by Rick Partlow
“Why did you bring them here, Lana?” The man was at least sixty, though the shadows the portable lanterns threw didn’t do him any favors, with grey creeping into his short-cut blond hair, skin tanned to leather, weathered and cracked with decades of exposure to the dry wind of Revelation. “This is a huge risk. What if you were followed? What if they have drones up? Or the satellites Salvaggio has used against us before?”
“No one followed me,” Kane insisted. She still had the boy with her, holding onto him as if she were afraid he’d run off if she let go. He hadn’t said a word the whole time and Terrin was beginning to get the idea he couldn’t speak. “How many times have I been to our old house? I know the routes to take by now.”
“You take too many chances,” the woman standing beside the older man declared harshly, hands on her hips as if scolding. “These two found you there! Who else might have?”
She was of an age with the man and stood close enough to him that Terrin thought she might be his wife. They were dressed in similar fashion, work clothes of local fabrics, wool and cotton, hers with a long, hooded cloak but both a neutral, natural gray.
“I know it’s a risk,” Kane admitted, surprising Terrin with the contrition in her tone. “But it’s where our parents are buried and Alec needs to see them.” Her arm tightened around her brother’s shoulder when she said the name. “I appreciate you looking after him while I’ve been gone, but you won’t take him there.”
“Because it’s not safe…” the woman said, but Kane interrupted her with a raised palm.
“Right now, there are more important things for us to consider.”
She squeezed Alec’s shoulders and gave him a comforting look as if she were trying to anchor him in place, then paced over to where Terrin and Franny stood apart from the cluster of locals. The lean-to was colored to blend with the rock of the canyon and concealed well under the spreading shade of the twisted trees with their short, hardy tufts of needles, and large enough Kane had been able to pull her rover all the way beneath it. He and Franny were leaning against the side of the car while the council of elders and some youngers sat on boxes of supplies or sandstone boulders or just leaned back against the canyon walls.
“This one,” Kane waved at Terrin, “has a brother who is the commander of a mercenary company called Wholesale Slaughter. His brother will be coming for him and I have…” She hesitated. “…certain leverage I can use to influence this Jonathan Slaughter.” She smiled broadly. “This could be exactly what we’ve been looking for, a way out of all this.”
“A way out of what?” Terrin demanded, a sinking feeling in his gut. “What do you want from Wholesale Slaughter?”
“Lana,” the old man began, stepping on the woman as she began to remonstrate with Kane as well, “you can’t make this sort of decision unilaterally…”
“No one’s made any decisions yet, David” Kane held up a hand to forestall the objection. “I’m just giving us options…which is more than we’ve had in a long time.”
“Options to do what?” Terrin demanded. “You need to tell me what this is all about, lady. We had a deal.”
“And the deal was for me to turn over what you gave me to your brother, wasn’t it?” She cocked her head. “He’s not here, yet. If you’d like to survive till he gets here, maybe we should amend the agreement, because I don’t recall saving your asses being part of it.”
“Like I said,” Terrin repeated, trying not to let his impatience cost him his temper, “what do you want?”
“This place has always been rough,” Kane said, waving a hand around demonstratively. “We don’t make much anyone else wants, but the upside of that has always been that no one messed with us. Until the Red Brotherhood popped up a few years ago, that kind of loose alliance between a bunch of bandits and pirates. Then all of them started getting this idea they were like a government and wanted someplace to call home, a base where they could set up on a habitable planet and fortify against attack from the Dominions.”
“They won’t be doing that anymore,” Terrin assured her, feeling a visceral sense of satisfaction for his part in the mission. “We knocked the head right off that snake.”
“Not in time for us.” Kane clutched her arms to herself, eyes closing as if she were reliving a memory. “He called himself Captain Fowler and when he and his people landed with a few platoons of half-assed foot-soldiers and six or seven slapped-together Hopper scout mecha, there wasn’t a damned thing we could do to stop him…though some people tried.”
“Is that what happened to your parents?” Franny’s question was quiet, hesitant. Terrin understood. He wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask it.
Kane’s eyes opened to narrow slits regarding Franny from just beneath the brim of her cap.
“It’s what happened to a lot of people. So, when we were able to get the word out, we asked for help on the Merc-Work net, anyone who’d come and work on spec. And who we got was Momma Salvaggio and her Savages. They weren’t much more than Fowler had, weren’t equipped much better, but she had actual combat experience and all he’d ever done was terrorize civilians who didn’t have much more than you can fabricate from local materials. She kicked his ass and hung him from a pole out in front of the city hall. Everyone cheered…”
“And then she wanted to get paid,” Terrin presumed.
“And we had nothing left to pay her with…except our labor.”
David cut in then, his voice sad but somehow resigned.
“Trinity was having problems getting enough workers,” he explained, “because no one in their right mind wants to get paid poverty-level wages for the privilege of living in a damned cave. Salvaggio cut a deal with them and received a hefty piece of their action in return. But she didn’t count her new percentage toward our repayment. That has to come out of the wages of the workers.”
“And since our pay is so low,” Kane added, “it’s going to take forever. Which is fine with her, since she’s made Revelation her own little fiefdom until the debt is paid off.”
“Shit,” Terrin murmured. It was about what he’d expected.
“It’s not as if she’s been cruel or harsh,” the older woman beside David admitted, obviously reluctant to give Salvaggio her due. “Not like Fowler. She hasn’t killed anyone or tried to take our food or businesses. But her word is law, and she controls all shipments in and out of the system. If we wanted to live under the rule of a tyrant, we could volunteer as cannon fodder for Starkad.”
“Especially considering they’re here,” David said grimly.
“What?” Kane exclaimed, head snapping around toward him. “When?”
“A few hours ago. They’re all over the city, an invading force…looking for them, I assume.” He pointed at Terrin and Franny.
“Looking for what we gave you,” Terrin corrected. He cursed under his breath, then gave up and slammed a palm into the side of the rover and just shouted it out loud instead. “Shit!” Kane stared at him and he waved his hands at her in frustration. “When they come, they’ll walk right into it.”
“They’ll be okay,” Franny assured him, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. “We’re talking about your brother, and Colonel Randell and the Shakak.”
He wanted to laugh at how confident she sounded, as if there were no odds Logan and the others couldn’t overcome. He didn’t, because he knew she still hadn’t completely forgiven him for going along with Salvaggio at the jail. Pissing her off again wouldn’t help any.
“What do you guys have?” he asked Kane and David and the woman. None of the others gathered around had said a word and didn’t seem likely to without encouragement. There were lots of wide eyes and frightened expressions and their lack of confidence didn’t inspire any in him. “I mean, do you have any weapons at all? Any armor?”
David and the woman shared a look, but it was Kane who answered.
“We have a couple old armored personnel carriers we salvaged from Fowler and repaired,” she said, s
hrugging. “They have missile launchers but we don’t have any more missiles for them. We were able to fabricate ammo for their heavy machine guns. Plus, we have some cargo trucks we’ve welded armor onto and we have machine guns we put onto turrets we made for them. We couldn’t do anything against their mecha, but we can help against their infantry.”
“Maybe Salvaggio’s infantry,” Terrin scoffed. “Not Starkad Marines. I know you guys are in a bad situation here, but if we go up against Starkad and Salvaggio, they’ll burn the whole city down around your ears. The Supremacy doesn’t mess around.”
He turned away from them and rested his hands on the hood of the rover, trying to think. Logan would know what to do. Lyta would know what to do. Hell, even Katy would know and she was a pilot. He was an astrophysicist, and this didn’t seem like a problem he could solve with hyperdimensional math.
“How will we even know when our people get here?” he wondered. “It’s not like they’re going to announce it on the public net.” He snorted humorlessly. “If you even have a public net here.”
He thought Kane was about to answer back, probably with something angry, but the sound of an engine brought everyone’s head around and some of the teenagers who’d been taking shelter under the lean-to grabbed rifles or shotguns and disappeared into the darkness. Terrin looked around for somewhere to take cover, some direction to run, but everything outside the circle of light beneath the lean-to was utter blackness—his eyes had adjusted to the lamps and the canyon was a dark mystery to him.
He’d just about decided to steal the rover and drive out the way they’d come in when someone called out of the black.
“It’s okay,” a young, male voice said. “It’s Chloe!”
Chloe turned out to be another of the teenagers, no older than sixteen or seventeen, with ratty, brown hair tied into a ponytail and a long, narrow face. Riding goggles rode atop her head and she was pushing a dirt bike up the rock-and-sand floor of the canyon toward the lean-to, flanked by two of the boys who’d run to investigate.
“What is it, girl?” David asked her. “You were supposed to be keeping an eye on the city hall. If they send out a patrol while we’re all bunched up here…”
“Something’s happened, Dad,” she interrupted him, making an impatient slashing motion. “Julia was bringing food in for Momma Salvaggio’s night shift, like she always does, but they weren’t on duty. She said those Starkad assholes…”
“Honey,” the older woman with David admonished. Terrin still hadn’t gotten her name. “Language.”
“Sorry, Mom,” Chloe said, rolling her eyes just slightly. “Anyway, the Starkad Marines had taken over the office and they were on all the monitors and everything. Julia heard them complaining about how shi…sorry, crappy all the equipment was. They took the food, though, even though they said it was crappy, too.”
“Starkad didn’t waste any time,” Kane murmured. “I suppose they don’t trust Momma any more than we do, which shows uncommon good sense.”
“Isn’t this something you could have told us when we returned to town, honey?” Chloe’s mother asked, gently reproving. “Riding all the way out here at night without lights…”
“That’s not it!” Chloe insisted, fingers clenching as if she were about to tear her hair out. Instead, she pulled off her goggles and gestured with them. “Julia was there when the alarms went off. The Marine dude brought in one of Salvaggio’s people and they told them the two satellites in polar orbit had been…” She trailed off, frowning in concentration as she tried to remember. “…flashed? I think the guy said flashed. They were all worked up, thought something was happening, but they called their ships and they couldn’t detect anything so they figured it was some sort of malfunction, but I thought I should come tell you.”
“Well, there you go,” Franny said. All eyes turned toward her, including Terrin’s, and she reddened slightly at the attention. “You wanted to know how we’d know when your brother arrived,” she clarified to Terrin. “Two satellites don’t get blinded at the same time by accident.”
She pointed upward, at the stars they couldn’t see for the overhang of the lean-to.
“They’re here.”
17
“Are you sure they didn’t see us land?” Acosta whined, peering upward through the canopy of the drop-ship’s cockpit.
Katy closed her eyes, counted to ten, and prayed, then yanked the quick-release for her seat restraints before she answered him. When he was in his element, the Intelligence agent turned copilot was self-assured and in control. But put him out in the field during a combat operation and he sounded like a scared twelve-year-old.
“I’m sure if they’d been looking, they might have seen us, Francis.” She was never going to call the man Patrick, no matter how many times he asked. He just looked like a Francis. “But this isn’t Stavanger, or Sparta or even one of the busier Periphery worlds. This is the ass-end of nowhere and they neither have the money nor the need to put out drones or remote sensors on every stretch of God-forsaken wasteland.” She hopped up, yanking a pair of levers to open the external compartments where the camouflage netting was stored. “Of course, once those satellites are back up, they’ll be able to spot the drop-ship, so we’d better go on out and make sure the camouflage is in place before that happens, right?”
In other words, why don’t you go make sure they’re in place and get out of my damn way? she thought but didn’t say. Even though they were the same rank now thanks to her promotion to Lt. Commander at the end of the Terminus mission, she was still his junior in time and grade. Of course, he was posing as her subordinate for his cover, which made things even more complicated. What the hell isn’t complicated about my life?
The cockpit steps led her down into the hold of the lander, where a dozen mecha were already being lowered to the ground on freight elevators, jagged and menacing silhouettes backlit by the work-lamps along the belly of the craft. She wondered what it would be like to pilot one of the things, to have all that destruction at her fingertips.
Naw, not fast enough, she decided.
“I’m still not comfortable that signal we got was actually from Terrin,” Acosta continued, coming down the steps behind her. “It was text-only, not even a voice pattern. If he’s been captured by Starkad, they could have forced him into sending the message.”
“They could have,” Lyta Randell agreed, waiting for them at the bottom of the skeletonized metal steps, dressed in combat black, her balaclava in one hand, carbine secured in the other. “But we won’t find out sitting in this bucket of bolts.”
Behind her, the rest of the two Ranger platoons she’d brought down in the drop-ship were slipping into backpacks, strapping gear to each other and checking the placement of their spare magazines. They were, Katy thought with some envy, a finely-tuned machine, and she hoped someday she could command an outfit as squared away.
“Your people ready, Lyta?” Logan’s voice came over the cockpit speakers and, Katy assumed, in the ear bud for Lyta Randell’s ‘link as well. Logan was in his Sentinel strike mech, already on the ground outside. “I want to move out before Starkad gets their eyes back.”
“My drivers are pulling the trucks out now,” Lyta told him. “Give me five.”
“Come on, Francis,” Katy nudged her copilot. “Let’s get the netting in place before we miss our ride.”
Logan felt obscenely exposed stomping along in the track of the dry riverbed under the pale light of the planet’s pockmarked moon. He knew on an intellectual level the enemy couldn’t have seen their landing and, even if their satellites were back up now, the odds they’d be scanning this exact area were incredibly low. It didn’t help. Every instinct he’d developed over his short but highly active career kept bringing his eyes back to the passive sensors, waiting for an assault shuttle to come screaming over the horizon and end them.
The darkness provided no comfort, not even a psychological one, not when the mech’s night vision and thermal scann
ers and sonic analysis systems were synthesized into an image in his helmet’s visor as clear as noontime in the blazing sun. Ahead was the only shelter that would make him feel less vulnerable, down the wadi and into the rising walls of the canyon. The map coordinates Terrin had sent them had specified this entrance to the maze of dried up waterways.
Well, he hoped Terrin had sent the message. It had contained the correct code-words for the last time his brother had been on the Shakak, but he had no illusions Starkad couldn’t have wrung those out of Terrin’s broken body if they’d gotten their hands on him. His stomach lurched at the idea, bad enough he thought for a moment the Sentinel had stepped into a chuck-hole.
He still wasn’t completely used to the massive machine, despite the hours he’d put in the simulator since his Vindicator had been destroyed fighting the Jeuta raiders. He missed the lighter, more agile assault mech, missed its jump-jets and the way it could out-maneuver larger, heavier machines. Even the improvements in armaments he’d been given back on Argos didn’t make up for it, but he had to get used to it. The Sentinel was the mech of a commander, which was what he’d become.
He checked the formation in the IFF—Identification Friend or Foe—transponder display at the right side of his vision, saw the rest of the two heavy platoons he’d brought down with him from the ship spread out in a single-file line down the broad swathe of the riverbed. Ideally, they’d be in a wedge formation, but geography dictated their route. He was in the center behind Kurtz’s First Platoon and their mobile, agile assault mecha, ahead of Paskowski’s strike mecha. Ford and Hernandez hadn’t been happy about being stuck on the ship, but he hadn’t wanted to chance landing two drop-ships in the limited window they’d been afforded.
At the rear of the formation were the two APCs carrying Lyta’s force as well as Katy and Acosta. He’d thought about leaving the pilots with the lander, but if it was found, they wouldn’t be able to get it back into orbit before Starkad assault shuttles blew them out of the sky. Anyway, Acosta was an Intelligence officer, the only one they had along—as far as he knew—and Katy had always been good to have around in a fight.