What the hell? Bronze was enjoying the hell out of his confusion.
“We think you may have some latent special abilities,” the woman said. “Have you ever been able to outthink everyone else in a way that’s more than just smarts? Perhaps you can make calculations that would challenge an AI? Or read thoughts? Likely, it’s an ability that comes so rarely, you convince yourself it isn’t real.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
She drew a device from her pocket and waved it at him. He was so astonished by what she was saying that he didn’t shoot her.
“Because there are other people buried in the outer reaches of the Federation who also have special abilities. And this gadget confirms who they are.”
She grinned. Alice really wouldn’t approve. Razzle girl was smoking hot.
Claudio kept his gaze on her but pointed at Bronze. “And Mr. SpecMish is going to be okay with this. A man can have a strong opinion about having his hand vaporized.”
“Oh, he’ll be fine,” she replied with a smile. A cloud of worry passed over her face. “Seriously, though, never mention what you did to his girlfriend.”
Bronze shot his partner a withering glare.
There was a story behind that look, and Claudio dug stories.
“I like you,” he said. “I like your money more. I guess what I’m trying to say is…I’m in.”
* * * * *
Chapter Three: Hines “Bronze” Zy Pel
Secret Planetoid Base, The Redoubt Line, Deep Space
Three Months Earlier
Lady Indiya trooped the line, her walking stick beating an unhurried rhythm into the heated flags.
The Federation’s greatest hope—if you believed the narrative told across the redoubt line—was this grotesque creature from a children’s storybook, an impossibly ancient crone, all angles and bones. Her flesh was so desiccated, Bronze doubted she weighed more than 80 pounds, yet her lilac hair still blazed like a protostar in a stellar nursery. And her will…that was whip sharp and sturdier than neutronium. A single glare from those rheumy eyes was enough to make a company of drill sergeants not only soil themselves but say sorry like they meant it.
“You do realize I can hear your thoughts,” she rasped. She laughed, but there was no humor to the sound. It was scarcely Human.
Bronze already knew about her mind reading. He knew more, too. Such as the way she could turn you into red mist with a single thought.
He shivered, despite the warmth of this room in her personal chambers. The old woman was the most terrifying being he’d ever encountered. That monstrous super-Zhoogene on Doloreene didn’t even come close.
“Empress. Empress!” Indiya tutted. “You wixering bunch of pig-licking panty-noses. I have already told you that Far Reach is not and has never been an empire. I served one extended term as president, and that was only because my husband disappeared while he was supposed to be running the place. The next person who thinks of me as her empress, I’ll have shot.”
She timed her speech to perfection, issuing her deadly threat as she came in front of Zan Fey. Indiya’s head was level with the Zhoogene’s chest, but her stoop meant she was looking at Zan Fey’s naval. Without looking up, Indiya jabbed her walking stick into the soft underside of Zan Fey’s jaw.
“Shot…or worse, greenie.”
Zan Fey’s waxy cheeks glowed hot. It looked like she was melting.
Immortal legend or not, Bronze had already tired of Indiya’s antics. “Seems to me,” he said, “the loyalty you inspire is a key asset, ma’am. One we should be exploiting.”
“Oh, he talks!” She flicked a watery gaze his way. Instantly, Bronze felt a tingling in his mind that spread to every inch of his skin. Was he imagining it? Or was she making use of her nano-bot engines that after millennia of constant upgrades might as well be described as spell casters?
“Funny,” she said, “I almost didn’t invite you and the thug to our informal gathering. You’re correct, of course. I’m supposed to be long dead; I prefer it that way. But since I’ve been recalled to duty as a consequence of my successors’ total fuckwit incompetence, I must once more consider myself an asset. One that must be exploited in the cause.”
She paused, a sour look frozen on her face.
Fitz saw his chance. “The pipe smoker raises an important point,” he said. “Also, why have you summoned this particular group? Why not include our Viking or our shy loadmistress?”
Bronze had been wondering the same thing. Fitz, Zan Fey, and Kanha Wei all had the purple thing going. He and Darant didn’t.
“Because you are all my children. Vetch Arunsen, Justiana Fregg, and the others are not.”
Lady Indiya flicked her tongue out like a snake tasting the air. “Oh, I enjoy your awkwardness. I savor it, and yet I am jealous of you. Can you believe that? Such feelings—any feelings—come extremely rarely to an immortal. However, as I say, I’m your…” She shrugged bony shoulders. “You’re the descendants of my husband and the loves of his life, so I guess I’m your stepmother of sorts. This may sound ridiculous to you, but we exchanged oaths, my husband and me. It was a long time ago, but they still bind. You may not be my descendants biologically, but you’re my stepchildren. You would’ve had my husband’s blessing, and so you have mine. My support. My protection. My fears for you.”
Bronze looked across at Darant, only to see he was glancing back at him.
Indiya, of course, saw this. “I’ve had you all scanned for…various reasons, including to determine who among you are my stepchildren. Darant and Bronze, the proportion of alien DNA in your genes is more limited than the others. Not enough to express itself, but I would offer you odds of 1,000-to-1 against your children having a purple body part.”
“I question your odds, ma’am,” Bronze said. “Special Missions Executive rebuilt my broken body, but there was only so much they were able and willing to repair. I’m most definitely sterile, and that’s a blessing. My radiation-blasted DNA is not something to be passed on.”
“No,” Indiya said, “I fixed that…” She winked. Hideously. “Perhaps you could be an experiment for another time.”
Indiya turned and walked to her oversized chair, intricately carved from planet-grown wood. For someone who didn’t like to be thought of as an empress, it looked suspiciously like a throne.
“Oh, and Zan Fey,” she said over her shoulder, “the scans show your Human ancestor was around 60 generations back, probably in the brief era when having purple eyes was considered a most desirable characteristic.”
She took her sweet time settling into the deeply padded seat before addressing the six people standing before her.
“I said I was an asset,” she told them. “Well, guess what? So are you, and I’m going to exploit you to the fullest. Your first mission is to seek out others who carry your alien DNA and bring them to the JSHC orbital in the Tej system. I’ll give you six months, which isn’t much, but the Andromedans are already on the move. You’re to be my bargaining gambit and a fallback position. If the Federation doesn’t fix itself to my satisfaction, I may have to replace it with something new that has you at its head. You’re not seen as being aligned with any political faction because everyone hates you. This makes you a perfect unifying force. Hopefully the situation isn’t so bad that I have to roll up my sleeves and take control directly.”
Zan Fey bowed deeply. “We will not fail you, ma’am.”
“You’d better not. And don’t interrupt again. There’s another reason I summoned you here today. The walls here are filled with sensors, and they’re directed at you. I’m going to conduct an experiment. I’m going to see if I can level up the alien in you.”
* * * * *
Chapter Four: Adony Zaydok
Pirna Defense Zone, 21-Ginoesse
Wrenchy cleared his throat, the bare ferrocrete walls amplifying the sound with weird precision, as if this were an acoustically tuned amphitheater and not a shell-blasted gravitics factory.
>
“So,” the squad joker began, “Kreisha, what’s this we’re all hearing about the hunk of flesh in Blue Platoon who’s won your innocent heart?”
Zaydok glanced across to the other suppression fire gun and its assistant gunner, who was giving Wrenchy her 10-terawatt glare.
“Stow that shite,” Kreisha told Wrenchy. “None of us want to hear your weird sex fantasies.”
Zaydok silently disagreed. He opened up his gas-proof outer suit and reached inside his battledress for the pipe his mother had sent him in the last package from home. Wrenchy and Kreisha kicking off was always choice entertainment. Everyone deserved the distraction.
“Don’t deny it,” Wrenchy countered with a leer. “I saw the way you looked at Hunter. The past week has been tough on all of us. The Iron Lady understands. Maybe if you ask her, she’ll organize overwatch for you to safely wash your hair in the river before meeting your new man?”
That got a few laughs, even from Kreisha. The Yavitri ran just behind the factory, but these days it flowed with corpses and rotting fish. Zaydok wouldn’t take a dump in the river, let alone wash there.
“In any case,” Kreisha responded with a haughty air, “if it’s Corporal Hunter Tengri you’re thinking of, at least he has some hunks of flesh worth talking about. We all know you’re hung like a Xhiunerite’s trimmings. A girl could find a better man than you in the Reserve Corps.”
A gust of wind blew through the shattered carcasses of the windows and snatched the good humor away.
Zaydok stowed his pipe without lighting it. Talk of the Reserve Corps had killed the mood.
“Quiet!” the sergeant snapped.
No one spoke. Everyone on the second floor of the factory strained their ears.
The wind blowing through the building made the faintest whistle. Beyond the rear window frames, they could hear the Yavitri cheerfully splashing through the bloated cadavers. On the far bank, the bats that had begun to colonize the hollowed-out spaces of the pulverized city squabbled over perching rights.
Then Zaydok heard it: the distant roar of aero engines.
“Are they…?” Pendleton didn’t finish his question. The replacement trooper had joined the platoon only 10 days ago, just in time to die, but the kid had learned a little while he’d been in the front line.
“Answer your own question,” the sergeant told him.
“The Militia’s field guide to aircraft identification,” Pendleton recited. “If it’s not there, it’s one of ours. If it is, take cover and start praying.”
“Good lad.” The sergeant spoke in a friendly voice, which worried the hell out of Zaydok. Usually he terrorized the new ones. “Check gas seals,” he ordered the detachment, “then masks on and check your buddy’s seals. They’ll use aerial and artillery assets to soften us up. Then the next assault will come in.”
They didn’t have long to wait.
Blazes of light streaked over the horizon toward them, coming in at impossible speeds.
“Brace for missiles,” Pendleton muttered, but the truth was, if they took a direct hit from any of the air-to-ground ordnance, nothing would save them.
A double explosion ripped through their world, a brutal blast of heat and light that cleared to dust and screams.
The ringing in Zaydok’s skull had barely begun to ease when the flight of ground attack craft roared past, lashing the 3031st with cannon fire.
The aircraft passed over. Zaydok looked around to check if his comrades still lived. The aero engines Doppler-shifted as they receded into the distance.
The scene outside was still too full of dust and screams to see what the enemy was doing, so Zaydok listened to the skies like his life depended on it. They all did. Would the aircraft turn around for another run?
They didn’t.
The 3031st wasn’t worth the risk.
“Glory be to the sodding Legion,” the sergeant said.
Not that the Legion was shoulder to shoulder here on the front line, but the Legion Navy flotilla still held superiority in this star system, choking rebel logistics. Here on 21-Gionesse, the Panhandlers could manufacture blasters, rifles, boots, and conscripts, but not air assets—nor heavy guns, for that matter. The aircraft would be hoarded for more vital missions, their task for today completed.
The bridge over the Yavitri would now be taken on the cheap by more expendable elements of the rebel war machine.
Down below, the dust began to clear. Through the hazy eyepieces of the gas mask, Zaydok could see the enemy filtering through the ruins as they advanced to their assault positions.
Would this be the attack that would finally take the bridge?
He surveyed the Militia position. The air attack had added new craters to the street and knocked a hole out of the barricade. Troopers were frantically doing their best to repair the defenses in the last moments before the infantry assault came in.
The defense was anchored on either flank by suppression fire gun teams. Zaydok’s was positioned in the factory. On the other side of the street, two more SFGs were set up in the old Lion Hotel. They didn’t look to have been hit, so they might actually survive this.
But even if they did, what then? There were always more Panhandlers. Having expended the volunteers of the early days, the rebels swelled their numbers nowadays with unwilling conscripts.
Zaydok observed the frantic activity at the barricade. He looked for a figure with two blue stripes daubed onto the back of her gas mask, a pair of stripes to match the two metal plates that held the rear of her skull together.
Calm surged through him when he caught sight of her. This was First Sergeant Heive, the Iron Lady. If the Lady stood firm, so would the rest of them. Even Captain Iredalie, the most senior remaining officer, the others having been called away by an urgent need to liaise with Divisional HQ or to perform some other suddenly vital activity well away from the front line.
Zaydok tried and failed to batter away an unwelcome thought. If the Lady went down, would he run? Would everybody run?
It was as well, he supposed, that with the attack imminent, there was no time to dwell on such matters.
The 3031st Battalion of Militia had been committed to the defense of the only remaining bridge across the Yavitri for a hundred miles in either direction. The Panhandlers wanted to seize the crossing so they could send their shock brigades across into the soft hinterland of Basscrei Province and threaten the capital.
But the Militia clung to the bridge so the Reserve Corps could counter-attack and shatter the stalled Panhandler advance.
Zaydok could think of many problems with the Militia strategy, the most pertinent being that the Reserve Corps didn’t exist. It was a phantom unit, a tool for senior Militia commanders in the sector to siphon hundreds of millions in public funding. An entire economic ecosystem of bribes and backhanders had developed around the fictitious corps. All those dirty credits swirling around, and Zaydok’s squad, hunkered in the ruined gravitics factory in their gas suits, would earn nothing, but likely pay everything.
“Hold firm, 3031st.” Iredalie’s voice sounded convincingly firm over the general channel. He was one of the few officers the troopers respected somewhat. “It’s come to my attention that there’s been talk of the Reserve Corps being understrength.”
Wrenchy laughed first. Most of the others joined in.
“There’s some truth to those rumors,” the captain admitted graciously, “but the Reserve Corps isn’t here. We are. By holding the bridge at Pirna, we hold onto the honor of the Militia, and…we buy time, because reinforcements will soon be here. Real ones.”
“Is he pulling our strings?” asked Zaydok’s gunner, Lance Corporal “Prince” Gethrai.
“I don’t know,” the sergeant growled. “Don’t rightly care. We focus on the job at hand. We survive what comes next. That’s all you gutter wipes need to think about.”
“Attention,” the Iron Lady said over the same general channel, “S&S reports ISD has joined the party. You kn
ow what that means. No mercy. Kill them all, or they’ll kill all of us. It’s liberty or fucking death time, people. Don’t waste a single shot. ISDs are wearing their usual blue colors. They are priority one targets. And a reminder to the new members of the 3031st’s family. I wear two blue stripes for a reason, but I’m not IS-frakking-D. Anyone who shoots me had better make it a clean kill, or you will regret it. It’s time, people. The Panhandlers are coming.”
* * * * *
Chapter Five: Adony Zaydok
The enemy advanced cautiously. With their tan uniforms and helmets coated in the ubiquitous white powder Pirna had been ground into, they looked like golems manifested out of the tortured city.
When they reached Zaydok’s fire zone, both SFGs opened up. Brrrrrt! Brrrrrt! Brrrrrrrt! From the Lion Hotel, the other two suppression guns did the same.
The enemy went to ground, their dusty clothing blending perfectly with the powdered city, as good as any active camo.
While Prince fired trios of bursts into the street, Zaydok monitored the gun’s real-time diagnostics and ensured a good feed from the ammo drum.
Brrrrrt! Brrrrrt! Brrrrrrrt!
The violent staccato whir combined with the hot, oily exhalations of the exhaust vents and the dance of the feed belt. He was an assistant gunner. To him, when an SFG spoke, it was a multi-sensory symphony.
He looked out onto the street, where he hoped the Panhandlers would be having a less pleasing experience of the gun.
The Rocksair SFG Model 13T fired segmented, caseless rounds perfect for controlling fire zones in urban environments. A hard-point tip penetrated through the initial targets before dispatching trailing mushroom segments designed to ricochet off hard surfaces and carve terrible wound channels through soft flesh.
Red blooms spread beneath the rebels splashed by the gun’s fire. They no longer looked like supernatural creatures conjured from ferrocrete dust and urban aggregate. They just looked dead.
Hold the Line (Chimera Company Book 5) Page 3