by Jamie Sawyer
“It doesn’t matter,” the man repeated. He had bruises and lacerations all over his chest, souvenirs from Darkwater. “I am Spiral. I have no other name.”
Novak rounded the tango slowly. A predator on the prowl, the Russian appeared to be savouring every moment of this confrontation. He wore a deep grin on his face, a smile that exposed his darkened teeth.
“I think I call you Martin. Is nice name. Is American name. We both know you not American though.” Novak paused. “I am Russian. You are too, yes?”
The figure looked up, and there was some silent understanding between Novak and the tango. Another prickle broke on my skin.
“We are understanding each other?” Novak said. He was stripped to the waist, his muscled body also wet with sweat, his prison tattoos more extensive than those of the smaller prisoner. “I think you are from mother country too. Am I right?”
“It doesn’t matter,” the prisoner spat back.
“I am Alliance,” Novak continued. “I am here for answers, yes?”
The prisoner scowled. “Fuck you. Is coming. Is happening, whether you like it or not.”
“You think I care about that?”
“Warlord cares about all of us,” the prisoner said.
Novak’s reaction was instant. He pounded a fist into the left side of the tango’s face. Martin’s head cracked backwards. Bright blood and spittle sprayed from his mouth. Zero gasped sympathetically.
Novak got right into the man’s face. “Your ship is gone. We destroyed it. My officer, she kill it in poison atmosphere.”
Martin snarled. The noise was wet and painful to listen to.
“You know this man Riggs, yes?” Novak said. “He was once like me.” He thumped a fist against his chest. “He was Jackal.”
Martin said something in a language that was probably Russian. Novak rewarded him with another roundhouse to the chest. Ribs snapped. I started to feel a bit sick.
“Now you tell me what I want to know,” Novak said. “Why were you on Darkwater?”
Martin’s head swung back and forth, strands of saliva and blood dripping from his ruined mouth.
“Supplies,” he managed. “We needed supplies.”
“Why Darkwater? Is special. Is farm.”
“Warlord, he need special supplies.”
“Like what?”
“You see them.” Martin looked at Novak. “How you say? ‘Reapers,’ yes?”
“Why does Warlord need Reapers? Does not make sense.”
“If you cannot understand, then is your problem. No more talk.”
Novak dealt with that with another blow to the tango’s face.
Lopez moved back from the obs field now. “I can’t watch this,” she said.
“Feng, take Lopez out of here,” I ordered.
“On it,” said Feng.
He ushered Lopez out of the room, leaving Zero and I watching.
“All right!” Martin said. “I talk!”
“Why Darkwater?” Novak roared.
“Because we need sims, for Riggs.”
“For the traitor?”
“Yes,” Martin agreed. “For traitor.”
“What was Warlord doing there?”
“He need medication,” Martin said. “He cannot live without.”
“What medication?”
Martin rolled his head. “No more questions.”
“I say when to stop,” Novak said.
“We will stop all of this. We will destroy Aeon, and we will bring Dominion to your world.”
Novak cracked his knuckles. Stood behind the prisoner and produced something that reflected the low light of the glow-globe. It was one his precious knives. He ran the blade down his forearm, testing its sharpness. Martin seemed to tense up a little at that—who wouldn’t?—but his lips were still sealed.
I hit the two-way comms switch set into the wall.
“Leave it there, Novak,” I said. “He’s told us enough.”
Novak looked up at the screen. His face was remarkably open and incredibly calm: like this was just another day at work for him.
“Make window dark,” he said. “You do not want to be seeing this.”
“I said, leave it!”
But Novak wasn’t listening. He began to speak rapidly, in Russian, despite my order. Martin, grinning through a mouth of broken teeth and blood, answered in the same language.
Zero looked to me for approval. I nodded, and she very eagerly deactivated the window, turning the mirrored field opaque. Martin’s defiance was short-lived and pitiful. Soon his pained screams, his pleading in Russian, filled the brig. Novak was making the most of this.
“You can go too, Zero, if you’d prefer,” I said.
Zero shook her head. She frowned at me, unsure of whether she should talk.
“Go on. Spit it out.”
She held out a data-slate. “This is linked to the Firebird’s AI programme,” she said. “It speaks Russian.”
I took the slate and looked down at the words forming there.
“It’s a real-time translation of the interrogation,” Zero explained. “He keeps saying the word ‘Aeon,’ but the rest … Well, see for yourself …”
“Shit.”
Novak wasn’t asking about the Spiral. Not after his first few questions, anyway. The rest—shot through with untranslatable screams and wet gurgling noises—wasn’t about the Spiral at all.
“Get out of here, Zero. I have a slight matter of discipline to deal with, and it isn’t going to be pretty.”
Zero got the message this time and scurried out of the brig.
The interrogation didn’t last much longer. Barely a few minutes after Novak’s gig had been rumbled, the tango was dead. Leaving what was left of the body—which, admittedly, wasn’t very much—Novak came into the brig.
“Does not know anything else,” he said.
“Well he doesn’t now, Novak. He’s dead.”
Novak shrugged. “They kill Lazarus, yes? I kill them. Is no loss.”
“Except that you weren’t asking about Lazarus, or Darkwater, or anything else to do with this mission,” I said. “Just what exactly is your malfunction, trooper?”
Ichor and bloody fluid was liberally sprayed across Novak’s chest and face. He wiped at it with a rag, a mechanic cleaning himself up after a particularly messy repair, rather than an executioner who had just killed a man.
Novak glanced up innocently. “Is done,” he said. “Spiral were here for sims. They have no more operators, only Riggs.”
“And you know this how?”
“Because I ask question,” Novak said. “In Russian, yes? Maybe you not understand.”
“Oh, I understand perfectly. I told you to speak Standard.”
“My mistake.”
I thrust the data-pad in front of Novak, and his gaze settled on it. There was a perceptible drop to his shoulders, a tell that I’d started to recognise.
“I know what you were asking him,” I said. “Zero set up the ship’s AI to translate your questions, and his answers.”
“Zero make the error in words—”
“So you’re saying that Zero made an error in every question you fucking asked?”
“Ah, yes,” Novak said slowly.
“Who are you, Novak?”
“I am Jackal,” he answered. “I am soldier.” He went quiet and added: “I am Son of Balash.”
“Tell me everything. No more secrets.”
“I already tell you. Back on ark-ship, in Maelstrom.”
“That wasn’t everything,” I said. I pointed to a line of text on the data-slate. “‘Tell me where Major Mish Vasnev is?’ you asked. ‘On pain of honour as Son of Balash.’ Who the fuck is Mish Vasnev?”
Novak sighed, rolled his head on his shoulders as though he were considering how best to answer that question, or whether he should answer it at all.
“Vasnev was member of gang,” he finally said. “Back on Old Earth. In Norilsk.”
That w
as where Novak had grown up, according to his service files. During our last mission into the Maelstrom, Novak had revealed to me that he had tried to leave the bratva—the gang that I now knew as the Sons of Balash—and how his wife and daughter had been killed as retribution. Novak was arrested for the murders, then tried and sentenced to life imprisonment in a Siberian gulag.
“More,” I said. “I want everything, Novak.”
“Vasnev was boss, yes?” he said, seeking some understanding in my eyes. “Was godmother. I was enforcer. Bonded, for life.” He tapped a tattoo on his chest, something that looked like a feathered serpent, coiled with Cyrillic script. “That asshole—the Martin—was bratva too,” Novak explained.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “I saw how you treated Alexei, when we escaped Jiog. He was a Son of Balash.”
Novak waved a hand dismissively. “That was different. He was like me.” He pointed to another tattoo, markings around his left eye socket: a crude semi-circle that was almost certainly a prison tattoo. “He was exile. We are both Sons in exile, yes?”
I still wasn’t getting this. “So you were exiled from the Balash gang, or whatever it’s called?”
Novak looked at me plaintively. “This is not like life in California, in the San Angeles, ma’am. This is bad life. This is short life.”
Life in the San Ang ain’t exactly a dream, I thought to myself, but let it go. It was beyond argument that life in northern Russia was a good deal worse. The Russian Federation had taken a direct shelling during the Directorate–Alliance war. That had been generations ago, but the land still hadn’t recovered. Some doubted that it ever would.
“I am exiled, yes,” Novak continued. “I am exiled by Major Mish Vasnev.”
“And you want to know where she is, why, exactly?”
Now Novak’s presentation became stony cold, ice cold. “Because I want to kill Mish Vasnev. She … she give order.”
Novak pointed out another tattoo. In the mess of iconography and picts that spread across his skin, I’d missed so many clues to his background. But now that I looked, they were all there. His history was spelled out on a flesh-canvas.
“Vali,” I said breathlessly.
The name that he had used on the train, back on Jiog. He had spoken it accidentally, or so I’d thought, when talking about Zero. In the heat of the moment, I’d dismissed that as a slip of the tongue, nothing more. Now, it took on a new significance.
“Who was she?”
“My daughter,” Novak said. “My little girl. She was six years old, and very small. To have daughter in Norilsk is bad. Son is better, so elders say. But when I look in Vali’s eyes, I know this is wrong.”
I swallowed back regret. “She was killed, wasn’t she? By this Mish Vasnev?”
Novak nodded. “Vasnev gave this order.”
“And now Vasnev is working with the Black Spiral?”
Another nod. “And now I get chance to kill Vasnev. To avenge, you understand? To make right.”
“You can’t do this,” I insisted. “Not now.”
“Not you,” Novak said. “But me, I can. I do this, yes?”
“You’re a damned Jackal! You’re an indentured soldier of the Alliance Army, Novak!”
“I do not give fuck about rest of galaxy,” Novak said. “Mine is already gone.”
I met Novak’s gaze. It was calm, but also resolute. Was he so different to Warlord? Clade Cooper had lost everything once, too, and that had turned him into a monster. I realised then that I really didn’t know Novak at all.
“I’m sorry about what happened to your daughter, Novak,” I said. “And your wife, too. But while you’re a Jackal, you obey orders. Capische?”
Novak didn’t answer, but there was a slight upturn to the corners of his mouth. Smiling. He was smiling at me. I didn’t like that reaction one bit.
“Something funny, Private?” I asked.
“Nothing funny,” said Novak.
The words might be right, but the reaction and attitude weren’t. I sincerely doubted that this talk was getting through to Novak, despite everything that had happened. It struck me, in that instant, that maybe Novak had something in common with Riggs as well. I didn’t know either of them, not properly.
“It comes to it, I give the orders,” I said. “I know that you’ve got your own agenda, but like I said, you’re a Jackal.”
“Vali, she was toughest cookie,” Novak replied. “She would not quit. She would not stop, and I know this. So I will be Vali. I will not quit. Her favourite animal is dog, yes? We even had one. Was mutt.” He laughed hoarsely. “Did bite. Did have the fleas. But was Vali’s favourite. She love him.” The rage had returned to his posture, to his expression. “I would do anything for one more minute with her. Just one minute. You understand this?”
“I get it,” I said.
“I will be Vali’s dog. I will be Jackal.”
“You left your post aboard the farm,” I said, all of Novak’s various insubordinations now making a lot more sense, “and you lied to me about that prisoner. We have a chain of command for a reason. I need to know that I can trust every one of my Jackals. I need to know that you’re with this.”
“I am,” said Novak. “But I will not let this be gone. Chance comes …” He shrugged. “I take shot.”
“And if my order conflicts with your agenda?”
Novak’s eyes narrowed. He was rubbing the knuckles of his right hand with his left. The action was far from calming or reassuring. “Then things get interesting,” he said. “Very interesting.”
“Not good enough. I need to know that the Jackals come first.”
Novak gave a slow, and rather unconvincing, nod. “Of course.”
I shook my head and sighed at him. But I realised that this was the best response I was going to get.
“Dismissed,” I said. “Make sure that bastard’s body is spaced.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK
We were sixteen hours out of Thane.
The Firebird’s coolant leak had been stemmed. Captain Lestrade had initiated the ship’s automated repair systems and was satisfied that we weren’t going to fall out of the sky anytime soon. The damage to E-deck wasn’t as bad as the captain had first thought; Lopez and Feng had sealed the hull breach with emergency supplies. Other maintenance tasks would take time, but they could be done on the fly.
We made the jump to Q-space as soon as we could. Although that wouldn’t make us impossible to track, it would make it more difficult for the Black Spiral to give chase. That was the objective: to outrun the terrorist fleet and lick our wounds. It gave us some breathing space, at the very least.
I held a debrief, of sorts. Lopez and Feng had missed most of the action, and Zero had fallen back from the main station to the Firebird. Captain Lestrade had been posted there right up to the point of the station takeover. None of them had seen much. Zero went over our intelligence about the Shard once again, and started to make some enquiries of the Firebird’s mainframe, but I knew that she would find nothing. Whatever Warlord had become, he was as sub rosa as they came.
“I’ve never heard of anything like it,” Zero said.
“Neither have I,” I replied.
“I’ll do some digging, but I don’t hold out much hope. Maybe he was the product of a black op, something covert?”
“It … it was like he was manipulating time-space,” I said. Then shook my head. “That sounded a lot less stupid in my head.”
Zero smiled. “I get it. I’ll look into it.”
“You do that.”
I needed rest, and desperately. My neck throbbed, the bruises already turning a deep purple. Fresh damage to my ribs. My entire body felt as though I’d been pummelled by gunfire, which was more or less accurate. But the mission was more important, and sleep could wait. Half a packet of uppers—military-grade amphetamines—saw off any prospect of shut-eye.
E
lena’s data-packet was the logical next step in the operation. She’d sent that to the Firebird, in the closing seconds of the engagement around Thane. Whatever Harris and the Watch had planned, it would be in there. I hoped that it had some answers.
So I commandeered the Firebird’s briefing room, and settled in for the night. Of course, it wasn’t really night. But like most military starships, the Firebird operated a day–night cycle, even during deep-space flight. The human body’s got to have its rhythm.
“Here we go …” I muttered to myself. “Computer, open data-packet.”
“Affirmative.”
The smart-desk lit with tri-D graphics, with information streams, with the badges and seals of several military agencies. The Watch’s reach was far, it seemed, but Elena had trusted me, and everything in the data-packet had been decrypted ready for review. I found a carefully organised briefing, complete with telemetry, jump-data, collected evidence on the Harbinger virus. Intelligence on the subject of the mission, Dr. Olivia Locke, the former chief xeno-archaeologist of Tysis World. Harris had endorsed her file with annotations, with possible references to other leads.
I felt a real sadness as I read those notes. I lost focus, and it all came crashing down on my shoulders.
“Jesus Christo,” I said. Rubbed a hand across my temples. “What the fuck am I going to do, Harris?”
I didn’t expect an answer, but the darkness replied anyway.
“You got anything to drink?”
Harris stood behind me. He was still wearing the battered Directorate Ikarus suit, still clutching his stomach. Looking as though he had just stepped off Darkwater Farm.
“How—what?” I started. Much like when I’d seen Riggs in Simulant Storage, I was struggling to process this.
“Don’t get up on my account,” he said. Collapsed into a chair with a tired groan.
“What are you doing here?” I managed. “Did you get off Darkwater?”
Harris gave a toothy grin. “Yeah, sure, kid. I got off Darkwater.”
“But how?”
“Ah, we could go through the specifics, if you like. Maybe I could explain how I managed to fight off the Spiral, made a desperate run for the Paladin. Elena waiting for me, arms outstretched. That’d be a good story, right? Or maybe I found an evacuation-pod, one that the Jackals missed, and jumped into that. A passing Watch patrol picked me up.”