The hovertanks—if that was what they were—didn’t appear to Finnegan to be the source of the blasts they’d seen earlier. That became apparent when more shells landed, just missing two of the platforms before blowing a third to bits.
“There!” he said, pointing up. A pair of V-shaped aircraft soared down, crossing the battlefield and dropping more charges. Two more hovertanks were struck, sending some Dromax flying—and causing others to burst, shedding their innards across the ground. “That’s disgusting.”
“We killed quite a few in my realm. It’s why they like armor.”
“Whoever they are, they’re not on the same side,” he said.
Finnegan saw Georgiou peering through the night at the surviving pair of hovertanks. Given what they’d seen already, the vehicles, exposed under the night sky, had no hope against the fliers. If they stayed on the run, they could never bring their guns to bear.
The fourth hovertank suffered a glancing blow from an exploding shell and cartwheeled, sending its occupants flying in all directions. It slammed to a stop a hundred meters from their position. Faceup, its hover engines groaned hopelessly, bent rotors preventing it from rising again.
“This’ll be over soon,” he said to Dax.
“Will they come after us next?”
“I have no idea.”
“I do,” Georgiou said. She pointed to the crashed hovertank. “The symbol!”
Finnegan squinted at the marking on the side of the crashed vehicle. It was a pair of crescent moons, identical to the ones they’d seen on the midsection of Gnaeus, Quintilian’s Dromax assistant. He began to turn to Georgiou. “What do you think of—”
She was already on the move, he saw, bolting from cover in a headlong run toward the grounded hovertank.
“Wait!” he called out.
Dax tried to rise to look. “What’s she doing?”
“What she always does.”
He started to rise to follow—only to decide to stay beside Dax, who needed him. But not only that. He got the chance to watch as the emperor closed the distance with the wreck. Above, one of the bombers turned about, while its partner continued to fire at the one Dromax platform still on the move.
Reaching the damaged vehicle, Georgiou hit the ground beside it, even as the first bomber lobbed a shell her way. Finnegan called out, but his voice was nothing at this distance, especially when the projectile slammed into the ground on the other side of the vehicle. Emperor and wreck disappeared in a cloud of raining snow and debris.
“Georgie!” Finnegan stood, wanting to do something, yet powerless. The bomber ringed the valley and came in for a lower pass.
On her hands and knees beside him, Dax pointed. “Sean, look!” The dust clearing, the two beheld Georgiou alive and atop the gunnery platform of the fallen hovertank, standing at the controls of its sizable aft disruptor cannon. She fired it upward, winging the bomber and sending it careening into a ridge across the way.
It appeared to get the attention of the second bomber, which had been strafing the surviving hovertank. The flier’s occupants paused firing—only to receive incoming fire from Georgiou. The bomber exploded in midair, showering debris across the battlefield.
Finnegan, mesmerized, didn’t know what to say. Dax did. “I can walk.” And she did, working her way with him at her side to the platform Georgiou was on.
He just stared at her when they reached it. Happy at her gun emplacement, the emperor grinned down at him. “I thought you were assigned to shadow me.”
Before he could respond, the surviving hovertank approached. She turned her cannon toward it—only to raise it harmlessly to the sky as she saw its gunner doing the same. The vehicle slowed to a stop a dozen meters away.
The skiff carried at least half a dozen Dromax, but only one wore what appeared to be golden chain armor, draped across its gut. That individual trundled toward the fore of the vehicle—and looked down at Georgiou and her companions.
It turned and barked something incomprehensible. Moments later, someone brought the being a red box, which it affixed around its torso. “I am Sergeant Garph of the Double Crescent,” it said in modulated Federation Standard. “Do you stand with us?”
Georgiou responded in the affirmative. “I know your marking,” she said, pointing to the symbol on the vehicle. “I come from Quintilian. Gnaeus sent me.”
“Gnaeus! How is my old broodmate?” The Dromax lifted its mail armor, exposing an identical birthmark. “We serve General Agamalon.”
Georgiou looked satisfied. “That’s what I thought.”
“You have our appreciation. What can we do for an ally?”
Finnegan crossed his arms and smiled—first at the situation, then at her. “Can I say it?”
“Be my guest,” Georgiou responded.
Finnegan faced the Dromax and saluted. “Take us to your leader.”
34
Moon Thirty
DROMAX SYSTEM
Georgiou had not lingered in the Dromax system during her first visit, in her universe, a few years before, and that was unusual. It had been the emperor’s custom to tour the territories she conquered, seeing what was worth plundering and, on rare occasions, whether there was some title she could take for herself that would be of use. It was seldom fun to lay waste to places and move on.
The Dromax, on the other hand, had impressed her only as warriors—and nothing else. She had kept a portion of the species alive to serve her, but their works were of no concern. Based on the images her forces had provided her, there was nothing on any of their scrubby little moons worth getting her shoes dirty to inspect.
On traversing Thirty aboard Sergeant Garph’s hovercraft, she had seen little to change her opinion. If anything, the sights had reinforced it. The moon appeared to be a lesser holding within the Dromax system, and Garph’s general, Agamalon, controlled less than a third of it. Beyond the contested regions such as the one Boyington had landed in, Georgiou saw a battered landscape festooned with craters. Things that she’d imagined were permanent emplacements, like the disruptor batteries that had fired on the meteors and brought her shuttle down, were actually mobile units, larger versions of the hovertanks.
Then there were the ore mines. So many mines. The Dromax lived for war, with weapons from Casmarra and food from Oast, all delivered by Quintilian. The cost was minerals the Dromax carved from their moons, when they weren’t firing chunks of them at one another. The mining wasn’t performed in any orderly fashion, that she could tell: rather, when a space-fired projectile got through, the Dromax simply waited for the surface to cool and brought up what was uncovered. She wondered what would happen when the remaining leaders of the Dromax tribes—Garph said there were nine—were left alone squatting on the last mined-out pebbles in their system.
Spaceports were black maws in the ground, and Georgiou suspected the Dromax again let their enemies’ munitions do the excavating. All buildings of consequence were under the surface, so far as she could tell. And not one of them had been designed for comfort. The warriors had no art, no music, no science; only war, and tales of war.
She had heard them all in the cavern fortress of General Agamalon, imperious leader of Garph and other Dromax serving under the banner of the Double Crescent. Quintilian had been right; little of the tribe’s oral history seemed to stretch back very far. The legends were all of recent vintage—and now, it seemed, she had added to them.
“You’re a damned wonder, Captain,” Agamalon said, squatting in a tub of grain. “None of those other stinking two-legs ever stood beside us. Nobody ever tried to help. Not before you.”
Georgiou suppressed the urge to vomit. Agamalon and company dined somehow by sitting on their food and grinding around, taking in nutrients via osmosis. She fought to remember what the general had just said. “Why has no one helped you?”
“To keep us down, of course.” A wretched ripping sound came from someplace Georgiou couldn’t see. “Those disgusting Casmarrans need to sell wea
pons to keep themselves fed—where even is the mouth on those things? I’m sure they prop up our enemies on purpose!”
How their lives were unfair: that was the other favorite topic of conversation among the Dromax, all of whom seemed, like Agamalon, not to have tuned their voice boxes to Gnaeus-levels of politeness. Indignation was all about. She tired to hear of it—but at least it took her mind off how the Dromax ate, and her own food. The human provisions the Dromax had shared were kept about for the use of the Veneti and other traders: drab survival rations. She was certain Quintilian carried his own larder with him whenever he visited to trade.
None of the Dromax stocks included anything remotely alcoholic, and that had contributed to a Finnegan who was both out of sorts and unusually able to participate in after-dinner conversation. “General,” he asked, “what’s the beef you fellows all have with each other?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“You’ll have to excuse Finnegan,” Georgiou said. “He is what my species calls a buffoon. I’m hoping you can explain for him.”
“A Dromax would know. The other tribes are filled with reeking pus-bags.”
“And you consider yourself above them.”
“No, we’re reeking pus-bags too. But I’m damned if I’ll let them say it about us.” A wave of chortling came from the other Dromax in their food-tubs, a sound accompanied by the sickening grinding of grain.
The other tribes, Agamalon explained, had names ranging from the Three-Cross to the One-Star to the Jagged Spike, which was the outfit Georgiou had saved Garph from. Each name correctly described and corresponded to a marking on the guts of the member Dromax—not a birthmark or tattoo, as they’d guessed, but a brand.
“What do the slashes mean?” Finnegan asked, looking around. Several of the Dromax servers bore the moon symbols of the Double Crescent—but also painful-looking scars, canceling the icons.
Agamalon didn’t seem that interested in answering. “Indicators of rank, if you must know. Do I ask you uglies about the fronds of dead cells coming out of your heads?”
Apart from the insult, Georgiou found that response curious. If the absence of a scar indicated higher rank, did no one ever get promoted? But it did seem true in practice that the scarred Dromax were orderlies. The only specimens outfitted with voice boxes belonged to the no-scar caste.
“There were other Dromax on Quintilian’s estate,” she said, trying to think back. “Their markings weren’t like what Gnaeus had.”
“The trader keeps a representative from each tribe in service—every stinking one of them. It allows him to maintain connections here. He keeps his options open.”
Agamalon continued to rant for a while about the state of the war, which had gone on “forever.” Leadership of the Double Crescent tribe had come from an old leader Agamalon had defeated in combat, a system of power transfer that Georgiou innately understood. There was no such thing as a home moon for each tribe; they had constantly been trading territory. Two years earlier, Agamalon’s stronghold was on Moon Twenty-Four—and the year before that, Twenty-One.
“It sounds like you’re going the wrong direction,” she said.
“Clever animal. I’m sure remarks like that are what got you kicked off Casmarra.”
But it was true, Agamalon said, that the less desirable moons were the smaller, more distant ones—and that he and his forces had been pushed from one to the next. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll recover. The Crescents have controlled One more than ninety different times. And we will again.”
“Controlled one what?” Finnegan asked.
“The moon One,” Georgiou interjected, trying to forestall another harangue. She tried to remember something, anything, about the system’s largest satellite. “That moon is the best to control?”
“Of course. It holds our beloved. The prized place that gives our lives purpose: the Cascade.”
Georgiou’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the location. “A holy place? I didn’t know you had a religion.”
“We don’t, and quit badgering me with questions. I swear, you creatures can’t stand a minute without hearing your own squeaky voices.” Hands against the side of the tub, Agamalon heaved, exposing a grain-encrusted lower section. Another push and the general was out of the vat. “The Cascade sits at the exact center of the side of the world that always faces away from the gas giant. It is a place that…”
The general’s words trailed off. Georgiou stared, unwilling to interrupt again.
Agamalon trundled around the tub, the Dromax’s undersides crunching on the stone floor. “I was going to say it defies description. All the technology you offworlders have brought with you—your spaceships, your disruptors, your transporters—it all pales before the magic of the Cascade. I can’t describe it.”
Georgiou had never heard of such a place, but the largest Dromax moon had been the target of such a bombing campaign by her people that Victoria Falls would have been reduced to rubble. The thought that the Dromax placed such value on a geographic feature was at once unsurprising and disappointing.
Dax, who had been quietly listening, looked to her. “Can we just flat out ask this time?”
Georgiou thought about it. You know, I don’t see why not. There was no need to tiptoe with these people. “General, how long have you ruled?”
“Many cycles.”
“Since before Quintilian began trading with you?”
“Heh. He’s a child.”
That was what she wanted to hear. “I’m interested in a freighter that was sold to the Dromax long ago.”
“Which tribe?”
“I don’t exactly know. But it’s why we’re here.”
“If I ever meet this Starfleet you belong to, I’ll be sure to tell them you go blundering about into other people’s wars without any notion of where you’re headed. Or is that what all their people do?”
“I’ve been known on occasion—” Finnegan started to say.
This time, Dax shushed him. “The freighter.”
“Yes, yes. What’s so special about it?”
“I… boarded it once,” Georgiou said, picking her words. “I liked it. And as you’ve heard, my own shuttle is in a mass of snow at the bottom of a hill.” She went for it. “The freighter was named Jadama Rohn.”
The name caused a stir among the voice-box-wearing Dromax. Agamalon laughed. “Jadama Rohn? What kind of bad-brain would want that thing?”
“Is something wrong with it?” Georgiou asked.
“Something wrong? It’s notorious. I can’t believe that imbecile Skove traded for it.”
“Skove?”
“General of the Jagged Spikes. You should learn the name, you killed some of their pilots earlier. The Casmarrans made Skove the worst deal ever.”
“Why was it such a bad deal?”
“The freighter was cursed!”
More rumbling from the Dromax, as Georgiou, Dax, and Finnegan looked at one another. That descriptor had come from the Casmarran video. “Cursed how?” Dax asked.
“The ghosts of the dead haunt it. It’s said that the two-legs who ran it just dropped dead one day for no reason at all. Some even say they looked upon the face of an Oastling, and went mad. Their eyes rejected the sight.”
Finnegan peered at him. “You do know there’s no such thing as curses, right?”
“Talk down to me some more, two-legs. I haven’t thrown anyone into the acid pool in a day and a half.”
Georgiou ignored the byplay. She had never felt so close to her answers. “What did Skove do with it?”
“Skove couldn’t trade it back—and the only way the Dromax trade is through conquest. The Spikes abandoned it to the Three-Crosses. Who lost it to the Whorls. Who lost it back.”
“Sounds like a hot potato,” Finnegan said.
Georgiou leered at him. “What are you babbling about?”
“A kids’ game. Nobody wants to get stuck with it.”
“Ah. We had that on Terra—but with l
ive grenades.”
Agamalon laughed. “I knew I liked you, Captain.”
Dax interceded. “If the freighter is so horrible, why didn’t someone destroy it? Is it in one piece?”
“Oh, it exists. I know that for a fact. And it exists for a very good reason.”
“What reason?” Georgiou asked. “Where is it?”
“I’m tired of questions,” Agamalon said, “and the answers won’t do you any good. Not now. But if you’re as resourceful as you were back on the battlefield, Captain, you may just find out.” The general lumbered toward the exit.
35
Moon Twenty-Six
DROMAX SYSTEM
“Attack, you obscenities!” Standing atop one of Agamalon’s hovertanks, Georgiou screamed at the Dromax infantry flanking the vehicle. “Get those disruptors firing—before I start firing at you!”
Wading through the muck of the swamp, Sergeant Garph called up to her. “We should turn back, human. We’re getting torn apart!”
“Better there than here, where I can see it,” Georgiou said. “Now go!”
She turned to face forward. Over the battered shield that served to protect her perch, she saw the enemy emplacements in the haze ahead. Toggling the communicator on her console, she called out coordinates. Seconds later, bombs from Agamalon’s airships had the emplacements in flames.
“There’s your opening! Go!” Ahead of her, the two Dromax on surface gunnery positions atop the platform fired their artillery pieces—while the hovertank itself launched a shell from its big gun. For good measure, she planted her disruptor rifle on the shielding and began laying down covering fire. “Go, now!”
Agamalon’s Dromax, enlivened by her display, coursed ahead, moving more quickly through the guck than she would have thought their bodies would allow. They looked more like germs attacking a cell than valiant warriors—but there was no question they were fighters, just like the Dromax in her universe had been. No wonder they’d given her imperial forces such hell.
The emperor had personally led troops into battle many times, but never before had her army been an all-alien army. Nor would she have ever considered herself likely to engage in some other species’ civil war. Yet here she was, scarcely three days since agreeing to Agamalon’s bargain, helping to invade a moon he had been driven from in shame months before.
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