Ascension

by Nicholas Woode-Smith

  In the coming weeks, Marshal founded the Academy of Nova Zarxa. He did it not for the youth, nor for himself. But for a memory. He came to even smile again. But he never stopped mourning. You never did. You never got over the loss of someone you loved. You just got used to the pain and accepted that the void you felt now was because of a life of joy. And while a husk now, you had lived alongside people. And that was worth more than anything else.

  “How do you reconcile your pursuit of justice with your allegiance to a corrupt regime?” – Dygo Tark, questioning Warden Galli of Treth.

  Chapter 6.

  Keep your enemies close

  A smarmy face. Oiled-back, slick black hair. A Zerian corporate pin on the business suit lapel. His face looked like it was moulded from silicone. Creepy to many, but if one was not to look close enough, Danny knew they’d think the face charming.

  Mark Dresner. The grako is back.

  The holo-screen flickered.

  ‘Should’ve got him back in Titan City,’ Krena mumbled, chewing on a stick of dried mozar meat.

  ‘Should’ve,’ Danny replied. ‘But didn’t.’

  ‘And now he’s resurfaced,’ Quentin said, through a two-way holo-screen call. ‘But that’s good. It means you get a second shot. Mark Dresner, despite, or rather because of, his actions on Zona Nox, is now one of the leading executives of the Zerian Corporation. They hide the atrocities of their holdings well, but our intelligence suggests that they are prepping their frontier colonies for something big. We believe it is preparation for aiding the Imperial invasion of the core worlds.’

  Danny grunted, glancing through the collected dossiers.

  Dresner’s back, Danny thought. Rob…

  ‘You will get your revenge, Danny,’ Quentin said, as if reading Danny’s mind. ‘Revenge for your planet, your comrades and your cousin who died by Zerian hands.’

  Danny maintained his façade. According to Viper, Quentin’s bastard cousin, Boris had died in an intentional suicide mission conducted by Aegis on Grengen against Zerian. Quentin had gotten Boris killed, not Dresner. But Danny couldn’t act on that, he needed proof. Danny repressed a sigh.

  ‘I doubt he’s in Extos III anymore. Nova Zarxa is airtight, Grengen doesn’t have the cosmetic-clinics he’d want. How are we meant to find him? Space is big.’

  ‘Detective work, Don Marzio,’ Quentin said. ‘You like noire, right? The mafia is just one side of that genre. Explore the other. Get your trilby on and start chasing down the mark. Find some leads. Start with Gloria. She will meet you in person at the Aegis shipyard. Zerian is a threat to humanity that has lasted for too long. It is time we end them once and for all.’

  The holo-screen flickered and disappeared. Danny closed his eyes and rubbed his chin, strained. Krena frowned.

  ‘You okay?’

  Danny shook his head, but then answered. ‘Yeah, I am.’

  ‘Something’s bothering you.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  It wasn’t. Danny wanted to kill Dresner with every fibre of his being, but he also didn’t trust Quentin. Something was off about Aegis. Nothing explicit. On the surface, they seemed as white and as clean as their brand colours. Sure, they had the to-be-expected shady dealings of any megacorps, but they were the best of a bad bunch. Danny had thought that – until Viper had put the idea into his head that Quentin had gotten his cousin killed.

  Viper kept pushing Danny towards revenge. Not investigation. Not confirmation of the conspiracy. Pure, hot-red, vengeance for a crime Danny wasn’t sure Quentin had committed. People died in war and Boris knew the risks when he signed up. The question was if the mission was intentionally sabotaged to get Viper, and Boris, dead. Gre’sse didn’t seem to think so. He said that people died in war and that the mission made sense. Surgical team. Rescue mission of a VIP. Couldn’t risk being spotted, so sent in a team of deniable assets. He mourned Boris, but the tribal didn’t suspect Quentin of foul play.

  Despite his trust in the Aegis strategy, Gre’sse defected on good terms and signed up with the Defiant. He quickly rose through the ranks and now served as a lieutenant of a Defiant platoon.

  Viper, when he wasn’t telling Danny to avenge Boris, spent his time trying to avoid the Ganru. The now legitimised cartel saw Viper as one of their own and constantly kept trying to recruit him as an ethnic brother and skilled operator. Viper refused. The Grooks had been his gang and he wasn’t interested in joining another. After too much non-hostile harassment from the Ganru, however, Viper finally signed up with the Defiant. Danny saw them as a gang, but he saw any group with guns as some form of gang. Viper was much stricter with his definitions and saw the Defiant as an alternative to the Troopers. Danny almost envied Viper. If Danny had known that James would become such a great leader, he would have made him underboss back in Galis long ago. But then again, James was a good leader now because of the hardships he had faced. Not just the incessant gang wars in Galis, but this war. The Xank. The hardship that not even a street urchin or gangster faces. The occasional drive-by was one thing, but it could not be compared to war. To leading your troops over the lip of the trenches. Watching your comrades die in a hail of shrapnel and plasma. Danny had fought before. He had seen his comrades die – but even in his advancing years, he didn’t think he had seen as much death as James. He could see it in the void behind the boy’s eyes. And while he laughed off Nathan’s attacks that it was his fault that James became this way, Danny couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty.

  Krena leaned in. Danny glanced down at her cleavage and was distracted from his reverie. She smelt of gun-grease and strawberries.

  ‘Danny,’ she said, in between chews. ‘You the only friend I got left. Means I got to look out for you. Something bothering you, please tell me.’

  ‘Would hope just more than friends.’ Danny grinned, mischievously.

  Krena smiled. ‘If so, then I hope you’ll confide in me.’

  ‘I will,’ Danny lied. He then glanced at Krena’s chest once more. ‘I think Gloria won’t mind if I’m a bit late…friend.’

  Krena grinned – one of her rare grins after the fall of Zona Nox. They embraced and for a while, forgot about Dresner, Quentin, the Children of Iron and all they had lost.

  

  Nexus was a hive of activity, and all its inhabitants, dutiful and productive bees. On the surface, Nexus was still the bustling metropolis that Danny had witnessed when he first landed. Shining halls, restaurants and cafes filled to bursting, rough and ready workers hauling gear and spending creds. But back then, it felt plastic. Insincere. The drinking was to hide the pain. The drugs were to dull the senses. The business wasn’t really business. Just government mandated production. It was soulless.

  The Defiant had changed things. They had brought a bit of Zona Nox into Nova Zarxa. While Danny had despised the violent anarchy of Galis City, and the inability to conduct business without slaughter, he had also hated the strangling oppression of Dedelux’s regime. The Defiant balanced the two. Nova Zarxa, and its capital Nexus, now had the spirit of entrepreneurship that had persevered through Galis City, but the safety of stable institutions to allow business to thrive. Without Dedelux’s ludicrous dictates and the constant gang warfare of Galis City, enterprise flourished on Nexus.

  This translated into shining halls, once bare and clinical, draped with advertisements, artwork and colour. Business licenses had been abolished, allowing anyone to do business so long as they didn’t break any genuinely important laws.

  If it wasn’t for the strangling oppression that persisted.

  People could breathe the clean air of the purifiers and air-generators, but it wasn’t real air. They could gaze up through the pseudo-glass roofing of the transit tunnels – but the sky was grey. They could put on the air conditioner to feel some semblance of wind – but it wasn’t enough.

  Nexus was artificial – and the Zonians still weren’t used to that fact. They missed the sand, as blood-red and blistering as it was. They misse
d the sun, as much as it had scorched them. They missed the good with the bad.

  The Zonians had found peace, through allowing the best among them to become leaders. No Rising Suns, no gang bosses. The honourable shopkeepers, as seen in Chancellor Peterson, and the skilled and principled reformed thieves such as the Defiant himself, James Terrin. With good leadership, the troubled people of Zona Nox had finally found peace – if strangled by their new surroundings.

  The native Zarxans were different. They were pleased with the increased trade, but they were not used to the lack of restriction. Most of the locals continued as they would normally. They acted as if they were still under a police state. Many embraced the Zonian way of doing things. They became enterprising. Others, freed from their shackles, became criminals. While the Defiant eliminated many laws, they were strict on enforcing the laws they did have. Minor criminals were tried, fined or imprisoned. Harsh criminals were hanged from the sky-bridges. Dedelux’s regime had been harsh, but never publicly so. Zonians were different. You hanged villains, to ward off against other villains. Zarxans found it disgusting.

  All in all, Nexus functioned. Constantly at the brink of starvation, constantly at the cusp of prosperity and recession, constantly at the verge of civil war. But it functioned and Danny respected James for accomplishing here in Nexus what Danny had always failed to do in Galis City.

  Danny walked to the Aegis shipyard. It was small, compared to Grag-Tec. James had refused to give Aegis a free facility planet-side. He argued that this was due to the Defiant’s new private property legislation, but Danny knew better. The exanoid from Grag-Tec had successfully taught James some realpolitik. Aegis was a foreign power and one didn’t just give a foreign power a military base inside their borders. That had been Dedelux’s error. He had placed the Zonians in ghettos. In the sprawling slums that had formed in the artificial caves of Nexus’ underbelly, the Zonian uprising and subsequent Defiant Revolution had been able to form. Now Dedelux was dead. James wasn’t about to make the same mistake. So, the Aegis Corporation was required to purchase property like any other individual. So, they purchased a modest shuttle-yard near what was still called Underbelly Alpha – the one-time Zonian slum and now a thriving suburb.

  Danny resided in Underbelly Alpha, far away from the Aegis embassy in the Central Hub. He preferred it here. More faces he knew. More peaceful, yet more Zonian. Rather than just the pristine shopfronts of the local Zarxan businesses, this part of Nexus was alight with street vendors, colour and the smell of street food. Thankfully, mozar had not been native to Zona Nox and the meat was still imported to Nexus in bulk. As a result, Underbelly Alpha began to start smelling like home. Like Marzio turf in Galis City. There was nothing like the smell of frying mozar beef. It almost brought a tear to Danny’s eye. Almost.

  The walk to the Aegis shipyard was a pleasant one. Even with the hustle and bustle of Zonians going to work, returning from work, shopping and conversing, many still stopped to greet him. Old friends. Old comrades. Old enemies.

  Danny doffed his hat as he passed a gaggle of women who had been regular faces near the butchery where his gang was situated. He nodded at an old Zenite lieutenant and even recognised the underboss of the Purgers. The latter even smiled at him. Things sure had changed.

  A tasteful white and red Aegis sign greeted Danny as he arrived at the shipyard. Many Zonians had found employment with Aegis and there was a lot of activity as porters and employees went in and out of the facility. Danny signed himself in with his crypto-secure card and entered the staff only area. Some local Zonians turned Aegis guards nodded at him. He was a common sight and they knew him from Galis and Titan City. Many were surprised he’d turned corporate spook, but the surprise had long worn off.

  The security doors of the staff-section of the Aegis shipyard sealed off and Danny’s contented smile faded. No more wafts of Galis. Just fading visual memory. Nothing sensual anymore. While in Underbelly Alpha, Danny could relive the good parts about the city he hated and loved, but behind the closed doors of Aegis, he was left with only the realisation that, like everything in Nexus, these recreations of Galis City were fake.

  ‘Looking gloomy, Danny.’

  Danny turned. Gloria was wearing a corporate business suit. White pseudo-leather blazer, a synth-fibre dress and the emblazoned red globe of Aegis. Under her left arm, she carried a stack of metal tablets. Data-tabs. Secure, encrypted and totally disconnected from the Network. Besides paper, these were one of the securest ways of transferring sensitive data. Hopefully, at least one of the tabs contained the data Danny would need to find Dresner.

  ‘Smells, Big Momma. Smells,’ Danny responded, forcing his frown away and putting on as charming a smile as he could muster.

  Gloria shook her head. ‘Ever the joker, Danny Marzio. Even in days as dark as these.’

  ‘Dark? Nexus is free. The Defiant reign. Freedom and prosperity for all. What’s so dark?’

  ‘Nova Zarxa shines white.’ Gloria did not smile. ‘But a shadow looms over the galaxy. Zerian has increased its holdings by a predicted 110% across the galactic north-east of Free Space. When the time comes for the Imperial Crusade, it is our hypothesis that Zerian will flank the core worlds, preventing the Troopers from reinforcing Great Terra and the south-western front.’

  ‘Then we should fight them now. Invade Zuton. Break the chains.’

  Danny leant up against a geradite wall and crossed his arms.

  ‘Easier said than done. Both Aegis and Zerian are listed on the Martian stock exchange, as well as having a sizeable presence on the red world.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So…’ Gloria sighed. ‘We can’t just start a total war. Without Trooper Order approval, there will be a bloodbath. The aggressor will be wiped out by Armada.’

  ‘I’d say Zerian is pretty aggressive. They aided Dedelux loyalists and Imperials in the Battle for Nova Zarxa.’

  ‘They haven’t attacked Aegis directly, however. All evidence of the Titan City coup was lost with the fall of Zona Nox. So, it’s up to us as corps spooks to do two things. Compile a dossier which will allow us to declare war on Zerian and find the whereabout of Dresner. We believe he is the one pushing the Imperial-Zerian alliance. With him out of the way, the alliance may be disrupted.’

  ‘Sounds to me like we need a false flag,’ Danny said, off-handily.

  ‘Too risky. The Order are altruistic, honourable suckers, but they aren’t stupid. We need evidence.’

  ‘Evidence…’ Danny repeated. His expression darkened.

  Evidence. Of Quentin’s wrongdoing. That would prompt Danny to leave Aegis. Or prompt him to stay…

  Gloria noticed. ‘Something is wrong, Danny. Speak up. Can’t have you running missions if your head isn’t in the game.’

  ‘It’s nothing, Big Momma.’

  ‘Your cousin died.’

  Danny looked up. Gloria sighed.

  ‘Saw his corpse myself. Died like a soldier. Didn’t know him well myself, as much as I know anyone. I don’t know if he would’ve wanted to die like that, but it’s done now. If his death is to mean anything, get your head out of the ditch and start collating the info on these tabs.’

  ‘He didn’t know what he wanted,’ Danny mumbled, looking at the floor again.

  ‘It’s more than just his death, isn’t it?’ Gloria raised her eyebrow and walked closer. Almost menacingly. Danny noticed the lining of her suit. A bulge in the jacket. .45 railgun pistol, probably. She wouldn’t need it to kill him. Danny didn’t think he could tangle with Big Momma. Everyone who had tried was now a few feet under the ground – if not floating in the void.

  Danny tried to avoid her eyes. She gripped his chin and pulled him to face her. He didn’t know what she saw in his eyes, but none of them had any time to act, as an explosion racked the building and fire engulfed them both.

  “Honour is all.” – Krag-Tar of Clan Gaireek, last of the Northern Areq Lords.

  Chapter 7.

  Excursion />
  Thirty-six Aegis employees lost their lives. Twenty-eight were wounded. The hull breach let in enough toxins to kill three civilians and send ten more to the hospital. A freighter, usually designed to carry hover-cars between systems, had rammed itself into the Aegis shipyard. Upon impact, it had detonated enough explosives to level the facility. Rapid response repairman arrived to seal the hole and did so as fast as they reasonably could – but it wasn’t fast enough. No time could have been fast enough. Too many had died already.

  Danny and Gloria survived. They had been located at the edge of the main facility. They were treated for burns and punctures from shrapnel.

  James’ creases on his forehead grew tenfold as he read through the report of the event. Yobu stood before him, at attention. Erryn was sitting in a chair at the far-end of the office. On the wall, a holo-screen pictured the image of Quentin Wivern, galactic CEO of the Aegis Corporation. Yobu was speaking.

  ‘This was an intentional act of sabotage. Forensics provided by Aegis and corroborated by our own division confirms that the ship was intentionally put on course for the shipyard and detonated on command. It is almost undeniable that this is an act of terrorism.’

  ‘And the modus operandi of the Zerian Corporation,’ Quentin interjected. ‘As you well know from their incursion before the Imperial invasion, Zerian operators are very willing to sacrifice themselves for the corporation.’

  ‘Why? They’re a corp. Which staffer would die for their corporation?’

  ‘Many in Aegis, actually. We’re not just a megacorps. We’re a family. A nation. But Zerian staffers are not. Zerian runs credit rings across the galaxy. When a debtor can’t pay their debts, they’re left with two choices: Zerian will enslave them and their entire family, or they can sacrifice themselves as a Zerian insurgent – forgiving the debt. Our study of the body of the pilot reveals that he was one such debtor.’