Stormblood

by Jeremy Szal

  Around me, groups of soldiers of all ranks and Divisions were honouring their fallen, saying goodbye to friends and loved ones with their own little quiet rituals. There was a tally of the causalities, of course. But the stats don’t matter. Not when each death etches a little scar in your heart until you’re numb. By then, the losses feel innumerable.

  Jasken stood watching for a while before briefly resting a heavy hand on my shoulder and then walking off. Saren gave me a solemn nod. I returned it. No one much spoke. We didn’t need to. We all knew it was up to us to honour the fallen, to make their courage and sacrifice count. To keep their memory, their fire, alive in our hearts. And to forgive ourselves for not saving them.

  That was the part I was never going to figure out.

  It ended the same way it had begun: in Kindosh’s office.

  The place hadn’t changed much. Same view of the asteroid. Same coffee-stained desk carved from the same rugged black stone. Same chairs. Same printer. Only this time, Kindosh was somewhat pleased to see me.

  ‘If it was anyone else, I wouldn’t believe it,’ she was muttering as she sipped her espresso.

  I gave her a thin smile. ‘Fortunate it was me, then.’ I’d shaved and combed my hair and wore a new suit of armour. It was a dull dark blue in colour, less battle-hardened and more for everyday use. I clutched the helmet between my hands as I sat.

  ‘I see,’ said Kindosh, desperate to plug the silence with some vapid response. ‘You and Cobalt Squad are to be congratulated. Admittedly, having Jae Myouk-soon alive and in cuffs would have been ideal, but we’re still salvaging data from their operational bases. We’ve seized control of their station, the one you were taken to in the asteroid field.’

  ‘Any survivors?’ I asked.

  ‘Not many. The ones who did are severely traumatised and in very poor condition. We’re still making arrests; anyone with known affiliation to the House of Suns is being brought in. The whereabouts of the Jackal and Sokolav remain unknown.’

  I was startled. ‘Sokolav survived the explosion?’

  ‘Yes. We only found two bodies. There was a spacesuit suit and pair of grav-boots missing from the chainship’s armoury racks. He must have slipped back inside through a viewport. I know Sokolav. We’ll flush him out easily enough.’

  Only, she didn’t. Not like I did. Nothing with him was easy or straightforward.

  ‘He survived,’ Katherine growled, ‘while almost fifty thousand Compass citizens died in that Surge.’

  I laid a hand on her arm while Kindosh said, ‘Given the circumstances, that’s an astronomically low number.’

  ‘Tell that to the victims’ families,’ I said.

  Kindosh looked unfazed. ‘Three times as many were injured. Someone was preparing to blow the whole Upper Markets to clear it of skinnies. We were fortunate.’ Kindosh looked as tired as I felt, but only for a second. ‘We have to minimise the damage and move on, or we’ll be swept up in the chaos.’ She leaned forward, fingers steepled. ‘The House of Suns must still have operational cells. It’s going to take us months, maybe years to clear them from the asteroid. To heal the damage they did to Compass and its people? Even longer. Stormdealers are already reorganising, branching out.’

  She was right. I’d seen the data-packet they’d released, explaining the general gist of the situation. The House of Suns might not have spread their beliefs, but they had poisoned Compass, just as Harmony had poisoned our bodies with Shenoi DNA. Drug-trafficking was at an all-time high and rapidly climbing. The long-lasting consequences were yet to be seen.

  ‘We’re spread thin. We’re vulnerable. There’s offworld syndicates and species who’ll use this as an opening to get rid of us. And then there’s the Shenoi threat the Kaiji alerted us to. We have to stay vigilant, gather our allies,’ she said. ‘I did not survive the Reaper War to lose now.’

  ‘It’s not just about winning. It’s about how you win.’ I levelled my stare at Kindosh until she met it. ‘Harmony created Jae Myouk-soon. She fought back the only way she could, because she didn’t know any other way. She believed her actions were justified. The House of Suns wouldn’t exist without us.’ I held up my arm, where long liquid splinters of blue were shooting upwards like glowing arrows. ‘We have to change the paradigm. Learn not to make the same mistakes. Or we’ll have nothing worth fighting for.’

  I’d never trust Harmony completely. They were an interstellar government agency with enough military and scientific power to blast Compass to hell twice over. You’d have to be mad to put unquestioning faith in any organisation of that calibre. But they were also one of the few things holding the stitching of the galaxy together. If I had to bet on something, it’d be them. You learn to work with the intel you’re given. Like it or not, they were the best chance we had, and I was going to give them that chance.

  If I didn’t believe it, who would?

  Kindosh took all this in with a slow, deliberate nod. Perhaps listening to me, really listening, for the first time. Then her face assembled itself to its usual stoicism. ‘Noted. Now, if there’s nothing else, I’ve got a month’s worth of Galactic Common meetings to arrange and—’

  ‘There is something else,’ I interrupted. ‘I want to see him.’

  Artyom’s cell was in the innermost sector of the prison barracks and was roughly the same size as our shared room on New Vladi. Locked behind a crackling electranet, his only possessions were a stained mattress, a stained chair and a stained desk. The cleaning fluid failed to mask the stink of sweat and piss, drilling into my nose.

  Compared to my Harvest prison cell, it was a palace.

  ‘Hey.’ Artyom wore an orange prisoner’s jumpsuit. Fibres running through the thick fabric would seize up if he tried to escape. Licks of blue were faintly visible underneath the jumpsuit.

  I held my hands behind my back. ‘How you holding up?’

  ‘Could be better.’ He looked up. Pain creased the lines of his face. ‘You know what’s going to happen to me?’

  It had been the talk of Harmony. People had taken to looking away when I entered a room, conversations chopped short. Saren told me they’d get over it, but I didn’t buy that. I’d been talking it over with Kindosh for hours. Well, more like arguing. ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Though your death is in your favour.’

  ‘Yeah, there’s that.’

  ‘But you were involved in the most serious attack on Compass since the Reaper War. You were given chances to come clean. You ignored them. The Harmony Intelligence Committee will decide what happens to you.’

  It didn’t need saying that he’d already have been executed if he wasn’t my brother.

  ‘Why did you join them?’ I’d kept the question bottled up for months now. Sokolav had told me, but I needed to hear this from my brother’s lips.

  Artyom stared intently at his scarred hands, as if searching for a shred of wisdom there. He looked so thin and frail, like he’d been forced to grow up overnight and the rest of him hadn’t quite caught up yet. ‘You don’t understand how big a gap you left in my life. First I hated you. Then I hated Harmony for stealing you away and rejecting me. Then I hated both. One day, I got tired of waking up alone and checking Harvest correspondent newsfeeds to see if you’d been killed, I started hating the whole world.’

  I imagined him sitting alone, watching the smoking battlefields piled with dead soldiers, leaking red, and knowing I had chosen that instead of him. The rage and injustice forced onto him, spurring him on to force it on someone else. ‘They brought injured Reapers back to New Vladi. So drugged out of their minds that their bodies had grown into blue gills, their families grieving over them. But they had something to grieve over. They got closure. I didn’t. It was like being in limbo. They wouldn’t tell me where you were. My own brother, and it was too big a risk to tell me if you were alive or dead or captured. I lost it, Vak. I just lost it. I couldn’t
swallow the propaganda about stormtech doing what ordinary men couldn’t. Remember when Dad would tell us what happened to us was actually our fault? It was like that. Sokolav found me, told me I wasn’t the only one feeling that way. For the first time, I didn’t feel alone anymore. He said he’d found a source of comfort. It made sense at first. These people wanted answers, like we all do. The longer I stuck around, the deeper and deeper it went and I couldn’t get out.’ His voice adopted a raw, strained tone. ‘I never meant to hurt anyone, Vak.’

  ‘But you did.’ The words were glass shards on my tongue. But they needed to be said. ‘You hurt people. So did I. So did Harmony. The best we can do is own up to it.’

  ‘Jae told me she’d kill you if I tried to leave,’ Artyom whispered.

  ‘She tried anyway.’

  ‘I always said you were too stubborn to die, Vak.’

  I raised a thin smile to match his. A brief silence settled over us.

  ‘What happens next?’ Arytom asked.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You’re staying with Harmony, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t much like them, either. But maybe working on the inside is the way to improve things.’ A dreamy instrumental soundtrack was playing from some office down the corridor. Might have been one of the many songs we’d listened to together. ‘My advice? Tell them everything. Don’t hold anything back.’

  ‘Vak—

  ‘Do it, Artyom. It might be the only way to save your life.’

  Artyom’s hand brushed the cold metal wall. ‘Do you ever think we’ll see New Vladi again?’

  ‘One day,’ I said, and believed it. One day we’d return to the world of snow-peaked mountains and waterfalls and sweeping pine forests, full of animals and a wild, earthy smell.

  I had so many more things to say, but they were lodged deep inside me, and I’d have to break whatever threadbare stitching was holding me together to say them. So I bowed my head in the New Vladi way and turned to leave. Artyom whispered, ‘Arigato, Vakov.’ It was the first word of Japanese I’d heard him say in years. ‘Domo arigato. For everything.’

  I got halfway to the exit when Arytom called me back. ‘Vakov. Kasia would be proud of you.’

  Katherine and Grim were waiting for me outside. He bumped my fist as Katherine kicked off the podium she’d been leaning against and slipped next to me. We strode together down the glowing stairs of Harmony Station. She kissed me on the cheek before we headed off. ‘How’d it go?’ she asked me finally, squeezing my hand.

  ‘He’ll live,’ I said. ‘If Harmony lets him.’

  The Kaiji were picking their way up to the main building. The final negotiations of a peace treaty were beginning, as Juvens had promised. Their fleet was coming closer to the asteroid, handfuls of ships parking in dockyard berths designated for their species. The aliens would enter the Common as allies, along with their wartech, space fleets and armed forces for Harmony to call on. It’d take months, perhaps years, of interspecies diplomacy to fully determine the structure of it all, but that wasn’t my problem.

  Grim was gaping at the big aliens in wide-eyed awe. Juvens noticed, tilting his jutting horns in Grim’s direction and baring his teeth. ‘I bite.’

  Juvens ignored the Ambassadors narrowing their eyes in burning disapproval. The Space Marshall turned to me with a sly, devilish grin, pressing a fist of salute to his armoured chest as he passed. I offered one in return.

  We descended to the heart of Starklands, heading for our restaurant. Harmony had set up some sort of major celebratory event, but I wasn’t feeling up to it. Never been comfortable in large gatherings, anyway. Hanging out here with my friends was enough for me. At my elbow, Katherine was twirling the vaper in her hand. ‘Not going for a puff?’ I asked.

  ‘Trying to quit,’ she said, finally sliding it into her breast pocket. A trio of heavyweight Shocktroopers in robust armour and carrying their helmets gave us a nod each as we sliced by. I noticed Grim ducking away as they did, as if not wanting to be seen.

  ‘You okay?’ I asked him.

  Grim squirmed. ‘I guess.’

  ‘It’s because of Harmony, isn’t it?’ I asked. He nodded.

  ‘Grim, you saved hundreds of lives,’ Katherine said. ‘You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.’

  ‘It’s not about that,’ Grim whispered.

  Katherine clicked, understanding. My friend doesn’t like public attention, and even less when it stems from Harmony. I knew he’d be coming to terms with his new relationship with Harmony. Would be for a while.

  Even cleaned up, the streets were still a mess following the outbreak. Casualties were still streaming in. Chatterboards overflowed with calls for missing people. The chaos had touched every floor, every echelon of every sector and class. Nothing’s as indiscriminate as random tragedy. The formerly glimmering restaurants and bustling shop squares had been reduced to wrecks of smashed glass and blackened beams by a micronade. Ships had crashed into each other before faceplanting into the asteroid. The damage was steadily racking up in the billions. Spaceports had been shut down, all departures grounded. Communications and trading with offworlders and non-Common alien species were temporarily closed. Flexiscreens flickered with hotlinks and contact information for trauma counselling. Torn posters about uniting together under Harmony fluttered like lost ghosts in the simulated breeze. People still milled about, as if looking for a way to hold themselves together. The never-ending stream of aerial traffic above us had crawled to a standstill.

  But that’s the thing about people. Knock them down, and they find a way to get back up. Teams of all species were hard at work repairing the damaged property, providing food and shelter and free services. Everyone was doing their best. Floors that had been quarantined yesterday were slowly reopening to the public, reuniting sobbing families under the swaying trees.

  Further downtown, orange-domed medclinics had popped up like fungi overnight, dealing with the wave of injured and sick. Humans and aliens were queued around the medclinics in wide circles like an orbital trajectory. There was an entirely separate line for anyone with stormtech, a battered plastic barrier dividing the queues. I hadn’t wanted to believe the broadcast about escalating hate crimes towards skinnies, but now I was starting to see the truth of it.

  Slow, fat raindrops drizzled down. The raised glass platforms above us ran with veils of rain and smeared the blinking highrises and aerial traffic into a waterlogged neon stain. In the distance, the once-proud Reaper statue had been desecrated. Sprayed with sinister glyphs, gaping chunks of its body hammered and torn off. My belly was a pit of snakes, the stormtech lashing so violently that I almost didn’t hear someone telling me to head to my own line. ‘Are you okay?’ Katherine asked quietly.

  I moved to respond, but suddenly I heard a warbling echo from the trenches of my mind. My arm hairs stood up, body heat rising. A reminder of something far more sinister than anything that had happened on Compass. It had been there ever since I’d gazed into Jae’s signalling device. I hadn’t told a soul about it. Not yet.

  Katherine was still looking at me. ‘I’m just afraid we traded one enemy for another.’ I swept a hand out at the chaos around us. ‘What Jae and the Suns did … it’s going to ripple. I don’t know how we’ll fix it.’

  ‘We will,’ she whispered. ‘It doesn’t matter what happens, you won’t be alone, Vak. I’m not going anywhere,’ she said.

  ‘Neither am I,’ Grim said with a wide grin, slinging his arm around my neck.

  ‘I couldn’t get rid of you even if I tried,’ I said.

  ‘And what sort of friend would I be if I let you?’

  Katherine came up to me. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Promise what?’ I asked.

  ‘That this won’t be for nothing,’ she told me, cupping my face in her hands until her face filled my entire field of vision. ‘We’ll make th
is chaos count. All of it. I promise.’

  And you know what? I almost believed it.

  Acknowledgements

  I never thought I’d get to write this.

  It’s one thing to write a novel. It’s another thing entirely to put it through the gladiatorial tournament that is the publishing process, hoping it’ll one day end up on the bookshelf for all the world to read. Something that, in my case, took years of endurance, blood, sweat, tears and alcohol. With every frustrating writing day, trunked project and rejection letter, the odds of writing the acknowledgements page to capstone my debut novel seemed slimmer and slimmer. Now that it has happened, I can’t pretend it was a solo effort. Many, many people helped bring this book into existence. I’d give you all Rubix caretakers and spaceships, if I could. Alas, you’ll have to settle for thanks.

  Many thanks go to my absolute legend of agent, John Jarrold. For picking a rough diamond like me out of the slush pile, for answering all my pesky midnight emails, and for putting in a phenomenal effort to get my work seen by the right people. May there be gin in your future.

  A world of gratitude goes out to my wise and long-suffering editor, Gillian Redfearn, for giving a debut author that elusive second chance and helping me tell the story I’ve always wanted to tell. She’s spent more time than anyone should in Vakov’s head, using her insight, wit and mighty red pen to sharpen his adventure to be as cutting-edge as it can possibly be. Bouncing bizarre ideas off her as we conspire on these books together has been an insanely fun ride. I’m lucky as hell to have someone who just gets my work as well as she does. A big thanks to Will, Rachel, Marcus and the wonderful folk at Gollancz Towers, for doing what you do.

  I wouldn’t be here without my brave beta readers, who read Stormblood in its various stages: Jared W. Cooper, G.V. Anderson, Mel Melcer, Spencer Ellsworth, Natailia Theodoridou, and Erin Latimer (who suffered through more of my first-drafts than anyone legally should). Each of them told me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear. Without their feedback, you’d be holding a very different book in your hands.