by David Bowles
An Italian word.
Zio.
Uncle.
Brando’s fists clenched as if he might grind his own bones to dust.
“Santo,” he snarled.
It had been Santo all along.
CHAPTER 35
Once he’d gotten rid of the rookie, Ben collapsed to the floor of his office and began to weep.
How could you be so stupid, Brando? All these years I managed to protect your crazy, reckless arse, risking me and mine. Why? Just so you can go and pull a fucking stunt like this?
Dead. Konrau’s brother was dead, and someone was going to have to pay.
Ton of somebodies, but not me.
Ben clutched at his stomach and rushed to the ban. The light breakfast he'd had that morning spewed in an acidic gout into the jan, whose nearly frictionless surface whisked away the evidence of his weakness. He slowly got to his feet, cleaned up and drudged back to his office to make the calls he'd put off for years now.
He could still visualize their first faux interrogation after he’d been captured on the outskirts of Kinguyama: the konsehero’s doppelganger with its unreadable visage, the barrage of images over the table between them: his daughter prostituting herself, drugging herself, killing a civ and uploading credits with an illegal dumppad, stealing transports, fraternizing with yegsters and junk heads and yaks.
“Enough.”
Konrau’s representative in the virtual meeting had reached out and shut off the stream of filth without moving its gaze from Ben’s eyes.
“What. Do. You. Want.” The soldier’s teeth clenched.
“To help you, Captain. I understand how important family is to you. And your reputation, too, of course.”
Ben’s job had at first appeared simple: pursue the leads fed to him and stifle any independent investigation of Brotherhood activity. Many of the other squads were simply dummy units, but Alpha Squad had to be impervious to outside probes. It had to actually do its job. Ben's responsibility was to make them look good without actually doing serious damage to the syndicate. He suspected that this was what they wanted all along, but that they’d waited five years for sufficient leverage, assigning lousy recruits to him and destroying his squad twice in the interim to ensure his ineffectiveness.
Nestor had explained his situation very succinctly eight years ago during the captain’s brief stint as prisoner of the Brotherhood.
“Your little girl Ya-Ting, as we just saw, has some bad habits. Four years of accumulated vice. She likes the bad life, friend, but she doesn't have the sense to manage herself well, so she’s indebted her to us in a real awkward way, if you understand me. Instead of our usual reaction—we most times just gat fools like her—we’ve decided to be generous and cancel her debt. Well, put it to a side for now, anyways. Of course, she's so into the life now that we got her in our sensors at all times, you understand me. We might change our mind, no? You see what I'm saying?”
Typical, unoriginal, and wholly effective.
Ben Wu loved his daughter as all true men do, more than life itself. During his time in the AF, specifically quelling the Neptune Uprising, he'd been separated from her often. When his wife Qing had finally succumbed, sorrow and grief had compelled Ben to accept a post far from Ya-Ting. As he couldn’t have been with her often enough to warrant tearing her from her cousins, aunts and uncles, Wu had entrusted her education to his wife's family, especially his sister-in-law, who'd become a kind of surrogate mother for the eight-year-old.
It was his in-laws that he blamed for her slide into corruption. He had no idea how they'd raised her in his absence, but seeing them as responsible for her criminality eased his own sense of guilt at preferring a solitary life to one with a constant reminder of how he couldn’t keep his wife alive. Now that he knew the extent of Ya-Ting’s ruin, he had no choice but to own up to his part in it and to pay the price.
Ben Wu had sold his soul, just as she had, to the only devils he believed existed. He and all the other squad leaders were either former JLA officers puppeted by Sosa, or utterly compromised, with Damocles’ swords of incredible reach and sharpness dangling above their necks. He suspected that Santo Koroma was the author of the anonymous orders that arrived after the Major’s. There was nothing to connect the arojin to the Brotherhood, however.
For a time he had hoped that Brando, despite the goose chases that Ben himself engaged the ex-professor in and despite the intermittent distraction of Kunti remnants, would have discovered something, but Kyosu had dropped his wife’s suspicions of the Neog leader years ago, after the arojin had distanced himself from the squads, turning them over to the increasingly Dominian-dominated Chamber of Deputies.
Besides, hadn’t Santo gotten him on the squads? Hadn’t Ben and others worked hard to make Brando trust the old arojin?
Now someone had tampered with the kewbox, and the brother of the most powerful man outside of Solar space was dead. A nagging doubt surfaced in Ben’s thoughts, and he called the barracks.
“Put Endo on.”
A few seconds of silence.
“What’s on, Ben?”
“You get that box out alone, or did you send someone else?”
“You and me, we’re the only ones…”
“Yeah, yeah, but you could thumb a keypad for someone else to open it for you, no? That’s what it is you did, right?”
“You won’t be pissed?”
“Endo, by Domina…”
“Okay, jake. I sent the rookie. I was busy stowing gear, and he’d been sticking to me like a bleeding condom, asking all these questions about Brando and you. Real annoying arselick stuff, you know, so I…”
“How long did he take?”
“Don’t know. Had to go to the ban: the squirts, you know how I get. Was there when I came out. Hey, you don’t think…”
“Thumbing off, Endo.”
Ben tugged on his queue of gray-rimed hair thoughtfully, running the scenario through his mind as he placed another call.
Sosa assigns me the rookie, tells me to hit the yasa the next day. I ask him if Koroma approves because I know Felipe’s holed up there. He says yes, sends me in anyways. Jing has the box for a good long while, more than enough to mess with it. Brando’s out-the-lock kew techniques are famous planet-wide. Set up. Must be.
His encrypted call to the major suddenly went through, and Ben shook off his thoughts to concentrate on the moment.
“Report.” Major Sosa’s aged voice still commanded respect and no small measure of fear, especially from those who understood what he was capable of.
“I’ll cut straight to it. D’Angelo kewed Beserra’s brother, found out something about their connection to the government and his wife’s death. He killed the man during the kew session.”
“He what?” The ancient warrior appeared on the verge of apoplexy.
“Apparent tampering with the kewbox shut down the fail-safes. What I do, Major?”
“Shiperaro zo! Wait!” Major Sosa’s purpled face abruptly disappeared.
Not in the know! More twists.
Ben waited. Sweat pooled in the small of his back, prickled his armpits. Two minutes. Five.
I’m right? Find out soon.
Sosa’s face jutted up from the comtable again.
“Listen to me close. Take every man you got. Converge on his house. Eliminate him.”
“Huh? How can I? How will you justify that to Archon Rawe?”
“Archon Rawe died three hours ago, Captain. They’re swearing Koroma in right now. The Oracle attested to his quantum enlightenment. Time to close this mother up, got it?”
Ben nodded. “You realize it’s gonna take me a good thirty minutes to round the boyos up and equip them. Most of them are already headed home. Brando lives near Kinguyama, about an hour away.”
“I suggest that you get moving, then, Captain. He’s not there, you converge with Beta, Gamma and Delta outside Station City. Bastard has to go there. That’s where his contacts are. That’s where the Brotherhood’s
based. You go in and get him, if you ain’t finished him off before that. Then you start the evacuation of every non-Jitsujin in that city to the platforms with military transports.”
Shite. Brando, you unlucky sumbitch. Santo’s cycling you out the lock. Looks like he gots his own game now. Still a way to save me and mine, though.
“One more thing.” Ben blinked in confusion. The major hadn’t thumbed off. “I want you to send over Jing Wong with that New Beijing yak your report says Brando stuck a knife in.”
“Well, fine, but you want me to wait for the kid, or…”
“No, you leave now, no delay. I can tell Wong to rendezvous with yall at the city. Thumbing off.”
Clarity. Wong was a plant; so was the yak. Ben was willing to bet a sizeable portion of his measly salary that Santo was going to use them to strike at the heart of the Brotherhood. Suddenly, Ben’s hand was strengthened.
Show them my loyalty, feed them this info, I might make it out in one piece, with Ya-Ting still alive. Then I’ll leave this fucking glebe and get her back.
Quickly, he began coding a message for Nestor. Once he’d sent it tunneling into subspace, he called the barracks again and ordered all hands to the transports, geared and ready to clash.
INTERCHAPTER G
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: update
Date: May 5, 2697 10:03:19 (SST)
Decrypted 10:12:57 via FAE
The old man said I should tunnel you a message to this address if anything happens. Well, the ATS raided our desert HQ. Your boss’s brother’s dead. That one that they call Kyosu killed him during interrogation. The Archon’s dead, and Santo just took over. He started evacuating people, so you best call your boyos out. I was wounded and I’m in custody, but I got my connections (that’s why you’re reading this message). I’m gonna get out fast and get up to Nawabari. Full report then.
Wong Hark
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Caution
Date: May 5, 2697 11:53:49 (SST)
Decrypted 17:25:38 via FAE
Nestor, we got big problems.
Koroma arrowed us against Felipe. That arse-rooter Jing tampered with the kew-box, it seems, and Brando pushed Felipe too hard in the interrogation. Fail-safes never kicked in, so Felipe died. Beware: Jing and this New Beijing lad on Felipe’s squad are working for Santo, who’s now taken over as archon because Rawe’s dead. Don’t trust them. I think Santo is planning for them to strike against you.
As for Brando, Sosa is sending us after him. I hope we can catch him in time, because he pretty much figured ever thing out, and he’ll be gunning for yall. Tell your boyos to keep their eyes wide.
I’ll report to this address any new stuff that comes up.
Ben
CHAPTER 36
It was Nestor’s seventieth birthday, but he almost forgot.
Men like Konrau and me don’t celebrate birthdays. Every day might be our last.
The aging advisor regarded his leader with a bittersweet mixture of fatherly affection and genuine disgust. Konrau was like the son he’d never had, had never dared to have. The Bos men were destined for horrible deaths: Nestor’s father, Omero, had been beaten to death by cops on Mars; his grandfather, Baldemar, had similarly died at the hands of prefecture police; and his great-grandfather, Mateo, the first of the Bos clan to turn his back on the CPCC and join the Brotherhood, had fallen prey to the Pope-worshipping Aztlan Angels.
No more, Nestor had often thought. I’m the last Bos.
But while the gangly yegster had chosen not to bring a young squink into the universe to carry the Bos name, he did look at Konrau with fatherly affection.
Theirs was a nearly familial bond: after Ria had died, Konrau had insisted that Marisela Bos, Nestor’s mother, stay with the kasike’s own mother and cousins in the enormous house he’d built for them on Oceania, near the Arrambide fortress. There she’d lived the last two decades of her life, dying peacefully only a few months before, her funeral a glorious homage planned by the kasike himself.
Yes, Nestor owed Konrau much, and his life had been dedicated to repaying this debt of gratitude. For twenty-two years he’d served as Beserra’s counselor, his advice molding the present and future of the syndicate as a long line of konseheros’ words had done before him. He was also a reluctant but hopeful partner in Beserra’s plan to wrest control over humanity from governments and other syndicates, to rule human space as dictator.
The difficulty had always lain in the need to keep the families of the Brotherhood in line, as they viewed Konrau as their hired protector: boss of bosses, but not their monarch. And the Kunti-CPCC war had set them against Konrau’s aggressive policies, his machinations on Jitsu and elsewhere.
The war had strengthened the AF and swung voters toward military expansionists. Jetsun Muntso’s ascension to the post of prime minister had sent Konrau into a screaming, frothing fit after which he’d been in a coma for an entire week. The kabesitas’ qualms were not calmed even when other syndicates ceased criminal activity within the Consortium. They wanted a change in Konrau’s policies, immediately.
So Konrau had punked each of them.
Cleverly, quietly and quickly, the kasike had abducted the children or grandchildren of many of the heads, holding them as “guests” at the Arrambide family fortress. Using Nestor’s considerable insider information, he’d been able to blackmail the rest, so that soon every family was essentially in Konrau’s thrall.
Afterward, despite the increasing power of the Flotilla and the Army, Beserra had continued with his steady move toward greater power, though Nestor sensed that there was a hidden element to the kasike’s plan that he’d not been able to ferret out, despite even Yen Bandera’s far-seeing eye on his side. Nestor’s personal opinion was that the syndicate was now too unwieldy, what with the steady creation of new demimundo infrastructure on a dozen or more new worlds, but Konrau gloried in its expansiveness.
Jitsu was the thorn in his side. Nestor’d always told him so. Over the past thirteen years, it had served as a testing ground for their later, more refined techniques of conquest on other worlds, but the multitude of gaffs, tragedies and foot-dragging on the part of their associates on the ugly planet made the syndicate’s meager profit from the enterprise, most of which was still uncollected, utterly insufficient.
Yes, conquering Jitsu and the entire Eta Cassiopeiae system would be a symbolic gesture: the once center of the AF’s stranglehold on commercial and personal travel through space would now be the cornerstone of a new aetherocracy, as Konrau fancied such control over the void. Santo’s ridiculous plan was taking too damn long, though, risking their exposure to the CPCC and costing too many lives.
The worst of it was that Beserra had sent his little brother to take charge of the Jitsu operation eight years ago, once again ignoring the advice Nestor’d given him, though the counselor had recently installed a pair of New Beijinger eyes, kindly dredged up by Yen Bandera, to keep watch over Felipe.
Konrau had been so impressed with his half-brother’s successful assassination of Kinguyama’s mayor that he had slowly given him more and more autonomy in running the infiltration, heedless of his personality flaws. Felipe was too unstable, not a well proven enough leader to handle the responsibility, too prone to jump into the fray rather than to simply shout orders from the camp. And Jitsu was a dangerous world: fifty-nine true brothers dead so far, most at the hands of Alpha Squad, despite Nestor’s control of its captain.
Bandera had recruited a large number of more expendable decoy sikaritos for Nestor, but it still galled him for useful men to be wasted. Konrau, on the other hand, had always viewed these losses as acceptable and necessary for making the inhabitants of that planet believe the Brotherhood was actually being combated. The fact that he was planning a double cross of the planet’s government made the deaths almost sweet: they served to keep bo
th the public and the politicians who conspired against them complacent.
Now his plan was backfiring. Minutes ago the news had come.
Felipe was dead. The archon was dead. The planet was in turmoil.
Except for Felipe’s death, these events had been planned. But not for this year. Ten more cycles of forty days were supposed to go by before the final evacuation of non-Neogs from the planet and the transfer of the CPCC-leased worlds around Kobito to syndicate control—after another prime minister had been sworn in and the change of government had the pinche Consortium slightly off-balance.
Nestor struggled to get his mind around the new developments: those on the Jitsu end of the conspiracy knew Konrau well enough to understand that his brother’s death would bring swift action.
Tremors of understanding.
They want to preempt us. Make us do something sudden, draw the AF onto our arses. While we’re bashing at each other, Santo takes the whole system. Hoputa!
“Tell them to prep the ship.”
Nestor’s head jerked back around toward his boss. “What, the Echos Maje?”
“Yes. We’re gonna go to Jitsu. Tell them to get Ernesto to serve as swain. Only him.”
“But,” Nestor balked, “shite, Konrau, it’d take us days to get there.”
Konrau looked at him oddly, his gaze distant, then motioned for Nestor to follow as he set off toward the sled that shuttled them around inside the planetoid that served as Brotherhood HQ. The kasike had remained calm ever since receiving the news, quickly giving orders in a measured voice that betrayed no bereavement at his half-brother’s death, and now his movements were precise and nearly mechanical.
Nestor shuddered at the thought of the rage that boiled beneath that flat expression, knowing full well that when it was released it would obliterate all in its path. It would be better not to let Konrau discover the mole, especially since the punk had failed to keep Felipe alive and had been captured by Alpha Squad.
