by David Bowles
Damn Bandera, anyways. How come I keep trusting him?
Of course, he’d had to tell Konrau that the news of Felipe’s death had come from Wu and not the New Beijingers. He wondered what was keeping the older soldier’s message—was there betrayal coming from that front, too?
They climbed inside the sled, and Konrau ordered it to the docking berths while Nestor swallowed his impatience at his boss’s not being very forthcoming about the details of their upcoming trip. As the two of them hurtled along corridors that twisted madly in many directions, Konrau spoke, his voice flat and dead.
“We have an imrizabu right at the edge of the system, Nestor. I never told you about it. Just me and the heads know, plus Ernesto Mendosa and the rest of the crew of the ship that discovered it.”
The news twisted like a knife in his gut. “A hyperspace vein? Like the one the AF found between Tau-Ceti and Sirius? Shite, Konrau! What does it open onto?”
So that’s the secret. That’s the hidden thing I been sensing. He felt betrayed. Punked in the arse by his bezzy mate a second time. You can’t never trust them. Power goes to their fucking heads.
“Onto the Nereus system.”
“Sweet Fidensio! You could fucking spill ships right into the heart of the Consortium without warning. And you sat on this?”
Konrau reached over and grabbed his konsehero’s black jacket in a fluid, violent motion, yanking him close. “Don’t you fucking act shocked, Nestor. I put the Brotherhood before your feelings and your ideas of how shite should be. I’ve got my reasons, and the heads are with me on it. Komprennite?”
“Si, komprenni.” Nestor’s heart was beating like it hadn’t in years. In a devastating moment of clarity, he realized that Konrau had probably been right to hide this from him.
I nearly compromised it all, fucking trusting Bandera. Fuck me.
There was silence between them as they reached the berthed junk and boarded her through a narthex. Konrau saw Ernesto, an aging sikaryo with a pinched face, in the principal corridor and waved him over.
“Nestor, go prep our pods. I’ll be right there.”
As the older man walked away, he heard his boss begin to explain. “We’re going down the vein, then fenestrating like a madhatter into Jitsu’s system. How long do you think…”
Their voices faded as he rounded a corner and took a lift to the executive quarters. Nestor berated himself in a low, rough voice. “Stupid fucking old man. When did he start doubting you, eh? Was he reading your messages all this time? Does he know about your little sneaky shite? Fuck.”
He muttered curses at himself throughout the prepping of the hypostasis pods, beginning to see himself as the one to blame for Konrau’s distrust, promising himself he’d regain the kasike’s confidence, somehow.
After about fifteen minutes, Konrau walked into the room, his eyes dull with a thirst for vengeance. He briefly sketched what the trip entailed, and then he motioned brusquely at the pods.
Nestor stripped his clothes off and stowed them in a locker as Konrau looked their suspension pods over, making certain the suspensor gel had filled them sufficiently and was of the proper density. Everyone onboard the syndicate’s fastest junk, Echos Maje, would have to spend the entire seven-hour trip in hypostasis, controlling the ship through a virtual bridge as the swain and the computer performed an incredible feat, one that still had Nestor’s mind reeling.
A trip through an imrizabu, followed by a series of highly dangerous extended fenestrations that violated the Consortium’s regulations on the duration and spacing of holing events. The suspensor gel Konrau was examining had been specially designed to cushion travelers’ bodies against the wrenching gravity of accel and decel, and it was especially necessary on an urgent and potentially deadly trip like the one the kasike, his counselor and twenty of their most trusted foot soldiers were about to embark on.
Konrau straightened, turned to face his counselor, and began to undress. “Tell me more about this D’Angelo.”
Nestor snapped out of his reverie, eager to be useful. “Before joining Alpha Squad, he was a professor. Guy that we had his wife and kid killed, remember? About eight years back, at Santo’s request.”
Konrau swallowed as if in pain. “Of course. The job Felipe volunteered for so it would get done right. So this is about revenge. This Brando’s wife: architect killed Chago’s men, ain’t it?”
“Right. Anyways, he’s still alive because Santo always said he’s too popular to eliminate, and most times he was off on nowhere tangents I feeded to Wu. Killed a bunch of the suicide crews we sent in. Busted up some of our legit guys, too. Nailed Tripõ Lameda’s group all the way: Chore Yakima’s still in a coma; don’t know if you remember, but we pulled the other brothers off the southern continent quick.”
“He ripped us off, too, ain’t it?”
“Yeah. Had a little smuggler of ours in his pocket for a while, scraped up some medical equipment plus a fast little sub-light ranfla. Seems he was retrofitting it for holing, because he acquired a first-generation Lieske fenestration drive, too. Wu never found out where any of it was.”
“What he was doing interrogating Felipe? No one told that wankstain Wu not to let the egghead near him? Matter of fact, what was Alpha Squad doing at the warehouse anyways? You didn’t tell Wu to stay away, or what?”
“Of course I did. Minute they told me Felipe was going to be on the surface, I sent specific orders to the arojin that the squad shouldn’t—oh, bendita maje Mariya.”
Layer upon bleeding layer. Arse-punking upon arse-punking.
Nestor’s sagging flesh prickled and his stomach flopped. His boss slammed shut the locker he’d just dumped his clothes into and punched it as it cycled and locked.
“Santo set it up,” the kasike growled. “Bastard! Thinks he’ll elbow us off Jitsu.”
Illuminating aftershocks continued to shake understanding into Nestor’s mind: why Brando hadn’t been assassinated, why he’d been allowed to live and thrive in the squads.
“Worse than that. We’re gonna walk into a trap. Santo’s manipulated everything to send that crazy dirt bunny against us, and on top of that…”
Konrau interrupted with a forced snort. “Whatever. The Matõ and the Maliyas will rendezvous with us at the platforms. Couple shuttles coming up from Jitsu with several crews. Lot of men, Nestor. The fuck can one guy do against couple hundred little brothers? Santo has shite for brains. We’ll grab the platforms, kap this D’Angelo fucker and ram his cold corpse right up Archon Koroma’s arse.”
Nestor continued his previous point. “What about the AF? There’s a couple of ships in route right now to try to get Santo to stop quarantining off-worlders. We really want to butt heads with them right now? Don’t you think drawing us into the open is part of Santo’s ploy?”
“Screw the AF. About time we showed those bastards who is boss. They fuck with us, I’ll make them eat a couple antimatter rockets. Besides, we’ll exit the vein close enough to Jitsu to arrive in about six, seven hours: quick accel, hole five quick times, decel like a hoputa, and we’re there. We got the highest tolerance gel, fastest drives, let’s put them to use. Preempt everybody’s arse, be the ones running the show. I got a thousand ships, Nestor, waiting for crews that they have already been trained.”
Nestor’s lips moved silently. A thousand ships
“All this blackmail and so fucking forth? It’s been about that. Getting the kabesas to live up to their end of a bargain you weren’t aware of. Creating an army to conquer Nereus. So, Konsehero, let’s just throw the fucking gauntlet down, what say?”
Wonder fluttering in his chest, Nestor nodded and quickly turned to a console to transmit encoded messages to the other two ships. He had urged such balls-out measures many times over the years.
Still, as he eased his gaunt form into the suspension pod, as the pink beams began to dance across his face, connecting him to the virtual bridge, he couldn’t help but wonder whether this time Konrau’s vengeful brashne
ss might be both their undoing. The time just didn’t seem right. Their enemies were too strong. Openly attacking the Consortium’s armed forces could put the kasike’s long years of clandestine work at risk.
The old mafioso said a silent prayer to the Blessed Child before being whisked onto the virtual bridge.
Give us strength and wisdom, Fidensito, and victory. Over all, give us honor.
CHAPTER 37
How could I have been so blind? After all he did to Tenshi and Samanei—I still fell for his lies. Why?
The answer was easy. He’d needed to get on the squads, and his dead wife’s uncle had made it happen. Santo had also turned over all his files to Brando when he gave up control of the squads. The arojin had even supported Brando’s investigations, both financially and morally, when others in the government had begun to question his methods and obsession.
“Stop at nothing,” Santo had urged. “Catch the scum who killed her. Eliminate them. I will deal with the fallout.”
The doubts Brando still harbored began to fade as Santo had dialogued with reformers, showing repentance for his previous hard-line stance. When the Chamber of Deputies absolved the arojin of complicity in the Brotherhood attacks, the new squadman had instead focused his energy on finding the yaks who’d survived the attack on Kinguyama.
Santo and he had gotten along well enough afterward, discussing whatever leads that Brando felt the older Pathwalker might have insight into. A grudging respect had begun to grow between them, at least until Santo’s appointment as Minister of Immigration and his ghettoization order. There’d been a nasty argument at that, and Brando had stomped out of Santo’s new office, punching holes in the walls as Santo called off the security officers with a sly smile. The doubts had resurfaced then, though at the very edge of his consciousness.
Why? Because it was easy. He played me like a master does a guitar, plucking at my gut strings, his fingers tight around my neck. Mothergod, I was so naïve. What would Tenshi say? Fuck it. No time for regrets. Just for revenge.
Brando knew what she would say. Her simran was already murmuring in his mind.
You weren’t willing to accept it. Deep down, you knew he was the responsible one, but killing him with no evidence would’ve meant making him a martyr. He would’ve won that way, and you would’ve been made an example of. Better to keep your doubts deep within you and pretend not to believe what you did believe.
“Time for pretending is over,” he muttered as he stamped through the house. Stripped to his jock, Brando packed. Four konk rifles. A variable projectile chrome. A pair of lazgats. Twenty-five tubes of plaz. A highly illegal light fusion canon. A dozen grenades.
The comtable chimed.
Turning, he thumbed it on. Santo Koroma’s head and shoulders oozed upward from the glass projection screen.
“Soburi.”
Still has the gall to call me nephew. Brando wasted no time.
“I know about it.”
“What is this it, Brando-shi?”
“Everthing. You. Beserra. Tenshi. Tana.”
No expression. Guilty.
“I don’t know what you think you know, but let me tell you, it’s probably not as close to the truth as you may want to think.”
“I know you’re responsible for their deaths, and that means I’ll be responsible for yours.”
“That’s ironic, considering I called to warn you.”
“Warn me about what? I’ll be sure to do the opposite, you treacherous, naffing…”
“Captain Wu and your friends are on their way right now to your dwelling, with orders to eliminate you. I know this because I gave the order. You can ignore me, if you prefer, or you can get as far away from there as you can, now. Your choice, soburi.”
“Oh, I’ll leave, alright. And you’ll see me soon, no matter if you try and hide in the deepest cave of the southern continent. I’m coming for you, Santo. I’m coming to exact payment for the evil you’ve done. I’m coming to be sure you scream until the very last, and I’ll blow your fucking head to little bits of nothing so won’t be translated, not that you ever would, you twisted piece of darkness.”
He slammed his hand against the terminate square.
No time to unravel this particular mystery. Stick to what I know: Beserra and Koroma, coconspirators. Murderers of wife and daughter. Deserving of death. Details be damned.
As he crossed the room to his wardrobe, he caught a glimpse of himself in a cracked mirror: corded, knotty, hairy bulk, veins interlaced with myriad scars, rib cage mottled with bruises. Heavy lidded eyes. Salt and pepper stubble covering head and jaw. Drawn, macabre features from multiple head blows, extreme diet and little sleep.
Monstrous, that’s what he had become. Twice his original mass. Three times the typical girth of a space-born human or Jitsujin. Children shied from him on the rare occasions that he ventured out in public.
He didn’t care. He wanted one thing, and he was going to get it at long last.
The wardrobe irised open, and he yanked out a uniform, sliding into its semi-stiff flexibility. Without the suit, he felt wrong; when he pulled it on, it was as if the Blue itself had curled around him, cushioning and protecting him from the black that lay scant centimeters away at every breath. He strapped on his belt and holster, scooped up the bag he’d packed and headed for the rooftop tarmac, where he activated the com system on Tenshi’s transport, just in case he needed its deadly modifications, and boarded the boxy black hulk he’d borrowed from the ATS.
As he sped away, he passed a convoy of military transports presumably heading toward his house. For a few seconds they continued on their way, but suddenly one of them whipped around and gave chase. The others took longer to react, but in seconds all seven vehicles were bearing down on him like a pack of oni after a wounded jagen. The image made him give an ironic laugh.
“I’m not the jagen, mates. I follow the Oni Way.”
He called up his personal comcode on the transport’s system.
“Wake Tenshi.”
Feeding in the frequency of the ATS vehicle he’d borrowed so he could be tracked, he yanked the manual piloting system down from its ceiling compartment, activated the pulsing pink interface, and took the controls into his hands. His perspective shifted completely: he was now flashing over the barren rubble at the desert’s edge, his vision not limited by physical restraints.
“Rear.”
The convoy was whistling toward him at several hundred klicks per hour.
“Fore.”
Beginning to jut above the horizon before him was a series of auxiliary water tanks, heavily armored to ensure their integrity in times of severe drought.
“Connect to captain’s transport.”
A soft gurgle.
“Brando?”
“It’s me, Ben. What yall boys are doing, tell?”
“Come on, Brando. Should be obvious. We’ve got to take you in.”
“Just take me in, huh. Not eliminate me, say, on Koroma’s orders?”
“Well, Koroma’s the archon now, mate. Not a damn lot anybody can do about that. But the answer’s no. Just have to bring you before the major, is all.”
Archon? Oh, mothergod. He didn’t just play me for a fool. He fucked us all.
“Then why the seven transports? Everyone came to get me? I’m that dangerous?”
“We just had a feeling you might not be, uh, amenable to the idea. You’ve got a reputation, and we know it’s been watered down. Figured you’d be kind of hard-headed about things.”
“You’re not wrong.”
“Listen, mate. You figured right. I’m compromised. But I promise you, you turn yourself in, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you’ll be okay.”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe a damn word you say. Anybody’d betray everything they’re supposed to stand for doesn’t deserve my respect and confidence. So, tell you what, yall fuck off to the chinga, and I’ll be on my way.”
The tanks were looming
just a dozen klicks away now: monstrous relics of Soltec’s dominance of the world.
“Brando. Don’t do this, please.”
“Damn. Never heard you beg before. Must be some big thing they got on you, make you endure such humiliation. What say we chat about it, mate? You, me, the squad: we can work it out, whatever it is.”
“Nah. I’m too compromised for that. You want to help me, you need to turn yourself over to us.”
“Well, I guess that’s a mutual fuck you, no? Come and get me, if yall can, lousy fucking john-hops!”
He shut off the com channel. A sense of uneasiness and doubt welled up from deep within him. He’d worked with these men for years, after all. They were, if not his friends, at least deserving of his respect. Shaking off horror at what he was about to do, he shoved those thoughts back into the darkness of his mind. All that mattered was survival. And vengeance.
“Accel to four hundred klicks.”
The tanks rushed at him. Warning bells went off, messages flashed at the periphery of his sight. He ignored them. Trying to imagine his squad’s reaction, he risked a glance back. They’d begun fanning out: only two were directly on his tail; the others had begun to chart a path around three sides of the tanks, anticipating what they imagined to be his strategy: turn off at the last minute and send them careening into the tanks.
He had never been predictable, however.
Disappointing that they so easily underestimated me.
One of the transports behind him and the one above began to strafe him with a volley of blast fire, which his plating sent stramming off in weakened waves. He had to roll twice as the transports that had pulled ahead of him sent a pair of small fission rockets racing backwards in his direction. Any compunction he might still have felt about destroying them to protect himself evaporated as his vehicle shuddered and groaned under the sustained attack. Another minute and a half more of this and the hull would be breached.
By Sopiya’s sparks, let her arrive soon.
A spinning icon blocked his view of the tanks momentarily: Tenshi’s vehicle was nearly in range. A sudden, thunderous sonic boom: his cue.
