The Blue-Spangled Blue (The Path Book 1)

by David Bowles

  “I’ve found the jagen, Meji-shi. Time for the Wende ra-Kobomaga. I’ve studied Domina’s words closely.”

  “The Oracle never intended—” the minster began.

  “No?” Brando countered. “Then why did she write about the Oni Way? Why did the Dominatudan try to hide those teachings? She killed them all, Acharya-zin, everyone who had tortured and raped her. The oni showed her the way, and she did the dance. Her uncle fell before her. Santo and the others will fall before me.”

  Without waiting for a response, Brando ended the call. Then he looked through the alerts on the transport’s terminal, One was a loop of the original message by the Archon and Oracle that had disrupted all transmissions an hour ago.

  As Samanei leaned forward toward her audience, Brando surged to his feet.

  Tenshi! Every neuron in his brain sang out. An emaciated, bald Tenshi, but her nonetheless. Gestures, tone, diction: all hers. And she looked to be no older than twenty-five or thirty.

  “What in Sopiya’s name are you planning, Santo? Have you been feeding her faux-recordings of Tenshi, training her for this charade? Think you’ll get them to follow you like meek frigging sheep? Think you’ll whip me into a frenzy?”

  His blood pounding like pistons in his head, he snatched up the satchel and slammed his palm against the exit pad. Jumping out, he darted toward the entrance to the suite of offices.

  Interns, secretaries and other employees were frantically packing. They looked up as he barged in, wearing his ATS battle suit, and backed away, hands raised.

  “Give us just another five minutes,” a woman pleaded. “We’re almost—”

  Brando gestured her to silence. “Where’s Luisa Canales?”

  “I-in her office.”

  Stamping down a hall toward the room his wife had used for years before her death, before the firm was taken over by her protégé, Brando felt rage and sadness bubbling up within him, ready to burst at any moment.

  Soon, he told himself. Soon.

  Luisa looked up as he slid the door open. “Brando? What are you—”

  “Give me the access code to your transport,” he growled. “I need something fast and less conspicuous.”

  After a second’s pause, she closed her eyes recited an alphanumeric string, voice trembling.

  “Thanks, Luisa.” He turned to go, but then looked back. “Tell your employees not to bother. Yall aren’t going anywhere. I’m going to stop this fucking travesty myself.”

  Brando brought the sporty transport to a stop right outside the spaceport. He used his government override codes to gain entrance to a maintenance shack and descend into the web of access tunnels that ran under the landing areas.

  He was looking for Raghib al-Masih, a Martian mechanic that he’d made his fizgig four years ago in exchange for turning a blind eye to the man’s small smuggling operation.

  When Raghib caught sight of Brando bounding down the access tunnel that linked landing area seven to areas twelve and seventeen, Raghib almost bolted in panic. But wisdom or experience appeared to get the better of the mechanic, and he just stopped and waited for the squadman.

  A sigh was his only welcome.

  “Raghib.” Brando refused to call him “Rag” like many of his shady associates did.

  “Kyosu. Heard you died, long with the rest of your mates. Brotherhood doesn’t want to admit they did it, but everyone’s talking.”

  “What’s been going on?”

  “Between the Brotherhood and the ATS, the port’s been a fucking mess. Secrets and confrontations, uneasy truces and much credit exchange. Mainly shite-loads of protesting citizens and helmeted squadmen. They’ve all run my arse back and forth along the twenty-seven landing areas. I’ve checked so many transports they’ve begun to blur into a single shuttle. Wish I could hop on board and get the fuck of this glebe, too.”

  “The yegsters are leaving, right? Where to?”

  “Half the crews have flown up to Nawabari Platform.”

  “Why?”

  Raghib shrugged. “I keep hearing them mutter about the kasike, like he’s gonna be up there. Seems a little hard to believe, no? I mean, so they’re chucking everybody who isn’t a Neog. The fuck does the kasike care? Besides, his brother can’t take care of this?”

  “No. I killed him.”

  The mechanic blanched.

  “Oh, you are so fucked, bloke.”

  “Shut up.” Inwardly, Brando’s heart leapt. A chance to get Konrau, too. Then come back and take out Santo. Yes. “Any more shuttles heading up to Nawabari?”

  “Well, yeah, in bout ten minutes Wero Guzman’s crew is blasting from area seventeen. Just checked them over when you came throttling toward me.”

  “I want on it.”

  “You want me to smuggle a squadman onboard a Brotherhood shuttle? Think I’m looking to die, something? You like to act like some tough fucker with no limits or compassion. But you’re a fuzzy little toto compared to Konrau Beserra.”

  Brando’s eyes flashed and his hands balled into menacing fists. He started to growl something unintelligible.

  “Wait, goddamnit, let me finish.” Raghib crossed his arms over his stained jumpsuit. “I kind of like you. You’re a gormless cop, but it’d be sad if you went up against this guy and got killed. Think I don’t know? Everything you do is because you want justice, for your dead woman and child, for all the fucking addled Neogs on this planet. You’re just fucking brimming with love and righteous anger. But Beserra? The father of the girl he was shagging shot him in the eye, so he came back from the dead and killed them both. You can’t go up against somebody like that, Kyosu. He’ll fucking eviserate you before you can snarl some snide comment.”

  “You finished?” Brando’s right arm shot out and grabbed Raghib’s jumpsuit roughly, dragging the taller man’s face down close to his own. “Bastard ordered my wife killed. You think I give a fuck how cold-blooded he is? Now, get me on that shuttle, damn you!”

  “Alright, shite, come on.”

  They sprinted back up the tunnel and took the lift, emerging at the underbelly of the ship. The cargo door was open, though the ramp had been retracted.

  “Up to you, now,” Raghib muttered. “By the way, the CPCC’s local constabulary force has put in a call to the AF about the forced evacuation. Couple galleons and a patrol ship was already headed out here to quell this fascist Dominian shite, and now they’ve got even more reason. Yep, grunts gonna be showing up soon, make things real interesting. Good luck.”

  As Brando stepped off the lift, Raghib thumbed it back down.

  Doesn’t want to be seen helping me, Brando thought. Doesn’t think I can stop this. Wants to be on the victors’ good side.

  Looking up into the cargo hold, Brando heard the mechanic muttering far below, his voice faint but clear.

  “Yeah, good luck. Hope they kill you, bastard.”

  CHAPTER 40

  From the shadow of the shuttle’s underbelly, Brando could make out masses of people being herded by squadmen into the squat military gloom of the ATS low orbit transit ships. A tumult of insults, crying and shouted orders drifted across the distance. Occasionally the armed escorts would fire a blast above the off-worlders’ heads to keep them moving. Since no one other than CS, the ATS and CPCC’s constabulary forces was allowed to possess a weapon, there was little actual conflict here, just the odd fistfight between soldiers and civilians.

  Brando lept into the darkness of the cargo hold, his satchel of weapons cradled in both arms close against his body to soften the impact. The interior was cramped, with wall-to-wall crates and luggage secured by netting from floating around in zero g. Brando eased into a corner and hunkered down, running scenarios through his mind as he awaited take-off. After a few minutes, he heard whispered voices and felt the bulkhead vibrate: two people had entered the hold. As they crept around the boxes and moved closer to his position, he began to make out snatches of their conversation, which was in Unified Chinese.

  “And
how the fuck are we supposed to leave the station? Magic?”

  “I told you, Hark: Yen will pull us out once the situation has calmed down. All we have to do is sit tight in that room I was telling you about for a couple of days, and he’ll show up for us.”

  “I’ve never trusted that old bastard, Jing. You know that. But what you don’t know is what the yakuza will do to us if they find out what’s really going on.”

  Jing. The rookie. The other one, Hark, has to be the yak whose arse I kicked. Stowaways like me. Double agents? Yen? Could be Yen Bandera, that free-lancer.

  “Don’t worry, little brother. Yen has assured me that in two days there won’t be any more of these mafia types on the station. It’s all been arranged, seriously.”

  “Well…”

  “Shhh!”

  A dozen pair of boots could be heard tramping around outside, and the cargo door suddenly cycled shut, cutting off the only illumination in the hold. Brando held his breath and tapped his casque into place. It made a soft whooshing sound.

  Fuck.

  “Did you hear that?”

  “Yeah. Someone’s in here. Put on those IR goggles.”

  Brando also switched to infrared. The shuttle roared to life. He reached into his bag, his hands coming up full of firepower as he surged to his feet. A jolt forced him to lean against the bulkhead at the very back of the ship. He made out two heat signatures at about four meters, standing and moving side to side as if searching for something.

  Come on, yaks; take off already! Don’t want to fight them in normal gravity.

  “I see him! At the back!”

  The ship lurched violently, causing the New Beijingers to stumble into each other. Brando could feel the increasing speed under his boots. He felt heavier.

  Any minute now. No guns, if it can be helped. That would just call attention, maybe punch a hole in this can.

  The two figures climbed up onto the boxes and began moving toward him quickly. He aimed.

  Suddenly all gravity disappeared, for only a microsecond, but one that seemed frozen in time as the blobs of red, yellow and green threw themselves into the air at him. Then the thrusters kicked in: four gees of force hurled the brothers against the bulkhead and pinned them there as the floor tilted up crazily. Brando’s arms were thrown up and back, slamming with a painful crack onto the wall he was leaning against.

  Only a few seconds; move.

  The nearest of the New Beijing boys was groaning a meter above him as the gees continued to smash him flat. Brando rolled in agony toward him, then atop him; straining with the effort, he managed to straddle the young spy.

  “Get the fuck off me!” It was Jing.

  “Hey, Jing,” he replied in Unified Chinese. “Fancy seeing you here.”

  Grunting, Brando supported himself with one hand as he pushed his torso away from the rookie, lifted his arm, and let the gees smash his gloved right fist into the punk’s pretty face.

  “Hey, bastard!” shouted Hark from a couple of meters away. “Leave my brother alone or I’ll fucking kill you!”

  Brando lifted his fist again and again as Jing made increasingly weakened attempts to lift his arms and ward off the blows. In seconds, his face was a bloody mush.

  Then there was another shudder, and gravity disappeared permanently. Brando quickly pushed off the wall, flipping over backwards and snagging the netting that secured a crate nearby. Hark bounced toward his brother; as he embraced him, the two of them went into a spinning trajectory that would in seconds fly them over Brando’s outstretched legs.

  “Jing, you alright? Fuck!”

  Unbending his arms, Brando propelled his legs toward Hark just as the punk let his brother go to unholster a weapon. The squadman wrapped his legs tight around Hark’s waist and pulled him down, freeing one hand from the netting to knock the gun from the spy’s grip.

  “It’s you, ain’t it, Kyofu or whatever the fuck they call you. Well, this time I’m gonna finish what I started down on Jitsu.”

  A trucha activated in his hand, its sudden light disturbing the balance on the IR of Brando’s casque. The squadman released Hark from the scissored grip of his legs and kicked solidly in the middle of the spy’s chest, disarming him and sending him caroming off another bulkhead and into his brother’s inert form. The force of the kick propelled Brando backward swiftly; he tumbled and straightened in the air so that his legs jutted out behind him to absorb the impact.

  Bending his knees as he smacked jarringly into the bulkhead, he pushed himself forward at a disarming speed in Hark’s direction. The criminal managed to grab onto something dangling from the ceiling, a hook, Brando saw as he approached, set in a grooved track and probably used to hoist and position crates. Hark pulled up on the hook and swung his legs around in pair of vicious kicks to Brando’s head, deflecting the cop at an angle downward.

  Rolling into a ball, D’Angelo smashed into a large crate and rebounded with a curse. He’d probably fractured his arm, he reflected as he reached it out, wincing in pain, to grab Hark’s foot and lever himself upward with legs toward the ceiling behind the spy. He clamped his thighs around the punk’s neck and started to squeeze. Hark pedaled his legs back repeatedly, sending several nasty kicks against Brando’s casque, which thankfully absorbed most of the force. Soon Hark stopped struggling and released his grip on the hook, floating off slowly as Brando untangled himself.

  “Turn around, fucker.”

  Brando yanked his head about. The reddish-yellow blob in front of him with a chunk of blue in its outstretched hand had to be Jing, his feet inserted cleverly into the mesh to keep him still.

  Shite.

  A slight jostling sound from outside told Brando the transport was preparing to dock. There’d be a bit of gravity any minute now, once they’d osculated and the ship was in the platform’s gravity sink. A good amount of gravity, in fact, as they’d be at the very edge of the field.

  “Jing, you can’t fire that thing in here. It’ll make too much goddamn noise. You don’t want those bastards to find you in here.”

  “Got a silence module attached.”

  “You might punch a hole through the bulkhead, compromise air pressure.”

  “Not if I hit you. Besides, you’re standing in front of the wall between the rest of the ship and the hold.”

  Brando glanced around, getting his bearings. Jing was right, and that meant his satchel was on the other side of the hold. He thought he heard the starboard thrusters fire. They’d be osculating with Nawabari Platform any second.

  Keep talking.

  “Yeah, well, if you miss me, they’ll notice real quick the big-arse hole in the bulkhead, don’t you think?”

  “How could I miss? You’re just floating there: nothing to grab hold of, nothing to push off of, no weapons. Face it. This is the end for you, Professor D’Angelo.”

  A spot of red blossomed in the blue of Jing’s gat. Brando slammed his left hand onto his own shoulder, emergency-decompressing his casque and sending it folding rapidly into his suit’s collar. The change in air pressure drove him a meter down as the energy beam singed his hair and ripped through the bulkhead behind him.

  At the same moment, the transport started docking with the station and gravity returned, sending Brando sprawling onto the floor below as it toppled Jing with a crunching sound. Brando exploded into action, spidering over the tops of the crates to the corner where he’d left his satchel. Before he could reach it, an orange ghost popped up in front of him and punched him full in the face. He recovered quickly and grabbed Jing by the throat, hoisting him into the air and flinging him over his shoulder. He clambered over the remaining cargo to his original hiding place to the sound of a torch ripping through the bulkhead that Jing had just compromised.

  The satchel wasn’t there.

  “Looking for this, you sumbitch?” Jing called from behind him. “Before you throw somebody round the place, you ought to check what they might have on them.”

  The lights wen
t on then, and a crew of brothers poured in. Blinded by the illumination, Brando was unable to resist, and, after he’d broken a couple of bones here and there, he was bludgeoned to unconsciousness.

  He came to in a docking bay, on his knees with a couple dozen yakuza soldiers in a circle around him, gats and rifles pointed in his direction. His hands were tightly cuffed at his back, and his legs were numb. From the stiffness in his joints, he calculated that he’d been unconscious somewhere between fifteen and thirty minutes. Behind him, someone grunted.

  “Awake yet, Doctor D’Angelo? We just arrived, and we find you already here. How punctual! Nice of you to pay us a visit. Always nice to meet a victim’s surviving family members, believe me.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Brando began to make out a tall, emaciated skeleton of a man with a shiny pate and heavily wrinkled skin. His honey-colored eyes glittered with laughter as he walked around to stand in front of Brando.

  “Santo was real stupid thinking that you would be able to touch us. You couldn’t even handle a couple of ex-triad putos that don’t possess the loyalty of a rabid dog.”

  Brando laughed. This had to be Nestor Bos. He suddenly remembered his promise to Ben.

  Play this right. Give him the New Beijingers, buy some time.

  “What do you think is funny? The fact that you’re gonna die squealing like a little girl?”

  The squadman pushed back the image of Tana’s broken body.

  “No, just that you’re so naffing stupid you couldn’t figure out what’s going on with Jing and Hark. Hell, you probably don’t even know who Jing is, right? I mean, Yen passed you Hark for the crew, but his brother—that little bonus was behind your back.”

  That information broke through Nestor’s smug exterior. He ordered the men to retreat to the edges of the bay. When they were too far away to hear, Nestor grabbed him by his hair and hauled him to his feet with a wiry strength that the old man’s weak-seeming exterior cleverly masked.

  “The fuck you know about Yen?”