The Eve of War

by Christopher Hopper

“I don’t care about the code,” Ezo hissed, motioning for TO-96 to get on with it.

  The bot paused, tilting his head. “Interesting. That is precisely what you told me the last time, sir. Your petition for divorce cannot be processed until those taxes are paid in full.”

  “So,” Sootriman said as coolly as a Frondothian minx in the shade of an ever-palm, “you’re saying we’re still married.”

  “That is correct, Madame.”

  “Son of a—”

  “You’re still married?” Awen said, running a hand down her face. “To her?”

  “Well, this will be remedied shortly,” Sootriman said. “I believe I get to collect some sort of death benefit too—that is, if it’s not taken in lieu of taxes. Any last words before you die, Idris? Or maybe that monstrosity of yours has something more to add?”

  “I have nothing more to share, your ladyship,” TO-96 said. “Thank you for asking, though.”

  Sootriman rolled her eyes. “Kill them.”

  “Wait!” Ezo said in protest, raising his hands. “You can have the ship.”

  Sootriman raised her hand. The guards froze, their spears’ plasma heads a meter away.

  “The ship?” Awen asked.

  “The ship?” Sootriman echoed.

  “Sure. We both know you always wanted it. And I feel wrong about having kept it from you.”

  “You feel wrong about keeping it from me and you want me to have the ship?”

  “Is there an echo in here?” Ezo glanced at TO-96. “Is there an echo in here?”

  “A small one, yes,” the bot said.

  “You can’t give her the ship, Ezo,” Awen stated, suddenly aware that he was about to double-cross her—no, he’d lied, and he was double-crossing her. There was no favor to call in. If anything, he owed Sootriman!

  Awen cursed herself for getting involved in some lovers’ quarrel. She felt betrayed, and she hadn’t even seen it coming. How could you have been so stupid, Awen? You should have stayed home. She felt as though she was living in her parents’ house again, with her father talking down to her or her mother scolding her.

  Sootriman was on her feet now, descending the steps one at a time as the younger women moved aside. Curse those legs, Awen said to herself. Now she’s getting the ship too.

  The woman approached Ezo, and Awen realized for the first time that she was easily a head taller than him. “What’s your angle, Idris?” she said, striding to within a few inches of his face. “We both know you have one. You always have an angle.”

  “Let me use it for one last job.”

  “Ha!” Sootriman blurted. “You can’t even come up with enough money to pay for the divorce filing but you’re willing to barter your ship away for one last job? How did I not see this coming?”

  “I was hard up for credits,” he replied like a room fan trying to plead its case before a tornado. “You can’t even compare this to back then.”

  “You’re right, Ezo. You’re far more pitiful now. At least back then, you knew when you’d been beaten. But now, well, now you’re just groveling. And it’s a really bad look on you.” Sootriman held a sultry hand to her forehead and took a deep breath. “Bartering for your ship. That means you want something else from me too. It means you can’t do your next job without something only I can provide, and you can’t pay for it without pawning your ship to me. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Oh, she’s good—intelligent and beautiful. Awen was suddenly not as jealous of Sootriman’s legs as before. “No wonder she tried to leave you,” she said in Ezo’s ear.

  “I left her!” Ezo protested over his shoulder.

  “Please, Idris. Your girlfriend—”

  “Not girlfriend,” Awen interrupted. Sootriman raised her eyebrows. “Not girlfriend. Nothing’s going on here.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Zero,” Awen replied.

  “Huh,” Sootriman said with a look of genuine surprise on her face. “I’m impressed, Idris. Maybe you’re maturing after all.”

  “Ezo can mature, yes,” he said.

  “But—you’re still referring to yourself in the third person.” Sootriman sniffed the air again and tilted her head. She started to walk around the trio like a prowling tigress deciding how best to eviscerate her prey. “So, what is it you need from me? It can’t be more torpedoes. You can get those elsewhere, and they’re not worth the ship. And clearly all your navionics work, or else you wouldn’t be in the system.” She rounded the other side and tapped her plush lips with a finger. “So it’s got to be really, really expensive. Like—like a drive core.”

  Awen saw Ezo raise one shoulder. Sootriman saw it too. The tigress was getting closer to feasting.

  “There we go. Ezo needs another drive core. But”—she tapped her lips some more—“that’s not what you really want, is it? Unless you’ve blown your current one, which means you wouldn’t be standing in front of me. No, you need a second one for a long trip, one that would best benefit from… oh, Ezo,” Sootriman said with genuine pity, hands going to her hips, her head shaking back and forth. “You want a modulator.”

  If TO-96’s sudden head turn hadn’t given it away, Ezo’s double-shoulder raise certainly would have.

  “You really think I’m going to just hand over a modulator to you in exchange for a ship I’ll never see again because I let you skip to the farthest reaches of the galaxy?” Sootriman turned to Awen. “Listen, girl. I’m not sure how you got involved with this Bludervian dimdish over here, but my best advice is to run. Run as far away as you can. He won’t kill you.” She glared at Ezo. “He doesn’t have the nerve.” She looked back to Awen. “But everyone else who’s trying to liquidate him will. And you seem too nice to be liquidated.”

  “You’ll get it back,” Ezo said.

  Sootriman snapped her head at him. “I’ll get it back?”

  “You have my word.”

  Sootriman literally looked as if her eyes—pretty as they were—were going to pop out of her head. “I have your what?”

  “You have my word,” Ezo replied, squaring his shoulders and pushing out his chest.

  Sootriman started laughing—deeply. It was a laugh that said, I may be going insane, and if you were worried about your life before, you should be terrified about it now.

  Ezo looked at TO-96 then over his shoulder at Awen. “This is normal.”

  Fast, like a jungle cat leaping on some unsuspecting quarry, Sootriman withdrew a curved blade from somewhere behind her back and laid it across Ezo’s neck. Awen hadn’t even felt the warning ripples in the Unity. “I need more than your word, husband,” Sootriman said, her lips mere centimeters from the man’s ear.

  It wasn’t until the blade nicked Ezo’s flesh and a drop of blood appeared that Awen realized the woman wasn’t playing. She was going to kill him—and Awen wasn’t sure if she blamed her, as morally wrong as that felt. Maybe I’m becoming like one of them, she thought. That scared her.

  “Here,” Ezo said, lifting something in his hand. “Take this.”

  Sootriman glanced down at the offered object, and Awen did too. It was—

  The stardrive?

  “Ezo, what are you doing?” How could he? Awen was shocked. No, she was furious. She patted her clothing but realized she’d intentionally left the drive… on the ship.

  “What’s this?” Sootriman asked, removing the blade, her curiosity clearly piqued.

  “You can’t!” Awen protested. “How did you… you’re a coward.”

  “She’s not wrong, darling.” Sootriman took the stardrive and examined it. “It’s not every day you come across a find like this. But,” she added, looking at Ezo with a sad face, “Jujari stardrives aren’t any good without—”

  “It’s already unlocked,” he said.

  Then something came out of Awen’s mouth that she never thought she’d say. “I swear to all the mystics, Ezo, I will kill you.”

  Awen could hardly believe she’d said it. Worse, she meant it. She wanted t
o kill him, and that frightened her. This place, these people—all of it was getting to her, corrupting her from the inside out. But none of that changed the fact that she wanted Ezo to die for his treachery. In fact, if she’d thought she could outmaneuver two dozen armed guards plus Sootriman and TO-96 and then the Reptalons outside, Awen would have ended him right there. She knew how too. She could stop human molecules from vibrating in the Unity. Sure, it was never ever taught at the academy, but she’d figured it out. She could easily stop every cell in a person’s body from moving the same way she’d stopped a block of concrete from falling. Having the nerve to pull it off in cold blood, though—well, that was something else entirely. And that was what scared her: she had the nerve.

  “This means something to you, does it?” Sootriman asked Awen, snapping the Luma out of her obsessive stare into the back of Ezo’s skull. “You’d really kill him, for this.” She lightly waved the stardrive in the air.

  “I—it’s because—”

  “You don’t have to answer that, dear. Hearing yourself say it will only scare you more. I can see it in your eyes anyway. You’re wise to restrain yourself, however, as I would just as quickly kill you, and then where would either of you be?”

  “Give me the modulator,” Ezo stated as he wiped the blood from his neck. “You get the ship when I’m done, and now you know exactly where I’m going.”

  “New deal. I keep the ship, starting now,” Sootriman countered. “I lend you another ship that already has a modulator on board, and I know where you’re going.”

  Ezo cocked his head. “No, no, you don’t understand. I don’t want to fly another ship where we’re going. I need Geronimo.”

  “Well, it seems your options are running out, husband,” Sootriman said as she started back up the steps.

  Just then, one of her entourage stepped toward her and whispered in her ear. The young woman was barefoot and clad in a flowing silk dress that hung off one shoulder. Contrasting this, however, was a comms set in one ear beset with several small lights. She also concealed a holo-pad in the crook of one arm.

  “Are you sure?” Sootriman asked.

  The messenger nodded and showed her superior the holo-pad.

  Sootriman thanked her and turned back to face Ezo. “It seems you’ve attracted some followers, Ezo.”

  “Oh?”

  “A corvette just entered the system. Stiletto class. No designators, and it’s trying very hard not to be seen. That doesn’t bother us, of course, but it does say a lot about whomever they’re tailing. You must have really pissed someone off with this.” She shook the stardrive.

  “We got away clean.” Ezo turned to Awen as if expecting her to weigh in.

  “What are you looking at me for?” she asked, still furious with him. “We don’t fly gunships.”

  “Yeah,” he whispered, “but whoever your boss is working with might.”

  “I got away clean,” she insisted. “This one’s on you.”

  “She’s right, sir,” TO-96 said. “The likelihood that an adversary placed a tracking device on Geronimo is well above fifty percent. It would have been easy for any number of spies to gain access to the ship while—” The bot suddenly froze. “Oh my.”

  “What is it, Ninety-Six?”

  “I now recall that some of the Bawee were taking an unusually long time in the cargo hold during refueling.”

  “You now recall?” Ezo said with his arms out. “How are you just now recalling this?”

  “Given the cultural context and mission parameters of our stop on Worru, I was—”

  “It’s a rhetorical question, Ninety-Six!”

  “Quite sorry, sir.”

  “Ru-Do,” Sootriman said, summoning the foremost guard, “sweep my new ship for tracking devices, and dispose of them. I want it clean before anyone comes poking around.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” the guard replied with a crisp bow.

  “Hold on,” Ezo protested, “it’s not your new ship.”

  “Negotiations are over.” Sootriman ascended the stairs without bothering to turn around.

  “Over? But I—”

  “Oh, and Ru-Do, if you see any of these three snooping around, kill them on sight.”

  “With pleasure, Your Majesty,” the guard said.

  “Or… negotiations are over,” Ezo conceded.

  “Glad you agree,” Sootriman said as she sat back down. “You may borrow the ship currently in port at docking bay twenty-one. I believe she’s fueled and ready for departure. Plus, the way I see it, the Indomitable is ready to go. It would take at least one week to get a modulator on Geronimo. Given the Stiletto that’s about to make port, I’d say you have less than one hour. So once again, Ezo, my idea is your best idea.”

  Ezo let out a sigh. “We’ll take the deal. Plus, the Indomitable sounds like a good name for a strong ship.”

  Awen got the distinct impression that this was how most negotiations went between Ezo and his wife. If Sootriman hadn’t been so bent on thwarting their progress, killing them, or becoming the proud owner of some of the most important information ever to reach the known universe, Awen could see herself liking the woman. But for everyone’s sake, Awen hoped this was the only time they’d ever meet.

  “Have fun exploring the galaxy, Ezo,” Sootriman said. “The mystics know you were never talented at exploring anything else.”

  Chapter 28

  Magnus slid down the steep metal chute, slowing as the incline leveled out. His feet had contacted the first of a series of chute-wide filters meant to separate debris from fluids when he noticed that the large access panel to his left was propped open. He switched his HUD to infrared imaging and saw the team making their way along the gantry.

  “Nolan,” Magnus said over comms, “SITREP.”

  “Ten souls, myself included. Everyone but Rawlson is accounted for, sir,” Chief Warrant Officer Nolan replied. “Making our way to subsection bravo.”

  “Roger that. I’m on your six o’clock.”

  “Copy.”

  Magnus looked up just as bits of ash and shrapnel landed on his armor from above. He sidestepped into the hatch and started to run. Letting his sling catch his MAR30, Magnus drew his Z from his chest holster and held it in low-ready position. He toggled the weapon to single-round mode and thumbed off the safety, scanning for targets. He caught up with the slower-moving group, checking his retreat every five paces, expecting their position to be compromised any second.

  So far, so good. Magnus didn’t like how slowly they were moving. He toggled his HUD back to visual and was struck by how dark the passage was. Other than a few small red emergency lights, the maintenance shaft was black. He went back to IR.

  “Any way you can light our progress, Nolan?” Magnus asked over comms.

  “Negative,” the warrant officer replied. The methodical blare of the ship-wide klaxon sounded in the background over the mic. “It’s pretty slow going.”

  “Copy that,” Magnus replied, sweeping his Z from end to end.

  “Map says we only have another seventy meters.”

  Just then, Magnus noticed a new heat signature climbing into the tunnel two positions ahead. “Contact.” He pointed his Z, bypassing the two team members in front of him and zeroing in on the enemy combatant.

  The hostile jerked in surprise, probably at having so many options to target, and raised his weapon. Magnus squeezed off two bolts that flashed white in his HUD and caught the trooper in the shoulder and bicep. A weapon clattered to the gantry, and Magnus sent a third bolt into the base of the enemy’s neck, severing the spine.

  Magnus made out Dutch’s slender figure as she backed away from the dead trooper and raised her ML10 to cover the new entry point. A second combatant started to climb through, but Dutch ended the attempt with two point-blank shots to the trooper’s helmet. The body was pulled back, and a small ball rolled onto the decking.

  “Stun grenade!” Magnus yelled. By this point, however, he had run even with the
new entry hatch and batted the grenade back through the hole with his hand. He managed two more steps, hoping his body would block as much of the blowback as possible. But he knew that plenty of the grenade’s disruption blast would get past him, affecting those ahead.

  The grenade detonated in the hall with a high-pitched whine followed by an air-sucking whump. He watched ahead as the line of people stumbled to their knees, some falling on their hands. He couldn’t make out the girl’s status, but he hoped the adult bodies had shielded her from the worst of it.

  “Come on, Gilder!” Magnus shouted through his speaker. “On your feet, Private! Move, move, move!” The line started forward again, and as soon as they’d managed another five meters, Magnus returned the enemy’s gesture with a frag grenade of his own.

  “Cover your ears,” Magnus yelled up the line. He pulled the frag from his hip, pressed the three-second timer with his thumb, and tossed the ordnance through the hatch. “Fire in the hole!” He turned to catch up as the grenade barked in his helmet.

  The pace slowed. Within a few seconds, however, the line was underway again, and Magnus covered their retreat. Nothing more emerged from the hatch.

  The access tunnel ended in a T, and Magnus watched the group turn left—a good sign, Magnus noted, as it meant that his schematic was still current—and followed them toward the main access hatch at the end of the corridor. Preparing to exit into a larger corridor ahead, he holstered his Z and brought his MAR30 back up, walking backward to cover their six.

  “We’re at the end of the tunnel,” Nolan called over comms.

  “Egress,” Magnus ordered, “but stay alert. Stay smooth.”

  “Copy.” Nolan said. Magnus heard the warrant officer muscling the corkscrewed lock mechanism. “Opening.” A small squeak accompanied Nolan’s words.

  There was a moment’s silence as Magnus held his breath. If there was anyone on the other side of that hatch, they were most likely—

  “Clear,” Nolan said.

  Magnus let out the breath. “You should see a bank of emergency pods along the left wall. Confirm.”

  “Affirmative. Everything looks good, Lieutenant.”