by John Appel
“Rio Mizwar and associates, you are hereby apprehended under the Covenants of the Ileri Republic!” Zheng called out on her armor’s external speakers.
Her words were still booming off the building’s front as she blew the front door open with a breaching rocket fired on the run.
Noo ducked instinctively at the blast, even though she’d expected it, which allowed Meiko to surge past her with the goober gun. Fari crunched along in her exoskeletons, arm-mounted mini-guns already powered up. Noo cursed, waved off Teng’s offer of assistance, and trotted behind her comrades.
The left-wing door crashed open. Noo’s pistol was in her hand and she snapped off two rounds without conscious thought, the weapon bucking against her gloved palm. One round hit the door frame and spanged away. Someone inside fired back but she couldn’t tell who they were shooting at. An autorifle cut loose from inside the main door, answered by the stuttering rrrrrriiiipppp of Zheng’s mini-gun. Zheng slowed down to a brisk walk as she crossed the threshold, bullets ricocheting off her armor.
A defender fired again from the left door and she saw Meiko spin on one heel. Noo feared her partner had been hit, but instead Meiko planted her left foot, raised the goober gun to her shoulder, and fired a round into the doorway. The grenade burst on contact and then boiling foam filled the entry way, hardening even as Noo jogged up to the smoking ruin of the front door. She saw Teng lope around to cover the building’s rear while Fari held position between the lodge and their shuttle, ready to offer fire support.
Once inside the smoldering doorway, they found themselves in a large foyer with stairs rising to the second floor, from where they heard Zheng’s amplified voice calling again for surrender. A fusillade of shots answered her demand. A body lay next to the stairs in a spreading pool of blood. Splotches of blood and bullet holes marked the wall. Meiko slung her goober gun and they passed the stairs, pistols drawn, and entered a large room furnished with couches, chairs, and a massive stone structure Noo realized was for burning wood.
Since they’d taken fire from the left side of the house, they pivoted that direction from the great room, finding two doors. “Get the back door, I’ve got the front,” Meiko said, as she holstered her pistol and unslung her goober gun. Noo ran to take up position, feet thudding on the floor. She heard the thonk and pop behind her, and more gunfire from upstairs.
Noo studied the door in front of her, wondering how she could yank it open without the benefit of power armor, or at least a combat exoskeleton, as Meiko sauntered up next to her. “Try the handle,” Meiko said, stunner in her left hand, pistol in her right. Noo licked her lips, nodded, and grabbed the handle. She twisted it and was surprised to find that it was, indeed, unlocked. With a jerk, she pulled it open and ducked inside.
And found herself looking at her quarry, who looked like he’d been about to push the door open himself.
Mizwar’s eyes widened in surprise, but he still managed to step back, swung his rifle to bear, and fired from the hip as she desperately twisted away.
The three-round burst slammed into Noo’s chest and belly, but the Commonwealth hard-shell armor was good kit; angled as she was, his bullets couldn’t penetrate. Even so, she staggered with the impact as the air was driven out of her lungs. But her djinn marked her target and she brought her pistol in line and fired, once.
Mizwar screamed as the bullet smashed his right hand, turning it to a bloody ruin. The rifle clattered to the floor as blood splashed across the wall and onto her visor. Noo careened to her left and crashed into the wall. It took everything she had not to double over and rip off her face mask as her body insisted that she ought to. Mizar dropped to his knees, his right wrist cradled in his left hand, as she put her pistol against the top of his head.
Her vision narrowed, like she was looking through a tube. Had she been hit after all? Was she dying, as Saed had, at this man’s hands?
It would be so easy. Just one pull of the trigger.
Meiko reached forward and gently pushed Noo’s gun up and away from Mizwar’s head, then neatly kicked the rifle down the hall, firmly out of reach, and holstered her pistols.
When Noo could stand upright again she saw Meiko had Mizwar on the floor, face down, as she knelt on his back and yanked a plastic restraint band tight around his wrists. They ignored his cry of pain.
“Are you all right?” Meiko asked, after glancing at Noo’s armor.
“Yeah,” Noo said in the sudden quiet. The shooting had stopped upstairs.
“Would you like to do the honors?” Meiko said. “I understand there’s proper form to be observed.”
“There is, and I will.” She set her weapon to safe, holstered it, and then slumped down against the wall. She braced herself with a weary arm and leaned over to look into Mizwar’s face.
“You’re clipped, you bastard.”
Meiko
Ileri Backcountry
Meiko finished restraining her prisoner and eyed her partner up and down. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked.
“Got the wind knocked out of me, that’s all,” Noo said. “I’ll have some fucking spectacular bruises and I feel like I’ve been hit by a damned car, but I’ve been worse.”
“Lucky he didn’t go for a headshot,” Meiko said. That brought a wheezing laugh from their prisoner.
They both stared at him. “Do you have something to say?” Meiko asked.
“Not really,” he said. His voice was deep but ragged with suppressed pain. She groped at her harness and found the first aid kit. She gave him a carefully considered half-dose of painkiller. Not that Mizwar’s comfort was her true concern, but at some point, she’d have to answer officially for his treatment. If the sedative lowered inhibitions and made him less resistant to interrogation, well, that was a side benefit.
She glanced up at Noo from where she squatted beside their quarry. “I believe there’s a mandated warning about his rights?”
“Yeah,” Noo said, and pulled herself a little straighter from where she slumped against the wall. She recited the caution. “You are hereby apprehended under the Covenants of the Ileri Republic. You may choose to remain silent, but failure to disclose information you later rely on in court will be viewed with prejudice. Anything you do say can and will be considered as evidence in any and all proceedings. You have the right to a court-appointed advocate, and an interpreter if you require one. Do you understand these rights as they have been explained to you?”
“You’re not police,” Mizwar said, and Meiko repressed a sudden urge to kick him.
“I’m properly deputized,” Noo said, “and my partner is providing mutual aid sanctioned by both our governments. It was a constable who blew in your door, though, so it’s all nice and legal. Now, do you understand these rights as they have been explained to you?”
“I do,” he said. Meiko felt the tension in her shoulders ease a little bit. She rose and offered Noo a hand up, and then the two of them yanked Mizwar to his feet. She then keyed the comm net. “We’ve got him. Minor wound but otherwise intact.”
“What about my people?” Mizwar asked through teeth still clenched against the pain.
“Let’s find out,” Meiko said. “One dead for sure.”
Zheng asked for assistance with two prisoners and Teng clomped in, since Fari’s exoskeleton wouldn’t fit through the doorway even after the rocket-based remodeling. Teng grinned as he recognized Mizwar, flashed them the hand sign for mission complete, and headed up the stairs.
They hauled Mizwar past the body of his fallen teammate and out under the wide-open sky. Fari clomped over, the arms of her exoskeleton raised high. She stared at Mizwar, and Meiko could see her hands flex. “You give him the caution already?” Noo affirmed that she had. “Pity,” Fari said, and stomped away to stand near the shuttle.
The voice of Amaonzas’ signal officer on their comm net came as a surprise. “Ogawa. You need to get your people moving. The orbital situation is evolving rapidly.”
�
�What’s going on?” she said as Zheng and Teng appeared in the doorway with the survivors of Mizwar’s team.
Suddenly, the night sky turned to day.
They stared, all of them, as a new sun appeared, its brilliant white light casting harsh, sharp-edged shadows. It proved ephemeral, though, and over the course of a minute it faded away to nothing.
“What in the name of the Mother was that?” Noo asked.
“Someone just used a nuclear weapon in orbit,” Zheng said.
“No,” said Mizwar, and there was a note of triumph in his voice. Meiko saw with shock the most beatific expression on his face she’d ever come across. “True purification.”
“What do you mean by that?” Meiko asked, her own voice shaking. Mizwar didn’t respond; he simply stood, his face turned skyward, his face almost rapturous. She keyed the net to call Amazonas but there was no response. “Shit. I’ve lost contact with topside.”
They gathered by the shuttle. Zheng carried one of Mizwar’s companions, wounded during the firefight, to the triage bay. Teng, the closest thing they had to a trained medic, fired up the shuttle’s expert system and did his best to stabilize the patient while Meiko and the others secured Mizwar and his unwounded compatriot in acceleration couches. Zheng grabbed two body bags and returned to the house for the last casualties.
“If it wasn’t a nuke, what was it?” Fari asked.
“The only other weapon I know of with that kind of effect would be an antimatter conversion bomb,” Meiko said. Noo and Fari stared at her. “It seems the Saljuans brought some along. I expect they’ll claim to have found forbidden Exile technology somewhere in orbit.”
“Do you think that’s what Amazonas was trying to warn us about?” Noo asked as she finished securing Mizwar to his couch.
“Maybe. Or a conventional space battle might be starting up and they had to maneuver. Or both things. I’ll see if I can raise the ship.” Meiko made her way to the pilot’s compartment and waved her djinn to open the hatch. She’d ridden in the copilot’s seat of shuttles before, but never a military craft like this. Surprisingly, though, the shuttle’s controls responded to her djinn, and her incoming message indicator flashed.
She opened the message and discovered it was from Captain Gupta. The captain had zer combat suit on, but zer helmet off, indicating action topside was imminent. “Ogawa. The situation is deteriorating rapidly. The Saljuans have announced they’ve found signs of Exile-grade nanoware being manufactured in orbit and are broadcasting their findings. I’ll append the packet to this message. They’re going to destroy the facility with an antimatter weapon.” Gupta’s eyes flicked to another window and ze spat out a curse Meiko’s grandmother once used. “It looks like the rebel forces are moving to engage. We’re going to have to change orbits or we’ll get caught up in that mess. The pilot’s sending you two course packages for the autopilot. One will take you to New Abuja. The other is for Ileri Station. I authorize you to exercise your own judgement and pick whichever destination best allows you to complete your mission. Gupta out.”
Meiko sat back in the pilot’s couch and closed her eyes. Weariness mixed with dread overtook her. Both the Commonwealth and the Star Republic had possessed antimatter weapons for many decades, but they’d never been used before. As far as she knew, anyway.
The veil is torn now. There’s no going back.
Noo awkwardly clambered into the copilot’s couch. “Have you reached anyone yet?”
“Kind of.” Meiko forwarded the message to the rest of the team. No one spoke as they digested the news.
She heard Zheng clomping about as she stepped to the door and looked up. “I can see flashes of light in the sky,” she reported. “I think they’re going at it up there in orbit.”
“So where do we go?” Meiko asked. “New Abuja, or the station?”
“Is there any question?” Noo said, gently. She laid her hand on Meiko’s arm. “Take us home.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-NINE
Andini
SDV Iwan Goleslaw,
Ileri Orbit
Andini peered closely into the main tactical display tank, her tactician’s mind racing the expert systems, busy analyzing any changes in Ileri space following the destruction of the orbital manufactory. It made a great excuse to not have to look at Dinata’s smug face; the minister had been practically euphoric when the inspection teams reported they’d positively verified a store of nanoware containing a Unity Plague variant. Andini and her tactical officer had unlocked the special ordnance store under Dinata’s beatific gaze. The expression on Dinata’s face as they watched the imagery relayed by recon probe, before radiation fried the optical pickups… Andini thought she’d have nightmares about that for weeks. Not that she didn’t believe in their mission, or in the necessity of preventing Unity from appearing in the Exile Cluster; far from it.
But Dinata’s low moan as matter’s annihilation washed across the screen had sounded positively orgasmic. Andini realized that the woman took pleasure in destruction. The minister was part of that faction driving the Star Republic towards not just ever more extreme enforcement of the Accords, but to the imposition of Saljuan technology-constraint policies in unaffiliated systems. Her party had pushed for the annexation of Indra, which had been easy, and of Para, where insurgents still resisted the annexation, twenty years later. “We must maintain the safety of the Cluster!” Dinata had thundered during one of their early mission briefings. Andini had no doubt the minister would direct her to use the special ordinance against Ileri itself if she felt necessary, because to one of the alat pembersih, the purifiers, there was only one way to guarantee that safety.
Andini swallowed anxiously, wondering how she’d respond to that order if it came. The question no longer seemed to be purely hypothetical.
She noticed the change in the orbital situation almost the same instant the tactical expert system did. “Eyes, confirm vector change and energy profile of target cluster London Kilo four-five-seven,” she ordered.
“Don’t let them concern you, Captain.” Dinata’s voice rolled languorously. “They have seen our power and won’t dare challenge us now.”
If Andini had believed that was true, Eyes’ response dashed that hope. “Vector change confirmed, Captain. They’re no longer maneuvering to intercept that formation of loyalist cutters burning in from the outer-system station. They’re bearing for us instead. Radiators are still deployed.”
Her belly felt tight. “Still the same composition?”
“Confirmed. One Solewa-class cruiser, three Protagonist-class frigates, and six cutters—stand by. Update, formation is pulling in their radiators.”
So much for not daring to challenge us. “Time to engagement envelope?”
“They’ll be in our missile range in thirty-seven minutes, fifty-six seconds. Best estimate is thirty-three minutes, forty-two seconds for us to be in their missile envelope.”
Andini grasped the handrail that ran around the command dais and pulled herself upright. “Fist, launch weapons bus waves one and two, set for defensive fire. Ears, record the following for broadcast.” She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then took another breath. “This is Captain Andini commanding the SDV Iwan Goleslaw to all vessels in Ileri space. Our sensors indicate Ileri warships maneuvering with apparent hostile intent against my vessel. Any attempt to interfere with my vessel or our mission will be met with lethal force. Any attack on the Iwan Goleslaw will be met with lethal force. There will be no warning shots. Andini out.”
As she finished speaking, she felt the vibration and fancied she could hear the distant clatter and rumble of the weapons busses being launched, each basically a miniature automated warship packed full of missiles, coil guns, or laser pods.
Dinata rose to stand beside the captain, her face now a mask of confused fury. “They dare?” she hissed.
Her belly still felt tight, but Andini reached for the calm of routine. Her vessel was already at Condition One, battle-re
ady but for pulling in her radiators so they wouldn’t be shot away in the coming fight. Time to deal with that. “Hands, keep the radiators deployed for”—she checked the countdown until the rebel vessels would be in range of her weapons—“fifteen minutes.” It would take seven minutes to tuck the radiators back within Iwan Goleslaw’s armored hull. Dinata still raged beside her, pounding on the handrail, but Andini ignored her for the moment. “Ears, message for all crew.” She paused until the communications officer signaled the channel was ready. “Attention, my children,” using the traditional mode of address from captain to crew. “Rogue elements of the Ileri forces appear to be set on engaging us. We shall meet them, and if they persist on their foolish course, I have no doubt we shall prevail. The eyes of our people are upon us all. We bear the torch.”
Across the CIC, and across the ship, Iwan Goleslaw’s crew murmured, or spoke, or shouted the response. “We hold it high!”
She nodded at Ears, who cut the signal, before she turned to face Dinata, who still ranted. “Minister, it’s time for you to relocate to auxiliary control,” she said, as calmly as she could manage.
Dinata spun to face her, fists clenched. “You must chastise these people, Captain. They have violated the Accords, brought the taint of Lost Earth back from the brink!”
Andini chose her words with care. “With respect, Minister, we cannot say for certain that the Ileri government is involved in this.” She gestured at the display, which now showed a second rebel formation maneuvering to engage them. “We do not yet have evidence of anyone’s involvement besides the owners of the manufactory, which appears to be a legitimate Ileri business.”
Dinata snorted. “Legitimate is hardly the word for those who traffic in proscribed technology. And besides, their ships are attacking us.”
