Keltan's Gambit: Chronicles of the Orion Spur Book 2

by Michael Formichelli

“Meia!” Kaeden shouted.

  She turned and started moving again, twisting for a moment to put a bullet into her pursuer and dropped him. His body hit the ground, but the cloud kept coming. She holstered her weapon and pumped her legs as hard as she could.

  Kae put Rune on the open ramp of his ship and the boy scrambled up inside. He turned, and waved her over.

  Nope, you go ahead. We’ll rendezvous at the CSS Iapetus in orbit. Get your boy out of here, she transmitted. I’ll get starside in the shuttle.

  He glanced to the side at the C-37, nodded, and vanished into his vessel. Its engine roared to life moments later, and the ship flew up into the sky in the red-haze of dark-energy. Several of the workers on the pads around them paused what they were doing to stare up at the ship and then at her. She ignored them and kept moving. Her feet hit the landing-pad staircase moments later. She took the steps in two bounds and ran on up the shuttle’s ramp with Iapetus right behind her. Meia triggered the ramp to start closing before she even crested its apex. The controls lit up over the gray panels as she arrived in the cockpit and sat down in the pilot’s chair.

  “Okay, power’s up. Engines are in the green,” she said to herself, starting her mental pre-flight checklist. Through the windows she saw the workers notice the thick cloud pouring down the street. They turned to each other and made some gestures, then one of them saw the tendrils shooting out in their direction.

  Shit, shit, shit! she thought when the nanomachines wrapped around them. As with the bearded man, their bodies jerked in place as they were enveloped. She sat frozen by equal parts horror and curiosity as the workers grabbed the nearest tools and charged each other. The sight of the first wrench in a man’s skull shocked her out of her paralysis.

  She grasped the holographic controls, feeling their phantom solidity, an illusion projected into her brain from the shuttle’s computer, and yanked up.

  Nothing happened.

  “Iapetus?”

  “Checking,” he said through the DS-109’s speakers. “The shuttle’s flight controls have been locked out by remote from the CSS Iapetus.”

  “What?” The shock of what he said hit her like a bucket of ice. “Patch me through, and seal the ship’s vents; put us on our own air supply.”

  “Done.”

  “CSS Iapetus, this is your commanding officer, Lieutenant Ironstar. Respond.” She had to repeat the transmission twice before the shuttle’s speakers crackled to life.

  “Lieutenant, you have been relieved of command on the authority of Captain Solus.” The holographic bust of Jzai’Yi, the Cleebian Sub-Lieutenant she left in command, appeared hovering over the control board before her. Sub-Lieutenant Jzai’Yi blinked at her with all three fist-sized, yellow eyes.

  “Come again?”

  “Lieutenant Ironstar, you are relieved of command. Captain Solus has ordered no one is to leave the planet surface during the Siren test.”

  “Test? What the hell are you talking about? My unit came under fire. Sub-Lieutenant Ostrin is—“

  “That is correct. If you attempt to disable the lockout, we will be forced to fire upon you,” Jzai’Yi buzzed.

  “What do you mean, ‘that is correct?’”

  “It would appear the Sub-Lieutenant knew about the attack at the warehouse,” Iapetus said.

  “Lieutenant Ironstar, I know these circumstances are unfortunate, but the security of the Confederation comes first. This test will help us win the war. Take comfort in that as you pass on into the ranks of the honored dead.”

  “Go fuck yourself.” Meia cut the comm-line.

  She licked her lips. She was being cut loose as a liability to whatever this “Siren test” was. Her heart pounded in her chest as the reality of that sank in. The Confederate Star Corps, the organization she’d pledged her life to, that her father had given most of his to as well, just betrayed her. The magnitude of it—she felt her world shift beneath her, but she refused to go to pieces. That wasn’t what Ironstars did when things went to shit. She took three deep breaths to steady her nerves, and got ready to act.

  “Iapetus, isolate your platform from all but verbal communications. I don’t want to lose you to some remote override from your originating program. I’m going to need your help.”

  “Done.”

  She nodded, watching the gas cloud become a haze spreading through the colony beyond the cockpit windows. She pulled up the shuttle’s sensor screen and checked for the position of the Katozi Slynn. It was still on its ascent climb but something was wrong. She watched it dodge left and right as it scrambled to get free of the moon’s gravity, and realized it must be under fire from her ship in orbit—No, not my ship anymore. Congratulations, Jzai’Yi. I’ll remember this the next time we meet.

  She ground her teeth together, then sent a quick transmission to the Katozi Slynn using an old code that her father came up with years ago. It was on the books, but she doubted the CSS Iapetus would have it in her memory banks. If the message was intercepted they wouldn’t know what it said for at least as long as it took them to either break the code or contact the CSS Laocoon to download the cipher. She hoped Kaeden, being a fan of her father’s, would get it straight away.

  Her hand shook as she pulled it back from the comm panel. Relax, Meia, you’ll be okay, she told herself.

  “Is the ship air-tight?” she asked Iapetus.

  “Confirmed, Lieutenant. The C-37’s diagnostics report it is still space-worthy. However, I feel compelled to warn you, in light of the threat made by—“

  “I know.” She unstrapped herself from the flight chair and headed back to where the shuttle’s emergency supplies were located. She popped open the wall panel and fished out a combat e-suit. “Do we know anything about that nanomachine cloud? Can it get through a breather membrane?”

  “Unknown, I will have to perform some tests to analyze—“

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll have to take a chance. We can’t stay here. I sent Kae the command codes to override the ship’s targeting system. It should give him enough time to get to orbit and get the hell out of here. Once they reset it I bet this shuttle will be the next target.”

  “I concur,” Iapetus responded. “Might I suggest using the suit’s isolated air supply until tests can be conducted?”

  “It’s only got a few hours of air.” She stripped out of her uniform and climbed into the suit, then remounted Mr. D on the suit’s gauntlet. She was sure it would come in handy tonight.

  “Correct, but as you humans are fond of saying, ‘something is better than nothing.’”

  “I guess you’re right.” She nodded.

  Meia pulled the hood of the black suit over her head and held the seam against that of her neckline to let the smartfabric stitch itself shut. The suit’s armored plates clicked together when it cinched itself tight against her skin after she linked her implant to its OS. Lighter than a combat armor, it was still designed for military use with reactive plates protecting her head, torso, and the extremities of her limbs while leaving only nanoarmored fabric over her joints. The fibers would prevent some damage, but she didn’t want to test them against a direct hit from a gauss weapon or something worse. The helmet, which bore a vague resemblance to an old Earth praying mantis’ head, had a full suite of optics and other sensors to augment her corneal implants. She knew she would need them tonight. The sun was now set, and she could see by the light of the street lamps that the nanomechanical fog had infiltrated most of the colony. She began to hear gunshots and screams through the hull of the C-37.

  “Message coming in for you, ma’am,” Iapetus said, looking at the ship’s communications panel. “It is using the Ironstar code you used to aid Captain Faen.”

  “What does it say?” she asked, pulling the suit’s UI up into her field of view. The translucent display hovering in her visual field showed she had six hours of breathable air and three hours of aegis-field charge once it was activated. She hoped to do that as little as possible, although the suit
had a kinetic converter system to recharge its batteries, it would take a lot of movement to repower her personal aegis once it was depleted.

  “Transcribed from the code you entered into the C-37 computer, it says ‘Thank you, good luck. Hope we meet again someday soon. I owe you my boy’s life and a whole lot of drinks—Kae.”

  She smiled for a moment, enjoying the small victory.

  “Okay, here’s the drill. Use lethal force when necessary, but the goal here is to make it to someplace where we can hole up and wait for whatever this is to blow over. We’ll deal with what comes after that. Maybe we can use the colony’s communications system to call for help later.”

  “Understood, Lieutenant. Might I make a suggestion?” Iapetus asked.

  “Don’t you dare stop doing that.”

  “Confirmed. The suggestion is to head for the communications station and assess its defensibility. There appears to be a full scale riot going on now, and if it becomes damaged—“

  “We get stranded. Say no more. I get it.” She sighed and picked up her big ’90 from the pile of clothes she left on the shuttle floor. She strapped it on after checking the ammo and its charge, then opened the weapons locker on the wall and loaded up an RA-250 assault rifle. “Take all the ammo you can carry,” she said, clipping magazines to the suit’s belt.

  “Confirmed.”

  “It’s going to be a long night.” She dropped the C-37’s ramp with a thought and headed down into the chaos with her rifle at the ready.

  Chapter One

  Ikuzlu City, Kosfanter System

  41:2:9 CST (J2400:3132)

  Cylus watched the sky transition from the blue-black of night to the dim purple of pre-dawn. He reclined in a high-backed chair with one leg hooked over an armrest, his elbow resting at the corner of the main conference-room table. A thin crescent of orange-red rent the horizon over the rolling waves of the dark sea, heralding the approach of dawn. He would have thought it beautiful before, but the machinations of the woman he loved weighed too heavily on him to be able to enjoy it. Sophi was forcing him to marry the daughter of the man who murdered his family, his cousin Pasqualina Olivaar. How could anything be beautiful now?

  He heard the door slide open behind him.

  “Ben, I told you I didn't want to be disturbed until breakfast.”

  “Sorry, I couldn't sleep.” Pasqualina's voice was soft, and if he hadn't suspected her of being a spy for his enemies he would have thought it tender.

  “You can set your implant to fix that.” He let the irritation show in his voice and heard the door close behind him.

  “It's so dark in here,” Pasqualina said.

  He sat upright, turning his head to bring her into view. She moved around the table on silent feet. The coppery ringlets of her hair fell in a loose tangle above the shoulders of a black nightgown that left her ankles bare. Dark freckles adorned her skin, and were most visible around the low bridge of her nose even in the deep shadows of the room. Those were new, and he had to wonder if she added them with a dermal implant to look more like a Keltan.

  “I told you Ben can help,” he snapped at her. His fiancée was the last person he wanted to see now.

  She arrived behind him and placed both of her hands on the crown of his chair. “I don't want Ben's help.”

  He looked up at her. Her green eyes looked almost gray in the dim light.

  “Were you watching the sunrise?” she asked.

  He stared for a second longer before turning back to the carbon-reinforced glass. “I was trying to.”

  “It's pretty, one of the few things about this world that I like.”

  He watched the thin wound of the dawn widen into an arch of fiery light. The sky brightened before it.

  “It's so strange to watch the sun rise in the west. On Dorgar it rises in the east. Do you remember?”

  He hadn't been to the Olivaar home world since he was a young boy. In truth he had forgotten, but he didn't want to encourage more conversation by telling her that. There was a moment in the corridor on the Queen Gaia when he thought he might grow to like her in time, but that moment was gone along with his sympathies. The sting of Sophi and her betrayal burned him clean of them.

  He felt her hand on his shoulder, and swatted it away.

  “Do you want something?”

  She pouted, moved around the table, and sat beside him. Her body partially obscured his view of the ocean and he scowled at her.

  “I spoke with Sophi last night. She wants us off of Kosfanter as fast as possible.”

  “I bet she does. Can't wait to undermine my power here, can she?” He wouldn’t have believed it before, but she was so cruel to him on the cruise. He couldn’t understand why. Did her plan to undermine Zalor Revenant really require her to be so cold?

  Pasqualina leaned forward, the growing light framing one side of her face in darkness while the other took on a soft glow. “You said you wanted to go home. We talked about this in the hallway on the ship. I thought you wanted to have Sophi as your proxy in the Barony so that you could leave this whole mess behind.”

  “That was before,” he said.

  “Before what?”

  “Before you and Sophi tricked me. Before Zalor could go anywhere in the blink of an eye. We were supposed to be free of him while he traveled to Helix. We were supposed to be able to set up our plan while my idiot uncle bumbled around and stalled the Barony. Now what do we have? The moment he leaves is the moment he arrives.”

  “Helix is far from here, and even with an FTL communications channel to the capital, Zalor's messages will be delayed,” she said.

  “By how long? And what if he figures out how to send messenger robots via that alien transport thing he and that scientist dug up? What would be the delay then? He just demonstrated that he can be anywhere in the spur in the blink of an eye.”

  “The Helix Nebula is over fourteen-hundred light years away. Granted, if he can send messenger robots by his new system, his messages will have only minutes of delay between here and there, but using a quantum communicator it would take twelve days, or so.”

  He stared at her with wide eyes.

  “I studied some astro-engineering in college,” she said in a half-whisper. “The point is that all is not lost.”

  He snorted, turning his gaze back to the window.

  “We can still go to Anilon—to your home. That option isn't gone,” she said.

  “He can reach me there in a heartbeat. He can snuff me out.” Cylus shook his head.

  “He could've done that anyway. The Cephalon Gate Spheres don't change that.”

  “Great, I feel so much better.”

  Her hand touched his arm. He looked down at nimble fingers with black lacquered fingernails curving around his bicep, and traced a path up to her face. He was about to yank his arm away but froze when he saw the intensity in her eyes.

  “We could still go. It would be okay. We can stay, too. What do you want, Cy?”

  He stared, breathing, thinking. Though he wanted to know the truth of his family's death, and though he wanted revenge, he wanted to be left alone more than anything in the galaxy. At home, on Anilon, he might be safe. True, he would have to put up with Pasqualina for a time, but Sophi promised him that wouldn't last. For seven Earth years before all this started, on Anilon, he was safe, removed, and immune from the galaxy. He wanted that again, wanted it forever, but he knew it could not be.

  “Nowhere is safe,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “Nowhere is safe. After my family was murdered I did my duty. I memorialized them on the planet that gave humanity birth, and then I went home and shut the door. I was going to stay there forever, but Sophi and Sable came and dragged me out. They brought me back into this mess; I was never meant to be involved. This is my father's world, not mine.

  “I was going to live in my family arcology, my own floating castle in the sky. I was going to go about the galaxy in the Keynesian Fortune with Sable and Soph
i. I was going spend my days seeing far off places meeting strange beings. I was going to live my life having fun, but now I can't.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, my family is dead, and Zalor is after me next. There is nowhere in the galaxy safe from him now. I can see what's coming. He's not building a better Confederation, he's building his own private empire. There is no place for me in it.” He breathed out hard.

  Pasqualina watched him with sympathetic eyes. He wanted to believe the emotion was genuine, but he couldn’t. There was no one he could trust. Sable was burying his father a thousand light years away, and Sophi was off plotting new ways to dangle him in front of Baron Revenant like a ConSov at the end of a stick.

  “He's not going to leave me alone. He wants what I have too much. He's going to come after me no matter what.” Cylus sighed.

  She nodded. The warmth in her eyes seemed to grow like she was trying to reach out to him through them. Her face was soft, and he felt the need to believe her sincerity rising—but he knew it was a lie. She was genetically modified to look like a member of his family instead of the one she really came from. Everything about her was false, and he couldn't let himself believe her.

  “So, what do you want?” she asked.

  He didn't have an answer, not a real one. He wanted to avenge his parents. He wanted to go home and have things be like they were before the Brogh War, before his family was dead. He wanted Sophi back and treating him like she cared. He couldn’t say any of this to Pasqualina, so he didn't.

  “I'm going to the Interstellar Bazaar today.” The tenderness faded from her face. She looked like the vacuous, spoiled brat he'd known since childhood again.

  “Go.”

  “Can I get you anything, Cy?”

  “What would I want from the Bazaar?”

  “Suit yourself.” She turned and left the room with a spring in her step as though nothing were wrong in the galaxy.

  He waited for the door to shut, then accessed the tower's network through his cerebral computer implant. A translucent blue menu appeared in his vision as a series of prompts framed by a double rectangle. Pasqualina ruined his reverie, so he as might as well get the day started. He mentally clicked the rectangle with a bent line through it for his personal messages. He had no idea what, if anything, the icon was supposed to represent in the real world. It was simply the common symbol for messages in the human part of the Confederation. Although he was away from the Kosfantari Cyberweb while on the cruise, he didn't anticipate having a full message cue when he connected. No one bothered with him, but he expected at least two messages when he logged in—one from the Abyssian Praetor investigating Mitsugawa Yoji's murder, and the other from Sable. Sable always kept him up to date even when he was in his self-imposed exile.