Open Arms (On Silver Wings Book 7)

by Evan Currie

  *****

  USV SOL

  Admiral Ruger was scowling as he examined the daily reports.

  Alliance shipping in and out of the systems seemed entirely out of proportion to the size of the local population. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but there had to be something in the system that had caught the eye of the Alliance Mercantile Fleet, if not the government itself.

  “Admiral, the resource scans you requested,” his aide announced as she handed him a portable computer display.

  Ruger thanked her and started flipping through those reports next.

  Metals, heavy metals, more or less as expected. It wasn’t a resource-poor system—a decent carbon signature from the gas giants, lots of metals in evidence in the Trojan point belts that existed on either side of the larger two.

  The planet itself had high levels of organic compounds, mostly what would be associated with a much younger Earth according to the scientists onboard. Some of those were reasonably valuable on Earth—manufacturing them could be quite costly—but none of them really explained the traffic he was seeing.

  The Alliance contact he had, Seinel, had no answers for him either. Ruger couldn’t tell if the alien was stonewalling him or honestly had no idea himself, which just pissed the admiral off even more. He was used to being stonewalled—that was part of the game—but normally he was savvy enough to recognize when it was happening.

  Reading alien body language was a pain in the ass.

  *****

  Parithalian Diplomatic Cruiser, Red Sky

  Seinel swore as he examined the files from the local mercantile fleet representative and shared data provided from the surface.

  Why did I not see this before?

  The weight of cargo being transshipped into this system made no sense.

  He had been privy to the Alliance classified report on this system and, while surprisingly valuable on the whole due to various organic chemicals that cost a great deal of resources to replicate, there was nothing here that would explain the weight of metal and cargo flowing through the system.

  He had been too long out of the more mundane drudgery of the mercantile fleet if he’d missed this and had to have it pointed out by a human of all things. It was professionally insulting.

  He started examining freight manifests, looking for patterns. Obviously, he was looking at some sort of smuggling operation, but whoever was running it had chosen a frontier system with few valuable jump points nearby, so he couldn’t easily fathom what they were smuggling.

  Seinel knew that once he worked out what it was, figuring out who was doing it would be far easier, however, so he set himself and his team to crunching the numbers. Clearly he couldn’t trust the manifests, as they would be faked, but in order to hide what they were actually transporting, he knew that there would be certain telltales all the same.

  If one were transporting counterfeit machine parts, one wouldn’t list organic chemicals on the manifests, for example. Working out what they were actually moving would take time, unless he wanted to raid a few vessels. That was a tempting thought, of course, but it would only net him a few ships and their crews.

  Seinel wanted the people behind the plot, if only for making him waste his time in this manner when he had so many more important things to do.

  *****

  Arkana

  Grant watched, disgusted, as the woman charmed his employer, the two of them dancing on the upper level where everyone could see them.

  How Eri could carry on with someone tainted by the multi-cultural cesspool of Earth like that he did not understand. Ultimately, though, it wouldn’t matter a whole lot. Of that Grant was certain.

  The Xeno invaders would be forced off Arkana. Ultimately, that was the inevitable outcome. That was the outcome decided by God when those filthy beasts decided to defile the surface of Arkana with their presence, and it was the outcome that Grant would personally ensure.

  One way, or another.

  He stepped back into the shadows, where he was most comfortable, and lifted his radio to his mouth.

  “Do it.”

  *****

  Eri and Sorilla stepped off the polished stone dance floor and walked over to the low railing that ran along the edge of the platform they were on, each of them leaning into it as they paused for a rest.

  “You dance well for a soldier,” Eri said, smiling.

  “And how would you know how a soldier dances?” Sorilla asked, amused.

  In reality, she was well aware that he was flattering her. She could dance, yes, but she wasn’t particularly good at it, and what little she was decent at were all Earth styles. Arkana had evolved a little in their own direction since the colony had been founded, so she had been forced to follow his lead and had done so a little clumsily.

  “Touché,” Eri said, laughing lightly. “We don’t have any soldiers here, that is true. Just Rangers and militia. Are they really that different?”

  Sorilla shrugged. “Depends on what sort of soldier you’re talking about.”

  “Your sort,” Eri said, turning to look at her intently.

  “Vastly different,” she told him. “I am a cultural specialist and combat trainer.”

  “I have no idea what that means,” he admitted.

  “It means,” she said as she looked out over the assembled crowd below them, all dressed to the nines and enjoying the party, “that I specialize in slipping into a culture, becoming one of them, and then teaching them to fight against stronger, more powerful enemies. Guerilla warfare, asymmetric tactics…” She paused, dipping her head down a bit. “Terror strikes.”

  He looked at her, a concerned look crossing his face. “That sounds like no business for a beautiful lady.”

  “It’s no business for anyone,” Sorilla said, “but someone has to do it.”

  “You sound unconvinced,” he told her.

  “I sound tired,” she corrected him. “I’ve been doing this for a lot of years now. I’m the old woman of the teams now, should never have accepted the OCS offer.”

  “You’re hardly an old woman,” Eri corrected her.

  She shot him an amused glance. “I’ll be fifty in just a couple more years. Life extension treatments have improved considerably since your people left.”

  He stared, jaw hanging a little low as he stammered. “I…I never would have believed it.”

  “The years don’t show on the outside,” she said, “but they still weigh on the inside.” Abruptly she straightened, her smile returning. “Still, when they came to me with this mission, I couldn’t turn them down. You and your sister colony are too incredible an opportunity for me to pass up.”

  “Sister colony?” he asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “The Muslim world,” she responded. “I believe they called it the Greatness of God, in Arabic, of course.”

  His expression darkened. “I would hardly call them our sister colony.”

  “Points of view, Eri,” she told him. “You left at similar times, your ships had similar compositions, and you found worlds that allowed you to develop away from the triggers that drove your people to extreme beliefs on Earth. I had to see how you had come along.”

  He scowled, though not at her. “And how did we do?”

  Sorilla had a sad look on her face as she looked out on the crowd below. “I could live here, but you didn’t change so much as I hoped…though more than I had feared. The tribal fears are still here, even removed from the original sources. I hate that the Alliance annexed your worlds…I would love to have seen what you could have done with another century.”

  “You speak of us like an experiment,” Eri said, his expression dark.

  “I suppose I do. I’m sorry,” Sorilla said. “Occupational hazard, I suppose. You have one of the few colonies Earth sent out that succeeded, beyond question. Most failed within a few years, couple decades at most. You’ve been here almost a century?”

  “Nearly that, yes.”

  “You c
an’t know just how impressive that is,” Sorilla told him, “but trust me when I tell you that Arkana and Greatness are two stunning anomalies. By all rights, neither of you should have survived. That you did is a testament to the strength of the people, and your leadership.”

  She was laying it on just a little thick, Sorilla knew, but it was also true, so she expected that would disguise the more blatant aspects of the flattery.

  “It has not always been easy,” Eri said, his tone shifting just slightly as he looked out over the crowd then, “but we have always prevailed against whatever came against us.”

  “Great people always do,” Sorilla told him. “But there’s a storm coming.”

  Eri snorted. “There is always a storm coming. You speak of the Alliance, I suppose?”

  “Indirectly,” Sorilla said. “I think, at least.”

  “That clears things up.”

  Sorilla laughed softly. “Not enough information yet to be sure. I can just tell that something is brewing. You should prepare for whatever it is.”

  “I am always prepared.”

  Sorilla nodded. “I suppose you would have to be.” She straightened up, turning to look at him evenly. “So, Eri Constantine, have you learned what you wanted from me? Or do we have yet more business?”

  “Oh, Sorilla Aida, I rather think we do,” he said with a smile. “Might I offer you a drink?”

  “Local whiskey?” she asked.

  “If that is to your taste.”

  “I accept.”

  *****

  Kriss stood stiffly at what humans might call attention, ignoring the glares, the curious looks, and the attention in general as he observed the party he had found himself in. Humans were little different than most Alliance species, he supposed. There was a certain oddity about that, because in some ways he considered them quite different…had actually wondered if they might be a species similar to Lucians for a time.

  Gatherings like this told him otherwise, however.

  Lucians would not waste their energies in such blatant shows of self-important power games.

  Either you had power, or you didn’t. Parading it around like a puff-bird merely underscored how weak you actually were. Strength wasn’t something that needed a golden plating; it was undeniable in its raw form. The more bluster, the more boasting, the more someone proclaimed their strength…

  Well, the more the rot of weakness existed under the golden shine.

  There was at least some metal in the species. Humans had produced warriors worthy of a fight, but so had every Alliance race at one point or another.

  Few had the fortitude to maintain a real standing force in the absence of a true threat.

  Lucians stood on guard through war and through peace, because hard times rarely had the decency to announce their arrival in advance.

  ******

  Major Strickland examined the party with dispassionate eyes, casually moving among the gathered “elite” of the colony with the practice of a man used to maneuvering through crowds of generals and politicians and other various people who might easily step on him merely from a whim. He was careful to chat with people. Being seen to be part of the party rather than an observer would make him less memorable in the eyes of the majority there.

  Those he did speak with, he kept his voice almost monotone and his answers dull and lifeless. If they seemed too interested in him, he would intentionally drone on about some mundane aspect of his job that he knew far too many details about. Paperwork usually sufficed to provoke a vacant, glassy-eyed stare in his listeners.

  Tomorrow, if the majority of them remembered him at all, he expected that they would only have a blurry image of some boring bureaucrat who was serving as an assistant to the much more vibrant and memorable soldier from Earth who spent the evening dancing and chatting with Elder Eri.

  Behind that façade, however, he was cataloging every person that passed his vision, logging whether they were armed, their names, facial recognition stats, any interesting hits from hyperspectral imaging, and a host of other details. Each person went into a file, was compressed and logged, and then pulsed out to the SOL.

  A smaller percentage of those present were armed, but still quite high compared to similar groups on Earth. No weapons were visible, but the accelerant was still visible to his scanners, so either they were concealing or they’d carried into the party and checked their guns on the way in.

  Since he, Aida, and even Kriss had been permitted to keep their weapons, Strickland assumed that people were concealing.

  The local EM spectrum was pretty hot, a lot of encrypted signals bouncing back and forth, but most of the codes were not only ludicrously simple…they were historic. His implants teamed up with those of the rest of the squad—the lieutenant colonel’s aside, as she had more important things to focus on—and they cracked those codes in seconds.

  Not unexpectedly, there was nothing of any particular value being tossed around there, but having them cracked did expose the few signals with real encryption…and a few of those were really active.

  SOL, Strickland, he subvocalized while taking a sip of what passed for punch locally. It was mildly alcoholic, with a strong hint of apple and a notable HCN spike that made him nervous despite his system assuring him it was well below a lethal…or even harmful, dose.

  The SOL communications department came back almost instantly, just a short lag between his transmission and their reply to remind him that the SOL was in high orbit.

  ‘Strickland, go for SOL.’

  Request signals sweep, current location. Crack encryption, locate transmit sources as designated, he replied, sending along the spread frequencies being used by the more advanced encryption sources to give the people on the SOL a better target to work with.

  ‘Roger that. SOL out.’

  With that done, Strickland settled back into his role as the boring, incredibly forgettable party guest that no one remembered enough to regret his presence.

  *****

  Eri Constantine found himself enjoying the conversation with the soldier from Earth, impressed at her grasp of many aspects of his business and finding many of her offered opinions to be rather fresh compared to the rather limited perspectives he normally had available. Her frank evaluations of the local whiskeys amused him equally, and he found himself looking forward to setting up a supply route with Earth just for luxury items he and the colonists had long done without.

  Time had slipped past quicker than he would have thought possible, and they had settled into a two-seat table that featured prominently on the second floor terrace in the sight of everyone who’d come to the Red Room that day. When he was in his home away from home, Eri tried to be visible, as it reminded people just who he was.

  Him being visible with an attractive woman from Earth would shortly tear through the colony’s gossip mill and give him a noted edge over his few true peers.

  In fact… he glanced at his watch and then out and around. Odd. I expected some of them to be here by now…

  Eri looked back to his companion and was struck by the look of physical discomfort that appeared on her face.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, concerned.

  She looks like she’s going to throw up. He hoped she wouldn’t, really. It would be a horrible cap to the night, and the rumor mill would eat it up in ways he really would rather didn’t happen. Is there something wrong with her drink?

  He was about to ask then when she surged out of her chair like a missile fired from a launcher, lunging across the table and hitting him full in the chest with enough force to throw him back from the table and upend his chair. Eri’s eyes widened in shock and, for a moment, he wondered if it was an assassination.

  Am I about to die?

  They were still in the air when the table the pair of them had just vacated so quickly and violently exploded into shards.

  Eri just had time to wonder what the hell had happened before they hit the ground and slid across the dance floor a
mid shouts of alarm and anger from all sides.

  Chapter 11

  The gravity pulse of the Alliance warp weapon almost took her by surprise. She’d gotten used to not feeling the constant flux of gravity cores since putting her papers in, and oddly the SOL had barely affected her on the trip into Arkana. When the blaster powered up, though, Sorilla had felt a sharp reorientation of her senses that didn’t match what her eyes were seeing, and the old, familiar nausea had come back in spades.

  She hit Eri in the chest with her full bodyweight on instinct, just seconds before the weapon discharged. They were in the air when the table behind them was violently compressed and then allowed to snap back to its proper space-time lattice, with predictable results. Shards of the resulting debris tore into her back, drawing a hiss of pain from Sorilla as she and Eri hit the ground in a slide away from the target.

  She wasn’t sure how badly she was hurt, but her implants went to work automatically as she registered the situation as a combat priority alpha. Nerve deadeners killed the sensation of pain burning along her back, while her processor cheerfully noted that no critical nerves appeared to be neutralized by the damage.

  She put her right knee into Eri’s chest, snarling as she brought her left leg up, planted it beside his face, and let the red dress fall away to reveal the big Metalstorm pistol strapped here.

  “Stay down!” she snapped as Eri struggled under her, the gun filling her right fist as she swept it from the holster and snapped it out straight. “Are you alright!?”

  His eyes were wide, mouth open as she scanned him with part of her focus while the rest was looking out the camera embedded in the structure of the pistol, seeking a target.

  “Are you alright?” she snapped again, not seeing any injuries, but an Alliance warp weapon could do some pretty nasty internal damage even with a near miss.

  “I…I think so?” Eri stammered, confused. “What was that?”

  Her pistol fired, the recoil hammering her hand into her wrist, and that into her arm, and so forth, up through her body with enough force to deform flesh temporarily. She and Eri both looked in the direction she’d fired in time to see a man with a big Alliance weapon be thrown back off his feet as a bloody halo filled the air where his head had been.