Kill the Queen! (Chaos of the Covenant Book 4)

by M. R. Forbes

  They continued together, each dead creature leaving the remaining soldiers able to focus on the others. There were so many, Elivee quickly lost count. She focused on them one at a time, using the Gift only sparingly.

  Unfortunately, more of the creatures were still coming out of the opening, pouring forward in a dark mass. There had to be a hundred or more. Enough that even she suddenly started to feel overwhelmed.

  “Retreat,” Koy said. “Retreat. Back toward the shuttles. Honorant, where are your dropships?”

  “Back on the battleship in orbit,” he replied. “Gloritant Thraven’s orders. He didn’t want Cage using one to get off the planet.”

  Elivee almost laughed. Even Thraven expected this solitary woman to overcome his army? All because she had managed to cut him? These soldiers were going to die for that decision.

  They neared the shuttles. Thraven wouldn’t accept retreat, even in the face of a horde of infected Seraphim. There would be consequences for running.

  They didn’t have to abandon the planet. They could regroup and hit the site with Shrikes, clean it out before returning. None of them had been prepared for this.

  She reached the hatch to her shuttle, noticing a sudden, loud whine from above. She looked up in time to see a dropship appear out of the clouds, coming down hard toward the surface. A pair of missiles fired from it, streaking across the distance to the opening in the crater and detonating against it. The ground shook as a huge cloud of dirt and debris was thrown up around the opening.

  The dropship slowed, its soldiers deploying from three hundred meters up, dropping in rust-colored battlesuits, right into the midst of the creatures. They shot them point-blank in their heads with powerful hand cannons before smoothly slicing through their necks with some kind of portable laser cutter, showing no sign of fear or hesitation.

  “Honorant, are these ours?” she asked.

  “No, Venerant. I don’t know who they are.”

  They streaked across the field in tight groups of five, covering one another with expert efficiency, tearing through the lines of the infected with practiced precision. They seemed to know what they were fighting, or at least how to kill them. Were they eavesdropping on what should have been a secured channel?

  It was over within minutes, the remainder of the infected cut down by the newcomers. As the last head was cut off, one of them broke away from the rest, heading back toward Elivee and the retreating soldiers. They lifted off their helmet, revealing a square-jawed older grunt with a thick scar crossing over his face and both of his eyes, which had been mechanically replaced.

  “Who in the name of all that is in the least bit intelligent is in so-called command of this clusterfrag?”

  Elivee’s eyes shifted to the CIC on the other side of the crater. She raised her hands toward it, furious. A moment later, it was engulfed in flame.

  “Venerant, no,” Honorant Ibsen cried. She only caught the beginning of his screams before the comm was burned beyond function.

  “I am,” Elivee said, stepping past the soldiers.

  “We are,” Koy said, joining her. Of course.

  The soldier’s robotic eyes split to look at both of them at once.

  “My name is Quark. Those grunts back there are my Riders. Don Pallimo of the Crescent Haulers sent us with General Thraven’s blessings. He said you have a bead on someone who crossed the Don. We’re here to teach them why nobody crosses the Don.”

  15

  Olus was coming out of the cleanser when Pahaliah entered the bathroom. She was still naked, but she had two bundles of clothes in her arms that she placed on a nearby counter.

  “I thought it would be better if I didn’t smell like blood, sweat, and gunpowder,” she said, smiling. “I haven’t tried the clothes on yet, but I’m not feeling that confident of the fit. I think our proprietors may be in less than ideal shape.”

  “Overweight?” Olus said, padding over to the clothes and picking up his shirt. It was definitely too big.

  “A little,” Pahaliah said, laughing. “You should have picked a different apartment.” She moved past him, entering the cleanser and turning it on. “Who knew being doused with anti-microbial gel could feel so nice?”

  “You should try water sometime,” Olus said, putting on a pair of underwear. It hung away from his flesh like it had a weight on the back of it. She was right; he should have picked a different apartment. “Did you find a terminal?”

  “I left it on the table.”

  Olus glanced back at the cleanser. Pahaliah was looking right at him.

  “Sneaking a peek?” she said.

  “Be serious,” he replied. “I was wondering how I would feel if this was my life, instead of throwing myself through gunship canopies.”

  She laughed. “I think you would be bored, Captain.”

  He looked away. He had done okay with Iti. For a couple of years, anyway. He was lying to himself if he didn’t admit at least part of his inspiration for visiting Hell had come from a need to add some excitement back into his life. The theft of the Fire and Brimstone and his subsequent call to head the investigation had been just the catalyst he needed.

  And now he wished things would slow down again?

  He finished dressing, thankful Pahaliah had found a belt, and then left the bathroom and headed into the kitchen, opening the pantry and digging through it. Cookies. Candies. Sugar. Sugar. Sugar. No wonder these two were overweight. He didn’t care for sweets, but the Gift had left him hungry and tired. He didn’t have time to sleep right now. He took a box of cookies and brought it with him to the sofa. The terminal was sitting on the table there, beside a suitcase where he assumed she had put their suits. The data chips they had recovered were sitting beside the terminal.

  He turned the computer on, entering the thirty-two digit passcode that bypassed all of the machine’s security mechanisms. It was another government trick the rank and file didn’t know about. A backdoor hack into any citizen’s private life. He had never agreed with the Republic’s general stance that privacy was only acceptable until they needed to invade it. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to use the tools he had at his disposal.

  He slid the first of the chips into the terminal, navigating to its contents. He turned as Pahaliah approached from behind him. Her clothes fit a little better than his, but not much. They were oversized and baggy, giving the impression that she had just finished a full body rejuvenation procedure at the nearest medspa.

  “Don’t laugh,” she said, sitting down beside him and grabbing the cookies. “I love these.”

  “Junk food,” Olus said.

  “Not everything can be wheat grass and synthetic high-nutrition proteins,” she said.

  “I appreciate good food.”

  “Then you should appreciate these.”

  She dug into the box and handed him one. He bit into it, making a face at the sweetness. He forced it down.

  “We took a lot of data,” she said. “How do we know what we’re looking for?”

  “It would be easier with an OSI terminal and tools, but we can run basic queries on the data stored on each chip. The biggest problem is that we can only search one at a time, and we have about an hour and forty minutes to do it before they self-delete.”

  “Maybe we should break into another vacant apartment and get another terminal?”

  Olus smiled. “I think you’re on to something. Not two terminals. Six. One for each chip. Good thinking.” He stood and headed for the door. “Start searching the first chip. Look for anything from Davis, Thraven, Ruche, Elivee. Those are some names we know. Also, accounts, receipts, anything that can lead us to a cash flow that might point to larger projects that aren’t visible on the general Tridium network. Oh, and Covenant, Elysium, Fire, and Brimstone, that sort of thing. From there, we can branch off to shell companies, subsidiaries, donations to elected officials, and other gray area financials.”

  “In an hour and forty minutes?”

  “Did you think
fighting a war was only about shooting things?”

  “No, Captain, I-”

  “I’ll remind you. Killshot or Olus. Even if I wasn’t wanted, the Republic as it stands today isn’t the Republic I’m fighting for.”

  “Right. I’m on it, Olus.”

  He nodded and left the apartment. He scanned the hallway as he entered it, and then paused to listen. He could hear footsteps on the floor above, too many moving in unison to not be soldiers or law enforcement. He had to be quick.

  He crossed to the nearest door, manipulating the panel to check the status. Occupied. He went to the next one. Clear. He opened the door, surprising a cat resting on the sofa. It jumped up, hissed, and ran away.

  He entered, moving quickly through the rooms. He found a terminal in the bedroom, along with some women’s clothes. They looked like a better fit for Pahaliah. He grabbed them too and crossed back to their apartment.

  “Here’s one,” he said, placing it on the table and quickly entering the code to unlock it. “I brought you a better fit, too.”

  She glanced over, absorbed by the data she was poring through. “Thanks.” Her eyes fell on the dress. It was a floral print, each flower slightly luminescent. “You want me to wear that?”

  “Your choice,” he said, loading the second chip. “We’ve got company on the floor above us.”

  “Shit.”

  “Relax. It will take them a little while to make their way down, and there’s nothing out of the ordinary about this place.”

  “Right. Okay.”

  He left the apartment again, going further down the hallway to the rooms there. He found another unoccupied space and went inside, quickly tracking down not one, but two terminals, and a better fit of clothing for himself, too.

  He was heading for the door when it slid open, the apartment’s true owner standing behind it.

  “Who the frag are you?” the man said, eyebrows crinkling. He was slightly taller than Olus, and a little more muscular. He noticed what Olus was holding. “That’s my shit.”

  Olus didn’t hesitate. He threw the bundle he was carrying at the man, who instinctively raised his hands to catch it. As he did, Olus burst forward, wrapping an arm around the man’s neck and using momentum to pull him into the room and throw him to the ground. The door closed behind them, and he knelt over the man, putting pressure on his temple until he fell unconscious.

  “My apologies,” Olus said, picking up the terminals and the clothes. “Bad timing.”

  He headed back to the apartment, placing the two terminals down. Pahaliah had already changed into the dress. It fit her well. Maybe too well.

  “I think I found something,” she said.

  “What do you have?” he asked, stripping the oversized clothes and replacing them with a black tee and athletic gray pants.

  She rotated the terminal so he could see the projection better.

  Olus stopped moving, staring at it. It was a schematic, similar to the one Ruby had passed to him. The difference was that Ruby’s version was damaged. This one was whole.

  An Elysium Gate.

  “Where did you find it?” he asked.

  “You said to search for Covenant. It was the first thing that came up. There were a few other files in with it.”

  “Show me.”

  She did, opening one of the other files. It was a bill. An order for raw materials.

  “They’re already building it,” Olus said. “There has to be a facility somewhere. You can’t just transition an assembly line making starfighters to one that makes components like these.”

  “I don’t see it in the data here.”

  “We need to check the other chips.” He pointed to the second terminal. “Try that one while I unlock the others.”

  “We still need two more terminals to do them all at once.”

  “It’s too risky to go out there again. I had to incapacitate a resident who came home a little too soon.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’ll make do with what we have.”

  He unlocked the other two terminals, putting the chips in them both and starting queries, based on the data in the materials order.

  Twenty minutes of digging and a swap of chips later, he found what he was looking for.

  “Here,” he said. “The materials were sent to Avalon.”

  “Let me search,” Pahaliah said, entering Avalon into queries on her two terminals. “I’ve got Avalon here. It looks like Tridium hired an outside consulting agency to provide security there.”

  “Security for what? Tridium doesn’t have anything out there. Not officially, anyway. We need to pass this intel on to General Kett. If Thraven is building an Elysium Gate, he has to stop him.”

  “I agree.”

  “We can’t transmit from here. If anyone is listening, it will draw the wrong kind of attention. We still have forty minutes. Let’s see what else we can learn.”

  “Roger.”

  They returned to their searches. The effort to recover the data had already paid off. If Kett located and attacked the facility on Avalon and put it out of commission, it would put a serious dent in Thraven’s plans.

  Ten minutes had passed when Olus stumbled on something curious, a folder named “Project 109.” It wasn’t the title that stood out to him, but the contents, which came up on a search against both the Apocalypse fighter and the Kirsten-class light battlecruiser, a small, fast, well-armed warship also built by Tridium.

  “I don’t suppose you have any education in electrical engineering?” Olus asked, looking over the diagrams, pausing at the words he knew. Words like “frequency” and “network.”

  “No, why?”

  “I can only guess what this is, then,” he said. “But if I have to guess, I’d say it’s a proprietary network interface, deployed on two of Tridium’s newest military vessels.”

  “So?”

  “Networking components on Republic assets go through a rigorous certification program with the OSI, to ensure they meet standards for interoperability and security.”

  “So?”

  “I’ve only been out of the OSI for a week. I’ve never seen or heard of this before.”

  “You’re saying it’s a rogue network interface?”

  “Potentially.”

  “And if the Nephilim have access to it?”

  “Who knows? Perhaps they can self-destruct the ships? Or maybe they can remote control them? If we had time, I’d like to go visit Mr. Paul myself, and cut his fragging head off.”

  “You think he’s a Nephilim?”

  “He’s working with them. I think this data is irrefutable proof of that.”

  “It’s too bad we can’t save any of this. If we could show the right people on the Council what Tridium is doing.”

  “That gives me an idea. Run a query against the newly sworn-in Council members. I want to know if Tridium had anything to do with their rise to power.”

  “On it.”

  Olus ran the same query. Time was running out on the chips, and there were still so many questions he was hopeful the data they had stolen could help answer.

  “I’ve got a saved message from Davis to Paul,” Pahaliah said a couple of minutes later. “There’s a- oh.”

  He looked over at Pahaliah. Her face was beet red.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Apparently, Councilwoman Lorenti likes Xenos. A lot.”

  He looked up at the projection. Someone had captured video of the Councilwoman with a Rudin and an Atmo. Even he was embarrassed to note where the Rudin’s tentacles were.

  “It isn’t technically illegal,” he said. “They’re all consenting adult intelligent life forms.”

  “Her career would be over if this went public.”

  “Most likely,” he agreed. “Do you think Tridium is blackmailing Lorenti to keep her moving Thraven’s agendas forward?”

  “I think this recording is highly suggestive of that.”

  “And if there’s smoke, t
here’s probably fire. How many on the Council are under his thumb because of their skeletons?”

  “We don’t have time to try to find out.”

  “No. Not at the moment.”

  “What now?”

  “Now we get out of here and send word to General Kett about what we know. After that? It may be worth paying Lorenti a visit.”

  “You want to go and talk to her?”

  “Thraven has a one vote majority. If we can convince her to do the right thing, maybe we can slow him down.”

  “Good luck with that. The second she votes against him, this video is going to go public in a big way.”

  “I know she’s a politician, but it is possible she has a conscience. Some of them do.” He smiled.

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  The smile faded. “There are other ways for us to upset the balance of power. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  16

  “Gloritant,” Honorant Lu said, entering the room.

  Thraven opened his eyes, looking up at the Honorant from his position inside the Font. His Immolent was nearby, stiff and motionless, but ready to kill the Lesser at the Gloritant’s command.

  “What is it, Honorant?” Thraven said.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you, your Eminence,” Lu said. “You instructed me to report to you in person as soon as we had word from Azure.”

  “Of course,” Thraven said, only slightly less annoyed at the timing of the message. While he had been spending more time in the Font since Cage had scarred him, there were still many more hours when he wasn’t trying to find some measure of tranquility.

  The Father enjoyed reminding him that peace was for the victorious, and he still had a lot to do before he could claim it.

  “Go on,” he said.

  Lu nodded, placing a projector on the ground in front of the Font. A projection of Venerants Elivee and Koy appeared a moment later. A third person was standing behind them.

  “Gloritant,” Elivee said. “We’ve arrived on Azure as commanded. We’ve confirmed from the soldiers here that Cage was alive at some point over the last day. Somehow, it seems that she released a horde of infected Seraphim from an old compound hidden beneath the crater.”