A Prospect of War (An Age of Discord Novel Book 1)

by Ian Sales

  There was only one answer, and Kordelasz was officer enough not to voice it. The mere presence of the Order of the Emperor’s Shield on the station could well prove to be the most important piece of information Rinharte learnt during her mission. Its implications were both frightening and far-reaching:

  There was a traitor aboard Vengeful.

  They came for them an hour into the journey to Darrus. Someone outside slid open the door to the cabin and two figures in coveralls rushed in. The first, a huge brute with a wild beard and shaggy hair, reached out for Rinharte. The second, equally large, with dark skin, a shaved head and a gold hoop through his septum, went for Kordelasz.

  Kordelasz lifted his regulation sword from where it lay beside him. He jabbed it forward lazily. The shaven-headed crewman stopped, gazed down for a moment in stupefaction at the blade piercing his abdomen… then pulled away, dropped to his knees, and fell to the side.

  The second prole grabbed Rinharte’s hair, and yanked her to her feet. She had no weapon. A burning rage overcame her: to be manhandled by a prole. His hand could not be dislodged. She batted ineffectually at his chest. She was tall, over six feet, but he was taller still. He fastened a hand painfully to one of her breasts, and leered at her. She gagged at the reek of his breath.

  Rinharte fought to free herself. Her dress hampered her legs: she could not raise her knee high enough. She reached up and managed to lodge a thumb in the giant’s eye-socket. He grunted in pain and threw his head back.

  A slim blade slid into the hollow of his jaw.

  The point burst from the back of his skull. Skewered on Kordelasz’s sword, his eyes went wide and he let out a coughed gargle. His grip on Rinharte slackened. She pulled away.

  “Thank you, Mr Kordelasz,” she said, attempting to straighten her bodice. Her hands shook as she tugged on the material.

  The marine-lieutenant glanced across at her. “Can I let go?” he asked casually. “He is rather heavy.”

  “By all means.”

  The giant crewman toppled as Kordelasz withdrew his sword. As soon as he hit the deck, Rinharte stepped forward, raised her skirts and kicked the corpse savagely in the face. A bone cracked.

  Kordelasz left the cabin. Rinharte heard a choked-off cry. After a feeble attempt to tidy up her chignon, she stepped out into gangway. The marine-lieutenant had Safina’s captain pinned against the bulkhead, the point of his sword pressing lightly against the man’s chest.

  “Don’t kill me,” the captain begged.

  “Now, why would I do that?” Kordelasz asked pleasantly. His hand darted out and clamped about the captain’s throat. “Could it be because you tried to kill us?”

  “Not ‘kill’,” the captain gabbled. “No, no, not me. I just wanted the reward, the one they’re offering for her what killed that knight on the station.”

  Rinharte was astonished at the man’s gall. The captain’s liege clearly allowed him far too much latitude. “Kill him,” she told Kordelasz.

  The marine-lieutenant shook his head. “I think he’s learned his lesson, ma’am. He’ll be good.”

  The captain nodded feverishly.

  “But I do think we should be in the control cupola for the remainder of the journey.”

  Some six hours later, Safina’s captain found his courage. Rinharte could not say exactly when this happened, but she witnessed its effect.

  Through the many small panes of glass of the control cupola’s domed roof, Darrus had grown from one pinprick among many to a marbled green globe. As the data-freighter neared its destination, the planet grew larger and larger. It became a curved plain of emerald dominating the view ahead. Wisps of cloud drifted slowly across its textured surface. Green light washed across the consoles and fittings of the cupola.

  Overlapping shields clattered and clunked their way forward over the glass roof and forward slope of the control cupola. The pilot busied himself with his console. The ship hit atmosphere. It shook and rattled with the stresses of re-entry.

  The captain rushed Kordelasz. He grabbed for the sword, and elbowed the marine-lieutenant in the midriff.

  Rinharte stepped forward and kicked. Her heel connected with the captain’s kneecap. He bellowed in agony, and immediately fell to the deck.

  Kordelasz gazed down at him, one hand nursing his stomach. He booted the captain in the side. “You’re a damn fool. That could have got you killed,” he said.

  Through gritted teeth, the captain rasped, “You’ll never get away with this.”

  Kordelasz laughed. “Why,” he asked, “in times of stress do people resort to cliché?” He delivered another kick to the captain’s side. “Of course we’ll ‘get away with it’,” he said tartly.

  Rinharte felt remorse. “Don’t play with him,” she ordered. “He has to explain the disappearance of two crewmen.”

  “I’m sure he’ll come up with something,” said Kordelasz negligently. “Crew jump ship all the time, ma’am. How he explains the fact that they were aboard when he left Tanabria Station, but not when he arrived at Minadar is up to him.” He booted the captain once again, then glanced across at Rinharte. “You seem to have forgotten, ma’am, that he did try to take our lives.”

  Rinharte blinked. “I hadn’t forgotten.” In fact, she had. So much had happened since leaving Vengeful that the events of the last day had blurred in memory into a confused montage of self-defence and evasion.

  Kordelasz gazed down at the prostrate captain, who was clutching his knee, a rictus of pain on his face. He dropped to his haunches and prodded the captain in the side with a stiff forefinger. “Here’s something for you to think about: you’ve probably already worked out that we’re wanted by the Imperial authorities. Well, you mention us, and the Office of the Procurator Imperial will be on you so fast; and they’ll have you for so long, you’ll never see daylight again. We’re that dangerous.” He poked him once again. “If you value your freedom, you’ll keep your mouth shut.”

  The captain let out a low growl.

  Another prod. “Is that a yes?”

  The captain nodded his head slowly.

  “Ah, good.” Kordelasz rose to his feet and, with painful sarcasm, saluted the captain. Turning back to the pilot, he put a hand proprietorially on his shoulder. He said, “Now, let’s see if you can get this thing down on the ground without any more… incidents.”

  Rinharte kept watch on the captain. He had managed to drag himself to a seated position, leaning against the back of the ship’s engineer’s station. His face white, he clasped his damaged knee-cap with both hands.

  Why had he done it?

  It had been a gamble on three counts: that he could overpower Kordelasz, that Rinharte would do nothing, that the prices on their heads were worth the risk. It had not been, on reflection, well thought-out. Rank foolishness, in fact. He had paid for that foolishness.

  Perhaps the captain had not deserved the agony Rinharte had inflicted but there was some justice to it. She relaxed, no longer regretting her kick… until Kordelasz remarked, not turning from the pilot’s station:

  “Not very Navy, is it? Knee-capping someone?”

  Rinharte had imagined her arrival on Darrus as simply a matter of disembarking from the data-freighter once it had landed at Minadar. She soon learnt otherwise. After securing the wounded captain in his cabin—and grimacing at the stench of death which permeated the main gangway—she returned to the control cupola. Kordelasz took her aside.

  “Ma’am,” he said, “I’m afraid there’s no way we can stay aboard until landing.”

  She glanced across at the pilot. He was busy checking his console. The marine-lieutenant’s voice had been too low for him to hear. “Which means?” she asked.

  “There will be emergency evacuation kits near the main airlock.”

  Rinharte stared at Kordelasz, incredulous. “You want us to jump?”

  He flashed her an unapologetic grin.

  “Mr Kordelasz, I am
a Navy officer. I do not jump out of flying starships.”

  “Ma’am, trust me. The kits are automatic. If we jump at fifteen thousand feet, it should be an easy drop to the ground.”

  “And then?”

  Kordelasz had the grace to look embarrassed. “We can’t land too close to Dardina, so there will be a fair yomp across country… But,” he added, “the kits also include survival gear.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “Ma’am, we have no choice. If there are any knights stalwart in Dardina, they’ll be there to meet us when we land at Minadar. Nor do I trust the captain to keep his mouth shut. He’s lost two crewmen… and then you knee-capped him—”

  “I had to!” protested Rinharte.

  “I’m not denying that, ma’am. But he may well decide it easier to tell the authorities everything he knows rather than keep quiet.” The marine-lieutenant gave a rueful smile. “If there really is a price on our heads, telling all may make him a hero.”

  Rinharte was not convinced. Leap out of a starship at fifteen thousand feet? Walk to Dardina? It was insanity. A thought occurred to her: “Minadar will detect us leaving the ship.”

  Kordelasz shrugged. “Yes, they will detect something leaving the data-freighter. They likely won’t bother investigating until after the ship has landed and the captain has spoken to them. By then, we’ll be long gone.”

  “Satellites could spot us from orbit.”

  The marine-lieutenant shook his head sadly. “Ma’am, it’s our only option. I have thought it through. And I have done this before—”

  “From a jolly boat onto a battlefield.”

  “True. So, if anything, this should be easier. I checked: Darrus has only weather and traffic-control satellites. They have low resolution at ground-level: simple camouflage will confuse their optics. Our only real worry will be an old mapping satellite with radar. But it’s in a twelve-hour orbit, and if we’re under cover when it passes over, we’ll be safe.”

  Rinharte opened her mouth to further protest the marine-lieutenant’s plan… She closed it when no further obstacles came to mind. Her shoulders slumped. Kordelasz was right: she had no choice. If safety lay in jumping from a great height out of a speeding starship, then that was what she must do. Her lack of experience at such feats was no reason to cavil. Nor, she was honest enough to admit, was her fear.

  The pilot spoke up: “We’ll be out of ionisation in a moment, my lord.”

  Since the removal of his captain, the pilot had proven only too eager to please Kordelasz. Perhaps it was fear. Or simply that this was the nearest the prole would ever come to adventure.

  Kordelasz took position behind the pilot, hands on the shoulders of his chair. Rinharte moved beside the empty captain’s station. The shields covering the control cupola’s windowed roof slid aft with a series of thuds and rattles, revealing a scene fully as black and lightless as deep space. It was night in Dardina. She listened as Minadar Registrations Office accepted the data-freighter pilot’s request for landing clearance. A series of pulsing chevrons, a stepladder down to the starport, appeared in the circular glass on the pilot’s console. Digits indicating velocity and altitude flickered and changed. An artificial horizon rocked queasily from side to side above the digits. The bright line of chevrons seemed to pull the starship along its length with each pulse of light. Despite almost twenty years in the Imperial Navy, Rinharte had never before witnessed a small starship’s landing on a planetary surface from the control cupola. Ships of the line never entered gravity wells. In all her previous trips to a world’s surface in a pinnace or gig, she had been only a passenger.

  For several minutes, Safina shed velocity and altitude, following the flight path given by Minadar. Rinharte peered out and down through the roof’s panes of glass at her side. Below, shapes in the darkness suggested the landscape streaming far beneath them. She glanced at one of the glasses on the pilot’s console. It showed a false image of the rushing ground built up from sensor data. She tried to match the undulations and features on the glass with that dimly visible beside her, but failed. Night had flattened the landscape, and rendered the rolling hills of Darrus a two-dimensional patchwork of ebony and jet.

  “How far to Minadar?” Kordelasz asked the pilot.

  “About eighty miles.”

  “How far will it be when we reach fifteen thousand feet?”

  “About… um, forty or so miles, my lord.”

  The marine-lieutenant reached forward and clapped a hand on the pilot’s shoulder. “When you hit fifteen thousand feet, drop your airspeed to one hundred and fifty knots. Keep it at that for five minutes.”

  The pilot twisted round to look back at Kordelasz, and grinned.

  Rinharte sighed. The damn fool thought it all a great jape. His captain injured and under restraint in a cabin, two crew-members dead, and he acted as though he were in some melodrama. Admittedly, he did not appear quite so disreputable as his fellows…

  “Time to go,” Kordelasz said quietly.

  At the main airlock, Rinharte watched Kordelasz crack open an emergency locker and withdraw an emergency evacuation kit. A parachute. Chargers, the devices which provided artificial gravity and anti-gravity, required far too much power to be man-portable. The two of them would have to trust their lives to canopies of thin material.

  The thought prompted another. Rinharte looked down at her dress. “I can’t jump in this,” she pointed out. She should have worn trousers.

  “Take it off, then,” Kordelasz said. “Er, ma’am.”

  “And you would have me walk cross-country to Dardina in my underwear?”

  “Not very sturdy, is it?”

  He was laughing at her. His back was to her, but she could tell he was amused.

  “I didn’t think you were the sort, ma’am, to wear lace fripperies.”

  “What I wear beneath my dress,” she returned icily, “is none of your damn business.”

  Kordelasz straightened from inspecting the evacuation kit. “But it is, ma’am,” he pointed out. “You’re going to have parachute in your lingerie. It has a direct bearing on our current situation.”

  Rinharte snarled. The man was insufferable.

  “Unless you’d rather jump naked?”

  Rinharte growled.

  “I expect it’d be a trifle cold at fifteen thousand feet, though.”

  “You are not amusing,” she snapped.

  The marine-lieutenant was abruptly serious: “You’ll have to jump in your smalls, ma’am. There’s nothing for it. But if you hang onto your dress, you can put it back on once we’re on the ground.”

  He was right. “They’re not ‘smalls’,” she said mulishly. “Men wear smalls.”

  Embarrassed, Rinharte unbuttoned her dress, peeled it down her torso and stepped out of the skirt. She twisted the garment into a thick rope and secure it about her waist.

  “No, they’re not smalls,” Kordelasz remarked, grinning. He cocked his head and peered at her. “What, may I ask, are they?”

  “Your reputation as a ladies’ man has obviously been over-stated,” Rinharte said acidly.

  The marine-lieutenant laughed. “A hit, ma’am! I apologise.”

  Rinharte fell, face-down. Beneath her was blackness, unknowable, unfathomable. Kordelasz had sprung one more surprise before they left Safina. They were to jump tandem: they would share a single parachute. It was, he explained, the only way to ensure they remained together. Rinharte was strapped tightly to his front. Or Kordelasz was strapped tightly to her back. It made no difference which way she considered it. She led the way down to the ground. The marine-lieutenant wore the parachute.

  Kordelasz’s chest pressed against her back. His groin—uncomfortably, embarrassingly—was jammed against her rear. Her situation was made worse by the fact that she wore only underwear. She felt soiled.

  The marine-lieutenant’s hands gripped Rinharte’s wrists and held her arms spread-eagled. He had sp
read her legs with his own. She was impaled on air. Fear held anger at bay. Once she was on the ground she knew the fear would flee and the anger would rise.

  Eyes slotted against the rushing air, she peered downwards. It was impossible to see if the ground were fifty feet away or fifty thousand. She would never know until she hit it… at terminal velocity; or gently, a canopy billowing above her—

  She was abruptly jerked upright. She looked up. A ghostly shroud floated above her. Glancing down between her dangling feet, she could make out a faint texture against the blackness below. The distance was still impossible to judge.

  Kordelasz’s arms were out to each side. He held a pair of lanyards, controlling the parachute. His chin brushed the back of her head. He had bent his knees, and they pressed against the backs of her legs.

  As they swung about, Rinharte saw a dome of pale light on the horizon, a false sun seconds away from setting or rising: Dardina. It did not help her estimate her altitude.

  They fell slowly to earth. She watched the stars in the night sky. At intervals, she glanced up at the canopy that sheltered the two of them from gravity’s fatal velocity. She peered at the ground approaching between her feet, trying to will details visible. She plotted her path from Tanabria Station to Dardina, her immediate future… This gentle fall through night, strapped, embarrassingly, intimately, to the marine-lieutenant… Days spent marching across Darrus’s benign landscape, hiding from satellite observation…

  Shapes loomed below, growing in size frighteningly fast. Kordelasz had instructed her to relax for the landing. She tried to follow his advice, but fear disrupted conscious control of her dangling body. The menacing shapes below evaporated into bland darkness. She strained her eyesight, and could just make out—

  Her feet hit ground. She sprawled forward. Her fall accelerated as Kordelasz’s weight came to bear. Her chest hit soft grass, loudly forcing her breath from her. Her chin bounced against the earth, jarring her teeth. Kordelasz’s chest and pelvis dug into her back. She jerked her shoulders, trying to rid herself of her burden. The marine-lieutenant rolled sideways. Rinharte found herself lifted up and swung sideways. She finished up draped across Kordelasz. She heard low, breathy laughter.