“You probably know most of these gentlemen,” Georgio said, then pointed at one. “Braden Axwell . . .”
The suave, young heir of Axwell Investment Corp stood and offered his hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Scarlet.” His confident green eyes met hers and didn’t stray.
Emma shook his hand. “Emma. Call me Emma.”
Braden dipped his head. “Emma it is.”
Headlines rang a bell in her brain as his name settled. A quick connection formed between the news stories and the young man standing before her. “I was very sad to hear about your father.”
Braden brushed it off. “Years ago, but I do appreciate that.”
Georgio gestured to the next man. “And you may have met Arco Paley before.”
“Yes,” Emma said, shaking the grizzled and burly fellow’s hand. “Good to see you again, Arco.”
“Good to see you as well,” he said with oxymoronic stoicism. Arco unbuttoned the gray jacket wrapped tightly around his barrel chest and returned to his seat. A Paley-Powell Security Co. pin sparkled on his lapel. The man had carried himself with this much professionalism every time Emma had seen him. As head of a multi-planetary security company, he maintained the straight-faced image well.
Emma moved automatically to the last gentleman in the room, a lanky luneborn with a characteristically wide smile.
“And last but not least—”
“Mitchell Stott,” Emma said, grasping the man’s slender, open hand.
Mitchell’s smile widened. “Oh, Emma and I go way back. All the way to M-Forty-Two and back.”
They shared a laugh. The others looked on, smiling expectantly.
“We had to rid the Nebula area of pirates a few years ago,” Emma explained. “Couldn’t get any supplies to our shipyards out there, so we hired some of Knight’s gunships.”
Knight Protection Services had chased the pirates to a semi-arid moon, and after the orbital bombardment, the cleanup crew found several thousand charred bodies, including those of children. Halcyon hadn’t been bothered by pirates since. It was a bittersweet experience, one Emma preferred not to think about except in basic details.
“Ah,” Georgio said with raised eyebrows. “Very good. Glad we’re all acquainted. Please, sit.”
Once they’d all settled in and a well-dressed young woman dropped off an ice water on the table beside Emma, Georgio spoke again.
“Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?” The others nodded. Georgio rested his elbows on the chair arms and interlocked his fingers. “By now, we all know about Halcyon’s predicament, and we’d all like to avoid getting involved with the Carinians. The question is, how? My proposal, just so we have a starting point for discussion, is to band together and form a separate entity that will operate as a discretionary defense force.”
“Hold on,” Emma said, eyebrows pressed down in confusion. “Did I miss something? What is this ‘discretionary defense force?’”
“Yes,” Georgio said. “You did miss something. I’m filling you in on it.”
Emma’s nervousness returned. “Okay, go on.”
“We all saw the Carinian gunships pass through Chandra system,” Georgio continued. “The Carinians are getting bolder. Their government is getting more radical. The VN can’t afford to risk being unarmed if they push into Orion. We need some kind of defense force in case—”
“A military,” Emma interrupted. “You mean we need a military.”
“Something like that, yes.” Georgio wasn’t the least bit facetious. No one in the circle was.
“Despite the fact most people in the VN are anti-military?” Emma asked. “Despite the fact that three multi-planetary companies tried to form a VN-wide military decades ago and failed?”
Braden sat forward. “That’s what makes your predicament so interesting, Emma. It provides an opening that’s never existed before.”
Mitchell crossed his scrawny legs, still wearing the grin that never seemed to fade. “People’d rather see those ships going to a VN military than a Carinian one. Know I would.”
“Back in the Colony Wars, everyone knew the great powers would avoid Orion,” Georgio added. “But now, the VN planets are afraid. The Chandrans have seen Carinian warships in their space. Everyday on the news, there’s more warmongering from Carina. People are scared, Emma.”
“More scared than they would be of a government forming right under their nose?”
Georgio waved away the question. “Emma. You know us. The people of the VN know us. We don’t want to form a government. That’d create more problems than it would solve.”
“Well, you’d have a monopoly on interstellar military force,” Emma said. “That sounds an awful lot like ‘government’ to me. I’m assuming it’ll be a private entity? Where will your income come from?”
“We already have verbal agreements with jurisdiction companies on Chandra and six other planets in the VN.” Georgio rattled off with ease. Clearly, he had been working on this for some time. “And we’re in talks with some conglomerates in the Sol region. Delta Pavonis, Cassiopeia, a few others. A discretionary defense force will be a sort of preventive insurance policy, just in case outside forces start getting ideas.”
“We need some way to deter Carinian aggression,” Braden said, fingertips resting against each other.
Emma’s throat constricted. This was bigger than she had thought. And far more complicated. But as her gaze swept around the circle, populated by some of the VN’s most powerful men, she detected no nervousness amongst them. No hesitation.
“You’re all serious about this?”
Nods all around.
“And you’re certain this will never expand into something we don’t want it to be?”
Georgio inhaled a long breath and tightened his lips into a thin line.
“We’re certain this is what needs to be done. Not for us. For the whole Voluntarist Network.”
The Champion
Chapter Thirty-One
Sagittarius Arm, on the planet Upraad . . .
Kastor traversed the Upraadi palace with immunity. Abelard had broadcast over the commoner insurgency’s radio network that this nobleman and his ilk were on their side. Even so, the hesitation was apparent from the commoners’ sidewise glances and agitated grimaces. Dozens of exo-suited men and women followed them, heat and fetor emanating from grimy, reddened skin. Their war party grew as they surged through the maze of rocky corridors. Eyes seethed with rage against the spacious palace and its countless tapestries and chambers.
Kastor wondered if their new followers came along for the chance to kill Radovan or in with the hope of killing them.
Guarin stared forward with a hard scowl. The Grand Lumis wouldn’t approve of these methods, nor of the intended outcome. Kastor didn’t care. His object wasn’t to win whatever popularity contest Guarin had already won.
Guerlain, beside him, seemed as pleased as a cat with a mouse’s tail under her paw. The repeater rifle looked absurdly big in her hands, but her muscles were designed for maximal strength-to-size, like all warrior noblewomen. Compact but formidable.
Trajan’s datapad hissed in his slender fingers. “Master!” Trajan called from behind Kastor. “The Commodore!”
Kastor stopped to let Trajan catch up and then took the datapad. Commodore Vanora’s hard-edged face stared out of the screen from the bridge of the Aegis. The setting was dark, but the woman’s short-cropped hair, thick neck, and characteristic frown gave her away. The noblewoman obeyed orders so fiercely it seemed as if they were her own ideas, which apparently made this one particularly heinous.
The lines in her forehead deepened when Kastor came into view. “What the fuck are you doing, Kastor? I just destroyed six royal gunships and got banged the hell up in the process.”
Commodore Vanora received ample training in space naval strategy and tactics but none in the manners of urbane society. Naturally, Kastor liked her—except when his plans differed from hers.
“Six?
” Kastor repeated. “Good. Any more in orbit?”
Vanora recoiled in shock. “Did you hear what I just said? I want to know what’s going on, dammit! This wasn’t the plan.”
“Plan A didn’t work,” Kastor said, pausing at a fork in the tunnel to consult the map projected from his cuff. Two large cruiser yachts were already pulling out of the palace marina, escorted by a swarm of drones. “We’re going to depose Radovan. He refused to swear loyalty to the Grand Lumis. Are the drop pods on their way down?”
“Yes,” she spat. “Why are you ousting Radovan? You were supposed to sway him.”
“He couldn’t be swayed,” Kastor retorted. “Where are the drop teams landing?”
“Palace’s main landing platform,” Vanora replied. “Who’s going to replace Radovan? Doesn’t he have an heir?”
Kastor glanced at the rifle-carrying commoners to his right and left. “His heir is a commoner named Abelard.” Embedded in the statement was a death sentence for all Radovan’s genetic offspring. Kastor banished the thought. “We’ve allied with the rebellion.”
“What? Are you out of your damn mi—”
“Shut up and listen, Commodore. I want you to redirect one team to the riverside below the landing platform. Tell the other to start shooting down drones.”
Vanora turned from grouchy to enraged. “Radovan’s drones? Kastor, this is insane. You are insane. Those are military-grade drones. Not to mention whatever firepower he’s got on—”
“Just do it!” It grew tiresome having an officer around with the ranking to speak to him like that.
Kastor switched off the comm link and handed it back to Trajan. He led the war party into a corridor with a sign hanging from the ceiling which read “River Front.” Crimson light dyed the stony steps leading downward. Sounds of zipping drones and ripping gunfire and bellowing engines hummed in the air. The weight of Kastor’s task set in. This wouldn’t be easy.
* * *
Triangular drones screeched in a patternless swarm overhead as Kastor and his entourage crouched in the shadow of the landing platform.
Muzzle flashes of gunfire sparkled in windows or on platforms across the river, and every time, they were met with a spray of counter fire from the elusive drones, pummeling craters into the cliffside. The two hulking cruiser yachts, probably fifty meters long and twenty meters wide, powered down the river through the canyon, and the drones held their position directly above them.
In the sky, a pair of dropships squealed like ripping sheets of plastic until, a few hundred meters above the riverside, their brake thrusters kicked on with sudden force, slowing their descent. One impacted with a ground-shaking thump on the main palace landing platform. The other growled further into the canyon, blowing blue fire from its thrusters as it came to a soft but sudden touchdown in the soil beside the river.
Commoners stirred as they investigated the bullet-shaped lander. Mere seconds passed before its outer armor paneling blasted itself off. Nanoflex-clad soldiers lined the central spine of the interior like jewels on a crown. Beautiful, noble-built suits. Kastor grinned as they detached themselves and formed a perimeter beside the commoner war party. The groups sized each other up with distrust, but neither fired, and Kastor rushed between them to keep it that way.
“Hold your fire!” he shouted at his drop team, voice muffled behind his breather. The twelve of them remained in ready positions, assault rifles up and faceplates closed. Each of them wore identical armor covering every square inch of skin.
One drop trooper stepped forward, lowered his aim, and twisted a knob on the side of his helmet to slide back the reflective black faceplate. Hendrik—lieutenant of team two. His synthetic lungs could withstand the toxic air for a few minutes at a time.
“You want to take down Radovan?” he asked, face blank, his weapon poised between himself and Kastor. Regicide went against every moral fiber in a nobleman’s body.
Kastor squared his eyes with Hendrik’s. “He remains in defiance of the Grand Lumis. If we strike him now, while he’s on the run, we can tear the head off the snake before he has a chance to strike back.”
Hendrik’s expression didn’t change. His dark eyes stayed on the Royal Champion as Kastor’s blood blazed in his veins. Then Hendrik’s gaze moved to the side, past Kastor and to the superyachts receding into the distance.
“Suit’s in the dropship.” Hendrik jerked his head toward a storage locker inside the steaming hunk of metal. “We need to go.”
Kastor nodded and hurried past them to suit up. “Guarin! Guerlain!” he called over his shoulder. “Get suited up.”
“Eh, Master,” Trajan replied from the crowd of commoners. “They’re not here.”
“What?” Kastor searched through the bodies, finding no gems among them, no noble faces. “What happened? Where’d they go?”
“I-I don’t know, Master,” Trajan said. “They were with us coming down, but now—”
Kastor ground his teeth as the realization hit him. “Never mind them.” He pulled a pair of nanoflex pants from their cushioned case and slid them on.
“But . . .” Trajan seemed lost. “Should I go back and search for them?”
“If they separated from us, they meant to separate from us. They aren’t with us anymore. We go on without them.”
Muscles clenched reflexively at Kastor’s core. Nothing infuriated him like disloyalty. Wherever Guarin and Guerlain had gone, they were not with him. That constituted betrayal.
“What of the commoners?” Hendrik asked. “They seem rather attached to you.”
Kastor glanced back. Indeed, the crowd of coarse faces looked to him as their only familiar nobleman, the only nobleman to have been accepted by their leader. They probably still wanted to kill him, but for now, they respected him. They followed him.
Kastor thrust himself into the suit, forcing his arms through the narrow cavities to the side, locking everything into place. Nanoflex armor gripped him like a metallic fist, hot and foreign at first, until the coolant spread through the dermal layer pressed against his skin. One last sparkle in the storage case caught his eye: a long sliver of polished boron nitride. A blazer katana scabbard. Kastor grinned, then fastened it to the utility slot at his hip.
Then he turned to the mass of tense lowborns watching the nobles. Past them, ash-gray drones flurried in the canyon gap above the escaping superyachts. He raised Sylvan’s cuff to his breather and held down the comm button. “Abelard, do you have any shuttles still air-worthy?”
The commoner leader’s response took a minute: “Some. What do you need?”
The question returned some of Kastor’s pride. The leader of the “New Upraad” was at his beck and call. “Scramble them. All of them. Anything with wings and cannons.”
“Explain.”
“Radovan’s drones are going to be a problem,” Kastor said. “They must be gone if I’m to kill Radovan. Make it so.”
He stepped closer to the commoner militiamen, who’d overheard him and eyed him with suspicion. “Do you want to be free of Radovan once and for all?” Kastor asked in a raised voice.
“Yes” came their scattered reply as they shuffled forward and gripped their stolen repeaters. This rabble had asserted themselves all the way to the throne room, and they didn’t appear inclined to stop now. They could’ve been Kastor’s most powerful tool.
He wasn’t about to waste them.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Dull-plated Upraadi shuttles and gleaming dropship flyers—wide-winged with indented slots along the body for troopers to hang on—soared through the rocky canyon in the direction Radovan’s ships had gone. The shuttlecraft came in various models and sizes, the larger carrying dozens of angry commoners with repeater rifles.
Upraad’s midnight sun still cast a reddish glow over the cliff faces and glassy water below.
Kastor, clutching the handlebars of a flyer with three other noblemen, glanced to the side as they rose high enough to see the horizon beyond the ragge
d top of the cliff. The Upraadi landscape stretched on and on in arid expanse, most of it useless, hardened dirt and stone, not suitable for mining or farming. Good only as a wasteland in which to wander and die. In the vast distance, boulders thinned to stones, and stones thinned to tawny, sulfuric dunes, where automated sand-sucker machines crawled and dipped in a long row.
On the river ahead, Radovan’s superyachts and drones pushed into a part of the canyon that narrowed to about fifty meters at the top, maybe a hundred and twenty meters in the middle. Damn. The drones would grind them to dust in there. Kastor’s few dozen shuttles and flyers needed space to dodge without ramming into each other. What’s more, a pair of anti-aircraft artillery guns mounted on a semi-circular building in the cliff swiveled toward them threateningly. This must’ve been a loyalist section of the canyon.
Kastor felt a rush of panic rise from his stomach to his chest, having no time to act before—
The artillery guns bellowed and blew smoke rings from their barrels. Bursts ripped the air between shuttles, warming Kastor’s side and emitting a shockwave strong enough to jerk their lightweight flyer away. Shuttle repeater cannons rumbled and spat fire in return, streaking the intervening area with smoke lines. Rounds peppered the entire area around the artillery, breaking the building’s windows, putting out its lights, collapsing a balcony into the river, pocking rocks above and to the sides, and some of it, presumably, hitting the artillery. But it wasn’t enough. The heavy guns bellowed again, and two more bursts erupted nearby. This time, one of them caught a shuttle wing, exploding the mounted engine in a spray of fiery debris and sending the craft, which held perhaps fifteen tightly packed commoners, on a downward spiral straight into the cliff. The shuttle blew up and stained the rocks with flames and wreckage.
Kastor winced and growled inside his breather mask. Those damn guns needed to go. He unclipped himself from the flyer’s safety anchor and released his grip on the handlebars. The pit of his stomach went weightless as he plunged toward the river, vision blurring until he’d dropped far enough from the line of fire to kick on his boot thrusters. He curled his toes to increase speed, pushing the miniature rockets attached to his ankles as hard as they would go.
Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series Page 17
