Empty Between the Stars (The Songs of Old Sol Book 1)

by Stephen Hunt

  This was war. Incoherent, chaotic and moving far too fast to follow. A fog of war given literal existence by my artillery pieces rapidly pumping out superdense smoke canisters, hot fibres drifting in the air to tease the enemy’s thermal imaging systems. Wurm target designators blocked while my spartoi served up the full kinetic breakfast.

  Something screeched through the smoke, briefly targeted by my three bodyguards. But it was only a flock of so-called sparrows, flying insect-lizards unseated from their roost by the rattle of machine weapons and detonating shells. Flecks of burning vegetation followed the flock, towering mushrooms which had survived the alien sky’s energy storms tested to destruction by the clash around their roots.

  A hellfire scene, a battlefield painted by surrealists; rainbow smoke and inhuman screams, melting spartoi spinning into sight as black razored monsters undulated through the smoke. The earth trembled and shook. Stolen from a dream, the jammer specialist’s massive decapitated head rolled out of the smoke, slowing to a rest at my feet as tribute. Then the deafening chainsaw rip of a rotary cannon, sparking impacts from a metal cyclone, the divine geometry of a Legion’s nuclear-pumped lasers intersecting the shifting murk.

  I could tell the battle was turning badly against us when hundreds of Hauberk-class spartoi started climbing like ants out of the shell-cratered soil. They poured up my legs, meshing as they clambered, climbing my torso and flowing along my arms, seeking interface with my sadly unresponsive clothes. Deeming the stealth suit broken, they clicked into place across my skull and established a direct battlefield connection with my m-brain, rather than trying to mediate through my glitching clothes. In a matter of seconds, I wore a fine spread of spartoi chain-mail. Mozart and me. Just a boy and his robot, ready for mischief.

  As the fog of war began to clear my position I gritted my teeth against an uncomfortable vibration. The wurm’s MBOSS had hit on the tactic of using sonic disruptors to remove enough smoke for its targeting systems to make a clean lock.

  suggested the staff officer.

  Hell, if it’s just shooting the breeze. ‘Go, tell the Spartoi, thou who passest by, that here obedient to their laws we lie,’ I answered, indicating we would fight to the bitter end. I was a rash fool. I had attacked too early, our Legion not yet fully seeded. But then, for my desperate scheme to work, I needed to reach the grand assembly before this world passed into the Melding’s care as a protectorate. Would my enemies yield?

  The wurms sent me their answer, an airborne thrust suit diving out of the smoke towards me, lines of micro-round fire stitching the ground from twin guns. I don’t think they’d realised yet that it wasn’t just Sweet William they were shooting at. I felt the artificial muscles of my armour modulate as I leaped high into the air and transected the wurm’s arc, seizing its left flight pack. I snapped and inverted the thruster, causing the scout to unbalance and smash straight through a house, smoke, and fire blasting out from inside. I’m not sure how fatal a bad landing would prove against wurm scout armour, but the pair of spartoi sprinter mines that came comically jogging down the road, vaulting through the hole before detonating certainly sealed the deal.

  Dissolved by the wurm’s MBOSS, our smoke cover and smart particles dispersed enough to reveal the wreckage of spartoi and an advancing force of tank-suited alien demons.

  The Humanitum didn’t possess a god of war, not exactly, so I closed my eyes and whispered a prayer to Fure, Goddess of Armed Impertinence, instead. Favoured of the Fleet, loved of the Legion, most hallowed among the hardened artificial intelligences of Arius. Sadly, mumbling in Fure’s name wasn’t going to be nearly enough to save me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The Lady’s answer.

  The three spartoi amigos that comprised my personal bodyguard suddenly started hunkering down, burrowing into the soil, switching energy fields from offensive weapons to shields. I followed suit as the circling murmuration tightened ranks and became my personal shield wall, augmenting my armour’s protection. My prayer wasn’t about to be answered. At least, not by the Goddess Fure.

  That was when the first kinetic strike slammed into the street, the Expected Ambush showing the Melding forces her definition of Close Orbital Support on the swing down to a dust-off. Danger close, but far more dangerous for the wurms. Tungsten rods with a directional thrust system. Rods from the gods summoned by a dark angel.

  Explosions erupted, dozens of surrounding buildings gone in a fire-flash as bright as a sun this world had never seen before. Each rod struck with a ripping thwack, the scream of Yggdrasil being uprooted out of the soil by Odin. I rode the throbbing blast-wave, my chain-mail battered and shedding heat as fast as it could absorb it. There wasn’t much of an evasive plan of action anyone could field against orbital ammunition given terminal velocity by gravity’s kiss. It was a despicable tactic, but one the Melding wouldn’t imitate. But then, I could never have opened fire on a world filled with wurm settlers, either. Not without inviting a level of total war neither side wanted or could afford.

  I prayed this street’s inhabitants had been scared enough to flee the battlefield, not so terrified they’d headed down to storm shelters. How many more innocents on my conscience? How many more tombstone-shaped rocks as shipwreck for my faith?

  Spartoi soldiers switched back to full offensive mode, pressing their advantage against the badly wrecked enemy, segments of action briefly visible through dark raining rubble. A jigsaw of confusion and ferocity. Flashes of fire, kinetic, energy-based and wildly weaving smart munitions seeking out instruments of wickedness. There was little time to brood, for any human response to this, but I made one anyway.

  ‘After main objective’s achieved, re-purpose for search and rescue and medical assistance,’ I ordered the staff spartoi as it corkscrewed back up to the surface, embracing our realm of dust and smoke. ‘Dig all survivors out.’

 

  A sticking plaster for the limbless they’d drag from these broken ruins. They deserved more and better, but Sweet William was all the innocent had.

  I pressed on, hard, through the fog of war. Unfortunately, I sprinted straight into a commando wearing a force-suit which had survived our rods. I felt the warmth of the thing’s targeting laser flickering out of the smoke. Master Wurm was doubtless feeding something heavy and high-explosive into its biggest and baddest rotating cannon when it noticed a combatant that resembled a metal tumbleweed rolling down its ugly length.

  My spartoi grenadier flashed me a warning as it injected timed charges, little burrowing grubs perfect for breaching a wurm’s power armour segments. I managed to duck in time as half the creature’s flank departed the rest of its suit. I was hardly stretching my drone cloud’s protective shielding. The tumbleweed-shaped spartoi bounced onto the street’s dirt and rolled away gaily into the smoke, seeking fresh violence.

  I followed its example.

  ***

  My mail suit clicked like falling dominoes as it removed itself from around my skull. I needed to appear as human as possible before facing the grand assembly. To that end, I tossed aside two unconscious bodies, one filling each hand before I entered the cathedral’s central temple. This pair were supposedly Watch officers; ex-rebels wearing ill-fitting leathers liberated from the genuine article if I was any judge of character. They had been conducting an experiment: can looted Watch cutlasses slice through spartoi-composed smart-mail armour? As it happens, the result of that particular experiment is multiple rib fracture and stress-induced cardiomyopathy.

  A grand council inside, indeed. Lords and ladies of Hexator’s houses, great and minor, set out before me. Magistrates, guild notables, local merchants and a few familiar faces I recognised. Jenelle Cairo and the plantation mistress, Ajola Hara. How kind of Ajola to risk the dangerous roads leading to the capital.

  Of course, prime among those in attendance, Lady Blez and her eldest son Daylen Blez playing dress-up as Commander General of the Watch. Link hovered a couple
of feet behind his mistress, a hulking physical reminder of the scale of her supremacy, here. Sun of Clatch Rising, also. The wurm ambassador rested like a beached whale in a prime position to the left of the lectern where Alice Blez was busy making an impassioned plea for Hexator to become a Melding protectorate. Well, I say plea. Much of the little I heard sounded like a list of bribes.

  Alice broke off as she spotted me. ‘Remove that filthy offworlder!’ yelled Lady Blez, recoiling in almost physical shock. ‘He has no place at a grand council.’

  Yes, I could read it all from her tells. Shock, horror and visceral disappointment. Sweet William had no place in the realm of the living as far as Alice was concerned, let alone this old cathedral.

  ‘Let him speak!’ shouted one of the guild representatives.

  ‘Grodar also wishes to hear the doctor speak,’ cried the plantation mistress, her blue eyes flashing mischievously at me across the chamber. Ajola really did enjoy making mischief. A trait we shared.

  Lady Blez shot a filthy look at her plantation controller. Alice had many rivals inside this meeting, unhappy with the quick turn of events in her favour. But what she didn’t have was a sense of perspective, yet. Something I needed to provide. She jabbed a frenzied finger at me. ‘I command quorum among the Four. I say this crazy zealot taints our presence with his lies and foreign ambitions! Arrest him immediately!’

  Foreign ambitions? That was a bit rich, given the presence of Sun of Clatch Rising at the assembly. Jenelle Cairo stared at her Commander General’s furious face, before shrugging sadly at me and waving a squad of officers forward.

  I indicated the chamber’s entrance as her officers waded through delegates to reach me. ‘Are you so sure you speak with a quorum, Lady Blez?’

  It was hard to say what drove the chamber to instant silence: my circus act appearing in the archway, or the person the Legion escorted at their head. Zane Derechor, a company of his loyal house guards filing in behind my spartoi.

  ‘The Lord Derechor is dead!’ shouted Commander General Daylen. ‘This is a trick. A projection, a machine simulacrum.’

  ‘A trick of Humanitum medical science. My life saved inside the medical bay of Doctor Roxley’s vessel,’ growled Zane Derechor. ‘I’m as real as you, boy. More real than the rank of that Watch uniform you’ve stolen.’

  I shrugged apologetically at Lady Blez. ‘My ship did seem the safest place for his lordship given the shockingly high fatality rate among heads of the Four. You might recall I extended you the same courtesy. My vessel set down recently, returning the surviving Lord Derechor home.’

  ‘You told me both twins were dead!’ spluttered Lady Blez. A sound enough ploy, casting doubt on my propensity to tell the truth.

  ‘No, my lady, I said they had passed beyond this realm. Sarlee Derechor sadly met his death under the best part of a collapsing mountain. Zane Derechor, meanwhile, has been healing in the heavens under the care of a sweet angel; beyond your realm, indeed.’

  Although to be fair, the surviving Lord Derechor owed his life far more to Mozart than I. Moz had protected Zane from the worst of the rockfall, administering a stabilizing combat medical pack to keep him alive long enough to ride a medevac up to Exy. I smiled towards Jenelle Cairo. How was she to know that the comet she’d watched with me on Hebateen’s slopes was the retrieval capsule spat out by my ship?

  Lady Blez was not to be gainsaid. ‘I still speak with the voice of three families. Throw this fraud out now!’

  ‘Three, my lady? A recount might be in order.’ I indicated the archway a second time.

  Nie Trabb appeared, her young niece in tow with what remained of the Trabb house guards as well as dozens of madly tumbling spartoi. ‘Late for the meeting. But not quite as late as you thought me, Alice, eh? My apologies to the grand council, but I needed to extract Lady Trabb from her dismal accommodation at the Watch citadel on our way here.’

  ‘One of the many reasons I didn’t want to sell you my faithful robot,’ I informed Lady Blez, ‘is that Mozart is damnable fireproof. Useful in a hall burning, where human fire protectors would be roasted trying to rescue an old bird from the oven.’

  Nie folded her arms and gazed across the faces of the grand assembly, daring them to intervene. ‘Don’t look so upset, Lady Blez. I rather enjoyed being dead for a while. I spent my time productively, mustering the Trabb forces while your rebels were making merry, stealing and looting. Doctor Roxley laid before me his suspicions about the murders and the anarchy. I, too, say the grand council needs to hear his words.’

  ‘Seconded,’ barked Lord Derechor.

  Lady Blez’s face twisted in horror. ‘No!’

  ‘The thing about Wurm restraining crosses,’ I said, ‘is that they suppress all that nasty high-end combat and assassin chicanery.’ I beckoned my hat stand-shaped staff spartoi forward. ‘Tricks like glanding acid to melt the bolts nailing a prisoner to the device, or deactivating pain receptors. But what a cross can’t disable is an m-brain’s basic operating functions; such as verified truth recording…’

  My staff spartoi projected a hologram of the recorded torture session, making it sufficiently large for everyone in the chamber to watch without jostling for position.

  ‘Was it difficult for you to assassinate your first husband? Two bullets, one to burst his head and one to break his heart.’

  ‘Easier than you think.’

  ‘And murdering Lord Seltin?’

  ‘I was little more than a child when Falt raped me. All for the obsession of his stupid project, of course. Would you not consider it fitting for the product of our union to take revenge on the old pervert?’

  ‘What’s your self-serving excuse for bringing down a mountain on top of the twins, on all the others you’ve killed…?’

  ‘Surely, a priest appreciates the need of a sacrifice for the greater good?’

  And so it went until the projection finally ceased and Lady Blez stood condemned. Not by my words but by her own.

  I bowed towards Alice. ‘And so Modd reveals the deep things of darkness and drags utter dark into the light.’

  Shouts of anger and outrage began to break out among the assembled notables. Alice read the mood accurately, fleeing in panic towards the Wurm ambassador. ‘Asylum, I request political asylum from the Melding for myself and my family!’

  ‘Sun of Clatch Rising has consensus to embrace a new world. Not Lady Blez. What use does Melding have for fallen leaders?’

  Ah, the gratitude of the Melding is a fine force to observe. I lacked the appropriate microscope to try.

  Lady Blez whirled to single out her bodyguard. ‘Link, escort me out of here!’

  ‘As you wish, my lady,’ said the hulking robot, crashing forward. ‘I’LL CRACK OPEN ANY BASTARD WHO GETS IN MY WAY!’

  Sadly for the noblewoman, I had a friend in need of a rematch. My spartoi murmuration had been patrolling the cathedral domes and spires. Now, it abandoned its post and flowed inside the temple chamber. The cloud darted around, between and over terrified warriors and Watch officers until it reached Link. Lady Blez wisely abandoned her bodyguard’s side, retreating towards her eldest son and his retinue.

  Link popped open weapon hatches and began to fire off volleys, projectiles sparking against the defensive rotorheads’ shields. Coin-shaped spartoi darted at random from the cloud, breaking free of the molten silver ring circling Link. They struck the ex-construction robot hard and fast, meteorites puncturing an unshielded space capsule. Metal debris spurted from each hole. Link twisted and turned, fiercely pouring fire against the murmuration surrounding him, violently punching and kicking out at the coiling spartoi.

  Link was quickly left punching with more holes than hull in his hide, a veritable Swiss cheese. The robot slowed, growing clumsy as he shed vital motor functions. Link’s counterfire grew erratic, weapons misfiring and losing tracking, my rotorheads mobbing him as they grew ever more confident.

  ‘Oh dear—this is not how I predicted—the afternoon endi
ng,’ fizzed Link, jabbing and flailing. ‘BURN YOUR—SODDING—WASP NEST—DOWN!’

  A Frisbee formed from a hundred rotorheads before spinning out of the cloud, removing Link’s head with the clean economy of a buzz-saw.

  ‘Drinkkkkks—on the—lawnnnnn, madam?’ stuttered the decapitated robot skull as it tumbled across the floor. ‘Aaahhhh—mysssself—againnnnnnn.’

  Link’s massive body collapsed to his knees, smoke leaking from the industrial strength battery pack inside his chest. What was left of the construction robot fell like a crane across the central well, propped there jerking while leaking black hydraulic fluid onto the mosaic floor.

  Commander General Daylen, his retinue and mother were already halfway across the temple chamber, heading for one of the smaller exits.

  ‘Whose Watch are you? Hers or the Four’s’?’ I shouted at the enforcers, my murmuration flowing towards the exit, cutting off the retinue’s escape. ‘And while you consider the answer to that question, ask yourself whether your necks are any better armoured than Link’s was?’

  ‘I hold a pardon!’ cried Daylen Blez, showing contemptibly little loyalty towards his mother. ‘I’m a free man.’

  Nie Trabb jabbed an old twig-like finger at the boy. ‘A pardon requires two signatures by the Four to be granted.’

  ‘I have two!’

  Lord Derechor shook his head. ‘One. A murderess cannot legally inherit her victim’s titles or property.’

  ‘Arrest them both!’ barked Jenelle Cairo. ‘Any officer who wants to wear the badge at the end of day will follow the word of the law.’

  If that word was expedience, it seemed the warriors and Watch officers inside the temple chamber were all too eager to switch sides and obey. Daylen’s retinue seized the struggling rebel leader. Lady Blez fell, bundled to the floor by her own fighters, many of whom needed to be restrained from revenging Uance Blez’s murder under their watch. Was this to become a kangaroo court? Who am I to judge? Just a man with the threat of a Legion’s wrath standing at his back, innocently waiting inside an abandoned temple that would also make a serviceable stopgap courtroom.