Another great sound of bones snapping in the sky, another rumble of displaced air.
Maggine opened the last item in his work queue with a sigh of relief, and began to read. Of course, it would be a particularly grief-ridden petition. Just as he was beginning to think that his working week was coming to an end, naturally that was the best possible time for a four-way dispute between inter-married families to reach his desk. He began to read the circumstances, and found himself aghast that these people could even live their lives in such a—
The noise was so sharp and loud that he thought for a moment it had deafened him. Until the pressure wave came, he was sure his eardrums had been blown in. But then the thunder followed, battering the roof, and the walls shuddered. Furnishings in the office swayed from side to side, an antique pen jumped from its holder and rolled off the edge of the desk. He felt the jarring collision through his legs, sensed somehow that air had been pushed straight down on top of the building. A further sound, without doubt an explosion, rampaged violently on the heels of the thunder.
At that moment the alarms began to sound.
Maggine ran to the balcony and looked up into the night. Neither of Lophrit’s moons had yet risen above the horizon, and the stars were bright in the cloudless sky. And yet something was slightly amiss.
It took a few seconds before he realised that stars were going out. Not randomly, not one at a time, but in patches; irregular shapes, growing slowly and blotting out the firmament. His ears picked up a low, throaty rumbling across the water. The sound of engines.
It was then he understood it had not been thunder he heard; these sounds were the shock waves caused by atmospheric splash-downs. Now panicked, he dashed along the balcony, hand trailing along the balustrade as he made his way around the outside of the building. Everywhere he looked he could see the dark patches blotting out the night sky, gradually growing bigger. A new sound then started, repetitive and angry, quick snapping sounds followed immediately by equally short thuds. He rounded the next corner of the balcony, coming to the city-facing front of the building, and skidded to a halt.
There, over the roofs and towers of his beloved city, the orange beads of tracers streamed one after another into the night sky, straight lines criss-crossing each other as dozens of batteries tracked their targets. Anti-drop defences, activated before he had even been informed of any problem. The orbital platforms must have fallen already.
He saw small explosions high in the inky darkness, where the streams of tracers ended so abruptly. Brief ripples of light illuminated artificial contours, edges, protrusions. White streaks answered the defensive barrage, fringed with orange, bolting from the sky and slamming straight through buildings. Gauss guns. Gauss guns firing on an Imperial city! Nothing of the kind had happened in almost a generation.
Trembling, knuckles whitening as he gripped the balustrade, he looked out toward the city centre. The great triple tower of the communications building was gone. Simply gone. He guessed that its fall had been the source of that first explosion he had heard.
If the orbital defences had been overcome before the surface had even been warned, and the comms towers were now destroyed, that meant that in all probability no distress call had yet been sent. Maggine already knew there were no ships visiting Lophrit that were capable of opening their own wormholes.
He ran back to the office and pawed at his holo. For a moment his hands shook so much he could not find the right menus. He willed his fingers to co-operate, swiped and tapped, and eventually located the emergency interface.
Security code? Oh by all the many worlds. He vaguely remembered setting a password years ago, and guessed at what he might have used. Success! The menu folded outwards, and he was prodding at the pane marked ‘Incursion Protocol’ before it had even formed fully on the holographic display.
“Insufficient Network Access,” the holo replied. “Check Gate Connection”.
“You cannot be serious,” Maggine snapped. He jabbed sharply at an active area to run a diagnostic on the system’s jump gate.
“Gate absent,” said the holo.
• • •
Castigon stepped from shadow to light, and brought his hand up instantly to shield his eyes against the glare. As much as it pained him to admit it, those years spent in Urx’s infamous Correctional Compound One had robbed him of the memory of so many experiences. In this particular instance, it seemed his eyes had forgotten exactly how they should handle daylight.
When he had first arrived, he remembered, everything inside the facility had seemed dim and gloomy. Try as he might, he could not recall the exact time when he stopped noticing. He must have been in there so long that his brain had compensated, without him even perceiving a difference. The daylight now was blinding to him.
A rumbling came from behind him as the gates closed, further confirming his freedom.
He narrowed his eyes against the painfully bright sun, and started to trudge up the empty road towards the city. In his hand, he carried the chit that had been placed in with his personal property. He turned it over and over in his fingers.
They would grant him passage between star systems, at considerable expense, but they could not quite reach to a lift into town. And they wondered why people these days had no time for the government.
Oh, and only passage to planets of class two or below. So no chance of taking in the sights of Damastion then, or finding his way on Kementhast Prime. He would not be allowed to land on High Cerin, and a visit to the Meccrace system was out of the question. Nor would he be permitted access to Earth.
Well, not legitimate access.
He came to a natural bend in the road, where it curved away to follow the contours of the land, and turned back for a moment to take a last look at Correctional Compound One.
Sunk into the ground itself, in a vast basin of naked rock, it gave the unappealing impression of being a discarded lozenge. Of the three stories that were above ground, only the top one had windows; the privilege of daylight was reserved for staff. It was below ground level where the inmates languished. Out of sight, out of mind.
What had surprised him about the subterranean prison was that even through the rock and concrete and thick metal doors, the smell still pervaded every nook and cranny. The distinctive and tangy odour of Urx, a scent not unlike the combination of manure and old fish, somehow permeated every level of the ostensibly sealed facility. It clung to everything, and he loathed it. Worse still, for some elusive reason the smell defied habituation; one simply never got used to it. Every day spent on Urx was another day living with that rank stench. Day in, day out, for ten Solars, he had felt like he wanted to retch.
And the Blight! Oh by the worlds, the damnable Blight was everywhere.
Urx was a contaminated planet, one of many Imperial colonies which had come to be thoroughly infested long before anyone realised that interstellar travel could spread microbes so very far and wide. Granted very few humans had ever had a severe reaction to the Blight, but when it got a foothold in even a minor cut or scratch… hellish.
Other species were not so lucky, but mankind seemed to have a natural resistance to the curious little symbiotic complex of virus, bacteria, and fungus. It was just unfortunate that the composite organism was still capable of causing such misery when it infected open wounds: itching, scratching, pus, dead skin, more scratching, secondary infection, prolonged healing time, and most likely permanent scarring. Castigon now carried several Blight marks, and he recalled the torture of each infection with an abiding bitterness.
Funny that he should have been tormented by such relatively trivial matters, when the violence and malice of his fellow inmates should have been of primary concern. But then Castigon was hardly an angel himself.
He was not foolish enough to think that his survival had been relatively easy, but he would admit that he had learned a thing or two during his stay. One had to, stuck underground and surrounded by people who, without the shadow of a doubt, th
oroughly deserved to be there.
One thing had interested him above all else. It was a subject he had researched carefully and guardedly in small pieces, learning over many months, gleaning information from various different sources without putting himself at risk.
He had discovered there was a thing they called the Backwaters: a clandestine mixture of back channels, systemic security failings, and corrupt officials. About which — he was reasonably sure — the Empire knew absolutely nothing. What was surprising to him was not that it was so well developed and successful, but that even he had never heard of it before.
He had learned that the Backwaters were routinely used by criminals, smugglers, and society’s least desirable elements in general. At a price, the Backwaters could get you access to anywhere, or to anyone.
When he first learned of it, when he realised that even the intelligence analysts at Eyes and Ears were probably in the dark about it, he had been concerned. It could only have been the counterpart training that made him worry. After a few more years, he had quite stopped caring. All that mattered now was how he could use the information for his own ends.
Class two or below. Ha! He snorted, flicked the chit into the dirt by the side of the road, and started walking again. He would see about that. He would gladly accept the free ride to Imiron, but after that he knew exactly where he was going and it certainly was not class two or below. The crass mind games, played so commonly in the name of civilisation, no longer mattered to him. No; now there was only one thing on his mind.
It was time to settle some old scores.
— 04 —
Quiet as the Grave
The shuttle bucked hard as it dropped out into normal space, and Eilentes felt the familiar sensation of having every nerve in her body stretched away to infinity. As the stars outside became almost static points, and the flood of opalescent light faded from the cockpit canopy, the almost unbearable sensation trickled away quickly.
“Jump complete,” she said. “We’re on approach to Herros.”
“Thank you Hammer,” Caden said.
The wormhole projected by the waiting battleship stayed open behind them, but quickly closed down to a much narrower diameter. Close enough to avoid the problem of signal degradation, Hammer would now send and receive telemetry through the wormhole, thereby staying in real-time contact with the shuttle and her crew.
“Nothing worth mentioning in range,” said Throam, “and the station is silent.”
“Station?”
“Gemen Station,” said Caden, “is the reason we’re here. Two days ago it went dark; no databursts, no scheduled transmissions, nothing. Total blackout.”
“What in the worlds are they doing all the way out here?”
Caden turned away from his holo to look directly at Eilentes. “Medical research.”
“Yeah right.”
“Well that’s the official line,” he said, turning back to his holo. “Take it or leave it.”
“Do you believe it?”
“Of course not; it’s complete rubbish.”
“I’m showing green lights for all stealth plating,” Throam said. “It won’t hide us, but it will make us look much less like a shuttle. Think we can risk an active sweep?”
“Do it,” Caden said.
Throam tapped in commands, and the shuttle’s sensors started to probe more urgently into the space surrounding Herros.
“Our mission is fairly straightforward,” said Caden. “Secure Gemen Station, establish cause of blackout, neutralise any hostile forces, recover assets.”
“Nothing orbital,” said Throam. “Starting a sweep of the surface.”
“If you have assets worth stealing, you don’t put them out in the middle of nowhere without any form of defence,” Eilentes said.
“They didn’t. There’s supposed to be a task force stationed here,” said Caden. “I’m not entirely happy with how conspicuous their absence is.”
“I’m with you on that.”
Throam’s holo flashed up a blinking green icon: no contact. “We’re clear as far as sensors are concerned. Nothing on the surface that we shouldn’t be expecting to find.”
“So no defence force, but also nothing hostile in the system as far as we can see, and nothing out of the ordinary on the planet?”
“That’s about it, yes”.
“You sure there isn’t a Viskr battalion waiting down there?” Caden said. “If this turns into another Fort Tochi cluster-fuck, I’m going to stab you again.”
“Reasonably sure, yeah: there are no transmissions, no large energy signatures, and the only metallic structure big enough to give a reading this far out is the station. You stab like a child by the way.”
“Curious.”
“He stabbed you?” Eilentes had a note of genuine concern in her voice.
“Ha, yeah. A bit,” said Throam.
She stared at him for a few seconds, unsure whether the two men were testing her credulity. Next one of them would probably ask her to go for a long weight. On the other hand she already knew that Throam was damaged goods, and so far Caden did not seem quite as robotic as she had been led to believe he would.
“Eilentes, I think it would be best if you keep the boat ticking over while we check out the station, just in case we need to make a quick exit,” Caden said.
She found herself disappointed. It was the military equivalent of ‘you wait in the car’. Well okay, she thought. I suppose it beats getting shot in the face on my first trip out. My moment will come.
“We’re coming up on our insertion window,” she said.
Herros now loomed in the forward canopy, a great ball of muddy green which seemed to roll slowly without ever changing position. It hung in the middle of their view, gradually growing larger, the thick unbroken atmosphere crawling sluggishly across the surface in a futile race against its own indifference.
“Time to show us what you can do then. Take us down.”
Caden and Throam moved easily into the rear compartment, almost weightless in high orbit of the planet, and dressed themselves for combat. Protective plates, outer armour, webbing. Each of them holstered a pistol to the left of the abdomen, then clipped an assault rifle to the mag-tags on their back plates. The magnetic patches built into the armour accepted the weapons with a satisfying shunk, grabbing at the black metal and pulling it greedily into place. Secure, but easily accessed. The mag-tags would grip each gun jealously unless the weapon reported that an authorised user had taken hold of it.
While Throam stocked pouches with tubes of explosive gel and clipped grenades to his webbing, Caden strapped a longer pouch to his front armour plate: the set of eight zadaqtan, glossy throwing blades which could penetrate even a human bone. In close quarters combat, particularly in an environment where projectiles or energy discharges posed a hazard, the distinctive blades could easily ensure he was the last man standing. At least, they did so the way he used them.
“Check me?” Throam said.
Caden checked each of the seals on Throam’s armour carefully and methodically, and tugged at his webbing. “Down,” he said.
Throam stooped, and Caden finished his checks around the shoulders and neck. The helmet seal would have to wait until Throam had returned the favour. “Squared away. Now do me.”
“Maybe after I check your armour.”
Eilentes smiled to herself as she nudged the shuttle into its descent trajectory. Throam was still essentially the same then; confidently incorrigible with his close friends. From experience, she knew that for him to speak to Caden in that way must mean there was significant trust between them.
She wondered if since last they met Throam had managed to become a more sociable animal. She hoped so; last time around he had unwittingly made a real mess of their chances together. She shared the blame. Letting him walk away without knowing how she really felt? That was not a decision she had enjoyed making, despite him being blissfully unaware of it.
The shuttle trembl
ed, its outer hull buffeted by the gradually thickening atmosphere.
“Hold on back there,” she said, “we may experience some turbulence.”
• • •
“A word, Captain, if I may?”
Santani looked up from the repair summary that scrolled across her holo. Klade stood patiently in front of her, deferentially positioned just off to one side.
“You may.”
“I’ve just been informed of something unusual, and given the nature of our deployment I thought you’d want to know.”
“Go on,”
“As you know, sensor palettes shut themselves down during wormhole transit, along with a number of other sensitive systems. They power up automatically when the ship hits normal space.”
“I’m familiar with the process,” she said.
“In the same moment that sensor functions resumed when we arrived here, they recorded a large gravitational spike.”
“How large?”
“‘Vast’ would perhaps be more accurate.”
“The echo effect perhaps?”
“No, it was considerably bigger than us, even if you account for any distortion caused by the wormhole.”
“But scans of the surrounding space were negative when we got here.”
“Yes Ma’am, they were and they still are. The sensor logs show that the gravity spike vanished as we emerged.”
“So what you’re saying is, something left the system when it detected our incoming wormhole?”
“That is one of the possible explanations, Captain.”
“Something with an immense mass profile?”
“Apparently so.”
She grimaced. “I’m not sure I like that idea.”
“Well, it’s also possible that it was a power surge in a sensor palette. We did take a beating.”
“I’d very much like to know which it was, Commander.”
“Of course. I’ve already downloaded the sensor logs for analysis, and taken an imprint of the system software to be scrutinised by Tech and Systems. It’ll all be sent back in the next databurst.”
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 5
