Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars)

by R. Curtis Venture

  They had located a few such groups since securing the derelict chemical works where Morlum and his comrades had guarded the stolen Imperial warheads. Here and there, spread out around the long-destroyed town, were small teams of humans and Viskr. The ones who had somehow escaped being cut down when Caden’s team swept through the city on their way to Morlum.

  Eilentes would have called them pockets of resistance, only… they offered no resistance. It was as if someone had pushed a button and put them all on standby.

  The individuals from the chemical works — who had been still as statues when Caden and Bravo Company found them — were now corralled in the broken courtyard below Eilentes’ position, penned in by some of the ground troops deployed from Disputer. Not that they appeared likely to run: each of them was as docile as Amarist Naeb had been, when Caden and Throam had first brought her out of Gemen Station.

  Worlds! That seemed like so long ago.

  As she scanned the buildings systematically for other enemy positions, Eilentes set a part of her brain to work on what she had seen so far. Throam had told her what Morlum said before he died; that the ‘Rasas’ had nobody to tell them what to do, and that those in charge of them must have been killed already.

  As far as she knew no enemy commanders had yet been identified, whether living or dead. Whoever or whatever it was that directed the actions of these Rasas was nowhere to be found.

  Her scope passed over the smouldering trench that Hammer had sliced through the town, when the great ship had slammed her belly into the ground and barrelled gracelessly towards her final resting place.

  What if Hammer had demolished an enemy command post?

  The timing would have been about right, and all evidence would have been utterly destroyed; crushed into oblivion.

  She made a mental note to run it by Caden later on; the Shard might even have come to the same conclusion.

  • • •

  Santani insisted on staying by the smoking hulk of Hammer, watching the search and rescue teams bring her crew, one by one, from the open belly of her lifeless ship.

  First there were stretchers; the most critically wounded personnel were rushed to receive field care in a surgical module dropped by Disputer. After that came those with minor injuries, almost all of them helping each other. Finally there came the body bags.

  By the time she had started to count double figures, she had to look away. She leaned painfully on a long piece of plasteel shrapnel, trying to take the weight off her right leg. A field medic had hurriedly applied a basic brace, but she would need more definitive intervention before she was able to stand fully on those bones again.

  “Ma’am, you should come away from the wreck and move to the recovery area. It’s not safe to be here. We have no idea what condition the reactors are in.”

  She turned her head to look at the speaker, and saw it was a woman. Through the glow of the holographic overlay in the helmet visor, Santani could make out young, pretty eyes. Even in this tortured place, standing next to what would doubtless become a tomb for those who could not be recovered, those eyes sparkled with life.

  “I can’t leave yet,” she said. “Not until they bring the last one out.”

  “Yes, Ma’am… sorry Ma’am.”

  The young woman went back to her work, and Santani watched her leave with a deep sense of vicarious foreboding. How long before that one was herself being pulled from the dead husk of a ship? How long did anyone really have?

  She looked back along the hull, and forced herself to watch them bring out the body bags. Nihilism, she thought, is solely a privilege of the living. Respect will be the courtesy I extend to the dead.

  • • •

  Elm Caden seemed to be having one stupid conversation after another. First Daxon had wanted to take his fire team into the toxic inferno of Hammer‘s corpse. It was well-intentioned, but really not very prudent. After a few minutes of tiresome debate, Caden had palmed the corporal off onto Kohoi Chun: after all, the welfare of the troops was the sergeant’s responsibility.

  Then it had been Volkas, asking for Caden’s casualty report. Casualty report? Your job, Volkas, not mine. I don’t even know what half of your people are called.

  Now, it was the Executive Officer from the ICS Disputer who was giving him problems. The man seriously needed to work the stick free from his ass.

  “We will not be accommodating your prisoners in the brig aboard Disputer, Shard Caden. It’s simply too dangerous. They cannot be allowed even the remotest chance of gaining access to this ship’s systems.”

  “Dangerous? They’re vegetables, Yuellen.”

  “You haven’t been told, have you?”

  Caden sighed to himself. “Told what?”

  “About Fort Kosling.”

  “What about Fort Kosling?” It was like pulling teeth.

  “All but destroyed. That one you found on Herros; Amarist Naeb. She managed to cripple the entire fortress.”

  Caden was silent for a moment. It hardly seemed possible. “How? Last time I saw her she was off in her own little world.”

  “Well, it didn’t last. I’m sure Captain Thande will be giving you a comprehensive briefing after you leave the surface.”

  Caden groaned inwardly at the reminder. Captain Thande! Her reputation as a stern and humourless officer preceded her.

  “I’ll look forward to that.”

  He closed the private channel, rejoined the group channel that the ground parties were using, and set off across the charred landscape in the direction of the prisoners.

  As he came closer to the courtyard, he saw that Bruiser was standing guard. Apparently not satisfied that half a platoon of other MAGA troops kept watch already, the Rodori was leaning against what remained of a stone wall, his cherished machine gun in hand.

  “Anything to report?” Caden asked.

  “Nothing,” Bruiser rumbled. “These people don’t move.”

  “Stay vigilant, guys. Apparently they aren’t as harmless as we thought.”

  Bruiser moved his head forwards, angling his face down to maintain eye contact. Perhaps an expression of curiosity? Caden would have to see what the Imperial databases had to say about Rodori body language.

  “These people are a threat to us?”

  “Possibly. While we’ve been gone, Amarist Naeb somehow managed to take out Fort Kosling.”

  Bruiser’s head jerked back again. Surprise maybe?

  “Huh. That is one tough human.”

  “You don’t say. Listen, I’m not sure what’s happening with these prisoners yet. The XO on Disputer doesn’t want them on his precious command carrier. Keep a close eye on them until I know where they’re going, will you?”

  “Not a problem.”

  Caden gave a thumbs-up, and walked away.

  “One woman versus a fortress,” he heard the Rodori say. “My kinda gig.”

  • • •

  Santani picked her way carefully through the littered masonry and metal scrap, trying to keep out of the way as best she could whenever corpsmen and field medics hurried by. It was not easy to move aside quickly, not with a probably broken leg and the dubious assistance of her makeshift crutch. Twice, in her haste, she almost sent herself tumbling to the ground.

  The entrance to the field surgery loomed ominously before her; the screams and groans of the injured were audible even through the double-doored airlock, even above the howling atmosphere of Woe Tantalum. It was as if she had discovered a portal to the hell of the old world, and could hear the lamentations of the damned trapped within.

  She forced herself to enter.

  Inside, the noise was horrific. Men and women alike shouted, shrieked, begged, pleaded, threatened, calling out to anyone they thought able to help them escape their agony. The whine of powered surgical tools sliced and grated through the clamour without warning, and she shuddered involuntarily every time she heard those sounds and the inevitable accompanying screams.

  She pulled off her r
espirator and hobbled between the cots, dodging the frenetic medics as best she could, careful not to trip over the equipment that punctuated the orderly aisles. Everywhere she looked she saw the misery of injury; torn clothing, charred flesh, exposed bone.

  The denizens of the module were a mixture of her crew, and the soldiers who had already been on the surface when Hammer came down. She passed by several MAGA troopers with missing limbs; those lucky few who had suffered only glancing blows from the razor-edged rings of skulkers. Blood pooled around some of the cots, and the smell of it hung thick in the air, mixing with the stringent scent of antiseptics and the burned-rubber stench of coagulant foam.

  Then she saw Klade.

  Her first officer was laying on his side, bare from the waist up, with a mask strapped over his face. His chest was bruised darkly, and at the centre of the ugly discolouration a dressing was already wicking blood from the wound it covered. His eyes were wide; bright holes in a mask of dried blood and grime. They moved, found hers staring back at him, and tried to share a smile with his mouth.

  “Klade,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “He’s going to prep,” said a medic, and hastily checked the tubes connecting Klade’s mask to a machine. He hooked the machine on the rail surrounding the trolley.

  “You will pull through,” Santani said.

  The medic kicked off the brake, and began to pull the trolley into the aisle. Klade raised his hand weakly, as if to wave Santani off; the only way he could communicate with her. She raised her hand in reply.

  “You will pull through,” she whispered.

  • • •

  “Why is it you always tip up when I’m just about finished?”

  “Good timing I suppose,” said Caden. “We have a problem.”

  Throam grunted, and sat down heavily on one of the crates he had recovered. “Don’t we always? Go on.”

  “Disputer says they won’t accept our prisoners in their brig. But we can’t very well leave them here.”

  “Why not? They’re welcome to this shit-hole.”

  “For one thing, they’re undeclared enemies of the Empire. We need to find out as much as we can about them.”

  “We could do that here.”

  “That’s hardly optimal, is it?”

  “Suppose not.”

  “There’s something else, too. I’m told Amarist Naeb all but destroyed Fort Kosling.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “No, seriously. The XO told me. These people aren’t the drooling idiots they appear to be. There’s a lot more to them than that.”

  “I can see why he doesn’t want them on the Disputer.”

  “He does have a point. But we can’t just walk away. They could be rejoining their forces and feeding back intel within hours.”

  Throam stopped what he was doing, straightened up slowly, and looked Caden directly in the eye.

  “You’re not suggesting we kill them all?”

  “I wasn’t ‘suggesting’ anything.” Caden shrugged.

  “You thought it though.”

  “It is an option.”

  “They’re our prisoners.”

  “I know.”

  There was an awkward silence, and Throam found himself wondering if Caden wanted to be talked out of it, or given license to act. It was not a question he appreciated, in either case; decisions like that were firmly and undeniably in the remit of Shards, not their counterparts.

  He changed the subject. “Think there’s a connection between these people and what we saw on Aldava?”

  Caden tilted his head slightly, as if wordlessly questioning the change of topic. But he replied nonetheless. “It seems likely. I think we might have witnessed the early stages of… whatever it is that’s affecting them.”

  “They were all around you.”

  Caden remained silent for a moment. “So?”

  “Any idea why?”

  “You’re talking about the plaza, right? Before the Kodiak came for us? I just assumed it was because I was the first of us to get in amongst them.”

  “Sure about that?”

  “No, of course I’m not sure. Could have been that, but it might have been something else entirely. I don’t know what was going on any more than you do.”

  Truth be told, Throam had no idea what he was expecting to hear. But what he did know was that in all the time he had known Caden, he had never seen him throw away another’s life as casually and as consciously as he discarded that of Medran Morlum. And now Throam stopped to think about things, he also realised that Caden had never before told him to do something as vindictive as kicking Joarn Kages through a window. Something was different for sure, and it was a recent change.

  “It’s just that you’ve been… I mean, you haven’t been yourself for a few days now.” He paused as Caden raised an eyebrow, but no reply came. “You know it, I know it… pretty sure Euryce has picked up on it too, and she basically only just met you.”

  “Yes, and I’m really interested in what your new squeeze thinks of me.” The Shard was muttering, looking to the side, as if he were no longer in the conversation.

  Throam reeled. “My new squeeze? This is exactly what I’m talking about. This isn’t you. You’re hostile, Elm. Aggressive. I don’t get it. Aggression is my job.”

  Caden started, looking for all the worlds as if he had surprised himself.

  “You’re right, I’m sorry.” He looked suitably ashamed. “Don’t tell Eilentes I called her your squeeze, will you?”

  “Are you kidding? She’d take your balls as trophies.”

  “Exactly.”

  There was another awkward silence.

  “You have changed though,” Throam said. It was too risky to let it go now; if he knew Caden at all, he knew that the Shard would not make it easy to come back to this conversation once it was over. “And the timing is, like… pretty convenient. I’m just saying.”

  “What are you saying, Throam? Convenient for what? You’d better clarify, because it sounds very much like you think I’m connected to that lot.” He jerked his head vaguely in the direction of the corral, where Bruiser and the other soldiers still guarded the prisoners.

  Throam folded his arms across his chest. “Suppose I am.”

  “Oh, this had better be good.”

  “Not impossible, is it? They probably started acting all fucked-up too, before they ended up like that.”

  Caden raised his hand to his forehead habitually, as if his patience were wearing thin, and his glove clonked against his visor.

  “Listen, I know I’ve been out of sorts lately, but I’m not one of them” — again, he jerked his head towards the prisoners — “and I’m not about to pull an Amarist Naeb on you.”

  “Would you even know if you were?”

  “Okay, point taken. I am going through some stuff, as you have so keenly noticed and helpfully pointed out, but it’s not that. For one thing, it pre-dates all this Rasa business by some considerable margin.”

  “What then?”

  “I really don’t think this is the time or the place, Throam.”

  “Right, well you need to make the time later on.”

  “Oh, do I?”

  “Yes, you do,” Throam said, patiently. “Because I can’t do my job right if I don’t know where your fucking head’s at from one moment to the next.”

  “Fine. Yeah… no that’s fine, I’ll schedule you in.” Caden jabbed and prodded at his holo without looking. “Happy?”

  “Don’t forget.”

  “I won’t.”

  “And don’t ‘forget’, either,” Throam intoned.

  “I won’t.”

  “Good. I’m just worried about you, you do know that right?”

  “Yeah, I’m touched. Listen, we still have to come up with a plan for those Rasa goons.”

  “Think I might have an idea about that,” said Throam. “I’m going to need Bruiser down here… and some of that kit they’re using on what’s left of th
e Hammer.”

  • • •

  Santani left the field hospital, and struggled gracelessly along what had once been a stone boulevard. The crowded module, filled as it was with the chaos of suffering and the stench of the dead and dying, had been too much for her.

  She hobbled along, away from the corpse of the ICS Hammer, and headed for Bravo Company’s position.

  The wind tugged at her flight suit pants, ruffled her captain’s tunic, clawed at her loose hair. Her respirator covered much of her face, but she could still feel the icy chill of Woe Tantalum’s atmosphere. She balled her empty hand into a fist, tightened the grip of the other around her makeshift crutch.

  Someone is going to pay for this, she thought. My crew deserved better than to die out here.

  From what she had seen in the triage area, some sixty of her people were either being worked on, or waiting for treatment. That meant that she had potentially lost over ten times as many.

  Worlds! To have been on the lower decks when they hit the ground.

  Her heart sank, and she felt tears visit the corners of her eyes once more. She wanted to pull away the mask and wipe her face, wipe away the guilt and the pain. As much as it might allow her to breathe, the respirator was also suffocating her; trapping her in with her sorrow.

  No, not yet. You’ve got to keep it together for a little while longer.

  Step by awkward step, she made her way towards Eilentes’ crash site. Eventually, through the broken walls and mounds of frozen slag, she saw the hull of the downed lander. As she picked a safe path across the uneven ground, panting hard now with the exertion, she saw people in the opening of the rear hatch. She flicked her holo, and her link found and joined the group channel.

  “That should do the trick,” one of the figures was saying. “One temporary brig, for all your custody needs.”

  She rounded the outside of the craft, and the interior space of the rear lock came into view. A towering Rodori was lumbering down the deck, arc welder in hand, grinning that impossibly wide grin that made members of his species look so maniacal. He caught sight of her and tilted his head, and the pair on the ground turned to follow his line of sight.