“As you wish.”
“I will need to borrow landers, as well as some bits and pieces from your armouries.”
“My XO will arrange all that for you.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me what my orders are?”
Caden watched Thande’s face, looking for any small signs of the curiosity he suspected was snaking around beneath the surface. Santani would have been trying to pry the details out of him by now. But Thande was not Santani.
Still waters run deep, he thought. And these waters are damned still.
“I don’t really need to know,” Thande answered. “Just tell me what areas you will be working in, on the off chance it becomes necessary to fire on the surface.”
“I’ve already flagged them up on your mapping system. I need to be in the civic heart of the capital. Naddur, it’s called; after the general.”
“Noted. I’ll try not to bombard it.”
“That would be appreciated.”
Thande smiled her thin smile.
“What about the orbital side?” Caden asked. “Are you getting much from Command?”
“We know the Third Fleet has mustered in the system. They’re standing off for now, gathering information. We’re going to rendezvous with them there, and join up with the rest of the Fifth. Third will be taking the lead for this operation.”
“Any idea yet on enemy numbers?”
“Basically equivalent to our two fleets.”
“Equivalent to? Not less than? Doesn’t that concern you?”
“If it were up to me, we’d roll in with half the armada and smash them to pieces. But it’s not up to me. Commander Operations is calling the shots, and whatever resources travel to Mibes will be the ones that he deems necessary and available.”
Caden sensed a certain defensive fragility in her tone. “Okay, I didn’t mean to get your back up.”
“You didn’t exactly. I just don’t like being patronised.”
“I didn’t mean to do that either.”
“It won’t be my first battle, Shard Caden. Please try to remember that this is what we in the fleet do. Look after your own mission, and let me worry about what happens in orbit. I’ll keep my own counsel on what I need to be concerned with.”
“That’s absolutely fine by me,” Caden said. “Please let me assure you that I didn’t mean any offence. It was just a question.”
“Very well.”
Not for the first time since boarding Disputer, Caden found himself wondering if there were maybe some magic formula for keeping her captain happy.
Probably not, he decided.
• • •
Eilentes waited. She could almost see the rusty cogs grinding slowly against each other in Throam’s head, and wished that for once in his life he would connect that giant melon to his heart. Between the two organs he ought to have been able to cobble together a healthy emotional dialogue. Worlds knew they were both big enough.
“Any thoughts?”
“Sorry, Euryce. I don’t have the answer you’re looking for. I’ve honestly not thought about it.”
“Great.” Her body seemed to deflate beneath her.
“But I can kind of see where you’re coming from,” he added. “Really.”
She looked up again, hopeful that he might be about to have a personal breakthrough. His face was sincere, she knew that much. Whatever was going through his big head right now, he was going to be honest with her. Which, along with his apologetic tone, actually sort of helped.
“When I left the Embolden, it was because they’d paired me with Caden. Not because I was leaving you.”
“I know.”
“I’d been out of the Academy for over four Solars, right? The first thing that happened was I got a month’s refresher. That shit was intensive. I didn’t have a lot of time for anyone else, but I did try to keep in touch.”
“You did,” she said softly. “Once or twice. I remember, believe me.”
“Then I was actually on duty with Caden, and you honestly would not believe how hard it was at first. I know we make it look easy now, but it has been ten Solars. We know each other inside out. Right at the beginning, we were learning each other on the move. Mission to mission. I don’t know how we even stayed alive that long, to be honest. Between him always trying to do everything himself, and me breaking whatever I touch, we should have been dead a long time ago.”
Eilentes smiled to herself, imagining a comically inept version of the pair bumbling around the galaxy and leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. It wasn’t so drastically far-removed from the reality.
“And then when I met Ephisia, it was just… well she was there, she was amazing, and it felt like it was good timing.”
“Ephisia?”
“Gendin’s mother.”
“Oh.”
“It wasn’t good timing at all. It was a horrible mistake.”
“Really?”
“Put it this way: I don’t call her Ephisia any more.”
“What do you call her?”
“Thundercunt.”
Eilentes roared with laughter. “Oh! Oh Rendir, you’ve had it bad. Thundercunt! Oh my worlds, she must have fucked you over big-time to earn a name like that.”
“She did.”
Eilentes forced herself to calm down. “Do you want to tell me this? It wasn’t an idea you favoured before.”
“Might as well. It’s all connected, right?”
“Go on.”
“Ephisia was like a dream come true at first. She was stationed with us, on the same rotation, and was she ever beautiful and warm.”
Eilentes had never heard Throam describe anyone as ‘warm’ before, not even herself, and she fought back a small, sharp jab of envy.
“Then her rotation changed, and suddenly we were crossing over more often instead of being free at the same times. It got pretty hard to spend time together. It wasn’t long before she wanted me to drop things like special training and the gym, to make things easier.”
“Oh dear.” Eilentes could see as plain as day where the other woman had first gone wrong. “Big mistake.”
“Yeah, you know it,” Throam said. “Trying to force me out of the gym? Crazy. Should really have been my first clue.”
“So what happened?”
“She convinced me we should start a family. Still don’t really know how that happened. I mean, I’m a counterpart. That kind of thing is not recommended at all. But she was on about it for a long time, getting in my head until I thought it was a good idea too. Or maybe I just wanted her to stop asking.”
“Oh, Rendir.” Eilentes moved closer to the bunk. “What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I was. And then it was there, it was happening, she was pregnant. And you know what? I was actually glad. Despite all the misgivings, I was so glad I actually told myself it would work. I wanted it to work, badly.”
“But it didn’t?”
“No, it was a nightmare. Don’t get me wrong; I loved Gendin the moment I saw him come into the world, but it just wasn’t to be. Me, her, and him… at the time I wanted to be the family man, I really did. But I didn’t want to stop being a counterpart. The best counterpart anyone could ever be. That’s what did it for my family in the end.”
“What happened?”
“She left me. No warning, just upped and went when I was on a training exercise with Caden. Note was half a page long, Euryce. Half a page.”
She found that somehow she had reached the bunk, and she sat down on the edge of it. She reached out and touched his warm shoulder, and realised when she did so that he was shaking slightly. She had never seen him cry, and wondered if this would be that moment.
It wasn’t.
“Thundercunt!” He shouted it without warning. “She fucking used me.”
“It’s okay, Rendir. I so get that name now. Where did they go?”
“Some shithole of a backwater planet on the core-ward fringe.”
<
br /> “If you knew where they went, why didn’t you try to get them back?”
“I didn’t want her back,” he said. “And what kind of life would the boy have had living with me? No. There was a time when I wanted to steam in there and take my son away from her, but it didn’t last long. They kept us running missions.
“Caden held me together. He said he would go with me if I wanted him to. For support, you know? But the chance didn’t come for a long time. And when it did come around I’d cooled off. I’d thought about it for too long. I knew it wouldn’t be the right thing to do. For me, maybe, but not for him. Not for Gendin.”
“I think that was the right decision.”
“It’s his ninth birthday soon,” Throam said, sitting up. “I count them off. Count towards the day he can make his own choices.”
“Oh, Ren.” She wrapped her arms around him.
They stayed like that for a while, until Eilentes’ link began to chirrup incessantly. She tried to mute it without making the movement too obvious.
“If that’s Norskine, you should go,” Throam said. “You don’t want to keep her waiting forever.”
“Will you be all right?”
“Hey… it’s me.”
Eilentes kissed the top of his head, and stood up. On the way to the hatch she paused, and turned back towards him.
“I think that was the most I’ve ever heard you say in one go.”
He smiled as she stepped through the hatch, and she waited until it had closed fully before she started walking down the sterile passageway.
She stopped, mid-step, and nearly lost her balance.
Some part of her mind had been processing the conversation, rapidly shuttling through it on endless replay, and it had just put her whole brain on alert.
Throam had pulled the old bait-and-switch on her. He had guided her towards having the conversation about Gendin because it was preferable to answering her original question, and he knew she would be unable to resist hearing the tale. He had never had any intention of talking about where their maybe-relationship was going, and he had said nothing which would have constituted an answer.
The sneaky son-of-a-whore. Or, as he had so rightly corrected her previously, son-of-two-whores.
She looked back towards the hatch, then forwards in the direction of the waiting Norskine.
In the end, she chose Norskine. At this point, she felt as though she had little more to give if it came to another argument. She had said all she could, explained how she felt. If he could not bring himself to give her a proper answer, then it was obviously not that important to him, which was sort of an answer in its own right.
For now, she forced it out of her mind.
— 07 —
The Ashes of Lophrit
Captain Kabis Borreto was finally beginning to accept the reality of the situation. His brain knew that his eyes were showing him the evidence which explained everything; it just didn’t want to believe them.
Lophrit was a wasteland.
The civilian hauler Leo Fortune had touched down in the space between several of the craters pitting what remained of a pad at the capital’s starport. It was only the sheer size of the concrete expanse that allowed there to be an unspoiled area big enough to accommodate the modest ship.
Borreto stood at the top of the hauler’s open cargo ramp, and sucked air over his clenched teeth. He stared, and stared, and stared, yet nothing out there obliged him by moving. The silence was almost painful.
“Boss?”
He turned back towards the cargo bay.
“Boss, what in the many worlds happened here?”
“Fucked if I know, Prayer.”
Prayer Monsul had her hands shoved inside the front of her grimy overalls, resting on the top of her chest. She came to stand by his side, and she too gazed out at what had once been a rapidly growing town.
“Shit. Someone did a right fuckin’ number on this place.”
“You said it.”
“Gonna call it in?”
“Not yet. We’re not exactly here on official business. Let’s find out how bad it is first.”
“How bad it is? Boss, it’s bad enough. We know that already.”
He stared straight ahead.
“Boss… seriously. The gate’s missing, the orbital defences are gone, and the capital is fuckin’ rubble. How much worse does it have to be?”
“If there are survivors here, we have to stay. If they’re all dead, we fuck off quick as we can, and send an anonymous burst to the network.”
“We ‘have to stay’? Says who?”
“The universal moral imperative.”
“You’re a right fuckin’ idiot sometimes.”
Borreto ignored her, and walked back into the cargo bay. He punched the comm to call the cockpit.
“Sayad. Arm yourself and meet me on the ground. Bring our passenger.”
“You got it.”
Borreto came back to stand next to Prayer, and spat over the side of the ramp. “Who the fuck did this?”
“Think it was the Gomlic?” Prayer asked. “They’re the closest major power.”
“Doubt it,” Borreto said. “They don’t like confrontation. I read they seek non-aggression treaties with everyone they meet. Pretty sure they have one with us.”
“Yeah, I suppose it’s not really their style at all. I don’t know what to think.”
“Neither do I, Prayer. Neither do I.”
The cargo elevator started up at the rear of the bay, its gears squealing in protest. At some point, he thought, I really need to grease those up properly. Before they catch fire.
He turned to watch the wide platform as it descended slowly from the main deck, revealing two figures centimetre by centimetre.
The one on the left was Sayad Idiri, easily identified by his bright red flight suit. The one on the right then could only be the passenger.
In his many Solars as a hauler, Borreto had sourced plenty of paying fares from the Backwaters. But this was the first one he had almost instantly regretted picking up. There was something wrong about the man, something in the way he spoke and the cold, dead look in his eyes. He made Borreto’s skin crawl.
The platform came to a grinding halt, juddering when it hit the deck of the bay. Sayad and the passenger stepped off, and picked their way through the cargo crates on their way towards the rear ramp.
“What’s up, Boss?” Sayad asked.
“You know how sometimes our job means we deliver more than just cargo? How sometimes it’s humanitarian aid?”
“Yeah?”
“This is one of those times.”
“Is that why you told him to arm himself, Captain?” It was the passenger who asked.
There was a short silence.
“No,” Borreto said. “That’s because of you.”
Without being told, Sayad stepped subtly away from the passenger.
“No offence, buddy, but I don’t know you. I don’t know your problems. What I do know is you needed to use the Backwaters to catch a ride, and in situations like this that kind of extra complication makes me… nervous.”
“I completely understand,” said Castigon, “and you’re right to take precautions.”
Prayer cut right through the awkward moment, in that way she had which was blunt but somehow also managed to be as sharp as a razor. It was one of the reasons Borreto liked to have her around.
“You got any experience with disaster relief? First aid? Anything like that?”
“You could say that. I can turn my hand to most things.”
“Good. Pass me that, would you?”
Castigon looked to the side, and saw the metal box Prayer pointed to. He unlatched it from the deck and picked it up.
“Heavy. What is this?”
“PRAISE unit.”
“A what?”
“Penvos Robotics Autonomous Intelligent Sensory Equipment. Basically a robot sniffer dog. They all think it’s funny to have me run it, because o
f my name.”
“It is funny,” said Sayad.
“Fuck off, fly-boy.”
“Stow it,” said Borreto. “We’ve got work to do. Come on down.”
Sayad and Castigon followed Prayer and the captain off the ramp, then stepped away quickly when it began to fold up against the cargo bay opening.
“Here,” Castigon said, and handed Prayer the box.
She took it, placed it on the ground, and activated the controls on the top surface. The box clicked, hummed, and opened out, unfolding and twisting until the entire thing had reshaped into a metal quadruped. Small sensor arrays folded out from the front end and the underbelly.
“Off you go, boy.” Prayer tapped her holo, and the PRAISE unit loped away with a fluid, rhythmic bounding motion.
“It’s a polybot?” Castigon asked.
“Not exactly. It’s more like the kind of machine that inspired polybot design. Earlier model. Cheaper.”
Borreto was impatient to get moving. “Let’s get after him, before he gets out of range.”
“All right,” said Prayer. “You’re the fuckin’ boss.”
They walked as a loose group, Borreto and Sayad allowing Castigon to go ahead with Prayer. Borreto was not exactly thrilled to see his engineer so close to the wild card passenger, but there was not much he could do about it, short of tying the man up and making him walk at the end of a length of rope. That kind of thing tended to attract negative customer feedback.
“You think the same thing went down at Ophriam?” Sayad asked.
“Why would I think that?”
“It’d explain why the gate wouldn’t respond to us,” Sayad suggested.
Borreto thought about it. They had wasted two days waiting for passage to Ophriam, before giving it up as a bad job and placing the goods in storage. Without the destination gate they would never have made it all the way there; the Leo Fortune was far too small to survive a lengthy, turbulent wormhole.
He had had neither the nerve nor the patience to make a series of jumps through other star systems — each leg of the journey would have increased the chances of a patrol yanking them out of the queue to inspect their cargo. The merchandise had still not been collected since, and the buyer had not been in touch. Given the nature of the transaction, he suspected they would never call.
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 36
