Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars)

by R. Curtis Venture

“This is serious, Peras,” he said. “Try to keep yourself under control.”

  “What is it now? Did he finally kill her?”

  “No, I checked the feed just a few minutes ago. She’s still in a coma, still just laying there.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  Brant hesitated. “Branathes is missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “Yep. Can’t find him anywhere.”

  “Did you check with admin?”

  “Of course. He’s not in Central Operations or his quarters, and he hasn’t signed in or out of any other section for hours.”

  “People don’t just suddenly disappear from a fortress,” Tirrano said. “I mean we are in space.”

  “Amarist Naeb disappeared.”

  “Yeah, but she did it in a way nobody could possibly miss. She didn’t simply vanish.”

  Brant shrugged, as if he could think of nothing to say to that.

  “You think he knows we’re onto him?” Tirrano asked.

  “Could be.”

  “If he was going to flee, why would he not just finish her off on his way out the door?”

  “Maybe he didn’t flee,” said Brant. “Maybe he left for another reason, and didn’t want to draw attention by leaving a body behind. You know what he said before about drawing attention to her; it could be that was really his own anxiety talking.”

  Tirrano fell silent, her eyes flicking to and fro as she considered the idea. She looked up.

  “Doctor Bel-Ures.”

  “Shit, I’d almost forgotten. Would he really go after her himself?”

  “We have no idea how they work,” Tirrano said. “For all we know it’s only him and Naeb out there.”

  “What can we do about it?”

  “Warn her of course. There must be someone we know in the Eyes and Ears centre on Meccrace Prime.”

  “But can we trust them? We don’t know how far this thing extends.”

  “Okay, let’s think this through. If he is an agent — a Rasa, like Naeb — then he is taking orders from someone. If they had other agents in the Meccrace system, surely they would just have one of them find her.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “But if he is going after her, then perhaps they don’t have anyone there. We should inform E&E on Meccrace Prime. They can pick her up, get her family somewhere safe, and capture him when he arrives.”

  “Good idea. So what exactly are we going to tell them?”

  “The truth of course,” Tirrano said. “Everyone needs to know about this.”

  “I meant in a way that doesn’t make us look bored and crazy.”

  “Easy,” she said. “Get that Shard to do it.”

  “The one who told us to make her safe in the first place, which we haven’t done yet?”

  “No… which you haven’t done yet. I wasn’t there.”

  “Thanks. Nice teamwork.”

  “It’ll sound better coming from him. He’s not so lowly as us. His role in this thing isn’t quite so menial.”

  “Fine. I’ll bite the bullet.”

  “We’d best get back,” said Tirrano. “I don’t know about you, but I have new data coming out of my arse.”

  • • •

  The sound of a dozen conversations dipped when Castigon entered the tavern, then rose again when the patrons had eyed him up and turned back to their own business.

  He kept his hood up, looked around slowly, and walked to an empty spot at the bar.

  The tavern was typical of city centre dives, the kind of establishment where he might meet people who could get things done. It was the sort of place in which he would have expected to find Kulik Molcomb obliterating his senses, back in the day. Way back before Castigon had killed the old drunkard on a dilapidated Low Cerin rooftop.

  There seemed to be far too many dingy corners for the shape of the room, and a cloying drift of smoke and stim vapour hung in the air. Like Castigon, many of the customers had their heads or faces covered. Discretion appeared to be the normal order of business.

  “First one’s on the house,” said the barkeep. He slammed a short tumbler down in front of Castigon, and filled it halfway from an unlabelled bottle.

  “To your good health,” said Castigon. He drained the glass, and regretted it immediately.

  “Not local?”

  He looked to his side, and saw that the man next to him was staring amusedly at Castigon’s empty tumbler.

  “Can’t be, or you would have refused that piss. Arnaum: two proper drinks, if you would.”

  The barkeep came back, an entertained look about him, and poured out two shots from a less murky bottle.

  “Health,” they both said.

  “So what’s a fine outsider like yourself doing in a shit-hole like this?”

  “Hey!” Arnaum said. The man shot him a look, and the barkeep wandered off muttering to himself.

  “Just passing through on business,” said Castigon.

  “Aren’t we all,” said the man. “Name’s Collis. I own an irrigation company. You might have seen the holo-ads?”

  “Nope,” said Castigon.

  “You really aren’t from around here. Well I’m just here to oversee, anyway. Try to get the lads back on schedule. Those fucking Serrofites are holding everything up, and it’s costing me a fortune.”

  “Yeah, what’s with that?”

  “They always want the same thing. Ancestral land back, more territory for growing their junk crops. Just seem to be getting a bit more bold this time. That Proconsul up on the hill should think about swatting a few of them back down to their proper level.”

  “It sounds like that would really help.”

  Castigon almost jumped from his stool when he realised a second figure was standing on his other side, uncomfortably close to him. The newcomer had a strangely intense look in his eyes, and a smile that could have hidden half a dozen meanings within itself.

  “Worlds! You want to be careful who you sneak up on, friend.”

  “Apologies, Sir,” said the newcomer. “I did not mean to startle you. My name is Pammon. Herik Pammon.”

  “What can I do for you, Herik Pammon?”

  “Well, it’s more a case of what I can do for Mister Collis here.” Pammon aimed his distressingly frozen smile at Collis. “I couldn’t help but overhear his complaints.”

  “You’re talking about the Serrofites,” Collis said.

  “Yes I am, Mister Collis. My… friends and I are very interested in the Serrofite situation. Very interested indeed.”

  Castigon felt his skin crawl, as if all of it were flowing around his torso in search of a hiding spot. Somehow his body knew to be repulsed by Pammon. His mind could only wonder why.

  Pammon was older than Castigon, and his eyes had a twinkle to them. Others would perhaps have called it a mischievous sparkle, but Castigon was not so naïve. He knew a fellow killer when he saw one.

  “Your friends?”

  “We are — how would you say it? — ‘new players’.”

  “Players?” Castigon asked. “Players in what game?”

  “Why, the only game.”

  Castigon looked at Collis, who raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

  “And do you play this game well?” Collis asked.

  Pammon looked as though his shoulders and chest and diaphragm were trying to chuckle, but his smile stayed firmly in place.

  “Oh, Mister Collis. We do play it well. We play it very well indeed.”

  Castigon found Pammon’s tone a little too confident. The man had an agenda, that much was clear, and it seemed as though it would be one of which Castigon wanted no knowledge.

  He looked up, feeling eyes on him. Across the room, in an alcove lined by benches on all three sides, two men rested their elbows on an empty table. Their conversation had paused, and they looked back at him.

  No, not at him; at Pammon and Collis. And they were both wearing the same rigid smiles.

  Someone in the tavern was hummi
ng a strange, mournful refrain. He stole a quick glance around himself, and saw at least three others in amongst the tavern’s patrons. Standing or sitting, talking or silent; they all watched Pammon and Collis with expressions which might have been contemptuous had they not suggested that quite so much gloating was going on behind the eyes.

  Castigon’s guts turned, and he felt an urgent need to leave and never come back.

  Collis seemed oblivious to it all. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

  “Well, it seems to me that these Serrofites are dangerously close already to alienating our good-willed human citizenry,” said Pammon. “If they lose support from us, they won’t be able to hold back human interests any more. All it would take is a little push, and the wedge will be driven too deep to remove.”

  “I’m listening,” said Collis.

  Pammon’s horrible smile deepened at the corners finally, and Castigon fought back the urge to walk straight out of the tavern’s door. Whoever Pammon was, whatever it was he and his ‘friends’ wanted, it was beginning to sound like it might be exactly the thing Castigon had come in here to find.

  Once it had served his purpose, he would be back on the Leo Fortune and away from Pammon as fast as the hauler could carry him. And Maber Castigon — trained to fight, happy to kill — would hope never to meet that man again.

  • • •

  “What the…?”

  Tarrow snapped awake and grabbed at the wrists of the hands that shook her.

  “It’s me,” said Crathus. “Get up, quickly.”

  “What is it?” Tarrow was alert the moment she heard the urgent tone.

  “Some kind of disturbance in the city,” Crathus said. “Shit, might be a full-blown uprising for all I know.”

  “The Serrofites?”

  “I’d guess so.”

  Tarrow rolled off the bed and began to pull on her clothes. Crathus handed her a bandolier and her holsters.

  “Stupid cunt should’ve at least looked as though he would negotiate with them.”

  “Well, that’s not our business,” said Tarrow. “I mean I agree, yeah, but it’s up to him.”

  “You’ve actually got quite a strong opinion about that, haven’t you?”

  “You fucking bet I have. Weapons check.”

  Crathus went through the motions while Tarrow checked her own gear methodically.

  “You hear from his people yet?”

  “No,” Crathus said. “Came straight here.”

  “Right. We go find Kalistine first. Top priority.”

  “We need certainty on the perimeter,” Crathus reminded her.

  “Yes. You do that, then come get me.”

  Crathus looked at her reproachfully.

  “It’s fine. I’ll be okay. Go on; like you said, we need certainty.”

  They went to the door, and Crathus gave her another reproachful look.

  “Miall, don’t make me make it an order.”

  Crathus headed off down the corridor, towards the stairs.

  Tarrow drew one of her pistols and held it close to her chest in a two-handed grip. She stayed glued to the wall, moving swiftly down the corridor in the opposite direction to Crathus.

  The high chambers are not far, she told herself. Crathus is just downstairs.

  Within the same minute she was at the doors of the chamber, unlocking them with her link’s verified security pass.

  “Wake up, Sir. Proconsul, you need to wake up.”

  “What in the many worlds—?”

  “There’s something going on outside the compound,” Tarrow said. “I need to get you to safety.”

  “What exactly is happening?” Kalistine sat up in bed, rubbing his bleary eyes with the backs of his hands.

  “Well… I don’t know exactly.”

  “Perhaps you should have found out before you came bursting in here.” He flopped back down and rolled over.

  “Oh no, don’t you go back to sleep,” Tarrow snapped.

  The proconsul sat up again, and looked annoyed. “Did you just tell—?”

  “Look, Sir. You made it quite clear earlier I wasn’t to tell you how to do your job. So let’s make that a two-way street for the moment, and you can yell at me later if you really feel that it’s necessary.”

  “What if I just stay here in bed?”

  “You probably won’t want to when I burn the fucker down.”

  “Point taken.”

  He arose reluctantly and began to dress. Tarrow tapped her foot, amazed at the complexity of the outfit he was putting together.

  “I’d suggest only bringing what you need,” she said pointedly.

  “I’d suggest you keep those ideas to yourself, Shard. I’ve agreed to come with you, not to take your orders.”

  “There may be a time limit involved here.”

  “Yes, there ‘may be’. As you said yourself, you don’t know exactly.”

  Tarrow opened her mouth to respond, but she was interrupted before she could waste the breath.

  “It’s the Serrofites,” Crathus said from the doorway. “They’re rebelling. People are fighting with them in the streets.”

  “Rebelling?” Kalistine looked puzzled. “They don’t have it in them.”

  “Well, they seem to have got it from somewhere. The fires are spreading.”

  “Fires?”

  “Yes, fires. I’m told hundreds of bundles of burning weed have been shoved in places they shouldn’t be.”

  Kalistine’s jaw dropped.

  “The Serrofites are burning the city with weed?”

  “That’s what it looks like, Sir. Symbolic, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t believe it. They wouldn’t dare.”

  “Come on,” Tarrow said. “We can agree you’re wrong later. Right now we need to get you somewhere more secure than your bedroom—“

  Tarrow felt the building shake, and down the hall she heard the sound of breaking glass. The windows on the north corridor must have been blown in.

  “That was an explosion,” Crathus said.

  “Check it out, quickly. We’ll head for the south wing.”

  She grabbed the proconsul, and as Crathus ran away from her once more, she propelled him out of the doors and down the corridor.

  “They wouldn’t dare,” he kept saying.

  Tarrow’s link chirruped. “Go,” she said.

  “Outer wall’s breached on the south side of the compound,” Crathus said. “People are coming in — lots of them. Guards are falling back already. We’re going to lose this building.”

  “Okay. Get back here and we’ll find a way out.”

  “Don’t need to tell me twice.”

  Tarrow yanked the proconsul’s arm, trying to break through his anxious gibbering.

  “Where is this House’s emergency exit?”

  “On… on the west wing. There’s a tunnel to the commerce hall.”

  “Of course there is,” said Tarrow. “Isn’t there always? Where’s the entrance?”

  “In the main kitchen.”

  She tapped her link.

  “Crathus… west wing. Find the main kitchen; I’ll meet you there.”

  “Got it.”

  Tarrow hurried along the corridors, spurred on by more sounds of breaking glass and the intensifying smell of smoke. From beneath them, on all sides of the building, she could hear angry voices shouting. Not all of them were human.

  “Down here,” said Kalistine, pointing to a wide, curving staircase.

  “Not on your life,” Tarrow said. “That will be flooded with intruders in a few minutes. Is there a servants’ entrance?”

  “You are joking?” Said the proconsul.

  “No, Sir. I am most definitely not.”

  “That way,” he said.

  Tarrow found the entrance to the servants’ staircase, and bundled Kalistine down it ahead of her. She waited until she was certain nobody had watched them enter the stairwell, then pushed ahead of him.

  “Keep up or
stay behind,” she said.

  “Your constant insolence is being noted for the inevitable disciplinary hearing.”

  “Good for you, Sir.”

  They emerged in a large, square room with double doors at either end. Tarrow saw wheeled tables arrayed along one wall, and huge hampers along the other. She surmised it was a utility area between the kitchens and the rest of the ground floor.

  “That way,” Kalistine said.

  Tarrow pushed open one of the swinging doors, quietly and slowly, and poked her head through, close to the ground. The kitchens were silent and dark. Only the faint red glow of standby lights fell across the counters, steel basins, and tiled walls.

  “Looks clear,” she said. “Lead the way.”

  She followed after him to the end of a row of counters, and he knelt down by the side of a metal cabinet against the far wall. He disappeared inside all the way up to his shoulder, looked as though he was straining, and then there was a metallic clong.

  He pulled back his arm and shuffled aside as the cabinet swung away from the wall. A puff of dusty air hit Tarrow in the face, and she saw a square of gaping black before her.

  She switched on a small torch and pointed the beam into the tunnel. The space went into the wall for about a metre, then ended. She could see there was a drop right in front of them.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s get you in there, and I’ll join you when Crathus arrives.”

  • • •

  It was not the first time Castigon had sat and waited in darkness; not by a long shot.

  Even through the thick outer walls, he could hear the chaos of fighting and vandalism going on outside. Pammon and Collis had done exactly what they had planned together, once Castigon had spent a short while convincing Collis that the idea was a good one. It had almost been too easy. The friction between the human and Serrofite citizens had been enough to ensure the latter group was blamed for the damage that Collis and his employees had caused under Pammon’s direction.

  He wondered what exactly Pammon and his friends were getting out of it, then decided it was not something he really cared about. As long as he never had to look at Pammon again, he was happy with that. The strange little man had given him the creeps, and Maber Castigon was not a man who was easily creeped out.

  He sat and watched his doorway, waiting in silence.