“What’s going on, Kages?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Well, probably not quite as good, but better than most I would imagine. With all the increasing insanity amongst the locals, I have been cloistered away in my private emergency shelter since the day you left me flat on my back in my own courtyard. I’ve been monitoring the system nexus from here.”
“I presume you’re telling me all of this for a reason?”
“Of course. It’s quite simple really: I need you to come back to Aldava and pick me up, before this whole place goes to the Deep.”
“I’m on a priority mission right now. Why in the worlds would I divert to help you?”
“Because I have something you simply cannot do without.”
Kages wore his satisfaction like it was a medal, and Caden raised his eyebrows. With the start of the conversation being the way it was, he had not expected the information broker to start bargaining. He figured that guilt was supposed to be part of the negotiation process.
“Okay, Kages; you have my ear. If you want to keep me on the line, I suggest you start at the beginning.”
“After you left, I became curious about what you were up to at Woe Tantalum. What Morlum might have been up to. I know you won’t approve of me poking around in your business, but I’m sure you can appreciate that for someone in my line of work it was truly irresistible.”
“I can imagine.”
“Well… even for me, Fleet signals are difficult to crack. So I went for the information I knew would be easy to unwrap. I lifted the tables for Woe Tantalum from the central database’s List of the Dead. I knew that whatever was going on out there, I’d see the silhouette of it all from the data passed back to the casualty registries.”
“I have to hand it to you, that’s actually very clever.”
“At the risk of sounding conceited, I know. This sort of thing is my whole livelihood. But the point is, there was already a List in the database for Woe Tantalum. A List thirty Solars old, from the incident that killed the planet.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Not in itself, no. The colony was never sanctioned by the Empire, true, but the people who went there to start a new life were known. As were all the contractors the colonists paid to help build new infrastructure.”
“So what’s the problem with there being a List already?”
“The problem, Shard Caden, is that it’s wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“Yes, wrong. Some of the people on the old List are still walking about today. I’ve even had dealings with a few of them.”
Kages stopped talking, allowing time for the significance of his words to percolate. Caden realised that a moment was passing him by slowly, that his mind was numb. He forced himself to grapple with the implications. Secret survivors, who never made themselves known to the rest of the Empire, or to their families. Were they hiding themselves deliberately? Could they be known to each other?
He put speculation to one side. His training insisted that only diagnostic questions would be of any practical value.
“How is that possible? I thought the whole planet underwent some kind of sudden, catastrophic event.”
“Yes, that is indeed the official story. But when you look closer, I’m afraid the information simply does not add up.”
“What do you mean?”
“After stumbling across that dramatic revelation, I dug up everything I could on the planet. Old transit logs, comms transactions, even commissions and contracts. There’s a point when everything becomes chaotic all at once, then it stops entirely within the space of a few days. Then a gap of an entire Solar month before the news feeds all start to report the story of the accident.”
“The way you say that, you make it sound as though you don’t think there was any accident at all.”
“I don’t.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I have no idea. But I think that during that missing month, the Empire was already isolating the planet. And I think that ultimately, they failed to keep everyone in.”
“Are you absolutely certain about this?”
“In my line of work, Shard Caden, one is often obliged to double- and triple-check the identity of one’s clients. I have certainly had personal contact with people who were supposed to have died on Woe Tantalum almost three decades ago.”
“How could they move around and conduct business, without being flagged as using the identities of dead people?”
“There is a way. You will not have any knowledge of it, and neither will Eyes and Ears, but believe me when I tell you there is a way.”
Caden steepled his fingers, and rested his lips against them. “Kages, I was a bit preoccupied when I was at Woe Tantalum. But if you want my honest opinion, the whole planet looked to me as though it had been hit from orbit.”
“I knew it.”
“Given what you said before, I think whatever it was that happened to the people on Woe Tantalum, something similar might be happening around you on Aldava.”
Kages managed a smile. “Not a terribly difficult connection to make, Shard Caden, but I am truly effervescent with pleasure to see that you made it. Yes, the same thought had occurred to me also.”
“Which means that—“
“You have it. Which means that Aldava might soon meet with some kind of ‘disaster’, and have all life scoured from her surface completely.”
“This is the part where you remind me that you want rescuing, isn’t it?”
“That thought is foremost in my mind.”
“If you want off that planet, I’m going to need something from you. Some proof that this isn’t just a trick to get yourself rescued.”
“I anticipated as much from a Shard, and I have a name lined up for you. Herik Pammon — he was supposedly on Woe Tantalum when the surface burned up. I am confident, Sir, that he will be all the proof you need. But I’d urge you to take me on faith, because I truly doubt there is enough time for you to track him down.”
Caden noted the name, then returned his attention to the holo. “It’s still a big ask. The quarantine won’t be easy to get around, even if the orbital platforms aren’t yet ready.”
“But you’re an Imperial Shard,” Kages said. “If anyone can do it, that person is you. There are people wandering the Empire who should be dead, and I think you already suspect — as I do — that they are probably on the same side Medran Morlum joined so recently.
“If you don’t rescue me from this moribund rock, you will never know who those people are.”
Caden leaned in towards the holo. “Kages, if it means what you seem to think it means, that information could end up saving countless lives.”
“Then you had best endeavour to meet my terms.”
“You’d trade yourself against perhaps millions of other lives?”
“I’d rather not see other lives lost, Shard Caden, but I have to confess to harbouring a particularly special fondness for my own.”
“You really are a callous shit.”
“Be that as it may, this callous shit has information that you know you cannot do without. I suggest you come and retrieve it at your earliest convenience.”
“How will I contact you again?”
“I doubt that will be possible. The gate’s comm relays are likely to be under full lock-down within a matter of hours. Even I cannot bypass that.”
“Then how will I find you?”
“My shelter is beneath the villa; straight down. I have enough food to last half a lifetime, power, air cyclers, and the water purification system from the villa feeds in here as well. I can assure you I will not be going anywhere; not with those crazy people outside and the looming threat of death from above.”
“Then I guess if you see me again, you’ll know what my decision was.”
Caden hit the tile to close the channel just as Kages was opening his mouth to reply. The man’s broad face was frozen on the holo for a moment before vanis
hing completely, surprise and disappointment clearly competing for ground.
Let him sweat it out, Caden thought. If that’s how he wants to play it, he can sit and stew for a while.
When Kages had pointed it out, it had actually not yet occurred to Caden that Medran Morlum might have been on the same side as the people who apparently survived the Woe Tantalum disaster.
No, not disaster survivors. They were quarantine fugitives.
Medran Morlum, it had turned out, was a Rasa. If he were somehow in league with the fugitives, then they might also have been Rasas. Might still be Rasas.
As yet, Caden had no idea what a Rasa actually was, only what they were capable of. That small piece of knowledge was troubling enough, given that Morlum appeared to have coordinated the theft of prototype weapons from a top secret station, and that Amarist Naeb had single-handedly gutted a fortress on her way to freedom.
But worse still, somewhere in the upper echelons of the Imperial leadership, someone already knew what had really happened at Woe Tantalum all those Solars ago. They knew why. There was a good chance that they had known about the Rasas before Caden and Throam had entered Gemen Station and found Amarist Naeb, alone and out of her mind. They had left everyone else in the dark for years. They had killed an entire world of people to keep it all a secret, and they were probably getting ready to kill another.
Caden felt weak. They — whoever they were — had given the Rasas and their masters decades to prepare themselves.
His fingers clenched into fists, the tendons standing out against his forearms. Darkness bubbled around the edges of his vision, and his body seemed like a distant, foreign receptacle. Lips pressed thin, neck swollen, he stood up slowly, breathed out hard through his nose, and smashed his fists down on the desk.
“Motherfuckers!”
There really was no choice involved at all, and Kages knew it. Caden had to find Herik Pammon. And if that man was anything like Naeb or Morlum, then he also had to get hold of those names.
Everything is different now, he thought. Doctor Bel-Ures is the only hope I have of finding someone who’s willing to talk.
• • •
Eilentes walked up and down the passageway several times before stopping outside Caden’s quarters. She was not sure she wanted to do what she thought she was about to do.
“Motherfuckers!”
The outburst was muffled, but clear enough. It had come from his compartment.
She pressed the call panel and waited.
The hatch opened, and she was confronted by a frenzied ogre that had stolen Caden’s face. The ogre snapped at her.
“What?”
“I… uh, Caden, I really need to speak with you. If it’s not a bad time?”
“It’s definitely a bad time,” he said.
She tried her hardest, but a few small tears came anyway.
“Oh, for… I can probably squeeze you in.”
He moved aside, and she walked into his quarters. The air felt like treacle, and she was trying to sit down even before she had reached the nearest chair.
Caden caught her arm, and manoeuvred her safely into a sitting position. Her kit bag dropped to the deck between her feet, but she continued to hold on to the strap.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“It’s Rendir,” she said. “He… tried to make me…”
“Do what?”
“He’s out of his brain on something,” she said. “Doesn’t know what he’s doing. He was trying to make me have sex with him, and I don’t want to. I just don’t want to do that any more. But he wouldn’t listen.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”
Caden sat down opposite her, and pressed his palms into his face.
“He’s using more and more junk,” Eilentes said. “He needs telling, Caden. He doesn’t listen to me.”
A great weight began to lift from her shoulders. It felt good to get it out there, to tell someone else.
“But you think he’ll listen to me?”
“Doesn’t he always?”
“Yes, I suppose he does. He can listen to me while I’m kicking the shit out of him.”
“Don’t,” she said. “Once he comes down he’ll be ashamed. He’ll probably let you beat him black and blue.”
“I should fucking well hope so. I don’t fancy my chances if he hits back.”
She laughed. Somehow, the Shard she had once called unemotional had managed to make everything a little bit better.
“Please make him see sense. I’m not exactly a delicate flower, but I can’t put up with him like this; it’s just not right. That could have gone really, really badly.”
“Listen; there’s an important conversation I need to have with Brant, then I’ll get right on it. Where will you be?”
“Norskine’s quarters,” she said. “I’ll stay with Taliam Norskine.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll let you know when it’s done.”
• • •
Brant was confused. Caden had called him back less than twenty minutes after he broke off from their last conversation, and now it seemed that he was working to completely different priorities.
“Run that by me again.”
“It’s perfectly simple,” Caden said. “Forget about Doctor Bel-Ures; I’ll see to that myself. But you… you have a new job.”
“Yes, this mission you think I’m going to go off on.”
“It’s absolutely critical. I can’t think of anyone else I can trust to get this done, Brant.”
“Really? You trust me that much?”
“We’re having this conversation, aren’t we?”
“We are.”
“There you go then. Requisition a long-range transport or something, and get to Aldava as quickly as you can. You’re looking for a man called Joarn Kages; he’s the one Morlum visited. You need to get him off the surface, and — no matter what he has to say about it — hide him away.”
“Is that all?”
“Oh, you poor fool. Not in the slightest.”
“What’s the catch?”
“The gate is probably locked out. There will likely be a military blockade. The whole planet might have been burned up. Take your pick.”
Brant blanched. “You’re not serious?”
“I’m totally serious.”
“I’m not trained for this kind of thing,” Brant said. “And like hell will I get permission.”
“Simple: I’ll ask your superior. Oh no wait, he’s probably an enemy agent. Not to worry, I’ll ask his superior. Oh shit — she’s off on a merry adventure of her own.”
“Okay, don’t labour the point. I would have thought that maybe this might be a job for another Shard…?”
“No can do. I can’t pass this back up the chain, because I don’t know if that chain has been compromised. Kages has vital information. He could tear this thing wide open, if we can just get to him in time. There might be people who want him very dead. So no pressure.”
“Shit.”
“As of now, Brant, you’re deputised. You’re a mini-Shard. If there’s any fallout from this, I’ll ensure it comes back to me.”
“Okay.” Brant thought for a moment. “I can probably arrange this, if I call in some favours. You want field agents to meet up with Bel-Ures anyway?”
“Yes, that’s still a good idea; they can get her family to safety. And if you find time, start scouring the network for a man called Herik Pammon. But your main goal — your absolute top priority — is to find Kages.”
“And Bel-Ures herself?”
“I’m going to go for Doctor Bel-Ures. If Branathes has gone to silence her, there won’t be any coming back from that. Who knows what lengths he’s willing to go to.”
“Rather you than me.”
“When you get to Barrabas Fled, don’t take any chances. Avoid contact with the locals, and make sure you wear full environmental protection.”
“What’s the danger?”
“The people there were nuts. Whatever is causing that, we don’t know yet how it spreads.”
“Understood.”
“I’ll send you my digital seal. If you run into any serious problems, it might help to be able to show you’re working for a Shard.”
“You’d really do that?”
“Calm down Brant; it’s just a series of numbers. Doesn’t mean we’re married or anything.”
“Not yet. Should I take Tirrano?”
“If you think doing that will make you safer, sure.”
“I’m just not that wild about going it alone.”
Caden managed a grin. “I sort of hope you don’t live to regret that decision.”
“Oh thanks.”
“In the nicest way possible, of course.”
• • •
Caden had managed to calm himself down for the conversation with Brant. Or maybe it had been the conversation itself that calmed him down; he could not be sure. But the reprieve was now over, that much he knew for certain.
He seethed with building anger as he stomped through the maze-like passageways of Disputer, headed for Eilentes’ quarters.
Throam was laid out across the bunk when he entered. The counterpart was face down, still wearing only his socks and his underpants. The air in the compartment tasted of stale sweat, even with the cyclers turned on.
“You’d better not be asleep, dickhead,” Caden said.
Throam raised his head and squinted back at him. “Head. Pain. Shut up.”
“Don’t tell me to shut up, you massive idiot. What the hell have you been doing?”
“Huh? What have I done now?”
“What did you do to Eilentes?”
“What did I do?”
“Yes, what did you do. Go on; I want to hear it from you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What do you remember?”
“Mibes, then smashing it in the gym, then waking up here with a right bastard behind my eyes.”
“You massive twat.”
“Will you please stop calling me names?”
“No, stupid-bollocks. I won’t. Where is it?”
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 48
