“What the fuck is that?”
“A Shaeld Hratha,” said Caden. “Probably. We might be the first people to actually see one.”
“I feel privileged,” she said.
“Seriously though, we do need your help. Plus a couple of Tankers, and as many MAGA people as we still have.”
“Why?”
“We have a whole lot of other specimens to recover.”
“Specimens?”
“Eggs, Euryce. They’ve been dropping eggs. We just got a break.”
“How is that a ‘break’? And don’t make an egg joke or I swear I will punch you in the throat.”
“If these are Shaeld eggs, then we have specimens of both ends of their life cycle. Imagine what we could learn from them.”
Although she was no biologist, Eilentes had to admit he had a point. She linked to Daxon and asked him to provide some assistance.
“No worries. You got some guys on the way, I’ll ask Feior to send a couple of his fellas over to you too. There is something you and Caden need to be aware of.”
“What’s that?”
“One of those stolen fleets jumped into the system about an hour ago. It took them a while to get positioned, but they’re duking it out now with our task force.”
“Any idea who’s winning?”
“Not really getting much in the way of tactical updates, but from what I’ve overheard so far it sounds like a close-run thing. Those Rasas don’t seem to care much one way or the other if they get to fight another day.”
“Thanks. I’ll let Caden know.”
When she turned back to the hatch, Caden was placing two more eggs on the ground.
“Are those going to survive outside?”
“Who knows,” said Caden.
“Daxon says the task force is now fighting one of those stolen fleets. Looks like you were right.”
“I did try to tell them,” Caden sighed. “What’s the bet they called for dreadship reinforcements before they jumped in?”
“There’s nothing Fleet could have done to prevent that.”
“Guess so. At least this time we brought plenty of ships to begin with.”
MAGA troops began to arrive, Bro and Norskine amongst them, and Caden guided them to the entrance.
“In there,” he said. “You’ll see Bruiser down the corridor; he’ll show you where to go. Easiest to make a chain I guess. Any Tankers coming?”
“There.”
Eilentes pointed to four hulking silhouettes emerging from the fog.
“Follow those guys,” Caden told them. “Bruiser’s got some heavy loads for you to shift.”
“Heavy loads?” Eilentes asked.
“Two more of those.”
Caden gestured towards the slumped body of the dead Shaeld. Without knowing why, Eilentes shuddered. The creature was sinfully ugly by human standards — that much was true — but in all fairness she had to acknowledge she had seen much worse during her travels across the galaxy. But something about the lifeless body of the Shaeld Hratha made her skin crawl, made the hairs on the nape of her neck stand on end.
Occupy your mind, she thought.
“Anything I can do?”
“Start getting the others to lift the eggs as they come out? Other than that, not really. Unless you want to go organise our bugout with Feior?”
“I’d rather not,” she said.
“Problem?”
“I think in his own way, he’s trying to woo me.”
Caden chuckled into his link.
“It’s not funny, Caden. You really think I need that kind of attention right now?”
Even she was not sure where the anger in her voice came from.
“Sorry. No, you’re right. Want me to tell him to back off?”
“It’s okay. I can handle myself.”
“It’s him handling you I’m worried about.”
“Well if he’s mysteriously shot in the balls, you’ll know what happened.”
— 10 —
Poster Child
Euryce crouched next to Papa, watching intently while he loaded shot. Even at the tree line, the grasses beside them reached just above their heads, screening them from the rest of the meadow and the banks of the river beyond.
“Are you watching?”
“Yes Papa.”
“Good. Now, what did I tell you about the choke on this?”
“It’s improved modified?”
“Well remembered. But what does that actually mean?”
“The same shot will… go farther?”
“Excellent, Eury, really very good.”
Euryce smiled at Papa. She did not particularly like the shotgun he was teaching her to use, but she was happy that her answer pleased him. They had been spending a lot of time together in the meadows, and she was treasuring every moment of it.
“Choke is more complicated than that,” he said. “But with enough experience you’ll get the hang of it.”
She smiled a smile of obligation. More experience with the dreaded shotgun was not really what she wanted. As much as she enjoyed these trips, she had hoped that she might be allowed to use one of Papa’s more definitive, less archaic weapons.
“Now, let’s think about game.”
Euryce perked up. Birds she knew. Birds she could talk about for hours. She was the only child in her class who had been able to name every one of the Terran species which had been introduced successfully to Kementhast Prime, as well as listing the causes of the other species’ various failures to adapt. She had won a treat for that day’s work.
“You choose,” said Papa.
They stood quietly and she looked around. She was not yet experienced enough to realise that if Papa had brought particular shot, then he already had particular prey in mind.
“There.”
She pointed across the meadow, towards the far bank of the river. Amongst the twisted loops of roots which dipped into the water from the edge of the tree line, a tall, grey and white bird stalked elegantly through the shallows.
“No, Eury. That’s a heron. We don’t shoot herons. Try again.”
She adopted a look of fierce concentration.
“We’re at the edge of woodland, not far from a river. What would you expect to find?”
She chewed the inside of her lip thoughtfully, then her face lit up.
“Pheasants?”
“Exactly! We definitely shoot pheasants. Totally different matter.”
Euryce wondered what the difference was between the pheasants and the heron.
“How do we find the pheasants, Eury?”
“With a dog?”
“Usually, yes,” said Papa. “And why is that?”
“Because they make them fly up in the air.”
“And…?”
Euryce thought for a moment.
“And bring them back.”
“Shame we don’t have a dog, isn’t it?”
Euryce nodded in enthusiastic agreement, although she knew her motives for wanting a dog were really very different to his.
“Are we going to shoot anything?”
She looked up at him, hoping for the answer to be ‘no’. Everything about the shotgun made her anxious; the noise, the feel of a minor explosion so very close to her, the smell of it afterwards.
“What did I do just a few minutes ago?”
“Um, you loaded the shot, Papa.”
“What’s the only reason to load a gun?”
She looked around, dragged the toe of her shoe across the ground.
“Come on, you know this one. It’s the first thing I taught you.”
“Because… you intend to use it?”
“Bravo.”
She smiled again, this time with much less feeling.
“Let’s go for a walk.”
He gestured for her to start off ahead of him, and moved the shotgun to a two-handed carry, the muzzle pointing up past his shoulder. He followed her down the trail into the woods.
; “It’s getting cold,” she said, after a while.
“We’re under the canopy,” said Papa.
Euryce had hoped that the weather was changing, and Papa might be convinced to go home. Nothing she loved about these excursions — the fun they often had in the time they spent together, the almost grown-up conversations — was going to happen while they were stalking silently through the trees in single file.
But Papa was not interested in the change in temperature. He had an explanation for it, just as he had an explanation for all of the minor obstacles they usually faced, and his tone told her he meant for both of them to go on regardless.
Papa stopped dead in his tracks, and Euryce turned around to tell him to ‘come on’. He pressed a finger to his lips and she remained silent, her lips still forming the beginnings of a word.
Papa pointed over to their left, and Euryce peered into the trees.
Not too far away from them there was a gap in the canopy, where full daylight reached the ground. Flowering plants and a few small bushes had capitalised on the otherwise unexploited energy, covering the ground in the space between the trees.
And on their side of the bushes, three pheasants were pecking at the ground.
Two of them she knew were females; their dull, mottled brown colours were a dead giveaway. The third, with his long, streaked tail feathers and golden plumage, was undoubtedly a male. She watched the light glint off his green and purple markings as he fussed his way through the leaf litter.
Papa moved over to her, slowly and quietly, and placed the shotgun into her hands. She looked at it reproachfully.
He helped her position it properly, moving her hands for her, shifting the position of the stock.
Euryce resisted passively, pretending that the firearm was too much for her.
“Come on, Eury,” Papa whispered. “It’s only seven kilos. You’re not a little girl any more; you’re eleven.”
She sensed from his tone that he had seen through her subterfuge. Although the shotgun was an awkward shape for her, it was true that she could lift it quite easily.
“Take your time aiming, and don’t fire until you’re ready,” Papa murmured.
Euryce nodded.
“Ready?”
“What’s going to happen?” She whispered.
“I’m going to make them fly into the air, and then you try and shoot one.”
She closed her eyes, squeezed them tight, then opened them again. Tiny golden points danced across her vision. This was not what she wanted to do.
Papa clapped his hands together once, his curved palms slapping against each other with a PLAP which seemed to Euryce to fill the woods.
The birds launched into the air, a frantic fluttering of feathers, and the shotgun snapped. Leaves shivered and tore.
“Did you do that deliberately, Euryce?” Papa asked.
“It kicked me,” she said.
“I was watching, Eury. It did not kick you at all. You pulled your own aim, didn’t you?”
She said nothing.
“Why did you do that?”
“Birds are supposed to fly,” Euryce said. “I don’t want to shoot them down while they’re flying.”
Papa stared at her for a moment, and she saw his annoyance melt into amusement.
“As you wish,” he said. He took the firearm from her.
“Can we go home now?” She asked.
“Yes, fine. Let’s go. I suppose there is no point making you do something you don’t want to do.”
She smiled at him, and they started walking again. He moved the gun to an elbow carry, away from the side she walked on.
“I’m sorry, Eury; I thought you enjoyed these lessons.”
“Oh I do, Papa,” she said. “But not killing birds. And not the shotgun.”
“What’s wrong with the Winchester?”
He sounded as though his feelings were hurt, but Euryce knew this was not the case. It was not even a Winchester, not really. Even she knew it was a BromCon reproduction, the 101R Type-T. Anyone could afford BromCon.
“It just doesn’t feel right,” she said.
They continued to walk through the woods, with Papa deciding the route. She took it on faith that he was taking them in the general direction of Villium. For all she knew, they were getting farther from home all the time.
It was almost another half an hour before she saw it. She grabbed Papa’s wrist and squeezed.
“Wha—?” He said.
He stopped making noise when he saw what she was pointing at, and dropped to one knee.
A full-grown doe lifted her head high, and gazed in their general direction. Her black nose glistened, her eyes stayed fixed dead ahead, an ear twitched. After a moment, she returned to her grazing.
Euryce reached out towards the shotgun, and patted Papa on the arm.
He shook his head.
She insisted.
“No,” he whispered. “All wrong. It will just hurt her.”
Euryce pulled her hand back.
The doe started, sprang to one side, then ran off into the woods.
“She was beautiful,” said Euryce.
Papa looked at her with his puzzled face. She did not often see the puzzled face.
“But you wanted to shoot her?”
“Oh Papa, everyone knows deer are vermin,” she said.
“Where did you pick that up?”
“At school,” she said. “There aren’t enough things to eat them. People shouldn’t have brought them here.”
He smiled. “My clever little girl.”
They set off again, Papa still carrying the shotgun. After a period of thoughtful silence, he looked down at her and placed his hand on her back.
“If you are quite happy to shoot vermin, then you’re going to need to become familiar with a completely different sort of firearm.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You do mean rifles, don’t you?”
“That’s right,” he said.
Yes!
• • •
With a skip, and a hop, and a skip-skip-hop, Euryce wound her way back home through the streets of friendly Villium. Papa was so good at pretending that he could keep up; he almost looked as though he enjoyed plodding after her.
She knew that he was secretly tired, but so long as he was making an effort to hide it she was quite happy to continue her exultant homeward dance.
He was some distance behind her by the time she reached the short flight of stairs to their front door. Jumping up the steps one by one, with her feet together, she reached the top and whirled around to look over the heads of the people passing by. Papa was still halfway down the road. Slowcoach!
The door opened behind her.
“Eury?”
Euryce turned around to find Lasan holding the door open, her narrow face frozen in a mask of worry and remorse.
“What’s wrong?” Euryce said.
“Oh Eury. Go through.”
Euryce entered the house, removed her shoes, and followed the sounds from the family room. She heard the voice of a news anchor relating solemn details.
As she entered she saw both Mama and Brex, their eyes glued to the house holo. Mama had covered her own mouth with both hands.
“What is it?”
“Shh,” said Brex. “He’s saying now.”
Euryce looked at the holo. Behind the anchor was a picture-in-picture, and it took her a moment to work out what she was looking at. White streaks on a black background, bright flashes and flares, shaking and rolling.
Gun camera footage. It was something about the war.
“This is the last transmission received from any ship in the carrier group,” said the anchor. “At zero-nine-thirty hours exactly, standard time, this fighter turns back towards its parent ship and records its demise.”
Just as he had said, the camera view wheeled around to reveal a command vessel, burning in the black of space. Euryce had seen enough Perseus conflict f
ootage on the news to know that the great ship was very heavily damaged.
Something out of frame was still firing on it, shot after shot after shot.
“Once again; these are the last moments of the carrier Gather In Thy Fellows, ambushed at Capita Munduras and lost with all hands. We salute the brave men and women who fought in her, and extend our deepest sympathies to the families and loved ones they left behind.”
The carrier was now breaking apart, her shattered hull sloughing off in ragged sections. Explosions tore through her superstructure, globules of air and flame blooming in the blackness. Something small and fast approached from the top of the picture, curved towards the drive section, and then the screen registered only whiteness.
“But… that’s…” Euryce said.
Mama looked at her, her mouth still covered, and shook her head in slow disbelief.
“I wish she hadn’t seen that, Mai.” Papa had come in behind her. She had not even heard him enter. “We could have told her later.”
“I didn’t know you were back,” said Mama.
“That was…”
Euryce’s mind struggled to reconcile what she had just witnessed. It could not be true, it just couldn’t.
The Fellows was where Roima Gotharom’s bird roosted.
“Where is Roima?” Euryce asked. “Where is she?”
“She’s dead,” said Brex.
“Brex!” Mama shouted. “Be quiet. Let your father explain it.”
“I don’t know what happened, do I? I just came in.”
“It’s fairly self-evident, Westry.”
“You’ve seen the whole thing.”
A wave of dizziness hit Euryce. She felt as though she had gone on holiday to a strange land with a friend who spoke the language fluently. But that friend had wandered away without her, and now nothing anyone around her said seemed to make any sense. She could barely take it any more. The nonsense, the clamour, the pointlessness, the horrible talk talk talk.
Euryce screamed.
Papa’s hands came down upon her shoulders, but she shrugged them away and ran from the room. She hurtled through the house until she reached her own room, burst through the door, and threw herself on the bed.
Two Roima Gotharoms smiled down on her; one an inspirational aerial acrobat, the other a chiseled poster child; older and wiser.
Euryce stared at the second poster through bleary, tear-filled eyes. That same poster she had made Mama get for her from the crisply dressed recruiters who came to town almost three Solars ago, riding on the coat-tails of Roima’s surprise enlistment. That same poster she had proudly stuck to the wall after her hero decided to retrain, to go fight alongside all those other brave men and women struggling for humanity on the Perseus arm. That same poster which had made her feel as though the fight against the Viskr meant something immediate and real to the people living on Kementhast Prime.
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 77
