Lucifer's Nebula

by Phipps, C. T.

  Four hundred and seventy-four starfighters by today. Sixteen capital ships I had credit for. Sixty-two partial-kill credit. If it wasn’t a galactic record, it was damn close but that was much the fact the Commonwealth kept deploying its men in wave tactics as anything else. It had also done nothing to prevent Crius from losing the war and may have helped contribute, in some small way, to the vengeance the Commonwealth had taken on us.

  “What was your secret?” Fade asked.

  “Is that a demand for us to continue our business?” I asked, very careful. “There’s nothing else you want to know.”

  “Nothing,” Fade said, clearly not happy with my reticence..

  I sighed. “Be prepared.”

  Fade snorted. “Like the Boy Scouts? That’s not a question.”

  “I’m unfamiliar with that unit,” I said, honestly. “However, the vast majority of conflicts are resolved before the battle takes place. I did my best to make sure that my men were always properly provisioned, had the best equipment available, had as much rest as could be afforded, were trained extensively in every possible scenario I could think of, drilled them hard, and made sure they were familiar with both the capacities of themselves as well as the enemy. I did the same for myself.”

  “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Fade surprised me.

  “Sun Tzu,” I said. “Yes.”

  “We attribute it to Julius Caesar on my world,” Fade said. “Sounds rather boring and doesn’t explain how you racked up so many kills.”

  “I chose my team’s battles whenever possible,” I said. “Always taking those battles I knew we could win. If I could use stealth or overwhelming voice, I did. Many conflicts were won by targeting supplies before battles then crippling the ships so they were forced to surrender.”

  “Seems cowardly,” Fade said.

  I shrugged. “I fought many battles against greater odds, too, especially at the end of the war, but never by choice. War is about depriving the enemy of resources and a death of a thousand cuts is better than a single grandiose victory. It also means fewer casualties.”

  “Except that strategy didn’t work, did it?” Fade said.

  “No,” I said. “It didn’t. They cut the head off the dragon by bombing our homeland into dust. Most of my squadron didn’t make it to the end of the war either. The military kept us in battle versus rotating us out to educate less experienced pilots as was standard. It was propaganda that cost us our lives.”

  “And yet you lived. What would you have done differently, now, with experience?”

  I closed my eyes. “Become a watchmaker. Become a pimp. Become a professional card player. Anything else.”

  Fade nodded. “Pass over the object.”

  “Pass over my letters,” I said, referring to the documentation that would make the Melampus a licensed ship across hundreds of smaller companies with access to much of the border planets’ merchant lanes.

  Fade tapped a holographic display that appeared his wrist. “Done.”

  I checked my ship’s computer network and Judith confirmed he’d done it. I then slipped a small bronze pyramid from my pocket across the table, only for Fade to catch it. “Do you know what it does?”

  “No,” I said. “I think it’s a paperweight to be honest. The Elder Races made it, though, so it fits the criteria you wanted.”

  “Your doppelganger is scouring the universe for anything with even a hint of the Elder Races about them,” Fade said, staring at me. “On this world, you can buy alien artifacts for a decicredit and Elder Race materials are even cheaper because none of it is real. I can’t imagine what he would want with this. It’s not like they ever communicate with the Young Races, let alone humanity.”

  I knew the reason for that. Zoe had researched the Elder Races heavily as part of her desire to determine the secret of Fermi’s Paradox: that for all the fact the galaxy had thousands of sentient species inside it, there should have been millions. The truth was the Elder Races, those dozen or so races that had transcended their physical forms to become beings of pure information with godlike machines, destroyed the vast majority of species.

  They’d been responsible for the Great Collapse and the Galactic Dark Age (somewhat misnamed since it had only applied to humans) for no other reason than they believed humanity was advancing too quickly. Even now, they played games with races from upending their societies with new technology to creating wars to watch them play out. I’d learned that from Judith and was well aware that, at any time, humanity could meet its end in one of their games.

  “Perhaps he wishes to know his enemy,” I said.

  “Then he’s a bigger fool than I thought,” Fade said. “No offense.”

  “Some taken,” I said. “You said there were three tests before you accepted me as a lieutenant in the Consortium.”

  “Yes,” Fade said, continuing to drink Isla’s beverage. “You have to deliver a cargo from the Consortium back to the Ring.”

  “What’s the cargo?”

  “Weapons,” Fade said. “Enough to change the course of the Insurrection.”

  Chapter Four

  “You want us to deal arms,” I said very carefully.

  Fade finished off his drink. “You have a problem with this?”

  “A little bit,” I said, shaking my head. “I came out here to get away from the war.”

  “I thought the Consortium would be neutral in the war,” Isla said, narrowing her eyes.

  “It is,” Fade said, simply. “It will gladly sell any amount of equipment, arms, supplies, and war material to either side of the conflict. Certainly, our whorehouses and drugs are used by both in the spirit of common human interest—or otherwise.”

  “How noble of you,” Isla said, shaking her head and doing a scan of the bottles with her medical wand. “They’re clean.”

  “Please, you think I’d poison you?” Fade said.

  “Yes,” Isla said.

  “Only if I was going to knock you out and turn you over to your enemies, which we’ve established I’m not going to do,” Fade said. “Probably.”

  I lifted the brown bottle and stared at it. “What is it?”

  “Root beer…with alcohol,” Isla said.

  “Sounds ghastly,” I said, taking a drink. “Albeit, I approve of the latter.”

  Isla covered her face in embarrassment. “What exactly is the cargo?”

  “Ibixian’ah’nar missiles, and I’m butchering the name because I don’t have two tongues,” Fade said. “They’re basically barrier busters and can shred through most ship’s shields like they’re nonexistent. The Consortium uses them for their starships and are four or five times as powerful as an equivalent Commonwealth missile. The benefits of alien technology.”

  “How many?” I asked, causing Isla to shoot me a dirty look.

  “Two, two hundred and fifty thousand,” Fade said, chuckling as we both stared. “It’s a fairly easy mission, too, as you just have to venture across the border planets to Community space and pick them up at the rendezvous point. Then deliver them back here and we’ll pass them along to the Free Systems Alliance. A payoff worth millions.”

  “Do you know how many that could kill?” Isla said.

  “A lot of people,” Fade said, shrugging. “Probably not enough to win the war, not by a long shot or even change the course of it but certainly enough to do a lot of damage. The Commonwealth would do well to buy their own, but the Community has them under embargo for weapons importing due to breaking interstellar laws against orbital bombardment.”

  Crius.

  How ironic.

  “How did you get a deal like this?” I asked, wondering what the Consortium sold for such devices.

  “That would be telling,” Fade said. “But the Dragon has his ways. What’
s a common household appliance to them is decades of research to us.”

  I thought about the thousands, of men I’d killed. I had thought the deaths of others for the twin causes of “honor” and “duty” was justified. That any number of men and women as long as they weren’t Crius. I had moved past this attitude. I wasn’t going to become an arms dealer, no matter how much I needed money. This had been a mistake.

  “I suppose we’re not going to be working together, then,” I said dryly.

  Isla smiled.

  Fade raised an eyebrow. “Now you’re testing me.”

  “Am I?” I said. “You had to have known how I’d react. If this is a test, then it is a poor one.”

  “Perhaps,” Fade said. “Or perhaps it is an illustration that those who sit on the fence can expect to be kicked by both sides. You are too important of a figure to be allowed to remain neutral in this conflict.”

  “Am I?” I said sarcastically.

  “I wasn’t referring to you,” Fade said.

  Isla looked confused.

  We didn’t have a chance to discuss the matter further because five individuals wearing plastisteel power armor walked into the room. Their armor was bright crimson and faceless helmets with a chrome sheen. They were each carrying disruptor rifles on their back with fusion pistols holstered at their side. Two, however, were carrying stun spears and one was actually was playing around with a deactivated shock net ball in his hands.

  The effect of these individuals presence in the room was immediate as seemingly half the room immediately got up and waved their finance cards in front of their tables’ kiosk to depart. The other quarter either grabbed their weapons or more slowly started to depart. The men in red armor seemed to pay no attention to them as they showed a holo to the bartender.

  “Should I be worried?” I asked, looking over at Fade.

  The bartender pointed up at our booth.

  “Yes, I should say so,” Fade said, shrugging. “That’s the Hapsburg Blood Clan.”

  “Seriously?” I asked. “They actually call themselves that?”

  “You don’t develop a fearsome reputation in the border planets if you call yourself the Fluffy Bunny Patrol.”

  “Really?” I asked, looking at him sideways. “Because I’d think anyone who calls themselves that fears nothing.”

  “Cute,” Fade said, rising from his chair. “Of course, you realize that I will not be able to protect you since you’ve chosen to not become part of the Consortium.”

  “Yes,” Isla said, “I’m also sure you had nothing to do with their extraordinarily convenient timing.”

  Fade stared at me. “The Dragon doesn’t like you. I don’t know why. However, you’ll note that he may be in charge, but he’s not king.”

  That was an interesting statement.

  “We should go,” I muttered.

  “You think?” Isla said, reaching down for her pistol.

  I, meanwhile, activated my personal shield after standing myself. “Hopefully they won’t attempt to attack us in a public place.”

  I was very quickly dissuaded of that statement by one of the Hapsburg Blood Gang pointing at me with a fusion rifle and shouting, “She’s got accompaniment! Blast him!”

  Wait, what?

  Isla pushed me to the ground as she threw herself under the table and started firing back at the Blood Gang soldiers. Fade himself only barely got out of the way even as they began firing at him too. He would have been cut down quickly by the weapons but for the fact his personal shield worked fine and absorbed no less than three blasts. Most would have buckled under one, but his remained a soft white aura around his body.

  Attacking Fade also brought his bodyguards into the fight as they started unloading from the other side of the tavern, causing the Hapsburgs to unload on them as well. Their armor, if not Durandal-class level, was powerful and absorbed the Consortium soldiers’ fire as well as our own. Illustrating just how few fucks they gave about collateral damage, one of the Hapsburgs hurled his shock net ball at Fade’s bodyguards before it expanded to cover three of them.

  The shock net proceeded to squeeze them all together before delivering a lethal charge of electricity, causing the men to scream as their shields burned out before their bodies were fried execution style.

  “Dammit!” Fade shouted, running behind some of the booths beneath us for cover. “Those men were expensive.”

  He was shooting at them, though even as other members of the tavern had joined into the fray, either shooting to cover their escape or because they thought their lives were in danger. The Hapsburgs fired indiscriminately into the crowd and I wondered I could get away. It took only a second to realize that, yes, I could, but only if I abandoned Isla.

  So I drew my sword and ran out screaming, jumping at the Hapsburgs.

  “Crius!” I shouted, coming down on them as they all turned their attention to me.

  Yeah, maybe I should have stuck to piloting.

  I managed to survive my stupid ill-timed charge by Isla blasting one of the Hapsburgs’ rifles as it aimed at me, causing him to fall backwards and throw his fellow soldiers off their game. I landed in the middle of them and swung my proton sword through the closest one, cutting off his arms, as the weapon’s barrier was strong enough to cut through their shield-covered armor. The man, or woman, inside screamed with an electronically altered voice as wires sparked out of their cybernetic limbs before I stabbed another through the neck.

  I was still half-drunk, or I might have come up with a better plan other than ripping out the blade and slashing again and again but my attempt on the third of the Hapsburgs met a shock spear hardened enough to block my blow. I was so surprised by that, its owner pushed me back then delivered a power armor-enhanced kick to my stomach that sent me flying back into the booth behind me. It was like being hit by a ground transport going thirty kilometers per hour and if I’d not been enhanced at birth, I probably would have numerous busted ribs.

  Actually, I still might.

  “You killed my sister!” the Hapsburg shouted, charging at me as he tossed aside his shock spear and pulled out an electron knife.

  I didn’t much care for that sudden moment of humanization even as the five hundred-pound armored soldier threw himself on me and my personal shield. Even with all my enhancements, I couldn’t hold off someone wearing strength enhanced power armor so I futilely struggled to keep the knife from my face as I came down lower and lower toward my eye. So I dropped my resistance and moved my head to one side, resulting in the knife slamming into the table beside me.

  That gave me a single second to grab my pistol from its holster and place it against the side of the Hapsburg soldier’s head, pulling the trigger. The point-blank shot went through one end of his head and out the other. The armored body then collapsed on top of me, forcing me to push off the corpse even as combat was still going on around me.

  Which suddenly stopped.

  Sitting up and clutching my ribs, I saw the remaining two Hapsburgs were on the ground, a hole in each of their chests that looked like something had torn through their armor like fusion blasts through cloth. Fade was standing over them while Isla was walking down the steps carrying an Ares Armaments 51B Assassins Rifle. It was an anti-material kinetic gravity shell weapon used to take out tanks and kineti-transports. It was also about her size and looked somewhat comical in her arms.

  I wasn’t complaining, though.

  “Where the hell did you get that?” I asked, looking around.

  Isla shrugged. “Once I figured out my gun wasn’t going to do the trick, I rabbited from my position and looked for something better. One of the mercs on the ground had this.”

  “His name was Davis,” Fade said, sighing. “He was a good friend.”

  “Can I keep it?” Isla asked.

  Fade glared at her then laughed. “Sure, I suppose he’d like that.”

  “Good,” Isla said, looking over it. “I’ll have to add it to the collection.”
<
br />   The bartender, meanwhile, slowly lifted his head up from behind the counter before looking around the carnage. The Hapsburgs had killed almost a dozen patrons and shot up the place good, having relied on their armor to make themselves immune to reprisal. It had almost worked, and I wondered if that was standard operating procedure in the core.

  “Fade, I’m sorry, I didn’t know they’d—” The bartender started to say.

  Fade lifted his pistol and shot him.

  I glared at him. “That was murder.”

  “It was, wasn’t it?” Fade said. “Hopefully, the next bartender will understand the importance of the sentence: ‘No, I haven’t seen them.’”

  I couldn’t argue with that. Why were they after Isla? I started looking through the pockets of their belts, hoping to find a databook or infopad. There was five-year-old infopad on the one who’d come after me with an electron knife. It was, of course, locked, but all the major companies kept exploits for the Watchers and other secret services to access.

  “Judith, could you access the contents of this?” I asked.

  “Oh, are you letting me into this conversation now?” Judith asked through my private comm. “I thought you were ignoring me while you got into a gunfight.”

  “Not the time,” I said.

  “I’m accessing it now,” Judith said. “Besides, I suspect Isla is about to read you the riot act.”

  I doubted that. Isla knew the score better than Judith.

  “Cassius, what the hell were you thinking?” Isla said. “Did you seriously just charge at a bunch of gun-wielding mercs with a sword!?”

  “It worked, didn’t it?” I said, shrugging.

  “That’s not the point,” Isla said.

  “It kind of is,” Fade said, crossing his arms.

  Isla aimed the sniper rifle at him, carrying it in a manner no ordinary human strength would allow.

  Fade turned to me and put on a mock serious face. “That was very foolish of you, Colonel-Count.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I said, accessing the infopad’s contents. “The nation I held that rank in doesn’t exist anymore and good riddance.”