The Fall of Valdek

by P. L. Nealen

  Scalas put a boot on Dravot’s thigh and hitched himself up, grabbing the ladder above Powell with one hand as he lifted his other leg to put his foot on Dravot’s shoulder pauldron. Once again, the armor’s articulation would take most of the weight off of the men themselves.

  With a heave, Scalas hauled himself up, pushing the hatch overhead open with the still-warm muzzle of his powergun.

  The cockpit had fared less well from the blasts than it had initially appeared. It was a wreck. The acceleration couches had been torn from their mounts and thrown against the overhead. The deck was perforated where shrapnel had sleeted through it from the HV missile warheads.

  He shoved with his powergun’s muzzle, and the hatch fell open with a dull clunk. Then he put his other foot on the remains of the ladder and heaved himself up to where he could grab the lip with one hand, keeping his powergun ready in the other. It took some scrambling, but then he was up through the hatch and in the cockpit.

  He lowered his powergun. He would not need it.

  Three of the four yeheri in the cockpit were clearly dead, their mangled corpses leaking orange blood on the consoles and the shattered deck. One had a gaping exit wound at the top of its head; it seemed that a fragment had been propelled up through its body from below. The jagged chunk of metal was embedded in the overhead, dripping rapidly drying blood.

  The fourth was badly wounded, but still alive. “Dravot!” he called down the hatch. “Tell Medic Forster to be ready. We have a prisoner, but he is in a bad way.”

  As he got closer, keeping his powergun ready, he saw that the yeheri was actually a female. That was not unknown, particularly among the yeheri pirate bands. They might have been large compared to Century XXXII, but they were still relatively small as fighting forces went, and most of the pirates were roving packs of exiles. Some received some sponsorship and support from various yeheri worlds and organizations; some of the “pirate bands” were actually fighting units from yeheri worlds. These did not appear to be the latter, however. Just outcasts, greedy or proud enough to attack anyone else to take what they wanted. Or needed. None of their equipment seemed to be in the greatest of repair.

  Any sympathy for their poverty was wiped away when they turned pirate, however. Scalas looked down at the bleeding yeheri woman, looking for traps or weapons, before he slung his powergun and bent to lift her from the buckled deck, to lower her down to the Brothers below.

  ***

  Forster was identifiable by the dark red cross on his shoulder pauldron and the bigger medical bag he carried. He wouldn’t have much for a yeheri; some things, like bandages, direct pressure, and the like, translated across species. Some things were just constructed for certain physiologies, and it was impossible to have supplies for every race that might be encountered in even one small sector of the galaxy.

  He was still doing his best to patch the yeheri woman up, though. She appeared to be catatonic, though she occasionally moaned as pressure was put on one or another of her wounds. Even without Forster’s grim prognosis, Scalas could see that she probably did not have long.

  The yeheri was lying on the deck of the destroyed troop compartment, while Forster worked on her by the light of two powerful handheld lights that he had clipped to his shoulders. There really was little he could do there, in large part because Iabreton II’s atmosphere was as inimical to yeheri physiology as it was to human or ekuz. The yeheri woman’s suit was compromised, but her helmet was still feeding her enough oxygen to stay alive. Which meant that it could not be removed then and there without killing her.

  The shapes of humans and ekuz appeared in the hatchway. Half a dozen or so Quarisian militiamen were standing there, weapons in their hands. Scalas turned to face them.

  “So, there iz one left,” one of the ekuz said, scuttling forward, a coilgun in his hands. “Well, that will be eazy enough to remedy.”

  Scalas stepped forward and blocked the Quarisian’s way. “No,” he said.

  The Quarisian looked up at him in surprise. “It’z a pirate,” he said reasonably. “Why are you protecting it?”

  “Because she is wounded and likely to die,” Scalas rumbled. He stood nearly half a head taller than the ekuz, and his armored bulk was intimidating even without the powergun in his hands. “Are you the magistrate?”

  “No,” the Quarisian replied, a note of puzzlement in his voice. “Magiztrate Hozkinz waz killed in the initial attack. We have not elected a new one yet.”

  “Then you do not have the authority to execute this woman,” Scalas said. “The battle is over; this is no longer a matter of warfare. It is a matter of law.” He stepped closer, looming over the Quarisian militiaman. “Even summary executions must be carried out by lawful authority,” he growled. “If anyone here has that authority, it is me. Were I to let you kill her, it would be murder.” He let a small bit of dark amusement creep into his voice. “Then I would be obligated to take steps against you.”

  “You can’t do this,” a human voice protested from the hatchway. It might have been the same man who had nearly gotten himself killed running across the open ground to the Brothers’ position overlooking this very lander. “This isn’t your world. They didn’t attack you.”

  “Which fact is utterly immaterial,” Cobb snapped, stepping up beside his Centurion. “We are bound by the Code, and the Code says that we protect the weak and defenseless. And if not for us, you would be dead or groveling at the feet of a yeheri slave trader right now.” Acid dripped from his voice. “Besides, how do you propose to take her away from us?”

  “Who do you think you are?” another Quarisian demanded.

  “Who are we?” Scalas thundered. “We are the Caractacan Brotherhood. We are the men who came to your rescue without regard for reward. We sacrificed nine of our Brothers to save your colony from these pirates. And now you dare to question our Code, and get angry at us because we will not step aside and let you take revenge on a helpless, wounded prisoner?”

  The ekuz stepped back nervously. The Brothers gathered around the troop compartment, as well as those outside, stood ready, powerguns in their hands.

  “By all means,” Scalas continued, lowering his voice, “find a magistrate to render judgement. But do not expect me to stand aside for a mob.”

  “A magistrate would be too late, anyway,” Forster announced, rising to his feet. “She’s gone.”

  Scalas did not move, but continued to stare at the ekuz in front of him. His expression was invisible behind his visor, but his narrow vision slit, in the faceless bulk of his armor was far more intimidating than even his physical presence might have been. The chameleonic coating had shifted to a mottled, scarred gray and black inside the wreckage of the lander, making him a towering, broad-shouldered specter with a still-warm powergun in his gauntleted hands.

  “Stand down, you idiots,” another voice called, amplified by an external speaker. A man in ancient space armor, though still painted in the same orange and white as the rest Quarisian militia’s spacesuits, stalked up the ramp, shoving a few of the militiamen out of his way. He shouldered past the ekuz and turned to face him, turning his back on Scalas. “Po’ulu, I know you’re not stupid enough to try to go toe-to-toe with a Caractacan, even if they hadn’t just pulled us out of the fire. I trained you better than that.” His face hidden by his helmet, he still made it clear that he was looking around at the rest of the group. “I trained all of you better than that. Now get your butts back to the staging area and report in to Sergeant Traynor. We’ve got a lot of cleanup to do, and we’ve still got people missing.”

  The man stood there, his hands on his hips, giving every indication that he was glaring at his subordinates, as the militiamen reluctantly turned away and headed down the ramp. Only once they were gone did the man turn to face Scalas.

  He was armed with a coilgun that was at least as old as the armor. It appeared to have been wired up to a jury-rigged power pack on top of his sustainment pack with a thick cable; the attachabl
e power packs must have run out at some point.

  “My apologies, Centurion,” he said, in Trade Cant. “It’s been a rough few days. The men are…rather ragged.”

  “Apology accepted,” Scalas said. “I trust we can expect no further such incidents?”

  “Of course,” the man replied. “I will make sure of it. The loss of Magistrate Hoskins has been a shock, but we are getting things back together. I am Captain Agalan Voss, acting commander of the Iabreton II Militia. I would like to formally thank you, and assure you that there will be no more such breaches in discipline.” He turned slightly toward the plain outside. “I wish that we could offer you more in the way of thanks, but we have a great deal of rebuilding to do before we could begin to repay you.”

  “Repayment is neither necessary nor desired, Captain,” Scalas said. “As I said, we are the Caractacan Brotherhood. We only followed the Code. The only thing we ask is a place to bury our fallen Brothers.”

  Voss nodded slowly. “You will have it,” he said. “And when we are able, I promise that there will be a monument erected there; a monument that will last a thousand years.”

  “If you so desire,” Scalas said, as he began to walk down the twisted wreckage of the lander’s ramp. He glanced upward, to see the drive flare of the Dauntless as it made its orbital insertion burn, the last of the yeheri ships having either fled or been destroyed. “We shall conduct the burials and be on our way.”

  Chapter 3

  The Brotherhood’s Avar Sector Keep was built into a mountain on the fourth moon of Kaletonan, a super-Jovian gas giant and the third planet in the Tokanan system, twelve parsecs from Iabreton. Unlike Iabreton II, Kaletonan IV had a breathable atmosphere, and its own ecosystem. The Dauntless descended toward the massive landing pads cleared out of the red-orange vegetation on a pillar of blue-white fire, her massive landing struts already stretching out to her flanks. In the distance, a herd of the local quadrupeds dashed away through the waving, chest-high grasses, fleeing the thunder of the descending starship.

  The thunder slowly descended to a dull rumble, and finally faded away as the Dauntless came to rest on her jacks. Steam billowed from the landing pad, as the cooling systems desperately tried to dissipate the heat of the drive plume. For a brief time, the area around the starship’s base was uninhabitable by anything not heavily shielded.

  Scalas stood with Mor and the rest of his Squad Sergeants in the antechamber above the descent pod. Grounded at the Sector Keep, they were no longer in armor, but wore their white tunics and black trousers, the badge of the Brotherhood pinned at each man’s left shoulder. They were not unarmed; each carried a sidearm in an impeccably shined leather holster at his hip.

  As decorative as the holsters might appear, close inspection would reveal telltale signs of wear, the kind of wear that comes from hard use. Neither the holsters nor the pistols inside them were purely for decoration.

  Without his armor and helmet, Scalas still cut an impressive figure. Not a millimeter below two meters tall, he had a close-cropped shock of reddish hair, an angular face burned dark brown by many suns, and a short, neatly pointed beard ever so slightly darker than the hair on his head. His eyes, half-hidden behind a semi-permanent squint and a mass of fine crow’s feet, were black, and could quickly turn to icy-cold chips of obsidian when he was angered.

  Cobb stood next to him, slightly taller, significantly heavier, and considerably darker. His eyes were a pale blue so light that they made him look like a madman when he stared. His hair was a blond so light it was almost white.

  On the other side of Cobb stood Kahane, nearly as wide as he was tall, his skin almost as pale as his tunic. He was rocking a little on the balls of his feet; “low” gravity—meaning that which was comfortable for most of his comrades—tended to make the young Squad Sergeant fidgety.

  Slowly, the pad’s cooling system brought the pad itself and the surrounding atmosphere down to temperatures that were survivable for an unarmored human. Only once the indicator above the hatch to the descent car turned green did the small leadership contingent of the Dauntless and Century XXXII enter the car to start down to the surface.

  The outer hatch irised open, and the car pushed out to its descent rail, before smoothly starting down toward the ground. It hummed slightly, and the armored transparencies revealed the full glory of the moon’s surface in the early morning.

  The sun, a yellow dwarf edging toward orange, was rising over the shoulder of the mountain where the Avar Sector Keep was ensconced. Its rays gleamed off three more towering, tapered starships sitting on their tails on more distant pads, as well as off the shining pinnacle of the Keep itself. Mingled with the yellow light of the sun was the reddish-purple reflection of Kaletonan, where it loomed over the horizon opposite the sun, filling nearly a third of the sky.

  Two hoversleds were rapidly approaching the pad from the Keep, the howl of their fans dimly audible even through the armor surrounding the descent car. These weren’t armored cavalry sleds; they were sleeker, lighter civilian models; Juaran Ibexes shipped from Otaiho, nearly two parsecs away. They were expensive, but the Brotherhood had no civilian vehicle manufacturing of its own.

  The Caractacan Brotherhood’s business was war.

  The descent car reached the bottom of the rail, the starship’s massive drive bells looming and smoking overhead, and came to a smooth, almost imperceptible, stop. The car was designed so that it could descend as fast as a dropship, under fire. But here at the Keep, that was unnecessary.

  The outer hatch opened, and Scalas led the way out, Mor following behind before the Squad Sergeants fell in. Mor was actually the senior by nearly a year, but he was a starship captain. Here on the ground, the Centurion took precedence in leadership.

  The sleds’ doors opened, and two younger men in gray novice tunics stepped out. They had to be nearing the end of their five-year novitiate; only senior novices were assigned honor guard duties. The rest were deep in study and training, learning the arts of war and the philosophy of the Code as finely as possible before they would be allowed to don the tunic and armor of a full-fledged Caractacan Brother.

  The first novice saluted stiffly, raising his immaculate BR-18 to present-arms. “Welcome back, Centurion,” he said, his voice slightly raspy. The man’s scars suggested that he had seen heavy action in whatever planetary defense force he had come from before joining the Brotherhood. Few men joined the Brotherhood without experience. “Legate Kranjick is awaiting your report in the Keep.”

  Scalas returned the novice’s salute gravely, lifting his sidearm in front of his face. He well remembered his own novitiate, and not only refused to condescend to the less-experienced soldiers, but strictly forbade his men doing so, as well. Volscius, of course, often skated the ragged edge of disobeying that mandate, but Volscius was a problem for other reasons.

  The Brotherhood officers climbed into the two sleds, which then rose fractionally off the pavement, spun on roaring air cushions, and sped toward the distant Keep. The pads were far from the habitation sections of the Keep and its environs for good reason.

  Scalas sat in his seat, his arms folded, watching the plains speed by out his window. Much of this part of the moon was grassland, fading to forest on the flanks of the inert volcano where the Keep was perched. The Keep itself stood above the treeline; the forest was far too dense and the vegetation too iron-hard to clear efficiently. It could be done, certainly, but without using a starship’s drive to do it, it had been considered not worth the effort.

  A path had been cleared for the road leading from the landing pads. It needed nearly constant upkeep; the tangled mass of the red and orange-foliated forest did not grow quickly, but constantly buckled and strained the ground with its root system. Some said that the entire forest shared a single root system; that it was basically a single tree draped around the flanks of the mountain.

  Scalas did not know. Someday, he might have the time to indulge his curiosity and investigate the matter. There
were surely scholars living in the Keep who had studied the forest enough to know.

  He listened with mostly detached attention to the low conversation behind him, in the hoversled’s main passenger compartment. Kahane and Solanus were debating about some new sport that was coming from Wesalia. Scalas was not familiar with it, but it seemed to involve some combination of racing, sparring, and goal-scoring.

  “Dershod’s certainly got the endurance,” Kahane was saying, “but he’s never going to be able to go as long as Ikkaa.”

  “Of course he won’t,” Solanus replied, exasperated. Solanus was the youngest Squad Sergeant in the Century, and usually was fairly reticent to venture his opinion on most things. Sports seemed to be the one safe subject in his mind, which was probably why Kahane had started in on it. “A human will never be able to match a tehud for staying power. It’s a matter of two legs versus four. No one’s disputing that. But Dershod’s more agile; he can get around obstacles faster.”

  “Maybe.” Kahane didn’t sound convinced. “What do you think, Kunn?”

  Kunn, the third Squad Sergeant in the sled, said nothing. Scalas glanced in the rear-view mirror on his side, where he could just see in the passenger window behind him. Kunn, his narrow face the slightly grayish color that was characteristic of Nostrics, was sitting stiffly in his seat, his curiously blank, deep blue eyes fixed on nothing.

  Scalas watched the Squad Sergeant for a moment, his own dark eyes briefly narrowing as he regarded the strange man. Kunn was an excellent soldier; he would never have reached the rank of Squad Sergeant otherwise. But there was something vaguely off about him, a blankness that bothered many. It bothered Scalas, on a level he could never quite put his finger on. But Kunn had never acted inappropriately for his rank or his position. He just made his comrades wonder. No man could really be that…robotic.