by Dan Koboldt
“I’m sorry. It seems we’ll both be going home empty-handed.”
“Perhaps we don’t have to.”
“Oh? What did you have in mind?”
“If we can’t settle on an economic partnership, what about a strategic one?”
“A military alliance?” His brow furrowed. “For what purpose?”
“To combine our strength, should a common enemy threaten either of us.”
“Why would you ask such a thing now, when we’re at peace?”
“Let’s call it an overabundance of caution.”
He did not smile at her clever little joke. “Do you know something that we don’t?”
“We have our suspicions of things that are happening in Felara. There are reports of an army. Well-trained and moving southward.”
“Felara’s a long way from here.”
“A long way as the wine trains go. A much shorter way if one travels by sea.”
“Is that why you called all of your ships home?”
“It’s one of the reasons.” Other things, like the census, were just a flash of Richard’s inspiration. “If these invaders come south, they will find Valteron no easy harvest.”
“How comforting for you,” he said. A newfound concern traced lines on his face.
“I’m sure it’s the same with Caralis. You employ more mercenaries than anyone else on the continent.”
“That may be, but we hardly keep them all in the same place.”
Because they’re escorting wine caravans all over the continent. “Spread a little thin, are you?”
“We can certainly recall a considerable number of soldiers. But that will take time.”
“How much time?”
“Weeks.”
Now it was Veena’s turn to offer a dubious look.
“Months,” he admitted.
“You may not have that long.” She made her tone casual. “If only you could find an ally with the strength to ward off an attack.”
“Even with necessity, I’m not sure the Caralissian people will like the idea of an alliance with Valteron. I mean no offense, of course.”
Veena laughed. “The Caralissians will like whatever Her Majesty tells them to.”
“Perhaps.” He rubbed his chin, as if pondering.
“How far is her palace from the border again?” Veena asked.
Summertree’s lips quirked downward. “Not far enough.”
She smiled, because she had him. “It’s time we put the past behind us. Caralis and Valteron are more alike than they are different.”
“I will still need to verify what you’ve said, and convince Her Majesty to agree.” His tone implied that this was only a formality.
“Yes. And you should still recall your mercenaries,” Veena said.
“Why?”
“I’m afraid we’re going to need them.”
Chapter 8
Trojan Horse
“There’s no way to sugarcoat it. We underestimated them, and we paid the price.”
—R. Holt, “Assessment of Alissian Militaries”
Logan crouched beside Mendez in the shadow below the docks, waiting for perfect darkness. Waves lapped gently at their feet. The briny sea breeze nearly covered the pungent, sulfurous swamp stink for which Tion was known. At least there weren’t flies here, like there were inland. He still had occasional nightmares about the flies.
“You sure about this?” Mendez asked.
“I’m sure.”
“It seems like overkill to me.”
“The less Holt knows about our movements, the better,” Logan said.
Apparently part of the reason Holt had recalled the fleet was to take inventory. Valteroni ships were appearing in ports up and down both coasts again, but with a slight modification: a wooden panel on the stern with hand-painted numbers. Like a medieval license plate. As technological advances went, fleet inventories were pretty tame. Logan was far more worried about the disruptive tech they hadn’t yet seen.
“You ready now?” Mendez asked.
“Let’s give it ten more minutes.”
They waited in silence for a couple.
“You want to talk about it?” Mendez asked.
“About what?”
“You know what.”
Not really. Logan still couldn’t believe that the lieutenant had brought his family to the island facility as insurance of his cooperation in taking out Holt. Guess I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did. The worst part was that he had no one to blame but himself. He’d not taken steps to protect Sharon and the girls as he should have. And somehow, he’d given the lieutenant reason to question his loyalty. Hell, she might very well be listening in on this conversation. Bravo Team had brought all new comms equipment, supposedly to offer better range and superior encryption. Yet given the recent draconian measures against insubordination, it was always possible that the new comm units had other enhancements as well. Like passive listening capability.
He gave Mendez a hand signal. Comms not secure. “Oh, you mean Bradley?”
Mendez crinkled his brow. “Right, Bradley.” He signaled back, why?
“He wasn’t ready for this.” Distrust. Lieutenant.
“You say that about everyone,” Mendez said. Action plan?
Logan shrugged. Family danger. “Should have seen it coming. I’m just saying.”
“There has to be something we can do.”
“All we can do is wait,” Logan said. Opportunity.
Mendez put his left hand on Logan’s shoulder. Got your back.
They lapsed into silence again, as darkness crept across the water. There was nothing to do but follow orders, for the time being. Logan hated that, but at least he had lots of practice.
At last it was dark enough to cover their movements. Lamps and bow-lanterns sparked into existence out across the bay. Two similar gold-hued blobs of light appeared on the Valteroni vessels.
Logan stood and stretched his legs. “Ready to get moving?”
“Thought you’d never ask,” Mendez said.
They stepped into the canoe that they’d rented from a local fisherman. It wasn’t the sturdiest craft, but the low profile would make them hard to spot, and nothing was quieter on the open water. Logan wouldn’t risk it in high seas, but the winds had faded with the sunlight, leaving the bay’s surface smooth as glass. They slipped out into the open water, paddles whispering into the water.
For a moment, it was just like half a hundred maritime raids Logan had done in his career. Half a hundred quiet missions on moonlit nights. A lot of them dangerous jobs, too. Really touch-and-go. He’d always been able to keep focus for three reasons: his training, his brothers-in-arms, and the knowledge that his wife and daughters were safe at home. Now that last part wasn’t true. As long as CASE Global held his girls at the island facility, they were far from safe.
Meaning he was far from focused.
It didn’t help that they were right on the other side of the gateway, too. And the gateway was half a world away. He didn’t have a prayer of going near it until they’d taken care of Holt.
But God, once I do . . .
All he needed was one little opening. Once he had his girls back, and they were safe, nobody could touch him. And he’d make sure CASE Global didn’t make the mistake of threatening them again. That helped him focus again, because he had an operational objective that mattered.
It would have to be enough.
They hit some chop as they got out to where the Valteroni vessels had dropped anchor. Not so heavy as to make Logan scrap the mission—too many pieces were already in play anyway—but enough that he had to concentrate so the canoe wouldn’t capsize. He hoped Ralf and Snicket had found something sturdier or knew what they were doing. Without the two additional crewmen, they’d never get a ship out of this harbor. They’d literally be dead in the water.
“Which side do you want?” Mendez whispered.
“Whatever’s out of the wind.”
They paddled faster as the hull of the vessel grew near. No movement on deck, other than the amber lantern swaying back and forth at the bow. Twenty yards out, Mendez stashed his paddle and readied the first grappling hook. These were self-extracting hooks with padded tips; they landed silently and sprang open on impact. By the time Logan brought the canoe alongside the ship’s hull, Mendez had two lines secured. He took one and handed Logan the other. Then it was a quick, quiet climb up the paracord, a drill Logan must have practiced a thousand times.
Mendez beat him to the rail, the scrawny bastard. He held position until Logan was ready. They vaulted the rail simultaneously, landing with a satisfyingly minimal sound on the wooden deck. Logan crouched low against the rail and drew his pneumatic pistol. With his free hand, he secured the climbing line to the rail with a half hitch. Didn’t have to look—his hand tied it by muscle memory—allowing him to scan the deck for the crew. There would be crew. Even in a friendly port with a sister ship nearby, the captain would have left a couple of men on board.
So where are they?
He signaled Mendez to proceed toward the front of the ship. The lantern light in that direction should make for easy hunting. That left him with a far more difficult zone to cover. Even with the sails furled, the masts and rigging made the deck a nightmare to traverse in darkness. He moved in a half-crouch toward the stern, eyes straining to pick any humanoid forms out of the darkness.
A distant click and hiss from the direction of the bow signaled that Mendez had found his mark. No thud followed it, which meant he’d gotten close enough to catch the man before he fell. Sneaky son of a bitch. He turned back around and walked right into a chain that dangled knee-high across the deck for some unknown reason. It clanked and rattled, right in the middle of a lull in the breeze. He froze, hoping it hadn’t been noticed. No such luck. Boot steps pounded the deck to his right, heading toward the quarterdeck.
Where the ship’s bell would be. Damn.
Logan rushed to intercept whoever it was. Two or three strokes on that bell would alert half the harbor and blow this whole operation. He tripped on a hatch cover, stumbled, but kept his footing. He saw the runner now, a narrow blob of gray against a patch of darker background. Almost to the quarterdeck rail. Logan’s dart-pistol came up. He fired, but heard the soft thunk as the dart struck the deck instead of its target. Double damn.
He clambered over a beam and made a rush to close the distance. The sailor swung up on a piece of rigging to vault over the quarterdeck rail. The grayish form hung in midair for a moment. Logan skidded to a halt, drew a bead, and fired again. The dart hissed away. Felt like a good shot. He didn’t hear anything but running boots for a second. Did I miss? If so, he was out of darts and too far away to keep this man from raising the alarm.
Wham. Something heavy crashed into a barrel just below the quarterdeck. Then it was quiet for three seconds before Mendez came hauling up from the bow.
“You get him?” he asked.
“I think so.” Logan signaled him to move starboard and advance on the quarterdeck. He did the same, sliding to port a bit since that’s where the crash had come from. Ten paces up, he stumbled on a pair of boots pointed half-skyward. The rest of the unconscious man lay across the quarterdeck rail. His arms were both pointed forward, reaching. Logan looked past them and saw the milky white tendril of a string that ran up to the ship’s bell. He’d come within two feet of reaching it.
Mendez approached with his dart-pistol raised, spotted the fallen man, and eased up. “Cut that one a little close, didn’t you?”
“I missed on my first shot.”
“You missed?”
“He was running full tilt toward the quarterdeck. You try hitting a moving target like that, in the dark on an unfamiliar ship.”
Mendez whistled. “Never thought I’d see the day, man.”
“Yeah well, I got him with my second shot.”
Mendez snorted.
Logan pointed his gun casually in Mendez’s direction. “It occurs to me that I’ve got another round chambered,” he lied.
Mendez held up his hands. “All right, all right. You got him.”
They worked quickly to clear the rest of the ship. Logan hated to sacrifice the time, but it beat discovering more crew were on board once they’d hoisted anchor. The hold was empty, which he’d guessed when they were casing it, based on how high the ship sat in the water. It wasn’t a hard-and-fast rule, of course—spices and other lightweight cargo could fool the best-trained eyes. Still, the fact that the captain and most of the crew had gone ashore made more sense now.
“Let’s make the signal,” Logan said.
They jogged to the stern, where Mendez extracted a lantern from the gear bag. The metal-and-glass construction resembled in-world lanterns closely enough, though a close inspection would reveal some key differences. Like the ten-thousand-candlepower amber LED, which would let it “burn” for eight hours continuously on the lithium battery.
Logan hooked the device to a taut halyard near the ship’s stern at about head height. He hit the activation switch on the bottom. Amber light bloomed, casting its glow on the ship and masts and even the water. Probably a bit on the bright side, for an oil lamp, but Logan didn’t want them to miss it. Once he was confident it wouldn’t peter out, he and Mendez left it and set to work. Mendez climbed up in the rigging and began to unfurl the sails one at a time. There were four on the mainmast, another two on the mizzenmast. Once unrolled, they luffed quietly in the breeze and would keep doing so until pulled taut. Right now, that would be a little more work than he and Logan could handle.
Instead, Logan climbed up to the cockpit to acquaint himself with the controls there. Valteroni captains preferred a spoked wheel to control the rudder, and this ship lived up to that expectation. Once they hoisted anchor, a half-turn of it should point them out of the harbor, almost perfectly downwind. At least one thing might go right tonight. No surprises or concerns in the cockpit area—the logbook was missing, but he’d probably find that in the captain’s quarters—so he moved on to securing the crew he and Mendez had knocked out. His mark had been a young man, no older than twenty. Probably the most junior lad on the ship. He’d been brave to go for the bell rather than try to save his own skin.
He was a light kid, maybe sixty-five kilos, so Logan dragged him over the rail to the deck without any help from Mendez, who was still playing acrobat up in the rigging. “You going to wrap that up anytime soon?”
“Hey, don’t blame me. It’s a lot of sail.” Mendez ran quick-footed along the topmast and leaped around the main to the other side.
Was I ever that young and stupid?
Logan’s comm unit buzzed in his ear. He hit the button to transmit. “Go for Logan.”
“It’s Kiara. What’s your status?”
“We’ve got our Trojan horse and we’re getting ready to roll it out of the workshop.”
“Good. Anything unusual to report?”
“You looking for something in particular?” It wasn’t like her to ask vague questions.
“Holt is up to something.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” he said. “What is it this time?”
“He’s been meeting with the leaders of other Alissian nations.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them.”
“Where the hell does he find the time?”
“I’d like to know. The rumor has it that he’s hired ambassadors, and they’re just as good as he is at figuring out what people want.”
“The only thing unusual here is that the belly of the horse is empty, if you know what I mean.”
There was a slight delay; she was probably pulling up the latest intel on Tion and its exports. Logan had to admit that he’d never seen Valteroni trading ships sit idle while their crew lived it up in port. Every day they sat at anchor cut into the captain’s profit margins: he had to feed his crew, pay their salary, and probably pony up for some port fees.
&
nbsp; “How many crew were on board?”
“Two. The rest are on shore leave.”
“Will they know anything?”
He heard the unspoken suggestion, that he and Mendez extract whatever information they could from the captured sailors. “Doubt it. They just drew the short straws.”
“Make sure, and then get rid of them.”
He hesitated. Surely she doesn’t mean that the way it sounds. “Say again.”
“You’re to leave no witnesses,” she said.
“We took them down clean. They never saw us.”
“What would pirates do, if they captured the ship instead of you? What would Marundi tribesmen do?”
“We’re not like them.”
“Holt knows that. If someone steals a ship without any bloodshed, he’ll guess exactly who was behind it.”
“So?”
“I’d rather keep him guessing. This is war, Logan. No one gets information for free.”
There was no point in arguing. Once the lieutenant got her back up about something, she wouldn’t listen to reason. Be the good soldier she thinks you are. “Copy that, Lieutenant.”
“I want another update before you reach Valteroni waters. Kiara out.”
Logan sighed and walked down to the stern to brief Mendez. Ralf and Snicket had come aboard, and the three of them were making good progress with the sails. The breeze had picked up a bit, too. “How long until we can get moving?”
“We’re just about ready,” Mendez said. “What about the sleeping beauties?”
Bind their wrists and throw them overboard. It would be easy to give the order. No witnesses, just like the lieutenant ordered. No complications. How many people would she order him to kill before this was done? He couldn’t predict that, couldn’t control it. All he had was the occasional small act of defiance.
“Give them another dose, and put them in the canoe,” Logan said.
Mendez frowned. “What happens when they wake up?”
“We’ll be long gone, so it won’t matter.”
Thankfully, Mendez didn’t argue. Ten minutes later, they hoisted anchor and slipped out into the open sea. The wind picked up as they cleared the narrow peninsula that protected the harbor. Logan ordered full sail and turned the ship south, toward the seas of Valteron.
