Winged Hussars (The Revelations Cycle Book 3)

by Mark Wandrey

  “That Jivool was trying to infiltrate.”

  “”

  “Okay, but why.”

  “”

  “Any sign of threats in the system?” Alexis asked.

  “”

  “How long do we have?”

  “”

  “Surely, no one will attack us here.” Silence. “Would they?”

  “”

  Fuck, she thought. What in entropy had they gotten themselves into? The office intercom chimed.

  “Master Gevastopal from the Cartography Guild to see you,” Wendy said.

  “Show the master in,” Alexis said, and clicked off her pinplant. She rose just as the door opened, and a massive form stooped, and slid sideways through the door. “Welcome, Guild Master,” she said as she bowed.

  “I greet you, Commander Cromwell of the Winged Hussars,” Gevastopal said, bowing in return. He was just under nine feet tall. A member of the Sumatozou race, he resembled an upright elephant with stubby-fingered hands, and a bifurcated trunk. Their race was usually a gray or brown, and they took to wearing elaborately-wrapped robes around their somewhat rotund bodies. Their faces had natural red and green mottled striping that had something to do with their sexual maturity and herd status. Sumatozou had striking red stripes that ran along his trunk to curve back under his eyes.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “We received an info packet from your ship as soon as it made transition from Sulaadar,” he said. Alexis gestured him to one of the four chairs in front of her desk, the one that was a simple bench and would support him. He nodded congenially and took the seat. “Your use of the stargate was non-scheduled.”

  “And expensive,” she said, nodding. “Sadly, as you probably are aware of the combat conditions there, it was also necessary.” His trunk waved in the air over his head, a shrug in his race.

  “Yes, of course, yet this doesn’t negate the cost of an unscheduled transition.”

  Alexis grunted. No one was using the stargate in that system much, so it wasn’t like they’d needed to use the fusion plant to recharge. There was no real cost involved. Yet, here he was. “I understand. You can add it to our quarterly fee.”

  “Yes, well,” he said, “I’m going to have to request cash payment of your current fees.”

  Alexis straightened up, her eyes narrowing. “What?”

  “I said I’m going to have to request cash—”

  “I heard you just fine, master. What I don’t understand is why. The Winged Hussars have been a registered merc company for over 100 years, and we’ve never failed to pay on time.”

  “Yes, I know, but the fee for that unscheduled operation is quite…”

  “Expensive,” she finished for him, and he nodded his head, more of a bow since the Sumatozou didn’t really have necks. “We’ve paid it with the rest of the fees every time we’ve done an unscheduled transition, and that has to be at least fifty times!” She was starting to get upset. It wasn’t the cost, even though it was high; it was the principle of the thing! The guild master made an expansive, helpless gesture.

  “I have my instructions.”

  Alexis’ mouth set in a thin line of disapproval. This had never happened before! “What prompted this change?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Then I’m not at liberty to pay!”

  “Commander, please, this is difficult enough as it is.”

  Alexis snorted. “Our credit has always been good until now. What happened?”

  “Cartwright’s Cavaliers,” he finally blurted.

  “They’re one of our Four Horsemen, sure, but what does that have to do with us?”

  “They are insolvent. Out of business.”

  “Impossible; their ship is here at Karma.” That same frustrating shrug. She clicked her intercom. “Wendy, what’s up with Cartwright’s?”

  “Better check your email, ma’am.” Alexis grumbled and pulled her email back up. It only took a second to find it. Cartwright’s had been temporarily off the active contract list. Something had gone south, something involving the wife of Thaddeus Cartwright, the deceased commander. His son was too young to take control, and his wife had been running the financials until he was old enough. She ran it alright; she ran it right into the ground. So why was the Bucephalus, the Cavaliers’ merc cruiser, here? She found that in another email. Company lawyers had bought the ship from the Cavaliers out of bankruptcy to keep it in the Horsemen. They’d bought the half billion credit ship for 5 credits. The Horsemen protected their own.

  According to records, Jim Cartwright had assumed command only recently and had begun running limited missions. They were a mere shadow of their former selves.

  “Okay, I see now.” The Sumatozou nodded again. “What I fail to see is how this affects my company’s credit.”

  “You are a Four Horseman, yes?” This time she was the one to nod. “Now there are only two left.”

  “What?!” That expansive gesture. Dumbo was really starting to piss her off. She was about to call Wendy again, but decided to check her email once more. The next news item she was looking for was even more recent. Asbaran Solutions, the smallest, but always the most tenacious of the three ground-centric horsemen, had been devastated in a series of miscalculations during costly contracts. Apparently the fourth in line, a previously disinherited heir, was now in charge and running around the galaxy on a personal vendetta. What the hell was going on?

  The guild master was waiting patiently, so she did a quick check on the Golden Horde, the last of the Four Horsemen. Nope, no problems there. Good, she was beginning to think there was a conspiracy against them.

  “You think we’re next? Guild Master, I can assure you, we are financially sound.” He waited, staring at her. “I’m tempted to tell you get your sizeable ass out of my office.”

  “That is, of course, your right, Commander Cromwell. However, I will be forced to revoke your stargate access.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.” Expansive gesture. “I’ll file a grievance with the mercenary guild if you do.” Shrug. With a growl, she accessed her desk controls. It didn’t make sense to argue any further. Sure, she could file a grievance, and she might well win. But it could take months to work its way through the system, all the while her company would be grounded. Grounded, and unable to get Home. “Exactly how much was that unscheduled gate access?”

  “Unscheduled gate access from a Level Two stargate is one hundred thousand credits.”

  “Thief,” she said. It looked like he was smiling now, though it was admittedly difficult to tell if an elephant was smiling. She keyed in her cypher code, touched a finger to the locking plate, and drew a symbol. The safe popped with a click. Alexis reached inside, dug around and pulled out a credit chit. It was round, about twice the size and thickness of a regular denomination, and had a one carat red diamond in the center. Laser-etched on the diamond was 100,000 GCU in several languages, none of them English. She tossed it on her desk. It bounced twice and the guild master caught it deftly with his trunk. He examined it, almost curiously, for a few seconds. Just as she was starting to wonder if the bastard was going to pull out one of the little pocket validators some merchants carried, he set it back on the desk. “Yes?” she demanded.

  “I believe I said all your current fees.”

  Alexis blanched. “Are you serious?”

  “Deadly serious,” he said.

  “Is this in place across all my company’s ships?”

  “I’m afraid so,” he said, “at least for the foreseeable future. I’m so terribly sorry.” Alexis snorted again. He wasn’t sorry in the least.

  “How much?”

  “One million, one hundred seventy-five thousand, two hundred credits.” She tapped the slate dedicated to company finances and accessed the last quarter’s bill. Just un
der a million. The number he’d given wasn’t far outside the norm.

  “That includes the hundred thousand there?” An elephantine nod. “Very well,” she said and dug into the safe. This time she produced an unusual credit chit. It wasn’t round, like all the others, it was more oblong but flat on top and bottom with little indents along the flat point. It was obviously made to be stacked. The center was transparent and held a five carat red diamond of exquisite quality with a tiny built-in light source that made it glow slightly. On this one was printed ‘One Million Credits.’ The guild master’s eyes got wider. Then she added another.

  “Surely, you don’t expect me to make change.” He picked up the two million-credit chits and rubbed them together with the digits of his trunk.

  “No,” she said, “and it’s not a tip. That’s credit for continued operations.” She typed in another slate. “If we exceed that, come see my assistant. Wendy is authorized to pay you in the future.”

  “Wonderful,” the guild master said. He stood. “I believe our business is complete.”

  “Yes,” she smiled savagely, “once you give me a receipt it is.”

  When the annoying pachyderm was gone, she grumbled and closed the safe. The stack of million credit chits wasn’t noticeably smaller. It would take a lot more than a two million credit shakedown to affect the safe. The one in Pegasus was much bigger, and much fuller. Every ship’s captain in the Winged Hussars had a small stack of those oblong chits as well. In the Galactic Union, one never knew when cold hard red diamonds would get you out of a pinch. As she’d just been reminded, cash often trumped credit.

  Other business needed her attention, and soon. She’d probably have a few less of those fat chits after the Karma maintenance crews finished the rush job she wanted. But instead of turning to that work, she sat and thought about all the events swirling around. Cartwright’s Cavaliers badly damaged, Asbaran Solutions in a death spiral, and her own ship in fight after fight. Only, her Hussars were a lot more than just this one ship.

  “Shit,” she said and got back on her slate. She’d been so wrapped up in her own issues she’d forgotten about her other ships. Task Force Two was her concern. The Hussars had a contract pending, and she’d intended to attach Pegasus to that task force to assist. She scrolled through her email and found what she was looking for. Relay from Home, Task Force Two was dispatched on contractual commitment four weeks ago.

  She’d expected as much. It was a high-value contract, and when her job for the Peacemakers ran long, it only made sense that Operations sent the task force ahead without her. Captain Kowalczy was in command of Task Force Two. It was a powerful group of ships, after all, and though Pegasus was the most powerful ship in the fleet, it wasn’t the only powerful ship. He’d be in command of Alicorn, a damned fine ship. She wouldn’t normally have given it a second thought, until now. Were her own events tied to those of the other Horsemen?

  The Four Horsemen had faced innumerable challenges over the century since they came into being. “Born of dire battle and desperate necessity,” was a phrase Jimmy Cartwright, founder of Cartwright’s Cavaliers, had used in his silly autobiography. He’d spent a lot of words to paint his Cavaliers as the reason any of them had survived. Alexis snorted. He had no fucking idea.

  Outside, the world of Karma spun by lazily. Blue bodies of water, green continents full of life. So much like Earth, the world of her people’s birth. Why did she hate it so much? Maybe because the only place she considered home was parked a few miles away while her crew desperately worked on it. Now you’re being sentimental, she chided herself.

  On her financial slate, a glowing deduction was at the top of the debits column. The credits she’d taken from her safe to pay the extortion to the damned guild master. A computer in the safe had dutifully noted the cash removal in their balance log. It wasn’t much, in the grand scheme of things; the Hussars had always been wealthy, but few knew just how wealthy they actually were. Those 2.1 million credits were all but invisible on the bottom line—that’s how wealthy. And that was part of her anxiety. Maybe a realization that despite their wealth and prominence, the history of the Winged Hussars was no more than a historical footnote in the annals of the Mercenary Guild. Here today, gone tomorrow. Tomorrow was only a day away.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 17

  ECS Coronado

  Approaching Karma System

  Hyperspace

  Rick came back to consciousness slowly, with a feeling of deep disorientation. Something was beeping loudly, and he wished it would stop. He’d been dead and found he rather liked it. It was better than all the pain he’d suffered shortly before he died. The beeping continued to intrude on his happy afterlife, and worse, the lights came on and seared his brain, even through his closed eye lids.

  “What the hell?” he mumbled. It came out as “Wha eh ell?” He realized something was down his throat, and he almost panicked.

  “Woah, son,” someone said. His eyes didn’t want to focus entirely. It was like looking through a yellow, murky haze. He shook his head and immediately regretted it. Whatever was down his throat didn’t give him a lot of room to move, and it jerked in his mouth. He felt sick. “Damn it, if you don’t hold still I’m going to tranquilize you!” The voice was slightly familiar. The ship’s cook? He was in the galley? What the fuck happened?

  Still, the pain from his throat was enough to make him follow directions, and he forced himself to calm down.

  “That’s better,” the cook said. “Are you breathing okay? Just a little nod is enough.” He nodded his head fractionally. “Excellent. Are you in pain?” A tiny shake this time. “Good,” the cook said, and Rick heard the artificial clicks of keys on a slate. “Rick, I’m Brad, the Coronado’s medical officer.” Rick was still confused, because he’d been right; Brad was the cook. “Yes, I’m also the cook. But I was a medic back on Earth years ago before robots and nanites started making the job redundant. I did a tour in the Earth Defense Service when I was a kid. The only job they had was cook. Got cross-trained as a medic, and it gave me a job I could sell in space.”

  Rick’s head was beginning to clear. Things were starting to make sense. He began to remember the harried fight against the alien raiders. He’d been shot. Several times. So maybe he had been dead.

  “Glad you’re up. Hold on a minute while I have the autodoc run a few tests, and I call the captain.”

  Sure, Rick thought, not like I’m going anywhere with this thing down my throat. While he waited, he tried his body out and found nothing worked. That concerned him a little, but not as much as he’d thought it would. Ever since he was young and decided he wanted to be a merc, he’d known deep down he might die. Even kids knew it wasn’t safe being a merc, when the news was full of stories of merc companies taking huge losses, and the history books began with the Alpha Contracts. One hundred merc companies accepted the first contracts, and only four returned. The Four Horsemen. He finally decided he must have been given some drug that kept him from moving, and settled down to wait.

  Brad the cook/medic continued to work on his devices. Rick still couldn’t focus through the strange yellow haze, so he tried to recall how he ended up drugged, with a big tube down his throat. He didn’t have any memory of what happened after he made his reverse-G pass. Finally, he heard the captain’s familiar gravelly voice.

  “So, our savior is awake at last?” Rick turned his head as much as he could and was just able to make out the captain’s rotund form through the yellow haze. He gave a little nod. “How’s he doing, Brad?”

  “Everything looks good,” the other man said, showing the captain the slate. “Autodoc says we can unplug him.”

  “Excellent,” Holland said. “Let’s do it.”

  The two went to work; apparently Holland knew a bit about medical procedures as well. Rick had never been in an autodoc. He’d been to the hospital once as a child, but they didn’t use the computer-controlled automatic medical systems known as autodocs.
Earth doctors used all kinds of advanced Union tech these days, but largely relied on their own medical knowledge, along with a healthy dose of nanites thrown in.

  After a minute, he felt himself buffeted like a wind was blowing and heard a sucking sound. The yellow haze began to go away, and he realized he was surrounded by a fog, inside a bubble. It only took a few seconds for his vision to clear, and the two men to unlatch the bubble and open it.

  “Doing okay?” Brad asked. Rick nodded. “Good. We’re going to remove the breathing tube. It’s going to hurt a bit.” He was about to nod when the man did something out of Rick’s view, and there was a sudden, painful pulling sensation inside his chest. He tried to gasp but couldn’t breathe. For a second he felt panic, but then he felt something slide over his tongue, and he saw Brad taking something off his face. He could breathe again!

  “Holy shit,” he gasped through an incredibly dry, scratchy throat.

  “Yeah,” Brad laughed. “I hear it’s not fun.”

  “How you feel, kid?” Holland asked.

  “I still can’t move,” Rick said.

  “Oh, duh,” Brad said, and he examined the slate one more time. He finally tapped a control and Rick felt a moment of pain in his neck, right at the base of his skull. Like a wave, full feeling and movement returned. He was sitting in a chair, slightly reclined, with pads under his arms to hold them out and away from his body.

  “How long?” Rick croaked. It felt like they were under light acceleration. Brad handed him a cup of water before answering.

  “Eight days,” the older man said, consulting his slate. “We need to go through a series of mobility tests. Okay, raise your right hand and make a fist with one finger at a time until they are all clenched.”

  “But I want—” Rick started to complain.

  “Do as he says, son,” Holland said gently, but insistently. Rick sighed and followed the instructions.