by Rick Partlow
“The operation was a success,” Jonathan quoted the old saying, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice, “but the patient died.”
“The only way we could have avoided casualties on this one,” Lyta told him, “was to turn down the job. And if we’d done that, we wouldn’t be heading for our next job on the far end of Starkad space.”
“I’m sure I’ll get a fucking medal for initiative,” he said, sneering at the thought. “It’s too bad I won’t be able to put it in Marc’s coffin.”
“You can’t tell us your war stories, kid,” Osceola said, out of nowhere, as if he hadn’t been listening, “so let me tell you one of mine, instead.”
The older man’s eyes lost focus, turning inward towards a memory.
“There was this young officer in the Spartan Navy, almost as young as you. He was, at the time, the youngest man to make captain, to get his own ship command.” Osceola shrugged, sipping from his drink. “I understand that record’s been broken since, but it was impressive enough to get him noticed. He was at the tip of the spear when the real bullets started flying, never afraid of an impossible task. And you know what happens when you pull off an impossible mission, kid?”
“They give you one even more impossible,” Lyta supplied.
Osceola touched glasses with her and they both took a drink.
“Exactly. And you can only keep rolling sixes for so long before your luck runs dry. It’s the hottest days of the Lambert Rebellion, what you folk closer to Sparta call ‘the coup.’ Every ship is tied up fighting off the rebel forces, and Clan Modi decides it’s a wonderful time to try seizing one of our border colonies, a little place they called Vadodara. We named it something different, of course: Plataea.”
Jonathan’s eyes opened wide and his thoughts clarified with an instant sobriety.
“You were at Plataea?”
Osceola laughed without humor, the expression changing easily to a scowl when he saw his empty glass. He set it down with a flat crack.
“Three Modi cruisers were attacking the colony and the only reason it hadn’t fallen before we got there was a fairly robust static defense system…and the fact they wanted it intact. They had too many lifeless, radioactive rocks in their ‘holdings’ already thanks to the Reconstruction Wars, and they weren’t of a mind to just crash meteors into it until the local government surrendered.”
He didn’t say anything for about ten seconds, just staring at the empty glass. Finally, Lyta grabbed it from him, leaned over to Paskowski’s table and stole his half-full vodka bottle, pouring Osceola another shot. The captain took it from her, looked as if he were considering downing the whole thing in one gulp, but then just took a single sip.
“We ran them around the system for two solid weeks, trading potshots, waiting for help that never came. When we realized we were on our own, we had the choice of standing and fighting or just un-assing the situation and coming back to re-take the colony after things had shaken out back on Sparta.” Another sip, and a shrug. “Of course, by then Modi would have stolen everything worth taking from the planet, maybe including the people. Back then, the Modi government was into the slave trade, unofficially, you understand.”
“They still are,” Lyta growled, her face hardening.
“Just so. We…” A wince. “I decided to fight. Me, boy fucking wonder. I decided we could take them all on with just our one ship, the Paralus.”
“The Paralus?” Jonathan repeated, disbelief creeping into his voice. “The fucking Paralus?” He smacked the table. “We studied that battle in the Academy…it was required for military history. But I don’t remember any Donner Osceola being part of it.”
“Well, kid,” the captain said, cocking an eyebrow, “I hate to break it to you, but you’re not the first person in the galaxy to use a fake name.”
“Mithra,” Jonathan breathed. “Then you’re…”
“You may be in charge of this mission, youngster,” Osceola interrupted him, “and you may be paying the bills, but if you say that name in my hearing, your ass will be doing its best to breathe vacuum.” He eyed Jonathan with a sidelong glare, a conviction he meant what he was saying. “You get me?”
Jonathan didn’t like being threatened, but an instinct from somewhere in his hind-brain forced him to nod assent. Osceola grunted in what might have been acknowledgement, and went on.
“You know the rest. You know what we did. All the stories about how the Paralus destroyed three ships, each twice her size. And maybe you’ve even read about how much it cost, how we wound up with half our superstructure ripped away, with no atmosphere left and all of us who survived having to live in pressure suits until they could get rescue shuttles up to us.”
He drummed his fingers on the tabletop rhythmically.
“What they didn’t teach you was how you could hear the crew screaming over their suit radios when the acceleration couch they were belted into was knocked off its moorings by railgun rounds and kicked out of the superstructure into space. You couldn’t shut your suit radio off because it was the only way any of us could communicate, so you had to sit there and listen to them scream. What they didn’t teach you was how we had to gather the dead bodies and rope them together in one of the compartments so they wouldn’t float free of the ship, so we could bring them home. Or how the inside of our helmets began to smell like death after two days straight in it, or how we all ran out of the food paste in the reservoirs after three days…”
The man’s voice became more strained, more strident with each word until he snapped his mouth shut on the last, as if he were afraid what he would say next, of what the words were making him remember. His fingers ceased drumming, the hand shaking too badly to continue. Lyta covered it with hers and slipped an arm around him, her expression not so much concerned as forbearing.
A shudder ran through Osceola’s shoulders and he visibly gathered himself. A few deep breaths later, he was able to look Jonathan in the eye again.
“After they pinned the medal on my chest and had all the commemorative ceremonies and monument dedications and everything began to get back to normal on Sparta,” he went on, voice hoarser, rougher than before, “they wanted to reward my performance by putting me in command of the Salamis.” Which still was, Jonathan knew, the Spartan Navy’s flagship, usually reserved for an admiral. “Instead, I resigned my commission, cashed in my retirement and every favor I had, sold the prime land in Argos that had been in my family for ten generations and put myself deep into hock to buy an old, beat-up piece of shit like this.”
The grin twisting his face was far from pleasant. “Because now, when I fuck up and get people killed, I can blame myself for it without someone trying to give me a medal.”
Jonathan cocked his head to the side, eyes narrowing.
“Captain Osceola,” he said slowly, “that may be the worst fucking motivational speech I’ve ever heard.”
The older man’s grim expression cracked, shuddered, then broke completely and he began to snort, then giggle, before erupting into a full, belly laugh. Jonathan was worried for a moment it might turn into a hysterical cackle but he couldn’t help joining in, the catharsis of the laughter so much easier than the sobs he wouldn’t allow.
Lyta smiled but didn’t join in. Instead, she stood and raised her glass high.
“A toast!” Her voice cracked across the room like a bullwhip, and even Paskowski raised up from the table, a damp napkin sticking to his face, eyes blinking incomprehension.
“Here’s to us,” Lyta said in cheerful defiance of grief, “and those like us!”
Glasses were raised in salute all across the Shakak’s mess, ship’s crew, Spartan Navy, Rangers, and mechjocks all standing as one. Some smiled, others were grim, and Jonathan thought he saw at least a few tears. But the reply was universal, shouted loud, echoing off the bulkheads.
“Damn few!”
He downed what was left of his drink in honor of the dead.
Fewer all the time.
Colonel Aleksandr Kuryakin scrolled through images of the retirement community on Trondheim with a dolorous resignation. Hot springs and glaciers, beaches and mountains, it all looked supremely boring. When the knock came on his door, he didn’t even look up from the screen.
“Come.”
Clunky, clumsy, loud, rushed. He would have known who it was even if she hadn’t been announced by his office clerk twenty minutes ago.
“Sir, Captain Laurent reports…”
“At ease, damn it,” he snapped, interrupting her attempted salute. “Just close the door behind you and stop acting as if you’re on a parade ground, Ruth.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, juggling her tablet and her shoulder bag as she reached back to pull the door closed. She was still in her field uniform and from the look of it, had come straight to his office from the spaceport.
“What was so important you couldn’t go home first and change into your office uniform?” He leaned back in his chair and stroked his goatee. “Oh, for the love of God, sit down!” While she was fumbling with her shoulder bag, he turned the screen on his desk so she could see it. “Retirement,” he explained. “My wife is constantly bugging me to retire and I am not even sixty. What the hell am I going to do in some Goddamned retirement village? Fish? I hate fishing. I will put a gun in my mouth if I have to sit around and fish day in and day out…”
“Sir,” she interrupted him and he instantly knew it must be something important. Captain Laurent wouldn’t have dared try to speak over him otherwise. “There’s a new report about Wholesale Slaughter.”
“Well, I assumed so,” he said, waving a hand at her. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be back already. Out with it, Ruth!”
“I was out at the Periphery, sir,” she began, “searching for information on…”
“Cut to the chase. I know what you were doing, I assigned you the mission.”
Laurent sucked in a breath and appeared to be trying to organize her thoughts.
“Wholesale Slaughter took a job out in the Dagda system. It’s an independent colony technically within our claimed borders, but not worth the effort to annex due to the low rate of return in their gas mines.” She tapped a sequence into her tablet and a star map slid over onto his desk screen.
He nearly sighed at the uselessness of it; he knew where the damned Periphery was. But he dutifully noted the location of the system and the arrangement of the habitable worlds.
Three, he thought with just a hint of surprise. Don’t usually see three habitables in a Periphery system.
“A band of Jeuta raiders was trying to shake them down,” she explained, and he nearly came out of his chair.
“Jeuta!” he exclaimed. “Within our fucking borders? And this is the first I’m hearing of it?”
“It’s not a force from the Regency,” she amended hastily, blanching at his outburst. “These are outcasts, raiders, just a single ship and a few mecha. They haven’t threatened our shipping, just attacked outlying worlds not under our direct control. I, uh…I don’t know why no one has asked for military action against them…”
The why was obvious, he thought with cynicism born of years dealing with politicians. If we let them harass the non-aligned systems, it gives them more reason to align with us.
“Go on,” he told her, keeping the sentiment to himself. “What happened?”
She summarized the campaign from what sounded like the perspective of the local press in the Dagda system, which was probably her source.
“They took some losses,” she summed up, “but not unacceptable ones given the forces they faced and the situation. And they more than made up for them with the salvage.”
“A commander who’s willing to risk his people but not waste them.” Kuryakin nodded approval. Then frowned, disturbed by that very sense of approval. “Very unlike most mercenary units I’ve seen. Most of them are risk-averse. Understandable given the thin margins they live on, but…”
“We did manage to get some footage of the Wholesale Slaughter command staff from local news footage,” she went on, sliding another image from her work tablet to his station.
Kuryakin’s face froze in the middle of a suggestion she should get sources closer to the action. The image on his screen was of a slick-back weasel in a business suit speaking to two military types, a younger man and a middle-aged woman. She was tall and impressive and he had the feeling he’d seen her face somewhere before, though he couldn’t place it. The man, though…he knew he’d seen that face somewhere. He shushed Laurent when she tried to proceed, wracking his brain for connections.
Someone he’d seen at a conference? A treaty signing? A negotiation? Was it Gensai? Cordhaven? No, no, earlier. Atlomina? But that was ten years ago. This man would have been a teenager and what would a teenager be doing at a peace conference… Aleksandr Kuryakin’s blood froze in his veins and he pushed himself out of his chair, stepping away from the screen as if it were poisoned.
“Where are they now?” he demanded, his tone sharp and unyielding.
“They have a new contract with a system in the Shang Directorate,” she answered quickly. “They’re heading across Starkad space now; I think they’d be at the outer Blarheim jump point by now…”
He stabbed the intercom control, nearly snarling as he waited for his office clerk to reply.
“Yes, sir?” Petty Officer Greuner sounded efficient, professional, serious, everything he demanded of his staff.
“What’s the largest Naval combat vessel we have insystem right now?” Kuryakin asked him, knowing he’d have the information at hand, without having to search for it.
“The cruiser Valkyrian, Colonel. It’s scheduled to head out on a routine patrol in three days.” Perfect.
“Send this message, text only, to Captain Kessler of the Valkyrian: Colonel Kuryakin sends codeword ‘lycanthrope.’ Be prepared to receive troops, orders to follow in person. End message.”
“Yes, sir.” Greuner repeated the message back to him for confirmation, then signed off.
“Sir,” Captain Laurent asked, staring at him wide-eyed, “where are you going?”
He grinned at her and a savage, joy filled his chest, something he hadn’t felt since he’d traded a mech’s easy chair for this fucking desk.
“This information stays eyes-only,” he told her, tapping the tablet. “My eyes only, you got that, Laurent? No one sees this without my okay.”
“Understood, sir!” she responded smartly, coming to attention like the by-the-book marionette she was.
“Oh, and don’t bother to unpack,” he decided. “You’re coming along.”
“Yes, sir,” she said automatically, then frowned. “But where, sir?”
He wasn’t listening, thinking instead about the hot springs at Trondheim.
“Retirement my ass,” he murmured, chuckling. Logan Conner, by God. The Guardian’s son…
He was done with this job, all right. In a month, Lord Starkad would be appointing him to the fucking Ministry.
10
“You’re sure you can’t fix her?”
Jonathan cursed under his breath, angry at himself for the plaintive tone in his voice. What importance was a machine when he’d lost real people in the battle? And yet, seeing what remained of his Vindicator in pieces on the deck of the Shakak’s cargo bay seemed to bring home all the death and loss of the battle two weeks ago in the way no wake or memorial could.
“’Fraid so, sir.” Chief McKee rubbed at his hands with the stained red cloth he usually carried in his back pocket, as if he were wringing them in anguish. He seemed loathe to admit there was anything he couldn’t repair, but one look at the shredded remains of the cockpit made it evident. “The reactor flushed and the plasma did too much damage. I was able to salvage some of the weapons, but the rest is a total loss.”
“Well, damn,” he sighed. He’d been piloting the Vindicator for a long time, and his had been the only one on the mission. “I suppose I can use one of the Golems…
”
He trailed off. The Golems Marc Langella had taken with him on the ill-fated Trojan Horse mission had all been recovered intact. The Jeuta would have converted them for their own use eventually, but they hadn’t had enough time to begin ripping up their control boards to remove the fail-safes. The thought of piloting Langella’s mech, though…it wasn’t so much disrespectful as it was ghoulish.
“Well, that’s why I called you down here, sir,” McKee said, a distinct cat-ate-the-canary passing across his doughy, soft-edged face. “Me and the salvage crew, we’ve been working on something and I wanted to let you have a look at it.”
A twinge of suspicion passed across the back of Jonathan’s neck, but he followed Chief McKee out of the repair bay, through a maze of equipment and stacks of spare parts, on in to the mecha storage area. The huge machines were restrained by magnetic harnesses, monsters in some mad scientist’s lair, hidden away ready to be unleashed on the world. Some of the harnesses were empty, their mecha still being repaired, and some were occupied by mecha he hadn’t seen before, which he figured were salvage from their jobs.
The mech the Chief led him to wasn’t in a harness. The salvage crew had brought it out especially for his visit, he was sure the second he saw them all gathered at its feet. It was a Sentinel, towering fifteen meters tall, bipedal and upright, an ancient knight in shining armor, except…
“Was this Magnus’ mech?” he wondered, running a hand across the cold metal of a tree-trunk leg.
“The chassis,” McKee confirmed, nodding with a hint of pride in his eyes. “Though as you can tell, we did give it a paint job.”
That they had. Gone was the gaudy, boastful red of the bandit chieftain, replaced by what had become the official company camouflage pattern, grey and black and brown, with a subdued “Wholesale Slaughter” scrawled in cursive across the upper right chest plastron. And the color scheme wasn’t the only change.
“What the hell?” Jonathan muttered, stepping around the machine, eyes craned upward toward the strike mech’s hands.
