by Rick Partlow
“This is my fault,” Bohardt said, not for the first time. “I shouldn’t have let Katy out of my sight.”
The man was barely five years older than Logan, but he seemed ancient, the color gone from his face. His eyes were forlorn, as if he’d never be whole again. Salvaggio slipped an arm around his shoulder and pulled him closer to her, leaning her head against his.
“Don’t be stupid, David,” Logan told him, leaning back against his desk. “Were you supposed to put her inside your cockpit? You had to try to defend the civilians against the Jeuta soldiers and you did your job better than anyone had a right to expect, given the numbers. No one blames you for this and you need to stop blaming yourself. That’s a fucking order.”
Bohardt’s head snapped up and Logan thought maybe he’d made the man angry, but he read more surprise in those eyes than anger.
“Yes,” he confirmed, deducing the reason, “you and Josephine and everyone else in Wholesale Slaughter still work for me until I say different. You don’t have to join the Spartan military unless you want to, but I’m not done with Wholesale Slaughter, even if I can’t lead it myself. So, unless you’re tired of the regular paychecks and the first-class equipment, I need you to pull your shit together and start rebuilding your battalion. Clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Bohardt said, smiling finally, if a bit wanly. “Sorry, I mean, yes Lord Guardian.”
“Just ‘sir’ is fine for now,” Logan assured him. He nodded toward the door. “Why don’t you too go connect with the rest of the brigade and see about trying to recruit replacements? I’ll call when we have anything resembling a plan.”
Salvaggio shot him a look of gratitude, obviously glad to get Bohardt’s mind on something else, and led the man toward the door. Logan waited until he was gone before turning back to the others, the beatific beneficence he’d shown the two mercenaries draining away as he confronted his closest advisors.
“So far, I have heard nothing but what we can’t do in the face of the Jeuta incursion,” he said, his voice turning cold. “If I want to hear what we can’t do, I can just as easily get that from soldiers with much less experience and ability than you. Someone had better begin giving me workable options or I will simply start implementing unworkable ones. Because doing nothing is not on the table.”
“Lord Guardian,” Colonel Lee said, something hesitant in his tone, as if he felt uncomfortable speaking up in front of Anders and Stone, whether because of their rank or simply because they were unknowns, “I’ve been looking at the path the Jeuta took through the Periphery and unless they went way out of their way for some reason, I don’t think they’re coming from the Confederation homeworld. They’re in one of the outer principalities.” Logan frowned, giving him a blank look.
“Sorry, I don’t know as much about Jeuta astrography as I should,” he admitted.
“The Jeuta Confederation,” Colonel Stone supplied, “is separated into what they call principalities, three of them that we know of, though there might be more.”
He looked up for permission to work the holographic display controls set in the Guardian’s desk, and Logan motioned for him to proceed. The projector snapped to life with the seal of the Spartan government floating above the desk, an expensive toy his great-grandfather had splurged for decades ago. A menu appeared at Stone’s manipulation of the controls and he scrolled through the network before settling on something labelled “Jeuta Confederation” and casting it into the projection.
A red sphere of space out beyond the Periphery glowed red, its edges vague and growing fainter at the side opposite the human systems. Stone touched another control and the red sphere split into three sections, as if someone had sliced downward through it with a sword, colored differently for clarity.
“They’re not separate governments,” Stone went on. “At least we don’t think so.” He shrugged. “General Constantine thought so. It’s more for ease of administration.”
“The incursion is coming from down here,” Lee supplied, pointing at a position near the bottom front of the sphere as it was oriented in the projection. “It isn’t the closest area to Revelation or to us here in Spartan space, so I figure it has to mean they staged the attack from somewhere in here.”
“And we don’t have anything more specific?” Logan asked, waving at the featureless red. “We don’t know where their inhabited systems are?”
Stone swept his finger across the touch screen and individual stars lit up inside the sphere, the labels floating beside them only strings of numbers and letters.
“We have astronomical data about the stars, which ones used to be habitable under the Empire, but no details as to which worlds are settled and which were destroyed in the Fall. Again, it’s nearly impossible to infiltrate into their space without being intercepted."
“What do you have for me, then, Colonel?” Logan wanted to know. “Give me something we can work with or I’m sending the Shakak out to jump into every one of those systems until we find something to shoot.”
“The prisoner,” Lee interrupted. “What about the prisoner we brought back from the Jeuta ship? Has Intelligence been able to get anything out of him?”
“So far,” Stone admitted, “he hasn’t said a word, not in his language or ours. I was going to ask you,” he said to Logan, “whether you wanted to authorize using physical and psychological duress to question him.”
Logan’s lip curled in distaste at the euphemism. “Physical and psychological duress” was spook-talk for torture. Mental and physical torture.
And so what? It’s a Jeuta, not a human. And if it can get me closer to getting Katy back, it’s worth it.
But would Katy think it was worth it? She was perfectly willing to kill their enemies when their enemies were trying to kill them first, but torture? He remembered the first time he’d met her in the makeshift medical clinic at the bandit encampment on Ramman, just after Lyta and her Rangers had rescued her and the others from captivity. She’d been beaten badly, still had the bruises and cuts from it and the look of stunned realization, the look of someone who understood their life would never be the same.
He couldn’t imagine her approving, and he couldn’t bring himself to ask it to be done in her service.
“I want to talk to him.”
“Sir?” Stone blinked as if he hadn’t heard him right.
“I want to talk to the prisoner. Now.” He nodded at the door to the office. “Go arrange whatever you need, whatever security you think is appropriate, but I want to talk to him.”
“What do you think he’ll say to you that he won’t say to us?” Stone wondered, and Logan felt something cold running through his veins, a slowly-building rage he had to fight to control.
He took a step forward, putting his face centimeters from the Intelligence officer’s.
“Colonel Stone,” he said, the edge in his voice so hard it seemed to him that it came from someone else, someone he’d never met before, “you are drifting perilously close to insubordination. I wouldn’t have tolerated that sort of tone as a colonel, and I sure as hell won’t put up with it as Guardian. Perhaps you think my age means I lack confidence in my judgement, that I should defer to your years of experience.” He shrugged. “And perhaps I will, sometimes. But that will be at my discretion, not yours.”
Logan noticed Lee and Kurtz looking as if they’d rather crawl under a rock and hide than listen to this conversation, but Anders was watching closely, keenly, ever the schoolmaster scoring his student. Logan wondered whether he passed this test.
“My apologies, Lord Guardian,” Stone said, bracing to attention. “I was making presumptions I had no right to make.”
“You mean you were talking to me the way General Constantine talked to my father,” Logan corrected him. “But Nicolai earned that right over twenty-five years of friendship and service. And maybe you will, too, one day. But today, I need you to follow my orders and take me to see your prisoner.”
“Yes, sir.” Stone salute
d and Logan returned it. “I’ll notify you once the arrangements are made.”
“Val, John,” Logan said, once Stone had turned on his heel and left the office, “you two should get some rest then work on writing up formal reports to be filed with the Intelligence Service.” He sniffed humorlessly. “I guess that’s the biggest difference between now and when we were on our own. You’re going to have to file reports about everything.”
“Is it too early to retire?” Kurtz wondered, smiling thinly before he came to attention along with Lee and saluted on his way out.
Anders watched them go, waiting for the door to close before he turned back to Logan.
“Seriously, though,” the general finally said, “what do you think that Jeuta will say to you that he won’t say to Stone’s people?”
“Mithra knows,” Logan admitted with a shrug. “Or maybe Katy’s God does. Let’s hope one of them is listening.”
18
Tarpeia, Primus Pilus Alvar thought, no longer felt like home.
Have I been gone so long and so often? Have I grown soft on the human worlds? Or has this place always looked like what the humans call Hell?
Certainly the woman Kathren Margolis seemed to think of it so. Her eyes were wide with what he thought was horror at the glowing peak of Mount Tatius, its smoking fumarole a looming in the blood-red evening sky, a constant threat to all of Capitoline. He noticed her breathing grow shallow and he wondered if it was the sulfur smell in the air. Or perhaps she was simply terrified, surrounded as she was on all sides by enemies.
She was guarded of course, with the massive, hulking Centurion Turo in charge of her security detail, with troopers flanking her and behind. Ostensibly, they were there to keep her from escaping, but in fact, he’d put them in place to keep her safe from the public onlookers who might be tempted to take out their general hatred of humans on her. They were staring at her as the troops escorted her through the city, the civilians, the workers, even the off-duty legionnaires. Anger, resentment, and utter disgust was plain to read in their faces and in their posture, and he thought he saw a few legionnaires in the crowd reaching for the knives at their belts.
He didn’t blame them. A few years ago, he might have been one of them, looking to throw a rock at the prisoner or even risk the guards to attack her, but experience had taught him better. Letting personal hatred blind him to the big picture, to the cause of the Purpose, was a sin, a dereliction of his duty to his people. He didn’t count on the wisdom of the crowd to stay their hand, however. Turo’s legionnaires and the yawning muzzles of their rifles would make sure discretion would win out even if wisdom did not.
The Planning Center doors swung open at their approach, the guards there betraying no emotion for good or ill on their stoic faces. He felt worry gnawing at the back of his mind, only confirmed when Praefectus Magnus came up beside him, hand touching his elbow.
“Beware, Primus Pilus,” she said softly. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
He hadn’t needed the fleet commander to come down with him to share her feelings. He’d asked her to accompany him for the political support she could provide, and that need kept him from snapping some impatient and coarse comment about her fortune-telling abilities.
It didn’t take a soothsayer to sense trouble approaching. In this case, trouble was embodied in the tall, rangy form of Legatus Jouko, the purple cloak of his office draped over his right shoulder, his future mate Petra draped over his left. To say the Legatus didn’t seem happy would have been indulging in humorous understatement worthy of a human.
“Legatus!” Alvar said with the due respect the office deserved, snapping a sharp salute. “I have returned from my mission and wish to report its progress.”
Jouko returned it brusquely, giving no more precision or consideration than was necessary to maintain tradition.
“Progress?” Jouko snapped, jaw clenched, teeth bared with barely contained rage. “Is that what you call this? Why have you brought this thing here to contaminate our home soil?” He jabbed a finger at Commander Kathren Margolis. “And why have you not taken your fleet into the heart of the Spartan Dominion, as you assured us you would?”
“Legatus, by the time we arrived at Revelation, the rebel Logan Brannigan had already left the planet. Our signal intercepts from the human communications relay stations say he has already returned to Sparta and seized the throne, and has made peace with the Starkad Supremacy.”
“Then your plan was a failure,” Petra said, her tone dripping scorn, “and you will have to face the consequences.”
Alvar was barely able to conceal his disgust for the female. She was a capable warrior, but rather than seeking her own advantage and trying to seize leadership for herself, she was content to let Jouko’s career drag her along.
“All well-made plans leave enough flexibility to adapt to the situation,” he told her, voice and eyes cold, before turning back to Jouko. “I don’t need to go to Sparta to accomplish my mission. I can force Logan to come here, to Tarpeia, alone, without his fleet or his legions of mecha and soldiers.” He gestured back at Katy. “This one is a female, Logan’s mate, and she is heavy with his child. He is a young male, passionate and given to grand gestures. If we offer him her life in return, he will come here and sacrifice his own to save her. With him gone, his replacement will lack the loyalty of his own military, or the trust of the Starkad Supremacy. They won’t support Sparta when we attack their planets.”
For a few seconds, the Legatus said not a word. His jaw worked as if he were chewing up Alvar’s words, deciding whether to swallow them or spit them out.
“Your words stink of desperation,” he said, finally. “They are excuses for your failure, a transparent attempt to avoid the fate that awaits you. I would not have one who still may have value to the Confederation killed outright.” Jouko’s tone attempted conciliation but succeeded only in condescension. “Perhaps public flogging would be more appropriate, along with stripping you of your ranks and titles…and, of course, having your little human pet here put to death.” His face twisted in disgust. “We do not allow vermin in our midst.”
Tarpeia was spinning around Alvar, wastewater heading down the drain and taking him with it. He grasped for lifelines, for anything to keep him atop the flood and prevent his career and his dreams from washing away in the storm.
And what he found…
“Legatus Jouko,” he said, the words coming to his lips as if placed there by the Purpose, or by one of the human gods, “son of Tarja, son of Darkko, ruler of Tarpeia by the declaration of the General, by right of the Purpose.” He raised his voice, trying to reach the troops behind him, the officers and legionnaires scattered through the entrance hall of the Planning Center, the followers of Jouko gathered to watch the show. “I, Primus Pilus Alvar, son of Heikki, son of Vesa, leader of the Fleet of Conquest by your declaration, by right of the Purpose, challenge you to do battle in the Pit, to the death.”
The floor of the Planning Center grew so silent he could hear the gasping breath of the human female, all eyes on the two males, everyone waiting for Jouko’s response.
Not that there was any other way he could respond, unless he was prepared to be reviled and scorned.
“I, Jouko, accept your challenge, Primus Pilus Alvar,” the legatus said, his tone casual, not even showing a hint of surprise, as if this was exactly the reaction he’d expected. “As challenged, I will select the time, and I see no reason to draw this out any longer than necessary. We will battle tomorrow, when the star rises above the horizon.” He barked his derision. “And you may even have your pet human along to watch you die, before she’s beheaded and tossed into a sulfur pool along with you, for your bodies to dissolve into nothing together.”
“You are the challenger, Alvar,” Praefectus Magnus said, surprising Alvar by assuming the role as his second, chaining her fate to his. “By the customs of our people and the writings of the Purpose, you have the choice of weapons. What will be
your choice?”
Alvar considered in the few seconds he allowed himself whether he might be better off with a halberd, to counteract Jouko’s height advantage, or whether he would be better off keeping things simple and light with knives. But there was something more crucial here than merely winning the challenge in the Pit. He also had to win the political fight after the battle, the fight for reputation and followers, and that fight meant he had to win a certain way.
“I will beat Legatus Jouko to death in the morning,” Alvar declared flatly, “with my bare hands.”
Logan Brannigan winced at the sight of the Jeuta strapped to the padded table, secured tightly with thick bands starting across his forehead and running all the way down to his ankles. The table was in the center of a featureless, white room on the other side of the one-way mirror. He knew the Jeuta couldn’t see anything but a reflection, but Logan still had the sense the male was staring at him in silent accusation.
“We didn’t want him trying to kill himself,” the young Intelligence captain explained, her tone apologetic, as if she knew how it looked. “He won’t eat or drink, so we’ve had to drug him pretty good to force food and water into him.” The woman shrugged. “The drugs work at least, though we have to double the normal dose. But we can’t get him to tell us anything useful. Honestly, we’re not sure what to do next.”
“Stop drugging him,” Logan ordered. “Unstrap him from that table and get a chair in here, something we can restrain him in but comfortably. Do it now.”
“Um, yes, sir,” the captain said, hurrying out of the room.
