In the next glance my contact stood and walked right up to our table. “Hey, cutie.” Her eyes locked on me.
Dorr looked her over fast and his smile grew. “Not bad.”
She was over twice my age. She grinned at Dorr and leaned a hand on the table, scoped all three of us and lingered on me. “Can you lend him, blondie?”
Aki said, “He’s underage.”
“Don’t ruin the lad’s fun now,” Dorr said. And to the woman, “Go ’head, if you can drag him from his seat. He’s kinda prim.”
“I don’t think so,” I told the woman, because they expected that.
“Aw, c’mon.” She smiled and leaned in close to my ear as if she were flirting. I forced myself not to recoil as her lips brushed my cheek. “Den number nine, in a half hour. Get there.” She drew back and gave me a mock face of disappointment.
“Sorry,” I said. “You’re a little too old for me.”
Her smile showed teeth. I didn’t think the glare was an act. “Your loss, cutie.” She looked at Dorr. “How ’bout you?”
His gaze traveled around, avoiding hers out of disinterest. “Sorry, you ain’t my type.”
Aki said, “Maybe you should go scope out a twelve-year-old,” to the woman. Dorr laughed. The woman drifted off with a noncommittal shrug. Dorr talked on, trying to draw my eyes to some people he deemed “good ambushees,” which I ignored until enough time had passed that I could excuse myself to the washrooms.
Dorr said, “Don’t fall in.”
I threaded through the crowd toward the back of the bar, where a red-striped exit led to the dens. The washrooms were just beside it. A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed that Aki and the corporal couldn’t see where I was, so I ducked through the den entrance and fast-walked through the dim, narrow warren of corridors, past people lounging on the floor or in doorways, some of them clearly strung out. Den nine sat in a corner, a scratched, shut door. I knocked, a hand on my sidearm where it was tucked into my waist.
The woman opened it, stepped back so I could enter.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” I told her as she shut the door. “Macedon jumped a meeting between a strit and a Hub merchant. Can Niko explain that?”
She sat on the rumpled covers of the narrow bed, crossed her legs, and rested an elbow on her knee, looking up at me with dark eyes. The room was a hole, paint peeling. “Siddown, cutie, I don’t like how you hover.”
I didn’t want to touch anything in that room, so just crossed my arms. “Can he explain that?”
“No,” she said. She tugged a cigret out of her sleeve cuff, struck the end with her finger lighter. A crease appeared between her brows. “How long ago?”
“Four weeks.” I fished out the intel cube from one of my cargo pockets and handed it over. “The coordinates, everything, is in there. The ship was Havurkar. The merchant got away and Macedon’s on the prowl for it. We just came back from a mission. Attacked a symp—the Gra’tlir. It’s dead now.”
Her gaze lingered on me as she took the cube. “What about general intel about Macedon?”
“It’s in there.” The corners of the room were bare, ripped, furling carpet. “It’s all in there. The captain, their policies, all the shit they feed us about what Niko’s doing. So you don’t know anything about Havurkar?”
“No, but I’ll relay it to Nikolas.”
“Where is he?”
“I can’t tell you that.” She stood. “Just keep doing what you’re doing, Musey. It’s still early in the game.”
“This is a game?” I stared at her.
“You know what I mean.” Her eyes traveled on me. “Symp and strit, you said. They’re working you well, aren’t they?”
“What does he expect?” I couldn’t keep the resentment out of my voice. “When can I come out?”
The crease deepened between her eyes. “Are you in danger?”
“What do you think?”
“Specifically. Urgently.”
This woman might’ve known Niko, but she wasn’t going to give a thing. I took a breath of the stale air. “Would he take me back if I wanted to leave now? Could you arrange it?”
“You’d leave in the middle of it? After giving us this report about Havurkar? More than ever we could use the intel on what Macedon turns up about that merchant.”
“The Gra’tlir is dead! Don’t you care?”
She didn’t blink. “Of course we do. All the more reason to discover what’s going on. You’d waste their deaths?”
She was a symp, all right. That was a Niko answer.
“I killed them. I don’t want to do that again. Can’t you tell him that?”
Something in her face softened, but only a little. “Musey, we need you here.” She took out a cube from her pocket and went to the small table beside the bed, fished out an old model silver comp. “He sent you something. View it on this, then you better get back to your crew. I’ll be in the hall.”
She popped the cube in and left me there.
I stared at the comp screen. An icon flashed, waiting for activation. So I sat on the bed and poked it.
Niko’s image bloomed, eyes stark against the white head wrap, like the first time I’d ever seen him. He stared at me, but with that odd disconnection that happens when the other person can’t actually interact with you, like a first-gen holocharacter. But his voice was the same. He spoke in Ki’hade, a fall of words that poured into me like clear water.
“Jos-na, I believe in you. This is a risk, making this for you, but I want you to know it. I can’t speak to you physically but I see you here.” He touched his temple. “And here.” His heart. “Ritlua. Worthy student.” A smile drifted through his serious face. “I will see you, s’yta-na.”
The message shut, then the cube slot made a soft noise. Deleting. No doubt my contact would physically destroy it after I had gone. Efficient and precise, like his words had been. Just enough to remind me what I wanted and couldn’t have.
And even knowing that, I wanted it still. I’d only been on Macedon for a few weeks. Niko had stayed with me and trained me for over a year. What sacrifices had he made to keep me? What did I have to do to keep him?
I knew what. My heart pounded it out in my ears, like a protest. I’d play his message through my mind for a long time; I already had it memorized.
Ritlua. He’d taught me a new word.
* * *
XXVI.
The Charger APC troop bay smelled like gun oil, metal, and the cold sweat of close, nervous bodies. Low yellow light gave everyone a jaundiced complexion and highlighted the dark gray bulkheads like molten metal. Beside me, Kris checked and rechecked the pulse pack on his rifle and fingered his helmet’s unfastened chinstrap. Across from me, Erret Dorr sat slouched in his webbing and well-used black plate armor, legs outstretched and eyes half-closed. He cradled his rifle in his arms like a lover, cheek against the muzzle.
After considerable interrogation of the symps in our brig (who were later dumped on Chaos for trial) and investigation into the fleeting sig from the merchant at the battle, Hartman and Dorr identified the ship as Diamond-class Shiva, a name that rang vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t place where. By all accounts it was an upstanding ship, but it had been spotted in the same vicinity as a striviirc-na dreadnought, in apparent camaraderie.
Macedon was too large to approach the merchant without being detected so we had to sneak our way under their scan tech in a stealth-capable Charger, then force a lock and board. After that it was a routine search and seizure. So Dorr said. Jets did this sort of thing a lot.
I flexed my half-gloved fingers around the rifle stock. The pickup in my ear buzzed slightly, then Nathan’s voice came over, familiar, moderate, and without the usual joking tone.
“We’re under their scan, free and clear. Two mikes and we’re sealed.”
Lieutenant Stavros signaled Hartman with a brisk hand movement and unstrapped herself. Lieutenant Ballard, commanding the second platoon, motioned the sam
e to his sergeant.
Sergeant Hartman nudged the corporal awake. “Dorr, to the lock.”
“Rilke, set the birthday present,” Dorr ordered, yawning.
Kris extricated himself from his crash straps and dug into his gear for the shaped charge that we’d prepared on Macedon. He held it gingerly and went to our outer airlock. I took up a position behind his elbow, ready to move in, while Dorr and Madison covered the left side of the lock. The rest of the two platoons readied themselves in order of attack flow. Once we got Shiva’s lock blown it was going to be thick; by then the merchant crew would know we were there.
Nathan gently bumped and clamped the Charger against Shiva’s lock nipple. The light overhead snapped from red to green and the seal flared open. Kris stuck the charge to the middle of the merchant’s lock, poked the timer, and stepped back. We slid down our eye shields.
“Fire in the hole!”
We turned our armored shoulders to the seal. The charge beeped five times. A sharp pop and a line of smoke billowed briefly out, then came the heavy clang and thud of the seal falling outward from the explosion, into Shiva’s corridor.
Before it hit the other side Kris tossed through a thunder-flash. A deafening boom ricocheted in the air, accompanied by a blinding light. Our eye shields and helmets protected us, but not any enemy on the other side. We laid down fire in continuous, controlled bolts.
“Go!” Dorr commanded, when nothing came back at us.
Kris stepped through, followed by Madi. Dorr and I went after at a measured pace, through the veil of smoke and into a wide white corridor, tinted red by bunking emergency lights. Bodies lay crumpled on the painted deck, cut down and stained. I kept my eyes away so they were no more than dark shadows in my peripherals. The stripes on the deck confirmed we were on maindeck. Kris and Madi fanned the right corridor. Dorr and I followed on their six. The rest of the platoons poured through the lasered seal behind us.
“Deck up.” Stavros’s voice came through the pickup.
We’d memorized schematics of the Diamond-class merchant ships. Our goal was the bridge.
We spread through the ship like a virus.
“Where’s our resistance?” Dorr muttered, once we’d reached the command deck.
The ship sat curiously silent. Only our booted steps along the deckgrille made noise. Overhead the lights flickered red: warning, warning, warning.
“Maybe they’re barricaded,” Madi said.
“Or evacuated,” Hartman said, her voice a tinny relay in my ear. “Jelilian, what you got?”
“No movement in the bays,” he came back. “Their outriders ain’t peepin’.”
“This is shit,” Dorr said. He unhooked a singing grenade, poked the settings, then let it go in midair. It shot forward down the corridor with a soft whir and turned the corner, seeking man-sized heat signatures that weren’t protected by our coded armor beacons. Dorr flipped the tracker open on his wrist and watched the grenade’s route.
None of the other teams reported any contact.
My gut started to coil.
“It’s gone to the bridge,” Dorr said.
That meant none of the rooms or quarters were occupied between here and the bridge. Kris increased his pace.
“They’re lying in wait,” I said, just as the grenade exploded against the double-walled bridge hatch.
The ceiling panels slid aside and fire rained down. Two bodies thudded to the deck behind me as I slammed back against a hatch, covered somewhat in the recess, and shot out and upward into the corridor. A blast caught my shoulder armor and I hunkered down in reflex. The laser pulse hadn’t penetrated.
“Eyes up!” Dorr yelled through the pickup to the other teams.
A body fell to the deck in front of me from our team’s fire. Kris, Madi, and the two teams at our six coughed bolts from their rifles, the report echoing up and down the corridor. No paralysis pulses. Across from me in an identical recessed hatchway the corporal unhooked another grenade and tossed it overhead. I checked fast and fired again where I saw an arm, then again, popping in and out of my cover in stunted cadence when I spied a target. Grunts and swearing came from above and through my pickup. Two more bodies fell at our feet. They were dead before they hit, from our shots.
A silver tube protruded from one pocket.
“They’re rigged!”
I slapped the hatch access open and dived through just as the body in the corridor exploded. A wash of red seeped through my sight. Sparks lit behind my eyelids, they were so tightly shut. My breath came ragged.
“Oh, hell,” somebody said. Then the sounds of retching.
“We’re clear!” Hartman snapped. “Get to the bridge!”
I picked myself up and turned slowly to the corridor.
Dorr stood across the width. His eyes were dark and his armor splattered with blood and things you just weren’t meant to see.
He locked my gaze.
“Move out, Musey!”
My body responded to that voice before my mind did. I stepped out. My boot slipped. Dorr shoved my shoulder with the butt of his rifle and I saw Kris on my right, with Madi, wet streaks down his face—sweat, maybe. Blood on his leg armor.
“I said move!”
Kris and Madi covered steadily as Dorr and I jogged forward. The other teams came up in waves. Through the pickup I heard hell raised all through the ship.
“Wire!” Dorr yelled at me.
He swept his rifle around, his back to me, as I pulled the case explosive from my webbing pouch. I used my knife to pry open the bridge hatch’s control box, then yanked out the chipboard and wires, attaching them to the proper ports in the case. Behind me the pulse shots started again, loud and alive, stabbing through my mind. The enemy had reinforcements in their ranks. The scent of burned clothing, bodies, and metal swept under my eye shield and up into my head.
I turned my face, held up an arm, and tapped the trigger.
Burned wire added to the melt of scents, then the bridge hatch grated open automatically, a handspan. I shot through the breach as Dorr, Kris, and Madison came up to pry it wider. Bolts spat out and we jerked back.
“We want one of the officers alive!” Hartman reminded sharply through the pickup in my ear.
“Fuck,” Dorr said. He aimed his rifle blind through the crack and sprayed randomly, short spurts to keep the enemy low, then pulled back. “Lay down your weapons or we send in grenades!” he bluffed at the people on the bridge.
“You sure you didn’t kill ’em all?” Madi asked wryly.
His answer shot between us in the form of a small thrown grenade. I didn’t know how Dorr expected it, but he caught it midair and threw it back.
An explosion burst hollowly through the breach.
“I said alive!” Hartman barked.
Dorr grinned, eyes shining through his smoke-grimed face. “Them or us.” He raised his voice. “What’ll it be, mates? Hurry it up, I’m missin’ my dinner.”
I pulled out my small recon optic, flicked it activated, and unhooked it from my armor. I bent the eye to the opening so it scoped the bridge. A ghost image of seven people and some structural damage appeared on my eye shield heads-up display.
“They’re behind their seats and armed.”
“Stubborn bastards,” the corporal said. “We’ll just have to convince ’em. You got one marked?” he asked me.
“Yeah.”
“Gimme that.”
I tossed the optic across to him. It was still primed to my HUD. He held it up to give me a view of the bridge. I gripped my rifle, picked my target, and swung quickly to face the breach. I fired one shot, then pulled back tight as laser rained out.
“One down,” Dorr said.
A sharp expletive shot out at us after the laser.
“This’ll go quicker an’ with less bloodshed if y’all toss down your weapons!” Dorr yelled.
Nathan’s voice crackled through. “They launched outriders—and they’re armed!”
The Cha
rger sat like a growth against Shiva’s side. It had guns but no maneuverability, locked as it was.
“Call ’em off!” Dorr shouted at the bridge. “Muse.”
I eyed the HUD of the undecided crew, saw a head bob back behind one of the right-most seats. I swung in again and fired, one shot through the chair, and pulled back. They didn’t return fire. I heard the body thud to the deck.
“Call off your fuckin’ riders,” Dorr said again, in a different tone.
From the pickup it sounded like jets everywhere were taking down crew. Someone inside the bridge gave a command. “They’re breaking,” Nathan said. Then came the sound of heavy metal hitting deckplates.
“Come out to mid-bridge,” Dorr commanded, still braced against the hatch and watching me. I nodded to him when I saw the remaining crew step out from their damaged cover. “Kick your weapons away and get facedown on the deck, hands behind your heads.”
I nodded to him again and he signaled Kris and Madi to pry the hatch all the way open. Hartman and the other two fire teams started to come up closer. Reports of all-clear came spattering through my pickup from all over the ship, as well as requests for medics. Dorr and I moved onto the bridge, rifles aimed at the people lying on the deck. Five of them. Two others were dead. We frisked the live ones for other weapons while Sarge and the teams confiscated the tossed guns. Then Dorr stepped on the back of one of the men and shoved his rifle muzzle against the man’s head.
“Which one of you’s in command?”
“Fuck you, jet.”
Dorr pressed the trigger. The body didn’t even move. Laser pulse at close range just went right through you. Dorr moved to the next crewmember, a woman with long dark hair.
Sweat stung my eyes. Blood scented the recycled air.
The woman said, “I’m in command.”
Dorr stepped back, fixed on her. “Get up slow. Keep your hands on your head.”
She rose to her feet, back still to the corporal.
“Walk,” Dorr said.
Warchild Page 25
