“You should have seen what they did at Castle Nulth,” Colm said.
“I bet. But a sentrienza compound isn’t a medieval castle. You need to hook up with the Organization.” Axel glanced over his shoulder at the stoic Ghost who was still covering him. “Tell this chucklehead to put his gun up, so I can make a few calls.”
CHAPTER 45
COLM RECRUITED HELP FROM the queazels, wielding Gil’s name and authority. He felt somewhat bad about that, but he wasn’t asking them to fight. He just needed vehicles and power sources, so that the Ghosts could fight for them.
The Ghosts would not be fighting alone, though. Hundreds of mara and shablags were itching to join the operation.
Axel said, “They’ve had it with paying for their own subjugation. They’ve also had it with being slaughtered whenever they act ungrateful.”
They had stockpiled weapons and fuel. The whole town, perhaps the whole continent, was a bomb of radioactive resentment and pride. It only wanted detonating.
Half a day after the Ghosts’ arrival, it went off.
The sentrienza at the customs post never knew what hit them.
Their Walking Guns might be fearsome weapons, but they were no match for Ghosts who could simply drain their batteries, leaving them dead hunks of metal and circuitry.
“Now that’s a game-changer,” Colm murmured, awed by the sight of Walking Guns dying on their feet. For every Ghost who was cut down by flechettes or slugs, three more appeared from thin air. They were simply overwhelming the Walking Guns, exploiting their Achilles heel: electrical power.
“That’s my lad Janz,” Dhjerga Lizp said. “He’s very good at what he does.”
“I can see that. But is it a direct conversion of energy to mass?”
Dhjerga grinned. He had terrible teeth. “I’ve no fucking idea what you’re on about.”
Colm and Dhjerga were sitting in the cab of a dumptruck just inside the gate of the customs post. In the long shadow of an office building, Ghosts swarmed the few surviving Walking Guns. Colm drank in the sight. This was actually going well.
Dhjerga leaned forward and tapped the windshield. “What are those big boats?”
From here, high on the headland, they could see the prison ships moored in the fjord, surrounded by tenders and barges. None of them was the Constantinople, but Colm figured he would probably know some of the security personnel on board. “I’m going to contact them as soon as we’re done here. They can either join us or not, but when they see piles of scrap that used to be Walking Guns ... I think they’ll join us.”
“Who’s on board? More of the dwarves? Or the big green ones? Or the queazels?”
“Humans. Those are prison ships. There are thousands of humans on this planet, maybe a million at this point. Nearly all of them are shut up on boats like those.”
“Copies?”
“No, they’re not copies,” Colm said firmly. He was still a long way from understanding Dhjerga’s distinction between ‘originals’ and ‘copies,’ but he had grasped one important aspect of it: the Ghosts considered ‘copies’ to be disposable. Colm had had a hell of a time talking them out of gunning down every human they saw in Kevesingod. They assumed all of them were copies.
Now Dhjerga said, “We always thought we were killing copies. I mean, how would originals have got to all these worlds?” He spread his callused palms: QED.
“In spaceships, obviously,” Colm said, not seeing the difficulty.
“What are spaceships?”
It was extraordinary the things Dhjerga did not know. But he knew enough to be touchy about his own ignorance. Colm explained carefully, “Ships for travelling between worlds.” He tensed. A speck was falling out of the yellow-blue sky. “Like that one.”
*
IT WAS A SENTRIENZA short-hop shuttle. The Ghosts murdered its crew with phlegmatic brutality. The next shuttle to arrive tried something different. It hovered on its VTOL thrusters, clearly aiming to fry the whole compound with its plasma exhaust.
Colm saw this from the cockpit of the first shuttle. He’d taken it back into the air as soon as the Ghosts dealt with its crew. It lacked an esthesia interface, being built for sentrienza pilots. But he could fly it manually. He was pleased to discover he wasn’t too rusty after all these months.
Meg, examining the consoles in front of the gunner’s couch, said: “Keel-mounted railgun. Dual penetrator nuclear rounds, like the ones we used to have. Sweet.”
“You can read those displays?”
“I can read weapons schematics.”
Colm flew the shuttle on a low-altitude tour of the headland. Lumpy crags blurred past below. Whitecaps speckled the sea. A sonic boom trailed the shuttle across the barren valleys. “Fire at will,” he told Meg, as they came back within visual targeting distance of the customs post.
The other sentrienza shuttle was working the compound over, anal in its mission of total destruction. Rivers of melted glass and plastic trickled out of the charred shells of buildings. Colm hoped everyone had taken refuge in the underground warehouse complex.
“Rounds away,” Meg said calmly.
An explosion tore the other shuttle’s fuselage apart. It plunged to the ground outside the compound. As Colm flashed past, the wreckage cooked off in a fireball so dazzling that it whited out his external sensor array. He was flying blind for a moment, remembering that the sentrienza used a different type of power plant in their ships, not reactors, but field generators that did something really funky, like flipping down quarks into down antiquarks. He wondered for a panicky second what the hell he was doing, taking on a species that could toy with the fundamental building blocks of matter.
The sensors came back online. He pulled the nose up in time to avoid taking a dip in the fjord. He banked, gimbaled the auxiliaries into airbrake mode, and glided in to a calculated stall outside the compound.
Meg chuckled, “That was something, huh, Collie Mack? Just like the old days.”
“Just like the old days,” he agreed, avoiding her eyes.
The other shuttle was not there anymore. Smoke streamed from the crater where it had crashed. Their allies straggled out of the underground warehouse complex.
The VTOL thrusters lowered the shuttle gently to the hillside. Meg said, “Colm?” Her voice was different from before. Careful. “I need to ask you something.”
“Ask away.”
“How did the Ghosts get here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was it you?”
“No,” Colm heard himself saying. Meg would have to accept his denial. She didn’t know him that well. She didn’t know what had happened in the tower room at Castle Nulth.
He rose from the wrong-shaped pilot’s couch. His back popped. “Nice shooting, Gunny.” He climbed down the stairs into the sunlight.
Acrid chemical dust blew on the wind. The shablags and mara were hot-footing it away from the slagged compound. Only the Ghosts remained, dragging supplies out of the underground warehouses.
Dhjerga Lizp sauntered around the crater, swigging from a bottle. “So that’s a spaceship, eh?”
“Yup,” Colm said. “What do you think?”
Dhjerga, of course, was too cool to express any wonderment at the technological marvel looming over them. “I’m wondering what comes next.” He cast a distrustful glance up at the sky. “More of them?”
“Either that, or rods from God.” Colm sighed, feeling his combat high drain away. An incipient tropo crash amplified his misgivings. He wondered if it had, in fact, been a good idea to effectively declare war on a powerful interstellar empire.
“Rods ...” Dhjerga frowned.
“Missiles dropped from orbit. Which is why we’d better get out of here. We’ve done what we came to do, anyway. The news’ll get out: the sentrienza got their asses handed to them at Kevesingod.”
Meg came down the steps of the shuttle. “So, what’s next?”
“Food,” Dhjerga said. “Sleep. Maybe a bath
, if there is such a thing on this world.”
Meg gazed narrowly at the Ghost. “Do you enjoy this?”
“This?”
“War.”
“I love war. All except the fighting bit. I prefer resting. Hiding is good, too.”
Meg smiled thinly. She jerked her chin at the other Ghosts. “How’re we going to hide with that crowd tagging along?”
“Oh, we’ll just leave them,” Dhjerga said. “They’re only copies, after all.”
Colm squinted at the stragglers on the road. “Where’s Axel?”
They searched for him as long as they dared. He was nowhere to be found.
CHAPTER 46
THE VIENNA, LIKE ALL the prison ships of Juradis, stank. Its rich and foul perfume was a blend of toilets, rancid cooking oil, garbage fermenting in the skips in the hold, dead fish, fried fish, boiled fish, and people, people, people. On calm days, the smell travelled with the ship like an olfactory zero-gravity field.
Suleiman Tan and his family had found the best solution: sleep under the stars.
Their bivouac on the foredeck of the Vienna consisted of a canopy with one side hooked to a rusty lifeboat. It sheltered camp cots and appliances that ran off the ship’s solar array. It was a far cry from life on Gna. But the little girls, Crystal and Zainab, had adapted. They were young enough that wonders such as sea birds and real sunlight made up for the loss of two homeworlds in a row.
But when Colm and his companions slunk aboard, the little girls hid behind their mother. Colm felt like an intruder who’d crawled in through the window of their new home, bringing trouble and danger into their lives ... yet again. Bella gave him the evil eye. She obviously felt the same way.
“We’re not going to be here for long,” Colm promised, sinking down on the sun-warmed deck. “We’re only hitching a ride as far as the next port.”
“Damn right,” said James Lee. He had helicoptered out to the Vienna when he heard that Colm had resurfaced. He levelled a stare at Dhjerga Lizp. “I can’t allow you to remain on board, period. What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t,” Dhjerga said amiably.
Dhjerga had exchanged his Ghost uniform for a t-shirt and cargo pants, at Colm’s insistence. At a glance, he could pass for human. But sit down face to face with him and you felt how alien he was. Lke sitting in front of an open fridge.
Lee jerked his chin aft, indicating the bridge blister on top of the ship’s towering superstructure. That was where the Vienna’s captain and officers—all of them sentrienza—lurked. “They don’t make a habit of coming down this way,” Lee said. “But their Walking Guns patrol the boat regularly. Right, Sully?”
“Right,” Tan said.
“What if they find out we’ve got a Ghost on board?”
“This tub is a floating power plant,” Dhjerga said. “There’s a solar array up top and a nuclear reactor on the engine deck.” Dhjerga might not know what a spaceship was, but he knew all about power sources. “You want to take over the ship? Give me fifteen minutes.”
Lee squinted through the smoke from his cigarette. “I didn’t say I wanted to take over the ship.”
“I’m just telling you how easy it’d be.”
“We’d be cutting our own throats ... unless we took over all the prison ships at the same time.”
“How many are there?”
“Two hundred and twenty-eight.”
“They can be yours by the end of the day.”
Something ignited in the depths of Lee’s eyes. “Still not enough,” he spat. “Ships are vulnerable to air strikes.”
“What about these islands I keep hearing about?” Dhjerga said. “The ones where they keep their ships for travelling between worlds. Can’t sink an island. And they’re built up to the skies, right? I don’t normally like operating in cities, but it is good cover for small units.”
Meg, sitting at the edge of the group, cleared her throat. “I was checking out the news this morning,” she said. “There was something about a gang shootout on Gissthung.”
Gissthung was one of the other equatorial spaceports, the biggest after Haravalding.
“Forty-three killed,” Meg said. “Now I’m wondering if that really was a gang fight. Or ...”
Dhjerga grinned. “Got me. It was a recce.” He looked around at them until his gaze came to rest on Lee. “Now you know I’m not joking.”
Lee lost the staring contest, something Colm never would’ve expected to see. A second later he was aiming a handgun at Dhjerga’s face. He was so fast on the draw, Colm hadn’t even seen his hand move. Bella let out a smothered yelp. Everyone else sat in paralyzed silence. Lee gritted, “I’m having a flashback. I was on Kepler 442b at the end. I personally saw the Ghosts gun down women and children. That invasion started with a single Ghost, too. You see that kind of thing, you get to wondering. What if someone had put a bullet in his brainpan before the whole shit-show kicked off?”
Dhjerga stared into the barrel of the gun a few feet from his face, apparently unmoved by the threat. “Wasn’t me.”
“Same fucking difference.”
“You know how long I’ve been trying to defect?”
“Defect?” Meg said.
“I took off my uniform, too,” Lee said. “I’m still human.”
“I wanted to make amends for the things I did on Majriti IV.” Dhjerga glanced at Colm. “But when I tried to get a word with this ginger bastard, he shot at me and ran away.”
Colm said, “What were you expecting? You chopped off my copilot’s head.” He hadn’t meant to bring this up. it was war. People died. End of story. But he’d been carrying Erik Bekkelund around with him all these years. It just popped out.
“I remember that,” Dhjerga said. “That’s when I decided to defect.”
Colm shook his head angrily. He lit a cigarette, expelled his emotions in a cloud of smoke.
An unfamiliar expression pulled Dhjerga’s broad mouth down at the corners. He said to Colm, “If someone like you could live among the humans, I could, too. That’s what I thought, anyway.”
Tan said, “Someone like Colm? A serial screw-up who’s lost more jobs than I’ve cashed paychecks?”
Lee laid his gun on his thigh, pointing at the deck. He glanced at Colm. Stony-faced, he said, “By the way, you’re fired.”
Colm blew a smoke ring. “Streak’s still going, baby.”
Laughter broke the tension. Lee cracked a minimal smile. “All right,” he said to Dhjerga. “I believe you’re on the level. If I’m wrong? God help us all.”
*
DAWN BROKE OVER THE sea in a flood of magenta and peach. The Vienna had steamed far enough south that there were dawns again. Colm had not slept for much of the short night. Thoughts of war had kept him awake, seguing into memories of the sentrienza shuttle slagging the customs post. By the time the sky grew light he had convinced himself that there was no way they could win.
Lee, however, had come to the opposite conclusion. His helicopter took off from the aft deck, scattering a flock of sea birds. He was heading back to Haravalding. There, he would discreetly spread the word, warn the humans what was coming, and liaise with the mara and shablags of the Organization.
Meg had gone with him.
Colm watched the helicopter shrink into the dawn. He sighed.
Bella came to stand next to him. “I’m worried about Meg,” she said.
It was a relief to admit, “Me, too.”
“I get the impression that losing Axel really hit her hard.”
Colm said, “I don’t think he’s dead. More likely, he just walked off to sit by the fjord and mope about the unfairness of the universe.” Or else, Colm thought, he had seen the writing on the wall after the Ghosts’ extravaganza at the customs post ... and had acted on it by making himself scarce. But that seemed unlikely. Axel had taken a leading role in organizing the operation against the sentrienza, and in fact, Colm had been counting on his advice going forward. Damn him for disappe
aring.
Bella was more interested in her friend’s welfare. “I feel protective of Meg. Silly, isn’t it? We’re the same age. And God knows, she can defend herself. But still ... I feel like you guys are part of the family.”
Touched, Colm said awkwardly, “I’m sorry we’re putting you through this.”
“If anything happens to Sully, I’ll never forgive you, Colm Mackenzie. Never.” She smiled, but she obviously meant it. And why wouldn’t she? Colm was dragging her husband into another war, when they had only just escaped from the last one.
Dhjerga Lizp emerged from the Tans’ bivouac. He had Crystal on one hip and Zainab on the other. Bella’s eyes flashed panic. “Girls! Come here.”
But the little girls were giggling merrily. They ran to Bella. Crystal, the elder, had something cupped in her hands. “Mommy, guess what he gave me!” She opened her hands to reveal a small brown rat. “It’s just like the ones from home!”
“Home, honey?”
“Mars!” Crystal said impatiently.
Bella looked stricken. “I didn’t know you even remembered Mars.”
“I remember our old house. And the rats. They were just like this one!”
The rat sat blinking on Crystal’s palm. As Bella bent to look at it, it sprang to the deck and absconded among the yawning security guards who were emerging from their bedrolls.
“Never mind,” Dhjerga said, as the children wailed. “I can fetch you another one.”
“You’d better not, mister,” Bella said. “The last thing this boat needs is a rat problem.” Grudgingly, she added,“Coffee?”
“That’d be brilliant,” Colm said.
“What’s coffee?” Dhjerga said. “I’m joking. I tried the instant stuff in the Kuiper Belt. It was shite. I’m sure yours is a thousand times better.”
When Bella and the girls had gone back inside the shelter, Colm said quietly, “Was that rat really from Mars?”
“No. I’ve not been there. It was from the Kuiper Belt.”
“I didn’t know there were rats in the Kuiper Belt.”
“I fetched some for food. They multiply fast.”
The Chemical Mage: Supernatural Hard Science Fiction (The Tegression Trilogy Book 1) Page 28
