Ballistic

by Marko Kloos

  Her father was doing a sword kata in the middle of the gym floor when she walked in. Solveig watched from the entrance as he went through the motions slowly and deliberately. The sword he was using was his favorite, a slender and elegant two-hander with a slightly curved blade and a sloped cross guard. He moved it into a low guard position, parried upward, then turned the blade and executed the counterattack: downward stroke from left to right, then right to left, then straight down the centerline. In her mind, she reviewed the parries she would have needed to block each attack, the mirror image of her father’s kata, opposite-direction blocks while moving backward to make him extend his reach. Falk Ragnar finished his kata, then returned his sword to its sheath with a quick and precise movement. Her father was still fit, lean, and muscular, even at seventy, thanks to the healthiest lifestyle and the best genetic regeneration treatments money could buy.

  “Did you have a good run?”

  “I did,” she said, unwilling to admit that he’d messed up the most relaxing part of her day.

  “Good. I like that you are keeping that routine. So much has changed since you went off to university. I’m glad to see that some things haven’t.”

  “You’ve kept to your routines, too,” Solveig said. “I’ve seen you do that kata a thousand times. I bet I could set a timer to it.”

  “That’s how you measure real skill, Solveig. Reliable repeatability, not peak performance.”

  Falk nodded over at the equipment rack on the back wall of the gymnasium.

  “Come on. Put on some armor, pick a sword. When’s the last time you sparred? Let’s see if you remember which end of the blade to use.”

  “Papa, I just ran the path. I’m sweaty and I need a shower. And I need to be at the landing pad at seven thirty.”

  “You’re the boss at Ragnar. Or rather, you will be. You can take ten minutes to humor me. The pilot on duty will wait for you, I promise.”

  Solveig didn’t feel like sparring, but she knew that her father wouldn’t take a refusal for an answer without kindling discord. She walked over to the equipment rack and put on the adaptive armor they used for sparring with live blades. It was made of several layers of slash- and stab-proof synthetic spidersilk, cushioned by a layer of kinetic gel to absorb impacts. Falk Ragnar did not use blunt practice blades, even if it meant that sparring partners had to wear armor that cost as much as a decent gyrofoil.

  While her armor was adjusting itself to her body shape, she looked at the blades on the rack. Her father had rotated out some of the weapons as his whims and preferences had changed over the years, but some of the swords she had used years ago were still there. He was using his favored curved two-handed blade, which was excellent at slashing and only so-so at thrusting. She finished her inventory and picked the weapon that was best suited for countering his sword. She couldn’t match him for strength, but she knew she was faster and more agile, and she made a smaller target. The sword she pulled from the rack was a simple one-hander with a narrow, lightweight blade and a basket-shaped hand guard. She tested the balance and slashed the air with it. The tip of the blade made a sharp whistling sound. She repeated the motion a few more times, hoping to cement in her father’s subconscious that she intended to match his style of sweeping strikes, where his heavier blade with its curved geometry would have an advantage.

  When they both had their armor in place and the face shields of their helmets lowered, they took up opposing positions in the middle of the gymnasium floor. Falk nodded at her, and Solveig returned the gesture.

  “Sensei, begin scoring,” he told the gymnasium’s AI. “First to three strikes, lethal strike ends the fight.”

  “First to three strikes wins, lethal strike wins instantly,” the AI confirmed. “You may begin.”

  Falk launched into his first attack as soon as the buzzer sounded. He struck from the low guard position, the same left-right, right-left combination he had used at the end of his kata. Solveig parried both in quick succession, her blade so fast that it was merely a blur in the air between them, and the sound of steel clashing on steel rang through the gymnasium. He finished with the centerline strike, and she sidestepped it, then lashed out with her sword and lanced the tip of her blade along the side of Falk’s right arm. Without the armor, she would have sliced him open from wrist to elbow, but the armor merely marked the hit visually. An angry-looking pulsating red line appeared in the spot where the tip of her sword had touched the white fabric of the armor.

  “Point,” the AI said. “Nonlethal strike. Miss Solveig leads, one to nothing.”

  They returned to their guard positions. Falk changed his grip and shifted into a high guard, the sword curving down in front of him, shielding his other arm.

  “I almost forgot how quick you are,” he said. Solveig thought she could detect admiration in his voice.

  “I’m just glad I used the right end,” she replied.

  She feigned a swipe at the arm she had just struck, and he pulled back and deflected like she knew he would. She let him tap her blade downward, then used the momentum for a straight thrust at his chest. He spun away, but only barely, the tip of her sword missing his armor by the barest fraction of a millimeter. The shifting of his hands on the hilt of his sword alerted her to his next strike, a horizontal sweep at shoulder height. She ducked underneath the slicing blade, then rolled backward and came back up in a guard position. He pressed the attack, this time less predictably than his preferred kata combination, and his blade tagged her on the thigh on the finishing downstroke.

  “Point. Nonlethal strike. The score is one to one.”

  “Now we’d both be bleeding all over the floor,” Falk said with a satisfied smile. Solveig looked at the spot where his blade would have cut deeply into her thigh. The armor’s AI dutifully marked the potential wound in bright red that started pulsating like a heartbeat. In a real fight, she’d be hobbled now, but if her hit on his arm had been real, he’d have no use of his main sword arm. The fight would be a stalemate, with his offense and her mobility both neutralized, neither being able to strike the other decisively. They would have wounded each other grievously with no outcome, no clear victory to claim for their sacrifice, both worse off than before.

  Solveig knew that she’d be able to wear him down now, that the fire of his competitive spirit was only truly coming alive with the first point he had scored. He would get confident, and that would make him overly rash and hasty. But she also knew that if she beat him by points, he’d insist on a rematch until she conceded one, and if she beat him with a lethal strike, he’d be in a dark mood for the rest of the week. So when he crossed steel with her again on the next exchange, she invited a diagonal strike by lowering her stance into an imperfect guard just a little. He took the opening and let her goad him into committing to the strike. When it came, she tried to block it with her own blade, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to arrest his momentum. His blade crashed into hers, driving it against the side of her neck and shoulder, and he used his energy advantage to slide his sword down the edge of her blade until it made contact with her neck. The buzzer sounded.

  “Lethal strike. The fight ends. Master Ragnar wins.”

  They both looked at each other, panting with the exertion of their exchange, even though the whole fight had taken less than a minute. Then Falk flashed his toothy grin and sheathed his sword.

  “Not bad at all, for someone who’s out of practice. I would have bet money that you wouldn’t score at all. Come on, let’s get cleaned up and meet in the kitchen for breakfast. I have something to ask of you.”

  Falk was sitting at the kitchen table already when she got there twenty minutes later. He was wearing an all-black outfit, a flattering buttonless tunic with a high collar and sleeves that ended just below the elbows. There was a news stream playing on a screen projection, and when he saw her walking through the entry archway, he waved at the screen to turn off the sound.

  “I’m trying some of your tea,” he said and lift
ed his mug to show her. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” Solveig said. “It’s a Palladian blend. Most people I know think it’s too strong.”

  “I didn’t even know they could grow tea on that craggy rock of theirs. Come, have a seat. Did you put in your breakfast order already? Greta got some fresh shallows crabs from Oceana. The soft-shelled kind. Great in eggs.”

  Solveig walked over to the beverage station and filled a mug of her own with tea. The soundless news stream was showing a crowd in front of the old High Council building in Sandvik, half a kilometer from the square where Ragnar Tower stood. The deadly bombing on Principal Square three months ago had been all the excuse the Alliance needed to crack down on the protests that had been growing more heated and violent. Now the mere sight of an impact weapon was enough to draw the swift response of a JSP patrol, and if it looked like an assembly was about to slide out of control, there was a full JSP platoon on the scene in minutes.

  The breakfast she had requested from the kitchen staff was waiting for her in the service station. She took the plated arrangement of poached eggs and corn mash to the table and sat down, then spread butter on the mash and cut the eggs with her fork to pierce the yolks. They were just on the right side of runny this morning.

  “So what do you want to ask me?”

  “I have a suggestion for you. Unofficially, of course. I’m not supposed to have a hand in how you run the business.” Falk took a sip from his mug and watched over the rim as she took the first bite of her breakfast.

  “A suggestion,” Solveig repeated. Her father wasn’t in the habit of making those. When he conveyed his opinion, he usually expected agreement or compliance.

  “We—you—have to renegotiate terms with Hanzo soon. The terms we got from them three years ago are about to expire, and I think you’re in a good position to get more favorable ones. Now that the dust from the war has settled a bit.”

  “The graphene contracts,” Solveig said, and Falk nodded.

  “Hanzo would have given us better terms back then, but their main customer is Oceana. And you know the level of the grudge those people are holding against us. They made sure the Acheroni would charge us the highest net they could squeeze out of us. And we had no choice but to take it.”

  We invaded Oceana, Solveig thought. We occupied it for four years. Of course they’re holding a grudge. We are, aren’t we? We’re still protesting our occupation after five years.

  “And you think we’re in a better position now,” she said instead.

  “Of course we are. I mean, we’re not back to normal yet. Probably won’t be for another three years. But we’re back up to fifty percent of prewar. They need more Alon; we need more graphene. It’s no longer a one-sided deal. Now we have more Alon to use for leverage. If they refuse to revisit the shit terms they gave us, they get shit terms from us in return. With a grin, of course, because they’re all about etiquette.”

  He smiled without humor and took another sip from his mug.

  “And that’s where you come in, Solveig.”

  “You want me to negotiate with Hanzo?”

  “I’m not telling you to do anything. I’m not allowed, remember? I am just giving you some parental advice.”

  “Papa, I’ve been a vice president for three months. I’m hardly the most qualified person for that job. I’ve never negotiated foreign contracts.”

  “You have a magister in interplanetary business,” Falk said. “But you also have something nobody else at the company has right now. The family name that’s on the side of the building.”

  She felt her face flush.

  “I want to get assignments on my own merit, Papa. Not because I am a Ragnar. I already get enough side-eye at work because I get to have an executive office at twenty-three.”

  Falk shook his head lightly and flashed a smile again.

  “For this assignment, the fact that you’re a Ragnar makes you the most qualified negotiator.”

  “And how is that?”

  “It’s their etiquette thing. You don’t know their culture yet.”

  “I took four years of Acheroni in school. My instructor was from Acheron. I know a little about the place.”

  “They have really peculiar ideas about respect. Especially as it relates to family and business. We could send Magnus or one of the other VPs, of course. But you’re the heir. You have the name. In their culture, you outrank everyone else in the company. Sending you would be a major show of respect in their eyes. The terms are almost secondary, really. You’d get better ones than Magnus because his negotiating skills won’t count as much as your lineage.”

  “So you want me to be the company lead for the Hanzo talk.”

  “I want you to go to Acheron, Solveig. Meet with them face-to-face. These people will really respect the gesture if a Ragnar makes the trip in person. It will put us on much better footing with them than a Mnemosyne conference. You can’t drink on a deal with a hologram.”

  The low-level dread Solveig had been feeling at taking on the responsibility was suddenly tempered by the excitement she felt at the prospect of a trip to Acheron. She had never been there—the war had started when she was just fourteen and at boarding school—and the idea of being let off her leash to see a different planet again for the first time in a decade was almost irresistible. Still, she kept her carefully neutral expression and pretended that she was unsure about the whole thing.

  “I’d still want to take one of the VPs along. Maybe Alvar or Gisbert.”

  “Of course.” Falk nodded. “You’ll be going with a full delegation, plus security. But you’ll be in charge. Which means that you’ll get the credit for the result if Hanzo makes concessions. And they will.”

  And I’ll get the blame if they don’t, Solveig thought.

  “Well,” she said, and took another bite of her breakfast. “I am a Ragnar. And that name on my door says ‘vice president’ next to it. Might as well get acclimated to the water in the big pool.”

  Falk smiled, this time with genuine pleasure at her invocation of her name and status. She knew that losing the firm was the most grievous wound he had ever suffered, even more so than losing his son or his wife, and putting a balm on that wound would always let her score easy points with him.

  Thinking about her brother, Aden, made her excitement flare up again. She’d be off the planet for a little while, and it would be easier to get around Papa’s informant network when she was a few million kilometers away from Gretia. Corporate security had tracked Aden on Gretia, but they had lost him again as soon as they had found him, and as far as Solveig knew, neither Papa nor the company’s intelligence division had discovered his new identity or his current whereabouts. All they knew was that he had left Oceana three months ago.

  Maybe I can meet up with him, she thought. Finally see him in person again. They had exchanged brief messages, but he had only told her that he had a new job on a ship, and that he was traveling the system. He was always reluctant to share his exact location because he knew that Ragnar’s corporate intelligence was still looking for him after he had barely escaped them in Adrasteia three months ago. They couldn’t arrest him, but they could blow open his fake ID and take him home to Papa, and that was as good as a prison sentence.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll go to Acheron. And I’ll come back with better terms for the graphene contract.”

  “I have no doubt.” Falk grinned broadly. “Thank you for taking my advice.”

  “And do you think I can schedule a bit of time for fun stuff? I want to do some sightseeing while I’m there. I hear it’s a pretty exciting place.”

  “Of course you can. Once the business is done, your time is yours. And now that you’re swimming in the big pool, you’ll get to learn another family business rule.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “What happens off-world stays off-world,” he said with a conspiratorial wink.

  She responded with what she hoped was a
shy smile and ate another spoonful of her corn mash and eggs.

  Oh, you can very much count on that, Papa.

  CHAPTER 5

  ADEN

  Pallas One was immense, a floating city in space that looked nothing like any other orbital station Aden had ever seen. It had hundreds of docking berths, some empty, most occupied by ships of all sizes: freighters, passenger shuttles, yachts, and courier ships like Zephyr, and the command modules of the great ore haulers that supplied the other planets with the uranium and palladium that fueled the economies in the Gaia system. Planets without the palladium necessary for large-scale gravmag compensators had to build spin stations if they wanted to operate under gravity, but Pallas could have gravity on anything they wanted in space without having to make it spin, no matter the shape or size.

  From the vantage point of Zephyr’s bow sensors, Aden could finally see the cable that tethered the station to a mountainside terrace on the equator of Pallas. A cargo climber left the station as he watched, exterior lights blinking on every corner of the octagonal freight containers attached to the climber’s core. It descended on the cable at a brisk rate of speed, and Aden followed its path until it dropped from view below the edge of the screen projection. Below, the planet loomed, huge and gray and covered in clouds. Even the atmosphere had the color of frozen rock from up here. This place had been the reason for the war, trillions of tons of easily mineable ore and all the known palladium in the system, the grand prize for which Gretia had contested against everyone else. They had held a chunk of it for a year at ludicrous human cost, then lost it all again, and the war along with it. He wondered how many Gretian soldiers were still entombed down there in collapsed tunnels or crushed at the bottom of miles-deep mountain gorges, all dead for less than nothing. Dropping onto that planet into battle from orbit must have felt like jumping into a hell that was beyond even the reach of the gods. It twisted his stomach just to imagine it.

  What were they thinking? Aden mused. That anyone could defeat the people who chose to live on that? It doesn’t want us on it. It doesn’t want anyone on it. It looks like it would shrug off all life like a minor case of fleas if it had a mind to do it.