“Well, your scans couldn’t have been too great,” Boyd said. “The captain and Noland fired too.”
“Oh, look,” Thresh said. “Prize fight.” She slipped her arm free of Boyd’s.
Between a pair of smaller ships, a large sheet had been suspended to create a covered area. The white stones had been covered with a thin padded mat about five meters square. A pair of shirtless men stood in the middle, their fists clenched.
“They haven’t started,” Thresh said, dragging Boyd with her as she quickened her pace.
“You go. I’m not interested,” Boyd said.
Thresh grabbed him and pulled. “Well, you should be. You might pick up a few tips so I don’t so easily whip your ass next time we spar.”
“Whip my ass?” Boyd exclaimed. “You didn’t whip my ass.”
“Maybe not, but I certainly smashed your face in. Lucky for you, you’re not very good-looking.” She grinned up at him. “Not much to spoil.”
Boyd found the insult charming coming from Thresh. She was grinning and tugging him towards the fighters on the mat. He grinned and shook his head. He could see he wasn’t going to ditch her that easily. He would have to slip away when she was engrossed in the fight.
“Hey, there’s dark brew over there.” Boyd pointed at a line of large barrels on the far side of the prize fight. Someone was erecting a makeshift bar on a low outcrop of Kalis rock. “You want a brew?”
“No, and neither do you. If we have to bail in a hurry, I don’t want to fight off the Union with a drunken pilot at the controls. Stay sober, you hear me?” Thresh tugged Boyd’s arm to reinforce the point.
A small man, old and bald, stepped in between the two men on the mat. He held his hand out then raised it suddenly, giving the men the signal to fight.
Thresh shouted out instantly, calling her encouragement to the pair. She clapped and shouted, then cupped her hands around her mouth to help her voice carry over all the other shouting around the ring.
The pair of fighters circled each other while they delivered exploratory jabs, testing each other’s range. One was clearly taller than the other and had the advantage in terms of reach. The other, although shorter, looked the heavier of the two. Large thick shoulders, strong arms and scarred hands.
The shorter man moved in and delivered a jab direct to the taller man’s chin. He stepped back quickly, fast for a heavy man, and recovered his stance for the counterattack.
But the punch had been a gem. As the smaller man recovered his stance, the taller man toppled backward.
The cheering stopped suddenly and turned to howls of disappointment.
“What? Is that it?” Thresh said. “Get in there, Boyd! Show him how to fight.”
Boyd looked at the small, heavyset man dancing on the mat, hands held high in triumph. He had a dangerous look, a nasty cruel stare behind the smiling eyes.
“I’m not getting on the mat with him,” Boyd laughed. “I’d rather fly drunk than with a concussion.”
A man stepped onto the mat to cheers of enthusiasm from the crowd. He pulled off his jacket to reveal a thin, taut frame. Boyd watched him move and knew the current victor was doomed. The skinny man was balanced and fast. He was not going to succumb to a sucker punch.
The fallen man was carried away even as he began to wake, someone pouring some dark brew from a tankard over his mouth. Betting slips changed hands as the new pair of fighters squared off.
Thresh sniffed the air. She followed her nose away to the side.
“Hast. Pickled hast.” She pulled Boyd with her.
“What?” Boyd allowed himself to be tugged along. They pushed through the crowd as Thresh followed her nose. A cheer went up from the crowd, signaling the start of the second fight of the day’s entertainment.
“What do you mean ‘what’?” Thresh said. “Pickled hast. What sort of Faction settlement did you grow up on that you haven’t heard of hast?”
“I didn’t have hast,” Boyd said. “I grew up on a small uncharted settlement in the sphere. We didn’t have much of anything.”
“What drew you to the Faction?” she said.
“The Union killed my father.”
She smiled at him.
“Liar,” she said calmly and then resumed following her nose and the strange, pungent aroma that drew her.
Boyd fixed her with a stern stare. “They might not have shot him or blown his ship out of the void, but they killed him alright. They impounded his freighter, a small hundred-tonner. We could hardly survive. We were hungry. It drove my father wild with anger as we slowly starved. I felt so sorry for him and I promised I’d fight the Union as soon as I was old enough.”
“Liar,” Thresh said again.
“Okay, so I didn’t feel sorry for him. I hated him for it. He was an uncaring father when he had the freighter. He was a bastard to me and my mom after the Union took it.”
Thresh smiled. “Whatever you say, Will.”
Boyd had not had to use his cover story with any of the Fist’s crew before. He wondered if he’d told it right, just as he had been coached by Union Intelligence before he set off to infiltrate the Faction. But it had worked on Poledri. Here he was, amongst hundreds of Faction ships, and not far from their leader, Kitzov himself.
Sending word to the Union Fleet right now would bring a carrier here in a matter of hours. A Union Marine battalion along with a few minutes of orbital bombardment, and the landing zone would be nothing but molten glass. But Boyd needed Kitzov alive—to deliver him to Terra and make a sure the Union public could see this threat hang.
Thresh dragged Boyd to a small stand with a large pot boiling on a drive heater coil. An old woman was dumping large scoops of stringy gray-and-yellow vegetables into small paper cups. The smell was strange. Intense.
Thresh looked at Boyd as he wrinkled his nose.
“You sure you are Faction?”
“Yes, I just never liked hast.”
Thresh looked up at him.
“Liar.”
Thresh stepped up and the old woman grabbed a scoop of the foul-smelling stuff, dropping it on a tray. She held it out to Thresh, who dug in with her fingers, tipping her head back and letting the smelly, stringy food fall into her mouth.
Boyd stepped back and let a pair of Faction troopers move in front of him. Another step back and one to the side, and the crowd fell between him and Thresh. He watched her as she leaned back against an outcrop of white rock. She grabbed another pinch of the foul hast. Her hair fell back from her face as she tossed her head back again, dropping the horrid strands into her mouth.
Finally, sure that he was out of sight and hidden by the crowd, Boyd slipped away.
Ducking under the low hull of a Faction transport, Boyd checked his wrist-mounted holo-stage. He drew out a plug from his covert device and connected it to the small device. The image on the surface showed him the ships and the crowd in perfect clarity, far better than on the Odium Fist. Boyd scanned the landing zone. He was looking for one man amongst hundreds.
The holo-stage connected to the surveillance systems of all surrounding ships using the hacks in the covert device. Boyd uploaded the image of Kitzov he had taken when he and Poledri had recently been aboard the Silence during a deep-space rendezvous. The sensor network swept the entire landing zone.
Then the device recorded a hit. Kitzov was in a large tent, one of the many in and around the Faction ships. All raider captains were with him. Boyd slipped the plug out of the holo-stage, back into the covert device, and projected the image directly onto his retina, the sound feed directly to his aural nerves.
Kitzov was right before his eyes.
“And that, gentleman, is it. The Union has pulled back to the belt and the inner system. They are still moving black ice from the sphere and running without support. If we can stop the ice moving, then we stop the Union and break their stranglehold on the Scorpio System. To do that, we need to work together. I understand the urge we all have for a little bit of fre
e enterprise, but all that does is spread us too thin and keep us fractured. That is just how the Union likes it.
“So, we pull back to the belt. You each have your sectors. Your ships are the best the Faction has and you will be able to stop any and all freighters, light or heavy, running through your sectors. The Silence will be ready to assist if the Union sends cruisers after you. The adjacent sector captain will move in on the flanks, and we will destroy any cruisers that come after you. But we must try and avoid military engagements, until the Union is on its knees.”
Boyd was recording everything, and it was being automatically prepared to upload to Major Featherstone of the Blue Star Marines. All information was good.
“What if they send a carrier?” Poledri asked. “We’ve got nothing that can stand against a carrier.”
“But the carriers can’t operate in the belt. They have to leap over it. It takes them hours to get from one side of the belt to the other while a Faction raider, with a good pilot, can get through in half that time, less even. The point is, we stop the freighters. We cut off the ice and then we make our demands.”
Boyd watched the meeting. This was the ultimate goal of the Faction: to split the system in two. The Union had preserved law and order across the entire system for hundreds of years, since the first ship, the Scorpio, discovered the blue giant star and humanity settled. Now the Faction looked to rip it all apart.
But Boyd had them now. He had the leader and his closest allies. He just needed to contact the major, and the Faction would be over in a matter of hours.
Kitzov turned away from the gathered captains as a Faction trooper stepped up alongside him—a trooper from the Silence dressed in the new, neat military uniform. Kitzov turned back to the assembled captains, pirates all.
“This meeting is over. Sensor ships in high polar orbit of Extremis have reported several large ships heading this way. They are moving in fast. We have only minutes.”
Kitzov was interrupted again by a message from another trooper bursting in.
He looked stunned for a moment, and then he looked at the captains.
“It’s the Skarak. A dozen ships. They are back. Get to your ships at once and…”
The transmission ended. Boyd attempted to reconnect to the network he had created but found every ship’s communications disabled.
“Get lost, did you?”
Boyd turned around and saw Thresh looking up at him, grinning, her hair tumbling about in wild chaotic strands.
“Are you alright?” she said. “Did you try the hast after all? It’s a bit strong if you’ve never had any…”
Boyd grabbed Thresh by the hand and pulled her with him as he started his way through the crowd.
“We have to get to the ship.”
Thresh giggled. “Well, okay, but I thought you might buy me flowers or something first.”
“Not that. We haven’t got time,” Boyd said.
“Sure we have time,” she interrupted. “You can take all the time you like.”
“No, Enke,” Boyd said, pulling her faster as the crowd thinned. “We are under attack.”
“Attack?” Thresh said, running now to keep up.
And then blue fire rained down from the orange sky.
6
Boyd and Thresh ran across the sharp gravel, kicking up dust as they went. They ran and dodged through the crowd. The moon that had moments before been the site for a Faction meeting between the leader Kitzov and his most powerful captains was now a firestorm as Skarak ships rained fire down from orbit.
A blast of blue slammed into the ground, throwing up rock fragments and dust. The blast knocked Boyd sideways, and he brought his arm up to shield his face from the flying debris. Thresh lost her footing on the loose ground and only managed to stay upright thanks to Boyd pulling her by her hand.
“We need to get back to the Fist.” Boyd pulled at Thresh.
“My communicator is down,” Thresh said.
A blast of fire landed a few meters away, throwing white rocks into the orange sky. A group of Faction troopers came running as a unit, pulse rifles in their hands. A second blast of blue fire crackled down and slammed into the ground under their feet, flinging the group in all directions. As they tumbled through the air, Boyd saw limbs detaching from bodies as crackling blue light rippled over the tattered flesh.
Running made Boyd sweat and breathe heavily. The light gravity of Kalis made movement easier, but the thinner atmosphere made it harder to breathe. Boyd could sustain his regular pace, but he was naturally fitter than most Faction troopers or ship’s crew he had ever met, except for Thresh.
Boyd was impressed with the power and strength of the woman. She could keep up with Boyd, and he had no doubt she could beat any of the crew of the Odium Fist in a foot race. But running in this thin air had them both breathing hard.
A bolt of energy struck the ground just ahead of him. He stopped abruptly, skidding over the loose, sharp pebbles of the surface.
Thresh pulled Boyd to the side. Faction crew and troopers were running in all directions. A makeshift bar lay in ruins, a dead body lying in a pool of dark brew. Thresh pulled Boyd into cover under a ship.
“I recognize that fire,” Thresh said. She flinched as another bolt of the crackling blue fire slammed into the ground a few meters away.
Another squad of troopers was hit, sending their bodies and weapons flying. A pulse rifle landed in front of Boyd. He picked it up and checked that it was in working order.
“It’s the Skarak. They’re back.” Boyd slung the rifle over his shoulder. He held his right hand in front of him, showing the holo-image on his wrist-mounted holo-stage. Using the network he had created by knitting all the Faction ship surveillance systems together, he looked to the sky at the direction of the bombardment.
While his newly-created surveillance network zeroed in on a target, Boyd looked up into the orange sky. Another fizzing bolt of blue fire was streaking toward the ground, carving through the thin air and leaving crackling streaks of energy behind it. The vast swirling clouds of Extremis filled the sky, its ring system hazy overhead. And against the backdrop of the gas giant, Boyd could just make out the distant Skarak ships as tiny, dark flecks. They flickered as the fire burst away from them.
Shielding his eyes against the glare from the gas giant, desperate to focus on the tiny spots with the naked eye, Boyd saw his holo-stage zooming in finally on one of the targets.
The image showed a single dark speck, and then it zoomed in to reveal the ship.
“There’s a dozen of them out there,” Boyd said, looking at the data streaming in.
“Why are they back? What do they want?” Thresh said, her voice relaxed and surprisingly calm given the ongoing bombardment. She drew her pulse pistol from her thigh holster and checked its power and load.
“I don’t think they are looking to make friends.” Boyd looked at the ship on his holo-stage. He recognized it. He’d seen this ship before. A large bulbous main body that the holo-stage told him was hundreds of meters in length and dozens of meters across. At the front of the ship, where the blue fire was emanating, there was a large number of needle-like structures, like long rapiers, all striking forward. The multiple rapiers were equal in length to the main body of the ship. At the rear of the ship, there was a single straight rapier pointing directly back.
“We need to get close if we are going to hit them,” Thresh said. She checked the electron blade on the end of her pulse pistol, activating it for a moment and turning the pistol in her hand, watching the blade fizz from all sides. She deactivated the blade and sat crouched on the loose ground.
“Last time we met one of them, all we could do was scare it off. There are a dozen up there now. I don’t think the entire Faction assembly here on Kalis could take them on.” Boyd tried to increase the size of the image still further. He spotted a dark, hazy cloud on the bottom of one of the Skarak warships. His holo-stage was on the edge of its range peering at the ship in orbit,
but soon, Boyd saw that the dark haze was, in fact, a group of smaller Skarak ships falling away from the lower hull of the larger ship.
“Ground attack ships.” Boyd nudged Thresh and pointed at the new group of signals, moving quickly toward the surface. Boyd was able to zoom in closer on one. It shared the same basic shape as the mothership, but the main body was smaller and more spherical, and the collection of rapiers at the front were shorter and looked more like the bristles of a brush. But the single tail was not rigid and appeared to flick around like a serpent’s tongue.
“They move fast,” Thresh said. She stood up, her head almost touching the bottom of the Faction ship under which they were taking cover.
“We should move fast too,” Boyd said. He stood up, grabbed the pulse rifle off his shoulder, and made ready to run.
A blue energy beam slammed into a Faction ship away to Boyd’s right. The blue fire crackled over the upper hull in waves of lightning, turning white as they spread and finally centering on the drive assembly before fizzling out.
The pair broke cover and ran out into the open. People were running every which way; crewmen, troopers, and civilians all with their own idea of how to get to safety.
The smaller Skarak ships came into view in the distance. High overhead, they came in a swarm. Boyd couldn’t count, but guessed there were easily a hundred of the smaller ships closing in.
Boyd and Thresh ran and dodged their way through the panicked mass on the ground. The Fist was not far away, and Boyd could already smell the red waters of the lake he’d landed by.
There came a fresh wave of screams, and Boyd looked up. From the smaller craft in the sky, small objects were falling. Boyd knew at a glance.
“Ground troops.” Boyd and Thresh said it in unison.
Blue Star Marine Boxed Set Page 17
