Citadel

by Marko Kloos

  “I know what you are,” he said in Gretian. “I know where you learned foreign languages. I’m fairly sure we had some of the same instructors.”

  The surprise on Milo’s face seemed like the first genuine emotion Aden had seen out of him. He smiled thinly and looked at Aden as if he were reevaluating him.

  “So you’re one of us, then,” he replied. “I never would have guessed. You talk just like one of the shell munchers. Your instructor must have been better than mine.”

  From the way Milo spoke, it was obvious that Gretian was his first language, and Aden was once again reminded what made someone sound like a native. Milo’s Gretian had a regional inflection, the slightly softened consonants common in the capital region. His Oceanian had been clean and neutral, without any trace of an accent.

  “Some people have an ear for it,” Aden said.

  “It was never my favorite subject. But go ahead. Take a guess. You’ve got me curious now.”

  “Military language institute,” Aden wagered. “You don’t seem like someone who was on the diplomatic track. But I don’t remember your face from the branch training. So you were covert. Special activities division. Or maybe counterintelligence.”

  Milo nodded. “Not bad. You’re pretty close. So you’re field intelligence.”

  “I was,” Aden said. He didn’t want to glance over at Tess and give her away, but he could tell that she was tensing up for something, and the distance between them had increased ever so slightly. “In the 300th Signals Intel. But that’s long in the past. I’m someone else now. The war’s been over for five years, you know.”

  “Has it really,” Milo said with that thin smile of his. He was a handsome man, and Aden would have guessed that his face was too distinctive for covert fieldwork. He certainly would have remembered him from the service. The military intelligence community was small, and he had run into the same people over and over. But training in the regular signals division didn’t focus heavily on combat, and whatever this man had done in his time in the service, it had involved more than just standard hand-to-hand training. Every planet had covert intel operatives, and the Special Activities Division of the Gretian intelligence service heavily recruited from the top 10 percent of the military’s elite commando units.

  “It has,” Aden affirmed. “And we got what we deserved.”

  The smile on Milo’s face faltered a little. He turned the knives in his right hand idly, rotating the handles against each other.

  “Maybe it was over for you,” Milo replied. “You turned in your flags and you let them take your guns. March you off into internment. Fill your heads with guilt and self-loathing. But maybe some of us never quit. Maybe only you got what you deserved. For giving up when you still had fight in you.”

  To Aden’s left, Tess darted for the counter and Tristan’s knife roll. If Milo was surprised, it didn’t show in the speed of his reaction. He rushed toward her, shifting one knife into his other hand as he went. Aden reacted reflexively. He dashed into Milo’s path and slammed into him with all the force he could muster. Milo was fast and agile, but he was half a head shorter than Aden and probably a good ten or fifteen kilos lighter. They collided, and the force of Aden’s impact hurled them both over the edge of the padded couch lining the rim of the dinner pit. One of Milo’s knives fell from his hand and clattered to the floor somewhere nearby. The men hit the glass dinner table and flipped it off its legs, and all the dishes and utensils went flying. Aden tried to grab Milo’s other arm to control the knife, but Milo was already squirming his way out from underneath him, and Aden felt a sharp, bright pain along his left arm as the blade sliced the length of his forearm.

  He punched Milo with his right hand and tried to pin him to the ground, to immobilize the arm that held the remaining knife, but Milo knew more about ground fighting than Aden did. They struggled for leverage over each other for a moment, and then Milo was out of his grasp, and Aden scrambled backward to avoid the knifepoint that was lashing out at him. He kicked at the arm that held the knife to deflect the tip of the blade. For a few seconds, they engaged in a high-stakes contest of jabs and feints and kicks. Then Tess was there, one of Tristan’s cooking knives in her hand, and Milo jumped to his feet to meet her charge.

  Tess held her knife with the tip down, and the way she handled it made Aden think that she was no stranger to defending herself with a blade, but he knew that this would not be an even contest regardless of how many drunken spacers she may have nicked in seedy dive bars over the years. He struggled to his knees and scooped up the object on the ground that was closest to his hand, a beverage tumbler that had fallen off the table when they had turned it over. He hurled it at Milo, who was squaring off against Tess, and it hit him in the shoulder and made him raise his left arm reflexively. Aden grabbed whatever else was littering the floor around him and flung it at the other man—spoons, plates, cups, anything to distract him and keep him from giving Tess his undivided attention.

  She jabbed her blade at Milo’s chest, but he turned aside and avoided it, and when her arm was committed and extended into the attack, he flicked the tip of his own blade upward and jabbed it into her arm. She withdrew with a pained shout, and he followed up with another quick stab to her shoulder. Aden launched himself at him again, but this time Milo dodged the tackle and danced backward with infuriatingly light-footed ease. Aden tried to withdraw, but Milo darted forward and stuck him with the knife twice, quick and shallow jabs to his side and upper thigh, then retreated a step and gave his knife a little twirl.

  He’s playing with his food, Aden thought. We are going to die right here and now, once he decides that he has had enough amusement. Next to him, Tess had shifted her knife to her left hand, and her face was contorted in pain. Her right arm hung limply from her side, splattering big globs of blood on the white flooring. Aden’s own arm felt like someone had set it on fire from elbow to wrist, and he could feel the warm slickness of his blood as it ran down his hand and added to the mess on the floor.

  Something caught his eye on the ground near the overturned tabletop. It was Milo’s second knife, the one he had lost in their initial collision. Aden lunged and scooped it up from the floor. The blade was made of white ceramic, and his hand left a bloody smear on it as he shifted it in his grip. Tess looked over and saw what he was doing, and she brought up her left hand in a guard position again, ready to join the attack even if they both knew it was foolhardy. But two knives were harder to block than just one, and going out swinging was a better option than waiting to die.

  Milo looked at the knife in Aden’s hand and repositioned himself, keeping his distance as he prepared to take them on. There was none of the earlier contempt in his face now. It was all just focus and concentration, the expression of a professional at work who was fully engaged in a challenging but manageable task. Tess moved to his left, and Milo adjusted his angle to keep them both in front of him. Aden took the tactical clue and moved to the right to increase the separation. If they managed to catch him from two sides at once, they would have a fleeting chance at hurting him enough to level the field a little.

  Aden exchanged a look with Tess. She appeared frightened and frantic, but he could tell that she was also infuriated and determined. Dying in her company would not be the worst end he could imagine, not by a long shot.

  They both went for Milo at the same moment, but Tess had been a little closer to him, so she reached him first. She had switched her knife from an upside-down grip to a blade-first one for more reach, and her blade was aimed right at Milo’s middle. He turned into the strike and deflected her arm with his left hand, then pulled her forward so she was mostly between him and Aden. Her free arm came down reflexively just as he thrust his own knife. The blade had been aimed at her heart, but now it bit deep into her side, right above the hip bone. Tess yelled, but she sounded more pissed off than hurt.

  Milo used Tess’s momentum against her, pulling her by the wrist to get her off balance, then he shoved h
er against Aden. Their collision took most of the energy and all the aim out of Aden’s own knife thrust, and Milo easily sidestepped it. Then Aden felt a blow against his rib cage, and all the air went out of him in an instant. He stumbled and fell onto the floor. When he looked back, he saw that Tess was also on the ground. The fingers that still held Milo’s second knife were suddenly feeling numb.

  Milo stepped on Tess’s arm and wrenched Tristan’s knife out of her hand, then tossed it aside. He looked over at Aden and the knife he was still holding.

  “I’m going to want that back when you’re done with it,” he said.

  “Come and get it, then,” Aden mumbled. He tried to transfer the knife from the numb right hand into the left, but that one didn’t work much better. The knife slipped from his grasp and tumbled to the floor, where it landed with a dull clinking sound. Milo shook his head.

  “You really were one of those Signals wimps, weren’t you? Can’t even hang on to a knife in a fight.”

  Tess rolled over and kicked at Milo with both feet. He deflected the blows with his knees. Then he kicked her in the side of the head. She fell backward and went still, blood pouring from her nose and the corner of her mouth. The sight gave Aden a fresh rush of adrenaline and anger, and he got to his knees to launch himself at Milo again.

  Then that’s it, he thought. But to all the hells with it.

  There was a new sound somewhere in the room behind him, an inarticulate vocalization of surprise and anger. Milo looked away from Aden and off to the side, and his body tensed as he shifted into a defensive stance. Before Aden could turn his head, Henry leaped into the dinner pit, his kukri a silvery blur in front of him.

  Milo dodged the attack and swatted the blade of Henry’s big knife aside with his own, and the two knives clashed with a harsh clicking sound, metal against ceramic. Milo avoided Henry’s backhand swing as well, but only barely, the edge of the kukri missing the bridge of his nose by a fraction of a centimeter. Milo launched his own attack, a slash-and-jab combination that was almost too fast for Aden to follow.

  Henry jerked away from the slash and parried the jab with the spine of his kukri. Milo danced away from Henry’s counterblow, and each man assessed his opponent for a moment, their knives pointed at each other. Aden looked at Tess, who was rolling over onto her side with a groan. Milo’s second knife was on the floor in front of Aden, and Aden tried to scoop it up with fingers that no longer wanted to obey him. Whenever he breathed in, it felt like Milo was stabbing his side all over again. A few steps away, Milo and Henry had ended their momentary détente. They were engaged in a rapid clash of quick strikes and parries, each trying to get their blade past the defenses of the other. Aden had no knife-fighting experience beyond the hand-to-hand combat training he’d received a long time ago in the Blackguards, and none of that had looked anything like this fast and violent dance of death. Even without experience, he could see that Henry had the longer reach and the bigger blade, but Milo had speed and agility, and the smaller man avoided the arcs of Henry’s curved blade with what looked like practiced ease. Still, the sheer momentum and ferocity of Henry’s attack forced Milo back step-by-step until he was at the edge of the dinner pit, his legs bumping up against the cushioned bench that surrounded the sunken area. He parried another one of Henry’s blows and launched a lightning-fast counterattack, and this time his blade made it past the Palladian’s guard.

  Aden couldn’t see exactly where the blow had landed, but Henry grunted and pulled his arm back, barely deflecting Milo’s follow-up jab aimed at the side of his chest. Milo used the momentary breathing room he had created with the attack to jump over the low bench behind him and out of the dinner pit. Henry twirled his kukri and followed suit, crossing the knee-high barrier in a quick leap before Milo had the chance to exploit the momentary vulnerability. Then they circled each other again, two predators looking for an opening to strike a swift killing blow on a rival. But whatever blow Milo had landed on Henry moments earlier, Aden could tell that it was slowing the big Palladian down, and the arm that held the kukri wasn’t quite as steady as before. They clashed again as if they had simultaneously obeyed an unheard signal. Once more the knives flashed and made contact. Henry grimaced in pain, but this time the exchange had been mutual.

  Aden could see that the kukri had carved an ugly red gash along Milo’s jawline from his chin to his earlobe. Henry seemed to have gotten the worst in the trade again because when he pressed a hand against his side, Aden saw bright-red blood welling up between the first officer’s fingers. They went at each other once more, another flurry of jabs and slashes, steel against ceramic, dark skin against white. They were in front of the open balcony door now, and the tranquility of the ocean and the peaceful sounds of the water lapping against the piers below made the violence in front of Aden look offensively out of place.

  Behind Aden, there was more commotion in the room, movement and voices. Distracted, Henry missed a swing with his kukri and left himself open for a fraction of a second. The little bit of air Aden was able to force into his lungs with every breath felt like it was on fire, and he could not shout the warning that was on his tongue, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Milo kicked the outside of Henry’s right leg, and the Palladian dropped to his knee with a pained shout.

  Aden put whatever strength and willpower he had left in his body into hauling himself back onto his feet and over the low rim of the dinner pit toward Milo just as the other man flipped the knife around in his hand to plunge it into the back of Henry’s neck. They collided for the second time today, and once again the physics were in Aden’s favor, aided by the element of surprise. They plowed across the balcony together, and Aden felt a wild burst of satisfaction when he heard Milo’s other knife hitting the floor. Then they crashed into the waist-high Alon barrier on the edge of the balcony, and the force of the impact squeezed the last bit of remaining air out of Aden’s lungs. For a few heartbeats, the world spun madly in front of his eyes, sky and sea and white-painted composites trading places in brief flashes.

  The water below the balcony felt as hard as solid ground when he hit the surface and plunged in. He was still holding on to Milo with his left hand, and the other man struggled to free himself from Aden’s grasp. Aden’s lungs were burning with their need for oxygen, and he could feel the darkness descend on his mind already, but he held on as they thrashed around in the warm ocean water, sinking deeper with every passing second. He had spent three months out of every year on Oceana all the way through his childhood, and swimming and diving had been the only forms of exercise he had ever truly enjoyed, the only sport he’d ever been good at. He grabbed Milo with the other hand as well and dragged him deeper, away from the sunlight reflecting on the surface. Once you were a few meters down, it was hard to tell which way was up if you weren’t an experienced diver. The gradient of the ocean floor was shallow as it reclined from Adrasteia, but this far out in front of the southeastern leaf, the water was already twenty meters deep or more. Milo punched and clawed at him, but Aden hardly felt the blows, the water resistance robbing them of much of their energy.

  Wherever I am going, you’re coming with me, you piece of shit.

  He felt a grim sense of triumph at the thought, even as he was slipping into unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER 6

  IDINA

  On a normal day, the sight of the armored transport rolling up to the bottom of the Council Hall’s main staircase would have cheered Idina up, but right now it just amplified her anxiety. On a normal day, Red Section would be riding in a column of these vehicles, providing mutual protection and overwatch, strength in numbers. The security details would be riding in front of the VIP and behind, in the positions most likely to be hit first in an insurgent ambush. A single Badger was still formidable firepower and protection, but it left no doubt where the high-value target was riding.

  It’s been mostly quiet away from the demonstrations. Chances are good we won’t even need the armor, she thought to p
ut her mind at ease a little. Immediately, she chided herself for indulging in complacent thinking, even for just a moment. The last time she had allowed her edge to get dulled by complacency, her entire section had died in the span of two minutes.

  At the bottom of the staircase, the Badger armored carrier silently rolled to a stop, a thirty-ton wedge of laminated armor riding on eight huge, knobby honeycomb wheels. The tail ramp opened and lowered to the ground with the soft hiss of pneumatics.

  “Ride’s here,” she said on the team comms. “Purple Section, take up perimeter security for departure. Colors Norgay, we are ready to roll out when you are.”

  “Copy that,” the close protection team leader replied. “Coming down in two minutes.”

  Behind Idina, the four troopers of her half section came out of the Council Hall’s main entrance and made their way down the steps toward the Badger, where they took up guard positions around the vehicle. Idina surveyed the plaza below again, but nothing was out of place, no unusual circumstance caught her eye. Everybody here in the Green Zone had been checked and vetted, and the only access to the area was through a pair of security locks whose sensor tunnels could detect micrograms of explosives and any sort of weapon no matter how artfully it was concealed. But the grudges between Gretia and the rest of the system ran deep now, and she was not willing to bet her life on the security clearances of any of the Gretian civil servants here in the government quarter. There were only a handful of Gretians she fully trusted, and all of them wore green-and-white police uniforms.