Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 20

  “That isn’t true!”

  This time, there was a plainly visible flash of fear across Kages’ face. Whether it was concern for his professional reputation, or the thought of what the other people living on this border world might do to him if they heard he aided the Viskr, was not entirely clear. Chances were it was a little of both.

  “Isn’t it? It sounds true. That’s what matters. And to be quite frank, it remains to be established whether or not you’re a traitor. Unless he’s being coerced I think it’s likely that Morlum has fallen in with the Viskr Junta somehow. And his coercion wouldn’t carry over to you: if you gave him what he wanted, then you gave the Viskr what they wanted, like a good little traitor.”

  “A traitor—”

  “Of course, we have no way of knowing if you have sold out your own kind to an invading force, because you won’t tell us what information you gave to Morlum.”

  “I would never betray the Empire—”

  “I can’t confirm that. Our civilisation is spiralling towards open war, Mister Kages, and all I know so far is that you have been selling information to anyone with the money to pay for it.”

  “All right, you’ve made your point.”

  “Are you going to tell me what you sold him?”

  “Yes, but there is one thing.”

  “Which is…?”

  “Well, the information I sold him… I don’t know if you’d consider it treason or not.”

  “I’ll be telling you that pretty much straight away.”

  “Yes, but the thing is… I don’t really want to die.”

  “I’m on a schedule, Kages. I don’t have time to run you in and have you charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.”

  “Oh thank you, thank you.”

  “So I’ll just do as I promised and tell everyone.”

  “Please, I didn’t betray the Empire. I just gave him the codes.”

  “What codes?”

  “The lockout codes… for Woe Tantalum. He wanted to go to the surface.”

  “Woe Tantalum?”

  “Illegal colony planet out in the Deep,” said Daxon. “It was a terraforming disaster. Whole planet went geo-toxic — everyone died.”

  “And you’re telling me Morlum wants to go there?”

  “That’s right,” said Kages. “There’s a quarantine security network around the whole planet. He purchased the codes to bypass it.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all. Oh, well no… he wanted the location as well. He seemed to know Woe Tantalum exists, but not where it is.”

  “Anything else?”

  Kages’s eyes flicked up and side-to-side as he tried to recall his dealings with Morlum. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Right then.”

  “Are you satisfied?” Kages asked.

  “Well it certainly wasn’t worth getting kicked through a window for, was it?”

  “No, not at all. Thank goodness you saw sense.”

  “Throam,” said Caden.

  Kages’s eyes widened. “Oh… don’t!”

  Throam kicked him through a window.

  • • •

  “This is way outside my area of expertise,” said Laekan.

  Brant stared at the images that were lined up neatly on the holo, side-by-side slices of the inside of Amarist Naeb’s head. He had no idea what he was looking at, for the most part, but even with his limited knowledge of medicine and biology he could see that the scans had revealed something unusual. Human brains were not supposed to look like this.

  “Do you know what it is we’re looking at, Doctor?”

  Gordl Branathes had deigned to come and visit the isolated medbay, finally showing some interest in what his operators had been dealing with since Elm Caden first arrived at Fort Kosling. He too had been instantly transfixed by the scans Laekan showed him.

  “I’m afraid not,” Laekan said. “What I can say with certainty though is that these… structures are new. The scans run during her last routine medical, before she went to Echo, were all normal.”

  “What the hell are you?” Brant murmured.

  “A threat,” said Tirrano. “It can’t be a coincidence that this Rasa just happened to appear during the start of a new Viskr offensive. Balance of probabilities says she’s some kind of weapon.”

  “Maybe so,” said Branathes. “What would you propose we do about it, Peras?”

  “Kill her and be done with it, before she does whatever it is she’s meant to do.”

  Brant was appalled. “Are you kidding? She’s a citizen. If this was done to her deliberately, then she’s also a victim. We should be trying to help her, not talking about killing her.”

  “Oh okay, we’ll just let her complete her mission then.”

  Brant stopped himself from replying in kind. He knew this game well. Peras wanted to draw him into a childish squabble before she delivered her killing blow. Not this time, not in front of their superior. He counted to five in his head.

  “Even if she is a weapon,” he said, “which is by no means certain; killing her would be stupid. We should take the opportunity to learn as much from her as we can.”

  “She’s not telling us anything. We can surely learn as much from a dead Rasa as a live one.”

  Branathes had been looking from one to the other, waiting while they argued. Brant found he could not tell what the man was thinking. Odd, he was usually quite easy to read.

  “We’re not killing her,” the monitor said. “You’re quite right Occre, this ‘Rasa’ could turn out to be an invaluable source of information.”

  Great. Now Tirrano had Branathes saying it as well.

  “Well I’m glad you settled that,” said Doctor Laekan. “Are there any other patients in medical you’d like to consider killing?”

  “Apologies, Doctor,” said Branathes. “My staff did not mean to offend you.”

  But some of them might have been indifferent to whether or not they did, Brant thought to himself. Tirrano was standing with her arms crossed, stony-faced. She had said nothing since her plan to terminate Naeb had been vetoed, and would probably stay that way until she was alone with Brant. She would make her feelings very clear, then there would be a gap of a couple of hours before she came back to him with a cloying and painfully insincere apology. Her way of getting back into Brant’s good books.

  At some point, he would have to find a kind way of telling her that she had never had a chance of being in his good books.

  Branathes had not finished. “Draft in whatever specialists you need from Kosling, Doctor. Or even from other systems; I want to know what this woman is, and what she means.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Laekan said.

  • • •

  “And you said it was weird before.”

  Throam smiled grimly. Whatever it was that had changed while they were talking to Kages, it did not bode well. He could feel the difference in the air. He could smell it on the breeze. Trouble. He always knew trouble: he had a sense for it.

  The few people in the streets of Barrabas Fled had paid them relatively little attention when they were on their way to Kages’s place, other than looking to see who they were and maybe staring for a little too long. Some had watched as the Rodori thundered by, and others had eyed up the weapons they all carried, but none of that was unusual.

  Now, matters were different.

  Throam could feel the eyes boring into him, everywhere they walked. As they retraced their steps, navigating through the eerily silent streets of the city centre, his skin began to crawl and itch. Something was wrong, wrong, wrong.

  And apparently Caden felt the same way, since he had just commented on it.

  “Don’t like this one bit,” Throam said. “Suggest we lose no time getting off this rock.”

  “Agreed. I don’t intend to lose time anyway,” said Caden. “We have what we came for, and Morlum has a head start on us.”

  They were coming up on the small square con
taining the fountain and stone benches. As they rounded the corner, Throam saw that the same old man was still there. Only this time he was standing in the middle of the way, leaning awkwardly on a gnarled wooden cane as if he had never tried to walk or stand with it before this very moment. He was still humming the same refrain.

  “Did you get what you came for?” He asked, when they were close enough.

  “No business of yours, old man.” Throam said.

  “It’s everyone’s business.”

  The humming resumed.

  They hurried past, and into the next street.

  “You’d better hurry,” said a young girl. She had dark shadows under her eyes. She was stick-thin, and stood on a dirty blanket in a niche between two buildings.

  “Are you talking to me?” Throam said.

  “Or don’t hurry at all, and that way you won’t leave so soon.”

  She began to hum as she skipped away, the same refrain, the same melody that had been so alien yet so infuriatingly familiar to Caden.

  “Caden, what the fuck is up with this crazy-ass town?”

  “I don’t know, but something tells me the people here aren’t quite themselves today.”

  “We need to leave, now.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  Daxon was already talking into his link. “Bullseye One-Three from Charlie, come in.”

  “Go on Daxon,” replied Sergeant Chun.

  “We’re en route to you now. Be advised this city is possibly hostile. Suggest immediate dust-off when we return.”

  A gaunt man with a bread basket walked across their path. Throam caught the damp, powdery scent of decay, and looked into the basket as he passed by. What should have been a cargo of loaves was nothing but a lumpy carpet of blue and green mould. Specks of it covered the man’s hands, wrists, and sleeves. How long had he been walking around with that basket?

  “You’d better hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Throam whirled around, and backed away so that he could keep the man in his sight as the group moved on. The old man and the girl were one thing, an adult male was quite another. Who knew what weapons he might be concealing.

  The baker hummed his way out of earshot.

  They hurried on, all of them now adopting a defensive formation out of habit. Throam could see that everyone in the group felt the same unease, the same sense of not-quite-threatened-but-freaking-out.

  The street narrowed. Two mature women rose together from a bench by the side of the way, and stepped side-by-side into the middle of the path.

  Throam edged towards the front of the group, inserting himself between Caden and the women without making his intention obvious.

  “You don’t have to do anything, you know,” one said.

  The other gave a sickly smile. “It’s always been much safer not to take sides.”

  “Who are you?” Throam said.

  “Why, I’m me dear. I am.”

  The sickly smile widened. “Now be a good lad and tell us what you intend to do next.”

  Throam shoved through the middle of them as forcefully as he dared, not wanting to knock the women down. Whatever was happening to the people in this part of the city, he did not want to risk harming them if he could avoid it.

  The women moved aside easily, and just stood there staring vacantly as the others passed between them. Then the humming started, the very same melody.

  “Oh shit,” said Bro.

  Throam stopped dead when he caught up with the private. The street opened out onto a plaza, and the plaza was full of people. The entire throng was humming softly.

  Both groups stood motionless.

  “Come on,” Caden said. He punched Throam’s arm. “We’ve no time to waste.”

  “Fuck’s sake.” Throam darted after him.

  Caden was not running but walking briskly, stepping between the people standing in the plaza. Throam did his best to catch up, to stay close, but the lack of space made it difficult. The Shard was certainly not making his job easy for him. He was much lighter on his feet than Throam.

  “Caden, wait up a moment.”

  “Pick up the pace, Tiny.”

  Then suddenly he was almost falling over Caden. The Shard had stopped dead, and Throam could not see why at first. He came right up behind Caden and looked over his shoulder.

  The man in front of Caden, just off to the left, had put his arm up and placed his hand on Caden’s chest.

  Caden brought his own arm up sharply and knocked the hand away. The man let his arm drop, and stood rooted to the spot.

  A woman off to the right took a single step closer, and placed her right hand on Caden’s shoulder.

  The others were catching up. Throam could hear their voices coming up behind them. “Daxon,” he shouted. “Get us evac. NOW.”

  More people were stepping in towards Caden. Most stood motionless in the plaza, but those nearest were moving closer, aggregating around him as if drawn towards him somehow. Throam lunged forward and pushed them back, one at a time, striking them to the chest with the heel of his palm. They moved back easily; most seemed weak and unmotivated, some bordered on malnourished. But there were so many of them now, still closing in.

  The rumble of twin engines filled the plaza, and Throam saw that the throng was thinning out. Somewhere ahead of them, a vehicle was being forced through the crowd.

  People nearby began to react, turning slowly to stare impassively at the approaching Kodiak. Throam seized the chance, and grabbed Caden by the arm. He pulled him out of the nucleus, away from the mass of bodies, and propelled him towards the transport.

  “Come on,” he yelled at the others. “We. Are. LEAVING.”

  They reached the armoured vehicle, and Throam yanked hard at the heavy side door. The hatch slid back on its runners, and he half-lifted, half-threw Caden into the passenger cabin.

  “Watch it, you great oaf.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Throam.

  He climbed in after him, and the others began to follow. Bro, Norskine, Daxon, and Bruiser piled in. Eilentes brought up the rear.

  Throam reached back and grabbed the rail on the inside of the hatch. He began to drag it forwards, and as he did so he realised someone else was approaching the Kodiak. For a moment he thought he had miscounted everyone on their way into the cabin.

  The man outside the hatch was one of the city-dwellers. One of the people who was behaving so oddly. Throam continued to slide the hatch, and just before it slammed closed to seal off the outside world, he heard the man speak.

  “Fill the silence,” he said.

  — 17 —

  Shadows of the Heart

  Of all the people who could have demanded Caden’s attention, the Chamberlain was perhaps the least of his favourites. But the call had been deemed so urgent that it had been sent on the Actual-Confidential channel. For the CO’s eyes only. Or Shard eyes only, in this case.

  “Operation Seawall is a disaster,” the Chamberlain said, in a dolorous tone. “A disaster, yes. Admiral Betombe seems to have provoked quite the reaction.”

  “The Viskr aren’t falling back?”

  “Not in the least bit, no. Their border fleets have been reinforced three-fold since the operation began.”

  “We’re committed now. We can only try to hold those systems.”

  “Indeed. Captain Santani will be needed back with the Second Fleet.”

  “That might be an issue. I’ve just found our first usable lead, and it’s likely we don’t have much time left.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Medran Morlum — one of the people missing from Echo. It looks like he’s working with the Viskr, and he’s been to Aldava, sniffing around after the lockout codes for Woe Tantalum.”

  “Woe Tantalum… why in the worlds would he want to go there?”

  “Because nobody else would. I did some research. There’s no gate in the system, which means no nexus; whatever goes on in the space local to the planet won’t be
seen from afar. And from orbit, it’s virtually impossible to detect what is happening on the surface. It’s an ideal hiding place. An ideal staging area.”

  “Hmm, yes, ideal indeed. What do you intend to do about this?”

  “Take Hammer and Bravo Company, and go find Morlum straight away. Tear down whatever he has set up.”

  The Chamberlain nodded slowly, and drummed the side of his face pensively with three long fingers as he considered Caden’s reply.

  “The Empress was insistent that the border engagement should remain our priority,” he said at length. “However, if we recover those weapons, then the Viskr border won’t need to be held. She will want this matter brought to a swift conclusion.”

  “I’ll head there straight away.”

  “There is another reason for this call,” the Chamberlain said, his voice even more mournful than usual. “Something else you need to know about. Two of your fellow Shards have been killed. Murdered, in fact.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Oh yes, murdered indeed. It would appear from the witness accounts that your former counterpart Maber Castigon is responsible.”

  “He’s escaped?”

  “No, released. He went missing immediately.”

  Caden felt ill. “Released. I should have put a bullet in his head while I had the chance.”

  “It might have been better for all concerned,” said the Chamberlain. “But then, without proper justice, where would we be?”

  “I don’t know,” said Caden. “But I know a great many people who would have liked the chance to be there with us.”

  “Indeed,” said the Chamberlain. “Ottomas Endures.”

  “Until the Last Breath. What are the names?”

  “Kulik Molcomb, killed on Low Cerin. Ider Firenz, killed on Fengrir. Both shot in the head.”

  His stomach sank further still. He had known Molcomb by reputation, Firenz by association. The latter had run a joint op with him; a rare occurrence indeed for Shards, even in those agonising days of the Trinity Crisis.

  “And the counterparts?”

  “Rupus Dyne was unharmed. I gather he was not actually present at the time of the incident, and will doubtless be called upon to explain why. As I understand it, Mostrum Appatine made a valiant attempt to stop Castigon, and has been disabled as a result.”