“And from the launch zone you were able to find your way back into the armory wing of the complex. Which you say was a…”
“Eridani Federation Armory, sir.”
The heavyset man rubbed his temples, which disturbed his cap. He looked, every centimeter of him, a major: the stocky, strong body of a lifelong athlete, the short, pale fuzz atop his head, a wide chin and faint jowls of authority. But his uniform was always ruffled, pushed a few degrees and a few centimeters out of place by his restless mannerisms.
He opened his eyes again and rested his arms on his desk, covering the report.
In the beat of silence, Sam became aware of the way one of the recessed lights in this tiny office was installed above the ceiling fan, so that the fan’s shadow spun distractingly around everything.
“I doubt it. Volga has seen some damn fighting over the years. I could hardly believe that the Federation would abandon a treasure trove like that down there.”
“If you say so, sir. But it would explain where Kaiser was able to find a Neptune.”
Major Inman waved a meaty hand to banish the thought. “Who knows how long he’s had that beast. Wouldn’t be surprised if the Xīn Guójiā had something to do with that, arming dissidents all over the system like they are.”
“But is that not the problem, sir? How long has he had that thing?”
The major sighed. Sam barreled on.
“Kaiser has armor. He has cavalry. He might have a whole battalion of both. Why did he leave that Fusilier behind? The worst case scenario is that the assault ship was full up of even nastier surprises.”
“We can’t go focusing on the worst case, now, Arif.”
“But my point is we don’t know. We don’t have the intel. We need to press our employer for more, or we need to do more extensive reconnaissance…”
“Don’t worry about it. We won’t be doing all that.”
Sam drew up short. “… We won’t?”
“No. We’re going to cut bait on this one.”
“You can’t… we can’t. We couldn’t. Right?”
“We can and will. We’ll send a quick message to our liaison with Her Highness as a courtesy, but it doesn’t really matter. No proof of capture; no payday. They know how to handle this. I’m sure they’ve contracted mercs before who just haven’t come back or have ghosted them anyway.”
Sam snapped her mouth shut, dumbfounded. After sorting through and filtering out some of her more straightforward thoughts—How could we? Just give up, like cowards? Don’t we have any pride at all? Aren’t we professionals?—she found one that might have purchase.
“It isn’t over yet. A Neptune isn’t exactly hard to find in orbit.”
“And what, do you propose, we do about a Neptune, with God knows what aboard?”
“We figure it out! We have resources and room to maneuver…”
“But we don’t have the firepower for this, Private. The juice is not worth the squeeze.”
“Then we—”
“No we don’t, Sam. This one isn’t worth the money. Dismissed.”
Sam slammed her mouth shut again. She realized she was leaning with both hands on the major’s desk. Looming, really. The major leaned back in his chair, everything about him just slightly askew, his mouth slanted and lips pursed in annoyance.
She drew herself up, saluted, and withdrew.
An hour later, there was a knock at the door of Sam’s quarters: three businesslike thunks on the hollow metal.
Sam sat up, set her book down on the nightstand, and swung her feet out off the bunk and onto the ground. In just two steps she was at the door, flicking the switch to slide it open.
Out in the quiet hallway stood Lieutenant Fae, still wearing her battledress and cover. With her full combat helmet discarded, Sam could see faint bags under her dark eyes, and that she looked like she was chewing on the inside of her cheek. She held a manila folder.
“Ma’am,” Sam said. This didn’t look good.
“At ease, Sam.”
Sam eyed the folder.
“No, you’re not getting drummed out. You have a chair in here? Want to sit?”
Sam looked back and chuckled. There was a rack—a narrow bed just barely long enough for Sam’s comfort—made up with standard navy blue sheets, bracketed by storage compartments above and below. There was a cheap aluminum bedstand by the head, a little LED reading lamp, and the waiting book. There were a pair of locked trunks and a swivel chair pushed up against the wall where a desk was folded up. “Just the one. You want it or the bed?”
“That’s alright then. Here.” Fae handed the folder over. Sam took it and flipped it open. It was thick with printouts. The first few pages looked like dossiers, with black-and-white headshots at the top and blurbed descriptions stretching below. Dozens of the pages after that were dense with words, top-to-bottom. The last thing in the bundle was a little passport booklet. Inside was a travel visa: Salemo, Volga.
“It sure looks like I’m getting drummed out.”
“No, I promise. Sam, you’re a good soldier; we wouldn’t do that to you. The major said when he debriefed you, you seemed upset that we’d abandon the contract.”
“Upset sounds so pathetic. I did object, though.”
“Sure,” Fae replied. “So, he had a talk with the Colonel. The Colonel decided that maybe there’s a way forward here.”
Sam took the visa out of the passport booklet. Her own steel gray eyes looked back at her from the first page. “Salemo. Princess De Myrre holds our contract, right? I’m being sent to apologize?”
Fae kept chewing on the inside of her cheek.
“Officially you’re being sent to liaise. So… yes. But the Colonel told me that he wants you to take this one further. You told them we should gather more intel, right? You might be just the person to do it.”
Sam kept her expression carefully neutral. I’m a soldier, not a spy. But… I am a professional, aren’t I? “All right. So question one is why Her Highness sent us to collect the head of a man who just so happens to have come across enough materiel to outfit an EF marine battalion for a planetary assault. So I go ask her. Or someone close to her; I suppose that might be smarter.” She tucked the papers back into the folder and tried on a smile. “I think I can do this.”
Fae fidgeted.
“Ma’am?” Sam asked.
“Sam, I don’t think it’s a good idea. It’s… unusual.”
Sam had to laugh at that. “Well, apparently innovation is in my wheelhouse.”
“But it’s not in command’s. You know? You know how they work. The kind of orders they give. I don’t know what they’re thinking here, but it doesn’t smell right.”
Sam tapped the manila folder to her chin and thought, staring vaguely in the direction of Fae’s neck. “The major told me the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze, so the move we’d expect from them is to abandon the contract. They’re sending me along with implicit permission to not do that.”
“Right. Why?”
“Because I won them over with my appeal to their professional pride?”
Fae rolled her eyes.
“Okay, okay,” Sam said. “Unlikely. How about because they have such a willing volunteer in me?”
“Doesn’t change the math. You gotta figure that wherever this path takes you, there’s several hundred tons of frontline-grade armor and guns waiting for you at the end of it. Just because you’re hopping at the chance to get at them doesn’t mean that suddenly we can take that fight.”
“It’s our job to figure out a way,” Sam mused.
“Sam, you are such a good soldier, but come on. You know the Colonel made a reasonable call to forfeit the contract. And you know it’s weird that he’s backtracked, and now he’s going to let you go down alone to sort it out. I think this is dangerous. I don’t want you to do this.”
Sam looked at the ground, realizing now how Fae had been trying to lead to that point. She really did care. She really did want Sam to stay safe. And she really was doing her damnedest to make her case carefully, plying at just the right angle that Sam might find agreeable.
And she was right, wasn’t she? This would be a solo run into uncertain territory, dealing with an employer who had possibly been withholding important information about an adversary. An adversary with considerable resources and connections. It was, at the best, dangerous. At the worst it was suicidal.
But it was her job, wasn’t it?
“I’ll be careful, ma’am.”
Sam sat toward the end of the row of seats facing the wide rectangular viewport. Right out the center of it, thirty thousand kilometers below, the huge blue-green-white orb of Volga swirled.
Since the rest of the gate was outfitted in an impossibly drab shade of gray-blue, the viewport was a popular view, and this whole row of sixteen seats was occupied by an assortment of Sam’s anonymous fellow travelers. There were a few dozen other people sitting and standing around: mostly, it seemed, business travelers, although probably not the young couple in the corner, and the priest in the cassock and collar was likely on a somewhat different sort of business.
Behind Sam, the long starboard concourse of Lars Bruun station hummed with activity. Spacecraft from throughout the Eridani system—three of the four terrestrial planets, as well as some from a few of the moons of the two gas giants, Nile and Yangtze—berthed regularly at the port concourse, carrying with them a steady stream of travelers, almost all of them continuing down to Volga’s surface on one of the SSTOs here. Many were citizens of the interplanetary Eridani Federation, come to do a few months (or, sometimes, a few years) of work with its massive chartered Volga Enterprises Company. Others were coming in from the moons of Yangtze for a temperate vacation, to admire the wide oceans or primeval forests here, or on business of their own. Still others were refugees from Indus, its densely populated northern continent reeling from another bloody change of governance.
No craft came in from Bosporus. The peace between the Dominion of the Compact and the Eridani Federation was icy and fragile, and while the Federation was not sovereign over the whole or even the majority of Volga, it commanded enough influence to freeze the Dominion out of the ports here. That was just as well, for Sam. It had been years since she’d crossed paths with another Dominioner, and she wasn’t looking forward to the day it happened.
A short woman with a huge belly appeared at the corner of Sam’s vision, piercing her ruminations. Sam stood, her duffel rising with her, already slung over her shoulder.
“Here, ma’am.”
The woman seemed shocked to see Sam rise, then collected herself. “Thank you,” she replied, stepping over and setting herself gingerly down in the seat.
“Happy to.”
“Are you with the militia, by chance?”
Sam sighed inwardly. All this work to pick out a nice subdued coat and slacks to travel with and it was still, apparently, blindingly obvious that she was a soldier. Or maybe it was just her height? That would explain the way the woman’s eyes momentarily widened when she first saw her.
Sam shook her head. “No, but Volga doesn’t have just one planetary militia. Unless you mean New Hope’s Marshals.”
The woman sighed. “I was told it would be complicated, but I’m still not sure I get it.”
Couldn’t blame her. “Right. Coming in from somewhere else?”
“Jī. Yangtze ten.”
“You have great English!” Chinese speakers were 80% or so majorities on most of the moons of the giant Yangtze. It seemed like a fair guess that she was speaking a second language here.
“Thank you. My family is in shipbuilding; English is very handy.”
“Well, in Yangtze there’s the major system government and a heap of smaller republics on some of the outer moons, right? Volga is a little bit like that, but it’s all on one world, and without the major government.”
“That must’ve been what my husband was trying to describe to me. But there’s no… ah… alliance, or confederation? If there were an invasion, who would fight it?”
Sam shrugged. “I mentioned the Marshals. New Hope is the biggest population center on the planet and the Marshals are its largest force under arms. But the real top dog is actually the Eridani Federation; its Volga Enterprises Company here has a ‘Home Guard’ that’s a full sized army, and then all of the other squabbling governments and almost-governments would just have to figure out how to protect themselves or hide under the EF-VEC umbrella.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not always pretty. Anyway, I’m with the local mercenary group headquartered here on Lars Bruun station.”
“Can I ask you a question, then?”
“Sure.”
“Is New Hope… safe?”
Sam rubbed her chin. “I thought it had a good reputation off-world.”
“I’m told there’s a lot of organized crime.”
“Ah, don’t let that deter you.”
The woman bit her lip. Sam waved a hand.
“It’s not quite like that. You don’t step in it unless you really mean it.”
“If you say so…”
“Is New Hope where you’re headed?”
“Well, no, I’m on a shuttle down to Daolan. But my husband says he’ll have work in New Hope. And I might, too, after the baby.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. Shipbuilding, right? I assume you’re with a company. Their security people will be on it.”
“Oh. Thank you. I hope so. Where are y…”
At that moment, a chime called attention to the gate PA.
“Boarding is beginning for descent Delta Nineteen en route to Salemo. Please line up at the gate for check-in.”
Sam smiled. “Salemo. Zài jiàn.”
The woman returned her smile. “Safe travels.”
Sam stepped up to the end of the line, only nine travelers long, as the gate attendant fussed at the computer screen trying to prepare to check tickets. He looked up suddenly, his face a drama mask of condolence.
“I’m sorry, folks, but I have a last minute change of plans. Our planned touchdown at SLSA has been squeezed out of the schedule by today’s storms. But the royal port has offered us a gate. That’s SRQX. They’re offering quick connections to SLSA once the storms are out of the system.”
There was a hubbub, then, and Sam caught only one of the things said to the man at the computer:
“Well, damn, must be someone important on this descent.”
The gate attendant made a show of covering his PA mic and leaned forward, saying, “well, I wasn’t going to say it!”
In the end, one man stalked off to the transportation desk to book a new trip, but Sam and the other eight passengers lined back up for boarding.
Well, I knew they’d be expecting me, she thought to herself.
As she presented her ticket and prepared to disappear into the boarding bridge, she looked around and caught the eye of the woman from Jī. She gave a little wave and walked on, realizing too late that she had never gotten the woman’s name.
The skies above Salemo were clear but windy in anticipation of the storm that had so stopped up the major spaceport just to the west. After a bumpy descent, Sam and her fellow passengers stepped out onto the tarmac of a little private airfield, ringed by trees and chain link fencing.
A little retinue of civil servants (or, perhaps, household servants?) was waiting a polite distance from the bottom of the egress ramp of the Tonbo-class SSTO. They were wearing gray suits… with livery. Red and gold. Sam blinked.
The line of travelers trailed off in the direction of the staff, and Sam followed. There was a flurry of activity when they met as the household staff of the palace offered to take luggage. Sam was in the middle of protecting her duffel from one of the grasping attendants when a tall, thin, bespectacled man caught her eye. It was easy enough for him to do so—he was as tall as she was.
“Ms. Samantha Arif?” His voice was flat, disinterested, worn into that groove as if by long habit.
“Sir?” Sam replied.
“This way, please.”
While most of the entourage of travelers was channeled over to a staircase into one of the palace annexes, Sam followed the tall man across to a gate in the chain link fence, through it, and then into a waiting car (a classic affair in black, trimmed with chrome) under the eyes of a pair of security personnel (both sporting the crew cut-sunglasses-earpiece trio).
A short, wordless car ride later, another security guy opened her door, and she joined the tall man in a climb down a short flight of steps into a side door.
This was, apparently, the palace proper. Even this little back hall of the complex was outfitted ostentatiously, lined with alcoves flanked by painted columns holding up elaborately inlaid arch-work in a riot of colors, seemingly every corner studded with golden beads. It made for an odd contrast to the tall man walking ahead of Sam, he with the dark suit, simple velvet livery, and bored demeanor. The forest beyond the windows was dense with evergreen, over the tops of which could be seen a rolling landscape of grassy fields, tall groves, and little villages.
The tall man led Sam around a corner and held the door for her to step into a room. This was strikingly different. It was a conference room, with a wood-paneled wall, inoffensive gray carpet floor, and canister lighting in a drop ceiling. A woman sat at the table across from the door with a cup of coffee in front of her. A fresh pot sat on the maker over on a side table.
“Thanks, Henry,” the woman said. She was petite, wearing gray slacks, a pristine white shirt with the crispest collar Sam had ever seen, and a thin black belt to divide the two across her waist. Her face was neatly proportioned, with a flat chin and a short forehead, framed elegantly with sandy blonde curls.
“Yes, Your Highness,” he replied. The door was closed and the tall man was gone, as suddenly as he had appeared.
So this would be Princess De Myrre of Salemo.
“Sit, Private Arif.”
A lot of thoughts crossed Sam’s mind very quickly. Would “Sam, please, thank you” be a rude thing to say to a princess? Also, there had been a lot of security in the rest of the palace; why was there none by her person? Were you supposed to bow or shake hands? Or kiss her hand? What should Sam do about her duffel?
The last one, at least, was fairly easy to make sense of. Sam dumped her luggage on a chair near the door and pulled herself out a chair.
“Your Highness,” she said, simply.
“The pleasure is mine,” De Myrre replied. “I hope you found the reception comforting.”
“Well, it was nice not having to take a cab in. I’m surprised they found me on the tarmac, though.”
“How could they not?”
“I mean that they came and fetched me right away.”
De Myrre smiled. “That’s what I have people for, don’t I? Colonel Magnussen told me he was sending a representative, so I made sure Henry would know how to find you.”
Sam cocked an eyebrow. It had finally caught up to her what she found so strange about this scene: she had expected to wait in line, so to speak; to wait for the Princess of Salemo to find time in a very busy schedule to see a PFC in an orbital mercenary company about a scuffed contract. But here she was in the conference room, prepared with notes, all other appointments postponed, within 15 minutes of Sam’s touchdown planetside.
“So what did the Colonel tell you we were going to meet about?” Sam asked as she stood up to get some coffee from the pot.
“The word he used was liaise.”
“Sounds right. I’m surprised you’re so eager to meet me. That’s code language for ‘say we’re oh-so-sorry’.”
“The Kaiser matter is near to me,” the princess replied, with a little ironic emphasis on the assumed title.
“I’m hoping we can still nail him.”
De Myrre steepled her fingers and gazed out at Sam over them for a second. Then she smiled.
“Ballsy. You have plans to deal with an orbiting Neptune? I’m no general but I have enough education to know that’s a tough nut to crack.”
“Not yet,” Sam said, sitting down with the coffee. It was thin and bitter, cheap, like hotel coffee. “But even assault landers have weaknesses. They just usually have something to do with crew or logistics rather than armaments.”
“So what did you have in mind?”
“Intel. How’d he come by a Neptune? The Federation doesn’t just leave those things lying around. How does he plan to supply it? How does he intend to use it?”
“Are you concerned that he has the backing of the Federation?”
Sam thought. “It’s the obvious inference, but I wasn’t aware that the Federation had any bad blood with Salemo. It would be pretty stupid of them to try to give clandestine support to a coup with a huge, signature piece of military equipment like that.”
“What if the goal isn’t a coup?”
“Sure. But that’s what I’m here to ask about. What do you know? Did you have any idea about the Neptune? Not that you knew precisely about it, but did you have any inkling that he had outside connections or resources to draw on?”
“We were afraid he might’ve had pull with certain units he served with or the security services.” Sam’s ears perked. “But this is beyond what they could provide,” De Myrre continued, “and we figured that anybody who would’ve wanted to aid him just went with him in the first place. What, something interest you about that?”
“No, sorry, nothing. Continue, please,” Sam replied. But while the security connection couldn’t explain planetary assault gear, she thought, it suggested something about this meeting worth considering.
“At any rate, no, I don’t have more in the way of intel… that I can share freely, here. What we know about Kaiser since his defection is mostly furnished through an outside party. And…” De Myrre trailed off, eyes narrowed, searching for the words.
“They urged you to be discreet,” Sam said, filling in the blanks. “They don’t want it getting out that they know about the Kaiser or that they’re working with you.”
“They didn’t urge, they demanded.”
“Oh. I don’t imagine royalty much enjoys being demanded of.”
De Myrre tapped the table impatiently. “It’s all demands. ‘I demand your attention’ or ‘I demand recompense,’ I demand this, I demand that.” Then she smiled. “But you’re right. I didn’t much enjoy being demanded of my silence.”
“Well, what can we get? Sounds like they have what I need to get him. I need to know what he’s after, who is friends are, or where he’s getting his goods.”
The Princess paused again. Sam began to get the impression that this was a well-rehearsed maneuver.
“A meeting.”
“A meeting?”
“I can connect you with a trusted intermediary. They’ll interview you, see that your interests are aligned with theirs, and they’ll pass along what they know. I’m sure they have the knowledge you need.”
“And you’ll vouch for me?”
De Myrre sighed. “I already am.”
Sam wasn’t sure how to take that, so she chose to smile faintly and move on. “Right. Where and when?”
“It hasn’t been set up just yet but it will. I’ll demand it of them.” De Myrre smiled, flashing her teeth. “It’ll be New Hope, at the Sato hotel up in the Kai-A Prefecture. Tomorrow morning, provided you’re not too tired to travel tonight.”
“Of course not, ma’am.”
“Excellent. You’ll take a jet to the city’s port in an hour. From there you’ll need to find a cab or a bus, but Kai-A prefecture is easy to get to and around. A hotel room will be booked in your name. Give Henry your local or system net address and I’ll have him send you final details about the meeting.”
“I’ll be ready.”
The Princess stood, and Sam with her.
“A pleasure,” the Princess said. “Best of luck, but I dare say you won’t need it.”
Sam smirked. It was a good line, but she rather suspected that De Myrre used it on everyone. “I won’t turn down good luck if I see it.”
Flying on a private jet was a strange experience. Sam was used to flying on transport jets or SSTOs full to the gills with people and their smells and their luggage, landing with a stiff back and shoulders and a slight ringing in her ears. Never once had she contemplated the possibility of having a plush sectional on an aircraft or a coffee table arranged tastefully with magazines and a little potted plant (wouldn’t that be a hazard in an incident?) across from a wide panel display. There were jump seats in the back for the attendants, but only one was present on the flight and they seemed to have invisibly determined that Sam would rather be left alone, much to her relief, and so they disappeared into the rear galley for the duration of the cruise. Sam spent the trip reading.
She gave a brief salute to the two-man crew of the little jet as she deplaned onto the tarmac for the second time today, now under the bright flood lights that illuminated the port in the deepening night. A little steel-colored annex to the general aviation building stood off to the right, marked CUSTOMS. She headed over and stepped through the automatic sliding doors.
A few empty stainless steel tables stood under the harsh florescent lighting, along with one man and one woman both wearing immaculate navy blue suits, black ties, and silver-stitched black shoulder marks.
“Welcome to New Hope, ma’am,” the woman said. “Your passport and visa, please.”
Sam handed it over. The woman, through silver-framed spectacles, glanced at the visa before passing it on to her partner. She turned back to Sam. “Anything foreign to declare?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Anything I should know about?”
“Handgun in a locked case in this duffel. On top.”
“Leave the baggage on this table and hand me the key.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As Sam did so, the man was running the passport and visa through a scanning device. As she was watching him, the machine gave a unpleasant warning blap.
Henry had explained, in his flat, workmanlike voice, that this might happen. The moment De Myrre dismissed Sam from the conference room, Henry had contacted the New Hope National Affairs Office to establish Sam’s right to visit New Hope. But bureaucracies like New Hope were slow to move, and it was unlikely that customs would see the visit reflected in their records.
The whole thing was a little odd, Sam thought. Since she was a member of the Dread Fist, and therefore, technically a citizen of Volga, it ought to have been the Dread Fist sponsoring her travel to New Hope. But what Henry had said had the ring of truth—it was going to take royal pull to get the visit greenlit in the span of six hours.
But then it got a little odder. “Come with me,” the woman said from behind Sam, grabbing her wrists and pinning them behind her. Sam was startled from her reverie and almost—almost—did something very stupid. Instead, she suffered the indignity, lurched upright, and allowed the woman to frog-march her back into an interview room, just past the scanner.
She deposited Sam in a chair facing away from the door and withdrew. The woman slipped out through the door as an officer wearing a plate carrier and holding a carbine stepped in, wordlessly.
Well, Sam thought. He really ought to wait outside the room. If I get the jump on him in here, I should be able to win the fight. But it shouldn’t come to that, should it?.
In about five minutes the first two customs officers came back in and sat across from her. It was the woman who did the talking.
“You are Private First Class Samantha Arif, correct?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why has the Kingdom of Salemo sponsored your visit to New Hope?”
“I’m on urgent business for Princess De Myrre and she offered to sponsor it in order to facilitate it. Quickly.”
The two officers at the table shared a look.
“Who are you here to meet?”
“Mr. Jin Yecheng.”
“And he is?”
“A Chinese interpreter for the Xīn Guójiā. Salemo would like to hire him, discreetly,” Sam said, as Henry had instructed for this situation. It seemed like a dangerous idea to dangle in front of law enforcement officers—was this discreet business above-board?—but Sam just had to trust Henry on this.
There was a beat of silence. Whatever it was about what Sam had said, they didn’t much like it, or maybe hadn’t expected it.
“Where?”
Sam began to worry but refused to let it show. It was a good thing, she thought, that Mr. Yecheng was a “trusted intermediary” and not the skittish source of the intelligence.
“Kai-A prefecture. The Sato Hotel, which is where I’ll be staying.”
The man and the woman paused.
“Will you be going anywhere else in New Hope?”
“No. I haven’t been instructed to, anyway.”
“Do you intend to meet with any other persons in Kai-A prefecture?”
“Nobody specifically. Whoever I need to get cabs and food.”
“Has this business been coordinated with the VEC Home Guard or any representatives thereof?”
“No. Should it have been?”
The woman gave her a long look. She looked to the man sitting next to her, who shook his head. She waved off the man at the door.
“Everything’s in order,” she said. “You may go.”
Sam sighed. Back in New Hope. The first thing that always struck Sam about New Hope was its alluring, garish charm, followed quickly by its complete incomprehensibility.
The city defied the deepening evening with a sally of neon color. Lighted signs clung to or swung from the wall of every building for the first two stories, and many more adorned upper stories, too, on the buildings whose facades were not full glass matrices of lit and unlit windows. But once the gaze could be peeled away from the loud, clamoring lights, it settled on the roadways. The roadways which seemed to refuse to stay straight for longer than a quarter mile. The roadways which buildings loomed, frequently even cantilevered, over. The roadways that kinked and juked with odd intersections and thickly populated crosswalks.
Everyone on the street seemed to walk like they knew where they were going. The streets had no discernible direction or purpose, but the people on them had plenty, anyhow.
She paid the cabbie at the curb of the Sato and he nearly peeled out (huh) as she turned to size up the hotel. It was a freestanding building, moated by a few dark, narrow streets. The facade at street level was a glossy, metallic pine color framed around wide windows that looked into a moodily dim lobby. It was quiet here; she had passed by the noisier nightlife neighborhoods a few streets back on the cab ride.
Sam hefted her duffel up onto her shoulder and walked through the automatic sliding doors into the lobby. She strode across a blaze of red-orange carpet running along the hardwood floor, sparing a glance to her right to the lounge. It was empty but for the bartender mopping one of the tables.
The white-shirted woman at the desk bowed primly for Sam. “Good evening.”
“Evening. Samantha Arif, room for the night.”
A brief tap-tapping at the keyboard, a nod of the head, the scribbling of a pen. “One adult. Here are your keys.” She slid them over across the desk.
“Is there anything else I can help with?”
“No, thank you, ma’am.”
“Have a pleasant night.”
Sam headed back toward the elevators, pulling the keycard out of its little paper fold. A note came out. Neatly slanted on it were the words:
Accelerated timeline. Meet tonight in listed room.
Listed room, then, would be 1242, whose numerals were written on the paper fold itself in a different hand (which would be the receptionist’s). Sam’s brow immediately furrowed. She did not like the idea of answering the door of a little hotel room in the dead of night, at an unspecified time, for a mysterious asset. Or, worse, an operative.
The elevator door slid open for floor twelve, and Sam stepped out into a typical quiet hotel hallway lined with doors. She could work with this, but it was bad news if the secretive contact was getting anxious and trying to force things ahead in the schedule. Contingencies and ideas began to crowd her mind. Was the contact afraid of getting chased down by an enemy? Would that enemy be affiliated with the Kaiser somehow? Would they try to nab the contact on the way out of the Sato, or would they try to force an entry? Or was the contact afraid of Sam, an unknown factor who claims to be on a solo mission to take down a Neptune? Did they mistrust that explanation, and seek to put her off her footing? Or…
She opened the door to her room and stepped inside. As she pulled the door shut, she heard the clack of a door further down the hall coming open.
… Or should Sam mistrust the contact? She threw the duffel to the ground and grabbed her handgun from it, shoving it barrel down into her coat pocket. It made for shitty, dangerous concealment and an even shittier, more dangerous draw, but she hadn’t had the time or privacy to get her holster on her belt after customs. She kicked the duffel into the nearby closet just in time for a loud rapping on the door, right behind her.
She waited two beats and checked the eyehole. Black.
“This is Sam,” she said. Tried not to shout.
“Here to talk, Sam.”
“Who is it?”
There was a pause. Too long.
“Your contact. Meeting was originally tomorrow, right? Here to talk now.”
The eyehole was still obscured. Fuck. Sam quietly closed the privacy latch and backed away from the door. This would’ve been so much easier if the damn doors swung outward so she could barrel out through the hallway. Then she reconsidered. Assuming there were at least two of them out there—why else cover the eyehole?—barreling out was probably doomed. But that was the only way out. The only good way out, anyway. The window behind her, on the other side of the bed, opened to a twelve story drop.
“Sam?” the voice said from the other side of the door.
Sam put her right hand on her handgun grip and stepped back to the door. Doomed, maybe, but still: the only way out was through.
She undid the privacy latch and turned the doorknob.
The door swung open slowly, almost as if it were drifting, and a giant of a man stepped through through, kicking the door shut and denying Sam a view of the hall. He had a smooth, tanned complexion, dressed in a spacer’s black nylon jacket and baggy trousers, his blonde hair buzzed recently. His broad jaw and bushy mustache brought to mind a boar, or a bear.
Sam carefully masked her reaction. One look at the man and she knew.
“I am Sir Paven Roth, and I am here to extend an offer, Samantha,” he declared, his arms spread. His voice had an imperious marching beat to it that didn’t match the voice Sam had heard from the other side of the door.
“Are you now?” Sam replied. She reached over his shoulder and engaged the privacy latch for the door. Sir Roth snickered.
“I will be pleased to negotiate your offer,” Sam continued with a pointed smile, as if none of that had happened and she had the manners of an imperial liaison. “Please.” She gestured to the office chair at the little desk in the room.
The knight flashed a cocky smirk and lowered himself into the chair as if it were his throne.
“Samantha Arif. I want to erase your debt and let you come home.”
Sam stood—loomed—over by the bed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The Knights of Aquila wish to repatriate their lost brothers and sisters.”
Sam’s stomach twisted. She said nothing.
“I have it right, no? Candidate Samantha Arif. In the waning hours of the 1016 Indus North War, you were aboard the assault ship Valkyrie IV when its acting captain surrendered to the Federation ship Wolnas.”
“That’s true. Then the Dominion refused to exchange prisoners with the Federation as part of the peace accords. They kept their booty and cut us loose. Then the Federation decided to try to work the reparations out of us. That’s changed?”
Roth crossed his legs and rolled his shoulder. “Yes. That’s changed.”
Sam felt a twinge… of what, she wasn’t sure. A little pulse of adrenaline, pushing at a place in her chest she could feel but not quite name.
“All that big talk about the shame of surrender was… what, then?” she said.
Roth shook his head. “The Macedon sees it differently.”
“The Macedon?” Sam’s right eyebrow arched. “Are you serious?” The great general-warlords of the Knights of the Compact of Aquila had a tradition of self-selecting epithets, almost like regnal names for their command. Some were considerably more arrogant than others. This one was an all-timer.
“After Phillip, not Alexander,” Roth replied with a fine, sandy dryness which suggested that he agreed it was still a bit gauche.
“Is he mustering soon?” she asked, quietly.
“Yes. He’s gathered his kith and kin already. The Albion Corps has promised him two full regiments. More have sent initial delegations. His household… they’re enthusiastic. Their blood is rising. When was the last time you heard battle-songs in a locker room?”
Sam was silent. It had been a long, long time. Since hearing battle-songs in a locker room, but also since talking to someone who got it. Who knew what it was like to pledge oneself to a warrior-king, to soar on the wings of war.
She almost—almost—asked him if he was part of the muster. If he knew how it felt. Where to go to feel it again herself.
But then she remembered the covered eyehole. The forced urgency. The surprise. The deception: was this the contact she was supposed to meet with about intel on the Kaiser? If this offer for her old life back was on the level, none of that was necessary.
So instead, she asked: “Have you heard of Johan ‘Kaiser’ Hect?”
Roth’s broad brow furrowed: confusion, frustration at the turn in conversation. He crossed his arms, and began to open his mouth to speak.
But by then Sam had her handgun in both hands, pointed at his chest. Oldest trick in the book: a tiny verbal inkcloud is all the distraction you need for a clean draw.
“Walk back out there and tell your goons to back off. Now,” she hissed.
Roth slowly stood, arms spread. “Last chance,” he said. She tightened her grip on her handgun.
“No. Get out. Sir.”
Roth shoved both his hands into his jacket pockets, the motion sudden, a black blur in the dim room. He was calling Sam’s bluff, and he was right. She couldn’t shoot him yet. This was between him and her; she needed law enforcement involved in this like she needed an anvil to fall on her head.
Sam stepped forward and thrust her arm under his left armpit—hoping against the odds that it was his dominant arm—and hooked violently against his right leg with her instep. The big man grunted and went down hard, his right arm coming up out of his pocket with a knife in hand.
There was a crack and a bang as the door broke through the privacy latch. Shit.
Sam got a hold and pulled Roth up by his right arm—goddamn he was heavy—and wrenched it as hard as she could until the knife pattered to the ground and she was holding him facing the door.
Two more huge men wearing black spacer jackets and buzz cuts were thundering into the room. The one in front stretched a garrote between his hands.
Sam dragged Roth back a step into the space between the bed and the desk. It bought her just a second: there wasn’t room to get around her without navigating the bed, and going through her was a problem with their man being held up like he was.
The man in front hesitated. “Sister, put him down,” he growled.
That was the opening Sam needed. She threw Roth to the floor between them, raised her gun (fuck it, it was past time to start shooting), and yanked the trigger twice. She knew immediately that the shots were terrible, but there was no time for that. She was already backpedaling, grabbing the spindly office chair and slamming it through the back window.
There was groaning, shouting, and shuffling behind her as the assailants tried to pile through the hotel room after her.
She hopped up onto the windowsill and looked down—a life or death die roll, now.
And it came up heads.
But just then, she was yanked back into the room by her jacket collar with dizzying force. She rolled to avoid being clotheslined by an arm hurtling toward her, and then she hit the ground and rolled again out of the way of a nasty stomp. She looked up: two men, on either side of this little walkway, penning her in at the foot of the bed. The one between her and the window was bleeding from a bullet wound in the leg, so that was nice. But he was the one who had just pulled her back into the room, so he still had his strength. And Roth was standing again.
Rather than trying to come to her feet, she sprang for the legs of the man between her and the window, directly for the wound in his thigh. He buckled with a hacking, pained grunt, twisting and coming down on his side right by her ass.
That’s when the garrote whipped across her neck.
That was bad.
Sam’s left hand involuntarily rose to her neck, digging frantically to part the fabric from the flesh of her throat. But then a boot came down on her spine and an ungodly strength wrenched her neck up and back. Fear and pain seized her from heel to shoulders. Her vision began to tunnel with the deadly pressure.
“Disappointing, Samantha. A shameful resignation,” Roth was intoning from his post at the door.
She kicked and elbowed back, trying to find something soft in the man’s groin or gut, but failed. Then she remembered…
She stuck her handgun under her left armpit and yanked the trigger until it stopped roaring and clicked.
Somewhere in that span she had become able to breathe again. The other man was grasping again, but she smacked him hard in the chin with her gun. She scrambled to her feet, gasping, running, swinging over the windowsill…
There was just enough of a protrusion on the facade, about three feet down, to navigate. She lowered herself down and began sidling along, away from the window. A second later, Roth’s buzzed head popped out of the window and he turned his glowering eyes on her. Holding onto the concrete with one hand, she aimed her handgun—gestured, really—and Roth vanished again.
She was alone for the moment in the night, the wind thrumming between the high-rises, surrounded by the gaudy neon of the city. Below, the lights grew in intensity toward the street level, as if Sam could fall into a cushion of warmth and brilliance. But, of course, she could not.
So instead, Sam made her way across and down the gutters and ledges, and when she was sure she couldn’t be seen or heard by the knights, broke back in through another window on the tenth floor.
When Sam emerged from the Sato at street level, her aching muscles passed the baton back to her mind, which began racing again.
Where now? Surely not back into the hotel. She let her feet carry her across the street and down a perpendicular street, practically a tunnel between two deep buildings, for about a quarter mile, and then ducked into a through-alley to think.
So there, between the garbage bins, she thought.
The Macedon (seriously?) was offering to “repatriate” her. Probably not just her—there was nothing special about her—probably dozens or hundreds of former Dominioners who had been prisoners of war during Indus North. But he was going about it circumspectly. And sending men with garrotes. Why? One idea presented itself: the offer was really muster with me or die. They hadn’t brought—or at least hadn’t drawn—any guns, which meant they were trying to take care of it quietly if possible. Probably because they didn’t want to have to bug out immediately after finishing up with her. Maybe they were stationed here, long-term, on behalf of the Knights of Aquila. She might be seeing them again.
But one major question remained: how’d they find her? Were they the “contact” she had been sent to meet? Had Her Highness De Myrre sold her out? It was the only thing that made sense…
A shadow passed across the mouth of the alley Sam had come through. A big one. Maybe local law enforcement here in a patrol vehicle to see about a disturbance. Sam started hoofing it the other way, south.
A few neon-lit streets later, when she felt confident that she had put some space between herself and trouble, she flagged down a cab and took it to the other damn side of town. “Winton Street,” she said, and when the gruff cabbie shot her a skeptical look, she added “anywhere. Come on,” and she flashed some cash.
Which brought to mind: her duffel, passport, and tab were still back there in the hotel room. Shit.
A nice, long, expensive cab ride later, Sam stepped out into the dense night in Galway Prefecture, and she started walking.
Here, the neon signs clung to street level, and the mid-rises loomed in unadorned darkness above. The streets were a little wider, the traffic much thinner. As a practical matter, it did make it easier for Sam to watch her surroundings; she’d see any oversized Dominion goons coming from dozens of yards away. But it gave her too much to watch, and it mad her antsy to have to watch it.
Sam’s mind muttered its annoyances at her for a while as she passed through the sleepy neighborhood along Winton Street. Finally, it muttered something useful: home. Sam smiled to herself. She was home, for better and for worse, and it was time to stop acting like a fish out of water.
Earlier today—or yesterday, technically—Sam had been trying to explain the fractured governance of New Hope to that woman waiting at the gate up on the space station. Well, now it was time to live it again. Kai-A Prefecture, where Sam had been jumped, was run by the VEC Home Guard. The Home Guard had a lot of bad blood with the Dominion, so it seemed unlikely that they had a lot to do with the ambush. It was just as well that Sam hadn’t bothered to ask them for help, though, being so obviously a Dominioner herself. The Marshals were an option, but her frosty reception at customs and her missing passport (sponsored by someone she didn’t trust) complicated things, as well as not knowing why the customs officers where interested in Home Guard connections. On the other hand, she wasn’t very familiar with Galway. She only knew Winton Street’s name because it ran near the port on the south side of the city. Looking at it now, it was a dense street, the kind of street that kept its people close. Few people here commuted up or down the city; most lived and worked here. That seemed promising for finding a fixer quickly; a townie in a dive bar would know best.
The question was what the local syndicate was like. Friend or foe? One way to find out.
She found a corner with a bar on it. A Latin bar, its orange-red sign announcing Los Cabellos from the window above the corner door. She stepped inside.
It was a clean little bar on the inside, well-lit and smelling of limes. The clientele looked a little dingy, though: just four guys left hunched over the bar. One on the end spared a glance for Sam as she stepped in, but otherwise none of them paid her any mind. Sam pulled up a seat and waited. In a minute the bartender was out to see her.
“Need anything?”
“Water and some help. Do you pay anyone keep?” A bit of a verbal balancing act, there: Sam wanted to know who they paid protection money to, and she wanted to know right away. But if she put the question wrong, she’d look suspiciously like an enforcer trying to elbow in on new territory.
Apparently she struck the balance correctly, because the bartender eyed her placidly through his round lenses for a moment, before saying, “it’s Theta, here. Best I don’t ask about your trouble, you’ll want to… oh, hm.”
The bell above the door tinkled and Sam turned to see who it was. It was a woman in a shirt, tie, and dark blue coat, collar pulled up against the midnight chill. Her hair was blonde tinged with orange, held down by a black hairband, just slightly wild. Sam had a surprisingly hard time placing her: the outfit, in form, seemed to suggest a place of employment somewhere upscale, not in the humble industrial quarter of Galway down on Winton Street. But she walked and wore it like it were the only thing you’d dream of wearing in a quiet bar in this corner of the city.
“Sergeant Lin,” the bartender said. Sergeant?
“Damn, Jeff, can’t a woman keep an air of mystery?” Sergeant Lin said with an easy smile. “Tequila, for me and her. You drink?”
Sam kept her face level. “Not tonight.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Suit yourself. Just me, then.”
A tequila and a glass of water appeared as the sergeant took a seat.
“Ma’am?” Sam said. It seemed safest.
“Well, aren’t you the soldier. But you’re not one of mine, so call me Phira.”
“Sure. Phira. You don’t happen to be with Theta, do you?”
“Sergeant Phira Lin, Theta Group.”
“I suppose that’s not just my splendid luck. You’ve been keeping tabs on me.” She’d arrived moments after Sam had made it clear she was looking for someone just like her. That—combined with the fact that this local outfit styled themselves with military ranks—made Sam a bit uneasy, but there was no sense in losing her cool over it.
“Well, not a lot of new people come down here to Winton Street. What brought you here?”
The reality is that it was farthest street from the Sato that Sam had a name for. That seemed like a fact that could be divulged later. “Looking for you, actually. Your ears only?”
Phira leaned back to scan the bar. She must have decided that these other patrons didn’t need to hear it. “Yeah. Step outside?”
Damn. Outside was, admittedly, probably a good place not to be overheard; there was enough road noise even at this time of night to blanket a conversation. But Sam would be back to watching the shadows out there. Or she would have to trust this Sergeant Lin to know her neighborhood. Maybe that was a clever move on the part of this Sergeant Lin. “Alright,” Sam said.
Out front of Los Cabellos, Phira turned an inquisitive look on Sam as Sam glanced about at empty street.
After Sam was satisfied that they were alone and far enough away from the door to the bar, she began. “I ran into some trouble in Kai-A. I was jumped in my hotel room… I think I might’ve been set up. What I need first is a place to stay where I don’t need to hand over ID or a standard payment card. Then…”
“Whoa, there. I was hoping I could get your name, first.”
Sam shrugged. “Sorry. It hadn’t seemed important at the time. I’m Sam.”
“Great. You, um.” Phira gestured at Sam’s height.
“Yeah. And?”
“Well.”
“Some people,” Sam grumbled.
“Well you’re bloody obviously from Bosporus. Come on, now.” Sergeant Lin grinned. “I like to think of myself as a helping sort. But I know what kind of trouble follows Dominioners, and you know that I know that, and there’s no need to be cagey about it.”
Well, she was right, though Sam felt like it was only fair to resent that a little bit. “You’re right. I’m a born Dominioner, but not one any more. I’ve been on Volga for a few years now.”
“You and I are well on our way to becoming good friends. Who are you with now?”
“I’m a private with the Dread Fist Company.” This was beginning to get to be more than Sam would prefer to share. But she needed the help badly. It would not do to put off her gracious new host.
Phira paused, eyes searching Sam’s face with interest bordering on suspicion. Sam was worried for a moment. “Up on Lars Bruun station, right? But you know New Hope well enough to get around and ask the right questions.”
“You could say that.”
“And the trouble?”
“The Knights of Aquila,” Sam said.
Phira whistled. “Big trouble. Like I said, eh? Deserter?”
Sam felt the urge to grit her teeth and clench her fists. It was absolutely a fair guess, but: “No.”
“Long story?”
“I’ll tell you over a drink later. Can you help?”
“Oh yeah. I can help.”
Sam did her best not to wince at the enthusiasm. Enthusiasm was suspicious coming from a New Hope gangster. “What do you need from me?”
Phira crossed her arms and thought for a moment. “Oh, nothing. Walk with me. We’ll talk.”