35
Y'know it's always a terrible feeling when the penny finally drops and you realise you've been well and truly had, though it's happened so often to me over the course of my life that you might think I'd have got used to it by now. Sadly however that ain't so; I felt very bit as sick to my stomach and helplessly enraged that day all those years ago on Novo Franklin, as Bloom avoided my furious gaze and began to tell me the truth about his blasted brother and the real reason behind our trip into the Periphery, as when nearly twenty years later Melissa Steiner-Davion confessed to me at the Palace above Avalon City, that she'd been plotting with my mother behind my back and I was now honour bound to marry one of the most grotesque specimens of Fed Suns womanhood I ever had the misfortune to clap eyes upon.
It's the shock that's the worst. It hits you hard in the gut, and usually in my case knocks all the fight out of me, as I mentally toss and turn and lurchingly realise I've been duped once more and I'm rapidly sinking into the brown stuff once again.
"Yes Darius, I'm afraid I misled you about my brother's true activities in the Periphery. He was a pirate, not a mercenary." Bloom began sadly. "You recall I told you of Reuben and my childhood, of how he was by nature a wild lad, and later very much a man of action. All that was true, and I didn't lie when I told you of my abiding affection and respect for him despite all, or of his generous and honest nature, his bravery, his daring, his reckless ambition ... sadly however he fell in with the wrong sort during his time at Kilbourne Academy, in particular a clique that revolved around a promising young cadet who hailed from the world of Parma."
Bloom was watching me closely as I dredged through my memory of what he'd told me about his brother, amongst other things the boyhood games they played together at being pirates, then later about Reuben enrolling at a backwoods Academy ... which had clearly been 'the Kill and Burn', as Kilbourne Academy was affectionately known to it's cadets.
"Kilbourne you say?" I murmured suddenly as a flicker of something half-remembered prickled at my mind. "And your brother graduated at the turn of the century?"
"Indeed." Bloom breathed out heavily. "As I was saying he fell in with a clique of his fellows that radiated around a particularly charismatic young cadet from Parma; a Fed Suns world infamous for the bellicosity of it's upper classes as I'm sure you know. Perhaps this cadet carried some of that violence in his heart to Kilbourne, I can't say, but all I know is he cast a strong spell over Reuben and many of the other cadets of his year. Reuben's c-mails home from his time at Kilbourne were full of glowing praise for this young man, and are littered with the absurdly grandiose plans this fellow apparently shared with Reuben and his other admirers, often revolving around how he'd 'change the AFFS for the better' after he graduated.
Reuben got into a spot of bother when he was involved in a fight with an older cadet, apparently in defence of this Parman cadet he idolised. But his hero cruised through his time at the Academy and even graduated with honours, to be posted with Reuben and several of their clique to a unit of the Avalon Hussars.
At first we thought Reuben must have been right about this friend he so idolised, for within a couple of years we received word from Reuben, at around the time he made Leftenant, that his friend from Parma had recently been promoted to become one of the youngest Captains in the entire army."
"Wait ... hold on a moment." I held up my hand in an attempt to stop him, as a dreadful thought began to take shape within me; Kilbourne ... a controversial cadet who graduated with honours ... youngest Captain in the AFFS ... but Bloom seemed unable to pause and plunged on, giving me no time to collect my thoughts.
"It was in ought three it all went wrong, we'd detected a change in the tone of Reuben's c-mails home for several months before, they were beginning to be dominated with rants directed against the army brass, complaining about the 'mindless regulations' as he would put it, and the 'petty self-aggrandising cowardice' of the officers who were placed over him and his beloved Company Commander. Whole c-mails would be full of his support for the 'reforms' this Captain of his was trying to force through, he would even recount stories of how together they were instituting new battlefield tactics out on the Front.
Even then, perhaps stupidly, we never in our wildest nightmares would have expected things to play out as they did, and we were as horrified and amazed as anyone else when we received word that this Captain of Reubens had been accused of piracy, theft, and rank insubordination, after he lead an unauthorised raid into the Taurian Concordat and nearly started a full scale war. Before he could be arrested, he turned renegade and attacked his Regimental C.O.'s family estate, murdering the man along with several other members of his family. Then, along with all his Company, including Reuben of course, he stole a DropShip and fled into the Periphery." By this time I had a chill up my spine and I jumped in grabbing Bloom by his collar forcefully.
"This Captain ... who was-" I snarled, but Bloom hung his head and spoke over me in a doom filled sepulchral voice.
"Captain Helmar Valasek."
I dropped my hands from Bloom's collar in shock. "Va-Va-Valasek?"
Christ and Conrad but this was a most unpleasant titbit of Bloom family history though wasn't it just. Valasek was perhaps the most notorious Periphery pirate leader rampaging around our Outback frontier from 3003 right through to just a few years before the time I'm writing of here. He was infamous both for the brutality of his raids, and for his uncanny ability to lead not only our troops a merry dance, but those of the Outworlds Alliance and the Combine too. His narrow escapes were literally legendary, despite the best efforts of our government to keep them secret, and his band had only swelled with ever more deserters and Periphery trash with each new exploit.
He was no Robin Hood though, far from it, our Outbackers were terrified of him, and regarded him as something of a cross between Old Nick himself, and Atilla the Hun. It was said it was better to shoot yourself than to fall into his hands alive, and reports of the most hideous torture and murder always followed one of his raids.
Old Ross MacKinnon had once told me a story of how, during their famous frontier campaigns, he and his lads had clashed several times with Valasek's mob, and on one occasion had lost a couple of men to them. These two poor bastards were later found by Mack staggering through the ruins of a town; with their eyes put out, their lips sewn together, and their fingers cut off.
Valasek's reign of terror along our Periphery frontier had mercifully however come to a close, as I say, just five years or so before, there were scattered reports Valasek, tired of his nomadic existence, had headed coreward seeking a secure base, right around the Combine and up towards Lyran space, and he thus hadn't struck against any of our worlds, or been sighted anywhere near our borders since that time. Which was some small comfort to me, but nevertheless I was still near soiling myself just at the thought Bloom's brother had once run with Valasek and his gang. Brave and reckless, Bloom had said of Reuben, murderous and psychotic seemed much more likely.
While I tried to stop myself from literally shaking with fear, with my mouth opening and closing like a goldfish, as I tried to come up with the correct words to tell Bloom just what I thought of him, the dolt carried on.
"I think my brother slowly came to realise his mistake in placing his trust in a man like Valasek, but his iron loyalty kept him with the pirate long after he knew he should have left the swine. Whatever the truth of that, I know in my heart that while Reuben doubtless killed in battle, and robbed along with the rest of them to survive and to make his fortune, I cannot believe he joined in the barbarities that are told of Valasek and his men.
I
know Reuben, he'd kill himself before he tortured, or raped, or murdered innocents.
Perhaps it was his true nature that finally caused him to leave Valasek's service after eight years in 3011. However my brother was a known and wanted pirate himself by then, and couldn't have safely returned home if he'd wanted to. Also Valasek was never one to easily allow his men to leave his service, and he would usually execute any who dared try to do so. Thus Reuben had to flee deeper into the Periphery, making his way through the stellar desert spinward and coreward until he found somewhere to hole up safe from the wrath of his former commander."
* * *
Well, by this point my initial somewhat stunned horror was passing and I suddenly realised that for the first time since we'd left Argyle I now had the perfect excuse for demanding Bloom took me back across the border into the Suns and dropped me off at the first safe planet. Officially I'd accompanied Bloom in order to seek economic or real material gains for our great nation, I'd certainly not signed on for some quixotic personal family quest, and doubly not to track down an arch-criminal for the sake of a fraternal reunion. Of course Paula might cause some fuss, but to be honest I was so keen to get back to civilisation by that point I'd convinced myself that the giant Robinsonian could be blackmailed into keeping the lovely La Stilson quiet. All it would take, I thought to myself, would be for me to make a few veiled threats about my 'feeling obliged as an officer of the AFFS to report all I knew of such a heinous pirate' as Bloom's brother clearly was.
So it was as the big half-maimed raxx took a breath I seized the opportunity to interrupt and jumped in all guns blazing.
"Good Christ man, I've never heard such a tale!" I did my best to roar, causing him to jump a little to my secret glee, the more I unsettled him I reasoned, the better the chance he'd cave and agree to ferry me safely home. "It's a damned disgrace! You brought me out here, away from my duties at the Front, on a promise of us pursuing great gains for the Fed Suns and my House, and this is the truth of it? That we're actually here trying to find your traitor brother, who's a murdering pirate to boot, and if we find him you ain't even meaning to arrest the rogue, but intend to have some kind of warm and fuzzy get together with him?
Blake's Blood man, I want no part of this business. No part I say!" I'd worked myself up into a pretty fine state by this point, if I do say so myself, my face scarlet and spital flying as I shouted in rage, and Bloom was waving his hand and claw at me trying to quiet me down. Beyond him I noted we were drawing stares from the feast hall down below, with Paula in particular half standing and staring hard up at us. I drew in a breath, meaning to launch into my planned final assault, where I would make my barbed threats about exposing Bloom's familial links to a known deserter and outlaw, when the cunning sod threw me a curve ball.
"Darius, I meant what I said about us being on the trail of a great prize. Reuben's rich man ... rich as Croesus!" Well that took the wind out of my sails a little I'll own, and I paused, squinting at Bloom carefully to try to pick out any lies he might now try to spin.
"Rich you say?" I muttered grudgingly, the stupid greed already firing my curiosity.
Well, you should understand at this point, that though I was the only son of a branch of the mighty House of Davion, heir to the best part of the affluent little world of Killarney, and one day securely set to inherit our great Neo-Victorian Hall, the lands, and all the moneys that went with 'em, the cold hard truth at that time, and indeed even now, was that my dear dragon of a mother held a pinchingly tight grip on our family's collective purse strings. I lived fairly high on the 'Mech most of the time, don't get me wrong, and had access to a trust fund that I regularly drained dangerously low with my boozing, gambling, whoring, and general wasteful living, but still I was always on the lookout for easy sources of bunce which I wouldn't need to go hat in hand to ma'ma begging for.
Indeed that was why I became such a dab hand at the art of battlefield looting, well that and the fact it has to be said I learned the trade from the best, I have after all served with the likes of Scavenger Snord, Ross MacKinnon, and of course the Ryan family. Oh yes I've picked up some real treasures over the course of my career; let's see now, in my time, I've walked away from New Delos at the end of the Marik Civil War, with a large part of Duke Anton's extensive wardrobe in my luggage, I lifted a Combine Warlord's diamond encrusted toiletry set during the Ronin Wars, and like most of the AFFS during the Fourth Succession War, despite standing orders to the contrary, I made it a point never to leave anything not nailed down behind me during our early conquests. It's certainly no surprise to me that there's been so much Capellan art knocking about the Suns these last twenty years, for we picked the worlds we seized clean quicker than a Lyran would a chickaroo drumstick. Well you must have seen the results yourself; AFFS messes decorated with Tikonovian holo-paintings, New Syrtan studies lined with the finest Sarnan terracotta statuary, Avalonian libraries and gentlemen's clubs where fat retired senior officers lounge about in antique Chinese recreation furniture that before the Fourth War had graced exalted palaces on Wei, or St. Andre, or wherever. I don't much care for the Capellan Oriental style myself, but even I eat here at the old pile sometimes from delicate wafer-porcelain dishes and plates that once belonged to that dirty thug Ridzik.
Anyway, you'll understand then that Bloom's mention of his brother's supposed abundant wealth had me picturing the kind of loot a successful Periphery pirate might have squirreled away.
I'd been amongst the Brethren of the Black before by then of course, so I knew better than to imagine caskets of gold coins, jewels, piles of gem stones, art treasures, and the like. No, your Periphery robber is unlikely to have looted such spoil, though sometimes they indeed do, but I thought it eminently possible Reuben Bloom might have converted lostech, stolen mechanical and electronic parts, slaves, and such like into ready cash. There were plenty of unscrupulous traders roaming the Out willing to buy goods off the Bandit Lords, and even ComStar already had a few stations out beyond the frontier back then, and would very likely have happily exchanged goods for C-Bills on the quiet.
"
Very rich." Bloom repeated, then leaned in and lowered his voice. "Tell me Darius, have you ever heard of the Great Rasalhague Raid of 3010?"
I shook my head honestly, and he quickly continued.
"Well, that's not really surprising, the Snakes did their best to cover it up after all. At that time Rasalhague had been thought to be too deep inside the Combine's borders to be at risk from Periphery raiders, and indeed I believe I'm correct in saying had never been attacked by pirates before that year. So then you'll appreciate that when in 3010 the impossible happened, and a pirate force attacked Rasalhague, the Kuritan planetary defences were caught well and truly on the hop.
Achieving complete surprise, several DropShips bearing the markings of Tiberion Tominaga's pirates of Santander's World, burned in from pirate points barely a few hours out from the planet.
The raiders struck hard and fast, wrecking havoc amongst both the DCMS garrison and the civilian population. Many hundreds died, and the planetary and provincial capital Reykjavik in particular was badly hit in several places. After the pirates pulled out and jumped away the Snakes were shocked to realise the widespread attacks had in fact been a clever ruse to draw attention away from the real reason for the audacious raid; which was the robbery of the Draconian Provincial Bank of Rasalhague.
While the planetary police and garrison had been engaged fighting the scattered groups of pirates, a small team of Tominaga's men, disguised as ISF jump infantry, seized the DRBR's central vaults and ultimately stole a large part of the provincial government's cash reserves, before blasting safely offworld with the pirate main body. They took with them upwards of an estimated
three hundred million C-Bills!"
Bloom lingered over those last four words, and his one good eye twinkled in the dim light at me. At the time I wasn't entirely convinced about this tale he was telling me, for I'd never heard of such an attack on Rasalhague having happened. Of course I was wrong, as I was soon to find out, and besides mention of the attack can be found in the history books if you know where to look, though the exact amount Tominaga's pirates got away with from the bank tends to vary widely from account to account, due to the Snake government never having admitted exactly how much they actually lost.
"Tominaga's greatest raid however was ultimately to fail almost at the last hurdle." Bloom then continued in the same low, excited voice. "The pirate fleet jumped into an uncharted system just over the Periphery border, while on their way back to Santander's World, and there they were spotted by Kuritan DCA picket ships watching for them. A series of space battles and combat jumps followed, with more and more DCA ships being rushed in to the fight, until finally Tominaga accepted the inevitable and ordered his fleet to break individually for home as best they could.
Why Tominaga didn't carry the money stolen from the bank back to his base-world himself on his flagship is unclear, perhaps he was too closely hounded at the time by the Kuritan ships and thought he wasn't going to make it home, or maybe he thought to hide the loot from his own men, either way he dispatched the money aboard a small JumpShip under the protection of a trusted lieutenant, his lover Lilli Jacobs.
When Jacobs never made it back to Santander's World with the loot, many amongst Tominaga's band assumed she'd stolen it, or had been captured by the Kuritans. However spies inside the Combine soon confirmed that the money had not been recovered, so a quiet and widespread search was begun by the pirates, and after a year or so a message pod was found floating in a nameless and uninhabited system two jumps from where Jacob's ship was last sighted. The message was from Jacobs and suggested that while about to be captured or destroyed by Kuritan ships, she'd managed to stache the loot on one of the many uncharted planetoids that covered the region. As far as could be told her ship had then jumped away, but shortly thereafter been destroyed at the location where the message pod was found.
After another few years of hunting on and off Tominaga finally called a halt to the futile search, and the story of the lost bank loot became just one of the legends that circulate across the Periphery."
"What does all this have to do with Reuben then?" I asked impatiently, thinking that Bloom was just trying to distract me with this little tale of lost loot.
"Well, of course Reuben was still with Valasek at the time of the raid." Bloom went on. "But as I say he left Valasek's band the following year, and made his way up around the Combine, until he eventually stumbled across Santander's World, and ultimately found a place there in service to this Tiberion Tominaga.
Reuben's skills, experience, and basically good character quickly made him a favourite of the stern Tominaga, and Reuben was entrusted with many secrets by the pirate lord. He was also heavily involved in the search for Jacobs and the lost bank haul ..." Bloom paused significantly as the pieces began to fall into place.
"You may recall I told you that Reuben contacted me for the first time since he'd gone into the Periphery at the end of the year 3011, and at that time was able to send a money order repaying his old debt to our father for his BattleMech."
"Jerome!" I blurted in realisation of what the one eyed brute seemed to be suggesting. "Are you telling me Reuben has the Rasalhague money?" I was suddenly seeing C-Bill signs in front of my eyes, three hundred million ... my God, even a part cut of that would keep me in cold PPCs and hot totty for years.
"Reuben's c-mail that accompanied the money order was necessarily vague, but he hinted enough for me to begin to piece together the truth. I believe he found the money, but perhaps out of a strange loyalty to Tominaga, whom he seems to have genuinely respected, or perhaps simply because he didn't feel safe running off with the loot while Tominaga and his band were still so hot on finding and recovering it, he didn't actually make much use of the money and stayed quietly in Tominaga's service, obviously keeping the secret that he had the cash, or at the least knew where it was hidden, to himself.
Reuben's c-mail however did request that I make a trip out into the Periphery to meet him, at which time he implied he would give me a large share of the cash, to legally invest on his behalf and to use for our family business."
"Your first 'exploration' voyage in 3015." I said softly, marvelling at the mans cheek; that he'd used the cover of Hanse's New Frontier initiative as a way to inveigle government sponsorship for a trip into the Out to meet his pirate brother, and there pick up the takings from a bank job.
"Ahh quite so." He said in an almost awkward tone. "Well, I met the same friend of Reuben on the Micanite station as I did this trip, and as this time, he pointed me in the right direction of where I would find Reuben. However what I told you about the misjump which injured me was true, and so we were forced to turn around without ever having met my brother.
I was thus forced to await another contact from Reuben, which never came, and so I have come out here trying to find him, and I now think we have.
Darius, this is money taken from the wicked Snake government, Takashi's tyranny, we can put it to good use for the Fed Suns eh?" Well, he didn't need to dress it up as a good deed for my sake, but there was one point I wanted to be sure about before agreeing to tag along for the ride and my share of course.
"Hm, so what about Tominaga, or Valasek? Can we expect them to turn up looking for Reuben and this loot he's half-inched?"
"Not a chance." Bloom snorted, reassuringly confident. "Valasek's wild lifestyle, and notorious debaucheries, have I'm led to believe taken a heavy toll on the man, who was once such a handsome, energetic, and charismatic lad according to Reuben's old c-mails. They're what led him to seek out a more settled existence beyond the reach of his enemies, and five years ago, back in '19, ironically he led his men to Tominaga's stronghold on Santander V, though I'm pleased to say that Reuben would have been long gone from Santander's World by then.
Initially Valasek apparently agreed to command his toughened band, under Tominaga's orders, but within a year there was a quarrel and Valasek mutinied, killing Tominaga in a 'duel'. Any of Tominaga's men and women who wouldn't swear a blood oath unto death, to the new Commander of Santander's World, were promptly tortured to death, and naturally it didn't take long for Valasek to be left as undisputed master of the two newly combined pirate groups, as he's remained ever since.
Valasek and his louts, haven't been seen within a thousand light years of this part of space since that time."
While Bloom described the coming of Valasek to Santander's World I found my memory drifting to a conversation I'd had back in '18 with Redjack on Butte Hold. It had been one of those mornings where the two of us had been nursing foul hangovers after a night of beastly behaviour, and I'd been cautiously taking advantage of Redjack's bemused and sickly mood to try to draw information about nearby worlds and their rulers from him, with a view to possible escape from the virtual captivity his service represented for me of course. Mention of Tiberion Tominaga of Santander V, had suddenly conjured in my mind the simmering heat, the fan rotating ineffectually overhead, and Redjack's bored drawl beside me once again;
"I met Tiberion once, yeah, he came to meet with ole Grimm few years back, needed to hammer out some agreements on boundaries.
That was a night, the old man, sat there with his nose red from the booze, and as usual generally seeming like nothing so much as a fat, slightly confused and befuddled grandfatherly type, with myself and Satanson sat either side of him, and in strides Tiberion. By damn he was dangerous looking, carried a pigsticker sword, and had the look of a Snake MechWarrior about him, smartly turned out too, a proper corsair like you and me."
Bloom coughed, and with that I blinked and the memory passed, though it struck me if Tominaga had impressed Redjack then Valasek, no matter how debauched and unhealthy he'd become, must still be a truly dangerous man to have supplanted him. However, I had no reason to doubt what Bloom seemed sure was the case, and it tallied with what I knew of Valasek; that he was very bad news, but that he'd vanished from our borders and hadn't been seen hereabouts for years.
"Very well Bloom, for the sake of getting this money into the right hands." I proclaimed without any hint of irony. "I'll go along with you on this. Now where the frack is Reuben holed up?" With that Bloom cheered and drew me into a happy, spine snapping, bear hug. I'd allowed the smell of C-Bills override my sense of self-preservation of course, and I was soon to pay the price for that.
