Wow that scene with the King Crab was amazing! As always the writing is 100% spot on brilliant. I fear the forts going to fall but how is another matter entirely. Excellent stuff and i'm hungry for more!
How are you always so positive, my dude? Don't get me wrong, this stuff is like catnip for writers, I just wish I could stay so sunny. Thanks as always for the comment and support.
I'm pretty sure the fort is going to be nuked... either by the Rimjobs, or by Orlava with the Rimjobs inside it...
Don't worry, they all go riding off into the artificial sunset at the end. Or maybe not.
***
TWENTY-ONE: ROSE
Hubris City, Nusakan
Terran Hegemony (Star League)
December 29, 2766Once the news blackout had lifted, the media announcements were almost comical in their bland inability to provide any kind of real information. For all their attempts a reassuring gravitas, the media personalities had no idea what was going on: Director-General Richard Cameron had resigned, or no, he’d been removed for abuse of power, but wait, he’d disappeared, or maybe, he’d died in an accident. The SLDF had killed Cameron, or perhaps, they were trying to bring him back to power, or who knows, maybe Kerensky was staging a coup.
At first Rose had wondered why the Rim Worlders had allowed the broadcasters back on air, but now she saw: The hundred different reports and rumor and conjecture only added to the fog, not cleared it, and the only reactions the reports produced were confusion and apathy, not anger.
Someone had attacked the police headquarters and leveled it, that at least was clear. Fire had been seen in the sky, far over the horizon, towards Jobs City. What it all meant, nobody knew.
The people in her building watched columns of police vehicles pass on the riverstreets below and said nothing. When the police pounded on Rose’s door, they continued to say nothing. The tall one called Rajk had come to collect Rose from her home, shouldering the door wide the moment she opened it, grabbing her arm and hustling her rudely outside and down the stairs before shoving her onto an amphi.
“Stratos wants to see you,” he said.
The tide was out, so the amphi puttered down the muddy canyons between buildings, among the tree-trunk forest of concrete, wood and stone pillars holding up the city.
The wind, channeled between the buildings, whipped her hair and stung her face. She wiped tears from her eyes.
“What does Stratos want?” she tried asking Rajk over the wind.
“Your friend Imre.” Rajk nodded to the amphi driver.
“He’s not my friend,” Rose said, reflexively. “He killed Tristan.”
“That little freak?” Rajk laughed. “Oh come on, don’t tell me you fell for that one. That kid’s about as tough and dangerous as a used tissue. Him, kill anyone? Don’t make me laugh.”
“Then, who?” Rose remembered the things Imre had said, the things she had dismissed out of hand. “You?”
“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” he said smugly. “What are you going to do about it, huh, Quisling?”
Rose stiffened, as though slapped. “Why would you say that?”
Rajk pointed over her shoulder. “Can you guess how many friends of mine died in there?” he asked. “All because of that little twerp and his subterranean troglodyte friends at the Fort.”
Rose looked. They were passing the burnt, blackened slag heap that had once been the police headquarters. Chunks of concrete, glass and police boats still littered the muddy ground of the plaza-lagoon.
“If you ask me,” said Rajk, “we should do the same to the whole damn city.”
Rose wasn’t listening. The only thing that registered was: Imre had been telling the truth. She’d turned him over to these people, she’d let them kill Hansen, for nothing. For a lie.
On the far side of the lagoon, the houses looked almost clean, and traffic was almost back to normal. A few of the more politically adroit families had taken down the Hegemony banner from flagpoles about their homes, and hoisted the Rim Worlds Republic shark instead.
The amphi halted by the Baroness’s residence.
It sat on its own, private island. There was a sprawling, walled garden all about the house, but most of the trees had been hastily hacked down and their stumps uprooted to make room for the sandbagged bowls of antiaircraft gun and missile emplacements.
Rose walked through in a daze, prodded by Rajk at her back.
Three ragged lines of people stood to one side of the garden, faces pale, resigned or disbelieving, some shocked, surrounded by black-clad men with guns. As Rose stumbled past, one of the lines was herded forward, around the corner and behind the wall. The sound of gunfire came soon after.
“Traitors,” Rajk said with satisfaction. “Your friend Imre will be joining them soon.”
“He’s not my friend,” she said automatically, but she could tell Rajk wasn’t listening.
They were met by Curda, the woman with black and white skin, at the entrance to the residence. Rajk seemed surprised to see her. “I can handle one civvie,” he said.
Curda’s expression did not change. “She told me to meet you,” she said. “You want to complain, take it up with her.” She turned and walked inside, evidently expecting them to follow.
“Weirdo voodoo freak,” Rajk muttered.
There was a broad, sweeping staircase inside, covered in plush red, velvety material that seemed to caress Rose’s feet as she walked inside. The material was filthy now, splattered with grease or oil and bearing the ground-in dirt of hundreds of booted feet carelessly tracking the mud of the riverstreets inside.
It must have been a beautiful place, once, before they transformed it into a fortress.
Rose could see through the doorways into several rooms off the main hall, and they had been converted into something military—a communications room, gun emplacements, storage rooms. Furniture had been piled up to one side, or simply smashed and the debris dumped outside.
Rajk and Curda led her up to the roof. There was a solarium there, mostly made of glass and steel, affording a view of the rooftop gardens and pool, and beyond, the sprawl of the city and the waters of the bay. Already Rose could see the ripples of the tide beginning to ebb.
“Wait here,” Rajk grunted. He went out, to the edge of the roof, where Stratos stood against a railing, looking North.
Rose stood, holding herself at the elbows, unsure what else to do. Curda looked at her, the way one might month-old food found at the back of a refrigerator, a mix of curiosity and mild distaste.
“The boy you helped us capture, Imre, will guide a regiment to attack the Fort today, in a few hours, and Stratos wants you as a hostage, in case Imre tries to double-cross them,” Curda said abruptly, in a matter-of-fact tone. “She’ll tell Rajk to kill you, after.”
Rose stared at her. Her eyes twitched to the exit. “What? Why?”
Curda shrugged and stretched, sinuously, both hands above her head. “It’s the way they think: People are pawns to be used and sacrificed. They don’t see that there are always levels above, we are always pawns in somebody’s else’s game.” She brought down her hands. “Company or country or cult or companions, we’re all servants in the end.”
Rose had started to shiver and was trying very hard not to cry. “Why are you telling me?”
Curda smiled, a little twitch to the side of her mouth, reached down to the pistol in her holster and drew it. “There are always levels above,” she repeated. She brought the pistol up to eye level, forcing Rose to look at it. “We’re all servants in the end.”
With a snap of the wrist, Curda twirled the pistol around and presented it towards Rose.
“Take it,” she said to Rose. “Take it. Rajk will be coming back soon. Take it, take it or die.”
Rose reached up, hands shaking, and gripped the gun in both hands. Curda released it with another smile, broad this time, filling her whole face. A look of utter satisfaction.
“I don’t understand,” Rose stammered. “You—you—“
“
Sevite,” said Curda, as if that explained everything. “We’re all servants, in the end. I am a loyal servant of the
Ghede lwa, and they command this thing be done.” She turned, and walked towards the exit. “Good luck,” she said over her shoulder, slipped through the door, and closed it behind.
Rose heard the door to the roof slide open. “Where’s Curda?” asked Rajk, behind her.
Rose lowered the pistol, shielding it from Rajk’s view with her body. “She left. She said something about say-vee-tay.” She took a deep breath. What was left? Amends maybe, for Ames, and even for Imre. Maybe he had wronged her, and she had wronged him, maybe the whole thing was a mess and this was the best way it could end.
“Malking cuckoo. Come on,” Rajk said, and put a hand on her shoulder, starting to turn her around. “Stratos is waiting.”
Rose let herself be turned. Saw the surprise register on Rajk’s face as he saw the gun cradled against her chest. His fingers on her shoulder twitched. Rose jammed the barrel of the pistol against him, right over the heart, and pulled the trigger.
“For Tristan.”
Rajk smiled. “Well, bugger me,” he said.
And fell to the ground, black hole smoking from his chest.
Rose looked at the body, waiting for it to move, but Rajk’s sightless eyes only stared blankly up at the roof. Rose raised her eyes, and looked outside. Stratos was watching her, speaking furiously into something grey at her wrist.
Rose stumbled outside, onto the roof, pistol held in both hands before her like a dowsing rod, as though it was the one pulling her forwards, and she merely stumbling after.
Stratos lowered her wrist as Rose approached. “Miss Ozaki, so good of you to join me. Though I am curious. Why did you kill poor Rajk?” she asked stiffly.
“He shot Tristan.”
“Who?” Stratos frowned briefly. “Oh, the boy on the island. No. That was me.”
Rose stumbled. “You?”
In that instant, Stratos sprang forward across the gap between them, crashing into Rose, grappling for the gun. They landed on the ground, rolling, first Stratos on top, then Rose, then Stratos, snarling, trying to kick and knee one another.
Rose got one hand free and clawed at Stratos’s face, forcing the other woman to jerk her head back. Then screamed in agony as Stratos drove an elbow into her cheekbone. Her grip on the pistol went loose for a second.
A second was enough. Stratos wrested the gun free, and leaped to her feet, back against the balcony railing. “You’re dead,” the Rim Worlder woman hissed. “Your idiot boyfriend is dead, the drunken cripple is dead, that lovesick puppy is dead, the whole rotten, stinking, slimy lot of you, all dead. We’re going to win, and I’m going to Terra a hero, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”
Stratos raised the pistol and fired.
Rose rolled, too slow. The beam struck her shoulder, burning through, and she felt her arm go numb. But she was on her feet. And charged, head down, straight towards Stratos. Another beam sizzled over her head, singeing her scalp, burning her hair.
Rose’s shoulder impacted on Stratos’s stomach. The momentum carried them back, further back, smacking against the railing and then teetering, tipping, overbalanced, feet off the ground, over the edge of the railing, and out into empty space.
They fell, twisting and tumbling through the air, hands still at each other’s throats, before smacking hard into the plaza-lagoon below, kicking up a white fountain of water.
The waters churned and two heads surfaced, screaming, spluttering, grappling with one another. Producing movement, heat, and blood. The lagoon came alive, thousands upon thousands of lampreys and leeches stirring to sudden activity in a blood-fueled frenzy, falling upon the two thrashing figures, coiling and rolling around them, blind hook-toothed mouths questing, seeking, burrowing into exposed skin.
The waters bubbled, seethed, kicked up frothy waves that grew smaller and smaller as the two struggling figures grew weaker and weaker, before finally sinking down into the depths of the lagoon.
A few bubbles rose to the surface. Little hemispheres of nothing, that soon burst.
