Renegade (44 page)

“Protect humanity,” Erik said quietly. “Protect my family. Be one of
those
people. The ones who matter.”

Trace nodded. “So. Look around you now. The Captain brought us here. He was one of those people who matter. What would he do?”

Erik gazed at her. Her intensity was catching. “The Spacer cause is corrupted,” he said.

Trace nodded again. “Go on.”

“They may be right that Worlders would make irresponsible leaders. They may even be right that humanity can’t afford full democracy right now. But if they can only achieve their goals by murdering the likes of Captain Pantillo, and mortgaging humanity’s future to chah'nas strategic interests, then they’re taking humanity in an unacceptable and dangerous direction.”

“And the Worlders?” Trace asked. “Should we join with them instead?”

“The Captain was a Spacer. He sympathised with Worlders, but he wasn’t one of them. I know Worlder politics, it’s little better than Spacer politics. I don’t trust them either.”

“So,” said Trace. “What’s our role?”

Erik blinked at her. “Fight for humanity,” he said as it came to him. “Be the one who stands up for everyone, not just some faction. Don’t be anyone’s enemy, don’t stand against this or that. Stand
for
something. The entire species, whether they like it or not. And try to win as many people onto our side as will come, Spacer or Worlder, military or civilian.”

Trace smiled at him. “Now you’re talking.”

“I still don’t know what that means, in terms of actual action.”

Trace shook her head. “Combat command rule number one; get the basics right. You’ll never be able to control the specifics in a fight anyway. The number one basic is your objective, so get that right, and the details will fall into place.”

Erik smiled back at her. The responsibilities of the path before him were still frightening. But it no longer looked so lonely.

A
t 0645 Erik
was woken by a blinking uplink icon on his retina. He opened his eyes and found Trace’s side of the bed empty. But the uplink icon was for
Phoenix
command staff, so…

“
Breakfast in the kitchen,”
came her voice in his inner ear. “
Get up, duty calls.”
Which was the kind of thing she’d say to a junior officer known for late starts. Erik got up and dressed, wondering grumpily if she pressed his buttons on purpose, or if it was just a happy coincidence.

The kitchen was on the far side of the sunken lounge, and was guarded by Private Arime, still in light armour and kit but without the helmet. “Good morning Private,” said Erik as he approached. “Get any sleep?”

Arime’s reply was made unintelligible by a yawn. Erik smiled, entered the kitchen and found Trace there unarmored as he was, plain jacket and pants plus a pistol in the waist band. With her was an unshaven man, tall with an undercut around the sides, narrow face and suspicious eyes. Erik headed for the coffee machine with no more than a glance at the stranger.

“Coffee?” he asked them both.

“Don’t drink it,” said Trace. “You shouldn’t either. Adjust your stimulant micros, Doc will tell you your response times will improve even on flight sims.”

“Ever flown a starship?” Erik asked her, finding the loose grind and scooping. It smelt wonderful, a luxury you couldn’t get on starships.

“No.”

“Well let me tell you, neither self-flagellation, nor a bed of nails, nor coffee deprivation, helps me fly any better.” Trace looked amused. “Going to tell me who your friend is?”

“That’s probably not wise,” said the man.

“Humour me,” Erik insisted, pressing the button. The coffee machine burbled pleasantly. Erik turned.

“You can call him Linley,” said Trace. She was sipping some dreadful vegetable smoothie concoction that looked like minced caterpillars. “He’s a journalist.”

“What kind of journalist?”

“Newtown Investigator,” said Linley. Newtown was the biggest human city on Apilai, Erik knew. “It’s a newspaper. I knew the Captain.”

“Great,” Erik said drily, with a glance at Trace. “That’s just great. How’d he get in here?” Which meant a bunch of things, mostly aimed at his marine commander. Things like ‘how’d you contact him?’ and ‘why didn’t you tell me first?’… and others in that vein. Though by now he was wondering if he should even bother. Journalists, in their present situation, were exactly what they didn’t need.

“There’s always unofficial ways in and out of big apartment quarters like this on stations,” said Trace. “You spend your life getting into firefights on stations, you learn the ins and outs.” And saw Erik’s unimpressed expression. “Linley was an army captain back when Fleet took Apilai. Two month ground campaign, wasn’t it?”

Linley nodded. “The tavalai weren’t much interested in fighting, but the sard left a couple of divisions on the surface to tie us down. I was Army Intel, the biggest thing we had to deal with was resupply from the sard forces, which our Fleet couldn’t always stop because they were spread too thin. I talked to your Captain a few times about it, from orbit. He remembered me.

“I came back after my term was up, set up in the colonial administration here for a while, getting the cities built. That was a bit of a mess, like colonial administration always is — I took what I’d learned to the Newtown Investigator, had a good background to write about all kinds of stuff. Got pretty involved in the local Congress, Apilai Congress has never been happy with lack of representation in Heuron Congress, but we put a lid on it because of the war. Kind of.”

Erik nodded. Apilai Congress was the local Worlder Congress, Apilai being a Worlder population of 200 million plus. Heuron Congress was the local Spacer Congress, representing maybe 30 million Spacers.

“Anyhow,” Linley continued, leaning back on the kitchen bench. “About five years ago it got much worse. The war was ending, everyone could see it. There was a push… I still don’t know who started it, but someone pushed to get Captain Pantillo to stand for Apilai in the Federal Worlder Congress, once the war ended. He got into talks with them — I understand he was talking with quite a few systems about the possibility — and that ambition changed to the Heuron seat in the Federal
Spacer
Congress.”

Erik stared. The coffee machine’s gurgling halted. Erik turned, and poured two cups. “You knew this Major?” Having his back turned forced her to say it aloud. He got some satisfaction from it, but only a little.

“Yes,” she said. “He doesn’t share it around.” Present tense. Reminding him of the charade they had to maintain. “He wanted me to contact Linley. Couldn’t tell you, the less people know the better.”

‘The man we talked about’. The message from the Captain’s final recording. Was this him? This thin ‘journalist’… what the hell kind of journalist kept secrets with a Fleet captain instead of writing them up for a story?

“Private Arime!” Erik called. “You take milk?”

Arime looked from the doorway in surprise. “Uh, yes sir.” Erik poured, and took it to the grateful Private. “Thank you sir.”

Erik returned, sipping his own. He looked at Trace without any particular accusation, just suspicion. She was unapologetic, as always. The Captain’s message hadn’t mentioned any particular system or destination. Trace had said she didn’t know which man he’d meant — a lie, obviously. Had she helped steer them to Heuron? He couldn’t recall her doing so, not even subtly… but then he supposed she didn’t need to, if she’d thought they were obviously headed in this direction anyway. She was always first to know when he had an idea where they should go next — probably she’d wanted to come here immediately, but hadn’t had to say so. Probably it had suited her to let him think
he’d
thought of it.

“Linley’s got friends in Heuron Dawn,” said Trace, meaningfully. “Lots of friends.”

“Hmm,” said Erik. A journalist who was a front for local Worlder extremists. But if rumours were correct, in Heuron they weren’t so much extreme as mainstream. It made sense — Linley’s military background, his administration connections, his current job in what was essentially a communications hub. A great place to hide in plain sight, for a Heuron Dawn organiser. “So basically we’d get shot for meeting with you. If they knew who you were.”

“Oh they’ve some idea,” Linley said grimly. “After the last few days I might have trouble staying out of prison. Be okay if I get back to the surface though, not many Spacer cops on Apilai.” Of course not. On Apilai he could walk down Newtown main street unmolested. Down there, everyone was Worlder. Only up here it became a problem. The human race was becoming dangerously divided.

“The Captain bought them off,” Trace continued. “They were going to get violent. It was going to spread to other systems. Apilai’s the hub. Heuron is. It spreads a long way. But the Captain said he’d run for office once the war was over, in return for a promise they wouldn’t resort to violence.”

Oh dear god. “And let me guess,” he growled. “Instead of supporting his effort to stop the violence, Fleet HQ called him a traitor.” Trace nodded. Erik sipped coffee to smother a curse. And now the Captain was dead. If the local people found out… if their current
guest
found out…

Well. They would eventually. All hell would break loose, for sure. That was unavoidable at this point. The only question now was, how much could be done in the meantime?

“He’ll want to know,” Linley continued to Trace, urgently. “Stanislav Romki is here.”

Trace’s eyes widened slightly. “Where?”

“Crondike mining settlement, out on Faustino. I know the Captain wanted to speak to him again once he got the chance. Well, he’s here now, there might not be another chance for a while.”

“Who is Stanislav Romki?” Erik asked.

“He’s a legend in xeno-sociology. Alien civilisations.”

“Why haven’t I heard of him?”

Linley smirked. “Because most of what he knows, he’s not allowed to publish. It’s classified — he works for Newtown University but he’s funded by Fleet, and they censor everything. He doesn’t have a choice but to accept their funding because Fleet blocks everyone else. He’s not even allowed to give lectures or take students anymore, not for decades. Most of the academic community’s forgotten about him, he’s purely a security asset. Fleet’s been trying to control him for years, but he goes rogue, wanders off, spends time with our ‘enemies’ and friends alike. Fleet love his research but are scared it’ll give us poor, weak-minded civilians the ‘wrong idea’ about our allies or something. Tried to recruit him into Fleet Intelligence or some other Intel branch, offered him heaps of money… Romki always turns them down.”

It was hardly Erik’s area of knowledge, but it sounded all too plausible.

“The Captain’s unable to leave the ship,” said Trace. “I’ll have to go. And right now.”

E
rik rode
with Trace and Command Squad down the elevator on security override to outer rim dock. The time showed Erik only half an hour until his appointment with Supreme Commander Chankow. If Lieutenant Commander Debogande had a reputation for anything besides his famous name, it was for being immaculate and punctual. Being late to meet the senior commander of all human forces would be a good way to smash a few preconceptions, at least.

“So is Linley the guy the Captain spoke of?” asked Erik. “Or is Romki?”

“Either,” said Trace. “Could be various people in Heuron. That was what he meant. Get to Heuron. Via Merakis.”

“Could have told me,” Erik suggested. Trace gave him a look. ‘You really want to have this discussion in front of Command Squad?’ that look asked.

“Could have,” Trace agreed. “Didn’t need to. You were coming here anyway. I’m the only person he ever really talked to with this stuff. That habit’s hard to break, and people in spacer crew were trying to kill you.”

And she hadn’t trusted him enough at the time to be entirely certain he wouldn’t let something slip. It was a fight once again not to take that personally, but a fight he was getting used to. She’d known, ever since the Captain’s death, that it meant Heuron was about to blow up, and that blow up would spread. She’d been holding that in, all this time. And not wanting to let it out for fear of what various people on
Phoenix
, with all their conflicting loyalties, might do with the information.

Erik decided he was tired of being angry with her. And being hurt and betrayed at her lack of trust only made him feel like a child. She was the big cheese in this relationship — he just flew the damn carrier, and it made him an irreplaceable skillset for her, the one vital thing she couldn’t do herself. The Captain had confided in her as he’d done with no one else on
Phoenix
, and that had been a huge burden for her. He’d done so, it was obvious, because he knew it was a burden she alone could bear, even with him gone.

Erik nudged her on the shoulder armour. “Pretty hard thing. Saving the galaxy all alone.”

She glanced at him, and saw his wry smile. And just for a moment, her defences dropped, as she realised she wasn’t having to fight him again. She smiled back, with the faintest touch of emotion. “Nah,” she said. “Never really alone, see?” Alongside in the elevator, Staff Sergeant Kono smiled.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened onto a wide steel floor, a small crowd of locals standing aside to let them off. Down here everything was less glamorous, with low steel overheads, big exposed pipes and rows of cheap fluorescent lights. Nearby generators hummed and the artificial breeze felt alternately hot and cold as they passed side passages off from the main dock. A big, oval-shaped bulkhead through the floor announced each lower-rim dock, with lighted display boards announcing the berth number and the ship present — only small down here, shuttles with power enough to dock with the rotating outer rim, big atmospheric shuttles could do it, heavier insystemers or underpowered runners could not.

They filed through the crowds, watching and being watched by station techs, uniformed admin, bored passengers glancing at displays for departure times, and new arrivals clutching bags and looking around. Some grey uniformed station cops made way for the
Phoenix
crew with polite nods.

“
This is PH-1, now on final, ETA forty seconds. Berth G40, see you there.”

“PH-1, Command Squad copies,” Trace replied. “We’re at G36, expect a two minute turn around for immediate departure.”

“
PH-1 copies Major.”

“Bet he scared a few people getting here so quick,” said Kono.

“Hausler’s the fastest shuttle pilot in Fleet,” Van agreed.

They reached Berth G40 just as Lieutenant Dale and Alpha First Squad were coming up the stairs from below, flashing Fleet IDs at the doorway scanner. “Escort the LC to Supreme Commander Chankow’s office immediately or he’ll be late,” Trace told Dale. “In Faustino’s current position I’ll only be a six hour trip to get there, I’ll report back as soon as I’ve something to say. Expect
anything.
Trust no one. We’ve no dog in this fight between Worlders and Spacers and I don’t trust Heuron Worlders anymore than I trust Supreme Commander Chankow.”

“Aye Major,” Dale agreed, and Trace descended the stairs past the last of Alpha First Squad on the way up, without a backward glance or a goodbye. Erik knew that shouldn’t have bothered him, but it did. He
wasn’t
feeling anything for her beyond any other female friend on
Phoenix
, he was pretty sure, whatever their recent night in the same bed. It was more that he ran on emotions in a way that she apparently didn’t, or at least liked to pretend she didn’t. He liked to feel close to the people he relied upon, and to know that they felt the same way back. This whole situation was fraught, and a final glance back, a little smile or simple eye contact, would have made all the difference. But then she was gone, and Command Squad with her.