Original Work Stolen Glory (Morningstar II)

Chapter Sixteen

Leo cursed under his breath as he saw the men waiting for him.

“I’m sorry I got you into this mess,” he told Boothroyd. The other four marines looked unimpressed. “I wasn’t expecting this …”

“Think nothing of it,” Boothroyd said. “Regulations forbid me from giving my opinion, sir, but I think we’ll be more effective on the surface.”

Leo sighed as he took his seat and strapped himself in. He’d recruited Boothroyd and the rest of the marines himself, offering them a chance to return to the corps semi-legally and serve under his command, doing the job they loved. Francis was cutting off his nose to spite his face, even if he was heading straight back to Yangtze. Disbanding the semi-legal marines would have been safe if regulars had been on hand to replace them, but the nearest detachment was dozens of light years away. Leo hoped the decision came back to bite Francis, although there was no way to be sure. If the ship got back to Yangtze safely, the gamble would appear to have worked.

“Brace yourself,” the pilot said, through the intercom. “We’ll be going down hard.”

Leo glanced at Boothroyd. “There’s a war on?”

“A cold war,” Boothroyd said. “Didn’t you read the files?”

“No,” Leo admitted. There was no point in pretending otherwise. “I didn’t have time.”

The shuttle shuddered as it disengaged from Waterhen, then lurched violently as the pilot brought her around and down into the atmosphere. Leo gritted his teeth, silently grateful he hadn’t had lunch before departure, and forced himself to count his blessings as the shuttle fell lower. Daybreak normally stopped wars with the threat of overwhelming force – a few worlds had thought Daybreak was bluffing and discovered the hard way they were wrong – and the fact the pilot was worried about antiaircraft fire bothered him. Most rebels and insurgents knew better than to piss off Daybreak. The punishment would be so far in excess of the crime that their own people would turn on them, just to save their lives.

He winced as the shuttle seemed to bounce, then steady and start the descent towards the capital city. The governor would be there, along with an embassy, a spaceport and a small military mission. It couldn’t be very large, if she was pestering Francis for reinforcements. And why would she want him? It wasn’t as if Boothroyd needed supervision. It was more likely to be the other way around.

“Landing in five minutes,” the pilot said. “We should be safe now … oh my god!”

“Pilot humour,” Boothroyd said, darkly. “You want us to beat him up a little?”

“It beats having the pilot pretend to be a civilian stewardess,” another marine offered. Leo couldn’t tell if the man was joking, or if he were being teased. “We had someone come out once with two melons stuffed under his tunic. He looked a right fool.”

“But not enough to keep us from eating the melons,” Boothroyd said. “I …”

The shuttle lurched violently, then landed so roughly Leo honestly thought for a moment they’d crashed. The gravity field flickered and died … Boulogne, he noted, had slightly higher gravity than his ship. Not enough to be disconcerting, thankfully. It was quite easy for accidents to happen in heavier or lighter gravity fields, if one wasn’t used to them. The hatch banged open a moment later, the marines grabbing their kit and heading for the open air. Leo reached for his own knapsack and threw it over his shoulder. He had the uneasy sense he was going in blind.

“Hey,” a voice said. “You weren’t planning on leaving me behind, were you?”

Leo turned and blinked as Flower stepped out of the pilot’s hatch. “I thought …”

“Really?” Flower grinned. “You surprise me.”

“Hah.” Leo couldn’t help smiling back, although he’d hoped Flower would ensure the recordings got into the right – or the wrong – set of hands. If she was trapped on Boulogne too … “What are you doing here?”

“Apparently, you need a personal assistant,” Flower said. “And the folks down here need a supply officer. Go figure.”

Leo shook his head. “And Francis just let you go?”

“He didn’t even look at my chest while signing the transfer order,” Flower said. “I guess he was just glad to be rid of me.”

“Superhuman self-control on his part,” Leo teased. Flower’s tunic showed nothing below her neckline, but it still managed to be incredibly alluring, drawing attention to her breasts in a manner that was weirdly deniable. “I’m glad you’re here, although …”

He turned and led the way to the hatch, taking a breath as he stepped onto the hard concrete landing pad. The air was warm and sweet, maybe not as tropical as Francis had promised but certainly warm enough to whisper of sandy beaches, gentle waves and romantic nights under the stars. He glanced around, frowning as he saw the handful of military prefabricated terminals, hangers, barracks and other installations dotting the spaceport, surrounded by a high metal fence and protected by a handful of missile installations. They were manned, the soldiers looking calm and relaxed … they didn’t expect immediate attack, he noted, but they didn’t discount the possibility. It boded ill for the future.

A young dark-haired woman hurried up to them, wearing an unfamiliar green uniform, and snapped a salute. “Commander Morningstar? I have orders to escort you to the governor’s office.”

Leo nodded. “Of course,” he said. He couldn’t read the young woman’s rank badges … something else he would have to learn, sooner rather than later. “Please led the way.”

He allowed the young woman to walk away and followed, trying to resist the urge to drop his gaze to her rear. It had been a long time since Gayle and, right now, his body was reminding him of just how long it had been since he’d touched a woman. Too long, really. The young woman wasn’t that much younger than him, her hips ululating in a natural rhythm … he caught himself with an effort and looked around instead, his eyes drifting to the nearest town. It was surprisingly close to the military post, what few buildings he could see clearly done in a medieval style that led up to a fairy tale castle. His lips twisted in dark amusement. It was standard procedures for the governor to move into the former seat of government, to make it clear to the locals who was boss, but the governor had clearly chosen to stay on the base. Or nearby. Leo did his best to ignore the indignity of being poked and prodded by guards as they passed through two checkpoints, no matter how irritating it was. It suggested the war was far from over.

Government House was another prefabricated building, designed more for practicality than elegance. It certainly looked a great deal tougher than the mansion on Yangtze … Leo hoped, grimly, that the servants were offworlders too, instead of locals who could be easily subverted by insurgents. The guards were locals, unless they were mercenaries; no, that wasn’t too likely. The combat outfits they wore suggested they expected to go back to war in the blink of an eye.

He kept the thought to himself – he’d discuss his observations with Flower later – as they were shown into a simple but surprisingly roomy office. The desks and chairs were military-issue, designed for easy transport: three of the walls were covered in paper maps, a large Daybreak flag decorating the fourth. Leo saluted the flag automatically, then looked at the governor. She wasn’t quite what he’d expected.

“Commander Morningstar,” she said. “I’m Governor Soule. Welcome to Boulogne.”

Leo took the proffered hand and shook it, studying the governor thoughtfully. She was old, her appearance suggesting she was in her early seventies, the combination of grey hair and an elderly body giving her an appearance of fragility that didn’t quite match her calm blue eyes. She wore a simple dress with a jacket, suggesting she saw no need to wear the expensive suits Governor Brighton had worn on Yangtze. A simple golden star and planet icon, the icon of the Colonial Service, rested on her collar. There was nothing to suggest how long she’d been in the service, or how long she’d been assigned to Boulogne.

“Thank you,” he said. “It’s good to be here.”

Soule smiled, as if she knew perfectly well he was stretching the truth to breaking point. Leo had grown up in an apartment block dominated by old women and he’d never been able to get anything past them; he had the feeling, despite himself, that Soule was a great deal more experienced and perceptive than Brighton. Odd, given that he’d been her superior, but not exactly unprecedented. It wasn’t as if he’d been in a position to give her direct orders.

“Of course it is,” Soule said. Her smile grew wider. “Tea? Coffee? The locals have their own speciality coffee blend, if you feel like trying something new? They do a good line in pastries too. It’s just a shame they can’t be exported to Daybreak. They’d make a killing.”

She smiled at Flower. “Will you join us?”

“If you’ll have me,” Flower said. “I can help make the coffee?”

“No need,” Soule assured her. “Let us pamper you a little.”

She motioned for them both to sit, ringing a bell for the maid. “Coffee and tea, please, there’s a love. And a selection of pastries too.”

The maid bobbed a neat little curtsey, then left without saying a word.

“Tell me,” Soule said. Her tone was light, but there was an edge to it that reminded Leo of his sharper tactical instructors. “What do you make of Government House?”

Leo took a moment to gather his thoughts. It was a test, although he wasn’t sure what of. Not yet.

“It isn’t a very secure place,” he said. Perhaps it was a little more like Yangtze than he’d thought. “You don’t feel safe enough to put down roots.”

Soule nodded, curtly. “I requested a full marine division and a handful of planetary defence starships,” she said. “I put together a detailed report on the simmering crisis here, and the long-term advantages to Daybreak if we nipped any more trouble in the bud, and sent it up the chain to my superiors. And what do I get? You and a handful of half-trained marines!”

“They are not half-trained, Your Excellency,” Leo protested. “They were merely retired when I recruited them.”

“I know,” Soule said. She sounded more reasonable than Commodore Blackthrone. “But this world needs a great deal more.”

The maid returned, bearing a large tray. She placed it on the desk, curtseyed again and withdrew as silently as she’d come. Soule poured milk into three mugs, then settled back to wait for the coffee to brew. Leo suspected she was using the act to get her thoughts into order. The upper classes on Daybreak were fond of using the tea ceremony for the same purpose, and it spoke well of Soule she was including them. Francis would sooner have gone without than invite Leo to join him.

“I assume from your reaction you never read my message,” Soule said. “Did you get any sort of briefing on this situation here?”

“No, Your Excellency,” Leo said. He kicked himself, again, for not at least skimming the file. “I wasn’t expecting to be assigned here.”

“I guessed.” It was hard to tell, from Soule’s tone, just how much she knew. “I’ll give you the highlights, and you can read the more detailed files later.”

She nodded to the map. “To sum up a long story, the planet’s founders created what was, in effect, a three-tier feudal system. Kings, who own entire nations; Aristocrats, who own lands and owe their loyalty to the kings; Commoners, who own no land. There’s a great deal of detail and justification in the files, most as self-serving as you’ll see on any other world, but that’s the basic idea. To keep their world from being torn apart by national conflict, after the first and second generations give way to the third, they agreed they’d elect an emperor who would have the final say if the kinds and aristocrats couldn’t agree.”

Leo frowned. “It sounds like a very ramshackle solution.”

“And tailor-made for abuse,” Flower added.

“Exactly.” Soule poured three mugs of coffee. “In theory, the emperor would be nominated by a handful of aristocrats, then elected by majority vote. In practice, the death of the last emperor came at a very bad time. They were starting to become aware of Daybreak’s march towards their system, and what it would mean for them if their world was disunited when we formally incorporated them. The election five years ago, therefore, was a contest between two kings who had very different ideas about how to respond to the onrushing threat. The stakes were so high that bribery, corruption and intimidation were used on a colossal scale, so blatantly obvious that it simply wasn’t possible to be sure the winner had won fairly.”

“Ouch,” Leo said.

Soule sipped her coffee. “King Louis of Metrovence, who was declared the winner, insisted that his victory was a mandate to reform the government and military to ensure Boulogne couldn’t be simply occupied overnight by Daybreak. His orders would have permanently subordinated the rest of the kings to his dynasty, and it was easy for his opponents – including the king who thought he should have won – to rally opposition. Louis tried to use force to impose his will and outright civil war began. They didn’t have the technology for one side to pull off a decisive victory, and there was no hope of compromise, and so they were still fighting savagely when Daybreak finally arrived. You would think that three years of bloody and largely pointless slaughter would teach them to stop, but no …”

She shrugged. “Daybreak sent a pair of destroyers and a small body of diplomats and technical experts to take control. The two sides were reluctant to separate their forces and draw back until KEWs were deployed, making it clear they couldn’t hope to defend their world. I landed to assume control, working closely with this side of the civil war, and an automated weapons platform was deployed to ensure the war didn’t restart.”

Flower cocked her head. “Why this side?”

“Prince Charles of Arundel – that’s this nation – is the leader of the side that believes cooperating with Daybreak is more likely to produce better results than trying to fight,” Soule told her. “They were also losing prior to our arrival, which gives them a very good reason to support us.”

“Of course,” Flower agreed. “And the fact they were dependent on us played no role in your calculations?”

Francis would have blown a fuse. Soule seemed unbothered.

“If I had the manpower to permanently impose a peace, rest assured I would have done so,” Soule said. “Right now, I don’t. I can threaten planetary bombardment, true, but little else. There is no room for a scalpel, no way to deal with King Louis without making the whole problem worse. Our general feeling is that we will keep the peace, push for economic development and hope it defuses the crisis.”

She scowled. “What makes matters worse is that I think King Louis is getting help from off-worlders.”

Leo tensed. “Who?”

“Good question,” Soule said. “Legally, trading weapons to anyone within this system is prohibited. We imposed an embargo when we arrived. Practically, we don’t have the resources to prevent it. Any smuggler who takes even a handful of precautions can get up and down again without being spotted. Or so I have been assured.”

“That might well be true,” Leo agreed. Automated sensors were good, but far from perfect. “Why? I mean, why this system?”

Soule grinned. “I’m tempted to make you read my report,” she said. “I spent weeks putting it together.”

She took another sip of her coffee. “Boulogne sits at the end of two jumplines that lead straight back to Yangtze and the other inner worlds. There are also several more that lead out into the unknown, past the Rim. Right now, they are only of limited use. We know little about what’s out there and what we do know is unreliable. But in the long term, control of those jumplines will make Boulogne very important indeed.”

Leo nodded, slowly. Gayle and her father had plotted to destroy the governorship, take control of the sector, and then reapply to join Daybreak. The scheme sounded like madness, but they’d come terrifyingly close to getting away with it … and their backers remained unidentified. Might they be involved here, in hopes of getting a friendly government controlling those jumplines? Or was there something else involved? Perhaps it was just a chance to cause trouble for Daybreak. It would certainly be embarrassing if Boulogne fell back into civil war.

“I see your point,” he said, finally. Perhaps it was Gayle. Perhaps not. Either way, it needed to be stopped before it got thousands of people killed for nothing. “Why do you want so many reinforcements?”

Soule blinked owlishly at him. “Isn’t it obvious? I need something less … brutal than a planetary bombardment. And I need it quickly.”

Because if there’s no immediate threat from Daybreak, King Louis can mount an attack and hope to win before another ship arrives to figure out what’s happening, Leo thought. And if he can blame everything on the other side, he might just get away with it.

“I see your problem, Your Excellency,” Leo said. He took a sip of his coffee. It was strong enough to wake the dead, although more flavourful than navy coffee. “I’ll do everything in my power to help you.”

But he knew, even as he spoke, that he had no idea what that might be.

 

Chapter Seventeen

“Well,” Leo said. They had been assigned a double room, either because someone thought they were together or the base was simply short of space. “I seem to have landed in it.”

“It could be worse,” Flower said. “Believe me, there are worse places to be.”

“I know that,” Leo said, waspishly. He had the nasty feeling Francis had found something akin to an asteroid mining base, a place to dump an unwanted XO without making it obvious. “What – exactly – are we supposed to do here?”

Flower pointed to the datapad. “You could read your official orders.”

Leo snorted. “That bastard is going to return to Yangtze a hero, with his reports carefully slanted to suggest he showed mercy,” he snarled. “What the hell are we going to do here?”

“Don’t think of it as a trap,” Flower advised. “Think of it as an opportunity.”

“Really?” Leo had to smile. “Did you get that out of a fortune cookie?”

“I know someone who was taken captive by pirates when she was nine,” Flower said, curtly. “She went through absolute hell, until her ship was taken by the navy and she was liberated, given the freedom to do whatever she wanted. She went back to school, studied hard, and made a name for herself. And a career.”

Leo glanced at her. “Is that your way of telling me to stop whining and get on with it?”

Flower smiled. “I can be more explicit if you like.”

She stood. “I’ll go see about another bed, if you don’t want the floor, and then I’ll see what else I can find out,” she added. “You read your orders and come up with some plans.”

Leo nodded slowly, keying the datapad as Flower left, closing the door behind her. The orders were vague to the point of uselessness, odd if Francis wanted to sabotage his career. Leo was supposed to serve as the navy liaison officer, assist in operating the orbital weapons platform and generally make himself useful, inspecting the defence lines and reporting back to Yangtze. There was little else, not even a suggestion he was replacing an officer who was preparing to leave the planet. It left him at something of a loose end. The navy had always had a place for him, with a clear idea of his duties. Here … he seemed to have nothing. There was no command post, no clear chain of command, no nothing. Francis hadn’t bothered to think very far ahead.

Either that, or he just wants to be rid of me, Leo thought coldly. If I stay here for a few months, my career will stall and that will be the end.

He sighed inwardly, then brought up the files on the planet and started to read. The governor had hit all the high points, but the files filled in the gaps. The civil war definitely wasn’t over. Both sides were desperately preparing for Round II, on the assumption Daybreak would lose interest or get distracted by something else. Or simply decide the chaos on the planet’s surface was of no great concern to interplanetary matters. They didn’t have to rule the surface to control the jumplines.

And we can’t even solve the planet’s real problem, he mused. Standard procedure was to separate minority groups, if conflicts couldn’t be resolved peacefully. Moving a few thousand settlers halfway across explored space did tend to quench disputes, if only because it was hard to keep up the fight when the two sides were separated by hundreds of light years. There are just too many people involved, and too little carrying capability.

He rolled his eyes. Boulogne wasn’t that heavily settled. It wouldn’t be that hard to separate the two sides, creating two nations where only one had been before, but … he scowled. A divided planet was one that couldn’t speak for itself, when Daybreak came calling. The locals needed a united government in effective control of the planet, and their elective monarchical system simply didn’t have the monopoly on violence it needed to keep control. It didn’t help, he supposed, that the jumplines really were important. The interstellar corporations had plenty of reason to look for loopholes, anything they could use to delegitimize the planetary government.

His eyes narrowed as he studied the military situation. He was no expert in ground warfare, but he was fairly sure the governor hadn’t been assigned anything like enough troops to keep the peace. She had requested an entire division, as well as naval fire support, and all she’d got was Leo and a handful of others. Did someone want a war? Or was Boulogne so far from Yangtze, let alone Daybreak, that higher authority simply didn’t care? A year ago, he’d have thought it the latter. He had learnt hard lessons since his arrival in the sector.

The governor might be genuinely bringing peace to the planet, he mused, but her backers might have other ideas.

There was a knock at the door. “Come.”

Boothroyd stepped in, looking somehow larger than life in the cramped confines. He’d donned his BDUs and combat vest, slinging a rifle over his shoulder and cramming everything from ammunition to medical equipment into the webbing. A knife, a pistol and a datapad hung at his belt, the latter probably already keyed to the planetary datanet. Leo had a nasty feeling Boothroyd expected trouble, and soon.

“If I were an inspector,” he said as he closed the door, “I’d have no trouble coming up with reasons to relieve the CO on the spot.”

Leo frowned. “That bad?”

“Yeah.” Boothroyd pulled a device out of his belt and waved it around the room, then carefully inspected the walls for peepholes. “This base isn’t remotely ready for trouble. Nor is the rest of the deployment.”

“Fuck,” Leo muttered. “The orbital platform can smash any attack, right?”

“Don’t count on it,” Boothroyd said. “There’s a near-constant stream of incidents: shooting and sniping, bombing and mining … nothing bad enough to justify dropping rocks on their heads, but bad enough to keep everyone jumpy. There’s no safe rear area, no place the troops can rest and relax … frankly, sir, another unit should have rotated in long ago, giving the others a chance to pull out and get some leave somewhere safe.”

Leo frowned. “There’s plenty of unclaimed land,” he said. “It shouldn’t be that hard to set up a base …”

“Yeah,” Boothroyd agreed. “But they haven’t done it. You might want to find out why.”

He leaned against the wall. “Lots of other niggling little problems, sir. Rations are shit, which isn’t uncommon but … this is a planet! They should be able to get better food. There’s not enough manpower to secure the base, let alone everywhere else, and they’re using local labour to do a lot of the grunt work. The vetting is pretty shit too. I’d bet half my collection of cigarette butts that half the labourers are spies from one side or another, and that might be being optimistic.”

“No bet,” Leo said. He stared at his hands. “What the fuck are we supposed to do here?”

“Good question.” Boothroyd took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. “There’s a lot we can do, given time, but the strain is starting to take a toll. It’s hard to determine how much longer support for the war will actually hold up, given the constant stream of incidents. The enemy might not be able to launch a major offensive, but they are wearing down our allies. I’m pretty sure half our allies are looking for a way out too.”

“I read the political background,” Leo agreed. “How … why did they even think this whole political structure was a good idea?”

Boothroyd shrugged. “It wasn’t uncommon, in the old days. The major investors in planetary development wanted to keep their investment, so they drew up monarchical constitutions that preserved their stake in the world and provided a figleaf of respectability to convince nervous settlers that they weren’t going to turn into corporate dictators. The UN went along with it because … who knows? They were desperate to get as many planets settled and as many people off Old Earth as they could, before the war. The system they had appears to have held up well enough, until it was faced with a major political crisis from offworld. That’s when all hell broke loose.”

He took a long drag on his cigarette. “This isn’t the strangest world I’ve seen, in my career. I could name a dozen isolated worlds that are just … weird.”

Leo rubbed his forehead. “What’s likely to happen?”

“I imagine the bad guys will keep up the pressure, until the good guys crack,” Boothroyd said, blowing a smoke ring. “Of course, the bad guys are bad because they’re on the other side and the good guys are good because they’re on our side. Don’t make the mistake of thinking our people are saints and the other people are devils, sir. They’re our allies and nothing more.”

Leo made a face. “I figured we supported the weaker side because they would have more reason to be grateful to us.”

“Yeah,” Boothroyd agreed. “And gratitude can vanish in an instant, the moment it proves inconvenient.”

“Francis certainly wasn't grateful to me,” Leo muttered. He was fairly sure Francis had already rewritten the reports to make himself look good. His uncle would want to believe it … perversely, Leo wondered if that would blow up in Francis’s face. Commodore Blackthrone was smart enough to realise the dangers of wanting to believe something. “What the hell do I do now?”

“You find a way to take advantage of the opportunity put in front of you,” Boothroyd said. “I’m going out to inspect the lines tomorrow. Would you like to accompany me?”

Leo hesitated, then nodded. “Unless the governor finds something else for me to do,” he said. “I don’t appear to have any solid duties.”

“Look around, get a feel for the place, see what you can do,” Boothroyd advised. “There’s opportunity everywhere, if you know where to look.”

“I’ll do my best,” Leo said. “But right now …”

Boothroyd cocked his head. “What happened to the charging young officer who called me back to the colours?”

Leo flushed. “I had a starship back then, and I wanted to make a name for myself.”

“You still can,” Boothroyd said. “Or were you expecting your career to be a smooth climb to the top?”

“No,” Leo said. “But …”

He sighed, inwardly. He’d been told promotion stemmed from merit, although it was clear that some family lines were considered more meritorious than others. There was no getting around the simple fact that well-connected young officers had an edge, when their families were their patrons. Leo had hoped he could rise in the ranks and in a sense he had, only to lose it when Francis and his uncle arrived. It was hard not to feel depressed, hard to resist the urge to simply give in. If he'd fucked up, he would have deserved his de facto demotion. But he knew he’d done well.

His wristcom bleeped. “Commander Morningstar, this is Femi in Fire Control,” a voice said. It spoke with an accent Leo didn’t recognise. “Please join me in my office at your earliest convenience.”

Right fucking now, Leo translated, mentally. The words were polite, the underlying meaning was not. And if I don’t go …

He shrugged. “Understood,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

“I’ll see you soon,” Boothroyd said. “Chin up. We’ve been through worse.”

Leo snorted, stuck his datapad back in his belt, and headed for the door. The air outside the barracks seemed cooler, as the sun dropped towards the distant horizon, although it was still disconcertingly warm compared to Waterhen. He looked up, wondering if he could see his ship with the naked eye even though he knew it was impossible. The light was still too bright to see any stars, let alone the handful of artificial structures orbiting the planet. There wouldn’t be many even after darkness fell, he suspected. The city’s light pollution would make it difficult to see anything.

He felt an odd little twinge of pain as he kept walking. Gayle had taken him far from the city on Yangtze, showing him parts of her world rarely seen by passing spacers. They’d made love in the countryside, far from prying eyes … in hindsight, her behaviour had been a little suspicious right from the start, but he hadn’t seen it that way at the time. He’d liked her. If things had been different …

But they weren’t, he reminded himself, with a sudden savage intensity. The bitch was setting me up all along.

It was hard to keep his face under control as he neared the Navy HQ, a low building isolated from the rest of the base by barbed wire and armed guards. The guards looked on edge, he noted, as they searched him quickly and thoroughly, their hands going everywhere to make sure he wasn’t carrying anything dangerous. He bit down the urge to ask if they were going to buy him dinner later, as they showed him through the gate and into the HQ itself. Leo had half-expected a starship’s interior, but instead it looked more like a temporary military outpost on some godforsaken rock. The nasty part of his mind pointed out that was exactly what it was.

His eyes flickered from side to side. Two tables, laden with portable terminals and holographic projectors. One showed a live feed from the weapons platform, another showed images from the satellite network … automated analysis algorithms came and went so rapidly that it was hard to be sure what was going on. There were three navy staffers in the office, none wearing the stars that would have indicated starship service. Leo couldn’t help thinking it boded ill. But then, they weren’t stationed on a starship.

“Commander Morningstar,” a voice said. Leo turned to see an older grey-haired officer, his uniform making no attempt to disguise his paunch. It was several years out of date too, although so far from Daybreak it didn’t matter. No one was likely to complain. “I’m Commander Femi. Welcome to our home away from home.”

Leo saluted, even though it wasn’t technically required. Commander Femi might be a real commander, instead of a Lieutenant-Commander being given a courtesy promotion by the person addressing him, but any starship officer was one grade ahead of an officer who’d never served on a starship. It would be an interesting headache for anyone who wanted to work out which of them was technically superior to the other, given that Femi almost certainly had more time in grade than Leo … he saw no reason not to be diplomatic. There was nothing to be gained by picking a fight with the man on the ground.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, and was rewarded with a flash of gratification in the older man’s eyes. “It’s good to be here.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” Femi said. He shot a look behind Leo as one of the staffers snorted. “Come into my office. I’ll show you what we do here.”

Leo followed Femi through a door, taking advantage of the pause to study him thoughtfully. It was rare for a naval officer to be so heavyset, but perhaps not unexpected on a planetary surface. Judging by his pips, Femi had been a commander for several years … Leo guessed he’d been promoted through time in grade, rather than merit or political connections. His lack of starship service would hinder him, making it very difficult to get any higher in the service. The navy wouldn’t let someone without at least some experience of the real world climb into flag rank.

Which raises an obvious question, Leo mused. What is he doing here?

“We have two main duties,” Femi explained, as he indicated a comfortable and decidedly non-regulation armchair. “First, we monitor the battlelines for signs one side or the other is breaking the truce. Second, and perhaps just as important, we call down fire from orbit if the situation requires it. We also liaise with incoming starships, but that’s not an important part of our duties. System Command is normally in charge of handling such things.”

He paused. “You do know how to call down fire?”

“With the right equipment,” Leo said. The academy had covered the concept, although the instructors had been at pains to point out a qualified fire control officer would have a great deal more training. “I’ve never done it for real.”

“You will,” Femi said. “The enemy” – he waved a hand at the map, hanging from the wall – “has a habit of pushing us, trying to infringe the demilitarised zone between the two sides, and sometimes we have to call down warning shots. Or actual shots. We’re the only thing between the bad guys and restarting the war.”

“They have to know they’ll be fucked if they attack us,” Leo said, doubtfully. There was no way the base could be held for long, if the enemy somehow took out the orbital platform, but Daybreak would avenge them. It always did. “Right?”

“So we think,” Femi said. He sounded as if he couldn’t decide if he wanted to be satisfied or worried. “But if they think differently …”

He shrugged. “You will train on fire control, as well as everything else,” he said. “Ideally, you won’t be needed here, but …we have to be careful. We rotate operators in and out of the DMZ and I hope you’ll be joining the rota. The note I got from Waterhen about you was very vague, to the point of uselessness. What did you do to piss off your CO?”

“I saved his life, and his ship,” Leo said, dryly. “An unforgivable crime.”

Femi laughed, although there was no humour in the sound. “Yeah,” he said. “That’ll do it.”

 

Chapter Eighteen

“You need to get up,” Flower said, the following morning. “You don’t want to be late, do you?”

Leo gritted his teeth. Commander Femi had invited him and Flower to the mess hall for dinner, which had turned into an drinking session. Leo had swallowed a pill to counteract the effects of the alcohol beforehand, but no amount of chemical treatment could ensure he slept well after drinking so much. It didn’t help that the food had been excellent, calling into question Boothroyd’s comments about the rations being poor. Leo suspected the navy staffers ate well and the soldiers got screwed, something that also boded ill for the future.

“No,” he managed. The bed was alarmingly comfortable, leaving him feeling uneasy and out of sorts. “I’ll be up in a moment.”

He rolled over and staggered out of bed, heedless of his own nakedness. There was no such thing as privacy at the academy and he’d gotten used to the lack of it long ago. He staggered towards the shower and stumbled inside, turning on the water and washing himself until he felt reasonably human again. Flower opened the door and passed him a can of cold coffee, which tasted unpleasantly strong compared to the coffee he’d been given by the governor. Leo drank it anyway, dried himself, and stepped outside. An outfit was already waiting for him,

“The Sergeant said you needed to wear something nicely anonymous,” Flower said. “You don’t want to be kidnapped by one side or the other.”

Leo scowled. Daybreak had a firm policy of not paying ransoms, but hunting down the kidnappers and executing them in a manner most gruesome, before rounding up their families and deposing them on penal worlds. He’d never been very comfortable with collective punishment, and had said so at the academy, but his instructors had insisted that the only way to defeat terrorists was to make it clear their families would suffer if they stepped outside the laws of civilised conduct. The protocol did offer an exemption for family members who reported the terrorists to the military authorities, sweetening the pill by offering them a chance to escape permanent exile. Leo had been told the protocol also tended to be very hard on the kidnapped officer. His kidnappers had no reason to keep him alive.

He dressed quickly, then checked his pistol and put some additional ammunition in his belt. His training in ground combat situations had been very limited, and mostly boiled down to doing what he was told by his escorts, but it went against the grain to go unarmed. There was no reason to expect trouble, yet … he shook his head. The governor had told him one thing and Femi had told him another, leaving him hopelessly unsure just what to expect. Better to be careful than dead.

“Good luck,” Flower said. “I’ll brief you when you get back.”

“Take care of yourself,” Leo said. He had no doubt she’d be safer than him, or that she’d get a better idea of what was going on through drifting through the spaceport and asking questions. “And don’t forget to be home before midnight.”

Flower laughed. Leo grinned and turned away, stepping through the door and hurrying down to the meeting place. Boothroyd was already there, standing in front of a trio of armoured cars. A young woman stood beside him, her hair a shocking green that drew the eye away from her face and her outfit so baggy it was hard to be sure if she had any figure at all. She wore a pair of gold-edged spectacles, rare in an age where eye problems could be fixed effortlessly. Leo saw his translucent expression reflected in her glasses and guessed they were recording devices. And that meant …

“Commander Morningstar,” Boothroyd said. “May I present Ruth Benedictine, of the Independent News Bureau?”

“A pleasure,” Leo said. Up close, he couldn’t help thinking Ruth would be prettier if her face wasn’t set in an expression that suggested she was sucking a lemon. “What can I do for you?”

“You can explain to this ape that I cannot do my job with a military escort,” Ruth said, curtly. Her accent was pure Daybreak … close enough to Leo’s own to make him wonder if she was from Cold Harbour. “I don’t need to be shadowed by armed men.”

Leo met her eyes. A reporter … that could be very good or very bad. Naval officers were discourage from talking to the press, although he’d been cautioned that policy was very flexible and some officers would be actively encouraged to talk while others would be ordered to keep their mouths firmly shut. There was normally a dedicated PR team assigned to any major naval deployment, to make sure the navy looked good even if the deployment was turning into a disaster to rival Gallipoli. The reporters, wise to the fact the navy intended to present the most optimistic picture possible, would do everything in their power to get at the truth. There were some pretty strict laws regarding privacy and misinformation, and most news services were careful not to find themselves on the wrong side of a lawsuit that would be costly even if they won, but the Independent News Bureau was known for pushing the lines.

“There is a war on,” he said, finally. It was bad form to override your subordinates without a very good reason, and in this case Boothroyd knew more about the situation than either of them. “It may be frozen, for a certain value of the word, but there is still a war on. We have to be careful.”

“Yes, sir,” Boothroyd said. “I thought you and Miss Benedictine could share the middle vehicle.”

Leo kept his face under tight control as they were shown into the armoured car. The vehicle appeared primitive, burning hydrocarbons for fuel, although that was not always a bad thing so far from the core worlds. There would be no trouble with maintenance … there was a better view than he’d expected, with metal wiring covering the portholes and hatches in place to slam down if they ran into something the wiring couldn’t handle. The passenger compartment was disturbingly small, so much so Leo was glad Boothroyd was riding in another vehicle. He was much bigger than either himself or Ruth, and there was barely room for the two of them. It was oddly – and uncomfortably – intimate.

“I heard you were transferred under a cloud,” Ruth said. Her tone was cold and hard, although it didn’t seem directed at him personally. “What happened?”

“I was reassigned to serve as the naval liaison here,” Leo said, although he doubted she’d buy it. The cover story wouldn’t stand up to more than a little scrutiny. “That’s all there is to it.”

Ruth snorted. “The Hero of Yangtze, sent here?”

Leo felt himself flush. He’d read some of the news reports from back home, the ones discussing his victory, and most had suggested the writers hadn’t read his official statements. He hadn’t saved his ship with pistols blazing, he hadn’t duelled the planetary governor in a fight to the death and he hadn’t taken out an entire battleship with a gunboat. Flower had told him there wasn’t much he could do about the stories, not when they weren’t crossing the line into outright lies or slander. Perhaps that explained why Francis had been so keen to put him in his place. A naval hero who enjoyed the support of the media could go a very long way.

“I go where I’m sent,” Leo said, feeling a twinge of suspicion. Gayle and Ruth had little in common, from what he could tell, but it would be a long time before he trusted anyone like that again. “The navy is a harsh mistress.”

The armoured car rattled into life a moment later, the compartment shuddering as the driver steered them through the gates and onto the main road. Leo leaned forward, watching with interest as they steered around the city and headed east, towards the front lines. The map suggested the DMZ wasn’t that far from the city, something that made him wonder why the government hadn’t moved west long ago. Did they have that much faith in Daybreak to protect them? Or had they feared that losing their city would mean the end of the war?

He glanced back at Ruth and allowed himself a smile. “How did you get here?”

Ruth gave him a cold look that suggested she thought he was hitting on her. Leo wasn’t. Not really. Ruth wasn’t ugly and it really had been a long time …

“The boss sent me out here, told me I might get my big break,” she said, finally. “And then he kept rejecting my stories.”

Leo felt a flicker of sympathy. “I know the feeling.”

“I doubt it.” Ruth crossed her arms over her breasts. “You’ve never tried working as a semi-independent stringer.”

Leo leaned back in his chair, gritting his teeth as the wind took on a decidedly unpleasant order. The fields were torn up and broken, converted into a refugee camp so big it stretched as far as the eye could see. The majority of inhabitants – Leo couldn’t help thinking of them as inmates – were women and children, but here and there he saw an older man sitting in the mud and staring at nothing. A handful of armed guards patrolled the camp, their weapons at the ready. It looked more like a prison camp than anything else …

Ruth leaned forward, their faces almost touching as they stared out of the porthole. “I did a story on the refugee camps,” she said. “Countless thousands, uprooted from their lands and forced to flee by the war. The local government is supposed to take care of them, but mostly they don’t bother. Half the supplies earmarked for them are stolen and sold off, the other half are simply not up to the job. They’re barely surviving through sending their kids into the towns and cities to beg …”

Leo shuddered. “What happened to the men?”

“Most got press-ganged,” Ruth said. “Others were told they had a flat choice between joining the labour battalions or being sent back across the DMZ. Some went underground, but”- she shrugged, expressively – “it isn’t that easy to hide here. The stresses of the war turned a lot of people against refugees.”

“Oh.” Leo had seen horror before, but the sheer scale of human misery in front of him was truly disgusting. “How … how do they even live?”

“Many don’t.” Ruth’s voice was cool, clinical. “Some do basic work to survive. Some become prostitutes. The sex industry is supposed to be regulated, but … it’s pretty easy to get someone to overlook a few … dozen … irregularities if you bribe the right person. I heard reports a number of pretty young girls were sold to starship crews, rumours I was never able to confirm. The rest … they take what they can get and they stay here, doing little. The government isn’t even trying to resettle them.”

“Fuck,” Leo said. “Why the hell not?”

“Lots of problems,” Ruth said. “I wrote a story about that too. It didn’t get picked up.”

She settled back on her seat as they drove on, leaving the refugee camp behind. Leo studied her for a long moment, admiring her sharp expression and sharper attitude, then forced himself to look back outside. The landscape had been shattered by war, farming villages left burnt-out nightmares, fields of crops turned into sodden swamps by military vehicles. Here and there, he spotted the remains of a shattered vehicle, although there were no bodies. He told himself it was a relief. The bodies couldn’t be left to fester, or there’d be an epidemic on top of everything else.

The armoured car slowed as it neared the front lines, the hatches banging closed. Leo tensed, hearing voices from the front compartment, then forced himself to relax as the vehicle drove onwards, coming to a halt a few moments later. He glanced at his wristcom and noted, to his surprise, that the drive had taken nearly two hours. He snorted at himself a moment later. The armoured car was no starship. It couldn’t travel at a reasonable percentage of the speed of light.

He checked his pistol automatically as the passenger hatch opened again. The air stank of mud and piss and shit, the latter wafting against his nostrils and making his stomach heave painfully as they scrambled into the open. The muddy field was shielded by row upon row of concrete blocks, some clearly sheltering machine guns and heavy artillery. A handful of primitive tanks and lorries stood to the rear, dozens of soldiers swarming over them. Leo sucked in his breath, trying to breath though his mouth. Starship combat was clean, but this …

Boothroyd nodded to him, his face grim. “The enemy isn’t that far away,” he said, his voice quiet. “Don’t salute anyone, and don’t do anything to attract attention.”

Leo nodded back, then allowed Boothroyd to lead them towards a flight of stairs leading underground. The air somehow managed to be oddly silent despite the activity, as if the universe was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. He glanced back, wondering why he couldn’t hear any animals, then looked forward. The DMZ looked still, utterly unmoving. It was easily the creepiest place he’d ever seen.

The air grew heavier as they made their way down the steps and into the bunker. It looked impregnable to Leo’s eyes, although he knew a starship missile would make short work of it. A KEW would shatter the underground complex, if it scored a direct hit, and KEWs were cheap. A starship could just keep raining them on the targets until it was over, one way or the other. He recalled the battered, blackened landscape in front of him, nature barely starting to reclaim it, and shivered. The navy had done that, drawing a line in the sand. So far, the enemy hadn’t seemed disposed to cross in force.

“Welcome to Command Post One,” a uniformed officer said. Boothroyd introduced him as General Mallory. He shook Leo’s hand hard enough to make him wince, the kind of power play that had always disgusted him, and kissed the air over Ruth’s hand. She didn’t bother to hide her disgust. “From here, we control this entire section of the front.”

He launched into a long and complicated explanation, covering everything from massive underground bunkers and fortifications to trenches and mines dug out to the edge of the DMZ, an explanation so complex Leo suspected he was trying to bury unfortunate and embarrassing truths under a mountain of bullshit. The line looked impregnable - General Mallory was proud to show off a network of cameras and sensors: some top of the line; others so primitive they were literally too dumb to fool – and that meant it probably wasn’t. Leo had had a fairly complete education in military history and he could name a dozen defence networks that had had been supposed to be impregnable, right until the moment someone proved they weren’t. The sheer complexity of the network suggested there would be all kinds of weak spots which, combined with top-down control systems, could be exploited by a determined and wily enemy.

“You spent a great deal of money on this network,” Ruth observed. “How is it that the enemy still skirmish with the defenders, when they have a chance?”

General Mallory’s smile became rather fixed. “Their commanders will not allow them to honour the peace,” he said. “And in places they skirmish with us.”

“And how is it,” Ruth continued, “that so many enemy insurgents make their way through the lines to harass our rear?”

“I would like to know that myself,” Boothroyd added. “Why do the insurgents get through your lines?”

Leo suspected he knew the answer. The lines were long. General Mallory might brag of his monitoring systems, but the truth was that it was impossible to keep an eye on all sections of the lines. A skilled commando team might get across without being noticed, at which point it could blend into the local population and effectively become invisible until the time came to strike. The lines looked good on the map, but the reality was something else. It was just too long to be easily monitored.

“We have taken in far too many refugees,” General Mallory said, crossly. “These refugees cannot be easily vetted, because we had no solid records of anyone living on the far side of the lines before the war. I believe many were enemy operatives in disguise, posing as refugees.”

“I doubt it,” Ruth said. She changed the subject with surprising speed. “You’ve put a great deal of money into these lines. Don’t you trust Daybreak to keep the peace?”

General Mallory scowled. “Our benefactors have a very large empire to monitor,” he said. “We like to think the peace will hold, if you count it as a peace, but we dare not lower our guard until the matter is resolved. King Louis is not the type of person to give in easily.”

You met him, did you? Leo resisted the urge to say it out loud. He’d met quite a few people who professed an understanding of someone they only knew through military reports and media broadcasts, rather than meeting them in person. Such understandings were rarely very accurate and often dangerously misleading. What aren’t you telling me?

“And why are there no solid accounts of military spending?” Ruth wasn’t giving up so quickly. “Where did the money go?”

“I’ll show you the lines outside,” General Mallory said to Boothroyd, ignoring Ruth. “I think you’ll find them interesting.”

Yeah, Leo thought. He could feel Ruth fuming beside him. He was starting to like her. And perhaps a little worrying.

 

Chapter Nineteen

“Tell me,” Ruth said, putting her lips intimately close to Leo’s ear. “How much of this do you actually believe?”

Leo frowned. General Mallory had led them on a long tour, first of the underground fortress itself and then of the complex network of trenches, gun positions, missile batteries and half-hidden barracks that made up the front lines. It had looked better on the map, he thought; the reality was a stinky muddy nightmare, a reality that made him glad he’d never volunteered to join the Daybreak Army or the Marine Corps. He’d known some poor conditions on starships, but they’d been the height of luxury compared to the trenches. The soldiers looked jumpy, their weapons already near to hand. And they were meant to be some distance from the enemy lines.

“Good question,” Leo said. General Mallory seemed to have decided that Leo was a junior officer who could be safely ignored, along with the pesky reporter, and was concentrating his efforts on buttering up Boothroyd. “The cold war isn’t very cold at all, is it?”

“Brilliant, Sherlock,” Ruth said, sarcastically. “And do you know how much money they’re wasting on this defence line?”

Leo shrugged. “Why do you care?”

“Daybreak is backing these guys,” Ruth reminded him. “They’re our allies. And we’re supporting them. The people have a right to know how their money’s being spent, and if it is being spent wisely.”

“I suppose.” Leo cocked his head as the wind shifted, again. “How long have you been here?”

“Two years,” Ruth said. “I was supposed to be here for a year, but …”

She shrugged, expressively. Leo felt a sense of sudden kinship. If she was as abrasive to her superiors as she was to General Mallory, a man who could certainly have her kicked off the planet at will, it was perhaps no wonder her superiors weren’t in a hurry to get her back. She was out of sight and out of mind, as was the whole planet. Boulogne wasn’t a particularly important world in the sector, let alone the entire republic. Leo couldn’t help wondering if there were some officers and diplomats back home who regretted getting involved, who thought the two sides should have been allowed to fight it out until one emerged victorious. It would never have been considered in the old days, but Daybreak had expanded too far too fast. The republic needed a period of consolidation before it could expand again.

Leo glanced at her. “And you know the city pretty well?”

“Yes.” Ruth studied him for a long moment. “Get to the point.”

“Will you give me a tour?” Leo nodded at General Mallory, who was explaining the technical functions of a missile battery to Boothroyd. Leo had to admire the older man’s fortitude. He was an experienced marine, and he’d forgotten more about missile batteries than General Mallory had ever known. “I don’t think they’d give me a honest tour if I asked.”

Ruth’s expression didn’t change. “Very perceptive of you,” she said. “And I will be asking questions as we explore the city.”

“I’m sure I can put up with it,” Leo said. He wasn’t sure that was true, but … it didn’t matter. “Where do you want to meet?”

“I’ll pick you up from the base tomorrow at 0900, if I don’t get deported tonight,” Ruth said, stiffly. “If you were hoping for my contact code … sorry.”

Leo snorted as he turned away. He had never had problems getting contact codes from most girls he’d asked, although not all had led to anything more than a night of dinner and dancing. That had changed when he’d met Fleur and … he tried not to wince too openly. He knew he’d been lucky and yet … he’d compounded that mistake with Gayle, convincing himself that her wide-eyed naivety was actually real. Perhaps it would be wiser to take a step backwards, to restrict himself to brothels or VR sims. The consequences for letting his little head do the thinking were much worse now.

He kept his face under tight control as Ruth strode past him to interrogate General Mallory. She had nerve, he had to admit, although she was protected by Daybreak. The planetary government could boot her off their world, if they wished, but not hurt her or, through inaction, allow her to be hurt. Daybreak looked after its citizens, and anyone who tested the limits would find the navy arriving to teach them a lesson. General Mallory looked bland and unthinking and yet Leo was sure he was fuming inside. He wouldn’t have taken very kindly to someone interrogating him like that either.

Boothroyd stepped back to join him. “The line looks solid,” he said, echoing Leo’s earlier thoughts. “That probably means it isn’t.”

Leo looked east. The enemy were somewhere in that direction, on the other side of the DMZ. It was large on a human scale, but it wouldn’t take long for an enemy force to get into attack range if it wanted. Hell, their long-range guns could bombard the trenches from their current positions, if they raised their barrels and took aim. Femi had made it clear that even trying would mean having a KEW or two dropped on their heads, but … Leo wondered, suddenly, if all the provocations were intended to test the limits, to determine what would draw a reaction from the Daybreak troops. Or not draw a reaction.

“If you were in charge of the other side,” Leo muttered, “could you break the line?”

“Yes, if the orbital platform wasn’t peering down on me,” Boothroyd said. “That’s the killer.”

“So they’ll be looking for ways to disable or destroy the platform,” Leo mused. “I wonder …”

General Mallory cleared his throat. “It’s time to return to the bunker,” he said. “Would the two of you like to join my officers and myself for dinner?”

Leo was tempted to ask if Ruth was invited, but let Boothroyd do the answering. “We have to return to the base to file our preliminary report before Waterhen departs,” he said, calmly. “If we can take you up on the offer another time …?”

“Of course,” General Mallory said. It was hard to tell if he was relieved or disappointed. “It will be my pleasure.”

Leo kept his thoughts to himself as they made their way back to the armoured cars. The close-protection detail looked relieved to see them, something that made Leo suspect they’d feared the worst. Odd, when the other side knew Daybreak would take a horrific revenge if anything happened to its people. He allowed Ruth to clamber into the armoured car ahead of him, then took his own seat as the vehicle rumbled into life. If they needed two hours to get back to the base …

He heard something hissing overhead and glanced up, spotting a small swarm of drones making their way east. It was technically against the peace agreement to have drones enter the DMZ itself, but both sides frequently violated that part of the treaty and Femi seemed disinclined to react to it. A pair of jet fighters followed, curving their flight path to ensure they didn’t cross into the DMZ. Drones were one thing, but armed fighters were quite another. Leo scowled. There was simply no way to check if the drones were armed, not without forcing them down. It might be better to simply shoot them all down from orbit.

The car lurched into motion. Ruth leaned back in her chair and took a datapad from her tunic, her fingers flying over the device in practiced motion. Her body language made it clear she was not to be disturbed. Leo tapped his own datapad, sending an inquiry to Flower, then forced himself to watch as the car drove onwards. The landscape kept changing. One moment, it was beautiful fields and croplands, charming farmhouses that could have come out of a historical docudrama; the next, it was a blackened ruin or broken by ugly refugee camps that shouldn’t have been allowed to exist. He ground his teeth in frustration. The planet had plenty of land. It wouldn’t have been that hard to resettle the refugees well clear of the war zone.

He looked at Ruth. “Why don’t they resettle the refugees?”

“The official explanation is that they don’t have the money or resources to resettle them anywhere outside already-settled land,” Ruth said. She didn’t look up from her datapad, her tone flat and cold. “Unofficially, title is held by the local aristocracy and they’re not giving it up. No one seems inclined to force them either.”

Leo nodded as the last refugee camp gave way to a road leading towards the city. The skyline looked like something out of a fairy tale, like the castle he’d seen earlier, although he doubted it was anything like as pretty up close. He’d seen quite a few brochures for cities on Old Earth that made them look like paradises, missing the grim and gritty reality. Or so he’d been told. He’d never visited Old Earth.

He put the thought aside as the car lurched up to the military base and stopped outside the checkpoint, the hatch banging open a moment later. The car wasn’t going any further, apparently. Boothroyd nodded to them as they scrambled out, then inclined his head towards the checkpoint. Leo nodded back.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Ruth said. “Goodnight.”

She turned and strolled away, heading towards the city. Leo caught himself staring at her shapeless tunic – he couldn’t see any of her curves – and turned away, following Boothroyd through the checkpoint. The guards seemed even more on edge, poking and prodding at Leo with an intensity that surprised him. Something had happened, he guessed, as they passed through the checkpoint and headed back to the barracks. Flower was already inside, waiting for them. Her face was set in a blank mask.

“I’ll tell you one thing for sure,” Boothroyd said, once the door was firmly closed. “That line isn’t going to hold if the enemy come for it in force.”

Leo blinked. “But it’s tough …”

“It’s also going to be easy to outflank,” Boothroyd countered. “It’ll be costly if they don’t get their hands on anything more powerful than they’ve already got, but not impossible. I could see a dozen ways to get men into the bunkers or isolate them before launching a major attack, and if I can see it so can the enemy commanders. It’ll get worse if they have access to modern technology. Even without the high orbitals, they could break the line in a dozen places, encircle the troops and force them to surrender – or slaughter them – and then advance to the capital.”

“You paint a grim picture,” Flower observed.

“If anything, it isn’t grim enough,” Boothroyd said. “The only thing that’s keeping the line from crumbling is the peace, the peace we imposed at gunpoint. It won’t last long.”

“As long as the orbital platform remains intact,” Leo said quietly, “any offensive can be stopped in its tracks.”

“Yes,” Boothroyd agreed. “And that means they’ll be looking for ways to disable it.”

Leo considered the problem thoughtfully. If he wanted to get rid of the orbital platform, how would he do it? A planetary defence cannon would be easily noticed from orbit, assuming there was one on the planet. Probably not, unless one had been smuggled in, and even if so it would impossible to power it up without being detected. A shuttle? Anything that moved too close to the platform would be destroyed, no questions asked. A starship … sure, if they had one. The planet wouldn’t be in such a mess if they had a space-based industry of their own. They certainly wouldn’t be at risk of being overwhelmed by Daybreak.

“I don’t know,” he said, finally. “There’s no easy solution to that problem.”

“They may think of one,” Boothroyd said. “They need to.”

“I wandered around, asking questions,” Flower said. “Everyone is on edge. The city feels threatened, and that isn’t good. There have been attacks on refugees and riots … some broken up by the police, others allowed to go ahead. I don’t think there’ll be a solution in a hurry.”

“No,” Boothroyd agreed. “We don’t have the carrying capacity to uplift so many people.”

Leo scowled. “If we could force them to resettle the refugees …”

He broke off. He was no longer in command of Waterhen, no longer the ranking officer in the sector … he wasn’t even the ranking officer on the planet. Governor Soule had either tried and failed to arrange a resettlement program, or she hadn’t even tried. Leo made a mental note to raise the issue with her anyway, just in case. It would make the war a great deal easier if there weren’t thousands of refugees clogging up the roads.

“If,” Boothroyd said. “Right now, our options are very limited.”

He stood. “I’ll see you both tomorrow,” he added. “Get some sleep. Get in some shooting practice too. You need it. So does everyone here.”

Leo watched him go. “Fuck.”

“We’ll see,” Flower said. She gave him a warning look. “I looked up Miss Benedictine, as you requested. She might not be another Gayle, but …”

“I just asked her for a tour of the city,” Leo said, feeling his cheeks heat. “It isn’t a date.”

“And you’re not interested in a tour of her body?” Flower’s tone was teasing, but her eyes were hard. “I hope you learnt a few lessons from your last experience.”

“I did.” Leo forced himself not to get angry. “What did you find out?”

Flower grinned. “Ruth Benedictine. Twenty-four years old. Parents both Daybreakers … father a well-known journalist, mother … the file notes she exists, but little else. Could be significant, could be nothing. Did her studies at Daybreak University, cut her teeth on minor reporting jobs before joining the Independent News Bureau and being assigned to Boulogne as a stringer. Reading between the lines, I’d say she doesn’t have the seniority or experience to rate the top assignments. There’s certainly no record of her undergoing civil service, let alone becoming a citizen.”

“Odd.” Leo looked up. “Any suggestion of why?”

“Nothing,” Flower said. “Not everyone does their service, as you know well. She might simply not have applied, when she reached the age of majority. There’s quite a few who go straight into university and then employment, without ever claiming citizenship. There’s no suggestion she washed out or quit.”

Leo nodded, slowly. The rules were very clear. A person who volunteered for service could not be rejected, nor could they be dismissed without very good cause. If someone was crippled in an accident and insisted on completing their service anyway, a post had to be found for them even if it was largely makeweight. If there was no record of Ruth entering service, the odds were good she’d never tried. He wondered, absently, if he should be disappointed. He’d always been taught that service was a badge of honour.

“Anything else?”

“Nothing worth the mention,” Flower said. “She has a reserved byline, most reporters do, but there’s next to nothing under her name for the last year or so. The handful of news articles in the database are all puff pieces, probably hacked apart and rewritten by successive teams of lawyers before they were published. None are remotely significant, certainly not enough to serve as the base for a career.”

“Ouch,” Leo muttered. “I take it she wasn’t caught in bed with an editor or their husband and sent into exile?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Flower said. “There’s no clear reason why she got the post. It’s possible she was the only one who wanted it.”

Her voice hardened, just briefly. “Watch yourself,” she added. “You’re famous now. People will seek to make use of you, or at least your name, and the results may not be pleasant.”

“I don’t think she’s like that,” Leo said.

“You refused to think ill of Gayle too,” Flower reminded him. “And she came very close to killing you and stealing an entire sector.”

“If her plan worked,” Leo muttered. It might have worked, it might not. No one would ever know for sure. “Ruth is very different.”

“I’m sure she is,” Flower teased. “But watch yourself.”

Leo nodded, curtly, and sat on the bed. There seemed to be little he could do to improve his position, let alone get back into space. Francis had probably already promoted Lieutenant Halloran to take his place, or decided he could do without an XO for the trip to Yangtze. It would have been easier, he reflected, if he hadn’t grown so used to command. It was one hell of a climb down. And …

His wristcom bleeped. “Leo, this is Femi,” Femi said. “I thought you should know. Waterhen just broke orbit.”

Leo felt a wave of pure rage, mingled with despondency. Francis had stolen his ship … he felt like the small boy who had built a treehouse, only to be pushed out by the bigger boys. He knew he was being silly, that they were both too old to act like children, but there was something in Francis that brought out the child in Leo. And vice versa, he supposed. Francis would certainly argue so.

“Thank you for letting me know,” he said, finally. It was hard to get the words out. “I’ll see you later.”

He closed the connection, then lay back on his bed. He’d had all kinds of plans and schemes, none remotely practical without Waterhen. Francis had won … no, Leo told himself savagely, he hadn’t. Leo would find a way back into space somehow …

But right now, in a barracks on a military base on a world of little interest to anyone who didn’t live on the surface, he didn’t have the slightest idea how.

 

Hi, everyone

To cut a long story short, much to the delight of my editor, I had to go into hospital on Thursday with a severe pain in my abdomen. Thankfully, it was just a nasty infection instead of cancer reappearing after I was declared in remission. I’m back home now, but I have strict orders to take it easy for a couple of days. I’ll try and resume the story on Monday. Until then, please check out these links:

OUT NOW – The Fires of Freedom (A Learning Experience IX)

OUT NOW – Fantastic Schools Sports!

Chris

 

Take care of yourself. I'm loving it, but I can wait until Monday...or later. There is no story without the storyteller.

 

Chapter Twenty

Ruth didn’t look to have changed her outfit, Leo noted, as he stepped through the gate and joined her outside the base. She still wore a loose ill-fitting tunic, her belt – covered by her jacket – clearly holding a very visible pistol. Leo had no idea if open carry was permitted or not on Boulogne, but he suspected it didn’t matter. He’d read the case studies. People who couldn’t rely on the justice system to keep them safe would arm themselves, even if it was illegal. And besides, as a Daybreaker, the worst that could happen to Ruth was being ordered off-planet and loaded onto the nearest ship.

“Good to see you,” Ruth said, in a tone that made it hard to tell what she was really feeling. “Are you ready for a ride?”

Leo nodded, and allowed her to show him into a small car. It looked like something out of a historical holovid, running on burning hydrocarbons rather than power cells or other pieces of modern technology. It didn’t fly either, he noted as he sat in the passenger seat. It made him feel oddly confined, unlike an aircar. But then, you couldn’t fly wherever you wanted with an aircar either. The engine rumbled to life a moment later, as Ruth turned the key. The whole arrangement struck him as disturbingly primitive.

It could be worse, he told himself. You could be stuck on a world so trapped in the past that the only way to get around is on horseback.

“You’ll be glad to hear I know how to drive,” Ruth said. The vehicle lurched into motion, heading down the road to the city. “Are you surprised?”

“No,” Leo said. The idea Ruth would be inherently unable to drive was alien to him. “Why would I be?”

Ruth snorted. “The locals have some funny ideas about women who take the wheel,” she said, dryly. “Apparently, the moment we take the car onto the road we crash.”

“You haven’t crashed yet,” Leo pointed out, unsure if she was pulling his leg. “Why would anyone think that?”

“Early days yet.” Ruth shot him a mischievous glance. “There’ll be plenty of time to crash before we get you home.”

Leo hoped she was joking, as they drove down a slip road and merged with an endless line of cars heading to Marseilles. The traffic was incredibly compressed, the line of cars jerking into motion and stopping again with an abruptness that shocked him, the drivers hooting their horns and shaking their fists every time someone cut them off. A shiver ran down his back as a car came within bare millimetres of crashing into their vehicle, the driver’s mouth moving as he raved something incoherent. There was little risk of an accidental collision in space, he knew from experience, but here … it seemed all too likely someone would hit their car. His hand dropped to his pistol as Ruth saw an opportunity and took it, nipping into a space barely large enough to take their car. The driver behind them was screaming. Leo couldn’t make out the words.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ruth advised. “This traffic jam happens every day.”

Leo forced himself to lean back in his seat as the city came into view. It managed to look massive and compact at the same time, giving the disturbing impression of an island in the sea of uncultivated land. A cluster of skyscrapers, surrounded by dozens of smaller apartment blocks, warehouses, shopping complexes and even a handful of missile launchers. His eyes narrowed as he spotted a tank, resting within a hollow beside a large sign. He couldn’t tell if it was a live vehicle, a dead shell or a mock-up. He’d read cases of dummy tanks being used to mislead enemy spies. Sometimes the enemy caught on and bombed them with dummy bombs.

The traffic picked up a little as Ruth took them onto the ring road, running around the city, and then into the city itself. The giant apartment blocks towered above Leo, making him feel small. The ground floors were shops, some stores he knew from Daybreak competing with local brands and produce. Up close, the gleaming façade was marred with homeless people and litter. A column of armed soldiers marched down the pavement, the civilians hastily getting out of their way. It didn’t look very promising.

Ruth kept up a running commentary, pointing out places of interest with a cynicism that matched Boothroyd. Leo found it oddly warming, even though she was indicating signs of trouble to come. Abandoned store fronts, warehouses converted into very basic shelters … it was a nightmare come to life, a reminder of the social collapse that had threatened to destroy human civilisation before the flight into space had saved the world. His instructors had blamed the collapse on liberalism, on a system that granted rights while refusing to penalise people who didn’t accept their responsibilities. Was that a problem here? Or was the city simply groaning under the weight of thousands of displaced people? Where were supposed to go?

“Watch yourself,” Ruth advised, as she parked. “There are countless pickpockets about.”

Leo took a breath as he stepped out of the car and instantly regretted it. The air stank of burning hydrocarbons, as well as the indefinable stench of decay. The surrounding streets looked neater, as if more thought had gone into designing them, but there were still too many people milling about, some clearly drugged out of their minds and others watching passersby, looking for potential targets. Leo had never felt so threatened in his life, even when he’d been fighting a rebel ship that outmassed and outgunned Waterhen. But then, he knew how to fight a naval battle. Ground combat wasn’t his forte.

And Boothroyd was threatening to train me, he thought, grimly. I’d better get on with it.

Ruth looked up and down the street, then shrugged. “Where do you want to go first?”

“Anywhere,” Leo said. He didn’t know enough about the city to pick a place. “Show me what I should see.”

“Hah.” Ruth looked unamused. “Let us see …”

She turned and led the way down the street, Leo’s eyes flickering from side to side as he followed her. The street was a confusing mixture of styles, traditional architecture clashing oddly with more modern metal or glass designs. A handful of shops had chairs and tables outside, positioned to catch the sun, but they appeared to be empty. No one seemed interested in eating in the open air. A handful of street vendors were waving at people as they passed, trying to attract customers. Leo felt his stomach turn as he caught a whiff of whatever they were selling. Naval rations were preferable. He didn’t know what animal had produced the meat and he didn’t dare ask. It could be anything.

“The official figures say there’s only a few hundred refugees in the city, with most moved on to new homes further west,” Ruth said, quietly. “The real number is a great deal higher, and they’re placing a lot of strain on the locals. Some are criminals, others are forced into crime. The government isn’t doing anything to solve the problem.”

Leo gritted his teeth. The locals seemed nervous; some hurrying around as if they expected to be attacked at any moment, others keeping their hands near concealed weapons. It was easy to pick out the refugees, mostly women and children, as they begged and pleaded for money or scraps of food. There weren’t many men amongst them and the few he saw were clearly wounded or crippled, even though modern medicine should have been able to heal them. He swallowed hard as he saw a young man, little older than himself, lying on the stone pavement. The poor bastard had no legs.

“What happened to the men?”

Ruth sighed. “Most young men have been conscripted, or are in hiding from the inspectors,” she said. “The able-bodied men you see on the streets have papers exempting them from conscription, papers they’ve bought from some corrupt judge or bureaucrat. Corruption is a major problem here, as you may have guessed. You can get pretty much anything you like, from land rights to debt slaves, if you have the money. Everyone else … they suffer. Or they go into hiding.”

Leo glanced at her. “They don’t see service as a duty?”

“This isn’t Daybreak,” Ruth said. “There’s no reward for service. No gain to be made from fighting, either. King Loathsome will be no better or worse than Prince Charles, either. The average person doesn’t give a shit who plants his arse on the throne, and why should they? It would be like a midshipman caring about the name of his commanding officer.”

“Some do,” Leo said. Enlisted men and NCOs talked, often sharing backchannel information about their commanding officers. Or so he had been told. He wondered, spitefully, what sort of word would be passed on about Francis. “If you know the CO is an idiot …”

Ruth snorted. “What can you do about it?”

Leo shrugged. Ruth went on before he could figure out an answer.

“The average citizen’s life won’t change, no matter who’s on the throne,” Ruth said. “They do the bleeding and dying, while the rich and powerful reap the rewards.”

She led him down a street, one so traditional that Leo could almost believe he’d stepped back in time. The shops looked expensive. There were no visible price tags on the window displays, suggesting he couldn’t afford it. Not that he would, he noted dryly. The handbags looked as if they’d fall apart if he picked them up, the suits looked uncomfortably tight in all the wrong places, the jewellery looked as if it would attract thieves and the dresses looked as if the only thing keeping them on was the eyes of every young man in the vicinity. A handful of giggling girls, seemingly no older than Leo, came out of a shop, laughing and joking as if they didn’t have a care in the world. Their bodyguards stayed close, their eyes darting back and forth as they watched for possible threats. Leo pitied them. The streets were too crowded. Someone could get very close to their charges without being noticed.

Ruth nudged him. “You see the brown-haired girl? That’s the daughter of a high-ranking government minister. Her father gave her everything, except discipline. Look at how she acts.”

Leo followed her gaze. The brown-haired young woman was dropping parcels into her maid’s arms, expecting her to carry them … he gritted his teeth, wondering how such an entitled mind could be housed in such a pretty body. The young woman was pretty, her dress flattering her curves … she giggled as she turned away, her sycophants giggling too. Leo felt a flicker of sympathy for the maid, seeing her eyes fall – just for a second – as she stumbled after her mistress. It boded ill for the future.

“She’ll be married off shortly,” Ruth added. “Her wedding has already been arranged. It’ll be the social event of the year. All the newspapers say so.”

Her lips twitched. “Which tells you everything you need to know about the local newspapers, doesn’t it?”

Leo nodded. “Where do you live in the city?”

“Near where we parked,” Ruth said. “The bastards back home will throw a fit when they see the cost, but there aren’t many other choices.”

She kept walking. Leo followed, feeling an uncomfortable sensation churning in his stomach. The gulf between rich and poor was staggeringly wide, and growing wider with every passing day. The city was trying to maintain a façade of normalcy, from what he could see, but there were soldiers, policemen and militiamen everywhere, the latter largely made up of well-connected young men who had evaded the draft by joining a force that would only be expected to fight if the shit really hit the fan. They marched up and down in fancy uniforms, parading back and forth as if they were on the parade ground instead of patrolling a potentially dangerous city. Leo had been told – by Boothroyd – that the better a unit looked, the worse it was likely to perform. He couldn’t help thinking the militiamen were unlikely to last long if the enemy attacked the city.

Yeah, his thoughts whispered. These guys make Francis look good.

They paused at an open-air restaurant, busier than the ones he’d seen earlier, and ordered lunch. Leo let Ruth do the ordering, content to try something new. The prices looked disturbingly high and the waiter seemed grateful to be given Daybreak currency instead of the local script. Leo guessed the exchange rate was heavily slanted in their favour, and mentally kicked himself for not looking it up earlier. But it hadn’t been an issue on Yangtze.

“The prices have gone up again,” Ruth observed, as their waiter returned with the food. “That’s not a good sign.”

Leo nodded, and tucked in. The meal had a fancy name, but it basically boiled down to beef stew with small onions and mash. It was difficult to be sure the meat was actually beef, he decided, although it tasted fine. The desert was a tart, with fruit and ice cream. He would have liked to order more, but the prices were just too high. He wasn’t sure if he had a detached duty stipend either. Given how quickly Francis had booted him off the ship, it was quite possible he’d forgotten to file the paperwork. Or simply assumed it would be handled by someone else.

They both ate quickly, he noted. Leo had learnt that habit at the academy, where there was rarely any time to sit back and enjoy the food – and no cause to do so – but Ruth had clearly learnt that habit too. The waiter offered them both cigars, an off-world brand; Ruth purchased one and then gave it to the waiter, who bowed and made it vanish within his jacket.

Leo raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t he prefer money?”

“These places have a rule, tips have to be shared,” Ruth said. “Mostly, that means the head waiter or the owner pockets the money. Or most of it. Giving him a cigar ensures his tip can’t be stolen so easily, and if he doesn’t know where to sell it for cash I’ll shave my head.”

“Oh.” Leo shook his head. “How do they keep staff?”

Ruth gave him a look that suggested she was re-evaluating his intelligence. Downwards.

“How many jobs do you think there are here?”

Leo flushed and followed her out of the restaurant, back onto the streets. It seemed even more crowded than before, hundreds of people jostling together as they hurried about their business. He kept one hand on his wallet and the other on his pistol as they kept moving, Ruth pointing out …

The air heaved, an instant before he heard the explosion. The sound blasted his ears, then vanished so completely he thought for a horrified moment he’d gone deaf. He spun around and saw smoke rising in the distance. He wasn’t sure, but it looked to be coming from the wealthy shopping district. A hail of gunfire followed. It sounded ragged, almost panicky.

Ruth grabbed his arm. “This way!”

Leo hesitated, torn between the impulse to help and the grim awareness he would probably make matters worse, then forced himself to follow her. The crowd was scattering in all directions, hundreds of people running for their lives … the sheer pressure forced him to run faster, through a bewildering maze of streets. He heard a clattering noise overhead and looked up to see primitive helicopters heading towards the bombsite, weapons clearly visible under their stubby little wings. Ruth yanked him into an alleyway and pulled him through a small door, then up a long flight of stairs. Leo barely had a second to catch his breath as she pulled him through another door.

“Fuck,” she muttered. “That was …”

Leo shuddered. He’d been in danger before, but … he’d never been caught up near a terrorist bombing before. His fingers twitched, unsure what he should do. There was no extraction team on the base, nothing to get him out if the war had started … he heard more gunfire in the distance and shuddered again. What the hell was going on?

Ruth’s face was flushed, her eyes shining. She was suddenly so close … Leo kissed her without thinking, her lips pressing against hers with a sudden desperate need. Her arms went around him, groping his rear before inching around to undo his belt. He ran his hands over her body, then pushed her tunic to her knees, slipping into her so quickly she gasped in pleasure and pain. Leo was lost, unsure if he was thrusting inside her or if she was riding him … it didn’t matter, not as he pressed her against the wall. He came so hard, so fast, he almost thought there had been no time to pleasure her. She was shaking, gasping for breath as she came. He thought she said a name … but he couldn’t tell whose.

She came down from her high, her eyes sharpening as she looked at him. Leo pulled back, pulled out, suddenly very aware there had been nothing there, but lust and the relief of being alive when so many others had died. It was different from Gayle and yet … he forced himself to take another step back, nearly tripping over his trousers. It would have been wiser to take them off completely.

Ruth met his eyes. “It won’t happen again,” she said. Her breath came in fits and starts. Leo couldn’t tell what she was feeling. “Understand? It won’t.”

“I understand,” Leo said. He forced himself to look away. Ruth’s unclad legs were incredibly attractive. He wondered why she wore such ill-fitting garb, then dismissed it as none of his business. “It won’t happen again.”

 

Chapter Twenty-One

It was not the first time Leo had had a one-night stand, he reflected time and time again over the following weeks, but it felt oddly wrong to have such a brief tryst and then be practically kicked out of Ruth’s apartment. It wasn’t as if they had anything, beyond a certain mutual attraction, and his experience with Fleur and Gayle had left him a little wary of women who had agendas of their own, yet … he tried not to think about her, with very little success. Ruth was sharp-tongued and prickly, but also observant and sensible in a way few could match. Leo liked her more than he wanted to let on.

And are you thinking that because you like her, he asked himself, or because you’ve been inside her?

There was little time for thinking, as he settled into the base. Boothroyd was a hard taskmaster, drilling Leo in everything from basic shooting to tactical deployments and pointing out, sarcastically, every little mistake. Leo had thought himself an experienced officer, but his experience had all been in naval combat. He knew little about operations on the ground, let alone just how messy such deployments could become. And no matter how hard he worked, he knew there was a great deal more to learn.

“I’m a naval officer, not a groundpounder,” he pointed out, one afternoon. He’d thought himself fit too, until Boothroyd – a man old enough to be his grandfather – had taken him out onto the field and run Leo into the ground. The bastard hadn’t even been breathing hard, when Leo had finally conceded defeat. “There’s no way I’ll ever be as good as you.”

“Probably not,” Boothroyd agreed. “But you do need to know the basics.”

His lips twisted. “Did you ever hear of Admiral Natasi?”

Leo shook his head.

“It isn’t a tale you’ll have heard at the academy,” Boothroyd said. “I served under her once, for all sorts of reasons. She was an absolute genius when it came to imagining newer and better tactics, but her grasp on the limits of her technology was very poor. She had ten or twenty ideas every day, and only two or three would be worth developing. A number rested on assumptions about how the world worked that were simply inaccurate …”

He shrugged. “I don’t know how she got so far up the ladder without someone realising the problem and quietly transferring her to a research department somewhere. I suspect she always had a superior who issued the orders, when it came to actual combat, until the disaster on Lucan’s World. Her instructions were literally impossible to follow.”

“I thought we won at Lucan’s World,” Leo said. He had heard of the battle, although he couldn’t recall many details. He’d been a naval cadet. He’d never thought he might find himself on the ground. “Didn’t we?”

“Yes,” Boothroyd said. “We won. We won by ignoring every order from the admiral in command, because following them would have gotten us killed several times over. So you need to learn now, because you will be going up the rank ladder and you will be getting people killed if you don’t learn the realities of combat, as well as the ideal.”

“I think you have more faith in me than I do,” Leo said. It was hard not to feel downcast, no matter how much time he spent training, learning the ropes in the operations centre and assisting the supply officer in organising the latest shipment from Daybreak. “If Francis gets his way, I’ll never see space again.”

Boothroyd snorted. “You think he’ll be able to hide his own incompetence forever? Or that he’ll be able to keep you here?”

He gave Leo a sweet smile that looked disturbing on his grizzled face. “I know the cure for depression,” he said. “More press-ups. Drop and give me twenty.”

Leo groaned, but complied. He hadn’t realised how hard the trainee groundpounders had it, when they scrambled off the buses and into a boot camp that would turn them into trained men or die trying. His arms and legs had ached terribly for the first week or two and they were still sore now, while Boothroyd seemed as untroubled as if he were merely sitting around doing nothing. His instructor didn’t show any mercy. He’d given Leo a brief overview of countless skills and specialities, offering him insights into the groundpounder life, then encouraged him to learn and grow on his own.

“I am starting to think the unarmed combat instructor lied to me,” Leo said. He’d grown up in a rough area and he had four years of training under his belt, but he was still no match for Boothroyd in a bare-knuckle fight. “He said I was good.”

“Well …” Boothroyd shrugged, expressively. “Compared to the average junior officer, you are very good. Compared to someone who went through boot camp and then spent several decades in the field, gaining experience all the time … not so much.”

Leo nodded as the bell rang, signalling the end of the match. “And the rest of your men?”

“Getting ready,” Boothroyd said. He glanced around the training ground. “To be honest, I feel as if I have my cock hanging out …”

Leo took his point. The base was secure, on paper, but he couldn’t help feeling dangerously exposed. The enemy terrorists had bombed a handful of targets over the past few weeks, making it harder for the allied governments to put together a proper response. Leo didn’t know why the governor hadn’t ordered King Louis to knock it off, on pain of bombardment, unless it was the lack of any real proof. There were thousands of dissidents on this side of the border and hundreds of protest groups, some probably willing to turn to terrorism to get what they wanted. The switchboards had been flooded with demands and there was no way to tell which ones were from the terrorists, if indeed any were. Leo had wondered if the spluttering bombing campaign meant there were multiple different terrorist bands, each with their own agenda.

“I doubt it,” Boothroyd had said, when he asked. “The terrorist is a bully at heart, and his bullying campaign relies on him convincing his targets he can strike whenever and wherever he pleases … and there is nothing they can do to stop him. If he pulls off a brilliant strike in his opening move, but then fails to match it … people will start wondering if the terrorists can’t do it again. And once they start thinking the terrorists are actually weak …”

Leo frowned, inwardly, as he made his way back to his quarters. There was no sign of Flower as he undressed, stepped into the shower, and washed himself hastily. She had been amused when he’d told her about Ruth, reminding him about Gayle and Fleur and just how those affairs had ended. Leo hoped Ruth wasn’t anything like Gayle, but it was hard to be sure. They had barely seen each other since their brief tryst and they’d never been alone. He had the feeling she was avoiding him.

She might regret it, he mused. It was embarrassing to be distracted by one’s hormones, to let yourself be gulled into doing something your body wanted but your mind didn’t. Perhaps he would have realised the dangers of sleeping with Fleur, or Gayle, if he hadn’t been a horny teenager with one hell of a sex drive. She might think she compromised herself in some way … perhaps she doesn’t even find me attractive.

He smiled at the thought. No, it couldn’t possibly be that.

Flower was sitting in the room when he stepped out of the washroom, reading a datapad. She glanced up at him and rolled her eyes. “You look like you’ve been wrestling a bear.”

“I feel like it too,” Leo said. His skin was covered in bruises, the result of Boothroyd’s merciless physical training. Unarmed combat had left fewer scars, he was sure. “Did you find anything useful?”

“Not much, unless you count an invite to dine with the governor tonight,” Flower said. “I couldn’t get a lead on the trouble-makers in the city, not one.”

Leo scowled. The bombing campaign had been punctuated by a leaflet and poster campaign, with countless leaflets being thrust into letterboxes and posters hung up under cover of darkness … the former, it seemed, being distributed by refugee children who’d been offered money in exchange for delivering the leaflets. There was nothing to be gained by interrogating the children, he’d been told. The description they’d given of their employer was so absurd it had to b a disguise. Leo could easily imagine someone donning an absurd wig and false beard, then taking them off as soon as they put some distance between the children and themselves. They would be practically unrecognisable.

He cocked his head. “Do you think they’re working for King Louis?”

“Hard to be sure, but they’re definitely helping him,” Flower said. “Intentionally or not, they’re fatally undermining their nation’s cause.”

Leo snorted. Daybreak had its flaws, and he wouldn’t deny them, but at least it tried to be a meritocracy. Boulogne didn’t even pretend to promote on merit, for one thing, and the only people who’d benefit from a victorious end to the war were the aristocracy. Reading between the lines, Leo suspected the losing aristocrats wouldn’t be rounded up and shot or sent into exile, not as long as they pledged allegiance to King Louis instead. It was sickening. The poor fought and died – the men at the front, the women and children at the rear – while the rich partied and told themselves they’d be fine, if the worst happened. It made him wonder why morale hadn’t collapsed completely. There didn’t seem to be any point in fighting.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” he said, with heavy sarcasm. “How do we even begin to right this ship?”

“If we can get proof the terrorist campaign is funded by King Louis, we can drop a hammer on him,” Flower pointed out. “If …”

“Yeah,” Leo agreed. “If.”

He ground his teeth in frustration. He’d been in command of Waterhen and his closest superior officer had been hundreds of light years away. His word had been law, giving him the power to take whatever steps he deemed necessary to complete his mission. Here … he was just a junior naval officer on detached deployment, with little authority and only a handful of men under his command. A handful of ideas ran through his mind – they could kidnap King Louis, they could launch a coup – only to be dismissed a moment later as sheer insanity. The only idea that made sense was faking the evidence, and that would land them both on a penal world if the deceit was ever uncovered. Daybreak was harsh, but fair. It only targeted planetary governments that deserved it. If that changed …

Flower stood. “Get your glad rags on,” she ordered. “We don’t want to be late.”

“Yes, Mother,” Leo said.

Flower ignored his sardonic remark as she stripped out of her outfit and hurried into the shower. Leo watched her for a moment, admiring the perfection of her body even though he felt little actual desire. Perhaps it was because of the way they’d met, or perhaps it was because they were effectively allies, or perhaps it was because she was a little too perfect. Fleur had been an older woman, Gayle hadn’t had any cosmetic treatments, Ruth was authentic … Leo shook his head and turned away, digging his dress uniform out of his bag. He didn’t need to worry about it now.

“Make sure you brush your hair,” Flower called. “Check in front of the mirror.”

“I’ll be waiting outside,” Leo called back. “We’ll go when you’re ready.”

He stepped out of the barracks and looked up. Night had fallen, the stars twinkling down on him. Waterhen was out there somewhere, under Francis’s command … he wondered, bitterly, how his ship was coping without him. It was hard to convince himself he shouldn’t be so attached. She’d been his first command … normally, he wouldn’t have held any command, not for at least two-three years. And only then if he’d been very lucky. The thought wasn’t very reassuring. Francis had been lucky too.

And normally I would have served on three or four ships before being considered for command, he mused. It would be harder to get attached to a ship that was just a workplace …

Flower joined him, looking stunning in a dress that covered everywhere below the neckline, flattering her figure in a manner that drew the eye without being tacky. Leo wondered which officer, diplomat or government minister was going to have her attentions tonight, coaxed into revealing too much by fluttering eyelashes and a smile that seemed to be for him and him alone. It was easy to make fun of such a man, a hunter who couldn’t tell he was actually the hunted, but Leo knew better. Gayle had made a fool of him, with far worse consequences. He could hardly blame others for making the same mistake.

Did Francis? Leo wouldn’t have cared to bet against Francis being seduced by Secretary-General Sharona. If he didn’t learn from my mistake.

He pushed the thought aside as they strolled towards Government House. There was an ongoing security crisis, and the guards should have been alert, but the building was brightly lit and a handful of vehicles were parked outside, a number manned by armed soldiers. They looked bored … Leo felt a twinge of pity, wondering just which government official had called for an escort and then left them outside. His eyes narrowed as they darted over the cars. They would have been scanned and searched, of course, when they passed through the gates, but there was no guarantee the searchers had checked everywhere. Boothroyd had cautioned him that some explosives were very hard to detect, no matter how carefully you looked. Leo believed him. As technology advanced, the technology to fool it advanced too.

The interior of the building was brightly lit too, the movers and shakers of the planet’s alliance milling about, chatting happily as they ate and drank their fill. Leo caught sight of a brown-haired girl who looked oddly familiar … it dawned on him, a moment later, that she was the spoilt brat he’d seen earlier. He hoped she’d given her maid the evening off. She was hanging on the arm of a slightly older man, smiling at his words as if he were cracking the funniest jokes in the universe. Leo wondered what was going through her mind, then shrugged. It wasn’t his problem.

His lips twisted as his eyes swept over the crowd. It looked as if everyone was mingling freely, but there was a very clear order of precedence … some men bowed or knelt to others, some women curtsied or knelt in front of their superiors. It made him feel sick to see such … such grovelling, from people smart enough to know better. One woman looked as if she were on the verge of taking her superior in her mouth … Leo’s stomach churned at the thought. Disgusting.

“The Governor is over there,” Flowers said. “You go make nice with her.”

“And to think I hoped it was a private invitation,” Leo grouched, although he had known better. “You go have fun.”

He forced himself to walk towards the governor, who was standing beside a man in a uniform so elaborate he could have stepped right out of a comic fantasy opera. His dark hair and pale face, his jaw line so solid Leo refused to believe it was natural, made him look striking, but they were overshadowed by the crimson uniform with gold braid and so much tassel the nasty part of Leo’s mind decided he looked like a Christmas tree. Governor Soule looked tiny compared to him, her face set in a line that suggested she wasn't best pleased. Leo didn’t blame her.

“Commander Morningstar, please let me introduce Prince Charles of Arundel,” Governor Soule said. “He’s been looking forward to meeting you.”

Leo nodded, politely. Daybreakers didn’t bow or bend the knee, let alone kneel before foreign princes. If the prince was offended, he gave no sign.

“We welcome you to our world,” Prince Charles boomed. He had no indoor voice. “We do trust you are enjoying your visit.”

Governor Soule leaned forward. “These gatherings serve a useful purpose, in that they allow us to meet outside the office,” she said. She took Leo’s arm and led him away. It took Leo a moment to realise she wanted a break from the prince. “Let me see who’s here …”

She pointed out a number of faces, movers and shakers, as the party wore on. Leo forced himself to pay attention, matching names to faces even though he couldn’t help feeling a twinge of disgust. The party felt oddly rowdy – some men braying like mules, some women giggling in unison – and it grew worse as the night wore on, a handful leaving ahead of time. He looked around for Flower, but he couldn’t find her. There was no sign of Ruth either. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Her reports were so critical of the locals that the real surprise was that they hadn’t booted her offworld already.

He finally escaped the governor and stepped out onto the balcony, gazing towards the city. There was no trace of the filth and squalor, no trace of the violent tensions shivering below the surface and threatening to break into the light. No explosions echoed across the landscape. No fireballs rose into the air. Instead, the tall buildings were brightly lit, a sea of lights set against a dark background. It was charming, and oddly peaceful.

But he knew, all too well, that it was an illusion.

 

Glad that you ae still among the living and have recovered sufficiently to continue the story, which I'm enjoying immensely!

 

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Sir?”

Leo looked up. The makeshift CIC was not his favourite place on the base, let alone the planet, and it wouldn’t have been even if he hadn’t slept poorly after getting back from Government House. He hadn’t joined the navy to be a traffic controller, nor had he planned on spending the rest of his career on a single world. He understood the importance of doing a good job, but … he shook his head. It wasn’t the fault of the half-trained local personnel – provisional personnel – that he was stuck on their world. He damn well shouldn’t take it out on them.

“Yes?”

“The Johnny Quick just entered orbit, sir, and is requesting permission to land at Arundel Spaceport,” the young operator said. She was surprisingly, almost disturbingly, young, although Leo knew he had no reason to complain. He’d entered the academy at sixteen and the operator was getting more experience than he’d had at her age. “She wants to actually land.”

Leo glanced at the terminal, then shrugged. The light freighter was perfectly capable of landing and Arundel Spaceport was rated to accept anything up to a medium freighter. It was rare for anything larger than a heavy-lift shuttle to land on Daybreak, or any other industrialised world, but the rules were different along the Rim. He wondered, idly, if the freighter was smuggling illicit goods, then shrugged. No smuggler worthy of the name would risk landing his ship. It was a great deal easier to search a freighter on the ground than in orbit.

“Check with the spaceport, make sure they have a slave circuit up and running,” Leo ordered. The freighter captain wouldn’t be pleased about slaving his ship to ground control, but it was a legal requirement and a very practical one. “If so, let them land as soon as possible.”

“Aye, sir.”

The operator turned and hurried back to her console. Leo shook his head and turned his attention back to his terminal, running his eye down a list of messages and notifications that had very little to do with him. Someone was bombarding the network with angry signals demanding the return of a missing datapad, before the IG noticed it had been lost sometime during the deployment; someone else was issuing a formal complaint about speeding vehicles near the base. A third person was putting pressure on the military authorities to shut down the brothels or at least to ban offworlders from visiting, as if such a ban would have a hope of actually suceeding. Leo rolled his eyes. He’d never liked the concept of a brothel, but banning them outright would simply drive them underground. No power in the known universe could keep spacers and soldiers from seeking easy women, when they made landfall. How could it?

He watched, thoughtfully, as the light freighter made her descent. The starship was bigger than he’d realised, although tiny compared to battleships, colonist-carriers or the giant bulk freighters he’d shepherded around the sector. Her design was old, and it didn’t look as though she had been refitted, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Near Daybreak, she would be far less cost-effective than a bulk freighter. Here, it was the other way around. He felt a flicker of admiration as the freighter landed neatly on the pad, without even a wobble of trouble. The slave circuits weren’t totally reliable, when confronted with the unexpected. Her captain had to have kept his hands on the controls, ready to take over if the shit hit the fan.

Another operator looked up. “Sir, we just lost contact with the weapons platform!”

Leo blinked. The orbital weapons platform was closely tied to both the entry station and the military base on the surface, as well as the network of communications satellites. If they’d lost contact … the orbital display blanked a second later, suggesting they’d either lost contact with the satellites too or the shit was really about to hit the fan. Local advisories made it clear that anything that flew too close to the weapons platform would be targeted and destroyed without warning, a wise precaution when there was only one platform in orbit. And there had been no sign that anyone was getting dangerously close.

“Check the datalink to the entry station, and then see what you can download from the other satellites,” he ordered, reaching for the emergency alert and pushing it down hard. It could be a simple equipment malfunction, but better to be safe than sorry. He’d sooner be yelled at for sounding the alert than dead. “Alert the spaceport, order them to …

The lights went out, the rest of the displays following a moment later. The ground heaved violently … Leo swore under his breath, hearing the first sounds of panic in the sudden darkness. Something had exploded, far too close to the complex for his peace of mind. His personnel weren’t trained for this … hell, he wasn’t trained. He was a spacer, not a groundpounder. But he was the ranking officer. There was no one more qualified to take control. The ground shook again. This time, Leo thought the blast was much closer.

“Don’t move,” he snapped, putting as much command into his voice as he could. He’d been told that the key to avoiding panic was to look and sound as though you knew what you were doing, even if you didn’t. He took the datapad out of his belt and keyed it to activate the display. The local datanet was down. “If you have any other source of light, get it on.”

He forced himself to pick his way towards the emergency cabinet and force it open, breathing a sigh of relief as he saw the flashlights, pistols and ammunition. He clicked on the first flashlight and passed it to an operator, then handed out the rest. The ground heaved again a moment later, followed by a crashing sound. Leo didn’t like the implications. The command centre was supposed to be hardened as well as guarded, but the power was completely out and the defenders hadn’t shown up to escort the staff to the bunker. If the base was compromised so badly …

This is war, he thought. The orbital weapons platform had to have been taken out and that meant this attack was for all the marbles. The attackers knew they were risking war with Daybreak and their only hope of not being hammered back into the stone age was completing the destruction of the base, winning the war on the surface, and blaming everything on their enemies. And they can’t leave any of us alive.

He heard a whimper and winced. The personnel hadn’t been stress-tested. Of course not. Some things could only come with experience and they had none.

“All right,” he said. Boothroyd, bless him, had made sure Leo was familiar with the entire base, even the secure compounds that were technically off-limits to unauthorised personnel. “We’re getting out of here. Keep your weapons at the ready and follow me.”

“I …” Someone’s voice wavered in the darkness. “Shouldn’t we go to the bunker?”

Leo forced himself to keep his voice even. “The attackers have already compromised the base,” he said. “If we go to the bunker, we’ll be caught like rats in a trap. And slaughtered.”

His mind raced. The attackers wouldn’t want any inconvenient witnesses. If they took control of the base, it wouldn’t take long to cut their way into the bunkers and panic rooms and slaughter everyone inside. Killing Daybreakers was a big no-no, but they’d have plenty of time to cover their tracks and blame it on their enemies. Commodore Blackthrone probably wouldn’t bother to do a proper investigation, if he heard about the incident before it had been properly buried in bullshit. There were too many problems on his plate, and too few ships to handle them all. Leo was uneasily aware he’d let things slide when he’d been de facto naval commander for the sector …

“We have to get out now,” he said. “Follow me.”

The door was stiff, hard to open without power. They were lucky the hatch hadn’t been sealed and locked. There were ways to hack the system and power up the mechanism, using a datapad power cell to provide the charge, but he’d never done it outside training exercises and even then it had been chancy. He stepped into the darkness, gritting his teeth as he flashed the light up and down the corridor. There was no sign of the guard who should have been outside. Leo hoped he’d gone for a piss. He feared the worst.

He forced himself to listen, carefully, as they inched their way out of the compartment. The complex was supposed to be soundproofed, but he could hear shooting in the distance. It was hard to tell who was shooting at who, or which direction the attackers were coming from … he kicked himself a moment later. His job was to get his staff out, not march to the sound of the guns. And yet … which way could they go? The shooting was blurring together. It sounded as though the base was under attack from all sides.

The shuttles, he thought. The attackers wouldn’t want to take them out, not if they could be avoided. It would be chancy, and suicidal if the attackers had modern weapons, but it was the best plan he could devise on the spur of the moment. If we can get to them and fly out …

“This way,” he hissed. “Keep your mouths closed and your weapons at the ready.”

His back itched as he made his way down the corridor. The local personnel were supposed to be loyal, but could they be trusted on their homeworld? He’d read the security reports and they’d made it clear there’d been no way to vet them properly. Was one of the staffers behind him an enemy agent? He’d given them guns! He gritted his teeth and forced himself to keep going. He couldn’t do anything else. Hopefully, they could get to the windows at the rear before it was too late. The attackers would be watching the entrances, including the loading bays, but if he was lucky they’d miss the windows even though they were big enough to allow a grown man to get out.

A dark figure appeared at the end of the corridor. “Freeze!”

Leo fired, instinctively. The man’s accent was wrong. Metrovence, not Arundel. Or Daybreak. There were none of King Louis’s people on the base … officially. A second man appeared and Leo shot him down too, hurrying forward as the shots echoed on the air. The two men wore simple military outfits, lacking any rank badges. Probably stolen, he noted coldly. The base CO was a stickler for proper grooming and the nearest man had at least two or three days of stubble on his face. His weapon wasn’t standard issue either. The design was simple, centuries old. Leo had been told that any half-decent gunsmith could churn the weapons out easily, with the right tools and materials. He checked for anything else, but found nothing. No grenades, no papers, no dog tags. He heard someone gagging behind him and winced inwardly. It wasn’t the first time he’d taken a life, but it was easy to forget that icons on displays were starships with crews …

The ground heaved again. Leo pushed the thought out of his head. That explosion had been far too close.

“Come on,” he hissed. “Hurry.”

He took the rifles and ammunition, then hurried onwards, hoping to hell he hadn’t got lost. The complex was strange, almost alien, in the darkness. It wasn’t easy to be sure where they were or where they were going … he breathed a sigh of relief as they reached the outer corridor, light flooding through the broken windows and stabbing deep into his eyes. The floor was covered with glass … he motioned for the rest to stay back as he neared the window, bracing himself to look into the open. The nearest building was on fire, a roaring blaze burning through the structure; he saw smoke rising from the direction of Government House, suggesting the governor and her staff had also been attacked. His earlier thoughts came back to haunt him. This attack really was for all the marbles.

“Follow me out,” he ordered, clambering through the window and carefully avoiding the broken glass. The sound of shooting was suddenly a great deal louder. He listened carefully, but couldn’t tell what was happening. “Keep your heads down and try not to be noticed.”

He did a quick headcount as the rest of the staff joined him, their expressions ranging from grim to terrified. Two had pissed themselves, something he could hardly blame them for. He felt scared too. Naval combat was deeply impersonal, but groundpounders got up close and personal with the men they had to kill, before they could be killed instead. His mind raced, plotting out the best way to the shuttlecraft … he hoped, prayed, that Flower was safe, wherever she was. She’d gone into the city … he glanced towards Marseilles and saw smoke rising into the air. It looked like multiple bombings, perhaps worse. Anyone who’d attacked a Daybreak military outpost wouldn’t hesitate to attack the base too.

“Keep your heads down,” he repeated. He could hear banging and crashing – and the occasional gunshot – echoing from the windows. The command centre was being stormed, the remaining staff being captured or killed. He doubted anyone would last long enough to surrender. They would probably be murdered if they tried. “This way.”

Leo forced himself to stay low as the shooting grew louder. The wind shifted, a gust slapping his skin before the sound of yet another explosion shook the air. He glanced back and saw the fireball rising into the air, marking the destruction of the ammunition dump. He told himself he should be relieved, that the modern weapons inside wouldn’t fall into enemy hands, but … he forced himself to keep going, gritting his teeth as the air blew hot and cold. No one was fighting the fires, which meant it was just a matter of time until the blaze consumed the entire base. No matter what happened, the base was done.

He braced himself as they slipped into the space between two warehouses, then kept walking to the shuttle hangars. The complex was separate from the rest, but the fence was torn down in two places … Leo cursed under his breath, fearing the worst. The enemy might have brought an handful of trained pilots with them, people who could fly the shuttles out. Any commercial shuttle pilot could do it, as long as they didn’t try to take the craft into combat. His lips twisted at the thought. If they wanted to turn the shuttles into guided missiles …

Something moved, at the edge of his vision. He threw himself to the ground instinctively, an instant before someone opened fire. Bullets cracked through the air above his head, sending one of his staffers tumbling down. He rolled over and fired back, cursing as he ran out of ammunition. He’d grabbed what he could from the cabinet, but the planners hadn’t expected the base to be attacked without warning. They hadn’t expected it would be attacked at all. Leo promised himself he’d punch the planners in the nose, as he swapped his clips. Their lack of forethought had gotten a bunch of people killed.

He fired again, snapping orders at the staffers. They were too scared to comply … he cursed as he shot himself dry again, for good this time. The attackers were holding back, taking shelter behind parked vehicles, but it wouldn’t take them long to realise Leo was practically defenceless. He swore at the staffers, then caught himself as he heard the deafening chatter of a heavy machine gun. The enemy position disintegrated, the vehicles they were using for cover exploding into fireballs. Leo looked up and saw Boothroyd. The marines were holding the shuttles.

“Get up,” he snapped at the staffers. The marines had won them some time, but nowhere near enough. The shooting would bring every enemy soldier running towards them. A mortar team or SAM missile crew would make flying out of the spaceport damn near impossible. “Hurry!”

He swallowed as he glanced at the staffer, the young woman who’d told him about the freighter … had it really only been a few minutes ago? Blood was leaking from her chest, staining her uniform. Leo checked her pulse, hoping she might still be alive, but there was nothing. Her body was rapidly cooling … she looked even younger now, her face almost childlike in death. Leo felt a surge of naked hatred and shame. He didn’t even know her name!

“Sir,” Boothroyd said. His voice was calm, impossibly so. “We have a situation.”

Leo bit down the sharp and unhelpful response that came to mind. “Yeah,” he said, stumbling to his feet. It would be easy to let Boothroyd take command … perhaps wise, too. But he knew his duty. “Situation report?”

“Bomb blasts at all four gates, armed men inside the wire,” Boothroyd told him. “I picked up a brief report from an OP on the edge of the security zone, warning of enemy troops advancing … the message cut out at that point. I have no contact with the orbital platform or the satellites.”

“The orbital platform is gone,” Leo said, sharply.

“The base is lost,” Boothroyd continued. “I ordered a retreat to the shuttlecraft.”

Leo nodded. “The governor?”

“Unknown,” Boothroyd told him. “The Base CO is dead. I saw the body.”

“Understood.” Leo gritted his teeth as he heard more shooting behind him. How many friendlies were left on the base? He didn’t know, but time was running out. “We’ll fly out. Now.”

 

Chapter Twenty-Three

There was no time for reflection as Leo scrambled into the shuttle’s cockpit and ran his eyes down the controls, checking the craft’s status before powering up. The shuttle was fully armed and charged, thankfully, but the handful of survivors had only two pilots and there was no one who could be spared to man the secondary consoles. He cursed under his breath as he shut down all the active sensors, uneasily aware there could be anything in orbit … anything at all. The shuttlecraft was supposed to be connected to the orbital net at all times, but the datalink was down and he didn’t dare try to re-establish it. If there was an enemy starship in orbit, it would get them killed for nothing.

Someone took out the orbital platform, Leo thought, coldly. The platform hadn’t been a manned battlestation, with enough armour to shrug off anything short of a nuke, but it was unlikely anyone on the surface could have taken it out with a single shot. If the rebels are supporting King Louis, they could have a ship in orbit ready to take down anything that tries to get to the high orbitals.

He cursed again as he checked the passive sensors. The local airspace was full of jets and missiles coming from the east, probably targeted on military bases and defences further to the west. The communications nodes weren’t picking up many signals, most either encrypted or simply nothing more than nonsense … one signal, he noted grimly, was coming from somewhere dangerously close to their position. It spoke volumes about the enemy’s determination to press the attack, he thought, that they were using any sort of radio communication. If the orbital platform remained intact, the transmitter and anyone using it would be smashed within minutes.

Boothroyd hurried into the cockpit. “We have everyone on the shuttles, sir.”

“Got it.” Leo keyed the control, bringing the drives online. They'd have to run west to the spaceport and hope for the best. “Go active the moment we get into the air, see if you can get someone to talk.”

“Aye, sir.”

Leo braced himself, then launched the shuttle into the sky. The base fell away beneath them, a burning nightmare he knew he’d see in his dreams. Flashes and flickers of light darted around under him, his imagination filling in the details of men fighting desperately to hold the base or get out before it was too late. He kept a wary eye on the threat receiver, all too aware that there’d be bare seconds – if he was lucky – to react if the enemy had a modern handheld antiaircraft missile launcher. It noted nothing, save for an active radar several miles to the east. It boded ill for the future, he thought. They should be detecting friendly radars too.

The shuttle turned, then accelerated west, yawing back and forth to make it harder to hit. The passive sensors weren’t picking anything up in orbit, but that was meaningless. A rebel starship could be lurking overhead, using passive sensors to track and target the shuttle. The craft was supposed to be stealthy, but she was hardly a modern design and in any case there were limits to how much they could hide themselves without a proper cloaking device. He had a nasty feeling their passage through the air would be noticeable, even if the shuttle itself was invisible. A great deal depended on what kind of sensors they were trying to fool and there was simply no way to know.

The sensors bleeped an alert. Something big had exploded, further to the east. Leo guessed the enemy were attacking the front lines, trying to get heavy forces through the gap and punch their way to the city before they ran out of time. He hoped it hadn’t been a nuke. Using nukes on planetary surfaces was supposed to be forbidden, but there was some leeway in the rules … he snorted in disgust. King Louis and his supporters were committed. They couldn’t afford to do anything less, not now. If they needed to use nukes.

Boothroyd sucked in his breath. “Shit!”

Leo didn’t look up from his console. They were in relatively clear space, but that could change at any moment. “What?”

“I just picked up a transmission from the governor’s close-protection team,” Boothroyd said. “She’s in the castle, in the city, and requests a relief mission.”

“A rescue mission,” Leo corrected. The troops on the ground were dead or scattered, out of communication with their superiors. He hoped some would make their way east and link up with the rest, but that wasn’t going to happen in a hurry. “There’s nothing else we can do …”

He hesitated, unsure what he could do. The nasty part of his mind was tempted to pretend they’d never received the message, to let Governor Soule be consumed by the chaos she’d helped to instigate. The rest of his mind knew it would be dereliction of duty not to try to do something, at least to consider the matter and figure out if it could be done. Boothroyd would never let him get away with it, if he chose not to try. And then …

“Get what details you can,” he said, looking for a place to put the shuttle down briefly. They’d split the refugees over two craft, in hopes of ensuring at least half their number would survive, but he had no intention of taking too many people back into the fire. “I’ll fly the mission myself, if it can be done.”

He spoke briefly to the other pilot, then landed neatly in the middle of a field. Some farmer was going to be mad at them, he noted coldly, but there was no time to worry about it. They’d pay compensation later, if they survived. He snapped orders, directing everyone to get out of one shuttle and into the other, then checked the weapons load. Boothroyd would have to handle the guns. Thankfully, the Marine Corps did even more cross-training than the navy.

“You may be the ranking officer left on the planet,” Boothroyd said, quietly. “Kyle can fly the mission …”

“Kyle is also a trained groundpounder,” Leo countered. The situation was fluid and incredibly confused, something that called for a groundpounder rather than a naval officer. If nothing else, a groundpounder could hide out until the commodore arrived and report the truth, destroying the cover story. “He’s probably more important than me right now.”

Boothroyd didn’t argue. Leo knew him well enough by now to understand the hidden meaning. Boothroyd thought he was right. And he was …

“Sit-rep?” Leo checked everyone had left the craft, then guided her back into the air. “What’s happening?”

“Terrorist shooting and bombings within the city,” Boothroyd said. “Land-based communications and local networks are down, armed men attempted to storm the castle only to be repelled. A number of other positions within the city have been seized. The streets are in chaos, and it’s just a matter of time before there’s a second attack.”

“Got it.” Leo forced himself to think. “Tell the team to make sure they’re ready to move. This is going to be one hell of a stunt.”

He brought up the map, cursing under his breath. The shuttle was designed for landing under fire, but extracting a handful of people from the middle of a doomed city was always a tricky manoeuvre, one he’d never done outside simulations. There had never been any suggestion he’d have to do it either, not when assault shuttles were normally flown by Marine Corps pilots and escorted by drones … at best, he’d assumed he’d be flying boarding parties to captured pirate ships. Clearly, a failure of imagination. He put the thought out of his mind and considered the situation. Enemy jets were orbiting the city … slower than the shuttle, but probably a great deal more manoeuvrable. And who knew what was lurking between the towering skyscrapers.

They might not have armed the insurgents with SAMs, he told himself. Guns were easy to obtain on Boulogne, but military-grade antiaircraft weapons were a great deal harder. The risk of friendly fire would be dangerously high.

His heart clenched, suddenly. Ruth would be in the city too, unless she was somewhere outside it … he doubted it. She wanted to be at the centre of the action and that was in the city … or had been, until the shit hit the fan. He stared at the map for a long moment, the urge to save her wrestling with the grim awareness it couldn’t be done. Hell, Flower was down on the ground somewhere too.

She knows to keep her head down, he thought. Flower would probably have changed her clothes and accent already, then joined the flood of refugees fleeing west. She’ll be safer than the rest of us.

“They’re ready,” Boothroyd reported. “Sir?”

“Take the guns,” Leo ordered, as he programmed the missiles. There really was no good way to approach the city. He would almost have been happier if he’d picked up air-search radars, something that would tell him where the enemy were lurking. If nothing else, he could have launched seeker missiles at the sensors and knocked them down, buying time for a flight into the city itself. “Let’s go.”

He keyed the missiles, launching them in a single spread. They were modern designs, terrifyingly fast on a planetary scale … the jet fighters had no warning before the missiles slammed into their craft, smashing them into atoms. Leo felt his heart twist at such ruthless slaughter, but told himself he had no choice. The enemy fighters could have shot him down, if they got into weapons range, and he had no idea what kind of weapons they were carrying. They could have everything from simple guns to plasma cannons or HVMs and … there was no time to admire the fireballs. He pushed the shuttle forward, wondering how holovid stars made it look so easy. There were at least three separate things he had to do and doing them all simultaneously was pure hell.

The city expanded in front of him, smoke rising from a dozen places within and around the city. The fortifications covering the main roads were gone, he noted coldly: it looked as though they’d been struck by long-range missiles, with bunker-busting warheads. That was alarming, adding to his suspicion King Louis had off-world help. The locals shouldn’t have been able to build the latter without help. An alert sounded and he snapped off a missile, blowing away the sensor before it was too late. He hoped to hell it had been in enemy hands. In all the confusion, friendly fire was practically inevitable.

He cursed under his breath as the shuttle swept into the ring of skyscrapers. He didn’t dare fly too high, but he didn’t dare go too low either. Windows shattered as he flew past … he had a brief glimpse of a teeming mass of people below him, swarming the road and surrounding shopping complexes. The mob was heading straight for the luxury district, he noted coldly, bent on looting as much as possible before order could be restored. Or taking out their class anger on the mansions of the rich and powerful. A number were already on fire … he recalled the giggling girls he’d seen earlier and shuddered. They might have been mindless ninnies who made Francis look like a genius, but they didn’t deserve to be raped and murdered. He’d seen the case studies, uprisings on worlds ruled by despots who kept the lid on, refusing to allow any steam to escape until the whole kettle exploded, unleashing an orgy of violence. Boulogne wasn’t as bad as some, but it hardly mattered. The insurgents might have provoked the riot to ensure the teams had a chance to seize their real targets without interference. It was hardly an ordinal idea.

“Got shooters on the surrounding buildings,” Boothroyd reported. “And armed men massing outside.”

“I’ll swoop us around,” Leo said. “Hit them as hard as you can.”

He braced himself as the castle came into view. He’d thought the spindly structure was faintly absurd when he’d first seen it, all the more so now the white towers were covered in scorch marks. Someone had bombarded the structure with primitive rockets, more to upset the inhabitants than destroy the castle. They probably wanted to take the governor and the prince alive, the former for interrogation and the latter to order his people to lay down their arms and surrender. Leo wondered idly if anyone would, if they knew the prince was in enemy hands. He certainly wouldn’t follow orders issued under duress.

“Now!”

The guns chattered loudly as he swooped around the castle, heavy machine guns sweeping the streets and smashing into buildings. Leo saw insurgents on the ground: some cutting and running, others trying to return fire with assault rifles and RPGs. The latter wouldn’t be that dangerous unless they scored a direct hit on one of the few unarmoured sections of the shuttle, but there were an awful lot of them. Leo gritted his teeth as the machine guns swept away most of the insurgents. RPGs were quick and cheap to manufacture, if you didn’t mind taking a few risks, and they were easy to smuggle into cities. And that meant …

The shuttle rang like a bell, then lurched violently. Leo cursed. The RPG had hit the armour. The next might hit somewhere vulnerable.

He yanked the shuttle up, then dropped towards the landing pad. There was no way to be sure if the structure could actually take the shuttle’s weight. Armoured embassies on planets that weren’t fond of Daybreak were designed to serve as fortresses – there was normally an emergency escape vehicle as well, if the guards and threat of massive retaliation wasn’t enough to deter attack – but was the castle designed for a shuttle? They were about to find out. He kept a hand on the controls as they landed, bracing himself to hit the drive and jump up again. The landing pad held. For now.

“Get them on!”

Boothroyd was already moving, throwing open the hatch. Leo glanced back, spotting the governor and the prince … he couldn’t help smiling as he saw Ruth too, her lips set in a grim light that lightened, slightly, when she saw him. A handful of others … he felt a pang of guilt as he realised the majority were Daybreakers, with a tiny number of local aristos. The poor bastards left behind would have to get out and take their chances on the streets, ditching their outfits and trying to get out before the mob came for them. He hoped they’d make it. A hail of RPGs shot through the air, some striking the castle and shaking the structure. Their time was running out.

“That’s everyone!” Boothroyd slammed the hatch closed. “Get us out of here!”

Leo nodded, powering up the drive as a second hail of RPGs flew at them. One struck the armour, setting off a chorus of screams. Boothroyd, trapped at the rear, barked orders as Leo launched the shuttle into the air, feeling the landing pad crumble beneath him. A third RPG slammed into the shuttle … Leo keyed the guns, spraying and praying the rest of his machine gun ammunition down the streets. The enemy fire slacked, just enough to let him throw caution to the winds and fly in a straight line as long as he dared, barely long enough to get them out of the city. The sensor bleeped an alert – three more jets, coming from the east – and he cursed under his breath. The shuttle could outrun them if she had a few moments to build up speed …

“Hold on,” he snapped. “Brace for impact!”

The jets fired, launching three missiles apiece. Leo swore out loud and yanked the shuttle to one side, launching a spread of decoys before altering course again. The missiles were faster than the shuttle … of course they were. If the range had been closer, they’d have struck home before he knew he was under attack. He breathed a sigh of relief as the missiles were decoyed away, exploding harmlessly behind him, then hit the drive. The jet aircraft fell behind rapidly. They’d shot their bolt.

Someone was nosily sick behind him. Several others followed suit. Leo didn’t really blame them, but … he gritted his teeth as the stench wafted into the cockpit. The hatch should be closed and the passengers should all be buckled down... he made a mental note to leave such details out of his report. The book had been written by a pen-pusher who hadn’t had to make a choice between violating regulations and leaving people to die. Francis would probably call him out for violating the regs, given a chance. The bastard would take everything out of context.

“We’ll be at the spaceport shortly,” he called back. Local skies were clear now, which was worrying. The friendlies had aircraft too. They should be in the sky. “And then …”

Leo checked the communications console, noting to his relief the first shuttle had made it down safely. They’d been welcomed, their message lacking the codes that warned they were being transmitted under duress. That was meaningless if they’d been removed from the shuttles … he shook his head. They didn’t have many other places to go, not if they wanted to fight back. Or simply hold out long enough for the commodore to send a starship or two to save them.

He frowned as he landed neatly on the pad. Commodore Blackthrone might dislike Leo personally, but he’d send help … wouldn’t he? Leo was sure of it, yet … it would take time for word to reach Yangtze and a relief mission to be organised. He ran through the calculations in his head. They were looking at three weeks, if they were lucky. If not, it could be a great deal longer.

And until help arrives, he told himself grimly, we’re on our own.

 

Chapter Twenty-Four

Leo awoke, one hand reaching for his pistol.

He didn’t know where he was, the previous day’s events and the night’s dreams blurring together into a crazed nightmare. His fingers found nothing … he swallowed hard and sat up in bed, a flash of alarm running through him as he realised he wasn’t alone. Memory returned, a moment later. Governor Soule and Prince Charles had been hurried off the shuttlecraft, the rest of the rescued aristos had been escorted to a nearby town, Leo himself had been shown to a bedroom and Ruth had accompanied him. And then they’d fucked.

I hope you got some sleep too, a voice said, in his head. It sounded a lot like Boothroyd. You need to be rested and ready for the rigours of the day.

Leo shook his head and glanced at Ruth. She was naked this time, her pale skin almost glowing in the dim room. Her breasts were small yet firm, the tuff of hair between her legs so very different from Gayle’s shaved vagina … he snorted inwardly, telling himself that he should have suspected something, in hindsight, because Gayle had clearly been prepared for sex. Her underwear had matched … Ruth’s didn’t, he noted dryly. Her bra was strictly functional, her panties surprisingly lacy. Her arms and legs were muscled too, although her body wasn’t as mannish as he’d thought. Her outfit concealed a great deal.

Someone knocked at the door, hard. Leo opened his mouth to bid them enter, then caught himself. He cared little for his own privacy, but Ruth was naked too. He stumbled to his feet, staggered over to the door and opened it, using the door to conceal his nakedness. A young man stood there, wearing a fancy uniform that would be considered laughable on Daybreak. His eyes flickered over Leo as if he was surprised to see him.

“Sir … ah, compliments of the Prince and … would you like breakfast?” The poor boy stammered as he spoke. “I can bring you a tray, or …”

“Bring us two trays,” Leo ordered, dryly. He sifted through his memories to determine where they were and drew a blank. “Where are we, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“The Spaceport Hotel, Sir,” the boy said. “His Highness said he’ll send someone for you when you’re ready to go.”

He bowed, then hurried away. Leo closed the door, somehow unsurprised to see Ruth sitting up in bed, her bare breasts bobbling invitingly and her lips set in a thin line that suggested it would be a bad idea to try to have sex again. She was as hard to read as ever, even naked. He checked the washroom and allowed himself a moment of relief when he saw the clothes that had been provided for him, then hurried into the shower. The warm water washed away the remainder of the fatigue, as well as the evidence of what they’d been doing before going to sleep. He dressed quickly and hurried back outside. Ruth would probably want to wash and dress herself before it was too late.

“The water’s warm,” he said. “And there are fresh towels.”

“Heaven,” Ruth said. Her tone was sharp, peremptory. “Leave my food on the table. I’ll eat afterwards.”

Leo snorted. “Sir! Yes! Sir!”

Ruth had the grace to look embarrassed, but she said nothing as she stood and hurried to the washroom, making no attempt to cover herself. Leo studied her with interest. Even unclothed, she moved gracelessly, instead of the seductive movements Gayle or Flower used to draw the eye. Her rear was slight and bony, nearly as thin as his own … it spoke well of her, he decided, that she’d never bothered to improve her body. She could have passed for a naval cadet.

There was another tap on the door. Leo opened it and took the trays of food, putting them both on the table and tipping the young boy before pointing him out again. The breakfast was porridge and toast, the former tasteless and the latter burnt, but it was better than nothing. Most spaceport hotels tended to be expensive, he had been told, and the food had a bad reputation. He wasn’t sure why. Surely, they would want to attract more customers,

Ruth emerged, wearing new underwear. “What happened last night …”

“Let me guess,” Leo said. “It never happened.”

Ruth shrugged, dressed herself in her shapeless tunic, then sat down to eat breakfast. Leo studied her thoughtfully, wondering just what she was thinking. The first time, they had sex after a terrorist bombing; the second, after a desperate flight from a doomed city. Perhaps she was an adrenaline junkie, like himself in so many ways, who was turned on by danger. Or perhaps she wasn’t interested in a long-term relationship and simply wanted to have no-strings-attached sex every so often.

He sat back in his chair and sipped his coffee, his mind racing. Flower could take care of herself … right? There had been no suggestion she’d been killed … he gritted his teeth, wishing he’d thought to keep her with him. She could be trapped behind enemy lines now, or in enemy hands, or dead, just another body that was likely to be hurled into a mass grave when the city was finally pacified. He might never know what had happened to her. Not ever.

“I have to go see what’s happening,” he said, finally. “Do you want to come?”

Ruth shrugged. “If they’ll let me in,” she said, in a tone that suggested she wasn’t very sure they would. “They may not.”

Leo nodded. “What were you doing at the castle anyway?”

“Puff piece.” Ruth made it sound as though she was confessing to a serious crime. “Prince Charles had a big announcement to make about his impending wedding to some poor bitch who doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s about to happen to her, as if the details hadn’t leaked out long ago. I could practically recite his long-winded speech as he told everyone what everyone already knew. And then the terrorists attacked.”

“They hit the base too,” Leo said. “It’s total war now.”

Ruth grimaced. She could work out the implications as well as himself. “Shit.”

Leo called for the escort, making sure to have both his pistol and datapad with him. The two men – wearing BDUs instead of fancy uniforms – made no objection to the weapon, or Ruth, as they led him down a flight of stairs and out onto the tarmac. The spaceport was teeming with soldiers, manning small tanks and antiaircraft missile launchers or patrolling as if they expected to be attacked at any moment. Leo rather suspected they did. There hadn’t been such a long chain link fence around the spaceport last night, if he recalled correctly, but there was one blocking the road now. He guessed it was intended to ensure that anyone with legitimate business was directed to the checkpoints, while anyone who tried to sneak in could be shot without warning.

The chaos grew louder as they made their way to the nearest terminal. Men were hurrying everywhere, while military policemen – the uniforms were different, but their attitudes were the same – were ordering them around, trying to form them up into units. He got a brief glimpse of the runways on the far side of the terminal and saw dozens of aircraft, as well as two shuttles and a full-sized freighter. The whole spaceport was a hub of military activity … he hoped, desperately, the enemy didn’t realise how vulnerable the spaceport was and launch a handful of missiles at the base. Or they didn’t have someone in orbit who could drop a salvo of KEWs.

Sure, the fact they haven’t done it suggests they can’t, he told himself. But if I were in command, I’d wait for the enemy to get organised and then drop rocks on their heads.

Leo considered the problem briefly, as they were led down a flight of stairs and guided through a checkpoint, before being taken to an elevator and moved even further underground. The rebels might be backing King Louis, but they wouldn’t want their involvement to be obvious. They might hesitate to deploy something that could be traced back to some off-worlders, and there were few other suspects in the sector. And that meant … he dismissed the thought as they stopped in front of a door marked EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTRE and waited. The door opened a moment later, revealing a surprisingly large chamber.

He sucked in his breath. There was a big conference table in the centre of the compartment, which didn’t surprise him, and a set of smaller tables lining the walls, with portable terminals manned by grim-faced operators. They wore headsets and spoke quietly into microphones, their words blurring together into a sound that made him uneasy, but the chamber looked about as secure as a jail made out of paper and cardboard. He was surprised Boothroyd had gone along with it. Perhaps he’d been overruled.

“Commander Morningstar,” Prince Charles said. His uniform was marginally more practical now, although it was still gaudy by Daybreak standards. “Thank you for saving my life.”

“And mine,” Governor Soule added.

She motioned for Leo and Ruth to take a seat, then made brief introductions. Viscount Lehar, General Dentine, several other aristocratic officers who had been unexpectedly promoted in the wake of the vicious attack and invasion. And one man who wore a bland suit and no name … Leo guessed he was an intelligence officer. He nodded politely to the group, wondering why he’d been asked to attend. Boothroyd was an experienced man. Where was he?

“General,” Prince Charles said. “You may begin.”

General Dentine was thin, his face pale and sweaty. He spoke in a rushed manner, suggesting he wanted to get the bad news out as quickly as possible. Leo suspected he hadn’t bothered to come up with any contingency plans for what he’d do if command devolved on him, something frowned upon by most military machines even though it was simple common sense. Even a vague idea of what to do was better than nothing. Unless it was a very bad idea …

“The offensive started at noon,” General Dentine said, activating a holographic map. “Armed insurgents attacked a multitude of targets, shooting, bombing and sabotaging until they either took control or were repelled. Several attacks were aimed at command and communication hubs, successfully taking down most of our power and communications network and isolating our units from each other. This offensive was followed by a major armoured thrust” – he drew a line on the map – “that broke through the defence lines and advanced straight to Marseilles, backed up by missile and aircraft strikes all over the region. I regret to say that losses have been very heavy.”

And what were you thinking, Leo asked himself, when you put the capital so close to the front lines?

He dismissed the thought a moment later. It had made sense at the time. But now it was actively disastrous.

“All communications with Marseilles have been lost,” General Dentine continued. “Landlines have been cut. Radios are being jammed. At last report, enemy spearheads had secured the fortresses surrounding the city and were moving into the city itself. That was three hours ago.”

Leo studied the map, shaking his head in disbelief. The front lines had been strong, but they’d also been dangerously thin. Once the enemy broke through, there was little between their spearheads and the city. There were probably thousands of men still alive and free within the region, but they’d have to get back west if they wanted to rejoin the fight and that would be difficult even if they had transportation. The enemy had near-complete control of the air.

“The city will fight,” Prince Charles predicted. “The enemy will find they have a tiger by the tail.”

“Unlikely,” Ruth said, coldly. “The average citizen cares little for who parks his ass on the golden throne.”

Prince Charles glared at her, then at Leo. Leo looked back evenly. He suspected Ruth was right … and besides, the riots would have burned up a great deal of energy, as well as ensuring that anyone who could restore order would be warmly welcomed. The enemy spearheads might be securing the roads instead, waiting for the riots to burn themselves out before they moved in, shot a few looters, and proclaimed themselves heroes. He certainly hadn’t seen any great enthusiasm for the prince, when he’d been in the city.

“This is a dire situation,” Viscount Lehar said. He was surprisingly short and stout, his hair hidden beneath a heavy grey wig. “How long do we have?”

“They need to reorganise their lines,” General Dentine said. “Just reinforcing their troops will take time. It could take them weeks …”

“Three weeks,” Leo said, quietly but firmly. “That’s how long they have.”

Prince Charles eyed him, but it was the governor who spoke.

“Explain.”

“They attacked a Daybreak base, killed at least five hundred Daybreakers, tried to murder the Daybreak Governor and, last but not least, destroyed an orbital weapons platform and perhaps the entry station,” Leo said. “That’s a direct challenge to the Daybreak Republic and they know it won’t be allowed to go unanswered. They have no choice, but to win the war before Daybreak can respond and blame everything on you afterwards. They’ll make sure all the bodies are buried and nothing survives to contradict whatever cock-and-bull story they feed Commodore Blackthrone, when he arrives.”

And they may not have realised the commodore was coming until it was too late and their plans were too far advanced to be changed, his thoughts added, quietly. I didn’t know the squadron had been dispatched until it arrived and I was supposed to be in charge of the sector and the makeshift naval base.

His imagination ran wild, sketching out a series of coups and wars that would put rebel-friendly governments into power right across the sector. Gayle and her father had planned to unite the sector, entering the republic as a cluster of autonomous worlds instead of de facto colonies … was that plan still underway? Or was he overthinking it? He was a student of military history and he’d studied countless plans that looked good on paper, but were just too complex to work in the real world.

Governor Soule cleared her throat. “Three weeks?”

“In the best possible case, it’ll take three weeks for a message to reach Daybreak and the squadron to arrive here,” Leo said. He had a nasty feeling it would take longer. “They have no way of knowing if we’ve sent a message, or if someone in orbit noticed the chaos and fled …”

He shook his head. “Three weeks. They have to move fast.”

Governor Soule spoke to Prince Charles in a low voice. Leo forced himself not to listen, to consider the variables instead. Would Commodore Blackthrone leave Yangtze and head straight for Boulogne? Or would he be more careful? Leo had been lured into a trap at Eden and Commodore Blackthrone, being smarter and more experienced than his nephew, might suspect it was another trap. He might even wonder if the entire report had been deepfaked. God, Leo wasn't sure there even was a report. There hadn’t been any courier boats in orbit when the shit hit the fan. And Waterhen had left the system weeks ago.

Viscount Lehar spoke into the silence. “We could always send messengers to Louis …”

“And then what?” Prince Charles glowered at him. “Louis will kill us. He must kill us. We know too much.”

Leo kept his face carefully blank as Viscount Lehar staggered, his face suddenly pale. It had never occurred to him, Leo suspected, that he might be in any real danger. He was an aristocrat. The worst that could happen was that he would be taken prisoner, if he wasn’t killed by accident. His family would happily ransom him. But now they wouldn’t have the chance. King Louis wouldn’t believe any promises of silence, not when the stakes were so high. Everyone who knew the truth, everyone who had a motive to reveal the truth, had to die. And that included Viscount Lehar.

“Yes, Your Highness,” Viscount Lehar managed. “Can we slow the enemy offensive?”

“We will try,” General Dentine said. “But right now, we need to buy time.”

“We should be able to take control of the satellite network,” Leo mused, out loud. The command codes had been copied into his datapad, giving a hacker a chance to break into the rest of the system. “We could de-orbit them, aimed at their spearheads …”

“Their antiaircraft network is too good,” General Dentine said. He sounded like a man clutching for straws and finding none. Leo wasn’t an expert at reading army maps, as opposed to starcharts, but it looked bad. On paper. “They’ll be able to smash any falling satellites before they hit their targets. Assuming they do.”

Yeah, Leo agreed. It was a neat plan, but one better held in reserve. Accuracy would be terrible – and there would only be one shot at making it work. We need to think of something else.

“All we have to do is hold the line,” the general continued. “And towards that end I have a few ideas …”

“We also need to get as many people out of this spaceport as possible,” Leo added. The enemy would start sending aircraft west soon, if they weren’t already. One nuclear-tipped missile would kill nearly everyone of importance, decapitating the west and allowing Louis to win the war by default. “Right now, it’s a very big target.”

“Yes,” Prince Charles said. He looked at Leo, but didn’t quite meet his eyes. “I want you to inspect the freighter first, see if it can fly.”

So you can escape the entire planet, if we lose, Leo thought, coldly. A flash of contempt shot through him. Damn you.

 

Chapter Twenty-Five

“That bastard,” Leo said, once they were clear of the terminal and walking towards Johnny Quick. “He’s going to abandon everyone to save his miserable skin!”

“You are surprised?” Ruth sounded bored. “Not everyone is as bloody-minded as a Daybreaker who would sooner die than face dishonour.”

Leo gave her a sidelong look. “I was always taught that the captain goes down with his ship.”

Ruth shrugged. “Daybreak insists that everyone who wants to enter politics has to do some form of service first, which tends to make our politics dangerously militarised. We have leaders who think they can’t back down, and others who see every problem as a nail … luckily, they have a hammer. Here? The aristocrats have no skin in the game and no concern for anyone who isn’t one of them. I’m sure Prince Charles can come up with something to justify his flight from danger. A government-in-exile, perhaps.”

“Charming.” Leo could happily spend hours detailing Francis’s flaws, but at least the wretched bastard had the nerve to serve on a starship. Enemy missiles didn’t care how much gold braid you wore and wouldn’t be deflected by your ego, even if it warped and twisted the interpersonal dynamics around you. If Waterhen were to be destroyed, Francis would die with the rest of the crew. “And he wants us to check the freighter.”

He felt his scowl deepen as he looked at the freighter. Johnny Quick was a towering blocky mass that looked too crude to touch down, let alone take off again. She was far less aerodynamic than the shuttle he’d flown, let alone the jet aircraft waging titanic conflict over the battlefield, and it seemed absurd to think she was actually very small, even compared to Waterhen. It would be easy for a bulk freighter to carry twenty or more such freighters within their hold, rather than rely on their own FTL drives. His earlier thoughts came back to haunt him. The ship just wasn’t cost-effective on a more civilised world.

His thoughts darkened as he checked his pistol. The freighter’s arrival had been unscheduled, which was meaningless in and of itself, but it had arrived bare moments before the orbital weapons platform had been destroyed. A coincidence? It was possible – quite a few incidents had been caused by coincidence, as implausible as it seemed – but he knew better than to take it for granted. The inspection team had found nothing, yet that was meaningless too. A spaceport crew, so far from civilisation, might not know what to look for. Or they might simply have been bribed. Corruption was a way of life, along the Rim, and there was little anyone could do about it until law and order was firmly established.

“You don’t have to come with me,” he said, as he stopped outside the hatch. Up close, the freighter had an indefinable sense of age, her hull scarred by decades in cold soak and hundreds of passages through planetary atmospheres. Here and there, there were places where the hull had been patched up … he wondered, idly, if they had been properly inspected afterwards. It wasn’t that hard to seal a hull breach, but most starships didn’t try to land on planetary surfaces. “If you want to go back to the hotel …”

“I might get a story out of it,” Ruth said. “And what else am I going to do?”

“Don’t forget to mention the prince planning to cut and run,” Leo said, dryly. He blinked in surprise when he saw the buzzer on the hatch, then snorted at himself a moment later. The ship was designed to land, after all. “Here goes nothing …”

He pressed the buzzer. A naval crew would open the hatch at once. A civilian crew generally took longer. Leo allowed himself a flicker of relief as the hatch opened two minutes later, a hint he wasn’t dealing with military or intelligence personnel. A middle-aged woman stood inside, wearing a shipsuit with a single gold star at her collar. Leo straightened to attention. There were no hard and fast rules for what merchant skippers should wear, save one. They always wore a captain’s gold star.

“Captain,” he said. “I am Commander Leo Morningstar, Daybreak Navy, and I am required to inspect your ship.”

The captain scowled. “I am Captain Hilda Hawthorne, and my ship has already been inspected.”

“There is a war on,” Leo said. The captain was the same age as Fleur, he thought, but she was a hell of a lot more grizzled. Her outfit was cut to show off her muscles and she carried an oversized pistol at her belt. “The normal rules have been suspended for the duration.”

Hilda studied him for a long moment, then shrugged. “You may as well come in,” she said, as if she had a choice. “Don’t forget to wipe your feet as you enter.”

Leo nodded, schooling his face into a blank mask as they stepped through the hatch. There was no change in smell, suggesting the crew had thrown open the hatches and thoroughly vented the ship before all hell had broken loose. He hoped they were adhering to standard biological contamination procedures. Too many planets had had problems after rats or other small animals had hitched a ride on a starship, then run wild in an environment that didn’t have any predators that kept them in check. The corridors felt oddly cramped, the bulkheads lined with power conduits and air tubes that were normally tucked away on interstellar starships, although he could see the sense of the design. Anything the crew couldn’t reach, his instructors had told him, was practically guaranteed to fail and completely impossible to fix. Quite a few civilian ships had cut their maiden voyages short because something had failed, forcing a return to their shipyard because repairs couldn’t be done in transit. God alone knew how many ships had never returned at all.

He looked around with interest as they were shown onto the bridge. It was small and cramped, more like a shuttle cockpit than a starship’s command centre. The crew were a family, he noted, feeling a twinge of envy. He’d grown up reading books and watching holovids about families living on starships, making money by trading as they moved from star to star. It wasn’t so easy in the real world, he’d learnt when he’d entered the academy, but there was a part of him that still craved the life of a wanderer. But he craved glory more.

“You haven’t filed a departure plan,” he said, as Hilda showed him the engineering compartment. It looked as if the jump drive had been bolted into a compartment that hadn’t been designed to take it. “Don’t you want to leave?”

Hilda looked as if she’d bitten into something sour. “The jump drive is good for one more jump, if we’re lucky,” she said. She indicated the sealed device with a wave. “You think we can go anywhere?”

Leo shook his head. It would take at least two jumps to reach the nearest populated star … and if the jump drive failed after the first jump, Johnny Quick would never be seen again. There were all sorts of stories about ships being discovered in interstellar space, and it wasn’t as impossible as the statistics suggested because most commercial vessels tended to use the most efficient jump drives, but it was unlikely. The odds of rescue were low anywhere, but so far from civilisation they were practically non-existent. He supposed that explained the captain’s reluctance to leave, even if it meant getting out of a war zone. There were limits to how long they could hang around in orbit even if they weren’t destroyed by a rebel ship.

He kept the thought to himself as they swept through the remainder of the freighter. She was small and cramped, something that bothered him on a very primal level. It took him a moment to realise why. His family’s apartment in Cold Harbour had actually been smaller, he thought, but he’d been able to go out on the streets or visit the library or something – anything – other than staying in confined quarters with his family. He loved them, but … he shrugged, noting the lack of proof the freighter was smuggling anything. The only real cargo they could be smuggling was datachips, perhaps loaded with pirated holovids or audio albums, and proving it was a pain in the arse unless they were caught in the act. Daybreak’s ban on copy-protection had some unfortunate side effects.

“Thank you for your time,” he said, finally. A thought was nagging at the back of his mind, something that refused to come into the light. “Do you want the engineering crews to take a look at your drive?”

“If they’re properly insured and qualified,” Hilda said. She glanced at his collar and nodded to herself. “You know how dangerous working on a jump drive can be.”

Leo nodded. That was another good sign, although it was quite possible the engineers would shake their heads and tell Hilda to take her ship to a proper shipyard. That wasn’t going to be easy. She might have to beg for a tow, when a larger freighter passed through the system, or sell her ship for scrap and hope she could get a replacement. Hell, if something went wrong, it was unlikely she’d live long enough to claim compensation, and even if she did there was no way to know what the planetary authorities would say. King Louis might argue it wasn’t his government that had insured the engineers.

And he’d probably be quite pleased if Prince Charles vanished somewhere in interstellar space, Leo thought. But then, he’d never be quite sure the bastard was dead.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Leo said. If nothing else, it was proof the freighter crew had nothing to hide. Nothing obvious, at least. “I’ll see you later.”

Ruth said nothing until they were well clear of the freighter. “Not much of a story in that, sadly.”

Leo grinned. “Just remember to write about the handsome naval officer carrying out the inspection and the plaudits will roll in.”

“Hah.” Ruth seemed unamused. “What now?”

“Good question.” Leo made a show of thinking about it. “I suppose we could go back to bed.”

“And then you’d be arrested for dereliction of duty,” Ruth pointed out. Her tone was so dry Leo couldn’t tell if she was serious or if she simply didn’t want to go to bed. “I think you’d better go to the prick and tell him there’s no way to get offworld.”

“Getting offworld isn’t the problem,” Leo countered. He tried not to feel disappointed. “It’s getting somewhere else that’s going to be the killer.”

“Yeah.” Ruth shrugged. “You go tell the prince the bad news. I’ll go find a story or two.”

“Be careful,” Leo warned. “There’s a lot of people running around with itchy trigger fingers.”

Ruth nodded and turned away, leaving Leo alone. He felt a pang of disappointment that she hadn’t kissed him goodbye, then pushed it aside and told himself not to be silly. They weren’t in a relationship. They were just … he didn’t know, to be honest. She might not know either. He shrugged and kept walking towards the terminal, gritting his teeth as he saw hundreds of soldiers, spacers, and officials hurrying around in a manner that suggested they knew they were running out of time. It would be easy for someone to slip into the terminal, he thought coldly, simply because there were so many men from so many units. A stranger would be spotted on Waterhen, but perhaps not Pompey. There were certainly stories of imposters getting onto battleships and passing unnoticed for quite some time.

Which would mean getting onto the ship first, Leo thought. Here ...

There were more guards on the elevator as he arrived, who checked Leo’s ID and then frisked him before allowing him to proceed underground. Another guard met him at the bottom of the elevator and escorted him the rest of the way, a precaution that would have irked Leo under other circumstances – it was proof they didn’t trust him, despite his naval service – but understandable under the circumstances. Prince Charles was sitting in his office, taking a conference call with a dozen other aristocrats. He muted the call the moment Leo arrived. Somehow, Leo didn’t think it was a good thing.

“Johnny Quick is incapable of reaching the nearest populated star,” he said, bluntly. “We can’t use her to send for help.”

“That’s … unfortunate,” Prince Charles said. “Is there anything we can do with her?”

“Not really,” Leo said. “I’ll arrange for an engineering crew to take a look at her, to see if they can do anything, but even getting off the surface is going to be problematic with so many missiles flying around. She’s not designed to fly through a war zone.”

And we still don’t know what happened to the orbital weapons platform, he reminded himself, grimly. Whatever took it out could easily take out the freighter too.

The prince looked tired, tired and desperate. “Go down to logistics and let them know you’re entering the personnel pool,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll find a use for you.”

Leo bit down the response that came to mind – he was a Daybreaker, not a servant – and merely nodded. Prince Charles was in deep shit, and so were the rest of them. His earlier thoughts came back to mock him. There was no hope of survival if King Louis won the war. The bastard had committed himself the moment he’d attacked Daybreak’s personnel. It struck Leo as insane, practically suicidal, but the prince had lost his first bid for supreme power. It made a certain kind of sense from that point of view. Maybe.

Yeah, he thought. Or maybe he knows something we don’t.

He put the thought aside as he hurried up to logistics. The staffers were running in and out as if the devil himself were chasing them, or shouting into landline phones that looked disturbingly retro. Leo had never seen a logistics hub that didn’t manage to combine frantic activity with mindless bureaucracy and this was no different, even in the middle of a war zone. He supposed it make a certain kind of sense – half the weapons stockpiles were in enemy hands or destroyed, the other half scattered across the western continent – but it was still frustrating. A line of officers waited by the desk, demanding everything from combat commands to precedence. Leo wasn’t sure what that even meant …

“Leo!”

Leo looked up and grinned as Flower appeared, wearing a stolen outfit that did nothing to hide her figure. “You made it!”

Flower grinned. “Yeah,” she said. “It was quite a ride.”

She took his arm and led him into a small office. “How did you get out?”

“Shuttle,” Leo said. “You? You were in the city?”

“Stuck around long enough to make sure of what was happening, then bugged out with a bunch of other refugees,” Flower said. “It was chaotic outside, had to steal a vehcle to get over the bridges and then abandon it when they started shooting up moving cars. I kept moving and eventually got picked up by a military convoy. And then I got taken here.”

Leo felt his smile grow wider. “Are you going to take charge of the logistics?”

“If they’ll let me.” Flower looked grim. “Right now, the situation is so confused no one knows who is the ranking officer … the ranking surviving officer. We’ve already had two shouting matches between officers who assumed command, only to discover they weren’t the highest-ranking officer left in the region. Not to mention that this is a team effort, of course. Does an officer from one kingdom have authority over another?”

“You’re a Daybreaker,” Leo pointed out. “You have supremacy …”

“Technically, yes,” Flower said. “But right now that argument isn’t going to work very well.”

She shook her head. “There were enemy agents in the city, steering the riots,” she added. “I wouldn’t bet against there being agents here, inflaming tensions and reminding everyone that they’re not really friends, just allies of convenience. If one kingdom’s officer sends troops from another kingdom into a battle that can only end with their deaths, is he doing it because there is no choice or because he wants to weaken his rivals while preserving his own troops? It won’t take long for the whole united front to come apart, if the enemy starts pressing on the faultlines.”

Her lips twisted. “It might happen even without their help. The faultlines are very fragile right now. One argument over there” – she pointed at the door, indicating the office beyond – “and we’ll have a civil war on our hands, in the middle of another civil war.”

“And we have to hold out for three weeks,” Leo said. If they were lucky. “At least.”

He met her eyes. “If things get a great deal worse, and we are going to lose, I want you to go underground,” he added. “A ship will come by sooner or later” – right now, Leo would have welcomed Waterhen even if she remained under Francis’s command – “and you can report what really happened here, no matter what happens to the rest of us. Daybreak will punish King Louis.”

“I can,” Flower said. Her face was expressionless, but Leo could tell she was annoyed. “Is that an order?”

“Yes,” Leo said. He knew he couldn’t run and hide, even though cold logic suggested it was the wisest thing to do. Flower could tell herself she was obeying orders. He couldn’t. Besides, she was far better at blending in and going unnoticed than himself. He was too clearly a Daybreaker to pass for anything else. “The truth must come out.”

Flower nodded. “As you wish,” she said, curtly. Her tone lightened a moment later. “So tell me … how are you and Ruth getting along now?”

Leo flushed.

 

Chapter Twenty-Six

There was no sign the chaos would come to an end, despite the best efforts of military commanders and logistics officers alike, over the next two days. Leo pitched in where he could, offering advice and support as best as he could, but there was very little he could do that was actually helpful. He was a naval officer, not a ground combat specialist, and there were few roles for him that weren’t already filled. He wasn’t used to feeling useless, which grated on him … all the more so, he admitted to himself, when Flower and Boothroyd had important work to do. He spent the days assisting the governor, playing at being her personal aide, and the nights in bed with Ruth. She felt useless too. The provisional government had imposed strict censorship and threatened to jail her if she published anything without clearance. The governor had backed the prince up.

It was almost a relief to be called into the operations chamber, three days after the desperate flight from Marseilles. The governor’s aide had vanished somewhere in the chaos – Leo wondered if he’d taken advantage of the confusion to desert – and she expected a great deal of services from him, to the point he honestly wondered if she could take care of herself without help. It struck him as shameful, if only because she wasn’t a cripple, but there was no point in arguing about it. If the general could find him something else to do …

“Glad to see you,” Boothroyd said. He was sitting at the table, looking irked. “How are you coping?”

“Coping,” Leo said, dryly. Boothroyd looked as if he were about to order dinner, not go to the front lines. “Yourself?”

“I had to knock out an officer who thought his social rank took precedence over my military rank,” Boothroyd said. “Other than that …”

General Dentine cleared his throat. Leo took a seat and forced himself to pay attention as the general keyed a switch, displaying a holographic map. The three-dimensional display teemed with icons, representing military units and installations on the ground … some fuzzy, he noted grimly, to indicate the information was out of date. It was chilling to realise that some of the units on the map might already be dead, or retreating towards an illusory safety, or that senior officers in warm rooms might believe they could move military formations as if they were units in video games. There was no shortage of horror stories about REMFs who tried to do just that, although they were fortunately rare in the navy. It was simply impossible to direct operations in one system from a base in another, no matter how close they were in interstellar terms.

“The enemy has reorganised and moved follow-up units into the city, allowing their spearheads t resume the advance,” he said. “As you can see, they are advancing towards the bridges crossing the River Gaul and then the fortress on the far side, blocking the motorway leading further west. Their objective is to secure the three bridges and then storm the fort. We don’t believe they intend to storm the forest or the mountain passes. The terrain is terrible for infantry, let alone vehicles.”

Leo cocked his head. “How can you be sure?”

“If they take the road and bridges intact, they’ll have the logistics base they need to push further west,” General Dentine said. “The forest is deep enough that a relatively small force can slow the advance for weeks, forcing them to waste time clearing us out of the thickets … and even if they do they’ll going to have real problems getting vehicles through the trees. No, their only logical option is to attack the fort as quickly as possible. We have advance parties on the far side of the river, impeding their operations, but they won’t last long. And the fort itself is barely manned.”

“A terrible oversight,” Boothroyd said, dryly. “What were you thinking?”

“The threat of orbital bombardment would be enough to keep a major war from breaking out,” General Dentine snapped back. “The kingdom that built the fort believed you’d keep your word.”

“All we have to do is hold the line,” Leo said. There was no point in rehashing the debate now. “What do you want us to do?”

“Two things,” General Dentine said. “First, we are dangerously short of heavy-lift vehicles. We need you to fly the lead units to the fort on your shuttle. Second, linked to the first, we want you to use your remaining missiles to take down the three bridges themselves.”

Leo’s eyes narrowed. “Can’t your jet fighters do it?”

“The enemy’s air defence network is very good, and they’re been advancing it forward over the last two days,” General Dentine told him. “If we send in a bombing raid, they’ll move their own units to counter. The shuttle has a better chance of getting through.”

Leo glanced at Boothroyd, who nodded in a manner that suggested he wasn’t very pleased with the concept even though he had to agree it would work. Leo suspected he knew why. He might know how to pilot a shuttle, but he wasn’t a trained groundpounder pilot and the flight would be tricky even for someone with years of experience. There was no time to simulate the mission either, to plot a dozen ways to get through the enemy defences either. The odds of getting in and out weren’t zero, but … he shook his head. It had to be done.

“I can do it,” he said. “If the shuttle is armed and ready …”

“It is,” General Dentine said. “You can also take your reporter friend with you. We’ll need stories of the defenders, heroically holding the line.”

Really, Leo thought coldly. And you don’t have any reporters of your own?

He wondered just what General Dentine was really thinking. Did he think Ruth could rally support from offworld? She was a Daybreaker, which meant her word would carry weight on Daybreak, but it was unlikely she had enough influence to convince the Senate to support Prince Charles, no matter how many reports she wrote. Was he hoping to get rid of her? Or send her into danger in hopes she'd be killed? Sure, they could censor her now, but that wouldn’t last forever. Who knew what stories she’d tell, after the war?

“If she is willing to go,” Leo said. Ruth was difficult to pin down, reacting more as if her work was a duty rather than something she enjoyed, but he had the feeling she wouldn’t turn down the chance to see the fighting at first hand. “When do you want us to leave?”

“As soon as possible,” General Dentine said. “Good luck.”

Leo nodded curtly, then stood. “I’ll go prep the shuttle,” he said. The ground crews would have taken care of her, he was sure, but smart pilots inspected their craft personally if they had time, if only because they were the ones who would fly into danger. “Sergeant?”

“I’ll come with you,” Boothroyd said. “We’ll do what we can to buy time.”

Leo said nothing until they were heading towards the shuttle. “Is this wise?”

“It’s their best chance to slow the enemy down,” Boothroyd said. “If we can get the fort up and running, we can slow them down long enough to set up better defensive lines.”

Leo tapped his wristcom, sending Ruth a message, then scrambled into the shuttle and ran through a series of basic checks. The weapons load was incomplete – the stockpile was in enemy hands, if it hadn’t been destroyed in the fighting – but there were six missiles remaining … just enough, he thought, to drop the bridges. The machine guns, thankfully, took standard ammunition. He’d have a chance to shoot back at the enemy … perhaps. He finished his checks and activated the flight computer, silently thanking the planners back home that the shuttle was designed to fly without a planetary datanet or navigational network. It was going to be hard enough to find the targets, let alone hit them.

If I get out of this alive, Leo told himself, I’m going to brush up on everything.

The hatch opened. Ruth stepped into the shuttle, a knapsack slung over her shoulder. “Are you going to be staying at the fort?”

“I don’t know yet,” Leo said. The shuttle could carry a hundred men, if they were crammed in tightly. He wished for a bigger craft – the largest shuttles could carry nearly a thousand in reasonable comfort – but there was no point in wasting time thinking about things he didn’t have and couldn’t get. “I think I’ll be flying in reinforcements.”

“Charming,” Ruth said. “What happened to the other shuttle?”

Leo shrugged. It was possible the government was keeping the second craft back, if only to launch themselves into orbit if the worst happened. They’d be lucky if someone rescued them before it was too late, but it was better than being executed if their positions were overrun. Who knew? Maybe they would get away with it.

He glanced at her. “They seem very keen to get rid of you,” he said. “Do you know anything embarrassing?”

Ruth snorted. “A great deal, but most won’t raise a ripple on Daybreak,” she said, sourly. “And they refuse to believe it.”

Leo nodded, slowly. Two years ago, a delegation from an autonomous world had challenged a migrant’s statement by noting he was a practicing homosexual, a major sin on their world but completely immaterial on Daybreak. It had been seen as nothing more than an attempt to smear, to delegitimize their accuser, rather than the proof he couldn’t be trusted they’d been so certain it was. Daybreak had been more amused than horrified, and the delegation had lost the suit they’d tried to bring. He supposed the same was true here. The locals had quite a few practices that meant nothing outside the planetary atmosphere.

The hatch opened. Boothroyd poked his head into the craft. “Ready for passengers?”

“Yes,” Leo said. He checked the emergency supplies, then nodded. “We’re ready to fly.”

He motioned for Ruth to sit in the cockpit as Boothroyd ordered the company of soldiers onto the shuttle. A handful were Daybreakers, survivors of the attack on the base; the remainder were local troops from several different units, thrown together so quickly it wasn’t clear if they could work together long enough to hold the line. Leo had been told that military training and terminology was supposed to be standardised, but Boulogne had been out of contact for so long there’d barely been any time to revamp their training protocols. He wondered, numbly, how many were the last survivors of their units, thrown together because they had nowhere else to go. He didn’t want to know.

“All aboard, sir,” Boothroyd said. “You may launch when ready.”

Leo nodded, eying the console as he powered up the shuttle. The local radar network was full of holes, thanks to enemy long-range missiles, but it didn’t look as if there were any fighters prowling nearby. He hoped to hell the IFF beacon worked, when they flew through the forward defence network. The missile launchers might think they were an enemy aircraft, despite their flight profile, and open fire. Leo doubted they could escape a second time. The decoys were running low too.

He tapped the sensor console the moment they were in the air, switching briefly from passive to active sensors and then back again. The sensor pulse would be visible right across the continent, unless the enemy passive sensors were worse than he thought, but it was unlikely they could do anything about it. The display filled rapidly, revealing dozens of fighter jets and helicopters … even some odd contacts that puzzled him until he realised they were trains. He shook his head and gunned the drives, steering the shuttle towards the fort. The landscape below blurred as the shuttle picked up speed. It was impossible to pick out any details.

His heart raced as the mountains came closer, the fort dug so deeply into the rock that it was barely visible. The forest was a mass of greenery, seemingly impassable; Leo recalled the briefing and shivered, all too aware that small teams could easily make their way through the forest, if they didn’t mind leaving heavy equipment behind. He made a mental note to urge the prince to hurry reinforcements forward, before it was too late. They were behind the times and the enemy was reaping the rewards.

“Touchdown in two minutes,” he called. The enemy might be able to see the shuttle and they might have long-range guns in place, ready to shell the troops as they ran for cover. Leo wished he’d spent more time studying ancient warfare. Daybreak didn’t bother with heavy artillery because its troops could normally call the navy and get them to bombard enemy positions fr4om orbit. Boulogne hadn’t had that option until recently. “Get ready to run.”

“Me too,” Ruth said. She sounded as calm as ever. Leo envied her. “How long do we have to run?”

“Seconds,” Leo said. There was just no way to know if there were guns in position to engage. Not until they started shooting. With proper aiming systems, the enemy could plot their targeting without using active sensors or anything else that might tip the defenders off before it was too late. “Good luck.”

He brought the shuttle in hard, flaring the drive as she touched down. The hatch banged open a second later, Boothroyd barking “move, move” at men who didn’t get unstrapped and out of their seats quickly enough to suit him. Ruth rose too and hurried for the hatch, without even bothering to look back at him. Leo wondered if he should be hurt, then shrugged.

“Good luck, sir,” Boothroyd called. He tapped his forehead in a mock salute, then headed for the hatch himself. “Have fun!”

He banged the hatch closed. Leo grinned and counted to ten, then twenty just to be sure, before keying the drives. The gravity field twisted painfully as the shuttle rose high into the air, building speed so quickly it had to look like he was heading for orbit. A vague idea crossed his mind – they could manufacture KEWs and use the shuttles to deploy them – before he dismissed it as impractical, if not suicidal. Shuttles were very fragile targets and the enemy would throw everything they had at the craft, once they realised the danger. One hit would be enough to destroy it.

Here goes nothing, he thought.

There was no point in trying to hide now. He keyed the sensors, sweeping the eastern lands. The ground below him was hilly, covered in trees; the river was easy to spot, deep enough that it would be different to cross without bridges. Red icons flashed on the display as the sensors picked out enemy missile launchers, air defence sensors and countless moving vehicles, out in the open in a manner that struck him as absurd … until he recalled there were no orbiting killers, ready to rain kinetic strikes on enemy tanks. King Louis didn’t need to keep his movements concealed, not on his side of the border. His only hope of victory lay in speed.

Leo braced himself, then keyed the console. The gravity field twisted as the shuttle plummeted like a rock, the hull creaking alarmingly as the craft lurched from side to side. Any missile batteries defending the bridges would have trouble locking onto him, let alone shooting a missile close enough to take him down. Hell, his flight path suggested he was in real trouble … Leo snorted at the thought as the ground came closer, the sensors locking onto the bridges and priming the missiles. He wished he’d known what was coming. His warheads were designed to take down aircraft and vehicles, not hardened targets. But fired at such speeds …

An alarm sounded. The enemy sensors were trying to lock onto his hull. Their missiles couldn’t be far behind. The shuttle rocked as he launched his own missiles, aimed right at the bridge. They were already fast and getting faster with every passing moment … he wasn’t sure if the enemy would have time to realise they were coming, before it was too late. There was certainly no time to take them down. They’d planned for jet fighters flying up the river and trying to take down the bridge, not a shuttle with missiles designed for interstellar combat. The explosions looked spectacular. He hoped they’d done enough damage to render the bridges useless. If there wasn’t someone watching from a safe distance, it would be unclear until it was too late.

The threat receiver screamed. Leo glanced at it, then jammed the drives to full. A HVM … a modern HVM! How the hell had the enemy gotten their hands on a modern antiaircraft missile launcher … he felt the gravity field twist again as he tried to evade, too late. Something slammed into the shuttle … he fought for control as the shuttle started to fall out of the sky, trying to ensure a soft landing. It wasn’t going to happen. The damage was too great. He wasn’t sure why he was still alive. A modern weapon should have vaporised the entire shuttle. God knew the enemy had no reason to keep him alive. Daybreak didn’t negotiate with terrorists. They certainly wouldn’t pay a ransom for his safe return.

Commodore Blackthrone is more likely to pay them to keep me, he thought, with a flicker of gallows humour. The shuttle was spinning now, the ground coming up with terrifying speed. He might even look the other way …

He pushed all the power he could into the remaining drive node. The shuttle lurched, as if God Himself had grabbed her rear, then hit the ground. Hard.

 

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Leo waved, on the verge of blacking out.

It took him everything he had to force himself to reach for the stimulant concealed under the pilot’s seat, press the injector tab against his bare skin and trigger the needle. There were strict rules and regulations concerning the use of stimulants in a combat zone, and anyone who took them was supposed to be under medical supervision … it wasn’t going to happen. Not here. His fingers jerked as the drug ran through his body, giving him a burst of energy he knew wasn’t going to last long. He had to move, and fast. The enemy wouldn’t let him live.

He gritted his teeth as he looked around. The shuttle had come down hard. The airframe was largely intact, surprisingly, but there were a dozen gashes in the hull and the rear section was a twisted piece of scrap metal. There must have been something wrong with the HVM warhead, he thought in a daze, or the crew hadn’t known how to fire it properly. How the hell had they even gotten their hands on it? HVMs were restricted for a reason. It had to have been smuggled in from offworld.

It was hard to unstrap himself and stumble to his feet, but he had no choice. His hand shook as he checked his pistol, then grabbed the kit of emergency supplies and threw it over his shoulder. His uniform was torn on several places, his blood staining the outfit … he checked himself quickly, looking for serious wounds, and breathed a sigh of relief when it became clear he was relatively intact. The enemy would have seen his shuttle go down, would want to confirm he was dead and the shuttle beyond all hope of repair … Leo glanced at the wrecked rear and shuddered. There was no way any engineer could put the pieces back together, no matter how much time they had. It would be cheaper to build a new shuttle from scratch …

Move, he told himself. The enemy will be here shortly.

The hatch was a mangled ruin, but he had no trouble clambering through a gash in the hull and into the open air. The shuttle lay at the bottom of a slight incline, surrounded by fallen trees; Leo shuddered again, suddenly aware of just how lucky he’d been to survive. The air was cool and yet silent, painfully so. That wasn’t a good sign. He’d been through Escape and Evasion courses during his time at the academy and his tutors had pointed out that silent surroundings meant something was disturbing the animals, possibly enemy searchers. Or possibly a crashed shuttle. His lips twitched as he looked east – a large plume of black smoke was drifting into the sky – and then west. The pass wasn’t visible. He wasn’t sure which side of the motorway he was on.

He rubbed his forehead and forced himself to walk west, away from the crash. It was a miracle the enemy troops weren’t already on top of him. There was an emergency beacon in the kit, he knew, but activating it would only draw the enemy to his position. He heard the sound of distant gunshots and wondered, numbly, what was happening. The general had said something about infantry holding the forest. Perhaps they were shooting at the enemy.

The trees closed in around him, his visibility dropping sharply. Leo had never been a great outdoorsman and he found it hard to pick his way through a tangled mass of trees, roots, and smaller plants that seemed to be woven through the foliage. The light faded sharply as he moved deeper into the forest, the canopy overhead blocking the sunlight. The ground became rougher, puddles of water or mud contrasting oddly with patches of bone-dry land. He felt a twinge of sympathy for the soldiers of both sides, turning the woods into their private battleground. It was not something he would do for a living.

I’m a spacer, not a soldier, he thought, sourly. I’m a fucking liability down here.

His legs ached as he pressed onwards. The forest had looked small on the map, but on a human scale it was massive. It was hard to get lost in interplanetary space – most spacers learnt how to check their location during basic training, yet rarely needed the skill – but on a planetary surface it was terrifyingly easy. He’d known, intellectually, that a planet was more than just an icon on a starchart … he kicked himself, mentally. Daybreak was the hub of an interstellar union that stretched for thousands of light years. It was hard to wrap his head around the different kingdoms on Boulogne, but … on a planetary scale, they made sense. They were much bigger than they seemed on the map.

He heard a helicopter clattering through the air and cursed under his breath. What sort of sensors did it have? There were some that could pick out a living man wearing anything short of a sniper camouflage outfit and others that could be fooled by a dive into the nearest mud bath. Or so he’d been told. He knew how to conceal his presence in interstellar space, how to step down his drive and hide in the inky darkness, but here …? He couldn’t even tell how close the searchers were to his position. They could be right on top of him, hovering above the canopy. If they were that close, he was likely fucked anyway. They couldn’t have passed so close by coincidence,

The sound came and went, echoing oddly through the trees. Leo gritted his teeth, unsure what to do. He could hunker down and wait, but he wasn’t that far from the crash … it crossed his mind, just for a second, that he might have gotten turned around, that he might be walking in circles or heading back to the ruined shuttle. The noise seemed to grow louder … he heard a sound that might have been a shot and scowled, although the bullet didn’t seem to come anywhere near him. He wasn’t the only person trying to flee west. The searchers might have caught someone else instead.

And if they think that person is me, they’ll call off the search, he thought. If.

He took a ration bar from the kit and ate it quickly, then forced himself to resume the walk towards the mountains. There weren’t many ways through the range that didn’t involve passing under the guns of the fort, he recalled, but he might be able to find a way through or spot the fort and walk there. It wasn’t much, yet … he couldn’t think of anything else. The beacon would get him killed. So would the flare. His body ached as he kept walking, wishing he could be sure he was truly walking in the right direction. For all he knew, he was about to walk right into the river.

The forest seemed to hum around him, the sound of countless small animals and insects blurring together into a surprisingly loud noise. Leo had always thought the forest would be quiet, but birds were singing as they flew through the trees and small rodents were squeaking as they scurried through the undergrowth. He told himself to keep listening as he walked, that anything that silenced the noise was almost certainly trouble, but as the wind shifted, blowing the scent of the forest into his nostrils, it was hard to keep from relaxing. It was almost hypnotic.

He gritted his teeth. The drug was wearing off. He would need to rest shortly afterwards … he didn’t know how long he could keep going, but it wouldn’t be that long. His body would take the rest it needed, even if his mind wanted to keep going. He found himself looking around for a place to rest, unsure where was safe to lay his head. The forest might have lions and tigers and bears … the briefing hadn’t mentioned bigger animals, but there could easily be wolves or wild boar or something else big enough to eat him. Or poisonous snakes. Hell, a rodent bite could be lethal if it got infected …

Something crashed through the undergrowth, something too large to be a rodent. Leo drew his pistol and turned, seeking cover as he spotted a shape within the foliage. The animal burst into view, a four-legged beast … it took him a second to recognise it as a deer, something he’d never seen outside cartoon holovids. He could eat it … could he? He didn’t know how to butcher an animal. His survival training had focused on remaining alive in deep space, not surviving the surface of a planet. His blood ran cold. Was the beast safe to eat? Was anything? He had no idea which plants and animals were safe for human consumption, which would make him very sick if he ate them. If he got it wrong … he’d die, miles from help and light years from home.

He tensed as he realised his mistake. The deer had been driven west by something else … he tensed as he spotted something else moving within the foliage, something humanoid. Leo knelt down, seeking additional cover, as the hunting party came closer. They’d disturbed the deer, but they hadn’t made any attempt to shoot it. They were hunting him, not a deer. He gritted his teeth as the team stepped into view, weapons at the ready. They were far too close for his peace of mind, moving so quietly he couldn’t hear them even in the sudden silence. His grip tightened on his pistol. He knew he wouldn’t be taken alive.

Not friendlies, he thought, numbly. Their camouflage uniforms carried no markings, but they couldn’t be friendly. There were no friendly forces east of the mountains. Leo had heard a number of men had vanished instead of making their way west. Killed? Captured? Deserted? Leo hoped it was the latter. He could hardly blame the average local soldier for not wanting to die for a prince’s claim to power. If they see me …

Sweat prickled on his back. The enemy were too close. How the hell had they even found him? Perhaps they were skilled woodsmen and trackers … Leo might have been leaving a trail they could follow. He wasn’t dressed for the forest either. His shipsuit was designed to stand out and …

A voice barked a command. Leo lifted his gun and fired twice, silently relieved he’d kept practicing. The first man tumbled to the ground, the second staggered … Leo darted back, crawling away as a volley of bullets crashed through the foliage. There had to be more enemies in the rear, he noted, although it was hard to be sure. The holovids made it look as through the good guys had perfect vision and aim, even in the darkest of places, while the bad guys couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. Leo cursed the scriptwriters under his breath as he crawled faster, hearing someone coming up behind him. He aimed behind him and fired a random shot to discourage pursuit, hoping it would buy him a few extra moments. There was little hope of hitting someone, but …

He cursed as his body wavered, the drug wearing off at the worst possible time. He needed to sleep and eat, perhaps not in that order. The medics were supposed to take care of the patient as he came off the drugs … he gritted his teeth, fighting a sudden wave of nausea that threatened to overcome him. He didn’t have time. He’d killed one man and wounded another, but there was at least one more coming after him and probably more. The sound from behind him grew louder. The enemy was picking up speed.

At least three more men, he thought. Perhaps …

A man landed on him, hard. Leo grunted in pain, the pistol flying as his attacker slammed his body into the ground. The weight made it hard to breathe, hard to move … he threw his head back as hard as he could, feeling a flicker of satisfaction as he felt his enemy’s nose break under the impact, only to have his head pressed down again. It was hard to focus, hard to fight … it crossed his mind that he was about to die, on a planet he hadn’t known existed a few short months ago. His attacker muttered something in a language Leo didn’t understand, then pulled his hands behind his back and secured them with a plastic tie. Leo tested it as subtly as he could and found it unbreakable.

“Stay down,” his attacker ordered, in badly-accented English. The universal language was a great deal less universal along the Rim, where planets had lost touch with the rest of the human race for decades, if not centuries. “Don’t move.”

Leo gritted his teeth as his attacker rested one knee on his back, to keep him pinned down, and frisked him quickly and brutally. Two more appeared, one snarling a comment in the local language that didn’t sound remotely friendly, a second ordering the first to mind his tongue. Leo wondered if they were going to kill him or if they had something else in mind, something worse. He didn’t know much King Louis would consider useful – if he didn’t have spies in the west, Leo would be astonished – but it was hard to say what he knew that might provide his enemy with a missing piece of the puzzle. Or the rebels …

Shit. Leo hadn’t thought of that possibility. Someone had given King Louis the HVM … and he could name at least one rebel who wanted him dead or alive. They might trade me to Gayle, if she is still alive.

Strong arms grabbed Leo and hoisted him to his feet. Leo staggered on wobbly legs, trying to make his weakness look worse than it was. The ground seemed to shift beneath him as he looked around, making out three uniformed men in front of him and two more behind them, one speaking into a radio in hushed tones. Leo guessed they were reporting success and calling in a helicopter to get him out, or … he tried to listen, to pick out words. In hindsight, he should have spent more time studying the local tongue. He didn’t know anything like enough to get by. Or ask why his aunt’s pen was in the garden.

The leader stepped forward. “Who are you?”

Leo hesitated. Standard protocols were to give nothing more than name, rank and serial number, but the academy had made it clear anyone who took him prisoner was unlikely to be satisfied with so little. They knew Daybreak wouldn’t show them any mercy …

He forced himself to shape the words, feeling that even admitting his name was a defeat. “Leo Morningstar, Lieutenant-Commander …”

The leader slapped him, hard. Leo tasted blood in his mouth and gritted his teeth in pain. They were going to kill him and … he gritted his teeth. They didn’t need torture to make him talk. There was no shortage of drugs that could be used to extract information from unwilling donors. He wondered if they were trying to soften him up, or simply hurt him before killing him … it didn’t matter. He’d reached the end of the line.

There was a brief debate between the men, their words coming so quickly Leo couldn’t understand them. He staggered and nearly collapsed. He would have fallen completely if one of his captors hadn’t been holding him upright. The plastic tie was cutting into his hands … he tried to speak, but the combination of throbbing pain and the aftermath of the drug made it hard to focus his mind. It was the end.

Francis will laugh his arse off, when he hears what happened to me, Leo thought, numbly. No doubt Francis would try to take the credit, once he knew Leo was safety dead. He might even make a big song and dance about offering patronage to Leo’s children, secure in the knowledge he would never have to make good on his promise. Leo had no children. He had never thought to have his contraceptive implant removed. Fuck it.

He closed his eyes, feeling his legs wobble. His plans for a stellar career had come to an end, in a nameless wood on a world unknown outside the sector, and none of his dreams would ever come true. He had achieved so much and … his captor collapsed, his weight pulling Leo down too. He only registered the gunshot a moment later, the sound drowned out by a dozen more. His awareness faded as more men appeared, running forward to overwhelm his captors …

“Captain?” Boothroyd sounded nervous. Leo stared up at him, unable to form a coherent thought. It was Boothroyd … he simply couldn’t think clearly. He was safe now. He didn’t need to remain alert. “Are you alright?”

Leo stared at him, then giggled. He wasn’t sure what he was laughing at … a memory crossed his mind, of experimenting with a semi-licit sniffer when he’d been fifteen and laughing hysterically at everything, no matter how unfunny. His mother had been pissed. She’d blistered his naked backside with a hairbrush and that had been funny too, until the sniffer wore off and he’d realised just what kind of an ass he’d made of himself. It hadn’t been the spanking, or the humiliation, or the mockery from his siblings. It had been losing control of himself so completely that he had had no awareness, no understanding, no common sense. He’d never touched a sniffer again.

He tried to say something, but nothing came to mind. The world wavered around him, Boothroyd’s eyes going wide with alarm. Leo was too dazed to care. Boothroyd could handle everything. He was good at that. Leo closed his eyes. Everything just …

Went away.

 

It just keeps getting better and better with each passing day!

 

Thank you very much. I am enjoying the story and its twists and turns.

 

Chapter Twenty-Eight

“If you feel the urge to do something,” a voice was saying, “make sure you do all the work.”

Leo gritted his teeth as he opened his eyes. The light was too bright, stabbing daggers of pain into his eyeballs and deep into his skull. His memories were confused … had he been taken prisoner? His body ached painfully as he tried to turn away from the light, his vision sharpening rapidly. He was lying on a hard mattress, staring up into the light …

“Thank you, Doctor,” Ruth said. Her tone dripped honey and acid. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Ruth?” Leo had to concentrate to speak properly. “Is that you?”

“None other.” Ruth’s voice was as flat as ever, but he thought he heard relief buried within the tone. “We got you back safely.”

Leo’s vision sharpened. Ruth was bending over him, wearing a military jacket that looked oddly fitting on her. A doctor stood behind her, holding a simple medical scanner in one hand and something that looked like an instrument of torture in the other. His face was old and rugged in a manner rare on Daybreak, at least amongst those who didn’t wish to turn age and gravitas into a statement. He stepped forward, looking Leo up and down. His accent, when he spoke, was very local.

“I’ve flushed the rest of the drugs from your bloodstream and checked you for wounds,” he said, curtly. “You should rest and eat, for the moment, but …”

He shrugged expressively as Leo forced himself to sit up. His body felt weak, as if he were recovering from a fever, but everything appeared to be working properly. The doctor passed him a ration pack, watching carefully as Leo opened the tube and put the straw to his mouth. The emergency ration mixture – Leo had no idea what went into it and didn’t care to know – tasted like sludge, as if the cook had blended a meal into soup in hopes of speeding up the eating process. Or convincing children the food didn’t include broccoli, peas, or anything else the poor kids didn’t like to eat. Leo suspected there was more than just vegetables in the glop. Most ration packs included low-level stimulants to keep their drinker going.

“You’re in good shape,” the doctor said. He passed Leo a glass of water and kept talking. “You should be fine, after a night’s rest, but if you feel dizzy or anything let me know at once. I’m not familiar with modern combat stimulants and their effects can be dangerously unpredictable.”

“Understood.” Leo sipped the water, then looked at Ruth. “What happened?”

“They caught up to you after the crash,” Ruth said. “Luckily, the troops in the fort tracked your … landing … and sent a team after you. The enemy were shot or taken prisoner and you were freed.”

“A very concise summary,” Leo said. His tangled mind produced a question. “Why didn’t you join the military?”

Ruth looked surprised, then mildly offended. “I’m not good at taking orders.”

Ask a stupid question, Leo thought, annoyed at himself. He wasn’t sure where the question had come from in the first place. Ruth’s summery was very good, by military standards. She had told him everything he needed to know, while ensuring he could ask more questions if he thought he required more information. He’d met officers a great deal more long-winded, even when the missiles were flying. And she obviously doesn’t want to talk about it.

He puzzled over the problem as he forced himself to stand. There had always been a social gulf on Daybreak between those who did their planetary service and earned the right to be called citizens, and those who declined the chance to serve and remained merely civilians. The latter had almost the same rights as the former, but they lacked the right to vote or run for office or serve on juries … and there was a nasty little sense they didn’t have the courage or determination to serve. It was easy to look down on a coward, yet Ruth was clearly no coward. She had put herself into very real danger, just for a good story. It made no sense.

“I see you’re not going to stay still,” the doctor said, breaking into his thoughts. “You Daybreakers never do, do you?”

“No,” Leo agreed. He’d never been very good at lying on his back and doing nothing. “Thank you for your care, but I need to report in.”

“Ramjet is in the Tomb,” Ruth put in. “I’m sure he’ll listen to your report and then send you back to bed.”

Leo blinked, then recalled Boothroyd’s first name. “The Tomb?”

“You’ll see.” Ruth stayed beside him as they walked to the door. “This place is old.”

Le looked around, thoughtfully. The infirmary was brightly lit, but there was something oddly temporary about the arrangements. Everything, from the beds and chairs to the medical equipments and lighting, was clearly designed to be folded up and carried away in a hurry. A handful of power cells were pressed against one wall, cables letting the power flow from the cells to the medical devices. He could hear an air filter labouring in the distance, but the atmosphere still felt oddly stale. The lights were designed to kill germs, if he recalled his emergency medical procedures correctly, but the chamber didn’t give the impression of being sterile. It probably hadn’t been designed from scratch, suggesting that any real causalities would be shipped west as soon as possible. Leo didn’t like their chances. If there were any stasis tubes in the chamber, he couldn’t see them.

The impression of age only grew worse as they stepped through the door. The air was heavier, tasting of dust and a sickly-sour stench that suggested there was a dead rat or two in the air ducts. It didn’t look as if the ducts were large enough to take a man … he guessed there were cleaning robots assigned to the fort, if the designers had realised it was a possibility. It wouldn’t be the first time some designer had overlooked something that would be blindingly obvious to someone who had spent time in the field. Keeping the ducts small made sense on paper, but there was no way to evade the consequences. He wondered if he’d be staying at the fort long enough to make a few improvements.

He scowled as a thought struck him. “How long was I out?”

“Around twelve hours, give or take,” Ruth said. “The doctor wanted to make sure your bloodstream was clear, before he tried waking you. He’s a reservist and he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing.”

“Ouch.” Leo tried not to grimace. “So he said.”

The air grew thicker, somehow, as they made their way through a series of corridors that looked to have been hewn from the mountain rock. Ruth kept up a running commentary, pointing out the barracks, the armoury and a handful of other important locations. Leo couldn’t help thinking the barracks looked even more cramped than a midshipman’s compartment, the latter small and claustrophobic even if the junior officer somehow got a compartment all to himself. Had anyone ever been so lucky? Leo couldn’t recall, but he doubted it. He might be the only naval officer who had never spent a day as a junior midshipman. Even Francis had spent time below decks.

A pair of guards barred their way as they reached a solid metal hatch. They looked them up and down – Leo noted they didn’t get distracted by Ruth’s femininity, a good sign – and then tapped a command into a datapad. There was a long pause, then the hatch hissed open. Two more guards waited on the far side, beckoning them to enter. Leo stepped inside, Ruth following. The hatch hissed closed behind them, a dull thud echoing through the air as it slammed shut. Leo felt trapped, despite spending much of his career on starships. But then, starships weren’t buried under thousands upon thousands of tons of rock.

The Tomb – Leo could see how the command centre had gotten that name – looked dark and ominous, despite the portable terminals resting on tables. A trio of operators sat in front of their terminals, speaking quietly into headsets and listening to the replies. The terminals were modern, he noted, but the consoles piled against the far walls – dark and cold – looked ancient. A large map rested on the centre table, paper rather than holographic. Leo would have laughed – it looked like a giant gameboard – if the situation hadn’t been so serious. It was hard to be sure, but it looked as if the enemy forces were advancing towards the fort.

“Captain,” Boothroyd said. He stood, removing his headset in one smooth motion. “Did the doctor clear you for duty?”

“He didn’t try to stop me leaving his care,” Leo said. It was technically accurate, if Boothroyd didn’t ask too many questions. Sorting out just who was in charge would be a legalistic nightmare, if he felt inclined to bother. “Situation report?”

Boothroyd looked at Ruth, then shrugged. “You took out the bridges,” he said, “and won us a few more hours. Unfortunately, the enemy has brought up pontoon bridges and is currently advancing towards our location. They’ve also surrounded the bridges with better antiaircraft weapons and sensors, ensuring we can’t launch a second bombing raid. We’re keeping our lone surviving shuttle back for emergencies.”

“They have modern weapons,” Leo said. “They shot me down with a modern HVM.”

“I saw.” Boothroyd looked grim. “They might have captured it during the raid on the base or …”

“They got it from offworld,” Leo finished. “Is there any sign of orbital activity?”

“Not as far as we can tell, but the remaining satellites aren’t designed for monitoring the high orbitals,” Boothroyd said. His face darkened. “The entry station remains intact, sir, but the enemy appears to have uploaded a viral agent into the station’s datacores. They’ll need to be purged before we retake control.”

“So get the shuttle up there and do it,” Leo said, waspishly. “Or …”

Boothroyd gave him a sharp look. “We don’t have the technicians on hand to effect a repair,” he said, dryly. He didn’t quite say I thought of that already but the implication was there. “And even if we do launch the shuttle, it might be shot down by whatever took out the weapons platform.”

Leo flushed. The original calculus still held true. The strongest possible evidence a rebel ship wasn’t holding position overhead was negative, the lack of any kinetic bombardment that would have won the war for the rebels very quickly. That suggested that whatever had killed the orbital platform was ground-based, although the platform should have been able to spot anything capable of hitting it and taking countermeasures. Perhaps the whole thing had been set up without a single betraying emission, the ground-based phaser or whatever concealed under a tarpaulin and aimed using paper calculations or passive sensors. It wasn’t impossible. The enemy knew the value of hiding their assets until the time came to deploy them.

“Understood.” He shook his head. “What’s the prognosis?”

“They’re moving light infantry and artillery over the bridges now,” Boothroyd said, “and they’ve secured the approach roads leading to the pass. My best-case estimate is that we’ll be attacked shortly, sir, and it won’t take them long to get a foothold. We can slow them down for a few hours, maybe a day, but not much longer.”

Leo swallowed. “There’s nothing we can do about it?”

“Not unless Waterhen gets back,” Boothroyd said. He tapped the map. “I have teams deployed to the west, tearing up bridges and setting traps … planning ambushes, even, for the moment they break through the pass. Things will get a great deal worse if they have modern weapons, sir. The rock will hold up to local gunfire, at least for a while, but a modern bunker-buster will wipe us out.”

Leo grimaced. “Shit.”

“I have plans to get everyone out, when the time comes,” Boothroyd added. “There’s no point in a futile last stand.”

Leo looked at the map. “Will they try to flank us?”

“I’m sure they will,” Boothroyd told him. “They can get infantry over the mountains, if they try. We have antiaircraft weapons ourselves, on the far side, but … coverage is shitty. I suspect they’re probing our defences already, trying to pick out weak spots they can widen and land troops behind our lines.”

Ruth snorted. “Can’t they simply climb over the mountains?”

“It’s possible,” Boothroyd said. “Some locals say it can’t be done, not in great numbers. Others think they could get a few companies across, if they try. I’ve got observers in place to watch for possible raids, but” – he smiled, rather dryly – “it isn’t like trying to hide in an asteroid field.”

Leo had to smile. There weren’t many asteroid fields that actually provided concealment to fleeing starships, not outside the holovids. Shutting down one’s drives and pretending to be a hole in space was far more effective, particularly if the enemy didn’t dare risk using active sensors. The naked eye was useless in interstellar space. But that wasn’t true on the surface. He recalled the forest and shuddered. The hunters had been very close to him and he hadn’t had a clue until it was far too late.

A thought struck him. “Did the prisoners have anything useful to say?”

“They gave us name, rank, and serial number,” Boothroyd said. “We haven’t bothered with a more intense interrogation. I’d be surprised if they knew anything of value, certainly nothing worth breaking the protocols. They’re very junior troops and their commanders would expect them to be forced to talk, if they fell into enemy hands.”

“Charming,” Ruth said. “What are you going to do with them?”

“Send them back to the POW camps, I think,” Boothroyd said. “I doubt we’ll have time to do a prisoner exchange.”

Leo nodded, coldly. “What can I do to help?”

“We need people on the fire control stations,” Boothroyd said. “Like I said, we’re not going to be able to hold the fort for long. But the more we slow them down, the greater the chance we’ll be able to build proper lines further west.”

“And get everyone else organised,” Ruth said. “You seem to be assuming help will arrive in time.”

Boothroyd met her eyes. “The average local citizen doesn’t really care who rules over him,” he said, bluntly. “So far, King Louis appears to have avoided the sort of atrocities that will unite everyone or promote desperate resistance. There’s also a shortage of weapons in private hands, which means it’ll take time to get resistance organised even if we can find volunteers. Enemy broadcasts insist a number of aristos have switched sides, which may or may not be true but is weakening their resolve to carry on. I don’t think we can put together the kind of defence that will stop them, let alone the military power to take the offensive. If we try, it will shorten the war.”

“And not in a good way,” Leo added.

Boothroyd nodded. “Frankly, if we were dealing with reasonable opponents, I’d advise you to surrender. But we’re not.”

“Yeah.” Leo scowled as a thought occurred to him. “How long until someone sells us out?”

“If you think no one is trying, I have some land to sell you,” Boothroyd said. “It’s about fifty miles east of Florida.”

Leo snorted. Land on Earth was ridiculously expensive, or so he’d heard. Humanity’s homeworld was still a net exporter of people, using draconic measures to reduce the population as much as possible … the odds of a Sergeant-Major owning land on Earth were about as low as Leo being promoted to Fleet Admiral the moment he entered the academy. Lower, perhaps.

Boothroyd shrugged. “Prince Charles won’t last the war and he knows it,” he said. “But everyone else will think they can make a deal, if …”

He shrugged again, then looked at Ruth. “Take him to the barracks and make sure he gets some sleep,” he ordered. “And that does include sleep.”

Leo felt his face heat. Ruth showed no reaction. “Of course, sir,” she said, with a sweetness that was so over the top there was no way it could be real. “Would you like me to tuck him into bed with a hot water bottle and a mug of hot chocolate too?”

“I can go to the guns now,” Leo said. “I spent the last few hours asleep …”

“Take it now,” Boothroyd advised. “You don’t know when you’ll be able to sleep again. If they hold off for a day or two, I’ll be astonished.”

Leo nodded. “Wake me up when the time comes.”

He allowed Ruth to lead him back out of the Tomb and down to the barracks. His earlier impression had been right, he noted, only worse. There were dozens of bunks crammed into the barracks, so many it was hard to see how they could all be filled without real problems, but only a couple were set up for use. The rest were as dusty as the rest of the interior.

“They wouldn’t let me bed down with the men,” Ruth said, as she closed the door behind them. “Charming.”

Leo grinned at her annoyance. “Do you really want to bed down with a bunch of strange men?”

“I’ve been in worse places,” Ruth said. “How did you cope, at the academy?”

“You’re not allowed to fuck your bunkmates,” Leo said. The academy had strict rules about cadets having sex with other cadets and breaking them was a serious offense. Even Francis hadn’t taken the risk. It was safer to visit a brothel or use a VR sim, if you had the energy after training from morning till night. “It’s strictly forbidden.”

Ruth snickered. “I guess we won’t be fucking either,” she said, her lips curving into a brief smile that transformed her face. “What a pity.”

“Disastrous,” Leo agreed.

 

Chapter Twenty-Nine

When Leo had been a child, there had been a brief crazy for retro computer games that had been played on consoles and televisions rather than datapads, terminals or VR headsets. The games had come with joysticks, joypads and various other tools that had looked cheap and nasty, the graphics a strange mixture of crude and cartoonish, but he had to admit he’d enjoyed playing some of the games even though they weren’t particularly realistic. The gunnery console in front of him reminded him of a tank simulator he’d played that, he’d been told later, had been incredibly misleading. A crude targeting system, a battery of mid-range guns linked to automated loaders and ammunition dumps … guided by a joystick and a combination of radars and cameras. It was primitive. He just hoped it would be effective.

“The system is supposed to be automated,” the gunner explained, showing him the control systems. “However, we have crews ready to load the guns if something happens to the automated system.”

Leo winced. There had been no time to read the manual, but one thing was clear. The system was flimsy, with no self-monitoring capabilities, and there was no way to be entirely sure it would work as designed without breaking down. Boothroyd had had crews inspecting the guns from the moment the fort was reopened until now, but there had been no time to be certain they hadn’t missed something. A spacecraft could be placed into cold storage for years, if necessary, while a fort needed constant maintenance. There was no way to be sure the shells would detonate when they hit the target, although Leo was less worried about that. They’d upset the enemy even if they didn’t explode.

“If a shell does get into the gunnery chamber, the system will be wrecked,” the gunner continued, grimly. “If the worst happens …”

“I read the briefing notes,” Leo said. On paper, a direct hit shouldn’t set off a chain of explosions that would destroy the entire fortress, but it was impossible to be sure. The weapons storage depot was buried deep below the surface, and the shells were passed through a set of trap doors that should confine any explosion and prevent a chain reaction, yet the slightest flaw in the system could lead straight to disaster. “If that happens, get out and seal the complex.”

“If you have time,” the gunner said. “Good luck, sir.”

He patted Leo on the shoulder, then left him alone. Leo wished Ruth had joined him – or someone, anyone, else – but there were too many things to do and not enough men. The military authorities seemed reluctant to risk sending too many trained men to the fort and Leo could hardly blame them, even though it was a major nuisance. If they’d had time to prepare for an all-out war, things would have been different. Leo couldn’t help feeling a twinge of guilt as he turned his attention to the console. Daybreak was supposed to prevent war amongst the stars, to settle disputes through negotiation or force, but they’d failed here. No matter what happened, when the fleet arrived, the planet would never be the same. And who knew who might be watching, from a distance, to see how Daybreak reacted to the crisis?

The thought nagged at his mind as he worked the console. It was slow and creaky compared to the tactical display on Waterhen, and a great deal older than Leo’s first command, and it took some time for him to get used to how the guns and cameras traversed the combat zone. The enemy had some remarkably good antiaircraft systems, he knew from painful experience, and they had shot down the first two drones Boothroyd had launched. He hadn’t bothered to risk any more, which meant the fort was dangerously blind. Leo wished, again, for a starship or two. He’d even welcome Francis, if he arrived in time to stomp the enemy and save the day.

And then he’ll get a medal for an effortless victory, Leo thought sourly, while everyone on the surface will be …

The intercom crackled. “Attention, all gunners,” a voice said. It should have been Boothroyd, but the sound was so garbled it was hard to be sure. “We have movement all along the front. Engage on sight. I say again, engage on sight.”

Leo tensed, feeling oddly disconnected from the activity as he disengaged the safeties and moved his guns forward. It was hard to remember, sometimes, that the icons on the display were actual starships with living crews, but here … it really did feel like a game, one where there was nothing more at stake than a high score. The handful of enemy vehicles, lurching up and out of the forest, were just targets. He took aim, wondering why the enemy had shown themselves so openly, and keyed the trigger. A dull rumble ran through the fort as the guns opened fire, shells raining down on the enemy vehicles. Their accuracy was terrible, almost non-existent, but there were so many shells that the enemy didn’t stand a chance. Their vehicles exploded, men running for cover only to be caught in the explosions and sent tumbling to the ground. Leo sucked in his breath sharply. He’d seen horrors before, but this …

There was no time to think as the enemy guns opened fire, starting a long-range duel with the fort’s defenders. Leo felt the fort shake as the shells crashed down … the gunports were small, compared to the mountain, but a single direct hit would take out a gun even if it didn’t set up a chain reaction. The intercom buzzed, barking orders at the heavy gunners to target the enemy guns. Leo felt his world shrink as more targets came into view, the enemy troops trying to advance under cover. Leo admired their nerve, even as cheap and nasty rockets rose up and rained down on the fort. They were too light to do any real damage to the mountain itself, but a handful of cameras died … he had to admit it was a sensible tactic. It cost them little and it would likely gain them much.

The intercom crackled again. Leo fired a second salvo, targeted on a handful of enemy vehicles that slipped out of the forest and opened fire. Dull thumps ran through the fort, the vehicles dying seconds later … his eyes narrowed as he realised some of the shells had exploded well short of their targets. He fired a third salvo and cursed under his breath as he spotted the shells explode in midair. Someone had set up a point defence network and configured it to deal with ballistic threats … clever, he noted, and not something that would have occurred to him. But then, he'd never been on the receiving end of a barrage of KEWs. The shells were nowhere near as tough. He had to admit it was working, as he depressed his guns and fired yet another salvo. The enemy were pushing forward …

He gritted his teeth as the enemy bombardment intensified. It was bad enough on a starship, but here … he had the impression, despite what he’d been told about the rocky armour, that it would be very easy for them to batter the fort into submission. The roof might cave in on them at any moment … he winced as something shook the fort again, the shockwaves vibrating the entire structure. How long would it be, he asked himself, before the shaking destroyed something important? The automated system that lifted shells to the guns was supposed to be tough, but there were limits. Hell, how long until they ran out of ammunition? They were firing shells, not plasma pulses. There had to be a limit.

The battle raged on, the enemy shooting and sniping as they tried to close the range. Leo lost track of time, unsure if he’d been fighting for hours or days or even just minutes. He couldn’t tell what the enemy were doing, couldn’t see how they could take such losses without turning their guns on their commanders … he felt parched, unwilling to turn away from his console for even a moment without someone in place to take over. There just weren’t enough people on the team for him to take the risk. If things had been normal, he wouldn’t have been manning the guns …

The intercom crackled again. “Enemy aircraft approaching, bearing …”

Leo braced himself. His guns weren’t designed to fire on aircraft, but … he switched to rapid fire, hoping the enemy would deactivate their point defence if their aircraft were flying through the combat zone. He had the satisfaction of seeing a handful of enemy vehicles explode, a moment before his screen went white. He cursed and switched through the network of other cameras, drawing a blank. A second later, a series of explosions shook the fort. They felt a great deal closer.

“Attention, all personnel,” the intercom said. “Situation Gamma is now in effect. I say again, Situation Gamma is now in effect. Switch your weapons to automatic and report to the vehicle bay. I say again …”

Leo tapped his console. He had no idea if his guns still existed, or if they had ammunition left after the interior explosions, but it was worth a try. There hadn’t been much time to come up with contingency plans, not when the enemy was pressing against them, yet … Situation Gamma meant the fort was lost, that it was time to get the hell out while they still could. He stood, glanced around the compartment to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind, then turned and ran through the door. There was no point in trying to destroy anything. The gear was outdated, of very little use to anyone. Probably.

The main power was down, he noted coldly. The lights were dim, the air conditioning silent. A flash of déjà vu ran through him and he checked his pistol, wondering if they’d have to fight their way out again. There were no shuttle this time … his heart twisted, painfully, as he caught himself an instant before he opened the elevator. It made sense normally, but with the complex heavily damaged and running on battery power there was no guarantee the elevator would even work. To be captured again because he’d been stuck in an elevator would be supremely humiliating. He grinned at the thought and ran onwards. The stairs leading down to the vehicle bay felt deserted. Had he left it too long? Was he alone?

The racket greeted him as he reached the bottom of the stairs. A pair of MPs were urging the men into IFVs, while a small team were opening the heavy doors. Leo hoped the enemy hadn’t managed to get troops over the mountain as feared, let alone get them into position to intercept any runaways. The fort had held out for … he checked his wristcom and cursed under his breath. Two hours. It had felt much longer. He hoped it would be long enough.

“Get in, sir,” Boothroyd said. Ruth was right behind him, her face pale. One hand clutched a datapad … Leo hoped the censors didn’t have a chance to take a look at it. The data was probably outdated and useless, but the censors weren’t known for applying common sense. “We need to move.”

The IFV was smaller than a shuttle, and the sheer number of people crammed into the tiny space made it feel even smaller. Leo gritted his teeth as the vehicle lurched into life, wishing he could see outside as the IFV plunged into the tunnel and headed down to the open air. The exit was supposed to be concealed, but Leo wouldn’t care to bet against the enemy knowing precisely where it was. Daybreak had forced the planetary governments to give up most of their secrets and they might have fallen into enemy hands. It was clear, in hindsight, that King Louis had had spies in Daybreak’s installations.

He looked at Boothroyd. “What hit us?”

“Liquid fire,” Boothroyd said, curtly. “Probably some kind of modified fuel-air explosive … designed to burn at a very high temperature rather than explode. It melted pretty much everything save for the rock itself.”

And got into the air vents and triggered a chain reaction, Leo thought, grimly. The defenders had had only a few hours to put together a plan. The attackers had had weeks to plan precisely how they were going to take the fort. Shit.

The vehicle lurched, violently. “Who farted?”

Boothroyd glowered at the speaker, an officer who looked younger than Leo … so young, on a planet that lacked rejuvenation treatments, that Leo couldn’t help wondering if the young man had lied about his age. Navel cadets started at sixteen, but they were rarely sent into combat until they graduated … Leo could only think of one example where a young cadet had been forced to engage the enemy and that had been during a terrorist attack, in the middle of a training mission. Technically, the cadet shouldn’t have been there at all.

The vehicle lurched again. Leo gritted his teeth, unsure where they were. There were no windows and the hatches were firmly closed … something rattled against the armour, something loud and hard … it took him a second to realise they were gunshots. They were under attack … the armour looked solid, but even a primitive antitank weapon would be enough to destroy the IFV. There were plenty of RPGs around … he dared not assume some hadn’t been sent west. For all he knew, there were entire teams of terrorists and insurgents behind the lines. There was no reason King Louis couldn’t have set them up …

The bastard was planning this for a very long time, Leo thought, numbly. The only way to stop him is to do something he hasn’t already anticipated and planned for.

He looked at Boothroyd, who appeared calm. Leo envied him. He knew he’d done well on Waterhen, when he’d been in command of the situation, but here … he felt helpless. He was utterly vulnerable, his survival depending on a driver he didn’t know and a sheet of armour that felt terrifyingly thin. He hadn’t felt so helpless in his entire life. A young man was praying silently and Leo was tempted to join him, to remind the Supreme Being whose side he was supposed to be on. But he’d always been raised to think God helped those who helped themselves.

The IFV lurched again, then came to a halt. The hatches banged open a moment later, the men scrambling for the open air. It smelled of smoke and fire, but it was still sweeter than the stench inside the vehicle. Leo jumped to the ground, helped Ruth down too, then looked east, towards the mountains. A giant plume of smoke was rising, above the pass. He hoped the pass was blocked. He feared it wasn’t. He could hear gunfire in the distance. The enemy were on the prowl.

Ruth joined him. “Where are we?”

“West of the mountains, in one of the fallback positions I ordered set up,” Boothroyd said, curtly. “You two will be going back to the spaceport as soon as I can arrange transport.”

Leo looked around. The camp was difficult to see, even at close range. A couple of buildings were barely visible, within the foliage … the rest were there, he was sure they were there, but he just couldn’t make them out. The IFV was already driving away, heading down the road, while the men were being hurried under cover. He hoped they’d have a chance to rest before the shit hit the fan again. The sound of gunfire was getting closer.

“The fort was supposed to last longer,” Ruth said. She sounded tired and drained by her brush with death. Leo didn’t blame her. “Was the fire that bad?”

“The explosions it set off were worse, but …” Boothroyd shrugged. “They knew too much about just where to target, so we may have been lucky. I triggered the self-destruct as we fled so there’ll be little left for them to recover.”

“Hopefully,” Leo agreed. The fort’s self-destruct system might have been damaged too. It could hardly have been tested until the appointed hour. “Did you manage to block the pass?”

“Unless we got very lucky, they’ll have little trouble clearing the way,” Boothroyd said. “I’ve ordered teams to get up and harass them, when they start breaking through, but it won’t be long before they’re free to move men and materials through the gap. We did plan accordingly, so …”

He shrugged, expressively. “We can bleed them. We will bleed them. And we will buy enough time for help to arrive.”

Leo frowned. “I can stay …”

“You’re not trained for this role,” Boothroyd told him. There was no give at all in his tone, no suggestion he could be talked out of his decision. Leo wanted to point out that he was the superior officer, but that would cut no ice in a combat zone. Boothroyd kept talking, his voice firm. “Get back to the spaceport, see what you can do there. Out here, you’re a liability.”

“I …” Leo wanted to argue. The thought of going back to safety while Boothroyd stayed on the front lines was unthinkable. Cold logic insisted Boothroyd was right, raw emotion demanded he stay. “Sergeant, I …”

“Someone has to keep an eye on the politicians,” Boothroyd pointed out. “And make sure they keep sending supplies east. We can’t afford to hold them, so we have to keep harassing them instead.”

Leo nodded, reluctantly, as the jeep arrived. “Are you sure …”

“Yeah.” Boothroyd clapped his shoulder. “And make sure you get lots of shooting practice. You’re doing to need it.”

“Yes, sir,” Leo said.

 

Chapter Thirty

If things had been different, Leo would have enjoyed the ride to the airport.

The landscape looked charming, so different from Marseilles or any city on Daybreak. Small towns and villages, the latter surrounded by tiny patches of farmland that seemed to blend into the surrounding countryside in a manner that made it very hard to tell where one ended and the other began. The roads were small and neat, half-concealed within the forest to the point Leo couldn’t help wondering if they’d fallen back in time to an idealised past that had never truly existed. It was charming, and yet the signs of war were everywhere. Some villages had been hastily abandoned, others were inhabited by nervous-looking civilians who kept their hands near their guns, as if they expected the enemy to jump out of the shadows at any moment. They might well be right, Leo noted grimly. King Louis had definitely sent men over the mountains to sow havoc in the rear.

He scowled as they neared the airport, the signs of war growing stronger. Hundreds of refugees were heading east, kept off the road by grim-faced policemen and MPs who were trying to clear the road for reinforcements. Mobile air defence units were scattered everywhere, sensors sweeping the air for incoming enemy targets; Leo gritted his teeth in dismay as he spotted a missile battery positioned right next to a sensor unit. The enemy would have no trouble locating the sensor and tossing a missile at it and the battery would almost certainly be caught within the blast. He was tempted to get out and explain the mistake before it was too late. But there was no time … they drove past a strongpoint, one he suspected wouldn’t hold the enemy any longer than it took to bring up aircraft and bomb the shit out of it, and straight into the airport. A small jet was sitting on the tarmac, waiting for them. The other passengers looked pale and nervous. Leo didn’t blame them. The plane was an obvious target and if it was attacked there’d be little hope of getting out before it was too late.

Ruth nudged him as they scrambled to their seat, the jet engines whining as the pilot steered the aircraft onto the runway. “You know anyone here?”

Leo looked, then shook his head. He’d been introduced to a few dozen people at various parties and gatherings, but none had seemed particularly important … or interested in him. He wasn’t the most important Daybreaker on the planet, and his power to give the locals anything they might happen to want was very limited. The faces meant nothing to him. He wasn’t sure if he’d missed a trick or not. If they were important.

“They’re the local gentry,” Ruth said, pitching her voice so low Leo could barely hear the words. “I guess they’re not confident the line will hold.”

Leo nodded, shortly. The gentry were probably right to be concerned. The fort had been lost in only a few short hours, which meant the enemy troops would already be flooding through the pass and into the western lands. Combined with a handful of enemy infiltrators in the rearm, running amok, it would be hard for anyone to establish a new defensive line in a hurry. King Louis would throw everything he had into the west, Leo reflected, as the aircraft shuddered and jerked its way into the sky. He had a time limit. If he hadn’t won the war by the time a starship arrived to ask some pointed questions, he was thoroughly screwed and he knew it. All the normal military observations about consolidating before resuming the advance and securing supply lines simply didn’t apply. Not here. If he won, he could pick up the pieces afterwards.

The aircraft shook violently as it headed west, the passengers gasping as if they thought an enemy missile had slammed into their hull. Leo knew perfectly well that a missile would vaporise the aircraft before they knew they were under attack, unless the enemy was using inferior warheads for some reason, but he couldn’t help feeling nervous too. It was different when he was flying the craft himself, his fate in his own hands. Here … he shook his head as the aircraft flew onwards, checking his pistol to give himself something to do. Ruth seemed to withdraw into herself, her eyes half-closed as she leaned back in her chair. It felt like hours before they finally came in to land at the spaceport, once again. Someone had clearly sorted out the security situation, Leo noted. The aircraft landed at the edge of the complex and the passengers were ordered to disembark under the watchful gaze of armed security officers. No one looked very pleased about it.

“But I’m the Marquis de St. Cyr,” one insisted. He was an overweight man in a scarlet outfit that would draw the eye of every sniper in the vicinity, his chest dripping with medals Leo didn’t recognise. “Take me to the Prince at once …”

The guard seemed unimpressed. “Remain here for security vetting,” he said. Leo couldn’t help noticing all heraldry and nametags had been removed, leaving the officers nicely anonymous. “If you leave without permission …”

“Commander Morningstar?” A young officer interrupted the discussion. “I have orders to escort you to the council chamber at once.”

Leo nodded, ignoring the rest of the argument. Dealing with imprudent local aristocrats had never been part of his training, if only because few local aristos would mouth off to a Daybreaker. He wondered if he should brush up on his training, then decided it probably didn’t matter. Francis had condemned him to spending years on the wretched world and … he rolled his eyes as the Marquis kept arguing, as if it would impress the guards. If there was any justice in the world, the idiot would be knocked down and sent to a penal unit before he could cause real trouble for everyone else. But he knew there was little real justice.

Unless you make it, Leo reminded himself. There has to be a way to win and get back into space.

He mulled the idea over as the officer escorted them to the terminal and down into the council chambers. Johnny Quick was still resting on the landing pad, a handful of engineers buzzing around the drive unit. That boded ill for the future, although Leo doubted they could fix the problem without a proper shipyard and engineering crew. Most spacers preferred not to risk repairing a jump drive, if it could be avoided. A thought crossed his mind and he frowned. Could it be done …

The security was far tighter now, he noted again, as they passed through a series of checkpoints. The guards checked everything from fingerprints to blood samples, then scanned their bodies and checked anything that looked suspicious. Leo didn’t really blame them, no matter how unpleasant it was. There were so many different units moving through the spaceport that it would be easy for someone to slip onto the base, bringing enough explosive with them to cause real damage. Suicide attacks weren’t King Louis’s style, Leo thought, but time really wasn’t on his side. He might be desperate enough to try.

All we have to do is hold out, Leo told himself.

The council had been moved to another chamber, superficially comfortable and yet heavy with the stench of fear. Prince Charles, Governor Soule and General Dentine were sitting around a table, studying a paper map. Leo couldn’t help thinking they were looking, but not really seeing. He saluted the governor and then nodded to the other two; Ruth, behind him, nodded curtly. Leo was surprised she’d been allowed to stay with him. That too boded ill for the future.

“Commander Morningstar,” General Dentine said. He sounded grim, the lines on the map suggesting the line was crumbling rapidly. “The fort was supposed to hold out for days. How was it lost so quickly?”

“Incompetence,” Prince Charles added, “or treason?”

Leo took a breath. The only person in his chain of command was the governor, who appeared to be watching and waiting instead of asserting her authority. Leo wondered, coldly, just how much authority she actually had. Her position was backed by Daybreak, true, but Daybreak was a long way away. There were only a couple of hundred Daybreakers on the planet at the moment, nowhere near enough to take control or even defend themselves until the fleet arrived. She was effectively powerless until Waterhen returned or Commodore Blackthrone dispatched reinforcements. And that meant …

“The enemy had clearly planned how to take the fort for quite some time,” Leo said, bluntly. “Their attack was carefully carried out to take advantage of the fort’s weaknesses, weaknesses that could not be covered without heavy reinforcements. I don’t believe that either incompetence or treason was involved.”

Prince Charles scowled at the governor. “You assured me your man knew what he was doing.”

“He does,” Leo said, stung. He’d recruited Boothroyd and the older man had more than proved his value. He was damned if he was turning on him just because of a single lost battle, one that had been little more than a holding action. “The war is far from lost.”

“I want my own man in command,” Prince Charles snapped. “If we can’t hold the line …”

“Understood,” Governor Soule said. “Commander Morningstar, you will recall your man at once. The prince will assign someone to take his place.”

Leo gritted his teeth. “With all due respect …”

“You will carry out my orders, or be relieved,” Governor Soule said. Her tone was dull, as if she were just going through the motions. Leo couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “See to it at once.”

“Yes, Governor,” Leo said. He couldn’t believe it. A Daybreaker, willing to bend before an imprudent prince. It was absurd. Or was there something he was missing? It was quite possible there was an angle he wasn’t seeing. “I’ll send the message after this meeting. Would you like me to recall the rest of his team too?”

“Yes,” Governor Soule said.

“There have been developments,” Prince Charles grated. “Louis” – his lips twisted unpleasantly – “has moved into Marseilles. He has formally declared himself the winner of the election and stated he will be crowned in two days. Just by holding the capital, he has a great deal of legitimacy.”

Leo didn’t pretend to understand it. King Louis could call himself whatever he liked, from Assistant Vice Dog Catcher to Supreme Ruler of the Known Universe, but that wouldn’t make him so. Going to Marseilles wouldn’t grant him any more legitimacy than he already had, no matter what bullshit he used to justify himself. Or would it provide an excuse for the western aristocracy to switch sides? How many people knew the truth? Sure, King Louis couldn’t afford to leave anyone who knew what had really happened alive, but if he had enough time to fudge the issue and blame everything on his enemies … Leo scowled. It might just work long enough for Daybreak to lose interest. No one cared about a crisis so far from the core worlds. There were too many problems nearer home.

“We have to do something,” Prince Charles snapped. “Can we not attack the city?”

General Dentine looked pained. “No, Your Highness,” he said. “We have little contact with military units east of the mountains. They are either in retreat, trying to hold their ground, or gone. The enemy has also moved formidable units into the city itself, to ensure air or ground raids cannot succeed, and evacuated large swathes of the population.”

“Those that hadn’t already left,” Ruth put in.

Prince Charles glowered, as if he’d forgotten she was there. “There has to be something we can do,” he snapped. “What about …”

Leo kept his face blank as the prince outlined a scheme that couldn’t hope to work on paper, let alone the real world. It wouldn’t work if the enemy were armed with water pistols and peashooters, let alone pistols and assault rifles. Boothroyd would have a great many scornful things to say about the idea, then refuse to even try to carry it out. That would be an interesting legal case, if the matter ever reached Daybreak. If.

“We will discuss the idea,” Governor Soule said. “If we can refit the Johnny Quick …”

“Not without parts and equipment we don’t have,” Leo said, curtly. He couldn’t help feeling a flicker of pleasure at their disappointment. “She’s good for one jump. That’s it.”

“So we jump all the way to Yangtze,” Prince Charles said.

“It can’t be done,” Leo told him. He hadn’t bothered to run through the calculations, but if there was a direct jumpline from Boulogne to Yangtze someone would have charted it a long time ago and the planet would be a great deal more important. “The odds of getting there safely in a single jump are practically nil.”

The governor’s lips tightened. “Thank you for your time,” she said. “Send the message, then return to your quarters and wait.”

Leo blinked. “I have quarters?”

“The pageboy will show you there,” Governor Soule said. “Dismissed.”

Leo saluted, then left the chamber and allowed the pageboy to show him to the communications centre. Ruth followed, her face so blank Leo knew she was angry. Flower was at the console when they entered, her face calm and composed. Leo wanted to ask her why she wasn’t hiding somewhere nearby, but he had to admit the communications centre was a good place to keep tabs on what was going on without making it obvious. A great many messages had passed through the centre and even the encrypted transmissions would give her some information even if she couldn’t read them.

“They’re recalling Boothroyd?” Flower seemed surprised. “Who are they sending in his place?”

“God knows,” Leo said. He glanced around. No one was in earshot. “What’s been happening behind the lines?”

“Morale is down,” Flower said. “And you know what that means.”

Leo nodded, curtly. There were countless wars throughout history where the loser could have le[t fighting, for better terms or even victory, but their lack of morale made it impossible to keep up the fight. Someone who thought his side was beaten would generally turn out to be right, which meant … he scowled as he sent the message. Prince Charles was clearly planning to leave, somehow, and the governor wouldn’t be far behind. He wondered how long it would be before his faction came apart. If King Louis worked out a deal with the gentry …

Chancy, Leo thought. But it might work.

“I’ll need a full briefing later,” he said, instead. “And when Boothroyd returns we’ll discuss the matter with him.”

“Understood,” Flower said. She nodded at the console. “So far, there’s been no hint of anyone entering orbit.”

Leo nodded, then allowed the pageboy to show them to their quarters. Boulogne was off the beaten track, which meant there was no way to predict when someone – anyone – would pass through the system. If morale crumbled completely, to the point there was no longer any resistance, it wouldn’t take more than a couple of days for the spearheads to reach all the way to the spaceport. Arundel would fall, Prince Charles would be executed … Governor Soule would be murdered, her death blamed on the prince who’d kidnapped her. Leo would be for the chop too … King Louis would hopefully give him a good death. Not that Francis would look too closely. If the king insisted Leo had died begging and pleading for his life, Francis would want to believe it.

“What now?” Ruth swept the room with a bug detector, then checked the walls, floors and ceilings for peepholes. “If the line crumbles, we’re dead.”

“Go underground, I suppose,” Leo said. He sat on the bed, thinking hard. Flower could pass for a local, with a little effort. Boothroyd, Ruth and Leo himself would find it a great deal harder. Perhaps they could get a boat and sail to the uninhabited continent, or some island they could hide out until the fleet arrived. “There’s one shuttle left. We could use her to get somewhere safe and …”

Ruth shot him a sharp look. “The prince thinks he can use the shuttle to escape.”

“And go where?” Leo shook his head. “He might as well try to take the Johnny Quick. It isn’t going to work.”

A thought crossed his mind. It might be possible to extend the life support on the freighter, perhaps enough to get the craft into orbit and wait for the navy. They’d be sitting ducks if the rebels got there first – he dared not assume the high orbitals weren’t being watched, even if there wasn’t a rebel starship waiting to see if King Louis needed fire support – but it might be their only chance of making contact with Commodore Blackthrone. The man wouldn’t let someone steal a whole planet, not like that. He’d act and …

Not enough time, he thought, grimly. We’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Ruth pushed him onto the bed and straddled him, taking control in a manner so different from Gayle that Leo found it oddly reassuring, even as they struggled to get out of their clothes without tearing them. Ruth pushed herself down on him, riding his cock and gasping as he thrust up into her, her warmth a distraction from the horrors to come. They both knew there was little time left, unless the navy arrived quicker than expected. Unless … unless …

A thought crossed his mind. It was crazy. It was insane. It was utter madness, an idea as stupid as the prince’s grand plan to take the offense. He knew he should dismiss the idea at once and yet it refused to go away, as they came together in a climax that should have shattered his train of thought. It truly was insane, but it might just work …

And no one, absolutely no one, would see it coming.