Song of Redemption Read online

“Of course, it is. But that doesn’t take away from the joy in kicking your butt, Recon Raider.”

  Her response gave Rev pause. He’d just been trying for any excuse, but she was openly admitting it.

  “Is that true?”

 

  “You know it bothers me? You reading my mind again?”

 

  Rev did feel a little better now that he knew Malaika had an advantage, but not completely. An advantage could be overcome with effort, and he swore that the next time, he’d come out on top.

  Malaika finished cleaning the .44 and turned it back into the armory. The two walked out the door and to the shuttle stop. They discussed the Franklin until the clockwise shuttle appeared in front of the mini-PX down the street.

  “Well, that’s me. Thank you for breaking it in with me. It was fun.”

  “No, thank you. Prestor Nix was jealous when he heard I was joining you. He wanted to come, too. We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

  “Sure. Whenever,” she said.

  The shuttle left the mini-PX and started toward them.

  Once again, Rev didn’t know if he should shake hands as if they were just playing ball or give her a hug.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asked. “I’ll probably just watch the holo. A new Prince of Demons season just dropped today.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  The shuttle pulled to a stop in front of them.

  “Well, thanks again,” Malaika said as she started to step aboard.

  “Hey-some-of-us-are-getting-together-at-the-E-club-do-you-want-to-come?” he blurted out in a rush.

  “Uh, sure,” she said, sounding surprised.

  The shuttle started moving, and Rev jumped on board.

  “I mean, if you want.”

  “Yeah, sure. Better than just going back to my quarters. But the club is the other way.”

  “I guess we should have waited. We can get off at the next stop and grab a counterclockwise shuttle, or just take this all the way around. It might be roundabout, but it will get us there.”

  It was the long way around, not that Rev cared. Almost forty minutes after leaving the range, the shuttle came to a stop outside of the E-club. The two Marines jumped off and entered a decidedly quiet club.

  “Wow, it’s dead in here tonight,” Malaika said as she looked around where Marines were silently watching some of the screens mounted throughout the place.

  “There’s my crew,” Rev said, pointing to a table in the back. “We’ll liven them up.”

  They made their way to the others, and Rev said, “What’s with all the serious faces? You’ve got beer and cider. What else do you need?”

  Tomiko pointed to the screen mounted over the next table. It was only then that Rev looked, and most of the screens and the main holo were on the same channel, where a newscaster was speaking.

  “ . . . situation is still unclear. We are trying to get our local correspondents to give us a better understanding on what steps authorities are taking.”

  “What’s going on?” Rev asked, trying to make sense of the broadcast.

  “Trouble on San Jacinto,” Tomiko said.

  “So, what else is new?”

  “Not like this.” She scootched over on the bench seat so Rev and Malaika could sit down.

  San Jacinto was an independent world closer to the center of human space where entertainment was the main earner. Gambling was the main pull, but almost anything else, either real or simulated, could be experienced. Want to be a Conan? No problem. Get jacked in and hack away at bodies to your heart’s content. Don Juan or Annie Iago? Get jacked and enjoy virtual partners ready for anything. Want to try the rarest delicacies in the galaxy? If you had the money, you could get them on the planet. Synth drugs were readily available.

  It was the holy grail of liberty ports. Most militaries restricted their sailors and soldiers to one of three reservations where it wasn’t quite anything goes. The entertainment was limited to what was legal in the major nations. But for young military members, that was more than enough, and commanders sometimes held that over a crew and embarked troops as a reward for a deployment well done. And with the war, places like San Jacinto were more likely to be authorized by commands where losses had been heavy.

  The San Jacinto police didn’t care what you did as long as you didn’t interfere with others or damage anything, and young servicepeople being, well, young servicepeople, they were often arrested and eventually returned to their ships once damages were paid. But some drunken sailors wouldn’t garner the news attention that Rev saw on the screen.

  Slowly, though, things became clear, and it was worse than he’d expected.

  By dint of bad timing, both Frisian and Union ships were in orbit over the Rio de Plata reservation, with hotels booked long before the present difficulties between the two nations.

  The Frisian ship was a personnel carrier returning troops from a devastating battle against the Centaurs. The Union had two ships that had been on anti-piracy patrols and were scheduled to go back into the war rotation.

  The news report kept showing holos of the initial fight. Frisian soldiers and Union sailors were at a beer and dance hall. It wasn’t clear from the video who started it, but there was arguing, then pushing, and finally an all-out brawl. The San Jacinto police, probably on alert given the current situation, quickly moved in with their roboenforcers and stopped the fight, but not before a Union sailor had been killed, his head smashed in with a chair.

  Close to a hundred soldiers and sailors were arrested and locked up. The commander of the Union two-ship force, probably after reporting back to New Mars, demanded that the San Jacinto authorities turn over the Frisian soldier who killed the sailor.

  The San Jacintans refused, but the Frisian maroon-master commander, whether because he feared the locals would accede to the demand, or whether it was because they’d just had their butts kicked in by the Centaurs and simply had no more fucks to give, broke into the jail to free the Frisian prisoners, and then they managed to board some shuttles and took them up to their ship before the authorities could react. Technically, this was an act of war against San Jacinto, but one that could have been diplomatically defused as no San Jacinto citizens had been killed. But then the situation deteriorated.

  Before the Frisian ship could leave orbit, the two Union destroyers moved to block it. The force commander ordered the ship’s captain to send over the suspect. Not surprisingly, the Frisian commander refused.

  And that’s where the situation was as Rev watched the broadcast. Three ships in a holding pattern while commercial ships and a single Grant’s World corvette under the Congress of Humanity flag left orbit for the safer confines in the system.

  Both the Perseus Union and Frisian Mantle governments were already accusing each other of instigating the incident and threatening to send more forces to the planet, and accusations and denials of Centaur prisoners were back in the forefront. This specific incident had all the earmarks of becoming the proverbial powder keg, with the larger issue being the Union not sharing Centaur intel and tech.

  The other nations were also weighing in on the overall conflict. The reporter announced that the Hégémonie Liberté had joined the independent worlds of Tigana 3, Nowhere, Bugatti’s World, and Paxus in siding with the Union, while the Manifest Destiny Sphere, the Synergy Alliance, the Association of Independent Worlds, the Rigel Cluster, and several more nations and individual planets were already announcing support for the Frisian Mantle. Even with the major corporations staying silent so far, that meant almost seventy percent of humanity had chosen sides.

  It wasn’t surprising that the Heg supported the Union. They had a long history of cooperation, and they had never fought against each other. What was surprising was some of those who were siding with the Frisians. Not the MDS, whose philosophy was flexible, to be generous with the term. But the Rigel Cluster received huge amounts of financial support from the Union and was considered an ally.

  It was evident that the Union’s denials of the Centaur prisoner accusation were not being believed, and erstwhile allies were turning against them.

  All the while, the Congress of Humanity was pleading for the governments to back off the rhetoric, reminding everyone that the real enemy was the Centaurs, not each other.

  “I bet it’s the angel shits who’re spreading all these rumors,” Hussein said as they watched the screen. “Anything for their tin-ass masters.”

  Hussein was more apt to believe conspiracy theories than any of this team, but in this case, Rev thought he might be on to something. Not the initial Frisian accusation of the Union having a Centaur body, which, of course, was true. But of the escalation. Not all of the Children of Angels had been rounded up, and those who were still out there had to have revenge on their minds. And fights breaking out between human forces would go a long way in helping the Centaurs take over human space.

  “If they’re afraid that war is going to break out, then why aren’t we in Condition One right now instead of watching this on the news?” Radić asked.

  “If this goes any further, we will be. But right now, the Navy will be scrambling,” Tomiko said.

  “The Heg navy, too?” Strap asked.

  The Union navy was nothing to sneer at, but the Hégémonie Liberté was the largest and best-equipped among all of humanity, and if fighting did break out, they were a nice security blanket.

  “Who knows?” Tomiko said. “If they are siding with us, I’d have to guess so.”

  The conversation died down as they sat and watched. All of them had enlisted or been conscripted during the war with the Centaurs. Until the Children of Angels, and those traitors were a different situation, none of them had fought fellow humans. But for the first time in their lives, it looked like that might be a possibility.

  6

  Tomiko aimed her M-49 downrange and pulled the trigger of the attached launcher. The 40mm grenade arched lazily three hundred meters and landed next to the scraps of what might have been almost any kind of Marine vehicle before it was hauled to the range.

  “Shit! It didn’t detonate again!” she said, turning around where a major and two civilian techs stood watching.

  “We’ll take care of that,” the major said. “But how did it feel?”

  Tomiko twisted her M-49 to look at the launcher. “Like everyone else said, it works. I still don’t see why we’re using this, though. The tin-asses gotta be using filters or canned air.”

  “This is just one of the employment methods we’re developing. There are others,” the major said. “So, who’s next?”

  Private Radić stepped up as Tomiko left the firing position and walked back to the bleachers and took a seat beside Rev.

  “You’re not missing much,” she told him. “But even if they can get the damn grenades to detonate, then what the hell good are they gonna do?”

  “You heard them. They want the grenades to be destroyed by the self-defense belts. Spread the virus out faster.”

  “If they aren’t zapping the air with some sort of virus killer.”

  Rev didn’t respond. Tomiko, along with some of the others, was still on edge. The situation on San Jacinto might have been resolved to a negotiated stalemate by the Congress of Humanity—assisted by the arrival of a Home Guard battalion—but the entire situation had come too close to ending up bad, very bad.

  Rev was just grateful that things hadn’t broken down. He was a Marine on a holy mission, the very survival of the human race, and he was more than angry that the politicians on both sides, he had to admit, were playing with fire. Why do the Centaurs’ job for them?

  So, this little test firing of some prototypes was probably the best thing for the platoon. Give them something to do and bring the focus back on the Centaurs. If Rev was a betting man, he would say that was the captain’s plan. That, or the R&D folks were particularly bad at their jobs. Very few of the bio-grenades were detonating upon impact, so they weren’t field-ready.

  He watched Radić fire his rounds. Two detonated with little puffs of mist. One hit a chunk of the wreck and didn’t detonate. Hopefully, by the time the actual weapon hit the fleet, they’d have ironed out little kinks like not working.

  If it did work, then it would be great that finally, the average Marine could do something against a Centaur instead of using the main individual weapon to hopefully knock drones down. Other than the drone-eyes, the M-49 was useless in combat.

  Well, it was fine against the angel shits.

  Rev wasn’t part of this make-busy test. His weapon was Pashu, not an M-49, and according to the major, his job wasn’t going to be to send the virus to the enemy. He’d be the supporting element to keep the other Marines alive. It was a sea change from the last two missions. They were the package, and he was the security. And he was fine with that.

  He’d be fine with whatever it took to win this war.

  7

  “Who or what is ‘Della Dragon?’”