Her Brother's Keeper - eARC Read online

  BOOM! The concussion in the corridor was head-splitting, and had it not been for the mercenaries’ active hearing protection they’d all be deaf. Wade moved forward first, checking his shot. The door, mangled and twisted, barely hung on by one bent hinge. Wade booted it once, then twice, then a third time, which broke it free and sent it clattering down the stairs below. “We’re through!” he announced.

  Without missing a beat, Marcus and Halifax rounded the corner, guns up, and headed down the narrow stairwell. Lights flickered in the aftermath of the blast, and the corridor was filled with smoke. Even with vision enhancement, it was hard to see.

  Tanaka’s voice crackled in Marcus’ ear as he made his way carefully down the stairs. “This is strange. We’re encountering almost no resistance. The two men we’ve dropped are still incapacitated, and there’s been almost no sign of anyone else.”

  “The building went into an automatic lockdown when we breached,” Halifax said, breathing heavily in his mask. “And it’s the night shift. Probably only had a couple Peacekeepers on desk duty. More will come, lads, so keep your wits about you. The whole town knows we’re here now.”

  “This is Overwatch,” Devree said breathlessly. “The whole town lit up when you guys breached. People are mostly staying indoors, but the feed from the ship shows multiple personnel on foot, headed our way.”

  “We’re in the detention center,” Marcus said, static fuzzing over his transmission.

  “Roger,” Devree acknowledged. “Extraction Team, now would be a good time!”

  Mazer Broadbent responded. “Understood. Extraction team moving.” Kilometers away, at the outskirts of the spaceport, the Andromeda’s security officer and another volunteer from the crew sped toward town in a ground van they had rented from the traders. At the same time, Captain Blackwood was running her crew through the final checks for a short-notice emergency launch. The powerful fusion reactor of the Andromeda was running hot, ready to lift the ship into the safety of space at a moment’s notice.

  Down in the subterranean detention center, Marcus and his team found themselves shrouded in darkness and smoke. They hit their vision enhancement as they came around a dogleg in the corridor. He gasped aloud as a dumpy Peacekeeper, mostly clad in ill-fitting riot armor, crashed into him coming the other way. The startled colonist dropped the helmet he hadn’t yet put on as he tried to bring his carbine to bear, but Marcus grabbed the barrel, shoved it aside, and cracked the constable upside the head with his flechette gun. Before the Peacekeeper could recover, Marcus shoved him back a bit and hit him with a full-on butt-stroke from his weapon. The Peacekeeper’s weapon clattered to the floor as he collapsed against a wall, coughing and wheezing.

  Wade slung his flechette gun full of less-lethal rounds. He faced the injured colonist, kicked his carbine away, and leveled his big 12mm revolver at the man’s face. “Stay down!” That gun was loaded with especially lethal rounds, and the dazed jailer gaped at it wide-eyed. He raised his hands slowly and didn’t move.

  Across the detention center, Marcus and Halifax had located a bewildered Cargomaster Kimball. They handed the spacer a respirator mask through the bars of his cell as they struggled with the door controls, trying to figure out how to let him out. He might have to run, and Opal’s thick atmosphere made aerobic activity difficult if you weren’t used to it. Wade marched the injured jailer over at gunpoint and sat him down in his work station. It took a couple of prods with his big sidearm, but the Peacekeeper relented and shakily tapped the controls.

  With a loud buzz barely audible over the constantly blaring klaxons, every single detention cell opened at once. The other prisoners, wide-eyed and confused, mostly stayed in their cells, afraid to do anything, but two of them bolted, running up the stairs and out the door. Where they thought they were going to hide on an inhospitable planet with only ten thousand permanent residents was anyone’s guess.

  The mercenaries led Kimball out of his cell and handed him the Peacekeeper’s very old-looking carbine. “Don’t shoot unless you have to,” Wade said. “We’re trying not to kill anybody.”

  Marcus keyed his microphone. “Andromeda, this is Cowboy-6. Package in tow, headed back to the barn.” As his team checked Kimball for injuries and got him ready to move, Marcus took a quick look around. Two of the rooms in the detention center had large chairs in the middle, fastened to the floor, complete with restraints for the arms, legs, waist, and head. The floors were bare, complete with a drain. “Does that look like a torture chamber to you, Wade?” he asked.

  “It sure as hell does, Boss.”

  Kimball spoke up after tightening the straps on his mask. “They were constantly accusing me of trying to threaten the aliens, their so-called protected ones. They pointed guns at me and accused me of being a weapon-loving fanatic. I pointed out the inherent irony in that situation,” he said, pointing to a large bruise on his brow, “and they responded with a demonstration of their nonviolence.”

  “He has few bruises and swelling, but he’s good to travel, Marcus,” Tanaka said, switching off the flashlight he’d been checking Kimball with.

  “Good. Alright, boys, let’s get the hell out of here. We just kicked a hornets’ nest.”

  * * *

  Mazer Broadbent rolled the van through the narrow streets of the colony as fast as he could manage without crashing. He hadn’t driven a ground vehicle in quite some time and was a little rusty. This became perfectly clear when he bucked the wheels over a curb and scared the hell out of the young Tech Daye, who had volunteered to come rescue Kimball. The colony had woken up. Nearly every light was on, people were peering through their windows, and a few were running through the streets.

  Fishtailing around a corner, Mazer stomped on the accelerator and raced the boxy vehicle down a slightly wider street leading to the Office of the Peacekeepers. With vision-enhancing goggles, he could see the mercenary team holding a tight perimeter by the building’s entrance, awaiting his arrival. Coming to the end of the street, he hit the brake, cut the wheel to the right, and spun the van around, lifting it briefly up on two tires, so the rear doors were facing the waiting mercenaries.

  The van’s cargo door was yanked open, and the mercenary team shoved poor Kimball in with such force that Mazer thought that they threw him. The seven mercs piled in after their quarry, faces concealed behind masks and tac helmets. Two of them were very difficult to see in the gloom of the night until they deactivated their thermoptic camo. Those two, Starlighter and Markgraf, climbed in last and pulled the door shut.

  “We’re in!” Marcus Winchester announced. “Drive!”

  “Hold on!” Mazer replied, hitting the accelerator again. The mercs were tossed around in the cargo space of the van, not having seats nor anything to hold on to, as the security officer roared the vehicle back through the city the same way he’d come in.

  As he made a hard left turn onto the main road which led to the spaceport, he saw a group of men hurriedly trying to pull barricades into the street.

  “Roadblock!” Daye announced.

  “Brace!” Mazer said, pushing the accelerator to the floor and bringing the van to its top speed. Terrified Peacekeepers dove out of the way as the clunky vehicle smashed through their plastic barricades, sending them clattering down the street. Mazer had no idea why they thought those would stop a speeding vehicle, but they were certainly unhappy about it. In the van’s wake, orange muzzle flashes appeared in the night as a couple of the constables opened fire.

  “They’re shooting at us!” one of the mercs shouted, as small-caliber bullets punched through the back door, narrowly missing the occupants. But in a flash, the van was too far away from the Peacekeepers for their sidearms to be of any use, and rounding a bend, put the colony out of sight.

  “I think we’re in the clear,” Mazer said, and immediately regretted it.

  “Mr. Broadbent!” Daye said, tapping the security officer on the shoulder roughly. “Mr. Broadbent!”

  “What is it,
man?”

  Before Daye could answer, Marcus, in the back of the van, peered out of the rear hatch. “Hellfire,” he spat. “Mazer! We’ve got company! Inbound hovercycles, coming in fast!” Mazer hadn’t known the colonists actually had any vehicles, much less hovercycles. But there they were, skimming low over the pseudo-trees, twin lift-fans screaming in the dark. They would’ve been hard to see except for the bright spotlights they shone on the van as it sped up the highway.

  Daye ducked down in his seat as bullets pinged and dinged against the van’s body. “They’re shooting at us!” Each hovercycle carried two Peacekeepers; the one in front drove while the one behind him aimed a pistol as best he could. Their accuracy was terrible, but one lucky hit and the van would crash.

  In the rearview mirror, Mazer noticed Halifax changing magazines in his weapon. Wind filled the cab of the van as the mercenary slid open the top hatch and stood up. “Marcus, I have a shot!”

  Mazer swore to himself. “Marcus, shoot them down!”

  The mercenary team leader nodded and gave Halifax a thumbs-up. The stout merc laughed aloud and opened fire. Between the hovercycles zipping back and forth, being blinded by spotlights, being shot at, and the van weaving all over the road, Halifax could barely hit anything. But the cycles weren’t armored to save weight, so one lucky shot… “Yes!” he exclaimed victoriously. One cluster of flechettes had struck something critical on the closest hovercycle. It rolled over and crunched into the pseudo-trees, disappearing from sight. The other one slowed down and backed way off.

  Halifax ducked back into the van. “I got one! The other bastard’s runnin’ home to mama.”

  “We’re almost there!” Mazer said, as the van sped through the gates of the spaceport at well over a hundred kilometers per hour. Hardly slowing down, he maneuvered the van down into the subterranean service tunnels. The vehicle entrance ended at an airlock. The Security Officer hit the brake and cut the wheel. The van’s wheels screeched at is slid to a stop, barely two meters from the wall. Mazer took a moment to exhale heavily as the mercenaries kicked open the back door and piled out. “I don’t think we’ll be getting the deposit back on this,” he said, examining the holes in the vehicle.

  Leaving the van where it was, the spacers cycled through the airlock as quickly as possible. Once inside, they discarded their respirator masks and ran down hundreds of meters of tunnels, dodging oblivious service robots and knocking over a garbage can. Rounding a corner, the group ran down another, shorter corridor and came to a massive cargo elevator. The doors opened, and all nine people piled in, breathing heavily. The elevator moved slowly upward, taking almost a full minute to reach the cargo deck of the Andromeda. The three spacers and seven mercenaries, sweating and panting, said nothing as tinny, electronic music played softly.

  The music gave way to a chime as the elevator came to a stop. The doors opened, and the group ran up the long, ramping tunnel, the arm of the spaceport’s service tower, and into the open cargo bay doors of the ship. Crewmen were waiting for them inside. They had barely cleared the entrance when the cargo doors began to close and the service tower began to retract. Med Tech Lowlander, checking them for injuries as she led them through the ship, hurried them to the crew deck and got them strapped in for liftoff.

  * * *

  Up on the command deck, Captain Blackwood received word that the ship had been secured, all personnel were accounted for, and all stations were secured for liftoff. At the same time, one of her screens flashed a warning and displayed more incoming hovercycles. There were six of them in total. Hovering at low altitude, they circled the Andromeda like vultures as the service tower slowly retracted.

  One of Peacekeepers transmitted a threat to the Andromeda in a thick Esperanto accent. “Stand down at once! Stand down! You are all under arrest! Comply!”

  Catherine had had enough of these people. She tapped the transmit button on her display. “Officer, this is Captain Catherine Blackwood of the Andromeda. Be advised, we have been cleared by the spaceport for launch. We are lifting off in T-minus ninety seconds. If you value your lives, you will be clear of our exhaust plume by then. Andromeda clear.”

  Catherine listened to their frantic transmissions as the Peacekeepers, completely unsure of what to do, called back to the colony for instructions. Their leader radioed Spaceport Control, demanding that the Andromeda be detained. The traffic controller, a quintessential Freeholder, calmly explained to the Peacekeepers that as a sovereign and free individual, not only did he not recognize their authority but he had no authority of his own to detain a ship. As a matter of fact, he said, detaining them would be tantamount to piracy. The Andromeda, he said, hadn’t broken any spaceport rules and had filed its flight plan twenty hours in advance, as requested. He repeated Catherine’s suggestion that the hovercycles clear the launch area before the ship lifted off, and reminded them that the spaceport would not be liable for any injury or death that may occur if they chose to stay.

  Catherine actually laughed out loud as the Peacekeepers broke and fled. As the countdown reached T-minus twenty seconds, she reclined her command chair back into the launch position. The deal she’d worked out with the Freeholders who ran the spaceport hadn’t been inexpensive, but it had proven worthwhile. Freeholders, by nature, disliked the weird, authoritarian rules of the tiny colony, and only accommodated them to the extent necessary to do business. She’d gotten her crewman back, and these backworld crazies could go pound sand.

  “This is the captain,” she said, broadcasting over the ship’s intercom moments before launch. “Well done, all of you. Stand by for liftoff.”

  Chapter 21

  Zanzibar

  Danzig-5012 Solar System

  Lang’s Burg, Equatorial Region

  Pale light from Danzig-5012 peeked in through the shutters as Zak opened his eyes. He stretched lazily, like a cat on a summer morning (a cat with creaky, cracking joints, anyway). While normally a night person, since coming to Zanzibar Zak had been a habitual early riser. He suspected it had something to do with the planet’s lack of a magnetosphere screwing with his sleep patterns, but that was only a guess. It would be a while before Anna got up, and even longer before Cecil crawled out of bed. He retrieved his handheld from the nightstand and took it out of standby.

  Zanzibar didn’t have a functioning planetary network. There were a few satellites in orbit, but they were strictly pay-for-use, and Zak didn’t have access to them. Lang’s Burg had its own crude local network, but it was monitored and had nothing of interest on it. Little, if any, news from the rest of inhabited space ever made it as far as Zanzibar, and what news did arrive was months out of date. Fortunately, Zak had thousands of texts saved on his handheld: history books, novels, poetry, anthologies, fiction and nonfiction alike. He was a voracious reader in his free time, and found solace in the quiet solitude of a good book.

  His current fascination was an ancient epic poem titled The Fall of Mankind and the Coming of the Long Night, written some eight hundred years before. It was a romantic, tragic, and sadly beautiful retelling of the First Interstellar War, the horrific atrocities committed as both sides struggled to exterminate each other, and the ultimate collapse of interstellar civilization. It was woeful lament of humanity falling from its zenith, destroyed by its own hubris, returning to pre-Space Age barbarism and continual struggle.

  The long-dead author of the poem had seen his civilization destroyed. He wrote the poem not knowing if or when the Long Night would ever end, and the sense of loss he felt was palpable with each verse. It made Zak think of the ancient Zanzibari; did they know their end was coming? Did they write epic works lamenting their impending doom, or did it happen suddenly? How many times, on how many worlds, had such a cycle of achievement and destruction been repeated, over billions of years? What great civilizations had lived, flourished, and died in the countless eons before humankind had taken its first step? The Milky Way Galaxy was but a grain of sand on a vast beach, stretching across the cosmo
s and through time. What difference did any of it make? What did it matter?

  The author of The Coming of the Long Night pondered these possibilities as well, and felt insignificant because of it. Perhaps it was just the melancholy that comes with witnessing an apocalyptic war unfold, but Zak could feel the bleak hopelessness, the futility of man’s insignificant struggles, in the words. It was depressing, more depressing than merely waking up on a dead rock like Zanzibar.

  After an hour or so of reading, Zak heard Anna quietly moving around downstairs. She, too, was an early riser, and typically started her days with yoga, then breakfast and tea. He pulled up a picture of her on his small screen. It had been taken right after their arrival on Zanzibar, before their ordeal of captivity began. She was actually smiling. Such a beautiful smile. She undoubtedly had her pick of suitors on her homeworld.

  Yet, apparently, she had set her sights on Zak. Cecil had pulled him aside and told him, bluntly, that Anna was in love with him, but he didn’t believe it. At first he thought the Avalonian aristocrat was playing a joke on him. After all, Anna had always seemed all business to Zak. She never made any flirty gestures, seemed to dislike physical contact, and was almost standoffish at times.

  Cecil had laughed at Zak when he said that. “You just described yourself there, my friend,” he’d said. “Did it ever occur to you that she’s just like you?”

  As a matter of fact, that hadn’t occurred to Zak. But why hadn’t she said anything about how she felt? Anna was a strong woman from a powerful family, and never had any trouble speaking her mind.

  Cecil had laughed at that, too. “It wouldn’t be proper,” he explained, “for a woman of her position to go chasing after a man. That’s not how they do things on New Constantinople. Supposedly sophisticated societies sneer at how backward it all is, but in some places a man is still expected to court a lady, to earn her favor. Women don’t necessarily give their affections away. You have to work for it. She’s not going to risk humiliation by expressing her interest in you. That’s your job, as the suitor, to read the signs and make the connection.”