Her Brother's Keeper Read online

  There was ice on Zanzibar, which created a supply of water. Before the war, a stubborn group of colonists had been determined to live on this Godforsaken rock. They pressurized their buildings or lived underground. They grew crops in hydroponic greenhouses and not only survived, but thrived. Off-world investment money poured into Zanzibar for a time. The planet was seen as a launching pad for colonial expeditions far beyond it. Numerous potential colony worlds had been identified back then, when the Concordiat was at the height of its expansion. Soon, the philosophers promised, a second Diaspora would begin, and humanity would spread even further across the galaxy. Zanzibar, they said, would be a critical logistics hub for this envisioned age of exploration.

  So they said, Cecil mused. He’d read everything there was to read about Zanzibar before he’d begun this expedition. That was before those outward-bound expeditions had discovered the Maggots. When the war began, humanity was unprepared. Never before had a sentient, spacefaring species been encountered, and the encounters soon turned violent. When the alien invaders reached the Danzig-5012 system, they wiped out the small defensive fleet protecting it and blasted the scattered colonial settlements from orbit. They were remarkably precise in their targeting, only hitting human settlements with enough force to destroy them. Later in the war, on other worlds, they would use mass orbital bombardment techniques, but on Zanzibar they were very careful.

  There were many theories about that as well, but Cecil fancied that he had that one figured out. There was something of value on Zanzibar, and it wasn’t the usual natural resources that attracted human settlement. This world had once been alive. It had once, long, long ago, supported an alien civilization. Whatever had killed Zanzibar didn’t leave many traces of these aliens, and little was known about them. If you wanted to find traces of them, you had to know where to look, and you had to dig. Cecil figured that even the Maggots valued that kind of knowledge.

  Before the war, the colonial government had strictly controlled information about the long-dead alien civilization, referred to as the native Zanzibari. Even simple artifacts were extremely valuable, and some of the artifacts that had been found weren’t so simple. It was feared that if the archaeological/paleontological expeditions weren’t conducted in a controlled manner, outside interests would swarm Zanzibar and loot it of its invaluable alien treasures.

  Much of that knowledge was lost in the war. Zanzibar’s infrastructure was destroyed, and the shattered colony was all but abandoned as the war raged on. The Maggots never came back, but very little help arrived. The survivors of the onslaught banded into tribes, based around whoever could control the precious resources needed to produce food and water, and keep the necessary machinery running. And so it went, for over a hundred standard years. Even today, the small population of Zanzibar was fractured, divided, and usually under the thumb of one warlord or another.

  Warlords like Aristotle Lang, who had been holding Cecil captive for the better part of Zanzibar’s four-hundred-and-eighty-day year. The fact that those days were only nineteen and a half hours long hadn’t helped much.

  There you go again, Cecil, thinking too much. Just get through the day. One day at a time. Depressed, he walked back to his bed and poured a shot of the awful booze into his awful coffee. The combination was surprisingly good, and he finished the cup quickly.

  Bianca stirred then. She sat up, yawning and stretching. Long, black hair cascaded over her shoulders and complimented her smooth, walnut-colored skin. She looked up at Cecil with dark, playful eyes and smiled. “Good day, Mista Ceecil,” she said, with the gruff accent the inhabitants of the Zanzibaran wastes all seemed to have. Her ample, bare breasts bounced as she planted her feet on the floor and hugged him. Bianca was a concubine, given to Cecil by his captor many months ago. It would help him focus on his work, the old warlord promised, and would take his mind off foolishly trying to escape.

  Old Aristotle Lang liked Cecil, he insisted. He really didn’t want to have to kill him. For her part, Bianca insisted that she wanted to be with Cecil, and that she was “his” woman now. She didn’t just screw him (though she did that eagerly and often, Cecil thought with a grin, and had none of the cultural inhibitions Avalonian women were saddled with); she cooked for him, cleaned their flat, washed his clothes, took care of him when he was sick, and rubbed his temples when he was hung over. She made for a better, proper Avalonian wife than half the Avalonian women he’d known ever would have. He couldn’t imagine being apart from his sweet Bianca, and hated himself for it.

  It was another one of Old Man Lang’s methods, giving him something to care about. He knew that if he ran, not only would he probably die, but the bastards would probably kill Bianca too. Cecil couldn’t bear that thought, he just couldn’t bear it.

  Bianca’s skin was warm against Cecil’s. He stood by the bed as she sat on it, arms wrapped around him, her head resting against his belly. She began to kiss him all over, her hands caressing his back and butt.

  “I need to get to the work site soon,” he managed weakly.

  She grinned devilishly. “Mista Ceecil says he hasta go, but Little Ceecil says he wansta stay.” Bianca did that thing she liked to do, and Cecil lost what little willpower he possessed.

  Old Man Lang can wait a little longer. It’s not like I’m going anywhere anyway.

  * * *

  “Zak! My main man! How are you this fine day?”

  Zak Mesa, historian and amateur archaeologist, rolled his eyes behind his gaudy, gold-rimmed smart glasses. “Not as good as you, Cecil,” he said, not looking up from what he was doing. “You’re late.”

  Cecil beamed stupidly. “Yes, well, a man has business he needs to take care of, as it were. At any rate, where are we at?”

  Annoyed, Zak took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Same place we were yesterday, Cecil. We’re being held hostage on Zanzibar.”

  “True enough, my friend, but not what I meant. Have you uncovered any more possible dig sites? Lang is getting impatient.”

  “Impatient? I’m trying to make sense of what’s left of records that were kept secret before the Maggots bombed this planet back to the stone age. It takes time.”

  Cecil looked around conspiratorially, then leaned in close to his unfortunate partner. “That’s the idea, man. Give Lang enough to keep him happy, but not so much that we outlive our usefulness, yeah?”

  “That’s what I’ve been doing, Cecil. We’re still alive, aren’t we? Well, you’re still alive because you said your rich family would pay for you. I only get to live as long as I come in handy.”

  “Zak,” Cecil said, trying to sound reassuring, but coming across as condescending, “it’s not like that. I hired you. You’re my responsibility, you and your assistant both. I’ve been bargaining for all of our lives. I wouldn’t abandon you two just to save my own skin. You may think I’m a blue-blooded rich man’s son, but I’m not a coward.”

  We’ll see when the time comes, the frustrated historian thought bitterly. He scratched his bald head and showed Cecil his tablet. “I’ve found more references to a vault where the prewar colonial government kept a lot of the more interesting artifacts. I just haven’t found one yet listing where it is. I figure there’s about a fifty-fifty chance it was blasted in the Maggot bombardment.”

  “I don’t think they would’ve done that,” Cecil insisted. “I think the Maggots knew about the species that had been here. I think the reason they were so careful in their attack on this world is that they didn’t want to destroy any of the artifacts.”

  “I actually agree with you,” Zak replied, “but they had no way of knowing about a secret government vault. It might’ve gotten destroyed by them, unknowingly.”

  Cecil furled his brow. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the vault out in the wastes, closer to dig sites and away from the cities?”

  “Yes and no. Less prying eyes in the immediate area, but construction out in the middle of nowhere would’ve been more suspicious. Peopl
e would’ve gotten curious, thought something was up. An underground construction project in the city wouldn’t have drawn that much attention, and they could’ve just hauled the artifacts in nondescript trucks.”

  “Bloody hell,” Cecil muttered with resignation.

  “Honestly though, it’s not like we’ve had a bad run here. The stuff we have found is probably worth millions on the open market. Like this,” Zak said, holding up a strangely smooth, angular stone, and handing it to Cecil. It was twelve centimeters tall, and had seven sides. Each side was engraved with a glyph that seemed to shine or even glow if it caught the light just right. Whatever it was made out of, it wasn’t stone. It was perfectly smooth and weighed so little that it felt like it was made of aluminum.

  “What is this?” Cecil said, examining the piece in awe. He’d seen them before, of course, but Zak hadn’t shown him this fine specimen before.

  “I have no idea,” the historian admitted. “Neither did the Zanzibaran archaeologists. My spectrometer can’t even identify what it’s made out of. I don’t want to risk damaging it by doing a more invasive procedure. I found it cataloged in the original dig site archives. They had no idea what it was either, but judging from where they found it, they estimated it to be about four million years old.”

  “Four million years,” Cecil repeated. “That’s about when they estimated that Zanzibar lost its magnetosphere, isn’t it? My God. It just boggles the mind, Zak. What happened here? Who made this thing? What purpose did it serve?”

  Zak raised his eyebrows. “I’d be curious to know how it sat unused for four million years and still looks new. It said that when they found it, after they cleaned the dirt off, they thought it was much more recent at first, or that it was an anomaly.”

  “Most of what we’ve found on this planet is anomalous,” Cecil said. “So . . . not to be crass, but how much is this thing worth?”

  “Well, there isn’t much of a network on Zanzibar, and it doesn’t get updated very often, but according to the latest information, a generic alien artifact of this size and condition from just about any extinct species could fetch up to one-point-five million credits on the market, potentially more if it was auctioned off. And that’s generic. Stuff from Zanzibar is exceedingly rare out there. We’re definitely sitting on a fortune, Cecil. I just hope that Lang doesn’t end up selling all this stuff off for the money. These are priceless relics from an unknown civilization. They need to be studied.” He took the object back from Cecil, holding it delicately. “This belongs in a museum.”

  Cecil patted Zak on the shoulder. “I admire your passion, mate, but I’ll be happy enough if we manage to get off of this rock alive.”

  Zak nodded in agreement. It was something they tried not to dwell on. Aristotle Lang appeared to be a jovial man, and he had, truth be told, taken very good care of his captives. They were never physically abused, they had plenty of food, and could do whatever they wanted as long as they didn’t try to flee. But for all his pretenses of being a gentleman rogue, Lang was a stone cold killer and they both knew it. You didn’t rise to the top of that particular dung heap without being willing to slit a few throats.

  “Come on then. Speaking of the devil, we’ve got to go give Lang an update. The guards said he’s in a good mood today, so this should be painless.” As the two men left the historian’s tiny, cluttered office, Zak found himself hoping to God, or whoever was listening, that Cecil’s father had sent someone.

  Chapter 7

  New Austin

  Lone Star System

  Laredo Territory

  Southern Hemisphere

  The proprietor of the establishment was quietly reading his tablet, feet up on the desk, when Marcus and Wade walked in. The door quietly hissed open, sending a warm draft into the shop. Elliot Landrieu, the owner of Laredo Armament and Supply, smiled at the two colonial marshals as they came into his shop. “Good afternoon, boys,” he said, setting the tablet down and standing up. “What can I do ya for?”

  “Ah, we’re just killing time, Elliot,” Marcus said, looking around. “Kinda slow today.” The marshal liked visiting with Elliot. He was an old veteran of the Espatier Corps, always had good inventory at fair prices, and was a hell of a gunsmith on top of it. His shop was well-lit, with a friendly atmosphere despite the fact that Elliot looked like a crusty prospector, right down to the shaggy beard and denim overalls.

  The blue and silver flag of the Interstellar Concordiat hung on the wall. Next to it was the rampant stallion on burnt orange banner that represented New Austin. Next to that was the red and silver Eagle, Globe, and Rocket flag of the Espatier Corps. Daylight poured in from large windows, and the walls were stocked with firearms of every sort. His wife, Meg, handcrafted leather holsters and gun belts, just like you’d have found on ancient Earth.

  “I heard about that tussle you had with that cyborg fella,” Elliot said. “Glad to see you’re okay, Marshal. The news said he was a pretty bad hombre.”

  “Yeah, well, I owe Wade here for that one,” Marcus answered, patting his partner on the shoulder. “He saved my ass with one well-placed shot.”

  Wade shrugged nonchalantly. “It was the ADR-808 you built for me,” he said, referencing the powerful 8mm rifle he kept in their truck. “I couldn’t have missed with that optic on there.”

  “Bull-shit you couldn’t have missed,” Marcus said with a grin. “You miss all the time. A fancy automatic optical gunsight can’t make up for the fact that my daughter shoots better than you.”

  “Says the guy whose ass was saved by my amazing marksmanship!” Wade retorted. “Get this, Elliot: perfect headshot, standing position, forty meters. The perp’s head was wobbling all over the place and he was choking Marcus here out. I had to line up the shot through a cloud of dust and make it without hitting this clown, who decided to try and go hug the dangerous felon.”

  Elliot let out a hard, raspy laugh and slapped the counter.

  Wade pointed a finger at his partner. “And for the record, Boss, your daughter is an unnaturally good shot, and that’s not a fair comparison.”

  Elliot laughed again, then gestured toward the selection of firearms on the wall. “Anything you boys wanna see? I’ve been playing with different configurations of the ADR-808 and the CAR90, since those are two of my best sellers.”

  “You got more lasers in stock than usual,” Wade observed.

  “Believe it or not, there’s been more demand for them lately. I guess the economy is picking up. Take a look at this.” After checking to make sure there was no power cell inserted, Elliot handed the stubby weapon to Wade. “It’s an update to the LAS-5 design, the new J-model. I bought the schematics and manufacturing rights as soon as they became available.”

  “Wow, this is light for a laser carbine,” Wade noted.

  “Yep. More efficient cooling, too. It’s the first real update to the LAS-5 in a generation. I paid a pretty penny for the rights to build them but they’ve been selling well. Improved optics on the six-centimeter lens, improved throughput on the power cell, and it’s even a little more powerful. Four-point-eight kilojoules per shot now. Not too bad, hey?”

  “Not bad at all,” Wade agreed. “But I’ll stick with my rifle. You got any more 12mm APHE in stock?”

  Marcus absentmindedly browsed the store while his partner bought ammunition for his revolver. It was an odd weapon, based on the earliest repeating handguns from ancient Earth, but it was modern all the same. It fired 12mm rounds from a disposable, seven-shot cylinder that vigorously ejected upward away from the gun when empty, allowing for a rapid reload. Marcus stuck with his regular 10mm automatic, but the Marshals Service was pretty lax on duty weapon specifications. After a run-in with a psychotic cyborg with built-in armor plating, Marcus could certainly see the value of armor piercing, high explosive 12mm rounds.

  Wade himself was an odd sort, a former Nuclear/Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician from the Concordiat Defense Force. He was a couple centimeters taller and a f
ew years younger than Marcus, but was the best partner the marshal had ever had. He had a screwed-up sense of humor and a penchant for dry wit that made him tolerable on ten-hour shifts. Two of the fingers on his right hand had to be reattached, he once admitted, after an accident while making homemade explosives. He’d been thirteen years old at the time.

  While Wade and Elliot talked guns, Marcus retrieved his handheld and browsed through its applications. There was a response to the profile he had posted on a professional networking job board. Interesting. He opened the message and read it quietly.

  Mr. Winchester:

  The Privateer Ship Andromeda is recruiting highly qualified and skilled personnel for an expedition to a remote system. We are looking for people of the highest caliber with extensive military experience. Unquestionable accountability, integrity and discretion is a must. Experience in the full spectrum of ground warfare operations is desired. The assignment will include protecting the ship’s crew while conducting business in an austere, potentially hazardous environment.

  From your verified professional credentials, we believe you to be an outstanding candidate for this expedition. We are offering a generous pay package that we believe you will find to be more than competitive. This expedition is departing in a matter of weeks, so this offer is time-sensitive. If interested, please respond to this query and we will schedule an interview with you as soon as possible. Thank you.

  Marcus looked up from his device and blinked hard. Is this for real? When he’d updated his portfolio on the professional networking board, he was hoping to be offered side-gigs as a personal bodyguard or some such, just to bring in extra money. He didn’t expect an off-world expedition to try to recruit him. He wondered if it was a hoax, that someone was playing a joke on him, but the network site screened and vetted its job postings. How generous is generous? Off-world. Holy hell, Ellie won’t like that.