The Eve of War Read online

“I want reassurances on our deal,” the Luma leader said.

  “Reassurances?” Kane was beside himself, but he couldn’t let his emotions show. The wolf pack would circle for the kill at the slightest sign of weakness. This is the reason partnerships fail, he reminded himself. Because no partner is ever your equal.

  “This escapade has cost me many students,” So-Elku said. “I need to know it was not in vain.”

  “Then you should have counted the cost before you agreed to this escapade, Luma Master.”

  So-Elku cleared his throat. “I want sole access to the temple library.”

  “As I said, I have no interest in your metaphysical dealings.”

  “I want the woman too.”

  Kane’s eyes studied the man. He had no use for the Luma, let alone their female “expert” on the Jujari. But further negotiations always meant more opportunities for gain. “Additions to the agreement are not in your best interests, So-Elku.”

  “Do you have any use for her?”

  “No. But ensuring her survival will cost me. Discretion in violence is expensive.”

  “I’m not sure I have anything more to offer,” So-Elku said.

  It was unfortunate that he was so honest, Kane noted. The admiral laced his fingers together and leaned forward. “You will, Luma Master. You will.”

  • • •

  Kane returned to the bridge and lost himself in thought as he stared over Worru, hands behind his back. While things hadn’t gone exactly according to plan, So-Elku’s placement of the tracking transponder had probably saved the Luma master from an inconvenient assassination.

  “Captain, sensors are picking up a Republic distress transmission,” the comm officer said. “Looks to be heavily coded.”

  “Log it, and keep scanning,” replied the captain. “Navigation, how much longer before we achieve synchronization with the—”

  “Wait,” Kane said, raising a hand. “What’s that distress signal coming from?” He turned and walked to the comm station.

  “Seems to be a civilian transport, sir. A light cruiser. Looks like it’s in the Kar-Kadesh system.”

  “Captain, we have synced with the transponder,” the navigation officer said.

  “Good. Set course, and prepare to jump.”

  “Belay that order,” Kane said. “I’m curious about this transmission.”

  “Sir, there’s no reason that we can’t—”

  Kane silenced the captain with an upraised hand then leaned closer to the comm officer’s station. “Can you decode the message?”

  “Working on it, Admiral.” The officer’s fingers tapped the black dashboard, working with the ship’s AI. Kane waited but had a sense it couldn’t be cracked. Finally, the officer let out a sigh. “I’m sorry, sir, but they used a variable quantum algorithm that—”

  “It’s not breakable?” Kane asked.

  “I’m sorry, no. All I have is basic intel. The ship’s ident, basic data on the flight log—”

  “Bring it up.”

  The officer swiped up on the dashboard’s surface and sent the field into the holo-feed. Kane scanned the text and then froze on something. He leaned in even closer. “It can’t be,” he whispered. Under the flight’s log order was a name he had not seen in a very long time. He double-checked the date. It was only three days old. She’s alive.

  “Admiral, sir. Do you want us—”

  “She’s alive,” he whispered.

  “Who, sir?”

  Kane turned toward the captain and stared at him, aflame with dark fascination, like a Venetian mawslip observing a squirming rabbit pinned under its talons. “What an unexpected turn of events,” he said, wringing his hands.

  “Sir?”

  The admiral paced a few steps, holding up a finger to silence the overeager captain. Kane looked again at the holo-feed, trying to see his way through the ether, but there wasn’t enough light to outline the shapes. He needed more of the picture before anything would come into focus. However, he could at least make sure no one stole the parts of the scene he already possessed.

  He looked up from his scheming and eyed the captain. “Order a Bull Wraith to that cruiser’s position. I want the whole ship, and I want the passengers and crew alive. If anyone kills them, they forfeit their lives as payment.”

  The captain nodded, confused but agreeable. “Yes, sir. And Geronimo Nine?”

  “We follow her. Proceed with the jump.”

  Chapter 20

  “Destiny’s Carriage, Destiny’s Carriage, this is the pilot in command of Republic light armored transport Sparrow Two Seven One.” Silence filled the bridge as Chief Warrant Officer Nolan waited for a reply. Magnus stood over Nolan’s shoulder and studied the light cruiser through the cockpit window.

  “All scans show the ship’s systems nominal,” said Petty Officer Rawlson, the sensors officer. “No hull breaches, no exterior damage.”

  “Understood.” Nolan gestured to the comms officer to open the channel again. “Destiny’s Carriage, Destiny’s Carriage, this is the PIC of Republic light armored transport Sparrow Two Seven One. Do you copy?”

  More silence followed Nolan’s second hail attempt. He ran a pale hand through his auburn hair. “I don’t like this,” he said to no one in particular.

  Magnus felt that sensation in his gut, the one that prepared him to deal with bad situations—like finding a ship full of lifeless bodies. But I thought you didn’t care about a senator and his family. Magnus knew he could not win the battle of wits with his inner self. People in distress were people in distress, and he was a Marine who was called to defend the weak.

  But are all Marines also traitors, Magnus? Or are you only a traitor if you get caught?

  “Hail them again,” Magnus ordered.

  “Destiny’s Carriage, Destiny’s Carriage, this is—”

  “Sparrow Two Seven One, this is Destiny’s Carriage. We read you, Captain.”

  Magnus hit Nolan’s shoulder with a fist—perhaps a little too hard. Nolan shrank away from the blow.

  Don’t care too much, Magnus. It’s just a senator.

  “What’s your status, Destiny?” Nolan asked, rotating his shoulder.

  “Boy, are we glad to see you. Drive-core failure knocked us out of subspace.”

  “How many souls aboard?”

  “Six souls, including myself. All accounted for, no injuries.”

  “Copy that, Captain. Good to hear. Is there any known reason we should not attempt to dock with you for boarding and situation assessment?”

  “Negative. Core is contained, all systems nominal.”

  “Permission to dock to starboard?”

  “Permission granted.”

  “See you shortly.” Nolan closed the channel and turned to Magnus. “We’ll have a lock in ninety seconds, Lieutenant.”

  “Copy,” Magnus replied. “We’ll take it from here.”

  Magnus left the bridge and walked into the cargo bay to address the three privates. The flight engineer and medic were each nose down in two rucksacks while the corporal was checking an MX13 subcompact blaster.

  “Expecting heavy resistance from the senator, Corporal?” Magnus asked.

  The young woman looked at him with a measure of surprise and perhaps a little embarrassment. Her flight uniform name tag read Dutch, followed by her designation number. She was small in stature and wore her dark hair cut just below her ears, parted to one side with a few strands falling over her face. She had intelligent brown eyes and seemed reluctant to give up the weapon.

  “You can never be too sure, Lieutenant,” Dutch replied.

  “No, you can’t, Corporal. I like that. Never know what uninvited guests we might encounter.” Magnus tapped the receiver of his MAR30 and smiled.

  “Uninvited guests, Lieutenant?” Gilder, the flight engineer, asked.

  “In this part of the void, you never know what sort of things can find their way into a disabled starship.” Magnus could hear Caldwell rebuking him. Go easy o
n them, Magnus. He tossed them each a handheld comm. “Since you’re not in armor, we’ll use these. Channel’s preset. One click up will get you the bridge if needed, but only I should be talking to them. Copy?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” they replied, catching the radios one at a time.

  “You ever see anything like that, Lieutenant?” Haney asked. “You know, like really out of the ordinary?”

  Magnus tried his hardest not to smile at the medic’s question. He knew the holo-vids these boys were raised on. Heck, he’d been raised on them too, and he’d seen enough of the real world since then to know that the movies were fake. The real stuff was way worse.

  “Yeah,” Dutch said. “We heard stories about you on Caledonia.”

  “Stories? What kind of stories?” Magnus was genuinely intrigued.

  Gilder stood up, lifted his chin, and pushed out his rather large chest as if he was about to recite the Republic pledge in front of a review board. “Some said you took on twenty ’kudas at once with your bare hands. Then, after that, their ghosts came after you and tried cooking you inside your armor. But you MAR’d them all, held the position for days until reinforcements arrived.”

  Magnus raised an eyebrow, trying to figure out what crazy version of reality this boy was talking about. Top Shelf Pass, he guessed. He nodded, connecting the dots—the real dots. It was three ’kudas, not twenty. He’d stabbed two of them and shot the third with his sidearm. Then he recovered his MC90—that was long before the MAR30 came into being—and cooked their spawn for about ten minutes before his platoon realized what hellhole he had fallen into. It had been a total accident, one that led to finding a back door into the enemy’s main fortification. But no use breaking these Marines’ hearts.

  “Well,” Magnus said, charging his MAR30, “then I guess it’s a good thing for you that I’m taking point.” The privates spoke their assent and stacked up behind Dutch. “If I duck, just make sure you’re not standing.”

  “Copy that, Lieutenant,” Gilder said. “I’ll stay hidden underneath you and let you take the fire.” He winced. “I mean—”

  “Stow it,” Magnus said.

  “Copy.”

  “Thirty seconds, Lieutenant,” Nolan yelled from the cockpit.

  “Roger that,” Magnus replied then turned to his makeshift away team. “Lock it up, Marines. There’s no reason this should be anything but rudimentary, but you never know. In the Recon, we say OTF—own the field.”

  “OTF,” they replied as one.

  For Magnus, the next thirty seconds were a strange mixture of boredom and anxiety. Boredom because… well, he wasn’t expecting any action, and this was the last place in the cosmos he wanted to be. And anxiety because he had a sudden urge to find out how Awen had fared with her debriefing. Sure, she was a prude. Altruistic? Check. Naive? Double check. Still, there was something about her that he couldn’t put his finger on—something that he hadn’t felt toward a woman in a long time. Not since…

  He shook the thoughts from his head. This wasn’t the time to go there.

  So when will it be time, Magnus?

  It was then that he remembered the piece of paper that Awen had handed to him when they’d said goodbye.

  “Ten seconds!” Nolan yelled.

  The proximity alarm began to wail as a red light warned against opening the hatch into vacuum. Magnus held the stock of his MAR30 with his left hand and reached into his small chest compartment with his right. He removed the paper and unfolded it with his gloved fingers.

  “Five seconds!”

  Magnus looked down. On that scrap of paper were three large letters handwritten in old-fashioned black ink: NMB. The ship jostled, and the paper slipped out of his fingers.

  “We have a lock!”

  • • •

  “Lieutenant?” the senator asked.

  “Adonis Olin Magnus, sir. Seventy-Ninth Recon Battalion, Marine Special Units.” The two men shook hands, Magnus holding his helmet under his arm and allowing his MAR30 to hang from its sling.

  “Senator Darin Stone. Thank you for coming.”

  “Our pleasure, Senator. I have orders from Brigadier General Lovell to assess your ship’s condition and then make necessary arrangements based on the situation.”

  “Remind me to recommend a promotion for you when I get back to Capriana.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Magnus replied, but inwardly, he rejected the comment, recognizing it as snarky political jargon. No Marine worth their boots wanted a promotion just because they showed up to a broken-down starship on the side of subspace. But Magnus had to hand it to the senator—the man had come to greet them himself. Most men of his status, at least in Magnus’s experience, never spoke to anyone below their station, especially troopers.

  Magnus and his team stood on a beige carpet inside Destiny’s vestibule. Off-white walls with baby-blue trim emitted a soft glow, exuding all the credits spent on a shipwide mood-lighting package. Polished wood rails ran along the corridors on either side, crystal-clear directional signs with frosted letters pointed toward the ship’s many destinations, and the vessel smelled like vanilla and jasmine. The scent of more credits than you’ll ever see, Magnus noted with some measure of jealousy.

  The man in front of him wore an impossibly white smile, manicured blond hair, and a luxuriant tan. Those features, combined with his radiant blue eyes, made Magnus wonder if the man was even real. The senator’s appearance was so perfect that he transcended age. Magnus couldn’t tell if he was old but spent a fortune to turn back the years or young but spent the same fortune to appear statelier.

  Magnus suddenly felt out of place. He still hadn’t let the medic look at his injuries. Moreover, he hadn’t even wiped his armor down. The senator could probably smell the Jujari saliva on his boots.

  Just then, a woman emerged in the corridor from around the corner. “Darling, who is it?”

  There were times in life when something so unexpected happened that it left an imprint on a person’s soul. Magnus had plenty of those—so many, in fact, that he often wondered if there was any substance left to mark. Most of his imprints, however, were of the sort he’d rather forget than remember. They’d come to him in the heat of battle or in the nightmares that followed. What happened when Lady Stone extended her hand to meet him was of another sort entirely.

  “My love, this is Lieutenant Magnus of the Galactic Republic Marines,” the senator said. “He and his Marines have come to rescue us.”

  “Rescue us?” she said with a wide smile. “How wonderful.” She continued holding her hand out until Magnus finally had enough sense to remove his glove and shake it.

  “Ma’am,” he said, instantly self-conscious about his voice—and his appearance, noting that if he’d felt out of place in front of the senator, he felt like a Jellataun snout fish on a frying pan in front of Lady Stone.

  “Please,” she said, “call me Valerie.”

  Magnus was pretty sure he forgot how to speak at that moment. Poetry replaced prose, and he cursed himself for what he was sure would be a failure to construct a coherent sentence in her presence.

  Valerie’s hair was the color of sunlight, and her eyes sparkled like the sea at high noon. Her skin was so smooth that Magnus suddenly wanted to know what it felt like. The white gown she wore was draped around a body that Magnus swore was some lost temple covered by a thin blanket of powdery snow.

  “I’m—here to take you,” Magnus said.

  Valerie smirked. The senator held his smile but cocked his head in question. And Magnus was almost sure he could hear the privates’ thoughts behind him: You tell her, Lieutenant! That’s how it’s done!

  Magnus cringed. “I’m here to take you all to the nearest Republic substation if we’re unable to get you underway again.”

  “See there, my love?” the senator said.

  “Yes, dear,” Valerie replied, withdrawing her hand. “We are most grateful for your assistance, Lieutenant.”

  “There are six souls
on board?” Haney asked, stepping to the side.

  “Yes,” the senator said. “My wife, our daughter, and myself. Then our ship’s captain, our chief engineer, and our steward.”

  “Do any of them require medical attention?” Haney asked, apparently eager to ply his trade for what Magnus could only assume was the first time in the field.

  “All of them seem to be in good health,” the senator replied. “I will introduce you to them nonetheless, and you may judge for yourself.”

  “And the engine room?” Gilder asked.

  “Yes, of course,” the senator said. “I’ll introduce you to our engineer, and he’ll take you personally.”

  “Thank you, Senator,” Magnus replied. “And this is Corporal Dutch, our ranking NCO and weapons specialist.”

  Dutch nodded to the senator and his wife.

  “Is this everyone, then?” Valerie asked.

  “We have three more crew on the bridge of our ship, but they’ll remain in place,” Magnus replied.

  “Very well,” Valerie said. “Let’s move to the lounge and get everyone acquainted. I’ll have some refreshments brought as well.”

  Magnus tipped his head and gestured forward with his hand, hoping he wouldn’t have to use more words with Lady Stone. Yet for some unknown reason, as he followed behind her, he said, “Acquainting is great,” and cursed himself for even opening his mouth.

  • • •

  Senator Stone introduced his crew to Magnus’s troops, and the steward offered the troopers beverages and a light snack. Gilder declined and insisted that he head straight for the engine room with the ship’s engineer. He was young and enthusiastic, but that counted for something in moments like this.

  As much as the whole situation had taken a peculiar turn for the best, Magnus still wanted to get off the cruiser as fast as possible. She’s married, for galaxy’s sake!

  The senator invited the others to sit, but the troopers waved him off, Magnus insisting that their armor would mar their furniture.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” the senator replied. “Please make yourselves at home.”

  “You said you had a daughter on board?” Haney asked, taking a seat.