Brigends (The Final War Series Book 1) (5 page)

An unexpected encounter

Hidden in the ruins across the harbor from the Spire, Chadwick peered through his trinoculars at the departing shuttle. “Someone boarded alone, Cap.”

“Who was it?”

“Don’t know. I couldn’t get a good look.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

He lowered the trinoculars and massaged his sore eyes. Bronson was busy stowing their gear inside two compact rucksacks.

Zoe charged her assault rifle. “Alright, I’m calling it; mission over. Let’s head out. I want to get home before sunrise.”

The boys finished packing and slung the sacks over their shoulders. She walked ahead, leading them from the lookout. Every time she left its sanctuary, she felt vulnerable. Her team used the cluttered path between the warehouses with their senses hyper and their weapons ready for any threats.

A morning haze had settled on the ground. She estimated they had twenty minutes before the new day’s light would compromise their presence. At their rate of travel, they were over two klicks from the nearest portal. Left with no option, she signaled for her team to hustle.

Soon they reached the inner quad. Regardless of the hurried pace, their footfalls were nearly undetectable.

While the hunters slept, Max continued an anxious watch. His ears caught the brigends’ egress. Sneaking to the ledge, he scoped the terrain with binoculars. Zooming in, he made out three figures moving in a classic soldiering pattern.

Fingering the tel-link, he said in a hush, “Hey, dipshits. I’ve got movement. Ninety-five of your position. Thirty meters out.”

On the ground, Paz Vega snorted awake and popped his head out to get a clear look at the kill zone. His snarled face was visible by a fraction. Cutter stuck his head out too, but not as cautiously as Paz had done. A loud smack against the head got his attention.

“Put you hed down,
pendejo
. An cu’ver yur face.”

Cutter tugged the shemagh scarf up and over, encircling his lower face with the black cloth. Paz didn’t bother with concealing his identity; that was for noobs — not a weathered hunter-celeb such as himself.

Both men dropped behind the rubble. Paz activated his tel-link. “Ey bro, yu cee ‘em?”

A short distance away, inside a busted doorway, the younger Vega situated for a look. The moonlight reflected off his greasy hair while he worked the data-plate to aim its camera at the advancing targets. On the tiny screen, digitized images rolled. A couple of adjustments cleaned the grain so he could view Zoe and her team with clarity.

Another fine-tuning focused on her neck. After more than a minute of waiting, she exposed the radioactive signal of her brigend mark. The device locked on it, scrolled through a list of mug shots, and stopped on an outdated likeness of Zoe in her early twenties.

Words appeared: #14 MOST WANTED – WAR CRIMINAL – 75,000 EURO-M.

Paco flexed a crooked smile and spoke into his comm device. “We gots a big ‘un. Sevety-fev kay.”

“We gona score ti’nigh, bro,” Paz replied.

Max cringed at the offhanded chance the targets might have heard the brothers’ cackles. He cursed under his breath.

As suspected, Zoe did hear the laughter. She signaled halt. Using her rifle’s scope, she surveyed the terrain. By this point, the Vegas had ducked out of sight, but she knew her team was being spied on. Not wanting to take any chances, she motioned for the boys to fall back. Without turning around, they retraced their steps.

Paz was the first to see their prey moving in the opposite direction. The brow over his lazy eye twitched.

Cutter’s nervousness overloaded. “Whatta we do? They’re getting away.”

Paz snatched the noob by the collar and shoved him at the retreating brigends. “Git ‘em! Muv it!”

The hunters bum-rushed, waving their humongous guns about in mad disdain. “Dont muv! Yu unner arrest! Dont muv! Yu unner arrest!”

Zoe jumped. “Retreat!”

Using suppression fire, they executed a center-peel maneuver. Zoe assumed her first fallback position. Bronson fired full-auto on the attackers, killing Cutter. Needing to reload, he dropped behind while Chadwick and Zoe kept him safe. The Vegas couldn’t gain ground.

Paco risked the hail of bullets to lob a grenade. The small amber sphere landed at Bronson’s feet. The blast ripped him apart. Zoe and Chadwick broke formation and withdrew at full gallop. The brothers pursued, tossing more grenades, and spraying aimless gunfire.

Tracers zinged past Zoe’s head. A lucky grenade exploded beside them, slamming Chadwick against a wall. Tossed off her feet, she smacked the asphalt hard. Stunned, but still in the fight, she crawled to the kid. He was dead. There was no time to mourn.

When they got to the body, she was gone. They twisted around, expecting her to attack.

Paz pushed his brother. “Chek ‘im. Mak sure ‘e’s ded.”

Paco tugged on the corpse. The shifting freed a nitrixe popper tucked inside the dead man’s rucksack. It rolled and bounced off the thug’s boot. The bright red indicator counted to detonation. Paco’s jaw dropped as Paz yanked him back. The explosion propelled them both across the alleyway and through a partition. The impact crumbled the surface, burying them under heavy chunks.

Max wanted to bang his head on the ledge. “Those mucking idiots!”

He didn’t know what to do. Paz had ordered him to stay out-of-the-way during the snatch. Thankfully, for once the man’s arrogant stupidity was Max’s saving grace. The others may have been out, but he was still in the game.

He keyed his earpiece. “Dinx, pick up. I need you, man.” There was no response. “Dinx? Damn it — pick up!”

Max ripped the earpiece from his ear and stuffed it in a pocket. He could hear the surviving brigend’s footfalls disappearing into the ruins.

Ignoring the shooting pulsation in her hip, Zoe ran from the waterfront and into the borough proper. Not knowing how many more pursuers were on her tail, she couldn’t ease up. Getting to the next portal in one piece was the new mission.

With no warning, a dark figure launched from the shadows. She rolled, avoiding by a hair what would have been a bone-jarring tackle. Max sailed over and tumbled to a squat several meters away. Both he and Zoe locked eyes for a five second eternity and listened to the haste of their combined breathing.

His inexperience made the standoff last longer than it should have. Tackling her was the only plan he could think of on the fly, and when it failed, he was fresh out of ideas. Luckily, he had the foresight of hiding his face behind a shemagh. If he wanted, he could renege and return to his obscure life without fear of retribution.

Not a chance, he wanted the money.

What he hadn’t anticipated was her palming a handful of dirt as she avoided his attack. His hesitation gave her the advantage. She flung the mix at his face and he protected his vision as she expected. When he reopened his eyes, she was already scaling a rickety fire escape on one of the nearby buildings.

She got to the rooftop and looked back. Somehow, her pursuer was less than four meters behind her. She took off again. Her feet flew across the gaps between the buildings with feline agility. Judging from the nimble strides of his footfalls, she knew he was close and gaining ground. She couldn’t believe he was keeping up with her.

On the last rooftop, as she ran for the ledge, the shell under her feet caved and through the cavity she fell. Max eluded the pitfall with just enough warning.

Zoe plummeted three levels before crashing onto an immovable floor. The world spun as she fought to stay conscious. The pain in her body was intense and she was going numb to compensate.

The door to the room opened with a thud and Max crept in. He approached her limp form, troubled she might be dead. A deep sentiment, one of pity more than regret, stirred in him. What he wanted was the money. He cursed her for not surrendering.

It didn’t have to end this way
.

He knelt beside her. She didn’t move. Carefully, he reached for the grip of her pistol. His hand touched it and she struck, ramming her shoulder into his belly. They rolled on the floor. Her hands were at his throat and he felt her fingers crushing his windpipe. She had the upper hand, but he muscled to his feet. Desperate to breathe, he planted a foot in her pelvis and kicked. It was enough to break the stranglehold and rip them apart.

Zoe somersaulted to her feet. In her hand was the green scarf she had pulled off him. The shock of seeing him unmasked pulled the air from her lungs. The boy stared at her with a familiar face.

He looked exactly like John.

Their gaze would have stayed locked if it were not for one tragic factor — in his hand was her gun, and he was aiming it straight at her. Neither of them budged. Her mind replayed her life’s totality and the sad irony of her ironic doom. Finding serenity, she wanted to call out and reassure him — it would be okay. She would forgive him.

So immersed in her own anguish, she couldn’t foresee what he would do next. Max gestured a truce with his free hand and lowered the gun. He couldn’t go through with the deed, whether it was to take her prisoner or kill her. She had communicated her fear, knowing he held her life in his hands and she was powerless. He didn’t want the money like this. Not like this.

Looking at those sheltering eyes, there was something else he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It was an instinct not associated with reason, but attached to a truth embedded on a word which refused pronunciation.

He motioned for her to go.

The pain returned to wreak havoc as she shuffled away, keeping her red eyes fixed on his boyish face. By now, the imbecilic yelling and stomping of hard boots from the stairwell ricocheted around the empty space. She went to a large window and climbed up on its sill just as the Vegas burst in, riled from their previous encounter. She freed her regard from Max and disappeared into the predawn air. The brothers ran to the window, but she was gone.

“Muck
ma madre
!
Pendejo
, yu let ‘er git away!”

They turned to confront Max, but he was gone, too.

“Yu, me,
pendejo
!
I hare du mal par you
!” Globs of saliva sprang from Paz’s mouth as he spat his threat.

Paco picked up a cold gun from the floor. It was Zoe’s. Max had no need for it.

Emil’s mission

Emil looked up from the flat of his bunk at the metal seams of his cabin’s overhead. He had been trying for hours to sleep, but his mind was devoid of exhaustion. How he wished for his spectral lover to come and caress him. To his disappointment, he was without her for the first time in years. Thanks to her bittersweet absence, insomnia teased him unmercifully.

The wall chronographer beeped the passing of another cycle. So much for trying to sleep, he joked.

In the labor camp, sleep was a luxury the prisoners received by chance. During those rare intervals, they cherished it like the greatest fortune ever given to kings. Ironically, even in that situation, his soul could never find torpidity. No matter how hard he would try, slumber would deny him its gift.

The last time he had a real night’s sleep was with her — the real her. They had slept naked in each other’s arms, not daring to budge for what seemed hours. The jasmine upon her skin mellowed him. Her lips rested on the softness below his earlobe and with each exhale of her warm breath, she sent electricity through him.

That was the last time he had slept like a king.

He got off the bunk and endured every twinge in his old body. He looked at the scars on his bare torso. Contrasting against the pale canvas, they told the story of the battles he had fought. He ran his hand over his chin whiskers, feeling much older than his fifty-seven years.

His hand shuffled inside the desk drawer in search of a razor, but instead he found the red crystal exactly where he had stashed it. Had it been waiting for his attention? He didn’t pick it up; he dared not. Consumed by its luminescence, he remembered a little known fact: only a Zolarian could use the power contained within.

But, how could that be true? The thing had called to him back at the camp. Why?

Had he not suffered enough?

Emil ignored it, hoping it would fade from thought. He found a razor tucked in the corner of the box. Retrieving it, he slammed the drawer shut.

Life aboard the Crimson Bandit, like any other ship, was a set of routines. Every crewmember had specific duties and went about them with little or no complaints. While he strolled the cramped passages, crewmen snapped to attention. He returned a fatherly nod and they carried on with their tasks.

Earlier in his career, he came to understand why the seafaring men of centuries past referred to their vessels as women. A ship is a home, a man’s symbol of safety and support. The golden rule of a healthy marriage applied: take care of her and she will take care of you. She’s an all-consuming lover, demanding more and more attention. As with a real woman, one must learn the rhythmic sound she makes when she’s happy, and just as important, her cries when she is in distress.

The bulkheads purred from vibrations of a well-cared-for propulsion drive. To the uninitiated, the
purring
passed undetected, but to him it was as unmistakable as a satisfied lover’s heartbeat. She knew he was home and she was happy.

He made his way to the galley. Relaxing at the far table was Adi, sipping coffee from a tin mug and smoking a cigarette. He already knew she was in there just by the smell filling the corridor. Only she smoked those foul-smelling French stinkers. No other crewman had the audacity to use anything made by a country comprised of smug bureaucrats.

She smiled and waved him over. As he sat down across from her, she shoved the mug at him. He picked it up and without hesitating, drank from it. Like he suspected, it was her special brew of burnt coffee beans.

“I see your domestic skills haven’t improved,” he said over the soreness in his throat.

She exhaled smoke. “I’ve never heard you complain before.”

“Complain? No. Fear? Yes.”

She grabbed the mug and went to refill it from the coffee pot. He examined her behavior.

“How did you know where to find me?”

Adi twitched slightly to the question. To him, her reaction might as well have been a jump. She poured more of the roasted battery acid into the mug and returned to her seat.

“We were looking for you the whole time.” She took another drag off the cigarette. “It wasn’t easy.”

“I would imagine. I was never in one place more than a few months. So, how did you find me?”

Adi flicked ash on a tin plate. She knew he was probing her.

“We captured Major Koloff. He led us to you — after some vigorous cajoling.”

“Koloff? How did you get him alive?”

“His shuttle came under fire during Prague and crashed just outside the city. He was making a run on foot when we caught up to him.”

“Prague? Did we retake it?” He hoped the tide of the war had shifted during his absence. He could see from her expression, it had not.

“Haiduc, I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“Prague was three months ago. We took the city a year before that, but couldn’t hold it. When they regrouped, the Alliance pushed us back to the Reine.”

He slumped in his seat. The Reine? That meant the enemy overran the Vanguard central command. “What about the War Council?”

She sipped from the mug and smoked.

“Adi?”

“You are the only one left.”

He absorbed the enormous news. The Vanguard Resistance was broken and most of Europe was undoubtedly under Serov’s control. As the lone surviving council member, leadership now rested upon Emil’s beleaguered shoulders. To the grunts in the field fighting the losing war, he had to be a bastion of faith no matter the outcome.

How could he inspire hope in others when he didn’t have any left in his own heart?

Atlas be damned.

She coughed to get his attention. “The War Council had forbidden us to search for you. They didn’t want to spare another ship, especially this one, for just one man. Cine alergi dupa doi iepuri, nu prindi niciunul.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I told them to kiss my ass,” she said without skipping a beat.

“Well, I appreciate your disobedience.”

“I learned from the best.” Adi winked. “It was a good thing we disobeyed orders. We’re the only ship still flying.”

“The American expression — out of the pan and into the fire — I suppose.”

Him mentioning America provided the needed segue.

“Sir, why are we going to New York?”

He expected her curiosity, but he wasn’t ready with an answer. He trusted Adi more than anyone else in the world, but this time, things were different. It was difficult to read her expressions as she sat there waiting for his trust.

“It’s a mission.” It wasn’t a great answer, but he didn’t have another one to give.

“Mission?” Her face was straighter than a detective’s poker-stare. “You’ve been in prison. How can you be on a mission?”

“I’m returning to the one I was on before my incarceration.” He hoped she would buy the lie.

Adi puffed one last drag from her cigarette and snuffed it out on the plate. She reclined and sipped coffee. “What is this mission?”

Yes, what was the mission? It wasn’t simple to lay out the melody when he was playing by ear.

Minsk stepped over the hatchway, wiping engine grease off his meaty hands with a rag. It was the perfect interruption.

“Morning, Chief,“ he greeted his friend. “Where have you been? Annoying Tullia again?”

The cantankerous Russian freed a guttural hum from his chest and stuffed the soiled cloth in his back overalls pocket. “Nyet. She been annoying me,” he said with an overemphasis on the
oy
in the word annoying. “I tell her I made 321-peto design long before she was tickle in papka’s trousers. She no like me saying it.”

Tullia Pitu, the ships engineer, was not a woman to antagonize even on a good day, but Minsk enjoyed the aggravated reactions he got from her. It wasn’t something that required a lot of effort. They were both assertive personalities and used to getting their ways.

He lifted the pot and poured Adi’s hot, acidic coffee directly on his dirty hand. He didn’t flinch as the scalding liquid cleaned the blackened calluses. “Commander, most repairs done.”

The Bandit may have been a fusion-powered airship, but she also had plenty of moving metal parts to maintain. Although he had once been a master ship designer in his younger days, Minsk wasn’t above getting dirty when called upon.

“I’m not in charge anymore,” she corrected him.

“Good. It about time you get off ass and work again,” Minsk chided Emil, without any insinuation of humor.

“I don’t know, Chief. I’m thinking of taking a holiday. I’ve accrued enough sick days to do it, don’t you think?”

“Nyet. Girl here drive me mad. No good to let her be in charge.”

Adi wasn’t offended by the honest misogyny. She shrugged it off with a smile and a crude hand gesture.

“Tell me, Chief, while you’re cavorting with Tullia in the engine room, who’s flying the ship?” she asked with a side-glance.

“Cob.”

“Anton is manning the conn?” Emil asked, raising a surprised eyebrow.

“Much has changed since you’ve been away,” she reminded him.

“Apparently.”

“Don’t worry. He can handle it.”

Emil snatched Adi’s mug and downed the last gulp. Waiting for the burning sensation to pass, he handed it back to her. “Okay. Remind me how to get to the bridge.”

While she put away the mug, he stood, relieved that he didn’t have to answer her questions. But, knowing her as well as he did, he knew she would return to the subject sooner or later.

When they walked out of the galley, he patted his old friend on the shoulder. “Don’t let Tullia push you around, Chief.”

Minsk growled then laughed.

“General on the bridge!” Cob announced, popping to attention.

Emil stepped inside to the symphony of workstations relaying data streams. The mix of warm metallic deck plates with the fumes of overloaded circuits, somehow reminded him of his childhood home in Aiud. There was always the aroma of his mother's fresh baked bread cooling in the kitchen and the sound of his sister, Stephania, practicing a concerto on her violin in the front room.

“As you were,” he greeted the crew. He was home — the only one he had left.

He inspected the perimeter of the bridge, returning the admiration of his soldiers, some of whom he didn’t recognize. The crewmen he knew by name beamed as he went by, some with happy tears. The replacements he didn’t know looked on him as a living legend.

After completing a lap around the oblong shaped compartment, he stopped at the conn-chair. Cob stepped aside to relinquish control.

Emil placed his hands on the young man’s shoulders. “It’s a hard thing to give up isn’t it, Lieutenant?”

“What’s that, sir?”

“The allure of command.”

“I guess so,” he snickered, looking more like a kid playing soldier than the real thing.

Emil gave him a playful pat on the cheek. “Status, Mr. Cob.”

“We’re on course for New York, as ordered. Arrival in thirty. Most of the systems are online and in the green.”

“Most?”

“Yes, sir. The dust storm damaged two drive shafts, the auxiliary generator, and fresh water tanks three and four.”

“Tisk-tisk,” Emil joked. “Looks like you and the Chief have been neglecting my ship.”

“Oh no, sir. I swear —“

“Calm down, Mr. Cob. I’m joking.”

Anton’s posture slouched with relief.

“You did good. Take your post,” he commanded as he sat in the big chair.

Cob assumed his post at the helm, relieving a woman not much older than himself.

Adi watched Emil savor the occasion. He noticed her staring. He smiled. The two of them had a bond, which meant when one was out of sorts, the other would know without asking and could take action to remedy the malady. She was the closest thing to a daughter he had ever...

Daughter?

He remembered what Milari had forced from him during the interrogation. She mentioned
the child
. Could it be possible? He sprang from the conn and went to an empty workstation. Using a waveboard to enter a name into the search grid, he waited for the results.

Curious Adi walked over and read the words on the screen. “Markus Nerees?”

Either he didn’t hear her or he was ignoring her as he studied the flowing information. The results identified Markus Nerees as the chief executive officer of Jaures Industries, a subsidiary of Zolaris. He had offices in Paris, Buenos Aires, and New York. A related press release said the Frenchman would be in attendance at the World First Celebration in New York on the twenty-first of September.

“The twenty-first is just a couple of days away,” he muttered.

Is it possible
?
Would she be with him
?
Could the child hold the answers
?

He cleared the search results from the screen and returned to the conn. Adi knew something was up, but she chose not to press the issue.