Stars of Blood and Glory (2 page)

She turned and saw a cluster of
weathered adobe huts and sun-faded tents, with a rickety old
windmill towering up near the center.
Home
. She stepped forward, sand tickling her
toes as her dress and headscarf fluttered in the wind, until she
reached an old sun-faded rug draped over a doorway.

Inside, a narrow tunnel of brick and stone
stretched out in front of her, with cozy, familiar rooms branching
off on either side. Arabesque carpets covered the uneven dirt
floor, while old, faded glowlamps illuminated the interior from
various niches in the adobe walls.

The moment she stepped inside, a feeling of
supreme peace swept over her. She ran her hands along the rough
adobe, letting the familiarity of the place fill her. Just around
that corner at the end of the corridor, someone was waiting for
her, someone who—

Kill him.

The datalink implant jolted her out of her
trance, alerting her to the sound of footsteps in the hallway. A
heady rush passed through her, making her shiver, but with
practiced concentration she kept herself perfectly still.

The door hissed open, shattering the last
remaining shards of her meditation. From her vantage point, she
watched the boots of almost a dozen Federation officers as they
entered the room and gathered around the table.

“
Colonel Jameson, you’re looking
quite well.”

“
Thank you. I wish I could say
the same of my men.”

“
I haven’t seen Major Hector at
all yet—does anyone know where he is?”

“
Last I heard, he was engaged in
counter-recon operations down by Eyn-Gatta.”

“
You don’t suppose—”

The room grew silent as one last pair of
boots stepped into the doorway. There was a quick shuffle as the
others drew themselves up at attention, facing the newcomer.

“
At ease, gentlemen.”

The sound of his voice sent chills shooting
down the girl’s back. She licked her lips and flexed her
fingers.

Kill him.

The men took their seats around the table. A
couple of them stretched out their legs so that their feet were a
hand’s breadth from her hiding place, but the external frame of her
skin-suit kept her fastened in place. She drew in a silent breath
and settled in, biding her time.

“
I’m afraid I have bad news,”
said her target. “A courier from the fourth division just arrived
with reports of massive Hameji movement in the Gamma sector. Major
Hector’s forces have been overwhelmed and routed from their
positions.”

“
Overwhelmed? By an advance
party?”

“
Yes—an advance party that
outnumbered his own forces three to one.”

A nervous rumble arose from the men. One of
them scooted his chair back and rose to his feet.

“
But Admiral Genjiro, why would
the Hameji move to attack us so soon? Our reconnaissance shows that
they’re still assembling their forces out beyond the local
cloud.”

“
Because, gentlemen, I believe we
are dealing with more than one battle fleet.”

The room fell deadly silent. Two of the men
started tapping their feet nervously against the floor.

“
There are several reasons to
believe that this is the case,” her target continued. “Analyzing
the Hameji movements further, however, we see that their fleets are
not uniformly coordinated. This development, I believe, warrants
some attention.”

“
Begging your pardon, Admiral,
what does that matter when their capital ships outnumber us by so
many?”

“
At this point, any advantage, if
properly leveraged, may prove decisive. We still hold all of the
important star systems in the sector. If we coordinate our
movements, we might be able to repel their advance.”

“
But if they’ve already entered
the rift,” a new voice said, “how can we possibly hold our current
position?”

The admiral sighed. “You’re right, I’m
afraid. Every moment we spend at this outpost, we risk getting
flanked or pinned down. I therefore propose that we leave a small
force at Eyn-Gatta to harrow the enemy’s rear and move our base of
operations back to New Vela.”

His proposal met with a chorus of assent.

“
Ende, I want you to move toward
the Gamma sector and try to cut off the Hameji advance fleet from
their main command. It won’t stop them, but it might slow them
down. Webb, I want you to provide the support for Ende’s rear and
watch for any Hameji flanking maneuvers. We’ll concentrate the
balance of our forces in the rift—whatever else happens, we can’t
afford to let them through.”

“
Are you sure that’s wise?” asked
a young man. He nervously tapped his fingers against his knees only
inches from the girl’s face. “If we fail to secure Zeta and Omega
sectors, the Hameji could launch a secondary campaign and bypass
the rift altogether.”

“
I realize that,” said her
target, “but I don’t believe the Hameji will come at us that way.
The hasty disorganization of this first attack shows me that their
fleets are disunited, with each commander hoping to beat the others
to the first spoils. It takes more than a standard month to bypass
the local clouds, and I don’t think any of them have the patience
for that.”

Silence again. From the lack of objection,
the girl guessed that the rest of the officers agreed with him. She
could easily visualize their nods of approval.

“
I have a strong feeling that the
coming campaign will prove decisive,” he added in a low voice. “No
military force in the galaxy has ever struck the Hameji a decisive
defeat, but every empire must one day fall. For the sake of the
last remaining free worlds in this galaxy, let us all perform our
duty with valor and honor. To your ships, men.”

The girl waited in careful silence as the men
all rose from their seats and made their way to the door. A few of
them lingered to chat about inconsequential things, but she kept a
close watch on the boots belonging to her target. As expected, he
stayed behind until he was alone.

When the door hissed shut for the last time,
the girl slipped out from under the table like a cat, moving on her
hands and feet while remaining out of sight. Her target stood
gazing at the video feed on the wall, completely unaware of her
presence. Heart racing, she reached to a pouch at her hip and
pulled out a syringe filled with a clear serum.

Kill him.

In less than a second, she crossed the space
between them and covered his mouth with her hand. He gasped in
surprise, but before he could resist, she jammed the syringe into
his neck, injecting the serum into his twitching flesh. His back
arched, and he collapsed to the floor.

“
Who?” he croaked, staring up at
her in horror. “Who ar—” His eyes rolled back in his head, and his
body convulsed one last time before growing still.

The girl stood over the body for several
moments, savoring the rush that always followed each kill. This one
had been clean—remarkably so. She admired her handiwork the way a
painter might admire his art or a chess master the elegance of his
game.

She wasted little time reveling in her
success, though. Before anyone else could discover her work, she
was more than a light-year away.

Part I

Chapter 1

If Roman Andrei Krikoryan felt anything
anymore, he felt old. His bones ached and his joints felt sore, but
those were only the echoes of his aging body—a body that was
quickly becoming irrelevant. The simulators did a little to
revitalize him, but it really made no difference anymore. No matter
how often he returned to the artificial comforts of the dream
world, he was still just an empty shell, a fragment of the man he
used to be.

“
How are you feeling, Master
Sergeant?”

Roman grunted and sat up on the examining
table. He flexed his left hand, observing the claw-like prosthetic
fingers as they clenched and unclenched. Only minimal nerves ran
beneath the durasteel plating, but he preferred it that way—the
less he could feel, the less pain he had to deal with.

“
Every time you see me you are
asking this question,” he said, glancing up at the young doctor who
stood over him. “And every time my answer is not
changed.”

“
Still, humor me.”

He grunted again, turning the right side of
his mouth up in a grin. “I do not feel anything, Lieutenant. I am
machine.”

Lieutenant Maia Avanadze nodded and pulled a
strand of her jet-black hair behind her ear—such a youthful
gesture. Roman’s mechanical eye registered her body heat as a soft
infrared glow, making her look like an angel in her immaculately
white uniform. She smiled at him, but her smile was one of pity and
not of understanding.

“
Your prosthetics are all in
working order,” she said. “I made some adjustments to your jaw,
though—a couple of bolts had come loose, and a nerve ending was
starting to grow into the empty socket.”

“
Perhaps you should become
mechanic,” said Roman, chuckling as he put on the top half of his
olive-green uniform. His thick chest hair extended across his right
pectoral until his skin met the dull metallic sheen of the body
plating on his collarbone. It took daily hormone injections and a
rigorous workout routine to keep the biological half of his body
from shriveling in comparison to his cyborg half, but even at his
old age, he kept a strict daily regimen. That was one thing the
prosthetics made easier—one reason he preferred them over a
rejuvenation. Mechanical muscles could be fixed when they broke
down.

Lieutenant Maia gave him a sharp look. “I’m
not just here to give your prosthetics a tune up, Sergeant. Your
enhancements are designed to let you live, not to turn you into a
machine.”

“
At my age, is there any
difference?”

She rolled her eyes, probably because she
didn’t think he could see her. That was one advantage of the
wide-angle lens he’d installed a few years back. He finished
adjusting his uniform and pulled on the eye patch—it slightly
impaired his vision across the visible spectrum, but it tended to
set others at ease, which made social interactions easier. The
subtle shift in Maia’s body heat confirmed as much.

“
I’ll see you back in in a week,
then?” she asked.

“
Of course,” said Roman. “There
is no face on this ship I would rather see.”

She smiled in the way that young women smile
at cute old men, and as Roman followed her to the door, he allowed
himself to believe that it was genuine. A moment later, he stepped
out of the medical bay, and the door slid shut with a sharp
hiss.

The
Tajji Flame
had hardly changed in the thirty or
so standard years that Roman had served as her second-in-command.
The personnel had come and gone—some, to more lucrative military
contracting jobs, others to their deaths—but the old warship was
one of the few remaining constants in his life. Her dimly lit
corridors and dull metal walls were almost as drab as a prison, but
he didn’t mind. In fact, it felt a little bit like his first
assignment: a convoy support craft with a crew of barely fifty. The
exposed wires running along the floor grating, however, reminded
him that this was no Imperial warship. Thank the stars for
that.

At the end of the main corridor, he palmed
open the door to the bridge and stepped inside. A little more than
half a dozen chairs circled the room, all of them unoccupied. The
main forward window offered a magnificent view of New Rigel V, a
deep blue water world with clouds swirling above the hydrosphere
like blemishes on a marble. Swarms of spacecraft glittered in the
bright yellow sunlight, slipping past in their lower orbits while
tiny shuttlecraft danced between them in a carefully coordinated
ballet.

In the center of the room, just behind the
command chair, Captain Danica Nova stood in a crisp uniform with
her hands clasped behind her, staring out at the view. Her dark
hair was cropped at her shoulders, the short streaks of gray a sign
of her age. She turned to face him, and he responded with a crisp
salute.

“
Captain, sir.”

“
Master Sergeant Krikoryan,” she
said, saluting him back. “At ease.”

Roman nodded and rested his hands behind his
back. “You wished to see me?”

“
Yes. How are you
feeling?”

“
I am functional,
Captain.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Did you give the
Lieutenant a hard time?”

“
No more than usual.”

“
I should hope not. She only
wants to look out for you, Sergeant—as do I.”

He grunted. “Do not worry about me, Captain.
I am fine.”

Danica stared at him for a moment, as if
looking through his cyborg shell to some part of him that only she
could see. He flinched, and she turned her attention to the control
panel in front of her.

“
I’m sure by now you’ve heard
about the renewed hostilities in the Gamma sector,” she said as she
typed in a series of commands. “It looks as if the Hameji are
launching a major offensive.”

“
Such as last campaign in
Oriana?”

“
No. Bigger.”

“
Good,” he said, relaxing a
little. “It will be good for our men to see action. Have we
received any new offers?”

“
Actually, it looks as if the
Rigelans want to keep us under their employ. They’ve promised to
renew our contract at four times the current rate.”