War Against the White Knights (31 page)

Ndjaek slithered forward at a surprising turn of pace. The staff general’s gelatinous body shot out two curved columns from the sides of its torso and stabbed them into its master’s back. The tips of this makeshift pincer burrowed deep within the master’s flesh before the Friokeban scissored them together, cutting through the great one’s spine.

The mutant master fell forward, crashing into the ground, and lay still.

The Jotuns shot at their master’s neck, not resting until its head was safely severed from its torso.

“You did not stop me,” said Scrutineer-Vigilant to Pierce-Wonder. “Why?”

“I find I grow tired of slavery.”

“And you fools had already sealed my fate,” said Ndjaek.

Scrutineer-Vigilant roared. It seemed dignity and honor were not beyond her reach, after all. “Then we should take advantage of your changes of heart,” she said. “Open a communication link to this Human Legion.”

“I’ve seen enough,” said Lieutenant-General Aelingir, satisfied that the defensive coils had been turned off, and not through the efforts of Mountain Root’s Khallenes. “Put her through.”

An image appeared of a Jotun field commander in the red uniform of the New Empire, an officer who claimed to be a General Scrutineer-Vigilant.

“An interesting move, General,” said Aelingir, “and quite a change from trying to kill me with another sneak missile attack. That
was
you, wasn’t it?”

“It was. To eliminate your opposite number is a sound tactic. But now that I have disabled the defensive coils, do I have your trust?”

Aelingir snarled. Did this idiot take her for a fool? “No, you have earned only my attention. I do not trust you. This smells of a trap.”

“Then smell this…”

The enemy general sent coordinates. Aelingir took a moment to calculate the location: about six levels further down.

“I have given you the location of the generator that powers the coils. I do not act with official sanction. Consequently, the coils will eventually be turned back on and their progress sped up. Unless, of course, you seize this opportunity with all four limbs and race down to the power generator first.”

“Why? Why aid us now?”

“Dignity.”

Dignity?
What crises of the spirit were afflicting the enemy staff? “Perhaps,” said Aelingir carefully, “but what you ask is too big a gamble. I still believe this is a trap.”

“Then I invoke the Protocol of Uij-Aohlaw.”

Aelingir’s claws
snikked
out. How dare this ridiculous fool mention the Protocol over an easy to monitor line? It was the last secret of the Jotun people that even the White Knights had never uncovered. The Protocol of Uij-Aohlaw was the ultimate guarantor of truthfulness, a form of words that would bind General Scrutineer-Vigilant, her family, and her progeny for 100 generations. The protocol bridged divides of caste and tribe, mattered more than such superficial distinctions as the sides one fought for in a war. It superseded everything, even their pledge to the White Knights, because the spirit of Uij-Aohlaw was the eternal soul of the Jotun people. Without Uij-Aohlaw they were but soulless colonies of organic compounds, mindlessly following their programming in an imitation of true life.

The Protocol of Uij-Aohlaw was not to be invoked lightly.

And equally, it must not be brushed aside without due reverence.

“Very well,” said Aelingir, “You may nominate your patron.”

“You, General. I request your patronage.”

“I accept.”

So few words… yet so many lives would be bound by them, and for so long.

Aelingir dismissed the image of her new vassal client – dismissed but hardly forgot – and signaled her staff to gather around.

“We have a new objective,” she said. “A power generator at these co-ordinates. Send orders for all armored divisions to converge on this new target with maximum speed. Instruct Lieutenant-General Mountain Root’s scribes that the Trog warriors are to rise up and assail the generator from below. Forward to victory!”

“Disappointed,” snapped Xin in answer, with head high and eyes blazing with indignation. “You do realize that our soldiers are still fighting down there?”

“Stop talking drent,” Indiya replied. “The battle for Australia is all but over, and neither of us are required to supervise mopping-up operations. I trust my
other
subordinates to carry out their orders – including your replacement in command of Army Group Sky Strike.”

Xin smiled at the two staff officers who had joined Indiya in this preliminary hearing. Indiya didn’t scare her, and she was determined that everyone in the room knew that, even though the officer to Indiya’s left was a Littorane who probably mistook the smile for a sign of drowning or a sexual invitation. But the other was a Kurlei empath who would feel Xin’s contempt burning in the fleshy comb that traversed the alien’s skull.

“I will ask this question one, final time,” said Indiya. “To the charge of gross insubordination in the face of the enemy, how do you plead?”

“Tired. Exasperated. Irritated. I don’t like your jostling for position while General McEwan is unable to take command, and I reject your insinuation that I failed to do my duty, because that implies that the personnel under my command carried out their duties with anything less than honor and competence. We should all of us be proud of the soldiers in Army Group Sky Strike, and I would not have them slandered. Not even by you, Supreme Admiral.”

“And I,” Indiya replied, “would not have our brave Sky Strike soldiers led by a commander who has become unreliable. Frankly, they deserve far better than you. As Colonel Lee your contribution to the Legion’s cause is well documented, but as a lieutenant-general, I fear your duties have overwhelmed your abilities. I understand you are bringing your baby to term. I suspect this has clouded your judgement, and made an already challenging role impossible for you.”

Xin bit her lip until the blood ballooned in the zero-g. It was better than screaming or strangling that frakking little shit. How dare she? As if Indiya, with her heart as cold as the deep void, would ever know motherhood.

The veck was doing it deliberately. The scrawny ship rat wanted to provoke a reaction. When Xin said she was tired she hadn’t been making that up. She was frakking well exhausted by decades of war. She had been fighting since she was a teenager, and she wasn’t intending to keep going until she was an old woman without experiencing something else, something more. If there wasn’t anything else, then what exactly the frakk were they fighting for?

The admiral tilted her head and arched an eyebrow. What was that, a frakking invitation?

Damn right it was! Xin crouched down, bunching her leg muscles in readiness to spring at the veck. Oh, she wouldn’t kill her or anything. She would try but there were provosts there and they would pull her off before she could do serious damage. But if she could land just one punch, give the ship rat a scar or a badly healed bone fracture that she would never forget, then it would all be worth it.

“Stop right there!”

When the auxiliary mess hall had been re-designated as a makeshift courtroom, the security setting on the hatches had been set high enough to prevent access to outsiders. Other than the provost guards, no one had noticed the hatch open.

But the figure hunched over in the mobile life-support pod jetting across the room had access everywhere.

“Cool it!” roared Arun McEwan. “Both of you!”

“General McEwan,” squeaked the admiral, “I… It’s good to see you up and about. We are conducting a preliminary–”

“I know why you’re here.”

Xin couldn’t remember the last thing to give her as much satisfaction as seeing the smile wiped from Indiya’s face.

“I heard everything,” Arun added, and then cast a withering look at Xin. “Saw everything too.”

Xin wiped the blood away from her face. Talk about awkward! She put on her parade ground face and decided to act as if Arun weren’t her lover. There would be time for that later, but for now he was a seriously pissed senior officer, and the weather forecast predicted shitstorms ahead.

“I go away for a few weeks and I come back to find you two fighting tooth and claw,” said Arun. Xin couldn’t help but notice how pale and puffy his face looked, how his eyes were so sunken they were bottomless pits of despair. “What is wrong with you? Both of you?”

“I gave her a direct order,” said Indiya. “She disobeyed.”

“No,” snarled Arun.

“She’s power mad,” said Xin. “Prevented me conducting operations, tried to stop me fulfilling my promise to you, Arun.”

“No. No. No!” shouted Arun. His outburst seemed to exhaust his feeble reserves of energy, and he visibly slumped, eyes closed. It took an age before he opened them again, bloodshot and sparkling with moisture. “I’m disappointed in both of you,” he said.

He buzzed his chair over to the admiral and delivered her a filthy glare. The ship rat was putting on a brave face but must know by now that her days were numbered, although the Littoranes would still find a way to use their favorite purple-haired religious symbol. They could embalm her, lacquer her, stick a pole up her ass and carry her around as a religious totem. Everyone would be happy.

Arun kept the rat girl dangling on his glare like a hanged woman dancing from the noose.

All too soon, though, he released her, and brought his chair over to confront Xin.

“Lieutenant-General Xin Lee,” he pronounced, “I find you guilty of insubordination, of disobeying orders in the face of the enemy. You are confined to your quarters.” He sighed, pausing for a rest, but he obviously hadn’t finished with her yet.

Xin felt her heart pound in her chest, an erratic pulse that was so strong it threatened to rip her free from the charged area that kept her attached to the deck. She realized her parade form was shot to shreds when she found she was staring at Arun, mouth open.

He was focused again, trying to hold her in a stern gaze. “We will talk when I have sorted out this mess, and you have had time to think. Dismissed.”

Xin held Arun’s gaze, and made no effort to leave. He probably thought that by looking back at him she was issuing a challenge, an adolescent boy’s staring competition. Yes, that was why he was returning her attention, unflinching, but she wasn’t interested in the pissing contests of men and boys; she was searching his face for the truth about who he now was. She was looking behind those brown eyes, hoping to find signs of the 17-year-old cadet who had fantasized about the girl from the class above him, the girl everyone said was out of his league, but who wouldn’t let that puncture his dreams.

Arun had turned out to be far more than a cute kid with a cheeky sense of humor and a refreshing innocence in a cynical world, but that kid had always lived on inside Arun’s head, the reason she had loved him back, long before the dumb veck worked it out for himself. Underneath the talk of galactic politics, war plans, and the legality of their own slavery, was still a boy who could never believe his luck that he shared his rack with the most beautiful woman in his world. That had been the secret to their success as a couple – Xin knew how to bring out the boy in Arun, how to reach inside and pull him out from the pit of despair that always threatened to close over his head.

Damn her! Damn Tawfiq for leaving behind this ruined husk of her man, and damn Indiya for her secrets and power play.

Xin closed her eyes. It was no use; he was gone. Her Arun was dead. She drew herself erect and breathed out a long sigh, contaminated with the enormity of her loss.
He’s dead.

She saluted her lover’s memory in the form of this echo in the chair before her, and allowed the provosts to escort her to her quarters in
Lance of Freedom
.

——

“I’m sorry you’ve had to come back to this, General.”

Arun barely heard Indiya speak. The enormity of what he’d said to Xin left little room for anything else. Had he lost her for good?

“Enough!” he snapped. “Leave me! All of you.”

He didn’t breathe until he was alone in the compartment. What was he going to do with Xin? They were going to win this battle for Athena – after seizing Australia, he was sure of that now – but he couldn’t bear to lose his Xin. Not now. Not when they were so close, and not this way. And their daughter…

Arun shook his doubts away. He and Xin had fought before, but their love had always won through in the end. Before he could fix this, he had to keep going until they had won this battle, to have the Emperor and the Empire in his grasp.

He would give all of it to Xin in a heartbeat, anything to reconcile with her.

The battle came first, though. The war was not over, but… perhaps he could finish this battle sooner than anyone thought possible.

——

Xin had been smuggled to the hearing on
Holy Retribution
in secret, but by the time she reached
Lance of Freedom
, the news of her status had spread to the passageways of the ship, which were lined with Navy and Marine personnel – many of whom had no legitimate reason to be there – who stood to attention and saluted her as she passed.

The message in the eyes of her supporters was clear: she might have lost the confidence of the Legion high command, but the soldiers in her command, and even many Navy personnel, would still follow her wherever she led.

When she entered her quarters, leaving the provosts to stand guard outside, a smile came to her lips.

Without moving her limbs, Aelingir elongated her fingers and laid the playing card on the table, letting the electrostatic charge secure it with an audible snap.

Unter of Bells
.

Arun looked down at the card but saw only a stylized image of an ancient European aristocrat grasping a brightly colored bell, a picture devoid of meaning. He couldn’t remember the Jotun’s bid. Had she called Schneider, or did she do that last round?

“Sorry,” he said, and opened his hand, allowing his own cards to float away.