Imposter's Gambit: A Space Opera Adventure (Delta Desperadoes Book 1), page 30
“What did you do, what the hell did you do?” Botan yelled. “This wasn’t the fucking Necros. This was you, wasn’t it?”
“I saw the whole thing,” Ori Jo said, her voice firm. “It was Steelgrave.”
The chill in Steelgrave’s heart would have frozen a star.
Botan screamed at the sky and lashed out at wounded marines with his blade. Their heads fell into the uranium-caked fissures far below. Though Ori Jo, trembling, turned her head, Steelgrave watched it all as an astronomer might watch a sun burn through a telescope. An observer, rather than a participant. But he was more than a participant: he was the perpetrator, and he would never be able to forget that no matter what he did now.
24
“Blood can never turn into water.”
- Badawi proverb
Julia waved the real marshal’s nickel-plated Dokor revolver in Steelgrave’s face as she stood before him at the station outside Warui Kaigan.
“I should use this to shoot your balls off, marshal. The parts of your balls that are left, after you did this for Karl Bauer.”
Steelgrave, his shoulder treated by a Sentiri medic, returned her look. “It’s not my balls you should be worrying about—but the balls on those who tried to pull this off.”
She snorted. “Thanks to you, Kaigan will be inoperable for at least a month. That burning tram damaged the mining equipment and collapsed several vital bridges over the richest fissures. Now I will have to hire more offworlders to come and clean that up.”
It was early the next sol, and the sun had barely risen over the horizon. In the distance, smoke still rose from where the soldiers had destroyed Tram 2. Sentiri aircraft flew overhead, ready to strafe anything that wasn’t a miner or marine.
Botan waited nearby, hand on his sword, karuta armor still spattered with blood from the marines he’d executed.
“You’re going to risk that, with Karl Bauer doing this right under your nose?” Steelgrave asked. “My deputy saw me tussling with one of your marines—big fucking deal. I didn’t pull the trigger out there. I didn’t spook those Necros off. What did you expect? They probably saw those rocket launchers and hauled ass.”
He didn’t say what he really wanted to: that she had ordered Tram 2 to be destroyed to prevent miners from leaving Warui Kaigan en mass.
“Your deputy cried outside the station after my marines brought you in,” Julia said. “Is there some connection with her I should know about?”
“Yes, one we can sever,” Botan said, tapping his sheathed blade.
“She’s just a farmgirl with a gun,” Steelgrave said, hating every word. “She’s helped me with the locals. It makes me look respectable, having a deputy. Takes the heat off of me when things go to shit. But you’re going to trust her over me? Bauer is the one you need to worry about, not me.”
Julia put the revolver away and tapped a finger against his neck. “I have already contacted Karl Bauer. He is denying any involvement in Santiago’s disappearance. That Norsk Rom cunt even had the nerve to demand the return of his stolen lab equipment.”
“Maybe he’ll demand the Delirium next?” Steelgrave asked, doing his best to nonchalantly increase her suspicion of her fellow oligarch. “Maybe Botan here can suck it out of some Necro corpses. I hear he’s good at that.”
The next instant, Botan’s blade was at Steelgrave’s throat.
Steelgrave smiled at him. “Nikkō was right. You have no control. No wonder this shit went the way it did. Karl Bauer, huh? You threw fuel on the fire you’ve built here.”
Botan glowered. “That meinu will join that priest and his Necros soon. Maybe the deputy, too. Do you wish to watch before I add you to that pile of bodies out there?”
Julia casually flicked away Botan’s blade and studied Steelgrave for a moment. “Botan relieved those who failed to do their duty. Yet, now that you mention Nikkō, it is strange how Bauer hired that Forever Girl given her history with her own people. Knowing that might cause problems here on Pavo Dos. He’s planned this for some time. Then there is Santiago. The old bastard wants me to believe that he had those Necros under control, but that you caused problems, marshal.”
“I went to check on the shipment, and those fuckers attacked me,” Steelgrave said. “That stupid bastard should have given them the drugs later, rather than right away. That’s on him. Unless he wanted me dead.”
Julia nodded, eyes narrowed. “Yes, unless he wanted you dead. Hmm. Then there is that incident at Bona Aigua. Enitan, what did you see there?”
Steelgrave hid his unease the best he could as Enitan strolled onto the tarmac. Her scarf and mask were in place, no doubt due to the radioactive air. The moans of wounded marines and corralled miners carried on the breeze, along with particles that had drifted from the fissures. He was surprised Pavo Dos’s few cyclers kept the tainted air from poisoning everyone on the planet.
Enitan looked him up and down, as if his appearance would decide his guilt. “Your marines shot a canteen so that a woman could not drink from it. Their recklessness alerted the Biogen guards, and they fired upon one another.”
Julia kept looking at Steelgrave, arms crossed. “And Steelgrave?”
“He was trying to help the woman,” Enitan said.
Veld hunters were known for their integrity, but Enitan’s selective honesty almost made Steelgrave smile. Whatever game she was still playing, he was thankful for it.
Julia’s nostrils flared, her eyes boring into Steelgrave until she scowled at the smoke rising from the canyon. “Goddamn Karl Bauer. I knew hiring those settlers on the flatlands would be trouble, but I thought Bauer was smarter than this. This has been one incident after another. A power play. It started when you returned, marshal. Why is that?”
Steelgrave had prepared an answer. “I’m the easiest fall guy. I’m a MEC marshal that’s more corrupt than either of you. I’ve worked for both Sentiri and Biogen. If I were going to blame it on someone, I’d have chosen me, too.”
Botan lowered his blade but didn’t sheathe it. “That is a shit explanation.”
Steelgrave shrugged as if they were arguing the price of a beer. “What do you want me to say? This is a shit business, and I came to this backwater to make credits. Out here, I can do whatever I want, kill whoever I want, fuck whoever I want, and claim it’s the law. Why would I want to mess that up?”
Julia wheeled around. “I believe that. But I do the fucking around here, not you, and certainly not Karl Bauer. That goddamn laboratory rat. I knew it was a risk, agreeing to share this planet with him, but I needed to feed these miners, and drone labor remains a hot button issue throughout the Spur. He’s always been too ambitious for his own good. House Sentiri must respond, and quickly. None can doubt our supremacy in this system.”
Enitan leaned on the railing beside Steelgrave, as if his innocence was reestablished. “Hmm.”
Julia smirked. “You can kill Steelgrave after I am through with him, hunter. He should prove himself useful once more.”
“Thanks,” Steelgrave said.
Botan finally sheathed his blade. “I say we strike Bauer at his compound. Turn the sand around it into glass.”
Julia shook her head. “No, he has those android guards, and I’d like to have whatever else he’s been developing in there regarding all that aquaculture equipment he’s been buying offworld. If it truly is modded pilots, as you claimed, marshal, then that could net House Sentiri bargaining power with Biogen. No, we’ll act like we wish to renegotiate our terms with him.”
“Karl Bauer won’t do that on Pavo Dos, milady,” Botan said. “He will want neutral ground.”
“Dozois Depot?” Steelgrave asked.
It was too on the nose, too close to what he really wanted…
Julia grinned viciously. “That is perfect, marshal. The Depot is exactly where I shall invite him to discuss our…differences. Bauer will come, thinking he has safety amongst all of those merchants up there. We will radio him the offer and leave for Dozois Depot at dawn. Bauer will come. He must, at this point.”
“I want my deputy back,” Steelgrave said. “She saw these things, too. The things Bauer has done.”
It wasn’t a lie. Ori Jo could back up whatever he needed to say, as well as provide support if a firefight broke out. He was using her again, he knew. But if she didn’t appear to be under his employ, then Julia might have her killed. He tried to convince himself that he was keeping Ori Jo safe. It almost worked.
“Bring her,” Julia said. “But I want you both cleaned up. Better jumpsuits, armor, the works. That way, if we have to kill that asshole Bauer, it will look like law enforcement took him down. That means you are my trigger man, Steelgrave.”
“What about her?” Steelgrave asked, and jerked his thumb at Enitan.
“If this works, then we shall see,” Julia said. “This hunter has been in Bauer’s camp, too, and if he sees her with us, it might make him think twice about doing something foolish on the Depot. And Enitan? Wajibu or not, do not test me.”
Enitan nodded once.
Steelgrave tipped his hand in acknowledgement, and Julia smiled as if she owned him. Maybe she had owned the previous marshal in all but name.
As Julia exited the station, Botan gave Steelgrave one last scowl and followed. That left him and Enitan on the tarmac, watching the smoke rise from the tram wreckage.
“What will you do?” he asked her.
Enitan didn’t look at him as she stared over the horizon. “Whatever it takes.”
“And Ori Jo?” he asked, knowing he had revealed a vulnerability in even asking about the woman he’d grown too fond of.
Enitan made for the stairs. “Whatever it takes.”
Ori Jo approached the landing pad outside Warui Kaigan with the swagger of a gunfighter who had all the bullets in the universe and no one to use them on. A new, wide-brimmed hat shielded her features from the sun. It looked like one of Slushie’s mementos he’d spotted aboard Molly Zero. The Toshiro revolver didn’t slap against her thigh anymore. Now, she wore it with the holster’s lower half strapped to her upper thigh.
It was as if she had grown up in the short time they’d known each other, in the ways a person should never have to grow. The steel in her eyes, visible through her translucent goggles, bore a casual menace he had not expected.
“No one followed you?” he asked over their mask radio.
Ori Jo walked right up to him and tapped his chest with a gloved finger. “Nope. You ain’t taking me up there to put all this on me, are ya? I’ve plenty of bullets for this here gun.”
Steelgrave pushed his mask up so she could see his eyes unfettered by the protective gear. “Ori Jo, I just--”
“You’re just a fool, standing out here in the god dang sun,” she said.
He flinched at the venom in her voice.
Her fingers curled into his jumpsuit collar, like she wanted to either strangle him or feel his touch—and that she wanted both options whenever she needed them.
“Let’s keep this here deal professional and all, marshal. I’ll back up whatever ya say to Miss Julia and Karl Bauer. When that affair settles…when whoever is left standing calls the shots for Pavo Dos…we’re done. You follow me, ya try to hurt me, you even ask me where I’m a going, I’ll put ya down. Understand?”
Steelgrave’s heart sank. “I understand…deputy.”
Ori Jo released him, looped her thumbs in her gunbelt, and paced around the landing pad like a predator waiting for prey.
Though her words stung him, he deserved no less. In some ways, he wished he hadn’t met her. Then, maybe she’d still be that grinning, happy-go-lucky farmgirl who believed in her heroes.
Julia had ordered her commissary to give them both armored jumpsuits and reinforced masks that were vacuum-ready. They were brown with orange shoulder and knee pads, plus an orange stripe across the chest: the MEC magistrate uniform that had once meant something across the Dust Systems. Now it would be the alibi she wanted them to use in the event she ordered them to kill Karl Bauer.
He gazed at Ori a few moments, admiring how the uniform suited not only her figure, but the new person she had become. A survivor.
“My, don’t you two look the part,” Julia said as she walked up the pad’s ramp. She wore a slim business suit that he assumed was constructed of ballistic fibers and hidden armor plates over the larger areas. The outfit was meant to convey cooperation and a non-threatening demeanor. He suspected she had a small gun hidden on her person as well. A woman like Julia Sentiri never went into any situation unprepared.
“A far cry from the bandit woman who killed that traitor right in front of me on that shuttle,” Steelgrave said.
Julia ran a hand down his chest and smiled as if they might have drinks in her hot tub later. “I am still that woman, marshal. Do not forget that.”
Ori scowled at the noblewoman, then looked elsewhere.
Two squads of Sentiri marines walked onto the pad. Their sergeant saluted Julia and displayed a holographic representation of a ship on their wrist mobile.
“Lady Julia, Queen of the Afternoon is inbound to our position, ETA one minute and twenty seconds,” the sergeant said.
Julia nodded. “Very good. Our interceptors are in place near Dozois Depot?”
“Yes, milady,” the sergeant said.
Interceptors. Julia was going to risk a space battle with Karl Bauer? That level of arrogance meant the oligarchs weren’t hiding anything from MEC now. If Julia or Bauer got full control, that arrogance would only worsen. The people on Delta Pavonis’s struggling worlds would all become slaves, and not just the miners and farmers.
Botan and Enitan appeared next, wearing their typical karuta and Veld outfits and armed to the proverbial teeth. Julia eyed them all in a single glance, as if satisfied that her personal army had finally been assembled.
“Botan, Nikkō is yours once we get what we need from Bauer,” Julia said. “Enitan, I expect you to leave this system after this. Marshal, you and your deputy will serve me afterward, if you perform well. Delta Pavonis is going to make all of us very, very wealthy—as long as you listen to what I say. Without House Sentiri, MEC will investigate these events, and everything we have worked for will fall apart. We must not fail. Bauer must not exit Dozois Depot alive.”
They all nodded, even Ori Jo.
“So you are Steelgrave’s little protégé?” Julia said, smiling at Ori Jo. “It’s good to see someone realize what they are capable of, once they set aside the things holding them back. If all goes well, I might offer you a position in my house. A pretty face like yours could prove more than useful. Men always look at that before they realize you’re holding a gun.”
“I’d sure like that, milady,” Ori Jo said.
Julia chuckled. “How delightfully charming. Very well. Let us be off.”
Ori didn’t look at Steelgrave as the starship arrived, its thrusters blowing the canyon’s hot, irradiated air over them. He wanted to tell her Julia would use her up, that the woman could offer her nothing but death—but that’s all he had to offer, too.
Once the ship landed, Julia entered, then Botan and Enitan. Ori Jo followed in a cautious gait, still not looking at him.
He didn’t blame her. He wouldn’t want to look at him, either.
Steelgrave took one last look at Pavo Dos: the flatlands, the spindly columns of the Blood Buttes near the Grinders, the defiant splinter of Calamity Cliff, the infertile brown expanse that was the Shitter, and the glint of buildings at Noia de la Flota. The mesas where El Agujero Muerto lay, the infertile valley that held the ruins of Bona Aigua, and the still-rising smoke from Warui Kaigan. A world of pain and misery, and he’d thought he could alleviate some of it. What a fool he was.
He turned to the open airlock. Ori Jo finally met his eyes, and he’d not expected the regret in those soft brown orbs as she waited near the hatch. Maybe she had tried to assuage pain, too—hers, and his.
Steelgrave tilted his hat and walked up the ramp. Time for the final gamble.
25
“When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
- quote attributed to a follower of Pistola Rojas
Queen of the Afternoon lifted off the pad and ascended through the sky in a smooth ride. Ori Jo lost some of her reticence and gaped out the viewports at the tiny structures below, growing even tinier by the second.
Steelgrave hid his smile at her reaction even though the mask concealed it. He recalled the first time he’d launched off a planet. The awe at the incredible powers of technology that could lift him above the reach of gravity, and the impossible view that put one’s life into perspective. He loved the adrenaline rush of flying through turbulence, then the surprising tranquility once the vessel rose above the airy confines of lower atmosphere.
Back then, after growing up on a world that meant nothing to MEC, it had seemed like he was finally going to see all those places shown in adventure vids. Like the universe was finally open to him and all his dreams.
How he’d wasted those dreams, discarding them in favor of the weapon on his hip and the callous heart that gave its projectiles as much propulsion as the gun itself.
Ori’s eyes grew even wider as Queen of the Afternoon departed Pavo Dos’s upper atmosphere for the dark expanse of vacuum. Stars shone outside the viewport, tiny little godlings wanting to be seen against the gorgeous yellow-white glare of the planet below. Lila became a sphere of fading crimson, banded by orbiting installations. All worlds appeared beautiful from orbit, seemingly filled with possibilities. It was easy to forget, if only for a moment, that such a captivating image could contain all the hurt and death he’d seen over the last several sols.
“ETA to Dozois Depot: two minutes,” the captain called over the ship’s comm.
Steelgrave unbuckled and floated above his seat. Ori Jo regarded him with shocked envy, then did the same. She drifted above the seat beside him and spread her arms as if she were swimming in an invisible ocean. They shared a joyful look. He didn’t care that the others ignored them or rolled their eyes. It was a private moment between him and Ori, and he wanted that in his memory rather than the schism between them.
