Ragamuffin (21 page)

“Are there people aboard that?” Etsudo asked. “Or was it evacuated yet? What the hell is happening?”

With only a few thousand miles between the habitat and his ship, Etsudo considered trying to move closer. If someone survived, maybe he could save them.

More explosions rippled down the end of the habitat, splitting off one of the end caps from the rest of the dying structure. It looked like a giant metal cup losing its top, disgorging debris.

“How many people lived in there?” Etsudo asked, horrified.

“The last registry says a couple hundred thousand,” Brandon said.

Hongguo ships moved closer, five tiny chips of reflected light. But instead of moving to search for survivors, the five ships passed around the debris for the separated end cap.

“What are they doing?” Bahul asked.

Etsudo knew. He zoomed in on the end cap to where the ships cast out nets. Three of them were smaller merchant ships, like the
Takara Bune
. The other two Etsudo recognized. Large, heavily weaponed sister ships to the
Shengfen Hao
:
Datang Hao
and
Wuxing Hao
. Even closer. He froze the image for his crew to see. “They’re recovering the Satrap.”

“Is it dead?”

“No, they’re perfectly fine in the vacuum,” Etsudo said. His father had talked about once helping build a new upstream habitat for a Satrap.

“So that is a Satrap,” Brandon breathed. A lump of chitinous flesh almost a hundred feet long being pulled into the belly of the
Datang Hao
.

“Behold our masters,” Etsudo whispered to himself.

“Does it disturb you we aren’t included in any of this? We didn’t even know it was about to happen.” Brandon looked wounded.

“We proved our worth,” Etsudo said.

But Brandon didn’t look quite convinced. It’d be time to take him back to the room soon, Etsudo thought. Too much restlessness bubbled up from inside the man, restlessness that threatened Etsudo.

Etsudo looked over at Bahul. “Get us moving, head downstream.”

“We have business upstream,” Brandon said.

“I want to observe what comes next,” Etsudo said. Something important was happening. Something big. And Etsudo wanted the pieces to the puzzle, because he had a feeling it would be important to his future.

If the Satrapy had big changes in mind for humanity, Etsudo at least wanted enough warning to figure out what he wanted to do next.

And with a small chance that Nashara still lived, he needed to be sure his deceit didn’t get uncovered.

In the off chance she was captured alive or without unleashing her talent, Etsudo had been spending all his spare moments in his captain’s room, working hard to prepare his equipment in case it ever happened again.

T
he
Toucan Too
whipped around Chilo, a choking-hot and heavily clouded planet offering no traffic except a series of science satellites jostling between the two orbiting wormholes. Moving from the upstream wormhole to the downstream took a morning, and at noon Nashara faced herself. “You holding on?”

“Somewhat overwhelmed.” Cascabel rubbed her eyes and leaned back through a chair. “We have the lead. We’re almost there.”

“At a cost.” The pods had dragged everyone back to life after the last set of transits. Fast in, bump down the momentum, correct course, slam downstream. But the pods estimated they would fail the next time Cascabel pushed the
Toucan Too
that hard, and Cascabel bet the ship would shake itself apart at those speeds as well. Ijjy, Kara, and Jared slept under sedation, blissfully unaware of it all.

“They’re alive, right? We’re just a few wormholes upstream. We’ll try to take it easy now,” Cascabel said. “But better we save the thousands than the three.”

Nashara closed her eyes and agreed. “We should see a ship soon, though.” They were ever so close to old Ragamuffin haunts.

Though what the handful of aging ships Ijjy described out in the end of this run could do for her she wasn’t sure.

They continued on, each withdrawing into her own private space. Hours bled into each other as the
Toucan Too
drifted from wormhole to wormhole, each transit dangerously close to ripping the ship apart.

But under Cascabel’s quick guidance, they always pulled through. The hours bled into a day, then a second day, and on the third Cascabel appeared with a smile.

“Contact.” They had just two more transits to go; it made sense that they encountered a Ragamuffin ship.

“I’ll get Ijjy up.”

The
Toucan Too
shuddered as it slowed and the other ship paced them.

Nashara kicked her way down the central shaft to the medical room, giving the command for Ijjy’s pod to open as she opened the door.

He coughed, spitting up a tiny bit of blood. “My chest hurt something evil,” he complained.

“You’ve had three cardiac failures,” Nashara said, helping him wobble out of the pod. “But a Raga ship’s pacing us. We’re two transits upstream.”

“That go be the
Starfunk Ayatollah
, I bet you anything,” Ijjy said. “I know the captain.”

“Let’s get you strapped into the cockpit.”

They coasted back, and Nashara helped Ijjy secure himself. “Cascabel, let’s talk to the ship.”

Her other self appeared. “Is that a good idea?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do we want to be taking over Ragamuffin ships?” Cascabel asked.

“There are controls built in regarding Ragalamina,” Nashara muttered.

“But if they’re using Satrapic technology . . .”

Ijjy shook his head. “Nah, all homegrown, all the time. Just open the channel and make sure I visible.”

Cascabel shrugged. “Okay. And in one, two, three: the
Starfunk Ayatollah
’s on.”

A leathery-faced man with grayed dreadlocks appeared before them all. “I Don Samuel Andery, captain of
Starfunk Ayatollah
. Who you is?”

“Mr. Andery, my name is Nashara. This is Ian Johnson, of the
Queen Mohmbasa
. We need to talk, and quick.”

“Ijjy?” Andery frowned. “Where the
Queen
?”

Ijjy swallowed. “Gone. The Hongguo attacked.”

“The Hongguo? For real?”

“They also had attack the other higglers we was with,” Ijjy said. And then he launched into a recap, answering Andery’s questions as the conversation grew heated.

“I find all that hard to believe. Hongguo enforce the rule of the Satrap, but this?”

“Believe it,” Nashara said. “Why else do you have armed ships? Why else do you cluster around a dead wormhole instead of trying to integrate with the rest of the worlds? The Satrapy doesn’t have our best interests at heart.”

Andery looked at her. “That true, sister, true, but we can’t just take you word for it. You go have to come in, call a grounation with the Dread Council to talk. Then they can send out some ship to check all this.”

“You think you have the time for that?” Nashara waved in the air to display an image of the upstream wormhole. A Hongguo ship breached the wormhole, cautious, tasting the air ahead of itself with a score of drones that
swarmed out tossing chaff and bleeping random static across frequencies. Nashara shook her head. No way back through, Hongguo would be piling up on the other side of the hole any moment now.

Another ship followed it. Then a second. Then a third.

“Taking us a bit more seriously now?” Nashara asked. It surprised her the Ragamuffins only had one ship out patrolling.

Andery looked serious. “Get you self moving, we right behind.” He looked away from them, then nodded. “The
Magadog
coming in.”

A new face appeared, scarred with short-cropped hair. “
Toucan Too
, this
Magadog
, Ras Christopher Malik here. Been listening to what all you saying. Don Andery got the right of it, head downstream, we sending back explanation, mobilizing.”

“You have preparations for such an event?” Cascabel asked. A Ras ranked higher than a Don; this captain would know more about Ragamuffin emergency plans.

Ras Malik nodded. “Morant being towed out system, deep space. Worse come to worse we keep going, head out into them Oort cloud, hide out deep, forget the wormhole them, hunker down. We already an hour into it, you’ll find out what happen when you get in system. Just be careful, we all jumpy, seen?”

Nashara saw a blip moving out from beside the downstream wormhole now. The
Magadog
. The two ships played chicken for a few brief minutes, until
Magadog
curved out of the way.

“Good luck,” Nashara said.

“You too,” Ras Malik said. “Thanks for the heads-up. Make sure to drop all you speed coming out the wormhole, it mined.”

Magadog
whipped past them, mere thousands of miles apart. Cascabel upped acceleration, and the
Toucan Too
hit the downstream wormhole toward the Ragamuffin home territory.

Sweeps of the area around lit up their displays. Ships, shuttles, drones, chaff.

“Shit, Malik wasn’t kidding.” Cascabel dumped velocity, spinning them on end to fire the main engines and bleed tens of thousands of kilometers per hour.

The two wormholes orbited a rocky world, and that in turn hung out near a brown dwarf. Nothing of interest to the Satrapy here.

“
Toucan Too
, this the
Xamayca Pride
.” An audio-only connection of a
woman’s voice. A cautious choice. Nashara respected that. “Ras Monifa Kaalid here, we sending you a path through the mines hanging all around you.”

Cascabel nodded. “It’s here.” The
Toucan Too
puffed, adjusting orbit to sink down into the cloud of mines.

The round face of Ras Kaalid appeared, her dreadlocks floating loose around her face. “Sorry about that,” she said. “Things really getting hectic here and everything on a full stand-up. We already getting Morant towed out.”

“You knew about the Hongguo?” Nashara asked.

Ras Kaalid shook her head. “The downstream wormhole to New Anegada reopened. Everything upside down.”

Nashara and Cascabel stared at each other, and Ijjy leaned forward. “That even possible?” Ijjy asked.

“Apparently,” Ras Kaalid said. “Now we have to find out what coming up through from there, and what coming down on all of we with the Hongguo.”

Nashara looked at Cascabel. “We have to get there. We have to find out what has happened.”

“Maybe, but it ain’t big enough. We waiting to see what coming through.”

“Make sure we’re there too,” Nashara told Cascabel. She had to see what lay on the other side of the wormhole, what had happened to New Anegada.

Her long quest might almost be over.

And they might have a new ally in the coming fight against the Hongguo.

PART TWO

P
epper wrapped his oilskin duster around himself tighter as the wind kicked up through the trees and water cascaded down on his dreadlocks and behind his collar. He shivered.

He needed a new duster. He’d bulked out too much over the last few years. Good food, a free schedule. It sounded good. Nice planet, New Anegada. Or Nanagada, as the Caribbean descendants here had taken to calling it sometime in the last few hundred years. Only, somewhat annoyingly, the locals called their land on the other side of the mountains Nanagada, just like the planet.

He still wanted to get off the damn planet and see if it was possible to get back to the rest of the worlds. The destructive dying spams of the war against the Teotl the Black Starliner Corporation had raged in space had left the planet with no wormholes out anywhere and with the destruction of technology. It was hard to step back from centuries of progress and not miss it, and Pepper found each year grated harder at him.

A branch snapped.

Someone sniffed.

Pepper’s gray eyes flashed back a bit of moonlight, like a cat’s. He flipped back an edge of his coat and pulled out a long hunting knife.

Five days in this dirty, muddy, humid, sticky-leafed outskirts of the Azteca city Tenochtitlanome.

It was something to do.

The warrior-priest he’d been stalking stepped around the large banyan tree and Pepper picked him off the ground by his throat. He tossed the sniper’s rifle the man carried off into the bush.

“
Niltze
,” Pepper said. Hello. Pepper had been practicing his Nahautl.

He flashed the knife in front of the man, who whispered, “Pepper,” and wet himself.

Word apparently got around.

Pepper shoved the man down onto his back. Mud exploded outward as the flat of the warrior-priest’s back slapped against the sloppy ground.

“I die gladly for my gods,” the priest choked.

“That’s nice.” Pepper leaned forward. “I have a question. Which one of your gods is giving you the orders to try and kill delegates from Nanagada?”
The Azteca’s gods, the Teotl, couldn’t leave well enough alone since their defeat and the overthrow of their priests. They still tried to manipulate things here in Tenochtitlanome from the shadows.

“I’ll die a thousand lives before giving you any information,” the priest spat.

“I can do that,” Pepper growled. A twig snapped nearby. “But you’re lucky today.”

“Pepper?”

“You’re late, Xippilli.” Pepper looked over at the Azteca nobleman who stepped off the muddy path toward them. “Told you I’d catch one skulking around here.”

Several Jaguar warriors in yellow-and-red capes stepped forward, rifles aimed at the warrior-priest on the ground.

“Take him for interrogation,” Xippilli ordered. The Jaguar scouts ran forward and bound the warrior-priest’s hands with leather thongs and carried him away.

Xippilli stood with Pepper in the rain, looking through the foliage toward the pyramids rising over the top of the jungle. Tenochtitlanome, the capital of Aztlan, was home to tens of thousands of Azteca. And home to a small delegation of Nanagadans, their housing not too far away from the copse they stood in.