Ragamuffin (37 page)

Cascabel moved to touch Kara’s shoulder, then pulled her hand back as her fingertips slipped through, instead of resting on, Kara. “We’re evacuating it all. And the captains here are calling for us to start attacking back.”

The thuds continued.

“That was close,” Kara said.

“Yeah.”

“Nashara—wait, I’m sorry, Cascabel—be honest. Are you worried?”

“Flying through the remains of this thing when it falls apart will be messy. The attack will be messy. But I think it’s our best chance.”

Another near strike loosened some debris that softly struck the left side of the
Toucan Too
.

But Cascabel said she wasn’t worried. And Kara was going to do her best not to as well.

T
he
Wuxing Hao
, which Etsudo suspected of being taken over by Nashara, had passed well beneath them on a tighter, lower orbit. It didn’t seem concerned with him at all.

He then watched it climb into a higher orbit, letting the upstream wormhole and its cloud of chaff and drones and Hongguo ships catch up to it. Now it was ducking and weaving its way toward the wormhole, explosions blossoming around it.

The Ragamuffin ship behind the
Wuxing Hao
, however,
was
concerned with him. The
Magadog
fired its first missile spread now that it had gotten within range. Once again, it called for Etsudo to slow down for it or be destroyed.

Etsudo drummed his fingers, checking simulations in the lamina, and realizing the cold truth. “I think I may have put us in a bad spot,” he said.

His crew didn’t say anything back. Bahul, Fabiyan, Michiko, and Brandon all looked at him as if not quite hearing what he was saying.

Etsudo continued, “I’m going to stop accelerating and let you all get out in pods. Fire your emergency beacons. I’ll continue running. I know some of you might wait to light up your beacons until Ragamuffins rescue you, I understand that. I know Hongguo might try, but remember, most likely they’ll wipe your minds. Just keep that thought before you light up.”

He cut thrust and watched the missiles gain.

Bahul floated over and shook his hand. “Be safe, Captain. Be safe.” Then he kicked off with Michiko and Fabiyan, who did not even look back.

Etsudo remained strapped in and shut his eyes. He watched the deadly points of light that represented a certain death get closer.

The Takara Bune shook as the pods left and streaked away.

Brandon came back and strapped in.

“You’re staying?” Etsudo looked over, disappointed. Of all his crew, he did not need Brandon aboard.

“You think it so easy to betray the Hongguo.” Brandon settled in. “You tried to get rid of those who would keep an eye of what you are about to do.”

“Three minutes to impact,” Etsudo said.

Brandon leaned his head back against the rest, which molded itself around his head. “You’re going to hand her the ship?”

“Who else will call the Ragamuffins off?”

“And will you be able to regain control?” Brandon asked.

“No, she’s too good.” In a way it was a relief. Soon Brandon would know his secret, and Nashara would be able to spread it all over. “Bit-based SOS with our ship’s lights, that was something else.”

“Do you think they’ll kill us?”

“I don’t know.” Etsudo looked at Brandon. He didn’t have time to try to get him off the ship. Whatever happened next, happened. Brandon was bucking the changes Etsudo had made and would soon cause trouble.

He’d have to deal with that when it happened. “Nashara, in two and a half minutes missiles from your Ragamuffins will hit us. They’re chasing us. We are in your hands, Nashara.”

And Etsudo handed his ship over to her.

The ship jinked as Nashara took control. The acceleration shoved Etsudo to the brink of blackout, but then it stopped.

“First of all, call me Cayenne, not Nashara. It’ll just be easier,” she said, her voice echoing through the entire ship.

“Cayenne? Like the pepper?” Etsudo asked.

“Exactly. Okay. What other surprises do you have, Etsudo?”

“I’m out.”

Nashara, no, Cayenne, appeared in front of him. “I doubt it, but let’s put that aside for a moment.”

“I apologize,” Etsudo said. And meant it.

He couldn’t see anything anymore, she had taken over all lamina, but inside he had counted the seconds to impact.

Time was up.

Nothing happened. Etsudo let out a long breath, glad to be alive.

“If you move,” Cayenne said, “I’ll accelerate so fast the blood will drain out of your head, and then I’ll spin this ship until you literally fall apart.”

“I expected no less,” Etsudo said softly.

“Just so that we’re on the same page.”

Etsudo nodded. “I understand.”

“I’m talking to the Raga. They’re a bit jumpy and we have to keep our distance. But your timing is perfect, Etsudo. We’re gearing up to attack the Hongguo. Apparently we want the
Gulong
.” Cayenne grinned in front of them. It was clear she approved.

Brandon and Etsudo looked at each other. Brandon’s lip curled. He did
not like this, his strong loyalties were unbreakable, but at least he kept quiet.

Cayenne flickered for a moment, looking, Etsudo thought, slightly distraught. “Oh, shit, Piper . . . ,” Cayenne said to herself, then flickered away, leaving the two men alone in the cockpit with nothing to look at but each other.

This was even more dangerous than Etsudo had suspected. Without the
Gulong
, the Hongguo were almost toothless. If they lost the
Gulong
, what would the Satrapy think?

And if they want far enough, and the news spread all throughout the Satrapy, what would become of the Satraps?

As others sensed weakness, order might be destroyed. Old injustices still rankled many, even among the Gahe and Nesaru living under the Satrapy.

It would mean worlds-wide chaos.

And maybe, Etsudo thought, freedom from the Satraps. A delicious and treasonous thought. Could the Ragamuffins actually pull that off?

P
epper had acquired one of the nice recoilless machine guns the Ragamuffins carried. It was snub-nosed and easy to hang off a strap.

“This some ill stuff,” Don Andery said. Several Azteca and Raga moved large, fibrous husks of cocoons through into the
Cornell West
. “Teotl on board Raga ships.”

Metztli hung over the bay doors, directing.

Pepper nodded at the procession of unformed Teotl waiting to be hatched. “We split them up, different ships. Reduces concentrated strength.”

“So they have we all infiltrate now. We all vulnerable.”

“You’re moving them to ships waiting out on the periphery,” Pepper said. “The higgler ships.”

“Dangerous. They still dangerous. What happen that you so soft on them?”

Pepper didn’t bother replying to that. Soft. Right.

If Andery and his crew didn’t see the potential to squeeze useful technology out of the Teotl, Pepper wasn’t interested in baby-stepping Andery through it.

Just rehashing arguments anyway. As a founder of the Black Starliner Corporation, Pepper still had considerable power within a grounation. Besides, they’d all voted. It was time to get on with it.

“The Azteca go through first,” Pepper said. “They’re the more unreliable part of the equation.” Warriors with a barely Copernican knowledge of the world fighting in zero g, who knew what went through their minds. Dragged from the ground to orbit and from ship to ship.

He was surprised how calmly they were taking it. Each Azteca had pinned a sick bag to his hip. The one thing they couldn’t adjust to with a quick snap was space sickness.

“Attacking the
Gulong
.” Don Andery stared off at the polished rock walls.

“At the least”—Pepper smiled—“we’ll be remembered.” He’d been hemmed in again. Destroying or capturing the
Gulong
might give him a way back out.

“We go be remember as bobo idiot them, not hero,” Andery said. “The point of battle ain’t to die for no glorious cause, but make you enemy to die for theirs. Some old friend had tell me that once.”

Pepper folded his arms. “Old friend, you had hours to make a case in the grounation. It isn’t my fault your imagination isn’t up to the task of coming up with anything better.”

Metztli, for all his wounds, moved from pillar to pillar and helped move Teotl eggs. Pepper noted every twitch and move of the Teotl. Every tentacle flip, filed away in the back of his head.

“Fuck you. No reason to be hackling me.”

“Get a pod, or shuttle, and try and run for it somewhere, Don Andery. Just leave
Starfunk Ayatollah
for us to fight with.”

“I ain’t no yellow-belly,” Andery protested.

“You’re the one causing botheration about all this.”

“Ain’t no botheration,” Andery groused. “Just talking.”

“I’m done talking,” Pepper said.

Metztli left to go deeper into the nest for more eggs.

“You want to come aboard the
Ayatollah
for the attack?”

“Getting aboard
Duppy Conqueror
,” Pepper said. He moved closer to Andery. “Someone said Earth cut off, before it happen to us, we had heard rumors. The last ships the company sent came back empty.”

Andery shook his head. “Was part of the Emancipation agreement. Freedom, but Earth was cut off, yeah.”

“I see.” That was like a sucker punch. Pepper blinked and looked around.

“Look. I got to go bunks, me rest now.” Andery drifted away.

A good idea, catching a nap now while things still were spinning up for the assault.

And Earth was once more beyond his reach. Pepper looked down at his dirty boots and swore.

N
ashara helped John add his son to the other bodies headed out with Teotl cocoons to the other ships.

He stood there until the dock alarms sounded.

“Come on,” Nashara pulled him back through the chaos of the docks using the mobile unit, to the
Toucan Too
. Teotl cocoons festooned the floor, with the fifteen warrior Teotl still alive guarding several of the larger units.

Inside the
Toucan Too
, John collapsed, hanging limp in the air as Nashara guided him to one of the rooms.

John then grabbed the lip of the cockpit entrance. “Hello.”

Kara, her feet hooked around a strap and floating in the air, twisted to face them. “Hello.”

John moved in and held out his hand. “I’m John.”

Shit, Nashara thought. She’d forgotten about the kid.

“I’m Kara.” Kara solemly shook John’s hand.

John turned around. “She needs to get off the ship before we go after the
Gulong
.”

“I know, yeah.” Nashara entered the cockpit, squeezing past him. John smelled of sweat and moss, oddly.

Not a great combination.

She was back in the cockpit, her world. The mobile unit used grapples to secure itself inside the air lock, ready to accompany her on any outside trips.

John drifted away into one of the rooms. “I need to go rest a bit, before all this starts.”

Cascabel appeared. “I’ll start hunting down a seat for Kara.”

“I don’t want to go.” Kara tilted her head and stared at the both of them.

“You’re just a kid.”

“I’ve seen more than many adults.” Kara folded her arms.

“Look—”

“You have talked to me about the horrors of revenge. But if the Satrapy is going to kill us all, or take our minds, what can I think of myself if I did nothing? Could it be worse than Agathonosis?”

Nashara sighed, and so did Cascabel. They glanced at each other. It could be worse. She could certainly imagine worse herself.

“I’m sympathetic,” Nashara said.

“But it’s just not something we can allow,” Cascabel finished.

“Do you think you are my parents?” Kara snapped. “No one here can tell me what to do.”

“Okay.” And Nashara saw a message pop up in her lamina. Cayenne was back.

Nashara could, of course, physically force Kara out onto one of the outgoing Ragamuffin shuttles.

Screw it. Cayenne was back and needed her, Nashara had more important things to care about.

“Okay,” Nashara said. “Stay. It’ll be dangerous. You’ll help with wounded. We’ll have Azteca and Raga aboard, and medical pods for the wounded. You’re able to interface with lamina, so you’ll be able to talk to the pods and authorize whatever medical treatment they want to give. Now I need a moment for an important conference.”

Maybe seeing the chewed-up bodies that would come from all this would temper Kara’s thirst for vengeance.

Nashara waved Kara out of the cockpit, and Cayenne and Cascabel appeared.

“Cayenne, what the hell happened on the
Takara Bune
?”

“Etsudo isn’t all he seems,” Cayenne muttered, then caught them up.

Nashara rocked back, as did Cascabel. “He what?”

“Altered our minds.”

Cascabel looked at Nashara. “I don’t feel it, I don’t feel different, do you?”

Would they even know?

“Think about it,” Cayenne said. “If this happened on Astragalai, would we even have stopped to consider whether his live was worth saving?”

“I would have flushed him out into the vacuum the moment I had the ship back then; right now, I’m not so outraged,” Cascabel said, and Nashara nodded.

“I know,” Cayenne said. “And I can’t. That’s a problem.”

“Shit,” Cascabel and Nashara said. “Can we still function?”

“I’m ready to face Hongguo. But we have to be careful with Etsudo, you know?”

Fair enough. That was done. There was Piper to deal with. She was getting the shit kicked out of her, the
Wuxing Hao
suffering enough damage it didn’t look as if it would even get through the wormhole in one piece.

Cayenne was the closest, and she was able to get a tight beam through to Piper, who showed up in their midst looking wan.

“I know I’m virtual to you guys, a spin-off, but to me this is damn real. The ship is falling apart, and I’m losing processing power with it. I’m dying. For real. I’m not going to make it.”