Fated Blades

CHAPTER 3

New Delphi perched on top of a towering plateau, its glittering skyscrapers and beautiful office buildings vying for space with residential apartments and houses, cushioned in greenery. On the side of the cliff, five hundred meters below the city level, lay the Terraces. Seven platforms, each about a couple of kilometers long and two hundred meters at their widest, they curved from the living rock one under another, like scalloped mushrooms from a massive tree trunk.

The Terraces offered views, shopping, and restaurants, all catering to residents of the city longing for a brief return to the simpler, slower life in the provinces of their childhood. Here service was relaxed, the furniture was rustic, and the food tasted homemade.

Matias touched down in a small private parking lot on the Fourth Terrace, next to a quaint café protruding from the cliff. Its front wall offered the familiar carved facade of reddish rock etched with acid to a paler shade particular to the Terraces, where any new building space had to be reclaimed from the plateau. A hipped roof with upturned corners, lined with high-tech solar shingles made to resemble blue clay, shielded the building from quick torrential rains that soaked Dahlia year around. The café looked like it had always been there, but he was 100 percent sure he hadn’t seen it the last time he’d visited.

The moment he’d swung the aerial from the Davenport building, they’d agreed they required a secure terminal. Haider was a shrewd rival. Even if he planned on making money from their deal, he wouldn’t pass up a chance to pry the lid off their servers and rummage through their contents. There was no telling what fun surprises he had stuffed into the file he sent to their in-boxes. If they were dumb enough to open it without precautions, they would deserve everything they got.

They needed a scrubber and a quiet, private location to view their little gift. Ramona told him she had one. Matias had one as well, but if his lifelong enemy wanted to invite him to view one of her safe houses within the city, he would be a fool to decline. Learning more about the Adlers only benefited the Baenas in the long run. You never knew when things like that would come in handy.

Ramona’s door slid open, and she climbed out of the aerial. A moment later Matias followed. Sunlight spilled from the clear sky, warming the tiles under his feet. A hundred meters away, the Terrace ended, guarded by a stone rail, and beyond it an ocean of air stretched, the fertile plain far, far below rolling into the hazy distance toward the pale-blue mountains at the horizon. Wind buffeted Matias’s face, bringing with it the aroma of cooked meat, spices, and the scent of fresh bread.

How long had it been? A year? No, closer to eighteen months. Enough time for a new restaurant to be carved out of the living rock and wrapped in a facade of Dahlia clay.

The last few months had been a tense, focused blur.

Back when Matias had first left Rada, one of the jobs had taken him down to a planet where the natives raced large, fast herbivores. The animals were used to dodging predators. Despite their size, they were skittish and required small screens on the sides of their heads restricting their vision to the narrow tunnel directly in front of them or they would veer off course.

That’s what he was, Matias realized. A Metfost charger, racing to the finish, oblivious to everything else. Except he didn’t have a handler. He was the one who’d willingly put blinders on himself and sprinted.

He noticed Ramona standing next to him. She had turned her face to the sky, and the sunlight dusted her bronze skin with gold. Wind pulled at her dark hair. She caught it and twisted it into a bun with a practiced flick of her hand. She looked like she belonged here, on this terrace suffused with light and fanned by wind.

They stood side by side, bathed in scents of cooked food and sunshine. Ramona made no effort to hurry him along. They were in a hurry, but she must’ve sensed that he needed this pause.

Time was the one thing they didn’t have. He made himself turn to her. “Shall we?”

“This way.” She turned to the right and started walking.

They passed the new building, then a shop selling ceramics, and she led him to a two-story café, with the same reddish walls and covered balconies on the upper floor under an ornate pseudoclay roof. The thick, scarred wooden doors guarding the entrance swung open at their approach. A server greeted them, wearing an apron, a kitchen towel slung over one shoulder.

“The Green Room, Ms. Adler?”

Ramona nodded with a soft smile.

The server led them past the tables to a stairway, up the stairs, and to the left. They passed through another doorway into a small square room in the corner of the balcony. Directly across from the door and on their left, smoke-colored glass blocked the view outside. Matias’s implant told him that the walls on their right and behind them were soundproof polymer covered with a thin veneer of green plaster.

A single table and four chairs waited by the windows. Ramona sat. He took the chair across from her. The server retrieved two mugs of lemonade from the hidden niche in the wall, placed them on the table, and departed. The door shut behind him, and hidden metal bars slid into place with a familiar faint click. A blast-proof door. Ramona had taken “Do Not Disturb” to a whole new level.

Ramona tapped the corner of the table. A console ignited in the wood, painted in silver. She typed in a quick sequence. The dark glass to his left and behind her turned transparent, presenting him with a view of the Terrace and the passersby milling on it. They would still be invisible from the outside, but they would see anyone approaching.

“Nice,” Matias acknowledged.

“Thank you.”

Ramona touched the console. A narrow slit appeared in the opposite wall, releasing a vid screen showing a swirl of flickering sparks. She had sent Haider’s file to it and now the scrubber was crunching through it, stripping malicious code and traps.

Matias pushed a little further. “How secure is this place?”

“The restaurant belongs to the family,” she told him. “However, only my brothers and I use the Green Room. I had it built a few years ago, and it’s off limits to regular patrons.”

Of the three Adler siblings, Karion was the oldest, then Ramona, then Santiago. All three were secare. Karion and Ramona were the closest, separated only by two years, while Santiago just turned twenty this year. Since Karion lost his right arm, he had shifted to full support of his sister. Ramona was the nerve center of the family, Karion was its eyes and ears, and Santiago was the plasma cannon in the family’s hand. When someone had to be removed, Santiago would do it enthusiastically and without asking questions, because he trusted his sister and brother completely.

Sometimes Matias wished his sister hadn’t left to marry a woman halfway around the planet. Simone wasn’t born secare. He’d asked her once if she regretted it, and she hugged him and told him that the only thing she regretted was that his genetics had trapped him.

“Hungry?” Ramona asked. “I promise not to poison you.”

His implant could detect hundreds of known toxins. If she tried to poison him, she wouldn’t leave this place alive.

It would be a hell of a fight, though.

He acknowledged the offer with a nod. “In that case, please order for both of us.”

She tapped the console, conjuring a ghostly menu, made her selections, and nodded back. “Done.”

He drank his lemonade. Tart and aromatic, it was the next best thing to wine when one wanted to stay sober.

The vid display snapped into focus, presenting a list of everything it had stripped from the file. Let’s see, a data tracker, a location beacon, and . . . a worm virus. Given a chance, it would have ridden back to their home servers through their implants, burrowed in their network, splitting into segments, and detonated like a cybernetic bomb at a time of Haider’s choosing, destroying their data.

“Haider, you prick.” Ramona laughed.

“He must think we were born yesterday.”

“You can’t blame him for trying.”

She waved at the display, and the files melted into a still image.

A conference room with a large mother-of-pearl table assembled from carved barnacles common to the North Arctic Ocean. Three men on the left. Haider, Damien, and Derra Lee on the right.

The three visitors wore similar dark doublets and coordinating trousers, semiformal clothes that could have come from the rack in any New Delphi shop. Standard fare for midlevel businessmen and kinsmen retainers. Three names glowed above their heads: Ronaldo Marner, Weston Lugfort, Varden Plant. All three had conservative short haircuts of exactly the same length. All three sat straight, the lines of their bodies not rigid but far from relaxed.

“Military,” Matias said.

“Agreed. And new to the planet. I bet everything they’re wearing was purchased on the same day in the same shop.”

The recording resumed.

“As I already told you, we decline your generous offer,” Haider said. His expression was flat, his stare hard and hostile. A different man from the one they’d met this morning.

Varden Plant, the oldest of the three men, spoke. “It would be in your best interest to reconsider.”

Matias focused on him. Tall, fit, pale skin, brown hair, brown eyes. A masculine face. Deceptively middle aged. The galaxy offered a plethora of enhancements and rejuvenation modifications. He could be in his fifties or his eighties. He could be over a hundred, but almost certainly older than forty, because he looked at the Davenports with slight contempt and the impatience of someone irritated by perceived youth and stupidity. Both Haider and Damien were in their early thirties.

Damien Davenport leaned forward. Taller than Haider by several centimeters, he was lean, with long limbs and short black hair, his skin a reddish ocher. Where Haider was speed and explosive strength, Damien projected resolve and staying power.

“We are not interested,” Damien said, his voice smooth, almost lazy. “There is no need to argue. We won’t be swayed. You have your answer.”

“Failure is a harsh teacher,” Varden said. “You stand on its precipice, and the galaxy is watching. Take our offer and save yourselves before your enemies rip you apart.”

“Oddly grandiose,” Ramona said.

And familiar. There was something achingly recognizable about the tone, the words, and the look in Varden’s eyes, as if he weren’t speaking with human beings but with insects suitable only to be crushed under his boot.

Haider gave an exaggerated sigh. “You’ve offered three times, and we refused you three times. This meeting is over.”

Varden rose, and the two others jumped to their feet, pushing their chairs back. The visitor raised his chin and gave the Davenports a look of undisguised scorn. “I will remember this. In the future, don’t blame me for being impolite.”

Alarm bit at Matias with red-hot teeth. The world went white for a blink, as repressed memories flooded in.

The recording stopped.

“Not much to go on,” Ramona murmured and saw his face. “What?”

“Give me the access code,” he told her.

The code to the vid screen flashed in his implant. He connected to his private database, pulled the right file, and tossed it on the screen. The conference room melted, coalescing into rows of soldiers standing still in high-tech silver armor, shoulders straight, spines rigid, helmets held in the left hand. Same height. Same long braid stretching across a nearly bald scalp from forehead to the neck. Same expression: locked teeth, lowered eyebrows, unblinking stares, faces stamped with the need to dominate.

“Who are they?” Ramona murmured.

“The Vandals,” he said. The word tasted foul in his mouth. “Star Fall Republic Pacification Brigade.”

“The Vandals?” Ramona frowned. “Is that what they call themselves or what others call them?”

“Both.”

Kurt’s face flashed before Matias, the startled expression on the older man’s face branded in his memory, because he didn’t want to remember the next moment, when his crew leader’s corvette bloomed into a small star on his screen.

He tossed the map of the star sector onto the display, a large sphere punctuated by bright sparks of individual stars. As humanity had expanded across the galaxy, it had done so in bursts. A single habitable planet wasn’t enough to warrant establishing an outpost unless the settlers had serious separatist tendencies and could finance their own expedition. Instead, humanity looked for a cluster of star systems with habitable planets in relative proximity to each other. They would identify an anchor world, the place of initial settlement, build the warp gates, and funnel supplies to that world, from which humanity would spread in a starburst to all other planets within reach, forming a sector.

The sectors varied in size. Theirs was one of the larger ones, with Tayna, the anchor world, in the center and twenty-seven inhabited star systems situated at random distances from it. Even with warp gates, it took months to travel from one edge of the sector to another. Most planets traded with their immediate neighbors and with the anchor world, but the longer the distance, the less they knew about the other populations. Only the spacers—merchant marines, convoy guards, and migrant worker crews like asteroid miners—understood the whole picture.

Matias tagged Rada, and the planet lit up on the display to the “southwest” of the anchor world, about midway between it and the edge of the sector.

“Us,” he said.

He tagged the other planet, a large world all the way at the upper boundary of the sector, and it flared with angry red.

“Kooy star system.”

He zoomed in on it, and the map showed a four-star cluster, with the middle star flashing red while the other three were tinted pink.

“About eighty standard years ago, a military uprising overthrew the existing monarchy and established Star Fall Republic. It’s a republic in name only. Only active-duty military or veterans are true citizens. Everyone else is part of a lesser support class with limited rights and even more limited protections. They are ruled by a military high council, and the council’s power is absolute. It’s as if a totalitarian regime and a military meritocracy had a baby and dressed it in republican clothes.”

“Charming,” she said. “Is this their elite unit?”

“In a manner of speaking. The Vandals aren’t the republic’s best fighters. They’re handpicked sociopaths, unburdened by morals and trained to obey their commanding officers without any hesitation. To be considered for this unit, one has to have a certain body count.”

“So they are killers.”

Matias leaned back, trying to push the memories aside. “They are eradicator troops. They are not deployed; they are unleashed. When you need to erase something from existence—a troublesome asteroid factory, a planetary settlement, a military unit whose commander steps out of line—the Vandals are the answer. They have no problem killing their own.”

He paused, deciding how much to tell her. Just the highlights. Yes, the highlights would do.

“There was a mining settlement on one of the moons in a planetary system on the edge of the SFR’s territory. The miners had settled there a few decades before the SFR claimed the system. The SFR gave them an ultimatum: convert or move. The miners refused to do either. The Vandals were ordered to claim the settlement by any means necessary. It was a dome colony, no defenses to speak of except the settlement police. The Vandals could have simply blown their generators with a few missiles, and the miners would’ve had to evacuate.”

“They didn’t,” Ramona said.

“No. It was judged as a good opportunity for a field exercise. Besides, the generators were in excellent condition and would have been expensive to repair or replace.”

Ramona’s gaze hardened.

“Nine thousand people,” he said. “Of those, fifteen hundred were children. Slaughtered to a soul. They had a point system. So many points for an adult, a few less for the elderly and children under twelve. Babies counted for a single point. The Vandals kept a tally by drawing numbers on their armor in blood. They had their body cameras, but blood looks impressive, and it was all for fun anyway. The SFR called it the Reclamation and Liberation of Mining Facilities on Opus VII. Their neighbors called it the Opus Massacre.”

She stared at him, horrified. The shock melted into suspicion. “Why do you know so much about this?”

Because it irreversibly altered the trajectory of his life. He owed the Vandals a blood debt he could never repay. “When I left the planet thirteen years ago, I joined a mercenary outfit. They avoided the SFR and all its troops like the plague. We were told about the Vandals’ adventures as a warning.”

Her eyes narrowed. She clearly expected more, but he wasn’t ready to reopen that wound. The less she knew about him, the better. He wasn’t in the habit of giving his enemies ammunition.

“You’re saying that this is a military operation,” she said. “The SFR wants seco tech, and they sent the Vandals to get it.”

Yes and no. “When a Vandal officer warns you that he is about to be impolite, he means comply or die. If you fail to obey his order, he will murder you, your family, your pets, your neighbors, until there is nothing left but a lake of blood. Haider is a marked man. The Davenports are living on borrowed time. Before the Vandals leave the planet, they will make that promise a reality.”

A change came over Ramona. The relaxed provincial woman with warm eyes and lazy movements evaporated, like a kan-mask melting into thin air at the end of a festival. The woman across from him now was focused, her eyes calculating, the line of her mouth hard.

Hello, Ramona. This is more like it.

“Suppose you’re right,” she said. “Does the SFR have an intelligence branch? Or a diplomatic corps?”

“Yes,” he said. “They have a diplomatic corps, intelligence bureau, public outreach bureau, and a few other agencies that deal with the outside world. They’re paranoid, and they collect every scrap of information about their neighbors, because they view everyone as a potential threat.”

Ramona drummed her fingernails on the table. “Then why would they send homicidal maniacs to negotiate the purchase of seco shield tech?”

Good question.

“That type of mission requires flexibility and a talent for diplomacy,” Ramona continued. “Two things an eradicator unit clearly wouldn’t be known for.”

“And yet here they are.” Without their trademark skull braids.

A gentle chime sounded through the room. Ramona rose, crossed the floor to the opposite wall, and retrieved a tray of food from a niche. She brought it to the table and set it in front of him. A dish of spicy soup, smoked fish, four different types of local cheese, small fried pastries, skewers of meat grilled over an open fire, still sizzling, crusty golden bread, and honeyed Rada berries.

Suddenly, he was ravenous.

Ramona ladled the soup into two bowls and passed one to him. He drank it. Spiced just right. He took a second swallow. Even better.

“Good,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “Of course it’s good. Everything here is good. They’re serving our family recipes.”

“In that case, I should have said passable.”

“Clearly, you don’t value your life.”

They ate in silence. Ten minutes later, he was no longer starving, and his brain restarted, crunched through the data, and spat out an answer to the Vandal mystery. He really didn’t like it.

“Is the existence of the Vandals secret?” Ramona asked.

“No. Their reputation is an asset.”

“How closely are they monitored? As a unit?”

“Not very. They answer directly to the high council and are typically stationed on whatever border the SFR finds most troublesome at the moment. They do not enter deeper into the republic’s territory unless ordered.”

“Two birds with one stone,” she murmured. “Secure the border and keep them away from civilian centers and other military installations.”

She was walking the same logical path he took. She didn’t have all his background, but she would arrive at the same conclusion whether he helped her or not. There was no reason to hold things back. They had to work together. And yet he hesitated. It was probably force of habit. For some reason, he was irritated, and that irritation made him combative.

“If three men in uniform with skull braids showed up in the Davenports’ office bringing the same proposal, their reception would’ve been exactly the same,” Ramona said. “There is no reason for Varden and the others to hide their identity from the kinsmen or to pretend to be Rada citizens.”

“They are not hiding from us.”

She fixed him with her stare. He imagined a bloodred seco blade unfurling from her arm.

“Why do I get a feeling that you’ve already figured it out and are now feeding me bread crumbs of data to see how fast I get there?”

“Because I am.” He probably shouldn’t have said that.

She leaned forward. “Kinsman Baena, you try my patience.”

Haider called her she-wolf. Apt.

“Are we working together or not?”

“We are,” he told her. “We are temporary allies.”

“Then you must share information. I brought you to a safe room. You’ve seen my people. I fed you. I demonstrated trust.”

“I don’t have a problem with you. I have a problem with your last name.”

She bristled. “And now you’ve insulted my family.”

“It’s not an insult but a statement of fact. Our families have been enemies for generations. There is no guarantee you won’t stab me in the back.”

She gave out a short laugh. “Oh, that’s rich coming from a Baena.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You have no room to talk of betrayal considering who you come from.”

That was quite specific.

“You talk as if our families had an alliance, which my family broke. There was never any such relationship. We were always rivals.”

“Don’t pretend like you don’t know.” Her words dripped with scorn.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Ramona stared at him, sizing him up.

He spread his arms and stared back.

“Fine,” she said. “We have bigger things to worry about.”

Oh no, you don’t. “Tell me.”

“As you said, Kinsman Baena, we are temporary allies. The information you’re asking for is outside the scope of our limited partnership. We don’t need it to find your wife or my husband. What we do need is everything you know or even suspect about the Vandals on our planet, since they are trying to buy the same type of tech our spouses are selling. If you don’t want to share, tell me now so you can stop wasting our time.”

Nothing she said was wrong. He had to give her enough information to move forward. The most important thing was finding their spouses and recovering the tech.

He realized why he was being petty. He liked this. Without meaning to, Ramona had rubbed his nose in what he was missing. He would never come to a secret room on the Terraces with Cassida. He would never enjoy a delicious meal in comfortable silence and then discuss serious plans and plots with her. His wife had no interest in sharing that part of his world, and she filled every silence with conversation, meaningful or not.

He also understood that he had to draft an immediate divorce agreement. If he were ever to find this again, it wouldn’t be with Cassida, and now having experienced it, he wouldn’t settle.

“I apologize, Kinswoman Adler.”

Ramona drew back.

“This morning taught me many things I didn’t know. I learned that my wife is cheating on me. I learned that she stole our research. I learned that foreign troops have targeted my family, and that my lifelong enemy is the only person capable of helping me. It requires an adjustment.”

Her expression softened, and he was struck by the profound sadness he saw in her eyes. For a moment Ramona looked as if someone close to her had died, and then she hid it, and her eyes were once again calm and warm. He was forgiven.

“Apology accepted. This has been a trying morning for both of us.”

“Here’s what I think. Vandal leadership is planning a coup,” Matias said.

“From what you’ve told me, it wouldn’t be improbable. They are already kept apart from civilians and the rest of the military. Since they are used to punish rogue units, they are viewed as outsiders by other soldiers, and they believe themselves to be above other armed forces.”

He nodded. “The seco shields would give their ships a massive advantage against other SFR forces. Given time, the Vandals could expand their use to small craft. They would go through the regular troops like a knife through butter. That’s why they disguised themselves. They don’t care if we know who they are, as long as the SFR doesn’t get wind of them being here.”

Ramona thought about it. “They would want to acquire all of the technology, everything we have in addition to the Davenports’ share.”

“Yes.”

“But they didn’t approach us. They must have changed strategy after the Davenports turned them down. And how did they know we were working on seco fields in the first place? Someone is helping them. Someone local.”

“Not only that, but the Vandals wouldn’t have taken commercial transport here. They rely on numbers.”

Ramona drew back. “You think they have a warship in system?”

“I would bet my arm on it.”

“State-of-the-art identification is one thing,” Ramona said. “A foreign warship in system is another. They would require a diplomatic waver.”

“Which can be granted by a federal senator,” Matias finished, his tone grim. “Like Theodore Redding Drewery.”

Ramona widened her eyes. “Cassida’s father?”

He nodded.

“Wow,” Ramona said. “That’s fucked up.”

Matias drained the rest of his lemonade. It tasted bitter.

“What we have is a lot of conjecture. I’m going to verify some of this.”

“No, let me. They are probably watching you. If you start making inquiries, their alarms will go off.”

“They’re watching you as well.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Matias, let me do this. I know what I’m doing, and I will do it quietly.”

He owed her for his moment of pettiness. “Please, be my guest.”