Fated Blades

CHAPTER 4

“ . . . so glad that the artist worked out for you.” Ramona smiled.

On the screen Aria Teeling, a short, plump, middle-aged woman in the sky-blue uniform of Orbital Traffic Control, smiled back. “Thank you again. You should see the mural. It’s to die for. You have to come over for dinner sometime soon.”

“Send me the date.” She would keep it, too. She liked both Aria and her husband.

“I will hold you to it.” Aria glanced to the side. “And here it is. Looks like Senator Drewery signed off on the permit.”

“I’m in your debt.”

“Nonsense. Friends don’t owe. Oh, and you will love this. It’s not the first time our dear senator pushed a permit through for the SFR. He’s done it before, seven years ago.”

Ramona kissed her fingers and offered them to the screen.

“Oh, stop it. I’m happy to help.”

They said their goodbyes and ended the call.

Matias stared at her as if she had sprouted a second head.

“What?”

“The New Delphi Spaceport Customs crew leader owes you a favor because you remembered that his father likes Conuvian pottery.”

“Yes, I make sure to send a piece every year on his birthday. They are a nice family.”

“The assistant immigration court clerk loves you because you helped him smuggle in a foo foo dog for his wife.”

“It is an Albine Needlehair Spaniel. They’re fierce.”

“All seven kilos of them.”

“Small dog, big heart.”

“The OTC chief cracked a file open for you because you got her and her husband an artist to paint a wall in their provincial home.”

“Valina is very busy, and she rarely takes commissions. My mother helped her get her start, and our family is fortunate enough to support her art ever since.”

Matias leaned forward. “And now the Davenports may owe you a favor, because you introduced them to a renowned psychiatrist who just happens to have two children with the Tarim mutation and who might save their marriage.”

She hadn’t realized he was paying attention when she mentioned Olivia’s name. “You looked her up. It’s not nice to eavesdrop.”

He gave her a sharp look. “You’re a spider. You sit in the middle of your beautifully woven web and pull the right strings until your prize lands in front of you.”

Beautifully woven, even. She wiggled her fingers at him. “Fear my spider legs, Baena.”

Matias shook his head. “It’s half fear, half admiration. Just so you know, we are partners. I won’t be owing any favors to you at the end of this.”

“That’s the beauty of it, Matias. None of them owe me anything. They help me because they consider me a friend. Being kind to people and paying attention shouldn’t be done with the expectation of repayment. I helped them because I could, and it made me happy.”

He shook his head again.

“To summarize,” she said, “your father-in-law is deep in the SFR’s pocket. The Vandals arrived to the system two and a half months ago, and a group of them requested asylum under the Political Prosecution Act. He arranged for their diplomatic warship permit, and he likely pulled some strings to expedite their asylum applications. Their IDs pass inspection because they’re real, and according to Immigration, there are at least forty of them in Dahlia, all coded as humanitarian refugees. The warship dropped them off, left the system for two months, and now returned, supposedly to negotiate another refugee drop-off, but most likely to pick up the so-called refugees after they obtain our tech and murder the Davenports. It’s not a buying expedition, it’s a mini-invasion, and your senator father-in-law is in this up to his eyeballs.”

Matias smiled. He actually smiled. It softened his harsh face and lit up his eyes. The effect was shocking. She had to fight herself to keep from staring.

“It sounds bad when you put it like that,” he said.

“There is no good way to put it.”

Matias rose. “Have you ever seen Senator Drewery’s summer home?”

“I haven’t had the pleasure.”

“I’ve been neglecting my son-in-law duties. I’m overdue for a visit. Join me?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” She got up. “Before we go, do you want to warn the Davenports?”

She said it lightly, almost as an afterthought, and if he said no, she would walk away from him right there. The Davenports were competitors, that was true, and if they were eliminated, both of their families would gladly pounce on their orphaned territory and resources. But that was kinsmen business. All of them grew up under the same sky in the same province, they enjoyed the same food, carried on the same traditions, and laughed at the same jokes. Friend or enemy, they were part of Dahlia. The Vandals were outsiders.

Some things just weren’t done.

“I already forwarded everything we’ve learned to Haider,” he said. “I’ll call him when we’re on our way.”

She let out a quiet breath and opened the door for him.

The verdant gardens slid below the aerial, splashed with flowers in every color under the sun. Ramona sighed quietly. If she could open the window—an impossibility in an aerial—the wind would smell of summer: sun-warmed leaves, rich soil, and the layered aroma of flowers.

When she was a child, every summer as soon as school was out, the family would make the pilgrimage to the Adler summer home. Watching the gardens glide below meant the start of the holidays. Two months of swimming in a lake and splashing in the family pool, of climbing trees and eating fruit off the branch, of hikes in the orchards and berry fields that could almost pass for a scary ancient forest if one squinted just right. Long lazy days of reading in a hammock and long happy evenings watching the purple fireflies glow in the warm darkness as adults cooked food over open flames and sneaking off at midnight to catch star flowers when they opened to greet the two moons.

Back then time stood still during summer. Now it was just another season filled with deadlines. They were a week into it, and she’d barely noticed.

“Is something the matter?” Matias asked.

For a man, he was remarkably observant. Or perhaps he seemed so because Gabriel had been so completely disinterested.

“I miss my childhood,” she said.

“Summerhouse in the gardens by a lake? Evenings chasing purple fireflies and waiting for the two moons to rise so the star flowers would bloom and release the gala swarms? Climbing a tree to eat the orange cherries?”

She blinked. “I hadn’t realized the Baenas’ data gathering was so extensive.”

“No, I just described my own childhood.”

“You waited for the moons to rise so you could see the star flowers?”

“No, but my sister did, and she dragged me with her. Every time.”

It made sense. Most families either kept summerhouses if they could afford them, rented them if they couldn’t, or chose to raise their children in the provinces. Most children chased the fireflies and ate their weight in orange cherries and raspberries during summer.

Matias smiled. “She didn’t have to drag me very hard. I liked the flowers too.”

“I miss it. Back then, I thought that when I grew up, it would be always summer. I would do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted . . .”

He chuckled. It sounded bitter. “How long?”

“Since I spent a summer in the province? Four years.”

He held out his hand, showing her five fingers.

“Why do we do this to ourselves?” she wondered.

“Family. And the glamour of being kinsmen.” His words dripped sarcasm.

“So much glamour. Sometimes I am so glamorous I forget to take a shower for three days and sleep in my office.”

“Sleep? What is this luxury? Sleep is all about relaxation. Soft bed, warm covers. I haven’t slept since last month.”

She looked at him, not sure if he was joking. Today was the seventh. Technically, with the right boosters, it was possible.

“I don’t sleep. I pass out, and before that I lie awake making mental checklists, until my brain shuts down and the alarm goes off four hours later.”

“Thank the universe you got some sleep, because for a second there, I had second thoughts about you flying . . .”

He took his hands off the controls. The aerial dipped forward.

“Matias!”

He grinned and pulled the vehicle back up.

“If you’re too tired, I can take over,” she offered.

“I could fly this thing in my sleep.”

Sure, you could. “Bad choice of words.”

“It was on purpose.”

Ramona shook her head and accessed the dashboard display in front of her, pulling in the feed from the satellite. They were about ten minutes out from the senator’s villa. She called it up on the screen. A sprawling three-story mansion in the extravagant style of Third Wave, the final mass arrival of the settlers, it was built with pink marble and accented with Cellordion quartz trim that shone with bright crimson when it caught the sunlight.

What an enormous house.

The bottom floor was a massive cube with rounded edges, twenty meters tall and one hundred meters wide, with walls featuring towering arched windows. A smaller rounded cube—the top two floors—sat on top of that huge base, in the center. The space around those two floors was taken up by a beautifully landscaped park. Several curved paths meandered through the greenery and wound their way to the south corner of the structure, where a double staircase sliced through the first floor, leading down to a semicircular pool as big as a small lake. It looked like someone had taken a knife to an oversize three-tier cake and hacked off one of the bottom corners, and the liquid filling had leaked out of it in a round puddle.

Not a single sharp angle to be seen. Everything was cambers and arches, and the dark-red roof was a sinuous curve crowned by a cupola. Everything glittered with red quartz.

“Shiny,” she summarized.

“It’s meant to reassure voters of his traditional values.”

“It looks like rose wine cake. How big is it?”

“Almost twelve thousand square meters.”

The average home in New Delphi ran about two hundred square meters. “I didn’t realize politicians were paid that well.”

“Honest ones aren’t,” Matias said. “This is a monument to all of the bribes he took.”

Wow.

It wasn’t just the cost of the house. It was also the upkeep. Even if Drewery automated just about everything, the energy cost of cleaning and maintaining all that had to be staggering.

“Cassida is an only child,” she said. “It’s just him and his wife in that monstrosity. What does he even do with all of that space?”

“Some pretty amazing things. He has a library filled with antique books. Real paper, vacuum sealed. He has an indoor sports court. And there is a massive atrium in the middle of the house with its own tropical garden, saltwater pool, and an actual sand beach. The atrium alone is six thousand square meters.”

She stared at him.

“I’m not joking,” he said. “His wife is a fan of the tropics.”

The mansion filled the screen. The aerial’s camera couldn’t see it yet, but they were getting steadily closer.

“Do you have a plan?” she asked.

He glanced at her.

“He is a federal senator, after all.”

Rada was divided into provinces, each with its own provincial senate. In addition to that, every province sent federal senators to the planetary council, one representative per each million citizens. Dahlia had eleven federal senators, which made Drewery one of the eleven most powerful people in the province. Only the provincial governor held more authority.

“We can’t simply assault him,” she continued. “For one, there will be senatorial guards.”

“There won’t be. He declined the protection of the guard to ‘save the taxpayer money.’ The guard is loyal to the institution of the Federal Senate. He found the presence of so many eyes and ears he didn’t own inconvenient.”

“Private security, then,” she guessed.

“Most likely.”

That certainly made things easier. Still, their approach and everything they did inside the house would be recorded. There was no doubt that if they left Drewery alive—and they would have to leave him alive—he would use the record of their actions as a detonator to explode their families. The future of both the Adlers and the Baenas hinged on what they did next.

She wasn’t sure she cared. That thought should have been disturbing, but Ramona simply couldn’t muster any energy to devote to it. The pressure she had felt building since she’d learned of Gabriel’s betrayal had reached a critical point. She had to vent it, or it would rip her apart.

“Anything I need to know about the senator? Any fun surprises?”

“Lyla Drewery has a combat implant.”

Matias had answered without any hesitation. Perhaps this temporary partnership would work out after all.

“I know,” she told him. “C-class.”

His eyebrows rose slightly.

“You’re our lifelong potential enemy, Baena. We keep an eye on your possible allies.”

“Then I have nothing to fear. Your surveillance is good, but your judgment is crap. The Drewerys have never been my allies.”

She rolled her eyes. “What about the senator himself? Any enhancements?”

“The standard senatorial implant. Combat implants don’t integrate well with the senatorial admin models. It’s one or the other. He was groomed for the Senate from the day he was born. If you gave him a firearm, he wouldn’t know from which end it would fire.”

The display flashed with gold. They’d crossed the property line. She could see the red cupola rising above the treetops a few kilometers out.

Two dark aerials shot into the air and hovered, flanking the residence. She zoomed in on them using her display to access the aerial’s camera. Not aerials. Gunships. Two short-range space fighters. They didn’t look like Planetary Defense.

“That arrogant bastard,” Matias growled. “He isn’t even trying.”

“The Vandals?”

“Yes.”

The house rushed at them.

On the display the gunships sprouted twin barrels tipped with calibration coils. A third cannon under the cockpit dropped into view. A kinetic projectile launcher.

“Weapons hot,” Ramona reported. “Two Vulcan cannons and a 20 mm KPL each.”

Matias whistled. “Expensive toys.”

The calibration coils on the muzzles of the Vulcan cannons spun, turning white. When ready, they would fire packets of ionized matter, supercharged with energy to deliver both kinetic impact and extreme heat.

“Calibration initiated,” she said, her voice clipped.

Matias showed no signs of altering their course.

They were outgunned. The 20 mm rounds from the KPLs would shred their aerial like a spiderweb. And if it missed, a direct hit from either of the Vulcan cannons would fry their electronics, melt their hull, and cook them alive.

Four turrets rose from the roof of the villa, expanding like mushrooms. Surface-to-air missile batteries. That couldn’t possibly be legal. Even for a senator.

“And four SAMs,” she added.

Matias smiled. “Such a warm welcome.”

“You are his favorite son-in-law.”

Her harness clicked, squeezing her into her seat. He’d activated the crash protocol.

“We should land and go in on foot. We’d have better odds,” she said.

No response.

The gunships shot toward them.

“Matias!”

The aerial surged upward, gravity mashing her into the seat as it inflated to compensate. The gunships fired, tilting their noses up. The aerial streaked up, avoiding the white-hot streams from the Vulcans, and plunged directly between the two SFR fighters.

Not enough space. They would plow straight into the Vandal gunships.

The world turned on its side in a dizzying somersault. The right gunship flashed by her, a dark shadow outside the window. He’d spun them sideways, squeezing into a narrow gap. The two gunships banked to the sides, trying to turn and retarget.

The nearest roof battery spat blue fire. The aerial dropped under it in a sharp hawk dive. Her stomach screamed in protest.

The azure water of the pool sparkled in front of them.

There is no way the pool is deep enough. We’re going to smash into the bottom, and even if he rights it, there isn’t enough length to stop in time. We’ll crash into the wall. If the impact doesn’t kill us, we’ll drown.

The aerial pulled up in an almost impossible curve and plummeted into the water at a sharp angle. They skimmed along the bottom of the pool, flying through the water on pure momentum. Walls closed in, boxing them into a tunnel. The proximity alarms wailed, warning that the wings had less than ten centimeters of clearance. She gripped her armrests.

Darkness rushed at them; they angled up, and surfaced. A tropical garden spread outside, separated from the blue water by a strip of sandy beach. High above them, a dome of transparent solar glass flooded the scene with sunshine.

Her seat deflated to normal size with a soft whisper.

The seco burst out of her left forearm almost on its own, stretching into a translucent narrow blade. She held it a centimeter from Matias’s throat.

“Did I forget to mention the tunnel?” he asked, his voice calm.

She moved the blade a millimeter closer.

“Did you really think I came all this way to suicide bomb my father-in-law’s mansion? The pool outside is connected to this one, inside the atrium. According to our illustrious federal senator, it was cheaper to have one giant pool than two slightly smaller separate pools. One filter system, one robotic cleaning station, and he has plans to turn the walls of the tunnel into an aquarium so you can enjoy the illusion of swimming with the fish.”

“Communication, Matias,” she ground out. “Try it next time. Before you do something like that again.”

His eyes turned warm. He leaned toward her, and she had to retract the blade to keep from cutting his throat.

“I won’t let you die, Ramona.” His voice was quiet and intimate.

Suddenly the cabin shrank, and she was acutely aware that his presence seemed to take up too much of it. He was still looking at her with those warm, sincere eyes she’d never expected to see.

“You can berate me later,” he said in that same voice. “But right now, we need to get out of the vehicle, because the Vandals are coming.”

He reached over to the console with his left hand, still looking at her, and the aerial turned around, slid backward, and beached itself, the cargo area facing the manicured jungle.

Snap out of it, she told herself.

Matias’s fingers danced over the console without him looking. The cargo door rose, and the ramp slid into the golden sand.

“Show off,” Ramona growled and unbuckled her crash harness.

They were fifty meters from the exit when the Vandals attacked. Matias sensed them moving down the curving path toward them and stepped into the flower bed behind a palm. Ramona sank into the greenery across from him. It was as if they had coordinated this without speaking.

The atrium was full of life and sounds. Rare birds sang in the canopy. Small pretty animals from a dozen planets darted through the branches and snacked on orange fruit hanging from the vines. A lot of cover from the bioscanners. But cover didn’t mean complete invisibility. At most, it would buy them a few seconds.

Four soldiers rounded the bend, moving in a standard two-by-two formation. Their silver-and-black armor molded to their bodies without restricting movement. It would absorb a shot or two from a typical handheld energy or kinetic firearm, and it would block a thrust or cut from most blades. They carried standard Vandal burst rifles, designed to fire cartridges of tightly compacted pellets. When a single pellet tore into flesh, it exploded, shredding internal organs. When a full load from the cartridge hit at once, it turned human bodies into a bloody mist.

The Vandals didn’t value precision shooting. They sent out a wall of projectiles, indiscriminate and deadly.

The front pair of troopers took up positions behind two trees. The rear pair moved forward, covered by the first, the scanners on their helmets painting the jungle in green light. Ideally, Matias would’ve circled behind them to take out the rear soldiers first, but they didn’t have that luxury. In a moment, they would be detected.

Matias glanced across the path and saw Ramona looking back at him. He gave a short nod toward the soldiers. She winked at him.

They moved at the same time. She stepped onto the path a hair ahead of him. The seco in her left forearm spilled out, turning into a rectangular bloodred shield, while her right produced a long scythe blade. He’d opted for the same shield and a longer, slimmer sword.

The world slowed as they charged through it, too fast.

The pair of troops before them had no time to react.

Ramona slashed, slicing the man in front of her in half.

Matias thrust his blade into the neck of the trooper before him. The seco encountered no resistance. It never did.

Blood wet the paver stones.

The pair of remaining Vandals opened fire. In the split second before they pulled their triggers, he’d shifted both seco into shields and sprinted, aware of Ramona at his heels. The pellet barrage smashed into the double shield, glancing off and mincing the jungle around them, and then he was in strike range.

Ramona spun from behind him with breathtaking elegance, her two seco mutating into wide blades, and struck. Two heads rolled onto the path. She dismissed the seco with a flourish and stepped over the bodies.

He knew it was for the cameras. He had no doubt they were being watched and that whoever saw that on the other end likely wet themselves. But she had done it flawlessly. Every line of her body, every twist, every movement was the definition of deadly grace. Jealousy seared him. He wished she had done it just for him. He wished he was the one to parry it.

Ramona plucked a rifle from one of the dead men’s hands.

“The exit is about forty meters down this path,” he told her quietly. “They’d be fools not to guard it.”

She hefted the rifle and fired into a corpse with a metallic thump. The body jerked, spraying blood and liquefied flesh onto the path as the payload detonated.

“No genetic lock. What kind of door?”

“Hermetically sealed plasticore with a wood veneer.”

The atrium was around thirty degrees Celsius, about six degrees above what most people found comfortable, and a good deal more humid. Drewery meant it as a tropical retreat and took pains to insulate it from the rest of the house. Plasticore was a poor heat conductor and therefore perfect for his purposes, but an average firearm would punch a hole through it even with the smallest-caliber round.

“And behind the door?” Ramona asked.

“A hallway about ten meters across.” It went without saying that they had no idea how many Vandals waited there.

“Fun.” Ramona eyed the rifle. “Do you want to shoot or cut?”

“Cut.” It was his turn to take point.

“Then I’ll make some noise.”

He sprinted down the path. She followed a step behind. He veered right, dashing through the greenery out of sight of the security cameras; she kept going straight.

Matias ran for a few more seconds, then cut left. Ten meters, fifteen, twenty . . . The perimeter path that ran along the wall of the atrium winked at him through the leaves. He crouched in the bushes at its edge. The exit door lay to his left, about twenty-five meters down. No guards in sight. They waited on the other side of the door.

Once he stepped onto the path, the cameras would find him.

A pellet rifle thudded, sinking a full cartridge load into the door. The pellets discharged. Wood and chunks of plastic sprayed into the air.

Ramona fired again, and again, pumping cartridges into the expanding hole.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

She was going to run out of ammo at this rate. He had never bothered to get the specs on the Vandal rifles, and he had no idea about their magazine capacity, but judging by the size of the cartridges, they would carry fifteen to twenty, at most.

Thud.

The rifle fell silent.

Now.

He burst onto the path and sprinted to the door. Double thuds of the pellet rifles tore through the silence—the Vandals returning fire through the ruined doorway, focused on finding Ramona in the jungle.

He cleared the last meter and a half. The door was a memory, gone except for a ragged piece hanging from the top. He snapped his seco into two square shields and thrust them against the gap where the door had been.

Three cartridges punched the red force fields and ricocheted. Matias leaped to the side, putting the wall of the atrium between himself and the hallway.

A howl of pure pain rang out. The ricocheted pellets had hit home and detonated.

He dived into the hole, his seco twisting into short, curved blades. Two bodies down, motionless, one soldier trying to stand up on the left, two to the right, two more in front leaping to their feet after hugging the floor. He floated through them, weightless, free of gravity and time, slicing, cutting, severing. Blood sprayed the white marble walls. The last soldier let out half a scream and gurgled on his own blood, his terrified plea for help aborted midnote.

The Vandal in front of him fell. In Matias’s mind, ships exploded all around him, blinding flares against the darkness of space.

A faint gasp made him turn.

Ramona stood by the ruined door, the long spike of her right seco buried in one of the bodies. She was looking at him, and he saw admiration in her eyes.

“Did I miss one?”

“No. He was dying. I ended it quickly for him.”

“It was more than he deserved.”

“My apologies. I’ll restrain myself next time.”

He remembered her striking on the atrium path. “Please don’t ever restrain yourself on my account.”

Her eyes widened.

He dismissed his seco and held his hand out. “The blood is slippery.”

She glanced at the walls and the floor he’d painted red, put her hand in his, and let him lead her through the bloodstains.