Ragamuffin (32 page)

“But it means our killers will be coming after us soon. Despite our closing the wormhole behind us.” Metztli spread its metal-tipped tentacles. Jerome noticed that they were tiny gold caps. He’d thought they served as protection when on the ground, but maybe they were a fashion accessory. “Time is of essence. We need a treaty as soon as we can and the help of your species.”

“I understand.” John looked over at Jerome, who looked down at the ground.

Something stirred in the ceiling. Jerome stepped backward and looked up, realizing that what he’d thought were fluted decorative arches fitted into the rock above their heads were actually legs.

The spiderlike creature above him lowered a globular head and hissed.

Jerome turned to the Teotl. “Do you fear us?”

The Teotl reached a golden tip up and scratched at Pepper’s explosive collar. “I anticipate troubles,” it hissed. “But I am not worried about my own life, just the perpetuation of my own species now.”

That was interesting. These gods
were
worried about them, and yet dependent. Jerome liked that. “Just a few of us here, we ain’t no threat.”

“Your actions may affect our lives,” Metztli said. “If we cannot keep the other wormhole closed, we will be exterminated.”

Jerome shook his head. At the start of this he would have given anything to have a Teotl talk about its impending doom, and for Jerome to help destroy it. Or all of them.

He didn’t feel as if he could now. How strange.

The massive stone door blocking them into the nerve center of the Teotl spaceship rolled aside. Xippilli walked in. Five Azteca warriors followed him.

Jerome stared at him, numb and angry. The man who had betrayed them all walked casually in, as if nothing were wrong.

“John, I need to talk to you.” Xippilli walked quickly toward them.

“Jerome looked around. He had no knife, he had nothing. And the murdering clot stood within his reach.

A steady rumble wormed up through Jerome’s feet.

“We’re moving,” John said. “You were going to repair our ship.” John walked forward. The Azteca raised their rifles and John stepped back.

Metztli cleared its throat. “The wormhole is ready now. We did not intend to open it and then return to orbit, we must achieve our goals first. We must be secure.”

Jerome took a small step toward Xippilli, who watched John and Pepper, his hands near a pistol by his belt. The thundering increased, and Jerome could feel himself having to lean against it. He noticed Pepper standing behind them all, blending into shadows in a niche of the wall.

Was there a better time for revenge? It didn’t come easily or announce itself. One had to grab it. Grab it before standing still and just hating burned him up from the inside.

Jerome threw a shoulder into Xippilli and knocked him to the smooth floor. “Murderer,” he hissed.

“Jerome!” John shouted.

Xippilli fought back, but Jerome got his hands on the pistol. He jammed it up against Xippilli’s ribs.

“I only tried to help.” Their noses almost touched.

“Tell that to them that dead.” Jerome pulled the trigger and watched Xipilli jerk as the pistol cracked. “Pepper would do the same. He was there, he saw what happened.”

He could hear the snap of Pepper’s coat, and as Jerome pulled his bloodied hands free with the pistol still clenched in them, he looked up to see one of the Azteca warriors slump to the ground as Pepper whipped toward Jerome.

Pepper grabbed him by the neck and yanked him up into the air. “What the hell are you thinking?”

Jerome choked, vision graying.

“Pepper! Drop him right now.” John stepped forward with both hands tightened into fists.

Pepper threw Jerome against the wall. Jerome scrabbled to his feet, vision swimming in tears, and grabbed his bruised neck, taking deep breaths.

“He’s endangering it all.” Pepper turned his back to Jerome. “We should have left him on the ground.”

Jerome fell back to the ground, dizzy.

“I’m on it.” John dropped to his knees by Xippilli. “But you know what Xippilli did. He ran a big risk.”

Pepper radiated barely contained fury. “He worked from the inside doing what he could. The boy’s too full of misdirected anger.”

“You’re talking about misdirected rage?” John had stripped off Xippilli’s shirt.

“He was running interference for us, taking on the evil to redirect.” Just like that Pepper looked about, calm again. Metztli had backed away from all of them, its chair tilting.

“He’s losing blood, gut shot,” John said. He looked back at Jerome. Instead of fury, only a deep sadness masked his face.

Jerome swallowed and looked away. It felt as if cold water had trickled down his back.

“Get over there.” Pepper turned around and grabbed him hard by the shoulder. He pushed him forward. “Get over there and help your father.”

Pepper spun on Metztli. “You stay calm, this is a human matter.” Metztli’s strange chair had moved him away from their circle. Jerome crawled past an Azteca warrior who lay with his head cocked at an odd angle. Pepper had broken his neck to stop him from killing Jerome.

Blood pooled in the floor around Xippilli, and the man hiccuped blood from his mouth, but couldn’t speak. Jerome wanted to throw up. Instead John ripped his shirt from him with his free hand. “Bundle that up, hold it here.”

John avoided looking at him. Jerome looked down at wet strips of cloth, then John grabbed his hands and pushed them onto Xippilli’s stomach. “Keep the pressure.”

Jerome’s handiwork. Revenge. This is what it felt like. Wet and sticky, sickening. And a man lay in front of him slowly dying.

“You must wrap this up quickly,” Metztli said.

“Shut the fuck up,” John snapped. “Pepper, there are hundreds of Azteca on this ship and we just shot their leader.”

Pepper looked over at the entryway to the control room. “Open the door, Metztli, and you will die.”

“The door will remain closed,” Metztli said.

A strange feeling flitted through Jerome as he watched. As if he were being turned inside out and then back again.

“Transit,” John said to Pepper, as if were the most automatic and normal thing.

“I felt it.” Pepper folded his arms.

“Please,” Metztli said.

“The man on the floor is of no consequence. We need your assistance.”

“Why the hell are you still talking?” John snapped. “Unless you have a first-aid kit lying around, you’re going to need to give us some time.”

“There are no first-aid kits,” Metztli said.

The entire room shivered, distant explosions getting everyone’s attention. A keening sound from the walls threatened to deafen them.

“And that was?” Pepper looked around.

Metztli waved a tentacle. “There are a lot of vehicles out on the other side of this wormhole, human we assume. Someone fired a missile in front of us. We’re broadcasting that we’re no threat, humans are telling us to come in slowly and identify ourselves. We need your services, as I’ve been saying. We need them now.”

“Who’s out there?” John asked, looking up.

“We do not know,” the Teotl said. “But there are ships, everywhere. Some of them match the ship names of ships that once defended your planet several centuries past, so we assume them to be hostile. Do you think they will fire on us next?”

“I don’t know. Do you have any weapons?” Pepper asked. Blood seeped out over Jerome’s fingers. He couldn’t look down. But he could feel Xippilli’s slow, ragged breathing under his hands.

The Teotl looked at them all. “No. The nest has no real weapons to speak of. We’re slowing down as we have been asked.” It leaned forward.

Pepper walked over to a length of screen goop. “Show me who’s knocking and maybe we can start talking.”

“Do you think the Ragamuffins are still waiting out there?” John asked Pepper.

Pepper shrugged. “Why not? We were still on Nanagada, weren’t we?”

The rock under Jerome’s knees shivered again, and Xippilli coughed up more blood and moaned.

PART THREE

T
his was Ragamuffin home territory: a dim brown dwarf that gave off no life-giving light, a rocky world that the upstream and downstream wormhole orbited, and lots of random dirt and rock for ships to hide in past that.

A desolate area.

Etsudo had caught up to the
Shengfen Hao
and three more heavy ships as they moved through toward the Ragamuffins.

He’d scattered drones hundreds of miles out in all directions when he’d transited in. Enough scattered drones could put together a detailed image of whatever he wanted. Any one of them wouldn’t have the ability to see the details he wanted, but the whole network could process the light hitting their optics to make a superarray.

The four Hongguo ships chased two smaller Ragamuffin ships, but had stared dumping speed as they’d come through the wormhole. The two wormholes orbited the rocky world in geosynchronous orbit, and now so did Etsudo and the Hongguo. A massive cloud of chaff and mines hung around the wormhole they’d just come through, enclosing it in a massive protective sphere.

The Ragamuffins were well defended against an attack, and Deng had barely stopped the
Shengfen Hao
from plowing into the mess.

Hongguo drones spread out from all the trapped ships, seeking to gain data about the situation.

Deng hailed him. “What are you doing here? We are not expecting you.”

“I wish nothing more than to assist.” Deng would have trouble believing it. But what could he do about it for right now? Etsudo would get away with it for a while, Deng would hardly have the time to care all that much or shoot him out of the sky unless he posed a threat.

“You have drones out?” Deng asked.

“Of course.”

“Check the downstream wormhole, we don’t have drones to spare. We’re getting radiation readings from it. As if it were open.”

Etsudo started turning his drones that way, opening up other tools to probe at the wormhole trailing almost a thousand miles behind them in orbit.

He waited as the scattered drones stitched together their impressions, losing a few to mines in brief, fiery explosions.

“Deng? There is something you should see.” Etsudo passed along the images as they came. A very large cylinder of rock, like a scaled-down habitat, slowly moved away from the downstream wormhole. “The downstream wormhole is not only reopened, something really big came through from New Anegada.”

Deng looked as if he’d been slapped. “We know roughly how many ships the Ragamuffins have. More ships are moving to flood the area. But this could change things. We’ll need more ships, and need to get some drones down that thing. Hold.”

Etsudo looked back out at the scene, closing his eyes to the cramped cockpit and the faces of the gamma crew staring back at him.

Behind the
Takara Bune the Wuxing Hao
and
Datang Hao
transited slowly into orbit with them.

“Our orders are changed.”

“And?” Etsudo asked.

Jiang Deng rubbed his neck. “We’ll first move to destroy that object. The Satrap recognized the design and function of that vehicle, it indicates it has the ability to reopen wormholes. Once destroyed, the Gulong will come to shut down the upstream wormhole. We will seal the Ragamuffins off.”

“I don’t have weapons, but my drones are clear of the mines and chaff, I can provide a good plot through.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Deng said. And in Etsudo’s lamina he could see representations of the three small ships like his moving out. The
Chen Yuan, Pao Ming
, and
Fei Ying
. He remembered meeting the captain of the
Pao Ming
once. A short, stodgy man who kept his hair long. Impractical on a ship.

The three ships fired their engines and dropped their orbit. They hit the first shield of mines.

“Are there people aboard?” Etsudo asked. “It’s suicide.” And then the thought struck him that he might be asked to follow them, and he wished he hadn’t said anything.

“Everything is in a good state.” Deng coughed. “It is for the greater stability, the Satrapy agrees.”

Agreed or not, Etsudo stared as the burning hulks of the ships cleared a major hole downward and at an angle backward through the shield.

And even for Deng, the man was behaving strangely.

“Is everything okay, Deng?” Etsudo asked.

Deng didn’t reply. “The
Wuxing Hao
and I are moving against that vehicle. You will follow and coordinate drone reconnaissance as we go.”

And maybe be commanded to ram something.

The Hongguo had now become a military arm for the Satrapy, entirely, and this was nothing but a war, Etsudo thought.

“Imagine a world where any interdicted system could come back into the Benevolent Satrapy,” Deng said. “Earth terrorists and Chimson fighters would all pour into our worlds and ignite a war to end all wars throughout the forty-eight worlds. It would be our end. We would be wiped out in response.”

Etsudo rubbed his forehead as the
Shengfen Hao
moved its orbit lower and through the gap in the shield. As it slowed, the downstream wormhole would catch up to it. The
Wuxing Hao
followed, and Etsudo swept away visions of lamina to look at his crew.

Bahul and Brandon cocked their heads as the
Takara Bune’s
engines fired. They were patched into the navigation lamina, which gave them a crude simulation of the outside world. Enough to have seen the three-ship suicide run.

“We’re following them down and out to the downstream wormhole, it’s open again, and we’re destroying whatever came through.”

“We have no weapons,” Fabiyan said.

“I
know
that,” Etsudo snapped. “But you saw the other three, didn’t you?”

“They can’t ask us to kill ourselves to protect those ships,” Bahul said.

“They haven’t,” Etsudo said. “Yet.” They all paused to listen to the pattering of chaff and other debris against the Takara Bune’s hull.