Graveyard of Empires Read online

  Abdullah never imagined her to be anything less than a pure representation of the Ministry: apocalyptic and aloof, untouchable in her love of religion. He couldn’t believe she would dishonor the Ministry and her faith. It was unfathomable to think of her worshipping anything other than her God.

  But he wasn’t about to point that out.

  “Sister Portia Nace, your crime is against the Holy Ministry you deigned to serve and thus punishment was passed down on behalf of Conciliator Argus Wade and Minister Givon Mielo. Your crime is against God, not the First Citizen, so you will not be offered burial in space.”

  He paused, dabbing sweat from his forehead.

  “You are to be thrown into the furnace and burned until dead.”

  “No!” Portia cried. “No please! I’ve done nothing. Please!”

  The men took her by the arm, and the muscular executioner slid his pistol away under his overcoat, folding his arms behind his back. Portia thrashed against her captors, to no avail, crying and screaming incoherently. Abdullah watched them drag her to the exit, trying to make out her words, and suddenly he realized what she was saying:

  Please kill me first.

  And then she was outside. The door shut behind her and they were cast once more under a heavy blanket of silence. Abdullah couldn’t even hear anyone breathe. The officers faced forward, and the Captain stared back, no one acknowledging the pair of bodies lying on the floor.

  A long moment passed.

  And then, “Abdullah Mohammad Al Hakir,” the announcer called. “Step forward.”

  2

  The voice was like a knife cutting through Abdullah’s abdomen, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe. His vision swam in front of him and he fought rising panic. Focus, breathe, focus, he told himself, counting his breaths.

  I can’t go forward…

  …I have to.

  They’ll kill me if I go…

  …They’ll kill me if I don’t.

  A full thirty seconds passed before he could move. No one spoke. No one moved. His eyes were locked, and he felt lightheaded. He forced one foot to move, then the other, and muscle memory took over. His body was sluggish.

  The officers parted easily before him. He doubted any would trade him places right now. He tasted garlic bile in his throat and fought to keep his knees from shaking.

  If either the announcer or the Captain were aware of his trepidation they pretended not to notice. Captain Kristi only watched him with her cold gray eyes.

  He forced himself to walk past the executioner and stand next to the body of his dead friend, holding perfectly still. If I duck to the side and dive I might be able to tackle the man standing behind me and wrestle his gun away, he thought, then forced the idea away. It was hopeless, utterly. If they wanted him dead, he was dead.

  He tried to think of any crimes he had committed. There were several, but none so horrible he should be executed. He thought about the times he’d fallen asleep on duty, gambled with his fellow low-ranking officers while off duty, even times he had considered consorting with disreputable traders…if bartenders counted.

  In his terrified state, he even thought about all of the times he had accidentally given the wrong order to a soldier or misspelled a word in one of his reports. Had anyone else done those things? He didn’t know. Every misdeed felt like fair game in his heightened state of panic.

  Oh God, I drank the wine…

  “Abdullah Mohammad Al Hakir,” the announcer said in his slow practiced voice, pausing to add grandiosity to his words, “on behalf of his Holy Grace the First Citizen you are hereby promoted to Lieutenant Commander of Denigen’s Fist, effective immediately. You will begin performing the duties therein required from this day forth and answer directly to Captain Kristi Grove. With God as my witness may it be so.”

  Abdullah tried to absorb the words, but they were slippery. Lieutenant Commander? That wasn’t even a promotion that was…what the hell does that mean? I barely hold rank at all. I’m a junior grade Lieutenant in charge of seven people. The Lieutenant Commander is in charge of half the goddamn ship of—

  Sixty thousand.

  Abdullah almost fell over. There had to be some mistake. He shook his head slowly and tried to formulate the words to object.

  This couldn’t be right. They must have selected the wrong person.

  The announcer didn’t seem to notice his sudden concern, turning back to the rest of the gathered officers.

  “You are all hereby dismissed for the day to deliver messages and make preparations for travel. Enjoy the buffet and discuss for as long as you wish but make sure those under your command are fully informed of these circumstances: we will leave the central Sector tomorrow on a patrol route through Sector Two.

  “Viewing services for Rodriguez Montes and Mikael Wilson will be held on deck three at twenty-two hundred hours followed by funeral services. The body of Rodriguez Montes will be sent to Axis per his family’s request.

  “Lieutenant Commander Abdullah Al Hakir, you are ordered to report to the bridge for debriefing.”

  Abdullah was still shaking his head and barely registered the order. He looked up, but the announcer was already walking away. As the door opened four more people flooded into the room to gather the bodies on long stretches. Body bags at the ready.

  Abdullah found himself caught by the gaze of Captain Kristi. Her gray eyes boring into him, telling him nothing. She seemed almost bored by the entire proceedings.

  It was for show, he realized. She killed my friend because he was a drug addict, and she wanted to set an example. He didn’t do anything to warrant death, but he doesn’t have any family to object or complain. What kind of a cold and heartless bitch are you?

  He prayed she couldn’t read his thoughts. They stared for a few more seconds before she nodded slightly and walked away, disappearing out of the conference hall with her entourage. The officers were alone once more, yet still no one spoke. All stood in stunned silence, exchanging glances and clearing throats.

  He doubted anyone would touch the food. He glanced over at his plate on the far table and fought down a queasy feeling. He had to leave it for someone else to clean up. Right now he had to go to the bridge.

  Suddenly, he had the urge to laugh sardonically. He bit it back.

  Yes, the Captain certainly made one hell of an impression.

  Chapter 11

  Sector 6 – Mali

  Vivian Drowel

  1

  The blocky merchant class spaceship Cudgel lowered slowly to the surface of the barren brown planet, landing with an audible plop that made Vivian wince. She’d searched for over an hour for a landing spot that wasn’t a mud pit, but the best she could find would still leave her landing gear deep in sludge.

  It had rained within the last few days, and with the planet’s slow evaporation rate water would sit on the ground as a muddy paste for at least a month. It didn’t rain often, but when it did it left things a mess.

  Dry deserts, mud, and incredibly powerful winds were all the planet had to offer. It was stripped of its resources hundreds of years earlier by extensive mining operations and could barely sustain its modest population.

  Vivian rose from her seat in the cockpit and stretched out her back. A day, she decided. Maybe two. With a sigh, she headed farther into her ship to find Traq.

  2

  “Why is it so muddy?” Traq asked. They were standing on top of the ship’s ramp, looking out at the desert below.

  “No foliage or evaporation,” she replied, “so the water just mixes with the dirt and stays.”

  “Why aren’t there any trees?”

  “They were cut down.”

  “All of them?”

  Vivian nodded. Whoever owned this planet, years ago, hadn’t been concerned with preserving it. They stripped it bare of anything of value and left it a floating husk. They also left the workers who moved here years ago behind, those too poor to afford passage off this world.

  In the Repu
blic, many did the same thing. They would create enormous stations orbiting these planets, ship supplies up from the surface and then leave once the planet ran out of resources.

  The only urban center left on Mali was an outpost-turned-city named Garran’s Ridge. Population just over two million. Every other city and mining facility were either buried by constant sandstorms or destroyed.

  “Why are we here?”

  “To talk to the locals,” she said. “Find out what they need so we can hopefully trade with them.”

  “What do they need?”

  It was only a guess, but Vivian was confident in it:

  “Water.”

  3

  Vivian didn’t even like pets, so what the hell was she going to do with a kid? Every step of the way, she felt his eyes on her. Watching her. And he wouldn’t say anything, he would just stare and then run away, making her feel like maybe she had something on her face. It was infuriating, but she knew she would have to maintain her calm. He would grow out of it.

  At least, that’s what the books told her.

  Wade’s stupid, stupid books.

  The funny thing was just how many there were. He sent her basically every parenting book they could offer. There were thousands of them. Some claimed children were little treasures, and others that they were little monsters. Each book had a silver bullet solution to raising kids, and none of them were the same. For the most part, all she had learned was that raising kids was difficult, and no one really knew how to do it.

  Which meant, at the very least, if she screwed up it wouldn’t matter too much.

  The worst part was, her experience being a child wasn’t much to draw upon either. From as early as she could remember, she lived at the Ministry. It hadn’t taken her long to realize she was different, that something was wrong with her, and that her ‘teachers’ didn’t care much for her. To them, she was an animal.

  They beat her with whips when she disobeyed, training her to use her modest gifts and studying her. That was something she never wanted Traq to experience, and she resolved herself to take care of Traq in the best way possible.

  Unfortunately, she was fairly certain that locking the kid in the cargo hold of her ship because he annoyed her was in the ‘don’t’ section of most parenting books.

  “I…” she said, then sighed. “We need to leave the ship for a little bit. We need to talk to some people.”

  His eyes went wide.

  “We’re on a different planet?” he asked.

  Vivian grated her teeth.

  “Yes. This is Mali. We’re about two kilometers from a city called Garran’s Ridge. We need to ask them about some things.”

  “What kind of planet is it?”

  “The gravity is ninety-eight percent axis norm; the star is a Solar Analog to a K class star…”

  His expression was blank. Oh, this is going to be fun, she thought. He doesn’t even know basic science.

  “We’re going to have to walk, you might get muddy,” said Vivian, turning and striding to the exit hatch. She did a quick check of her gear and punched the button to lower the ramp. She turned and glanced down the hall at the cockpit.

  “We’ll only be gone a few hours TM, just radio me if you run into trouble.”

  TM, her little robot assistant, walked out of the cockpit on her reverse jointed legs. She clicked an affirmative response.

  Suddenly Vivian felt something clutch her leg. Her body went rigid.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, she removed her hand from the hilt of her half-drawn sword. The Vibro blade was slung over her right shoulder—careful Vivian—and she looked down at the creature clutching her thigh.

  Traq was shivering and staring at the robot, a look mixed between shock and terror plastered on his face.

  Vivian had never thought of TM as particularly scary. She was a service robot, insanely useful, but without combat skills. True, TM had a small flamethrower mounted on her shoulder, but she insisted it was only for welding. Welding, and killing bugs. Vivian had never known a robot to have an aversion to bugs and assumed her engineer had a sardonic personality.

  Gently, she extricated the child from her leg and looked at the robot.

  “He didn’t know you were on board?”

  TM streamed a series of binary clicks. The robots voice software was turned off—Vivian didn’t like having other people listening in on unencrypted conversations—and it sounded like a hundred or so chickadees singing. Her internal translator decoded the message for her.

  “Good job then. Hiding was an admiral decision TM. Now he’s not only scared of you, he’s petrified.”

  TM clicked angrily in response.

  Traq mumbled something incoherent and reached out to touch the robot, as though afraid it would scorch him. His eyes were wide, but the fear was replaced by curiosity.

  “It is not my job to introduce you two,” Vivian retorted. “Just watch the damn ship.”

  This time, TM clicked a high pitched long response.

  “No, you would not do a better job watching Traq…yes but…I mean I know I forgot to feed him but he found that packet of crackers and…I can say whatever I damned well want in front of my passengers and—oh, forget it!”

  Vivian turned and strode down the ramp, forgetting about the mud. She stepped ankle deep in a puddle just at the bottom and cursed in frustration.

  4

  Angrily, Vivian trudged off in the direction of the city her scanners had picked up. She walked light on the slick surface but set a brisk pace, her boots scrunching uncomfortably from the mud. She didn’t know, or particularly care, if Traq was keeping up.

  The sun was hot, but without intense humidity, it was quite a mild day.

  Gale force winds blew across the landscape every few minutes. Each time she staggered to keep her feet and once slipped to her knee, muddying it. She knew that if the wind was hard on her, Traq didn’t stand a chance. Think of it as a training exercise, she decided. A really cruel training exercise.

  5

  When she first radioed the planet from orbit, a man named Quinton informed her they didn’t have a landing pad. Anywhere outside the city would do for landing, and they would meet her nearby.

  There was a group of about twenty locals waiting for them just inside the city limits. They were all smiling, which was kind of unsettling. When people were this happy about Vivian’s arrival, they either weren’t used to off-world travelers or they were planning to kill her.

  In her current mood, she wasn’t sure which one she would prefer.

  “Welcome to Mali,” a man who could only be Quinton said, gesturing grandly. He had deep green eyes and white hair, though he didn’t appear that old. Probably bleached by the sun. He was wearing a purple flannel shirt, blue denim pants, and a pair of sandals that made him look kind of like a piñata as he waved his arms.

  It’s a mud hole, she thought, glancing around. Not that impressive.

  “It’s windy,” she said instead.

  “You should see it at night,” Quinton said, laughing heartily. “We don’t receive many visitors, so this is a very special occasion.”

  Vivian glanced back and used her hand to deflect the sun from her eyes, trying to spot Traq.

  Traq was about fifty meters back, head down and leaning into the wind.

  The gale let up suddenly, and he collapsed face first into the mud. Vivian stifled a laugh and then shrugged away the shame it elicited.

  Traq picked himself up and hurried the last distance to them before the wind whipped up again. He was wiping his face off with his shirt, smearing it more than cleaning it. Vivian introduced them and listened vaguely as Quinton ticked off the list of names of the others gathered around.

  “You must be hungry, would you like something to eat?” Quinton asked.

  “We would love a meal,” Vivian said, glancing down at her side. Traq was covered in mud from head to toe. “And a place to clean up.”

  “Of course, please, right this way.”
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  Quinton led them through the city and the congregation followed. A few were carrying weapons, she noted, but they were old model projectile pistols and rifles that had been put through extended use. She had the Vibro blade slung over her shoulder in easy reach and a heavy pistol tucked under her black tunic, but she wasn’t concerned about safety.

  Right now she was concerned about information. Something she could give to Argus to justify her absence.

  Most of the buildings were primitive; patchwork monstrosities. Newer lean-tos created semi shelters, butting up against the older structures.

  The people lived in abject poverty. A lot of windows were boarded up and people were crammed in close together. They walked slowly, hopelessly, eyes down.

  Quinton led the group alongside an open sewer, high from the rain water. The smell curled her nose.

  Every corner she passed she saw large ceramic basins overflowing. She saw locals dumping it on themselves and scrubbing their bodies with it, but she didn’t see anyone drinking it. Could be dangerous, she thought. Maybe acidic fall.

  All in all, her impression of the city wasn’t positive. It was dingy and would have been nothing more than a pimple in a sector closer to the Core. Yet, to hear Quinton talk of it, this was one of the most beautiful and lively places to grow up in the entire galaxy.

  After about twenty minutes, Traq asked if he could have something to drink. All conversation ground to a halt and a few people exchanged glances.

  Quinton met Vivian’s gaze and then his eyes flicked down to Traq. There was a brief pause and then he said, “Of course you can,” and pulled a slim bottle from his pocket.

  “We can’t—”

  Quinton shot the speaking man a look, which shut him up. The man was taller than Quinton, though not a lot, with ruddy skin and pale eyes. Vivian thought back and remembered that his name was Ralph.

  He had a look about him that bespoke confidence and arrogance. He remained silent as the bottle was handed over to Traq, staring pointedly off down the road and patting his hand absently against his leg.