Honourbound - Rachel Harrison Read online

  ‘Like I said,’ Wyck says, ejecting the pistol’s powercell. ‘Quick and vicious.’

  He throws the powercell up and over the Demolisher. It lands somewhere in the darkness with a clatter. Wyck walks past Kolat and picks up the satchel. He goes through it until he finds what he needs. Two silver tins. Ten auto-injectors each. He takes them both, then throws the satchel at Kolat’s feet.

  ‘We’ll call my silence the cost,’ Wyck says. ‘That seems fair to me.’

  Kolat gets upright by leaning on the chassis of his Demolisher.

  ‘You should go and find that cell,’ Wyck says, handing the empty pistol back. ‘You wouldn’t want to be caught out of hand, now.’

  Kolat scowls at him and spits on the ground. He snatches the pistol back.

  ‘You have secrets too,’ he says. ‘In the end you will be found out as surely as I will. You will answer for what you’ve done.’

  Wyck thinks about that. About the deaths and the oaths broken. The betrayal and the blood. Heavy and cold, like the pendant around his neck. There’s another weight now, though. The weight of those two tins and their contents in the pouches at his belt.

  ‘In the end, sure,’ Wyck says. ‘But I am not there yet.’

  Lori Ghael is sitting on one of the mess hall benches, telling Antari stories to those who don’t belong to the regiment. She works in requisitions, a Munitorum adept by rights, but she dresses and acts like a soldier. Most from Antar do. Today she wears the same boots and fatigues as the rest of them. Her hair is shaved on one side, and she has dog tags around her neck. The difference with Ghael is that where those of the fighting companies are marked with blood and with ash from the forges and the funerals, she is marked with ink stains. Her only augmetic adjustment is the bionic lens that replaces her right eye and her skin is pale and unscarred from a life spent away from the front. Out of the sun and the field of fire. That means that Fel doesn’t know her much at all other than by sight. When she spots him, she stops her story and holds up her hand before he can speak.

  ‘Let’s see,’ she says. ‘Black fatigues. That’s a storm trooper unit. Red bars mean a captain. I saw you sitting alongside Hale, and Awd and Koy too. That’s a safe bet for Grey Company. Those taken together means a Duskhound.’

  She looks at him and narrows her eyes. Something in that look reminds him of a hunting bird. It’s the keen sense of being observed.

  ‘Captain Andren Fel,’ she says. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘You are,’ he says. ‘On all counts.’

  Ghael grins widely and applauds herself.

  ‘I told you,’ she says to those sitting around her. ‘I know everyone, name and rank, if not by sight or sound.’

  Fel suspects she knows a good deal more than that, with keen eyes like hers.

  ‘I have a question,’ he says. ‘And I think you may have the answer, or a part of it.’

  Ghael’s remaining Antari eye brightens, amused. ‘Questions I like,’ she says. ‘But first, you have to tell everyone here why your unit is named the way they are.’

  The outsiders all look at him, curious. To Fel, it feels like an intrusion of a kind. He doesn’t speak their stories to just anyone, so he tells them the simple version.

  ‘Because the story goes that the duskhounds come to take those who fate passed over,’ he says. ‘Where they go death walks in step beside them. Given what we do, it seemed a good name.’

  Some of the Munitorum workers laugh in a way that suggests unease.

  ‘Throne,’ says one of the Navy pilots. ‘Your world must be dark, to give rise to those kinds of stories.’

  Ghael shrugs. She is still smiling. ‘Sometimes,’ she says, before sliding off the edge of the bench and getting to her feet. ‘Now, what was it you needed to ask me?’

  Fel pulls her aside and the outsiders go back to their own murmured conversation.

  ‘What do you know about Steadfast pattern lasrifles?’ he asks.

  She frowns for a moment. The expression is mismatched where her bionic pulls the skin taut.

  ‘That you get twice as many shots for one pack out of them,’ she says. ‘That they are thirty per cent less likely to overheat because the venting is better. That no amount of requisition will get any for our troops.’

  ‘Because they are rare,’ Fel says.

  Ghael snorts. ‘Not that rare,’ she says. ‘If that were true, the Kavrone wouldn’t have them.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’ he asks.

  She nods. Taps the shaved side of her head with her forefingers. Fel notices the long scar that runs front to back there for the first time.

  ‘This bionic isn’t all they gave me,’ she says. ‘I don’t forget. Not names. Not ranks. Especially not guns.’

  Fel frowns. Two thoughts drift ashore in his head. The first is the easiest. That the Sighted really did take the rifles off the dead. There are certainly plenty of Kavrone dead on Laxus Secundus to account for a few stolen guns. But then it isn’t just guns. It’s the camo gear. The field artillery. The machines.

  Zane’s long shadow.

  Then there’s the feeling he’s getting. Instinctual. Like when you’re clearing a series of blind corners and switchbacks and you know that there’s a blade waiting for you around one of them.

  ‘Honestly,’ Ghael is saying, ‘you would think the Kavrone were the Lions of bloody Bale, the way they are treated.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Fel asks.

  She nods over at the outsiders in their Munitorum coveralls and workers’ boots. They are back to their laughing and their drinking, a spread of faded playing cards out on the table between them.

  ‘Ask them,’ she says.

  ‘It’s like I said to Ghael,’ Krall says. ‘They had us reassigned. Made us redirect the landers and move everything so that they could use the largest of the bays for their own.’

  He puts his cards out in front of him, and one of the Navy pilots laughs.

  ‘Looks like you can’t win at this, either,’ the pilot says, with a grin on her face.

  Krall scowls. The expression is disrupted by the bruising from where Crys hit him.

  ‘On the orders of the Kavrone general, you said,’ Fel says.

  Krall nods.

  ‘He was down there himself,’ one of the others says. His name is Brannt, and he’s in the same coloured jumpsuit as Krall. ‘General Sylar, I mean. Didn’t speak to any one of us directly, of course. Not someone of his rank.’

  The way Brannt says ‘rank’ makes it sound as though he has given the word a second meaning. The others in Munitorum gear smirk or snort laughter. Fel lets it pass. From what he’s heard muttered about the Kavrone general, Sylar has earned the bad blood.

  ‘If the general was there, then they could be using the bay for reinforcements,’ Fel says. ‘I can’t think my kin are the only ones to get cut badly today.’

  Krall shakes his head. He collects up the playing cards and shuffles them together.

  ‘That’s the thing,’ he says. ‘They aren’t bringing anything in. They are sending it out.’

  The other Navy pilot snorts as he picks up his new hand of cards. ‘Typical,’ he says. ‘We have over half of our birds on the ground, wounded or dead, and we are sending supplies off-world. And they wonder why the crusade has been going for over forty years.’

  Fel gets that feeling again. That same unease.

  ‘There will be a reason,’ the other pilot says. ‘There always is. Someone needs it more.’

  ‘Who could need it more?’ Fel says. ‘If it’s as bad as you say.’

  Krall looks at his hand of cards and puffs out his cheeks. He is incapable of hiding the truth in his face.

  ‘The Strixian Ninety-Ninth,’ he says. ‘Apparently.’

  Brannt hisses and punches his arm. ‘You could get the lash for repeating that,�
� he says. ‘Idiot. Shut your mouth and play cards.’

  ‘He won’t get the lash,’ says Ghael. ‘Because he’s wrong.’

  She has been quiet until now, watching the others play.

  ‘Are you calling me a liar?’ Krall says. ‘I saw the orders with my own eyes.’

  Ghael snorts. ‘Such eyes they are too,’ she says. ‘But mine is better, and I’m telling you, you’re wrong. The Strixian Ninety-Ninth won’t be getting those guns, because you don’t give guns to the dead, which is precisely what that regiment is. They caught fire on Hyxx to a soul, if I remember right.’

  The Navy pilot rolls his eyes. ‘And now we are sending guns to the dead,’ he says, his tone caustic. ‘Glory be to the holy Munitorum, and all of their mistakes.’

  Fel knows that it happens, now and then. The Bale Stars is a big place. There are many deaths. Reports from the field can be conflicting and confused and lead to mistakes. They are rare, but they do happen.

  But he cannot help feeling that is not the case this time.

  ‘We are not sending guns to the dead,’ Ghael says. ‘And mind your bloody words too.’

  The pilot holds up his hand in apology, knowing when he has overstepped his mark.

  ‘Krall is just wrong about the Strixians, that’s all,’ Ghael says, nodding at Krall. ‘Just like he was wrong about winning against Crys.’

  Krall’s face colours. Another feeling that he’s incapable of hiding.

  ‘I suppose I’m wrong then,’ Krall says, then throws down his cards. ‘And I’m out too. The odds are stacked badly in this game.’

  Fel watches the cards hit the table and thinks that Krall’s words might apply to more than just the game. He gets to his feet and Ghael pulls a face at him.

  ‘You’re leaving?’ she asks.

  Fel nods. ‘There is a lot to do before dawn,’ he says.

  Six

  Bad blood

  It is well into the early hours when Raine arrives back at her tent, but she cannot sleep. Not yet. It is always difficult, on the nights before a deployment. Usually she has her routines and rituals to pass the hours. She speaks with Fel, or she trains, or she takes to her prayers.

  But not tonight.

  Tonight is different.

  Raine tends to her weapons first. She cleans and hones the blade of her sabre. She takes apart her pistol and uses a fine brush to scrub and knock the blood and ash from the component parts. She mends the tears in her greatcoat. Other commissars would give this duty to their cadets, or rely on an aide. Raine does not. When her weapons and uniform are restored, she takes a shower herself. The water is colder than the Laxian storm outside, and it only lasts a minute, but it cleanses her of the worst of the dirt. She realises now how badly she was cut in the forges, so she cleans, binds and stitches what she can with the field kit she has. The bruising across her chest from the impact of the shotgun round she cannot do much about but suffer. She only ever goes to Lye if she needs to. If her injuries compromise her ability to perform her duties. Anything else is just another scar. Then Raine puts on a clean uniform and binds her long hair into a tight crown braid. Restored, just like her weapons, there is nothing else to be done but the last thing.

  Raine goes to her greatcoat and takes out her timepiece. The hands tick softly, like a heartbeat. The brass warms in her palm. Raine turns the timepiece over to look at the back of the case, and the word scratched there.

  Lucia.

  She remembers pushing the point of her training blade into the soft brass to make each mark. The letters are jagged and angular. Angry. Broken up. Just like she was, the day she received the timepiece in that box. Just like she has been in some ways every day since.

  ‘Ten years,’ Raine says, to herself, and to the timepiece.

  Ten years to the day since Lucia was executed by firing squad.

  Ten years since Lucia betrayed her. Dishonoured her.

  Absolutely and irrevocably broke her heart.

  Raine closes her hand around the timepiece and her knuckles go pale. Every year, it’s the same. She tries to think of the moment it happened. The moment that Lucia fell. Raine thinks that if she can find it, that moment of weakness, that she will be able to prevent herself from falling the same way and from giving in to the weakness of her blood, as Lucia did. She remembers every word. Every frown, every smile. The way her sister would teach her about the Bale Stars and every one of its worlds. How they would read by candlelight long after they should have been sleeping. She thinks of braiding Lucia’s hair for her graduation ceremony. Of the way she changed, every time she saw her. Leaner and more haunted. Last of all she thinks of Lucia standing there on that stage in front of everyone and saying those words that she was so proud to hear but that mean nothing now.

  The answer is faith.

  The remembered words snap something inside of Raine. She drops the timepiece to the floor of her tent and drives her boot down onto it again and again and again until she hears something break. The anger blows away like parchment torn free in a gale, and she realises what she has done. Raine goes to her knees and picks up the timepiece. The glass face is shattered. The chain is snapped. The brass is dented.

  Somehow, though, the hands are still ticking.

  ‘Fool,’ Raine says to herself. Her jaw aches with the want to scream or shout or cry. ‘You fool.’

  She runs her thumb around the outside of the casing and it comes away, hinged open by the force with which she crushed it. She can see the workings of the timepiece glitter. Wheels and cogs and tiny needles.

  Then she sees something else. Not a wheel. Not a cog.

  A datacrystal.

  Raine goes cold and her heart feels as good as stopped. She pulls the case away a fraction and tips it so that the datacrystal comes loose and lands in the palm of her other hand. Raine looks at it for a long time, listening to the second hand of the timepiece tick around and around.

  It could have been in there all along, Raine realises. From the day her father gave the timepiece to her mother, all those years ago. Before his weakness earned him his death. Or it could have been hidden there by her mother, a message for her daughters.

  Or it could have been put there by Lucia.

  She should get rid of it, but Raine cannot find it in herself to tip the crystal onto the floor and crush it. Instead, she finds herself carrying it over to the table where her datareader sits and clicking it into place. The machine whirs and spools and ticks over, just like the timepiece. Raine closes her eyes.

  When she opens them again, she is faced with a hololith projection.

  For my sister, it says, in flickering text. The truth is contained within.

  Raine has to put one hand on the table’s edge to keep her feet. She feels hollow. Shattered. Just like the timepiece. She should definitely get rid of the datacrystal now. Lucia’s words are the words of a traitor, no matter their intent. But Raine’s eyes keep going back to that word.

  Truth.

  Underneath Lucia’s words is an input field for a passcode. Raine types in her commissariat authorisation slowly, deliberately, telling herself that she doesn’t do it because of the pain or the anger. The guilt. That she does it because it is her duty to seek the truth in all things.

  Raine hits the input key and the hololith flickers. She closes her eyes again.

  When she opens them, she finds no truth waiting for her. Just the same hololith screen, only now it is overlaid with new words that make Raine’s heart sink.

  Access denied.

  Gloam, before

  Severina kneels on the hard flagstone floor of the scholam’s chapel. Outside and inside, deepwinter howls. The altar sparkles with frost, save for where the candles flicker and the tallow drips. The wind twists through the rafters, bringing flurries of snow to land around her as she prays. The snow stings her skin and the floor makes her
knees ache. Severina can’t feel her fingers or her toes, but she remains unmoving.

  ‘Service is my duty,’ she says.

  The candles flicker in the wind.

  ‘Duty is an honour.’

  The shutters on the windows clatter together.

  ‘The greatest honour is to know true faith.’

  It is the last of her prayers, and the simplest. That is why it is her favourite. The most calming. There is serenity in simplicity. In the plainness of words that mean just what they say.

  Severina gets to her feet slowly. They prickle with the rush of blood coming back. She puts her hand to her heart and bows her head one last time to the golden figure of the Emperor that stands at the head of the chapel. Severina knows that there is someone else in the chapel who has been there for several minutes. The flow of the winter air changed when they opened the door and entered, bringing with them the smell of gunsmoke and cold metal. But that is not all the person brought. There is a sound too.

  A soft ticking.

  ‘Sister,’ Severina says.

  This time Lucia comes to stand beside her, playing opposites to that day on the gantries all those months ago. She bows her own head to the Emperor and makes the same gesture as Severina. One hand, over her heart.

  ‘Courage in His sight,’ she says.

  The words are strange to Severina. She wonders if they belong to the Kavrone. Lucia looks as though she belongs to them now. The heavy coat she wears is lined with a blue fabric that Severina catches sight of when she moves. There is something else too. A pin wrought in iron and gold that Lucia wears on the collar of her tunic.

  Severina smiles, broadly and without thought for the chapel’s solemnity.

  ‘That is a mark of office,’ Severina says. ‘You are no longer a cadet.’

  Lucia smiles in return, though it is thinner and gone as quickly as the snow in the candlelight.