I reached for my fishing pole and checked the hook. I broke off a fresh piece of bait from the tin and reattached it and stood there a moment.
The guild had remained silent. I had expected that. After what I’d sent them, I’d probably been written off as a lunatic, and I couldn’t argue with the logic. If I’d stuck to requests and tactical information, andnothanded them a personal declaration in plain text, they might still be passing me intelligence. They might have told me something useful.Something about timelines. Something about whether the Rivonok had rerouted after the Durbok’s complaint.
I had no one to blame for that gap except myself.
I checked the surveillance indicators on my wrist comm. No alerts. Whatever was coming, we’d hear it before it arrived.
I took the pole and started down the path to the beach.
Halfway down, I stopped.
Smoke.
I turned north and saw it above the tree line. Gray-white columns rose against the clear morning, more than one, rising from the direction of the village. Too thick. Too much of it. Not cooking fires. The wind was carrying it north, otherwise I’d have smelled it sooner.
I dropped the pole and ran back up the path. “B2.”
No response.
“B2, respond.”
Nothing. But I couldn’t wait to figure out what was happening with it. Silli chirped in alarm, but I ran past him to the hangar before he could follow.Fleck. What was going on? My only thought was to get to the village.
The shuttle’s power-up sequence took ninety-three agonizing seconds. I counted each one. I ran the preflight as fast as it would go and lifted off and banked north.
From the air, it was worse than the smoke had suggested.
Three buildings fully engulfed, two more had largely been destroyed and others had caught. The docks were in flame, the fishing boats with them. I came in low and saw nothing moving below. No people, no activity. Just fire eating through wood, and smoke in the morning air. I set down in the clearing at the south edge of the village, took the blaster from the weapons compartment, and jumped out of the hatch before it had fully opened.
The village was quiet, and it was the bad kind of quiet. My skin crawled as I moved through the main path with my blaster raised, scanning each doorway I passed. Open doors. Overturned things, but no bodies, no blood on the ground. I didn’t know yet whether to be relieved about that.
The smell found me in the center of the square.
Burning wood and hot stone, and underneath both of those, a chemical undertone Ireallydidn’t like. Plenty of combat groups used it in the early stages of a containment operation to establish control and induce panic, including the mercenary guild. I knew this before I’d processed it consciously, because the last time I’d smelled it I’d been standing in the remains of an ancient forest that had been obliterated because of some little purple mushrooms.
I bent over with my hands on my knees.
The thought that arrived was not strategic. It was:I failed them.All that training and positioning and surveillance, and the Rivonok had walked in while I was sleeping soundly in my bed. I had let the guild go dark by sending a message I never should have sent. I had not convinced Maive to evacuate when she was still willing to argue about it. I’d had the chance to force the issue. And I didn’t.
Now, I needed those who had done this. And I needed themdead. I straightened up.
Standing in the square, cataloging my failures, was not useful. I would do that later, at length, at my own expense, when there was time for it. I raised the blaster and I bellowed at the empty village.
“Come out! Come out and face me!”
It was a bold demand for a man standing barefoot in the middle of a burning village. Yes, I’d left in such a hurry, I literally wore what I’d slept in.
Then, from behind the long storage building on the east side: a figure. Tall, gray face mask, black uniform with no visible insignia. He emerged without urgency into the open square, pulling a child behind him by the wrist.
Aila.
She had her feet planted and was dragging against his grip. Then her gaze found me and her eyes went wide. I had enough time, in the space of one breath, to see the relief in her face before everything in my gut turned to tight knots.
“Stand down,” the figure said. His voice was flat, processed slightly by the mask. He stopped in the center of the square. He picked Aila up and held her against him with one arm, her feet off the ground. She went still as his grip tightened around her. “You lost. Tell me where your people are and we can resolve this quickly.”
What? How didhenot know where they were? “Don’t play games with me,” I snarled. “Let that child go.”
“Did you not hear me?” He tilted his head. “Forgive my lack of formalities and allow me to start over. I am Ambassador Yeaven Morra, representing the Rivonok Alliance interests in this system. You are Gilrox Ban-Ver-Mos, Rank V, Level Ten Mercenary. I’m sorry—ex-mercenary. Now, I’m not asking where you hid them as a matter of curiosity. I’m asking because this will go faster if you assist me.”
