Chapter 18
“A RAIL GUN?”
The incredulous query made the man sitting across from Major Caze Paledan shift uneasily on the hard wooden chair, for at least the third time in as many minutes. It seemed Ordam was even more nervous than the last time he’d been here. Perhaps the mere discussion of the Raider struck fear into him. He seemed the type.
“Who is this raider?” he demanded.
“It was not him,” Ordam said hastily. “He was in town—”
“Blowing up a cargo transport,” Paledan snapped.
“Er . . . yes.”
“A diversion, you fool. Who is he?”
“Some say,” Ordam began hesitantly, “it is the ghost of Torstan Davorin.”
Paledan barely managed not to snort his disgust of such theories. “And you believe this?”
“Of course not. I only say that is what some believe. That, or that it’s Davorin himself, that he somehow is not dead.”
“I have seen the recordings of the day he died,” Paledan said dryly. There was absolutely no doubt that, save his head, the man had been reduced to fragments of bone and tissue no bigger than his own thumb. He’d seen firsthand what a rail gun did to a human body, and the survival rate was zero.
“And I saw his head,” Ordam said.
“Then we have dispensed with that irrationality,” Paledan said. “So who is this raider in fact?”
“No one knows.”
He lifted a brow at the man. “No one?”
“It is . . . common knowledge,” Ordam added hastily.
“So it is common knowledge that no one knows?”
If the man saw the absurdity, it didn’t show. Paledan didn’t bother himself about it; men who never looked beyond the surface failed on their own, one way or another.
“Yes,” Ordam said. “But it wouldn’t matter if they did. They would protect him,” he added with clear disgust. “And they condemn me. Fools.”
For hating the man who handed them over to an invader?
Paledan had few illusions about the Coalition. He knew too much, had seen too much. For that matter, he had done too much to hold on to any illusions, acknowledging it was necessary for the long-term goal of keeping the machinery oiled and moving. He had achieved his own position because he was not subject to emotions; he was harshly efficient, excellent at reading people and predicting their actions, and unmoved by the plight of those foolish enough to believe anything the size of the Coalition could be benevolent.
And he had little sympathy for those who buckled so easily, who wouldn’t fight for themselves or their world. In the case of Ziem, he suspected they had naively assumed their distant location and damp, misty climate would protect them. Not that the blasted mist wasn’t an obstacle, but when weighed against the lure of a huge supply of planium, it was a mere irritation. And, as usual, there had been some people willing to trade their world’s sovereignty for individual reward, who welcomed the coming of the dominant—soon to be only—power in the galaxy, as long as they benefitted from it. In that, people were sadly consistent.
“And where does he strike from?”
“The mountains.”
Given that Zelos was surrounded by mountains, that was almost as helpful as saying “Ziem.”
“Just how hard have you tried to discover who this man is?”
“Very hard,” Ordam retorted instantly. “No one wishes that pestilence gone more than I. But the results are unvarying. No one knows who he really is, where he came from, not even his own followers. By his command.”
Now that was interesting.
“His own command?”
“It is said he orders it, so that no one can be forced to betray him.”
He leaned back in his chair, studying the man before him. “Ziem’s total population is a quarter that of any other planet the Coalition has reached. Two-thirds of those live here in Zelos. And you’re saying no one recognizes this man?”
“Have you not heard? The man is hideously scarred.”
“I have heard.”
And if the scars are all you see, if you notice nothing else about him, not his height, his build, his way of moving, his mannerisms, then you are even bigger fools than I thought.
Ordam glanced quickly around as if he feared a hidden watcher, then whispered, “They say he wears that helmet not to protect from injury but to hide something even worse than the scars that are visible. Some say there is no flesh left on his skull beneath it.”
Paledan didn’t bother to ask who “they” were. He’d encountered enough of the types who simply had to have a horror story to pass around, for the momentary importance it gave them. In their own minds, anyway.
“This is all you know?”
“It’s all I want to know,” Ordam said with a shudder that was visible.
And I’m sure you are very good at limiting your knowledge to what you want to know.
He dismissed the man with a wave of his hand. Ordam stood, hastily, but then hesitated.
“Something else?” Paledan asked, not bothering to disguise his distaste for the man.
There was another moment of hesitation before Ordam asked, “Does this mean you intend to do something about him? I only ask because . . . Frall never did.”
Paledan’s gaze narrowed sharply; he might not think much of the bumbler himself, but he would not tolerate such disrespect for an officer from a man he thought even less of.
“Are you referring to Coalition Major Frall?” he asked, his tone icy.
“I . . . of course. I’m sorry.”
“We’re finished,” Paledan said flatly.
“Yes, sir.” Ordam nearly tripped over his own feet in his hurry to leave.
When the man had gone, Paledan leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers before him. He thought about the orders Legion Command had given him. Or rather, the result the Coalition expected; how he got there was left up to him. Which was both a mark of his own reputation, and the Coalition habit of deniability; what they hadn’t specifically ordered, they could not be held accountable for. Not that they cared what they were blamed for; the more horror stories that circulated, the more fear existed, which suited their purposes.
Besides, when everyone was following the same handbook, orders didn’t need to be spelled out. He didn’t need to be told all Ziemites except for the planium miners were expendable; that was a given.
But he also knew that wiping out the rest of the population, including their families, could tip the miners into a refusal to work. When men lost everything they loved, they seemed to no longer care about life or death. He did not possess or quite understand such emotions, but he knew they existed. He knew as well that the lack made him an oddity, but it also meant that by not being prey to emotions, he was better able to see the necessary path through them.
He leaned forward and keyed the comm system.
“Brakely.”
“Sir?” his aide answered almost instantly. Marl Brakely had once been a rising star, expected to go as far as his famous uncle, who had made his reputation as the much-honored commander of the Brightstar, a premiere Coalition battleship. Commander Brayton Brakely had survived, barely, the misfortune of having had two traitors serving together on his crew. That they did not turn traitor until long after they had left the Brightstar did not alleviate, in the Coalition mind, the fact that they were the two most infamous and grievous traitors the Coalition had ever known: Califa Claxton and Shaylah Graymist.
Commander Brakely’s heroic career and stellar history had saved him then, but it had not saved him from Coalition rage after the second defeat on Arellia just a few months ago. The Coalition had taken out its anger on the man who had been in charge during the battle that had ended with Coalition forces unable to even approach for fear of being blasted to bits all over again by the unexpectedly fierce resistance of a people they had thought easily defeatable.
Something those who thought the same of Ziem might be wise to remember.
Brakely’s nephew had been condemned to the same fate, having first committed the sin of being a cadet at Claxton’s much vaunted academy at the time of her betrayal, and now being related to his disgraced uncle. Such was Coalition thinking. He saw the sense of it; if you knew your entire extended family would pay for your sins, you were more likely to think thrice before betraying your masters.
But, by the other side of the token, saving someone from that fate earned you a kind of loyalty it was hard to gain any other way. So plucking the younger Brakely out of the death line had been a calculated move that had paid off well. When he had offered him the position as his aide, the look in the man’s eyes told him he had assessed him accurately. And the man had served him loyally ever since. Now there were few he trusted more.
Although there was no one he trusted completely.
He glanced at the document open on his viewscreen. Claxton’s classic Aerial Combat Tactics. Although he was not a pilot, the treatise had always been in his collection for the simple reason that, in the end, surprisingly for an air fighter, Claxton had agreed with him. Or rather, the other way around, given that he’d been all of fifteen when he’d first read it. She’d stated that while great strides could be made by air in any battle, it could not be finished without troops on the ground.
Of course, agreeing with a notorious traitor was never a good thing to advertise.
Of Graymist and Claxton, Claxton had been the harder for him to believe; he’d studied all her writings on tactics and strategy and thought her a genius. He’d regretted that her academy had been closed before he’d been old enough to attend; he’d been looking forward to it for years. But it had been bombed to rubble after her defection to the Triotian forces. A defection the Coalition had tried to cover up, but she was too well known, and the whole Triotian fiasco too big to hide for long. Someone had fallen down on the job; someone should have noticed what was going on with Claxton a lot sooner.
And he’d be damned to hades if he would fall into that trap. If he was ever beaten, it would not be because he failed to track potential threats.
“Gather everything you can find on this raider,” he said over the comm link. “I want it all, fact or legend, any rumor you can pick up, including hearsay and speculation.”
“I’ve already begun, Major.”
And that, Paledan thought, was the mark of a good aide, anticipating what his commander would want. “Excellent,” he said.
“Do you want what I have so far?”
He considered that. “No. I want to see it all at once. But make it your first priority, Brakely.”
“Yes, sir.”
And in the meantime, he would change into civilian clothes and take a walk through the streets of Zelos before the night curfew. Not many knew what he looked like yet, and he might be able to pick up something of interest himself.