Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

Did Etsudo remember his mother? He didn’t know. That face that had kissed him in the mornings, sung to him, that might have been the same face. Or one that Kenji stole from a database somewhere. Etsudo never bothered to find out. He destroyed the message and walked back to Kenji’s room in the hospital.

Looking in at the body of the man, Etsudo crumpled to the floor to cry for the last time in his life. His father had died and his mother had never existed, and neither did he.

And here was this loyalty to the Hongguo built into him by his father, and yet the knowledge that he was one of their victims. The love of his mother, who didn’t exist. The love of a father who did, and had betrayed him.

A ship to run that was his. Kenji had worked hard to make sure Etsudo had full captainship of the Takara Bune .

Etsudo heated a bulb of tea over the hot pad at the center of the round table in the cramped galley. Brandon gripped the edges of the table as if he would fall away from it if he let go. Vertigo was a small side effect from reconditioning. Etsudo had a sick bag in his back pocket. He handed the bulb to Brandon, who cradled the handcrafted glass in his two callused hands. The etched silver swans on the sides caught the glint of the cabin lighting as he rolled the bulb between his fingers.

Brandon looked up from the tea, a brown drop of liquid hovering above the tiny lip. “Etsudo, I’ve been wired to send everything I see and hear back to Deng.”

“You’re okay.” Etsudo shook his head. “Nothing leaks out of this ship unless I want it to. But Deng will be contacting us soon when you don’t report back to him.”

Brandon shuddered.

“I know.” Etsudo nodded. “But we will be okay.”

“I’ll fall apart facing him right now.”

A message pinged for Etsudo’s attention. He relaxed and settled into the lamina. The image of Jiang Deng appeared before him, standing on the table. “Etsudo,” Deng snapped. “Check in.” Then the Jiang folded his arms and disappeared.

Etsudo subvocalized his response while looking at a tired Brandon sip tea. The man did not look up or even realize Etsudo was multitasking. “Brandon has yet to finish his tour of the Takara Bune . If you’ve been worried about him not checking in, it’s because the ship is shielded. His personal communications have to route through the Takara Bune ’s lamina first. We keep a low profile.”

The message would get bounced out to the nearest buoy, shot through the wormhole back downstream. Even with Hongguo priority codes on it, Etsudo had maybe ten minutes before Deng received it, though he wasn’t sure where Deng was. Then the message had a ten-minute return. Could be a long twenty minutes.

Brandon looked up. “Our Jiang’s strategies have changed.”

“How?”

“Four days ago the three Consuls were asked to make a trip to a habitat with a Satrap in it. When they came out, everything was different. New orders, new thoughts. Like the new initiative against the pirates.”

“The pirates? That was for real?” Etsudo asked. And Jiang Deng appeared again. Etsudo frowned and held up his hand, and Brandon waited. That had been, what, a minute? Two at the most. That mean only a handful of wormholes lay between him and the Shengfen Hao . Deng’s ship was a lot faster than Etsudo’s unless the Takara Bune ditched all its cargo. So much for running away. Deng was catching up to him.

Deng waved a hand. “I don’t care about Brandon. I need your direct assistance. “We have a problem.”

Again, Etsudo wondered if he’d overreacted with Brandon. Maybe they’d genuinely thought he needed assistance running his ship. Maybe they were actually trying to eliminate the Ragamuffins.

Maybe.

Deng continued, “Jiang Wu and Jiang Li suffered damage to their ships while attacking pirates. They managed to destroy four ships, but a fifth escaped. I’m in pursuit, but I need your help.”

Etsudo stared at the tiny figure of Deng. Attacks in space? In a hundred years maybe a few Hongguo ships had actually attacked others. Brandon was right, the Jiang’s strategies had changed.

“What’s wrong?” Brandon had realized Etsudo was staring off into space. “Is it Jiang Deng?”

“Don’t worry,” Etsudo whispered. “Just give me a second.”

Jiang Deng’s message went on, “We didn’t get the identity of the fifth ship, but it leaves a recognizable gamma radiation trail our drones are following. Your message ping time indicates you are just upstream of us and close by. We’re jamming the ship to stop it from calling for help, but they may get ahead of us. We’re shutting communication buoys down. It begins at Thule and goes downstream from there. This whole downstream branch is being put under a blackout as we work to squeeze any pirate ships down towards their home base. We did not brief you because your ship isn’t involved.” And because Deng didn’t trust him. “But now I need you to run support for our mission. When the pirate ship overtakes you, blow your cargo and keep up with them, you have a faster ship than I do. Send confirmation you received this and are acting.”

Etsudo gripped the table as hard as Brandon. Why attack them now?

Spaceships cost immense sums, and the Hongguo had a lot invested in their fleet strung across the Satrapy. Some of the ships creaked along at almost a hundred years old, like the Takara Bune . Risking them in direct confrontation with other ships didn’t fly well with the captains. Better to hunt the pirates once they docked at a station somewhere.

“Has it begun?” Brandon asked.

Etsudo regarded the man. “What?”

“Removing the Ragmuffins.” Brandon swallowed. “The Satraps ordered the destruction of the pirates. We’ve been keeping records and collating activity of all the ships coming out from where New Anegada used to be. We start upstream, begin working our way downstream. If they don’t allow boarding, we destroy them.”

“That’s a whole-scale war,” Etsudo said. “Since when have we been the Satrapy’s direct enforcers?” The Maatan could do this. They’d dropped asteroids on Earth during the pacification and destroyed Earth attempts to strike back. Why the Hongguo?

“But look at what it means.” Brandon had an eager smile. “For all these years we tried to prove to the Satraps that humans were trustworthy. We kept technology in check, surgically killed off the worst elements. We’re proved our worth, we’re standing at their right hand now, and since we have access to all those technologies anyway, we’ll be like monks after a dark age. We’ll be able to slowly introduce things again. The Hongguo will stand at the front of humanity.”

“I don’t know,” Etsudo muttered. “We were doing well at our job before.”

“Let me tell you something personal though, old friend.” Brandon leaned over. “You want to know why we should really help Deng any way we can? There are damaged ships out there, big ships whose captains have screwed up, Etsudo. Do well now, you and I could get a bigger ship, more crew. You could get off this small trading ship and into bigger things.”

Etsudo stared down at the smooth table. He missed the days Kenji had told him about. The days when the Hongguo was just a company paid to explore the wormholes and map out all the forks and streams connecting the various worlds, just a trading company.

And what of his ship when this was all done? Etsudo looked around. What would become of him, and all his memories as the Hongguo changed into something else at the Satrapy’s bidding?

Etsudo folded his arms around himself, feeling alone in the heart of his ship. He stared at Brandon as he sipped his tea. He wasn’t sure what was going to come next. For all his loyalty, and the loyalty his father had instilled in him to the Hongguo, Etsudo would hardly give up his ship and his own mind without a fight.