Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

“Everything is in a good state.” Deng coughed. “It is for the greater stability, the Satrapy agrees.”

Agreed or not, Etsudo stared as the burning hulks of the ships cleared a major hole downward and at an angle backward through the shield.

And even for Deng, the man was behaving strangely.

“Is everything okay, Deng?” Etsudo asked.

Deng didn’t reply. “The Wuxing Hao and I are moving against that vehicle. You will follow and coordinate drone reconnaissance as we go.”

And maybe be commanded to ram something.

The Hongguo had now become a military arm for the Satrapy, entirely, and this was nothing but a war, Etsudo thought.

“Imagine a world where any interdicted system could come back into the Benevolent Satrapy,” Deng said. “Earth terrorists and Chimson fighters would all pour into our worlds and ignite a war to end all wars throughout the forty-eight worlds. It would be our end. We would be wiped out in response.”

Etsudo rubbed his forehead as the Shengfen Hao moved its orbit lower and through the gap in the shield. As it slowed, the downstream wormhole would catch up to it. The Wuxing Hao followed, and Etsudo swept away visions of lamina to look at his crew.

Bahul and Brandon cocked their heads as the Takara Bune’s engines fired. They were patched into the navigation lamina, which gave them a crude simulation of the outside world. Enough to have seen the three-ship suicide run.

“We’re following them down and out to the downstream wormhole, it’s open again, and we’re destroying whatever came through.”

“We have no weapons,” Fabiyan said.

“I know that,” Etsudo snapped. “But you saw the other three, didn’t you?”

“They can’t ask us to kill ourselves to protect those ships,” Bahul said.

“They haven’t,” Etsudo said. “Yet.” They all paused to listen to the pattering of chaff and other debris against the Takara Bune’s hull.

“The Ragamuffins will attack us,” Brandon said. “It’s us or them.”

Maybe. Hongguo called themselves the guardians of humanity. And the Ragamuffins on the run had kept trying to insinuate that the Satrapy had begun a pogrom against humans.

And what if it was true?

“Brandon, Michiko?” Etsudo opened his eyes. “Go to zeta and alpha crew, help them rig up their rooms as alternate cockpits. We’re going to be on alert, no shifts.”

“What are you doing?” Brandon asked.

“I am following orders,” Etsudo said. Brandon’s conditioning was weakening here. His desire to serve the Hongguo without question would begin to buckle as Etsudo looked more and more like a free agent.

There was no time to fix that.

And he was still keeping Nashara’s secret to himself, not warning Deng about it. He had a gut feeling that if he revealed his small treason, he would be ordered aboard one of the ships. There his mind would be stripped free of its moorings and he would be remade into a subservient soldier.

Much as he suspected Jiang Deng’s mind had been altered somehow by the Satraps. And all the other Jiang serving in the Hongguo.

Nashara watched the three Hongguo ships burst through the bottom of the Ragamuffin security cloud and tumble out with a cloud of debris.

“Do you think there were people aboard those?” Cascabel asked, appearing only to Nashara.

She suspected so.

Cascabel nodded. “I tried to hail them, to see if I could get into their ships and spread. You?”

“Destroyed before I could do anything.” The desire to multiply out into fresh, virgin lamina made Nashara shudder. A sad waste.

“A waste,” Cascabel whispered. “The other three ships, one of them is the Takara Bune . I’m trying for them.”

Nashara knew. “He followed us here. Something doesn’t add up with him.”

“I know. I have this odd feeling. But I trust him.” Cascabel shrugged and faded away from inside the cockpit.

The Xamayca Pride had dropped down and managed to get into a geosynchronous orbit several hundred miles above them. Holding the high ground and ready to power out of orbit and run for it if needed.

Nashara had pulled the Toucan Too through the shield and lay in front of and just above it, and both the Starfunk Ayatollah and Chistopher Malik’s Magadog had followed a similar path. Neither could get back to the trailing wormhole anytime soon, only the Xamayca Pride could.

These ships were heavily armed Ragamuffins, weaponry bolted on from the days when New Anegada and Chimson faced constant alien threat. The Ragamuffins had retreated far into the unexplored areas of this wormhole stop, but all the old ships were still here.

No doubt all the higgler ships such as the Queen Mohmbasa had been bringing in the necessities, stuff they needed to survive all these hundreds of years holed up out here.

She’d forced them out of hiding.

“Kaalid, here.” Monifa appeared to them all in the cockpit. “Got this damn time lag: everyone out there and all of we down here.”

Ijjy twisted. “See those two big Hongguo ship?”

“Yeah, I can’t take them with just the Pride, seen? Ain’t go risk just my ship against them Hongguo. I can’t talk to whatever coming through, the Hongguo jamming the area already.”

Nashara cocked her head. “And if they’re from New Anegada? We’re leaving our friends standing alone in the middle of an attack.”

“ Cudjo and Duppy Conqueror coming down to back all of we up.” There was a pause as Monifa tapped more people into the discussion. “Don Andery, Ras Malik, you there?”

“ Magadog here.” Christopher Malik appeared.

“ Starfunk Ayatollah .” Andery frowned. “Why I seeing you double, Nashara?”

Nashara looked over at Cascabel, who’d joined the conversation. “Don’t worry about that just yet.”

Cascabel disappeared, but Nashara could feel her nearby, listening in.

“The Hongguo jamming me out something bad,” Monifa said. “I can’t talk to whatever just came through that hole back to New Anegada.” She said the name fast enough that it sounded more like Nanagada to Nashara.

“But if we can talk to them, we have five ships to them three. It worth moving toward it?” Andery asked.

“If we raise them, yes,” Monifa said. “I don’t have no reply from the Dread Council, but I running this show and I say I want know for sure these people friendly before we rush in. That thing don’t look like any ship I ever seen.”

“I can stop the jamming, with a little help,” Nashara said. “I need a string of communications drones, or buoys, whatever you have. The highest bandwidth you have.”

“What you go do?” Christopher Malik asked.

Nashara paused for a moment. She was so used to keeping this deep within her. But this was why she’d been sent, and what she should be doing.

Cascabel appeared beside her with a smile. “You’re not seeing double,” she said. And Nashara explained what they were seeing.

“She ain’t telling no lie,” Ijjy said softly from behind her when she finished, and the captains of the other ships stared.

“Do I get drones?”

“Dropping them down now,” Monifa said.

Nashara waved her hand. Now she stood on the hull of the Toucan Too with Cascabel and watched a shimmering line leap up toward the direction of the Xamayca Pride .

“Pretty nice visuals,” Cascabel said with a smile, and clapped her hands. For a moment they both hung beside a large silver ball, then another, and a third, jumping along the chain of high bandwidth laser to the final destination.