Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

He’d have to deal with that when it happened. “Nashara, in two and a half minutes missiles from your Ragamuffins will hit us. They’re chasing us. We are in your hands, Nashara.”

And Etsudo handed his ship over to her.

The ship jinked as Nashara took control. The acceleration shoved Etsudo to the brink of blackout, but then it stopped.

“First of all, call me Cayenne, not Nashara. It’ll just be easier,” she said, her voice echoing through the entire ship.

“Cayenne? Like the pepper?” Etsudo asked.

“Exactly. Okay. What other surprises do you have, Etsudo?”

“I’m out.”

Nashara, no, Cayenne, appeared in front of him. “I doubt it, but let’s put that aside for a moment.”

“I apologize,” Etsudo said. And meant it.

He couldn’t see anything anymore, she had taken over all lamina, but inside he had counted the seconds to impact.

Time was up.

Nothing happened. Etsudo let out a long breath, glad to be alive.

“If you move,” Cayenne said, “I’ll accelerate so fast the blood will drain out of your head, and then I’ll spin this ship until you literally fall apart.”

“I expected no less,” Etsudo said softly.

“Just so that we’re on the same page.”

Etsudo nodded. “I understand.”

“I’m talking to the Raga. They’re a bit jumpy and we have to keep our distance. But your timing is perfect, Etsudo. We’re gearing up to attack the Hongguo. Apparently we want the Gulong .” Cayenne grinned in front of them. It was clear she approved.

Brandon and Etsudo looked at each other. Brandon’s lip curled. He did not like this, his strong loyalties were unbreakable, but at least he kept quiet.

Cayenne flickered for a moment, looking, Etsudo thought, slightly distraught. “Oh, shit, Piper… ,” Cayenne said to herself, then flickered away, leaving the two men alone in the cockpit with nothing to look at but each other.

This was even more dangerous than Etsudo had suspected. Without the Gulong , the Hongguo were almost toothless. If they lost the Gulong , what would the Satrapy think?

And if they want far enough, and the news spread all throughout the Satrapy, what would become of the Satraps?

As others sensed weakness, order might be destroyed. Old injustices still rankled many, even among the Gahe and Nesaru living under the Satrapy.

It would mean worlds-wide chaos.

And maybe, Etsudo thought, freedom from the Satraps. A delicious and treasonous thought. Could the Ragamuffins actually pull that off?

Pepper had acquired one of the nice recoilless machine guns the Ragamuffins carried. It was snub-nosed and easy to hang off a strap.

“This some ill stuff,” Don Andery said. Several Azteca and Raga moved large, fibrous husks of cocoons through into the Cornell West . “Teotl on board Raga ships.”

Metztli hung over the bay doors, directing.

Pepper nodded at the procession of unformed Teotl waiting to be hatched. “We split them up, different ships. Reduces concentrated strength.”

“So they have we all infiltrate now. We all vulnerable.”

“You’re moving them to ships waiting out on the periphery,” Pepper said. “The higgler ships.”

“Dangerous. They still dangerous. What happen that you so soft on them?”

Pepper didn’t bother replying to that. Soft. Right.

If Andery and his crew didn’t see the potential to squeeze useful technology out of the Teotl, Pepper wasn’t interested in baby-stepping Andery through it.

Just rehashing arguments anyway. As a founder of the Black Starliner Corporation, Pepper still had considerable power within a grounation. Besides, they’d all voted. It was time to get on with it.

“The Azteca go through first,” Pepper said. “They’re the more unreliable part of the equation.” Warriors with a barely Copernican knowledge of the world fighting in zero g, who knew what went through their minds. Dragged from the ground to orbit and from ship to ship.

He was surprised how calmly they were taking it. Each Azteca had pinned a sick bag to his hip. The one thing they couldn’t adjust to with a quick snap was space sickness.

“Attacking the Gulong .” Don Andery stared off at the polished rock walls.

“At the least”—Pepper smiled—“we’ll be remembered.” He’d been hemmed in again. Destroying or capturing the Gulong might give him a way back out.

“We go be remember as bobo idiot them, not hero,” Andery said. “The point of battle ain’t to die for no glorious cause, but make you enemy to die for theirs. Some old friend had tell me that once.”

Pepper folded his arms. “Old friend, you had hours to make a case in the grounation. It isn’t my fault your imagination isn’t up to the task of coming up with anything better.”

Metztli, for all his wounds, moved from pillar to pillar and helped move Teotl eggs. Pepper noted every twitch and move of the Teotl. Every tentacle flip, filed away in the back of his head.

“Fuck you. No reason to be hackling me.”

“Get a pod, or shuttle, and try and run for it somewhere, Don Andery. Just leave Starfunk Ayatollah for us to fight with.”

“I ain’t no yellow-belly,” Andery protested.

“You’re the one causing botheration about all this.”

“Ain’t no botheration,” Andery groused. “Just talking.”

“I’m done talking,” Pepper said.

Metztli left to go deeper into the nest for more eggs.

“You want to come aboard the Ayatollah for the attack?”

“Getting aboard Duppy Conqueror ,” Pepper said. He moved closer to Andery. “Someone said Earth cut off, before it happen to us, we had heard rumors. The last ships the company sent came back empty.”

Andery shook his head. “Was part of the Emancipation agreement. Freedom, but Earth was cut off, yeah.”

“I see.” That was like a sucker punch. Pepper blinked and looked around.

“Look. I got to go bunks, me rest now.” Andery drifted away.

A good idea, catching a nap now while things still were spinning up for the assault.

And Earth was once more beyond his reach. Pepper looked down at his dirty boots and swore.

Nashara helped John add his son to the other bodies headed out with Teotl cocoons to the other ships.

He stood there until the dock alarms sounded.

“Come on,” Nashara pulled him back through the chaos of the docks using the mobile unit, to the Toucan Too . Teotl cocoons festooned the floor, with the fifteen warrior Teotl still alive guarding several of the larger units.

Inside the Toucan Too , John collapsed, hanging limp in the air as Nashara guided him to one of the rooms.

John then grabbed the lip of the cockpit entrance. “Hello.”

Kara, her feet hooked around a strap and floating in the air, twisted to face them. “Hello.”

John moved in and held out his hand. “I’m John.”

Shit, Nashara thought. She’d forgotten about the kid.

“I’m Kara.” Kara solemly shook John’s hand.

John turned around. “She needs to get off the ship before we go after the Gulong .”

“I know, yeah.” Nashara entered the cockpit, squeezing past him. John smelled of sweat and moss, oddly.

Not a great combination.

She was back in the cockpit, her world. The mobile unit used grapples to secure itself inside the air lock, ready to accompany her on any outside trips.

John drifted away into one of the rooms. “I need to go rest a bit, before all this starts.”

Cascabel appeared. “I’ll start hunting down a seat for Kara.”