Tobias Buckell - Ragamuffin

Ragamuffin drones and mines whirled after their Hongguo counterparts. That dance went on for almost an hour.

Next up came a series of explosions beyond the upstream wormhole: a ring of low-yield nuclear bombs, blossoming flowers of fluorescing colors that expanded out in irregular balls of destruction and generating massive electromagnetic pulses. Communications and feeds dropped resolution, fuzzing out and consumed in static for several minutes before recovering. The next round a little farther out. The Hongguo were clearing the area.

A long, silver needle poked through the wormhole, crackling with massive bursts of static electricity that raced up and down the spire.

“The Gulong .”

Small, flattened Hongguo fighters squeezed in past the needle of the Hongguo machine.

“To the races,” Cayenne said.

Ragamuffin ships moved, seven or eight of them, engines adjusting their orbits to fall down toward the upstream wormhole from their higher orbits.

Another nuclear explosion blossomed in front of one of the Ragamuffin ships.

“They got the Magadog …” Cayenne was talking about the Ragamuffin ship that had overtaken the Takara Bune . The husk of the ship continued to drop toward the upstream wormhole, internal explosions ripping through it and bursting through its skin, debris raining off to form a cloud around it.

Another nuclear hit. Pieces scattered out into different trajectories.

Whatever happened, Etsudo was going to remain aboard his ship, and Cayenne was the ship now. He couldn’t take it back.

“Cayenne.” Etsudo licked his lips nervously. “I want to make a deal. If I can help you, can I remain aboard? Permanently?”

“I’m listening.” And so was Brandon. He cocked his head and looked at Etsudo intently.

“You need to communicate out, and I can give you that. I can get you access to the communications buoys if you can get a drone through to the other side of the upstream wormhole.”

Cayenne moved closer. “The communications buoys, really?”

“Yes.” Etsudo nodded. “I can get you into them.”

“No, you can’t,” Brandon said.

Etsudo looked over. Brandon had a gun out. “You are a traitor, Etsudo.”

“I know,” Etsudo said. “But to whom? Humanity, or the Hongguo?”

“The Hongguo serves humanity,” Brandon said, and Etsudo gritted his teeth. He didn’t believe that anymore, not really. Not after seeing Agathonosis ripped apart just to move a Satrap.

“You’re the losing side,” Brandon said to Cayenne. “And I don’t think, Etsudo, that you are truly my fried. You both antagonize the Satrapy, demonstrate their worse suspicions about humankind: that we’re unable to control ourselves, unable to coexist with them. This woman and her allies have caused a great deal of trouble because they’re unable to work with something to better things, you feel obliged to completely oppose, even if it means complete destruction.

“You’ve not only made things worse for yourselves, but the greater part of the race as well.”

“We’re already lesser citizens, Brandon,” Cayenne said. “Arguing how much lesser we’re going to become, that’s hardly an attractive way of arguing for your masters.”

Brandon took a slow breath. “The Hongguo alone have kept humanity from being destroyed by the Satrapy for almost two centuries now.”

“The Hongguo alone have kept humanity in their place for two centuries.” Cayenne drifted in front of Brandon, who was still firmly strapped in so that she couldn’t dislodge him by using the ship’s acceleration. She usually walked as if there were gravity: this was new. Etsudo carefully flipped his straps off, but left them lying against him so that Brandon didn’t notice. “You should have seen Chimson grow after we were cut off. We did great things.”

And Etsudo believed her.

She floated between the two of them now. Etsudo launched himself at Brandon, passing through her. Brandon blinked for that critical second, and Etsudo smacked into his arm. The Takara Bune fired its engines at the same instant.

Etsudo grabbed hold of the gun and held on to it for all he was worth.

“Shoot it, shoot it,” Cayenne yelled, floating over both of them. “Empty the chamber.” Etsudo pulled the trigger and kept it down. A deafening stream of bullets struck the cockpit wall.

The moment Brandon wrapped his arms around Etsudo’s neck and choked him, he knew this had been a stupid idea. Brandon was feng, Etsudo could not beat him physically.

Already Brandon began to break free as Etsudo gagged.

But the accelerating continued and the gun was empty. Etsudo felt three, four, seven times his weight pressing down on Brandon’s arm.

“Give it up,” Etsudo hissed.

Brandon did not reply, but sank his teeth into Etsudo’s neck. Etsudo strained to pull free and rolled off Brandon, clutching the gun. The engines cut off the moment he fell. He struck another acceleration chair and still felt bones break. He groaned.

“Snap in,” Cayenne murmered into his ear as Brandon burst free of his straps.

It hurt like hell, but Etsudo had never strapped in this quick. Brandon froze and had enough time to get one single strap back on before Cayenne smiled.

Etsudo had never pushed his ship as hard as Cayenne did for that second. The strap snapped, and Brandon fell farther than Etsudo had to a cockpit wall with a loud smack.

Then Cayenne decelerated, and Brandon flew across the cockpit to the other wall. And then she accelerated again, and blood splattered against the metal. He didn’t scream, but Etsudo did. Cayenne kept doing it until Brandon hung limp, and quite dead, in the middle of the cockpit.

“Let’s get those codes, Etsudo. We don’t have a lot of time.”

Etsudo painfully twisted to look at the ghostlike form. He wasn’t sure which was scarier: Cayenne or the Hongguo ships out there.

Nashara ignored her cockpit. She sat in a model of the space between the two wormholes watching as the attack on the Hongguo proceeded. The five Ragamuffin ships dodged their way through their own security cloud and the Hongguo with only the Gulong in their sights. The Hongguo were running silent. It meant Nashara couldn’t get into their lamina, but it also meant they were having trouble coordinating their defense.

The Datang Hao ’s Satrap was a formidable enemy.

But within the next twenty minutes they’d transit and strike the Gulong , and then the real mess would begin.

Cayenne appeared. “I’ve got codes,” she hissed.

“Codes?”

“The buoys. The Hongguo buoys.”

Cascabel appeared, and all three of them nodded. “We send the message out.”

“I’m on it,” Cascabel said. The model shifted. Nashara and Cayenne watched Cascabel bounce information from the Toucan Too out through a chain of drones through to the Duppy Conqueror , which had just transited.

They could see visuals that Cascabel sent back to them of the Ragamuffin ship as it approached the Gulong . But Nashara didn’t pay attention, she focused on the schematics as Cascabel cast her search out using the link through the Duppy Conqueror to boost the signal.

“Got it,” Cascabel hissed.

And it lit up, a straight connection out, and with Hongguo overrides it was fast.

Cascabel shivered, blurred, and began to fade. “I’ve found lamina,” she said.

And Nashara pulled back. Cascabel had been sucked clean out of the Toucan Too . Several minutes passed. “Cascabel?”

“I’m okay,” a grainy Cascabel reported. “I’m spreading, multiplying. Happier hunting grounds here, and I’ve found something you’d like.”