Hûw Steer's Blog, page 35

Salvage Seven: Chapter 6

Space submarines is finished. I’ll get back to this story once I’ve done a little Blackbird-related work…

Behold, Chapter 6 of Salvage Seven. Back to work for the team, with a little friendly(?) competition.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

Beyond the first of the mountains, upon a broad plateau, they came upon the gods of thunder.

It had been marked on their maps, thankfully; a Union outpost that had been abandoned to advancing Republic forces relatively early in the long, long battle. It had not been retaken until it was too late to make any difference – but, thanks to some canny sabotage from its retreating Union occupants, the Republic had been unable to take advantage of what they had left behind. When Salvage Seven clambered up over the last ridge, followed by Petra, bouncing along in the labouring four-wheel, they beheld the gods themselves.

“Holy hells,” Handel breathed as he dropped out of the passenger seat, his eyes wide. A similar sentiment had crossed Gideon’s mind, as it clearly had most of the others – even Yaxley looked impressed. Upon the plateau before them there was a forest, not of wood but of metal, several dozen tall trees glinting in the wan sunlight, rooted into the rock with heavy iron pins. They were the biggest guns Gideon had ever seen off a starship, their yawning mouths up to a foot wide, all still angled towards whatever part of the battlefield had last felt their wrath. They were all self-propelled, mounted on boxy tank bodies of a design that had hardly changed in centuries, but clearly had not moved in a long time; their tracks were beginning to rust, as were the iron stakes that held their retractable stabilisers in the ground. Conspicuous by their absence were the shells that the guns had rained down on Arcadia: the ammunition racks next to and strapped to the sides of every gun were empty, and a quick look around told Gideon why. The plateau had once been half as long again as it was now; its far end was jagged, the rock freshly broken.

“They blew it,” Dawson said, seeing the object of his gaze. “That’s what the report says, anyway.” Gideon nodded. Donoghue had shared the information with them the night before. The Union artillerymen, unwilling to let the enemy take advantage of their weapons, had rolled every shell they had over to the end of the plateau and rigged a simple, but brutally effective detonation system. The explosion had killed hundreds of their enemy – and when the survivors had finally made it up the rubble to the guns they had found them empty, and carrying the enormous shells up a mountain range had been near-impossible. The big guns had been effectively silenced – so the battle had simply raged on without them. There were always more.

“Alright,” Donoghue called, clapping her hands. “Don’t get distracted. Could still be a lot of explosives here, and if there are they’ve been sitting in the rain for weeks.” She nodded to Dawson. “See if you can get the long-range working. Any details about this place you can drag out of Command.” She turned back to the others as Dawson clambered back over to the four-wheel and into the back seat, bending to fiddle with their long-range radio – a direct line to the Jeroboam that, if they were lucky, would have a bored ensign who didn’t even know their designation on the other end. If they weren’t, they’d end up on hold for hours.

“We’ll sweep for shells first,” Donoghue continued, “make the place safe. Republic might have lugged some more up here. Yax, you’ve got point on that. Don’t blow us up. Collins, do your thing with the drones. Petra, Dawson, if any of these things still run I want to know it.” She looked around the artillery nest, nodding. “This is a real opportunity. We don’t die, we get all this secured, and maybe Command’ll give us a day off for once. We clear?”

The chorus of ‘Yes, Sarges’ was a little more coherent than normal, and Salvage Seven set to work. Collins got his drones in the air, programming in a series of aerial sweeps to hunt for any shells that had slipped the net. As they flitted back and forth overhead, the skinny man glued to his screen and calling out locations, the others split up. Yaxley, Donoghue and Gideon went their separate ways, climbing up onto each gun platform in turn and checking it for abandoned rounds. It was cold, high up the mountain, and though it wasn’t raining for once the wind was bitter. Gideon shivered as he climbed the short ladder up to the next gun. They were basically tanks, with the huge, reciprocating cannons angled upwards, a heavy blast shield protecting the gunners from its backwash. Recoil had smashed parts of the gun against each other, scraping paint from the edges of the shielding and other plates of armour; where there should have been shining, raw metal there was instead a light coating of rust from the constant rain.

He stood on the gantry for a moment, looking at the huge cannon, imagining the thunder of its voice deafening the crew who worshipped it, feeding and caring for their god of steel and brass as it rained wrath and ruin upon the insects far below it. He wondered what it would have been like to fight as an artilleryman, so far from the blood and misery of the main field, raining death without danger to one’s self. Except for air attack. And saboteurs. And flanking. At which point he would have been stuck behind the breech of an essentially immovable object, without proper armour or armament and laden with high explosives – in other words as horribly vulnerable as a soldier could be with all their limbs still attached. Maybe not the path for me, he reconsidered.

There were no shells in the gun’s breech or magazines, so Gideon moved on, climbing onto the next gun in the long line as Yaxley and Donoghue did the same. Petra was at the foot of the ladder, prying open a back panel on the bolted-down hull.

“Give me a hand,” she said, and Gideon bent to help; together, both straining at the crowbar, they managed to crack the thick layer of rust that had sealed the panels as effectively as any weld. Underneath it, the tank’s innards lay exposed, pipes and wiring gleaming with a thin sheen of oil. Petra stuck her head inside, tutting.

“Sloppy. Typical Union. Just assume their kit’ll keep working no matter what they put it through.” She emerged with a length of cable in her hand, the insulation rotted and the wiring inside corroded clean through, brandishing it at Gideon. “Look after your kit. First lesson we get taught. Christ on a fucking bike.” She slammed the rusted panel shut and stalked around to the front of the tank, where the engine was. Gideon didn’t follow her, but quietly walked on to the next gun in line. He didn’t mention the fact that he had fought for the Union and took as good care of his equipment as anyone in the squad – nor that the tank’s disrepair could easily be the work of the Republic troops who had captured the mesa. Petra did have a point, he reflected, as he clambered up atop the treads of the next gun, ducking under its backwash shield to reach the breech. The Union had begun the war with near-limitless materiel at its disposal; ships, guns, weapons – and soldiers. The Republic had barely had a quarter of those same resources, and had gotten very good at scavenging or outright stealing Union gear, adapting non-standard equipment and, in the lattermost case, conscripting civilians from its newly ‘liberated’ colony worlds to throw into the grinder. Idealists like Petra were the ones who survived long enough to forget that they’d never wanted to fight in the first place.

Dawson, having finally managed to radio in their find, started checking the engines and electrics too – though she stayed far away from Petra as she did so. As Collins’ drones whirred around above their heads Gideon checked breech after cannon breech, calling out the few shells he found still in situ so Yaxley could check them out. Most of the tanks were non-functional, whether drained of fuel by the retreating Union, welded in place by the spreading tendrils of rust, or so poorly maintained that they had simply corroded to death – but as Gideon worked and the pale sun began to dip below its zenith he heard engine after engine sputter into life, the screeching of unlubricated metal moving for the first time in months, as the two engineers performed miracle after miracle, bringing the gods back from the dead. They’d be unstoppable, he reflected as Donoghue called for a break, her voice almost whipped away completely by the freezing wind, if they worked together. But he knew that he’d get better odds on a galaxy-wide lottery.

At the end of Gideon’s chosen line of guns was a low, prefabbed building, one of several, little more than a few shipping containers laid end-to-end and stacked two high. Barracks, he decided; the artillerymen would have had to sleep somewhere. He’d been quartered in such things before, back when he’d been in the infantry. They were usually dropped in by air, landed by the big cargo-mover VTOL dropships that every starship carried in dozens. That, at least, explained how the Union had gotten the unwieldy artillery pieces up here, rather than driving them over terrain that even their dedicated four-wheel-drive had struggled to conquer. The rest of the squad had gathered in front of it – out of the wind, Gideon realised gratefully as he approached.

“Might as well go inside,” Donoghue shouted, gesturing to the doors. They followed Handel inside, and Gideon sighed in relief as the closing door cut off most of the howling of the wind. Within the block proper was an even better story – for once there weren’t any bodies rotting quietly in their chairs in the little kitchen or laid out on the unmade bunks. Whichever side had most recently abandoned this place, they had done so in decent order. Dawson immediately began rummaging in the cupboards for supplies as Donoghue sat down with a sigh, and the others generally made themselves uncomfortable. Handel disappeared into the bunk-room immediately – Gideon could hear him rummaging through lockers and abandoned bags, grunting dissatisfaction as he found nothing of value. Dawson passed around mugs of something that tasted like it was distantly related to coffee on its mother’s side. They all drank them gratefully – it was hot, and that was enough. Gideon could feel the warmth flooding through him, realising only now just how cold he had become.

“What did base say, Dawson?” Donoghue asked around a mouthful of ‘coffee’. The engineer shrugged.

“‘Your request is being processed, we’ll get back to you’, and all assorted bullshit. Like a damn call centre.” The sergeant growled her displeasure.

“We’ll be out here days at this rate. Keep trying them, see if you can get more than a drone. We’ll need an airlift for all this shit.”

Handel poked his head out of the bunk-room.

“Let me try. I know a few people. Reckon I can bump us up the chain a few places.” Donoghue raised an eyebrow.

“In exchange for…”

“A negligible percentage of the heavy armour bonus,” Handel said dismissively. “Nothing too extravagant.” Among the many salvage bounties the one for operational armoured vehicles was nearly highest.

“Just enough to grease the wheels,” Donoghue replied drily. “Of course. Give it a go, then.”

“Yes, sarge.” Handel pulled out his radio and disappeared back into the bunk-room, snippets of his conversation drifting through the door. Gideon caught Petra shooting the opportunistic quartermaster a filthy look, and Collins looking down uneasily. Neither of them were particularly happy with Handel and his like’s profiteering – Collins uncomfortable with the exploitation of what was, to him, a duty to the galaxy; Petra with the man’s apparent disregard for how the things he peddled had come to him in the first place. She, at least, was mistaken, Gideon thought, catching a glint of light off Handel’s prosthetic leg through the doorway. Handel knew the horrors of war better than any of them.

“How many of them will still run?” Donoghue asked, looking up at Petra and Dawson. Both women opened their mouths to speak, but Petra got there first, to Dawon’s obvious irritation.

“I’ve got six or seven at least that’ll turn over,” the Republic engineer said. “Most of them just need fuel. Or something small replacing; spark plugs and the like.”

“There’s a lot of rust,” Dawson interrupted, flashing a glare at her opposite number, “in the lifting gears. They’ll need some proper maintenance before they’ll operate properly. Just a running engine isn’t going to cut it. Wouldn’t have expected you to notice that,” she said to Petra with an utterly false smile. “The systems are complex.”

Petra bristled, but Donoghue, kneading her brow with one hand, raised the other firmly.

“Enough. Both of you.” She leaned back and sighed, and Gideon caught something that sounded like damn children on the breath. “So they’re in good nick. That’s the main thing. All we need is a way to get them out of here.” She turned to Yaxley. “Explosives. Anything?”

“Few live shells,” the big man rumbled. “Not many left. Defused.”

“Good,” the sergeant said briskly. “I don’t want any surprises left lying around, for us or whoever else gets here.” She drained the last of her ‘coffee’ and stood. “Right. Let’s check out the rest of them; check inside too, see if any kit got left – ”

Handel’s grinning face interrupted her, as the quartermaster stamped back into the room, the sheet metal of the shipping containers ringing under his feet despite the thin carpeting.

“One superlifter inbound to our position as priority two. ETA fifteen hundred hours.”

“Alright!” Collins beamed with satisfaction. Even Yaxley was smiling slightly, and Gideon couldn’t help but do the same. A way out. The Jeroboam wasn’t much of a home, but it was a damn sight better than this – and with thirty intact artillery pieces down here with them, there was no way that Salvage Seven weren’t being shipped home as express delivery for a pat on the back and some commendations. And a superlifter too! The Union wouldn’t send one of those aerial behemoths out for anything less than the most important pickups. Donoghue, smiling, clapped her hands to dispel the little hubbub Handel’s words had created.

“Ok! We’ve got… an hour and a half, boys and girls, so look lively! Dawson, Petra, finish checking the last few engines; Yax, same for explosives. Don’t want any surprises now, do we? The rest of you, we need to get these things ready for pickup. Handel, gather up all the small stuff as best you can; Gideon, Collins, you’re with me. Let’s get those stabilisers stowed away. Off you go!”

Shouldering their gear, Salvage Seven stepped back out into the wind – and, now, an equally freezing rain. But for once Gideon didn’t mind it; for once, he had a decent purpose. The three didn’t bother to split up, knowing full well that it would take all their strength to manhandle the retractable legs that held the guns in place and drag free the iron pins that held them in the ground. Sure enough, the stabilisers were corroded to the point of immobility – perfect when the guns had been firing, keeping them from bursting their chains and harming their crewers, but less than ideal now that they had to move once more. Each deployed their own methods to ease the rust; Collins used his drones to pulse tight, hair-fine laser beams along the rusted edges, sending orange flakes showering down to the wet stone; Gideon dragged his energised scalpel along those same joins, cutting through the thick rust with a not-inconsiderable effort. Donoghue, on the other hand, had taken a more traditional route. The ring of metal on metal split the air, Donoghue’s hammer striking her chisel over and over, punching through the rust inch by inch. Whoever was fastest moved on to the fourth stabiliser on each tank, and without discussion it rapidly became a competition. Collins might have had an advantage of efficiency but manipulating the drones took time, and while Gideon’s scalpel was sharp enough to slice the rust Donoghue’s brute-force approach proved equally effective.

By the time they lifted the last set of stabilisers in their line up and into their housings, it was six guns to Donoghue, four to Collins and five to Gideon. They paused for breath, all panting with the effort, tools hanging limply by their sides. Gideon looked up at the second rank of guns, over which Dawson and Petra were poring, neck-deep in their engine compartments, while Yaxley quietly carried the few remaining shells – presumably defused, though perhaps not – over to a safe distance, stacking them neatly beneath a crude awning someone had rigged up long ago as shelter. Checking his watch, Gideon saw that they had thirty minutes before the cargo-lifter arrived.

“Let’s step it up,” Donoghue said, glancing at her own chronometer. “No time to waste!”

“Maybe we should work together,” Collins offered. “I can split the drones up?”

Gideon and Donoghue looked at one another, eyes narrowing, and Gideon shuddered a little at the predatory glint in the sergeant’s eyes – but tried to return it as best he could.

“I don’t think so,” Donoghue replied, still looking at Gideon. A small grin crept onto her face. “All to play for. Let’s get on with it.”

She bent immediately to the nearest stabiliser and set to work, Gideon scrambling to follow her. As the minutes ticked away they powered through the tanks one by one, heedless of the wind or rain, the straining of their muscles giving more than enough warmth. Collins rapidly began lagging behind, his flitting drones unable to keep up with sheer human strength, as Donoghue’s hammer rang and Gideon’s scalpel sparked in the rain. He had to replace the power cell – they normally lasted days, even overclocked as his piece was – and retune the emitter twice, just to keep cutting, swinging the stabilisers up into their housing carelessly as he grappled to keep pace with Donoghue, who though red in the face from the effort of so many hammer-blows was still faster than him. They were at the last tank, neck and neck, almost before Gideon realised, with less than five minutes to go. The sergeant was at the front left leg, Gideon the rear left – in full view of one another. Gideon opened his mouth to speak, but Donoghue was already slotting her chisel in place, brow furrowed in concentration, and so he flicked on his scapel and bent to it. Come on, then. Let’s see what you’ve got.

The seam of rust around the hinge was thick, but it parted with a little pressure from the glowing blade as Gideon drew it carefully downwards, knowing that he couldn’t rush even now – if he slipped he’d either break the scalpel or lose a finger, and neither option was appealing. Donoghue’s hammer rang out bright and clear beside him, but he didn’t look up – he had to concentrate. He could feel the tank shaking, just slightly, under the force of her blows, adjusted his grip to compensate, holding the scalpel like an artist’s brush. The first seam flaked away, finally, the sliced edges glowing faintly, and Gideon switched to the other side – thicker, more resistant to the drag of the blade. It was only around the top of the locking collar, but the incessant drizzle had caked the mechanism in corrosion, and the thin scalpel blade struggled to get through to the space beneath. He saw Donoghue from the corner of his eye – saw that she was already working on the locking pin, driving her hammer overhand. He grimaced and sliced faster, and felt the clunk as the stabiliser came free of the rust, settling back a little into its socket. He bent to the locking pin, seeing that the rust there was thin, dragged the scalpel swiftly around its circumference and grabbed the stake, dragging it free of the ground –

“Gotcha!” Donoghue cried, and Gideon cursed openly as he heard the sound of metal scraping on rock and more metal as the pin came free, just as his loosened in the rock. He pulled it free anyway, grabbing the stabiliser – but Donoghue was already slamming hers back into its housing, a triumphant grin plastered across her sweating face. She turned it on Gideon; genuine triumph and a little mockery.

“Well done,” Gideon said, smiling back. He felt disappointed, but he couldn’t help but grin at Donoghue’s triumphant expression.

“Something to be said for the old-fashioned way,” the sergeant replied, hefting her hammer with a smirk. “Nice try.”

“Almost had you.”

“Almost,” Donoghue repeated. Gideon chuckled. Then he realised that this might be the first time he and Donoghue had had a positive conversation – certainly the first time they’d ever made each other laugh. He smiled back at his sergeant, and saw actual good humour in her eyes.

“On you go, then,” Donoghue said, nodding to the final stabiliser. Gideon’s smile became malicious. Oh no you don’t.

“If we’re sticking to the rules,” he said, folding his arms, “then I believe to the victor go the spoils. Sergeant.”

Donoghue stared at him for a moment, and Gideon thought that he’d overstepped himself, the illusion of good humour shattering – but then her lip curled in a wry smile.

“Hoisted,” she said, “by my own petard. Fuck off and see if the others need help.”

“Yes, Sarge,” Gideon replied, saluting, and Donoghue returned the gesture – with two fingers.

SPFBO: Semi-Finals!

The Qwillery has just posted its last semi-finalist nomination for the SPFBO – and it’s The Blackbird and the Ghost!

So I’m now in the final five for the Qwillery – one of which will be picked as their finalist and reviewed by all the other blogs involved in the competition!

Check out Qwill’s review, it’s lovely! 

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Goodreads Choice Awards 2019

So, here’s something interesting. The Goodreads Choice Awards are happening. Lots of lovely books are being voted on in all manner of genres and categories.

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What’s interesting is that in addition to the chosen books for each category, users can write-in any book they like for each category. The top 5 user picks then advance to the semi-finals.

And someone’s voted for The Blackbird and the Ghost.

One vote isn’t going to cut it, though. If it’s going to stand even the slimmest chance of getting anywhere, it needs a lot of votes.

I’m hoping that’s where you lot come in.

If you read and liked, or even mildly tolerated, The Blackbird and the Ghost, please, please, please head over to the Goodreads Choice page and write it in, in the Fantasy and Debut Novel categories. It’d be a real help, and maybe, just maybe, the book will get somewhere.

HOW TO ACTUALLY DO THAT  (it’s slightly complicated)

Look at the list of categories on the left. Click ‘Fantasy’ and/or ‘Debut Novel‘
Scroll down to the bottom of the page, to the ‘Write-In Vote’ box
Type in The Blackbird and the Ghost. When it comes up as an option, click it
Click ‘Vote’
Bask in the eternal gratitude I will be giving you!

Salvage Seven: Chapter 5

I cannot thank this novel enough for helping me start a semi-regular posting schedule.

The book is very much still in progress – I’m on Chapter 34 now – but I have been temporarily distracted by an idea about submarine warfare in space…

Anyway, here’s Chapter 5. I think the crew has earned a little downtime.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

They were far enough out from the Jeroboam that they set up camp overnight. Gideon and Collins ended up stumbling across the best location; a shattered bunker further into the hills. It was tucked under an overhang, its facing walls made from concrete blocks and its plywood floors held up with rusting scaffolding – not a temporary shelter, but not exactly a fortress of legend. Its roof was half-crumbled, one wall completely missing, but it was still intact enough to provide shelter from the ever-present rain. Judging by the uniforms on most of the dozen bodies sprawled throughout its three levels, and the markings on the mounted heavy gun in one window, it had belonged – at least most recently – to the Republic. The two men radioed the rest of the squad, before dragging the bodies to a back ‘room’, as far away as possible from the main bunker. Then they set to building a fire.

As Arcadia’s wan sun slid below the horizon, one by one, Salvage Seven filtered in. Dawson rolled up first, scowling as she slammed the door of their freshly issued but far from freshly manufactured four-wheel-drive – the flatbed hadn’t stood a chance of making it this far into the mountains. It wasn’t big enough for everyone by half, but it at least let them drag their salvage back to base – and given how slowly she’d had to drive it, the fact that the others had to walk wasn’t really a problem.

“Blew a tyre,” Dawson grumbled as she came into the bunker, looking around with obvious disdain as she pulled off her helmet. “Got a spare off a dead flatbed. Thank the gods for standard sizes. This it?”

“Our humble home,” Gideon said drily. Collins offered Dawson a cup of coffee – far from pleasant but at least hot. She took a grateful draught, nodding thanks.

“What have we got, then?” she asked, looking up at the scaffolded floors. “Not exactly high-spec. Republic piece of shit.”

“Most recently, at least,” Gideon nodded. Dawson looked faintly disgusted.

“Well,” came another voice from the bunker entrance, “it’s not exactly luxury, but it’ll do.” Handel stumped in, a heavy pack over his shoulders, metal legs striking the floor heavily. He glared at Dawson. “Thanks for helping me up.”

“You’re a big boy,” Dawson replied without looking at him, drinking more coffee. “You can handle a little climb.” Handel lowered himself to one of the lumps of rubble Gideon and Collins had hauled around their desultory little fire, sitting down with a grunt of exhaustion.

“Go with the squad, they said,” he muttered, accepting Collins’ coffee. “You can appraise things on the spot, they said.” He sighed. “Anything interesting in here, at least?”

“Heavy cannon up top,” Gideon offered. “Dozen bodies to search.”

Handel brightened visibly.

“Well, that’s something.”

“What a dump,” came yet another voice, and Donoghue and Yaxley walked in, shaking off their rain-capes and removing their helmets. “Christ, Handel, do something about that fire,” the sergeant continued. “I’ve seen hotter cigarettes.”

“There wasn’t much fuel,” Collins explained, but Donoghue wasn’t listening, dumping her pack and taking a seat with a sigh.

“Well, it could be worse. At least there’s a roof.” They all looked across the room, where the broken overhang let the thickening rain through to spatter on the stone floor. Donoghue swore under her breath.

“Well,” said Handel, inserting something from his pack into the fire that made it flare into sudden life, almost taking his eyebrows off, “we’ve got half a roof, a fire. Gideon, these poor bastards have any rations?”

Gideon nodded to a small stack of wrapped packages, tucked safely out of the rain. Handel grinned.

“Shelter, fire, and a decent meal.” He sighed contentedly. “It certainly could be worse.”

“We just need Petra,” Collins offered. Dawson’s scowl deepened, but Donoghue at least looked concerned, reaching for her radio.

“Don’t bother,” Petra said quietly. “I’m here.”

Everyone jerked around, searching wildly. Gideon saw her first, tapping Handel on the shoulder and nodding up at the third-floor scaffolding, next to the mounted gun, in the rain. Petra was leaning against the wall, looking out across the dark battlefield, rain-cape pulled over her shoulders.

“Glad you could join us, Corporal,” Donoghue said pointedly.

“Always punctual, Sarge,” Petra replied absently. She didn’t make a move to come down, her eyes moving slowly from the big gun down into the bunker, and over to where a hung tarpaulin hid the dozen bodies that Gideon and Collins had found there – bodies wearing Republic insignia. Gideon saw Petra’s fingers rise unconsciously to her collar, where that insignia had once been.

“Right,” Donoghue said, clapping her hands. “We’re out again at oh-eight-hundred. Yaxley, Collins, get cooking. Dawson, see to the car. Might be some fuel around here somewhere. Handel, full inventory. See if you can find any. Petra, perimeter, if you please. I know nobody’s shooting anymore but I don’t want to get caught out if they decide to start again.” Gideon winced. The sergeant was right; they were still soldiers, still technically on active military service; but sending Petra off on her own was just another insult in a line of many.

“Gideon,” Donoghue concluded, “bodies. Might as well see if they’ve anything useful. I’m going over the maps for tomorrow. Give us a call when food’s ready.” She didn’t bother to dismiss them – just got up and left, cracking her neck as she looked for something resembling a piece of furniture on which to spread the maps.

The smell of boiling ration packs really didn’t help Gideon at all, tucked away in the ‘room’ behind the hung tarpaulin into which he and Collins had dragged the bodies. He could hear the others at work; Collins babbling to the silent Yaxley about all and sundry as they prepared the food, Donoghue muttering over the maps, planning their route, Handel cooing as he found some choice item in another corner of the bunker. Gideon’s company was less lively. At least, he reflected as he bent over the third corpse, their fire had made the bunker tolerably warm – and at least they no longer had to disguise its light, lest enemy forces hone in on their position. Hurrah for the ceasefire, he thought drily, as he began going through the corpse’s pockets. He tried, and failed, not to think about what had killed the man, the gaping hole in his throat plugged with dried blood, punched cleanly through his spine. This one they had found clinging onto the heavy weapon emplacement one-handed. Sniper, then. As Gideon pulled magazines and loose bullets out of the man’s webbing; a few cigarettes, a little loose local currency; he could not help but relive the imagined shot again and again, seeing the man jerk, slumping down, his finger still hooked around the trigger of the big pulse cannon.

The next body was missing most of its head, and he spent as little time searching its remaining pockets as possible, fighting to repress unwelcome memories. It seemed to have been a woman, but it was honestly too skinny for Gideon to really tell. The fifth and sixth had died side by side, crushed by masonry from whatever shell had split the face of the bunker open. The seventh had seemed to be completely uninjured when he and Collins had found it – until they’d turned it over to see the ruin that a fall from the top of the scaffolding had made of the back of its head. The woman had been young, younger than Gideon. He wasn’t quite sure why that made him so sad.

He was amassing a sizeable pile of salvage by the time Handel dragged the tarp aside and stumped into the room; ammunition mostly for a variety of weapons, themselves nothing remarkable, but a few small luxuries besides, little things like compasses or hip-flasks tucked into webbing and belt pouches.

“Enjoying the ghoul life?” the quartermaster asked, stomping over and lowering himself onto a chunk of rubble, wincing as old servomotors whined in protest.

“Oh yes,” Gideon muttered as he pulled free the next body’s sidearm, trying not to look at the space where one of its legs ought to have been. If they hadn’t been stuck out here in the mountains, such a wound might have been survivable. Handel was walking proof of that. “Robbing corpses is exactly what I signed up for when I transferred.”

“Hey now,” Handel countered, leaning heavily on his knees, “it’s not like they need it anymore. And it’s not like we’re stripping their gold teeth.” Not yet, anyway, Gideon thought darkly. It seemed one small step to him before Command started reducing the bodies themselves into biofuels.

“Take a look,” Gideon said, waving at his stack of equipment. “Most of it’s in good order. Handel shuffled over, giving the heap of weapons a critical glance.

“Hellfire. Most of these I wouldn’t trust for shooting at a barn door.” He poked one rifle with his toe. “Really? A 57? Is that really all the Republic could afford?” He picked up the battered old gun, racking its slide, checking the action. “Junk when it was new.” Gideon grunted acknowledgement as he liberated his current body of a first-aid kit it had never had the chance to use. The Union did have better kit overall – better gear, a bigger army, better ships, all actually supplied by the state to its legitimate army. The Republic had had whatever it could scrounge and a few clandestine ‘donations’ of materiel – a fair amount, but nothing like the resources of an interstellar empire. Sometimes he wondered why the rebels had even bothered. And how they managed not to lose for so long. Hell, they still hadn’t technically lost. Looking down at the bodies lying before him, he could take a guess at why – outgunned, outnumbered and outflanked, this dozen men and women had simply refused to die for as long as they could manage.

He wasn’t quite sure if they had been brave, or just stupid. He did know that, given the chance, he’d have turned tail and fled long before death had come knocking.

“This is better,” Handel continued, moving onto Gideon’s luxury pile. “Drink’s always welcome.” He uncapped one of the flasks and sniffed it appreciatively, took a sip and sighed. “Definitely welcome.” He offered it to Gideon, who took it gingerly, eyes flitting through the tarpaulin to where Donoghue bent over her maps.

“Go on,” Handel murmured. “We could all use it. Her too.” Reluctantly, Gideon sipped at the flask, and immediately had to fight to stop from coughing, the fumes from the flask alone enough to make his eyes water, the discomfort only compounded by the stuff’s foul taste.

“Fucking hell,” he cursed, catching his breath as Handel chuckled, taking the flask back, “is that paint thinner?”

“Just the thing for a long, cold night in the field,” Handel admonished, the flask vanishing into his webbing. “That and some lovely field rations. Speaking of which…” He cocked his head, sniffing at the air. “I reckon our erstwhile chefs are just about done.”

As he was finishing the sentence, Gideon heard the banging of metal on metal, and Collins’ cry of ‘Dinner!” He and Handel came out from behind the tarpaulin to see Yaxley stirring a big pot of something that smelled at least vaguely organic. Collins was gathering up the foil packets from the various Republic field rations, while everyone else dug out their mess-tins. They filed up to Chef Yaxley quietly, Gideon and Handel at the back, and they took their heaps of boiled protein and carbohydrate without complaint. Despite the fact that the food was, to all intents and purposes, identical to that they were served aboard the Jeroboam, it tasted ten times better – which wasn’t to say it actually tasted good, but it was as fresh as it got, and hot, and the ruined bunker was quiet, save for the distant echoes of other engines and the shouts of the night-shift crews. The squad sat together, not really talking, refuelling their weary bodies. Even Petra sat with them in the circle of rubble. It was the closest Gideon had felt to peace in a long time.

Donoghue set her mess-tin down with a clatter, and the fragile peace was shattered.

“Alright. Routes for tomorrow are planned. We’ll cover the next valley, and see how far we get. If we don’t find anything else we’ll come back here for the night. Dawson, you and Handel take the jeep back down to drop off the load first thing. Rest of us can get started. Up at oh-six-thirty, out of here by oh-seven. Clear?”

“Clear,” came the ragged chorus. Gideon tried not to look at his watch, which was trying very hard to tell him that even if he fell asleep immediately he’d only just get eight hours.

“Watches,” Donoghue continued, and Handel groaned.

“Really, sarge? We’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s a bloody truce.”

“Which does not, unfortunately,” Donoghue sighed, “mean we get to be complacent. This is a battlefield, truce or not. Might be something still out there that decides it wants a piece of us.” Gideon nodded reluctantly. Whatever wild animals Arcadia possessed had fled the field long ago, but his head was immediately filled with spectral combat drones or Republic guerrilla kill-teams, waiting in the shadow of the mountain for a nice soft Salvage squad to present its vulnerable underbelly. No, standing watch made sense to him, at least. He just hoped –

“I’ll take first. Gideon,” ordered Donoghue, “you’re up second. Yax, third, Collins last. Rest of you stand tomorrow night.” Gideon bit back a curse. Second watch – not enough time for him to get to sleep properly before he had to be up again to sit staring into the night, and then not enough time to get a decent rest before they were up again. And he knew, he just knew, that tomorrow night, when one extra person had to make up the numbers for that watch, that he’d end up doing it all over again.

They laid out their bedrolls in the bunker’s main room, near the fire, which, while banked, was still comfortingly warm. As Handel took off his legs and Collins put his drones to sleep, Gideon folded his flak jacket into a hard pillow and laid down.

“Two hours,” Donoghue called softly from above on the third-floor gantry, her rifle at her side. Gideon nodded reluctantly, closed his eyes, and tried his best to get to sleep as quickly as he could.

What seemed like seconds later Donoghue was shaking his shoulder. He opened already-gummed eyes, shaking his head and regretting it, blearily acknowledging the outside world.

“Ok, ok,” he said, more to himself than Donoghue. “Awake.” He abandoned the warmth of his bedroll, unfolding his armoured vest and pulling on his boots as Donoghue refuelled the banked fire, breathing a little more life into the flames.

“Take this,” the sergeant said, handing Gideon her rifle – his shotgun wasn’t exactly a watchman’s weapon. Gideon nodded thanks.

“Nothing to see so far,” Donoghue whispered, almost apologetically. “Wake me if there is. Otherwise wake Yax in two.”

“Yes sarge,” Gideon murmured back, stretching, forcing as much lethargy as he could out of his limbs, feeling the aches already trying to sneak back in. “Get some rest.”

“You too. Tomorrow we might actually make some progress,” Donoghue said. “Goodnight, Gid.”

“Night, Sarge.”

Donoghue went to her bedroll, as Gideon clambered up the rickety ladder to the chosen observation platform. The mounted pulse cannon was still there, but he ignored it; the chances of facing something big enough to need the heavy gun were almost nil. Hell, the chance of seeing anything is nil. Gideon took his seat – Donoghue had found a spindly chair somewhere in the bunker – and scanned the battlefield below. The rucked and ruined earth seemed to stretch on forever, mud and debris littering the entire plain below his mountain perch. The Jeroboam was clearly visible in the distance, its internal lights glittering like a dusting of stars, almost overpowered by the bright floodlights that shone day and night, cutting through the gloom for night patrols and salvage crews. As Gideon’s eyes adjusted to the gloom – the fire at his back now, no longer interfering with his night vision – here and there he could see the headlights of some vehicle or another, tiny fireflies describing sluggish patterns in the night. The rain had abated somewhat, but there was still a thin layer of cloud that obscured the stars. There was no moon on this world, even if Gideon could have seen it. He was glad of that. He had been born far from here, under different stars entirely, and never in his brief career had he been able to get used to foreign skies. With the cloud covering the heavens, this could have been anywhere, any of half a hundred worlds, all ruined by the war, scattered across the galaxy.

That thought saddened him. So many worlds, so many wonders – and they were all reduced to nothing but mud and blood and metal. That, he supposed, was why they was out here in the first place, to turn that ruin around. At the rate things seemed to be going, there would be another hundred worlds like this by the time they were even close to finishing.

He slapped away the grasping tendrils of fatigue, scanning the horizon, and seeing nothing out of the ordinary. Grimacing, he settled back in the chair – but not too comfortably. It was going to be a long two hours.

Gideon watched a night like a hundred others, alone.

Salvage Seven: Chapter 4

And here we have Chapter Four. A little shorter this time. Let’s learn a little more about Yaxley, shall we?

If you’re reading this, do let me know in the comments/etc. what you think.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2
Chapter 3

Slowly but surely, the cleanup operation moved further north. The various Salvage squads scoured the muddy hellscape for any and all materiel they could find, hauling it all back to the Jeroboam where Handel and his compatriots broke it down for reuse. Behind Salvage came the corpse wagons; those unfortunates of the Medical Corps (and the common soldiers pressed into helping them) who followed the thousands of markers laid by the Salvage crews to haul the bodies from the sucking mud, stacking them like cordwood in flatbeds and piling them in one stinking cargo bay, where personnel officers in breathing masks took their dogtags and shoved the bodies into another of the ship’s furnaces, while clerks filled in the blanks on a thousand identical, sincerely worded letters home to already-grieving parents and spouses.

Behind them came the regular army, who were already rebuilding shattered fortifications, digging new trench lines and emplacing artillery and organising patrol routes. Supposedly they were just ‘replacing existing infrastructure’ for ‘training and garrison purposes’. That was the official line from Command. Nobody had believed it for a second.

At least, Gideon reflected as he picked his way over the shattered boulders, we’ve got a change of scenery. Orbital bombardments – from both sides – might have scoured most of Arcadia’s forests from the face of the unfortunate world, but not everything was mud. Salvage Seven’s efforts had gradually moved them out of the mud and into the blasted foothills of some mountain range whose name Gideon hadn’t bothered to learn. The terrain was buckled and rough, difficult to traverse even on foot; the further from the mud they went, the fewer vehicles they found. Gideon would have been happy with that fact – but both Union and Republic had compensated for the rough terrain in other ways just as deadly.

Yaxley finally came into view, crouched in a crater; loose stone surrounded it, at first seeming mere gravel but on closer inspection proving to be sharp shards, wicked as shattered glass. The big man was still as the stone, only his huge hands moving, subtly, slowly. Gideon set his pack down at the lip of the crater and peered over.

“Shell?” he asked, feeling a familiar spike of fear. Yaxley didn’t look around, but nodded.

“Burrower. Unexploded. Live.” Suddenly, Gideon wanted to be anywhere else – even more than normal.

“What do you need?” Yaxley had pinged the rest of the squad (they were all out again now, the split-shift initiative quietly taken into the yard and shot) a few minutes ago, requesting another pair of hands. Gideon had been closest.

“See,” Yaxley replied. Gideon swallowed, then forced himself to climb down into the crater, two full yards deep. Yaxley shuffled aside to make room as Gideon slid down the sheer rock, catching him with one massive hand before he tumbled. At the centre of the crater, lodged firmly in the cracked stone, was a metal cylinder eight inches across, spiral scars, the legacy of rifling, twisting around its length. Less than a foot was above the ground, but Gideon knew that within the stone was lodged another foot and a half of steel alloy, most of that a drill-bit like point edged with synthetic diamond, the rest packed with high explosives.

“Primary’s gone off?” Gideon heard himself ask, even as a significant portion of his mind battered at the proverbial doors, demanding to be let out. The burrower shell was designed to pierce stone and then shatter it, an initial charge breaking ground for the drill-head to push deeper before the secondary charge blew the target apart. They were designed to crack bunkers, fortress walls – but some enterprising artillerymen had pointed out that they would be ideal for shredding the hard stone of Arcadia’s mountains.

Yaxley nodded slowly.

“Secondary live.” So this was a shell designed to blow apart reinforced concrete, that had already rent a ten-foot crater in granite older than some stars, ready to go off again at the slightest disturbance – and Yaxley was crouched inches away from it without the slightest tremor. There was a reason, Gideon reflected as he dug around in his webbing for tools, hiding his own shaking hands, that the big man was their explosives specialist. He could be standing underneath a tactical nuke and he wouldn’t flinch, wouldn’t even frown. Not that he’d frown at anything. Or smile.

“You disarmed these before?” he asked, knowing the answer but asking anyway, finding the narrowest of his electronic probes.

“Yes.” Yaxley was looking intently at the rear of the shell. “Here. Seam.” He shifted slightly, making room for Gideon. Reluctantly, Gideon moved up. He could see the seam, just; for once there was enough daylight to actually see by, despite the ever-present drizzle.

“Open that?” Yaxley nodded. Gideon gritted his teeth, holstered the probe and pulled out his scalpel. He’d gotten it off Handel, a piece of ‘misplaced’ medical equipment – but with the safeties removed and the emitter cranked up to three hundred percent the inch-long energised blade would cut through sheet metal easier than the flesh it was designed for.

“Alright,” he said, heart hammering, taking a deep breath to steady his hands. “Cutting.”

He dragged the energised scalpel down the seam as gently as he could, applying barely any pressure at all. The blue-white field envelope hissed as tiny raindrops struck it and flashed into steam. The seam ran all the way around the shell’s circumference; Gideon had to make two passes with the gentlest touch of his scalpel before he felt the metal give, slightly, subtly.

“Cut.” Yaxley nodded, and with hands as steady as rock he gripped the end of the shell and lifted it free – but not all the way. Gideon almost cried out when he saw the dangling wires that trailed to the ignition charge, embedded in the dull putty of the high explosive filling.

“Hold this,” Yaxley murmured to Gideon, and Gideon took the severed bit of shell casing reluctantly, barely daring to breathe. He held it exactly as though it was about to go off, as the huge man next to him pulled out a delicate pair of wire-cutters and leaned forward, examining the strands of copper.

“Impact fuse tripped,” he muttered, conspicuously not touching any of the wires. “Loose connection. Design flaw.” He looked at the seemingly identical wires, then nodded, and before Gideon could so much as draw breath to scream he snipped one in two – then another, and then the third.

“Safe,” Yaxley said softly, and as if to prove it he reached into the shell with his free hand and pulled out the ignition charge as casually as if it were fruit from a bag. He plucked the shell-end from Gideon’s frozen fingers and handed him the charge. “See?”

Gideon forced himself to take the thing that had – he was certain – been a whisper from vaporising him completely. It was safe, he saw; without electrical input it was just a stick of putty, as was the high explosive it would have in turn set off.

“Glad to hear it,” he said weakly, putting the charge in his pocket. To his surprise, Yaxley’s mouth twitched in a faint smile.

“My first. Orappa Prime.” He held up a hand, made it shake. “Pissed myself.”

Gideon laughed, unable to help himself, and Yaxley’s smile became a grin.

“So did I,” he replied with a grin of his own. Yaxley chuckled – actually chuckled, the first laugh Gideon had ever heard him utter – reached out, and patted him on the shoulder with one massive hand.

“Gets easier.”

I wish it did, Gideon was about to say, the words on the tip of his tongue, suddenly and finally able to admit his fear to someone else, after so long – but then the vox crackled, and Yaxley’s smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. He pressed his earpiece.

“Seven-Three.”

“Yaxley,” came Donoghue’s voice, choppy with static. “We’ve got some mines here, not sure if they’re live. Can you take a look?”

“Coming.”

“Half a klick east,” Donoghue directed. “Gideon, carry on sweeping.”

“Yes, sarge.” As the radio fell silent, Gideon made to speak again – but Yaxley, with a great heave of his huge arms, had already dragged the burrower shell free of its rocky lodging, gravel and stone shards cascading down from the drill-head, dented but still glinting wickedly. He tossed it casually out of the crater, and despite knowing it was dead Gideon couldn’t help but flinch away as it clattered to the rocky ground. The huge man clambered out of the hole, shouldered his pack, picked up the shell and strode away without another word, leaving Gideon to struggle out of the crater alone, and sit for a moment, wondering what in the seven hells had just happened.

Review – The Wood Between the Worlds

I didn’t think it was possible to like a book as much as Erin Kahn over at The Wood Between the Worlds seems to have enjoyed The Blackbird and the Ghost – but her review of it is absolutely wonderful!

Very much chuffed by this. Thank you, Erin!

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Review: The Wood Between the Worlds

I didn’t think it was possible to like a book as much as Erin Kahn over at The Wood Between the Worlds seems to have enjoyed The Blackbird and the Ghost – but her review of it is absolutely wonderful!

Very much chuffed by this. Thank you, Erin!

[image error]

Salvage Seven: Chapter 3

Chapter 3 time. Let’s go.

Prologue
Chapter 1, parts 1 and 2
Chapter 2

They disabled the tank with surprising efficiency; on the rare occasion that the members of Salvage 7 worked together without remembering their petty squabbles and disagreements they were a damn fine team. While Collins’ drones continued scanning the tank’s internal power lines, watching for any spike from the backup battery to one of the tank’s many energy weapons, Gideon, under Petra’s direction, systematically disabled as many of the tank’s visual sensors and external weapons as possible. Some of the sensors were inaccessible – the backups, sheathed in armour-plated clamshells that only opened if the main cameras were knocked out – but Petra’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the tank’s design let Gideon short out all the tank’s main eyes, largely blinding it. That alone wasn’t especially reassuring, so they moved onto the external guns.

“Power diverted from main cannon… now,” Collins called, one of his drones holding position over the tank’s back, an invisible beam piercing the armoured shell. Gideon nodded and bent to his work, insulated wire-cutters snipping carefully at the relevant cables through the hold Petra had carved with her plasma cutter. Within a few moments he had disabled every feed to the big pulse cannon save the one to its auxiliary plasma reservoir.

“Collins,” Petra called, “can you drain the aux tank?”

“Working,” the technician replied. He was still up on the ridge, hunched over his laptop and tapping furiously at its keyboard. Awkward he might look, but there was nothing awkward about the smooth flight of his three drones, circling balletically around the buried Talos. The nearest – Gamma, Gideon thought – stopped jamming the cut power feeds and shifted position.

“There,” Petra pointed, to a spot beneath the armour that was identical to all the rest. Gamma held position, shuddering as it began to emit invisible radiation again. It would have been impossible to tell, had the unseen beam not vaporised every raindrop that it touched, sending them hissing into steam.

“Fifty percent, thirty…” Collins called, “ten, empty!”

“Cut it,” Petra ordered, but Gideon was already working, Petra’s plasma cutter in his hand. There was a hiss as ozone forced its way out of the pipe and Gideon almost threw himself backwards, but Petra waved her hand.

“It’s fine. Empty.”

Gideon leaned back and saw that she was right; the pipeline was empty. He cut through the rest, just to be sure.

“Main cannon disabled,” he called for Collins’ benefit.

“Nice job,” came Handel’s voice over the radio. “Now, get to the other hardpoints. Some nasty shit mounted on these things.” Gideon nodded; he didn’t want to tangle with any of the tank’s munitions if he could help it.

“No,” Petra countered, and Gideon’s heart sank, “we kill the backup battery. We’ve a way in now. Let’s kill this thing for good, and we can haul it out intact.”

“After my own heart,” Handel replied with an audible grin. “Alright. Backup on a Talos is a 50MW output. Fry you out of your skin. But it’s an older model. Capacitors were pieces of shit, used to bleed out into nothing if you looked at them funny.”

“We can use that,” Petra decided. “Gideon?”

“We’ll need something to bleed them into,” Gideon replied, burying his nerves as best he could, “if we don’t want to get fried.” And I don’t. He thought back to the old shop and all the ancient vehicles and ancient capacitors that had come through day after day. In the shop, they’d had a big industrial capacitor buried underneath the workshop floor, which had come in handy during their frequent powercuts. Here, in a muddy field in the middle of nowhere…

“Another vehicle would do it,” he decided finally. “Big enough frame to take the charge, and if we earth it properly it’ll flow straight through.”

“Could use that four-wheel you found,” Collins called to Petra, clearly eager to redeem himself a little, “if it runs!” Petra shrugged.

“Let’s go and find out.”

It took all three of them, all their strength and some clever leverage to get the jeep on its wheels again, heaving it out of the mud. Gideon knew the type immediately; a popular civilian model modified for combat use, simple and rugged and one he’d mended dozens of back in the day. Once he’d reconnected the leads for the hydrogen fuel cell the engine started with barely a splutter. The four-wheel had become a two-wheel drive, and its gearbox was shot to hell, but Petra still managed to coax it up and over the ridge and back to the tank. Collins was sent back to their own flatbed and stumbled into view a few minutes later with a reel of insulated cable slung around his shoulders. He busied himself attaching one end to the jeep’s heavy chassis. Gideon took the other.

“There,” Petra pointed, and Gideon squeezed the trigger of his soldering iron, sticking the frayed cable end to the exposed terminal with a hiss of flash-boiling drizzle. “Collins, let’s try this!”

They all scrambled well clear of the tank. Two of Collins’ drones kept monitoring the power flow to the tank’s many weapons and sensors; the third moved into position above the backup battery. The technician was glued to his laptop screen, but Petra beckoned Gideon into cover in a shell-hole. Worryingly, she had unshipped her marksman’s rifle – decidedly non-standard even for the unregulated Salvage crews. Gideon checked the load of his shotgun, for all the good it would do. If the tank woke up, he’d be paste and vapour before he could so much as aim, cover be damned.

He breathed in deeply, then out, slowly. It didn’t help at all.

“Hope this works,” commented Handel unhelpfully. Gideon saw Petra scowl.

“Collins, when you’re ready,” she called. The skinny tech replied over the radio.

“Ok. Opening the taps in three, two, one…”

Gideon felt the air crackle with static as the backup battery emptied itself down the cable and into the frame of the four-wheel-drive, the backwash standing his hair on end. Four sharp cracks, a burst of gunfire, made him cringe into the mud, almost foetal, as Petra instinctively snapped her rifle up to return fire. He tasted copper – but it wasn’t blood, and though his ears were ringing he couldn’t hear Collins screaming, the whine of bullets, barked orders and rumbling engines. Cautiously, Gideon poked his head above the lip of the foxhole, shotgun in a death-grip. The four-wheel was a blackened ruin, its chassis warped and buckled by the sheer heat of the discharge, and all four tyres had burst – in rapid succession Gideon realised, flushing with embarrassment under his coating of filth. The mud surrounding the wrecked jeep was bubbling with heat, giving off a deeply unpleasant, worryingly organic smell – but a few yards away Collins sat happily with a big smile on his face.

“It’s dead!” he called, waving at Gideon. “Not a watt left!” His three drones swirled over the Talos, beeping merrily. Beside Gideon, Petra lowered her rifle with a sigh of relief, and for a moment Gideon felt a new solidarity, a reassurance that, for once, he hadn’t been the only one scared. But then he saw Petra’s expression of utter indifference; the look of a woman who’d seen all this before a hundred times and never once flinched, never once faltered; and the feeling faded.

“Alright. Good job. Now let’s get it out and go home.”

She shouldered her gun and strode towards the tank, leaving Gideon in the foxhole, wet, and tired, and alone.

*

The Jeroboam’s Deck Three mess hall was packed, as it always was. The grounded frigate was home to thousands – besides the five thousand Union soldiers and salvage operators who packed its hastily converted barrack-rooms, the ship had two thousand in its crew, from bridge officers to mechanics, and another several hundred assorted hangers-on and camp followers who plied trades sweet and sordid in the lower decks. The Jeroboam had not been designed as a troop carrier. It was a warship, an escort vessel, meant for the simultaneously lightning-fast and achingly slow dance that was space combat. With the war against the Republic officially over, however, and the cleanup operation only widening in scope, Union Command – and indeed the Republic’s own Council – had pressed the Jeroboam and dozens of other ships like it into service as improvised ground bases. It was, Gideon reflected as he shuffled another few inches forward in the heaving queue, trying not to jostle the big infantrymen who surrounded him, a good idea in theory. Capital ships had communications equipment, powerful sensors, defensive weapons and the manufacturing and recycling capacity necessary to work very well as bases. They also, on paper, had plenty of room in their cargo holds and other big spaces to fit the region’s assigned ground forces. On paper, the Jeroboam was a perfect ground base. In reality, it was an overcrowded hellhole. The Navy men and women of the ship’s crew resented the Army for cluttering their ship and forcing them to spend months on the ground; the Army resented the Navy for being stuck-up arseholes who wouldn’t allow them free reign aboard ship; and everyone resented the Salvage squads for being the reason they were there at all. Gideon, therefore, as he shuffled towards the mess hall’s food counter for dinner, kept his head down and his mouth shut.

After what felt like hours he finally reached the counter, taking a tray of the evening’s nutritionally balanced rations. The best thing anyone, Army or Navy or Salvage, could say about the supposedly perfect balance of protein, carbohydrates and vitamins was that it was sometimes hot and usually didn’t taste like vomit – no matter how much it looked like it. Gideon took his tray and slipped back through the crowd to a long table in the corner, where the rest of Seven and some other Salvage people picked at their slop with varying levels of enthusiasm. He slid onto the end of the bench, next to Handel, who alone among the group was attacking his slop with a smile on his face, metal arm moving slowly. He actually liked the stuff, Gideon knew; apparently standard rations had been much worse once upon a time. It was difficult to believe, Gideon reflected as he took his first bland, faintly acrid spoonful, that such a thing was possible. Next to Handel was Collins, barely paying attention to his food as he leafed through some technical manual, utterly absorbed. Just once Gideon wanted to see the volunteer in some kind of discomfort – but the day still had not come.

Donoghue sat down across from Gideon, nodding curtly but saying nothing to him. Handel smiled at her and cracked a joke that cracked her dour expression just a little, and the two began chatting amiably. They had been thick as thieves as long as Gideon had known them, the kind of genuine friendship that only came, at least for soldiers, from months spent under fire together, trapped in foxholes with nothing but each other’s company. It was the kind of friendship Gideon had never had. He didn’t expect to ever find it. Next to Donoghue loomed Yaxley, twice as broad and almost a foot taller than any of them. Yaxley Gideon barely knew at all, even after half a year spent working with the big man. He was good with explosives, even better to have around when the heavy lifting needed doing as it so often did… and that was just about all Gideon knew about him. He’d been, according to Handel, in the Ordnance Corps before being seconded to Salvage; an artilleryman. What he’d done to end up digging unexploded shells out of the Arcadian mud instead of putting them there was anyone’s guess.

Dawson sat next to Yaxley, and, at the far end of the table with another half-dozen people separating them, sat Petra, eating silently. Surrounded by people she might be, but she was unmistakeably alone. Even Gideon, ignored as he was, seemed part of the squad – but no matter what Petra did she would never escape the fact that she was the enemy. Gideon would have felt sorry for her if he’d not felt so sorry for himself. The salvage operation might nominally be a joint effort, but the Union and Republic commands had been sensible enough to realise that mixing squads of soldiers who’d only just stopped trying to kill each other wasn’t a good idea – except in Petra’s case, and a few other unfortunates like her. At least, he reflected as he ate, trying not to concentrate on taste or texture, she was separated from Dawson. Gideon knew from experience what would happen if the two were forced into the same space for longer than a few minutes. It was never pretty.

He suddenly realised that he was out of slop, spoon clattering against his bowl. The others, too, were just finishing up, and Gideon waited quietly for them. He wanted sleep, knew he was unlikely to actually get it. Something, as it always did, would come up. One by one, Salvage Seven finished eating.

“Well, that was awful,” sighed Donoghue, stretching and wincing as something that shouldn’t have cracked did. “But we’re done. Nothing more tonight, everyone, so do what you want.”

They all stood, gathering trays and bowls.

“I’m going for some real food,” Dawson grumbled. “Can’t stand this shit. Yax, coming?”

“Sure,” rumbled the big man. Gideon wasn’t surprised; standard rations were designed for humans of ordinary size – Yaxley had to need twice as much just to not starve.

“Collins?” Dawson asked, barely disguising her relief when the technician shook his head.

“Had a few gyro issues earlier,” he said. “Might go down to the workshop and have a proper look before tomorrow. Always maintain your kit, right?” He smiled. Only Handel offered a weak smile in response.

“Well, I might have a tasty little deal going down for those flechette pistols,” he said with a predatory grin. Gideon shuddered. Those guns were nasty little things, normally banned by at least two conventions he could think of – compact, easily concealed and horribly efficient. No wonder Handel stood to make good money off them.

“You want backup?” Donoghue asked. Handel shrugged.

“Couldn’t hurt. Get the feeling a sergeant isn’t exactly inconspicuous though. I’ll be fine alone.”

“Never said I’d show my face,” Donoghue countered. “Besides, you can’t afford to get anything else cut off.” The quartermaster scowled, making an obscene gesture with his prosthetic fingers that was all the more insulting for how slowly it came together.

“What about you, Gid?” Handel asked, unexpectedly. For a too-long moment, Gideon struggled with an answer he hadn’t expected to have to give.

“I’m shattered,” he finally said, lamely. “Need to sleep for a week.” He shrugged. “I’ll settle for eight hours.” In truth he’d settle for six.

“Alright then,” Donoghue said, dismissing him with a wave of her hand. “Whatever you do, don’t start a fight you can’t win and don’t get so drunk you can’t stand. Briefing at oh-seven. Piss off.”

The less-than-formal dismissal was met with a series of less-than-formal salutes, as Salvage Seven made its way out of the mess-hall and, splitting, out into the bowels of the Jeroboam. Gideon spared half a glance for Petra as they passed. She’d heard Donoghue, but didn’t look up as the rest of the squad filed out – she just ate her gruel in silence, alone save for whatever dark thoughts she carried. Gideon knew there were some. They were the only commodity not in short supply on the muddy hell that was Arcadia.

He, Handel, Donoghue and Collins went back to the squad’s cramped quarters, Yaxley and Dawson splitting off for the sub-decks together. As Handel retrieved his contraband from whichever hidden compartment he’d stashed it in, and Collins gathered up his drone kit, Gideon once again rinsed the mud from his body armour, his boots, all his outdoor gear from earlier, hanging them up in a vague semblance of cleanliness. He took another shower – all too brief, their hot water allowance running out almost immediately. By the time he emerged, he was alone in the suite of rooms. In less than nine hours, he would be on duty again.

He killed the lights, climbed into his bunk and buried himself in the thin blankets, and tried to relax. In the dark, the bloody face of Corporal Atwell waited, and she was not alone.

He did not sleep for some time.

Salvage Seven: Chapter 2

Once you’ve started, why stop? There’s a lot more where this came from.

If you haven’t read the first bit of Salvage Seven, you can find the prologue and parts 1 and 2 of Chapter 1 at these links. If you have, then here’s Chapter 2.

All too soon, Gideon was following Petra and Collins back through the motor pool to the waiting flatbed. They were all fully kitted out: fresh fatigues and less-than-fresh body armour, bucket helmets and knee-high boots, with webbing belted over it all to hold their own specialist tools. Collins was carrying the big plastic case that held his drones, while Petra had a compact plasma cutter that, Gideon knew, could scythe through armour-plate like a knife through butter. Gideon had his full suite of electrician’s tools. They were probably the most important things he owned – some he’d brought from the shop, what felt like a lifetime ago. He still got regular updates from David on how it was doing. He hadn’t replied to one in months.

They made their way through the fuel-haze and hubbub to the flatbed; still covered in mud and grime but sitting a little more comfortably on its heavy suspension, its chunky tyres reinflated. Dawson was tinkering with something above the rear wheel, looking up when the three scavengers drew near. When she saw Petra, her eyes hardened.

“All ready for you, Corporal.”

“Good,” Petra replied, and walked straight past Dawson to the driver’s seat, climbing into the cab without another word. Gideon muttered vague thanks as he passed Dawson, and Collins tried a smile, but the engineer ignored them both. As Petra started the engine and rolled the flatbed out of its bay, Gideon glimpsed her in the rear-view mirror, staring a thousand blades into Petra’s back as she shrank into the crowd. That can’t last forever. The only way Gideon could see that particular feud settled was with at least one death – and not necessarily on the battlefield.

They waited for a long few minutes in the queue of vehicles; more flatbeds, a couple of armoured personnel carriers ready to go on patrol; until the duty corporal finally waved them through. Petra slipped smoothly into gear, and they rolled down the colossal ramp and out into the mud. It was getting dark now, but light from a thousand sources flowed out of the hangar bay and showed them the latest form of the ever-shifting landscape, the new shape of the flowing mud and earth. It was still raining. Gideon wasn’t sure that it had ever stopped. Petra found some tracks that hadn’t oozed back into the ground yet, flipping on the floodlights as Collins, riding shotgun, called up the navigation display and plotted a route. Gideon, useless, turned back and watched as the light from the hangar slowly dimmed, as the almost impossibly vast shape that was the grounded UNS Jeroboam, home and operating base for five thousand soldiers of the Union army, slowly faded into the gloom and was gone, leaving nothing but the mud and rain.

*

All too soon, they reached their assigned sector. Gideon donned his helmet, took one last breath of warm air, and then opened his door and dropped into ankle-deep mud, the chill immediately finding his bones and biting deep. This, apparently, was what passed for springtime on Arcadia, a world famed for its vast forests and their thousand-year-old trees – not that Gideon had ever seen them. Until the war came it had still been a wild world, recently settled and barely tamed by its colonists; ending up right between the seceding Republic and the reeling Union had sealed its fate. If there were still trees on Arcadia, they were far, far away – the war had chewed up the forests, sucked down the crisp, clear air, eaten the dream of utopia alive and left nothing behind but smoke and mud.

“Alright,” said Petra, closing the truck’s door behind her. Her dark fatigues, carefully divested of most of their insignia, made her blend far too well with the mud. “The scans picked up some heavy machinery. Corpse wagons haven’t been round yet. Focus on the big stuff, but pick up whatever you can.” She pulled up the map on her wrist-mounted PDA, a few taps synchronising it with Collins and Gideon’s. “Here, here and here. Spread out, take it slow, and keep in touch. If they’re Republic, let me know and I’ll be right over.”

“Got it, Corp,” said Collins. Gideon just nodded. Petra fiddled with her radio, cursing quietly as it crackled with static.

“Seven-Two to Seven-Actual. Comm check.”

“Copy, Seven.” Handel’s voice; given the man was already stuck back on the Jeroboam it was only logical that he run their comms and support. “Happy hunting. And if you find any fusion cells, let me know. Bounty just went up.”

“Will do.” Petra looked up and nodded curtly at Collins and Gideon. “Off we go.” Without another word she turned, snapping on her helmet torch, and stalked off through the mud.

“Would you hold this?” Collins asked, passing Gideon his gun. He took it, as the technician squelched around to the back of the flatbed and set down his heavy case, popping it open.

“Alpha, close support,” he muttered, tapping at the screen of his PDA and linking it to the crude AIs, “Beta, wide scan, Gamma, focus standby.” He pressed a button with a flourish, and from the case three silver spheres popped up, springing into the air on miniature repulsors to hover around Collins’ head. Lights flickered in a wide array of patterns, and Collins smiled, satisfied.

“Good boys.” He flicked back to the map. “I’ll take the west mark, you the east?”

“Fine,” Gideon said, handing the submachine gun back. “Shout when you know what it is.”

“Got it.” Collins turned on his own head-torch and squelched away, his drones following, taking up their assigned patterns. Gideon shook his head, flipping on his own light. His bunkmate spent far more time than was healthy with his little friends – but he had to admit that they were useful bits of kit. None of that for him, though. If he wasn’t working with his own hands, he wasn’t working. He checked his map, found his waypoint, and set off, leaving the floodlights of the flatbed behind.

He’d barely gone twenty steps before he found his first body. Once he would have been squeamish about it, but now the sight of the corpse barely shook him. Because, he reflected as he turned the body over, its flesh pallid, bloated by the endless rain, it’s not fresh. Someone days, even hours dead was no concern of his – it was the thought of the dying that made him shudder, of fresh blood on living skin. He pushed the memory away, scanned the body. It was a Union infantryman, armed with a kinetic rifle soaked through by mud. Gideon pulled it free of the corpse’s hands, cleared the firing chamber with a jerk, examined it. Properly cleaned, it ought to work again. He disassembled it and stuffed the pieces in his pack, before finding the dead man’s dogtags, flat above the entry wound of the shot that had killed him. A few taps on his PDA logged the serial number and name for the corpse wagons that would sweep the sector after Salvage was done – or at least after they had disarmed the really dangerous stuff. Gideon knew that this blasted waste would never truly be free of the remnants of battle. He had read about the Iron Harvest back on Earth during his training, of how farmers had dug up shell-casings and helmets for centuries after the big old wars were done. In years to come, Arcadian farmers would dig up shards of steel, plastic cartridges and ballistic polymers. If any ever come. Gideon couldn’t say Arcadia would be at the top of his list for settling down.

Four more corpses delayed him on his slow, sticky journey to the pulsing signature on his PDA map. He checked each one, relieving them of their weapons, armour if he could easily get it off – and if it was remotely intact. By the time he drew near the energy signature his pack was already heavy with broken-down rifles; nothing special, but finding the special things wasn’t actually his job, much to the chagrin of Handel. The official mission statement of the Salvage Corps was to clear up the battlefields of the Uncivil War (as the satirists had long since called it), to make a half-dozen planets safe again for human habitation, a grand gesture of a joint venture between two armies who very much still wanted to go for each other’s throats. The actual role of the Salvage Corps, as Gideon perceived it, was for the Union and the Republic to scavenge as much scrap and still-functional materiel as they could, so that when the uneasy truce inevitably shattered they could get right back to shooting at each other like nothing had ever interrupted.

Regardless of how idealistic you were, Gideon’s job remained the same: find anything remotely usable or dangerous – and a lot of stuff that wasn’t – and bring it back to the Jeroboam to be used and reused again. As he brushed the worst of the mud off a pistol, he wondered idly how many hands would wield it – and how many hands would pluck it from the mud on a dozen different worlds so it could be wielded again. He wondered if anyone he knew had held it, would hold it. Maybe he would. He hoped he wouldn’t.

The mud formed a low rise, up which he slid and squelched, his high combat boots providing as much grip as possible – which was to say none at all. The beam of his helmet torch jerked around like a half-dead moth as he struggled over the lip of the rise, almost falling more than once, but he got a grip on some half-buried chunk or rock or metal and straightened. Looking down at the shallow dip in the field, he didn’t need to consult his PDA to see what the orbital scanners had picked up – and really wished that he did. Crouched in the bottom of the dip, what little of it that wasn’t covered in mud blackened and warped by energy weapon impacts, but still brutally, terrifyingly intact, was a Talos-pattern Automated Weapons Platform, big and brooding and bristling with guns. Gideon instinctively dropped into what little cover there was, drawing his woefully useless shotgun. His heart was pounding. Fucking auto-tank! It looked intact, too, or mostly so; half-buried in the mud of the battlefield it might be, but he could see no obvious damage beyond scorching. It was also, he realised, his heart slowing a little, completely still. He slipped a compact scope from his webbing and scanned the mass of metal slowly, looking for the telltale crimson glint of active sensors. He found none. Forcing himself to breathe out, he keyed his comm.

“Seven-Actual, Four.”

“Go ahead, Four,” replied Handel from the tiny corner of the operations centre that Donoghue had been able to scavenge to run the team’s support.

“Reached scan reference… whatever it is,” Gideon said, “and it’s a Talos.”

Handel whistled.

“You’ve either got the best or worst luck in the world today, my son. How’s it look?”

“Intact. Half-buried, but in one piece.”

“Shitting hell,” Handel breathed. “That’s one hell of a find.”

“Seven-Actual,” came another voice on the comm, “we are on duty.”

“Sorry, Two,” Handel said, without a trace of embarrassment. “Four, can you handle it?”

Gideon considered the seemingly dead machine. The many patterns of auto-tank were surprisingly cheap and horrifyingly effective murder machines of a kind both sides had thrown enthusiastically into the fray throughout the war. “Automation,” the press statements had said time and again, “will increase efficiency and save lives. Fewer soldiers on the battlefield means fewer soldiers in the infirmary.” There might have been fewer soldiers on the battlefield at a time, but the efficiency of death-machines like the Talos and the T-27 meant that those soldiers died just as fast as before. The Talos, Gideon remembered, flipping through hazy images of old technical manuals, was a multi-purpose assault vehicle, pointed in the general direction of the enemy and then unleashed, spitting fire and lead from its many mouths. If its slaved AI were still active, Gideon would be pulped as soon as he got within five yards – and if they woke up, he’d be just as screwed. He could take the thing apart and fry its brain like he had the drone earlier – but he couldn’t do it alone. Or at least he really, really didn’t want to.

“Could use a hand, Actual,” he said, trying to keep the relief out of his voice. “This one’ll be hard to crack.”

“Gotcha. Two, Six, can you assist?” If Handel knew how scared Gideon was, it didn’t show in his voice.

“On my way over,” came Petra’s voice, brusquely. “Mine’s just a four-wheel. Can get it later.”

“I can come too,” said Collins with a static edge. “Flatbed over here. Civilian model. Barely worth our time.”

Petra didn’t reply, but Gideon almost flinched away from the daggers she would be staring at Collins – dear, naïve Collins, whose tactless appraisal of the Republic’s improvised vehicles could not have been delivered to a less appropriate person.

“So we’re all on their way, then,” Handel said, filling the silence. “Lovely. Gid, sit tight.”

Gideon did so, and a few minutes later he heard Collins scrambling and squelching up his ridge, even less elegantly than Gideon himself. He didn’t offer a hand until Collins was almost at the top, pity overriding the vindictive pleasure of watching the struggle.

“Oh, lovely,” Collins breathed, settling into the mud next to Gideon. His three drones settled into formation above and behind his head, many lights flickering. “The targeting software on those things set a new standard.”

“And that new standard got a lot of people killed,” said Petra, and Gideon almost jumped out of his skin. He hadn’t heard her approaching at all, which in this sucking mud should have been impossible – yet there she was, standing behind them, her fatigues barely muddy at all.

“Collins, deep scan,” Petra ordered, her eyes fixed on the auto-tank. “Residual power output, anything that’s still charged. These things are tough; might just be dormant.”

“Yes, Corporal,” the skinny man replied, tapping at his PDA. Two of his three drones gained height and then floated forwards, stopping a few feet from the tank’s shell. The pattern of lights changed, and then Gideon saw the infrared beams flicker out, playing over every exposed inch of the dead – or sleeping – machine.

“Some residual power,” Collins muttered, eyes locked on his screen, the drones feeding him information in real-time. “Looks like the backup fusion battery’s still active. Main couplings are fried.” One of the drones was hovering over the mud-covered half of the tank, scanning through the muck.

“Any idea,” Gideon asked carefully, “what took it out?”

“Switching Alpha to external scan,” Collins replied, and one of the drones changed its pattern at his touch. “Armour mostly intact. Under the mud… ah. Rocket impact at the rear.”

“Engine block,” Petra said confidently. “Armour’s thinner there for heat dissipation. A good shot cripples them. It’s Union.” Gideon nodded, but he was unable to stop Collins asking the stupid question.

“How do you know?”

Petra turned, fixing Collins with a dark glare.

“Because that’s how we used to kill these things back on Karapoor,” she replied. “When the Union sent half a brigade into the suburbs and killed two thousand civilians. Auto-tanks, against noncombatants. Against children.”

She looked up at the tank again, and Gideon’s eyes were drawn to her collar, and the darker patch on the worn fabric where the insignia of the Republic had once been sewn.

Review – Paul’s Picks

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