Terminus Cut

  TERMINUS CUT

  ©2019 RICK PARTLOW

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors.

  Print and eBook formatting, and cover design by Steve Beaulieu. Artwork provided by Filip Dudek.

  Published by Aethon Books LLC. 2019

  All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  FROM THE PUBLISHER

  Prologue

  Jaimie Brannigan walked alone.

  It was the lot of the Guardian of Sparta, the fate he accepted when he shouldered the burden. He’d thought, for a while, he might avoid both the burden and the fate, despite the circumstances of his birth. His father had been a hale man, sure to live another century and perhaps have more sons and daughters who would take up the mantle while he, even as the eldest, might remain a simple soldier with a wife, a home, and a family.

  The Lamberts had changed all that, taken it away from him, he thought in the darkest hours of the night. Others assured him the coup attempt by his cousins was a blessing, an opportunity to use the gifts Mithra had given him. The portrait of his wife hanging on the wall just outside the chapel reminded him those opportunities came at a steep price.

  His breath still caught at the sight, at the memory. She had been so strong, so beautiful, and remained so to this day in his heart. What would she think of him now? What would she think of the course he had set for their sons?

  He entered the chapel unaccompanied, no guards or caretakers this deep inside the palace so early in the morning. It was just after sunrise, and the first golden glow reached the confines of the private temple through the skylight, diluted by stray wisps of smoke from the sacred fire. He took strips of sandalwood from a bowl beside the door and presented them to the priest, his face covered by a mask to prevent his breath from corrupting the ceremony. The old man had served his father here since before Jaimie was born, the lines and creases of a hundred and fifty years in service to God etched around those perceptive green eyes.

  The wood burned well in the sacred fire and Jaimie knelt to receive the ash, to have those strong, old fingers smear it across his cheeks as the priest uttered the ancient ritual. Had this been a public ceremony, he would have been expected to be dressed in the traditional robes, to bathe beforehand right here in the temple instead of back in his quarters, and to tie and untie the sacred knots, but allowances were made for his position and schedule.

  Great Mithra, Lord of Light, he prayed, feeling the rough warmth of the ash on his face like the presence of God, take care of my boys. Forgive me for the danger I have placed them in and I beg of you, please don’t punish an old man for the foolishness of his youth.

  “You ever study up on how Zoroastrianism came to be the state religion of the Empire of Hellas?”

  Jaimie tried not to indulge in the anger swelling in his chest. It wouldn’t be appropriate here, which was probably why Constantine had chosen this place to corner him. Jaimie Brannigan rose from his knees, pulling out a cloth to wipe the ashes from his face and murmuring an apology to the priest before he turned toward the unwelcome voice.

  General Nicolai Constantine was a weapon waiting to be used, a dagger held low and ready for a disemboweling strike. Even stretched out in an almost disrespectful sprawl across the worship bench, he had the look of a coiled spring or, perhaps more aptly, a snake ready to strike.

  “What do you want, Nicolai?” he demanded.

  “It’s incredibly interesting, if you ever bother to look into it,” the man insisted, ignoring Jaimie’s question. “My grandparents were followers of the Old Way, you know? What used to be called ‘Christianity’ before the Empire banned it.”

  “I would say you should know better than to speak of the Old Way in a place of worship,” Jaimie said, a slight tremble to his voice at the barely-contained rage, “but obviously there are many things you should know better about, but have proceeded to do anyway.”

  “Christianity, Buddhism and an old religion called Islam basically split the world between them once. Whole societies were built on the foundation of these religions, systems of law and government based on their tenets. And Zoroastrianism, well…it barely survived, a curiosity with a handful of followers. And it wasn’t like this,” he pointed out, waving a finger at their surroundings.

  Jaimie checked behind them surreptitiously, making sure the priest had left. The old man knew conversations such as these weren’t his place to hear.

  “Mithra wasn’t even the chief god of Zoroastrianism back then; he was an angel, one of the Spenta Mainyu. When Emperor Ericka took power, she wanted to combine Zoroastrianism with the worship of Mithras, to turn it into a soldier’s religion. That’s why the Old Way was banned, because too many of its followers are pacifists and even those who weren’t didn’t take kindly to the idea of a religion not merely sponsored by the state but nearly created from whole cloth simply to ensure loyalty to the Empire.” The General smoothed down the front of his uniform jacket, regarding the Spartan seal on his right breast carefully.

  “I sometimes think,” he said, the casual arrogance of his dark-browed face sinking into something brooding, “in our efforts to recapture the glory of the Empire, we forget the cost.”

  “Nicolai, you have been a friend and supporter for longer than I care to remember. So, I won’t give in to my baser instincts and have you taken out to the lake and weighed down with stones, despite the fact you knew Terrin was leaving to stow away on the cargo ship supplying Logan’s mission and did nothing to stop it.” Despite his resolve not to give sway to his rage, Jaimie’s voice rose until he was almost shouting the last few words and his hands had clenched into fists.

  “By the time I learned of his plan, that ship had sailed.” Constantine snorted, though there seemed little humor in it to Jaimie. “And I didn’t tell you about it until after it was a fait accompli because you would have thought with your heart rather than your head and cancelled the mission to get him back.”

  “Be that as it may,” Jaimie ground out, the growl rumbling from somewhere deep in his massive chest, “I don’t think either of us wants to go over that same ground again, and I doubt you came here to give a lecture on comparative religions. So, what do you want, Nicolai?”

  “We’ve had our first report back from Wholesale Slaughter.”

  There it was, the other shoe. Jaimie Brannigan shook his head, falling into the seat next to Constantine’s.

  “I still can’t believe I let him get away with naming it that.”

&nbs
p; “Oh, it’s colorful, certainly,” the Intelligence chief admitted, “but it’s exactly the sort of thing a mercenary company commander would do, particularly a young one. It attracts attention; it’s free advertising. Though nothing advertises a mercenary company as well as success.” He grinned close-mouthed, the last thing an elk saw before the wolf pounced. “They’ve had their first job. They were hired by an independent colony out beyond Spartan space in one of the nooks and crannies between us and Clan Modi. A place called Arachne.”

  Constantine barked a laugh, scornful and dismissive. “They were being extorted by some two-bit, wannabe warlord who called himself ‘Captain Magnus.’ He’d pulled together a cluster of outlaws and rejects and convinced them they were a pirate band he’d named the ‘Red Brotherhood.’ What a moron. They took him down with minimal casualties, from the reports I’ve heard.”

  “That’s good news, at least,” Jaimie allowed, hissing out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Have you heard anything else?”

  “Their success hasn’t gone unnoticed. They’re already on their way to their next employer in the Dagda system, right at the edge of Starkad space.” Constantine steepled his hands, tapping the fingers together. “Unfortunately, I don’t think this job is going to be quite so simple.”

  1

  “Three habitables in one system is pretty rare,” the man who called himself Jonathan Slaughter mused. “Especially out here in the Periphery.”

  He had to tear his eyes away from the viewscreen, away from the deep blues and welcoming greens of Rhiannon, passing by slowly as the station rotated for the faux gravity of centripetal force. Dagda gleamed in the ever-night, its ferocity muted by the filters of the cameras, a G-class star. He blinked automatically despite the barrier of the video wall, and looked back to the oval table at the center of the—what had Vasari called it?—oh, yeah, the “situation room.” It seemed pretentious to him.

  Jabbar Vasari had also labelled himself a “designated negotiator,” which also seemed pretentious and Jonathan wondered if it was something about the culture out here. He was a spare, slender man, not young but not yet at middle age, either, his dark and intense face unlined and unweathered. It was the face of a man who didn’t spend much time outdoors. His features could have been painted on for all the emotion he’d shown since they’d arrived on the orbital station. He wasn’t exactly cold or unpleasant, simply reserved and calculating.

  Desirable qualities in a “designated negotiator,” I suppose.

  “Honestly, I’m surprised you can stay independent this close to the Supremacy,” Jonathan added, wondering if he could provoke a reaction from the man.

  He couldn’t. Vasari’s answer was as calm and unemotional as everything else he’d said.

  “Lugh and Fiachna are just terraformed moons around the gas giant Fand,” he said. “They don’t offer much besides a habitable place for the men and women who maintain the gas mines to raise their children.” He shrugged, the movement stiff and almost robotic. “The mines themselves are what keep our economy going, but the Dagda system is at the dead end of a jump-point node. We’re not on the way to anywhere else and shipment costs would be too high to justify the expense of annexing us…for the Starkad Supremacy.”

  Finally, he allowed a frown to mar his sculpted features, eyes losing focus as they stared through the table in front of him.

  “Unfortunately, it also means we aren’t worth defending.”

  “Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” Jonathan smiled, mostly to hide the tension. He was alone with the man, and he wasn’t certain he was ready for it. Lyta had insisted, though. Maybe she was trying to make up for usurping his authority with Magnus, though the details of what had happened remained their secret.

  “You’re in charge,” she’d told him in the docking bay, and yet somehow it had still seemed like an order.

  “I wouldn’t expect the Jeuta to be active this close to the Supremacy border either,” Jonathan ventured, stepping back over to the table, leaning on it with the heels of his hands but not sitting down. It was a trick he’d learned from his father; it put people off-balance. “They’re risking retaliation, aren’t they?”

  “According to what they’ve told their interpreters, they’re independent from the Jeuta Confederation, a splinter group looking to set up shop for themselves somewhere further away from the central government. And we’re their means to that end.”

  “What do they want?”

  “Fuel, ore and ships.” His carefully held face twisted sourly. “More than we can continue to give up and still turn a profit. We considered simply hiring escorts for our barges, but they’ve threatened to go after our production facilities if we resist. A consensus has been reached.” Jonathan stifled a laugh at the intricately-crafted passive voice of the sentence; Vasari was going out of his way to avoid saying who had made the decision. “We believe their ultimate aim is to simply take over our production machinery and, eventually, our worlds.”

  He smiled, as thin and insincere as the expression could possibly be.

  “And that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

  Kamehameha-Nui Johannsen whistled softly at the images playing out across the readout screen. Osceola understood why. The ship was old, centuries old perhaps, but she wasn’t a converted commercial craft with strapped-on weapons; she was military, born and bred.

  “That’s a Reconstruction War era destroyer,” Osceola confirmed with a nod toward the surveillance image of the angular, wedge-shaped starship. “Maybe Mbeki, maybe Shang construction. Can’t say she has her original load-out, but just the hull is a weapon itself, thick as it is.” He shot Lyta a rueful grin. “No wonder these damned plutocrats don’t want to mix it up with the Jeuta their own selves.”

  Lyta Randell looked as if she wanted to pace, but it wasn’t practical in microgravity, even with the magnetic boots the four of them were wearing. Kammy always seemed ridiculous in them, wobbling this way and that against the magnetic anchors like some sort of parade float. The kid, Slaughter—Good God, what a dumb-ass name—stood stock-still, hands clasped behind his back, frowning in concentration.

  “This is going to be a damned sight harder than those half-assed bandits,” Osceola added for the kid’s benefit. “Jeuta don’t fuck around, Wihtgar can tell you that. And they ain’t got no inflated ego like that dumb-shit Magnus.”

  “He’s right about that,” Lyta admitted, eyeing Jonathan Slaughter sidelong. “Plus, the Dagda Commercial Investment Council doesn’t have any idea where the Jeuta are operating out of. They know it’s not anything one jump out, and that’s about it.” She shrugged, an awkward, full-body thing in free-fall. “Maybe we should pass this one up.”

  Osceola knew that wasn’t happening even before the kid shook his head. He might have been a wet-behind-the-ears company commander, but he had focus.

  “We need this job.”

  Jonathan glanced around the bridge carefully before he went on, as if to assure himself the four of them were the only ones there. Osceola had dismissed the duty shift for the meeting since the Shakak didn’t have anything that could rightly be called a conference room or an operations center.

  “This gives us a legitimate reason for heading through Starkad space. If we turn it down, we’ll have to bum around waiting for another job to pop up, and then we’ll have to take the next one, no matter where it is, or risk looking suspicious.”

  It was a legitimate point, Osceola had to admit.

  “Granting that,” he interjected, “we still got the problem of how the hell do we find them? ‘Cause I’m telling you right now, we ain’t gonna be taking that…” He motioned at the destroyer. “…on head to head in open space with this ship if we wait for them to come to us. If we ain’t surprising them, we ain’t winning this fight.”

  “I got an idea,” Kammy said, surprising even his Captain and longtime friend. The big man was wagging a finger at the image of the destroyer, bobbing in the air
with each motion. “There’s one ship we know they’d take back to their base.”

  Lyta was way ahead of him, grinning broadly at the First Officer.

  “The one Dagda is giving them!”

  “We gotta put a tracker on it,” Kammy agreed, nodding. “But it can’t activate until it gets to the system they’re heading to.” He nodded toward Jonathan. “Maybe your…” He frowned. “Brother? Cousin? Whatever, maybe Terry can help come up with something. It’s gotta’ launch on compressed gas, maybe have some kind of radar-absorbent shield it can slough off once the enemy is out of range, then start broadcasting a unidirectional beacon back at the jump point.”

  “God damn,” Osceola murmured, scratching behind his right ear absently. “The only way we could find it is to head down every jump track one after another until we hear the signal. It could take days…even weeks.”

  “Unless we come up with something better, it’s what we’re going to have to go with,” Jonathan declared. The kid was very decisive, which Osceola found damned annoying. He motioned back toward the main view screens at the commercial space station turning slowly against the blue arc of Rhiannon in the background. “I told them we’d have a tentative plan for them in six hours and that was four hours ago.”

  Osceola blinked at him, mouth falling open.

  “Well, why the hell did you tell them that?” he demanded. “What if we hadn’t been able to figure out a plan?” He waved a hand at the image of the destroyer. “Besides, even if we do track down the system they’re using for a base, what the hell are we gonna do about it? Build another damned nuke?”