The nanobots overloaded every nerve ending in his body with pain signals.
As Alfonso convulsed in a silent scream, Doctor Kircher’s surprised giggles filled the room.
Several hours later, a small, tube-shaped vent opened in the hull of an unnamed corvette spaceship orbiting Dione, black metal against the planet’s gray atmosphere. Alfonso Petra’s remains were ejected out of the vent unceremoniously. His body gyrated against the backdrop of space, with his dead eyes frozen in a pained, unheeded plea.
Not long after that, a courier ship began the months-long voyage toward planet Jagal, capital of the Systems Alliance and home to the Tal-Kader Conglomerate.
War raced at the ship’s heels.
2
CHAPTER TWO
CLARKE
All that Joseph Clarke wanted was to finish his whiskey without getting yanked away into the night by Internal Affairs.
While he watched at the small-timer gang drawing loyalist graffiti on the abandoned building across the street, he suspected his fated meeting with the IA’s detectives would arrive closer than he had hoped.
“It doesn’t concern you,” his waitress advised him, drawing Clarke’s attention away from the scene and back to his rugged table at his seedy bar of choice, Kozue Pub. “Don’t get involved.”
Clarke’s eyes flew to the waitress, a middle-aged woman with a face hardened by past mistakes. For all he knew, the waitress saw the same in him.
“Loud and clear,” he said, and waved his index and middle finger as one might gesture with a gun. “Just kids being kids, alright.”
The woman grunted and took away his empty peanut’s tray. “Just friendly advice, old-timer,” she said before she went back inside.
Clarke took a long swig of whiskey and let the burning sensation traveling down his throat get his full attention. He liked Kouze’s. The whiskey was barely tampered with, judging from the lack of chemical-tasting bite on his tongue.
And the employees were sensible people, just like his waitress, good folks who knew just how to survive in the cutthroat culture of Jagal Metropolitan City: by keeping their heads low and knowing when to act like you had gone suddenly blind.
Outside the bar’s window, the kids were drawing Commodore Terry’s face with his prominent, wedge-like forehead exaggerated at grotesque proportions. One of them wrote “Earth can go fuck itself” in neon purple, underlined, under Terry’s drawing.
It wasn’t that worrying, yet. It was a common misconception that Tal-Kader was the Commodore’s lapdog nowadays. They had signed the terms of surrender after all. In truth, old Kader hated Terry as much as the common man. Of course, UEF Mississippi, orbiting Jagal like a gunmetal moon for a decade now, forced the Conglomerate to watch their manners better than the kids outside. Clarke looked away.
His wristband computer had a voice note left from his boss, Julia Fillon, waiting for him. Knowing he could use the distraction, he listened to it while sipping his drink.
“Yo, Grandpa, don’t think we didn’t realize you missed the last five minutes of your shift today. Keep trusting the assembly line to run itself, and one day you’ll wake up to find that robots have finally replaced your ancient ass.”
The “Grandpa” talk was justified, since he was almost twice her age. Her tone wasn’t admonishing, though, and Clarke chuckled to himself. He could almost see Julia’s fake annoyance drawn on her face, trying her best to hide a conspiratorial smile. She’d be the death of him, one day, he was sure of it.
“Anyway, someone forgot to report your mishap to our benevolent overlords. Don’t get too comfortable, Grandpa, it’s going to cost you. I’ll have to see you in my office tonight, so you can make it up to me.”
Julia winked, and the message ended. Clarke smiled to himself. Julia was easily the same age as the kids outside, filled with rebellious energy, eager to defy The Man, and to prove to herself she wouldn’t end up like her parents.
What she saw in Clarke, only she knew, and she wouldn’t tell him.
The sound of glass shattering brought Clarke back to reality. The kids were burning a trashcan while one of them drew a caricature of Vagn Mortensen, Tal-Kader’s CEO, sucking off the Commodore.
Alright, Clarke sighed to himself. That’s bound to piss someone off, sooner or later.
It wasn’t that he was on Kader’s payroll—not anymore—or worse, that he was one of Commodore Terry’s few actual fans. Simply put, Internal Affair’s way of dealing with loyalists had the unfortunate tendency to splash on anyone nearby. There wasn’t such a thing as friendly fire in Jagal Metro City.
And what the hell, Kozue Pub’s crew were good people.
Clarke finished his drink, thumbed his wristband to tip the waitress, and left to stick his nose in business that didn’t concern him.
“Fuck off, man, this doesn’t concern you,” the kid said. His angry swagger made his bright Mohawk sway side to side like a peacock’s tail, which, for all Clarke’s knew, could be the entire point.
Clarke raised his hands briefly at the kid and the rest of his group to show them he was unarmed. “I’m just saying, you may want to take your art to another zone.”
One that lacks clear line-of-sight to the orbitals, he thought to himself, glancing up at the artificial sky above them. There was nothing strange in the pretend-night, but he knew the orbitals were there, always watching.
And, of course, there was the Mississippi, waiting in upper Jagal’s orbit, with sensors so powerful it could see a mouse take a shit in one end of Jagal and count all the worms inside.
“Oh no, we are staying right here,” said another one, androgynous and lanky, with that slight unevenness of proportions that were the result of an infancy of cheap stim juice’s injections. “We want Tal-Kader to see what we think of them. If you have a problem with that…”
The kids fanned out in half a circle in front of Clarke, some of them with their hands in the pockets of their jackets. There were five of them, all younger and hungry to vent their frustrations with a fight. Clarke grimaced. He regretted getting involved already, but he wasn’t in the habit of backing down.
“The only problem I have,” he told them, trying to inject his voice with authority. Once a time, it had come naturally to him, “is that you idiots are going to get me in trouble when the video-feed shows my ID close to yours after some IA grunt is investigating your drawings. The problem you have is that you’ll spend the next decade in some hole-in-the-ground jail if you stay here. You think that will show Tal-Kader who’s boss?”
“We’re not scared of Internal Affairs,” Mohawk guy boasted.
“That only means you’re an idiot,” said Clarke. He grimaced again. Now the fight was unavoidable. The fact he had a head over the tallest of them wasn’t going to deter them. Muscle mass and height meant little in a fight where firearms were involved.
That meant they were packing. At least one of them. Plastic, probably. One or two shots at most. The odds weren’t in his favor, but Clarke had survived worse.
“I know rats like you,” Androgynous told him, “always thinking of themselves. Edge’s freedom may be hanging by a thread, and all you can think of is not pissing of Internal Affairs.”
They were getting closer. Clarke gave them a wide berth, retreating where they advanced, but not back to the pub. Instead, he moved sideways, parallel to the kids, until his shoulder reached the same wall they were painting on. As a result, he ended completely surrounded and with all his escape routes cut, except for the dead-end alley a couple meters away from him, currently blocked by Mohawk’s bulk.