Soldier of Fortune: A Gideon Quinn Adventure (Fortune Chronicles Book 1) (11 page)

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

BY THE TIME
Jinna had gathered up a few belongings from her nearby flat and Gideon had ‘arranged’ transportation — he told Mia they would absolutely be returning the sassy little Edsel Comet as soon as they had Jinna settled — it was well after 14 midnight, and the main airfield gates were locked.

Luckily, Mia was able to lead them to the smaller gate, the one used by the field and ‘ship crews.

It was, in fact, being used as they approached, by two somewhat worse-for-wear airmen.

“All I’m saying is, life on airships’d be a deal simpler if we had us some matter transporters, like they had back inna day.”

“You’re sauced,” his friend tried to slap his friend’s arm and hit the air instead, proving the sauce had not been selective in its targets. “Ain’t so nuch thing as matter tranposters. Never ‘ave been.”

As one, Mia, Jinna and Gideon (carrying Jinna’s carryall) slowed their pace, the better to avoid being brought into the drunken debate.

“A’course their were,” drunk number one insisted, weaving to a halt. “S’in all’a records ain’t it?”

“Them’s ficshun, Johnny,” drunk number two opined, drunkenly. “If all’a books our aassestors brought wiff’em was a record, we’d be arse to elbows in fairies, an kaiju an’ coffee.”

“Oh my,” Gideon whispered.

Jinna elbowed him.

“I don’ know how you can close your mind so, Ken,” drunk number one shook his head — and almost face planted because of it.

“An I don’ know how you can hear past the wind whislin’ through that empty skull, John.”

At this point, the pair turned off towards the passenger liners and though Gideon feared they were going to come to blows (or, given the level of sobriety, near misses), at least they’d be doing it far, far from him.

“I never did believe in coffee,” Mia was saying as they wove their way through the anchored cargo vessels.

“I’ve always wanted to,” Gideon said.

“There it is,” Jinna pointed and all three froze, staring at the uniqueness that was the Errant.

“It flies?” Mia looked from the ship to Jinna and back again.

“If it does, I bet they serve coffee, too,” Gideon said.

* * *

They did not serve coffee, but Rory assured them that the Errant did indeed fly. “She’s nae much to look at, but she’s a rare lass,” he said.

The visitors looked up at the much patched hard-shell of the airship’s dirigible, then back to Rory, currently perched atop the port aft engine pod with his torch in one hand and spanner in the other.

“I can believe that,” Gideon said.

“Maybe this was a bad idea,” Mia offered.

“What’s a bad idea?” Rory asked. “And for that matter,” he turned his focus to Jinna, “what are you doing out and about and it so late?”

“It’s nothing,” Jinna began.

“Jinna’s in trouble,” Mia said at the same time.

“Trouble?” Rory was already halfway down the pod’s ladder as he asked, “Of what sort?”

And whatever Gideon might have thought of the Errant — or her captain — the gaze the young man turned on Jinna was reassuringly serious.

“You’re dead pale,” Rory observed before Jinna could protest again. “You’ll come inside and have some tea while you tell us what’s what.” Already he was leading the small party around to the rear gangplank.

“Rory,” a male voice emerged from the gondola as they approached, “have you figured out what’s going on with that engine, yet?”

“And here’s John,” Rory said, patting Jinna on the shoulder. “I’m still sussing it out, Captain, but there’s another problem we’ve to see to.”

“Problem?” the man echoed. “I’m not sure we can afford any more problems with this job… ah, pardon me, Jinna,” he paused halfway down the gangplank as he noticed the young woman Rory was shepherding aboard. “I didn’t realize Rory had company.” He glanced up, saw Mia and Gideon and dropped his chin in a nod of greeting before returning his attention to the mechanic.

Gideon, watching, found himself annoyed by Pitte’s lack of distinction. There was nothing about him to suggest a man complicit in the institutionalized murder of half a company. He looked, in fact, like what he was supposed to be, an ordinary freighter captain, dressed in shirtsleeves and trousers held up by faded suspenders. Physically he was almost as tall as Gideon and about the same age, though his  hair was more fair and his eyes a warmer shade of blue, and his physique more solid than Gideon’s rangy frame.

Then again, Pitte hadn’t spent half a dozen years in the stir, harvesting crystal and fighting for every spoonful of Morton Kibble.

“So, what kind of problem are we talking about?” Pitte was asking, coming the rest of the way down to the tarmac.

“Jinna’s got some sort of trouble,” Rory explained, then looked back at the others. “This is John Pitte, captain of the Errant. John, this is Jinna’s friend, Mia.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Pitte smiled down at the dodger, who grinned back.

“Sorry,” Rory said, looking at Gideon, “but I never caught your name.”

“I didn’t throw it,” was Gideon’s short reply.

Pitte’s eyes turned to him and then he took a step closer as he asked, “Don’t I know you?”

Gideon’s chin dipped once in acknowledgment, but he said nothing. He did see, however, the moment the starbuck dropped, because Pitte’s face went white and blank, as if he’d seen a ghost.

In a way, Gideon supposed, he had.

“Colonel Quinn,” Pitte said, the name falling hollowly between the two men. 

“I’m surprised you remember. We never met. Formally.”

“No,” Pitte said, his face still unreadable, until he looked past Gideon’s face and his expression became actively puzzled. “You kept the coat?”

Gideon nodded to Pitte’s civilian garb. “You didn’t.”

“No,” Pitte said again. “It didn’t feel right…”

Which was all John Pitte had time to say because that was when Gideon’s already thin hold on control snapped and with a rushing shove he slammed Pitte back, headfirst into the Errant’s hull where he then grabbed the stunned captain by the throat with both hands and began to squeeze.  Behind his eyelids he read the names etched in the wall of his cell…
Eitan Fehr… Esther Carver… Bertie Walsingham…

Around him, Gideon heard voices rising in shock, hands tugging at him in protest. But there was no protest in Pitte’s eyes.

There, all Gideon saw was acceptance and, he thought, relief.

It was as if Pitte had been waiting for this moment.

Waiting for judgment.

Pitte’s silent affirmation of his own guilt served only to make Gideon more angry. “Six soldiers,” he said as he’d wanted to say so often over the years. “Six of my company died on your order.”

“
N-not mine
,” Pitte’s voice creaked out as an  arm, presumably Rory’s, snaked around Gideon’s own throat in an attempt to pull him back.

But Gideon wasn’t letting go. Six dead soldiers lent him more than enough strength to hold on. “Liar.”

“
No
,” Pitte managed to force out. “
My fault, but not… mine.
”

Which made squat all sense to Gideon. Distantly, he was aware of Rory’s arm falling away. Going for the cops, maybe? Didn’t matter. He’d be too late. “Maybe,” he said to Pitte, “you’ll get to explain it to them.”

“In fact,” a new voice — its cultured Fujian accent the twin to the dead Eitan Fehr’s — cut into Gideon’s awareness, “he has already explained it to me. Repeatedly.”

Gideon shook his head. He was just hearing things, that was all, memories surfacing in the face of Fehr’s killer.

“Let him go,” another voice snapped from behind, this one female, supremely angry, and not known to Gideon. He might have ignored the order, but it was accompanied by the press of a something cold, metallic and humming at the base of his skull. “Let him go,” she said again, “or I will be decorating the hull with your brains.”

“
Gideon
,” Mia’s voice, strangely thick, followed the threat.

“I won’t bother to count to three,” the woman said.

From atop the gondola, Elvis let out a low croon.

But it was Pitte’s expression — one that had no name but which Gideon had seen in countless mirrors since that day in Nasa— that had his fingers loosening and his hands falling to his sides.   

Pitte, no longer held up by Gideon’s murderous fury, slumped down onto a supporting shoulder.

A shoulder that belonged to Eitan Fehr.

Which was impossible, because Eitan Fehr was dead.

Gideon’s hand half rose, then fell again. He was just turning to Mia, who was, unbelievably, crying, when he felt a sharp thunk at the back of his head and then
he
was slumping too, all the way to the wet tarmac where he heard Pitte’s voice, much the worse for wear, berating the woman.

“Jagati, that was hardly necessary.”

“Were you without oxygen long enough to suffer brain damage?” the woman asked. “Because that was absolutely necessary.”

To Gideon’s mind, Jagati probably had the right of it, though he was too far down the long slide to unconsciousness to say so.

* * *

“You have such a way with people, Quinn,” Dani said, leaning over him on the wet tarmac. Her dark hair was loose this time, spilling down in a curtain, closing him off from everyone else.

“It’s a skill,” Gideon told her. He reached out to touch her, and saw his hand was still shaking from the effort of nearly murdering a man.

She jerked her head back, taking her hair with it. At his side he could see Pitte, still supported by the surprisingly not dead Fehr. 

Standing next to both men was a tall, statuesque woman with skin like umber and hair as dark as Dani’s, but tumbling in a riot of curls while Dani’s was straight as the rain currently falling on the airfield. The woman’s hand gripped the hilt of her holstered gun as she glared at Pitte, which told Gideon this was probably the Jagati who’d knocked him senseless.

To either side, Mia and Elvis and Jinna and Rory were looking on in various states of shock and anger.

None of them were moving.

“What?” he asked, looking back to see Dani watching him. “What’s wrong?”

“You,” she told him. “This,” she gestured at the tableaux surrounding them. “What you are letting yourself become — what you are letting Jessup Rand turn you into.”

“Rand’s not turning me into anything,” he said, then watched her tilt her head in that particular way she had, and cursed “Fine, what’s he turning me into, then?”

“Him,” she said simply.

“Which would be bad,” Gideon said, amazed at the coldness in his own voice, “if being Rand weren’t working out so well for him.”

And that, he thought, as she shook her head and faded into the rain, was exactly the wrong thing to say.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

WHAT EVENTUALLY CAME
to be known as the Nasa incident (a designation Gideon always thought too clean, as if it referred to nothing more dire than wearing one’s combat uniform to the Regimental Ball) was, to most of the United Colonies, no more than a blip in the wartime annals, at worst a smattering of crystal dust, swept quickly into Containment where it could pose no threat to the well-tuned machine of the Colonial Infantry Corps.

But when he let himself think about it, even Gideon had to admit the — incident — hadn’t lasted long.

Minutes only, he’d remember, a handful of minutes to see half his team dead and the rest, along with himself, in detention.

It had been shorter even for Gideon, who’d missed the last of that handful of minutes when one of the Kodiak's cannon took out a nearby cypress, a small chunk of which had knocked him senseless.

He’d woken to the prodding of a boot and a voice, high-pitched from nerves, demanding he rise and surrender arms.

It seemed Colonel Gideon Quinn was to be placed in custody on charges of desertion and treason.

At first Gideon hadn’t understood what that voice was saying, a little because his ears were still ringing but mostly because he was laying on his side, facing Corpsman Estelle Carver, also on her side.

Carver’s eyes were open wide and staring, as if in surprise.

He figured she must have to have been at least a little shocked to find that big-ass splinter of cypress spitting from her chest.

The staring contest, such as it was, might have continued indefinitely, had not the sensation of someone pulling Gideon’s sword from its sheath likewise pulled his gaze away from the very young (and very dead) radio operator.

“Treason?” he heard himself echo the only word that had sufficiently penetrated the fog. Then, by dint of sheer stubbornness, he got himself to his feet.

“Treason,” he said again, focusing on the also very young (but very
not
dead) Air Corps Provost pointing a fully charged crysto-plas rifle at him. “What, and please, feel free to be specific, are you talking about? And where’s Captain Ravine, no,” he shook his head, which surprisingly ached (Tree. Exploding. Right). “Not Ravine,” he corrected himself. “Gorge — Chasm —
Pitte,
” he said at last with a dark sort of triumph before starting to move forward. “
Where
is Captain Pitte, because I want a word with the murdering son of a—“

“Colonel Quinn, you will
stand down
,” the prov snapped, stepping back and bringing the rifle to his shoulder, which might have been more imposing if the kid’s Adam’s apple hadn’t been bobbing with nerves. As it was, the only thing keeping Gideon from ripping the weapon aside was the fact it was already live and the prov’s finger was tense on the trigger.

“Fine,” Gideon said, rocking back on his heels. “I’m standing down. See?” he held his hands out at his sides. “This is me, standing down.”

The trigger finger relaxed, ever so slightly, and Gideon took that as an okay to look around, hoping against hope that he’d already seen the worst, with Carver.

He hadn’t.

The apiary was a mass of blackened stumps. The soft Nasa air was thick with smoke and sharp with the odor of blood and the ozone-heavy stench unique to crystal plasma weaponry.

The thrum of bees, disturbed from their rest, and the distinctive creak of an airship’s tie ropes underscored the otherwise unnatural silence.

Amid the flickering hand torches he could make out a score of Airmen, moving through the smoke-filled night. The only sign of his own company was Carver, dead at his feet, and a pair of boots, standing suspiciously empty, about a dozen meters away.

“Where is Pitte?” Gideon asked again, looking from those empty boots to the provost. “Why did he give the order to murder my company?”

“Actually, I gave the order,” a voice emerged from the dark. “Although I fail to see how firing on soldiers embroiled in an act of treason could be considered murder.”

Gideon turned to his left to see none other than General Jessup Rand, he who had sent him to Nasa in the first place, stepping from the shadows.

“Treason,” Gideon repeated the word again, but it made no more sense now than it had the first two times.

“What else could explain your presence here?” Rand continued, coming to a halt beside the provost, who became, if possible, more tense at the General’s proximity. “You and your company in Nasa, en route to Coalition territory.”

“That,” Gideon said, “is a complete load of draco sh-
ow
!“ he swore and ducked as the provost, in a moment of panic, loosed a burst of plasma fire, singing Gideon’s shoulder and taking out one of the last trees standing.

He straightened and glared at the kid who, to give him credit, looked apologetic. Gideon turned his attention back to Rand. “You have absolutely zero—“

“Proof?” this time it was Rand who interrupted, raising a hand which Gideon now saw held a standard field pack — Gideon’s field pack — from which he pulled a scarred document cylinder from the map pocket.

By now there were more people emerging from the shadows — Airmen, more AC provosts and, he was relieved to see, Corpsmen Freeman and Patel, singed but alive.

While the gathering crowd watched, Rand slid a roll of onionskin papers from the cylinder. He gestured and one of the Airmen came forward with a torch as the general unrolled one of the pages. “I’m no engineer,” Rand said, holding the paper before column of light, “but this looks a great deal like the specs for one of our plasma cannon. And this,” he pulled out a second sheet, “this is a map,” he looked up, “marking the location of several key UC weapons’ depots. Ah, and here are plans for troop movements, mission specs… I’d imagine this is worth quite a lot to the Coalition brass.” He shook his head over the sheaf of papers, as if in shock, then rolled them back into the cylinder, which he tucked into his coat pocket. “It’s sheerest luck I intercepted one of your correspondences in time for the Kodiak to put a stop to your treason,” now he looked at Gideon, “Odile.”

At which point Gideon felt sure the ground was giving way beneath him, as it had given way beneath Lt. Fehr so many minutes past.

Rand was gesturing to the provost, who approached Gideon while unhooking a pair of restraints. “Colonel Gideon Quinn, you are hereby placed in custody—“

But Gideon was already moving

In the end it took three provs and the application of several shock sticks to get Gideon off the general, but not before he left Rand with several broken ribs, a bruised spleen and a shattered kneecap that would continue to ache every time the weather was damp.

* * *

Later, much later, Gideon was stewing in the Kodiak’s brig, waiting for the ‘ship to lift off and wondering where the rest of his company had been stowed when Rand came down to see him.

Gideon waited until the general dismissed the duty officer before rising from his bunk. He looked at Rand, and his new accessory. “Nice cane.”

Rand didn’t rise to the bait. “Colonel,” he said, glancing down the passage to make certain they were alone. Satisfied, he turned back to Gideon. “You are going to plead guilty to all charges,” he said simply.

Gideon stared. “I really don’t see that happening,” he said after a moment.

“First, I will pretend there was a sir at the end of that statement and second, I rather think you will,” Rand told him, “particularly given the overwhelming evidence against you.”

“The manufactured evidence,” Gideon countered.

“And you would prove this, how?” Rand asked. “All your witnesses are either dead or likewise accused. The Atlas, which you say transported you to Nasa on my orders, has yet to respond to any hails.”

Gideon’s jaw, already clenched to the point of pain, twitched. “Dead or paid off?”

“That
is
a question,” Rand said, and then changed the subject. “Then of course, there is all
this
,” he held up the cane, gestured to the livid bruise that was the right side of his face. “You’d be amazed how much weight aggravated assault and attempted murder can add to a case of treason. So much weight,” he added, “I am within my mandate to order a battlefield execution. Not for you, sadly. Your rank guarantees you the right to trial, but I can and will have every surviving member of the 12
th
company shot at dawn. A terrible fate for those six soldiers,” Rand said, leaning on his cane, as if weary. But there was nothing weary in his eyes as they locked on Gideon’s. “Especially if they were only following their colonel’s — their
traitorous
colonel’s — orders. And in case the lives of your enlisteds aren’t sufficient motivation,” he continued, “I’m given to understand you’ve a certain fondness for one Lt. Indani Solis, currently assigned to the Phalanx.”

“Wait,” Gideon said.

“The Phalanx, which I’ve only just ordered to the eastern front. So easy for a jump to go wrong in the middle of a firefight. Lines fail, weapons misfire — accidents happen.” He paused, studying Gideon. “I see I have your attention.”

“
Yes.
You — have my attention.”

“And you understand just how many lives are at stake, here.”

“Are they alive? Is Dani— are they all still alive?”

“You doubt me?”

“What do you think?” Gideon’s hands slammed against the bars and it was the minutest satisfaction to see Rand flinch. “Are they alive?”

“For now,” Rand’s response came out more as a hiss than as words, “but unless you take responsibility for the crimes of which you have been accused, what remains of your company will be witnessing their last suns rise in the next two hours, and it won’t be another full day before Lt. Solis makes her final jump.”

* * *

In the end there had been no choice, not for Gideon. Even if a single scrap of evidence to support his innocence existed, he couldn’t let Rand execute the rest of his team.

And Dani…

So no, there had been no choice.

Even so, after it was done, after he’d sworn out his confession before witnesses, and signed his name to the document, and returned to the brig to await delivery to the court martial where he would receive his sentence, Rand returned to visit, once more.

Again the general stopped at Gideon’s cell, again dismissed the duty provost and again turned to Gideon who was, again, stretched out on his bunk.

He didn’t bother to get up, this time. “Anything else I can get you?” Gideon asked the ceiling. “A pint of blood? My left hand?”

Rand said nothing. He continued saying nothing for so long Gideon was eventually moved to sit up and look at the man, and what he saw there had the spit drying in his mouth because what he saw wasn’t triumph, it wasn’t the gloating he’d have expected.

What he saw was a self-loathing so hungry it seemed to have hollowed the general out, leaving him nothing but husk. “What?” he asked, rising now, though he didn’t step closer to the bars. Something in Jessup Rand’s expression prevented any such forward motion. “What?” he said again.

Rand seemed to shiver, as if coming awake. “Do you have the least idea,” he said, his voice as hollow as his expression, “the
least
idea what I’ve done because of you?”

Gideon, who'd lost half his company, believed he knew, but that still left him with a burning question of his own. “What did
I
do,” he asked, quietly, “that those soldiers had to die?”

At which point Rand’s eyes hardened and his body straightened and the loathing of self gave way to a livid, living hatred of the man imprisoned before him.

Gideon had the space of his own, caught breath to absorb the impact of the general’s hostility before Rand turned and began to walk away. 

“What did I do?” Gideon asked, moving, finally, to the bars.

Rand, his steps uneven on the grated deck, continued on.

“Damn you, Rand! Tell me why they’re dead!”

At which point the general did stop. “You should never have touched her,” he said, not quite looking back. Then he continued on through the brig’s door, leaving Gideon alone, still grasping the bars of his cell for many minutes before uttering the soft denial.

“
I didn’t.
”