Chaos Space - Marianne de Pierres [52]
‘So you think Landhurst was after the ‘zoon?’
Rast steepled her fingers. ‘I knew him for a businessman but I didn’t know he was dangerous.’
‘What about Captain Dren from Audacity? How do you know him?’ Mira asked.
The mercenaries exchanged glances. Latourn, whose complexion had turned as white as Rast’s hair, rested his head on his arms on the table.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘He said that “you owed him now”.’
‘What else did he say, Baronessa?’
‘That I should join Consilience; that there was room for people like me.’
The mercenaries all exploded into laughter. Latourn hammered the table with his fist and Rast rocked back and forth on her chair until tears streaked down her filthy cheeks.
Mira took a large swallow of wine. It was beginning to lift the edge from her fatigue. She let them spend their mirth, not caring one way or the other what they found amusing.
‘Have you heard of Consilience?’ Rast asked finally.
Mira sipped deeply again -
Mira, your body chemistry is changing. It might not help your foetus if you ingest drink—
- and refilled her glass before she replied.
‘Si and no. You hear things on Araldis but there was no way to prove their veracity. Our farcast links were always unstable and our Studium texts were . . .’
‘Bullshit?’
‘Parochial,’ Mira finished.
‘Consilience is the third side,’ said Rast.
‘The right side,’ added Catchut.
Mira regarded Rast with a steady stare. If the mercenaries wished to talk more she would listen but she would not play a guessing game with them.
‘OLOSS brought order and rules and accountability to most of Orion but not everyone wants that.’
‘Criminals do not, I should imagine,’ Mira said.
‘That’s where you show your ignorance, Fedor. It’s not as simple as that. Not everyone wants to be safe and constrained. OLOSS is seen as a protector by most, but as a dictator by some.’
‘The Extropists?’
‘Them, yeah. And others.’
Mira found Rast’s ability to switch between crude and eloquent baffling. For the first time she wondered about the mercenary’s background. ‘Where do you fit in this web?’ Mira asked.
‘I fit where I please. I take people as I please. But Consilience believes in something that OLOSS doesn’t, and that’s loyalty. Loyalty can keep you alive.’
‘You believe in loyalty?’
Rast took several noisy swigs from her demijohn. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone with an unnatural sparkle. She ran her tongue over the neck of the bottle, licking the runaway drops. ‘I could teach you something about loyalty, Baronessa. In fact, I could teach you ... a lot.’
Mira’s throat tightened. She put her flute down so that they would not see her hand trembling. She let her glance slide to Rast’s filthy boots. ‘You should wash yourself,’ she said.
They all laughed again at that, as if she’d meant to be funny, not acerbic.
Catchut yawned and stood. ‘I’m heading to kip down, Capo. And, like the Baronessa says, to wash. Feel like I’ve been poking my shaft in a jam roll.’ He moved his thighs apart in an exaggerated fashion as if they were stuck together.
Latourn climbed unsteadily to his feet as well. ‘Me too, Cap. This ‘zoon goo crusts up your crap-hole.’
They left together, still laughing.
‘I knew Dren in the war,’ Rast announced when the pucker settled shut. She sprawled sideways out of her chair, taking quick swigs. ‘He fought for Consilience too, but he wasn’t just on the payroll, he was…is one of them.’
Mira saw her guard dropping with each swallow. ‘We didn’t hear much news of the war—until it was over, at least.’
‘If you take the history downloads they’ll tell you that the Extras started it but it was OLOSS.’
‘What do you mean? OLOSS retaliated after one of our worlds was attacked.’ Mira searched her memory. ‘Longthrow, wasn’t it?’
‘The Extras need raw materials; they exist in one small corner of Orion and there’s not enough minerals there to support their needs. They bought Longthrow from its OLOSS owners. The owners were broke and it was a shitty, slimy place overrun by amphibians. OLOSS panicked