Siege of Praetar (Tales of a Dying Star Book 1) (11 page)

He didn’t mind being called a sinner. The Prophet yelled the insult at anyone and everyone. But Bruno was dusty from the ride and unhappy at being woken. He gestured and Loddac left the group. Bruno turned away and yawned. The Prophet cried out but then was silenced. A few moments later Loddac returned to them, blood dripping from his club.

Their destination was a wide factory that stretched an entire block along the boulevard. It had no windows; its entrance was plain double doors. Once again Bruno climbed from his cart, gesturing at Rief to join him. He considered Loddac a moment before waving him along too. Blood on the guard’s club would add emphasis to Bruno’s words.

It took several blinks to adjust before he could see in the factory’s dim light. One long conveyor belt snaked its way through the room, with women spaced along the belt every twenty feet assembling parts. His presence was an aberration, and every worker stared with open mouths.

He turned left and walked along the wall, conscious of their eyes. It made him smile. If they were surprised by his visit Jin would be too.

The secretary rose from her desk outside the office when he approached. She looked Bruno up and down, unsure of what to say. He’d never visited the factory before but she surely knew who he was. She made some protesting noises but he ignored them. Rief opened the office door and Bruno strode inside.

The man behind the desk was not Jin.

He had the blue eyes of a Melisao, but that was the only similarity. Where Jin had been stocky this man was slim. His short, thin hair was the color of Praetari mud, and his eyes were too close together. “Who are you?” the man said.

They were the exact words Bruno had opened his mouth to say. “Where’s Jin?” he asked instead.

The man looked past Bruno to the doorway, where the secretary’s head appeared. Rief put his arm around her shoulder and led her away, slamming the door behind him.

“Jin was arrested yesterday,” the man said, now flushed. “I’m Lenir, the new foreman.”

Bruno’s heart jumped into his throat. Was Jin removed for dealing with him? If his work was discovered peacekeepers should have already stormed the Station. They could be there right now, waiting for him to return.

He regarded Lenir carefully. “Why was he removed?”

“He was stealing food credits. Hundreds of them, apparently. As if the Governor wouldn’t find out.”

Bruno felt relieved, but only for a moment. It had taken a long time to dig his claws into Jin, but once he had, the deliveries came every week, never late. And here was Lenir, staring at him cluelessly. Losing Jin was a blow to his plans indeed.

Something on Bruno’s face must have scared the man. His hand reached out to push a button on the desk. The motion caused Loddac to raise his club, scaring Lenir back against the wall. The office window suddenly shifted, tinting to conceal their meeting. The guard lowered his weapon, though Lenir was still pressed against the wall. Bruno smiled. This may go easier than he expected.

“My name is Bruno. I’m a businessman.” The office held only one chair, so Bruno stepped closer to the desk. “Jin and I had an arrangement, one I would like to extend to you. You are a lucky man, Lenir.”

From his pocket Bruno pulled a small square device. It was more advanced than anything a Praetari ought to own, with a computer screen on the front and some electronics encased behind. There were two numbers visible on the screen: a sixteen-digit account number, and then the balance below. Buttons on the side allowed him to scroll through a list of transactions. Davon’s deposit was already listed, he saw.

“What is your Melisao account number?” he asked Lenir.

The foreman hesitated, taking another long look at Loddac before rattling off sixteen numbers and letters. Bruno held down a button while he spoke; the device listened. When he was done a new account displayed on the screen.

Bruno gave an exaggerated laugh. “You are not a rich man, foreman Lenir. But that will change today.” He tapped a few commands into the device. “Check your balance now.”

Lenir stared at them with wide eyes. He was confused at the conversation, or at Bruno’s laughter, or at a Praetari owning a Melisao account at all. He turned to his own screen and moved a few fingers, and then gaped at what he saw.

“Consider that a deposit,” Bruno said, replacing his smile with a frown. “Ten fully constructed electroids. Twenty additional power batteries. Twenty separate memory cores, unprogrammed. That is all I require of you.”

Lenir sputtered. “How am I supposed to provide those? The Governor sends inspectors every few days to check the factory. They’ll know if anything is missing.”

“Counterfeit your inventory numbers,” Bruno said, “or scrounge from the electroids assembled. Jin had help from some of the workers, I recall. It is your problem to figure out, not mine.”

Lenir opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it and gave a nod. Too quickly.

“I know what you are thinking, foreman Lenir,” Bruno said. “You will call the peacekeepers as soon as I leave, to tell them of my visit. I can assure you that would be unwise. If I am arrested my account will be discovered, and my transactions examined. And they will see a transaction to your account.”

“I’ve done nothing illegal for you.”

“You think they will believe that? You received a sizeable deposit from the Lord of the Station, for nothing in exchange?” He looked to Loddac. “This one’s a bigger fool than Jin.”

They both laughed. Lenir’s eyes grew wide; Bruno knew he had him. “We require those parts delivered once a week. I will send you the location and time.”

They left the factory and returned to the cart, and turned it back the way they came. They passed the Prophet moaning on the ground, but otherwise there was nothing to keep Bruno from sleeping soundly all the way back to the Station.

Chapter 11

“I don’t care about the details, Dok,” Bruno said. “Just tell me when the damn thing will be ready.”

Bruno wiped grime from his forehead with a rag, but all it did was smear. The courtyard was enclosed on three sides by various Station rooms, but wind still kicked up dirt and swirled it around the area. Behind him was the door back to the main chamber. To his right was an entranceway to Dok’s workshop.

But what occupied their attention, and most of the courtyard, was the freighter. Square-shaped and long, it was similar to most of the others they launched, but with a coiled red snake painted on the side. Their dusty planet had no lack of ships. The Empire was in too much of a hurry to maintain the freighters that carried cargo and supplies from the planet, and it was easier to simply build more in their factories than repair those that broke down. Scrap heaps were dug and fenced-in, but Davon permitted him to enter and take what he needed.

Dok and his crew worked on the ships once they arrived. It usually took little effort to get them launch-ready; they didn’t need to fly far. But this particular ship was giving the engineer trouble. The two blocky engines extended away from the hull at the rear of the ship, and Dok had spent three days tinkering inside one. Each day the problems became more complex, his explanations more detailed. Bruno was growing impatient. The Station had many sources of income, but sending desperate civilians into space was the largest.

Dok tapped his foot into the ground, counting. “One day,” he finally said. “One day.”

Bruno eyed the fidgety man and frowned. One day seemed unlikely, and for a moment he considered arguing, but then he dismissed the thought. Dok was eccentric, but he doubted the man could lie, or even exaggerate. If he said it would be ready tomorrow then it was simply the truth.

“Need more weapons,” Dok blurted out. “Still no weapons.”

“The ships don’t need weapons, Dok.”

“But you told the woman. I heard you tell her, the woman with the yellow hair, I
heard
. You said--”

“Damnit Dok,” he said, grinding his teeth, “there are no weapons. There will be no weapons!”

The little man cringed away from him, and he felt a tinge of guilt. “Dok, what I say to you is not what I say to others. You just listen to what I tell
you
, okay Dok?”

He grunted and continued counting on his fingers, but he nodded.

Bruno spun around to return inside, but Kotra waved at him from the workshop door. “Uhh, Lord Bruno,” he said, “there’s something here you’ll want to see. Err, hear.” One of Dok’s workers stood next to him, looking uncomfortable.

The workshop was dimly lit. It was one large square with workbenches against each wall. Wires and pieces of metal spread over every surface. It all looked haphazard, though he knew it was orderly to Dok. The only wall not occupied by a workbench was a gap to the right, where a door led to the warehouse, the same one with the huge bay door to Bruno’s main chamber. He looked away from it after only a quick glance.

The worker led them to a bench on the left, where boxy electronics were stacked from the table to the ceiling. They looked like they would topple over at the slightest touch, but the worker twisted a knob and pressed a button. A buzz pierced the air and Bruno realized one of them was a speaker.

The speaker crackled, and then a voice drifted through the static. “--hear me? Can you hear me?”

The worker pressed a button and leaned forward. “We hear you, two-forty. Repeat your status, please.”

Two-forty was the freighter launched last week. Bruno shot Kotra an alarmed look, but before he could say anything the speaker crackled back to life.

“We were halfway through our acceleration to Oasis when we ran out of fuel. Must have been a leak, or a faulty sensor, or something. I don’t know. We’re drifting now. Could use some help, the next time you launch.”

The worker reached forward to respond, but Bruno grabbed his hand. “Where is the ship now?”

A clockwork map of the system was built into the wall a short distance away. Saria was a stationary ball of red, but its three planets were set into grooves, moved by unseen machinery. Other unnatural objects followed their own grooves: the Ancillary, circling close to the star in retrograde to harvesting its power; various military installations orbiting at strategic distances.

And Oasis, the neutral space station that orbited between Praetar and Melis. Its orbit was faster than either planet, but just then it was close to Praetar.

The worker took a grease pencil and drew an arc away from the yellow planet. “This is their trajectory if they continued accelerating as planned. Here is where they are now. I’ll need some time to calculate their drifting route, but by then they’ll be out of communication range.”

Bruno looked behind him to make sure they were still alone. He didn’t want Dok to hear anything. ”Let them drift. Tell them we’re sending another ship today to help them refuel.”

The worker shifted, looking from the radio to Kotra and then back to him. “I don’t know what Dok has told you, Lord Bruno, but the next freighter won’t be ready today.”

“Just send the message.” The worker continued to look uncomfortable, but Bruno’s stare set him to work. Bruno waited for him to begin speaking into the microphone before leaving the workshop.

Outside Dok tinkered with the freighter’s engine, out of earshot. Kotra whispered, “Has the blockade been lifted?”

It was the same question on Bruno’s mind. “It must have been. How else would the ship get through?”

“Maybe they missed it.”

“The Melisao don’t miss things,” Bruno said. “If a ship got through the blockade it was because they allowed it to.”

“We could leave,” Kotra said. The hardened man seemed hopeful, almost child-like then. He ran a hand through his rough hair. “If they’re letting ships through we could leave, couldn’t we?”

“I’m not a rat, and I won’t flee like one,” Bruno said. He frowned at his guard. “Is that what you want? To be a slave for the Empire in some faraway system, instead of a free man here?”

“Of course not, Bruno. I just thought you might--”

“You actually believe them?” he said, his anger boiling up. “Saria’s burned for billions of years, why should it stop now? It’s all an excuse for the Empire, believe me. I’m a king here. The Empire allows me to gather power, and I’ll continue doing it until they storm through the doors and kill me on my throne.”