Soldier of Fortune: A Gideon Quinn Adventure (Fortune Chronicles Book 1) (7 page)

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

BEFORE MORTON BARRENS
, before Nasa, before the Corps, Gideon had been just another dodger on the streets of Tesla.

Then the Adidans attacked, their forces overcoming the Fordian frontier city in less than a day as part of the Coalition’s first move against the United Colonies.

The occupation of Tesla lasted for four years, and for Gideon, it changed everything.

* * *

“And where do you think you are going, young man?”

Gideon, one foot on the teleph station’s ladder, felt his shoulders hunch up to his ears at the sound of Fagin Martine’s voice.

It didn’t seem to matter he was going on fifteen, or that he’d been part of Martine’s hive for going on eight years, the merest hint of disapproval in the fagin’s voice had him flushing and hunching like a raw drone, fresh from the streets.

“I was going out to cadge some food.” He faced the small, nut brown woman who’d fed, clothed, educated and trained him into dodging since the age of seven, and whom he suspected of being a Sensitive.

“Supplies my behind.” Her eyes narrowed. “You think I don’t know what you’re really doing down there? I may not be on the streets so much as you young ones, but even this old nose can smell phosphorous on your clothes.”

Okay, maybe not a Sensitive, just observant.

“You been marking targets for the allies,” she continued, “and likely adding a little sabotage of your own into the bargain.”

Busted,
he thought. “It’s important work,” he said.

“It’s soldier’s work, and you may be the best cannon I got, but you are no soldier.”

“Not yet,” and damned if he couldn’t taste the bitterness in his own words, “but someday.”

“Someday is not this day. This day you are still my dodger.”

“Yes, but since there’s no one but the enemy to steal from, anyway, why not paint a few targets, or free some horses, or spike some Coal fart tires —”

“You know I do not like that kind of language,” Martine poked a finger into his chest.

“Even for—“

“Even for the enemy, yes.” She gave him the full-on Martine de Loire glare. “Do you know why?”

He looked at his too-tight boots, which were wearing thin as the occupation dragged on. “Because it’s verbally lazy,” he said, parroting one of Martine’s many, many views on the use of language.

“That and because if you belittle something dangerous often enough, maybe you start thinking it is not so dangerous.” Her eyes, a shocking hazel in the dark, wrinkled face, were hard. “You start thinking that, you maybe stop being so careful on the dip, never mind what other trouble you’re getting up to out there, and then,” she brought her hands together in a sharp clap that had Gideon jumping in spite of himself, “no more Gideon here to give me sass.”

He flushed, and hated that even in the dim light of their shielded solar lamp, she’d be able to see it.

“If I promise not to call them Coal-farts can I go?”

She stared.

He rolled his eyes. “If I promise not to call them Coal-farts and stick to stealing food can I go?”

“Tempting, but no,” she set a gentling hand on his arm. “Lessons first, as always. I
need
you,” she continued as he began to formulate another protest, “to set an example for the others. They look up to you, Gideon.”

“Only because I’m so swarming tall,” he said, though he straightened some at the praise.

“Not so tall I can’t still box your ears,” Martine said sharply, but with a smile in her voice. “Now, come and join the rest of the hive or you will see how very high I can reach.”

* * *

He joined the others, but when the lesson began, Gideon wondered why, of all subjects, Martine would have chosen ancient history.

Not only was it a lesson he’d heard many a time since coming into her care, but it wasn’t nearly as useful as a lesson in lock picking or wall climbing or basic first aid (should the lock picking or wall climbing go amiss).

“So, my young ones,” she began as Gideon settled at the outer ring of dodgers (the youngest, as always, sat closest to Martine), “today you will learn, as I learned when I was young, how Fortune’s history began when Earth’s history came to its end.”

“Earth?” Maurian, nine years old but only recently brought into the hive, looked at the fagin in disbelief. “Earth’s not even real! It’s just a place the Keepers made up so we’d follow their Laws.”

“Not so,” Martine replied, but without the heat Gideon would have expected. “Earth existed, likely still does in her little solar system with her one, lonely sun,” she continued to all the children. “She was humanity’s first home, but the humans of Earth were a contentious, wasteful people. Because of this, they did not respect their home and so their home began to fail. Rather than do the needful and care for it, these contentious people turned on one another, scrabbling over what little remained.”

“Like the Coal-far— like the Coalition forces,” Yribe, a boy of around 12 (and an ace at second story work) corrected himself at her glare, “attacking the United Colonies for our crystal.”

“Some would argue about crystal belonging only to the United Colonies,” Martine said over the ensuing angry buzz of children in the throes of patriotism, “but there are similarities, as the Earthers fought many a war over oil.”

“Like, olive oil?” little Aaya asked.

“Like old, melted dinosaur bones,” Gideon threw in from the rear.

Half the little ones let out a concerted ‘ewww’ and the other half clambered to know what a dinosaur was.

“Thank you so very much, Gideon,” Martine said over the tumult.

“Just glad to be needed.” But he put his fingers in his mouth and whistled loud enough to cut through the uproar.

“Dinosaurs are similar to dracos and lizards and the like,” Martine spoke into the startled quiet, “but bigger — bigger even than a mastodon.”

“But why fight over old melted dinosaur bones in the first place?” Aaya’s question emerged from the chorus of disbelieving ’nu
-uhs
’.

Martine smiled at the little one. “Because the oil those dinosaur bones melted into was for the Earthers what crystal is for us. Except oil was very dirty, very messy and it did not grow back after it was pulled from the ground.” She paused for the various sounds of disbelief from the younger dodgers. “Which is why,” she said when they calmed again, “the Earth became so polluted, and why so many people fought over it — fought so bitterly, it was not until Earth’s demise was certain that her children, our many-times great foremothers, accepted the need to work together —“

“For world peace?” Yribe asked.

“More like world pieces,” Gideon muttered, then hunched his shoulders again as Martine shot a look his way.

“More,” she looked back to Yribe, “that some private citizens, those with wealth and resources, worked around their governments and together gathered the finest minds of their time to do the needful. The needful,” she continued expansively, “being the engineering and seeding of planets beyond the Sol system. Planets like our own Fortune.”

“Were there others?” Yribe asked, leaning forward, arms resting on his crossed legs. “Other planets the Earthers made?”

“That we do not know. We only know, from Keeper records, that many, many ships set forth to many, many systems, in hopes at least one would provide a new home. We may be one of many, or completely alone.”

“Okay, so, maybe the Earthers
were
real,” Maurian admitted grudgingly, “but they couldn’t have been all that smart.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because they left us here, all alone, with no way off and no way to talk to anyone else!”

Even Gideon could see Maurian, who’d recently lost her parents to the Coal-fart slave docks,  wasn’t talking about their long-dead ancestors.

“This is true,” Martine agreed, speaking only to the surface topic. From experience, Gideon knew the fagin would view Maurian’s underlying loss as something to be dealt with privately. “Though it is also true the Earther’s had a reason for this. Do you know what it is?”

Maurian’s only response was a single-shouldered shrug.

Which somehow kindled Gideon’s own anger. “Because,” he said before Martine could speak, “once Fortune was cooked enough to populate, they made sure none of the knowledge that got them off of Earth in the first place touched Fortune. None of the tech, none of mechs. They even destroyed the ships that brought them here.”

Martine nodded, encouraging him as she asked, “And do you know why they did this?”

“Because,” he said, again, “if we know we can’t ever leave, we’ll take better care of Fortune than our ancestors took care of Earth.”

“So the Keepers tell us,” Martine beamed.  

“And how,” he asked, holding his fagin’s gaze, “do the Keepers think that’s working out so far?”  

At which Martine’s expression slammed shut and Gideon, ashamed, turned away.

This time, when he headed for the ladder, she didn’t attempt to stop him.

Soon enough he heard an undaunted Yribe asking if the Earthers engineered crystal as Fortune’s version the old melted dinosaur bones, and why it grew in so few areas, which led to Martine beginning the primary school edition of the Great Crystal Debate.  

There, see,
he told himself
it’ll be okay
. The younger ones’ curiosity would cheer the fagin and, for his part, he’d stick to pilfering stores, make sure there was enough food to last the hive out a few days. And during those days he’d stay close to the tower, help with training and — hells, he’d just make it up to her.

At least, that was what Gideon meant to do.

In fact, he’d just reached the lower section of the ladder when the attacks began.

It seemed the Adidans, having filled their slave barges and cargo freighters, and tired of the constant thieving and sabotage, had chosen to level Tesla once and for all.

* * *

Two days later, Gideon woke in a Keeper-aid tent with three cracked ribs and a few new scars to add to the livid gash over his collarbone.

The Keeper tending his wounds told him he’d been found at the base of a decimated teleph tower. As far as she knew, no one else had been recovered from the area.

Because of their neutral status, the Keepers were allowed to go anywhere they wished, no matter who was fighting over what, so only a few days after he woke, the entire party set sail up the Folger River, delivering Gideon and a handful of other survivors to the relative safety of Edsel.

By then, Gideon was on his feet so, after thanking the Keepers who’d helped him, he went in search of a recruiting station where, being so tall for his age, he was able to convince the Infantry sergeant he was old enough to enlist in the Corps.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

“YOU WERE DODGING
during the Occupation?” the girl said, clearly impressed. “You’re even older than I thought.”

This time he did laugh, but the laugh was wet and turned to a cough and Elvis, disturbed by his chosen person’s obvious distress, crawled along the edge of the tub to press his head against Gideon’s leg.

“Good boy,” Gideon stroked the draco’s head. “It’s okay, you did okay.” Yes, he’d be feeling the slices from Elvis’ talons for a month, but it beat drowning.

He glanced up, saw the girl watching their interaction.

“So,” he said, “one dodger to another, why did you target me?” Because it should have been obvious to the rawest thief he wasn’t rolling in starbucks. What could he possess that she’d have wanted enough to scale a building in the rain?

Even as he thought this, her eyes darted to Elvis, then to the floor, and the bruise deepened with her flush.

It was the blush that told him. “You wanted Elvis. You wanted my draco.” He thought about that. “
Why
did you want my draco?”

“Not me,” she said quickly. “My fagin’s the one wants it and Ellison only wants it because ain’t no one else in Nike has one, they’re that rare.”

“And rare means pricey,” he said, quietly furious with himself for not giving a second thought to traipsing the streets of Nike with Elvis perched on his shoulder. By doing so, he’d basically invited every thief in the city to come after the draco. Smarter, he thought, to have let Elvis take flight and tail him to the hotel.

Of course, had he done that, there would have been no dodger at the bathroom window when the morph took effect, in which case he wouldn’t be standing here, in a tub with a towel wrapped around his middle and making himself dizzy playing ‘what-if’.

He looked at the girl, who was watching him, her small frame balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to run.

“Tell me about Ellison,” he said.

“Naught to tell,” she said, shrugging. But not running, which was something.

“Okay,” he said, stepping carefully out of the tub, where he imagined he looked the utter dodo. “I get where you’re coming from, but this is where we are now. First, don’t worry about me calling the cops. After all this,” he indicated the tub he’d likely have drowned in, without her, “there’s no way I’d swear a complaint. I also won’t let you go back empty-handed, but your fagin’s going to have to make do with whatever cash I can spare because taking Elvis is not an option.“

“Then I’ll be out!” she protested in a voice sharpened by fear. “S’what he said when he marked you. To come back with the draco or not at all. If I don’t bring Elv—that draco — then I’m as good as dead.”

“That’s not—“

“Not gonna happen? Is that what you think?” She lifted her chin, all youth and defiance. “Maybe you was a dodger, maybe you wasn’t, but you ain’t —“

“Aren’t,” Gideon murmured.

“— one of Ellison’s hive,” she continued over his grammatical distress. “Ain’t a dodger ever left his protection before graduating and lived to tell it.”

“It’s not supposed to work that way.” Even as he said it, Gideon knew it was an asinine statement because obviously—

“That’s how it is,” she confirmed his thoughts with a weary certainty. “I do what he says, or I’m done.” She gave Elvis, peeking from behind Gideon’s leg, another look. “Guess I’m done.”

“No, you’re not,” Gideon said. “I won’t let that happen.” Which, from her expression, probably sounded just as asinine as his previous statement. “I know I can’t ask you to trust me—“

She snorted, he presumed in agreement.

“—but you’ve got to trust me. If only because, even if I did let him go, Elvis wouldn’t leave me. You’ve seen what he can do when he’s motivated,” he pointed to his talon-raked shoulder, “and he
likes
me.”

Something in her eyes told him she thought it might be worth the risk. Or maybe she’d just like to see Elvis have a go at her fagin. Either way, there was still something he didn’t understand, and he found he needed to. “If you’re so sure this Ellison will put you out, why didn’t you just let the Morph finish the job?”

She shrugged and scuffed her feet looking, he thought, embarrassed. “I may be a dodger, but I sure as comb ain’t no killer.”

A distinction Gideon could appreciate, but it also got him thinking. “I’m not sure whoever dosed the soup was, either,” he said, following the thought. “Morpheus is a sedative, not a poison.”

“And?” she asked, then slapped herself on the forehead, “And no way the fop would know you’d be nutter enough to eat your dinner inna tub!”

“Yes. Not exactly how I’d put it but yes. Wait,” he held up his hand as his thoughts caught up with her words. “What fop? I thought you didn’t know who did it?”

“I don’t
know
, know. I just seen the bloke leaving while I was out there,” she pointed to the window. “Poison green jacket and sick yellow pagri — couldn’t miss ‘im.”

“And his fashion sense makes you think he did it?”

“No,” she huffed, he presumed at the idiocy of adults. “I think he done it —”

“Did it,” Gideon corrected automatically.

“— because
he
was following you, too.”

“Huh,” Gideon managed. For a guy less than two days out of prison, he was proving awfully popular.

“Bugger tried to warn me off’a you, too,” the girl continued, puffing up some at having been able to shock the seemingly unflappable man. “Gave me a ‘hands off’ sign,” she said, then went on to describe her rival’s behavior, from the way he’d changed his clothes in the alley before entering the hotel’s front door, to his departure just as she’d reached Gideon’s window. “I wasn’t planning on coming in so soon,” she admitted, glancing at Elvis, then the tub. “But then I did.“

“Huh,” Gideon said, again. Then he tilted his head. “Are you hungry? Because I’m hungry.”

Her mouth actually dropped in surprise. “Didn’t you just eat?”

“Temporarily.” They both looked at the trash bin. “Besides,” he stepped around the girl, to where his clothing lay neatly folded, “whoever dosed me might be coming back.”

“But whoever dosed you would be thinking you’re out cold,” she turned to watch him. “Why not stay here and, you know,” she punched a fist into her hand, “give ‘em a good pounding for their trouble?”

“Because,” he reached down to pick up his pants, “as much as I’d enjoy it, I’m not in full pounding form just now.” As if to prove his point, he overreached, missed the trousers, and almost fell over. He didn’t look but was fairly certain she was rolling her eyes.

“Here,” she grabbed the pants and handed them to him.

“Thanks.” He took them, straightened up and waited.

She crossed her arms over her chest and waited, too.

“Do you mind?” he asked, making a ‘turn around’ gesture with the pants, so the trouser legs seemed to perform a little jig.

“Mind what?” the girl looked confused, then the crystal flared. “Ohhh.” She drew the word out into three syllables, then grinned. “Are all Fordians prudes?”

“This one is,” he muttered. “Especially in the company of minors. How old are you, anyway?” he then asked. “Eleven? Maybe?”

“Thirteen,” the girl responded, unoffended. “Best guess, any road.” Still, in deference to what she obviously considered unnecessary modesty, she did turn around to stare out the window, where the rain had finally ceased.

Since Gideon was already dry (and cold — so cold), he dressed quickly, hands still shaking somewhat as they buttoned up the trousers. He ditched the padding over his shoulder before donning the shirt — it wasn’t the first time he’d have gotten blood on his clothes — and it didn’t look as if stitches would be necessary.

By the time he got to the boots, he could tell right from left, which was nice, and soon he was sliding his arms into the coat and clicking for Elvis.

The girl turned in time to see the draco land on his right shoulder. “So,” she said, “where we going?”

He was encouraged by the ‘we’. “Don’t have a clue. Got any suggestions?”

She considered him, then seemed to come to a decision. “I know a place, nothing too posh, mind, down on Marlow-
oy!
” the street name turned into a squeak as Elvis gave a massive leap from Gideon’s shoulder, wings brushing the girl’s hood on the down-sweep. In one flap he was at the window, where he scented the air briefly before turning his eyes downward and letting out a low keen — the draco equivalent of a canine’s warning growl.

“Keepers!” the girl said, obviously impressed.

Gideon said nothing, but moved to the window himself where he stood carefully to the side so anyone looking up wouldn’t see him. “Ah,” he said. “Of course”

“What?” the girl joined him, trying to peer around the tall man and his draco, both. “Of course what?”

“That,” he nodded towards the coach and four pulling into the square.

That there was a horse-drawn carriage at all at was impressive as, while equines were numerous in rural areas, in the cities most citizens used public trams or rickshaws. The moderately well off might spring for a battery powered car or cycle, but only ristos had the ready to support livestock that had no purpose other than to look good.

So the fact the four horses drawing the Rolls were perfectly matched blacks was additionally impressive, as were their deep red traces and the carriage itself, which was big enough to hold six comfortably, eight if you weren’t prudish.

“Nice,” the girl said, standing on her toes to better see the vehicle, “if you’re into that sort of thing.”

Looking at the family crest emblazoned on the glossy black door, Gideon could say with absolute certainty, “They are.”

“That’s a Rolls,” she pointed out. “A Rolls Royce with the Rand family crest on it.”

He glanced down at her. “You know the Rands?”

“Everyone knows the Rands. Family owns most of Avon.”

“Of course they do.”

“What’s it mean, them being here?”

“It means,” he said as the horses rounded the square to pull up at the hostel’s entrance, “it’s time to find the back door.”