The Honour of the Knights (First Edition) (23 page)

“
Really?” Enrique asked, flabbergasted.

“
No, they didn
’
t! Grow up, mate!” McLeod said, as
Dodds picked up his beer. It was becoming obvious that McLeod was
feeling the storyteller was now winding up his audience
unnecessarily, and was starting to get bored with the yarn, seeing
its facts being grounded in nothing more than rumour, speculation
and hearsay.

“
Yeah, they did,” Shy said. “They shot him when he tried to
run away and buried him in an unmarked grave. Okay, that’s a bit of
an exaggeration, but they certainly made him disappear. I think his
name was Bishop or Nurse or Dean or something like
that…”

Dodds,
in the middle of swigging from his bottle, suddenly choked and spat
a mouthful of beer out onto the floor. He proceeded to cough for a
good while, trying to clear his throat.

“
You okay?” Enrique asked.

“
Yeah, just went down the wrong way,” Dodds
spluttered. Enrique gave him a few slaps on the back. He noticed
how everyone was still giving him a strange look as he continued
wiping his mouth and coughing. “Think
that
’
s
true about the Imperium?” Dodds asked Enrique, once he had calmed
down.

“
No idea. What do you think, Chaz?” Enrique deflected the
question to the man sat on the far right.

“
I think you boys should stop worrying and have another
drink,” Chaz said with clear amusement. Dodds became thoughtful.
Whilst Shy had been right on one count, perhaps McLeod did have a
point. Maybe the man was exaggerating to amuse himself. He returned
to his cards.

“
Excuse me?” a voice interrupted the group, as they prepared
to continue their game once again. They looked up to see a man
staring at Enrique, looking somewhat bemused. A short distance
behind him a young woman hovered, watching the group and the man
expectantly.

“
Yeah?” Enrique asked.

“
I er… I hear
you
’
re the
guy to talk to about getting hold of spare
mattresses..?”

* * *

Don
’
t get
stressed, just keep calm. They
’
ll shut up in a minute.

Estelle
attempted to convince herself that Dodds and Enrique would cease
their whispering and drop off to sleep. It was not just that they
were being loud that was annoying her, but also that they were
doing it after lights out and everyone else was asleep and quiet.
Anything bad that they did was ultimately a poor reflection on her.
She tried to ignore it for a little longer.

The Officer
’
s Club had been emptied some time ago, everyone being
shepherded back to their quarters for an immediate lights out.
Estelle recalled seeing a couple of men being shouted at by a
higher ranking officer. From what she had heard, whilst they had
been out drinking and enjoying themselves, they had missed their
transport and, as a result, their scheduled patrol. Though often a
calm and pleasant man, Estelle knew that Meyers would not tolerate
that kind of behaviour on the base and they would without doubt be
feeling the heat from him when he returned. Estelle was not keen
for the same fate to befall her or her team any time
soon.

“
Do you think tha guy wuz right?” Dodds asked, his speech
slurring.

“
Wig guy?” Enrique wanted to know, communicating with his
long-term friend in the same tongue.

“
The guyz that was
talk
’
en
about the Imperial civil war.”

“
Naah. He
’
s talking out ta his
arse.”

“
Yeah?”

“
Yeah.”

They
both went quiet; Estelle relaxed more. A good minute or so passed.
It sounded as though the conversation that had woken her had been
concluded. Estelle turned over in her bed and rearranged her
covers, to get more comfortable.

“
Yeah… bu.. but, when yous thinks about it, its makes
sssense,” Dodds tried again.

Estelle
felt herself stiffen at the sound of resumed chatter.

“
How?”

“
Well for one
there
’
s..
there
’
s that
transmission we got t
’
other day. That bloke, right, he’s was really sscared. I
doubt a civil war could be that bad toos make someone as hysterical
as that. He wuz running away from somethings pretty nasty,
I
’
s thinks,”
Dodds managed, the volume of his voice rising as he
spoke.

“
Okay. Anythings else, like?” Enrique wanted to know, not
sounding convinced.

Both men
went quiet again. Even so, Estelle was feeling thoroughly wound up.
She hated it when people would not shut up at night, and even if
they did quieten down now, it could take her quite a while before
she was settled and able to drift off.

* * *

Dodds paused to consider all the possibilities. Despite being
drunk, he was not about to bring up the subject of the ATAFs and
the redirection of revenue into support his argument. He realised,
just as he had said it, that he should not really have mentioned
the Dart pilot, either. No, it didn’t matter. He was sure that
no-one else was awake to hear him anyway. He considered telling
Enrique about Dean. That was weird that his name had been brought
up tonight. He then remembered the warnings given him by Admiral
Turner and the officer who had come to retrieve the
man
’
s body, and
thought better of it.

There was something there, though, in the back of
his
mind. Was there a
connection with what he had heard tonight? Dean was doubtless a
piece of the puzzle, but was there something else, too? Had Dean
said something that, at the time, he had missed? The amount of
alcohol he had consumed was inhibiting his ability to think
straight.

* * *

“
Well, then there
’
s Hawke,” Estelle heard Dodds’
voice offer, resuming after leading her into false promises that he
and Enrique had fallen asleep.

“
Yea, sho?” Enrique replied to the man in the bunk above
him.

“
I swears that since they pulled him out of
that escape pod, he
’
s become an even bigger
arsehole…”

“
Go to sleep, Dodds,” Estelle said. She’d had enough. The pair
had clearly had too much to drink and were now just spouting random
nonsense. At the mention of a senior officer, and the insults that
followed, she had decided that they had crossed the line. Should
anyone come around to inspect their quarters and discovered them to
be speaking after lights out, drunk and making derogatory remarks
about the commodore, they would be disciplined; all three of
them.

“
Dids we wake yous up, Estelle?” Dodds asked.

“
It
’
s after lights out,
Dodds.”

“
Ssorrys, Estelle,
couldn
’
t
sleep. And we
’
s
was jus
’
chattin
’
,”
Enrique muttered. “We ain’t doin’ anys harms, right?”

“
You
’
re drunk and you
’
re being loud,” Estelle hissed back
at them.

“
Nos louder thans Kelly,” Enrique said. The woman was snoring
ever so slightly.

“
I remembers when tha’ girl us’ ta be able t’put it away,”
Dodds said, regarding her from his top bunk. “Hmm, things
shange…”

“
Yeah, sshame she shill shnores likes a pig,
though!”

Both men
started laughing.

“
I mean it, you two! Shut up and go to sleep!” Estelle raised
her voice. Others around her stirred a little in their
beds.

“
Whatz the problems, Estelle? Wuz got a late patrol
tomorrows,” Dodds said.

“
Or maybe not evens one a’all, the way they muck the schedules
‘bout,” Enrique added.

“
Yeah, exactly; nothing to do tomorrow
mornin
‘”
Dodds moaned.

“
If you don’t shut up and go to sleep, then
I will
give
you something to do in the morning, Lieutenant!”

“
Jeez,” Dodds said.

“
Sssherioushhly dude, I
can
’
t
believe…” Enrique started.

“
Final warning, Todd!” Estelle glowered.

She
waited patiently for them both to settle down, feeling her heart
thumping hard, her chest tight. She drifted off to sleep herself,
once Dodds and Enrique had fallen silent.

* * *

Chaz
Koonan lay on his back, arms folded across his chest, staring up at
the ceiling. Unlike Estelle, Dodds and Enrique’s conversation had
not roused him, as he had not been asleep. He was thinking, his
head filled with memories of the past and contemplations of the
future. He thought of the Dart pilot; of the conversation in the
Officers’ Club; and of how Parks had not kept his word, had not let
him go, had broken his promise.

He
rolled over and closed his eyes, knowing that tonight he would not
be getting much sleep. Just like every other night for the past
four years.

X

—
Far From A Saving Grace —

N
atalia Grace slept deeply, her
slumber aided by the stasis capsule that she had crawled into over
three weeks previous. The escape pod around her lay in almost
complete darkness. Crumbs from biscuits she had eaten dotted the
floor, a small trail leading from a storage cabinet, to the cockpit
chair.

Deep
asleep, those last three weeks had passed unnoticed to her. No
longer had she to endure the frustration and depression she had
suffered during the first seven days alone in the pod. She had wept
several times during that period, almost uncontrollably the whole
way through jump space. Exhausted, she had settled down and slept
in the cockpit seat and had, upon awakening, been greeted by the
inky blackness of space and her exit from the jump.

Hope and
relief had washed over her as she looked out of the pod, expecting
to see familiar sights of the Independent star system she had
entered. Far below her she sighted a planet, though not one she
recognised. That didn’t matter; she was home. A quick glance out
the rear viewport revealed the jumpgate she had exited, the
structure not too far behind her.

The
navigation systems of the escape pod synchronized themselves with
her new location’s navigation buoys and soon revealed her location:
Iliad, an Independent frontier star system; the planet below her,
Diso. According to the navigation computer, Iliad was sparsely
populated, but populated nonetheless. At that moment, Natalia had
exhaled a breath she seemed to have been holding in for
months.

She had activated the pod
’
s SOS broadcast and then explored
the cramped pod. From a storage cabinet, she had removed a small
bottle of water and a handful of biscuits, before settling back in
the cockpit
’
s
seat to await rescue. And there she had waited. And waited. And
waited. But the minutes had turned to hours, and the hours to days,
and in all that time she saw no signs of rescue. In fact, she saw
no signs of
anything
. Not a single glimpse of another vessel, nor any sort of
activity within the system.

She had
turned to the radar system, in an attempt to discover whether there
was anything else around her: perhaps a research station or a ship
that may have failed to spot her, her arrival in Iliad having
somehow gone unnoticed.

She
would have expected to have seen a number of coloured shapes,
indicating the presence of other vessels or entities in the area.
But except for a solitary yellow marker resting at the bottom of
the display, that she had already identified as being the jumpgate,
it was empty. With the aid of a flight manual she had discovered,
she began tweaking settings and display options, searching for
something, anything, that might help rid her of the feeling that
she was alone. There was nothing.

After
the second day had passed, the relief she had felt upon entering
the star system had all but abandoned her, to be replaced by a
feeling of dread. Her escape pod continued to drift, moving away
from Diso and leaving the jumpgate far behind. She knew what had
happened: the system had been abandoned. She had done her best to
hold back the anger and frustration she had then felt, but it had
forced itself out, and she had hurled the flight manual across the
tiny pod’s interior, before cursing out loud and slamming her fists
onto the console. Soon after that, she had begun to weep
again.