Fighting Shadows: Cortii series, #2

By J C Steel

The Cortii are mercenaries, for hire to anyone who can afford their services. From their beginnings in humanoid pre-history, they have grown and colonised to span every galaxy. Every government uses them; no single government can destroy them.

To the Councils that rule the Cortii, eleven lives are easily replaced.

For the newest unit in their ranks, those eleven lives were half their number. To their commander, they're a marker she has every intention of making good on, and while some of her unit's wounds are less visible, it doesn't mean they can't be lethal.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J C Steel
• Release date: Oct 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781999504649

Book preview

Prologue

CORTIORA, YOU HAVE one hundred and sixty-seven communications waiting, the computer’s voice informed her. Of those, one hundred and twenty-three are official and require response, and thirty-nine are Priority.

Fuck. Khyria hesitated in the doorway of her sleeping room, caught between a desire for a long shower, an approximately equal amount of faran, and the certain knowledge that most of the waiting communications were not going to be good news. Hold all. Locate Taiva Zarlan; request her presence, here, half an hour.

Half an hour to get clean, get a clean uniform, and probably most importantly, get some faran, and whatever those Priority messages represented would be easier to deal with. Whether or not any amount of preparation would make her de facto second in command easier to deal with remained to be seen.

BY THE TIME TAIVA REPORTED to her commander’s quarters as ordered, approximately awake and wearing the very new insignia of a full derian at neck and shoulder, her Cortiora looked alert, freshly groomed, and about as vulnerable as a battle platform. Unfairly, the visible injuries, and there were some, made the perfect accompaniment to the rest of her appearance; black hair, black uniform, and all of a Cortiora’s rank tabs on intimidating display.

Taiva made her the bow her rank required, wrists crossed, fists at each shoulder, using the time to force resentment back, or at least out of sight. Her knuckles brushed the leaping cat symbol of Wildcat Cortia, an unfamiliar shape without the outer circlet denoting a trainee. It jolted her. Everything since she woke up had been unfamiliar, from the new insignia on her uniform to the shape of her bedroom, and it was throwing her off.

Ilan’s working area was already littered with slithering piles of hardcopy, and a diverse array of information filled the big wall screens above her. The rooms were different, but that sight was very familiar from the past few months, enough so that Taiva sighed as tension she hadn’t consciously noticed left her shoulders.

Characteristically, her commander didn’t waste time on small talk, but waved her to a seat on the nearest end of the standard-issue couch. That piece of furnishing, at least, was very much like the versions in the trainee quarters they’d so recently left. Taiva inhaled quietly, encountering the same smells of very recently opened rooms and new enviro tech that pervaded her quarters, and the body-wash Ilan preferred. Air, stirring from the vents, brought her the smell of faran, very strong, and her mouth watered.

Help yourself, her commander said quietly, indicating the dispenser on the opposite wall. There’s a lot to do.

Possibly the hot stimulant—over-strong, from Ilan’s dispenser, always—helped her focus. Even viewed with the faran, the volume of work waiting on Ilan’s console made her head swim. She managed to lose herself in it to the extent that the report on their unit’s survivors, when she found it in the stack, got her attention as effectively as a fist to the face. She realised at the bottom of that short list that she’d forgotten to breathe, and inhaled harshly.

Cortiora. She spoke quietly, and there was a brief hesitation before the other answered to the new title.

Yes?

This one has to go through you, Taiva said. Ilan made her feel about as easy to read as an ad holo, and the faran churning in her gut wasn’t helping any more. The list of survivors needs your decision on ranking. She held out the reader to the Cortiora, watching under her lashes.

The Councils, the overlords and commanders of the Cortii, had done their best to discreetly exterminate Wildcat Cortia this past few months, and they’d very nearly succeeded. Wildcat’s survival had hinged on two people’s survival; two more casualties and they would have been broken up, stripped of Cortia title, and left for other Cortii to recruit or the Councils to make use of as they saw fit. That very abbreviated list of names had just successfully brought home to her exactly how close they’d come. Her hands were shaking as she cupped the beaker of faran.

If the unit’s survival had been a miracle, the woman sitting silhouetted against the backdrop of the huge displays had been the one who worked it, and whatever she had done before, during, and since that miracle had left her command, or the remains of it, free of the Councils’ telepathic conditioning. What that might mean in terms of the future it was currently beyond Taiva to guess. She’d gambled, wildly, on a last-ditch attempt to bring Ilan back to command Wildcat, and against all the odds, it had paid off. She hadn’t thought past surviving the Crossing. Full rank, the new quarters, the new insignia, all felt like a dream.

Fourteen out of twenty-five, Ilan said thoughtfully. Abruptly, Taiva found herself pinned by the other’s sardonic green gaze, and felt the betraying heat run along her cheekbones at being caught watching quite so blatantly. All the lucky ones, or possibly the ones that the Councils were willing to leave alive...

Taiva bit back her reaction with an effort. She knew Ilan’s reaction to being stared at. The other, her expression all light amusement, scanned down the list again.

What an unpromising collection, she said. If you’re quite sure my despotic rule will bear discerning analysis, you may as well stay where you are, which leaves us the entrancing prospect of choosing three Cantarai from the rabble.

It stopped Taiva’s line of thought dead, and for a long moment, she met Ilan’s eyes, unable to form words. Whatever reaction she’d anticipated, the stinging, elaborate mockery hadn’t made the list. A memory of a very much younger Ilan swam momentarily in her mind’s eye; both of them so newly recruited even the language came haltingly to them, experimenting with Ilan’s kinetic ability, both of them laughing as she lifted them off their feet.

It came to her after a moment that she had just been officially offered the position of second in command of Wildcat, but by then Ilan’s patience, a nebulous commodity at best, had worn thin.

What would you have me do? Wail to the hells’ Lords of injustice?

If not for Vokan’s efforts, you wouldn’t be alive now, Taiva said, anger thickening her voice. Could you aspire to some feelings for a change and pretend that his death grieves you? Blood pounded stickily in her ears. On some level, she was dimly aware that her commander’s impervious facade was probably just that, but just then she was beyond taking it into account. It also occurred to her that she’d probably just lost her chance to be Cortertia of Wildcat. It wasn’t until several planetary rotations later that she realised her initial reaction to that had been relief.

Ilan rose in a single smooth movement and paced towards her, effectively trapping her in her seat. The taller woman stared down at her for a long second, and Taiva felt her heart jump and accelerate. More than anyone else she knew, Ilan had the ability to be viscerally frightening on some level well beyond her control.

I’m well aware of my debts. Ilan’s voice was utterly flat. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that I don’t grieve for his death—all their deaths. I do. But not here, and not now. I have a Cortia to attempt to lead into some sort of unit, and not for you or anyone else will I plumb the murky depths of public mourning. Now, will you do the job, or must I find someone else to do it?

Taiva hesitated, anger and humiliation warring for her attention, familiar pain beginning to claw at her temples. For once, a brief, instinctive touch of telepathy confirmed that her commander meant exactly what she said.

I’ll stay, she said, hearing the harsh edges on her tone. Someone has to remind you that emotions do exist, and friendship and loyalty can’t exist in a vacuum.

Ilan took a step backwards, her gaze resting on Taiva’s face. Whereas melodrama, and, it seems, rhetoric, can thrive anywhere, she remarked, and made three brief entries on the screen before handing her back the unit. Very well. Since I doubt that the Councils have given up hope of exterminating us like the vermin we are, you may go and rouse the three Cantarai, find a list of available recruits, and compile a shorter list of all those of suitable rank, expertise and character for me to interview concerning our eleven available spaces. I expect it on my console by the change of the watch.

KHYRIA, ALONE IN HER spacious quarters, stared into the reddish liquid in her beaker, her expression quite blank. The best that she had been able to do hadn’t been enough, and the Councils had killed eleven of her command. One of them had died defending her from an attack during the Crossing itself. Not killing those attackers had allowed the Cortia to survive as a unit. The irony had been bitter in the back of her mind ever since.

Longing stirred in her for the days, not so long gone, when chemical escape was always at hand, or failing that, a long-odds fight to test herself against. It occurred to her that the only major difference these days was that it was memories that she was trying to escape, rather than the lack of them, and the sound of her uncontrollable laughter shattered the silence in her quarters and rang against the walls.

Chapter 1

‘Debauchery, the anodyne of the soul.’

From ‘Ideal Truths’ by Mekli ish Fran

THERE WAS NO SIGN OF untoward emotion when Cortiora Senja Ventiva, carefully groomed and immaculately uniformed, arrived at Khyria’s door. Lounging in a pose of deliberately elegant relaxation on the couch in Khyria’s quarters, she smiled picturesquely at the Base’s newest Cortiora.

But of course the Councils had a hand in it, she said, light amusement glittering in her voice. You’ve been left with a Cortia of mavericks, my dear. A set of ringleaders, as it were, with a much reduced ring. I suppose they imagined you would find Zarlan far more annoying alive than dead.

If it cost her one-time protégée an effort to match the careless tone and pose, it didn’t show. It amazes me that they left the Cortia intact. A slight oversight, one would have thought.

Senja smiled deliciously, watching the other carefully. Oh no, darling. Those whom the Lords would destroy, they first make mad. It seems the Councils have established a rule—if you are to be eliminated, it must look natural. And the entire Base knew that if any of your motley gang could survive the Crossing, it would be you. She broke off, laughing, and gestured to the expanse of empty couch beside her. Come and sit down, my dear.

If the invitation was unwelcome, the reluctance was buried in enviable self-control. They’ve left us free access to the recruit pool, Khyria remarked, sinking fluidly onto the padding. Unfortunately, as the Councils must be well aware, I can hardly give authority over the Cortia to a newcomer. I have enough factions on this Base trying to murder me.

Senja studied the younger Cortiora with some care from under her eyelashes. She’d encountered Khyria shortly after she’d been recruited, a mere six months after she emerged from Base Med. Precognition had convinced her that Khyria was worth making every effort to keep, and the fact that she’d lost her to the hareni less than an orbit later had been both unfortunately public and widely discussed. Those memories still rankled.

The intervening six orbits in the hareni had changed her a great deal from the much younger trainee Senja had known. It was also worth keeping firmly in mind that since Khyria had survived the hareni, it was a fair assumption that she’d learnt to do any number of things more than competently in the name of survival. Senja hid her evaluation, invisibly, and allowed her gaze to become heavier. If she could still read Khyria at all, the other Cortiora had already had a trying morning.

Khyria, unable to ignore her further, met her eyes. Any visible signs of decay? she inquired at once, smiling. Senja returned her much the same expression, her wide eyes slowly drinking in all the dramatic good looks seated next to her.

...No, she said at last. They were, of course, extremely careful not to mark your face.

The Councils’ crudities are very rarely too much for a Cortiian regenerative system, Khyria agreed, devoid of emotion. If the comment had had any effect at all, it was irritatingly well disguised.

Senja shrugged gracefully, buying time. The Khyria Ilan of six orbits ago, the trainee who had fiercely resented the Councils and all their prerogatives, would have lost her temper at that insinuation.

Rumour, flying wild on the Base, said that Ilan had often sold mind and body both to the highest bidder to fund a drug habit, some years ago. Senja, who knew where that one had originated, was well aware that while it might once have been true, it was no longer. It would be convenient if that were to change, but this Ilan was a much warier and more experienced opponent, and she doubted creating such a hold would be simple. She smiled internally. It never hurt to try.

I shall be in my quarters from sixth watch onwards, she said smoothly, and stood. Why don’t you come and celebrate our good fortune?

She noted the black irony that flashed in Khyria’s eyes, and relished it. The younger Cortiora needed her, needed the offered opportunity to make herself politically indispensable to other important figures. The fact that Khyria realised it made the control all the sweeter. Senja had every intention of pulling Khyria back under her cloak, resisting if need be.

But of course, Khyria’s roughened voice replied. Providing, of course, that I’m still alive and on-planet at that point.

Senja inclined her head, wondering exactly what the other was hinting at, and left without looking back. Some hold would have to be found for Khyria, something less tenuous than the other’s need of information and support. Someone, somewhere, must know something. Even the hareni could be bribed or employed, if you knew the wrong people and were prepared to pay.

TAIVA, SWEARING UNDER a returned list of recruit selection applications, wouldn’t have been pleased to know where her Cortiora had been going when she had left the Wildcat corridor after having apparently gone through the recruit files with a high-res scanner. She’d rejected all but two of the candidates chosen by Taiva and the Cantarai during their afternoon of hard work, and sent back her own list of recruits.

Taiva stared at the eleven files with mounting anger, and gave the necessary orders. Whether the Cortiora was being deliberately capricious, or merely demonstrating her disregard for Taiva’s judgement, she couldn’t quite decide. She’d done her best to pick steady, reliable people who might quiet down the Cortia, and Ilan had publicly and scathingly handed her her head in a sack.

There was a cryptic note on the bottom of one of the files. It said ‘Survival traits?’ and had been hand-styled, with the angular glyph that began Ilan’s name after it. Taiva shook her head. The recruits would be available for interview early tomorrow. Since Ilan wasn’t answering her room comm, she was presumably not about to object to the timing.

She hoped by that time, her crushing headache would have yielded to medical maltreatment.

KHYRIA, FAR FROM BEING on duty, had left her quarters almost immediately after sorting out the recruit problem. It hadn’t taken an in-depth read through any of their files to realise that Taiva’s choices had been, without exception, steady, reliable people with all the imagination and initiative of a block of wood. It had been an illuminating insight into Taiva’s views of Wildcat, and she hoped the very new Cantarai hadn’t had much to do with the decision-making.

She halted outside Senja’s quarters. The Cortia signet inlay on the door glittered silver in the corridor lights, and the corridor was soundless and empty: normal. It was also, she was well aware, extensively bugged, and so she placed her palm on the ident reader without any hesitation, keeping her shoulders loose and easy under the black cloak. Since she had no choice of the game, she preferred to keep her pieces as disguised as possible.

The door slid noiselessly aside, and she stepped through, allowing it to close behind her as the sounds, sights and smells of the gathering washed over her. The usual dizzying mix of scents, among which she recognised at least three common hallucinogens, was underpinned by the perfume Senja preferred. Disturbed by the movements of the group, the drugged currents of air wound around her in drowning tendrils. A generous offering, if you chose to view it that way. An investment, if you tended to the realistic. Senja rarely gave anything away for nothing.

Drums pulsed, the undertow of the crowd, bass thrumming along her bones. In that crowd, Senja’s recognisable mane of russet hair was easily visible, coming towards her. Khyria stood by the door, stance relaxed and careless. Fatalistic excitement lay cold in the back of her mind, detaching her emotions from the reality that was about to take place. An encounter with Senja, Cortiora As’ra’tan, might be debatably less bloody than a duel in a dark corridor, but it was a battle in its own way, for power and independence, and required much the same reflexes.

A peripheral glimpse of someone else watching her sent adrenalin rocketing through her system, but it was Senja, out of uniform and with her amber eyes outlined with paint in streaming flames like a devil-mask, who reached her. The flames writhed as she smiled, eyes two holes of life among the fantastic colours.

So serious, she said teasingly. I do hope nothing else has gone wrong?

Khyria matched her smile, feeling the remembered weight of those other eyes on her cheek. It’s only been half a rotation, she replied easily. Suddenly battle-awareness slid over her, smells and sounds clearing and other minds pressing shielded presences around her.

Senja’s laugh, expected, nonetheless grated on her eardrums. Come and have a drink, my dear. Entertain us. We’re a dull company this evening.

That was an uncharacteristically direct hit at shared history, trying for a reaction, and Khyria gave her nothing more than a practised, amused smile, unobtrusively scanning the crowd. The man who’d been watching her had vanished—not surprising, under the circumstances. The only reason she’d seen him in the first place was because he’d intended her to.

She accepted the drink Senja offered, the skin on the back of her neck crawling. It seemed unlikely that Senja was unaware of just who—and what—she was entertaining tonight. It was just faintly possible, however, that she was missing some of the context that was potentially going to touch off a bloodbath in her well-kept quarters. The container was very cool through the sealant on her shredded palms, adding its own alcoholic contribution to the aromas assailing her.

Hyper-aware, instinct warned her of an approach in time to turn and take in the man who joined them, moving through groups of errant dancers like a blade through fine cloth.

From a distance, or in bad light, they had been mistaken for each other before; similar height, same dark hair, but his eyes were a dark shade of blue where hers were green, and the rank bars at his neck were a colour that nearly matched them, denoting almost a century of seniority. Ashan Maklin: Cortiora Zebrani, sometime ally, sometime lover, an assassination specialist with a list of kills to his name.

Senja’s gaze played over him from head to foot as he approached, direct and admiring, and his eyebrows rose fractionally, noting it. Congratulations, Cortiora, he said ambiguously, and turned the full force of his attention on Senja. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.

Senja, her expression amused, waved easy agreement to that dismissal, and Khyria lost sight of her as she slipped away. A wave of cold gripped her, and it took a conscious effort to gather her concentration and smile to cover the initial frozen moment of silence.

Fascinating, she said in an undertone, meeting those familiar, opaque eyes. Are you here to kill me, or to make sure no one else kills me?

The man laughed deep in his throat, barely audible over the music, the sound like a warm caress between her shoulder blades. No one had ever claimed that Maklin’s empathic Ability was less than outstanding. One of the rumours she did credit was that a number of his victims had died smiling.

Wildcat, he said. Still and forever the last word in cynicism. Most of the galaxy would still rate you a minor.

Khyria smiled into those coolly observant eyes, her peripheral vision tracking each breath and minute shift in weight. The enemy you underestimate is the one who kills you, she said, and raised her eyebrows mockingly. Lucky little me.

It was hard not to remember the last time that Senja had thrown her together with someone here; hard because Vokan was dead. If she couldn’t concentrate, she was likely to join him. Maklin of the Blue had earned his reputation honestly.

His expression was capable, disconcertingly, of reflecting more or less any emotion he chose. At the moment, suddenly, he was amused. Lucky little you, he agreed, traces of sardony marking his tone. His gaze travelled to her hands, rested with a nicely-done touch of cynicism on the drink she still held. I do hope you aren’t actually going to drink that until after we’ve finished speaking.

She didn’t have to fake the edged smile. Why, would I see something interesting? The additions hadn’t been one of Senja’s more subtle efforts.

It washed the entertainment out of Maklin’s expression, leaving a faint, facile smile hard over something else that she was fractionally too slow to decipher.

Quite possibly, he said quietly. Our friends want you either very dead, or alive and not under the influence of, shall we say, anyone as politically ambitious as many of our companions here tonight.

Khyria set the drink down behind her and allowed her cloak to hide her hands, all too aware that he and she were the discreet focus of far too many peoples’ attention. Now was not the time to take risks with whatever Senja might have slipped into her drink. For an encounter with Maklin, she would do better with her wits about her. Over his shoulder, groups moved past them, faces painted, amused, drugged, observant, swept on the tide of the mind-drowning music Senja preferred. Their movement intensified the concentration of the drugs, close to the point of having effect.

If you talk to me much longer, you’ll have to seduce me, she said briefly. I doubt our mutual acquaintances want either of us gossiped about. You find me very slightly surprised: the last time I met an old friend, she very nearly managed to kill me. Now you appear, trying to protect me from myself. There is, I have to point out, a slight conflict of interest.

Well, yes, he admitted. You left our select circle rather abruptly. People got nervous. He glanced casually around the crowd, one quick look apparently telling him all he wanted to know. Allow me to dance with you briefly, in the expected way, for our audience. After all, officially— he looked briefly around at the crowd again, and his mouth curled with perfectly echoed contempt —we don’t know each other. I suggest that we get, very obviously, to know each other and then I suggest we go and finish talking elsewhere.

The music washed past her - she heard it properly for the first time in several minutes, her concentration dilating enough from the man in front of her to take in her surroundings. Senja was nowhere in sight, a small mercy.

And precisely why should I trust you? she asked pleasantly.

He looked around them, his expression mildly sardonic. Because I’m here officially, and you...wouldn’t be here if you had any other options. Or do I have it wrong? He reached out slowly to catch her shoulders, and pulled her with him into the small, dense knot of dancers, his hands light and wary.

Chapter 2

‘Power may corrupt, but corruption carries power.’

Quoting ‘Ideal Truths’ by Mekli ish Fran

IT WAS VERY EARLY IN the morning, Corina Base local time. Most of the Base was more or less deserted, save for those with a duty watch. The Wildcat corridor, however, was alive with movement, down to a watch detail in the niches to each side of the blast door. Recruits, in immaculate formal uniform, their cloaks all fastened with cancelled insignia, lined one side of it—a lot of recruits. Their faces were impassive, but Ranai imagined she could smell the desperation on them even over the chemical stench of a freshly-commissioned area. She counted automatically, moving past them at an even stride, and the total jolted her. Either this Cortiora liked a lot of choice, or the Cortia had come within a very close flyby of ending up in the recruit pool itself.

The Cortia insignia was a stylised, leaping feline, traced in silver on the Cortiora’s closed door. She touched her hand to the glowing pad, and the door slid soundlessly aside. Like the corridor outside, the quarters were bare and freshly opened for habitation, and she entered them with very mixed feelings. Her original Cortia, caught in a firestorm on their first assignment, had been all but completely exterminated two orbits ago. The remaining survivors had been whittled away over the intervening months; one into a new Cortia, the others vanishing in a faceless escort of akrushkari and never returning. She pushed the memories firmly away and bowed formally, wrists crossed over her heart, to the Cortiora in front of her.

The weight of her long, formal cloak slithered down her back as she straightened, and she looked properly at the woman ahead of her for the first time. The other was sitting, alone and apparently wholly relaxed, in the big console chair, all the usual insignia flashing silver in the harsh overhead lights. Her features were hollow, a long hard mouth and straight nose emphasising the casual arrogance of that posture, and her mind was impenetrably shielded. Ranai could feel the power of those defences crackling through the room, and was disconcerted. Like everyone else on Corina Base within five training orbits of Wildcat, she’d heard rumours about Ilan of Wildcat. Somehow, face-to-face with her, the stories became either impossible or totally believable, and she couldn’t quite make the decision which.

Dark green eyes surveyed her from head to foot, taking their time, and she held her position with an effort as the silence drew out. It was an effort that was ultimately rewarded. Ilan’s speaking voice held an unusual rough texture, and Ranai wasted a moment trying to isolate what might have caused it before the other mercenary’s actual words landed with about the same impact as a high-altitude bombardment.

Ranai Yanis, Derian of the Green, lately of Jian-iu Cortia. Cortia disbanded after its first active assignment with an overall complement of five survivors. The clinical tone took on a note of derision. To lose four-fifths of a Cortia might be considered careless.

Ranai’s thoughts stopped as if they had run into a wall, fury scalding through her along with the memories. With the entire valley turned into a sea of sticky fire, we were damn lucky anyone escaped! It wasn’t our Cortiora’s fault the Federated-fucking-Alliance can’t find its own backside with both hands!

The tanned face in front of her showed no satisfying response to her outburst. The Cortiora waited until she had run down, and then spoke evenly, her long, scarred fingers playing idly with a little throwing knife. Ranai’s eyes fastened on the movements of the blade, cold reality damping the anger. If there had ever been a good time to bite her tongue and bow, that would probably have been it.

"Loyalty has been considered a