Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
Some fights find you
The message was waiting when I woke up.
I didn’t open it immediately. I fed Silli first, made something to eat, and stood on the deck in the early light.
I’d added the railings after Aila’s surprise visit and was glad I did.
They gave me something to lean on as I looked moodily out at the ocean.
Silli had finished eating his fish eyes and was lying belly-up on the deck, sunning himself.
He didn’t have an inkling about the dangers facing his very cushy lifestyle. But I did.
The guild response had arrived in the standard encrypted format, no author listed.
I’d expected that. Response documents like this were typically compiled from senior members who weren’t out on assignment.
They pulled from their collective knowledge and the computer wrote the thing based on those responses.
I knew how this worked, since I’d been on the contributing end of several inquiries, back when I was active.
Usually, the guild charged for their feedback, but they hadn’t asked for any credits from me.
Maybe this was their version of professional courtesy, considering how long I’d been an active member.
I would have paid whatever they asked.
Eventually, I went inside and read it.
To the inquiring party, re: The Rivonok Alliance and current outer quadrant activity in the Lesser Wafsel star system:
The Rivonok Alliance is a multispecies smuggling syndicate currently operating across the outer and mid-quadrant.
Their primary function is the acquisition of proprietary biological resources—specifically those of high value and limited replication potential—and the subsequent lockdown of their production for syndicate-controlled distribution.
Engagement: They do not lead with mass violence.
Their preferred methodology is intimidation, economic displacement, and coerced cooperation.
They acquire with leverage as the first option, and force as their second.
However, they carry significant muscle, and several of their member factions are aggressive by nature.
Despite preferring nonviolent methods, this syndicate should not be considered harmless.
This faction is methodical, plans extensively, and has multiple contingency plans in place before arriving at a location for takeover.
The Rivonok have been operating in the outer quadrant for approximately one standard galactic year. Regarding the Lesser Wafsel system, they have identified a local substance with healing qualities and flagged it for acquisition eight standard galactic months ago.
Estimated arrival at a likely target location: six to eight weeks from the date of this message.
No further intelligence available at this time. Treat the above as directional, not definitive.
I sat with that long enough for the sun to move higher over the ocean.
I was aware of how the Rivonok Alliance worked, having been on several different assignments that had put me alongside them and against them.
The guild knew this, but it had been a long time since those assignments, so their full account was thoughtful.
What really bent my mind was the realization that this…invasion? Capture? Whatever it was, it had been in the works for longer than I’d been here. So, when I chose Podnos-9 as my new home, the Rivonok Alliance had already targeted it. That made me madder than I had the luxury of feeling.
Another guild practice I was using more often than I thought I would: let new information settle. Do not immediately take action. I’d come close to dying for my own premature conclusions once or twice, and here I was, taking this advice for the second time in a couple of weeks.
I did not have much patience today.
I went back to the deck again. Silli had relocated to the back of the big chair and was watching me. He’d lived with me long enough to know when something was off.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said.
He sneezed and rolled over.
By midday I’d drawn every line there was to draw, and they all pointed in the same direction. I put on a clean shirt and decided to walk to the village, rather than take the shuttle. Not that delaying the inevitable would make this any easier.
Maive’s house was lit from inside when I arrived. She opened the door before I knocked, which meant she’d seen me coming, which meant she’d been watching for me. Her face fell when she saw me in her doorway. My expression must have been dark enough to tell her that I didn’t have good news.
“Come in,” she said.
I came in. She did not ask how my day was going. She was bypassing the ritual of it, and I was grateful for that.
I told her everything. The Rivonok Alliance.
What they did and how they did it. The eight months of interest in junver syrup.
The estimated timeline. The methodology that involved intimidation, displacement, and coerced cooperation, with violence as backup in case the cleaner methods failed to get what they asked for.
I was clear and specific and brief as possible, which was one of the few things the guild had trained into me that I was genuinely grateful for.
She listened without interrupting and, oh, I recognized that behavior in her. She was composing her response, more than absorbing what was being said. She’d already decided what she wanted to do and was waiting for me to finish so she could say it.
“What do you think we should do?” she asked as a formality.
“Evacuate,” I replied immediately. “I have contacts. I can arrange transit. It won’t be easy, but everyone will be alive and together, and that’s more than I can promise if you stay and try to fight a professional syndicate with people who’ve never held a weapon.”
“No,” she said. Just that. No deliberation, no consideration.
Frustration rose up in me. “You cannot just say no, with the lives of your people at stake.”
“I’m aware of the stakes,” she said sharply. “How many will be coming here?”
“The first Rivonok operation I saw was a takeover of a biomine collective on Tessavar IV. They arrived with forty personnel. Armed security, extraction specialists, a negotiator and dozens of drones.” I paused, leaving out my role in the mission.
“The negotiator goes in first. That’s how they prefer to work.
They make an offer. It’s not a good offer, but it’s an offer.
They’ll go back and forth for a while, but if they’re refused, the security team takes over. ”
“And if they’re resisted?”
“There were sixty-three people in the Tessavar collective,” I said.
“Twelve of them refused to cooperate after the negotiation failed. The Rivonok wanted to set an example, which they did.” I watched her face carefully.
“The other fifty-one cooperated, after cleaning up what was left of their colleagues.”
She was very still. “And the other time was the same?”
I nodded. “The second time was smaller. A botanical cultivators’ settlement on the Drev moon.
Fewer people, same methodology. Same outcome.
” I kept my voice even. “The Rivonok have done this enough times that they’ve refined it.
They know how to pressure a community until it complies.
They know how to extract cooperation without producing the kind of attention that complicates their operations.
They are not amateurs making threats. They are professionals with a system, and the system works. ”
Maive said nothing for a moment.
“So they won’t come in and kill everyone,” she said.
“No.” I wished I didn’t have to be blunt about this, but Maive was not listening to reason. “Dead people don’t teach you how to make junver syrup.”
A shiver moved through her at that. Finally. She absorbed it, and her jaw set, and she looked at me with eyes that had gone very clear and very cold. “Then we will make sure they never get close enough to ‘make an offer.’”
“Maive.” I kept my voice level with extreme effort. “Sending your people to fight professionals is not possible. The villagers will die. The only variable is how many, and what atrocities the survivors will have to witness before they finally submit.”
She closed her eyes. “I know what you want me to say.”
“It’s not about what I want,” I said, louder. “It’s about self-flecking-preservation.”
“I can’t order these people to just pack up and leave,” she said. “This is their home.”
I could feel my frustration building and as it mixed with panic, it was becoming unsustainable.
I could not tolerate being right but also unable to make people see sense.
“You haven’t seen what it costs,” I said roughly.
“I have. I’ve watched civilians try to hold positions against professional fighters, and I’ve walked through what was left afterward, and I am telling you that I know precisely what those costs look like. ”
“I believe you,” she said quietly.
“Then how—?”
“This is our home.” She was watching me with those green-gold eyes, and my thoughts created a vision of seeing the light fade from them. Of blood. Of screams. Of things I knew I could not see or hear or experience again. The words were out of my mouth before I’d decided to say them.
“Belaga,” I blurted. “My home planet. I lost everyone and everything. It wasn’t the Rivonok, but some other group like them.
My father first, of course, as he was part of the initial resistance.
Then my brothers. Then my mother. I was a child, and they rounded me and the rest of us up and handed us over to the mercenary guild.
” I threw my hands up, then brought them down to rub over my face, which felt numb.
“That’s how I ended up this way. It wasn’t my choice.
I don’t want these children to end up…like me. ”
The silence after that was different. She let it stay silent for a moment, and I was grateful for it. She didn’t move toward me. She didn’t push closer. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Oh, Gilrox. No one should have to endure that.”
“It was a long time ago,” I said, which was true. Also, not the point. “Please. Please, let me evacuate your people.”
Something shifted in her expression. She had heard what I was actually saying underneath everything else, and she was taking it seriously, and she was still going to say no.
“If it were my choice alone, I would. But this is not up to just me. The village decides its fate, and I already know what those people are going to say,” she said.
“That’s why I’m saying no. This village is not just where we live.
The junver ecology took generations to develop.
The birds, mushrooms, trees, all of it managed and tended and passed down.
If we leave, even for a season, it begins to unravel, and do you think these Rivonok people will just let us go?
Do you think that if they show up here and find us all gone, they’ll just say, ‘oh, well,’ and move along?
” She leaned toward me, finger pointed and eyes sharp.
“No. They’ll hunt us. They’ll find us, and drag us right back here.
And we, Runams, would be enslaved again.
We haven’t forgotten our history, Gilrox. ”
Huh. I hadn’t thought about the scenario she described.
It wasn’t wrong, though. I wondered if there was a place in the galaxy where I could hide several hundred people from a syndicate with massive resources and the capability of a vast network of spies.
Probably not without dividing them up, giving them all new identities and possibly having to alter their appearances, too.
Maive began to pace, flicking her hand with agitation.
I’d never seen her like this before. “When our original enslavers abandoned this planet, they left us with nothing. We built everything you see from nothing. We became a people who build a life of peace and balance with the natural world here. We make our own decisions and are not dominated. That is not something any Runam of Valrim Village will be willing to surrender.” She looked at me. “You cannot evacuate a way of life.”
“You can rebuild a way of life,” I said, because I wasn’t ready to concede to her point. Which was one hundred percent valid. “You cannot rebuild the people who died defending it.”
“We are not fragile,” she said in a louder voice that had turned raspy.
“I’m not saying you’re fragile,” I shot back, though I was. And they were. “I’m saying you’re outmatched.”
“Perhaps.” She lifted her chin. “What I know is that we will not run. And run, and run, and run.”
“For flecks’ sake,” I said, turning away so she couldn’t see the stricken look on my face.
Panic had completely overtaken the frustration.
Fear. And it was an old fear that gnawed at my bones and left me with a relentless ache.
“I know what’s coming here. I know what will happen and I cannot stand by and watch all that I love be destroyed again.
I simply cannot. Do you understand that? ”
“I understand,” she said through her teeth, looking as wild as I probably did, “that you have spent so long moving from one battle to the next that you can’t remember what it feels like to fight for something other than credits.”
The air emptied out of my lungs. That was a low blow by any standard, and she knew it the instant she said it. Her hand clapped over her mouth and her eyes widened. “Oh, no. I didn’t mean that.”
Maybe not, but that was what landed. Also, she wasn’t entirely wrong. I knew it, and she knew I knew it, but it was still a harsh thing to hear after I just basically told her I loved her.
“I need to go,” I said.
“Gilrox—”
“I need to go,” I said again, and left.
I walked south. The sun was just as harsh as Maive’s words, which settled in my chest and stayed there.
She wasn’t wrong. The horrible things I’d done to earn credits.
But I was also right.
Both things were true at the same time and I had nowhere to put that, so I walked home and didn’t speak to B2. I let Silli curl up next to me because he seemed to have opinions about my current condition and the opinions appeared to be in my favor.
It was something. Not much. But something.