Coming Undone

Chapter 38

Radiation, warmth, and dust pressed down around the construction hives burrowed into the crater-scarred surface of Canadere, Balmut's third moon. The sky overhead was dominated by Balmut's rich grey and brown face, grand streaks of the gas giant hovering above like a mosaic in the stars.

Marcen had to admit, it was a better view than most.

Through the visor of his thin suit, he could see past the papery atmosphere of Canadere and out into the vast reaches of space. A half-dozen motes of light overhead were his handful of ships, orbiting quietly above one of many dozens of shipyards on the rich ore fields of Canadere. Not far away was a quiet one, struggling for money and in desperate need of a patron after an unfortunate accident years prior.

Marcen had been only too happy to lend them his blood money in exchange for ships built quickly and quietly. The meek nationalists on Canadere thought their silent manufacturing was meant to evade Alliance taxes and restrictions.

It was more accurately to avoid being seen at all.

And this little hive of ships was only one.

Marcen looked around, his small escort of discreetly armed agents waiting just outside one of the massive octagons while a man in a dingy, welding-scorched exo-suit bounded towards them in the awkward gravity.

As he approached, Marcen's datapad dinged.

He looked down at it.

Iron Ghost under way. No word from our agents. Quixxa and the runt presumed dead. I'll keep an eye on the situation.

Marcen smiled, and tapped the screen off.

Despite the troubles, things had worked out. And even if they hadn't, there were excellent failsafes.

And with them gone, very little stood in his way. Only a few weak navies manned by kind, generous people. The sort who hesitated behind guns, not the sort who were willing to fire on all targets. The sort who drew second blood, and never left the battlefield as the victors.

Marcen squared his shoulders as the excited, beaming shipyard managed bounded up to him.

"Mr. Marcen!" he said happily. "We've got great news. We're ahead of schedule, and we haven't spent nearly what we were allotted. There are another dozen ships ready to launch today if you like, thirteen if you can spare the electrical shielding..."

"Leave no job unfinished." Marcen said kindly, his rich voice filling the communication lines. "We paid you well, and you've taken excellent care of my mining company."

"I'm glad to hear our ships have been serving you well." He said.

He hesitated for a moment.

"Did you, uh, have to test any of them out when the MLA attacked? I've been hearing the system news. They shot up a lot of people."

Marcen nodded, putting a deep, somber look across his face.

"Yes, yes they held their ground. Our ships faced a beating, and took it. Part of why I'm here. I fear more attacks soon."

The human got a stern look on his face.

"We'll ramp up production. We can do a little better, and I'd say its wartime hours for us. If those MLA animals want a piece of Canadere steel, they can have it, right between the eyes!" he said.

"We brought crews to get these ships launched. Are you sure they're ready now?"

The man in the airtight suit smiled and waved broadly to the completed, shining hulls that waited in the octagonal bays behind him.

"They're fine ships, Mr. Marcen, bloody fine. Hulls built to take blows, extra engine space, minimal cargo, and more hardpoints than any alliance frigates could hope to have. It's a fine fleet, and it's ready to launch. Glad to see them go up against the MLA, the bloody monsters."

"Thieves, pirates, and tyrants." Marcen said with a broad grin. "The people who rape and burn our system. If they want chaos and war, then we will burn them down to ashes and spread them across the stars."

The construction worker smiled also, a glint in his eye.

He was imagining pirates and cargo-stealers.

Marcen, however, had bigger targets. The true pirates and tyrants were those in dreadnaughts and stations. They stood in the way of Marcen's empire. They stood between him and the searing hot star of Socotra, trying to rob him of his right, claiming to be the heirs to the throne while coddling the usurpers Imbra and Pathmos.

Soon, they would burn. They would shatter under a thousand guns, and melt under the heat of nuclear fire. Despite their lofty stations and shining warships, they stood no chance against the legions of the restless, the hungry, the grasping, the weak, all those who wanted and had not, those who coveted and would not cooperate, those who envied and those who hated.

And Runt, if he had lived, and Carl Osterman, and Admiral Yen, even the turncoat whore Quixxa? They were irrelevant. Their noble efforts and self-sacrifice would be nothing but blood on the altar of a wrathful god, burned by hellfire and split open like sheep for slaughter.

They were good men, some of them.

Yet, a few good men could not turn back the tide of war. They could only drown in it.