The Broken Charter is a serialized fiction series set in the Harmonic Constellation universe, following the Ironbell Company — a Class B mercenary outfit — during the Mercenary Age, c. 3,237 CE.
Episode 1: “The Contract”
The Ironbell Company’s dropship hit atmosphere at a bad angle and nobody said anything, because saying anything would have meant admitting that their pilot was drunk. He wasn’t drunk. He was tired, which in Drakes’s opinion was worse. Drunk pilots made big, recoverable errors. Tired pilots made small precise ones that killed you.
Drakes gripped the jump harness and watched the viewport go orange and tried to look like he did this every day.
“Stop white-knuckling the harness,” said Lieutenant Maret from the seat across from him, without looking up from her tactical display. “You’re making everyone nervous.”
“I’m not white-knuckling.”
“Your hand is the color of bare bulkhead.”
Sergeant Vel-Kara, three seats down, made a sound that was either a laugh or a cough. It was hard to tell with Vaskarr. Her Blood-Shell war-skin was racked in the deployment cradle behind her, and she was sitting in standard kit — light armor, no helmet — with her ears flat and her eyes half-closed. She looked like she was sleeping. She was not sleeping. Vel-Kara did not sleep within six hours of a drop. She’d told Drakes this once and he’d thought it was professional discipline until he realized it was just that she liked being awake for the part where they might die.
“Keth-7 processing station,” said Captain Rowan Hext from the front of the bay, standing without holding anything, reading from his datapad with the relaxed posture of a man waiting for a train. “Three hundred and twelve personnel, civilian contract workers, currently under protection of the HELOS Mining Consortium private security detachment. Forty-six armed, half of them qualified.” He turned a page. “The Consortium has contracted the Ironbell Company to provide augmented defense of Keth-7 and its associated mineral processing operations against potential seizure by parties acting in the interests of the Vaskarr Hegemony.”
“Potential seizure,” Maret repeated. “That’s a nice way to say it.”
“It’s the client’s language.” Hext set the datapad down. He was forty-one, grey at the temples, with the kind of face that looked like it had been decided on a long time ago and hadn’t changed its mind. He’d been running the Ironbell for eight years, since the Free Lance Union had let him go over what he called a disagreement and the Union’s official record called a contract violation, a distinction he considered unfair. “Our role is defense, not engagement. We hold the station. We protect the workers. If a Vaskarr-backed company shows up and wants the station, we make holding it expensive enough that they choose arbitration over assault.”
“And if they don’t choose arbitration?”
“Then it gets loud.” He looked around the bay. Six pilots, three ground infantry teams, Pitch in the corner running comms checks with their headset on. Akkran was in the frame bay below them, probably asleep against his Iron Kin suit. He slept everywhere. “This is a Class B deployment. Standard contract terms, standard rules of engagement, MOB registered. Don’t do anything that ends up in a disciplinary file. Don’t shoot civilians. Don’t destroy the station we’re being paid to protect.” He paused. “Questions?”
Drakes had about thirty questions, but they were all variations of the same one, which was why does this feel wrong, and he didn’t have enough experience to know whether that was instinct or just fear. He kept his mouth shut.
The dropship leveled out. The viewport went from orange to dark grey to the muted amber of Keth-7’s processing floodlights, a web of light spreading across a surface that was mostly rock and conveyor infrastructure and processing towers venting slow columns of particulate. It looked like an industrial station on an asteroid, which was what it was, and nothing about it should have made the back of his neck prickle.
The prickling didn’t stop.
Keth-7’s station commander was a woman named Ortega who shook Hext’s hand for too long and talked too fast. Drakes had been taught to notice those things. He noticed them.
“We’re very glad you’re here,” she said, walking them through the main operations level while workers moved around them with the studied normalcy of people trying not to look at the armed personnel they’d just been told not to worry about. “We’ve had two proximity alerts in the last week. Unidentified vessels, holding at the outer boundary.”
“Holding pattern or approach?”
“Holding. But they’re not responding to hails.”
Hext nodded. “You filed with MOB?”
A slight pause. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
Vel-Kara’s ear twitched. She was walking two steps behind Ortega and to the left, which put her in a position to see the station commander’s face during answers. Drakes had noticed that Vel-Kara always positioned herself like that. He’d started doing it too.
“We’ll want full access,” Hext said. “Frame bay clearance, all levels, all transit shafts.”
“Of course. We can provide a guide for the lower —”
“We don’t need a guide.”
Another pause. Shorter, but there. “Of course,” Ortega said again, and turned them toward the frame bays, and did not look at any of them.
That night, in the crew quarters that smelled like processed air and recycled water, Vel-Kara sat on the edge of Drakes’s bunk and said, very quietly, “There’s a sub-level below the registered infrastructure.”
Drakes looked at her. “How do you know?”
“Because the transit shaft ends at Level Nine on every map we were given, and the vibration pattern in this floor suggests a Level Ten.” She said it like she was commenting on the weather. “I can feel the structure. It’s a Swift-Claw thing. Don’t make it strange.”
“I’m not making it strange.”
“You’re making the face you make when things are strange.”
He didn’t know what face that was. “Should we tell the captain?”
“I already did.” She stood up. “He said to leave it alone until we know what we’re dealing with.” She looked at him for a moment with her eyes the amber-gold of all Swift-Claw Vaskarr, the pupils narrow in the corridor light. “You had the right instinct on the ship. The contract parameters are too clean for what the proximity alerts suggest. Someone knew this was coming and let us walk into it without the full picture.”
“That’s not legal. The client has to —”
“The client has to provide accurate mission parameters under the Charter, yes.” She moved to the door. “Clients do that all the time. In the meantime, we do our jobs and we pay attention.” A pause. “Get some sleep, Drakes. Tomorrow will be busy.”
She left. He lay in the dark and listened to the vibration of the level below him, and didn’t sleep, and was not surprised when the proximity alert sounded at 0340.
By the time he reached the operations level, Hext was already at the sensor console, Maret was pulling her flight suit on over her thermals, and Pitch had their headset on and their eyes closed in the particular way that meant they were listening to three conversations simultaneously.
“What have we got?” Hext said.
“Four vessels,” said Pitch, without opening their eyes. Their voice had the faint resonance of active psionic sensitivity, like sound coming from slightly the wrong direction. “Dropping out of transit three hundred thousand kilometers out. I’m reading frame transport configuration on at least two of them. The other two are —” A pause. “Escort. Destroyer class.”
Maret stopped dressing. “Destroyers? For a mining station dispute?”
Hext was already on the comms. “Keth-7 ops, seal all external access. Get the HELOS security personnel to defensive positions. Do it now, do it quietly.” He clicked off. To Maret: “Get to your frame. Power it up but don’t go active on the weapon systems — I don’t want to look like we’re threatening.”
“We are threatening.”
“We’re being cautiously prepared.” He looked at Drakes. “Go with Vel-Kara. She knows where she wants to be.”
“Where does she want to be?”
“She didn’t say. That’s how you know it’s somewhere she shouldn’t be.” He turned back to the console. “Go.”
Vel-Kara was already in the corridor, Blood-Shell War-Skin half-sealed, the suit’s Howl-Node relay casting a faint subsonic hum that Drakes felt in his back teeth. She handed him a rail carbine without looking at him and started moving.
“The transit shaft,” she said. “Sub-level access. Before anyone else thinks to look.”
“The captain said leave it.”
“The captain said leave it until we know what we’re dealing with. Four vessels with destroyer escort is us knowing what we’re dealing with.” She turned a corner, moving fast in the armored suit with the fluid efficiency that Vaskarr pilots always had, like the suit was something they’d been born with. “Whatever is in that sub-level is why they’re here. Not the minerals.”
Drakes followed her. Behind them, through the station’s hull, he could feel the distant thrum of approach drives decelerating. Four ships. Destroyer escort. For a mining station on the edge of contested space.
The comms crackled. Pitch’s voice, calm, the resonance in it tighter now: “Captain. Transponder IDs confirmed. The approaching vessels are flying Iron Veil colors.”
A silence on the channel that lasted exactly one second too long.
“Iron Veil,” Hext said. Flat. The voice of a man doing very fast arithmetic. “Copy that.”
Drakes knew the name. Everyone in the Compact knew the name. Flag-Class. Marshal Keiko Tanaka’s organization. Fifty thousand personnel, two thousand frames, fifteen capital ships. They charged more for a single company deployment than the Ironbell Company had earned in its entire operational history.
They did not get sent to mining station disputes.
Vel-Kara found the sub-level access hatch behind a maintenance panel on Level Nine. It was sealed with a lock that wasn’t on any of the station’s provided schematics. She looked at it for a moment, then looked at Drakes.
“Your captain is about to get a contract offer from an Iron Veil representative asking him to stand down,” she said. “Iron Veil doesn’t fire first on licensed companies — the Charter won’t allow it. They’ll try to buy us out.”
“What does he do?”
“That depends on what’s down here.” She put her battle claw on the hatch. The draw-cords in the suit’s arm whined as the fourteen-times-amplified grip engaged. “Stand back.”
The hatch came off the wall.
The air that came up from below was cold and very old, and it carried a sound that wasn’t quite a sound — a vibration at the bottom of hearing, rhythmic and patient, like something enormous breathing in its sleep.
Vel-Kara’s ears went fully flat. Her Howl-Node hum cut out.
“That’s not mineral equipment,” she said.
On the comms, Hext’s voice: “Company-wide. Defensive positions. We are not standing down.”
Drakes looked at the hatch. He looked at the dark below it. He thought about the contract parameters, too clean. The station commander’s pauses. The Iron Veil destroyers sitting three hundred thousand kilometers away, waiting to see what happened next.
He thought about what Vel-Kara had said. Whatever is in that sub-level is why they’re here.
“Captain,” he said into his comms. “You need to hear this.”
Iron Veil’s lead vessel, the IVL Exacting, broadcast the stand-down offer at 0412 station time. The Ironbell Company did not respond.
The first frame drop began at 0437.
Next episode: The frames hit the ground. Maret takes her Centurion into the ore flats against Iron Veil’s Vanguard line. Vel-Kara goes down into the dark. Akkran wakes up.
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