Hellsky (Hunter-Killer #3)

Chapter 03 - Crossing Rubicon

Year 248 P.L. Rychter Calendar
Coordinates: 15.4°N; 29.8°E
Site Designation: Rubicon (City of)

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Dawn blazed into life over the city of Rubicon.

The first city. The jewel of Rychter. Planetfall. The Mouth of the River. A place of myth in the minds of many.

Rubicon followed the contours of a large waterfall - one of the few naturally occurring sources of water on the planet's surface - sheltered by a huge crescent of mountainous cliffs. A great cluster of white-stone buildings filled the upper reaches, some of them a dozen stories tall, larger and more strident than anywhere else on the planet.

Standing on the balcony of his residence in Rubicon's cliff district, Commissariat Minister Lanto Numitor took in the view. Age was catching up to him now, his slim crop of black hair now peppered with increasing streaks of grey, his joints aching in protest as he tried to stride on through life as though he was still a young man. One bony hand held a ceramic mug of sun-roasted coffee; the other held a data slate, its screen clogged with today's agenda.

He sipped. The coffee was good - grown on the Rubicon slopes barely a few hundred yards from where he stood. Not a lot of people on Rychter could enjoy such luxury, but he allowed it to himself. Such indulgences were payment he felt he deserved, given that his job left precious time for much else. A moment of calm like this was more precious than gemstones; rarer than rain.

Another sip. It made some of the information on the data pad easier to digest.

Lanto never thought he would have missed the simplicity of the Scraegan war, but what had sprung from the dark waters of the south made him long for the years of us versus them. Two sides wrestling for the right to exist on this planet.

His eyes wandered to the great cluster of the cliff district. In the midst of it, the armoured cube of Rubicon's Grand Commissariat chambers stood, austere in its decoration save for a large flag draped over its southern-facing wall above the main entrance. Blood red and bisected by a horizontal line of blue, with a depiction of the twin suns of Rychter stitched into its upper section.

Lanto had the same flag hanging in his house, because he was a patriot. A man who would do anything and everything to defend Rubicon's place in history.

The ping of his door alarm dragged his attention reluctantly away from the vista. Lanto turned, draining the last of his coffee as he did, and stepped back into his home. He walked through the front room, passing smoothly machined chairs, a stonework dining table and a well-stocked cabinet of expensive liquor until he reached the front door.

When he opened it, he found his adjutant, Aurelia, waiting for him. She was a tawny-skinned woman in her early thirties - barely half his age - clad in a crisply pressed grey uniform with the Rubicon flag emblazoned above her right breast and a matching military cap. Her short bundle of dark hair jutted out beneath it, and she stood smartly to attention, bright blue eyes looking past him as she saluted.

"Sir," she declared in her gritty voice.

"Lieutenant." Lanto inclined his head to her. A thin smile played on the corners of his mouth as he held up the mug. "I don't suppose we have time for another coffee."

Aurelia mirrored his smile. "Afraid not, sir. You know how the other ministers are about their punctuality."

"Yes indeed." He placed the empty mug down on a small table beside the door and selected a long black jacket from an alcove that receded into the left hand wall. With a smoothness that belied his age, he swept the jacket on over his white Commissariat fatigues and tugged it straighter onto his angular frame. "Very well. How do I look?"