“Watch it, Sagong!” he yelled at one of the crewmembers, who was about to drive a mag-lev forklift into a bulkhead. Sagong glared at him but slowed down and maneuvered the container through the door without breaking anything. The last thing they needed was damaged cargo. The Captain would take any penalties out of the shares of all crewmembers involved.
I can’t live like this, he thought, not for the first or the thousandth time. He had a plan of sorts: save enough to buy his way out of his contract, and then find some ETs willing to pay what he was worth. Failing that, he intended to jump ship with the clothes on his back and take his chances. So far, neither opportunity had presented itself. But some day, hopefully soon…
A sudden flash of light interrupted his thoughts. Next thing he knew, Harry was crumpled against a bulkhead, trying to blink away the afterimages dancing in front of his eyes. He couldn’t hear a damn thing.
Explosion.
The concept felt dull and distant, much like the sound that eventually got through the temporary deafness. The whine of charging capacitors and sizzle of energy blasts. Shooting. Someone was shooting inside the ship.
Someone screamed loud enough to be heard over the beamer discharges. Harry thought he recognized Sagong’s voice, but the scream had been too distorted with pain to be sure, and it was quickly cut off.
We’re under attack.
The thought brought back memories of life in the Navy, drills and battle stations. Captain Minh should be on his imp, screaming at the Port Authority. Who would be crazy enough to attack a ship here?
A figure loomed over him. Its head was hidden behind a helmet, but the eyes looking down at him from a transparent visor were human.
“Wait…” Harry croaked.
Human, yes, but there was no mercy in those eyes as the attacker leveled a beamer at him.
A shitty end to a shitty life.
* * *
“And you’re sure this isn’t going to come back and bite us in the ass,” Guillermo Hamilton said. It wasn’t a question, more of a combination of a statement and a veiled threat.
“The GACSS-1138 left on schedule and will complete its delivery,” Heather said. “Nobody at their next stop will care what species the ship’s crew is, even assuming they can tell humans from Blue Men. After that, the ship will quietly disappear. The Boothan Clan Lord assured me neither the vessel nor the bodies of its crew will ever be found again.”
“Kind of unsettling, how easy it is to steal a freighter, even a small one, in the middle of one of the busiest warp lanes in the galaxy.”
“It wasn’t that easy. Without my implants making sure the local security sensors didn’t notice the commotion, it would have been impossible. And we wouldn’t have pulled it off at the common docking stations. Security is a bit lax in the low-rent docks. You truly get what you pay for around these parts.”
“I guess we’re clear, then,” Guillermo said. He didn’t look happy about it.
“Yes. I figure someone in the State Department will eventually let the Pan-Asians know they shouldn’t bother looking for the ship. That it’s been taken care of. They won’t like it, but having it vanish into hard vacuum makes things easier for everyone. Word will get around that working with the enemies of humankind isn’t conducive to a long or healthy life, and there’s plenty of plausible deniability to go around.”
“You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?”
“I made sure the entire thing was done off the books, as per your instructions. As far as everyone is concerned, the Company had nothing to do with the mysterious disappearance of a Gack freighter. The Vehelians have no indication a crime was committed in their territory, and their records show that the ship departed TN-11 without incident.”
“Not bad, I suppose,” Guillermo conceded. “I’ll send off a report with the next courier, eyes-only. We’ll both get an unofficial attaboy and the usual reward for a job well done.”
“Good.”
Revenge hadn’t been as satisfactory as she’d expected, but she at least felt a sense of closure. Of course, that still left the Lampreys. Hopefully she’d get a chance to settle that score, too.
Ten
Parthenon-Three, 165 AFC
“I can’t believe we’re off to see a witch,” Gonzo muttered. “Sometimes I don’t believe the shit we do for pussy.”
“No hookers anywhere around here, so the witch will have to do,” Russell said as he drove the civilian vehicle he’d rented for the night. The car’s handling was terrible, the IC engine made a continuous roaring noise that annoyed the shit out of him, and he felt every bump on the poorly-maintained road all the way up his spine. He’d shelled out twenty bucks for the privilege of driving this POS for the night once it became clear they weren’t going to let him borrow the platoon’s LAV for this recon mission. He didn’t mind the expense; he had some money to burn, courtesy of Dragunov’s pathetic attempt at bluffing, and nowhere else to spend it. It’d been three months after they’d arrived at P-3, three months of hard work and no play. Hard to believe he’d gotten laid more often in P-4, which had held less people in total than any of the top five cities here. Being deployed in this hick-ridden valley sucked ass.
He’d been on a quest to find loving companionship at reasonable rates since day one, spending time and money among the local yokels to see if anybody could point out a discreet cathouse in the area. All he’d gotten from his efforts had been lots of blank stares, some cussing and a couple bar fights. Until now.
“There’s this woman. Might be she can help you,” the local bartender had said reluctantly after Russell plopped down an obscenely-large tip in front of him, all in anonymous cred tubes that the IRS didn’t need to know about. Even so, getting the story out of him had been like pulling teeth, but Russell had been relentless. VR porn could only get you so far in life.
“Are you sure she’s down to fuck?” Gonzo asked as they turned into a tiny country road leading up into one of the gazillion hills that dotted Forge Valley.
“Dude said she’ll do a reading first, some witch stuff with cards or whatever, and if she decides you are worthy, she’ll do whatever she thinks you need,” Russell explained. “He made it sound like she was willing to go full service.”
Or maybe the dude had steered him wrong and the woman at the other end of the road would be an old spinster with a large collection of pets or someone who’d get Russell in trouble otherwise. Russell had been a little too persistent, so maybe this was a way to try and get rid of him. In which case that bartender would get what was coming to him. He didn’t say any of that out loud, though. Best to have a positive attitude.
“And if you ain’t worthy?”
“Not gonna happen,” Russell said confidently. “I know how these scams work. She’ll do a ‘reading’ of my credit stick and will know I’m worthy. Here in the boondocks, she can hardly hang out a shingle announcing she’s a whore, can she? The local Bible-thumpers would run her out of town. But doing it this way, all them horny farmers can say they’re just getting their fortunes read. Everybody wins.”
“Whole thing doesn’t sound right,” Gonzo said. He’d only agreed to come along because he’d been just as bored as Russell. “How much business can she do anyway? She’s in the middle of nowhere, even for this one-cow town.”
Gonzo had a point. The ‘fortune teller’ lived well off the beaten path. Their drive was taking them to the very edge of farmland and imported Earth plant life in the valley; the trees around here were a mixture of native and terrestrial species. The local varieties were tall and spindly, their long pointed leaves arranged in a circle on top, a little bit like palm trees, except the trunks were studded with sharp hollow spines filled with poisonous sap. You didn’t want to frolic around them woods without some high-grade nano-meds on you. The witch liked her privacy. Maybe the remote location made it easier on the locals, too. Out of sight, out of mind.
They almost drove past the path leading to the witch’s hut. The wind
ing private road was barely wide enough to fit their civvie car and it had been barely graded; it made the pothole-ridden country highway they’d taken on the way there look great by comparison. You’d think that someone providing a vital service would make it easier for prospective customers to find her.
“Doesn’t look like she gets much traffic,” Gonzo said, echoing his thoughts.
“They just don’t want to make it too easy to step out on their wives is all.”
“We could just turn around, Russet. There’s always the waitresses at the Boar’s Head and Smiley’s. Or the new enlisted joint they just opened.”
“Yeah, sure. Half those girls just won’t put out, and the other half have a dozen Marines apiece chasing them. Good luck getting anywhere.”
Gonzo glanced at the woods. “Not liking this, Russet.”
It wasn’t like Gonzaga to get nervous, but they were way off the grid out here, and if that bartender had been doing more than bullshitting Russell, this was just the kind of spot where a couple of idiot grunts could get bushwhacked. The alien trees grew thickly alongside the road, their canopy obscuring the stars above and darkening the area to the point they might as well be driving down a tunnel. The car’s headlights cast a small patch of illumination ahead of them, and Russell had his imp run a low-light app, which helped a little. It still felt like they were going into hostile territory.
“Almost there, brah.”
A house loomed at the top of the hill, its slopes too steep for the trees to continue crowding the road; only few brushes and wind-bent saplings grew on the final stretch. Russell noticed that someone inside the house would have a clear shot of the approaching vehicle most of the way up. The impression that the place had been set up with an eye for defense got stronger as they reached the house proper, a three-story old-school wooden structure with peaked tiled roofs and narrow windows, its dark colors fading into black in the faint starlight. There was a footpath leading up to the porch, too narrow and steep for a wheeled vehicle, and not coincidentally in full view of several of those narrow windows. Russell wouldn’t want to storm that place with less than a squad in full battle-rattle, even if there was only one person inside. A less-well equipped force – a mob of angry townies, say – could expect to take some losses before even getting to the front door.
They parked in a cleared area some twenty feet below the summit, and walked the rest of the way. Out in the open, the forest below seemed too quiet for comfort. Russell didn’t like this one bit. That bartender had screwed him. It’d be just the thing to do to some outsider trying to get laid: send him somewhere where asking for sex might get him shot or arrested for attempted rape.
“Let’s play it smart, Gonzo,” he said as they paused in front of the door. “Be very polite-like. Maybe we got played, so don’t be asking for her rates just yet, okay?”
“I feel you,” Gonzo replied. “If this is a whorehouse, it’s the worst one I’ve seen. Makes you feel as welcome as a Snake at a Puppy festival. Tell you what, even if she is hot to trot, she’s all yours, man. I’ll just catch up on my reading or whatever.”
“Roger that.”
Russell was looking for a doorbell or intercom while his imp searched for the contact info associated with the property. He drew a blank on both fronts, but the door swung open on its own anyway.
“Spooky.”
“Just an automated door,” Russel growled. “Like they got everywhere.”
“Here, it’s just fucking spooky.”
They went in.
The door opened to a narrow hallway leading in, with a small table built into a wall and an antique-looking mirror above it. Russell noticed yellow wallpaper in a twisting pattern that caught his eye and wooden slat flooring with a homey welcome mat by the entrance. He carefully used it to scrape any dirt from the soles of his boots. Like he’d told Gonzo, he planned to be very polite. Worst case, he’d get the cheapest fortune reading available, and then head home and figure out some payback for the dickhead who’d steered him here.
“Good evening,” someone spoke from deeper inside the house. A female voice.
She was waiting for them in an old-fashioned parlor. All the furniture appeared to be hand-made and locally-produced. He’d noticed the same styles around Davistown; hardly any fabber stuff around. The woman appeared to be in her thirties, not that looks meant anything nowadays. He noticed her jet-black hair, long but tightly wound in a bun over her head, its lustrous sheen making Russell wonder what it would look like loose and whipping around while she swayed back and forth in time with his rhythmic pounding…
Shit, he thought, noticing his mouth was hanging open, making him look like some yokel on his first trip to the big city.
“Good evening,” the woman repeated. Her face was a pleasant oval shape, her skin pale, in sharp contrast with the dark hair. The lips were a bit thinner than Russell liked, and the grin had an edge to it that made him wary; something about her told him she could take care of herself.
“Evening, ma’am,” he said while he tried to access her public profile with his imp. PRIVATE PROFILE was all he got. Weird. It was hard to avoid providing at least a name and birth date, and people who went to the trouble of hiding those were automatically met with suspicion.
“I assume you are here for a reading, Lance Corporal Edison, Private First Class Gonzaga.”
Nothing supernatural about that. Their public profiles were pretty much open to inspection by anybody with an imp. Russell’s Facettergram page was short on personal details and long on adult content clips and pics.
“Yes, ma’am. We were told you did that sort of thing.”
“Is that all they told you?”
Ordinarily, Russell would have used that question to start testing the waters about any ‘special services,’ but he simply shrugged. “Pretty much, ma’am. Psychic reading, fortune telling.”
“I see.” Her smile shifted a bit as she spoke, her dark-blue eyes glimmering with a mixture of humor and something else. Russell had never been the kind to look away from someone’s gaze, and he didn’t do that here, but it took some work. She was unsettling. A witch. He could tell without looking away from her eyes that Gonzo was getting tense, and when Gonzo got tense things could get ugly fast.
At ease, he sent through his imp, and his buddy relaxed minutely.
“Very well. Let us get started,” she said, getting up. She was wearing a plush bathrobe, and the movement revealed something satin and sleek underneath, bright blue against pale skin, and the little flash stirred Russell up more than a full frontal squat at a strip joint.
“Ah, well, about your rates. Uh, for a reading,” he stammered, feeling about as sure of himself as he’d been his first time at a cathouse, back when he’d still been an Obie.
“You will pay me what you think the experience was worth. Does that sound fair?”
He glanced at Gonzaga.
“All yours, bro,” Gonzo said with a shrug.
“Follow me,” she said.
He did.
Most of the interior of the house was unlit. A lone lamp illuminated the parlor. The hallways leading deeper into the house had no overhead lighting, and the only break in the darkness was an open door at its end, where another lamp cast a small square of light. They went through that door, into a smaller room filled with a table and four chairs.
“At ease, Marine,” she said. “Have a seat.”
Russell did so automatically, following the orders as if they’d come from an officer. Which clearly was who he was dealing with. Miss Private Profile had commanded troops at some point. He suspected bubblehead rather than Marine, but an officer was an officer.
He’d always wanted to fuck an officer. But in this case he wasn’t sure if it was a good idea.
“So what did they tell you about me?” she asked as she sat down on the other side of the table. “Did they call me a fortune teller? A witch?” She tilted her head, and her smile vanished. “A whore?”
“Al
l of those,” he said. Lying came as naturally to him as breathing, especially lying to an officer, but it didn’t even occur to him to say anything but the truth to her.
“They would say that. Witch. That’s almost flattering, if by that word they meant a follower of one of the Old Religions. As far as belief systems go, most of theirs aren’t bad at all. But no, I’m not a Wiccan. I was raised Catholic. I even attend Sunday services.”
How about the whore part? The thought came up as automatically as a fish darting for a lure.
“No, I do not sell my body for money, either,” she answered the unspoken question, and laughed at the way his expression changed. “And no, I didn’t read your mind. You have a decent poker face, Lance Corporal, but not good enough, that’s all.”
“Understood, ma’am.” Well, this had been a waste of time and money. But he wasn’t sorry he’d come here. The woman was…
“Hold out your hands,” she said in the same voice of command.
Orders were orders. She reached out towards him. Her skin felt cool to the touch, almost cold. Cold hands, warm heart. His mother had used to say that, in between the periods of incoherent, blissful stupor when she got her hands on a dose of her medicine, and the bouts of brutal, also incoherent cursing when she was going through withdrawal.
She closed her eyes, still holding his hands in hers.
“Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” she said. “It’s easier if you’re warp-rated, of course.”
“Wha...?”
At first, he dismissed the slight tingling feeling as just nerves, at least until he started seeing things.
Warp Marine Corps- The Complete Series Page 48