by Mel Odom
Halladay smiled grimly. “I know that, but he’s not going to be any happier with me than the general is.”
Kiwanuka cocked her eyebrow suspiciously. “Where is Master Sergeant Sage?”
“In the infirmary.”
That worried Kiwanuka. During the attack on the Zukimther, she’d seen Sage go down, but he’d gotten back up again. “The last I’d heard, Master Sergeant Sage was only shaken up, sir. Has his condition changed?”
“No. I’ve given Captain Gilbride orders to keep Sage out for a few hours. In addition to being shaken up, the master sergeant is in danger of exhausting himself. He needs some rest, even if I have to order it for him.”
Kiwanuka knew that was true. The last few days, Sage had hollowed out his reserves while trying to keep the fort’s defensive systems operating at peak performance and getting the troops ready for anything that might come. In addition to that, the police action enforcing martial law in the sprawl had taken up even more time and energy that Sage hadn’t had.
Halladay paused. “It’s for his own good because I know he’s going to be needed more later, and to keep him out from underfoot while I deal with the general. The general is under the impression that Sage will be with me and is looking forward to getting Sage in line with Charlie Company policy while on Makaum.” He said the last like it was a title of an MOS handbook. Then he rubbed his chin. “Having the master sergeant in the general’s office is . . . problematic, to say the least. Like walking through a minefield. Sage wears his heart on his sleeve. Even when he’s being polite you can tell what he’s thinking. The general doesn’t like anyone in his office who is thinking anything other than what he wants them to think.”
Kiwanuka figured leaving Sage out of that meeting was probably the smart thing to do. Makaum needed a firm hand right now, and—as long as he was onplanet—Sage was going to use one. If he was asked by the general what was needed, he would tell the general that. She felt a little relieved because there was nothing Sage could hold her accountable for concerning getting left out of that meeting. “That sounds fine, sir.”
Halladay tapped his PAD and dropped a file on to Kiwanuka’s device. “Here’s where it gets sticky for you. I’ve just received some information from Mr. Huang regarding the assassins who killed Wosesa Staumar at the festival.”
Mr. Huang operated a noodle shop in the sprawl, but he was also a trader in secrets and gossip. The Terran military, and others, had used Mr. Huang and his large, colorful family as spies on other planets before Makaum. The man had an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time.
“I thought we were at a dead end in our pursuit of the assassins, sir.”
“We were. Now we aren’t. Mr. Huang has managed to locate at least one of the people who were involved with the shooting.” Halladay leveled a forefinger to her PAD. “The intelligence we received is in that file.”
Tapping her PAD, Kiwanuka opened the file. Its contents were slim, just a few images and a paragraph of information.
The subject of the images was a Voreusk female. At least, Kiwanuka thought the alien was female. With the Voreusk, it was hard to know the difference. Sometimes only another Voreusk could tell.
Kiwanuka assumed the alien was a female because she was surrounded by males of a half dozen different cultures who were showing evident interest in her as she stood at one of the ramshackle bars in New Makaum, which was essentially the sprawl’s red light district.
At least two meters tall, nearly half a head taller than the humans around her, the Voreusk was covered in fine reddish-orange feathers that deepened more toward red at the center of her body. Her head was vaguely wedge-shaped, large round eyes set wide over a curved beak. Clad in a grease-stained mechanic’s jumper that had worn cuffs and patched elbows, the alien leaned an elbow on the bar and hoisted a tankard in her other hand. A fluff of pale orange feathers stuck out from the crown of her head.
Kiwanuka read the intel on the one-sheet showing on her PAD. “Says here that Darrantia is a ship’s mechanic with a history of making repairs using other people’s parts. She hasn’t done anything criminal on Makaum, sir.”
“According to Mr. Huang, Rakche Darrantia is serving aboard a ship called Kequaem’s Needle. Have you heard of the name?”
Kiwanuka had to think a moment. “No, sir.”
“Well, I have. It’s from a Fenipalan drinking song, a satirical lament about how Black Opal Corp gutted a world called Fenipal a few years back.”
There were a lot of worlds out there left gutted by the corps. “If you say so, sir.”
Halladay looked pained. “I do. General Whitcomb was stationed at Fenipal for a time when I was still just a shave-tail lieutenant. The Terran Alliance sent us in to help keep the peace after things there got out of hand. By that point, there wasn’t much we could do. The planet was in shambles.”
Kiwanuka nodded, thinking that General Whitcomb had a history of assignments filled with too little, too late. Makaum was just another bead on the string.
“Mr. Huang insists that Darrantia is part of a mercenary crew that specializes in assassination, as well as smuggling and other illegal enterprises. The ship’s captain is supposed to be a ghost, a guy who can walk in anywhere and kill a target, then disappear.”
“Sounds like our guy, sir.”
“I want you to go collect Darrantia, Staff Sergeant, and bring her here so we can talk to her.”
“She hasn’t broken any laws, sir.”
“Trust me, you’ll find stolen goods on her.”
“And how do you know that, sir?”
Halladay checked the time on his PAD. “Because one of Mr. Huang’s family members is going to sell them to her this morning. You’ve got an hour to get a team ready and bring her in.”
“Sir, shouldn’t Master Sergeant Sage be involved in this?”
“No. I want the master sergeant off the firing line on this one. He’s already hit the general’s radar way too often lately. This thing could get messy. If it does and Sage is involved, it will make my job harder.” Halladay grinned. “Now do you see why we’re both going to be taking heat over this?”
Kiwanuka did. Sage would be upset that he wasn’t there to bring Darrantia in. Of course, he would be even more upset if the Voreuskan got away.
If the alien was truly involved in the assassination.
Then again, Mr. Huang seldom had bad information.
“Good hunting, Staff Sergeant. Try not to get yourself killed. That would leave only me for the master sergeant to be annoyed with.”
Realizing Halladay was out of his chair, Kiwanuka stood and saluted him. “Thank you, sir. Of course not, sir. Top of my to-do list every day is to save my own life.”
Halladay smiled. “Good. Keep me updated.”
“Of course, sir.”
Halladay walked away and Kiwanuka ignored the curious stares turned in her direction as she gathered her things to prepare for the mission she’d been given. The colonel was right. No matter how the arrest went down, Sage was going to be properly ticked at being left out of the loop.
So you’d better have Darrantia in hand when he finds out.
SEVEN
Red Light District
Makaum Sprawl
1058 Hours Zulu Time
Get up, soldier! Move or you’re going to lie there and die!
The AI no longer spoke in the dulcet feminine voice inside Jahup’s head. The new voice belonged to Master Sergeant Sage. Jahup had programmed that in for emergency situations, thinking that he would react more to Sage’s voice than any other.
Feeling chems racing through his body to clear his head and take away the pain wracking his body, Jahup rolled over onto his back and pulled the Roley up. The reticule tracked the movement on his faceshield and showed him what he was going to hit when he squeezed the trigger. It came to rest on the center of his attacker’s face.
In that second before firing, Jahup realized he knew the man. His name was Oeldo and
he was one of the farmhands who worked in the corok fields. The man was old and stooped from his labors, his back no longer straight, and his stomach bulged from too much time spent with a wine flask. His bearded cheeks and nose showed burst blood veins, and his eyes were phlegmy, like they had gone bad inside his head and were just waiting to ooze out.
“It’s you, isn’t it, Jahup?” Oeldo bellowed.
Pedestrians on both sides of the confrontation fled either down the street or took shelter in some of the shops. On the ground beside Jahup, Tanest lay facedown and still on the cracked street.
Oeldo took a step forward, almost stumbling. His hand holding the weapon shook. “I know it’s you. You took my son out into that jungle and you got him killed, got him eaten by a kifrik.”
Luek’s death had been unfortunate. The young man volunteered to become a hunter, and Jahup had suspected it had more to do with his father’s drinking than a desire to make meat for the village. Family problems couldn’t follow hunters into the jungle, but a hunter had to make sure they got left at home. Luek had never seen the kifrik that had dropped from the canopy and killed him.
Slowly, Jahup got to his feet. He kept the Roley pointed at the man’s center mass. “Oeldo, you need to put that weapon down.”
The old man swayed a little. “No! I’m going to have my revenge on you, boy. You took my son from me. My only family. And now you’ve joined up with those offworlders to try and take our world away from us.”
“Corporal Jahup, this is Corporal Vaughn. We’re on our way to you.”
Jahup knew his suit AI had sent for support. Vaughn was patrolling the next area over. “Roger that, Vaughn.” He watched Oeldo and spoke to the old man. “I want to check on my friend. I don’t think you meant to shoot her.” He wanted Vaughn to arrive and take command of the situation. Too many people were watching, and Jahup didn’t want things to get worse. “I’d like to make sure she’s okay.”
Oeldo glared at Jahup over the weapon. The man took the burster in both hands now, fighting to keep it steady. “You’re not going to do anything! I’m in charge here!”
“Jahup,” Vaughn transmitted, “you need to drop this guy.”
“I don’t want to kill him.”
“Negative, soldier. You don’t want to die. You don’t want your partner to die. He is a threat and that weapon can cause a lot more damage in that crowd even if he misses you. Shoot him.”
Even though he was aware of the wall slagged and burning behind him because it had taken the brunt of the burst, Jahup ignored the command. Vaughn held the same rank he did. He wasn’t in command.
“Oeldo, please,” Jahup said, “put the weapon down.”
“You put yours down!” the old man shouted.
Even before he’d been accepted to the Terran military and told never to surrender his weapon, Jahup wouldn’t have made himself defenseless. He’d hunted in the jungle too long for that kind of thinking to be acceptable. “I can’t do that.”
Farther down the street, Jahup spotted Noojin standing in the crowd. She wore bloodstained hunters’ leathers and carried her bow in one hand. Leaves were still caught in her short-cut dark hair that lay close to her head and was no longer than her jaw. Dirt smudged her face and her eyes were dark and hollow from lack of sleep.
Jahup wished she wasn’t there because he didn’t want her to get hurt and he thought the confrontation with Oeldo was going to end badly. At the same time, he was scared and angry that she had gone off to hunt without him there to watch over her. He’d suspected that was where she had been the last few days since he hadn’t seen her.
“Jahup, shoot him!”
Tracking Vaughn’s movements on his faceshield, Jahup knew help was less than a minute away. Moving slowly, Jahup walked away from Tanest but didn’t close the distance between himself and his attacker.
Oeldo’s hand tightened on the weapon. His knuckles whitened with pressure. “You’re going to burn, boy.”
Jahup kept moving and Oeldo moved with him, turning so that his back would be toward Vaughn when the Terran arrived. “Oeldo, please. Don’t do this. We can talk.”
Oeldo rubbed his mouth on his shoulder. “There’s no need to talk. You killed my boy, and now you’re killing your people for the offworlders.”
“That’s not true.”
Behind Oeldo, the crowd had grown. Many of them were Makaum, and some of them were offworld media people who had their recording devices in hand. They were an oddity. Jahup still couldn’t imagine vid of him being shown on other worlds in other galaxies. That made everything seem far too big.
“Time for you to die, boy! Freedom for Makaum!” Oeldo pulled the trigger.
A bright ball of flame erupted from the stubby weapon and streaked for Jahup. He dove to the side, rolled, and shifted the reticule from Oeldo’s center mass to his shoulder, hoping to wound the man, not kill him.
The bullet struck Oeldo in the shoulder and staggered him. Clinging stubbornly to his weapon with his other hand, the old man fired again. This time the blast smacked into the top floor of a two-story building meters away from Jahup.
Flaming slag ran down the side of the building onto a group of bystanders. Screams of pain and agony filled the street on the heels of the rumbling destruction.
Vaughn yelled curses inside Jahup’s head. Jahup tried to line up his second shot, but a pile of molten rock poured over him and knocked him to the ground.
Get up, soldier!
As Jahup forced his way to his feet, heat waves distorted his vision. Broken and molten plascrete tumbled off him. He wiped away debris wreathed in flames from his faceshield, but that only made his vision worse. Even with the AKTIVsuit’s cooling system working at full strength, he felt like he was baking alive.
Alarm systems pinged and whistled inside the suit. Jahup didn’t know what all of it meant other than he was in deep awivor. He tried to track Oeldo, but the targeting system was suddenly erratic and the reticule blinked into and out of existence across his vision. Vaughn’s voice crackled across the comm but the transmission was too staticky and cut out often.
Cooling systems unable to combat heat. Automatic armor evacuation in progress. 10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . .
Blearily, Jahup tried to focus. There was a way to stop the auto evac of the armor, but he couldn’t remember it. Perspiration covered his body. His eyes teared up. He tried to manually aim his weapon, but there were too many people behind Oeldo. If he missed, he might hit a bystander instead.
. . . 7 . . . 6 . . .
Still howling threats and curses, Oeldo readied his weapon again. Then the man staggered and looked down in surprise at the arrow jutting from his chest. Dropping his weapon, he grasped the arrow with both hands and looked over to where Noojin stood with another arrow already nocked to the string.
Her face was stone cold, but even at this distance Jahup could see the pain and shock in her eyes. Her lower lip trembled, but her hands were steady on the bow.
. . . 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . .
Oeldo took one step backward, then he collapsed onto his back. His hands slid away from the arrow and he stared sightlessly into the sky.
. . . 2 . . . 1.
The armor jerked and vibrated and jarred Jahup inside it.
Unable to engage automatic evacuation at this time. Systems compromised. Distress beacon activated. Get out of the armor.
Jahup dropped his assault rifle and fumbled at the armor’s release points, but they wouldn’t respond to his frenzied attempts. He couldn’t breathe. His lungs moved and he tasted smoke, but no oxygen was in the air.
Oxygen supply stopped because it is flammable and will result in death. Get out of the armor.
Jahup tried the release again but only got the same non-response. Panic rose in him as his lungs struggled to fill and only found the same dead air. The suit had sealed to protect him from the fire; now it held him captive. The armor was killing him.
His vision dimmed, growing smaller and smaller till on
ly a pinprick remained.
Noojin was there.
He reached for her, wanting to tell her that he couldn’t breathe, wanting to tell her that he was sorry they weren’t getting along, wanting to tell her his lungs hurt, wanting to . . .
1106 Hours Zulu Time
Kneeling beside Jahup, Noojin peered into the AKTIVsuit’s faceshield and tried to see him within, but the pressure-treated polycarbonate didn’t allow that. She knew he was inside because she knew the way he moved and because he wore a coiled red omoro on the right side of his helmet. He’d gotten that after he and Master Sergeant Sage had encountered one of the large tree snakes on a recent scouting expedition into the jungle.
When he reached for her, his hand still covered in flames from slagged plascrete, she broke out of the shock she was in and dodged back almost too late. The heat singed her hair and burned her face. Pain bit into her and she almost got angry.
Weakly, Jahup reached up toward his helmet and writhed on the ground.
He’s burning! As soon as the thought entered her head, Noojin shot to her feet and looked around.
Now that the attack was over, the crowd grew braver, drawing closer to see what was going on. They’d divided almost equally between Oeldo with an arrow in his chest—Don’t think about what you’ve done now, Noojin!—and Jahup lying there on fire. All of them drew to the spectacle of impending death like a storm of krayari beetles to rotting flesh.
Noojin shoved through the crowd, throwing elbows and knees into those who didn’t move quickly enough. “Get out of the way!”
Curses and protests spilled out behind her, but the people in front of her—including a huge Lemylian over twice her size—got out of her way more quickly.
Inside the clothing store across the street, Noojin gazed around wildly. The store was operated by a Makaum family she barely knew. The family had signed on with a subsidiary of DawnStar to sell offworld fashions that had grown popular on Makaum. Several of Noojin’s friends wore the clothing, and all of them complained of how substandard they were. They didn’t stop wearing them, though.