by Mel Odom
Although the plascrete buildings that had been extruded to house offworld businesses weren’t old, they were already falling into states of decay and disrepair. Most of those businesses were just fronts for the true profit centers of vice and black marketeering.
The only building in the area that stood against the encroaching jungle was the Phrenorian Embassy, and that edifice towered over its neighbors.
“These areas are much different than the parts of the sprawl where your soldiers police businesses, Master Sergeant.” Jason Fachang sat in the crawler’s passenger seat and watched the pedestrian traffic and the storefronts. His armor was protective only, with no built-in servos to boost his strength and speed.
With his augmented reflexes and muscle reinforcement, he was a weapon all by himself. Still, he was strapped with a top-of-the-line Birkeland coilgun on his right hip and Gatner fléchette pistol under his left arm. “You were right not to bring your soldiers into this.”
Fachang was one of Mr. Huang’s “nephews” somewhere along that particular family tree. Or maybe he’d been grafted on at some point. According to Mr. Huang, whom Sage had reached out to for this assignment, Fachang was one of his best people when it came to sec work in potentially hostile zones.
Once Sage had decided on a course of action, he hadn’t wanted to bring his soldiers into the area. All of them were too green to know how to be low-key when bracing a potential enemy among unfriendlies. That kind of experience came at a cost and required a soldier who could de-escalate a situation that didn’t have to go volatile.
So he’d notified Huang and subcontracted the necessary muscle. Huang had a number of trained combatants. Kiwanuka had made Sage aware of that.
“With everything the soldiers have been going through,” Sage said, “they’d go guns hot at the first sign of trouble.” He glanced at Fachang. “I don’t want to do that here.”
“Because that would make too many of these people think you were encroaching on their territory. The balance here must be maintained. Otherwise you’ll aggravate more potential saboteurs against the fort. And the Phrenorians might choose to make more of it than what it is.”
“Exactly. I’m glad you understand.”
“The sudden death of General Rangha has left a void in the command infrastructure.”
That interested Sage because none of the fort’s cyber-intel groups had picked up any chatter. The Makaum soldiers hadn’t mentioned it either.
“What do you know?”
“Uncle Huang believes that Captain Zhoh is preparing to exercise his ambitions.”
Sage thought about that and didn’t like it. Of all the Phrenorian command officers located on Makaum, Zhoh was the most experienced and most aggressive.
Terran military intelligence still hadn’t sniffed out why he’d been demoted.
Sage turned his thoughts to the task at hand. He’d left his AKTIVsuit at the fort and opted for generic armor because he didn’t want to announce the Terran military was coming for Throzath. He wanted a simple, quick takedown without a lot of violence.
“This may go sideways,” Sage said as he checked the crawler’s GPS. Like his present armor, the crawler was unmarked, a castoff one of the larger corps had decided to abandon or had forgotten about. Mr. Huang had provided the crawler and the armor.
“I expect it to.” Fachang rolled his head on his shoulders and the movement was smooth as silk. “Mr. Huang told me that. We”—he gestured to the two other security “consultants” in the crawler’s rear seat—“hope to contain any negative reaction.”
Sage flicked a glance at the other two sec warriors. One was a woman. Both were watchful and quiet, seemingly at ease with their assignment and not artificially relaxed with chems. That was reassuring.
Colonel Halladay wouldn’t be happy with Sage’s decision, but the man would accept it.
Provided they got in and out without creating a large mess. Taking Throzath was going to cause complications, but he hoped Quass Leghef would be able to put a damper on that.
The fact that Throzath was currently encamped in the sector overseen by the Phrenorians underscored the need to shut down the rebellious Makaum factions. Otherwise there would be more attacks like the one on Jahup and his unit.
“This close to the Phrenorian Embassy,” Sage said as he took a right turn onto the street where the GPS told him his destination was, “people don’t always worry about the law.”
Fachang looked at Sage and smiled. His head was encased in an anti-ballistic and beam-resistant helmet. At the moment his faceshield was recessed. Wraparound dark glasses with ruby lenses hid his eyes.
“Mr. Huang knows that,” Fachang said. “He has . . . business interests in this district too.”
In order to be as good as he was in the spy business, Mr. Huang had to break a lot of laws. Of course, there were also those who said it the other way around. In order to break a lot of laws, Mr. Huang had to be good at the spy business and sell information for “indulgences.”
Mostly, Mr. Huang worked with the Terran Alliance and showed a special interest in developing worlds new to interstellar trade who were caught up in the war.
“What do you know about this place we’re going to?” Sage asked.
There hadn’t been much in the fort’s intelligence files on Xurase.
“It’s a mercenary bar,” Fachang said. “Straight-up military special forces who have worked on several worlds, and bashhounds from the corp space stations. Some of the people the corps employ for wetwork and assassinations come down here to play and not have to worry about finding a place to drop a body. Or two. Their excesses are unlimited. People here quickly separate into predator and prey. Xurase is a Cheelchan word that means ‘death art.’ Because the people that go there are killers.”
Sage couldn’t help thinking that was a reflection promoted by the proximity of the Phrenorian Embassy. He knew that was skewed thinking, though, because every world he’d been to had a zone just like this one.
“Do you know the guy we’re going after?” Sage asked.
Fachang nodded and frowned. “I know him. Mr. Huang doesn’t do business with him or his father. Throzath isn’t a merc or an assassin. My uncle is aware.”
“I’m not exactly off the reservation with this,” Sage said, “because Throzath is wanted, but I didn’t hang around for a blessing from my CO.”
“Mr. Huang told me. I am fine with this, Master Sergeant. I know that Throzath is responsible for the attack on your soldiers this morning.” Fachang pursed his lips. “That is one bit of information Mr. Huang missed that he especially regrets.”
“It’s not his fault,” Sage said.
“No, but it has made Uncle, and us, more aware that control is slipping away on this planet. Helping you will aid Uncle’s efforts to find better intelligence streams.”
“Is Huang thinking now might be the best time to get offplanet? With his assets intact and ahead of the rush? A few of the smaller corps are doing that.”
“On the contrary, the smaller corps aren’t pulling out. They’re selling out. In every case such as Makaum, where there is a discovery of a new planet and profits are to be made quickly before the trade balance swings to something more equal or the resources dry up, everyone who can rushes in. Then, when the war begins, they hang on to what they own—materials, land, contracts, resources—so they can sell it to the highest bidder when the time comes. This is an old technique. The transitory corps make a quick profit, seed money for their next enterprise, and go to find their next strike.”
“You make war sound like a stock market.”
“Profits are always available in wars, Master Sergeant. You just have to figure out where your bottom line is. Uncle teaches all of us this.” Fachang paused. “When Uncle asked me to help you with this, he told me that you once saved his life.”
That surprised Sage. “I’ve never met your uncle.” Even now, he had used the commlink number Kiwanuka had given him when she’d first to
ld him about the man to make contact. There had been no face-to-face.
“Uncle said he saw you on Nogdria 7 when the (ta)Klar betrayed the Terran Alliance to the Phrenorian Empire and caused that world to fall to the Phrenorians. He told me you and your men saved a lot of people that day by holding the Phrenorians at bay till they could ship offworld.”
For a moment, memory of that old police action rose up in Sage’s thoughts. Those recollections had been in his mind when Gilbride had put him under too. He could still remember losing his legs there, thinking that he was going to die.
But he hadn’t.
“Nogdria 7 was a bad situation,” Sage said.
“It is the reason that Uncle no longer does business with the (ta)Klar,” Fachang said.
“I didn’t know he didn’t do business with them.”
“Mutual trade proximity elicits talk, and talk becomes information, but there is no serious trade with the (ta)Klar.” Fachang nodded ahead. “There’s Xurase.”
The mercenary bar stood between a cyber-enhanced pleasure palace and a casino. Like the two businesses it shared space with, the bar had once been a sophisticated establishment. But now it was just one more seedy-looking dive among many.
It was plain and unadorned, gun-metal gray and three stories tall. Foot traffic weaved and stumbled across the street in both directions. A crowd had gathered around an overturned crawler and several of the onlookers held weapons.
That’s not your problem, Sage told himself as he pulled the crawler to a stop in the alley down the block from Xurase. He didn’t have jurisdiction here, and seizing Throzath was going to be complicated enough.
Still, part of him was relieved to see two Phrenorian warriors stride out of the casino and break out weapons. The crowd around the crawler thinned immediately. If someone there needed help, they would get it. Or if they were a problem, they wouldn’t be for much longer. The Phrenorian “protective” services believed in instant justice.
Sage got out of the crawler and pulled at his armored jacket to make sure it covered his weapons. The jacket hung to his thighs and covered the Smith and Wesson .500 Magnum on his hip and the twin Kalrak plasma pistols in shoulder holsters he’d liberated from the Zukimther weapons his team had brought in last night. Tangler grenades, lethal and nonlethal, were concealed in the jacket’s pockets. And, in case Throzath resisted the coming arrest, he had a Rakan tranq pistol in his boot.
The arsenal didn’t compare to having a Roley and an AKTIVsuit, so he was going to have to make do. He also didn’t have the 360-degree view of his surroundings, and he missed that most of all.
Old school, Sage thought, and even though the danger was high, part of him welcomed it.
Two Lemylian warriors, both tall and broad-shouldered with blue crystal eyes and covered with ridged muscle, guarded the featureless plasteel door. Unlike the Lemylians that had protected Zorg’s Weeping Onion the night Sage had captured the Makaum men who’d attacked the fort, these guards wore lethal weapons instead of shoktons.
Sage motioned to himself, Fachang, and the two other sec operators as he held out a credstick. “Me and my friends.”
The Lemylian holding the wand reader studied Sage for a moment, then wanded the credstick and waved him through.
Sage pushed through the door and went inside.
NINETEEN
Lima Base Temporary Command Center
North Makaum Sprawl
1724 Hours Zulu Time
“ETA is two minutes twenty-seven seconds to impact point.”
Kiwanuka stared at the vid showing the crawler trundling through the narrow streets packed with other vehicles. Most of those other vehicles were dafeerorg-drawn carts, but there were a few corps crawlers and pedestrians. All of those avoided the beasts and native wagons.
The crawler had Terran Army markings, which made it a target for rebels and enemies alike. That alone made Kiwanuka’s gut clench. She would have preferred the vehicle be anonymous, but she needed the advertisement for her catch-and-release plan to work. It wasn’t exactly something she felt Halladay would have approved of, but she thought Sage would have supported the subterfuge.
The image was streamed by overlapping gel cameras that had been fired onto buildings by an aerial drone less than an hour ago. The gel cameras had a short life span once they were implanted. They’d dry out and flake away within three hours. Nothing would be left behind.
“Roger that, Lima Two,” Pingasa replied. He sat in front of the small computer he was using to run the op over an encrypted MilNet frequency. The unit used a tightbeam connect that made it hard to detect, much less crack, and provided instantaneous communication. “Reading you five by five.”
In addition to the expandable main screen that was 1 meter by 1.5 meters, six other screens sat in two rows of three on either side. All of the screens showed part of the target neighborhood.
Culpepper sat in the corner and watched the main door of the small room they’d set up as op base for the current mission. The big man ate fried ysecki with a pair of chopsticks like he was on a day trip. The carton advertised Uncle Huang’s Noodle Shop. Huang had a lot of pushcarts in the area today, and Kiwanuka had wondered if that was merely a coincidence.
Five other armored soldiers sat in the room too, but they were young and tense. Their inexperience showed in their attentiveness and rapid heart rates, which presented on her suit’s sensors.
Kiwanuka preferred Culpepper’s lackadaisical approach to the mission. He was relaxed, but he would shift into full-on mode in the space of a breath. Pingasa was totally locked into his element. This was all a game to him.
“Let me see the crawler’s holding area,” Kiwanuka requested.
Pingasa tapped the keyboard and an inset window opened on the screen.
Darrantia still wore the orange coverall she’d been outfitted with in the holding cell. She looked totally bored.
Three other prisoners, all of them soldiers, wore orange coveralls. They talked quietly among themselves and ignored Darrantia like they’d been told to.
“Okay,” Kiwanuka said.
“She’s pretty relaxed,” Pingasa said. “She should be spazzing over the prospect of being shot offworld and Gated to a prison colony. I know I would be.”
“Why?” Culpepper used the chopsticks to dredge up another bite of ysecki. “What’s so bad about a prison colony? You get fed. You get a bed. You even get entertainment piped in. All you have to do all day is whatever piecework the prison is contracted out to do. Manufacturing. Packing goods. Hydroponics. Mining. You ask me, it sounds a lot like the Terran military.”
“Yeah, but look at all the undesirables you get at a prison colony.” Pingasa shook his head.
“Have you taken a look at some of the people in our barracks?” Culpepper asked. “Nah. You ask me, prison colony is easy. You even get your own bed and don’t have to hot bunk the way we do here. If you don’t change the sheets, you’re sleeping in somebody else’s sweat here.”
“Then why did you enlist?” Pingasa asked.
Culpepper grinned. “Like I told you before, they put you in prison for blowing stuff up, but when you’re in the military, they pay you to do it and give you plenty of explosives to do it with.”
Pingasa laughed and reached back over his shoulder to bump fists with the other corporal. “Terran military all the way!”
“ETA is fifty-nine seconds, Lima One,” the crawler driver said, and those numbers took shape on the upper left corner of the computer screen. They counted down too quickly. “Are we good?”
Pingasa flicked to another camera view. This one showed an unmarked crawler loitering in an alley. The vehicle was only a short distance from the jail transport crawler.
“Roger that, Lima Two,” Pingasa said. “Lima Three, get moving in three . . . two . . . one . . . go.”
The second crawler pulled smoothly into motion onto the street. At the same time, a cart driver slapped the reins across his dafeerorg’s back and the
big lizard lumbered into motion in front of the crawler.
Lima Three’s driver cursed. “Do you see what happened?”
“I see it,” Pingasa said calmly. He tapped keys and mathematical equations ran in a transparent stream across the screen. “I’m working on it. Be ready to break left and go around it on my mark.”
“Roger that.”
Pingasa tapped more keys and a red dot formed on the screen.
“What’s that?” Kiwanuka asked.
“That,” Pingasa said, “is a SchmeltzerPress media drone I just hijacked.”
“You hacked it that fast?”
Pingasa hesitated.
“No,” Culpepper said. “He hacked it right after we got here. He’s been using it to track women in the bar across the street when you aren’t in the room. What’s the name of that place again? The Carmine Belelt-Cha? Something like that?”
Kiwanuka watched the numbers. They’d reached twenty-two seconds and continued dropping. The red dot swooped toward the cart.
“Man, Culpepper,” Pingasa said, “do you think before you speak?”
“I do. I thought, if you let the staff sergeant think you can hijack an encrypted media drone in the blink of an eye, she’s going to expect you to do it again in the future.”
Pingasa’s scowl turned into a grin. “True. It was me that wasn’t thinking.”
Culpepper grinned and returned to his meal. “Count on me to always have your back, brother.”
The red dot flew past the dafeerorg’s head. The lizard reared fearfully, bolted to the right, and burst through a collection of tables outside a small restaurant. Luckily only a few diners were there and they escaped harm.
Lima Three accelerated around the cart and sped toward the prearranged interception.
“Ultrasonics,” Pingasa said. “Those big geckos hear things most humanoids can’t. Thankfully, those media drones come with a full aud package of splendiferous sonic suites.”