Deathtrap

by Craig Alanson

  A male Verd-kris soldier hopped down first, holding out a hand to Shauna. That gesture might have irritated her, but she knew the soldier only intended to be polite and she was dead tired. She briefly accepted his grasp until she had her feet solidly on the ground, then shook away his hand and turned to the pair of Verd guards. “Sergeant Jarrett to see Colonel Perkins.”

  One of the guards checked a tablet while the other kept her rifle’s muzzle pointed at the ground between Shauna’s feet, the guard’s finger poised next to the trigger guard. Both guards were wearing skinsuits and Shauna saw at a glance their rifles had the safeties off.

  “You are not on the authorized list of visitors for Colonel Perkins,” the guard with the tablet stated. “Go to the administration tent and wait for-”

  Shauna was tired. She was tired, she ached all over and she was hungry despite the half of a sawdust-flavored powerbar she had eaten in the truck. Low blood sugar made her short-tempered, and anyone who knew her understood you did not want to piss Shauna off when she was hangry.

  “Mavericks,” she tapped the very distinctive and famous unit insignia on her uniform. The guards surely had run facial recognition, retinal and DNA scans on her and they knew who she was. “Get out of my way.”

  Verd-kris were certainly not intimidated by humans, so it had to be Shauna’s fame that made them step aside. It may also have been the fact that, of the three species occupying the planet, no human or Ruhar posed a threat to Legion headquarters. Or that the two Verd-kris decided that squabbles between humans was none of their concern. The one with the rifle pointed its muzzle to the side.

  Shauna strode into the tent, nodding to people busy at map tables or consoles. She saw Perkins immediately, hunched over a map table with two other officers. “Colonel Perkins,” she saluted to be safe, not knowing the protocol in the makeshift headquarters.

  “Sergeant Jarrett,” Perkins wanted to give Shauna a hug, so great was her relief that the sergeant was not dead as everyone had thought. She settled for a smile and returned the salute. “We are all very glad to see you are-”

  “Yes, Ma’am, thank you.” Shauna barely glanced at her commanding officer as she concentrated on the map table. “I’m fine,” she added while striding up to the table. “I need a Class-three drone in,” she scrolled the map to the west and highlighted the target, “this area, right now.”

  Perkins’ eyebrows lifted. Jarrett was dirty, disheveled and looked gaunt and weary from hunger and constant tension. The sergeant might be forgiven for her rudeness under the circumstances. “You should get checked out by a medic first. The hospital tent is-”

  “Ma’am?” Shauna glanced up, her expression implacable. “A drone.” She jabbed a finger down hard on the map display. “Right now. Please,” she added as an afterthought.

  Perkins either trusted her people or she didn’t, and Jarrett had demonstrated many times that she could be trusted. “Major Amari,” she turned to a staff officer, “retask a drone to Sergeant Jarrett.”

  “But, Colonel,” the already harried Amari looked even more pained. “All our recon drones in that sector are-”

  “Did I mumble, or do you have a hearing problem, Major?” Perkins was also harried and desperately tired and not on her best behavior. And she was burning with curiosity to know what Shauna thought was so damned important.

  “No, Ma’am,” Amari stiffened. Though he had not served with Perkins long, one thing he knew was that once she made a decision, no argument was allowed. “Sergeant Jarrett,” he tapped icons on his tablet, “a drone has been released to your control.”

  “Thank you, Colonel,” Shauna did not look up, intensely concentrating on her own tablet. “This shouldn’t take more than an hour. Colonel, you don’t need to be here. I’ll let you know the second I’ve got what I need.”

  “And miss this?” Perkins shook her head. “You can forgedaboudit,” she said without intending to be humorous.

  Shauna smiled at that. “Forgeadaboudit, Ma’am?”

  “You got it.” She stepped next to the sergeant and pulled a tablet from under the table. “I will fly the drone if you want to operate the scanner?”

  “Right, good idea,” she agreed.

  The task did not take an hour, though it took eighteen minutes just to reposition the stealth drone. Perkins was called away at that point, so Shauna continued by herself. Forty minutes later, she rapped her knuckles on the post next to the flap to Perkins’ temporary office, and after the colonel waved her to come in, sat down heavily on a folding chair. With the adrenaline rush fading, she was overcome with weariness, and a bit of regret. She had been undisciplined and rude. Being a Maverick came with responsibilities and privileges and she had abused that privilege. The fact that she had a good reason did not excuse her behavior. “Ma’am, I apologize for my rudeness, and-”

  “Jarrett, there’s a war on, we’re fighting for our lives. Right now, I care more about results than protocol. You have something for me?”

  Shauna dug into a pocket of the vest she still wore, and tossed a bent piece of metal on the colonel’s desk.

  “What’s that?” Perkins picked up the chunk of metal, testing the weight of it in her palm. Too heavy for steel, too light for aluminum. Titanium or some alloy, or some exotic alien metal she had never heard of.

  “Evidence,” Shauna replied through a jaw-stretching yawn, shoulders shuddering. “The drone was for confirmation, and we got it.”

  “Evidence and confirmation of what?” Perkins set the chunk of metal down on the table. She assumed Jarrett was going to complain her Buzzard had crashed because of mechanical failure, or a mechanical problem had rendered the aircraft unable to defend itself from missiles. Shauna and Nert had survived a traumatic experience and Perkins understood they needed to deal with their emotions. If Shauna was going to say the maintenance team had neglected her aircraft, Perkins would be very disappointed in her sergeant. Even if Shauna had solid evidence that someone had sabotaged that Buzzard, the information was meaningless now, as the Legion had few flightworthy aircraft remaining after three days of constant fighting. “We need to concentrate on-”

  “You were right, Ma’am. This whole mission has been a set-up from the beginning. You were wrong about who set us up.”

  Perkins rocked her folding chair back on its rear legs while she considered that statement. “Explain, Sergeant.”

  “This hunk of junk,” Shauna picked up the dull gray, twisted piece of metal, “is debris from the colony supply dump near where we got shot down. There’s more of it scattered around, we didn’t take time to collect any more, but you can trip over it. It got ejected from the impact site, the drone confirmed there is a whole lot of stuff like this in a circle around the crater.” She held up a hand to forestall the colonel’s protest. “Metal, composites, some of it is part of the crates the stuff was packed in,” she dragged a hand across her face, fatigue fighting with her anger.

  Perkins tilted her head. “I’m not following you, Jarrett. Material gets thrown from the impact site, that’s expected.”

  Shauna pushed the piece across the table to her commanding officer. “I don’t think the assholes that landed this crap expected it to be ejected. They expected it to be vaporized. Look at it closer. It’s torn and broken, see that jagged edge?”

  Humoring her sergeant for another minute while her patience ran down, Perkins examined the twisted piece of metal. It appeared to be a bracket, there were holes for bolts or maybe cables to run through it. It was charred from heat and fire of the railgun dart impact, one of the holes was bent into an oval shape, and one side had a semicircular hole along a jagged line. Clearly, the fragment was part of a larger piece that had been violently broken away. That, too, was expected when three darts moving at an appreciable percentage of lightspeed struck the site. Each of the darts carried multiple kilotons of energy that was released on contact with the ground, creating three overlapping craters and throwing material up to twenty kilometers away. Le
gion HQ and the Ruhar task force in orbit had monitored the explosions, the only analysis Perkins had seen expressed surprise that the darts had come in with less velocity than expected. One of the three supply dump sites was near a Kristang village so perhaps the attackers had wanted to spare their people from collateral damage, that did not explain the comparatively gentle treatments given to the other two supply dumps. The Ruhar speculated that the railguns of the Kristang ships may have been in poor condition, but subsequent darts fired in ship-to-ship combat were launched at potent velocities, so Legion HQ could not explain the discrepancy. It really didn’t matter anyway.

  While she pondered that minor puzzle, she ran a thumb along the jagged edge, imagining the massive energy it had taken to tear the piece of metal away-

  She sucked in a sharp breath.

  “You see it?” Shauna leaned forward eagerly.

  Perkins held a finger for silence while she used her zPhone’s magnifier to look at the jagged edge more closely. “Shit!”

  “Yeah,” Shauna balled her fists and pounded the table. “Those motherfuckers sold us out.”

  Perkins had immediately shouted for her aide to call Commissioner Yusafft’s office and request a meeting, then alerted General Ross to join her there. Getting to the Commissioner’s office was not the quick walk to another tent that Shauna expected and hoped, because Yusafft had set up his office and personal quarters inside the cargo launcher itself. The trip involved walking across the tent city to what was normally a maintenance access port less than two meters in diameter. With pipes and brackets and conduits sticking up from the floor and hanging down from the ceiling, Shauna had to step carefully and watch her head as she followed Perkins. In the actual launcher tunnel, which was uncomfortably warm because the railgun magnets had only recently been shut off, she groaned at the idea of walking a long way in the heat, dim lighting and numerous tripping hazards scattered along the tunnel floor. Perkins either saw Shauna’s expression or read the sergeant’s mind, because she held out a hand to hold them there. “Tram is coming.”

  Shauna looked up the tunnel, puzzled, then understood when she looked the other way. A makeshift tram was approaching, its single headlight bobbing as it rolled along the bumpy surface of the center walkway. For maintenance crews to travel along the tunnel, the launcher had something like a cross between a riding mower and a golf cart, with four seats. Now that the Legion’s headquarters was taking shelter at the site, someone had modified trailers with crude side-facing seats so the contraption could carry eleven passengers, plus the driver.

  The thing was so wobbly on its narrow wheelbase that Shauna feared it would tip over whenever the tires thumped over an obstacle. She clutched a flimsy handrail and leaned backward to steady the vehicle, afraid it would flop over on its side. Perkins squeezed her hand. “It’s safe,” the colonel assured her, pointing at the trailer’s deck. “Gyroscopes under the floor, we won’t tip over. Watch your head,” she advised, and Shauna ducked when she saw what the colonel warned about. There was a maintenance crane hanging down from the tunnel’s ceiling, it was uncomfortably close to hitting Shauna’s head as they passed under it. “Commissioner wants the launcher ready to go again soon.”

  Shauna watched the crane fading in the gloom behind them, watching two Verd-kris working on a platform at the top of the crane. “Why would that matter?”

  “Yusafft thinks if we launch something into orbit, even a cargo pod full of rocks, it will prove to the Kristang ships upstairs that the site is operational, so if they hit it, they break it. I,” Perkins waved a hand, “actually agree with him about that. Ok, here we are. Sergeant, I’ll do the talking, if the Commish or General Ross ask you a question, give them a concise answer. This is going to be a shock, and the brass need facts, not speculation. Stick to what you know, they’re smart enough to fill in the rest for themselves.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Shauna frowned. From what she had heard about the dim-witted alien bureaucrat, Yusafft was surprised to see the sun rise each morning.

  Commissioner Yusafft was irritated to see Perkins, glancing up from his desk to glare at her while flipping through documents on his tablet at the same time. The Commissioner’s retinue of harried aides and advisors also were distinctively unhappy to have a group of humans burst into the large conference room that was growing smaller with every person who squeezed through the doorway.

  The Ruhar were not the only beings unhappy with Emily Perkins. The Verd-kris commander and her chief of staff had been shunted aside to a corner of the room, in a deliberately rude gesture. The Verd was trying her best to pretend she did not notice. The only person Perkins cared about was General Ross, standing beside the Commissioner and tilting his head in a gesture that was all too clear. The gesture meant ‘this had better be damned important’ and ‘if it is that important you should have briefed me first’.

  Perkins nodded to Ross first, to defuse the man’s anger. “Sir, sorry there was not time to brief you first. Commissioner Yusafft, thank you for-”

  “Colonel Perkins, we do not have time for pleasantries,” said the man whose entire career consisted of exchanging meaningless pleasantries. Yusafft pointed to his Naval liaison officer. “I am very busy, there is a war on, if you haven’t noticed. You may address your concerns to my military aides when they are-”

  Perkins slapped a hand on the desk. “No. I can’t.”

  Yusafft did not know how to respond to the unprecedented act of an inferior species being rude to him. Then his bureaucratic instincts took over and he became very angry, to the point of rising partly from the chair. “You will leave immediately-”

  “I have information that represents a clear and present danger to your office, and the lives of the entire force you command. Sir. I will leave after I have presented the information to you, and you decide what to do.” Despite her boldness, Perkins knew her lack of familiarity with Yusafft meant she had no idea how he would react. Over the years, she had learned to read the body language of Ruhar, which could be deceptively similar but subtly different from humans. The political appointee was frightened. Not for his personal safety and not for the lives of the Ruhar, Verd-kris and humans he was responsible for. He was frightened for his career prospects, if the occupation of Fresno ended in the disaster it was rapidly sliding toward. “Only you, Sir,” she added in a softer tone, “have authority to deal with the situation.”

  Yusafft sat back down rather more abruptly than he intended. Embarrassed and unsure, he looked back at his military aides.

  The Navy advisor glanced at the Command in Space pin on his uniform, the similar pin Perkins wore, and made an almost imperceptible nod of respect toward her. Her service had earned her a right to speak. “Commissioner, I would like to hear what Lieutenant Colonel Perkins has discovered.” The emphasis on her rank was a warning that the respect she had earned had limits.

  Perkins had three advantages. First, Yusafft was looking forward to slapping her down when she finished speaking, using his power to punish her and put her in her place. Second, he was primarily concerned with covering his own ass, and if the upstart human truly had information that might be damaging, he needed to hear it.

  And third, Yusafft had become genuinely curious about what information the Mavericks commander might have that made her so bold. Waving one hand slowly in a dramatic gesture, he sat back in the chair. “Proceed, Lieutenant Colonel Per-kins. What is the nature of the threat you discovered?”

  Emily tensed her shoulder muscles to suppress the shudder of relief she felt. “Commissioner, we know many elements in the Ruhar federal government opposed the use of the Alien Legion to occupy Feznako.”

  No one in the room even attempted to stifle their groans of disappointment, least of all General Ross, whose wide-open eyes warned Perkins not to continue. And that she was in big trouble later.

  The Navy advisor snorted in disgust. “That is your information? A few disaffected politicians are not a problem for-”

  “Th
ey are not a few, Sir” Perkins glared right back at the Navy officer who considerably outranked her. “I said federal government, not only political leaders. Your own Navy wants us to fail, because the Legion makes it too easy to capture marginal territory your fleet needs to hold.”

  That remark lost her all support from the Navy officer. “Are you accusing the Navy of-”

  The corners of Yusafft’s mouth curved upward ever so slightly as he watched the two military officers tear into each other, anticipating the delicious prospect of dismissing the human, who had quite obviously allowed her emotions to cloud her judgment.

  “Your Navy is not alone. Your Army is worried that the availability of the Legion, including potentially millions of Verd-kris, allows the government to cut Army funding. The Peace Party in your government thinks the Legion encourages military adventures that stretch your military too thin, and risks the safety of your civilian populations. Your intelligence people don’t like the Alien Legion because they don’t trust the Verd-kris,” her eyes flicked to Burtal Zaring. “The only group that wants the Legion to succeed here is the blood-sucking colony contractor!”

  “We are honored to support Commissioner Yusafft in any way we can,” the smarmy corporate lawyer for Glabosor said, keeping any tone of sarcasm from his voice due to long practice with lying.

  Yusafft had become bored already. “Yes, Colonel Perkins, your political analysis is interesting, however-”

  “I don’t give a shit about politics,” she cut in quickly, sensing her window of opportunity was closing. “Someone tipped off the lizards before we got here. That isn’t politics, it’s treason.”