Then there was the programming. No one had both the source of nanites and the knowledge of how to use them. The Wrogul ability to directly penetrate skin and bone and manipulate tissues directly allowed the nanites to be placed in exactly the right locations to support assembly of the neural mesh. Add to that the unique programming Molina had…borrowed…from Nemo meant eventually they would be able to offer pinplants for Humans. The merc units would pay for those. Oh, would they pay!
Molina set the Tri-V to display the information Ortiz had siphoned from the merc ship. Oh, oh, this was good stuff. Major Azarola’s bosses on Earth would not be pleased, not to mention the Merc Guild. I wonder if I might be able to turn a profit yet?
The thought gave him pause. He wasn’t due to return the nanite fabricator until tomorrow. Young’s translator pendant would be finished tomorrow. The Basque Blades would be leaving tomorrow, headed for Karma and their contract.
Tomorrow. Why yes, the sun will come out tomorrow! he though, laughing.
Using his pinplants, Molina activated a circuit giving him administrator access to the station comms. It was an emergency circuit based on the fact each Wrogul utilized the comm system to provide their voice for the benefit of Human co-workers. It was a simple matter to contact the major while bypassing Ortiz and any monitoring the station or colony might have in place.
“Major, I encountered a problem when processing your payment. It seems there’s an issue with your accounting. I’m sure it’s just an oversight, but perhaps we can come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement!”
* * * * *
Chapter Five
Molina had seriously underestimated the venality of Major Azarola. He’d thought to use the irregularities in the Basque Blades’ accounting as leverage on the mercenary commander. After all, most mercenary companies were commanded by colonels, and even the rare general or admiral. His mistake was in assuming the merc had a superior officer on Earth who would be upset to learn of the major’s pecuniary irregularities.
The Blades were in the minority of merc outfits, translating rank directly from the number of soldiers under command. Given that the entire unit was essentially an oversized company—three platoons of three squads of ten infantrymen, plus a fourth oversized platoon of forty CASPers—command of the unit, if they’d been part of a larger army would have fallen to a senior captain or a major. Major Azarola was thus the senior officer, owner, and founder of the Basque Blades. He also enjoyed the occasional opportunity provided by the assumption he held less seniority in the organization.
As a result, Molina arrived aboard the Omaha Beach expecting his blackmail threats would afford him a free ride to Karma or wherever the Beach was headed after dropping the Blades at Orkutt. He also learned he’d misinterpreted the order of the unit’s destinations. The next stop was the Blades’ hot drop. The transport was continuing to Karma, but since his arrangement was with the merc unit and not the ship’s crew, he was stuck with the merc unit until they went to Karma after fulfilling the contract.
Approximately an hour after the Beach entered hyperspace, Azarola was at Molina’s compartment door, with the first officer of the Beach and two CASPer-suited security guards, declaring him a stowaway. He could have bought his way out of trouble using the fabricator and/or the raw materials he had “forgotten” were still in his possession, but the major had a counteroffer: take employment with the Blades as their medical officer. He would be paid a modest salary—but not bonuses—for the first mission, then would earn standard shares of all proceeds from subsequent missions.
The current residents of the planet called it Ak’La’Ka—the Humans called it Orkutt—and it was a bloody planet with a bloody reputation. The Blades were hired to protect an ore processing plant on behalf of the Caroon miners who had established multiple mines on the planet and had been fighting literally hostile takeovers for years. This time, it was the Wathayat Consortium who claimed they owned the processing plant due to default on the—frankly usurious—loans used for the original construction. The Wathayat had hired MinSha mercenaries to take the plant, while the Blades were hired to hold off the insectoids until the Caroon could deliver the next shipment and pay off the loans.
The MinSha were fearsome fighters with height, reach, strength, and armor advantages over Humans. Their naturally-armored exoskeletons and bladed forearms meant that an unarmored or lightly armored infantryman was no match for the praying mantis-like mercenaries. The Human advantage came from the forty armored mecha in Lieutenant Young’s CASPer platoon. From the hot-drop to hand-to-claw fighting on the roof of the processing plant, the Blades were outnumbered, and—mostly—outclassed. It cost them nearly all of their conventional infantry, every Mark 5 and half of their state-of-the-art Mark 6 CASPers. In the end, they held. They killed the aliens—and most importantly, they got paid.
Molina was kept busy throughout the fighting. The chief engineer of the Omaha Beach installed a watertight compartment and modified one of the Blades’ dropship containers to serve as a combat surgical hospital. Once the troops were on the ground, the container was delivered to the surface and the CASH—the Combat Army Surgical Hospital—was in business. It wasn’t his notion of a lucrative job, but the major relented, and Molina got to share in the combat bonus—particularly after he reached through the exoskeleton of a MinSha that breached the CASH walls and forcibly removed two of its single-chambered hearts, all while simultaneously treating three injured soldiers.
The job had risk, it had danger, it was exciting, and, dare he say…fun. Azarola extended an offer for him to stay on with the Blades and continue to serve as combat medic and surgeon—only now as a subcontractor with guaranteed payments, benefits, and bonuses based on the company’s own merc contracts. After thinking about it for a while and realizing that setting up his own clinic on Karma was not viable, Molina took him up on the offer and stayed with the Blades for four years.
The Wathayat were not ones to take no for an answer. Nearly four years after the Blades prevented the Consortium from taking the Caroon mines and ore processing facility in Orkutt, they hired Lieutenant Colonel Azarola and the Basque Blades for another try.
Having been the defenders almost four Earth years ago, Azarola knew the strengths and weaknesses of the terrain. The Blades were newly expanded to battalion strength with an infantry company, an armor company with three platoons of Mark 6 CASPers, and a headquarters company with an attached artillery platoon. Not one to lead from the front, Azarola had his headquarters set up ten klicks from the processing plant, with the ground troops holding a semicircular front about a klick from the target with the CASPers backing the line. Molina’s CASH now filled a whole dropship for faster deployment, and he, too, was set up well behind the lines.
In the end, it wouldn’t matter. The miners had also learned from the past and the facility had been quite profitable. They hired the Croogith Regiment to deploy three companies of Besquith in defense of the ore processing facility. Despite the seventy-five CASPers, one hundred infantry and light artillery, the Humans simply could not stand in the face of three hundred mercs that looked like Human legends of werewolves. HQ was overrun even before the first casualties could be transported to the CASH, and Molina’s dropship pilot was killed trying to get the hatches closed before they, too were overwhelmed.
Molina essentially had to pay his own ransom to the Besquith and an outrageous price to the Wathayat Consortium for transport off Orkutt. Installing his quarters into a dropship outfitted as a combat surgical hospital had seemed like a bad idea at the time, considering he would always be in harm’s way. He conceded the idea didn’t seem so bad now, given that his personal quarters and all of his property had been installed with his clinic. He always insisted his contract be paid in Union credits or red diamonds; the fact he ran his CASH on a cash-basis had been a source of great amusement to Azarola. Still, it meant all his assets—nanites, fabricator, and considerable wealth—were in his possession, and he was able to pay to get
off of the planet, even if it meant that life would once again be uncomfortable until he could set up a steady revenue stream once again.
* * * * *
Chapter Six
Orkutt was located in the Centaur region of the Jesc arm. That made Karma in the Crapti region the logical next port-of-call. Karma Station, Karma System, Karma the planet, Bartertown—all were synonymous with the mercenary guild. And Peepo’s Pit was the most famous, most popular, most infamous market where mercenary companies and clients met to place and bid on contracts. This would be the place to set up a lucrative practice. There was only one problem with that plan…well, two, actually.
The first problem was that Karma was just a bit too cosmopolitan. Sure, they had seen Wrogul before. They even had a strong appreciation for the skills of Wrogul surgeons. Unfortunately, Molina was not like any Wrogul they might have met. From his blue eyes to his preference for Human-style entertainment, he stood out and apart from the Galactics that frequented the crossroads of the Jesc Arm. Humans weren’t all that well thought of on Karma despite eighty years as mercenaries. To practice medicine on Karma would require much more knowledge of anatomy for species other than Humans, or he’d have to get employed directly by one of the mercenary companies. Considering the conditions behind his departure from Azure and the risk of running into his progenitor, Nemo, that was a less desirable option.
Molina had been to Bartertown once before, after the first mission with the Blades. He knew he’d been naïve in those days. Despite four generations of Wrogul memory, he was still essentially the same as a Human juvenile on his first trip off-planet. He’d quickly learned his idea of setting up a clinic for mercs was impossible when he discovered he wasn’t even allowed into Peepo’s, or any other merc pit, to try to make contact.
Now, however, he was a registered merc subcontractor and could enter the mercenary marketplace as long as he was looking for a contract or to join another merc unit.
But he was thrown out of Peepo’s when the bartender overheard his conversation with the commander of Riedel’s Rächer—a small heavy weapons unit out of Germany on Earth. He was just winding up in his pitch to provide basic pinplants to the Humans when two Lumar security goons picked him, his powered chair, and the mobile water tank up and pitched them out the door.
“You do realize there are more comfortable ways of exiting a building, right?” A gravelly voice came from behind him. Molina used his arms to drag himself to the upside-down chair and reached four arms over the frame to try to right it.
“I could help you, you know.” He ignored the voice. Anyone offering help outside a merc pit was not to be trusted. He reached behind him with two more arms and grabbed the edge of the doorway. With the resulting leverage, he managed to drag the chair upright. The klearplas of the tank was cracked, but there was just enough water to allow him to splash a little to keep his skin wet on the way back to the starport.
“As stubborn as ever, eh, Ol’ Squid?”
Molina finally looked at the source of the voice as he dragged himself back into the tank and saw a very old man in a powered chair not too different from his own…except for the multiple mechanical arms attached to it. “Roeder?” he asked.
“In the flesh,” the biochemist replied. “What’s left of it, anyway.” He coughed, and the sound wasn’t good. The man would be around eighty years old now. His body appeared even more shrunken and shriveled than the last time Molina had seen him. “So, where are we going next?”
“Back to my ship,” Molina said. He’d long been able to program emotional overtones into his translator, and the synthesized voice sounded distinctly grumpy.
“You have a ship? Outstanding! You must be doing very well for yourself.” Roeder’s enthusiasm seemed genuine, if a little…desperate. “Lead the way.”
Molina flashed annoyance but said nothing and turned his powered chair in the direction of the port.
“You can’t hide that from me, young man. I’ve been reading Wrogul light-language all my life. What are you so annoyed at? Me? Or the mercs who threw you out of their pit?” Roeder had indeed recognized the flash, and the whole time they had been together had never been one to let him sulk in silence. “What about that, anyway? Last we heard you were a merc?”
“Apparently, I am as much a merc as I am a Human, Doctor Roeder. Or a doctor, for that matter. They took exception to me offering medical services.”
“You mean pinplants,” Roeder corrected.
“Whatever,” grumped the Wrogul surgeon.
It took almost an hour to return to the starport, clear the security checkpoint, and board Molina’s ship. It would have been faster by flyer, but Molina was still annoyed, and he hadn’t decided how much of that was due to his old coworker seeing his current situation. The interior of the dropship had been stripped of nearly everything except the Wrogul’s water tank. Where once there had been a fully-equipped field hospital, there was now only a few broken stumps and fittings that had once been medical equipment…
…and that was the second problem with setting up a clinic on Karma. Molina was broke.
“What the fuck, Squid? I was told you had a complete hospital! What happened?” In addition to the surprise, there was a note of fear in his old friend’s voice.
“The Merc Guild happened, Brent. As the sole surviving member of a unit—even as a subcontractor—they ruled I had to pay the penalties for a terminated contract. They froze my yack and confiscated anything they could find.”
“The nanite processor?” Roeder’s eyes were wide. Yes, the fear was clear, now.
“No, I embedded that here.” Molina slapped an arm against the base of the powered chair with a wet sound. “But they got most of the feedstock—whatever wasn’t already loaded into the machine.”
“Oh,” was all that Roeder said in return.
“Out with it, Old Man. You can read my flashes, I can read your face. You came looking for me. You want something, and you’re disappointed I don’t have a hospital or clinic.”
The Human looked chagrinned at the accusation. He hung his head, and his whole body was limp.
Come to think of it, he hasn’t moved his left side, and little more than his fingers on the right side the whole time he’s been here!
“You had a stroke,” Molina said matter-of-factly. There was no accusation, no pity, but there was a note of understanding.
“Doctor Hoyt said it wasn’t a stroke, but the peripheral nerves are breaking down. I need a pinplant or I’ll be locked inside my own body, unable to move, talk, make love…” He looked somewhat wistful at the last item.
“They took my feedstock; I can’t make the nanites. Besides, I never finished the full programming package. That’s why I’ve been trying to get a contract to a merc company. It would give me the capital to finish the job.” Molina lifted his body out of his tank and shifted to hang from one of the waldo arms his old friend had mounted to the chair. “Besides, you swore you’d never let me put ‘those infernal machines’ in your head or even perform fiilaash on you,” he said quietly.
“I know I did,” Roeder answered. His fingers moved over a slate that had been attached to the right arm of his chair. One of the waldoes moved to the storage area below the seat and extracted a small package. “But you’ve seen my businesses. I always hedge my bets.” The mechanical arm held the package out for Molina. “By the way, you didn’t abscond with half the feedstock as Governor Greeson said after you left. Todd and I had already put half of it in a separate secured storage place in case of emergency. Granted, we thought the emergency would be a greedy government, not an impulsive Wrogul.”
The aforementioned impulsive Wrogul took the package and flashed without saying anything.
“Yes, that’s for you. It’s about half of what we put back. Your lost quarter, less this, still leaves Azure with a substantial supply. Consider it the purchase price for my pinplants.”
“I…don’t actually know what to say,” Molina finally responde
d. “But I still don’t have a clinic or any of the instruments I’d need. We need brain scans and diagnostics of your nervous system. Not to mention, I haven’t finished the programming for the neural mesh.”
“Squiddy the Surgeon at a loss for words. Who’d’a thunk it?” Another waldo reached out holding a slate-compatible memory chip. “Fresh off the MRI. Sasquatch put all of my scan data on there, and there’s a compressed file from Nemo. He and that genius merc buddy of his sent you their nanite programming. By the way, he and Todd send their best.”
“But why? They hate me back on Azure!”
“Look, kid, we always knew you would leave. Todd and I were trying to get you prepared, but then he went off to Earth and you jumped the gun by a few years. When Todd got back last month, he forced the governor to rescind the warrants out for your arrest. You have a full pardon and can even come home if you want to.” Roeder raised his head and looked him directly in the eyes. “But we know you won’t, and frankly, it’s better that way. Humans need what you can offer, but it can’t be done on Azure. You’ve got the flexible morals to survive.” He looked around the wrecked clinic. “But you’ve got to get out of here.”
“Did you forget the part where the Guild confiscated all of my capital?”
“Did you forget the part where I’m something like the third richest Human off-Earth?” Roeder grinned. “C’mon, Squiddy. You don’t need a clinic with those mystic tentacles of yours. Get started fixing me up, and then we’ll start looking for a sufficiently shady station with honest officials. You know, ones that will stay bought!”
* * * * *
Chapter Seven
Do No Harm Page 21