The Fleet-Book Four Sworn Allies

by David Drake (ed)

  English waited until they were out of there before he picked up the card. It was a credit card, slugged “bearer,” and damned if it didn’t have a purple stripe on it.

  He paid for the damage with it and decided to go to bed. Everybody knew more about what was going on around here than he did. The 121st’s captain and the Haig’s Intel officer, Manning, seemed to be saying the same thing. But until somebody came up to him with orders, English and his Redhorse were still standing down and giving after-action reports to automats, and that was all.

  He successfully told himself that for nearly twenty minutes after he got to his billet. Then the door tinkled and he slapped the viewer by his bed. There was Sawyer, who needed a shave. He’d left word for Sawyer to get with him . . . Beside Sawyer was Manning, her face scrubbed and her short hair combed, standing stiffly as if she’d had her ribs taped.

  He punched the lock and the intercom. “Okay, come on in.”

  He wasn’t getting out of bed for this. He was just a little relieved to see Sawyer and Manning together: Sawyer was the only one who’d ever had a handle on Johanna Manning.

  But Sawyer didn’t look happy. He walked her inside and said, “I gotta wait out—”

  “The hell you do, Sawyer. You’re not subject to Navy orders.” God, he hated this shit. “Manning, what’s up?”

  “I’m hand-delivering these sealed orders to you, as I’ve been requested. Any problems, you’re to take them up with the Observer here on ASA-Zebra. I’m supposed to stay while you read them and ascertain that you have read them and do understand them. Then I’m to take the hard copy with me.”

  “And the Observer is someone we all know and love, right?” Grant, the pig-bastard. English felt like he’d just fallen through a false floor into a Weasel’s stake-pit.

  “So far’s the automat’s concerned, that’s right, sir.” Sawyer was looking at his big hands.

  “Let’s see it then, Manning.” Still under his blanket, naked, he reached out for the packet.

  Manning handed the orders over.

  English read them twice to make sure he understood what was stated and what was implied. Then he said, “We don’t do this sort of thing. We’re not trained for it. You tell—”

  “Captain,” Manning reminded him, “if you see problems with this, you’re to take it up with somebody who can do some goddamn thing about it, and that’s not me.”

  “Balls.” English swung his legs out of bed, forgetful of his nakedness, and stopped with the blanket across his groin. “Look, off the record, you two: what do you want me to do?”

  “We can‘t get that far off the record, sir,” said Sawyer. “And you’re the only one who’s seen the specifics. Redhorse’ll go where you point ‘em.”

  “Thanks, Sawyer. Manning, I’ll deal with the Observer. You won’t have to.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” said Manning primly. “May I suggest compliance?”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Better to be on the dispensing end than on the receiving end of this, if I may say so, Captain,” said Manning again.

  Damn these Intel types and their subtext. She was looking at him keenly and so was Sawyer. If these two had any sense, they’d break off their affair. Sleeping together wasn’t an excuse for anything, but it was a reason for more than English liked, perhaps even half the troubles Redhorse had had with the Observer.

  “I’ll go see your brass, Manning. And I’ll tell him what you said, don’t worry about that. Sawyer, you finished with your automat?”

  “Yes, sir. Went clean.”

  “Then you come with me. Officer Manning can find her way back by herself, or she ought to have her rating pulled.” Manning took the sheaf of orders and left stiffly.

  When the door closed, English said, “Why don’t you quit messing with her, Sawyer? Kowacs from the 121st flat told me she’s an Eight Ball Command staffer. He knew all about those orders. Wanted a little slack. If not for her, none of us would be in this mess.”

  “Then we’d be among the possible targets. Sir.”

  “Yeah, that’s so. Okay, let’s go see the man. And be nice, Sawyer, until we see if this is the moment we’ve both been waiting for.”

  There was always a chance of that. If the 92nd was going to be the witch hunters, then which witch they hunted ought to be up to them. The orders from ISA said “good and sufficient reason to believe that approximately thirty to forty human Alliance personnel serving in various capacities on ASA-Zebra are actually enemy agents.” The rest of it told him to use whatever measures he saw fit “to identify and arrest and/or eliminate these threats to Fleet security.”

  In other words, pick out some poor suckers, anybody if you couldn’t find the right somebodies, and deal with them harshly enough that any agents you might miss will be scared enough to screw up or quit.

  The bitch was, he hadn’t the faintest idea where to start. He was a Reaction Marine, not a private investigator or an Intel type. So it was off to see the Observer and find out who it was that the Observer wanted English and his 92nd to wax in the name of security.

  As he pulled on his coveralls and strapped on his kinetic pistol because he wasn’t in any mood to go see Grant without it, he thought that if there was some way that Grant could be fingered as part of the purported nest of infiltrators, Grant would have picked somebody else’s company to do his dirty work.

  But then, you never knew why Intel did what it did.

  The one thing English knew for sure was that the 92nd had gotten tapped for this because every man jack of them knew for certain that there were humans working willingly with the Khalia. They’d dropped onto Bull’s-Eye, expecting Khalians, and found everything that should have been on Target except Khalians: ships, command bunkers, com systems—everything.

  They’d found men, women, children . . . many of whom preferred suicide to being taken by other humans. The rest, Grant had disposed of out of hand. So using Redhorse, who already knew there were humans working for the Weasels, was one way to limit the privy parties.

  Maybe Grant would behave himself, this time. Maybe there really were Weasel-symp infiltrators in the Fleet’s command structure. Maybe that was why these missions kept screwing up. Maybe it was even the reason, if you wanted to stretch a point, that the 121st was thirty percent shy of a full clip.

  But it wasn’t the reason that English had lost his Beta three-team during the Bull’s-Eye insertion. The reason for that was Grant and his APOT test gear, clear and simple.

  As he was walking down the hall with Sawyer, headed for the tube that would take them to the command module where the ISA office was, English kept thinking about the stolen hard suit, and wondering if Grant had any idea how long the men of Redhorse could hold a grudge.

  And Sawyer said, as they came to the tube and he pushed the button to call a car, “How come, you think, everybody—Headhunters and all—knew before we did? Think Grant’s trying to make us secondary targets? Because if he is . . .”

  “Back to plan A?” They really had been going to smoke the bastard, for good reason. In close quarters like this, nobody was going to love Redhorse going around sniping various and sundry personnel at will.

  Nobody.

  If security didn’t improve one hell of a lot, this mission was going to be as dangerous as Bull’s-Eye. Worse, maybe, depending on whose friends turned out to be the 92nd’s targets.

  Sitting ducks weren’t fair game. But then, with Eight Ball Command, fair was beside the point.

  “Plan A’s fine with me, anytime, sir—now that we’re through with our automats . . . About Manning,” Sawyer said like it hurt to form the words. “She’s a good soldier, I told you before. You’ll have to take my word for it, if her gettin’ three ribs busted in some bar tonight tryin’ to object to those orders doesn’t mean nothin’ to you.”

  So Manning hadn’t told Saw
yer that English had been on the scene. Maybe English could include Manning as one of the infiltrators he was tasked to take out: after all, it was just a numbers game.

  If Grant knew who the hell he was looking for, he wouldn’t need Reaction Marines to find them. The 92nd was in this to flush any real bogeys and bag as many others as would satisfy Eight Ball Command. So long as those others couldn’t prove they were innocent, who they were wasn’t going to matter one bit.

  The car, when it came, looked like a body bag on wheels to Toby English.

  “Let’s get it over with, Sawyer.” There just wasn’t any other choice.

  * * *

  “Killing Weasels is war. Killing Alliance humans is murder, the way I see it, “English said thickly, backed up against the wall in Grant’s fancy-ass ISA office.

  The Civilian Observer tapped something on a desk that was big enough to sleep two. A screen behind him cleared and started running Bull’s-Eye transcript right out of English’s helmet—the stuff that hadn’t been in the automat’s banks.

  “Shit,” said Toby English, shaking his head.

  “Don’t take it so hard, Captain.” The Observer had this tweaky red silk cord knotted around his wrist; he played with it. “We don’t want to see you back in automat debrief, going through this whole other datapack, any more than you do. Or your lieutenant Sawyer does, or any of your boys do.” He tapped his desktop keypad again and the datapull froze, then disappeared.

  “Find somebody else.” English’s lips were numb. He crossed his arms over his chest to make sure he knew what his hands were doing. He still had that pistol on his hip.

  “Now why would I do that?” Grant wanted to know. “I told you there wouldn’t be any trouble over Bull’s-Eye, and I kept my word. That ought to be sufficient show of good faith.”

  “It ain’t.”

  “Again, mister, we’re not asking. You’re the right tools for the job. We chose you out of a number of candidate units, long before Bull’s-Eye. You’re ours, and we’re going to take good care of you. You ought to be asking me about weapons and procedures, considering this is all going to go down on an ASA.”

  English was prayerfully glad that Grant had made Sawyer wait in the anteroom. He was having enough trouble controlling himself. “This is legal? You can just co-opt us for this kind of duty?”

  “Now that you ask, you’ve got carte blanche. Try and leave the ASA intact. Beyond that, do it however you choose. And yes, you’ve got a tight time frame—forty-eight hours, max. Twenty-four is better. Six is best. Don’t give them any warning.”

  English gave up. He rubbed his forehead. “I’ll get stuff off the Haig. Assuming I can requisition whatever naval support I think I need?”

  “That’s what Manning’s for.” Grant was a big thoroughbred spook with home-world manners. The nameplate on the door to this office said Deputy Director, Interagency Support Activity. Either the Observer had pulled a promotion after Bull’s-Eye, was here under false pretenses, or was way upchain from where English and Sawyer could hope to touch him. With a jovial smile, Grant leaned across the huge desk to hand English a piece of flash paper. “Here’s your target list.”

  English had to take it. At least there was one—a real list, with real names. It wasn’t his business how the Observer had determined those names. Not once he’d seen the transcript Grant had held back from the automat.

  He tried to read the list but the names blurred; or else his hand was shaking too much. “Who do I report to when this is done, you or Manning?”

  “If I’ve left, Manning will do. Good hunting, English,” said Grant.

  “Um . . . what about parameters?”

  “There aren’t any, beyond dead or alive, and I don’t care about that, although some may. Tag any live ones for me at MAC-ASD, and ship ‘em back there. But not too many. Clear enough?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said English. He’d better get out of there before he started demanding to know whether Grant was getting bumped upstairs because of what had happened on Bull’s-Eye, or because of the list English had in his hand. “Ah—can I have a phone number for you, if I need you?”

  “As I said, that’s what Manning’s for. Good luck. Special ops are always tricky. That’ll be reflected in your pay scale.”

  “Well, that makes it just dandy peachy keen. Sir.”

  There was no use arguing with the Observer. English had tried it before and ended up here with this list in his hand. He had to get out of there before he did something stupid enough that he couldn’t survive it. Because, short of a two-shot burst to the well-manicured head, there was nothing he could do to Grant.

  This whole mess was as button-down as the Civilian Observer himself.

  When English wandered blindly through the anteroom and found Sawyer by the coffee machine, he said, “We’re sheep-dipped.” And shrugged. “Here’s the list. Hold onto it for me.”

  In the state he was in, he didn’t trust himself not to lose it.

  Sawyer didn’t comment until they were out of the office complex and in the tubeway. “Where we goin’, Cap’n?”

  “Back to the Haig.” Somehow, saying it made him feel better. “I want everybody back there by twelve hundred. Anybody still in auto-debrief, you can use our new clout to get ‘em waived.”

  “You sure?” Their car came. They got in and dialed the Haig’s dock.

  “Nope. But it’s worth a try.”

  Sawyer pulled out the list. “You want this now?”

  “No. Yeah.” He took it. “Well, now we find out what it feels like to be sanctioned assassins.”

  “You kidding?”

  “Nope. What’d you think?”

  “He said that?”

  “You know he didn’t say that. We can send some back—not too many, though.”

  “Terrific.” Sawyer’s expression was unreadable as they sped through the tubeway and marker lights strobed in the car’s windows.

  “Don’t assume we won’t face lethal resistance. There’s a real list. For all I know, the guys on it might be real traitors. We gotta think that way, ‘cause we’ll never know for sure.”

  “Human Khalian agents burrowed into the Fleet . . . if they are real, I won’t have any trouble with this.”

  English wished he could say that. He wasn’t sure whether Sawyer meant it, either, but Sawyer was giving him a way to present it to the 92nd that sounded better than expedient murder.

  “Well, great. You pump up the troops. Let’s split tip the targets and figure the teams . . .”

  You did the job, whatever it, was. You didn’t worry about why your orders were cut, or you went crazy. English had to look out for his men. This wasn’t a democracy, it was the Fleet.

  * * *

  Everybody in the APC knew the score, but English did the final briefing in there anyway. The APC was discreetly secure and had countermeasures up the ass. Plus, some of them were going to be using it for basing and tactical maneuvering—and to store the prisoners, alive and/or dead.

  You couldn’t ask Jay Padova to get the Haig this dirty; English hadn’t tried. Because of the rumor mill, he’d told Padova what he was about—at least enough that Jay wasn’t worried for his butt or any of his crew’s. And because, once this started, Redhorse wasn’t going to be real popular, and Redhorse was shoehorned into the Haig, so Padova’s personnel might take some of the flak meant for English’s 92nd.

  So Padova had to know.

  It was Jay’s damned APC, and English had it armed to the teeth from the mothership’s stores.

  The 92nd wasn’t going to take a single casualty on this one. Grant wanted Reaction Marines for his sterilization mission, he was going to get ‘em. English had ordered full kit, including recon rules, so everybody was running a log. In case there were questions later.

  Each man was fully armored and armed as if the 92nd was
dropping onto a Weasel-infested planet. Sawyer had done the pep-talk, and nobody was arguing about the mission.

  You found the guys on the list. You gave ‘em one call on your bullhorn to surrender. You fired one warning burst of rubber-foil ammo that wouldn’t pierce the module skins. If they offered resistance, you shot them.

  If they offered lethal, resistance, you shot them dead.

  It was clear. It was clean. It sucked.

  Everybody in the APC knew it. They’d never asked to be some kind of elite secret police, or whatever this equated to. But they knew how to take orders. English kept wondering how it was going to be after this was over, when you ran into the inevitable shit from other companies.

  First you had to live through it.

  He toggled his all-com once he’d settled his helmet on his head. They were all in their suits and buttoned up, as overpowered as they could be for fighting guys on stand-down and Fleet staffers. But there were plenty of firearms on ASA-Zebra.

  English said, “You’ve got your targets. Don’t underestimate them. It’s life and death for these guys. That means it’s life and death for us. Some of them may be happy to surrender and spend the next few years in chemical interrogation before they face a firing squad, but I don’t think that’ll be the majority. Don’t get sloppy. Systems checks . . . on my mark—“

  They checked out.

  The APC pulled away from the Haig’s belly. Maybe you could argue that security might have been better preserved without the APC, and their identities as well, if not for the fact that everybody on ASA-Zebra had known more than English about what was coming down.

  What they didn’t know was how.

  “Manning, got your end together?”

  They had her with them, and she was as snug as a bug in her clamshell armor. Sawyer personally checked her gloves as the running lights came up.