The Weapon

by Michael Z. Williamson

  One of our disreputable embassy people was tracking an arms shipment. It wasn't really a surprise; we'd set it up ourselves. Since the Freehold allows any goods to be sold without silly inquiries, we're a popular source for dark elements. They never seem to catch on that just because we allow such sales doesn't mean we don't track such sales, so as to know who has what capabilities. This particular shipment was meeting a suspicious bunch of characters who wanted lots of Mobile Assault surplus gear that was ideal for penetrating ships and no questions asked about the sale. Not asked verbally, anyway. As I said, we generally knew who bought the stuff.

  So Ghassan actually paid us a fair price for the equipment we used to track him, that we would recapture or destroy after we shoved a nuke up the asshole's rectum. Irony is sweet.

  He was almost good, I'll give him that. Good at being a weasel. His safehouse wasn't where we first thought; that one was a decoy. It was an apartment above a warehouse. He would stop by there often, but I sent Gary, one of our best sneaks, in to do a recon while the guards played cards at night, and he reported it was just a cover. There was a shower, a bedroom and all the basics, but largely unused. "Dusty," he said. "And musty. I don't think that bed has been used in a month or more."

  Ghassan was arriving, then departing out the back as a teamster on a cargo floater. Three kilometers away, it would stop at a traffic signal and he'd swing off, just like a cargo handler getting a ride home.

  We didn't attack at once. What we wanted was a nice gathering of turds we could flush all at once, hopefully to clog the plumbing. At the same time, we needed to hit before things cooled down. It had to be an obvious response to that incident, in the minds of our targets. We'd eaten up most of a month already and we had to hit soon.

  We got lucky. I'd picked a day by which we would attack even if no one else were present. Three days before that, we hit the jackpot. Something else was apparently in the works, as we'd deduced from the hardware he was buying, and it seemed he was doing an initial mass briefing. All day long, people trickled into this little house behind a strip of restaurants and bars.

  I put the word out, and we kept it in view on all sides. Second Team watched outwards, looking for arrivals and security. That's a hell of a task, scanning the crowds with binox, comparing every face, sweating over the faces you can't see, straining to see who goes where without blowing your concealment, lying on rooftops in weather, which in this case was cold and wet. I didn't envy them that task, and had taken the easy one myself so as not to be worrying about it. I'd be worrying about it anyway, it was just easier from a distance and an intellectual basis rather than from the front.

  We counted as they arrived, and knew this was the day to do it, assuming Flaming Asshole showed up. I sent people out for food and the rest of our gear and we eased closer, as leopards ease up on gazelles. By eight local at night (22-hour clock, 62 minutes per hour), I was in a building across the alley, that was abandoned and filthy and filled with cobwebs. It was perfect, I thought, as I brushed grit and sticky spider goo from my hair. By eleven, I was atop our target, having slipped over on a thin but strong board we use for bridging crevasses; it works on alleys, too. I had Team One with me, which included experienced elements of Team Two. I had the new kids watching for trouble outward as the rest of Team Two, and Team Three (nominally Weapons), moderately experienced, roving around, pretending to drink beer, eating pies and watching. My salty people were in close, and Eliot's replacement—Johnny the Squidboy, and don't ask about his nickname, as it involves a busty young lady, a squirt bottle of henna and a bar bet—was in with us to get experience.

  Finally, there were twenty-three of them in the house. Now, most terrorists operate in small cells, so this was a bonanza. My team was utterly silent, and I was incredibly proud of them. This was a tricky op.

  They had a woman. It was an important datum. Here they were, insisting that women should be veiled, barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, speak only when spoken to by men and not interfere in affairs of state, business, etc. Yet they had one here. We'd had her on file, but only as a ladyfriend and cover. She was talking about techniques for smuggling explosives aboard ship. Clearly, she wasn't along as mere cover and sexual service, as their "beliefs" seemed to suggest she should be. I made note of it. We'd upgrade her threat level accordingly. As to their hypocrisy, it was likely that the rules didn't apply to them, being revolutionaries and all.

  We were wearing assault armor, which is heavy ballistic padding with reinforcement and shields to prevent splinters and shrapnel. Our weapons were shotguns, loaded with special ammo that was a combination of impact stunners with neural shock cartridges, and coated with a substance that would act as a sedative also. You can never have too many backups.

  It seemed like a good time to start. More might arrive, but we could deal with that. I clicked a code to my immediate flankers, Squidboy and Barto, to detain any new arrivals, double-clicked that we were starting, and hopped. I brought my feet together off the joists and fell through the ceiling.

  Naturally, I dinged my shoulder on the polymer beam on the way down. It hurt, I ignored it. There were two of them in front of me, looking shocked and reaching for weapons. I double-tapped both and rolled on the ratty carpet, turning, getting the one behind me. I stood fast and cleared the room visually, behind the couch, a shot through a closet door before I swiped it open, and a quick poke into a hallway until I saw Frank and Barto in other rooms. Throughout the building, I could hear similar sounds, then descrambled bursts announced, "Bottom alpha clear," "Middle delta clear," "Middle beta clear," and through the entire building. The last two were "Out rear clear," and "Attic clear." They were last, to confirm both our safety and that all others had reported.

  We dragged the limp forms into the kitchen of the restaurant, closed at this hour and for their own cover, and weren't any too gentle about it. Hey, these fuckers blew up civilians. They weren't soldiers, the conventions didn't apply, and I wanted them to remember that.

  The kitchen was full of black polymer and polished metal tools that looked mean. I picked out the garbage separator by eye. Oh, to stuff them in piece by piece to be turned into industrial hydrocarbons. But no, at least a few pieces had to stay intact.

  Ghassan wasn't hard to spot. I jabbed him with the antidote—yes, an old-fashioned needle. No sterility and not gentle about it, either. The stim hit him and he puked all over himself.

  "Greetings, dogfucker," I said. He glowered at me and tried to get up. I smashed him back down with a kick to the knee. He screamed. "Tell me," I continued, "why you hijacked the Francolin."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," he replied. "Who the fu—"

  Sigh. He insisted on the ritual. Very well. I used the weapon butt to smash his right hand into jelly, blood oozing under his nails and across the scarred white floor. He passed out, and we repeated the stim and the vomiting. His stomach had to be sore by now.

  "Talk, or hurt. It doesn't matter to me," I said.

  He tried to squirm, and I shattered his wrist. We did the stim one more time, and nothing came of his retching. He was crying in agony. I could empathize. Not sympathize. There wasn't enough suffering in the universe for this piece of filth.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "To . . . to show the infidel dogs that they cannot oppress the true people of God!" he muttered through his tears. Or something like that. Canned, unthinking hatred.

  "So, to show disapproval of a government, you blew up a shipful of civilians and shot a little girl?"

  "I didn't like it," he said. Sure he didn't. "But sacrifices are necessary in war. They died for a greater—" I shut him up with a shotgun butt to the jaw. He sprawled back, blood and a tooth flying from his mouth.

  I'd expected this, but had hoped he'd be a little better than any other terrorist. No, he was just a piece of shit. It pissed me off, and I got angry. I shouldn't have, but it wasn't going to change the outcome much. I was furious, self-righteous, and at the time I enjoyed e
very moment of it.

  "There were other children aboard the Francolin," I told him, as I dragged him up by the hair and slapped tape over his mouth. "Some of the civilians . . . and the children . . . came from the Freehold of Grainne, including Jenny Marlin. So they sent me to deliver a message."

  All his people were now awake, and my boys and girls had them on their knees, cuffed, pistols at their heads, as these scum so delighted in doing to their captives. The difference was, we weren't doing it to compensate for lack of courage and small penises. We were doing it to scare the shit out of them. My nose told me it was working in at least one case. Gutless weasels.

  I got to work on Ghassan. First, I pulled on heavy gloves. I didn't want my skin polluted with his blood, and this was definitely going to be bloody. I handed back the shotgun, and Tyler took it. I was going to use bare hands as there was a point to be made here. Actually, several points. I stuck him with another needle, this one full of shock stabilizer and another stimulant. We wanted him awake to appreciate this. I boosted for additional strength.

  I put the boot in for several seconds, hard, augmented and accurately. I aimed for ribs, joints, nerve points. He was shrieking under the tape, and trying to shove it away with his tongue. Then I clicked open my knife.

  I waved it centimeters from his eyes. He was still conscious, the pain having gone beyond the threshold of comprehension. He stared at the glittering tip and wet his pants.

  The human body can take a lot of damage. He was hyped on stabilizers and stims. I was trained for trauma medicine. Suffice it to say that, in fifteen minutes, he resembled nothing so much as a butchered hog. All it took was the knife and some creative posing. He was still alive. Isn't modern medical technology wonderful?

  He shrieked and screamed and passed out again. Several of his underlings spewed and choked, or simply fainted. Heck, even Tyler looked a bit queasy when I was done, and she knew what was coming and had once helped deal with a parachute drop gone bad.

  I had promised he'd stay alive. He was a much better warning that way. A corpse is forgotten soon. A mutilated survivor is horrifying again and again. So I was very careful not to cut any major blood vessels that I didn't seal at once. But that wasn't much of a limit. People don't bleed out nearly as fast as vid would have one think.

  Finally, I stood. He was a ruin underneath me. One trauma medic had taken him apart, others would have to put him back together.

  "Here's the message from God, My Children," I said as I looked at his lackeys. They were the most terrified, bedraggled-looking bunch of punks I had ever seen, with good reason. Most of them had pissed and shit themselves and were showing signs of shock from sheer sensory overload. I peeled off the gloves and dropped them into a bag to take with us. No evidence we could carry would be left behind. Sprayed nanos would destroy most of our pheromones and any stray biological material after we departed. "If you ever fuck with a Freehold registry ship, or a foreign flag vessel with Freeholders on it, we can find you, we will find you and the results will be even less pleasant than this. You do not want to see me pissed off.

  "Now," I added, "your grunting sodomite here is still alive, and will stay alive long enough for a trauma team to get to him." Squid held a phone up to one thug's ear and dialed. "Call for help," he ordered as he ripped off the gag.

  The punk stuttered and jabbered but finally got across that a terrible accident had happened, and help was needed right now! We disconnected, and I strode along the line of them as John retaped his mouth.

  "We can find all of you any time we like. This is a small sample of how we deal with our enemies. Given good skeletal surgeons and several years of anguish in regen, he'll eventually resemble something that might look like a human being in bad light. With no balls. Of course, he never had any to start with, if he kills children." Yes, I'd castrated him. It was symbolic, and brutal, and of great impression to the young men with him. Frequently, they fear that more than death.

  I nodded, and in seconds, every right hand in the place was mashed into stew. As they tried to scream through their gags, we vanished.

  Revolting? Why, yes, they were.

  Oh, you mean us?

  These people killed innocent children to show disapproval of a government. They couldn't even justify it as collateral damage, as the government officials in question weren't near their targets. Aiming for a politician would risk their own hides, and that was something Ghassan just didn't have the stomach for. Not until the doctors finished rebuilding him, anyway.

  How do I justify it? Well, since then, no Freehold registry vessel has ever been targeted by terrorists. No foreign flag vessel frequented by Freeholders has been attacked by the Fruits, and the total number of such vessels targeted has dropped 85%. I stand by my results. As to his torture and suffering, he was entitled to no protection under the conventions, not being a soldier and not choosing military targets. Besides, as Ghassan told me, sacrifices are necessary in war. His suffering was for a greater good.

  I hate terrorists.

  Did it disturb me, you wonder? After all, I'd taken such glee in doing it.

  I wake up at night sweating, hands itching until I get up and scrub them thoroughly. I can't look at a person confined medically, or a person in a regen tank, without thinking about the pain and fear that got them there, and how it might be inflicted, stroke by stroke, by me. I can't watch a cut up horror vid, although I never liked them before anyway, but now they make me sick. I have this compulsion to jump on a person with the slightest injury, do everything I can, take them to the hospital, assist in their therapy and follow them around for years. I can't do that, so I dwell on it in my thoughts, for every little injury I see. I even bandage birds' wings.

  No, it doesn't affect me at all. And there is such a thing as a stupid question.

  But I do take pride in the results. Terrorists then, entire armies now, quiver in fear at the repercussions of attacking the Freehold. No one dares mess with us, and I personally am a large part of the reason why. Others speak of their lives as "the ultimate price" for their homes. I figured years ago my life was forfeit for the training. If my home is at stake, I'll sacrifice my soul. Any Operative will. That's why we win. That's why we did win.

  But we do have to live with ourselves afterwards.

  JOURNEYMAN

  Chapter 7

  The civil war on Mtali was the first real shooting war the FMF was involved in. I was lucky or unlucky enough to be along for it, with most of my friends. Some people rave about how well it went. Others claim it was a screwup from the word go. The truth, in my opinion, lies somewhere between the two. Certainly it was a balls-up nightmare, but I can't honestly say it was any worse or better than any other conflict. And even if it was worse, you have to consider the environment:

  Mtali was named after a scientist from the old Central African Union about three hundred years ago. That makes it older than many other colonies. It's in sad shape because there were richer claims closer to Earth, so it was put in trust by the UN. This made it useful to several groups bent on escaping Earth (a valid thing to do, granted), who each staked out a small territory where they could have religious freedom, meaning to most of them the right to oppress anyone wrong-thinking, which was anyone not of their particular delusion. A couple of centuries of expansion brought them into contact, and the fighting started, or, for several groups, continued its millennia long tradition.

  Just so we're all on the same page of the script, let's cover the major groups on Mtali. First in my mind, are the Bahá'í pilgrims. They are peaceful, decent people, with a practical and inoffensive religion that prohibits alcohol and initiation of force. They do consider self-defense valid and reasonable. They are technical and educated and very decent people to know. I like them. I can't think of anything they could have done to deserve the fate of being among the rabble, but here they were, and they were paying for it.

  Want an example? The week we landed, a 14-standard-year-old Bahá'í girl named Tahirah R
abbani was caught and "tried" by a Shiite (although I spell it without the "e") Mullah and his brave flock. The twelve of them gang-raped her, hung her up by her hair then lacerated her feet, leaving her to bleed to death. Her crime? Teaching the Bahá'í faith in their claimed territory. How can you argue with logic like that? The Bahá'í were the only people I felt sorry for on the whole worthless ball of mud.

  So, onto the Shiits, or Shia. They were unchanged for five hundred years, and bore little resemblance to their 12th-century namesakes, who were not any relation I could discern. Regardless of their books, their "clergy" held that being non-Shia was a crime worthy of death and dismemberment. Being close wasn't enough—the closer you were, the more obvious it was that one should know the "real" truth, and were obviously that much greater a sinner. To that end, they killed a few of their own periodically. That's the only good thing I could say about them. Their hygiene was minimal. If something wasn't useful for killing, they didn't care to study it. In fact, most of them were barely literate, but had memorized the Holy Quran (or at least the parts about killing unbelievers and raping their women. I seem to have missed those verses in theology class). My opinion was that they were suffering a mineral deficiency in their diets—not enough elemental lead and tungsten. What do you call a Shiit armed with only a rifle and three grenades? A moderate.

  The Sunni. They were better educated than the Shia, but still bent on eliminating "unbelievers" from the galaxy. As with the Shiit, odd that their "true faith" didn't resemble the original schismatic beliefs the sect originally had. The only good thing I can say about them is that they generally limited their attacks to either Shia, or real military targets of anyone else, thus minimizing civilian casualties. The running joke was that you could pick up their weapons as cheap surplus—never fired, dropped once.