Recon- the Complete Series

by Rick Partlow

  “Munroe,” she insisted, grabbing me by the front of my jacket and pulling me around towards her, “you are my family.”

  That felt good, too, but I could see more chunks falling away.

  “That’s the last thing,” I told her, putting my hands on her arms and pulling her against my chest. “I’m a selfish prick,” I admitted. “Because I know how much it’s going to hurt you if anything happens to me, but all I can think about is how I would feel if you got killed because of me, because of a debt I owe.”

  Her head sagged against my shoulder, the breath going out of her in a sigh. I could feel a shuddering go through her, and I realized with a start that she was sobbing. She hadn’t cried in front of me since the war. I kissed her forehead, stroking her hair.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry, Sophie.”

  Then she hauled back and hit me hard in the shoulder, rage and ferocity etched into her face beneath the tears.

  “If you fucking get yourself killed, I’ll dig up your corpse and kill you again,” she growled. “Do you fucking understand me? You are not leaving me alone here.”

  “I love you, too,” I said, rubbing the spot she’d punched.

  She was still crying, and still angry, when she kissed me. I wanted to promise her I’d come back, but I’d never lied to her, and I didn’t want to start now.

  Chapter Three

  The inside-out world of Belial stretched out before me like a twisted wonderland of human debauchery and I remembered all in one rush why I’d left my old life behind. I stepped out of the lift I’d ridden here from the docking bay, moving aside to let others by behind me, staring like a tourist up the hub of the “blown” asteroid that was now the largest man-made construction in all of human space.

  Some independent investors---back before the Corporate Council, when there had been such a thing---had taken a basically spherical, nickel-iron asteroid, drilled a narrow hole down its center, filled it with water and then exposed the thing to sunlight amplified by large mirrors. The resultant steam pressure produced a hollow tube of compressed ore, in this case nearly thirty meters thick. Spin was imparted to produce near one gravity at the lowest levels. The "open" ends were sealed by transplas, with reflectors mounted to provide natural sunlight, and a pair of huge docking rings were connected through the core with a non-spinning transport tube.

  They’d left gaps between the hub and the innermost ring, so you could see basically all the way from one end of the station to the other in a mind-bending and balance-challenging view. The gravity this close to the hub was fairly light, and I saw thin, impossibly tall Belters and low-gravity natives striding quickly with their long, skinny legs as they searched out places to eat or do business or get their lightweight rocks off. I idly wondered if the sex dolls and prostitutes on this level were just as tall and skinny as their clients.

  I shook that thought and the uncomfortable mental images that accompanied it out of my head and walked carefully to the next lift station, the one that went outward towards the lower levels. I’d been here once before, just after the war’s end, when I’d been searching out discreet and untraceable transportation back to Demeter. This time, I already had the transportation; Cowboy had left a ship docked for me here. What I was looking for now were passengers.

  “You have room for maybe eight or nine on the boat,” Roger West had told me hanging on to the railing beside me as I’d taken a look at the small, delta-winged starship just a few minutes ago.

  It had been one of the first generation of missile cutters from the Fleet Attack Command, produced just after the Battle for Mars had shown the weakness of our capital ships to assaults from Transition Drive warships. Superseded by more advanced models later in the war, it had been stripped of its armament and sold for surplus a year later, and there were hundreds more like it all over the Commonwealth. It was barely bigger than a cargo shuttle at a hundred meters long and half that wide, and it had the name “Wanderer” stenciled on its rounded, armored nose.

  “If you want, you can fill her up with that many,” Cowboy had continued, “but I want you on Thunderhead in five hundred hours, whether it’s you and eight other people or just you. I transferred the files you asked for to your ‘link.”

  “I saw that a couple of the people are right here on Belial,” I’d said, eyeing him suspiciously. “Did you know who I’d ask for, or was storing the boat here just a happy coincidence?”

  He’d just grinned at that, in that not-quite-pleasant way of his. “The clearance codes for the Wanderer are on your ‘link too.” He’d glanced around to make sure no one else in the docking bay was close to us. “There’s another set of codes in there too. I’m leaving a little insurance policy in orbit around Thunderhead for you, geosynchronous over Freeport. It’s a kinetic strike package, totally stealthed so their anti-spacecraft sensors won’t pick it up. The atmospheric conditions make communications problematic though, so you’ll need a tight-beam laser uplink to use it, and you’ll only be able to do it once. Once it fires, the anti-spacecraft system will blow it out of orbit.”

  He’d fixed me with a harsh glare. “This is a last resort only. The people I work for want what’s down there intact.” Then he’d shot me a wave as he headed back to the berth where his own ship was docked. “Five hundred hours,” he’d reminded me. “Good luck.”

  I felt the apparent gravity of centrifugal force begin to increase the farther towards the outer shell the lift descended. I didn’t have a problem with microgravity, but I saw some of the others in the lift car let out relieved breaths as their weight increased to closer to what was normal for them back home.

  They were a mixed lot, from business travelers in vat-grown suits to cargo crews in stained coveralls. Belial was a gathering place for all types: Belters from here in the Alpha Centauri belt and the one back in the Solar System congregated on this station for recreation, along with Corporate and private freighter crews and some off-duty military on leave from the small base on Hermes out at Proxima. Not to mention the lower-tier Corporate Council people who came here to live out their own private sexual kinks in a place where it couldn’t come back to haunt them as they climbed the ladder.

  And then there were the ones who were here for business instead of pleasure. Belial was legendary as a hotbed of corporate espionage, shady black market deals and fugitive criminals. Security here didn’t put up with people killing each other indiscriminately, but they pretty much turned a blind eye to anything else, and were insistent that since they were a private entity not affiliated with the Commonwealth government that its rules didn’t apply. Most legal scholars had doubts as to how that argument would stand up in court, but it had never been tested, thanks to money greasing the right palms.

  The establishment I was heading for couldn’t have existed anywhere that operated under Commonwealth laws; and even on Belial, it was stuck pretty far back in the ass-end of the shadier parts of the station. I got off the lift car about three levels from the outermost ring, emerging into a district of the station that was dimly lit by design, a world where it was always night and the businesses and storefronts were mostly labelled with simple, uninformative names like “Klondike” or “Dunkel Nach Hause,” whatever the hell that meant. You weren’t in this section of Belial unless you knew what you were looking for and where it was.

  I tried not to pay attention to what went on in the places I passed on those streets, but I couldn’t help but register the glimpses through curtain doors as they parted for people who seemed to look over their shoulders instinctively, even in a place like this where no one cared. It was in places like these that you could practice the habits that broke you, either physically or mentally. Fantasies that weren’t tolerated anywhere else, that would land you in involuntary psych counseling and a law enforcement watch list, could be indulged with Virtual Reality, or for a bit more, with pleasure dolls nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. Or, for enough money, with real people just as desperate as th
eir customers.

  Once in a while, when a soundproof door was opened at just the right time, you could hear screams. I wondered if they were from a pleasure doll or a human. Either way, a human was causing them and it would have made me think some very dark thoughts about what we were capable of as a species…if I hadn’t already known.

  This whole area seemed to be devoted to those who derived pleasure from pain, and my destination was different only in execution, and in size. This establishment dwarfed the smaller shops around it, taking up three times the number of lots and stretching from the ceiling ten meters above down to the rough, stone floor. “Lucha” was the name above the large double-doors and, unlike anywhere else I’d seen on this street, those doors were manned by private bouncers and a sign on the wall proclaimed “No Weapons Allowed.”

  The station didn’t allow guns or projectile weapons of any kind, but you could bring in knives, shock gloves, mono-wire whips and basically any other sort of deadly device you wanted that had to be used one-on-one. But not in this place. There was a line of people in front of me, varied from the stylish Corporate Council types to the ragged ship crewmembers or towering Belters struggling against the .8 gravities; and every once in a while, one of them would produce a weapon from a concealed sheath or pocket and deposit it in a locker for which they’d get a code so they could retrieve it when they left.

  Everyone also had to deposit a rather hefty entrance fee, usually in actual, physical Tradenotes. Luckily, Cowboy had foreseen the need for a good supply of untraceable funds on this mission and I had a few hundred in my jacket pocket, plus more on the Wanderer. It’s always nice spending someone else’s money, particularly when it was some Corporate Council asshole. I tipped the bouncers.

  Through those doors was a bar, with dozens of stools and tables, but it was only lightly populated; the real business was beyond it, through a curtain entrance that stretched all the way to the ceiling. I stopped to pick up a shot of tequila from the real, human bartender---always a sign of a class establishment, in my experience---then moved through to the main event.

  Either the curtain was made of some soundproofing material or they were engaging in some very elaborate and expensive acoustic dampening; the second I stepped through it, I was assaulted by the roar of the excited crowd, the slap of flesh on flesh and the unmistakable grunts of someone being hit very, very hard. I could see it immediately; the floor was sloped gently downward, to let you view the show from every level. There were no seats, but the place was so packed, it would have been standing room only even if there had been.

  The match was being held in a square, mesh cage about five meters on a side, with a floor of flexible polymer, once white but long since stained with dried blood, among other things. There were four men inside it, all dressed in tight-fitting singlets, one pair colored white and the other two black. The ones in white were older, weathered and scarred, one of them shaved bald and both with amber skin darkened under alien suns not that long ago. They were traveling champions, pursuing this illegal sport in the undergrounds of a dozen colonies.

  The other two were newer to the game, from their youth, and had been here in Belial for a while from their pallor. They were brothers, obvious from the likeness of their squared-off features and the common blond color of their long, braided hair and beards. Yet new or not, they were solid, corded muscle and there was a cold, deadly frost in their shared blue eyes that seemed totally bereft of fear. Besides their singlets, each man had tight gloves of hard leather and the brothers’ were already stained with the blood running from their opponents’ faces. Even as I watched, leather hammered into flesh and each of the brothers scored a punishing body blow almost simultaneously.

  I made my way downward, closer to the ring, through throngs of screaming fans, their hands in the air, chanting “lucha!” Their faces seemed transfixed, transported with an almost sexual excitement. Inside the cage, the older fighters attempted a gambit that I was sure was well practiced by its smoothness of execution, probably one that had served them well in a dozen other fights on a dozen other worlds. Each ducked aside, under the guard of the man they were fighting, and slipped around to take the other’s opponent unaware from the rear.

  I tensed, expecting disaster for the brothers; they were vulnerable to any number of attacks, from a rear naked choke to a debilitating strike that could break a bone. Instead, both of the brothers spun into matching back kicks and their opponents walked straight into them. There was a crunch of cracking ribs that I could hear above the chanting and yelling, and both the older fighters were down, the bald one on a knee, struggling to breath, and the other man flat on his back and unmoving. One of the brothers moved behind the bald man and put him into a choke hold, and I wondered for a moment just how far they were going to take it. Was this to the death? Would they go that far, even here on Belial?

  But he stopped once the bald man was unconscious and let him fall limp to the canvas. Then the brothers raised arms spattered with blood and absorbed the cheers and screams of the crowd, their faces twisted into grimaces that seemed less satisfied and more enraged. Medical technicians dressed in white opened the gate into the cage and rushed over to the unconscious men, while the blond, hulking brothers stepped out behind them and headed up a walkway back up to the dressing rooms.

  “Victor!” I yelled after them, rushing up towards the cage. “Kurt!”

  A very tall, very unpleasant looking bouncer took a step to block my way, one hand raised palm out and the other poised in a fist by his chest.

  “Sir, you need to stay away from the ring.” His voice was calm and professional, but his demeanor was more along the lines of a barely-restrained psycho killer.

  “Sure,” I acquiesced, raising my hands in surrender. “But you need to tell Kurt and Victor that Munroe is here to see them.”

  “The fighters do not socialize with guests,” the man said flatly. He was so tall and broad-shouldered, I couldn’t see past him, and I cursed under my breath, sure they were already through the door into the dressing room by now.

  I debated briefly and internally whether I’d be better off bribing him or hitting him; I wasn’t sure either would be effective, but I was leaning towards bribery.

  “Holy shit, I don’t fucking believe it!”

  The voice was familiar, deep and booming, maybe a little harsher and harder-edged than the last time I’d heard it. Victor Simak stepped around the bouncer, putting a restraining hand on the man’s shoulder.

  “Is that really you, Munroe?” Kurt asked, wonder in his eyes as he came around the other side of the guard. Kurt had a cut on his cheek oozing blood, but he didn’t seem to notice it.

  Back before I’d been able to remember their names, I used to call them the Viking Brothers, and that name suited them now more than ever. They’d been college kids when they’d joined the Resistance on Demeter, and they’d looked older and more hardened than they had any right to be when it was over. Now, though, they were beyond hardened into…feral.

  “It’s really me,” I said, and tried not to grimace when they both swept me into a group hug that smelled of blood and sweat. One or both of them pounded me on the back hard enough to drive the wind out of my lungs and I heard them laughing wildly.

  “Good God, we haven’t seen you since the night of the assault on the fusion plant!” Victor whooped. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  There was still the roaring of the crowd around us, and I was beginning to see people moving forward out of their seats, maybe emboldened by my presence outside the normally acceptable areas for spectators. The bouncer was frowning and I saw him touch an earpiece and mutter something inaudible as he began to get visibly agitated.

  “Is there someplace we can talk in private?” I asked them, having to yell to be heard over the din.

  “Yeah, follow us,” Kurt said immediately, waving towards the door to the dressing room.

  Glancing back at the cage as we jogged towards the exit, I could s
ee that the two older fighters were both sitting up and conscious now. The fight had been brutal and brief and I was impressed how good the Simak brothers had become at this game just two years after leaving Demeter.

  The bouncer opened the door for us with his palm on the ID plate, then stayed on the other side of it when it closed, guarding it against any incursion by insistent fans. The hallway back into the dressing room was almost obscenely bright after the insistently dim lighting everywhere else in this district, and it felt like we were going backstage at one of the old-time theaters favored by the rich tourists on Demeter. Kurt and Victor bypassed the first few open locker rooms and led me to a private door keyed to their palmprints. The dressing room inside was spacious and well appointed, with a massage table, a couch, two reclining chairs and a shower stall.

  “It’s nice as all hell to see you again, Munroe,” Victor said, leading the conversation as always; Kurt was the more shy and reticent one, always willing to let his older brother spearhead conversations. “But I can’t think you tracked us down to this God-forsaken pit just to grab a drink.”

  He was changing as he spoke, peeling off the sweat-soaked one-piece and pulling on a robe that had been hanging from a hook on the wall. Kurt just sat down as he was on one of the chairs, grabbing a bottle of water out of a holder in the arm and taking a long drink.

  “No, honestly I didn’t,” I admitted. “But I did want to ask you something first. After the war, I went back to Demeter. I live there now with Sophia.”

  “Congratulations!” Kurt said, his hard mask of a face cracking into a smile. “I’m glad you guys made that work.”

  “Thanks,” I said, nodding to him. “But when I came back, I looked for you two, and no one could tell me why you’d left or where you’d gone, not even your parents. How the hell did you wind up here,” I waved a hand around us demonstratively, “doing this?”