by Mark Wandrey
Rick held up one bloody armored hand. “Trackers? You created them.”
“Oh,” Sato said, “right.” He’d invented a low-level radioactive tracker based on nanites, capable of being dispersed with minimal chance of detection. It was one of a thousand little projects he’d undertaken that had never quite made it to the level of being delivered to Alexis. He barely remembered building it into the Æsir.
“Come on, we need to get out of here,” Rick said, offering a blood- and gore-covered hand. Sato’s eyes went wide, and he took an unconscious step backward. “Oh,” Rick said. “Sorry.” He looked around and opened a panel, pulling out a hose. He easily snapped it from its fitting, and water began spraying. Rick used it to wash himself clean of the mess.
“Do you mind?” the elSha asked.
Sato gasped, unaware the alien was still alive. “What are you going to do with him?”
Rick finished his cleaning job and somehow turned off the water hose, stuffing it back into the panel he’d pulled it from and closing the door. “I haven’t decided,” he said, looking at the dangling elSha. “What about you? Was this part of the plan your Kaa and GecSha partners had?”
“I just work for them,” the elSha admitted. “Those morons didn’t know anything about this. If they bothered to cut me in for a decent—” Whack! Rick hit the elSha in the back of the head with his other hand, and the alien fell limp.
“You kill him?” Sato asked.
“Not likely,” Rick admitted, lifting the body to look closer. “He’s still breathing.” Rick walked to the edge of the promenade and sat the elSha to the side, propping him up like he was just chilling. Rick patted him on the head and returned to Sato, who was still staring at the deceased Besquith. “We better leave before security shows up.”
“Okay,” Sato said and gingerly stepped through the watered down gore, following Rick toward the hotel. “I do have a question,” he said.
“Yes, sir?”
“Why didn’t you just use your gun?”
The armor shrugged under the wet, blood-stained robes. “I forgot.”
* * * * *
Chapter Three
Back in their little hotel room, Rick used the ‘shower’ included to give himself a more thorough cleaning. He had bits of Besquith everywhere. The armor was completely sealed, of course, but he still wanted to make sure no slivers of bone or teeth worked their way into a joint.
Of course he’d been untruthful with Sato. He hadn’t used any of his weapons because he simply hadn’t needed to. The pair of Besquith only had blades and a small laser pistol each. Their natural weapons, claws and teeth that could rend the metallic skin of a CASPer, were no threat to him. He’d been happy to work his annoyance out on the pair.
I tried to warn him, Rick thought as he used a micro-pick from his built-in toolkit to get a bit of bone out of an elbow seal. I knew one of those shifty fuckers would start something. He briefly popped his helmet to check the seal and frowned at his visage. So familiar, and so alien at the same time. He buttoned it back up as quickly as he could.
Sato was sitting on the bed with their newly acquired counterfeit identification credentials spread out and a pair of slates, busily working on something. He seemed no worse for wear at almost ending up as a Besquith snack. When Rick had come up behind the Besquith, he’d expected to find Sato cowering in fear. Instead, he’d found the little guy actually threatening the beasts! To put paid to it, he’d called them “Efko-uf,” which in Besquith meant an abandoned pup nobody wanted, raised clanless. The lowest of the low in the aliens’ society.
Can’t imagine why they went apeshit.
“Everything okay?” Sato asked without looking up from his slates.
“Yes, sir,” Rick replied. A notification had been flashing in his pinplants. “I need to recharge.”
“Oh, sure.” Sato pointed. “There’s a Union Standard medium-flow powerport there. Be sure to set recharge rate 3 so you don’t blow out their circuits, okay?”
“Understood, sir,” Rick said, and plugged into the indicated power. A few seconds later, the armor was charging. He looked back at what Sato was doing and saw various starmaps being displayed. “May I ask what you’re doing, sir?”
“Trying to decide on our next destination,” Sato replied and turned on one of the slates’ built in Tri-V, causing their sector of the galaxy to spring into a bright 3D rendering. Rick could see he had several destinations highlighted.
“Earth?” Rick asked and pointed. “I had the feeling your goals were more far reaching than back home.”
“You know, you’d be right.” Sato stared at the display, waiting, as if it would have something to say. “Only we need to go to Earth first.”
“Why?”
“I wish I knew.”
Rick observed Sato, who appeared no different. Earth, he thought. He didn’t think he’d been to Earth since he’d left. Reviewing his personnel file confirmed the thought. Once he’d signed on with the Winged Hussars, he’d traveled for several missions, but never to Earth. Still, he didn’t know if he really wanted to go. He briefly considered waiting on Karma before remembering two things.
One, Earth was at war with the Mercenary Guild, for reasons he didn’t understand. He knew it would be a waste of time to ask Sato, so he’d been reading articles on the GalNet. Unfortunately they were mostly propaganda pieces, so there wasn’t much to glean. Either way, if he couldn’t trust Sato to make it back to their hotel without getting mugged, there was no way the scientist could travel to a war zone without being arrested. If they found out his real identity, it was certain he’d be imprisoned as a valuable member of the Winged Hussars.
Two, he wanted to go. The realization was a little surprising. He glanced at his armored hand and wondered what his mother would think. She’d probably gotten a death notice from the Mercenary Guild months ago, along with quite a few credits.
Still, he owed her a chance to explain, and to see him again. Don’t I?
“Pack up tonight,” Sato said as he finished and put his slates away. “We’ll find a way to get to Earth tomorrow. Shouldn’t be too hard.”
“True, sir. It’s not like there’s a war.”
Sato glanced at him and frowned. He picked up the case he was keeping the credits in and shook it. “This should make it possible.”
“And you can do me a big favor by not flashing them around.” Sato opened his mouth to complain. “The more thieves and various lowlifes I have to chop up, the less likely we’ll get wherever you want to go.”
“You have a point,” Sato admitted.
“Good. Can I have some credits, too, please, sir?”
“Of course,” Sato said, then opened the little case, fished out a handful, and handed them to him. He didn’t even look at the denominations.
With Rick’s improved visual and recognition capabilities, he knew he’d been handed 229,000 credits. It was so much because Sato had given him the 100,000 credit chit. Rick retrieved the high denomination one and handed it back. He hefted the remainder. “This is more than enough. Thank you, sir.”
Sato examined the large denomination chit and nodded, adding it to the five remaining million-credit chits. “I’m going to get some rest; you should too.”
“Of course, sir.” Rick stored the 129,000 credits in one of his many little storage areas. They fit almost perfectly in the one on his left forearm. “Good night.”
Sato went over to the sleeping platform and made an improvised bed from the printed sheets provided, which would be recycled after they left. In minutes, he was quietly snoring. Rick watched him for a short time, then set his detection systems on medium—he didn’t want to be woken by some little vermin crawling around, or a servicebot—and shut off all external input. Utter darkness and silence enveloped him.
It’s not the same, he thought and found some music to listen to. All the media files from the Winged Hussars were saved in his datalogs. Something made him pick a group called Led Zeppelin, da
ting back more than a century. The track was called Immigrant Song. The tones made him feel nostalgic, though he couldn’t remember ever hearing it before. He had a fleeting memory of an overweight boy sitting in a chair with a piece of pizza in one hand, singing along. It was gone as fast as it had come.
Rick drifted off, trying to recall who it was and remembering the taste of pizza. Ok, Earth would be fun.
* * *
He woke early. A no-shit Earth fly had crawled across one of his acoustic sensors, sounding like five people were breaking down the door. He had his gun in hand in a fraction of a second and aimed before he realized what had happened and replaced the gun.
“Hello, my Terrestrial friend,” he said. It was a common housefly; his scanner and computer confirmed it. “I wonder how many worlds we’ve dropped your kind off on?”
“A lot,” Sato said, yawning. “Same with cockroaches and rats.”
“That’s kind of disturbing,” Rick said.
“You need to look into how many battles against alien invasive species we’re fighting on Earth. We’ve gotten some help from the Science Guild…” Sato blinked and seemed to lock up.
“Mr. Sato, are you okay?” He remained—what, locked? Frozen? He stayed in that condition for over ten seconds before he blinked and looked up at Rick.
“Well, come on, we need to get down to the ship hangars.”
“Are you okay?” Rick asked, genuinely concerned.
“Yeah, why do you ask?” Sato was up, carefully packing his slates and other gear. He seemed to always have a place for everything. As a merc, Rick admired the trait. In cadre, if you weren’t a natural organizer, they’d beat it into you.
“Nothing,” Rick said, but started a file in his pinplants. Sato Weirdness, he labeled it, and placed the recording of what he’d just seen in it. Then he went back and added the incident against the Besquith, and even earlier, when they were getting the counterfeit Yacks.
Rick finished getting their modest gear packed up then left behind Sato, falling into his guardian mode. As they moved toward the glideways, he did his own research on alien life invading a member planet. Turned out it was your job to keep invasive species off your own planet. Dumping nasty critters on someone else’s world could fall under the genocide rule, and that would involve the Peacemakers, so nobody did it. At least not in a way they could get caught.
What Sato had mentioned before he brain locked was a Science Guild program known as Purity. With their help, you could purchase, at cost, bots whose only purpose was to hunt down and kill invasive species. Everything from small insects to large animals, and even plants. Even with the help, though, a detailed eradication program could cost millions of credits. In the case of Earth, the planet was so darned favorable to life, it was nearly impossible.
Purity had gotten rid of a couple of bacteria that had threatened to collapse the plankton life cycle, which would have been bad. They did so early after first contact, and for free, which was weird in and of itself. Afterwards, humanity had used the program nine times, and had wanted to do so in six other cases, but lacked the funds. Earth reported 20 active alien infestations, but had chosen to ignore 14 of them. One, it turned out, rather liked terrestrial mosquitoes. Rick grinned and shook his head. There was always a bigger bug.
He was still somewhat surprised he’d never read about it. Then he remembered what the Earth Republic was like. Free flow of information wasn’t really their thing, which was why there wasn’t a GalNet node in every library. Instead, Earth suffered along with their own homegrown Aethernet, which was a pathetic echo of the GalNet. Great way to keep some things out of the public eye, too, he guessed.
They reached the zero-gravity hub and headed toward the area where ships could be hired. Now that they were in an area that was patrolled more regularly, Rick could ease up a bit. With the massive population of Karma Station, they largely left basic law enforcement to private concerns. However, the station employed over a thousand four-armed Lumar, contracted as a sort of garrison. They mainly concentrated on merchant operations, offices, and the ship docking bays. That was where the most money was located, of course. Having a ship’s captain get mugged right after arriving would give your station a bad rep, and with another dozen trading stations within single-jump range, Karma needed to keep a good rep.
Within the business area of the hub, all manner of races worked at terminals or with station personnel. They were arranging various repairs, purchasing consumables, and occasionally getting ship upgrades. The aliens Sato was looking for hadn’t come looking for goods or services; they were offering them.
Rick waited to the side, floating away from Sato as the scientist found a group of ships’ captains apparently discussing business. As the scientist moved between the groups, Rick kept his senses open, observing the goings-on in the cylindrical space. In particular, a MinSha crew was pointing at Sato and speaking to each other.
The nature of the MinSha language worked in the aliens’ favor. Mostly scratches of their mandibles accented with minor vocalizations, they were extremely adept at sotto voce communications, and Rick couldn’t read what they were saying. Considering the history between Humans and MinSha, and the near complete lack of fellow Humans on Karma Station, it wasn’t a good thing. Couldn’t be.
Great, he thought and stayed where he was. A quick assessment showed 147 individual beings within the space they occupied. Most weren’t merc races; however 31 were. Besides the four MinSha, there was a group of 10 Goka, another race less than friendly to Humans, as well as three Besquith, a pair of Oogar, and the rest were random pairings. More than enough heavily armed mercs, many hostile to Humans, for this situation to turn to shit in a fraction of a second.
Outside, they found a side passage holding several public-use slates built into the structure. An elSha and a Jeha were chattering at each other as they accessed a terminal, neither taking note of Rick and Sato’s appearance. Once clear, Rick used his pinplants to access the station’s GalNet for more info on Earth’s current status.
As he’d feared, it had worsened. The Hussars’ fleet had been defeated, and the survivors had fled the system. Jim Cartwright’s Raknars had surrendered. It looked like General Peepo had been completely victorious.
“Going to Earth might no longer be an option,” Rick said to Sato quietly.
“Why is that?” After Rick had explained, Sato nodded a couple times then spoke. “It hasn’t altered the necessity.”
“Did you hear me, sir?”
“Of course.”
“Any attempt to go in-system will likely get us arrested. Arrested at best, is more like it.”
“Humans.”
Rick spun, caught off guard and immediately afraid one of the many races adversarial toward Humans had followed them. Instead he found two giant flies, both holding their manipulator hands in front of their massive, multi-faceted eyes.
“Don’t kill us!” the bigger of the two Athal said.
“What do you want?” Rick demanded, not replacing his weapon. The Athal were known for having no known hint of ethics. They were most often found as traders and key members of the Wathayat Syndicate, where they wielded a disproportionate amount of power for such a relatively weak race.
/> “K-ka,” the one who spoke indicated the other bug, “overheard that you wanted transport off Karma. Did you escape?”
“Escape what?” Sato asked.
“Earth, or one of your colonies.”
“No, we want to go to Earth,” Sato said before Rick could stop him. He cringed inwardly and wondered what their response would be.
“This is not logical,” the one named K-ka said. “Why would you want to go to an occupied world? You are a mercenary race, and the Mercenary Guild has occupied your world.”
“Yes, we still want to go to Earth,” Sato said. “Do you have a ship?”
“We not only have a ship, but we have a contract to deliver goods to Earth.”
Sato reached into his bag and slowly drew out a 100,000 credit chit. “Interested in some extra cargo?”
Rick didn’t know the body language of the Athal. By the agitated way their feelers moved and mouth parts squirmed, he didn’t think he needed a lesson to be sure these two bugs were quite interested.
“That worked out better than I expected,” Rick admitted as they floated away from the encounter. The Athal had agreed to 200,000 for both of them and their personal gear. They’d paid the aliens 50,000 credits up front, though they’d wanted it all. They’d get another 50,000 once the pair boarded their craft, and the final 100,000 upon landfall on Earth.
“Athal are greedy,” Sato said in his occasional confident voice. It was part of the man’s demeanor Rick hadn’t yet figured out. Most of the time Sato seemed lost—a fish out of water, as it were. But occasionally he was as confident as a salty marine master sergeant on his 100th HALD. At least thus far, the confidence hadn’t been misplaced. Rick had a feeling, sooner or later, it wouldn’t work out.
“The limitation they put on our personal goods means we can’t take the smuggling module,” Rick said.
“True,” Sato agreed. “I have some tools and equipment we need, though. Better go get it now.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Rick agreed. “Now that we have these,” he held up his Yack, “it won’t be as difficult to get to the module. Even so, better let me.”