by Evan Currie
The arrival of the humans from Earth, though, they represented a new variable…and new possibilities.
“Grant,” he called suddenly, turning around.
“Sir?” Grant Portman, his family’s retainer, stepped into the room practically the instant he’d spoken.
Eri often marveled at how frighteningly efficient Grant was, but couldn’t imagine living without his assistance either.
“I want to speak with the Earthers,” he said. “Arrange a meeting, will you?”
“Would sir like them in any particular frame of mind?” Grant asked.
Eri considered then. “Willing to deal.”
Grant was silent a moment before smiling slowly. “I believe I know just the men to make the invitation, sir.”
Chapter 7
The colonists had spread out a lot compared to Hayden, Sorilla noted as they drove. The APC was making decent time on the packed dirt road along the river, but the main site was easily an hour’s drive from the airfield and they’d passed lots of small villages on their way in.
They were maybe another ten minutes from the city limits, so to speak, when the APC skidded to a halt. Sorilla twisted around, swapping over to the driver’s channel.
“What’s going on?”
“We’ve got a welcoming party, boss,” the driver said. “You might want to check it out.”
Sorilla linked directly into the APC’s feed, getting a look at the situation. She whistled in appreciation as she got an eyeful.
“I do declare,” she said with a bit of a Southern drawl, “that looks like an old fashioned posse come out to meet us.”
“I see a couple Alliance blasters in the bunch, boss,” the driver said nervously. “This baby can take a lot, but those will scuff the paint a bit.”
Sorilla shot an annoyed look at Kriss.
“You’re selling them weapons?” she demanded over the open air.
“I’m not,” Kriss said. “However, what merchants choose to sell here is not my concern, unless it is illegal or breaches an active embargo. At this point, there is none to this world.”
“Please tell me those aren’t mil-spec,” she groused.
“They are not. However, there is very little difference between military-issue and civilian,” Kriss admitted. “Primarily safety systems, control locks, and other similar items. The damage they cause is close to identical.”
“Great,” she grumbled, hammering the door. “Open it up.”
“Colonel…?” Strickland got to his feet.
“I said open it up,” she repeated herself. “I’ll see what’s up. Hopefully this isn’t a fight in the brewing…so just play it calmly.”
Truth was, she rather doubted it was a fight. If they’d wanted that, then they would have ambushed the APC, rather than blocking the path. She grabbed her helmet on the way by, but didn’t put it on as the door started to open.
The door of the APC was only halfway down when she jumped from it and planted both feet in the dirt, taking a moment to look around with her optics fully active.
“Eyes open, everyone,” she ordered. “Watch for snipers.”
Unless the group ahead of the APC was particularly stupid, she knew they would be out there.
Sorilla fingered her helmet, considering putting it on, but ultimately decided against it. Unless she fouled this up badly, she didn’t expect the situation to deteriorate. Putting the helmet on would just make them more nervous, and in the worst case scenario, she rather doubted her head would survive a hit from those Alliance blasters whether she was wearing it or not.
She clipped the helmet on her hip belt as she walked around, making a show of clearing the poncho from her armor to open access to her guns.
Not looking intimidating was one thing; looking like a pushover was something else entirely.
“Gentlemen,” she said evenly as she tipped her head in the direction of the group. “Fine day today, isn’t it?”
The men looked at each other, some uncertainty there, but mostly they were looking to the man in the middle of the group for direction. Sorilla shifted her focus primarily to him, tagging him in her HUD as the group’s leader.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, dark hair and deeply tanned skin that was just starting to show the craggy look of a man who’d spent too much of his life in the high UV of direct sunlight. Sorilla noted the star pinned on his chest and blinked to adjust the focus and zoom of the liquid lens over her eyeballs so she could easily read the lettering on it.
Arkana Rangers.
She wondered what their legal status actually was, locally, but supposed it didn’t really matter a lot. She’d treat with them as actual authorities until it was time not to.
“Ma’am,” the leader said sternly, “going to have to ask you to surrender your weapons.”
Sorilla smiled slowly. “That’s interesting, Ranger, is it? I was informed this was an open carry community.”
“Citizens have the right to carry,” he told her evenly. “Unless you have papers to show otherwise, I’ve never seen your like in these areas.”
“Ranger, if you want to play those semantics, I can play right back,” Sorilla said evenly. “This is Alliance territory, and we have all necessary permissions from the Alliance to operate within their space. Put simply, my authority is higher than yours. Mine controls the orbitals.”
She glanced up pointedly.
“Fuck those Xenos!” one of the younger, and stupider, men shouted, surging forward, only to be held back. “This world ain’t theirs!”
Sorilla honestly wished she’d had the time to do the job properly from the start, but the Alliance had pushed too hard in the beginning and there was no way either Alliance or SOLCOM would accept a long-term familiarization with the local culture. It probably wasn’t feasible anyway, given that the colony site was small enough that it wouldn’t take too long before any attempt at infiltration was discovered.
It was large enough that no one could know everyone, but small enough that everyone knew someone who knew anyone in particular. Any outsider would automatically be pegged as an off-worlder, and that would totally destroy any point in the soft approach anyway.
“Shut up, Frank,” the leader snapped, glaring at him as the protesting man was dragged back.
“How about we get to what you’re really here for?” Sorilla suggested, her link back to the APC filling her in on the location of snipers they’d found so far. Two men on overwatch, both within three hundred yards.
Honestly, she was a little disappointed if that was all they had.
There was a moment of indecision in the man’s eyes, and Sorilla tried to work out just why that was. He had to have come in with a plan. Had he actually expected her to just hand over her team’s weapons?
No way. They’re under Alliance protectorate status and have been for at least a decade. They aren’t going to expect military people to hand over their weapons, no matter how nice they ask. There’s another game here.
There was a clear undercurrent of anger toward the Alliance she could see for the first time out in the open, though. That was good, confirming her psych profile at least in part.
The leader seemed to have made up his mind, judging from his body language. He shifted his attention back to Sorilla and away from the loudmouth, all indecision gone from his stance as his hand started to move to the gun on his hip.
Sorilla’s guns were in her hands and clear of the Kevlar holsters before he’d fully gripped the handle of his own, and she thrust them out in front of her as the men were highlighted in her corneal implants as yellow and red threats.
The leader was still yellow as he froze in place, both guns aimed to take his head off. Sorilla ignored the red threats for the moment, as they had frozen in shock despite already having rifles and carbines in their hands.
“I think we should keep this talk all civilized-like,” she said with a sweet smile, letting the leader stare down the barrels of her Metalstorm tactical pistols for a m
oment before she abruptly returned them to her holsters with fluid, efficient motions.
The whirr of the APC’s main gun rotating out of its armored storage protection and aiming over her shoulder caused the whole group to take a step back before even thinking about it.
“Don’t you guys think that’s a good idea?” she went on casually, as though nothing had happened.
“Yeah, civilized is good,” the leader said, swallowing hard.
“Excellent,” Sorilla told him. “Now, we have a bit of an impasse. I can certainly understand your desire to keep military ordnance out of your city, and that is not unreasonable, but we’re not handing over our guns when no one else is walking around unarmed.”
She casually walked closer to him, the group of men parting to put as much room between them and her as possible. Sorilla had no intentions of doing anything hostile, though, and so she simply clapped a hand lightly on the leader’s shoulder.
“Why don’t we work out a compromise?” she suggested, stepping in close to him and smiling up at the taller man.
“Right,” he stammered a bit. “That…that works?”
Sorilla didn’t make any notice of the hesitance in his almost questioning tone, outwardly at least, but instead just continued to speak calmly and as pleasantly as she could.
“What if we—?” She was forced to pause as the loudmouth from earlier lunged for her.
She slapped her hand into the leader’s chest, pushing him out of the way as she twisted to deal with the threat.
*****
Everything was just a blur, it happened too fast.
Ranger Dalton had been cursing the whole situation from the get-go, particularly the “deputies” he’d been ordered to bring along. Doing favors for Eri Constantine was part of the job, but he was smart enough to recognize when he was being set up for something.
Having a handpicked team of the worst hotheaded idiots in town assigned to him was enough of a clue that he’d have known something was up if that was the only part of the situation that stunk. They didn’t have near enough firepower to go around hassling Xenos, for one, and that ignored the fact that the targets were riding around in an armored vehicle that looked right out of the old media clips in the approved histories.
The Xeno blasters they had were impressive, but Dalton knew damn well that if it came to a fight, they were about as likely to be enough as pop-guns. That armor may or may not stand up to the Alliance blasters, but he’d bet almost anything in the galaxy that it would give the people it was protecting a chance to react.
His people wouldn’t get that much in the retaliation strike.
Still, he’d done what he’d been bade. You didn’t turn Eri down flat, or bad things were likely to happen to you or people you gave a damn about. Dalton had been surprised when the only person to emerge from the vehicle was a woman, wearing local garb as best he could tell, until she cleared room to expose her pistols.
Those were obviously not local.
She was too calm for a woman facing down a dozen men with guns, some of which he knew had to be a threat to her, no matter how effective any armor she might have. When Frankie had gone off like the hotheaded idiot he was, and things started to deteriorate, Dalton decided that was about as good an opening as he was going to get.
He started to go for his gun, just as he’d been told…and then he froze.
As God was his witness, Dalton hadn’t even seen the woman move.
One second he was casually reaching for his weapon just to punctuate the line he’d been told to deliver, the next he was staring down four big bores in two very big guns that looked outsized in the hands of the woman, who was looking pleasantly at him without looking down the sights. Normally, he’d consider that the sign of an amateur, but her guns didn’t waver and he knew they were both dead on target.
He, very slowly, drew his hands back from his pistol and lifted them up with fingers splayed. The whirr and clunk from the armored vehicle as it exposed a big gun that now moved to cover him and his men was mere punctuation as the moment stretched out forever, in his estimation.
Then it was over. The two guns vanished back into the woman’s holsters and she was all smiles again as she spoke cheerfully and stepped in close, as though there was no reason to be concerned. He found himself agreeing with her, nodding along as though she hadn’t just put guns in his face, and for the life of him he didn’t know why.
So it was a surprise when she suddenly shoved him, hard enough to make Dalton stumble a few steps back. As he got his balance and looked up sharply to see if she was attacking him or not, he spotted Frankie, that idiot, charging the woman.
“Frankie!” He snarled a warning, but stopped short when the woman again moved so fast he was barely able to figure out what she’d done after the fact.
She stepped out of the way of the lunge at the last second, not even looking in Frankie’s direction, pivoting to face the idiot as he stumbled past her. Then, with a single, smooth motion, she kicked his feet out from under him while striking him in the chest with a ridge hand. The combined forces laid Frankie out flat in midair, a shocked expression on his face as stupid as anything Dalton had ever seen in the man, and that was saying something.
She wasn’t finished, though.
She spun around in a smooth motion, ridge hand closing into a striking fist, and with the spin to add force, she delivered a hammer blow to Frankie’s sternum before he could even finish falling. The added force of the blow drove Frankie the Idiot, which would forever be Dalton’s name for the fool from then on, into the ground with enough force to throw up dust in all directions as he gaped and flopped around like a fish out of water.
Two more of the idiots he’d been saddled with had gone to help Frankie, but they both pulled up short as one of her guns was jammed into the first’s nose while the other was bent over in pain as her other gun was jammed into his crotch.
It was only at that point that Dalton realized that the rest of the soldiers in the APC had gotten out at some point during the conversation or fight.
What was worse, though, was that as he looked at them…not a single one of them had their weapons at the ready.
At least twenty guys, big guys, were standing there with weapons hanging from tactical slings or holstered. Some were leaning casually on the APC, others were just standing there and watching…including the Xenos.
He rather thought the Xenos looked even more amused than the humans.
Jesus Christ, Eri, what the hell did you get me into? Dalton thought as he swallowed.
Then she looked back at him, still holding her guns on the two dumbasses. “I believe we were talking about a compromise?”
Dalton nodded, taking a breath.
Fuck Eri. I’m not paid nearly enough for this. If this bunch start breaking laws, then maybe I’ll do something, but I’m not one of his paid guns.
“Yes, I think we were. Everyone, stand down,” he said. “I’m Ranger Sasha Dalton.”
“Brilliant,” she said, withdrawing her guns as the two men carefully stepped back and everyone relaxed a bit. “Sorilla Aida, colonel for my sins, don’t you know.”
“I don’t, but I’m beginning to guess,” Dalton said, sighing. “Sidearms in town are fine, but we’d prefer you leave the tank on the outskirts.”
“We can work with that,” Sorilla said. “Would local transport be available for rental?”
“Colonel Aida,” Dalton said dryly, “for you, I’ll take you and show you around personally.”
“Fabulous.”
*****
That had not gone to plan.
Grant Portman, like everyone else, had been shocked by the speed and power the woman who seemed to be the spokesman for the group had exhibited. Everything had been going more or less as expected, right up until the Ranger had gone to draw his weapon. That was the signal they’d agreed on, and it would have allowed him to show up and play peacemaker after a brief standoff was allowed to play out.
A bit risky, but everything they knew about the woman and her team seemed to indicate that they weren’t looking to start anything, so he’d decided it was worth the risks. Wasn’t him down there, after all, and there were always up-and-coming young bucks who wanted the prestige of the Ranger’s badge if he’d miscalculated.
He obviously had done just that, but not in the way he’d expected.
The woman was fast.
She’d shut down the attempt at standoff before it had even properly begun, and then in the follow up had gone on to utterly destroy one of the more reliable hotheads in Eri’s employ before charming the Ranger into showing her around town.
He was going to need a new approach.
Grant turned to one of the men with him and extended his hand. “Radio.”
The secure radio was dropped into his hand, and he thumbed it open with a motion.
“Eri? Yeah, didn’t work out. Going to offer your invitation in a different way. No, shouldn’t be too much of a delay. Might I suggest visiting the Red Room this afternoon, however? Excellent. See you there.”
He flipped the radio closed and handed it back, mentally still replaying the fight.
He did not want to be within that woman’s reach…not for any reason under the white sun.
Chapter 8
Kriss had been amused, watching the human casually take out one of the more foolish examples of local toughs like he was the nothing he clearly was. As with his counterpart in the human forces, he’d issued a stand-down order to his men, as it was clear there was no actual threat to her. What impressed him more was how she’d managed to completely dissolve the tension with the leader of the group, and now he and a few others were packed into the back of the man’s own vehicle and driving casually into town.
They’d split off, leaving guards and, more importantly, he supposed, potential backup with the APC, while Aida, Major Strickland, himself, and a couple young human soldiers had piled into the Rangers’ transport and in short order were being personally shown around the city with the local law enforcement as their tour guide.