Starfist FR - 03 - Recoil

by Dan Cragg

  “Ah,” Mullilee said, looking plaintively at the Marine, “we don’t have secure satellite communications.”

  “But you do have commsat, don’t you?”

  “Y-Yes. We have a Lodestar in geosync.”

  “Surely it’s got an unused secure channel that we can use.”

  “I-It doesn’t have s-secure channels installed.”

  Daly looked at Mullilee with disbelief.

  “We’re an open society, Mr. Daly,” Miner interjected. “On the rare occasions we have for secure communications, we use a scrambler at each end. And before you ask”—he held up a hand—“no, we don’t have any unused scramblers we can lend you.”

  “All right,” Daly said slowly, not believing Miner. He turned to Mullilee. “We still need the vehicles.”

  Before Mullilee could respond, Miner said, “Give it to him.”

  Mullilee began transmitting data from his comp to Daly’s. Miner turned to Daly. “I’m sure if I ask him, Mr. Rhodes will supply you with vehicles and drivers.”

  Daly addressed the metals boss for the first time since he’d begun talking directly to Mullilee. “The drivers won’t be necessary, sir. The vehicles are all we need.”

  “Of course you need the drivers,” Miner insisted. “How else will you find your way around without getting lost?”

  Kindy barked out a laugh. Williams looked amused. Daly maintained his calm demeanor.

  “Sir, we’re Force Recon. Every time we go on a mission, we find our way around without getting lost, and without local guides. We wouldn’t be Force Recon if we couldn’t do that.”

  “I still think you need the drivers, and you’ll have them.”

  Miner looked as though he thought the matter was settled. Daly didn’t press it. Mullilee indicated that the data on the vanished homesteads had been downloaded to Daly’s comp. Daly looked at him. Mullilee almost choked saying, “It’s all there. Everything I have.”

  Daly stood; so did the squad leaders. “Thank you, sir. We’ll study this then go out first thing after we have the vehicles. If there are any further developments before then—or at any time at all—kindly notify me immediately.” He nodded to Miner and Sales. “Gentlemen.”

  The three Marines left and walked side by side back to their quarters. They talked about all things Haulover except for their mission—and the thing uppermost in Daly’s mind. Marine House

  “I didn’t see,” Ensign Daly said as soon as they were inside the house. “Where’d you plant it?”

  “Did you see me lean forward when I asked if all the homesteads were farms?” Sergeant Kindy asked. Daly nodded, and the squad leader continued. “I’d already dropped it on the floor by my toe. I slipped my foot forward and fed it to the leg of the desk. It crawled up to the bottom of the console base.”

  Daly clapped him on the back. “Very good. With luck, we’ll find out what Mullilee’s putting into his comp or getting out of it, as well as hearing everything that’s said in that office.” The office of the planetary administrator was more effectively bugged than Marine House had been. By the time the three leaders returned from their meeting with Planetary Administrator Mullilee, all of the Marines were feeling hungry. Haulover was new enough that it didn’t have many of the labor-saving conveniences of more settled worlds, such as automatic kitchens—the Marines would have to prepare their own meals. Fortunately, the kitchen was as well stocked with food as with beer. Corporal Belinski claimed he knew how to cook, so the others let him do the honors. It wasn’t the worst meal any of them had ever had on a deployment but it was far from the best. Except for Corporal Nomonon and Lance Corporal Ellis, who admitted they couldn’t do as well, the other Marines all swore they’d do the cooking themselves before they’d let Belinski try to poison them again. They’d barely had time to clear the table—Belinski was assigned kitchen police duty as punishment for not being as good a cook as he claimed—and begin studying the data Mullilee had downloaded to Ensign Daly’s comp when Daly got a call.

  Another homestead had been attacked. Seventeen people were missing this time.

  The homestead wasn’t a farm or ranch, it was a small mining operation.

  The Marines were ready to move out in minutes. They each carried food and water for two days; one man in each squad carried a blaster—the others only had knives and sidearms. They were going on a reconnaissance—if they found a trail they could follow—not a combat raid.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  Marine House, Sky City, Haulover

  “Where are our vehicles?” Ensign Daly snapped into the comm. “They aren’t here yet.”

  “I-I don’t know.” Planetary Administrator Spilk Mullilee’s voice was almost a whine. “B-But you can travel with my convoy, we’ll make r-room for you in our v-vehicles.”

  Daly swore under his breath, but said out loud, “How soon will you be here to pick us up?”

  “F-Fifteen minutes? M-Maybe twenty.”

  “Make it ten.” Daly cut the connection and turned to his Marines. “Showtime. Let’s get ready to find the bear.”

  In less than ten minutes, the Marines were ready and assembled in front of Marine House. Sergeant Williams grinned. “They’re going to shit a brick when they see us.” They were in chameleons with their helmets and gloves off and sleeves rolled up so Mullilee and his people would be able to see them. Corporal Nomonon hooted. “They’ve probably heard of chameleons but don’t believe what they’ve heard.”

  “Got that right,” Sergeant Kindy said, poking Nomonon’s shoulder.

  Daly faced his men. Despite the many years he’d been a Marine, he still sometimes found the sight of disembodied heads and hovering hands disconcerting.

  “Just don’t go out of your way to frighten the natives,” he told them.

  “Aye aye, sir,” Corporal Belinski said and made to put his helmet on. He lowered his helmet and grinned when Daly gave him a stern look.

  It took more than thirty minutes from Mullilee’s call for the small convoy to reach Marine House.

  “What is this?” Chairman Smelt Miner yelped from the front seat of the lead vehicle when he saw the Marines’ heads and hands. Mullilee sat staring slack-jawed in the vehicle’s backseat. Daly ambled over to the landcar, not showing the annoyance he felt at the delay—or the presence of the overbearing Miner. He pointedly looked at the three vehicles of the convoy—two of which bore the markings of the Haulover Constabulary, and were already full—before leaning to look into the backseat at Mullilee. “Sir,” he said, “I still don’t see the vehicles for my Marines.”

  “You c-can sit with m-me,” Mullilee said. He tried to look at Daly’s eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at the way the Marine’s head hovered in midair. Miner twisted around in the front seat to watch, but didn’t say anything.

  “My Marines, sir. I was promised two vehicles.”

  “I-I’m sure they’ll be here by the time we g-get back from the Johnson h-homestead.”

  “If we find something we can follow, my Marines and I aren’t coming back. If we have to come back, we may lose valuable time and the perpetrators have a greater chance of getting away and raiding more homesteads. I need those vehicles now.”

  Mullilee lowered his eyes, blinked when he realized he couldn’t actually see through Daly, and looked past him toward the other Marines. “Ah, do . . . do you ha-have weapons and . . . and . . .”

  “We have everything we need, sir. Except vehicles.”

  “You’ll get ’em,” Miner snarled. He yanked his comm out of a pocket and spoke sharply into it, listened for a few seconds, then snapped it off. “They’ll be here in ten minutes. And if they aren’t, we’ll leave without you.”

  “They better be here in ten minutes,” Daly said, far more calmly than he felt.

  True to Miner’s word, when the extra vehicles didn’t show up in ten minutes, the three-vehicle convoy pulled out, leaving Daly and the other Marines behind when Daly refused to leave without his men. Less
than two minutes later, two Land Runners, the civilian version of the Confederation Army’s Battle Car, pulled up in front of Marine House. The Land Runner had thinner armor, no firing slits in the window armor it didn’t have anyway, and a less powerful engine.

  “Nomonon, Belinski,” Daly said, and gestured sharply at the two vehicles.

  The two corporals moved sharply to the Land Runners, pulled the drivers’ doors open, and ordered the drivers to get out.

  “No, these are ours!” the driver of the lead vehicle objected.

  “We’re driving—we have our orders.”

  Daly used his parade-ground voice to say, “I told Mr. Miner we didn’t need drivers, that we’d do our own driving.”

  That voice, and the sight of hovering heads and bodiless hands, rattled the drivers enough that they dismounted.

  “B-But, Mr. Miner,” the first driver said, “he told us we have to drive. He’ll be awful pissed when he finds out that you took the Land Runners from us.”

  “What’s the matter,” Kindy said, sneering, “do you think he’ll fire you?”

  The first driver’s head bobbed rapidly.

  “He’ll do more than just fire us,” the second driver said. Daly considered that for a second, then ordered the drivers,

  “All right, get in the back. I’ll take care of Mr. Miner.”

  The drivers did as Daly said, and in a moment the Marines were mounted and chasing after the convoy.

  Johnson Homestead, One Hundred Kilometers Northwest of Sky City Although Ensign Daly was annoyed by the delay in the convoy’s arrival, and the further delay caused by the wait for the Land Runners, he’d put the time to good use by studying the data Planetary Administrator Mullilee had downloaded to his comp. His Marines also studied during that time. The data, contrary to what Mullilee had said during the meeting in his office, did have the timing of the attacks on the homesteads. But he had to work at getting the data in such shape that he could clearly see the sequence of disappearances. He didn’t have enough time to study the sequence before they arrived at the Johnson homestead, as all the vehicles heading there pushed at two hundred kilometers per hour and arrived half an hour after leaving Sky City. The Johnson homestead was—or had been—a dozen buildings situated along the bank of an ancient, dry riverbed. The three vehicles that carried Planetary Administrator Mullilee and the police arrived scant minutes before the Marines and parked just outside a disturbed area. The Marines parked their Land Runners next to them. Mullilee and Chairman Miner stood on the edge of the disturbance, along with a uniformed man the Marines hadn’t seen before, watching the constabulary forensic people, who were setting up to examine what they were treating as a crime scene. A platoon of local soldiers were in a defensive perimeter around the site.

  “This is General Pokoj Vojak,” Mullilee introduced Daly to the stranger, “Haulover’s minister of war.”

  “Ensign Daly, I’m pleased to meet you,” Vojak said and extended his hand. Even if his civilian masters weren’t, Vojak was respectful of the Marines. He’d been a major in the Confederation Army, and had experience with Force Recon, so he had an idea of their capabilities.

  “General,” Daly said, saluting, then shook the offered hand.

  “My army isn’t much, but I’ll offer you every bit of help we can give,” Vojak said.

  “Thank you, sir. Once we locate the base of these raiders, we’ll provide you with assistance in dealing with them.”

  Before they could say anything more about cooperating, Miner stepped forward, shouldering Vojak aside. “That’s all good and well,” he snarled. “But in the meantime, what are you going to do about this?” He waved a hand at the devastation. Vojak didn’t protest Miner’s treatment and moved away. Daly looked around but didn’t see anything that looked like the entrance to a mine, so he asked, “What were they mining here?”

  “Platinum and ru-ruthenium,” Mullilee said. Miner shot him a harsh look.

  Daly’s eyebrows went up. “Ruthenium?” He looked around again and saw gouges in the riverbed where the alluvial deposits had been dug out to be shoveled into sluice boxes.

  “What did they do, pay for their initial operation with the platinum and use the profits to go after the ruthenium?” Ruthenium was commonly found with platinum. As a necessary metal in the manufacture of Beam interstellar drives, it was an extremely valuable export commodity. Platinum, while a precious metal, wasn’t as valuable on the interstellar export market. It was probably worth more on the domestic market; no matter how far they were removed from the bright lights of high society, women always liked to adorn themselves with sparkly and shiny things.

  “Ah, I . . . I th-think so.”

  Miner spat onto the alluvial deposit that contained the rare metals. “Johnson had some romantic idea about striking it rich like an old-time gold prospector,” he growled. “He spent all the time he could over four years prowling around, looking for the big strike. Every now and then he found a few nuggets of gold, but never enough to justify a commercial mining operation. Then he found this.” He shook his head. “The son of a bitch knew the value of the ruthenium. He wouldn’t sell out to me when he had the chance. Now look at where it got him.” He looked away. “People know I wanted this mine. Now some of them are going to blame me for what happened here.”

  Daly looked at him levelly. “Are you?”

  “Allah’s pointed teeth, no!” Miner yelled. “If I was, why would I have taken out two dozen farms and ranches? They don’t do me a damn bit of good. So don’t you think I’m in any way responsible for this, mister!”

  They would if you were trying to deflect attention from yourself, Daly thought. He abruptly turned from Miner and Mullilee to direct the two squads in examining the ground surrounding the destroyed mining operation, leaving the locals to stand staring after him. Miner’s chest heaved with deep breaths as he tried to calm himself and bring his fury at this junior officer under control.

  The Marines didn’t need to be directed by their officer; the squad leaders knew exactly what they needed to do and already had their Marines doing it. Daly remembered the “dumb question” he’d asked at the preplanning briefing: “This is a twosquad mission. Why does it require an officer?” He now felt every bit like the excess baggage he had feared he’d be. A few minutes later, a raised voice caused Daly to look toward the parked vehicles. He saw Miner angrily talking to the two men who’d been the assigned drivers of the Land Runners loaned to the Marines. He lowered his sleeves and put on his helmet and gloves before briskly walking toward the trio.

  “. . . to scrounge whatever odd jobs you can find, because nobody on the board will give you any assistance,” Miner was saying to the two terrified-looking drivers when Daly stepped unseen between the director and the two men. The drivers didn’t say anything, didn’t look like they could say anything. Daly whipped his helmet off in a move that created the impression that he had simply appeared out of nowhere. The helmet removal was a move practiced by Force Recon squad leaders to startle people who needed to be put off balance; the sudden appearance of a disembodied head usually distracted whoever for long enough that the Marine could peel his gloves off, leaving the impression that he’d suddenly appeared exactly as seen.

  “Mr. Miner,” Daly said in the voice noncommissioned officers have used to put fear into the hearts of recalcitrant soldiers for as long as there have been armies, “I believe you are threatening these men because they obeyed my orders!”

  “I tol—”

  “I don’t give a hair off Muhammad’s ass what you told them!

  They are civilians. I told you I don’t want or need drivers. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. Let me do that now. I am not going to put the lives of my Marines in the hands of civilians. I am not going to take civilians into situations where their mere presence might endanger the lives of my Marines. And I am not going to take them into situations where they might get killed!” As he spoke, Daly edged closer to Miner, until his nose was mere centi
meters from the other’s face. Now he moved those final centimeters, forcing Miner to lean back off balance.

  “Or do you want these men to get killed? Do you want my Marines to get killed? Do you?”

  Those last shouted words sent Miner staggering back a step or two.

  “You can’t talk to—”

  “I can talk to anyone anyway I please when the success of my mission is at issue!” Daly lowered his voice to a tone that implied he had the weight of the entire Confederation of Human Worlds behind it and said, “I will not tolerate anyone placing their own lives or those of my Marines in jeopardy. If you punish these men because I won’t allow you to use them to interfere with my mission, you will have occasion to regret it. Do you understand me, Mr. Miner?”

  A step away from Daly, barely within arm’s reach, Miner felt more confident. He drew himself up to his greatest height and shouted, “You’re insubordinate, mister! I’m going to lodge a complaint and have you removed from command here. I have connections, and by the time I’m through with you, you’ll not only lose your commission, you’ll be lucky if you don’t wind up in Darkside!” He began to turn to stalk away, staggered again when Daly stretched to grab his shoulder and yank him back.

  “By the time your complaint reaches my superiors and their reply comes back here, my mission will have been completed and my Marines and I will no longer be here. And you will look like a fool, because my superiors will back me.” It looked like Daly merely flicked his fingers, but he did it with enough force to stagger Miner. He turned his back on the furious chairman and said to the drivers, “Let me know if he does anything to you.”

  Miner wrapped himself in as much dignity as he could and stalked away, snarling over his shoulder, “You’re done here, mister. You’ll be sorry that you ever crossed me, Ensign!”