by Rick Partlow
Another row of narrow houses was crammed in behind the one I’d just exited, all of them burned out and deserted; I thought for a moment that I should search them, but I figured the kid would want to get farther away, if he was smart. Past the wreckage of the row-housing was another fenced-in industrial building, this one larger and more fortified than the last, and across the alleyway was the back of what looked like some sort of storefront, boarded up and dark and seemingly unoccupied. The store had a second floor with a fenced in porch hanging over a storage area that held nothing but a few empty, plastic crates. Support beams of local wood propped up the porch and chain link fencing enclosed the storage area.
The boy was climbing up the outside of that fence when I reached it, trying to reach the second-story porch, trying to find somewhere out of sight where he could hide. I thought for a second that he was going to make it, until a blast of laser-pulses hit the wooden post a meter away from him, sending a blast of steam and splinters exploding away from it. The kid screamed and fell the two meters to the ground, hitting hard, flat on his back.
I slid into a kneeling position beside him, sheltering him with my body, then twisted around and opened fire almost before I had a target. The handgun rounds weren’t going to penetrate their armor at its thickest points over the chest or major arteries, so I aimed someplace where I knew it would be thinner out of the need for flexibility. The one who’d fired at the boy was ten meters away, give or take, hopping around a fallen section of block wall, when I shot him through the left knee. The armor held his leg together, but I was fairly sure that was the only thing; the warhead of the round I’d fired expelled a jet of plasma when it impacted, superheating all the tissue around it like a grenade going off.
The Savage/Slaughter contractor screamed loud enough that I could hear it through his helmet, then went tumbling forward head over heels, the laser carbine slipping from his hands as he slammed to the ground. I ran over to him and ejected the magazine from his carbine, firing off the last chambered round back the way he’d come before I tossed the weapon down and let it retract on its sling. Then I ran back to the kid and grabbed him under the arm, dragging him back towards the alley between the shop and the burned-out house next door.
He was groaning, which at least meant he was alive; I thought maybe he’d just had the wind knocked out of him, but I couldn’t afford to check him out yet, not with the Skingangers and the mercenaries still shooting at each other. I could see the flashes from the lasers on the next street over, and heard the faint whooshing crack of rocket-propelled projectiles answering back. I kept my handgun trained the way I’d come, expecting one of the mercs to find the guy I’d shot any second and head after me.
Unfortunately, I was so focused on the way I’d come that I made a rookie mistake and didn’t pay enough attention to the approach behind me. I heard the footsteps and started to turn when I heard a slightly wavering male voice over a helmet speaker.
“Don’t move. Throw down the gun.”
Shit.
I thought for just a second about making a play, but the kid was starting to stir and I didn’t want to try something that could get him killed. I opened my gloved hand and let the pistol fall out of it; it hit the packed dirt with a solid thump of metal and polymer. Then I raised my hands over my head and slowly turned around.
There was just one of them, dressed in black armor, aiming the crystalline emitter of a pulse carbine at my chest.
“I’m just trying to get this kid out of harm’s way,” I told the merc, actually being honest with him. “You guys were about to shoot him.”
“Shut up!” The man snapped. “Interlace your fingers behind your head and get on your knees.”
I hissed out a sigh and did as I was told. He was going to take me prisoner, which sucked, but at least then I could get a chance to talk to his commander. The guy probably wouldn’t get sent out on his own if he was a total shit-for-brains. Maybe I could reason with him.
My knees were just hitting the dirt when the boy came to, saw what was happening and shot to his feet, panicked alarm written on his lean, hungry face. I was jumping to my feet with him, knowing what the merc would do even before he swung around his carbine, and knowing I wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to stop him before he shot the kid. Then something flew through the air in a blur of dark clothing and slammed a body block into the mercenary, taking them both to the ground.
It was Braden Vilberg, wrestling with the armored contractor for control of the carbine and yelling at him, simultaneously.
“God damn it, it’s just a kid, Corwin!” Vilberg bellowed, his face flushed red with outrage. “What’s wrong with you?”
If the words penetrated Corwin’s adrenalin buzz, he didn’t show it; he threw Vilberg off of him, then came up to a knee and aimed the carbine at his comrade’s face. Fortunately, by that time I’d had the opportunity to roll back the other way and grab my pistol. With Corwin about to pull the trigger, there wasn’t time for a shot to the knee or somewhere nonfatal, which left his faceplate as the only practical target; but he was facing away from me. I shot for the head anyway and saw the round flare against the thick BiPhase Carbide of his helmet, the plasma splashing out and scoring the faceplate even though it didn’t penetrate.
Corwin spun towards me instinctively and I fired again. This one went right through the helmet’s visor, through his left eye and directly into his brain. At that range, it was nearly impossible to miss. The contractor slipped from his knee down to his shoulder, shuddering and kicking for a few moments as he died.
Vilberg’s face went from a flushed red to a ghostly pale in seconds as he watched his former comrade’s life slip away, looking from the body to me and back. Behind him, I could see Victor and Divya running up, guns ready.
“Sorry, Boss,” Victor said. “He slipped away when the Skingangers started taking shots at us.”
“Where’s the boy?” I asked, ignoring the big man’s explanations, looking up and down the alley.
There was no sign of him, and the fighting was moving farther away, leaving its dead behind.
“Damn,” I muttered.
I couldn’t go chasing off after the kid again. I’d have to hope he could make it somewhere safe. Maybe he’d head back to his old house again and I could find him there later.
“Come on,” I urged, pulling Vilberg to his feet. “Let’s go find this contact before anyone else tries to kill us.”
Chapter Six
The warehouse didn’t look much different from any of the others we’d passed by in the last twenty minutes. It was faceless, featureless sheet metal, scored and rusted and coated with a thin layer of ice near the roof. Yet I could tell something was different about it, though it defied description.
Maybe it was the solid thickness of the walls, or the lack of graffiti and vandalism, or maybe it was just the subconscious knowledge that this place was occupied and in use. Or maybe it was the lights leaking through the covered windows high up on the walls, hinting at a vigilance that the other places lacked.
Divya led us to a door that looked much like all the others, and stared up at a section of wall that seemed like just another stretch of locally-manufactured steel. She smiled and waved.
“Open up, Koji,” she said in her artificially sweet tone that was meant to let you know she was in charge and you’d best deal with it. “I’m a friend of Roger West’s.”
There was no reaction for maybe ten seconds, but then the door opened with a hiss of hydraulics that gave some hint as to how solid their security really was. Just inside was a short, solidly-built woman dressed in an armored vest and a fur-trimmed jacket, standing behind the gaping maw of a flechette gun. I didn’t know which looked more dangerous, the scattergun or her stark, fearless glare.
“I need your weapons,” she said, her voice as unyielding as her expression.
“No, you don’t,” Divya corrected her, seemingly unfazed by her gun and her attitude. “You need to remind your b
oss who he works for, and then you need to let us in before I terminate that arrangement effective immediately.”
The resolve on that solid face seemed to waver, and I saw her eyes flicker back to her left, though she didn’t turn away from us.
“Let our guests in out of the cold, Reyna,” a smooth tenor instructed from somewhere in the darkness behind her.
The woman reluctantly waved us inside, checking the street behind us to make sure no one else had followed, then hitting a control to slide the door shut. It slammed with a solid, metallic clunk and we found ourselves inside a thick, almost palpable darkness that my night vision lens couldn’t penetrate. That was some trick; I didn’t know how he did it, but it was probably expensive. A circle of light appeared in the darkness and in it was a slender, Asian man dressed in loose, comfortable clothes that were either silk or an artificial analog of it. He looked young, but that was probably the result of money and technology, and he had not a single hair anywhere on his head or face. What he did have was an active, holographic tattoo of a nest of serpents that writhed in and out of his skull. It was a disturbing image that distracted me from his generic features, which was probably the idea.
“Divya Reddy,” the man who I assumed was Koji said, extending a hand. “How very nice to see you again.”
“You never were a good liar.” Divya took the hand in something less than a handshake, then used that same hand to gesture at me. “Koji Tsukahara, allow me to introduce Randall Munroe, the stick to my carrot.”
I shook his hand. It was soft, and cold, and mushy, and I didn’t care for it.
“You keep it like this all the time?” I asked him, waving a finger around at the theatrical darkness. “Or is this just for our benefit?”
“Please do dispense with this nonsense, Koji,” Divya sighed in exasperation. “If you want to impress me, do it with your knowledge.”
Koji made a sour expression, but he reached inside his sleeve and touched a control and the lights came up. The place wasn’t that impressive in the light and I began to understand why he kept it dark. It was what it looked like, a warehouse, stacked high with pallets of plastic and metal cases and cartons that lined the cement block walls and moved towards the center in layers that left passageways wide enough for an industrial lifter to navigate.
“That’s better,” Divya said, smiling. “Now, let’s have a seat; we need to talk.”
Koji led us to a small back room, surprisingly well-appointed for a warehouse in the Pirate Worlds, with hand-crafted furniture and hand-painted art decorating the walls. Victor was gawking like a tourist, his carbine tucked casually under his arm, while Vilberg was still in shock. The guy I’d killed had been his friend, apparently, or so I’d discerned from his dejected mumbling. He still couldn’t believe his friend had been about to shoot a child, and then him.
I felt for him; I’d been there, done that when it came to people I trusted stabbing me in the back. At least Gramps and I had a chance to reconcile a little before he died.
There were only three seats at the small table in the center of the room and Divya and I took two of them with Koji in the last. Vilberg fell into a padded chair in a corner, eyes staring into the haze of his thoughts, while Victor leaned against a wall, keeping watch.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Koji offered, waving at a dispenser on the far counter with a selection of coffees and liqueurs.
I shook my head. Honestly, I could have used a nice, stiff drink. It wasn’t the getting shot at, or the shooting other people; I had, unfortunately, done enough of that in my life that it barely registered anymore. But the business with the kid had rattled me, and I couldn’t shake it. Every time I imagined his face, all I could see was my son, Cesar. But I didn’t drink on duty.
“We need an assessment of the local situation, Koji,” Divya got down to business. I appreciated that about her.
“It’s a total shit show,” the man said bluntly. “It’s been damned bad for business.”
“Koji is a go-between,” Divya explained to me, pausing the other man with an upraised palm. “He brokers deals---arms deals, specifically---between the Sung Brothers, the bratva and whoever else comes along.”
“I also keep a little inventory of my own on hand,” Koji said, motioning out at the warehouse through the open door to the room. “Not that anyone trusts anyone else enough to do a straight deal lately.”
“What the hell are those Skingangers doing here?” I wanted to know. “I’ve never heard of them working as mercenaries for anyone.”
“They aren’t mercenaries,” Koji corrected me. He snorted out a breath, then pushed up from the table and walked over to the dispenser, pouring an amber-colored drink into a clear glass. “They’re part of the bratva.”
“Since when does the bratva roll out the welcome mat for Evolutionists?” Divya asked skeptically.
Koji took a long swig from his drink and sat down again. “Since the brother of the current boss became one.”
“Whoa,” I murmured.
“Exactly,” Koji agreed, nodding. “This kid, Anatoly, he went off on his own to try to make his way without Alexi’s help, and he came back with a shitload of bionics and a bunch of like-minded friends. The Skingangers got an enclave, a safe haven in the Pirate Worlds, where the Patrol and planetary law enforcement can’t touch them; and the bratva got a pretty bad-ass group of head-knockers. And Alexi decided to take advantage of that to try to take back the arms business from the Sung Brothers.”
“That’s why the Sung Brothers hired these mercenaries?” I presumed.
“No,” he corrected me, “they didn’t do that until someone started ripping off their off-world caches. Losing one or two small arms dumps here on-planet isn’t a game-breaker, but losing cargo ships full of military grade proton cannons is something that could put them out of business.”
“How the hell does the bratva know where the Sung Brothers are storing their weapons?” I leaned forward, elbows on the table. “It’s not like knocking over a warehouse here in Shakak…space is big, after all. There can’t be that many of the raiders like the ones we hit on that moon, so how are they finding them?”
“I’m not so sure the bratva are the ones behind it.” Koji drained the last of his drink before looking between Divya and I with a conspiratorial expression. “I still have connections with them, even after everything that’s happened.” He snorted. “Not that they trust me; they think I’m too close to the Sung Brothers. But although they freely admit to sending the Skingangers to stealing or destroying arms here on Peboan, they all insist they have nothing to do with the raiders.”
“They’re criminals,” Divya pointed out drily, steepling her fingers. “Have you ever considered that they might have an incentive to lie?”
“Of course. But if they are stealing the off-world shipments, what the hell are they doing with it? Because they sure aren’t selling it to anyone.” He threw up his hands in consternation. “It’s not as if these sorts of transactions don’t get noticed. If they’re on the market, it’s not anywhere in the Pirate Worlds, and it would be damned risky to try to sell them in the Commonwealth.”
“So why would someone be stealing all these weapons if not to sell them?” I had a nasty feeling I knew the answer.
“That’s easy,” he told me, smiling with a grim certainty. “They plan on using the weapons themselves.”
“That makes a depressing amount of sense,” Divya declared.
“We should talk to the Sung Brothers,” I said. “They might have intelligence on who’s behind this.”
“Good luck with that,” Koji scoffed. “They’re totally paranoid right now, with the Skingangers gunning for them all over Shakak. They have a fortress built out away from the city with air-tight security and they haven’t left it in weeks. They won’t even accept messages from me.”
“That only leaves one other possibility then,” I decided, looking over at Vilberg. “We need to talk to Captain Calderon. Can yo
u get us in to see him?”
He seemed to consider that for a long moment before he answered me.
“Before what happened tonight,” he replied quietly, “I’d have said yes. But now…I don’t know. They might just shoot me before they give me a chance to talk to them.”
“The Savage/Slaughter crew is hold up in a temporary camp outside of town,” Koji mused, rubbing his hands together thoughtfully. “Security’s pretty tight, but I might be able to grease the right palms to get you through.” He shot me a hard look. “I can’t promise you’ll come back out, though. Calderon’s a maniac. He’ll kill you as soon as look at you.”
***
The Savage/Slaughter encampment might have been temporary, but that didn’t mean it lacked for solidity or security. As the car that Koji had loaned us slowed near the end of the hard-pack dirt track, I could see the quick-setup buildfoam walls rising above the grassy plain, their grey surfaces lit white by the glare of the security spotlights. Guard towers rose at the corners of the wall, reinforced with local metal, each of them crowned with a Gatling laser turret that could be used for air defense at need…and probably had been, when they’d tried to shoot down the Nomad.
Out beyond the walls, I saw something that made me cringe instinctively: automated sentry pods, armed with grenade cannons, set out at intervals around the perimeter. It was all kinds of illegal in the Commonwealth to use any sort of automated weapon; even the military were restricted from letting anything other than a human decision maker pull a trigger, even during the war with the Tahni.
Gramps had told me the laws had been passed because of what had happened along the European borders with Russia after their nuclear exchange with China. Refugees were flooding into western Europe, many of them carrying diseases, and there was already a critical shortage of food, fuel and medical resources because of the economic disruption the war had caused. More than one nation had deployed automated sentry drones to patrol the border and programmed them to shoot anyone crossing without authorization. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians had died in a few days.