A knock came at the door. I went and looked at the display screen by the door that showed who was there. An Indig man. I cracked the door open. “Hello?”
He stared at me. He wore brown dress shoes, brown slacks, a plain white dress shirt with the collar open, a dark brown sport coat over that. Straight black hair pulled back in a single low pony tail. It was Coyote.
He frowned. “You?”
“Yeah. What do you want?”
He handed me a data stick. “For you. Enjoy.”
“How…”
He turned and walked away. I shut the door. The Major didn’t even look up from his terminal. I went to check on my clothes and they were dry so I got dressed. I put the data stick in my pistol holster and strapped on my belt and went back out to wait. Emily came out of her room wearing an evening gown, pastel blue. Ruffles and laces at the hem and shoulders and around the low neck line. Her breasts were pushed up and together and projected forward. She wore makeup and her hair was fluffed out. I blinked.
“You look entirely different.”
She twirled around. “You like?”
“Yes.” Her butt was… it was the shoes. She wore high heels. That made her arch her back, made her butt look higher and rounder.
She looked at me. “You’re going dressed like that?”
“Yep.” I shrugged.
The Major went to his room, came out three minutes later wearing his ceremonial uniform, the whole nine yards. Saber in a scabbard, spurs, black hat with yellow tassels.
He looked at me. “You’ll be all right. If that uniform’s good enough to die in, it’s good enough to eat in.”
He led us out of the room, down the hall to the stairs, down the grand stair case, right of that and back to the restaurant. The Maitre d’ led us past the tables to an outside umbrella table and pulled the chair for Emily and pushed it back in as she sat. The Major and I then sat. The Maitre d’ disappeared. I looked at the table top and saw pictures of food with French words by them. I rubbed the image sideways and it changed. Finally I saw steak and potatoes and a glass mug full of an amber liquid topped with foam. I double-tapped that image. A server came and placed a mug of dark beer near my right hand, put a glass of white wine by Emily’s and a glass of water for the Major. Then the server said something in French and we all nodded and smiled and he left.
He returned and set an ice-cold metal plate with lettuce and stuff on it in front of each of us. I reached out with my left hand to grab some and the Major cleared his throat and pointed at the fork farthest out from the plate. Took some practice but I managed to eat all the plant stuff on my plate using the fork. The server came and took away the cold metal plates and sat our meals in front of us. The baked potato had a white sort of butter with green specks in it, but it tasted great. The Major raised an eyebrow when I used my spoon to eat the potato but I ignored him. The steak, it was great. Juicy and soft, it came apart easily with a fork, no need for a knife. Didn’t taste as good as the beefalo steak we had on Tumbler. But, no doubt the cooks were better down there, and besides, this steak was all beef. Not much chewing required.
Emily had some sort of thick brown-gravy soup with chunks of bird meat in it, and the Major ate a slab of some kind of thin breaded fish meat with a reddish sauce ladled onto it. Desert was confusing. Mine looked like a very yellow version of cheese cake, and more substantial but not as thick, with flecks of stuff in it. And it was eggs, mostly. I ate it.
The Major said, “Quiche.”
I said, “Bless you, Sir,” and kept eating.
The server came back, cleared the dishes and set teeny cups of coffee before us. I sniffed mine and it curled my nose hairs so I set it back down.
The Major sipped his and said, “Espresso.”
Emily sipped hers too. I didn’t want to look scared so I downed mine in a single gulp. Then got a head rush. Won’t do that again.
The Major said, “Slaughter, we need to get you a suit.”
I shrugged. He stood, Emily and I stood and followed him out of the hotel and to the left. We walked about a hundred meters and he led me into a tailor shop. I picked out a suit similar to what I saw Coyote wearing, except I went with black shoes, dark blue pants and jacket, and a dark gray dress shirt. I also chose a longer jacket, long enough to conceal my side arm and bayonet. We waited twenty minutes for the sewing and I put on the new outfit and carried my combat coveralls and boots in a shopping bag. The Major charged the outfit to the hotel and explained that the Acadian government paid for everything, a stipulation of our contract with them.
We window-shopped on the way back to the hotel. Back in the suite, the Major fell back under the spell of his terminal and Emily went to her room. I went to my room and took my personal communicator off my wrist and set it on the desk and turned on its holographic keyboard and adjusted the projected monitor to shine on the wall behind the desk. Then I took the data stick Coyote had given me out of my holster and attached it to the communicator. It was full of useful information which I copied to my communicator.
I started to re-sort it into folders for vid, audio, and documents. The documents were mixed, most in French and about a third in Standard. Some had both. I cranked them through the translator and even though the translation wasn’t perfect, I was able to get the general idea. I started reading; my eyes got blurry so I leaned back in my chair and started to check out the vids.
My door opened and Emily entered wearing her hotel bath robe. She closed the door behind her and locked it, stood behind me and rubbed my shoulders and said, “Your suit looks good on you. You look good in it.”
I moved my hands back from the keyboard and placed them on hers. “So, you don’t want me to take it off?”
“That’s not what I said.”
I said, “I have a lot of work to do.”
“I’ll help. Tomorrow. We have all day for the next three days.”
I stood and removed my jacket and hung it on the back of the chair and gave Emily a hug. “Your assistance in this matter will be greatly appreciated.”
She put her hands around my neck and playfully gave me a very weak choke. She pulled my face to hers and kissed me full on the mouth, broke away and dimmed the lights, dropped her robe to the floor and then pulled back the bedclothes and sat and patted the mattress with her left hand. I doffed my new clothes to the floor and joined her on the bed.
Major Deskavich knocked on the door. “Hey you two.”
Emily lay down and pulled the covers up to her neck. I put on my bath robe and opened the door. “Sir?”
“Oh. Don’t worry abut that, we’re cool. Did an Indig stop by earlier today?”
I said, “Yessir. Coyote.”
“Good. You know him. Did he drop something off?”
“Yessir.” I pulled the data stick from my communicator and gave it to him. “This.”
He smiled. “Carry on.”
I closed the door.
Chapter Sixteen
The big day came and my presentation was wrapped pretty tight, thanks to Emily’s help. I wore my suit, Emily wore a dress suit, and the Major wore his full dress uniform. I walked with her and the Major across the street from the hotel to the Government building. Turns out, it’s the Acadia capitol building. Sounds impressive until you realize there were less than a thousand Acadians at the time. Not counting all those zygotes and embryos still in stasis, of course, as well as the couple thousand Indigs who already took up residence in the orbital habitat. There was room for two million to live comfortably in a utopia, five million if they packed them in and lived in a dystopia.
We entered the main hall and took the grand steps up to the entrance of their legislative chamber; the gold-plated doors slid back automatically as we approached. Victor, the same Frog who greeted us on our first day, ushered us forward to the center of the dome-roofed round room to stand in front of high wooden chairs, a long sturdy table in front of us for our use.
Five chairs, we stood before the middle three
. A single long table began at one side of the door and ran in a circle all the way around to end at the other side of the door. I looked and saw about a dozen well-dressed middle-aged people seated behind the table, about a third of them women. Pink highlights in pasty, chubby faces. Except for the couple of balding men, they had poofy gray hair. They flanked the three leaders before us. Those three wore black oversized berets with a gold tassel emanating from the center to hang to the left. Most of the chairs around the room were empty. There was a gap of one empty seat to the right, then Coyote. He sat hunched forward, elbows on the table, arms folded, a blank look on his face.
The Major said, “Governor-General, Magistrates and Representatives: it is an honor and a privilege to appear before you today.”
The Governor-General, the man seated directly in front of us, said, “Take you seats.”
Victor scooted Emily’s chair forward a couple of centimeters as she sat. I sat and scooted my chair back a little, and the Major sat straight down and leaned forward a little to open his terminal and log it onto their AV network.
The Governor said, “To my right is the Honorable Andre Thibodaux, your Advocate, and to my left the Honorable Malthus DeLaJoya, your Adversary. We’ll begin with your opening remarks and presentation, then our questions and your answers will follow.”
“Very well.” Major Deskavich stood. “We have come here today to explain why the Jasmine Panzer Brigade contract with Acadia is in dispute and hopefully come to an equitable resolution. Sergeant Slaughter, if you will?”
“Yessir.” I stood, he sat. Emily poked at the terminal and brought up the opening image of my presentation. It showed on three screens positioned around the chamber, along the round wall above and behind the seats. It showed a grazing herd of beefalo. “The vast herds of beefalo began disappearing right after Acadia came to orbit Tumbler. Disease and a lack of suitable grazing land have cut their numbers from hundreds of millions to the last remaining herd, which seems to be about half a million animals. The Indigs found traces of hoof and mouth disease and anthrax among the areas formerly ranged by the herds, and both these diseases are new to Tumbler.”
Emily changed the image to one of Tumbler taken from orbit, a conspicuous shadow on its surface. I said, “Also, here we have evidence this orbital habitat was deliberately positioned to block more than forty percent of the sunlight reaching the arable surface of Tumbler, greatly interfering with the growth of the grass. This is not isolated, but occurred throughout the first two years of Acadia’s presence here.”
A document, officially stamped and signed, showed on the screens. “And thirdly I present the policy of Acadia that any Indig family that wished to move up here to Acadia would have to adopt an Acadian embryo. Meaning, the wife would be forced to not only carry and bring to term an Acadian baby, but the family would have to care for and raise the child as well. And lastly, the policy of converting the Indigs from their religion to Acadian Catholic, and also force them to learn French and use it exclusively, all that violates basic tenements of being able to get a contract with mercenaries licensed and bonded with the authority on Ostreich. Had the Brigade been aware of any of this, it would not have entered into a contract with Acadia.”
The Advocate said, “Governor, I must ask.” The Governor nodded. The Advocate said, “My dear Sergeant, excuse my ignorance, but how can an institution such as the Bonding Commission, dedicated to the professional conduct of war, be the least bit concerned with religious freedoms?”
I shrugged. “Attempts to outlaw or persecute religions simply drive them underground and then later they rise up violently. Problem is, religious wars are impossible to win because they have no tangible objectives and second of all, they don’t pay very well. Generally, they don’t pay at all.”
“I see. Very wise.” The Advocate made notes.
The Governor General said, “I feel the need to respond at this time, not to argue but simply to inform. When we arrived, we had no idea how much time had actually passed outside our ship. The Indigenous people came as quite a surprise. We viewed them as some sort of primitive, nomadic offshoot of humanity. It took time, but we learned that their use of primitive electronics was a result of Tumbler’s strong magnetic field, their lack of a permanent settlement of any kind a result of the climate and its patterns. It took time, but we did exchange information and it was the Indigenous peoples themselves who not only proved to us what year it was, but taught us about jump points as well. As luck would have it, a jump ship entered our system and we were able to begin integrating ourselves into the community of inhabited worlds throughout the Galaxy. The policy of forcing immigrants to adopt an Acadian child has been reviewed and done away with, and French will be taught as a second language, with Standard the primary from here forward. These things take time but within a few generations, Acadia will be a Standard-speaking nation. Our earlier mistreatment of Tumbler and its inhabitants has stopped. The damage to the herds, the damage to personal feelings, has been done. But the causes have been stopped, and over time may be forgiven. In light of this, is it still possible to continue the contract Acadia has with your Brigade?”
The Advocate nodded and smiled, the Adversary gave a snort.
Major Deskavich said, “Thank you Sergeant Slaughter.”
I sat, he stood. “Governor, were that the case I surely wouldn’t be here now. We take your measures to mitigate the circumstances as a good faith gesture. What I must now bring to your attention may not be. On the original bid for this contract you described the hostile force as eight thousand primitive nomads, three thousand military age males protecting their families, spending most of their time hunting, with limited military experience. This proved to be false. In fact, every last member of an Indig clan is available to provide military force in one way or another.”
The screens showed the vid I had of a four year old kid smashing in the head of a wounded Troop, his mother teaching him the best spot to hit his head to make it crack more easily. Six whacks, then brains spilled out. Another vid showed a woman with gray hair running past a tank. She tossed a bomb onto the rear deck of the tank. It exploded and the tank lost power, a flame rising from its rear deck, the tank’s crew dismounting, hands up. They were met by teen boys and girls who shot them with large-caliber rifles. Rifles suitable for killing beefalo bulls with a single shot.
“As you can see, the Acadian assessment of the hostile force was clearly inaccurate. Be that as it may, there is the matter of the size of the force. It has come to light that the single Indig clan we were sent out to capture was actually re-enforced by the warriors of at least five other clans. They left your designated safe zone to join the one hostile clan to assist in their seasonal beefalo hunt. And that’s because in the safe zone there were no beefalo at all, and Acadia was clearly not providing adequate sustenance. Acadia withheld sustenance deliberately, to coerce the non-hostile Indigs to immigrate here to this habitat. This was something we needed to know. Information about the size, composition and motivations of the hostile force was deliberately withheld from Lieutenant Colonel Guillermo Camacho and it was that lack of information that resulted in his death on the field of battle.”
The screens showed a document dated a month before the battle. It was from the Indig agent on Tumbler reporting that more than twenty thousand warriors had left the safe zone to join the beefalo hunt. The recipient was the military liaison of Acadia.
The Major slammed his left hand down on the table. “I was at that meeting where your military liaison briefed my commander and insisted the hostile force was just eight thousand Indigs, not a soul more. He also lied and said the hostile Indigs were malnourished and in low spirits. That, my friends, was blatant lying. Your military liaison knew better and sent us off to what he hoped would be our deaths with a crooked smile. And that, my friends, is the main reason this contract is under dispute.”
The screen showed the response from the military liaison to the Indig agent. An official document, it cl
early stated that the Mercenaries would under no circumstances be informed of anything, and it even said it was unlikely the Mercenaries would live past the end of the week.
The Major pointed at the screen to the left. “That!” He executed an about-face and left the chamber.
I stood. “Governor, I assure you he’ll come back shortly. He just needs to cool off for a few minutes.”
The Governor stood and said, “Ten minute recess,” and banged his gavel. The Frogs left through a door behind the Governor’s chair. I sat with Emily. We didn’t want to leave, just in case the Major came back. Coyote stood, looked around and then made his way all the way around the long table to come stand in front of ours.
He looked at me. “How’s it going?”
I shrugged. “You seem to be an important person around here.”
“I’m the duly appointed representative of my people here in the Acadia legislature. I get to sit in on their sessions, but I don’t get a vote.”
“Anything I can do for you?”
He placed his hands on his hips. “If your boy don’t get back in time, cede the floor to me until he shows up. I have something to say for the official record.”
I considered. “What is it?”
“You’ll like it.”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure I have enough ass to make a decision like that.”
“You chicken?”
I stood. “Say that again.”
Coyote stuck his thumbs in his armpits and flapped his arms. “Chicken.”
Emily stood and grabbed my left shoulder. “Hey. This is unprofessional. Tell us what you plan to say or you don’t get the floor.”
Coyote folded his arms across his chest. “The story behind the attack on the pressure valve.”
I wanted to hear that story. I smiled. “No problem, you duly appointed non-voting member.”
Coyote tilted his head to one side and then the other to stretch his neck, adjusted his tie, snapped his arms downward to make his shirt sleeves even, ran his right hand fingers over his jacket buttons and went back to his chair. The recess was over and the Frogs returned and took their seats and Major Deskavich was not back.
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