by B. V. Larson
“McGill?” he asked. “You asleep in that suit of yours?”
“No Vet. Right as rain.”
“Ha! You’re as crooked as that nut Claver if you ask me.”
I eyed him wondering why he’d come back to talk to me. As he wasn’t making it obvious, I figured I’d prod him a little.
“Hey Vet, why haven’t we met up with any of the other units out here?”
Harris snorted. “You should be able to figure that one out by yourself,” he said in a lowered voice. “And if you do, keep quiet.”
I thought about that for about thirty seconds. As I pondered, it began to rain. Real frigging rain drops! I couldn’t believe it. Carlos had been right. If the Tau had set up dehumidifying fields on the distant roof, they were failing utterly.
Suddenly, I looked to the front of the platoon. There was Adjunct Leeson marching alone. At last, I figured it out.
“They’re in cahoots,” I said.
“Ca-what?”
“I mean Leeson and Old Silver. They’re in this together and now—we all are. Locked in tight. He doesn’t want anyone coming to rescue us. He—did he even call in and report what happened, Vet?”
Harris looked upset. “Just keep quiet about that,” he muttered. “Leeson did what he had to. He’s a good man—if a little slow to see a trap when it’s laid at his feet.”
Nodding to myself, I figured Harris was right. We’d taken bribes, lost men, and we were marching around with high-value credit pieces slung over our back in wet sacks. For all I knew, the coins were as illegal here as they were back on Earth. There had to be a serious reprimand in Leeson’s future if anyone higher ranked figured out all these details. The first thing they’d want to know was what idiot was in command of this fiasco.
“Leeson’s scared,” I said.
“Shhh! Shut the hell up! You can’t say that about your officer—especially if it’s true. Why do I even talk to you, anyway?”
“Because deep down you have feelings for me, Vet. No, no—you don’t have to say a thing, ‘cause I know it’s true.”
That was the sort of thing Carlos would have said, but I didn’t care. It had the effect I was hoping for. Harris flipped me off and moved back up the line, slapping at troops who were about to let their bags rip. He demanded that each of them keep their heads, weapons and peckers upright.
It was about midnight when we finally reached a more civilized region of the city. Here, we found buzzing skimmers for rent. I longed to climb into one of those flittering taxis. I didn’t even care if the pilot was a mad alien who made me puke. I just wanted to get back to my bunk and crash.
Adjunct Leeson trotted forward flagging down the first transport he saw. He waved and the craft drifted closer. Suddenly, just as the skids touched down in the stained street, it reversed itself and lifted off again.
I could hear Leeson’s curses even without squad chat turned on.
“Did you see that?” he demanded. “What the hell kind of a civilization are these aliens running here? They must know we have money. We can pay, but they don’t want to pick us up.”
“Maybe they know trouble when they see it, sir,” I suggested.
Leeson marched back along the line toward me. I guessed right then that everyone who’d ever told me I had a big mouth had had a good point.
Leeson’s eyes were more than a little tired and crazy when he got to me. “What do you suggest, McGill?” he asked dangerously.
I unlimbered my sack of coins, reached inside and pulled one out. It gleamed and flashed in the rain, reflecting the city lights.
“I’ll go up to the taxi station at the end of the block. I’ll wave this around until one of these greedy bastards takes the bait. He’ll have to take the rest of us to get it, but by that time, I’ll be aboard his skimmer.”
Leeson’s face changed. His rage subsided, and he nodded. He reached out and snatched the coin from me.
“Good plan,” he said. “But I’ll do it. You look like some kind of armored ape and I don’t want to spook them.”
We huddled up while we watched Leeson march to the taxi station. He mounted the steps, which clanged as if they were made of black iron. He reached the top, which was unmanned, and lifted his coin into the air.
The effect was immediate—but unexpected. Someone did notice but not the right someone.
An air car packed with a half-dozen Tau swooped and a nose-mounted beamer flashed blue-white.
Leeson didn’t even know what hit him. He was burned down to his boots. The golden thousand-credit coin rolled back down those black metal steps, clinking and clattering.
-14-
“Ambush!” roared Harris. “Take cover!”
Troops separated and crouched behind anything they could find. I straightened my back and unlimbered my weapon.
The air car did a loop and came cruising back toward us picking up speed.
What can I say? It was luck, really. I fired first because I had to. The lucky part was that I had my beam cranked down into a narrow field, and I managed to hit them with my first shot.
The air car lost its stabilizers on the left side and it was thrown into a spin. I found myself sprinting and diving for cover.
It splashed down with a cascading sheet of white fire onto the street. We lost a man there, and I felt bad about that, but the rest of the platoon clapped me on the back and even Sargon came to me shaking his head.
“That was class-A shooting, kid,” he said.
“You should try dying more often,” I told him. “I find it sharpens my reflexes.”
Sargon laughed and moved off. Generally, in small unit actions it was standard procedure to separate specialists so they didn’t all get wiped out at once. Natasha broke that rule by hurrying over to me.
“Are you okay, James?”
“I’m feeling better than those guys,” I said, gesturing to the burnt Tau corpses lying in the wreckage of the air car.
Harris called us together and ordered us to retreat from the open street. We moved into a long, low structure that appeared to be abandoned—or maybe it was just under construction. It was hard to tell the difference on Tech World.
Natasha followed along talking fast. “I was worried about that possibility.”
“What possibility?”
“They were waiting for us,” she said. “Didn’t you see that? They knew we had to come this way, and they knew the financial district was a no-fly zone. So, they waited here in the tourist section until we showed up. I bet every skimmer driver on the street has been paid to tip off whoever is hunting for us.”
“Who are ‘they,’ exactly?”
She looked at me as if I was being dense. I get that often, but I think it’s because if I don’t get something I confess ignorance right up front. A lot of people prefer to pretend they know what’s going on even when they don’t. As a general rule, I only fake competence when I’m flirting with women.
“I’m talking about those gangsters—whoever they were—the people who tried to hijack this cash at the bank.”
“Hmm, maybe,” I said.
“Who else would have been ready to swoop down on us that way?”
“Just about any thief on the station. If you haven’t noticed, they’re a little obsessed with shiny coins.”
“We should just dump this cash,” she said with sudden feeling.
“Why?”
“Why get ourselves killed? We did our job. We aren’t getting paid anything extra for dying over some crook’s treasure.”
“You have a point there, but the platoon took payment. We’ve got a rep to establish on this world. If these people think they can chase us off over this—how do you think the rest of our year-long tour is going to go?”
Natasha chewed over that thought. “You’re saying we have to show how tough we are and return the coins to their owners even if they’re crooks themselves?”
“At the very least we should return to headquarters and show we weren’t beaten.”<
br />
“About that, why haven’t we been picked up? Someone must have been dispatched by now.”
“Haven’t heard about that yet, huh?” I asked then filled her in concerning Harris’ hints.
“You mean Leeson never called us in? That’s unbelievable. I’m patching into command right now.”
Natasha was our platoon tech, and I knew she could do it. I put a gauntlet on her arm.
“Let’s talk to the commander first,” I said.
“Leeson’s dead.”
I gestured with my chin toward Harris. He was trotting along the line looking over his shoulder at the sky every few seconds.
“Vet?” I called. “You got a second?”
Harris turned to shout back something rude, but then he saw the two of us together. He frowned and trotted to our location.
“This better be short and good. We’re in a combat situation, and God knows who else is looking for us.”
“Vet,” I said, “Natasha is patching into command. She’s going to call for support.”
Harris hesitated. His eyes widened, and he opened his mouth uncertainly. Finally, he nodded.
“Fine. Leeson’s paste anyway. It’s his own damn fault if they bust him on this deal. Call in the cavalry, Specialist.”
Natasha worked her magic. She was on the line with Graves in ten seconds flat—and he was pissed.
“I’ve been waiting for this contact for hours,” he said into every headset in the platoon. Put Leeson on the line, Tech.”
“Sorry sir, he’s gone.”
Graves was silent for a second. I saw Natasha dialing down the number of people in the channel. It went from everyone to just the noncoms and officers—only, we didn’t have any officers left.
“He’s gone? Oh yes, I see that now on the system—he’s queued up for a revive. I think I’ll postpone that until morning. He can sit in limbo for the time being.”
A chill ran through me. Could he really do that? Just leave a man dead overnight because he felt like it? That seemed like an odd, godlike power to me, but then, the process of reviving the dead into new bodies was freaky under the best of circumstances.
“So,” Graves said. “I show Claver as in command. Why isn’t he on this channel?”
“Uh,” Natasha said. “He’s not available, either.”
“Who is in charge of the platoon?”
“Veteran Harris, sir.”
Graves sighed. “Harris, stop hiding. Talk to me. What the hell happened to your officers?”
With a look of obvious pain on his face, Harris began his report. “Claver took off on us, sir. He took the skimmer we left headquarters with and bugged out when things went wrong at the bank.”
“The bank? What bank?”
“Uh, are you aware of the mission parameters we’ve been working under, sir?” Harris asked.
“Apparently, I’m aware of frigging nothing. It’s midnight, and you guys are out there cluster-humping in the streets. That’s what I know.”
Harris showed his teeth and squinted his eyes in anguish. I knew there was nothing he hated more than being left holding someone else’s shit-bag of mistakes. Nothing, that is, except for dying.
Natasha tapped on my shoulder and I turned away from the drama as Harris tried to explain how our day had gone thus far. Graves peppered the report with curses and threats.
“What’s up?” I asked Natasha.
She pointed, and I followed her finger.
I saw a mass of people. They were Tau, what looked like an army of them.
“Behind us, too,” Natasha said, pointing the other way.
I looked, and she was right. They were gathering on the streets in every direction. They all wore the same maroon-colored holographic suits. These weren’t expensive projectors, however. The illusory suits flickered with dark, deep vibrancy. The effect was a ghostly one. It appeared as if they wore shimmering wraps that were the color of dusk.
They shuffled forward, readying weapons. They were closing in.
Shouldering my belcher, I slammed my gauntlet on top of Harris’ helmet. I knew he liked that.
“What the frig, McGill…?”
Then his eyes crawled over the scene, and all around us troopers hunkered down and unlimbered their weapons.
“Ah, dammit,” Harris said. “Tell me those are civvies, someone?”
“I think they are, Vet,” I said. “But they’re armed and well-paid if I had to guess. Or maybe they’re driven by greed.”
This time, we opened up first. As soon as we saw them expose the short-barreled automatic weapons they had under their shimmering non-clothing, we didn’t wait any longer.
Someone must have told these fellows we were packing a fortune—which was true. Probably they’d been told we were leaderless and lost—which was partly true.
But the one thing we weren’t was weak. We had firepower and training this mob of thugs could only dream of. We slathered them with beams and bullets until the front line fell, shattered.
I have to admit, I fully expected them to turn tail and run screaming at that point. I even let my weapon dip—but when the smoke cleared, there were even more of them than before. Any mob on Earth would have broken. But these people weren’t human.
I could only surmise that greed was such a powerful motivator among the Tau that they could be driven to reckless behavior by it. Apparently the emotion was akin to hate, or even love, for these beings.
Instead of fleeing, they charged in a convulsive mass. The front line showered us with explosive pellets. A few on my team had been surprised enough to forget to slam down their visors. Pellets popped into two troopers’ faces and provided them with an instant, gory death.
Cranking my weapon aperture as widely as it would go, I set it for a broad cone dispersion pattern. My next blast hosed down a hundred of them, giving their unshielded skin about a thousand degrees C of energy. I didn’t feel good about doing it, but I hadn’t started this fight.
After that, they rushed in too close. I couldn’t get off another effective blast. I had to drop my cannon, set my legs, and extend my force-blades. All around me, troops were doing the same.
We fought in close-quarters. It was a vicious struggle with ghostly people that quivered and wore colored lights for clothing. They flickered as we fought them. Only when they died and the power to their illusionary circuits was cut could we see the reality of their bodies underneath. Pink, covered in ropy veins, they shivered and died at our feet.
They formed a howling wall around us for maybe two minutes. That was all it took. After that, sanity returned. The fight was over, and about half of us were still standing—I guess that meant we’d won.
Sargon had gone down. Natasha was hurt but able to stand while hobbling on one stiff leg. Veteran Harris was on his back but still breathing. Carlos had made it too, and for once, he didn’t have anything funny to say.
“That was unbelievable,” he said, staring at the bodies. “Can they really want Galactic credits that badly? So weird.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe something else was driving them. The bank guards weren’t this crazy. Why these folk? Why now?”
Carlos shook his head and went to help the survivors get on their feet and gather up the fallen equipment and coins.
“Can you get up, Vet?” I asked Harris, moving to where he lay on his back like a beached turtle.
His face was sweating and his visor was open. His breath came out in puffs.
“Does it look like I’m getting up?” he demanded in a wheezing voice.
I peered into his face and checked his vitals. As far as I could tell, his spinal cord had been severed somewhere down the line. The back plate of his armor had taken a lot of rounds, and it looked like someone had beaten on it with a jackhammer.
Harris looked at me and laughed suddenly. He sounded half-mad. His tongue showed pink and his teeth were outlined in red.
When he was done laughing, he didn’t close his mouth again. Hi
s eyes just stared at me, and his lips froze wide, still in the midst of a belly laugh.
He was as dead as a dead man could be.
Natasha put a hand on my shoulder. Her face was dirty, and she looked bloody and stressed.
“You’re in command now, McGill. You’re the senior noncom.”
“Crap,” I muttered.
-15-
I’ve fought and died on several planets in my lifetime, but Tech World had to be the strangest. About ten minutes after the battle was over, the death-officials arrived. As before, they didn’t ask questions or fill out reports. They made no effort to figure out what had happened or who was at fault. All they wanted to know was who had died and whether or not they could make a buck off of the corpse.
Apparently, the reaper had brought in a pretty poor crop this time. Unlike the relative excitement these ghouls had exhibited when our original clients had died on the steps to the bank, this time they were disgusted. They kicked at the bodies and shoveled them wholesale onto a skimmer. There would be no expensive revival processes tonight.
I approached the nearest of them, and he watched me warily.
“Speak English?” I demanded.
“Little bit,” he said. “No deals.”
Snorting, I reached out and showed him what I had in my hand. It was a golden coin. An Imperial coin that apparently everyone on Gelt Station knew was priceless.
He snatched for it, but I was quicker. I closed my gauntlet over the coin and pointed to the skimmer they were loading with bodies.
“Give us a ride on that thing. You get this coin now and one more when we get home.”
“Two?” he asked, as if he couldn’t believe his ears.
“Two,” I said firmly. “Deal?”
His eyes darted over to the corpses. I knew he was calculating the profit he could make here, weighing it against what I was offering. I had to wonder what value a pile of still-warm corpses would bring on this station and to what purpose they might be applied. When credit-values were compared, however, there wasn’t any contest.