Murphy's Lawless: A Terran Republic Novel

by Charles E. Gannon

  “I was looking at the history files,” Chalmers said carefully. They’d been cooling their heels since the SEAL’s mission had launched, attending a seemingly endless string of mandatory briefings and planning sessions. Despite all the meetings, Murphy was being cagey about when, exactly, their deployment would happen. Tonight had been their first time off in a while, and Chalmers had decided to turn over a new leaf and started researching their space-dwelling allies. What he’d found hadn’t satisfied him, not at all. He’d looked for more juicy material, something equivalent to a gossip rag or tell-all book, but the SpinDogs either didn’t have such things or were keeping the Lost Soldiers locked out of the public information stream.

  “Not much there,” Jackson said. “Makes you think they got shit to hide.”

  Chalmers nodded at the computer screen. “Maybe we can hack it, you know, like War Games? You get much time on computers as a kid?” he asked, hoping against hope the younger version of his partner would have acquired some hidden skill at computers he didn’t know about.

  “‘Course, man!” Jackson chuckled. “Growing up on the South Side in the early eighties got us kids all sorts of time on them mainframes. In fact, I was gonna go straight to work for IBM right up until I signed my first contract with the Bulls.”

  Chalmers was laughing well before Jackson finished his sarcastic rant. He held his hands up in surrender. “All right, all right! I’m an asshole.”

  “No, you just showing your vanilla,” Jackson said, smiling.

  “All right, I deserved that…” He gestured at the terminal as well. “But you’ve been reading up, right?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “The files they gave us; they’re pretty scant on who hates who.”

  Jackson shrugged narrow shoulders. “Well, kinda understandable.”

  Chalmers looked a question at him.

  “They’re making a mistake like the one mistake you just made. Only on a lot bigger scale.”

  “Not sure I follow,” Chalmers said.

  “The SpinDogs all seem to think their way is the way, so why bother learning what others think or do?”

  Chalmers shook his head slightly. “Yeah, but these guys are supposed to be all, ‘survival of the fittest’ and warrior culture. Seems like holding back basic information would create issues of survival for anyone who was that blind, and those acting on that blindness.”

  “Crackers gonna be crackers.” Jackson delivered the words with a southern drawl that he seemed to think should underline his meaning.

  Underlining or no, Chalmers missed what he meant. “What?” he asked.

  “Look at their history—at least what we’ve been told of it. They were bound to think of themselves as the best and brightest thing going, and their arrogant asses won’t let them admit that losing their own civil war—or whatever—was their own damn fault. So, they get kicked out of the house and come here, finding all these backward people, a lot of who’ve descended into some kind of worse-than-Thunderdome shit. They all set to claim themselves the new masters, but then the Kulsians appear, who haven’t descended quite so far, and they got big guns, too, and better numbers. But our friends were lucky enough to be in space, so they hide out, bide their time, all the while thinking their truth is the only truth that matters. When really, what’s goin’ on is one cracker sees the other cracker got a bigger whip and knows, deep in his bones, that he wants to hold that whip, but can’t.”

  “You lost me again, Jackson,” Chalmers said.

  Jackson sighed, thought about it a moment, then said, “These SpinDogs have had nothing smack them in the face to tell them how wrong their outlook is.”

  “But they were kicked off their home world or whatever.”

  Jackson nodded emphatically. “Sure were. But to their minds, they got beat by people who were better than they were at being the ideal of their culture. They come here, see the people that lost some of the motherland’s stink, all descended into barbarism, and the folks that didn’t sink as low still in charge, still adhering to the Old Ways. Nothing has ever told these crackers their system is whacked. They don’t even think to question that. The only lesson they’ve learned is the wrong one: that they weren’t good enough at working that system, which only served to confirm, in their eyes, the values of the very same system, man.”

  Chalmers blinked. He’d always known Jackson was smarter than he, but he’d rarely been shown just how much smarter. If the man had been given a better education, Chalmers had no doubt Jackson would have been some kind of staff officer or civilian bigwig.

  Guilt followed the thought. Guilt that, had Jackson not fallen in with the wrong crowd, so many things might have been different. Especially since, in this case, the wrong crowd was one Horace Chalmers, Warrant Officer, US Army.

  “Yeah,” Jackson mused, staring at the bulkhead, “Murphy seems to think things are going to be fine once we put our hosts in charge of the planet. Maybe it’s just my blood talking, but I’m thinking we just putting our crackers in charge, nothing more.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  Another pensive shrug. “Not really. I figure the government in D.C. used to do the same shit all the time, right? So long as we know what our crackers want, we can be looking out, I guess…No, thing I worry about is this: do we really know our crackers, or are they gonna be stabbing each other—and us—in the back to get the best bits of the pig?”

  Chalmers leaned back, suddenly wishing they hadn’t had this conversation in what was probably their bugged bay. Not that there were any sureties of privacy elsewhere, but if Jackson was right, Chalmers was certain all of the competing interests would act to make sure their agenda was served. And that could interfere with the mission. Almost certainly would, in fact.

  He didn’t think he was being paranoid, but just because you couldn’t see threats didn’t mean they weren’t there. That’s why he’d been diligently searching through the records they’d been given. Wanting to name his fear made Chalmers a far better student than he’d been before.

  Come to think of it, the emphasis all the non-Terran humans—SpinDogs, Hardliners, R’Baku, and Kulsians alike—placed on clan loyalty was a lot like Mogadishu, what with its powerful warlords and would-be kings.

  No, this could end up being the Mog all over again, no matter who they wound up backing in the end.

  * * *

  Spin One, Seven Days Later

  “Man, this mission just keeps getting better and better,” Jackson said, replacing the headset on the terminal.

  “What’s that?” Chalmers asked, mopping a sweaty brow with one end of his towel. The .75-gee maintained in the quarters of most SpinDog habs wasn’t enough to maintain real muscle tone, not on its own, so the afternoon workout he had just returned from had quickly become a habit. His body had likely been in the best shape it had been since AIT on his awakening, and it was easier to start from that high level of fitness than it had been at any time since his youth. He needed something to be easier, too. This changing his life for the better the second time around wasn’t exactly easy, so he figured making a habit of healthy practices was better than trying to play catch up later.

  “You see the latest mission brief?” Jackson asked, leaning back in his chair to avoid getting sweat dripped on him. The Coriolis effect made it hard to predict just where shit was gonna hit.

  “No. What happened?” Chalmers asked, his gut suddenly churning.

  “Murphy said we’re no longer going to be tasked with locating black-market dealers and their suppliers, but uncovering spies in the local populace.”

  Nodding, Chalmers finished wiping down and, wadding the towel in one fist, chucked it into the reclaimer built into the wall of their quarters.

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  Chalmers shrugged and skinned off his sweat-soaked shirt. “Nope. Murphy doesn’t know any better than us what we’re gonna see on the ground until…well, until we’re boots on the ground. I figure we could en
d up doing anything from carrying beans and bullets for the shooters to driving one of those goofy armored vehicles the local warlords tool around in. There’s just no way of knowing until we are down and doing it. Murphy’s Law screws with even the simplest plans, and this one has way too many ifs for comfortable planning.”

  “How are you so chill, man? No offense, but your ass wasn’t exactly known for coolness…”

  Chalmers smiled. “I figure I got a second chance at doing this right. Being…better, I guess? Life being life, that don’t mean the chance doesn’t have a heavy price tag attached, but I’d rather get it right, you know? For me.”

  Jackson smiled. “You got all wise and shit, Chalmers.”

  “I’m trying, Jacks. I’m trying.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  R’Bak

  And I’m still trying, Chalmers thought, trying to bring his focus out of the past and back on to the mission. But the heat when the sun—no, check that—when the suns came up was pretty awful. Only two hours on R’Bak and the problem was not that it was too alien, but too damned familiar. It was hot like the Mog, dry like the Mog, and even had terrain like the Mog. Shit, maybe this was just some long, booze-born hallucination, and he was still in the Mog.

  But no, the locals who rose out of the gray and red rocks in front of them were not properly cast if this scene was set in Somalia. Wild diversity of genotype, better fed, crap weapons, and sparing of both motion and sound.

  Chalmers grunted and slowed the buggy to a crawl as sentries waved to him from a guard post located just below the crest of the pass. They’d been under observation for at least the last ten kilometers, from well-concealed watch posts they only knew of because of the images the SpinDogs had given Murphy and by roving patrols they had caught glimpses of once or twice in the hours it had taken them to come this far.

  A large man, with dreadlocks, a broad, scarred face, and wearing the loose, flowing tunic and pants that seemed something of a uniform for the indigs, came out of a rampart-like arrangement of felled timber, earth, and stone. He barked something that Chalmers lost the meaning of somewhere between the thick accent and missing teeth. Again, just like the Mog.

  Chalmers put the buggy in neutral and braked to a stop but kept the motor running.

  Jackson smiled and called back in the same language, “We’re here to see the chief.”

  The man smiled, showing dark spaces where his front teeth should be. “The Kedlakis-Ur waits for you with son and daughter at tent something the something.”

  “Can get this in?” Jackson asked, gesturing at the buggy.

  The guard nodded and said, “I send warrior with you to make sure you not something on something.”

  “Understood,” Jackson said. Chalmers really didn’t want to think how hard his life would be without a good partner. Jackson truly had the gift of tongues.

  “Mayal, you go with something. Guide past the something.”

  A skinny warrior—Chalmers did a quick double-take as he made out the fine features and beardless chin—woman came out of the defenses and eyed the buggy suspiciously.

  Jackson smiled and waved the woman to the back seat, which she promptly climbed into. Chalmers eyed her in the rear-view. The woman named Mayal held herself tightly and didn’t strap in until Jackson leaned back and showed her how to work the three-point restraint. She seemed a lot younger perched nervously in the unfamiliar seat, one of the long-barreled single-shot rifles favored by better-equipped nomads held muzzle-down between her knees. She smelled of nomad, too. A not entirely unpleasant tickling of the nose that fell somewhere between sweat and sage.

  Once she was situated, Chalmers put the buggy into gear and eased past the guard post. About a hundred yards on, the saddle at the top of the pass narrowed to the width of a football field.

  Mayal tapped his right shoulder and pointed to the right.

  Chalmers obeyed, and, after they covered about twenty yards on the new heading, she tapped his other shoulder, pointing to the left. He changed direction, but she tapped him again, directing a harder left.

  “Shit!” Jackson said, looking down.

  “What?” Chalmers asked, taking his foot off the gas.

  “Didn’t you listen to the guard boss?” Jackson spat.

  “I fucking listened, man,” Chalmers answered, mildly angry at lying. “I just couldn’t understand him past the lisp.”

  “Right,” Jackson said, shaking his head and gesturing at the ground to the right, “Pits, man. Covered pits. Big enough to swallow a rider…or us.”

  “Jesus.” Chalmers made sure to drive slowly for the next ten minutes as Mayal guided them through another series of changes of direction. When she relaxed in her seat, he relaxed. By then, though, they’d climbed to the top of the pass and turned up a defile that was only a few feet wider than the buggy.

  They drove out of the shadow of the defile into a larger box canyon, a narrow, side-hugging shelf that descended to the canyon floor, which held the tents of the encampment.

  Chalmers nervously kept the driver’s side wheel next to the wall of the canyon. The last thing he wanted was to go over the edge and down the two hundred yards or so to the floor. He whistled after a moment. What he’d first taken for a scattering of only twenty-odd tents resolved, after a more careful study, into nearly a hundred.

  “This is a freaking town, not a camp,” Jackson said, his eyes on a forge being worked under an awning of one of the larger pavilions, located hard by the spring that had presumably helped carve the network of draws and canyons that made up the territory Chalmers and Jackson had just come through.

  Their engine noise attracted the interest of a great number of the locals, who paused to watch them as Chalmers navigated the narrow track. Some started moving onto the trail head.

  “Major Murphy did say something about the tribal leadership summoning the clans after the beating Moorefield gave the J’Stull.”

  Jackson nodded, but the sergeant didn’t otherwise answer. Chalmers could see the sergeant’s fingers twitching as he kept counting tents.

  “Figure a family a tent, a hundred tents…” Chalmers mused. “What do you figure, one or two military age males per family?”

  “Stop throwing numbers at me. I’m trying to count.”

  Chalmers shut up.

  “Jesus,” Jackson said after another minute. “There’s ninety-six tents in view. Call it at least two hundred, two hundred and fifty, military age people,” Jackson said, hiking a thumb at the woman in the back seat.

  “I wonder how things ended up that way,” Chalmers said. “No religion’s saying it’s a no-no, maybe?”

  “Gotta think it’s more than that,” Jackson said, sounding thoughtful. “They inherited their way of living from the Ktor. And I think the decline in tech was faster and mentally easier to accept than the disintegration of social norms.”

  Chalmers chuckled.

  Jackson shot him a look. “What?”

  “You talk a good game, but I think you had more schooling than you let on,” Chalmers said, navigating the last turn of the trail before reaching the bottom of the canyon.

  “I had occasion to read a lot,” Jackson said, looking sidelong at his partner, “and a library card is free, yo!”

  Chalmers was prevented from talking shit when Mayal pointed at a nearby tent and said, “There.”

  A large number of indigs were already gathered around their destination, with more arriving every moment. The crush of bodies forced Chalmers to slow to a crawl. All ages were represented, though the people were generally thinner and just a little shorter than most 20th century Americans. Everyone was armed in one way or another, the richest having some form of rifle and smoothbore muskets for the slightly less affluent.

  “Lots of bandoliers filled with shells, almost enough to equip the extras on Blazing Saddles,” Chalmers said nervously. The crowd was parting for them, but slowly, and everyone was eyeballing them like they wanted t
o cut a flank steak from their bodies.

  “Not that many bandoliers in that flick. You’re thinking Three Amigos, man,” Jackson said, nerves making his voice high.

  “That the one with Chevy Chase?”

  “Yup.”

  “Dammit,” Chalmers said, shaking his head. “I always get them mixed up.”

  “Good way to keep ‘em separate is to count n-bombs. Not an n-bomb in Three Amigos, while Blazing Saddles has them all over the place. Then again, that’s ‘cause there’s not a single black person in Three Amigos, and Mel’s always interested in punching people in the face with their own racism and bigotry. Love that old bastard.”

  “Probably dead, now, though,” Chalmers said as he parked in front of their destination.

  “Why you gotta be a dick, Chalmers?” Jackson shook his head. “Mel will live forever, man! The 2000 Year Old Man is immortal!”

  “Sorry, Jacks. Guess I’m just not that nice a guy.” He shut the motor down.

  “At least you own it,” Jackson said as a tall woman stepped from the tent. The crowd quieted. Not that they’d been that loud to begin with. The newcomer looked about forty, which meant she was likely in her mid- to early thirties. A nomad’s life wasn’t easy, not even for the wealthy, not unless they were filthy rich, by which point they’d carefully chosen to remain nomads.

  “Who is the chief, again?” Chalmers asked.

  “Not sure Murphy had a name for us, but the guard said Kedlakis-Ur, right?”

  “Awesome.”

  “Just like the regular Army,” Jackson said, grinning.

  Shaking his head, Chalmers concealed his own smile until Jackson wasn’t looking. No use letting Jackson know in just how high a regard Chalmers held the small sergeant.

  * * * * *

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  R’Bak

  “Focus on the mission,” Chalmers told himself as the indigs of Kedlakis continued to gather. He tried not to shove too hard at the onlookers as he came around the buggy to stand next to the passenger side.