The man grumbled as he ogled the young woman, smiled, and then rubbed his hands together, thinking of the money he was being offered.
“I’m up for a fight.”
“I thought as much.”
Hughes looked highly offended, and Mason knew it was a conflict they may never settle.
“Now, both of you. I never signed up for the war and don’t have an awful care for either side. Sometimes, we’ll get work from either party, so you’re just gonna have to deal with that. Whatever conflict may have been between you, you need to let it be. You both take this deal, then you work for me and put all that crap aside?”
Hughes accepted, and the stranger spat on the ground and ignored it.
“Name’s Viktor, and I can’t say I care much for the war either. You pay me and give me a bed, I’ll shoot anyone you want me to.”
“Long as that stays to killing the right people, we got a deal,” replied Mason.
Viktor nodded and followed them back towards Kaper’s bar.
Chapter 8
Liu looked surprised to see Mason walk through the door with two new faces that were clearly fighters. Mitchell was still complaining as he knocked back the local root based soda.
“This is Liu and our pilot Mitchell.”
“Vincent Hughes,” he replied, and reached out and shook their hands.
Viktor stayed back and seemed to care little for instructions.
“That’s Viktor.”
“Both these guys signed up?”
“What, Liu, you doubted I’d come through?”
“No, Captain, I just wasn’t sure you’d find anybody crazy enough to sign on.”
“Maybe not in a pussy place like this,” muttered Viktor.
Kaper wanted to disagree, but he could see Viktor was not a man to cross.
“So what now?” asked Viktor. “We taking this fight to the man?”
“No, no need. He’ll come to us.”
“He turned, strode over to the bar, and pointed for a drink.”
“This is no time to be drinking,” insisted Hughes.
Viktor ignored him. The others looked to Mason to do something, but he knew he could not risk causing a rift among such a newly formed team.
“Can I have a word with you a moment, Captain?”
“Yeah, sure, Liu.”
They stepped outside beyond the hearing of the others.
“This is no good. We’re going into one of the most dangerous jobs of our lives and taking on newcomers we know nothing about.”
“Tell me we have a choice?”
“What?”
“You’re telling me what isn’t ideal. I’m asking you what can we do different?”
Liu didn’t have any answers.
“Can’t just call for backup on this one.”
“Maybe we can. Put out a bulletin and try and get some of our old contacts on board.”
“Old contacts? Near enough everyone who has ever worked with us is either dead or retired.”
“But it’s got to be worth a shot?”
“We can try, but in the meantime, we need to get down to the job. Come on, time isn’t exactly on our side.”
He led Liu back inside where the rest of them were awaiting his command, except for Viktor who had settled down with his drink.
“Here’s the deal. Volkov is gonna come for us with whatever he can muster. We are going to hold here in the town where we have cover and the support of the locals. When he comes, we’re gonna offer him peace, or give him the gun if he refuses.”
“That’s it? That’s the plan?” asked Erin.
“What else would you do?”
“Seems a bit basic. Hunker down and wait for him.”
“Sometimes the simple plans are the best ones. Mitchell, I want you back at the ship to help Wizard with his repairs.”
“I ain’t no mechanic.”
“No, but it’s either you or Liu goes, and you suck with a gun.”
Viktor chuckled to himself in the corner. Mitchell took offence, looking to Mason to do something.
“Hey, don’t look at me. Learn how to handle yourself, and I’ll stop ragging you for it. Now, when you get back to the ship, I want you to send Hella our way with all the extra ammo we have. We’ll need her here in the fight.”
“What about protecting the ship?” Liu asked.
“Fact is it can’t fly, and once we’ve taken all the weapons and ammo, there really ain’t much that can be robbed. We need to amass all our firepower here if we expect to have a hope in hell.”
“Your sympathy is overwhelming,” Mitchell murmured.
“Come on, man up. You got clipped. It happens.”
“And who’s fault was that? I should never have been in combat.”
“Well, maybe you wouldn’t have been if you didn’t get the ship shot up,” said Liu.
“You mean I shouldn’t have saved all your asses?”
Mason jumped in between them and stopped them from coming to blows.
“Hell of a crew you have here,” said Viktor.
Mason shook his head in disbelief.
“Look, we’ve got a big fight on our hands and the chance of a big payday. Let’s work together and get this done. Mitchell, take Mily back to the ship and get to work helping Wizard. The rest of you, it’s time we started planning this defence!”
Mitchell winced as he got to his feet and rushed out from the bar to do as ordered, cursing words as he did.
“Kaper, I need that map of the town!”
The barman jumped to their assistance and brought over a tabletop projector. He hit the on switch, and it displayed a metre square overhead map of the town.
“So, which direction are they going to be coming at us from?”
“Volkov’s mansion is to the east way past Avery’s place. He has the militia base nearby. That’s where he’ll come from.”
“Assuming he hits us head on.”
“We have to take an educated guess to some degree, Liu. We can’t account for all eventualities.”
They went silent, and he looked over to Viktor. He still sat alone with his drink.
“You want to get in on this?” Mason called to him.
Viktor shrugged his shoulders, got up, and dragged his chair over to join them.
“He’ll hit with a pincer movement from the north and south, with a minimal force from the east to draw our eye,” Viktor said.
“How’d you figure?” asked Hughes.
“Because he has help from within the Alliance forces, and that’s exactly what an Alliance officer would do when opposing a hostile town of militia.”
Mason could tell Viktor wasn’t any ordinary soldier, and he was curious to pursue the subject, but there was no time for it. Hughes seemed to be nodding in agreement.
“You think he’s right?”
“As much as I hate to say it,” he responded.
“Nothing from the west?”
“No, that would be over extending and cutting off their retreat.”
Mason was surprised to hear such military knowledge. Despite being a fighter his entire life, he was rarely involved in a stand up fight. Their team relied on surprise attacks and assaults that meant they could study their enemy’s positions before going in. Now they were almost on the other end of the scale.
“Okay, and we could expect to face up to two hundred armed fighters.”
Hughes recoiled in shock, but Viktor didn’t respond at all.
“So, ideas?”
“This how you do things around here, sit around and brain storm?” asked Hughes.
“Clearly you weren’t an officer,” replied Liu.
“What?”
“Someone has to plan an operation. Maybe you were used to just doing what you were told, but in this business, we are the officers, the generals, the grunts, and everything else.”
“So let’s try this again,” Mason sighed.
“Explosives,” Viktor answered.
“Go on.�
��
“This is a mining town. They must have tonnes of explosives lying around.”
“Yes, that’s a start,” Liu agreed.
“We’re in the middle of the town, do we want to blow the whole place to hell?”
“It’s a good idea, Hughes. We can set all kinds of charges that could even the odds,” replied Mason.
“And if we do blow a few shops apart?” asked Hughes.
“This isn’t a poor town. Get rid of Volkov, and we save them enough money to fund any manner of rebuilding within a month’s pay.”
Several hours went past as they debated the matter and had the locals gather all the supplies they could think of. Hella finally walked into the bar, grabbing the attention of both Hughes and Viktor.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Nice to see you too, Captain,” she replied.
“No, really, you could have been here hours ago,” added Liu.
“Felix needed patching up, and Andrews was having a hard time working alone.”
“So you do engine work?”
“I do all sorts, Captain.”
“Really?” Viktor grinned.
She turned to the hulking man with a despicable look.
“Who the hell is this?”
“Best man you’ll meet on this world,” he responded, to the sound of groans from the others.
She strolled up to Viktor who seemed enthralled with her. She rested a hand on his thigh that made him smile. He looked up into her eyes and just as he did, felt the tip of a knife on his throat and froze.
“You’re the new goon, great. More to fighting than size.”
“Not my experience,” he whispered back.
She pushed the blade in just a little more so that she broke the skin and blood trickled down his neck, but it didn’t get the response she wanted. He didn’t respond to the pain and only smiled. He quickly grabbed the blade of his knife in his hand, without regard for the edge and threw her back. She was launched across the bar and into a tumble but managed to nimbly roll back onto her feet.
Hella rushed at him with immense speed and knife in hand, but his pistol was drawn and pointing at her head before she’d closed the distance. She leapt into a roll to get under the barrel of the gun, jumping up to him with her knife on his groin, but stopped as she felt the barrel of the gun on her temple.
“Enough!” Mason shouted.
They both lowered their weapons, and Hella stepped back.
“One big happy family,” said Liu, shaking his head.
Mason could see Kaper. He had heard everything and was behind the bar, stunned. He could see the man wondered if they’d hired the wrong people and condemned the whole town. The Captain got to his feet, scowling at the team while be paced up to the bar owner and his daughter, who seemed even more in shock.
“Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry? Look at you. You’re a bunch of crazy people. You’re more likely to blow this town up and turn on each other than deal with Volkov!”
He looked back to the team. They were all looking at him for answers. In the past, the Boss had always dealt with such matters. It was his time to step up now as much as he didn’t like it. He turned around and responded to Kaper in a calm voice of a volume that could be heard by all.
“You’re a family here. Not just you and your daughter, but the rest of this town, right?”
He nodded in response.
“Okay, and despite the fact this town works together, it’s not always fun and games, is it? Tell me you never argue about anything?”
Kaper was thinking about it and couldn’t answer.
“You see! Our crew is just the same. We’re dysfunctional. What do you expect? We’re expected to risk our lives for a living on a regular basis. We get the job done. That’s what we’re paid for, nothing else. We aren’t paid for our manners, not for keeping our language clean.”
The barman was thinking it over carefully and looked at his daughter, remembering how Mason had saved her. Viktor broke the silence, burping as he sipped back on his beer. Mason could not help but smile.
“We aren’t perfect, nobody is. You might have wished for the proper authorities to do the work for you, but they don’t care. We’re here, and we’re willing to risk our lives for an amount of money that is sizeable, but not worth dying over. It took a lot for us to except this job, and we were within hours of leaving you to deal with this yourselves. Now we’re in, and we’re not perfect. We don’t have much in the way of gentlemanly conduct.”
Kaper reached down beneath the bar, and Mason’s instinct was to think he was reaching for a gun. He carefully pulled his pistol from its holster, holding it ready to respond, when Kaper’s hand came back up with a tankard of ale and presented it to him.
“I really pray you are everything we hope you are. And while you are working this job, feel free to drink here at no charge, but I won’t have such terrible language used within these walls in the presence of my daughter and the rest of our customers.”
* * *
“This isn’t working!” Mitchell hollered.
Lubrication fluid burst out over him. He spat it out and tried to keep it out of his eyes. He pulled himself across the floor and sat back against a sidewall, staring at Wizard who had given up too.
“The fit isn’t right here at all.”
“What, these assholes given us the wrong part?”
The two of them looked at the new coil they were trying to fit, and the old one that was in two parts and lying on the deck where Andrews had stripped it.
“This for the wrong engine?” asked Mitchell.
They both were quiet, trying to figure it out.
“You think Mason getting us into this job is a good idea?”
“I don’t know, Mitchell. You have been to town and seen it all. I’ve just been here. All I know is the price, and it’s dangerous.”
“Come on, man, you were at the briefing.”
“Yeah, and it just seemed like another job to me.”
“Another job? We’re talking about facing several hundred trained soldiers, and we have no ship to rely on to get us the hell out of dodge.”
“Like things usually go perfectly? Way I see it, we didn’t choose to be here, and we’re here till these repairs are complete. Rest of the crew may as well work and get us some money.”
Mitchell fell silent. A moment later Andrews had a moment of clarity as he stared at the coil they were trying to fit.
“It’s a different part.”
“I know. I’ve been telling you that for the last ten minutes!”
“No, it’s the right model for this ship, just newer than our blocks here. I bet they’re a new model. Can’t be a whole lot different.”
He got to his feet and staggered over to where the twisted parts of the old coil lay, picked up one of the fragments, and returned to Mitchell.
“Look, the basic component is the same. It’s just this reinforcement ridge that has been added. We cut that off, and the baby will slide right in.”
“You sure about this, man? I mean right now we can go back and maybe exchange it. We start fucking with it, and God knows.”
“Come on, when have I not known what I was talking about?”
“Maybe if you’d spotted this damage a little earlier, we wouldn’t be on this shithole planet at all.”
Andrews shook his head in disbelief.
“When we talked about this mission, you were all too happy to be working for that ten million credits.”
“Well it’s easier to like the job up until you get shot,” he replied.
“Fetch me the tools I need to get this job done, and maybe you can be in the air before you know it.”
“Mason has got us in for the long haul here. We might be airworthy tomorrow, but we ain’t going anywhere.”
“Don’t know about you, but I’d at least like to have the option.”
“Yeah, yeah, all right. I’ll get you the tools. Don’t break
anything now while I’m gone.”
Mitchell staggered to his feet. He had almost forgotten about the pain in his ear now for all the sweat dripping from him. Without any climate control, the ship was like a sauna.
“Goddamn you, Mason, sweating my ass off for this job.”
He passed through the engine bays towards the cargo hold where their power tools were held. The table in the middle of the room was still filled with cards and empty cups from their game. For a moment, he wished it could be all over, and they’d just be continuing that game.
“Some things just ain’t worth the money,” he said to himself.
He went to the racks of equipment and pulled out a cutter when he noticed a shadow cast over him. His heart almost stopped, and he turned to see three armed men stood on the ramp of the ship.
“Felix Mitchell, you are under arrest.”
He looked at them for just a moment, and then turned and ran as fast as he could. Two lasers smashed into the bulkhead, and the men pursued him. He reached the cockpit, slammed the blast door shut, and sealed it. The three men began hammering on the door, but he knew they didn’t stand a chance of getting through.
Mitchell collapsed down against the doorway. He didn’t even know what they wanted, but he knew it couldn’t be good.
“Mitchell, we have a warrant for your arrest! Open this door and come peacefully!”
He’d been in enough trouble in his life to know he didn’t want to go with any authority. He had spent time behind bars, and he couldn’t bear to do so again.
* * *
Mason grabbed his glass, lifted it in gratitude to the barman, and took a sip. He had a simple policy against drinking when on a job, but it would have been rude to refuse. As he did so, his comms unit crackled, and Mitchell’s voice sounded out.
“We’re under attack. We have fucking intruders aboard. I repeat…”
They heard laser blasts over the comms as it cut off. Mason’s face turned to stone as he realised their vulnerable ship had come under attack.
“This is Mason, what the hell is going on?”
The comms was silent until Mitchell finally replied in a calmer tone.
“Three guys got aboard. They’ve got guns, and they say they have a warrant for my arrest.”
Maniacs: 01 - The Krittika Conflict Page 12