by Steve Perry
She glanced back. Where the hell was Wink? He was supposed to be right behind them.
“Ease up,” she said. “Wink? Where the fuck are you?”
~ * ~
Gunny and Singh were doing okay up there clearing the forest, and Wink didn’t have much to do. He heard her com.
“Two hundred meters back, Gunny. Be there in a few seconds. Don’t go slow on my account, I’m just enjoying the scenery here—hello?”
Then he came across a stray picket of his own ...
He had the advantage when he saw the Pahali soldier.
Wink knew who his friends were; the soldier, if his transponder was working, probably thought that Wink was one of his own. Since Gunny and Singh had been shooting up ahead, maybe the transponder trick wasn’t working, but this guy wasn’t pointing his gun at Wink.
Against the rules of war, to fake a sig that way, but this wasn’t CFI’s war, was it? The rules didn’t apply to them— both sides would shoot them if they had a chance.
All he had to do was raise a hand and wave at the soldier in greeting. The man would automatically return the wave, and at twenty-five meters, it would be an easy shot.
That was the smartest thing to do. Also the safest.
Save for his running activity, his heart rate was relatively slow and steady, there was no bubble of adrenaline popping in him. He wasn’t afraid, and given the situation, he should be at least a little bit nervous.
Again, the perils of an adrenaline junkie’s habituation. You needed a little more to spark it if you went to the edge a lot, and this one soldier thinking he was a buddy wasn’t gonna spike anything.
So Wink yelled: “Hey, Pahali! Welcome to Balaji!”
The soldier started as he realized what Wink had said. The transponder was wrong! This was an enemy!
Time seemed to slow down:
The Pahali began to raise his weapon ...
Wink waited. Not yet...
The carbine’s muzzle came up, oh, so slow ...
No... Not yet... not yet...
Now!
Wink snapped his own carbine up and point shot.
The Pahali soldier’s carbine went off maybe a quarter second later, and the round blew past Wink’s left ear close enough for him to hear the whine and feel the wind of its passage—
Wink’s shot was better. The round blew through the Pahali’s armor and the man collapsed.
Wink’s heartbeat went up a hair. He felt a little surge of excitement, but...
Not enough
“What the fuck are you doin’?” Gunny said, coming up behind him. “Why didn’t you just shoot the sucker?”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
“Doc, you are gonna get killed, and it will be a shame because then we’d have to break in an FNG, and that will be a pain in the ass. You need to think of us.”
“Says the woman who practices her fast draw against an already-drawn gun?”
She shook her head. “Different. Let’s go. The hopper is most of a klick that way—”
Then they heard Kay toggle her com and say: “Why are you here? Has the Rajah sent you?”
“What the fuck?” Gunny said. “Sent who?”
“Go see,” he said. “I’ll collect Gramps, be there right behind you.”
~ * ~
Kay said, “Why are you here? Has the Rajah sent you?” Ganesh grinned. “No. I am here on my own.”
Kay said nothing, but she understood immediately then why he had come.
“You will not take me by surprise this time, karāhiyat animal!”
They seemed fond of that word here: abomination.
He held his knife in front of him, point facing her. Kay kept her silence as she circled slowly to her left.
The others had heard her com. They would be coming...
Gunny arrived and pointed her carbine at Ganesh. “Put the knife away,” she said.
“This matter does not concern you!”
“On this, we agree,” Kay said. She didn’t look away from Ganesh. “Mine.”
Gunny raised the muzzle of her weapon to point skyward. “Ah was just tryin’ to do you a favor, Ganesh. It’s your ass. But hurry, Kay, the clock is running, we need to get gone. Got too many soldiers roamin’ around.”
Wink came into the clearing, followed by Gramps. They looked at Gunny. She waved them off. “Kay’s got it.” Then she subvocalized into her com: “Jo? You want to see Kay dance with Ganesh? Better move.”
“Thirty seconds,” Jo said.
“Probably won’t last that long.”
Kay continued to circle. She had yet to extend her claws.
She noticed that something about Ganesh’s motions seemed off. He wasn’t fast, but it seemed as if he was holding back. She sniffed the air. He was downwind, but she caught a faint trace.
Ah.
Gunny also got it. “Kay, Ah b’lieve our true-believer boy Ganesh here has had some alterations done on himself.”
“Yes, he has. I can smell them—even over his fear.”
“Reckon that makes him calling anybody ‘an abomination’ kinda suspect, doesn’t it?”
Ganesh edged a little to his left, seemed a little more nervous. So much for his element of surprise.
Enhanced speed, Kay guessed.
Jo arrived. “Did I miss anything? I—wait. Kay, he’s augmented.”
“She knows,” Gramps said.
“No matter,” Kay said. She opened her hands. Her claws snapped out inaudibly.
“Gets me every time I see that,” Wink said.
Ganesh looked increasingly fretful.
“You can still walk away, Ganesh,” Jo said.
“I cannot. This creature insults me.”
“How? You jumped her. She kicked your ass. Ah make that your fault.”
“She insults me by her existence!”
Gunny looked at Jo. “Can’t say we didn’t try—”
~ * ~
Ganesh jumped, and he was a lot faster than he had been in the recording Gunny had seen of that first encounter. He led with the blade, but Kay was already moving as soon as he stepped, and she wasn’t getting out of the way—she was charging at him.
He had fifty to sixty kilos on her and his reach with the knife was a lot longer than Kay’s, but of a movement, she dropped lower, blocked with her left hand, and was inside Ganesh’s arm, right in his face—
He tried to pull the knife back and twist away, but she raked her left claws across his knife arm and opened it from elbow to wrist; at the same time, she jammed her right claws into his throat and tore out his voice box. Then she climbed him, got her feet onto his chest, and shoved away, pushing him backward as she arced up and back, turning a high back dive into a tucked somersault, landing lightly on her toes as Ganesh collapsed onto his side like a felled tree.
Maybe three seconds, attack to ending, tops.
Kay dropped the gory part of his neck’s anatomy she held as Ganesh gurgled, spasmed, went completely slack.
Gramps shook his head. “Another fucking show-off. You and Gunny could take your act out on the road.”
Kay whickered.
“That was no fun at all,” Wink said. “Rip-claw-thank-you-sah. I’d paid for this show, I’d want my money back—”
Jo said, “We need to go—”
Tracers blew through the clearing, and the suppressed rifles firing them became audible at the same time, cough-cough-cough-cough—
“Fuck!” Gunny yelled. She spun around.
Wink saw blood blossom from a wound on Gunny’s un-armored upper right arm—
As he watched, her carbine retracted. She crouched, pulled a pistol with her good hand, pointed it into the woods, and started shooting—
Jo and Gramps were already hosing the forest with their carbines on full auto, spraying fifteen rounds a second waist level at the unseen shooters. Wink heard screams from the forest as he ran for Gunny, a smart dressing already in hand. He got there, peeled the trigger-stik cover of
f, and pressed it against Gunny’s wound. The battle dressing hummed as the rudimentary computer’s sensor locked the bandage down, came online, and flashed its diagnosis. He looked at the dataflux.
The shooting stopped.
The bandage whirred: fragmented round, got the arm, shoulder, broke the collarbone on that side. No big arteries hit. Could be worse—
The dressing assessed Gunny’s augmentation status and added what it thought was enough painkiller to make up any difference. It also pumped coagulants and steroids and PH balancers into the wound, along with antibiotics and adrenaline.
Enough damage so that she wasn’t going to be using that arm for a while—
Either the dressing gave her too much chem, or shock set in. Gunny fell.
Wink managed to catch her and lower her to the ground.
Gramps said, “Jo, you got it?”
“I got it,” Jo said.
Kay had vanished into the woods, and there came another scream as she found somebody too slow to get out of her way.
Gramps spun and dropped to his knees. “Megan!” He put one hand under her head.
Wink touched the control panel on the rudcomp and the dressing gave Gunny a squirt of revivant. Her eyes fluttered open. She looked up and saw Gramps bent over her, his expression was full of worry.
“Megan?”
“Crap. Ah died and went to hell, didn’t Ah? Got to be if you’re here, Roy.”
“You’re not dead yet, Chocolatte. You don’t get to do that if I can help it.”
They looked at each other and had a moment...
Wink hated to break into it, but that was his job. “We need to get to the transport, people, and apply more than a smart Band-Aid to Gunny’s injuries.”
Jo used her com: “Colonel?”
“We’re on board,” he said. “You need to stop dicking around out there and join us.”
“On the way.”
“Will Ah be able to play the piano, Doc?”
“Not if you couldn’t play it before.”
“Heard that one already, huh?”
“No more than eighty or a hundred times. Help me get her up.”
They got Gunny to her feet.
“Can you walk?”
“Nobody shot me in the leg, did they? Can’t tell, all the dope.”
“Legs are fine. Let’s go.”
Gunny looked at Ganesh. “What about him?”
“He’s dead-thirty, and who gives an aardvark’s ass?” Wink said.
Wink was not the kind of doctor who would shoot somebody and then hurry to fix him, especially if he had just hurt one of Wink’s own. He was the kind of doctor who would shoot somebody and spit on him as he lay dying if he’d done that. Maybe kick him, too. Not a great bedside manner, but what you wanted in a fellow soldier.
“Ah do believe Ah might could go lie down for a bit. Ah’m a little tired. Long day and all.”
“I’ll put a mint on your pillow, Chocolatte.”
They moved out.
There was a thought rattling around in Jo’s head, she couldn’t quite pin it down, something about Ganesh ...
Wait. There it was:
How had he found them?
~ * ~
THIRTY-SIX
“Hey, there,” the colonel said. “You need a ride? We’re going as far as Ramal, over in New Mumbai.”
Jo grinned. “Well, it’s pretty nice out. We could walk.”
“Make up your minds,” he said. “I don’t have all night to chat with hitchhikers.”
“Get in the hopper, Jo,” Gunny said. “Ah ain’t walkin’ five thousand klicks with Gramps here feeling up my titty.”
Gramps said, “I’m just trying to keep you from falling down. Besides, there’s not much to hold on to.”
Kay whickered.
They loaded in. Nancy hit the risers, and they lifted.
Nancy said. “Folks, the seat-belt sign is lit. No smoking, and if you need to pee, hold it. We are a bullet, and we ain’t slowing down until we get home.”
~ * ~
THIRTY-SEVEN
“More tea, Colonel?”
“No, I’m good.”
The Rajah smiled behind his thin beard, and once again, Cutter was taken with the notion of how complicated human beings could be. Kay had it right: Look up “devious,” and there would be a picture of some sneaky-looking Homo sapiens next to it. Maybe one in a red turban.
Cutter shook his head.
“There seems to be something more on your mind,” the Rajah said.
“Just thinking about how things turned out.”
The Rajah leaned back. His form-chair shifted smoothly and silently as it adjusted to his new position. “My daughter is safe. Nothing else matters. Is the bonus payment sufficient?”
“More than generous, sir.”
“But... ?”
Cutter looked him in the eyes. “But I hate to be lied to and used, even if I’m well compensated for it.”
The Rajah could have raised an eyebrow in pretend wonder. Why, Colonel, whatever are you talking about? But he only smiled a bit wider.
There was no question but that he knew exactly what they were talking about.
“You surprise me,” he said. “I did not expect you to see past Rama.”
“I’m not sure I would have, except that I have an XO who is a walking stress analyzer. She said Rama was telling the truth when he said he didn’t take Indira. Although by the time I knew that, it was too late for Rama. He would have killed me.”
“Ah. I keep forgetting about these unnatural things you people enjoy inserting into yourselves. We seldom indulge in such here.
“This does not automatically point at me, that Rama was not the one.”
“Well. If he was telling the truth and he didn’t do it, who did that leave? Who had the power to manipulate the situation? It would have to be somebody with major clout. The suspect list got very short when we started considering all those rich people who were involved. Who could get them to do what they did? Had to be somebody with power since they don’t need the money.
“Rama had such, but if he didn’t? Who else could it be? Who knew all the buttons to push? More importantly, who had inside access to all we were up to?”
The Rajah smiled and inclined his head.
“Your daughter—who I assume was never in any real danger—is back home. Was she part of it? Or did you use her as a pawn, too?”
There was a slight pause. “My daughter is an uncorrupted soul and a pearl of great value. She believes that Rama betrayed her. Eventually, he would have—it was his nature. She liked him, perhaps even loved him, despite the political aspect of their engagement, but he would have disappointed her. Only a matter of time.
“Women are attracted to men with a certain streak of cruelty. This is because women have that in them, too. You know the old saying, ‘If you are captured in battle, don’t let them give you to the women.’”
Cutter nodded. “And Rama, her cruel, ambitious, headstrong suitor, is dead, leaving his father, a weak rajah, running Pahal. A likable man, but one without strength, as you pointed out.
“How long before you install a puppet in his place?”
The Rajah shrugged. “Who can know the minds of the gods? Why do they take this one and leave that one? They are ever capricious. A healthy man falls over with a bad heart a week after his doctor told him he was fine? It happens all the time.”
“So you have Mumbai, and soon, you will run Pahal. The thakoredom of Balaji is now more pliable as a result of your generous peace accord, and Rama is out of the way. There are better trade agreements favoring you, a less restrictive border, more access to their markets. And the Thakore might have an accident, too.
“Can Depal and Hem be far behind?”