Stars & Empire 2: 10 More Galactic Tales (Stars & Empire Box Set Collection)

by Jay Allan

  I settled in, because now the real waiting began. We couldn't do anything until the target arrived.

  We took turns at watch, two of us observing the base while the other two slept. The jumpsuits took care of our external bodily functions, flushing waste products into space. Retractable feed straws let us drink liquid meal replacements when we got hungry. Not the tastiest food, but it did what it was supposed to do.

  The third morning found me re-watching Star Wars XXVII on my HUD. I was just at the point where Jabba's son begins the lightsaber dual with Yoda's son when Big Dog interrupted me.

  "Incoming shuttle," Big Dog said into the comm line.

  I shutdown the vid and zoomed in on the shuttle that was highlighted in dark red on my HUD. Definitely of SK make, judging from the hard angles. It was basically an iridium pod with two parabolic fins on either side and a stabilizer fin on top, with three thrust nozzles at the rear. Its nose was tilted up, and the landing gears had been lowered. I couldn't make out the cockpit windows from this angle.

  "Still no sign of the mothership," Big Dog said.

  "Oh it's there, don't you worry, mate," I said. A shuttle like that wasn't designed for interplanetary travel.

  "Give me the word, sir." Big Dog had a Carl Gustav rocket launcher resting on his shoulder and aimed up at the object.

  Trace and Ghost were awake now too, following the shuttle with their sniper rifles.

  I zoomed in further. "There's no sign whatsoever that this shuttle houses the HPT. No external markings or labels of any kind. The serial number has been scraped off. And I can't see the cockpit windows."

  Big Dog hadn't lowered the Carl Gustav. "Sir?"

  "Bloody hell." I sighed. "Lower the rocket, Big Dog. We're going to have to do this the hard way." I wasn't going to risk destroying a shuttle when I couldn't make a positive id on the target.

  I watched the shuttle dock inside the largest module of the base, a sprawling dome which was apparently the hangar bay. The hatch doors sealed shut, hiding the shuttle from view.

  "Time for plan B." I gave my rifle to Big Dog and stripped off my utility belt, grenades and all.

  Ghost handed me the holo projection attachment, and I applied it to my facemask. Ghost made some adjustments.

  I watched his face as he worked, and studied those eerie red eyes of his, eyes that stood out all the more because of the paleness of his face. Ghost quite literally towered over me, and when you took him out of that jumpsuit he made quite the sight: a tall, lean albino with white hair and demonic eyes who could have been some alien warrior straight out of a science fiction novel. He was human, though. Like the rest of us. Humanity hadn't discovered any alien races yet. Not for want of trying.

  "You make one mean-ass Italian," Ghost said. "Straight out of the slums. Or maybe the vineyard."

  I couldn't see the holo projection at all from this side of the facemask, but I trusted him implicitly of course. If Ghost said I now looked like a mean-ass Italian, then I did.

  "Is that a good idea?" I said. "The meanness? I'm supposed to be a merchant, after all."

  "Hmm, good point." Ghost made some further adjustments. "There. Now you look like a doe-eyed wine merchant who has lost his way and just wants to go home to la mamma. All innocent looking. A lion in sheep's clothing."

  I shrugged. "Works for me."

  I needed the holo projection, at least to get in, because it was believed the SK spies maintained a database of all special forces operators by headshot. A few pencil-pushing moles back at HQ had been caught and executed over the years, but for every mole the brass tracked down a new one popped up: greed was too great a motivator.

  One thing I should mention. Every man, woman and child had a chip embedded in the wrist, called an embedded Id, that linked to everything from that person's public InterGalNet profile to his or her bank account. The Id chips of my fire team members had been backed up and wiped, so that our true identities couldn't be read.

  But now Ghost uploaded the profile of a Franco-Italian merchant into my embedded Id, and when that was done he modified the digital signature of the Id to conform with Franco-Italian tech standards.

  "You're now Mario Costa," Ghost sent. "Born during the Great Unification, purveyor of Lambrusco wine. Don't let your grape brothers down."

  Ready to go, I turned toward the privateer base. "You can bet I won't."

  "I still think this is a bad idea," Big Dog said.

  "You think every idea that doesn't involve blowing something up right away is bad."

  Big Dog scowled. "Yeah, but this is especially bad. Because it involves us staying behind while you go in alone."

  "You're just mad because I get to have all the fun."

  "Yeah," Big Dog smiled. "There is that. But I'm also seriously concerned about your refined English ass. Sir."

  "Okay. Worry noted, mate."

  Big Dog stared at the distant base. "What if the HPT isn't even there?"

  "Let me worry about that. You remember how I got my callsign, don't you?"

  Big Dog nodded. "How could I forget?"

  He'd been there from the start, when I was still a "caterpillar without a callsign" on my first mission. It was an Earth-based raid, in the mountainous war zone between Mongolia and Russia. My platoon was working with the Marines, performing counterinsurgency operations. We usually went ahead of their advance, scouting for pockets of resistance and securing buildings along the way.

  I'd gone into this one particular building first. Big Dog and the other members of my fire team followed me in. Gunfire erupted from upstairs. I dove to the deck and fired off five shots at the second story from my M4 rifle. With each shot, I literally hopped my aim from face to face. I scored five headshots in five seconds, ending the engagement.

  The biggest debate after that gun fight was whether to call me Five-in-five, or Facehopper. The latter ended up winning the majority vote.

  "Now if you don't mind," I said. "I have a date with a certain strapping privateer. Who may not even be on the base."

  I started forward alone, with my palms raised to emphasize that I didn't have any weapons.

  It wasn't long before I set off the proximity alarms. I immediately froze.

  A spherical drone similar to our own HS3s floated out toward me. Its twin machine gun turrets were aimed right at my facemask.

  "Identify yourself!" the drone transmitted over the standard SK comm frequency. Spoken in Korean-Chinese of course. A man's voice. Deep. Authoritative.

  The drone had already scanned my identity profile, I had no doubt. But I guess even drones had procedures to follow. As did the drone operator back at the privateer base who was observing the interaction at this moment.

  "If it pleases you, I am Mario Costa," I told the drone in polite Korean-Chinese. All MOTHs learned the language in training. I had a bit of an English accent but I knew my Implant would correct the tonality, giving it more of an Italian articulation before transmitting it to the drone. (The Implant was basically a computer chip all military personnel had in their brains. It augmented reality, allowing us access to internal databases or external InterGalNets such as Milnet at any time. Most important of all, it let us communicate messages directly to our teammates' brains.)

  "Identify profile match," the drone said. "What is a wine merchant doing on 99-Herculina? Where is your ship?" The voice had changed, and I figured I was talking to the drone operator himself now.

  "If it pleases you, I am marooned," I said. The "if it pleases you" part was always used when addressing someone you considered your superior. The operator wouldn't question that I could speak Korean-Chinese. All Franco-Italian traders were expected to know the language, to some extent.

  "Marooned? Specify."

  "If it pleases you, my ship, the Buon Vino, had a deflector malfunction, and while passing near the Tau Ceti debris disk we hit a high velocity particle. The size of a grain of sand. Tore my ship apart. I was forced to abandon ship."

  "Where is the rest o
f your crew?"

  I lowered my eyes, and tried to make my voice sound contrite. "If it pleases you, I don't know. I'm not sure if the rest of my crew made it."

  "Where is your lifeboat?"

  "Abandoned in space, some distance from this asteroid. I ran out of fuel."

  "Your jumpsuit is of strange design..." the drone said.

  "If it pleases you, I bought this suit from an armor merchant in the Gliese 581 system. He said it was of military origin. With all the privateer attacks lately, I thought it prudent to get myself the best gear."

  The HS3 asked no further questions. I merely stared at those gun turrets, hoping the holo-projector was still active on my facemask, hoping that they didn't see my true face. Of course, once I actually got inside the base, eventually I'd have to take the helmet off. I'd delay that as long as possible but in the end they would know I wasn't who I appeared to be.

  I knew that the three remaining members of my fire team had the drone in their sites. I knew that they were ready to take the drone down at the slightest hint of aggression. Problem was, I'd probably be dead at the slightest hint of aggression. I had no doubt that the drone's turrets contained armor piercing rounds. At this distance, a single shot would tear me in half, jumpsuit or no jumpsuit.

  I held my breathe.

  "Follow," the drone finally transmitted.

  So there I was, on some asteroid twelve lightyears from Earth, letting a robotic drone escort me toward the heart of a privateer's den, where I would soon come face to face with the band's leader—if my Intel was correct.

  My heart was beating. I was scared, but I was excited too.

  This was exactly what I signed up for.

  An SK privateer in a gray jumpsuit holding a wicked space rifle met me just outside the airlock to escort me the rest of the way inside. The moment I stepped through the hatch, the five hundred pound osmium attachments on my belt clicked off and slammed to the deck, crunching into the floor padding. The base had artificial gravity then—the buckles that joined the osmium attachments were designed to click open under their own weight. That was a good thing, because if the clamps didn't open and you entered a real or simulated gravity environment, you'd find yourself sitting on the deck pretty quick, probably with a broken back. Assuming the weights didn't tear open your suit first.

  When the airlock hatch closed behind me, the room started to pressurize. I could see the universal pressure indicator above the hatch slowly changing color from red to orange. However, before the bar reached green, my escort decided he didn't like my suit--he went behind me and started opening it up.

  "No, wait!" I said in Korean-Chinese. "You have to wait until the pressure equalizes!"

  I tried to swat his hands away, but Gray Jumpsuit aimed his rifle at my forehead. There was nothing I could do. I let him open it up.

  My ears popped, but otherwise I didn't really feel any different. Maybe the indicator was wrong. Maybe the pressure had already equalized.

  I doubted it.

  My helmet fogged right up, and I was freezing.

  Anyway, by the time the bar finally turned green, I was naked except for my skivvies, shivering on my knees before Gray Jumpsuit. On the ground beside me my helmet still projected the holographic image of a doe-eyed Italian, so it looked like poor Mario Costa lay beside me, beheaded.

  So much for my disguise.

  The far door slid open and two more armed SKs rushed in.

  They didn't seem anything like how I'd imagined privateers must look. They both wore black khakis. No helmets, no jumpsuits. One had nerdy-looking glasses—probably aReals, or "augmented reality" devices, which would give him his own private HUD, similar to an Implant. The other was a white-skinned bloke who looked like a member of the UC (United Countries): square nose, big chin, heavy brow line. A little crossed eyed though. Well, privateers would accept any sort of scum they could get their hands on. All that mattered was that they could pull a trigger and shoot. Neither of these guys appeared particularly strong or menacing in and of themselves, but when I factored in the rifles they shoved into my face I definitely felt a rise in blood pressure.

  The privateers escorted me through the cylindrical passageways (which were actually kind of roomy, in stark contrast to how the passageways had appeared from the outside). At least it was warm in here. We lost Gray Jumpsuit along the way, but the other two led me from dome compartment to dome compartment, past bulkheads covered in white padding. We went through hydroponics, then recycling, then some sort of mess hall. While in that hall, I glanced down a side passage and saw a door labeled with the Korean-Chinese symbol for "Control." I made a mental note of it.

  The two SK privateers led me down two more passageways then rudely shoved me inside what seemed little more than a janitorial closet and locked the door. Other than those two men and Mister Gray Jumpsuit, I hadn't seen anyone else in the entire base. I guess with all the automation available these days, you didn't really need a lot of people to operate an installation.

  I looked for some weapon I could hide in my skivvies, like a knife or something, but the closest thing to a weapon I could find was a mop.

  About an hour later I found myself escorted from the makeshift brig. I was feeling some of the classic signs of decompression sickness. My joints throbbed, and my shoulders in particular were killing me. I had a fairly strong headache. Hopefully that would be the worst of it.

  Nerdy and Cross-eyed led me to a large compartment laid out sort of like a throne room. There were some stolen works of art laying against the wall, some crates of what looked like confiscated wine, some star charts, some expensive-looking glass figurines, a couple of old-fashioned weapons. Privateer stuff, I guess.

  At the far end of the compartment was a massive silver box.

  Sitting on that box was the high-payoff target.

  Unfortunately, I had made a very big mistake.

  Intel had failed to inform me that Mao Sing Ming went about his daily business inside the cockpit of an ATLAS mech.

  As they say, military intelligence is a big fat oxymoron.

  With the emphasis on moron.

  The mech was an SK model. Three times the height of an ordinary man. Humanoidal in shape. The head was a pinched version of a man's. A blue visor with two red glows made up the eye area. The cockpit was at the center of the bulky chest, and below that a red circle where the atomic core resided. Beneath each massive hand were three weapons that the pilot could swivel into place: a gatling gun, a rocket launcher, and some sort of spout, probably a flame thrower.

  The ATLAS mechs were called "one-man-armies" in some circles.

  For good reason.

  I could see a man who matched the photos of Mao Sing Ming sitting in the cockpit, his silver-coated teeth glimmering in the cockpit light.

  The target is here. I sent to my fire team, via the Implant. Repeat, the target is here. In an ATLAS mech.

  This was going to be a wee bit harder than I thought.

  Nerdy and Cross-eyed forced me to my knees. There were four other armed men in the room, situated near the silver box that served as the "throne." I hardly paid them any attention. My eyes were locked on the most dangerous man in the room, the one in the mech.

  "Salutations, Leading Petty Officer Marshall," Mao Sing Ming said in very good English. "Or should I say, Facehopper."

  I stiffened. It was intentional.

  "Surprised?" Mao Sing Ming said. "You do know I have the full backing of the SK government—I have met with the Paramount Leader Guoping Qiu himself. It was a simple matter for me to send a message to my contact in parliament. They had your photo in the database of UC military personnel. A MOTH. Member of Team Seven. Said to be the most highly trained and highly skilled special forces unit in the galaxy. You yourself are supposedly highly decorated. Recipient of the Navy Cross, among other pieces of worthless metal. The great Leading Petty Officer Facehopper." He sniffed. "I am truly not impressed. You are weak, Petty Officer. Indeed, petty is a most appr
opriate word for you."

  Mao Sing Ming got up. The servomotors in his massive legs whirred as he steered the ATLAS toward me. Through the cockpit glass I could see his upper body; it was wrapped in the elastic actuators that translated his every movement to the mech.

  "You came here hoping to capture a high-value target, no?" Mao Sing Ming said. "But I have turned the tables on you. Instead it I who have captured the high-value target! What do you think of that? What will your military pay to get you back, hmm?"

  I didn't answer.

  "Maybe I'll just sell the contents of your brain to the highest bidder. You like that? Bad for you, good for me. You'll leave here little more than a vegetable. So much for the great and invincible MOTH, no?"

  I kept my peace. Mao Sing Ming had stopped about a pace away, and he towered above me. I was still on my knees, but I refused to crane my neck up to look at him.

  "Where is the rest of your platoon?" Mao Sing Ming said. "Are they in orbit, hiding on the other side of this asteroid? Have you sabotaged our LIDARs on the dark side?"

  I remained silent.

  "Hmmm. I remember when I was a boy on Earth, running in the woods. I liked to run in the woods. I'd go there after the bigger boys would beat me up after class. Sometimes, while running, I would see a white witch in the trees. One of the biggest moths in the world, with a wingspan the size of both your hands put together. Beautiful insects. Looked a little bit like owls. But the problem with the white witch was, you know, for all their beauty, and their size, they were slow. Too slow. It was one of the easiest and most pleasurable things in the world to catch one of those moths, and rip its wings off one by one. I'd put the wingless moth on the ground, this creature of such beauty reduced to an ugly, oversized white worm. I'd watch it struggle along, crawling without its wings, trying to get away from me. I'd toy with it, sometimes putting the flame of a lighter nearby, sometimes taking a piss on it, sometimes pulling off all its legs, too. But in the end, after that moth gave me what I wanted, I ground it into the dirt with the heel of my foot."

  Mao Sing Ming tilted forward so that the cockpit of the ATLAS was only a handspan from me. I could see his face clearly through the glass. His yellow eyes only amplified his wolfish features.