The Vastalimi Gambit

by Steve Perry

  “So whispers began. Evidence disappeared. Zolo’s body was quickly cremated, pursuant to a request that nobody remembered him making.

  “It was made clear to me that if I stayed on Vast and continued to prattle on about poison, stirring up muck that did not need to be stirred, that I and my family would be made to suffer. My relatives, say, would suddenly be Challenged every time they stepped outside. The chances of our having fatal accidents would rise. Doors that had been open in this business or that would close. If, however, I were to find that I wished to pursue opportunities offworld? There would be no repercussions to my family for my mistaken view that one old male had been poisoned.”

  Wink shook his head. “That’s fucked-up.”

  She shrugged. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The best thing was for me to leave, so I left.

  “We have an expression,” she said. “Tzit dogoditi se.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “Shit happens.”

  “I hear that.” Then, “Wait, you said, the poison scans came back negative at first?”

  “I had some friends who could keep their jaws closed who would help,” she said. “I had some tissue samples. There were trace amounts of sivotro in the plasma. Not a substance that occurs naturally as such, distilled from a kind of rare earth, debilitating and fatal in tiny amounts. A minute dose could certainly put a person into a state where an opportunistic pathogen could step in and complete the job.”

  “So you had real evidence.”

  “Which would have been as useful as spitting into a windstorm and caused my friends no small grief if they were willing to stand up and offer it. No point in asking them to do that, there were too many forces who would claim the test had been altered or faked.”

  “So you were screwed.”

  “Tzit dogoditi se,” she said.

  He hesitated to say it, but having heard this much, Wink was curious, so he did: “And how does Jak fit into the story? Other than his uncle.”

  She blinked at him. “Why would you think he does?”

  He said, “I sat in the bolnica cafeteria for meals every day, surrounded by Vastalimi who didn’t realize I could hear and understand most of what they said.” He tapped at his ear, indicating the missing earbud. “I think it amuses them to talk about us, with me sitting right there smiling and looking like a dull ape.

  “Jak’s name has come up a few times.”

  She whickered softly. “Always a mistake to underestimate you humans.

  “Jak. Jak and I shared sleep mats, on our way to becoming mates when this happened. He was in medical administration at the time, which is how we met, in the bolnica.

  “Naturally, when this happened, I told Jak all about it.

  “His counsel was to pack up and lift, leaving Vast behind. He would, he said, miss me beyond measure, but it was the best thing for all concerned.”

  Wink didn’t say anything.

  “At the time, I thought he was the voice of reason. It was later that I realized his motives might be less concern about me and my pack than for his own fur. His association with me would put him at some risk, more so were I to stay on Vast. There might be some liability for the bolnica were it determined that a highly respected Vastalimi’s treatment was in error. Jak had ambitions, and a mate in disgrace would be a stumbling block to those.

  “In retrospect, that was one of the best things to come from all of this, that Jak and I did not become legally mated. I believe I would have eventually come to realize what kind of person he is, but it might have cost me dearly in time and energy before I did.

  “Even a killing storm waters the grass.”

  Wink nodded. He would have said something else, but Kay snapped her gaze away from him at the room’s door. He never heard the footsteps approaching before the door opened.

  It was Two. He held a pistol. “Step out, Kluth, and move slowly and carefully. Twitch, and you die. Human, you will stay here.”

  Kay stood. She flicked a glance at Wink, then moved out.

  The door shut behind her.

  He waited for a moment, then stood, walked to the door, put his ear to it.

  Nothing to hear.

  He had already examined the lock, and it was simple, old-tech, obviously installed in a hurry from something they had on hand. No knob had been left on the inside, but the latch was a simple spring-loaded bar that snicked into place when the door was closed. No electronics, nothing. Even a simple dead bolt would have been much better, but without tools, the spring latch would have been sufficient. With Kay’s claws being padded, she wouldn’t have been able to get at the latch, or to rip through the door or walls, and human fingers wouldn’t do the trick, so their captors would have had it covered.

  He could open it. He had already told Kay that, but she had said they should hold off for a while, to wait and see what happened.

  Now seemed like a good time.

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  The Vastalimi might be all about honor, but for Wink, honor was tied up with survival. The female guard with her back to him might kill him and Kay if she got the notion, and while they’d taken his pistol, he had his knife.

  That still amazed him. They asked him if he had any more weapons, and either they believed him when he said he didn’t or didn’t consider him dangerous if he did. Human? A threat? Please!

  He had the knife in a saber grip, ready. Opening the door had been easy, all of six seconds, to stick the point into the latch and slide it clear. No guard watching it.

  Skulking through the building was a little harder, but he had taken his time. They had better hearing and senses of smell to go along with the superior vision. Quiet and careful was necessary.

  The guard was concentrating her attention elsewhere, her own pistol holstered, and she didn’t hear or sense him coming until too late. Her turn at the last quarter second actually helped him—the tip of his blade sank in between her fifth and sixth cervical vertebra and her motion made the cut for him, all he had to do was hang on to the knife.

  She fell, cord severed, paralyzed from the neck down.

  There were advantages to being a surgeon, and knowing where to cut was one of them. And this was a good technique by its nature.

  No longer any threat there.

  He took the pistol from her nerveless fingers. It was not a model he knew, but the operation seemed simple even enough: He stroked the magazine-eject panel, a double-touch. The magazine dropped into his other hand. It held fifteen darts. They were probably poisoned, maybe with nonfatal shocktox, but that didn’t matter. He reinserted the magazine. A green diode lit on the pistol’s butt. No external safety—must be in the trigger itself.

  Now. He needed to go find Kay and pot some kidnappers. With any luck, they’d eat darts before they knew what had hit them.

  He considered the downed guard. He had no scruples against killing an enemy, which this one certainly was; still, it wasn’t necessary. The cord could be fixed, and eventually she’d regain use of her body below the cut though it would take several months, were she a human. He and Kay would be probably long gone when this fem became functional.

  Then again, the injured Vastalimi had been part of kidnapping them, and likely set to kill his friend once they’d tortured her for whatever information they thought she had.

  Dead enemies didn’t come looking for you later.

  He moved to the side to avoid the arterial spray, leaned down, and nicked both carotids, zip, zip, easy as that. The Vastalimi’s expression, not something he was all that adept at reading, seemed surprised. He said, “If you are captured by the enemy, don’t let them give you to the humans. We aren’t quite as harmless as everybody thinks. Take that with you to your Other Side.”

  He wiped the blade off on her fur away from the pumping blood flow. Sheathed the knife, and stood.

&
nbsp; Without a com, he would just have to do it the old-fashioned way and find Kay himself. And shoot anybody who got in his path.

  He was done being the quiet and docile human here. It was time to break shit and raise hell.

  SEVENTEEN

  Jo was ten meters ahead of the others when the enemy mercs realized they really were being attacked by a superior force. She was running every useful aug she had, she had the suit, and she was fast, but they weren’t blind, and at least a few of them had decent combatware on the clock.

  It didn’t matter for the first one, she was too far ahead of his response curve. She fired her carbine, one shot, and the tiny rocket impacted with his breastplate armor and blew a hole through it, shattering his sternum and rupturing the heart beneath it. He never got a round off—

  The second soldier whipped his own carbine around and triggered a burst, but Jo was already in the air in a high, forward flip over and above the incoming, tucking tight for speed, and coming down heels first onto the man’s shoulders, knocking him flat.

  Her proprioception aug let her land in perfect balance. Damn, that was great!

  Before he had a chance to recover, she fired two rounds into his body, and he was done, too, and KMA, friend—

  Carbine fire from behind her took down the next merc, and Jo had time to see the impact of the round on his faceplate as it blew up, along with a goodly part of the head behind it.

  Gunny, taking head shots because she could?

  More fire from both sides. A round glanced off her shoulder plate, denting the soft ceramic but not punching through. The ricochet screamed away into the forest, dopplering into silence.

  Another incoming small-arms round blew past her head, two centimeters away, maybe, and whistled as it went.

  The temptation was to hose, to spray-and-pray, and chances were at this distance that would do some serious damage, but it was never a good idea to run your weapon dry in a fire zone unless you were sure you had taken all the enemy out. Given the terrain and conditions, it would be hard to tell if there were shooters hidden and waiting for a weapon to click empty.

  Jo indexed a short figure—looked female—and did another double tap. The figure spun and sank to the ground, triggering off a long burst of full auto from her weapon but pointed too high to hit any of Jo’s team.

  “To the left!” Singh yelled.

  Jo was already aware of the three mercs in that quadrant, but they were scrambling for cover and not aiming as they threw rounds in her general direction. She dropped low—panicked fire tended to start high and climb higher—and aimed low, sweeping her weapon from left to right, targeting legs just above the tops of their midcalf boots. The boots would be armored, but between the knee and boot, a lot of people didn’t bother, considering that too small a target to worry about. Not that overlap-joint armor would stop what she was throwing anyway, but still—

  Now she let the carbine run full auto. She had a sixty-round magazine, and she’d used only four rounds, she could afford ten or fifteen on a sweep. She moved it in a short arc, relaxed her finger on the trigger—

  All three went down with shattered shins and knees—

  Jo came up, sprinted, and hurdled the downed mercs, looking for the command cart—

  Behind her, her team grabbed the three wounded mercs who might have the wherewithal to keep resisting even with their legs shot out from under them. They’d give them field first aid and try to keep them alive.

  “Down!” Gunny yelled, and Jo dropped prone, skidding on the damp ground—

  Somebody ahead opened up with a light machine gun, the hard chatter of a 10mm spewing jacketed hail in her direction but passing over her at chest height.

  How had Gunny known?

  She saw the muzzle flashes, but not the gun itself, fifty-plus meters ahead, shrouded by the dense woods.

  She indexed the flashes. No more mercs in sight, might as well finish off the mag.

  Jo hosed the target until the carbine ran empty. Some of her rounds hit something hard enough to create sparks. Didn’t see that often, even with jacketed.

  Somebody screamed. The fifty went quiet.

  She tapped the electronic eject button twice and shoved a fresh magazine into the well. It seated and whined, and the round counter lit: 60, then blinked off. Probably she should tape over that, lot of troops did, so the LED wouldn’t give them away, but it wasn’t likely anybody would see the brief green flash, and besides, it wasn’t as if anybody was going to be worried about shit like that now . . .

  Say, did you see that little green light?

  Why, no, I must have missed it while I was busy watching a fucking assault team spray bullets at us!

  She heard a motor start. That would be the command cart retreating.

  Jo came up and sprinted, her augmented muscles and nervous system driving her body to a speed the best unaugmented runner who ever lived couldn’t begin to match.

  —there, just ahead and to the left, there was the cart—!

  The cart’s gunner was gone and the fifty pointing skyward, but they might have a bot shooter, so she couldn’t assume the gun wasn’t in play anymore.

  Her carbine would punch through some body armor, but not the stressed plate on a command cart. Wouldn’t hurt the solid-body tires, either, and she didn’t want to use a grenade on it because she wanted the CO alive if possible. She’d have to stop it somehow.

  The road was dirt, packed down from use. Jo pulled a grenade, thumbed the safety up, and tapped the timer. Four . . . three . . . two . . .

  She threw the grenade over the cart. It arced, fell, and went off just as it reached the road five meters in front of the vehicle—

  The blast threw up a blinding shower of dirt and blew a half-meter-deep, two-meter-wide crater into the road.

  The driver instinctively veered to the right, the turn sharp enough to tilt the cart. The low center of gravity kept it from going over—until the back wheel slipped into the grenade’s crater. That did it. The cart tipped, rolled, landed on its side, engine roaring, drive wheels on the passenger side spinning—

  “Gotcha, asshole!”

  Gunny ghosted into view, carbine held ready. “We all done back there,” she said, “five by five.” She looked at the cart lying on its side. “You get us a prize, Jo?”

  “I believe so. Let’s go see.”

  From her earbud, Cutter’s voice: “Aren’t you done out there yet?”

  “We decided to stop and have some lunch before we came home. Fighting makes you hungry, Rags.”

  “So I dimly recall.”

  “Maybe next time,” Jo said.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  _ _ _ _ _ _

  The building was larger than the warehouse in which they’d been captured, with individual rooms. Kay’s claws were top and bottom still bound, but the bigger problem was the sturdy chair into which she was securely strapped.

  One and Two were in the room with her, and Two kept popping his claws in and out in anticipation.

  “What say, Kluth?” he said. “An ear membrane first? An eye?”

  Kay said, “What does it matter? You’ll kill me soon enough. Being blind or deaf when I die? So what?”

  “Brave talk. We’ll see how long it lasts.”

  One said, “Yes, you die, but you can make it hard or easy, your choice. We can dart you. We can slash your neck arteries, and you can bleed out, relatively painlessly.”

  “Dead is dead. Why should I make your task any easier?”

  One shook her head. “You understand we need to know everything you know and that you will tell us eventually.”

  Kay was listening intently. Nothing yet.

  “Eventually, the universe goes cold and collapses to start anew.”

  “Unlike my comrade, I get no pleasure in another’s pain. Tell us what
we need to know, swear it is true, we’ll make it quick.”

  “Fuck your father.”

  One looked at Two. He said, “They were right—we might as well be talking to the chair. But she will change her song.” He snicked out his forefinger claw and waved it back and forth. “I bet I can jab this finger into a tender spot and wiggle my talon enough to make you scream like a cub.”

  She told him where he could insert that finger.

  He laughed. “Oh, I shall enjoy this so much!”

  Kay finally heard the sound for which she had been listening. “No, you won’t. Two only, please,” she said in Basic.

  Both of the Vastalimi looked at her. Two frowned. “What?”

  The door opened behind them. They turned to see what the guard wanted, only it wasn’t the guard—

  Wink fired before he stepped into the room. The male Vastalimi who called himself Two took the dart in the throat. He spasmed, fell, and jittered on the floor.

  “Kay wants you alive,” Wink said to the female, “but I don’t have any problem killing you. That’ll bring my total up to five for the day. Free her, or I’ll fucking shoot you and do it myself.”

  Once Kay was out of the chair and on her feet, she said, “Unbind my hands.”

  One nodded, but her claws popped out and she lunged for Kay—

  “Wink, don’t—!”

  Wink fired three times—pap-pap-pap!—and the fem went down—

  “Tzit!”

  Wink came over to help Kay free her hands and feet.

  “There will be a magnetic key in her belt purse.”

  Wink nodded, opened the small case, found the key. He freed Kay’s hands. She took the key and bent to remove the slippers.

  “I wanted this one alive,” she said.

  “Sorry. I wanted you alive.”

  “She knew that. It’s why she did it. Any of the other guards survive?”

  “Not any I saw. I stabbed one, shot two others. Far as I can tell, that’s all there were in the building.”

  “Done is done. We’ll have to collect or follow whoever comes to check on these.”