Merkiaari Wars: 02 - What Price Honour

by Mark E. Cooper

  “I’m not like that. It’s exciting being here, but not because I think you’re all savages. It’s exciting being on my own away from home, that’s all.”

  Robert nodded. “I would love to travel like you’re doing.”

  “It is fun,” she agreed. “But Garnet will always be home.”

  “I understand perfectly. I feel the same way about Tigris.”

  The crashing of abused suspension over ruts and potholes gave way to the comforting purr that Kate always associated with civilisation. The plascrete road that humanity always inflicted upon its worlds, hummed and purred with the speed of the tyres racing over it. At this rate they should reach the city of Rhagnall in no time. She was glad of it.

  Kate tensed when Robert suddenly slowed down. There was some kind of checkpoint up ahead. She eased her hand into her pocket and retrieved her new pulser. She kept it low beside the seat, and waited to see what would happen. Robert hadn’t noticed the weapon. He didn’t appear concerned when a man in uniform stepped onto the road in front of the barrier and waved him down.

  Robert opened his window and leaned out. “Hey, Johnny. What’s happening, man?”

  The soldier, Johnny, came forward, stuck his head through the open window beside Robert, and peered around the interior. His eyes brightened when he noticed Kate. He smiled and she forced herself to reciprocate. Her pulser was aimed to take him in the upper chest—maybe the neck. The door would be no hindrance to her shot, it would simply burn through. She couldn’t do better without pulling Robert down or revealing that she was armed.

  “How’s it going, Roberto?” Johnny said looking Kate up and down and enjoying the view.

  Kate felt like blasting him just for that, but she held off. Johnny’s friends wouldn’t take kindly to her burning his face off. They were bound to get upset about it, and then she would have to kill them too. No, it was better to keep her cover uncompromised. Anyway, Cherry always aroused this kind of interest. It was part of what made her a good disguise. No one expected violence from her.

  “Good, and you?” Robert said.

  “Not so hot. We had another bunch of riots in the city. Not good man, not good at all.”

  “Yeah, I heard about it on the news. How is it now?”

  “Quiet.”

  “Well that’s good,” Robert said.

  Kate didn’t agree and neither did Johnny by the look of his face. Things tended to go quiet just before the storm.

  “This is Cherry,” Robert went on. “She’s on vacation here.”

  “Nice to meet you, Cherry. Are you staying long?”

  “Not long,” Kate said wondering if he was asking officially. “Just the week.”

  Johnny nodded. “We aren’t supposed to let anyone through, Roberto, but seeing as it’s you…” he gestured to one of his men to raise the barrier. “You be careful tonight. If you see anyone on the streets, for God’s sake don’t stop. There’s a curfew, so no one should be out, but just in case there is—don’t stop. Okay?”

  “Okay man,” Robert said easily. “Can I drop your name if a patrol stops me?”

  “No problem,” Johnny said and stepped back.

  “Thanks,” Robert said and drove on. “A friend of mine.”

  “Yeah?” Kate kept her eyes on the soldiers in the mirror. “Known him long?”

  “Johnny and me go back. He’s not like the others—he believes in what he’s doing.”

  That was interesting. “How do you mean?”

  “Sanderson has been buying troops from all over the place.” His face twisted into a snarl, “Mercenaries can’t be trusted. Johnny can be. He was born here just like me.”

  Kate privately agreed. A man with no stake in a place could not be relied upon to defend it. Tigris would be far better off building its armed forces from locals. They at least had something to lose if they did a bad job.

  The city was dark and quiet as they drove through the streets. Street lighting had been turned off in an effort to discourage people from leaving their homes. It had worked. The city felt abandoned. Robert was silent as they drove along. He was concentrating upon his driving as if he feared to fail some kind of competency test. The only light, other than Robert’s headlights, came from the public address screens. Every one of them showed the same thing—a screenful of text warning people to remain calm and off the streets. The glow emanating from them seemed somehow sad. Each one a lonely island in the unremitting darkness the city had become.

  They were stopped twice.

  The first time was another roadblock consisting of two APCs blocking the main route through the city. Kate realised why they had chosen the location the moment she saw them. The road they were on would lead them right passed Tigris’ centre of government—the Assembly Building. Not a good place to allow rebellious persons to approach, and not somewhere she was interested in seeing anyway. By all accounts, it was a spectacularly ugly building.

  Robert slowed and stopped when the officer in charge of the roadblock waved him down. Kate counted more than twenty soldiers wearing battle dress and body armour. Each man carried an M18-AP pulser—the standard rifle for the majority of forces deployed throughout the Human sector. They knew what to do with them too. She could tell by their reactions that they had been in similar situations before. She watched the soldiers spread out to cover them from all sides. Mercs they might be, but they were seasoned mercs. The officer—she assumed he must be an officer though he had no visible rank insignia on his uniform, was wearing a pulser on his hip. The snap holster containing the weapon was ominously unsecured. She watched him warily. He placed a hand casually on the weapon and strolled toward them. By his attitude, he thought he was something special.

  The merc knocked on the window with a knuckle and Robert lowered it.

  “Identification,” the merc snapped with his hand out.

  Kate relaxed a little when she noted the merc wasn’t carrying a simcode reader. Not that it would have done him any good where she was concerned. Like billions of others from the core, her simcode implant was an integral part of her spinal cord, but unlike them, hers was a little bit special. It was programmable—a thing not possible without very sophisticated equipment that only governments supposedly possessed. The Border Worlds didn’t support the use of the simcode implant. It was one of the things that made living outside the core so attractive to certain kinds of people. Tigris maintained only a basic system of identicard to keep track of its citizens. Visitors were issued with temporary cards up at the station.

  Robert handed the merc his identicard. “We just came from the port. This is Cherry.”

  “Last name,” the merc snapped again.

  “I ermmm…” Robert said and broke off in embarrassment when he realised he didn’t know the answer.

  “Jackson,” Kate said and quickly retrieved her forged card. “Here.”

  Robert took the card and passed it on.

  “Destination,” the merc said after scrutinising the card long enough to make her fidget.

  The merc peered into the truck and double-checked her picture. Kate smiled, trying to appear innocent, but his eyes remained cold. He had a killer’s eyes. She had seen the same in the mirror enough times to recognise it in him. Cherry of course had puppy eyes—eyes that said let’s be friends. He didn’t want to be friends and was unaffected by her innocent look. He checked the card a third time.

  Kate’s palms began to sweat.

  “We’re heading for the Mayflower,” Robert said unaware of the merc’s suspicion. “You can let us pass can’t you? It’s only three blocks down.”

  “By order of the President, no one may pass. No one.” The officer handed the cards back to Robert. “Turn back.”

  “Oh come on, you can—”

  “You heard the man, Robert,” Kate said watching the merc’s eyes. “There must be another route we can take.”

  “Yeah but—”

  The merc’s eyes were hard. “The city is under martial law. Turn
around or be arrested. I won’t tell you again.”

  Robert opened his mouth to protest, but Kate clamped a hand onto his knee in warning. “No need to threaten us, sir. We’re going… aren’t we?”

  Robert winced at the pressure she exerted on his knee. “Yeah… I guess we can take another route—sure we can.”

  “Then do so,” the merc said and stepped back.

  “Arsehole,” Robert hissed under his breath. He slammed the truck into reverse and accelerated hard with a squeal of rubber. “They make me want to puke.” He braked with another squeal of abused tyres. “I would love to kick his arse up between his ears.” He turned onto a side road, and accelerated hard enough to leave tyre smoke in his wake. “Bastards…”

  Kate said nothing, though privately she agreed completely.

  They were stopped one final time almost at the entrance to the hotel. This time Robert managed to exert his charms upon the officer in charge. She was a local woman name Charlene, and it turned out that Robert was a friend of a friend. He dropped Johnny’s name without hesitation.

  “Johnny’s so charming,” Charlene gushed. “I just love the way—”

  Kate stared at the blushing soldier in something akin to horror. Charlene was fifty if she was a day. She was wearing battle dress and was carrying an M18-AP rifle in addition to the pistol on her hip, yet she was blushing like a damn schoolgirl over a man half her age. There should be a law or something. She was a soldier for God’s sake!

  The barrier lifted and Robert was waved on. “What’s wrong?”

  Kate was still scowling. “Nothing.”

  “Something is,” Robert said glancing at her then back to the road. “You look like you swallowed a bug.”

  “I’m just feeling a little tired. It’s been a long day, Robert, and a lot’s happened. Is the hotel far?”

  “We’re nearly there.” He pulled into a parking area outside a tall building proudly displaying the name Tigris Mayflower in glaring blue neon over the lobby doors. “It’s the best place in the city.”

  Kate climbed out of the truck carrying her kit bag. The Mayflower Hotel was a tall chrome and steel building that would be better suited to a corporate headquarters if not for the balconies. They appeared to have been tacked on at some later time, and didn’t match the building’s architecture at all. The parking lot was a simple plascrete area surrounded by gardens on two sides, the road on the third, and the hotel on the fourth. There was a duplicate of the building, minus the balconies, seemingly unused on the other side of the road.

  “They were built by McPherson,” Robert said watching her study the towers.

  “McPherson?”

  “McPherson and Dermott used to make drive coils, but they went bust years ago. The towers are all that’s left.”

  Kate hefted her kit and walked toward the lobby. The night was quiet, but the hotel was anything but. When they entered, they found the lobby bustling with people coming and going. From the sound of muffled music, she decided there was a party going on somewhere. Men and women were walking arm in arm toward the elevators, while others passed behind her and through the double doors on her left. The music’s volume increased then dropped away as the doors closed.

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “Don’t need one to have fun,” Robert said with a grin and draped an arm around her shoulders.

  Robert escorted Kate to reception where she asked for a room. The receptionist, a slim balding man, asked her how long she planned on staying. She said a week, though she had no intention of staying that long. As soon as she completed her self-imposed mission, she planned to leave on the same ship that had brought her to Tigris. She had killed Millard as down payment for the information she needed to find Paul, but although it had been necessary, it didn’t sit well with her now that she knew Whitby was ultimately behind it. To redress the balance, she was going to end Millard’s war for him. The receptionist named a figure. It was daylight robbery, but she had expected nothing less. A place like this probably saw no more than one or two new guests a week. It was already obvious from the pounding music that the hotel made its profit from something other than renting rooms.

  “I’ll take it,” she said.

  “Payment all in advance, food is extra.” The receptionist tapped a finger against the screen in the desk. “It’s the law.”

  Kate dropped her kit bag to the floor and Robert retrieved his arm so that she could sign the register’s screen. Kate was careful to use her alias. She pulled her credit wand from her pocket, and slid it into the receptacle in the desk as the receptionist keyed a figure into his consol. Kate took note of the amount before pressing the transfer button. He hadn’t tried to con her.

  “Thank you for using the Tigris Mayflower,” he said in a bored voice before handing her a pass card. “Have a nice night.” He glanced at Robert and smirked at her.

  Kate ignored him.

  “Thanks for everything,” she said turning to Robert and taking her kit from him. She had to tug it free of his hand, but he did release it no matter how reluctantly.

  “It was nothing. I’ll escort you up—”

  “No, that’s okay,” Kate said firmly and his face darkened. “Please Robert, don’t be like that. I really like you, but I’m so tired. I haven’t slept since I arrived insystem…” she checked her wristcomp. “That was almost thirty hours ago. No wonder I’m so testy! Can you forgive me? Maybe we could have dinner tomorrow… no, I’ll be asleep. What about lunch the following day?”

  Robert’s face lightened. “There’s nothing to forgive, Cherry. I should have realised after what you’ve been through. Can you forgive me?”

  Kate smiled coyly and nodded.

  “Lunch here on Wednesday then?” Robert said.

  She nodded and smiled again. “I’ll look forward to it,” she said and headed for the elevators. She let Cherry’s smile drop from her features the instant the doors closed and blocked her view of Robert.

  The first thing Kate did upon entering her room, was check for places she might be observed. The bedroom had its own balcony, but it was unlikely to provide anyone with access. Similarly, the sitting room had a balcony and was secure from intrusion, but unlike the bedroom, there was the other tower on this side that could be used as a platform to observe and listen in. Pulling the drapes closed would stop the one, and switching on the holocentre would limit the other. She did both in the sitting room before closing the drapes in the bedroom.

  After taking a long awaited shower, Kate sat cross-legged on the floor in her skivvies listening to the news broadcast. Now that she had time, she took the opportunity to strip and clean her weapons, before turning her attention to her new toy.

  Millard’s pulser was a nice little weapon, short ranged and compact with a sixteen round magazine. He had chosen well. Pulsers, or more properly pulsed plasma particle weapons, were the most commonly used hand held energy weapon in the Alliance. Although this one was more compact than most, they all work on the same principle. Whether you called your weapon a plasma rifle, a plasma pistol, a pulser, a PPG, or a PPC, they all worked the same way.

  An energy cell is used to reduce a round of ammunition into positively charged ions called plasma, which is expelled as a bright flash of light using a solid-state laser with a ruby core. Pulsing the laser gives the best stimulus. They were often called pulser or plasma pistols for whichever part of the process the manufacturer felt to be the most important. The induction coil in the barrel was there to excite the charge as it passed thereby adding a little oomph.

  The coil of such weapons was the component most responsible for the pyrotechnics accompanied by firing. Removing the coil to eliminate the display would turn a good pulser into a useless piece of junk that resembled a PPG or PPC. Construction is similar, but particle projection guns and particle projection cannons were almost worthless as hand held weapons. They were naval ordinance almost exclusively. On any scale less than ship to ship actions, pulsers had superiority ove
r other energy weapons due to their physical size and the damage they could inflict. In space, where almost unlimited energy could be used to add destructive punch, particle projection cannons held sway, with grazers and lasers following a close second.

  Kate studied her new toy turning it this way and that. It appeared well cared for, but she stripped it down and reassembled it for her own peace of mind. She left her hands to the task they knew so well, and watched the news on the holo.

  “…Garnet. Shares in mining and steel industries received a major boost today, as President Dyachenko announced a new contract to increase production of the new Washington class heavy cruisers. President Dyachenko stated that the Fleet’s newest heavy cruiser had proven itself superior to the older Excalibur class in exercises designed to test its potential, and having done so, it would go into full scale production with immediate effect. This decision by the Council was not unexpected and came on the heels of…”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s old news,” Kate muttered as she reassembled the pulser.

  That was one problem the Alliance had failed to solve. Member worlds were separated by vast distances, and news travelled slowly. The President had announced the Council’s decision to increase production months ago, yet here on Tigris it was being aired as if it were only yesterday.

  “President Sanderson…” the announcer was saying.

  Kate stopped what she was doing to listen to the report.

  “…failed to address the harvester’s concerns yesterday when he announced a further increase in export tariffs. The news has sent shockwaves through Tigris. Rioting on the streets in towns and cities all over the continent has caused much loss of life. The decreeing of martial law, and the suppression of the riots by Tigris armed forces has, thus far, been successful in calming the situation. The use of non-lethal force has proven effective in reducing the bloodshed, and with President Sanderson’s plea for restraint from both sides calming the situation still further, a return to normality is once again in sight.”