by Gavin Smith
‘A dangerous proposition,’ the Ultra mused, ‘but I shall pass that on.’ Then, a few moments later as they were walking down the corridor past the melted and burned remains of the Honey Badger: ‘I’m out of this conflict, aren’t I?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Miska told him. He nodded but Miska was sure she detected sadness in his expression.
Between them they managed to dump the destroyed Honey Badger in the departure lounge area. The aerostat’s emergency systems sealed the ruined airlock as soon as it detected the prison shuttle disengaging. Grig and Bean had left through a different airlock. They rendezvoused with the shuttle in the upper atmosphere. All of them were sat in the prisoner transport area. Bean and Grig were still in their combat exoskeletons.
‘That man does not like you,’ Gunhir pointed out, meaning Resnick.
‘I know, and I’m such a likeable person!’ Miska said. ‘Though you’d be surprised how often that happens.’
‘Maybe it’s the whole slavery thing?’ Grig suggested.
‘Oh, you love it really,’ Miska said but Gunhir was right. Resnick’s dislike of her seemed disproportionate and very personal. She ran through some of the gun-and helm-cam footage, taking the best images of each of the operators, putting it into a text message, encrypting it and then sending it to one of Raff’s dead letter drops. She wanted to know who they were, particularly the woman.
The journey was going to be a bit of a trek. Waterloo Station was about as far away from their position as it was possible for the station to be, despite orbiting a satellite of the planet whose atmosphere they were just leaving.
A blinking icon asking if she wanted to accept an incoming comms link appeared in her vision. She accepted it and a grainy image of Corenbloom and the Doc appeared in a window of her IVD. She guessed that Corenbloom had wedged his helmet in a tree to film them both. In the background FOB Trafalgar looked even more like an anthill than ever with UN and New Sun investigators crawling all over it. It was night down on Ephesus. The investigators had set up huge lights to illuminate the scene of the crime. On a flat piece of open ground she could see where all the body bags had been laid out. As she watched, an investigator in a brightly coloured hostile environment suit came out of one of the tunnel system exits.
‘Guys, what’ve you got? Did we do it?’ Miska joked. There was a bit of a lag.
‘It wasn’t us,’ Corenbloom said, smiling. ‘It’s weird stuff. Whatever did this came on them suddenly. Natural weapons of some kind, traces of a super dense wood in the wounds. Whatever they used was hard enough to go through combat exoskeleton armour, and whoever was wielding it was strong enough to push it through.’ The disgraced FBI agent did not look happy.
Miska frowned. ‘Are you saying the trees did this?’ she asked.
‘You know some of the so-called mangroves are ambulatory?’ the Doc asked. ‘Actually, they are less like mangroves and much more like the kahikatea trees native to New Zealand back on Earth.’
‘That’s great, Doc,’ Miska said. She had heard of the walking mangroves in the swampy land north of where they had found FOB Trafalgar. ‘But there’s a big difference between trees that move slowly to catch the light and a tree that kills a mercenary company made up of experienced pipe-hitters, know what I mean?’
‘Not really,’ Doc said. ‘But the root, branch and trunk structures of the Ephesus-Mangrove heavily resemble mammalian musculature.’
‘So what are you telling me?’ Miska asked. ‘An unknown alien plant species that was missed by the extensive planetary survey?’
Neither of them answered but Miska suspected that the Doc was so excited by the prospect he might even have a facial expression. Corenbloom looked less happy.
‘The UN people are freaking out down here. They’re talking about suspending all hostilities, first contact protocols, even planetary evacuation.’
Miska pursed her lips. That wasn’t good news but all it really meant was that they would have to go looking for another job.
‘How are New Sun behaving?’ Miska asked.
Even with the lag Corenbloom seemed hesitant in answering.
‘Poker-faced,’ he finally said.
I’ll bet, Miska thought.
‘And?’ she pushed.
‘It’s just a hunch but I don’t think they’re all that surprised,’ he told her.
Again Miska found herself wondering why New Sun were there.
‘Colonel Corbin,’ Doc said. ‘Epsilon Eridani isn’t a very old star, maybe a billion years.’ That sounded old to Miska. ‘I’ve read the survey, and there were some questions the surveyors couldn’t answer. The plant life is very advanced for a moon in a system that young. The exobotanists couldn’t understand why the moon was so fecund with flora when the sun is so far away. This is connected to some kind of heat exchange from Epsilon Eridani B that the physicists don’t quite understand.’
None of this sounded like something an ex-marine should concern herself with, Miska decided.
‘What are you telling me, Doc?’ Miska asked.
‘One of the possibilities was that the ecosystem, and perhaps even the planetary mechanics, had been tweaked somehow,’ Doc told her.
Miska let that sink in. It definitely sounded like something well above her pay grade.
‘If that’s the case could this … I don’t know, have some kind of ramifications for biotech?’ she asked.
‘Almost certainly,’ Doc told her. She made a mental note to ask Raff if biotech was part of the New Sun portfolio. She suspected it was.
‘So who tweaked the ecosystem?’ she asked. Doc didn’t answer. There was that feeling at the back of her mind again. Something wasn’t right. Something about this made her think of the artefact they had tried to steal on Barney Prime: some supposedly ancient alien doodah that had released a truly horrible entity that had inhabited Teramoto’s dead body. It had also saved them from the orbital bombardment. A boon and bane but any way you looked at it, weird shit that she didn’t want to have anything to do with.
‘Okay, thanks, guys, is there anything more you can do down there?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Corenbloom answered. ‘We’ve got more than enough to prove the Legion didn’t do it. So it’s just a matter of dealing with the PR fall-out but I think that the UN is going to want to keep this pretty quiet.’
‘Okay, talk to Vido, you’re on the next shuttle back to the Daughter,’ she told them.
Corenbloom nodded but she was pretty sure that the Doc looked disappointed.
The clanging noise that the shuttle made as it slotted into the plug-like docking port of the Hangman’s Daughter, and was then sucked slowly into the mother ship’s superstructure, sounded different to any other dock. It sounded like home to Miska.
‘Good work, everyone,’ she told them as they exited the shuttle onto the Daughter’s cavernous hangar deck. Surprisingly there was nobody doing PT today but the guard droids were there to escort the Ultra back to his pod. It wasn’t much of a reward for his part in the job. The rest had been given shore leave but would have to store all their battle gear first. Though they were allowed to carry handguns and knives on Waterloo Station. They had strict ROE for barroom brawls. If the other guys drew a knife then they could, same for guns. They were under orders to help each other out if they saw another Legionnaire in trouble. The two most important ROE for shore leave was to never start a fight but to always win them. It was the only way for her people to get peace and quiet from the other mercenary companies. Many of whom still barked when her Bastards walked by – a reference to the explosive collars they had worn during their first job.
A blinking icon appeared in her IVD. She opened it. In the window she saw Uncle V in the control room. He did not look happy.
‘You need to see this,’ he told her. Miska looked around. There was a comms screen next to the airlock. She patched the message through to that. It was a net news viz. She immediately recognised the slaughter just outside the airlocks on the ae
rostat.
‘… the level of barbarity involved beggars belief,’ the war correspondent was saying, ‘Those not killed in the initial onslaught were subsequently tortured to death while trying to surrender.’
The image changed to an ashen-faced Triple S (conventional) mercenary stood by the blast door to the C&C. She could hear the sound of retching in the background. Through the open blast door they could make out Lieutenant Larouc and some of the Masaai crew suspended in the air by hooked chains. They had been peeled open layer by layer, like a medical dissection. There was something familiar about their grotesque postures. It took Miska a moment to realise where she had seen scenes like this before. The Ultra’s file. This was how he liked to kill.
‘We should have seen this coming,’ Nyukuti muttered. He was right. They had been set up. Royally suckered. She had walked them right into it.
‘Salik wants to speak to you,’ Uncle V was telling her but she was barely listening. She had just remembered where she had seen the blonde woman before. She had been a Marine Raider, like Miska, but she had been based on Earth. She had been involved in some kind of scandal involving the torture of enemy combatants in some brushfire European conflict. There had been deaths involved. ‘We’ve had death threats from the Dogs of Love,’ Uncle V continued. That was a shame. She liked L’Amour, their leader.
‘I’m angry,’ the Ultra said quietly. Miska glanced over at where he stood, looking naked and pure. She knew how he felt.
Chapter 11
Miska was staring at the footage playing on the view screen next to the airlock. It showed Resnick talking to her on the aerostat, among the dead. It had clearly been shot by one of his squad’s helm-cams. Resnick’s face was blacked out.
‘You people fucking disgust me, you’re a disgrace …’ he told her and Miska just turned and walked away with the others. Except Kaczmar. Kaczmar had stayed and when he had leaned towards Resnick the Triple S (elite) commander had flinched away. It had been an act, all of it. His words had probably been scripted. There was no way a guy like that was frightened of someone like Kaczmar. A list of Kaczmar’s crimes was scrolling down the screen accompanying footage of the crime scenes, his arrest, and the trial. The footage had to have come from out of system, which meant New Sun/Triple S had been planning this.
Hell, they’ve probably got some kind of revenge think tank consultancy, she decided. The footage changed to a murder scene on board the aerostat. A reporter was explaining how the murders fitted the ‘Fatman’s’ MO. The UN investigators would be over the moon about reporters tramping all over the crime scene.
Miska was shaking she was so angry, mostly at herself. She had walked right into this one.
She flinched away as she felt a hand on her shoulder. She spun to find herself looking up at the Ultra.
‘I can …’ he started.
‘No,’ she told him. Anything he did now would just make matters worse. ‘Get him cleaned up and then take him back to his pod,’ she told the guard droids. The look of hurt on the Ultra’s face was obvious this time but he nodded before the droid took him away. ‘Not him,’ she told the guards as they started to take Nyukuti away. ‘Get changed into civvies,’ she told him. ‘Make sure they’re armoured, draw a PDW, you’re with me.’ It wasn’t that she felt she needed a bodyguard so much as she wanted another gun because of the sheer number of people that were pissed at her.
Nyukuti nodded and then pointed at his neck.
‘You need to get that seen to,’ he told her. It took her a moment to work out what he was talking about. Then she remembered the burns on her neck that she had received when Gunhir had fired the plasma rifle too close to her skin. She touched the blisters and some of her hair just crumbled away. It was the least of her problems.
The med bay was pretty much the last place that she wanted to be. She would have taken care of the wound herself but it was starting to look like time was of the essence. The Doc was still returning from the surface. Torricone was dressing the burns while she pointedly ignored him and spoke to Uncle V, who was still in the CP at Camp Reisman.
‘Miska, you’ve got to take the call from Salik.’ Vido was practically begging her. She didn’t want to speak to Salik right then. She needed time to marshal her forces, work through what was going on, and come up with a strategy to deal with it, but things were happening too quickly.
‘Put him through,’ she told him. Salik appeared in her IVD. He was sat at his desk. It would be one of his absurd liveried servant droids filming him. He would be looking at her animated comms icon.
‘Miska, I’m sure you know what’s coming next,’ he said, his voice full of regret.
‘It wasn’t us. Well, some of it was us. The civilian personnel and all the DoL who surrendered quickly enough were alive when we left. Resnick had them killed to frame us …’
Salik held his hand up.
‘Miska, please. The murders all fit the MO of the individuals in this so-called Nightmare Squad you took with you. There’s footage of you standing among the bodies of some of your victims …’
‘They were combatants!’ She was screaming now. She pushed Torricone away as he tried to apply medgel to the wounds. She was on her feet. ‘It was a fight, a hard fight. They sent two combat exoskeletons after us! I can send you over the helm-and gun-cam footage!’
Salik was motioning for her to calm down.
‘It’s out of my hands. The UN has stepped in. It’s being investigated as a war crime.’
‘It is a war crime! Just not ours! And this is an extra-legal area. The Colonial Administration hasn’t even asked for UN recognition. They have no jurisdiction here. If they did we couldn’t operate.’
Salik’s expression looked pained.
‘They have no jurisdiction here yet. They are already talking about shutting us down because of what happened at FOB Trafalgar. If there is some kind of first contact situation then they can legitimately claim jurisdiction. Look, Miska, the fact of it is I need to remain in the UN’s good graces in order to do business. That means trying to keep a lid on some of the worst excesses that can happen during war time …’
‘But you know that we didn’t do it, don’t you?’ she howled at him.
‘It doesn’t matter what I know, it doesn’t even matter what I can prove. It matters how it looks.’
Miska stopped. She just stared at the comms window in her IVD. To Torricone it must have looked as if she was staring into space.
‘You’re fucking kidding me?’ she finally managed to mutter.
‘All the Bastard Legion’s active duties are suspended. They are confined to whichever base they are currently stationed at, and prohibited from carrying arms pending an investigation.’
‘What about Triple S?’ she demanded.
‘They’re not currently under suspicion,’ he told her.
‘So much for innocent until proven guilty,’ she muttered. ‘If we’re being accused then I want my people looking into this,’ she told him. Salik looked pained again.
‘Miska, please, think about this. Your people are a serial killer with a keen interest in botany, and a disgraced, corrupt FBI agent. How do you think that will look?’
‘I don’t care.’
‘And perhaps that’s the problem. Have you spoken to Vido about this? Your father.’
Suddenly Miska didn’t trust herself to speak.
‘Just make it happen,’ she managed.
She severed the comms link and found Torricone watching her. She held up a finger in warning.
‘Can I finish dressing your neck?’ he asked.
Miska just nodded. She sat down, still trembling. The medgel felt cool on her neck as Torricone applied it.
‘I only heard half of that conversation,’ Torricone said.
‘Just don’t,’ she tried to warn him.
‘You seem to feel you’ve been unfairly treated,’ he continued, apparently unaware of just how much danger he was in. ‘Maybe you might want to consider how the victi
ms felt, regardless of who killed th—’
Miska was screaming. She somehow carried Torricone across the med bay by his neck and slammed him against the wall. Her knife had appeared in her hand. She was only partially aware of someone entering the med bay.
‘Miska!’
A hand grabbed her knife arm as the blade plunged towards a terrified Torricone’s chest. She was picked up and slammed into an operating table. Nyukuti appeared over her, trying to say something. She neck-locked him with her legs and then straightened them, skipping off the table and taking Nyukuti to the floor.
‘Miska!’ her dad’s voice from one of the view screens cut through her fury. The tip of her knife was millimetres from Nyukuti’s eye.
‘I’m sorry,’ Miska said. She was sat on one of the stools in the med bay, breathing heavily. Nyukuti was leaning against the wall. He nodded. Torricone didn’t look mollified by her apology in the slightest.
‘Fuck you,’ he told her. Miska looked sharply up at him. ‘You just can’t take responsibility for your actions, can you? Whether you did it or not, those people are dead because of the choices you made. Think about that the next time you’re feeling sorry for yourself!’
Miska was on her feet again. Nyukuti pushed himself off the wall and interposed himself between them.
‘Just piss off, mate!’ he told Torricone. Torricone turned his stare from Miska to the stand-over man.
‘What?’ Torricone demanded.
‘Seriously, I don’t want to get killed over whatever this is,’ he said, pointing between the two of them. Torricone kept staring at Nyukuti. The stand-over man didn’t turn away. ‘How far do you want to take this, brah?’
Torricone leaned around Nyukuti.
‘I’m fucking sick of this,’ he told her and stormed out of the med bay.
Nyukuti moved away from Miska before turning to face her.
‘It would be a lot simpler if you just fucked him,’ he told her.