by Gavin Smith
‘With respect, Colonel, I think they feel that you’re part of the problem but basically they’re looking for an excuse,’ Corenbloom told them.
Miska nodded again. She knew when she was being warned.
‘Okay, thank you both, get some sleep,’ she told them. Corenbloom glanced at Vido and then the hologram flickered off.
‘So we’re going to be exonerated,’ Miska said.
‘Of that,’ Vido added.
‘Eventually,’ her dad said.
‘So what do we do now?’ Miska asked.
‘What do you want to achieve?’ Golda asked. ‘After all, we’re not getting paid.’
It was a good question. She wanted to know what New Sun were up to but that wasn’t enough justification for military action. She knew that Raff would want to know as well. He, and by he she meant her employers in the CIA, would also want any evidence of Martian and/or Small Gods involvement. Miska would quite like Colonel Duellona exposed as well, if for no other reason than it would explain the beating she took at the other woman’s hands. But none of this was justification for an unpaid mercenary action and in terms of Small Gods’ tech, she needed to keep whatever the Ultra was quiet. Except you sent him right out on a mission immediately after saying you wouldn’t.
‘Have we heard from the Nightmare Squad?’ she asked.
‘Nothing yet,’ Golda told her.
‘We’re burning money staying here,’ Vido pointed out.
‘We got anywhere else to be?’ Miska asked. There was always going to be down time, which was going to burn money, though she had to admit the docking fees for Waterloo Station were exorbitant.
‘What do they want?’ Miska asked.
‘New Sun?’ Golda asked. Miska nodded. ‘Does it matter?’
‘It’s bothering me,’ Miska told him.
‘It never hurts to know what your enemy’s objective is,’ her dad said, ‘and they are the enemy.’ These last words were growled. They hadn’t talked about the allegations made but she knew her dad. Rage was bubbling under the surface. God help the people responsible if he ever got hold of them while he was wearing the Cyclops.
‘They want the north, right? The highlands, the mountains?’ Miska said. ‘That’s why they crossed the river, that’s why Trafalgar wasn’t near anything strategically useful.’
‘But if there’s something up there why don’t they just send a force directly? Why such a big military action?’ Golda asked.
‘They want the planet,’ Vido said. ‘That’s clear.’
Miska agreed with him. The military effort was one big distraction, however they justified it. They wanted the planet for some reason and that reason wasn’t the gas mining operation.
‘But Miska’s right,’ her dad said, ‘too much emphasis on the north.’
‘Which is uninhabited, and the survey says there’s nothing of value up there,’ Golda said.
‘Surveyors have been bribed before,’ Vido pointed out. ‘To leave things out of the report that can be exploited at a later date.’
‘Golda’s right, why don’t they just go to whatever it is?’ her dad asked. ‘They’ve managed to set up a no-orbit rule, presumably to hide something. So fly to whatever it is, set up a concealed camp.’
‘What if they can’t fly to it? FOB Trafalgar was extremely low tech. What if advanced tech doesn’t work up there?’ Miska asked.
‘How would that work?’ said her dad.
Miska shrugged.
‘Are we forgetting that there’s something down there killing people?’ Vido asked. He looked less than happy. She suspected that his encounter with the artefact on Barney Prime had been more than enough ‘alien’ for Uncle V.
‘The Doc said there’s something odd with the flora on Ephesus. He suggested that it had been tampered with, somehow advanced along its evolutionary path,’ Miska told them. ‘I think this is all to do with biotech. I mean, leaving aside something that can ram wood through a combat exoskeleton, imagine if you could shut down your opponents’ advance weapons systems? No plasma, no laser, electromagnetics, drones or aircraft.’
‘But how does this help us?’ Golda asked. ‘I mean, are we going to get involved? The war is all but over. Even if we are exonerated and MACE hires us, we may still be on the wrong side of a losing war. New Sun and Triple S have played this well.’
‘I still want to drink beer from Resnick’s hollowed-out skull,’ Miska mused. Vido stared at her, horrified, her dad laughed and Golda smiled.
‘Who shoots at us if we get involved again?’ Miska asked. ‘I mean, the UN know we’re innocent—’
‘Of this,’ Vido pointed out once more.
‘—and if the UN knows then Salik knows. MACE, frankly, need us, so that leaves New Sun’s forces who were shooting at us anyway.’
‘But we’re not getting paid,’ Golda protested again. Her dad was nodding.
‘Vido, can you contact Salik and MACE? Tell him what they both already know, and that we’re back in the fight if Salik wants his cut and MACE need our help. I fancy taking Badajoz back.’
‘Sure?’ Vido asked. Miska nodded.
‘Gunny, sorry, LSM,’ Miska addressed her dad, ‘you and I are going to work up a plan.’ Her dad nodded. ‘We go low tech, slugthrowers only, and no gauss kisses, no air-bursting bullets, in fact nothing more sophisticated than armour-piercing and tracers.’ This raised an eyebrow but her dad nodded again.
‘We may have to print some new weapons and ammo,’ Vido told her. She sighed at the cost but he was right.
‘What would you like me to do?’ Golda asked.
‘Unless you’ve managed to develop sources already, then, other than helping Vido, I want you to wait,’ she told him.
‘For what?’
‘The Nightmare Squad to contact us.’
Miska opened her eyes as she tranced out. She climbed out of the bunk feeling like she’d been lying in bed too long. She looked up at the weapons clipped above her bunk.
The AK-47 copy that she had taken from Faigroe Station as a memento was actually going to get some use it seemed. The carbon composite weapon had been printed from a template that Che had provided when he helped organise the miners on the asteroid station to rise against their corporate masters. Modified to fire a 9mm long caseless round, it was otherwise the same as the pre-FHC weapon that had been favoured by terrorists and freedom fighters all over the world. She’d replaced the stock, pistol grip, and the rest of the furniture with found Ephesus hard wood as a project.
She picked her laser carbine up and started removing the under-barrel grenade launcher from its mounting rail. She would attach it to the AK-47 instead.
She briefly considered taking the big Mastodon revolver that had been handed down through her family. It was such a basic weapon that she couldn’t see how anything could go wrong with it. But she was saving the revolver for a special occasion. For when she caught up with her dad’s killers. She would take the old Glock and the Winchester shotgun that had come from the Daughter’s armoury. The Bastard Legion was going old school.
Chapter 14
Miska strode across the hangar deck accompanied by the sound of gunfire. The industrial white noise generators couldn’t quite drown out the racket of the legionnaires zeroing their weapons on the range that Miska’d had the Daughter’s maintenance droids build. VR simulations were all well and good but sometimes you just had to live-fire. She’d ordered all the slugthrowers that they were taking with them to be equipped with old-fashioned optical sights. Many of them were still slick from the printer, which had been working overtime. If they were right about tech not functioning properly down there then they couldn’t rely on the weapons’ smartlinks to feed them targeting information. She was pleased that her dad’s training regime, which was based on the USMC’s own, had involved learning to shoot properly before relying on smartlinks. She was also pleased that her right hand was pretty much healed and back to normal.
The plan was to drop a fire tea
m from the Sneaky Bastards platoon’s first squad to recon Camp Badajoz. That would be Kasmeyer, with Kaneda, Hogg and one other. The Harpies, with the mechs, and the Pegasi, with the Offensive Bastards, would hold off. A decision would be made depending on what the Sneaky Bastards found. The current plan, however, was to use the Sneaky Bastards as forward observers for the mechs. The Satyrs would take out the camp’s point defence systems and SAM emplacements. The mechs would act as walking artillery until they were close enough to engage Triple S’s armour. At which point the Pegasi would add their own firepower against the Triple S mechs and land the Offensive Bastards, with support from the Armoured Bastards, as and when they could. They had a couple of different contingencies in place, and of course it could all change depending on what Kasmeyer and his fire team found.
She saw Mass heading towards her with the rest of the Heavy Bastards from his two armoured platoons. All of them were wearing full combat armour – padded inertial armour undersuits with load-bearing, hard ceramic plates over the top of them. Normally vehicle pilots would just wear inertial armour but they had packs on their backs and all of them were carrying M-19 carbines.
‘You boys look like you’re ready for a lurp,’ Miska said, meaning a long-range reconnaissance patrol.
‘Never know, boss,’ Hemi growled, just the slightest smile on his face.
‘Sorry, it’s been a busy few days, but good work in Port Turquoise,’ she told them.
There was some smiles and nods from the big tā moko-covered Maoris.
‘You give me a moment, guys?’ Mass asked. Most of the Heavy Bastards looked at Hemi, who nodded. He smiled at Miska and they continued on their way towards the two Harpies attached to the Daughter’s rear airlocks.
Miska frowned. ‘Everything okay?’ she asked. Up close she could see the bruises on Mass’s face, presumably from his disagreement with Torricone. Despite what Vido had said, she was pretty sure that Mass wouldn’t have been able to stop a really committed Torricone.
‘They’re tight knit. They all know each other from home. They resent some Italian guy being in charge of them. I get it. I’d feel the same way if things were reversed.’
‘You could always go back to the Machimoi,’ Miska suggested, smiling.
‘And give up my armoured giant? You must be kidding,’ he told her. She knew that Mass had developed a major armoured war machine fetish, she’d seen it before. ‘The answer’s for us to get more mechs so you can promote me, then Hemi can run the two platoons,’ he continued. She opened her mouth to tell him that wasn’t imminent. ‘I know, I know, I’ll have to earn it. When haven’t I?’
Miska smiled as she heard her father’s amplified voice from somewhere on the hangar deck, shouting at some poor legionnaire who’d fallen afoul of him.
‘Still, I’ve learned a new word,’ he told her. ‘Pakeha.’
‘What does that mean?’ she asked, adjusting two of the magazines in one of the pouches attached to the front of her load-bearing plate.
‘I’m guessing it’s Maori for nice Italian guy.’
She smiled again and then pointed at his face.
‘You okay?’
He grimaced. ‘Torricone and I are going to have another little chat the next time I see him,’ Mass told her.
Miska nodded. She didn’t say anything but she couldn’t see that going well for Mass either. Torricone had been taught to fight by his mother, and Miska knew from personal experience that Mother Torricone was hard.
‘What’s with all the gear?’ she asked, changing the subject.
‘Hope for the best, plan for the worst,’ he said. ‘Most of it will be stowed before we go to work.’
Miska smiled.
‘I’m going to go and get them squared away,’ he said and headed towards the Harpy that had his mech on board.
Just for a moment Miska felt like she was part of some legitimate military organisation. She could almost pretend that the vast majority of people on the hangar deck wouldn’t cut her throat or do much, much worse given the choice. Including Mass.
‘Hey!’ Mass called. Miska turned around to face him. ‘Whatever else finally happens here. What they said about you. That ain’t right.’ He gestured around the hangar deck. ‘We know the truth.’ He turned around and continued heading for the heavy drop shuttle. Miska found herself smiling.
Then she noticed that the buzz of activity had died down. A lot of people were standing around with the look on their face that suggested that they were watching something on their IVD, or in their helmet’s heads-up-display. She saw there was a flashing icon from a news feed in her own IVD. She wanted to ignore it but knew she couldn’t. With a heavy heart she opened the news feed.
It took her a moment to work out what she was seeing. She saw the suspended terraces of an arboculture plantation hanging between the huge trees. It was on fire. Troops in MMI armour and carrying MMI weapons were brutally murdering the tree-farming colonists. At first she thought it was Triple S. Then she saw the insignia on the uniforms. Then she read the headline: ‘Fresh atrocities committed by the Bastard Legion.’ She could barely hear the presenter in some virtual studio talking about ‘punishment squads’ that she, Miska, was supposed to have sent to the planet as revenge for MACE suspending their contract. Then she saw the face of the ‘punishment squad’s’ leader. The grotesque snarl on his face as he put a pistol to the back of a sobbing woman’s head and squeezed the trigger, murdering her in front of her children. She was vaguely aware that Torricone’s squad were made up of some of the other deserters. She was vaguely aware that Torricone was being described as a serial rapist, a trusted lieutenant, and her lover. Everyone was staring at her. She couldn’t think straight for the screaming in her head. She felt a hand on her shoulder. She spun around, almost reaching for a weapon. Not out of instinct but because she wanted to hurt someone.
‘Don’t burn, goddess,’ Nyukuti told her. ‘None of this is real.’
Miska stared at him. She knew that he believed that only his dreams mattered, that they were real in a way the waking world wasn’t. It wasn’t something she believed but somehow his words were getting through to her. Maybe it was just his tone of voice, soft, deep, mellifluous. Maybe it was his beaten face, partially covered in swell patches. The price he had paid the last time she lost her temper and hadn’t been concentrating on the task at hand.
‘We need you cold. He needs you cold.’ This last was whispered.
But last night I tried to kill him! she wanted to tell Nyukuti. Dark eyes watched her as though he knew, somehow he knew. She noticed that both her dad and Vido were trying to contact her.
‘You know what they have done,’ Nyukuti told her and suddenly the screaming stopped, in fact all the noise on the hangar deck didn’t so much stop as go away. And she was calm. New Sun/Triple S had committed one of the most heinous crimes possible.
She didn’t open the links to her dad and Vido’s incoming calls, instead she had one of the security lenses focus on her and feed the image to every screen in the hangar deck, the shuttles, Camp Reisman and anywhere on board where the prisoners, her legionnaires, could see it.
‘New Sun and Triple S have sequestered some of our people,’ Miska said, ‘They can’t do this. We’re going to make an example of them.’
There was no cheering. Nothing like that, but as the legionnaires returned to work they did so with renewed purpose.
She felt eyes on her. She looked up to see Raff – wearing inertial armour and carrying a pack, M-19 carbine and sidearm – standing at the top of Pegasus 1’s cargo ramp, watching her. She nodded and turned towards Nyukuti. He was wearing full combat gear as well, carrying a slugthrower squad automatic weapon.
‘You look beat to shit,’ she told him. ‘You good to go?’
Nyukuti didn’t dignify her question with an answer. He just fell in next to her as she strode towards Pegasus 1.
The shuttle shook as they hit Ephesus’s atmosphere. Miska was standing, holding onto one of
the handrails. The Cyclops war droid was locked in place, standing over her like a huge metal insect bristling with weapons. The two platoons of Offensive Bastards were strapped into the seats that ran along either side of the assault shuttle’s cargo hold. She had the funny feeling that they were watching her when she wasn’t paying attention but then looking away if she looked towards them. They no doubt wanted to know what she was going to do if they found Torricone and his sequestered ‘punishment squad’.
Sequestration technology, implanting neuralware that effectively allowed an operator, or an AI expert system, to puppeteer a human being, was among one of the most illegal technologies in human space. A number of nation states, including America and its colonies, still executed those caught using it. It was so obvious that Torricone and the others had been sequestered. She knew that there was no way he could ever act like that. The problem was she didn’t have access to the neurosurgical tools that would be required to remove the sequestration implants. That was even assuming the Doc had the skills required to do the surgery. And of course Torricone had deserted.
The Rules of Engagement: if they are under arms then they are a legitimate target, she told herself. The reassuring thing was that she was pretty sure she could do it. The worrying thing was just how much she didn’t want to.
She was trying not to think too much about how close to sequestration what she had done to the legionnaires was. But even if she could have, she wouldn’t have used sequestration. She had put them in a horrible situation, narrowed their choices, but they were still themselves, however bad that was. It was a fine line, but it was enough for her.
She had spoken to Vido. All he had said was that he was going to handle the PR angle. He had sounded angry, a cold anger. He had sounded like he’d had quite enough.
The UN had protested but any way you cut it, Salik had the power in the sky over Ephesus at the moment. Miska did wonder if the UN were in touch with the Teten. Could they call the FBI destroyer in to help, until a peacekeeping force turned up? That would complicate things. Golda had spoken to Salik, made it clear that the Bastard Legion were going planet-side. That they were going to deal with these war criminals and anybody who stood in their way. MACE were fighting a losing battle against Triple S (conventional) and (armoured) in the west. They were too busy to object. By all accounts Salik was not happy but he did not try and stop them.