by Gavin Smith
They were through the fires of atmospheric entry. Cooling thermals rising from the jungle were causing some chop but she’d experienced worse. She received a heavily encrypted comms link request. She opened it.
‘I’m not in the mood for any more bad news,’ she said.
‘Define bad news.’ It was the Ultra. She shared the link with her dad in the Cyclops.
‘Where the fuck have you been?’ she asked. It was difficult to make out the Ultra’s surroundings in the encrypted feed. It was being shot from Bean’s helm-cam, apparently. It looked as though he was standing at the bottom of a hill but nearby she could make out what looked like hooches. Some kind of military camp, then. Even for night the camp looked dark. She couldn’t see anybody else moving around. At least the Ultra was clothed this time, though he only wore inertial armour and he still only appeared to be armed with a knife.
‘Moving from atrocity to atrocity,’ he told her. ‘Following our so-called punishment squad. Torricone and some of the others have been sequestered.’
‘We know.’
‘We thought we were tracking Resnick’s people,’ the Ultra explained.
‘Where’s the punishment squad now?’ Miska asked. She couldn’t quite bring herself to use Torricone’s name.
‘They rendezvoused with Resnick,’ the Ultra told her.
‘That doesn’t make sense,’ her dad said. ‘Why not leave Torricone and the others in play, committing more crimes, getting us into more trouble?’
‘We can’t get into more trouble,’ Miska told him.
‘That’s the most optimistic thing I think I’ve ever heard,’ her dad said across the comms link. She was surprised to see a small smile on the Ultra’s lips.
‘I mean as far as the punishment squad goes. Five atrocities or fifty, it’s the same effect. Ties us up, gives them more time,’ she explained.
‘They need Torricone and his people back to either hide the evidence of the sequestration, or …’ the Ultra said.
‘Use them as a human shield against us,’ Miska finished.
‘Make us fight each other,’ her dad said. ‘I really don’t like these people.’
‘Everyone’s got to make it personal,’ Miska muttered.
‘What do you want us to do if we encounter Torricone and the others?’ the Ultra asked.
‘Why’re you even asking me that? You know the ROE.’
The Ultra stared for a moment or two.
In the shuttle the Cyclops’s head looked between his legs, lens focusing on her.
‘We’re going after Resnick and his people,’ the Ultra told her after a moment or two.
‘There’s something else up there, something truly dangerous,’ she told them.
The Ultra nodded. ‘I’m curious,’ he said.
On the shuttle the Cyclops was shaking its head. It was kind of an incongruous gesture for a war droid to make.
‘Where are you now?’ she asked.
The Ultra did not answer. Instead he just nodded to Bean, who panned the camera around.
‘Oh,’ Miska said.
‘We left a couple of presents for you as well,’ he told her.
‘Personally I would have opened with this,’ her dad said as the Cyclops looked around Camp Badajoz. Miska was doing the same, her artificial eyes amplifying the faint red light that managed to penetrate the jungle canopy. There had been a fight. That much was clear. Triple S had laid down a lot of fire both from slugthrowers and actual flame guns, which, outside of the huge flamers carried by bunker-busting mechs, wasn’t a weapon that a modern army tended to use.
The camp itself was a natural amphitheatre with hills on the south, west and east side. The CP, many of the hooches, and the shuttle/gunship landing pads were built into the hillside, along with SAM, point defence and artillery emplacements. Ammunition storage, machine shops and the mess were in the basin formed by the hills. The northern, jungle-facing perimeter was a raised trench system made of bulldozed earth. Miska, Nyukuti and the Cyclops her dad was wearing were looking down on the base from just below the brow of the southern-most hill.
Her own mechs were kneeling down behind whatever large, solid cover they could find. They were organised in a rough circle around the perimeter, though she’d ordered Mass to make sure that the north was particularly well defended. What she couldn’t understand, however, was why the Triple S mechs were frozen in place like petrified giants. They had creepers crawling up them as well.
The hillsides were covered by row after row of impaled, headless bodies. All of them wearing Triple S uniform. Miska hadn’t checked all the bodies but she was pretty sure that most of them were Triple S (conventional) and support staff.
‘I sent him after Resnick,’ Miska said by way of explanation. The Ultra was nothing if not focused.
After the Ultra had shown her what had happened to Camp Badajoz, Miska had sent the Satyr scout mechs in for a fast recon. When they had confirmed the Ultra’s intel the rest of the Bastards had joined them. She’d had mech and infantry secure the camp. Pegasus 1 was providing air support from above and the Armoured Bastards were splitting their time between patrolling and nesting in the nearby trees to provide overwatch. She had the Satyrs patrolling the perimeter using their reactive camouflage. Kasmeyer’s fire team were scouting to the north but she had told them not to go too far.
‘I kind of want to meet whoever is doing this and shake their hand,’ Miska said.
The Cyclops turned its head towards her.
‘These were just soldiers,’ her dad told her.
‘You’re right. We need to go and get Resnick, Duellona and that oily fuck Campbell and feed them to whatever this is,’ she suggested.
‘That’s a better idea,’ her dad admitted.
Nyukuti chuckled. He was an unobtrusive shadow wherever she went, despite his armoured bulk.
‘Sneaky-One-Actual to Hangman-One Actual,’ Kasmeyer said over an open comms link.
‘Hangman-One-Actual, what’ve you got?’ Miska asked. She was seeing light-amplified footage from Kasmeyer’s helm-cam. She accessed the helm-cam footage from the other three members of the scout team. The forest just outside the camp looked diseased somehow. She saw several canisters the size of old-fashioned oil cans. They had biohazard signs on them and were riddled with holes.
‘Looks like Triple S rolled them down the hill and shot them up,’ Kasmeyer told them. ‘Smells fucking horrible, chemical stench.’
‘Okay, get out of there,’ she told them. ‘Get back here. Hangman-Two-Actual will assign you a search area in the camp.’ From the helm-cams she saw the scout team move quickly away from the chemicals.
‘Sneaky-One-Seven, to Hangman-One-Actual,’ Kaneda said over open comms. According to her IVD he was heading back towards the trench system in the north. ‘This seems to be where much of the fight was. I’m seeing lots of fire damage here as well.’ She accessed his helm-cam. He was right. They were moving through a large area of recently burned moss and scorched root structure. It looked like a green hell.
‘Offensive-Two-Actual,’ the lieutenant in charge of the Offensive Bastards second platoon said over comms. ‘You need to see this.’ Miska minimised the feed from the scout team and opened up Offensive-Two-Actual’s helm-cam feed. He was up by the landing pads. Aim-lights attached to their M-19s played over the light-amplified images of the same containers that the scout team had discovered. These ones weren’t riddled with bullets. Instead they were strapped into plastic pallets by the side of the landing pad as though they had just been unloaded. Nearby, a cargo-handling exoskeleton looked frozen mid-movement. There was no pilot but there were bloodstains in the pilot area.
‘Looks like death-strength defoliant,’ Offensive-Two-Actual said. He moved around and shone the aim-light onto the rifle-like apparatus. Their barrels ended in nozzles and they had canisters the size of a small fire extinguisher attached to them. They were in crates that had been smashed open in a hurry, and it was clear that several of the
squirters were missing. ‘Looks like we’ve got some military grade super-soakers as well,’ Offensive-Two-Actual added.
‘Offensive-Two-Three-Actual,’ the sergeant in charge of second platoon’s third squad said. ‘We’ve got some flame guns here as well.’ Lights played over opened crates with the flame guns and fuel canisters. Again they were next to the landing pads and again some of the weapons were missing.
‘Pass them out?’ her dad asked.
‘Hell yes,’ Miska said. ‘Check them first but make that happen.’
‘Didn’t do them much good,’ Nyukuti said, tension in his usually calm voice.
‘Depends,’ her dad said. ‘It might have enabled Triple S to break out and make it to the river.’
Miska glanced at Nyukuti. He didn’t look convinced. She didn’t think they had enough information to support her dad’s idea just yet.
‘I don’t think they had time to equip everyone with them,’ Miska told the stand-over man, and then to her dad: ‘Do it quickly, and make sure there’s a good mix of defoliant and flame gun.’
She heard him start giving orders over the comms.
‘Sneaky-One-Three to Hangman-One-Actual,’ Hogg said over open comms a little later.
‘Hangman-One-Actual, here’
‘I’ve got something I need you to see yourself,’ Hogg told her. He sounded hesitant, as if the last thing he wanted to do was tell her this. She enlarged the feed from Hogg’s camera. She saw two bound and gagged Triple S support personnel wriggling around on the ground. They had been left in the shadow of the Camp’s CP. The Ultra’s ‘presents’.
There was a great deal of activity as Miska made her way down the hill towards the CP accompanied by the Cyclops and the ever-present Nyukuti. Second Platoon was busy delivering the squirters and flame guns to the other platoons.
One of the headless bodies impaled on a stake caught her eye. Fungus was already starting to grow from the severed neck but Miska recognised the powerful build.
‘Semper Fi, sister,’ she told Jones. Then she continued down the hill. She was glad that the Bastards hadn’t been responsible for Jones’s death.
‘Hangman-One-Actual to Heavy-One-Actual,’ Miska said. ‘I want both your bunker-busters on the northern perimeter. Anything happens I don’t want them to mess around. They burn whatever it is and we ask questions later. If it doesn’t come from the north I want them to move position, same rules. Burn it, burn it with fire.’
‘Heavy-One-Actual to Hangman-One-Actual, understood,’ Mass said. Moments later the mechs started changing position. Infantry scurried out of their way. Miska could feel their footfalls through the earth as she reached the CP. Hogg was standing over the two captives. He didn’t look happy.
‘Rejoin your fire team,’ Miska told the ageing terrorist in an attempt to forestall what she suspected was about to come. He didn’t move. ‘You’re going to be difficult, aren’t you?’
‘Flame throwers, defoliants, really?’ he demanded. ‘I came down here to kill corporate assholes. Not help you murder the forest.’
‘Seriously, dude, if it’s trying to kill you then it’s self-defence,’ Miska told him. He opened his mouth to argue further. ‘We are trying to kill corporate assholes but we need a moment here, so could you please just go away so I don’t have to blow your brain up?’
‘Or I shoot you,’ her dad added.
‘Or Nyukuti hits you with a boomerang,’ Miska suggested, mostly for variety. She was quite impressed that Hogg held his ground.
‘What are you going to do with them?’ he asked and nodded towards the two captives.
‘Decoupage,’ Miska told him. Hogg frowned. ‘I’m a slaver and a killer, not a torturer.’ The two captives seemed quite excited by this and were rolling around on the ground making squealing noises through their gags. ‘How about this, if you don’t fuck off right now I’ll shoot both of them in the groin?’ she suggested.
‘Miska …’ her dad said from the Cyclops.
The two captives seemed even more agitated now. One of them had managed to sit upright and was trying to scream ‘fuck off’ at Hogg through his gag.
Hogg stood glaring at her. Miska drew her Glock. The two captives were in a frenzy now. Hogg walked away.
‘I’ll put him in for a discipline,’ her dad told her.
‘Everyone’s being so fucking difficult,’ Miska muttered. Truth was that Hogg had kind of reminded her of Torricone. She looked at the two captives, and held her gun to her lips. ‘Shhhh,’ she told them and then removed the gag from the one who’d sat.
‘In as concise and straightforward a manner as possible, tell me what happened here,’ she said to him.
The captive was a fleshy man in his mid-forties. His soiled overall suggested ground crew to Miska. He looked between Miska, the Cyclops war droid, and Nyukuti.
‘Oh my god, you’re the Bastards aren’t you?’ He sounded terrified.
‘Don’t believe the hype,’ Nyukuti told him.
‘More concisely than that,’ Miska suggested.
The man just stared at her.
‘Now!’ her dad demanded, his voice emanating from the Cyclops, making both captives jump.
‘We hid, it’s why we’re both alive,’ the man told them. ‘We didn’t see much, but roots grew out of the ground … through people … vines lifted them into the air and tore them apart.’
‘So the jungle came alive?’ Miska asked. It sounded ridiculous saying it out loud but it was what all the evidence had been pointing towards. After what Doc had told her about the ambulatory trees she suspected that it was some kind of natural self-defence. She could respect that. She just couldn’t let it kill her people.
‘It was more than that,’ he told her. ‘There were … things … people.’
Miska felt Nyukuti turn to look at the man.
‘People, are you sure?’ her dad asked.
The man nodded and opened his mouth to talk but a private from the Offensive Bastards second platoon ran up and handed Miska a flame gun and Nyukuti one of the squirters full of biohazardous defoliant. Miska thanked him and sent him away.
‘People,’ she prompted.
‘I saw them, in the flames, before the mechs stopped working,’ he told them. This wasn’t good. It suggested some kind of EMP effect that was somehow strong enough to affect military grade shielded equipment had been used against the tech.
‘Why did the mechs stop working?’ her dad asked. The man just shook his head, it was clear that he didn’t know.
‘What did they look like?’ Nyukuti asked.
‘Not human,’ the man told her.
‘Can you be more specific?’ Miska pushed.
He just stared at her. It was clear that he didn’t have much in the way of an imagination.
‘Look,’ he told them, ‘I saw one of the combat exoskeletons get hit with something that looked like an arrow, a wooden fucking arrow, and it went straight through, killed the pilot.’
Miska wanted to call bullshit but it tracked with what she’d seen at FOB Trafalgar.
‘Resnick?’ Miska asked. She had thought it impossible for the guy to look more afraid than he already was. It was clear that he’d already soiled himself. That was fair enough, he’d had a difficult day. First he’d seen his friends massacred by wood nymphs, then he’d been taken prisoner by the Ultra and his band of merry serial killers. It was enough to make anyone soil themselves. She was still a little surprised when he pissed himself at Resnick’s very name. He was trembling. Shaking his head. ‘Really?’ she asked.
‘You don’t understand … those people …’
‘Are they a more immediate threat than me?’ Miska asked and put the barrel of the Glock to his head. The other captive was trying to scream through her gag, drool running down her chin.
‘Miska …’ her dad said.
‘I have a family,’ the captive told her.
‘Fair enough.’ Miska wouldn’t actually go after someone’s family. She shot him i
n the head, then a second time. Double tapping out of habit.
The Cyclops was moving towards her. Miska suspected her dad was about to disarm her, so she held up a hand to forestall him. She was surprised and impressed that he stopped.
‘Remove her gag,’ she told Nyukuti.
He shook his head.
‘CP,’ he told her. He was right. A close protection detail’s job was to look after their subject, not be at their beck and call. He couldn’t protect her if he was mucking around with a gag. Miska had the Glock in one hand, the flame gun in the other.
‘I’ll do it,’ her dad muttered. She could hear the disgust at what she’d done in his modulated voice but he reached down and removed the gag.
‘I don’t have a family, I’ll tell you!’ the woman practically screamed at them.
Miska could hear her dad telling everyone not to worry about the gunshots and go back to their tasks over the comms.
And she told them. Resnick’s squad of war criminals were all ex-special forces guilty of heinous acts. They were Triple S’s own pet atrocity makers. They were called the Double Veterans. On Ephesus their job had been to run black propaganda missions to make the Bastard Legion look bad. It wasn’t much more than Miska and the others had already figured out. The male captive had died for nothing. Still, it was nice to get it confirmed.
‘Where did they go?’ Miska asked as she attached the flamer to her AK-47 by joining the mounting rails. It would make for an awkwardly bulky weapon but it would make it much easier to carry both weapons and bring them to bear when needed.
‘They went north,’ the woman told her. ‘They had a flotilla down by the river. They had the conventional troops hold the line while they ran.’
Miska nodded.
‘How many?’ she asked.
‘Four squads,’ the woman told her. Miska guessed that could mean as many as forty-eight soldiers. ‘Three squads of the Double Veterans …’