by Gavin Smith
That’s a lot of potential bad guys, Miska thought.
‘These were spares,’ Hemi suggested, ‘or those things killed too many of their people and they didn’t have enough to make it worthwhile taking them.’
‘Check them for booby traps,’ she told them.
‘Because you’re going north, right?’ Mass asked.
Miska turned to look at him.
‘Probably into more of those tree-things and we can’t risk taking mechs or air support in there,’ she told him. ‘Want to get yourself killed just because you want to try out a new toy?’ she asked.
‘And to impress you,’ Mass said still grinning. It was infectious.
‘Still bucking for promotion, huh?’ she asked him.
Mass gripped Hemi’s arm.
‘Need to get out of this young man’s way,’ he told her.
‘Until that day?’ Miska asked. Her smile had gone.
‘Until that day,’ Mass agreed. His smile had only left his eyes.
Exfil point three was a grotto-like clearing in the jungle. The pool at the base of the waterfall was of sufficient size that there was a slight break in the overhead canopy to let the light in, which in turn meant that the pool was surrounded by non-fungal undergrowth, a relative rarity on Ephesus.
The shuttles, with the exception of Pegasus 1, were parked back in the shadows under the canopy. The mechs, having been defoliated and then decontaminated, were being loaded into their cradles. Most of the Bastards were preparing to head back to the Daughter. There was just no practical way to transport them into all into the north, not with the pollen fall, as much as Miska wanted to. She’d had Hogg collect some of the pollen. She would have it taken back to the Daughter for the Doc to look at, though she already had her suspicions as to what it was. The weird arrows had given it away. That was not a practical way to deliver a weapon in this day and age.
She had managed to get through to the Daughter and spoken to her very worried dad. The copy of him that had been wearing the Cyclops hadn’t managed to upload, so he hadn’t assimilated the Camp Badajoz experience. Miska wasn’t sure she’d helped much when she told him what a buzz it had been.
She had let her dad in on the plans. It was clear that he hadn’t liked them, but he hadn’t argued. The UN still hadn’t released the news of their innocence of the aerostat massacre. The whole punishment squad thing was complicating that. MACE and the Colonial Administration seemed prepared to accept that the punishment squad were either sequestered or, to their minds more realistically, a rogue element. Whatever, Miska had thought when her dad was telling her this. MACE were happy to deal with the Bastards again, but the UN was hampering this. Her dad had told her that Vido was handling the PR and legal problems.
She had the remaining members of the Offensive, Sneaky, Heavy and Armoured Bastards gather just under the jungle canopy, in sight of the waterfall, that fed the pool, that fed the tributary river that snaked through the trees to join the Turquoise. The river was much narrower this far north than it was down by Port Turquoise. She had to move her head to look at all her Bastards because of her loss of depth perception. A few of them were walking wounded, and they would be medevac’d. A number of them hadn’t got their goggles down quickly enough and the pollen had destroyed their artificial eyes. Others had prosthetic limbs that no longer worked. Most of them had the thousand-yard stare – last night’s fight had been intense and against a terrifying foe that none of them understood. A few were perfectly composed. She knew what that level of fearlessness in the face of what they had faced last night meant, especially in a prison population. They were the psychopaths. They were probably the people that she was going to be addressing. The people she needed.
‘What we did last night was as incredible as it was unprecedented. Those things walked through Triple S conventional, while Triple S elite ran away,’ she told them. It wasn’t entirely clear that was what had happened but it was starting to look more and more like the truth. ‘Well, we’re not impaled on spikes. They didn’t take our heads.’ That wasn’t entirely true. They’d lost a few heads early on in the fight. ‘I’m not going to bullshit you, I’m going north to where those things live. I’m going to hunt Resnick and his black propaganda squad, these so-called Double Veterans. I’m going looking for our sequestered people.’
She heard a lot of muttered ‘fuck that’s, saw some of them shaking their heads at the mention of ‘those things’.
‘I’m willing to offer double combat pay,’ she told them. That got the attention of some of them. She could see them doing sums in their heads. She wasn’t actually entirely sure how she was going to pay the double time as, strictly speaking, nobody was paying them at the moment, but Resnick, Triple S and New Sun had all really got under her skin.
‘Triple,’ Mass called from the ranks. There were a few half-hearted cheers.
‘Two-and-a-half times normal combat pay,’ she told them, ‘my final offer.’ She could work out how to make that come true later. ‘I need nine people; we’ll be taking flame guns and defoliant,’ she told them. She was also going to take all the 30mm HEAP grenades she could find. If possible she wanted the belts that fed automatic launchers on the Waders filled with HEAP grenades.
Mass stepped forward, as did Hemi. Miska had expected this. She nodded at them both. Mass returned an ironic salute.
Corenbloom stepped forward. Miska looked at him and raised an eyebrow. He shrugged.
‘Golda ordered me to, he wants an intelligence element with you,’ he explained. Something about the story didn’t quite fit but she let it go. He’d held his own during the battle.
‘I’ll go,’ Hogg said stepping forward, leaning on his compound crossbow.
Miska nodded to him. She was intrigued to know what he had to say.
Raff stepped forward as well.
She shook her head. Raff was more than capable of looking after himself. Her people knew that embedded journalists were allowed to carry arms but it would look weird if she didn’t object.
‘This is the story of a lifetime,’ Raff told her. ‘There’s no way I’m missing out on it. I’ll carry my weight, besides,’ he looked at the rest of the Bastards present, ‘nobody else seems to be in a hurry to volunteer.’
He had a point.
‘You gonna let this lenshead put you to shame?’ she asked them. She was a little surprised to see a few shameful faces looking down.
‘We’ll go,’ Kasmeyer said as both he and Kaneda stepped forward.
‘Is that it?’ Miska asked. Nobody seemed terribly eager to meet her eyes but, frankly, she didn’t blame them.
‘Just seven then?’
‘Eight,’ Nyukuti said.
It would have to do.
The undergrowth started to wave around in the downdraft as Pegasus 1 appeared overhead, sinking down through the gap in the trees. A positively ancient-looking flat-bottomed riverine patrol boat hung by cargo straps underneath the assault shuttle. Pegasus 1 lowered the boat, which they had ‘borrowed’ from MACE, into the calmer part of the waterfall-fed pool.
‘Get the Waders on board,’ Miska told Mass and Hemi.
Chapter 17
Miska drove the boat. It had been the least sophisticated riverine patrol boat that she had been able to find in the short amount of time they had. Made of hardened plastic, protected by ceramic armoured plate and run off a screw-shaped impeller hydro-jet, the patrol boat had been stripped of the majority of its systems and all its weaponry – most of which had been electromagnetic or laser based. It had a satellite uplink, GPS and sonar, largely for finding river debris, but Miska had turned them all off.
The two Waders – she hesitated to call them mechs – were stowed back to back on the flatbed, their telescoping legs folded away underneath them. Should they be attacked while still on the river, the Waders would provide the firepower. The front Wader’s legs would be extended so it could fire over the patrol boat’s wheelhouse.
‘So we’re just going ups
tream in the hope that we discover something?’ Corenbloom asked as he leant on the side of the wheelhouse.
Miska sighed. It had been peaceful piloting the boat, the reflected red light of the gas giant occasionally breaking through the cathedral-like jungle canopy high above, dappling the water. She had been desperately trying to remember everything she had learned about small boat handling as a Recon Marine.
‘Resnick’s people went upstream in a flotilla,’ Miska told him, ‘and eventually they’ll run out of river. We’ll be able to find the boats and follow them then.’
She could see Kaneda and Kasmeyer forward of the wheelhouse. Kaneda was lying on the deck close to the turret that used to contain one of the boat’s railguns. Kasmeyer was practically perched on the bow watching the river ahead. The two Sneaky Bastards were taking it in turn on watch. She knew the others were doing something similar port, starboard and aft. If nothing else they were keeping an eye out for the occasional monstrous branch that fell from the huge trees; the ‘spore mines’, huge sub-surface fungi that exploded when knocked; and bite-seed swarms.
‘How’re you going to track through the mangroves?’ Corenbloom enquired.
Miska glanced over at him. ‘You’re going to dive down and look for footprints under water.’
‘Seriously.’
She sighed again. Nobody seemed to get her sense of humour.
‘It’s more difficult but there are ways and means,’ she told him. Recon had taught her to track. She and her dad had been teaching it to the Sneaky Bastards as part of their own reconnaissance training. Between Kaneda, Hogg Kasmeyer and herself there should be enough trained observers to find Resnick’s path through the waterlogged mangrove swamps. That wasn’t her issue. What worried her was how long it would take. Which was why— ‘You’re relying on the Ultra to track Resnick and leave a trail of breadcrumbs, aren’t you?’ Corenbloom said, interrupting her thoughts.
‘Relying is a strong word.’ She wondered briefly how Corenbloom had found out about the Nightmare Squad’s presence in-country, was it that obvious? Probably Golda, she decided. Corenbloom was desperate to make friends. Golda could be a useful ally for him.
‘Problem with that?’ she asked.
‘The Ultra? Maybe if I was still a profiler, career FBI. This is kind of interesting. Makes sense as well.’
That got her attention.
‘Well, he sort of had a rule. I’m not even sure it was that codified. Almost an algorithm. He only killed parasites.’
‘By his definition, surely,’ Miska said. She felt better without such excuses. If you’re going to kill just get on with it. Don’t dress it up.
‘Let’s say they were pretty popular definitions. He killed people that he didn’t feel contributed in any way: lawyers, estate and letting agents, politicians, oligarchs who were all take and no give, and their useless spawn. There’s no doubt he was a monster but I think he was trying to help. He wanted to kill and thought these people would be the least damaging people to murder.’
‘You think that’s why he’s helping me?’ she asked. ‘There are no good or bad people, just differing points of view, and I’ll work for the one that pays.’
‘I know you’ve refused to commit atrocities,’ Corenbloom pointed out.
‘That’s hardly a particularly sharp moral compass,’ Miska told him. ‘If I’m on the side of angels it’s normally for an easy life.’
‘We’re after some bad people.’
Miska turned to look at Corenbloom.
‘We are some bad people. If you think what you’re doing is about making amends, you’re fooling yourself,’ she told him. Corenbloom held up his hands.
Miska wasn’t best pleased that he was here. She would have preferred him working on finding her dad’s murderer, and somehow she didn’t think this job was going to require an intelligence element. This was all about the seek and destroy.
Corenbloom pointed at her eye. ‘Think they were aiming at you?’
Miska shrugged. ‘I’m going to assume that it was an accident.’
She checked behind her to where Hemi and Mass were tinkering with the Waders. ‘I need to worry about your history with him?’
Corenbloom looked over at Mass, spending some time studying him.
‘We did some damage to each other, it’s true. None of it really matters now, I guess.’ He turned back to Miska. ‘So not from me.’ He nodded towards Raff, who was standing guard on the starboard bow. ‘The lenshead was pretty good in a fight.’
Miska glanced back at him.
‘A lot of war correspondents are. He’ll probably get some kind of prize for that footage, not to mention a tell-all exposé of us nasty mercenaries.’
‘It was more than just skillsofts. He’d been trained.’
‘Lots of them are before they embed,’ she told him. He looked unconvinced. For someone who’d worked for the CIA she didn’t think she was a very good liar. ‘You talked to him?’
‘A bit. Maybe I should some more.’
‘You investigating something?’
‘Always.’
Corenbloom headed aft to give Hogg a break from watch. Miska saw Mass watching as the disgraced FBI agent walked by on the other side of the Waders to avoid the Mafia button man.
‘Maybe a bit more investigating and a little less crime back in the day would have helped?’ Miska muttered to herself.
‘It’s getting dark, maybe somebody with two eyes should drive,’ Mass suggested.
Miska’s remaining functioning eye was protected behind the drop-down goggles on the half-helm she had borrowed for the mission. The goggles formed a hermetic seal that had proved protection enough against the pollen bloom at Camp Badajoz. This meant she still had nightvision capability in her remaining eye. Some of the legionnaires with artificial eyes, who hadn’t got their goggles down quickly enough, had ended up blind. Thanks to her reduced depth perception, though, she had to move her head from side to side so often that it was actually starting to hurt her neck.
‘You know it’s not a mech, right?’ Miska asked.
‘I used to have a gin palace moored in the marina back in New Verona,’ he told her.
She guessed that a gin palace was some kind of boat. ‘Did it ever leave its moorings?’
‘Frequently. Sometimes I wasn’t even drunk.’ He smiled. Miska guessed it was what passed for charm in his world. She took a step back, rubbed her neck with one hand and gestured for him to take the wheel with the other. He stepped forward, and just for a second looked slightly nervous and then that was gone, replaced by his normal confident smile.
Miska leaned against the side of the wheelhouse and waited.
‘I saw you talking to Special Asshole Corenbloom earlier,’ Mass said.
‘Yeah, it’s a small boat, that’ll happen, but I want you to know you’re still my favourite organised criminal from Barney Prime,’ she told him. ‘Y’know, except Uncle V.’
‘He’s a charmer, no doubt,’ Mass said and then took his eyes off the turquoise water to look at her. ‘I guess that means you see Torricone as a disorganised criminal, right?’
Miska pushed herself off the edge of the wheelhouse.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she demanded, lowering her voice.
Mass met her glare.
‘It means people are talking,’ he told her.
‘You mean people with fucking bombs in their heads?’
‘Yeah, them. How you doing on the recruitment front?’ he asked. The sudden change of subject took her by surprise.
‘What the fuck …? Look I get you’re still pissed off about T … Torricone kicking your ass—’
‘He did not—’
‘—but do you see me cutting that sanctimonious asshole any slack?’
‘That sanctimonious deserter asshole,’ Mass pointed out. Miska stared at him. ‘Things like that don’t help.’
‘Things like what?’ Miska asked. She wouldn’t have been surprised if her voice had actual
ly lowered the water temperature.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘I really don’t, Mass.’
‘Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.’ Mass sounded more frustrated than anything. She wondered if he actually thought he was doing her a favour. ‘If he comes back, chances are he’ll be killed.’
‘Another threat, Mass? Torricone, me when my “time comes”?’ It would be so easy to end this particular problem right now but she’d be killing out of anger and it probably wouldn’t do mission morale much good. ‘Anyone else you want to add to your hypothetical list?’
Mass couldn’t help himself, he glanced back at Corenbloom. Miska leaned in close to him.
‘I mean it, Mass, don’t fuck about on this one!’ she hissed.
He nodded.
‘I get it,’ he told her. Something in his tone made her think he’d seen enough of what lay ahead of them at Camp Badajoz to realise the mission was too important compared with whatever problems he’d had with Corenbloom back in the world. Miska decided she wanted to be somewhere that was away from the button man.
‘Hey,’ he said as she walked away. Somewhat reluctantly she turned back to look at him. ‘You want them to follow you then you’ve got to be the big dog, the cellblock daddy. We respect strength.’
Miska tapped the side of her head. ‘How big a dog do you want?’
Mass was already shaking his head.
‘You gotta earn that shit,’ he told her.
‘Like you, like Vido?’
‘Vido’s respected, so’s Golda, and Hemi, and presumably whoever’s in charge of the Yak at the moment – because they’ve all got influence, they’ve got soldiers. But they’re not the big dog.’
‘Who is then?’ Miska asked.
‘You created the problem when you let him mix, when you let him train with us.’
‘The Ultra?’ she asked, confused. His Nightmare Squad still kept pretty separate to the rest of the prisoners, but Mass was already shaking his head.
‘Red,’ Mass told her. ‘I wouldn’t fuck with Red, and I don’t know anyone who would.’