by Gavin Smith
Miska made her way forward past the wheelhouse. It was getting dark under the canopy as night fell. Her one remaining eye amplified the sparse ambient light.
Red, the huge professional convict who had killed so many people inside that he’d earned himself a pod in solitary, was a problem. She wanted him to volunteer for active service but she and her dad were the closest thing he had left to screws, authority figures he could set himself up in opposition to. He had very publicly announced that he would not be their slave when he had been allowed to train with the rest of them. The Ultra didn’t want him in his squad because he wasn’t nearly sick enough. Besides, guys like Red murdered guys like Kaczmar, Bean and, if they could get away with it, Grig, to improve their reputation in prison. Miska certainly didn’t like Mass’s suggestion. She was pretty sure that as well-trained, augmented and experienced as she was, Red would tear her apart. Still, it was a problem for another day.
Kasmeyer was leaning against the front of the wheelhouse. His eyes were closed but Miska could see he was still awake. She knelt down next to him.
‘Kasmeyer,’ she said quietly. He opened one eye to look at her.
‘Boss?’ he asked.
Kaneda was perched on the bow of the boat, on watch. He glanced behind him towards Kasmeyer and Miska.
‘How’re you doing?’ she asked.
There were a few moments where he just looked at her. It was a stupid question, she’d never been good with the sort of easy small talk that officers were supposed to do to make their people feel better, to bolster morale.
‘I’m good,’ he told her finally. Kasmeyer was a quiet guy but, as far as she could tell, a good squad leader. He sought the path of least resistance, avoided a fight where he could, but tended to bring home the intel they needed. Miska had wondered if he was just so non-descript everyone ignored him. Miska’s only worry was that he wasn’t aggressive enough for what was to come.
‘Why’re you here?’ she all but blurted out.
Kasmeyer blinked.
‘I thought you wanted people?’
More like needed, she thought.
‘I do …’ she started.
‘You can’t figure my angle?’ he asked.
‘That obvious?’
‘Kinda understandable.’ He nodded towards Kaneda. ‘Someone’s gotta watch his ass,’ Kasmeyer said. There was something about the way he said it. Nobody was quite sure who was in charge of the Scorpion Rain Society at the moment. Vido, Golda, Teramoto when he’d been alive, had all made plays for rank in the Legion. Power and influence as they saw it. Kaneda, if he was rising through the Yakuza’s ranks, hadn’t. She was, however, starting to wonder just who was in charge of the Sneaky Bastards’ first squad, or possibly the whole platoon. There were a lot of Bethlehem Milliners in the Sneaky Bastards. It was a solid power base for Kaneda, who’d been a member of the bōsōzoku gang before he had been promoted to a member of the Yakuza.
Miska and her dad had tried to split up the gangs initially but it was pointless. Every military base of any size that she’d ever been to had its own gangs. The same went for any ship beyond a certain size as well. She’d been on carriers that had all but ghettoised. There were no-go areas depending on who you were and what you represented. But she did object to the gang politics when they blew back as operational problems.
Miska nodded towards Kasmeyer’s SAW, which was propped up on its bipod and laid out alongside him. ‘You ready to use that?’
Again he didn’t answer immediately. Miska had never entirely trusted people who had to think before they spoke.
‘I’ll be honest with you, I don’t want to but I will,’ he told her. She frowned. The last thing she needed was any more reluctant soldiers. She opened her mouth to tell him so. ‘I didn’t kill those people,’ he suddenly blurted out.
Kaneda glanced back at him.
It took a moment for Miska to work out what he was talking about.
‘The hijacking?’ she said, remembering his file. He’d snuck on board an automated ore transport to let his accomplices on board. Then they’d discovered stowaways.
‘I didn’t want to kill them,’ he told them.
Didn’t want to cop a plea either, Miska thought. If what he was saying was true, and Miska’s gut reaction was to believe him, then he could have turned in the others for a reduced sentence.
So I guess he’s loyal.
‘I can do my job.’ He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as her.
‘Well, you’ll mostly be shooting at trees and people who really deserve it.’
‘What about the sequestered deserters?’ he asked.
That gave her pause, but only for a moment. ‘Somebody’s shooting at you, you shoot back.’
He nodded. He was scared. That was clear. She supposed it was a natural reaction to the circumstances. She suspected that even the guys on their side were terrifying to Kasmeyer. She just couldn’t shake the feeling he was frightened of something else. She glanced over at Kaneda. He still had his back to them.
‘Get some sleep,’ she told Kasmeyer. It sounded like the sort of thing a commanding officer was supposed to say in these circumstances.
‘You hear that?’ Miska asked quietly as she crouched down by Kaneda. She meant the conversation with Kasmeyer.
The world under the jungle canopy would have been in near total darkness now had it not been for her nightvision. The river was continuing to get narrower. As a result it was the lower branches that were arching over the river, making the leafy ceiling that much closer. Huge building-sized roots grew into the water.
‘He’ll be fine,’ Kaneda said, not looking at her, continuing to scan the river.
‘Like you were on Barney Prime?’ She wasn’t sure why she’d said it. Miska had watched some of his gun-cam footage in Kaneda’s after-action reports. He was becoming quite the accomplished sniper. Quite the killer. She had remembered his initial reluctance to kill in a football stadium carpark out in the desert on Barney Prime.
He didn’t answer her but he tensed, just slightly.
‘My father—’ she started.
‘You’ve figured out that certain interests are protecting Corenbloom and you wish this to continue,’ he said. Miska just nodded and then felt a little foolish. He wasn’t looking her way. ‘There will have to be considerations.’
‘A power play?’ she asked.
Now he looked at her, something in his expression she couldn’t read, anger, contempt, sadness, or perhaps the suspicious absence of any emotion.
‘I am not Teramoto,’ he told her.
Miska just watched him until he turned back to the river. If Teramoto had been the abusive father that had helped give birth to this new, colder, Kaneda, then Miska had been the mother. Something about that didn’t quite sit right despite his usefulness.
Raff was stood on the starboard side next to one of the Waders. He had his M-19 at the ready, the squirter full of defoliant still attached to it. He was taking his turn on watch but he looked pretty relaxed.
Miska didn’t want to risk using comms. She had her suspicions about who and what the tree-creatures were and as low tech as possible was still currently the best option. Talking out loud to Raff where it could be easily overheard meant that she had to respect his cover as an embedded war correspondent.
‘How’re you doing, lenshead?’ she asked.
‘Not enjoying this soldier-boy shit,’ he told her. ‘But I’m getting good stuff, and I look like a goddamned hero in the footage I shot at Camp Badajoz.’
‘Assuming the pollen doesn’t crawl in your brain and eat it,’ Miska said brightly. His expression soured. She noticed that Raff’s half-helm had its ear protectors and goggles down, however.
‘Hey,’ he said as she tried to pass him. She stopped. ‘Any idea what hit us last night?’
Miska’s face screwed up in mock concentration. ‘Woodland elves?’ she finally suggested.
‘You know you’re going to look
really hostile in the footage, right?’ he asked.
‘I’m not hostile. I’m lovely, downright fluffy. I just don’t like you or your kind,’ she told him and tried to move on again.
‘Hey,’ he called again.
She stopped, again, and let out an audible sigh.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘No joke. Those things are dangerous. What’re you going to do when you find them?’
She moved in close to him, standing on tiptoes to be close to his ear.
‘Diplomacy,’ she told him. ‘Corenbloom suspects you.’ This last she whispered so quietly that she barely made a noise. She hoped Raff’s boosted hearing picked it up but nobody else’s had.
Raff’s expression didn’t change. ‘You’re not exactly known for your diplomacy,’ he told her back as she walked away.
Corporal Hemi Kohere was sat with his back against one of the Waders watching the dark riverbank go by. He was holding a weapon that looked half club, half knife. Made of wood, it was intricately carved with individual tooth-like blades embedded in the head. The blades reminded Miska of the circular teeth of a hammerhead shark. It was a wicked, if not entirely practical-looking, weapon. Between the archaic weapon, the inverted lower canine tusk implants, and the wooden-like quality his tā moko tattoos gave his face, he did not look as though he’d be out of place with the ferocious jungle spirits of this moon.
‘What’s that?’ Miska asked.
‘It’s called a māripi,’ Hemi said. His accent was lovely, Miska decided, his voice surprisingly soft. ‘Supposed to be shark’s teeth. My ancestors used to get them the hard way. They’d wade out into the sea. Cut themselves and wait for the sharks to come. Punch them in the mouth.’ He looked up at Miska, one eyebrow cocked.
‘Sure,’ she said, laughing, though she could half believe it. He smiled.
‘Local hard wood. Carved it myself, though I had to use a laser, the wood here’s really tough, has to be to hold the trees up. The teeth are titanium with a fused synthetic diamond edge,’ he told her with obvious pride in his voice.
‘Yeah, my blade’s the same,’ she told him. She sat down next to him and drew the double-edged, black-bladed knife that her dad had given her when she’d finished boot camp. She passed it to him. He handed her his māripi. It had a heft to it but it was surprisingly well balanced and felt comfortable in her hand. Hemi inspected the diamond-fused titanium cutting edge of her knife, the ring on the end of the hilt. He looked at her questioningly.
‘It’s based on a sword that belonged to my favourite character in a sense game I played growing up,’ she admitted.
Hemi laughed.
‘A person made this,’ he said, holding her blade up, ‘not a machine.’
‘Yeah, it was the armourer on the base where I trained, he was a friend of my dad’s.’
‘It has mana,’ Hemi said and handed it back.
‘Thanks,’ she said, though she only had a vague idea of what mana was.
‘And it’s been used,’ he said.
‘You get all that from just holding it?’ Miska asked.
‘Just playing the odds,’ he said.
She laughed and handed the māripi back.
‘I like your thingy—’
‘Māripi,’ he supplied.
‘—as well.’
He shrugged. ‘Can’t use mechs, maybe we can’t use guns.’ He held the māripi and made a striking motion with it. ‘I’ll bite these maero.’
‘Maero?’ Miska asked.
‘Wild people, evil faeries who lived in the woods in the south island of Aotearoa back on Earth, where my people are from.’
‘Aotearoa?’ Miska asked.
‘Land of the Long White Cloud,’ he told her.
‘I’ve never heard of it, pretty name though. I thought the Maoris were from New Zealand.’
Hemi just laughed.
‘We’re not facing maero though, are we?’ he asked.
‘What makes you say that?’ she asked.
‘I saw what happened to the Cyclops.’
‘Yeah?’
‘So the arrow hits. Roots grow out from it and wrap around its head, crushing it. Where’d the extra matter come from? It can’t create it out of thin air.’
‘The Cyclops itself.’ She had suspected the same thing.
‘So something is modifying the matter at a molecular level,’ he said. It was clear he was much more than just some dumb gang leader, regardless of how ferocious he looked. ‘Which means …’
‘Nanotech,’ Miska supplied. She’d been thinking the same thing herself, but then she’d been trained about this sort of thing in the Marine Raider Regiment, and then more comprehensively when she’d joined the CIA.
‘But the defoliant works on it, which means that the nanites must have some kind of flora component to them.’ He looked sideways at her. It sounded ridiculous but she thought back to what Doc had told her about Ephesus’s flora, how it appeared to have been tampered with or engineered at some point in the past. She knew Them, the aliens that humanity had fought some hundred years ago in a sixty-year-long war, had been composed of naturally occurring bio-nanites. Their original form had been a sort of extremophile coral.
‘You put this all together yourself?’ she asked.
Hemi shrugged.
‘I like reading, sense documentaries, vizzes, that kind of thing. I was doing some courses in VR when you interrupted my sentence,’ he told her. There was no reproach in his voice that she could hear. He was just providing her with information.
Maybe that’s something we’ll have to look at, she thought. If individual legionnaires wanted to learn stuff beyond their training she certainly had no objection.
‘Any ideas where it’s coming from?’ he asked.
‘A few,’ she admitted.
‘Pretty sophisticated stuff, any idea how you’re going to deal with it?’
‘You’re going to hit it with your māripi,’ she told him.
This time his laugh was a proper belly laugh. It seemed to echo through the jungle. Heads turned their way. She noticed Nyukuti staring at Hemi for a moment or two.
‘Dude, shut up,’ Miska hissed but his laughter was infectious.
She nodded towards Nyukuti when they had stopped laughing.
‘There a problem there?’ she asked.
Hemi turned and looked at Nyukuti.
‘He hurt some friends of mine,’ he finally said, the smile gone now. ‘Everyone breaks but Whānau don’t break easily. Too proud. But with him it would have been better if they’d broken easier. Every minute a year when he dragged them into his dreams.’
Miska knew that when Nyukuti had been a stand-over man he had used custom-made sense programs to torture the criminals he preyed on into giving up their loot.
‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘I want to fight him, not kill him. I just want to know which of us is stronger,’ he finally said. Then he turned back to look at her. ‘But another day.’
It wasn’t ideal, she decided, but it would have to do.
‘Nyukuti,’ Miska said, as she sat cross-legged on the deck next to where he was stretched out. Hogg was sat a little way off looking out over the boat’s stern at where they’d been.
‘Boss,’ the stand-over man said.
Miska glanced down at him. He looked perfectly relaxed. He somehow managed to simultaneously look as if he was in a world of his own and completely alert at the same time. She’d not quite worked out how.
‘Yeah, you’re good, aren’t you?’
He nodded. The biggest worry about Nyukuti was that his loyalty was all a lie. That he was lulling her into a false sense of security until she took him for granted.
‘I am good, boss-lady,’ he told her. ‘This is exciting.’ He held both his arms up, spreading his fingers and then moving his hands one over the other. ‘Last night the dreaming world and the false world started to come together. I think they will merge at the head of the river.’
Miska digested this.
‘Okay, sure,’ she finally said.
‘Burn cold and paint the world red,’ he told her.
She nodded. ‘Good talk,’ she said, and started to get up.
‘Do you want me to kill Torricone?’ he asked.
She froze. She felt a coldness inside her chest. Nyukuti was watching her, intently.
‘Someone shoots at you, you shoot back,’ she told him. ‘Same as it ever was.’ Nyukuti nodded. ‘Now can you give me some space here? I want to talk to Hogg.’
Nyukuti watched her for a moment more and then nodded and got up.
‘I wondered when you’d get round to me,’ Hogg said as Miska lay down on the deck, hands under her head. She was looking up at the nearly impenetrable canopy of leaves and branches. This far up the river the canopy seemed close, even claustrophobic. The air was also starting to cool, though it was still humid. It had that just-before-a-storm quality to it.
‘You know, I knew your uncle,’ he said.
Miska had been thinking about their next move but suddenly Hogg had her attention.
‘What? When?’ she asked.
‘During the Occupation,’ he told her. He meant the Cult of Ahriman’s occupation of Sirius 4, nominally her home world. She knew that Hogg had been part of the resistance, before he had become a terrorist.
‘He was in the resistance,’ Miska said. She knew bits of the story but none of that generation liked to talk about the Occupation, about how her granddad had died.
‘Eventually,’ Hogg said. Miska wasn’t sure what to make of that. ‘His brother and both his sisters were in the British part of the expeditionary force.’
‘I know, Mum coordinated with the resistance through him, after she’d dropped planet-side ahead of the main invasion force.’ It was how her mum had met her dad. He had been doing the same thing in the American sector. This was family mythology.
‘I know,’ Hogg told her. ‘I worked with her and your dad.’
Miska sat up and stared at him for a moment.
‘My dad?’ she asked. He nodded. She thought back to when they’d defrosted Hogg to ask questions about the Che virus, before they’d infiltrated Faigroe Station, the Legion’s first job. She had talked to her dad about Hogg. He had given no indication of knowing the terrorist. Miska knew that her dad took secrecy seriously. He did not talk about his work, but even so this had operational relevance, he would have said something. ‘He never—’ she started.