by Rick Partlow
“Just face it, Val,” Hernandez said, not slurring her words but savoring each one, “you’re a lightweight backwoods colony world hick who can’t handle city life and can’t hold your liquor. It’s probably just as well you’re going into combat, where it’s safer for you.”
“You think that’s where we’re headed?” Summer Prevatt asked. She hadn’t been along on the pub crawl; the bus had grabbed her at the BOQ. Kurtz thought she hadn’t felt comfortable coming along because she was the newest of them and still just a newly-minted Sub-Lieutenant, field promoted from Warrant to take over Langella’s platoon after his death.
“No,” Kurtz drawled, eyeing her balefully, “I think they sent MPs after us at two in the morning because Colonel Conner got bored out there on his beach vacation and decided he needed us to really make it a good time.”
Prevatt reddened in obvious embarrassment and Kurtz sighed, blaming the sarcasm on his hangover.
“Sorry, yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s a fire burning someplace they’ll be wanting us to put out.”
“I hope they got my new Arbalest set up the way I asked.” Ford sniffed impatiently. “I don’t trust these dirtside crews. Wish they’d just let Chief McKee work on our mecha down here like he does on board the ship.”
She was, he noticed, rubbing at her left shoulder unconsciously as she spoke, and he wondered if it was actual pain or just the memory of the injuries she’d received when her missile platform mech had been disabled by an enemy machine. She’d nearly been killed, but it didn’t seem to have bothered her. Not that she’d let on, anyway.
“You can get the Chief to go over it en route,” he suggested instead of asking her if she was okay, which was his first instinct. Some things you just didn’t talk about. “Quick as they shanghaied us on this little trip, I just hope they have our damned mecha loaded on the drop-ship.”
“You’re about to find out.” That was the driver, an enlisted man who’d said not a word to them the whole trip until this point. They might as well have been riding an automated city vehicle, except the military didn’t use automated vehicles. Got all those enlisted troops sitting around, might as well use them to drive the trucks. “We’re here.”
Kurtz blinked and peered out the side window, realizing the Private was right. He’d been so wrapped up in his headache, he hadn’t noticed they’d reached the main gate of the military spaceport outside Argos. It was sliding aside on motorized rollers, the automatic sensors reading the clearance codes in the vehicle’s transponder, and the driver edged forward through before it had fully opened, tires bumping roughly over the couched security spikes.
“There it is,” Paskowski decided, gesturing at the massive, hundred-meter-long lifting body shape of a drop-ship resting on a landing pad a half a kilometer down the service road.
A train of power-loaders cycled in and out of its cargo bay, each carrying a heavy pallet of parts or ammo or raw materials. Unlike every other aerospacecraft at the port, it lacked the seal of the Spartan military on the fuselage, carrying no markings other than a temporary clearance number. Once they were on board, the techs would affix the Wholesale Slaughter badge to the side.
Op-sec, the same reason they were wearing their Spartan Guard uniforms rather than their Wholesale Slaughter fatigues. Those too would be donned once they were on board the Shakak II, just in case Starkad spies were watching.
Ain’t no “just in case” about it. The bastards have spies everywhere.
“This is where you officer types get out,” the driver announced, pulling the bus up behind a cargo truck being drained by power-loaders and taken pallet by pallet up the belly ramp. “Don’t leave any of your shit on my bus.”
“I’d chew that fucker out,” Kurtz assured Paskowski, grabbing his bags, “but I can’t yell with this headache.”
Paskowski snorted a laugh, throwing his duffel bag across his back.
“I’ve never heard you yell at anyone, Val. I’m not sure you’ve got the constitution for it.”
“I yelled at my dog once,” Kurtz assured him. He frowned. “I don’t think he ever forgave me.”
Logan Conner was waiting for them at the foot of the ramp. Kurt didn’t salute despite an almost overwhelming urge to; they’d been instructed to avoid it on the flightline, again for operational security.
“Good morning, sir,” Kurtz said, nodding to the man instead. “I think you got yourself a tan still.”
Logan Conner lacked his father’s intimidating height and mass, but there was something resolute in his grey eyes, in the squared-offset of his jaw that gave a hint of the determination he brought in a fight. If the man wasn’t fearless, he at least hadn’t shown even a moment’s hesitation in battle. He knew Logan was worried people would think he’d been given his Colonel’s rank because of his father, but in Kurtz’s opinion, he’d earned it.
“Glad they were able to scrape you guys off the bar, Val,” Logan told him. His expression sobered and he regarded each of them as they lined up at the ramp. “I can’t tell you all the details until we’re in the ship, but Terrin’s in trouble. He’s on the run and we have to go get him.”
Kurtz swallowed hard, his headache forgotten. He shared a look with the others, a hollow opening up in the pit of his stomach. Terrin had been on Terminus, and if was in trouble, that could only mean one thing. Starkad had found them. Terminus had fallen.
“Let’s not stand around jawin’ then, sir,” Kurtz said. “Let’s get this bird in the air and go find your brother.”
6
“I wish we had a gun,” Terrin fretted, tapping his fingers on the control console while he waited for traffic control to reply.
“You think we’ll need one?” Franny asked, her voice telling the strain of the last three days.
The ship had water, and while they were getting pretty hungry, the ration bars Cordova had given them had kept them going. But the confined quarters had been maddening. Three full days trapped in a space barely large enough for the two of them to fit, unable to move, unable to stretch…it had felt like being buried alive. Not to mention the smell, and the embarrassment of having to use the weird zero-gee vacuum device to go to the bathroom while sitting right next to each other.
“In this place?” Terrin nodded toward the image projected on the front display, the slowly-rotating surface of Trinity, glinting and glimmering with solar collectors. “Hell yes,”
There were two docking hubs, one at each pole, and he was waiting to access what they’d dubbed the north polar dock behind a pair of orbital transfer vehicles, standing out like a whore in church. If you looked carefully enough, you could see the weapons batteries wedged between the solar panels and around the docking hubs of the dwarf planet, targeting anyone who threatened the station or its clientele…and probably anyone who tried to leave without paying docking fees.
“What kind of space station lets you bring a gun inside?” Franny wondered. “Even way out here, isn’t that nuts?”
He tried not to sigh. He knew she found it annoying. After three days cooped up with each other, he was pretty much an expert on what she found annoying.
“It’s only nuts if you assume the ownership and management are trying to cater to the sort of clientele who would think it’s nuts to bring a gun onto a space station.” He also tried hard not to roll his eyes; she didn’t care for that, either. “It’s right there in the files on my datalink. This place was built for outlaws and pirates and mercenaries to do business with each other.”
“And there’s nowhere else we could go?” The question was a whisper, Franny’s eyes fixed on the docking hub, yawning wide and dark and hungry ahead of them.
“We’re down to minutes of fuel,” Terrin said, shaking his head. “Once we dock, I doubt this ship is moving again unless someone tows it away.”
“Unknown spacecraft, please identify yourself for docking records.” The female voice coming over the cockpit speakers was professional sounding for a place like this, he thought, b
ut maybe doing the same thing every day made you seem more businesslike about it.
“We don’t have an official registration,” Franny said, tension written on her face as if she’d just realized it.
“Neither do most of the other ships here,” he reminded her. “They just want a name to put next to our identification profile for convenience.” He scratched at his arm where the sleeve of his Wholesale Slaughter work fatigues was rolled up, feeling dirt under his fingernails. It felt as if he’d never get clean again.
His first thought was to name the ship for his mother, but he rejected it immediately, because there was a good chance he’d never see the thing again and he’d already lost his mother once.
“This is the orbital transfer vehicle Francesca,” he told traffic control, just blurting out the next name that came to him. “We’re a tender for the freighter Margaret.”
The woman working traffic control snorted laughter. “If you’re an orbital transfer vehicle, I’m the Imperator of M’beki. But I don’t give a shit as long as you pay the 300 credit docking fee in tradenotes or Dominion scrip upon debarking. Proceed to polar docking collar A3.”
“Right,” Terrin answered, his stomach twisting into a Gordian knot. “No problem.”
“Umm…” Franny stuttered, a strange look on her face, which he was sure had something to do with him naming the ship after her. “Do we have any money?”
“Courier, take us into the docking bay,” he told the computer before turning to her and shrugging helplessly. “Not a single credit,” he admitted. “All I have is my family account, if I can even access it here.”
“Even if you can, should you?”
Maneuvering thrusters banged impatiently against the hull as the ship’s computer guided them into the hollow cylinder of the docking bay, interrupting his answer and giving him another few seconds to think about it.
Shit. Why couldn’t it be Logan dealing with this instead of me? I’m a scientist, not a soldier.
“No. But this isn’t the kind of place where you can blow off the fees, and we don’t have any other options.”
The computer slid them into their berth as slickly and smoothly as any pilot who’d ever flown him. Better than Katy even.
Guess it’s a good thing we can’t build Artificial Intelligence that sophisticated anymore or she’d be out of a job.
The docking collar tightened around the courier’s universal airlock with a resounding clunk he could feel in his sinuses and they had arrived. He yanked the quick-release on his restraints and pushed the control to open the hatch. It hissed aside as if the ship was sharing in his sigh of agitation.
“Courier,” he instructed, “after we leave, seal the hatch and don’t open for anyone except for the two us. If someone breaks or burns or blows through the hatch, I want you to wipe system memory. Do you understand?”
“I understand and will comply, Mr. Brannigan.” If the computer was disturbed at the thought of suicide, it gave no indication.
“Franny,” Terrin said, the pieces of a plan coming together in his mind even as he spoke, “when we get into the station, I’m going to see about using my family account to get some Tradenotes. We’re going to need them, and it will be better if I only do the one transaction anyone can trace. Maybe we can buy transportation off this place before anyone can track it down,” he said with more optimism than he felt. “While I do that, I need you to take the data crystals with you and go find someone.”
“Find who?” she asked, her voice going a bit shrill. She’d released her own harness but was clinging to it like a life preserver. She was, he thought, close to panic and he didn’t blame her.
“Something Lyta told me about,” he explained, trying not to give into the gibbering building up inside him. “Someone you go to in places like this when you need things taken care of. They call them a broker.”
“You’d trust someone here?” She looked between him and the opening hatch, the harsh light of the docking bay beyond it.
“No,” he said, squeezing past her to lead the way out of the ship. “But I think we’re going to have to.”
I was not trained for this, Francesca Hayden screamed inside her head, wishing she had the luxury of screaming on the outside as well. I’m a computer technician!
She huddled in the corner of the lift car, clutching the case with the data crystals against her side, striving not to make eye contact with the ten other people squeezed into the elevator, and trying to make sure she was aligned correctly for when the rotation of the asteroid turned one of the walls into a floor.
She’d never felt more alone in her life. Not when her father had died and she’d hidden under the table where the bowls of sandalwood strips were kept to be tossed into the sacred fire, refusing to come out and talk to her friends or family. Not when she’d left home against her mother’s wishes to follow in his footsteps and enlist in the Sparta Guard, not even on that horrible first day of military recruit training when they’d taken her civilian clothes, shaved her head, poked and prodded her, inoculated her, and shoved her into a grey jumpsuit. Not when the training sergeants had screamed at her and made her do push-ups until her arms wanted to fall off.
It had taken them nearly an hour to get through security, most of it due to Terrin haggling with the customs official about letting him pay for the docking berth before departure instead of leaving a deposit now. He’d finally had to agree to take one of the customs workers along with him to the currency exchange to get the deposit—and a healthy bribe—with the rest to be paid upon departure.
“You go, Franny,” he’d told her, the broad-bodied, menacing bulk of his escort hanging impatiently over his shoulder. “Our ‘links will work on the system here, so just message me and let me know where to meet you after you find what we’re looking for.”
And then he was gone and she’d been left staring at the thick-jowled little weasel who ran Customs for the station. He rested in a net running across the open, three-walled booth he inhabited to keep him stationary in free-fall, a bearded, sweating spider in his web. But the armored, helmeted guards anchored to the deck with magnetic boots beside him kept the customers respectful, or at least the backpack-fed lasers they carried did.
“Where can I find a broker?” she’d asked him, trying not to stutter the words out.
The man sniffed in derision, as if he didn’t think much of the profession; but he waved a hand down the corridor, where a small crowd of inbound travelers were heading for a lift station.
“Those termites are in the walls almost everywhere,” he grumbled. “But I suppose the most reliable is probably that bitch Kane in G-42.”
She’d wanted to ask him where G-42 was, but she’d felt as if it would have been pushing her luck. Fortunately, the elevator came with a sort of map, although it was as complicated as a circuit diagram. Her eyes wanted to cross just staring at it and the car was already moving before she’d found the corner of the rock labelled “G.”
Did anyone actually plan this place out, she wondered, or did it grow organically like a crystal in a solution?
“What the fuck’s a ‘Wholesale Slaughter,’ anyway?”
Her eyes were furtive, like a bird’s, and she realized she must look like prey to these people and made an effort to move calmly as she turned to see who had asked the question. It was a woman, probably from either a low-gravity world or a Belter since she had to be nearly two meters tall and was painfully thin. Her face was stretched out like a waxworks figure caught in a fire and the image made Franny’s skin crawl. She wore a shoulder holster openly over her quilted vest, and the handgun nestled in it seemed oversized, its handle no doubt custom made for her long, slender fingers.
“Mercenary company,” she said, trying to sound confident.
Apparently, it didn’t work. The woman guffawed far too loudly for the packed elevator, drawing stares from the other passengers.
“You’re a mercenary? What? A fuckin’ mercenary accountant?”
> “I’m a computer technician,” she confessed.
The woman shrugged it off and looked away, probably thinking it was a reasonable answer.
“I’ve heard of Wholesale Slaughter,” someone else spoke up, a man this time, normal sized at least, even if it was the only normal thing about him. His hair was hardened into orange spikes and tattoos of winged snakes crisscrossed his face, running downward onto his neck before disappearing under his shirt. “You’re the ones who took out the Red Brotherhood.”
“Yeah, and those Jeuta assholes out in the Dagda system,” someone she couldn’t see put in from behind the Belter woman.
“Umm, yes,” she agreed readily, then gulped as the car began to descend outward toward the rim of the asteroid, and centripetal force began to pull them all to the deck. “But I wasn’t with them for those; I just signed up a couple months ago.” Hopefully, they wouldn’t ask her a lot of questions she couldn’t answer if they believed she was a new recruit.
“They pay good?” the spike-haired man asked, sounding sincerely interested. “I’d love to get off this fucking rock and back to Revelation.”
Oh, shoot, she thought with a surge of panic. I don’t know what they’re supposed to pay!
“We, umm…” she fumbled for something likely-sounding. “We each get a share of the profits and salvage. How much depends on the job. There’s a signing bonus,” she added in a flare of creativity, “but it depends on your specialty, experience and former military rank.”
“What the fuck do you care, Larry,” asked a short, dumpy woman who looked eighty to Franny but was probably forty given the medical technology out here. “You won’t be able to pay off your debt to Salvaggio for another ten years! She’ll have your balls if you try to duck out on it, and where would you go anyway?”