Gun Runner

by Larry Correia

  A tall man appeared at the doorway. He had dark hair, dark skin, and a red dot of paint on his forehead. Jackson suspected the red dot meant he’d said his prayers today. He carried a small apparatus in his hand, one with a hypodermic needle.

  The old woman said, “Pull up your shirt.”

  “No.” Jackson shook his head. “What is that?”

  “This is your parting gift from Swindle.”

  “You’re going to infect me with some plague, hoping I infect Big Town?” He tried to feign concern. Please don’t throw me into that briar patch.

  “No, I doubt a simple virus or bacteria would work. The scans we did while you were unconscious indicated you have some high-end cleaners in your blood.”

  Jackson’s heart sank. The Tar Heel visited so many worlds and stations that the captain sprang for the best preventative treatments. Even with that, he was still rigorous about decon procedures, and their ship had a pretty decent med bay.

  “We are going to inject a nano bomb into your back. It will be on a biological timer. When time runs out, the engineered agent will aggressively react with your cerebrospinal fluid.”

  “That sounds bad.”

  “It will literally melt your spinal column.”

  Jackson raised his eyebrows. “You couldn’t just go with the plague?”

  “I thought it prudent to have an insurance policy against a man who sells weapons to our enemy. Once injected, you will have exactly forty-six hours and fourteen minutes to complete your task.”

  “I can’t work with a ticking time bomb in my back.”

  “It’s perfectly stable…until it’s not. We want you to complete your mission, Sergeant Jack.”

  “What’s to prevent me from having a med scan and zapping this thing?”

  “You don’t want to do that. A scan will trigger an immediate activation, as will any physical tampering. By the time the doctor figures out what it is and how it works, you will have already been paralyzed, and lost control of your lungs and heart. Or, you can demonstrate the sincerity of your repentance, and I will tell you how to safely deactivate and remove the device.”

  “And I’m just supposed to trust you,” he said.

  “Yes. Because your only other option is Ragnar here shoots you in both kneecaps, we throw you outside, and we take bets on what gets you first. The air or the wildlife.”

  Jackson glared at her, but he didn’t see much choice. She might think her little bio bomb couldn’t be stopped, but he had faith Jane was smarter than anyone on this crapsack planet.

  “Start the clock,” he said and turned his back toward them.

  The needle man proceeded forward. They pulled his shirt up. Hands touched his back. A moment later there was a sting right up between his shoulder blades. He flinched.

  “Hold still,” the needle man said.

  Jackson grimaced, and then it was over. Someone wiped his back with something wet that carried the faint odor of an antiseptic.

  “Glad you’re trying to prevent infections. That just gives me all sorts of peace of mind.” Jackson dropped his shirt and turned around.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Capital. Nothing like starting your day with a dose of spine melt.”

  She said, “Fifty-four hours and three minutes. You’ll want to keep that in mind.”

  Jackson started a timer in his eye display. Swindle days were two hours longer than standard. Which meant his bomb would go off on Friday. That was Leo if you were using the names of the days popular in Big Town. Leo at seventeen-oh-three hours. In most sane places people would be sitting down for a drink and kicking off their weekend.

  “That’s not a lot of time.”

  “Time enough to prove you are a man of your word.” She held up her hand display. The holo that appeared was an aerial shot of the woods.

  “The skirmish occurred here,” she said and pointed at the road. She zoomed in to show the vehicles and the bodies, which were now mostly eaten and scattered. However, there was a flock of birdlike creatures hopping around and working on the bones.

  “You will be dropped three klicks south of that location. Rangers have moved in to salvage what they could. This is the story you will tell. You were left behind, you woke, you saw the caliban, saw a fallen soldier from which you stole a waterjohn, and escaped to the woods. You got lost. You were stung by wollards. You wandered for three days. There’s a creek here, do you see it? You crossed it by scampering along a tree trunk that had fallen and made a sort of bridge. They will not believe you if you tell them you waded or swam across. That’s your story.”

  Jackson nodded, then realized his orange wrist band was gone.

  “What about my wristband? Warlord’s tracking device.”

  “Here,” she said and fetched it out of her pocket. “It’s broken. But you don’t know that. You expected them to come find you.”

  Jackson held his wrist out, and she snapped it back on.

  “Once you get back to the orbital, we will contact you.”

  “That’s it?”

  “For now,” she said.

  “Okay. I need to know your name.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “For this operation my codename is Big Fox.”

  Jackson sighed. So much for seeing if the captain could find any leverage on her.

  “Please sit down.” She motioned toward the bed. She waved at Needle Man to come forward. He had a tiny cup of dark liquid. “Drink this. We can’t have you seeing where we actually are.”

  Jackson drank it. It was bitter and tasted like licorice. And it wasn’t long before he began to feel warm and relaxed. He lay back.

  “Good luck, Sergeant Jack.”

  He was on a planet that wanted to kill him and had just gotten in bed with a bunch of terrorists who’d stuck a nano bomb in his spine, to go up against a warlord with his own army. What could possibly go wrong?

  “Piece of cake.” And then his eyelids slid comfortably shut.

  Chapter 23

  Jackson came to lying on his back under the enormous leaves of a bush. He was back in his cracked mask, Raj, and beat-up patrol suit, body aching like he’d been stung by wasps in half-a-dozen places. Then he noticed something on the underside of the large leaf that was only centimeters from his face. It took a moment for the picture to resolve in his blurry mind. Green with white dots, it was some kind of weird Swindle spiderlike creature about the size of his hand. With fangs. Big fangs.

  “Ah!”

  A jolt of adrenaline surged through him, as he scuttled out from under the bush and stepped back. He looked around and found himself alone. Unless, of course there were more of those wollards somewhere up above, and more spider things hiding beneath the leaves, and who knew what else.

  He immediately spotted his Wakal under the bush where he had been dumped. Using a stick, he dragged out the Wakal. They’d also left him a water purifier, but when he tried to snag it, the damn spider thing attacked the stick. Jackson whacked at it a couple of times, then swatted it back into the undergrowth. He expected it to come barreling out at him, but the thing ran off into the brush.

  I really hate this planet.

  He figured this must be the spot where Big Fox had said they’d drop him, south of where he’d be found, but which way was north? The GPS in his mask was still busted and of no help, so he looked up past the tops of the trees to find the sun in the partly cloudy sky, then stuck the stick it in the ground. He picked out a tip of shadow made by a plant and waited.

  Jackson examined his Wakal. It had only five of the long steel darts left in the magazine. He cleared it, function-tested it—good—then reloaded. Fifi was back in his pocket, but she was inert. He didn’t know if she was broken, deactivated, or maybe her battery was just dead. Then he turned to the waterjohn, which was a little device that circulated air and extracted water from it. It also had a funnel into which you could pour filthy water, to purify it. This one had a symbol on the side that Jackson had seen all over Bi
g Town. Upon feeling the weight of it, he knew there had to be a least a liter of water there. There was a connector on the bag that attached to a receptor at the base of his mask. So he attached it, put his dry, cracked lips on the spout in his mask and sucked on it until the water rose to him. It was wonderful.

  Satisfied, he slung the bag, and brought up the timer in his eye. 49:15 left. Then it was spine-melting time. But he’d have to worry about that later. Right now, he needed to focus on surviving Planet Nightmare. The shadows of both the stick and the plant had moved. And with that movement, he now knew his directions. He positioned himself so the sun was on his left shoulder, and then began his hike through the woods of doom.

  His wollard stings had been fine during his brief captivity, but now they were burning again. Whatever Big Fox had given him with had worn off, or they’d neutralized the treatment so the ranger medics wouldn’t know he’d been treated. Either way, he wasn’t happy to have those reminders back. The itching was infuriating.

  Of course, he couldn’t just walk in a straight line. Because Swindle sucks and hates you. There were too many thickets. There were webs to skirt. And two snakelike creatures that were the exact coloration of the dirt and leaves, and probably poisonous. Then a ledge from which he had to find a way down.

  Worse, a mist began to filter down through the giant trees, obscuring the sun. He could still tell its general direction, but the dimness made it a lot easier to trip, and a lot harder to sense predators.

  It took a long time to make his way back to the battle site. He very specifically didn’t check his timer. He needed to focus on getting back to civilization to make things right. And in the process probably piss off the captain and Shade and the crew to the point they’d probably want to just shoot him themselves. Of course, if they didn’t, he still had the packet of spine-melting Swindle juice in his back to deal with.

  Then he saw a rise that looked sort of familiar. It was hard to tell because the plants had already grown and moved so much, but Jackson was pretty sure he’d run up this one in an exo toward the sound of gunfire. The salvagers should be working right on the other side.

  He rehearsed his cover story one more time as he walked uphill. He hadn’t gone ten steps when he heard a low rumble off to his left.

  Jackson froze.

  It rumbled again.

  Shanks. That was the exact same noise he’d heard at the skirmish. Caliban.

  He stood stock-still for a minute or so, then took another step. A quiet and careful step. Then waited again.

  The rumbles continued, and from the directions of the sounds there were at least two of them. Something large moved through the brush twenty meters behind him, then stopped, probably to smell the ground.

  Jackson knew if he stayed here, he was toast, so he kept moving, slowly, proceeding with extreme care, pausing behind the trunks of trees to listen. He moved at a diagonal away from the sounds. After what seemed an eternity, he reached the crest.

  Below him was the remains of the ruined dropship. Vines and moss had already covered big chunks of it. All the exposed bits of metal had turned orange with rust. There was a new vehicle, some kind of hovering sled, and equipment had been piled on it. Then he noticed movement around the wreck. From the subtle twisting of light, it was the active camo effect of a combat exo.

  The last thing Jackson needed was to walk out in the open and have one of the monsters spot him. He’d seen how those things moved. But not seeing much choice, he looked around, made sure the coast was clear, then stepped out into the misty sunshine to begin walking down the hill.

  Immediately, somebody shot at him.

  There was a crack. A bullet struck a rock next to his boot and zinged away.

  “Friendly!” Jackson shouted.

  Then the man fired again. That one zipped right past his head.

  Jackson ran toward a large clump of stones as more shots rang out. He dove behind them and hugged the ground. A bullet smacked into the rocks. Then another.

  “I’m from the Tar Heel!” Jackson shouted.

  Another shot.

  “I’m the Warlord’s guest. You idiots!”

  And then he noticed his mask was now picking up a weak signal. He was so close that even his damaged antenna connected.

  “Mayday. Can anyone hear me? Mayday.”

  A moment later a female voice came on the line. “State your position.”

  “My GPS is shot, but I’m on the hill overlooking your downed transport. I was part of the hunting party three days ago.”

  “Shenko?”

  “Rook. Jackson Rook. I was hunting with Warlord.”

  “Rook? We thought you were dead.”

  “I’m alive, except your yahoos are shooting at me.”

  “One moment, please.”

  And then he heard the swish of something large moving through the brush and trees toward him. Heard the rumble. Which was when he remembered Warlord talking about how the wildlife was attracted to the sound of gunfire.

  Everloving shanks.

  “You may proceed, Mister Rook.”

  He bolted from behind the rocks and sprinted for the sled.

  Behind him, branches cracked. Something roared. That wasn’t a caliban. For all he knew, it was worse! Jackson poured on the speed as something mottled broke from the tree line and came after him. It was the size of a horse. With a totally different shape and colors than the caliban he’d seen. This thing had big white whorls on its sides and something like a crown of spikes on its head.

  But at least it was smaller than the caliban and that other freaking mountain of a creature he’d seen before. Suddenly three more of these new things broke out of the brush and joined the first. A nice little hunting pack.

  “Bogies! On the road behind!” Jackson shouted.

  “We got ’em, Mr. Rook,” said a calm male voice. “You just keep running toward us.”

  But there were no shots fired. No machine guns unloaded on the beasts.

  One of the creatures trilled.

  Jackson glanced back. They ran like quadrupeds, and had big handlike appendages, with massive curving claws on each finger.

  “Shoot them!” Jackson cried.

  “Keep running,” the man said. “Keep running. Don’t stop.”

  Jackson ran, but he could see the lead beast gaining on him. And he knew there was no way he was going to make it.

  “Just a little farther,” the man said nonchalantly. But Jackson didn’t have any more room. The beast was going to close with him in moments.

  The thing closed the distance. Opened its mouth. It had several long tongues. Each one ended in a spike.

  There was a long burst of gunfire. The muzzle flashes reflected on the active camo exos.

  The animal roared again, stumbled. Stumbled again. Fell.

  A second creature jumped over it and came at him. Jackson dodged to the side. Then the whump of a pneumatic bolt sped past Jackson, inches from his head. Behind him, the creature suddenly nosedived and slid past Jackson on the road, speared through the skull.

  “Got ’em.” An exo-suited ranger flickered into existence just ahead of him. “Come on. We’ve got to split now.”

  Breathing hard, Jackson looked back and confirmed the remaining creatures had hightailed it for the woods. “They’re gone.”

  “Pinkers are nothing. Caliban will have heard the noise though.”

  Another, taller ranger appeared as he shut off his camo. “That was some good running. They nearly had you.”

  “Why didn’t you shoot them sooner?” Jackson demanded, trying to catch his breath.

  “Those little pinkers are smart. You gotta lure those ’uns out if you’re going to get a shot.”

  Jackson just glared at him. “With your crappy shooting I thought you would have wanted to start earlier.”

  “Crappy shooting?” the ranger asked.

  “You seemed to be having a hard time hitting me at three hundred.”

  The ranger’s face wa
s covered but it was obvious he was grinning. “I didn’t want to kill you. I thought you were an Original. I wanted to pin you down to give the pinkers something to toy with.”

  Jackson just blinked in disbelief.

  “Anyways, we don’t want to stay here. Ain’t nothing worse than a curious caliban. Best climb on the sled, Mr. Rook.”

  * * *

  In the command room at the Swindle mountain base, Sam Fain watched the rangers’ helmet feeds of Jackson Rook being rescued. He replayed the scene several times. Then he tracked back through the sentinel feeds.

  Fain had personally overseen the deployment of a network of sentinels in the area.

  Recording bots didn’t survive long in the wilderness here. If they were stationary, the plants would grow over them. Mobile bots avoided the hypergrowth flora, but they couldn’t avoid the atmosphere that corroded their seals. And if the bots escaped both of those things, then there were those that hunted them. The rebels, of course, but that particular area of the woods had been hit by a troop of kulags—smaller-sized animals who traveled along tree branches—that had come through a few weeks ago. Kulags seemed to love attacking his sentinels.

  So, many of the last batch of sentinels were gone, but there were still a good number there, silently watching. He checked the logs of those that had first picked Rook up. Supposedly his transmitter had been damaged, so he hadn’t been marked as a friendly. However, they’d only picked him up when he was about two klicks out. They’d failed to catch him sooner because Rook had arrived from a blind sector. The one that had just been scoured by kulags.

  Very convenient.

  Rook had been one of those at the riot. In fact, all three of the Tar Heel crew who had been at the riot had gone down to the surface. But Rook had been the one that James Overturf had sidled up to off camera. And then there’d been an unexpected strike just as Warlord was returning from his hunt. Rook had gone missing, yet somehow someone with no familiarity with the planet’s multitude of hazards had survived, only to reappear in a blind sector. And all that was supposed to be coincidence?