Merchants of War

by Rick Partlow

  Nate sighed and rubbed at his eyes, propping his feet up on the slats of the stool and resting his elbows on his knees. He was exhausted. The nightmares wouldn’t stop. No matter how much he drank or how many pills he popped before bed, he woke up screaming, tasting Bryan Richardson’s blood, feeling the sticky wetness plastered against his chest and face, the sickly-sweet smell of it choking him.

  “I can try,” he said, careful not to get Ramirez’s hopes up too much. “But if they had those kinds of resources out here, they wouldn’t need contractors like us. What about the other Tagans, the ones we took out at the warehouse? You get anything from them before we evacuated?”

  “I could only grab the CPU out of one of them.” Ramirez made a face like he was about to throw up. “And the fucking pilot was splattered all over it. But it’s pretty fried too, and it’s mostly just operational stuff since it was a Pi-Mech without the sort of remote piloting hardware a U-mech would have.”

  “All right, I’ll make the call,” Nate told him, standing up from the stool and leaving Ramirez to his task.

  The old conference room where they’d set up the table had ample windows, most of them broken, but it provided plenty of light without having to set up the lanterns. They only had so many of those and so many batteries to go around. Nate limped out into the hallway, dim and shadowy even at mid-morning. The walls were stained and peeling and there wasn’t much they could do about it, though they’d swept the floor and mopped it with bleach.

  “This place isn’t exactly the Ritz-Carlton,” he muttered to himself as he stepped into the former garage where they’d stored the mechs.

  “What’s a Ritz-Carlton?” Roach asked him. He nearly jumped; he hadn’t seen her there, nestled in beside her Hellfire on a stepladder, working at one of the hip-joints.

  She looked as tired as he was, with the added effect of grease and dirt smeared on her face and hands.

  “Someplace I was never rich enough to stay,” he clarified. In actuality, he’d never been alive to see one, but his Prime had known what it was. “I’m going to send a message to the DoD Liaison Office and see if we can get some support on this.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that.” She snorted a skeptical laugh. “When was the last time they gave us anything but ammo and spare parts?”

  “I know,” he admitted, shrugging helplessly. “But Ramirez doesn’t have the equipment or the skill to coax anything more out of the CPUs we retrieved and we’re not doing much more than sitting around licking our wounds here.”

  “Buena suerte,” she said, wishing him good luck. He understood the Spanish. The Prime had taken it in college, then gone to a Defense Language Institute course before he’d been stationed in Venezuela.

  I wonder if Venezuela even exists anymore? The last he’d heard, Brazil had invaded in their quest to unite most of South America under one government. The one government that doesn’t speak fucking Spanish. Ironic.

  But that had been… His head spun for a moment as he tried to remember if he’d heard the news himself or it had been something passed on from his Prime. It had been seven years ago, the last time he’d read any news on South America. He felt dizzy and reached out a hand to steady himself against the leg of Roach’s Hellfire.

  “You all right, Nate?” she asked him, coming down the stepladder and putting a supportive hand on his arm. “You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  “Not getting much sleep,” he admitted. Normally, he wouldn’t have even said that much, but he was starting to wonder what the point was of being stoic when everything was falling apart. “Another reason I need to ask for some support. We need more crew here, Rachel.”

  “We need competent people,” she corrected him, arching an eyebrow. “All DoD is going to send us is more guys like Patty. He’s enough problems by himself.”

  “Where is he?” Nate glanced around, hoping the man wasn’t standing right there listening to them talk about him. “I haven’t seen him since last night.”

  “Who the hell knows?” She tossed down the wrench she still held, letting it clatter back into the open tool box beside the ladder. “Still sleeping it off maybe. He can fucking stay out of my way for the next few hours unless he wants a kick in the ass.”

  “Maybe I should just let him go,” Nate mused. “He’s no use to us if he’s sitting around feeling sorry for himself.”

  “He leaves here on his own,” Roach said, “and he’s never going to make it back to Kentucky. His only chance is a MAC flight and they don’t give those spots to civilians who didn’t live up to their contract.”

  He nodded. Military Airlift Command would let contractors who were finished with their commitment fly Space-A in cargo birds back to the closest air base to their home, but Patty wouldn’t have that option if he took off now. He’d have to try to buy his way on a boat or an overland cargo convoy, maybe hire on as security. The odds weren’t great.

  The satellite communication gear was set up near the largest of the broken windows, the only one in the garage they hadn’t boarded up the first day. The dish was fixed to the window sill with a C-clamp, the cables running back down to a folding table they’d found in a closet. The actual sat-com was small, about the size of a cell phone, but it was hooked up to a keyboard and monitor along with a 3-D scanner and printer because you didn’t want to have to run to wherever the Department of Defense’s nearest contractor liaison happened to have an office to get every little thing you might need.

  Too bad we can’t print a new mech pilot with the damned thing.

  He powered on the sat com and monitor and waited way too long for it to boot up. He remembered, through the eyes of the Prime, a time when computers had booted up quicker than this. Was this just an old machine trying to run new software or was it due to the added security for a military program?

  The prompt blinked on the screen and he typed in his code word, the identifier to let someone on the other end know who was connecting. Then came the questions. Password. ID number. Date of birth. He’d made something up for that one back when he’d first signed up for the Contractor program—no one was going to believe he was seven. Same for place of birth, though for different reasons. He couldn’t remember where he’d been gestated, just where he’d woken up. It was on a military base, of course.

  Finally, the system gave him access and he navigated to the help screen and chose “chat with a live representative,” then waited again, much longer this time.

  “How much you want to bet the guy who talks with you on that thing is somewhere in Malaysia or east Africa?” Roach cracked, back to working on her mech.

  He didn’t comment. It was an old joke, one he’d stopped laughing at and then stopped trying to discourage her from repeating because what was the point?

  THIS IS CONTRACTOR LIAISON, the chat program responded after nearly ten minutes. MY NAME IS CHAD. HOW MAY I HELP YOU TODAY, CAPTAIN STOUT?

  He’d been thinking about what to say for hours now, but it still took him a long several seconds of consideration before he began typing.

  HAVE LOST A MAN KIA. TWO ENEMY ATTACKS HAVE SHOWN INSIDE KNOWLEDGE OF OUR LOCATION AND TACTICS. NO SIGN OF OBJECTIVE AND NO INDICATION OF WHERE THE ENEMY IS BASED. He left out the part about Langley. Even if they believed it, there was nothing they could do about it. REQUIRE A REPLACEMENT PILOT ASAP WITH PRE-WAR MILITARY EXPERIENCE. REQUIRE GUIDANCE AS TO OBJECTIVES.

  PLEASE WAIT WHILE I REFER YOUR REQUEST TO THE PROPER DEPARTMENT.

  He’d seen that one coming. He expected it at least once more, but he’d copied the text onto his clipboard to re-use when he had to repeat it again. And again. He went through the original guy with the dubious name of Chad, to Eric in Contractor Relations, to Fiona, supposedly Eric’s manger and finally, blissfully, to Charlotte who actually worked for the Department of Defense. He pasted his request again and there was no response for nearly ten minutes. He was starting to worry he’d lost the data connection, but then something totally unexpected happe
ned. The screen flashed: CONNECTION INTERRUPTED, and the sat phone began ringing.

  Roach stared at him and he shook his head. They’d never called before. He picked up the handset and pushed the flashing green button on the screen. He nearly just gave an inane “hello,” but decided it wouldn’t sound professional.

  “Stout,” he said instead.

  “I’m looking at your official roster,” a woman’s voice said without preamble or introduction. Was this Charlotte? “Who did you lose?”

  “Dix,” he said quickly, then elaborated. “Lt. Bryan Richardson, formerly US Navy. He was our computer guy and our chief repair tech. We’re having trouble maintaining the gear without him.”

  And maintaining our mental stability, he thought but didn’t add. Didn’t want to give higher a reason to revoke their contract.

  “What is the situation with respect to your objective?”

  He bit down on the profanity he wanted to reply with.

  “We received intelligence about a possible shipping location a few days ago and when we went to check it out, it was an ambush. We fought through it without casualties, but the enemy Tagan we captured was a U-Mech remotely piloted via satellite and we couldn’t get anything useful from it. While we were examining it, we were attacked by multiple Tagans at our assigned primary home base for this mission and Dix was fatally injured almost at once. We defeated the enemy but had to move to our secondary base and have received no further intelligence.” He paused, and when she didn’t respond, he felt compelled to continue. “Honestly, we’re starting to feel like our asses are hanging in the wind here. We need another pilot with maintenance experience and we really need some guidance from higher.”

  He felt his stomach turn backflips. He hadn’t spoken to anyone at the DoD since he’d finished his training course for contractor work and received his permit, now here he was running to them with his tail between his legs. He half expected Charlotte, or whoever was on the phone with him, to snap at him to man up and get back to work.

  “Wait one, Stout.”

  Sure, I’ll wait, he yelled at her inside his head. Where the hell am I going to go?

  Charlotte came back two minutes later, not pissed off or annoyed as he thought she’d be. She seemed concerned, or else very skilled at faking it.

  “Stout, we need you to hold in place until we can get you a new target. The enemy has gone silent but we have reason to believe they’re still in the area.” She hesitated, as if unused to sharing this much information with her contractors. “It’s almost as if they’re waiting for something, but we have no clue what. As for your personnel issues, we…might have someone we can send you. He isn’t ideal, but he’s the best we can do and he has the experience you need. Be aware, it may take as long as three weeks before he can get there.”

  “I copy that,” Nate said, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. “Will comply. Thank you.”

  He made sure she was done speaking before he touched the button to disconnect the call and looked up at Roach’s expectant, questioning stare.

  “They’re going to send us a replacement, but it might take a couple weeks.” He shrugged. “She also said he wasn’t ideal, whatever that means.”

  “Like any of us are ideal. What about the mission?”

  “They’re trying to get more information.” Nate shrugged. “They want us to stand by and not make any moves until they can get a better handle on things.”

  Roach grunted thoughtfully.

  “I’m not sure if I feel good that they’re being honest with us or worried they really do know as little as we always thought they did.”

  “I’m going to hold onto the positive for the moment,” Nate declared, slapping a palm on the table as he rose. “And I’m going to go tell Ramirez the good news. If you see Patty, let him know.”

  “I’ll tell him,” she promised, “right after I kick him in the ass.”

  Geoff Patterson wasn’t hiding…not exactly. He’d just decided to explore a part of the Coast Guard base away from where he knew everyone else would be.

  The place was creepy. The warehouse where they’d been was small, self-contained, a kind of a shell against the devastating loneliness of the Norfolk docks. The Coast Guard base was huge and sprawling and it seemed like every dark corner or shadowed alcove held a threat, an enemy, a monster. Patty had hoped to find some old lost treasure, something overlooked by decades’ worth of looting, but the closest he’d come was when he’d stumbled on an old break room, complete with snack and soda machines. The front display panels were busted out and everything had been looted out of them decades ago. The money was still there, coins scattered across the tile floor, worthless now since the government had adjusted for the hyperinflation that had followed the outbreak of the war. No paper money, though.

  Someone probably grabbed it to wipe their ass with. Or maybe to paper their wall.

  He sat down in one of the uncomfortable white plastic chairs in the break room and stared up at a tattered information poster detailing the new minimum and maximum ages to enlist in the military back about thirty years ago. The minimum age, it informed him, was now sixteen, while the maximum age had been extended to fifty.

  Nowadays, the military barely accepted any recruits, and put the ones who did enlist through excruciating tests to make sure they were physically and mentally fit. There just wasn’t any money to pay for food and medical care and retirement and housing for dead weight. Contractors were much cheaper, and much more disposable.

  His cell phone chirped at him with annoying cheerfulness and he scowled. He needed to remember to delete the ringer on the damned thing. It would be Roach or Nate bugging him again, wanting to know where he was, wanting to know why he wasn’t doing his share of the work, because they and Ramirez were the only ones who could access the phone. The only cell towers that had any power going to them were the military ones and the ones paid for by people like the little enclaves in Norfolk who still had money, still tried to run their businesses. None of those would reach here.

  He tried to ignore the phone, but it kept signaling, vibrating and finally he cursed and yanked it off his belt clip, half intending to throw it across the room to join the wrecked vending machines as a testament to a lost world. Then he saw the incoming call icon and the name hovering above it and his hand froze.

  “No fucking way,” he murmured.

  It was his mother’s number, in Kentucky. There was no way in hell she should be able to contact him out here. He hit the answer button with trembling fingers and put the phone to his ear.

  “Mom?” he asked, his voice sounding young and hesitant. “Mom, is that you?”

  “Sorry, little Geoffrey, but it’s not Mommy.”

  His blood froze at the voice on the other end of the line. It was smooth and husky and familiar, with the bite of a shot of cheap vodka.

  “Svetlana, why did you call me? How did you get my mom’s number?”

  Both were, he recognized immediately, very stupid questions, but they were placeholders to buy time until he could think of something more intelligent to say.

  “Never mind that now, Geoffrey,” she said, dismissing what he’d said as if she’d already discerned its unimportance. “For now, I think the most important thing for you to consider is the video clip I’ve attached to the message I’ve just sent you. Please go ahead and take a look. I’ll wait.”

  He’d seen the message alert flashing out of the corner of his eye and it only took a moment for him to scroll through to the screen to open it. It was being recorded off a body-cam of some kind, probably concealed given the way edges of a jacket or shirt kept blocking the corner of the frame. The scenery was generic, green trees and dirt road. It could have come from almost anywhere. The house though…

  He knew the house. He knew every peeling strip of white paint, every crack in the windows of the old house. He’d spent his childhood on that back porch, throwing sticks for the dog to fetch, helping to tan leather from the de
er he’d killed. His mother was sitting on the porch, not as she’d been when he was a child but as she was now, hair white and stringy, face cracked and older than her years. She was sewing something. She was always sewing something, fixing some clothes for herself or others who’d pay her in food or trade.

  “I have finished cutting the firewood, Mrs. Patterson,” the voice behind the camera announced with just the slightest hint of an accent. It could have come from anywhere in eastern Europe, but he’d learned it was Ukrainian. “Is there anything else you’d like me to do?”

  “Naw, Lex, you’ve done enough for today.” Cold fingers squeezed Patty’s chest at the voice he hadn’t heard in months now. “Honestly, I could find more stuff for you, but there’s no more money left to pay you today.”

  “That’s all right, ma’am,” Lex replied, laughing. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

  The body cam walked away from the house, back down the road to where a bicycle was leaning against a tree, saddlebags hanging from the seat. The camera stared into the left-hand bag as Lex pulled it open and the darkly polished lines of a Makarov automatic gleamed in the noonday sun for just a few seconds until Lex folded the flap back down.

  “No!” Patty exclaimed involuntarily before realizing the video had ended.

  “Don’t worry, Geoffrey,” Svetlana assured him, her voice coming from the phone’s speaker loud enough for him to make it out even before he put the instrument back up to his ear. “Nothing has to happen to your mother, or your dear, sweet sister…or your little niece. As long as you do what you know must be done.”

  Patty’s shoulders sagged, the air going out of him along with the will to fight. She owned him now, and she knew it.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Twelve

  Nate decided to check the sat-com one last time before he went to bed. Wishful thinking maybe, hoping against hope the answers he waited for would be sitting there and not wanting to take the chance of letting them sit all night without seeing them. They seemed nebulous, prone to fading into the aether while no one watched, and he’d already cruised by the device four times just that day, despite resolving he wasn’t going to do it again.