Packmule

by Blaze Ward

  “Jim and Wil on point,” he said.

  The stairs up were along a wall, with a railing around the top, tucked into a corner. That left them out of the way, and several of them could look up into the main room on the second floor at the same time.

  Six stacked pairs of bunks. Door to what looked like the head. Another door at the far end, closed.

  Little Jim held up a hand to pause everyone on the stairwell. He pulled off his scarf and wrapped it carefully around his gun hand, indicating to Wil to do the same.

  Yeah, that made sense. Maybe silence them completely.

  Trinidad waited for the two men to move, and then gestured everyone else up to where they could see. And pour fire and chaos into the room if they had to.

  Little Jim and Wil would be in the middle of it, but they were marines. It came with the signature on the page.

  Most of the bunks were filled. Someone up here snored almost as loud as the man downstairs had.

  On the snore, Little Jim and Wil both fired, taking out a top and bottom bunk.

  Trinidad had his eyes, and his gun, focused on that closed door at the far end.

  The pair moved to a second stack and zapped the people, covered by the snores.

  A third pair of locals went down just as steadily. Trinidad relaxed, just a might.

  Maybe they could pull this off.

  “Wha…??” a muddled voice spoke up. “Hey!”

  Crap, someone had gotten up to hit the head in the dead of night. Little Jim spun around, but Teresita had already nailed the woman standing in the doorway.

  She went down heavily, and the snoring stopped abruptly.

  “Now,” Trinidad said in a normal voice.

  Little Jim moved like a ballerina. Wil was his clumsy shadow, by comparison.

  Vlad and Gerry poured fire into the last set of bunks. The angle was bad, but anyone too close to an edge would get brushed. If they sat up, they were toast.

  Dead silence. Adrenaline rush. Trinidad really had to pee now.

  Trinidad raced up the last few steps, leading the rest of his team. A signal to the point pair had them listening at the door to the officer’s bunk, so he took Gerry and Vlad and cleared the head. Silence abounded.

  Nobody home, but a damned fine time to use the facilities. Vlad waited until he was done, and did the same.

  Back in the main room, they approached the last door.

  “Locked but silent,” Wil whispered as he got close.

  “Kick it in,” Trinidad ordered.

  Time was burning.

  Gerry shattered the doorframe with a kick, and Little Jim was inside before Gerry was done rebounding. Trinidad heard two quick shots from the stunner and then a muffled curse as Little Jim stomped out.

  “Could have used grenades and she’d have never noticed,” the weasel opined.

  The stale reek of alcohol followed him out.

  Trinidad peeked in. One woman on the bed. Two empty wine bottles on the floor on their sides. Fog of drunken stupor emanating from every surface.

  Yuck.

  “Zip tie everyone,” Trinidad ordered, before switching channels. “Heather, building one is cleared. We’ll be down in five to clear the rest.”

  He didn’t bother waiting for her response. He was too professionally offended at the drunk officer. Wanted to kick her, but that wouldn’t solve anything.

  He’d settle for robbing her blind.

  Dawnlight (September 5, 402)

  Eleven prisoners. Six horses. Seventy-three chickens. A little over nine hundred head of cattle, spaced out in various pastures, pens, and fields. Two tractors. Nine vehicles, from zip bikes up to a wheeled, flatbed pickup truck for hauling hay rolls, complete with the spiked hydraulic system on the back to lift and lower the massive bales.

  Heather nodded to herself as she closed down the computer system for the ranch and looked around the office of the woman who had been in charge of the facility.

  Squalid. Hadn’t been cleaned in ages, with empty candy bar wrappers wadded up everywhere. Plates stacked on the edge of the desk with food dried on. An arms locker that had contained one pulse rifle and nine bottles of wine locked up in it before it got emptied.

  She understood Trinidad’s anger, but also understood that the woman was in charge of a cattle station in the middle of nowhere, on a planet more or less forgotten in an abandoned colonizing effort.

  The ultimate dead-end job. Some people couldn’t handle that. This woman had apparently been one of them.

  “Heather,” Trinidad was in the doorway. “You need to see this.”

  He was gone before she could ask, but he wasn’t running, just moving out of her way, so she stood and joined him. The bound prisoners had been moved downstairs, into the big common area, where several people were guarding them at all times. No food or drink this morning, and one potty break under guns had kept them contained.

  Being outnumbered by armed, angry gunmen had done wonders to keep them quiet.

  Trinidad led her through the kitchen and out the back door, to where Nakisha and Vlad had two of the prisoners separated from the rest. Both men. Late twenties, maybe. Possibly over thirty.

  The closer one had skin a darker red than the average member of The Holding. Hispanic, perhaps, mixed with a few other things.

  “Identify yourself,” Trinidad ordered the man.

  “Flight Lieutenant Granville Veitengruber,” he said in a calm, serious voice. In English, rather than Mongolian. “IFPN-12576-9JD5JC4. Most recently attached to IFV Germania. Shot down and captured at Samara, Imperial Founding Year One-Seventy-Two.”

  Oh, shit. A real prisoner of war? Here? Why would you put one on a farm in the middle of nowhere?

  Because there was nowhere for him to run. It made a twisted sense. How many of the miners at Barnaul might they have missed?

  “Senior Centurion Heather Lau,” she introduced herself. “The war with Aquitaine is over, Lieutenant, and we have made common cause with Fribourg to fight Buran. I am the First Officer of the Corvette/Scout RAN CS-405, flying under IFV colors.”

  He looked dubious, but that wasn’t a surprise.

  “Much has changed in the last eight years, Veitengruber,” she continued. “Among other things, we’re looking for prisoners like you that we can rescue and take home.”

  She could tell he expected it to be a trap. A trick of some sort. His teeth ground for a moment. The man surprised her by turning to the other prisoner.

  “Tell her,” he said in Mongolian.

  This man was smaller. Perhaps not even Heather’s height, whereas the Imperial looked to have several centimeters on her. The second stranger’s skin was a golden brown that was almost bronze. Brighter than normal for Buran. Darker than the Chinese Diaspora.

  “Indeed?” the man asked in a quiet, tenor voice.

  Veitengruber nodded. Once. Fierce.

  “My name is Malondenishk Abarantakratar,” he said in a musical voice. “I was born in the nation known as NovLao, and captured by the Invader’s forces five years ago.”

  “Where is NovLao?” she asked in an apprehensive voice.

  “As I understand it from Granvie, the far side of The Holding from the Fribourg Empire, madam,” he said with a nod.

  Granvie?

  “I can’t promise to get you home, Sri,” she explained, shocked. “But I can rescue you from here.”

  “And if we choose to remain?” he asked.

  “Why in the world would you want to do that?” Heather was perplexed.

  “I cannot return home,” the Imperial said, almost defiantly. “Will not, without Deni. But I would not be welcome in Fribourg. We would not be.”

  Oh? Oh.

  Heather growled, but only in her head. Yes, the traditionalists would not welcome that sort of a relationship. Back home in the Empire, such behavior, even between two consenting adults, was, at best, ostracized, and frequently criminalized.

  She could see the new Emperor changing that, eventually, bu
t it probably wouldn’t do those two any good in the next generation.

  Still…

  “We are an Aquitaine warship, Lieutenant,” she fired back at the man. He had never had a female commanding officer, until he came to this world. The drunk wouldn’t have warmed him to the idea. “On an extended raiding mission, deep into Buran with no plans to return to Imperial space anytime soon. Until then, nobody cares, except how hard you work. You will not have to return to Fribourg afterwards, but you do not have to stay here. But if you desire to remain a slave, I won’t stop you.”

  Probably never had a woman talk to him like that, either. Not that he was probably that interested in females to begin with, given the circumstances.

  “Oh,” he said. “Really? We could be free?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And my commander will be quite interested in hearing about other cultures, even five thousand light-years away.”

  “Thank you,” the smaller man, Deni, replied.

  Veitengruber had fallen mute.

  She turned to Nakisha.

  “Have these two help out with the field teams when Saddlebags gets here,” she ordered. “Then make sure they’re on Anna when we lift.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Heather smiled at the two men.

  “Welcome aboard, gentlemen.”

  Rustlers (September 5, 402)

  Siobhan laughed to herself when nobody was close by.

  I did not join the Navy to steal cattle, but I also never expected to be a pirate, either.

  They couldn’t steal all the cattle. For one thing, they didn’t have enough hands to keep them taken care of on the flight to Lighthouse Station. Additionally, they didn’t have anything like a container to keep that much beef penned during the flight.

  What Markus and friends had done was take four of the big containers and rebuild the interiors. Six by eighteen was a reasonable floor space, and they had added a catwalk overhead that someone could stand on to drop hay and feed to the big creatures below, without risking getting kicked or trampled.

  Milking was going to be a pain in the ass, but that wasn’t her problem. Each container would simply be landed aboard Packmule and use the big ship’s gravity to keep the cattle happy. Others would go in and milk the critters.

  And rather than try to mess with the grav-plates on the ship, Heather had just had Yamaguchi fly each of the three shuttles down, loaded with two containers each, and haul off three loads of cattle. A fourth would carry six of the horses and all the chickens. The last two were in the process of being loaded with a tractor and all its implements, plus all the vehicles and milking equipment that could be moved.

  Talk about inducing chaos along the frontier. She could already imagine her image showing up on the vid for this week’s episode of Dangerous and Wanted.

  Heather walked over to the tree where Siobhan was leaning, watching growling sailors carry dismantled gear towards the shuttle. They had already run the leftover cattle off into a distant pasture.

  Siobhan watched expectantly, but Heather just stood nearby and watched, with the same, goofy grin.

  “You heard about the two prisoners?” Heather asked after a bit.

  “Did,” Siobhan agreed. “What do you think Phil will do?”

  “Depends on them,” Heather observed. “If the one is really a pilot, then we’ve suddenly got two to fly insertion shuttles on raids. Not sure how we go about rescuing more of them, other than just keep our ears open when we take prisoners.”

  “Thinking about Barnaul?” Siobhan asked.

  “How many men did we leave behind there?” Heather nodded. “Even if we had no idea they might be available to be rescued.”

  “Maybe organize a prisoner’s revolt?” Siobhan’s face turned sober. “Let them know that the war is getting closer?”

  “Won’t work,” Heather shook her head. “We don’t know where we’re hitting next, and sure as hell don’t want them knowing. Plus, we’re not likely to come back, so the best we might do is get them killed for no reason. I wish we had the ability to land on a planet and hold it long enough to find all our people and get them out.”

  “What about the alien?” Siobhan pressed.

  “Deni’s human,” Heather countered. “But yeah, we’ve got another one like the Khan of Trusski on our hands. Makes me wonder if Phil might not decide to blast lengthwise across the entire Holding to see who lives over there and how we could help.”

  “Sounds like something Tomas Kigali might do,” Siobhan murmured.

  “We’re all a little crazy,” Heather replied.

  Both women’s comms beeped at the same time. Siobhan was faster to pull hers out.

  “Skokomish,” she said. “Heather’s with me.”

  “Trouble might be coming,” Evan said quickly. “Picking up a flyer headed in a direct line for your location from the city. ETA fifteen minutes. Nobody else in motion, and no radio traffic I can pick up. How close to ready are you?”

  “More than fifteen minutes,” Siobhan said. “Keep a watch on everyone else, in case they decide to send reinforcements.”

  “Will do,” the man said, and then the signal was dead.

  Heather whistled to get heads turned this way. Trinidad and Nakisha came at a hard jog when she waved. In fact, she started jogging towards them, Heather in tow.

  “Company coming,” she said, loud enough that everyone could hear. “Finish loading, but all the security marines find hiding places. We want them to land, so act friendly and wave, but pretend like the radio system is completely dead and nobody knew about it here. Heather, you pretend to be in charge. They’ll be expecting a woman boss. Hopefully, they’ve never met her. Veitengruber, you run interference.”

  Siobhan joined the seven marines in finding hiding places. The rest of the men and women went back to work, loading equipment up the low ramp into the insertion shuttle’s container. They wouldn’t have it locked down well, and there was no way to hide an insertion shuttle on the surface.

  They would just have to play it by ear.

  “Nakisha,” Siobhan yelled in the direction of the big barn where the marine was. “Be prepared to shoot if down it they refuse to land. Everyone else, total radio silence from here on in.”

  A hand waved back.

  Within moments, calm had settled on the big pasture. The tractor and the truck were loaded. The big tanks to hold milk were partly dismantled, but not ready to go. From her hiding spot, the crew were going after the refrigeration and pasteurization equipment. Tanks were just sheet metal bent and welded. New ones could be built easy enough later on.

  Siobhan found herself checking her pistol again and grinned. Trinidad would be on his fourth or fifth time doing the same thing, but he needed that to calm his nerves. She popped her knuckles instead.

  A sound overhead caught her attention. Flyer coming in. Not at a dead sprint, like a strafing run. Not a slow orbit to see what the hell was going on and maybe open fire from overhead.

  Nope. Neighbors coming over to see what the hell was going on and why nobody was answering calls.

  Everyone on the ground waved, all friendly like. And there were only a half-dozen bodies out there, rather than twice as many pirates as this farm had hands.

  Siobhan had ended up over inside the dog house. Rather than listen to the beast howl and bark constantly, or keep having to stun it, Heather had locked it in the commander’s office upstairs, where poop and piss on the floor would probably be an improvement.

  Still, it gave her lots of cover, separated from the rest of the team. And a flank she could turn, if she had to.

  The flyer orbited once, nice and calm, and then flared forward and started to land.

  It was built rather like the truck they had stolen, a big passenger hauler box that rode on repulsors, but it was smaller and leaner, looking rather more like a goose in flight than an armadillo someone had tossed into the sky.

  The port hatch had been open when it flew, but the craft landed with the st
arboard side facing her. Siobhan could see a pilot in the right-hand seat, with a side window open to let in air, even as brisk as the day was.

  It landed on skids tall enough that Siobhan could see someone jump down on the far side and stalk over to where Heather and the two locals were waiting. Two more sets of legs appeared, but didn’t stray far. Probably two guards that wanted to stay close to the warmth of the ship, rather than follow the boss over and get mud and snow all over their boots.

  Siobhan studied the craft. No guns were obvious, and the pilot was looking the wrong way. Executive decision time. Her folks were close enough to departure if nobody had come with the locals as backup.

  She crept from inside the dog house and moved closer to the craft. It had a cantilevered wing across the top, probably to help with lift when it got up to speed. It also cast a shadow in the midday sun. There were portholes on this flank, but hopefully everyone would be looking at the action over there.

  She was staring hard at the pilot. Or rather, the back of his head as he watched the action on his left as well. No mirrors on this side for him to glance back, so he would have to turn his whole head to see her.

  Ten meters. Eight. Six. His head came back to center and started to glance this way.

  Siobhan burst into a run, right at him with her stun pistol in hand. For a moment, the man’s eyes got big in shock, like he couldn’t even imagine what was going on.

  Then the gun in her hand registered.

  He looked down and powered the bird for flight.

  Siobhan stopped thinking about how crazy this might be, and stepped onto the skid next to the pilot, grabbing a handle on the outside of the door and centering her weight, just as the man pulled the control stick back and suddenly the flyer was airborne.

  Without thinking, Siobhan stuck the stunner into his window and shot the man dead center. He fell as far forward as his seatbelt would allow.

  Unfortunately, his hand fell against the controllers at the same time, and the flyer suddenly leaned over to starboard, still lifting, but now threatening to turn turtle with her under it.