Bound by Honor

by Terry Mixon

  Brad dropped down next to the Councilor they were covering, making sure his own briefcase was with him. It was bulletproof in its own right and had other virtues as well.

  “Easy enough,” Fisk muttered, tucking himself into the shell of the barrier. “This was not in my daily briefing.”

  “We would tell you if we knew someone was going to assassinate you,” the tallest bodyguard told him. “I think the NVPD only found out about this a few—”

  The entire unfolded shelter of the car rang like a bell as a heavy bullet slammed into it. The round went clean through the barrier, missed Brad by about four centimeters, and then smashed into the ground.

  “Sniper,” Saburo said sardonically. “I don’t suppose you’re willing to reconsider the gun thing now, boss?”

  “Oh, shut up,” Brad snapped. His wrist-comp was running a triangulation program, but he could already tell that the shooter was well out of range of any of his concealed weapons. “That way,” he noted to the bodyguards, pointing towards a nearby building. “Shooter is on the ro—”

  That shot hit Brad in center mass. A perfect shot even through the barrier the bodyguards had assembled, it hit him in the chest and hammered him into the ground.

  Between his own armor and the theoretically bulletproof barrier they’d folded out of Fisk’s car, Brad was…alive. He didn’t think he’d even broken anything, but he’d definitely had better days.

  Gunfire echoed above his head, and he saw that all three bodyguards had taken his directions to heart. The sniper’s second shot had let the women pick out the shooter, and they were returning fire with carefully aimed shots.

  “That’s not going to do much more than keep their head down,” Brad half-gasped as Saburo knelt down next to him.

  “That’s enough,” his subordinate told him. “The armor held?”

  “So did my ribs. Just feel like I got kicked by a loose thruster. ETA on the cops?”

  “Sixty seconds,” Saburo responded. “Bets this is still a distraction?”

  “Oh, at least a week of your salary,” Brad croaked. “Help me up.”

  “Shit,” Stacy suddenly swore. Even before the mercs could ask what was up, they heard the explosion and looked up—in time to watch the strange looking upside-down-car shape of the incoming dome cruiser detach from the roof.

  Smoke was still spewing from the lower chassis where a bomb had taken out the gravity generators, and Brad swallowed hard. There was no way anyone in that vehicle was going to survive the two-hundred-meter drop.

  “How many cops?” he asked softly.

  “If they were loaded for tactical cover…seven,” Saburo replied. “Fuck me.”

  “I suspect our assailants have something much less pleasant in mind,” Brad told him. “Blades, Colonel. We’re out of time.”

  There were enough people on the street to qualify as a crowd. They’d been scattering away from the moment the bodyguards had started unfolding the bulletproof barriers, but the falling dome cruiser sent part of the crowd recoiling back toward Fisk’s car.

  A large-enough part of the crowd to cover the approach of the next—and hopefully final—string to the assassination attempt’s bow. The three figures didn’t look remotely out of the ordinary in the crowd until one produced a gun and the others produced mono-blades.

  All three of Fisk’s bodyguards were down in moments as a spray of automatic gunfire walked across the interior of the barricade. Brad was pretty sure all three would live, but the attackers had clearly prioritized the women with guns.

  From the perspective of the lead swordsman, that was a mistake. Saburo stepped inside the man’s reach and uncoiled his mono-blade in a strike that slashed through the attacker. An elbow slammed the trooper back—but not fast enough to stop the blade nearly bisecting the intended assassin.

  The second attacker moved around, balancing on her feet with enough skill to suggest that these were very good people. These weren’t local rebels. These were either Cadre or pro assassins.

  “You know, I’m always up for buying the names of the people who try to kill me,” Brad suggested as conversationally as he could with the bruising on his chest. He was digging into his briefcase as he spoke, however, and wasn’t expecting a positive response.

  The response he got was another bullet. The sniper seemed to have stopped shooting, at least, but the hanger-back of the current group was a disturbingly good shot.

  Not good enough to aim for the head, but even the armor he was wearing only did so much against gunfire at that range. Brad went down again, and this time he was certain he had at least one cracked rib.

  The surviving bladeswoman was trying to close with Brad, but Saburo had her completely tied up. The gunner tried to shoot at Saburo, but the old battler twisted his opponent in between them. Several rounds slammed into the first attacker’s back, and her armor wasn’t as good as Brad’s.

  It was probably good enough to save her life, but she went down hard. Something in Saburo’s free hand flashed as she collapsed, and Brad doubted she’d be getting back up until the merc decided she was getting up.

  That left the gunman with a free shot at all of them, but Brad had finally managed to get into the lining of his briefcase. The black leather case fell away from his hand and the toy-sized crossbow snapped out its arms.

  Toy-sized or not, the weapon was made from the same material used in his body armor and carried a small motor to wind it on activation. He had spare bolts, but he didn’t expect to have time to reload.

  He didn’t need to. Saburo had trained him well and the range was short enough there was no drop. The monomolecular wire-edged bolt took the gunman in the throat in a spray of blood, and Brad lay back down.

  “So, Saburo,” he said slowly. “I’m just going to…lay here for a few minutes. Can you make sure our friends and our prisoner live?”

  “I can do that,” his subordinate replied. “I take it the gun rules don’t apply to you?”

  “This?” Brad waved the crossbow weakly. “This isn’t a gun. No explosives; would plug any hole it pierced in the dome with its own shaft. Completely harmless.”

  The dead gunman was a mute counterargument that Saburo didn’t even need to make.

  Chapter Nine

  “Well, Commodore, it seems you make an impression on arrival.”

  Brad looked up from the emergency room bed on New Venice and snorted at Councilor Fisk.

  “I really would prefer to arrive with a very different type of fanfare, if I can’t arrive quietly.”

  “So would we all.” Fisk pulled up a chair, trading a nod with Saburo. “Thank you, Commodore, Colonel. I may not have been the target, but I doubt they planned on leaving me alive, either.”

  “Your guards?” Brad asked.

  “The Aces are still with me,” Fisk said with a smile. “All three are in urgent care, but the prognoses are good. Like me, though…I don’t think they’d have survived a successful attack.”

  “Our attackers were good,” Saburo replied. “Cadre-good.”

  “Or professionals in general,” Brad allowed. “Lots of hardware, lots of prep. I’m guessing there was a similar team on the other road?”

  “The NVPD are looking now. You were only out for a couple of hours while they worked on your ribs,” the Councilor assured him. “We’re still sorting out the details. It was surprisingly low-resourced for how well it was put together.”

  “That’s usually how it goes,” Brad said grimly. “Resources let you be crude. Sophistication comes when you can’t just walk over the enemy. How bad, Councilor?”

  Fisk didn’t even pretend he didn’t understand.

  “Nine police officers dead. My bodyguards wounded. Two civilians dead, crushed under the falling cruiser. Another dozen wounded from debris and stray fire.”

  “Damn.” Brad shook his head. “And we were supposed to stop the violence.”

  “That was why they moved, at a guess,” a new voice interjected. A tall and broad-shou
ldered man entered the room. His head, like Fisk’s, was shaved clean. His eyeshadow, however, was dark green.

  New Venetian styles were not what Brad was used to.

  “There are people who want to see this endeavor fail. Some of them sit on the Council with us,” the new speaker continued. “The best are activists in the working classes who don’t want any violence at all but would prefer we made concessions to end this. The worst, well, are active opponents of New Venice and the Commonwealth.

  “Is this going to delay your operations, Commodore?”

  Brad glanced at the stranger, then at Fisk.

  “Commodore Madrid, meet Governor Karl Ngu,” Fisk said with a small, almost helpless hand gesture.

  “Governor,” Brad said. “My contract said that we were to commence operations immediately upon arrival. If I’m reading the clock on my wrist-comp correctly, the first customs inspections launched four hours ago. My crews don’t need me to babysit them.”

  “I see. It seems you may be worth your princely price tag after all,” Ngu said genially. “You saved one of my Councilors, Commodore, so I am indebted to you beyond the contract. Is there any assistance that we can provide you?”

  Fisk’s body language suggested that he and Ngu might not get along very well…but also that he didn’t think the big man had ordered the attack. That was reassuring.

  “There were a number of requests we forwarded the Council while we were on our way,” Brad replied carefully. “I was told those would need to be debated by the Governing Council.”

  Ngu made a large, expansive throwaway gesture.

  “I don’t recall the exact list,” he freely admitted. “What would you say your priorities are, Commodore?”

  “I need to refuel my ships and set up a resupply depot for my shuttles, preferably on New Venice, though I’m not picky. While I want to keep at least some of my ships above New Venice, the destroyers will be more useful playing watchdog over the cargo routes than orbiting your capital.”

  “Fisk will make sure the crews of High Venice know your needs immediately,” Ngu replied. “We’ll get your ships fueled. I’ll have to speak to some others about the depot, but I see no major obstacle. Anything else?”

  Brad smiled grimly.

  “I need access to the full, unredacted police reports on the missing aircraft, any pirate or wrecker attacks in the last three years, all meteorological reports for the same time period, and all of your missing-person reports.”

  The big Governor blinked.

  “That seems…excessive, Commodore. Missing-person reports?”

  He needed those to track down Agent Mulroney, though he was planning on getting multiple uses out of every piece of data he got his hands on.

  “Just because someone wasn’t officially on one of the missing transports doesn’t mean they weren’t aboard,” Brad pointed out. “Those discrepancies, those people who are missing and we don’t know why, can easily point us at clues to the operations in play.”

  “You were hired for customs duty, Commodore,” Ngu said calmly.

  “That’s not what my contract says, Governor,” Brad replied. “It calls for me to operate a customs blockade and to prevent any further attacks if at all possible. With that data, Governor, I believe that stopping the attacks may well be possible.”

  Ngu grunted, studying him with flat eyes.

  “And yet you aren’t competent enough to avoid getting shot on your first day here?” he asked. His tone was still genial, still brightly cheerful.

  “Security inside the city is far from my responsibility,” Brad replied, his voice carrying a forced equal level of cheer. “That falls on the NVPD, who I believe report to…you?”

  The Governor chuckled.

  “I’ll pass your requests on to the Commissioner,” he conceded. “You can talk to her. She’ll understand your needs better than I, one presumes.”

  “Please, Commodore Madrid, we may have stitched the fractures back together, but you were just shot,” the doctor told Brad as he carefully redressed in his armor and uniform. “There could be half a dozen different types of damage our first examination wouldn’t reveal!”

  “Then my ship’s doctor will find them,” Brad said firmly. “I appreciate your care, Doctor, but I have work to do. I have a job to do—and it doesn’t normally involve being shot, I promise.”

  The ER doctor shook his head and glanced at Saburo.

  “Is he always this bad?” he asked the ground trooper plaintively.

  Saburo paused thoughtfully, then passed Brad his briefcase. The crossbow was back in its concealed compartment, the Commodore noted. Probably reloaded, too. Saburo was very thorough.

  “Nah, he used to be worse,” the mercenary finally responded to the doctor. “He’s mellowed in his old age.”

  The doctor probably had thirty years of age on Brad and visibly paled at that idea.

  “I’ll be fine, Doctor,” Brad assured him. “And past history suggests that keeping me in a hospital bed isn’t healthy for anyone else in the clinic. Forward your scan results to Oath of Vengeance and I promise to check in with Dr. Terzić when I get back aboard.

  “For now, however, the NVPD Commissioner has generously managed to find a time slot in her schedule today. I have no intention of missing that appointment.”

  Unmentioned was the marked police cruiser parked outside the hospital waiting for him—or the armed cop having a stare-off with Corporal Jimenez outside the room they were arguing in.

  “And if something goes wrong along the way, Angelica Jimenez is a fully trained combat medic,” Brad continued. “People have already been injured and killed in an attack on me, Doctor. I won’t put your hospital at risk for longer than I have to.”

  That, it seemed, was enough. The ER doctor threw his hands up and gestured for Brad to leave.

  “Very well, Commodore. I’ll be in touch with Dr. Terzić shortly. You’re an expensive investment for New Venice; I’d prefer to make sure you live!”

  Brad chuckled.

  “If you think I’m expensive for New Venice, you should consider that I’m Dr. Terzić’s employer. He’ll make sure I don’t die, I promise.”

  And if the worst came to pass, well, Brad now had reason to be comfortable with the competence and integrity of New Venice’s hospital staff. That was nothing to sneer at.

  Though he’d prefer to not have been shot to get that reason.

  There was no question which side of the stare-off Brad was coming down on, so his emergence got them to the NVPD headquarters in surprisingly brisk time.

  To his surprise, Commissioner Emeka Lagos was waiting for him at the front entrance. The tone of the email notifying him she had an appointment available had prepared him for less-courteous treatment.

  Lagos was a tall black woman, heavily muscled, with a shoulder-length dark braid and bright pink eye shadow. Meeting him might have been encouraging, but her shoulders were set and her face was grim.

  “Commodore Madrid. You’ll understand if I don’t say this is a pleasure,” she said crisply.

  “Commissioner Lagos, my condolences on the loss of your officers,” Brad replied quietly. “I didn’t have the chance to meet them, but no one needed to get caught in that ambush. I’m sorry it came to that.”

  “Wasn’t you,” she said flatly, but her tone had softened a little. “Condolences don’t mean much to their families. We’ll do what we can.”

  She gestured for him to walk with her, and he obediently fell into step beside her. His own gesture sent Saburo and Jimenez to the waiting area. If he wasn’t safe there, he had far larger problems than a few cracked ribs coming.

  “I would hope there is some pension for the families,” Brad murmured as they walked. “I would assume so, in fact.”

  “There is,” Lagos confirmed. “And despite my best efforts, it sucks. I can sell the Governing Council on a lot of things when it comes to living officers to maintain their precious order, but the purse strings get real tight
when they aren’t looking at immediate return.”

  The mercenary’s sympathy for the rebellion was minimal—they had tried to kill him—but he was beginning to understand where they were coming from.

  “If I wanted to make sure some money made it to the families of those officers, would you be able to assist me?” he asked.

  Lagos stopped in the middle of the hallway and turned to study him.

  “You’re serious.”

  “Those officers died in an attempt on my life,” Brad replied. “From what you are saying, their families may be in trouble from that—trouble no family needs on top of the loss of a loved one. I would ease that burden, if I can.”

  “I see.” Lagos continued to study him, then nodded. “I’ll provide your staff the names of the officers involved and a reliable lawyer to set up trusts for their family. I would recommend against doing anything through more official channels, Commodore. A quiet trust is better for everyone, especially the families.”

  “I can do that,” Brad said.

  Lagos shook her head in disbelief, then took off down the corridor to her office. The door automatically unlocked at her approach, and she flung it open without breaking her stride. She gestured Brad to a seat and dropped behind her desk.

  “If you think paying out the families is going to make me more inclined to approve your frankly ridiculous requests, however, you’re wrong,” she told him bluntly. “Data related to the pirates and the missing transport is already packaged up; we’ll have it to your ship by nightfall. Meteorological records are publicly accessible; I’m sure you can manage them yourself.

  “Historical cases and missing-person reports? Those are confidential information, Commodore. I could barely justify releasing redacted versions, let alone the unredacted ones you’ve requested.”