by Daniel Gibbs
Rainbow like the flowers in Gina’s apartment. Sev hated them.
His directives were clear. Wait until the barge was being unloaded, then coordinating with Warrant Dwyer, well, he would interrupt the process.
No deaths. Sev would acquiesce. Captain Adams was a good man. Unnecessary death burdened him. He had an artist’s soul, for all he hid behind rules and regulations. He had simply found his true calling then a way to apply that calling to fighting for his nation, for the freedom of his people. Sev admired that. He had learned to do the same.
Sev sighted on a squat robot with broad shoulders as it carried Orbita from the open duffel bag and placed bundles inside various other containers. Some were rugged bags. Others were boxes labeled with local delivery or business markings. Still others had plastic taped over a logo, though he couldn’t make out for what company.
“Sev, when you’re working with clay, you must mind your hands.” Mother worked on a government farm combine. She repaired machinery but nursed a desire to be a potter. A few people paid her in food and other goods for her pieces. Even with his finger poised over the trigger, Sev could feel her warm hands enveloping his tiny ones.
“You need only a little pressure. See what your little hands can do…? No, no, you are tense. Relax. Breathe out.”
Yes, Mother. Sev took a breath then let it out slowly. The air trickled between his lips.
Hold. Pause. Fire. He pulled the trigger. The shot hit the bot’s head in the center of a broad, glassy optical port. The incendiary round ripped the head clean off, tearing it apart even as it exploded in a small but brilliant fireball.
Cartel thugs shouted and scattered. They all ducked—good training. But they drew their guns, close-range plasma weapons, looking for a nearby target.
Let me give them one.
Sev had a palm-sized device fixed to his tripod. He found the flat panel without looking, his fingers pressed against the side. Warrant Dwyer said it would read an individual finger’s pressure and prints when he chose. He pressed with his pinky.
A second explosion sent a ripple up the east side of the building, toppling containers and sending a rack squealing from its bolts. It crashed into its neighbor. More boxes fell. The cries reached Sev down the street as the debris pinned several men.
It sounded to Sev like one of Warrant Dwyer’s drones, the units he’d been unable to deploy last night, had found its mark. Sev hoped Lieutenant Guinto was getting a good read off their telemetry—they were, after all, recording whatever data they could prior to Sev destroying them.
The cartel people sprinted out of the warehouse to a collection of hovercraft and customized trucks waiting inside the fenced yard. No, fellows, too soon to leave. Sev fired three more rounds in rapid succession, making sure to pause his breathing for at least six seconds before shooting. One round exploded inside the windscreen of an off-road, eight-wheeled vehicle. A man fell out, slapping at flames that licked his jacket. The other two pierced the powerplant on the back end of a hovercraft—an expensive model. Sev wondered at how much it could have been sold for to feed his family, back on Earth, before it, too, erupted into a fireball.
The drug runners had regrouped behind hulking heavy-lift mechanized suits. Each one was the size of a mastodon skeleton—Where have I seen one? Sev frowned. Surely from an Earth educational video. Was there a museum near my home?
The suits gave the cartel cover enough to deploy their own weapons. Plasma blasts struck the building beneath and around him. Dust shivered from exposed supports. Sev frowned. Unacceptable. He pressed another button.
Incendiary rounds fired from guns secreted in another unoccupied building situated ninety degrees from the address of Sev’s hiding place. The shots sparked inside in the barge’s open cargo hatch. Sparks. Warrant Dwyer would appreciate that. Sev added to the confusion by detonating another pair of drones, one farther back in the warehouse and another ten meters over the crouching group of drug runners.
Their shots went wild after that as they diverted fire to the other building and the rear of the warehouse. Meanwhile, flames caught the stacked Orbita ablaze. More bundles smoldered.
A good start, but I have two more drones remaining. Sev removed the rifle’s magazine, found a second, smaller magazine on his belt, and rammed it home. He sighted, breathed, paused, and shot again.
The round zipped into the Orbita, releasing nothing but a puff from where it dispersed the drug. Within seconds, twin airborne robots buzzed at the stack from opposite directions and exploded. Flames turned the profitable, addictive drug into a mound of blackened, smoldering goo as flames melted it from the inside.
Emergency klaxons sounded. Red drones with white stripes, emblazoned with the logo of the city’s firefighting services, appeared on the horizon. The squadron of six bots paid no heed to the ongoing gunfire or the scattered cartel members, concentrating instead on putting out the blazes, like they’d been programmed to do. They emitted low, rumbling sounds without unleashing any visible propellant. The wave extinguishers battered the fires into submission like a pack of groaning beasts. Again, Sev wondered about the mastodon. Had it sounded anything like these artificial creatures?
More sirens and klaxons approached. His wrist comm buzzed. Emergency services en route. Patrol and Fire. Recommend withdrawal.
Sev tapped his preprogrammed response, Copy. He set the final triggers. Deep thumps came from the building across the way, where his remote guns were stationed. Smoke poured from the windows—and from a floor below him, where he’d planted a separate flash bomb. All spark and smoke, as Warrant Dwyer would call it. Sev stripped his rifle and tripod, stashing them in his backpack, leaving only the base module as a compact semiautomatic weapon tucked inside his jacket.
As he went down the back stairs, he paused to draw a mark on the hallway door with a permanent marker—a red circle, bisected by three equal diagonal slashes.
One gang war, as ordered.
Dusk painted the sky its usual vibrant colors. Jackson watched from his apartment with the local news network running off his tablet in the corner of the room.
“Unnamed authorities familiar with the case indicate the Red Ring cartel, which has made inroads among the narcotics traffic over the past decade, was responsible for the raid. Police arrested several members of the dominant Demir cartel fleeing the warehouse, which was leased to a third-party holding company registered in neutral space. So far, authorities say they have received no information about where Demir got its Orbita supplies, which were burned up in the attack. The CDF has publicized the League of Sol’s introduction of the drug to Coalition space at Gilead during the last few years of the war…”
Jackson smiled. Let the local Leaguers feel the heat for a while, now that the general populace is aware Orbita is out in the open. Of course, Red Ring would deny any role in the attack, but their denial wouldn’t stop Demir from striking back. Eventually, they would lose enough money and people to sit down. Constant warring was bad for business. In the short term, though, the disruption of Orbita sales was a win.
“Should interrupt Salvatore’s courier runs too,” Jackson murmured to the empty room. “Though if Demir needs those damaged skimmers repaired, that could be helpful.”
The imagery on the tablet’s projected wall screen shifted to a long line of fencing. “The Cypriot Crisis continues, though with a bright spot of good news—forty-six refugees were rescued from what was an apparent attempt at trafficking. Rumor has circulated for some months that the League refugees arriving in our system have been targeted by criminals, but this wasn’t proven until late last night, when police received an anonymous tip…”
No. Jackson slumped into a seat. He ran his hand through his hair.
The recording showed uniformed patrol officers leading teenaged children of varied races, all dressed in tattered clothing, out of a barge—the barge Sparks had tracked from the hidden landing field.
He was relieved the children were going to be reunited with th
eir families—albeit either back aboard the orbiting ships or crammed inside Kolossi Landing’s makeshift camp. But the police would involve the Coalition Bureau of Investigation, which would conduct its own investigation. Both would complicate matters for Unit 171, which hadn’t alerted either to its presence out of an abundance of caution when it came to possible League infiltrators in either organization.
Someone had called the police—someone who knew where the ship was going and what cargo it carried, someone who was trying to be a hero, someone who had put the entire operation in jeopardy.
“The League,” Jackson said, “is not going to be happy.”
15
Secret League Facility
Aphendrika System—Terran Coalition
24 July 2464
Forty-six people. Kiel didn’t care about their age. Adult or not, they were either fleeing the League or dumped outside its borders, which meant they didn’t matter—not as persons, as individuals. What mattered was their price. Between eight and twelve thousand apiece. Kiel squeezed the tablet until the screen developed a dent. Half a million credits.
Ferenc and Arvid waited for a response, a sound, anything to indicate his reaction. Kiel wouldn’t let them see his fury. Arvid shifted his stance, twice, three times, until he settled onto a lopsided container. Ferenc stared, arms folded.
Blast and damn, Kiel fumed. One of these days, I will get a rise from the man, short of pulling a trigger in his face. “Where are they?”
“As near as we can tell, being held at Kolossi camp, while TCFE attempts to reunite them with their families, if they have any,” Ferenc said. “I’ve heard they’ve had some success.”
“You’ve heard. That’s wonderful.” Kiel turned and flung the tablet with all his strength. It whipped past Ferenc’s left ear, crashing into the far wall. The plastic casing shattered. Arvid flinched, his gaze jumping from Ferenc to Kiel and back again. “I’d prefer you had certain evidence instead of hearsay.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Work harder, and replace the lost shipment with four times that many.”
“Sir, we’re lucky they didn’t pick up the Picton once she broke orbit.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it. The obscene amounts of money our superiors poured into her refit has everything to do with her success.” Kiel pointed a finger in his face. “And you’d better make sure she’s recouping every single cent. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you.” Kiel spat the word, his lips pulled back in a sneer as he took a step toward Arvid. “You were supposed to guarantee silence on our transfers. I never would have brought our goods into the same location from which you traded the Orbita if I’d known you would be this sloppy. Didn’t I tell you to seal the last leak?”
“I—yes. You did. And we took care of the man, one of the skimmer couriers. He is dead.” Arvid’s tone was quiet, clipped. He had the posture of a student called to apologize in front of an instructor. Fool. An ESS supervisor would have struck the instant incompetence was recognized. “I—don’t know what happened this time.”
Kiel leaned in and wiped soot from the man’s shirt, rubbing the scorched carbon between his fingers. “I suppose it’s difficult to remember, given the catastrophe you’ve suffered today. Didn’t you also tell me Red Ring wouldn’t be a problem anymore, with us supplying new weapons to the vaunted Demir cartel?”
“They caught us by surprise!”
“Obviously.”
“Sir,” Ferenc interjected, “Red Ring hasn’t made any moves against their rivals for ten months. Word is trickling in that they deny any role in the attack.”
“Bullshit!” Arvid snapped. “Who else would want to put us out of business? You chose us, and they’re jealous, so they torch our Orbita, wreck our craft…”
“My Orbita. Which I give to you to sell so you can earn a profit and I can take what I demand for my enterprises. Those same enterprises will now suffer because your incompetence let half a million credits walk off a barge into the embrace of police and CBI.” Kiel drew his plasma pistol and centered it on the man’s forehead. “I tire of excuses.”
“Hey!” Arvid sprang up, his hand slashing toward the weapon.
Kiel pulled the gun back, ducked the bigger man’s attack, and reversed his grip. He cracked the gun against Arvid’s jaw just under his left mandible. Arvid shouted, grasping his neck, but when he recovered enough to go for Kiel again, he found the muzzle of the latter’s pistol blocking the vision in his left eye.
“You really should keep both,” Kiel murmured. “Ask Ferenc. Having a cybernetic replacement installed isn’t a picnic. Who is your courier?”
“S-Salvatore’s guy was running that night. Euke Till. He’s done runs before. Never said a word. He had a new guy with him…”
“There’s always a new guy,” Ferenc said.
“Quiet.” Kiel withdrew the gun. “And?”
“I don’t know how the dispute took place, but it had to do with a miscount of Orbita.”
“Euke’s bag was short,” Arvid wheezed. “I sent one of the boys back to Salvatore’s with him and kept the jabbering guy as collateral.”
“And you found the missing Orbita?”
“Euke did.”
“This Euke. Again.” Kiel glowered at Arvid. “You have contacts on local police? Lean on them. Bribe them. I want the name of this ‘anonymous’ tipper.”
“I’ll have Corriveau pull signal records too,” Ferenc said. “We can trace the call if the police aren’t able.”
“Good. Dual efforts never hurt.” Kiel raised an eyebrow. “Arvid? Stop cowering and get back to work.”
The Demir enforcer left the room.
Kiel sighed. “I much prefer intrigues on League planets, you know. Much simpler when we have access to everything and everyone. Imparting fear required less work.”
“Yes, sir.” Ferenc retrieved the broken tablet. “Salvatore’s?”
“I know. Prepare a suitable message and run it by me before you execute.”
“What about the refugee camp, sir? The Orbita’s been circulating well there. I know we’ve tapered off, hoping to incite another riot when it runs short—”
“It’s fine. We’ll simply push up the timetable. I’ll reach out to our contacts on the inside.” Kiel smiled. “And I think, draw attention skyward so we can regroup on the ground.”
“Why do you think Red Ring is deliberately picking a fight now?” Ferenc frowned. “Jealousy, as Arvid said?”
“Perhaps. What did our people find of the attackers?”
“Three burned-out rooms in two buildings, melted weapons, shrapnel and other debris in the warehouse—possibly drones used in the attack.”
“No bodies? Signs of life?”
“If Red Ring sent people, they didn’t use many.”
Kiel accepted the bent tablet from Ferenc. He dusted off its surface. The screen hiccupped but loaded the data he needed. “Keep looking. Something’s afoot here, between this attack, the loss of our refugees, and the disappearance of Lucy Lee. One smuggler caught by TCFE doesn’t surprise me. But a second? So soon? And to just vanish…” He shook his head. “I don’t like it. After weeks of smooth operations, there are too many glitches.”
“CDF?”
“Their Intelligence apparatus, so to speak. All the blathering from Canaan certainly makes it seem like the government is hands-off except for TCFE crowding orbit. But as we well know, there are so many factions jockeying inside the Coalition—even in the White House itself—I wouldn’t put it past a few enterprising souls to have gone for a quieter option, off the books.”
Ferenc nodded slowly. “Coalition operatives.”
“It’s a possibility, which means we’ll have to be more observant. Pass the word to our people. Get me all visuals from the landing field. I want to know if anyone else was in the area.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll give you options on Salvatore’s within the hour.”
“
Ferenc?” Kiel pocketed the tablet. “Move the choices that will reduce his business to a smoking crater to the top of the list.”
Andreas Stefanidis threw a box at the fence, then he knelt and picked up another.
The crush of people around him was enough to suck the breath from his lungs, but he was beyond caring.
How many days have I been stuck in this wretched hellhole of trampled waste and squabbling factions?
There were still thousands of refugees in the camp. Supplies came in, but with the discovery of Orbita among the people, TCFE had clamped down on the flow, reducing it to a trickle as they examined everything sent. A few of the charitable organizations had taken offense and tried to find ways around it, including tossing containers over the fences in the dead of night. Still others suspended their shipments, pledging to clean up the mess on their end.
The youth didn’t improve the situation. Every morning, and every night, clusters of men assaulted the gates, fences, or random refugees. They were daring TCFE to send its officers in. It resulted in more suppression smoke plus the occasional patrol drone swarm trying to bind the ringleaders, like the lassoing tricks Andreas had seen in old pirated videos aboard the transport.
The chaos left people like Andreas and Jian—people struggling to keep themselves together and find their families—with no avenue but desperation, which was why Andreas was hurling empty ration containers at the guards along the fences.
Jian stood beside him, doing likewise while shouting for justice. “Clean the rabble out!” he yelled. “We’ll show you who they are! Come in and take them!”
