“Jessica? I’m not going to target you. You’re my friend.”
“Understand where I’m at, Tara. Your company is about to commit genocide, which is expressly forbidden. I recommend you surrender immediately.” Jessica heard the familiar warbling of the bird-things begin to rise. Their meals nearly finished, they were looking for another target, and without her synthetic TriRusk hide poncho, she and the CASPers were next on the buffet.
“I’m just doing my job and following the orders of my commander. We had no idea there was a Peacemaker involved.”
Jessica snorted. “He’s a drunken coward who rules his own company with violence and intimidation, but that’s beside the point. The ‘just following orders’ excuse doesn’t work. You had a choice before signing up with that bastard. You knew his reputation.”
“Nobody else would give me a job, Jessica. I’m bad luck. Every time I’m deployed, people die. I’m their Death Angel. The only person willing to give me a job, even on a provisional contract, was Raleigh.”
Jessica wanted to vomit. Tara Mason was too good and strong to have capitulated to the life of a privateer. “Then you should have hung it up, Tara. You’re wasting your talents.”
“I’m putting credits in the bank, Jessica. I don’t have the luxury of being taken care of for life like you are. Your father’s business and the Peacemaker Guild have set you up nicely. You can sit there on your high horse and berate me all you want. I’m a merc, and this is what I do.”
“You’re a human being, Tara!” Jessica snapped. “You know better than to get involved with an asshole like Raleigh Reilly. You know better than to undertake a mission to kill unknown subjects. You have the right and the ability to question the orders of those above you. You’re protected in doing so by the codicils of the Mercenary Guild. You’ve ignored them for credits, Tara.”
“Maybe I have,” Tara replied. “But you don’t understand what it’s like to be me, Jessica.”
Jessica nodded. “I don’t, Tara. But I know how to be a human being, and so do you. Surrender your CASPers. Your commander probably thinks I’m dead. I’m not, and what I say goes.”
“Raleigh didn’t bother to tell any of us anything. I barely knew the mission parameters and had no idea you were here. I wouldn’t have done anything like this if I had.” The Mk 8’s arms swung up at its sides. “I’m cleared and safe, Peacemaker,” Tara said. “I am your friend, Jessica. My current employer doesn’t change that.”
“Friend or not, Tara, you’re in violation of the law. We’ll deal with that, too. Have your wingman surrender right now.”
“He’s in full shut down.” Tara replied. “Lucille says he tried to reboot, but the system is stuck and not able to reestablish any linkages.”
“Lucille is onboard with you? Is that Angel Two?”
“Roger that.”
Jessica raised her voice and shouted, “Stand or fall, Lucille!”
The program’s synthesized voice replied over the speakers. <
“What are you doing?” Tara yelled.
“Insurance, Tara. My trust meter is on empty right now.” Jessica lowered the pistol, walked up to the CASPer, and reached for the external cockpit release handle. Behind her, there was a click and she heard a pneumatic system engage. She spun, bringing up her pistol. The Mk 5’s cockpit swung open, and an older man in a stained haptic suit with thinning black hair slicked back over his skull raised a laser pistol and aimed at her chest.
<
An earth-shattering roar came from the jungle, quieting even the squalling bird things. A white blur crossed under the Mk 8’s right arm and came up at the exposed man with snarling rage.
Kurrang!
He jumped up to the CASPer’s open cockpit and tore his claws across the man’s neck, severing his head in a shower of bright red blood that arced across the jungle. As the TriRusk impacted the man and his CASPer, the mecha fell backward. Kurrang and the man fell to one side as the Mk 5 slammed into the jungle floor on its back.
Kurrang turned to the Mk 8, red blood across his whitish-gray fur and a fierce snarl on his horned face. His eyes fell to her for a brief glimpse, then he stalked toward the remaining CASPer. Above her, Jessica heard the Mk 8’s cockpit open. She winced with pain, and her right arm hung nearly useless at her side. She clutched it across her stomach and tried to sit up.
“Kurrang, wait.” The words were softer than she intended, and the TriRusk didn’t hear. He stomped forward. Jessica sucked in a painful lungful of air. “Kurrang! Wait! She’s a friend.”
“She tried to kill me.” Kurrang snarled. “They will kill my daughter!”
Tara’s boots appeared on the external crew ladder descending from the cockpit. She froze and gaped down at the TriRusk. “It can talk.”
Jessica tried to sit up again, but the pain made her bite her lower lip and hot, angry tears filled her vision. “Godsdamnit, this hurts!”
Tara jumped down to the ground. In her arms was a first-aid kit. She knelt beside Jessica and embraced her carefully with one arm. “I am your friend, Jessica, above everything else.”
Jessica nodded against the pain and her crumbling resolve. She really wanted to believe Tara was her friend—that this was all some misunderstanding—but facts were facts. All things considered, it was still good to see her. The unexpected meeting, under horrible circumstances, had the glimmer of a silver lining. “It’s good to see you. We’re a long way from that drink you bought me.”
Tara laughed and pulled away. She looked down and dug into her first aid bag. “I’d forgotten about that.”
Like hell you did, Jessica wanted to say but didn’t. Her arm hurt too much. She could feel everything, which ruled out extensive nerve damage, but the sight of the wound was almost unbearable. The laser’s heat had cauterized the worst of the damage and, while the bleeding was under control, the smell of singed meat hung in the air like a putrid cloud. Only the familiarity of it, through seeing thousands of wounds as a mercenary commander and through the xeno-anatomy and physiology courses at the Peacemaker Academy, kept her from vomiting in revulsion.
She shook her head and looked up as Kurrang knelt over them. “Kurrang, this is Tara. Tara, this is Kurrang. He is a TriRusk who is much more than he seems on the outside.”
“This woman tried to kill me, Peacemaker,” Kurrang said with a growl.
Jessica nodded. “She doesn’t understand the circumstances. Her commander lied to his forces. There’s—” Jessica sucked in a breath as Tara applied an antiseptic wash generously to her wound. The flash of pain numbed quickly as the wash took effect. “There’s a lot that doesn’t make sense right now, Kurrang, but I’ll get to the bottom of it.”
“What if we don’t have that kind of time, Peacemaker? Then what?” Kurrang turned toward the downed CASPer. “The humans will send more of these, and they are not your friends. They will not stop their conquest to dress your wounds and stab you in the back.”
“I’m not stabbing anyone in the back, buddy.” Tara flared. “My vehicle and I are out of this fight if the Peacemaker wants it that way. It’s that simple.” She looked at Jessica, “You want me out of the fight—I’m out.”
Jessica nodded and looked at Kurrang only to see him looking at something in the distance. He vocalized three short noises that almost sounded like a dog’s bark. To her shock, there was an answer from the wood line behind them. She tried to roll around. “What’s going on?”
“More of them,” Tara said. “TriRusk. I can see ten, no, a dozen. They’re armed and moving this way.”
“Armed?”
Tara chuckled. “Looks like spears and rifles of some type. Big ones. You’ve got some interesting new friends, Jess.”
&n
bsp; Jessica looked up and decided Tara couldn’t know just how interesting the TriRusk were—at least not yet. “They’re much more than they seem. I’ve placed them under the protection of the guild until the Union can determine if they’re worthy of citizenship. I believe they are.”
Jessica stopped there. The TriRusk had to have been citizens of the Union. The MinSha knew what they were, and it was a near certainly that the other species in the galaxy, especially those well-traveled and more experienced than humanity, knew who they were, and what they could do.
Tara finished dressing the wound. The pain was a distant throb and, while it was a good dressing, it was nothing like Kurrang had used to completely heal the gash in her thigh in less than 24 hours. Tara didn’t need to know about the pharmaceutical benefits and experiments around them, either. While she’d tended Jessica’s wounds and vowed to stand down from operations, Jessica wasn’t sure she could trust her.
Which sucks.
“How does that feel?”
“Better,” Jessica said. “Get me up on my feet?”
“You’re not going to go into shock on me, are you?” Tara half-smiled.
Jessica shook her head. “No, I’m good. Kurrang? What’s going on?”
He turned to face her. “Nurr sends her regards and a squad of soldiers. The city itself is threatened, but all tunnels have been closed and we’ve evacuated further underground. There are troubling reports from our regular patrols in the area that the mercenary ship, the one damaged by the MinSha, is nearly repaired. The humans could use it as a gun platform again.”
“Or they could run,” Jessica looked up at Tara. The taller blond nodded.
“Raleigh could be planning that. But he won’t leave until he has something of value.
Kurrang snorted and Jessica glanced at him. He was undoubtedly thinking of his daughter and her unique condition. The child was something of value to both of them, for vastly different reasons. Raleigh Reilly had the child, but he also had the stash of diamonds that Psymrr had collected in the weeks before Jessica’s arrival.
Would that be enough for him to run?
Jessica sighed. “He’s not going to run without attempting to do what his contract stipulated. He’s going to kill the MinSha, and then he’ll come after the TriRusk. He’ll take the children and leave the rest. He’s thinking about profits, not about taking care of his forces.”
Tara hung her head. “He doesn’t care about his forces. He’ll sacrifice all of them to get what he wants.”
Jessica nodded, mentally noting that Tara had used the word “them” instead of “us.” It was a start, but it wasn’t all that was necessary. Another idea formed. “Tara, load me into your CASPer.”
“You can’t just leave me here!”
“Why not?”
Tara looked up at the bird-things passively watching from the under-canopy of the tall trees. “I’d be alone out here. Probably wouldn’t survive the night. But I can help you.”
“Help us?” Jessica shook her head. “You’re sitting out.”
Tara blinked. “But you can deputize me. You did that on Araf, remember?”
“I do remember that, Tara. But that was when I could trust you. If you hadn’t seen me, hadn’t listened to my order to stand down, you’d be chasing Kurrang and the other TriRusk all over the jungle. You saw me and realized something was wrong. That’s a good first step, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to deputize you.”
“At least let me help. You’ll need firepower to stop Raleigh.”
“Fine. You want to help?” Jessica pointed at the Mk 5 laying in the grass like a dead insect. “Get that one running.”
“Lucille says it’s frozen.”
Jessica looked up at the open CASPer cockpit. “Lucille? If we slave you over to that CASPer, can you get it running?”
<
Tara spoke up. “How much longer for you to completely download to that vehicle? Or for a supplemental controllability download package?”
<>
Jessica raised her eyebrows. “You can pilot that thing without Lucille, can’t you?”
“I’ll need a haptic suit,” Tara said. There was clearly more to the situation than that. Ever since Araf, when she’d taken on a mercenary command skiff with virtually no CASPer operational time, Lucille had been much more than an analysis or tactical operations package. She’d been a co-pilot and far outside the original bounds of her programming.
“You need a haptic suit? There’s one on your friend there,” Jessica said.
Tara’s face paled. She looked away as if the prospect of pulling a dead man out of a couple thousand credits worth of haptic technology was much more than the simple task she’d had to do dozens of times before. “He was my friend, Jessica. At least he had confidence in my ability to lead. He trusted me.”
There was much more to Tara’s voice than a simple loss of confidence. The man who’d tried to kill her might have been a friend, or at the very least a good wingman, but he was still acting on the orders of his commander. She’d been dangerously close to following her commander’s quest for credits above all else. Salvaging her went far beyond what a Peacemaker was supposed to do. Needs of the many and all that being what they were, a simple human mercenary shouldn’t have been worth her time. Except that Tara was her friend, and something needed to be done. “Tara? I need you to listen to me very carefully. I’m only going to say this once, and you sure as fuck need to hear it right now.”
“Oh-Okay?”
“You’re complicit in this mission. You and the rest of the mercenaries around you blindly followed the orders of your commander without giving a shred of thought to whether it was right to do so.”
Tara blinked. “He never told us anything. Raleigh blanks out every frequency we have except for his command network. We had no way of knowing, Jess.”
Jessica bit her lip for a moment. That Raleigh was dumb enough to jam his own forces gave her options. He might even have his guard down. “You talked about trust? If you want to gain my trust back, get that CASPer moving and do exactly what I tell you to do. The galaxy needs to know what’s happened here, and until we get Reilly’s jamming system disabled, we can’t do that.”
“You want me to take out the jammers?”
Jessica nodded. “You and me. You came out here with two CASPers—you’re going back with two. I can’t fight a Mk 5, but I can pilot a Mk 8 with Lucille. You can pilot a Mk 5. I’m trusting you to have my back, Tara. Fuck that up, and it’s over. Lucille will not hesitate.”
Tara’s eyes cleared, and she nodded almost absently, her eyes on the Mk 5. “I’ll need Lucille’s help to get it running.”
“Direct connection. Make it fast,” Jessica said. Tara stepped toward the Mk 5, and Jessica watched her for a long moment before Kurrang stepped closer.
“You’re trusting her?”
Jessica shrugged slightly. “I need her, Kurrang. If I can get these two mechs into the compound, we can disable the jamming, call for help, then focus on hammering Raleigh Reilly into the mud.”
“You can…pilot this thing? You are injured, Jessica. And who is this Lucille? I cannot see her.”
“Yes,” Jessica grinned. “I can pilot this thing with Lucille’s help. She’s a very capable computer program I’ve had for years. She’s almost artificially intelligent, and she’s much better than a true AI.”
Kurrang stared at her for a moment. He spoke slowly, as if considering each word. “There is much about you humans I do not understand. Intelligent computation systems are forbidden, yet you produced and fielded your own program that pushes the definition of the rules without breaking them. We are very similar beings, Jessica, but also very different.”
“Are your friends ready for this?”
&nb
sp; Kurrang’s jaw worked in a frightening approximation of a human smile. “The TriRusk do what must be done, Peacemaker. We will join you against a common foe. What happens beyond that, when your Union comes to discuss our future, is not for us to decide. We can affect the next few minutes, sometimes the next few hours, and maybe the next few days. All else doesn’t matter. What matters is stopping the human commander and his forces before they eradicate the MinSha, the TriRusk, and everything else they can to slake their greedy thirst. It’s been done to the TriRusk before, and we will not stand for it. We stand with you.”
Were there any doubt the TriRusk had been full citizens of the Union, it fled Jessica’s thoughts like the raccoons that tried to steal dog food from the back porch of her childhood home when the outside light came on. They were fewer in number and firepower than what she’d had on Araf. There, she was supposed to keep a fragile peace. Here, there was no such thing. Raleigh Reilly would order his soldiers to kill everything that moved. None of them were safe, especially not on their individual paths. Working together, they had a chance. Jessica glanced at Tara, who was securing a direct link between the stricken mecha and the Mk 8. Lucille would find a way to get the other CASPer functional. From there, the easy part was getting into the MinSha compound and destroying the jamming platforms. The other variables needed consideration.
Jessica looked Kurrang in the eye. “Can your people hold the city? If they use the tunnels and what terrain there is, can they hold it?”
“Why would they want to, Peacemaker?”
Jessica rubbed the inside corners of her eyes. “If we can hold the bulk of Reilly’s force there, we have an advantage when we go after the compound and his ship. If we take away his ability to run, and his captured headquarters, he will be forced to link up with his remaining troops. When they do, we can surround them and put an end to this conflict.”
Kurrang looked away, almost thoughtful in a very human way. “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
Honor the Threat Page 29
