Recon- the Complete Series

by Rick Partlow

  “Not your mother…” Yassa’s eyes went wide and her hands came down to her sides like she was getting ready for flight or fight.

  “No,” I assured her. “That’s why it’s even more complicated. Mother and other members of the Executive Board might also know about this, and they might have people on the ground as well.”

  “Wait a second,” Victor held up a hand. “What the hell does she mean about your mother? Who’s your mother?”

  “It’s not important or relevant,” I told him. Then I watched the eyes of all the others staring at me, even Kane’s, and I sighed, rubbing my hands over my face.

  Shit. I really hadn’t wanted to tell the others any of this.

  “Okay,” I said, leaning back against a locker set into the bulkhead. “My mother is a very highly placed Corporate Council Executive Board member. We had a disagreement about me joining the military…which ended with her sending one of her people to kill my great grandfather, because she felt he was trying to lead me away from her and what she wanted for my life.”

  “What the fuck?” Bobbi muttered, her expression scrunched up in a look of disbelief. “Is this your actual life or are you ripping off the plot of one of the drama serials on Commonwealth HoloNet?”

  “I killed the guy,” I said, unamused and showing it. “I had the choice of letting my mom cover it up and being her puppet for the rest of my life or taking off and changing my identity. I ran.” I gave them a truncated version of the events that had happened after that, and of Cowboy’s involvement. “That’s why I’m here. I owe Cowboy, and this is how I have to pay him back.”

  “You’d rather risk dying in the Pirate Worlds and no one ever hearing of it,” Carmen said slowly, smiling hugely, eyes beaming, “than living the life most people only dream of and winding up a high level Corporate Council executive? That’s so damned romantic.” She laughed. “And absolutely nuts, of course.”

  “And I thought my relationship with my mom was fucked up,” Sanders muttered, still seemingly bemused by the story. At least something had taken his mind off Overtown.

  “The money’s still real, right?” Bobbi asked, looking a bit concerned.

  “The money’s very real,” I told them. “You all get half in advance in your accounts the minute we Transition into the system. If you die, you get the full amount sent to whoever you want.”

  “I’m not sure there’s anyone I like that much,” Yassa commented drily.

  “If anyone wants off,” I said, “I’ll make you the same deal I did Captain Yassa. We’ll be at the Transition Node for Loki in a few hours. If you don’t tell me by then, you’re in and I’m in charge. No backing out and no trying to make any side deals.” I caught each of their eyes and made sure they understood me. “This is a military operation, and we’re going to be pretty far from any laws or any backup. The Chain of Command is the law. Everyone good with that?”

  There was a lot of surreptitious looking around as everyone tried to see what everyone else was going to say, but in the end, they all nodded, or said some version of “yes,” or “I’m in.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll be handing out weapons before we land. You’re going to need one there, just walking around, if what I’m told is accurate. We aren’t going to have the luxury of run-throughs or tac-lanes, or training, because we have no idea what the ops we’ll be pulling will look like until we get some intelligence; so I hope none of you have forgotten how to shoot-n-scoot since the war.”

  Again, nods all around. I was only really worried about Victor and Kurt, who hadn’t had any formal military training, but I figured I could go over a few things with them before we got there.

  “There’s no set jobs and no rank,” I reminded them, “except Kane is the pilot and the net-diver, for obvious reasons. I’m in charge and Captain Yassa is my second. If anyone has a problem with that, say so now and I’ll leave you on Loki.”

  Bobbi and Sanders both looked at her sidelong, but said nothing. If Yassa noticed it, she gave no sign.

  “Like I said before,” Bobbi piped up, “you’re the boss, Boss.”

  “Okay then,” I concluded. “Get some food, get some sleep, do whatever you need to do to be ready. From here on out, you’re on the clock.”

  They dispersed, except for Yassa. She waited until the others were out of the compartment before she stepped closer to me.

  “Are you sure you trust me with this?” She asked me quietly.

  “You trusted me once,” I reminded her, just as softly, “when you had no reason to, when the MPs and the DSI and every fucking body on Inferno wanted my ass arrested. I owe you one.”

  “What if I fuck up?” She wondered, just a hint of a tremulous note in her voice.

  “We’re going to the Pirate Worlds, Cap,” I reminded her. “We’re going to be surrounded by criminals and spies.” I forced a grin. “If you fuck up, you’ll be dead. And so will the rest of us.” I moved toward the passageway, intent on getting some sleep. “So, don’t fuck up.”

  Chapter Seven

  I’d traveled through T-space at least a couple dozen times in my life, starting when Mom had hauled me to Hermes for a “vacation” that mostly involved her schmoozing with other executives when I was about eight years old. They’d let me onto the command bridge of the Corporate transport for the conversion and I remember the ship’s Captain had told me about the computer negotiating our course and orbit automatically with the traffic control systems in orbit around Hermes. I could see on the ship’s sensor display that there were hundreds of other ships in orbit, some heading to the civilian or military stations, some carrying cargo to or from the orbital industrial plants, all dancing to the complex tune that the computers played for them.

  Arriving at Thunderhead was nothing like that. The universe had unfolded around us and deposited the Wanderer just past the orbit of Thunderhead’s major moon, Stormbringer, and I was adjusting to the return of microgravity and getting my first look at the blues and greens and angry, swirling whites of the planet when Kane glanced over and touched a control on the communications panel.

  “This is Freeport Control,” a human voice said, sounding annoyed at the interruption. “Who are you and what do you want?”

  I glanced over at Captain Yassa, the only other member of the crew who’d come to the cockpit for the landing. She shook her head and raised her hands palm up in a clear “I have no clue” gesture.

  “This is the independent freighter Wanderer,” I said into the audio pickup, improvising. “We’re here on business, looking for work.”

  “There’s a $200 landing fee, payable in Tradenotes or Corporate Scrip,” Freeport Control informed us. “You’ll pay it when you land or you won’t be allowed to take off again. You’re currently being targeted by a laser defense system that can reach anywhere between the surface and lunar orbit, so you will stay in the approach corridor I’m sending to your navigation system. If you deviate, you’ll be blown to vapors. Is all that clear, Wanderer?”

  “Read you five by five, Freeport Control,” I assured him. “We will stick to the prescribed flight corridor. Wanderer out.” I cut the connection and looked over at Kane. “You got the flight plan?”

  He nodded once.

  “Then take us down.”

  “See those clouds?” Kane pointed to the display, where quickly spinning storms of angry skull-white swirled over the major continent of the Northern Hemisphere.

  “That’s where we’re going?” Yassa demanded a bit too loudly.

  “This is Munroe,” I said over the ship’s intercom. “Everyone strap in, and grab a motion-sickness patch if you’re so inclined. It’s going to be a rough ride down.”

  I felt acceleration press me back into the cushion of my seat as the fusion drive ignited, and I cursed as I slipped my arms into the restraints hurriedly.

  “I just told them, Kane,” I grumbled. “You could have given everyone a second.”

  He said just what I expected him to, which was nothing at
all, but I was already grabbing a motion sickness patch from the supply in a pocket of the acceleration couch. Peeling the backing off, I slapped it onto my neck. I had a sudden thought about what memories that the sights of the patch might dredge up in Captain Yassa, and I shot her a worried look.

  “It’s okay, Munroe,” she assured me, smiling grimly. “I don’t get motion sickness.”

  The drive took us along the approach corridor at a steady one gravity of acceleration and it wasn’t that long before we slipped around to the night side of the planet, darkness swallowing us as the primary star fell out of sight behind the midnight blue of Thunderhead’s largest ocean. No one lived on the coasts, I’d read in Cowboy’s files. The size and proximity of the moon caused tides that bashed at the shore like sledgehammers, leaving bare, naked rock in its wake. Sea farms or undersea mining was impossible with the storms, and the frequent windstorms made the open plains a nightmare. The only cities, such as they were, were nestled in isolated valleys between the largest mountain ranges, sheltered from the worst of the storms.

  We had to fly through that.

  The ship shuddered as the atmosphere thickened around us, from a wisp of baby’s breath to a soup of turbulence that battered the Wanderer mercilessly. My fingers dug into the soft, malleable plastic of the acceleration couch’s armrests as my stomach did flips and the seat kept trying to jump away from me. I could hear the whine of the turbojets through the bangs and jolts of the winds that assaulted us, and while I knew on an intellectual level that the cutter had enough power to force its way through anything in that atmosphere, what I knew in my head wasn’t quite making its way to my gut.

  Thank God for motion sickness patches.

  The turbulence didn’t let up until we emerged from the lower level of clouds only a few hundred meters over the spaceport. Well, to call it a spaceport was stretching the truth; it was a landing field, nothing more, and you could see that even at night, from three hundred meters up. It was packed with ships, but they were mostly heavy lift cargo craft and orbital shuttles; the only other starships were two cutters like ours, military surplus or maybe stolen, given where we were. Floodlights illuminated the field from poles set every fifty meters around the perimeter, and there was a building of some kind set up on the only paved road out of the field.

  Then the view disappeared in a spray of steam and sand as the Wanderer descended on columns of fire from the landing jets, the whole boat shaking with the effort and then touching down with a jolt on five massive skids. I felt the slight bounce as the ship settled down onto the landing gear, then the fading whine as the turbines spun down and I let out the breath I’d been holding. The display went dark and Kane swiveled his seat around to face me.

  “I can stay here,” he volunteered. “For air support.”

  I thought about it for a moment. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to leave someone with the ship, but would it be smart to leave a guy who was the only one who could possibly crack the encryption codes to fly it without my permission and had a big incentive to go sell it somewhere and use the money to fix his body up with bionics?

  “No,” I decided. “With all the EM interference here, we wouldn’t be able to call you even if we did need help. It’s better if we stick together.” He shrugged, and I couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or not.

  Everyone was waiting in the utility bay, gathered around the weapons locker like kids at a toy box. I shook my head slightly. Well, the kind of people willing to go get shot at for money because they were bored with their lives probably weren’t the ones I could expect to have a mature attitude about being issued a gun.

  I touched the ID plate on the locker and the door popped open, revealing a double rack of firearms, handguns across the top, carbines on the bottom, ten of each with cases of loaded magazines stacked on a shelf above them and a loose collection of belt and shoulder holsters jammed in-between.

  Bobbi pulled out one of the carbines and gave it a cursory inspection, racking open the grenade launcher affixed under the barrel. It was a Gauss rifle, standard issue when the two of us had been Recon Marines, a bit dated now.

  “Just sidearms for now,” I said, slipping off my jacket and shrugging into a shoulder holster before grabbing one of the pistols for myself. I stuffed a few spare magazines into the pockets, then zipped the coat up. “We can come back and get heavier weapons if we need them.” I motioned to a smaller locker off to the side. “There’re commercial enhanced optics glasses in there that’ll synch to the gun’s sights if you need them.”

  I didn’t; I still had the contact lens. It wasn’t as versatile as the enhanced optics, but it also couldn’t get knocked off your face and kill your night vision in a fight.

  Bobbi scowled as she put the carbine back in the rack and grabbed a handgun. “What do you think we can accomplish with these popguns, Munroe?” She asked me, popping the magazine out of the ZWH pistol and checking its load. The variable-warhead, rocket-assisted round straining against the feed lips gleamed a dull silver in the stark light of the bay.

  “We’re here to get hired,” I reminded her, trying to summon patience I didn’t ever recall having, “and gather intelligence. When the time comes for breaking shit and blowing things up, you’ll be the first in line for the big stuff.”

  Once everyone had got what they needed, I sealed the locker and led them over to the boarding ramp. It was raining outside, and a few drops blew in as the ramp lowered, cold against the bare skin of my face. I let the others go ahead of me, and when I closed the ramp, I activated the security seal. That meant that only Captain Yassa or I could open it, though I hadn’t actually told her about it yet. Walking out from under the nose of the Wanderer, I felt the rain and wind smack me in the face and my boots nearly slipped out from under me in the thin coat of mud on the fusion-form landing field.

  I stared up into the roiling clouds and saw lightning forking across the sky, its glow illuminating the slopes of the mountains surrounding the town. Thunder trailed a second later, echoing back and forth across the valley.

  “That’s not all ominous or anything,” Ibanez said, smiling crookedly. I grinned back at her; it was impossible to dislike the woman.

  I walked through the midst of them and headed for the lone building, more like a shack, out near the edge of the field. It was about a half a kilometer of walking, and by the end I was feeling pretty glad my jacket and boots were waterproof. It was a small building, but everyone crammed into it anyway, and the skinny, unhealthy looking little man behind the single desk inside eyed us suspiciously as we dripped water and tracked mud on the plastic sheeting that lined the floor beside the single entrance. He was dressed in practical clothes that looked more hand-made than fabricated, which might cost less out here for all I knew, and he wasn’t armed.

  Behind me, I could hear the door creek shut as the last of us made it inside, slamming at the end as the wind gave it a final, spiteful shove.

  “You off the Wanderer?” He asked us, looking around for someone to focus on.

  “Yes,” I answered, giving him a target for his stare. I reached into a pocket and withdrew a dataspike, flipping it over to him. “There’s the port fees,” I explained as he caught it with an awkward grab.

  He made a face at the spike, but then jabbed it into a reader built into the cheap, plastic desk and nodded at the figure that came up on the display.

  “Two hundred in Corporate Scrip,” he confirmed. He eyed me sidelong. “You want to hire protection for your boat?”

  I rolled my eyes. I guess I should have been expecting that, out here.

  “Protection?” That was Victor, sounding outraged. I looked over and held up a hand to silence his protest. Arguing with the sad sack behind the desk would accomplish less than nothing. And on a place like this, maybe it was just the cost of doing business.

  “How much is it?” I wondered. “And what do we get for it?”

  “Three hundred per day,” the little man told me, smiling so widely
I knew he must get a big cut of that.

  “Local day?” Bobbi cut in, eyebrows rising. “Those are only eighteen standard hours long!”

  “We have quite a few people in our party,” I mused, remembering my days haggling with the merchants in the Zocalo in Trans-Angeles. “It wouldn’t be that big of a deal to leave someone behind to keep an eye on the ship, I suppose…”

  “I know the people who offer the service,” the little man hemmed, acting as if the savings were coming directly out of his flesh. “Maybe I can talk them down to…two hundred a day?”

  “We’re going to be here probably at least a local week,” I told him. “How about we give you a thousand for the week, ahead of time, in Tradenotes?” I fished the roll of bills out of my pocket and peeled off ten of the twenty dollar notes, handing them over to him.

  “You drive a hard bargain, sir,” he said, but he nodded.

  “How about arranging us a ride into town?” I asked him, handing over an extra twenty.

  He looked at the eight of us, scratching at his scraggly, grey-streaked beard. “It’ll cost you more with so many,” he warned me. “They’ll have to send a truck.”

  “That’s fine,” I assured him. It was better than walking the two or three kilometers into town in the rain, and just like in the Zocalo in Trans-Angeles, it was all someone else’s money.

  ***

  Freeport wasn’t as ugly and primitive as I’d thought it would be. The buildings were mostly one-story, probably because of the high winds they could get even down here in the sheltered river valley, but they looked quaint and homey, built from local wood and stone instead of buildfoam and concrete, and fleshed out with the personalities of the people who lived and worked in them.

  The truck had dropped us off at the heart of the hospitality district, rolling slowly through the darkened and sleeping apartments and townhouses at the edge of town, through the shops and storehouses closed now for the night, and into the part of Freeport that never slept. It was fairly crowded for that late at night and lights blinked teasingly from hotels, restaurants and clubs catering to spacers.