by Rick Partlow
It’s getting too long, she mused idly. Then, It’s been red a long time. Wonder if Ash is right, and I should let it go back to brown.
“I wonder if he’s got enough of a handle on the communications network that we couldn’t get a message through to Korri’s ‘link.”
“He doesn’t have to block messages to track them,” Ash reminded her, infuriatingly correct. “She’s probably laying low…” He winced. “Assuming she and Kan-Ten aren’t sitting in a cell in the Constabulary or…”
“They’re fine,” she insisted flatly, not willing to hear it. “Korri knows how to take care of herself.”
“We could get help from the mercs again,” Ash suggested, his expression brightening with the idea. “The mining co-op won’t pay them, but the planetary government sure as hell will, if they help take out Jordi.”
“Hell, Captain Fox will pay them, if I have to get Korri to squeeze his head like a grape until he does.”
Ash was nodding and she could see his mind working behind his eyes, feeling it meshing with hers, the way it had since they were in the Academy together.
“They may not have the laser defense systems online,” he pointed out working the problem, “but they have those armed shuttles. That means they might have a ship in orbit that launched them, too. We can’t take on their starship and guard the Savage/Slaughter landers at the same time.”
“We need to get the shuttles coming after us,” she agreed. She frowned. “It’d be just like Jordi to hold one of them back in reserve, though.”
“None of this is going to work unless we get some intelligence about what’s happening on the ground. We need to find a way to contact Fontenot and Kan-Ten.”
A notion suddenly blossomed into a thought in Sandi’s imagination, and a grin spread across her face. She reached out a hand and grasped Ash’s shoulder then pulled herself over to him and kissed him solidly.
“What?” he wondered. He was smiling, too, maybe because he’d liked the kiss, or maybe because he knew her well enough to figure out that there was something fiendish and devious going on behind her dark eyes.
“Jordi’s paranoid,” she explained, her lips beside his ear, “but more than anything else, he’s a vindictive prick. And there’s one thing that’s guaranteed to make him throw everything he has in one attack, and that’s me. I’m going to send him a little message.”
She chuckled, her breath whispering against his face and she felt his hand slipped down the small of her back, pulling her closer.
“Easy, tiger,” she said, but didn’t pull away. “First, I think I’ve figured out a way to reach Korri, too.” She nodded at the main control panel. “You still have all those multimedia documentaries about the First War with the Tahni in the ship’s memory?”
“I think so,” he answered, blinking in surprise at the question. “Unless Kan-Ten erased them again to make room for more nature shows.”
She leaned over him to access the controls at the pilot’s station, typing the search in manually. Ash was convinced that voice control was easier, but talking computer systems freaked her out and she’d vetoed the idea every time he’d brought it up.
“What are you looking for?” Ash asked, trying to sneak a look over her shoulder.
“Who do we know,” she reminded him, “who might be familiar with a military encryption from the First War?”
Chapter Fourteen
“Tell me something, Constable Freeman,” Jagmeet Singh asked sourly, “if you’re such a know-it-all frontier badass, how the hell did Jordi kick your ass and take over your station so easy? And why didn’t you go down fighting in true cowboy style?”
The Constable downed the last of the water, then handed the glass back to Fontenot for a refill before he turned and regarded the bounty hunter with a dubious glare. His face looked less ashen than it had when he’d arrived at the door, but he still hadn’t recovered from the blood loss.
“You waited until I came down off the painkillers just to ask that?” He made a show of checking the time on his ‘link. “It’s been, what? Two hours?”
“Four,” Fontenot muttered, taking the glass from him. “But who’s counting?”
“It’s not as if we’ve had any place to go, or anything else to think about,” Singh pointed out. He was sitting on the bed, arms over his knees, watching the Constable with suspicion in his eyes.
Fontenot sighed, holding the glass under the sink spigot for a moment and handing it back to Freeman. Singh had been brooding the whole time, mostly silent but with the occasional complaint, and only the fact that they were crashing in his rented room had kept her from smashing him through a wall.
“Give it a rest, Singh,” she snapped.
“If I lay off him, I might just start remembering how you and the Tahni,” he jerked a thumb at Kan-Ten, who leaned against a wall, in a stance that she’d come to know spoke of impatience at their inaction, “basically handed Jordi Abdullah everything he wanted on this planet in the space of a few days.”
She controlled herself with difficulty.
Use your words, Korri, she reminded herself, not your Gauss pistol. It’s too messy.
“He was a lot further along in his operation here than I thought,” she admitted. “If you were so interested in killing him, though, it seems to me that you had the perfect chance back when you busted in on the shop where he had me prisoner.”
“I was a bit preoccupied saving your ass.” He sniffed, his look showing how much he thought of her for getting captured in the first place.
“Yeah, why’d you do that, anyway?”
“It seemed like the right thing,” he snapped, looking off to the side, not meeting her eyes. “I’ve been experimenting with doing the right thing lately.”
“And how’s that been going for you?” She couldn’t help the grin, even though she knew it would piss him off. Or maybe because.
“I wanted to stay and fight,” Freeman interrupted, answering Singh’s question, his voice strained, a haunted look in his eye. “My people were getting killed all around me, and I wanted so bad to stay... But there was a chance I wouldn’t get killed, and I couldn’t let them take me alive.”
“Why not?” Singh demanded. “What’s so special about you?”
“I’m one of three biometric signatures required to unlock the controls for the planetary defense laser.” Freeman drained the glass in one long pull, and Singh fell silent, understanding passing over his face. “So yeah, I ran. My chief deputy told me if I didn’t, he’d kill me himself. I saw him die before I got out.” He paused, working that memory through his mind, visibly wringing the pain out of it.
“Anyway,” he went on, “Abdullah can kill our power and take away our water, but he can’t shoot down any ships, and we need to keep it that way.” He looked at each of them, as if evaluating their worth. “Now, what I have in mind is I got out of the Constabulary through an escape tunnel we dug after the war, and that’s just how we can get back in.”
“Get back in and do what?” Singh asked.
“That’s what’s gonna’ take some planning.” The Constable spread his hands. “I figure we got maybe two days at most before he finds us. We need to come up with something before then.”
Fontenot felt a vibration from her ‘link and checked it reflexively, then realized that the others were doing the same thing. She saw the readout and frowned. A wide-band broadcast was coming in, something keyed to activate the emergency announcement settings on every ‘link and console on this side of the planet. That had to be a beam from a satellite or…
She grinned and keyed the ‘link to receive, then set it to project and laid it on the table in front of Freeman, letting the image display on the wall again.
It was Sandi, the smirk on her face smug and taunting and just perfect.
“Jordi, you low-life piece of shit,” she said, shaking her head. “You thought you had this all figured out, that your hired guns could stop the ore shipments and starve the Brigantians
long enough to destabilize the government and take over. It must have seemed like easy pickings after you got your ass kicked by every other Pirate World cartel, and had to run your sorry little group of losers to the Periphery to find a place you could hold up. But you didn’t count on one thing, asshole.” She touched her chest with two fingers.
“Me. Me and Ash took out your pirate friends, and now we’re coming to take you out, too. You can skulk and hide in your little castle, but it won’t save you from us. You should have stayed home and died like a man fighting your enemies, Jordi. You’ve come a long way just to get put down like a rabid dog.” The smirk turned to a sneer. “We’re coming for you so you’d better get your ass ready.”
There was a burst of static at the end of the recording, just a half-second long, but incongruous enough to catch Fontenot’s attention for reasons she couldn’t consciously identify. She was still staring at the projection when she noticed Singh rising off the bed, shaking his head in disapproval.
“What was the purpose of that?” He threw a hand up demonstratively. “She obviously wanted to piss him off, but why? What does she think she’s going to accomplish?”
“I take it you know this woman?” Freeman asked, cocking an eyebrow in an obvious invitation for an explanation.
Fontenot ignored the question, fingers tapping out a control sequence on the keyboard of her ‘link, her mind working feverishly. If that static wasn’t static…
“She could,” Kan-Ten speculated, “have been attempting to draw him out, keep him from just sitting under the protection of the fortress and counting on our fear of civilian casualties to prevent us from attacking from the air.”
“The shuttles,” Singh decided, pointing a finger overhead. “He has those armed shuttles. Hollande and Carpenter are trying to get him to commit them to combat so they can take them out.”
Still looking at the screen of her ‘link, Fontenot began to laugh softly, drawing curious looks from the others.
“That’s not all they’re doing,” she said, touching the screen and projecting the data there on the wall. The code sequence she’d initialized was represented in the display as a series of horizontal grey bars, shrinking as each was decoded, revealing a sequence of numbers which transformed slowly into words.
“What is that?” Singh asked, peering over her shoulder. “Was that attached to the recording?”
“Not attached to it, embedded in it,” she corrected him, feeling his warmth against her shoulder. It bothered her for some reason, like an ache from an old injury. “It’s a worm program, dates back to the First War with the Tahni, decades ago. That burst of static at the end, that was a signal to look for it.”
“Don’t tell me you fought in that war,” Freeman said, eyes narrowing. “How the hell can you be that old? Shit, even nowadays, people out here don’t get the same medical treatments that they do in the Core worlds. Back then, it was even worse.”
“I’m from Earth,” she said, blowing past the questions that was going to bring up. “And yes, I was in the Marines during the First War, and this code was used to get through to colonists and intelligence assets on occupied worlds.”
The grey lines were disappearing more quickly now, running across the display from side to side, and the numbers were following them, switching to letters and revealing just a few sentences.
“We’re attacking in thirty-six hours,” she read them aloud. “We’ll draw their air assets away to clear the landing for two shuttles full of mercenaries. One platoon will land at the fusion reactor, the other at the Constabulary. If you can penetrate the fortress and get the ground forces a point of ingress, it would aid in avoiding civilian casualties. The garage entrance would be best, since it’s got less of a choke-point. Also, if the defense lasers are working, we’re fucked, so give us a heads-up. Take care of yourselves. S&A.”
“Well, there you go,” Freeman said, leaning back in the chair, his hands clasped over his belly, the grin on his face satisfied and slightly taunting. “A plan.”
***
Jordi Abdullah stood from the bed, grabbing the woman’s clothes and throwing them at her with casual disdain.
“Get out,” he told her, not bothering to turn on the lights.
It was daytime here, mid-afternoon he thought, but his internal clock was still set for another set of Circadian rhythms and he kept the windowless room dark. It had belonged to the Constable, Freeman, and he’d likely kept his spare room deep inside the fortress for security reasons, but it worked fine for Jordi. The only illumination was a small chemical strip-light across the top of the heavy, metal door, but it was enough for him to see the prostitute’s bare shoulders disappear under the darkness of her shirt, to see a glint from her eye as she watched him.
The scornful sneer on her face was probably just his imagination, but his fingers brushed against the butt of his sidearm where it lay on the bedside table, longing to grasp it, to put a round through her face. Instead, he picked up the small wad of Tradenotes and tossed them underhand to her. Even in the dim light, her hand snatched the bundle of cash out of the air as fast as a snake striking. She was smart enough not to say anything as she pulled open the door, letting in the glaring white light of the outer hallway.
She’d barely had the chance to close it behind her when he heard the knock. He ground his teeth against the curse that tried to force its way out; he needed to seem in control.
“Just a minute,” he said, loud enough for it to carry through the door.
His clothes were on a chair beside the door. He pulled them on slowly, taking his time, slipping into his shoes and buckling on his gunbelt, and then taking a deep, shuddering breath and slitting his eyes before he touched the main light switch. He blinked anyway as the glare stung his eyes, then turned and pulled open the door.
Medina was on the other side of it, nervously shifting from one foot to another the way he did when he had to relate bad news. Since he was a large man, a good six centimeters taller than Jordi and at least fifteen kilograms heavier, with bushy blond hair and a forked beard that gave him a fairly sinister appearance, the childish fidgeting seemed even more ridiculous.
“What is it, Francis?” He didn’t bark the question; Medina was a bit fragile around the feelings, and he didn’t need the man retreating into a shell before he told him the news.
“You gotta’ come to the comm room, boss,” he said, motioning back across the hall. “There’s a message.”
Jordi sighed heavily, making a herding gesture to get the big man moving. He wasn’t in the mood for this.
“Uh, boss,” Medina hesitated, still filling the doorway. “You got a…” He trailed off, pointing to the side of his neck.
Jordi cursed under his breath, feeling around on his own neck until his fingers found the drug patch he’d stuck there before he’d called for the working girl, and then forgotten after. He peeled it off and stuck it in his pocket. Medina gave him a disappointed look that made rage blossom in his chest.
“What?” This time he did bark.
“You never used to sample the product, boss,” he responded, the concern in his voice more infuriating than any insubordination or disrespect.
He wanted to slap the man, wanted to yank him to the ground and kick the shit out of him. But he didn’t have enough loyal soldiers left to ruin one of them now. Maybe after this job panned out, after this city was his, this world.
“A lot of things are different now,” he growled, pushing past Medina and heading for the Constabulary’s operations center.
It was down the hallway from the office, a large room, the largest on the floor. It was a combination conference, briefing and communications room as well as a tactical command post for teams in the field, and it was packed with display screens that could be slaved to drone feeds or helmet cameras. The rest of the space was taken up by a holographic mapping table surrounded by chairs, and a holotank hooked up to the communications array on the roof of the fortress.
There was only one other person in the room, one of his netdivers plugged into the tactical control stations, her baggy clothes hanging off her skeletal frame. Her eyes were open, but unseeing, lost somewhere inside cyberspace.
“So, show me,” Jordi demanded, waving at the holotank.
Medina nodded, moving quickly over to the controls and scrolling back through the menu until he found what he was looking for, then poking at one with a fat, meaty finger.
Sandrine Hollande’s face filled the holotank, lifelike enough that he could have reached in and strangled her, and he so badly wanted to. She was the cause of all this, she and her insufferable, straight-laced boyfriend…the cause of the loss of face, the loss of confidence, the loss of the fear the other cartels had for him and for La Sombra. They’d robbed him of his pipeline of stolen military weapons, killing his major source of income, robbed him of Singh and turned the bounty hunter against him. It had all been downhill since then, his enemies emboldened against him.
He was weak, he was vulnerable, and now he was an addict, and it was all that fucking bitch’s fault.
He very nearly didn’t hear her words, didn’t register the meaning until finally they penetrated.
“Me and Ash took out your pirate friends and now we’re coming to take you out, too. You can skulk and hide in your little castle, but it won’t save you from us. You should have stayed home and died like a man fighting your enemies, Jordi. You’ve come a long way just to get put down like a rabid dog.” The smirk turned to a sneer. “We’re coming for you so you’d better get your ass ready.”
He didn’t remember drawing his pistol, didn’t remember making a decision to shoot; the hiss-crack of the spin-stabilized mini-rocket startled him, and in the next instant the holoprojector was flaring and sparking and exploding, and the image in the holotank flickered and faded away in a sea of static.
Medina was staring at him, wide-eyed, but he ignored it the same way the netdiver was ignoring the gunshot and the smoke and the insistent hooting of the smoke alarm in the background. She was totally absorbed with whatever obscure corner of the data-stream had caught her attention, and he was absorbed with rage, with hatred. He pushed it down with all the willpower he had…all he had left. He shoved the gun back into its holster and turned to Medina.
