Wolf Hunters

by Kevin Killiany

  Tommy was surprised by the bile in the back of his throat. He'd thought he was past this. He fought down the urge to spit on his rented carpet.

  Jazz was watching him, holding very, very still. A lifetime of reading eyes and he wasn't sure what was in hers. Or what she saw in his.

  "Yulri I can deal with," Tommy said when he trusted his voice. "He wasn't there in thirty-fifty—probably, with the way Clanners remember history, he doesn't even know about Unzmarkt. Plus, he's a good scrapper. But I never forget he's a Clanner, a clone, a biological automaton . . ."

  He knew his shrug looked helpless. "If you're just enjoying the ride, fine," he said. "But don't you ever forget Clanners got no hearts, got no souls. When he gets tired of you . . ."

  He looked away from her. There was some sort of bird he'd never noticed before hanging in the air, practically hovering, about twenty meters outside the office window.

  "Just don't want one of my top players off her game," he said at last.

  The bird was a sort of gray with rust brown. He'd probably seen a million in his life without noticing them. Who knew they could hover?

  The neoleather of the wingback guest chair creaked. A few moments later the door to his office clicked gently shut.

  Tommy sat for an uncounted while longer, watching the hovering bird as it hung, looking to him like it was searching for something vital. Finally it saw whatever it was looking for—or gave up—and dived from sight.

  With a sigh, Tommy swiveled back to his desk. Not looking at his nieces, he pulled the comm unit to him and punched in a code from memory.

  14

  DropShip Diligence

  Wasat System, former Prefecture VI

  16 November 3135

  "In eighteen we were recovering a Tramp-class Jumper off the Kyrkbacken nadir station," Yard Control Officer Tarnell Amiton's voice came over the bridge speakers. "The Largo. Some sort of explosion, I forget what, blew its sail assembly and sent it spinning out of the system."

  Anson Monteith grinned and shook his head. The problem with skippering the Diligence was having to listen to Tar's endless stories about the adventures he'd had when she'd been his. The Octopus tug was just over a century old, but apparently its days of greatest glory had been the two decades Tar had either XO'ed or held down the hot seat.

  Now he ran operations for the Wasat Yards. Less than a third of the sprawling complex of habitats and shipbuilding facilities—built during the Star League era- was in use. But that was five times as much as had been viable before Devlin Stone and The Republic's revitalization program.

  Designed to save vessels in need of service the three- week round trip to planetary orbit, the yard hung a half a day "below" Wasat's zenith jump point and recharge station at one-gee boost-and-flip. Distant enough to be out of the way of traffic, but close enough to be efficient. The yard was now a cargo-handling hub for a half-dozen transport companies and—though shipbuilding was still at least a decade in the future—was well known for fast, quality JumpShip and DropShip repairs.

  "Matching spins was a bear," Amiton said. "It was still venting gases and rotating on two axes, so yaw and tumble were flux . . ."

  Helm Officer Nyota Liberdade turned her head just enough to catch Anson's eye. Her face, nearly as dark as the image of space on the viewscreen, was outlined in the multicolored glow of her control panel as she arched one eyebrow.

  Anson grinned back at her. Gripping his tightly bound ponytail of dreadlocks he pantomimed pulling his own hair.

  "Hold one, Yard," he said aloud. "We're closing on the maverick. We'll reopen this channel when we've got it under wraps."

  He signaled the operations officer to cut the radio before his supervisor had time to point out capturing a wayward storage hold wasn't anywhere near as difficult as matching spins with a tumbling JumpShip. No doubt Amiton had often done this in his sleep.

  Storage holds weren't exactly misnamed, though the label implied they were part of a larger vessel. Storage holds were free-floating containers designed to hold construction materials until they were needed or—in the case of this one—cargoes that had arrived too far ahead of the connection that would take them to their final destination.

  With delays of a few days or even a week, the DropShip would wait, of course. But if the anticipated wait time stretched into weeks, it was cheaper all around to off-load the shipment. Even with stevedore fees, it cost a lot less than making the wait worth a Drop-Ship's while.

  Occasionally storage holds were anchored, but the laws of physics were usually all that was needed to keep them handy. Parked outside the travel lanes, hundreds of them hung, motionless relative to the yard, waiting for pickup. Without some form of energy signal, free-floating metal objects were practically invisible, of course, but transponders made location simple. Most storage holds could be easily retrieved by service sleds with only a few of the big ones requiring the Diligence.

  Only two things could go wrong with the system. A transponder could go dark, rendering the storage hold invisible to the yard's sensors, or a hold could pick up incidental motion and drift out of formation.

  Both had happened in this case.

  Late in the last shift a hold had abruptly changed position and begun tumbling toward Wasat. That had been a fairly easy capture, routine. Until they'd gotten a look at its hull damage. Something had struck it a glancing blow along one side; most likely another storage hold with a dark transponder.

  Factoring the mass, course, and speed of the container they recovered, it was a simple matter to work out the amount of energy necessary to swat it out of position. What made finding the culprit tricky was guessing how much of that impact energy had come from the velocity of the interloper and how much from its mass.

  Eyeballing the hull damage, Anson had gone with a big, slow-moving bogie. Keeping the search spiral tight, they'd found the maverick in a matter of hours. A hexagonal prism, sixty meters by twenty, it was tumbling languidly toward deep space.

  Given that physical description, Amiton had given them a list of six storage holds lost over the last decade that it could have been. Yard insurance had long ago reimbursed all the parties involved, so whatever it contained was now salvage—property of the yard.

  Which—according to their contract—meant twenty percent of whatever was left after the cost of damages to the contents of the other storage hold belonged to the officers and crew of the Diligence.

  "Match rotation, helm," Anson ordered. "Close to grapple."

  Nyota's long fingers keyed attitude thrusters—firing, feathering, adjusting sequence and fuel flow—until the cylinder tumbling against the field of stars became rock steady. Without gravity to alert their inner ears, only the pinwheeling of the distant stars told them the Diligence was now spiraling in perfect time with the tumbling container.

  Nyota tapped the main drive, a single pulse. The storage hold grew gradually larger on the screen.

  On most DropShips, the skipper did nothing firsthand. She or he made decisions and gave orders, relying on everyone else to carry them out. What Anson loved about the Octopus was the control panel he could choose to swing up from beside the command chair.

  "Taking grapples," he informed Harrison at ops. A formality. The operations officer hadn't even bothered to activate his own grapple controls.

  Nyota keyed a long burn on the nose thrusters, hard enough for Anson to feel a gentle pressure against his harness.

  Anson activated arms one and five. Fingers feather light on the joysticks, he extended them as a pair, gripping two of the hold's hard points without fumble. Given its dimensions, two arms would be sufficient to secure the storage hold even if it were packed with solid lead. But Anson was master of a recovery tug because he knew when to take risks and when to play it safe. Locking the first pair in position, he brought arms three and seven online and repeated the maneuver.

  Only when he had the cylinder in a grip that would have held a Union under thrust did he order Nyota to slow the ro
tation. She rode the attitude thrusters harder, compensating for the additional mass, and brought them to horizontal relative to the yard proper.

  "What have we got, Johnny?" Anson asked.

  The operations officer spun his chair to face the cargo board. Running a trickle of power through a contact in arm one to a receptacle built into the hard point, he brought the storage hold's transponder online.

  "Zero one four four three six dash four four eight four dash three one two eight," he read aloud as he tapped the numbers into his terminal. There was a pause as the database rendered the storage hold's manifest. "Damn."

  "Not four hundred and twenty-seven tons of uncut jewelry-grade diamonds?" Anson guessed.

  "All the way from exotic Wasat," Harrison confirmed. "It's a load of Wasat Aggressor targeting systems. They had been bound for Andurien Aerospace seven years ago. Paid for, never collected, lost, then paid for again by yard insurance."

  "Damn," Anson agreed.

  "There goes my solar sailboat," Nyota said. "This year anyway."

  Sale and transport of military materiel was closely regulated by The Republic. Which meant no public auction of this particular salvage.

  Protocol was that any locally produced hardware they recovered had to be returned to the Wasat plant. Even hardware for which Wasat had already been paid. There would be a small finder's fee, of course, but not enough to make an appreciable bump in their annual incomes.

  On the other hand, since they knew who had ordered it in the first place, it was possible, if they squinted at the regs just right, to offer the cargo to Andurien Aerospace. They had already been paid for the shipment lost seven years ago and—if they were still building whatever it was they'd wanted these for—they might be interested in buying these at a discount. Anson bet half price would still be an order of magnitude above the finder's fee.

  Except—given what little he understood of the current political situation—getting in touch with them might be problematic.

  There could be other markets out there. Almost certainly were, in fact. But that did them no good. He just didn't have the connections . . .

  Anson sighed.

  He didn't have the connections, but he knew who did. Their supervisor had been around for decades—back in the days when the Diligence had been armed and could go wherever the work took it. Before she'd been reduced to a glorified harbor tug for the Wasat Yard. It was possible Tarnell Amiton knew people—or knew people who knew people—who might be willing to pay a decent price for the load of specialized technology.

  He'd had a vague hope that whatever they'd pulled out of the sky would have been rare enough or valuable enough to—finally—top one of Tar's stories. As it was, all they'd found was a white elephant. And he was going to need Tar's help to unload it.

  He laid the situation as he saw it out to his bridge crew. Nods all around; their numbers matched his. By now the long comm silence had to have tipped the yard master something was up, but there was no incoming signal. He wasn't one to ask important questions over an open radio channel.

  Johnny Harrison scrolled through the list of possible storage holds they'd been sent.

  "Tall Trees triticale," he said, reading the screen. "Wheat. Lost nine years ago."

  Anson nodded. Recovering nine-year-old wheat would not attract interest—except to make them the butt of a few jokes. And parking a can of wheat for the months— or years—it would take to find a market would not inspire any questions.

  "Wheat it is," he said. "Make the report and find an out-of-the-way place in the grid to park it. Tar will know we need to talk after we dock."

  "Assuming Old Tar finds some way to make some C- bills on this," Harrison said after shutting off communications again, "how many years do you figure we'll have to listen to the story of how he bailed us out?"

  "Four years," Anson guessed.

  "Ten," countered Nyota.

  15

  New DeLonStablesSolarisCity,

  Solaris VII

  Lyran Commonwealth

  21 November 3135

  "This is your champion?" Yulri demanded.

  The youth, hardly a man, stood up straighter at Yulri's incredulous tone and regarded him down the length of a particularly narrow nose.

  Yulri thought it was possible the angle of his chin was meant to imply disdain, but the net effect was to expose his thin neck for easy slaughter.

  The broad man who had been speaking to Tommy Gunn near the door of the 'Mech hangar—the Industrial- Mech hangar, since there was not a true BattleMech in sight—chuckled deep in his throat.

  Yulri knew the big man's name was Garnet , and that he was someone of significance at New DeLon Stables. Someone Tommy Gunn was going to great lengths to humor.

  Garnet's features, his shoulders, even his arms and legs, seemed to have been stretched sideways, creating the illusion he was as broad as he was tall. But the man was not fat. Yulri recognized the physiognomy of someone raised on a heavy-gravity world. He suspected Garnet's bone and muscle density would rival an Elemental's.

  "This is Parchez, young man with a future," said Tommy Gunn, indicating the youth who had abandoned his exposed-throat stance to meet Yulri's gaze more directly. "He earns his keep as a sparring partner for the pros. You look good against him, maybe you get one, too."

  The Solarian spoke rapidly and with an inflection that implied familiarity, a combination Yulri found annoying. But he could not fault the assessment of Gunn as the best agent through whom to navigate the business side of Solaris VII.

  Behind Tommy Gunn, Jazz shifted her weight to catch his eye, then pulled her interesting mouth into a straight line. Her impression of the testing procedure reflected his own.

  Yulri flicked an eyelid in response.

  Looking over the agent's head, he ran a practiced eye over the row of 'Mechs. None was in good repair. Battered and worn, they looked to serve no other purpose than to be targets for better machines.

  Bringing his gaze down, he met Garnet's appraising eye, cold and level. His next words would not surprise the heavy-worlder.

  "If I am not to fight a true Warrior in a BattleMech," he told Tommy Gunn, "being here serves no purpose."

  His agent looked to the DeLon Stables man and raised his eyebrows and shoulders while spreading his hands at waist level.

  Unschooled in Solarian culture, Yulri was still able to understand that the overdrawn "what can you do?" body posture was meant to convey both an apology and a question. He recognized that the little man's eloquence in communicating in such gestures was one of the skills that made Tommy Gunn an effective agent.

  Garnet was equally nonverbal. He shook his head.

  Yulri turned on his heel and strode from the hangar.

  * * *

  "That was the stupidest maneuver I have ever seen," Tommy said. "You managed to blow your best shot at getting out of the scrapper league and dent my credibility in one fell swoop."

  Jazz said nothing. Walking a half step behind the two men, flanking them, she kept her own council. She wished Tommy had kept his. Knowing what he felt, what he kept hidden while dealing with Yulri, colored the way she heard everything he said. On the other hand, knowing how he felt and seeing how he looked out for them . . .

  "Defeating an unbloodied child in an IndustrialMech proves nothing," Yulri said.

  "It proves you know what you're doing," Tommy said. "It proves an employer can count on you to stick with a program and turn him a profit."

  At the limousine Tommy's driver Clarence stood by the rear door, holding it open as the three climbed in.

  Jazz stopped before entering, taking a moment to scan their surroundings. New DeLon security right where they should be, with at least one she couldn't see for every two she spotted. They were a sharp outfit.

  She knew Yulri did the same sort of scan without being obvious about it. So did she, for that matter. The point was letting the other guy know you were watching and know you knew they were watching you watch.
>
  And I'm not even security. She felt the left side of her mouth twist in a wry grin. She knew from weeks alone with the mirror this gave her mouth a disconcerting sideways S turn. When did my whole life become a scrapper match?

  "You screwed up any chance you had of being taken seriously," Tommy was saying as she took her seat facing back toward the two men. "You can't tell from most MechWarriors, but you don't get into Valhalla just by being arrogant. You earn it.

  "New DeLon is not going to invite you back," he added. "Unless you two want to come in on their infantry team."

  Jazz shook her head. Tommy knew that wasn't her style, smaller cog in a big machine. When they went to company-level competition, she planned on leading her own company. If. She liked squad-level action. She and

  Yulri had to get serious about recruiting some long-term talent. It was too late for this year, but she could see them taking the '36 trophy easy.

  "I wish to defeat their champion pilot," Yulri was saying. "In a BattleMech."

  "First of all . . ." began Tommy and stopped. "No, before first of all: why them? Why New DeLon Stables?"

  "Because they answered your batchall."

  "I didn't make a batch call, you Clanner, I made a comm call." Tommy sounded exasperated. "And I called them because—I don't know why I called them. They were just first on the list."

  Jazz read that as a lie, but she was too interested in seeing what Yulri was up to to sidetrack the conversation with questions.

  "Back to first of all," Tommy said. "You didn't show them anything today that was worth seeing. Certainly nothing to make them think you're worth Jordan's time."

  "Jordan is their champion?"

  "The top jockey in their stable, yeah," Tommy said. "Used to be a client of mine, but he's got a short memory."

  For the second time in ten seconds, Jazz bit her tongue. Now was not the moment to get into short memories and agent-client loyalty.

  "Then I shall defeat Jordan."