by B. V. Larson
“What’s that?”
“Take these rifles to their final destination.”
“You never told me where that is.”
Kersen laughed. It was an ugly sound full of raspy noises that came up out of his guts.
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t want you to take these weapons there and sell them yourself.”
“I’d never do that. You can’t build a good working relationship if you rip people off immediately.”
Kersen seemed to find my ideas amusing. “What do you say? Will you make the delivery?”
“I need more work—and you need a runner. I’ll take the guns out to wherever you say, and deliver them, no questions asked. But, you have to pay me for this run. I want a half-share.”
Kersen’s face quivered. “A half-share? Insanity. You’ll get ten percent and like it.”
The haggling began. At the end, when Jort was beginning to look sleepy, we agreed to a one-third share for me and my crew. It was actually better than I usually got out of Kersen. He must have been hard-up for a good crew.
We left with the rifles and instructions as to how to get to Baden, a star I had no memory of.
Turning back, I noticed that Sosa had stayed behind to talk to Kersen.
“Looks like Kersen is angry,” Jort said.
“Maybe he noticed her rider is missing.”
We waited, and about a minute later, Sosa appeared. She stared down at the deck.
“Is there a problem?” I asked her.
“Yes… Kersen insists that I travel with you again.”
“Is that such a bad thing?”
“He’s angry about the lost model-D. We’re getting a new one—and we must take better care of it this time.”
“That damned thing deserved to die. It wasn’t programmed right.”
Sosa still studied the deck. “Will you have me? As part of your crew? Or do you wish to argue more with Kersen?”
She was acting kind of strangely, like she didn’t want to come with us. I didn’t get it. I was getting used to her, and I thought she’d enjoyed being part of my tiny crew, despite her near-death experience.
“Of course,” I told her. “Let’s get out of here before he fits you with a new rider.”
Sosa followed us, and we returned to the ship. After loading fresh supplies and fuel, both of which were grudgingly provided by Kersen, we shipped out.
Chapter Eighteen
Sosa stayed moody and distant for several days. It was easy to avoid one another on the ship, which was designed for a larger crew.
When we finally reached Baden, I found it to be an unfriendly place. Our radio squawked and spit static before we got anything intelligible out of it.
“This is Colonial Traffic, please respond,” said a model-K who was manning what passed for Baden’s border outpost. “State your destination and purpose.”
“Baden. We’re here to trade at the main city.”
“Baden only has one city.”
I rolled my eyes. Model-Ks were annoyingly exact and literal-minded. They didn’t have the brains for flexible references.
“I know this colony is a one-town planet. They all are out here on the fringe.”
The model-K thought this over, then spoke again: “Approved. Please note: this region is under a travel advisory. The Conclave can’t guarantee your safety in this star system.”
“Don’t worry about it. If you don’t call me, I won’t call you.”
The model-K puzzled over this for a moment, then spoke a single word: “Proceed.”
We roared away from the slip-gate and flew to the second planet from the star. The star itself was one of those blinding-white, F-class jobs. They burned hot and tended to give you skin cancer if you walked on the beach under one of them.
The planet itself, fortunately, wasn’t too bad. It was a bit cooler than Earth due to being further from its sun. Despite this, there was more background radiation due to the star being an F-class. The polar ice caps were large, each occupying about a quarter of the planet’s surface area. The middle half of the surface was dotted with seas, but was primarily made up of lush green lands.
“Nice looking place. You think they have trees?” Jort asked me. “Real trees?”
“They’ve probably got something like a tree. Most habitable planets do. Have you been here before, Sosa?”
She didn’t answer right away. When I turned and looked at her, she avoided my eyes. “Yes,” she said at last. “They’ve bought weapons before. It’s an unpleasant place.”
“Do they have trees, though?” Jort demanded.
“Yes… of a sort. Snow-covered pines. But they aren’t like Conclave pines. The needles are hard, and they sting the skin. The branches are broadly spread and trunks are like—like a spreading umbrella.”
Jort thought that over. “I’ve seen worse.”
We homed in on the single town on the planet’s surface, then rode down a guiding-beam to land. I set Royal Fortune down on steaming skids, and we headed for the ramp.
We were close to the equator, and the land was warm and humid—but not hot. I stepped out, and it felt like I’d walked into a public sauna. The clinging humidity was oppressive after having been aboard ship breathing canned, dry air for so long.
I soon got used to the climate, and Jort seemed positively happy. His homeworld of Scorpii was like this, but with more gravity and more stench.
His face made a sudden change. His smiled faded away. “Look at that, boss.”
Turning, I saw a clam-shell turret that had rotated around and shunted open its blast-shields. Inside, I saw what gunners called a four-banger—a turbo-laser with four barrels. They were all aimed at us.
“Whoa,” I said, putting up my hands. “Stand down, soldiers! We’re here to deliver vital supplies.”
Whoever was driving the turret took no notice of my remarks. The crew kept those big barrels aimed at me and my ship. Next to that thing, my rifles seemed inadequate.
We waited, not daring to move around for fear the turret might get excited. At last, a man in khakis showed up. He had the oak leaves of a major on his lapels.
“Major,” I nodded, playing friendly and dumb. “Glad to see my first human on this lovely world.”
“Stow it, trash. You’re the gun runner, right?”
I nodded sourly. “And you are…?”
“Major Hendricks. Second-in-command, Baden colonial guard.”
“Okay, Major. Where do you want these rifles delivered?”
“Rifles?” he asked, curling his lips. “I didn’t order small arms. I ordered—”
“Just wait until you see these beauties, sir.”
I lowered the ramp, and the two model-Ds rolled down a pallet of shiny black Sardez guns.
The major tried not to look impressed. “Accelerators? Really? Actual rail-guns? But what about power packs? I can’t supply a gun like this with—”
The next pallet trundled down then, almost tipping over with power packs.
He inspected the armament and quickly returned to look at me appraisingly. “I don’t know where you got this kind of gear, runner—and I don’t want to know. If I didn’t need this equipment so badly, I’d call you in and report you.”
I smiled. “It’s all legit, sir. One hundred percent.”
“I’m sure… All we’ve got at this outpost is cordite weapons, plus a few turrets and artillery pieces. Nothing that can do more than land a stray shell or a laser beam. But these rifles… They’ll hit like rockets every time.”
“We only deliver the best, sir,” I told him.
He squinted at me thoughtfully. “Have we met before?”
“I don’t think so…” I said, blinking. It was possible, of course, that my clone had met him after I’d been made. That would be an awkward situation. I decided to play it straight and just smile at him.
He finally stopped squinting into my face and shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, I guess. These weapons are excellent.”
“I’m glad to hear you’re satisfied, Major. Now, if you’ll be so kind as to remit payment, I’ll unpack all these guns for you and be on my way.”
The major looked startled. “Payment? Kersen said we could pay later—on credit.”
“Oh really? That’s a shame.”
So saying, I ordered my model-Ds to turn tail and push the cargo back up the ramp. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a few more deliveries—”
“Hold on a damned second!” the major boomed behind me. “This colony is in trouble. The local fauna are organized and they outnumber us a thousand to one. Now that it’s rutting season, they don’t care if they live or die.”
He was talking to my back. “That’s a shame, sir. A damned shame,” I called down over my shoulder.
The cart with the power packs on it was already halfway up the ramp. The model-Ds were both working hard to backpedal the rest of the way into the hold.
“Hold on, runner. I’ll talk to Colonel Fletcher. I’ll see what I can do.”
The major hustled away, and we waited.
After a few minutes, a larger, even more sour man arrived. He inspected our goods, but barely raised an eyebrow.
“You guys know we’re about to be wiped out, right?”
Jort and I glanced at each other, sensing another dodge.
“Well, in that case Colonel,” I told him. “We’ll never get paid if we leave these guns with you.”
The colonel eyed us coldly. He seemed to be calculating whether or not he could take our weapons from us by force.
“May I ask, sir,” I said, “why the Conclave hasn’t provided our brave colonists on the front with either the arms or the funds to defend themselves?”
I worded this question carefully. It always got the officials on these dirt-grubbing worlds into a talkative mood. The answers were always the same, but the subject never failed to excite the locals.
“I’ll tell you why!” Colonel Fletcher said, stepping up and shaking a finger the size of a flashlight at my nose. He was a big guy with shoulders like a lumberjack. “They don’t give two shits about us, that’s why. Every colony is a gamble. If it works out and thrives, great. If it requires more investment—too bad.”
“Have you considered evacuation?”
He laughed bitterly. “We can’t afford passage for two million people. Some of the officials here would like to run, but I’ve put a stop to that. It’s martial law here, and I’m in charge.”
This was valuable information. Colonel Fletcher could confiscate my load and give me a promissory note. I kicked myself mentally, I shouldn’t even have landed without payment up front.
“Sir,” I said, “I’m very sympathetic to your cause. In fact, I’d like to bring you more supplies and guns to supplement these. But I’ve got to make an income, or I can’t even buy the fuel to do it.”
“More guns? How many do we have here?”
“Three thousand prime weapons. Enough to equip three battalions at least.”
He nodded, and I could see the greed in his eyes. He wanted my guns and more.
At this point, I figured I wasn’t getting off-world without violence. But a deal could still be swung. The promise of more vital supplies was always the way to go.
“What have you got to trade with, Colonel?” I asked. “Every planet has something.”
He worked big lips for a few seconds. “We’ve got raw materials. Gold, uranium, even some cobalt.”
I shook my head. “Too bulky. I’m not flying a freighter, here. But maybe plutonium…”
He winced. “We’re out of touch with those mines. We had good production a few months back. All automated. But we can’t even get up to the hills to pick it up.”
He turned and pointed up a rocky black slope. A road could be seen, cut into the land. Freaky-looking pines lined the road, with branches that spread out like palm fronds. Each frond bristled with green needles.
“Do the enemy control that high ground? Right above your city?”
“We trade fire on that road every day. But we can’t go all the way to the top. They hold the forests around the road. We’re hemmed in.”
I thought about trying to take Royal Fortune up there, landing near the mine and plundering it. But as soon as the thought struck, it faded. Doing so would take more than two model-Ds. I didn’t have much anti-radiation gear either, other than spacesuits. On top of that, there were these native rebels who sounded kind of dangerous.
“How about this,” I said. “You take our rifles now, you use them to retake that mountain and that mine. Then you give us our payment, and we’ll supply more.”
The colonel grinned. “You’d do that?” he asked.
“I would consider it to be my civic duty, sir.”
“I stand impressed.” He slammed me one on the shoulder, and I grinned up at him. “I never thought a runner could be anything other than a snake.”
“Glad to disappoint, Colonel.”
All smiles, I shook hands, and I began to unload my guns. Jort soon took me aside, with Sosa joining in the huddle.
“You crazy, man!” Jort said.
“What are we doing, Captain?” Sosa hissed. “We’ve got to get out of here. If these people can’t pay, they should get nothing.”
“That’s Kersen talking,” I told her sternly.
Shaking her head, she walked off.
Jort stared at me like I was some kind of new and exotic animal. “You let them rob us. If someone had told me this, I would call them a liar! Now, I watch with sad eyes.”
“Jort,” I said. “You’re basically a pirate, right?”
He shrugged, admitting to the charge.
“What would you do if you were that colonel over there? What if your base was about to be overrun, and a gun runner came with vital supplies, but you couldn’t pay?”
“Uh… I’d steal the load, shoot the runner. I’d take his ship, too.”
I grinned with one side of my mouth and snorted. “Exactly. Now do you understand why I made this deal?”
He thought it over, and I saw his eyes light up with understanding. He thumped me on the shoulder several times. “I get it. Yes. You smart man… Smart man!”
While troops unloaded my precious cargo, I eyed the stony black mountains looming over their lonely town. The road that ran up its side looked like a wound.
It couldn’t be more than ten kilometers to the top. These rifles I was handing to the colonials were game-changers. Maybe my plan was going to work out after all.
Chapter Nineteen
Colonel Fletcher wasn’t a half-bad guy once you got to know him. He offered us food, drinks and the best hotel room in New Town to stay in. Making an effort to be polite, I didn’t even crack jokes about the lame moniker they’d given to their one and only city.
There were about a million colonists living on Baden—or at least, there had been the last time they’d bothered to count them. There had been plenty of deaths since then.
Several hundred thousand of them lived in New Town. The rest were scattered over the planet, operating plantations, mines and fisheries. They’d managed to put together a small army, about eight thousand militia troops supported by the colony garrison regiment, which was eight hundred strong.
Unfortunately, only the garrison troops had real weapons. The rest were carrying hunting rifles and the like. Colonel Fletcher quickly decided to give the three thousand guns I’d brought him to his garrison men first. They were loyal and better-trained. The plan was I would help train them on the operation of the weaponry, then those men would train the best of the militia.
As Colonel Fletcher put it: “It won’t do to have these farm-boys shoot us in the ass the first time they see a duck in person.”
That’s what they called the alien locals—ducks. They didn’t look much like ducks to me. In fact, they were kind of like squatty, apish humans. But they did have duck feet. Long, webbed toes, the works. This made them excellent swimmers, apparently.
&nb
sp; In the face, they resembled beavers, which I’d seen in historical vids. The Conclave’s original settlers had brought beavers with them, touting their usefulness in managing wetlands. I’d never had much use for the buck-toothed furry bastards, but I hadn’t been around when they’d decided what to bring out here from the homeworld a century or two back.
These aliens looked like that. Hunch-backed, web-footed, with big buck teeth that looked like they could snap off a finger if they wanted to. In any case, someone had riled them up and gotten them to decide they had to kill every human on the planet. It was an old story—I’d heard it a thousand times in the past.
Or rather the first version of William Gorman had heard it. Just thinking about my ex-life made me bare my teeth like one of these alien duck-guys. I still had no idea where the original Gorman had gone or what had happened to him. Oh, I had ideas… but no evidence. Not yet.
Before I could worry about that stuff, I had to get my ship off this planet with a load of credits or tradable goods. That was my mission today, and I was going to stick with it.
“All right boys, listen up,” I said, addressing eighty-odd officers and noncoms. They wore half-assed uniforms that amounted to coveralls of the same drab green. Rank insignia adorned lapels and sleeves, but they looked homemade. I pretended not to notice.
“This charging port is a little tricky,” I told them. “You have a few options with it. You can yank the release and drop the battery, like this.”
I demonstrated—the rifle making a loud metallic click as the battery unlocked from the bottom of the receiver and fell into the dirt.
“But that’s not really the recommended approach. In combat… sure, you can do that. It’s quick and you’re ready to slam in a new battery. However, there’s always some charge built up in the rifle at that point. It will cause some arcing as it disconnects, which will eventually wreck your port. So, when practicing—don’t do it.”
After some more basics, during which the group listened closely, we finally got around to firing the rifle.
“This rifle fires accelerated rounds. It’s essentially a small-caliber railgun. It doesn’t have a high rate of fire, but it’s extremely accurate with no drop off for over a kilometer out. Better still, it hits really hard. You can take out a small vehicle with this weapon with one or two shots.”