Tales of B-Company: The Complete Collection

by Chris Pourteau

  Not exactly the New Hilton.

  “I’m more worried about getting back out,” said Stug, scanning the plans with his mind’s eye. He disconnected his BICE from the Internet, and the static stopped immediately.

  Hatch kept silent.

  “Why don’t we just find a couple of Transport mooks, clobber ’em and take their uniforms, and file in when the shift changes?”

  Hatch shook his head. “They BICE-scan when you walk in the door. You know that. The only people who get in without scanning are prisoners with their BICEs already removed. And it’s not like we’re on a sanctioned mission for Covert Ops, with idents programmed in. We’d have fifty rifles pointed at us before we made it to the front security desk.”

  Stug grunted. “Well, how about until we figure out a better plan, we just find a couple of Transport mooks and clobber ’em anyway? You know. For fun.”

  “Quiet, Neanderthal. I’m trying to think.”

  In the distance to the north, the vibrating hum of anti-gravs caught Hatch’s attention. The wind blew it in over the top of Transport’s Justice Building, which connected to the Detention Center on one end, forming an L. Lady Justice, her traditional blindfold removed by the Transport Authority decades ago, stood atop the Justice Building, her arm holding the scales of justice stretched out toward detention, as if pointing the way.

  An airbus appeared over the statue. Hatch and Stug watched it make its way to the center of the street between them and the Detention Center. Dust kicked up as the ship’s airjets cushioned the bus’s descent.

  “A little late for a delivery, isn’t it?”

  “Transport likes to bring in political prisoners after midnight,” Hatch said. “Less chance for a public spectacle that way.”

  The airbus settled, its hydraulic legs locking. A door opened and a ramp extended, and two fully armored Transport soldiers marched out and took up positions at the bottom of the ramp. Running lights popped on in succession along the walkway as the first of the passengers stepped out.

  A woman, her hair tangled and her clothing stained and hanging like rags, walked forward unsteadily. She was followed by another, then a man, then three children. All had their hands bound in front of them. Most stumbled with fatigue. Hatch saw that some of the prisoners were walking wounded, their injuries apparently field treated with hastily wrapped bandages. A few had to be helped down the ramp by others. One soul was carried on a litter by two other prisoners, their hands bound despite their burden.

  Hatch caught a gleam of starlight moving to the north. Though he couldn’t hear it yet, he could see the running lights announcing the inbound flight of a second airbus. He arced his head northward, and Stug followed his gaze.

  “Five minutes?”

  “Sounds about right,” said Hatch. He glanced back at the offloading prisoners. The drone by the street was monitoring their transfer with its one red eye. Looking down at the crumpled state of his clothes, Hatch said, “I have an idea.”

  “Great. I get to hit someone, right?”

  “Eventually, I have no doubt.”

  “Then I’m in.”

  Hatch took out his knife and extended the blade.

  “You’re taking a knife to a gun fight?”

  Instead of responding, Hatch handed Stug the knife. “Say goodbye to your BICE.”

  Stug stared. “Wait, what?”

  “Not a lot of time to discuss. You cut mine out, then I’ll do yours.”

  Still the sergeant hesitated. “You really have no intention of going back to B-Company, do you?”

  Hatch turned his head to offer Stug a better angle. “Likely more a matter of them not wanting me back. And me not wanting to spend the rest of my life in prison.”

  “Yeah, I guess that ship has sailed.”

  “Four minutes, thirty seconds. And we have two surgeries to perform.”

  Nodding, Stug reached over and rubbed his thumb along the skin below Hatch’s right ear. “Kinda dark,” he said. “And I usually only do this to dead guys.”

  “Make do.”

  There it was. The telltale bump of the BICE implant below the skin. Stug spit on his friend’s neck, then wiped the skin as clean as he could with one thick thumb. He placed the tip of the knife a quarter inch above the bump.

  “This is gonna hurt.”

  “Four minutes.”

  The big man cut a vertical line across the bump. “You gonna remember the schematics?” he asked as he cut. Blood welled from the wound, and Stug wiped it away. He could feel Hatch trying to keep his neck muscles from jerking beneath the blade.

  “I hope so.” Hatch winced. “For her sake.”

  Stug cut a second, transverse line across the bump. Though he largely ignored the blood, which was flowing freely now, he had to constantly clean the wound to see what he was doing. Slowly, delicately, he worked Hatch’s flesh back to expose the implant.

  “Remind me not to let you carve the turkey at Thanksgiving.”

  “Never had any complaints before.”

  “Right!” Hatch clipped the word off, squeezing his eyes shut as Stug dug into his neck.

  The big man carefully dug the knife through the slit he’d just made. Then, placing its tip below what he thought was the center of the implant, he said, “This is gonna hurt.”

  “You said that al—ow!”

  Stug’s meaty hand came into view. Resting on the tip of a bloodied index finger was Hatch’s BICE. “Want to say a heartfelt goodbye?”

  “Crush it. Two minutes till that second ship lands.”

  Stug handed the knife to Hatch and turned around. “Be gentle with me. It’s my first time on the receiving end.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Hatch.

  The airbus on the ground was spinning up its engines, so Hatch was forced to work faster than Stug had. A minute later—counted in the number of new curses the big man coined for the occasion—both men were BICE-free.

  “Feels a little like being naked, doesn’t it?”

  “More like unchained,” said Hatch. But Stug was right. Being without the Internet for support and communication made him feel a bit like his left arm had been cut off. “Stow your pistol up that drainpipe. And throw the Raymond Chandler duds in the trash can there.”

  “The what duds?”

  “The coat and hat,” said Hatch, exasperated. “Leave ’em.” He wrapped a strip of cloth around his neck to stanch the bleeding and shook his head. “No one has any appreciation for classic pop culture anymore.”

  “Hell, I don’t appreciate today’s pop culture. Not that there is any.”

  Both men stood silently in the shadows of the alleyway, away from the constant surveillance of Transport’s security cameras. The first airbus lifted off, heading for its landing bay on the roof of the Detention Center. In the rumbling wake of its engines, they could hear the second one coming in; the ships were like two runners passing off a baton.

  The second bus’s landing ritual mimicked the first’s. While the anti-gravs swirled dust noisily around on the road, Hatch and Stug stole away from their hiding place and slid around to the left side of the landing zone.

  Crouched and careful, they made their way from trash can to apartment stoop to a second statue of Lady Justice, this one on the ground. She stood as the centerpiece of a stone fountain in the middle of the square and pointed toward the Justice Building, a sister to the statue on its roof. The fountain’s display was turned off for the night, so no water pumped to afford them cover. But the moon had slipped behind the clouds, and their silhouettes blended with the night well enough as they knelt near the stonework. From this position, the second airbus, its jets settling its legs into position, was no more than twenty feet away.

  The door slid open and the ramp extended. Once again, two soldiers descended, taking up positions to either side of the sloping metal walkway. Another crowd of men, women, and children began to file out slowly.

  “Hey, some of those people look familiar,” said Stug.

&n
bsp; “Yeah, me too—but I don’t know where from. We’ll figure that out later. Focus on the timing.”

  Hiding behind the fountain, the two men were outside the guards’ direct line of sight. Hatch estimated it should be easy enough to blend in with the offloading prisoners while avoiding detection by the guards. It was the prowling drone on the sidewalk, its heat sensors ever watchful, that worried him.

  “You watch the guards. I’m pacing the drone. When you and I both agree on the timing, we go.”

  Stug nodded, though his eyes were elsewhere. How many times had they been in a similar situation together? the big man wondered. When the quips ceased and the focus sharpened. When they thought and moved and fought together like two halves of the same killing machine. Or in this case, the same covert mechanism, gliding quietly along its course.

  Twenty prisoners, nearly half the airbus’s complement, had unloaded when Hatch said, “The drone follows every fourth person into the facility with its sensors. That gives us a pretty big window to join the line.”

  “As long as it’s not counting how many come off and how many go in,” said Stug. “And doesn’t notice we’ve added ourselves to the herd.”

  “Yeah, that.”

  They waited a moment longer.

  “Drone’s tracking,” said Hatch. He watched it follow the progress of a large woman with a child attached to her hip. The child clung to her tattered skirts, terrified.

  “Guards are talking about something. Not looking this way.”

  “Now,” said Hatch, rising and leading the way.

  They approached from behind and to the right of the guards, who stood talking to one another in their boredom. As he moved, Hatch glanced at the drone to make sure its sensor eye was still aimed at the woman and child.

  Two prisoners stepped off the platform together. Holding his wrists together, Hatch slipped in behind them. Stug knelt below the ramp a moment longer, then joined the line when another hole appeared.

  The guards kept jabbering. The drone kept humming.

  Slowly, Stug moved up nearer to Hatch, but he remained three feet behind him as the line made its way from the airbus to the facility.

  “I know where I’ve seen these people before,” he whispered.

  “Me too,” said Hatch over his shoulder. “But shut it for now.”

  The two men walked freely into Columbia’s Detention Center, now political prisoners destined for The Dungeon.

  Obadiah’s Orders

  “Do you understand, Sergeant?”

  Emma Ellis stood straight as a new recruit in front of Obadiah Neville’s desk. Pusher was dressed in civilian attire, per her orders to report. It’d been less than twenty-four hours since Hatch and Stug had gone absent without leave. Right on time, she’d thought when the summons to the colonel’s office came.

  “Yes, sir,” Pusher said, eyes forward. She stared at the portrait on the wall behind Neville’s head. It was a photograph of Neville receiving a commendation from Amos Troyer, much earlier in the war. Not looking Neville directly in the eye helped Pusher concentrate.

  “As Sergeant Miller’s replacement, you might get some guff from the rest of the company,” said Neville, standing up. “But you’re tough. Until he gets settled into his new position, Lieutenant—Captain—Mason is going to need some back channel support when the officers aren’t around. That’s your job.”

  Still staring forward, Pusher blinked. “Sir, yes sir.”

  “I have no doubt of Captain Mason’s loyalty. Some of the others, I’m not so sure of.” Neville glanced out the window—a momentary lapse of discipline for him. “I know some of you loyal to Hatch think I’m an idiot. That being an officer of higher rank, I don’t know how things really work around here.”

  “No, sir, not at all sir,” replied Pusher, her voice flat as iron. “I’d never make the mistake of equating rank and intelligence.” Her eyes darted from the photo to the colonel as she heard the words that had just come out of her mouth. “Sir.”

  “Yes, well,” said Neville, his attention back as he tried to parse her statement. “Yes, well, intelligence is a demonstrated thing, Sergeant. Like any characteristic you can trust. True ability is shown—that’s my point. Avoiding assumptions is always best.” Neville’s inflection was staged, as usual, for impact. Like he was dry-running quotations for a future edition of Obadiah Neville’s Guide to Leadership During a Time of War. “Especially when it comes to another man’s—or woman’s—intelligence.”

  “Couldn’t agree more, sir.”

  “Right.” Neville’s tone seemed to close the book on that discussion. “Now, I briefed Captain Mason earlier. But I wanted you here so we could have this little chat, out of his earshot. Are you clear on the rest?”

  “Sir, yes sir. Trick…” She saw Neville flinch. “Sorry, sir. Captain Mason and I are to go with two others into the City to locate and retrieve Lieutenant Hatch and Sergeant, uh, Miller. Two teams of two, civilian attire. We have thirty-six hours. We’re to be out by dusk tomorrow, well before curfew. We’re to make use of various TRACE assets and contacts in the City as necessary.”

  Neville nodded curtly. “And if you fail to retrieve the two traitors?”

  Now it was Pusher’s cheek that twitched. Her eyes refocused on Amos Troyer’s image on the wall, and that steadied her.

  “Then, sir, we’re to consider Lieutenant Hatch and Sergeant Miller lost as prisoners of war.”

  Neville put his hands behind his back. He even managed to make parade rest a stiff show of projected pomp. As if listening to a movie director, he paused to let the gravity of those orders stake its claim on the room.

  Pusher heard Stug’s voice in her head. “I didn’t know being a bad actor was a qualification for being an officer now.”

  Actually, that was a lot of words for Stug.

  “Pansy-ass.”

  Yeah, that was more like it.

  “And if any of you are captured, Sergeant?”

  The cold of the grave weighed on his words.

  “Okay, not bad,” allowed Stug’s gruff voice in her head. “For a pansy-ass.”

  “Then, sir, we too are to be considered lost.”

  Neville nodded again.

  “Sergeant, you and the others are performing a great service. A great … sacrifice … if necessary.”

  He was pausing in all the right places again, she noticed. Maybe he was editing his future tome on the fly. Chapter Three: Acknowledging the Noble but Necessary Sacrifice of Cannon Fodder.

  “Uh, yes sir. Thank you … sir.”

  “Dismissed.” Neville waved her away and returned his butt to the creaking wooden chair.

  Pusher saluted, received the colonel’s acknowledgment, and turned to leave.

  Before she made it halfway to the door, Neville slapped his desk. “Sergeant!”

  She stopped immediately. She’d almost made it. Now she wondered if the whole briefing had been an act, not just practice for the good colonel’s memoirs. What if Neville had actually known everything all along?

  “Nothing for it now but to let it ride.” This time it was Hatch’s pragmatism voicing her thoughts. She turned around slowly to face the colonel.

  “One more thing,” Neville said. His eyes were intense, piercing.

  Pusher half-thought the slap on the desk had been a signal for members of A or C Company to come charging through the door and arrest her.

  “Hatch and Miller are no longer to be addressed with rank. They’re deserters. I’d give you orders to shoot them on sight, but it’d likely draw Transport down on you like a bunch of hornets. They are no longer to be saluted, and they are certainly no longer to be obeyed should they attempt to issue orders. Am I clear, Sergeant Ellis?”

  Pusher stiffened her back, legs, and shoulders to attention. She hoped it looked to Neville like she was acknowledging his authority in the matter—a little stagecraft of her own. But she knew it was really to keep herself from charging the overstuffed uniform in front of her. />
  “Sir! Yes sir!”

  “Very well,” he said, stabbing his fingers toward the compound. “Uh, you’re still dismissed. Again.”

  Pusher turned on her heel and exited the office, releasing her frustration with a silent sigh. It was going to be a long day.

  “Bet you never thought you’d see me again,” said the ferryman. He flashed his near-toothless smile.

  “We’d hoped,” said Bracer under his breath without looking at the man. Instead he stared across the Susquehanna at Little Gibraltar. He wondered if it was the last time he’d ever see the TRACE stronghold. Whichever way this thing went—right or wrong, success or failure—he knew that was likely the case.

  “Oh, sure! Be like that,” said Sticks. “I’m your ticket into the City. Just like last time.”

  “About that,” said Trick, squinting one eye against the rising sun. “I thought you could only move safely after dark.”

  “That was last week,” answered Sticks, untying the first of two ropes securing the Pittsburgh to Shenks Landing. “And you’re just citizens looking to do some business in the City, not decked-out commandos like last time.” He didn’t offer further explanation.

  But Pusher wanted more. “Transport’s still there. And they’ve been cracking down on everyone—TRACE, the Amish … everyone.” Her voice grew quiet.

  “Oh, sure,” said the ferryman, pulling the second rope from its wooden post, freeing the Pittsburgh of all moorings. “Now that they’ve gotten their assets in gear and headed to the Shelf, Transport has bigger fish to fry. They’re mopping up behind themselves, a last gasp in the region, so to speak. Still, it’s like they want folks to move into the City. All I know is, I got this.”

  He held up what looked like a broach. It was really a metal badge shaped in the symbol of the Transport Authority. Called a SLACK—a Shipper Locator and Consignment Key—it tracked inventory data and the GPS location of its bearer. The Authority sometimes granted free, though monitored, movement to shippers who carried food, goods, and, in some cases, people. But Transport usually reserved the keys for a select group of Authority-approved collaborators, and even then only those rich enough to own their own air transport.