Other quick impressions: overflowing trash containers. Carpet stained and sticky. Broken furniture in the waiting areas which no one had cleaned up. The faint, distant, musical tinkle of auto-fire flechettes hitting metal.
If Gasiri had known what was going on down here, I doubt she would have sent us down the Needle. Her reasoning was that the rescued civilians and ship’s crew, along with the captive uZmataanki Marines, would be safer down here than in either her cruiser or one of the nearly empty unarmed transports, since there was no telling when or if more uZmataanki warships might show up. Of all the odds and ends of rescued friend and foe, only Joe Lee Ping had remained aboard the Fitz. His testimony might be needed on short notice. But as to the rest of us, better to ground us and let the local Co-Gozhak commander look after us.
It had sounded reasonable in orbit.
There were thirty-four of us: the eighteen surviving uHoko crewmen, seven uZmataanki Marines, four of Gasiri’s Marines guarding them, the four of us from Long Shot, and Gasiri’s executive officer—Lieutenant Commander Fong-Ramirez—with orders to deliver a face-only report to Commanding General, Cottohazz Ground Forces, K’Tok, although when they talked about the ground general, they called him COGCOG-K’Tok. First time I heard it, I said, “And coo-coo-kachoo to you, too,” but the naval ensign I was talking to just looked blank.
I guess we’d had our share of acronyms and buzz words in the Army as well. We’d have called him “the CG, K’Tok,” but that didn’t sound so tight-assed to me; it sounded squared away. There’s a big difference between being tight-assed and being squared away.
Honest.
But ground security at Needledown didn’t look like it was either of those things . . . Well, I guess you could argue for tight-assed, in the sense that the pucker factor was right up near the top of the scale.
They had already processed us at K’Tok Highstation, so the ground staff and security goons just waved us through, which I thought was pretty sloppy. A Varoki MP captain met us at the end of the concourse and explained the situation in aGavoosh to Fong-Ramirez. One of the Marines translated for the sergeant in charge of the security detail, and since we were standing about as close to her and her Marines as we could get, Marfoglia didn’t need to repeat it for me.
A bus was waiting outside to take us to the Co-Gozhak headquarters compound, where we’d be processed more carefully. Simple enough. We all tramped down the nearly empty corridors to the main entrance, shuffled through the security gates one at a time under the big AZ Kagataan Welcomes You To K’Tok banner—in aZmataan—and came out into light rain. The bus—also an AZ Kagataan corporate charter—was at the curb, with a hard gun-car in front of it and another behind it. As we hit the street, we all stopped and just looked around for a while, mouths open.
There was a lot of trash in the streets, a lot of broken windows, and I saw two burned-out ground transports, one of them rolled over on its side. When people don’t bother to clean that stuff up, it’s generally a bad sign.
But what really creeped us all out was the silence. There wasn’t one moving vehicle in sight, not one pedestrian. Everyone wasn’t dead, so that meant they were staying inside, and folks don’t do that without a pretty good reason.
The Marine sergeant—Wataski was her name—broke the spell.
“Okay, people, you’ve had your ‘oh shit’ moment. Now let’s get these detainees on the bus. Pronto, muchachos.”
She was supposedly just talking to the three Marines in her guard detail, but all of us got the message.
* * *
All during the ride across the city, I kept expecting our four-vehicle convoy to be attacked, but it wasn’t. A couple times we stopped and I could see the Varoki MP NCO, up at the front with Fong-Ramirez, talking by secure comm to the convoy commander. Then we’d start up again, sometimes continuing, sometimes turning at the next corner, and once backing up and turning down a side street.
Once when we turned I saw a manned roadblock down the street we’d been following—a couple spikey-bars across the street, a combat walker in an alley but with its autogun mount visible and covering the street, and four or five uniformed grunts out there on duty. The grunts didn’t look like insurgents; they looked like colonial regular troops. No one was shooting, but we were avoiding them.
I’d herded Marfoglia, Barraki, and Tweezaa onto the bus and parked us in two rows of seats almost at the back and near the rear exit door, with Marfoglia and I sitting in the window seats and the kids in the aisle seats. Marfoglia and I would shelter them from any broken glass that way. I’d done all that, but my attention was on what was going on outside. Now I looked at them.
Both kids had been pretty sick from the anti-allergy and anti-viral shots we’d gotten the previous day, and they still looked rocky. They hadn’t bothered me or Marfoglia that much, and as I looked around, I noticed that the Marines standing in the aisle seemed to be in better shape than the Varoki sitting in the seats. No telling with body chemistry.
I looked back at the kids. They weren’t just sick; they were pretty scared, too.
“Why are we turning?” Barraki asked, once my glance let him know that I’d mentally returned to the interior of the bus.
“Are those insurgents down there?” Marfoglia asked, looking at the roadblock.
I shrugged. I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure.
“No. They are local troops,” I heard a voice say, and one of the Varoki sitting in the row ahead of us turned and looked at us. He was in the plain yellow jumpsuit they’d given all the captive uZmataanki Marines, and he had a single-piece soft conforming bandage covering most of one side of his face and head—a burn-graft sustainer compress, from the looks of it.
“We trained with them, before . . .” His voiced trailed off and he looked around, unsure what word to use. War? Unpleasantness? Sneak attack? Atrocity? Mistake? Finally, he just tilted his head to one side—a shrug. Before this.
“Hey, Curley!” one of the Marine guards standing in the center aisle said sharply, pointing to the wounded Varoki Marine to make it clear which of the prisoners he was talking to. “Zip it, hombre.”
Most of the Varoki on the bus—not just the prisoners—looked at the Marine with a mix of surprise and resentment. At least some of the uHoka crewmen had entertained the notion that we might all be united in brotherhood by common adversity, regardless of race or nationality. But calling a hairless Varoki “Curley” was not much different than calling him a leather-head, and everybody on the bus knew it. Sergeant Wataski shot the Marine a sharp look, but the rifleman’s defiant glare remained intact.
Hard to blame him; he’d lost friends. Hard to blame the Varoki Marine, either. It’s not as if anyone had asked his opinion before charging off to war, and he’d lost friends, too, probably a lot more of them. Hard to blame anyone on the bus, or anyone down at that roadblock. Hard to blame Gasiri, or even the dead captains of the dead uZmataanki cruisers, carrying out orders from their government and high command. But here we were, going down this waterslide of blood, picking up speed every second, and the fact that there didn’t seem to be anyone handy to blame wasn’t making the ride any more fun.
* * *
aGavoosh is a heavy, guttural language, very well-suited to angry rants. Since I don’t speak it, I let Marfoglia do all the ranting while I looked around the deputy attaché for something-or-other’s office. It was messy, like everything else I’d seen on K’Tok. All the comforting administrative routines were crumbling, and that’s probably one of the things that made the paper pushers so cranky, but it didn’t explain all of it.
I mean, here this guy was, a Varoki, a cultural attaché of some sort for the Cottohazz, pressed into emergency refugee management, with anti-government insurgents all over the place and a nice little side war going on between the uBakai and uZmataanki. Here we were, two Humans taking care of a couple Varoki kids in trouble. And they weren’t just any Varoki kids; these were the e-Traak heirs, and he knew it. Up in orbit,
the only remaining functional—and loyal—Cottohazz warship in the star system was Human-manned. You’d think this guy would be interested in helping us, or would at least pretend to be. But no.
So I let Marfoglia do the yelling, because even though I knew yelling wasn’t going to budge this guy, it let her blow off some steam, which I figured was good for her mental health. Besides, all the steam she vented at this jerk was steam that wouldn’t vent my way.
I studied the guy while he sat there and took everything Marfoglia dished out, and from the way he flushed now and then, his ears back against his skull, I figure she must have been dishing it pretty good. But he wasn’t moving. He didn’t like being yelled at, but it was just a temporary discomfort; this too would pass.
What makes an official of the Cottohazz so uninterested in apparent loyalty and/or service to it?
What makes a Varoki so uninterested in helping the scions of a wealthy and powerful Varoki mercantile clan?
The paranoid answer is that he was being paid not to help us, and believe me, there’s a lot to be said for paranoia. I just wasn’t buying it today. He didn’t act like a guy who was on the take; guys on the take usually make excuses, or try to feed you a line of bull. This guy acted like he honestly just didn’t give a damn.
How far did he think that was going to get him in his career? Not very far. So the question was, why didn’t he give a damn about that?
Marfoglia’s rant had subsided, and the official—Vice-Consul Zasa-litaan, according to the glowing name plaque on the wall behind him—had finally begun speaking again, explaining something in his bored, tired-sounding voice, maybe offering something. He and Marfoglia exchanged a few more comments, and she turned to me.
“He’s offered to put us in touch with AZ Simki-Traak corporate security on K’Tok. That’s about all he’s willing to do until the maglev leaves for Haampta tomorrow.”
I wasn’t crazy about taking the maglev to Haampta to begin with. I wanted to climb back up the Needle ASAP, not head for some place over a thousand kilometers away from it, but we didn’t really have an option. All of us from the Fitz were being shipped over to the Co-Gozhak’s subsidiary ground forces headquarters in Haampta, the capital of the uBakai colony—security was supposedly a lot better there. All the Cottohazz’s senior commanders and staff wonks had already been flown over, but when one of the birds got knocked down by surface missile fire, they grounded all the air transports and now everything was moving by high-speed rail.
Okay. So the maglev train ride was a done deal. AZ Simki-Traak corporate security—they’d have lots of resources, and they’d be a lot more interested in helping protect the e-Traak heirs than this empty suit was.
Hmmm.
I’m told I have good verbal skills, so even when I use bad grammar, people tend to listen to me and think I’m pretty smart. Maybe you think that, too. But the truth is, I’m not as smart as I sound. I’m not stupid, but I’m no genius, either. If I were, there’s something I’d have wondered about sooner.
Why hadn’t Bony Jones gone to AZ Simki-Traak corporate security back on Peezgtaan? I mean, they practically ran the place. They had the Needle concession; they were the money behind the new wattaak. What the hell?
“Tell him thanks, but we’d rather keep the group small and low profile,” I answered her.
Her eyes got big in her head, like she was getting up another head of steam, this time for me.
“Just do it,” I said flatly. She’d opened her mouth to say something to me, but she shut it, looked at me with hard, angry eyes for a moment, and then turned back to the empty suit and gave him the news.
I’d explain later, when we were away from this guy. Once I spelled it all out for her, Marfoglia would agree.
Or not.
TWENTY-ONE
Flechettes slammed into the rock wall above us, flaying my back with razor-sharp chips. The building was native stone, which made it solid enough to stop all the incoming rounds except for the stuff that came through the windows, but those threw high-speed rock shards all over, and I could feel blood trickle down my back.
One of Sergeant Wataski’s Marines staggered back from a window, coughing and gurgling wetly, blood bubbling out of her mouth and from around her hands where she held her throat. I was lying over Barraki, with Marfoglia covering Tweezaa closer against the wall.
“Marrissa, you’ve got to cover Barraki, too!”
She looked at me through a wild tangle of muddy blond hair, eyes wide with fright, but she didn’t protest. She nodded jerkily and I pushed Barraki under her, next to Tweezaa, who was sobbing in terror. Barraki was shaking all over, but he was still in control. Brave little guy.
I rolled away from them, grabbed the Marine by her harness, and pulled her down onto her back. The Marines had different gear than I was used to, but there was only one thing that looked like it could be a wound kit. I ripped it open, pulled out the A-stop syringe and trachea kit, pushed the autoinserter into her mouth and part way down her throat, fired it and watched her body jerk and eyes bug out with agony as it slammed the breathing tube down her trachea and inflated it. Then I shot her neck full of A-stop, once I was sure it couldn’t get down her throat and strangle her. I hit her with a shot of pain killer, too, and her eyes rolled back up into her head, but she’d probably live.
“You know what the fuck you’re doing there?” Sergeant Wataski bellowed at me from another window.
“Yeah,” I shouted back over the small-arms fire. “Been here.”
“Then pick up her fucking weapon and cover that fucking window!”
For about a tenth of a second, I considered arguing the point, but Wataski had already turned away. My responsibility was Marfoglia and the kids, but if people came through the front door after all the damage Wataski’s Marines had already dished out, they weren’t going to stop shooting until a long time after everyone inside was dead.
So I picked up the Marine’s weapon and gave it a quick once-over, checking its ammo and making sure it wasn’t damaged. Mark 19 Rifle, Assault, Gauss—RAG-19 to its friends; four and a half kilos of light composites, with a few dense composites in critical places; 4.5mm serial flechette rifle with an integral 3cm grenade launcher; laser designator mounted on the under-slung utility bracket; four grenades and 100 flechettes internal, which added another kilo to the weight. I’d qualified on an older Mark 14, but there wasn’t that much difference: aim, pull the trigger, somebody falls down.
I unhooked the Marine’s ammo harness and threw it over my shoulder. Then I very carefully unhooked her helmet—tough with her still holding her throat with both hands. I needed the pot for more than just the protection, though; the gun’s boresight video system dumped into the visor, so if I wanted to hit anything without sticking my own head up, I needed the helmet.
Her eyes were big and frightened, even with the painkillers in her bloodstream, and my face wasn’t working right to give her a calm, reassuring expression. I just made myself go slow for the two or three seconds it took to slide the chin strap through her fingers. I cradled her head with one hand as I pulled off the helmet and then lowered it to the floor. She was still looking up at me, terrified, so I winked at her and grinned. It was hard to tell if she was trying to smile back, what with a trachea tube down her throat.
Marfoglia and Barraki were both looking at me, but their expressions were too wild to make out what they were thinking—if thinking was even how you’d describe what goes on in your head in a spot like this. I scrambled back to them, unzipped the black carryall, and pulled out the little LeMatt.
“You remember how to—”
“Fuck that!” Marfoglia practically screamed, cutting me off. “Give me the big one!”
* * *
Two hours out of T’tokl-Heem, the maglev current had died and we’d dropped onto the rail and slid about a kilometer along it, slowing to a halt. Nobody knew what was up, but we’d off-loaded, grabbed our gear, and started hiking toward the nearest town. There we
re over two hundred passengers, mostly evacuees bound for the uBakai colony, including a bunch of Cottohazz civilian officials and their dependents.
There was no well-planned ambush waiting for us. We just started getting some small-arms fire about a klick from the town—scattered single shots at first that didn’t hit anyone, but they put everyone down in ditches and behind hedges. There wasn’t anyone in charge, so no one to tell people to get up and move. Our group was lucky—Wataski and Fong-Ramirez both kept their heads and figured out we needed to get to some hard cover. A few people followed us, but most of them stayed out there in the ditches.
The firing got hotter as we got closer to the town, and we took our first casualties, but we made it to this stone house on the edge of the built-up area. Then things got very exciting for a while, but whoever was shooting at us decided the pickings were easier elsewhere. There was still scattered small-arms fire from down the road, where everyone else took cover. There were a few armed MPs back there, but if the bad guys—whoever the hell they were—decided it was massacre time, there wasn’t going to be much to stop them.
After about fifteen minutes, the firing died away, and once it looked like it wasn’t going to start up again, Wataski made a head count. She had two Marines down: the Marine I’d patched up—Private Lashia Coleman, I found out—was still hanging on, but the guy who’d called the prisoner “Curley” took a head shot and was gone. That’s one of the things about firing from behind hard cover—the cover protects most of your body, but the exposed parts are real important, and if you get hit there it’s usually pretty bad news.
We’d lost four of the uHokos getting to the house, and two of the uZmataanki Marines had slipped away in the confusion. About a dozen other passengers had attached themselves to us, along with five Co-Gozhak MPs, four of whom were still standing. Including injured civilians, we had eight wounded, of which Coleman was the worst, but three of them would have to be carried if we were going anywhere.
How Dark the World Becomes Page 20
