Ghost War mda-1

by Michael A. Stackpole

  “…I have you mistaken for someone else?” The man’s deep blue eyes became angry slits, and the thick white mustache he wore quivered. “Though you are here, I shall assume you are not a fool, and you will do me the same courtesy. ComStar may not be functioning well, but I review with interest criminal cases. We are very diligent here in logging the names and identification numbers of those who cause trouble. You, Sam Donelly, are such a person. What is the purpose of your visit to Basalt?”

  Lowering my hands, I slid myself back on the bed and leaned against the headboard. “You don’t want me to take you for a fool, then live up to your end of the bargain. This is The Republic. I don’t have to answer that question or any other without advice of counsel. That said, I’m here to enjoy Basalt’s scenic beauty.”

  “Then you will be remembering the key rules to your wilderness adventure. Leave everything as you found it. Don’t disturb the native life. Stay on the paths and don’t go wandering because it could be dangerous out there.”

  I listened to his words and watched him standing there, and I found it easy to imagine Commander Reis adopting the same pose and saying the same things. The main difference was that with Reis it would have been posturing, backed by empty threats. Niemeyer was what Reis would have aspired to be, but never could become without a steel spine insert and a gallon of neurons being poured into his skull.

  I wanted to like the man, but until I knew the political lay of the land, he was one of those dangers waiting for me in the wilderness.

  “I’ll do my best to remember that.”

  “Good. Now, this is the part of the conversation we’ve never had. I know why you’re here. I know why all of you are here, and I won’t have it on my planet. If trouble erupts and I know you did it, I’m not going to worry about proof beyond a reasonable doubt. If I bring you in and book you on charges, I face hours of paperwork, months in court, and I hate that. If I burn the back of your skull off with a laser and leave you out there for the nibblers, I file one missing persons report and I’m done. I already have yours filled out, in fact.”

  “Oh, transmit the file to my ex-wife. She’ll be a big fan of your work.”

  His expression soured and the white brush-cut hair on his head actually seemed to bristle. “You’ve been down this road before, Donelly, and you’ve danced around disaster somehow, but your luck runs out here. I’m going to be especially watchful of you because you’re smarter than the others.”

  “Smart enough to stay out of trouble, Colonel.”

  “You better be, Donelly. I’ve got enough trouble dealing with problems native to my world here. The last thing I need is more mercenary thugs making life here difficult. I’ve not always subscribed to the idea that the only good mercenary was a dead one, but the concept is growing on me.”

  “I’ll be no trouble at all, Colonel.”

  “Next time, try it with more feeling, moron.” He snorted. “You’re not as smart as you think you are. You’ll fall.”

  “You’ll be there to catch me?”

  “I’ll be there to make sure you don’t get back up.” His expression tightened. “Basalt is a peaceful world. It has been that way, off and on, for centuries. Even during the civil war we kept things quiet. Reforms were painless and we’ve done well. I’m not letting that change now. And you tell your boss that he can think himself immune to my touch, but he’s not.”

  I almost tossed off another denial, but nodded instead. “If the opportunity arises, I’ll pass your message along. I won’t be bringing you a reply.”

  He considered for a moment, then nodded. “You can just go home, you know. You can head back out on the Somerset. I’ll get money to cover your passage.”

  “Offers like that will gut your tourist trade.”

  “I don’t want my world gutted.”

  “You’ve made that clear.” I rose from the bed. “I appreciate your stopping by. Don’t hesitate to come again. I look forward to seeing you.”

  “Yeah, sure. You won’t like it when you don’t see me, Donelly. Staying, you’re being stupid.” He started for the door, then looked back over his shoulder at me. “Don’t go all the way to idiocy, because it’s a fatal disease around here.”

  21

  An ally has to be watched just like an enemy.

  —Leon Trotsky

  Manville, Capital District

  Basalt

  Prefecture IV, Republic of the Sphere

  29 January 3133

  Niemeyer’s visit, though brief, was enough to focus me on an important part of my job, and the reason I’d arrived early. I needed to scan the local political situation to see if I could figure out what the teams were and where Handy was going to have me work. Niemeyer was clearly one faction, though exactly how strong and how aligned I had yet to figure out. Clearly if he were warning folks off and even offering to pay them to leave, he hadn’t yet made the transition to outlaw that his threats suggested. While I had no doubt he could murder me and leave me in the wilderness for the nibblers to get, telling me he would do it and actually doing it were worlds apart.

  Nibblers were, in some ways, the antithesis of Niemeyer, because their bite was definitely worse than their bark. The little predators were native to Basalt, ran up to sixty centimeters in length and fifteen kilos in weight. Thoroughly disagreeable creatures, they would hunt and scavenge anything, consuming its bone, sinew, hair and meat. It was highly recommended that folks should not go camping alone in Basalt’s parks because if you happened to die in your sleep, or fall down and get injured, the only traces of you that would ever be found would be badly dented metal like belt buckles and jewelry.

  A smaller species of the creatures had entered the cities, occupying the same ecological niche as rats on other worlds. As a result, animals that were considered pets on Basalt tended to be medium to large dogs with a history of ratting. Someone once had the plan of introducing large snakes to Basalt to clear off the nibblers, but the beasts got to gathering at the point where the snakes were released into the forests. They just loved that wriggle-steak.

  In fact, the only thing that kept them in check is that they were as cannibalistic as they were territorial. I definitely had the feeling that Niemeyer saw me as a nibbler, along with the others he’d alluded to. The analogy seemed rather apt and when I got back to Terra I was going to convince Consuela to change from jackals to nibblers as her totem creature for troublemakers.

  In one more way the idea of our being nibblers was appropriate because, twenty years ago, the locals made an effort to soften the image of nibblers. Cuddly plush toys were created in their image. A local author started a series of children’s books featuring one as the hero. The “Nifty the Nibbler” character had even starred in a series of Tri-Vid shows I remember seeing as a kid—not that I knew what he was or where he was from.

  I suspected that any effort made by those folks in Handy’s employ and our opposition would similarly be dressed up and softened to make it more palatable to the citizenry. In essence, we would be two groups of nibblers fighting for territory, with each side trying to take on the role of Nifty and painting the other side as his evil cousin, Naughty.

  Regardless, nibblers we would be, and hiding our nature would be difficult. In fact, Niemeyer’s comments to me suggested he knew a lot about us. I had to assume nothing much had happened yet, but that talent had been gathering rather noticeably and no one had taken the good Colonel up on his offer to send us home.

  I waited for a half hour after Niemeyer left before I headed out again. I spent the time clipping tags and labels from my clothes, then dressed in things that would sink me into anonymity in the crowds. I walked out of the hotel and watched for any tails, but saw nothing. I flagged down a hovercab, or tried to. The first two were driven by Dracs and refused to pick me up. Finally a Capellan who was adventurous or just really hungry stopped. I climbed in, then asked the driver to take me to a place where the liquor wouldn’t kill me, but some of the patrons might. He started t
o laugh, then caught my look in the rearview and just started driving.

  He took me north along the east side of the river. Manville had grown up around the downtown. The river became navigable to the north of the city, so the docks, warehouses and industrial sectors had sprung up there. To the south, where the three rivers allowed for a lot more in the way of waterfront property, the suburbs had grown. The hilltops became the Olympian domains of the rich like Emblyn. The Germayne palace covered a hill to the southeast and shone like a fairy-tale castle when the clouds broke and a lance of sunshine pierced it.

  The driver began talking cautiously as he drove into a commercial area in the industrial district. It seemed pretty clear to me that thirty years ago some regentrification had been tried here, with factories being converted into lofts and other things to attract the rich, but they had wandered elsewhere, letting the area begin to slide back down into decay.

  I had him drop me a block south of a place called the Cracked Egg. We drove past it once and then circled the block. He picked up speed as we went by it, which I took as good omen. The fact that the place’s sign showed an ovoid Union–class DropShip that had been ripped open by savage fire told me this was the sort of dive I was seeking.

  He grumbled about the lack of a tip, but I snarled at him. His comment in Chinese pertained to my ancestry and doesn’t bear repeating here. He sped off angrily and I gestured eloquently and obscenely in his direction.

  He turned the corner and I turned my attention to the bar. I watched the Egg for a little while and didn’t see too much traffic going in or out. I did notice some activity at a fourth-floor window in the building across the street and down one. I figured it was Niemeyer’s Public Safety Department hard at work. My wandering into the Egg so quickly after he spoke to me would likely engender a return visit to my room, so I’d have to be careful.

  I walked down the block and into the tavern. The door opened into a small corridor made of corrugated steel that forced you to turn left, walk three paces, then turn right again. I was fairly certain that on that short walk before the second turn I got scanned for weapons. I didn’t see anyone in position to stop me if I did have them. My eyes had not yet adjusted enough to the darkness for me to glance up and see if there were walls that would slip down and trap someone coming in with heavy gear, but that wouldn’t have surprised me.

  The Egg looked as if it had once been a department store as it was deeper than it was wide and a lot taller than it needed to be. Thick pillars held the ceiling up. It had four bars, the largest being along the first quarter of the left wall. In the right corner, halfway down the right wall, and then a bit further down on the left were the others. That last one serviced the tables where folks were playing cards. Back in the far right corner a Tri-Vid projection system had been set up and was playing old music Tri-Vids. The one they had on showed little Becky Shaw gyrating. Apparently they didn’t know she’d gone and grown up and had been repackaged as Rebecca! when her career was relaunched.

  I stood in the opening and felt more thoroughly scanned by eyes than I’d been when dropping into a hot zone. There were probably a hundred people in the Egg, excluding staff, and easily half had a feral sense to them. They were sizing me up as trouble, as a possible ally, and most certainly as a potential kill.

  I let them have a good look, then walked to the bar. A bartender came over to me and glanced a question. I pointed to a neon sign. “That sign true? I’ll have one.”

  The heavyset guy wearing a sleeveless shirt to my left hunched his shoulders and chuckled into his beer. “The only way there’d be Timbiqui Dark in the place is if you drink it someplace else and pee it out here.”

  I looked at him. “Do you realize you have more hair on your shoulders than you do on your head?”

  He had so much beer in him, or so little sense, that it took him a moment to realize I’d meant that as an insult. As he began to get up I found it easy to imagine him being Boris’ little, dumber brother—an assessment I did mean as an insult. His left hand tightened on the barrel of his mug. He intended to splash the beer in my face, crash the glass against my forehead, then pound glass splinters into my skull with his fists.

  Everyone does need a hobby and, from a glance at his scarred knuckles, I gathered he rather enjoyed his.

  A hand landed on his right shoulder. “At ease, Sergeant.”

  He moved up for another second, then turned to look at the speaker with confusion knotting his brow. “Did you hear what he said?”

  “He asked for a beer.” The dark-haired woman moved to slide between me and Boris Junior, but she had to wait for me to take my right foot off the back leg of his bar stool to do so. When I did, she bellied up to the bar and rapped her knuckles on it. “Tina, two bottles of Diamond Negro.”

  I looked up and saw no sign for it. “Never heard of it.”

  “Basalt brand, not quite up to Timbiqui, but good. They brew it up in Contressa, where Broad River meets the ocean. I have it brought in.”

  I reached into my pocket for money, but my benefactor shook her head. “My treat.”

  “I owe you for saving my life.” The man behind her snorted as he parsed the sentence.

  “If lives being saved is the criterion, Mustang should be buying for both of us, for a long time.” Her brown eyes glittered with red-and-yellow highlights from the sign. “You’d have tipped his stool back, then what, stomped on his groin and his throat?”

  “One or the other. I’m new here and don’t know him that well.”

  “If you did, it would have been both. Repeatedly.” The beers arrived and she slid one to me. We raised them and clinked them together. “I’m Alba Dolehide.”

  “Sam Donelly.” I drank and the beer was good, very good, but I found myself distracted by the tattoo on her right forearm. It was the Lament insignia.

  She lowered her bottle and smiled. “So, what is a MechWarrior like you doing in a scrapyard like this?”

  “Could be a long story. Do you want to sit?”

  “Sure.” She started off through the crowd and I found myself distracted again, but not just by her body. She moved so well, so supple and lithe was she, that parts of me were inclined to aching. Her long black hair had been loosely knotted with a red bandana and swayed back and forth from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. She wore her sleeveless gray shirt snug where it should have been snug, and that applied to her cargo pants as well.

  What distracted me more than her walk was the way the others looked at her. Whereas I’d been regarded with cold hostility when I came in, my being in her company offered me a dispensation. Some folks even gave me a nod, about as close to a welcome as I’d get before I’d bled alongside them, and maybe not even then.

  Alba reached a table that, while she was still incoming, had been fully populated. By the time I got to it, an ashtray leaking smoke and several condensation rings were the only evidence that anyone had been there. She drew a chair back against a wall and I came around to her left. My back remained a bit open, but if anyone in here wanted me dead, they weren’t going to worry about angling to shoot me in the back.

  She sipped her beer. “You were going to tell me why you’re here.”

  “Same reason as you are, I suspect. Victories are bought with blood or gold. Our blood, their gold.”

  Alba nodded easily, both in agreement with what I’d said, and acknowledging that she’d heard that sort of reasoning before. “Gold is to be had here, but I thought this was going to be a private little affair. Someone else sent for you because I know I didn’t, which means you’re not on my team. As the saying goes, you’re either with us or against us.”

  “There’s another saying: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’”

  She regarded me carefully with sloe eyes. “You have enemies?”

  “A guy named Baxter Hsu. There was some trouble on Acamar and he set me up to take a fall for him. I was told he was heading here, to Basalt, so I came after him.”

  She shook
her head. “Name’s not coming up in my directory, Sam. He’s not one of mine.”

  I glanced around the room. “I notice no Dracs or Caps. Personal preference or…?”

  “My employers’ preference.” She shrugged. “Pity, since they are good fighters, but the crew here will do fine.”

  “They look hard enough.” I scanned the room again. “You’re right. He’s not here, at least, not here.”

  “Describe him.”

  “Average everything, black hair, brown, almond eyes, yellow skin. A bit more cunning than I expected, but I think someone was pulling his strings.”

  “Could be one of millions here.” She regarded me quizzically. “You gonna climb those strings and go after the puppeteer?”

  I drank, savoring the heavy taste of the hops. “Not unless he knots those strings on me. Now, if Bax isn’t one of yours, who would he be working for?”

  “Someone else. Take your pick.” Alba shrugged her shoulders. “Warriors are being collected here like coins.”

  “Who’s got the biggest collection?”

  She smiled. “You follow the analogy. Good. Most of the folks here think analogies are why you sneeze during pollen season.”

  “Flattery. I like it.” I gave her a nod. “And a nice deflection of my question.”

  “If you’re as smart as I think you are, you can answer the question all by yourself.”

  I thought for a moment. “Emblyn, of course, can afford as much muscle as he wants. But the biggest collection isn’t always the best.”

  Alba smiled in spite of herself. “Wise words. The best collection here might not be paid quite as much as the largest, but there will be a lot of slugs and plugged coins that won’t ever spend their gold.”

  “Just leak their blood.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What does the best pay?”

  She shook her head. “You’re still an unknown quantity, Donelly. I will take some time to check you out. You’ll be talking to others, I’m sure, so you’ll know the going rates and see what you can negotiate. I’d expect nothing less.”