“Huuu?” Chalmers asked, the desire to know more momentarily overcoming the need to avoid more itching.
“How? Not sure of the delive—Oh, you mean how do we know?”
“Essss.”
“You know how exacting their copies of our weapons are, right? That’s why my .45 rattled like the ones I trained on at Basic despite the fact it was a SpinDog-made copy. Well, the mortar was straight US Army, circa Korean War, but no serial number. Not even the stamp that the SpinDogs put on their knock-offs. Meaning the Hardliners found a way to get the plans we shared with the SpinDogs to their own fabricators—probably black-market operators among the RockHounds.” Jackson shook his head. “Leastwise, that’s what we think. Not a lot of real evidence left. You fucked the tube up good driving through the crew like you did.”
Chalmers heard another swig and swish as Jackson drank. Silence remained in its wake; Chalmers was unable to speak and struggled to avoid recalling the feel of Man-Eater as she bucked over the bodies. He wasn’t sure what Jackson was thinking, but hoped the silence was recognition of Chalmers’ sacrificial act, interposing himself between Jackson and the exploding shell.
“Anyway,” Jackson said after another pull on the bottle, “I think Murphy is layin’ too little at the feet of the Hardliners, but he may just be taking a page from General Powell: tryin’ to avoid breaking up the alliance despite the shit our allies be pulling.”
“Buuuht?”
A theatrical sigh. “You talkin’ too much, Chalmers. Let me get a word in edgewise, man.”
“Funk uuuuu. Wheeer frm?” Chalmers managed. His bonds were loosening, which might be of concern. He probably wasn’t supposed to scratch at any of his infected wounds.
“Where were the weapons from? I already tole you,” Jackson was slurring a bit now, the drink obviously taking effect.
“Mnnn.”
“Oh, the men were militia from the villages in the regions north of Clarthu. Fuckin’ weekend warriors. Apparently, they were called up by the satraps’ local underlings—called vavasors—but hadn’t shown much enthusiasm for taking on the Clarthuuns or the Kedlakis until they got the gear from the Hardliners.”
“Tang?”
Jackson snorted. “Space OJ?”
“Nnnmmm. Traneng,” Chalmers said carefully.
“Training?” Jackson asked.
Chalmers didn’t answer, fully occupied with suppressing a resurgence of the itch.
“I’m just gonna take your trembling for a yes. We’re still trying to run that down, but it looks like some of the satrapies allow locals to guest-train on the equipment they keep stored in their city armories. We couldn’t ask questions of the mortar men, for reasons you know already. The rest either got away or got themselves executed by the Clarthuuns, who were straight pissed. Oh, and in case you’re wondering where we are that I’m able to knock back Wild Turkey like the good ole days, then wonder no more: we’re in the new camp. All of us. The Kedlakis-Ur and her people came, too, once they heard from Ked that vengeance had been taken for the affront to her niece—that’d be the little badass, Kenla—and we’d settled the rest of the matter for them.”
Chalmers stirred.
“And about the scores getting settled? Apparently that was part of the plan from the get-go. At least, according to the Kedlakis-Ur. The village hetman’s kid, the one Kenla killed? He wanted to take over from his pops but had been refused by the village council. So, he gets all angry and shit, and starts shopping the village to the, uh…the vavasors. Real dirtbag, this fucker.
“Somewhere along the line, a vavasor puts him in touch with the local satrap’s fixer, who hooks him up with those RPGs. It was part of a deal to not only get control of the village, but as many of the nomads as he could convince to come over to their side. And, get this! He apparently approached the Kedlakis-Ur’s niece to negotiate a deal that would betray us all to the satrap. When the niece told him to pound salt, he attacked her.”
Another pull on the bottle, then a bourbon-rasped, “I remember thinking, given how easy she was about dueling the hetman and controlling that fight to buy us time, that his rat-fuck son must have had a trick up his sleeve to even think about attacking Kenla himself. Didn’t make sense at the time, but then enter the drug the healer used to put me down.”
Jackson coughed. Another slosh. Chalmers heard the bottle thump on the ground.
“So…so then. What am I missing?” Jackson’s slur was fairly strong now. “So…so the healer, right? She’s pissed about her son—oh, yeah, the healer and the hetman were a couple back when. But she’d made her peace with the break-up. She wasn’t happy about her boy making deals with the enemy and then stealing her drugs to mickey the Kedlakis-Ur’s niece. Oh, no, not the kind of shit a wise woman or whatever can take lying down. Goes against her oaths and whatnot. So she’s pissed, right? But it’s her kid, right? So, she decides to get rid of the evidence that shows he’s working for the wrong side…and that’s when we show up and I put a round in her chest.” Chalmers heard Jackson’s hands scrubbing the stubble of his cheeks. “Fuck, me, but I’m glad I didn’t kill her…”
Silence settled around them.
Chalmers wasn’t sure he understood all of it, or that it all made sense, but what he did comprehend jibed with the behaviors he’d seen from the principal players in this little intertribal drama.
“Cmmn?” he asked.
“Common?”
Chalmers nodded.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand you, Chalmers. Maybe if I take that off.” Chalmers heard a thump, like the front pair of a chair’s legs hitting a wood floor after someone leaning back came fully forward. A clinking, as of scissors being taken off an aluminum tray, then, “Hold still.”
Chalmers, helpless to do anything but, did as he was told. A few seconds later he was blinking into a lantern hung from one of the tent’s supports while Jackson got rid of the remaining bandages that had swaddled his head so tightly he couldn’t speak.
Jackson sat, returned his chair to the preferred angle of lean with his boots on Chalmers’ bed, and allowed a big shit-eating grin to slowly spread across his face.
“What?” Chalmers asked. Surprised at the lack of pain, he tried to raise an arm to touch his face and survey the damage, but Jackson hadn’t cut his hands free.
“Nothin’,” Jackson slurred.
“Wait, why am I feeling no pain?”
“‘Cause you’re in heaven?” Jackson ventured, fixing Chalmers with a leer.
“Fuck you. We both know I’m going to hell when I die.” He blinked, struggling to get his hands free, still feeling no pain—at least from his face, despite talking. “Wait, why was my jaw tied up?”
“Already told you. I wanted to get a word in edgewise.”
“Jackson!” Chalmers shouted, the deep breath that followed and the struggle to get his arms free causing a harsh throb from deep beneath his ribs.
Jackson laughed, hiccupped.
“What the fuck, Jackson?” Chalmers wheezed.
“You like that shit? I’m particularly proud of the alien fungus bit I came up with, though I think I might have over-sold the cracker shit Sonningen wanted to act out.” He looked a question at Chalmers.
“B-b-but, you said I was out for weeks?”
“Jesus, man!” Jackson snorted, waving a dismissive hand. “You just lost a shit-ton of blood, had some deep lacerations, and broke two ribs. The crazy drugs they have here did for the lacerations, and you’re wrapped pretty tight around the chest. The face wounds are already pinked scars. You’ve only been out…uh, a little less than two days, I think.” He paused, thinking. “Yeah, two days. Shit did really get fuzzy at the end, there.”
“Wait, so no alien fungus?” Chalmers asked, bewildered.
Jackson laughed. “Fuck no!”
“Untie me, then, you asshole!” The shout drove a spike of pain through his ribs. Chalmers decided not to shout, ever again.
Jackson only laughed harder as
he watched Chalmers’ face contort. “Nah,” he eventually gasped, wiping at tears, “I think I’m gonna enjoy this a while longer.” He reached down and plucked the bottle from the ground. Saluting Chalmers with it, he took a long swig, swallowed, and said, “Not every day I get to shut you up at will.”
Jackson made a face as the liquor went down. Now calm enough to note the bottle wasn’t Wild Turkey, but some of the local rotgut, Chalmers let go of his earlier jealousy.
He also didn’t repeat himself. Didn’t beg. Now that his temper had cooled, Chalmers knew better. Old Chalmers might have begged. More likely he’d have raged and cursed. But new Chalmers wasn’t about to beg. Not that Jackson wouldn’t accede to a properly worded beg-fest, but because that was exactly what Jackson wanted.
No, Chalmers’ choice was about himself. New Chalmers had, ultimately, been better. Done better. He’d sacrificed his body to save Jackson from injury, and they both knew it.
The whole purpose of Jackson’s charade was to distract them both from the changes wrought on their relationship by surviving the shit show together. They both knew their lives had rested in the other’s hands in ways they never had before, that whatever sins Chalmers had committed in the past, they were just that, in the past, and he had done better with his present.
Against all previous experience and expectation, Chalmers had made good on some of the oaths he’d sworn, both to himself and to Jackson.
Neither of them could acknowledge what they had done for each other, not openly. To do so would break the unspoken contract. Jackson had come close to breaking it back in Kedlakis, but he’d been justified. Anger and honor wore a completely different set of responsibilities than gratitude, and it demanded a different set of rules. Gratitude was not to be spoken of, not to be displayed. Not between them.
So instead they would continue this complicated dance, neither admitting to the other exactly what the other meant to them until one or the other was dead.
And that was fine by both new and old Chalmers.
Really.
“Can I get a sip, Jacks?”
“Sure, sure,” Jackson said, holding the bottle out to his partner.
Chalmers reached, but his hands were still tied.
Jackson fell out of his chair laughing.
* * * * *
Chapter Forty-Four
Spin One
“Major?” Mara Lee’s voice called from just beyond the open hatchway.
Murphy leaned away from the plotting table until he could see her. “Bruce, what are you doing here?”
“Hoping to speak with you a moment, sir.”
Murphy checked his G-Shock. “A moment is all I’ve got. Meeting with the new head of Family Otlethes in fifteen minutes.”
“I know, sir. That’s why I’m here.”
Murphy motioned her in. She shut the door behind her.
“You’ve got that look on your face, Bruce.”
“What look is that, sir?” Her tone was forced jauntiness layered on top of trepidation.
Murphy met and held her eyes, kept his own tone serious. “The look you were wearing when you came back from the first training cycle dirtside.”
Lee dropped the jauntiness, paused, then nodded. “Yes, sir. That tracks. Probably because it’s connected to what I wanted to ask of you.”
“Ask of me?” That’s new. Captain Mara “Bruce” Lee made it part of her job to be all about finding solutions and answers instead of making requests and asking favors. Murphy sat on the edge of the table. “So, I can give you two minutes, but that’s really all I’ve got. Particularly after getting Chalmers’ report.”
“Actually,” she said, “that’s part of what I’m here to talk to you about. I know you’re getting ready to take news of that to Anseker, the new Primus Otlethes, but…” She took a deep breath. “Let me do it. I can make it right.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I think I can guide how the dominoes fall.”
“Still don’t know what you mean, Bruce.”
“I mean that what Chalmers dug up at Clarthu will be…will be easier for Family Otlethes to hear if it comes from me.”
“Because you’re closer to them?” Murphy shook his head. “Bruce, that might be one of the main reasons not to let you be the bearer of the news. Stabilo’s creation of an insurgency against us, of attacking our columns in the region, could tear our alliance with the SpinDogs to pieces. Particularly since there are indications that his father, the Primus Zobulakos, pointedly looked the other way. Which makes him complicit in his son’s treachery, at least to the extent of aiding and abetting it. And given that the mortar used in the attack was produced by RockHounds that subcontract for Family Kormak—”
“Sir,” Lee interrupted, eyes closed tightly; she didn’t open them until she continued. “Major, please. I understand the political dynamics at work, how this news is going to be heard, the repercussions it’s going to have. So please, trust me on this.” Her carefully controlled expression didn’t disguise the pleading in her eyes. “Have I steered you wrong yet?”
Murphy considered. “No. No, you haven’t. Very well, Captain. You will proceed as our formal conveyer of—”
She shook her head. “No. Nothing formal. I’m just going to visit the family. As I normally do. That won’t raise any suspicion. And trust me, we want to keep this as low-profile as possible, for as long as possible.”
Murphy sighed, nodded. “The whole pound, then.”
“What?”
“Brit expression that an English diplomat in the Mog used: ‘in for a penny, in for a pound.’ I guess if I can let you be our messenger for this news, I can let you do it on your ‘private time.’” He smiled faintly.
Her answering smile was larger, but also, very serious: not an expression he often saw on “Bruce” Lee’s face. “Thank you, Major Murphy.”
“No reason you should thank me, Captain.”
She stopped at the hatchway, shook her head. “I didn’t say ‘thank you’ for me, sir. I’m thanking you for all of us.”
Puzzled, he frowned after her receding back before gathering up the classified hardcopies. It was going to feel damned odd, asking to step up the rate of replication while knowing that the Family responsible for eighty percent of it—Kormak—was probably trying to sabotage the very campaign it was enabling.
But there was no way to put off the conversation, no matter who wound up handling the production. One of the linchpins of the ground campaign wasn’t carrying the strategic weight that they had all hoped it would support. The SpinDogs had been certain that the satraps would be slower to react, would not realize what was happening until Moorefield and Tapper had cleaned out all the caches the Sarmatchani knew about or suspected existed. The Harvesters took considerable precautions to keep their locations secret, but the odds were low that any construction or changes—either in the Ashbands and Hamain—would escape the notice of those who called the wastes their home.
And at first, everything went according to that plan. Sarmatchani scouts had led Bo and Harry to three caches, each of which was promptly emptied. But when they arrived at the fourth, it had already been opened, stripped—and booby-trapped. Apparently, it had only taken the remaining Kulsian raiders two weeks to realize that their caches were being breached and emptied. Possibly they’d been alerted by embedded alarms, or maybe they’d sent satrap patrols out to keep their untapped caches under observation.
But that hardly mattered now. What was to have been a fast find-and-grab campaign to equip the Lost Soldiers and their Sarmatchani allies at the expense of their enemies was now a race of who could get to which caches first. And whereas the Sarmatchani were the masters of the region and knew much of what went on in it, the Kulsians had exact coordinates.
So, the mission clock had been impacted again, and now, more replicated gear was needed since there was going to be less coming from pilfered enemy reserves. Which made the ground campaign that much more uncertain and
turned the dial more in the direction of having to rely on Bowden’s air attack—in concert with a mechanized assault or not—to take out the transmitter.
Step one in the attempt to salvage the situation was to brief the most sympathetic leader amongst the Expansionists: Anseker, the new Primus of the preeminent Otlethes Family. It would be their first face-to-face meeting—not the best time to announce problems and make requests—but the situation required prompt action. If there was any way to make more of what was needed, either through the present arrangement with Family Kormak, doubtful, or by shifting to a different provider, likely—that option had to be identified and activated immediately.
Tucking the sheets into the folder, Murphy checked his watch again, discovered he was going to be late, and was secretly glad that he’d sent Max ahead of him; waiting on every security precaution the big bodyguard wanted to take kept eating into his schedule.
Hustling out of the CP and code locking it behind him, Murphy swung onto the corridor that followed the long axis of Spin One, pushing through the momentary balance and orientation glitch that was part of learning to live with the Coriolis effect. In this case, it was the result of the rapid repositioning of his inner ear in relation to the direction of the habitat’s rotation. The little things one got used to…
From further up the corridor, there was a sound of a hatch swinging back. Not opening, just swinging on its hinges.
Murphy frowned, took his first step toward the meeting with Anseker, resolved not to fret and flinch at every sound that might be out of the ordinary; Spin One was a big habitat with new sights and sounds that still surprised him and the other Lost Soldiers. Even so, he let his right hand drift toward his sidearm—and realized that he hadn’t shifted the folders to his off hand.
Shadows appeared in the passageway, one emerging from either wall. No, not the walls, from maintenance access panels that connected with crawlspaces that snaked like rat warrens throughout the habitat.
Murphy's Lawless: A Terran Republic Novel Page 43
