Just Compensation

by Robert N. Charrette

  “Hoi, Cinq. How’s the biz?” Furlann didn’t sound like she felt threatened at all.

  “Fine, no thanks to you.” Cinqueda replied. “Don’t make this go the hard way.”

  Cinqueda’s knife was ready to throw. Tom had seen the street samurai move and knew that Furlann’s best speed-up spell couldn’t match the samurai’s jacked-up reflexes. Cinqueda could launch her strike before the mage could do a thing. But would the samurai’s optics compensate for the displacer spell that had foiled Markowitz? Furlann didn’t seem to think so, because she didn’t release her hold on Tom. The gun still hovered before his face.

  “You wouldn’t do it, Cinq.” Furlann said. “We had too fine a time together. You remember, don’t you? I know I do.”

  Cinqueda didn’t move, not even a muscle twitch. “I remember that you always bet the wrong horse. Think hard on this one, Lanny. I never miss at this range. It’s your choice.”

  “It’s true I’ve never seen you miss, but then you never threw against my displacer.”

  “Is it as good as Black Mary Thomas’s displacer?”

  “Almost.” Furlann said it with pride. Black Mary Thomas must have been a hellacious mage.

  “Too bad for you, Lanny.” Cinqueda said emotionlessly. “Black Mary’s wasn’t good enough.”

  Tom felt a tremor in the invisible hands that gripped him.

  “You’re bluffing.” Furlann said.

  Cinqueda’s expression didn’t waver. “Like I said, your choice.”

  The rifle pointed at Tom did waver. It quivered, as the trigger slowly drew back. Tom lost interest in the confrontation between the samurai and the mage. The weapon’s dark, lidless eye became all-absorbing.

  He knew he wasn’t fast enough to dodge a bullet, but he couldn’t just stand still. At the very least he could go down fighting. He threw himself against the invisible, restraining hands, fully expecting it to be the last thing he did.

  Metal clanked against hardened plastic. The echoes of that sound were swallowed in the coughing burp from the Steyr. Irate bees buzzed him. Fire burned across his shoulder. A hot needle pierced his ear. Something the size of a Clydesdale kicked his forehead, shattering his vision into darkness. He fell.

  * * *

  Andy had been afraid Furlann had taken over Cinqueda’s actions when he saw the street samurai throw her knife at Tom. Kit had said that the Army mage was dangerous.

  But Cinqueda had thrown, not at Tom, but at the rifle menacing him. Though the samurai’s throw was good, her blade failed to knock the muzzle far enough out of line. When Furlann triggered the rifle, the burst of slugs caught Tom. He went down in a splatter of blood and a spray of plastic shards from his shattered helmet.

  Cinqueda had Furlann by the throat before Tom’s body hit the ground.

  “We need her to talk.” Markowitz shouted.

  Andy thought he needn’t have bothered. If Cinqueda had intended to kill the mage, Furlann would have been dead before Markowitz got his words out.

  It was Tom they needed to worry about. Kit ran with Andy to see if there was anything to be done for his brother. Despite the blood all over his hair and face, Tom still breathed.

  “The helmet saved his life.” Kit said. “The other wounds are superficial.”

  She searched through Tom’s belt pouches until she found a first aid kit. “Hold his head.” she said, and went to work cleaning and bandaging Tom’s wounds. She sang softly, too softly for him to catch the words. Andy hoped he was hearing a healing spell; Tom looked terrible. Feeling a little queasy at all the blood, he looked elsewhere.

  Markowitz had taken Furlann’s pistol from her and was holding it trained on the mage while Cinqueda tied her hands behind her back. Cinq was making sure to restrict Furlann’s fingers as well as her wrists. That done, she gagged Furlann. Andy guessed that the samurai had some experience in securing mages. It was supposed to be impossible for a mage to cast a spell without being able to speak or make hand gestures. Andy hoped it was true.

  When Cinqueda came near to retrieve her knife, Andy asked, “Why’d you come back?”

  “I never left. Job wasn’t done.”

  “You let us think you had.” Kit said, looking up from her work on bandaging Tom.

  “Served you right. You should have told me about the Ferrets. I should have left, though.” Her chromed eyes tracked to Furlann. “It would have saved me some more . .. trouble.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t.” Tom said weakly. “This time I did need the rescue. Thanks.”

  “Make your thank-yous in negotiable credit and I’ll believe you’re sincere.” Cinqueda told him.

  “Don’t try to sound so mercenary.” Kit said. “It doesn’t become you.”

  “I am a mercenary. Don’t forget it. I won’t when I send you your bill.” Cinqueda looked away. “Vehicle approaching.”

  A few seconds later Andy heard it too.

  “It’s a Ranger.” Tom said. He must have recognized the engine noise. “Must be the task force command car. Help me up.”

  As the Ranger armored car bulled through the fence surrounding the back yard they had all violated, its turreted chain gun swiveled to point at them. A helmeted soldier watched them from the turret. Andy had no doubt the man’s finger was on the trigger. With Furlann tied and gagged, and Tom all bloody, the little group probably didn’t look friendly to the soldier.

  “Jackson.” Tom called out, waving weakly.

  “Major?” The soldier sounded a little surprised. “What’s going on?”

  “Call back Hanley and his men.”

  Jackson’s eyes wavered between Tom and Furlann till Tom told him what Furlann had tried to do. Jackson didn’t like what he heard and made no effort to hide it.

  “I’ve got a micro-grenade we could feed her.” Jackson called out.

  “Forget her for now.” Tom told him. “Stop Hanley and the troops before they kill themselves following her stupid orders.”

  The sergeant disappeared inside the Ranger. A minute later, the command car’s rear ramp dropped open. Jackson emerged with word that he’d gotten to Hanley in time.

  “Why’d she do it, Major?” Jackson asked.

  “Good question, Jackson. Just one of many.” He turned to Furlann. “If you’re willing to talk, we can take the gag off.”

  “But one word of a spell and you get popped.” Markowitz added.

  Furlann nodded understanding. As soon as the gag came off, she croaked a plea for water, complaining of the taste in her mouth. Andy had a bad taste in his mouth too, but his was figurative and had a lot to do with her.

  “You’ve got a lot to tell us.” Tom said to her.

  “Maybe.” Furlann said. “I’d like to be assured of certain considerations if I do.”

  “You’re already getting more than you deserve.” Andy said.

  “Kid’s right.” Markowitz agreed. “You’re alive. Talk if you want to stay that way.”

  “You’ve all called me a ‘murderer.’ You’ll be one as well if you carry out your threat, Marksman.” Furlann smirked at him. “Not your style.”

  “Nobody will think twice about finding you shot with a Confed weapon.” Tom said.

  Furlann’s eyes snapped to him and her demeanor lost a little of its arrogance.

  “Why?” Tom asked.

  Furlann sighed. “Rocquette, you’re a lot like the mess you tried to lay before the President. Too much trouble. Too many connections. Too many loose ends. Your problem with Lessem was bad enough, but all the other stuff just—well, let’s just say that circumstances made it very expedient for you to be put out of the way. Disappearing would do as well. Think about it. You could save yourself a lot of trouble. Drek, you might just plain save yourself if you decide to go that route.”

  “You following Trahn’s direct orders, or did the word go through Jordan?” Markowitz asked.

  Furlann glowered at him silently.

  Jackson looked near to boiling over. “That stuff the news pi
rate reported is true then! The fragging brass are in it with the Confeds. Trahn, too. God, who’d have thought it? Did that fragging Confed sympathizer hand you the Steyr himself? Tell you to have a good hunt? I ought to—”

  “Easy, Sergeant.” Tom said warningly, and Jackson subsided.

  Furlann looked toward the fallen Steyr autorifle.

  “Don’t try it.” Kit warned.

  “Put it in the fridge, sister. All I was going to do was say, take a look at it. It’s real Confed issue, and we really did take it from the Consies. Some of them are Ferrets, you know. Your Confed connection is real, and it’s a serious problem that you’re not helping. But it don’t link this mess to Trahn. The Army’s not taking the rap on that one.”

  “Don’t think we can make the blame stick?” Andy asked.

  “I know you can’t, because neither Trahn nor anyone connected to him has got squat to do with the Confeds.” Furlann said. “Except that we’ve been had, like the rest of the rubes. So you want to make trouble? Go ahead. Help the Confeds.”

  Markowitz wasn’t convinced. “Why should we believe you?”

  “Don’t. I don’t give drek if you do.” Furlann brightened a little. “On the other hand, go ahead and try to blame Trahn and the Army. Do it and you’ll be shown so wrong that nobody will believe you about anything else. Yeah, go ahead. I like the strategy.”

  “If Trahn’s not involved, why was he colluding with Osborne?” Tom asked.

  Furlann snorted. “I told him from the get-go that the weedeater was a double-dealing bastard, but he thought he had enough juice to keep Osborne toeing the line. Looked chill for a while. It’d still look good if you hadn’t blown open Telestrian’s hook-up with the Confeds. Some good you did, though hearing it must have slotted off the general to hell and gone. Double-dealing weedeater!”

  “You didn’t answer my question.” Tom said.

  “You are determined to frag it up, aren’t you? Oh the hell with it! Everything’s falling apart anyway.” Furlann’s tone lost its belligerent edge. “Let’s talk protection.”

  “For you?” Markowitz asked incredulously.

  “You want me to talk. I want protection. It’s a simple equation. Even simple enough for you, Marksman.”

  “You want to live, you talk.” he shot back. “A simpler equation. Even simple enough for you, Furlann.”

  She ignored him and looked at Tom. “Deal or no?”

  “Talk first.” Tom told her. “We’ll see.”

  “Drek, it’s not like you’ve got authority to do anything useful anyway.” She looked down at the ground. She seemed finished with talking.

  “You might want to change your bet, Lanny.” Cinqueda said.

  After a moment, Furlann said softly, “Maybe I do.”

  She looked up and her eyes swept across all of them, but ended on Tom. “You’re an honest guy, Rocquette. You’ll deal fair.”

  “Fairer than you have.” Andy said.

  Tom looked at Andy with a funny expression on his face, but he schooled it before turning back to Furlann. “Tell us what Trahn’s got going.”

  Furlann blew out an explosive sigh. “Okay. Trahn’s got an agenda, but it’s got nothing to do with the Confeds, unless it’s to kick their butts a few years down the line. He’s not happy with the way the politicos have gutted the military. He’s right to feel that way, of course, but he sees things as somewhat worse than they are; he thinks the politicos have brought us to the brink of destruction by internal anarchy and external enemies, and he’s been planning for years to do something about it.

  “Lately, he’s been looking for a demonstration. When the Compers came to town and Steele didn’t do a damn thing, Trahn thought he saw an opportunity. Having it come up in his own military district made him very happy. Back in July he had Osborne get the hold put on the riot-control supplies, and made sure that what was in inventory got used up or surplused. He knew that sooner or later the pot would boil over. When the situation in Chicago blew up, he knew the time had come. He had Jemal stoke up the fire a little by putting agents among the Compers to encourage them to violence. You see, he figured that once things got out of hand, which he was sure they would, he would resolve the situation with prompt action by the Army.”

  “Using the proper riot gear would have made the action quicker and cleaner.” Tom said.

  “But that wouldn’t let him show that the Army had been slighted.” Furlann shrugged. “Would have left a lot of the metagene junk alive, too. The general’s a two-for-one kind of guy when he can get things to work out right.”

  “So he declared open season on orks and other metahumans.” Markowitz suggested amicably. “To clean out the trash, as it were.”

  “That’s right.” Furlann said. Then she noticed the chill in the group watching her. “Hey, what’s the problem? We’re all humans here. We can’t let the orks and the other metagene drek keep fouling the gene pool, can we?”

  Fouling the gene pool. Orks. Metagene drek. Andy’s father had been an ork. A Changed ork rather than a born one, but an ork nevertheless. So if there were ork genes, Andy had them too. How long before people like Furlann and Trahn decided that just having genes made you metatrash, no matter what you looked like?

  “You’re talking genocide.” he said.

  “Always a popular hobby with fascists.” Markowitz said. “Tell me, Furlann, ever think that magical ability was metagenetic?”

  “That’s different.”

  Markowitz smiled an evil smile. “You sure your chummer Trahn feels that way? The Jews weren’t the only ones providing fuel for the Nazi furnaces.”

  Andy liked the disquieted expression those words brought to Furlann’s face.

  Tom wasn’t distracted by the race angle. “Why now? Considering what’s happening in Chicago, the country has enough trouble.”

  “Considering what’s happening in Chicago, it was the perfect time.” Furlann said. “Trahn has got a thing for what he calls ‘the great days, when it meant something to be a soldier in this country.’ With most of the armed forces busy in Chicago, we’re running short-handed everywhere. Trahn’s always said that the UCAS military, as currently constituted, is insufficient for the country’s needs. Pulling troops from the border to deal with the riots went a long way to demonstrating his point.”

  Andy thought such a view ignored an important point. “He thought he could pull troops from the border even with North Virginia talking secession?”

  “All that secessionist drek looked like a lot of hot air and politico nonsense.” Furlann said. “Nobody really thought they’d go through with it. They couldn’t make the shift without Confed support, and nobody thought they really had any support from Atlanta.” Furlann shrugged. “Can’t be right about everything.”

  Tom shook his head sadly. “Trahn was willing to bet the nation’s peace just to improve the lot of the UCAS military?”

  Furlann replied, “Hey, the Army’s his life. You ought to understand that.”

  “I understand where he came from—it’s where he’s headed that I have the problems with.” Tom said.

  “We’ve got to get the word out.” Markowitz said.

  “Your broadcast didn’t work.” Tom pointed out.

  “Maybe we sent the wrong message to the wrong people.” Andy said. “The Ranger’s got MilNet connections, right?”

  “Yeah.” Tom said. “A Fuchi 5000 clone, but it’s only configured for standard access. Any general posting will run through headquarters and censors.”

  “Good enough. With that deck and a few codes, I ought to be able to cut us in wherever we want to go. We can dump everything we’ve found out on MilNet. If everyone else thinks like Sergeant Jackson, we can get the action against the Compers shut down within the hour.”

  “Nobody’s going to like hearing about this.” Jackson agreed.

  Tom showed Andy where to jack in and arranged a dump on the Ranger TCV’s capabilities. It only took Andy a moment to find the unit’s standa
rd net-access codes. Everyone crowded into the command car to watch him work. He set up a slaved transmit using the Ranger’s radio to run simultaneously with his excursion into the MilNet. Working with the whole group watching was like being on display; but as soon as he’d done what was needed to let them follow along, he forgot about the watchers. He whirled through the electron sky, wearing a shape that was government issue, drab and plain, but he felt like Paul Revere giving the alarm to Concord and Lexington, or maybe Cary Justus waking the Houston garrison before the Azzie troops stormed the perimeter. It was a hero’s turn he was doing, spreading the word.

  Taking what Furlann had told them and running with it, Andy informed the soldiers about Trahn’s fabricated emergency with the Compers and his intention to make the confrontation as bloody as possible simply as a means to a political end. He didn’t say a lot about the Confed threat—thinking that a straightforward connective chain would work better to convince the people that Trahn was leading them the wrong way—but he did emphasize the danger of leaving the border unguarded while troops battled the Compers. He had no compunction about telling every node he met about the illegal orders Tom had received and the attempted murder that had been his reward for trying to do his duty and refusing to go along—it was only because Tom requested it that he didn’t mention Furlann by name, simply referring to her as the “failed assassin” who revealed much of the plot.

  Something exploded overhead, blasting Andy back to meat awareness. The shock wave rocked the command car.

  Jackson dropped back into the cabin from his turret seat. “Cut it off! Cut off the broadcast! We just had a beam rider dumped on us. Somebody’s getting desperate.”

  Andy killed the transmitter. Somebody clearly had not liked what they had to say.

  “Driver, roll us out of here.” Tom ordered.

  Andy was happy to hear that order. He’d played enough games of Gulf Victories to know what happened to electronic sources that broadcast for too long. They would catch a missile that could track the emissions to their source, a beam rider like the one the sergeant had just destroyed with the Ranger’s chain gun. Even with the computer aid, Jackson had gotten lucky. They’d all gotten lucky. Anti-missile fire didn’t have high kill probabilities; most likely the sergeant wouldn’t hit the next one.