Erebus

by Ralph Kern

  For over an hour with one eye on the monitor, the tech asked endless questions, some as simple as what day of the week it was or his mother’s maiden name. Sometimes she asked twice. All the while, Kumba answered in a lethargic voice, a vacant smile on his face. I started on some paperwork through my HUD while the two captains with me discussed tactical options and military logistics for when we tracked down Kumba’s group. Eventually the tech stood up, went to the window, and tapped lightly on the glass before giving a thumbs-up. She was ready for the interview proper.

  She had a map of Kumba’s event response potentials, the neuroelectrical activity in his brain. Whatever he might say—or in fact not say—was completely irrelevant. It was which synapses were flaring when we asked our questions that we were interested in. By a lot of technical wizardry, we could then convert that activity into answers for what we wanted to know.

  I closed down the paperwork I was doing as Phillips and Otanga went silent.

  “How many of you are in your group?” The tech asked in a calm, measured voice.

  Mohawk stayed silent, his eyes tracking around the bare brick walls of the room with a vague look of euphoria in them. I had no doubt right now he was a happy man. I could only hope the comedown was hard on him. The answer popped up on the screen.

  22

  Interesting. I guess they had left a couple of guys at home.

  “What weapons are your group equipped with?” A trickier question to answer. Sometimes the ERPing got verbal responses like the 22, sometimes it got images. This time, a series of weapon silhouettes appeared on the screen. Some of them looked vaguely familiar: AK86s like Mohawk had and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. It was all fairly low-tech stuff, other than a few they had probably stolen, including the four dead peacekeepers’ weapons.

  “Where is your group located?” Again, the equipment interpreted the response in the best way. A satellite map appeared and focused on a small collection of buildings just north of the small town marked Er Rahad.

  “Were you part of the attack on the Karen Cole Hospital?”

  Yes appeared on the screen.

  “Did you kill anyone at the Karen Cole Hospital?”

  Yes

  Phillips leaned forward in her chair, a cold but hungry look in her eyes.

  “Why did you attack the hospital?”

  Money

  At least the guy wasn’t some fanatic; he was simply a greedy, murderous thief.

  CHAPTER 4

  SAHELIA, WEST OF ER RAHAD

  War Crimes Investigation at The Hague. When I’d seen the ad on the Hypernet to do a stretch in War Crimes, I’d spoken to my boss. He got all enthusiastic about it. He thought an attachment, a stint away from my then current assignment, would be good for me. “Go see the world for a couple of years, Layton. Get something on your resume that no one else has, and by the time you get back to the Met, they will practically be begging to give you your third pip.” The first part I’d liked, but I had one little problem with the second bit. I didn’t even like being an inspector that much, let alone going for further promotion. It involved far too much damn admin and not enough actual being a police officer.

  War Crimes was different. I got out on the frontlines. I’d managed to stretch my two-year attachment to twice that. Now, I was desperately hoping—beyond making sure someone, somewhere, sorted my pension contributions—the Met would eventually forget about me and leave me at The Hague. It was probably wishful thinking, but so far, so good.

  It was a strange business. I spent a lot of time dealing with military types as, by definition, a war crime tended to happen in a war zone. That made it a heady mix of old-fashioned policing combined with sending in the troops to do the dirty work. I didn’t get to feel too many collars. Kumba was an exception, not the rule, but enough to sate my thirst for the simple joy of tracking down some of the nastiest pieces of work on the planet. Sometimes it was nice to be a cog in the machine.

  The commando team was all in position around the bandit camp, ready to go. We’d discovered a nasty surprise: a cheap but effective jammer in a building near the center, probably another design from one of the many anarchist sites on the Hypernet. It wasn’t a powerful device, but then, it didn’t exactly take a lot to disable the mosquito drones. We couldn’t simply flood the area with the little buggers and let them tranquilize the targets. We were going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.

  We had flown the Australian commandos’ sleek VTOL low and slow through the mountains in the predawn darkness and landed a few miles away from the squalid collection of wooden buildings nestled in the desert. There, we had met up with Otanga’s company, who had driven to the area in their carriers. All the pieces were in place.

  The plan Phillips and Otanga had come out with was, like all good ones, simple. Otanga’s men would set up an outer cordon to prevent anyone from escaping the area. The Australian team would go in and disable the jammer. Then we could tranquilize them with the mosquitoes. It certainly beat getting into a firefight with a group that had proven to be smarter, more brutal, and more resourceful than the average scumbags who operated in the area.

  After Phillips had given a quick but through briefing, the eight troops hustled out, the active camouflage of their armor blending seamlessly with their surroundings. They disappeared into the night in seconds, nothing visible of them but a nearly imperceptible figure-shaped heat shimmer.

  Phillips and I were in the VTOL’s tiny control suite where she could coordinate the operation. Sergeant Jones was in operational command on the ground. He was a quiet-spoken man who most definitely knew what he was doing and exuded the unflappable confidence of a career military man. Interestingly, they had a fellow Brit on the team, also on an attachment, Corporal Singh. Apparently these kinds of military units did a fair number of international exchange programs to promote new skills between allied countries.

  The commandos had divided into four two-man fire teams and taken position at the cardinal compass points while Otanga’s entire company had crept in and surrounded the place a mile out.

  “All Tigers and Backstop. HQ Actual. Final ROE, ladies and gents,” Phillips said. “Nonlethal force is fully authorized. Lethal force is authorized on a self-defense basis only. Any mark that makes it past Tiger, leave to Backstop.” Otanga’s team. “We have no air support besides HQ.” I’m guessing she meant the hypersonic we were in. “However, Canberra will authorize a KIS if things go wrong.”

  The soldiers all gave terse acknowledgements as I glanced over at her. This was news to me. The Australians were serious. A KIS was a kinetic impact strike, basically dropping a rod of reinforced tungsten from orbit on these arseholes. The energy released would be equivalent to a tactical nuclear weapon, only without all the dirty radiation. The camp, and anyone in it, would simply cease to be. One way or another, the bandits were coming in, dead or alive.

  “I will, however, consider it a personal failing if we have to go that far. Canberra doesn’t want to have to deal with the political fallout, and I want the marks alive so we can haul their asses before the tribunal. Do I have a solid copy?”

  Every member of the team gave a resounding affirmative even though their instincts were probably telling them to kill every last bandit in the gang. I could sympathize. These animals were the reason Dev was currently on a slab in the Keep morgue. Part of me wanted the whole area to be KISed and be done with Sahelia. But that wasn’t what we were about. It was our job to put every last one of them before a court—make them answer for their crimes. They didn’t deserve an easy way out with a tungsten KIS.

  ***

  Fighting wars is often much like policing: long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of terror and exhilaration, yet the Australians sounded neither terrified nor particularly exhilarated—one of the signs of seasoned veterans.

  I watched on the live tactical plot as the eight commandos crept closer and closer to the small collection of huts and vehicles in the middle of the
desert settlement. The encoded transponders on their armor were the only thing giving them away. They were practically invisible on the visual spectrum and their armor cloaked them from thermal imaging, sniffers, and displacement sensors. Not that a bunch of two-bit bandits were likely to have such cutting edge tech, but they had proven fairly ingenious with what they did have.

  “HQ Actual, Tiger Three. IED. Standard trip wire and grenade configuration. Disarming now.” A calm voice came over the com. Seconds later, her voice said, “Disarmed. Proceeding.”

  “Roger that, Tiger Three. All Tiger teams watch for IEDs.” Phillips was warning the troops to be on the lookout for any improvised explosive device. “Tiger Two, you have one sentry eight zero meters at your eleven. Take him,” Phillips said.

  “Roger.” A pause. “Tango down. Incapacitated. Proceeding.”

  “Tango down, roger that.”

  The Brit, Corporal Singh, had nailed the first bad guy. Score one for the home team.

  The teams made their way closer to the hut emitting the jamming signal. A few more calls about booby traps being disabled came in, and a couple more bad guys were put to sleep. It was pretty slow going and, frankly, quite dull to watch. I was basically watching eight dots inching toward a building on a map.

  Waiting for a lull in the coms, I whispered to Phillips, “I’m going to grab some fresh air. Do you want a coffee?” She nodded, and I stood up and stretched out. I made my way down the ramp of the hypersonic and out onto the scrubby desert floor. I walked over to Otanga’s logistics vehicle and nodded at the private who stood watch. He was young and more than a little star-struck by the smooth operators from Down Under.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  He nodded and smiled at me. I had the distinct impression he hadn’t understood me. “Two coffees, please?” I pointed at the coffee cantina before holding up two fingers. The young man poured two cups for us as I pocketed a few sugar packets.

  I stood in the desert, enjoying the cool air. The stars were out in full splendor, and I could see the drifting lights of the space cities and ships in orbit, so far removed from the horrors of what was happening in this lawless hellhole.

  I activated CNN on my link and took a sip of my coffee as I watched the reports coming in from the Jupiter system. They told of some kind of accident out there, but the authorities of the Jupiter Alliance were more interested in coordinating relief efforts than providing coherent reports.

  Still, I envied them. There was none of the generations-long rivalries of Earth, none of the pettiness and squabbles that led to misery and despair, just striving to create a better world and life.

  The dull thump of an explosion sounded in the direction of the bandit camp, the noise diminished by the distance.

  I raced back to the hypersonic. “What the hell was that?”

  “All Tigers, HQ Actual. Confirm status,” Phillips said, shaking her head, forestalling any more questions.

  “HQ Actual, Tiger Four. We have a tripped IED.”

  “Understood. Casualties?”

  “No, ma’am, just a hell of a dent in my armor.”

  I looked at the satellite overview. Bandits were swarming like ants over their camp, disturbed by the sound of the explosion. “HQ Actual, Tiger Four. We are in contact with four-plus Tangos.”

  I could hear the distant rattle of automatic weapons fire and the thump of explosions; noise carried for miles across the desert. The shooting had started.

  “Roger, Tiger Four, go loud. Draw them in.”

  “Tiger Four going loud. We have incoming small-arms fire and RPGs.” Considering someone had just tried to blow him up with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and was now firing hundreds of rounds of ammunition at them, the soldier’s composure impressed me. It didn’t sound like he was even breaking a sweat.

  I watched the sat images of the bandit group swarming Tiger Four’s position. Phillips directed the other Tiger units to surround them, improvising an arc now that they had been made. Before long, they were boxed in and didn’t even know it. Tiger Four were taking a hell of a pounding, but over the coms it sounded like the two soldiers were having a stroll in the park.

  “Tiger Four, HQ Actual. Start falling back. Get them outside of the jammer’s range.”

  “Roger that.”

  Steadily the battle rolled farther away from the encampment. The bandits, though now surrounded, thought they were engaging on one side only.

  Anticipating Phillips’s next order, I got on the com to Otanga. “Get your mosquitoes online. The bandit forces will be clearing the jammer radius soon.”

  “Understood,” Otanga responded.

  “Mosquitoes ready to go,” I called to Phillips.

  “Get them up. Tell Otanga’s troops to go for targets with RPGs. They’re the only things that can do my team any harm.” I relayed her instructions to Otanga and watched a dozen new icons blink onto the map and swarm the bandits.

  The rattle of gunfire echoing across the desert intensified as Tiger Four ceased withdrawal and returned fire in earnest. I could hear their voices repeating over and over, “Tango down.” Each time, incap rounds had dropped another bandit on the map.

  The mosquitoes swarmed in, each one landing on a distracted combatant and injecting them with a tranquilizer bite. The few that were left were easily mopped up by Phillips’s and Otanga’s disciplined soldiers.

  ***

  The VTOL touched down near the main building of the encampment, and Phillips, Otanga, and I walked out into the former combat zone. Twenty ugly, nasty-looking men were trussed up in cuffs, most still unconscious. The ones who had been knocked out were all on their sides in a first-aid recovery position. The Australian soldiers were clearly magnanimous souls at heart. The team’s medic was even treating the bandits’ injuries.

  Phillips’s and Otanga’s troops had done their jobs well, only two fatalities. One bandit had been incapacitated as he was about to fire an RPG, and he took out both himself and his partner when he’d fallen to the floor. I didn’t feel any sympathy; he’d made his life, or in this case death, choices.

  The commandos gave none of the high fives or whoops I was half expecting from a successful mission as they watched over their charges. Sergeant Jones approached and nodded at me and Otanga.

  “Ma’am,” he said to Phillips.

  “Good work, Mick. Any unreported injuries?”

  “Thank you, ma’am. Just some cuts and bruises. Rohal is going to need some new armor. That explosion was a little too close to him for comfort, but he’s fine.”

  Phillips nodded and looked over at me. “Well, we’ve bagged and tagged ’em, Layton. It’s up to you now.”

  “Thank you, Captain.” I shook her hand. It was a knuckle crusher. I felt she could break every bone in my hand if she wished—a sign of her advanced combat enhancements.

  She regarded the bullet scar on my chest armor and gave a slight smile. “I’d say we’re on first name terms now. Call me Ava.”

  I nodded back at her. It hadn’t escaped my notice that she was an attractive woman. Maybe if we hadn’t met in some war-torn hellhole…

  “See you at the tribunal, Ava.”

  CHAPTER 5

  THE HAGUE

  The War Crimes Investigation offices stood next door to the International Criminal Court on the tenth floor of a dated glass building. It was pleasant enough, although the place desperately needed a makeover, but then, that is the lot of law enforcement offices throughout history—to be consigned to old buildings.

  I walked through the door and was greeted by the bustle of the office. I rubbed my chest. It was still bruised and aching from the shot. As people began to notice me, the room quieted. Giselle looked up from where she stood talking to one of the officers, excused herself, and walked over.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Layton, welcome back.”

  “Thanks. How’s—”

  “Being taken care of,” Giselle preempted my question. “His famil
y wanted him back in Paris. The coroner can review…Dev, just as easily there, and it saves moving the body more than we have to.”

  “Okay,” I nodded.

  “Listen, you did good work,” Giselle said. “Captain Phillips has written me a very long letter endorsed by a Colonel Sanderson, her commanding officer. Apparently the two of them are going to be putting you in for an award. They’ve done some digging at their end and are recommending the Australian Overseas Policing medal as appropriate. They’ve made it clear that they can only recommend it, of course. It’s up to the Australian Government House to approve it.”

  “And Dev?”

  “Him, too.”

  “Thanks. I don’t know if his family will care, but…it might help.” I looked at the woman I had grown to admire and respect over the last four years. Her calm, measured nature helped keep us all together when things inevitably turned distressing or upsetting in our business. But now I could see she was struggling. In the couple of days I’d been gone, the woman I knew had aged ten years. Her hair, normally tightly controlled in a bun, had wisps escaping, and her piercing enhanced eyes looked tired. “It might help us all.”

  “It’s not me you should thank. Besides, the Australians needed to show their electorate that they were decisive and speedy in bringing those bandits in. You two played a big part in that.”

  About ninety-nine percent of the time this job was totally thankless. To actually have someone give you a pat on the back was pretty damn rare, but welcome. It was a sign that what we did meant something.

  We walked through the open-plan office to my desk. We hot desked officially, which meant first come first serve, but perks of rank meant that I kept one of the best ones unofficially reserved for myself. It had a nice window to gaze out of, easy access to the vending machines, and no one behind me—something I hated. As much to get away from the subject of Dev as to get any information, I asked, “Any more news from Io?”