Guerilla: The Makaum War: Book Two

by Mel Odom

  And the increase in armed guards worried the locals even more.

  “I know they’re afraid,” Kiwanuka said. “We’re afraid too.”

  Army sec drones zipped by overhead, scanning rooftops and trees. One sniper, properly armed, could take down a soldier in a hardsuit. Ten could take down just as many. The snipers might not get away, but escape might not be one of the goals of the next attack.

  And Kiwanuka was certain there would be another attack. Whoever had hit them last night had drawn blood. That was sure to incite continued violence.

  Corporal Pita Brandvold shook her head. “After I heard the Phrenorians had negotiated treaty rights with Makaum, I came here hoping I could do some good for these ­people.” She took a breath that was audible over the comm link. “I’d heard they were peaceful, just kind of blown away by all the attention. I can’t imagine what having alien worlds drop down among them has done to them. But I want to help.”

  “I know.” Kiwanuka hadn’t been on Makaum by choice. She’d been assigned there after losing an arm and assaulting an officer during a battle in the Kimos system. She’d had the arm replaced with a bionic one, not flesh and blood, because the cyberlimb would be a better weapon than an organic one, and because the demand on her circulatory system would be diminished.

  Since she’d lost her arm just before she’d attacked the officer and nearly killed him, the assault charges against her had been ameliorated, but her field ser­vice report was flagged as still “under review.” The Army could sideline her at any moment. She’d intended to simply put in her time on Makaum, keep her nose clean, and get through the probationary period.

  Still, a soldier didn’t spend time at a post without becoming attached to the ­people she served with, or the ­people she was assigned to protect. That bond was something a lot of soldiers didn’t talk about, but it was there. Part of it was pride, wanting to do the job right, but part of it was a sense of community, a sense of belonging—­no matter how briefly—­to a place.

  But that sense of community faded quickly when one of the locals attacked the post and seriously injured—­or killed—­a soldier.

  “I’ve just started gaining the trust of some of the kids in this sprawl,” Brandvold said bitterly. “Do you know how hard that is?”

  Kiwanuka didn’t know firsthand, but she remembered how the children in Uganda had acted when medical ­people from outside the country had arrived to help during crises. Kiwanuka’s mother had been from Norway and was working in a medical facility when she’d met her future husband, a diplomatic attaché. Even after years of ser­vice inside Uganda, even with children of her own who had been born in that country, most citizens still considered her mother an outsider.

  Offworlder. Kiwanuka heard the word circulate in the crowd that watched with hostility and speculation and, yes, fear. There was always that division of us and them when two or more cultures shared space. ­People often tried to get past that, to pretend that it didn’t exist and to say that it didn’t matter, but the division was too sharp, too ingrained.

  The soldiers regarded the Makaum ­people with the same reined-­in hostility. Little trust existed at the moment. Everyone was an outsider.

  Kiwanuka had been an outsider all of her life. Her father’s ­people didn’t consider her African enough, and her platinum blonde hair—­which she’d gotten from her mother—­set her apart from the children she had grown up with. And her mother’s ­people, and most Europeans, considered her to be African, not white, because of the dusky hue of her skin. On top of that, she hadn’t wanted to follow her mother into medicine or her father into diplomacy. She’d had no path either of her parents approved of or offered mentorship for.

  Her only choice that had allowed her to be herself was the Terran Army. That was her family. And they’d just been hurt by the ­people they were supposed to be there protecting.

  Some of those ­people, Kiwanuka reminded herself. Only a handful.

  That was all that had shown on the sec cams. The handful of locals had slipped through the shadows and launched the attack from hiding. So far the vid forensics ­people hadn’t been able to identify any of them.

  She pulled up the med stats on Corporal Anders. He’d been most injured during the attack. The bomb had been a combination of acid and flammable substance, concocted to eat through an AKTIVsuit’s armor and burn the soldier inside. The attackers hadn’t developed that on Makaum. They didn’t have the resources. The weapon had been offworld tech. Evidently when it came to murder and destruction, the anti-­offworlder ­people didn’t mind going to offworlders to upgrade their weapons. It was peacekeeping they couldn’t deal with.

  The med reports weren’t accessible. Kiwanuka had no idea how the young corporal was doing. The surgeons would have him sedated now, but once he came out of that fog he would be traumatized and more frightened than he could ever remember.

  Flexing her bionic hand that looked human but wasn’t, Kiwanuka remembered her own recovery after her life had been saved. Her parents hadn’t found out about her injuries till weeks after the attacks. One of her father’s diplomat friends had told him, and he had told Kiwa­nuka’s mother. Then her mother had called to discuss organic limb replacement, and she’d been shocked to hear about the cyberlimb. Kiwanuka and her mother didn’t agree on much even now.

  Kiwanuka took a deep breath and let it out as she surveyed the Makaum ­people. More were still arriving. Some in the back were getting louder, trying to whip the others into a frenzy.

  Only a handful, she told herself again. There are a lot of ­people here still worth saving. We are here to help them. They will recognize that again.

  Still, that number of anti-­Terran dissidents was growing, though. She’d seen the reports filtering through to Colonel Halladay. Taking down the DawnStar cartel had been a major victory to the military mindset, and to many of the Makaum ­people, but other Makaum natives didn’t like the Army’s heavy-­handedness in acting without permission.

  Permission was a gray area. Everything in the fort was under military jurisdiction, and permission had been granted to shut down drug dealers inside the sprawl and keep the general peace. Exterminating outlaw drug labs in the jungle had slipped into the gray. Putting those labs out of business had turned into an undeclared war that persisted.

  Some of the Makaum ­people, and the soldiers, blamed Master Sergeant Sage for the increased hostility. But Sage hadn’t initiated the attacks. Colonel Halladay and Sergeant Terracina, now KIA on one of those drug lab hunts, had started the mission. Sage had just been more successful at it. DawnStar was involved with a PR nightmare, not only on Makaum, but in other systems as well. The Terran Alliance now had their operation in other systems under review. That was no doubt that improprieties would be found.

  DawnStar was trying to put distance between themselves and Velesko Kos, painting him as a loose cannon within their ranks. The spin doctors would fix that eventually. DawnStar Corporation was too large, too well embedded in most systems to be easily chased away.

  The current situation onplanet had turned nastier. The Quass, and the Makaum ­people, were more divided than ever. The Phrenorians and the (ta)Klar had taken advantage of that, stepping into more prominent roles and spreading the wealth to win over supporters.

  The Phrenorian base, if that’s what it was, would cause another major shift in alignment when it was announced, but Terran military intelligence circles weren’t sure what shape that shift would take. Having the base turn out to be a false alarm would probably be best, but Kiwanuka didn’t believe that would be the case.

  “I was supposed to spend the morning giving inoculations against disease brought here by interplanetary corps,” Brandvold said. “The Nys’ale brought in a variant of the Isummy virus, which could be lethal to local infants if not taken care of. I wasn’t supposed to be preparing to shoot some of those ­people.”

 
Corporal Brandvold was cross-­listed on her MOS, serving as a med tech and as a rifleman. She’d joined the Terran Army to get the training she’d wanted for her eventual return to a medical career in civilian life.

  “We’re not there yet, Corporal. Don’t borrow trouble.” Kiwanuka nodded toward the fence. “Right now we’re just here to secure the perimeter. As soon as reconstruction’s complete, we’ll go back to business as usual.”

  “We might, Sergeant, but I don’t think those ­people will.”

  Kiwanuka didn’t have anything to say to that, so she didn’t try. Her comm popped for attention and she shifted over to a link where Colonel Halladay was waiting for her.

  “Sergeant Kiwanuka.” Halladay sounded calm, but his voice held a note of tension that Kiwanuka could hear because she knew him.

  “Yes sir.”

  “I was told there were witnesses to the attack.”

  “Yes sir. Noojin and Quass Leghef’s granddaughter.”

  “Jahup’s sister and girlfriend?” Halladay’s calmness slipped away.

  “Yes sir.”

  “What were they doing there?”

  “I didn’t ask, sir. I secured the scene and made certain the two girls were out of harm’s way.” Kiwanuka didn’t know if Noojin had been part of the attack or if she’d just gotten caught in the middle. Kiwanuka had spotted the broken arrow with transparent blue insect wing fletching in the confrontation area when she’d arrived. It didn’t make sense that Noojin would have been part of the ambush while shepherding the young girl. Kiwanuka thought she knew what had happened, but she wanted to hear it for herself.

  “Did they see who did this?”

  “Private Welchel informed me the girls told him someone tried to kill them, sir. They’ll have to be interviewed to find out what they know.”

  “Bring them in.”

  “Yes sir.” Kiwanuka handed off control of the attack site to another sergeant, let Lieutenant Murad know she’d been called away, and went to get the girls.

  Private Welchel had intercepted the girls and brought them into the fort through the hole in the fence. She’d immediately locked them down in an armored personnel carrier.

  Crossing the parade grounds that showed fresh wounds from the tracks of the massive main battle tanks that had drawn a line in the sand with their presence, Kiwanuka headed for the APC. The tracked vehicle stood eight meters tall, seventeen meters long, and five meters wide. They were called Invincible Bubbles, and mostly they were. Capable of carrying a cargo of four powersuits, or twenty soldiers, or tons of equipment and materials, they were workhorses in ground campaigns but were difficult to use in Makaum’s jungles.

  Kiwanuka reached the APC and laid her palm on it, juicing her ID and authorizations through the alloyed skin. A lot of soldiers felt the physical contact was a joke. A Bubble’s weps would cut down anyone not cleared by security for 1,000-meter access, so if anyone got that close, the crew already recognized them as friendlies.

  But the touch logged the person into the Bubble’s rec­ords, something flesh-­and-­blood soldiers sometimes forgot to do in the heat of a battle, or just because they were lax. Kiwanuka left her hand on the behemoth’s armored shoulder and let the link flare to life.

  “Something up, Sergeant Kiwanuka?” a man’s voice asked over the comm.

  “I need the two civilians and enough sec to manage a transfer on-­post.”

  “Copy that.”

  Kiwanuka stepped back. A moment later, the door opened, a short stair extended, and two armored soldiers stepped out locked and loaded. After a short time spent confirming a physical visual recon, Noojin and Telilu followed.

  Neither of the girls was bound, but both had small bandages on their arms and faces. Kiwanuka had been told the injuries were superficial and had been sustained from a leap off a house. Kiwanuka figured they were both lucky to be alive from a leap like that in the dark.

  Noojin’s weapons had been confiscated. She’d been carrying several knives, a short sword, and a bow and quiver of arrows.

  Kiwanuka glanced at the arrows, saw that they had the same dark blue insect wing fletching as the one that she’d noted earlier at the confrontation site, and captured a digital image to her hardsuit’s memory. She ordered the faceshield to go transparent, so Noojin could see her. They’d met after the DawnStar cartel business. They hadn’t gotten to know each other well, but there was something about a woman talking to a woman that broke down barriers.

  “You can’t hold us like prisoners,” Noojin stated in a hard tone. She held the small girl before her, hands on the thin shoulders, in a protective manner.

  Or maybe those barriers wouldn’t be broken. Kiwanuka tried not to let her frustration show.

  The small girl still looked frightened and shrank back into Noojin’s loose embrace. “Have you seen my grandmother?”

  Kiwanuka answered the youngest child’s question first. In the sergeant’s eyes, both of the girls were still kids.

  “Quass Leghef is busy at the moment, I’m afraid. But she knows you’re here and that you’re in good hands. She trusts us to take care of you.” Kiwanuka wanted to emphasize that.

  “We’re prisoners.” Noojin took an aggressive step toward Kiwanuka.

  One of the soldiers standing guard took a step forward to block her way.

  “As you were, Private,” Kiwanuka said.

  After a brief hesitation, the soldier nodded and stepped back into formation.

  Kiwanuka turned her gaze to Noojin, who met her attention full measure.

  “You’re not prisoners,” Kiwanuka replied. “You’re being projected.”

  “In this?” Noojin snorted derisively as she pointed at the Bubble. “Do you really think it’s better than your fort? The ­people who did this have big enough weapons to destroy this crawler.”

  Maybe that was true, maybe not. The answer didn’t matter to Kiwanuka at the moment. She also thought Colonel Halladay was going to have his hands full talking to the girl.

  “We have somewhere to go,” Kiwanuka announced. She adjusted her faceplate and darkened the material, then turned and started walking toward the command post where Halladay was working.

  In her 360 view, Kiwanuka saw Noojin standing her ground stubbornly. The hard set of her jaw told Kiwanuka that she was going to resist. One of the soldiers put a hand on her shoulder, but Noojin immediately shrugged and pushed the hand away.

  The soldier took a step closer and put his hand in the middle of Noojin’s back. This time she had no choice but to take stumbling steps or be shoved along. She called the soldier all of the obscene names she’d learned in Terran English. The list was well fleshed out and even Kiwanuka heard some terms that were new to her.

  Abruptly, several shouts arose from the assembled Makaum natives. More had joined the mob and tempers were flaring. In the helmet’s view, Kiwanuka saw one man take a swing at another, then when the combatants were roughly shoved apart, another man close to the action took a swing at one of the men trying to keep the fighters apart. That only started two more fights, which in turn turned the whole gathering into a vicious kicking, hitting, and spitting scrum.

  The mob teetered as they fought. Men went down under fists and feet and tripped others. Suddenly, the group staggered into the laser field and a dozen ­people had their senses shaken and stirred. A handful of them got sick, throwing up and going boneless, causing even more problems for the crowd.

  Kiwanuka got her charges moving, but she watched the developing violence.

  “Lieutenant,” a soldier bellowed over the comm link. “Permission to use dispersal gas and microwave repellers.”

  Before Murad could reply—­the lieutenant was still green but coming along, so he was slow to make a call—­a shrill, melodic whistle cut through the air.

  “Grandmother!” Telilu shouted. The girl started to run
toward the soldiers and the mob.

  Kiwanuka grabbed Telilu and wrapped one arm around her. “Wait, little one. It isn’t safe.”

  Telilu looked at Kiwanuka in disdain. “It’s Grandmother! Everyone is safe with Grandmother. She is Quass.”

  “Just a moment,” Kiwanuka said.

  “You can’t stop us,” Noojin shouted. She fought to get free of the soldier that held her but she didn’t have the strength. “We’re not prisoners.”

  Kiwanuka lifted her eyes to meet the girl’s gaze. “Do you want to take her through that?”

  Face twisted in rebellion, Noojin calmed herself and reached out for Telilu’s hand. “It’s okay, Twig. We’ll stay here. The Quass will come for us.”

  Kiwanuka released the girl and was relieved when her two charges stood still and watched the crowd.

  The effect of the whistle was instantaneous. Since Telilu had assumed her grandmother was there even though she hadn’t seen her, Kiwanuka assumed that the whistled tune had something to do with the identification.

  The mob quieted quickly, splitting out into groups and standing by meekly.

  Through the chasm created between them, Quass Leghef strode like a general taking the battlefield. She wore a green and gray kifrik silk gown bright enough to stand out even in the early morning. A silk headdress covered her head and face, but the material was transparent enough to see the lean, brown features seasoned with a few wrinkles. Her hair was black but shot through with gray strands. She was small, barely five feet tall, and thin. She carried a wooden staff a foot taller than she was.

  She stopped in the middle of the crowd and surveyed them with narrowed eyes and tight lips. “Look at yourselves,” she said in a hard voice. “Fighting among yourselves like savages.”