His company, his Headhunters. And would to God he was back with them now.
“If you’ll come this way, please, Captain Kowacs,” said the guide.
This one was a young human male, built like a weightlifter and probably trained as well as a man could be trained. Kowacs figured he could take the kid if it came to that ... but only because training by itself wasn’t enough against the instant ruthlessness you acquired if you survived your first month in a reaction company.
Captain Miklos Kowacs had survived seven years. If that wasn’t a record, it was damn close to one.
Kowacs was stocky and powerful, with cold eyes and black hair that curled on the backs of his wrists and hands. The Fleet’s reconstructive surgeons were artists, and they had a great deal of practice. Kowacs was without scars.
On his body.
“Turn left at the corridor, please, sir,” said the escort. He was walking a pace behind and a pace to Kowacs’s side. Like a well-trained dog ... which was about half true: if the kid had been only muscle, he wouldn’t have been here.
Here was Building 93 of the Administration Annex, Fleet Headquarters, Port Tau Ceti. That was the only thing Kowacs knew for sure about the place.
Except that he was sure he’d rather be anywhere else.
Building 93 didn’t house clerical overflow. The doors were like bank vaults; the electronic security system was up to the standards of the code section aboard a command-and-control vessel; the personnel were cool, competent, and as tight as Nick Kowacs’s asshole during an insertion.
“Here, please, sir,” said the escort, stopping beside a blank door. He gestured. “This is as far as I go.”
Kowacs looked at him. He wouldn’t mind seeing how the kid shaped up in the Headhunters. Good material, better than most of the replacements they got ... and Marine Reaction Companies always needed replacements.
He shivered. They’d needed replacements while there were Weasels to fight. Not anymore.
“Have a good life, kid,” Kowacs said as blue highlights in the door panel suddenly spelled SPECIAL PROJECTS/TEITELBAUM with the three-stars-in-a-circle of a vice admiral.
The door opened.
Nick Kowacs was painfully aware that he was wearing the pair of worn fatigues he hadn’t had time to change when the messenger rousted him; also that the best uniform he owned wasn’t up to meeting a vice admiral. He grimaced, braced himself, and strode through the doorway.
The door closed behind him. The man at the desk of the lushly appointed office wore civilian clothes. He was in his mid-forties, bigger than Kowacs and in good physical shape.
Kowacs recognized him. The man wasn’t a vice admiral. His name was Grant, and he was much worse.
I thought he was dead!
The man behind the desk looked up from the hologram projector his blunt, powerful fingers toyed with.
He grinned. “What’s the matter, Kowacs?” he said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Grant gestured. “Pull a chair closer and sit down,” he said. He grinned again. There was no more humor in the expression the second time. “Hoped I was dead, huh?”
Kowacs shrugged.
The chairs along the back wall had firm, user-accommodating cushions that would shape to his body without collapsing when he sat in them. The one Kowacs picked slid easily as his touch reversed magnets to repel a similar set in the floor.
Keep cool, learn what hole you’re in, and get the hell out.
Nobody likes to talk to the Gestapo.
Though if it came to that, Reaction Company Marines didn’t have a lot of friends either.
Assuming the office’s owner was the vice admiral in the holographic portrait filling the back wall, Teitelbaum was a woman. In the present display, she wore a dress uniform and was posed against a galactic panorama, but there were probably other views loaded into the system: Teitelbaum and her family; Teitelbaum with political dignitaries; Teitelbaum as a young ensign performing heroically in combat.
Special Projects.
“You work for Admiral Teitelbaum, then?” Kowacs said as he seated himself carefully.
“I’m borrowing her office,” Grant said without apparent interest. He spun the desk projector so that the keyboard faced Kowacs, then tossed the Marine a holographic chip. “Go on,” he ordered. “Play it.”
Kowacs inserted the chip into the reader. His face was blank, and his mind was almost empty. He hadn’t really felt anything since the Weasels surrendered.
The message was date-slugged three days before, while the 121st was still on the way to Port Tau Ceti. An official head-and-shoulders view of Kowacs popped into the air beneath the date, then vanished into another burst of glowing letters:
FROM: BUPERS/M32/ l10173/Sec21 (Hum)/SPL
TO: KOWACS, Miklos Alexeievitch
SUBJECT: Promotion to MAJOR
Effective from this date ...
Kowacs looked across the desk at the civilian. The air between them continued to spell out bureaucratese in green letters.
Grant’s face was too controlled to give any sign that he had expected the Marine to react visibly. “Here,” he said. “These are on me.”
He tossed Kowacs a pair of major’s collar tabs: hollow black triangles that would be filled for a lieutenant colonel. “Battle-dress style,” Grant continued. “Since it doesn’t seem that you have much use for dress uniforms.”
“I don’t have much use for any uniforms,” said Nick Kowacs as his tongue made the decision his mind had wavered over since the day he and his Headhunters had taken the surrender of the Khalian Grand Council. “I’m getting out.”
Grant laughed. “The hell you are, mister,” he said. “You’re too valuable to the war effort.”
The data chip was reporting Kowacs’s service record to the present. Part of the Marine’s mind was amazed at the length of the listing of his awards and citations. He supposed he’d known about the decorations when he received them, but they really didn’t matter.
His family had mattered before the Khalians massacred them.
And it mattered that the 121st Marine Reaction Company had cut the tails off more dead Weasels than any other unit of comparable size.
“Fuck you,” said Nick Kowacs distinctly. “The war’s over.”
“Don’t you believe it, mister,” Grant replied. There was only the slightest narrowing of his cold blue eyes to indicate that he’d heard everything the Marine had said. “We’ve got a real enemy, now—the Syndicate. The humans who’ve been using the Weasels for their cannon fodder. The people behind the whole war.”
Kowacs shut off the projector. The list was reminding him of too much that he usually managed to forget while he was awake: hot landings ... civilians that neither God nor the Headhunters had been able to save from the Khalia ... Marines who hadn’t survived—or worse, who mostly hadn’t survived.
“I don’t . . .” Kowacs muttered.
“We’ll be raising mixed units of our best and the Khalia’s best to go after the Syndicate,” Grant said. “You’ll want to be in on the real kill, won’t you?”
From his grin, Grant knew exactly how Kowacs would feel about the suggestion of working with Weasels. It was the civilian’s response to being told to fuck himself.
“Besides,” Grant went on, “what would you do as a civilian, Kowacs?”
“I’ll find something,” said the Marine as he stood up. “Look, I’m leaving now.”
“Siddown, mister!” Grant said in a tone that Kowacs recognized because he’d used it often enough himself; the tone that meant the order would be obeyed or the next sound would be a shot. Kowacs met Grant’s eyes; and smiled; and sat in the chair again.
“Let’s say that you’re here because of your special knowledge,” the civilian said. Grant could control his voice and his breathing, but Kowacs saw the
quick flutter of the arteries in the big man’s throat. “If you know who I am, then you know too much to think you can just hang up your uniform anytime you please.”
But I wouldn’t have to work much harder to be buried in that uniform.
Aloud, Kowacs said, “You didn’t call me in here to promote me.”
“You got that right,” Grant said, his voice dripping with the disdain of a man who doesn’t wear a uniform for a man who does. “We’ve got a job for you and your Headhunters.”
Kowacs laughed. “What’s the matter? Run out of your own brand of sewage workers?”
“Don’t push,” said the civilian quietly.
After a moment, Grant resumed, “This is right up your alley, Kowacs. The Syndicate used cut-out bases in all their dealings with the Khalia, so the Weasels don’t have the locations of any of the Syndicate home worlds. But we think we’ve got the coordinates of a Syndicate base—so you’re going to grab prisoners and navigational data there before the Syndicate realizes they’re at risk.”
Kowacs frowned as he considered what he’d just been told. There had to be a catch. ...
“All right,” he said. “What’s the catch?”
Grant shrugged. “No catch,” he said.
“If there wasn’t more to this job than you’re telling me,” Kowacs said, unsure whether he was angry, frustrated, or simply confused, “we wouldn’t be briefed by the fucking Eight Ball Command, mister. Is this some kinda suicide mission, is that what you’re telling me?”
But that couldn’t be right either. Normal mission-control channels hadn’t shown any hesitation about sending the Headhunters on suicide missions before.
And the Headhunters hadn’t hesitated to go.
“Nothing like that,” said Grant. “It’s safer than R&R—you won’t even risk catching clap.”
Kowacs waited.
“You see,” Grant continued, “you’re going to use APOT equipment for the insertion. All points are the same point to the device you’ll ride in. The Syndicate won’t have any warning.”
That was the fucking catch, all right.
The 92nd MRC had tested APOT equipment on Bull’s-Eye. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it got them dead. Dead wasn’t the scary part of the stories Toby English and his Marines had brought back from that operation, though. ...
“I . . .” Kowacs said, “ ... don’t know how the guys are going to react to this. Seems to me that maybe a unit that’s already got experience with—”
“Wrong, Major Kowacs,” Grant said. He didn’t shout because he didn’t have to shout. “You know exactly how you and your company are going to react. Because it’s orders, and everybody knows what happens to cowards who disobey orders in wartime.”
For a moment, Kowacs couldn’t see anything for the red film in front of his eyes. When his vision cleared, he noticed that one of the civilian’s hands had dropped out of sight behind the desk.
There was no need for that. The room’s automatic defensive system would trip faster than a human could if somebody tried to attack the man in Admiral Teitelbaum’s chair; and anyway, Nick Kowacs wasn’t out of control, was never out of control. ...
“As a matter of fact,” Grant said in what was almost a conciliatory tone, “the Ninety-Second was the original choice for the mission, but they’re still in transit. They’ve been switched with the backup company. Yours.”
Kowacs swallowed. “You got the coordinates from a captured Syndicate ship?” he said, sure that he’d be told that sources and methods were none of his business. He had to change the subject, or—or else.
Grant smiled again. “From the mind of a prisoner. Before he died. The prisoner you captured on Bull’s-Eye, as a matter of fact.”
“From his mind?” the Marine repeated. “How did you do that?”
“Pray you never learn, mister,” Grant said.
“Right,” said Kowacs as he got to his feet. He wondered whether his escort was still waiting outside the door. Probably. “I’Il alert the company. I assume formal briefing materials are—”
Grant nodded. “Already downloaded to the One-Twenty-First databank,” he said. “I’ll take the lock off them immediately.”
“Right,” Kowacs repeated. He reached for the latchplate of the door, then changed his mind and turned.
“Just one thing, Mister Grant,” he said. “My Headhunters aren’t cowards. If you think they are, then you come on a drop with us someday.”
“Oh, I will,” the civilian said with the same mocking terrible smile as before. “As a matter of fact, Major Kowacs—I’m coming with you on this one.”
* * *
“Our job,” said Nick Kowacs in the personnel hold of the intrusion module, “is to—”
The high-pitched keening of a powerful laser cutter rose, drowning out his voice and thought itself.
Sergeant Bradley glanced around flay-eyed, looking for the source of the noise. It came from somewhere between the module’s double hulls. He started for a hatch, wiping his palms on his fatigues to dry the sudden rush of sweat.
Kowacs grabbed the sergeant with one hand as he put his helmet on with the other.
“Right,” Kowacs said over the general frequency. “Lids on.” He looked to see which of the new replacements needed to be nudged by their neighbors before they figured out that the rest of the briefing would be conducted by radio even though the Headhunters were all in one room together.
“Our job,” Kowacs went on, “is to capture personnel, databanks, and anything that looks like it might be navigational equipment. We aren’t going in to blow the—”
The laser shut off. A woman with commander’s collar pips on the uniform she wore under her lab coat walked into the bay with two male technical representatives, speaking among themselves in low voices. Heads turned to watch them.
Sergeant Bradley grimaced.
“—place up, we’re going in to gather information before the enemy blows it up. We’ve only got seventeen minutes. That’s one-seven minutes, period. Anybody who—”
The trio in lab coats gestured Marines away from a portion of deck and knelt down. One of the tech reps took an instrument from his pocket and placed it cup-end down on the decking. He frowned at the result; the commander growled at him.
—loses sight of the mission will have me to answer to,” Kowacs continued.
“And they’ll wish they’d never been born!” added Sergeant Bradley. The field first sergeant got enough venom into the justified threat to take out some of his frustration about the way the briefing had to be held.
And the way the mission was shaping up.
Kowacs was holding the briefing here because the module’s hangar was the only space in the huge headquarters complex both big enough to hold a hundred Marines—and cleared for this particular dollop of Sensitive Compartmentalized Information. Unfortunately, the module was still under test, and the technical crews dialing in the hardware had precedence over the briefing.
The Marines who were about to ride the hardware into the middle of enemies worse than the Khalia couldn’t argue with the priority, but it didn’t make life simpler.
Kowacs touched a stud on the control wand a Grade P7 Fleet technician had given him. For a wonder, the system worked perfectly. The hold’s circular bulkhead was replaced by a holographic display, the simulated interior of the Syndicate base the Headhunters would be attacking.
“We’ll be landing inside the docking bay,” Kowacs said as a slow hammering sound began to work its way across the ceiling above him. “In all likelihood it’ll be under atmosphere, but we’ll be wearing ten-minute airpacks for an emergency.”
The two tech reps got up and walked toward the hatch, a rectangle with rounded corners in the midst of a holographic gantry. The commander followed them, shaking her head. She turned in the hatchway to frown at the deck she’d been e
xamining.
“Suits?” asked Laurel, a squad leader in 3d Platoon.
“Weapons Platoon will be in suits,” said Kowacs. “They’ll provide security for the module. The remainder of us’Il be traveling light. We’ll fan out in three-man teams. You’ll all have prebriefed objectives, but don’t hesitate to divert to grab anything that looks like it might be valuable.”
Something popped within the hulls. The encircling holograms vanished. All the lights in the bay went out. First the display, then the lights came back on moments later.
Somebody swore bitterly.
Corporal Sienkiewicz—the tallest, possibly the strongest, and certainly the toughest member of the 121st—looked bored as she lounged against a bulkhead covered by the image of an open corridor. She knew what the Headhunters’ job was this time out—and she knew her own job on every operation, to cover Kowacs’s back and keep him alive till the next time. The whys and hows of the operation didn’t matter to her beyond that.
“Sir,” said a newbie named Bynum—five years a Marine but on his first operation with the Headhunters. “I looked this boat over and she don’t have engines. No shit.”
“The ship,” said Kowacs harshly, “is none of our business. Do you hear? The ship just gets us there and brings us back.”
“S’posed to bring us back,” somebody muttered in what should have been general silence.
“Listen!” Kowacs snarled. He had to take a tough line, because they all knew this could be a rat-fuck, and the only way his Headhunters were going to go through with it was by rigid obedience. “If there’s any of you who don’t think you want to chance life in a reaction company anymore, I’ll approve your transfer now. Want to be a cook? A recruiter? Just say the word!”
Nobody spoke. A number of the Marines looked down, at the deck, at their hands.
They were a good bunch, the very best. They’d charge hell if he ordered it ... only in part because they knew if it came to that, Nick Kowacs would be leading from the front.
The Fleet05 Total War Page 15
