Merkiaari Wars: 02 - What Price Honour

by Mark E. Cooper

  Her brother was younger than she was by seven years. Tall and dark haired as she was, they even had the same eyes. Blue like ice and cold as a glacier her mother said of them in admiration. Her father’s eyes were grey and her mother’s blue. The combination of the two was striking. About eight years ago, her father fell foul of the Baxters (one of the Ten) and lost the business that his father, and his father before him, had built up. Paul had promised he would get their money back. Together with some friends, he had set out to do it, but something went wrong and he never returned. A week later, the bodies of his friends were found dumped near one of the city’s auto-recyclers. They would have become fertilizer if not for an unscheduled shutdown for some minor repair or other. The official explanation was that Paul had teamed up with a group of con-artists, and tried to rip off someone from the Baxter family. Paul was never found. It was assumed his body had already found its way into the recycler before the shutdown. Kate had never believed the story. Yes Paul had been seventeen and full of bravado, and yes he had said he would get their money back, but he was good, and kind, and honest, and…

  He isn’t a criminal and he isn’t dead dammit!

  Kate took a deep breath and continued dressing. The bright orange top left her midriff bare, and the tight criss-cross straps restricted her breathing. It was uncomfortable as hell. The lime green trousers she pulled on, hung too loose on her hips. They felt in danger of pooling at her feet at any moment. The slashed open styling on her arms and legs, especially on the thighs, made her want to cringe, but it was the height of fashion in the core. Fashionable or not, her father would faint if he could see her now. She wished she dared wear something plain, but she needed the disguise the clashing colours offered her.

  She checked her appearance in the mirror one more time and shook her head. Zelda’s marketing department had a lot to answer for.

  Once dressed, Kate broke her rifle down to its component parts, and stowed them out of sight in her kit bag before moving forward to programme the computer. She gave commands for an auto take off and flight toward the spaceport. While the computer did that, she spent her time in the head polishing her disguise. Hair was first. Applying a handful of Goop Original, she greased her hair flat then applied a comb to make it spiky all over. Turning this way and that she admired the results in the mirror. She looked truly awful.

  “Perfect,” she said and applied the setting agent that came as an aerosol with the Goop.

  Heavy lipstick and eye shadow came next. Reading the instructions on the side of the applicator, she found the appropriate code and chose a red that was almost fluorescent for the lipstick, and dark purple that was almost black for her eyes. She dialled in the numbers and went to work. By the time she was finished, she looked fifteen years younger and just like a dippy teenaged tourist.

  “That should do it.” Kate smirked at the image in the mirror. “Hello Cherry, long time no see.”

  Cherry was a cover she had used before. Although of course some details like her last name had changed many times, she always looked like a rich man’s rebellious daughter. The clothes and makeup made Kate seem years younger, and nothing like Kate Richmond—spy and assassin. Cherry was a real person to her. Kate could slip in and out of her Cherry persona easily whenever the need arose. She had others, many others in fact, but Cherry suited a surprising number of situations. People liked her, wanted to help her, or bed her, or simply dance with her. Some had even wanted to take her home to meet the parents! Kate snorted at the remembrance and shook her head. The illusion of naïve youth and money was very attractive to some.

  Kate sat in the pilot’s chair to watch as the jungle grudgingly gave way first to tamed forests, and finally to cultivated farmland. The shuttle made a small course correction, and a road flashed by beneath her. Roads meant civilisation. She was nearly there. She keyed the microphone and began to play her part.

  “Can anyone hear me? Please say you can hear me… mayday, mayday. How do I land this thing?”

  “This is Tigris port control. Identify yourself.”

  “Oh thank God. My name’s Cherry and I’m on a shuttle. There’s no pilot!”

  “State your designation,” snapped the flight controller.

  “Touchy, touchy,” Kate murmured to herself before keying the microphone live again. “Cherry, I just told you.”

  “Not your name, your shuttle. What is your registry?”

  “I don’t knoooow!”

  “Calm down and start at the beginning. What happened to your pilot?”

  Kate launched into her prepared story. “…said he knew this great place we could go, but when we landed, we were in the middle of the jungle! He grabbed me, but I stamped on his foot and got away. He chased me into the trees, so I hid until I could sneak back to the shuttle. I locked the hatch and pushed the button that said auto, but now I can’t laaaand.”

  “Ahh, hmmm… everything will be fine now, ma’am. Shuttles are very safe, but I need you to do something for me. Can you do that?”

  “I’ll try,” Kate said in a small voice.

  “Good, that’s good. Now what I need you to do is…”

  Kate almost shouted in triumph as the controller’s attitude changed. He was treating her like a not very bright child now. That could only help her when she landed. She reached for the transponder control and waited.

  “…you to look above your head. Can you see all the knobs and switches?”

  “I see them.”

  “That’s good. Now, near the centre of the panel there’s a row of knobs. Don’t touch them, but at the end of the row is a switch that says transponder. Have you got it?”

  “Yeah. It says disable at the top, autonomous in the middle, and enable at the bottom.” Kate rolled her eyes and waited for the command she knew was coming.

  “Very good. It should be pointing to the word autonomous, but I want you to flick that switch all the way down to enable.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, do it now for me.”

  Hallelujah!

  “I did it. There’s a blinking light on the panel—”

  “Don’t worry about that. It just means I’m flying the shuttle now. You stay strapped in, and I’ll have you on the ground in no time.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said in a meek voice and threw the microphone down. “The things I have to do for this job.”

  Kate kept a wary eye on her instruments, ready to intercede should that be necessary, but the controller seemed competent enough. Her disguise was important, but not more important than her life. She kept a close eye. The shuttle came in slower than she would have flown it, but that didn’t concern her, what did was her reception committee. There was bound to be one. As the shuttle landed, she took a sniff from the aerosol that she’d used on her hair. It was astringent and made her eyes water. Through the cockpit window, she could see that powerful floodlights lit the taxiway and shuttle parking bays, making the night flee and welcoming her to civilisation. While she cried alone in the cockpit, the shuttle automatically taxied toward a small group of people waiting for her outside the brightly lit terminal building.

  “There you go. You can move around now,” the flight controller said.

  “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there. Will I see you outside?”

  “Ah… about that. I’m on duty so I can’t come down there, but I’ve sent a friend of mine. His name’s Robert; you’ll like him.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said.

  Kate was peering out the cockpit window looking for anyone in uniform. She didn’t care whether the flight controller came to meet her or not. All she cared about was the lack of security personnel in her reception committee. It looked as if they had bought her story.

  “Before you go, I need your name. I had to log your mayday call, and my supervisor will want to ask you a few questions.”

  Kate frowned, suspicious of his motives, but then she shrugged. “It’s Cherry Jackson. What kind of questions
? Does he need to ask them tonight?”

  “Nothing to worry about, just routine. I know you must be tired. I’m sure he won’t mind waiting until tomorrow. Look, I’ve got to go. Good luck, and let Robert take care of you. He’s a nice guy.”

  “Thanks.”

  Kate’s eyes were red and puffy by the time she opened the hatch and barrelled into the arms of one of the waiting men.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” She forced more tears to come and cried on his shoulder while trying to watch his friends’ reactions.

  “Hey Robert, you’ve caught a wild one this time,” one man called and the others laughed.

  For the most part, Kate found amusement at their companion’s situation when she studied their reactions. To them, he had his arms full of a hysterical teenager, and a goddamn tourist at that! Tourists were universally despised as rich no-nothings in the Border Worlds. No one had time to spare on them, especially not when they were busy with their own survival. If she had been one of their own people, their reaction would have been one of concern, but as she wasn’t, they were amused and angry at the same time.

  That was fine by her.

  “You’re all right now,” Robert said casting around for help from his friends. Said friends simply grinned and backed away with their hands raised to ward him off. They were more than happy to leave him to it.

  “I want her arrested for stealing my shuttle,” a distant voice shouted.

  Kate stiffened and pushed away. She wanted her hands free in case of trouble. Everyone turned toward the man storming across the taxiway.

  “What an arsehole…” one of Robert’s friends said. He was a maintenance engineer going by his clothes.

  Another man nodded. “I told Jennings not to leave it unsecured.”

  “…does he think he is, strutting around like he owns the place?”

  Kate relaxed just a little. Jennings was obviously an outsider. They seemed solid in their disapproval of him. She slipped her hand into her pocket and grasped Millard’s dinky pulser, but she doubted she would need to use it.

  “Now, now Jennings. I told you about leaving it like you do. It was bound to happen.”

  “That makes no difference. She stole it.”

  “I never,” Kate gasped using Cherry’s outraged voice. “You take that back!”

  “It’s all right… Cherry,” Robert said stumbling on her alias as if about to laugh. “We’ll handle this.”

  While Robert was reassuring her, the others had closed ranks against Jennings. Kate listened in genuine admiration as they battered him into submission.

  “…accessory after the fact.”

  “But—” Jennings began.

  “And it’s your fault she was abducted in the first place.”

  “My fault? How is it—”

  “We told you about it before. You can’t leave your shuttle unsecured like that, it’s begging for trouble. Lucky for you miss Cherry doesn’t want to press charges.”

  “Charges?” Jennings said faintly and visibly wilting under the storm.

  “Charges,” Robert agreed firmly. “Your shuttle is back safe and sound, and the thief is marooned in the jungle. I suggest you be satisfied and let the poor girl go home. She’s had a bit of a shock.”

  “In the jungle you say?” Jennings said and at Kate’s nod, his face lightened. A calculating look replaced his earlier outrage at the theft. “Well I suppose… and it does appear unharmed and all. It would be churlish of me to hold this young… err lady responsible. Let’s leave it at that.”

  Kate released her pulser as Jennings went to inspect his shuttle. Her allies wandered off when they realised the crisis was over, and left her in Robert’s hands.

  “Well, can I drive you somewhere?”

  Kate thought fast. “I need a hotel. I didn’t have time to find one before…” she looked down shyly. “You know.”

  “Hey, it’s okay,” Robert said softly to console her. “It wasn’t your fault, and the bastard is history.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You marooned him. The jungle is wild. He’ll never make it back here on foot.”

  “Oh,” she said in a small voice.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it. He deserved it.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “This yours?” Jennings said descending from the shuttle and locking the hatch. He was carrying her kit bag.

  Kate nodded and reached for it, but Robert was becoming a pest. He got a hand to it first.

  “I’ll carry it for you, Cherry. It’s heavy, what’s in it?” Robert asked hefting the bag experimentally.

  “Just girl stuff.”

  “Girl stuff?” He grinned. “Like what?”

  “Clothes and stuff,” Kate said with a disinterested shrug.

  “Ah.”

  Robert escorted her toward a row of battered ground cars. All of them were covered in dust and had seen hard use. If Kate had been alone, she might well have stolen one of them. A ground car would be useful later. There were a few ground effect vehicles at one end of the row—a truck with its own crane attached to its cargo bay, and two executive saloons that had seen better days, but most of the vehicles ran on tyres with deep treads. Wheeled transport was more common in the Border Worlds; hover vehicles had problems with uneven ground.

  “This yours?” Kate asked admiring the dirty and beat up exterior of the truck they approached. The cargo bay was full of odd pieces of junk and tools that had been haphazardly thrown inside, but the cockpit looked clean and well cared for.

  “Yeah,” he said blushing in embarrassment as they climbed in.

  Transport like this could be very useful. It wouldn’t stand out on a world where the lack of decent roads made four-wheel drive a necessity, and its battered appearance automatically labelled the owner a harvester—a useful mistake for people to make.

  “I know she doesn’t look like much, but she’s really something where it counts.”

  Kate raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” he said with a mischievous grin and started the turbine.

  Weruuuuummm!

  Kate winced as the turbine started in a thunder of noise. The power under the hood was unexpected. These things were notoriously easy to tune, but he had more than tuned this one.

  “What the hell did you do?”

  “The turbine is straight out of a autoharvester,” he said with a another cheeky grin. “Twelve hundred horsepower on max boost.”

  Kate whistled silently and gave him the admiring look he craved. “Where did you get it?”

  “I have lots of friends, Cherry. We do each other favours.” He backed out of his parking space and then floored it.

  They accelerated along the road like a shuttle boosting to orbit. He was grinning like a kid, obviously trying to impress her. He must have decided that she wasn’t as young as she first appeared, and that he might have a chance with her. He was dead wrong there, but she wouldn’t hurt his feelings by letting him know that. The only thing in her pants he would get was her pulser in his face. She didn’t react to his reckless driving. She had seen worse; hell, she had done worse.

  “So, you here on vacation?” Robert said.

  Kate shrugged. “Sort of. Daddy wants me to take over the publicity side of things for him next year, so I said he had to let me have this year to myself. He wanted me to stay in the core, but I said to hell with that.” She grinned and Robert returned it. “I was on my way to Arcadia via Thurston, but I heard there’s fighting there. So I came here instead.”

  “Why here?”

  “Why not?” she said with a shrug.

  “Well, there’s been some trouble here too. Nothing really serious,” he hastened to add seeing the worry blossom on her face. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it will blow over by tomorrow. So, what do you think of Tigris, nothing but trees and more trees huh?”

  That was a trick question if ever Kate had heard one. “I like trees,” she said e
nthusiastically.

  “Really?” Robert said, raising an eyebrow in surprise.

  “Yeah. It’s so great being able to walk on the surface for as long as you want. It’s like having a huge agridome all to myself. You’re lucky living here.” Kate shook her head in awe. “All this space and air for free, and you don’t have to watch how long you’re out in it.”

  “Where you from?”

  “Didn’t I say? Garnet.”

  “Garnet… no wonder you like trees,” Robert said with a snort of laughter.

  Kate tried to look hurt. “What’s wrong with Garnet? Ever been there, ever seen the sunset over the Cheji Mountains? It’s beautiful. So what if we haven’t got lots of stupid jungle. We’ve got trees… lots of them. And we’ve got crystal forests—they’re so huge they go on forever, and they’re really useful too.”

  “I’m sorry,” Robert said contritely. “I didn’t mean to belittle your home. I’m sure it’s beautiful. Maybe I could visit sometime.”

  Kate wasn’t going to let him off that easy. “Hmph.”

  “I apologise, Cherry. I mean that. I was born on Tigris and I love it, but I’m not used to visitors saying they like it.”

  Kate frowned and unbent a little. “Why, what’s wrong with it?”

  Robert smiled pleased at the confusion he heard in her voice. “Nothing by my way of thinking, but you know what people are.” He shrugged. “The tourist types say things like how quaint it all is, or how terribly brave we must be living on the frontier, how scary and dangerous the animals are… my god they say, you have real live animals walking about without supervision where people might run into them. They treat us like backward savages. They actually get a thrill out of mixing with us,” he finished in disgust.