Merkiaari Wars: 02 - What Price Honour

by Mark E. Cooper

  “First time, Lieutenant?”

  Gina turned to find herself sitting next to a man in Fleet uniform—a lieutenant commander. Protocol would normally have her bracing to attention and saluting him, but not on an overcrowded train like this. Common sense did have its place. HQ was full of officers of all ranks and branches of the service. If they went around saluting each other all the time, they would never get any work done.

  “Sorry, sir?” Gina said belatedly realising she had been wool-gathering.

  “I said is this your first time here?”

  “On Luna, yes, sir. I’ve been to Earth a couple of times though—just to say I’ve been there… if you know what I mean?”

  He nodded. “Everyone should visit at least once. Just spent some R and R there myself as a matter of fact. Place called Grand Canyon. Ever heard of it?”

  “North America?”

  “Right. Beautiful place, but the canyon isn’t the biggest I’ve ever seen. Ever been to Garnet?”

  “Twice, not sightseeing though.”

  He understood. Both times had been training missions. Stein had led the aggressor force of which her squad had been a small part. She remembered Garnet from the point of view of her discomfort. The air was breathable, but prolonged exposure was unhealthy. The soil and air were laced with heavy elements that made the use of environment suits and canned air essential. The natives could risk more exposure—they were descended from generations of people that had slowly adapted to the environment, but even they retreated to their domes after a few hours.

  “My ship was stationed there a couple of years ago. There are some serious mountains and canyons to see. They have these crystal spires taller than the tallest buildings in Chicago… that’s a city on Earth.”

  “I know,” Gina said and smiled at his condescending tone.

  “Oh, sorry.”

  She shrugged the apology away. There were so many worlds and cities that Chicago could have been literally anywhere in the Human sector.

  “So, what are you doing here?”

  “Redeployment,” he said with a grimace. “I’m on the beach for the next two years, filing reports and making coffee for the admiral. Apparently it will be good for me.” He rolled his eyes and Gina grinned. “I guess I do need some admin under my belt. Don’t want to be a commander all my life.”

  Gina nodded. Fleet took the well-rounded education of its officers seriously. If he wanted his own ship, he would have to ‘do his time’ in administration. If it had to be done, what better place than here at the hub of the Alliance?

  The train slowed abruptly as it approached a station. She checked its name automatically, but she knew there were two more stops before hers. Her chatty companion however, rose to his feet.

  “This is mine,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

  Gina doubted it. “Nice to have met you, sir.”

  He nodded and worked his way to the door and onto the platform. As the train pulled away, she realised she hadn’t even asked his name. She shrugged. It wasn’t as if a grunt like her would ever move in the same circles as a future Fleet Captain.

  When her stop arrived, Gina quickly exited the train and made her way along the platform. It was busy with people coming and going. She wove her way between civilians and military alike, wondering where they were all going. Didn’t they have work? She wasn’t used to such large crowds. It reminded her of what she had found on Earth, and she didn’t like it. Grace would have loved it though. She had always preferred big cities over provincial ones like Thurston.

  Gina shied away from thoughts of her dead friend and unerringly chose the right exit from the station. Perhaps ten minutes of walking saw her turning a last corner toward her destination. She stopped in surprise. Here, finally were guards, and what guards! Vipers. There was no mistaking those black uniforms. What were vipers doing guarding a mere hatch?

  She stepped up to the guard on the left and offered him her orders. He inserted the card into his reader without comment, and used it to scan her simcode for a match. While he verified her identity, she amused herself by trying to examine the pistol on his hip. Both vipers wore heavy plasma pistols with a modified grip. Without being obvious, she tried to see the palms of their right hands. She wasn’t very successful, but thought she caught a glimpse of the gold contacts in one man’s palm. Vipers were all right handed so that special weaponry could receive targeting information through the weapon’s data bus in their hands.

  “You’re early, Lieutenant, but that’s okay.” He handed back her orders and palmed the sensor on the wall. The hatch slid open. “Good luck, sir.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant…?” she said waiting for a name, but both men just looked at her in silence. “Thanks.”

  Gina stepped through the hatch. It slid shut and locked behind her.

  The corridor was straight without hatches or other corridors to adjoin it. It was silent and empty. She marched at a brisk pace, but was tempted to lope along in the low gravity. It was something of a treat moving about like this. She felt like a little girl at a play centre. She resisted the impulse with images going through her mind of security watching and laughing at her antics… not that there appeared to be any. Ships always maintained one standard gravity of course, and most Human inhabited worlds were close to that of Earth for obvious reasons. Rarely were heavy grav worlds settled, though two did come to mind. Surprisingly, low grav worlds were also shunned. The lowest she had ever heard of was Alizon at 0.85g, but it was such a lovely world that she didn’t blame the colonists for settling there.

  She reached the end of the corridor and found another pair of vipers barring her progress. She approved of the security measure—HQ could do with more security in her opinion, but this was a little over the top surely? Vipers were too rare for hatch guarding. The viper, a woman this time, handed her orders back after verifying them and opened the hatch.

  Gina stepped through and it locked behind her. She glanced around at the waiting area. It was populated with red plastic chairs standing in neat and precise rows—all of them vacant, and a reception desk held down by another viper—an officer this time.

  Gina crossed to the desk and came to attention. “Lieutenant Fuentez, reporting as ordered, ma’am.” She offered her orders one last time.

  “Lieutenant Hymas, Lieutenant. No need for that.” Hymas waved away the card. “You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t supposed to be.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am,” Gina said replacing her card in her top pocket and securing the flap.

  “I note your campaign ribbons, Lieutenant. You’ve seen action on most of the Border Worlds.”

  “Yes, ma’am, but more are colonised each year… or so it seems to me.”

  Hymas tilted her head and looked thoughtful. “Do you agree with Alliance policy regarding those worlds?”

  That wasn’t a frivolous question. Hymas was looking at Gina intently—evaluating her. “I do not make policy, ma’am. I enforce it.”

  A small smile flickered into being on Hymas’ face. “A nice safe answer, Fuentez, but I want your opinion.”

  “My opinion, ma’am? My opinion is that the bigger we are, the safer we are. Those worlds provide a buffer between the core worlds and the Merkiaari.”

  Hymas nodded without revealing her opinion of that. “Losses would be heavy.”

  Gina nodded once, firmly. “But not as heavy as allowing a Merki incursion into the core of the Alliance. I’m not suggesting we abandon them, ma’am. We would fight as hard for the Border Worlds as for… Thorfinni let’s say, but the Border Worlds are less densely populated. They’re an ideal battleground.”

  “Well reasoned,” Hymas said and keyed her terminal to life. “Walk to your left and enter the first door on the right.”

  Gina braced to attention and saluted before moving to the room she had been ordered to enter. Inside, she found a small room with one chair, a table with a standard terminal, a locker, and a rack. She opened the l
ocker and stowed her gear. On the table beside the terminal was a set of instructions to follow. The first part told her the room was hers for the duration of the test; the last part ordered her to activate the terminal and answer the questions.

  She sat before the terminal and switched on. The usual questions appeared. Name, rank, and serial number all went into the machine, and the screen cleared to display the questionnaire. She scanned the questions and frowned. They didn’t appear to have any relevance to weapons testing. Maybe she and Stein had it wrong. Maybe they were testing her for some reason. She didn’t like being kept in the dark, but she obeyed orders and began answering the questions.

  Orders were orders—period.

  * * *

  Private First Class Kate Richmond, 2nd Airborne Rangers, was not a happy woman. Correction, she was steaming mad. Why did she have to choose that shuttle? Hundreds arrived and departed from Earth every day, yet she had chosen one that happened to be carrying Captains Hiller and Whitby.

  Whitby!

  It was beyond galling having a Whitby ordering her around, and Hiller seemed cut of the same cloth. Both captains seem to assume it was the duty of a lowly PFC to wait on them, and tag along behind them, like some kind of personal pet. She couldn’t tell them her real rank. She certainly couldn’t tell them that she was an undercover operative of ISS. The uniform she wore, though hers, hadn’t been worn for five years or more. She had last worn it to her ISS recruitment briefing, and not one day since. No, she couldn’t tell them why she was here. She had to take whatever they dished out, but damn it was hard.

  Kate surreptitiously checked her wrist comp and scowled at what it revealed. Her orders were specific. She was to report to the training centre on her arrival at Alliance HQ no later than zero-seven-hundred on the 26th. It was zero-nine-hundred now, and neither captain appeared in any way interested in reporting in.

  “Captains, with respect, I must insist that we report in.”

  “Insist?” Captain Whitby said, turning to confront her. “Since when does a private insist on anything? If you think that being off Bethany gives you leave to take liberties with me, think again. I am a Whitby, and you had better remember it.”

  Whitby’s face was within centimetres of Kate’s during the harangue. It was all she could do to prevent herself from killing him. One blow to the larynx and there would be no more high and mighty Captain Whitby. Did he know about the loss of his family’s operation on Tigris yet? She hoped they all choked on that bit of news.

  “Don’t ever presume to disapprove of me or my actions,” Whitby was saying oblivious to her thoughts and growing anger. “Now come along. I want to have a late breakfast before going over to the training centre.”

  The pompous arse! She had killed people for less cause than he had just given her. She gritted her teeth and swallowed her anger. How she wished she had her gear with her. But then, if she had brought it along, all hell would have broken loose. Weapons were frowned upon within the confines of Alliance HQ.

  Kate followed along behind Hiller who had remained silent throughout the exchange. She wasn’t surprised by his lack of support. Although his family ranked among the Ten, it was of lesser importance than the Whitbys. Whitby was a name well known on Bethany for power and prestige. Money most definitely talked, and the Whitbys had plenty. The Whitby name was pre-eminent among the families originally settling Bethany. There were very few people, if any, willing to cross them and that included the Hillers. Still, Kate was considering just that as they moved through the crowded concourse toward one of the finer eating establishments on Luna.

  Whitby and his ilk made her want to puke. He had the money, so he had the rank; it was as simple as that. That he couldn’t find his arse with both hands never entered into the equation. God help Bethany and the Alliance if he was ever in command during a Merki incursion. She knew his type well. There were many like him on Bethany. Know-nothings—powerful know-nothings who acted as they pleased believing themselves to be the lords of creation. Although few Alliance worlds truly had an aristocracy any longer, Bethany was by far the worst of those that did.

  As a lowlife commoner, Kate had a surprising amount of freedom thanks to ISS and the military before that. She was happy with her life mostly, and did not want to change it by falling foul of these arrogant fools. They of course had more pressing worries to concern them than a lippy PFC. She shuddered; not for her the worry of political backstabbing or the sucking up necessary to get ahead at the rarefied heights of Bethany’s government. She had no responsibilities except to herself and the mission.

  That’s how it would stay until she found Paul again.

  Her last mission on Tigris had gone a fair way toward helping her with that. Her contact had been pleased with her handling of Millard, and had not connected her with Sanderson’s assassination. He had kept his end of the deal by finding some information that pointed off-world as a probable location for her brother. That didn’t surprise her; she had searched everywhere on Bethany for him without success. No, she had known that if he lived he must be off world, but where exactly? Without solid leads she could search for her entire lifetime and never find him. That’s why the data her contact had turned up was so exciting. It pointed to some kind of deal between her brother and the Baxters. Unbelievable at first glance—it was the Baxters who had ruined her father—but maybe this deal with them was Paul’s way to take back all they had stolen.

  Kate’s gaze swept the concourse and locked onto a man like a laser turret onto a Merki ship. She was always surveying her surroundings, it was a good habit in her line of work, but this time she caught sight of someone who should not have been there. The broad shouldered black man was hanging around again. She first saw him upon her arrival, hanging around the embarkation lounge, but had thought nothing of it then. He had been just one of many people waiting for friends to arrive. Now though, his presence set alarms ringing. He had shown up too many times on this ill-advised tour of Alliance HQ for it to be a coincidence.

  The man stared directly into her eyes, making her bristle and check her stride, and shook his head. He looked meaningfully at his wristcomp, and she flushed in anger. He knew she should be elsewhere and was chiding her for her lateness. How did he know who she was, and how dared he look at her like that? If she hadn’t been in the midst of a crowd, he wouldn’t look so condescending. He nodded up the concourse and she flicked a glance that way. The toads were continuing on their tour oblivious to the fact she had stopped.

  Good enough.

  Kate hefted her kit and lost herself in the crowd before the toads saw her. She knew the route to the training centre. She had been there before when her old captain recruited her. Captain Newell hadn’t been too bad for an officer. He had seen the killer in her and nurtured it by pushing her to try for her marksman’s certificate, which had inevitably led to other training. She had enjoyed learning so many ways to practice her craft.

  Kate didn’t need a weapon to do her job, but she much preferred the HTR to any other weapon. The Heavy Tactical Rifle was a precision railgun with a range close to a klick and a half. What she liked about it was its untraceability and the terror it inflicted on those near the target. Unlike every plasma weapon ever produced, railguns and other projectile weapons did not give away their presence with a glaring display of released energy. Being traced by the simple expedient of following an energy pulse by eye, wasn’t something she ever wanted to deal with. Those who thought projectile weapons outdated and crude were fools—dead fools quite often.

  She turned down an empty corridor and used the low gravity to make up some time. At least she was on the right level. Loping along, she soon reached the hatch at the end, but she skidded to a halt well short of it when she saw the black uniformed sergeants guarding it.

  Her mouth went dry and her heart raced at the sight of the cyborgs. Her trigger finger twitched. She fought her fear not realising that the snarl on her face had been seen. Cyborgs were not human, they were mach
ines that looked like people, they were dangerous and should be dismantled, they let Bethany’s people die during the Merki War. It didn’t matter that vipers liberated her world in the end, it didn’t matter that without them the Alliance would likely have been scorched beyond recovery, it didn’t matter—

  Kate took a deep steadying breath and expelled it. Another, and calm began to return. Her childhood lessons on Bethany whispered in her mind of terror and destruction, but she throttled the fear with the simple expedient of overwhelming it with anger. Anger was good; she was intimately familiar with anger. It overwhelmed her fear. She was no child to feel threatened by the bogeyman!

  “Orders,” one of the cyborgs growled with his right hand upon his pulser.

  Kate approached warily. Her body was loose, prepared to kill if the need arose. If the cyborgs attacked, as everyone on Bethany said was certain sure, she would sell her life dearly. She didn’t like the knowledge that she was at this thing’s mercy. People were at her mercy, not the other way around. It upset her view of the universe knowing these things existed and that they were infinitely more deadly than she.

  The cyborg inserted Kate’s card into its reader and quickly scanned her simcode. He scowled at the result the reader displayed. “You’re late, Private.”

  “And?” Kate said with eyes tracking from one cyborg to the other.

  “And you had better get in there.”

  The cyborg flicked the card toward her making her grab for it. She caught it against her chest. The hatch slid open and she edged sideways through it keeping the machines in sight every second. The hatch slid shut and locked, but she didn’t take chances. She backed for a hundred metres before loping down the corridor. When the second hatch came into sight with its guards, she was ready and more in control of herself.