by Chris Bunch
Flame spurted here, and Goodnight decided it was time to be about his business.
• • •
Riss trotted down the corridor, between huge machines, sowing demo charges like a crazed planter.
She flung the last, and ran for the door they’d come in through.
• • •
The patrol ship was about five hundred meters up when flames gouted out the windows of the plant, and explosions shattered the assembly lines.
Von Baldur watched the screen with satisfaction.
“Well, a bit of revenge for our Jasmine,” he said.
“Just a bit,” Riss said coldly.
TWENTY-THREE
Riss looked at the stack of papers, growled like Grok, in timbre if not in happiness.
How come, she wondered, the romances never show the hard-bitten warrior as being up to her nipples in paperwork?
And how long was it since she’d been in the field, footloose, carefree, and destructive? A lousy week. Seemed like forever.
There was less than she’d have if she were still in the Alliance Marines, but still …
An unadmitted but experienced bureaucrat, Riss started flipping through reports. She frowned, went back through them, got on the com to Hore’s battalion.
Hore’s XO showed up on screen.
“Why isn’t there any report on how well your training has been going?”
“We’ve been busy,” the man said, a bit snippily. “But things have been going well.”
“We’ve been busy, too,” M’chel said. “That’s no excuse. Can I expect something this decade, perhaps?”
“We’ll see,” the man said, smiled a distinctly unpleasant grin, and cut off.
“Aren’t we the snotty little mercenary,” Riss murmured. “What did I do to piss him off?”
She picked up a report, then stopped. She thought a minute, then went back to the com, and put in a ‘cast to a Shaoki officer whose name she remembered.
• • •
Friedrich von Baldur got a com from the spaceport.
Someone named Miss Anya Davenport was at the spaceport, wanting pickup.
Von Baldur frowned. He knew no one by that — oh. Yes. That was the name of the lobbyist one of his contacts on Earth had recommended. She was supposedly expensive, but well worth the price.
But what the hell was she doing out here instead of hustling Omni Foods back wherever their corporate headquarters was?
A blank com answers no questions, so von Baldur grabbed the duty driver and headed for the spaceport.
• • •
“I do not understand what you are telling me,” the Shaoki captain told Riss. “My brigade has not been having any training at all, ma’am. Unless being a stevedore is training.”
“Explain, please,” Riss said.
“Your Colonel Hore has had all available men putting an old arsenal back in service and transferring weaponry. Frankly, my soldiers are starting to grumble, saying they could have found jobs in a warehouse and gotten much better paid.”
• • •
M’chel, even though she didn’t know what anything meant, other than that Hore’s troops were, at the very least, swinging the lead, was upstaged by Anya Davenport’s arrival.
Riss knew Davenport was another kind of mercenary, but she hoped to hell she wasn’t beginning to look as hard as the woman.
She was tall, could stand to put on about another five kilos, had clearly had at least one face-lift, as well as augmentation to her breasts, and was, naturally but unnaturally, blond.
Davenport announced to the assembled and very curious crew, over before-dinner drinks, as if it were a natural part of a résumé, that she’d been runner-up in one or another Miss Galaxy contest, as well as mentioning various politicos and firms she’d pumped for.
It appeared to M’chel as if Friedrich were thoroughly smitten.
Chas could have been, having never encountered a lobbyist before, but von Baldur appeared to have gotten in line first.
At dinner, Davenport asked if there was any of this wonderful maln tea about. Some was found and brewed.
Davenport tried it, smiling brightly, and only coughed twice.
“Very interesting,” she said.
“You see,” Grok announced. “There has to be someone besides myself liking it for it to be so successful.”
“Fad freaks,” Riss said, “never need a reason for liking something, other than other fad freaks do.”
“I must say,” Davenport said with a tinkling laugh, “it’s as well you’re not in Omni Foods’ marketing division.”
“That is the truth,” Riss said, trying to sound friendly.
“Let me explain something,” Davenport said, and the tinkle was gone.
“Omni Foods is divided, generally, into two divisions. The first is the Staples Market. This is rice, coffee, flour, and so forth. If your company is distributed by the Staples Division, or if your product is part of that network, you can relax, safe, comfortable, and very rich.
“The new foods — such as your maln — are in the New Products Division. That means Omni is taking a flier on them, on your company. If your product catches fire, as maln appears to be doing, then, after a suitable time, they’ll move you over to the Staples Market.”
Friedrich’s eyes glittered a little.
“But if it’s no more than a fad, a momentary interest, or if for some reason you cannot provide your product consistently, on a fairly massive basis, you’re doomed.
“Omni’s dropped hundreds of thousands of new products over the years. Do any of you remember ralcat?”
Blank looks from around the table.
“I didn’t think so,” Davenport said. “That is an example of just what I’m talking about. Gone and forgotten, and no one, including me, knows why.
“Now, from what Friedrich had sent me, you want me to convince Omni Foods that you are, ultimately, in control of the maln situation, as well as this cluster,” Davenport said. “Which means no one need suggest the necessity of an Alliance peacekeeping force here.”
“Just so,” von Baldur said.
“The law gets in the way of our sort,” Goodnight said bluntly.
“I hardly think that’s the way to put things,” Davenport said. “I wonder one thing, however, which you can correct me on. You are, let us say, advising the Shaoki here. Yet from what I’ve read, the other force in this cluster, the, uh, Khelat, have the majority of maln plantations. Am I in error?”
“No,” Riss said. “But given the nature of things, that is not necessarily a permanent state of affairs.”
Von Baldur looked mildly alarmed, as if Riss shouldn’t have spoken.
“I gather by that,” Davenport said, “you intend a swift victory.”
Riss started to offer another option, kept her mouth shut.
“We anticipate an end to this frankly absurd war at any moment,” von Baldur said, and M’chel knew why, way back when, somebody said she stood little chance of making general in peacetime, since that meant being most political.
“I’ll be happy to provide a full briefing in my quarters,” Friedrich went on, and Davenport dazzled him with a smile, her siren role coming back.
M’chel Riss decided she was going to bed early.
• • •
She was up early and heading out the door, buckling her combat harness on, when Anya Davenport, looking tousled, came down the hall from Friedrich von Baldur’s suite.
That figured.
• • •
“How very interesting,” Riss said as she eyed the manifest, authorizing the purchase of certain medium armaments, construction materials, and such, to be provided on a RUSH basis.
“Did I do something wrong by accepting this?” the worried clerk said. “Colonel Hore said he’d hand carried it to me, after you’d signed the requisition.”
“No,” Riss said slowly. “Nothing is wrong.”
Everything was very wrong.
S
he’d never seen the requisition in her life, let alone signed it.
And she suddenly had a very good idea of what Hore was up to.
TWENTY-FOUR
It was Vian’s death that saved Jasmine King’s life.
When the patrol ship crashed, he went, very messily, into the control panel. Jasmine’s seat broke at the mount, catapulting her into Vian’s cushioning corpse.
The world went away as the ship pinwheeled, then settled, stern first, only thirty meters from shore.
She came back to a world of pain, hurting everywhere. There were various alarms, and King smelled something burning. She wanted to just lie still and go back to that place where it didn’t hurt.
But she also wanted to live.
She managed to hit the quick release on her safety harness, rolled away from the mess onto the floor.
A port painted sunlight across her, then away, as the patrol ship turned in the surf.
She closed her eyes.
The burning smell got stronger.
Jasmine wanted somebody to help her.
But no one came.
Without opening her eyes, she ran her hands over her body. There weren’t any bones sticking out. King forced herself to sit up, tried not to look at Vian’s body. There were two more bodies in the cramped cockpit. She didn’t need to get up to see they were as dead as their CO.
Hissing came.
King wondered, dully, what that could be, guessed it might be water hitting molten metal.
No.
She did not want to die.
She forced herself to her knees, then her feet. The overhead was very close to her, smashed down in the crash.
Still on the back of her seat was her combat harness. King stared at it for a time, then pulled it on.
She almost fell, caught herself on a bulkhead, staggered to the air lock. Jasmine hit the cycle sensor. There was a humming, then a grating noise, but nothing happened.
King hurt everywhere. There were tears running down her cheeks. That does nothing, she told herself, pulled the safety cover, and hit the emergency lock controls.
The explosive charges in the inner and outer doors blew the lock open, and she smelled ocean instead of the canned ship air.
The burning smell got stronger, and King heard, from somewhere near the ship’s stern, the whoosh of flames. She felt heat, pushed herself down the small, twisted tube of the lock.
The ship rolled again, and slurped water into the lock. Jasmine let herself slide forward, out of the ship, into the water.
The salt burned her cuts, but it was cold enough to soothe her for an instant. King went underwater, curled, and brought herself back to the surface.
There was the ocean, a reef in front of her. She turned, wiped her blurred eyes, saw a rocky beach. Jasmine discovered she could swim, and made for the shore. She feebly stroked, again and again.
It would be easier to just stop and let herself be swallowed by the cool greenness. It would be easier to let the combat harness fall away.
But she did neither, and then there were pebbles under her feet, and she was on her knees, crawling out of the tiny waves.
She wanted to collapse on the shore, but didn’t, crawling toward brush. At least her near-indestructible ship suit wasn’t torn.
She allowed herself to rest for a few minutes in the shelter of the brush.
Then she caught herself.
King stared out at the wreckage in the sea, realized anyone overflying it would assume everyone aboard was dead.
She fumbled in her harness for her SAR — search and rescue — com. Maybe the other two patrol ships were still in-atmosphere, and she could shout for help. Or maybe the SAR would reach beyond the atmosphere. She had no idea of its range.
The SAR com wasn’t in its pouch.
Jasmine remembered where it was.
It was plugged into its recharger, where King had conscientiously put it the day before, back on the bureau in her suite on Irdis.
And she was the woman who was supposed to remember everything….
There was a scream, and King got up. It had to be one of the patrol ships coming back to see if Vian or anyone was alive.
It wasn’t, Jasmine realized, in time to flatten herself.
An in-atmosphere interceptor dove down.
Khelat.
Flanking it were three wingmen. Rockets spat from the lead ship, into the wreckage of the patrol ship, and it exploded, the shock wave rolling toward shore.
Jasmine found herself crying again, thought Goodnight would be snarling “What a baby” at her, forced herself to stop, crawled farther away from the ocean as the Khelat flight made another firing run.
• • •
An hour later, things looked a little better to her. She definitely had nothing but bruises, even though a few of them would make wonderful shades of purple.
All she was missing was the SAR com. Everything else was proper and well maintained.
Jasmine had some serious extras.
For openers, a lot more money than the standard survival kit suggested. She had both gold coins and Alliance credits.
Her emergency food packs had been tweaked by M’chel to be almost palatable, and she had tiny packets of spices to go with them.
Jasmine remembered the on-screen map of Khelat II quite clearly. Rafar City would be about thirty kilometers … that way. King didn’t need a compass to find north. It was reflexive.
Her intent was to hike to the city, keeping away from the locals, since she would be hard-pressed to resemble them. She wished there really were bandits in the hills she could join up with until she was able to rejoin Star Risk, but knew better.
King guessed she’d work her way into the capital and try to join up with Ells and his maintenance crews. She doubted they’d turn her over to the Khelat. She was very unsure about the other mercenaries who’d remained with the Khelat.
It was a plan. Maybe not a very good plan, but a plan.
King put everything away in their little pouches in her harness, clipped it on, and set out, remembering the old cliché: “A journey of a thousand blisters starts with a single stumble.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Hore and his ranking officers roused their battalion an hour before dawn, always a propitious time for a palace revolution.
In the hours before, the men and women had been armed, the supplies coming from the new arsenal to prevent suspicion, and told their duties.
The few mercenaries who still had any ideals were told that Star Risk had made a secret pact with the Khelat to doublecross everyone, including their fellow meres, in the Shaoki worlds.
This was a deceit.
At the moment.
The more rational soldiers were told that Hore thought it was time to get rid of Star Risk because they weren’t “winning the war by direct action,” and, more important, were hogging the majority of the client’s credits.
None of the various watching posts on Star Risk positions or soldiery reported anything untoward, although two LPs on the “mansion” said there’d been a flurry of ships that arrived after dusk on the roof landing platforms, but they’d trailed away within hours.
Electronic posts reported normal traffic from the high-rise.
The two critical units were Inchcape’s destroyers and the three remaining patrol boats of Vian’s unit.
All but one of the starships were comfortably grounded. Vian was dead, and Inchcape had just left on a five-day leave, according to reports from Star Risk Central.
Hore’s XO and adjutant were beginning to gloat, but Hore reminded them of Shakespeare’s lion hunter, and said the celebrations could wait until they had Star Risk’s hide properly skinned and staked out for drying.
He reported to the Shaoki Council members who’d convinced him to betray his employers that his troops were on the move.
Hore intended to cause as few casualties as possible in his coup and make one quick strike against the mansion, wait until Star Risk realized f
ighting back was useless, and it would all be over.
Two cargo lifters had been fitted with 200 mm medium autocannon. Keeping to the streets, they closed on the high-rise. Behind them was the rest of the battalion, all in lifters.
Shaoki civilians heard the turbine whine, peered down, saw soldiers in the streets, and made for cover.
On signal, the two lifters came up from their concealment and took the mansion area into their sights. They each fired four rounds in less than a minute.
Masonry crashed, and glass sharded down. The outer wall of the high-rise cracked and tumbled, exposing Star Risk’s innards.
The infantry lifters came in, surrounding the high-rise. There was only one slight problem:
There was no one, no one at all, in Star Risk’s quarters.
Hore was still gaping at this impossibility when Inchcape’s destroyer dropped down out of the clouds.
Two missiles spat out, were guided into Hore’s artillery.
They blew, fireballs that left little debris to cascade down.
As the missiles struck, the other destroyers and the patrol boats lifted off from their fields. Her four destroyers linked with Inchcape, and each sent one missile arcing down on Hore.
The four Star Risk operatives watched, grim-faced, from Inchcape’s bridge.
Riss had put sensors out around Hore’s barracks, two days before, when she’d figured out what the man intended.
When the alarms went off the day before, as Hore concentrated his troops, Star Risk evacuated all their personnel from the hotel and let Hore walk into their trap.
The patrol boats flew up the streets, just over Hore’s infantry lifters. There was no escape for the infantry — but the patrol boats held their fire.
Hore looked around, saw he was surrounded from above, took the obvious way out.
“Does anyone,” he asked in an emotionless tone, “happen to have a white flag?”
• • •
Hore’s battalion was disarmed, including the officers’ individual weapons.
Hore started to say something about this being dishonorable, got a look from Riss that shut him up.
He was enough of a leader to be the last aboard the transports commandeered from the Shaoki, turned back at the entrance to the lock, and tried a smile.
