by Rick Partlow
She sat behind him, wisely silent if not exactly repentant or submissive. Her left leg was swaddled in a bandage from a shrapnel wound and, from what Lyta had told them, she’d been damned lucky to survive. They’d all been lucky to escape the car before the Peregrine’s missile took it out, lucky they’d made it to the edge of a forest thick enough to keep the scout mech from finding them.
Julia, the friend of Chloe who’d helped them break Salvaggio out, had come through basically unscathed, and Lyta just had a few scrapes and a bruised shoulder. Chloe had a concussion and a broken left ulna, but the Ranger docs said she’d be okay. The Carpenters were still pissed off she’d been used to help Salvaggio escape custody and were out for blood.
Logan sighed, wondering how his father did it.
“Captain Salvaggio has certainly abused her power and taken advantage of your situation,” Logan admitted, pitching his voice to carry across the crowd. The rumbling died down to a low murmur. The people were ready to listen, mostly because of the military force he brought with him.
“Things are different now, though,” he went on, looking around, not so much to see them as to let them see him. “You’re not dealing with a strong-arm mercenary trying to squeeze you for money and run your imports, you’re dealing with the Starkad Marines, and they won’t rest until they get what they want.”
“Then why don’t we just give it to them?” someone in the crowd asked plaintively. The man looked to be one of the younger of the adults Logan had seen, maybe forty or forty-five.
“Because I made a deal,” Lana Kane spoke up, stepping up to the table beside Logan.
Her little brother was not clinging to her for once, but only because she’d given him the job of taking care of Chloe. Not that the Ranger medics needed the help, but it kept him out of the way while the adults argued.
“I made a deal to get us out from under her thumb,” Kane went on, stabbing a finger toward Salvaggio. “Maybe you think I was reckless to do this, maybe you think I should have consulted with everyone, but there wasn’t time to put this through a committee. I had to make a decision on my own, sitting on Trinity, with basically a gun to my head.” She eyed them all defiantly, fists on her hips. “Would any of you have done differently? Do you want to give Starkad what they came for and then go back to the way things were?”
“At any rate, part of what Starkad wants is my brother’s life, so that’s a hard no,” Logan declared, cutting through the buzz and cross-talk. “We need Salvaggio’s Savages to get rid of Starkad. We might or might not be able to take them on by ourselves, but it would get a lot of us killed and I’m not willing to go that route.”
You don’t need to know I’m willing to go that route if I have to, he corrected himself silently.
“The commander of our infantry units, Colonel Randell, is going to tell you what she saw on her recon of the city, and the plan she came up with.”
And thank God they’ll have someone else to be mad at for a few minutes. It wouldn’t last. After she’d told them what she wanted to do, he’d still have to go back and sell it.
Lyta was back in her combat gear, black utility fatigues and body armor, a disembodied head floating in the shadows until she stepped up into the light by the central table. A model of the town had been set up there with food containers.
“Starkad Marines have Captain Salvaggio’s mercenary troops locked up in a warehouse here in the industrial district,” Lyta said, launching into the presentation without preamble or pleasantries. “They’re guarded, but not heavily, for one thing because they’ve been disarmed and for another, because Starkad has a fairly low opinion of civilians and an even lower one of mercenaries. They’ll probably wind up executing them before they leave, if we let them.”
She’d said it so casually, so off-handedly, yet Salvaggio blanched, visibly affected by it, the first hint of vulnerability she’d allowed herself to show since she’d arrived.
“Their mecha are secured in the stockyard not too terribly far away,” Lyta went on, pointing to a dented metal container surrounded by crackers. She’d wanted to construct a sand table, but Logan had convinced her most of the people wouldn’t have been able to see it. “What I propose is my Rangers and I, with Captain Salvaggio and whatever forces you locals can provide, will break the Savages out of their holding cells and lead them in an attack on the Marines at the stockyard. They’ll get in their mecha and head out of town, straight for the canyon.”
“The Run,” one of the teenage boys near the head of the crowd corrected her.
Lyta gave him a glare that had made hardened NCOs wither away and the kid shrugged an apology.
“That’s we call it,” he stuttered an explanation. “This canyon…it’s called the Run.”
“Yes, well,” she continued, her tone dry and brittle enough to serve as tinder, “Salvaggio’s Savages will head straight for the Run, hopefully drawing the majority of Starkad’s mecha right behind them to here.” The Run had been simulated by a few wooden slats they’d found, and she pointed to where the canyon first narrowed down and began curving. “It’s a natural choke-point, and we’ll be waiting for them here with our Mobile Armor forces.” She shrugged. “It’s a classical ambush, but hopefully one they won’t be expecting since they still shouldn’t know we’ve landed. The Rangers, Captain Salvaggio’s infantry and those of you who join us will band together to take out whatever Marine forces are left in the town.”
“Seems complicated,” Logan told her quietly. “I thought you always said the best battle plans were the simplest.”
“This situation is so fucked up,” she shot back at him, sotto voce, “this is the simplest plan I could think of short of orbital bombardment.”
“I still want to know why we have to bring her along?” Kane demanded, pointing at Salvaggio. “Why not leave her here where she can’t betray us all?”
“Because her troops have no reason to follow me or anyone else in Wholesale Slaughter,” Lyta pointed out. “If she’s not there to hold them together, they’ll just scatter and the whole thing falls apart.”
“If you leave her with her troops and their weapons,” Kane argued, leaning over the table, knocking over half the simulated town as she got into Lyta’s face, “after you go, she’ll just turn it all back into her own little fiefdom again!” She bared her teeth and Logan tensed, thinking for a moment she was about to go after Lyta or Salvaggio. “She’s the reason Starkad is here to begin with!”
“You yokels were lucky to have me!” Salvaggio shot back, hopping up on one leg and putting her nose right into Kane’s face. “A world like this is ripe for the picking for mercenaries, raiders, pirates, Jeuta bandits and anyone else with a ship and a few guns! You think any of them would be satisfied with making you do some honest work for your defense? You think they’d treat you as nice as I have?”
“You,” Lyta said, pushing Salvaggio backwards, “sit down and shut up.”
The mercenary captain lost her balance and plopped back down into the chair, snarling at Lyta.
“And you,” Lyta leaned across the table and jabbed Kane with a finger to her shoulder, “don’t knock over my Goddamned map!”
“Listen,” Logan said, raising his voice over the din and arguing starting to rise up in the wake of Salvaggio’s response. “I said listen! Captain Salvaggio is right about one thing. Even if we pull this off, even if we get rid of Starkad, you’re still going to need protection and it’s not going to come cheap or easy.” He pointed a finger at his chest. “We’re not staying. We’ll do this job to get back what’s ours, but then we have places to be. Are you going to somehow get together the money to buy your own mecha and guns and people to train you how to use them?”
Salvaggio looked as if she were about to make some smartass remark at the question, but Lyta detected it before he could and raised a cautioning finger to silence the woman.
“What I’d suggest,” Logan went on, “is that you formally incorporate Salvaggio’s Savages as
your planetary defense force and allocate a permanent, but sustainable portion of your gross domestic product to paying them to stay here.” He shrugged. “Maybe arrange something like a cut of the import fees, something you can both live with. Everyone who’s been forced to work on Trinity would obviously be brought back unless they want to stay.”
Some would, he was sure. Or would get work on outbound ships rather than return to a place like Revelation.
“It’s not…impossible,” Kane admitted, though the look on her face was still unhappy. “I just don’t know if we can trust her.”
“Then trust me,” Logan suggested.
This was where things could get really tricky. He hadn’t run this part by anyone, not Lyta, not Acosta, and not Salvaggio, but he had to hope he had enough power in this situation to make it stick. These people had latched onto him as their one safety line in the rising waters and that had a lot of cache.
“What if,” he suggested, “I make Salvaggio’s Savages an official subsidiary of Wholesale Slaughter LLC?”
He might, someday, get used to so many eyes being fixed on him, following his every word. Someday, but certainly not today.
“An official what?” Salvaggio repeated, disbelief and skepticism warring for position in her expression.
“You’d work for me,” he told her. “And before you shitcan the idea, consider your alternatives. I have bigger guns, bigger mecha, and much better people than you. I sure as hell have better funding and I can pay quite a bit more than you’re making right now.”
“Wait,” Acosta interrupted, stepping up out of the shadows where he’d been standing beside Katy. “What? We’re funding them now?”
“Just an annual stipend,” Logan suggested. “Something for upkeep and recruiting, you know?” He’d addressed the last to Salvaggio, but now he turned back to the crowd. “And, of course, since my name is on the product and my reputation is on the line, I’d feel obliged to become personally involved if any word reached me of Captain Salvaggio and her subsidiary operation abusing their authority here.”
That got them thinking. The buzz in the crowd this time was quieter and he saw quite a few nods. It was David Carpenter who finally spoke up.
“I think we could live with that,” he judged, and Logan fought the urge to blow out a breath with relief.
“All right,” he said in an even, professional tone instead. “The satellite and ship coverage is thinnest right after sunrise. Whoever’s going along with us on this, get yourself ready. We attack at dawn.”
They drifted apart with the decision, small groups getting their jury-rigged technicals ready for the morning, but he managed to track down Lana Kane. She was sitting on the dirt in the ruddy glow of a small lantern at the edge of the lean-to, field-stripping a shop-made automatic rifle while her brother sat crouched beside her, watching with rapt attention.
“Before you ask,” he told her, “you’re not going.”
“What?” she blurted, leaping to her feet quickly enough to send the pieces of the firearm flying. Her brother ignored their conversation and went chasing after an errant spring. “What the hell do you mean I’m not going?”
“In case you’ve forgotten, you’re the only one who knows where the data crystals are.” He waved a hand in invitation. “Now, if you want to give them to me tonight, you feel free to risk your life to your heart’s content.”
The glow of the lantern didn’t travel far over the broad hood sheltering it and he could barely see her face, not that he expected someone in her line of work to give away her thoughts anyway.
“All right,” she acquiesced. He wondered if it was too easy and if he should be worried. “I’ll stay here. But you better hold up your end of the bargain, Colonel.”
“We’re Wholesale Slaughter,” he said, grinning with more confidence than he felt. “It’s what we do.”
20
“Get them in there!” Saul Grieg bellowed, motioning with his drawn sidearm. “Every last one of them, damn it!”
The civilians being chivvied into the temple were clearly terrified, some of them still bearing the bruises and stun-gun burns of interrogations, others rousted from their beds well before dawn, and they nearly stampeded to squeeze through the narrow doorway simply to get away from the prodding butt-stocks of the Marines’ rifles. Even the Marines looked a bit cowed by Grieg, shoving the steady line of residents ahead of them with renewed vigor.
The Intelligence officer seemed manic to Ruth Laurent, and she couldn’t be sure if it was the lack of sleep, the paranoia, or simply the fact he was clinically psychotic. To be sure, he hadn’t closed his eyes once in the last eighty-four hours, which couldn’t have helped, but she thought it was the jailbreak that had done it. He’d been so sure the culprits were locals working in concert with Salvaggio…
She’d thought about telling him of her suspicions that Sparta already had agents here, but abandoned the idea quickly, certain it would have only spurred him to greater madness. His reaction to the escape and the killing of Sgt. Taylor had been to send out every Marine and every mech to round up all the civilians and put them under guard in the city’s central temple to Mithra, the only building large enough to hold them all that wasn’t already being used for something else.
They must be packed in there like cartridges in an ammo box, she thought with a sort of perverse curiosity, watching one after another traverse the purposefully narrow entrance. It was a statement on how narrow the way to Heaven was. And a safety violation if it had been on Stavanger.
Then it happened. She’d been praying it wouldn’t, and standing outside a temple seemed a great place to pray, but Mithra, apparently, wasn’t listening. Someone panicked. It was a teenager, a boy, probably looking younger than he was, and younger still with the childlike fear on his baby face. He’d been near the door, close enough to see the people squeezing through it, and he bolted. Maybe claustrophobic, maybe just afraid he’d die packed into the building with all those other people, but he broke from the line and ran.
The shouted commands, the cries of alarm, and the screams of the elders all merged into one, cacophonous static of white noise, one sound indistinguishable from another like feedback inside her head. Broken by the staccato chatter of an assault rifle, just one Marine breaking discipline but one was all it took. The three round burst grouped perfectly, each bullet hole less than two centimeters apart when they exited through the boy’s chest in a spray of arterial red.
He stumbled, gasped for air he couldn’t get with his lungs deflated and now the screams were higher-pitched and the shouts of command died away. He toppled to his side, coughing fitfully, each spasm of his chest matched with a splatter of blood from his mouth. Laurent wanted to run to him, wanted to check on him, but something anchored her in place, a conviction it was too late. Too much damage had been done. She wanted to scream, wanted to cry, but she didn’t give into the urge because she also knew what was going to happen next, and she had to be ready for it.
When the old woman waddled out of the line, unable to run but shuffling as best she could in a long dress that nearly scraped the ground, Laurent moved. The woman was a lost soul, a banshee wailing in the morning haze with a wild mane of grey hair tossing one way and then another as she lurched across the gravel road toward him. The Marines were spooked and Grieg was doing nothing to stop them, watching as if he’d wagered on the outcome.
“Stop!” Laurent yelled at the nearest of them as he raised his rifle, ready to shoot the old woman down. She stepped between them, pointing an accusatory finger at the Marine. “Goddamn you, she’s not trying to escape!”
The trooper hesitated, the muzzle of his rifle going downward as he looked back to Grieg. The Colonel shrugged, making a dismissive gesture with the barrel of his handgun.
“Fine. Get her inside.”
The old woman was still wailing as two Marines dragged her back toward the temple, but she didn’t really attempt to resist.
There’s no strength lef
t in her, Laurent judged. Is there any left in me?
“I’m going to help check the next street over for stragglers,” she told Grieg.
He barely acknowledged her, talking on the radio with someone back in the city hall. She thought she made out something about satellite coverage and when the Sleipner would have a workable angle. Just another factor in his paranoia. He’d sent out surveillance drones over and over, and over and over they’d gone down without explanation. Remote sensors had been sabotaged. Live patrols had seen nothing out of the ordinary, but they couldn’t afford to go too far off the roads because the Marines were needed to guard the citizens, and Grieg wouldn’t let the mecha out of town unescorted for fear of booby traps. It was ridiculous, but she expected nothing less from someone who had been, as the late Colonel Kuryakin would have said, a career crunchie, a foot soldier.
She couldn’t bear the sight of him anymore. How did men such as him climb so high so quickly in the Supremacy military when Colonel Kuryakin had remained at his rank and position for years? Kuryakin had shown poor judgement in the end, but he hadn’t been mad, merely ambitious. Was Lord Starkad mad as well, surrounding himself with people like him, or was he simply poorly advised, told what he wanted to hear?
She’d endured so much pain, so much horror to get the intelligence back to him, knowing it was her duty. And somehow it had resulted in her serving under a madman, watching a child shot down in the street. Maybe the narcissistic assholes who worshipped Ahriman had it right, and Mithra hated them.
By the time she was able to pull herself out of her thoughts, she found she’d actually gone where she told Grieg she’d be, to the warehouse where he’d confined Salvaggio’s troops. She wasn’t sure what it had been built to hold, perhaps food, perhaps raw materials for the fabricators, but it held men and women now, soldiers, mercenaries. She’d seen their looks when they’d been forced into the locked storerooms of the warehouse, after Grieg had decided Salvaggio wasn’t useful as an ally. They were resentful but also unsurprised, as if they’d expected nothing less from Starkad.
