The Tejano Conflict (9 page)

Gunny said, “Where is this going?”

The older man said, “I sicced our C-AI folk into GalaxCorp's Legal Entities.”

Jo looked at Rags. “Wow. You let him
do
that?”

“Sometimes you have to spend the money,” Rags said.

“That's not what you tell me.”

Rags shrugged. “He does the banking. He'd just do it anyhow. I'm surrounded by liars and cheats who take advantage of my good nature.”

That got laughs.

“So what are we talkin' about again?” Gunny asked.

Gramps said, “I'll spare you the endless detail, fascinating as it is, the kind of questions they have to ask to properly narrow the search, the circular shell corporations and cutouts, but the bottom line is, there is an 87.6 percent chance, according to the C-AI runner, that UMex and thus Dycon LTD, are working for the Bax.”

That gave everybody pause.

Jo got to it first: “The Bax? Why? What would the loopies want with water rights on Earth?”

“I haven't gotten that part yet,” Gramps said.

Gunny said, “The other side is working for aliens. Don't that beat all?”

“Actually, no,” Gramps said. “It doesn't beat all. Because our C-AI runners are passing diligent as long as you keep paying 'em, and I let them run for a while, there's something even more interesting.”

He waited, a dramatic pause.

“You gonna tell us or just sit there grinning that shit-eating grin?”

“According to the AI, there is a 84.4 percent chance that
we
are working for the Bax, too.”

That shut everybody up for a few seconds; then they all started to talk at once.

– – – – – –

Cutter calmed everybody down. Gramps had given him this intel only an hour ago, and while it was odd on the face of it, it didn't seem to have any direct effect on what they were doing here.

Probably.

Maybe.

Gunny said, “Not like there's any shortage of water in the galaxy, nor that the Tejano version is any better than anything you can make at home with a couple of gases and a spark. What are they gonna do? Pipe it onto ships and haul it off? Doesn't make sense.”

“Something we might ought to figure out,” Cutter said.

There weren't any dullards here. Wink picked it up: “Whatever their reason, they want it really bad. Because no matter which side wins, they win.”

Jo said, “Maybe not. Maybe it's two different factions of Bax at odds with each other.”

“And you say this because . . . ?” Wink said.

“Dhama's attempted bribe. Why would he do that if we are both working for the same people? They get the rights no matter what.”

“Misdirection?”

Jo looked at Wink. “Seven million noodle on the off chance that we'd have somebody good enough to figure it out? No. In that case, it would be a complete waste. Makes more sense that it's two different sets. Likely the same reason, but competitors.”

“Bax,” Cutter said. “Trying to get property on Earth. That would contravene the ASA.”

“My education is lacking,” Wink said, “I thought ASA was the medical abbreviation for acetylsalicylic acid.”

“The Alien Species Act,” Gramps said, “a provision of which forbids members of intelligent species other than humans to purchase or own real estate properties on Earth, Luna, or Mars.”

“Really?”

“Technically. There are some who have sneaked around the clause and used beards to buy parcels here and there, but if they get caught, it gets confiscated, there are huge fines, and somebody goes to prison. Several of the more intelligent sentients would apparently love to have access to Terran land.”

“How come?”

Gramps looked at Gunny. “Back in the prespace days, when there were still more discrete countries than multinationals, one country would often buy property in another, for political, social, or financial reasons. Species that value property still do that. There are human landowners on other worlds.”

“None known on Vast,” Kay said.

“Death penalty?” Jo asked.

Kay nodded. “Just so.”

“Maybe the loopies want to influence local politicians to vote for things that favor them in trade. Maybe they want a place where they can seduce our women—or men—drink the local wine, pee on the ground. Maybe just to be able to point at it and brag to their friends? Who knows why aliens want what they want? Who knows why anybody wants what they want?” Gramps said.

“Ain't you ever the long-winded philosopher.”

Cutter said, “I don't want us to have any part of this, but we are on the ground, and if we just report it and walk away, that maybe doesn't fix things enough. General Wood knows what we know, and she has people who will pursue it, too.”

“You think they know about each other? The Bax?”

“I would not be surprised.”

Cutter thought,
Well. One more variable to be taken into account . . .

Gunny said, “Well, sheeit. So much for having a nice, plain shooting war on our plate. Ah hate all this fuckin' intrigue.”

Jo said, “Knowledge is power.”

“And ignorance is bliss,” Wink said. “Except if it might get you killed.”

War Day arrived:

“HOSTILITIES WILL COMMENCE IN TEN SECONDS,” the Monitor broadcast announced.

Jo, leading her team, looked around as the Monitors did the countdown:

“FIVE . . . FOUR . . . THREE . . . TWO . . . ONE . . .”

The oogah horn sounded.

“Okay, the war is hot, people, asses and elbows!”

The cart accelerated, rolled past the Monitors stationed on the road.

One of the Monitors behind her camera waved.

Jo shook her head.

The entrances to the battle sites had been divided into two 180-degree sectors, and those randomly assigned. Neither side offered any overwhelming tactical advantage, but their assignment put them almost a kilometer closer to their destination, and since it was the only high ground in the area—such that it was—and it overlooked two of the main roads in and out, they needed to get to it first and occupy it.

Easier to protect your people on the flats if you had the high ground.

“High ground” in this case was something of a reach; this was mostly dead-level terrain, some river and lakes. Save for the planted forests of the mineral-laden cypress trees and some fast-growing black cottonwood pulp-crop plantations, it was nearly all scrub, with scraggly bushes and grasses. Once upon a time, this had been territory primarily farmed with cotton, corn, wheat, and the raising of bovines. They still grew a lot of grain, not so many cattle.

Their destination was not a natural rise, but a man-made trio of hills, constructed from excavations that made a reservoir nearby. A hundred years ago, they had dug a big hole and piled up the dirt. The elevation of the tallest hillock was only 150 meters; the other two were slightly lower. The newly created real estate had quickly sprouted some expensive houses, but during the Mutant Plague Years late in the previous century, the rich people who owned those houses had somehow suffered infection worse than the poorer folks around them. The houses were, according to local superstition, cursed, and while some of the structures were still there and more or less intact, home to a few squatters, the enclave had become mostly a ghost town.

The squatters had been kicked out for the duration of the war.

The name of the fake mountains was ironic:
Montoncillo de Habas
. Which meant, more or less, according to Gramps, “Hill of Beans . . .”

Singh drove, having shown a talent for operating small armored vehicles. On the field, nobody trusted the computers to pilot if they didn't have to do so.

The road was narrow, barely wide enough for two lanes of traffic, though both lanes were one-wayed toward the upcoming action, and the column Jo led was double-stacked and rolling fast. Twelve vehicles, two of them troop carriers, the rest lightly armored, some heavy machine-gun platforms, 10mm-caseless Fraleys, and supply transports.

High ground didn't mean as much as it once had, given aircraft and satellites, but water still ran downhill. It was harder to ascend than descend, and the ability to eyeball incoming traffic was sometimes critical. One of the first things that happened in combat, even a small war, was that high-tech gear went wonky. Coms failed, sat overflies that could pick out individual troops taking a leak somehow missed a column of tanks, drones developed engine problems. The fog of war obscured everything.

If you looked out over a road and saw infantry marching in your direction with your own eyes, that was probably closer to reality.

“Singh,” Jo began.

“Six minutes, sah.”

Jo activated her opchan. “Gramps, how—”

“Nine minutes before they get there,” Gramps said. “You'll have all kinds of time to set up and start plinking.”

“Big talk, old man,” Gunny said. She was in the caboose, bringing up the rear. “Takes you three minutes to find the Velcro to untab your fly.”

“Yeah, but then I have overwhelming firepower.”

Jo grinned.

– – – – – –

Kay ran, working her way through the forest. Her com was shut down. Even though it was encrypted, using it would produce a signal that might be detected, and that was more information than she wanted to reveal, and she didn't need to talk to anybody yet.

Yes, they would know enemy scouts were in the woods, but they might be able to determine some kind of location using field-strength metering, and she didn't want to give them anything.

The enemy had ATVs, small single- and double-wheelers, a couple of two-person quads, but no GE or hovercraft—the woods were too thick to operate those safely. Kay's side also had similar vehicles, but she was faster on foot than most of those in a wood this dense.

There was a choke point half a kilometer ahead, a deep stream that would have to be bridged to allow vehicles and troops to move over it quickly. Kay's assignment was to get there as soon as possible and slow the construction of a crossing until more of her own troops could arrive.

Control of the stream was not likely to win the war, but it was a factor.

The enemy had the advantage in that their entrance to the forest was closer, and they should reach the stream first. Control of the forest might be key since the wells themselves were just past the northern edge. It was not critical for Kay's army since their plan was to approach from a different angle; however, it seemed that the opposition had elected to work from this venue.

The rule was simple: If an enemy wanted something, it was generally best to deny it to them if you could.

She heard the hum of gyroscopic motors in the ATVs before she heard the sounds of human engineers. They were at the stream, only a few minutes ahead of her, but they would have support infantry. Not too many, since the limits on combatants were strict, but at least a squad or two, maybe a platoon.

Kay slowed, moved more cautiously, heading for the first-choice spot she had selected on the recon of the area earlier. There were three good vantage points on her side of the stream, and if she could get the first, she would have the best field of fire.

The enemy had two men in the water swimming when she got to her spot, and those were her first targets.

She unslung her weapon.

The unit had computer-assisted-targeting sniper rifles, the CATs were accurate to a thousand meters, and you had to get in its way to miss a human-sized target as far as they could reach. The computer's cam could spot, ID, and paint a target with a tiny dot of light, and all one had to do was point in the approximate direction; the inbuilt gyros would hold the weapon rock-steady. It could be programmed so that you didn't even have to trigger it yourself—it would fire automatically as soon as it was lined up. It would seek the nearest target after that and repeat the process until all the targets were down or it ran empty.

On the other hand, CAT rifles were expensive, heavy, loud, slow, and their tactical choices weren't always correct. Sometimes the target selection was wrong—the computer didn't differentiate between a man with a gun pointed in your general direction and one dialed onto your heart.

Kay was not the best shooter in the unit, but she was certainly adept enough to use a manual weapon at short range effectively, and she trusted her sense of who to deal with better than she did the computer's. Always her choice when it came to machines. A gun might misfire, a claw was always there.

Cutter Colonel left it to her, and she had elected to use a lightweight carbine with a suppressor and simple-glass. At 150, it should be more than enough. She had ranged the sights in practice to this distance, it was a dead-on center hold, and the scope was preset for a cold shot at that range.

The first enemy soldier achieved the near bank of the stream, wading onto the shore, as Kay lay prone and lined up. His armor was minimal—it was hard to swim in Class IV—and even with the suppressor, the restricted hardball should punch through a standard trauma plate. He had his helmet off for the crossing, and she knew the round wouldn't be slowed much by his skull.

She lined the crosshairs up right between his eyes and stroked the trigger.

The sonic boom happened some meters in front of her.

The target's head blew apart.

Even as he fell, she swung the sights to cover the second swimmer, but he was quick and smart. He submerged, still five meters from the bank, leaving ripples in the slow-moving stream.

Kay adjusted the carbine. She knew which way the water flowed, and she had measured the speed. She reasoned that he wouldn't keep swimming toward her, and swimming against the current would take more energy and oxygen, so it made more sense for him to go downstream. He would want to get as far away as possible before he had to come up for air, then he would expose as little of himself as possible. Were it she, she would roll onto her back as she rose and put no more than her nose above the surface. She would have already exhaled, so all she'd have to do would be suck in a fast breath and backstroke herself down again, less than a second, and at best, that would be a nearly impossible shot for an expert. Taking off a nose wouldn't be useful in any event.

Shooting at a target underwater at this shallow an angle was a waste of ammunition. The bullet would skip across the water like a thrown stone.

The soldiers on the other side of the stream began making a lot of noise as they realized their swimmer had been shot. They would be seeking cover, but that didn't matter; from where they were, they weren't a threat unless they knew her position, and they didn't yet . . .

The second swimmer came up, and his mistake was that he didn't roll onto his back but stuck most of his face up.

Kay was almost exactly on target, a couple of centimeters off. She fired again, and immediately rolled to her left, five quick revolutions. She crawled quickly forward, then angled farther to her left.

Either they spotted the suppressed muzzle flash or backwalked it with spotting computer because her former position was raked with full-auto fire. The bullets chewed up the ground and bushes, but she was eight meters away and moving toward her second-choice location.

She didn't have to hit any more of them now, only make them keep their heads down and stop trying to build their bridge.

As she crawled toward the cover of a tree, she glanced at the water.

The second swimmer's body floated downstream.

Enemy troops were dug in.

She toggled her com on. No worry about them knowing she was out here now.

“On-station,” she said. “Enemy advance delayed.”

– – – – – –

“Park it behind that stone wall, right here,” Jo ordered.

“Sah.”

A meter-and-a-half-high wall of natural rock surrounded one of the larger houses, a two-story monstrosity that had boarded-up windows and part of the roof on one end collapsed. Somebody had tacked a gray tarp over the sunken section of roof, and there was a small garden planted to the rear of the place, rows of assorted plants, some of which bore green and red fruits or vegetables.

Stone wouldn't stop big artillery, but there wasn't going to be any big artillery, and it would keep small arms and machine-gun rounds at bay.

Singh parked the cart.

The other vehicles moved into their assigned locations, and within a minute, everybody had exited.

The grenadiers scrambled to their positions, and the two mortar teams hurried to set up.

Jo saw the enemy column approaching on the road from the other direction. They were moving fast but by now must know they were beaten. Jo saw several drones crisscrossing the sky over the enemy convoy, some of them theirs, some hers. As she watched, the drones fired at each other, and some shot at the vehicles below. Probably those were hers, but you never knew. Friendly fire—an oxymoron—was always a danger once the war went hot. Excited troops would sometimes shoot at anything that moved without worrying if it was their own.

“Mo?”

“Dialed in, Cap,” came the mortar-crew chief's vox.

The weapons had been preset to hit at a certain distance, and the flight time for the shells calculated in. In theory, as soon as the lead vehicle reached a predetermined spot, there would be an explosion waiting for it . . .

As she watched, however, the dozen vehicles on the road below began to split. Several of the smaller ones veered off the road and began evasive maneuvers across the flat dirt, kicking up clouds of dust. The leading vehicles stopped.

“Recalibrating,” the mortar CC said.

That would have been too easy, wouldn't it? That they would have just driven right into the hard rain . . .

On com, Jo said: “Who is running our drones?”

“Why, that would be me,” Gramps came back.

“I wouldn't be upset if you stitched that lead APC some before it gets to those oak trees.”

“Your wish is my command.”

He was dozens of klicks away, but that didn't matter; you could run a drone from halfway around the planet and then some—hardly any appreciable time lag at such short ranges.

Jo watched one of the drones bank and zoom to follow the APC bouncing across the scrub toward a grove of pin oak trees nine hundred meters south of the hill.

A second friendly drone peeled away from the air-to-air shooting to circle around from the opposite direction.

The lead drone's light machine guns blinked, the sound arriving a few seconds later, and the bullets thunked and spanged off the vehicle's top armor. It kept going.

“Help if you would hit the sucker,” Gunny said.

“I
am
hitting it, open your ears! It's the crappy low-powered ammo.”

The second drone came in from the front and opened up, and either clouded the windshield or busted it. The APC slewed to a stop in a mushroom of reddish dust.

“Gotcha!” Gramps said.

The drone went into a hover and continued to fire for a couple of seconds, but then a thin tracer line arced up from the ground below and connected with the drone, which blew up in a spew of fire and pieces.