The Vastalimi Gambit (12 page)

“So there’s the deal,” Cutter said. “Proderic turned out TotalMart’s offer of a buy-off, and so we are good to go tactical and do something about them.

“We know where they are.” He glanced at Jo, who nodded. The caster she had planted was operational, and it said the cart was still parked at the base they’d uncovered.

Unless Em the Vastalimi had happened across her before she had hidden the bug, in which case it might have been left there on purpose. One had to consider such things.

“So I’m thinking we give them a fat and too-lightly-guarded target and see if they go for it.”

Around the table, the others nodded. That would enable the GCES.

The problem with private militaries was that the rules of engagement had to consider civilian authorities in ways that government-sponsored armies did not. ROE for a brigade going into a declared war were different from a corporate unit of fifty engaged with a similar force on an otherwise peaceful planet. You couldn’t just stomp in and kill them all without pissing off the local police. The GCES—Galactic Corporate Exception Statute—allowed a fair amount of leeway when it came to shooting at each other, but it was always better if you could show necessary self-defense.

We were, just, you know, escorting a convoy from here to there when the other guy’s forces jumped us, and we had no choice.

If you could document that with vids and a photon trail of orders and legal activity, so much the better. If you could show that you were also protecting civilians and locals? Better still.

So if you could lure the other guys into an attack you were set up to deal with? That was the way to go.

“The local military CO is stretched thin, not enough troops, and he’s looking to rise in ranks and leave soon, so as long as we don’t make too much noise or disturb the locals, we probably don’t have to worry about him. We’ll have to disguise troop egress, but we’d do that anyway. So let’s come up with bait. Kick it around, let’s meet again at 1800.”

They broke the meeting. Jo found herself with Gunny and Gramps, trying to lay out traps.

Singh was in the yard. Gunny had developed a fondness for the young man, and she looked at the others. “Can we give the kid a lesson?”

“Sure,” Jo said.

Gramps nodded.

Gunny waved Singh over.

He didn’t walk, he jogged.

Jo grinned, remembering when she’d been that eager to be involved in things.

“Ho, sahs!”

“Singh,” Gunny said. “We have ourselves a little strategic and tactical situation, maybe you might help us out with.”

Jo allowed her grin to linger just a moment more. Singh’s help would be, if anything, minimal, given the wealth of experience among the three of them, but if that’s how Gunny wanted to play it, that was okay.

Gunny said, “We are going to knock Masbülc’s dick into the dirt, but we want them to think it’s their idea.”

Singh nodded. “Yes, sah.”

“How you figure we should go about such a thing?”

Singh considered it. “Some kind of lure into a trap.”

“That’s good,” Gramps said. “What do you reckon would work?”

Singh thought about it some more. “Well, what they are after are those purple vegetables, yes? Either grabbing them or destroying them. So doing it at the source, in transit, or at the destination would be their choices. The source and destination are the most well guarded, so in transit. They have tried that and have been repulsed, but it is still the easiest of the three. Give them a convoy that is somehow vulnerable. What about shipping cargo by water? A barge up a river, a ship via a local sea? Such vessels are more constrained in their movement and easier to target, yes?”

Gunny grinned, like a proud mother at a bright child. “Why, that’s a good idea, Singh.”

Jo played along: “But won’t they suspect a trap?”

Gunny said, “Actually, we make the barge the decoy. It’s too easy, so they will suspect it’s a trap, and will look around to see what we’ll be covering up. Ah like it.”

Gunny said. “Remember Meko?”

Both Jo and Gramps grinned.

Singh looked blank.

Gunny said, “Meko was a guy we met during a dustup on New Java, a local, worked security at some entertainment arena. He was old—older even than Gramps here. Retired military. He liked to stop into the local pub where old Army guys or SoFs hung out for a beer now and then.”

Singh nodded.

“We got the story from the pubtender one evening after Meko had his one beer and left.

“Meko was quiet, laid-back. Average-looking, not real big. Nobody’d look at him twice in a crowd.

“He was a religious man, Ah don’t remember which one he was into—was he Hindu?”

“He was a Zarathustran,” Gramps said. “They are monodeistic, all about truth and order, as I recall. He always wore a little cap whenever we saw him.”

“Right. Anyway, he spent a fair amount of time going to his temple or church, whatever. One evening after the service, he was walking home, a trio of local thugs who’d been doing strong-arm robberies decided he was a viable target.”

Gunny said, “So they rolled up on him in a cart, hopped out, and gave him the speech, give up your money, or we kick your head in.”

Singh nodded. “I think I see where this is going. This was unwise, yes?”

“Oh, yeah. Meko was retired military, but not just any military, he’d been a blue hat.”

“A Ghost Lancer?”

Gunny grinned real big. “Yep. Ghost Lancer, a hand-to-hand combat instructor, and a veteran of scores of down-and-dirty campaigns. Uniform wasn’t big enough to hold all the medals and ribbons and patches he’d earned. Those kind of guys are tougher than a rhino-hide bag full of granite. You probably couldn’t pick a worse man to fuck with.

“Pubtender said there was a traffic cam or building security cam caught it. Three guys surrounded him, six seconds later, all three of them were on the ground in need of serious medical care. Two of them didn’t last until it got there, and it was wasted on the third, who croaked on the way to the hospital. Meko didn’t have a scratch.”

“And lo, order was restored,” Gramps said. “Amen.”

Singh nodded.

“Gunny’s point here,” Gramps said, “has to do with underestimating an enemy. Sometimes, best way to sell something is to let people sell themselves. If the Masbülc troops think they’ve figured this out on their own, if they believe they caught us hiding something? They’ll be more inclined to go for it.”

“I’m not sure I see the connection with the story of the Ghost Lancer,” Singh offered.

Gunny grinned really big. “Well, our old drinking buddy Meko? That benign look of his was an act. He liked to use his skills—you don’t get into the blue hats unless you are into serious violence. Since good predators can usually tell each other, something in the eyes, the way they stand or move, Meko went out of his way to look like he was prey. He walked a route where he knew there had been previous attacks. He pretended to be foolish, because an attack was what he wanted. A chance to keep the rust off.”

“Ah. Most devious.”

Gunny said, “Taking something at face value, making a snap judgment at first glance can get you into deep shit. Hip shots are faster, but aimed are more accurate.”

“Unless it’s Gunny doing the shooting, in which case it doesn’t matter,” Gramps said.

“Was that a
compliment
, old man?”

“Slip of the tongue. Forget I said it.”

They smiled at each other.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Kay called her sister. “How goes the investigation?”

Leeth said, “We have
Sena
sifting reports, investigating on the streets. It goes as well as it can, given how little there seems to be to it.”

“Anything of substance?”

“Not yet. Even if there was, I wouldn’t tell you. We don’t need an amateur getting in our way.”

“I am charged by our brother to look into this.”

“From the
medical
side. I represent the law, and my agents will handle matters
criminal
.”

Kay waited a beat, then said, “I see. Wink Doctor would have a word with you.”

“Really? Why?”

“I’ll include him in.” She nodded at Wink, who thumbed his own com to life.

“
Sena
Leeth,” he said. “I have some information you might find interesting.”

He told her about the street meeting. She listened without interrupting until he was finished.

“Well done, Wink Doctor. And compliments to you, Sister, for observing the letter of an agreement, if not the spirit.”

“‘Spirit’ is a nebulous term,” Kay said. “It means different things to different people. Do the
Sena
enforce the law or the spirit? If an adversary makes a foolish error, it is her concern, not mine.”

“True. You will keep me apprised?”

“That claw rips going and returning.”

There was a long pause. Finally: “We do have some leads, I can tell you that much,” Leeth said. “Skimpy as yet.”

“Such as . . . ?”

“Such as not enough to tell you until we have more. Will you teach the
Sena
how to follow a scent?”

Kay didn’t speak to that.

“There may be nothing here with this messenger, Kluth. Someone winding your stem just to watch you dance.”

“And maybe not.”

“Let me know if you are contacted by these people.”

“Not I,” Kay said. “Wink Doctor might feel a need to com you again.”

Leeth whickered.

They discommed. Wink said, “Your sister is tight-lipped.”

Kay shrugged. “It goes with the job. I will prod, and she will parry, I expect nothing else. If she and her agents can find the answer, no one will be more pleased than I—it will reflect well upon the
Sena
, and my sister’s victories are mine.

“But an answer must be found, and it might fall to us to be the ones to find it. We won’t ignore anything that crosses our trail if it might lead us to our prey.”

“So we sit around and wait to be contacted?”

“I think we won’t have to wait long. If they weren’t ready to talk, they wouldn’t have gotten in touch with me.”

Wink nodded.

Kay continued: “My sister will investigate the messenger who approached us. I expect that within short order, she will know who the messenger really is and where to find her. She will probably hold off on contacting her until we see if those who sent her have anything of substance to say.

“Leeth’s first loyalty is to the
Sena
and to law and order. She might be tempted to come along and hide in the bushes, to keep an eye on things.”

“Worried about her sister?”

“Maybe. But if it turns out this plague is Vastalimi-made, despite Leeth’s belief otherwise, she would position herself to catch the perpetrators. And I don’t want them frightened off. They were specific, no Shadows. Harder to track a bird flown than one on the ground. She doesn’t want us bumbling into the path of her investigations; that gate swings both ways.”

“Your show. But maybe I could leave a message that won’t be delivered until after the meeting is over? We come home in one piece, I cancel it. If not, it gives her a place to start looking.”

Kay considered it. “Leave such a time message for Droc but not for Leeth. He will be more circumspect in his actions, and if the time comes he feels the need for
Sena
, he can contact Leeth.”

“Got it.”

The trap was set, and the Cutters were about to spring it. It had been laid out using the basic idea Singh had offered: A barge was loaded with a secret cargo in such a way that any opposing military with half a brain and the barest intelligence unit could not have failed to notice it. As it left the dock headed downriver for a seaport five hundred klicks away, there was no air support, and only one boat with a few soldiers acting as escorts, an easy target.

Too
easy a target, and if the Masbülc mercs didn’t look at it askance, they’d have to be completely stupid. Cutter thought that they would upgrade their CO, and anybody worth his component elements wouldn’t be in a hurry to go for the bait. They’d look around.

The convoy of wheeled vehicles, for which more efforts had been expended to load and get it rolling secretly, was on the move, using narrow, back roads. The convoy had a few more guards, but not enough to stop any real effort to take it. And the work to keep it secret was enough, maybe, to convince somebody that was the intent.

They had sat down and worked it out to the nth detail, and their main force of ground troops, eighty strong, and just shy of the legal limit, was already in place. Cutter and his staff, with Singh, were taking a hopper to a hidden staging point. The attack, were it to be a surprise and successful, could only be launched through a narrow window, and that’s where CFI would be, waiting. If the Masbülc fly buzzed in, they would swat it.

Nancy, the best pilot they had, flew their hopper, and they kept it low and slow as they headed for the stage.

His field team wore shiftsuits, which gave them advantages, and the slow ride rocked them into a semidoze, at least it did Cutter. He wouldn’t be leaving the hopper, nor would Formentara; they’d be monitoring the action from there. He would rather be in the thick of it, but Jo was too good an XO to allow him to take the risk most of the time. Now and again, he could coax her into letting him into the action, but that happened less and less. He understood. Commanders were supposed to lead from the rear; getting killed was bad for the business.

Singh was a newbie but not totally green. He had gone with them on sorties on Ananda, demonstrated his courage and a basic skill, but he need seasoning, so they kept him close. After his initial action and kill, the team had talked about their first hot actions, mostly to help him get past it.

Eventually, most of the team had stepped up to tell their tales, then or later.

They had been interesting stories. Wink, Jo, Gunny, Gramps, even Kay. Cutter hadn’t heard some of them directly, but public spaces in his camps were usually under electronic surveillance. Say something in the yard, chances were somebody could hear it if they wanted to bother. Word got around.

Cutter hadn’t told his story. He hadn’t thought about it in a long time.

Not that he could ever forget it . . .

_ _ _ _ _ _

It had been his first time in the field after basic, so long ago and far away, a little police action against a private militia that had gotten too feisty and had started stepping on civilian toes.

Cutter’s light-infantry rifle platoon had been part of A company, with two other companies, B and C, set to surround a sixty-solider enemy unit and either capture or take them down.

Cutter was in Second Squad, run by an old sergeant, Ali Muhammad Ali. The ten-person squad was a mix of a couple of old hands and mostly newbies, and the platoon leader had been a shavetail second loot straight out of some university ROTC school who thought he was Robert E. Lee, George S. Patton, and Lead Foot Franklin McGruder all rolled into one. A man who used the words “glory” and “honor” a lot in much of his conversation.

Their assignment was to guard a narrow road leading from the main field of battle, and that would have been easy duty—the road bottlenecked between two old buildings just past a bridge over a narrow but deep river, there was plenty of cover, and all they had to do was line ’em up and knock ’em down if anybody tried to leave that way.

It was a cool fall day, but the trees still had most of their leaves, and Sergeant Ali set Cutter and the rest of his squad behind bullet-stopping brick and permaplast walls. Cutter was a rifleman, but set to feed ammo for the light machine gun being run by Corporal Omar, who was on his second tour.

The other two squads were placed, the com units seemed to be working just fine, and the main action was going to take place three klicks away, on the other side of a patch of woods, so probably, Ali said, they wouldn’t see anybody, and maybe not even hear much of the engagement. The militia was outnumbered, outgunned, and if their commanders had the sense Allah gave a jackboot, they’d surrender PDQ, Ali allowed.

Cutter figured their captain gave them the job because it was the least likely to get anybody killed, and he’d have been right, except that Lieutenant Savoy Oslo Brinkley—and yeah, it didn’t take the unit thirty seconds to latch onto the man’s initials—wasn’t content to do what he’d been ordered to do.

Thirty minutes after the push started, it seemed to be over. Ali had unauthorized access to the other two companies’ opchans, and he gave the squad a blow-by-blow.

Apparently, however, a dozen or so of the enemy managed a retreat to escape being captured, and nobody seemed quite sure where they had gone. There weren’t any sats footprinting the area, and a wind blowing through the trees messed up the motion sensors or some shit.

Lieutenant Brinkley, who shuffled about, but mostly stayed with the Third Squad, came to where Ali, Omar, and Cutter were.

“Some of the enemy combatants have escaped the net,” he said.

Ali, who already knew this, nodded as if it were news. “Sir.”

“I think we need to go collect them.”

Ali cast a quick glance heavenward—Brinkley didn’t catch it—and said, “Sir, if they come this way, we’ll have them. They can’t wade across that river, they’ll have to use the bridge, and come right up the road.”

“No, they could spread out along the riverbank there, and it would be hard to capture them.”

“Our field of fire covers that pretty well, Lieutenant. They won’t get far if they try that.”

“We want to capture them alive if we can, Sergeant.”

Ali didn’t say anything to that.

“They could be valuable sources of intel. So I think it best if we move across the bridge and set up in the woods, there and there.” He pointed.

“Sir? I don’t see what the tactical advantage would be—”

Brinkley cut him off: “That’s why
I’m
the officer, and
you
are the sergeant.

“First Squad will take the point, you will follow them, and Third Squad will bring up the rear.”

“Begging the lieutenant’s pardon, sir—”

“This isn’t a
discussion
, Sergeant Ali, it is an order. We move out in two minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

After Brinkley left to speak to the other squads, Ali offered a string of what sounded like Arabic curses. He shifted into Basic and ended with the phrase “shit-for-brains asshole photon-pusher who couldn’t find his dick with both hands!”

Cutter said, “Is this a problem for us, Sarge?”

“Nah, just a boneheaded move by a glory hound who wants to polish his brass. It won’t matter if we are on this side or that, thirty of us set against a dozen stragglers running to save their asses, we get them either way, but trying to capture them if they do show up might get some of us killed. Don’t matter what SOB says, if you see somebody and they point a weapon in your direction, you cancel their ticket, you understand?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“Good. All right, let’s get ready to move.”

First Squad was three-quarters of the way across the bridge and Cutter’s unit ten meters onto the structure when the shooting started.

Apparently, the remains of the militia were not interested in capturing anybody, and smart enough to know that an exposed bridge was a great place to kill your enemy.

First Squad dropped prone and returned fire, but they were wide open, and the militia had a light machine gun and somebody who knew how to use it.

Cutter saw half the men ahead of him catch rounds and go down, and the hosing kept on.

Cutter’s squad shot back, too, but all they could see were muzzle flashes—the militia troops were in the trees.

“Back it up, back it up! Move!” Ali yelled, as the deadly rain spewed past them.

Omar took a round in the throat and fell. Ali bent and grabbed his arm, and Cutter moved over to help—

There was a lot of noise, and time skewed crazily as men screamed and continued to fall.

The fog of war, they called it, insanity loosed—

They were all out in the open here, no concealment, much less cover, and they had to get off the bridge, or they’d get slaughtered—

“Keep going! Across the bridge! Keep going!”

Cutter looked to see Brinkley, waving them on with his sidearm.

Was he out of his fucking mind?

“Fuck me—!”
Ali yelled.

Cutter turned, and saw the sergeant go down. A splotch of spreading darkness appeared between the bottom edge of his dorsal armor and the hip plate, centered over his spine—

Cutter had a moment of tachypsychia: Time slowed to a crawl. Sound went away.

There was Brinkley, standing in front of him, waving his pistol. Men were going around him, like a stream around a rock, he was silently bellowing, trying to exhort the remaining members of the squads to go across the bridge, which was already blotched with the dead and dying, and each second more of them joined the fallen.

Brinkley lashed out with his sidearm, hit somebody across the side of the head, knocking him down—

Cutter looked at Omar and Ali. Omar looked dead, and Ali’s legs were paralyzed, he could tell. He let go of Omar’s arm and grabbed Ali’s armor handle and started dragging him—

—Brinkley was suddenly there in front of him, pointing his gun at Cutter.

Sound came back:

“—let him go, get back across the bridge! Now! Goddammit,
now
!”

Cutter had his left hand on Ali’s armor handle and his assault rifle in his right hand. He didn’t think about it. He reacted. He shoved the weapon forward and triggered it. The recoil rocked it in his single-handed hold, but he was so close he couldn’t have missed. The bullet ricocheted off the lieutenant’s armor just over his sternum and angled upward, hitting beneath the chin. The lieutenant’s helmet lifted from the impact as the round blew through his skull and pierced the helmet.

The man collapsed, brain-dead before he hit the deck.

He dragged Ali off the bridge, and one of the other sergeants got the rest of the platoon under cover.

Of the thirty troops, six were killed and twelve more wounded, but the remaining soldiers were enough to keep the enemy from risking the bridge.

Ten minutes later, Baker Company arrived and wiped out the militia.

In the hospital later, Cutter went to visit Ali.

“Hey, Sarge. Sorry about all this.”

“Are you kidding? I’ll be here three months while they knit my spine back together, feeling up the nurses, plus another three for rehab, and then two weeks leave with six months back pay. Me, I’ll be getting tanked and laid in a posh jukery while you and the squad are getting your asses shot off in some hellhole. Advantage: Ali, all the way.”

Cutter chuckled. “Right.”

“I owe you, Cutter. Lot of guys would have left me there.”

“Would you have been one of them?”

“Hell, who knows? Maybe, maybe not.”

“Listen, about the lieutenant.”

“That craphead snake-sucker? What about him?”

“Well, you know, how he . . . died.”

Ali looked him square in the eyes. “How he died was, he took an enemy round during the engagement. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving asshole, in my considered opinion.”

“Sarge—”

“No, Cutter, don’t say anything else. Maybe you didn’t see it, but I was looking right at him when it happened. It was an enemy round zipped across that bridge and took the man out, only thing it could have been.
That
is how it went down, you understand?”

Cutter nodded. “Thanks, Sarge.”

“For what? Send me a vid of them pinning the medal on you. You’re a hero, Cutter. You saved a lot of soldiers with your action. Not just me and the guys on the bridge, but anybody SOB would have commanded later.”

He hadn’t felt like a hero. He’d been scared shitless. But the next few days had been unlike any other. The air had been sweeter, food tasted better, and everything seemed brighter and more imbued with . . . something. He understood the phenomenon, of how almost dying made you appreciate what life had to offer. And it was a potent drug, that feeling. Battle was not glorious. But surviving it? That was.

_ _ _ _ _ _

It must have been in the air, the memories of first encounters with death. Cutter, half-dozing, heard Singh say something to Jo he couldn’t quite make out.

Formentara muttered something in return.

Jo said, “Excuse me?”

Formentara said,
“Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet.”

Cutter understood that one: Kill them all, God will know his own . . .

Singh looked at Formentara. “You aren’t a combatant. You don’t kill people.”

“Did I say that?”

They looked at hir.

“I’m not a soldier, that’s true. But that’s not to say I don’t have my own story.”

“Want to share it?” Gunny asked.

“Sure. Why the hell not?”

They waited expectantly.

_ _ _ _ _ _

“I grew up on Oceanica, in the big spaceport city Lalau. We lived in the slum district called Papauaa—that translates to ‘sty.’

“The summer I turned thirteen, I caught the attention of Limanui, the port’s largest flesh peddler.

“The man had three hundred whores working the streets and docks for him, and many of them had not entered into the work voluntarily.

“He was rich, and he was connected. He owned police, judges, politicians, port officials, even the local Army commander was in his pocket, and nobody in Lalau told him no.