He
nodded.
“I
can live with it,” she said, standing.
“I’ll start rounding up a crew.
The usual wages won’t attract anybody.”
“Tell
everyone it is a high-risk mission,” Fenaday said, “with an extremely good
chance of not coming back.
No details,
don’t mention Enshar.
It will get out
eventually, but I don’t want to deal with the press if I can avoid it.
Tell them it pays a hundred thousand credits
for able-bodied spacemen and twenty-five thousand more for every grade over
that.
It goes to their dependents if we
don’t come back.”
She
blinked.
“We have that kind of money?”
“Yeah,
but on a very short leash, otherwise we’d be lifting for the Fringe at maximum
delta-v.
We are not dealing with fools.”
“Be
nice,” Shasti sighed, “if it was easy once.
Just once.”
“Where’s
the fun in that?” he asked
Shasti
gave him a mock glare, shaking her head.
“Standard humans,” she muttered.
Chapter Five
Shasti
and Fenaday spent the next thirty-six hours looking through the low places of
Marsport for their crew, trolling through bar after bar and less savory dives
and flophouses.
Sidhe
was crewed normally with two hundred-fifty spacers and her
own Landing Expedition and Assault Force, nicknamed the LEAF.
Fenaday wanted a full contingent of ground
fighters on this trip.
He’d need fewer
regular crew, since they’d carry no cargo or trade goods.
This was a military mission, and Fenaday
planned to take as few to death with him as he could.
As for Mandela’s people, they were not his
responsibility.
Fenaday
finally located Carlos Perez,
Sidhe’s
chief engineer.
Ironically, he found him
in Luchow’s, where Fenaday had carried his own sorrows the day before.
His wife had already thrown him out.
Again.
Fenaday explained about the upcoming voyage.
“Sounds
like a suicide mission,” Perez said, dark eyes blazing.
“That is exactly what I want, provided
La Bitch
gets nothing in the event of my
death.”
Fenaday clapped him on the
shoulder and sent the engineer back to the ship to start coordinating repairs
and maintenance.
Moshe
Karass, pilot of the shuttle
Banshee
,
was maintaining Marscabs in a garage.
Karass was one of the few of Fenaday’s crew in whom he had much
faith.
The Israeli was a good pilot and
loved spacing.
Karass looked pleased to
see him.
He wiped his hands on a rag
before shaking Fenaday’s hand.
“Hey,
skipper,” Karass said.
“What’s the good
word?”
“There’s
work, Moshe.
It pays four hundred
thousand credits for a top pilot but I can’t recommend it.”
Moshe
whistled in astonishment.
“Four hundred
thousand credits?
Where are…never
mind.
If you could tell me, it wouldn’t
pay such a mint.
Well, I’m no closer to
getting a decent spacing job.
Pan
World’s frame job on me for that moon shuttle collision is still fresh in the
minds of prospective employers.
My only
way back into space is with you.
If we
live, I’ll have enough money to clear my name.”
“Okay,
Moshe.
Get down to the ship as soon as
you can.”
Meanwhile,
Shasti had found most of her LEAF troops in bars or jail cells.
Some were working as leg breakers, bouncers
and such.
A few had found respectable
work; those she left alone.
This
mission was suicidal and only the desperate, or those they desperately needed,
were invited.
One of
the respectable turned up at the ship anyway.
Shasti
looked down from the gantry to see a familiar, tall shape, striding between
lines of supply carts.
“Johan,” she
muttered to herself and took a work elevator to the ground.
Johan
Gunnar had served in the LEAF with her since she arrived on
Sidhe
.
He’d landed a job with a shipping warehouse as a manager.
Glad of it, she’d not contacted him.
He
smiled when he saw her open the elevator cage.
“I hear there’s a mission,” he said, his eyes level with Shasti’s.
Breath steamed from his breather unit as it
whiffed O2 to him.
“I
heard you had found a job already,” she replied.
“Bah,”
he growled.
“A few days behind a desk
and I begin to think death might be preferable.”
“You’re
being a fool,” Shasti said.
“This is a
voyage for the desperate and the damned.”
“You’re
going,” he said, “that’s good enough for me.”
“I
qualify on both grounds,” she snapped.
“My
choice,” he shrugged.
“For my own
reasons.”
“As you
say,” she said, “your choice.”
Angry for
reasons she couldn’t quite understand, Shasti spun on her heel and left.
She
spotted Fenaday by the front landing jack.
As usual he had a preflight list in his hand.
He and their tactical officer, Katrina “Cat”
Micetich, were talking to an engineer and pointing at the immense jack towering
over them.
Fenaday spotted her and waved
her over, handing the comp to Micetich, who walked off with the engineer.
“What’s
our status on ground troops?” he asked, adjusting his breather and zipping his
leather jacket.
It was bitterly cold in
the ship’s shadow.
“Pickings
have been better than I expected,” she said, putting Johan out of her
mind.
“With the war over, the economy
lousy, there are lots of hard cases available: LURPS, Commandos, and Air Space Assault
Team troops.
Mars seems full of people
with little concern for life and hungry for money.”
Shasti knew the type too well, having been
raised from childhood as an assassin in the Denshi Order on Olympia.
She’d developed an eye for the good, for the ones putting up a front and
for the plain crazy.
She made her picks,
hoping she read people—standard humans as she thought of them—correctly.
Fenaday
grimaced, “Great.
Well, the contractors
showed up an hour ago and began the most extensive maintenance
Sidhe’s
ever received.
I’m glad Mandela’s footing the bill for
it.
We’ll have shipwrights around the
clock.
I’m having them pay particular
attention our shuttles and fighters.”
Something
tickled Shasti’s senses and she turned away from him.
In the distance, just coming around a machine
shed, a group of people came into view.
Fenaday’s
stepped forward to stand next to her, eyes narrowed.
“What’s that?”
“Must
be Mandela’s contingent.
About fifty of
them,” Shasti said.
“I
wish I knew how you do that,” Fenaday muttered.
“Just
rely on it that I can,” she replied.
The
group passed the gate to
Sidhe’s
launch pad, led by another forgettable individual.
“I do
like punctuality,” Fenaday said.
“Let’s
go meet the latest members of the legion of the damned.”
Shasti
nodded, trailing him in her customary position to his left and slightly behind,
opposite his gun hand.
Shasti shot
equally well off either her left or right.
*****
They
walked over to the loading platform in silence.
Fenaday waited, trying to look relaxed as the newcomers came up to
them.
A breeze from the terraformed
desert tugged at his brown hair, he shivered again then put on a cap bearing
his ship’s name and identification numbers.
A
nondescript man came forward, the group pausing behind him at a hand
signal.
He walked up to them
slowly.
“Good morning, Captain Fenaday,
Commander Rainhell.”
“Just
Rainhell,” Shasti said, she didn’t look at the man,
her
eyes searched the people behind him for any threats.
“Who
are you?” Fenaday asked.
“Mr.
Gandhi,” he replied.
“Mandela sent me.”
Fenaday
grinned mirthlessly.
“Your boss has a
hell of a sense of humor.”
“I
assure you that you have no idea.
Be
glad of it.
I’m bringing you the
promised help, all sworn to secrecy, of course.
A damn sight better than anything you’re likely to find.”
Gandhi turned and waved at the group.
A small woman, bundled in an ankle-length,
blue Marscoat, led five other people up to them.
“This
is Dr. Shizuyo Mourner,” Gandhi said.
“She has a Ph.D. in Enshari biology.
Dr. N’deba, also an MD and familiar with Enshari biology, Dr. Fierman,
Dr. Hecht, their assistants Yamata and Vashti.”
“Pleased
to meet you,” said Mourner, a woman with an intense, almost predatory
look.
“In case you’re wondering, I agree
with Mr. Duna’s speeches.
No Enshar
homeworld, no Enshari.
I’d hate to see
my specialty become a study of corpses.”
“You
come on this voyage,” Fenaday replied, “you’re apt to end up a corpse
yourself.”
Ignoring
her shocked look, Fenaday turned to Shasti.
“Call Quartermaster Dobera to the dock.”
“Dobera
will see to getting you settled on board, Doctor,” Fenaday said.
“Afterwards, he’ll show you the Sickbay.”
Shasti
popped out a pocket com and relayed the order.
The medical party walked to the place Fenaday indicated.
A
group of five advanced on Fenaday and Shasti.
They were enough to startle even a seasoned traveler.
The man was about Fenaday’s age, though
taller and gaunt.
Half his face was
covered with a ceramic and metal skullcap that included a prosthetic eye.
Most such surgeries were far less obvious and
Fenaday wondered why the man wore the disfiguring headpiece.
Then Fenaday looked more closely at the man’s
companions.
They were HCRs—Humanform
Combat Robots—inventions of the closing days of the war.
The filament hair they used for transmission,
ECM and cooling was long and gave them a feminine look.
Actually,
he thought after a few
seconds,
they don’t look all that
female.
It’s a first impression.
The machines stared back at him with doll’s
eyes.
They wore black jumpsuits,
identical, save for a color strip running sash-like across the chest.
Their
human controller strolled up.
“Kyle
Mmok,” he introduced himself, ignoring Gandhi, who returned the favor.
He introduced his team, “Cobalt, Verdigris, Magenta and Vermilion.”
Rather
horribly, the robots bowed as he called their name-colors.
Worse, Magenta curtseyed.
A sardonic smile passed over Mmok’s pale
face.
Belatedly, Fenaday realized Mmok
was communicating subvocally.
He
probably had almost as much machinery in him as the HCRs.
“I
have thirty crab-style assault robots and a half dozen general purpose models
in a warehouse nearby,” Mmok continued.
“We all come combat tested on Conchir itself.
Isn’t that right, girls?”
They
nodded in unison.
Fenaday
kept his face a mask, though the HCRs raised the hair on the back of his
head.
“Wonderful act.
I didn’t realize there’d be a floor
show.”
Fenaday gestured to the spot
where Dobera and Mourner stood.
“Over
there.”
Mmok
nodded without looking at him and moved on.
Dobera,
a Frokossi of about middle height for his reptilian people, stood by the first
group, scratching a clawed hand over his head.
He held a portable computer.
Mourner pointed to something on it, doubtless looking at details of the Sickbay.
Two of Dobera’s assistants showed up.
One went over to Mmok, looking somewhat
nervously at the HCRs.
Gandhi
introduced an array of shipwrights and engineers whose names Fenaday didn’t
bother about.
He’d get the list later
from Dobera.
Before Gandhi finished
another group showed up.
Twenty-two
ground troops, in black and green Air Space Assault Team uniforms, followed a
tall, lanky human and an ape-like Morok.