The Mammoth Book of SF Wars (42 page)

Sula’s heart was thundering in her chest as it never had when confronting Sergius or Lady Mitsuko. Ideas flung themselves at her mind, and burst from her lips in not-quite-complete sentences.

“Place to park?” she said urgently. “Garage? Pretend to make a delivery?”

The answer was no. Parking was illegal, there was no garage to turn into, and all the businesses on the street were closed at this hour.

Casimir’s shoulder clashed with hers as he came forward to scan the scene before them. “How many?”

“I can see seven,” Sula said. “My guess is that there are two or three more we can’t see from here. Say ten.” She pointed ahead, to an open-topped vehicle run partly up onto the sidewalk, with a machine gun mounted on the top and a Naxid standing behind it, the sun gleaming off his black beaded scales.

“Macnamara,” she said. “That gun’s your target.”

Macnamara had been one of the best shots on the training course, and his task was critical. The gunner didn’t even have to touch his weapon: all he had to do was put the reticule of his targeting system onto the van and press the
go
button: the gun itself would handle the rest, and riddle the vehicle with a couple thousand rounds. The gunner had to be taken out first.

And then the driver of the vehicle, because he could operate the gun from his own station.

A spare rifle had been brought for Sula, and she reached for it. There was no spare suit of armour and she suddenly felt the hollow in her chest where the bullets would lodge.

“We’ve got two police coming down the line towards us. One on either side. You two—” she indicated the driver and the other man in the front of the van “—you’ll pop them right at the start. The rest of us will exit the rear of the vehicle – Macnamara first, to give him time to set up on the gunner. The rest of you keep advancing – you’re as well-armed as the Patrol, and you’ve got surprise. If things don’t work out, we’ll split up into small groups – Macnamara and Spence, you’re with me. We’ll hijack vehicles in nearby streets and get out as well as we can.” Her mouth was dry by the time she finished, and she licked her lips with a sandpaper tongue. Casimir was grinning at her. “Nice plan,” he said.

Total fuckup, she thought, but gave what she hoped was an encouraging nod. She crouched on the rubberized floor of the van and readied her rifle.

“Better turn the transponder on,” Casimir said, and the driver gave a start, then gave a code phrase to the van’s comm unit.

Every vehicle in the empire was wired to report its location at regular intervals to a central data store. The cliquemen’s van had been altered so as to make this an option rather than a requirement, and the function had been turned off while the van was on its mission to Green Park. An unresponsive vehicle, however, was bound to be suspicious in the eyes of the Patrol.

“Good thought,” Sula breathed.

“Here they come.” Casimir ducked down behind the seat. He gave Sula a glance – his cheeks were flushed with colour, and his eyes glittered like diamonds. His grin was brilliant.

Sula felt her heart surge in response. She answered his grin, and then she felt that wasn’t enough. She lunged across the distance between them and kissed him hard.

Live or die, she thought. Whatever came, she was ready.

“They’re pinging us,” the driver growled. One of the Patrol had raised a hand comm and activated the transponder.

The van coasted forward a few seconds, then halted. Sula heard the front windows whining open to make it easier to shoot the police on either side.

The van had a throat-tickling odour of tobacco and terror. From her position on the floor she could see the driver holding a pistol alongside his seat. His knuckles were white on the grip. Her heart sped like a turbine in her chest. Tactical patterns played themselves out in her mind.

She heard the footfalls of one of the Patrol, walking close. She kept her eyes on the driver’s pistol. The second it moved, she would act.

Then the driver gave a startled grunt, and the van surged forward. The knuckles relaxed on the pistol.

“She waved us through,” the driver said.

There was a moment of disbelieving silence, and then Sula heard the rustle and shift of ten tense, frightened, heavily armed people all relaxing at once.

The van accelerated. Sula let the breath sigh slowly from her lungs, and put her rifle carefully down on the floor of the vehicle. She turned to the others and saw at least six cigarettes being lit. Then she laughed and sat heavily on the floor.

Casimir turned to her, his expression filled with a kind of savage wonder. “That was lucky,” he said.

Sula didn’t answer. She only looked at him, at the pulse throbbing in his neck, the slight glisten of sweat at the base of his throat, the fine mad glitter in his eyes. She had never wanted anything so much.

“Lucky,” he said again.

She didn’t touch Casimir till they reached Riverside, when the van pulled up outside the Hotel of Many Blessings. Careful not to touch him, she followed him out of the van – the others would store the weapons – and then went with him to his suite, keeping half a pace apart on the elevator.

He turned to her, and she reached forward and tore open his shirt so that she could lick the burning adrenaline from his skin.

His frenzy equalled hers. Their blood smoked with the excitement of shared danger, and the only way to relieve the heat was to spend it on each other.

They laughed. They shrieked. They snarled. They tumbled over each other like lion cubs, claws only half-sheathed. They pressed skin to skin so hard that it seemed as if they were trying to climb into one another.

The fury spent itself some time after midnight. Casimir called room service for something to eat. Sula craved chocolate, but there was none to be had. For a brief moment she considered breaking into her own warehouse to satisfy her hunger.

“For once,” he said, as he cut his omelette with a fork and slid half of it onto Sula’s plate, “for once you didn’t sound like you came from Riverside.”

“Yes?” Sula raised an eyebrow.

“And you didn’t sound like Lady Sula either. You had some other accent, one I’d never heard before.”

“It’s an accent I’ll use only with you,” Sula said.

The accent of the Fabs, on Spannan. The voice of Gredel.

Lady Mitsuko signed the transfer order that morning. Transport wasn’t arranged till the afternoon, so Julien and the other eleven arrived at the Riverside station late in the afternoon, about six.

Sergius Bakshi had a long-standing arrangement with the captain of the Riverside station. Julien’s freedom cost two hundred zeniths. Veronika cost fifty, and the Cree cook a mere fifteen.

Julien would have been on his way by seven, but it was necessary to wait for the Naxid supervisor, the one who approved all the ration cards, to leave.

Still suffering from his interrogation, Julien limped to liberty, on the night that the Naxids announced that the Committee to Save the Praxis, their own government, was already on its way from Naxas to take up residence in the High City of Zanshaa. A new Convocation would be assembled, composed both of Naxids and other races, to be the supreme governing body of their empire.

“Here’s hoping we can give them a hot landing,” Sula said. She was among the guests at Sergius’s welcome-home dinner, along with Julien’s mother, a tall, gaunt woman, forbidding as a statue, who burst into tears at the sight of him.

Veronika was not present. Interrogation had broken a cheekbone and the orbit of one eye: Julien had called a surgeon, and in the meantime had provided painkillers.

“
I’ll
give them a welcome,” Julien said grimly, through lips that had been bruised and cut. “I’ll rip the bastards to bits.”

Sula looked across the table at Sergius, and silently mimed the word “ten” at him. He smiled at her, and when he looked at Julien the smile turned hard.

“Ten,” he said. “Why stop there?”

Sula smiled. At last she had her army. Her own team of three plus a tough, disciplined order of killers who had decided – after a proper show of resistance – to be loved.

THE PRICE

Michael Z. Williamson

Inevitably combatants get killed in war, yet some must choose their deaths …

Michael Z. Williamson was born and raised in the UK, then in Canada, then in the US. He served twenty-five years in the US military in engineer fields, in the Army and US Air Force, with deployments for Operation Desert Fox and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He retired in 2010. When not writing, he tests and reviews, restores and repairs, builds and collects firearms and edged weapons. He lives near Indianapolis with his wife Gail Sanders, a veteran US Army combat photographer, and two children who are studying languages, history and mathematics with the intent of world domination.

F
OUR
J
EMMA
T
WO
Three, Freehold of Grainne Military Forces, (J Frame Craft, Reconnaissance, Stealth), was a tired boat with a tired crew.

After two local years – three Earth years – of war with the United Nations of Earth and Space, that was no small accomplishment. Most of her sister vessels had been destroyed. That 4J23 was intact, functional and only slightly ragged with a few “character traits” spoke well of her remarkable crew.

“I have a message, and I can’t decode it with my comm,” Warrant Leader Derek Costlow announced. The crew turned to him. This could be a welcome break from the monotony of maintenance. Jan Marsich and his sister Meka, both from Special Warfare and passengers stuck aboard since the war started, paid particular attention. Any chance of finding a real mission or transport back to Grainne proper was of interest to them.

“Want me to have a whack at it, Warrant?” asked Sergeant Melanie Sarendy, head of the intelligence mission crew.

“If you would, Mel.” He nodded. “I’ll forward the data to your system.”

Sarendy dropped her game control, which was hardwired and shielded rather than wireless. Intel boats radiated almost no signature. The handheld floated where it was until disturbed by the eddies of her passage.

Jan asked, “Why do we have a message when we’re tethered to the Rock? From who?”

Meka wrinkled her brow. “That’s an interesting series of questions,” she commented.

“The Rock” was a field-expedient facility with no official name other than a catalogue number of use only for communication logs. The engineers who carved and blasted it from a planetoid, the boat crews who used it, the worn and chronically short-handed maintenance personnel aboard had had too little time to waste on trivialities such as names. There were other such facilities throughout the system, but few of the surviving vessels strayed far enough from their own bases to consort with other stations. “The Rock” sufficed.

They were both attentive again as Sarendy returned. She looked around at the eyes on her, and said, “Sorry. Whatever it is, I don’t have a key for it.”

Meka quivered alert. “Mind if I try?” she asked.

“Sure,” Costlow replied.

She grabbed her comm and plugged it into a port as everyone waited silently. She identified herself through several layers of security and the machine conceded that perhaps it might have heard of that code. A few more jumped hoops and it flashed a translation on her screen.

The silence grew even more palpable when she looked up with her eyes blurring with tears. “Warrant,” she said, voice cracking, and locked eyes with him.

Costlow glanced around the cabin, and in seconds everyone departed for their duty stations or favourite hidey-holes, leaving the two of them and Jan in relative privacy. Jan was family, and Costlow let him stay. In response to the worried looks from the two of them, Meka turned her screen to face them.

The message was brief and said simply, “YOU ARE ORDERED TO DESTROY AS MANY OF THE FOLLOWING PRIORITIZED TARGETS AS POSSIBLE. ANY AND ALL ASSETS AND RESOURCES ARE TO BE UTILIZED TO ACCOMPLISH THIS MISSION. SIGNED, NAUMANN, COLONEL COMMANDING, PROVISIONAL FREEHOLD MILITARY FORCES. VERIFICATION X247.” Attached were a list of targets and a time frame. All the targets were in a radius around Jump Point Three, within about a day of their current location.

“I don’t understand,” Jan said. “Intel boats don’t carry heavy weapons. How do they expect us to do this?”

“It was addressed to me, not the boat,” Meka replied. “He wants me to take out these targets, using any means necessary.”

That didn’t need translating. There was a silence, broken by Costlow asking, “Are you sure that’s a legit order? It looks pointless. Why would they have you attack stuff way out here in the Halo?”

Meka replied, “We know what the enemy has insystem. We know where most of their infrastructure is. If Naumann wants it taken out, it means he’s preparing an offensive.”

“But this is insane!” Jan protested. “The Aardvarks will have any target replaced in days!”

“No,” Meka replied, shaking her head. “It’s a legit order. All those targets are intel or command and control.”

Costlow said, “So he wants the command infrastructure taken out to prevent them responding quickly. Then he hits them with physical force.”

“OK, but why not just bomb them or use rocks in fast trajectories?” Jan asked.

Costlow said, “It would take too long to set that many rocks in orbit. Nor could we get them moving fast enough. Manoeuvring thrusters and standard meteor watch would take care of them. As to bombing them, they all have defensive grids, and we’re a recon boat.”

Jan paused and nodded. “Yeah, I know. And there aren’t many real gunboats left. I’d just like a safer method.” He asked Meka, “So how could you get in?”

“UN stations have sensor holes to ignore vacsuits and toolkits. Ships can’t get in, but a single person can.”

Costlow looked confused. “Why’d they leave a hole like that?” he asked.

“Partly to prevent accidents with EVA and rescue, partly laziness. They lost a couple of people, and that’s just not socially acceptable on Earth,” she said. “It’s the Blazer’s greatest asset to penetrating security. Systems only work if they are used. Back doors and human stupidity are some of our best tools.”