Ghost Ship (Gene Soldiers Book 4), page 11
Which suddenly appeared through the storm, dead straight at their six o’clock with the last mercenary. Their helmet visor was a complicated apparatus with breathing tubes, and they were waving what appeared to be some sort of spike-firing shotgun at them.
All three of the UTA Pillarmen opened fire straight ahead, and the pointed grills of the drone platform exploded with sparks. The mercenary was taken out in a heartbeat, and the platform flipped. It spiraled upwards over their heads—to disappear on the other side of the metal rock wall and explode with a whump that Carl could feel shake the ground that they were standing on.
Carl collapsed forward onto one knee, his senses feeling strangely raw after that intense and brutal fight. It happened like this sometimes. The WarDog chemicals left his body feeling drained and achy as they suddenly left his muscles and organs.
“The Palacian—where is she!?” Mendiata wasn’t so wearied, however.
“She took that mercenary platform! She made a run for it—probably to tell the rest where we are!” The specialist was stalking forward, her own rifle up and scanning back and forth into the murk of the sulphurous storm.
“She wouldn’t,” Corporal Katya was saying behind them all, defiant and scared. “She wouldn’t leave me, one of her own, behind.”
“You don’t sound so sure, Corporal,” Abrams muttered just as darkly as Mendiata. He picked himself up from the sand and stalked forward too.
“Eyes up!” There was a sudden shout over their open broadcast channel. The third and final drone platform, bearing Lieutenant Archer of the Palacian Close Combat Unit, surged through the storm to hang some seven feet over the sand.
Carl heard Mendiata hiss and Abrams snarl as he looked up.
To see that Lieutenant Archer now had a very large military pistol in one hand and a large dagger strapped to her thigh, both of which she had clearly liberated from the dead mercenary.
“Hey—no weapons!” Abrams started to shout as Archer lowered the platform to the sand in a flurry of dirt and flame.
“Bite me, big guy,” she snarled back at him, hopping off the platform to walk towards Katya and producing another gun from the back belt of her suit to hand over to her close combat soldier. She had clearly been busy ransacking the bodies of the other dead mercenary, too, Carl noted.
“Hey! What part of ‘no weapons’ don’t you get!” Mendiata was saying, already turning to cover them both with her rifle.
Carl saw Archer turning to look over them all, not paying any attention to the fact that Mendiata had a rifle pointed to the back of her head as she holstered her new pistol and oversaw Katya doing the same.
“I don’t understand how you expect us to pass for mercenaries if we’re not armed,” Archer said with a smirk. She turned to nod at the platform itself.
“That should just about have enough room to carry us to Folston. Or near, anyway,” the lieutenant said gruffly, walking casually past a bemused and surprised Abrams and Mendiata.
Carl, on the other hand, was starting to like her attitude. He slowly stood up and waited for Abrams’ nod to follow her onto the drone platform and forward to their rendezvous.
22
Folston Habitat, Maleka
Folston was a monster of black, pitted irons and steels straddling one of the rock faces of Maleka like an ungainly, fat-bellied spider.
“Sheesh,” Carl heard Mendiata whisper as the shape of the industrial platform rose before them. “I can see why you Palacians hate the place. It looks like the frack end of a miner’s ship.”
The sand storms and sulphur winds had finally died down across the planet, and now the air was a hazy, yellow fugue which turned the spotty flood lights of Folston into dim glares of light.
Carl could only agree with Mendiata’s review of the place. The larger platform levels of its body sat perched on and over the rock wall, with giant girder towers bracing it to the floor below. As the WarDog watched from the vantage point of his tight space behind the others on the drone platform, he saw small cable boxes lurching up and down the insides of those girder towers. They would wait for a second at the ground floor before a hatch opened, and they disappeared—or reappeared—going up and down.
“She’s an old mining platform,” Archer said, but it was clear that wasn’t all that she was. There were at least two landing platforms on her broad back clustered with tight-packed ships of all sorts of varieties, shapes, and designs. Outside, on the sand plains, was a hazy maze of metal container boxes—some relic from Folston’s past, which had formed de facto sand walls against the storms. On the inside, another landing space compound had been cleared and was home to more motley vehicles. Carl’s quick eyes spied mostly Palacian designs—outboard thrusters—but there were also quite a number of Alliance vehicles there too.
“Sir,” Carl whispered over his comms as he nudged Lieutenant Abrams towards the Alliance vehicles out there.
“We haven’t got any of our own out here?” he asked curiously, knowing that if there were Alliance vessels—even Alliance passenger or crew vehicles—then the place would probably come under the attention of UTA intelligence.
The large lieutenant gave a grunt. “If we do, then it’s not in my pay grade, Corporal,” Abrams said. He turned to fix the Alliance vessels with a scowl.
“Maleka is home to mercenaries from across the frontier,” Archer butted in, clearly having understood their meaning on the shared channel. “I know that it’s something the UTA doesn’t want to admit, but there were plenty of disaffected soldiers from UTA space after the last war.”
Plenty of WarDogs like me? Carl thought. He sensed how Abrams and Mendiata rippled with affront at the idea that any Alliance citizen would choose to share space with the Palacians.
“Traitors, all of them!” Mendiata snapped, throwing the insult as much at the Palacian lieutenant as she was at any possible Alliance.
Carl kept his mouth shut as his eyes lowered, and he looked away. He had spent the years after the last war on the run from his own side because of who he was. What he was.
The Pillarmen—the very UTA division that he was now a part of—had rounded up the genetically enhanced soldiers like him and disappeared them into “Rehabilitation” because they were deemed threats to the general population. Carl had been to Rehab himself and had discovered that it was actually the creation of the Exalted WarDog program. But back then, in the years between the wars, Carl had heard plenty of scare stories from his old WarDog community, and he had heard plenty of tales about people who decided to escape into the lawless frontier space.
“What’s our entry plan?” Carl heard Abrams saying as their platform neared. Carl was intensely aware that they were on a stolen platform and that there might even be friends of the owners of their stolen ride out there somewhere.
“Folston isn’t like your Alliance spaces,” Archer said a little derisively. Carl wondered if there was still some element of possessive pride here, even of this outlaw colony, from the Palacian lieutenant.
“It doesn’t have guards or entry codes linked to your citizen ID,” Archer said. She glided the drone platform down the avenue before the lower landing pad and towards the first of the lifts. Up this close, the lift itself turned out to be huge, big enough for fifty people inside, easily.
“It doesn’t even have security cameras,” Mendiata remarked as they drifted to a stop beside other containers and bits of old engines. Figures hurried past them inside their own encounter suits.
There weren’t many people out here on the surface, but they all had the look of mercenaries or smugglers—encounter suits that were well out of date, patched, and remade out of other suits—some even ex-military gear.
“And cloaks,” Carl heard Mendiata saying with a groan at the few figures hurrying past them with what appeared to be voluminous capes of old canvas webbing half wrapped around their bodies.
“You can always tell a backwater frack hole from its level of cloaks,” Mendiata muttered as the company got off the drone platform and started towards the lift.
Carl felt his back teeth itch as soon as he set foot on the sand and turned to see the odd assortment that they would be traveling with. Lieutenant Archer had been right. There were no guards—and not even any floating drone cameras or surveillance devices anywhere near the entrance to Folston. The lift they were about to jump in was already half full of a selection of mercenaries and toughs, some carrying plastic crates and containers from their ships landed on the ground, clearly intending to bring them into the platform station above.
Each of the other smugglers and exiled around them had that almost-casual demeanor that Carl remembered from his time on the run. I spent plenty of time in circles like this, the Exalted WarDog remembered. Usually they were just figures and faces in dive joints and bars, or else those lurking on the peripheries of loading docks and equipment stations: men and women who were willing to turn their hand against almost anyone in order to survive or to make a buck.
They appeared nonchalant, casual, but there was no affirming nod of recognition that you got among civilians or military personnel, Carl recognized. Here, everyone was trying to tell everyone else that there wouldn’t be any trouble if you didn’t look for it, but if you did . . .
Carl saw Abrams’ stiff-backed stance at the end of the lift as it suddenly lurched and started hauling upwards towards the belly of Folston Habitat itself. Like the rest of the tech around them on Maleka, it appeared to work on a system of patches and fixes, luck and a fair degree of good wishes.
Carl’s senses were still jangling as they moved, and he was aware of the sideways turns of the other mercenaries and inhabitants of Folston around them. They weren’t planning anything, but he saw one gloved hand casually leave the grab handle for the container and rest near a pirate’s belt, dangerously close to the handle of their heavy pistol.
Don’t . . . Carl thought, turning his body in an easy step so that he was facing the would-be aggressor. The Exalted corporal didn’t have to say anything, but he allowed the man to see the size and weight of his combat suit and his heavy rifle.
This is all easy, man, right? he thought to himself, as the pirate quickly looked away. The air of threat didn’t decrease, but Carl was confident that it was just a show of teeth from those around him.
We’re way better equipped than you, Carl thought before instantly wondering what this would mean when the rest of Folston knew that too. In company like this, strong people were usually tested.
There was a sudden rush of sand-laden air and an abrupt fall of shadow as their lift moved up into the loading airlock above, and they found themselves in a tight chamber just a little bit bigger than the lift itself and lit by an irradiated orange light. The automatic cleaners of the Folston airlock flushed as their suits were blasted with a high dose of radiation—meant to destroy any pathogens that had somehow survived the outside environment. Then there was the hiss of atmosphere as the lights changed to sodium yellow, and the double doors opened onto their first view of the pirate platform itself.
“Eyes up!” Abrams breathed. All at once, their microphones were filled with the hammer and jammer of a busy loading port.
The lift was one of two that opened out onto the widest bottom level of the platform, a wide space with the bottom level filled with storage blocks and engineering shops. A higher avenue stretched around three sides of the level, occupied with shops, booths, and outfitters. It was busy and packed with figures and machines—from loaders to gangs of people hanging around booths listening to glitchy strains of music. Illegal smokes filled the air, and the noise of harsh laughter, urgent calls, and even harsher arguments warred for attention.
“Too many!” Mendiata hissed immediately. They stepped forward into the press and throngs of people, who naturally formed drifting rivers of human flotsam pushing their way through to whatever their criminal destinations were.
Carl understood at once what she meant. Abrams and Mendiata were already fragmenting ahead of Lieutenant Archer and Katya with him at the back struggling to keep up.
“Suit identifiers,” he said quickly as he flickered a hand gesture to turn his own on, trusting that their suit scanners would keep holographic triangles hovering over the members of their team—even the Palacian newcomers—despite the fact that they were becoming separated. Even with this technology, it didn’t give Carl a feeling of relief. There were simply too many people around him that he couldn’t trust. His eyes danced through his visor helmet at the assembled throng as he dared any of them to make a move on him.
“Where is this Hive of yours, Lieutenant!?” Abrams growled over their shared suit channel. They were all still wearing their helmets up, even though most of the other inhabitants of Folston here were enjoying the breathable atmosphere of the rebel platform. Carl could feel the eyes starting to seek them out, alighting on the five fully armored people moving through their midst.
They’re wondering what crew we’re from, what ship . . . Carl thought. In a place like this, there were a lot of new faces coming and going, he surmised, but there would also be a lot of general knowledge and rumors about which ship had docked, which other was coming to land, and just who was the meanest crew around.
How long before someone here finds the Pegasus out there? And they recognize that the Pegasus is a UTA military vessel? Carl was thinking as Archer responded to Lieutenant Abrams’ question.
“Working on it, big guy,” the Palacian lieutenant was saying. “First level.” Carl saw her identifier icon—but not the woman herself—suddenly veer through the crowd and towards the nearest set of steps. She and Katya pushed their way up as Abrams, Mendiata, and finally Carl struggled along behind.
“Where is she . . . ?” Mendiata growled under her breath. “I don’t see any Hive up there!”
Carl raised his head to confirm that he, too, couldn’t see any joint called the Hive on that part of the upper level, but he did see Archer gesturing to one of the small gangs of mercenary types standing by the railing, a party of three: one older man and two younger women. She closed with the older and clicked open her visor.
“What is she doing!?” Mendiata snarled, attempting to push ahead through the crowd and up the stairs to get to them, but the press of people was too much, even for her in her full armor.
“She’s talking to the local guide! Calm down!” Katya, a few steps behind her own lieutenant, hissed back. Abrams murmured for Mendiata and Katya to wait down here.
After a few moments, Carl could see Archer concluding her conversation with the older guy. With another wave of her hand, she supposedly deposited credits into her account.
“Fire and fury!”
Even among the noisy throng around them, the many voices and the clanks of loading material, the words of the old WarDog mantra cut through to Carl’s ears like a bullet leaving a rifle.
“Huh!?” He spun on his heel, earning a disgruntled snarl from the nearest people around him as he searched for the bark of a voice that had met his suit’s pickups. Had he been imagining it? Or was it a trick of his memory?
“Sebastian, Corporal—move out!” Abrams was snapping at him. Carl’s eyes searched the crowd to find just more of the same people, no one shouting at him long-dead military slogans.
“Corporal!?” Abrams and Mendiata were halfway up the stairs already as Carl felt the back of his teeth itch, which was usually the first sign of his body registering threat.
But there was threat everywhere here, Carl told himself. There were figures looking at them, cold-eyed figures and faces that were registering their full encounter suits. But no one was waving at them or making passing references to WarDogs, mutants, gene soldiers, or the Exalted.
“Come on, Corporal, step lively. We can’t hang around!” Abrams was saying as Carl shook his head, turned, and made his way behind the others in the direction that they had been guided towards.
23
Elsewhere in Folston Habitat
“And you have your men in place?” said the small holographic image of Lord Vareilla as he attempted to lecture the brown-haired, wolfish-looking man with a three-day scatter of stubble across the lower half of his face. The man’s name was Jode Tine, and he was well known in these parts as the pirate mercenary captain of the Maleka Reavers, one of the most fearsome pirate outfits in the Palacian part of frontier space.
Jode had placed his most trusted guards at the intersections to give him some peace in his conversations—the mercenary pirates had their rifles braced in front of them and clearly looked ready to enforce their captain’s wishes.
This conversation was occurring somewhere in one of the many crowded nooks and corners of the Folston Platform Habitat. In a more official habitat in either Palacian or Alliance space, such a conversation would have required encrypted security booths, perhaps entire suites dedicated to its secrecy. But not here in Folston, where many sketchy deals and nefarious activities were planned and created.
“You leave me to my side of the operation, you hear, Vareilla?” the wolfish-looking Jode said. “We got eyes on your man. The general. And the others.”
“Others?” Vareilla said, his hologram glitching back and forth as the signal through the metals of Folston and the sulphurous atmosphere broke and reconstituted.
“Yeah, the soldiers coming for Greer. They arrived in Folston not even an hour ago. Stuck out like a sore thumb,” the mercenary said.
“Really?” Vareilla’s form froze as he tapped his chin. He looked questioningly off camera.
“Well, no time to change plans now. Probably defectors that Greer convinced to turn traitor with him! Take them all. Keep them together,” Vareilla announced sharply.
“Extra five thousand credits per head,” the mercenary captain smiled.
“Five thousand!? How many are there? Who are they—royalty?” Vareilla’s speech came back a few moments later. The drag, even with the fastest and most advanced technology available, was still frustrating.
