Fire Base (Drop Trooper Book 6), page 11
Luz spun on me, his glare hard enough to warrant radiation shielding. Vicky didn’t even look my way, her eyes focused on Luz, her jaw clenched, feet stepping into a fighting stance. She was, I knew, about to try to kill him, and the gun holstered at his hip wouldn’t deter her. I wasn’t sure who I was there to save.
“Are you the sort who likes to watch his woman with another man?” Luz growled, hand hovering over the butt of his pistol. “If not, I suggest you find someplace else to be.”
Wow, talk about assuming the sale. I should have been enraged, I suppose, and maybe if I’d been married to anyone else, I would have been. But I’d spent a lot of years learning to control my rage and think through it.
“Mama Bindy wouldn’t like this,” I told him, and as I spoke, I took a step to the side, putting space between Vicky’s position and mine, making sure he wouldn’t be able to cover us both if he pulled that gun.
“Neither would Isabella,” Vicky added, surprising me, not that she was smart enough to figure it out from what I’d told her about Isabella, but that she was able to rein in her temper long enough to allow her to speak to the man at all. “She’ll have your balls if she finds out.”
Luz snorted a laugh, but it was forced, and I knew the warning had at least made him think.
“You think just because they’re women, they’d care about you, putang? Mama Bindy didn’t get to where she is by being soft and gooey on the inside.” He made a throat-slitting gesture. “I seen Mama kill a man with her own hands, gut him with a knife and watch the life go out of his eyes. They ain’t little old ladies knitting baby clothes, they’re fucking savages just like the rest of us.”
“But they’re women,” Vicky countered. “They’re mothers. And I know they aren’t fond of human trafficking.”
“And you can’t lie to Isabella,” I put in. “She reads people. She’ll know. Even if you manage to kill both of us right now….”
“And you won’t,” Vicky assured him.
“…she’ll still know it was you. And maybe she won’t have you gutted just like that guy you saw, but she won’t trust you. She’ll know you lied to her, went against her orders. And what’ll that do to your arrangement with the Tahni?”
His eyes had been flickering back and forth between us but at the mention of the Tahni they settled on me, narrowing, fingers wrapping around the grip of his Gyroc pistol. I thought maybe I’d gone too far and we’d have to try to take him out after all, but I pushed through, knowing I didn’t have much to lose.
“I know you gotta be getting a cut, right? You wouldn’t be so sensitive about the deal unless you were getting something under the table. No one wants to take that away from you. None of us want to horn in on your deal. We’re all cool with it. But if you give Mama Bindy and Isabella a reason not to trust you anymore, you’re taking the chance it’ll all fall apart. And what are you gonna do then?”
“Now, I’m good,” Vicky said, cocking an eyebrow, “but am I worth that kind of money?”
Luz’s fingers dropped away from the butt of his gun and his lips pressed together tightly, as if he was trying to hold words inside.
“Get that fucking truck fixed,” he snapped, then stalked out the door.
The air went out of me and I sagged, catching myself against the side of the cargo truck. Vicky was still watching the door as if she expected Luz to return, but she grabbed my hand and squeezed it.
“I don’t know how you figured out what was going to happen,” she said, “but thanks. If you hadn’t come along, I would have killed him…and then we’d be fucked.”
I kissed her on the cheek.
“You’re welcome. Let’s go get Cunningham. I don’t think that asshole is going to let him out.”
11
My eyes snapped open at the knock on the door and I cursed when I realized I’d fallen asleep in the chair across from the screen door. The Gyroc pistol was still in my right hand, but my fingers were cramped and I shifted it to my left and jumped to my feet.
It was light outside, but just barely. The grey light of dawn was creeping through the door, not bright enough to have woken us up on its own, but we were all awake now. Vicky tossed off the cover and slid off the other side of the bed, putting it between her and the door, while Wade rubbed at his eyes and pushed out of the corner, leaving behind the pallet of spare bedding we’d made for him there.
“Who is it?” I croaked, shaking out the fingers of my right hand and then transferring the gun back to it, since I couldn’t hit shit left-handed.
The door couldn’t lock, but we’d done our best, pulling the dressers from our room and Wade’s across it to give us some warning if Luz or his people came after us. It was a short-term solution, but those were all we had until we could figure out a way to get back to the spaceport and our suits. And we were lucky as hell to have the gun, for which I had to credit Wade for his foresight and paranoia.
When we’d turned our weapons over to Luz, Wade had kept the spare magazines for his pistol tucked into a jacket pocket. When he’d had the chance to pinch one of the Gyroc pistols from the Kurotong armory after yesterday’s debacle, we’d suddenly had a handgun again, even it was just one for the three of us.
“I got a message.”
It was a kid’s voice. I moved beside the door, just to the side of the dressers, and motioned for Wade to check the window. He edged up to it like a snake slithering around a tree and angled his head so that as little of it was possible was visible from the outside. After a second, he flashed me a thumbs-up.
“Give me a hand,” I told him, grabbing one of the dressers and pushing it away, the wooden legs scraping against the floor.
When I finally pulled open the door, a boy dressed in rags with hair down to his shoulders stood outside, a ‘link in his hand, extended toward me.
“He told me to give you this,” he said.
“Who?” Wade asked him.
“The tall man with the beard. He had scars on his neck.”
I shared a look with Vicky before I took the device from the child.
“Tip him, Cunningham,” Vicky said.
Wade made a face at her, but he fished a Tradenote out of his jacket pocket and tossed it to the kid. The boy vanished like he’d never been there and I pushed the door shut, let Wade blockade it again while I turned the ‘link over in my hand. The message light was blinking.
It was text-only, which was smart considering where we were, and I waved for the others to crowd around and read it with me.
You didn’t run straight to Kamara and rat me out, so it’s a deal. I expect that deposit you talked about. My account is attached to this message. You said you wanted my help. What am I supposed to do?
Weston got right to the point. I appreciated that in a criminal. Vicky and Wade were both staring at me, wondering what I was going to say back to the man. Fair enough, I was wondering that myself. I hesitated, my thumbs hovering over the haptic hologram of the keyboard.
We need a distraction so we can all get out of here and get to our suits, I told him. Can you have your people take a few potshots at the security on the main gate? Let’s say 48 hours from now, just before dawn in two days. Keep them occupied until we can get out, then take us to the spaceport. I’ll send you a message on this ‘link if plans change.
Wade blew out a breath, shaking his head. He didn’t like my plan, apparently, but I hadn’t heard him coming up with anything better. We waited in silence, huddled shoulder to shoulder, and when the reply came, I still nearly jumped in surprise.
Simple but not easy. All right. 48 hours.
“Oh, I hope this isn’t a bad idea,” Wade murmured.
The knock on the door could have been a grenade going off in the midst of us and I stuffed the ‘link in my pocket, spinning around to bring the pistol to bear.
“Hey, Earthers!” It wasn’t a kid this time. The voice was gruff, older, though not familiar.
“Yeah?” I responded, not making any move to open the door.
“Get your asses in gear. Mama Bindy wants to see you at the main house in ten minutes. Don’t be late.”
I kept the pistol aimed at the door until I heard heavy footsteps trailing down the stairs, signaling his departure.
“What now?” Vicky asked, shaking her head.
“I don’t know about you,” I told her, handing the gun off to Wade, “but I’m gonna brush my teeth.”
“In there,” the woman told us, one hand resting across the top of her slung carbine, the other jerking a thumb at the curtain hung across a doorway at the back of the room.
When, I wondered, did these people sleep? Or were we catching the tail end of the night shift?
The guard stared at us as we passed, the baleful gleam of a single lamp in a corner of the study reflecting off the golden ring in her left nostril. Her glare was heavy on my back, and I imagined she could see right through the material of my fatigue jacket to the Gyroc pistol tucked into the small of my back. It was a risk bringing it with us, but it would have been a bigger risk leaving it behind in our rooms. Or walking into what might very well be an execution unarmed.
“She’s not going to have us killed,” Vicky had insisted during the walk over from the guest house. “Not just on Luz being pissed off.”
“And how the fuck do you know what she’s going to do?” Wade had demanded, his voice taut as a guy-wire. “Unless I missed something, we met the woman like two days ago! She could have us diced and fricasseed and serve us for fucking breakfast for all you know!”
“Don’t panic,” I had told him. “She’s not a cannibal. I know, I saw the chickens.”
For some reason, that hadn’t brought Wade any comfort.
Mama Bindy didn’t have a stew pot in her office, but she did have Isabella…and Luz. The elder Kamara sat in a high-backed chair behind a table of polished basalt that served as her desk, while her daughter leaned against the wall to her right, dressed in something high-necked and flowing, much less revealing than what she’d worn to my room. Luz stood to the other side of the desk, arms folded, eyes couched in shadow, unreached by the glow of the lamp on the table.
None of them looked as if they’d just been roused from a sound sleep, as I was sure I did. Or maybe none of them looked as if they’d slept in a chair, in their clothes, holding a gun like a totem against the forces of evil.
“Close the door,” Bindy Kamara told me.
I glanced over my shoulder, surprised there was a door, since we’d walked in through a curtain, but it was propped open, wedged against the interior wall by a large chunk of volcanic rock. The stone looked too big for me to move, but when I nudged it with my toe, it rolled off to the side, much lighter than I’d thought, and the door swung shut.
“Mr. Cunningham,” Isabella said, “you look like a racoon.”
“It’s a fashion statement,” Wade told her. I grunted, unable to completely suppress the laughter trying to erupt from my chest.
“Sorry to drag you here before you have had your breakfast,” Bindy said, though she didn’t look at all sorry. “A situation has come up, something for which we could use your unique assets and talents.”
“You mean,” Vicky surmised, “you want us to blow shit up and kill some people.”
“Just so.” She glanced at Luz. “Your people discovered this; you should tell them.”
“You have heard of the Novya Moscva Bratva?” Luz asked. His demeanor was cool and professional, as if our confrontation in the garage had never happened. It worried the shit out of me.
“The words sound Russian,” I said. “But other than that, no.”
“They’re another of the cartels out here,” Wade put in, casting me a look of disgust as if this was something I should have remembered. It had probably been in one of the endless briefings he’d given us on the trip over, but a lot had happened since then and my brain tended to prioritize the shit that could get me killed the soonest. “Refugees from the old Russian Confederation who got relocated to Alaska after the Sino-Russian War. A bunch of them signed on with Corporate Council-run mining operations in the asteroid belt and fell in with the Belt Pirates when they wound up in debt over their heads. When Sanya Baretto rebelled against the Commonwealth and started the Pirate Wars, the bratva joined the cause and, when they lost, they wound up out here. Peboan, I think? Maybe Thunderhead too?” He shook his head. “I can’t remember.”
“Impressive, Mr. Cunningham.” Isabella nodded to him. “It almost sounds as if you were quoting an intelligence briefing.”
“I’m quoting an article I read on the indie nets on the way out here.” Wade almost sounded convincing, and I hoped the almost part was because I knew him and it wouldn’t make Isabella suspicious.
“Your article probably didn’t mention,” Luz said, firmly stepping back into control of the conversation, “that the bratva are being squeezed from both sides by La Sombra and the Rif cartel. They’re always looking to break out into new territory, somewhere they can gobble up new sources of income, and they’ve decided we’re it. They’re fucking vultures sitting on a branch waiting for us to die. Only they’ve decided they can’t wait any longer.”
He looked to Bindy for permission and, at her nod, traced his finger down a control built into the tabletop. A map sprang to life on the wall beside Isabella, projected over a painting of an old sailing ship. I could immediately see that it was a map of the nearby islands just like the one Luz had shown us in the bar when we’d first arrived. This time, one of them was already outlined in red. It wasn’t a volcano, either extinct, dormant, or live, which was the only significant thing I could tell about it from the map.
“This is Jolo. No one goes there, no one lives there, so no one picked up on this until recently.”
“Why?” At his annoyed glance, I expounded. “Why does no one live there?”
“No fresh water,” Isabella answered for him. “It’s not incredibly expensive to rig a desalinization plant, but it’s bothersome enough and there’s enough land available with natural springs that no one has gone to the trouble.”
“Until now,” Luz continued. “A fishing boat anchored for the night in one of the island’s coves spotted a hovercraft sitting inland, camouflaged. The crew was curious so a couple of them swam ashore and crept inland very carefully. They saw at least twenty men working under the cover of darkness, probably using night-vision, unloading weapons. Coil guns, missile launchers, small arms. And they heard them speaking Russian to each other.”
“How did they know it was Russian?” Vicky asked. If Luz had been annoyed before, now I could practically see the steam coming out of his ears.
“It’s a fair question,” Isabella opined, regarding the man.
“We get shipments from traders who were born among the bratva,” Luz answered, though he very clearly didn’t want to. “The fishermen recognized it from hanging out in the bar with the traders.”
Which, to my ears, didn’t even sound as convincing as Wade’s obvious lie.
“So, you think this is the bratva.” I motioned toward the map. “But why there? What are they gonna do from there? It’s not like there’s any of that Firefox stuff to steal since there’s no volcano there.”
“We don’t know that yet. And we’re not going to sit on our asses until we find out. They’ve moved into our territory, smuggled in, no doubt, by those same traders. And they’ve brought heavy weapons with them. We’re going to drop in on them with your cargo shuttle and you’re going to kill them, and then we won’t have to worry about why they’re here or what they want. They’ve intruded on our world and they need to be dealt with.”
And that, I thought, sounded as contrived as any rah-rah pre-mission speech I’d ever heard from some REMF colonel. Which didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Some people liked to hear themselves talk.
“No problem,” I assured them, clapping like we were breaking the huddle at a football game. “If you can give us a ride to the port, we’ll call our pilot to get the shuttle warmed up while we’re on the road, wipe those fuckers out for you and be back in time for lunch.”
Not only was it not a problem, it was also a Godsend. We’d been looking for an excuse to get back to the shuttle and find the Tahni, and this was a hell of a lot safer than having Weston attack the Kurotong compound. I was tempted to let him go ahead and attack the gate anyway, just on the off chance he might get himself killed. Even though Wade was sometimes not my favorite person in the world, I wasn’t happy about Weston breaking his nose.
“It’s not quite so simple,” Bindy cautioned me. “As much as Luz might dismiss the reasons for the bratva troops to be on our world, I would very much like to know the why of it, myself. You’ll be taking Luz and a few of his soldiers along and once you’ve eliminated the heavy weapons, they will land in your shuttle and interrogate whoever you’ve left alive.”
“Our shuttle isn’t a combat bird,” I said immediately. “It’s not meant for flying in under fire and it’s not equipped for touching down on an unprepared LZ. If you want Luz and his people on site, the better idea would be to send them in on a boat, or a hopper.”
“There’s no need for your shuttle to land,” Luz told me, unfazed by my objection, which should have been my first clue something was wrong. “It’s perfectly capable of hovering a meter or so off the ground. We’re hardy sorts here on Bathala. We can survive a meter jump.”
“It’s our bird,” Wade ground out. “We know what it can and can’t do. It’s not a military dropship and if one of those coil guns takes a shot at it while our pilot is trying to drop off some passengers, it’s so much scrap metal and we’re out hundreds of thousands in Corporate scrip and the only battle-tested combat pilot on the whole planet so far as I know.”
“It is what they do, Mama,” Isabella said quietly. “Perhaps we should listen to their counsel.”
“It is, daughter. But this isn’t merely about what is tactically correct.” Mama Bindy caught my eye and held it, and I found myself unable to look away, as if singularities lurked inside that dark gaze. “But you said you wished to be part of our family. This means more than simply acting as our mercenaries. Anyone can be a mercenary. To be part of our family means taking risks for us, sometimes risks you’d rather not take. And it means trusting that if you suffer loss because you’ve done as we asked, that we’ll make them good.”
