Master Sergeant Page 7

  “They probably do. These ‘deserters’ were probably chosen just for the purpose they’re serving.”

  “They are. There are chem cookers working out in the jungles, brewing up mindblowers for the civilians, guys in our unit who use—though we weed them out when we find them—and Makaum people who decide to be more experimental in their recreation.”

  “Business is good for those folks, I take it.”

  Terracina nodded and smiled unhappily. “All these biopirates here ripping off plants and local medicine savvy, you’d think they wouldn’t have enough time to start up a homegrown drug franchise.”

  “Maximizing profit potential through an available on-site revenue stream.” Sage had seen that happen before on other worlds.

  “The corps probably look at it that way. The thing is, busting the drug suppliers isn’t the greatest danger.”

  “Then what?”

  “The contraband seeds and plants they bring in to do their business present a lot more problems and potential for disaster. We spend more time doing slash and burns around a drug camp than we do putting the operators down. Some offworld plant gets loose in the environment without a natural predator in play, it can take over and destroy some of the food chain. We’ve already had to go after some environmental disasters. Here and there, you can find burnouts we’ve staged where nothing grows. And nothing probably will for years.”

  “The corps don’t care?”

  Terracina shook his head. “They’re here to make money, steal what they can’t buy, and leave as soon as they’re done. They don’t have a long-range plan. Sooner or later, all good things come to an end. You follow a corp’s back trail, you can find a lot of planets that have been cherry-picked. Most of them never recover, and when they do, the corps come back in to suck it all dry again.”

  A trio of bashhounds entered the café. They strode confidently into the room and talked in loud voices as they took a table off to the side. One of them saw Sage, and Sage thought he recognized the guy from the previous night.

  Throwing Sage a mocking smile, the bashhound made a gun with his forefinger and mimed shooting, then blowing smoke off the barrel.

  Terracina nodded toward the bashhounds. “Looks like you’ve already got a fan club.”

  Sage didn’t reply.

  “You know any of these guys?” Terracina nodded at the soldiers sitting at the surrounding tables. The tension in the air had shot up by degrees.

  Sage didn’t bother looking around. He didn’t know anyone on Makaum. Most of the soldiers he’d gotten to know during the last training session were on the front lines. Where he should have been. “No.”

  “Then I’d suggest getting to know a couple of them. Somebody that will have your back when you’re in the DMZ. A guy who drinks alone out here and has enemies? They usually turn him to mulch for one of the Makaum gardens.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  AFTER THE MEAL, which Terracina paid for, they returned to the crawler. The bashhounds watched them leave the café, but nobody said anything. They studied Sage, though.

  The city looked different in the moonslight, darker and layered in shadows. The air hummed with the sound of insect wings. Darting bodies, some of them longer than Sage’s arm, flew through the streets.

  “Welcome to the nightlife.” Terracina chuckled. “If you think there’s a lot of bugs in the daylight, it gets worse at night. Those things big as your arm? They’re elhtho. That’s Makaum terminology, though. The grunts were already calling them hellbeetles when I got here. Don’t know who came up with the name, but it fits. They’re carrion feeders for the most part, vegetable and animal, but they’ll take a bite off someone living if they get hungry and get the chance.”

  One of the hellbeetles hovered less than a meter away, turning its ugly face on Sage and Terracina. The thing’s proboscis was at least twenty centimeters long and looked as sharp as a knife. Its wings drummed the air so fast they were invisible and the humming was so loud it felt like a physical blow.

  “Those things are dangerous. Most things on Makaum are. A hellbeetle’s proboscis can penetrate body armor. Not very far, but far enough. You go down, get enough of them on you, your life expectancy drops to minutes as you bleed out. You don’t have battle armor on, you can cut that time down to less than a minute.” Terracina whipped out the fighting baton at his hip, telescoped it with a flip of his wrist, and crushed the hellbeetle’s head into mush.

  The dead creature dropped to the ground.

  Terracina kept the baton in his hand, then took a button-sized device from his vest pouch. “Need to give you this. Clip it to your shirt collar when you’re out of your armor.”

  Sage took the small device and slipped it into his chest pouch. “What is it?”

  “Ultrasonic generator. We call them whistlers. The bugs don’t like the frequencies.” Terracina led the way to the crawler. “One button is good for twelve hours. There’s a bin back at the post where you can toss it so it can be charged again. You wear them during the day, they power up from solar energy or from your armor.”

  “Also marks you for anybody who knows to look for the ultrasonic frequencies. Even with a rolling frequency, a tech-savvy opponent can track it.”

  Terracina nodded and hauled himself up behind the steering wheel. The vehicle started with a rumble. “When you’re out in the field on a cover op, you don’t wear them. But you’ll wish you could.”

  Loud voices across the narrow street drew Sage’s attention. A lot of what was said was in the Makaum language he’d learned from datachips while Gating to the planet, but there were English and Spanish words in there as well. He took a fresh grip on his gauss rifle.

  Terracina gripped his rifle and cut the crawler’s engine. He automatically pulled out his helmet and put it on. Sage already had his helmet tabbed into place and the nightvision program was queued up. Transparent numbers floated into his view, marking off the street and the distance to the buildings, defining the potential battle zone.

  “Peacekeeping.” Terracina took the lead, holding his gauss rifle canted before him at the ready. The maneuver was second nature to him, everything properly in place. “Just another one of the services we provide. You have to watch out, though. A lot of the locals don’t like it when we get involved.”

  SEVEN

  Makaum Civilian Sector

  Loki 19 (Makaum)

  1907 Hours Zulu Time

  Sage followed on Terracina’s six, far enough back to have a good field of fire around the other man. Terracina headed through a short alley between buildings that looked like they were on the verge of falling over. Roots, resembling fibroid veins, crisscrossed the walls of the structures, curling out of the native rock and mortar, then tunneling back in. More of them laced the ground in confusing tangles.

  Evidently the defoliants couldn’t keep Makaum’s vigorous plant life from growing into the walls of buildings. The mortar of the structures lay in the alley and didn’t look more than a few years old. Maintenance on the planet had to be cost prohibitive. Upkeep would have meant tearing the buildings down and starting over. That explained why there was so much urban decay. It was easier and cheaper to erect new buildings on top of newly defoliated areas than to tear down older structures and start over.

  Terracina paused at the other end of the alley. Sage automatically fell into place on the opposite side of the alley with his rifle tilted down across his body in the half ready position.

  “Bashhounds.” Terracina cursed under his breath, but the helmet mic transmitted his words.

  Fifteen meters away, on the other side of the street, ten Terran soldiers stood confronting four corps secmen. On the surface, the situation seemed to favor the soldiers, but Sage knew the cyberware the bashhounds carried counted in a big way.

  A dozen or so Makaum people shifted in the shadows of the buildings. None of them appeared armed, the onboard suit security didn’t identify any weapons, but that didn’t mean they weren’t
carrying. It didn’t have to be high-tech. Sharp and pointy could kill a soldier just as dead.

  On Sage’s faceshield, the ranks and identification of the ten soldiers floated up in transparent script. The fort’s database had been downloaded to his system on the dropship trip.

  The squad of Terran soldiers was assigned to Sergeant Greg Wireman. According to the field service record Sage glanced through, Wireman was young and somewhat inexperienced, only three months on the ground locally, and without true combat experience. His promotions had come through attrition while at a training fort.

  “Sergeant Wireman, what’s your sit-rep?” Terracina asked.

  Wireman’s head swung slightly so his field of vision picked up Terracina. “Top, we’ve got smugglers. These guys are unloading contraband to the locals.”

  One of the bashhounds turned to Terracina and held up a hand. Sage’s friend/foe programming kicked in and swept the ecard in the bashhound’s hand. The digital information contained on the ecard funneled into Sage’s faceshield.

  “Security exec Bao Fong of Green Dragon Industrial Trade.” Fong was in his middle years, average sized, with short-cropped black hair and a goatee. Not much more information was provided. He’d been with Green Dragon for nine years. At least, that what was digitized onto the ecard.

  Fong’s heart rate was 47 percent lower than average, and Sage surmised the man’s cyberware probably included replacements for his arms and legs. The reduced circulation paths increased the heart’s efficiency. Or maybe the heart itself had been replaced or augmented. Either way, the man—and his associates—were loaded with potentially deadly surprises.

  Fong glared at Terracina. “Who’s in charge here?”

  “Top?” Wireman stayed locked on his weapon, aiming dead center at the bashhound’s chest.

  “Where’s the contraband?” Terracina stayed where he was.

  “Guy’s still got it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Drugs of some sort. Maybe some hardware. We didn’t get a good look.”

  Fong shook his head. “Incorrect. You misinterpreted what you saw. I’m telling you for the last time to disengage.”

  “What about the rest of you people?” Terracina addressed the Makaum onlookers in their language. “What did you see?”

  A few of the onlookers at the back of the crowd chose that moment to wander away.

  One of the young men in front crossed his arms and shook his head. He wore dark, lightweight clothing that bagged around his body. Milspec boots gleamed dully and were worn down enough Sage suspected they were junked gear. “We didn’t see anything, Terran. You people need to take your argument somewhere else.”

  “You think so?” Terracina spoke calmly. “Maybe we should collect you, take you in to see the council reps, see what they think about you being here with these people. If I run your identification, what am I going to find?”

  The young man snarled a curse. “You offworlders weren’t invited here. You’ve got no right to tell us what to do. And your identification does not define who I am.”

  “I’ve got treaty rights. I’m here as a peacekeeper. Your council doesn’t want your people to have access to offworld drugs.”

  One of the soldiers in the back of the squad spoke up. “I recognize this guy, Top. His names’s Krol. Brought him in twice myself for distribution. He works as a spotter for drug labs out in the Green Hell.”

  “Let’s bring him in too, then.”

  Two of the soldiers stepped forward. One of them held a pair of plastic cuffs. “Get over here, Krol.”

  The young man lifted a small burner from the loose folds of his shirt. He brought the weapon up like he knew what he was doing, extending his arm as he took aim at the young Terran soldier.

  Sage fired and a blue bolt twinkled from the gauss rifle’s muzzle. The piezo-electric shockround smashed into Krol and blew him backward, wrapping his body in crackling blue lightning for a moment. The stench of ozone filled the street. Keeping the rifle ready, Sage watched the crowd and the downed man. The rifle had been set to stun. The Roley could fire the shockrounds or steel ball bearings.

  The electromagnetic charge had lifted the young Makaum from his feet and short-circuited his nervous system. When he recovered, in an hour or two, he’d have a headache and be relatively unharmed.

  Unless the charge stopped his heart. That was always a possibility. But Sage’s suit sensors confirmed that the man’s heart was beating and respiration was taking place.

  The crowd reacted at once, becoming more threatening but at the same time frightened.

  “The boy’s alive,” Sage said over the suit comm. “I didn’t shoot to kill.”

  “Put your weapons down,” Terracina ordered over his suit’s loudhailer. His amplified voice ricocheted from the buildings along the street, sounding alien and cold. “He is not dead, just stunned. Put down your weapons before someone does get hurt. We will not allow the distribution of contraband.”

  For one frozen moment, Sage felt the violence hanging over the scene. Things were about to defuse or blow up in the blink of an eye. He felt certain the bashhounds would make the first move.

  Instead, the four bashhounds seemed to come apart, blood spurting, and the explosive detonation of automatic weapons filled Sage’s hearing, instantly blunted by his helmet’s suppressors.

  Bao Fong yanked a laser pistol from his hip with the arm that remained to him, but he couldn’t stand on the shredded metal that heavy-caliber bullets had reduced his cyberlegs to. Still, even on the ground, he struggled to raise his weapon and take aim. A single shot cored between his eyes and evacuated his brain in a rush. The bashhound lay back, permanently offline.

  Swinging the gauss rifle around, Sage located the shooters. He was already barking orders to the soldiers. “Get out of there! Get to cover! Get those civilians clear!”

  The men should have already been in motion, but it didn’t take them long to get moving. They flooded into the alley on the other side of the street. The few Makaum people still standing there got swept along by the first two soldiers, who waded into their midst with their arms spread wide.

  “This is the Terran military! Put your weapons down!” Sage peered over his rifle at the seven figures spread out on both sides of the street a block away. The nightvision programming lifted the shadows from Sage’s vision.

  They were Phrenorian. The curling tails that moved restlessly behind them were a dead giveaway. They stood, on average, a head taller than the Terran soldiers. Their blue and purple exoskeletons offered a lot in the way of natural protection, but they’d reinforced that with segmented body armor that glinted dully in the moonslight. Instead of rounded helmets like the ones worn by the Terrans, the Phrenorians’ helmets were angular, wider at the top than at the bottom, and had an elongated faceshield to accommodate the six twenty-millimeter mandibular “arms”—chelicerae—that jutted out from their faces.

  For a moment, Sage felt certain the order was going to be ignored. A cool burn covered the back of his neck as he held his position, his finger poised over the trigger. Using his thumb, he flicked the rifle’s setting to lethal, readying the ball bearing ammo.

  Then the largest of the Phrenorians waved to his companions. His voice, gruff and raspy through the vocal modulator he wore to approximate human speech, held a note of derision. “This is not the reaction I’d expected to receive for saving your lives.”

  The nuances the Phrenorians had learned to enunciate still perplexed the modulator designers, as well as the xenopsychologists. The Phrenorian society wasn’t a hive mind, like that of bees. They operated more like ants, everyone knowing his or her place within the society but still capable of independent action.

  Derision was a human emotion, but the Phrenorians had learned to use it like a weapon. After it had first manifested, that fact alone had astonished the military’s PsyOps division. The Phrenorians could radically and speedily evolve, always changing as they adapted to resistance. That w
as the biggest threat they posed, because they’d proven more flexible than the Terrans.

  “You didn’t save anyone.” Terracina’s voice was hoarse. “You executed those men.”

  “Truly?” The Phrenorian snorted, something that should also have been physically impossible for them. “That is how you choose to view what just happened here?”

  “That is what happened.”

  The Phrenorian shook his head, then reached up and unfastened his helmet. “Four high-level bashhounds against the twelve of you?” He laughed. “You would have all died.”

  Sage didn’t see it that way, but he didn’t argue. If the bashhounds had chosen to attack, things would have gotten bloody. Looking at the pieces of the corps secmen scattered across the street, he amended his assessment. Bloodier.

  With the helmet dangling at the end of one double-jointed arm, another facet of Phrenorian physiology that benefited them in combat, the alien glared at Terracina with the three pairs of black eyes above his mouth. He had another pair on the back of his head. All of those eyes were capable of seeing more of the color spectrum than a human and in low light. His face was sharp and angular, faceted rather than rounded, flat like it had been smacked with a plank to knock everything into place. Coarse reddish-brown hair was scraped back from his high forehead and pulled back in twin tails wound with bright red bands.

  “Accept our generosity, Terran, and don’t presume to give me orders again.” The Phrenorian boldly lifted his rifle once more. “Your time here is up. We have run of this part of the city now. It’s best if you move on. Unless you want to break your treaty with us—and with the Makaum.”

  The rest of his men lifted their weapons as well.

  Sage’s stomach tightened and he didn’t drop his sightline. Thoughts of all the young men and women he’d trained for the war ricocheted inside his skull. He didn’t know how many of them still lived, or how many of them were dead or maimed or otherwise broken fighting the Sting-Tails. But there in that moment, he knew all he had to do was twitch his finger just the fraction of a centimeter and the score would be a little more balanced.