War Criminals by Gavin Smith (ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📕

IVD and made her way towards the platoon commander of the Sneaky Bastards. The Cyclops was a large metal insect moving through the dust cloud next to her. She tugged on the Sneaky Bastards’ commander’s ghillie suit, hanging down his back. He turned to face her.

‘Tell your boys good work. Gear cleaned, upload their after-action reports and then you’re stood down for twenty-four hours. I’ll put some money in your commissary accounts above and beyond your combat pay. Have some drinks and then get some sleep.’

The platoon commander just nodded – he looked bone weary – and then turned and headed for the platoon’s hooch.

‘I don’t get it,’ Raff’s voice said behind her. Miska didn’t turn to look at him. Instead she was concentrating on the Offensive Bastards waiting in the landing pad’s ready area, most of them leaning on their packs. The Offensive Bastards were her rifle company, the conventional force that was forming the backbone of her fledgling legion. The legion she didn’t have enough volunteers to bring to full strength, or enough resources to fully equip. Currently they were one full fighting company, the Offensive Bastards; their recon platoon, the Sneaky Bastards; an under-strength combat exoskeleton squad, the Armoured Bastards; and their two brand-new mech platoons, the Heavy Bastards. In addition they had a significant amount of support staff, which included the ground crews for the two Pegasi and the recently up-armoured prison shuttle. With only two Armoured Personnel Carriers, they were, however, significantly under-equipped vehicle-wise and of course, all of this had on-going costs, most of which was being met by stealing the stuff they captured. The Ephesus conflict had been a boon in some ways, particularly financially, but it had also been something of a baptism of fire. In the two months they’d been in-country some of their leadership choices were working out, other not so much.

‘Beat it, lenshead.’ The Cyclops’s voice modulator really was excellent quality. It picked out her dad’s gruffness so clearly.

‘It’s all right, LSM,’ Miska told her dad. ‘Go and speak to the company commander, make sure they’re ready to go.’ The Cyclops glanced suspiciously at Raff. Not even her dad knew that the entire Bastard Legion was a deniable CIA black op. He just thought Raff was another annoying war correspondent.

‘Yes, boss,’ her dad said and then made his way towards the Offensive Bastards’ company commander.

Miska turned to Raff. At least he wasn’t looking at her with puppy-dog eyes. She hoped she’d beaten that out of him.

‘You’re going for FOB Trafalgar, right?’ he asked. ‘You think you’ve found it. That’s why you were running the mechs, bringing them through the jungle.’

Trafalgar was a concealed Triple S forward operating base on the wrong side of the Turquoise River, somewhere in the held territory of the Ephesus Colonial Administration, the legions’ current employers. MACE, or Military Active Command Ephesus, knew roughly where FOB Trafalgar was, but had yet to pinpoint it. The Sneaky Bastards were about to be tasked to look for it again. She wanted to join them but knew that sort of thing wasn’t really her job any more.

‘McWilliams, Perez, how’re you guys doing?’ Miska subvocalised over comms. She was watching Raff but not answering him. She could see the Colonial Administration’s ground crews hooking up heavy gauge power cables to the Pegasi. Cargo exoskeletons were loading new missiles into the empty racks.

‘We’re good, boss,’ Perez told her.

‘Need time to recharge the point defence lasers and re-arm and then we’re good to go,’ McWilliams added.

‘All right, stretch your legs and get some coffee,’ she told the pilots.

‘So why is your rifle company ready to ship out?’ Raff asked. Miska just looked at him.

‘You’re not going after Trafalgar, are you?’ he said slowly. They weren’t, but the feint’s secondary objective had been to try and get a reaction from FOB Trafalgar. Currently stealthed spotter drones were going through the area where MACE suspected the enemy FOB was located, using heat sensors to try and find it.

Miska still didn’t say anything. Instead she just pointed at the newly christened Harpy 1. Raff turned to look at the huge heavy lift drop shuttle. The modular cargo bays were open. They could see the low loaders but the mech cradles were empty.

‘Where are your mechs?’ Raff asked.

Miska just smiled.

Nyukuti was waiting for her. The big Aborigine wore full combat armour, inertial armour battle dress with hard plates over the top, and a half-helmet, rather than the full-threat helmet that most of the Offensive Bastards preferred. He almost looked like a marine, except for the circuit tattoos on the nearly-black skin of his face. His eyes, implants, were unnaturally dark as well, presumably to enhance the intimidation factor. Before he’d been imprisoned on the Hangman’s Daughter he’d been a stand-over man in the Lalande system, meaning he’d ‘stood over’ criminals as he tortured them into handing over their ill-gotten gains. A criminal dangerous enough to steal from other criminals, he was feared and respected as much as he was disliked onboard the Hangman’s Daughter.

‘Hey, Nyukuti, you want something?’ Miska asked. She liked Nyukuti. He was weird but capable, and appeared enthusiastically loyal for someone with a nanobomb implanted in his head. On the other hand, Miska knew she couldn’t trust any of them. Still, she was glad to see he’d recovered from the quite serious wounds that he had received on Faigroe Station at the hands of Triple S contractors.

Nyukuti was staring over her head. He towered over her, but then everyone did. She turned to see what he was looking at. One of the Whānau was walking by. She guessed he had been the member of the Heavy Bastards who hadn’t got a mech because Mass had taken out the eighth Medusa. The Maori mech-jockey was glaring at Nyukuti, his face made all the more fierce because of his tā moko facial tattoos. Miska knew that in his stand-over days Nyukuti had targeted the Whānau often enough to gain their enmity. It was the