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

dangerous individuals shifting uncomfortably. Over the comms link Miska heard the Ultra give the shuttle pilot the order to rise out of the gas clouds. Miska enlarged the feed from the ageing shuttle’s external lenses in her IVD. She saw tendrils of cyanide-laced hydrogen swirl around the shuttle, reaching out for it as it rose out of the clouds towards the gas mining platform.

The aerostat mine looked like a technological mushroom covered in industrial hardware. Interconnected pre-fabricated machine rooms, tool sheds, atmosphere flyer hangars, storage bladders and sleeping quarters sprouted haphazardly from the spars of the mushroom’s superstructure. Trunk-like appendages hung from the refinery machinery at the base of the mushroom. These huge tendrils, dangling into the planet’s stormy upper atmosphere, harvested the gas giant’s hydrogen and helium-3. Miska could make out the lights of the numerous automated aerostat platforms in the upper atmosphere. They fed on the huge planet’s resources like a swarm of blood-sucking mosquitoes.

There was an assault shuttle docked with the aerostat atmosphere-mining platform. It belonged to the Dogs of Love mercenary collective employed by the Colonial Administration and under the command of MACE. The tactical information overlaid in her IVD made her aware of their own shuttle missile-locking the Dogs of Love’s shuttle. She watched hypersonic tracers from the prison shuttle’s new railgun batteries turn the aerostat’s bolted-on weapon emplacements into so much scrap with short controlled bursts, only a minimum of collateral damage.

Despite the upper atmosphere turbulence, Grig and Bean had buttoned up their combat exoskeletons and, along with the Ultra, who had also sealed his borrowed spacesuit, made their way towards the airlock.

‘Piper Sierra to unknown shuttle, please be aware that the articles of conflict prohibit all space warfare. Your attack is an act of piracy and will be dealt with as such.’ The voice was calm, just a hint of tension. Miska assumed that it was one of the mercenaries rather than one of the miners.

‘I think it’s best if you handle this,’ the Ultra told her over a private comms link.

‘They’ve got two combat exos in the air,’ Grig relayed over the group comms. ‘Look like older generation Honey Badgers to me.’

‘Okay, the shuttle will hunt them, we engage only if fired upon, stick to the plan,’ the Ultra reminded them.

‘Piper Sierra, your gas mining station is within a planetary atmosphere and therefore a legitimate target. If that shuttle attempts to leave its dock we’ll blow it out of the sky. This is the Bastard Legion, surrender now.’

‘Let’s go,’ Gunhir told them. Despite him being a newcomer the Ultra had put him in charge of the boarding element. If Kaczmar minded he hadn’t expressed it in any way.

‘Piper Sierra to the Bastards, aren’t you supposed to be on our side?’ the voice asked. Miska could hear a little more tension now. She didn’t answer. The Dogs of Love would fight. They would have to if they ever wanted another mercenary contract in the Epsilon Eridani system. Miska managed to stand up, somewhat unsteadily, as the deck bucked underneath her. In the external lens feed she watched as Grig and Bean jumped from the shuttle’s airlock, the Ultra, in Miska’s spacesuit, wrapped tightly around Grig’s Wraith. The torches on their flight fins lit up as they jetted underneath the aerostat in between the dangling tendrils of the huge vacuum hoses.

Miska picked up her boarding shield and followed the others towards the airlock, moving from handhold to handhold as best she could, the molecular hooks on the soles of her boots helping her remain on her feet.

The shuttle was now playing hide and seek in between the superstructure with the two Honey Badger combat exoskeletons. She heard the faint staccato drum beat of electromagnetically-driven 20mm rounds powdering against their shuttle’s much improved armour. In the external lens feed the upper atmosphere glowed red as the shuttle’s point defence lasers destroyed incoming missiles fired from the Honey Badgers’ back-mounted launchers. It was a very unfair fight. The two Dogs of Love Combat Exoskeletons had little going for them except their manoeuvrability. Any cover they found was quickly chewed away by the shuttle’s railguns as it chased them around the aerostat. A stray round caught one of the Badgers’ flight fins and sent it spiralling down towards the gas clouds.

Miska had taken up position at the corner of the corridor that led down to one of the shuttle’s airlocks. Gunhir was next to her. On the other side of the corridor Nyukuti waited with Kaczmar. She heard Kaczmar chuckle.

‘He’ll be so tiny,’ the huge serial killer said quietly. His voice was soft and surprisingly high pitched.

‘Are you in this, Fatman?’ Gunhir asked him. Kaczmar just grunted at Gunhir by way of reply.

In the external lens feed Miska saw the other Honey Badger dive after his plummeting mate.

‘Let them go but keep an eye on them,’ Miska subvocalised to the shuttle’s pilot and co-pilot, receiving an acknowledgement back. She was also keeping an eye on the DoL assault shuttle but it hadn’t moved. The Dogs of Love might have to put up at least a token resistance but they weren’t prepared to risk a resource like an assault shuttle. Very wise, Miska decided, though not the way she would have played it.

She checked the lens feeds from Grig and Bean. They were standing on an EVA walkway just outside one of the aerostat’s airlocks. Bean was attaching his very expensive plasma thermite frame charge to the external airlock while Grig covered him. When he’d finished Bean stepped away from the airlock, putting his back to the aerostat’s hull, unclipping his Dory railgun and readying it as the frame glowed white, turning thick metal and hardened composite molten as it burned through the external airlock. Grig placed an armoured hand in the centre of the airlock, pulled the glowing, molten-edged rectangle of dripping metal and composite out of the airlock, and let it fall into the crushing depths of the gas giant. He stepped into the airlock and