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

all down on their knees, hands behind their heads. Grig’s prisoners looked more comfortable. He had the civilian aerostat staff sat around tables in a rec area. There may have been a few stragglers hiding in the aerostat but she couldn’t see them wanting to start anything. She noticed that Gunhir was swaying.

‘You okay?’ she asked.

‘Hit my head pretty hard, it’s reinforced but still,’ he told her.

‘Nyukuti, check him out,’ Miska told the stand-over man. All the Bastards had now received rudimentary field medic training. Nyukuti slung his SAW and moved to Gunhir. Miska was pleased that Kaczmar was covering the corridor that led to the aerostat without being told. Not that he would have heard her anyway. They hadn’t even left the shuttle yet.

‘Miska?’ Even over the comms the Ultra’s voice sounded like sex.

Get a grip! she told herself. She was trying to ignore how much pain she was in.

‘Report,’ Miska told the Ultra over the comms link.

‘Lieutenant Larouc has very graciously provided us with access codes for all of the aerostat’s systems,’ he told her.

‘Good of him, thank the lieutenant for me, and you can probably stop terrorising him now.’

She was answered by a soft chuckle.

‘I’ve stimmed him,’ Nyukuti told her. If he was concussed Miska was pretty sure that wasn’t the thing to do.

‘You weren’t really paying attention during the field medic training, were you?’ Miska asked the stand-over man. Nyukuti looked at her for a moment or two.

‘You are a tiny blood-painted goddess who I have dreamed. We should return to Australia and stain the sands red,’ he told her.

Miska pursed her lips.

‘Maybe another time,’ she told him.

‘I feel fine,’ Gunhir told her.

‘You go and see the Doc when we get back to the Daughter, you understand me?’ Miska told him. Gunhir nodded. ‘Okay, Nyukuti you’re on point, then Gunhir and me, Kaczmar brings up the rear, diamond formation.’ Gunhir and Nyukuti nodded. Miska put her hand on Kaczmar’s shoulder and communicated her orders via hand signals. As she turned away from the huge serial killer she felt a massive fleshy hand on her shoulder. She almost flinched away from his touch but instead turned back to face him.

‘Thank you,’ he shouted. Miska stared at him while the feeling that something just wasn’t quite right intensified. She just nodded. Then the shuttle’s ageing fire control system woke up and sprayed the burning combat exoskeleton with flame retardant foam.

The prison shuttle had docked at the passenger airlock. There was a small passenger lounge and a series of suit-lockers. The airlock had apparently doubled as an EVA exit as well. The Dogs of Love mercenaries and a few of the aerostat’s security staff had tried to fortify the lounge area with strategically placed crates of raw material for the aerostat’s printer. They had partially closed the interior blast doors to the surrounding corridors to use as cover as well. Miska suspected that the stun grenades had done their job but it had been the fragmentation grenades that had done the real damage. Though she also saw flaps of bloody skin and limbs that were consistent with the damage done by railguns. There would have been little left of the bodies hit by Kaczmar’s Sarissae. She had her SIG in her hand as she surveyed the carnage wrought by her fire team. The others were covering the bodies. There was the occasional sob or moan but there were very few wounded, and those were deep in shock. Miska noticed that Kaczmar had a wide grin on his face.

‘This was everything the Corps promised but never delivered,’ he said.

The corridor leading to the Command & Control had been painted red and was spotted with corpses. Each of them had been efficiently dispatched, their left and right common arteries cut. Miska was grateful that there were no civilians among the dead. What she couldn’t understand was how the Ultra had done it without them responding. There were four bodies leaking precious blood into the corridor leading to the C&C. Nobody was fast and stealthy enough to do all four without any of them getting a shot off. One, yes, maybe two if you were good, but not all four. The precision of the cuts was extraordinary. This was viz/sense game nonsense. It was nearly impossible to kill like that. She felt Gunhir’s eyes on her. The door to the C&C slid open.

Command and control was a utilitarian collection of consoles illuminated by strip lighting and the holographic displays of the various systems, some of which showed local weather patterns in the clouds below the aerostat. The closest things the C&C had to comfort were the ergonomic chairs and the peeling magnolia paint.

All the civilian staff were cowering in one corner of the room, many of them with tears running down their faces. Opposite them, the Ultra was leaning against one of the consoles. Miska was less than pleased to see that he was naked. He held his dripping knife in his left hand. His left arm was bloodied to the elbow, like a red opera glove. A gangly man with a goatee wearing the uniform of the Dogs of Love mercenary cooperative was sat on one of the chairs next to the Ultra and he looked scared shitless.

‘You the Dogs of Love commander?’ Miska asked the man, presumably Lieutenant Larouc. He nodded. ‘I’m here to discuss nominative determinism.’

‘Did you go commando in my spacesuit?’ Miska asked the Ultra. She wasn’t entirely sure if she liked the idea, or was repulsed by it. Possibly both. They had sent Larouc and the C&C personnel to join the other prisoners that Grig and Bean were guarding. Kaczmar was standing guard by the door to C&C and Nyukuti still seemed to consider himself her bodyguard. He was hanging back but keeping an eye on her. Gunhir had been given the unenviable job of liaising with Triple S.

‘I stashed your spacesuit in a safe place. I will retrieve it before we leave,’ he told her, not