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

frightened of someone like Kaczmar. A list of Kaczmar’s crimes was scrolling down the screen accompanying footage of the crime scenes, his arrest, and the trial. The footage had to have come from out of system, which meant New Sun/Triple S had been planning this.

Hell, they’ve probably got some kind of revenge think tank consultancy, she decided. The footage changed to a murder scene on board the aerostat. A reporter was explaining how the murders fitted the ‘Fatman’s’ MO. The UN investigators would be over the moon about reporters tramping all over the crime scene.

Miska was shaking she was so angry, mostly at herself. She had walked right into this one.

She flinched away as she felt a hand on her shoulder. She spun to find herself looking up at the Ultra.

‘I can …’ he started.

‘No,’ she told him. Anything he did now would just make matters worse. ‘Get him cleaned up and then take him back to his pod,’ she told the guard droids. The look of hurt on the Ultra’s face was obvious this time but he nodded before the droid took him away. ‘Not him,’ she told the guards as they started to take Nyukuti away. ‘Get changed into civvies,’ she told him. ‘Make sure they’re armoured, draw a PDW, you’re with me.’ It wasn’t that she felt she needed a bodyguard so much as she wanted another gun because of the sheer number of people that were pissed at her.

Nyukuti nodded and then pointed at his neck.

‘You need to get that seen to,’ he told her. It took her a moment to work out what he was talking about. Then she remembered the burns on her neck that she had received when Gunhir had fired the plasma rifle too close to her skin. She touched the blisters and some of her hair just crumbled away. It was the least of her problems.

The med bay was pretty much the last place that she wanted to be. She would have taken care of the wound herself but it was starting to look like time was of the essence. The Doc was still returning from the surface. Torricone was dressing the burns while she pointedly ignored him and spoke to Uncle V, who was still in the CP at Camp Reisman.

‘Miska, you’ve got to take the call from Salik.’ Vido was practically begging her. She didn’t want to speak to Salik right then. She needed time to marshal her forces, work through what was going on, and come up with a strategy to deal with it, but things were happening too quickly.

‘Put him through,’ she told him. Salik appeared in her IVD. He was sat at his desk. It would be one of his absurd liveried servant droids filming him. He would be looking at her animated comms icon.

‘Miska, I’m sure you know what’s coming next,’ he said, his voice full of regret.

‘It wasn’t us. Well, some of it was us. The civilian personnel and all the DoL who surrendered quickly enough were alive when we left. Resnick had them killed to frame us …’

Salik held his hand up.

‘Miska, please. The murders all fit the MO of the individuals in this so-called Nightmare Squad you took with you. There’s footage of you standing among the bodies of some of your victims …’

‘They were combatants!’ She was screaming now. She pushed Torricone away as he tried to apply medgel to the wounds. She was on her feet. ‘It was a fight, a hard fight. They sent two combat exoskeletons after us! I can send you over the helm-and gun-cam footage!’

Salik was motioning for her to calm down.

‘It’s out of my hands. The UN has stepped in. It’s being investigated as a war crime.’

‘It is a war crime! Just not ours! And this is an extra-legal area. The Colonial Administration hasn’t even asked for UN recognition. They have no jurisdiction here. If they did we couldn’t operate.’

Salik’s expression looked pained.

‘They have no jurisdiction here yet. They are already talking about shutting us down because of what happened at FOB Trafalgar. If there is some kind of first contact situation then they can legitimately claim jurisdiction. Look, Miska, the fact of it is I need to remain in the UN’s good graces in order to do business. That means trying to keep a lid on some of the worst excesses that can happen during war time …’

‘But you know that we didn’t do it, don’t you?’ she howled at him.

‘It doesn’t matter what I know, it doesn’t even matter what I can prove. It matters how it looks.’

Miska stopped. She just stared at the comms window in her IVD. To Torricone it must have looked as if she was staring into space.

‘You’re fucking kidding me?’ she finally managed to mutter.

‘All the Bastard Legion’s active duties are suspended. They are confined to whichever base they are currently stationed at, and prohibited from carrying arms pending an investigation.’

‘What about Triple S?’ she demanded.

‘They’re not currently under suspicion,’ he told her.

‘So much for innocent until proven guilty,’ she muttered. ‘If we’re being accused then I want my people looking into this,’ she told him. Salik looked pained again.

‘Miska, please, think about this. Your people are a serial killer with a keen interest in botany, and a disgraced, corrupt FBI agent. How do you think that will look?’

‘I don’t care.’

‘And perhaps that’s the problem. Have you spoken to Vido about this? Your father.’

Suddenly Miska didn’t trust herself to speak.

‘Just make it happen,’ she managed.

She severed the comms link and found Torricone watching her. She held up a finger in warning.

‘Can I finish dressing your neck?’ he asked.

Miska just nodded. She sat down, still trembling. The medgel felt cool on her neck as Torricone applied it.

‘I only heard half of that conversation,’ Torricone said.

‘Just don’t,’ she tried to warn him.

‘You seem to feel you’ve been unfairly treated,’ he continued, apparently unaware of just how much danger he was in. ‘Maybe you might want to consider how the victims