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

‘You seeing this?’ Vido asked over comms. Miska risked glancing up at one of the viz screens, and then opened a window for the footage in her IVD so she could keep an eye on the retreating DoL mercs.

The footage showed Medusas sweeping out of the jungle into Port Turquoise, weapons blazing. She watched one of the mechs turn their flame gun on a four-storey building. Triple S conventional had just retaken the town. It didn’t look as though they were being nearly as careful with collateral damage as the Bastards had been, but then Miska was starting to understand the lengths to which Triple S would go to punish those who had defied them. The footage showed gunship-escorted Harpies and VTOL transports in the air high above the wide Turquoise. There were landing craft, patrol boats and fortified barges carrying troops and vehicles below the shuttles and aircraft down the river itself. Miska knew that Camp Badajoz would be the next target.

‘I don’t give a shit, Vido,’ Miska was subvocalising over the comms as she walked into the hotel, Nyukuti in tow. ‘Contact Salik, contact MACE, tell them that I’m not having my people, or my gear, captured by Triple S. They have a choice, either we fight and we get paid for it, or we pull off-planet and head back to the Daughter.’

There was an automated reception screen but much of the ground floor of the hotel was taken up with a bar. Frequented by journalists, the hotel bar was clearly meant to cater for a more moneyed clientele than many others nearby, though it still kept to the faux-Napoleonic decor that ran throughout the station. There were very few customers at the moment. Most of them would either be down on the moon covering New Sun’s offensive, or still reporting on the aerostat massacre. Still, it was nice not to be looked at with seething hatred for once. The few lensheads in the bar just looked shit scared of her.

‘MACE has been pushing to let us fight, but the UN are saying no and Salik’s backing them,’ Vido told her. That was what it had all been about. Remove one of the stronger, more capable forces from the Colonial Administration and then make an aggressive push.

‘Fine, get our forces ready to evac,’ Miska told him.

‘Nobody is going to like that, Miska,’ Vido told her.

‘Then get them ready to do it under fire,’ she said and then cut the comms link. She was giving some thought to going over to the New Sun offices on the station and shooting Campbell in the face, a lot.

‘Stay here,’ Miska told Nyukuti. He opened his mouth to protest. ‘Seriously, not today.’ He closed his mouth again and nodded.

Miska knocked on the door to Raff’s room. It hissed open for her. Raff was standing looking at the wall, which had become a huge viz screen. He was watching footage of Triple S (conventional) rappelling onto rooftops in Port Turquoise, vicious one-sided gunfights, and burning vehicles.

‘They’re learning from you,’ he said when the door closed behind her.

‘We safe to talk?’ she asked.

‘It’s been swept,’ he told her and then pointed at the small white noise generator on the bedside table. The device would inhibit any attempt to listen in on them with long-range microphones. ‘Can’t say the visit was all that subtle.’

‘You’re embedded with us,’ she pointed out.

‘Yeah but everyone knows I’m not welcome, and then you come running to me when this happens.’

‘Maybe I want to tell our side of the story.’

Raff turned to look at her, one side of his face illuminated by the huge wall screen. He concentrated for a moment and the grisly images from the aerostat massacre appeared on the wall screen.

‘This is why you have journalists with you,’ he told her.

‘Oh bullshit, Raff!’ Miska snapped. She was tired of getting lectured. ‘The lensheads covering this are in bed with New Sun’s PR company.’

‘Of course they are,’ Raff told her. ‘They have a good working relationship. The journos get what they need from New Sun and Triple S, and you’re letting me get tied up in the back of a shuttle. Guess who controls the narrative?’

‘I run a slave legion made up of hardened criminals, so positively spin that for me!’ she shouted at him. ‘Do you just want to be a sanctimonious prick, or are you actually going to be of some fucking use?’

Raff sighed and went and sat on the bed. Miska glanced at the footage from the aerostat that still covered the wall.

‘Can you change that over?’ she asked. Raff studied her for a moment or two and then concentrated, switching it back to Triple S’s offensive down on Ephesus.

‘That bothering you?’ he asked. There was something in his voice, suspicion maybe.

‘Did you get my message?’ she asked.

‘Yeah, the net on this station isn’t up to much information-wise. Sports, porn and gun template catalogues is fine, information on war criminals with spec-ops backgrounds is sketchier. But the woman you pointed out, I recognised her from that mess during the Rotterdam drug wars.’

‘That it?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I’m pretty sure one of the other guys was ex-SAD, Fifth Special Forces originally. I think he was a counter insurgency specialist. Dishonourably discharged. SAD recruited him …’

‘When you were looking for morally ambiguous operators,’ she finished for him. Like her, she didn’t add.

‘Rumour has it he went too far even for us.’

‘So Resnick’s got a squad of sick bastards,’ Miska said.

‘So they frame you for the aerostat massacre. That’s assuming you didn’t do it. I mean, you took some very sick people with you. Your very own atrocity in a box.’

Miska turned to stare at him.

‘That look like me?’ she asked, meaning the aerostat massacre. ‘You’ve tried to get me to do those kinds of things in the past, to send messages. Have I ever done it?’

‘Not for me, not for the company. For yourself? I’m less sure. I mean, what are you going to do when you