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

‘That will be medieval,’ Miska admitted, her voice cold.

‘And like I said, you set up your Nightmare Squad for a reason.’

‘To scare people.’

‘Good work. Why did you take them on this job?’ Raff asked. She realised what he was doing. A confrontational debrief, to get to the truth quickly. On the other hand at least he wasn’t hitting on her.

‘To see if I can control them,’ she told him.

‘And can you?’ he asked.

It was a good question. Was I in control or was the Ultra? she wondered. One thing she was sure of: she didn’t control the Ultra.

‘I’m having a difficult day, Raff. I’m in no mood for an interrogation. Are you part of the problem or the solution?’

He sat up on the bed.

‘Okay, I’m sorry. I don’t have much in the way of good things to tell you. This looks really bad.’

‘But it’s bullshit,’ she said. Raff just looked at her. ‘I mean it, Raff, we didn’t do that. Okay, I mean we did some of that, but we weren’t fucking peeling people.’

‘They didn’t have long to set that up. They couldn’t have known who you were taking until shortly before the op happened.’

‘So they’ve got from when we left the aerostat until we get back to the Daughter, maybe two hours.’

‘Then they’re running through their files on the Nightmare Squad’s past crimes, got them in their IVDs, trying to recreate them.’

Something occurred to Miska.

‘Did anyone get eaten?’ she asked.

Raff stared at her.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Raff exploded. ‘You’re going out on jobs with fucking cannibals?’

‘Hey, this was your idea,’ Miska pointed out.

‘This wasn’t … Okay, look, so this is a hastily set up series of copycats. The investigators are going to see through it pretty quickly.’

‘And go after Triple S?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. If Resnick’s a Spartan then he fades away, maybe they serve up the rest of the squad. Triple S and New Sun use their influence to keep the whole thing as quiet as possible. Nobody notices the retractions in the news, and you’re still the bad guys as far as everyone can remember.’

‘We’re always going to be the bad guys,’ Miska said, ‘but Triple S are going to get caught, right? Sure, they get us out of the way. They do their little offensive—’

‘It’s not a little—’

‘But as soon as it gets investigated we’re back in the game and I go fucking head hunting. Make sure I’m drinking my next beer out of Resnick’s hollowed-out skull.’

Raff stared at her.

‘What?’ she demanded.

‘We’re left with one of two possibilities. Either they only need the short-term gain to achieve whatever the fuck it is that they’re trying to achieve here,’ he suggested, ‘or—’

‘It’s just the first part of the strategy to deal with us,’ Miska finished.

‘Possibly both.’ Raff looked as though he was wrestling with what he was about to say next.

‘Don’t,’ she told him. ‘We leave now, our rep is fucked. It looks like we lost. We cut and run and we committed a war crime to boot. Nobody will touch us and nobody will hire us to fight Triple S in the future, and I really want to see them again.’

‘They’re fighting wars in ways you won’t … can’t fight.’

‘The lies?’ she demanded.

‘The PR, the media part of the campaign, whether you like it or not it matters.’

‘Where’s Resnick?’ she asked. Raff looked at her, saying nothing.

‘You really going to make me beat it out of you?’ she asked.

‘You just don’t like having friends, do you?’ Raff asked. He sounded more irritated than hurt. ‘He’s in-country.’ Resnick was down on Ephesus and on active duty.

‘There’s a ship just docked,’ she told him and then explained about the Sneaky Bitch.

‘Okay, I’ll look into it,’ Raff grudgingly told her.

Miska turned and headed for the door.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked her.

Overreact, Miska thought.

‘See if you can speed up the whole “we’re innocent” thing,’ she said over her shoulder, and left the room.

‘Vido?’ Miska said over the comms link, ignoring protocol as she made her way towards the elevator on Raff’s floor in the hotel.

‘Hey Miska,’ Vido’s beleaguered voice finally answered when she was riding the elevator down to the ground floor. ‘Sorry, I was speaking to Salik. The UN and Salik are happy for the Bastard Legion to withdraw to the Daughter. Frankly I think they’d be happy if we just left.’

‘I hear a problem,’ Miska said.

‘Triple S are saying that they will fire on us if we try to pull out,’ Vido explained. The elevator doors opened. The bar was a scene of utter destruction. The DoL mercs that had hassled them in the street were lying around among broken furniture and smashed glass. Nyukuti was sat at the bar. His PDW lay on the wood next to a very large glass of bourbon that the stand-over man was taking sips from. The barman was cowering behind the bar, and there were several journalists hiding behind overturned tables as well.

‘They came back,’ Nyukuti told her as she emerged from the elevator. She could see in the mirror behind the bar that his face was a mess.

‘So I see,’ Miska said. She noticed that Nyukuti’s folding boomerang sword was imbedded in a wooden carving of the Duke of Wellington, its blade bloodied. One of the DoL had pushed himself to his feet and was staggering towards Nyukuti. Miska had had quite enough for one day. She drew her SIG Sauer GP-992, dialled the velocity down to subsonic via her neural interface with the gauss pistol’s smartlink, and then shot him in the back of the knee. He howled as he went down. He doubtless had subcutaneous armour but it still would’ve hurt.

‘We didn’t fucking do it!’ she told the DoL mercenary as he rolled around on the floor clutching his wounded knee. ‘And you’re going to feel pretty fucking stupid when the truth comes out in a day or two!’

‘Miska?’ Vido asked over the comms link, more than a little concern