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

‘I’m sorry,’ she told Uncle V over the comms link, ‘We’re just diploming with the DoL.’

‘Oh, right.’ Uncle V sounded more than a little dubious.

Miska sat down next to Nyukuti but swung the stool round so she could see the rest of the bar.

‘Tell Salik and the UN that we are non-combatants. We are withdrawing from the theatre of operations. If we are fired on then not only will we assume that we’re combatants again but we will take that as a breach of the articles of conflict and defend ourselves with every means at our disposal.’

‘Including space assets?’ Vido asked.

‘Including the Daughter,’ she told him. She heard the consigliere sigh over the comms link. ‘Get our people out of there, Uncle V,’ she said softly.

‘Understood.’ He sounded exhausted.

‘One more thing,’ she said, ‘I don’t care how you do it but get the Nightmare Squad down on Ephesus. I want them outfitted for a lurp,’ she told him, meaning long-range reconnaissance patrol, ‘but tell the Ultra he has to go as low tech as possible, no electromagnetics, no lasers or plasma, just slugthrowers.’ She was thinking about how the dead Triple S (elite) at FOB Trafalgar had been armed. ‘And tell the Ultra he needs to stay in contact with me.’

‘Why?’ Vido asked.

‘I don’t care how they do it but tell them to bring me Resnick, alive.’

‘Okay,’ Vido said. She could tell he thought it was a terrible idea but it sounded like he was too tired to argue with her.

Miska was aware of Nyukuti sagging down onto the bar next to her.

‘What?’ she asked turning to look at him. He just pointed at a viz screen in the corner of the mirror behind the bar. She saw the words ‘Breaking News’ on the screen. Miska was really starting to fear the news. She contacted the bar’s public systems via her neural interface, enlarged the viz screen so it filled the mirror, and then turned the sound up so it drowned out the moans of the beaten mercenaries behind her.

‘… with my head in a lead bucket all the way from the Sirius System.’ The smartly dressed young man on the screen looked very familiar to her but Miska couldn’t quite place him. He was sat next to Brennan Campbell, who was definitely on Miska’s shit-list. The sympathetic expression on Campbell’s face looked about as sincere as a prison daddy telling his bitch that he won’t come in his mouth. I’ve been around convicts too long, she decided. They were both being interviewed by some viz-presenter clone.

‘But surely you knew that coming here, to the conflict in Epsilon Eridani, would be a death sentence?’ the interviewer said.

‘I had to,’ the young man said. ‘Look, I’ve done some bad things in my life, I know that and I’m happy to serve my time, but she’s fu … she’s evil.’ Miska realised that they were talking about her. ‘She targeted the role model prisoners first, murdered them in front of us. Then she put the worst in charge. The serial killers, sex offenders—’

‘No I didn’t!’ Miska shouted at the viz screen.

‘—they ruled by gang rape.’ The man broke down, sobbing. ‘I’m sorry,’ he managed. Then Miska realised who he was. On the large screen she could see where the prison tattoos had been removed. He’d been spruced up considerably, given a hair cut, new clothes, but there was no mistaking Lomas Hinton, convicted drug dealer and, apparently, a consummate actor. Hinton had not returned from shore leave on Maw City. With a thought, Miska sent the detonation code for the tiny nanite explosive implanted in his head. Nothing happened. The signal returned to tell her that the N-bomb did not exist.

On the screen Campbell was patting Hinton’s shoulder. The New Sun exec looked like he’d seen acts of sympathy before but hadn’t really understood them.

‘New Sun employed the Bastard Legion, didn’t they, Mr Campbell? How do you explain this sudden reversal?’ the interviewer asked.

Now Campbell was all mock contrition.

‘Well, Cynthia, that was a disastrous lapse in judgement, and I can assure you that those responsible no longer work for New Sun,’ Campbell told the interviewer. ‘As soon as I realised what had happened I was in contact with Colonel Duellona. She sent Triple S (elite) to deal with the situation but sadly they didn’t get there in time. The Bastard Legion’s so-called Nightmare Squad had fled before the true extent of their crimes was discovered.

‘I can’t emphasise enough just how brave Mr Hinton has been in coming forward. He still had one of the N-bombs in his head and expected to be killed immediately. Fortunately New Sun had the surgical facilities to remove the N-bomb.’

The camera closed in on a fresh scar on the side of Hinton’s head.

‘We’re sorry for the part that we played in this morning’s terrible atrocity. It is unfortunate, the rather selfish anti-capitalist stance that the self-declared Ephesus Colonial Administration has chosen to take. It is the kind of resistance to a free market economy that needs to be opposed wherever it is found, but this is not the way that New Sun fights wars.’

Now he turned to face the camera. It was all clearly rehearsed.

‘I want the Colonial Administration to know that New Sun will make reparations to them, and to the Dogs of Love mercenary collective, for our part in facilitating this outrage.

‘Things have moved very quickly today. Mr Hinton only arrived a few hours ago from the Sirius System—’

The Sneaky Bitch! Miska thought.

‘—but we think we have a way that we can help this situation. To all members of the so-called Bastard Legion, I have this message: we know that you are being forced to fight in a war you must know is unwinnable against professional soldiers. You are being fed into a meat grinder for the gain of an evil, possibly insane woman. Our ships and our facilities on Waterloo Station, and down on Ephesus, are all currently broadcasting jamming signals, though