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

that it had been tampered with, somehow advanced along its evolutionary path,’ Miska told them. ‘I think this is all to do with biotech. I mean, leaving aside something that can ram wood through a combat exoskeleton, imagine if you could shut down your opponents’ advance weapons systems? No plasma, no laser, electromagnetics, drones or aircraft.’

‘But how does this help us?’ Golda asked. ‘I mean, are we going to get involved? The war is all but over. Even if we are exonerated and MACE hires us, we may still be on the wrong side of a losing war. New Sun and Triple S have played this well.’

‘I still want to drink beer from Resnick’s hollowed-out skull,’ Miska mused. Vido stared at her, horrified, her dad laughed and Golda smiled.

‘Who shoots at us if we get involved again?’ Miska asked. ‘I mean, the UN know we’re innocent—’

‘Of this,’ Vido pointed out once more.

‘—and if the UN knows then Salik knows. MACE, frankly, need us, so that leaves New Sun’s forces who were shooting at us anyway.’

‘But we’re not getting paid,’ Golda protested again. Her dad was nodding.

‘Vido, can you contact Salik and MACE? Tell him what they both already know, and that we’re back in the fight if Salik wants his cut and MACE need our help. I fancy taking Badajoz back.’

‘Sure?’ Vido asked. Miska nodded.

‘Gunny, sorry, LSM,’ Miska addressed her dad, ‘you and I are going to work up a plan.’ Her dad nodded. ‘We go low tech, slugthrowers only, and no gauss kisses, no air-bursting bullets, in fact nothing more sophisticated than armour-piercing and tracers.’ This raised an eyebrow but her dad nodded again.

‘We may have to print some new weapons and ammo,’ Vido told her. She sighed at the cost but he was right.

‘What would you like me to do?’ Golda asked.

‘Unless you’ve managed to develop sources already, then, other than helping Vido, I want you to wait,’ she told him.

‘For what?’

‘The Nightmare Squad to contact us.’

Miska opened her eyes as she tranced out. She climbed out of the bunk feeling like she’d been lying in bed too long. She looked up at the weapons clipped above her bunk.

The AK-47 copy that she had taken from Faigroe Station as a memento was actually going to get some use it seemed. The carbon composite weapon had been printed from a template that Che had provided when he helped organise the miners on the asteroid station to rise against their corporate masters. Modified to fire a 9mm long caseless round, it was otherwise the same as the pre-FHC weapon that had been favoured by terrorists and freedom fighters all over the world. She’d replaced the stock, pistol grip, and the rest of the furniture with found Ephesus hard wood as a project.

She picked her laser carbine up and started removing the under-barrel grenade launcher from its mounting rail. She would attach it to the AK-47 instead.

She briefly considered taking the big Mastodon revolver that had been handed down through her family. It was such a basic weapon that she couldn’t see how anything could go wrong with it. But she was saving the revolver for a special occasion. For when she caught up with her dad’s killers. She would take the old Glock and the Winchester shotgun that had come from the Daughter’s armoury. The Bastard Legion was going old school.

Chapter 14

Miska strode across the hangar deck accompanied by the sound of gunfire. The industrial white noise generators couldn’t quite drown out the racket of the legionnaires zeroing their weapons on the range that Miska’d had the Daughter’s maintenance droids build. VR simulations were all well and good but sometimes you just had to live-fire. She’d ordered all the slugthrowers that they were taking with them to be equipped with old-fashioned optical sights. Many of them were still slick from the printer, which had been working overtime. If they were right about tech not functioning properly down there then they couldn’t rely on the weapons’ smartlinks to feed them targeting information. She was pleased that her dad’s training regime, which was based on the USMC’s own, had involved learning to shoot properly before relying on smartlinks. She was also pleased that her right hand was pretty much healed and back to normal.

The plan was to drop a fire team from the Sneaky Bastards platoon’s first squad to recon Camp Badajoz. That would be Kasmeyer, with Kaneda, Hogg and one other. The Harpies, with the mechs, and the Pegasi, with the Offensive Bastards, would hold off. A decision would be made depending on what the Sneaky Bastards found. The current plan, however, was to use the Sneaky Bastards as forward observers for the mechs. The Satyrs would take out the camp’s point defence systems and SAM emplacements. The mechs would act as walking artillery until they were close enough to engage Triple S’s armour. At which point the Pegasi would add their own firepower against the Triple S mechs and land the Offensive Bastards, with support from the Armoured Bastards, as and when they could. They had a couple of different contingencies in place, and of course it could all change depending on what Kasmeyer and his fire team found.

She saw Mass heading towards her with the rest of the Heavy Bastards from his two armoured platoons. All of them were wearing full combat armour – padded inertial armour undersuits with load-bearing, hard ceramic plates over the top of them. Normally vehicle pilots would just wear inertial armour but they had packs on their backs and all of them were carrying M-19 carbines.

‘You boys look like you’re ready for a lurp,’ Miska said, meaning a long-range reconnaissance patrol.

‘Never know, boss,’ Hemi growled, just the slightest smile on his face.

‘Sorry, it’s been a busy few days, but good work in Port Turquoise,’ she told them.

There was some smiles and nods from the big tā moko-covered Maoris.

‘You give me a moment, guys?’ Mass asked. Most of