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

the Heavy Bastards looked at Hemi, who nodded. He smiled at Miska and they continued on their way towards the two Harpies attached to the Daughter’s rear airlocks.

Miska frowned. ‘Everything okay?’ she asked. Up close she could see the bruises on Mass’s face, presumably from his disagreement with Torricone. Despite what Vido had said, she was pretty sure that Mass wouldn’t have been able to stop a really committed Torricone.

‘They’re tight knit. They all know each other from home. They resent some Italian guy being in charge of them. I get it. I’d feel the same way if things were reversed.’

‘You could always go back to the Machimoi,’ Miska suggested, smiling.

‘And give up my armoured giant? You must be kidding,’ he told her. She knew that Mass had developed a major armoured war machine fetish, she’d seen it before. ‘The answer’s for us to get more mechs so you can promote me, then Hemi can run the two platoons,’ he continued. She opened her mouth to tell him that wasn’t imminent. ‘I know, I know, I’ll have to earn it. When haven’t I?’

Miska smiled as she heard her father’s amplified voice from somewhere on the hangar deck, shouting at some poor legionnaire who’d fallen afoul of him.

‘Still, I’ve learned a new word,’ he told her. ‘Pakeha.’

‘What does that mean?’ she asked, adjusting two of the magazines in one of the pouches attached to the front of her load-bearing plate.

‘I’m guessing it’s Maori for nice Italian guy.’

She smiled again and then pointed at his face.

‘You okay?’

He grimaced. ‘Torricone and I are going to have another little chat the next time I see him,’ Mass told her.

Miska nodded. She didn’t say anything but she couldn’t see that going well for Mass either. Torricone had been taught to fight by his mother, and Miska knew from personal experience that Mother Torricone was hard.

‘What’s with all the gear?’ she asked, changing the subject.

‘Hope for the best, plan for the worst,’ he said. ‘Most of it will be stowed before we go to work.’

Miska smiled.

‘I’m going to go and get them squared away,’ he said and headed towards the Harpy that had his mech on board.

Just for a moment Miska felt like she was part of some legitimate military organisation. She could almost pretend that the vast majority of people on the hangar deck wouldn’t cut her throat or do much, much worse given the choice. Including Mass.

‘Hey!’ Mass called. Miska turned around to face him. ‘Whatever else finally happens here. What they said about you. That ain’t right.’ He gestured around the hangar deck. ‘We know the truth.’ He turned around and continued heading for the heavy drop shuttle. Miska found herself smiling.

Then she noticed that the buzz of activity had died down. A lot of people were standing around with the look on their face that suggested that they were watching something on their IVD, or in their helmet’s heads-up-display. She saw there was a flashing icon from a news feed in her own IVD. She wanted to ignore it but knew she couldn’t. With a heavy heart she opened the news feed.

It took her a moment to work out what she was seeing. She saw the suspended terraces of an arboculture plantation hanging between the huge trees. It was on fire. Troops in MMI armour and carrying MMI weapons were brutally murdering the tree-farming colonists. At first she thought it was Triple S. Then she saw the insignia on the uniforms. Then she read the headline: ‘Fresh atrocities committed by the Bastard Legion.’ She could barely hear the presenter in some virtual studio talking about ‘punishment squads’ that she, Miska, was supposed to have sent to the planet as revenge for MACE suspending their contract. Then she saw the face of the ‘punishment squad’s’ leader. The grotesque snarl on his face as he put a pistol to the back of a sobbing woman’s head and squeezed the trigger, murdering her in front of her children. She was vaguely aware that Torricone’s squad were made up of some of the other deserters. She was vaguely aware that Torricone was being described as a serial rapist, a trusted lieutenant, and her lover. Everyone was staring at her. She couldn’t think straight for the screaming in her head. She felt a hand on her shoulder. She spun around, almost reaching for a weapon. Not out of instinct but because she wanted to hurt someone.

‘Don’t burn, goddess,’ Nyukuti told her. ‘None of this is real.’

Miska stared at him. She knew that he believed that only his dreams mattered, that they were real in a way the waking world wasn’t. It wasn’t something she believed but somehow his words were getting through to her. Maybe it was just his tone of voice, soft, deep, mellifluous. Maybe it was his beaten face, partially covered in swell patches. The price he had paid the last time she lost her temper and hadn’t been concentrating on the task at hand.

‘We need you cold. He needs you cold.’ This last was whispered.

But last night I tried to kill him! she wanted to tell Nyukuti. Dark eyes watched her as though he knew, somehow he knew. She noticed that both her dad and Vido were trying to contact her.

‘You know what they have done,’ Nyukuti told her and suddenly the screaming stopped, in fact all the noise on the hangar deck didn’t so much stop as go away. And she was calm. New Sun/Triple S had committed one of the most heinous crimes possible.

She didn’t open the links to her dad and Vido’s incoming calls, instead she had one of the security lenses focus on her and feed the image to every screen in the hangar deck, the shuttles, Camp Reisman and anywhere on board where the prisoners, her legionnaires, could see it.

‘New Sun and Triple S have sequestered some of our people,’ Miska said, ‘They can’t do this. We’re going to make an example of them.’

There was no cheering. Nothing like