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

it quickly, and make sure there’s a good mix of defoliant and flame gun.’

She heard him start giving orders over the comms.

‘Sneaky-One-Three to Hangman-One-Actual,’ Hogg said over open comms a little later.

‘Hangman-One-Actual, here’

‘I’ve got something I need you to see yourself,’ Hogg told her. He sounded hesitant, as if the last thing he wanted to do was tell her this. She enlarged the feed from Hogg’s camera. She saw two bound and gagged Triple S support personnel wriggling around on the ground. They had been left in the shadow of the Camp’s CP. The Ultra’s ‘presents’.

There was a great deal of activity as Miska made her way down the hill towards the CP accompanied by the Cyclops and the ever-present Nyukuti. Second Platoon was busy delivering the squirters and flame guns to the other platoons.

One of the headless bodies impaled on a stake caught her eye. Fungus was already starting to grow from the severed neck but Miska recognised the powerful build.

‘Semper Fi, sister,’ she told Jones. Then she continued down the hill. She was glad that the Bastards hadn’t been responsible for Jones’s death.

‘Hangman-One-Actual to Heavy-One-Actual,’ Miska said. ‘I want both your bunker-busters on the northern perimeter. Anything happens I don’t want them to mess around. They burn whatever it is and we ask questions later. If it doesn’t come from the north I want them to move position, same rules. Burn it, burn it with fire.’

‘Heavy-One-Actual to Hangman-One-Actual, understood,’ Mass said. Moments later the mechs started changing position. Infantry scurried out of their way. Miska could feel their footfalls through the earth as she reached the CP. Hogg was standing over the two captives. He didn’t look happy.

‘Rejoin your fire team,’ Miska told the ageing terrorist in an attempt to forestall what she suspected was about to come. He didn’t move. ‘You’re going to be difficult, aren’t you?’

‘Flame throwers, defoliants, really?’ he demanded. ‘I came down here to kill corporate assholes. Not help you murder the forest.’

‘Seriously, dude, if it’s trying to kill you then it’s self-defence,’ Miska told him. He opened his mouth to argue further. ‘We are trying to kill corporate assholes but we need a moment here, so could you please just go away so I don’t have to blow your brain up?’

‘Or I shoot you,’ her dad added.

‘Or Nyukuti hits you with a boomerang,’ Miska suggested, mostly for variety. She was quite impressed that Hogg held his ground.

‘What are you going to do with them?’ he asked and nodded towards the two captives.

‘Decoupage,’ Miska told him. Hogg frowned. ‘I’m a slaver and a killer, not a torturer.’ The two captives seemed quite excited by this and were rolling around on the ground making squealing noises through their gags. ‘How about this, if you don’t fuck off right now I’ll shoot both of them in the groin?’ she suggested.

‘Miska …’ her dad said from the Cyclops.

The two captives seemed even more agitated now. One of them had managed to sit upright and was trying to scream ‘fuck off’ at Hogg through his gag.

Hogg stood glaring at her. Miska drew her Glock. The two captives were in a frenzy now. Hogg walked away.

‘I’ll put him in for a discipline,’ her dad told her.

‘Everyone’s being so fucking difficult,’ Miska muttered. Truth was that Hogg had kind of reminded her of Torricone. She looked at the two captives, and held her gun to her lips. ‘Shhhh,’ she told them and then removed the gag from the one who’d sat.

‘In as concise and straightforward a manner as possible, tell me what happened here,’ she said to him.

The captive was a fleshy man in his mid-forties. His soiled overall suggested ground crew to Miska. He looked between Miska, the Cyclops war droid, and Nyukuti.

‘Oh my god, you’re the Bastards aren’t you?’ He sounded terrified.

‘Don’t believe the hype,’ Nyukuti told him.

‘More concisely than that,’ Miska suggested.

The man just stared at her.

‘Now!’ her dad demanded, his voice emanating from the Cyclops, making both captives jump.

‘We hid, it’s why we’re both alive,’ the man told them. ‘We didn’t see much, but roots grew out of the ground … through people … vines lifted them into the air and tore them apart.’

‘So the jungle came alive?’ Miska asked. It sounded ridiculous saying it out loud but it was what all the evidence had been pointing towards. After what Doc had told her about the ambulatory trees she suspected that it was some kind of natural self-defence. She could respect that. She just couldn’t let it kill her people.

‘It was more than that,’ he told her. ‘There were … things … people.’

Miska felt Nyukuti turn to look at the man.

‘People, are you sure?’ her dad asked.

The man nodded and opened his mouth to talk but a private from the Offensive Bastards second platoon ran up and handed Miska a flame gun and Nyukuti one of the squirters full of biohazardous defoliant. Miska thanked him and sent him away.

‘People,’ she prompted.

‘I saw them, in the flames, before the mechs stopped working,’ he told them. This wasn’t good. It suggested some kind of EMP effect that was somehow strong enough to affect military grade shielded equipment had been used against the tech.

‘Why did the mechs stop working?’ her dad asked. The man just shook his head, it was clear that he didn’t know.

‘What did they look like?’ Nyukuti asked.

‘Not human,’ the man told her.

‘Can you be more specific?’ Miska pushed.

He just stared at her. It was clear that he didn’t have much in the way of an imagination.

‘Look,’ he told them, ‘I saw one of the combat exoskeletons get hit with something that looked like an arrow, a wooden fucking arrow, and it went straight through, killed the pilot.’

Miska wanted to call bullshit but it tracked with what she’d seen at FOB Trafalgar.

‘Resnick?’ Miska asked. She had thought it impossible for the guy to look more afraid than he already was. It was clear that he’d already soiled himself. That was fair enough, he’d had a difficult