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

the chain of command had never really been his thing. ‘You met with him on the May ’68, the free port in the Tau Ceti system.’

Miska was getting an IVD headache. The various feeds – biometrics, gun-and helm-cams, lens feeds from the shuttles, the net feed, the tactical overlay, the comms icons – may have been minimised in her IVD but the sheer amount of information that was incoming was nearly overwhelming, and Torricone wasn’t helping. Not for the first time Miska decided that she far preferred operating to command.

She watched the mechs stepping out from their surrounding platforms as she tried to decide what to tell Torricone. The platforms folded down onto the backs of the low loaders as their engines rumbled to life and they pulled away from the mechs, making for the drop shuttles.

‘You’re surprised I know war correspondents?’ Miska asked.

‘Bullshit, I watched you, it was more than that,’ Torricone snapped, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

Is he jealous? Miska wondered. She’d had a brief, ill-advised drunken fling with Raff when she’d found out about her dad’s murder. Raff had carried a bit of a torch for her. She wondered just how much of that had been apparent when she’d met him on the May ’68.

‘Is he a spook?’

No, he’s not jealous, Miska decided, absently wondering if that bothered her. He is, however, very perceptive. She also suspected that Raff would either kill Torricone, or ask her to kill him, if he thought the ex-car thief suspected anything.

‘No, he’s not a spook. Not everything is a conspiracy,’ Miska told him, wondering how apparent her exasperation was when she subvocalised.

‘No, but your plan to steal a prison barge and turn it into a mercenary penal legion was,’ Torricone pointed out. The ground started to shake as the seven remaining Medusa-class mechs sprinted for the treeline. Moments later the two thin Satyr-class scout mechs, each of them half the size of the Medusas, sprinted by at a much higher speed, causing other Bastards busily going about their business to scatter out of their path.

‘Well yes,’ Miska admitted, ‘that was a conspiracy, but a conspiracy of one. Two if you count my dead dad.’ She was extremely conscious of the countdown in her IVD, the inbound assault shuttles full of Triple S (elite) and the lancing pain in her head. ‘Look, I don’t have time for any of this. If you’re not going to carry a gun then just fuck off out of my sight, will you?’

Torricone narrowed his eyes. She wasn’t sure if he was hurt or angry, and she certainly wasn’t sure why she would care one way or another.

‘Any wounded?’ he asked. Their last mission had been a difficult one. A small-scale black op that had turned bad. They’d encountered some kind of ancient alien artefact. Raff, who’d set up the job, had called it a ‘Cheat’.

‘Not on our side,’ Miska told him.

Since then Torricone had point blank refused to carry a gun. He’d augmented the rudimentary combat medic training he’d received from Miska’s dad with lessons from the doctor. Miska hoped that medicine was all the doctor was training Torricone in. The imprisoned serial killer had some truly unpleasant predilections.

‘That’s a first for you, isn’t it?’ It was an unusually spiteful thing for Torricone to say. Now Miska narrowed her eyes. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t … Permission to see to any enemy wounded.’

‘Go on, fuck off,’ she told him. For a moment Torricone looked as though he was about to say something else but thought better of it. He turned and trotted towards the bunker.

What was that about? she wondered as she turned and headed back to the assault shuttle. She was more mystified than hurt, and conscious of what a waste of time it had been.

Miska drew her fighting knife and stood over Raff. She knelt down, cut his hands and legs free and then removed the tape covering his mouth none too gently.

‘What the fuck!’ he demanded as Miska sheathed her knife. ‘Seriously, what the fuck?’ he subvocalised, more reasonably, over a secure private comms link.

‘Stop whining, lenshead, you didn’t get beat on,’ Miska said and then subvocalised: ‘I didn’t order it and I didn’t know they were going to do it.’

Raff sat up, leaning against the folded-up bench seats.

‘Colonel Corbin, I am a duly licensed war correspondent. The articles of conflict state that all operations will have an embedded—’

‘Parasite packaging our deaths as entertainment for the core systems?’ Miska asked, still keeping an eye on the countdown and checking on Mass’s platoon’s progress as they sprinted through the dark jungle. Through the feed from the lead scout mech she could see that the skyscraper-tall trees’ thick interlinked canopy was letting in only the odd stray beam of red light reflecting the gas giant overhead.

‘Seriously though,’ Raff subvocalised over the comms link, ‘I need your co-operation so I can get a better idea of the scope and capabilities of your outfit.’

‘My contract says you have to accompany us, it’s less clear on the degree of co-operation that entails,’ Miska said out loud. ‘They’re criminals, Raff, what do you expect? You’re the enemy,’ she added over the comms link. ‘And never mind evaluating us, you’re still on probation for walking us into that clusterfuck on Barney Prime.’

‘I never met a criminal who didn’t want to be famous,’ Raff said and then subvocalised: ‘The codes work?’

‘Yeah,’ Miska subvocalised back. ‘You must have drilled into them deep.’

‘One-time deal,’ Raff admitted over the comms link. ‘We’re not going to get away with something like this again.’

We? Miska wondered.

‘Stay out of our way,’ Miska told him out loud. ‘Get off the shuttle if you want but you get left behind if you’re not back here when we’re done, and I have a feeling Triple S are going to be pissed when they get here.’ She walked down the ramp and back out into the jungle night and the hive of activity. She was pleased. Everyone was doing what they were supposed to