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

without having to be told. If you want stuff stolen, criminals are the right people to ask, she decided. The low loaders were driving up into their modular airlocked slots in the Harpies’ holds. There was a steady line of cargo lifters and movers from the hangar to the heavy shuttles.

‘Sneaky-Two-Actual to Hangman-One-Actual, I think we’ve got something you want to see,’ the sergeant from the Sneaky Bastards’ second squad told her over a direct comms link. Miska checked his position. He was in the hangar.

‘On my way,’ she told him, trotting towards the large poured-concrete building. The mech that Mass had put out of action was still burning, its flickering light illuminating the Bastards’ efforts.

‘Well now,’ Miska said, grinning.

‘Thought you’d like it,’ the smiling sergeant said. Miska was pleased to see that, despite the find, the four-man fire team were still alert, looking outwards rather than inwards. Her legionnaires stole spares, ammunition, tools and anything else that wasn’t nailed down. It was like watching locusts at work. She checked the countdown. Captured Triple S guards and support staff knelt, facing the wall, under the watchful eyes of another fire team from second squad.

‘Oh, I like them,’ Miska said, still grinning as she looked over the two Martian Military Industries Cyclops war droids. About the same size as a combat exoskeleton, the Cyclops were state of the art combat drones, capable of bipedal and quadrupedal movement. They had modular weapons hardpoints and a limited AI that allowed a pretty sophisticated level of autonomy. Matte grey with no right angles, their smooth lines helped lower their sensor signature and it looked like these ones came equipped with reactive camouflage. Both of them carried the same weapons load-out: a turret-mounted 20mm Dory/light multi-role missile battery combination. They also had ball-mounted point defence lasers at their shoulders and hips. In short, they were a fast and formidable weapon system. ‘Good work,’ she told the fire team.

Miska patched her comms into Pegasus 1. The assault shuttle was still circling the base. She piggybacked on the shuttle’s more powerful transmitter to reach the Hangman’s Daughter docked high above them at Waterloo Station.

‘Hangman-One-Actual to Hangman-Actual,’ she said. ‘We’ve found you another body.’

She sent an order through the virus’s expert system to automate one of the war droids. It burst into life, startling the fire team, but they made way for it as it ran across the hangar, leaping a cargo lifter exoskeleton, and made for the assault shuttle. The second droid was reserved.

‘Acknowledged,’ the gruff voice replied after a few moments of lag. She couldn’t be sure but she didn’t think her dad was particularly enthused by her plan. Still, studying the Cyclops she couldn’t help but feel that, despite the name, the head looked more feline than anything else. She pointed at the remaining war droid.

‘I think I’ll call it Kitty,’ she decided.

‘To LSM’s face?’ the sergeant asked. There was some laughter from the other three members of the fire team. Miska just smiled.

Miska had promoted her dad to legion sergeant major, effectively making him the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer. That said, even those that had been promoted to officer knew that LSM Corbin was still the de-facto second in command of the Bastard Legion. He might have been an electronic ghost created from the uploaded personality of her father, existing only as an icon in the virtual construct they used to train the Bastard Legion, but he was still both feared and respected among the convict legionnaires.

Then the second Cyclops burst into life as well. Immediately another two limbs unfolded like switchblades from the mech’s existing forelimbs. These new limbs ended in two slender chainsaw blades. Miska couldn’t be sure but she suspected that the teeth on the chainsaws were synthetic diamonds fused to the titanium, just like her fighting knife. She liked that. It felt like synchronicity – after all, her dad had given her the knife when she’d made it through boot camp.

‘What in the good goddamn!’ her father demanded, his voice emanating from the war droid. Miska was delighted that some Martian designer had seen the need to equip the Cyclops with such a good quality voice synthesiser. ‘I feel like a praying mantis carrying a pair of switchblades.’

‘Hey Kitty,’ Miska said brightly. ‘Walk with me.’

‘What did you just call me?’

Miska just nodded to the second squad fire team and made her way out of the hangar, now almost bare.

‘Harpy-One to all Bastard call signs, we’re fully loaded and buttoned up,’ the pilot of the one of the captured Harpies said. They’d broadcast it on a frequency that, while not exactly open, wasn’t going to take too much effort to break for people listening in. It was exactly the sort of mistake that criminals masquerading as military amateurs would make.

‘Harpy-Two to all Bastard call signs, the same,’ the pilot of the other Harpy said over the same frequency. Both the Harpies’ flight crews had been picked from male members of the Sirius-based pirate fleet, the Scarlet Sisterhood. In fact Harpy 1’s pilot’s lover had fired on Miska while she’d been piloting one of the Pegasi during her last visit to Maw City, the pirate base in the Dog’s Teeth asteroid belt.

‘Hangman-One-Actual to Harpy-One and Two, okay, full burn for Camp Badajoz, we’ll be right behind you,’ Miska told them over the same frequency. It wasn’t the sort of mistake an operator of her calibre made, but then you played the cards you were dealt.

She heard the roar of the Harpies’ huge engines as hot winds buffeted her and anything that hadn’t already been stolen or wasn’t nailed down turned into so much flying debris. Miska knelt, shielding her face with her arm, and tried not to inhale too much dirt as the Harpies clawed their way into the sky like ancient rockets. They looked so ungainly, so heavy. Miska still struggled with the concept that they could fly. As the dust clouds swept past her, Miska realised that the Cyclops had taken