Merkiaari Wars: 04 - Operation Breakout Read online

  “Go on, have fun,” he said giving her his permission to leave him. “Usk will stay.”

  She didn’t need telling twice. She screamed her battle cry and ran off.

  Valjoth shook his head and glanced at Usk. “She’s young.”

  “Not that young,” Usk said watching enviously as the closest pack to them butchered the remaining vermin and began checking the heaps of carrion for fakers.

  “Now, now, we had our time on the battlefield. You can’t begrudge her these years.”

  “I don’t,” Usk said. “Really!”

  Valjoth just stared at him.

  “Really!”

  Valjoth didn’t believe him, but let it go. Besides, if he was honest with himself he still yearned to do as Kylar was doing, but maturity and his... ah, little differences allowed him to control such urges. It didn’t mean that he didn’t have them though. He had heard the whispers; the rumours about him and how he was unnatural in the way he controlled the rage. Unnatural? Maybe it was, but it was useful in someone with his responsibilities. Besides, weren’t the gene splicers cultivating his ability in the new batches? He knew they were, and it was just one of the things that made those troops so useful.

  He wandered amidst the heaps of the dead. He had hardly lost any troops here. The stampede had worked as doctrine intended, and the grav sleds had reaped a heavy toll upon the vermin. This wasn’t a battlefield really; there had been no battle. It had been a slaughter. Something made him stop his wandering and back up a couple of steps. He reached down suddenly and pulled a Human out of the heap.

  “What do we have here?” he said, showing Usk.

  “A young one, my lord. Alive?”

  Indeed it was, but not faking death or unconsciousness; it had a head injury and was covered in gore. He studied the creature, holding it up by one arm to see it better. A male, he decided, and a small one. He didn’t know how to judge age in Humans, but it wasn’t adult in size. The fur on its head was pale in colour as was its skin, but the paleness was not natural or healthy for it. Valjoth looked away to find Kylar had returned and together with Usk was waiting to see what he planned to do with his Human.

  “I’m saving it for later,” he abruptly decided. “Have we a collar?”

  Usk shook his head but Kylar thought there might be one in the sled. She went to look. While she did that, he carefully tried to wake the creature. It groaned and its eyelids flickered as it stirred. He shook it, and the eyes snapped open. It cried out at the sight of him, but he was pleased when it stopped after only a brief struggle to be free. It glared at him. So! A fierce one then. He grinned back at it.

  “Humans don’t make good pets, my lord,” Usk said doubtfully as Kylar returned with an obedience collar. “They never last long.”

  True. Humans were a little like Merkiaari in that they preferred death to captivity, but this was a young one. Perhaps he could train it to survive. It would give him something to do on the journey. There was little else for him to do in foldspace; all his planning was long since complete. He snapped the collar around its neck and waited for the device to adjust its size before letting the creature stand on its own feet. It bolted immediately as expected. Kylar handed him the controller and he used it.

  The creature staggered and fell tugging for all it was worth upon the collar.

  He had chosen strangulation over direct pain stimuli for its first lesson. Time would tell, but pain could be endured up to a point, suffocation couldn’t. Besides, he didn’t know its pain threshold yet and didn’t want to kill it or make it mindless accidentally. He collected the Human and allowed it to breathe again. When it opened its eyes he showed it the controller so it knew where its pain had come from, and then strangled it again. This time it just watched him until it fainted. Excellent! It was an intelligent specimen; he had hoped it would be. It had learned that running was pointless already. He felt quite optimistic that he might train it to at least survive for a short while.

  “Can I ask why you even want a Human for a pet?” Kylar said. “Wasn’t the entire point to cleanse them entirely?”

  Valjoth watched it coming around again. “It’s just an experiment. We know they won’t be controlled, not like the Parcae or the Shintarn let’s say, who do whatever it takes to survive today so they might rebel again tomorrow with better hope of success. I simply wonder if Humans can be that pragmatic. I don’t think they can; they’re too much like us.”

  Kylar drew back, obviously affronted by the thought of being likened to any vermin, even one worthy of giving Merkiaari a true challenge as Humans had done in the past.

  “I admire that about the vermin; their pragmatism I mean.”

  Usk rolled his eyes and shook his head at Kylar, trying to make her drop the subject, but she ignored him. She tended to do that, and it drove Usk to distraction, which of course was why she did it. Valjoth enjoyed them both and their rivalry; they were immensely entertaining to him.

  “I did wonder about that,” Kylar admitted. “Why we didn’t cleanse them completely last time I mean.”

  “Oh that has nothing to do with why I didn’t erase them. No, the Parcae—and the Shintarn for that matter—are much too useful to force into extinction. The Hegemon would have my head if I deprived us of useful species that way. No, they just needed the usual reminder of their situation. It will hold them for another half century or so.”

  The usual for the Parcae was decimation not annihilation. Other vermin needed lesser or greater object lessons depending upon species, but putting down four in ten always worked. They even chose by lots which of their people would die when their battle was lost. They never needed to be forced to hand them over either. He suspected they chose amongst themselves before they even began their rebellions and considered it an honour to serve their people in that way. They would think it very unfair if he killed five in ten instead of the usual four. Not traditional at all they would probably say, as if rebellion were just a game. Maybe to them it was.

  Vermin madness.

  * * *

  Davy glared up from where he lay as the Merki talked amongst themselves. His hand stole up to the collar around his neck. He couldn’t stop himself from pulling at it, even knowing it wouldn’t come off. His eyes slid from the Merki in charge to the giant he was talking to; it was head and shoulders taller. He remembered what that meant from school. It, the giant, was a she. A female death trooper. The worst of the worst.

  He had to get away, but how? Everyone was dead except for him. Even if they let him go, how long could he survive here alone? How long would he want to? He wanted to scream for help, but his teachers and friends were all dead. They were all around him, piled high where they’d fought and died without hope. He felt numb. Was that grief? He couldn’t believe everyone he had ever known was dead. He was the last Human; he might never see another, like ever!

  His parents... he wanted to scream and never stop, but in his head he heard his dad telling him to be calm and think it through. Think it through, Davy, he would say. I know you can do it... but his dad had been talking about a math problem, not this!

  Think it through, think it through, think it...

  * * *

  18 ~ Arrival

  Day 10, Crichton Orbital, Northcliff, Border Zone

  Bang! Clang-thump!

  Kate sighed tiredly. Docked finally. She stood and headed for her cabin to change clothes when all she really wanted to do was enter maintenance mode for some much needed downtime, but she could sleep in a hotel when she got down world as easily as here. Besides, she wanted to get settled on Northcliff before her brother’s ship arrived, not be scrambling for a base of operations when that event happened, which it would any day now. She had already tapped into the Infonet for news, and into the station’s net for its ship list. Her processor would raise an alert the moment her brother’s ship translated into the system.

  In her cabin she stripped and took a shower to wake herself up a bit, before redressing in one of the outf
its Stone had supplied. As she pulled on the stylish purple trousers with the see through net panels down the sides, she folded herself away gradually allowing her Cherry Jackson persona to take over. Cherry was a real person to her—one of her alter egos who had a surprising number of uses. Everyone loved her. When Cherry looked at you her eyes said, ‘let’s be friends’ and you found yourself smiling. Whether she was a teenager away from home for the first time, a silly tourist sowing her wild oats while travelling the Alliance, or a young salesperson on a business trip, Cherry Jackson got the job done. It was uncanny how easily Kate found it to become someone so opposite to her real nature. Handy though. One of Stone’s I.Ds was for Cherry because he knew she was a favourite cover story of hers.

  Thinking about I.D, she ordered her processor to reset her simcode implant in case immigration checked. Northcliff was an Alliance member world despite its edge of the Border Zone location. No doubt its assimilation into core world civilisation was well under way and using simcode readers was part of that. All vipers had re-programmable simcode implants, but it wasn’t a new convenience for her. Bethany’s ISS had replaced her original implant as part of her spinal cord when it recruited her years ago. What was new was her ability to re-program it on the fly. Her processor had a lot of identities to choose from. Very useful they were too, especially when simcode implants were meant to be tamper proof and were therefore automatically accepted wherever they were used within the Alliance.

  In her experience nothing was really tamper proof. The degree of security just depended on how much time, money, and effort one was willing to spend to compromise it. In the simcode implant’s favour, it took government level resources to cheat the system... or General Burgton level of time and determination. Come to think of it, both things applied where vipers were concerned. The regiment did have its own planet and fledgling navy after all.

  Kate chose a hideous shirt to go with her purple trousers. It was lime green with lemon stripes and was designed to be worn untucked. She admired the results in the mirror, but shook her head unsatisfied. Her military haircut needed disguising, but because it was shaved tight to her skull on the sides she would need something extra to pull off the look she was going for. She grabbed her Goop and got to work styling it into spikes to distract the eye. Ten minutes later she used the setting agent on it and admired the result.

  “You look gorgeous, Cherry,” she said and frowned. “You look gorgeous, Cherry!” She said again, adjusting her tone of voice lower. Sultry worked better. Cherry wasn’t a dippy tourist this time around. She was a thirty-something young business woman on her way up in the world. Well on her way to better things, but not quite there yet. “Hi, my name is... Hi! I’m Cherry, Cherry Jackson? I’m here to see... I have an appointment to see...” she nodded.

  She hadn’t lost her touch.

  Makeup was last. She chose the lemon stripes of her shirt and matched it for eyes and lips. She dialled in the codes and waited a second for the nannies in the eye shadow and lipstick to adjust before finishing her disguise. Last of all she did her nails. Lemon again. She would have preferred black or maybe a very dark purple, but Cherry the up and coming business woman preferred bright and cheerful, not dark and mysterious. She could already feel the colours settling into her psyche as she studied the woman in the mirror. She pouted and smiled, practising her moods. The cheerfully outrageous colours and clothing were making a difference. Cherry was feeling more real, more in control of their body.

  She shuddered. On ops like this it was spooky being Kate Richmond. Sometimes she worried that there might be something not quite right with her head, and at other times she knew beyond question she was a psycho. It didn’t matter really. She hid it well and could function like a normal person when she had to, but letting her alter egos like Cherry out to play now and then was good for her. Better they come out like this than in an uncontrolled way. She knew that Hymas had been watching her for instability. Not so much now that she had undergone a second enhancement without a whig-out, but she did still keep a watch. Hymas had tried to have her scrapped early on in the recruiting process. She had wheedled that out of Stone one night when she asked about Hymas’ vendetta against Bethanites. There was history there. She didn’t know everything, but she would one day. Kate respected Hymas because she knew the woman was right to be wary around her despite every other doctor’s contrary view. She really was a dangerous psycho... just not all the time. The only ones who needed to worry were her enemies, and the General chose who those were these days.

  She frowned.

  She had never liked authority, and resented those with power over her, but she needed the discipline of her military career to keep her head straight. She was a weapon in need of targets, and the regiment provided her with those. That was one of the reasons why she disliked being an officer. It was better someone else decided who needed to die. OSI (Office of Strategic Intelligence) had been the perfect solution. She could have been happy there performing missions and planning ops for the others, while letting Stone and the General aim her in the right direction. It had been great—just enough direction to satisfy her needs without too much oversight to make her resent it.

  She sighed. Well, that life was over now. It hadn’t worked out, that was all. It wasn’t the first setback she’d had in her life and it wouldn’t be the last. She didn’t know what the future would bring, a quick death probably, but she wouldn’t go quietly. Until then, she would live her time to the full, and she already had some idea of what to do after rescuing Paul. If she only had limited time, she wanted to use it wisely. Bringing down a ruling family of Bethany—the Whitby family—would make a fine epitaph. Anyway, that was for later.

  It was time to go, but before leaving the ship she needed one last disguise. She rummaged in Stone’s trunk and located the medical kit. Inside amongst the bandages and nano injector cartridges she found a box of surgical gloves. To outsiders they would be just another part of a standard med kit, but these gloves weren’t standard. Each cellophane packet contained a single glove designed to disguise a viper’s right hand. It was a fingerless glove only covering the hand and each finger to the first knuckle. It would be useless for medical purposes. She tore open the sterile packet with her teeth and pulled the glove on, working her fingers and smoothing it over her palm with her other hand. Her weapon’s bus was completely covered. The glove slowly shrank as it reacted to the heat of her body, wrinkles smoothed out as it tightened, until it had blended with her hand. It would take a close inspection for anyone to realise the glove was even there.

  Customs and immigration, as expected, was busy as hell. That was both good and bad in her opinion. Bad, in that it slowed her down and she was impatient, but also good because she was just one of hundreds of people eager to get down world. The customs people were only interested in shoving as many bodies through its procedures as it could before another ship docked and the flood of passengers started over again.

  Kate checked that her ECM (Electronic Counter Measures) was ready to spoof the scanners and shuffled to the front of the line. Stone’s battered trunk faithfully followed her movement, humming quietly on its anti-grav. She ran a sensor sweep looking for anyone taking notice of her, but detected nothing outside of the usual security precautions. No unusual movement caught her eye, no one watching her or suddenly turning away when she turned to look. She had a window open giving her the feed from dockside security cams, but again everything seemed normal. She had a nearby cam zoom in to study her own face. She forced the annoyance out of her expression and replaced it with Cherry’s ‘let’s be friends’ look before dismissing the window.

  “Next!”

  She shuffled forward.

  “Name, homeworld, destination, reason for visiting?” the bored customs official said by rote and without catching Kate’s eyes.

  Realising her ‘let’s be friends’ expression was wasted on this man she let it drop. “Cherry Jackson, Beaufort, your lovely capital city, and busines
s.”

  He nodded. “Arms up at your sides for the scan. Anything to declare?”

  “Nothing,” she said and raised her arms for him to wave his scanner over her. A security alert blinked onto her internal display and kept flashing as he speedily worked the wand expertly over her body. Another indicator lit. Her ECM was countering and sending back a false reading. Both alerts disappeared when he moved on to her trunk.

  “Did you pack this yourself, anything perishable inside, anything unsafe or volatile?”

  “I packed it, nothing perishable, nothing volatile, but I’d appreciate some care. It has all my samples.”

  “Samples... pharmaceuticals?” His eyes narrowed.

  “Oh no, nothing like that!” she said, trying to sound scandalised. It didn’t sound quite right though, more like she was horrified by the very idea. Good enough. “I’m visiting your world with the latest cosmetics to come out of the core. They’re guaranteed to knock years off your appearance. Why, they’re better than body mods and a fraction of the cost!”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “Open it.”

  “But!”

  “Open. It.” His voice was harder now. “You can do it here with me or in a cell a couple of hours from now.”

  She grumbled as expected but unlocked the trunk.

  He ran his scanner over the contents, adjusted settings, and did it again. “Okay, you’re clear. Next!”

  She locked her trunk before proceeding through the checkpoint towards a shuttle. The faithful trunk followed two paces behind with Stone’s bomb making and snooping supplies safely inside. She sneered at the so-called security measures, but kept it off her face. This kind of thing was why people like her were needed in the first place. There were always home grown trouble makers, but the problem was made massively worse by off world backers. Security at the interface between worlds—the stations—was so important, yet it was ridiculously lax. People like her had to come in and clean up messes that were allowed to happen due to weak security, yet if asked, people out here in the Border Worlds would protest any proposal to tighten it up. They didn’t really want core world rules and regs, but they secretly wanted the affluent lifestyle found there. Those that wanted neither simply emigrated further out where the cycle had yet to start. Northcliff was an Alliance member but it was still at an early stage in its journey from true Border World to Core World. It was definitely on the path, but not there yet by a long way.