Ghost War Read online

  Perfect.

  I shoved the door open and stepped into the dark bar. The miasma of rotting veggies made it into the place, but the reek of human vomit overpowered it rather sharply. A couple of steps in from the door I picked up the stronger perfume of stale beer and the sharper scent of whatever burning herbs the two guys in the back corner were sucking out of a hookah.

  Those two were clearly the cream of the crop for clientele. Most of the other folks huddled over drinks at their tables. They looked like ticks sucking supper from some dog, all bloated and disgusting. Save the guys in the corner, and the bleached blonde working the tables, I had to be the youngest person in there by twenty years.

  I slid onto a stool at the bar. I had plenty of choices and picked a place with two empty stools between me and an old souse nursing a beer. He watched me sit down, sprinkled a little salt into his beer to bring the head up, then gave me a nod.

  I returned it automatically, which I knew was a mistake. The bartender had been keeping well away from him at a time when he should have been pushing more suds, which meant he didn’t want to deal with the guy. My nod was a nice little acknowledgment of his existence, so sooner or later I knew I’d be listening to his life story.

  I glanced at the bartender. “I’ll have what he’s having.”

  “You can’t. We’ve had a new delivery since then.”

  “Just draw it wet, will you?” I fished in my pocket for a couple of five-stone coins, got a knight and an exarch in change. I left the exarch for the bartender, then drank. The beer was surprisingly good, which meant I was doomed.

  It is a fact of life that the better the beer, the greater the idiot sitting near you.

  “Young fella like you shouldn’t be in a place like this.”

  I gave the old man a sidelong glance. “You checking IDs, gramps?”

  “There was a time you wouldn’t have taken that tone with me, you pup. Better days.” He raised his glass and drank a little, but not much. As he drank I saw a tattoo on the inside of his right forearm.

  I put another five-stone coin on the bar, then pointed to the old man. “Give him one from this week’s batch.”

  “I don’t need your charity.” He said it sharply, hoping his vehemence could cover his desire.

  “Not charity, grandfather, gratitude.” I nodded at him. “That tattoo for real?”

  The man snorted. “If it weren’t, do you think I’d show it? You know the stories. It would be long gone.”

  I nodded. Though it was faded, I easily recognized the insignia for Stone’s Lament, one of the core regiments that fought with Stone to liberate worlds from tyrants. Of the hammers Stone wielded, Lament was the one he gave the truly tough jobs.

  As will always happen, there are those mountebanks who will claim to have been part of something they were not. More than once I’d heard of Lament vets seeking out those who claimed to have been part of Lament and had the tattoo to prove it. Those folks underwent retro-voluntary laser dermabrasion to erase those tattoos—usually in a medical facility since the field operation, using a laser pistol, usually removed a bit more than just the pigment.

  “Where did you see action?”

  The man sucked the foam off his new beer then licked his mustache away. “You name it. I joined up in ’93 and went through all the campaigns. Capellan was the hardest. Those Warrior Houses weren’t surrendering a centimeter until they were drowning in blood. They killed Allard-Liao and one of Victor’s sons, you know. I fought with Burton. I wouldn’t be sitting here if he hadn’t saved my ass.”

  The bartender rolled his eyes, so I could tell a story was going to be coming if I didn’t do something. “What are you doing here, then? I thought Republic vets got taken care of. Half a dozen of the Knights have to be Lament alums.”

  The bartender shook his head and went over to stand near a patron who’d passed out at the bar. Lament looked at me with bloodshot blue eyes. “They forgot me. After the peace I got out, came home here, had some trouble adjusting, got in trouble with the law, did some time. The screws didn’t like me, so they sent in paperwork saying I’d died in the hole. I’ve tried complaining, but no one listens. Be easier to come back from the dead than to file all the forms to show I’m not dead.”

  I frowned. “But there’s a DNA registry, right?”

  He laughed. “Sent a sample. Got a letter back confirming I was dead.”

  “You look pretty much alive to me.” I extended a hand toward him. “I’m Sam Donelly.”

  “Andy Harness. Folks call me Croaker. That’s what I was in the Lament. Obliged for the beer.” He drank again. “Being dead’s my excuse for being in here. What’s yours?”

  “Like you, I’m dead.” I snorted and sipped more beer. “Until an hour ago I worked for ARU harvesting trees up by Kokushima. GGF ambushed some Constabulary folks up there, killed a few, and some damned Republic Knight has decided I’m working with the GGF. She got ARU to fire my butt and since they were housing me, I’ve got nothing. ARU isn’t going to give me a recommendation, so no one on this rock will hire me, and I can’t afford passage away. They’ve dug me a nice little grave and are shoveling dirt on me as fast as they can.”

  My voice rose as I spoke, but only the bartender seemed to take notice. I could tell from the expression on his face I was going to be strictly cash-and-carry, and he’d be biting the coins to see if they were real.

  Despite how he’d been treated, Andy was still a Republic man. “Well, now, if a Knight thinks that there’s a problem, he must have a reason.”

  “It’s a she and she’s listening to that moron Reis. That bloated slug . . .” I grabbed Andy’s saltshaker. “I’ve half a mind to head back there and just pour this on him and watch him shrivel. Better yet, I can run back to ARU, sneak in, take my ’Mech and show him why a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

  Andy laughed at that idea. “He was the assistant warden when I was let go. He’s the one who did me, so I’ll help you.”

  “I’m telling you, Andy, he jobbed you and he jobbed me, and the worst of it is that The Republic believes him. You know, if Stone were still around, he’d come down and kick that jerk in the butt, and hard, too, but where are things now, right? Why doesn’t The Republic wake up? That Knight is here backing Reis when he’s a little toy dictator. She ought to be taking him apart and you know what? If she doesn’t, I’m gonna. He’s ruined my life, you know, so I don’t see why he should be sitting fat, dumb and happy. For a stone I’d . . .”

  Andy held a hand up. “Easy there, Sam. Reis is dumb, but in the hole I learned he has spies everywhere. You don’t want to be attracting attention, especially his attention.”

  I nodded and drank. “You’re probably right.”

  “Oh, I know I am.” Andy frowned. “So you don’t have no place to stay, right?”

  I opened my arms. “This is it, Andy, everything I got.”

  “Okay, we gotta get you a place to stay. There’s a mission over on Akuma that should have space. They have food, too. Not much, not very good, but it will fill a belly. You can get some rack time there, too. You’ll have to listen to some preaching after supper, but it usually ain’t too bad.”

  “I can handle that.” I gave him a smile. “For a dead guy, you’re pretty nice. If Reis has spies all over, though, aren’t you running a risk? He’s got it in for me, and I’m sure he’d love to have you be collateral damage.”

  Andy heaved himself up from the bar and slid from his stool. He shook his fists out, not with the awkward motions of a drunk, but the fluid force of someone who once could have whipped everyone in the bar before the head had settled on his beer. Though white hair, gin-blossoms and a keg of paunch cloaked it, I could see the old MechWarrior in him.

  “Son, all I been through, I’ve never been afraid of Ichabod Reis. He’s a conniver and he has a special hate for MechWarriors because he couldn’t never get accepted into any training program. When I was with Lament, I’da thought nothing more of him
than things I scraped off my boots. Now just my being alive must rankle him, and that’s good enough.” His eyes sparked for a second. “At least, good enough until we saw his house in half.”

  5

  It’s easy to cut to pieces a dead elephant, but no one dares to attack a live one.

  —Yoruba saying

  Overton

  Joppa, Helen

  Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere

  20 November 3132

  Andy took me under his wing and over the next week I learned quite a bit. Given that he was dead as far as The Republic was concerned, he did pretty well without any official status. When we didn’t make it to the mission in time for food, he knew which restaurants had picky eaters. Sure, the food was all jumbled together, but it all mixes in your stomach anyway.

  There’s always a need for day labor. Sure, ConstructionMechs might be the things that put buildings together, but they’re notoriously bad at getting into small spaces and are really too big to be pushing a broom and hauling junk. When we worked on trash details we’d get first pick of the scrap, which we could then sell to dealers for a couple of knights. It wasn’t much, but without food and housing expenses, we didn’t need that much.

  Banal was only one of a couple of dives that Andy frequented. Most were pretty close to a mission or where the day labor trucks would drop us back. We’d get paid in cash, of course, and kick some back to the driver so he’d let us onto the crew the next day. The rest of the money didn’t stick with us for very long, but we didn’t go to bed thirsty, so it was counted as a good day.

  On the rounds I learned a lot about Reis that made my experience with him seem benign. He’d always been bad, but really had let his power blossom in the south when Helen got cut out of the net. The arrival of a Knight-Errant must have filled him with dread until he managed to seduce her into thinking he was the second coming of Devlin Stone. With Lakewood backing him, no one could oppose him.

  Except for the Gaia Guerrilla Front. After the incident on the mountain they laid low for a bit. Reis was at his pompous best during the funerals for the constables he’d lost on his raid. He delivered a eulogy that would have made a rock cry and then sign up to join the CDRF to avenge fallen comrades. Even the barflies watching the funerals on the Tri-Vid were thinking Reis was doing a good job until they were pointedly reminded that he’d already done a job on them.

  That wishy-washiness really brought the worst out in me. I was good and vocal about what I’d do with him. My plans had progressed well beyond sawing his house in half. In bragging about my plans I showed a little bit more in the way of technical expertise in some areas than I should have, but I was hoping word would get back to Reis and he’d start sleeping with one eye open.

  As it turned out, I should have been the one who avoided sleep. My seventh night in the shelter I was awakened by having a rough canvas hood pulled down over my head. I heard Andy wake up, ask what was happening, and get a punch for his trouble. My covers were ripped away, I was rolled over and placed in cuffs, then dragged from the mission.

  About the only words I heard my captors speak were a stern warning to someone. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll forget this ever happened.”

  I got stuffed into the trunk of a hovercar and it took off. I tried to memorize the route, but we sped up, slowed down, circled left and right, so I had no clue as to how far we’d gone or where. After ten minutes I surrendered and pretty much decided that I wasn’t going to be killed immediately. Given that they’d pulled me from a mission in the slums of Overton, if they wanted me dead, they’d have just blasted coherent light through my skull and left me in the gutter.

  Since I wasn’t dead, I had to assume I had information my captors wanted. It was pretty obvious that no one was going to be paying a ransom for me, after all. I could only think of three people who would think I had something valuable between my ears. Lady Lakewood wouldn’t have used a midnight snatch. Reis would, but he’d have made it a public event.

  That left the Gaia Guerrilla Front. It made perfect sense for them to tag me. As the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and I’d made it pretty well known that I considered Reis just this side of Stefan Amaris in terms of evil. I’d also turned out to be pretty lethal when it came to dealing with their ambush.

  That thought caused me to pause. It could be they wanted me alive for some sort of sham trial, then they would execute me. Then again, I was nobody. If they wanted to attract attention to their cause by trying me for crimes against nature and their organization, they’d have been better served to kill me first, publicly, and then send out a media release explaining why I was a target.

  The hovercar stopped and I heard the clanking of a panel door being cranked down. The trunk popped open and I was yanked out, my shins scraping over the lip of the trunk. I cried out and caught a cuff for my trouble. It wasn’t a Reis-quality cuff, but hurt enough to make me quiet down.

  They sat me in a chair, then pulled the hood off. A bright light blinded me. I shied away, then sucked in as much good air as I could. Good, in this regard, has to be qualified, since we were in a large warehouse that had been built to house ’Mechs, but clearly had been unused for a long time. Roof leaks had left pools of standing water ringed by rusty shores.

  Once my eyes adjusted I looked about. Five people stood around me and right off I noticed a bad sign. None of them wore masks which, in a kidnapping situation, is not good. It means your captors don’t care if you can identify them, and the easiest way for them to make sure of that would be to kill you.

  I did recognize one immediately. Red stood there, absolutely boiling. She still had two black eyes and her jaw had been wired shut. She folded her hands beneath her breasts and tapped a toe. I was fairly certain she was eyeing me with the intent of planting that toe where it would do a lot of damage, and I did not like that prospect at all.

  The other four were unremarkable save that they looked pretty fit and tanned. I guessed they spent a lot of time in the outdoors, which would fit with devotees to the GGF philosophy of loving the earth and hating the metal maggots that chewed into it or cut the trees down. A couple of them watched me very closely, which suggested some military experience, but I didn’t see anything like a convenient tattoo to give me a clue as to where they might have gotten it.

  What I did note is that the four of them had on jackets with CDRF insignia. I had no doubt that the story of my snatching would make it through the Overton slums quickly, building more fear and resentment against Reis. No mention of it would appear in any public media, but the honest folks in Overton would have a hard time believing anything bad about Reis anyway.

  Another man entered the warehouse from a small office. He kept to the shadows mostly, though light did glint from glasses. I wasn’t sure if he needed them to see, or thought they would serve as a disguise, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t see enough of his face to recognize him later anyway.

  He spoke and his words buzzed through a voice-modifier worn at his throat. “Good evening, Mr. Donelly. So glad you chose to join us.”

  “I’m usually a wallflower, but your people were convincing.” I sniffed and tried to wipe my nose on my right shoulder. “So, is this the meeting of the Ichabod Reis Appreciation Society?”

  “Please, Mr. Donelly, do not insult my intelligence. I have not insulted yours. Letitia here you recognize, of course. She has volunteered to kill you if necessary. You know who we are.”

  I nodded. “I do, and your girl there knows I don’t care about the Mottled Lemur or anything else. I was working for ARU because it was a paycheck. I don’t care about politics or anything, just getting by.”

  The leader wore black, so his long-fingered hands showed up as white spiders as he pressed them fingertip to fingertip by his breastbone. “You again misspeak, Mr. Donelly. You do care about some things. You care about seeing Ichabod Reis get his due, correct?”

  I frowned. “Okay, maybe, yeah.”

 
“Splendid. And you care about money, clearly.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  “A point that could be argued, but I have neither the time nor the inclination.” The hands spread apart. “My associates and I take action because of our deep commitment to the preservation of the environment. We believe deeply in the sanctity of life, in all its forms.”

  The image of the constable rolling through the pine needles flashed into my brain. “The firefight on the mountain was holy hell.”

  “Unfortunate, yes, and unintentional. The hovercars were to cover our retreat once your ’Mech had been disabled. It was a debacle to which you contributed, though I bear you no malice for the casualties incurred. You were merely reacting in self-defense, as you did with Letitia. Had the strike team been acting as per orders, they would have been away before your attack would have proven effective.”

  I nodded. “These are the survivors of that cell?”

  “Oh, very good, Mr. Donelly, you know about cell systems, do you?”

  “I’ve read Word of Blake histories. Every one of them tends to go on and on about how elaborate their system was. Couple of the books might as well be texts for revolution.”

  “Indeed, and thus does a society that values freedom of information sow the seeds of its own downfall.”

  “To be supplanted by a system that doesn’t value personal freedoms?”

  “Hardly, Mr. Donelly, we would seek to expand them beyond their current humanocentric confines.” The fingers interlaced. “Has it ever struck you as odd that in the centuries humans have been expanding into the stars we have never found another sentient race?”

  “The universe is big and old. No aliens, so what?”

  “You see, even you fall prey to the subtle lures of nomenclature. Why would they be aliens? If we came to a world and found them here, wouldn’t we be the aliens? We would, but everything is defined in terms of humans. The fact is that we probably have encountered dozens of intelligent races, like the Mottled Lemur, but because they did not measure up on a scale created by men who sought to distance themselves from their biological roots, these creatures are dismissed as raw materials awaiting exploitation.”