Codename: Night Witch (7 page)

The war for independence had begun.

Her eyes fixed on those of his cronies next. The gaggle of fat men were already jostling each other in their haste to get away. The chairman's body blocked the door. They couldn't move him. They were trapped. Trembling, they stood before her, and they knew their miserable lives were over. Their lives were hers for the taking. For she was death. She was the Night Witch, come to claim them.

No witnesses: those were the orders of her mistress, and her mistress would not be refused. From the hem of her dress, she withdrew four more of the razor-sharp blades and stepped toward them.

~ - ~

Sigrid awoke with a start, coughing and choking.

The nightmare was already fading. In her mind, she saw the faces of men, she heard…music, but then those images were gone as well, brushed aside by the stench of burning metal, fuel and flesh.

Minutes passed and all Sigrid could do was lie there, staring up at the overcast sky. The full moon was just barely visible through the clouds, and any stars she saw were solely in her head.

The moon.
Earth's moon.
Wherever she was, this was Earth.
Blast.

Dazed, and with her ears still ringing, Sigrid struggled to sit up. Twice she gave up, deciding that lying there in the snow was perfectly acceptable, thank you very much. But her PCM kept prodding her: two more of the gunships were speeding her way.

Two more! Bloody hell…

Finally, she managed to sit all the way up. It was even more of a struggle to rise to her feet. Her head throbbed—twirled was more like it. Her whole world was spinning about. When she touched her forehead, her hand came back thick and sticky with blood—blood that flowed freely from a deep gash. Her diagnostics confirmed that she'd suffered a grade-three concussion; she was cut, burned and bruised. But she was alive.

If she was conscious at all, it was only because of her PCM. The nanoswarms worked to reduce the swelling in her brain. Painkillers took away the hurt while strong stimulants brushed the fog aside. She'd pay for this later, but for the moment it was the only thing keeping her alert.

Rising again, Sigrid stumbled back toward the causeway. The Thunderhawk was gone, disintegrated. The ground was blackened and charred. Unspent fuel lay burning in wide puddles amongst the piles of burning wreckage.
And the soldiers? Sigrid scanned around her. They were dead. All of them. Yet she alone had survived. She was alive, but she wouldn't be for long, not if she stayed here much longer. The other two gunships
would be here in moments.

Kneeling by one of the dead, she took a brief inventory. His rifle was smashed and his grenades spent. She rolled him over, pulling off his long coat, about the only thing of use left. Wrapping it around her shoulders, she stumbled on.

The freeway was only a few hundred meters away through the trees. Half-delirious, Sigrid weaved her way toward it. When she got there, she was surprised to find it wasn't much of a freeway at all. The cracked and potholed pavement didn't look like it had been resurfaced in years, and there were only six lanes running in each direction. It was barely a highway at all.

Long-hauler transports dominated the traffic. These were massive cargo trains, some of them hauling as many as eighteen flatbeds. The scream of their massive engines mixed with the roar of their three-meter-tall studded tires. The sound was deafening, especially standing there on the shoulder. Sigrid held up her hand, trying to flag one of the transports down. One after another they roared past. Great wakes of snow and ice swirled around her and blasted her in the face.

Behind her, she was very aware of the closeness of the two new Thunderhawks
.
They were circling the scene of the battle. It wouldn't take them long to figure out her body wasn't among the dead.

She was just about to give up and make for the woods when she heard the blast of an air horn. Sigrid spun around in time to see a particularly large transport swerve onto the shoulder. Like a charging bull, it barreled toward her with its long train of fourteen cargo carriers snaking behind it. The driver hit the brakes, teetering on the edge of control. Sigrid saw the wheels lock up, all 148 of them. The entire train of carriers appeared to spasm violently, threatening to jackknife and sweep over her.

It stopped just short of plowing into her—it would have too, if she hadn't taken four steps back. Opening one eye and then the other, she found herself staring up at the towering chrome grill of the truck's engine cowling. Two enormous headlights stared down at her expectantly. Warm blasts from its exhaust washed over her like hot breath.

The entire front of the rig was jury-rigged with armored plating: someone had taken thick plates of heavy steel and bolted them on to protect the engine and wheel mounts. Even the windscreens were made from reinforced permaglass. She didn't fail to notice the many dents on the armored plates either, nor the scars and scorch marks. Clearly, the highways of Earth were a treacherous place and not to be traveled lightly.

The side door opened and a hand waved her forward. "Well, come on, sweetheart, I ain't got all night."

With one last look behind her at the Thunderhawks circling in the distance, Sigrid climbed the ladder to the cab. It was time to get the hell out of here. It was time to go home.

CHAPTER FIVE
Jaffer

She was only halfway inside when the driver of the truck hit the accelerator. The transport gave a great lurch that sent Sigrid tumbling headlong into the cab as the door slammed shut behind her. She was too exhausted to move. In fact, she was quite happy to lie there face down on the floor. It was only when Sigrid heard the unmistakable
click
of a weapon's firing hammer being drawn back that she looked up.

Her hair had tumbled over her face, and she pulled it back only to find herself staring down the twin barrels of a sawed-off shotgun.

"Are you all right?" the man with the gun said.

Sigrid glared at the twin muzzles pressed against her forehead. "I suppose that depends on whether or not you're planning on using that? Perhaps you should ask me
after
you blast a hole through my skull."

Her answer seemed to satisfy him and the trucker snickered. "Sorry, sweetheart. Can't be too careful in these parts." In one motion, he flipped the shotgun over his shoulder, depositing it in the wall-mounted rack behind his seat.

"Jaffer," he said, thrusting a meaty hand toward her, and she supposed "Jaffer" was the man's name. He was rather large and wore a long-billed cap. The down-filled vest he was wearing had seen better days and only half-covered his immense paunch. But his face was pleasant, and she caught an unmistakable flash of mischief in his eye that put her instantly at ease.

"Sigrid," she said, reaching up to shake his hand. She tried not to wince as he clasped her hand and hauled her up, lifting her from the floor and setting her down on the bench seat beside him.

"And sorry about the whole gun-in-your-face thing back there. I thought maybe they were using you was bait."

"They?"

"Jackers, sweetheart. Who else? They love a good honeytrap. It's one of their favorites."

"Don't you mean honeypot? And if you're suggesting I'm the honey—"

"Not suggesting. Just saying. Jackers love to leave pretty girls by the side of the road. Unsuspecting bloke pulls over. Next thing he knows—
wham!
Out cold. Rig gone. Cargo stolen. Then there's me, left by the side of the road in nothing but my skivvies—if I'm lucky."

"Well, I can promise you, I have no wish to see you in your skivvies—not that there's anything wrong with you in your undershorts!" she added hastily, not wanting to give offense. "I just meant, I didn't want you to lose your shirt. So to speak."

"Don't worry yourself, kid. My days on the catwalk are long behind me."

"Well, all right then."

"Look, um, it's none of my business, but do you want to tell me what happened back there? And don't tell me it was nothing. I saw the explosion from ten miles back."

Several lies came to her lips, but Sigrid dismissed them. Considering her condition—the wounds, her lack of trousers or shoes, the blood on her face, arms and legs—she couldn't exactly paint herself as an innocent hitchhiker traveling the countryside. And this trucker, she owed him some kind of answer, didn't she? If he hadn't picked her up, she'd be back in the hands of those men. Or worse.

Leaving out the more gruesome parts, Sigrid spun a tale of her escape. Sold into servitude, she was an escapee from a corporate-run facility, where she'd been indentured for the past six years. At least that part shouldn't be too hard to believe. She wouldn't be the first worker to flee from her corporate masters. The factories were notorious for their poor conditions. For the Federation's working poor, there were few choices: it was either escape or the slow and dreary death of indentured servitude.

When she was done, Jaffer seemed suitably impressed and gave a low whistle. "Six years! And with no outside contact?"

"None," Sigrid said. "To tell you the truth, I don't even know where I am. Not what province or territory."

"Punta Arenas," Jaffer said. "I just pulled out of the port, not four hours back."

Punta Arenas
.
So this was Chile, and deep in the southern industrial zones of South America.

"Is there anywhere I can take you?" Jaffer asked. "Somewhere I can drop you off? You must have friends? Family? Someone who's looking for you?"

It was a good question, and one she'd been asking herself since her awakening. But after six years, would her friends still be looking for her? They'd probably think her dead. And if the Independents could do this to her—holding her captive and doing who knows what to her—then who knows what they'd done to her friends. Was New Alcyone still there? Was Suko even alive?

"North," Sigrid said. North was the key. If she could get to Buenos Aires, from there there were any number of places she could go. She could take a TGV to São Paulo and maybe smuggle herself off-world. Or if São Paulo was too hot, she could make for Panama. "I need to get north. As far and as fast as I can. I need to get off-world, Jaffer."

"North I can do. I'm heading for the Crossroads now. As for off-world? Well, that
might
be a problem."

Anxious tendrils crawled up Sigrid's neck. "Why? Why can't I get off-world?"

"Look, you've been gone a while, and I hate to be the one to say it, but Earth's not the same place you left, kid. There hasn't been any travel off-world for years. Not since the embargo. Not since the war."

"War!"

Jaffer nodded. "Not since the Independents killed the Council."

Sigrid thought back to what the orderly had told her. She hadn't believed him. She'd written it off as some desperate attempt to throw her off. "Then-then it's true."

"What's true?" Jaffer said absently.

"The Council for Trade and Finance. They're really dead?"

"All twelve of them. Murdered. I'm surprised they never told you. It was all anyone could talk about."

"One of the guards said something about it," Sigrid said. It was a half-lie. Sort of. "I-I didn't believe him!"

"Well, you can believe it. They be dead. Sent the whole Federation into a frenzy. They were so worried the war was going to spread, they shut down the Warp Relay. That was five years ago. We've been stuck here ever since. Like I said, nobody gets off-world."

Gaping, Sigrid slumped back. "How? How is any of this even possible? How could they let this happen?"

"Depends who you ask. Some say it was the Independents. Others think it's the pharmaceutical cartels, but if you ask me, I say it was the witch."

Not sure if she'd heard him correctly, she turned slowly toward him. If he was joking, he certainly wasn't giving anything away.

"A witch?" she said. "You're actually trying to tell me a witch killed the Council for Trade and Finance? The twelve most powerful and protected people in the Federation of Incorporated Enterprises?"

"I didn't say
a
witch, sweetheart. I said
the
witch. The Night Witch."

Despite the fact that he was piloting the charging transport at such great speeds down the narrow freeway, it was Jaffer who turned to Sigrid and gave her a long look, and to her surprise
he
was the one looking at her like she was crazy!

"Look, kid, I know you were indentured, but you weren't dead, for crying out loud! How the hell can you not know about the witch?"

Folding her arms, Sigrid returned his dubious glare. "There are no such things as witches, Jaffer. I might have been indentured, but I'm not delirious."

Jaffer rolled his eyes. "She's not a
real
witch. Oh, for crying… It's just a name. That's what they call her!"

"They?" Sigrid shook her head and sighed. "I think you're spending too much time watching the viddy-feeds."

"Look, I'm not making this up. Somebody murdered the Council. And whoever it was, they didn't stop there. They wiped out the enclaves on Vega IV. And rumor has it Cor Caroli was just hit—"

"Wait. Now I know you're off. Cor Caroli is an Independent colony."

"Was," Jaffer said soberly. "It
was
a colony. Until the CTF invaded. Wiped everything out. To a man, woman and child. Extermination team. Real nasty people."

"I still don't under—"

"They're gone!" Jaffer said. "The entire battalion. Fourteen hundred soldiers. Five companies of men and women. Gone! Looks like the Independents got their revenge."

"And you think it's this night bitch?"

"Night
Witch
,
" Jaffer said with a grin. "Now who's having a laugh?"

"Sorry. I couldn't help myself."

"Still, true or not, you have to admit, it makes for a good story."

"Or propaganda, more likely."

"Whatever you call it, that's what turned the tide. That's when things changed. That's when the indentured workers started fighting back. They'd never do it on their own—the CTF knew it. But they'll follow her. They'll follow the Night Witch."