The War for Profit Series Omnibus (64 page)

“Touch my trike and you’ll be left with a bloody stump.”

I whirled around. A Scout stood there. “You ride these?”

He stepped closer, half a meter from me. “You’re some kind of genius, figured that out all on your own.”

I stared into his eyes. Dark brown, hard. A weather beaten face, bronze skin. He stepped closer and poked at the stock of the Eliminator I had slung barrel down over my shoulder. “What’s that?”

I took it off my shoulder and held it at port arms. “My thunder stick, Big Chief.”

“Huh.” He gripped it with both hands. I didn’t let go. “I used to have one just like it. Why don’t you give it to me?”

The other Scouts stood around us in a semi-circle, their trikes behind me.

I raised my voice and said, “Step back about five meters and I’ll give you the bullets. All you can eat.”

He smiled and released his grip and tossed his head back and laughed loudly. “You’re all right.”

“You too.” I smiled.

Emily looped her right arm through my left and we walked off to the mess tent for supper.

Day Zero of Operation Roundup finally came at high noon. Or midnight, hard to tell on Tumbler with its eleven hour days. The Indigs adapted to sleeping through one period of daylight. They get up a couple hours before the next sunrise, work a shift, then call it a day when it gets too dark to work. But it was 00:00 hours Standard Time and that’s what we mercenaries use.

A, B and C companies left the staging area in long parallel columns, skimmers and Scouts to the front, infantry fighting vehicles interspersed between the tanks, a contingent of support and maintenance vehicles at the rear, with one last skimmer in the back. Finally my company moved. Led by the Company XO’s skimmer, my two ORF tanks were at the front. ORF-2 had the shower trailer hitched to it. The generator trailer was hitched to the back of my tank. We were followed by cargo trucks and command post carriers and recovery vehicles. At the very end was the Commander’s skimmer. At the exit point were eight ground-mobile anti-aircraft guns, quad twenty millimeter rapid-fire Gauss guns. They were lightly armored wheeled vehicles with lousy cross-country mobility. They’d just slow us down, and besides, the Indigs had no significant air assets. Nothing I couldn’t shoot down with my cupola Gauss machine gun.

I made a rude hand gesture at the AA guns as I rolled by. They made an even more rude gesture at me. I doubt they heard me but I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, “Have fun pulling guard duty on a bunch of pallets!” Squeaky and scratchy static filled my ears. I dropped down and looked to my left rear at the comms gear. Most of it was showing yellow and red blinking lights. The only thing up a hundred percent was short-range ultrasonic, good out to two hundred meters most of the time. I engaged the noise filter and that took most of the racket out of my helmet.

I switched VOX to internal only. I’d have to press the button on the side of my earpiece to transmit outside the tank. “Hey Caldwell, how you doing?”

“Fine, Sergeant.”

“Parks?”

“I’m bored.”

I said, “Good. Let’s hope it stays that way. Know any good jokes?”

Caldwell
said, “I know one but I don’t think it’s that good.”

I said, “We have four hours until the first halt. Let’s hear it.”

“Okay, but I warned you.”

Parks said, “Just tell the joke.”

“All right.” Caldwell took a deep breath. “There was this guy who worked at a flower shop and he went to get a haircut at a barber shop that had just opened. After the cut, the barber told him the haircut was free this week for the grand opening. You know, to build up a client list. So the flower shop guy thanks the barber, and the next morning the barber comes to open the shop and finds a dozen roses set by the front door. That day a security guard comes for a haircut, gets it free, says ‘thank you’ and the next morning the barber finds a dozen donuts by the door. That day a mercenary comes in and is thankful to get a free haircut. Next morning, the barber finds a dozen mercenaries lined up for free haircuts.”

After a moment of silence, Parks said, “Ha!”

Caldwell said, “Well I suppose you know a better joke?”

“Let me think. I heard a funny story once but I need to get it organized before I tell it.”

A minute went by. I said, “If you don’t have a joke, don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”

Parks said, “I got it. Here, these two security guards are on foot patrol, doing their checks.”

Caldwell said, “Which company?”

Parks said, “It was Greystone. But it doesn’t matter. The one guard was a total newbie and the other guy was about to retire, the new guy was following the old guy around as part of his training.”

“What were their names?” Caldwell asked.

I said, “Knock it off. Let him tell the story.”

Parks continued, “Okay. So the old guy goes up a flight of stairs and then sits down clutching his chest and then slumps over on the landing. The young guy keys his communicator and says to the Sergeant of the Guard, ‘Hey, this is patrol one. My partner just collapsed, what do I do?’ and the Sergeant of the Guard asked, ‘How is he?’ and the newbie checks and says, ‘He’s not responding, I think he might be dead.’ and the Sergeant of the guard says, ‘Don’t jump to conclusions. First thing, let’s make sure if he’s dead or not.’ Then the newbie draws his side arm, shoots the old guy through the heart and says, ‘Okay. Now what?’ ”

I said, “Never mind.”

The kilometers passed. The grassy plain all around showed few features. Occasional plateaus in the distance, streams, some fed by melting ice thousands of kilometers away, some bone dry. The landscape near the equator, bulldozed yearly by advancing ice packs that then melted, then bulldozed from the other direction by ice from the opposite direction. Occasionally there was a round boulder standing alone. One was the size of a hill, a granite rock shaped like an egg laid on its side, embedded half in the ground. Then green shoots, then thick grass arising from the gravelly ground when the ice left, herds of beefalos followed by Indigs who relied on mobility to stay ahead of the ice flows and close to the herd animals they relied on for their livelihood.

Finally we reached the bivouac area. Six called a halt and the line companies parked in a circle facing out and my company parked in a smaller circle in the center. We didn’t set up camp, just slept on our vehicles with security set at twenty five percent. Stopped, the comms improved and I got a link with the ship in orbit. I dug through all the traffic that had been in the buffers of the comms systems from all around the task force. (Sure, I’m telling this story. I’ll call it a task force if I want.) Most of the voice traffic I archived, a bunch of annoyed voices decrying ‘negative contact.’ Then the good stuff, the free texts and status reports. I sorted them by subordinate units and put them in time-stamped folders and did a summary analysis of the day’s events and packaged it all up in a single file and sent it to both the ship and Six. Sure, Ops did the same thing. But it was my job to do it too, independently, from a different angle. Keeping everyone honest, so to speak. I was about to take a nap when I got a free text from Stallion Six.

Meet the Scouts now. Ride with them. Confirm their sighting, report back to me in person. Six out.

I climbed out of my tank and walked over to the entry control point. Three Scouts were there, seated on their trikes. Major Deskavich was there talking to them. He turned to me and said, “You busy right now, Slaughter?”

Like he didn’t know why I was there. I decided to give him a little attitude because he failed to address me as Sergeant. “I’m bored out of my mind, Sir. Anxious for something to do. Sleep is a crutch for the weak.”

“Good. The Scouts report an encampment and I want you to ride out with them to confirm it.” He turned his back on me and strode off. Giving me attitude right back. I can respect that.

I yelled, “Yessir.”

The same Scout who tried to take my weapon earlier patted the back seat of his trike. “You can ride here behind me. Like a little bitch.”

I stepped closer, and also noticed the other two trikes had too much gear on them for me to sit there. And the lack of dust on the seat showed the gear had recently been re-distributed to accommodate me. “You smell like coyote shit.”

Not sure why I said that. Coyote, I mean.

“How do you know what my shit smells like?”

He pointed at his name tag. It said ‘Coyote.’ My subconscious must have picked that up. I climbed in the back seat. He said, “Hold on, like a bitch.”

I hooked my left forearm around his neck from behind and spoke into his ear. “If you’re the last person I ever kill you’ll never know what happens next.”

He nodded slowly. I released my hold and put on the seat belt and grabbed the handholds at each side of the seat. “Let’s ride.”

He held his left fist up, index finger extended, twirled it and lowered his arm straight ahead to point forward. The trike took off surprisingly fast, its air-cooled diesel engine muffled, not too loud at all. But it ran sooty, left a trail of thin black smoke. The fuel was derived from animal fats, I’d heard. The other two Scout trikes rode on either side, half a trike length back, in a wedge formation, blazing along at a hundred and twenty kilometers an hour. They drove in the dark, following the tracks they had left earlier during daylight. I just happened to be wearing my ground troop helmet at the time and didn’t have my dust goggles. The ballistic glasses are okay but the wind gets in around the edges and can dry the eyeballs out pretty quick in the wind so most of the way I hunkered behind Coyote’s back, like a little bitch.

It was just after sunrise when we stopped. We were on a precipice, flat on top, a steep incline where we had come up and a cliff to the front, about a hundred meters to the ground. Coyote pointed at a few strands of grass with the tops knotted together, three bunches in a row. I sighted along them and noticed nothing unusual. He looked and pointed, handed me his binoculars. I removed my ballistic glasses and peered through the binos, twisted the zoom and focus, handed them back. Coyote pointed, I looked along his arm past his finger, tried the binos again. I shook my head. He pointed back the way we had just come and about fifty klicks away I could make out the task force, a bit of darkness and disturbance just at the edge of the horizon. I looked back the other way and tried to find what it was Coyote wanted me to see. To be fair, I was tired. Hadn’t slept for nearly twenty hours and had grass pollen in my eyes. But still, I looked and couldn’t make out anything.

“I know what I saw.” Coyote took his binos back and looked and shrugged. Then he said, “Bullshit.”

He put the binos away and kicked the grass, stomped it with his heel. We turned around and went back to the task force.

I reported to Stallion Six in his tent. “Sir, Sergeant Slaughter reports.”

“Sit down.”

I took a seat on his bunk, facing his field desk.

He leaned back on his camp stool. “What did you see?”

“Nothing, Sir.”

“Really.”

“But hear me out. I think the Scout report was good. I’ve been up for a while and I didn’t have dust goggles with me, my eyes are red from the grass pollen. And the Scouts, they know what an Indig camp looks like. I don’t.”

“I thank you for your honesty. Okay. We’re moving out within the hour to that overlook and I’ll scope it out for myself. Dismissed.”

I stood and left and told my crew to strike tents and mount up, and then I settled in my cupola for a brief nap. I needed it.

I woke to Parks punching my left thigh. “Wake up, Sergeant. We’re moving.”

I popped my hatch and raised my seat to armpit defilade and had my Combat Vehicle Crewmember’s helmet on just in time for the tank to start rolling. The entire task force moved toward the overlook, making good time, following the trail left by the Scouts. Two hours later we were there, parked so that the high ground was between us and the suspected location of the Indig camp. Stallion Six’s tank alone drove up top and took a look. With its superior optics, he was able to locate the camp right away, right where the Scouts said it would be. He came back down and sent three Scouts out to take a closer look at the camp and announced that the planning for an attack would begin as soon as the Scouts got back.

I figured that would be a couple of hours so I lowered my seat and closed my hatch and went back to sleep. But then it happened. Got a call from Alpha.

“ORF One, this is Apache Six. Over.”

I heard Parks answer, “Apache Six, this is
Orf One Gulf, Over.”

“I need your tank, one of mine lost power.”

“Cleared through ALOC already?”

“Roger. They know.”

I answered, “Roger. Be right there, Apache Six.”

“Tango Mike. Apache Six out.”

I keyed the mike twice, flipped my helmet to internal comms. “All right, driver. Let’s do this. You have the objective on your screen?”

Caldwell
answered, “The little red tank. Got it.”

“Move out.”

We parked next to Alpha Three Zero and tossed all our gear on the ground. While the Alpha tank crew transloaded all their gear to ORF-1, my crew disconnected the generator trailer and muscled it over and hooked it up to A-30. I then connected the power cables and started the gas turbine and flipped the switch that would send power to the tank. Parks and the tank crew quickly re-painted the bumper numbers, using the stencil kit and spray paint I kept in the tool box.

Caldwell
stood up from the driver’s hatch and said, “I’m good, we can roll as soon as you’re ready.”

As I put the stencil kit and paint in the tool box, I remembered my personal rifle. I went to the other tank and retrieved it. I did one last check around my old tank and then climbed back aboard the disabled one. I sank into the cupola seat and just didn’t feel right. I had to reset all the comms to my net ID, which took me all of three seconds. Had all that on my personal communicator and sent it wirelessly. I surprise even myself sometimes, my high degree of expertise…

But still I didn’t like this. Jumping into some other crew’s tank is like wearing someone else’s underwear. Takes a while to adjust. Caldwell drove slow and easy back to park by the recovery vehicles where the mechanics could look it over properly. The generator trailer provided just enough juice to run the drive motors and maintain comms. My crew got out and I watched as the mechanics lifted out the turret. They were just starting to remove the upper hull when I got the word to go to the planning meeting. That meant all Platoon Leaders and above, plus me.