Starfist FR - 03 - Recoil (16 page)

Kindy’s eyes grew wide. “The destroyed homesteads we know of were all farms or ranches. Could Agro Herder be behind it, forcibly putting small farmers out of business so he can take over their holdings?”

“Possibly,” Williams said. “He has bought up their holdings.”

“Damn,” Nomonon said, “are we dealing with an inside job instead of off-worlders?”

“Wouldn’t that be a bitch,” Jaschke said; his beer bottle dangled from his hand, half-forgotten. Office of the Planetary Administrator, Sky City, Haulover Ensign Daly and the two squad leaders went to meet with Planetary Administrator Spilk Mullilee to get the details of the most recent raids on the homesteads. Chairman of the Board Smelt Miner was there, and so was another member of the

board to whom the Marines hadn’t been introduced: Goode Sales, who owned all of the major goods distribution and sales operations on Haulover.

“Our most recent information is a couple of months old,”

Daly said. “What’s happened during that time?”

Miner glared at Daly. “What’s the matter with you people that you can’t keep up?”

Daly looked at him with the kind of blank expression that can be more threatening than a glare, then said calmly, “Sir, we were in transit for nearly four weeks; it wasn’t possible for us to receive updates during that time. Prior to that, our headquarters hadn’t received anything directly from Haulover, but only data that had been relayed from Earth. It took a month for the data to be transmitted from Haulover to Earth, be analyzed there, and forwarded to Halfway. Ergo, we’re two months behind on what’s happening here.”

Miner glowered. “So, when a member world sends to Earth for assistance, it’s likely to be destroyed before the cavalry arrives.”

“Yes, sir, that’s possible. It’s also possible that the situation will have resolved itself before the arrival of any military assistance. But usually help arrives before things have gotten too far out of hand.” He turned to Mullilee and ignored the anger radiating from Miner. “Now, sir, about incidents in the past two months.”

Mullilee spoke hesitantly, with frequent glances at Miner and Sales, as though asking permission to continue. “There have been eleven more since the Montgomery homestead.”

“All of them farms?” Kindy asked, leaning forward. Mullilee nodded. “Eight farms and three ranches. Seventyfive more people are missing.” He seemed shaken by the missing people. Neither Miner nor Sales seemed so much disturbed by the missing people as by the destruction of the properties. Except:

“Dammit,” Sales grumbled, “those ranchers were good customers. Herding animals is hard on clothes.”

Daly didn’t acknowledge Sales’s comment, but Sergeant Williams fixed him with a hard look. Uncowed, Sales returned the look.

“Where were these homesteads located?” Daly asked. “The first dozen plus that we know about were scattered pretty widely.”

Mullilee looked at Miner, who nodded curtly. “So were these,”

Mullilee said. “They’re all over the continent.” He looked to Miner again, got another curt nod, and tapped the console on his desk. A map was projected onto the wall behind him, with the attacked homesteads marked on it.

“Can you show them in the order they were attacked?” Daly asked.

Mullilee again looked for Miner’s permission before touching his console again. Numbers appeared next to the markings for the homesteads.

“Show which ones Mr. Herder has acquired.” Williams didn’t ask, he told Mullilee to put the data up.

“Ah,” the planetary administrator said when Miner made a slight sideways movement of his head, “I d-don’t think I have that information in my database yet.”

Kindy snorted. “Sure you don’t.”

Mullilee put his fingertips to his throat, swallowed.

“Now see here!” Sales snapped. Daly gave no sign he was aware of the byplay. He got out his comp and set it on Mullilee’s desk. “I’ll need all of the data you have on the homesteads. Then we will examine a few of the sites—particularly the most recent ones. There are two more things I’ll need: one is secure satellite communications; the other is two all-terrain vehicles.”

“Ah,” Mullilee said, looking plaintively at the Marine, “we don’t have secure satellite communications.”

“But you do have commsat, don’t you?”

“Y-Yes. We have a Lodestar in geosync.”

“Surely it’s got an unused secure channel that we can use.”

“I-It doesn’t have s-secure channels installed.”

Daly looked at Mullilee with disbelief.

“We’re an open society, Mr. Daly,” Miner interjected. “On the rare occasions we have for secure communications, we use a scrambler at each end. And before you ask”—he held up a hand—“no, we don’t have any unused scramblers we can lend you.”

“All right,” Daly said slowly, not believing Miner. He turned to Mullilee. “We still need the vehicles.”

Before Mullilee could respond, Miner said, “Give it to him.”

Mullilee began transmitting data from his comp to Daly’s. Miner turned to Daly. “I’m sure if I ask him, Mr. Rhodes will supply you with vehicles and drivers.”

Daly addressed the metals boss for the first time since he’d begun talking directly to Mullilee. “The drivers won’t be necessary, sir. The vehicles are all we need.”

“Of course you need the drivers,” Miner insisted. “How else will you find your way around without getting lost?”

Kindy barked out a laugh. Williams looked amused. Daly maintained his calm demeanor.

“Sir, we’re Force Recon. Every time we go on a mission, we find our way around without getting lost, and without local guides. We wouldn’t be Force Recon if we couldn’t do that.”

“I still think you need the drivers, and you’ll have them.”

Miner looked as though he thought the matter was settled. Daly didn’t press it. Mullilee indicated that the data on the vanished homesteads had been downloaded to Daly’s comp. Daly looked at him. Mullilee almost choked saying, “It’s all there. Everything I have.”

Daly stood; so did the squad leaders. “Thank you, sir. We’ll study this then go out first thing after we have the vehicles. If there are any further developments before then—or at any time at all—kindly notify me immediately.” He nodded to Miner and Sales. “Gentlemen.”

The three Marines left and walked side by side back to their quarters. They talked about all things Haulover except for their mission—and the thing uppermost in Daly’s mind. Marine House

“I didn’t see,” Ensign Daly said as soon as they were inside the house. “Where’d you plant it?”

“Did you see me lean forward when I asked if all the homesteads were farms?” Sergeant Kindy asked. Daly nodded, and the squad leader continued. “I’d already dropped it on the floor by my toe. I slipped my foot forward and fed it to the leg of the desk. It crawled up to the bottom of the console base.”

Daly clapped him on the back. “Very good. With luck, we’ll find out what Mullilee’s putting into his comp or getting out of it, as well as hearing everything that’s said in that office.” The office of the planetary administrator was more effectively bugged than Marine House had been. By the time the three leaders returned from their meeting with Planetary Administrator Mullilee, all of the Marines were feeling hungry. Haulover was new enough that it didn’t have many of the labor-saving conveniences of more settled worlds, such as automatic kitchens—the Marines would have to prepare their own meals. Fortunately, the kitchen was as well stocked with food as with beer. Corporal Belinski claimed he knew how to cook, so the others let him do the honors. It wasn’t the worst meal any of them had ever had on a deployment but it was far from the best. Except for Corporal Nomonon and Lance Corporal Ellis, who admitted they couldn’t do as well, the other Marines all swore they’d do the cooking themselves before they’d let Belinski try to poison them again. They’d barely had time to clear the table—Belinski was assigned kitchen police duty as punishment for not being as good a cook as he claimed—and begin studying the data Mullilee had downloaded to Ensign Daly’s comp when Daly got a call.

Another homestead had been attacked. Seventeen people were missing this time.

The homestead wasn’t a farm or ranch, it was a small mining operation.

The Marines were ready to move out in minutes. They each carried food and water for two days; one man in each squad carried a blaster—the others only had knives and sidearms. They were going on a reconnaissance—if they found a trail they could follow—not a combat raid.

FOURTEEN

Marine House, Sky City, Haulover

“Where are our vehicles?” Ensign Daly snapped into the comm. “They aren’t here yet.”

“I-I don’t know.” Planetary Administrator Spilk Mullilee’s voice was almost a whine. “B-But you can travel with my convoy, we’ll make r-room for you in our v-vehicles.”

Daly swore under his breath, but said out loud, “How soon will you be here to pick us up?”

“F-Fifteen minutes? M-Maybe twenty.”

“Make it ten.” Daly cut the connection and turned to his Marines. “Showtime. Let’s get ready to find the bear.”

In less than ten minutes, the Marines were ready and assembled in front of Marine House. Sergeant Williams grinned. “They’re going to shit a brick when they see us.” They were in chameleons with their helmets and gloves off and sleeves rolled up so Mullilee and his people would be able to see them. Corporal Nomonon hooted. “They’ve probably heard of chameleons but don’t believe what they’ve heard.”

“Got that right,” Sergeant Kindy said, poking Nomonon’s shoulder.

Daly faced his men. Despite the many years he’d been a Marine, he still sometimes found the sight of disembodied heads and hovering hands disconcerting.

“Just don’t go out of your way to frighten the natives,” he told them.

“Aye aye, sir,” Corporal Belinski said and made to put his helmet on. He lowered his helmet and grinned when Daly gave him a stern look.

It took more than thirty minutes from Mullilee’s call for the small convoy to reach Marine House.

“What is this?” Chairman Smelt Miner yelped from the front seat of the lead vehicle when he saw the Marines’ heads and hands. Mullilee sat staring slack-jawed in the vehicle’s backseat. Daly ambled over to the landcar, not showing the annoyance he felt at the delay—or the presence of the overbearing Miner. He pointedly looked at the three vehicles of the convoy—two of which bore the markings of the Haulover Constabulary, and were already full—before leaning to look into the backseat at Mullilee. “Sir,” he said, “I still don’t see the vehicles for my Marines.”

“You c-can sit with m-me,” Mullilee said. He tried to look at Daly’s eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at the way the Marine’s head hovered in midair. Miner twisted around in the front seat to watch, but didn’t say anything.

“My Marines, sir. I was promised two vehicles.”

“I-I’m sure they’ll be here by the time we g-get back from the Johnson h-homestead.”

“If we find something we can follow, my Marines and I aren’t coming back. If we have to come back, we may lose valuable time and the perpetrators have a greater chance of getting away and raiding more homesteads. I need those vehicles now.”

Mullilee lowered his eyes, blinked when he realized he couldn’t actually see through Daly, and looked past him toward the other Marines. “Ah, do . . . do you ha-have weapons and . . . and . . .”

“We have everything we need, sir. Except vehicles.”

“You’ll get ’em,” Miner snarled. He yanked his comm out of a pocket and spoke sharply into it, listened for a few seconds, then snapped it off. “They’ll be here in ten minutes. And if they aren’t, we’ll leave without you.”

“They better be here in ten minutes,” Daly said, far more calmly than he felt.

True to Miner’s word, when the extra vehicles didn’t show up in ten minutes, the three-vehicle convoy pulled out, leaving Daly and the other Marines behind when Daly refused to leave without his men. Less than two minutes later, two Land Runners, the civilian version of the Confederation Army’s Battle Car, pulled up in front of Marine House. The Land Runner had thinner armor, no firing slits in the window armor it didn’t have anyway, and a less powerful engine.

“Nomonon, Belinski,” Daly said, and gestured sharply at the two vehicles.

The two corporals moved sharply to the Land Runners, pulled the drivers’ doors open, and ordered the drivers to get out.

“No, these are ours!” the driver of the lead vehicle objected.

“We’re driving—we have our orders.”

Daly used his parade-ground voice to say, “I told Mr. Miner we didn’t need drivers, that we’d do our own driving.”

That voice, and the sight of hovering heads and bodiless hands, rattled the drivers enough that they dismounted.

“B-But, Mr. Miner,” the first driver said, “he told us we have to drive. He’ll be awful pissed when he finds out that you took the Land Runners from us.”

“What’s the matter,” Kindy said, sneering, “do you think he’ll fire you?”

The first driver’s head bobbed rapidly.

“He’ll do more than just fire us,” the second driver said. Daly considered that for a second, then ordered the drivers,

“All right, get in the back. I’ll take care of Mr. Miner.”

The drivers did as Daly said, and in a moment the Marines were mounted and chasing after the convoy.

Johnson Homestead, One Hundred Kilometers Northwest of Sky City Although Ensign Daly was annoyed by the delay in the convoy’s arrival, and the further delay caused by the wait for the Land Runners, he’d put the time to good use by studying the data Planetary Administrator Mullilee had downloaded to his comp. His Marines also studied during that time. The data, contrary to what Mullilee had said during the meeting in his office, did have the timing of the attacks on the homesteads. But he had to work at getting the data in such shape that he could clearly see the sequence of disappearances. He didn’t have enough time to study the sequence before they arrived at the Johnson homestead, as all the vehicles heading there pushed at two hundred kilometers per hour and arrived half an hour after leaving Sky City. The Johnson homestead was—or had been—a dozen buildings situated along the bank of an ancient, dry riverbed. The three vehicles that carried Planetary Administrator Mullilee and the police arrived scant minutes before the Marines and parked just outside a disturbed area. The Marines parked their Land Runners next to them. Mullilee and Chairman Miner stood on the edge of the disturbance, along with a uniformed man the Marines hadn’t seen before, watching the constabulary forensic people, who were setting up to examine what they were treating as a crime scene. A platoon of local soldiers were in a defensive perimeter around the site.