War Criminals, Gavin Smith [best novels for beginners .txt] 📗

‘Hangman-One-Actual to Sneaky-One-One, this had better be good.’

‘We’ve found Trafalgar, repeat we have found Trafalgar.’

Triple S’s hidden forward operating base on MACE’s side of the river. It was good.

‘Okay, I want you to get what you can, defences, numbers etcetera, and then withdraw quietly. They can’t know we know,’ Miska subvocalised back.

‘Er … that’s not really an issue,’ Kasmeyer replied.

‘You compromised?’

‘I think you need to see this for yourself.’

Miska didn’t bother with the lens feed from the squads’ guncams. Instead she tranced in, appearing in the net as the stylised, spiky cartoon version of herself. Around her the computer-animated representation of Camp Badajoz looked like an old, squat, thick-walled fort from the Napoleonic War. It was the net architecture favoured by Salik, the mercenary broker who owned Waterloo Station. Cartoon Miska took hold of a flickering but dim neon line that symbolised the comms link between herself and Kasmeyer. Already accepted by the comms links encryption, she allowed herself to be sucked down the link.

Kasmeyer didn’t have a net representation beyond a faint, roughly human-shaped wire-frame grid that represented the various electronic systems he was wearing/using. She knew that the armour he wore, and the thin shielding on the systems themselves, would mask any EM signature. She was only able to see them because of her command access. She made herself tiny and entered the net representation of his Martian-designed Xiphos gauss SAW, going straight for the guncam. Her carbine’s-eye view told her everything she needed to know.

Shit!

‘I’m on my way,’ she told Kasmeyer.

Rank had its privileges. One of Miska’s was her own Machimoi combat exoskeleton. They had captured them when the Bastards had taken the Excelsior from Triple S during the battle for Faigroe Station. There had been enough to equip a squad of soldiers with the power armour and three left over. One had already been used to replace losses in combat and Miska suspected the same would happen to the other two, but until then she liked having her own ride.

She didn’t bother to wake Nyukuti, who would have insisted on coming with her, but she did inform the MACE duty officer that she was going out. He tried to insist on her taking an escort but she didn’t want to draw any more attention than she had to, and besides, she outranked him.

The Machimoi power armour was in a small pre-fab hangar on the edge of the terraced landing pads. There were lights on in the hangar but none of the support crew were anywhere to be seen, and sentry duty had been left to an unobtrusive surveillance drone. Miska did not approve.

Inside the hangar the Machimoi combat exoskeletons were ten-foot-tall, grey, nearly featureless, almost organic-looking suits of armour. The same smooth lines and lack of right angles that Miska had come to expect from all MMI tech. She sent a command to the armour and it split open for her. She clipped her laser carbine to the bottom of the ammunition hopper for the power armour’s main weapon, a 20mm Dory railgun, and then climbed into the armour. The padding changed shape to securely grip her small frame. Her hands slid into the control gloves, feet into the control slippers. The Machimoi was by far and away the most comfortable combat exoskeleton she had ever piloted. Even more comfortable than some of the African models she had used, and far more comfortable than the Honey Badger and its variants favoured by the Corps.

The suit ‘buttoned up’ around her. Her neural interface connected with the exoskeleton’s systems and suddenly she was a ten-foot-tall armoured killing machine. The feeling of power was palpable. She was wary of just how addictive it was, but couldn’t stop a smile creeping across her mouth. She strode out of the hangar and into the humid night, Dory at the ready like an oversized rifle as the two stubby halves of the flight fin unfolded from the exoskeleton’s back and slid together. Telemetry cascaded down her IVD. All systems appeared to be optimal. A quick run, the suit’s servos amplifying her own muscle power, then she jumped into the air and she was flying. The neural interface meant that the suit’s sensors were now her own.

Despite what she had seen through the guncam, Miska felt good. She knew it was reckless going out on her own but they were, after all, supposed to be in friendly territory. Ten-feet-tall or not, the vast scale of the trees was humbling. She flew through banks of steamy mist. Feedback from the Machimoi’s sensors made the mist feel like sweat beading on her skin. Far below her the patchwork quilt of moss and lichens gave away to tall fungal forests – the bane of the foot patrols. All of this was visible in the suit’s optics, which amplified beams of faint red light from the gas giant above that managed to penetrate the jungle canopy.

I need more moments like this, she decided. And then it was over and she was approaching the Sneaky Bastards’ position. FOB Trafalgar looked like an anthill rising out of smaller, surrounding anthills on the hard-packed dirt floor far below the canopy.

An anthill that had been covered in stakes with headless bodies impaled on them.

Miska touched down close to Kasmeyer’s position. With all of her legionnaires using their reactive ghillie suits even the Machimoi’s excellent sensors were struggling to pick them up. She could only tell where they were by their transponder positions, which overlaid her vision.

‘Hey, Kasmeyer. I take it you didn’t do this?’ Miska asked.

‘The twelve of us?’ he asked grimly. There were at least a hundred bodies arranged around the hill. Judging by their gear alone, at least some of them must have been Triple S (elite), the rest were presumably support personnel. Her people didn’t do this. Probably weren’t capable of doing it, and she was trying to think of any of the other mercenary units who were. She was coming up blank.

‘What’ve