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

about the bad things we do. That’s not the way that works.’ She leaned back in the bucket chair and crossed her arms, smiling.

‘Unless you’re a psychopath,’ Torricone said out loud. Miska was pretty sure she heard a couple of sharp intakes of breath, but over the engines it might have been her imagination.

‘Your leave is revoked, Private,’ Miska told him. ‘Report to LSM Corbin to discuss your attitude.’ It felt petty but she had to at least give the impression there was discipline. Torricone let out a humourless laugh and shook his head.

‘You could just get a room together?’ Nyukuti suggested over a direct comms link. Miska turned to stare at him. He held up his hands and shook his head. The problem was that if the other legionnaires decided that this was all sexual tension then Torricone might not be long for this world.

There was clearly a lot of money in mercenary proxy wars. Waterloo Station was a lot grander than any military orbital habitat Miska had ever been posted to. The modular station was designed to be broken down and pulled by FTL-capable tugs to new colonial conflicts. There were other stations that did a similar job but none of them came close to the scale and success of Salik’s operation.

Much of the station was given over to hotels of various quality, alcohol and drug bars, restaurants, clubs, strip joints, brothels and sense booths. All ways for Salik to claw back the mercenaries’ pay above and beyond his fifteen per cent. The station had offices for the representatives of the belligerents and the various military contractors to rent, and even modular barrack areas for those that didn’t have their own ships to work from.

As Miska and Nyukuti made their way down the bustling Central Concourse past drunk and wasted mercenaries, barkers hustling their varied entertainments, serving drones and prostitutes of various genders, Miska noticed she was earning more than her fair share of glares. From various screens she could see footage from the massacre. It still surprised her just how much those who should know better lapped up propaganda. She guessed people just believed what they wanted to believe. She also noticed that she had a number of messages from Raff. They would all appear to be legitimate communications from a journalist to a commanding officer. What he really wanted would be encrypted. She just didn’t want to deal with it right now.

Too many spinning plates.

Above her the transparent panes of the domed ceiling provided vertiginous views. Miska could see most of the rest of the torus and the centre spindle. Further up the spindle she could make out the smaller top docking torus. The long, slab-like mess of superstructure and armour that was the Hangman’s Daughter was slowly rotating into sight. Miska was almost surprised at how much the ugly prison barge felt like home. That said, she would much rather be in-country than up here on the Station.

Salik’s house was a tall, grey stone, nineteenth century town house that, according to Uncle Vido, used to belong to somebody of import to the Napoleonic Wars. (Miska had forgotten who that was moments after she had been told.) The house had been transported block-by-block from London, or possibly Paris, or some other old place back on Earth. Waterloo Station’s nineteenth century meets vice-Disneyland aesthetic notwithstanding, the antique house looked pretty incongruous on the habitat.

Miska paused and looked up again. Beyond the spindle and the other side of the torus she could make out a glorious sunrise as the bright but distant Epsilon Eridani peaked over the gas giant’s horizon. The lights of the gas mining aerostats looked like glinting jewels in Eridani B’s upper atmosphere. New Ephesus seemed very close to the station. The green moon’s peaceful look belied the reality of the situation below the jungle canopy.

‘You all right, boss?’ Nyukuti asked.

‘We get in there, I give the word and we kill everyone who isn’t a Bastard. You cool with that?’

‘I can’t tell if you’re joking or not,’ Nyukuti told her. Miska headed for the front door. ‘Seriously, what’s the word?’ he asked.

Miska supposed the hall to the town house was nice. It was certainly full of expensive, old and tasteful – she guessed – stuff, but it wasn’t really her sort of thing. The servant drones in nineteenth century livery were a bit much, however. Drones shouldn’t wear hosiery and wigs, she decided.

One of the drones showed her up the stairs and into the lounge, which she knew from a previous visit was actually called the drawing room, though she had no idea why. Apparently drawing rooms weren’t supposed to be on the fourth floor but Salik liked to look out over his domain.

‘Miska!’ Salik stood up to hug her. She frowned a little but let it go. She liked Salik well enough but she never let herself forget who and what he was. Much of his fleshiness was artfully concealed in a well-tailored suit. Miska supposed she should be thankful that he wasn’t doing his Napoleon cosplay thing today. Salik had a perfectly shaped goatee and lacquered, shoulder-length hair. He may have had the look of a well-turned-out Europhile but Miska knew he came from Arabian old money. Old money that had helped him set up his mercenary brokerage operation. ‘What a pleasure. I’m sorry to call you away from your command but I’m sure you can appreciate the seriousness of the situation.’

‘Not my problem …’ Miska started but then Uncle V was in front of her, hugging her as well. This she hadn’t expected.

‘You get you’re supposed to salute, right?’ she asked her executive officer. In his mid-sixties, Vido was in surprisingly good shape for his age. This was probably in part due to her dad’s punishing physical training regime. With a white crown of hair, his features just beginning to flesh out and sag, he looked like somebody’s favourite grandfather – something he both knew and capitalised on. That said, he’d done