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

he finally said. Then he turned back to look at her. ‘But another day.’

It wasn’t ideal, she decided, but it would have to do.

‘Nyukuti,’ Miska said, as she sat cross-legged on the deck next to where he was stretched out. Hogg was sat a little way off looking out over the boat’s stern at where they’d been.

‘Boss,’ the stand-over man said.

Miska glanced down at him. He looked perfectly relaxed. He somehow managed to simultaneously look as if he was in a world of his own and completely alert at the same time. She’d not quite worked out how.

‘Yeah, you’re good, aren’t you?’

He nodded. The biggest worry about Nyukuti was that his loyalty was all a lie. That he was lulling her into a false sense of security until she took him for granted.

‘I am good, boss-lady,’ he told her. ‘This is exciting.’ He held both his arms up, spreading his fingers and then moving his hands one over the other. ‘Last night the dreaming world and the false world started to come together. I think they will merge at the head of the river.’

Miska digested this.

‘Okay, sure,’ she finally said.

‘Burn cold and paint the world red,’ he told her.

She nodded. ‘Good talk,’ she said, and started to get up.

‘Do you want me to kill Torricone?’ he asked.

She froze. She felt a coldness inside her chest. Nyukuti was watching her, intently.

‘Someone shoots at you, you shoot back,’ she told him. ‘Same as it ever was.’ Nyukuti nodded. ‘Now can you give me some space here? I want to talk to Hogg.’

Nyukuti watched her for a moment more and then nodded and got up.

‘I wondered when you’d get round to me,’ Hogg said as Miska lay down on the deck, hands under her head. She was looking up at the nearly impenetrable canopy of leaves and branches. This far up the river the canopy seemed close, even claustrophobic. The air was also starting to cool, though it was still humid. It had that just-before-a-storm quality to it.

‘You know, I knew your uncle,’ he said.

Miska had been thinking about their next move but suddenly Hogg had her attention.

‘What? When?’ she asked.

‘During the Occupation,’ he told her. He meant the Cult of Ahriman’s occupation of Sirius 4, nominally her home world. She knew that Hogg had been part of the resistance, before he had become a terrorist.

‘He was in the resistance,’ Miska said. She knew bits of the story but none of that generation liked to talk about the Occupation, about how her granddad had died.

‘Eventually,’ Hogg said. Miska wasn’t sure what to make of that. ‘His brother and both his sisters were in the British part of the expeditionary force.’

‘I know, Mum coordinated with the resistance through him, after she’d dropped planet-side ahead of the main invasion force.’ It was how her mum had met her dad. He had been doing the same thing in the American sector. This was family mythology.

‘I know,’ Hogg told her. ‘I worked with her and your dad.’

Miska sat up and stared at him for a moment.

‘My dad?’ she asked. He nodded. She thought back to when they’d defrosted Hogg to ask questions about the Che virus, before they’d infiltrated Faigroe Station, the Legion’s first job. She had talked to her dad about Hogg. He had given no indication of knowing the terrorist. Miska knew that her dad took secrecy seriously. He did not talk about his work, but even so this had operational relevance, he would have said something. ‘He never—’ she started.

‘I know,’ Hogg said. ‘Doesn’t recognise me at all, and I know the difference between genuinely not recognising someone and blanking them for some secret-squirrel bullshit.’

‘Hogg, are you lying to me?’ she demanded.

‘For what reason?’ he asked.

Paranoia was creeping in. Was he someone’s agent? An operator? Had he killed her dad?

‘So what were you and my parents doing? How come you waited until now to tell me?’ Miska asked.

‘That’s a long conversation,’ he told her. ‘And we need to discuss quid pro quo.’

And there it was, another grafting convict, Miska thought. She couldn’t say she blamed him.

‘What do you want?’ she demanded.

‘What do you think?’ he asked.

You and everyone else, she thought.

The pitch of the boat’s engine changed, Miska felt the boat slow.

‘Miska?’ Corenbloom said from where he was standing by the rear Wader. ‘I think you need to come and see this.’

‘What is it?’ she asked, without taking her eyes off Hogg.

‘A breadcrumb,’ Corenbloom told her.

Chapter 18

It had started to rain. They had only heard it at first. A distant percussion on the canopy high above them. Miska knew from bitter experience that the water would build up and build up on the nearly impenetrable canopy, until there was enough weight to bend the huge leaves – and then the jungle would be filled with waterfalls. Some of them had enough volume of water behind them to do serious damage. Miska had seen mechs knocked over, gunships forced into the ground and boats sunk. It was just another hazard they would have to look out for. Along with a forest full of ex-special forces mercenaries, sequestered slaves, and plant-based bioborgs, Miska thought. But that wasn’t her problem, right now. Her problem was her own people.

Ahead of them the river widened out again into a turgid, swampy area. The trees were smaller, though still huge; the canopy was lower, though still far above them, and now broken by the storm-brought waterfalls. The trees that dominated the swampland had silver coloured bark, much of it spotted with huge fungal growths and crawling mosses. Their root structures made Miska think of a loosely clenched hand with too many fingers. These were the ambulatory mangroves, the walking trees of Ephesus, though Miska knew that for the most part they moved too slowly for people to see. Deeper into the ‘mangrove’ swamp Miska could see the higher ground. There, stepped waterfalls rose up into the highlands of the imaginatively named Northern Mountains.

They