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

as Hemi knelt down behind her again to adhere the medpak and wire it to the medgel.

‘You just used us for bait didn’t you?’ she asked the Ultra as he reached them. She felt Hemi pause for a moment as he attended to her wound.

‘We had to draw the ambushers out. Surprise was the only advantage we had, so heavily outnumbered as we were,’ he told her. His voice was music over the sound of Bean and Kaczmar’s butchery.

‘You going to control your men?’ she asked.

He looked into the fungal forest where the two serial killers were hard at work.

‘They are controlled,’ he said. ‘In order for this to work their … our … appetites must be indulged. We’re unleashed at your will but once released we’re not taps that can be turned off and on.’ It wasn’t quite a challenge to her authority. She had, at the end of the day, given him autonomy to run the unit the way he saw fit as long as he didn’t hurt non-combatants. They weren’t really meant to operate with the Legion’s more conventional elements.

Miska was aware of Hemi tensing behind her. So, it seemed, was the Ultra, as he glanced the Maori’s way.

‘Done,’ Hemi told her as he stood up, peeling off the gloves.

‘Join the others,’ she told him. ‘Get everybody back on the clock, I want three-sixty security.’ Hemi nodded and started towards the rest of the squad. ‘I dropped Nyukuti’s SAW somewhere in the woods, retrieve that, get the spare ammo from Nye’s body, and see if the Triple S have got any ammo or grenades we can use.’

Hemi listened and then went on his way, making towards Nyukuti’s body first. Miska turned back to the Ultra.

‘Have your guys do the same with the ammo and get them ready to move,’ she told him.

‘I can’t come with you,’ he told her.

Miska gaped at him. She didn’t have time for this kind of bullshit. Then just for a moment, she had a horrible thought. Would the N-bomb work on someone so clearly augmented with Small Gods’ tech? But then why would he have gone along with this as long as he had? He had little to gain, after all. Besides, maybe a Small God could walk away from an N-bomb going off in their head, or even just have their body reject the device.

‘What do you mean you can’t come with me?’ she demanded.

‘You kill Resnick then you can probably prove that he’s augmented with illegal Martian tech, or possibly even connect him to the Spartans. If I go then perhaps our own secrets are exposed.’

It was a fair point.

‘And your pet monsters?’ she asked.

‘Grig and Gunhir are quite disciplined. Bean and Kaczmar will do as they’re told once I have spoken with them.’

‘No more mutilations,’ she told him. The Ultra frowned for a moment.

‘I’ve always wondered at the difference. They were dead before it happened. Mostly.’

‘What about your signs?’ Miska asked. ‘Were they all dead already?’

‘People must know fear.’

‘We were the only ones who saw it,’ Miska pointed out but the Ultra was walking away. She looked down at Kasmeyer’s body. Fungus was already starting to grow out of the wounds. All of them were going to be having anti-fungal baths when they got back to the Hangman’s Daughter.

If we get back, she thought. Though the odds were starting to even a little.

Mass had just finished wrapping Nyukuti’s body in his poncho and was heading back to rejoin the others.

‘Mass,’ she called. He turned to face her. It was clear that he was still angry. She suspected it was the need to differentiate himself from the Nightmare Squad and perhaps the fear that he wasn’t as different as he might wish. ‘Kasmeyer’s body as well,’ she told him.

‘Fuck that guy!’ he snapped. ‘Kasmeyer turned on us.’

‘Somebody forced him, somebody with influence and reach,’ she told him. Mass didn’t answer, he just made his way over to the body. Miska wasn’t sure she liked the guarded expression on his face, but she left him to it and started making her way towards the Nightmare Squad. A sodden Kaneda and Hogg had made it to not-so-dry land.

‘Good work,’ she told them as she passed and it was true. Without them the heavy weapons on the Waders would have torn them apart. Kaneda nodded, Hogg just watched her pass. She could practically feel the judgement in his eyes.

‘That ain’t right,’ Raff said as she passed the mushroom tree he was leaning against. She knew he meant the mutilations.

‘Yeah? Well you get what you pay for,’ she muttered. What had he expected when they’d embarked on this path? She’d known serving soldiers who’d done as bad. Hell, Resnick had recruited his own band of war criminals in so-called legitimate mercenary, sorry, ‘military contractor’ circles.

‘Miska?’

She looked up to see Hemi sat on the stem of a fallen mushroom tree, wiping mud off his inherited SAW. Nyukuti’s switchblade sword-boomerang was leaning against the tree. Hemi picked it up.

‘You want this?’ he asked.

Miska moved towards him, looking down at Nyukuti’s strange weapon.

‘I guess you’ll never get the chance to find out if you’re tougher,’ Miska said as she took the boomer-sword and tucked it into some of the straps on the back of her load-carrying plate.

Hemi shrugged. With the rain gone the first of the pollen started to fall from the canopy far above.

‘That is weird,’ Miska muttered.

‘That’s just all kinds of trap,’ Mass said next to her. He sounded spooked.

They were lying in a waterlogged ditch looking at a clearing within a small, low wood that existed far below the dense canopy of the huge trees. It had stopped raining but intermittent waterfalls still fell from the leaves far above, the water broken up by the secondary canopy. The much smaller, Earth-like trees were the least surprising thing. There were a number of overgrown Corinthian columns in the clearing. Only a few were standing. They looked as though they had been scattered around by some