WARDOGS INC. #1

Battlesuit Bastards

Episode 3: Industrial, Various

Four blues lit up inside my bucket. “Friendlies, coming in!” yelled a voice, confirming the computer. We turned to the door as Fire Team Red walked in, which consisted of Corporal Howland, our sometimes medic, plus Privates Ward and Four-Eyes. With them was Master Sergeant Thrasher, aka Squid.

“You boys made a right mess in here,” Squid said, looking at the bodies and blood spattered about. “Good work.” He noticed my arm. “Tough luck, there, Tommy. That from the slug-thrower?”

“Yeah, Sarge,” I replied, as Howland motioned me to sit, then sat down with his bag to take a look at me.

Jock handed the weapon to Squid, who turned it over and examined it closely. “Odd choice for space. Think the owner collected antiques?”

Four-eyes took it from him. “No. This is new,” he said. He opened the breech and looked down the barrel. “Probably the first time it was fired.”

“Headed for a colony?” Jock suggested.

“Dunno,” said the master sergeant. “Not my problem. Find anything interesting in the ship’s computer yet, Raymond?”

Raymond, better known as “Four-eyes”, had a full AI augment, unlike the rest of us. There were far too many exotic viruses floating around the various planetary nets, to say nothing of the chance of being mind-raped by the devil-gods of the Unity. “Nothing interesting, sir.” His face made it obvious he was somewhere else. Probably inside a database. “Cargo is listed as ‘industrial, various.’”

“Nice and vague,” Squid said. “They wanted it all intact, very pointed on that, so it’s probably either weapons or flower arrangements for a royal wedding. We’ll come back for a quick look after we hunt down our missing target.”

“One left, then,” I said.

The master sergeant nodded. “Time to hit engineering. Raymond and Park, you stay here with one-armed Tom. Howland, Ward and Hanley, you’re on. Raymond and the rest of you feel free to scan the cargo for items of interest. I just want to make sure we’re not dealing with biogenetics or nanites or something that’ll trigger Ascendancy interest. We’re getting paid good for playing hall monitor.”

“Yessir,” Four-eyes said mechanically, still far away.

“You’re going to live, Tommy,” said Howland, putting away his scanner and patting my back. “The joint is fine but you’re going to have a heck of a bruise.”

“Great,” I said, “I’ll tell HR that Jock was harassing me.”

Park was already walking a row of cargo, helmet off again, looking up and down as he went. Jock and I followed, looking for anything that stood out. Almost everything looked just like the manifest had claimed. Heavy equipment. Parked behind the barrels and shelves were huge grinders and laser augers on treads and various construction equipment I didn’t know anything about. I didn’t know why the ship was our target and I didn’t really care.

I saw some water reclaimers, bundles of piping, spools of wire, lighting, a few ATVs. And then a stack of wooden crates. Wood? What the devil?

“Four-eyes—something strange over here,” I said. Wood made no sense.

Four-eyes came. He whistled at the crates. “That is strange,” he said, leaning in. “And no maglocks.”

“No,” said Park, joining us. “We need a crowbar.”

Four-eyes looked at him blankly.

“Geez, Four-eyes,” I said, “It’s a tool. A–”

“A crowbar, wrecking bar, pry bar, or prybar, pinch-bar or sometimes a prise bar, prisebar, and more informally a jimmy, jimmy bar, jemmy or PikiPiki, gooseneck or ‘pig foot’ is a tool consisting of a metal bar with a single curved end and flattened points, often with a small fissure on one or both ends for removing nails,” Four-eyes said, quoting his implant.

“Great, thanks,” I said. “Now let’s see if we can find something like that.”

“We probably shouldn’t open them,” Four-eyes said, but Park had already returned with a metal bar and jammed it into the gap on the lid of a crate.

It popped open easily thanks to the superhuman strength his exo provided. Inside were tightly packed rows of slug guns, wrapped in brown paper and slick with grease.

“Nice,” I said. “More antiques.”

The next crate was packed with old-style ammunition. Projectiles with chemical propellant.

Park shrugged. “Nothing on the books about old weapons.”

“Not our problem,” I said, then glanced at the stats. “Fourteen,” I said.

As I did, Squid’s voice growled over the transceiver. “All clear, gentlemen. Time to clean up.”

We left the crates and started dragging bodies to the airlock, Four-eyes leaning over each corpse, his retinal cam storing the data for our client. I got to look at the guy who shot me. He was just a kid, maybe twenty, if that. Well, at least he died fighting. Give him that. The first few guys we took out just ran like rabbits down the corridors.

We unceremoniously stuffed the bodies into the small personnel airlock and flushed them out into space.

“Sergeant Thrasher, cargo is clean,” I reported.

“Find anything interesting?”

“Mostly just industrial equipment. Construction stuff,” I said. Four-eyes cut in, “To be precise, mining equipment.”

“Roger,” Squid said. “No problems?”

“Nothing illegal. Some more slug-throwers though, in wood crates,” I said.

“Not our business. Everyone meet up on the bridge in five. We’ve cleared our bodies here, we’ll finish there.”

“Roger,” I replied. Park hammered the tops back on the boxes, then exited cargo. I reset the seals on the door and we headed up to the bridge. It wasn’t a huge ship, so no lifts. Just ladders and stairs like an old atomic model.

We entered the bridge just as Private Ward was dragging out the body of the captain. Park saluted the dead man ironically and Jock laughed.

“Now what?” I said.

“Now we wait for a new crew,” said Squid from the late captain’s chair, a flask in his hand. “Lieutenant says their ship is on the way and they should be here within the hour. At ease for now.”

I looked around the bridge. Everything looked clean and well-maintained, though it was an older ship. Garamond read the name plate on the wall. Registration 1001x235htfg22789.113. Gruppo ENIL-EX, Valatesta.

I took off my helmet and set it on the navigation table next to a personal tablet, still displaying a colorful picture story its owner would never finish. Probably lots of time to read on freighters.

Almost exactly an hour later, a sleek black transport pulled alongside and hailed us. A few moments later, the boarding party joined us. The men wore the same navy blue jumpsuits of the guys we’d just spaced. Gruppo ENIL-EX uniforms, I assumed.

Their leader engaged with Sergeant Thrasher and a severe little man walked up to me. “Do you mind?” he said, then powered up the nav board. He tossed the tablet onto a chair as I gathered up my helmet.

“Good to meet you too,” I said, getting out of his way.

“Hmm,” he said, keying in some numbers.

“So,” I pressed, partly because I was annoyed, “got a hot date, then?”

“Not likely on Ulixis,” he sniffed.

“What? You don’t like furry chicks?” I remember jokes about the women of Ulixis, though I really only had a vague idea where the place was.

“Go away, Wardog, I’m working,” he said, waving his hand dismissively.

I considered shooting him in the back of the head, just on principle, then decided I’d rather not lose my bonus today. Squid didn’t take kindly to freelancing.