Here Be Monsters - Chapter 35

     When the medics found him, Rollie was huddled behind an overturned table, arms wrapped around his knees, covered in someone else's blood, with his eyes squeezed shut.  He was unsuccessfully trying to forget the last ten minutes of his life, but the images kept replaying over and over, no matter how much he willed them to stop.
     About a dozen members of the crew, including DJ, Alex, Hicks, Bao-Jian, Jinx, himself and a few others, had decided to spend some of their impending bonuses having a good time, while the Captain arranged the sale of their salvage claim.
     They had unanimously agreed that it was a good idea to maintain a low profile, so they'd decided to go to a semi private bar and gambling den in the Old Quarter.  Housed in a decrepit looking building without windows on the lower level, it catered strictly to spacers, and a few locals with dubious reputations.  For those who were interested, it offered dice, cards, mahjong, and a few games he'd never even heard of.
     The gaming tables were right at the front as one came through the beaded curtain, with tables and booths near the back separated by the oval bar area in the middle.
     The crew had taken over a corner at the back, and they were all looking forward to seeing how much Cameron would be able to wring out of their discovery.  Rollie had suspected that DJ had some kind of inside information on what the Captain was going to get for the colony ship, because he was engaging in some pretty serious public displays of affection with Alex, and he was still sober.
     Somewhere between the first and second round of drinks, Alex and Bao-Jian had gotten up to go get another round at the bar, when all Hell had let out for payday.  There was no doubt in his mind, that the sound of automatic gunfire in an enclosed space was going to stay with him for years to come.  It wasn't just deafeningly loud, it was concussive; something that could be felt, as well as heard.
     What became evident later on, was that the three gunmen had split up, with one covering the front and the other two moving around the bar, allowing them to - theoretically - use their overlapping fields of fire to herd their victims into a lethal barrage.
     There was no warning, the two men in dark coats had simply reached into them, pulled out their weapons and begun firing.  Rollie had seen them, and had frozen in shock as they began firing.
     Bao and Alex had been midway between the bar and their tables, and directly in the path of the first shots, and then Rollie's shock had turned to horror.  Bao was hit with two bursts of three rounds each, one high, one low, and he was dead before his body had begun to fall.
     Alex, showered with Bao-Jian's blood and brains, sprinted for their table.  As DJ screamed at her to get down, he grabbed the edge of the table, ripped it off the stand to which it had been bolted, just in time to push Rollie down, as one of the killers put a burst through Alex's back.  His aim was thrown off by her sudden acceleration, but three bullets struck her in the upper torso, and punched her to the floor in a writhing heap, coughing blood bubbles from a perforated lung.
     The second gunman had been walking his own fire along the wall into crewmates who were sitting at tables in the open, and most of them were to shocked to do more than scream incoherently.  Hicks was right next to Rollie behind the table, but he could only watch with horror as she did the unthinkable, and tried to surrender.  He was sprayed with gore as she was slammed into the wall behind them by long bursts of automatic fire.
     DJ saw Alex get hit, and his scream of pure, animal rage drowned out everything around him.  He popped up with a speed that seemed impossible, and his hands were a blur as he pulled his jacket back, and drew his personal weapon from the cross-draw holster on his left hip, punching it out in front of himself like a striking snake.  To Rollie, it seemed as though everyone else was moving in slow motion except for DJ.
     He watched as his friend put two rounds through the face of the man who had just gunned down the most important person in his life, and with as little effort as possible, put two into the second man's chest, with another through his head for good measure.  The third gunman had finished with the front half of the bar, and came around just in time to see DJ put down his second target, and he hesitated for just a split second.
     Dirk didn't.  He fired twice, striking his target in the lower abdomen, incapacitating him.  Dirk slowly walked over to where the man was lying, mortally wounded, and asked him one thing.
     "Who sent you?  If you tell me, then I give you my word that I won't let you die gutshot."  He said, in a voice cloaked in incredible serenity.
     Rollie hadn't heard what answer the man had given, but Dirk had stood back a step, said "Thank you", and then shot the man in the forehead without warning.
     When he turned around, his face was a mask of cold, raw, naked hatred, the like of which Rollie had never seen before, on anyone.  He'd calmly walked back to where Alex lay dying, he took the Medalert tag off from around his neck, and placed it carefully around hers, then he pulled the tag off of the chain, activating it.  He looked around and saw Rollie.
     "Rollie.  When they come, don't interfere, just tell them that she has to live, OK?"  He said, in a voice aching with sadness, mingled with inconsolable rage.
     Rollie could only nod his head furiously, he didn't trust himself to speak without screaming in horror at all he'd witnessed.
     Dirk looked directly at him and said: "Thanks Rollie, tell Alex that I'm sorry I won't get to meet her parents."  Then he stood up and walked out of the room, leaving Rollie to the horrors of his own memory.  He backed himself into a corner behind the table, curled himself up, and shut his eyes.
     He knew a monster when he saw one, and it had just walked out.

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 34

     Chevy was fast asleep when the emergency call came through on her comm implant.  Normally she was a light sleeper, but a day that had started with meetings, then proceeded to training, followed by surfing, and then dinner, drinks at a private club, and finally a couple of hours of decent quality sex, had wiped her out, and full consciousness was slow in coming.
     All that changed the instant she recognized the emergency code.
     She sat bolt upright so fast (and for someone operating in two thirds of their normal gravity, that was very fast indeed), that she nearly dragged her surfing instructor out of bed with her.  There was no time to apologize, and she started grabbing her clothing from the floor where it had ended up earlier, and dressed herself with indecent haste as he came to and asked her the most obvious question.
     "Where're you going, hái'ér?"  He asked, sleepily, using a word that she now understood as a term of endearment, which translated literally as 'babe'.
     "Emergency call, I have to go.  Fast."  She paused as a person to person call came in, and she scrambled to get her personal headset jacked into place behind her ear.  The jack wasn't really needed, but it encrypted her communications, making them indecipherable to anyone not on her unit's network.  Once she had it connected, she opened the connection, and spoke quickly.
     "Turlington.  IG identification number 211768.  Give me a SitRep."  She said tersely; identifying herself, and demanding information in the same breath, without any wasted effort.
     Kenjirō answered in a similarly clipped tone.
     "Commander, about two-point-six minutes ago, our monitoring station here at the embassy began receiving a Class Five emergency code from a broken Medalert beacon.  I had the signal traced, it originated from a commercial building in the Old Quarter.  Luckily, the call came in as the ready teams were switching shifts, so I've loaded them all up.  I have a fix on your location, we will pick you up en route; we are less than two minutes out, don't be late."  He informed her, as she ran out of the studio apartment without so much as a backward glance, ignoring the lift, and headed to the stairwell.
     The relatively low gravity allowed her to jump from one landing to the next without touching the stairs, and she was outside on the walkway fronting the apartment building with no other desire but to get to work. 
     She had enrolled at the Imperial Academy when she was eight, or about 12 Terran standard years old.  Her induction into the ranks of the Imperial Guard had taken place the week after her 12th birthday, where she had pledged her life to the service of the Imperial House, and now she found herself in the unenviable position of being called to action on behalf of that oath.  A Class Five emergency was reserved for members of the Imperial House itself, and there were no members of the MacMullen clan known to be on-planet.
     Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of vectored thrust engines, specifically those of a Tsuji-Gibson VH-71A 'Spider Wasp', a variable geometry VTOL attack transport, that resembled an unholy union of Russian attack helicopter and jump jet.  She could see it coming in at a speed and altitude guaranteed to infuriate the local air traffic controllers, police, and a host of corporate security services, but in that moment she couldn't have cared less if they'd shattered windows all along their path.  The pilot didn't bother to deploy the landing gear, but instead cut power to the engines, while simultaneously boosting power to the antigrav, which put the machine down right in front of her, about one meter off the ground.  She was running for the door before it even opened, and she simply jumped in without slowing down as it did.
     She didn't have to tell them to take off, because the pilot had applied power to the VT, and extended the stub wings for additional lift and maneuverability, before she could even yell "Go!"  In the close confines of the highly urban and incredibly built-up area in which they were operating, the pilot purposely selected a flight path at low altitude, which was illegal, but made it easier to avoid other air traffic.  Thankfully, there was little traffic along their route, and nothing she could do about it anyway, so she put the thought aside and focused on getting herself ready.
     Looking around the interior of the vectored thrust aircraft, she saw that the combat team was made up of a mix of personnel; Kenjirō and two other Imperial Guards, plus a squad of regular army for backup.  The Guardsmen were wearing Hollis-DTI's K7 'Guardian' late generation exoarmor; consisting of an outer shell of metaceramic, laminated with carbon nanotube impregnated polycarbonate, over an ultralight metaplast 'skeleton'.  Articulated with synthetic muscles, the K7 would allow the user to perform feats of strength that would be impossible otherwise, and its armor was proof against virtually all high velocity AP rifle rounds.  It was possible that a glancing shot from a light anti-material rifle might be deflected, but large anti-armor rounds from 14.5mm on up likely would not.  The squad of Darkaellan Imperial Army were wearing B4/6 'Interceptor' body armor, which, although it was moderately bulky and somewhat heavy, covered them from just below the chin down to the groin, plus the upper part of the arms, and would stop ordinary rifle fire cold, in addition to shell fragments and pistol bullets.
     "Kenjirō-san," she said, once she'd tied her comm into the combat team's network, "did you bring my gear?  Or weapons?"
     "I didn't have time to grab much, but there's a set of HEX armor, combat fatigues, boots and your personal weapons:  Rifle, pistol, plus HE and stun grenades.  I figured you would want to be airborne sooner rather than later.  If I have erred, I apologise."  He told her over the noise inside the cabin.
     She was less than pleased to hear that her own K7 had been left behind, but HEX armor was the next best thing, and she quickly began changing.  HEX was an abbreviation for High Energy eXchange, although the armor's appearance of being made up of small hexagonal plates led people to assume that the name was descriptive.  It occupied a niche between the Interceptor armor of the DIA and powered exoarmor; it was extremely light, and would stop almost any small arms fire, including high velocity armor piercing rounds.  It was also proof against the hypervelocity flechettes used by the HIA Marine Corps in their Colt-Armacon M-125A1 rifles, which was the primary threat against which it had been designed.
     Kenjirō had, however, brought her rifle, which she was very glad to see.  The Imperial Guard were issued the best weapons of any military unit in the Known Sphere, the crown jewel of which was the Hollis-MacNeil 6th generation magrifle.  Consisting of a slab-sided, flat charcoal metaplast shell, with an integral electronic sight, the 6Gen magrifles were capable of incredible accuracy on their own, but when linked to a user's cranial interface, they reached a peak of lethal efficiency that was completely without precedent.  The magrifle was essentially a man-portable railgun, capable of accelerating a 7mm prefragmented metaceramic bullet with a steel driving band to velocities of up to 2150 meters per second.  When a round struck a hard surface it would either punch through and fragment, or it would liquify, causing spalling and thermal damage.  In a soft target of heterogeneous organic matter like a human body, the round would destabilize and fragment explosively, creating dozens of razor like fragments. 
     Naturally, they had been declared illegal in every system outside of the Imperium, and even there, they were restricted to military service.
     "Commander, I have at least four local law enforcement VTOLs and air EMS units en route to our primary LZ, and one military VTA, a Kuàisù Jīngshén JS5-1 from its power output, set to intercept us; however, we should have time to drop your team off before that happens."  The pilot, Captain Ackles, said over the vehicle's interior comm.
     "Thank you, Captain.  Unless that military flight begins targeting us with fire control radar, ignore it and put us down as close to the beacon as possible."  Chevy instructed, as she secured her personal weapons for rapid deployment.
     "Understood, Commander."  He acknowledged.  "We'll be dropping into the primary LZ in 90 seconds."
     "90 seconds.  Got it."  She acknowledged in return.
     She began to feel the adrenaline and dopamine rush that preceded combat, and even the moderate weight of her weapons and armor became unnoticeable, while every sense became crystal clear.  She wanted to get in there and kick some ass, even if, intellectually, she knew the time for that was likely over, and there was probably going to be little more for her to do than pick up the pieces.  One thing was certain:  If it turned out that there was a member of the Imperial House injured, or dead, at their destination, then there was going to be hell to pay.
     Her thoughts were cut short for the second time in less than five minutes when the interior lights went red, alerting the occupants of the fact that they would be landing in ten seconds.
     She checked her rifle's power and ammunition levels, then let it hang on its sling while she made certain once more that her sidearm had a round chambered and the safety was on.  The cabin lights went out as she finished securing her helmet's chin strap, and she grabbed a support bar, just as the pilot cut the VT and pushed the antigrav to the limit, causing everyone to experience a brief moment of weightlessness.
     The side doors of the VTA slammed open, and Kenjirō's team jumped the last three meters.  They hit the ground running, weapons up and sweeping across the dimly lit street in both directions.  Shevaughn remained with the Army unit until the aircraft was closer to the ground, and she was the last one out.  She could hear the sound of incoming sirens, and the noise of both rotor and vectored thrust aircraft.
     "Captain Ackles, get airborne, and stay overhead, but under no circumstances are you to fire on anyone, unless you are fired upon first.  Understood?"  She said, immediately upon hitting the ground.
     "Aye, Commander.  Understood."  He replied, already underway before she'd finished speaking.  With their transport away, Chevy retracted her helmet's light enhancing visor, and took a look around.
     There wasn't much to see.  The street itself was poured concrete, and in desperate need of resurfacing; some areas had ruts so worn that major fractures had formed.  Buildings of a commercial or light industrial nature - one of which, she noticed, was a local manufacturer of sex toys - fronted the street in both directions, this area of Níngjìng Bay being part of the city's original industrial park.  There were vehicles parked along the sidewalks on both sides of the street, most of them locally made wheeled cars, and a few light cargo vans clearly belonging to businesses in the area.  A few were wildly out of place; there was a Ducati Vetrano 1098 Superleggera, which was only available on Earth, and rare enough there to almost certainly make it unique on Minotaur.  The late model NAC-Hyundai Aerodyne was also out of place; while not uncommon, it tended to be most popular with private security firms, and was definitely out of place in a neighborhood like this.  That, and it was still running, its front windshield perforated from several well placed gunshots, and the driver slumped over, clearly dead.
     She and the backup team secured the street while the Guardsmen, having pinpointed the structure from which the beacon was being sent, kicked in the front door.  Each second that passed while she waited for them to give the 'all clear' felt like a lifetime, but she willed herself to be patient; when she finally heard Kenjiro make the call, she led the way for the rest of the team.
     She could hear the sounds of multiple voices, and sounds of people in varying degrees of distress, as her team swept through a short hallway between the outer door and a beaded curtain at the far end.  The inside of the nondescript building turned out to be a bar; one that looked like a small, probably unregistered, gambling den.  The place was dimly lit, and a miasma of stale tobacco, spilled alcohol, and the brassy odor of fresh blood hung in the air, causing her nose to wrinkle involuntarily.  The floor was littered with bodies, blood, broken furniture, bottles, and glass.  Some of the bodies were still alive, although she doubted for long; even if the EMS units on the way showed up right now, it would be touch and go.  Nevertheless, she turned to the backup squad's leader, and gave orders.
     "Fan out, identify any wounded who are critical, and be prepared to assist the incoming emergency medical personnel.  If anyone who is uninjured can be persuaded to help, use them, but don't get too aggressive.  Go."  She ordered, and turned to where Kenjiro had stopped with the other two Guardsmen.
     She saw three men in identical Armorweave trenchcoats lying dead on the floor as she made her way across the room, each one had a Norinco QBZ-803 compact assault rifle on a tactical sling.  They had all been killed with a weapon of fairly large caliber, and by someone skilled in its use from the placement of the shots.  Her helmet's forward camera would record the faces of the gunmen, and she would run them past the embassy's intelligence section later, to see if they were known to the Imperium.
     "Commander, we found the Medalert tag, but there's something you should see."  Kenjiro told her, as she came to where he was standing, the other two down on their knees working furiously to keep one of the shooting victims alive.  "This one," he gestured at the young woman being worked on, "had an Imperial House issued Medalert tag around her neck, but I don't recognize her, and her identification seems to be genuine."  He concluded, handing her the woman's identification packet.
     Chevy looked at the ID in her hands, and found herself with more questions than answers.  She knew that the person on the floor was no member of the Imperial House, and yet the tag she was handed by one of her subordinates was one of those issued to direct relatives of the Emperor.  How had she acquired it, and from whom?  She examined the holo image on the ID card once more, looking for a clue when the locals started pouring in, yelling like a pack of cliffcats in a rut.  She ignored the noise, and stared at the image in front of her.
     Who the hell was Alexandra G.J. Chase?

Here Be Monsters - Chapter 33

* My many thanks got to Joe MacDonald for much of the background on The Cartel, it was his brainchild 20 years ago, and it seemed like a shame for it to go to waste. *

     "It looks as though I was worried for nothing, Gandu.  Offers are still coming in."  Said Cameron, as they sat in his private office on the Jester watching the bids roll in; his ship having safely returned through the Vulcanfall-Minotaur locus only four days ago, transmitting the limited details of their discovery of a derelict colony ship to the Space Enforcement Agency.
     The Agency was a system wide organization whose duties included local offplanet law enforcement, and inspections for compliance with Alliance and UniSys regulations in space.  They were generally considered to be one of the most trustworthy organizations with which to file a salvage claim, and they maintained it with considerable effort.  They tended to give salvage operators the best possible assessments it could, and its personnel did their jobs without a hand under the table, reaching for graft; some places, like Jefferson, for instance, would stiff you at every turn, and charge you for the inconvenience, all the while giving preference to anyone who was willing to pay for the privilege.  As a result, virtually all legitimate salvage operators working in Alliance territory, both private and corporate, used the Agency to file their claims.
     "No offers from Resodyne, though; I thought they would be first in line.  After all, we published the registry number along with the high resolution rendering of the ship's exterior.  Someone has to know about its omission from ARA Corporation's records by now, and the fact that they have been silent worries me."  Gandu commented pensively rotating his tumbler of Scotch whisky back and forth between large, spatulate fingers.
     "It's been less than a dozen hours since the SEA's Salvage Title Adjudication Board allowed us to put our find up for bids; maybe they were slow getting out of bed this morning, or they just don't understand what we've found.  Either way, when they get in touch - and they almost certainly will - the higher the standing offer at the time, the more they'll have to pay to get it."  Cameron pontificated, with a smirk of triumph.
     Gandu took a contemplative sip of the smoky, amber liquid before speaking again.
     "I am, admittedly, probably worried about nothing, but SEA-STAB probably has at least one person within its ranks who sells information to the Multisolars."  The XO countered, once again playing the devil's advocate.
     The Captain of the Jester considered what he had just heard for all of two seconds, and said, "Maybe, but probably only to the Cartel", grinning maniacally.
     Cameron would have been the first person to admit that having to pick between the highest bid on the salvage title, and any bid made by the Cartel, would be a decision fraught with uncertainty at best, but chances were that the Cartel's bid would likely be made by one of their proxies, and no one would be the wiser.
     Well, no one who wasn't as thick as lard, like grandma used to say.  Cameron thought.
     Gandu was less than appreciative of his Captain's attempt at humor.
     "Thank you, I hadn't actually thought of that."  He said, in a dry tone which suggested he would have much preferred not to have heard his Captain's attempt at humor.
     "Sorry, XO, I know it's not funny, but you know as well as I do there's a good chance that their factors and proxies are already bidding as we sit here."  He explained, somewhat unnecessarily.
     Like most people who'd had any dealings with a Multisolar corporation, Cameron was aware of the Cartel as a pervasive element of the Known Sphere's political and economic climate.  They had a reach that extended well beyond Sol and the Humanist Interstellar Alliance, into the Free Systems League, and the other Independent Systems; their influence extended right up to the edge of the Darkaellan Imperium, where it more or less stopped.
     The Cartel had evolved from a loose conglomeration of Earth-based multinationals into the first true Multisolar.  Over the course of a generation, they had embedded themselves into virtually every major company in the Sol system, and a majority of those in the Alliance, which had been an early benefactor of the Cartel's desire for greater autonomy.  Their only objective, as Cameron saw it, was power; their pursuit of that gave them access to the capital and economic resources to support their agenda, whatever that might be.  If, however, the Cartel discovered an impediment to its goals, then it was generally considered to be a good idea to stay home, if possible.
     There had been rumors circulating for decades, about people who had gotten on the wrong side of the Cartel in a bad way, and the rumors had a certain consistency; someone finds themselves on the Cartel's radar, and they suddenly disappear, die, or end up taking an unscheduled vacation very far away.  There's never any evidence, and no one will testify to anything, either on or off the record.
     To say that those who knew of - or just suspected - the Cartel's existence feared its attentions would be a massive understatement, but the vast majority of people had no clue that such an organization existed, and that suited the Cartel just fine.  Anonymity made it virtually impossible to target the leadership legally, to say nothing of how it frustrated occasional attempts made by some very brave, determined, and incredibly stupid journalists, who clearly had more ambition than good sense, to try and expose Cartel malfeasance in the Known Sphere.
     Yet, for all of that, exposure was something - perhaps the only thing - that it seemed to fear.  It was obvious that the leadership went to great lengths to hide their identities, and keep their activities from being publicized, which, to a number of people, meant that if you had incontrovertible evidence of something that would be impossible to ignore, then you had something to bargain with.  The Cartel would negotiate when it mattered, but you'd be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your days.  It was whispered to Cameron once that a particularly intrepid young reporter had really gotten the goods on the Cartel a couple of decades ago, and had used it as leverage to fastrack her career at InterStar Media Group, arguably the largest media company ever to exist, and now that woman sat at the head of the table in the executive boardroom, newest CEO of InterStar.
     If he suspected that one of the bidders was working sub  rosa for the Cartel, then there were worse things than feigning ignorance, and hoping that he was wrong.  If, on the other hand, they decided to let him know that a third party bidder was acting as their agent, then he would have to try and work out the best deal possible, and pray he didn't push so hard that they pushed back.
     "Captain, the fact that they are probably using a half a dozen proxies and third party buyers doesn't worry me, its the total silence of the one group that has the most to lose if word about what's on that ship was to be made public."  Gandu said, reiterating his initial point regarding Resodyne's absolute silence.  "They should have at least tried for an injunction against our claim by now, or something, and they're not doing a thing.  Do you suppose that they plan to just use the fact that it wasn't listed as an asset as an excuse to let it go, then pretend to be shocked when it turns up?"
     Cameron took a slow, pensive sip of his own drink and considered the question.  On the one hand, there were some advantages to Resodyne doing just that, since they had no reason to believe that ARA Corporation had kept a mobile black R&D lab in a backwater system.  They could quite easily shrug their shoulders and say:  'We are shocked, shocked I say, at the news that the company, which we purchased in good faith, was engaged in such terrible activities, but it has nothing to do with us.'
     On the other hand, it was entirely possible that there was a boardroom catfight going on right now at Resodyne, and when the dust settled they would simply offer more money than anyone else would want to put up, or try to cut a long-term deal that amounted to the same, and he'd be set for life; with enough left over that the crew's bonuses would make them insanely happy.
     "I can't say with any certainty that would be their plan, but it makes sense.  Really, though, there's not a lot they can do to prevent the sale from going through; they never knew it existed, so what's the basis of their complaint?  Any marginally competent lawyer would laugh himself sick before telling them to go home; as it stands, we can plead ignorance, and they can plead ignorance.  Trust me, Gandu, we're covered, and we are gonna make out like bandits."  He grinned like an urchin, and finished the remainder of his drink in a single swallow.
     His executive officer still didn't seem convinced, but he sat back in his Captain's very comfortable sofa, and took another sip of his drink in order to marshal his thoughts.
     "Shall I authorize shore leave for the crew?  I'd say that they've earned some real vacation time for a change, but I would like to rotate them through a third at a time, and maybe give an extra day to the last rotation.  As sort of a compensation for being last."  Gandu asked him, moving on to more immediate, practical concerns.
     "Yeah, go ahead; after six months aboard, and all we've been through, even Rollie is gonna want to get off the ship for a few days."  Cameron answered, reflecting on the fact that even his bosun had been climbing the walls of late, Saints knew they all deserved some R&R.
     He sincerely hoped they would have fun.