Chapter Twenty-Seven
Exceedingly bored and a little warm, Chalmers leaned back and yawned. Things had been pretty calm since the attempted assassination a few weeks back, and he’d never found paperwork exciting. Awareness had faded into a light doze when the office door slammed open. Jackson entered and winged a message packet across the desk at him. Chalmers ducked. The packet bounced from the wall behind him and to the ground.
“What the hell?” Chalmers said.
Jackson snorted.
“Seriously, you sick bastard. What do you think it is?” Chalmers bent to pick up the packet.
“I suspect we’re getting fresh orders,” Jackson said. He was grinning as Chalmers sat upright from collecting the packet from the floor.
Ignoring the letter opener lost somewhere under the papers scattered on his desk, Chalmers pried the packet open with his thumbnail.
He flipped through several pages, then sorted them into the proper order. He removed the codebook—a very real technical manual on aircraft engines—from the desk and flipped it open. It took a minute and some absentminded cursing, but Chalmers eventually had the headline deciphered.
“Operation BUCKET,” he read aloud. “What the hell is BUCKET?”
“Won’t know till you decrypt the rest, genius.”
Chalmers sat back. “I freely admit you’re better at this than I am, Jacks.”
“Damn straight I am, but it’s your turn.” He looked thoughtful a moment. “Bucket like an old car, maybe?”
“We won’t know until the resident genius decodes it,” Chalmers said, but he was grinning as he picked up the manual.
The grin died a quick death as he dove into decoding the rest of the message. Dimly, he noted that Jackson sat still and silent while he worked, giving his partner both time and quiet in which to work. A quiet only broken by his own occasional expletive as the new orders were slowly, painfully revealed.
“Fuck me,” he breathed once he’d finished.
“What?” Jackson asked, leaning forward and trying to read upside down.
“Murphy wants us to play Ice Pirates!”
“What?” Jackson said.
Chalmers looked at his partner. “An SF flick. Eighty-three or f—”
“‘Why’d you make him black?’” Jackson interrupted, doing a fair impression of Robert Urich.
Chalmers sat back in his chair, surprised his partner knew the movie.
“‘B’cause I wanted him to be perfect,’” Jackson quoted, as if reading from a film script. “It’s an immortal line for black SF fans. Roscoe was the shit. And the black robot made the movie. So, yeah, I know the fucking flick, Chalmers.” He shook his head and flipped the decoded message around to read for himself. “I meant, what, specifically, does Murphy want us to do?”
“He wants us to capture a lighter intact. Preferably without alerting the rest of the port that it’s been taken.”
Still reading, Jackson sat back in his chair and muttered, “Not asking for much, is he?”
Chalmers grinned. “Never.”
“Says here we’re to rendezvous for further instruction. There’s also a schedule for delivery of additional assets beginning next month…” Jackson let his voice trail off, shaking his head.
“And he adds that we should prepare preliminary plans for review,” Chalmers finished for his partner.
Jackson let the hand holding the orders fall into his lap. “The guys are not going to be happy, being forced to leave after all the work they’ve put in.”
“Unless we can pull it off without revealing our hand,” Chalmers said, pulling his lip.
“We need Vat’s thoughts on this. Where is he?” Jackson asked. He’d already forgiven Vat for underestimating the violent response of Fangat.
“Meeting with the Ghnzi,” Chalmers said, lip curling. He, on the other hand, had yet to forgive the former arms dealer for underestimating the backlash from Fangat over the Broker Principle position.
“Moose with him?”
“Yeah.”
“Send a messenger to ask him to come back to the office?”
“No.” Chalmers shook his head. “Not that time critical, really. We can get started without him.”
Jackson was looking across the papers at him, his expression showing he saw right through Chalmers’s bullshit.
“I’ll just send someone to make sure he comes straight here instead of the baths or his club,” Jackson said in the tone that told Chalmers it wasn’t up for discussion. Setting the papers on the desk, Jackson stood up and left the office.
Wanting to distract himself, Chalmers set about clearing the desk for action. That done, he bent and uncovered the floor safe containing sensitive documents. Entering the combination, he withdrew a bundle of files containing hand-drawn maps and hastily written patrol schedules. Each had been cajoled out of compromised personnel—confirmed by firsthand observation by a Lost Soldier where possible—then collated and constantly updated over months of painstaking surveillance work. He pinned each piece of the puzzle to the local version of a corkboard, and had to set up another one to take all the material. He was just finished laying it all out when Jackson returned.
Seeing their work in plain view, Jackson quickly closed the door behind himself. The brokerage employed a substantial number of local hires, and, while they were as loyal as could be expected, that particular bar was set at about knee height.
“Security is tight,” Chalmers muttered, examining the most recent guard schedule for the main gate.
“And we were focused on sabotage—getting access to fuel lines and the parts depot—thinking that’s what Murphy would want,” Jackson said, leaning on the desk with both hands.
“Vat was right, though,” Chalmers admitted grudgingly. “The Kulsians are focused on internal competition, not infiltration by outsiders hostile to their presence.”
“Can you blame them? What back-country R’Baku madman could get across the ocean, then past their security—and then, what could such a relative primitive accomplish if, by some miracle, they managed a breach?”
Chalmers cocked his head. “Terror attacks?”
“And not much more.”
“Yeah, this mission might be more easily accomplished than it sounds.”
Jackson snorted. “You been smoking that shit you give Daroz? Last I checked, we barely qualified with space suits. I sure as hell don’t know the first fucking thing about piloting a spacecraft.”
“Me neither, but I gotta believe Murphy has something planned,” Chalmers said.
“A SpinDog pilot?”
“Could be. Or maybe one of us Lost Soldiers underwent some special hypno-training by the Doorknobs before they bounced?”
“They’re called Dornaani, you dick,” Jackson said.
“I know that. Not like any of those assholes are around to correct me. They took off, so I figure we don’t owe ’em shit.” Chalmers shook his head. “What I was trying to say, before you so rudely interrupted me, was that the mission might be both easier and harder than it looks.”
“How so?”
“The perimeter security is hard, sure, but once past the gates and fences almost everything is focused on keeping their own side from stealing cargo. Their measures against outsiders are almost laughable in comparison.”
Jackson slowly nodded, understanding dawning in his eyes. “So they won’t be on the lookout for someone trying to stow away.”
Chalmers felt the hair on his arms stand up, a sure sign they were either onto something big or his thinking was entirely, even idiotically, wrong.
Only time would tell which was correct.
“Everything all right?” Vat asked upon entering the office.
Chalmers was glad to see Moose shadowing the smaller man. He waved him in as well.
“Sort of,” Chalmers said, closing the door behind Moose.
“What’s up?” Vat asked, glancing from Jackson’s pensive expression to Chalmers’s poker face as he stepped across the icebox set in the wall. There wasn’t any ice in it, but rather the broken branches of a particular plant that had an intense endothermic reaction when submerged in a particular solution of water and a honey-analogue of all things.
“New orders,” Chalmers said.
“So?” Vat pulled a pitcher of blespa juice from the fridge and poured himself a drink. Keeping hydrated in the growing heat was a stone bitch, even if you were only outdoors for a short while.
“So, the objective is so high-value it—or the aftermath of acquiring it—might require us to cease all other operations on the island. Indefinitely.”
Vat’s knuckles whitened as he clenched his fist around the glass. “What?”
Moose had to turn sideways to get by Chalmers and take the pitcher from Vat. He poured himself a glass. “Anyone else?” he offered.
“No, thanks,” the partners chorused.
“Answer the question, Chief,” Vat said tightly.
“I heard you,” Chalmers said, intentionally omitting the other man’s rank. Vat was, ostensibly, his superior, but this op was so far off the regs as to be undetectable to the naked eye. Besides, using ranks was a dead giveaway to eavesdroppers that they weren’t who they appeared to be, so he was covered.
“So.” Vat set his glass down on the sideboard with a dull thunk and crossed his arms. “You gonna keep us in suspense?”
Chalmers shook his head. “First, I want to tell you I want to keep going as we have almost as much as you do. I enjoy the trappings of power here, too.”
“What the fuck is the target?” Vat growled.
“It’s just that I know you’re a little too happy here, enjoying your wealth and whatnot,” Chalmers said, knowing he was winding the other man up but unable to help himself. “The challenge, that kind of thing, to your skills.”
“I don’t need this shit,” Vat said, turning to leave.
“This about stealing the lighter?” Moose asked, looking at Jackson.
“Sure is,” Jackson said, then he looked at Moose, eyes wide.
Everyone in the room turned to look at Moose, who chose that moment to chug his drink.
“You knew?” the partners chorused.
“Steal a lighter?” Vat sputtered at the same time.
“I did,” Moose said to Jackson and Chalmers. “And,” he continued, looking across at Vat, “yeah, it was part of the plan from the first sign of the surveyors approaching.”
“Wait,” Chalmers said. “Why tell you and not us?”
“Because you and Jackson might have been caught and tortured in the early days of the operation. So. Here’s to that not happening.” Moose lifted his glass and pretended clinking it with another. “And, if we were cut off from reaching higher, I was to inform you of the mission if a month passed absent fresh orders from on high.”
“But why keep it from me, then?” Vat said.
Chalmers almost sneered, hearing the incredulity in Vat’s voice.
“I’m not sure, but I do have a lengthy record of keeping my mouth shut and my nose clean while I follow orders.” He looked meaningfully from Chalmers to Vat, the silent subtext clear to both: And I don’t dick around on a mission. Ever.
Jackson shook his head. “Shit.”
“Well,” Vat said, “I ain’t playing this go-round. Not if it means sacrificing everything I built, again.”
“I?” Chalmers said. “There’s no ‘I’ in team, buddy.”
“Like you could’ve done this without me, you redneck fuck.”
Chalmers came off the door. “Who you callin’ redneck, yo—?”
“Murphy plays a damn deep game,” Jackson said, loud enough that his voice cut across Chalmers’s retort.
“Has to,” Moose said, nodding.
“What’s that?” Chalmers snarled.
“Murphy has to play hardball.” Moose looked at each of the other men in turn. His normally placid expression was displeased, even angry.
“Look, the shit I did up in orbit? The stuff that made it politically expedient to send me down here? Well, it wouldn’t have been necessary if the political situation up there weren’t clear as mud. Right when everything was going well for us planetside, when we had the J’Stull satraps on the run, that’s when the factionalism among the SpinDogs started getting murderous.” He sighed. “No, that’s not right. The factions became even more murderous then.”
He shook his head. “But that’s not really my point.” He jabbed a finger at Chalmers and then Vat. “You two take every command in light of how it affects you, personally. Makes you feel like the decisions Murphy is making are meant to dick with you, personally. I’m here to tell you that attitude is complete bullshit, and a product of your misapprehension that the fucking universe revolves around you, gives a fucking shit about you, about any one of us. Thinking it’s personal in any way is wrong. So fucking wrong.
“I had the opportunity to watch Murphy work up there. Every single decision he makes is intended to increase our collective chances of survival. Not his personal power or individual odds of survival, mind you. He could have easily secured a position of relative security for himself with the SpinDogs by using up the Lost Soldiers like so many bullets in his sidearm. He hasn’t—he won’t—do that because he’s trying to ensure our survival. Not his, not mine, not any single one of us, but our collective survival. And in deciding to do that, he’s been repeatedly forced to bet on our skills and our will to win to even the odds in a brutal, zero-sum game that we either persevere in or perish from.”
A thoughtful silence fell as the big man stopped speaking.
Vat looked at his hands, face twisted as if he were in pain.
Chalmers had never been one to feel much shame, but he felt his cheeks burning under Moose’s accurate assessment of his shitty attitude. What made it even more painful was that Chalmers was sure that if he were to add together the word count of every conversation Moose had taken part in since the big guy had joined them, the sum wouldn’t equal half the words he’d just spoken. More than that, he’d never heard Moose express an opinion, positive or negative, on anyone in their little ersatz unit. He’d consistently presented a uniformly solid workman’s attitude to getting the job before him done and a sly sense of humor that was fun, if not as edged as Chalmers’s and Jackson’s could be.
For the first time in a long time he thought about his vow to do better, to be better, and how he might have fallen short of that in front of his peers, especially recently.
“Still waters run deep,” Jackson breathed, breaking the silence.
“That they do,” Vat said, looking at Moose first and then Chalmers.
“Look, man, I shouldn’t have been trying to push your buttons,” Chalmers said, recognizing the moment.
“And I shouldn’t have called you a redneck,” Vat said.
Chalmers shrugged. “Shoe fits and all…”
“Damn, brother, you know how to cut through the bullshit.” Jackson reached out and offered his hand to Moose, who clasped it, then drew the smaller man in for a rib-thumping pat on the back.
“Now we got all the bitching, moaning, hugging, and groaning out of the way, can we get on with the business at hand?” Moose asked, gesturing past Jackson at the map-and-report-littered boards.