The Man Who Never Missed (21 page)

It took ten minutes to find the spetsdods, another three to load twenty of them and ten thousand rounds of ammunition into his pack. Less the two he strapped on, with magazines of Spasm for each. He climbed the boxes he’d stacked to the roof and left through the hole he’d cut. The rain was going to make a mess of whatever was under the hole, but that was one more blow for the Shamba Freedom Forces against the Confed.

He left the synlon ladder hanging from the roof and scuttled away into the rainy night. Maybe he should have picked off a couple of the troopers, but he figured they would have enough trouble as soon as the theft was discovered. Besides, he was still reluctant to start. He had the spetsdods and ammo, that ought to be enough for one night.

It was almost a week before he shot his first troopers, a quad he’d seen at his pub hours earlier. They were all stoned and it was no challenge. He hit them in the back; it wasn’t sporting, but then again, it wasn’t supposed to be. It was war.

And so the months on Greaves passed, with the Shamba Scum laying waste to the Confederation’s finest. They grew in number, the Scum, according to the dispatches Khadaji tapped into. There was more than a little concern in official circles.

Gradually, Khadaji came to accept what he was doing, to a degree. It still bothered him when he thought about it; only, he didn’t think about it much any more. It became his job and he tried to stay dispassionate. But he had nightmares at times, not always triggered by drug use. It had to be done, what he did, but he took no joy in it.

Eventually, as all things do, Khadaji’s plan wound its way toward a climax.

Finally, they knew who he was.

Finally, they came for him.

Chapter Twenty-One

AND SO HERE he was. Sitting on the floor of a drug vault, waiting for the Confed to come and extract its revenge. They wanted him alive, of course, but that wasn’t going to happen. It would spoil all the months of work, make it all worth so much less. Oh, sure, what he’d done would still be remarkable, but it would be less than perfect. And once they had him, they could make him say or do anything, eventually. He had no illusions about that. They could peel his brain like an onion.

Well. So much for quiet meditation. He touched upon his past in the last few moments, had brought forth the good and the bad, some of the people he had known and loved. He was, he supposed, as ready as he would ever be.

There were a couple of things left to do, before the troopers arrived. He looked at a package gathering dust in the corner and smiled. It had been there since the beginning, over six months. Khadaji took a few steps and picked up the package, a plastic box sealed with security strips. It was heavier than he remembered. Or, maybe he was just tired—

“—looking for the owner, Khadaji!”

The transceiver over the window picked up the voice of the trooper clearly. Khadaji smiled. So. At last. They were here. He stepped in front of the densecris window and touched a control, depolarizing the crystal to clarity once again. There were a dozen troopers crowding into the room, all wearing class three armor and waving carbines. One soldier carried a grenade launcher. Khadaji smiled more broadly and felt himself become calm. It was the waiting that was hard, not the doing. He waved at the troopers. “Here I am,” he said. Then he touched the control for the densecris and the window faded to black.

“Open it!” the Lojtnant said, waving his sidearm at Butch.

“I can’t. It can only be opened from the inside.”

Sleel stepped forward. “What’s the scat, Lojt?”

“I want that man.”

“Why?”

The Lojt turned on Sleel. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m the man who is going to flatten you if you don’t come up with some reasons for being here.”

The Lojt laughed. He was pointing a rocket pistol at Sleels belly; more, he was dressed in class three armor, which was proof against any weapon in the room, save the grenade launcher. Even so, he shouldn’t have laughed.

Sleel stepped forward and hooked his right heel behind the Lojt’s ankle, then shoved against the man’s chest, hard. The Lojt went down, flat onto his back. He looked like a giant beetle as he waved his arms and legs, trying to right himself. There was a procedure, but he wasn’t using it.

Sleel smiled, but the smile vanished when a trooper thunked his carbine’s butt into the back of Sleel’s head. He fell. Butch dropped to his knees and cradled the fallen man’s head.

Three troopers helped the Lojtnant to his feet. Behind the faceplate of his armor, the man’s face was livid. “Get that door open!”

Two men waddled toward the door in their armor. One began kicking it while the other slammed his carbine’s stock against the handle.

From the floor, Butch said, “I wouldn’t do that. There are reaper locks installed there.”

The door’s alarm system began squalling, a singsong whoop-whoop. A recorded voice began blasting the two troopers: “WARNING, REAPER SEQUENCE ENACTED. STAND CLEAR. WARNING, REAPER SEQUENCE ENACTED—”

The two troopers looked at the Lojt, who waved the rocket pistol at the door. “Go on!”

The recorded voice warned them a final time. Then the reapers went off. Four finger-thick steel bars shot out of the door, two each near the upper left and lower right sides, angled across the door. The two troopers weren’t hit, but before they could move, the steel rods whipped out from the bars. The top set took the men at shoulder height; the bottom set just below the knees. An unarmored man would have been broken in half; as it was, the troopers were flipped sideways as if they were toys. The reapers re-cocked themselves.

“Damn!”

“I told you,” Butch said.

“Back off!” The Lojt yelled. He pointed his rocket pistol at the door and triggered it. The rocket reached the sound barrier just before it hit the door; there was a double boom. A burn scar flashed the steel, but the door held firm.

“All civilians out!”

When the room was clear of everybody but his men, the Lojt said, “Take out the window.”

A tall woman raised her Parker and let loose a blast. The densecris shook under the impact of the explosive slugs, but didn’t crack. It didn’t even star. There was a line of black scotches, no more.

“Goddamn!” The Lojt was so angry he shook. “Listen up in there, mister! You come out, now, or we’re going to implode the damned room, you copy that?”

There was no answer.

“Outside, everybody but the L-45!”

One of the Sub-Lojts said, “Sir, aren’t we supposed to capture—?”

“I said out!”

The troopers cleared the room, fast. In a minute, only the Lojt and the trooper carrying the L-45 were left standing in the doorway. “Blow it,” the Lojt said. He was grinning like a man on the wrong side of sanity.

“Not from in here,” the soldier said. “It’s liable to suck us in when it goes.”

“Blow it!”

The trooper looked at the Lojt’s face and decided disobeying him was a bigger risk. He raised the L-45 and pointed it at the sheet of densecris. He took a deep breath, held it, then fired.

The grenade hit the window and there came that muffled whuff! of an implosion device. Objects not tied down leaped at the sudden vacuum. The trooper with the L-45 was already scrambling backwards and he cleared the door. The Lojt stood like a rock, leaning against the wind. There was a bright flash of red light, going to blue, and a sonic blast which shattered glass for a kilometer around. Things got very quiet.

In the wreckage of what had been the Jade Flower, the drug vault and all its contents compacted into a sphere three meters around. Much of the space around the atomic particles which made up the seemingly solid material was eliminated. The ball sank through the pub like lead through feathers, until it buried itself deeply in the earth below.

Behind the faceplate of his armor, the Lojtnant was still smiling tightly. He didn’t know it, but the war on Greaves had just ended.

For now.

Chapter Twenty-Two

IT WAS, THE OB thought, a good thing Creg was laid away with Spasm poisoning; otherwise he’d wish he were. As it stood, the Senior Sub, a whipcord woman named Pease, was hearing most of what Creg would have heard.

“—inept management I’ve ever seen!” Over-Befalhavare Venture said. He paused for a breath.

Pease jumped in before the OB could take off again. “Sir, this man Khadaji, the leader of the resistance, was very resourceful. He was a Jumptrooper—”

“—a decade and a half ago,” the OB said. “Where was he between the time he deserted on—” he looked at the HX on the holoproj’s imager, “—Maro and his arrival on this backrocket dinge of a world?”

Pease took a breath, but the question was rhetorical. The OB continued. “Creg never would have caught him if he hadn’t sauntered into this very office and told him who he was.”

“The attacks on our troops have stopped,” Pease tried. “The death of their leader—”

“Sub-Befalhavare Pease, I know you heard the recording this man Khadaji left. Did it occur to you the reason the attacks have stopped might just be because what he said was true? That maybe he was the resistance—alone?”

The woman stood at parade rest, as formal a position as full attention, despite the term. She looked pale, but determined when she spoke. “Impossible, sir. The logistics of the attacks, the sheer numbers preclude that. He was lying.”

The OB nodded, as if to himself. Yes. He had seen the numbers. It didn’t seem likely, even if possible, that one man could have done so much damage. Word of the resistance to Confederation forces on Greaves had spread to other worlds, of course, and was damaging enough when it was thought that hundreds or thousands were responsible. If it were even suspected that a single man could do such… well, that was not a pleasant thought, not at all.

Venture looked at the holoproj again. “So, in the two weeks since Khadaji was imploded, there have been no attacks on our troops whatsoever?”

Pease allowed herself a small smile. “None, sir.”

“And we are certain this pub owner is dead?”

Pease nodded at the computer. “The chemist’s report is in the files, sir. With an implosion device, the only way to be sure a human was included in the condensation is a deep-spec analysis of the material. The breakdown indicates the constituents of a human body were present, within normal parameters, and allowing for error due to compressed mass.”

Over-Befalhavare Venture nodded. That much was good, anyway.

The intercom came to life.

“Yes?”

“Sir, we have a report on the rebel leader.”

“Well, stick it into the computer.”

There was a slight pause, then the Lojt said, “I—ah—don’t think that would be—ah—wise, sir. We in MI think it should be classed A1A—ah—pending your approval, of course. Sir.”

Venture sighed. A1A. Top Secret, Eyes Only for Full-Clearance Personnel. Damn. Now what? “All right. Bring it in.”

The door slid aside and a starch-spined Lojt marched in, carrying a small reader. He handed it to the OB and stood back at attention. Venture stared at the reader. “All right, Lojtnant, what am I about to look at?”

“Sir, this is a report on the inventory taken of the rebel Khadaji’s personal effects.”

Over-Befalhavare Venture stared at the young officer sourly. “Son, I have a lot on my mind. Why don’t you tell me precisely why MI thinks how many pairs of socks and tunics this man had is important enough to make Al A noises over.”

The Lojtnant swallowed and took a deep breath. “Sir, if the Systems Marshal will punch up code A-slash-S-slash-D, I think the answer will present itself.”

Venture glared at the man. “It had better, Lojtnant.” He tapped in the code. The inducer in the desk’s computer picked up the signal from the reader and put the file onscreen. The military jargon was there, but it had been fifty years since it had caused Venture any problems. At eighty, he might be a bit past his prime, but he was still sharp.

FLECHETTES / ANTI-PERSONNEL / SPASM / SPETSDOD

BOXES / 25 TOTAL ROUNDS / 7500

UNBOXED MAGAZINES, COMPLETE / 9 TOTAL ROUNDS / 108 UNBOXED MAGAZINES, PARTIAL / 1 TOTAL ROUNDS / 04

INVENTORY TOTAL / 7612

The OB looked up from the read at the Lojt. “I am impressed. MI knows how to count—obviously the canard about ‘Military’ and ‘Intelligence’ is not an example of oxymora, after all. Is there a point to this, Lojtnant?”

The younger man seemed to sag a little from his stiff posture, without any movement the OB could detect. He said, “Sir, the Spasm darts in Khadaji’s possession, along with fourteen gas-operated fully automatic dorsal hand weapons—spetsdods—were stolen from an arms shipment to this base seven-and-a-half months ago. Twenty spetsdods and ten thousand rounds of ammunition, to be precise.”

“So he was shooting our men with our weapons. Not uncommon during guerrilla warfare, son. The point?”

The man sighed and swallowed again. “Sir, if I might beg the Systems Marshal’s indulgence a moment longer, please add file T-slash-W-slash-S to the screen.”

Venture shook his head. “Why is it I get the impression you’re trying to get me to say the horse is dead, Lojtnant?”

The Lojt was silent, and the OB shook his head again and punched in the second code. Another jumble of military acronymity lit the air, and Venture scrolled to the basic data enshrouded in the tangle.

CONFEDERATION TROOPERS HOSPITALIZED FOR CONTRACTURE POISONING, TOTAL / 2388.

Venture looked up. The Lojt didn’t wait for permission to speak. “As the Systems Marshal is no doubt aware, most of our casualties in the conflict on Greaves have been due to Spasm darts.”

The OB smiled. “The Marshal is also aware that those injuries not due to poison are, at best, suspect. There have been rumors of troopers shooting themselves in the feet, then claiming they were attacked by fifty of the Scum.

“Sir. If the Systems Marshal would examine the screen again—”

“Dammit, boy, I’m tired of playing games! What are you trying to avoid saying?”

The Lojt swallowed again. “Sir, the numbers.”