“The star shouldn’t have killed him,” Psycho said.
“Well, the V shouldn’t have killed him either,” Coolhand said. “Look-a cold knife!” A big, nasty blade, strapped to his waist. “That’s not Systie issue.”
“He’s got to be a Systie!” I said.
“Certainly,” Coolhand replied. “Let’s examine him carefully.”
“No wounds.”
“No comtop.”
“What’s in the bag?” The lightweight nitex pack contained dried rations. A canteen was strapped to the pack.
“That’s civilian ConFree camping gear, gang. And the rats are also ConFree.”
“Wonderful. No other equipment! Except the knife.”
“That’s good camfax.”
“It’s not Systie made.”
“It’s not standard issue, we can say that.”
“He dropped something,” Dragon said. He stood over a cylindrical package wrapped in camfax.
“Careful with that!”
Dragon opened it gingerly. A soft, camfaxed weapons sleeve, covering an image suppressor case.
“Well, that’s something!”
“Any markings?”
“This looks like a standard civilian suppressor case, available in any good ConFree tech store.”
Dragon opened it slowly. It contained a V gun.
“Deadman!”
“A V gun!”
“Blackstar Industries, M-92 Guardian heavy-duty V gun,” Coolhand said, “freely available to any ConFree citizen. A very low-profile weapon. I believe we’ll find the ID strip has been scrambled.”
“The image suppressor is what did them in,” I said. “They needed the V guns, I guess, to deal with the Taka. And they had to hide the image from us.”
“No other equipment. Not even a chron!”
He had been a young man-a soldier, surely. But he was nothing now. His body was empty, as inanimate as a rock, the eyes vacant. The eyes of the dead. The person who lived there had gone. Death, for all his efforts. I wondered what had motivated him to risk his life for the System. I wondered why he had died. I could feel only admiration for him. Surely he recognized it as a perilous mission. He had gone anyway.
“The boots?”
“Ultra-light armorite,” Dragon said. “I don’t see any markings.”
“Looks like civilian hikers.”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
“Nice. You don’t get much more low-profile than this.”
“Coolhand, Snow Leopard.” The tacnet crackled. “How did your guy die?”
“We don’t know, Snow Leopard. There’s no wound.”
“Troubling,” Snow Leopard said. “This is not good.”
“Could be Systie commandos,” Psycho said, “using ConFree equipment.”
“Could be just about anybody else, too!”
“Two of them. Reconning the squadmod.”
“What killed them?”
“How could both of them die?”
“Where did they come from?”
“These are our Systies, guys!”
“Yeah. Yeah. So where’s the rest of them?”
A shiver ran over my skin. “Don’t know. Let’s call in the aircar.
It’s getting cold.”
Chapter 11: The Delegate from the Past
“We all here?” Snow Leopard looked us over critically.
We gathered around the table in the squadmod tac room.
“Beta here,” Coolhand confirmed. Merlin had been pondering a miniscreen full of data; he slipped it into a pocket. Psycho had a disassembled Manlink on the table; he continued to fool with it. Warhound and Ironman gave Snow Leopard their attention. Dragon brooded over a cup of dox at one end of the table. Priestess sat beside me, silent.
“If you’re through, Psycho, we’d like to begin.”
Psycho put down the parts and grinned. “Sorry, Snow Leopard. I try to keep occupied during these staff meetings so I don’t fall asleep.”
“Well, I appreciate that, Psycho, but nevertheless I would like your full attention, if you don’t mind.” Snow Leopard really had a way with words.
“Sure. Sure. You got it.”
“All right,” Snow Leopard began. “We don’t have these meetings as often as we should, but as you know we’ve been rather busy lately. The Second-Cubes-recently briefed all the CAT commanders, and our own Two Four-Lowdrop-briefed me and the other squad leaders. So I’d like to bring everyone up to date on the sit. Feel free to break in with questions. All right, I’m going to summarize this. These meetings go on for hours but generally contain about three to five marks worth of useful information. So I’m going to leave out all the nonsense.”
“We appreciate that, Snow Leopard.” Psycho gave him his best grin.
“And also we’re hoping that Psycho can stay awake throughout the meeting if we keep it short enough. All right, first subject-the mission to Andrion 3. There’s a lot of nonsense making the rounds about what was found and what wasn’t.
“The truth is as follows: The Fourth, that’d be Mobius, did the mission-CAT 44 downside and CAT 43 as backup topside. That’s a lot of people. Nobody called backup-in the best Legion tradition. The mission was bad, and so was the planet. It’s even more hostile down there than it looks. Even without the exos, it’s a struggle just to stay alive, and with the exos it’s quite a challenge. Mobius called it ‘interesting’ and if you know Mobius, you know that’s not the sort of place you want to visit.”
Snow Leopard had our undivided attention.
“Despite this, they had no serious casualties. Two main points. First, the environment was so bad-so noisy-it was not immediately possible to learn much more about the planet than we already know. Command has not yet reached any new conclusions. In other words, anything could be hiding there-even power systems.
“Second, 44 did capture some Dominants. They also picked up live samples of all the other non-indigenous species we have so far identified here on Andrion 2. Testing is still underway, but forget all that speculation about superior intelligence. Initial readout is the Dominants control the other exos through biochem. There doesn’t appear to be anything remarkable about the Dominants, except their ability to manipulate other exo species.”
“So there was no sign of the Systies?” Merlin asked.
“Nothing. But it’s an excellent place to hide. They could very well be there.”
“Then the mission failed?”
“I wouldn’t say so. The Fourth collected a lot of data and it’s undergoing analysis. Conditions did not permit the immediate resolution of the problem. Obviously, they could not physically search the whole planet. They went a lot further than they had to, spent a lot more time downside than planned, and did a lot more than was required. They gathered enough info to keep Command busy for a long, long time. It was above and beyond all the way, and I wouldn’t want anyone in Beta referring to that mission as a failure. Otherwise I’m going to have to volunteer us to do it better.”
“Good point!” My voice almost cracked.
