A Fiery Sunset Read online

  “You tryin’ to tell me a 20-year-old kid is the commander of a Four Horsemen outfit?”

  “Well, actually, yes,” he said and smiled big.

  “You?” The man looked at Jim, a young man carrying about an extra 100 pounds around his waist and without the common hard-as-nails muscle tone you saw on the Tri-V all the time. The media was full of mercs, often larger-than-life heroes, and equally large villains. Despite the fact that mercs accounted for 90% of the Earth’s economy, and paid a massive price in blood to do it, many hated and resented them. Jim returned his scorn with an indifferent stare. “I think you need—”

  “No,” Jim said in his command voice, and everyone in the room jumped a little, “I think you need to give me back my possessions and let me go, right now.” They didn’t respond, several looking at each other. “Now, or call the MLO in Sao Paulo.”

  “The Mercenary Liaison Office?” the leader asked, now looking uncertain. Jim nodded. He felt movement at his side and glanced down. The others all looked down to see Splunk stick her head out of the bag and glare at them suspiciously. “I don’t know if that’s necessary.”

  “Then we’re done here?”

  “It’s illegal to carry a firearm in the United States District,” one of the others said.

  “Not for a command officer of a registered mercenary guild,” Jim said.

  “A twenty-year-old merc command officer, Jimmy?” the one who’d spoken up about carrying a gun being illegal asked.

  “Any age command officer,” he replied. “And it’s Commander Cartwright to you.”

  “Give him his stuff,” the leader said.

  “But sir…”

  “Just do it.”

  Jim didn’t wait, he reached across and took the bag. Then, with them watching, he took out the GP-90 and checked to see if it was loaded. It wasn’t. Several of them looked decidedly nervous as he took his weapon, loaded it, put on the belt, holstered the gun, and flipped his jacket over it. He’d done it all with the calm assurance of someone who handled a firearm all the time.

  “Have a nice day,” he said as he took the now lighter bag and headed for the door. “Fuckers.”

  “Idiots…” Jim chuckled as he walked down the hall, past the surprised security staff, and out into the airport concourse.

  “I couldn’t agree with you more, Splunk.”

  The aerocab he took from the airport was an older model with a driver. The man tried to chat Jim up, but it didn’t work. Now that he was finally in Bangor, he’d become more depressed. He hadn’t spent a lot of time here in his childhood, a few summers when he was very young, and then one as a preteen. It seemed to be a place full of old money and beautiful people. He was neither.

  The cab circled and descended onto a manicured driveway with ancient elm trees down the center. A few leaves still clung stubbornly to their branches, despite the chill in the air.

  “You sure you just want to get out here?” the driver asked.

  “Yes,” Jim said and paid him twice the meter.

  “Hey, thanks!”

  Jim took his bags and climbed out. Splunk, now awake and rested, immediately climbed out and onto his shoulder. She’d put on the little jacket he’d made for her with a printer at headquarters. Sliding the goggles over her eyes, she sniffed the chill Maine air curiously.

  “Where is this…”

  “Maine,” he said as he walked over to the ornate iron gate and slipped through. “It’s a long way from Texas.” She bobbed her head, and her ears flattened against her back, a sure sign she was uncertain about the situation. He knew she could feel what he felt, but he didn’t know how. Telepathy was a thing out of comic books and bad movies. He loved the 20th Century. So much about it was awesome.

  He walked down the grass-lined lane and around massive old oak trees, guided by a map he’d downloaded into his pinplants after landing at the airport. He eventually came to his destination and walked off onto the grass. After a bit, he came to a section of grass that hadn’t recovered from being disturbed and stared at the freshly-chiseled granite.

  “Here Lies Elizabeth Cartwright-Kennedy. Born April 19, 2072. Died August 10, 2125. Beloved Wife.”

  Splunk looked at the marker, then at Jim, and remained silent. Jim took a step closer and knelt. The last time he’d seen her was Houston, just after getting home from the Chimsa mission. Adayn had been with him, and his mother had tried to talk to him, probably to get money. He’d gotten a restraining order, and he’d never seen her again. A few months later, she was dead. He’d gotten the news weeks after she’d passed. By that time, she’d already been buried, and there’d been no reason to rush home.

  He knew he should feel sadness or something. She’d been his mother, given birth to him, raised him, taken care of him, and ultimately destroyed Cartwright’s Cavaliers. He looked at the adjacent grave.

  “Colonel Thaddeus Grover Cartwright—Commander of Cartwright’s Cavaliers. Born January 1, 2069. Died approximately October 2117.”

  “Hi, Dad,” he said. There was a marker for him in Houston as well, and a plaque in the merc guild tower. He stared at the death date for a long moment and sighed. Splunk chirped once in a way that made him spin and put a hand on his pistol. “Who’s there?”

  “I’m impressed,” a female voice said from behind an ancient oak that gave his parents’ grave shade in the summer. A rather short but attractive woman emerged from behind the tree. She was dressed in street clothes with a heavy winter jacket. She had short black hair and decidedly Asian features. “Commander Cartwright?” she said and reached toward her jacket.

  With the speed of thought, Jim triggered his pinplant interface at the same time the pistol came free from its holster. His eyes had already acquired her as a target, crosshairs locked on her center of mass, the gun aimed from the hip.

  “Easy sir,” she said. “I assure you I am no threat.”

  “I’ll decide that for myself.”

  She smiled a tiny smile. “I see your dossier was not inaccurate.”

  “Dossier? What are you, a reporter?”

  “No,” she said with that little smile again. Her hand was paused exactly where it had been when he’d drawn his weapon. He could kill her with one thought. He’d only killed Humans on two previous occasions. One was back before he’d ever led the company, the other was…more recently. “James Eugene Cartwright II,” she said. “Age 20 years old. Despite poor VOWs scores, you assumed command of the Cavaliers after your mother, through an apparent act of mismanagement, drove the company into insolvency. Again, despite what many might have expected, you’ve led the Cavaliers with distinction, emerging victorious from numerous contracts with minimal losses, and you’re in the process of standing up a third company of troops.”

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “May I?” she asked, cocking her head toward her coat.

  “Slowly,” he emphasized. She reached in and slowly pulled out a Yack.

  “Sergeant Nergui Enkh,” she said. “Intelligence Division, Golden Horde. It’s time we had a talk.”

  Nergui Enkh had an aerocar parked at the cemetery exit. She held the door for Jim as he climbed aboard, then got in and performed an illegal takeoff from the spot. Jim smirked; he liked decisiveness. In just a minute, they were climbing into the cross-country traffic pattern.

  “Where are we heading?” he asked.

  “Back to Houston.”

  “If you wanted to talk, you could have asked there and saved me a flight.” He looked at her, flying the car with her pinplants. Jim knew all the Horde had pinplants as a requirement. It was something that had never appealed to Jim’s father. Of course, he’d been from a previous generation. The pinplant technology had been perfected in the last decade.

  “Sansar said to let you say goodbye,” Nergui explained; “it might be the only chance you get.”

  Now she had his attention. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m getting a little ahe
ad of myself,” she said. “Let me get us parked in the pattern, and then we’ll talk.” Jim nodded, and she closed her eyes, operating the craft and probably communicating with the regional traffic control computer. Splunk was out of her bag and sitting in Jim’s lap, examining the car’s complicated control systems with a particular curiosity.

  “Don’t think about it,” he said, “Watchmaker.” Splunk looked at him with a cocked head, her eyes wide as Jim used the name Adayn gave her.

  “That’s an amazing creature you have there,” Nergui said after a few minutes.

  “Splunk isn’t mine,” Jim said. “We’re friends.”

  “We weren’t able to find it in any of the GalNet data sets.”

  “Me neither,” Jim admitted.

  “Yet it displays—”

  “She,” Jim said gently. “Splunk is female.”

  “She, then,” Nergui said with a nod of her delicate head. “She displays all the hallmarks of either a naturally-sapient species, or an uplifted one.” She started ticking points off on her fingers. “One, she’s fully self-aware and able to act independently on personal plans.” You have no idea, Jim thought. “Two, her physical morphology is ideally suited for all types of tool use. Three, she’s displayed an incredible level of technological savvy, both with modern Union tech, and with ancient types of pre-Union.” Jim gave a combination nod and shrug. “I don’t suppose you’d tell me where you found her?”

  “I wouldn’t,” he said.

  “Fair enough.”

  “You know an awful lot about us,” Jim said. “Do you mind telling me why?”

  “The Horde maintains an intelligence analysis of everything around Earth,” she explained, “and well beyond. Every time we go off-world, we gather information. We even have contracts with freighters and transporters out in the Union to gather data for us.”

  “Why?”

  “Intelligence is power,” she said with a wry smile. “Many of our operations are successful because of our intelligence-gathering operations.”

  “I can understand that,” he said. “But what does it have to do with me?”

  “We also keep up with Human merc units.”

  Jim’s eyes narrowed. “Does that include the other Horsemen?”

  She shook her head. “Usually not, but this time—”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “Please don’t be upset,” she pleaded. “We weren’t surveilling you; we came upon data we had to follow up on, and it crossed into your area of operations.”

  “Should I be thrilled?” he asked. “We’re supposed to be allies. A team working together. Because of our alliance, we’ve survived through the unthinkable.”

  “Sansar said you’d be mad.”

  “That doesn’t quite cover it,” he said.

  She chewed her lip and nodded. “We weren’t going to say anything. Regardless of what you might be thinking, we did this for the Horde’s protection, and yours as well.”

  Jim stared out the forward windscreen and noticed the car’s controls. He was surprised to realize there were no alien components; he wasn’t aware there were any Human-manufactured aerocars.

  “The car?” she asked, seeing his gaze. “We make them ourselves. The Horde doesn’t trust alien-made equipment.”

  “Are you going to get to the point about your spying?”

  “Yes,” she said with a nod. “I can’t tell you all of it until we get back to Houston, but I can tell you some. We have been attacked, and there are several diseases about to strike all the mercs on the planet. It’s an alien assault hidden within nanobots in the anti-laser coating of our CASPers, and it migrates to the CASPer pilots and mechanics, and on to the people they come in contact with.” She explained how their procurement person had unintentionally been scammed into buying the goods at a discount. She looked down and shook her head. “This wasn’t their first attack, and it won’t be the last.”

  “Why is it happening, and what do you mean it’s not the first attack?”

  “Well, our analysis indicates you were the first.”

  Jim shook his head. “Me?”

  “Well, the Cavaliers, then you.” She used her pinplants to activate a Tri-V between them. “We weren’t expecting this sort of an attack, and we weren’t ready for it. Sure, there’ve been things done to the Horsemen in the past. Outright attacks by the MinSha decades ago, a feud with the Oogar, sanctions by the guild based on allegations of improper business practices. Things like that.” She chuckled and shrugged.

  “That’s funny?”

  “No,” she admitted, “but pathetically obvious compared to this. We think your father was assassinated. We don’t know the details, because we normally don’t target the other Horsemen. We also think your mother was seduced into a complicated financial confidence scheme. It was elaborate, almost elegant in its design. The attack didn’t come from where you might expect it; it came from the side. Considering it wiped out the Cavaliers, it was initially successful.”

  “But I rebuilt them,” he said.

  “Yes, because Humans plan and, by and large, we have taken care of each other. Something the aliens seldom do. They often happily chew each other to pieces. Maybe that’s part of why they hate us? Interesting.” She cocked her head, and he guessed she was taking notes with her pinplants. “You must realize now that your mother didn’t die of a stroke.”

  “I was wondering,” he admitted. “I last saw her in Houston almost a year ago. She didn’t look great, but her family is pretty long-lived, especially the women.”

  “Yes, we think she was assassinated by a Depik. Unlike your father’s death, this one we have evidence for.” Toxicology reports from his mother’s autopsy appeared on the Tri-V. “We obtained these copies and ran some tests against the data we have from another Depik attempt against one of our own people. That one failed.”

  “I’ve read about the Depik,” Jim said. “Felinoid race, perfect little fucking killers. I don’t think they’re members of the Union. Why would they kill my mother and your person?”

  “Because someone paid them. We think the hit against our person was to cripple our intelligence operations, which were getting too close to the truth. The move against your mother was to close a loophole. We found several deleted computer chips in her apartment. You can’t undelete Union chips, but you can tell when they were deleted. They were cleaned almost exactly at her time of death.

  “The financial attempt to ruin you failed, so they closed the loose end by killing your mother in case she knew anything. Then they went after Asbaran Solutions.”

  “I read the briefing from my people,” Jim said. “Some crazy contract gutted the company, then the youngest Shirazi went on a vendetta.”

  She nodded again. “Some MinSha kidnapped his sister as a bargaining tool. He went straight at them. He got the kidnappers, but they killed his sister. They just got back to Earth a little while ago. Well, what’s left of them. He managed to get a huge pile of red diamonds from the operation, and he’s buying new equipment and hiring whoever he can.”

  “The virus was aimed at you?” Jim asked.

  “Sort of. We were the primary target. They set up a contract we couldn’t resist, then tried to decapitate us, probably so no one would know where it came from. Sansar Enkh got out of the trap and made it back to Earth with the information and a cure.” She put a Union-made hypodermic injector on the console between them. “This will take care of the virus, which you probably have. The rest of your people almost certainly do.”

  “This is a lot to absorb,” he said.

  “I understand,” she said. He looked at the injector but didn’t touch it.

  “What about the Hussars?”

  “We know the least about them,” she explained. Data appeared on the Tri-V. “Several months ago, a Hussars fleet was caught in a major fleet action. It represented a significant percentage of their mobile strength. It was a no-win situation. Alexis Cromwell doesn’t like no-win situations. Apparently sh
e took her flag ship, Pegasus, into the system where her people were trapped, and mauled a couple dozen ships, including both an Izlian and a Maki battleship. Then she disappeared. No Hussar warships have been seen since.”

  “I saw her in Karma a few months ago when she sold us the Bucephalus back.” He thought for bit, then spoke again. “Is this a move against us, or against Earth?”

  She smiled. “You’re as perceptive as your file suggests. We believe this is a move against Earth.”

  “How many are going to be affected by the virus?”

  “We don’t know. Millions? The real problem is that it likely went off-world with merc companies before we could do anything about it. First their CASPers will stop working, then the nanovirus will attack with several pathogens, killing everyone.”

  “I see,” Jim said, took the injected and stuck it in his arm. “What about Splunk?”

  “It’s only designed to work on Humans.”

  “Bastards.”

  “Indeed,” she agreed. “We’ve sent a shipment of the treatment to every merc unit we could reach, so it should be neutralized shortly.”

  “Is there more?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “But that has to wait until we get to Houston.” The other data was replaced with a map of the United States and their flightpath. “We’ll be there in 2 hours.”

  * * *

  Jim’s mind was a blur of activity as they flew through the upper atmosphere at several times the speed of sound. He admired the design of the car; it was easily better than any of the alien designs. If the Golden Horde could produce a product of this quality, he wondered why they didn’t sell them. Sergeant Enkh spent the time staring blankly out the windscreen. Jim knew that look; he often saw it in the mirror. She was deep in the AetherNet, Earth’s version of the GalNet, working on something.

  As they’d climbed into the car, he’d noticed she possessed more than two pinplants. That suggested another rumor about the Horde was true, that they went in for pinplants in a big way. He’d never met Sansar Enkh, their commander, but he’d heard she had more pinplants than any Human. They were a curious bunch, of that he was sure. Despite being the biggest merc company on Earth (based on employees), they weren’t the largest in fieldable units.