5

Roughrider Base Camp, Galatea

Prefecture VIII, The Republic of the Sphere

26 May 3134; local summer

Grace’s thoughts spun like a rock cutter on stone it barely scarred. Pirates and bandits had sent the Falkirk militia reeling? This merc officer thought a bunch of thugs out for loot had kicked her butt, her and her folks who stood between their homes and a bunch of punks? No! No way!

Her enemy had turned into her trap without hesitation. They’d stormed up the hill after her miners and farmers, ignoring fire as only men trained for a year or more, as only men driven by a tradition that made them unhesitant in their obedience to orders. Grace had faced mercs all right. Damn good ones.

And now she was being presented with the cash price for such men. One glance at the paper and she almost dropped it. Behind her, Jobe whistled low. “Man of my men, mercs don’t come cheap.”

“Not at all cheap,” Chato answered.

Grace had to move her finger slowly over the cost of the task force. Yes, there were that many zeros after the 32.

She focused on the cost of just one lance of BattleMechs like the one she’d fought and looked at today. The monthly rental for—No, she divided the cost by four and still got a figure way larger than her last year’s profits!

“Is this some sort of joke?” she said, rounding on the Major. “There’s no rational excuse for these prices. Or is this just an opening bid, because I’ll tell you, mister, haggling is not something we waste time on back home.”

“Neither do we,” the Major said, so calm, so cool. He’d be like that under fire. “Those are the regimental rates.”

“You’ll fight what, one battle a year?”

“Yes, ma’am. You use your MiningMech every day. And we’ll use our ’Mechs and tanks and infantry every day, sometimes every hour of every day. We train, day in and day out, because we never know when the day will come that we need that training. Do you think men and women advance on my order into fire just because I tell them to? No. They advance because I’ve ordered them to do it day after day. Every day is the same. Only one day, it’s for real. So they do it by the numbers, just as if it were another training day. And that is why we win.”

Left unsaid was, And that is why you lost.

He turned away, paused, then turned back and pointed his finger at her, sharp as any laser. “That is our price. You can come with me to talk to Accounts about posting bonds and other requirements of the Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission. If not, Sergeant Major will provide you a lift to the gate. If you want to think about it, come back any time. Have the guard at the gate call for Major L. J. Hanson, and I’ll collect you. Have a good day,” he said, then turned and marched for the exit.

Grace turned to face her associates, struggling to keep her chin from trembling. Men never show emotions. Damned if I will. She shook her head. Jobe pursed his lips for a moment, then shook his head, too. Chato turned to the Sergeant Major. “Where are you parked?” he asked, as calm as Grace had ever seen him.

“Outside. We should move along. People are waiting to use this table.” The Sergeant Major escorted them out with what Grace was coming to expect as the usual merc efficiency. He deposited them at the gate in less than five minutes with a “Have a nice day” that was just as empty as his Major’s.

“How do we get back to town?” Grace managed to get out as Jobe and Chato unloaded their gear.

“Don’t know, ma’am,” the Sergeant Major said. “Taxis don’t come out this far. Bus comes by once a week, but you missed it.”

“Don’t your people ever leave?”

“We move in convoy on regimental transport when we travel on regimental business. When we grant a unit a pass, Transport sets up a shuttle van service.”

“So we are on our own.”

“We’re still looking for recruits, ma’am,” he said. He had the civility to not drive away until she turned her back on him.

“Heartless bunch of bastards,” Jobe observed dryly.

“At their prices, they are rich, heartless bastards.”

“I would not want to pay their medical bills,” Chato said. “Did you notice the number of teachers in the computer center who were limping or missing an arm?”

“No, I was concentrating on that Hanson. On not letting him infuriate me,” Grace said, picking up a duffel and checking the sun. It was still high. The road back to the main highway wavered in the heat. “We’d better see if we can catch a ride.”

It took them an hour to get back to the main line, and Grace found herself regretting she’d left so much as a drop of water in her lunch goblet. Twice they were passed by Roughrider jeeps leaving the post. The hard-eyed women behind the wheels didn’t afford them a glance as they whizzed by.

At the four-lane road there was plenty of traffic, but none of it slowed down for them. They started hiking toward town, looking for a bit of shade from the broiling sun. Low shrubs were all that had managed to grow out of the hard, cracked dirt.

“Might as well be concrete,” Chato noted, scuffing the toe of his boot against the yellow hardpan beside the road. “When was this place attacked, a hundred years ago?”

“Space-based weapons burned the life out of this soil, down to the bedrock,” Jobe said. “No way to treat a planet.”

“I don’t want Alkalurops looking like this five hundred years from now,” Grace said. The others nodded.

The whine of a truck coming up behind them signaled that its brakes had begun to bleed air. “I do believe someone is stopping,” Grace told her companions as the truck roared by, still slowing. It pulled off the road several hundred meters past them.

The driver leaned out the window. “Hurry up. I got a schedule to meet. You like it out here in this skillet?”

Despite the heat, they ran.

The truck was a big quattro-trailer. The cab was huge behind a rumbling motor that made Pirate’s seem small. “You guys stow your gear in back and get comfortable on my bunk. Little lady, why don’t you take this seat right next to me.”

Grace took an immediate dislike to the big-bellied driver with his wandering eyes, but since the seat “right next to” him was almost two meters away, across the wide cab, it seemed safe. Chato and Jobe weren’t that much farther away, and in the mood she was in, she almost hoped the guy would do something she could mash his skull for. Not a good day, she admitted to herself.

“There’s water in the cooler back there,” the driver said as he concentrated on getting his rig back in motion. “You folks look like you could use a couple of gallons. Must be hot out there.” He laughed and jacked up the air-conditioning enough to make Grace shiver. “I could turn the AC off. Then you wouldn’t need all those clothes, little missy.”

“I’m quite comfortable,” Grace assured him, pulling her thin sweater tighter around her.

“Just that some women, grateful for a ride in this out-of-the-way place, like to show a driver their appreciation.”

“See how grateful I am in Galaport,” Grace said, swallowing her first dozen replies. She didn’t want the man to dump them out here; from the looks of all the options that had passed them, the milk of human kindness didn’t run deep in this desert.

He leered at her as the rig put on more speed, forcing her deeper into her chair. “You might want to put on that seat belt, little lady. Wouldn’t want you hurt if I have to swerve out of some idiot’s way.” He was belted in with five-point restraint.

Grace eyed the harness on her chair. It was the same. She’d seen vids where off-world people kidnapped strangers by locking them in a harness. “I’ll take my chances on your good driving record.”

That brought a hack of a laugh, and he regaled her with a list of near misses that would terrify a battle-hardened merc. So she swapped him tales from the mines. They spent the next hour one-upping each other. When signs of life started dotting the side of the road, the trucker asked where they were staying. “Don’t have a place,” Grace admitted.