The Tejano Conflict Page 3

  Sometimes a man put his hand out, and said, “I’m your friend,” and it was so. Sometimes the shake was to grip your own hand tightly so he could keep it occupied while he pulled a hidden knife and stabbed you.

  It behooved you to know which was the more likely possibility, and part of his job was to try to determine that. In this case, it wasn’t really CFI’s responsibility, they were just hired eyes and guns, but after Ananda, there had come a decision: never again.

  Not always easy, sussing out the reality from the fantasy. They had been caught flatfooted on Ananda, had never seen what was really going on until they were almost done. In that case, it hadn’t hurt them much, save maybe for pride, but it reminded Gramps that the next time might not be benign.

  That didn’t mean you walked around in a constant state of high-alert paranoia, but it did mean that if you were caught sleeping when you should be awake, it was your fault.

  So the rule was, “Trust after you verify,” and even then, keep an eye peeled. Trust could be so ephemeral . . .

  Corporations these days tended to be like mazes, especially the multiplanetary ones. Given the complexities of law from world to world, it was often easier to pay for forgiveness than to ask permission. What they did for fun on Glade would be cause for imprisonment and serious rehab on a dozen planets in three systems. What was legal on Earth might get you executed on Morandan. So it went.

  Corporations fielded platoons of lawyers and spindocs and PR folk and they became star-chamber cultures, keeping their business secret and handing out their own punishments for crimes against the company. The largest corporations spanned systems, and their operant phrase could be boiled down to one concept when it came to keeping in step with local laws: What they don’t know won’t hurt us . . .

  Tejas Enterprises and UMex were not happy exceptions. There was the surface scan, which showed shiny fronts and polite smiles, and a centimeter under that, a tungsten-steel wall upon which the curious would smack their heads and be stopped cold.

  Say there, friend, what does this little phrase you have on your financial report mean?

  NOYFB, pal.

  None of my fucking business? But, really, if you have fleas and I’m about to get into bed with you? That, uh, kinda makes it my concern, you know?

  Unless the curious happened to be adept at finding ways to get past it and into the belly of the beast, finding out who had what could be difficult.

  Gramps didn’t have the chops, nobody at CFI did. Formentara was brilliant enough so zhe could have figured it out, but it was a waste of hir skill since there were others who had the talent and who could be rented. Over the last few years, CFI had developed a go-to group of simadams and their freaky-clever AIs, and they were have-guns-will-travel paladins. A call, a deposit into an account, and the lookers would probe whoever or whatever Gramps sicced ’em on, and eventually get information that would benefit CFI to know.

  The problem was not that they couldn’t find it, it was that sometimes it seemed so obvious to Gramps and Rags and Jo what was going on that they didn’t check.

  Well. They had learned that lesson. Look-before-leaping had become CFI’s mode of late, and while that was expensive, it was hard to put a price on keeping your ass alive and in one unbloody piece . . .

  The com was clean, the transmission encoded out the wazoo, and the person who might or might not be a woman, and who ran one of the sharpest and fastest C-AIs in the galaxy smiled across however much time and space there was between them.

  “Ah, my friend. How nice to see you again.”

  What she was seeing—if indeed she was actually a fem at all—was also a computer construct of him that looked like somebody half his age and of a different genetic makeup. Certainly, she could rascal that and get his true image if “she” wanted, given her expertise. And while the encryption on the pipe they were using was as good as anybody could afford, they avoided names, just in case.

  “My own sentiment,” he said. “I have bought some new artwork,” he said, continuing the verbal fugue they used. “I was wondering if you might take a look at it and evaluate it?”

  Even if somebody broke into the pipe and managed to unravel the encryption, what they heard wouldn’t do them much good.

  “I would be happy to. Drop a copy into my mail chute, and I’ll have a look.”

  “You are too kind.”

  “Not at all. Well, I must run, things to do, people to see. So good to talk to you again.”

  “The pleasure was all mine,” he said.

  The names of the corporations would be sent steganographically, buried in a complex image of computer-generated art, and even if somebody knew it was there, good luck on finding and decoding that. The key was iffy even for a high-function AI running quantum—the person to whom he had just spoken had told him that and certainly should know. And even if a spy somehow managed to suss that out? So what? It wasn’t illegal to send a corporate name hidden in a picture anyhow.

  Gramps felt better after the call. With the tame Connections AI on the case, it would only be a matter of time before they had what was there to be had. Might even have it done before the war proper started though sometimes the fine sifting took a while.

  Well. It was in play, and it would take however long it took.

  – – – – – –

  Jo and Kay didn’t wear the shiftsuits that would have made them mostly invisible and impervious to a lot of small-arms fire. The suits were good, but they slowed you down, and both preferred freedom of movement when they had the choice.

  Despite the state-of-the-art climate control they ran, the suits were too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, too. Field equipment was never perfect, no matter how much it cost. The top-of-the-line com would work just fine until it didn’t; the big-scale purifier that would turn raw sewage into potable water might leave a little turd flavoring in your tea. The loudest sound on a battlefield was click! when you were expecting bang! It was a never-ending wonder: What was going to go wrong next?

  Rags had made a pro forma protest over Jo’s decision to skip the shiftsuits, but he knew it as well and Jo and Kay did: The perfect scout was one nobody ever knew had been there. They couldn’t shoot what they didn’t know about, and Jo and Kay were faster and better than most anybody they were likely to find in the woods. In and out quick was their plan.

  The area they needed to scout was a large patch of the genetically modified trees that shielded the ground from pradar and IR sats, bordering the contested wells on the eastern and northern sides, near some place called Choke Canyon, some 130 klicks south of the biggest city in the region, San Antonio. The forest was only about ninety years old, a ragged kidney-bean shape that was eight kilometers long by four wide, narrowing slightly in the middle. There were rivers there, and a reservoir farther south.

  They took a flitter to the northern edge, parked it, programmed their coms to the shielded opchan, and headed in.

  There was a two-man Monitor team near the road. Jo sent their ID on a short-range pulse, and the Monitors—unarmed but connected to Central—checked the sigs against their list, then waved them through.

  Jo said, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen any of the opposition come by here recently?”

  The Monitors smiled. They were neutrals, and they didn’t give anybody anything.

  Given her choice, Jo would have waited until night. Both she and Kay could see in the dark, and even if the rangers from the other side had spookeyes, that made their chances of being spotted less. But speed was of the essence in more than one way. They had to assume the opposition’s rangers were already on the ground and scouting, and letting them get too far ahead was not good strategy.

  They wore POV cams that would let them record what they saw, and that would be integrated into the maps Gramps was compiling.

  “Weapons check,” Jo said. She unslung her
carbine, looked at the diode and counter. Green and six-zero.”

  “Green and full,” Kay said. She restrapped the weapon over her back, snugged it tight.

  “Cam diagnostics,” Jo said.

  Kay nodded. “Green.”

  “Com check. Anybody home?”

  “Online,” Kay said.

  “Nobody here but us chickens,” Gramps said, from back at the base.

  Kay looked at Jo. “Chickens? A kind of bird?”

  “Old joke.”

  Gunny piped in: “All his jokes are old.”

  “Speak to a passing parade, Egg. Funny if you haven’t heard it.”

  “We are moving into the target area.”

  “I’d get some popcorn, but there won’t be much of a show, given those trees,” Gramps said. “Break a leg.”

  Jo and Kay separated and moved into the woods.

  – – – – – –

  The first hour was mostly quiet. There were animals and birds, deer, turkey, squirrels, but no sign of people as they scouted, mapping trails and landmarks. Not really much of a surprise—noncombatants had been warned away, there were signs posted on the trees, and transponder sigs marked the area as off-limits—so Jo didn’t expect they’d run into a family of campers or nature lovers taking a hike. That was a good way to get shot, and that’s what the sigs and signs said: Go away or risk dying.

  Mostly, their coms worked inside the forest though there were patches where they cut out. Beaming a sig through the canopy? Didn’t happen.

  Another thirty minutes, and Kay, half a klick to Jo’s west, said, “I have human scent, male. To my north-northwest. Not close enough to see.”

  Jo marked the general location of the source. Her own olfactories were enhanced as much as they could be but still weren’t as good as that of a Vastalimi; plus, she wasn’t downwind from the source’s position.

  “Affirm that. Marked. Might be a Monitor.”

  Nobody knew where the Monitors would be, or how many there were, and you had to be careful when they were on-site. Killing a Monitor was good for a monstrous fine, maybe even a forfeit, depending on circumstances. As was disguising yourself as a Monitor. You didn’t fuck with them when they were deployed. Not all wars used them, but the big ones usually did, and probably even the small ones here on Earth would. Part of doing business.

  Kay would try to spot the source of the scent without being seen, to ID and narrow down the location, but that was less important than avoiding contact. They hadn’t come to shoot, only to look.

  After a few more minutes, Kay subvocalized into her com: “Here he is. Appears to be a human in a yowiesuit, crouched, not moving.”

  “Not a Monitor. Sounds more like a sniper than a ranger. Unless he spots you and starts shooting, best leave him be.”

  “Affirm that,” Kay said.

  They were almost two klicks into the forest from the edge, and there were opposition rangers, so they’d have to move carefully if they were going to finish the recon.

  They’d have to come back later for the section where the enemy had a squatter, chances were the scout wouldn’t stay there, and they could log that area once it was clear. If he wasn’t gone when they were ready to withdraw, they’d come back another day.

  An initial crisscross recon didn’t have to be perfect, but the more you knew, the better. Might be something important where the enemy scout was, and it would be shortsighted to assume otherwise.

  After six hours, they were done for the day. Studies had shown that rangering skill on the ground increased for the first few hours, peaked at five or six, then began to decline. There was no sense in pushing it; they had covered a lot of territory, had recordings of it, and knew considerably more than they had before.

  Formentara would add what they’d collected to the maps. Zhe would also talk to the locals Gramps had found who knew the area. Paying them was cheap, and often, locals would know things even a thorough CCR would miss.

  They nodded at the Monitors outside the forest as they headed back toward their vehicle.

  “Nice work,” Gramps’s voice came over the com implant. “Got some information: Looks like our opposition is Dycon Limited.”

  Jo said, “Ah.” They were reputed to be one of the better SoF companies around, though CFI hadn’t been on the other side of the battlefield from them.

  “In fact, we got a call from them not an hour ago. They want to meet with us, have a chat.”

  “Really.”

  “Yep. Rags thinks you and Kay should go.”

  “And why is that?”

  “You two are our best observers, you’ll pick up stuff the rest of us will miss. And Gunny, if you are eavesdropping, don’t even bother with the blind-deaf jokes at my expense.”

  “Ah’m sure Ah have no idea what you are talkin’ about. Which would make two of us.”

  “And why CFI in particular?”

  “I dunno, ask him when you get there.”

  Jo said, “We are going off-line. See you in an hour or so. Discom.”

  After they shut down their opchans, Kay said, “Can Gramps and Gunny truly not see how they feel about each other?”

  “If they do, they don’t want to admit it.”

  “How interesting,” Kay said. “The human capacity for denial sometimes seems to be quite large.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  FOUR

  The caller was in San Antonio, and after Jo and Kay got cleaned up, they arranged to meet him that evening. Gunny and Singh were backup, in a following vehicle, just in case the opposition was trying to be cute.

  The trip was uneventful, if slow. The traffic-control autodrive notwithstanding, there was only so much the TCA computers could do once the carts and lorries and assorted scooters climbed past a critical density on the road. Plus, there were always drivers who got around the rush-hour controls and elected to do it manually. Despite strict licensing requirements that demanded public-vehicle operators be skilled and knowledgeable, there were always idiots who somehow slipped though . . .

  Jo herself preferred manual, she didn’t like to give up the control, but of course, she was an expert operator, and her augmented reflexes gave her an advantage. In a situation where the traffic was bumper-to-bumper, there was no point in doing it yourself—less stressful to let the TCA pilot.

  She tooled the wheeled cart into the hotel’s underground parking. The air had that city smell, hot concrete, dust and mold, leaked cart lube.

  Welcome back to civilization . . .

  – – – – – –

  Gunny parked the cart, and she and Singh alighted, to follow Jo and Kay into the hotel.

  The place was designed to look as if it had been built in the . . . seventeenth—eighteenth?—century. There was a baroque look to it; there were faux oil paintings of men cradling shotguns and servants holding up small, dead animals; more images of women in long dresses and bearing baskets, surrounded by children who seemed miniature adults. Some of the paintings were life-sized, all had ornate, gold frames, and though well lighted, had a dark tone to them. The hotel’s walls were patterned in muted colors, flowers here, geometric designs there. The floors were beset with Oriental carpets. There were overstuffed couches and chairs perched on carved wooden legs, made of leather or what appeared to be crushed velvet in deep shades of red or green.

  The staff wore period costumes: odd-looking trousers that ended just below the knees and long stockings, squared-toed shoes and brass buckles, with frock coats and frilly shirts for the men; long dresses with some kind of hoops under them for the women. All of the clothes were in bright colors, reds, greens, blues, with buttons made to look like shiny brass or bone.

  Must have spent a small fortune on this ornate crap.

  She thought it looked silly, and said as much to Singh.

  “But v
ery posh,” Singh said.

  “What exactly does that word mean?”

  “It is a term used on my homeworld, originally from Terra. As I understand it, in the days when oceangoing ships were powered by wind, predating electric engines and air cooling, the voyages on such vessels from the colonizer country of Breetan were long and slow, and the trips were often in tropical waters.”

  “Okay, so?”

  “The heat was greatest on the side of the ship that mostly faced the sun. Traveling to India, that would be the starboard side, and returning from there, the port side.”

  “Ah’m still with you, but you been talking too much to Gramps, you are starting to sound like him.”

  Singh laughed. “Sorry, sah. For reasons of comfort, passengers apparently preferred to travel on the shadier side of the ships, so if given the choice, they elected for port-out-starboard-home, which gives the acronym p-o-s-h. It has come to mean luxurious, upper-class.”

  “Is that true?”

  “Who can say? It might be, and it makes a good story.”

  “You really need to stay away from Gramps, the man is going to infect you with his babble.”

  They followed Jo and Kay to the elevator, paying attention to the patrons of the hotel, several of whom were obviously startled by Kay’s appearance.

  Gunny had tuned that out long ago, and you tended to forget something you became acclimated to after a while. There were still people who had never seen an offworld alien up close though you’d think in a big city, that would be unlikely.

  Of course, Vastalimi were rare away from Vast, and they had a reputation for danger that was, if anything, understated.

  “Nobody steps into Kay’s path,” Singh observed.

  “Ah see that.”

  “I confess when I first met her, I was myself somewhat nervous. She appears formidable just standing there.”

  “She does that. Because she is.”

  “Do we follow them up?”

  “We catch the next elevator, find a spot where we can watch the room they go into.”