Authors: Elliott Kay
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Science Fiction, #Adventure, #Military, #Space Marine
Rich Man's War
RICH MAN’S WAR
BY
ELLIOTT KAY
© 2014 Elliott Kay
Cover Illustration © 2014 Lee Moyer
Cover Design
© 2014 Lee Moyer
Leemoyer.com
Kindle Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
As a general rule, I like to know how the real world works before I take things off the rails in a sci-fi or fantasy story. Books
with space navies and laser pistols are never all that realistic, but stories are better when the writer at least has some good benchmarks. In addition to a lot of Internet searches, endless demonstration videos on YouTube, Crossfire specials on the economic meltdown of 2008 and my collection of military and survival manuals, I owe thanks to several people who shared their professional knowledge with me.
Perhaps most importantly, I got a lot of valuable input from MA1 Joe Moon of the US Navy and SPC Brett Lawrence of the US Army MP Corps.
Cat Robinweiler offered a lot of guidance on nursing and emergency medicine, to the point of writing a page of notes for me on one particular matter. In all honesty, the most valuable contributions they made came in the form of things that
didn’t
happen in this book. That sort of thing is often invisible to a reader, but it means a lot to me as an author. I am very grateful to them, as I am to Kelsey for her help with a little bit of Arabic translation.
Once aga
in, Lee Moyer and his assistant Venetia Charles were a joy to work with for the cover art. We sat down in the hotel bar at NorWesCon this year to talk about picture concepts. I rattled off a couple of ideas. Lee sketched for two minutes at the most before I saw one of those ideas on paper, only he’d turned the dial up to eleven. I feel greatly privileged to work with them both.
As usual, I also have a lot of beta readers who gave me more feedback and editing help than I could ask for: Zach, Matt D., Matt S., Jenny, Phil, Tracy, Keith, Brent, Erik,
Clarke and Sean. Naturally, Erica gave it all multiple reads, caught more than a few mistakes, fixed my formatting and reliably makes my life awesome.
Lastly, and of great importance: thank you to everyone who wrote reviews on Amazon,
Smashwords and elsewhere for
Poor Man’s Fight
and my other books, and thank you to everyone who emailed me directly. By definition, a writer should be able to put emotions into words, but I can’t express just how much those reviews and those emails have meant to me, and how much they have contributed to the overall success of my work. Thank you for that, and thank you for picking up this book, too.
One last note: if anyone’s wondering, my copy of Sun Tzu’s
The Art of War
is the translation by Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford University Press, 1963).
To my sister, Jennifer
“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."
--
War Is a Racket
, 1935
Major
General Smedley D. Butler, USMC (ret.)
Two-time
recipient of the Medal of Honor
Prologue: Unfinished Business
“Everyone loves a hero story, okay?” said Maria Pedroso, NorthStar’s Executive VP of Risk Management. “But we shouldn’t let Archangel’s hype take us for a ride. That Malone kid was
rescued
, just like everyone else, by a Union Fleet battleship—not by the Archangel Navy. And if Archangel had not unilaterally ended corporate security fleet coverage, the whole incident wouldn’t have happened. Archangel doesn’t have the ability to fully protect itself and its interests across the Union. They need us. It’s only a question of how long it will be before Archangel realizes that, and how much harm the system does to itself in the meantime.”
--“Archangel Sticks to Her Tiny Guns,” The Solar
Herald, March 2276
“Archangel has not seceded from the Union, nor will it. We have only withdrawn from
some bad business relationships. It appears those businesses would have the Union believe this is no different from secession.
“We remain committed to the Union,” President Aguirre continued, expecting neither applause nor murmurs of agreement from his audience. He knew how many delegates to the Union Assembly were bought and paid for—and how many others simply couldn’t risk the confrontation that Archangel now faced. “We support the common causes of humanity, such as a unified diplomacy toward our alien neighbors and a common defense. We also support the rule of law. We believe in paying for services rendered. We also believe that when those services are not rendered, as has been the case with NorthStar, with Lai
Wa and the CDC, that no payment is merited and further services should not be pursued. The current corporate educational regime has not served our young people well, and thus we have decided to provide for our own educational needs. Our security contracts have gone unfulfilled, as was made plain by incidents reaching back as far as the loss of the
Aphrodite
and the later loss of—“
Peanuts bounced against the flat image of President Aguirre as he spoke. “I’d pay good money not to hear about the fuckin’
Aphrodite
ever again,” grumbled Ranjan at the bar.
“Shut up,” snapped the pirate beside him. “I’m listening to this,” Trevor said.
Ranjan glanced over his shoulder to take a look around the dimly-lit dive. He saw little interest in the news broadcast on the large screen behind the bar. He also saw little in the way of customers other than his shipmates. “Yeah, you and all the other political junkies in here. Just download this shit to your holocom and let’s get the bartender to put on something interesting.”
Baleful blue eyes looked up at Ranjan from behind Trevor’s long blond hair. “I’m not
payin’ six creds to watch the news when it’s on here for free.”
“You don’t have a subscription service?”
Trevor made a face. “Do you? What the hell do you put down in your subscriber info? You still have a bank account?”
Ranjan blinked. He glanced at his other shipmates at the bar, feeling awkward. “No,” he lied. “Look, I’m just saying I’m sick of hearing about
Aphrodite
. We knocked over a fuckin’
planet
, but you don’t hear him—“
“He just did, but you were talking.”
“And shut up about that,” hissed a shipmate opposite Trevor. Shahal leaned in with a scowl. “We’re not on Paradise anymore!”
“Have you seen a single badge the entire time we’ve been on this rock?” Trevor asked, though he did lower his voice. “We didn’t park the
Guillotine
at the spaceport because of the tight security service. We could land here with every gun turret exposed and nobody’d bat an eye. And I’d be happy if you’d both shut up.”
“As anyone might expect, these changes have led to disagreements on all sides,” continued Aguirre in a calm, reasoned tone. “We disagree on payment of primary debts and the terms of debts owed by individual citizens. We disagree on compensation for the state takeover of corporate property within Archangel
territory, such as educational facilities. Careers and lives have been disrupted. We do not dispute that these changes are difficult matters.
“Yet when the corporations involved escalate to economic warfare—when they not only sever the ties of interstellar commerce and communication, but indeed act to disrupt
Archangel’s efforts to provide such services for itself—then matters go beyond simple business relationships. At that point, the governments of the Union must ask, who really governs the Union?”
“He had to know they’d cut Archangel off from their packet ship services,”
Shahal noted.
“That’s not the point,” Trevor said, shaking his head. “Did you listen? It’s not that they cut off service, it’s that they’re putting up barriers to Archangel taking care of itself. It’s one thing not to deliver the mail, but it’s another when you won’t even let a guy pick it up himself.”
“Why do you care so much?” asked Ranjan. “You aren’t from there. None of us are.”
“You don’t think this will wind up affecting us?”
Ranjan frowned. “I don’t see how.” His eyes drifted to the door to the back room. Almost as if he’d given a cue, the door opened and Hannah Black walked out. The three pirates rose to meet their ship’s elected captain. “How’d it go?”
“Well enough that I don’t want to talk about it in here,” Hannah grunted.
Shahal returned her pistol as she passed, walking for the door with her long black coat billowing in her wake. The other crewmembers present, some of them closer to the exit, rose as soon as they saw her. By the time she stepped out into the night, her pistol tucked safely in its underarm holster, the crew had formed a pack around her.
The planet
Edison had been settled early in the second wave of expansion from Earth. Though the world enjoyed rapid growth, later expansion developments and the whims of the markets left its economy crippled, leading to its current status as an urbanized backwater. The spaceport city of Stilwell exemplified that demise, with miles of towers, bridges and highways now showing far more decay and vandalism than its original, ambitious beauty.
At this hour, not too many people roamed the streets. Even the homeless and the criminals had to sleep sometime. One could see scattered pedestrians and vehicles here and there—people did still live and work in
this city, though few prospered—but Hannah and her crew walked unimpeded. “We’ve got a lead on a target,” she said, “but I’m not sure everyone’s going to like it.”
“What’s the trouble?” asked Ranjan.
He could see Hannah’s frown and one blue eye looking at him from under her long black hair. “The info is an astronavigation protocol, not an actual flight plan. We’ll have to park ourselves in one of three locations and hope we’ve picked the right one.”
“One-in-three odds is still better than roaming around aimlessly,”
Shahal shrugged. “These are cargo ships, right? Should be a decent haul and not too much risk for the
Guillotine
.”
“
It’s a matter of location. Like I said, not everyone’s going to like it. And some people on the crew might like it too much.” Hannah paused. “I don’t think our seller was out to make a profit on stolen shipping data. This smells like someone pushing an agenda. He sold pretty cheap given what he had to offer, and now that I know the location I understand why.”
“Where?” asked Ranjan. Hannah didn’t often go for ominous hints.
She held her hand up, nodding and looking forward as they entered a wide pedestrian tunnel under one of the city’s major highways. A tall, young black man and a girl of Asian descent approached from the opposite direction, walking close together. Ranjan thought the girl was hot. Her tight pants and boots hinted at a great figure. The other pirates began their inevitable catcalls and whistles.
It hardly mattered if the girl turned away or walked in silence, or if she responded with a rude word or gesture, or if she politely asked to be left alone. The pirates would do whatever they felt like doing
. That was the nature of pirates. Unfortunately, she made the worst of all possible choices: she smiled nervously and made eye contact as she passed.
Trevor reached for her ass as she came within reach. Other men let out further catcalls. The girl slapped Trevor’s hand down but turned as she kept going in the same direction, walking backward to keep her eyes on the pirates. The tall black youth with her scowled, of course, but he didn’t put up any sort of fight. Like his girlfriend, he just kept moving.
Ranjan quickly forgot the pair. “Hannah, what’s the deal?”
Again, the captain shook her head and nodded forward. Yet another pedestrian approached on the bridge, this one a black woman wrapped up in a large grey overcoat. Ranjan paid her no mind. She’d inevitably step to the side. Anyone with sense would want to be on the outside of such a rough-looking group.
“Fuckin’ random pedestrians, who cares?” Ranjan muttered. He glanced over his shoulder. The young couple was already at the end of the pack of pirates.
“I’m of a mind to be careful right now,” Hannah replied quietly.
“Why?” he asked. “What’s the deal?”
Fuming, Hannah looked to Ranjan and hissed, “Our contact had NorthStar Risk Management written all over him. Those coordinates are in Archangel
space.”
“What?” Ranjan blinked.
“They want us to do their dirty work for them. Now shut up. We’ll talk about it on the ship.”
Ranjan
caught sight of the black woman again in his peripheral vision. She hadn’t made a course correction. She walked between the pair of pirates in front of the group, directly into Ranjan’s path.
He
tried to say something, but the woman’s elbow went right into his throat. Hard.
At the back of the group of pirates, Alicia Wong saw Janeka’s first blow all but lift her target off the ground. The big overcoat fell from the gunnery sergeant’s shoulders as she turned on her next opponent with a roundhouse kick, but Alicia had no time to watch. She and Ravenell had jobs to do—quickly and quietly.
A knife take-down from behind was easier for Ravenell, given his height. The last two pirates in the group never saw him coming, having discounted him as a
wuss for not defending his girl and now distracted by Janeka. Ravenell’s big hand wrapped around his target’s mouth from the left while his knife plunged into the side of the man’s neck from the right, then punched straight out in a rough, ugly and well-practiced motion.
Alicia didn’t have Ravenell’s stature to work with, but size rarely held her back. Given an unaware target, she had no reason not to commit her full power to her first move. Alicia drew the
thermal dagger from her jacket sleeve, raised it to the base of her target’s skull and then yanked back on the man’s hair to pull him onto the blade. Precision and six inches of strong, laser-hot metal made for an effective job. Alicia tugged to the right and then left to jerk her sizzling weapon free. She had her sights on the blond bastard just a couple meters ahead before her first target hit the ground.
The blond pirate’s first reaction when violence erupted in front of him was to go for his gun without looking behind. As with her first victim, Alicia tugged back fiercely on the man’s conveniently long hair. Taken by surprise, he staggered backward as she planned. Alicia brought her blade around his chest and slashed upward, slicing his neck open in a vicious arc.
She didn’t try for grace. These people were all mass-murderers. Alicia had to break each man and move on to the next as quickly as possible, before anyone could fire off a gun or make other attention-grabbing noise. The next pirate in line recognized the threat in time to meet her approach, but not quickly enough to do much about it. The young woman didn’t try to dodge his meaty fist. Alicia endured his awkward but heavy punch so she could step in close enough to stomp on his foot and throw him off balance. The pirate took a blade up under his ribcage and into his lung.
Bracing with both feet and twisting hard, Alicia flung her third victim to the ground. He had just enough fight left in him to break her grip on the dagger as he fell. With her targets down, her eyes quickly swept the field.
Ravenell’s second target had reacted quickly enough to put up a fight, but Ravenell seemed to have the upper hand. The pirate leader, Hannah Black according to the briefing, staggered back after a kick from Janeka while the gunny turned to deal with the last of the men standing nearest to her. Hannah reached inside her long coat, clearly going for a gun in a shoulder holster.
Alicia grabbed at Hannah’s wrist and pulled. She slammed her free hand against the pistol. The push-and-pull motion
took Hannah’s arm one way and sent the gun in another, breaking her grip on the weapon at her thumb.
Hannah got one solid shot in across Alicia’s
cheek with her left hand. The pirate captain knew how to throw a punch, but Alicia had endured much worse. Tangled together in a standing grapple, both women struggled to apply the right footwork to throw the other off-balance.
The contest was never in doubt, though Hannah couldn’t have known it. They had a moment to lock eyes as they struggled. Alicia saw rage and a rising sense of panic. Hannah saw controlled ferocity. Then Hannah’s whole world spun as Alicia got her leg around the back of Hannah’s and shoved the pirate into the wall beside them. The back of Hannah’s head hit hard against unyielding concrete. She blacked
out even before Alicia’s knee came up into her groin.