John Ringo: Honor of the Clan

Wheeler shared only a couple of traits with the bleached-blond twit in the shuttle seat next to him. The first was that both were quite fit. He knew the other man’s work, such as it was, and its motivation. The second was a complete and total lack of conscience. It was the only thing about the over-sexed moron he remotely respected.

“So, what’d we sign up for?” the other man asked him.

“A trip to the vet. My god, I hope you’re not on my team,” Wheeler said, pulling his hat down over his eyes and leaning back to catch some sleep. As always, the hat caught and rested closer to his head than his ridiculous ears. Wheeler was used to it. He even liked his ears now. They were an excuse to beat the crap out of, if not actually kill, guys who made fun of them. He’d slipped up and nearly killed one, once. At the time, he thought the slip up was in not killing the little fuck. Then he found out that, had he succeeded, the bastard’s entire debt would have been added to his account. As it was, the prick’s medical bills were his own problem. Just like the antiseptic for his own knuckles got charged to him.

He grinned slightly as he drifted off to sleep. Never miss a chance to sleep. God, he hoped he wouldn’t be working with that vapid twit.

An hour later, Wheeler groaned mentally as they stood on top of the building that contained their assigned targets. Of course, pretty boy wasn’t just on his team. It was worse. What team? Just him and mister never-met-a-pussy-he-wouldn’t-fuck. He’d better explain the facts of life to this loser before he had to half kill him.

“You wanted to know what you signed on for? In exchange for killing some Indowy wimps, we get our entire debt paid off, plus a bonus. Almost half the cost of a ticket back to Earth. This is a sweet deal, and if you fuck it up for me, I swear to God I will keep that pretty face of yours uglified for years. Get me?” David, of course, wouldn’t be going back before he could afford that plastic surgery and a nice retirement on Earth. He was tired of the stink of sliced and diced Posleen.

“Holy shit.” Karnstadt was too busy seeing dollar signs to give a fuck about the threats. “No fear, dude. You just point me at who I gotta kill for that, and we’ll get along fine.”

One plus. The twit usually did take point on recon patrols, emplacing a lot of sensors, and did, Wheeler admitted grudgingly, kill his share of feral Posleen normals in the process. As much as he was out front, if Karnstadt wasn’t pretty good he’d have been thresh for some ravenous carnosauroid moron by now. Okay. Whatever.

“Right. The first task is finding each of these little buggers, and there is a priority to pulling them in. The most important ones — don’t ask me why they’re important, I dunno — have been called to a meeting like where their debts usually get called in. It’s like it would be with us, only the Indowy just let the poor bastards starve to death. We’ve got this little gadget — kinda a Galactified buckley.” Wheeler held up a black box about the size and shape of a box of cigarettes. Neither man had ever seen an AID before. “It can find the headset the critters use when they make stuff — the specific one for our target, and tell if it’s in use, and where it is. We just follow this box’s directions. It talks. Right, box?”

“I am not a box, I am not a buckley, I am an AID, and yes, I can talk.” The AID sounded resigned rather than snippy. It had been in the unassigned pool for what, to a machine that made a supercomputer seem like a digital watch, was an eternity. It had never met user support staff from pre-war Earthtech companies. It neither knew nor cared that those staffers had existed. Still, it and they were kindred souls in long-suffering exasperation with the average user.

“Yeah, but aren’t some of these guys going to figure out what’s coming and run? What if they aren’t at work? What good is that thing then, huh? Thing doesn’t even have a screen.” Karnstadt took an instant dislike to the little box, as if sensing its own opinion of him.

“I can tell you where their quarters are. Other Indowy would be most reluctant to hide them,” the AID said.

The two men looked at each other. Wheeler could tell that the twit was thinking the same thing that he was. Both had been born on Earth, and knew if they were caught up in a shrinking net of cops, or a gang, the last place they would go was home. Why would these bastards need anyone to hide them? The building was huge.

“How many of these buggers do we have to kill to get paid?” Karnstadt asked.

“If you kill every individual I find for you, you will have completed your contract.” The voice emanated from the box in a way that made David want to cross himself, despite being a long-lapsed Catholic. It was as if a human being were standing right there next to him. Gave him the creeps.

“Yeah? What if the sucker bugs out between when you find him and when you actually get us there?” Garth Karnstadt had run enough cons himself to have a keen sense of when a con might be coming at him .

The AID sounded reluctant as it agreed, “You are only obligated if I get you within range of your eyes, where you can see the specified individual.”

“Not good enough. All these little greenies look alike to me. You have to have some way of pointing the specific guy out to us and keeping him pointed out when he tries to get lost in the crowd.”

“In all probability, an Indowy will not attempt to flee,” the AID lied smoothly.

“You didn’t promise to point him out. If you don’t keep him positively identified until we’ve got our hands on him, the deal’s off.”

Wheeler restrained himself from breaking into the conversation. Yeah, he wanted the prize, but not enough to take his hand off the game. He wouldn’t have thought of bargaining with the thing to tighten the agreement up. Maybe the other guy wasn’t a complete twit after all.

The AID’s tone was positively frosty as, after a noticeable pause, it agreed. “Acceptable.”

“I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard of these things. If you can make them change terms for you, the changes are tight. Official. Just like a supervisor or fucking el — Darhel putting it down with his own voice.” Karnstadt nodded at the box.

“Thanks. These bastards would dick over their own mothers for a buck,” Wheeler was less circumspect in front of the AID than his partner, but his voice held no particular rancor, just acceptance. And the observation, although the biology was necessarily metaphorical, was simple truth.

“So, you got any advice on the best way to do this?” Karnstadt asked the AID.

“I am not programmed to plan killing,” it said distastefully.

“Wait a minute. You can tell if these guys are on their phones or head-thingamajigs or whatever. How many of them are down in there with their whatzis on?” Wheeler pointed downward into the building.

“Four hundred thirty-seven,” the machine answered.

“Any of those the same as the ones that showed up to that meeting?”

“No.”

“How many are in the meeting, and where’s that?”

A ghost-transparent hologram of the building came into being in front of the two men. Built with antigravity technology, it was the typical Indowy squared-off soda straw. Troops from early in the Posleen war had compared some Indowy cities to an order of french fries, only organized. Notably, the comparison had come from troops who had spent the prior three months on a near-exclusive diet of MREs.

This particular french fry had a red dot in one corner, almost a third of the way down. The dot blinked wickedly as the AID spoke, “Two hundred nineteen targets are in room fifty-seven point twenty-five point twenty-five.”