"Sounds like piracy to me," Lawrence said.
Ntoko laughed at the youth's surprise. "You got it, my man."
Platoon 435NK9 was scheduled to land on Floyd, a large moon orbiting Kinabica. While the rest of the Third Fleet platoons would be trying to keep a lid on Kinabica's resentful and resourceful population, they would be intimidating the three thousand inhabitants of Manhattan City.
Floyd was just large enough to hold on to an atmosphere, a thin argon-methane envelope that occasionally snowed ammonia crystals during midnight on the darkside when the temperature became seriously chilly. There were no seas or even lakes; its surface was covered with a spongy dull rouge vegetation, like a lichen with dendrite fronds. The claggy stuff covered every square centimeter of the moon, from the top of its few sagging mountain ranges to the bottom of crater basins. Not even boulders or cliffs remained free: its grip was pervasive and total. The locals called it Wellsweed, after the avaricious Martian weed in The War of the Worlds.
From the platoon's landing vehicle it looked as if they were gliding over an ocean of thick liquid, with strange crumpled wave patterns suspended in time, casting long, low shadows. They were having to use heavily modified Terran lunar cargo landers to get down to the ground. The vehicles were normally a simple cylindrical pressurized cabin, with rocket engines, tanks, sensor wands, thermal panels and cargo pods clustered around it in an almost random pattern, while three metal spider legs were flung wide underneath to absorb the impact of touchdown. Now the whole clumsy edifice had been encased in a lenticular composite fuselage designed to protect the vulnerable bulky core from the meager atmosphere during descent and deceleration. It was the closest the human race had ever come to building a flying saucer, though it certainly lacked the smooth elegance normally associated with the concept.
The sun had just risen above the low hills behind Manhattan City, beginning its seventy-five-hour traverse of the sky, when they wobbled in over the spaceport. Various strobe lights and guidance instruments ringed the patch of blasted rock that served the city (all currently dark and inactive). Noxious yellow flame belched out of dark holes in the vehicle's fuselage. Legs unfolded with labored jerky motions, allowing them to settle to the ground with alarming creaking sounds and the muted roar of the rocket jets drumming against the badly stained fuselage.
A second, then a third vehicle from the Third Fleet swooped in gracelessly and touched down beside them. Nothing marked them out as interlopers more than the local ground-to-orbit shuttle craft that were parked along the far side of the spaceport, silver-white spire rocketships standing vertically on curving scimitar fins, their pedigree taken direct from the dreams of the 1950s.
The platoon disembarked, edging clumsily down an aluminum ladder welded to one of the landing legs. On the ground, Lawrence's muscle skeleton AS struggled to compensate for the low gravity, restraining every movement. They jostled, bounced and slithered their way toward the main airlock of Manhattan City. Bulky impact armor worn over the muscle skeleton made it look as if they'd sealed themselves in puffball spacesuits to cover the short distance.
The smaller one-person airlocks only just allowed them to pass through.
It was the combination of Floyd's minerals and the odd biochemistry that Wellsweed employed that had justified the construction of Manhattan City. Essentially it was nothing more than a dormitory town for the refineries and processing plants that produced complex organic molecules that were used by Kinabica's medical and chemical industries—high-value, low-mass products, perfect for Z-B to reclaim and transport back to Earth.
Once the platoons were inside Manhattan, the mission proceeded along more standard lines. The commanding officer delivered his polite ultimatum to the city's administrator, who immediately agreed to all the demands. Technical support teams came in and started going through the inventory and refinery specifications.
There were plenty of suitable products that could be shipped back up to the starship orbiting Floyd. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of anything stored at Manhattan; batches were usually delivered straight down to Kinabica. For some inexplicable reason all Manhattan City's industrial facilities had been shut down five hours after the Third Fleet had emerged from compression.
Platoons were dispatched with Z-B technicians to "assist" city personnel in restarting the production lines with minimum delay.
On day two, Lawrence found himself with Colin, Ntoko and a couple of other 435NK9 squaddies, bouncing and tottering over the ubiquitous Wellsweed into a small crater a kilometer to the north of Manhattan City, where a chemical plant had been dug into the protective insulation of the regolith. They were escorting a pair of Z-B technicians and five of the chemical plant maintenance crew who had been assigned to restart the systems.
He scanned his image-intensifiers around, eager to absorb as much as he could. His first Alien Planet. Admittedly it was different from both Earth and Amethi. He was just slightly disappointed that it wasn't more interesting. Wellsweed made it look as if the whole place had been meticulously foam wrapped ready for storage. He kept looking up at the huge, brilliant crescent of Kinabica hanging above the horizon, wishing he'd drawn that assignment. A genuine new world. The i-i's made it glow enticingly.
Apart from the spaceport, the crater was the first area they'd encountered where the Wellsweed was patchy. Dozens of crude tracks and wheel furrows crisscrossed the floor, cutting right through the vegetation. The center of the crater was home to a series of regular humps, each one a couple of hundred meters long. Ribbed cylindrical heat exchange towers stood on top, resembling the brick chimneys of the Industrial Revolution four centuries and seventeen light-years distant. The dirty soil that had been bulldozed on top of each bunker was speckled with dull rouge blooms of new-sprouting Wellsweed, stains that were gradually spreading and merging. In comparison to the torn carpet on the crater floor, none of the new growths seemed particularly healthy.
The airlock was large enough to hold the whole group. After it cycled, the inner hatch opened into a warren of concrete corridors. Long rectangular windows set in the walls provided views across chambers full of tangled machinery and piping. Blank steel doors led away into offices, workshops and vaults lined with deep storage tanks.
It was bewildering to the squaddies, even with their muscle skeleton HUD visors providing them with a full map of the installation. The technicians and maintenance crew were unfazed, making their way directly to the quiet control center. Within minutes, the management AS had begun speaking to them at half a dozen stations simultaneously, while the big status board began to light up with schematics as the plant came back to life.
"You'd better check out the rest of this place," the senior technician told Ntoko—a reasonably polite way of saying "get lost."
"We're with that," the corporal assured him.
"Check it out for what?" Colin asked as they left the control center.
"Revolutionaries and terrorists, I guess," Ntoko said. "Relax, my man, we pulled an easy duty with this one. Walk around the scenery for six hours, and we're back in the barracks with no harm inflicted."
"I thought there'd be more to it than this," Lawrence admitted.
"There never is, son," Ntoko said cheerfully. "The platoons are only ever here for that one anarchist hothead who doesn't give a shit about collateral and the gamma soak. Everyone else knuckles under and gets on with the job. They might not like us, but they don't cause any trouble."
"Do we ever use the gamma soak?"
"Never have. I doubt we ever will."
"Thank Fate for that."
"It's logic, not fate. If we ever got to a situation where it needs using, we've lost anyway. If things are so out of control you need to kill half a million people to frighten the rest into obeying you, there's not really a hell of a lot of point in using it. That kind of madness will never achieve anything except to twist the level of hostility beyond reason, and with it the probability that we'll ever make it home. Use gamma soak against a planet, and they'll throw everything they've got against the starships by way of retaliation and vengeance." His thick, armored hands tapped against his thigh with a sharp clacking noise. "In any case, I could never give that order. Could you?"
"No, sir," Lawrence said firmly.
"Course not. But you'll still have to shoot your scatter pistol when I tell you."
"Ready for that one, Corp."
"Good man. Now, you and Colin make a sweep through the two eastern bunkers. Make sure there's nobody lurking around avoiding collateral status. It's not that unlikely. Some people just don't trust their fellow citizens to behave. Sad but true."
They made their way along badly lit corridors, taking junctions at random. Infrared, motion detectors, i-i's and sound filters couldn't detect anyone else in the bunker.
"This is a total waste of time," Colin grumbled on the local frequency. "It's not like the planet, where people can hide out away from the cities. We know exactly how many people there are in Manhattan; it's listed in the AS memory."
"Quit complaining. Like the corp says, it's an easy duty."
"Yes, but how's it going to look on our records? I wanted to see some action, perhaps get the chance to earn a commendation."
"Will you relax? Keeping the whole of Manhattan City under control without ever having to fire a shot is like the universe's most perfect operation. And we're part of that. Now that's what'll get you a commendation. The company likes things that go smoothly,"
"Possibly."
Overhead pipes began to gurgle and shake as fluids rushed down them. It had been happening all morning as the plant slowly came back to life. The ambient temperature had risen fractionally as the machines all returned to work. Even through the protective layers of armor and muscle, they could feel vibrations building in the walls and floor.
"Newton, Schmidt, get over here," Ntoko ordered. "Bunker three, section four."
"What's up, Corp?" Lawrence asked.
"Just get here." Ntoko's voice was flat.
"On our way."
They couldn't run. Any real strength applied through their legs would smack them straight up into the ceiling. Instead they moved with long, loping strides, arms raised ready to slap themselves down if the arcs became too high.
As they approached the door to bunker three Colin drew his carbine, taking the safety off.
"Are you crazy?" Lawrence hissed. "Those things are loaded with explosive shells. You could blow a hole clean through the wall."
"We're underground, Lawrence. All I'm going to kill is hostiles and rock."
"And chew up a billion dollars' worth of machinery." Lawrence pulled his own scatter pistol out. The magazine was loaded with toxin darts. "You know policy; assets have priority."
"Fine fucking policy that is," Colin grumbled. A further few words were muttered, which the helmet mike had trouble picking up. Lawrence guessed they were German anyway. Colin always reverted to his native language when he felt stressed. He paused and shoved his carbine back into his holster, removing a maser wand.