29

Paisen waited, watching as the spacecraft passed overhead, the turbulence from each wave of ships tossing the tree tops above. They were a motley collection of vessels, from dedicated military transports to converted cargo ships and small spaceliners. But each held several hundred soldiers, and she had no idea what their sensor capabilities were. So she waited.

After a minute, the last ship thundered past, and disappeared from sight among the trees to her right. She checked the map in her heads-up display, listened for any sounds of movement over her enhanced implants, and then stood carefully.

“Vence!” she hissed.

The contractor appeared silently to her left, and Paisen started with surprise – the younger woman had been much closer than she had realized.

“Let’s go,” Paisen growled. Better get used to this fucking kid showing me up all day long.

They crossed another kilometer in silence, moving ghost-like through the trees in their shaggy ghillie suits. Paisen checked herself for a weapon, touching her hip subconsciously where she would have worn a pistol, and finding only her water canteen. She shook her head ruefully. Nothing like hanging out right next to a few thousand unfriendly troops with nothing but a bottle of water. But at least we still have our Forges.

Paisen heard a birdcall up ahead, and a piece of mossy ground lifted up, resolving itself into Tepper’s arm, which waved once at her. She changed course slightly, and hurried over, joining him on the ground behind a rotting log.

“Okay,” she whispered. “You got me to come out of my nice, cozy apartment. Now what was so important I had to see it for myself?”

“That is,” he said, pointing past the log.

Paisen shielded her eyes from the sun and followed his finger, increasing the magnification on her cybernetic eyes.

Nearly a mile away, across a wide patch of open ground, an immense prison encampment sprawled across the grassland. A deep moat ringed the camp, and Paisen saw pairs of soldiers patrolling the outside of the moat. Hastily-built guard towers stood at intervals along the moat, with armored tops sporting automated machine gun emplacements. And inside the camp, Paisen saw a shambling mass of people in tattered rags.

Paisen sucked in her breath. “A prison camp?”

“Death camp,” Tepper corrected. “We’re still trying to piece it together, but I think they’re all insurgents from the civil war, and their families. The ones that lost the war.”

Paisen counted barracks buildings silently, and accessed her internal computer’s calculator function.

“Fifty, sixty thousand people, maybe?”

“More or less,” Tepper agreed. He nodded toward the moat, where a group of prisoners were slowly shoveling dirt into the wide trench. “See that work party? They’re on graves detail. Every day they bring out the dead, drop them in a section of the moat, fill it in, and then dig a new ditch behind it. They’re slowly moving the moat inwards, shrinking the camp as more people die off. Look, you can see the rows where the old moats used to be, where the grass is still sparse.”

“The whole camp’s surrounded by a mass grave,” Paisen said, scowling.

“Mm-hm. Yesterday they buried almost a hundred people. Men, women … children.”

Paisen turned, leaning on her elbow to look at him. “Did you get a recording?”

Tepper nodded, and tapped his forehead. “Yeah, I got it in here. We did some bad stuff for the Guild, you know? Like, I’m not real proud of those eleven kills. But this …?” He shook his head, at a loss for words.

“Yeah,” Paisen said. “Send me those recordings, and all your notes.”

“What are you going to do?” Tepper asked.

“I’m going to tell the Senate Intelligence Committee what we found here.”

“Why don’t you just send them a message?” he asked.

“Too important,” Paisen said. “I need to be there in person.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to brief them in person? At Anchorpoint?”

“It’s the only way to make sure they understand the severity of the threat.”

“Last time I checked, you and Rath were still at the top of the Interstellar Police ‘Most Wanted’ list,” Tepper pointed out.

“I’ll be careful,” she assured him. “And Rath’s not on the list anymore – they caught him.”

“What?” Tepper asked, eyes wide.

Paisen nodded. “We’ve been out of the loop out here, but it’s been all over the news – he got picked up on Scapa about a month ago. They’ve got him on trial for murder.”

“Well, shit – are we going to go help him out? I can’t speak for the rest of the team but I’m pretty sure they’d be up for it. We all owe him as much as we owe you.”

“I think he’s going to need our help,” Paisen agreed. “But first, I’ve got to report this in.”

“You want me to come to Anchorpoint?”

“No,” Paisen said, shaking her head. “I’ll take Vence with me. I need you here: you’ve got command of the team while I’m gone.”

“What are my orders?”

“All of the military activity is in this sector, so round up everyone else and bring them here. Establish two-man observation posts overlooking their spacecraft staging areas – the ones north of here you sent me the coordinates to. I don’t care about training missions, but if it looks like they’re loading up for a real operation, fueling for deep space, let me know ASAP.”

“Okay,” he said. “Boss, give me about four hours and I could ground that entire ramshackle fleet of theirs if we wanted to. A few well-placed demolition charges, and the Federacy wouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

“I’ll float the idea,” she promised him.

“We could try to get those people out of the camp, too,” he suggested.

She patted him on the shoulder. “Yeah, I’ll tell them. Take care of the team. And stay safe.”

“Always,” he replied.