Heavy Forces: Freehold

Saffron had a pretty good idea how the mail message would read before she opened it; nobody ever responded to Your armed group has five days to evacuate before I clear it out by any means necessary with sure thing, leaving now. (All right, there was the fortification outside Port Arcturus, but they left a bomb behind to try to take out both her and the equipment her client had tasked her to retrieve, so it didn’t count.)

This settlement was granted to us by the Black Creek Syndicate as part of the Nova Vision II reconciliation. The Wilton Syndicate has no right to order our evacuation, and we are unable to comply regardless. We beg of you to reconsider your illegal course of action, and to understand we have every right to defend ourselves.

Frowning, the jackal woman leaned back, drumming her fingers against her office desk. Mostly what she expected, but not entirely. “Bob. What’s the Nova Vision II reconciliation?”

It took longer than usual for Bob’s pleasantly neutral voice to respond, the system’s hidden speakers sounding a regular chime while it searched databases. “Nova Vision was a quasi-religious, exclusively human organization that established four colonies seventy-eight years ago on various moons and planetoids around sectors 23-D-5 and 23-D-6, without consultation from syndicates operating in those areas.”

“So that went poorly.” The mix of quasi-religious and exclusively human carried a distasteful stench of speciesism—not uncommon for humans. They’d created the ancestors of maybe two-thirds of the species around known space, including hers, then spent the intervening centuries collectively pissed that their creations were by and large more successful at everything than they were.

“It appears so. Two of the colonies were destroyed by syndicate forces, and the other two lack any recent information past the reconciliation, a peace settlement of an undisclosed nature with—”

“Black Creek.”

“Yes.” It sounded ever-so-slightly annoyed by the interruption. “Black Creek claimed legal ownership of the territory that all four of Nova Vision’s colonies occupied.”

“And what was in the reconciliation contract?”

“There are no records of any such instrument.”

“Okay. But. Wilton’s getting the planetoid I’m clearing out as part of a deal with Voyager Partners. How is—”

“Black Creek even involved here?” Bob sounded smug as it interrupted her. “They were dissolved thirty-four years ago, and have no direct successor organizations. Apparently Voyager acquired a portion of their old assets, and they’re offloading what they don’t want.”

She drummed her fingers on the desk again. “So this rock is inhabited by people who Black Creek may or may not have had a deal with. Voyager doesn’t want the rock and doesn’t want the people. Wilton does want the rock, but doesn’t want the people. Anyone I can get in touch with who used to be at Black Creek who can fill in the missing bits?”

“No one I’ve been able to track down yet.”

Saffron ran a hand through her hair. It wasn’t uncommon for syndicates to be acquired, whether through application of money or application of armed force. She’d been that armed force a couple of times. But dissolution—just closing up shop and auctioning off remaining assets—was rare. “So this message is probably bullshit, but I can’t verify it’s bullshit.”

“Correct.”

“So this doesn’t get me out of on-the-ground recon.”

“You always do on-the-ground recon, even when I advise you against it.”

The jackal spun around in her chair, holding her hands up. “Bob. My job is to get big and smash shit. There is no way for me not to be on the ground.”

“That’s the way you choose to do your job, Saffron.”

“Got to maintain the branding. Also, it’s really fun!”

Bob wasn’t capable of sighing, but was capable of playing a recording of an exaggerated one that it knew annoyed its owner. “If this self-declared settlement is a lost Nova Vision colony, you can’t visit without attracting attention.”

“I…yeah, all humans. Hmm.” She drummed her fingers again. “Well, there’s always…”

After several seconds, Bob prompted, “Always what?”

She grinned widely, throwing her hands in the air. “Attracting attention!”

Bob played its exaggerated recorded sigh again. “You’re aware Wilton is sending in a secondary contracting force after you land. It’s clear they want this to be a surprise assault.”

“C’mon, Bob. This was a weird job to begin with. Voyager doesn’t want it, but Wilton wants it enough to have it cleared out. They don’t want to clear it out themselves, they want Heavy Forces to do it, but they still want to send in somebody with me for reasons they won’t explain. You’re not in the least curious as to what’s going on here?”

“Curiosity is a biological emotion.”

“‘Curiosity is a biological emotion,’” she repeated in an exaggerated mimic. “Uh huh.”

Big Stick wasn’t the smallest spacecraft on record still capable of hyperdrive, but it came close. It lost that honor primarily due to its battery of weapons; Saffron usually got away without having to use them—she was enough of a weapon herself on most missions—but it never hurt to have a diverse arsenal.

Normally, if her target was an isolated settlement on a planetoid like this, she’d try to land undetected and sneak in. But being the only non-human decisively ruled out staying hidden. Coming up with a believable cover story would be a challenge, too; she was still working on it.

Both Wilton and Voyager referred to her destination as Hollerman 14, but the automated landing beacon she locked onto identified it as Nova Freehold. Hmm. Someone was making a claim to ownership, but based on what? There were dozens of “freeholds” across known space, but they didn’t tend to last. Syndicates had a dubious track record of recognizing fully legal claims to assets; they wouldn’t humor claims based on mere tenancy.

“Verify the trajectory they’re trying to set. And give the landing field a once-over before we follow that beacon.” As far as she knew, Stick wasn’t on any published hostile ship registries, despite multiple attempts by enemies to list her—one major component of her diverse arsenal was, between her and Bob, top-tier hacking skills. But her policy of alerting targets that Heavy Forces was coming for them, so they could choose to evacuate, meant they had time to prepare if they took the threat seriously. Fortunately, most syndicates either didn’t take it seriously due to habitual overconfidence, or prepared for a massive assault team, not a small single-person craft carrying a small single person. Unfortunately, once in a while isolated targets prepared by trying to fly any visiting ships right into a trap—or a mountain.

“The trajectory takes us to what appears to be a Class One spaceport, albeit in name only. If the beacon wasn’t still operating, I would have assumed it was deserted based on the scans.”

“Terrific.” Class Ones were technically big enough to land a single small liner-class ship, but most were glorified train stations. No, that wasn’t fair to most of the train stations she’d been through.

Like most working ships, Stick limited its windows to portholes, but the cameras provided a panoramic view of what looked for all the stars like scraggly high desert as they came in. That was, not to put too fine a point on it, fucking weird: left to its own devices, this should be an airless rock. Somebody had gone through the incredible expense of terraforming it, then…effectively abandoning it? There were open pits, too, where digging equipment had clearly been. Once. No sign of it now.

If the landing pad was in any worse shape, it’d be nothing but gravel. The control tower remained in serviceable shape, but the terminal building matched the landing pad. Nine or ten people—all human, mostly men—balefully gazed out from under a ripped canvas awning as the craft touched down.

“Four of our greeters are armed,” Bob reported. “Three bullet pistols, one beam rifle.”

“Got it.” As the engines powered down, Saffron unlatched the safety belts, got up, and clicked on her bracers—shins first, then forearms. Each one briefly lit up as it interfaced with her in-body circuitry; when they all came online, she got a brief jolt, halfway between an orgasm and sticking her tail in an electric socket. The force armor should protect her from their weapons—and the whole system did far more than that. But it was sleek enough that it looked like it might just be decorative, unless you knew what to look for. She had a suspicion her welcoming committee wouldn’t.

“Okay.” Saffron headed through the inner airlock door, lowering the ship’s exit stairs while the pressures equalized. “Wish me luck.”

“Don’t get killed or step on someone important.”

“Words of wisdom.”

The exterior door slid open, and she stepped out into hot, bone-dry air, matching the desert look perfectly. Three humans walked toward the base of Big Stick’s stairs as she made her way down. All were men: one grey-haired and as weathered as the terminal, another middle-aged and burly to the point of being musclebound, and the last a lanky kid who probably wouldn’t be old enough to drink at more conservative ports. The oldest guy was the one who spoke. “I’m Elder Grigsby. What brings you to this Nova Freehold?”

Okay, moment of truth. Did she have a cover story yet? Lost and asking for directions because her nav was out? Passing through and looking for supplies? Moved onto a nearby planetoid and bringing over a nice noodle casserole to introduce herself? No, she bet the best option was telling the truth, just selectively. “Hi, Grigsby. I’m Saffron, and I’m here doing reconnaissance. I’m Heavy Forces.”

Bob played its recorded sigh over her internal comm.

Grigsby pursed his lips. The two younger guys exchanged glances, and Burly Guy made a fist and portentously cracked his knuckles. Lanky Guy put his hands on his hips. “And just what are you reconnaissancing?”

Old Guy—Elder Grigsby—shot him a withering glance. “That’s ‘reconnoitering.’” He turned back to Saffron. “Our histories warn us about your kind. That, if we allowed you to, you would drive us to extinction.”

She folded her arms. “Yeah, well, with all respect, your histories are kind of exaggerated. I know what my client says, and I know what my histories of this place say. But I have way too many gaps to be comfortable right now. I don’t have any record of a ‘Nova Vision II Reconciliation,’ for a start.”

Old Guy walked forward, motioning her to follow. As soon as she did, Burly Guy and Lanky Guy dropped into step behind her. “We are the second of four freeholds established under the aegis of Nova, our visionary leader, may he rest in peace.”

“May he rest in peace,” the other two echoed simultaneously. Saffron skewed her ears. That wasn’t creepy at all.

Grigsby continued. “The Black Creek Syndicate accused us of infringing upon their claims to the empty planetoids we terraformed with our resources.” He spread his hands. “In exchange for letting us remain, we became their ‘contractors,’ although ‘indentured servants’ is a more honest description.” He made a lemon-sucking face. “When their syndicate closed, we came into legal possession of this property, as per their agreement with us. Which we communicated to the Voyager Partners Syndicate, which, I assume, is your client.”

“It is not, and there’s no record of any contracts you made with Black Creek.” The rest of the group began following behind her, too. And around her. What fun.

“And yet here we are. Does our presence alone not confirm my story, engineered animal?”

“Not really, ostensibly natural animal. It only confirms—”

“Watch your mouth,” Burly Guy spat. “You’ll show Elder Grigsby respect.”

Saffron looked back up at him levelly. “I’ll show the respect I’m given.”

That just made Burly Guy look even more livid, but Grigsby held up a hand. “Our visitor makes a valid point. If referring to her as an engineered animal is offensive, we shall refrain. And she is correct. We are all animals, aren’t we. Now. You were saying?”

“I was saying that no, your presence doesn’t confirm your story. The deed to Hollerman 14—the name I know this rock as—passed from Voyager Partners to the Wilton Group, and as far as they’re concerned you’re illegally occupying their property. They told me you were an occupying camp of dangerous armed zealots.”

They walked past the terminal building without going in. More buildings came into view, ones in considerably better shape, although they had an aggressively low-tech air about them: wooden construction that gave an air of performative antiquity, all manual doors, overhead wires for power and communication.

As they walked, Lanky Guy watched her really closely. Was he expecting her to make a dash for it, draw a weapon…or, wait, was he fighting with unexpected attraction to an “engineered animal?” She put a touch more sashay into her step, tail swishing, showing off what she knew was a damn fine butt. His eyes widened and a bit of flush crept onto his cheeks. Uh huh.

“We dispute the Wilton Group’s claim.”

“Do you have anything that can prove Black Creek transferred Hollerman 14’s title to you?”

“They gave us this land in exchange for our work. And they gave us their word. Should a man’s word not be his bond?”

Saffron sighed. “In an ideal world, sure. In this world, though, either nobody at Black Creek left legally recognized documentation backing up your claim, or Wilton and Voyager are pretending they don’t have it. Without a signed, verified document, this rock is Wilton’s, not yours.”

They’d walked into “town” now, and the sense of it being unstuck in time only intensified. The vibes she was getting from onlookers wasn’t exactly hostile, but it sure wasn’t welcoming. Even so, these people didn’t look anything like soldiers. They might technically be occupiers, and they probably were zealots, but they definitely weren’t an occupying army.

“So you’re determined to proceed with your assault on our peaceful settlement.”

She stopped, crossing her arms. “I’m determined to fulfill my contract, unless I have a valid, well-supported reason to break it. I’m not seeing the armed mercenary camp here I was expecting to, but bluntly, that’s not enough. You being sincere, backwards, self-evidently speciesist settlers is not enough to let me break the damn contract without putting me at risk—and without having Wilton send somebody else who won’t bother talking to you first. Which, technically, they’ve already done.” She spread her hands. “So with all respect, Grigs, if you don’t give me a convincing reason to terminate my contract, either I help you clear out peacefully, or I clear you out the hard way.”

The armed humans who’d walked her back from the terminal drew their weapons. Oh, come on. Surely they weren’t going to—

“Or, we hold you hostage in exchange for Heavy Forces leaving us alone. Unless you think your employers will not honor their word, in which case we have a serious problem.”

They were. She rubbed her face. “Trying to hold me hostage. That’s your backup plan? Please tell me this wasn’t your first plan.”

Grigsby looked nonplussed. “Miss Saffron, inform your superiors of your situation.”

She sighed. “Okay, I’ll get right on that.” Saffron lifted her right arm in front of her chest and tapped on the bracer with her fingers, bringing her internal systems out of standby mode and setting a target height. Hmm. She usually went for a hundred meters, but she wanted to give them a last chance for conversation. Forty? Forty.

Elder Grigsby turned to Burly Guy. “Take her to the constable’s office.”

Burly Guy nodded, and pointed. The armed guards hefted their weapons, keeping them aimed at her. “That way. Animal.”

All four of her bracers lit up with internal power lines. A moment later, matching lines appeared under her fur.

“What’s she doing?” Lanky Guy’s eyes widened. He addressed her directly. “What’re you doing?”

She glanced up at him. “Back up about, oh, five meters.”

“Turn that off!” Grigsby demanded, his voice almost lost in the rising whine of her mass generators kicking in—the noise of turbines powering up.

She pointed at the ground a few meters in front of her. “Seriously, back up.”

Most of the humans did so, but everybody with weapons had them trained on her, naturally. As the lines around her body shifted into brilliant, vision-searing white—along with her eyes, she knew—one of them, one of the guys with a conventional pistol, fired, several times.

“No!” Grigsby shouted, simultaneously with the literal explosion of her growth. Crackling ball lightning blew outward, storm force wind behind it, hurling the crowd off their feet, loosening boards on nearby porches and cracking a door or two.

She could have rejiggered the systems to be less dramatic in any number of ways, but dramatic chaos was usually her friend. The townspeople who hadn’t been bowled over were in a panic, scattering away from her. Two of the guys with pistols and the one with the beam rifle were on their backs, firing desperately at her, ignorant of the telltale flashes from her force armor. “Stop that,” she muttered.

Grigsby hadn’t recovered enough yet to speak, but Lanky Guy had. He stared up with a mix of, oh, three or four parts terror to one part sublimated lust. “You—you—”

“Hi. Allow me to introduce myself again. I’m Heavy Forces. Let’s try this one more time, hmm? You can choose to start evacuating now under my supervision, or you can pick a fight with me, lose, and the survivors can evacuate.”

The rifleman shot at her again, the beam sizzling off the force armor. She pointed a finger at him. “One more time and you’re under my sandal.” His eyes got wide, and he dropped the weapon, putting his hands up in the air. “Good boy.”

“You have no right.” Grigsby tried to maintain his forceful elder voice as he got back to his feet, staring at her, but she could tell she scared him shitless. She almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

Saffron dropped into a crouch, which caused half the humans still around her to scramble back even farther, and fixed her gaze on him. “Yeah, I do, and we both know it. And bluntly, you’re lucky they hired me to come in on this job first. I know more than one mercenary group which would have just sent in a squad to mow you all down and claim they had to do it because you put up resistance. I’m not going to do that unless you do.”

“‘Lucky.’” He clenched his fists. “You’re a lackey, doing your master’s bidding, just like all of your kind. The Wilton Group has no right to drive us out of our home solely because they have no use for us!”

They have no use? But a few minutes ago, he said—

Saffron slammed both her hands down on the ground, fingers spread out, head directly over the elder. He bit back a cry, stumbling. “I’ve been trying real hard to be the nicest engine of destruction you could possibly have deployed against you, Grigs, but I’m out of patience. Either stop lying to me or start running, if you think you can run fast enough. Which you can’t.”

Burly Guy protested, although he was far less blustery about it now that the “engineered animal” he had to face off against stood forty meters tall instead of one point six. “Elder Grigsby is not lying!”

“Five,” Saffron replied.

“What?”

“Four.”

“I—you—”

“Three.” She began to straighten up.

“Stop!” Grigsby cried. “Please!”

She froze, still in a crouch, looking straight at him.

“Our original freeholds were free, and as far as Nova knew, there was no prior claim on the planetoids we settled—planetoids his surveys showed were rich in lithium-6. He spent all of his Foundation’s resources on terraforming, with the expectation that mining would make the freeholds self-sustaining.”

Saffron’s ears skewed, and she glanced around the town. No obvious signs of any industry now, much less heavy mining equipment. But that would explain the pits. “Let me guess. Black Creek showed up and gave you an ultimatum: get kicked off, now with no money to start over, or work the mines for them.”

“Yes.”

“And after this syndicate effectively enslaved you, they gave you this planetoid free and clear out of, what, a sense of remorse?”

Burly Guy gave her a fearful glare. “Is that so hard for your kind to understand?”

“Oh, no. Do not even think about pulling a ‘humanity, fuck yeah’ line with me. Black Creek commandeered your whole utopian Nova Vision dream nonsense. You know who ran them? Humans. They literally sold you off to Voyager Partners when they went bankrupt. Who runs Voyager? Humans. Who runs the group that claims this place now and hired me to get rid of you all? Say it with me: humans. And who’s the only person who’s even tried to give you a say in anything for the last eight decades?” She jerked both thumbs at herself. “The giant jackal lady.”

“But you still intend to force us to leave.” Grigsby managed a glare, too, but more sad than forceful.

“You haven’t given me any evidence that Wilton’s contract is illegal, Grigs. So is the other surviving Nova Vision colony still operating mines that Wilton owns now?”

“No. They are their own freehold, and they own their own mines.” He sighed heavily. “They have helped support us in hard seasons.”

“Would they be able to prove that Black Creek gave you control of your colonies?”

He looked down.

“That’s what I figured.” She sighed, running a hand through her hair. “Can they give you all refuge?”

“If you can get us there.”

She stared down at him. “Me?”

“We have three small ships. Between them, they can carry eight dozen. But there are nearly two thousand residents.”

“Terrific. All right. I’m about to talk to my synth assistant. You won’t hear its side of the conversation.”

Several of the humans scowled. Naturally, they hated modern technology, too, right? If she ripped off the roof of the nearest house, she’d probably find a wood-burning stove and a fucking butter churn. Rolling her eyes, she spoke aloud. “Bob, find a service nearby that can run liners out here, enough to get two thousand people and their possessions from here to Calla 2. Let Wilton know what the schedule is, tell them to call off whoever’s coming in after me, and be prepared to haggle over price, because this is not all coming out of my fee. They’ll probably try to stick us with the secondary group’s kill fee, too.”

You’re about to pick a fight with a major syndicate to save these guys?

“Apparently.” She sighed. “But…hmm. Bob, ask Wilton to send their documentation for the claim on this place and the other freehold. They should at least be on an asset list from Black Creek.”

On it.

“You can’t make us leave!” someone yelled abruptly.

“This is our home!”

“What do you have against humans?”

Saffron closed her eyes, rubbing her temples.

The fastest evacuation I can arrange at any price will take 15 standard days, but Wilton will not accept that agreement. Price is not the issue. The contract stipulates you clear Hollerman 14 within one standard day after your arrival, and they insist you honor it.

“Yeah, no. My contract’s for clearing an occupying paramilitary force, not a barely armed settlement of civilian wackos.”

The growing crowd muttered angrily. She held up a hand to them, pointing her other hand at her ear.

The synth assistant I am negotiating with states, and I quote, “If we wanted Cuddly Bunnies for this job, we wouldn’t have hired Heavy Forces.” The team from Kellerman Operations is already on its way.

“Christ, Bob, if they just wanted to kill everyone, they could have—” She stopped, ears lowering. “Shit. They want this to be a show.”

Grigsby spoke up, voice trembling. “I don’t understand.”

“Grigs, I think Black Creek did promise you this place, but not out of remorse. It was cheaper to leave you here than to remove you. I bet they never paid to finish the work to make that promise legally binding, either.”

“Isn’t it still cheaper to leave us here?” Lanky Guy said hesitantly.

Saffron looked down at him, and he quickly colored. Had he been staring at her tits all this time? She leaned down, arching her back in just the right way to make her substantial cleavage that much more pronounced. His eyes visibly widened. Mmm hmm. “Yeah, but you know what’s better than being cheap? Making money. Wilton kills you all, sends footage of it to the surviving colony, and says ‘give us the proceeds from the mine or you’re next.’ And if they know that you all take it as spiritual truth that engineered animal-people secretly hate all humans, who better to get to do it than me.”

The crowd began to back away from her.

“Bob, look for loopholes in the contract, quick. Wilton had to agree to my terms of service, right?”

Those terms not only allow for collateral damage, they explicitly warn about how extensive it can be.

“There’s no armed resistance here—”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but those are weapons pointed at you, aren’t they?

Groaning, Saffron dropped back down into a full crouch, eyes fixed on Grigsby. “We can argue that Wilton’s violated the terms of the contract I’ve signed with them. Now you are going to sign a new contract hiring me to protect you. By you, I mean both your freehold and the other one.”

“We—I—Saffron, we will not give in to extortion. Not from you, not from anyone.” Murmurs of angry assent rose from the crowd.

“I’m not telling you to hire me to keep me from destroying your weird little doomed colony, Grigs, I’m telling you to hire me to protect you from the other mercenaries Wilton’s got on their way here because they were worried I’d do exactly what I’m doing.”

“Then just defend us without making us sign a contract to do it!” Burly Guy yelled, shaking a fist at her. Bless his heart.

“If I’m going to put myself on the line for you, you can damn well help me protect my reputation in return. Wilton’s going to do all they can to paint me as the bad guy, and they can do a lot. If I have a contract with you, I can at least fall back on the ‘it’s just business’ line.”

Elder Grigsby scowled, but more thoughtfully than angrily. “I fear you are right, as much as I wish it were not so.” He nodded a stiff-necked assent. “But I cannot speak for the other freehold.”

“As long as Wilton doesn’t know that, we can burn that bridge when we come to it. Bob’s sending you the contract on the channel that I sent my original message to you on. Sign it and send it back in the next…how long do we have, Bob?”

One hour twenty-three minutes.

She grimaced. “In the next now, please. Sign it and send it back now. Okay, we have one other big problem. If it’s obvious I haven’t leveled this quaint dirt farming town, Kellerman may just bomb it. And me. So we’ve got to come up with a way to fool them.”

Lanky Guy stared up. “How the hell do we do that?”

“You are absolutely not going to like this.”

Everyone—including Grigsby—looked up at her pronouncement with dread. She shrugged apologetically, and looked around. “How many of these buildings have basements?”

“Most of them. The homes, most of the stores, the town hall.”

“Could you all live in those basements for whatever fifteen standard days is here? Basements, and maybe, like, a quarter of the homes. If I can smash most of the town, it could be convincing enough.”

More angry murmurs. Grigsby looked aghast. “You want us to hire you to go ahead and destroy our settlement? That’s absurd! We can’t allow you to…”

He trailed off as she stared down at him, arching a massive eyebrow at the word allow and remaining silent.

“Engineered animals truly do hate humans,” someone in the crowd said distinctly, to scattered cheers and clapping.

“No, we just find you exasperating. I don’t have a better solution I can pull off in only eighty minutes, and if my synth assistant had one, it’d have already told me about it.”

That is true. I can find no alternative that isn’t stupider than your actual stupid plan.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Bob. Send the contract to the liner company and get them on their way as soon as possible. If they can beat that 15-day estimate, all the better.”

The little humans looked at each other, back up at her with mounting dismay, fear, and hatred, and back at each other as they burst into argument.

Saffron waited about sixty seconds, drumming her fingers on her knee, then finally said, “Enough. If you come up with a brilliant plan to defend yourselves against a small but heavily armed mercenary group in the next ten minutes or so, I’ll peace out, and you can handle them on your own without help from the icky animal woman. Otherwise, how about getting the hell over yourselves for long enough to let the icky animal woman try and save as many of your furless butts as possible. You’re welcome.”

The silence lasted about three seconds before everyone burst into argument again. Saffron gritted her teeth.

That could have been phrased somewhat more diplomatically.

Grigsby stepped forward. “What do I do to help you, Miss Saffron?”

She perked her ears up, and looked down at him. “Sign my contract, send a message to your sister freehold on an encrypted line—you can do that, right?—to let them know what’s going on, and send me a map of the settlement so I can figure out which places are essential to keep intact and which ones I can use to make the most dramatic debris fields with.”

He nodded, and hurried toward one of the buildings, motioning for Burly Guy and another woman to follow him.

The elder’s tacit agreement with her plan ended the argument quickly. Nobody looked happy about it, except maybe Lanky Guy, who might have just been happy Saffron and her breasts would stick around a few more hours. She straightened to her full height and stretched exaggeratedly, just to see if he could keep from gawking open-mouthed. He couldn’t. Mmm hmm.

It took barely another minute before Bob sent, We have the contract. Sending the map to you now.

“Thanks, Bob. And Grigs.” The map appeared, overlayed on her vision and dimming the world around her. She surveyed it a few seconds, and switched the overlay to label each building in her normal field of view.

“Okay!” She raised her hands, addressing the crowd. “Get what you want to save out of this tiny business district now.” She indicated the buildings with her hands. “And start setting fires.”

“Fires?” someone called hesitantly. “You mean…set fire to our buildings?”

“A few you can afford to lose, yeah. Anything that’s gonna send up plumes of thick black smoke over the areas you want to stay in would be perfect. If you can, get bags of saltpeter and sulfur together in empty buildings. Or saltpeter and sugar.”

Everyone collectively stared at her.

“Smoke bombs,” she explained. “They’re probably already coming in suspicious that I’m breaking the deal, so we want them to think I’ve gone through with it. Make the aerial view smashed buildings and fire and shit, so they don’t just drop bombs.”

They kept staring.

She stamped a huge paw and waved both hands. “Now! Go! Shoo!”

The crowd scattered.

“Terrific,” she muttered. “Okay.” She cracked her knuckles, then walked toward the town hall, stomping down through the roof, kicking at the walls, sending sprays of debris in all directions. She leaned over to carefully clear debris away from the basement entrance. It looked big. And sturdy. Promising.

They may check for the presence of bodies.

“Have any idea on how to account for that?”

Ask for volunteers?

“Oh yeah, that’ll go over well. This doesn’t have to fool Kellerman for long, though.”

Mmm.

A soft explosive whoosh drew her attention to her right. A fire—an intentional one. With a lot of smoke. Excellent.

She kicked through another low building, and brought her sandal down on a car that looked like a bad revival of last-century design. A few people hurriedly emptied a store across the street—she couldn’t tell if they were the owners, or just looting the place. Hmm. There were arguments breaking out between them. So maybe both. It’d have been so much easier if the place was a true cooperative, although the syndicates did their best to keep attempts at those from surviving.

“Hey,” she called down, walking ahead and sharply clapping her hands. “Not the time to haggle over price. Get what you want to save and argue tomorrow if you’re still alive, okay?”

That didn’t stop all the arguing, but it stopped enough of it for everyone to clear out over the next minute. Saffron carefully demolished the front of the store while a few stragglers set fire—with another smoke bomb—to the back. She clenched her left fist and fired a few rounds from that bracer into intact, empty buildings. If she’d been doing the actual job Wilton had contracted her, she wouldn’t have gotten away without using a few projectiles.

The next hour was one of the strangest “rampages” Saffron had ever engaged in as Heavy Forces. Staging a town to look as if she’d been chasing and crushing armed resistance throughout it, while still keeping enough of the town intact to safely house everyone until they could evacuate, turned out to be a lot damn harder than doing it for real. A half-dozen near misses of humans darting into buildings at the last second as she approached left her nearly as frazzled as being in an actual battle.

Even so, by the end of that hour, the town looked good—that is, from five kilometers up, it looked like a smoking ruin. Bob flew Big Stick up on its own to verify. Much lower and an observer might notice the suspicious number of buildings with little to no damage, but that would be okay. She hoped.

The Kellerman Operations ship is ten minutes out.

“Great. Configure our jammers to hit their standard frequencies on my mark.” Saffron walked over the ruins of the town hall toward the crowd Elder Grigsby stood in front of. All of them gaped up at her; she guessed a giant jackal woman striding toward you out of smoking ruins had to be terrifying. If also goddamn awesome. “It’s time for you all to get to shelter. Middle of the settlement, down in the basements. There’s a good chance this is going to get messy.”

“Messier than this?” Burly Guy yelled. “What the hell else are you going to do?”

“The Kellerman crew’s probably going to land to get ground-level confirmation, and if they do, they won’t like what they see.”

“Do you think you can stop them?”

“It’s only going to be…hmm, I think their squadrons are fifty people.”

Lanky Guy gawked up at her. “Fifty against one?”

“It’s not fair, right?” She leaned toward him and winked. “They don’t stand a chance.”

He opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything, just kept gawking.

“Find somewhere safe to watch.” She straightened up, and walked around the area slowly, waving her hands as if directing pedestrian traffic.

You know you’re scaring them.

She murmured, “If I’m scaring them into not being in the way, I’m fine with that.”

Barely more than a minute after the last human disappeared into what she hoped was sufficient shelter, Bob broadcast, They’re here.

“Okay. Showtime.” She walked slowly around the ruins, occasionally stomping abruptly or firing off another round or two, as if picking off stragglers.

Their ship is surveying the settlement. No signs of aerial weapon locks. Another ten seconds: They’re descending. Looks like they’re going to touch down on the opposite side of the town from the airfield.

“Great.”

The ship’s side guns are online, Bob sent, a split-second before the cannons opened fire—mostly on already-destroyed areas, but they took out an intact house, one she knew she’d seen about a dozen humans hurry into. Fuck. Hopefully it had a basement.

Well, they hadn’t fired on her, so maybe they hadn’t figured out what was going on. Yet. She hurried toward their projected landing point, tapping on the right bracer’s control panel and bringing the jammers online.

The ship was coming in for a rough landing on the pitted, rocky surface they’d chosen. It looked less like the bantamweight warship she’d been expecting than a private cruiser retrofitted with armor and weaponry. She doubted it’d have been able to do any real aerial bombing, although they could have simply flown back and forth firing off those cannons. That they didn’t probably meant they believed the job was mostly done.

As the engines powered down, the ship’s hatch opened, the ladder dropping to the ground. Uniformed soldiers piled out. All humans, it looked like. Well, wasn’t that ironic.

Saffron crouched, watching. Tempting to just blow away the ladder, but she didn’t have munitions she could toss inside the ship to take the rest of the soldiers out. (That felt like cheating, too, although Bob would have exasperatedly reminded her that cheating was her modus operandi.)

About a half-dozen soldiers approached her, as the others assembled. “Heavy Forces?” the guy in front said. He managed to stay looking professional as he stared up; not all his squad mates succeeded.

“That’s me.” She straightened up to her full height.

“You’ve completed your contract?” He looked suspicious. “The client said you’d reneged.”

“I proposed an alternative, given that this settlement is basically unarmed, and I don’t like going after noncombatants.”

“Aren’t you known for absolutely massive collateral damage?” one of the other soldiers said, crossing his arms.

“That’s not the same as having noncombatants be my primary target.”

“Mmm.” The leader signaled to the rest of the group. “Set sinker charges around the town.” He looked back up at Saffron. “You’ll understand if we don’t take your word for it.”

Welp, that was fast. Sinker charges were basically demolition weapons, the force going out to the sides and down rather than up—taking out buildings, foundations, and basements. “Yeah.” She sighed. “That was probably a good call.” With a quick, hard step, she smashed her sandal down on him and three of the other soldiers standing close by.

By the time the rest of the Kellerman team caught on, she’d begun strafing with beam weapons. Being a giant target had definite downsides, but the laws of physics—at least the ones she wasn’t, on the surface, flagrantly violating—sometimes worked to her advantage: both her force armor and her energy weapons packed an order of magnitude more juice than what the opposing ground troops had. Their beams barely registered as flickers against her seemingly unprotected body, while her half-meter-wide beams overloaded their protective fields in about a half a second of concentrated fire.

After a few seconds, though, half of them had the presence of mind to dash back toward their ship. Maybe to take off, maybe to bring serious weaponry to bear on her. Didn’t matter. Now it was time to blow away the ladder with a few of them on it. She charged toward the ship at full speed as she fired, leaping onto it, smashing her sandals down on the roof, bouncing as hard as she could right behind the bow. Didn’t this model have a joint—

The ship’s front section cracked at its top, the bow rocking forward and tumbling her off onto the grass flat on her back. Oof. Okay, that could have gone better, but they weren’t flying anywhere. And hopefully not getting any more cannon shots off.

All right, that left…too many opposing soldiers, and while a few of them were stupidly running right at her, the rest sprinted for cover to take shots from.

No, the ones stupidly running at her weren’t running at her. They were running for the ship. Her stunt had broken one of the landing struts, dropping the hatch down to ground level. She dove for them, catching two between her fingers, but two others got inside, no doubt heading for a more serious portable weapon.

“Dammit.” She hurled the two soldiers off into the distance, away from the settlement, and leapt to the other side of the spacecraft, the one with the intact landing gear. Bracing herself, she got her hands under the ship and lifted it up on its side. Damn, that hurt. Just—a little more—

The craft toppled over on its roof, upside down.

That’s the second time you’ve tried the “jump on the ship” trick and had it fail. Consider starting with the “flip the ship over” trick next time.

“Thank you, Bob,” she wheezed, staggering to the other side and firing into the open hatch a few times to make it that much harder for anyone still conscious to get out quickly.

A warning box popped up on her HUD. Power 60%

What? Shit. Either her force armor was taking a lot more hits than she thought, or she’d been pretty indiscriminate with those beam weapons a few minutes ago. On the other hand, she probably had three dozen soldiers left to face off against, tops.

Whirling around, she saw—nothing, at first. The surviving Kellerman troops had dispersed into the settlement. She couldn’t track them by targeting humans, obviously, but they’d be the only ones in uniform—and they’d be the only ones firing at her. Hopefully. She tapped out a preset routine on her bracers for instant return fire, and hurried toward the widest avenue in the town, arms outstretched, angled at about forty-five degrees from straight in front. A volley of shots fired toward her from all around—matched by her weapons systems blasting back in a spray of energy beams and exploding debris. The fire tapered off to zero in barely three seconds.

Another advantage of being a giant in a town where few buildings stood taller than two stories: you didn’t need drones or other remote cameras to make it a damn sight harder for anyone to hide from you. On the flip side, most of the buildings that still stood even a full story high were ones she’d intentionally left standing. She had to take her shots carefully, and her stomps even more so. There: fire. There: fire twice. There: two steps forward and stomp.

“Surrendering is a viable option,” she called.

“Fuck you,” someone yelled back, over an amplified speaker. She fired off a shot in that direction manually, and paused. Everything fell unnaturally still, except for a faint hum, a few meters to her left. It sounded like…

She dove to the side a split second before the sinker charge detonated. They’d set it upside down, so the blast shot upward rather than into the ground. Not nearly as effective—the whole point of the thing was to collapse structures, so it was all explosive force intended to drive through solid matter, no shrapnel or extra timed charges. Even so, she was a lot of solid matter, and the force was strong enough to lift her off her paws. Her systems put everything they had into her armor, lighting it up with so much energy it momentarily blinded her; a wrecking ball might as well have slammed into her entire front. At least the pain radiating everywhere from the explosion was so great she barely felt landing on—and sliding through—a pile of debris and at least one intact house.

Power: 20%

The pain subsided enough after a few seconds for her to be aware of the rest of the shots being taken at her: the remaining Kellerman crew had converged on her, giving everything they had to finish the job. Little fuckers. She started to push herself up, but the pain in her right shoulder turned white-hot as she put pressure on it. Great. She pushed up with her left hand, stood, and staggered, nearly toppling again. Ow ow ow ow ow. Dislocated shoulder and twisted ankle. Terrific. She managed a half-crouch, keeping her weight on the good paw.

New artillery noises sounded, old-school rifle bangs. Her ears folded down. What the hell were they—

It wasn’t Kellerman’s group. It was the settlers, the other humans, pulling together a patchwork quilt of firearms from last-generation blasters back to shotguns.

For a glorious, impossible moment, the settlers kept the upper hand: there were more of them, and they understood the terrain of the town, even if most of it lay in ruins. But their weapons weren’t military-grade, and they weren’t trained soldiers. It took mere seconds before her would-be rescuers started going down.

Even so, by moving as a whole against Saffron when she’d fallen, the remaining Kellerman mercs had gathered together, now effectively surrounded by her on one side and the armed civilian mob on the remaining three. That was a mistake. And now they had their attention on the mob rather than the angry jackal woman towering overhead. That was a worse mistake.

With a thundering snarl, Saffron brought her good foot down, hard, in the middle of their group.

Pain shot through her twisted ankle, and she stumbled. She let herself drop to her knees, and started smashing at soldiers with her good fist, rolling, kicking, even biting. All the rapidly dwindling fire concentrated on her again. She didn’t care.

Power: 10%

The few remaining soldiers—maybe five or six at this point—ran. It was easy to get out of her range, but not out of the settlers’ range.

“We surrender! We surrender!” one of them yelled, coming to a stop and facing her pleadingly.

“Great,” she wheezed. “Drop your weapon.” She gestured at the other soldiers, who’d turned to stare. “All of you.”

Burly Guy cocked his rifle, pointing it at the closest soldier.

“Don’t,” Saffron said warningly.

“You take prisoners?” He sounded skeptical, but lowered the gun.

“When it’s appropriate, yeah. Although you’re taking these prisoners, because I don’t have space, and you don’t want them going home and bring back reinforcements.”

He lifted the rifle again.

Saffron lowered her muzzle toward him, baring her teeth. “Stop it!”

Eyes widening, he dropped the rifle, stepping back.

She winced, rubbing her shoulder gingerly as the other Kellerman soldiers approached warily. “Where’s Elder Grigsby?” Rubbing the shoulder made it hurt more. Okay, stop touching it, stupid.

Lanky Guy approached from wherever he’d been hiding, Grigsby in tow. Other settlers gathered around, and a weak cheer went up. They seemed too petrified of her to make it full-throated, but she supposed she’d take what she got. “Thank you.” Elder Grigsby looked uncomfortable—maybe because she was an engineered animal, maybe because she was still forty meters tall, and oh yes, maybe because she was spattered with blood that mostly wasn’t hers—but sincere.

She closed her eyes, grimacing. Everything else was starting to hurt now. “Mmf. Bob, did Wilton get that asset list to you?”

Yes, but neither Hollerman 14 nor Calla 2, the other colony, are listed on it.

Her ears perked up. “Really.”

Really.

“So Grigs here may not have direct proof that Black Creek ceded these settlements to the settlers, but if it’s not on that asset list, they took it off for a reason.”

That seems accurate.

“All right. Wilton can’t back up their claim that the settlements were transferred to them through Voyager. Here’s what you need to do, Grigs. Coordinate with that other colony of yours and make sure they know what happened here and get a sign-off on my contract from them. Bob’s going to send you—and them—as much proof as we can muster to back up your claim, which is mostly built on Wilton’s glaring inability to back up their claim. You and your counterpart on Calla 2—”

“The second Nova Freehold.”

“Whatever. You’ll have to get those documents to a claims company and to a protection service that can get armed soldiers on the ground for you. That’s a one-two punch that should get Wilton off your back.”

“But how do we find those? How do we know they’re trustworthy?”

“I’ll hook you up.” She winced again, biting back a scream. “I don’t suppose you have a medical facility here?”

Someone from the crowd called up, hesitantly, “I don’t know if I know how to treat your kind. Let alone your size.”

“Bones are bones, and I can fix the size.” She tapped on her bracer’s control panel. “Although I’m going to probably black out the town’s power for a few hours to do it, because it’s the only way to recharge enough to shift.”

Burly Guy protested, although it was more nervous this time. “You can’t do that.”

“Yes. I can. Stop being an idiot.” The lines in her fur glowed once more, accompanied by the rising howl of phantom turbines.

Lanky Guy laughed, ignoring Burly Guy’s sullen glare.

With a soft thunder crack, Saffron returned to her normal height. “Help me up,” she said to Lanky Guy, waving him over.

He stared at her, eyes widening.

“Come on. I can’t stand up on this ankle.”

Swallowing, he hurried over and lifted her up, putting his arm around her shoulders. She put her arm around his in return.

“You’re heavy,” he gasped. “I mean heavier than you look. I mean, uh…”

“No, I get it. I am heavier than I look when I’m this size. I’m lighter than I look when I’m a giant, although you still don’t want me stepping on you.” She batted her eyelashes. “Unless you’re into that sort of thing.”

His eyes widened.

She grinned, lowering her voice. “It’s not a sin if you think I’m cute.”

“I…” He swallowed and gave her a bashful smile, blushing deeply. “Uh. The clinic is this way, ma’am.”

Saffron flipped through the most recent batch of bank payments. She’d been in this business two decades and was still surprised by how few clients were diligent about paying a massively destructive jackal woman on time, but the money always came in. Nearly always. Eventually.

She stopped at an unexpected receipt from the Wilton Syndicate. That number was way too high to be the kill fee they’d been fighting over for the last four months.

Opening it, she scanned over the line items. There was the kill fee, finally, but the rest was a “contract buyout” for…what the hell? “Bob, why is Wilton paying off the contract the Nova Freehold guys made with me?”

“Let me access the contract records.” More windows opened on Saffron’s display. “They inherited the debts of Nova Freehold when they acquired the mines on Calla 2 five standard weeks ago.”

“What the ever-loving fuck.” She closed all the windows and opened a comm line to Rough Diamond Defensive Services—not to the front desk, but direct to Commander Wakefield, her main point of contact and occasional competitive drinking partner (current standing for who drank who under the table: tied, three to three).

When he came on the line, the tiger was in his office, dressed casually, but wearing the perpetually harried look of a manager. “Saffron.”

“Jim. Hey. I wanted to follow up on those clients on Calla 2 I referred to you, for that ongoing protection gig a few months ago.”

“I remember ’em.”

“Yeah. So…?” She spread her hands questioningly.

“So they didn’t hire us.”

Her ears folded back. “But—I told them—” She rubbed her face. “Why?”

Jim shrugged. “Some argument between two ‘elders,’ whatever that means to those wackadoodles. One of them wanted to hire us, one of them didn’t. The one who didn’t won.”

She ran a hand through her short hair. “I told them you were the best.” Strictly speaking, that wasn’t true, but they were the best you could get without paying a lot more. “Was it price, or…?”

The tiger grunted. “We’ll go with ‘or.’ I heard they hired Blue Line.”

“Blue Line? They’re terrible.” But they made being all human a selling point.

“Agreed. Why are you checking in now?”

“Wilton just bought out my contract with them. The wackadoodles, that is.”

“Ah.” Jim fell silent a few seconds, then shrugged again. “At least you got paid.”

“At least. Thanks.”

The tiger nodded, and signed off.

She drummed her fingers on the desk. “I wonder if the lanky kid with the repressed hots for me made it.”

Bob made an electronic snort. “Do you want to swing by and see if you can rescue him?”

She shook her head. “If he wants to be rescued, he can get in touch with me himself. I don’t need to keep actively pissing Wilton off.”

“They not only paid your kill fee, they honored the inherited debt,” Bob pointed out. “It’s just business.”

“With syndicates, isn’t it always.” She drummed her fingers again, and pushed back from the desk. “I’m gonna go get shitfaced and find someone cute to bully.”

“Try not to break them.”