Chaos Space - Marianne de Pierres [97]
Jo-Jo saw the opening and took it. ‘Stain Wars vet?’
‘Yeah.’ The white-haired woman shot him a sharp look. ‘Why?’
‘You got that manner about you. Good crew?’
‘Yeah. Mostly dead now, though. I was in the first wave on Longthrow. Not many survived that.’
‘Aaah,’ said Jo-Jo. ‘You were the meat that OLOSS were prepared to waste.’
‘You know the real story, then.’
Jo-Jo nodded. ‘If there was a real story. I heard a few versions. One that sounded most likely reckoned that OLOSS started it on Longthrow by sending in a bunch of mercs to spoil a kosher deal. Things went cone-shaped.’
‘Glad to see not everyone believes the history fastloads. That was pretty much how it was. When Longthrow got going skirmishes broke out around about the Saif system. If you could draw lines from one to another you’d say that the Extras were poised and waiting for a chance.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Could be they were. Could be there would never have been any trouble if OLOSS hadn’t provoked things on Longthrow. Thing about Extras is that you can’t always pick them out from normal aliens or ‘esques. Depends on what body they’ve snatched. On Longthrow they were their weapons. You shoot one down and it just slides across into another machine.’
Rast stabbed the toe of her boot into the stratum wall and twisted it as if she was gouging a hole.
‘Oww!’ She pulled her foot away and shook it. ‘Damn thing stung me.’
Jo-Jo laughed. ‘What did you expect? It’s alive.’ He wanted to ask her then who her Capo had been, but he didn’t want to make her suspicious. He tried coming at it from another angle. ‘So how did you come by this line of work?’
She gave him a narrow look. ‘You really interested or you pissing into the black?’
Jo-Jo shrugged. Following Rast’s lead he started to stretch. He wasn’t one for regular exercise but right now it was the only thing that kept him from making an idiot of himself in front of Mira Fedor. ‘Take it how you want.’
Rast bent down and touched her toes, pressing on her boot to ease the pain. ‘I grew up on Edo Lesser. Not much of a place. Cold and boring. We lived underground most of the year in something not much better than a rut in the ground. Petalu Mau was next door. He had sixteen brothers. They taught me how to fight. Seemed I was better at that than anything else.’
Jo-Jo eyed her lean frame. She was built like most mercenaries he’d encountered, strong without too much bulk. Her hands though, were bigger than they should have been, the knuckles more scarred. He wondered how many people she’d killed.
‘Pet wanted to work for Farr right from the start. Everyone on Edo Lesser did. Farr’s more than a hero on our world. He’s our economist. Our standard of living got way better when he purchased Edo and began to dump Orion’s shit on it. People’ll do anything for you if you keep their bellies full and their living comfortable. Crux, he even paid for education.’
‘Lasper Farr?’
Rast nodded. ‘Yeah. Not directly. But he paid a bonus to our government for every person who joined his corps or his other forces. Our govs put that into a fund to educate the ones who were interested, or smart enough.’
‘What happened to the rest?’
‘Everyone got accelerated-learning basics but that didn’t teach you much more than how to work the different tech tools. You were supposed to do the rest yourself. Course, no one did.’
‘So why didn’t you want to work for Farr?’
‘I got the education. I guess it changed things. I began to look for more but I was still only good at one thing.’ Rast blushed. ‘My ma was a gov.’
Jo-Jo couldn’t suppress a grin. ‘A gov’s girl, eh? What’s she think about your line of work?’
Rast pinned him with a flat, unemotional look. ‘She died in the war, representing Akouedo on peace talks. Wrong place, wrong time. It could have been me—should have been. Ma had ideals. I’ve just got grudges. Nowadays I don’t get caught up in the games of supremacists. Not unless they pay me what I want.’
Jo-Jo didn’t offer any sentiment about her mother. Rast wasn’t the kind to take it. ‘Yeah. That’s why I took to my