The Vastalimi Gambit Read Free

guy, but two of them were a waste. Fortunately, Rags wasn’t here to see it. And she wasn’t going to tell him although the recording cams would rat her out if he looked, and he would . . .
    She swung the gun’s muzzle a hair to the left.
Bam.
One more . . .
    That did it. The remaining attackers scattered and retreated, heading for the woods.
    She probably could have spiked them all, but there was no need. If you could nail a couple, and the rest ran off? Never knew but that someday one of them might be working for you. Well, maybe not this bunch, but still. Plus, it would save on the cost of ammo . . .
    Gramps came on the opchan. “Special delivery from our drone—AP DU Lance, and . . . Adieu, Monsieur Personnel Carrier.
    “Second one missed the wreck and is still coming. Stand by.”
    “Come on, Gramps,” Gunny said. “Let it go. It’s almost within mah range!”
    With the fifty silent and her hearing-implant suppressors off, Jo heard the explosion as the second carrier ate the depleted-uranium-sheathed lance. Loud, even so.
    “Dammit!”
    “Sorry, Gunny. The DU is cheaper than the Magma, and you know how Rags is.”
    “Ah am gonna remember that, old man, next time you want something.”
    Jo grinned. Well, one attack, one win, within Rules of Engagement and legal. Could be worse. “Move along, folks. Call it in to the local cleanup crews.”
    Yep, not so bad. So far . . .
    Jo remembered the briefing before they’d left the Solar System . . .
    _ _ _ _ _ _
    Gramps had said, “Far Bundaloh? What’s on Far Bundaloh? Aside from the iridium mines, there’s jack there. It’s an agroworld. Somebody looking to steal the crops out on the back forty? Rustle some meat critters?”
    Jo looked at Gramps. “Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.”
    Gunny chuckled.
    Gramps frowned.
    Cutter, leaning against the wall by the door, nodded. Off his look, Jo said, “As you are all aware, TotalMart is our top customer and thus pays most of our bills. And since the current corporate philosophy is ‘If anybody sells it anywhere, TotalMart does it cheaper and is more convenient,’ then you realize that supply and demand depend on each other.
    “Masbülc—for those of you living in a cave for the last twenty years, is TotalMart’s biggest competitor. ‘Biggest’ is a relative term: They do seventeen percent as much business as TotalMart, so that’s hardly threatening the corporate existence; however, that’s still twice as much as Masbülc bottom-lined ten years ago. They are leaner, hungrier, and aggressive, and looking to cut a bigger slice of the pie. Decreased sales for TM means some executives will see it reflected in the size of their year-end bonuses.
    “More importantly, we might see it reflected in
our
business.
    “On FB, as everywhere else, Masbülc’s ops have nipped at TotalMart’s heels for years. Little stuff, mostly, misdirected delivery vans, cyberattacks on store systems, bribing employees to become sand in the machine’s gears, like that. Probably the store there—only one of those onworld—loses more to pilferage and shoplifting than from what Masbülc’s dirty-tricks harriers are doing.
    “But it’s not about the local store. FB supplies some exotic food exports that are sold galaxy-wide, and the biggest share of those flow into the TM system.
And
the Masbülc ops have gotten their claws hooked into that in a way that pisses off corporate uplevels.”
    Formentara said, “So we are spacing to the end of the galaxy to do what? Act as armed guards on agrovans full of roots and twigs?” Zhe raised an eyebrow.
    Jo smiled. Formentara was an androgyne,
mahu
, and hir sex impossible to determine from a first look. Attractive, but . . . male, female, other? Jo didn’t know; nor did it matter. Formentara was perhaps the greatest augmentation expert in the galaxy, and it was through hir grace that Jo functioned as well as she did. Jo was near the limit on augs, and