TEXT: BattleCorps
  DJINN OF DESPAIR
  Kevin Killiany
  Chapter Two
  
  BattleCorps
  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  16 September 3057
  Terrance:
  You can get the hard numbers from the attached files. Or save yourself 
  a lot of wading by looking at the digest Miriam put together. Let me save 
  you some time on gloating by letting you know up front you were right. 
  After more than a decade on a low simmer, MindMASC has taken off. It’s 
  all over the place. Well, not all over—more on that in a minute.
  Lot fewer fatalities among users than we were seeing five years ago. 
  Percentage wise. We’ve seen something like a ten-thousand percent rise 
  in users in the last year, year and a half. Looks like whoever is packag-
  ing this stuff figured out what to cut it with to minimize the risk. Need 
  to keep users alive if you want repeat business. So you were right—I’m 
  going to keep saying that until you stop getting a kick out of hearing 
  it—the limited distribution we used to see meant test markets, not lack 
  of resources. 
  Pills are standardized, meaning tight central control on production—
  though we’re finding mixing and pill-pressing labs on several worlds. 
  It’s easier to smuggle the pure stuff and step on it after it reaches a dis-
  tribution point. One milligram of MindMASC to ninety-nine milligrams 
  of a sugar/vitamin/electrolyte mix designed to carry the body through 
  the rush. 
  One upside of the explosion of MindMASC is now a hundred local law 
  enforcement agencies are on the case. Some of these crews are sharp. 
  They’ve put together stuff in months that took us years. And they’ve 
  found a few new wrinkles. Which means: You were right. We should 
  have gone public with this in forty-seven.
  One thing you—and the rest of us—were not right about. MindMASC 
  is not coming from the outside. Not your favorite Rim Collection nor 
  the Circinus Federation everybody else was betting on. Though you can 
  take some solace from the fact you were probably closer.
  MindMASC is a natural product, one that can’t be synthesized—yet—
  and the source can’t be widespread or we’d have heard of this stuff a 
  century ago. All of which means MindMASC has to be coming from one 
  place. The tight vertical control of distribution supports that thinking.
  Well, Isodore realized we were looking at a distribution issue as well 
  as a smuggling operation and that BCS didn’t have the resources to 
  watch every jump point, so he called in—brace yourself—the Eighth 
  Lyran Regulars. 
  I sent a back-up crystal in case you just threw the noteputer.
  
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  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  Isodore’s reasoning turned out to be sound. While you don’t expect 
  guys used to making busts in hundred-ton BattleMechs to be too subtle 
  on a street investigation, when it comes to shipping... Pirate hunters 
  routinely analyze shipping patterns and put together clues from circum-
  stantial evidence we’d miss. Evidence we were missing.
  Rochelle was the guy we dealt with, XO of the Eighth, pretty much, 
  though you know how they go out of their way to not follow stan-
  dard structure. Funny thing was we first had to explain MindMASC to 
  him. Never heard of it. From New India to Son Hoa and points in be-
  tween—the corridor the Eighth occupies—there has been no evidence 
  of MindMASC. Meaning the distributors have been staying out of their 
  way. Which implies talent local to their area—folks who knew enough to 
  stay out of their way.
  More evidence of a local operation: Coreward from New India to Halifax 
  and spinward from the Periphery to Mercedes are about a dozen worlds 
  in Alarion and the Periphery March – excuse me, Timbuktu Theater—that 
  have never heard of MindMASC. Rochelle thinks that means the source 
  is somewhere inside that region. (If the stuff weren’t taking over the Rim 
  Collection, he’d support your pet theory.) The idea being they aren’t do-
  ing business close to home because they want to avoid attention.
  So while we’re still working the streets and following command chains 
  and money trails, the Mad Hatters are making a sweep of the middle 
  third of the Timbuktu Theater. Using their BattleMechs to kick in doors 
  and turn over rocks. Seems they hate drug pushers as much as they hate 
  pirates.
  Of course, even if they’ve wiped out the source by the time this crystal 
  reached you, we both know there’s enough raw MindMASC in circula-
  tion to keep the drug on the streets for years. Plus we never know when 
  some kid with a chemistry kit is going to figure out how to synthesize 
  the stuff.
  So we are ever vigilant, mon ami. The stuff is making its way farther 
  spinward every day and it’s up to us to stop it. With everything that’s on 
  her shoulders now, I don’t want our Archon having to take time out to 
  consider something as banal as drug addiction among the people.
  Best to Cecilia and the grandkids.
  Freideric Salinger
  Director, Bureau of Controlled Substances
  
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  Djinn of Despair • Page 
  JumpShip Saint George 
  Kirkkila Asteroid Cloud 
  Timbuktu Theater, Lyran Alliance 
  20 October 3057
  The last tones of the all-clear signaling the Pith was secure in its 
  docking collar were still sounding as Hauptmann Kristoff Sardella, 
  Second Company, Third Battalion of the Eighth Lyran Regulars 
  cycled the personnel hatch. Jackknifing mid-flight with practiced 
  ease, he kicked off from the bulkhead and arrowed toward the 
  bow of the Saint George. 
  Stretching his right arm to its limit—and picking up a bit of un-
  intended spin—he tapped a handhold with the very tips of his 
  fingers. The push accelerated him up the corridor toward officer 
  country. He liked to “fly” as far from the walls as possible—risking 
  the possible injury and certain embarrassment of an uncontrolled 
  trajectory. 
  He didn’t give a damn most people—particularly spacers—
  thought it was typical MechWarrior bravado. He remembered 
  the terror of heights—of falling—that had haunted him his entire 
  childhood. And paralyzed him during zero-g before he’d set out 
  to overcome the phobia. Now he reveled in his ability—his vic-
  tory—and pushed his personal limits at every opportunity.
  Now his mind was more on the mission than the joy of flinging 
  himself through empty air. The mission that was changing—had 
  changed—unexpectedly. The unexpected was expected on pirate 
  patrol, of course, but the source of the unexpected—the sort of un-
  expected one expected—was usually pretty predictable. The new 
  orders were unexpected in a new direction.
  Sardella was self-aware enough for a twisted smile at the convo-
  lutions behind that thought. 
  Pulling his knees to his chest, he planted the balls of his feet on 
  the lip of the rotator ring. A powerful thrust carried him across the 
  empty axis of the grav deck—nothing around him for thirty meters 
  in all directions—and into the JumpShip’s forward section. This 
  was the crew’s section. Sardella knew it was supposedly crowded 
  because the Saint George carried a double complement—stan-
  dard practice aboard a pirate hunter that might need a prize crew 
  to man any captured vessels—but he saw no one. 
  
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  From the grav deck it was a straight shot up the central corridor 
  and through the always-open double hatch of the bridge. Snagging 
  the edge of the hatch frame, he pulled a sharp ninety rather than 
  shoot into the center of the cabin.
  Sardella had to stretch to catch the handhold just “above” the 
  scanner tech’s position without bumping his chair. Her chair, 
  Sardella saw, Leutnant Travers. Still on New India Base time, he’d 
  forgotten the Saint George was on gamma shift during his mid-
  morning.
  Leutnant Travers—he couldn’t remember her first name—ac-
  knowledged the MechWarrior’s presence with a nod, keeping 
  her attention fixed on her duty. Though technically a JumpShip, 
  Captain Josef Lanier and the crew maintained conducted them-
  selves as though the Invader-class Saint George was a WarShip. 
  Which made sense, since its primary duty was transporting Mad 
  Hatters on pirate hunts. At the moment the Saint George was car-
  rying the Union-class Pith—on which his company of BattleMechs 
  was berthed—and the Intruder-class Harpy on a cold hunt for a 
  new pirate group rumor said was building a base somewhere in 
  the heart of the Periphery March. 
  Timbuktu Theater, Sardella corrected himself. It’s been Timbuktu 
  Theater for a month, now.
  The Saint George’s particle projection cannon weren’t much of a 
  threat to any pirate ship they might encounter. But pirates almost 
  never risked their precious ships in direct combat. Nearly a de-
  cade of pirate hunting had taught Sardella pirate battles happened 
  on the ground—either on worlds the pirates were raiding or on 
  moons they’d fortified. It took BattleMechs and ground pounders 
  to bring pirates down.
  He didn’t imagine they’d see anything but the exhaust flares 
  of any pirate ships they encountered in space. Particularly if the 
  baddies got a glimpse of the Harpy—nobody went up against an 
  Intruder if they could help it. What he was really hoping for—had 
  been hoping for—was a ground-based stronghold he and his boys 
  and girls could crack open.
  Not likely now.
  Sardella noted Travers was strapped tightly to her chair—not 
  merely tethered—ready for any sudden maneuvers. A quick 
  glance at the field of asteroids cluttering the main screens con-
  
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  vinced him she had the right of it. Pulling the retractable tether 
  from the base of the handhold, he searched for one of the safety 
  loops built into the jump suit he’d been issued. A hundred patrols 
  and he still couldn’t get used to the monkey suits. Of course, he 
  felt overdressed in anything other than a cooling vest—and under-
  dressed without the weight of a neurohelmet.
  Once he was secured—and had remembered to ratchet the slack 
  out of the safety line—Sardella glanced around the bridge. As 
  commander of the mission, he technically had the right to be on 
  the bridge of the Saint George any time he wanted. But tradition 
  kept him either aboard the DropShip transporting his company or 
  in the more public areas of officer country. In making his bridge 
  open to the MechWarrior, Captain Lanier was granting him an 
  exceptional courtesy. And the best way for Sardella to show he 
  appreciated it was to keep himself stuck to a back wall and out of 
  everybody’s way.
  The scanner tech’s screen—a tertiary redundant of the main 
  screens at tac—showed Sardella nothing but natural rocks rang-
  ing in size from a small farmhouse up to impressive planetoids. 
  He recognized a behemoth bisected by the left edge of the screen 
  was massive enough for its own gravity to have shaped it into a 
  sphere. That made it, what? At least a thousand kilometers in di-
  ameter. A planet in his book, though the astro-cartography wonks 
  disagreed. 
  Whatever one chose to call it, that rock alone offered plenty 
  of places for pirates to hide a base. The Karkkila asteroid cloud 
  would take weeks to survey, even if they avoided the areas being 
  mined for metals, rare earths, and water. Of course, fresh from 
  their fruitless sweep of Kladnitsa’s moons, they had the search 
  routines down pat. The fact they were looking for a base—and that 
  a base under construction was hard to hide—made their objective 
  possible, if not easy. Hunting a single pirate ship lying doggo in 
  this rocky wilderness would have been pointless.
  Though this last batch of orders make it pointless anyway.
  Captain Lanier had his back to Sardella, giving orders in a voice 
  pitched to the helm and nav officers directly in front of him; 
  Sardella heard them only as a murmur.
  Content to wait until he was noticed, Sardella watched the half 
  dozen other members of the bridge crew do their jobs. As a com-
  pany commander, he appreciated watching professionals work in 
  concert. But he was a MechWarrior and sufficiently aware of his 
  
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  own independent nature to know the level of cooperation neces-
  sary to command and run a JumpShip was completely beyond 
  him.
  Nothing seemed to move, but a faint wave of nausea passed 
  through him. His inner ear told him something was changing, but 
  it was too subtle for even his battle-trained reflexes to sort out. He 
  suspected it was a micro correction to the JumpShip’s course.
  “Hauptmann Sardella,” Captain Lanier broke into his thoughts. 
  “What do you make of our last communiqué?”
  There was another difference between himself and Lanier, 
  Sardella noted. The JumpShip captain considered conversations 
  in front of the bridge crew to be private.
  “There’s enough leeway in the wording to allow us to finish scout-
  ing the Karkkila system before complying,” he said. “We could 
  take whatever time we need and still be within the letter.”
  “But you don’t intend to finish here?” Lanier’s tone made it clear 
  he thought hunting down the pirates took precedence over any 
  other consideration.
  “I’d rather get the pirates,” Sardella assured him. “But this 
  MindMASC is the graver concern.”
  Which was true. The info dump that had accompanied his orders 
  documented hundreds of worlds—tens of thousands of lives—be-
  ing corrupted by the hallucinogenic drug.
  Lanier nodded. He’d seen the same data.
  “Distribution patterns indicate the source is New India,” the 
  JumpShip captain said. 
  “Which would be convenient,” Sardella acknowledged with a 
  twisted smile. “But I’m thinking something a bit coreward.”
  “Ender’s Cluster.”
  “Ender’s Cluster,” Sardella agreed. “The cluster proper, not the 
  colony.”
  “All of First Bat is one jump away from Ender’s,” Lanier said.
  “And gearing up to meet a thrust high command thinks the 
  Leaguers are going to make,” Sardella shrugged, the gesture 
  bumping him against the bulkhead. “We’re already deployed, the 
  
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  perfect mix for the mission, and also only one jump away from 
  Ender’s.”
  Lanier grunted. He clearly saw the logic of the choice, he just 
  didn’t like it.
  “There are nine suns and God knows how many worlds and 
  moons in the Cluster,” Sardella said. “Any thoughts on where we 
  should begin searching?” 
  “We don’t search the Cluster,” Lanier said. “Not on our own. 
  There’s too much going on in that soup for anyone who’s not there 
  every day to track. We need to make Ender’s Cluster and take on 
  a local pilot—three local pilots if the DropShips are going to de-
  tach—before we go into the Cluster.”
  “Ender’s Cluster it is, then.”
  “Course is plotted and load in the nav computer,” Lanier said, 
  confirming the entire exchange had been a formality confirming a 
  decision they’d both made in advance.
  “Right now our only problem is all this local gravity clutter,” he 
  indicated the asteroid field beyond the viewports with an econom-
  ical wave. “No handy pirate points. We have to climb to the zenith 
  jump point to get out of here.”
  Sardella nodded. In space the long journeys were instantaneous. 
  It was the short trips that ate up your life.
  
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