Ghost War by Stackpole Michael A

Author:Stackpole, Michael A [Stackpole, Michael A]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-10-12T09:29:24+00:00

21

An ally has to be watched just like an enemy.

—Leon Trotsky

Manville, Capital District

Basalt

Prefecture IV, Republic of the Sphere

29 January 3133

Niemeyer’s visit, though brief, was enough to focus me on an important part of my job, and the reason I’d arrived early. I needed to scan the local political situation to see if I could figure out what the teams were and where Handy was going to have me work. Niemeyer was clearly one faction, though exactly how strong and how aligned I had yet to figure out. Clearly if he were warning folks off and even offering to pay them to leave, he hadn’t yet made the transition to outlaw that his threats suggested. While I had no doubt he could murder me and leave me in the wilderness for the nibblers to get, telling me he would do it and actually doing it were worlds apart.

Nibblers were, in some ways, the antithesis of Niemeyer, because their bite was definitely worse than their bark. The little predators were native to Basalt, ran up to sixty centimeters in length and fifteen kilos in weight. Thoroughly disagreeable creatures, they would hunt and scavenge anything, consuming its bone, sinew, hair and meat. It was highly recommended that folks should not go camping alone in Basalt’s parks because if you happened to die in your sleep, or fall down and get injured, the only traces of you that would ever be found would be badly dented metal like belt buckles and jewelry.

A smaller species of the creatures had entered the cities, occupying the same ecological niche as rats on other worlds. As a result, animals that were considered pets on Basalt tended to be medium to large dogs with a history of ratting. Someone once had the plan of introducing large snakes to Basalt to clear off the nibblers, but the beasts got to gathering at the point where the snakes were released into the forests. They just loved that wriggle-steak.

In fact, the only thing that kept them in check is that they were as cannibalistic as they were territorial. I definitely had the feeling that Niemeyer saw me as a nibbler, along with the others he’d alluded to. The analogy seemed rather apt and when I got back to Terra I was going to convince Consuela to change from jackals to nibblers as her totem creature for troublemakers.

In one more way the idea of our being nibblers was appropriate because, twenty years ago, the locals made an effort to soften the image of nibblers. Cuddly plush toys were created in their image. A local author started a series of children’s books featuring one as the hero. The “Nifty the Nibbler” character had even starred in a series of Tri-Vid shows I remember seeing as a kid—not that I knew what he was or where he was from.

I suspected that any effort made by those folks in Handy’s employ and our opposition would similarly be dressed up and softened to make it more palatable to the citizenry.

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