Sons of the Lion

by Jason Cordova

  The rifle shot was almost inaudible to Mulbah, even though he was less than twenty feet from it. The front left tire of the lead vehicle blew apart as Ange’s perfectly placed shot shredded it. The vehicle wobbled slightly before pulling to the side of the road and turning on its flashers.

  Four men piled out of the lead vehicle, weapons drawn as they scanned the area. Mulbah and his command squad remained still, using their camouflage to hide from suspecting eyes. Every scenario they had gamed suggested they would need more than the command squad if they attempted to subdue the Portuguese the moment they were out of their vehicles. No, they would wait until their guard was down, and the mercs were just about finished changing the tire on the vehicle, before the Korps struck.

  As expected, the second vehicle stopped behind the first and five more mercs climbed out, each one armed with a carbine Mulbah couldn’t immediately identify. Their eyes were focused outward, scanning for any signs of danger as the driver began to inspect the damage. Thanks to the subsonic round’s fragmentation, though, the tire was pretty well shredded, with no obvious sign of a bullet hole.

  The next part was the hardest. The Korps simply lay there and watched as the tire jack was dug out of the back and the vehicle raised so they could change the tire. The mercenaries began to relax, their eyes turning inward. Their talking became less agitated and moved onto more inane topics, exactly as Mulbah had hoped. A few even lit cigarettes and stood around smoking.

  Mulbah double-clicked his mic and counted to five before clicking it three times in rapid succession.

  Four shots whispered out from compressed air guns, the miniscule darts flying true through the open space between their concealed positions and their targets. More darts followed, and within thirty seconds, ten men were unconscious in the middle of the road.

  “Shuttle Aristotle, this is Lion Six,” Mulbah murmured into his throat mic as he pushed his ghillie blanket away and slowly approached the downed men. “Bagged ten mercs. Requesting retrieval, over.”

  “Copy, Lion Six,” came the immediate reply. “Down in thirty seconds.”

  “Lion Six, out,” Mulbah confirmed and killed the comms. Moving faster now, he pulled out his zip ties and began securing the captured mercenaries’ hands behind their backs. The process took less than thirty seconds, and he was able to check on the status of his squad before the shuttle landed.

  A perfect op. There was no other way to describe it. He had been a part of many ops throughout his years as a mercenary, and not one had ever gone perfectly to plan. Not until now, at least. Exhaling sharply, he looked around, concerned. Nothing had gone wrong? He shook his head.

  “That’s just strange,” he muttered as the shuttle landed ahead of them on the road. Zuul clambered down the rear ramp, their eyes carefully on the road, not the members of the Korps. Which is a good thing, Mulbah thought.

  The last thing Mulbah wanted was to tempt fate one too many times.

  * * *

  Mother Bea’s Tea Tavern, Chocolate City, Liberia District, Earth

  “I like you, Captain Tolbert,” Gregory Donahue said as he sipped from his mug, his blue eyes closed as he enjoyed the spicy flavors of the local tea leaves. He set the drink down before continuing. “You are very much like your venerable colonel, Mulbah Luo. Did you know this?”

  “So I’ve been told,” Samson replied with a dry chuckle.

  The captain had accidentally run into the defense contractor on his way home from the Kakata Korps’ headquarters the day before as the contractor was inspecting some of the larger buildings within Chocolate City. Worried the westerner would be robbed, or worse, by local toughs, Samson had invited him to his house. Once he realized just who he was, however, the captain began to doubt their meeting was any sort of accident at all. It was part of the reason he had insisted on taking the defense contractor out for tea at a local tavern, away from his family. Not because of the potential danger the westerner faced, but for privacy. His neighbors were both nosy and gossipy. Rumors were sure to spread.

  “Unlike your stalwart colonel, I believe the Mercenary Guild will turn on the Korps eventually,” Donahue said as he stirred his tea with a pinky. The heat of the liquid didn’t seem to bother the man, Samson noticed. “I did a little research on their history before the Information Guild began to clamp down on what passed between Earth’s Aethernet and the GalNet. They…have a reputation of doing this to races who belonged to the guild. Nothing concrete, mind you, but some of the allegations are serious enough to warrant an investigation, if there was anything in the Galactic Union that could stand up to them.”

  “I don’t get it,” Samson said with a shrug. He looked at his empty cup and decided he had enough tea for the day. “Why would the guild do this?”

  “Hard to say,” Donahue admitted as he swallowed the rest of his hot tea in one gulp. Sighing with satisfaction, he set the empty mug down and looked across the table at Samson. “I think part of it is that the colonel has put a lot of faith into the Mercenary Guild. It’s done wonders for your nation and your company, after all.”

  “Still,” Samson paused for a couple of heartbeats, considering. He thought about it and decided both men were correct. The possibility of the Mercenary Guild turning on them once everything had calmed down was definitely there, while the colonel’s reasoning why they wouldn’t was also sound. He grunted. “Still, the bass always says to be prepared. I’ll talk to Zion. He’s the man who controls the bank, menh.”

  “I promise you, your boss will thank you later for this,” Donahue assured him. “I’m a former merc myself, you know. I’ve seen the ‘justice’ and ‘fairness’ doled out by the Mercenary Guild firsthand.”

  “Who were you with?”

  “Morgan’s Morticians,” Donahue said as he leaned back in his chair. He put his hands behind his head and sighed contentedly. “God, those were the days. Suicide drops from assault shuttles on worlds where the sun is too far away to cast anything other than pre-dawn light, toxic worlds where the air was filled with oxygenized acid, aliens that can eat you in two bites, aliens who were venomous,…”

  “You are a twisted person, menh,” Samson chuckled and shook his head. “That sounds like no fun, ken?”

  “It wasn’t,” Donahue admitted with a wry smile, “but it paid well.”

  “You have no CASPers we need at the moment,” Samson stated as he brought the conversation back to the original point of their meeting. “You have no assault shuttles. Yeah, menh, I looked up your company. No spaceships. What do you have we can use?”

  “Ever heard of the Patriot Advanced Capability missile?”

  “No,” Samson admitted, digging into his pinplant for some information. What he found was very limited. “Who makes it?”

  “We do,” Donahue grinned. “We developed the PAC-VL when we got our hands on some Galactic tech. We made a surface-to-air missile that has almost zero heat signature when it launches. It doesn’t use radar but is instead guided into position by a dummy missile from a control unit. Neat stuff.”

  “Why…?” Samson paused as he thought his question over. The only feasible way for the Mercenary Guild to attack the Korps without violating Galactic Law would be through assault shuttles. The overland route was swampy and horrid, while around the capitol and Chocolate City there were spots where one could land a shuttle without difficulty. Without telling Mulbah, the former child soldier had already begun to identify potential landing zones.

  Samson still had serious misgivings about the Korps working for the guild and arresting the other Human mercenary companies. His natural distrust of all aliens, even Thorpi, was nearly impossible to shake. There was just something in the way they looked at Humans which set the mercenary on edge. It was as though they were constantly and silently judging humanity.

  Samson tugged on his ear and considered. He would have to bring Mulbah around, and quickly, since Zion would go to their CO the moment Samson asked for credits.

  Launch sites would be
dispersed around the city so identifying them would be difficult. Finding a spot for the command vehicle would be tricky, as would getting someone trained up enough to actually run the command site. The SAMs would definitely be an unwelcome surprise to any pilot who had been under the impression Liberia was a backwards country with no defenses.

  “Can you get your missiles into the country without alerting the Mercenary Guild?” Samson asked the defense contractor.

  A sly smile began to grow on Donahue’s face. “Getting it past the aliens was fairly easy.”

  “Good, I was worried about—wait, was?”

  “You didn’t think I’d come all this way and not be prepared, did you?”

  * * *

  Kakata Korps HQ, Freeport of Monrovia, Liberia District, Earth

  “Easy,” Zion said as he helped Sunshine out of the CASPer suit. “You handled it well, considering.”

  “I don’t feel good,” she gasped and promptly vomited all over the concrete floor of the storage warehouse.

  They had been going at it for almost twelve hours straight, with Sunshine refusing to give up on the training exercises Zion had designed for her. Despite her relative inexperience in the machines, she had initially taken to it like a duck to water. As time progressed, however, it became clearer to the CFO of the Korps the young woman was in dire need of pinplants. Not so she could keep up with the suit, but so the suit could keep up with her.

  “Let it out,” Zion murmured, not knowing what else to say to the sweat-soaked teenage girl. Sunshine had put more hours into a CASPer than anyone else had over the past few weeks.

  Mulbah was still incensed the Nigerian government had given the drug warlord their mechanized units, complete with trained crews. Nobody knew just how deeply the rot went, but Zion had a sneaky feeling that if the country’s leadership did not right itself soon, the Korps would be making a second trip to Nigeria, and it would not end well for the current regime.

  Sunshine crouched down and stared hard at the puke-covered concrete floor. Zion gave her another moment to spit out the last taste of bile and catch her breath before he reached down to pull her back upright.

  “Let’s go, back into the suit,” he instructed, hating himself for it but following her request to push her harder than he did anyone else. “Your breaktime is up.”

  “Ugh,” Sunshine groaned but quickly climbed back into the suit. Sealing herself in, she began to simulate a cold-start. Moments later the CASPer came back online. “Private Sunshine, reporting for duty.”

  “Don’t vomit in the cockpit or you’ll be cleaning it out for weeks,” Zion warned as he brought up a new simulation within the CASPer. He searched through the options on his slate until he found one in particular he felt was challenging. “Okay, the objective in this mission is to protect the primary. He is marked blue on your Tri-V display. There are an unknown number of hostiles in the area. You have some air support but the rest of your team is down. Get him to the evac site and off-world before they catch up with you.”

  “Time?” Sunshine asked, all misery and pain gone from her voice as she became hyper-focused on the task at hand.

  “Eleven minutes and counting,” Zion said, checking the timer off on his slate. “Starting now.”

  The young girl went to work.

  * * *

  “She’s coming along well, sir,” Zion told Mulbah two hours later as the duo sat in the briefing room. Both wore the typical dark green jumper of the Korps’ standard uniform, though neither wore the beret which Mulbah preferred. Zion shook his head. “Hell, she’s better in a CASPer than most of the men. The problem is the suit doesn’t respond as quickly as she does.”

  “Thinks too much?” Mulbah asked as he scrolled over the assessment report Zion had sent him of the young girl.

  “Thinks too fast, Colonel,” Zion corrected. “Her mind processes the simulation and comes up with a plan within seconds. It’s terrifying, sir. None of the other prospects tested as high as she did during her MST. For a girl who was nothing more than a thief and property of some wannabe drug boss, she’s almost too good to be true.”

  “You’re thinking she’s a plant of some kind?” Mulbah asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “If you think that, why recommend her for the procedure?”

  “I don’t think she’s a plant, no,” Zion said. “I’m just saying that if we push this ahead, she’ll be able to access stuff on the GalNet. It’s one thing to succeed in the classroom, but it’s another if she realizes just how big space really is.”

  “Final assessment?” Mulbah said in a tired voice. If he allowed the lawyer-turned-merc to dither around with the decision, they would be there until the end of time.

  “She’s ready, and we should foot the bill for the procedure,” Zion declared. “We’re flush with credits right now and if we wait, we could miss out on a window we might not get again.”

  “Meaning?” Mulbah probed.

  “Thorpi doesn’t like the feel he’s getting from the Mercenary Guild of late,” Zion said. “He thinks there is something afoot which will cause us problems, but he doesn’t have any leads just yet. Plus, Samson brought something to my attention I think you should really consider.”

  “I’ll talk to him later,” Mulbah promised. He tapped in a final series of commands and sent it to Zion’s slate. “Schedule her for the operation. The doc’s in Miami, Florida. It’ll take a full day, so I’m going to get her put in for the day after tomorrow. Does she know how painful it’ll be?”

  “I’ve warned her,” Zion nodded, though he was not quite fully convinced. “But I don’t think she believes me as to just how hard it could be.”

  “She was a slave who was beaten and abused by people her entire life, Captain,” Mulbah reminded him. “If she says she can handle this, then she can handle it. You of all people should know this.”

  “Call it my protective streak of all children, drunkards, and fools,” Zion chuckled.

  “I always wondered why you became a merc,” Mulbah said. “Now I know.”

  “Why, to protect Earth and the children of it?”

  “No. To keep idiots like me alive.”

  Zion laughed and got to his feet. Though it was early in the afternoon, he was exhausted from working with Sunshine all morning. He half-turned and looked at his boss, all humor quickly vanishing as he changed the subject. “One thing still bugs me after reading the after-action review from New Ikoyi.”

  “The laser shot which killed PFC Doré,” Mulbah finished for him.

  “I went over the visual feed and everything,” Zion stated as he smoothed out a small crease on his rolled-up sleeve. “There’s literally nothing around which could have made that shot from the angle it did. Not for kilometers around. The only location the shot could have come from was from almost seven kilometers away, near downtown Lagos. The R3 Galactic building, actually.”

  “Want to investigate it?” Mulbah asked, frowning. Zion shook his head.

  “It’s the beginning of the wet season,” he stated. “Any evidence that might have remained is long gone. It just…bugs me we don’t know who killed PFC Doré, or even why.”

  “Whoever made the shot, they knew the precise spot to hit,” Mulbah reminded him. “It’s not hard to get a really good sniper rifle these days, especially one that has the hitting power of a .577 and almost zero drop at up to ten kilometers. I know we’ve made enemies, both here and off-world. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if this was retribution for Italy.”

  “If it was, they sure picked one hell of a time to do it, sir,” Zion shook his head. “No, sir, it doesn’t add up at all.”

  “Okay then,” Mulbah decided as he stood up as well and pocketed his slate. “Keep it on the down low and investigate it on your own time. Meanwhile, go prep Sunshine for her trip to Miami. Sign out a shuttle from Major Thorpi and check his availability as a pilot. I’m fairly certain he’s free the rest of the week.”

  “Where are you off to?” Zion asked.


  Mulbah smiled slyly. “Meeting with President Forh in an hour,” he answered. “I think I know what he’s going to ask, which would be terrific, but I’m also a little afraid of it as well.”

  “Hey, the West African Defense League was a brilliant idea,” Zion countered. “He’s not thinking of changing it, is he?”

  “Not that I’m aware,” Mulbah reassured his CFO. “If anything, he might be adding more nations to it.”

  “Well, this is good news, isn’t it?” Zion asked.

  Mulbah shrugged. “When was the last time you saw a Liberian politician willingly cede power of any sort of magnitude?”

  “Uh, didn’t former President Njie do that?”

  “He only did it because I warned him if there were any problems with transference of power, the Korps would come and take care of him,” Mulbah stated. Zion’s eyes grew wide with surprise. Mulbah chuckled. “I did say ‘willingly,’ you know.”

  “I would never have pictured you as a king-maker,” Zion muttered.

  Mulbah grunted. “I never wanted to be one,” he said. “I’d rather be looked at differently than the man who led a coup against a coup to defeat another coup in order to restore democracy.”

  “That made my head hurt.”

  “Should’ve tried saying it. I think I sprained my tongue.”

  * * *

  Executive Presidential Mansion, Monrovia, Liberia

  “Colonel Luo! Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

  The President of Liberia greeted him as soon as he cleared the last set of guards.

  Mulbah was impressed with the security upgrades. As much as he loathed needing so many defenses to protect the president, the recent uptick in legitimate threats to President Forh meant precautions had to be taken, especially as more and more people moved in from the bush to live in the capitol city itself. The city, which was once called home by 1.5 million people before the influx, was now bursting at the seams as various indigenous tribes and people lived amongst one another.