“Yes, bass!” Simbo replied, just as loud. The command had been broadcast across the entire 1st Company frequency and though the veterans knew precisely what the captain was doing, the new recruits did not and were suitably terrified. Their pace increased.
Integrating the new recruits into 1st Company was taking longer than Samson and Mulbah had liked, so the Leopard’s commander suggested taking them out into the middle of nowhere and forcing the recruits to find their way back to civilization. Mulbah had then proposed he take all of 1st Company, and Samson, seeing an opportunity to build up the teamwork necessary for them to be efficient mercs, had readily agreed.
They had left headquarters three days ago. Three days of running inside their Mk 7 CASPers, stopping only to refuel their suits at designated spots and for a quick bite to eat and some water from their packs. No showers, little rest. The men inside the suits were tired and angry, but functioning as a unit. This was important because of the storms looming on the horizon, ready to lash down on the Korps.
We truly are the lions now, Samson thought as they began to bound past one another, using a standard two-man fire and movement tactic used by soldiers from around the world. Bounding overwatch was effective when not in contact with an enemy. It was a doubly effective maneuver when two CASPers used it to lay down the pain and offer suppressing fire for one another as they moved.
Samson had considered early on just using the sims but then realized the new recruits weren’t ready for integration through simulation just yet. It hadn’t taken much to get Mulbah on board with the enhanced training ideas, either, which meant the Korps commander knew an attack was imminent. The problem? Nobody knew precisely which alien race it would be.
Samson was determined to train against all possible threats. He knew Zion and, to a lesser extent, Antonious were both preparing in similar manners. With the flood of new arrivals, Antonious had been fitted for a new-ish Mk 8 CASPer with a fully integrated pinlink Mattis Aerospace and the ever-helpful Mister Donahue had found somewhere. The one-armed merc could be a pilot once more and command the Jackals out in the field, where he belonged. His old CASPer, after being patched up, had been assigned to the only woman in the entire Korps, Sunshine.
A yellow suit warning appeared on his Tri-V. He read the screen and saw the cooling system in one of the new recruit’s CASPer was beginning to fail. Samson waited for the panicky call from young private. Sure enough, eight seconds after Samson detected it, the call came.
“Uh, Leopard Six? It’s Private Fields,” the voice said nervously over the company frequency. Samson rolled his eyes and flipped over to a private frequency.
“Alpha Five, this is Leopard Six, go,” Samson ordered. He made a mental note to work on comms discipline at the next refuel stop.
“Sir, I’ve got coolant issues with my suit, over.”
“Have you informed your squad leader yet, Private?”
“Uh…no, sir?”
“Best get on that, Private,” Samson stated. “Leopard Six, out.”
He killed the comms and waited a bit as he listened to the new recruit struggle to create a private frequency between the 1st Squad Leader and himself. Samson shook his head as the private fumbled his way through the problem, which the squad leader rightfully kicked up to First Sergeant Simbo. The sergeant had the solution to the issue within seconds and the orders came back down. Samson smiled but said nothing more as more instructions were relayed. Alpha Five stepped out of the bounding cover maneuvers to work on the problem in his suit.
Samson checked the external temperature and found it to be a rather placid 112 degrees Fahrenheit. Given the time of year and location they were running through, he had expected it to be markedly higher. Yet if this mild of a temperature was causing some foul-ups in the suits, then there was no telling just how bad it could get when it truly got hot.
There had been many reasons he had selected the Tanezrouft region of the Sahara Desert for this sort of bonding/training exercise, but the overall heat in the dead of summer was his primary reasoning. Most of the men were from Monrovia, so they were used to the combined heat and humidity. Water was never a problem there, though sometimes it was suspect and chock full of bacteria. Dysentery was still a problem in Liberia, even after mankind had traveled to the stars. Training in the barren wastelands of the Tanezrouft meant water was more precious than anything else. Cover and shelter were also needed, and the maintenance the mercs of 1st Company performed on their CASPers before they went out was beginning to show.
“Leopard One, this is Six, over,” Samson said as he bounded after the lead element of the company, using his jump packs to vault forward fifty meters at a time.
“Copy. Bass?”
“We’re five klicks from the last refuel point of the day,” Samson said as he consulted his GPS locater on the Tri-V. “Recommend we take the long way.”
“Let them learn to love the Land of Thirst, eh, bass?” Simbo laughed boisterously. Samson couldn’t help but chuckle at Simbo’s “embrace the suck” mentality. It was very much in kind with what Mulbah liked to preach, and what 1st Company had adopted. “Copy, Six. One, Out.”
Samson grinned as he listened to the first sergeant order a new set of commands on the company frequency. He could hear the groans of the men, particularly from the new recruits, but they followed the first sergeant’s lead anyway. Samson nodded and watched the procession continue the bounding overwatch.
Practice makes perfect, he thought.
* * *
Later, as the sun set and the men of 1st Company were settled down for the evening, the sky began to burn.
Samson watched in awe as meteorite after meteorite fell from the heavens, blazing a brief, bright trail across the sky before disappearing. Dozens fell by the minute and the Liberian could only watch the splendor which was the universe. He had traveled across dozens of worlds and seen many alien sights, yet nothing called to him more than his own planet. There were many mysteries yet to be uncovered.
For the first time since being hired by Mulbah, he understood just what the commander meant. Earth was different in a way no other alien species could hope to understand. It had spawned a race unlike anything the Galactic Union had ever seen. Slowly, as he watched the beauty of the night and the stars race overhead, Samson came to realize this was why the Mercenary Guild had taken control of Earth. Not for the safety of the planet, nor because of the Four Horsemen allegedly breaking Galactic Law. No, it was out of fear. Fear of what humanity was.
Of what it could become.
“First Sergeant?” Samson called as he sought out the company’s senior NCO. Outside of his suit, he found the desert beauty came at a price. It was colder than he had expected, but otherwise not too unpleasant. Some of the other men, however, had elected to sleep in their CASPers to stay warm. Almost all of them were the newer recruits. The veterans had opted to sleep outside their suits to enjoy the nighttime views.
“Yeah, bass?” Simbo appeared out of the darkness as if by magic. Samson never took his eyes off the stars above.
“You think the bass know what he do?” Samson asked, slipping into the familiar pidgin mashup he had been raised with. It was comforting, but it also felt slightly wrong. He had been using his translator in his pinplants for too long. His accent was beginning to fade. “He ken good idea, but this?” He waved a hand around the desert, and he switched back to standard English. “Is this worth it? Is all of this worth our possible deaths?”
“It’s not for me to decide, bass,” Simbo answered as he looked up at the sky. “I do what I’m told. If you or the bass say go and fight, I go and fight. But you want to know the truth?”
“Please.”
“I don’t like to fight,” Simbo admitted. “But this merc job pays better than anything, and I can feed my family. My mama didn’t have food. It’s why I ended up with you when we were kids. The general, he feed us, but he beat us, too. This? This is like…responsibility, ken?”
Samson no
dded. Loyalty he understood. It had been loyalty which had kept him onboard with the Korps after his friend Khean had died defending the alien Korteschii on their first contract. Samson’s word was worth something, which was one of the many lessons he wanted to impart on his children before he left the world for good.
“I think we misnamed the company,” Samson said after many long, silent minutes of reflection.
“What’re you thinking?”
“Mulbah—Captain Luo, he named his platoon the Lions,” Samson said. “I took Leopards and Antonious took Jackals. It fit too well. Heh. Zion took Goshawks, which I can understand a little. But you know what? We are all under one banner. We should have called ourselves Sons of the Lion.”
“The fabled lost lions of Liberia,” Simbo nodded in understanding. Every boy knew of the stories of how the lion was once mighty and proud, prowling the delta of what would later become Liberia. The Christian parable of the mouse and the lion was always at the forefront of their minds because legend had it the lion was from their part of Africa, enslaved and abused for the amusement of its Roman masters. “I never told you about the time I saw a lion out in the bush, did I?”
“No, never,” Samson admitted. Simbo sighed and crouched down. He found a small rock in the sandy basin and brought it up for a moment. The merc played with the stone, rolling it across his rough, scarred palms.
“I ran away from the CLPA when I was ten,” Simbo said, lost in his memories. Samson listened, fascinated. He never knew how Simbo had arrived at the old general’s camp. Simbo had shown up one day and been proficient with a weapon. The fact Simbo had been a child soldier for the Christian Liberation People’s Army was surprising, since they had been wiped out to a man when UN peacekeeping forces clashed with them. “You remember how bad they were? The rumors? The rumors were nothing compared to the reality of it. The bass there was mean and liked games. He called himself General Pontificus, like some great Roman general. Said he was the African Caesar, and every great Caesar needed his gladiator pits. He had a game he liked to play. He would throw two boys into a murder pit and let them try and kill one another. The winner got to eat, the loser became dinner to the lion he kept in another pit. It was always scary, but also…fun. Looking back, it was horrible, but at the time it just didn’t seem real. You know what it’s like.”
Samson nodded. He did understand. The warlords always kept the children under their command addicted to drugs and in a constant stupor. It was hard to run away when you were dependent on a drug only the general had.
Simbo continued. “Then one day my time came. I knew it would happen. I was always the smallest, ken? Fought hard but got beat by the bigger boy. I was supposed to be thrown into the lion pit but then we were attacked. I ran into the bush in nothing but my pants and an old dress shirt I stole from some dead boy.
“For three days I walked around. I was lost. My feet were bloody and my teeth were loose, ken? I could barely see. I was in withdrawal. I was starving, but I knew I couldn’t go back to the CLPA. They’d kill me. But I didn’t know what else there was. The drugs had worn off by then, so I was hungry and sick. Everything hurt. I kept throwing up the water I drank. I knew I was dying, bass, but I wasn’t afraid. It just was supposed to be.
“Then I saw it. It was a night like tonight, far away from the city lights. I saw a lion standing on a rock, looking at me. It might have been a dream, I don’t know. It was a big lion, bass. His mane was gold, his eyes glowed in the dark. His fur looked as if it had been dipped in bronze. Maybe it was the drugs changing the way I saw things? It jumped off the rock and started walking away. I followed it. All night I walked, staying just behind it. The lion, bass, was strange. He never looked back at me, not once. Just kept walking, like he was leading me somewhere.
“At sunrise I lost sight of the lion. It just disappeared in the bush. I was crying because I was still alive. I thought I was dying and the lion was taking me to heaven, menh. The sun grew brighter and I wanted to die so much. I thought I earned the good death, ken? But…then I saw the general’s camp. I made it to the gate and they let me in. He recruited me and fed me. I lived when I knew I should have died. Two weeks later we were freed by them Christian missionaries. I never had to fight for him.
“But even now, I wonder if I really saw a lion. I want to say yes. I want to believe God sent that lion down to guide me so I could do things later. When I heard about the Korps I signed up. I knew how to fight, even though I didn’t like to. Still don’t. But the bass, Captain? He give us something to fight for. This is why I fight for the Lion. He wants Liberia to have hope, menh.”
The officer and the NCO sat quietly for the remainder of the night, each lost in their own thoughts as they watched the stars rain down upon the great Saharan Desert.
* * *
Mangrove Island, Chocolate City, Liberia District, Earth
“This is the best you got?” Donahue complained as he looked around the barren, swampy muck of the island. He tried to lift his foot out of the thick mud and almost lost his boot. “Once the missiles get placed here, the vehicles aren’t going to be able to move again. You’ll be stuck in there good.”
“If everything happens the way it appears to be headed, then we’re only going to get a few chances at launching,” Thorpi reminded the defense contractor as he nimbly made his way through the muck and grime. “This island offers a clear flight path in all directions with zero barriers for your missiles. The hardest part will be hiding them from above.”
“Let us handle that,” Donahue reassured the diminutive Veetanho. Pushing his brown hair from his eyes, the contractor set his sunglasses firmly in place and placed his hands on his hips. “Yep, we’ve got inflatable buildings which can be popped up and pulled down within seconds. We already know when satellites pass overhead, as well as the platforms, and there’s a good four-hour window every morning just before dawn. Hiding won’t be too much of a problem.”
“If you say so,” Thorpi said and kicked at a rather large clump of grass and mud. It splattered against the toe of his boot as well as against the side of the off-road utility vehicle Donahue had driven them in. The COO of the Kakata Korps looked at the two mercenaries flanking the vehicle, providing security in case a local decided they made a tempting target, and sighed. “This will work. The assault shuttles will need to be targeted first. Don’t waste time on the fighters, if they send any. The mercs being dropped need to be targeted, not the fighter.”
“I was a merc once too, remember?” Donahue reminded the Veetanho, his tone sour. “You can bomb a culture back to the Stone Age but it doesn’t matter if you don’t have boots on the ground to hold it. We’ve learned this lesson the hard way many times over. Humans…well, we are very good at killing.”
“So I have noticed,” Thorpi said without much humor. “Everyone in the Galactic Union knows by now.”
“What type of assault shuttles do you think they’ll bring?” Donahue asked as he surveyed the muddy isle with a careful eye. The more he looked around the better it appeared. The grounds would dry out as they moved out of rainy season. The island would rejoin the mainland when the river diverted after the seasonal storms dissipated. This could be both a blessing and a curse, though.
“I have no idea,” Thorpi admitted, annoyed at the fact he was missing vital information once more. It was beginning to grow tiresome. “I would assume they would be Zuul shuttles, though, so what you Humans would call Excelsior-class assault shuttles. Besquith and Tortantulas are similar in design, but larger.”
“Small exhaust ports, bulky things, decent armor,” Donahue murmured as he began to flip through his slate and scroll through the data. “Yeah, the PAC-VL’s would do wonders against them. What about other mercs though?”
“Besquith and the Tortantulas are still reeling from the biological attacks, last I heard,” Thorpi stated. “General Peepo is most displeased by this, and is trying to keep it quiet at how far back this sets her. Unfortunately for her, she has made
enemies everywhere. Other than that, she doesn’t have many options. The Horsemen are keeping the rest of the guild busy around the galaxy. One of the few times I will admit to being thankful for them.”
“Why do you hate them?” Donahue asked, turning to look at the Veetanho. “I mean, they didn’t do anything to you, did they?”
“I don’t hate them,” Thorpi stated after a long, pregnant pause. He looked off into the distance, his eyes unseeing. “It’s envy, sort of. Luck, too. Luck is not a strategy, yet each one of the Four Horsemen have had more than their fair share of it, altering the tide of battle far too often in their favor. Luck which many other mercenary companies, Human and non-Human alike, have not been blessed with.”
“I hear you,” Donahue grunted. “I had a guy in my old company who walked through fifteen drops without a single scratch on his CASPer. Luckiest son of a bitch I ever met. Retired when he made enough money to buy his own company but settled off-world somewhere, fat and wealthy. But you know what? The reaper comes for us all, eventually.”
“His luck ran out, I take it?” Thorpi looked over at Donahue, who nodded.
“Died on his wedding night,” Donahue stated. “Married a girl who was young and energetic. By that point old Julian was pushing well into his eighth decade. Heart attack in the middle of his wedding night, ah, celebration.”
“It is…darkly humorous, and is terrible of me to feel as such,” Thorpi admitted, his voice uncomfortable. Donahue chuckled.
“Welcome to the club,” the contractor replied. “We laughed our asses off at his memorial service while tossing back drinks in his memory.”
“His poor wife,” Thorpi sighed. Donahue’s grin widened.
“She made out pretty well,” he told the Veetanho. “Legally married, and inherited quite a large fortune because of it since she didn’t violate the pre-nup. Julian was big on contracts, but he didn’t expect to die in the middle of…well, you get the gist. Before you say she had it easy, however, bear in mind it took the first responders thirty minutes to pull the body off of her. Julian was…extremely hefty.”
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