by Nick Cole
And that was it. That was all he said. He didn’t ask for a way out. Didn’t try to surrender. Thinking back on it, as we secured the building later and waited for the new day, I heard his voice, replaying it in my head. Not grim fatalism. But a kind of practical, well, this is it, isn’t it?
“You guys comin’ in?” Steadly asked finally.
I hesitated for a long moment and then I must’ve mumbled or not shouted loud enough down the corridor where we were. That we had to.
“What?” he yelled back.
“Yeah,” I told him. “We’re comin’ in. Got to, Stead. You know how it is.”
I was sorry about that. But I couldn’t tell him.
You become a paid private military contractor, this is how it shakes out sometimes. You know that going in. You know that all along. We weren’t here to take prisoners. We needed to own this loc for the next two weeks. Until the big show.
“Figured,” he said back down the hall.
“How many you got in there?” I asked. But why? Why did I ask? Like if he gave the right number was I gonna dare call it into the captain and say Hey we couldn’t kill twelve guys we once knew on another contract? Or did I do it because I was just desperate to survive a fight? This was a fight and maybe I needed to know how many he had in there. If I could trick him into giving me a number, using sentimentality like maybe that might humanize the defenders a little more and buy them some mercy, then I’d do it. I’d use it to kill him so I could stay alive one minute longer.
But we were both pros. And we both knew it.
You have to be honest about these things.
“Guess you’ll have to come in here and find out, Orion,” said Steadly in the silence that followed.
And so we did.
Chapter Six
The attack on the Astralon port of stellar entry was two days later than the two weeks I’d expected it to happen by. And what was supposed to have been an oh-dark-murder didn’t kick off until the sun was mid-morning high and no one was in the mood to cross open ground to get their kill on.
The Resistance generals, again the actual legitimate authority of the world known as Crash on the official stellar charts, had dithered over a massive artillery strike on our behalf, finally releasing the big guns to fire at dawn. Great. I love artillery. Let the gun bunnies do all the work. Instead they did some work and then we were ordered forward into the day at the edge of the kilometers-wide starport of entry. The whole line was. This was the big one we’d all been waiting for.
The Resistance generals were going for all the marbles. I mean, they weren’t here. They weren’t actually going for it. It would be us going for all those marbles across all that wide concrete ring, artillery-savaged starships still on the ground, docking and boarding terminals on fire and burning. But that’s why we get paid the big bucks. Right?
Eight months of fighting on this world had boiled down to today. Whoever owned the starport owned traffic in and out of Crash and the rest of the system. Crash, like many of the rim worlds out here along the frontier, just needed a win to throw in with the actual rebellion against the Monarchs.
Something that wasn’t officially happening, according to the networks.
Maybe it’s time for some big-picture stuff. Since I’m slicing this account out of the main logs, and who knows what will happen to it, if all I can do is get it onto a cargo light hauler doing less than sub-light for the next forty years before it can get to the company’s lawyers and someone useful, then maybe I need to explain the whole galactic situation. Chances are it’s changed by the time someone reads this account.
Listen, you have to be realistic about these things. The galaxy’s a big place and stellar travel is an iffy proposition on a good day for most of the ships making the long dark haul between worlds.
Sorry to infodump. When I got this job, the job of the keeper of the official company log from Jojo No-Toes, before he got medical’d out on Surrant… Listen, there’s only so many limbs you can lose and still fight on without cybernetics, and the company hasn’t had cybernetic augments mem in ages. At least five contracts. But when I got this job, I said I’d do my best. So here it is. Here’s my best to get it all down on how we got involved with the Seeker.
A real live actual Monarch.
Listen, you didn’t catch us at our best. You should have seen us back in the day. Or so the old company logs seem to indicate about the mercenary outfit known as the Strange Company.
We ended up on Crash because it was just another contract. We have no dog in this fight between the rim worlds and the Monarchs. We’ve fought on both sides in a dozen different brushfire conflicts since the Sindo. That was the last big conflagration to sweep the galactic scene.
It’s just work. We try not to get caught up in the reasons for it. Therein lies belief, and as has been illustrated, belief will get you killed, right?
Crash, or Astralon as it likes to call itself, is the same story you’ll find on every one of those other worlds that are now either smoking piles of irradiated ruin, because a Monarch Avenger-class Battle Spire showed up and did it to death twenty-six different ways including G-beam strikes operating in the six gigawatt range per beam strike… or are under total Monarch control with a new outlook on life courtesy of orbital re-education rings, cyber-racks, and the locals always reminding one another it was “a good thing” the Ultras showed up. Like culties chanting out the orders that must be repeated and repeated if one is ever to earn some kind of reward in this life.
There are worlds forever ruined by a Battle Spire crew. Forever. Skeletal cities. Blackened landscape. Mutated freaks crawling the ravaged wasteland looking for a morsel to eat and maybe a dirty irradiated puddle to drink from. Starving masses ruled by the warlords left behind who managed to hold on to the military-grade weapons that survived the conflict.
No one goes to those worlds ever again.
Crash, or Astralon, isn’t there yet. It’s still in what I like to call DeathCon Three. Three is where you get to have a war because you think you’re actually gonna get free of the Monarchs’ tight grasp on human expansion and end up like some modern-day Juan of Mars. That you’ll fight a battle, or a series of battles, and carve out a nation-state among the stars that the Monarchs, enigmatic though they may be, will have to live with. If they could do it in the home system, then hey… why not out here along the dark rim and so far away.
Except that’s all a big lie. Juan and his Ranger buddies died badly a hundred years after they got their taste of temporary freedom. And every minor potentate, or newly formed Independence Committee, on all these rim worlds out here thinks they can do it differently than old Juan did. So, they train up their militaries and maybe the local generals with combat service to the Monarchs, and convince them that yes, given enough supply from the haulers moving between worlds they can break away from the Monarchs and be “free.”
What did someone once say “freedom” was?
Anyway, they go for it. The corporations are all pushing for it because everyone knows they’re playing both sides, and of course for their own.
That’s Phase Three. Or rather DeathCon Three. War. Let’s do it, guys!
That’s when we mercenaries generally start showing up because we smell easy mem. Companies directed by their lawyers, like ours, back on Bright and Central, made worlds, sign the digital and we redirect from wherever it is we are. The only question is Who are we fighting for on this one? Sometimes we’re working for the Monarchs. Sometimes we were working for the losers.
See what I did there?
But just because you’re working for the losers don’t mean there ain’t profit in it. There is. And if you play it right, time it right, and do it right, working for the losers is actually where the real big money can be found.
See, the losers are often willing to throw an entire planet’s economy at you for the win. They have no
other choice. If they lose, believe me, they really lose. The Monarchs don’t look kindly on failed upstarts, and for the civilian populace, a two-hundred-year light hauler sleep to a reeducation ring and who knows what after that, is convincing enough to fight hard and throw everything you have at the mercs you hired to win you some “freedom.”
So we fight, take all the dangerous money, and hopefully get off-world before the Battle Spires show up in Phase Five. Or rather DeathCon Five.
What’s DeathCon Four, you ask?
Honestly that’s the worst phase for a mercenary company. It means the Ultras, the Ultra Marines, show up with all their deadly toys. Toys courtesy of Monarch super-science. On one hand Ultras are good for the locals. Ultra Marines, if you survive their first pass over the battlefield, are more than likely to send you to the rear to seek adjudication and payment for your sins via the Adjudicators’ Guild. Survive that and maybe you just lost your life savings and you get to start over somewhere else. The lucky ones get to move off-world and try again. The unlucky get to stay here and hope Phase Five doesn’t go down between both sides.
The Ultras pull a ruin while the Battle Spires fly in over atmo and start targeting solutions for their G-beams.
That’s DeathCon Five. Or… the end of the world. Skeletal cities, irradiated water puddles, warlords of the wasteland. Living death.
But for us mercs… the Ultras are pure death sentence. Anyone bearing arms on a world where the Ultras show up is fair game to them. Best to make for the ships and get off-world.
That is not just merc thinking. That is mercenary holy writ. You don’t want to be around when the Ultras show up.
So, this account is a slice from the main log and I have to get down an important point right here in it to show how we ended up in league with a rogue Monarch known as the Seeker.
Our ship, the Spider, can no longer make planetary landings and her jump drive is down until major overhaul and replacement of the quantum compressor array. Right now, she’s down to sub-light flight only. I’ve been in planning sessions with the command team of Strange Company—that means the platoon sergeants, the First Sergeant, the wizards of Voodoo, Chief Cutter, the XO, and the Old Man. We know that no jump drive overhaul is possible here, and that has us prepping for the big sleep and a twenty-five-year trek to the nearest world, Blackrock, where we might, emphasis on might, get one.
Blackrock. Sounds like a fun place don’t it? Well we’ll find out in twenty-five years after we get off this dog of a world.
But, there is a Class Delta starport on Blackrock and maybe we can get our jump drive repaired if we have the mem from this job.
Currently, we do not have the mem from this job.
So, the contract. Crash, or Astralon, decided they could become a stellar empire all on their own like some of the farthest-out rim worlds and the myth of Mars that never really did. They hired mercenaries to supplement their military forces and here we have been. Supplementing. Which means doing all the dirty work that needs to be done regardless of politics.
At first the war went extremely well for the Resistance. We were fighting Loyalist units that appeared out of the populace. Guys and gals who saw the winds of change coming, even though that breeze came from the Monarchs themselves and from their lofty blue jewel once known as Earth to us all. But the kids never seem to care where the winds of change are really coming from. And the Monarchs… well, that dissent and unrest, and grand ideas, fomenting on Crash, didn’t seem to bother them much.
Until it does.
It’s always that way. The Monarchs never seem interested until they’re very interested. Then you got problems.
So at first Crash, or Astralon, was easy. Once we were off the Spider and planetside, we started operating. We took two weeks to get acclimatized and get as much gear and ammunition as we could from the locals.
Cook in Voodoo, our intel and psyops specialist, developed the situation and briefed command nightly. The Resistance, which was what the legal government as duly elected by the people of Crash had called themselves, weren’t that many. And this too is almost always the same story on every world. Among the Resistance, or whatever they choose to call themselves on the world we happen to get hired to fight on, are usually people from the middle classes and definitely from the old early star pioneer stock. The ones who want freedom and the chance to either win bigly, or lose bigly. And gloriously.
They’re always on about gravitas and destiny. I’ve found those things, like dignity, too often are a needless luxury. Especially if you can’t afford them.
They just want to make all the big calls like their ancestors did since the planet came online and got discovered. Back when the real big fortunes were made. The Loyalists, on the other hand, loyal to the Monarchs that is, usually want things to stay the same. Which means letting the Monarchs have more and more control of your lives. They love the Monarchs. The Monarchs give and provide and as long as you accept your lot in life, in that the sky’s the limit as long as you don’t want to be a Monarch, then life is all gravy if you’re willing to bend the knee and wear the leash.
Some people want to be Chiefs though. No matter what. And the Monarchs only want Indians. So it goes. Enter mercenaries…
I guess the Resisters are a little jealous. Jealous of all that unlimited power the Monarchs have. Hey, I don’t judge. I just show up and get paid to fight for whoever. If I seem hard and callous, that’s totally by design. I got schooled a couple of times early on about getting caught up in that week’s cause. Now I know the realities and I measure everything twice, so I can cut once.
It’s best to just keep your pod face on and collect the pay from whoever’s paying you to kill. Believing in one side or another has a tendency to get you killed.
Think that’s just hardboy, fatalist mercenary with the tat that says, Kill ’Em All and Let the Universe Sort? Well I don’t have that particular ink. But every morning I get up and tell myself the same thing. Whether it’s in some mud hut, the actual mud, or even a five-star shot-to-hell hotel we commandeered for our base of operations on a world slowly going fever-mad, I look in the shaving mirror and say to myself, Believing in one side or another has a tendency to get you killed, Sergeant Orion.
So, don’t.
Example…
Our first op planetside. Here’s what belief has to do with getting you killed.
We were on the ground for about two weeks after getting shuttled down by sub-orbital drop-off from the Spider. Getting acclimatized. Geared up. Ready to go. Assessing the actual situation on the ground as opposed to what we were being told by our employers. That’s important in our line of work and we try as best as we can to get our own due diligence done so we can know the score before we start pulling the trigger.
When this conflict started, like I said it was one faction, probably the faction in charge, deciding it wanted to be free of the Monarchs back on Earth. Why share the take when you can keep it all local? So of course, they started all the independence rhetoric that gets everyone killed, eventually. Big speeches. Pride in planet. Spirit of the original colonists. That whole thing.
And of course, the Monarchs have their agents. Always watching. Always reporting back. It may seem like the Monarchs, mankind’s elitist of the elite, may do nothing and are only ever concerned with their fantastic-beyond-imagining lifestyle and schemes. But I know different. When they’re not using the fist, they’re in the shadows watching and waiting. Counting and calculating. Pulling the strings.
The indifference is just for show.
The Monarchs run everything and it’s best just to accept that if you wanna have a nice life. In a galaxy full of have-nots, they are the haves and this cannot be disputed. And they have no intention of having it any other way.
So the “loyal opposition” to the Resistance arose, and as ever with the Monarchs it rose within the mass of angry and disgruntled y
outh who wanted to be more like the Bright Worlds. Monarch Poster-Child Worlds is what they really should be called. Blah blah blah. Whatever. The Loyalists are just playthings of the Monarchs’ psyops division. Creations by master puppetmasters. They fell for it. They always do. Agitated. Made a nuisance of themselves to the Resistance and the undecided silent majority. And then one day found themselves in possession of lots of off-world weapons. They, the Loyalists, were dumb. If they would’ve looked closer they’d have seen the bloodstains on their weapons from the last group on another world the Monarchs ruined who thought they wanted to freedom-fight by serving the masters of the universe without knowing they were doing so.
It gets complicated because it’s murky and byzantine and the Monarchs are involved. To put it so it’s easily understood:
If you don’t want to accept the truth that the Monarchs rule everything then you are Resistance. Especially if you’d like to be the one ruling at least your little slice of everything.
If you’re local pop, and you envy the Bright Worlds that are the poster children of the Monarchs and you’d like to live your best life courtesy of the stellar state, then you are Loyalists. You’re usually dumb, young, badly though extensively educated, and have very little work ethic. You think the people in charge are doing a pretty great job with what seems to be a tedious task and you’d prefer for the local greedheads not muck it up because they want to be “free.”
And here’s one more wring on the shammy to make it easier. Both sides want power and don’t like each other much. Or at all. They hire mercenaries to settle the constant disputes.
The Resistance—which, as I have pointed out is the legitimate government of this world—hired their mercenaries, rogue navy, and started training their own people up to liberate themselves from the shackles of oppression and maintain their sizeable business holdings. Meanwhile the kids decided to go a’rampaging in order to maintain the status quo. And now that they, the Loyalists, those kids, had weapons and uniforms and even cool red berets courtesy of the Monarchs even though they didn’t know it, they thought they were an actual military.