Target Rich Environment

by Larry Correia

  Then I saw it.

  The BTR was running parallel to us. It was one street over to the right, separated from us by a single row of mud houses and shacks. The grey hulk was going to intercept us. The Cubans inside opened up through their firing ports. Most of the rounds smashed into the buildings, but at each gap, some passed through. Tracers stabbed a dotted line across the road.

  Two could play that game. I grabbed the smoking handles and swiveled the DhSK.

  “Hey!”

  “Yeah!”

  “BTR on our right. Will 12.7 pierce their armor?”

  “Hell yeah! They’re light plate.”

  I wasn’t going to try to time it between the houses. We were almost out of town, and I didn’t want to square off with this thing in the open. I mashed the butterfly trigger down.

  The DhSK roared. Homes disintegrated as we played tag to the death with the Cubans at fifty miles an hour. The mighty 12.7 rounds crashed into the monstrosity, zipping right through the armor and through the crew inside.

  The BTR swerved hard toward us, smashed through a house, actually got some air, and careened onto our street. I kept the DhSK on it the whole time, stitching it from end to end, opening it like a teenager shooting a pop can with a .22. The BTR continued on at an angle and smashed through another house and disappeared onto another street.

  “I think I got him!”

  “No.” Carl pointed out the window. The BTR was now traveling down the street to our left. The 37mm cannon was rotating toward us. I cranked the DhSK back around and opened fire, bouncing wildly as the Toyota careened down the rutted road. Carl stomped on the brakes. I flew forward and smashed into the cab as the cannon bloomed flame. The round narrowly missed us and a pile of shanties exploded into flames and shrapnel.

  I spit a mouthful of blood onto the roof and shoved myself back onto the machinegun. The BTR was slightly ahead of us on the next street over. Carl suddenly accelerated. Somehow I knew exactly what he was doing. I cranked the DhSK around toward the front.

  Carl swerved, crashing us through a fence made of sticks and cardboard. A pile of chickens fell victim to the Toyota, and suddenly birds and feathers were flying everywhere. We seemed to be airborne for a brief second, then the tires struck earth, and we were behind the speeding BTR.

  I mashed the spade grips, the sight lined up on the rear end of the BTR. The muzzle brake reverberated painfully off the Toyota’s roof. Carl stuck his fingers into his ears, and steered with his knees. Round after round ripped through the armored vehicle from end to end, and it careened wildly to the side and crashed into a ditch, flames suddenly licking out of its ports.

  Carl pulled his fingers out of his ears, put one on the wheel and one on the gear shift, and hammered the little Toyota forward. We zipped past the now-burning BTR and toward freedom. A hot wind struck my back as it exploded behind us. Another black, oily cloud was rising above Sweothi City as we sped onto the highway and past the sign pointing toward the Congolese border.

  2:52 p.m.

  The man looked up at me in fear, as he thrashed against the duct tape that held his wrists to the heavy chair. The old warehouse was deserted and I knew that nobody would hear him scream. “Please, come on, man, don’t do it!”

  I held the syringe up to the flickering fluorescent light. “You know what this is?”

  “No, please, come on, I’m begging you.”

  Did my father beg? No, of course not.

  “It’s heroin. Mostly. The rest is drain cleaner. The heroin is to make this plausible. You’re just another scumbag junkie, got some bad stuff, had an overdose. There won’t even be an investigation. The drain cleaner is so this will hurt. A lot.”

  “You can’t do this. T-Bone will kill you. He’ll kill you, man!” the thug screamed.

  Did my father threaten violence? No. I’m sure he hadn’t. He was a man of peace and justice.

  “T-Bone’s dead. I got him already. He fell out his apartment window. Landed on one of those pointy fences. Real nasty.” I gave a fake shudder. “The others are dead too. Ice got shot in a drive by shooting this morning. Little Mike is floating in the river. He fell in, couldn’t swim. Especially with those cinderblocks I tied to his legs.”

  His eyes were wide. I could smell the fear. “Who are you?”

  “A year ago, you were passing through a little place outside Georgetown. You beat a man to death. He was a good man. Why? Why did you do it?”

  “I don’t know, man! I don’t remember . . . He had a nice watch or something. Come on, man, he was just some dude! We didn’t mean to kill him. Just mess him up, take his shit.”

  I stabbed the needle into his arm and smashed the plunger down. I tossed the now empty syringe aside. He began to convulse as I cut the tape and stuffed the evidence into my pocket. He fell to the floor as I walked away. I shut the lights off on the way out and left him in the dark to twitch and foam. I started walking, and didn’t look back. I was sixteen years old.

  The thing is, when you let the evil out, it’s hard to put it back.

  Sorry, Dad.

  Ten Kilometers east of Banti-Guonda, Congo

  December 16th, 1993.

  DREAMS of home. So very long ago.

  I woke up sore when I heard the sound of the airplane. The stitches on my arm, back, and legs were tight and itchy. Carl did good work. He was already awake, cleaning his Aug while leaning in the shade beneath a crumpled tree. He had a bandage wrapped around his torso, over the carpet of black hair that was his body. The ruined Toyota was hidden in the bushes.

  He squinted at me with beady eyes. “Bush plane’s coming in. You think we can trust this guy?”

  I yawned. “Yeah. He’s good people . . . Phil specializes in helping people move valuable things. He owes me a favor. So, Carl, you think about what you’re going to do now?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “My company’s gone. Most of us died in the coup. I don’t even know if my men made it out.”

  “They’re with Decker. They made it.” I answered truthfully. As much as I hated the man, he was extremely good at what he did. “You know, I’m now out of work myself.” I pulled a black bag out of my pocket and tossed it to Carl.

  He caught it absently, opened the drawstring, and shook some of its contents into the palm of his hand. He whistled.

  “SWITCHBLADE had a few simple rules. The leader always got a double share, and he was the only one that has access to the Swiss bank account. Since the diamond exchange crossed us, I’m pretty sure nobody got paid. So we looted some of the treasury while we were in the palace. The six still gets a double share.”

  Carl’s hand was filled with diamonds.

  “I took the liberty of lifting Decker’s shares. And to think he called me a common thief. I’m pretty sure he’ll be massively pissed when he finds out. Good thing he thinks I’m dead.” I knew that was for the best. I would gain nothing by tracking Decker down. It was time for the evil to be put away once and for all.

  “Not a bad haul,” Carl said, as he poured the diamonds back into the bag. He started to hand it back.

  “No, that’s your share. I’ve got mine.”

  “Serious?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been thinking . . .” I said as the bush plane approached the runway, landing gear extended. “I’m going to go on my own, form my own team. Be my own boss. But I’m going to need help. Have you ever thought of stealing stuff for a living?”

  “Can’t say I have,” he answered. “Unless you count twenty years of plundering Africa, but I’m sick of this place.”

  “Well, I’m thinking about only robbing bad people. They’ve got all the money anyway, and screwing with them is a lot more fun.”

  The little plane touched down with a squeak of tires. Carl chewed his lip for a moment, then extended his hand.

  I shook it. “Carl, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  SWEOTHI CITY was one of my earliest short stories, but I still really like it b
ecause Lorenzo is one of my favorite characters to write. Plus, I originally wrote this story aimed at an audience of online gun forum members, so I got to turn my gun-nuttery up to ten and break off the knob. I love writing giant gun battle scenes.

  The novel Dead Six originally started as an online fiction serial called Welcome Back, Mr. Nightcrawler, written by Mike Kupari. He would post a new scene every few days. I didn’t really know Mike, I was just another reader, but I loved his story, and asked if he minded if I wrote a scene from the perspective of one of the minor background characters. He said go for it. People liked my addition so we kept writing the serial together. At the time neither one of us had published a thing and were complete newbs at writing fiction. We made it up as we went, yet by some miracle it actually turned out surprisingly good.

  Years later we polished that story and Baen released Dead Six. It turned into a trilogy that I am really proud of, and now Mike Kupari has launched his solo writing career with the excellent sci-fi novel Her Brother’s Keeper, also from Baen.

  THE BRIDGE

  This story was originally published in Champions of Aetaltis in 2015 by Mechanical Muse, edited by Marc Tassin and John Helfers.

  LAVRO could have sat in the shade of a nearby tree, but Droth had blessed this day with miserable heat and a merciless sun, so he gave thanks for his sunburn and discomfort, and remained standing in the middle of the bridge.

  He did loosen the straps of his armor a bit, so he wouldn’t boil in his own sweat. Droth taught through suffering, but it would be difficult to fulfill his guard duty if he became delirious from heat exhaustion. Summer in the Free Kingdoms was nothing like the northern wastes where his clan wandered. This place was green instead of grey. The water in the river below wasn’t choked with ice. It was a good thing this land was so plagued with perpetual warfare, otherwise those who lived here would be in danger of becoming soft.

  This portion of the Serenth River was sluggish. The shores on both sides of the bridge were mud and reeds, so Lavro was continually bitten and stung by hungry insects all day. At night, it was cool, but that was when the beast men liked to sneak up and try to murder him.

  Praise Droth.

  It had been many days since he had spoken to anyone, not that Lavro cared much for speaking even when there were others around. Most things a Drothmal wanted to communicate were better shared with steel than words. He had been all by himself since the rest of the mercenaries had fled.

  Lavro the Drothmal did not flee. He had accepted a contract and would fulfill his duty until relieved or killed. Mercenaries had been hired to hold this bridge because one petty lord was feuding with another petty lord, and someone somewhere had seen this crossing on a map and decided it might be of strategic importance. Sure, they’d camped here for weeks without seeing so much as a single refugee, in a forsaken part of the Free Kingdoms abandoned by civilization and reclaimed by nature and monsters, where they had been neglected, unsupplied, and forgotten . . . but a promise was a promise.

  So, long after the others had left, Lavro continued guarding the bridge. He slept beneath it so that he would wake up should anyone attempt to cross. The hardest part of this duty was foraging for food in the reeds while still keeping an eye on the crossing. It was hard for a three hundred-pound Drothmal to find sufficient nourishment in such a small area. He was very tired of eating frogs. If he never ate another damned frog again, that would be fine by him. Especially these miserable, stinking swamp frogs that tasted like mud.

  Praise Droth.

  Boredom was just another form of blessed suffering, but Lavro couldn’t help but hope that if the war was over, eventually someone would remember to tell him.

  Could it be? Lavro lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the setting sun. Someone was approaching his bridge. At first he thought it was just another vicious beast man, coming to throw rocks at him, but this one wasn’t running on all fours or howling for his blood. It walked like a normal, boring, civilized traveler.

  The man was tall for an Atlan, but still tiny compared to Lavro. He wore simple, baggy clothing, a straw hat, and carried a large traveling pack. Despite looking like a farmer, the man wore a pair of swords through an orange sash on his waist. The stranger also had a confident walk. He certainly didn’t carry himself like a refugee. Lavro knew refugees. You couldn’t work as a mercenary in the Free Kingdoms for long without becoming very familiar with the look of refugees. They were always either shocked, skittish, or defeated. This man was confident and walked with purpose.

  Excited, Lavro adjusted the straps of his armor and dusted off his steel breastplate so that he would look respectable. Since he’d been wallowing in mud and insects for a month, that wasn’t very respectable at all, but Lavro put his great sword over one shoulder, drew himself to his full seven-foot height, and tried to be as intimidating as possible.

  “Hello,” said the man.

  “You will not pass!” Lavro bellowed.

  “Oh . . .” the man stopped and looked around. There really wasn’t much to see, except for a rickety old bridge and a whole lot of mud. He lifted the straw hat and wiped his face with one sleeve. Lavro was not good at guessing atlan ages, but this one was no longer young, but not yet old, though his long hair was turning grey. “Why?”

  “I have orders to hold this bridge. Only the forces of Lord Wainbrook may cross here.”

  “I don’t know who that is.” He pointed at the Donarzheis Mountains on the other side of the river. “I need to go there.”

  “Well, you can’t cross here,” Lavro said with grim finality. “If you try, I will bleed you.”

  “Bleed? Interesting choice of words.”

  “Whether you live or die is the will of Droth. But when I hit somebody with this sword, they usually die. More often than not.”

  The man nodded thoughtfully. “That would be terribly inconvenient. Do you mind if I have a seat while we debate this?”

  “There is no debate. Those are my orders.” But the atlan had already taken off his heavy pack, placed it in the dirt road, and sat on it. As long as he didn’t try to cross, Lavro didn’t mind the company. “Fine.”

  “What a miserable day.” The atlan paused to swat a mosquito on his neck. “Normally, your people are as deathly pale as your tundra. I didn’t know you could get so red in the sun. May I ask your name, Drothmal?”

  “I am Lavro, son of Ulm.”

  “A pleasure to meet you. I am Decimus.” He held out his straw hat. “If you let me use your bridge, in trade, I will give you my hat. It would make that sunburn far more bearable.”

  “We learn through suffering,” Lavro muttered, though he wished he’d brought a hat. He’d been so bored he tried making one out of reeds, but given up when he discovered his large fingers were no good for weaving. “There is another bridge ten miles that way.” He nodded downstream, toward the village of Korval.

  “I’d rather not. I am on an important quest.”

  Lavro didn’t care. A contract had been made. “No.”

  “What if I were to offer you a real bribe? I have money. I could probably pay you more than you accepted to guard this bridge, just to look the other way for a moment.”

  It wasn’t about money. Lavro shook his head.

  “I suppose I could swim across.”

  Lavro shrugged. His orders didn’t say anything about intercepting swimmers. He’d only seen a couple of scaled gillcutters swim by the entire time he’d been here, so he might even make it.

  Decimus looked at the river suspiciously. “Or I could just fight you and get it over with. Only killing you over something so trivial seems like a waste. I will take the middle path and beat you soundly. I will do my best not to kill or maim you, and this way you will learn a valuable lesson about etiquette.”

  The Drothmal snorted. The little atlan could try. Life was cheap in the Free Kingdoms. “Come on then.”

  “Very well, Lavro, son of Ulm.” He stood up. “It is nothing personal, but I re
ally do have important things to do.” He didn’t even bother to draw either of his little swords as he started across the bridge. Decimus didn’t seem intimidated. In fact, he seemed rather calm about the whole thing.

  “I’m not kidding, atlan.”

  “You don’t strike me as the joking type, Drothmal.” Decimus stopped a few feet away, bent at the waist, and bowed respectfully. “Shall we begin?”

  Lavro lifted his sword high overhead, roared his battle cry, and brought the blade crashing down with the fury of an avalanche.

  Decimus moved aside and let the blade embed itself deeply into the wood. Nobody’s that fast— Before Lavro could tug his sword free, Decimus stepped on the steel with his sandal and trapped it. Lavro didn’t even see the punch coming, but the small man hit him in the chest so surprisingly hard that Lavro found himself sailing back through the air. He landed flat on his back several feet away.

  The Drothmal clambered back to his feet. The knuckles of the atlan’s fist had left dents in the steel. “What manner of magic was that?” he snarled.

  “No magic. Just focus . . . You lost your sword.” Decimus grunted as he pulled the heavy blade free. “This isn’t a proper sword. This is a log splitter some delusional smith welded a handle onto.” He lifted it in both hands and tossed it toward Lavro.

  Lavro caught it by the grip, and spun the sword to show that he meant business. “I was not ready. Now I am ready.”

  “Good. It’s hard to tell what a Drothmal is thinking with such a catlike face, but I thought you remained unconvinced. Let us try this again.”

  It angered him that Decimus hadn’t even bothered to draw his own blade. That seemed incredibly insulting. Lavro roared and swung his sword, this time from the shoulder, so fast it whistled through the air. Decimus ducked beneath it. Lavro recovered and brought it back around, hacking at the atlan’s legs, but this time Decimus jumped over it.

  “Fight me, cowar—” but Decimus stepped inside the next swing, caught Lavro’s wrist with a grip as hard as iron, and somehow, the next thing Lavro knew he was flipping through the air. This time when he hit the bridge, it knocked the air from his lungs.