Miranda's War

by Eric S. Brown

  * * * * *

  Chapter 1

  Strider came howling out of Void Space, her aft thrust engines blazing. She rolled a complete three hundred sixty degrees on her axis. Carson whooped at his controls, enjoying every moment of it. Wulf clasped the arms of his captain’s chair, holding on for dear life, though there was no danger of being thrown about. The ship’s inertial dampers were pushed to their limits, but nonetheless did their job. Lee and Peart’s reactions were the exact opposite of Carson’s antics. Lee looked on the verge of drawing the hulking pistol he wore on his hip and putting a bullet through the backside of Carson’s skull, while Peart merely smiled where he sat at Strider’s comm station.

  Peters’ voice rang out over the ship’s intercom system. “Tell the kid to ease up already!”

  Wulf glared at Carson. “You heard the man,” he growled.

  “Yes, sir!” the young pilot snapped, straightening up in his seat at the helm as he slowed Strider to a more normal post-transition speed.

  “We’re approaching Tanatos IV,” Lee said to Wulf.

  An image of the green planet filled the ship’s forward viewer, growing larger with each passing second.

  “What a sinkhole of a place,” Carson shook his head. “How in the frag did this place ever manage to afford us?”

  Wulf snorted. “They offered us the creds to keep this ship flying. You may have noticed job offers ain’t exactly been rolling in lately.”

  “You can blame Earth Gov for that,” Peart snarled.

  “But…” Lee mocked, “they’re making the universe a better place, one planet at a time.”

  That got a laugh out everyone on the ship’s bridge but Peart. His hatred of Earth Gov and what it was doing these days ran deep. Earth Gov had always kept the colonies on a tight leash through economic means, but now they were going beyond that—installing garrisons on every world that would allow it or that they could find a reason to demand one be placed there. The presence of their soldiers and the greater amount of fleet activity, even on the rim, was making life harder and harder, not just for monster hunters like themselves, but smugglers, black market traders, and anyone else who skirted the edges of Earth Gov law.

  “Ain’t nothing we can do about that.” Wulf grunted. “And it ain’t business anyway. Our job is waiting on us down there on that planet.”

  “Amen to that.” Lee smiled. Any chance to kill something usually brought a smile to his hawk-like face, and the monster waiting for them on Tanatos IV was no exception.

  “Should I bring us into orbit so Peart can run a scan for the thing we’re hunting?” Carson asked.

  Wulf shook his head. “No, take us straight down as close to the colony as you can.”

  Carson blinked. “They have a spaceport, ya know…”

  Waggling a finger at Carson, Wulf smirked. “That’s true, but I want us to make a good impression. You got me?”

  “It’ll be hard on the ship, but oh yeah, I got ya!” Carson laughed. “I suggest y’all find something to hold on to. This is gonna be fun.”

  Carson punched it, not to maximum, but enough to make a lasting impression on anyone watching Strider entering Tanatos IV’s atmosphere. The ship shook and rattled as she slammed into the planet’s gravity field, and fires burned over her hull as she made her entry. From the ground, she surely looked like a large asteroid blazing its way out of the sky.

  “I hate you both,” Lee said, his knuckles white from the grip he had on the edges of his console as Strider bounced about.

  “Fragging frag it!” Peters screamed over the intercom from engineering.

  Carson slowed Strider, tilting her nose up for dramatic effect, as he brought her in for a landing just outside the walls of the small farming colony. He brought her down smoothly and killed her engines.

  “Welcome to Tanatos IV, gents.” Carson chuckled. “Let’s go kill ourselves a monster!”

  Wulf stabbed a button on the arm of his chair and said, “Peters, you stay with the ship. Keep her ready just in case.”

  “Fragging bloody Hades, sir,” Peters answered. “It’s going to take me hours just to patch her up. I told you not to be pushing her so hard. She’s got conduits blown out all over the place.”

  Wulf ignored the engineer’s complaining. “You can handle it, Peters. If you need anything, you can reach us on the standard channel.”

  Lee, Carson, Peart, and Wulf hit Strider’s armory and geared up for the work that lay ahead of them. As they emerged from the ship, walking down its ramp, Lee carried a wicked-looking sniper rifle in addition to the hulking pistol holstered on his hip. Peart was packing a tri-barreled belt-fed heavy machine gun. They both wore secondhand Earth Gov combat armor. The suits might be older, but they were the real thing and were still intimidating in their appearance. Carson just wore his normal loose-fitting clothes. He believed they were stylish, but that was subjective. In truth, they were flashy, and he looked more like some kind of traveling bard than the highly-skilled pilot he was. His boyish features and wild, blond hair only added to absurdity of his appearance.

  Wulf came down the ramp last. He always did. The master hunter knew how to make an entrance. The armor he wore, while still as good as anything ever designed by Earth Gov for its troops, closely resembled the plate mail worn by knights in the middle ages of Old Earth. On his hips were holstered matching pistols and in his hands was a giant, silver-bladed axe so large that an average man couldn’t even pick it up, much less wield it effectively as a weapon. Of course, Wulf was no average man. The master hunter stood seven feet tall, a figure of imposing power clad in metal. His armor gleamed, unblemished, in the light of the Tanatos IV’s midday sun. Only his head and face were exposed, and a collar of metal extended upward from around the neck of his armor to give him an almost regal appearance, though the features of his face were fierce and savage. He looked every inch the legend he was supposed to be.

  Laura Bergman, the owner and leader of Harold’s Colony, surrounded by several armed guards and a handful of the small farming town’s elders, was moving across the open space that lay between the fields and the town, where Strider had landed. Bergman wasn’t an old woman; Wulf guessed her to be middle forties by her appearance. Her dress was nothing extraordinary. She wore the same brown and gray clothes that almost everyone in the colony did. Her hair was a deep brown and fell in waves down over her shoulders. The state of her attire did nothing, though, to mask the fierceness of her spirit and her sharp green eyes betrayed the cunning intelligence behind them. Many of the town’s residents and workers followed after Bergman and her party. Unlike her, they appeared utterly in awe of Strider and her crew.

  Wulf studied the approaching crowd and raised his large axe in a show of greeting.

  “I am Claus Wulf. I and my people have come in response to your plea for help,” his voice boomed like rolling thunder across the open field, amplified by the speaker built into his armor.

  “Welcome to Tanatos IV,” Laura Bergman answered him.

  Wulf marched the rest of the way down the ramp from Strider and moved to clasp her offered hand. Bergman flinched from the pressure of his grip, then whispered so only he could hear, “You can drop the theatrics, Mr. Wulf. My people need a hunter, not a performer.”

  He nodded to show he’d heard her, but flashed a wry grin and then turned to address the gathering crowd. “Dear people of Tanatos IV, your troubles are at an end, for the great Wulf has come!”

  Bergman, the elders, and their guards merely stared at Wulf, but the farmers and workers who had followed them went wild, erupting in cheers.

  “Wulf! Wulf! Wulf!” the crowd chanted.

  The master hunter bowed to them, basking in their praise for a moment before raising a hand to silence them. “I must speak with your colony’s leader, but I give you my word, a time of great celebration is close at hand! Return now to your work and homes! I and mine will call for you when our own work is done!”

  There was another loud, long-la
sting round of cheers and clapping, then the crowd broke up, heading back toward the town.

  “Mr. Wulf,” Bergman said sternly. “Was that little show truly necessary?”

  Wulf chuckled. “That depends on how one looks at things, I suppose. Your people have been harassed by this monster of yours for a good while. You yourself said in your communique that things here were bleak and without hope. I’ve given them that now.”

  “Given them what?” Bergman demanded.

  “Hope, ma’am. Hope.” Wulf smiled. “It’s a powerful thing in and of itself.”

  “I didn’t hire you to give them hope, Mr. Wulf. I hired you to bring an end to the foul beast that’s killed so many of us these past months,” Bergman told him.

  Wulf placed his axe on the back of his armor, magnetically locking it in place within easy reach should the weapon be needed, and then clapped his large, armored hands together a single time. “Yes! That’s what we’re here for. Have no worry about that. Shall we retire somewhere more comfortable so you can bring us up to speed on what you know about this monster of yours?”

  “I think that’s a very good idea,” Bergman answered. “If you’ll follow me…”

  Bergman’s guards led the way as her party and Wulf’s kill crew headed toward the small farming town.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 2

  As the crowd broke up, Miranda lingered. Her father was one of Mrs. Bergman’s guards, but that wasn’t the reason she was reluctant to leave. She stared in awe at Strider. It wasn’t a beautiful ship, as one would normally think of such. It was ragged and battered, its hull scorched from countless such atmospheric entrances as the one it had made here on Tanatos IV. The lingering remnants of a giant snarling wolf head were painted on each of its sides. If she recalled correctly, it was a Deathbird-class vessel. The Deathbirds were old warships used in the early days of Earth’s expansion to the stars, designed to come in hard and fast, guns blazing, at the enemies of humanity. She still had her guns. The barrels of huge railguns protruded along the sides of her nose. Though Strider was a transport, she was built like an over-sized fighter. She could house two dozen people for an extended period, with ample room for supplies, weapons, and even possibly one or two small ground vehicles. The legends about her and her crew were known throughout the fringe worlds of the Earth Republic.

  Miranda had been born on Earth but had left it before she’d turned two years old. Her father was a military man in those days, and they relocated often throughout her childhood. He never talked about what made him leave the service of the Republic, but she knew whatever had happened had scarred him badly. Resigning when she turned seven, he had brought them to Harold’s Colony to start over and find a new life. Harold Bergman had offered him the job of town sheriff, but her father had refused it. He had traveled a long way to get away from violence and guns, and he had no intention of ever pulling a trigger again.

  He had lived his life as a simple farmer, working shifts like everyone else, until the last few weeks. Miranda didn’t know if her father was as afraid of the monster that lurked in the hills above the fields, as everyone else seemed to be, but she knew he hated it. He hated it for the lives it had taken, and what it had done to their home. Harold’s Colony was no longer the thriving, determined to make it, friendly place it once was. The monster’s rampage had brought the colony to its knees economically, stopping production in the fields and causing not only division among its residents, but also taking away the freedom they once knew. No one wandered out alone anymore to explore the beauty and alien sights of Tanatos IV. They remained within the town’s walls, and often behind their own locked doors.

  After the deaths of Sheriff Jones and Sheriff Heinbrick, Laura Bergman, with the approval of the town’s elders, had come knocking again on their door. Her father, having had enough of the monster’s attacks, finally agreed to take up arms again. He still refused to become the sheriff, but instead made a counteroffer. The division in the town’s residents tortured him to the depths of his soul, and he seemed to know that unless something was done, it would only continue to grow and would perhaps turn violent. He suggested to Bergman that she needed someone to watch her back, and he became her personal bodyguard. Her father had faith in Laura Bergman and truly believed that, if given the chance, she could turn the fortunes of Harold’s Colony around.

  Miranda liked Mrs. Bergman and was happy to see her father standing up for what he thought was best for everyone on Tanatos IV. Unlike her father, though, Miranda Leighman wanted more out of life than to be a farmer. She dreamed of soaring among the stars and traveling from world to world. Maybe that was what all kids her age did, maybe it was just her, but regardless, her heart longed to touch the stars. Claus Wulf and his kill crew were a walking, breathing realization of that dream. As much as her father talked of the freedom on worlds like Harold’s Colony, it was people like Claus Wulf and his kill crew who were truly free. They functioned beyond the growing reach of Earth Gov and its lackeys. They existed outside the law, and if it did come for them, they had not only the means of running, but of fighting back.

  For all his armor and showmanship, Claus Wulf was an ugly man. A long scar ran across his face, and his eyes were beady for a man his size. His ruffled hair was an unkempt mess atop his head, a dark black streaked with touches of gray. There was no question as to his strength, but to Miranda, that was not the full measure of a man. Her father had taught her that, and it had stuck. Claus Wulf lacked nobility, despite the shining, regal nature of the heavy armor he wore. The young, foppish man named Carson who was supposedly his pilot was more a jester to Wulf’s king than anything else. But the other two…they caught her eye.

  For all Wulf’s size and bluster, the one called Lee looked far deadlier in his own way, and not just because of the sniper rifle he carried. There was a liquid grace to how he moved and coldness to his eyes that bespoke just what kind of a killer he was. He terrified Miranda in many ways. His hawkish, sharp features and long brown hair pulled into a pony tail that tumbled down his back between his shoulders made him far from handsome, but nonetheless, there was a powerful and frightening charisma about him. He stayed close to the one named Peart. Anyone with any sort of awareness could see they were steadfast friends who had known each other a long while.

  Peart was a stark contrast to Lee in his appearance and demeanor. He wore a small gray cap that covered most of his short black hair. Peart looked more like an artist, or a poet, than a member of a monster hunting kill crew…no, Miranda thought; he looked like a rebel. He was a handsome man, with deep blue eyes. The kind who stole the hearts of young girls with nothing more than a glance in their direction. Miranda had to admit that she was no exception. She was drawn to him like a moth to a flame, but knew she would never have the nerve to approach him and ask Peart about his life among the stars. Besides, if she did, God only knew what her father would do. Her father was a veteran warrior and skilled fighter, but he was one man, and Peart was part of the legendary kill crew of Claus Wulf. Kill crews looked after their own.

  Miranda jumped as she felt a hand clasp her shoulder. Her fingers locked in place around the arm the hand was attached to, and Miranda flung her assailant over her shoulder to thud hard onto the ground. Stunned and bruised, Anna stared up at her with wide eyes.

  “What the heck?” Anna snapped, clearly in pain.

  “Oh, my gosh…” Miranda stammered, turning red and looking abashed. “I am so sorry!”

  “You should be,” Anna huffed as Miranda offered her a hand to help her up. “That freaking hurt.”

  Miranda yanked Anna to her feet and looked around to see if anyone had seen what she had done to her friend. Peart and Lee apparently had. Peart wore a puzzled expression as he studied her with an appraising gaze, while Lee just smirked.

  “Come on,” Miranda urged Anna. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Slow down,” Anna said, hobbling along as Miranda kept pulling at her in an attempt to make her go
faster. “I’ve got an aching backside, remember?”

  Neither Peart or Lee moved toward them, and Miranda was grateful for that. If they had, she would have been forced to speak with them, and that was the last thing she wanted to do right now. She didn’t doubt that they’d recognized the form of martial arts she had used. Her father had spent years teaching her how to handle herself. Sometimes, though, her nerves got the better of her—like they just had. Miranda had been so wrapped up in staring at the members of the kill crew, her situational awareness had failed her badly, and she had almost broken her best friend’s back.

  Miranda refused to look back at Lee and Peart as she scrambled toward the gates of the town’s walls. She was too embarrassed by her actions.

  “Seriously!” Anna demanded, pulling free of the hold Miranda had on her. “Slow down already! It’s not like the monster is coming or something.”

  “There are other kinds of monsters than just the one in the fields,” Miranda mumbled.

  “What? Those guys?” Anna asked. “They’re not monsters. They’ve come to save us.”

  “I know,” Miranda said. “Heroes or not, though, they’re professional killers.”

  “Like your dad used to be?” Anna said, and then instantly looked like she regretted it.

  Miranda frowned at Anna’s words. They stung her deeply. “My dad was a soldier, not a merc. What he did, he did to help us all, not just to make some quick credits, okay?”

  “You’re just this upset because, whether you want to admit it or not, you like those guys… especially the cute one with the gray cap,” Anna argued.