“What do you think we should do?” Nigel finally asked.
“I think you wanted the leadership position, and we should do what you say—”
“You know as well as I do how that turned out! We lost half of our company. You want me to say it? Fine! I will. You were right; I wasn’t ready to lead. There, is that what you want?”
“Easy, sir, that wasn’t what I meant. You actually have done pretty well so far. You listen to advice and have shown good leadership. For example, even though you were hurt, you led the assault that captured this ship. You saw what needed to be done, gathered the available assets, and accomplished the mission. If you hadn’t, we’d still be back on the planet…and I don’t think they’d be treating us very well. The troops actually are starting to believe in you.”
“Well, then why did you turn it around on me and say I should figure it out?”
“You interrupted me, sir. What I was going to say was that we’d do what you said, but if you wanted my advice, we need to hire more troops. We can’t take Moorhouse and four companies of Besquith with what we’ve got. Even if we bluff our way to the surface and hit them with our CASPers, we’ll still be slaughtered. You saw what the Besquith did to us on Bestald. Five of them were the equivalent to about 17 of our guys. The CASPers give us additional capabilities, but not enough to overcome 8:1 odds. It can’t be done. We need more troops.”
“Maybe we could hire the Tortantulas and Breetar to come with us to Moorhouse.”
“I’m sorry, but that isn’t going to happen,” a voice said from the door. Breetar entered the room. “I’ve fulfilled my contract and will be leaving the ship here.”
“What? You’re not coming to Moorhouse with us?”
“No thanks. I told you before that airborne assaults aren’t my thing. I hate spaceship crashes and they tend to do that around you a lot. Besides, I’ve seen enough Besquith in the last couple of weeks to last me the rest of this life and most of the next.”
“What about the red diamonds? You’re going to miss out on a big payday.”
“I am sorry to miss out on that…however, a big payday isn’t much good to me if I’m too dead to enjoy it.”
“You don’t think we’ll be successful?”
“In a word? No. You’re too outnumbered, even if you do get onto the planet unopposed.”
“What about the Tortantulas?”
“They’re out, too. They like wholesale slaughter better when they’re the ones doing it, not having it done to them. Sorry. Hopefully, we can do business again in the future.” Breetar turned and left.
“He’s got a point,” Mason said. “Even if they stayed, the psychopathic spiders wouldn’t have made enough of a difference. Besides, this mission requires a little more subtlety than the Tortantulas generally possess. While they’re great at blowing things up, we don’t necessarily want them to drop a hangar on where the enemy is holding your sister. The chipmunk at least answered to orders, but he’d barely be a snack to one of the Besquith.”
“We could have used them, though. We don’t have time to go back to Earth and recruit more troops.”
“Agreed; however, we don’t have time not to. You want your sister back. I get that; I want her back too. But neither of us are getting her back if we don’t get more troops. We’ll be killed and so will she.”
“Well, shit.”
“Yeah.”
Both men stared at the deck, trying to come up with an option that didn’t end with their own funerals.
“Huh,” Nigel said after a pause long enough to be uncomfortable.
“Got something, sir? I’m willing to discuss even a crappy idea at this point.”
“Well, maybe. We need people right?”
“Uh, yeah. We have been discussing that.”
“They don’t have to be our people though, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, all along, I’ve been thinking about going back to Earth and recruiting more people to fill out our ranks. But that means finding them, interviewing them, hiring them, and then training them to our standards. That’s going to take a long time, far longer than we have. But what about if we hire a unit that’s already trained?”
“What are you going to pay them with?”
“Well, we could sell So’Kla’s ship and this frigate. That would give us enough credits to buy a transport.”
“And then what? Try to get a group of troops to jump ship from one company en masse and come over to us? I don’t think that would work too well. Besides not being terribly ethical, we probably don’t want anyone who would just up and quit their company at a moment’s notice. They couldn’t be trusted and we’d get a pretty bad reputation, pretty quickly. There’s also the fact that, even with selling the ship, the last time I looked, the company was pretty broke. Generally, mercenaries like to get paid and we’re also going to have to refuel the frigate, which won’t leave much left over to pay the mercs. History has shown that it’s bad practice not to pay the people with the weapons once they complete the job you’ve hired them for.”
“No, I’m not talking about trying to steal forces from another company, I’m talking about actually hiring another company…well, subcontracting our contract out to them, anyway. Look at it this way, we have a contract to provide defense for the plant on Moorhouse. That contract is coming to an end. If we come in, wipe out the Besquith without destroying the factory, and satisfy the terms of the contract, we will get paid, and from that payment, we could pay whoever comes in with us.”
“Subcontract it out. Hmmm…never thought of it that way.”
“It would be a perfect solution. If we can find the right people, they wouldn’t have to do a whole lot beyond the initial assault. Admittedly, there’s going to be some danger in the assault they’d have to be compensated for, but after that, we’d just have to hold the plant for a few more days and then everyone would get paid. Not only that, we’ve had to fight to complete the contract, so we will collect on the combat clause, as well. If we can take it and hold it, we stand to have a pretty big payday, and one more than large enough to share with another company.”
Mason’s brows knit as he chewed over the plan in his mind. Finally, he looked up and said, “You know what, sir? I think you may have come up with a workable solution. There are some things that would have to be ironed out, and we would have to find the right company to subcontract to, but that just might work.”
Nigel smiled.
“Before you get too big for your britches, though,” Mason added, “there are some issues with the plan, and some of those may be showstoppers.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact we’re on the ass end of the system, and there aren’t a lot of opportunities. There’s only one merc pit likely to have the forces we need as quickly as we’ll need them.”
“Okay, I defer to your judgment on that. We can head to that star system—wherever it is—as soon as we get our CASPers off the other ship.”
“That isn’t the problem. The problem is that, like I said, we’re on the ass end of the system, and we are a long way from Earth. The odds of our finding humans out here will be pretty small.”
“Okay, well maybe we’ll have to hire an alien race to help us.”
“That’s going to be tricky. As we’ve already discussed, the Tortantulas and the Flatar are out. We’re certainly not going to hire Besquith, and they will probably make up the bulk of the forces we find there. Hell, we may have a hard time just getting in and out of the pit if the word gets out that we were the ones that leveled the Drinkers’ base. There will be Besquith that will want to avenge them.”
“Let’s talk about that for a moment, shall we? I heard the base went up in a nuclear explosion once we got off the planet. You wouldn’t happen to know how that happened, would you?”
“Well, I didn’t want the Besquith to be able to pin it on us, and we left a lot of our blood around the hangar, so I merely suggested to Zzeldar t
hat some of the weapons in the hangar would do a great job of covering our tracks. What she took it upon herself to do with that information, I really can’t be held accountable for.”
Nigel’s eyebrows rose. “Really, that’s your story?”
Mason shrugged. “There wasn’t time to call you, so I made a command decision to mention it to her. I didn’t cause the explosion, though.”
It was Nigel’s turn to shrug. “Okay; whatever. I’ll let it go, but next time, please clear it with me before you decide to nuke somebody, all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Mason replied. “Besides, I know it wasn’t a perfect solution; it was just the only thing that could be done with the time remaining.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that it’s possible some Besquith will come looking for whoever did it. They might even figure out it was us. I mean, we are in possession of one of their frigates, and there aren’t very many humans on this side of the galaxy.”
“But why would they want to search us out? There’s no business reason to do so. They will just lose assets and not get paid anything for it. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Politicians don’t make sense,” Mason said, “and yet people still vote for them. Besquith don’t make sense, either, and they certainly don’t need a reason kill us; they just need an opportunity. I doubt they are going to want a rumor going around that someone blew up one of their bases on their home planet, and they didn’t track down the people responsible and kill them in some horrible way. It’s bad for their image.”
“Okay, so we need to get rid of the frigate, and we have to be careful while we’re there.”
“Careful? We’ll have to be damned vigilant. You may remember that there’s only a platoon of us left, right? And the Besquith will have companies, if not battalions, of troops on the station?”
“I’m aware,” Nigel replied. “Still, we have to go there.”
“We’re at least going to bring the CASPers this time, right? I understand why we had to leave them here when we went to Bestald, but the suits will help us even the odds some, too.”
“Like I said, yes, we are going to get them. We should have had them last time. I shouldn’t have worried about walking through the station with them. We lost a lot of good folks because I didn’t bring them. That is a mistake I won’t make again. We will also have the Jehas get the dropships from this ship once I purchase a transport for us; I want every advantage possible for when we get to Moorhouse.”
“Bet your fucking ass,” Mason said, then added, “Sir.”
Gravity Ring, Free Trading Station, Grbow III
“People are staring,” Turk radioed on the command frequency where only Nigel and Mason could hear.
Nigel slewed the monitor of his CASPer left and right. The corridor was fairly crowded, and all of the passers-by were staring.
“Well, we have to get the CASPers to the new ship, and this is the fastest way to do it,” Nigel replied. “At least they’re older models that had our unit insignias removed. They’ll know we’re human, but we could be any unit from Earth.”
“Can I do some misdirection, sir?” Mason asked.
“Go for it.”
Mason turned on his external speakers. “Make a hole!” he broadcast as he slammed his way through the crowded ring. “Varangian Guard coming through!”
“Varangian Guard?” Nigel asked.
“Always hated those stuck-up bastards,” Mason replied. “Varangian Guard coming through!”
They made better time through the throng with Mason broadcasting, and they arrived at their destination 10 minutes later.
“There it is,” Nigel said. “The Vindicator.”
“You actually bought that piece of shit?” Mason asked as he stared out Docking Bay B-17’s viewing window. “With real money?”
“What do you mean?” Nigel asked. “The Jehas said it was a sound ship.”
“They’re hard to understand sometimes,” Mason said. “What they probably said was, ‘It sounds like a piece of shit.’”
“No; I had them look at it before I bought it. They said the engineering spaces were good.”
“Really? Did they have their eyes open? Because I’ve left better-looking craps in the toilet after a hard night drinking.”
“Look. We needed a transport, and this was the only one available. I was able to afford it with what I got from selling the ships we had. We wanted to blend in and look non-offensive. This ship screams ‘inoffensive.’”
“And, ‘It would be safer to fly anything else.’”
“Well, look at it this way. Who would be dumb enough to launch an assault using this?”
“I’d love it if you named any other merc unit besides Asbaran Solutions,” Mason said hopefully.
“Oh, stop being such a baby. The Jehas said it would probably hold together for as long as we needed it to. It’s going to work.”
Mason turned away from the window. “Well, at least we won’t have to worry about getting eaten by a Besquith.” He shrugged. “Although I’m not sure dying in space is any better.”
Captain’s Cabin, Asbaran Ship Vindicator, Enroute to Telgar II
Nigel dropped the pen and sighed. How could there be so much paperwork while they were on a mission? Okay, there were probably things that needed to be documented for the bean counters back on Earth, but he needed to implement some procedures so he didn’t have to authorize every single credit spent.
A knock on the door saved him from the stack of paperwork, and Mason and Turk shuffled into the cabin with their heads down and sat on the bed. Neither looked particularly happy when they looked up, either.
“So, what have you been able to learn from the info we gathered on Bestald?” Nigel asked.
Mason snorted. “Mostly we learned, ‘Don’t let Tortantulas open safes for you.’ Zzeldar used way too much explosive, and the only info we got out of it is what we’ve been able to piece together from the remnants we gathered afterwards. It’s been like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the box to show us what it’s supposed to look like.”
“Did we get anything helpful?”
“A little. Turk has been spearheading the effort, so I’ll let him brief you on what he found. Turk?”
The trooper cleared his throat. “I have some good news and some bad news, sir.”
“All right, hit me with the good news. After playing with paperwork for the last couple of hours, I could use some good news.”
“Despite the fact most of what we got was in little pieces when we recovered it, we were able to extract a few data points that will hopefully make our lives a little easier. Not only did we get some of their crypto codes, we also got some good info on their deployment data and the forces they took to Moorhouse.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, sir. As you were no doubt aware, the contract called for four companies of troops. They took two companies of their own troopers and two companies of heavy air defense forces.”
“They only had two companies of combat troopers?” Nigel asked. He turned to Mason. “I guess that confirms what you thought about their using banshee bombs.”
“Unfortunately. There’s no other way they could have evicted four companies of our guys in state-of-the-art CASPers. Especially since they would have been dug in and ready for them.”
“I can’t confirm that, sir,” Turk said, “but I can tell you that’s all the ground forces they took. Either they had traitors on the inside or they cheated somehow; I don’t know. What I do know is that they lied about the air defense forces. Although they brought two companies of air defense troops, they brought four companies’ worth of gear.”
“Wait…four companies’ worth of gear?”
“Yeah, in addition to the two companies of Blood Drinker troopers and two companies of anti-air forces from the Eagle Swatters, they also brought the gear from two companies of the Red Archers. All of these units are Besquith, by the way.”
“The Drinkers
paid to have extra equipment shipped in? That doesn’t make sense. I mean, it makes sense for why we haven’t been able to recapture Moorhouse…no one was prepared for that level of air defense. But that’s a pretty big expense they aren’t going to be reimbursed for.”
“That’s the interesting thing, though; they didn’t pay for it. Someone else did. But here’s the bad news, we don’t know who as that data was lost. We searched through the pile of fragments we had three times, but no luck. Either we missed it or it was destroyed, but we don’t have it. And, what’s worse is there was another shipment.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know. The only thing we recovered just mentioned it as ‘the shipment,’ but from the connotation, it had something to do with defensive material or systems, and it was heavy.”
“So someone’s helping them for some reason, although we don’t know who or why. And they’re sending the Besquith extra defensive material. Lovely. Well, maybe when we get to Moorhouse we can find out who they were going to pay it back to.”
“Maybe…” Turk didn’t sound convinced. “I don’t think they are going to pay it back. One of the other fragments said something wouldn’t have to be reimbursed. The Drinkers were just supposed to keep whatever it was as ‘an advance against future ops.’”
“Who told them that?”
“Sorry, sir, but that info was lost, too. All we got was a callsign; it didn’t explain who it was.”
“Damn it! Well, thanks for putting that together. It explains part of the puzzle, even though I think it creates more questions than it answers. At least we know why our folks failed in their assaults; there were twice as many missiles headed at them as they were expecting. The good news is there aren’t as many of the Drinker’s combat troops as we thought there would be.”
Asbaran Solutions (The Revelations Cycle Book 2) Page 20