by Mark Wandrey
“Huge things with flat heads.” the man explained, “Remind me of dinosaurs.”
“HecSha,” Murdock said. “Crabs and dinosaurs. Great.” As the others were coming up, Murdock spoke to the guy with the bandage, whose name was Carlisle. “You said they’re patrolling the docks? How do you know, and how many?”
“Well, they caught a bunch of old guys on a barge a few minutes ago down there.”
“Fuck,” Murdock snarled. The man looked alarmed. “Sorry, those were more friends. Go on.”
“Well, there was six of them, all with body armor and big guns.”
“Lasers or ballistic?”
“I don’t rightly know.”
“Was there a hole in the end or a detachable magazine?” He pointed at the AK-47 Dod had slung over his stooped back as they helped the old man up. “Like that.”
“Yeah, but a lot bigger.”
“Okay, great. Have you seen more?”
“I heard there were eight or ten groups. They were rounding up all the police. They also had a list of people.”
“Who?”
“Anyone with more than a few guns or interest in using them.”
“Have people fought?”
“A few constables tried to hold the police station,” another man said. “The dinosaurs used a rocket launcher and blew the whole place to hell.”
“Sounds like HecSha, alright,” Murdock said.
“A few of our friends hid when it all happened,” the bandaged man said. “What are you going to do, mister?”
“I need to find Sheela Dresdin.”
“They took her captive,” another man said. “Went down her street and rounded everyone up. They turned an amphitheater into a big detention facility.”
“They’re occupying,” Murdock said under his breath. What the fuck is going on? He’d been part of a dozen occupation contracts, but never against civilian targets. It was always either industrial or research. There was no profit in attacking civilians, no rhyme or reason to it. Worse, it was bad for business, attacking another merc race’s planet. Valais had nothing except fish, and compared to some commercially-producing worlds in the Union, not much of that. The planet didn’t yet export a million tons a year; chump change in the galactic scheme of things. The Union’s mile-wide cargo ships never came to Valais. If one did, it could probably haul away an entire year’s catch with room to spare.
“Occupying?” one of the men asked. “What, like in a war?”
“Yeah,” Dod said and spat on the dock, “just like a war.”
“Is there a place we can meet some of those friends you said are hiding?”
The man with the bandage considered for a second, then nodded. “We’ll take you to them,” he said. “My name is Robin Stevens.”
* * * * *
Chapter Twelve
Murdock had never seen the area of Atlantis Robin Stevens led him and his cohorts to. Of course, a lot of the city no longer looked like it had. The alien mercs had clearly enjoyed themselves as they neutralized what defenses the planet had. The starport was a smoldering wreck. They’d left the only starship there untouched, a Merchant’s Guild vessel that had arrived only days ago. It seemed there were some things this occupying force wasn’t willing to do, lines they didn’t want to cross.
All the fishermen Stevens led carried their weapons concealed under their coats, a disguise that was aided by the clouds opening in a downpour halfway to their destination. Murdock might have been annoyed before he moved to Valais. Now it was part of life. The rain was becoming more frequent as winter approached. A couple of the highest peaks on Pinnacle now sported little snowy white crests. As winter progressed, they would slowly grow down toward the water.
Murdock and his seven allies, including Vince, were concealed by the fishermen, who all moved in a tight knot across the war-ravaged dock district. They couldn’t simply hide their weapons under heavy raincoats. The former mercs all wore their old combat armor, and many had long arms. The weapons were held down, out of view. Murdock was afraid the group would look extremely conspicuous, moving as they were. He needn’t have worried.
They were just past the starport entrance when he spotted the first aliens. Like he’d thought, they were HecSha. Their stooped gait, occasionally using all four limbs, flattened heads, and menacing, beady eyes were unmistakable. Also, as they’d said, it was a squad of six aliens, all in light combat armor and carrying huge slug throwers.
He wasn’t an authority on HecSha expressions, but to him they looked bored. Good, he thought as the alien mercs walked by. One of their huge flattened heads glanced at the group of fishermen shuffling by, heads down and dripping rainwater. The HecSha trooper snorted and walked on, radiating contempt.
Murdock almost shot the fucker in the back; his fingers hurt with the longing for it. Later, he thought as the alien mercs disappeared around a corner.
The only signs of organized activity Murdock saw were small teams of humans collecting bodies. They were using hand-drawn fish carts, and they all looked shell shocked. None of them looked up from their grisly task. As usual, the HecSha had caused as many casualties as possible in doing their job. Any contract calling for mayhem was a favorite of theirs.
The fisherman led them into a short alley, which stopped at a dead end. For a second Murdock thought he’d been played and wondered if he’d have to kill all these men. Then two of them moved a garbage dumpster aside, revealing an old doorway.
“A place where we played as kids,” Stevens said, gesturing to the door. “The building was a storehouse back when the colony was being built.” He moved over and knocked three times, then opened the door. The interior was dimly lit, though there was enough light to see a dozen men and women pointing guns at them.
Good, Murdock thought, the lizards didn’t knock all the fight out of them.
“It’s okay,” Stevens said, stepping forward, “they’re with us.” He gestured to the woman at the front of those inside. “My wife, Janet,” he said. They all lowered their weapons. “Come in quickly,” he urged, “we don’t know how many patrols they’re sending out yet.”
Those inside watched on, somewhat suspiciously, as the older mercs filed in. One of the fishermen who’d led them there stayed outside, and the can slid back into place before the door was closed.
“Everyone,” Robin Stevens said, “this is Murdock. He’s the merc who killed the pirates.”
“Retired merc,” Murdock corrected. Once they were inside and away from any prying eyes, the old mercs stopped hiding their weapons. The men and women who’d been hiding looked surprised at the array of deadly weapons.
“They’re mostly a bunch of old men,” someone said, a laugh in his voice.
“And women,” Mika said, her eyes hard.
“This is your idea of bringing help, Robin?” his wife asked. “What can this bunch do?”
“A fuck lot more than you idiots can!” Dod spat and held his AK-47 in a somewhat neutral position.
“Why don’t you bring me up to date with what happened?” Murdock asked.
The group wove the tale of how the alien mercs attacked. They put it all together in bits and pieces, based on what each of them had seen and when they’d seen it. One of them was an engineer on the planet’s small squadron of gunboats. He’d been rushing to the starport when the attack came, and he saw the alien dropships begin their attack run.
Another man had been late to the docks and was just arriving when the dropships began strafing the fishing boats. His tale was particularly harrowing. Still another was on the city’s sanitation team and had been heading out on the morning run when HecSha merc teams began their attack on the police department. He was the one who’d seen the troopers destroy the building with rockets. The rest had only gotten their accounts secondhand.
It’s not enough, Murdock thought as they wound down. None of them knew where the alien mercs were setting up headquarters, how many squads there were, or how many dropships had landed. One s
aid only a single ship, several others insisted two, and a pair of brothers said they’d seen a third ship land just outside the starport perimeter, near the water. He also wanted to find out about the hostages the aliens were keeping.
“Alright,” he said, “we need to get organized. First, let’s inventory what we have to work with. While some are doing that, the rest of us better start evaluating just how secure we are and seeing if we can arrange a secondary escape route.”
“Who put you in charge?” one of the men who’d been in the hideout asked. “Stevens has been doing okay until you came along.”
“Yeah?” Murdock asked. He looked at his crew, who were mostly looking at him. “Stevens, you want to run this operation?”
“Hell, no,” the man said and held up his hands, “and I don’t know what kind of operation you’re talking about.”
“Killing aliens,” Dod said, then turned to spear the guy who’d confronted Murdock with an arthritic finger. “You stupid or something?” Stevens looked down and backed away. His wife, Janet, looked less than happy that her husband had let himself be usurped so easily.
The guy who’d spoken up glared belligerently at Dod. “Screw you, Grandpa,” he said. “Maybe you’re working with the dinosaurs.”
“HecSha,” Dod said.
“See?” the big guy asked. “He knows all about them.”
“Because we’ve all fought them,” Ripper said.
The big guy looked at Ripper and got a confused look on his face. He didn’t look like he wanted to argue with a guy in a mobility chair.
“Look, Tomlinson,” Stevens said, “maybe you should—”
“Oh, shut up,” Tomlinson snapped. “You’re too much of pussy to stand up to these old worn-out assholes.”
“I’d give it a rest if I were you,” Murdock said.
“You can go to hell,” Tomlinson said, facing Murdock now. “I really think you might be part of it. Big hero, shot up those pirates. I’ve been slinging fish here my whole life, and nobody gave me a house.”
“Mine just got blown up by some Xiq’tal,” Murdock said. Tomlinson looked confused. “Big fucking crabs.”
“Big story,” the man replied. “Smells to me. Or maybe Grandpa there shit himself,” he said, pointing at Dod without looking. That turned out to be a mistake.
Dod snatched Tomlinson’s finger in one hand and bent it in a direction it wasn’t intended to go. Tomlinson squealed like a pig as Dod used the joint lock to bear the man to his knees.
“Ow, stop—”
“You shut your cakehole, punk,” Dod said and pushed harder. Tomlinson’s knuckle gave a pop, and he cried out in pain. “I’ve heard enough of your simpering shit to last me a while. You gonna shut up, or do I twist this finger off? Your girlfriend would be real disappointed.” Tomlinson nodded frantically, so Dod let go. The big man came at him instantly.
Murdock took half a step to help the old merc. It turned out he needn’t have expended the energy. Dod half pivoted away, neatly letting the big fisherman slide by without the other man being able to even lay a hand on him. As Dod spun, he brought his AK-47 around and slammed the buttstock into the back of Tomlinson’s head.
The other man let out a grunt and fell to the floor. His face smacked into the dusty floor, skidding a half a meter, and leaving some skin behind in the process. He jerked a bit and fell still.
“Y-you just kill him?” someone asked. Dod turned toward the voice, the barrel of his rifle at belly height. The man who’d spoken turned white as a ghost.
“He ain’t dead,” Murdock said. He glanced at Tomlinson quickly. No blood was leaking out of his ears, and his head was still shaped like a head. Yeah, not dead. It hadn’t looked like Dod had clocked him too hard. More like a love tap. “But I think Dod here made his point? We ain’t working for the HecSha, or the Xiq’tal. We’re gonna run this operation because we know what to do, and you guys fucking don’t. Do I make myself clear?” He looked around the group. Everyone nodded, except Tomlinson of course.
“Good,” Murdock said and nodded. “We can all be friends. Now, even though we’re going to run this show, that doesn’t mean we’re going to tell you to go get killed or anything. Most of you haven’t hurt anything more intelligent than a fish in your life. Now Dod here, and the rest of us,” he said and gestured to the hard-looking mercs standing around him, “we’ve killed plenty of aliens. Some of us a fuckton of them. So we’ll do the wetwork. We need the rest of you because we didn’t grow up here. You know all the local places, people, and stuff. Do we understand each other?”
“What about him?” a young-looking man asked and pointed at Tomlinson, who was now snoring.
“We’ll see where he stands when he wakes up.” The kid nodded. “Okay,” Murdock said, “I need some local clothes, and we can get started.”
Murdock turned to his merc friends and winked. Most had small grins and were nodding at him, impressed with how he’d handled it. He looked at Dod and shook his head. “Good thing you didn’t crack that guy’s head wide open,” he whispered.
“I tried as hard as I could.” Dod admitted, “Just don’t have the arm strength anymore.”
“Jesus Jumpin’ Christ,” Murdock said and sighed. Dod was grinning from ear to ear. He glanced at Vince, who looked like he’d just had an interview with God himself. The look on the boy’s face said it all; any hope of getting the lad to do anything else with his life had just gone up in smoke.
* * * * *
Chapter Thirteen
Intelligence was the most important asset; Murdock had learned this fact at a young age, even before his first battle. The commander of the unit he’d been assigned to directly out of cadre ended up separated from the main body of their forces. Faced with a large unit of Jivool troopers, they were outnumbered four to one. He sent in three men, out of uniform and unarmed, to scout the Jivool position. Two of the three came back with detailed maps. When his unit attacked, they didn’t lose a single man except the one who never came back.
Murdock learned his lessons well. He used those skills constantly in his years as a merc. They’d saved his life, and those of his troopers, countless times. Never had he needed to do so much with so little, though. The city’s AetherNet was down, so he needed to get intel the old-fashioned way.
He sent out three groups of two each. Their instructions were simple—gather as much intel on the alien mercs as possible. He only used his friends dressed in the locals’ clothes. A bunch of old fishermen hobbling around would garner little attention. Kelso and Tully in one group, Greenstein and Dolan in another, and himself. Murdock had intended to go by himself, but Vince wouldn’t let him get away with it. The kid was far too surly to allow himself to be left behind, so he just took him along.
Murdock guessed they looked like a grandfather and his grandson. He planned to tell anyone he ran into that he was showing the kid the trade. It was as likely a story as any other.
He’d sent Kelso and Tully to scope the business district, while Greenstein and Dolan swung by the starport. He and Vince went down past the city center, taking a circuitous route so if they ran into any of the occupying force, the story of just heading for the docks might hold water.
The sun was well into the sky as they reached the edge of the city center. There wasn’t much damage there, unlike the docks and the starport. The first thing they came to was the police building.
“Wow,” Vince said. “That’s fucked up.”
“Language,” Murdock mumbled, then shook his head. Of course, the kid was right. It looked like the HecSha hadn’t just hit the building with a rocket, it looked like they’d hit it with a dozen rockets. Emergency personnel were working on the building, despite it being collapsed in on itself. A dozen electric ambulances waited for casualties. If Murdock knew his job as well as he thought he did, there wouldn’t be enough casualties to fill two of them. They’d be better off in the residential district.
“Murdock,” a voice hissed from a doorway.
<
br /> He turned, hand under the waterproof cloak and on the grip of his HP-4. Back in the shadows was none other than Detective Shawn Tyrie. “You’re alive,” Murdock said. He didn’t remove his hand from the gun.
“No thanks to the aliens,” the man said. He looked much the worse for wear. He was wearing civilian clothes, with no sign of his position or a weapon. He looked like he’d been rolling in the mud and wasn’t wearing a raincoat.
Murdock moved closer, out of the rain and near enough he could silence the man in an instant. He had no doubt Detective Tyrie was a capable cop, well-trained in hand to hand and how to stop a man. He was sure he didn’t know how to kill a man quickly.
“How are you still here,” Murdock asked, and pointed at the remains of the police building, “and not in there with your fellow constables?”
The man looked at him in anger for a moment, then cast his eyes down. “I was late,” he admitted. “I was at a female associate’s house.”
Murdock laughed and shook his head. “That was some lucky pussy,” he said.
“None of this happened until you came along,” Tyrie said far too loudly. Murdock glanced toward the emergency personnel. Nobody had noticed the little meeting, at least not yet.
“My arrival and all this are simply coincidence.” he told the detective, “Perhaps a fortuitous one.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I can actually help in this situation.” He gestured at the ruins. “As you can see, the HecSha and the Xiq’tal were quite systematic in their operation. This was a planned occupation.”
“You mercs don’t do things like that,” the detective argued. “Why would someone pay them to take Valais? We don’t have anything.”
“I know,” Murdock said, “but that didn’t stop them.” He took a breath and calmed himself. He’d been about to lose his patience with the cop. “Look, I’m going to try and help here, and I need people like you on my side.”