by Mark Wandrey
“Why don’t you take a nap, then we’ll get you something to eat?”
“No,” the kid insisted. “I’m fine.” He sat back in his chair and took a drink of his tea.
Apparently the emotional release was all he needed. Murdock thought it was the first time he’d seen him cry. Tough kid, Murdock thought, then he nodded. “We can use your help,” he said to the boy. “We’re going to make our move.”
“While they’re celebrating killing our people? Good, I like it. Fuck ’em when they’re not looking.”
“Language,” Murdock growled.
“Sorry, sir.”
“Yeah,” Dod said. “Fuck ’em hard.” Murdock shot the old man a dirty look; Dod just winked at Vince, who grinned.
“All right then,” Murdock said. “Here’s how we’ll do this.”
* * *
Chosht watched Khisht complete his conference with the Xiq’tal’s new commander. He was glad not to be the liaison with the crustaceans. The Xiq’tal were difficult to deal with and less than reliable in many situations. They made bad decisions in tough situations, like when half their force had been splattered all over the side of a hill while trying to complete a simple operation. Now, with their commander dead, apparently a new one had somehow been appointed.
General Peepo handled all the tasking for the grand operation of containing and neutralizing the Humans. In her wisdom, she’d sent the Xiq’tal along with the HecSha, probably because Valais was a water world. In Chosht’s opinion, the surly crustaceans were more trouble than they were worth, especially on a job like this where no real fighting was necessary.
“Cursed sea creatures,” Khisht said, snapping his jaws in anger after he’d cut the connection.
“What’s wrong?” Chosht asked.
“The Xiq’tal are enraged their leader was killed. The new one seems more outraged about the lost money. He wants to take it out on the Humans.”
“Which ones?” Chosht demanded. “The ones the crabs are guarding have been compliant since the day of the invasion.”
“Nonetheless, that’s what he says. Unless we find the money, they’re going to kill half the hostages,” the commander said, then heaved a sigh. He turned and looked down the barracks. Most of his command were enjoying a ration of Kick as a reward. Aside from the squad leaders, most were lounging on pads, tongues lolling out in drug-induced euphoria.
Chosht could tell his commander now regretted the decision. With the Human resistance dead, it had made sense. They’d bagged the pair of aged Human mercs who’d led the civilians. That was a serious coup. Now the planet was secure for when their relief arrived. “I’m going to go talk to the king crab wannabe. We also need to replace the ammo we used today. You go take care of resupply.”
“Certainly, sir,” Chosht said. He almost suggested they take extra guards, then he shrugged it off. If any rebellious Humans remained, likely they were in fear for their lives and hiding.
At the barracks exit, the guard looked despondently at his fellows, all stoned to their heat receptors, wishing he were with them. The commander paid him no attention. The trooper had drawn the duty because he’d fallen asleep when he was on guard duty last week. Served him right.
Outside, the snow showed no sign of relenting as it poured from the dark sky. Satellite imagery suggested it wouldn’t let up for days. Worse, the temperature was continuing to drop, and the already wet ground was freezing. HecSha were only moderately homeothermic. The idea of freezing precipitation wasn’t one that made them happy. The troopers all wore armor with heaters built in, but it wouldn’t be enough. They’d need to consume 50% more calories to fuel their inefficient metabolism enough to make up for heat loss. The worthless Humans were complaining about food shortages as well.
At the street corner, the pair of wide reptilian mercs split up. Khisht went toward the detention center where the Xiq’tal were billeted, and Chosht the other way to the merc outfitter to get the ammo. He didn’t see any Humans. Likely if the bipedal mammals saw him they’d have run away, only there were no Humans. Chosht chalked it up to the late hour and the inclement weather. He reached his objective in a few minutes’ walk.
“BBW” he said, the letters rendered into his language. There was no literal translation. “Strange name,” he said as he reached out a claw and pulled the door open. Inside the temperature wasn’t quite as warm as he enjoyed or preferred. Still, at least it wasn’t raining frozen precipitation inside.
“Welcome, Squad Leader Chosht,” the Tri-V known as Red said as it came to life before him. Despite its voice sounding like a female HecSha, the image was that of a male trooper complete with combat harness. Unlike the normal mottled brown and green hide, it appeared with a reddish-green hue. “How can I help you today?”
“I require some ammunition,” he said, and took out some credit chits. The Tri-V smiled.
* * * * *
Chapter Eleven
Murdock lit a fresh cigar and enjoyed the taste of the Zimbabwe-grown tobacco. If things went south, it would be his last, though he had nine left back in the hideout. He checked the time glowing in the Tri-V display. H hour. “Team One, report,” Murdock called.
“In position,” Kelso called.
“Team Two, report.”
“Ready,” Dod said, and the sound of him spitting carried over the radio.
“Team Three, report.”
“In position, eyes out,” Mika said. “This snow isn’t going to help.”
“Understood,” Murdock said. “Can’t be helped. Team Four, report.”
“Ready,” Vince said. Murdock made a face and suppressed his reservations. Forty top-notch HecSha troopers and a couple dozen Xiq’tal. The enemy force numbered more than six times his own trained people. What choice did he have?
“Dolan, any update?”
“I’m trying,” the man replied. Murdock could hear a portable generator and tools making metal-on-metal sounds. It was a serious longshot. In the end, he’d decided to roll those dice and see what came up. It was Dolan and Greenstein’s project; Murdock couldn’t help them if he’d wanted to. If they needed it, things were going badly. Better to have it out there than not.
Okay, he thought, checking the four drones he’d released into the starport, let’s see what’s going on. The drones were the last ones he owned, and he watched their feeds in the compact Tri-V display with interest as he ran the checklists. So far, the only movement was two dinos; one was at the detention center inside the crab shack, the other was in BBW.
Murdock would dearly like to put a rocket into the building, especially if Canaday was there. Serve the motherfucker right, selling guns to aliens invading a Human colony. He made a mental note to find the shithead after it was all over and settle the debt once and for all. The telltales were all green except for a few yellow; good enough. He took a deep breath and let it out.
“Team Four, you have a go.”
“Roger that!” Vince said.
Just outside the old starport, forty young kids appeared from a dozen snow-covered alleys, out of mostly-full rubbish bins and broken windows. In an instant, they crossed the streets outside the starport and converged on the old hangar, where the HecSha had their barracks set up. Armed with backpacks full of every manner of exploding, burning, or stinking ordnance they could find, the kids—ranging in age from seven to fourteen—attacked the barracks, its security systems, and portable power supply.
Murdock saw the flashing lights in the barracks compound within the fence, indicating the kids had been spotted. Caught in the act, the young Humans lit fuses on what they could and ran like hell. A squad of HecSha burst out the main street-side door just as the first surprise was going off at their feet; 200 kilograms of the rottenest fish effluent was blown all over the troopers, the front of the barracks, and through the door into the equipment room.
The HecSha lost their shit and began spraying the vicinity with automatic gunfire. Murdock bared his teeth and sucked in his breath as the
drone over the barracks showed the wolf pups running, dodging, and scampering for their lives. He didn’t know what annoyed him more—that the kids were in danger, or that they seemed to be having so much fucking fun!
The kids were gone as fast as they’d appeared, and none seemed to have so much as skinned a knee. On the other hand, the HecSha looked like they were extras in a fish version of a slasher flick. He let out a little chuckle at the stunned looks on the five troopers. They looked miserable.
He watched and waited, hoping the attack would have the desired results. It took a full minute for the response; two more squads burst out the main door. They stopped just long enough to look over their comrades, maybe have a good laugh, and then rocketed off in hot pursuit of the kids.
“Good luck with that,” Murdock said with a laugh, then activated his radio. “Team One, go!”
“Roger that,” Kelso reported. The drone hovering over the detention facility showed two squads of five Humans, all dressed in brand-new light combat armor, step out from adjacent streets and open fire with battle rifles at the four watchtowers constructed to guard the compound.
Murdock cringed at the lack of accurate fire, silently hoping none of the rounds found an innocent detainee. The towers were empty, merely containing electronic monitoring equipment to help the Xiq’tal guards watch over their prisoners. They certainly weren’t hardened to withstand high-velocity 10mm armor-piercing rounds. The irregulars managed to put enough rounds on target to chew up all four towers, then just like the kids, they fell back before the aliens could respond.
Two squads of crabs boiled out of the front gate, with another squad coming up behind them and stopping before they exited. Among them was a slightly larger crab. Looks like the new leader, he thought. It was a theory amongst those who’d dealt with the crabs that the dominant one in the group, the king crab, wasn’t bred to be the king, it just grew bigger because it was in charge. Well, there’s confirmation.
The Xiq’tal troopers tore off in pursuit of the irregulars, only to come under attack from two more squads of irregular troopers on either side of the detention facility, one led personally by Kelso. Like the first two squads, their fire wasn’t very disciplined, and most of the rounds bounced off the heavily-armored alien troopers. Even so, Murdock saw two go down, then a third as Kelso used a shoulder-fired armor-piercing rocket launcher.
The Xiq’tal stopped, confused by the second attack. While they were reorganizing, Kelso had the two other squads fall back.
“Perfect,” Murdock said to himself over the circulator fans, a grin cracking his rough features, “badger the fuckers half crazy!” Then as he was watching, a single HecSha emerged from the front of the detention facility. “Team Three, you see it?”
“Got it,” Dandridge said from his perch next to Mika.
The biggest building in Atlantis was a nine-story-tall combination office/government building that had been under construction for two years when the invasion happened. A modern concrete-and-steel spire, it was visible from anywhere in the city, including the starport. The alien dropships had strafed it, placing its structural soundness in question. That and the power shortage meant it had sat vacant since the invasion. Climbing to the top had cost Mika and Dandridge two hours of hard work, but now they had the ultimate sniper’s perch.
“Do it,” Murdock said.
“You heard the man,” Mika said to her spotter. “Range me.”
Dandridge worked the electronic spotter’s scope, one of the gems Murdock had gotten from BBW just hours ago. It was high tech, excellently designed, and hot as shit. A smile curled up the corners of his mouth as he settled the crosshairs on the wide, flat head of the HecSha. Its ugly face matched perfectly the image taken by Vince; this was their commander.
“Range 3,923.5 meters,” he said. “Dispersion one-point-nine, frozen water. Target steady.” He hit a button, and the data fed to Mika’s weapon.
“Fucking snow,” she said. Dispersion was a factor of how much energy would be dispersed between her and the target. If this were vacuum, it would be zero. Dense smoke could be three or four. A factor of one-point-nine was far from ideal. She worked her scope with the data and dialed the power and frequency control.
Murdock had offered her a new automated weapon, tripod mounted and integrated with the spotter module Dandridge was operating, sniping transformed to point and click. She sneered at the idea as just under four kilometers away the HecSha commander turned his big blunt head and looked down the street in her direction. The weapon’s crosshairs settled right between the alien’s eyes. Point and click? she thought, and pressed the trigger.
The chemical laser rifle, optimized for custom use by a sniper such as herself, mixed chemicals in the proportions she’d set when targeting the weapon and sent a pulse of electricity through the lazing chamber. The result was a deep thrummm from the weapon, a pulse of heat, and an invisible beam of hexagonal coherent light of half a million watts connected her gun to the HecSha’s head.
Because of the shitty weather, only 420,000 watts of power actually met the target. A few milliliters of snow was turned to vapor, accounting for the lost wattage by scattering the formerly perfect beam. Now more of a circle than a hexagon, the front of Khisht’s scull was vaporized a picosecond before his brain was boiled. The HecSha commander didn’t feel a thing before his head exploded. What fun is there in point and click, Mika thought and smiled. She loved her job.
“Target down,” Dandridge said.
Murdock watched the HecSha fall through his drone feed and nodded. He only wished the dinos were as hierarchical as the crabs; it would have made his job so much easier. Instead, the dead alien was sure to have a second in command. Killing it would still cause some problems for them. He shrugged; it was worth it.
“Murdock, Tyrie here.”
“Go ahead,” Murdock said. He hadn’t expected to hear a peep from the former cop. After the initial organization of the irregulars, he’d used Tyrie mainly as a recruiter and intelligence gatherer. In the former job, his position as LEO on Valais gave him gravitas, while the latter was well-suited to his primary skillset. He’d helped bring quite a few into the fold. Being well known, his intel unfortunately wasn’t as useful.
“I have a squad of aliens approaching the new government building.”
Murdock knew Tyrie would be soft on killing, being a cop, so he’d set him on his intel gig, equipped him, and left him to keep an eye on one of the wildcards in this game—the local quislings in the government. He’d had personal reasons for not treating them the same as he had the Sharps. Well, fuck, he thought. Murdock tossed his cigar on the warehouse floor and went to work.
* * *
“Khisht, can you read me?” Chosht sent yet again on their squadnet. Something was wrong. He had returned from his resupply mission to find that hatchling Humans had struck in what Chosht thought was a revenge attack for the HecSha success earlier in the evening.
The attack was all sound and fury, with little of significance. A squad had gone out to confront the hatchlings and inadvertently detonated a bomb full of rotten fish. The smell was horrendous; however, the offense was entirely olfactory, resulting in no casualties.
Squad leader Shisht hadn’t agreed that the attack was unsubstantial, and he’d led out two squads in pursuit. He didn’t seem to care the squads were still under the influence of Kick, and Chosht wondered if Shisht was as well. Officers were strictly forbidden to partake at the same time as enlisted.
The coordination was too good, Chosht decided. He gathered up a squad from those available, mostly the ones who seemed the soberest, and headed toward the one source he thought would have answers. The Human government.
He didn’t bother knocking, instead he had his troopers barge into the building, banging the walls for attention. For safety, the Humans who made up the new government had been living in the same building they administrated from as the rest of the civilians did not hold them in high regard. Considering that the
core of the government was made up of people who had cooperated with the invasion, the fact didn’t strike Chosht as too surprising.
“What’s happening?” one of the Humans asked, dressed in some sort of strange robe.
“Bring the rest of your people.”
“Why?” the Human asked.
“Just do it!” he yelled and raised his rifle. The Human’s eyes got twice as big, an interesting phenomenon for their species, and she left rapidly. In only minutes she was back with all the others, many similarly dressed. Is that some kind of evening ritual dress? Chosht silently wondered.
“What’s wrong?” the Human leader asked.
“Where are the rest of the mercs?”
“What do you mean the rest?” another Human asked.
“We killed two tonight,” Chosht said, “and a group of civilians being armed by them as a militia.” One of the Humans gasped, a female, he thought. He pointed at her. “You,” he said, “you act surprised.”
“I-I don’t know what you mean.” The other Humans all looked at her curiously.
“My commander isn’t here, and I am tired of you Humans denying everything, being unable to meet our demands for production, and probably helping the hatchling terrorists.”
“Wha—” the Human leader started to say, but Chosht used his rifle to buttstroke her to the ground.
“Enough!” Chosht yelled. The Human held her bleeding head and tried to crawl away, but one of Chosht’s troopers stopped her. Chosht had a brief moment when he was afraid he was making a mistake, but then he noticed the one who’d gasped trying to slip out the door and pointed. “Stop that one.”
His troopers were obviously not completely sober. Still, one managed to get his claws on her before the female got out the door.
“Let me go!” she screamed. The trooper struck her backhanded, sending blood flying in an arc. The Human epidermis wasn’t very durable, compared to HecSha hide.