“I’m sorry, Sheila, but Bravo Company was gambling on this farm staying low-intensity, just enough to repel local raiders, thieves, or pirates. Deterrence through presence ops. Put on a good show. Against another similarly-sized garrison of alien mercs as tenacious and resourceful as the Zuul? We’re kinda fucked.”
Sheila deflated, her shoulders slumping. “Crap. Really?”
Reeves shrugged. “Don’t worry about it overmuch. Foster ain’t stupid. He won’t push for a last-gal-standing defense. He’ll realize we’re outmatched soon enough, and he’ll either cut a deal with the GenSha and Jeha to pass along some of the GenSha’s mystery crop so everybody profits, or he’ll cry to corporate and advise default, withdrawing us from this contract. The Texans might get a black eye which could affect what we’re offered in the future, but the company will survive. A pencil-pusher like him will never take the bold option.”
Sheila frowned. The Terrible Texans were the third merc outfit she had worked for since completing her Voluntary Off-World assessments. Not the best and not the boldest, but they had a great bottom-line and the lowest loss rate of any outfit she had seen, even if their per-op profit margin was a bit low. She thought that meant they knew what they were doing, not that they were well-practiced at avoiding doing it.
The 1SGT put an arm around her and walked them both toward the gate. “Trust me! This time tomorrow, we’ll either be compromising with the Zuul or packin’ up to get out of their way. It’ll suck for our own bottom-line, but better alive, toasting our good fortune, and able to quit this chicken-shit outfit than dead and on a wall of Honored Dead.”
* * *
Captain Foster neither cut a deal the next day, nor ordered a withdrawal. Instead, he himself joined the ranks of the Terrible Texans’ Honored Dead.
And so did First Sergeant Brenda Reeves.
Disconcerted by what Reeves had laid out for her, Sheila returned to the comforting chaos of Second Platoon. The squads were just about to go on rotation outside the outer perimeter. They were all on edge, but they covered their uneasiness well with good-natured trash talk, some wholly inappropriate gallows humor, and exaggerated posturing. To the uninitiated, their forced joviality might have looked uncaring or insane. After all, Second had lost three mercs in the mortar attack. Banter, boasting, and grab-ass were the last things someone might expect, but the vast majority coped as such.
Not all were as sanguine, though. First Lieutenant Jamal Smith, Second’s platoon leader, was not taking it well. He barked orders and grew visibly angry if the mercs cutting up did not immediately jump to comply. A sheen of sweat was visible on his forehead, even in the cool temps.
Sheila shoved her own concerns, questions, and doubts to the rear. “All right, you dumb-as-fuck jokers, square your shit away and hop to when the L-T says, or you’re gonna have to mod your CASPer’s to make room for my boot up your ass! You feel me, Second?! Move it!!!”
Once they were engaged, Sheila hung back and pulled Smith aside. “L-T, you good? Need to re-center yourself maybe? Before you climb in your CASPer and short it out from all the sweat pouring off you?”
Looks of confusion, anger, and then embarrassment flashed over his face before he was able to wipe his brow and put on an expression of faux-stoicism. “I beg your pardon, Staff Sergeant?”
Sheila shook her head. “Never mind, sir.” She almost let him go, but then grasped his arm again. “L-T, when we deployed, the TOE had enough sealed gear listed to sustain us for up to 30 days of full combat ops before we required augment or re-supply. More than enough to defend this farm from a whole brigade until reinforcements could be flown in. A big investment in resources which you signed for as the inventory control officer. You stand by that signature still, sir?”
His mouth opened and closed without saying anything. After a moment, he stood straighter and looked her squarely in the eye. “Sarge, we have exactly the resources we expected to need and were meant to have. Now, I think we should get on with relieving First Platoon on the perimeter.”
Shit, she thought.
The night passed tensely, but without any further attacks. Sensors picked up some small, moving heat signatures on the horizon, but recon drones and a few patrols beyond their lines did not reveal any Zuul. Either the mutts were good at hiding or they were indeed biding their time.
Six hours later, with the sun not yet risen, Third Platoon trotted out and relieved them. The reveille watch sucked, beaten only in terms of circadian rhythm ruination by the six hours of the mid-watch Second had just stood. And Sheila had the sinking feeling the Zuul had slept a full night, secure in the knowledge that—rather than counterattack—the human mercs would opt instead to redouble their defensive line. She sighed, parked her CASPer in its maintenance alcove to charge, made sure the rest of the platoon was stowed and settled, then shuffled off to breakfast while the sun began to rise.
The farm went from different shapes of black, to indistinct grays, to finally the riotous colors of this world, muted in intensity only by the cool light of dawn. As the light rose, Sheila could see others had been at labor while she had been on watch. Hundreds of transport crates had been loaded full of the glowing eggplant-ish C117 plants. GenSha workers toiled to fill even more, leaving only the few immature plants in the soil. She understood that harvest was not intended for another two months. What did this mean?
Catching 1SGT Reeve’s eye, Sheila trotted over. “Been busy?”
Reeves nodded. “Plan C. The GenSha figure they’ve already harvested more than they anticipated, so they contacted the Jeha and offered a compromise. No more attacks, we depart early, and the Jeha are welcome to shift their failed farm to here. Win-win. We complete our contract, the customer makes its profit, and the enemy gets a second chance.”
Sheila frowned. “Yeah, the only ones that get screwed are the poor bastards that got blown up before the deal was done.”
“No deal would bring them back, Sheila.”
“Nope,” she acknowledged. “But they go unavenged all the same.”
Reeves averted her gaze. “Think what you want, Murphy. I’m less interested in revenge than I am in survival and contract completion. If it sits that badly with you, go free-agent when we get back to Karma. Join a more daring outfit than the Terrible Texans. Hell, I might opt out, too—with the first round of drinks on me—but that’s all for after the contract. For now, I gotta help Foster with closing this negotiation.” She stalked off, away from the growing stacks of transport containers and toward the flyer field.
Sheila shook her head and continued on toward the mess. If this was the way it was, so be it. She wanted to live, to have a chance to go back to Earth, to family and friends, and to enjoy some of the credits she had saved up. And, yes, now that she had seen how the sausage was made in an outfit like the Texans, she was anxious to move on. Doing something half-assed did not suit her. It was not how she had been raised, where being a Texan was a source of pride, not a disingenuous form of advertising.
Still, she was surprised they were getting off this easy. Based on everything she had ever heard about the Zuul, they were a greedy, resourceful species, more akin to hyenas than the bipedal mastiffs they looked like. She was surprised they would allow the GenSha to take the harvest they had already gathered when a second yield from this valley was just another gamble.
Just before she entered the mess, she heard a whine of servo motors from overhead and looked up. A quad-mounted air defense MAC atop a middle perimeter post swung down from its ceaseless scan of the sky and locked in its maintenance position. Around the farm, all the other air defense stations did the same.
With alarm, Sheila sought out and grabbed a corporal from the operations cadre. “What’s with the air defense!?”
He looked at her like she was an idiot. “It’s for the Zuul. They’re flying in to parley and inspect the facility before the Jeha agree to this turnover deal. They refused unless we showed good faith by masking our weapons.”
Pa
nicked, Sheila looked to the flyer field. Captain Foster, Glashthul, 1SGT Reeves, First Platoon’s lieutenant, and a small contingent of senior personnel all stood next to an empty landing pad. Foster keyed a handheld comm and spoke, presumably to give the Zuul the go-ahead for a safe landing. Sheila ran a few steps toward them, then stopped, stumbling, unsure. Surely, they wouldn’t—
The white hot lance of a hyper-velocity penetrator struck the ground in the center of the assembled personnel. Ten megajoules of kinetic energy instantly converted itself to heat, sound, and pressure, blossoming outward at many times the speed of sound.
The equivalent of two kilograms of TNT, it was a targeted meteorite of death. The explosion ripped apart Bravo Company’s leadership and wrecked the nearest flyers, but left the containers of C117 untouched.
Alarms sounded, and the air defenses came back up, searching for radar and lidar tracks. Two quad-pack MACs picked up the trail of whatever had fired off the HVP and fired back. Streams of magnetically accelerated coil gun rounds scythed through the morning sky until an explosion answered, just above the distant horizon.
Sheila picked herself up from where the detonation had knocked her on her ass. She looked to the smoking crater where Foster, Reeves, and the others had been. Questions filled her mind. What do we do? Who’s in charge? How soon can we get off this rock? Can we take them in a stand up fight? And what the hell are we really doing here?
The only answer she received was rushing, aimless chaos.
“We are so screwed,” she said to herself.
* * *
“It’s really quite fascinating from a strategic, xeno-anthropological standpoint.”
“You’re talking out your ass, Meyers. And shouldn’t that just be xenopological?”
“That’s not a word, Poretti. But vernacular aside, that’s what we’re seeing here: ‘Alpha-oriented predation.’”
The surviving officers of Bravo Company, one first lieutenant and two second lieutenants, stood in the ops center, arguing back and forth. 2LT Dina Poretti was strident and assured, if lacking in experience, while 2LT Ben Meyers was bookish and haughty…and also lacking in experience. Of the three, 1LT Jamal Smith had the most authority and experience, but seemed least able to exercise it. His dusky skin had traded its sheen of sweat for the gray pallor of abject terror.
And Sheila didn’t feel any bit too confident looking at him from her spot by the door with the other platoon NCOs.
Smith spoke softly. “Alpha-oriented predation. You mean the Zuul are gunning for whoever’s in command?”
Meyers nodded. “More or less. We usually only tend to notice examples of convergent evolution in animals, like dolphins and fish exhibiting the same form even though their backgrounds are completely different…but there’s no reason we cannot apply those same principles to alien species. The Zuul are a dog-like, mercenary, interstellar race, but they are not dogs. Dogs are more closely related to humans than they would be to the Zuul—but it is not outside the realms of reason to surmise that, given their outward appearance, they may still have evolved to fill roles and develop behaviors not unlike those of earthly dogs.”
Poretti chuckled in derision. “But instead of ‘fetch’ or ‘roll-over,’ the dog-like behavior the Zuul just happen to mimic is boss-murder?”
“Well, I would never reduce the issue so simplistically, but yes. Canids are often pack animals. When two packs meet, their individual members may clash, but it’s just as likely only the alpha of each pack will vie for dominance, or a single member of a pack will challenge the alpha for dominance. Evolutionarily, that’s far more efficient than both packs fighting down to the last member for supremacy. Strategically, going after leadership rather than the rank and file makes perfect sense—”
“Perfect sense if your damn leaders keep exposing themselves,” Poretti interrupted.
Meyers kept going like she had not even spoken. “—and it’s been a time-honored tradition among resistance movements and guerilla factions opposing superior forces. We rarely use it as our primary stratagem, though, as we tend to focus upon objective-based maneuver, accomplishing a specific mission rather than just ‘gunning for the boss.’”
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” Smith chanted, pacing. “I’m senior. I’m in charge. I’m next on their list. This isn’t what I signed on for. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…”
Third Platoon’s NCO, SSGT Cuchinello, grunted from his spot on the wall next to Sheila. “I’ll tell you one thing, I don’t think I’m willing to trust any of those twits to lead me into battle,” he said in a low voice.
From her other side, SGT Evanston chuckled. “Yeah. I’m thinking a good, old-fashioned fragging might be in order…”
This is getting out of control, Sheila thought. She felt she had to rescue LT Smith from himself. Pushing off the wall, she approached the trio and stopped the pacing Smith with a gentle hand. “Sir, you are senior. That puts you in charge, but it doesn’t mean you have some sort of death sentence. Your best bet—and that of every other merc around you—is to figure out a way to counter the Zuul directly, to act instead of react.”
He looked at her with a small glimmer of comprehension, but it was soon enough supplanted by the same gibbering fear. “No, no, no, I can’t…go out there. I can’t expose myself.”
“Sir, you have to,” Sheila pleaded.
Poretti walked up and pulled her hand off Smith’s shoulder. “No, screw that. He steps down. I’m in command now. Bravo Company is to form up under me and we are going on the goddamn offensive. The mutts want to take me out, they can try it as I ram my armored fist up their asses!”
Meyers raised a hand. “Technically, Dina, I believe I’m senior to you. If Jamal abdicates, I’m in charge—”
“Fuck you, Meyers! You couldn’t lead an elementary school fire drill, much less Bravo.” 2LT Poretti turned to the NCOs glaring at them. “Who’s with me!? Who wants to give those mangy mongrels some payback!? Who wants to show them you don’t friggin’ trifle with the Terrible Texans!!?”
She pumped her fist and yelled, and—sure enough—the NCOs began to match her fervor and bloody-minded enthusiasm. Even LT Meyers recovered from the upset and managed to pump his fist too. LT Smith just sat down and stared forward blankly. Sheila felt pity for him, but a certain level of contempt as well. Poretti might be a hot-head, but better to err on the side of violence than to just sit here, waiting for the next raid.
Fifteen minutes later, the whole garrison was afire with activity. Sheila briefed the mercs of Second Platoon by herself—LT Smith was nowhere to be seen—and they set to, switching the loadouts on their CASPers from light patrol to heavy assault. While they worked, Sheila used a universal key (a crowbar) on the door to the sealed combat resupply containers. It took some doing. The containers were sufficiently armored to survive an unaided drop from orbit into a hostile fire zone. But Sheila was determined.
What she found inside was depressing, but not that surprising, given what 1SGT Reeves had told her. Each container was supposed to be a squad-in-a-box, with enough ammo, rations, repair parts, and sundry to re-equip a whole CASPer squad for three days of sustained combat. For 30 days sustainment for four combat platoons and support staff, that meant 100 containers of stuff. On the plus side, there were indeed 100 containers. Within the containers, however, the mix of stuff was a bit…off.
Inside each box she pried open, she found a few cartons of ammo, some random, non-matching repair parts, and more rations than a squad could eat through in a year of gluttony. While they might not starve on this planet, they’d be hard-pressed to defend themselves from the Zuul in a protracted fight—unless the pups reacted worse to “Stew, Vegetarian Beef (Simulated), w/Goat Cheezee Puffs” than the mercs did.
Sheila informed Poretti, who shrugged. “Guess we better kick their asses in round one, then. No need to hold anything back,” the lieutenant said.
“Yes, ma’am. And I know it’s not in my lane, but with the demise of the company HQ
staff who’d normally do this…”
“Out with it, Staff Sergeant.”
“Have we communicated with Karma and the home office yet? That sort of thing sometimes gets frowned on by company officers worried about the optics of it.”
LT Poretti frowned, but nodded. “It does, and I’m sorry for that reality. But I wanna survive. I want all of us to survive, even if it means telling the whole galaxy we couldn’t handle things on our own. Yes, Sarge, I already sent the balloon up. We sent a priority skip drone back to Karma, requesting relief and assault support. But they reasonably won’t reach us for at least two weeks at the earliest. More likely 3-4 weeks, which is why we had those combat stores…”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sheila responded, resigned.
Poretti looked around. “This is a farm, ain’t it? Hit up the GenSha. At this point, I’d even take an improvised ANFO bomb if it can add to that first assault.”
Sheila did just that, and received the GenSha equivalent of a shrug in response.
Burblann—Glashthul’s replacement after that worthy individual had been blown up with the rest of the leadership—answered her. “No. No ammonium nitrate or any other type of fertilizer. Object of farm to remove specialized ‘car’ compounds from valley soil, not sow nitrates. C117 not organic plant. C117 is archeological/industrial resource extraction device, nanotech-enabled pseudo-organics. No fertilizer required. All necessary process energy come from ‘car’ soil.”
Sheila screwed up her face. She was tired of everyone keeping her and her people in the dark. She encroached upon Burblann. “What is all this ‘car’ stuff!? Cars? Like vroom, cars that you can drive around?”
“No, no!” the GenSha answered, hastily. “Very sorry. Homonym. ‘Car’ is K-A-H-R in your spelling. As in Kahraman, ancient despots from 1,000 years ago, creators of the Canavar destructors. Analysis indicates this valley owned by Kahraman before the Fall and Galactic Union. Theory suggests certain locations involved in creation, processing, or rendering of Canavar monsters. This valley may have been…ecological dump of requisite chemical compounds, concentrated and stabilized by intervening centuries. No longer immediately deadly.”
For a Few Credits More: More Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 7) Page 28