For a Few Credits More: More Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 7)

by Chris Kennedy

  Mara walked up next to him. “What are you looking for, Chief?”

  “I don’t know. Seven missiles, with no trace of who or what launched them. Doesn’t make sense.” Mackey scratched his chin. “Color code the three attacks and show where the harvesters were located during each.”

  “What about the dropchutes? Could they be using those to hide?” Mara asked.

  “Not inside.” Thavy said. “I’m tapped into the local maintenance net. None of the dropchutes have been tampered with.”

  “Give me a 200-meter ring around where each of the missiles showed up.” Glowing rings formed an arc to the northwest. Two of the rings included dropchutes, but the other five did not. Four came from behind harvesters, but three were not within five kays of one. The only similarity was altitude—each of the missiles was picked up at just over 40 meters above the ground—but that still didn’t tell him if they were ground- or air-launched. A good soft-launch system would float a missile out over 100 meters before the main engine ignited in order to prevent counter-fire from coming back down the shooter’s throat.

  “They all came from the northwest,” Mara said. “We could fly the transport out that way and try to find them before they launch again. With only four CCMs remaining, we’re going to run out of indirect protection here anyway, and I wouldn’t want to fly out there with zero counter-missiles. Might as well paint a big bull’s eye on the transport and broadcast ‘shoot me I’m defenseless’ in the clear if you do that.”

  “Thavy, what will one of those incoming missiles do to the maintenance facility?” Mackey asked.

  “I’ve looked at the schematics. Not much. Blow a big hole in the fibercrete, but they could topple the whole structure, and it wouldn’t interfere with the maglev station. The generators and cars are too far down.”

  Mackey was reluctant to send out the transport. Aside from the four CCMs remaining, the 20mm main gun was their only real defense if the rebels had any more surprises. On the other hand, if he could kill whoever was launching the missiles, it might get inside the enemy’s decision cycle and halt any plans to attack the station.

  “Fuck it.” He snapped the SyncSlate closed. The LT wasn’t here to make the call. “Thavy, go find and kill those bastards would you?” It was better to go on the offense than sit and wait for more missiles to rain down on their heads.

  “Fight or die, Chief!” The transport’s semi-enclosed rotary blades spun up, filling the air with dust.

  “And Thavy...”

  “Yes, Chief?”

  “Don’t lose the transport. It’s a long walk back to the capitol.”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “What about me?” Mara asked.

  “You and I, along with the rest of the platoon, are going to dig our fighting positions a little bit deeper.”

  * * *

  A missile screamed over Mackey’s head and exploded in the dirt 20 meters behind him. The ground heaved, and the concussion knocked him against the wall of his fighting position. Dirt splashed over him like an ocean wave, and dust blanketed him in a heavy fog. Even with his earpieces filtering out most of the sound, his ears still rang.

  The ground shook with another explosion further away and again when a third hit somewhere between the first and second. The AMWARN alert tone ceased.

  Mackey coughed and waved his arms, trying to clear the air. “Casualties?” He asked on the command net.

  “None in Third.”

  “One in Second,” Taber said. “Direct hit on Damon’s position. Doesn’t look like there’s much left—just a crater.”

  Mackey tried to picture Damon in his head. He was one of the new guys. The one with a mustache and narrow eyes. This was his first contract out of the mercenary service track, or MST, if Mackey had it right. It shamed him that he wasn’t certain. It was his job to know everyone in the platoon like he knew his own mother. He pushed the feeling away. There would be plenty of time to beat himself up about it later.

  “Well, at least they’re using rockets and not missiles,” Mara said, stating the obvious. “Crater analysis says 150 millimeter.”

  Mara was correct. Missiles locked on a target. Rockets were precision guided to a location, and one-fifties made a big hole when they got there.

  “They’re shooting blind. Picking spots at random around the station in the hopes of reducing our numbers.” Mackey changed his comms to a direct feed to Thavy. “It would be real nice if you found whoever is shooting at us.”

  “I’m trying, Chief. I’m already at the launch point for the last salvo and there’s not a damned thing here. Just dirt piles and pod fragments.”

  “Well something’s out there.”

  “Chief, I’m using every sensor I’ve got. They’re all empty.”

  “Then quit relying on the sensors and use that one good eye of yours to look.” Mackey switched to the platoon frequency. Before he could speak, the blare of the AMWARN kicked in again. He dropped down low. The HUD in his goggles told him three more rockets were inbound.

  “Man, I’m going to seriously fuck up some rodents for this!”

  “Ya. Fuck those little, buck-toothed gopher-looking bastards.”

  There was laughter on the net. Mackey needed to shut that down. It was never good to use slurs for your employer’s race, even when their rebellious cousins were trying to kill you. Once an offensive nickname stuck with soldiers, stopping it would be like putting milk back into a cow, and that wouldn’t be fun for either side involved. Let them run with the name, and it would only be a matter of time before someone used the term at the wrong moment. It didn’t help that the soldier was right. The locals did kind of look like gophers.

  The first rocket hit. The concussion felt like a hammer slamming into every part of Mackey’s body. One moment, he was looking up at the stars, and the next, all was black. A giant was standing on top of his chest. He couldn’t move his arms or legs. Angry bees filled his ears, and he couldn’t breathe. He twisted and turned, fighting against whatever held him.

  Slowly the bees became words. “Chief!” Mara yelled over the net. “Chief!”

  Mackey forced himself to calm down. “I’m…alive,” he croaked through a mouthful of dirt.

  “We’re coming for you.”

  He heard scratching above him for a long agonizing minute before rough hands dragged him out of the ground and pulled him to his feet. He doubled over coughing. Someone shoved a water pouch at him, and he used it to rinse his mouth and flush out his goggles.

  A blackened crater was carved out of the ground next to them. Flames danced at the bottom of the depression. Little remained to mark his fighting position. Mara and another soldier stood to either side of him, holding him up by his body armor.

  “Thought those fucking gophers took you out, Chief.” Mara said.

  Mackey shook his helmet out. “If you’d dug any slower, they might have, and don’t call them...” Mackey froze. Furred bodies. Long, flat teeth. Clawed hands. “...gophers. Well, fuck me.”

  “What is it?” Mara asked.

  Mackey ignored him. “Thavy, you there?”

  “Roger, Chief. Moving to the launch point of the last salvo. About five kays from it.”

  “Thavy, what do you have that’ll let us see movement underground.”

  “Underground, Chief?”

  “Yes. Underground.”

  “I suppose I could reconfigure the x-band. There isn’t a lot of power on the PRDs, so it will only reach a couple meters in depth, and there’ll be a lot of holes. It won’t see through all those pod shells.”

  “Do it, and send the results to my screen.” Mackey pulled down his SyncSlate. There was a crack down the right side, but it still lit up. Mara and the other soldier who’d helped dig him out huddled around it.

  Onscreen Mackey could see icons for his personnel and the transport, along with range rings around the PRDs. One of the two recon drones was straight above the platoon and the other shadowed the transport.

 
“Here goes, Chief. It’s not going to give you much more than a kay or two radius.”

  At first nothing happened. Then, as the computer onboard the PRD began tagging movement, icon after icon populated on the screen. The area to the south of their location became a solid mass, with the leading edge no more than fifty meters away from their positions. To the north, near the transport, sporadic icons popped onto the screen.

  “Holy shit!” Mara said.

  Mackey looked up from the slate. Through his night vision goggles, the fields to the south were empty. He had no idea how close the little bastards would come before they attacked, but he was sure there wasn’t much time. Any minute now, they’d be overwhelmed by a thousand rebels popping up out of the dirt, or even worse, they’d dig right into the fighting positions. Mackey had their defense set all wrong. “Everyone out of their holes, now!” he yelled over the platoon net.

  “What do we do, Chief?” Mara asked.

  Mackey took a long look around them. Setting up an ambush for child-sized gophers wasn’t exactly something they taught during MST. He looked at the pod shells and the maintenance facility. There were very few options. He flipped back to the command net.

  “Taber, split your squad east and west of the building. Get people up onto the biggest pod shells they can find. Crew served on the flanks. I want them ready to lay grazing fire across our front along a final protective line. They’d better be prepared to protect our rear as well.”

  “Moving, Chief.”

  “Mara, get your squad on the roof.”

  Mara nodded and began shouting orders.

  Mackey glanced at the time on his display. It read zero-one-twenty-six. “Thavy, start killing those launchers. If I were a betting man, I’d say there was going to be one final artillery prep before they attack. You’ve got about four minutes to kill as many as you can before it happens.”

  In the distance, he heard the boom of a 20mm projectile going supersonic.

  “Was only waiting for the order, Chief. Just smoked the first one. Twenty-three more to go.”

  That girl will make one hell of a chief someday...if she didn’t get hired as a platoon leader first. Mackey smiled as another thought came to him. “Taber,” he called over the net.

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “How many trip wires do you have?”

  * * *

  Thavy didn’t get all the launchers. Whether they were too far apart or some had remained still and gone undetected, it didn’t matter. The moment Mackey’s display hit zero-one-thirty, the AMWARN went off for what he hoped would be the final time. Eight red icons lit up the display in his goggles.

  Mackey, lying flat on top of the maintenance facility with the rest of Third Squad, looked north. The display helped him locate the inbound rockets. The glowing pinpoints grew larger, coming straight for them. He was guessing the rebels wouldn’t target the entrance to the maglev station, but his instincts still yelled at him to run like hell.

  He forced himself to turn away. “Forget the rockets, watch the south,” he told the platoon, as much to stop himself from worrying as focus the soldiers.

  The incoming rockets pounded the ground north of the platoon’s new formation in a staccato of deafening explosions that shook the building and rattled Mackey’s teeth. He imagined what twenty or thirty of them would have done if they were still in their fighting positions. No doubt it would have been a sad-faced day for the visiting team.

  The quiet stillness of the night returned, as if the darkness attempted to hide all trace of the destruction that had already occurred...or the carnage about to happen. To the south, there wasn’t a hint of movement, but Mackey knew the enemy was there, clawing their way through the soil.

  As he and the rest of the platoon waited, a dozen scenarios ran through his mind. What if they dug straight into the facility? He should have blown the door open and sent a squad down into the station. That was dumb. There was no way they could dig through the fibercrete, and the platoon was already shorthanded. What if the enemy came out behind them? “Stop it, Mackey,” he told himself. This was the best course of action for the limited time available.

  Still, it was hard to push the apprehension away. He always doubted himself in the silent moments before combat. There were some who loved to fight—who lived for the rush and the power. The wait turned people like that into coiled springs ready to unleash destruction. Not Mackey. He kept his emotions out of it. People who lived for a fight had a way of finding them a little too often for his taste, and at some point, the odds of survival always fell to zero. No. Mackey loved easy contracts, and he loved soldiers, and he loved being alive to spend his pay. It was those three things that made him a good chief. While he would always accomplish the mission, he would never waste a soldier’s life, or his own for that matter, and he never took the missions personally.

  An explosion at the southernmost fighting position batted the self-reflection from his thoughts. The positions to the left and right of the first flashed a moment later. “Surprise,” Mackey whispered. He’d had Taber string tripwires attached to grenades inside those three. It wouldn’t take out many, but it was certainly worth the effort...and it felt damned good. It was the little things that kept a person motivated.

  Mackey flipped down the SyncSlate for a final glance. There were icons inside the original perimeter, closing fast on the building beneath them. He switched to the platoon net one last time. “Get ready people. Watch your sectors and conserve ammo. Remember, they don’t have to kill us to win. Don’t let any get inside the maglev station.”

  About 20 meters from the building, the icons halted. Mackey snatched one of the two grenades he carried from a side pouch and pulled the pin. “It’s about that time ladies and gentlemen. Fight or die, people. Fight or die.”

  “Fight or die, Chief!” echoed across the net.

  In front of the platoon, sinkholes formed. Each reminded Mackey of sand emptying from the top of an hourglass, counting down the seconds. They were short timers, because in less than a minute, the area was littered with gaping holes. Men and women around Mackey hunched over their rifles, eyes pressed to thermal sights. Mackey cocked his arm back, ready to throw.

  There was no audible signal. One moment a dirty, furred and goggled face appeared in one of the holes. The next, more than a hundred rebels leapt out of the ground yelling and spraying automatic fire.

  “Big mistake.” Mackey threw the grenade he held and drew his pistol as Second and Third Squads opened up, mowing down the lead rebels. Even with the deafening sound of both sides firing, Mackey heard projectiles smack the fibercrete beneath him and whiz overhead.

  Explosions dotted the enemy’s front ranks as his and a dozen other grenades detonated—he hadn’t been the only one ready to throw when the rebels appeared. To his left, a man screamed as a projectile found a seam in his combat armor. Mackey ignored the soldier and calmly blew a hole through the forehead of a rebel with a two-millimeter, depleted uranium round traveling at a hair over 1,500 meters per second. He looked for another target.

  A rebel leapt forward. In his clawed hand he held a heavy satchel. Mackey put two rounds through his chest plate before the rebel pitched forward and dropped it. The depleted uranium rounds the Legionaries used were expensive as hell, but they were very effective against all but the best combat armor.

  A second rebel picked up the satchel and advanced.

  The unmistakable hammering of a crew-served weapon came from Mackey’s left. Eight-millimeter rounds at grazing-fire height raked along the enemy’s front. Against humans, it would have cut the legs out from under them. Against the short-statured natives, it tore heads from shoulders. The rebel with the satchel lost half his face. He stood confused for a moment before toppling over—sometimes it took the body a moment to realize it was dead.

  The platoon continued to pour depleted uranium rounds into the onslaught, and the bodies stacked up. The second wave used the first for cover, but it did them little good. Rou
nds punched through the dead to reach the living. Still they kept coming.

  Mackey continued to fire into the mass. Another rebel reached the satchel and hurled it as he died. It cartwheeled through the air and disappeared beneath Mackey’s sight. An explosion rocked the building, and Mackey found himself sliding forward and down as the front of the maintenance facility collapsed. He hurled himself forward and rolled when he hit the ground. Hulking sections of fibercrete tumbled around him.

  The destruction wasn’t limited to the building. The front ranks of the rebels were scattered by the blast. A weaponless rebel with his fur on fire materialized in front of Mackey. The creature screeched and slapped at the flames before disappearing into the billowing smoke and dust. For a brief moment the pungent smell of burning hair and flesh overpowered the metallic smell of the soil in Mackey’s nose.

  “Don’t let them in the building!” he shouted into the net. Around him, deadly projectiles ricocheted from the fibercrete. Several bounced off his combat armor, and one tore painfully through the joint of his wrist. He needed to get to cover before the enemy reorganized. Mackey scrabbled back, climbing the rubble. He reached out for a broken chunk of fibercrete to pull himself up and realized he was holding the protruding leg of a soldier buried in the wreckage.

  Suddenly Mara was next to him, skating down the debris and firing his rifle on automatic to cover Mackey’s retreat. Together they worked their way to the top of the rubble and dove down the back side into the remains of the maintenance facility. Tool bins and lockers lay toppled and burning. A broken winch swung loosely above a wide, square hole with a ladder leading down to the maglev station. Fully a third of the structure had collapsed, leaving a 20-meter gap on the south side of the circular building.

  The remains of Third Squad were positioned behind the rubble in the breach. Mackey climbed next to one of the soldiers, but he’d lost his pistol in the fall. Somebody shoved a rifle at him. Mara took up a position on the left side, using the wall for cover. To his right, two soldiers struggled to get a crew-served up and firing.