MULTIPLE UNK ORGA DETECTED<
BIO SIGNS CONFIRMED<
ESTIMATED RANGE FIVE HUNDRED METERS<
The ride down to 30,000 feet from orbit had been nerve wracking in the free-falling Nuckelavee. Once the vessel had been firmly in the mountain range’s sensor shadow, Silvius had activated the thrusters and turned their plummet into a glide. Eight thousand kilometers away from the cargo drop site, he had placed the vessel down in a clearing. After erecting camouflage nets and shutting off the power plant, the Tumen had laid doggo for the first night.
8 ORGA, RANGE 350 METERS<
POSS ID: 3 TORT 3 FLATAR 2 ZUUL
PSS SEN 3, BEARING TWO NINE FIVE RELATIVE<
Wait a second, Bolivar thought. That’s a grouping that makes no sense. The Tortantula were giant, wasp-waisted spiders, while the Flatar were the evil, one-foot-tall chipmunks that rode them like malevolent Chip ‘n’ Dales. In their time on planet, the Tumen had seen the duos running regular patrol routes through the region.
Okay, the plan of snatching up one of the furry midgets just went awry, Bolivar thought. There’s never been Zuul before.
BOSS. NOT SURE ABOUT THIS GROUP. THE TWO ZUUL SEEM TO BE CARRYING PROBES OF SOME KIND. THEY’RE IN REGULAR COMMS WITH THE NEAREST BUGSATZ FOB.
The message from Paige, likely cooking in her powered-down CASPer, had come through the fiber optic cable attached to the port on his armor’s right heel.
YEAH, THAT’S NOT A PLEASANT SURPRISE, Bolivar responded.
ALMOST AS UNPLEASANT AS THE CHAFES I’M GETTING FROM SPENDING TWO EXTRA MONTHS IN THIS DAMN TIN CAN.
Bolivar fought the urge to move and look behind him. The redhead was 200 meters behind him, the CASPer buried under a half meter of mud to protect it from magnetic anomaly detectors. While the jungle heat was not as bad as Terra’s, it was still bad enough that the Flaming Yurt was a mobile sauna.
Not that I’m much better off, he thought, feeling sweat running down his back to be wicked away by the battle armor’s life support.
THANK YOU, MADAME SOURPUSS. DID YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE AN OPINION ON THE TACTICAL SITUATION? Bolivar shot back.
I WAS THINKING. THE JUICE AIN’T WORTH THE SQUEEZE. DON’T WANT ZUUL HUNTING US FREESTYLE, Paige typed back.
She’s got a point, Bolivar thought. Tortantula were pretty straightforward killers, with the Flatar along to add extra intelligent firepower. The Zuul were the wild cards. Zuul were known for being very, as the pun went, dogmatic about following orders. The crazy happened when the walking canines were presented with something not covered in their directions. Then they got downright chaotic neutral in solving their new problems, often violently.
AGREED. WE LET THIS GROUP PASS, GET THE NEXT ONE, Bolivar replied.
ROGER. NEXT GROUP IS BUSY CONDUCTING COMMS CHECKS. SHOULD BE ABOUT THREE HOURS.
Great thing about your opponents being basically an ill-disciplined scratch team is that no one’s shit is encrypted, Bolivar thought. CASPers with electronic countermeasures make child’s play out of unsecured nets. Makes it easy to figure…
In retrospect, Bolivar would realize that he should have confirmed with the entire snatch and grab team that they were letting this group pass. Paige and he had directly communicated using the command fiberlink, not the general comms channel. Fenrir and Grandpa were experienced enough to realize that, even from ambush with a CASPer, one did not screw with three Tortantulas and a pair of Zuul. But the rookies…well, like most young men, they were equally eager to screw or shoot something, and eight aliens in the kill sack seemed as alluring as a high-end escort spreading her legs for ‘one on the house.’
The compressed air charges firing the gas mines was the first indication Bolivar had that they had lost their damn minds. Arranged in a two horizontal rows alongside the trail, the gas mines began their arc from beneath the ground with an aim point roughly human head height in the trail’s center. Two of them never made it; the Flatars blasted them out of the air in a criss-cross of chemical laser beams. The other six burst with high-pitched sounds as their contents were forced out in an opaque cloud.
Fuck fuck fuck! Bolivar thought, his arms moving in a blur as he fired at the Tortantula closest to him with his Morningblade laser rifle. The spider was distracted by the collapsing Flatar on his back, the mammal coughing and hacking from the vomit gas. It still saw Bolivar’s motion and was turning to charge toward him when the first laser caught it in one of its eyes. The creature screamed but sprang incredibly fast toward the Tumen’s leader…then had its thorax explode as Fenrir hit it with a grenade from the revolver launcher in his hand.
Bolivar turned back to the kill sack and saw the fight was already over. The ambushed aliens had gotten several shots off, but not in any coordinated way due to the gas.
We got freakin’ lucky, Bolivar thought, visually checking the three spiders. The last Tortantula’s legs were still twitching, a burning Flatar pinned under its body. Firing two more blasts into the Tortantula that had charged him just to be sure, Bolivar grabbed the now unconscious Flatar on top of it.
Are the Zuuls still alive? he thought. The Flatar looked up at him and snarled, then immediately retched again. Putting the rifle against the alien’s head, Bolivar fired once.
“SITREP!” he barked, turning away from the nearly decapitated corpse. “One up!”
“Two up!” Paige said, her voice clearly annoyed.
“Four up!” Mitchell said, almost panting.
The two Besquith’s reports were both identical rumbling grumbles.
“Five up.”
“Six up.”
What happened to Donovan? Bolivar wondered, watching as the two Besquith began moving through the dispersing gas cloud in their spiked, black battle armor. The huge wolfmen looked even more monstrous with their oversized respirators. With a flash of their axes, they made sure of the third Tortantula and its rider.
“Someone check on Tumen Three,” Bolivar said. He strode over to where both Zuul continued to attempt to fight to their knees, vomit streaming from their muzzles. Whipping his rifle around, he swung the butt as hard as he could into the back of the first Zuul’s head. With a whimper, the beast collapsed, and he kicked it onto its side so it would not drown.
Goddamn rookies, he thought, trying to fight down his anger. Any idiot should have known those were bad odds. Tortantulas are not easy…
“Look out!” Paige shouted. Seeing the motion out of the corner of his eye, Bolivar dove aside as the second Zuul swung desperately at him with its claws. He felt the scrape of the beast’s nails across the front of his thighs, the blow vicious enough that it would have laid him open like Freddy Krueger’s backhand. Bolivar landed on his back, the rifle falling from his hand. Before the Zuul could gather himself, two snarling forms landed on it.
Gotta talk to the boys about going hand-to-hand, Bolivar thought, grabbing the rifle. A severed limb flew from the whirling pile, the Zuul’s plaintive wail ending in a gargle as Fenrir ripped the smaller canine’s throat out.
Or you have to accept that having two walking dire wolves isn’t necessarily the end of the world, Bolivar thought, shaken.
“Lots of chatter, boss,” Paige said, speaking directly over her loudspeakers.
“Boss,” Mitchell said, sounding distant. “Donovan’s dead.”
Bolivar whirled toward the rookie’s position. He saw Mitchell standing over a lump on the ground and cursed. Rushing over, he saw what had happened plain as day. Donovan had not been hit full on. Instead, it looked like one of the Tortantulas had fired some sort of flechette weapon in the rookie’s general direction, and one of the dense needles skipped off a rock in front of the rookie and up under his face shield.
Luck is still a bitch, Bolivar thought angrily.
“Get his legs,” he said to Mitchell. “Fenrir, bind the prisoner.”
“They’re debating whether to roll the QRF,” Paige said, referring to the Bugsatz Quick Reaction Force. “Seems like whatever lieutenant is
in charge of it has a bunch of ‘fuck’ and ‘that’ without reinforcements.”
Thank you, Jesus, for cautious aliens, Bolivar thought. Human mercs would have been out for blood, Besquith likely not far behind them. Just about everyone else in the galaxy was not really keen on getting their heads blown off regardless of what had just happened to friendly forces.
Grunting, Bolivar and Mitchell carried their dead comrade next to the closet Tortantula and the Flatar next to it.
I don’t even know what words to say over his body, Bolivar thought angrily. Looking over, he could see Mitchell’s lips moving silently.
“Holy shit,” Paige said.
“What is it?” Bolivar asked, pulling out three small discs. Placing his fingertip on them, his suit connected with their timers. Once more just thinking, he set the dials for five minutes apiece, then placed one at Donovan’s feet, another on the center of mass of one of the Tortantulas, and the last on another Tortantula’s head.
“Okay folks, five minutes!” he barked. “Paige, again…what was it?”
“The Zuuls,” Paige replied, somewhat distracted. “They were searching for nesting sites for the indigenes.”
Bolivar stopped for a second, shocked. From the lack of indigenous activity, they had assumed that the Bugsatz had pretty much annihilated the entire native population. Recording the lack of indigenous presence had, as Devilmane predicted, been more than enough to satisfy their Order of Meyra contract. However, a live specimen would definitely put icing on the cake, as well as perhaps provide a living witness to the massacre.
“Silvius, we’re heading for LZ 1,” Bolivar said, bouncing the transmission off the relays the team had put in place. “The Bugsatz don’t seem all that interested in coming out to play.”
“Don’t blame them,” came the reply. “Lifting off.”
“Human Alpha, come quick!” Fenrir grunted. Bolivar strode over to where the bloody-muzzled Besquith was placing the dismembered Zuul’s torso atop the other Tortantula. Looking down where Fenrir had ripped the dead alien’s shirt open, Bolivar felt a chill down his spine as he looked at the tattoo shifting before their eyes.
Fuck me, he thought.
“HOSTILE SENSORS DETECTED! HOSTILE SENSORS DETECTED!”
The audio alarm in his battle armor nearly deafened him even as he dropped to the ground and began looking around. With a start, he realized that the warning was being relayed from the Nuckalevee. Before he could press the transmit button, his suit answered the question he was about to ask Silvius. Three angry triangles, not there previously, had winked into life surrounding the Bugsatz base camp one hundred kilometers distant. Before Bolivar had a chance to do anything more than draw in the breath to scream an order, each triangle sprouted five smaller ones that immediately leaped toward the incoming space yacht.
The Nuckalevee had launched from the other side of the mountain range and continued down a twisting river valley that bisected it. Silvius had plotted his approach route at supersonic speed through a notch between two 15,000-meter peaks.
“Silvius, evasives…” Bolivar began shouting.
The Nuckalevee’s maneuvers within atmosphere were limited. At multiple times the speed of sound, there was simply not enough room between the two peaks to dodge the incoming missiles. Even if there had been, there was not a single being aboard the yacht that could tolerate more than 12 Gs, while the obsolescent, smuggled missiles fired at her could easily pull 15. In the face of an unplanned threat, the yacht’s computers and autopilot wisely decided not to knock out the entire crew.
What the automated defenses did do was immediately engage countermeasures. These were promptly ignored by 14 of the incoming missiles. This left the Nuckalevee’s close in weapons systems (CIWS). While far from top of the line, the four CIWS pods served Silvius and the 10 crew members well. Of the 14 weapons left, 12 never made it through the chemical laser and magnetic cannon storm that provided an intense fireworks show above the canopy.
The first of the two that hit, however, killed the entire bridge crew before their brains had time to fully register the bulkhead disintegrating in front of them. The backup autopilot barely had time to issue stabilizing commands before the last missile plunged into the vessel’s engineering spaces. The dense metal kinetic kill vehicle met the yacht’s propulsion plant with a screech of metal and a shower of painfully bright sparks. Ceasing to be a controlled craft, the Nuckalevee ripped itself apart in a tumble and debris wave that moved like an angry giant’s swipe for three miles through the jungle.
Thankfully, the jungle canopy prevented Bolivar from actually seeing his brother’s death. The sound and loss of datalink, however, told him all he needed to know. There was a stunned silence at the ambush site.
Silvius, Bolivar thought. I’m sorry.
The aural warning from the Dante discs passing through one minute snapped him out of his shock. Swiftly recording the dead Zuul’s chest with his onboard cam, Bolivar blinked away his tears. His armor claimed the water with a slight suction sound.
“Change of plans, people,” he bit out. “Grab that shithead, and let’s get moving.”
To their credit, the Tumen didn’t even hesitate. Throwing the shock bracelet-bound Zuul over his shoulder, Grandpa took point, followed by Mitchell, then Fenrir, then Bolivar. The solid thrump! thrump! thrump! of the Flaming Yurt walking behind him kept Bolivar from glancing back when the Dante Discs finally ignited. Thinking, he brought up a list of the stores they carried and had emplaced at the caches they’d established for just such an eventuality.
Forty-eight hours, Bolivar thought angrily. Just gotta survive 48 hours.
“We’ve punched them in the nose hard enough they may leave us alone,” Paige said, her voice tight with emotion.
“We’ll see,” Bolivar said. “For now, we move. They don’t know we have help coming, but if they figure it out they’re going to want us dead.”
“How are we going to get off this rock?” Mitchell asked. Fear was starting to set in.
“You let the boss worry about that,” Paige snapped, steel in her voice.
In retrospect, maybe not telling the entire team about the added contract was a bad plan, Bolivar thought. Time to remedy that.
“Listen up folks.” He huffed as Grandpa and Fenrir picked up the pace. “We’ve got backup coming. We’ve just got to hold on for a bit.”
I really hope Devilmane has a ground contingent somewhere on those tubs, Bolivar thought. I don’t see the Wraiths buying off on doing a hot extraction.
“Cross that bridge when we come to it,” Paige said, using a direct laser link.
“Get out of my head,” Bolivar muttered back.
“Are you okay?” she asked, then corrected herself. “Stupid fucking question.”
“No, I am far from okay,” Bolivar said, then added with a confidence he didn’t feel. “Ask me in three days when we’re off this rock.”
“Sounds like they don’t want any more of us right now,” Paige said. “But bad news—they’ve got help coming in 24 hours.”
Bolivar took a deep breath, then looked up through the canopy at the mountains beyond.
“Then tomorrow’s gonna be a good day for someone to die.”
I just hope it’s not us.
# # # # #
MESSENGER by Nick Cole
Part One - Even Mercenaries Sing the Blues
Nobody knows anything.
Really.
Nobody knows anything.
When I look at your record’s jacket, the one we began to keep on the day you started working for Secure Horizons, a new hire recruit just out of the schools, I can make my guesses as to who you are. But I always remind myself...nobody really knows anything.
All I have left now are the actual records’ jackets of my company. The digital copies were seized after we failed to fulfill the contract on Denar. Today is a hot Tuesday in San Bernardino. I left the motel room I rent, stopped for my rum, some ice, and a few deli sandwiches.
Then I arrived at the storage facility sprawl that spreads off into the burning dirt of high desert. Today, as I do every day now, I will go through the records of all that once was and try to put it all together for no good reason in particular.
And today, Tom Kyle, today is your day.
But first a taste of the rum over some ice from a plastic bag, and a squeeze from a slice of one of the limes I stole from a tree in someone’s yard.
Hard to believe the CEO, the former CEO that is, of a merc company, an Earth merc company, an almost guaranteed money-making operation in this fantastic day and age of the future, needs to steal limes off a neighbor’s tree at six a.m. But I do. Every little bit helps since I got sued into oblivion.
And they’re not really my neighbors. The people I steal from. They’re just some Cambodians whose small house and fruit trees back up to The Whole Year Inn where I live as long as I pay by the week.
I have occasionally, since Denar, been forced to pay by the day at the Hole yur In, as I call it.
I have this secret fantasy that I can actually part ways with The Whole Year Inn and live in my storage locker if I’m crafty enough to avoid the surveillance drones.
I once evaded capture after getting my mech shot out from underneath me on some jungle hellhole I can’t seem to remember the name of. PTSD...I guess. I went to a lot of jungle hellholes when I was saving every dime to put together Secure Horizons. I went to a lot of hellholes, not necessarily jungle-specific. I did all the things one needs to do to become a small business owner of a merc company.
I killed a lot of stuff.
And for a brief moment, I was successful enough to retain an HR firm and get some top-flight recruits fresh out of the schools. Like you, Tom. You tested well, even though you were lazy in school, and your dad had gone to prison. Even though you came from a wealthy family. Even though every opportunity was available to you...we were able to get our hands on you, and we marked you for OCS. We saw a young commissioned officer in you. HR told us so.
For a Few Credits More: More Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 7) Page 40