The Good, the Bad, and the Merc: Even More Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 8)

by Chris Kennedy

  Find out more about Mark Wandrey and get the free prequel, “Gateway to Union,” at

  http://www.worldmaker.us/news-flash-sign-up-page/

  Four Horsemen Titles

  Cartwright’s Cavaliers

  Asbaran Solutions

  Winged Hussars

  The Golden Horde

  A Fistful of Credits

  Peacemaker

  For a Few Credits More

  The Good, the Bad, and the Merc

  * * * * *

  The following is an

  Excerpt from Book One of the Omega Wars:

  A Fiery Sunset

  ___________________

  Chris Kennedy and

  Mark Wandrey

  Available from Seventh Seal Press

  Winter 2017

  eBook, Paperback, and Audio

  Excerpt from “A Fiery Sunset:”

  Avander Pharmaceuticals, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Earth

  “Dr. Avander will see you now,” said the Veetch. The alien obviously thought he was stupid, Major Good decided, as it flipped one of its left hands to indicate the enormous mahogany door behind it that sported the nameplate, “Dr. Ezekiel Avander, CEO.” As it was the only door beside the one he came in, Good really didn’t need a lot of decision-making skill to figure that out.

  Apparently, showing in visitors wasn’t part of the alien’s job description, as it went back to what it was doing without getting up. Nice.

  Major Good walked to the door and turned the handle. The solid mahogany door was every bit the feature-piece it appeared to be and required a decent portion of his augmented strength to open. It probably was meant to overawe visitors. Good, however, found it slightly annoying.

  “Dr. Avander?” he asked as he entered the room. The office was as ostentatious on the inside as he had guessed it would be from looking at the exterior. Luxuriously-appointed furnishings were tastefully positioned throughout the room, with bookcases artfully filled with a variety of works, from classical masterpieces to the latest treatises on the art and practice of war. It was a tribute to an extremely wealthy man who had equally eclectic tastes.

  The other feature of the room was a massive desk that matched the entrance door, on which sat a forest of slates and monitors, to the extent that the man behind them was only glimpsed in portions and slices. From what Good could see, the man appeared in constant motion, working on a great portion of the devices in front of him, nearly simultaneously.

  “Yes?” came a distant voice from behind the monitors.

  “I’m Major Good,” the intel officer replied. “I’m here to talk with you about why you haven’t returned our calls.”

  The motion behind the monitors ceased, and a hand slid a number of the monitors out of the way so Good could see the man behind them. Whatever Good had expected from the merc-turned-CEO, this wasn’t it. The man wore a faded leather jacket, and a giant stogie hung from the corner of his mouth. Lines from his implants trailed off to four of the slates. Although the man was closing in on 150 years old, he looked no older than 55, and appeared in top physical shape. The piercing blue eyes stared at Good for a moment as if looking into his soul, then the man smiled and waved him to one of the two chairs in front of the desk.

  “Please sit,” the man said, “and call me Zeke.”

  “Hi, Zeke,” Major Good replied; “we’ve called you a bunch, and you haven’t returned any of our calls.”

  “There’s a damned good reason why, too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not interested,” Zeke said, and he started to pull the monitors back into their earlier positions.

  “One second,” Good said. “Can I ask why you’re not interested? Your planet has been assaulted by aliens, and all you want to do is to sit here and run your empire? Trying to milk a few more credits from old men and women in search of the Fountain of Youth?”

  “Look,” Zeke said, “I enjoyed my time with The Golden Horde, and I think I did very well for you. Certainly, my service helped garner some extra credits for the company. Now, I may not have the intelligence facilities the Horde does, but my network runs pretty deep, and I’m kept passingly familiar with anything important going on, anywhere on this planet, that might affect business. I am well aware of the aliens on Earth and their intentions. I’m not, however, interested in coming back to work for the Horde; I have enough to do here.”

  “What could be more important than joining the resistance?”

  Zeke cocked his head and looked piercingly at the major again. “Do you know what we do here?” he finally asked.

  “You help old people live another day through a variety of treatments and enhancements.”

  “I help people live longer,” Zeke said. “I help them beat diseases that are untreatable anywhere else on this planet. I do this by working at the cellular level, fixing things that have previously been unfixable by mankind. I give people life!”

  Zeke turned one of the monitors so Good could see the image of a virus on it. “I can also take life,” he continued, his voice quiet, “just as easily as I can give it. You are running around recruiting people for a war that is already underway, a war that I am already fighting. Only my company can tailor viruses to do the things we want. To attack the creatures I want. Why am I not interested in coming back to the Horde? Because I’m far more valuable here.”

  * * * * *

  Find out more about Chris Kennedy and get the free Four Horsemen prequel,

  “Shattered Crucible” at: http://chriskennedypublishing.com/

  The following is an

  Excerpt from Book One of The Psyche of War:

  Minds of Men

  ___________________

  Kacey Ezell

  Now Available from Theogony Books

  eBook, Paperback, and (Soon) Audio

  Excerpt from “Minds of Men:”

  “Look sharp, everyone,” Carl said after a while. Evelyn couldn’t have said whether they’d been droning for minutes or hours in the cold, dense white of the cloud cover. “We should be overhead the French coast in about thirty seconds.”

  The men all reacted to this announcement with varying degrees of excitement and terror. Sean got up from his seat and came back to her, holding an awkward looking arrangement of fabric and straps.

  Put this on, he thought to her. It’s your flak jacket. And your parachute is just there, he said, pointing. If the captain gives the order to bail out, you go, clip this piece into your ‘chute, and jump out the biggest hole you can find. Do you understand? You do, don’t you. This psychic thing certainly makes explaining things easier, he finished with a grin.

  Evelyn gave him what she hoped was a brave smile and took the flak jacket from him. It was deceptively heavy, and she struggled a bit with getting it on. Sean gave her a smile and a thumbs up, and then headed back to his station.

  The other men were checking in and charging their weapons. A short time later, Evelyn saw through Rico’s eyes as the tail gunner watched their fighter escort waggle their wings at the formation and depart. They didn’t have the long-range fuel capability to continue all the way to the target.

  Someday, that long-range fighter escort we were promised will materialize, Carl thought. His mind felt determinedly positive, like he was trying to be strong for the crew and not let them see his fear. That, of course, was an impossibility, but the crew took it well. After all, they were afraid, too. Especially as the formation had begun its descent to the attack altitude of 20,000 feet. Evelyn became gradually aware of the way the men’s collective tension ratcheted up with every hundred feet of descent. They were entering enemy fighter territory.

  Yeah, and someday Veronica Lake will...ah. Never mind. Sorry, Evie. That was Les. Evelyn could feel the waist gunner’s not-quite-repentant grin. She had to suppress a grin of her own, but Les’ irreverence was the perfect tension breaker.

  Boys will be boys, she sent, projecting a sense of tolerance. But real men keep their private lives p
rivate. She added this last with a bit of smug superiority and felt the rest of the crew’s appreciative flare of humor at her jab. Even Les laughed, shaking his head. A warmth that had nothing to do with her electric suit enfolded Evelyn, and she started to feel like, maybe, she just might become part of the crew yet.

  Fighters! Twelve o’clock high!

  The call came from Alice. If she craned her neck to look around Sean’s body, Evelyn could just see the terrifying rain of tracer fire coming from the dark, diving silhouette of an enemy fighter. She let the call echo down her own channels and felt her men respond, turning their own weapons to cover Teacher’s Pet’s flanks. Adrenaline surges spiked through all of them, causing Evelyn’s heart to race in turn. She took a deep breath and reached out to tie her crew in closer to the Forts around them.

  She looked through Sean’s eyes as he fired from the top turret, tracking his line of bullets just in front of the attacking aircraft. His mind was oddly calm and terribly focused...as, indeed, they all were. Even young Lieutenant Bob was zeroed in on his task of keeping a tight position and making it that much harder to penetrate the deadly crossing fire of the Flying Fortress.

  Fighters! Three o’clock low!

  That was Logan in the ball turret. Evelyn felt him as he spun his turret around and began to fire the twin Browning AN/M2 .50 caliber machine guns at the sinister dark shapes rising up to meet them with fire.

  Got ‘em, Bobby Fritsche replied, from his position in the right waist. He, too, opened up with his own .50 caliber machine gun, tracking the barrel forward of the nose of the fighter formation, in order to “lead” their flight and not shoot behind them.

  Evelyn blinked, then hastily relayed the call to the other girls in the formation net. She felt their acknowledgement, though it was almost an absentminded thing as each of the girls were focusing mostly on the communication between the men in their individual crews.

  Got you, you Kraut sonofabitch! Logan exulted. Evelyn looked through his eyes and couldn’t help but feel a twist of pity for the pilot of the German fighter as he spiraled toward the ground, one wing completely gone. She carefully kept that emotion from Logan, however, as he was concentrating on trying to take out the other three fighters who’d been in the initial attacking wedge. One fell victim to Bobby’s relentless fire as he threw out a curtain of lead that couldn’t be avoided.

  Two back to you, tail, Bobby said, his mind carrying an even calm, devoid of Logan’s adrenaline-fueled exultation.

  Yup, Rico Martinez answered as he visually acquired the two remaining targets and opened fire. He was aided by fire from the aircraft flying off their right wing, the Nagging Natasha. She fired from her left waist and tail, and the two remaining fighters faltered and tumbled through the resulting crossfire. Evelyn watched through Rico’s eyes as the ugly black smoke trailed the wreckage down.

  Fighters! Twelve high!

  Fighters! Two high!

  The calls were simultaneous, coming from Sean in his top turret and Les on the left side. Evelyn took a deep breath and did her best to split her attention between the two of them, keeping the net strong and open. Sean and Les opened fire, their respective weapons adding a cacophony of pops to the ever-present thrum of the engines.

  Flak! That was Carl, up front. Evelyn felt him take hold of the controls, helping the lieutenant to maintain his position in the formation as the Nazi anti-aircraft guns began to send up 20mm shells that blossomed into dark clouds that pocked the sky. One exploded right in front of Pretty Cass’ nose. Evelyn felt the bottom drop out of her stomach as the aircraft heaved first up and then down. She held on grimly and passed on the wordless knowledge the pilots had no choice but to fly through the debris and shrapnel that resulted.

  In the meantime, the gunners continued their rapid fire response to the enemy fighters’ attempt to break up the formation. Evelyn took that knowledge—that the Luftwaffe was trying to isolate one of the Forts, make her vulnerable—and passed it along the looser formation net.

  Shit! They got Liberty Belle! Logan called out then, from his view in the ball turret. Evelyn looked through his angry eyes, feeling his sudden spike of despair as they watched the crippled Fort fall back, two of her four engines smoking. Instantly, the enemy fighters swarmed like so many insects, and Evelyn watched as the aircraft yawed over and began to spin down and out of control.

  A few agonizing heartbeats later, first one, then three more parachutes fluttered open far below. Evelyn felt Logan’s bitter knowledge that there had been six other men on board that aircraft. Liberty Belle was one of the few birds flying without a psychic on board, and Evelyn suppressed a small, wicked feeling of relief that she hadn’t just lost one of her friends.

  Fighters! Twelve o’clock level!

  * * * * *

  Find out more about Kacey Ezell and “Minds of Men” at:

  http://www.kaceyezell.net/

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