A Fistful of Credits: Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 5)

by Chris Kennedy

  “What do you want to do, sir?” Wethington asked. “If the fuel cell is shot, we’ll need a new fuel cell, and the only other ones are at the bottom of the last river we crossed.”

  “Yeah, and unfortunately we just contaminated half of the fuel we had,” Walker added. “Damn it! Well, that one is down, and there’s no recovering it. Leave it and continue. We’ll just have to do this the old fashioned way.”

  “Scouts out!” Wethington shouted. “Everyone else, move out slow.”

  Walker shook his head as he walked past the non-functional CASPer, successfully fighting off the urge to kick its metal leg. He had needed two of them for his plan to work, so that plan was trashed. He’d have to come up with something new, and fast. He just didn’t know what that was…yet.

  Chapter 3

  “I’ve got movement back here,” Corporal Joseph Reynolds radioed. The trooper was driving their remaining CASPer, and was at the trail position of their formation.

  “How much movement?” Walker asked.

  “It’s hard to get a good scan, because the damn bugs don’t show up on thermal as well as people,” Reynolds replied. “Also, the damn jungle makes getting a good reading difficult, as do all of the damn creepy crawly jungle creatures moving around. That said, I have to imagine there’s at least a company of MinSha in pursuit, if not more. The bad thing is, I think they’re moving faster than we are, so they’re catching up.”

  Walker looked at Wethington. “What do you think? Is it worth trying to ambush them?”

  “We could…and the CASPer would help balance the odds, but if we don’t really squash them, we’re going to be in some serious shit, especially since we don’t have any sort of transport to get us out. Also, there’s no telling what they have in reserve that they may hit us with if they can pin us down.”

  “Hey, Colonel, I’ve got some bad news,” Reynolds called. “I need to revise my estimate. There are at least two companies out here, and there’s at least one flier, although I can’t tell if it’s a fighter or a transport. I can try to take it out, but it’s a ways behind their line, and I’ll probably expose myself to their fire if I do.”

  “No, I don’t want to lose you,” Walker said. “Catch back up with us.” Walker looked at Wethington. “What did we do to them?” he asked. “Does this seem normal to you?”

  “You mean, what did we do to make them all come out from defending the mine to chase us through the jungle?”

  “Yeah. If there’s two companies chasing us, they’re leaving the mine pretty open to attack, unless they really have a lot of troops here.”

  “I don’t know,” Wethington said. “Maybe they have a really nice combat bonus, or they get paid extra for every body they bring back.”

  “Have you ever heard of that?” Walker asked.

  “A combat bonus? Yes, absolutely—”

  “I know that,” Walker interrupted. “Hell, we have…had…a combat bonus for this job. I was asking if you’d ever heard of a contract where you get paid a bonus for every enemy you kill.”

  “No sir,” Wethington replied. “Never. Slaughter contracts are bad for business.”

  “Well, we’ve already had combat, so they would get the bonus. I don’t understand why they’re still chasing us. There’s no business case for wiping us out, unless that’s what their contract says, and I can’t understand why the locals would write that in.”

  “Maybe they didn’t. Maybe the MinSha did.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense, though. Why risk trapping us and having us fight like cornered animals? They have to know that, even without our suits, we’re still going to kill a bunch of them.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. I feel like if we knew why they were chasing us, maybe we could make a deal with them.”

  “Well, why don’t you ask them?”

  “Because any time they’ve seen one of our people, they’ve shot first and asked questions…never.”

  “Call them on the radio,” Wethington suggested.

  “I’ve tried. Either their radios aren’t compatible with ours, or they don’t want to talk to us.”

  “Well, aside from grabbing one of them and bringing it to us,” Wethington said as the CASPer strode into camp, “I don’t see how you’re going to do that.”

  “Top, that’s it!” Walker exclaimed. “You’re a genius!”

  “So I’ve been told,” Wethington agreed. He paused and then asked, “Care to tell me what for, this time?”

  Chapter 4

  The CASPer’s antenna rose slowly from the waters of the river, sampling the electromagnetic spectrum for any signs of activity. Finding none, the trooper cautiously emerged from the river and walked to the shore. The darkness didn’t bother Corporal Reynolds inside the suit; he had a variety of low-light and thermal cameras to help him find his way in the dark.

  He walked as slowly as possible, placing his feet where they would make the least noise. He knew there was no way he could be ‘silent,’ so he instead settled on ‘as stealthy as possible.’

  He saw the MinSha camp after about an hour of walking and was concentrating so hard on not making any nose that he nearly walked into it before he realized he had arrived. If the MinSha had been hard to track by day, they were even harder when bedded down for the night. Only the residual heat from the dropship, sitting in the middle of a small open area, gave it away.

  He tweaked some of his filters and the camp came into focus. The majority of the MinSha were on the ground, presumably sleeping, or whatever they did at night, and their body temperatures had cooled to within a few degrees of the ambient temperature, making them hard to differentiate. Additionally, as he looked closer, he saw their outside chitin was transparent at the infrared wavelength he was using, so he could look through them and see their internal organs, with a backdrop of the ground beneath them.

  He found himself staring at one of the MinSha, almost as if looking at a science experiment, and had to force himself to look away. It was gross, but at the same time, strangely fascinating.

  Now that he knew what to look for, he was able to pick up the rest of the MinSha camp. Sentries were out on the opposite side of camp, facing west toward where the rest of the Humans would be, and there were a couple of roving patrols to the north and south. He showed the computer the signature of the MinSha and asked it to calculate the number of targets. 127. Not only were there two full companies that he could see fairly easily by the dropship, the computer also determined there was another company to the south.

  He had been toying with attacking the camp, but with the numbers that far against him, he decided discretion was the better part of valor. He would instead focus on his mission…and maybe just cause a little mayhem along the way.

  Reynolds surveyed the bugs where they were sleeping, looking for one that might be a leader among the group. Most of the MinSha had a tarp or other piece of material strung between the trees above them; he would have to watch that his sensors didn’t get tangled in them as he rushed through the camp. He was looking for…there! Almost all the MinSha were sleeping in pairs, but there was one sleeping by itself. The good news was it was alone; the bad news was it was sleeping near the center of the camp.

  Having made up his mind, the rest was easy, and he plotted it out so the suit’s computer could assist him. As he made the final calculations, Reynolds realized it was time to go; one of the roving patrols was headed straight for him.

  The trooper took three steps to get some momentum and jumped about 40 feet. One thousand pounds of steel and Human crashed down through one of the tarps, ripping it from the trees, and landed on a pair of sleeping MinSha. A massive titanium-alloy boot came down on each, and the MinSha bodies exploded outwards in all directions. Reynolds leaned forward and jumped again, the rocket motors in his jump jets flash-boiling the remains of the two aliens.

  He landed again, and the remains of two more aliens painted the ground in blue Rorschach test
patterns. His target now only 15 feet in front of him, he took three big strides and reached the alien as it was starting to rise. Scooping it up in his left arm, he removed two K bombs from his belt, armed them, and threw them toward the center of camp. The first laser bolt from one of the patrols snapped past him as he planted his left foot and pivoted, tapping his jump jets to fly into the air about 30 feet. As the dropship came into view, he locked three missiles onto it and fired.

  Reynolds tapped his right jumpjet to break the spin, and then both of the jets together as he crashed down onto one of the sentries. The blade on his right arm extended, and Reynolds chopped the head off the other sentry. Taking three more steps, he jumped again, a major jump this time, using up nearly the remainder of his jump juice in the launch and subsequent landing.

  The MinSha under his arm struggled to free itself and emitted a high-pitched keening as the trooper landed and began running away from the MinSha camp. With his free hand, he tapped it as gently as he could on the head. Reynolds didn’t know whether he had killed the MinSha, or if it was just unconscious or pretending to be, but it stopped struggling, and that was all he cared about.

  Chapter 5

  A hand shook Walker from sleep. “I’m awake,” he said.

  It was Wethington. “Hi sir,” he said. “It’s almost dawn. I thought you’d like to know Reynolds made it back with one of the MinSha.”

  “Alive?”

  “Mostly. He had to whack it on the head once to get it to settle down, and he cracked its carapace. We sprayed it with a medkit, and that sealed it back up again. It didn’t look like it lost any blood or had any major exterior damage, but if they get concussions, it’s probably got one.”

  “Is it awake?”

  “Yeah, it just woke up. C’mon, sir, and I’ll show her to you.”

  “Her?”

  “Yeah, the damned MinSha says she’s a ‘she.’ Not that I can tell or give a shit about it. Her name’s Proptayl.”

  Walker followed Wethington over to where the alien stood under guard. The alien’s hands were zip-tied, its legs shackled, and there was a black band wrapped around its thorax. “What’s that?” Walker asked, indicating the band.

  “Ordnance tape,” Wethington said. “As soon as Reynolds let her go, she tried to fly off. She wouldn’t give us her word not to try it again, so…”

  “Ordnance tape.”

  “Yes, sir,” Wethington confirmed.

  Walker inspected the MinSha; he’d never been this close to one. Like most Humans, he had a natural aversion to them after what they’d done to Iran at first contact. It wasn’t that a response hadn’t been deserved—and had probably been warranted for some time—it was the over-the-top nature of the attack that made humankind in general tend to be wary of the MinSha; people in New Persia, though, tended to be a little more…extreme…in their outlook.

  Up close, Walker was struck by how much the MinSha looked like oversized versions of Earth’s praying mantises. They walked on four legs and used two more as hands, and they could fly as this one had already tried to demonstrate; hell, they even had triangular heads with beady eyes that stared back at you when you looked at them. While sort of creepy in a four-inch insect, it was tremendously disconcerting to have it done by a six-foot-tall alien. The only two things he could find different, besides the size, were that their captive was a light blue in color and had a somewhat funky smell.

  Walker stepped forward to address the alien. “Hi, I’m Colonel Walker,” he said as a half-smile crossed his face. “Sorry about the ordnance tape; it’s going to be a bitch to get that off. You’d have been better off giving your word that you wouldn’t try to escape.”

  “If our positions were reversed, would you have given your word?” the alien asked, the translator putting a harsh tone on her words.

  Walker considered a moment. “No,” he finally said. “Probably not.” The smile went full. “Still, that tape is going to suck to get off you.”

  The MinSha continued to stare at Walker. “Is there a reason you abducted me?” Proptayl asked after a long pause. “Am I to be tortured by you Humanssss?”

  “Straight to business, eh?” Walker asked. “Of course there is a reason we grabbed you, but I hope to avoid any unpleasantness between us. That will depend on you, though, of course.”

  “And what would your reason be?”

  “I’m looking for information,” Walker said.

  “I’m sorry, but I am a private on my first tour of duty. There isn’t much I know, even if you do decide to torture me.”

  “I’m not looking for secret information or anything that might be proprietary or privileged; I’m just trying to figure out what we did to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what it is we did to you to cause you to continue pursuing and attacking us. If your mission was solely to guard the mine, you wouldn’t have companies of troops out here trying to run down our platoon of soldiers. I’ve gone over this hundreds of times in my mind, and I just can’t figure out the business case for why you’d want to risk loss or damage to your personnel and equipment.”

  “Really? I would think that it would be pretty apparent, even to you,” the MinSha replied.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because there are always repercussions when you do things that are generally accepted as impermissible.”

  “Impermissible? What things are we talking about?”

  “Wiping out orphanages, of course,” Proptayl spat, “as well as the factories that produce the food to feed the children there.”

  “I agree with you,” Walker said; “we’d never do anything like that.”

  “Liar!” the alien exclaimed. “I have already seen the Tri-V photos. The locals showed them to our leaders, and our leaders showed them to us!”

  “What photos are you talking about?”

  “The photos that convinced my leaders to wipe your disease off this planet. What you did to the younglings was horrible. They looked just like baby MinSha; to see their broken bodies was ghastly. And to think you have come here and done that repeatedly…Although the locals offered us a small stipend, we probably would have taken the contract for free.”

  Walker jerked back. “What?”

  Wethington was more to the point. “That’s fucking bullshit!”

  The MinSha cocked its head. “I suppose you are going to say that’s not true?”

  “There is nothing that could be further from the truth,” Walker said. “I’ve never even been on this planet before this week, nor has anyone else in the company that I’m aware of.”

  “I certainly haven’t,” Wethington added.

  “The only reason we’re here now is that we were hired by the local government to guard the mine from the rebels in the civil war they’re having.”

  “Interesting,” Proptayl said. “Really? When were you hired?”

  “About 30 days ago,” Walker replied. “Why?”

  The MinSha ignored the question. “And how much were you paid to guard the mine?”

  “We haven’t been paid anything yet; we were supposed to collect our first installment on arrival. It was a fairly big contract, though. We stood to make 40 million credits over the next year.”

  “Let me guess,” the MinSha said; “the locals didn’t have an exit clause to get out of the contract, did they?”

  “No, they didn’t,” Walker confirmed. “The contract was pretty iron-clad. It was the only way we’d do it without at least a partial advance payment.” His eyebrows knit. “Why are you asking all these questions?”

  Proptayl’s voice, when she answered, was much quieter than before. “The civil war ended two weeks ago. A week ago, we were hired by the new government to defend the mine from you, and to terminate you…all of you…on sight. No questions or communications with you. We accepted payment of five million credits to cover our expenses while we performed the job, plus a modest retainer to make it worth our while.”
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  It all clicked into place for Walker. “Those sons of bitches! They hired you, at a minimal salary, to kill us so they wouldn’t have to pay us! Those bastards!”

  “Sir,” Wethington said, “we’ve got to stop the MinSha. This is all bullshit. None of us need to die…on either side.”

  “Unfortunately, that is not entirely the case now, though.” The alien finally broke the stare and focused on something on the ground. “The locals here, while somewhat backwoods in nature, are very quick learners. They took your iron-clad contract and used it to make one that is similarly iron-clad for us. I heard some of our leaders talking and, if we fail to wipe you out, we are responsible for paying them a large sum…40 million, I believe…plus we forfeit our initial retainer.”

  “That’s bullshit!” Wethington exploded.

  “What about if we cover your fees and payments?” Walker asked. “Do you suppose we could buy our freedom, if we were to explain what actually happened?”

  “Unlikely,” the MinSha said. “Our commander gave her word, and that is something we do not back down on. That is why people hire us—once we give our word on something, we either do it, or we die trying.”

  Chapter 6

  “Colonel Walker!” a voice said, shaking him. It seemed like he had just laid down—maybe he fell down?—and his eyes were all gummy as he tried to focus.

  “Uh. Yeah?” he finally asked.

  “Top Wethington is gone, sir!” Staff Sergeant Rapp exclaimed.

  “Gone?” Walker asked, instantly awake. “Where did he go? Did the MinSha capture him?”

  “No, sir, he just vanished. I might not even have noticed he was gone, but one of the men found his kukris and a note to you.” He held out a small piece of paper.

  Walker flipped on his mini-light and looked at the note. “Colonel Walker, this whole situation sucks; someone had to ask the MinSha for quarter. I know you couldn’t order anyone to do it, so I volunteered. I couldn’t live with myself, otherwise. Sorry, sir, but I had to try. Sergeant First Class David Wethington.”