Second Strike

by Tim C. Taylor

  SECOND STRIKE

  Book 2 of REVENGE SQUAD

  Copyright © Tim C. Taylor 2017

  Cover image by Vincent Sammy

  Published by Human Legion Publications

  Also available in paperback

  All Rights Reserved

  HumanLegion.com

  * * *

  The author wishes to thank all those who work-shopped, proof read, or otherwise supported the making of this book. In particular, Paul Melhuish for allowing me to raid the vault of filthy Skyfirean vernacular he invented for his Terminus sci-fi horror books, my editor Donna Scott, the Northampton Science Fiction Writers Group. Then there's Ronnie, Pam, Melissa, and all my loyal friends and supporters from humanlegion.com and the Legionaries. Finally, a big thank you to Jim Butcher, who has been entertaining me with his marvelous Dresden Files novels ever since I picked one up out of curiosity a year ago. His writing inspired me to create Revenge Squad.

  * * *

  Table of Contents

  — CHAPTER 1 —

  — CHAPTER 2 —

  — CHAPTER 3 —

  — CHAPTER 4 —

  — CHAPTER 5 —

  — CHAPTER 6 —

  — CHAPTER 7 —

  — CHAPTER 8 —

  — CHAPTER 9 —

  — CHAPTER 10 —

  — CHAPTER 11 —

  — CHAPTER 12 —

  — CHAPTER 13 —

  — CHAPTER 14 —

  — CHAPTER 15 —

  — CHAPTER 16 —

  — CHAPTER 17 —

  — CHAPTER 18 —

  — CHAPTER 19 —

  — CHAPTER 20 —

  — CHAPTER 21 —

  — CHAPTER 22 —

  — CHAPTER 23 —

  — CHAPTER 24 —

  — CHAPTER 25 —

  — CHAPTER 26 —

  — CHAPTER 27 —

  — CHAPTER 28 —

  — CHAPTER 29 —

  — CHAPTER 30 —

  — CHAPTER 31 —

  — CHAPTER 32 —

  — CHAPTER 33 —

  — CHAPTER 34 —

  — CHAPTER 35 —

  — CHAPTER 36 —

  — CHAPTER 37 —

  — CHAPTER 38 —

  — CHAPTER 39 —

  — CHAPTER 40 —

  — CHAPTER 41 —

  — CHAPTER 42 —

  — CHAPTER 43 —

  — CHAPTER 44 —

  — CHAPTER 45 —

  — CHAPTER 46 —

  — CHAPTER 47 —

  — CHAPTER 48 —

  — CHAPTER 49 —

  — CHAPTER 50 —

  — CHAPTER 51 —

  — CHAPTER 52 —

  — CHAPTER 53 —

  — CHAPTER 54 —

  — CHAPTER 55 —

  — CHAPTER 56 —

  — CHAPTER 57 —

  — CHAPTER 58 —

  — CHAPTER 59 —

  — CHAPTER 60 —

  — CHAPTER 61 —

  — CHAPTER 62 —

  — CHAPTER 63 —

  — CHAPTER 64 —

  — CHAPTER 65 —

  — CHAPTER 1 —

  I tried to break away from her, but my hands betrayed me, sliding down her shoulders rather than releasing them. Only moments had passed since my brush with death at the robotic hands of a homicidal droid, but that didn’t explain why my heart was beating so fast.

  Nor the sweating hands.

  What the hell? Was I about to kiss this alien?

  I thought through the extensive catalog of embarrassing things I’d done or said under the influence of combat stress. Smooching with non-humans would be a first, but not quite the worst.

  Not today, though. I flinched at the psychic burn as Silky’s mind mercilessly blasted away these distracting thoughts, until she was all business once more.

  She was my section leader, after all. And we were on a mission.

  “Sel-en-Sek just reported in before I had to fry our comms,” she said. “The Port Authority accepted our authorization code, and he’s about to pilot the ship out into the bay. However, now that you’ve made all that noise, NJ, I want to gather the others and meet up in the–”

  Silky was interrupted by the forward hatch opening. We took cover and drew our weapons, but it was only Shahdi and Nolog.

  Our comrades locked the hatch behind them and ran into our lower hold compartment.

  Former Flight-Corporal Nolog-Ndacu was a Tallerman, a race of blocky humanoids who hibernate through the centuries-long winters on their home planet in a state that is more mineral than animal. He possessed the kind of stoic attitude that you would expect from someone who looked like a small hillock. It took a lot to worry him, but with the way he was swinging his arms as he pounded along the deck… I’d say he was fleeing.

  “NJ here,” I said and broke cover. “Status?”

  “We encountered a hostile droid,” Shahdi explained without slowing. At nineteen years of age, Shahdi Mowad bore an uncanny resemblance in both looks and attitude to the teenage version of my first wife, Sanaa. She tried to act how she imagined a rock-hard veteran should – like her murdered parents, I guess – but I caught the tremble in her voice.

  “It’s okay. We met one already.” I pointed at the deactivated heap of smart-ass metal, and was surprised when neither Shahdi nor Nolog stopped. “They’re tricky,” I told them, “but together we can beat them.”

  “It wasn’t that model,” said Nolog, or rather the thought-to-speech speaker in his collar did. “It was more–”

  He came to an abrupt halt, though abrupt when you’re a minor geographical feature meant his stopping distance was about ten feet. He froze and vacuumed up a stiff breeze through his highly sensitive nose. His shoulders stayed as rock steady as an armored cupola, but within that ring of muscle the ball of his head tilted upward. He pointed up too. “More like that.”

  The overhead in the lower hold was a complex topography of ribbing, access ports, sensors and grilles, but as I studied the portion Nolog pointed to, I sensed there was something about its bumpiness that wasn’t right.

  What I had thought were four circular ventilation shafts marking out a small rectangle resolved into four unidirectional engines that gripped the overhead with extendable suckers. While the engines spun briefly in what looked like a power-up test sequence, the empty space between the engines revealed itself to be filled, though the details were still indistinct. Whatever was up there lazily shed its stealth cloaking to unveil its true shape. It was a double-headed rocket between which three revolving discs were sandwiched, bristling with guns, sensors, and a lust for killing that made the maintenance bot that had almost killed me seem as gentle as sleeping puppies laid on a mile-deep bed of soft feathers. I knew what this was.

  Silky and Shahdi shot at the de-stealthing droid.

  “Cease fire,” I said grimly. “You’re more of a danger to us than to it.” I watched in horror as two more droids began appearing out of the overhead to either side. “They’re LTB-10 combat droids. Little Tin Bastards. We’re outgunned.”

  “Don’t stare at it like it’s a piece of frakking high-class artwork,” suggested Silky helpfully. “Run!”

  — CHAPTER 2 —

  Revenge Squad.

  Port Zahir branch.

  If you know the stories, then you won’t be surprised to hear this tale of the evening we were chased by killer combat droids through the hold of a freight ship called Spirit of Progress.

  In the summer of 2762, this was just another day in the office.

  You must have at least heard of Revenge Squad, but if you suspected the stories are wildly exaggerated, well… not all of them are.

 
My name is Ndeki Joshua McCall, though ‘NJ’ is a popular form for people shouting at me in a hurry. I was born, bred, engineered and augmented to be an Assault Marine. I was never supposed to retire.

  So when the Human Legion actually beat all the odds and started winning its war, it had to figure what to do with the old soldiers. In my case, that meant dumping me on a planet called Klin-Tula and telling me I was now a reservist-colonist.

  The journey from Legionary to civilian was the hardest campaign many of us would ever face. Many fell along the way, and I would have joined them too if not for Silky.

  My journey was not over, but for now I was taking an extended stopover with Revenge Squad. Why? I like to think it was philosophy that drew me to them.

  Mess with our friends and we’ll mess with you. With interest.

  As corporate philosophies went, Revenge Squad Incorporated’s was one that made a lifetime of sense.

  Say what you like about the company, I don’t care. True, some of our main board were insane, and Revenge Squad was deeply entwined with a dark conspiracy called the Phoenix Cabal that was infecting every organ of power on the planet. But I’d signed up to the organization with the best corporate mission statement on the whole of Klin-Tula, and that more than offset the bad stuff.

  Besides, nine months into my posting at the Port Zahir branch, I was experiencing something I never thought would be possible again. I was having a good time.

  Payback is profitable. That’s the flipside of our corporate philosophy, the slogan we don’t use in our media adverts. Never having encountered the concept of money until after the war, the profit motive hadn’t bothered me a great deal when I signed up, but under the leadership of our ancient war hero, Laban Caccamo, we now made serious checks to ensure we would never again be used as puppets in someone else’s turf war, no matter how fat the paycheck.

  Which gave me a tingling feeling when I buried my fists into someone else’s face, because that individual was very definitely probably a bad person.

  For example, imagine that you’ve paid your monthly premiums to mount one of our Revenge Squad logos outside your house, and some inconsiderate shunter dumps their truck in your parking space. We will find out who they are and park somewhere inconvenient for them. In an armored vehicle, perhaps. With an offensive slogan painted on the side, and an even more offensive junior employee inside glaring at them.

  But if our background checks discovered that this parking transgressor was, in fact, your ex-wife, and she was only parking outside your home because you asked her over, then we would remove your Revenge Squad plaque and then park something more interesting at your home. Such as a wrecking ball. In your bedroom. In the middle of the night.

  Mess with our friends and we’ll mess with you. But mess with Revenge Squad, and you’d better flee to the nearest spaceport and pray that something interstellar is leaving soon, because we will find you.

  Now that our section had passed its probation, I did more than take revenge for petty thieving and the like.

  Which is why one early evening in the summer of 2762, a short while before we were pursued by combat droids, you would have found me prying open another mini-container of cargo in the lower hold of Spirit of Progress, a freight ship partially laden with machine parts to feed the growing industrial belt that ran through the center of Tata-East province. Essentially, these were robots that would build the robots that would then construct the assembly line that would build… Actually, I didn’t know what they would have built. They weren’t building it now.

  The ship belonged to Blue Star Logistics, a freight transportation company who had sabotaged the proof of concept of a small rival hoping to provide cost-effective local freight management that would save on port fees for the big shipping companies. Several innocent sailors were injured in the process, which was very bad for Blue Star because they’d picked on a Revenge Squad client.

  I attached two color-coded charges to the cargo: a blue disc would fry circuitry with an EMP blast. The red one was a modified breaching charge, just powerful enough to punch a hole through the most sensitive part of the machinery, which according to my highly skilled eye meant the bits with the most flashing lights when this thing was active.

  Satisfied the charges were secure, I checked the monocle over my left eye. It told me nothing of interest. Typical!

  In theory, the monocle was a junior version of the tactical display shown on the inside of an ACE-series combat helmet.

  If all was well, then if I switched to active signal mode, I would see a tactical interpretation of the Spirit of Progress with my two squadmates in the wheelhouse, and the rest of us laying charges throughout the hold. But that would mean using active radio comms, which might not go unnoticed.

  Instead, we relied on tight beam microwave links, and there was no way to establish a network through this maze of hardened bulkheads, blast-proof hatches, and sturdy baffles that were designed to prevent fluid cargoes from slopping around.

  I didn’t like this isolation in what could turn into a hostile environment. For all I knew, my comrades had already been picked off and killed one by one. I wouldn’t know a thing about it until it was my turn. I was relying upon Chikune and Sel-en-Sek in the wheelhouse to keep an eye out for trouble. César, too, should be overseeing events through the sights of his sniper’s rifle from his post on the third floor of the Port Authority office overlooking the quay.

  I did trust them but my faith was brittle. For a start, César wasn’t who he claimed to be, and I worried he was overstretching himself by also guarding the two sailors we had knocked out. Chikune was exactly who he claimed: a desperate man who would sell me out in an instant if it suited his purpose. Even my friend, Sel-en-Sek, had been completely off his game lately, distracted by something personal that he refused to reveal.

  But our squad boss, Silky, was in charge for a reason, and if she said we should run silent, then that’s what I would do.

  I snapped my attention back to the job in hand. As a professional purveyor of revenge, I understood that there was more to payback than blowing things up and hurting bad people: the deed must be seen to be done.

  I grabbed the intelligent aerosol canister from my hip pouch and fired a burst at the machinery. It was a silly name. There was nothing intelligent about the acid that flew out of the nozzle onto the shiniest surface I could find, well away from the direction of the shaped charge I had prepared. The familiar pattern of an R and an S inside a circle appeared on the burnished metal. The English language version of the Revenge Squad logo wasn’t proof of anything. Who, me, officer? I was nowhere near the ship. Nonetheless, Salty Harmony would know that their Revenge Squad premiums had been well spent, and Blue Star Logistics had better think twice before bullying a smaller rival again.

  Yeah, Salty Harmony. That was our client on this job.

  Salty Harmonic Corporation – as they would expect me to call them – sounded like one of the new virtual sex arenas everyone was talking about. The name said it all. Not because the company specialized in saltwater operations; they did load some cargo in deep water but operated mostly in freshwater. As for harmonic, this was the Littorane idea that the entirety of existence is but a complex song, and if you find yourself in a patch of discord, you need maximum prayer and religious observance to fast forward to the next outbreak of harmony.

  Ah, yes, the Littoranes. Our clients were amphibious aliens who look like a cross between crocodiles and tadpoles, and possessed a mania for cults and religious visions that made them fascinating to watch – preferably at a safe distance from the far side of the galaxy.

  Words you did not want to hear from a Littorane mouth: holy war. The Human Legion hadn’t entirely finished fighting the last one, and yet I’d read worrying intelligence about Littorane religious gangs driving other species out from their areas of the city.

  My monocle display reminded me I had just six minutes left before we had to move to the upper hold to dump the lighter cargo
into the deep water of the bay. Time to get a move on. I jogged rearward one compartment, cursing the bulkhead hatches which were heavier than many I had experienced on starships.

  I bit my lower lip. Before me was a tower of miniature crates, a three by three array stacked four tiers high. I only had two charges remaining. Luckily, I had a Plan B ready to deploy in case we were discovered. Our standing orders were to run and evade capture at all costs, but I didn’t like to go out for an evening without bringing a little protection.

  I unclipped the fusion grenade from my chest webbing and adjusted the yield for minimum heat and maximum burst radius, to go off in eleven minutes. That should melt anything delicate, and set the crates ablaze if they were at all flammable.

  With Klin-Tula’s commercial freight traffic being a rounding error compared to the massive logistical operation that supplied the Legion’s war machine, the ship’s hold was not designed to be stacked full of standardized containers. Instead, there were ropes, nets, straps, stanchions and lashing points aplenty. So it was the task of moments to rig a cargo net over the tower of crates, which I climbed, before prying open one of the boxes on the third tier.

  The front panel fell with a clang onto the deck to reveal a maintenance robot, a general-purpose unit that would assemble and repair the larger equipment. I laughed at its cute design with a cylinder-like head with front-facing sensor apertures, and human-like arms folded over a cylindrical chest. Only its tracked wheels spoiled the android effect. I wished I’d had more time. I could have used it well by drawing a mouth and nose onto the robot’s face. Maybe a luxurious beard.

  “Never mind, you’ll still do, pal.” I placed the grenade in its hands, and was about to scramble back down to the deck when the robot’s head rotated through 90° and stared me in the face.

  Time slowed.

  I had taken out serious combat droids during the War of Liberation. I’d flown through nuclear fire to assault the homeworld of the White Knights themselves. On one occasion, buoyed by a large quantity of bittered ale, I’d even challenged our team gambler, Sel-en-Sek, to a game of cards. None of those deeds of bravery prepared me for the shock of this robot coming to life.