Alpha Contracts

by Chris Kennedy

  He got to the back and walked out into the night, only to find a disturbance, centered on the copilot. Several red-lensed flashlights were being held on him. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “He doesn’t want to do what we tell him,” Staff Sergeant Avesta replied. “He says he wants to surrender.”

  “Is that so?” Shirazi asked, turning to the SleSha.

  “They are all tying themselves together,” the copilot replied. “I don’t want to be tied up.”

  “Did they tell you why they’re doing that?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, we don’t have time for this. There’s such a thing as dry quicksand. If you fall into it, or a sinkhole, or anything, you’re gone. If you don’t give a shit about that, fine; they won’t tie you into one of the squads. But you’ll be on your own—if you fall or can’t keep up, we’re not stopping for you.”

  “That’s fine; I want to come, but I won’t be tied up.”

  “Fine.”

  Sergeant Major Kazemi approached. “I’m glad that worked out, sir. I didn’t want to, but I was about to shoot the little bastard and throw him into the ship.”

  “Me, too,” Shirazi said with a nod. “We ready to go?”

  “Yes, sir. We scavenged a bunch of water from the ship and have as much as the men are able to carry. It will be close, but we ought to have enough water for three days. If we have to go a fourth, it’ll be tight.”

  “Move out then. We need to be as far as we can from the dropship by daybreak. I’ll address the men when we stop.”

  “Yes, sir.” He turned to the lines of men, roped together. “First Squad, head east. Second, follow them, followed by Third and Fourth. We’re trying to cover as much ground as we can before daylight. Move out!”

  “Who’s torching the ship?” Shirazi asked as First Squad started moving, the 10 men of the squad roped together moving in a single file, with Captain Abbasi tied in at the end of the stick. Captain Rajavi was at the end of Second, Shirazi would go at the end of Third, and Kazemi at the end of Fourth. It wasn’t your typical march through the desert—the men carried more RPG rounds than was usual for a squad. It was a gamble how much they could carry and still make it to the target, but they also needed the ammo if they were to be successful when they got to the city…everything was now up to them.

  “I am,” Kazemi said, “and then I will catch up to Fourth Squad. How could I pass it up? How many Humans have ever gotten to blow up a spaceship before?”

  “Not many,” Shirazi replied. “Be careful.”

  Third Squad began moving in a single file, following the path First Squad left, with one light at the front. It became much easier to see two minutes later when the dropship blew up in an enormous fireball.

  * * *

  The sky began to lighten in front of them, and the copilot came to walk alongside Shirazi. “Why are we going east?”

  “Because we’re trying to evade capture. The MinSha will look for us on a line to the south from the crash first, thinking we’ll be headed toward the closest civilization. We either needed to go east or west, and the ravine is closer to the east, so we went east. It adds time, but hopefully there will be harder ground by the ravine and we’ll be able to walk faster and make up some of it. We’ll be more visible by the ravine, but we have to make time.” He paused and then added, “You’ll want to be extra careful there.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “If you’re not going to be tied in, you better watch your step. The map shows a 3,000-feet drop-off. How well can you fly?”

  “SleSha can’t fly.”

  “Well, if you step off that edge you will…for about 15 seconds, anyway.”

  Shirazi signaled and the group came to a halt. Within seconds, everyone began digging or assembling boxes from the metal poles they’d been carrying.

  “What are they doing?” the copilot asked.

  Shirazi snapped two of his poles together and looked up. “We’re building our day shelters. The frame makes a rectangle and the cloth covers it and keeps out the sand. You bury it in the sand and cover it with sand, leaving one end open as a ramp to get down into it. It will keep the sun off you during the day and it will be a little cooler than it is outside. It will also be darker, so you can sleep. If you do it right, it is nearly invisible from the air.”

  “But what about the paths we’ve been making all night? They will point right to where we are.”

  “No, we have only been making one path all night—we have followed in each other’s footsteps. Whichever squad was last also had the job of erasing our tracks. If they don’t find us today, we ought to be okay for the next day or two. We’ll be harder to track on the harder ground by the ravine.”

  “How much farther do we have to go to get to the ravine?”

  Shirazi laughed. “I guess you weren’t paying attention. It’s only about 200 yards to the edge. If you sleepwalk, be careful where you go.”

  * * * * *

  Asbaran Solutions - 11

  The company travelled for two more nights in that manner. Although there were some close calls in the dark, no one went over the edge of the ravine. The water supply continued to dwindle. While it was good in that the troops had less weight to carry, it was bad in that they needed water in order to function. Shirazi knew they didn’t have enough water to make it the extra day they needed, so on the second day they had recycled the water they drank, catching their urine to drink it later. Although repulsive, you did what you had to do to survive in the desert.

  The next night, Shirazi and Kazemi agreed that the color and odor of their urine showed it was too highly concentrated with dangerous waste products to drink. They would have to make do with what remaining water they had. As they bedded down for the third day after traveling the ravine—and fourth overall—they finished the last of their water and hydration salts. They still had about five miles to go the next night, but they would have to push through. Shirazi could already see that many of the troops were starting to show symptoms of mild dehydration; nearly everyone had a headache, and they were showing signs of irritability. He knew they would have to hit the city the next night, regardless of what they found, or they would begin losing people.

  The target was already in view—five miles away across the sand dunes. The lights of the city had been glowing on the horizon all night, and they finally had to abandon the precipice route—it made them easy to see as they traveled—so they returned to the open sand and zig-zagged their way through the dunes. Although it slowed them down to go back and forth, it cost less energy than going over the tops of the dunes and kept them from being highlighted. They stopped traveling early when Shirazi deemed they were close enough to assault the town the next night, and they built their holes behind the largest dune they could find.

  * * *

  “Let’s see what there is to see,” Captain Rajavi whispered as he piloted the little drone toward the walls of the city. Asbaran Solutions had come as far as they could without exposing themselves. The last 500 yards of desert prior to the walls of the city had been mechanically smoothed; if there was someone on the wall, they’d be able to see the company if it moved any further.

  Operating on four small fans, the drone reached the wall in just a couple of minutes. Thirty feet above it, the sentries didn’t see or hear it. Asbaran had brought along several types of drones—the one currently in use was the spy drone, which made almost no noise and was the hardest to see. On a dark night, like tonight, it was nearly invisible.

  “One…two…two indigs on the wall. They look bored, and it’s not even late yet. Hmmm…what’s that? Oooh, it’s a sentry station. And look what’s inside—it’s a MinSha. Shit. Nothing else for a ways down the wall. Three targets. Two are easy. One’s going to be harder if the bastard doesn’t ever come out of the sensor station.”

  “Can you see his monitors?” Shirazi asked.

  “Just a second.” Although Rajavi wasn’t the best officer in Asb
aran, he was by far the best drone pilot; if he couldn’t do it, no one could. “Yeah, I can just see the monitors. It looks like thermal screens looking out into the desert from the wall. Wait…he just got a call, I think.”

  “It’s probably a check-in from the central monitoring station,” Shirazi said. “How long can you hold that position? I’d love to know how often they check in with him.”

  “Battery shows about 50 percent; I can hold it here for another couple of hours if I don’t fuck it up.”

  “Do so, please.”

  Thirty-seven minutes later, the MinSha went through the same check-in procedure.

  “Okay,” Shirazi said. “We have a 37-minute window. Go back to the indigs on the wall.” He watched as the view shifted. The indigenous life forms were reptilian and looked like five-foot-long bearded dragons. Both were looking out over the desert with some form of night vision or infrared googles. The wall was about four feet high and crenellated. As they watched, first one of the indigs, then the other, crawled up onto the wall’s crenellations. Although they both maintained their watch, it was much less effective, and Shirazi figured they would both be asleep shortly.

  “Is Drone 2 ready?” Shirazi asked.

  “It’s in a holding pattern, just waiting to be called in.”

  “Sergeant Major, alert the troops. We move in about 30 minutes.” He turned back to Rajavi. “Go back to the MinSha please.”

  Shirazi watched his timepiece. Right on time, the MinSha got the call. “Bring in Drone Two,” he ordered. “I want one shot through the indig on the right’s head.”

  Rajavi put the smaller drone into a holding pattern and switched the controller to the second drone. A bigger drone, he had parked it over the ravine. He brought it in over the city at 200 feet. At that height, it was high enough not to be heard, but low enough to not show up on the anti-aircraft missiles’ radar. Unlike the first drone, this one was armed, and he looked through the targeting crosshairs as he slid it into position.

  The indig never knew what hit him. The MinSha laser mounted to the UAV fired, and the bolt hit the drowsy reptilian in the head. With barely a sound, it rolled over and off the wall.

  The targeting crosshairs slid over to the second indig as it jumped up and peered down at his comrade, then turned and gestured to the MinSha.

  “Be ready,” Shirazi warned. “I want one through the head of the MinSha first, and then one through the indig.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Rajavi pulled back on the zoom to get the whole scene in the viewfinder. Sure enough, after a couple of seconds, the MinSha came out of the monitoring station and walked to the wall to see what the indig was motioning him about. Rajavi zoomed back in and tracked the MinSha as it approached the wall and looked over.

  “Now,” whispered Shirazi.

  The laser fired as the alien looked over the edge, and the beam speared through the alien’s head. The MinSha fell forward and flipped over the edge. The other indig watched the alien fall from the crenellation it was standing in, then turned back toward the monitoring station, its mouth wide open. Rajavi fired again, and the bolt speared through its open mouth. The lizard pitched backward over the edge.

  “Showoff,” Shirazi said. “Now find and kill the rest.” He looked up. “Kazemi! Go! Go! Go!”

  As silent as ghosts, 42 soldiers sprinted forward, all thoughts of water forgotten.

  Reaching the wall, the leaders made way for the ladder bearers, covering the wall above them with their weapons. Made from the same metal poles that had formed their sleeping boxes, the three ladders each extended 25 feet and were easily high enough to breach the wall. The bearers put the ladders in place and started up, with the next person in line holding it until they reached the top, then they started up and the next in line held the ladder.

  Shirazi was the second person up on the middle ladder. He reached the top and stepped off, pulling the laser rifle off his back. A little too big originally, his armorer had modified it for Humans to carry and fire more easily, just like the one Sergeant Major Kazemi was carrying.

  Reaching the ground on the other side, the company split up into eight-man fire teams. One went to each of the anti-aircraft missile batteries, two went to the MinSha barracks, and one team took up a blocking position on the main road between the barracks and the south gate. One by one, the groups checked in over their sub-vocal radios. Some were slowed by the indigs, but all of the locals had been dealt with by the members of the teams with their suppressed weapons.

  Finally, the teams were in place, with but two minutes to spare. “Fire!” Shirazi ordered, and the two teams with him fired thermobaric RPG rockets into the MinSha barracks. The city lit up as additional RPG rounds detonated at the anti-aircraft missile sites, setting them ablaze with numerous secondary explosions.

  Each of the teams at the barracks fired another round into the barracks, just to be sure, even though the building was already burning fiercely.

  “Let’s go!” Shirazi urged as he turned toward the headquarters building behind him, and three members of his group detached to go with him, leaving the RPG crew to guard the front doors of the building.

  * * * * *

  Asbaran Solutions - Epilogue

  Colonel Shirazi and Sergeant Major Kazemi watched as the rescue dropship came down to land just outside the town’s walls. “There’s our ride,” Kazemi said.

  Shirazi looked at his watch. “And right on time.”

  “Fire in the hole!” someone yelled from further down the wall, and the MinSha funeral pyre was lit. Only five of the MinSha had survived the initial assault. Two more had been shot down by the drone Rajavi controlled as he searched for more of the aliens, one had been at the front gate and was killed by an RPG round as he returned to the headquarters building, and the last two had been in the headquarters building itself. They had barricaded themselves in the command bunker, and, rather than take any unnecessary casualties, Shirazi had blown up the building and dropped it on them. Problem solved.

  “So what did we end up making on this contract?” Kazemi asked.

  “About three-quarters of a trillion dollars, U.S.” Shirazi said. “That will buy us some better equipment for the next time, since most of the MinSha gear I wanted to capture was destroyed. Even better than the money, though, is that we killed 40 MinSha.”

  “Hey, sir, you know what you call 40 dead MinSha in a fire?”

  “A good start?”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth. How soon can we come back and do this again?”

  * * * * *

  Avenging Angels - 2

  Message Initially Received: Taloco System

  For Forwarding To: Earth System

  Message Begins:

  Dearest Dianne,

  It’s with great sadness I have to tell you we won’t be home as soon as I had hoped. Not only aren’t we any closer to you than when I last wrote, unfortunately, we’re now even further away. We’re so far away, even I’m having a hard time comprehending where we are now, and I’m one of the best astrogators we have.

  All I can tell you is we’re somewhere in the Praf region of the Jesc Arm. Jesc is one of the lesser arms of the galaxy—it’s the one that is trailward of the one Earth is in (the Tolo Arm.) The Praf region is the region closest to the galactic core where the stars are densest. Our commanding officer thought if we came here, the relative abundance of star systems close to the core would mean we could find work easier. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out quite as well as he had hoped. While there are more systems, with more races of aliens and lots more conflicts going on—and contracts to be had—there is also a relative abundance of merc races here to fill them.

  Worse, we just found out the MinSha Series 3 dropships we got are giant pieces of crap, just like the ones we got for our original issue. We were told they were much better, but saying the Series 3s are “much better” than our original craft is like saying the Sherman tank of World War II is “much better” at
fighting a war with contemporary Russian or Chinese forces than a World War I tank would be. Yes, it would be better, but it would still suck and wouldn’t last long before it was destroyed.

  Everyone here seems to have heard what our equipment is like, and because there are so many other merc forces available, it’s hard to undercut them on price. It seems like no matter how low we go, there is always another merc race willing to do it for less, with equipment that is much better than ours, which makes it far more likely that they will be successful. Hell, I’d pick them too, if I were a potential hiring authority.

  The only thing we were offered is a combat salvage, search, and rescue (CSSAR) mission for a war going on at a nearby system. I know, that probably seems a lot like what we normally do, which is combat search and rescue (CSAR); however, it’s a lot different. Back home, if there’s a battle going on and someone gets shot down, we will do a CSAR to get them back before the enemy snatches them up. Dash in while firing anti-missile missiles, grab the aircrew guy or gal, and dash back out. Easy peasy. Okay, it’s not really that easy, but it can be done if you have a good plan and good intel on the enemy. It’s what we do, and we’re good at it.

  Unfortunately, we’re still having to figure out the whole “mercenary thing” as we go along. Not only are mercenaries worried about people like militaries are, they are also worried about the bottom line for their business. In many cases, merc outfits are actually a lot more worried about the equipment than they are the people. What I mean is that a dropship costs a heck of a lot more to replace than a pilot; therefore, they are considered more valuable than the pilots flying them. Sure, you can add in the costs of training a new pilot…but many times, companies will just hire new pilots away from other outfits and save themselves the costs of training. Sure, it costs more to hire an experienced pilot than a newbie, but even an experienced pilot still costs orders of magnitude less than the equipment he or she flies (and they’re more likely to survive the mission than a newbie, which also makes financial sense).