“Loftis, you and Burke take up the valley toward the airfield,” Sommerkorn said. “DeWayne, you’re with me down the valley.”
“Got it, El-Tee,” Sergeant Loftis said. “Three coming our side,” she added. Her MAC fired, and Burke joined in. “Didn’t take long for them to see us here,” she muttered.
“We’ve got plenty over here, too,” Sommerkorn said. “You’re going to have to hurry, Morgan.”
“Wonderful,” Morgan muttered to himself. “No fucking pressure there. Hey, sergeant, could you wire a nuclear weapon to blow, and then set it off in your face? It’d be great if you could. Oh yeah, and could you please hurry with it? Don’t worry if it goes off accidentally…after all, that’s what we’re trying to do in the first place.”
“Shut up, Morgan,” Loftis said. “Some of us are trying to concentrate on what we’re doing.”
“Oh yeah,” Morgan said as he removed the access panel. “You definitely need to concentrate. Even more so than the guy playing with the nuke.”
“The only way we’re going to Valhalla is if you get it done,” Sommerkorn said, firing at a dismounted Flatar. “So shut the hell up, Morgan, and get it done.” The Flatar ran around in circles, like a squirrel that couldn’t make up its mind in front of an oncoming car. He fired again, and the round decapitated the enemy. “Stupid rats.”
“Fuck,” Loftis said. “Burke’s down.” Sommerkorn spared a glance at his aft camera; the trooper had taken a round through the center of the suit’s chest. Blood poured from the hole in the back of the suit; Burke wasn’t coming back.
“Move around,” Sommerkorn said, triggering his jumpjets. It was obvious the spiders knew they were there; they were coming in ever greater numbers. “Make yourself a harder target.”
“I will,” Loftis said, “but not for long. I’m almost out of jump juice.”
Sommerkorn saw Private DeWayne go down. Although the private killed the Tortantula that shot him, the smoking hole in the center of his suit where the laser beam hit him showed he wouldn’t be getting up.
“Morgan!” Sommerkorn said, this time with real urgency. “We can’t hold them much longer!” A platoon-sized mass of spiders had turned back and were racing toward him. His ammo counter showed eight shots remaining, and there were at least 10 spiders.
“Gonna need a little help,” Sommerkorn said. Neither trooper said anything. Sommerkorn fired his remaining rounds and checked his rear camera. Loftis and Morgan were both down, and the mass of spiders was within 20 feet of him. His suit rang as something ricocheted off it.
Movement. Morgan was moving, trying to pull himself toward something on the ground with one hand. The firing mechanism! It was attached, but it looked like he’d been hit before he could detonate it. Morgan’s hand fell to the ground and stopped moving. He wouldn’t be pushing the button.
Sommerkorn turned, and one of the spiders fired. The round shattered his right knee. Pain coursed through his body as a host of red lights illuminated on his suit. He tried to take a step, but his suit had locked in place and wouldn’t move. One of the spiders in front of him was aiming a MAC at his chest, and several of the ones behind him were lining up shots with their lasers. He was dead, and they hadn’t accomplished the mission.
Not. Good. Enough.
With a thought, he fired the canopy eject and jumped out of the suit. He had seen troopers who could do it and turn their dives into a roll. He hit flat on his chest, and all of the air exited his body with a whoosh.
He’d never hurt so much in his life, even when the sergeant major had steamrolled him, and he couldn’t breathe. Pain lanced into his side as one of the Tortantula lasers fired. The trigger was three feet away. A pair of large black legs stopped by his head as one of the Tortantulas towered over him. The legs flexed as the spider reached down to grab him, but he pushed off with his one good leg and dove forward, underneath the giant spider. His left hand grabbed the trigger mechanism as pain blossomed throughout both legs. The Tortantula had both of his ankles in its claws, and it pulled him out from underneath its body.
Sommerkorn had no idea whether Morgan had been able to connect the trigger before he was killed, but he knew he wasn’t going to get another chance. He could feel the life draining from him. His thumb pushed the button, and a blinding light filled the valley.
Operations, Golden Horde HQ, Uzbekistan, Earth
As her engineers had promised, the reinforced doors and caverns held up to the force of the nuclear detonation. Certainly there was enough lead between the explosion and her forces to stop any of the radioactives, although they wouldn’t be going out into the valley anytime soon.
“Blow the plateau,” Sansar growled.
“If we do that, one of the ships is going to get away. They will be able to report what we’ve done.”
“I don’t give a shit,” Sansar said. “Blow the plateau. I’ll take two out of three.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the weapons station operator replied. She turned a key to enable the system and pressed the red button once it glowed.
Command Ship, Near Golden Horde HQ, Uzbekistan, Earth
Peepo watched the mushroom cloud rise in the distance over the site of the Golden Horde headquarters, her whiskers stiff in disbelief. She jumped back from the window as a piece of metal—with a bit of something gray on it—embedded itself in the transparent polymer of the window right in front of her. She recognized the metal; mech armor. It even had a name on it. ‘Morgan.’
“No!” she screamed. She turned away from the debacle to see the entire bridge crew staring at her. “Go back to what you were doing!” she snarled. Unaccustomed to Peepo screaming or snarling, they all immediately found things to hold their attention while her gaze was on them.
Peepo knew she deserved the stares; for the first time in over 40 years, she had completely lost her composure. Her tail twitched in annoyance. These damn Humans just couldn’t be counted on to do anything expected of them. Cartwright’s Cavaliers should have been financially ruined, but it had come back even stronger than before, and had somehow been able to make Raknar function in combat! The family behind Asbaran Solutions should all be dead, but they weren’t. Worse, the mission had been bungled so badly the remaining member, Nigel Shirazi, now had even more reason and motivation to fight back, and he was now rich, as well! He would never surrender willingly to her. She had designed the perfect trap for the Winged Hussars, and yet they had somehow escaped, too.
After three failed attempts to ruin the Four Horsemen, she had given up on allowing her minions to execute her perfectly planned assaults, and she had come to Earth to ensure the attack against The Golden Horde had gone as planned. And yet it hadn’t.
Every data point she had collected indicated the Humans would not commit mass suicide, and yet they had. Fight to the last unit, yes, they could—and probably would—do that, which is why she had brought so many Tortantulas. She had enough troops to completely overwhelm the Humans, even had they chosen to fight to the end. She had so many Tortantulas that she had determined there was a 65 percent chance the Humans wouldn’t even fight—they should have surrendered when faced with such an imbalance of forces; their survival instincts should have given them no other option.
But they hadn’t!
Not only hadn’t they surrendered, they also hadn’t fought to the end. The odds suggested a nearly equal chance that they would fight until the end, or would surrender once they had taken losses amounting to over half their forces. By detonating the nuclear weapon, though, they had probably killed all of the Tortantulas and Flatar she had brought—the death reparations she would have to pay their governments were beyond astronomical; the price tag for this mission alone had just risen over 100-fold…and they still had three other Horsemen on the loose, as well as the rest of the minor mercenary bands.
Everything tilted suddenly as a blast wave enveloped the ship and threatened to push it over off its landing skids. After several long seconds of being held off center,
the ship crashed back down to level, but several of the skids buckled with the impact, and the ship now leaned toward the other side.
“What was that?” Peepo asked, already knowing the answer.
“The Humans just detonated a second nuclear weapon,” one of the sensor operators replied. “It was apparently buried on the plateau the other ships were on. They have both been destroyed.”
This was not going as forecast, and it was time to put an end to it.
“Lift off,” she ordered. “Take us up to orbit and tie into their communications networks. I have an ultimatum to present them.” She was too distraught to notice the dragonfly staring at her from where it was attached to the edge of the observation window, five feet to her left.
Operations, Golden Horde HQ, Uzbekistan, Earth
“I think you pissed her off,” Major James Good noted, looking at the feed from the small monitoring device attached to the window of the Tortantula icosagon. There was no audio through the glass of the spaceship, but by the way the bridge crew looked anywhere but at the Veetanho commander, he could tell that what she had said to the bridge crew had not been pleasant.
“Good!” Sansar spat. “My only regret is the number of our troopers who had to die to do it.”
“This has to be the most lopsided battle in all of history, though,” Good replied. “We lost 47 troops, but the computers estimate we killed on the order of 42,000 Tortantulas and Flatars, plus however many were inside the two ships. That’s gotta leave at least a little hole in their table of organization.”
Sansar shrugged. She wouldn’t be happy any time soon, if ever again, no matter how lopsided the battle. “A little hole, perhaps,” she admitted, “but even if that was all of the damn spiders, which it isn’t, it does nothing to whittle down the Besquith, the MinSha, the Gokas, and whatever other races are on their side.” She shook her head. “We’re going to need more people. See if you can find and activate anyone who ever was in the Horde. Sergeant Major Akira for starters, as well as First Sergeant Parker. Oh, and that medical guy…Zeke. What was his name? Oh, yeah, Dr. Ezekiel Avander. See if you can find out where he landed. Start there…”
“Ma’am, I have mercenary units mobilizing across the globe,” the Current Ops technician exclaimed from a nearby station.
“Good, I told them all they should leave, they need to get to space.”
“No, ma’am,” the tech replied. “They’re not leaving; they’re joining forces to attack the Tortantula ship.”
“What!” Sansar exploded. “They are supposed to leave! I told them to leave! The enemy fleet is going to be here at any moment. If they get caught here, it will be all over for Humanity.”
“It’s Nigel Shirazi, ma’am,” the tech said. “He’s organizing all of the available forces for an immediate attack. Sinclair’s Scorpions, Burt’s Bees, and at least 10 other companies have joined him. Want me to set up a comms link to him?”
“No,” Sansar said, regaining control of herself. “Peepo’s ship is sure to have some sort of communications monitoring ability. If we call him, we’ll give away the fact that we’re not dead.” She shook her head. “No. Cooler heads will have to prevail upon him.”
The Space Ops technician sitting next to Current Ops jumped and sat up straighter. “Ma’am! Major Good! A large number of unscheduled ships just transitioned in, and more are continuing to arrive.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Data is just coming in, ma’am,” the tech said. Her eyes jumped back and forth between focusing on her screens and a faraway stare as she listened to the commentary in the monitoring station. “At least 11 ships have entered the system so far,” she finally advised. “Five appear to be cruiser-sized, with an additional three destroyers and two frigates. There is also a ship the monitoring station is reporting as ‘the biggest goddamned warship they have ever seen.’ Unlike the Tortantula icosagons, this one has been classified as a warship, and is over 5,000 feet long. For lack of a better term, they are calling it a battleship, although it is over twice as large as the normal battleship.”
“Damn.” Sansar said. She turned back to Current Ops. “What are the rest of the mercs doing?”
“Jim Cartwright has taken over from Nigel Shirazi. He is leading all the mercs who can get to space to the stargate. He hasn’t said where they’re going.”
“I know where they’re going,” Sansar said. “And it’s about time they left.”
* * * * *
Epilogue
Command Ship, Near Golden Horde HQ, Uzbekistan, Earth
“I’ve tied into all of their nets and into their world government’s communications system,” the tech said. “You may transmit when ready, ma’am.”
Peepo looked at the main Tri-V viewer and nodded. It was a pretty planet, almost as nice as her home world. Its people would still make good troops, too, once they were broken.
“Government and people of Earth, this is General Peepo of the Mercenary Guild. I speak to you today, not out of any joy or desire to rule you, but as a sorrowful sister, who has watched her younger littermate make bad choices that demand correction. The Mercenary Guild has watched your performance these last 100 years, and it has been with increasing frustration and amazement. Not amazement for the good you have done as a mercenary force—although there has been some—but amazement at how your leaders have shirked their duties. How they have broken the rules, time after time. How they have shown that, not only are you not ready to join the Mercenary Guild of the Galactic Union, but how you are also not ready to join the Union, period.
“Personally, I believe the Buma erred in making first contact with you; you were not ready. You needed longer to mature as a civilization, to come together as a culture, and to learn to follow the rules and strictures of an advanced society.
“For your rulers have chosen not to follow the rules. They have used nuclear weapons on civilians. They have meddled with genetics, bringing back the horrors of the ancient Canavar and uplifting races before they were ready to join the Union. They have experimented with outlawed technologies. They do these things on their own, without bringing them before the ruling council of the Mercenary Guild or any of the other guilds. History has shown that one thing happens when leaders choose to go it alone and flout the rules of civilized society—war.
“Rather than allow this to continue, and to give these decisions legitimacy by allowing Humans to become full-fledged members of the Guild, the Mercenary Guild has chosen to act and has called for a Guild Tribunal. We have decided to step in and take over as rulers for your planet while the tribunal is held to determine the future of your membership. Perhaps you can resume self-rule again in the future, but for now, it is in the best interests of the Galactic Union for the Mercenary Guild to assume responsibility for your society, for your own good and to preclude any other…unfortunate incidents…from occurring.
“As of now, the mercenary industry of Earth is under new management. All mercenary organizations will be subsumed as direct forces of the Mercenary Guild, and the industry for making equipment for war will be supervised by members of the Guild until the Guild Tribunal can be held. This tribunal will be held in six of your weeks at Capital Planet, and I call upon all of your mercenary leaders to step forward to be judged, especially your so-called Horsemen. All mercenary force leaders must come and give an accounting of their actions. If they do not present themselves for judgment, they will be declared rogue and hunted to the ends of the galaxy.
“I know this is unpleasant, but it must be done for the good of the galaxy and the Galactic Union. Please do not consider fighting us. You need only look into the skies; our ships are large enough for you to see with your eyes. We hold your orbitals and will use whatever force is necessary to ensure you do as instructed. One hundred years ago, an example was made of your nation-state of Iran, and death can, and will, come again from space for any who attack those carrying out this lawful action.
“We will be contacting
your planetary leaders to inform them of what is required. All mercenary leaders are to present themselves in one week at your world government headquarters for transportation to Capital Planet for the tribunal.
“That is all.”
Peepo smiled; the master plan was still salvageable. It hadn’t gone the way she had foreseen, nor anywhere close to the way she had wanted—three of the Horsemen were still on the loose, and one of them was dead, with all of its equipment—but she had won. The planet was theirs, to do with as she pleased. To do with as she needed.
She didn’t know how wrong she was.
# # # # #
About the Author
A bestselling Science Fiction/Fantasy author and speaker, Chris Kennedy is a former school principal and naval aviator with over 3,000 hours flying attack and reconnaissance aircraft. Chris is also a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).
Chris’ full-length novels on Amazon include the “Occupied Seattle” military fiction duology, the “Theogony” and “Codex Regius” science fiction trilogies and the “War for Dominance” fantasy trilogy. Chris is also the author of the #1 Amazon self-help book, “Self-Publishing for Profit: How to Get Your Book Out of Your Head and Into the Stores.”
Titles by Chris Kennedy
“Red Tide: The Chinese Invasion of Seattle” – Available Now
“Occupied Seattle” – Available Now
“Janissaries: Book One of The Theogony” – Available Now
“When the Gods Aren’t Gods: Book Two of The Theogony” – Available Now
The Golden Horde (The Revelations Cycle Book 4) Page 32