by Gavin Smith
‘Pegasus-One to all call signs, I’m cutting the canopy now.’ McWilliams’s voice over the comms net shook Miska out of her somewhat guilty reverie.
Fucking concentrate! she told herself. From the external lens feed she watched as the assault shuttle fired its point defence lasers up at the canopy, using them as energy-inefficient cutting torches, further reddening the jungle darkness. Miska’s stomach lurched as McWilliams jinked the assault shuttle, sluggish from all the weight it was carrying, out of the way of the falling greenery. She heard someone further forward in the cargo bay retch, an angry voice admonishing them.
Miska enlarged the feed from the spotter drone in her IVD. It took off from its cradle and flew through the smouldering hole that had been cut in the foliage. Above the jungle canopy, the distant star of Epsilon Eridani was just starting to brighten the horizon, though the gas giant, Epsilon Eridani B, remained large in the sky above them. The drone stayed low over the canopy, its reactive camouflage rendering it all but invisible. The drone’s-eye view of the jungle top made it look like a vast green plain, broken only by distant hills and beyond them the imaginatively named Northern Mountains. Without satellite coverage and with the sensor range limited above and below the canopy, a spotter drone was their best bet of finding incoming aircraft.
‘Pegasus-One to all call signs, two fast-movers inbound from the east,’ McWilliams intoned over comms. Miska could just about make out the fast-movers in the spotter drone’s long distance lens feed. They were burning hard, skimming over the tree tops at what looked like mere inches above the canopy. They had the smooth lines of sleek violence that Miska had come to associate with Martian Military Industries weapon systems. She was pretty sure they were Siren multi-role atmosphere fighters.
‘Pegasus-Two to all call signs,’ Perez added over comms. ‘Passives are picking up heat behind us. I’d guess one, possibly more assault shuttles coming in fast and angry.’
That made sense. Leave someone to secure the base and then come after them.
‘Shit,’ Miska muttered out loud. Some of the nearby legionnaires turned to look at her, as did the head of the war droid that the copy of her dad’s electronic spirit was wearing.
‘Going to get expensive,’ her dad said. Miska nodded. It was inevitable. They had attacked Triple S (conventional), a subsidiary that, as their name implied, handled the conventional part of the war on Ephesus. The QRF was most likely Triple S (elite), recruited from special forces veterans. Miska and her Bastards had encountered them before. Triple S had their faults but their elite subsidiary had their shit together.
‘Hangman-One-Actual to Pegasus-One, missile mine the fast-movers,’ Miska said over the comms link.
‘How many?’ McWilliams asked.
‘All of them,’ she told him.
It was odd hearing a war droid groan.
‘Hangman-One-Actual to Pegasus-Two, you’re cleared weapons hot as well.’
There was a dry chuckle from Perez over the comms link. There was no two ways about it, missile combat was expensive, and thanks to the efficiency of modern point defence systems, often ineffective. That said, it was devastating when it worked and they had stolen much more material than the mission was going to cost.
Assuming we don’t get shot out of the sky.
The Pegasi assault shuttles were designed to survive putting troops down in hot LZs, and then providing a degree of close air support if need be. But they weren’t dogfighters, particularly when they were this heavily laden.
‘All call signs abort, abort, abort. I need the Harpies to come in and pick up the mechs,’ Miska said over an open frequency, hoping that Triple S would think that the Bastards had sloppy comms discipline.
And if they buy poor comms, hopefully they’ll take the bait and won’t think to look for the drone. She was starting to think her dad was right. This plan had too many moving parts. She was feeling trapped in the press of bodies. Helpless. She didn’t like the way that her life was in the hands of the shuttle pilots now.
She felt the shuttle shift around her. Checked the lens feed. Watched as Pegasus 1 manoeuvred under the hole the shuttle had cut through the canopy, the missile batteries, on their stubby wings, angling upwards. Both of the Pegasi would be trying to put trees between themselves and the inbound Triple S shuttles making their way towards them. Miska knew that the co-pilot in Pegasus 2 would be programming the missiles to use the trees as cover to close with the enemy shuttles. Ambush tactics were pretty much the only advantage they had.
‘Hard scans,’ McWilliams said over the comms, and she could hear the tension in his voice. ‘They’re flooding the jungle with lidar and radar.’ It was a bold move on behalf of the Triple S pilots. Good news for them if they found the Bastards’ shuttles, but it also gave their position away.
‘We’ve got weapons lock,’ Perez said.
‘Let them close,’ McWilliams told him over the comms link.
‘I know how to do my job, old man,’ Perez answered, but there was humour in his voice. The two Hard Luck Comancheros were old friends.
Miska checked the position of the Harpies. They had practically reversed their course and were burning hard for an artificial clearing by the banks of the Turquoise River to rendezvous with Mass’s Heavy Bastards.
Then she checked the spotter drone. The two Sirens were almost overhead. Between the mechs and the Harpies they were about to enter a target-rich environment. Again Miska felt the shuttle shift slightly as McWilliams adjusted their position. Then it shook as McWilliams fired every single missile in the racks up through the hole in the canopy. Even through the assault shuttle’s armour the sound of the rocket engines igniting was loud enough to trigger Miska’s audio dampeners. She saw some of the other legionnaires put their hands over their ears.
She checked the feed from the spotter drone. She barely saw the missiles. The feed was full of red flashes and explosions powerful enough to shake the drone as the Sirens’ ball-mounted point defence lasers took out missile after missile, but the aircraft had been too close to the canopy. One of the sirens was hit, thrown into a brief flat spin, the pilot managing to eject before the wreckage hit the canopy. Then something hit the spotter drone and the feed went down. Thoughts of yet more expenditure were replaced by worries about the second Siren.
Miska watched as Pegasus 2 waited until the last moment to fire all of its missiles at the two, now visible, enemy assault shuttles, hoping to expensively overwhelm their point defence systems. Harsh red light, fire and force filled the jungle under the canopy as Pegasus 1 and Pegasus 2 turned tail, their own point defence systems shooting down incoming missiles from enemy shuttles and launching counter measures as they fled through the jungle. Miska’s stomach lurched as she felt successive shockwaves from nearby detonating warheads buffet the Pegasus. She heard the brief thunder of rail cannon rounds pitting the assault shuttle’s armour and then they were out from under the canopy, over the riverside in the dawn’s rising sun. The two huge Harpies were below them. The mechs milled around the heavy lift drop shuttles.
McWilliams brought Pegasus 1 up over the canopy by the riverside to check what had become of the second Siren. Miska wasn’t sure what they were going to do if it had survived. The Pegasi couldn’t take on a fighter with just rail cannons and point defence lasers. Fortunately for them, they could see more smoke rising from the jungle canopy, another parachute drifting down towards the treetops.
‘What happened to the second shuttle?’ McWilliams asked over comms. Miska could hear the urgency in his voice.
‘The first one I took out, second one got tagged pretty hard, last I saw he turned tail and ran,’ Perez answered. ‘Will provide overwatch until Harpy-One and Two are ready to get their fat asses in the air.’
‘Understood,’ McWilliams said as he circled Pegasus 1 over the clearing.
‘Dad,’ Miska subvocalised over a direct link. The Cyclops’s head shifted at a funny angle, rotating a lens so it was looking at her. It was a b
it weird but better than him looking at her with one of his ass lenses mounted on the point defence systems on the war droid’s hip joints. ‘I’m bored.’
‘What’re you complaining about?’ he replied. ‘Parachute insertion, you killed a guy and shot up a spider drone. That’s more than most colonels get a chance to do.’
Pegasus 1 dropped back through the hole cut in the thick canopy of trees and into the morning mist underneath. Even though the correct access codes for the day had been transmitted, the missile and laser batteries affixed to the huge trees, and in the various strongpoints around the hillside base, still tracked the shuttle as it came down towards one of the hilltop landing pads. Above and behind them, one of the Scarlet Sisterhood pilots was skilfully easing a lumbering Harpy through the same hole. Miska suspected the heavy drop shuttle was losing paintwork to the trees.
The rear cargo bay was coming down even as the landing struts touched the earth. Cool air conditioning was replaced by flying dust and grit kicked up by the shuttle, and, of course, the omnipresent humidity. Moments later Miska lost most of her visibility in a huge cloud of dust as the Harpy landed lower down the terraced hill on one of the reinforced landing pads. Miska pushed her goggles down over her eyes and made her way through the dust. She could feel the legionnaires pushing past her. They all knew their jobs. The stolen gear had to be thoroughly checked for back doors into their systems and other nasty surprises. Then it had to be catalogued, stored and other shit that Miska knew she was supposed to care about.
Another huge cloud kicked up as the second Harpy came down. Miska was vaguely aware of Pegasus 2 moving sideways in the air above them, a shadow in the dust as it came in to land. She spat, checked her IVD and made her way towards the platoon commander of the Sneaky Bastards. The Cyclops was a large metal insect moving through the dust cloud next to her. She tugged on the Sneaky Bastards’ commander’s ghillie suit, hanging down his back. He turned to face her.
‘Tell your boys good work. Gear cleaned, upload their after-action reports and then you’re stood down for twenty-four hours. I’ll put some money in your commissary accounts above and beyond your combat pay. Have some drinks and then get some sleep.’
The platoon commander just nodded – he looked bone weary – and then turned and headed for the platoon’s hooch.
‘I don’t get it,’ Raff’s voice said behind her. Miska didn’t turn to look at him. Instead she was concentrating on the Offensive Bastards waiting in the landing pad’s ready area, most of them leaning on their packs. The Offensive Bastards were her rifle company, the conventional force that was forming the backbone of her fledgling legion. The legion she didn’t have enough volunteers to bring to full strength, or enough resources to fully equip. Currently they were one full fighting company, the Offensive Bastards; their recon platoon, the Sneaky Bastards; an under-strength combat exoskeleton squad, the Armoured Bastards; and their two brand-new mech platoons, the Heavy Bastards. In addition they had a significant amount of support staff, which included the ground crews for the two Pegasi and the recently up-armoured prison shuttle. With only two Armoured Personnel Carriers, they were, however, significantly under-equipped vehicle-wise and of course, all of this had on-going costs, most of which was being met by stealing the stuff they captured. The Ephesus conflict had been a boon in some ways, particularly financially, but it had also been something of a baptism of fire. In the two months they’d been in-country some of their leadership choices were working out, other not so much.
‘Beat it, lenshead.’ The Cyclops’s voice modulator really was excellent quality. It picked out her dad’s gruffness so clearly.
‘It’s all right, LSM,’ Miska told her dad. ‘Go and speak to the company commander, make sure they’re ready to go.’ The Cyclops glanced suspiciously at Raff. Not even her dad knew that the entire Bastard Legion was a deniable CIA black op. He just thought Raff was another annoying war correspondent.
‘Yes, boss,’ her dad said and then made his way towards the Offensive Bastards’ company commander.
Miska turned to Raff. At least he wasn’t looking at her with puppy-dog eyes. She hoped she’d beaten that out of him.
‘You’re going for FOB Trafalgar, right?’ he asked. ‘You think you’ve found it. That’s why you were running the mechs, bringing them through the jungle.’
Trafalgar was a concealed Triple S forward operating base on the wrong side of the Turquoise River, somewhere in the held territory of the Ephesus Colonial Administration, the legions’ current employers. MACE, or Military Active Command Ephesus, knew roughly where FOB Trafalgar was, but had yet to pinpoint it. The Sneaky Bastards were about to be tasked to look for it again. She wanted to join them but knew that sort of thing wasn’t really her job any more.
‘McWilliams, Perez, how’re you guys doing?’ Miska subvocalised over comms. She was watching Raff but not answering him. She could see the Colonial Administration’s ground crews hooking up heavy gauge power cables to the Pegasi. Cargo exoskeletons were loading new missiles into the empty racks.
‘We’re good, boss,’ Perez told her.
‘Need time to recharge the point defence lasers and re-arm and then we’re good to go,’ McWilliams added.
‘All right, stretch your legs and get some coffee,’ she told the pilots.
‘So why is your rifle company ready to ship out?’ Raff asked. Miska just looked at him.
‘You’re not going after Trafalgar, are you?’ he said slowly. They weren’t, but the feint’s secondary objective had been to try and get a reaction from FOB Trafalgar. Currently stealthed spotter drones were going through the area where MACE suspected the enemy FOB was located, using heat sensors to try and find it.
Miska still didn’t say anything. Instead she just pointed at the newly christened Harpy 1. Raff turned to look at the huge heavy lift drop shuttle. The modular cargo bays were open. They could see the low loaders but the mech cradles were empty.
‘Where are your mechs?’ Raff asked.
Miska just smiled.
Nyukuti was waiting for her. The big Aborigine wore full combat armour, inertial armour battle dress with hard plates over the top, and a half-helmet, rather than the full-threat helmet that most of the Offensive Bastards preferred. He almost looked like a marine, except for the circuit tattoos on the nearly-black skin of his face. His eyes, implants, were unnaturally dark as well, presumably to enhance the intimidation factor. Before he’d been imprisoned on the Hangman’s Daughter he’d been a stand-over man in the Lalande system, meaning he’d ‘stood over’ criminals as he tortured them into handing over their ill-gotten gains. A criminal dangerous enough to steal from other criminals, he was feared and respected as much as he was disliked onboard the Hangman’s Daughter.
‘Hey, Nyukuti, you want something?’ Miska asked. She liked Nyukuti. He was weird but capable, and appeared enthusiastically loyal for someone with a nanobomb implanted in his head. On the other hand, Miska knew she couldn’t trust any of them. Still, she was glad to see he’d recovered from the quite serious wounds that he had received on Faigroe Station at the hands of Triple S contractors.
Nyukuti was staring over her head. He towered over her, but then everyone did. She turned to see what he was looking at. One of the Whānau was walking by. She guessed he had been the member of the Heavy Bastards who hadn’t got a mech because Mass had taken out the eighth Medusa. The Maori mech-jockey was glaring at Nyukuti, his face made all the more fierce because of his tā moko facial tattoos. Miska knew that in his stand-over days Nyukuti had targeted the Whānau often enough to gain their enmity. It was the kind of prison yard bullshit she didn’t have time for.
‘Nye!’ she snapped. ‘Down here!’ He broke eye contact and looked down at her, smiling.
‘I punched the platoon commander,’ he told her. Miska stared up at him. She felt her ‘command headache’ worsen and decided that she could go off people quickly.
‘Why did you do that?’ she asked dangerously.
&
nbsp; ‘He’s a wanker,’ he told her. ‘I didn’t kill him, though.’
Thank God for small mercies, she thought.
‘You’re his platoon sergeant,’ Miska managed through gritted teeth.
‘Not any more,’ he said. He was grinning now.
‘Let me guess, you were busted down to private again?’ Miska asked. Nyukuti nodded. ‘Major Cofino?’ Miska asked. Nyukuti nodded again. ‘And what were the good Major’s orders?’
‘CP.’ They both said it at the same time. Close Protection. It seemed she now had a bodyguard. She struggled to think of anything more pointless. She wondered if her dad had a hand in this. Being an NCO had never sat well with Nyukuti but the sad thing was he had been good at it, perhaps because of his own military service before he had become a stand-over man. Though he had been dishonourably discharged.
‘Stop being a pain in the ass, or I’ll blow your head up, understand me?’ Miska told him. He looked confused. He never seemed prepared to acknowledge he had a bomb implanted in his head. ‘Fuck’s sake, get your gear, and get in the shuttle, but I tell you you’re going to be bored. I never get to have any fun any more.’
Nyukuti just smiled, grabbed his daypack and his MMI Xiphos gauss squad automatic weapon. Miska noticed that he’d added a 30mm grenade launcher to the under-barrel mounting rail. He shouldered the pack, slung the SAW and headed for the shuttle.
‘Hangman-Actual to Hangman-One-Actual.’
Oh good timing, Miska thought.
‘Uncle V, just the REMF I wanted to speak to,’ Miska subvocalised back over the comms link. REMF stood for rear echelon motherfucker. It was a little unfair, after all Vido had thrown down with the rest of them on Barney’s Prime, and she herself was supposed to be a full bird colonel, a REMF rank if ever there was one. Vido Cofino had been the consigliere, or adviser, to one of the most powerful Mafia families on Barnard’s Prime before he had been sentenced to the Hangman’s Daughter after being prosecuted under the RICO statutes. Now, recently promoted to major, he was putting his skills to good use as the Legion’s intelligence officer, civilian liaison/negotiator and, if she was honest, her acting XO or executive officer. Her father may have been the Legion’s second in command in all but name, but he was too involved in the training, and now, with his new war droid body, he would presumably be more hands-on operationally as well. That left Vido in the rear, handling things, always happy to help, as he built his own empire.