A Fiery Sunset

by Chris Kennedy

  The Depik strutted over to Sansar. “I hate those things,” she said. “They think they’re such good killers, but all they really are is bullies. They could never match the skills of a Hunter.”

  Sansar pointed to the cell floor. “You left two footprints.”

  “I know,” the Depik said. “Although we normally don’t leave any indication we were around, this is a statement to the Merc Guild. Despite what they think, they don’t control us, nor can they tell us what contracts we can and cannot take.”

  “Well, thank you, brave Hunter, for saving my life,” Sansar said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy you came, but I thought you said you couldn’t help me escape?”

  “And I couldn’t, normally,” the Depik replied.

  Alarm lights began strobing, and a siren wailed in the distance.

  “Did you do that?” Sansar asked, nodding toward the siren.

  “No, your friends did, I suspect. I was told they were coming and asked if there was anything I could do to help you.”

  “Who asked you to do that?”

  “A friend of yours,” the Depik replied. “I was told to tell you, ‘Smokey says hi.’”

  Sansar pointed to the Besquith. “You’re sure you’re okay with that? They’re going to know I didn’t do that.”

  “I didn’t have much time for alternatives,” the Depik replied. “Perhaps it would have been better if I’d gone for additional weapons and left you alone with them for another five minutes?”

  “No, I don’t think that would have worked out as well,” Sansar said with a smile. “Thank you for coming.”

  The Depik walked to the door, looked up and down the hallway, then turned back to Sansar. “Stay here and let me see about getting you a weapon.”

  “Can you take me to my friends?” Sansar asked.

  The Depik looked over her shoulder. “I’m sorry, but that’s impossible. If we’re lucky, though, I may be able to keep you alive until they get here.”

  * * *

  Above the Mercenary Guild, Capital Planet

  Nigel stepped out of the transport and began falling toward the city. Although he’d done plenty of High-Altitude, Low-Deploy drops, he’d never been a big fan of them—too much room for things to go catastrophically wrong, and he usually touched down without a drop of jump juice to spare—so jumping from 10,000 meters was a walk in the park. As the planet’s gravity was slightly less than Earth’s, he also didn’t pick up speed as quickly, and as he descended, he almost felt like he was going too slowly. One thing the slower fall was good for, though, was getting a good look at the target area, and he turned two of his cameras down to take a look.

  He laughed. A blind man couldn’t miss the target.

  Where the rest of the capital—and the planet, too, for that matter—was stark, dead, and dotted with craters, the guild headquarters was best described as “grandiose.” It stuck up in the middle of the Capital City buildings like an oasis in the middle of a desert, beautiful and attention-grabbing. At 40 stories tall, it outclassed everything else in the city; the next closest guild structure was no more than half its size.

  On the front of the building was an enormous guild logo, nearly eight stories tall, which spread from one side of the building to the other. “Power, Service, Profit,” it read in lurid red letters, with weapons supporting the first two tenets, and a pile of red diamonds illustrating the profit portion of the motto. Nigel thought about launching several rockets at the logo to fuck it up, just on general principle. Power and profit the guild had in bunches, but he had no idea who they were truly serving, aside from the guild’s own leadership.

  He decided not to destroy the logo—the two honest people in the guild might happen to be sitting at their desks on the other side of the windows—and turned his attention to the landing area beneath him. He risked a second glance at the logo and smiled; perhaps he could hit it on the way out if he had extra ammo.

  Nigel looked back to the landing area and saw two types of beings in the street in front of the guild headquarters. Some aliens were standing and pointing—obviously non-mercs, they had no concept of what was happening—and other aliens who were running, flying, and slithering as fast as they could to get into the guild hall and get their weapons. He began firing at them as he jockeyed his thrusters to get closer to the building. Additional fire swept past him from the other CASPers, and most of the non-merc aliens got the hint; soon everyone was running. It was beautiful.

  He touched down as two MinSha wearing breathing masks raced from the guild with laser rifles. They’d failed to honor the threat, and twenty-three laser rifles and railguns splattered their blood and chitin across the front of the building in a series of macabre blue Rorschach patterns.

  Nigel gave a quick glance at the icons on his heads-up display—all green—and started for the doors, scanning on both sides of him to see the rest of the platoon forming up on him.

  “Alpha Sierra One, this is Gulf Hotel One,” Walker called, “we’re down and entering the building.”

  “Gulf Hotel, we are down and about to do the same. Minimal resistance so far. See you in a bit.”

  Nigel lowered his shoulder and smashed through the first set of steelglass doors. A second set waited for him, and he realized the front of the building was an airlock, like on a ship. He stepped back and fired several railgun rounds through the second set of doors in front of him. Lieutenant Justin Smith fired several more into the door, and together they smashed through the steelglass and into the atrium. Although the doors had been proof against hurricane force winds, they were unable to stop a ton of angry men and machines, especially when weakened by the railgun rounds that had already gone through them.

  The platoon poured into the building’s foyer as the airlock breach alarms wailed, and the blue and white warning lights strobed. In the lightning-like flashes of the emergency strobes, Nigel drew up to a stop, amazed. For an organization that was nominally focused on things like death and war, the display on the other end of the atrium was mind-boggling, both in its size and scope. In front of him was a huge mural titled “The Last Canavar.” Nearly a full-size representation at least 90 feet high, a Raknar stood with a booted foot on a Canavar’s head, while it fired some kind of huge gun down into it.

  The Canavar’s body trailed down to the right side of the atrium, where a series of 10 enormous cases contained what had to be actual Canavar skulls. Nigel shook his head at their immensity, hoping he never had to do battle with one. Between the video Jim had shown him, the mural, and the skulls, he realized that, if anything, the tales he’d heard about the fearsomeness of the Canavars—which he’d personally scoffed at—probably didn’t do them justice.

  On the left side of the atrium were several cases showing the evolution of laser rifles and other armaments. They normally would’ve been impressive in their scope; instead, they paled in comparison to the Canavar display.

  “Let’s go!” he yelled, shrugging off the effect of the display and moving forward. The rest of the platoon spread out and followed him as he raced across the open area.

  * * *

  Behind the Mercenary Guild, Capital Planet

  Walker surveyed the landing zone as his troops came down almost like snowflakes in the lower gravity. Everything seemed slower…or maybe it was because there weren’t people trying to kill him at the moment, which gave him time to think.

  The Mercenary Guild headquarters was obvious in its monstrosity, lording the guild’s wealth and power over the rest of the guilds on Capital Planet like a sixth-grade bully in a third-grade classroom. We have the guns and the power, it seemed to say, and all will bow down to us.

  The Guild had Walker’s boss, though, and neither Walker nor the rest of the Golden Horde troopers were particularly in a mood to bow.

  Unlike the front of the headquarters building, which faced most of the city, the back side of the guild hall faced a couple more blocks of smaller buildings—warehouses, mostly—then the blaste
d, cratered planet’s surface stretched out as far as he could see.

  “Everyone’s down and formed up,” First Sergeant Muunokhoi ‘Mun’ Enkh reported. “We’re ready to move out.”

  “Good, let’s go!” He started down the large ramp to the loading docks behind the building, then his conscious mind caught on something he’d seen, and he did a double-take behind him. There, across the street and down several buildings, a giant warehouse stood partially open. Inside, he could just see the outline of the gigantic humanoid structure his subconscious had recognized—Raknar!

  He shook his head to clear it, then turned and raced down the ramp with the rest of the troops. The ramp was big enough to accommodate at least four hovertrucks simultaneously, with a dock at the bottom for each. Two of the slots were currently filled with massive vehicles being unloaded. Some of the people had obviously seen them land and were staring at them curiously. The other aliens had either had some mercenary service or were a bit sharper than the first group, as they threw themselves to the ground and tried to look as inoffensive as possible. After a few moments, so did the crews unloading the trucks and the workers on the platform.

  With a roar of their jumpjets, the troopers launched themselves onto the loading dock, while keeping the workers there covered with their weapons. Walker was the last to land, and he quickly scanned the various aliens. None of the workers looked like merc races—mostly Lotar and Zuparti traders, with a few others—the closest to being dangerous was probably the Cochkala. He heard a wailing sound from inside the building.

  Using his external speakers, he amplified his voice and spoke in Zuparti, “Everyone needs to leave immediately. You have one minute, then we’ll declare anyone still here a party to the conflict, and you’ll be shot. Leave now, and don’t come back today!”

  Most looked up at him in surprise, not sure what to do. “Go!” he yelled, firing his railgun into the air. “Go! Go! Go!”

  With that, the aliens jumped down to the ramp or into the backs of the two trucks as they started up the ramp. One Lotar was too slow making the jump and struck its head on the deck of the truck with a crack! It fell to the ground and didn’t move.

  “Leave two troopers here to watch the docks, Mun!” Walker ordered. “Everyone else, let’s go!”

  Walker raced across the large warehouse space that the loading docks led into, and toward the marked airlock. As he got a clear line of sight to it, he fired off two of his shoulder-mounted rockets, which raced ahead of him and exploded on the cargo-sized doors. As the smoke cleared to reveal a huge hole, he fired his railgun through the gap as he continued to run.

  With a roar of flames, Mun landed in front of him at a full sprint and charged ahead of him. She fired a few more rounds as she raced through the gap in the airlock doors, then launched herself at the doors on the other side of the airlock. The doors shattered in a spray of steelglass, and she rolled to a stop on the other side.

  “Stop!” a MinSha trooper yelled from a guard post to the right as he reached for his weapon. He was focused on Mun and never saw Walker as the Human put a burst of railgun rounds through the trooper. A second MinSha went down a half-second later.

  Mun got back to her feet and put a hand on his chest, stopping his forward motion with a jarring slam. “The lieutenant colonel doesn’t get to lead assaults anymore, now that he is a lieutenant colonel,” Mun said on a private channel. “That’s what you have us troopers for.”

  Walker realized she was right and motioned to the large doorway to the side. “Be my guest,” he replied.

  “Glass, Figueroa,” Mun said, “lead the way down. Everyone else, follow them. Sergeant Enkh and Corporal Enkh, you stay here and guard our way out. Kill anyone armed that comes this way.”

  Staff Sergeant Glass kicked in the door, and Sergeant Michael Figueroa dove through it. He did a roll and came back to his feet on a circular ramp. The ramp led both up and down, and it served as an alternate to the elevator system for the wide variety of aliens that had to transit between levels in the building.

  Glass charged in behind Figueroa, didn’t see any threats, and vaulted over the railing and into the open area in the center of the ramp. He swept the ramp with his laser rifle as he descended, landing in a burst of flames from his jumpjets two levels down.

  Also disdaining the ramp, Figueroa followed him down, steering to land next to him.

  “Clear!” Glass called on the tactical net as he moved out of the ramp area with Figueroa next to him.

  “Let’s go!” Mun urged, jumping the railing. The rest of the troopers followed, fanning out as they landed.

  Walker was the last to reach the bottom of the ramp and saw the bottom level was marked as Sublevel #2. Perfect. “This is where the Besquith are,” he reminded them. “Shoot to kill.”

  Glass moved to the side of the door that led out of the ramp area and kicked it in. A volley of laser fire slashed past him from the other side and into the Golden Horde troopers.

  * * *

  Cell Block 307A, Mercenary Guild, Capital Planet

  The Depik materialized in Sansar’s cell holding two laser pistols and handed them to her. “This was the best I could do unnoticed,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Sansar said, taking both. “Don’t you want one?”

  The Depik slow blinked. “I have plenty of my own.” She held up her knife, which glinted in the strobing light. “This is all I really need.” She moved back to the door and added, “If you see anyone coming through this door, it isn’t me.”

  Sansar looked around the room, but just as the empty space hadn’t provided a weapon earlier, it also didn’t have anything in the way of cover—the only furniture was the bed, and it was secured to the floor. She inspected it quickly, realizing that only the mounts on the front two posts held it in place, and set to work burning them off with one of the laser pistols. At lower power, with a constant beam, she was able to melt through the restraints, although it cost all that pistol’s battery.

  Hearing voices in the hallway outside the door, she set the pistols down and yanked the bed out of its cubicle, then turned it on its side. She inspected it critically and realized that it wouldn’t do much in the way of stopping any serious weaponry, but at least it gave her something to hide behind. She grabbed the pistols and dove behind the bed as the door creaked open behind her.

  “What do we have here?” asked a voice in Besquith.

  She peeked over the top of the bed and saw a Besquith wearing a prison uniform standing in the doorway. Great, they’d released the prisoners…or that one had broken out. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

  “Let’s have some fun,” the alien said as it threw the door the rest of the way open and entered her cell.

  Sansar fervently hoped the Depik would return and deal with the monster, but as it approached, she realized that wasn’t going to happen, so she raised one of the pistols and fired. The beam, a weak one, hit the creature in the shoulder, and it drew back with a roar. Sansar pulled the trigger again and nothing happened; it was dead.

  Realizing her mistake, she dropped the empty pistol as the Besquith charged her and raised the second pistol. The creature flinched as it came into view, and her shot hit the alien in the opposite shoulder. She fired again as the alien dove for her, hit it in the head as it crashed into her impromptu barricade, and the alien and the bed slammed into her, driving her backward into the wall.

  She must have blacked out for a time, because when she came to her senses, she heard another Besquith laughing. “This is too easy,” it said. “I don’t know how you killed the others, but you will be mine.”

  Her eyes sprang open and she saw the alien—the other former prisoner—was already in her room, surveying the damage from the earlier fights. It stepped over one of the Besquiths the Depik had killed earlier and threw her bed to the side. She looked around frantically, but her pistol was nowhere to be seen. It reached for her, and she tried to roll to the side, but it was too quick and grabbed
her before she could get away. Pain strobed from her shoulders as its claws entered her, and the pain threatened to overwhelm her. A blinding white flash of pain crossed her vision as it lifted her off the ground. She felt the monster’s hot breath on her face, then she was out of the monster’s claws and falling. She hit and collapsed into a heap as the Besquith salivated on her.

  When it didn’t grab her again, she looked up and realized the creature wasn’t salivating—it was spurting blood from several wounds. With a whimper it fell to the side, and the Depik appeared. “I really can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?” she asked.

  The Depik bent down and picked up the laser pistol from behind Sansar and handed it to her. “You are a mercenary, right? You do know how to use one of these things?”

  “I killed one of them,” Sansar replied, “but I got knocked out, I guess, and the other grabbed me before I could come to my senses.”

  “Well don’t let them do that,” the Depik replied. She nodded to Sansar’s wounds, which were bleeding heavily. “I imagine it hurts.”

  “It does,” Sansar said. She checked to see if she had the working pistol—she did—then she climbed to her feet. “Is it time to go yet?”

  “Umm, no,” the alien replied. “I was coming to tell you they’re sending a squad of guards to kill you.”

  “What do we do?”

  “We attack before they’re ready, of course,” the Depik replied. “I’ll hit them first. Wait for the explosions, and finish off any that are left.”

  “Explosions?” Sansar asked, but the alien had already gone invisible. Sansar hobbled to the door—somehow she’d wrenched a knee in all the fighting, and her leg didn’t seem to work very well—and took a peek around the door jamb. A large group of Besquith with laser rifles were coming, killing all the remaining prisoners as they moved down the hall. Two of the monsters shot the Zuparti in the cell next to hers and she could hear the alien howl as it died. Apparently, the Besquiths’ executions were anything but merciful. Typical.