by P W Hillard
“I never had a choice. Family business, you know? Of course, you do. The name Cain is kind of, intrinsically linked to mercenary work after all. I didn’t even have much of a choice in being a freelancer.”
Alexi just nodded. The disgrace of Xander Cain was a well-known story in mercenary bars across the Iron Belt, and probably beyond. “If you have had enough of feeling sorry for yourself, can you help with this suit? I need to get the damaged arm off.”
“I can do one better; you can have the arm from the one I salvaged. I’ve already taken out the servos to repair my leg. And besides, I would much rather a working suit fighting on my side than some useless salvage. Not much we can do about the damaged front plate though.”
“We could maybe weld something over the cut?”
“And put a great big weak point here target on your armour? Probably not a good idea.”
"You make a good point, Cain." Alexi stood up, bracing himself against the doorframe with his freehand. The injury was painful and had no chance of healing properly in the field, but it wouldn't stop him piloting a suit. The wetware connection above his eye meant that, like all riders, the suit was controlled by his mind. There were dozens of stories about near-dead riders fighting to the last and even rumours above suits continuing to fight after their owners were technically dead.
“Come on, let’s get to work.”
***
Xander pulled himself into his cockpit seat. The chair was full of a form-fitting memory foam designed to stop him bouncing around as the heavy suit moved. He gripped the ladder, pulling it inside the suit and tucking it under the seat. He wiggled, getting comfy, and then reached up to his left. Attached to the chair, just above where it cradled his head, was a connector. He pulled on it and cable unspooled. He pressed the plastic end into the wetware connection above his eye and felt it click into place. There was a second where his mind was filled with a faint buzzing before the world fell away.
Reality returned, only this time he was staring upwards at the sky. With a thought he ordered the suits cabin to close. First, the cockpit lid shut, followed shortly by the front armour. His vision moved downwards as the head and its mounted cameras moved into place. Finally, the armour locked into position, sealing him inside his metal casket.
Xander turned, his suit following his mental commands. He stepped over to the QT-34, kneeling briefly to drop his weapon at its feet. Alexi had clambered up the side and was standing with his feet on the open front armour, his good hand gripping a handle on the inside of the cockpit. He gave a thumbs up.
Xander reached out and gripped the shattered arm of the suit. The missile hit had caused significant damage, it was barely holding on, the connections to the shoulder mount nearly severed. The shoulder itself was thankfully undamaged, though the armour around it was blackened. Xander held the arm, allowing his suit to take its weight.
Alexi shifted himself into the seat of the cockpit, reaching across the maintenance controls on the left side of the metal box. He pressed a set of keys, and the arm came free, the locks holding it to the shoulder releasing. Xander tossed it across the courtyard, the wrecked limb clattering against a far wall and bouncing slightly as it hit the ground.
They repeated the actions on the suit Xander had salvaged, having to stop for a moment to remove the singed corpse from the cockpit. Alexi had been forced to hold his breath as he released the shoulder locks, the smell of burnt flesh just too fresh.
The new arm slotted into place, Alexi gave another thumbs-up, and Xander slowly lowered it, allowing it to come to a natural rest. Xander stepped back and examined his handiwork. It wasn't pretty. Ideally, the arm needed to be tuned, the connections checked and tested. It would do, for now. Alexi unhooked the connection in his seat. Unlike Xander's suit, a well-worn Brahms and Stucker Defender, the wetware connection was simply held in place by a plastic clip, rather than retracting into the cockpit chair.
The cockpit door slammed shut, the armour sliding into place.
“Ah, feels good to be, well, not myself, but close enough.” Alexi's voice was coming through the radio, tuning to a frequency that had been predetermined as part of the contract.
“I get what you mean,” Xander said. All riders did. Their connection to their suits was sometimes so total that the massive war machines felt like the real them. Everyone claimed to know someone, a friend of a friend, who had ridden their machine just that little too long and could never leave it. It was a terrifying thought; one more step towards recreating the collapse. “You good to fight?”
“Always, my friend.”
“Good to hear it.” It was twice now Alexi had referred to Xander like that. Xander liked the man, but he was loathed to think of him as a friend. It wasn’t anything against Alexi but getting close to someone meant that Xander could lose them, and he didn’t want to feel that. Not again. “Think you can relieve Anya for a bit, whilst I go drum up some haste from those desk jockeys?”
“Happy to. Take her with you, might just push them along.”
***
Anya was a big woman. She heaved with muscle mass, her wide shoulders holding two intimidating arms. Her hair was dark brown, cropped short to avoid difficulty in combat. At her waist was a large sidearm. Much larger than she would ever realistically need. Her hand was resting on the holster of the cannon as she leant against the back wall.
“I’m sorry, but the request was declined,” Sergei said. The man’s tie had been undone and his hair messed.
“We need that air support,” Xander said, his arms crossed. He had raised himself up to his full height, fully intending to intimidate the man who was technically his boss. “Unless you want all of this to be rubble?”
“No! I tried. Really, I did, but head office said they can’t spare the resources.”
“Can’t spare the resources? Really? They can hire eleven freelancers for a supposed garrison op, but can’t afford to call in two, maybe three helicopters? Doesn’t quite add up, does it, Anya?”
“No, it does not.” Anya shifted her weight off the wall, stepping over to Xander. She towered over even him. “What gets me, is that the deployment date of this garrison job just so happened to be today. What are the odds of an attack on a day that anyone with access to the mercenary net would know there was a deployment going on? I mean, if the attack had been one day earlier, then the enemy would have taken this base easily.”
“Excellent points,” Xander said, nodding in agreement. “If you ask me, that means that there wasn’t anything worth taking here. Not until today. A cynical man might say that your, head office was it? Knew that an attack would come today and posted it as a garrison job to deliberately underbid.”
“Look, it’s not like that, it isn’t really…” Sergei was shaking, as though something was threatening to erupt from inside him.
“No? I don’t like being used,” Xander said. “Cheaping out on something like this is a bad, bad idea.”
“We can't afford it!” Sergei said, the words bursting from his throat. “The company, it's well, in trouble.” There was a series of gasps from the other office workers. It was clear they hadn't been privy to what Sergei was saying. “It's near-bankrupt. What's here, in these warehouses, will pay us billions. Billions! Enough to save the company. The garrison op was all head office could afford. It's why we can't have helicopters. We don't have any of our own and the rental costs on the others are…beyond our means."
“Rental costs on helos aren’t that much”
“They are when the whole Iron Belt is at war!”
“I’m sorry, you’re going to have to repeat that,” Anya said.
“I just heard. There are battles all over the place, corps fighting corps. Not just here. All across the belt. And not just mercenary actions. Proper planet-wide battles. Head office is under siege as we speak!”
“That’s insane,” Xander said. “The Core Worlds would step in. Like they did the last time. Hell, it might even be the end of the corps. What wou
ld even start something like that?”
“I don’t know. Look, I just run this warehouse. We aren’t a big company. We just have this facility and the salvage operations we run. We don’t even know who is attacking us!”
“I would think that it was corporate forces, considering the whole, situation. Why now though, this all feels too much of a coincidence.”
“I think,” Anya said, “that this one can answer the most pressing question. If they want this base, these warehouses, what’s under those sheets in there?”
***
Xander had never seen anything like it. The sheets had been pulled clear to reveal a cache that he could never believe, a trove of weapons and armour that was totally different in design to anything currently available. There were several crates of mechsuit sized weapons and armour plates, but most impressively was the entire complete mechsuit that lay in the centre of the warehouse. It was big, easily as large as Anya’s heavy Warden. It had strange legs that seemed to bend the wrong way, like a bird’s, whilst under each arm was a weapon that Xander didn’t even know how to describe. It was as if a rectangular box had been welded beneath each arm.
“Is this…is this lost tech?” Xander said.
“Yes. We found it whilst salvaging a detritus field in the belt out past Hades-Six. It was delivered in secret earlier today,” Sergei said.
“Not so secret,” Anya said. “Explains why the attack came today, getting all this stuff in the same place is a pretty tempting target.”
“I would say so. An entire lost tech mechsuit. I’ve never heard of that. Hell, I’ve never heard of this much together in one place,” Xander placed his hand on the side of the mechsuit. It was strange, to be so close to a weapon that predated the collapse, its science lost to mankind.
“If we can sell this, assuming our buyer is still willing, then we can pay you, and cover the cost of that orbital strike you called in,” Sergei said. He stepped next to Xander and coughed, pointing at the mercenary’s hand.
"If someone is still able to buy it. If your claim of war across the belt is true," Anya said.
“Now is the perfect time! Think of the increased price. Supply and demand and all that.” Sergei’s face was beaming. Clearly, he was in for significant bonus from this.
“That’s all well and good, but we need to hold out until then. And with this as a prize,” Xander said, gesturing to the suit before him, “you can bet your fucking arses those unmarked pricks will be back. And this time they know we’re hurt.”
Chapter Six
The wait was excruciating. Xander couldn’t understand it. The enemy had to know they were on the ropes, down a custom mercenary mech, out of ammunition, and running low on stamina. Most mercenaries were used to riding their mechsuit for prolonged periods of time, but it was draining. The wetware had a subtle effect, using it felt effortless and it was only when it was removed did the mental strain become apparent. It reminded Xander of his rider training when he was younger. The instructors had been fond of swimming as general exercise. Xander had enjoyed it, but already dreaded the moment when he stepped out of the pool and the waters comforting support slipped away, leaving only aching muscle in its wake.
Xander had taken the west side of the compound, resting his weapon along the top of the perimeter wall. The magazine loaded into the bottom was his only one remaining. The salvaged QT-34s used a different calibre in their cannons. Xander had allowed Alexi to scoop them up. The QT lacked the leg compartments to hold them, but they had found some combat webbing bundled into one of the corners of a warehouse. It now hung around Alexi’s suit like a sling, the spare magazines tucked within.
“This isn’t right,” Xander said, breaking the silence. They weren’t enforcing any kind of comms blackout, the enemy already knew where they were and what they would be doing, but the mercenaries had all fallen silent anyway. It was as if the wait was stifling their voices. “I would be pushing my advantage now.”
“Maybe they can’t?” Anya said. Her massive mech was back guarding the entrance, blocking the smashed gate with its enormous bulk. “Could be they don’t have the forces?”
“If you were going to take…what’s here,” Xander began. He wasn’t willing to discuss the contents of the warehouse openly on the radio. Entire battalions had fought over smaller lost tech discoveries. “You would come with a lot more than a handful of mechsuits, some infantry squads and a single helo. They clearly planned on bringing in more forces, otherwise why set up the AA? That was just the vanguard.”
“And yet, nothing. I get what you’re saying. Hell, I agree. But maybe what the suit said is right? Maybe stuff like this is going on all over the belt? Could be they got caught up fighting someone else?”
“She has a point, Cain,” Alexi said. He was pacing between the northern and eastern sides of the compound, patrolling the wall. Having more ammunition, he had been assigned the larger area to cover. “They were unmarked. There’s a war on and you see a unit with no IFFs or insignias, you shoot first and tag the bodies later.”
“I still don’t like it,” Xander said, his head unit shifting around, scanning his surroundings. “Do we even believe the suit? A war across the entire Iron Belt? That’s insane. Core worlds will come down like a sack of shit on the corporations if that’s true.”
“Not the first time there’s been a war out here.”
“Not the entire belt, Alexi.” Xander thought for a moment, the image of the nutcracker annihilating its target flooding back to him. “Hang on, just had a thought. Freelancer four to Heracles, do you copy?”
There were a few seconds of agonising silence.
“Heracles receiving you Freelancer four. We are a few light seconds out and prepping to jump.” It was a different operator to the last time, a man’s voice working its way across space on the radio signal. It wasn’t surprising. Jump ships made a good portion of their money providing additional services to the various mercenaries on whatever given world they were near. The previous operator was no doubt speaking with someone else right now.
“Just need a confirm on some intel. We’re hearing that fighting is breaking out across the belt. Suits here are claiming a war. Can you confirm?” Xander waited as his signal worked its way out of the atmosphere and across space. The delay to his first contact told him the ship was already some distance away.
“We’re hearing something similar, Freelancer four. Heracles has been contracted to pick up some of Helena’s Hydras for emergency routing to the Zeus system. Info on the drone was sparse, but it did confirm multiple conflicts right across belt space.”
“Affirmative, Heracles. Good luck.”
“You as well, freelancer four,” the operator said after a few seconds delay. It was longer this time, a sign the ship was getting further away.
“Ah shit,” Alexi said. “So, we’re stuck here? Guess a big operation like the Hydras pays more than a handful of freelancers.”
“If we can even pay. Suit says the company is in the shit. They need to sell that lot in there before they can.” Xander’s suit gestured over his shoulder with its free hand as he spoke, the wetware translating the subconscious motion.
“Why don't we sell it then?” Anya said. “I mean, they need to get it off-world to sell it, we need to get off-world to well…not die. They had to have a plan on shifting this stuff into orbit, right? Keeping it here just paints a big target on us.”
***
“No way. Absolutely not. That’s an insane idea.” Sergei was standing in the forecourt, head tilted back to look at Xander’s suit. People couldn’t help but look at the head unit, an involuntary reaction to the mechsuit’s humanoid form.
“Look. We can wait here until the enemy finally shows again, and they will, or we can get off our arses and get moving. They can’t steal this stuff if it isn’t here to steal in the first place.” Xander’s voice was coming from his suit’s speakers, tinny and rattling. Audio quality was low on the list for maintenance. “You have trucks
for it all, right? Had to bring it in somehow.”
“Yes, they’re in warehouse three. The smallest one.” Sergei pointed across the forecourt. “We’re not doing it though. It’s suicide.”
“Eh, fifty-fifty at best.” The huge machine shrugged. “Better odds than waiting for an airstrike. You do have a plan for getting the…merchandise, off-planet?”
“Yes. Heliustech has a berth on the space elevator, and a cargo transport docked in orbit. We were going to ship it out on the Midas, a jump ship due in six days. But I can’t imagine it will be here, not if reports are true.”
“Jump ships are neutral ground. They'll be here. Not completing a contract is a big deal for them. Trust me on this, never suggest otherwise, they consider it a matter of honour, and those jumpers a little bit crazy.”
“Can’t be good for you,” Alexi said, his voice echoing from the buildings that surrounded the facility. “Jumping over and over. Spending all your time in space. Enough to drive a man mad I would think. And they say we are the crazy ones! I would take riding a mechsuit down here over living up there in a tin can any day.”
“We aren’t doing it!” Sergei said, crossing his arms. It was almost funny, the size difference between man and machine undoing any sense of actual anger. He looked like a toddler not getting his own way.
“Look. You want to keep your job, right? If your company can’t sell this gear, then there will be no company at all. Especially not once I take them to court over failure to pay. That isn’t even including the cost of that orbital strike. I might be a freelancer, but I’m still a paid-up member of the guild. Think your tiny corporation can take on guild lawyers?” Xander was smiling beneath the metal of his suit. It was almost too easy.
“Well, there's certainly no need for any threats of legal action…”
“Can't imagine that you'll be very employable if you managed to kill your entire company. Listen, you paid us, or well, you will be paying us, to do a job. If we need a warehouse managed or…stock sorted? Whatever it is you do; we'll defer to you. When it comes to keeping this place safe, you come to us. We're the experts.”