The Iron War: A Xander Cain Novel

by P W Hillard

  “Blackmarked?”

  “Yeah, you know, stricken from the records. The guild has standing bounties on anyone blackmarked. Big ones. You couldn’t show yourself on the battlefield,” Xander said. His suit continued its regimented walk, one leg striding before the other with a thudding rhythm.

  “And yet, I bet there are still some of them out there.”

  “One or two. Still, I would take one of ours over one of yours any day. Merc’s don’t hire people when they have no money. They don’t lie about the operation to get a cheaper rate.”

  “I take your point,” Sergei said. “We never expected this, how could we? Planet wide battles, unnamed organisations paying for mercenaries to conduct raids, fucking anti-air guns waiting for dropships? None of this we could have planned.”

  “Someone did. It can’t be a coincidence our new friend had a mission to cause chaos during open conflict like this. If there really is fighting breaking out across the Iron Belt th-”

  “That can’t be true. It’s insane,” Sergei said, verbally cutting across Xander.

  “You get used to the insane. Besides you’re the one who told us.” Xander brought his suit to a stop. At the head of the convoy, Anya had raised her arm, signalling the halt. “Out here, on the battlefield, in the midst of everything, anything can happen.”

  “How many?” Sergei said. “How many battles have you been in?”

  “Hard to say. I’ve done eight contracts, maybe nine. Depends on how you define a battle really.”

  “That doesn't seem like that many.”

  “It’s enough. Trust me on that,” Xander said. He mentally flicked to the open channel. “What’s with the stop, Anya?”

  “Gunfire up ahead, sounds like suit weapons. Opposing sides of the intersection though.”

  “You guys always this lucky?” Meg said. Her weapon was resting on her suit’s shoulder almost casually.

  “It’s not been our day so far, no,” Xander said. “Fuck. Last thing we need is to get caught in a crossfire.”

  “There a problem?” Sergei said. His voice wasn’t as clear as the others. Suits spent a lot of space and power on their communications systems. Wars were won on the back of messengers.

  “Firefight up ahead, across our path. We continue on and we’ll be target number one, for both sides. We’ll have to go around,” Xander said. “Fuck, this is going to add at least an hour to our trip, maybe more.”

  He tilted his head unit towards the space elevator as he spoke. Their destination was visible from thousands of miles around, a long tether held taut by a station in orbit above it. It wasn’t that far. The suits alone could get there within the hour, but the loaders were huge unwieldy things. They simply couldn’t take every road and were forced to take a winding circuitous route to the elevator.

  It must have seemed impressive, once, when the first elevator had been built. A tower to the heavens, threatening to reach out and touch the gods. Maybe it still was, to the teeming masses that inhabited each world, toiling the factories or digging valuable metals from the dirt. To Xander, elevators were just a part of life, no different to boarding an aircraft or catching a train. It was like the mechsuits, in a way. Here was a miracle of science, poorly understood reclaimed tech from a bygone age, that had become mundane through constant use.

  “Is it really that dangerous to go through?” Sergei said. His voice seemed to be shuddering, as if his nerves were causing his throat to vibrate violently.

  “We don’t know how many there are, what they’re armed with, or even their dispositions towards us. You move those slow as shit loaders across there and they’re going to be full of holes pretty quickly.”

  “Not necessarily,” Meg said. She pointed up and to her right. There was a block of towers with a lower level side building, what appeared to be the entrance to an underground parking area. “I can get onto there with jump jets, then onto that other building there. That should give me a view of the area. Get the lay of the land so to speak.”

  “Do it, at least get us an idea of what we’re dealing with,” Xander said.

  “That can not be a good idea,” Sergei said. “You expect her to actually come back?”

  “I know she’ll come back. You need to show a little faith.”

  “Faith? In people who fight for money? You’ll have to forgive me but that doesn’t inspire confidence.”

  “Everyone does something for money,” Alexi said. A loader rocked as his suit clambered into the back, taking a seat on the loader’s rear ramp. “Fighting for money isn’t so crazy, I think. You win, you get paid. You die, well, then money is no problem anymore, right?”

  “Fucking morbid,” Xander said. “Regardless, we’ve nothing to lose doing it. Get on it, Meg, tag any targets you see.”

  “Right.” The nimble suit jogged towards the edge of the road. It crouched, metal sliding across the concrete as the suit locked into place. It released its bound energy, leaping off the ground, jets firing in tandem. The suit rose improbably, rocketing upwards, a combination of its own power and high-tech assistance. It landed with a thud; the sound muffled by the growing noise of violence. It leapt again, fingers gripping to the roof of the higher section. Meg scrambled up the wall, metal hooks digging into the stone, unfolding from custom-fitted feet.

  Every part of Meg’s suit had been altered, customised to an extreme degree. Servos had been replaced with newer, lighter models, Carbon nanotube muscles replaced with denser bundles, giving the suit speed beyond its original design. Even the head unit had been altered, stripping back the armour until only the cameras remained. Any excess weight that could be cut had been shed. Everything to make it as light and as quick as possible.

  Meg had always preferred it this way. Other mercs liked to laden themselves with armour and heavy weapons, becoming walking fortresses. Like the other woman, Anya was it? That wasn’t how Meg liked it. She wanted to be fast and free, running across the battlefield, leaping into the air like a blur. She had always liked to run, even as a child. Meg had always felt like the world couldn’t catch her, like she could just stay ahead of all her problems. So, she had never stopped running, even as an adult. Especially as an adult.

  She hung there, dust falling from her fingers as Meg allowed her jump jets to cool. They were amazing pieces of technology, somehow transforming the energy from her reactor into thrust without the need for fuel. They were poorly understood, examples of lost tech quickly copied and pushed out to market. Their major downside was the need for cooling. The jets were prone to overheating, and frequent heavy use could burn them out.

  Happy the temperature had dropped far enough, Meg fired the jets again, pushing off with her feet from the wall. She landed atop the building, stalking across the roof, keeping her suit as low as she could, difficult, considering its size. Meg reached the edge and peered down at the battle below.

  ***

  Shots rang out, the air a wall of lead and brass as both sides fired at each other. The air sizzled with bursts of laser fire, as suits moved forwards on both sides, infantry falling back from the onslaught. It was carnage, both sides were on opposite sides of an intersection, no cover between them. One brave infantryman crouched, launching a missile from a shoulder-mounted launcher. It struck a QT-34 on the left knee, the armour plating already damaged. The leg sheered off and the suit toppled, hitting the ground with a clang. Its opponents didn't hesitate, the now immobile suit bombarded by a burst of fire.

  On one side, the left side relative to where the loaders were, the suits were all uniform in colour. Vivid reds and white emblazoned across the metal. Each had a coiled serpent snaking through the eye socket of a skull painted on the shoulder, like a bad tattoo. The suits were varied in design, a dozen customised models. Mercenaries.

  Their opponents were falling back. The comparatively unmarked QT-34s were losing ground. The mercenaries were just that much better, their shots landing home with more frequency, their bodies twisting as they took their enemies re
turn fire, trying to spread the damage across their armour. Even their infantry was better, tucking behind friendly mechs when they expected laser bursts.

  “Meg to…uh, squad? Team? Whatever. I’m getting IFF markers from one side. Looks like mercs to me. Other side is unmarked, looks like the guys you described. Fighting like corporate goons,” Meg said. The red and white mechs were highlighted in her vision, small diamonds floating above their heads. They were operating openly, not afraid of declaring who they were.

  “So, more guys like us?” Xander said, a small oscillating wave appearing next to his name in the corner of Meg’s vision. “Are they identifying themselves? Freelancers or company mercs?”

  “No company tag, but they’re all painted in their colours. Logo is like a snake sliding through a skull. Red and white.”

  “Right, I know these guys,” Xander said. “Viper Legion. Small outfit, but a good reputation. Normally specialise in asset acquisition, I remember right.”

  “Asset acquisition?” Sergei said.

  “Get off the combat line desk jockey,” Anya said. “Stars help me.”

  “Going somewhere, attacking it, and then taking something away,” Xander said. “Fancy word for stealing something. Can you flash one with a laser comm message, Meg? Get them on the line.”

  “Yeah, hang on, I’ll try and hook them up now.”

  The Corporate Wars

  Excerpt from Brief History of Known Space by Doctor Ira Cunningham.

  The history of the Corporate Wars is, in a way, the recent history of mankind itself. The seeds for the conflict were sown in the early days of the re-expansion as humanity struggled to rebuild from the collapse.

  The collapse. A moment in history so monumental that it shattered an empire that stretched across the stars. Little is known about that vast interstellar kingdom, except that it was significantly more advanced than our current levels of technology. Some items from this era are still working today, so impressive was their construction, a phenomenon colloquially known as “lost tech”.

  Much like the empire it shattered, the exact details of the collapse elude historians. Myths and legends that persist across known space speak of a grand war against entities whose names vary. Stories speak of "machine men" and "steel adversaries", or some variation thereof. What is clear is that ancient man fought a long and lengthy war with a machine-based adversary of some kind, and as a result, man-machine interfacing and advanced AI is widely considered taboo on nearly every world.

  Regardless of the cause, the result of the collapse was to throw mankind into a dark-age, cutting off every planet totally and sending them back to napping flint for survival. Every planet that is, aside from the Core Worlds.

  When people talk of the Core Worlds, they are generally referring to all of the planets within the Atum system, though technically Maat retains its neutrality to this day. The system is unusual, containing four large habitable planets within its star’s temperate zone. Whilst the planets here did suffer technological loss, they fared much better than the rest of human space. The current theory is that the concentration of planets either allowed for, or necessitated, a much higher defensive effort, sparing the Core Worlds from the worst of the collapse's ravages. Most notably, whilst all the planets retained some element of space flight, Maat held onto jump drives, keeping the ability to travel faster than light.

  The exact history of the Core Worlds and their centuries of rebuilding is too much to recount here, but it is worth noting that the ultimate result was that three of the planets, Bastet, Hathor and Khonsu formed a single polity, whilst Maat remained its own political power, though allied, leveraging its control over jump technology to guarantee independence. Confident in their stability, these planets took their first tentative steps back out into the galaxy.

  To their surprise, they found that humanity had survived everywhere they searched. From tribes living in caves, to feudal warlords fighting amongst each other, to planets that were on the cusp of reaching out to the stars themselves, mankind had tenaciously hung on.

  The Core Worlds had expected to find planets in ruins, their populaces long dead. They had planned to slowly expand, re-taming the galaxy a world at a time. Instead, they found scores of planets with existing populations ready to be reintroduced to the universe. Overwhelmed with the opportunity, but eager to take advantage of it, the Core Worlds took an interesting step. They privatised the machinery of empire.

  Turning to the private sector, the Core Worlds issued hundreds of charters allowing corporations to absorb worlds into the newly formed “United Worlds”, a claim that would eventually prove to be futile. To celebrate what the Core Worlds considered a new era, the calendar was changed to begin counting “years of reclamation.”

  The corporations did as asked, funding and financing thousands of missions. They were extremely successful, more so than the Core Worlds could have hoped. The corporations grew in power as they founded new colonies or uplifted existing worlds. It became quickly apparent that some of the corporations were not above conquest, and a thriving mercenary industry rose to meet this demand. Whilst some worlds retained their cultures and some degree of independence, the vast majority became little more than company worlds, loyal hives of industrial drones feeding the constantly expanding corporate empires. Over the next thousand years, the cycle continued, until human expansion ran up against the bizarre phenomena known as the "dead stars", a swath of systems whose strange radiation is lethal and impossible to screen against, effectively locking mankind into one corner of the galaxy.

  It was only a matter of time then, until the corporations, ever looking to expand by their very nature, turned on one another. In 1084, the constant skirmishes finally spilt over into brutal all-out war, as corporations fought amongst themselves. No-one can pinpoint the exact action that caused the war. Common urban myth holds that a boardroom disagreement over a merger turned into a fistfight between opposing board members that eventually spiralled into a planetwide battle. Highly unlikely to be true, but a good enough metaphor for the simmering resentment that had built over millennia.

  The wars were brutal violent things, hundreds of different factions warring across thousands of worlds. The already existing mercenary organisations formalised into a single mercenary guild during this period, whilst the Core Worlds simply sat out. The corporations had long since set aside any allegiances to their original home over the thousand years since they had left, considering the Core Worlds pampered and soft. The only planet that they interacted with on any regular basis was Maat. Whilst the secrets of jump travel had long since escaped into the technology base at large, Maat still had the largest fleet of jump ships available and continued a long-running stance of neutrality throughout the war.

  The Corporate Wars ran for over three hundred years, finally ending in 1392. The Core Worlds hadn’t been idle over this time, building up a considerable force of warships and troop transports. The Core Worlds had always held a technological advantage over the corporations, the benefits of their early rise, and had been constantly purchasing and improving on any new discoveries or unearthed lost tech. The Core Worlds launched their fleets in 1345 and their technology made a laughingstock of the universe at large. In less than fifty years they forced all the corporations to accept a begrudging peace, striking down any that refused to come to the table.

  Realising that trying to control all of corporate space was impossible, the Core Worlds instead imposed a series of rules on the corporations. Known as the Articles of War, they decreed that conflict between corporations was legal but imposed a series of heavy fines and penalties for certain actions. Mercenaries were exempted from most of these (though notably not all) making it financially more prudent to act through the mercenary guild as a third party, rather than acting independently.

  By effectively taxing war, the Core Worlds were able to reimpose a semblance of order and made large scale conflict a dangerous prospect, financial penalties backed up by their military mi
ght should corporations go too far.

  Notable Events

  - On March 8th 1120 a war fleet belonging to Hera Pharmaceutical arrives in orbit of the planet Thoth. Scores of dropships enter the atmosphere, but rather than deploying mechsuits to the surface, the dropships had been modified to carry large canisters of gas. The gas is released into the upper atmosphere, and over the next three weeks slowly dissolves all carbon-based life on the planet to a liquid sludge. This incident was listed as the reason all chemical weapons are banned under the Articles.

  - During 1230, a fleet belonging to Burnham and Burnham attempted to skirt defenders positioned between them and their target system by venturing into the dead stars. The fleet vanished, before finally reappearing in 1312, in the same system they had departed from, heavily damaged and missing any sign of their crews.

  - The space elevator on the planet Cerberus was destroyed in 1115 in an ill-advised attempt by Hermes Innovations to prevent enemy forces from escaping. The destruction of the tether damages the station above, causing it to fall from orbit. The impact destroys the Hermes Innovations headquarters, killing the entire board.

  Chapter Nine

  It wasn't going as expected. The orders had been simple, escort a corporate executive as they made a tour of the facilities on the planet. Easy work, but it paid well, corporate higher-ups liked to think themselves far more valuable than they actually were. This one had been particularly insufferable, and Sandhu had been intensely annoyed when an ambush had been sprung upon them. It would only serve to inflate the pompous corporate windbag even further. Sandhu snapped off another volley of shots, cursing under his breath as his target moved, the shots going wide.

  “Commander. I’m getting a laser comms message.” An icon flashed in the corner of Sandhu’s vision, his mechsuit automatically identifying its speaker. It was coming from Arthur Johnson, as reliable a mercenary as a company could hope for.