“Stay calm, Zywroal.” There was an acid edge to Nwyhypnaguran’s voice. She did not appreciate the unsolicited opinions of her subordinates. “We proceed as planned to the bivouac site. Technician Clynder will monitor the three active targets via the drone while we investigate the two inactive ones in person. May I remind you, Ensign, that our role here is to acquire intelligence. I wish to know who these people are, not to kill them. Their extermination is a task for the pacification forces who will follow.”
Lep stuck his head into the monitoring system and kept his stupid mouth well and truly shut.
——
When he judged Lieutenant Nwyhypnaguran to be engrossed in the scene outside, Lep took his chance and raised his head from the feed streamed to his monitor by the drone twenty klicks away, and looked instead at the bulkhead screens showing what was happening outside the carrier.
The GPC was circling around the spot in the Great Ice Plain the targets had used to set up a bivouac stretched across their bikes.
It looked like an explosion had ripped their shelter apart. What had caused it? Lep didn’t know. The surveillance feed had gone dead for a few minutes. When it had restored, a crater had appeared that hadn’t been there before, and the three targets – who were still being tracked by the drone – were already riding north as fast as their bikes would take them.
Had the targets been attacked? Certainly, no member of Cora’s Hope Division would abandon their comrades without good reason, but Lep had flown the drone around the site and it had not been obvious that the fleeing targets were in any immediate danger.
The carrier looped around a scene of destruction frozen into permanence by the cold.
Two humanoid corpses sprawled just beyond the lip of the crater. Their loose cloaks were frozen in the act of billowing in a wind that had died away hours ago.
Already, Lep was beginning to fear the cold of Rho-Torkis more than the prospect of the inevitable Legion retaliation that would come, perhaps within days.
The two bikes also looked frozen into place. The blast must have thrown them up and dropped them on their rears, resting against the side of the crater. They appeared caught in the act of pulling a near-vertical wheelie – not a bad trick for a hover bike.
“Hey! That one moved,” said Uxham. “The body farthest to the east. Its hand moved.”
Lep followed the scout’s pointing finger to one of the bulkhead monitors.
All he could see was a body whose contours were softened by snow.
“Been eating those special cakes again, Uxham?” piped up one of the other scouts.
But whoever it was, he didn’t get the laughs he was after because everyone was watching a hand raising feebly out of the snow.
Uxham was right.
The figure rolled out of its snowy covering and waved pitifully for help. Then it lay still, its last energy reserves spent.
“An excellent turn of events,” said Lieutenant Nwyhypnaguran. “I had feared the corpses would prove too frozen to extract much information. Pilot, circle us around that wounded target. Remain cautious and pull out immediately if anything smells wrong to you. If I judge this scene is as innocent as it appears, then we’ll set down a hundred meters away and, Zywroal, you will secure the area before approaching the target.”
“Sir, I think the live target is the Zhoogene,” said Lep. “Movement is all wrong for a human. We know it’s been wounded since we first tracked it.”
“So,” said Nwyhypnaguran, “they’ve left behind their wounded. Whoever we’re facing clearly has no honor. And you, Clynder, are supposed to keep your eyes on the drone feed! If you disobey orders again, it will be you who’s abandoned out there in the snow.”
Lep gave a vague apology, but his mind was too busy filling with horror to worry about the lieutenant’s threats.
If the Zhoogene was here, who was Target-3, twenty klicks away?
He glanced back at his monitor. The display was blank except for a dangerous message.
No input feed. Reconnect device.
“Sir!” he snapped, but before he could give his warning, one of the other scouts beat him to it.
“Movement! Below us. Inside the crater.”
“Bugging out!” announced the pilot as the smooth hum of the engine suddenly roared, throwing Lep against his restraints.
Helpless, he watched as two hostiles emerged from concealed hollows in the sides of the crater and punched the controls of the two bikes without bothering to mount them.
They’d timed their appearance to perfection. The speeding hover carrier passed over the firing arcs of the bike cannons as they spat blaster fire into the air.
Impacts rippled along the GPC’s underbelly.
And then the craft shuddered in the air as the gravitics blew out.
That was the problem with gravitics. Always had been. Put as much armor as you like elsewhere, but gravitic vehicles would always be vulnerable to attack from underneath.
Which was why 2nd Regiment had upgraded their ride to the GPC-4c “Fat Belly” variant. It maneuvered like a drunken Littorane out of water, was slower than praise emerging from Nwyhypnaguran’s lips, but had layers of armor bolted between the deck and the bank of gravitic motors.
They lost all lift and skimmed across the ground in a blinding spray of snow.
Nervous glances spread like a disease, but although the gravitics had blown, the belly armor held. They were shaken, and immobilized. But they were unhurt.
And spoiling for revenge.
“Alpha Section, man the gun ports!” bellowed the ensign. “Beta, ready to deploy. Final check.”
While half the squad began calling out that they were ready to charge down the ramp, the rest opened the armored shutters in the bulkheads and poked out their blaster rifles, seeking targets.
They were already too late.
One of the hover bikes had ridden up a ramp built into the side of the crater, and was sailing through a hurried volley of blaster fire before landing on the GPC’s roof. The rider even had his face exposed, wearing a hat, and – of all things – he had a long smoking pipe clenched between his teeth.
Lep couldn’t believe what he was seeing in the external cam feed. Who were these devils?
“Keep that ramp closed,” said the lieutenant. “The hostile on the roof is obviously intending to shoot us as we disembark.”
A ripple of fear passed through the scouts, Lep included.
“Stay calm,” roared Sergeant Nialeg. “The buggers have crippled our motors. That’s bad. But the carrier’s armor is still solid, our guns are hot, and our rifles ready to make an accounting. That’s also bad… for them. And if that idiot on the roof hasn’t broken his neck in the landing, he’s wasting his time. He’ll never get through the roof armor. We’ll burst through the roof hatches and catch him in crossfire. For purity!”
“Purity! Purity!” replied the scouts.
Lep didn’t join in, too busy using his station to flick through the external cam feeds, looking for targets for the carrier’s autocannon pods to service. But there was nothing.
“Er... Sarge?” queried one of the scouts readying to deploy through the roof hatches. “Can you smell something? It’s – I don’t know… ozone?”
An instant later, a circular disc of foam dropped down onto the scout’s head from a hole that had miraculously appeared in the roof.
“Frags out, rebels,” said a man’s voice as two grenades followed the...
It’s a boarding patch…
The thought just had time to register in Lep’s mind that he was seeing a piece of ancient military technology from a long-dead era before the grenades went off, and the Fat Belly hover carrier became a fat-bellied slaughterhouse.
OSU SYBUTU
“So, speak!” Osu demanded of the sullen rebel.
The squatting man kept his gaze down at the ice beneath his boots, ice turned red by a ruby sky approaching dusk.
It cast a demonic glow on the interrogation pr
oceedings, but also softened the bloodstains on the rebel’s greatcoat. Maybe that would loosen him up.
He said nothing.
Was he still in shock? Zy Pel… Bronze… had said that when they’d pulled the only survivor out of the wreckage of the rebel carrier, he hadn’t resisted, but he’d screamed uncontrollably. They’d had to gag him before setting him riding pillion behind Stryker.
Osu wasn’t convinced this was shock. Time for another line of attack.
The man started shivering.
“Stryker, set the bikes to throw some heat. We won’t learn anything from an icicle.”
“You won’t learn anything anyway,” the man grumbled.
“All we really want to know is what the hell is going on with this damned planet,” Osu explained. “Is this an invasion? Are we in a civil war now? And why in the Five Hells was a military unit sent to kill us? Us! We represent an interstellar mining corporation. Who the hell did you think we were?”
The man shuddered, and this time it wasn’t the cold. “We saw… things. Horrors in the woods. Creatures that cannot be. We thought that’s what you were, and we followed you because we needed to know what we were facing. The guys call them vampire jacks. They had Legion equipment and they looked like normal people on the outside. But they weren’t. They bit!”
“We aren’t certain what they are,” said Bronze. “But there are no such things as vampires, and we don’t bite.”
The rebel looked up with interest for the first time, peering inside Bronze’s hood. “It’s you. The rider with the breach patch. I didn’t know such things existed any more. Why would a miner carry around a treasure like that?”
“They wouldn’t,” said Osu, “but Bronze here is a merc. He runs our escort team, and what pit of thieves he might visit to buy his toys is the kind of question I know to avoid asking.”
“Let’s say I believe you,” said the rebel. “You’re not vamps. You’re not military. What are you going to do with me?”
Osu shrugged. “It depends on the answers you give. Is it the Rebellion’s intention to seize mining rights on Rho-Torkis for itself?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then we aren’t enemies. Tell us what’s happening to Rho-Torkis, and I’ll set you free.”
The rebel withdrew into himself to consider his response. He flinched when Bronze stretched out a gauntleted finger and traced the unit patches on the man’s lacerated greatcoat.
“You’re a scout,” Bronze said. “2nd Regiment, Cora’s Hope Division. Says so right here on your shoulder. We assumed you were with the Rebellion, but you’re Cora’s World regular troops. I heard the situation had gone absolutely to drent in your system but is Cora’s World exporting its insanity now? Is Cora’s World trying to become Cora’s Empire?”
“I stand with the Rebellion,” insisted the rebel. His face fell. “My world has descended into hell. We got away in time. It’s why we need to forge a new Federation where the bonds between all strata of society are strong. It’s time to start again.”
“Like you did on your homeworld?” Bronze gave him a contemptuous grunt. “I was briefed. You had your own little homespun political revolution, didn’t you? You didn’t need vampire cults or alien invaders, the madness came from within you. All it took was the usual slime-spined Militia who will turn a blind eye to anything for the right price, and a heap of totalitarian bigots who deluded themselves they were creating a pristine new world order. By any means necessary. I bet you cheered them on, rebel scout. Until one day you woke up and found yourself atop a mountain of corpses – those who had to die because they hadn’t sung out the political mantra with sufficient fervor. Ideological purity is a madness that won’t stop until your planet’s a ghost world with two final survivors stalking each other, looking for an opening to kill the last betrayer of the narrative.”
“You don’t believe any of that speech, do you?”
“No? Every civic center on your planet has a place of public execution where political enemies of the new world order are put to death on the hour, every hour, every day, forever.”
“It’s true,” the rebel admitted. “The movement was betrayed. That’s why we sided with a Federation-wide alliance of liberation. The Rebellion. This time we will get it right.”
“Easy,” Osu snapped. “Both of you. Don’t mind Bronze, he snaps worse than he bites. Look, why not tell us your name? We already know your unit. See, I’ll tell you ours. That there is Urdi. He’s Zavage, and Stryker is standing outside.”
“They sound like code names.”
“Some. But they’re the mercs. I’m a geologist. My name’s... Sybutu. What’s yours?”
“Lep. Lep Clynder.”
“Well, Lep. I still don’t know what we’re up against here. I thought the Rebellion was a political movement with a military wing whose existence it denied, not that anyone believed you. And here you are, regular troops from Cora’s World nuking a peaceful planet, murdering thousands within seconds.”
“I’m ex-Legion,” said Bronze. “Whatever you may think of the corrupt skragg-necks and aristo-hats who run the stinking Federation, most legionaries are decent folk trying to do the right thing in a galaxy where acts of decency are condemned by a sea of haters as reactionary deviance.”
“I’m nothing to do with that,” Lep said hurriedly. “We’re Scout Company. We come in quietly. Take a look. Get out. If all goes well, no one gets hurt. No one’s supposed to know we’re even there.”
“Don’t mind him, Lep,” Osu reassured the scout. “Though I don’t blame him for smarting at what you did to the legionaries.”
“I didn’t do anything. I have never fired a weapon in anger. I swear it!”
Osu held up his hands. “Okay. I believe you. I’m just saying that I’m the one in charge here, not the merc – who, by the way, was kicked out of the Legion and with good reason – and all I need to know before I can let you go is your intentions here. Is this an invasion? A raid? Are there rebel authorities who will maintain the rule of commercial law, or should I hightail it to the nearest spaceport and evacuate my team? Give me a reason to set you free, Lep.”
“I cannot say.”
Osu stared at Lep, considering his next move. It didn’t look as if the rebel was going to say anything else of use, but Osu wasn’t ready to give up just yet. “Do you have someone special to return to, Lep? Someone who would miss you if we hadn’t rescued you from that personnel carrier?”
“Alyssa,” he replied. From inside his jacket, the rebel pulled out a holo-wallet showing a smiling young human woman and practically shoved it in the faces of everyone there inside the ring of warm bikes.
Lep seemed eager to establish a human connection to his captors.
It had the opposite effect on Osu’s scorched soul.
“I expect she’s worried about you,” he said acidly.
“Yes,” said Lep. “Terrified.”
“But you know she loves you and that helps get you through. That so?”
He nodded.
Osu laughed. It was not a happy sound. “I envy you that. My girlfriend’s name is Nydella. I never had the guts to tell her that I loved her. Seems stupid, really. I’ve always been too scared I’d scare her away.”
“You should take courage,” said Lep, relieved to be making this connection. The others looked away grimly. “Trust your feelings.”
“Yeah. I should have.”
The rebel froze. Doubt clouded his eyes.
“Shame you nuked her.”
Osu drew his plasma pistol and burned a hole through the rebel scout’s head.
He stared at the corpse for a few moments after it had slumped to the ground. Then he glared at the others, daring someone to criticize his state of mind, even his ethics. Several look thoughtful, but none spoke.
“We have a mission,” said Osu. “That man got in our way. His life was forfeit the moment he took up arms against the Legion.”
“You don’t have to justi
fy yourself to us, Sergeant,” said Zavage.
“Contact!” shouted Stryker from outside the circle of bikes. “Skragg! We’re surrounded.”
“Federation Militia,” announced an amplified voice before Osu had even grabbed his blaster and peered over his bike. “Put down your weapons or die.”
“Sorry, guys,” said the failed sentry, but Osu didn’t blame Stryker. Even as he watched, soldiers rose out of the snow like winter-camo zombies rising from a graveyard. He estimated thirty, and more were appearing every second.
One giant of a man threw off his camo-cloak and stood ten feet away from Osu, as if a herald awaiting the reply to take back to his master. Over his chain armor, he wore a huge cloak of fake animal fur. Beneath a metal helmet steaming in the cold air, the man’s beard was plaited and set with beads. If Osu had harbored any doubt that this was indeed what passed for a soldier in the Militia, the man’s rifle was slung over his huge shoulder. His weapon of choice was a war hammer, which he swung impatiently.
“Hold your fire,” yelled Osu, though he stayed behind the cover of the bikes. “We’re Legion. Everyone stand down. We’re on the same side. We’re Legion.”
“We know you’re Legion,” said the pale-skinned Viking herald. “We overheard your little chat after you executed the rebel scout.”
Militia troopers approached the bikes casually, with rifles slung.
Osu lowered his weapon to the ground and stood erect with arms in surrender. “We’re on the same side.”
The Viking shook his head and clicked his tongue. “Now, that’s where we have a problem. Your typical Legion arrogance means a lack of attention to detail.” The troopers were leaping over the bikes now. “You see, the two statements contradict each other. Let me spell it out. You can be Legion, or you could be on the side of the Militia and the Federation. But you can’t be both. Legionaries, you see, are traitors.”
“Don’t shoot them,” Osu ordered his team, and checked that the others weren’t going to put up a brief resistance. “And don’t believe anything that comes out the mouth of these prison scum.”
Chimera Company - Rho-Torkis Box Set Page 9