by Eric Thomson
They made it around a sharp bend in the road by the time the Shrehari patrol crested the ridge, but Decker didn’t stop. He’d managed to break clear in the hours before dawn and sure as heck didn’t want to renew his acquaintance with their pursuers. This wasn’t his war anymore.
The company kept moving until they reached the point where the mountains petered out among the rounded hills marking the southern edge of the Gandabeg range.
Decker ordered them off the road and under the triple canopy jungle to set up a bivouac. The exhausted troopers needed a full night’s rest before tackling the last leg to the camp where they hoped the battalion’s rear party still waited. If nothing else, they needed to replenish their ammunition and rations before they could even consider hijacking a starship.
With sentries set and most of the company fast asleep, Kidder joined Zack on a fallen log, a cup of weak kahvass in his hand.
“The troops are pretty excited at the idea that we’re no longer slaves,” he said, “even the Nelvans. Seems they can’t get enough of using proper military rank. It’s kind of cute actually, just like over-eager puppies.”
Decker nodded, smiling.
“It’s a rare soldier who won’t obsess over military trivia. Next thing you know, they’ll want me to sew them a company guidon.”
“Close,” Kidder replied, grinning. “They’ve been talking all day long about a proper name for us. If we’re no longer owned by anyone, we can’t be called the First Company of the Fifth Orta.”
“How about Decker’s Demons,” Cyone suggested as she sat down next to the two men. “It has a certain mercenary ring to it.”
“Not even in your nightmares, Lora,” Zack growled, shaking his head like an angry bear. “I’d rather we remain First Company before we take on some funny moniker.”
“Sir,” the radioman suddenly called out. “I’ve got battalion rear on the blower.”
“Finally!” Decker dumped out the last of his kahvass and stowed his canteen cup before taking the proffered handset.
Sixteen
There was a lengthy silence after Decker finished relating the events of the previous forty-eight hours to Jase Resson, now the senior surviving leader of the Fifth Orta’s remnants.
“What do we do, Zack?” He finally asked, sounding shaky to Decker’s ears.
“We grab a ship and go home, and by home I mean the Commonwealth, not that shit hole called Danjor.”
“Just like that?”
“Yep. I can’t see anything else for us to do. I’ve decided that we’re no longer slaves but free soldiers who just happen to be between employers. With the bunch you’ve got, we’re a respectable little company group. How’d you like to be a major?”
Again, there was silence from the other end of the connection.
“I’ve got a better idea,” Resson finally replied. “I can’t think of anyone who stands a chance of pulling this off other than you, my friend. I used to be a logistics puke in the Colonials before I ended up as one of the Atabek’s little toy soldiers. I’ll be glad to act as your XO. I’m pretty good at that job, but I’d make a lousy CO. Consider yourself elected to the rank of major in our private army, Zack. Being a captain again is just fine for me.”
“Buddy, I was a command sergeant. I’m not competent to run a company, let alone a company group.”
“You’re more experienced than any of us so stop trying to hide from your responsibilities, Marine. Tempting me with a promotion so you could duck the work won’t cut it.” The chuckle in Resson’s tone took the sting out of his words and from of the corner of his eyes, Decker saw both Cyone and Kidder grin like naughty school kids.
“What are your orders, sir?” Resson was all business again.
“Hang tight where you are. First Company needs at least eight hours of rest and we’re likely as secure here as we would be anywhere, so we’ll be spending the night. Tomorrow morning, after first light, I’ll give you the coordinates of a pickup point, and you can send every vehicle that still works to fetch us. We’ll use the camp as our operating base while we figure out how to shop for a ship. That being said, make sure we can pull out of there in a matter of hours. At some point, the Gwangar will figure out he’s pissed away his money on the Fifth Orta and might be looking for a bit of compensation out of our hides. I’d rather be gone with everything we can carry by the time his rotting brain synapses spark with anything more than hunger for a flying lizard.”
“Roger that, sir. We’ll maintain regular radio watch, now that you’re back on the net, with the proper hourly checks. By the way, I think we need a better name than ‘Survivors of the Fifth Orta’ or something similarly Danjoran.”
Decker groaned.
“Not you too. What is it with soldiers and their fascination with buttons and bows?”
“I still think Decker’s Demons has a nice ring to it.” Cyone made a face at him.
“If it’ll keep you all happy so you stop bugging me and I can get some sleep, okay,” he grumbled. “We can be Decker’s Demons. Now if there’s nothing else, your beloved commander really needs his rest if he’s to lead you reprobates back to civilization before we all keel over from old age. Talk to you tomorrow, Jase. Decker, out.”
*
Zack jumped off the back of an overloaded skimmer and landed in front of Jase Resson who was smiling broadly.
“Welcome back, sir. I trust you enjoyed the ride.”
“What? No honor guard? No band? No salutes?”
“I thought you Marines didn’t salute when you’re wearing helmets.”
“Getting all technical on me now, Jase? I guess it’s the sure sign that we’re degenerating into a regular unit. God help us all.”
The second-in-command of the newly named Decker’s Demons led his superior into the HQ tent and offered him a cup of kahvass while the latter stripped off his combat gear with a sigh of relief.
“Anything stirring around the Gwangar?” Decker took a big gulp of the bitter liquid.
“No. The liaison came by the other day, and he seemed just as bored and indifferent as ever. I doubt the Gwangar’s army will be overly saddened by our demise.”
“They’ll find sadness when the Shrehari decide to expand south of the Gandabeg range, though it’ll take a few generations, I think.”
“Any idea how they got this far from the Empire?”
“Nothing concrete, though the little I saw of their gear makes me think they came on a ship that was launched quite some years ago.”
“Having a Shrehari colony in the area isn’t going to make the Fleet planners euphoric, you know,” Resson said.
“Bah.” Decker shrugged. “We’re so far away, it’ll take centuries before these buggers become something to worry about, not to mention what’ll happen to them living on a planet that wasn’t designed for their physiology. They might die out in a few generations. It’s not our problem no matter what way you look at it.”
“The Gwangar might have a differing opinion.”
“Bugger the Gwangar.”
“No thanks.” Resson’s face twisted in mock distaste. “Interspecies sex isn’t my cup of tea.”
Lora Cyone stuck her head in the tent.
“Everyone’s inside the wire and accounted for, major. The troops are on equipment maintenance duties, after which I’ve told the platoon leaders to stand them down for additional rest.”
“Thanks, Lora. Don’t forget to take a little downtime yourself. Jase can handle the routine while we both catch some zees.”
“Will do.” She sketched a salute before disappearing.
Resson shook his head.
“It all seems so damn unreal, Zack. I’ve been a silahdar for so long that I can’t quite wrap my head around being a free man again, and a free mercenary at that.”
“When we get home you can re-enlist. That’ll take away the feeling of freedom and the joy of soldiering for profit.” Decker grinned.
“Is that what you’re going to do?”
>
“No.” He laughed bitterly. “The Corps offered me early retirement as an alternative to a court-martial. Considering that the chances of my serving time in a penal battalion would have been better than even, I handed in my papers.”
“Clocked an officer?” Resson looked at him speculatively.
“Yeah. The asshole needed it desperately.” Zack told him the story, as much to pass the time as to make sure his second-in-command knew exactly who he was.
“We had that type in the Colonials as well.” The XO nodded knowingly. “It’s not fair, but if you can’t take a joke, don’t join up, as they say.”
“I had a good thing going in the private sector, as first mate on a trader. Maybe I’ll go back to something like that.”
A sudden stab of anguish lanced through him as the memories flooded back, no longer held in check thanks to his exhaustion. It must have shown on his face.
“Are you all right, Zack?”
“Yeah.” He stood and tried to shake off the feeling. “Just got a reminder that I have some avenging to do when we get home. There are a few critters who owe me for killing my wife and destroying my ship.”
“That’s how you ended up with us?”
“Yeah, eventually, though I doubt they figured I’d be sold as a soldier-slave. They were probably hoping I’d end up in something with a shorter life expectancy and more physical abuse.”
“You must have really pissed those folks off.”
Zack grimaced.
“Massively. Now they owe me even more than the last time so I have plenty to do when I get home, stuff I can’t do if I re-enlist.”
“You know what they say about vengeance,” Jase softly replied.
“Sure: first dig two graves. In this case, it’ll be a few more than two. I’ll be cleaning out the Amali clan so thoroughly they’ll remember for a long time that it’s a dangerous thing to mess with me.”
“Care to talk about it?”
“Maybe some other time. I need a shower and some food that doesn’t come in slabs. Then we need to figure out how we can rent a starship.”
*
“What the heck is that?” Decker asked, pointing at Vulin’s upper arm. The platoon leader had joined him in the chow tent, a tray of hot food in his hands.
“Our crest, sir.” The Nelvan grinned.
Zack examined the patch carefully and snorted.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“If you think it’s the Atabek’s dragon design impaled on a bloody sword, then yes.”
“A bit heavy-handed on the irony front, no?”
“It does express the troops’ feelings.” Vulin chewed thoughtfully on a chunk of unidentified vegetable matter. “Amazing how quickly years of conditioning can vanish, given the right circumstances.”
“Good soldiers don’t make good slaves, Nik. If they did, they wouldn’t be much good as soldiers,” Decker pointed out. “Historically, they tend to take over and become the rulers. If you ever get near a library terminal when we get home, look up the Mamelukes or the Janissaries. I’ve no doubt that our dear Atabek has already thought about using his silahdars to make himself king of Danjor, or whatever they call their despots on that bloody planet.”
“No doubt,” Vulin agreed.
“What are we talking about?” Cyone asked as she sat down beside Decker.
“The wisdom of using slave soldiers.”
“Didn’t do the Gwangar much good.”
“It’ll do him even less good if he decides that we’re his to keep and doesn’t want let us leave Garada.” Kidder dropped his own tray on what was fast becoming the command group’s table. “Frog hunt, anyone?”
“Feeling frisky, Tran?” Cyone lifted an ironic eyebrow as she spoke.
“It’s amazing what a few hours’ sleep and a lukewarm shower will do to a man’s outlook on life, captain,” he replied.
“True.”
Before she could say anything further, a low rumbling began somewhere above their heads, its intensity increasing at a rather alarming rate.
“Starship coming down,” Resson called out from the tent’s opening.
“Let’s hope it fits our requirements,” Kidder said. “I can’t get off this dank, smelly planet soon enough for my taste. Any idea on how you want to take it, sir?” He added looking at Decker.
“Very quietly and very quickly.” Decker drained his mug. “Lora, find out who in this outfit has ever done so much as a day’s familiarization training in boarding party procedures, no matter whose Navy they were in. If I don’t have to teach them from scratch, it’ll save time.”
“Will do. Count me as being one of them.”
“Figured as much. Jase,” he called out to the XO who was still staring up at the gray sky as if willing the incoming ship to land faster, “when that thing’s on the ground, rustle me up a section of troops under a good sergeant and a pair of skimmers with machine gun mounts. I think I’ll go eyeball it myself and see if it fits the bill. I’m with young Tran here: the sooner we’re off this mud ball, the better.”
*
Decker stood on cracked tarmac shot through with purplish green vegetation and observed the freighter through his helmet visor. To either side of him, armed soldiers scanned the surrounding area, ready to make any interfering natives run for their lives. Those who might have noticed the humans were probably smart enough to stay well away anyhow.
The vessel itself was relatively large and probably near the upper limit of tonnage able to land on a planet’s surface. Though no expert on starship construction, he figured its lines were familiar enough that it likely came from a yard that employed humans, if not from the Commonwealth itself. It could also be of Nelvan origin, which was almost the same thing, give or take a few centuries or millennia, depending on who you believed.
What he could see of the crew favored his own species, and that was all to the good: it meant food and other facilities would be useable by his troops. It certainly was big enough to take the entire company group and all the gear they could haul to the spaceport, though close to two hundred passengers might strain the environmental systems. But there was no way around that. The next ship might be smaller or nonhuman, or not for another two months. It had to be this one.
The best time to seize it would be after it unloaded its incoming cargo and before it took on the outbound consignment. If the local stevedores were as useless as the Chulukian soldiery, they probably had a chance, but they’d have to move fast.
“Sergeant,” he turned to the Nelvan non-com in charge of the escort, “I’m going back to the base with your corporal’s skimmer. You stay here and watch the ship. I need to know when you see them start unloading, and I need you to track the crew by individual so we can estimate its size. I especially need to know if crew members wander off into town.”
“Got it, sir. And anything else unusual, of course.”
“Of course. Take crew pictures with your scanner. It’ll help break down the numbers.”
*
“Funny,” Jase Resson said, after Zack finished relating his findings to the assembled officers, “now that it’s no longer just a concept but an actual operation, I’m feeling a bit – strange, I suppose. It’s as if seizing a ship for ourselves marks the exact moment we break our slave chains. Up to now, it could have been nothing more than another day in the service of the Atabek.”
“I get that as well,” Cyone said, “but in my case, it’s excitement more than anything else. I just want to get going and lift off.”
“How do you intend to do this, sir?” Sal Aran asked.
“Like I said earlier, quietly and quickly. Sergeant Gesh has the target under observation, and when he reports the inbound cargo off-loaded, that’ll be the time to offer ourselves as the outbound load. We’ll leave the canvas here but take all of the other gear, ammo, and rations. I’m guessing that if they do offload today, they won’t be taking on cargo tonight. There are not enough hours of daylight left, and wha
t we’ve seen of the locals, they don’t like to work in the dark. Jase, have the skimmers loaded up now, ready to move. Troops carry everything they can. It’s only a few kilometers to the spaceport so we can cover that easily on foot in less than an hour. I’d like to be ready to move at thirty minutes notice after last light.”
He looked at Lora.
“Did you have a chance to ferret out boarding party veterans?”
“Other than you and me, there were fifteen in the entire group, all of us ex-Marines or Navy. I’ve had them formed in an ad hoc platoon under Sergeant Nunez, late of the 10th Regiment. He says he spent a couple of years in a cruiser’s Marine detachment.”
“You verified that?”
“He knows the procedure well enough he didn’t come by it through book learning only.”
“Okay. I’ll be leading the boarding party personally.” Decker held up his hand to forestall the inevitable protest from his second-in-command. “I know, Jase, but I’ve got to be the one who sticks his blaster in the captain’s face and offers him a deal he doesn’t dare refuse. You’re not ugly enough to scare him, and Lora isn’t big enough. Plus, I have a few ideas to sweeten the pot and maybe buy ourselves some willing cooperation. I spent a fair amount of time working in merchant starships after I retired from the Corps and I know how the buggers think.”
“Sir,” the radio operator called out from the other side of the tent, “message from Sergeant Gesh: they’ve started unloading.”
Decker glanced at the time on the computer screen and nodded.
“Only two hours left until last light. That ship is destined to spend the night empty. Or so its crew believes. With any luck, half of them will go out on shore leave, and if my time in the merchant service is anything to go by, they won’t have more than twenty or thirty crew altogether, maybe even less, if they’ve automated.”
“You intend to abandon part of the crew on this pustule?” Cyone sounded disapproving. “Those spacers didn’t do anything to annoy us.”