by PP Corcoran
Kate gave an easy chuckle. “Somewhere way the hell away from here, where we can give these assholes some payback.”
“Now that, Captain Preissman, I can definitely help you with. Have you ever been to New Warsaw?”
* * * * *
Chapter Five
Council Of War
The gentle pricking of his pinplants brought Alastair Sinclair out of his morbid reverie. The Tri-V paused its playback of the final transmission the Salamanca had received before Bucephalus had latched onto the merchantman and then taken it from the war zone. Alastair’s emotionless eyes soaked in every minuscule feature of his enemy. In the display, the motionless face of the Veetanho General Peepo, her rodent-like face with its obligatory darkened goggles to protect her light-sensitive eyes. It may have been a HecSha missile that downed Lapole’s flyer; however, it was Peepo and the Mercenary Guild who had orchestrated the attack.
“Go for Sinclair,” he said gruffly, allowing his heavy eyelids to close. Peepo’s face burned deep into his psyche.
* * *
“We’ve entered the New Warsaw system, Alastair. Would you like to join me on the bridge?” asked Kate Preissman. An edge of nervousness was evident in her tone, as she knew the news of the deaths of his daughter-in-law and his grandchildren had hit the man hard. Harder than Kate would ever have expected.
“I’ll be up momentarily,” replied Alastair, closing the link without another word.
A concerned frown creased Kate’s forehead. She had barely seen or spoken to her nephew after she had broken the news of the fate of the flyer. Alastair had received the news with barely a twitch of a facial muscle. He had given her a polite thank you before excusing himself and returning to the cabin set aside for him. As was expected of Alastair, as the commanding officer, he had called on each trooper who had suffered a loss after the shooting of Lapole’s flyer, and told them, personally, of the grief he shared. Nine times the door to Alastair’s bunk opened and closed, and with every entrance and exit the sense of loss spread, for every platoon had a member who had lost someone. The empathy the troopers felt for their comrades became something else during the 170-hour trip to New Warsaw—something ugly.
Being attached to the hull of the Bucephalus had meant that Kate had been unable to extend the gravity deck, which was the norm for hyperspace flights, so the crew and passengers of the Salamanca had spent the entire trip in zero gravity. Kate had fully expected the lack of gravity to restrict the activities of the Scorpion troopers; in fact, the opposite was true. On direction of Alastair, Tim Buchanan had liaised with Horak, who doubled-hatted as Kate’s First Officer, organizing seemingly never-ending drills. Everything from section level infiltration drills where one section would be tasked to enter covertly a specific section of the ship and recover an object while an enemy force comprising a platoon or more attempted to foil their attempts. The drills went as far as full-on company-sized boarding actions which caused merry hell in routine ship operations. When Kate had tactfully approached Alastair with a request to scale back the drills, he had pointed out that while the troopers were kept busy doing seemingly needless training, it gave them little opportunity to brood on recent events. Faced with the choice of physically-exhausted troopers gratefully retiring to their makeshift bunks for sleep when given the chance to, or seven days with bored troopers hell-bent on vengeance, Kate opted for the drills. Now, though, with entry into the New Warsaw system, the Salamanca had disconnected from Bucephalus and was navigating freely. Or as freely as it could. Jacobsthal was reporting that they were under constant lock by numerous fire control radars. The Winged Hussars took their security seriously.
“Will you look at the size of that thing,” commented Horak. With a flick of a lower hand, the Pendal flung an image of their destination, Prime Base, across the main bridge Tri-V just as Alastair Sinclair entered the bridge. The sight of the massive construct caused him to misjudge his reaching for the hand hold that would have swung him neatly into his chair. Instead, he continued his zero-G flight until stopped ungracefully by the rear of Kate’s seat. Kate let out a small chortle, while the remainder of the bridge crew feigned ignorance at his clumsiness. For his part, Alastair made the best of a bad entrance, pivoting on the ship captain’s headrest, and slipping his feet through the floor restraints to hold himself in place, while he, too, took in the sight of the massive space station.
Space tends to cause the uninitiated to misjudge the true perspective of objects, and sitting at one of the Lagrange Points of the planet that rotated slowly beyond it, someone viewing it from a distance could find it hard to gauge its size. That would be until you spied the flickering minnows that seemed to hover in an ever-moving cloud around it. These minnows were the cruisers and destroyers that had secured the Winged Hussars its deserved reputation as one of the galaxy’s premier space fighting forces, dwarfed by a space habitat which was miles on a side.
Horak busily tapped away at his console, four limbs entering and retrieving data quicker than any Human without pinplants could ever hope to. In the Tri-V, sections of Prime Base were highlighted one after another. The Pendal spoke with a sense of approval, “It looks like a mix of modern Galactic Union technology and something much older.”
“Prime Base is hailing us, Captain.”
“Put it up, Mr. Jacobsthal,” ordered Kate. The imposing image of the space station disappeared to be replaced with a pair of ruby-red compound eyes which stood out like laser points from the iridescent blue chitin which covered the entire head and body of the MinSha. The hairs on the back of Alastair’s neck stood bolt upright, and he had to physically restrain himself from reaching for the laser pistol which sat snuggly in its holster on his right leg. Alastair had no love for the MinSha, either as individuals or as a race. On his very first mission as a trooper in the Scorpions, an eighteen-year-old Alastair had been forced to watch helplessly as his squad mates had been sliced into small pieces by MinSha high-intensity lasers, like a Human would carve up a roast for Sunday dinner. The screams of the troopers trapped inside their CASPers was the theme of many of Alastair’s recurring dreams. Mentally shrugging off the image, he returned to the present, where Kate opened her mouth to introduce herself, and the MinSha spoke abruptly, leaving Kate’s jaw flapping in midair.
“Salamanca. You are to cease all active probing immediately, or you will be fired upon!”
Kate nodded to Horak who complied with her unspoken order. If there was one thing that Humans had learned about the MinSha, it was that they never bluffed. The entire concept appeared alien to them. If they said they were going to do something, then you could bet the house on it that they would. In the Tri-V, the mantis-like head twisted to one side on its stick thin, elongated neck, light glinting off the blue chitin as it appeared to acknowledge some unseen speaker.
“Colonel Sinclair, I am Major Krat’lik of the Winged Hussars Marine Element, and I will be your escort during your time among the Winged Hussars. You are to travel via shuttle to Landing Bay Six, where I will meet you.” And with that, the transmission was abruptly terminated.
“Well, I see the MinSha reputation as happy-go-lucky hosts is well deserved,” stage-whispered Jacobsthal, with a lopsided grin. His comment brought a grin to everyone else’s faces, even Alastair’s. Moment of levity over, Horak set them on a course to follow the beacon, while the Alastair slipped once more into silence as he contemplated his, and his troopers, next move. For the moment, those with him were safe; however, his thoughts strayed unbidden to his eldest son, Charlie, and the two platoons of troopers that were on their way to Galax. Without a conscious thought, his pinplants accessed the ship’s internal chronometer. Set to Standard Galactic Union time, the Union’s equivalent to Earth’s Greenwich Mean Time, was used as the standard time throughout the Union on all ships registered with the Merchant Guild. Alastair briefly did the math and correlated that with the travel arrangements for Charlie and his troopers. If they were still on schedule, they should be arriving at Ga
lax sometime tomorrow. Alastair’s coded warning, however, having to be carried from stargate to stargate by any ship headed in the right direction, would arrive at the whim of the shipping schedule. Alastair could only hope it arrived in time.
* * *
Happy Birthday, Son. Love, Dad. The message hung solemnly in midair, and the hustle and bustle of the thronging bar, which was the heart of Tal Station, receded as if someone had placed a large noise-canceling bubble around the stock-still form of Charlie Sinclair.
“Everything OK, Major?” asked Torey McDonald. Torey had been a merc long enough to recognize when something wasn’t right. She had joined the Scorpions as a snot-nosed trooper seventeen years before, rising to the rank of sergeant, where she had moaned about how every officer she encountered had a baby face which had never seen a razor, and who had to be led around by the hand. That was before Alastair Sinclair had offered her the chance to join the ranks of the ‘know it all officer types.’ As Lieutenant Torey McDonald, she had made it her mission in life to be the best officer she could be. And, if the countless offers she had received to leave the Scorpions and sign up with other merc companies were a judge of her competency, she had achieved that aim. Still, it was Alastair Sinclair who had made her an officer, and loyalty and respect was something too hard to come by in the modern world for her to just up sticks and abandon her troopers for what might, or might not, be greener pastures.
“Heads up!” she said in a voice loud enough to carry just as far as the other two tan uniformed troopers sitting at the table. Sergeant Angus Deacon casually dropped a hand below table level, until it rested gently on the grip of his ever-present Steyr 880 ten-millimeter, case-less machine pistol. With his opposite leg, he spun himself ever so slightly in his seat, clearing the weapon of the table and giving himself a clean draw if he needed to utilize the lethal little compact. His eyes calmly scanned the melting pot of aliens in the bar for any subtle sign of a threat. A group of knuckle-dragging Jivool grunted and drank some purple concoction that was an affront to any race with decent sensory organs. Another table was virtually overflowing with hairy-ass K’kng, six-foot-tall gorilla analogues with razor-sharp teeth and small, beady eyes. Deacon automatically dismissed them as a threat, for though K’kng looked scary as shit, they didn’t have the mindset to be mercs. Nature had a cruel sense of humor. Deacon continued his threat assessment, his gaze flicking from table to table, never resting long enough on one group to arouse suspicion, while all the time he carried on his mundane conversation with the fourth Scorpion trooper, Second Lieutenant Stacey Kamala.
Kamala may only have been be a newly-promoted second lieutenant, but it was a long-standing tradition in the Scorpions to promote from within its ranks, and though some other merc units insisted that their officer corps be selected from outside the company to discourage patronage, the Scorpions took the view that you would fight better and harder for those you considered friends, if not family. It also meant that in situations like the group of Scorpions found themselves now, Torey, utilizing only a minimum of words, could alert her troopers to a potential threat, confident in the fact that after years together she knew exactly how they would react.
Seeing Deacon align one-way, Kamala automatically aligned in the opposite direction. Raising her glass, she let out a gurgling laugh, and her head fell back while she hugged her ribs. To those in the crowded bar around her, it appeared like a normal Human reaction to what must have been a hilarious joke. The laughter masked the movement of her free hand, which tucked up into her armpit to where her PS6 hung in its shoulder holster. Mean and ugly, the PS6 was jokingly referred to as the People Stopper. Made only in .30 caliber, the magazine was mounted along the top of the heavy pistol, which allowed it to hold twenty mercury-tipped rounds. A single well-placed round from a PS6 would stop a Tortantula in its tracks at close range. A less hardy race would find themselves with a hole the size of a watermelon as an exit wound, and woe betide anyone standing behind the target, because they were more likely than not to suffer a fatal injury as the slug of mercury entered their bodies without slowing perceptibly. Yeah, if you wanted to put a target down so it didn’t get back up again, the People Stopper was the weapon of choice. Like Deacon, Kamala continued the mundane conversation while searching the thronging mass of alien clientele for threats.
Satisfied her troopers were now on alert, Torey spared a fleeting glance at her boss. Charlie’s features had formed themselves into what Torey normally described as his ‘it’s all gone wrong’ face. Lips pursed, eyebrows scrunched down, causing worry lines to cover his forehead, head bowed, eyes trying to bore holes into the floor. Yeah, something has gone pear shaped, thought Torey. And not for the first time on this contract. We should have arrived on Galax by now, instead of being stuck on this hunk of junk, floating around a barren planet because some merchant ship is running late. We’re still one jump away from our destination, and the more time wasted getting to Galax, the more the situation could have changed, making any intelligence Captain Buchanan had passed as much use as a sieve in a water-collecting contest. Meanwhile, all our gear is stacked in temporary storage with a couple of troopers keeping guard on it, while the remainder loaf around the entire floor of the hotel Charlie was forced to rent. Torey hated when the Scorpions had to rely on a third party to arrange transport, because it invariably went wrong somehow.
Charlie’s head came up, and instead of the usual flurry of quick battle orders Torey would have expected to receive over her pinplants, her boss shuffled closer to her, cupping his hand over his mouth so no one could see his lips as he whispered into her ear.
“Assume every electronic means is compromised. All messages are passed by word of mouth only and are done so face-to-face. Trust no one who is not wearing this uniform and that you personally know. Double the guard on our gear in storage, and I want someone with eyes on the gear, not just standing outside the door. Post armed guards at the hotel. I want our floor turned into a fortress as of yesterday. Send runners out in pairs to locate any of our troopers not at the hotel and get them back there ASAP. We’re reneging on the contract and heading home.”
As Charlie reeled off his orders a deepening sense of confusion filled Torey; the veteran could feel the blood slowly draining from her face. When Charlie finished speaking, she turned her head to look into his steady, unblinking eyes. “What the hell is going on, sir?”
In all the years that Torey had known Charlie Sinclair, she had never known him to hesitate before he answered her. Now he hesitated, and that hesitation was enough to send a shiver down Torey’s spine. A commotion by the bar rapidly became a roar of noise as a dozen races shouted to be heard. Torey’s eyes fixed on the Tri-V as it projected an image of a planet she could hardly fail to recognize. Earth. The image split in half as the whiskered, goggle-covered face of Veetanho General Peepo, master tactician and legend of the Mercenary Guild began talking. The bar fell into a stunned silence as each race’s individual translator converted Peepo’s words into their respective tongue. Torey was struggling to comprehend what she was seeing and hearing. Earth invaded! High orbit held by alien warships! All Human mercenary leaders to hand themselves over for trial on Capital Planet! Human mercenary companies to be subsumed by the Mercenary Guild. And, did she hear that damn rodent correctly? Earth itself to be controlled directly by the Mercenary Guild?!
“I think we might have just gone to war,” said Charlie quietly.
* * * * *
Chapter Six
The Mission
Alexis Cromwell considered the man sitting opposite her. Solidly built under an impeccable tan uniform. Oak leaves designating him a colonel glinted on the collar. A golden scorpion encircled in a ring of equally-bright gold sat on his right breast. A name tag, Sinclair, A., on the left. This then was Alastair Sinclair, thought Alexis. The man whom all their plans to upset the stranglehold of the Mercenary Guild rested upon. The man Alexis wanted to get the measure of.
In the five days Sinclai
r had been on Prime Base, he had not ventured from his assigned quarters except to attend the two meetings called by the Four Horsemen to hammer out a course of action. A course of action which had ended with Jim Cartwright declaring that with enough Raknar, along with the promise of fresh reinforcements by Nigel Shirazi, that fighting and defeating the combined forces of General Peepo was actually a viable option. The only fly in Jim’s plan was that he knew where to find the Raknar, but the original power sources the Dusman had equipped them with were missing. Alastair Sinclair had stepped forward and informed the gathered group of mercs that he knew of a place where he could secure the required power sources. Many of the mercs present had doubted Sinclair’s claim; however, they didn’t have any choice but to let the Scorpions’ commander take on the mission.
Clearing her throat to speak Alexis was forestalled by the large, open palmed hand of Alastair.
“Ms. Cromwell—”
“Please, Colonel Sinclair, call me Alexis,” Alexis interjected with her best winning smile.
Alastair pursed his lips for a moment as if considering ignoring her attempted platitude. “Alexis,” Alastair began again with a smile of his own which failed to reach his cold eyes. “Why don’t we dispense with the pleasantries and get to why I’m really here today shall we?”
The mistress of the Winged Hussars had never had dealings with the Scorpions, but, like any other business enterprise, it was good practice to do research on potential adversaries, and it appeared at least one of the things she had learned about Alastair Sinclair was on the mark. He had no time for BS. For the first time a real smile creased Alexis’ lips.
“I need you to find something for me—”
Alastair raised one quizzical eyebrow as he felt the growing tug of intrigue. “We will keep up our part of the deal, Alexis. I will track down the power sources Jim Cartwright needs for his army of Raknar.”