by Terry Mixon
“All in favor?”
All four of the directors present raised their hands.
Brad had no idea which of the three other directors had been hesitant, but the attack seemed to have firmly cemented their vote.
“The board of the Mercenary Guild hereby approves an overriding contract against the Outer Worlds Alliance,” Kutschinski said. “I hereby direct that all mercenary units, whether they be engaged in other contracts or not, be summoned to Io as quickly as possible. A preference is given to units with ships, but ground troops will also be needed. This is an all-hands-on-deck mission.”
“I have other business for the board,” the wounded man said, his eyes seeming a little less focused than a minute before.
“Proceed,” Kutschinski said.
“It appears that the board has a vacancy. An extremely recent and welcome vacancy. So that the board may continue to perform its function if I pass out or worse, I nominate Factor Sara Kernsky to fill the opening. Do I have a second?”
“Seconded,” Kutschinski said immediately. “All in favor?”
All four directors’ hands went up.
He smiled at Factor—Director—Kernsky. “I wish that your elevation had occurred under less-arduous circumstances, but welcome to the board of the Mercenary Guild, Director Kernsky.”
“If you don’t mind,” she said, “I’ll send the overriding contract now. I took the liberty of having something prepared so everything is already in order, and the sooner we can begin getting it executed, the better.”
“I concur,” Kutschinski said. “Do it.”
The van took a corner at a speed that threatened to send it into the other lane of traffic before it managed to straighten out. Just ahead of them, Brad could see a vehicle approaching at a high rate of speed with a man holding a rocket launcher leaning out the window.
“I’d get that sent and adjourn your meeting, because we’ve got company,” Brad said grimly.
Rather than dodge the vehicle, Brad’s driver swerved into oncoming traffic and forced the other vehicle to abruptly change course. That could have resulted in a head-on collision, but that probably would’ve been more survivable than a direct hit from the anti-vehicle weapon.
It turned out that the other driver had no desire to run headlong into the van he was trying to catch. He swerved to the left and was promptly struck by a vehicle in the other lane, causing both of them to lose control and slam into the building nearby. Thankfully, there were no pedestrians in that particular section of sidewalk.
Saburo turned in his seat to face Brad. “Major Papadakis is reporting that she can see several vehicles taking off in pursuit of us. She said that she’s got the attack squad on the run, but they disabled her van. She’s not going to be able to provide us any backup.”
“Then we’d best hope that the Pythons are ready to receive incoming fire,” he said. “You keep working with the driver to get us to a place where they can intercept the pursuit we picked up.”
Brad turned his attention to the Marines and Vikings in the van. “We’ll be stopping as soon as we get to the designated defensive area. We’ll pile out and look for whatever the Pythons have arranged as a barricade. We’ve got to stop the Cadre from overrunning us.”
With that said, he turned his attention to Sara Kernsky. She was focusing on the injured director, who’d lost consciousness since Brad had last looked at him. The wound looked bad.
It was entirely conceivable that the Mercenary Guild would be looking for another new director before this fight was over. The two Marines were providing what care they could, but they had no way to deal with internal injuries or bleeding.
“Director Kutschinski, you might want to give your contact another call and ask her to have some medics standing by,” he said. “I suspect that seconds are going to count once we arrive.”
The man nodded, took the com he’d borrowed earlier back from the Viking that owned it, and made the call.
“They just came out of nowhere,” Kernsky said bitterly. “We’d just gotten to the lobby when they came pouring out of the stairs. We thought we were ready, but they were shooting by the time we’d hit the door. He never had a chance.”
Brad put a hand on her shoulder, steadying her as the van took another corner at an excessive rate of speed. “The OWA had this set up in advance. They were waiting for the right moment to decapitate the Mercenary Guild. I tried to be subtle, but I suspect calling you triggered them to move early.”
She lifted her eyes to meet his gaze. “I think you were pretty damn subtle. While it’s possible that your call could’ve started the ball rolling, they had to have been on a hair trigger already. Let’s just save the blame for the bastards that deserve it.”
“If they’re taking a shot at us, it makes me wonder if they have a bigger force in position to go after Arbiter Blaze and the politicians at the hiring hall,” Brad said. “In just a couple of minutes, we’re going to be fighting this particular group of pirates, but they had to have had a plan to deal with the leadership here in the Jovian system if it came down to shooting.”
Kernsky paled and started tapping on her wrist-comp. “I’m sending her a message right now, but you’re probably right. Worse, they knew that building was going to be under heavy guard. They either have a force big enough to kill all of those mercenaries and private guards, or they have something worse in mind.”
At that moment, the ground seemed to buck under them, and the driver lost control of the van. It slammed into the vehicle in front of them and flipped over it before coming back down on the roadway, rolling, and finally smashed the building beside the road. Brad’s vision went dark.
Brad woke abruptly and realized that not much time had passed since the explosion and crash. Everyone had been tossed around inside the van, and those that had not been secured had suffered the worst.
The director who’d been shot was now in the front of the van and, based on the angle of his neck, had been prescient about the board needing to have four live members in case he died.
The other directors that Brad didn’t know had managed to secure themselves and, other than being shaken, seemed to be in good shape. That just left Sara Kernsky.
She’d flown forward with the impact, but Saburo’s seat had blocked her from being thrown into the front of the van. Based on the blood running down her face from her scalp, she’d struck the roof, but she was conscious and already stirring.
A quick check of the rest of his people showed that they were all alive, though some had obviously been injured in the accident. He supposed they were lucky that they’d only suffered one casualty.
The van had ended up on its roof, so Brad carefully undid his restraints and lowered himself. Once he was oriented, he tried to open the sliding door and found that it was jammed. As it was bulletproof, he resisted the urge to try and kick the window out.
“Saburo, can you get your door open?” he asked.
His voice sounded steady. Good.
The Colonel wrestled with his door for a moment and then it popped loose. He staggered out of the vehicle and bent down to find his pistol where it had fallen during the crash. He then turned to face the direction they’d come, obviously looking for the pursuit that Major Papadakis had said was coming.
Brad gestured for the driver to help him get the deceased director out of the van. Then he helped Kernsky and the other directors out and saw that they were safely protected by a ring of his Vikings and Marines.
She stared down at the dead man and shook her head. “I’d hoped to never see anything like this again, once I retired from being an active mercenary. Will the killing ever end?”
“I certainly hope so,” Brad said. “But the only way we’re going to make that happen is to stop the OWA. Did you get your message out? If that explosion was at the hiring hall, there’s no way that any of them got clear before the blast.”
He oriented himself and verified that the smoke rising in the distance was in the directio
n of the hiring hall. Based solely on the distance and the relative lack of damage around him, he didn’t think they’d used a nuke. Or if they had, it had been a small one. A full-size nuclear device would have obliterated the city.
Kernsky checked her wrist-comp. “My message went out, but I haven’t received a reply yet. I’m not sure that I’m going to at this point.”
There was a fair bit of panic in the crowd around them. People were running around in terror—which was completely understandable—and there was a lot of screaming and shouting. The smell of something burning was starting to sting his nostrils, too.
What there wasn’t was shooting. Where had the OWI commandos gone? They should’ve been here by now.
“Saburo, do you still have a signal? Call Papadakis and get a status from her. Is she still engaged?”
The mercenary brought his wrist-comp closer to his mouth and began speaking into it. Moments later, he nodded and said something else. Then he turned toward Brad.
“She says that the hostiles withdrew just before the explosion. They went back into the building, and she was about to have to make a decision on following them or trying to meet up with us when everything went boom.
“If I were a betting man, which I am, it sounds like someone gave the order to break contact. If they knew that the overriding contract had already been executed, there was no longer any need to kill the Board of Directors. That may mean that our pursuit won’t be coming.”
Brad shook his head. “We can’t count on that. We need to get under cover and find a way to the spaceport so we can get back to the fleet. It’s too dangerous down here. If they managed to decapitate every government in the Jovian system, one Everdarkened storm is going to break loose.”
Sara Kernsky’s wrist-comp signaled. She answered the call and her eyes went wide. As the other person spoke, she sagged with obvious relief in her expression.
“It’s for you, Madrid,” she said. “I think you’d better take it.”
Unsure of what to expect, Brad took her wrist-comp and looked at the screen. Now that he was facing it, the privacy function didn’t prevent him from hearing or seeing the other person on the call clearly.
It was Arbiter Blaze.
He felt himself sagging a little in relief of his own. “I have to confess that I wasn’t expecting to ever see you again, Arbiter Blaze. You’re looking unexpectedly well for a woman that just survived an explosion.”
“Ironically, we’d broken for lunch and I was a good distance away from the hiring hall. At this point, I have no way of confirming who might have died in the explosion, but I’m hopeful that the majority of the participants had decided to get out and get some fresh air.
“Governor Johnson was with me, so she is the only one of them I can say with absolute certainty survived. The initial reports are that it was a conventional explosion and that the hiring hall is completely gone.
“The buildings around it absorbed the majority of the blast and funneled it upward. I’m certain that everyone is scrambling to make sure it didn’t compromise the integrity of the dome, but if you’re not in a safe place, you might want to get to one soon.”
“We’re just getting organized to head toward the spaceport where our shuttle can pick us up,” Brad said. “We managed to rescue most of the directors of the Mercenary Guild. Unless they object, we’ll take them with us at least as far as there, and then they can make their own way to somewhere safe.
“They’ve issued an overriding contract, so I’d expect a lot of mercenaries to be headed back this way in the very near future. How will the explosion affect the Jovian system, if it took out most of the leadership?”
“Badly,” she said bluntly. “One thing that it will not affect is whether the Jovian system will support your actions against the OWA. That choice rests with me and I’ve made my decision. Jupiter will fight beside the Commonwealth fleet and Mercenary Guild.
“The only thing I insist on is that you personally are in command. Together with whatever mercenary companies you can gather, we’ll do our very best to stop the OWA under your banner.
“Those bastards made very clear that they were no different from the Cadre and they vindicated everything you said earlier. Sometimes people just can’t stop themselves from doing the very thing that’s going to get them in trouble. Let’s hope it kills them this time.
“Call me back when you’re back on your flagship and I’ll have a better report on the casualties here. Good luck, Admiral. And good hunting.”
With that, she disconnected the call and he handed the wrist-comp back to Kernsky.
That news was a relief, but Brad knew it was only a start. What happened with the Jovian system after the fighting was over, even if they won, would be a separate matter. For now, though, it would have to be enough.
It was time for him to go on the offensive. And that meant he had to kick the OWA where it hurt and do it fast.
Chapter Twenty-Two
As soon as he made it back aboard Incredible, Brad summoned his senior officers for a planning meeting. For the moment, it was only the Fleet side, because Michelle was going to be helping organize the mercenary companies as they came in.
She wasn’t experienced enough to command them, unfortunately. They wouldn’t hold enough respect for her to act as her subordinates. Thankfully, the board of the Mercenary Guild had thought of that and selected someone they could be sure would be able to give orders that the various mercenary companies would follow: Director Sara Kernsky.
It had been a long time since she’d commanded a ship in battle, but her reputation was solid and her authority unquestioned. In this case, she wouldn’t be leading any specific ship but would be acting as the flag officer directing the mercenary contingent under Brad’s command.
To do that, she first had to get all mercenary ships gathered at Io. Many of them were already in the Jovian system, but some were coming from the asteroid belt and various other locations scattered around the Solar System.
While she was doing that, Brad was in his office with Commodores Bailey, Nuremberg, and Jahoda. All of them looked grim.
“What a damned mess,” Bailey said straight off. “How did the OWA get all of these people in here? How did they plant explosives inside the mercenary hiring hall? Do they have every single organization out here penetrated six ways to Sunday?”
“Pretty much,” Brad said without much emphasis. “The Cadre has had a long time to put people in positions of power out here. The Jovian system is their playground. Jack Mader—long before anyone knew he was Jack Mantruso—was a senior political operative on Io for almost two decades.
“Every time they’ve made a move in this area, it’s caught us by surprise because they have forces and observers that we just can’t guess at in reserve. Everdark, they had an entire chemical weapon research facility buried in the Trojans.”
Commodore Nuremberg leaned forward and scowled. “I know that you don’t mean it like it sounds, but you act as if you’re already defeated. We don’t need to sit here, going over how screwed we are. We need to find solutions to take their strength and break it.
“They have to be just about finished with their fueling operations at Saturn. Once they start for the Jovian system, we’re going to have to meet them. As it stands right now, that’s going to be a tough fight. How can we improve our odds?”
“Fuel,” Jahoda said. “Even though they’re going to top off their tanks at Saturn, if they hope to strike Mars and then still make their way to Earth for the final fight, they’re going to have to refuel again.
“They can’t risk running out before they get to Earth or, worse yet, in the middle of the fight to conquer the planet. That means interdicting all sources for refueling here is critical.”
Brad had to agree. While he knew that the OWA had several small prototype refining systems that could work on ice bodies, for that many ships, they’d need something a lot bigger. He knew that the easiest way for them to refuel would be usin
g the refineries serving Jupiter itself, but he had to know that Brad, or whoever had ended up in command of the Commonwealth forces around Jupiter, would destroy those before he allowed them to fall into enemy hands.
So, that meant there would be another fuel depot hidden somewhere in the Jovian system, like the one he’d found in the Belt, though undoubtedly a lot larger. They’d had to have used it to fuel the ships that attacked Mars, since they hadn’t controlled Saturn at that point. The trick was going to be finding it in time to make a difference.
Brad was about to say that when his wrist-comp signaled. Since he’d set it not to disturb him, someone on his staff had overridden that to allow the call to go through. That probably meant it was bad news.
He brought the screen up and answered. “Madrid.”
Arbiter Blaze appeared on the screen, her expression even grimmer than the last time Brad had spoken with her. “I’m glad to see that you got back into orbit, Admiral. My hopes that the majority of the political leaders of the Jovian system had escaped the hiring hall seem to have been in vain.
“We’re still looking for anyone that might have been out of the building at the time, but all indications are that the blast killed a minimum of sixty percent of the political leadership out here. A minimum. Worst case, that number goes up to seventy percent.”
Brad felt his stomach do a slow roll.
“That’s awful,” he eventually said. “Do we have any idea how they got the explosives inside the building?”
Blaze shook her head. “And with the destruction of all the security systems, we’ll probably never know, unless we capture whoever planted them. Our friendly local OWA representative seems to have disappeared, so he’s very high on my list of suspects.
“I wish I could say that I’m confident that we’ll catch him before he escapes from Io, but I’m not. Frankly, if he isn’t already in space, I’d be astonished.”
The disarray that the various political entities would be going through from having their leadership killed was almost unimaginable. The only thing that kept it from being an utter disaster was the fact that they had decided to allow Arbiter Blaze to make the final decision before they’d been killed and that she’d survived. The OWA had missed the one person that they’d absolutely needed to kill.