by Tim C Taylor
I looked into her bloodied alien face, but I could see no answers there.
“Why?” I cried, but she knew me well enough not to answer.
“The stupid, soft bastard,” I railed. “Damage Unlimited, He… it… hell, I don’t know… it let us win.”
“I know,” she said and leaned in close enough to rest the cool flesh of her kesah-kihisia over the back of my head. They throbbed gently as she sent enough emotional salve to soothe away my wildness.
“The animus trusted you,” she said. “So do I. If you want to justify our trust, you need to take a few deep breaths and then get your shit together, NJ. This isn’t over.”
I looked at her contradictory face, with its black lips tight with concern, and huge eyes exuding cuteness, and smiled. My smile grew into a laugh that echoed through my ghosts.
I don’t like aliens. If you knew my history you wouldn’t have to ask why.
The first time I ever saw Silky was through the sights of my SA-71. I still couldn’t fully explain why I hadn’t shot her on sight, but as time went on I regretted that less and thanked fate for bringing her to me.
The sense of calm she was projecting from her kesah-kihisia stuttered and changed into something guarded that she rapidly snatched away from me.
Her skin had the color and texture of desiccated fish skins coated in powdery white river silt, but her neck and cheeks had suddenly flushed with lilac.
“I had no idea you regarded our association as positively as I do,” she said.
Dammed alien. Hang out with an empath and you can kiss goodbye to private thoughts. “Don’t flatter yourself,” I snapped. “I just feel sorry for you.”
She widened her black eyes and blinked them at me, like a doleful kitten.
“Stop that! Stupid alien.”
She didn’t. Silky was the most serious, professional, focused and downright scary individual I’d ever met except for her sole weakness. Me. She liked to tease me.
But this wasn’t the time or the place. There are few things as sobering as the sight of a battlefield, and the scene around me brought me back to my senses. A light coating of sand and ash did little to hide the chaos of shattered wood. A knee-high forest of arrows stuck up from the smoldering beach pockmarked with craters.
Of my team, all were still up on their feet. Most were immobile and silent, but Shahdi and César were striding over the corpses of our opponent, playing flame and laser over anything that looked green.
“That’s enough!” I shouted at them. “Damage Unlimited is dead. He was an alien, and he might look and act very differently from us, but he was a warrior and one with a code of honor we would do well to emulate. Respect him and cease fire.”
My comrades heeded me, but my own words spoke to me too. Damage Unlimited deserved my respect. And I knew exactly how to show it.
“Sel-en-Sek, set up the blower to Port Zahir, would you? I need to speak to the big boss.”
——
“How’s it going?” asked Branch Director Laban Caccamo over the secure comm link a few minutes later. Don’t be fooled by his easy-going manner. None of us on this planet would be alive if not for the likes of Caccamo. He was a genuine war hero who still harbored secrets, but my ghosts trusted him to the hilt, and so did I.
“That depends…” I replied. “Boss, you know you added a new clause to the contracts? After the business with Hurt U Back, we now have the right to withdraw from contracts.”
“We can withdraw at any time before the revenge clause is triggered. Premiums are returned and we pay a small indemnity. But your contract with Zhang-Unison Forestry has already triggered, NJ. There’s no way back.”
“Yeah, about that. Here’s the thing. We’ve just slaughtered everyone who harmed the loggers. Every last one of them. That sound to you like revenge?”
“Yeah, I’d say so.”
“Does that mean we can cancel the remainder of the contract?”
He laughed. “So far I’m saying yes. But there’s something you aren’t telling me, isn’t there?”
I looked around the hut we were using as barracks, grateful that Silky had ordered everyone else out. “Yeah, well, you might not like what I’m thinking. I might be setting a bit of an awkward precedent.”
“That’s why I employ you, McCall. The deranged and the alien can think along channels I can’t. What have you dreamed up for me?”
— 8 —
“You’ve done what?”
If he hadn’t been shouting at my Silky, I would have felt sorry for the small human with the increasingly purple face. The enterprise he’d obviously sunk all his energies and hopes into had collapsed before his eyes, then we’d magicked it back to life, though at the cost of Damage Unlimited’s. And now that Silky had followed through with the idea I’d cleared with Caccamo, Zhang thought we’d snatched it away again. Poor little man.
We were back in the hut that served as the corporate office. Zhang and To’as-Kan were expecting us to explain how Revenge Squad was going to deter any more trees from making a fuss about being cut down. We, though, had other ideas.
Silky turned away from the corporate bosses and walked over to me. “You try,” she said and winked. “I find I am nearing my threshold for violence. They may be former clients, but even so it would be unprofessional to damage them.”
“Former?” Zhang shouted. “We signed a contract.”
The Littorane nudged him with his tail. “The alien is correct, Zhang. It’s in the small print.”
“As the alien has already explained,” I said, ambling over, “we have fulfilled the revenge clause and have now terminated our agreement with your organization. You should know that we have taken on a new client in the vicinity. The animus of the region are under our protection, as are their hosts. Anyone messes with the trees and we take revenge on their ass.”
“But… but none of this is real,” sputtered Zhang. “Even if those tree-things were sentient creatures – and I’m not saying they are – they definitely have no legal status. You can’t have a contract with them. That’s not how the law works.”
“And yet we do, because that’s how Revenge Squad works. We made an agreement with the animus and we will honor it to the death. And on behalf of our new clients, we send you notice to cease logging operations immediately.”
“Impossible!” Zhang’s protests had softened to a whisper. He was a beaten man. “We have our responsibilities too. Those people out there have lives and families that rely upon us.”
“I know,” I said. “My client said to cease logging, not to clear off their islands. Sounds to me like an invitation to stay.”
The human blinked. I’d lost him, but by the way the Littorane jittered his tail, I guessed that although To’as-Kan was also confused, he was sensing a peaceful way out of this.
I grinned. I didn’t have many bright ideas, and most of the ones I did have turned out to be stupid in retrospect, but between me and my ghosts, we’d worked out a doozy. I walked over to the window and watched the Littoranes bask in the shallows.
“Ask the boss to explain,” I told Zhang and To’as-Kan. “She’s more articulate than me.”
And as a nonhuman, a more amenable negotiator to the Littorane, said Sanaa. NJ, being a civilian’s making you sneaky. I think I like it.
Thank you, I told the ghost of my first wife.
I glanced behind to see Silky bowing to the Littorane. “Honored Gishleene To’as-Kan, you told me when we met that you served with the 3rd Marine Army, which I believe formed part of the European Bastion during the liberation of Earth.”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“And while you were stationed on Earth, did you see local heritage sights?”
“Not many. I visited the Parthenon and the Acropolis, ancient buildings at a place called Greece. The natives said they were culturally important for some reason, but all they were to me were irradiated ruins surrounded by tourist kiosks selling overpriced beer. The drink was served as
sealed canisters with a drinking filter to limit contamination from radioactive fallout. If you asked me, I’d far rather come to a place like… Golden Bay. Oh…”
“You see?” Silky said to the bosses. “What better way to show Klin-Tula is becoming something more than another desperate frontier planet than to stimulate tourism? It’s not just Littoranes but humans like it here too. Which means you can make it a joint venture. And why stop at humans and Littoranes? You’re both intelligent individuals with vision, I’m sure you can work the animus into the mix. Imagine the advertising – relax in the unspoiled idyll of the Naddox Archipelago and meet with Klin-Tula’s native people. We established enough of a common frame of reference with Damage Unlimited that I’m sure you can work out a mutually beneficial trade.”
“By the Song,” exclaimed the Littorane, “you are a rare and strange being, Kurlei. I believe you are unique on this planet, and now I know why you came to this world. You do the work of the Goddess.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Zhang insisted. “She does the work of Revenge Squad, which is about as grubbily secular an organization as you’ll find on Klin-Tula. Don’t let her lead you where we don’t want to go, To’as-Kan. There’s a demand for timber. We’re here to supply it. Tourism, natural fuel… these are all blue sky ideas that could work in time, but first we get the timber business profitable. Then perhaps… ah…”
Silky shut him up with a burst of anger from her kesah-kihisia that I could feel from my position at the window. I turned round to watch. I couldn’t miss this.
“I plan on returning, Mr. Zhang,” she told him. “In what capacity, I don’t yet know. Either as a tourist paying you money, or as a heavily armed Revenge Squad agent on behalf of our new client, the animus people. Which would you prefer?” She leaned in so close her plump head tentacles brushed his forehead. “I’ll leave that for you to decide.”
I kept discipline until we were out of sight of the corporate office with its two bewildered occupants. Then the belly laughs reached out of my gut and possessed me. The look in that Earther’s eyes – it was priceless!
Silky and I exchanged an extended glance of mirth before I moved closer to give her a swift embrace. She looked up at me out of those fathomless black eyes and licked her lips. But by the time I’d registered the hunger in her look, I’d already swung her up to sit her on my shoulders and begun marching over to the Revenge Squad hut, whooping in triumph.
I’d only covered a few yards before Nolog-Ndacu burst out of the hut in such haste that he ripped the door off its hinges. Inside, the rest of the team were cheering.
“My friends,” he said, the eagerness obvious in the bobbing of his head. “I have… news…”
The bobbing ceased. Instead, the Tallerman withdrew his head inside his neck cupola like a startled turtle.
I stifled a laugh. For an ancient being with a physique so massive that if he stood still, mapmakers would draw contour lines to mark his position, Nolog often acted like a child. I knew precisely what had burst his bubble.
“It’s okay, big guy,” I told him. “Silky and me weren’t, you know…?” I sighed. “You didn’t interrupt anything.”
Aliens! They’re such hard work.
“I was not mating with the human,” said Silky matter-of-factly, although I distinctly heard her softly purring as she ran her fingers through my hair. “Proceed with your update.”
Nolog’s head popped back out of his neck. “I’ve just received fresh orders from Director Caccamo. He said to haul our bony asses home because the revenge clause has triggered for a client called Salty Harmonic Corporation.”
“Salty Harmonic?” I said. “That’s gotta be Littorane, right?”
“Yes, NJ. Please don’t interrupt – I haven’t finished. Our section is tasked with taking revenge. And, NJ, the director told me to inform you that this mission will involve blowing shit up. Those words exactly.”
“Oh, yeah!” I replied with a manic grin. But if I was excited, that was nothing compared to Silky, who not only oozed her enthusiasm for violence out of her kesah-kihisia, but jerked her thighs together so forcefully that I think she would have choked me to death if she hadn’t sensed my sudden panic.
Oh, she’d put her game face on and be all business as soon as we were on the job, but for now she was utterly intoxicated with the promise of savagery.
When my air passages restored to normal function, I grabbed Silky’s butt, and pushed her off my shoulders and high into the air, so she could show off by somersaulting and landing like a cat.
Already, I could hear the sound of bottles being opened in the Revenge Squad hut, and we rushed inside. No one ever wanted to miss a pre-mission party.
Our team had triumphed. We were invincible. There was drink. Soon, none of us could even conceive of anything going wrong with this Salty Harmonic deal… not even our Tallerman who was back to being as excited as a puppy on amphetamines.
Yep. You guessed it. Things were not going to run as smoothly as we assumed. Maybe we had done okay on this island, despite Damage Unlimited paying such a heavy price, but about everything else… all that being invincible and stuff… as we were about to discover, we couldn’t have been more wrong.
Author’s Notes: Damage Unlimited
Damage Unlimited is a fun introductory novelette that I wrote to give legionaries a flavor of Revenge Squad. (Incidentally, if you join the Legion at humanlegion.com I have a free starter library with introductory stories for all my series: Human Legion, Sleeping Legion, Four Horsemen Universe, Chimera Company, and Revenge Squad).
Revenge Squad was the series I developed in between War Against the White Knights and The Battle of Earth. It might surprise you to hear it was inspired by Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files.
I only started reading Jim’s series while I was writing War Against the White Knights and loved it so much that I knew I wanted to write something similar. Well, maybe not similar, but in my head, I wanted to be pressing the same buttons in my writing that got me so excited about Jim Butcher’s.
Rather than contemporary Chicago, I set Revenge Squad in a frontier world of the Human Legion Universe where retired Legion Marines are trying to learn how to become civilians. Instead of demons and werewolves, we have aliens, and also humans who have gone a bit… extreme.
The hero is NJ McCall. Klin-Tula, the world where he’s settled, has many problems, and no time for one more ex-Marine riddled with PTSD. Now that NJ has finally been forced to retire, he has to confront the enormity of what he’s encountered across two centuries of war (not least the events of The Battle of Earth, where he served).
NJ develops his wisecracking, risk-taking, and anti-establishment attitude as a coping mechanism, because he is struggling to come to terms with the demons in his head as much as the alien demons outside in his world.
In fact, he does have voices in his head – personalities of his former squadmates backed up into combat AIs and then plugged into ports that run along NJ’s spinal cord.
The first novel kept vague about whether these were really independent AIs or whether NJ is insane. I didn’t know the answer myself until partway into writing Hurt U Back.
The Revenge Squad idea was based on old fire plaques of the sort you can still see around the town of Bedford where I live. If you paid money to the fire insurance company, then they would give you a plaque to mount on your building. If your building caught fire, the insurance company’s private fire service would come and put it out. (I did some research and disappointing for the drama possibility, but encouraging for faith in humanity, if you didn’t have a fire plaque, the private fire service would probably put it out anyway)
In my books, if you have a Revenge Squad logo on your property, your vehicle, your clothing or whatever, and if somebody does something bad to you, then Revenge Squad Incorporated will make it their business to take revenge on the perpetrator with extreme prejudice – so long as your revenge assurance premiums are paid up to date.
I s
till think it’s a great idea, and I had about twenty novels planned out for the series. In the early ones, there’s a dark conspiracy swirling around, and it looks as if Revenge Squad Incorporated is the front for some very, very bad people with very bad ideas. Once that conspiracy was resolved (and when I say resolved, that’s quite a world-changing set of adventures in itself) NJ and his mates would have struck out on their own and a second series would emerge called Revenge Squad Independent.
I’m talking as if this is not going to happen. To be honest, the series initially flopped disastrously, sunk by some bad reviews on Amazon from readers who thought… Well, I sought opinions from a lot of fans afterwards to figure out where I went wrong, because my recon team feedback had been very positive.
The most likely explanation, we think, is that I got caught in the crossfire of the Culture Wars and took a gutshot from readers who thought I was writing a feminist social justice warrior attack on toxic masculinity due to my veteran being kept sane, in part, by the nagging of his dead wives (which may or may not be a sign of his insanity!)
It does go to show how important it can be to leave positive reviews if you like a book series and want it to continue. Back with the early Human Legion books, I got sniped with one-star reviews by intolerant people from the other side of the Culture Wars who decided I was a fascist, or who hated military science fiction on principle.
The only reason that first series was a success was because by the time I became a target, enough people had enjoyed the books and left positive reviews that the people trying to ruin me on principle couldn’t bring down the review average enough to kill the series.
To put the matter straight, I have had bad reviews across several titles from people who just didn’t like the writing. I can’t fault anyone for taking the time to share that opinion. As for getting a kicking from people who are intolerant of what they think I represent, that’s just the cost of doing business. No point getting bothered by it.
Nonetheless, that’s why I’ve pressed pause on Revenge Squad for the time being, though I have plans to resurrect it in a revised form in 2021.
