Kratos stood still for a moment, and then did as bidden and knelt before the boy, putting them face to face.
“Kind of,” he answered. “My…the body I was born with is long gone. My brain and spine are still in here though,” he said, rapping on his helmet with an armored hand.
“Why?” the boy asked.
“Why…?” Kratos repeated stupidly. “This is why I hate kids,” he grumbled inaudibly and Artemis might have let her form slip a tad as she suppressed a giggle.
“Why did you chop your body off? Didn’t it hurt?”
“Oh. Because I was dying,” he replied, blunt and direct. “I was born with a disease called cystic fibrosis, and a really awful case of it. All of the bits in my body that were keeping me alive were failing, and I was going to be dead before I was twenty standard. Same for all of us, we were all dying, and now we’re better.”
“Thank you,” Eric said in a quiet voice, and wrapped his arms around Kratos’ neck.
“For…what?” Kratos stammered. It was, to be precise, the second time he’d ever been hugged in his twenty-five years as a cyborg.
“If you hadn’t chopped your body off, you wouldn’t have been here to save us!” Eric beamed. “I’m sorry you were dying, but this new you is awesome.”
“Thanks, kid,” Kratos replied. “How about you go get aboard ship so we can get you home, huh?”
“Mmkay,” Eric nodded and took the woman’s hand, and she led the boy down the passageway to Pandora’s Hope.
“Dawww,” Artemis teased over the circuit. “You have a fan!”
“Let’s just get this over with,” Kratos replied. “I hate kids. Mostly. I concede young master Eric seems pretty alright.”
* * *
“Once again, I can’t thank you enough Mister, I mean, Commander Bellerophon. It is contractors like yourself that truly does your guild credit,” Sterling North, the Duke of Rideau gushed, shaking Bellerophon’s hand with both of his.
“Thank you, your Grace,” the Myrmidon commander replied. He gestured broadly to the soiree the duke had thrown in his team’s honor. “This is all a bit much; none of my team are really “tuxes and ties” types. The Hellenic Augmented and Robot Defense Corps occasionally hosted Regimental Dinners, with allowances for cyborgs in dress uniform. We’d get a really nice buff job on our armor plates and would pin our medals on with magnets, but that was it.”
“I had been meaning to ask about that, Commander, as I never got your full story. I met with each of the survivors upon their return, and one young lad said something about your troops being ill?”
“Not any more, of course,” Bellerophon nodded. “But yes, we were all dying, once upon a time. Medicine nowadays is basically divided up now into ‘fending off foreign viruses or bacteria,’ and ‘failing body parts.’ The former keeps us hopping, what with xenovirii and exotic conditions. Failing body parts, unless it’s the brain, we’ve got beat. In my case, I had Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy. Had I not swapped out my meat body for this one, I would have been dead and gone thirty years ago. The Lakonia Program made it possible.”
“What is the Lakonia Program, precisely?” The duke finished his rye, and motioned to a server for another. “I imagine some details are secret, but there must be some public knowledge, or no one would sign up?”
“In Ancient Greece, the Spartans threw imperfect babies from the cliffs to be dashed to death on the rocks below, or eaten by predators, or what have you. It was a harsh time, and the Spartans were a harsh people. Spartan men were raised to be some of the toughest soldiers in all of ancient Greece. The Hellenic Cluster’s Lakonia Program subverts that, somewhat, by helping those imperfect babies become some of the toughest soldiers we have. My failing body was gradually replaced over the years I attended the Hellenic Military Academy. Kratos, who told the boy about being ‘ill,’ had cystic fibrosis. My second in command, Daedalus, had Guillan-Barre Syndrome. Everyone on my team had something serious; everyone was dying of something. You have to be facing death square in the face to be willing to undergo full conversion; nobody in their right minds wants to be...this.” Bellerophon gestured to his death’s head face and synthetic body. “We bought our new bodies and a new future by serving our government for twenty years in the HARD Corps, or whatever their local equivalent was. Thor is a ‘Forgeborn,’ from Asgaard. Ryu is from Kagoshima’s Masamune program. Janus is from Palermo, and Nephilim is from New Tsiyyon. Now, I’m the majority shareholder of Myrmidons, Inc: a consultancy corporation engaged in high-risk problem solving, troubleshooting, and holder of several Writs of Marque. My hoplites all hold shares in the Corp, and we’ve shared a lengthy partnership with Pandora’s Hope, one of the fastest corvettes you’ll care to hire. You’ll note it took us barely eighteen days to get here all the way from Parker-Barrow.”
The duke laughed. “No doubt my citizens appreciate your speed and customer service, I know Her Majesty and I do. A trip like that in HMRS Toronto would have taken five weeks, minimum, more likely six.” A well-dressed man in his fifties or sixties, with steel-grey hair and an extensive body-sculpt joined them. “Have you met Mister Lauzon? He’s a vice president with Apex Energy, handles procurement contracts and such.”
“Sir,” Bellerophon said, shaking the newcomer’s hand.
“Congratulations, Commander,” Lauzon said, and the duke bowed out of the conversation and drifted into another. “That was a dynamic situation, and your team handled it professionally. Everyone is pleased to be rid of Carillon and his gang. Could I perhaps get your comm info? It is always in a Corp’s best interests to have a team of heavy hitters on speed-dial.”
“Certainly. Now that we’re off contract, we’re looking for work again. Anything in mind?”
“Perhaps,” Lauzon hedged, looking thoughtful.
* * *
“Hey, Boss, there’s some Johnson here, says he’s got a contract for us,” Daedalus sent over the internal comm. “It’s time sensitive,” he added, the finger-quotes audible in his tone.
“I was just searching the hub for a job. Search ‘em, and bring ‘em up,” Bellerophon replied.
The soiree had gone late, as they tended to, and he’d woken early, as he tended to. No amount of cybernetic conversion could change the brains’ need for sleep, although ‘plants could reduce it. Nor did he suffer any kind of a hangover, despite putting away several glasses of Ridian rye whiskey the night before. He had subroutines to dial up his synthetic liver’s function and was able to filter out all the alcohol in his ‘blood’ without needing to worry about awkward things like hangovers.
The door chimed, and Bellerophon’s second-in-command escorted a suit into their ready room.
“A mutual friend mentioned some unusually competent contractors were in town,” the suit said, with a thick New Rhodesian accent. “I have a time-sensitive window of opportunity for a fast-moving, hard-hitting team of professionals.”
“It’s nice to hear our qualifications summed up so well,” Bellerophon replied. “What’s the job?”
“Two-fold. As you may or may not be aware, El Republica del Escobar is undergoing a bit of a crisis. Seems El Presidenté was holding the entire system together through a network of bribes, blackmail, contracts, and coercion. He got whacked about the same time you were rescuing all those poor lost waifs out in the UST, and the entire Escobaran cluster began tearing itself apart an hour later.”
“What’s the job?” Daedalus interrupted. “We can get the cultural sensitivity brief on the way.”
“As I said, two-fold. One, Escobar was a valued client, but their money isn’t worth Jötunn shite anymore, and Paragon Savage just made a fatal mistake.” Johnson swiped a command on his wrist tablet, and a holo of Montoya III, one of Escobar’s planets, illuminated the air in front of them. “They have a major facility in Montoya’s capital, and had been in Presidenté Vasquez’ pocket. With him gone, their…arrangement, is gone too. They’ve just pulled a significant chunk of their genies out and left the
facility dramatically understaffed, security-wise. Get in, plug in. I have a Hydra worm that will sort, prioritize, and extract as much data as it can in whatever time you can buy.”
“What kind of genies?” Bellerophon asked.
“Paragon Savage is an Alpha tier gene-mod MegaCorp,” the suit replied. “Their top tier operatives are baseline human with wolf, cat or rhino mixed in. The rhinos are living tanks, their skin can stop gauss rounds. Cats tend to be assassins and agents, the wolves…” Johnson trailed off, swallowed hard, and regained his composure, “Intelligent, rational, pack-based werewolves in custom power armor doesn’t really do them justice. Paragon used to be strictly research. Now they have an entire “Direct Action” division and they’re making bank. Living or dead samples are a bonus.”
“That’s a little grim,” Bellerophon replied, “I don’t mind bringing home gene samples from dead combatants but we won’t kidnap someone to turn them into a lab rat, werewolf or not.”
“Johnson” blinked. “Killing is fine, but capture is not?”
“There are fates worse than death. I’m quite sure our mutual friend briefed you on our last job—recall what happened to Mister Carillon, and more importantly, why. What else?”
“There are some friendlies caught in a cleft stick. Apex Energies’ people would appreciate a ride home, but we—they, don’t want rivals to raid their facilities. So you’ll need to scrub the lab and servers, and then demo the building before you extract. Ridian security staff need a ride home as well—they’re co-located with Apex Energies and there’s no way a Ridian frigate could enter the system now, so there is a quiet bonus on the side for them. The Escobaran government is heavily backing contractors, which gives you some leverage to get in where govs cannot.”
“Not asking much, are you? Raid PSG, fight off their commando werewolves, collect samples, evacuate AE’s people, evacuate the Ridians, and demo the AE building, all from a system in the midst of a civil war,” Daedalus summed up. “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”
“I believe this fee should cover your transportation to and from, and adequately address your expertise and the risk involved,” Johnson said, and flashed an eight-digit sum on his tablet. “Half for the PSG raid, half for extraction of AE’s personnel. Ten percent bonuses for each additional objective—the samples, the Ridians, and destruction of AE’s facility.”
“Make it…twenty percent, and you’ve got a deal,” Bellerophon said. “Send Duke North the bill.”
* * *
“It occurs to me the potential for chaos and disaster is rather high on a contract such as this,” Thunderpaws said thoughtfully, and smiles broke out around the ops center on board Pandora’s Hope. Thunderpaws had a gift for understatement, which fit his tiny frame well. The mogwai were aliens from beyond the Windsor cluster, but the two xenos on board could not be more dissimilar. Silver, the ship’s loadmaster, was a xeno from beyond the Yggdrasil cluster. Jötunn were massive, thick-hided, xenos with a reputation for alcoholism and fist-fighting. Thunderpaws, however, was a mogwai. They were the first alien race humanity met when it left the Sol system, and the origin of the aliens’ name was shrouded in history. He was short, barely eighty centimeters tall, nimble, and fiendishly clever; he was a share-holding member of the crew, unlike Silver, and served as their science officer. He had broad birch-leaf-shaped pointy ears, large expressive eyes, and fine fur covered his body from head to toe. Their fur patterns varied with the individual as much as domestic housecats, and Thunderpaws’ own fur was snow-white with wide patches of dark brown.
“Humans are inherently chaotic, and residents of the Republica del Escobar even more so. Montoya holds eight of the ten standard markers for a failing colony, and Marquez is in open rebellion as they have, as you humans say, ‘seen the writing on the wall.’ Unconfirmed reports indicate that El Presidenté’s Republican Guard, having failed in their primary duty to protect Presidenté Vasquez, has been putting down rioting with not just lethal force but excessive lethal force. Bipedal warbots armed with high energy and mass driver weaponry have deployed against civilians armed with little better than rocks and homemade incendiaries. Los Jaguares Negros are suspected in several assassinations against the rebellion’s leadership, and any journalist who voice their suspicious out loud. Civilian casualties are, at minimum, in the six-digits.”
“You’d think the Ridiots would have known to cut bait before it got this bad, eh?” Kratos mused.
“A study of human history would show they, culturally, have a multi-century long history of blindly hoping all would work out for the best, and then blaming their political leadership for failing to take decisive action when it was clearly necessary,” Thunderpaws replied. “Excessively optimistic, polite to a fault—barring ice hockey of course—strong social net but weak military, unwilling to—”
“It was sarcasm, Thunderpaws,” Mitchell cut him off. Thunderpaws stopped mid-phrase, stroked his white-furred chin for a moment, and widened his already overlarge eyes.
“Ah. Yes, I see. Your linguistic subtleties occasionally escape my notice,” he said in a detached tone. “I have not yet mastered ‘sarcasm.’”
“And we’ll all be in a hurt locker when you do,” Aubyn “Ben” Faolain said with a grin, eliciting a chuckle from around the conference table. The human smiles were Thunderpaws’ cue to smile along with them, but the atmosphere at the table dropped ten degrees when his needle-sharp incisors and canines were bared. The xenos were furry and cute, but their nature as obligate carnivores made for fierce smiles.
Bellerophon resumed his briefing. “Chaos, panic, and disorder will absolutely be the name of the game on the ground, but that’s why they pay us the megacreds. Hitting Paragon Savage will be a standard corporate raid, one each. I don’t mind clipping ears if we get into a firefight, but under no circumstances are we kidnapping a genie for AE’s mad scientists to enslave and torture, fuck that noise. Not even for three million.”
“Three million yen? For a seven-system run headlong into a civil war to rescue some Darwin candidates who couldn’t see their way out the door?” Kratos interjected. “What the hell, over?”
“That’s the bonus,” Bellerophon calmly replied. “Total vig is fifteen million, with three additional objectives worth three million per. Genetic samples, extracting the Ridians, and demoing the Apex megascrape means fifteen becomes twenty-four million. The crew of the Pandora get their standard one quarter cut, plus combat bonuses, if any. After the Corp gets its percent, we divide the rest.”
Kratos did the math in his head. After Myrmidons Inc and Pandora’s Hope took its slice, the payment was divided out on a share-by-share basis. He’d invested heavily in the Corp, despite being junior, and “owned” ten percent of the shares in the company and was therefore owed ten percent of what was left. ¥1,440,000 was a helluva payday for one nights’ work, even given the travel time and the risk. Bellerophon owned three times as much, but then again, he’d founded Myrmidons Inc and heavily reinvested in the Corp with his own take too. Part of what made Myrmidons Inc so desirable was their partnership with Pandora’s Hope, which could scream across vast interstellar gulfs at omega band speeds, the fastest blue-shift tech was currently capable of. And that was what earned the Pandora’s Hope crew twenty-five percent of the Myrmidons’ gross contract fees.
“Well in that case, the juice is definitely worth the squeeze,” Kratos opined. “How many friendlies, how many tangos? Do I pack more demo or more ammo?”
“The Ridians have one light squad from the Queen’s First Lancers in powered Coyote armor, so they ought to be solid in a fight, and Apex Energies has moderately well-equipped security forces as well,” Bellerophon continued. “Modern environmental hard armor, and they of course issue their staff their own brand of carbines and sidearms. PITAs likely outnumber us a couple thousand to one. Pegasus can’t lift everyone at once, so if at all possible, we secure the ground level while Pegasus lifts the first wave from the roof. There should be twenty civ
ilians and the AE light security troops; they can go first. We’ll return with Charlie and the Lancers second, and if we have to blow their armor in place, so be it. Gents, that means BRUTE armor, power packs and energy weapons. Ladies, bring your ANGEL gear. Silver and Ben will handle the evacuees on Hope and get them stashed away while we’re still dirtside.”
* * *
The trip to Montoya was tedious, even though Pandora’s Hope was as fast or faster than any ship one cared to name. Smaller ships with larger power plants could reach exponentially higher FTL speeds, meaning they were the modern equivalent of Ye Olde Ocean-Going-Hydrofoils, compared to frigates and cruisers that once sailed Earth’s seas using diesel and propellers. They were still traversing nine systems, though, and it took just over four weeks to travel more than a hundred sixty light years.
Every time they dropped out of blue-shift in a new system, the NavBeacons relaying the latest news made the situation on Montoya sound worse and worse.
* * *
“Dropping out of omega band in four, three, two…” Castell warned, and then Montoya’s sun filled the viewscreen. The usual NavBeacon data began scrolling across the viewscreen, when Thunderpaws spoke.
“Heavy cruiser Bogota, already hailing us,” he said. “They’re ten minutes out and slowing. Deceleration profile suggests…omicron band, about all most Heavies can handle. They’ll overshoot somewhat, but the Cordoba and Nariño are cutter escorts and they’re already slowing at two hundred thirty standard gravities.”
“What do they—” Mitchell started to ask, but Thunderpaws interrupted, continuing his update.
“Flash update from NavBeacons, Montoya system is under martial law and unauthorized entry will be met with lethal force. Bogota has sent a track, and requires we not deviate as they maneuver to intercept.”
“Seems the system has collapsed even faster than we anticipated. Follow their directions,” she ordered, then activated her comm. “Roph, get up here. Our plan may have just contacted the enemy early.”
We Dare Page 15
