by Mel Odom
Dedication
For my wife, Sherry, who keeps my world bright.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
FIFTY-TWO
FIFTY-THREE
FIFTY-FOUR
FIFTY-FIVE
FIFTY-SIX
FIFTY-SEVEN
FIFTY-EIGHT
FIFTY-NINE
SIXTY
SIXTY-ONE
SIXTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgments
About the Author
By Mel Odom
Copyright
About the Publisher
ONE
Offworlders’ Bazaar
Makaum Sprawl
0314 Hours Zulu Time
Taking refuge in the shadows that draped one of the squares, stocky outbuildings dotting the bazaar grounds, Master Sergeant Frank Sage studied his target.
No matter how carefully he’d set up the attack, no matter how much he’d reworked the assault force—balancing between strength and stealth, and moving quick so that rumor of the attack didn’t get there ahead of them—he figured operations were about to go sideways. That was what happened when even the best plans met enemy forces. During engagement, the trick was to stay alive and keep his troops alive too.
He focused on remaining calm, relying on training and combat experience. Those were skills he had that most of the other soldiers around him lacked and he was uncomfortably aware of their absence.
Despite the police action they’d been involved with over the last few months, too many of the soldiers at Fort York were green when it came to fighting. Most of them had only handled the rough trade from the bars and the developing criminal element shipping in from offplanet and those learning illegal tradecraft among the local population. A burgeoning economy in a primitive setting transformed Makaum into an Old West boomtown. There hadn’t been a sheriff to keep the peace.
That had recently changed. The Terran military had stepped up to bring things under control. The speculators from a dozen different worlds operating in the black market hadn’t appreciated the interference, but they didn’t want to gun up against the Terran soldiers, so they backed down more often than not.
Tonight the adversaries would be a lot more experienced and callous than common criminals and junkies. They wouldn’t pull punches and they wouldn’t hesitate to kill.
Sage pushed that thought out of his mind. His troops were committed now, and lucky to have come this far without being discovered by their opponents. That would give the Terran military a slight edge because they would choose when things would go down. Getting discovered early would have forced them to gain access to the areas they already controlled.
Strictly speaking, the Zukimther mercs guarding the three-story building in the center of the bazaar weren’t hostile combatants. Like many of the other alien traders that had come to Makaum in the hopes of making a quick credit, they made efforts to stay away from the Terran and Phrenorian military forces located onplanet. The Zukimther mercs were, however, dealing in explosive contraband that Sage intended to take off the market because things onplanet had become volatile.
Hostile entrepreneurs, Colonel Halladay had called the Zukimther mercs during the briefing prior to the op. The warriors were identified as undesirables just as the corp drug labs had been. Intel on the Zukimther mercs suggested—strongly—that the warriors wouldn’t surrender without a fight. Past history combatting them on other worlds assured Sage of the same certainty.
With the backing of the Quass, the Makaum ruling body, Terran military Charlie Company was there to serve cease-and-desist orders on all transactions. The surviving Zukimther would be kicked offplanet on the first ship bound out of the system.
“Snipers in position.” Sergeant Kjersti Kiwanuka sounded cool and distant over the comm. She was heading up the long-range gunners that would back the engagement, taking out the first Zukimthers who aggressively resisted and threatened Terran soldiers. And the mercs would react aggressively because violence was hardwired into their DNA. After the initial firefight opened up, Kiwanuka and the snipers would settle into overwatch, picking targets as they could.
Using his helmet’s 360-degree HUD, Sage pinged the snipers’ positions and lit them up on his faceshield. All eight of them occupied positions in the ruins of multistory buildings that ringed the marketplace’s walls.
Other structures held central locations within the rectangular area. Dead trees snaked through the structures, proof that the newest generation of squatters in the area used defoliants against the constant encroachment of jungle that covered the planet. Makaum was aggressive down to its core.
The present squatters in the bazaar killed the trees and plants. They just didn’t clear away the debris, only succeeding in slowing down the growth and leaving piles of dead foliage behind. Makaum natives would have worked with the growth and shaped it into useful parts of the structure, and they would have hauled off the detritus for use as fertilizer. Before the arrival of offworlders, the Makaum people lived simple and clean, and Sage respected that.
“Roger that, Sniper Leader.” Lieutenant Hadji Murad, Operation Lynx’s OIC, sounded tense.
As officer-in-charge, Murad was still as green as most of his troops. He was a good guy. Sage liked the man, and one day Murad would make a good officer. If he lived. Living long enough to become adept at command was always the problem with green lieutenants and the sergeants who had to get them there.
“Confirm sniper readiness,” Murad said.
Sage peered around the building’s corner and looked at the Zukimther warrior standing only a few meters away.
The merc was almost three meters tall and massive. His body was corded with natural armor. Twin ridges of bone ran up from his eyebrow ridges, over his hairless head, and to his shoulders. More bone, all of it as durable as steel, overlaid major arteries in all four arms and both legs.
The Zukimther tended not to wear armor because their thick yellow skins splotched with brown patches were as dense and hard-wearing as most composite alloys. They figured it saved credits. And there was a pride issue. Broad belts containing tactical gear and weapons crisscrossed the warrior’s huge chest.
Three of Makaum’s five moons showed pastel green, yellow, and pink crescents in the sky. Cloud cover rendered the moonslight feeble and thin. Shadows pooled in inky darkness. The weak light bathed the loose circular pattern of the bazaar.
In the days befor
e the planet had been discovered by space-faring races and opened up for trade, then exploitation, by the Phrenorians, the bazaar had served as a community place for the Makaum people to trade and share news. The technology they’d had at that point had been minimal. No vids. No sensies. And the drug trade had been limited mostly to wine and natural herbs. Overindulgence of either was punished.
The arriving merchants brought drugs and offworld alcohol as they built up the area, raising buildings of plascrete as they’d needed them, with no regard to style or design. The buildings occupied loose concentric circles around the old Makaum building in the center. The planet’s fierce vegetation tore through the plascrete in short order if it wasn’t kept in check with defoliants, but the Makaum structures remained for the most part because the natives had worked with nature instead of seeking to overpower it.
Traders moved into and out of the building as they wished. As a result, keeping up with who was where at any given time was an almost impossible task even with intel provided by friendly shopkeepers and the local snitches. The crooked alleys and truncated streets provided lots of cover and ambush points. All of this was surrounded by the tall walls where Kiwanuka and her snipers had dug in.
Holding his position, Sage accessed the vid feeds from the other members of the assault team. The images lay ghostly pale over his own view and fed through quickly as he assimilated them. Charlie Company had rolled out six four-soldier fireteams in conventional armor with two four-soldier fireteams in powersuits lying in wait. Plus Kiwanuka’s snipers.
If the heavy cavalry showed early, the Zukimther mercs would set up inside the building and be harder to dig out. Sage hoped to circumvent that.
Sage held his Roley rifle loose and ready. “Lieutenant. I confirm seventeen tangos in sight.”
Those Zukimther showed as thin, translucent triangles on his faceshield, read in by thermographic imaging programmed to identify their heat signatures.
“Confirm that, Master Sergeant.” Murad’s voice sounded dry and cracked a little. “Seventeen tangos visible.”
Word on the street was that the Zukimther mercs were twenty-seven strong. Plus or minus two. Satellite imagery and Kiwanuka’s soft recon before sunset had confirmed that. “The other ten are probably in their racks or on downtime.”
“Affirmative.”
“It’s not going to take them long to join the party once we open this up.” Sage had been clear about that in the briefing but he wanted everyone to remember that now.
“I know.”
Sage kept his voice level but firm. “Waiting for your go, sir.” He knew he had to lead Murad into the engagement and not push. “Let’s button this down and get everybody back home.”
That was the plan, but Sage knew there was a good chance that some of the soldiers wouldn’t make it back to Fort York alive or in one piece. He’d already regretted that as he’d geared up, but that was out of his mind. Now, he focused on controlling the situation and nullifying any threat to his soldiers.
“Roger that. Changing channels.” Murad switched to the command frequency and Sage rolled over with him. “All right, soldiers, let’s shut this place down. On my mark. Go!”
As far as command voices went, the lieutenant was coming into his own. He sounded confident and ready, strong and motivated.
Smoothly, letting the training take over, Sage rounded the building in a single flowing motion and leveled the Roley. The combat rifle fired depleted uranium rounds as well as gauss blasts and laser bursts. For tonight’s action, he’d also equipped it with a gel-grenade launcher slung under the barrel.
“Terran military. Put your weapons—” Sage wasn’t sure if the Zukimther merc heard the public address speaker from his suit or if the warrior had heard him approach.
Either way, the merc went for his weapons before Sage finished speaking. The big alien filled two hands with an Yqueu 20mm assault rifle and his two other hands with Kalrak plasma pistols. Sage’s comm juiced and tried to open a channel, but the damper in his AKTIVsuit immediately blocked that attempt. They’d already dialed in the Zukimther frequencies prior to the op.
Sage held his weapon steady and spoke in a firm, nonthreatening manner. “Put your weapons—”
The assault rifle swung and pointed dead at Sage, but he managed to throw himself to the side before the stream of 20mm rounds and plasma bursts ripped through the air where he’d been standing. The impacts chopped fist-sized holes in the wall as the detonations and impacts rolled over the bazaar. If Sage hadn’t been in his suit with the aud dampers in play, the vicious blasts would have deafened him.
Rolling to his feet and coming up effortlessly, the reticule on his faceshield locked on his target while a secondary reticule tracked another Zukimther turning toward him, Sage squeezed the trigger on the grenade launcher. The Roley twitched slightly as Sage compensated for the recoil.
A trio of blue gel-grenades sailed through the air, stuck to the merc, and smeared only slightly as they grabbed traction and settled. The initial kinetic force of the impacts staggered the huge warrior and he roared in delight, thinking that he had escaped injury. Then the grenade blasts punched him backward, knocked him off his feet, and wreathed his upper body in an incendiary cloud. Red and yellow flames chewed into his flesh, digging past the armored hide.
Sage’s helmet automatically filtered the bursts of light and the sudden thunder, dialing all of it down to something he could handle. Voices of the men and women in his unit echoed around him as they called out to each other.
Roaring in pain, the Zukimther rolled on the ground as he tried to smother the clinging flames. He dropped his weapons and clawed at the mud from the recent rains, smearing fistfuls of it over his body to extinguish the fire.
Sage couldn’t believe the warrior wasn’t dead, but from the severity of the wounds, he knew there was no way the Zukimther was going to live. Aware of the approaching second Zukimther, Sage stepped up to the merc he’d put on the ground, aimed the Roley at the base of his opponent’s thick skull, and fired a short mercy burst.
The depleted uranium rounds cracked the thinner segment of the skull, then penetrated and killed the Zukimther, putting him out of the agony he’d been suffering. Still in motion, Sage pulled his assault rifle up, aimed at his second target, and fired as soon as he had target lock.
Howling like some mythical monster, the second Zukimther warrior fired short 20mm bursts at Sage that slammed into the hardsuit and knocked him backward. Sage aimed just above the muzzle flashes that tracked him and returned fire.
Warning! the suit’s near-AI spoke softly. Seek cover. Armor is taking critical damage.
Sage ducked away to the right, heading for the crumbled remains of a building’s foundation covered in vines and brush. He avoided the deadly hail of rounds as he ducked behind the structure, and he was glad to see the grenade launcher was once again charged and ready for use. He knelt behind the short broken plascrete wall that remained from the building that had fallen into ruins.
“This is the Terran Army!” Murad called over a loudhailer. “Put down your weapons!”
The merc coming for Sage fired on full-auto while at a dead run, and his accuracy kept the sergeant pinned behind the wall that fell in smoldering chunks as the large rounds cored through the building material.
“Master Sergeant!” a hoarse voice yelled.
The three men assigned to Sage’s personal fireteam broke cover and came out firing.
As the Zukimther turned toward the new threat, Sage yelled, “Stay with cover! Hit him with gel-grenades! Move! Now!”
The three soldiers fired their weapons but missed their target and scattered explosions all around the big merc. One of them almost hit Sage. Cursing as dirt, rock, and broken plascrete slammed against him, Sage went to ground.
The men realized the danger they were in when the Zukimther leveled his weapons at them. They pulled back immediately, but one of them got hit by return fire and went down. Another soldier reached ou
t, laid a glove on the downed soldier, and juiced magnetism through the glove, taking hold. The soldier reared back and pulled the fallen one to cover just ahead of another burst of fire that chopped into the ground.
“Kiwanuka!” Sage bellowed.
“Copy that, Master Sergeant,” Kiwanuka answered coolly. “We have you in sight and we are working on a solution.”
Popping up, Sage aimed a burst of depleted uranium projectiles at the merc’s back that made the alien stumble and tore through his hide in several places. As the Zukimther wheeled around, Sage plastered the merc’s chest with gel-grenades. The last one adhered to the Zukimther’s chin.
The Zukimther roared defiantly and unleashed a salvo of rounds that chewed into the foundation where Sage took cover. Then the charges draping his body exploded, and the one on his chin snapped his neck. Incredibly, the merc stood there for a moment as blankness filled his eyes and his heart stilled, then he dropped to his knees and fell face forward.
Four other Zukimther mercs rallied and started for him, but they were briefly targeted by Kiwanuka’s sniper team. The Zukimther dropped and Sage knew most of them wouldn’t get up again.
“Are you clear, Master Sergeant?” Kiwanuka asked.
“I’ve still got tangos on my twenty,” Sage replied.
“We’re having trouble seeing through all the dust and debris. For the moment we’re blind.”
“Understood.”
Another volley of 20mm rounds dug into the foundation fragments and chased Sage out of his temporary cover. Duckwalking rapidly along the low wall, pursued by the rounds, Sage popped up ahead of the enemy fire and took aim. When he squeezed the trigger, depleted uranium rounds dug into the nearest Zukimther’s chest and penetrated far enough into the merc’s hide to draw thick, orange blood, but not far enough to disable the alien.
Twenty-seven meters behind the merc bearing down on Sage, a hailstorm of 20mm rounds caught two soldiers. The continued ballistic assault shredded the AKTIVsuits and left the flesh beneath unprotected. Corpses hit the ground and lay still as KIA stats flared to life on Sage’s faceshield.
Privates McKendle and Birchart, both of Texas, were going home in body bags.
