by Declan Finn
Kyle’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded. “My uniform makes me invisible to your sensors.”
Rohaz puffed out a small cloud of smoke. “They’re not supposed to detect you. They’re supposed to detect me.” He took his drink and stepped towards the desk. “There’s a reason that I don’t have people over much. I would hate to slip and fall in the shower, and get them all killed.”
Kyle blinked. “You wired the house for explosives, and linked the trigger to your biometrics?”
“EEG and EKG,” Rohaz confirmed. He placed the glass on the desk, and leaned slightly over the desk. “Now, get the Hell away from my chair, and listen to what I’m about to tell you.”
Chapter 9: Fight Alone, Die Together
January 10th, 2090
Upon reflection, Major Antonio Rohaz, CEO of the Mercenary’s Guild, thought things might have been so much simpler if he had just broken someone’s neck. He could have killed all of those fat little men and been out of the building before any of the employees even noticed they were dead.
But all that would have done was start a war. In the end, he had made the only right choice. The end result was horrific, but it had the lowest body count. It may have been all for the best. But he didn’t believe it before, during, or after—and probably never would.
But Rohaz had been outmatched by the biggest evil ever encountered—bureaucrats.
The multinational corporations who owned San Francisco in 2090 had been running the city into the ground for some time at that point. And from the point of view of Rohaz, the real difficulty dealing with the Corporate Raiders is that the Mercenaries are just jarheads, thugs, and hired, brainless muscle… They’d be polite about it, just before they twist in the knife.
“Let me see if I can sum this up,” he said to the meeting of all the CEOs – somehow, they thought a group of petty little men could intimidate him. “Essentially, you’re offering the carrot or the stick. Join you, or the entire Mercenaries’ Guild gets slaughtered, with our families dying, too, as a kicker on the deal. And, if I join you, you will give my Guild the use of one of your pet Assassins—a real winner name of Derek, who appears to be fully trained, more or less.”
Rohaz didn’t laugh, but instead grinned broadly and lit a cigar.
I’ll be doing some more research on the stupid little pricks in the morning. A bunch of fat, overpriced, immoral slugs will not intimidate me in to killing my friends
These fools think they’re going to take me on. Well, they have more than just another think coming to them. They’re going to have the power of both our Guilds, Assassin and Mercenary, on their backs, and that weight will be more unpleasant than anything they’ve experienced during their entire lives.
I can see it now. The Mercenaries deal with the Corporate troops while the Assassins deal with the Corporate pigs themselves.
This is going to be fun.
***
At his own board meeting, Rohaz stood before the board and laid out the ultimatum from the “Corporate Raiders.”
Five minutes into the meeting, his face became beet red, his eyes alight with what can be only described as the heat of battle. He was tall and wiry, but muscular, dressed in a gray uniform that could be easily seen on a battlefield. His right hand twitched close to his sidearm. The muscles in his face were taut, and he was so enraged that his colleagues swore they felt the emotions coming off him.
He pounded the table with enough force to nearly splinter it. He thumped on it so hard that water glasses fell over, sending water splattering all across the table’s surface.
“I can’t believe you even considered going along with this. Not only is it insane, it is dishonorable.”
“It’s reasonable,” a larger man, Hyatt Wynn, struggled to situate himself in the chair, uncomfortable in the flannel suit. “They leave us alone, and then they give us the ability to pick the brain of an Assassin who’s willing to work with us and with them. Who knows what we would be able to get out of him alone?”
Another, thinner character, Alex Sheraton, nodded. “We can get basic hand-to-hand training, maybe even weapons designs and technology. And, if we can distill his blood, we can get the anti-nanotech modifications that Kaye Wellering provided for them. It would be an extraordinary windfall.”
“You talk to me of technology when I talk to you of men!” Rohaz roared. “Not just any men, but men we have broken bread with, drunk with, gotten drunk with. We’ve broken up bar fights with these men. These are men you can trust when the lights go out in the dark, because they can see in the dark without NV equipment. You don’t even want to kill them for money or power, but for a few pieces of tech and some tactics we’ll find useless. The Assassins fight and act alone, and we use military tactics.
“And what happens next, Alex?” Antonio continued. “If the Assassins are their major problem now, who are they going to see as next major threat to themselves in the city, you idiots? We are the next target! We are going to be the ones on the firing line, and we won’t be fighting with the Assassins on our side. If we stand together, we can take out these Corporate yahoos before this begins...”
“No, Antonio, we can’t take them out,” a softer voice answered him, stating sure fact. “And you know it.” The man speaking was about forty years old, still wearing his hair in the short military cut style. The olive drab uniform he wore was fresh-pressed, and clean. He seemed to be little more than an average soldier, with pale blonde hair and deep, dark, thoughtful brown eyes. “We’ve squandered our resources, really taking care only of the equipment we needed to complete our basic, regular jobs. Whatever else we needed, we got on an as-needed basis. He’d be dead in a direct confrontation.”
Rohaz’s back straightened stiff. “But we can hurt them. “We can make them bleed, and that will make them think twice before trying it. Even if they do continue, and it’s our end, we would make it such an end as to be worthy of a fucking song!”
Wynn growled. “What do you think this is, Rohaz? The Dark Ages? We don’t really give a damn about how we’re remembered. We’ll be dead, and after that, we won’t care at all, trust me. If you want to take your friends and die, don’t expect us to do it with you.”
Sheraton spoke a moment later, agreeing with Wynn. “We really don’t have much of anything to lose, right now. Even if you’re right about us being the next target on their list, then so what? We can take care of ourselves, as you keep pointing out, and I don’t think they’re stupid enough to try the same thing twice in such a short period of time. Besides that, if they want to, they don’t have the resources.”
“Are you so sure about that?”
Michael spoke up again a moment later. “If the Corporations do try to turn on us, we’ll know they’re coming with enough time to prepare ourselves. The best course of action they have right now is to just bide their time.” He took a deep breath, looking over at Rohaz. “Major, with all due respect, Sir… you want to go down fighting alongside the Assassins, but would you have the rest of us die as well?”
Despite my personal desire for blood, my duty is to my men, first, foremost, and always... Whether I like it or not.
***
March 30th, 2090
“Antonio, I am deeply wounded. You have not called, you have not written! I can only assume that I have wronged you in some manner…”
Major Rohaz did not even look up at his friend, Peter Hur, the short, elegant Korean who led the Assassins. “I’ve been busy,” he replied.
Peter chuckled, eyes glittering, his smile widening. “Ah, yes, Antonio, I understand that. After all, you have been quite busy transferring quite a large number of your Guild members in to San Francisco as of late.” He took a step sideways, tilting his head. “In fact, I would say that you are transferring in enough personnel that a person might begin to believe that you have some specific task for them. A paranoid mind would think you were bringing them here for one major job. One that requires every soldier you can lay your hands on.”
/> A moment later, he stepped the other way, head straightening as he glided in to a seat and continued speaking. “Although, I must say I find it most interesting that you would bring in primarily the most degenerate members of your ranks. If they were to be slaughtered on whatever this job is, then you could say you were simply improving the gene pool. I am forced to assume that they are intended to undertake some sort of corrective action.”
Rohaz leaned back. “You could say that, yes. In the end, however, it’s more a matter of punitive duties…if they manage to survive.” He gave Hur a weak smile. “We believe in competitive examinations. Things get quieter as the test goes on.”
Hur smiled again, though not as openly this time. “Well. I would say there would be no great loss, then, if they were to die…” He paused a moment, apparently thinking. “Shortly… tomorrow?”
Rohaz nodded. “Tomorrow.”
Hur nodded. “On another matter…your family is well? I have been hoping that their sudden trip to the East Coast was not due to some danger, or perhaps a sick relative.”
Rohaz almost smiled. If the large troop movements hadn’t caught the Assassin’s attention, moving his family out of the area would have done it. I knew he was going to have noticed that. I was certain he had probably noticed it even before the influx of Mercenaries from other areas had begun… “A trip, Hur…a spur-of-the-moment vacation.”
“Of course.”
The silence seemed to fill the room. Hur now knew what was coming tomorrow, and he would have more than enough time to warn his Guild, and prepare his forces.
After another long moment of silence, he spoke. “Why, Antonio?”
“Why them, or why me?”
“Them I can understand. But you? Do you want to do this?”
Rohaz looked at Hur like he was mad. “If I had my druthers, we would be in the third month of a San Francisco civil war.”
Hur nodded, taking a moment. “Understood, Major. What will you be doing tomorrow?”
“I’ll be there, Hur. I have to be, and you know that.”
He nodded. “Don’t use the retinal scanner on the armory vault.”
“I had no intention of being that stupid. By the way, if you have the chance, you might want to kill someone named Derek. He’s apparently involved in this, somehow.”
The older man raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really? There are some who would find that quite interesting.”
“A good friend of yours?”
“After a fashion. Goodbye, Antonio. I shall see you soon, then.”
“Tomorrow, Peter.”
“Tomorrow.”
***
March 31st, 2090
The uniform of the basic Mercenary in San Francisco was a deep, greenish-gray color, with several elements of armor. There are elbows pads, chest plates, and a helmet with a set of eye goggles that drop down from the helmet brim, installed with ’Heads Up Displays,’ or HUD screens.
The attack began at dawn. The Assassins were waiting, and the bloodbath started immediately on approach. There were explosives set along the path, and a few Assassins sprinkled along it with anti-tank rounds in their guns. Granted, that didn’t stop the surrounding city blocks from being leveled and those Assassins from being killed, but it certainly put the Corporate Raiders on alert.
Dozens of Mercenary troops who made it in to the Assassins Guild Hall were gunned down by automatic weapons turrets. Several dozen more Mercenaries were killed in the attempt to disable these guns, which were finally dealt with by a grenade launcher strapped underneath the barrel of a shotgun.
Several men, with those same launchers, went first down the narrow hallways of the Guild’s headquarters. After several turns, they were cut off at the knees by a wielding laser system embedded in the walls. These lasers were not disabled so much as the pile of bodies had finally grown higher than the laser grid, and those that followed chose to walk over the body of their dead comrades. As this point, the Assassins themselves became involved.
After the hop coming off the pile of corpses, the Mercenaries ran straight into the hands of trainee Assassins. Mercenaries were promptly beaten to death with their own weapons. The battle with the two Assassins is finished only after the death of forty Mercenaries-- a Corporate Raider finally launched an incendiary grenade down the hall, over the heads of numerous Mercenaries, catching the two Assassins as they still grappled with their opponents.
Assassins held Mercenaries in a hall for at least a half hour at a time. At one point, they used anti-tank weapons on the invading personnel, cutting through them like wheat, blowing them in half. Only one man held that hallway. Had there been two, the standoff might have lasted as long as the ammunition. However, when there was a pause of approximately ten seconds to reload a chain belt of ammunition, three Mercenaries came around the corner and gunned the Assassin down.
One particular example took place during one time when the Mercenaries hit what came close to being open ground. They encountered an office space filled with desks, an Assassin behind each one, using them for cover. During the entire firefight, each Assassin fought as though he was alone in the room. Their firepower was not coordinated, and some of the opposing gunmen were gunned down by as many as three different Assassins at the same time. There were attempts by Assassins to wait at the opening and engage the invaders at close quarters, but each time that happened, it was prevented by a simple team maneuver on the part of the Mercenaries. The Assassins were trained at all times to fight as individuals, and so they died that way.
The last of those standoffs was solved by the intercession of a rocket-propelled grenade to break up the formation of Assassins being fought at the time, and after being knocked senseless by the explosion of the grenade, they were finished by a flamethrower being wielded by a Corporate trooper.
A half hour went by before the Assassins leapt out of the buildings on either side of the entry point and attacked, blurring through the ranks of Mercenaries and Corporate soldiers.
Rohaz reached down to grab his Stechkin automatic and slowly drew it out. His magazine was a mix of armor piercing, incendiary, flachette and high explosive rounds, usually enough to turn anyone into charcoal.
At that point, a gun was being held up against his temple by one of the Corporate troops. “You bastard! You gave them a warning! They knew we were coming!”
He smiled. “But I also knew you were coming. We have sonar in these helmets to know where everyone is in our surroundings. And there’s something you should know.”
“What’s that?” the Corporate raider asked.
“You’re dead. Well… more like assassinated.”
His neck broke a moment later and a voice he recognized said, “Rohaz, what is this?”
Rohaz looked over, and there was Lance Kraft, his normally soft midnight blue eyes; looking more like storm clouds at the moment. Kraft’s job was basically “government employee”... And his wife was an Assassin.
Oh no. Rohaz swallowed hard before he spoke, afraid of what Lace’s answer was going to be to my next words. “Please don’t tell me Jennifer is in there.”
He stared at the merc with flat, angry eyes. “She was paged a few hours ago, and I came with her.”
“Get her out of here, Lance. I don’t even think I’m going to live through it, and you know my opinion of my own mortality.”
He gave that little smile of his and said, “That’s what ‘til death do you part’ means, Major. Look after Nevaeh for us, would you?”
A moment later, he was gone, headed to join his wife.
Oh, screw this. Rohaz raised his gun and fired on full automatic, cutting through the Corporates who stood in Lance’s way. No one who looked his way would live long enough to complain about what Rohaz had done.
Once his handgun was empty, he swung his assault rifle up, and was getting ready to begin again when a helicopter arrived, firing randomly into the crowd. There were flamethrowers and missiles aboard, not to mention bullets. No one could be sure
whom it was Rohaz was shooting at, and so they left him alone.
More infantry swept past him, several tripping on the way along—of course, Rohaz had nothing to do with tripping them. Nothing at all…
And, during the course of the battle, they discovered that the Assassins had a device that tripped all of the explosives charges the Corporate Raiders and Mercenaries were carrying. They had ‘mysteriously’ somehow discovered the frequency being used …
Gee, I wonder how that happened? Maybe I shouldn’t have so carelessly left that lying on my desk when Peter came to visit…
When the final wave of Mercenaries rushed past, Rohaz simply watched them go into the slaughterhouse, carefully strolling after them. He had set his helmet HUD scanner to find several personal biometric combinations. Along the way, he had found Mercenaries killed with toothpicks, pointer-sticks and ballpoint pens. Rohaz was almost certain he knew who was responsible for each of them. He had recognized each kill by style.
Rohaz stopped at one point. One of the Raiders was kicking the body of an Assassin nearly burned to a crisp. Rohaz shot the stupid bastard in the back of the head when no one was looking, then rushed forward to be absolutely certain who the corpse was.
The clothes had been blackened and burned onto the body. Most of the flesh had been burned below the thorax, and all that was left of the legs was bone. The Assassin’s hands had been wrapped around the throat of a man with a flamethrower; they died together. Rohaz carefully pried the hands away, and turned over the body.
It was the body of Peter Hur, assassination Instructor, and one of Rohaz’s last friends in the world. I sold him out. He knew I had, and he understood why. I had a duty and a responsibility…and so did Peter. We both fulfilled them.
At that point, all Rohaz could hear were the echoes of the reasoned, rational arguments he had heard over the months. Echoes of arguments he had become sick of. The destruction of the Assassins bought the Mercs time to become fortified against anything the Corporations could possibly throw at them. He had even discussed arrangements to make certain that their systems were impregnable and stocked up on. At that moment, he really care about how well protected the systems were. Peter was dead in his arms, and all Hell was still going on around him. If the Corporate goons were going to turn, Rohaz would have been dead that day.
