CASPer Alamo

by Eric S. Brown

  The fact that Valero relented and agreed to hire Bowie’s Marauders made Neill more than a little nervous. It meant Valero was out of options and this was a situation which reeked of desperation. That kind of thinking kept Commander Neill up at night. Well, that, and the howling sounds that came from the nearby mountain…

  “Can you make this thing go faster, Dustin?” Commander Neill barked as he tried to shut off the barrage of thoughts plaguing him. “The sooner we get back, the better.”

  Dustin nodded and hit the accelerator, leaving what was left of Johnson and Page as little more than a blood-stained smear in the rearview mirror.

  * * *

  The Sanctuary was a stunning, gleaming mass of metal that sparkled in the dust of Durin II. Although the planet was an Earth-like substitute, and base camp was as much like home as any gold rush town had ever been, The Sanctuary itself was out of place in the strange shadows of the mountains Father Valero and his brethren had been mining. In that way, it lived up to its name, serving as a place of protection against the beasts that had reduced Johnson and Page to scraps of meat on a butcher’s floor.

  Commander Neill felt equally relieved and uneasy when he saw it, appearing on the horizon like the hand of an iron giant digging its way out of a premature grave, metal spires rising into the air like steely fingers grasping for air, for life. Digital glass had been set at intervals, displaying cryptic scenes from the religion in which Father Valero and the others placed their faith. Images of fire and mushroom clouds raced across the polished walls of The Sanctuary, alternating with scenes of strange beings with eyes like golden coins performing rituals in a circle at the bottom of a dried-up Martian canal. Even now, Neill didn’t know as much about the sect as he would have liked, and none of the scenes made sense to him. But it didn’t have to make sense; Neill and his group were hired guns here, not acolytes.

  “Am I the only one who thinks it’s a little weird we didn’t find the monsters on the scans?” Dustin asked as he gunned the engine, eager to get back inside the walls of The Sanctuary. “Those things are pretty reliable. And yet, here we are having to scrape Johnson and Page up off the ground.”

  “I think about it every time somebody else gets torn apart,” Robbins admitted as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. “These religious types really creep me out. I don’t see how anyone can believe in an all-powerful, merciful creator given the constant conflict all around the galaxy.”

  “They really do seem to believe though,” Dustin commented. “Why else would they willingly choose to live in these kinds of conditions if it wasn’t ordained by a higher being?”

  “Hey, Sherlock,” Commander Neill said to Robbins. “You ever think that maybe all the electromagnetic radiation beneath the planet’s surface just might have been enough to mess up the scans of this place? We have enough real problems without you seeing shadows at every turn.”

  “Maybe,” Robbins conceded. “But still…”

  “I think you’ve been plugging into too many digital dreams,” Neill said. “Lay off those for a while.”

  “The guy who believes in conspiracy theories is always made fun of until he’s proven right,” Robbins said with a nervous laugh. “Maybe I’d just prefer to think we’re all going to die for a purpose, and not just because some radiation messed up the scans. We don’t even know how many of the monsters there are out there, but I know it’s more than we can handle.”

  “Maybe we should have just skipped the scans and consulted you instead, Robbins. You seem to have all the answers.”

  “We’re on a wasteland planet with a group of religious fanatics, and a horde of unknown monsters have been systematically picking us off a few at a time. Conspiracy or not, those are the facts,” Robbins said. “If we can’t do the job, there is a very good chance we won’t make it off this rock.”

  “He has a point,” Dustin noted.

  “You meatheads knew the gig going in,” Commander Neill reminded them. “We don’t have to understand Valero’s religion to protect him and the others. It’s a very simple job. Keep Valero and his people alive, make sure the miners are able to do their thing, and blast any monster we see within a thousand yards of this place. Now, enough talk about all of this. This is our job, and that’s what we’ll do. I have a headache from listening to you two whine about seeing a little blood.”

  Both Dustin and Robbins went quiet as they approached The Sanctuary. Truth be told, Commander Neill didn’t want to die because of some kind of scanning glitch either, but he couldn’t show his fear. If he crumbled, the entire unit would crumble. Obviously, Robbins was right to be afraid of perishing. Seeing men like Johnson and Page eviscerated would make even the most hardened veteran go pale. But it wasn’t just the savagery of the killings that had Neill’s men running scared. It was also their inability to understand and fight the unknown that made the fear more palpable. So far they had very little idea what they were up against. They might as well have been fighting against ghosts.

  Neill knew they were going to die if these mercs didn’t live up to their rep.

  The Father and his people were a peaceful lot. They didn’t believe in killing, and had no combat training whatsoever. That was why he and his small group of men had been hired in the first place. But now, as the monsters had shown themselves and spilled blood in ever-growing amounts, Commander Neill realized the number of their unseen enemy was far greater than he had first anticipated. They were ill-equipped to handle this.

  Commander Neill knew he just had to survive the gig, and then it would be onto the next world, the next colony. Still, in this line of work, there were no guarantees, and he couldn’t simply assume he would make it out alive. That kind of thinking is exactly what got men killed. He told himself to remain tough in the face of the carnage. Yet, telling himself to be brave and actually doing it were two different things. He was scared. The only consolation was that, soon enough, the mercs would be there, and much of the responsibility would be lifted from his shoulders. Colonel Travis and his group couldn’t get there fast enough.

  As they finally arrived at The Sanctuary and Neill witnessed some of Father Valero’s group engaged in prayer, he thought to himself that maybe this was exactly the kind of place he could find religion. At the moment, he needed the kind of fervent conviction that Valero and his men had, the kind of unwavering belief that drove you to settle on a frontier planet and set up a mining operation while bloodthirsty dangers waited on the fringes of civilization. He needed to believe in something, because right now he couldn’t even believe in himself.

  * * *

  As ordered, Lieutenant Blair and his men had serviced the CASPers, both their unit’s standard Mark VIIIs and its newly-acquired Mark VIs, and made sure they were combat-ready. Colonel Travis and Blair’s boss, Major Robert Evans, the unit’s ordnance officer, would likely find something that wasn’t to their liking, but Blair knew the CASPer suits were good to go. They had checked the jumpjets, made sure the enhanced arm shields that had been retrofitted specifically for the Mark VIs were operational, serviced the fuel cell modules on the Eights, and run diagnostics. Nothing would go wrong…well, at least not with the mecha.

  Lieutenant Blair waited until he was sure Colonel Travis was at the other end of the ship before slipping into his cabin and re-reading the anonymous comm message that had appeared on the plasma readout: “Only death can be found on Durin II,” it read.

  Who had sent it? Why? Lieutenant Blair had no clue. It didn’t make sense that someone would send the message to him. He wasn’t the one calling the shots. If someone was trying to issue a warning, why not send it to Travis?

  Death on Durin II?

  It didn’t make him feel any better about the mission. On the surface, suiting up to blast a few bloodthirsty creatures on an Earth-like planet sounded like just another day at the office. It was the terms of the arrangement that made Blair uneasy. Three times the normal rate plus a percentage of profits from all mining operations. That was a
crazy deal that seemed too good to be true. Why had Father Valero made such a lucrative offer when the job should have only warranted a fraction of that cost? Why had so many other groups turned him down? Did the colonel know something about the planet and the situation there the rest of the company didn’t? How had the man been able to haggle such a rate?

  They only had a short time before reaching Durin II, and then it would be too late. Thinking he might be able to gain more information before they landed, Blair decided to try reaching out to his anonymous tipster.

  He tapped out a response. “Who is this? What kind of danger on Durin II?”

  Not expecting an immediate answer, Blair was about to head back to the mech bay to double-check that all of Colonel Travis’ orders had been followed to the letter when he heard the ding of a comm message.

  “There are some things that even CASPers aren’t tough enough to destroy,” the message read.

  Blair’s blood ran cold at the thought. He was just about to type out a reply and ask for more intel when the colonel’s gruff voice came through his comm. “Blair, get to the mech bay ASAP. We have some things to discuss.”

  Blair sighed and hit a red button on his comm. “Be there in five,” he said, glancing back at the last message on the plasma readout.

  * * *

  Crockett sighed and ended his transmission to Sawyer. He sat in the small pilot compartment of his transport ship, Bear. Running his fingers through his thick, brown hair, Crockett knew he had done all he could to warn the inbound vessel away from Durin II. If the mercs aboard it were too dumb to listen to what he’d told them, well then, that wasn’t on him.

  Sliding his tomahawk from where it hung on his belt, he held the weapon in his lap, staring at it. It wasn’t a real tomahawk. It had a blade that could cut through low level armor, and its shaft was made of metal not wood, but it looked enough like an actual tomahawk to warrant the name.

  Crockett had owned the weapon for many years and carried it with him during his years as a frontiersman and explorer. Now it was little more than a gimmick, a part of the appearance he put on in order to live up to the legends about him. Most of the stories were just crap but, for whatever reason, folks liked to believe in them.

  Being famous had its ups and downs, yet it was his fame that had gotten him permission to land on Durin II. Crockett had been surprised to hear that Father Valero was a fan. The isolationist priest had invited him to land almost as soon as Crockett told them who he was.

  These days, he made his living as a courier and peddler. Bear had been stocked full of exotic foods, knick-knacks, toys, and other odds and ends from across known space when he arrived. Almost all of his stock had been snapped up by the colonists of Durin II.

  The colonists were a peaceful lot and really seemed to walk the faith they talked. That was a rare thing no matter where you went. He really felt bad for them. They were all going to die horrible, bloody deaths. And unless he could talk the inbound mercs out of the replacement part he needed for Bear’s astrogation system, he was going to be dying alongside them, because Father Valero and his followers didn’t have any spare units lying around.

  He had heard of Bowie’s Marauders and knew them to be a hard-hitting merc company. Against most threats, they would have been a more than adequate adversary. However, this threat wasn’t normal, and he was one of the few people who knew what they were truly up against. Maybe he should have gone the direct route with his warning and told the lieutenant who he really was, explained himself a little better, and offered to help the mercs in exchange for the part he needed. There would have been some challenges, but nothing that couldn’t have been overcome.

  Crockett hoped he was wrong about what was about to go down on Durin II, but he doubted it. He knew the signs, had seen them in other frontier colonies much like this one, and remembered how they could pour out of those fissures in the earth like ants out of a wrecked anthill. The thought made him shudder.

  He didn’t have any hard data on the number of monsters living beneath the planet’s surface, but he figured them to be an overwhelming force even against heavily-armed professionals like Bowie’s Marauders. None of it was his business. He just needed to get his ship fixed and away from Durin II. Sure, Bear was flight-capable right now, but once it cleared the planet’s atmosphere, he’d have no means of navigating the void or getting to the stargate. His only option would be to attempt a blind transit, and those, more often than not, ended in tragedy.

  Crockett’s thumb unconsciously stroked the side of his tomahawk’s blade as he thought the whole mess over. It was hard to accept that he was just as trapped as Father Valero and his order without the part he needed. There was no easy way to obtain it from the mercs without tipping them off, face to face, about what they were likely up against on Durin II. In his experience, mercs liked to establish martial law in situations like the one here until they were able to fulfill their contract. Colonel Travis was just as likely to order him to remain on-world as he was to sell or trade Crockett the part he needed. The only comfort Crockett could find in the entire mess was that Travis couldn’t legally conscript him into service, no matter how desperate things might get. Bowie’s Marauders was a merc company, not a Peacekeeper force.

  The roar of a massive ship’s engines overhead tore Crockett from his thoughts. He jumped up from his seat and raced out of Bear. His boots clanged on the metal of the small ship’s unloading ramp as he ran down to have a better look at Sawyer. The word ‘behemoth’ came to mind as he watched Sawyer fly over The Sanctuary, and slow to land in the clearing beyond its northern wall. His little ship had been able to land inside The Sanctuary, making use of the trading vessel spaceport that was still under construction.

  Based on random bits of comm chatter he’d picked up, Crockett knew that Sawyer wouldn’t be hanging around any longer than she needed to. Her captain would unload the mercs as quickly as possible and then get back out among the stars. In that way, Sawyer was little more than a glorified space taxi, and its captain was basically a well-paid shuttle driver.

  There was no point in heading over to the northern wall, though that looked to be where everyone else in the streets near the spaceport was heading. He had seen mercs disembarking many times in his life, and the sight held no thrill for him. The mercs would be too busy offloading and meeting with Father Valero for him to approach them about the part he needed. He would hit them up when they were settled in, provided they made it that long.

  Crockett watched as the last of the colonists making for the northern wall vanished from his line of sight, then stomped up the ramp and back into Bear. If he was going to have to wait, he might as well do it somewhere with air conditioning.

  * * *

  Dillard watched from the guard shack as Sawyer seemed to grow before his eyes, starting first as a pinprick in the strangely-purpled sky, then blotting out more and more of the two closest stars as it began its descent. Help was on the way, and he couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief. He had heard enough about the merc group aboard Sawyer to know they were bad news and not to be messed with, which was exactly what they needed here on Durin II.

  He had considered joining a merc outfit himself, before realizing that he didn’t have the stomach for it. He was only 19, and hadn’t been hardened and shaped by life to a point where spilling blood came naturally. He considered that to be a good thing, even if it made him seem a little soft to other guys in his unit. He wasn’t even sure he could kill someone if the situation called for it. Thankfully, he’d never even been in a situation that required drawing his weapon. Now that the mercs were here, he hoped that meant he wouldn’t have to.

  Dillard rested his hand on the butt of his pistol and wondered what it would take to goad him into using it; whether he could pull the trigger even if the situation called for it. The other men in Commander Neill’s unit had been grumbling about monsters picking them off one or two at a time. So far guns hadn’t done much to save the folks who had bee
n torn apart by whatever was lurking nearby. Maybe bullets wouldn’t work on them. Nobody really knew what they were, only that they were deadly. Everybody was spooked, and Dillard was no exception. Could he kill one of those things if it came for his throat? Or would he freeze in his tracks and die horribly?

  He lifted his field glasses to his eyes and scanned the mines for any sign of trouble. Everything at the foot of the mountain looked normal…or as normal as it could look on a foreign planet. Father Valero’s group had gouged out deep tunnels in the rock, and dozens of men were busy blasting and hauling chunks of stone away from the mouth of the mine shafts. Several groups of rugged, dirty miners manned industrial drills, boring new holes in the side of the mountain.

  Satisfied things were fine down at base camp, Dillard leaned back in his chair and began to daydream about the girl with cornsilk hair he had left behind. Her name was Sarah, and even now, as he thought about the last summer they’d spent together, it made him wistful for home. There was nothing as beautiful as Sarah here on Durin II, only harsh, rugged landscapes…and monsters. Why had he elected to join Commander Neill’s group again? His father had forced him to do it, thinking that a little time spent off-world would harden him, teach him responsibility, and make a man out of him.

  He wanted to go home, but the contract he’d signed wouldn’t be up for another couple of months. He hoped Sarah would be waiting for him when he got back. She had promised she would. In that moment, sitting in a guard shack on a frontier world, Dillard made up his mind. This wasn’t the life for him. If nothing else, his father had been right about this job teaching him a lesson. He knew this wasn’t what he wanted. When his time was up, he would go find Sarah, get a mundane job, and hit the reset button on life. Maybe this time next year, he and Sarah would be engaged, planning their life together.