Simple, yet deadly.
“Tell you what,” Letha said, taking a supercharged blaster from her weapons chest and holding it to the sky to assess, watching the sunlight glint off of its purple paint. “You manage to get someone’s head up their asshole, this baby is yours. Cost me a pretty credit or two, believe that.”
Aisha smiled, but her dark eyes showed a feral glint. “I… don’t think I could actually accomplish that. Not with their head intact. Maybe if I cut their asshole wider first? Maybe if—”
“Relax, girl.” Letha tossed her the blaster. “Just having fun. You hold onto that bad boy for me, use it when needed. Got it?”
Again, Aisha nodded, now holding the blaster out with arms straight. She was quite the sight, this young woman—barely nineteen—standing there in her cutoff shorts, tank top, rich dark brown hair pulled back, and holding this insanely powerful blaster. It was a sight worth keeping a memory of, one that many a boy would be jerking off to back home, so she clicked the button on the metal headpiece that acted as an image capture. They always had cameras built into the metal attachments for when the action went down, and they could take images like this to recall later. She could post it to image boards to earn more fans, or use later for inspiration.
This one was being used for all three—because damn, that sight turned her on, but also because she saw a bit of herself in Aisha. She didn’t just mean her tongue or fingers, although she also had no problem imagining that right now either. In a way, this girl was a mentee, Letha’s protégée, and she meant to eventually set her up just as Mantis had done for her.
Not allowing herself to get carried away or swept up in the moment, Letha wished the girl luck, then strolled off to find her generals. They waited for her in her war room, an inner sanctum of her caves, which was lined with tech acquired on the black market. Here she had the evidence of Aisha’s true value to the team—as ditzy as she sometimes seemed, she was what some considered a tech-ass, short for technical assassin. Others referred to this as being a hacker. She had managed to hack into many of the world’s surveillance systems, monitoring key areas around the globe.
At the moment, her generals were gathered around a cracked screen that showed a series of old ruins—lost relics of a long-ago forgotten alien race, no doubt—and the gleams of metal barely visible in spots from within the surrounding foliage.
“Ah, Letha,” Kale said when he noticed her enter. “Ghost spotted this a few minutes ago when planning the stage of attack. Seems Fireshot’s setting up defenses.”
“He knows we’re coming,” Letha said, furrowing her brow. “Makes sense, I guess. I’d anticipate the same.”
“If you think he’d attack us, maybe—” Brink started, but Letha held up a hand.
“No, he wouldn’t be. But if I were him, I’d expect an attack from us. He’s a fark-fucking dick maggot, ruthless to boot… but cautious.”
“You have a plan then?” Ghost asked. His near-violet eyes made him stand out, even here, and she allowed her eyes to linger on his a moment longer before answering.
“Don’t I always?” She turned to one of the other images, this one of a fortress that was clearly made by stacking boulders, scavenged scrap metal, whatever the people could acquire from the black market, and the fallen fortresses of their enemies. “He’s smart to put his allies in strategic positions around himself, but, and here’s the big but… I happen to know Fireshot enjoys a certain way of fucking that not all women like, one that an especially well-known assassin is into and might be enjoying this very moment.”
“You bought the Dark Mark?” Kale asked, impressed.
“It took enough credits to set her up to be a dangerous adversary after this is done, but she’s on our side. And… I can be quite convincing.”
Letha smiled to herself as she thought back to the moment, the Dark Mark kneeling on all fours before her, that strap-on rocking into the mysterious woman’s ass with each thrust. Not the most comfortable way to get what she wanted, but the way the woman had screamed out, “Oh yes, yes, you own me, you fucking own me!” had made it well worth it. And honestly, the act itself felt damn good, once she got over the mental discomfort of taking part in a scene like that.
Her three generals were all smirking, and Letha shrugged, knowing they were thinking back to the various moments she’d won their hearts over.
“Gear up,” she said, “while I check the troops.”
She didn’t think for a second that they were incapable of betraying her, but it wasn’t the sex that kept them around—it was the threat of what would happen to them if they tried something and were caught.
As far as Planet Kill warlords were concerned, Letha was, on the one hand, the most patient and morally righteous one around. On the other, if you crossed her, shit got nasty. She’d heard the rumors about herself. She had implied that half of them were true, and the other half she wouldn’t admit to. The one about her skinning a traitor alive for a week, feeding them their own shit and piss? Maybe. The one about her wearing an enemy’s flayed skin? No way in hell. She had to draw the line somewhere.
But in truth, she hadn’t done any of that. Not exactly. She had a system, an initiation of sorts, where her new recruits proved themselves in another way. A way that still saw them stripped down in front of the cameras, vulnerable, but usually less bloody. At the same time, it built up her reputation so that others on the planet would be terrified at the thought of her.
As a result, when she approached the Dark Mark, the woman had been both terrified and intrigued. It had gone quite well for her, in the end, judging by the screams. And each of these men in front of Letha right now had that same fascination with her. A mix of terror and lust, filled with the morale that accompanied being given positions of trust and leadership.
She knew how to work with people, and that’s all this really was. Personnel management. Delegation. Six-plus years in human resources trained me well, she thought with a laugh. She walked out into the clearing outside her base. It was a well-guarded area, surrounded by trees and small hills.
It wasn’t an army, exactly. Not even a full platoon—she knew as much because the HR firm she’d worked for had handled privatized military operations in preparation for sending troops out to the Largo Galaxy, where there was supposedly an alien invasion underway. Turned out, the oligarchs had organized a false-flag attack of humans hidden inside armor and masked as aliens to boost the ratings.
The crazy part was that once it leaked that the aliens were really humans in disguise, the ratings shot even higher. The whole intrigue of the conspiracy had drawn more viewers. Instead of making those behind the affair look bad, they all got promotions and bonuses, or so the story went.
It was all just one big sham, everyone lying to each other and doing whatever they could for more ratings. One day, Letha meant to be part of a change that saw this style of life vanish. Unfortunately, the only way to get there was to beat them at their own game.
And these fighters were going to help her. What she had was a squad, divided into three teams of four. While it wasn’t exactly accurate to have three generals in one squad, she wasn’t leading an actual military, so she could do what she damn well pleased. Another squad would stay behind to guard the base and take out any stragglers who might wander too close.
These fighters ranged from a few who had been with her for at least a year or two, to some who had joined up as recently as the last arrival of recruits a month ago. Most recruits died within the first week or two of landing, but ones who were smart enough to join up with warlords—if they were able to prove themselves valuable enough—might make it several months. Only the very lucky and skilled lived through the first year, so to have them on her team meant she had valuable players in this game of death. As far as she knew, she was one of few who had lived here as long as she had. Five years was a long time, more than many. The exceptions were a hermit who went by Sweeney, and the warlord known as Pete’s Dragon. He was a man who was w
idely known to be insane and even insisted on being pulled around on a leash by a younger, more attractive man. Despite that, he was ruthless when it came to battle. Sweeney was an outlier—a man who rarely seemed to fight but had somehow managed to survive this place over the years, as long back as anyone could remember. She knew there were probably others, loners who had holed up somewhere.
Letha had bigger plans than just survival though, so she had to take action. She did her best to equip her people, and it showed. Her squad had an assortment of weapons ranging from blasters, shoulder cannons, swords, a couple of shockers like her own, and more. Some wore differing amounts of body armor, and a guy named Trunk preferred to fight in the nude, claiming he was an ancient Greek god, reborn. He’d made it a year—who was she to argue? And honestly, she enjoyed seeing that massive “trunk” of his swinging around in battle, even if she’d never let it near her. There was fun in the sack, and then there was pain. That was pain, the type that she couldn’t allow herself when three or four days of limping around from an overdose of thick girth could get her killed.
When not in battle, she insisted Trunk wear a loincloth, to keep the other fighters—men and women—from getting jealous or gawking.
Her other most experienced fighter was a tall woman that everyone referred to as Redwood. Surprisingly, given the nature of the place, her nickname was actually not sexually derived at all, though Letha could think of a thousand reasons why it could be. No, Redwood had earned the nickname for the way she preferred to remove her opponents’ hands before finishing them off, so in a way they looked like trees, gawking at their handless limbs, before she delivered the final blow.
Even Letha thought the name was a stretch, but she admired the woman. She’d even made a few passes over the years, wondering what it would be like to fuck a woman that size, but Redwood was purely into dudes. Letha had been too, before coming here, but there was something about the freedom of going back and forth whenever she felt like it that was liberating, even helped her get through all the bloodshed and massacre. And there was the strategic side, of course.
“You look like you’re ready to fight,” Letha said, after assessing them and giving them a nod. Her style was to prepare for battles as if she were in a movie, because in a way, she was. An ongoing, never-ending, livestream of a slasher flick, kind of. Or thriller meets porno, she supposed, remembering the way she had once sat at the edge of her bed eating popcorn, watching the sex and the violence with wide eyes, never really thinking of it as real.
Well, now she knew.
“I want each of you to remember one thing—put on a show. This is about survival, but not just in the moment. It’s about the long game, about showing all those lovely people back home what you’re made of, what you’re capable of. And in some of your cases, how the gods blessed you.”
Everyone eyed Trunk, laughing. He struck a pose, loving it.
“This is going to be a quick in-and-out job, an assassin piece,” she continued. “That is, if it goes according to plan. However, we all know what happens to plans.”
“We make plans so that the gods can shit on ‘em,” Trunk shouted, emboldened by her comment toward him.
She nodded, letting it slide.
“I’ll be going in to take him out, you all be ready. He’ll have people there, though we might not know who until the shit hits the fan. When they move, you move. I want this to be a bloodbath, understand? You want your ass on a poster? Your name whispered in the rooms of everyone back home watching? Prove yourself in this battle, and you can become legends.”
They cheered, though she wondered how many of them bought the shit she was shoveling. Would they get recognition? Sure, but they weren’t about to get action figures made in their image until they reached her level, and even she wondered if she was high enough for that yet.
A glance back showed the generals were geared up and ready to roll.
“Move out!” she commanded, and as one they turned, beginning the long journey through the night. If the Dark Mark did as she was told, that son of a bitch Fireshot would be exhausted, go for his precious water, and then collapse, unconscious. Drugs were hard to come by, one of the few items only obtainable through the Warden, but for this skirmish, it had been worth it.
His men would assume he’d fallen asleep after being drained of cum, then set up a perimeter until morning, when they would leave the area.
She and her squad would ensure that never happened.
4
Training For Death
Earth: Four Days Until Reckoning
Dregg suggested that Pierce meet him in the darkest spot in the city park late that night. Pierce was on high alert, with his hand on his service revolver. But out of context, the setting was peaceful and serene, reminding him that perceptions can be deceiving.
A rock tumbled from behind, causing Pierce to swing around and fire a round. It hit its mark, to Pierce’s embarrassment. He’d split in half what looked like a flying cabbage head.
“What the fuck?” Pierce snarled.
“You were supposed to catch it,” Dregg said.
“What makes you think sneaking up on me like that was a good idea?”
Dregg tsked and lowered himself down from a six foot ledge from where the rock had dropped. “Seems like you could stand a little more situational awareness.”
Pierce holstered his revolver. “What’s with the cabbage?”
“It’s not a cabbage,” Dregg said. “Pick it up.”
Reluctantly, Pierce grabbed the shredded leafy vegetable and examined it. He saw nothing special about it. “What’s the lesson here? Am I supposed to learn what kinds of foods I can eat?”
“You need to learn that anything can be a weapon, and that thing is no cabbage.”
Pierce dropped the plant as if it were an explosive. “What is it?”
“It’s called colewort. It’s related to cabbage and broccoli, but it’s closer to collard greens. If a group wants to get rid of a weak team member on Planet Kill without the blood and fuss, they slip him some of this. If someone offers you anything that smells or looks like it, take a hard pass.”
Pierce kicked at the colewort. “Wow. Thanks. Never would have known.”
“Don’t need you to thank me. Need you to be ready for battle, so I can get what I want. Now smell it so you know when an ally is trying to poison you. And believe me, it will happen.”
Pierce knelt down and took a deep whiff. “Ugh.” He backed up and almost tripped over his own feet. “What the–”
Dregg laughed. “Smells like rotten ass, doesn’t it?”
“Could have warned me,” Pierce said, as he wiped his nose, with no luck. The stench stayed with him. Burned into his memory. Made his eyes start to water.
“Nah. Wanted to see the face you make when you’re upset. That way, I know if you’re hoodwinking me later. Besides, best way to train is to make it as real as possible. You ready for a little fun?”
“Sure, why the hell not,” Pierce said.
“Follow me.”
Dregg led him to the back door of a gym. He rapped a pattern on a steel-reinforced door. It swung open to reveal a heavily-scarred giant of a robot, one equal in size to Dregg, but the robot was female and her face was covered in scar tissue.
Pierce gestured toward his own body. “As you can see, I don’t need to work out. Already do that on my own. And to be honest, I prefer my sleek muscular body to her oversized puffiness. Seriously. I feel like I could pop her with a pencil.”
The scarred robot growled at Pierce.
“Whoa,” Pierce said, blocking his face. “And bad breath to boot. No thanks on the inflated muscles. Whatever supplement or performance enhancing substance you’re selling, I’m good. Besides…” Pierce grabbed his own crotch. “Messing with other types of performance is not a path I intend to venture down.”
“Just come inside,” Dregg said.
“Okay, I’ll play along, but this really had better not be some cheesy �
��puff up your muscles to intimidate your enemies’ bullshit.”
Inside, there was no gym. The place was just a front, a cover for what this place was really for. It did smell awfully gamy, though. What the fuck was this shithole, Pierce thought as he recoiled at the stink.
As if reading his thoughts, Dregg spun around and met Pierce’s eyes. “It’s time for you to know what being a man is like.”
Pierce laughed. “I think I’m good.”
“No,” Dregg said. “This is necessary. Sex is currency where you’re going. Do you want to starve? Do you want to be weaponless during a battle? Food and weapons aren’t free.”
“Wait, what? I thought you were going to teach me how to scavenge, find water inside rocks or something, and… I don’t know, maybe fashion a dagger out of an insect’s antennae. Not this. What the fuck is this place? A BDSM dungeon?”
“Yes. And yes, this.”
“No, not this.”
“Yes, this.”
“Okay, I’m leaving,” Pierce said, and began to turn. He bumped into the scarred robot and stumbled backward. Dregg caught and steadied him before he hit the ground.
“Thanks,” Pierce said reflexively. But then he pulled away. “Wait, no. No thanks. This just got worse. I’m not into what either of you has in mind, and I’m definitely not down with dealing with both of you at once. No kinky massages either. My muscles are exactly as tense as I want them to be.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Dregg said. “This is good for you. Besides, I’m only going to watch to make sure you fuck her right.”
“I’m already good,” Pierce said. “Keep your ‘gifts’ to yourself.”
“Don’t you want to win?” Dregg said. “To survive?”
“This isn’t going to happen,” Pierce said.
With that, the scarred robot and Dregg rushed at him. Pierce smoothly pulled his revolver and leveled it back and forth between the two charging beasts. They both froze.
Planet Kill Page 3
