Winged Hussars (The Revelations Cycle Book 3)

by Mark Wandrey

“Kat, you’re being stupid. Those procedures are limited to adults for a reason!”

  “Yeah, to keep us under their control. Alex, there are only a dozen Hussars with the level of pinplants I have now. After this next round, I’ll be the one with the most.”

  “You won’t because I’ll tell.” Kat shot hate at her. “Okay, I won’t tell about what you have now.” Her sister’s eyes narrowed, and she got a little, smug smile on her face. “As long as you don’t get any more.”

  “You can’t stop me.”

  “No, but you’ll wish I did. I swear by entropy I’ll tell mom if you get one more.”

  “You two!” the senior barked. “Shut up and mop.” Kat ground her teeth in rage, but Alex just shrugged and stared back.

  “Fine,” Kat said after a second, and looked away. Alex could feel the rage radiating from the other girl.

  “Promise.”

  “Screw you.”

  “Promise, or else.” Kat looked at her, and behind the anger Alex saw betrayal. Pain and betrayal. “That’s the deal.”

  “Okay,” Kat said with a little sigh. “I promise, no more implants.”

  “Good,” Alex said, and went back to mopping. Of course, Kat broke her word only a few weeks later, and the sisters’ relationship was never quite the same.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 21

  Karma Station

  Karma System

  Rick finished securing the duffel bag which held all his worldly possessions to his seat with a strap and adjusted his buckles. It was the first time he’d rode in a ship designed with the nearly infinite shapes of aliens in mind. He had the feeling it could accommodate almost any race…and none of them would feel comfortable.

  “All set?” He looked up to see a Human male floating down the middle isle of the shuttle, checking the passengers as he went. He was in the regular black uniform of the Winged Hussars, with a logo on his shoulder, and a nametag that said, “Southard.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rick said.

  “Just Larry is fine,” the man replied. “Pilots like me are about the same rank as a corporal in the Hussars. I might outrank you, but only technically. Behave yourself, and I won’t have to boss you around.” He grinned at Rick who smiled back.

  “You bet,” Rick said. “How long is the flight?”

  “Oh, Pegasus is parked just a few miles away. Once we get clearance, maybe 10 minutes. You aren’t bothered by free fall, are you?” Larry glanced at Rick’s brand-new uniform, but it didn’t have any insignia yet. “I’m guessing you’re one of the new marines?”

  “Right in one,” Rick said. “No, I’m fine in null gravity. I’m just eager to get aboard.”

  “Okay,” the pilot said. “Won’t be long.” He nodded to Rick and floated along to check others. The big purple bears, the Oogar, were struggling with straps which were barely long enough for the aliens. Further forward, a strange four-armed humanoid who looked like an advertisement against gene therapy abuse appeared to be completely confused by both the seat and the belts.

  “Mind if I sit with you?” Rick looked up and saw Corporal Johansson.

  “No, ma’am,” he said.

  “Eva is fine when we’re not in suits,” she said. Rick gestured to the seat, and she quickly configured it, swung around, planted herself, and belted in. It only took a couple of seconds. “Excited to see the ship?”

  “I got a look at it from the outside, on the way in, aboard the Coronado,” he explained, “but I’m looking forward to seeing more of it.”

  “We have launch authority,” the pilot’s voice came over the PA. “Prepare to detach.”

  The shuttle was clamped onto an unmoving central hub section of the huge Karma Station, one of hundreds of similar docking points. It was far easier than docking on the rotating sections, and made transferring crew and cargo immensely simpler. Southard released the mechanical docking collar and floated away on maneuvering thrusters. With a bump and a slight feeling of motion through the seat, they were clear. Toward the rear, the two Zuul yipped and panted excitedly.

  “Prepare for slight acceleration,” the pilot added. They were pushed back a bit as he gave the shuttle some power, and they were off toward their goal.

  “How long have you been with the Hussars?” Rick asked his new corporal.

  “Five years now,” she said. “I served with Bert’s Bees before. Didn’t feel like that was going anywhere, so I ended my contract with them when we landed here. I was picked up by the Hussars a few weeks later.”

  “Have you always been on this ship?”

  “I’ve only served on Pegasus for about five months. Before that I was on the battlecruiser Sleipner. And before that, I was in the Hussars rapid deployment force.” Rick thought for a moment.

  “Sorry about all the questions.”

  She made a dismissive gesture. “You’re one of us now,” she said, “ask away.”

  “How big are the Hussars?”

  She smiled slyly at that, for some reason. “Well, I know we have more than 100 starships, and something like 20,000 paid personnel.” Rick’s head came around and his eyes bugged out. “Yeah.”

  “That’s gotta be the biggest merc unit in the galaxy!”

  “Not even close,” she corrected. “Biggest Human-owned unit, even though Humans only make up about half of that. Have to, by guild law, or you can’t be declared by that race. Anyway, there are alien merc units with over 100,000. I know, sounds crazy. But you must remember, there are no militaries like Earth has, or used to have. Mercs keep the peace, or break it sometimes. We’re the only way races have of dealing with each other once diplomacy fails. Many never even try diplomacy, for that matter.” She chuckled, and he shook his head. Merc humor. “I read once that there are about 20 trillion beings in the galaxy. That’s an estimate, mind you. But only about 100 million total mercs. That’s only one merc for every 200,000 civilians. On Earth, before first contact, the highest ratio was 22-1. The average was somewhere around 120-1. So you see, in the Union, the number is pitifully small.”

  Rick said he understood, but he was still trying to come to grips with the numbers. He’d known some of this from his schooling, though not to the extent Johansson had explained. He decided to give the corporal a break and took out his slate. Using it, he linked with the shuttle and got access to an external view. The shuttle’s design was no nonsense, so there were no windows in the passenger area. Using the slate, he could see they were already closing on the Pegasus.

  The ship was just as he remembered from his arrival at Karma. A long-tapered tube with bulges of gravity decks and weapons points. Now he could see the damage was gone, covered and patched with new hull plates. Quite a few small craft hovered near those repairs, likely still completing them. Most of the small craft were near the rear, around one of three bulges which had to hold the ship’s massive fusion drives. Even from 1,000 yards away, Rick could see open access panels and the internals of the drive decks.

  He was still struck by the unusual look of the Pegasus. She had none of the retractable rings, and lacked the graceful lines of other warships. Even the hangar deck, almost directly amidships, was simple and utilitarian.

  “The Pegasus is different, isn’t she?” Johansson asked, looking down at the view Rick had of the ship.

  “Very,” Rick agreed. “I haven’t seen many warships up close, but none look like the Pegasus. Where was it made?”

  “We didn’t have it made,” she explained. “We found it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You know the Winged Hussars are one of the Four Horsemen, so we go back to the Alpha Contracts just after first contact.” He nodded and she continued. “The people who operated the Hussars got enough money to buy a little escort frigate and managed to secure a fleet operations contract. Big bucks, even back then, but like the rest of those contracts, we were basically set up. It turned into a rout and the Hussars ran for it with a crippled ship. The official story doesn’t give a lot of
details, only that they found the Pegasus in an asteroid field while hiding from pursuit. They got it running by gutting their ship, shot their way out, rescued some of the ships they were supposed to have been protecting, and made it home.” She paused and then added, “Pegasus looks like it does because it’s a pure weapon.”

  “It’s like a big ugly sword,” Rick said. “It’s designed to do a lot of damage, and no one cares what it looks like.”

  “Yeah,” Johansson said; “I guess you’re right. Ask again and I’ll tell you more about her sometime. Let’s just say we shot our way out of a system a few weeks ago. I didn’t see the fight, of course, but I’ve talked to those who did. We destroyed several battlecruisers and a bunch of frigates, and tore up a battleship.”

  “A battleship?” Rick said incredulously. She grinned savagely and nodded. “They’re like 10 times as big as the Pegasus, right?”

  “From what I hear. But Captain Cromwell is…gifted.”

  “Gifted, how?”

  “Gifted in fucking up other people’s shit,” Johansson said.

  Rick was glad he was on the Hussars’ team. It sounded like the last place he wanted to be in the galaxy was fighting against them.

  “We’re landing in a minute,” she added, “and I have to take care of a few things.” She leaned her head forward and closed her eyes.

  Rick recognized the look of someone concentrating on their pinplants and didn’t ask any more questions. He just sat and watched as the shuttle closed in on the battlecruiser’s docking bay and thought about what life was going to be like as a marine aboard EMS Pegasus.

  * * *

  From the moment he floated out of the shuttle and grabbed the guide rope to pull himself to the bay’s personnel doors, Rick was on a non-stop rollercoaster of challenges. First, he had to learn the layout of the warship. Compared to some of the ships docked and floating around Karma Station, Pegasus seemed small. Once aboard, he found out ‘small’ was a relative term, based on experience and perception.

  Johansson took her charges in hand and moved them to the nearest of four airlocks in the corners of the bay. This one stood open as the doors were closed and the bay pressurized once they’d landed. Rick gawked at the open doors on the other side of the huge transparent divider where spacesuited figures were floating around a small, open-sided shuttle under repair. He couldn’t imagine the stresses that piece of glass or plastic must be under—it had to be at least 60 feet wide and 20 feet tall!

  In the room adjacent to the lock was a gangway. One side went up, or toward the nose of the ship, the other down, toward the engines.

  “There are vertical access shafts in all four corners,” Johansson explained, using her fingers to make quotes around the word corners. “Two are gangways, like these; two are lifts. The lifts are reserved for movement of the ship’s crew, not marines. We walk or float.”

  Rick was watching some of the other new hires and saw a wide variety of zero-gravity familiarity. The older Zuul was bouncing around with the same level of assurance as Johansson, while the younger one was slower and more cautious, making sure he had handholds at each movement. The pair of Oogar seemed as at home in space as on the ground. Same for the strange burly four-armed humanoid.

  The gangways Johansson mentioned were ramps with non-slip surfaces. In zero gravity, their hand rails provided a quick way to move forward or aft. Under acceleration, they’d be easy to walk up or down (at one gravity), but probably impossible at higher gravities. Rick thought they were likely a bit steep for Humans at one gravity, and was reminded the ship wasn’t designed by Humans. That also explained why the decks were so tall. Twelve feet was almost double what most Human ships used.

  Johansson took them aft as a group. As they passed through decks, she explained some of the layout.

  “The bay we landed in is Deck 21. As you can see, 22 and 23 are support and storage for flight operations. Here on Deck 24 are the hyperspace electronics and control system, and 25 houses the aft laser batteries.” Rick got a glimpse of several mechanisms used to raise the laser arrays through openings in the hull. They were each several feet across, with massive power cables attached. “Each laser projector can produce a beam of 100 megawatts.

  “Decks 26 and 27 are engineering spaces. Life support, water processing and recycling, waste management, and shield generators are just some of the systems centralized here.” Each compartment they saw was crammed full of equipment. Rick thought a lot of it looked Human-manufactured, though just as much wasn’t.

  “Corporal,” one of the Zuul spoke up, “how do you know so much about the ship’s systems?”

  “I’m glad you asked that,” she said, bringing them to a stop on Deck 27. It was rather loud, with running equipment and a Human/elSha team working on an open electrical panel. “On Pegasus, the marines double as damage control assistants. Part of your training will include familiarization with the ship’s major systems, as well as welding and other skills.” Some of the new recruits looked interested; others, not so much. “Don’t worry, we’ll be evaluating your abilities to perform these tasks. Those who show interest and aptitude will receive further training. However, marines are usually the best trained at zero-gravity spacesuit operations, so we’ll be the ones to help with exterior damage control. You’ll all be more adept in a suit very quickly.” She got them moving again.

  “This is Deck 28, the aft missile battery, and below it is the magazine.” The missile magazine was rack after rack of six-foot-long missiles in a serpentine handling system that fed through to the deck above. Rick could see the floor and ceiling were heavily armored. “And below us now is Deck 30, marine country. Welcome home.”

  “Right below the missile magazine,” Lynn said from behind him, “damn.”

  “I’m sure you are all thinking how awesome it is being right behind the missiles,” Johansson said and many of them nodded. “Well, the magazine isn’t the best place to be, but keep in mind, like all the other decks, it’s split into four sections and the walls are armored. In addition, the exterior bulkhead of each section has blow-out panels. In the event of a magazine detonation, all the force should be channeled outwards.”

  “Should be,” Sergeant Jones, the new Raptor Squad sergeant said.

  “Yeah,” Johansson agreed; “they should be. Remember this, marines, there are over 400 people on this ship. The marines and our support personnel are only 25 of those. If the magazine takes us with it, the ship can still fight. Our space was originally filled with more missiles before it was refit.” They entered the deck and saw it was, in fact, split into four sections, like most decks, and each section had an open catwalk framework separating it into two levels. “Each squad gets a section. The fourth section houses a training/equipment area, the commander’s quarters, and the galley. Under the other three sections are a small gym, an armory, and a medical bay. We also have our own life support.”

  “We can dock boarding pods or a shuttle here,” she explained. “The only other docking point for the ship is on Deck Four.” Several people noticed the heavily-armored hatch in the ceiling. “And, yes, we help load missiles aboard when they come in.” Rick was beginning to get the idea his job was a lot more than fighting, and he was glad he’d done his tour on the Coronado. The skills he had picked up would probably prove handy.

  They floated down through the gangway into the galley on the lower level. The currently-serving marines were waiting for them. Rick came to a stop when he caught sight of a massive spider clinging to a wall opposite the ramp. Several others ran into him from behind.

  “Holy shit,” Lynn exclaimed when she caught sight of the Tortantula.

  “Some of you have already met the commanding sergeant,” Johansson said, “T’jto.” The MinSha she’d addressed was holding onto a seat with a pair of her rear legs and watching the new arrivals. Someone behind Rick pushed him, and he cleared the gangway.

  “Everyone find a place,” Sergeant T’jto said, gesturing with her hands. It was cr
owded, but they managed, even though most didn’t want to be too close to the huge hairy spider. For its part, the Tortantula seemed indifferent to the new arrivals. “As Corporal Johansson explained, I’m your commander. Normally I’d be a lieutenant; however, marines operate a little differently, so I’m just a sergeant, or command sergeant if more than one of us is around. I run Dragon Squad with Johansson as my second. We’ve added privates Culper and Jordan to our squad which includes veterans Oort and Jeejee,” A little chipmunk-like Flatar grunted from where it was sitting next to the Tortantula, which Rick guessed was Oort. “As well as Zhkt, who we call ‘Zit.’” Rick couldn’t see the last member until Lynn tapped him on his shoulder and pointed. In the corner was a huge cockroach sharpening a knife. It regarded them with tiny eyes on short stalks.

  “I’ve placed Stan Jones,” she said and gestured to the man who nodded, “in charge of Raptor Squad with Corporal Jakal as his second.” The older Zuul raised a hand. “With them are privates Bill Alvarado, Eskla,” the younger Zuul waved, “Alan Bacord, and L’kto.” With the last name, the other MinSha’s antenna waved in a friendly manner.

  “Zenith Squad will be run by Sergeant Leshto, with Corporal Meeroo as her second.” A dark-furred Veetanho held up her hand, and a Pushtal gestured as well. Rick wasn’t sure how he felt about serving with one of the felines, and he was secretly glad they weren’t in the same squad. After the incident aboard Coronado, he was second-guessing his commitment to serving with aliens, especially with regard to Pushtals. “Rounding out Zenith are Privates Ed O’Neal, Klon and Dron,” the two purple Oogar grinned hugely, “Godor,” the four-armed humanoid grunted and looked around with a confused expression, “and Ifeeka, who is a technical like Jeejee.” The elSha chirped in a friendly manner from where she was hanging on the wall. Rick noticed the cockroach named Zit eyeing the elSha.

  “Sergeants,” T’jto said, “take your squads and show them their quarters. In your quarters, you’ll find your assigned equipment, including a slate with your new duty and training roster. When we’re underway, we run eight-hour rotating shifts. In port, they’re twelve hours to allow down time. Combat situations will vary. All other squads, dismissed. My new Dragons, follow me.”