I turned and looked over the spaceport. Smoke had begun to rise from the areas of fighting, and I heard the dull thuds of distant explosions. The spaceport sprawled across a few low hills, the tallest of which held our headquarters, as well as the Lotar’s control bunker. I had no doubt our employers would order us to fight to the death to defend them. Nor did I doubt that if we retreated, they would transmit that we’d broken our contract, and that their corporation would probably put a hefty bounty on all our heads.
Not that Colonel Neubauer would hesitate if he realized how dangerous this fight will be...
“What is the meaning of this?” Colonel Neubauer demanded as he strode forward in his shiny, gleaming Mark Eight CASPer.
Speak of the devil, I thought to myself. “Sir, perhaps we should speak away from the men?” I asked. I didn’t trust him not to put a serious scare into the men...or worse, order them to stand down or retreat. I’d seen how fast those death-balls moved. There was no way our Mark Six CASPers could outrun them, especially not across the flat plains that surrounded the spaceport.
“Of course. Did Captain Schultz send you with a message? I’m having trouble getting through on Channel Two,” Colonel Neubauer started walking back to his headquarters building. Again with the twos…this guy has some weird fixations.
I didn’t answer out loud, not until we got inside his headquarters. I paused there, though, opened my clamshell and climbed out. I motioned to the Colonel’s clerk to come forward. “Go outside,” I ordered.
“Ah, yes, secret orders, I see...” Colonel Neubauer opened his suit too, and climbed out eagerly, rubbing his hands together. “I knew I made the right call in hiring you, Staff Sergeant Azoros—a fellow veteran, like Captain Schultz and I. Tell me, what’s going on? Why is the command net down?”
I spoke slowly and carefully, judging the effect of my words, “Sir, Captian Schultz is dead. Second Platoon is being overrun. The Cartar—”
“Nonsense!” Colonel Neubauer shook his head. He ran a hand across his blonde comb-over, as if checking to see if it had flown free from his vigorous head-shake. “Second Platoon is our finest, our best equipped! The nearest enemy is over two thousand kilometers away! Captain Schultz is a capable officer! Tell me, is this some kind of trick? Did he put you up to it?”
Colonel Neubauer adopted a sly expression. “Ah, I see what it is...this is a joke of some kind, isn’t it? Some kind of gag that Captain Schultz wanted to pull on me? I do know he has a fine sense of humor...a fine man he is...did he put you up to this?”
I felt a sick sensation worm its way through my guts as I stared at my nominal superior. I felt distant as I answered, like it was someone else’s voice coming out of my mouth, “Yes, sir. In fact, he has a special surprise for you. I told him you wouldn’t be fooled, but he was quite insistent.”
“Of course, of course,” Colonel Neubauer nodded sharply, then quickly ran a hand over his comb-over. “Right then. I’ll have to turn the tables on him. I’ll head right down there...invasion, pah! I’ll bet the Cartar delegation brought some kind of gift for us! Maybe fireworks, I do so love fireworks...”
If only you knew...“Yes, sir,” I answered, still feeling distant and somewhat sick. “I suppose you should head down there if you want to catch Captain Schultz.” A distant explosion punctuated my words. As I stared at the commanding officer and owner of the Argonauts, I wondered if he’d become unhinged suddenly or if the absurd military themes he’d insisted upon had been symptoms of some long-standing problem...and they’d somehow covered up his condition. Either way, it doesn’t matter.
“I hate to ruin the surprise...” Colonel Neubauer hesitated. Then he went on, smiling and rubbing his hands, “But I can’t let them think they can pull one over on the old man, eh? I’ll head out immediately...”
“Sir,” I spoke, still feeling disconnected and distant, “they’ll probably see you coming in your armor, perhaps you could take mine.”
“Yes! Yes! Excellent idea, Staff Sergeant Azoros, excellent idea,” Colonel Neubauer nodded, this time his comb-over flew up, like a rooster’s comb. He looked me up and down, “It should fit just fine. Help me get inside; it’s been a few years since I wore an old Mark Six.”
“Of course, sir,” I said. I helped him into the armor. It didn’t take long. I could hear the sound of gunfire and explosions drawing closer. “Sir,” I said after a moment, “perhaps it would be wise if I wore your armor, so Captain Schultz doesn’t realize you’re on the way?”
“Yes, excellent, my access code is two-two-two-two-two,” Colonel Neubauer said.
I froze, staring at him as he closed his armor. “You didn’t biolock your armor, sir?”
“Of course not, why would I bother? No one would dare steal my equipment. Now, I’m heading out. Don’t you dare warn Captain Schultz that I’m on my way. This will be fantastic...”
He turned and stomped out of the building. I took my time climbing into his armor, checking systems and bringing everything online. Putting on the Mark Eight was like coming home. He’d left almost all the combat systems on their default settings and, as I stepped forward, I began reconfiguring it. His access code let me into every part of the system and my implants made me one with the armor. I was in, and I controlled everything...weapons, navigation, communications, and even his bank accounts. As I stepped through the door I reconfigured the command net and pulsed out an updated set of frequencies to the rest of the Argonauts. We’d been on one of the default radio encryption sets, but I set us to a frequency hopping variable net and as I did so, the entire network came to life.
I found the clerk outside. She was looking around with wide eyes, flinching at every distant explosion. “Get all support personnel,” I snapped. “Order them to draw every weapon from the armory and report to the southern perimeter.”
“Yes, Colonel!” She gave a shaky salute, clearly grateful to get some kind of orders.
I messaged my squad directly, “First Squad, report.”
“Is that you, Staff Sergeant?” Reedie asked.
“Yes,” I hissed as I jogged in their direction, the seven-and-a-half-foot-tall armor’s feet thudding on the hard-packed ground.
“Third Platoon has sort of formed up, but no one knows where their LT went,” Gomez said. “I think he’s probably pissing himself...”
“Right,” I snapped, “Where’s our LT?”
“Still drunk,” Grimes reported. “I tried to wake him up, but he wasn’t having it.”
“Of course,” I said. “Professor, I need you to do something. Do you still have that voice altering software?” The Professor had used it to alter Gomez’s CASPer radio to sound like Daffy Duck. I could privately admit I’d found it hilarious, especially since it had filtered his voice back to his suit sounding normal. It had taken Gomez a week to figure out why everyone laughed at him whenever he said something over the radio.
“Uh, Staff Sergeant, you told me to delete it...”
“Do you have the damned program?!” I snapped.
“Yeah, Staff Sergeant, I do, but...”
“I’m closing on your position, I need you to upload it into the CASPer I’m wearing. I need to sound like Colonel Neubauer,” I snapped.
“But Staff Sergeant, don’t we have bigger issues...”
“Grimes!” I snapped.
“Yes, Staff Sergeant,” Grimes said. “I’ll need a sample of his voice.”
I looked through the Colonel’s files. Of course, he had a recording of every speech he’d ever made. In his entire command. It was something over a terabyte. I transferred it all to Grimes in a burst, just as I arrived at the perimeter. A moment later, he sent me the voice modulation file. As I uploaded it, I scanned my sensors. I was picking up one lone CASPer headed toward the enemy. Some part of me almost called out to the Colonel. Before I could, his icon winked out of existence, and my sensors picked up a distant explosion.
“All Argonauts,” I said, using the Colonel’s voice. “Form on the sou
thern perimeter. First Platoon has the center. Third Platoon, put your First Squad on the east flank and your Second Squad on the west.” The two NCO’s from Third Platoon were more solid than their platoon leader. Not by much, but enough that I figured they could hold the flanks. I didn’t think the Cartar bastards would be flanking us. The way things had gone so far, they’d probably roll right up the middle.
“Take your positions!” I snapped. I watched as the icons moved away.
I sent a tight-beam transmission to the squad leaders, “This is Staff Sergeant Azoros. I’ve seen these bastards in action. ‘They have armored balls, they roll fast, they have laser weapons, and serious power outputs. Have your squads focus fire on them one by one, understand me?”
I waited until the three of them sent me affirmatives. In my Mark Eight I would be able to identify targets and sort priorities...but right now we were down to only 20 CASPers, plus about 30 support personnel. I didn’t know if we could hold out, much less win.
The support personnel reported in, and I snapped out directions to them, mostly putting them in the stationary perimeter turrets. Technically, manning those was the responsibility of our employers and their allies, but I hadn’t seen any of them around since the fighting broke out.
The locally-made, chemically-powered autocannons mounted on the turrets should hit the enemy hard, but I didn’t know how accurate our support personnel would be. Hitting the fast, agile deathballs was going to be difficult under the best of circumstances.
As if to punctuate that thought, the first of the Cartar deathballs rolled out of the spaceport below us and started up the hill. Weapon ports snapped open and laser fire lanced through the air, slicing a trail of destruction through one of our turrets.
“Open fire,” I snapped. I highlighted the deathball, and all of First Platoon opened up. Weapons fire tore up the ground around it, and a few shots glanced off the armored surface as it raced up the hill toward us. “Hit it, damn you!” I snapped.
Someone fired a missile that raced down the hill and struck the deathball square on. There was an odd, almost muffled explosion and a huge spray of water. The deathball slowly began to roll down the hill, leaking inky-stained water from a jagged hole where the missile had penetrated.
“Nice shooting, Wilkens,” I said, identifying the gunner. He was my squad’s mechanic, I’d helped him get the job as I’d had experience working with him before. Now I regretted it...he was going to die and it was going to be my fault. We were all going to die. “Reload! Here come the rest.”
Before I’d finished speaking, what looked like a hundred deathballs rolled out of the cover of the buildings and began heading up the hill. I marked targets and fired at the same time. Laser fire didn’t seem to do much to the armor so I switched frequencies, even as I watched my powerpack drain.
“Die you mollusk bastards, die!” Gomez shouted next to me, laying on with his heavy MAC. The big magnetic-driven rounds punched into a deathball only thirty feet away, close enough that I could see the heavy tungsten rounds drive all the way through. As the deathball rolled to a halt, it began leaking like a colander.
“They’re cephalapods, Gomez!” Grimes shouted as he fired. The lighter rounds most of our CASPers carried didn’t seem to penetrate the heavy armor of the deathballs. I turned my laser on the one he was targeting, burning through the center. It detonated, spraying water, steam, and fragments of armor in all directions.
“Shut up, Professor; you ain’t hit one of them yet!” Gomez shouted, firing at another deathball, his heavy MAC chewing through it at close range. “I got you! I got you, you mollusk bas--”
Gomez broke off, and I saw his icon wink out. A glance at him showed that a laser had cut across the chest plate of his armor and peeled it back like popcorn...only this was blood, metal, and flesh.
“You bastards, you got Gomez!” Grimes shouted, “Die you mollusks, die!”
There didn’t seem to be an end to them. The deathballs kept rolling forward and the Argonauts kept dying. Icons winked out as we stood on line, firing everything we had at the enemy armor. It was insane; it was horrible. I would never have expected any of them to stand and fight and die, yet it was like none of us ever thought to run.
The battery died in my Chung-series laser, so I ripped the heavy MAC off of Gomez’s shoulder, firing it by hand. At this range, what I lost in accuracy didn’t matter. I saw the Colonel’s clerk run right up to the side of a deathball and slap a grenade through a weapon port just as it opened to fire the laser beam that sliced her in half. The grenade detonated a fraction of a second after she died, blasting the deathball apart in a geyser of water and bits of squid.
One of the mechanics gave a whoop as he fired the heavy autocannon on the turret into a pair of deathballs, then the entire turret vanished in a fireball, sending unarmored men sprawling or dancing around in flames. I laid into the nearest deathball, firing until the heavy MAC’s magazine emptied. I threw it to the side and reached blindly for a weapon from another fallen mercenary.
It was hell. It was absolute chaos. Somewhere in the middle of it I found myself laughing, screaming, and crying as I lifted another weapon. “To hell with this!” I shouted. I raised my weapon and bounded over the rampart, “Charge!”
I ran forward into the middle of three deathballs. They tried to shoot me, but they stopped firing when I got between them, too afraid to hit their own. I fired at them from point blank range, the rounds from my MAC sparking off armor and occasionally punching through. As my magazine emptied, I charged the nearest one, my servo-enhanced strength allowing me to punch through the deathball’s armor and rip it, creating a massive hole.
A lashing tentacle swung out at me and locked around the arm of my CASPer, but I caught it with both hands and pulled. I dug in my feet, dragging backwards and a moment later there was a sharp jolt and I stumbled back, holding the tentacle and a large piece of Cartar leaking inky blood in long runnels.
I saw movement to my side and turned, only to see the rest of the Argonauts had followed my charge. Reedie and Grimes were prying open another deathball, and Reedie pulled the squirming Cartar out of it and threw it on the ground. They both stomped on it with their armored feet and ichorous blood splashed everywhere.
Wilkens ran past and fired his missile launcher. The missile barely had enough distance to arm before it struck a deathball, blasting out the forward hemisphere and spraying Wilkens with scalding, boiling water. The rest of the Argonauts didn’t slow. They were among the enemy, firing, dropping grenades under the spheres, fighting, killing, and dying in a way that stopped the enemy cold.
The last four deathballs tried to retreat, yet they took fire as they did so. Three of them lost water from dozens of hits and slowly ground to a halt. Then the last one wobbled out of control into the wall of a burning building.
I stood there, my armor stained with soot and Cartar blood.
We’d won. The hell of it was, looking back, I almost wish we hadn’t.
* * *
The Argonauts were effectively dead as a force. Of the three platoons of Mark Six CASPers, there were only five functional, plus the Colonel’s Mark Eight, which I still wore. There were 20 of us still alive out of 37 CASPer pilots and 30 support personnel. In any mercenary unit I’d ever heard of, anything over 30 percent casualties was a deathblow. Grimes had told me that we’d taken 61.25 percent casualties. All I knew was that 23 of them had died while I was in charge. I was the senior person left alive. At least the Cartar did us a favor in that regard...Some of their stray fire, or possibly a few “friendly” rounds, had killed the First and Third Platoon Leaders. Bohannan had died cowering in the latrine, while my platoon leader had died still drunk in his bed. Every cloud has a silver lining.
“Colonel, we are very pleased with your efforts, very pleased,” the Lotar behind the desk chortled. “We transmitted footage of your assault on our attackers, and the few remaining native holdouts surrendered almost immediately. Apparently they though
t their Cartar allies would liberate the planet, and instead you dealt with them! Very good, very good!”
I still wore my soot-stained armor. I didn’t feel very good. I didn’t want to think. I didn’t want to close my eyes or I’d see Gomez’s shattered armor and hear the screams of men and women as they bled and died. Some part of me, though, realized that this Lotar didn’t really know one human from another, and he probably didn’t much care. The Argonauts had signed on to do the job, and the Argonauts had done it. Why should he care which human was in charge?
Not that I was in charge of very much. Of the 20 of us that survived, at least three would be crippled for life. But the payment Colonel Neubauer had promised would go a long way toward something of a medical retirement for those three, and would hopefully be enough to pay the way home for the rest of us.
“We have marked your contract as completed. The war here is over, and I’m sure the pay in escrow with the Mercenary Guild will be released to you shortly. Your men can, of course, take charge of the spoils of battle, as agreed upon in our contract,” the diminutive Lotar went on. “We’d be willing to pay for their F11 reactors and deuterium, if you wish to sell to us, at the going rate, of course. We’d be willing to purchase their ship, too...”
“Ship?” I asked dully.
The Lotar gave a gesture of impatience, “Yes, ship. The Styx-class, a former Peacemaker vessel, I believe. Your people killed all the Cartar, so according to your contract, the ship is yours.”
“The ship is mine,” I said dully. The old Styx-class gunboat was huge. It had carried more than 24 of the huge deathballs, but it could probably carry a full regiment or more of CASPers. I own a ship...
The Good, the Bad, and the Merc: Even More Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 8) Page 3
