The Good, the Bad, and the Merc: Even More Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 8)

by Chris Kennedy

  7

  “This is Peepo’s Pit,” Zirt said, pointing to a very plain-looking door. He drew a laser pistol and pointed it at Zeke. “Give me the antidote.”

  “And get shot down 20 feet from my destination?” Zeke asked. “I will give it to you inside.” He pushed past the symbiotes and walked through the door.

  Zeke was instantly taken back decades in time to the first (and last) time he was in a merc pit. Screens on the walls showed contracts offered and merc units looking for work, aliens of all types sat on a variety of stools and chairs—or stood, if that was what their anatomy dictated—drinking their favorite beverages, and nearly everyone seemed to be trying to talk over everyone else at the same time. It reminded him of home.

  Before he had a chance to find a Human group for refuge, a voice from behind Zeke asked, “Whom do we have here?”

  Zeke turned and found a large alien, as tall as he was but with rather short limbs, standing behind him. The creature looked like a cross between a white rat and a mole wearing huge sunglasses. It sniffed him several times. “Can I help you?” Zeke finally asked.

  “I do not recognize this Human in my pit,” it said, “and we have select clients here.”

  “I take it you must be Peepo,” Zeke said to the Veetanho.

  “I am,” Peepo replied, “but I do not know you, and we only take select clients here.”

  “Well, I—” Zeke said, but he was interrupted by a woman’s voice.

  “He’s with us,” the voice said. “We’ve been waiting for him.”

  “Very well,” Peepo said. “May your dealings be profitable.” She turned and vanished as quickly as she had appeared.

  Zeke turned and found two small Mongolian women, backed by a group of Humans of all colors and sizes. The only thing they all seemed to have in common was that they all had at least two sets of pinlinks he could see.

  “I’m Gerel Enkh,” one of the women said. A mature woman, she held the rank of colonel. Zeke couldn’t remember the unit patch—a woman firing an arrow from horseback—but he knew he recognized it and had seen it somewhere before. A bar, probably, because the memory was hazy. “Can I ask what that was all about?”

  “I needed to get away from a couple aliens,” Zeke said, “and I figured this was the best place to find a few well-armed Humans to back me up.”

  “That part is true,” Gerel replied, “but why would we want to back you up?”

  “I have something they want.” When all of the Humans looked around nervously, obviously expecting a fight, Zeke shook his head. “No,” he said, “it’s not like that. I want to give it to them, but they were armed, and I wasn’t, and I figured they’d kill me once I gave it to them.” He smiled. “After all that I’ve been through, I don’t want to end up dead this close to my freedom.”

  “Interesting,” Gerel said. “So you’re looking to hire a merc unit? What’s the pay?”

  “Well, considering I just broke out of bondage, I’m kind of short on funds.” Gerel frowned. “I am, however, a doctor of some experience, and I am willing to hire on with you and work off my debt, assuming you drop me off back on Earth when we’re done.” Zeke didn’t figure the woman needed to know about the one million credit chit in his pocket; that would only….complicate things.

  “A doctor?” the other woman asked. She looked much younger than the first woman, and she was wearing a lieutenant’s uniform. “How did you know there would be a doctor here, mother? And don’t tell me you had a vision.”

  “Sansar, you have much to learn,” the colonel scolded. “You would do better to talk less and listen more.” She turned back to Zeke. “As it happens, we are in need of a doctor for the defensive contract we just signed. I have a feeling we may need someone with your skill set.”

  “You can’t have him,” Zirt said. Zeke looked to his left and found both Zirt and Triz, as well as three large MinSha. The big aliens looked like over-sized praying mantises, but all three had laser carbines in their claws and well-used armor that spoke of their experience using them. “He is our slave.”

  Gerel raised an eyebrow at Zeke and nodded toward the aliens. It was his show.

  Zeke nodded and faced his former captors. “No,” he said, “I am not your slave anymore. We had a deal that I would give you the antidote when we arrived here, and you would set me free.”

  “My employer tells me you haven’t given him the antidote,” one of the MinSha said, pushing past several of the Humans to point her rifle at Zeke. She turned and Zeke could see sergeant’s stripes tattooed to one of her upper arms.

  “No, but I am going to,” Zeke replied. With a thought, the compartment on his right arm opened. Zeke reached in and withdrew the vial. He passed it to Zirt. “This is all you need. Simply replicate the nanites inside and inject your people; all better. There’s a bigger one with all my data on it to show you how to replicate my research.”

  He tried to step back, but Triz reached forward and grabbed him by the wrist.

  “You’re coming with us,” Zirt said.

  “No, he’s not,” Gerel said. She stepped forward, drawing her pistol.

  “Don’t do that!” the MinSha commander ordered. All three of the MinSha pointed their rifles at Gerel. “Step away from him now, and no one has to get hurt.”

  “Oh?” Gerel asked. Without a verbal command being given, all of Gerel’s troopers simultaneously drew their weapons and aimed them at the MinSha. “If anyone gets hurt, I can promise you that all three of you will get dead, starting with you, Sergeant.”

  “Stop!” a voice commanded, full of authority. “There will be no bloodshed in Peepo’s!” Zeke looked up. Peepo had arrived with five Besquith troopers, who had taken up positions behind the MinSha. The giant wolfmen would have been formidable with just their natural weaponry, but each of them also had a large diameter laser rifle, all of which were pointed at the MinSha. The MinSha raised their rifles, and the Besquith troopers liberated them from the aliens.

  Zeke didn’t hear or see a command being given, but all of Gerel’s troopers simultaneously holstered their weapons.

  “Now,” Peepo asked, “what is the meaning of this?”

  “My trooper owed these two—” Gerel nodded in the direction of the Limbets, “—a debt, but my trooper paid it off. These thugs—” a nod toward the MinSha, “—were trying to force my trooper to go with them, even though the debt was paid.”

  Peepo cocked her head, staring at Gerel. “This is truly one of your troopers?” she asked. “He smells old to be a trooper.”

  Gerel nodded. “He is one of mine. He is our medic.”

  Peepo nodded slightly. “And you vouch that his debt is paid?”

  “I do.”

  Peepo turned to Zirt. “Has he fulfilled his debt to you?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “There are no buts. As you say, he has fulfilled his debt to you. It is time you should leave. We have select clients, and you aren’t one of them.” She nodded to her Besquith commander. “Lieutenant, escort them to the door.”

  The Besquith growled. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. He waved two of his troopers forward. They each grabbed one of the symbiotes, lifted them from their feet and carried the struggling aliens off toward the door.

  “You may leave, too, Sergeant,” Peepo said to the lead MinSha. “And in case you were unsure, your welcome here is at an end. Do not come back.”

  The mantis’ head drooped. To be excluded from Peepo’s ensured they would miss out on the choicest contracts. “What about our—”

  “Your weapons will be returned to your unit,” Peepo cut in. “Now, go!” The MinSha walked off, their heads down, followed by two of the Besquith troopers to ensure the MinSha didn’t get lost on the way to the door.

  Peepo turned back and stared at Gerel for several moments, as if trying to read the Mongol woman’s thoughts. “Please try to control your troops in the future,” Peepo said when she finally spoke. “We have select clients here, and some
of them do not appreciate violence near them.”

  “We will, Peepo,” Gerel replied, flipping a credit chit with a large red diamond in it to the Veetanho. Peepo caught it, and it disappeared. “Sorry for the disturbance.”

  Peepo departed, and Gerel turned to face Zeke. “I’ll add the 10,000 credits to your bill,” she said.

  Zeke nodded.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I have to know,” she said, so quietly Zeke could barely hear her over the background noise. “What was in the vial?”

  “It was an antidote to a nanobot plague that is about to wipe out their society.”

  “A nanobot plague that was going to wipe out the entire society?”

  Zeke nodded.

  “How do you know it was going to wipe out all of them?”

  “Because that’s the way I engineered it.”

  Several of the Horde troopers’ jaws dropped, including Gerel’s.

  “You can do—no, you would do something like that?” Gerel asked.

  “It was the only way for me to get home,” Zeke said. He shrugged. “After 70 years, I really wanted to get home.”

  “Wait, 70 years? How old are you?”

  “About 112, I think. It’s hard to tell with all of the different planetary day lengths and yearly cycles.”

  “That means you would have left in the Alpha Contracts.”

  “The what?”

  “The Alpha Contracts—the contracts Earth people took after first contact.”

  “Yep,” Zeke said. “That’s true.”

  “How have you lived so long?”

  “I’m good at what I do,” Zeke said. “Also, I’m not afraid to experiment, and I’ve had access to some pretty good life sciences technology.”

  “Really?” Gerel smiled. “I think we may need to upgrade your contract from that of a mere medic to…something else. Come with me.”

  Gerel turned and led him to a booth, where several people wearing horse archer patches were sitting with a few others wearing a patch with a gray wolf on it. The two groups were a study in contrasts; while the horse archer members looked like military personnel, with short hair and bulging muscles, the wolves looked like…well, Zeke thought they looked like drug dealers. Their hair was longer, and they had an abundance of golden jewelry, while the horse archers didn’t wear much, if any, jewelry.

  The mercenary colonel nodded to the man wearing the most jewelry. “This is my…associate, Ganzorig, of the Gray Wolves. The Wolves are…allied with us. I think your skill set may be profitable to them, as well as our unit.”

  “All I care about is that it pays well, and that you’ll get me back to Earth,” Zeke said.

  “Don’t worry,” Gerel said, “we’ll get you back to Earth. As far as the pay goes?” She smiled broadly. “It’s very good.”

  Zeke smiled back. “Then I think we have a deal.”

  Gerel nodded once, the deal concluded. “Welcome to the Golden Horde.”

  # # # # #

  LESSONS by Kacey Ezell

  Such a small, ugly thing. Barely furred, like a little grub. I couldn’t believe this was the cause for Dama’s gloating, and for the clan’s celebration. The live birth of another kita! What was that worth? They had me. I would rule the clan one day. I and I alone. This pathetic, mewling thing was superfluous.

  Before I could be detected, I tucked it into the pocket of my harness and slipped out of the den. I would leave it in the woods to die. Its eyes weren’t even open yet, it wouldn’t take long. And tomorrow evening, everyone would simply think Dama had been mistaken. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.

  * * *

  Pain lanced through her middle, stabbing at her insides. She cried out, but the warm comforting push, the scent of milk and warmth didn’t respond. Instead, there was only more pain, and growing awareness of the cool sponginess beneath her.

  She pulled her legs underneath herself. Fine tremors of cold gripped her, rippled through her skin. She curved her head down beneath her front paws, made herself as small as possible, curled around the pain that seemed destined eat her from the inside.

  Soon, the warmth would come. The silky pads of a paw nearly as large as her head would push her toward the downy fur that surrounded the milk. She opened her mouth in anticipation of finding the warm smoothness of the teat that would fill her with rich deliciousness and make the pain in her middle fade away to nothing. She let out a squeak of sound, maybe it would help the soft one find her.

  Nothing.

  She let out another squeak, then a mewling cry.

  Still nothing. The pain in her middle intensified.

  More cries followed, but the warmth never returned, never guided her to the milk, never brought her the comfort that she so badly needed. Another pain joined the lancing bite in her middle, though this one was different. This felt more like an unbearable twisting inside her chest. No one was answering her cries. No one was holding her softly, giving her what she needed. The two pains wove together inside her trembling body, filling everything she was with something so bad, she had no name for it. Later, she would call it fear, and she would credit it for saving her life.

  That unnamed, terrible feeling made her tremors increase, but it also did something else. It unlocked something in her brain, and suddenly, she was able to move tiny muscles that she hadn’t known existed.

  A sliver of light, the first she’d ever seen. Her eyes slowly opened.

  With the blur of light, she became suddenly, incredibly aware of the scents. The cool sponginess upon which she lay gave off a scent of rich green death. The breeze that ghosted over her carried hints of other things; things which made the pain in her middle pulse with need. Things she wanted. Badly.

  Without knowing why, she pushed up to her four feet, and took a step toward that tantalizing scent, and then another.

  The soft wetness gave underfoot, dipping down and then springing back in the absence of her weight. It made no sound until she encountered something long and thin, which let out a loud crack as she stepped down on it.

  She froze, and listened. Sounds rose all around her, chittering, cheeping, susurrating sounds that seemed to climb up the tall vertical structures that towered in all directions. The breeze picked up again and ruffled her fur, intensifying that intoxicating scent. Drawing her onward.

  She stepped again, and again her instincts pushed her to avoid the source of the extra noise. She avoided the long, dry, thin stick, and anything that looked like it as she picked her way through the detritus around her.

  The light slowly changed as she moved, or maybe her eyes became clearer. She began to be able to focus on disparate details. First, she realized she could distinguish the individual towering stalks that held up the expanse above. Immense, varied, and dark, they loomed over her smallness and provided a framework for everything else she noticed. Like the way the light flickered in from above. Here brighter, there dimmer, sometimes draping the whole world in shadow so thick it leached the color from her gaze. Not that she had words for the differing shades she saw; they were just details she couldn’t see as well in the dark.

  She could see other things in the dark, though. Outlines of shapes stood stark against the blackness, and she could somehow feel the relative largeness of them through the way they pressed on the air. Or not the air exactly, because it wasn’t the medium that carried the scents. It was something else. Something that wrapped around every object, permeated every beam of light, every shadow. Something constant. Something hers.

  Through that medium, she could feel an echo of something. She wouldn’t even have noticed it, except that it ran parallel to the thread of scent that pulled her inexorably onward. They seemed linked, somehow, for in spots where one faded away, so did the other. And where one was strong and insistent, so, too, was the other.

  Interesting, that.

  In any case, she followed these threads onward, though her little legs still trembled with cold and fatigue. Step after step after step through the green
darkness.

  Her path began to slope down, and she wasn’t ready for it. She misjudged her step and tumbled forward, pain flashing into her head as it hit, and the rest of her body rolled over it. Air exploded from her lungs, leaving her gasping. She lay for a moment flat on her back, unable to move, blinking her novice eyes up at the broken green canopy above. Her breath came back all in a rush, and the throbbing in her head joined the pain in her middle. But at least she could breathe. Her legs trembled even harder after that, but she got back up.

  She got back up, and kept moving forward. Because she honestly couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  The scent slowly intensified, as did the strange medium she could feel and not feel at the same time. Up ahead, she saw a dark shape lying in one of the pools of shadow against one of the towering things. It positively pulsed with scent, and she could feel the other energy wrapping around her, providing an echo of the comfort she desperately sought.

  Animal, some instinct told her. Not the word, per se, but the concept. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. This large, dark shape was animal, and it was newly dead.

  Food, that same instinct insisted. And she knew it was right. This was what had brought her on this long, torturous route. Joy, triumph… something surged through her as she scrambled up over the splayed limbs of the carcass. Something good, that beat back the terrible badness of fear.

  When she reached the top, she found the coarse furriness of the animal had been torn open near the top of its limbs. The scent was overwhelming up here, and she could see the dark smears of red that ran through the matted, wiry fur.

  Before her conscious mind could think about moving, she leapt upon that red-smeared gash, using her tongue and tiny teeth to get more of that life-giving redness into her mouth. It didn’t taste at all like the sweetness of milk. This was harder stuff. She had no words for the iron tang of the taste, but it filled her mouth and, more importantly, quieted the screaming hunger in her belly.