“Why, Diggs?”
He sighed. She didn’t know if it was her lack of acceptance or because he had planned to kill her all along, but his face changed into a sad look she had never seen before. There was less regret than she would have hoped for.
“During transfer a few trips back, I caught some of the information we’ve been passing, though they tried to hide it after it happened. They said I was just tired or imagining it, but I found out that what I was carrying was going to the highest bidder—the guild had double-crossed the buyer. The buyer also found out I had seen the information, and his guild found me. They offered me a choice—death or a new life working for them. I didn’t have much of a choice.”
“What you’re saying isn’t what we do,” McCloud started, but Diggs was shaking his head. “No, Diggs. I don’t know what you got caught up in, but we carry information this way to stop the random killing between guilds. You should have told our Information Guild liaison. It isn’t about the credits, Diggs; our contracts are clear. We regulate the information, so people don’t kill each other over it.”
“All lies, Cloud,” Diggs said, shaking his head. “They’ve been lying to us from the beginning.”
Like you? She wondered. She bit back the words but only just. McCloud thought back to the meetings and the changes in security. She knew Diggs was wrong, but knew there was no way to prove it to him. Diggs might have been the one who got her into the guild for training, but she believed in what she was doing.
“I can’t support you, Diggs. As much of an annoying ass as Stephens is, you’re talking about handing him over to die so you can profit.”
Diggs nodded at her and reached into his pocket. He had a knife that slid out of a sheath when he clicked it.
“Sorry, Cloud.”
He didn’t look sorry, though. He looked resolved as he started to climb over the rim and into the cockpit. The space appeared to have shrunk in the last thirty minutes.
Diggs got one leg above the rim before his body slammed to a stop. Diggs frowned, then he grabbed the rim and pushed down on it hard, thrusting himself all the way into the cockpit. McCloud saw copper wiring wrapped around his leg as he flew toward the ceiling, pulling Stephens in behind him.
McCloud had found a children’s book once. Though she hadn’t been able to read the story, there had been an anthropomorphic primate wandering around a city with a Human pet and a floating ball on a string. At that moment, it seemed as though she was reliving the story in a way she never would have imagined—Stephens was the primate and Diggs was the ball on a string.
Diggs grabbed hold of one of the exposed pipes on the ceiling and used it to brace himself so he could remove his gravity boots. McCloud wedged a foot into the open grating on the floor, grabbed the wire from Stephens, and pinched it onto the live wire running around the console. Light flashed, and a burning smell assailed her.
* * *
Janna McCloud found herself staring at a bubbled section of the cockpit, her mouth tasting as if she had tried to eat a space ration without removing it from the packaging. She floated just above the pilot’s chair and main control panel.
“Shit that stinks,” a voice said.
McCloud was pulled down by Stephens, who floated over to her. Diggs continued to sizzle on the other side of the cockpit, the blackened husk of what had once been a man. The skin flickered and sparked as the current burned through the remaining bodily fluids.
“Do you need a cold pack? You aren’t going to faint again, are you?” Stephens inched over to McCloud, who fought the urge to shove him into the line that had ended her CHENG’s life.
Stephens reached for her head, and she swatted his hand.
“I think you forget yourself, Major.”
Cold slid through her body as she tried to process everything that had just happened. It wasn’t easy to look away from the body. Stephens ripped a strip of acrylic edging off the bulkhead and knocked the wire loose from the console, making the grate and metalworks of the cockpit safe to touch. The smell was truly horrendous and reminded her of the aroma surrounding the black-market food vendors.
“It’s Lieutenant Commander,” Stephens grinned. “Might even be commander, after this.”
“Bully for you. We still have incoming ships.”
She stretched her abused muscles and shifted up to read the alerts on the screen as the communications speakers clicked on, and a ship identified itself with a military call sign and code. McCloud blinked a few times, but otherwise limited her surprise to a few perfunctory swear words under her breath.
“They’ve been tracking us since we left,” Stephens said with a broad grin. “Even though they knew I could handle it.”
McCloud frowned and looked back to where the young man floated. He had blood all over his face, bruising around the eyes, and a torn uniform. One of his shoulders was lop-sided, an ear was caked with dried blood, and he had a nasty red welt around his neck. She wondered if the blood on his ear marked the frying of any brains he had been in possession of.
“Right.”
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken.
“You’ll need to come with us, Commander McCloud, for a debriefing while they download the information from my nanite.” He stood and dusted himself off.
“What information?” she asked arching an eyebrow at him.
“The stuff Diggs was looking for,” Stephens said, grinning.
“How would they get that from you?”
“What do you mean? Are you telling me that it was in Diggs?” Stephens grimaced as he looked at the blackened husk.
“No.”
“Well, like I was saying, then—”
“I have the information, and it won’t be downloaded anywhere until I get my orders from command, Major Stephens.” She entered her code to allow boarding.
“How the hell—”
“When I reset the system, the nanite surged and the system sent a signal through it,” She dropped her eyes to the wire, thankful for the nearly endless power the fusion core gave. “Clear away the wiring and put the body in a capsule so they can extract his chips. I’ll let you know when to come in for the debrief after I speak to the unit leader. I expect you to standby until I’m ready, is that clear?”
“Commander—”
“I don’t think I stuttered. Hop to, Major,” McCloud looked down her nose at the younger man and turned back to the console to send a transmission report. The information would continue to flow, as the guild intended. Hopefully, next time they would send her someone who wasn’t from the southern region. She wasn’t sure she could take another one.
# # # # #
Mark’s Introduction to:
ENOUGH by Chris Kennedy
I simply cannot say enough about the professionality and skill of Chris, both as a writer and a publisher. When he heard about my concept for “Cartwright’s Cavaliers,” he not only agreed to publish it, but suggested I had the makings of much, much more than just a single novel. And thus, I was both rescued from obscurity and catapulted onto the Amazon bestsellers list. Thanks to his help, ingenuity, and boundless patience with what I try to call writing, the Four Horsemen universe is a rich tapestry of tales which has already thrilled thousands of readers. Chris comes from a background in Naval Aviation, where he had a successful career before retiring to be a school principal, and then onto publishing, where he’s already had multiple bestselling books, with many more to come.
His story in this anthology, “Enough,” deals with what every military man dreads: a no-win scenario. It also touches on alien merc codes of honor and brings us back to humanity’s first adversary in the Four Horsemen universe, the MinSha. Pay close attention, because if you are a fan of the Four Horsemen universe, you’ll want to remember Walker. He’s someone who doesn’t go gentle into that good night.
Find out more about Chris at http://chriskennedypublishing.com/.
ENOUGH by Chris Kennedy
Chapter 1
“So
rry to—,” Colonel Roger Applewhite broke off, coughing, and Captain Dan Walker turned his head to keep from getting splattered by the blood the colonel was coughing up. When Applewhite continued, his voice was much weaker. “You’re in…in charge,” he gasped. “Get them home. Roughnecks…yours.” His head rolled to the side, and the slate he’d been holding slipped from his fingers.
Walker looked up for someone to share the moment with, but the rest of the company had pulled back to give him some privacy while he talked with the colonel.
There was a moment of utter silence, then everything came crashing in on him. The crackle of fire from the dropship as it burned. The CASPers on the front line as they fired at their lowest rate, trying to conserve rounds. Even the radio intercept chatter they picked up from the MinSha as the enemy worked to surround his company.
He sighed as he surveyed what was left. Applewhite had once told him that if he was in the mercenary business long enough, he would eventually take a contract that went bad. Whether it was because the intel was off…or the enemy did something unpredictable…hell, maybe the gods just decided you had lived long enough. Who knows? At some point, you’d end up on the wrong side of a contract that went bad. As Captain Walker reached forward to close his colonel’s eyes, he realized that he’d never really had one go bad on him before.
Until now.
As a captain, though, he’d been in the business long enough to know they were screwed. The enemy had shown up in force, with enough troops to bag their dropships and prevent any more from coming.
And now, this.
Colonel Applewhite’s suit had died, and he’d only taken two steps outside his CASPer when he hit the damned mine. Even though it was a relic of a previous war, it was still capable of claiming both his legs, and it was way more than they could fix with their medkits alone…even if the damned MinSha hadn’t been breathing down their necks.
Walker picked up the slate, his eyes focused somewhere beyond it. The bloody thumbprint was just a red smear in the center, and the text on it nothing more than a blur. “Congrats, sir,” Sergeant First Class (SFC) David Wethington said, looking over his shoulder. “Looks like the colonel just left you the Roughnecks.”
When Walker didn’t say anything, the platoon sergeant pointed to the top of the screen. “Transfer of Ownership of a Mercenary Company,” he added.
Walker still didn’t react as he listened to Colonel Applewhite’s voice inside his head, giving him advice about how to run his platoon…‘Take care of your troops, and they’ll take care of you’…and later how to be the best company commander he could…‘Quality training builds confidence and cohesion in your soldiers. Make it as hard as you can, so when you get into a real conflict, it’s nothing they haven’t seen before.’
Wethington took the slate from the officer as he reminisced, tapped it several times, then put his thumb to it. “Now it’s notarized,” he said. “So, Colonel Walker, the company’s yours. What are your orders?”
“Orders…” Walker asked, finally hearing him. “Wait…colonel?”
“Yes sir, Colonel Applewhite transferred ownership of the Roughnecks to you before he died. I saw it and witnessed the bequest. You’re the boss now; you’re the colonel. I need to know your orders, sir, because we’re in a real world of shit.”
A MAC fired, and several MinSha weapons fired in reply. The enemy was a lot closer than he remembered them being.
“Sorry, Top, I was kind of out of it,” Walker finally said. “What’s our situation?”
“Our situation? It’s bad enough that I’d almost rather be with General Custer at Little Big Horn than here.” He shrugged. “All they had to worry about was Indians killing and scalping them. They didn’t have big-ass bugs with lasers and magnetic accelerator cannon chasing them.”
“You do know all of Custer’s men died, right, Top?”
“Yeah, I know,” Wethington replied. “I’d still rather be there than here. If I’m gonna die, I’d rather do it on Earth. Preferably in bed.”
“Well, how about if we don’t die then? What would you say to that?”
“Sounds great, sir. So, how exactly do you propose we go about doing that?”
“Well, we’re going to have to write off the contract, at least for now.”
“I think it’s pretty safe to say we’ll have to write off the contract,” Wethington said, sarcasm heavy in his voice, “especially since our company is down to less than a platoon, and there’s a lot more of the bugs than there are of us.”
The Roughnecks had been contracted to hold a mining facility in the midst of a civil war, but as they flew in on their dropships, they found the mine already invested by the rebel forces…and the MinSha they had hired to guard it from the Roughnecks. Two of their four dropships had been bagged on the initial salvo, and a third right after. The ramps had been down for the assault, and some of the CASPers had made it out, but not many.
Walker’s dropship had almost made it clear…but the last missile got it. The pilot had held the craft steady long enough for the CASPers to jump out, but had crashed it at the edge of the jungle when he had attempted to put it down. Already on fire, the fuselage of the craft had tumbled several hundred yards before hitting a tree large enough to stop it. Along the way, it had left a trail of devastation as pieces had separated, making the recovery of anything of value problematic, at best.
Wethington used an open hand to indicate the wreckage of the dropship. “That was the last of our dropships; without it, we don’t even have a means of getting off this crappy planet. What do you suggest?”
“Top, here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to get back into our suits so we can control this goat fuck, then we’re going to salvage what we can quickly, including the fuel cells from the colonel’s suit, and any others that are available, then we’re going to walk through 100 miles of suck-ass jungle to get to Clifford, the capital city of our employers, so I can have a little talk with them. And when I say ‘talk,’ I mean I’m going to kick their asses for not warning us about the MinSha.”
“Well, shit,” Wethington muttered.
“What?”
“Sir, you just gave me a reason to live, because I surely do want to see that. Okay, let’s make this happen.” He turned and jogged off to where he’d left his CASPer. After a second, Walker sprinted toward his.
Chapter 2
“One, two, three!” The CASPer made a giant splash in the center of the river, and the other two CASPers turned and walked back to the bank.
“Well, shit,” Private Chan said, “there goes my ride. Guess I’m walking from here.”
“We’ll all be walking soon,” Wethington noted as he sharpened one of his kukris. “Even with all the fuel we siphoned from the rest, the two we’re keeping won’t last us the entire way to Clifford. The colonel wants to keep the two with missiles as long as we can, so that we can at least keep their air support away from us.”
“I get that,” Private Chan said, “but why are we throwing the CASPers in the river?”
“Because the colonel has this crazy idea that we’ll be back, and he doesn’t want the bugs to get our CASPers. If we can bring some fuel back, we’ll be able to reactivate them.”
“Works for me,” Private Chan said.
Wethington walked over to Walker, who was inputting data into his slate. Walker nodded at the kukri as Wethington slid it into its scabbard; the senior enlisted had one on each hip. “If it comes to those,” Walker said, “we’re screwed.”
“No doubt,” Wethington replied; “still, I like to keep them handy in case I have a close encounter of the giant bug kind. They’ve got enough weight to cut through MinSha chitin.” He motioned toward the CASPers. “We scavenged what we could of the fuel, sir. We’ve got enough to run the two we’re keeping a while yet.”
“Good, we’ll want to get going as soon as we can; we opened up some separation on the MinSha, but they’ll be faster than us now that most of us are on foot. I
want one of the CASPers at the point and one in trail.”
“Faster than us, sir?”
“Yeah, the damn bugs can fly, so obstacles like that river aren’t obstacles for them. That’s why I had you pitch the CASPers into the river; they’ll probably fly right across and won’t see them. That’s also why we’re going through the jungle, not around it. They’d be on our asses immediately if we were out in the open.”
“Well, can we set some traps for them?” Wethington asked. “Maybe do something to slow them down?”
“Not right now—I’d like to cover as much ground as we can while it’s still light. Besides, how do you set traps for a race that flies and can go right over them?”
“Tie lines across the trees and hope they run into them?” Wethington asked.
“Hope isn’t an operational strategy, Top; besides, it would take too long to have the troopers climb trees and run the wires across. Hell, we don’t even know what altitude they’ll be flying at. As thick as this jungle is, maybe they will be walking. What I do know is, at this time, we can see where we’re going, so let’s make the most of it.”
The platoon moved out, led by one of the CASPers, but it wasn’t long before Walker lost comms with it.
“Hey, Top, do you have comms with the CASPer in the lead?”
“No sir, I don’t,” Wethington replied.
The platoon moved up warily, only to find Corporal Amos getting out of the CASPer, an annoyed look on his face.
“What happened?” Wethington asked.
“Damn thing just shut down on me, Top. I’ve seen it before in these Mark 7’s; the darn fuel cells are just stupid on how picky they are. I got a fuel warning light, but before I could do anything about it, it shut down. We must have somehow polluted the hydrogen when we swapped the fuel, and it’s gone and wrecked the fuel cell.”
A Fistful of Credits: Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 5) Page 35
