Mercs!

by Dorian Dawes

  “It’s not strange at all. I respect you, Corporal Melanson. I respect you enough to establish the parameters of our relationship. You have made yourself a legitimate enough threat to my enterprise that I have to take you seriously, and in turn that makes you valuable as an ally. The second you stop being a threat, you stop being useful, and when that happens…”

  “Our contract is terminated. You are as ruthless as they say.”

  “This isn’t me being ruthless, Corporal.” Ching Shih leaned forward so he could peer directly into her eyes. “This is me at my fairest. Pray you don’t see ruthless.”

  “You make yourself pointedly clear, Captain.” Melanson choked. “Though if you don’t mind my saying, you talk too much. You have the coordinates to the temple, I take it?”

  She straightened. “I do, but I will be withholding them until my men have gotten a chance to secure the site.”

  “Just ’cause you’re likely to double-cross doesn’t mean I am.”

  “Then you’re a fool in the wrong game, Corporal.”

  Melanson let out another bout of belly-shaking laughter. “Well played, Madame. Very well, I take it we’ve come to an agreement. My men and I keep the key safe while you secure the Valran Temple. We split the bounty and go home richer than gods.”

  “Or we kill each other for the spoils,” Ching Shih shrugged. “Either way, I look forward to it.”

  Melanson licked his lips. “If it comes to that, be sure to bring your best. You’ve yet to see the full might of my warband.”

  Ching Shih raised her blaster and pointed it at him. He stood before the barrel unflinching. She flicked the gun into the air and laughed.

  “I would hate to tarnish our friendship by doing anything less,” she said. “If I come to kill you, I will bring you the fight of your life.”

  “It’s all I could ask for,” Melanson said, shoving a finger behind the strap of his overalls. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

  Ching Shih bowed and barked a departure order to her sailors. The schooners roared to life and, with frightening alacrity, turned and zipped far across the dunes. Melanson watched, the hairs on his thick arms bristling.

  “May the Mother protect us,” he whispered to himself.

  He’d never been a particularly religious man, but the platitude seemed to provide comfort to his war-band. He hoped it might instill some of that same comfort in him. It did not.

  THE CRAGS AND caves formed strange shapes, warped by the harsh storms and wind. Some formed great pillars and spirals like some mad artist had spent his last remaining years sculpting them. Snidely pulled the scorpion to a halt outside the gaping maw of a domed cavern.

  “I’ll check inside first,” Talisha said, locking her helmet into place. “Don’t want to run into any occupants.”

  “Hurry,” Nergal warned. He touched two fingers to the side of Bluebird’s neck. “I need to operate soon.”

  Rogers stood and drew his pistol. “I’ll keep an eye on things out here in case we get any visitors.”

  Talisha nodded approvingly and leapt out of the scorpion. She vanished into the darkness of the caves with her cannon aimed directly in front of her. There was a sweaty moment before she switched over to night vision lenses where there was nothing but an impenetrable blackness before her. A lurid purple flooded the lens as she scanned for heat signatures of anything crawling about in the caves.

  The helmet had sensors that could pick up faint traces of scarcely audible noises. They were made apparent to her through a wavelength at the bottom right-hand corner of her visor. Other indicators flashed across her scanners, languages and symbols known to few in the galaxy aside from herself.

  The Valran tongue was complex and nigh indecipherable. It’d taken her mother years of teaching for her to understand any of it. Her thoughts drifted to her mother.

  Mom could be a real asshole. She’d spent years hammering everything about Valran culture, technology, and the language into her. She’d go on and on about how the task and responsibility of preserving their ways rested on their family, but no other could be trusted with it. Up until Talisha became a teenager, her mother seemed hellbent on passing on the mantle for her to take up the armor and carry on being a freelance agent for the IGF.

  All that changed when Talisha came out of the closet. There’d been the telltale signs of course, such as when she’d dressed as a princess for a Halloween party several years prior and had been loath to change out of the costume. She’d been experimenting with makeup and the like, but most assumed she was just a pretty gay boy exploring the limits of gender expression.

  When she came out as transgender, her mother’s attitude abruptly shifted. She didn’t even show up to her own daughter’s graduation from the IGF Military Academy. It was like everything Talisha had been trained to do suddenly no longer mattered.

  Their relationship only further deteriorated from there. Talisha kept in touch, asking for advice now and again. Mom was a jerk, but she was a smart jerk with a lot of experience. Besides, she’d lost most of her accumulated wealth caring for orphans and refugees, so she couldn’t be all bad. It sucked, though, that none of the warmth or affection Mom showed those kids was ever once thrown her way.

  Damn. Focus, Talisha. Get your head together.

  Not like there was much present danger lurking within these caves anyway. There were flickers of noises showing up on the wavelength, but they were either too far or too faint to make any noticeable difference. That bothered her. It was fairly common to find some form of life dwelling within caves for shelter, especially in harsh climates such as this. Here there wasn’t so much as a fungus.

  She emerged from the cave several minutes later, visor raised. “All clear, folks. Let’s get her inside.”

  Sometime later they managed to get Bluebird into the caves. Rogers kept an eye on Jefferson while Talisha assisted with prying Bluebird’s heavy garments off her. The large woman’s chest was bound in a thick plating of terracilium alloy, a highly rare metal.

  “This explains a lot,” Nergal noted, tapping the breastplate with a gloved knuckle. “Instead of flying straight into her vitals, the bullets were slowed. We just need to remove them before they burrow deeper and do any real damage. She should be fine.”

  “All the same, I’m going to be watching you,” Talisha said.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “You’ve no reason to trust me, but please stay out of my personal bubble. For your own safety, if anything else.”

  “Try and ease off him, why don’cha, Talisha?” Rogers called from the mouth of the cave. He’d perched on a rock and was staring out at the horizon, hand resting lazily over one knee. “Let the man work.”

  Talisha exhaled. “You’re right. Starting to sound like my mother over here.”

  Snidely had been poking around on his datapad in front of the campfire. “I fail to see an issue there. She had a long and successful career before she retired. Brilliant woman, if a bit too generous for her own good.”

  “And what would you have done differently with those credits?” Talisha turned on him, a wry smile gradually forming.

  “Invest them of course,” Snidely shrugged as if the answer were so obvious that she was a fool for even asking. “With her contacts in the IGF, she could have set up a nice pension, sold the armor at an extraordinary price and lived off the residuals for years. Now she relies on the generosity of others and pity-money from her daughter every month. A sad end to the galaxy’s greatest bounty hunter.”

  Talisha shook her head. “You’re a piece of work, Blake.”

  He sighed and lowered the datapad into his lap. “Laugh all you like, that’s the world we live in. A libertarian’s wet dream of unfettered capitalism.”

  A chorus of groans from all other conscious persons caused Snidely’s shoulders to tense and he resumed scrolling through the datapad. It became very clear to him that his philosophies would not be well received on this particular crowd. He chose the wisdom of keeping h
is mouth shut on any topics of business in the future.

  Jefferson had curled up into a ball of skin and bones in a corner. He hadn’t wandered off too far, just nearer to the mouth of the cave. He’d shown a great deal of apprehension about coming inside.

  Ninety minutes passed. Nergal managed to pry the last shell casing from Bluebird’s body and wrapped her wounds with clean bandages. He picked up one of the casings with a set of tongs and held it out for the others to see. Rogers let out a pre-recorded whistle.

  “How many of those shells were in her?” Rogers asked. “How is she even alive?”

  “Several,” Nergal said, throwing the casing back into the bloody pile with the others. “She’s an extraordinary woman, I’ll give her that. Now all that’s left is for my serum to do its work. She should be fine by morning.”

  “Bullshit.” Talisha folded her arms over her chest. “Those wounds will take days to heal.”

  Snidely looked up from his datapad. “Dr. Isaac is telling the truth. It’s why I hired him. While his unique condition is a point of interest for us at Plymouth, his research is far, far more appealing.”

  “When one is riddled with as many diseases as I am,” Nergal said. “The eradication of all bodily ailments becomes a priority.”

  Rogers paused for a moment. He then turned to Snidely. “Talisha’s armor. Nergal’s research. Blue’s cannon…”

  “And your unique consciousness,” Snidely said, nodding. A smile crept onto his face. “Yes, you were chosen for more than your particular talents on a relic-hunt. My superiors thought it risky bringing you all together like this, especially with the Valran artifact taking top priority.”

  “But you thought getting to study us all up close would give us a better means of reverse-engineering the technology for yourselves,” Nergal whispered dryly. “You’ve been recording us.”

  “From the instant you set foot on Archimedes IV,” Snidely said. A panicked look suddenly came over him. “You’re not upset, are you?”

  “The IGF has been doing the same thing to me for years,” Talisha sighed, lying on the ground, arms propped behind her head. “Least with your people it’s par for the course. Can’t get mad at a snake when it bites you. It’s just doing what comes naturally.”

  “More than that,” Nergal sniffed. “This one is hoping to get a hefty promotion once this is all over.”

  “You’ve a remarkable talent for the obvious, Dr. Nergal.” Snidely rolled his eyes. “Any more shocking revelations you’d care to share with the class.”

  “Just one.” Nergal stood opposite the campfire, arms shoved into his coat pockets as a smug expression formed over his features. “Your superiors see your ambition and haven’t quite decided if that makes you an asset or a liability. You’ve got a real knack for running your mouth when you shouldn’t and don’t know well enough when to play your cards close to the chest. At this point, no one can tell if it’s guts or stupidity. I reckon you’ve skirted by on luck and determination for so long that they want to know how much you’ve got to offer them before you do something really foolish and bring the whole company down with you.

  “Any other time they might have had you monitoring the situation from a comfy shuttle, orbiting the planet and sending messages all covert-like, but they wanted to know if you could survive with the gang of lowlife’s your ambition hired. You’re so prone to gambling their pieces on the board they thought you’d like to know what that felt like. Frankly, I can’t tell if you’re being tested…or punished. Getting warm, Blake?”

  Snidely’s nostrils flared. He stood and marched angrily toward the mouth of the cave. Talisha snorted, watching his pathetic attempts at conveying furious indignation. It was too adorable to bear, and she soon was doubled over, hands clutching her stomach laughing till she was red in the face. Rogers joined in with his own mechanical laughter. Even Nergal giggled at Snidely’s expense.

  “Should someone go after him?” Rogers said, still jovial.

  Talisha shook her head. “I highly doubt he’ll find anything out here. Like I said, the cave’s pretty much devoid of life—”

  She was cut off by the sounds of panicked screaming. All turned startled eyes toward the mouth of the cave. Jefferson stirred quickly to wakefulness. He stared wide-eyed, bottom lip quivering.

  “Critters,” he whispered.

  “Impossible.” Talisha lowered her visor.

  Only Snidely could be seen through her thermographic visor, and, according to her sensors, he was dangling six feet in the air. Talisha’s shoulders tensed and she moved for the sounds, arm cannon raised. Rogers and Nergal followed behind, drawing their weapons.

  “What’s going on? Whaddya see?” Rogers pressed.

  Frustration crept into her voice. “Not a damn thing. That’s the problem. Whatever this thing is, it’s not putting out a heat signature of any kind.”

  Snidely’s screams grew louder and they picked up the pace rushing toward the terror. There was something there all right, gripping the company man in muscular humanoid arms coated in long bristling fur. It looked like a fifteen-foot-tall maggot with a hundred spindly cockroach legs to support its bulbous white body. The distressingly humanlike arms were pulling Snidely’s flailing body closer to a set of chomping mandibles. Teal-colored slime dripped from their jagged edges, pooling in a goopy mess about the creature’s lips and chin.

  “What are you waiting for? Shoot it!”

  Rogers waved his gun, struggling to find the creature. “Y’all better tell me if I’m aiming at whatever’s got the boss.”

  Nergal stared at him, visibly concerned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “This creature doesn’t appear on radar,” Talisha barked. “It’s invisible to him!”

  Talisha raised her visor and launched herself into the air with her jetpack. She flew around the creature’s side to fire wildly at its arms and bulbous body, searching for a weak spot. The creature let out an ungodly hissing noise before dropping Snidely to the cave floor, and it turned to crawl on its human arms toward her.

  She wanted to wretch just watching the way the critter moved. She thought she could see long wispy strands of hair atop a round protrusion from its head. It was a brief and fleeting vision, but it almost looked like a human head with a blank lump of flesh where its face should be.

  “Okay! That’s new!” She panted, flying away from a lunge of its powerful arms.

  Nergal retrieved the hoses from his apparatus. “Heard of these monsters before, from a bandit whose insides had been completely warped by its venom. Hair falling out in clumps, fascinating business. He’d started growing weird white lumps on his back, same color and texture as that thing there.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Talisha flew out the way of another lunge and fired on the creature again.

  Nergal allowed the fires in the apparatus to heat up before stepping forward. “I mean don’t let it touch you. My theory is these things are looking for new hosts for their eggs.”

  A wide arc of flame shot from Nergal’s guns and consumed the critter. It groaned and shrieked, coiling in on itself in a vain attempt to put out the flames. Nergal smiled wickedly, watching it scream its last.

  Snidely rushed to his feet, stepping in front of Nergal to gaze down in open-mouthed horror and fascination at the creature. “Is there any part of it you left intact, you brute?”

  Talisha leaned against the cave wall, panting heavily. “You’re welcome. He saved your life.”

  Snidely stamped his foot. “This creature has the capability of cloaking itself from all scanners. Those implications are huge! Dr. Nergal, as a scientist, surely you could understand the need to-”

  Nergal popped the edge of the gun directly into Snidely’s little nose. “The bandit was beyond saving. His body underwent a fascinating metamorphosis before I decided it was in my best interest to kill him. Didn’t want something let loose rampaging about inside my lab. If you’d seen what I’d seen, you would not suffer such a c
reature to live. The harm such a thing poses to our little party is simply too great.”

  Snidely grabbed Nergal’s gun and threw it out of his face before leaning in close, spittle flying from his mouth. “This is my expedition! I’m in charge! I will decide what to risk, not you!”

  Nergal wrapped his fingers around the back of Snidely’s throat and pulled him closer. “No one has ever dared get this close to me. Always afraid of what they might catch. Are you stupid, Blake Snidely? Or just suicidal?”

  Snidely grabbed onto Nergal’s collar. He’d gone completely red and his entire body shook. His screams were nigh unintelligible. “I! Have! Vision! You are just a quarantined…fff-freak!”

  Nergal’s resolve never broke. “There it is. That’s the special word I was looking for. Feels good to bring things out into the open, doesn’t it?”

  “Break it up,” Talisha said, rubbing her temple with her fingers. “Try not to let him get under your skin like that, Snidely.”

  Nergal smiled. “Oh, we’re just clearing the air. I like to know where I stand with people.”

  He turned his back on the flummoxed corporate man and sauntered toward the campsite. Rogers watched silently. He shook his head and made the sound of a tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth.

  “Do you think the same thing about the doctor?” he asked, turning to Talisha.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I didn’t see you stopping our boss from laying into him before. Way I see it, Dr. Isaac was just retaliating.”

  Talisha exhaled. “Nergal was clearly antagonizing him, but I can get why you wouldn’t see that.”

  “And why wouldn’t I see it?” A tense edge crept into the robotic Southern twang.

  Talisha gave him a hard look. “Calm down, cowboy. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  He’d had one hand casually leaning against the butt of his pistol. He sighed and relaxed his stance, turning away from her. “You think you’re better than us, don’t you?”

  “That’s not—”