CASPer Training Building, Golden Horde HQ, Uzbekistan, Earth
Staff Sergeant Walker and Corporal Allen made it to the Cargo Hold One hatch without running into any of the invaders. Along the way, they had run into two members of Walker’s squad, Sergeant Collyn Loftis and Private Vineet ‘VVR’ Vijayaraghavan, and they had brought them along. During the trip, a voice over the intercom had said the aliens had breached the hull in the area around Engineering. Walker figured the enemy force would make it to the hold shortly; they would have to hurry if they were to get into the CASPers before the enemy arrived. If they could get to the suits, though, between the four of them, they could kick some serious alien ass.
Walker opened the hatch to the hold and then dove out of the way as several laser rounds flew past. “Hey, fucktards!” he yelled. “We’re with the Horde. We’d love to help you if you could stop trying to kill us.”
“Sorry,” a high, thin voice called. “Come in.”
Walker peeked in and, when no more shots were fired, went through the hatch. The bay was huge, and chocked full of gear, including four dropships, at least eight APCs, and more crates and piles of shit than he could count.
A giant millipede dressed in a space suit came out from behind one of the crates. It might have looked funny…if not for the two laser pistols it held. “Sorry,” the Jeha said. “We thought you were the invaders.”
“Well, we’re not. Who’s in charge here?”
“I am,” the Jeha said, bowing. “Petty Officer Second Class Drambut.”
“What the hell’s a petty officer second class?”
“It’s an E-5; what are you?”
“I’m a staff sergeant; that’s an E-6, so I guess I’m in charge. How many folks do you have?”
“Four,” the Jeha said. “Myself, a MinSha, a Bakulu, and a Tortantula.”
An okay, but definitely not great, group of aliens. The MinSha were capable warriors, even though they were usually the enemy, and the Tortantulas were always good for wholesale slaughter and destruction. The Bakulu would probably stand up to enemy fire. They looked like giant snails—at least he could outrun it if they had to flee. The Jeha might or might not be worth a shit…so of course, it was the one in charge. It figured. He would have preferred if the MinSha were in charge of the aliens; too bad it hadn’t worked out that way.
“Okay,” Walker said to the Jeha, “I need you and your force to hold this doorway while we get into our suits. If you can do that, we ought to be able to keep them out of here.”
“We will try,” the Jeha said.
Walker shook his head. The MinSha would have been better. “All right, Allen, where are the CASPers?”
“Over here, Staff Sergeant!” Allen flew off, working his way around one of the dropships in the hangar bay. The thought of getting into a suit had rejuvenated the trooper, and Walker pushed off after him. As he came around the ship, he smiled; there were six CASPers tethered to the bulkhead.
“Can any of you run the ground-side start-up?” Walker asked.
“I can,” Private Vijayaraghavan said. “I’m qualified to run the board.”
“Good. Get the three of us started, and I’ll hop back out and start yours for you.” The unfortunate part of a CASPer start-up was that it required two people—one inside the cockpit and one on the ground. You weren’t supposed to leave the cockpit once the CASPer was operational…but then again, your ship wasn’t supposed to be overrun by homicidal robots, either.
Walker climbed up the structure of the CASPer he had chosen—the one with the rockets—and found it had been rigged for someone who had slightly longer legs than he did; the center piece poked up into his groin. It’s just a simulator he thought as he snuggled down into the cockpit. One of his testicles got caught and Walker was overcome by a wave of nausea; he had to take several deep breaths to keep from puking in his suit. What the hell? What kind of sadistic fuck programs that into a simulator, he wondered as he took a few shallow breaths. Asshole.
VVR ran through the three starts quickly and untethered the suits. As he climbed into the fourth, Walker opened his CASPer and climbed down to untether and start the private’s. As the fourth suit roared to life, gunfire could be heard from the other side of the dropship. Their time was up; the robots had arrived.
Walker mentally set up communications with the other CASPers as he slid back into his suit, careful that everything went where it was supposed to. “Let’s go!” he radioed the other operators, and the four suits lurched forward as one, the magnets in their boots holding them to the deck. Walker led them around the dropship, and he saw there wasn’t any time to spare; the crewmen were almost surrounded and within seconds of being overwhelmed. It still looked like all of the crewmen were alive, although one of the Bakulu’s eyestalks had been shot off, and it was jetting around slowly as the fluids sprayed out of it.
“Fire at will!” Walker ordered. He targeted one of the robots trying to sneak behind the crewmen with his laser and fired. The robot’s head erupted in a spray of sparks. He targeted a second, but it blew up before he could fire as Loftis hit it several times in the chest. The robot next to it lost part of its head as VVR shot it with a MAC; the robot fell backward, inop, as its magnets lost power.
Damn it, he hadn’t assigned zones of fire, and all of the troopers had keyed in on his first kill. “Allen, you and VVR start from the left; Loftis, you’ve got the ones coming through the doorway, and I’ll work on the ones on the right.”
The robots didn’t react fast enough to their presence, and the CASPers quickly destroyed the remaining robots in the wave. If the simulator was like most, the robots would come in waves, with a little time in between to rearm and take stock of the situation. The waves would probably get harder and harder, with additional stressors thrown in to screw with him. Kind of like combat, except that sometimes the enemy just tried to overwhelm you from the start. The Gokas and the Tortantulas were bad for that; like the Russians in the ancient World War II conflict, they’d try to rush you with so many troops you couldn’t kill them all before they were upon you. And then the slaughter began. Even pitchforks worked well as weapons when you got within three feet of your enemy.
Walker subordinated the other suits to his, so he could see their individual statuses. All his team’s CASPers were green across the board, except for VVR’s ammo status, which was yellow; he only had about 50 percent remaining.
“Allen and Loftis, watch the door; VVR, go see if there is more ammo where we found the suits.” That took care of the immediate needs, giving time for Walker to assess the situation. Four dropships and eight APCs would provide a lot of firepower, but it was overkill—there wasn’t enough room in the hangar to use all their weapons effectively. They could climb in and button up in one of them, but then they wouldn’t be able to see in all directions, and eventually the robots would be able to sneak up on them and attach explosives to the ship. And then…game over.
No, their advantage was mobility. He needed to use the CASPers’ mobility to their advantage. Getting tied down in either a dropship or an APC would be their deaths.
A robot stuck its head into the hangar and had it blown off by Sergeant Loftis. Although the robot was terminated, it signaled the start of the next wave, and the CASPers were busy for the next few minutes killing robots, including some who found a new way into the hangar bay from one of the side passages. Sergeant Loftis and Private Allen’s suits were damaged, and the Bakulu was killed before the sneak attack could be dealt with.
Walker shook his head. Damn. It had been a while since he’d done one of these; he should have had someone watching for enemy sneaking in from other directions. As Walker continued to kill the robots, he realized the wave wasn’t ending—a slow but steady stream of enemy forces were continuing to attack from the main doorway. His force was being pinned down; they were becoming less and less mobile the longer they tried to defend the doorway.
“Hey, Petty Officer Drambut,” Walker shouted over
his external speakers. “Get over here!”
The Jeha skittered over during a lull in the fighting and hid behind a large crate. “Yes, Staff Sergeant?” it asked. “What do you want?”
“I want you to stand here and watch for any of the robots trying to sneak up on us.”
The alien looked over the crate toward the doorway. “If I stand here,” it said, “I will be exposing myself to enemy fire from the doorway.”
“I don’t want you to stand here,” Walker replied with a mental sigh. He had forgotten how literal the Jehas could be. “I just want you to be our lookout. Stay behind that crate and watch for the enemy coming from anywhere but through the door, and let me know if you see any of them.”
“I will do so.”
Once again, that accomplished the immediate need, but did nothing to help their long-term situation. If there were more robots than he had ammunition for, he was going to lose. No matter how he tried to work the problem, though, it all kept coming back to mobility. He needed to be mobile; if he continued to defend this position, eventually he would be surrounded and destroyed.
Actually moving, however, presented an entirely different series of problems. Where would he go? He didn’t know the ship that well, and they might end up trapped somewhere in a situation worse than they had here. He had to move…but where would he go?
Another wave started, and he was forced to shelve the line of thought while he killed the attacking robots. This time he was ready for the ones trying to sneak up from the sides of the hangar.
“Above—” the Jeha said, before he exploded in a spray of chitin and fluids. Something crashed onto the top of the dropship next to him, and Walker threw himself to the side, narrowly avoiding the MAC round that slammed into the steel deck.
More robots were dropping from a hole they had cut in the overhead.
“Loftis! Kill the ones from the sides! I’ve got the ones coming through the ceiling above us!”
A well-placed shot killed the robot on top of the dropship as it aimed at the group by the doorway, and several more shots finished off the other ones coming through the hole. A spray of sparks further down the hangar bay ceiling showed the robots were cutting a second access point into the hangar. Walker drew the hand-held laser rifle from its mount on his leg and aimed it one-handed with his left hand at the new hole while he kept the arm-mounted laser on his right arm pointed at the first entryway. This would work…at least until the battery in the hand-held rifle died.
VVR’s suit flashed to yellow. It wasn’t ammo this time, but damage to his suit’s leg.
Walker realized what he had been trying to avoid was happening. They were being surrounded and were going to be overrun. They had to move, even if moving only delayed the inevitable. Regardless of what else happened, he needed to hang on as long as he could until someone stopped the robot attack. They had to have people going over to attack the other ship, right? If nothing else, eventually one of their ship’s weapons would blow up the enemy ship, and the robots would stop, right? All he needed to do was give them more time.
What if no one destroyed the enemy ship, though? The robots were probably being controlled from the other ship that had attacked them. The other ship had to be destroyed in order to stop the robots. Who was going to do that?
He looked around the hangar for answers, and it came to him. He would.
Main Gate, Golden Horde Headquarters, Uzbekistan, Earth
“I’d appreciate it if you’d come up here if you could.”
Sansar sighed and put down her old-fashioned book. So much for five minutes of relaxation. She trusted her troopers, though; if there was something one of them thought she should see, she probably should go and see it.
As she emerged from the headquarters building, she could see the massive hovertruck at the gate. It was impossible to tell what kind of load it was carrying; the back end was closed. The truck was surrounded by at least a squad of troops, all of which were heavily armed and had their weapons aimed at the truck. Two CASPers jumped in to help cover the truck, as well, and one of the corner guard towers also had the truck under its guns. It was well-covered…unless it was full of explosives, in which case, all of those troopers would be dead.
One of the troopers at the gate turned and ran across the compound to meet her. A short, dark-haired woman—Corporal Hanson.
“Thanks for coming, Colonel,” the corporal said as she reached Sansar.
“No problem,” Sansar said. “I wasn’t doing anything important. What’s going on with the truck?”
“There’s a…squid? Something. There’s an alien in the back of the truck. It says it’s from the Cartar race, but like I said, I don’t have a download of them, so I can’t confirm if that’s true. We’ve checked the truck, and there’s no bomb or explosive material we can find. Nor does there appear to be anything out of the ordinary with the truck, aside from the fact there’s some sort of creature in a tank of goo in the back.”
“But definitely no bombs.”
“Yes, ma’am, that was the first thing we did. We—me and Private Enkh, that is—met the truck a couple hundred yards out and stopped it there until the explosive ordnance disposal folks could come and check it. Once they gave it the okay, we allowed it to approach the gate, but didn’t want to let it inside without your approval. The thing in the back was very adamant, though; it wasn’t going to leave until it talked with you. It said its life was forfeit if it returned without meeting you, so I might as well go ahead and shoot it if I wasn’t going to call you. I’m sorry, ma’am; I didn’t want to shoot an unarmed…whatever it is.”
Sansar smiled. “Well, let’s go take a look at it, shall we?”
They went to the back of the hovertruck and Sansar found an enormous tank of what may have been water, although it appeared a little too viscous. It also was black, which didn’t help make it any more ‘normal’ looking.
The liquid parted to reveal something that looked like what you’d get if an octopus mated with a squid. The head was a little longer and thinner than an octopus’, and the arms were a little thinner and longer.
“I am Thron Sheel, from the Cartar Mining Guild,” a voice said from a speaker on the tank. The voice was straight out of a horror Tri-V, and the hair stood up on Sansar’s arms. “Are you Sansar Enkh?”
“Yes, I am,” Sansar replied. “What can I do for you?”
“I am thankful you came,” the alien said. “It is a privilege for us to meet one of the fabled Horsemen. We are new to contracting with mercenaries, but we need your services.”
“It’s good to meet you,” Sansar said, “but usually negotiations are handled through our contracting office in downtown Tashkent, not directly with me. Once an agreement is in place, then it is brought to me and the head of your syndicate for approval.”
“My apologies,” the alien said. “I am afraid I was unclear; I am the head of our syndicate. I am here to discuss such a proposal with you directly. We need your services immediately; there is not a moment to lose, so I came myself. We do not have time to go through the normal processes; our need is great.”
“I’m sure it is, to go to the trouble of coming here,” Sansar replied. “However, couldn’t you have let us known you were coming? We could have prepared spaces suitable for hosting and accommodating your needs.”
“It has been my experience that the more advance notice is given for something, the more time is wasted on the trappings of the visit, and the less time is actually spent on the substance; there are far too many obstacles to making progress. Our need is dire; I had hoped for a little of your time today to come to an arrangement. Besides, the more notice was given, the more chance there was for our competition to undermine us. We have come prepared to do what we must to secure your services.”
Sansar felt events getting away from her control; this was obviously what her mother had foreseen. It would have been helpful if her mother had told her a squidipus would come knocking. She sighed. Whatever it wa
s, it was starting.
She had never shirked her duty, though, and she wasn’t going to start today. She turned to Corporal Hanson. “Could you please see if any of our contract negotiating team is around? If not, recall a couple of them ASAP from Tashkent. Also, I’d appreciate a chair if someone would run and get one for me.”
The corporal saluted. “Yes, ma’am! I’ll take care of it!”
“Also,” Sansar added, “good job on handling the situation. Please stand down everyone out here, with the exception of the CASPers. I’d like to have two available during the negotiations for security, in case anyone else shows up.”
“Yes, Colonel!”
Sansar saluted, and the corporal ran off, shouting orders to everyone standing around. Sansar smiled. In the corporal’s zeal to carry out her duties, she didn’t realize half the people she was ordering around were senior to her.
“So,” Sansar said, returning her attention to the alien, “why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me what’s going on. I’m not familiar with your race, and the listing for it on the GalNet said you were confined to your home planet.”
“That used to be true. When the Buma showed up, they didn’t realize at first that our planet was inhabited. Our planet is mostly covered in water, and the Buma were excited at the amount of minerals we had in our oceans. When they found out there was intelligent life there, too, they were considerably less excited. In response, they took advantage of us in our initial contracts. It took us a long time of gathering resources for the Galactic Union before we were able to save up enough capital to buy a ship. Once we made it off-world, we found out how badly we were being taken advantage of.”
Sansar nodded. “That is a common issue I have seen with the Union. We were taken advantage of, too, after we were brought into the Union.”
The Golden Horde (The Revelations Cycle Book 4) Page 10
