“Yeah, I’d say so.”
“Does that mean we can cancel the remainder of the contract?”
He laughed. “So far I’m saying yes. But there’s something you aren’t telling me, isn’t there?”
I looked around the hut we were using as barracks, grateful that Silky had ordered everyone else out. “Yeah, well, you might not like what I’m thinking. I might be setting a bit of an awkward precedent.”
“That’s why I employ you, McCall. The deranged and the alien can think along channels I can’t. What have you dreamed up for me?”
— 8 —
“You’ve done what?”
If he hadn’t been shouting at my Silky, I would have felt sorry for the small human with the increasingly purple face. The enterprise he’d obviously sunk all his energies and hopes into had collapsed before his eyes, then we’d magicked it back to life, though at the cost of Damage Unlimited’s. And now that Silky had followed through with the idea I’d cleared with Caccamo, Zhang thought we’d snatched it away again. Poor little man.
We were back in the hut that served as the corporate office. Zhang and To’as-Kan were expecting us to explain how Revenge Squad was going to deter any more trees from making a fuss about being cut down. We, though, had other ideas.
Silky turned away from the corporate bosses and walked over to me. “You try,” she said and winked. “I find I am nearing my threshold for violence. They may be former clients, but even so it would be unprofessional to damage them.”
“Former?” Zhang shouted. “We signed a contract.”
The Littorane nudged him with his tail. “The alien is correct, Zhang. It’s in the small print.”
“As the alien has already explained,” I said, ambling over, “we have fulfilled the revenge clause and have now terminated our agreement with your organization. You should know that we have taken on a new client in the vicinity. The animus of the region are under our protection, as are their hosts. Anyone messes with the trees and we take revenge on their ass.”
“But… but none of this is real,” sputtered Zhang. “Even if those tree-things were sentient creatures – and I’m not saying they are – they definitely have no legal status. You can’t have a contract with them. That’s not how the law works.”
“And yet we do, because that’s how Revenge Squad works. We made an agreement with the animus and we will honor it to the death. And on behalf of our new clients, we send you notice to cease logging operations immediately.”
“Impossible!” Zhang’s protests had softened to a whisper. He was a beaten man. “We have our responsibilities too. Those people out there have lives and families that rely upon us.”
“I know,” I said. “My client said to cease logging, not to clear off their islands. Sounds to me like an invitation to stay.”
The human blinked. I’d lost him, but by the way the Littorane jittered his tail, I guessed that although To’as-Kan was also confused, he was sensing a peaceful way out of this.
I grinned. I didn’t have many bright ideas, and most of the ones I did have turned out to be stupid in retrospect, but between me and my ghosts, we’d worked out a doozy. I walked over to the window and watched the Littoranes bask in the shallows.
“Ask the boss to explain,” I told Zhang and To’as-Kan. “She’s more articulate than me.”
And as a nonhuman, a more amenable negotiator to the Littorane, said Sanaa. NJ, being a civilian’s making you sneaky. I think I like it.
Thank you, I told the ghost of my first wife.
I glanced behind to see Silky bowing to the Littorane. “Honored Gishleene To’as-Kan, you told me when we met that you served with the 3rd Marine Army, which I believe formed part of the European Bastion during the liberation of Earth.”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“And while you were stationed on Earth, did you see local heritage sights?”
“Not many. I visited the Parthenon and the Acropolis, ancient buildings at a place called Greece. The natives said they were culturally important for some reason, but all they were to me were irradiated ruins surrounded by tourist kiosks selling overpriced beer. The drink was served as sealed canisters with a drinking filter to limit contamination from radioactive fallout. If you asked me, I’d far rather come to a place like… Golden Bay. Oh…”
“You see?” Silky said to the bosses. “What better way to show Klin-Tula is becoming something more than another desperate frontier planet than to stimulate tourism? It’s not just Littoranes but humans like it here too. Which means you can make it a joint venture. And why stop at humans and Littoranes? You’re both intelligent individuals with vision, I’m sure you can work the animus into the mix. Imagine the advertising – relax in the unspoiled idyll of the Naddox Archipelago and meet with Klin-Tula’s native people. We established enough of a common frame of reference with Damage Unlimited that I’m sure you can work out a mutually beneficial trade.”
“By the Song,” exclaimed the Littorane, “you are a rare and strange being, Kurlei. I believe you are unique on this planet, and now I know why you came to this world. You do the work of the Goddess.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Zhang insisted. “She does the work of Revenge Squad, which is about as grubbily secular an organization as you’ll find on Klin-Tula. Don’t let her lead you where we don’t want to go, To’as-Kan. There’s a demand for timber. We’re here to supply it. Tourism, natural fuel… these are all blue sky ideas that could work in time, but first we get the timber business profitable. Then perhaps… ah…”
Silky shut him up with a burst of anger from her kesah-kihisia that I could feel from my position at the window. I turned round to watch. I couldn’t miss this.
“I plan on returning, Mr. Zhang,” she told him. “In what capacity, I don’t yet know. Either as a tourist paying you money, or as a heavily armed Revenge Squad agent on behalf of our new client, the animus people. Which would you prefer?” She leaned in so close her plump head tentacles brushed his forehead. “I’ll leave that for you to decide.”
I kept discipline until we were out of sight of the corporate office with its two bewildered occupants. Then the belly laughs reached out of my gut and possessed me. The look in that Earther’s eyes – it was priceless!
Silky and I exchanged an extended glance of mirth before I moved closer to give her a swift embrace. She looked up at me out of those fathomless black eyes and licked her lips. But by the time I’d registered the hunger in her look, I’d already swung her up to sit her on my shoulders and begun marching over to the Revenge Squad hut, whooping in triumph.
I’d only covered a few yards before Nolog-Ndacu burst out of the hut in such haste that he ripped the door off its hinges. Inside, the rest of the team were cheering.
“My friends,” he said, the eagerness obvious in the bobbing of his head. “I have… news…”
The bobbing ceased. Instead, the Tallerman withdrew his head inside his neck cupola like a startled turtle.
I stifled a laugh. For an ancient being with a physique so massive that if he stood still, mapmakers would draw contour lines to mark his position, Nolog often acted like a child. I knew precisely what had burst his bubble.
“It’s okay, big guy,” I told him. “Silky and me weren’t, you know…?” I sighed. “You didn’t interrupt anything.”
Aliens! They’re such hard work.
“I was not mating with the human,” said Silky matter-of-factly, although I distinctly heard her softly purring as she ran her fingers through my hair. “Proceed with your update.”
Nolog’s head popped back out of his neck. “I’ve just received fresh orders from Director Caccamo. He said to haul our bony asses home because the revenge clause has triggered for a client called Salty Harmonic Corporation.”
“Salty Harmonic?” I said. “That’s gotta be Littorane, right?”
“Yes, NJ. Please don’t interrupt – I haven’t finished. Our section is tasked with taking revenge. And, NJ, the direct
or told me to inform you that this mission will involve blowing shit up. Those words exactly.”
“Oh, yeah!” I replied with a manic grin. But if I was excited, that was nothing compared to Silky, who not only oozed her enthusiasm for violence out of her kesah-kihisia, but jerked her thighs together so forcefully that I think she would have choked me to death if she hadn’t sensed my sudden panic.
Oh, she’d put her game face on and be all business as soon as we were on the job, but for now she was utterly intoxicated with the promise of savagery.
When my air passages restored to normal function, I grabbed Silky’s butt, and pushed her off my shoulders and high into the air, so she could show off by somersaulting and landing like a cat.
Already, I could hear the sound of bottles being opened in the Revenge Squad hut, and we rushed inside. No one ever wanted to miss a pre-mission party.
Our team had triumphed. We were invincible. There was drink. Soon, none of us could even conceive of anything going wrong with this Salty Harmonic deal… not even our Tallerman who was back to being as excited as a puppy on amphetamines.
Yep. You guessed it. Things were not going to run as smoothly as we assumed. Maybe we had done okay on this island, despite Damage Unlimited paying such a heavy price, but about everything else… all that being invincible and stuff… as we were about to discover, we couldn’t have been more wrong.
FOLLOW NJ McCALL IN REVENGE SQUAD
REVENGE SQUAD Book1: HURT U BACK
The first Revenge Squad novel, Hurt U Back, is available now, a short novel of how much trouble one former Marine can get up to on his first day (spoiler: it’s a lot). Hurt U Back is available now from Amazon.
The first morning of my posting to Port Zahir didn’t start well. Revenge Squad Incorporated’s outpost was deserted, the police took me in for some applied brutality, and a religious cult tried to recruit me. Even so, Fate decided to take things easy on me for my first day, because it wasn’t until the afternoon that people start trying to kill me.
My name is NJ McCall, and this is the story of how Revenge Squad’s least-qualified new recruit stumbled across merciless revolutionaries while being assaulted from every quarter by the craziness that is everyday life in Port Zahir. It’s about what happens when you meet a bona fide war hero, your alien wife develops an obsession with human body parts, and you sip coffee with a Catholic bishop who knows every mercenary in town.
But most of all, it’s about how much fun you can have on a warm, sandy beach when you’re tied to a post below the high water line, and the tide’s coming in.
REVENGE SQUAD Book2: SECOND STRIKE
It was supposed to be just another job: trash the cargo of a shipping line that had been messing with a Revenge Squad client. Honestly, I hadn’t meant to blow the ship sky high. And when it transpired that the ship was owned by the most powerful man in Port Zahir, and that he blamed us for the damage he’d suffered, it was Revenge Squad’s turn to face revenge.
My name is NJ McCall, and this is the story of how I helped to tear Port Zahir apart, and then tried to stitch it back together… with mixed results. It’s about dark obsessions, corruption in high places, killer droids with attitude, and a city coming apart along racial lines. Along the way, I sing for my life, develop an inappropriate attraction to several civil officials, am recruited by a Legion spy, and get close and personal to a perverted statue.
But most of all, it’s about finding a new family amongst the most unexpected people I could imagine: aliens.
Damage Unlimited Page 5
