Mercenary Read online

  MERCENARY

  Book One of

  The Mercenary Trilogy

  by

  Dennis Young

  Edited by

  Christine Williams

  Cover Art by

  Russell Caras

  © All story material Dennis Young 2019

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means; graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this book are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author.

  TO MY ADVISORY TEAM

  Christine, Rachel, Marilyn, and Rod.

  Hua!

  MERCENARY

  HUA

  Heard. Understood. Acknowledged.

  Battlefield code used by the Theian Colonial Marines.

  The word is derived from Olde Earth military jargon,

  and has even found its way into civilian colloquial usage.

  History studies have shown the term was never used by

  Olde Earth Marine forces.

  Still, it has become an integral part of communications,

  particularly by covert operations teams.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Here and Now (Part One)

  Just Another Day at the Office

  “If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself,

  you are certain to be in peril.”

  Sun Tzu, “The Art of War”

  Mission 282HEBO - Code name: Little Finger…

  “Incoming! Troopers down!”

  Talice Wyloh hit the dirt as she saw the muzzle flash.

  The first shot ricocheted off her helmet.

  The second blasted apart the concrete stanchion in front of her, scattering debris hard enough to crack her visor.

  The third took the left half of Trooper Cowley’s face off. He lay in a widening pool of blood, a gurgling scream eking from his ruined mouth. In ten seconds, he was unconscious. In thirty, he was dead.

  Talice fumed. Damn fucking rotten intel! Damn robbers! Now I’ve got one dead and two wounded! We’ll be lucky to get out of this alive! She turned to Rory, five meters to the left behind her. “Eyes!”

  “Three marks, two-ten, one-fifty!”

  Talice tongued her throat mike. “March, Briggs, take those marks out! Javi, where are you?”

  “Your right, ten meters! Under a half-ton of sand!” Javier Orta’s deep Latino accent filled her helmet speaker.

  More incoming fire. More debris all around. Talice knew her two wounded were out of action, but she didn’t know anything other than their vitals. She scanned her remaining Headup display running across her cracked visor. Heartbeat, BP, Nerve Reaction, BrainWave, all nominal, considering they’d been shot and were slowly bleeding to death. She almost snickered.

  She turned back again to Rory. “Eyes! I need to know where the goodies are!”

  “Two hundred meters north, ten to twenty hostiles, full auto, Armor Piercing rounds.” Rory lowered his range-finder. “And I think they have artillery.”

  Shit! “Recall! Get us out of here!”

  “Hua!”

  One minute of the-worst-year-of-her-life later, Bird One circled, laid down suppressing fire from its twin Hellbores, and what was left of Talice’s team scrambled aboard, dragging the wounded. Another round of auto-fire from the enemy, and a Stinger that just missed ruining Talice’s entire day, not to mention killing everyone, and the assault craft lifted away. Two minutes, and they were out of the atmosphere. Three, engaging the fusion plant.

  Then they were far beyond anyone on the planet’s reach.

  “Medic!”

  “We’re on it, Talice, we’re on it!” The medtechs hurried the wounded troopers into the tiny infirmary.

  Talice faced Rory, Briggs, and the rest of her remaining team. Blood trickled down her cheek from a cut above her eye. She gave Briggs a withering look. “That’s the last time we use your buddy’s sources. And we may just pay him a visit and get my money back.”

  “Our money,” corrected Briggs softly. He was a bruiser, big and pasty-white, his ancestors Olde Earth stock, from somewhere near what they called the Arctic Circle. He met Talice’s gaze squarely.

  She glowered. “Once we’re back at base and get Taylor and Arty seen to, we’ll do just that. Unannounced.”

  Briggs nodded after a moment. “I told you at the beginning he was iffy.”

  “Never again. That sonofabitch killed Cowley, and I’m gonna take it out of his ass.”

  “You know, you’re beautiful when you’re bleeding,” said Rory from the side. He was as black as Briggs was white, wide and slope-shouldered, a head taller than Talice. And Talice was tall.

  She touched a finger to her cheek and it came away bloody. “I’ll live. More than what Cowley’s doing right now.” She stuck her head into the cockpit. “Anchor Prime, then get this crate ready for a return trip.”

  “Anyone get Cowley’s tags? Or his gear?” asked Rory.

  Silence.

  “They’ve still got twenty hostages and apparently a weapons cache we knew nothing about.” Again, Talice glared at Briggs. “Get a plan together to go back in… and see if anyone at The Head would like to spend the day getting shot at.”

  Briggs and Rory parted as she stalked past. “Because I’m feeling a powerful need to kill something.”

  * * *

  “Captain, this is Tover in the infirmary. Taylor and Arty are stable. Taylor will need reconstructive surgery on his shoulder and a couple of new fingers. Arty just got a graze.”

  Talice pressed the intercom button on the wall of her cabin. “A graze? He was bleeding like a sacrificial steer on the altar.”

  “The graze was his liver. From the inside.”

  Talice shook her head. “You guys have a sick sense of humor.”

  “I’ve heard that before.” Tover chuckled, then clicked off.

  Talice sat, still in her Heavy Combat Suit. The suits were older Marine issue, readily available from NetSurplus online, and plentiful. They were good quality, although cheaper imitations were starting to surface. The Marine-grade suits would stop anything less than high-velocity AP, Armor Piercing, rounds, and a full suit weighed only six kilos. Some of the cheaper suits she’d seen wouldn’t stop a sneeze. A merc-for-hire needed to be careful about the equipment she bought these days.

  She glanced at the helmet at her feet, the crack in the visor a spiderweb of many colors, having taken out half her monitoring system. That could have been me, left dead in the desert. Instead, it’s a twenty-five-year-old kid on his first mission. And I have no idea about his family. Three days. Shit.

  She stripped down to her “pervert undies”, the bodysuit filled with med-taps and monitoring nodes. It really wasn’t a suit, but a spray-on film filled with nanofibers. During curing, they would seek vital areas to nestle onto; or within.

  Pervert indeed, she thought.

  She sprayed the dry-film cleaner all over, and the bodysuit simply melted into the air, with a scent of wintergreen. Or maybe this one was spearmint. Marketing clowns. Fuck ‘em.

  She sat again, naked, and turned off the lights, all but the telltales on her mission board and the intercom. She laid her head in her hands.

  Talice
was a Marine. Scratch that; an ex-Marine.

  No!

  Talice was a former Marine.

  No!

  Talice was, regardless the situation, always in her mind, a Marine. Long as she could remember, it was all she ever wanted to be. But now she wasn’t. She was a mercenary-for-hire. Because… because…

  She stood and ran the sonic cleaner over her gritty skin, careful to avoid the cut over her left eye. She did a sloppy job of applying healing salve and sat again, running a hand through her rough-cut hair. No new bruises.

  No concussion this time. Whoopie.

  She toyed with her ear piercing, the one so many people made fun of. But it wasn’t just an ornamental piercing done of vanity. It was an emergency transponder, given by her former OIC, once she was out of the Service and… well, unemployed. The one person in the battalion who understood what her discharge was really doing to her. And offered help instead of platitudes.

  I’d have done anything for that man right then and there. Anything. Died for him. Sent him on a cruise to the outer moons. Given him the best blowjob he ever had. He wouldn’t have any of it. Sometimes you just gotta give thanks for a good man.

  Then she remembered her meds.

  Yeah. Better living through chemistry.

  She tapped in the code on her personal effects drawer, and it popped open. She drank half the bottle tucked beneath her nightshirt, then peeled the backing from a “this’ll cure what ails ya” patch and stuck it to her inner thigh. And if anybody finds it there, either I’m dead, or they will be.

  She pulled out her camis and slid them on, after slipping into a real bodysuit, checking the battery, and plugging in the telltales. Gotta be sure I’m breathing every minute of the day. Sometimes I think about “forgetting”, just to see what happens.

  She sat for the third (or was it the fourth?) time, thinking about a message to her dad. He was a Lifer, a thirty-year Marine, still in the reserves. Just like I wanted to be.

  She tapped out a quick message on her wristcom, knowing it wasn’t a secure circuit.

  Hi Dad. Just a note to let you know I’m still alive and kicking. Nothing major, just Trouble in Paradise as usual. Hope to be home soon. Love to you and Mom. Talice.

  Trouble in Paradise. A code she used to let him know things were not going as hoped or as planned. This mission had cost almost every creditmark she had. And little had gone as planned since she was discharged and became a merc-for-hire.

  Damn little.

  * * *

  Rory, Briggs, and Orta were gathered in the ready room, gazing blankly at the holoscreen showing the mission map and details. Jason March, the other member of the team, sat apart, having tracked in dirt and sand from his HCS. His Marine-issue pulse rifle lay across his legs, a round jammed in the chamber.

  Talice entered as Rory stirred and pointed. “Approach from the south is suicide, as we just found out. North, mountains. East, the lake. West…”

  “They’ll be watching the west,” said Briggs, drinking from a beer bulb. He drained it, tossed it in the ’cycler, and drew another from his carryall. “Can’t split the team, not enough firepower. With their missiles, come over the mountains, we’ll be a target. Ditto the lake.”

  “So… underground?” Rory huffed. “West has a bit of cover. Actually, more than we had.”

  “Then why was south our approach?” asked Talice.

  Rory gave Briggs a look. “Your buddy said that was the best.”

  Talice shook her head. “Fuck him. You should have done your own analysis.”

  Briggs glowered. “What’s that old saying about hindsight?”

  “Then fuck you, too. Now we need three more Troopers, and after word of this gets out, they’ll want real combat pay.”

  Rory straightened. “We’re getting real combat pay. Double, as I recall.”

  “Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean anyone else has to.”

  Rory shifted, walked around the table, eyes still on the screen before him. He looked to Orta. “Think six would be enough from the west? What if we used Bird One as a decoy, sent two from the south again, and the rest from the west?”

  “Then they shoot down Bird One with a missile and we walk home.” Orta shrugged. “You’re asking the wrong guy. I just shoot stuff.”

  Talice moved closer to Rory. “Look. We don’t have the firepower, and even if we did, they have hostages. People from Scarbach’s family, or friends of the family, or something. We’re getting paid to rescue them, not blow them into little pieces.”

  Briggs shrugged. “I agree, Scarbach’s intel was junk. We hit him up for more money and get more Troopers. Manpower is what we need, and some brains to go with it.”

  “So you’re saying I’m not up to the task of planning a mission like this?” Talice faced him. “We’ve done this… in the Marines, together. We know the drill. Right?” Talice raised her eyebrows in a silent dare.

  Briggs looked away for a moment. “All I’m saying is, you were too trusting of the intel and thought it would be easy. You… we got greedy. We started with eight, now we’re five. We need… hell, we may need a company. They’re dug in too well.” He considered. “Maybe Scarbach should just pay the ransom and be done with it.”

  Talice shrugged. “He decided to pay us instead. By my way of thinking, we still have a job to do, but it’s going to take more than just us.” She looked to March, asleep sitting up, snoring softly. “Javi, get him to his bunk and that gun out of his hands. Rory, get the weapons checked and stored, then everyone take some sleep under the wire.

  Rory stuck his head into the cockpit. “Time?”

  “Ten hours. More if there’s weather around Anchor Prime,” replied the pilot.

  “Stand down. We’re all pissed as hell and it doesn’t do any good to argue about it now.” Talice motioned to the screen. “We’ll work it out. We’ll get Scarbach scared to death, and he’ll give us what we need. Or I’ll kill him myself.”

  * * *

  Talice returned to her cabin. She glanced around, picked up her sidearm, stuck it in the safe, then pulled up Cowley’s file on her net interface. Twenty-five. Four years in the Service, Expeditionary Forces. Crack shot. Made Corporal in two years. Good guy. She switched off. Dead guy. So help me, if we get back there, I’ll retrieve his body myself if I have to. In fact, I want to. Damn.

  She exited, nearly running into Rory as he was coming from the armory. “Everything stowed?”

  “March’s pulse rifle is trashed. The mechanism jammed and locked up. He’s lucky the round didn’t explode in his face. Other than that, we’re good.”

  “I’m gonna need a new helmet, or a repaired visor.” Talice motioned to his cabin. “Get some rest and a shower. I’m gonna meet with Briggs to figure out how to do this again without getting us killed.”

  “That would be preferable, yes. Maybe we should hang you by your ears for bad decisions.”

  Talice drew back in false indignation. “Hey, my ears are just fine the way they are. I grew up here on Theia. Thin air, low gravity compared to… some places.” She pointed to his ample girth.

  “Right, Captain. Shower and rest.”

  “Thanks for the good eyes, by the way. Got us out of a mess.”

  Rory waved a salute and disappeared into his cabin. Talice headed for the ready room, finding Briggs still there. She glanced at the holoscreen showing the objective layout. “West? With a feint from the south or north?”

  Briggs nodded. “We paid for this ship as transport, but that’s it. Still…” he paused, then closed the door between the ready room and cockpit. “These guys came in and laid down a pretty good barrage. Fired short, kicked up a lot of dust that allowed us to escape. Gunner used his head, no threat to the hostages.”

  “Yes, and we’ll probably get a bill for it.”

  Briggs shrugged. “Saved our asses, so maybe it was worth it. The question is, what would it cost to buy this ship, or one like it?”

  “More wealth than you can imagine.
” Talice thought about it. “I could probably pull together the financing, if we can live through this mission. Scarbach has money, and once we get these hostages out, he’ll owe us one, even being paid well. He might consider it an investment.”

  “Take the ship instead of payment.”

  Talice scoffed. “We can’t eat the ship. But…”

  Briggs waited, toying with the holoscreen controls.

  “Lease. We could lease with an option to buy. Old stuff. Pay like rent, part of it applies to the purchase price, or walk away.”

  “You got a lawyer friend to work that out?”

  Talice pursed her lips and nodded. “Maybe.” She motioned to the map. “Okay, what about this?”

  “We need more bodies. Maybe a company.”

  “Not if we use the ship,” she replied. “Make your feint from the north with the ship, lay down fire close enough to make them take cover, we hit them hard from the west. Yeah, but we’ll need probably a dozen more, at least.”

  “Cuts into our pay. A lot.”

  Talice pulled a fold-down seat and sat. “We want a team of eight, right? That’s the best for this type of work, we learned that in Marine Special Forces. Why not two teams? We hire another one as our fodder and backup.”

  Briggs cast his eyes aside, nodding slowly, then faced her again. “One already made up. One ready to go, that we don’t have to train or watch out for. Yeah, I like that.” He laughed. “Scarbach is gonna need a lot more money.”

  “Then we take the ship and a bit of money. Hell, he wasn’t using the ship anyway. He bought it surplus, refurbished it, and it was sitting under a tarp at High Station. It goes out on a mission, gets shot up, crashes, whatever. He writes it off.” Talice grimaced. “He could arrange that. He’s got the contacts and the guts to do it. Then we have a ship.”

  “Outstanding, Captain. Then we get rich and famous, right?”

  Talice gave him that look, rolled her eyes, and walked away.