Peter Nealen's Blog, page 12

The Defense of Provenia is Out Today!

There are two story arcs in The Unity Wars. The Defense of Provenia begins the second, from a very different point of view than the Caractacan Brothers we met in The Fall of Valdek.

He’s about to get his first taste of combat…

…And he thinks that it’s the most awful thing he’s ever seen.

He’s about to find out what real horror is.

Gaumarus Pell has never heard of Valdek, or the Galactic Unity. To him, the rebels on his own world are enough of a threat.

But a greater threat lurks in the shadows.

The rebels unleash an atrocity that the Provenians have never seen before. Shock ripples across the face of the planet and, soon, they will have far worse to face than the rebels.

A nightmare descends from deep space.

If he survives, Gaumarus will have to make a choice. A choice that could change the face of the galaxy.

Don’t miss the next episode in the epic Military Science Fiction adventure, as the galaxy gets bigger! It’s perfect for fans of Rick Partlow, Jay Allan, and Galaxy’s Edge.

Get it now.

The post The Defense of Provenia is Out Today! appeared first on American Praetorians.

Terror from Above – The Defense of Provenia is Out!

The Defense of Provenia takes a slightly different tack from The Fall of Valdek. There are two arcs in The Unity Wars, and they will come together in the end.

He’s about to get his first taste of combat…

…And he thinks that it’s the most awful thing he’s ever seen.

He’s about to find out what real horror is.

Gaumarus Pell has never heard of Valdek, or the Galactic Unity. To him, the rebels on his own world are enough of a threat.

But a greater threat lurks in the shadows.

The rebels unleash an atrocity that the Provenians have never seen before. Shock ripples across the face of the planet and, soon, they will have far worse to face than the rebels.

A nightmare descends from deep space.

If he survives, Gaumarus will have to make a choice. A choice that could change the face of the galaxy.

 

The Defense of Provenia is out on Kindle and Paperback today.

The post Terror from Above – The Defense of Provenia is Out! appeared first on American Praetorians.

The Defense of Provenia Chapter 1

The halftrack grumbled to a halt with a lurch; the driver was clearly new, and hadn’t yet gotten used to the slightly different handling. In the turret above, Mertens was knocked against the double coilgun and swore.

“Who let that fumble-fingered nuyak drive?” Mertens demanded, his voice muffled by armor plating.

“He needs the road time,” Corporal Gaumarus Pell replied. “I remember your first few musters, Mertens. Don’t make me start telling stories.”

There was a general chuckle through the halftrack’s troop compartment at that. Gaumarus looked around at his section. Well, not his section. Sergeant Verlot was the section leader. Gaumarus was just a fireteam leader.

He was glad he’d gotten a chuckle though. It had broken some of the tension, and he’d actually managed to relax a little bit himself.

On most days, he was responsible for two thousand acres of tillage on the Pell Family farm, both supervising the human workers and the remote tractors. The humans were easy; it was the bots that made him want to tear his hair out. Even after centuries of computer development, they were still frustratingly glitchy, overly literal mechanisms, that could plow up two months’ worth of crops in an afternoon if not monitored closely.

He missed that frustration right at the moment. He’d been part of the Provenian Defense Force for six years, ever since he’d attained his majority, like every other able-bodied young man of the Families. But up until two days ago, his entire service had consisted of his initial training, monthly musters, and the two-month yearly drills. He knew his job, almost as well as he knew how to run the farm. He knew it well enough that he’d been promoted quickly. Several of his squad mates were far senior to him in both age and time in service. But facing actual combat, he suddenly realized anew, was something different. And looking around at the rest of the squad, he could see that he wasn’t the only one with a fluttery, crawling sensation in his guts.

The back doors of the halftrack swung open on hissing hydraulics. “Everyone out!” Sergeant Eudes Verlot barked. Verlot was a grizzled old man, a foot shorter than Gaumarus’s own two-meter height, so skinny that he looked almost like skin and bones when he wasn’t weighed down with his tac vest, power pack, and helmet, like they all were at the moment. He was also the only actual combat veteran in the squad; he had fought rebels and indig mountain tribes both.

Verlot had been around a long, long time. Gaumarus sometimes believed the rumors told in the barracks after lights out, that he’d made a deal with one of the mountain tribes’ plethora of devils and was actually immortal.

Gaumarus was one of the first out, hefting his long-barreled coilgun and carefully threading it through the narrow hatchway. The decision to equip all the PDF’s infantry with coilguns had been made a few years before, replacing the more compact, chemically fired rifles they’d been carrying before, and not a few of the PDF riflemen were still grumbling about it. At least, that was the case among the mech troops like Gaumarus’s unit, the 121st Motor Infantry. He was sure the regular footsloggers were still grumbling, but the footsloggers grumbled about everything.

His shoulders chafing under the relatively unfamiliar weight of his vest and the coilgun’s bulky power pack, Gaumarus hit the ground and jogged around the left flank of the halftrack, finally able to take in the scene.

Company Aleph of the 121st was presently drawn up in a rough L-shape on the rocky ridge overlooking the tiny settlement of Bar. They were holding about eleven hundred meters from the nearest structure.

Bar was a new settlement, only a few kilometers from the spaceport of Furch. As such, it was mostly prefabs, though it already looked well on the way to ruin. Several of the prefab containers/buildings were already dingy and crumbling, with refuse piled against their minimal foundations and drifting through the avenues. Gaumarus couldn’t help but think, in true Family fashion, that that was what one could expect from the Latecomers.

He hurried to a rocky outcropping just ahead of the halftrack’s front bumper, where he lowered himself to a knee, laying the barrel of his coilgun across his thigh and looking to his right and his left. The rest of the riflemen and the support gunners, lugging their heavy-caliber railguns to firing positions, were forming a rough line, along the edge of the cordon that the halftracks were setting up.

Verlot strode up beside him. He couldn’t see the sergeant’s face behind his helmet’s polarized face shield, but he could imagine the man’s blunt features twisted into their habitual, semi-permanent scowl. Gaumarus waited for the inevitable, his shoulders tensing a bit as if anticipating a blow.

“Get your worthless carcasses down on your bellies and find some real cover!” Verlot snarled. “You think that just because these Latecomer scum are lazy nuyaks, living in their own filth, that they can’t still manage to shoot you, standing up straight like parade ground windup toys, skylined against the horizon?” He shook his head in disgust, and Gaumarus was sure that, if not for his helmet’s face shield, he would have spat in the yellowish dirt and prickly, gray groundcover. “This is what we get for driving the mountain tribes away; a bunch of children playing at soldier!”

Gaumarus sank down behind his rock, his shoulders hunched, feeling Verlot’s venomous eyes between his shoulder blades. Vegetation crunched under the sergeant’s boots, and Gaumarus felt him loom above him. “How are you going to shoot the Latecomers with your weapon pointed at the ground to your left, Corporal Pell?” Verlot asked in a low hiss. Terrible old man he might have been, but Gaumarus knew that he’d pitched his voice just low enough for Gaumarus alone to hear him. Verlot was many things, but unprofessional was not one of them. He might not think that Gaumarus was worthy of his rank, but he wouldn’t let that lead him to dress down one of his fireteam leaders in front of the rest of the men.

Flushing behind his own face shield, Gaumarus fumbled his coilgun around and aimed it alongside the rock, pointed down at the nearest blocky trailer on the edge of Bar. There was no movement below; the windows were dark, and there were no people on the rough, trash-strewn streets of the settlement. Which could only mean that the Latecomers were getting set to get hit.

For a long time, the PDF just stayed where they were, weapons pointed down at the ramshackle village. The wind whispered through the low ground cover and the rocks, rattling some of the windows and shutters below, the sound drifting faintly up to the cordon.

“Where are they?” someone muttered.

“Waiting for you to do something stupid,” Verlot snapped. “Be quiet.”

Gaumarus hesitated, but he was a noncom himself, so he turned slightly to ask Verlot, “What are we waiting for, Sergeant? If Central Command is certain that the bombers came here…”

“We have orders to set the cordon and hold, Pell,” Verlot said, his voice suddenly empty of its usual snarling disdain. “I don’t think that the Council thinks we can handle it.” There was a bitterness in that sentence that had nothing to do with the quality of the PDF soldiers under Verlot’s command.

Another set of boots crunched behind them, and Gaumarus heard Lieutenant Yuusen’s voice. “Status, Sergeant Verlot?”

“The squad is set in and ready, sir,” Verlot replied formally. Gaumarus could picture Yuusen, straight-backed and aristocratic, probably with his helmet off. The young officer was given to those sorts of theatrics. When he’d been asked why he insisted that his men keep their helmets on while he regularly removed his own in what was supposed to be combat scenarios, he’d always said that it was to inspire the men with his courage and disdain for death.

The thing was, Yuusen probably took that seriously. There were stories about him. Young as he was, he’d been on expeditions into the Badlands. He’d never gone so far that he hadn’t come back, but he had to have clashed with the mountain tribes a time or two.

“Good,” Yuusen said. Gaumarus could feel the platoon leader’s eyes on him. “Unfortunately, the orders have not changed. We are to hold position and wait for the Knights.”

Behind his face shield, Gaumarus grimaced. He knew that Verlot had a far nastier expression on his face.

“Why are we waiting for them?” the sergeant demanded. “This is a local matter.”

“The Council hopes that having the Knights crush this cell will put the fear of God into the rebels,” Yuusen said. He sounded tired, as if he’d been over all this before, and it didn’t get any better with repetition. “They want to make an example, and the Knights are willing enough to help.”

“Typical,” Verlot grumbled. “I’m sure they kissed the Knights’ feet at great length beforehand.”

“I’m sure,” Yuusen said dryly. “But we shouldn’t be speaking so of our superiors in front of the men, Sergeant.”

Gaumarus didn’t dare look around, and knew that he’d just see the dark orb of Verlot’s face shield anyway, but the old Sergeant’s disgust was palpable.

“So, what is taking them so long?” Verlot asked.

Yuusen paused, and in the quiet, Gaumarus could just make out a faint howl that wasn’t made by any Provenian vehicle. “While I am sure that the Order of the Tancredus Cluster arrives when it means to, and not a moment before or after, regardless of what we mere mortals might hope for, that sounds like their skimmers now,” the lieutenant said.

Gaumarus forced himself to watch the village below, as much as he wanted to see the incoming vehicles. It had been a once-in-a-lifetime event when the Misericorde had arrived in the Leuekin system. Up until then, the Order of the Tancredus Cluster had been little more than a legend to most Provenians.

The howling of the skimmers got louder and louder. It sounded like they were coming straight at the PDF cordon, and if not for the comm headset built into his helmet muffling the worst of it, the rising shriek of the ground effect fans would have been deafening.

Just as the noise seemed to reach a painful peak, even through his hearing protection, it suddenly tapered off, and the ground beneath him shuddered. The skimmer’s driver must have grounded his vehicle. A moment later, a loud, resonant, artificially amplified voice spoke behind him.

“Is the cordon set, Lieutenant?” The voice was halting and flat, utterly without inflection. It sounded artificial, like a bot was speaking.

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Yuusen replied. “We are awaiting the scouts’ report, and then we will be ready to advance on the village.”

There was a long pause, and then the flat, mechanical voice spoke again. “That will not be necessary, Lieutenant,” it said. “Keep your men here, out of harm’s way. My Knights will advance and clear the village.”

It took Gaumarus a moment to realize, from the strange tone and the long pause beforehand, that the Knight must have a translator program built into his helmet. He probably did not speak Oxidanese, nor did the Provenians speak whatever esoteric language that the Knights probably spoke amongst each other. He was speaking his own language, and his helmet was translating for him.

“With all due respect, sir,” Yuusen began, but the Knight cut him off.

“Your Council requested that we take care of this situation, Lieutenant,” he said. “And so we shall. Be thankful that you may stay here, out of harm’s way.”

Gaumarus could only imagine how much Verlot was bristling at that, but Lieutenant Yuusen simply said, “Very well, sir.”

The Knight spoke again, his helmet speakers blaring what could only be orders in his own fluid, faintly sing-song language. Then the howling rose again, and dust and grit pelted Gaumarus where he crouched, as the skimmer lifted off the ground once more.

He got a glimpse of it as it passed through the cordon and started down the long, shallow slope toward Bar. Angular and sharp-nosed, it looked far sleeker and more high-tech than the Provenians’ own halftracks or wheeled assault carriers. The sides were folded up, forming a sort of armored wall around its turret, which had a single, blunt weapon muzzle pointed down at Bar. The Tancredus Knights were crouched in the open flanks of the skimmer.

They were dressed in full, articulated combat armor, far more advanced—and far more expensive—than anything Provenia could produce, at least as yet. Their heads were encased in faintly peaked helmets with T-shaped vision slits. Their armor, along with the skimmer’s hull, was painted a dull red that stood out against the brown, yellow, and gray dirt and vegetation of the Goderic Plateau.

They were nothing if not confident. Certainly more confident than Gaumarus felt. While he understood his superiors’ frustration, he couldn’t help but be a little bit thankful that it was the Knights going down into that Latecomer warren, and not him.

Movement stirred beside him, and he turned involuntarily to find himself looking into a quartet of completely black eyes, like obsidian marbles, set in a round, bristled face with a strange, three-sided mouth.

He managed to minimize his start. He took a hand off his coilgun and made a quick series of signs in the air.

[I wish you would stop doing that.]

If the indig scout had a facial expression, it was impossible for a human to read. [I am sorry,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff signed back. [I will never get used to human startle response.]

Communication with the indig tribes of Provenia had been difficult at first, since their mouthparts could not imitate human speech of any language, and vice versa. Over time, some humans and indig who had been dedicated to ending the constant brush wars in the aftermath of the first Families’ settlement had developed a sign language that both races could come to understand. It was the only way to communicate, except with expensive—and often unreliable—computer programs.

[What did you see?] Gaumarus signed, after indicating that he accepted Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff’s apology. Those sorts of manners were important, even among the indig who had accepted human presence on Provenia and begun to integrate with the human settler’s society.

[They are barricaded around the central power substation,] Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff reported. [They have explosives with them, and have taken several of the local residents hostage.]

That was a little strange; in the news reports of clashes with the rebels, if they took hostages, they tried to communicate with the authorities. To the best of Gaumarus’s knowledge, there hadn’t been any such attempt. There should have at least been calls over loudspeakers when the PDF had arrived. That had been the way it had always gone before.

Of course, a moment later, just as the Tancredus Knights’ skimmer got within a few meters of the first run-down prefab, a loudspeaker did start crackling from within the settlement.

“PDF pawns!” a shrill voice speaking Oxidanese shouted. “Is this how little the Families care about human lives? We have tried to negotiate, but you don’t answer! Do you want us to start killing the hostages now?”

“What does he mean, they’ve tried to negotiate?” Verlot asked Yuusen, still looming behind Gaumarus. “I’ve heard nothing.”

“I think that the Council has PDF jamming their comm signals,” Yuusen said grimly. “They want an example made.”

“That’s too costly a message!” Verlot snarled. “They’re really just going to sacrifice the hostages?” Gaumarus was a little bit surprised at that, but he reflected that Verlot was old-school. He was merciless to his subordinates who failed, but his code of honor was the PDF’s, and that meant protecting civilians.

Yuusen’s silence spoke volumes.

“So, we will be vindicated!” the voice over the loudspeaker shrieked. “When the word of this gets out, it will show all the emigrants and the downtrodden on this world what they can expect at the hands of the Families! This is our world, and all the so-called Latecomers will rise up with us, when they see how callously you sacrifice them!”

“Pell?” Yuusen asked. “Are the hostages really villagers?”

Gaumarus exchanged a rapid series of signs with Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff, then turned to address his platoon leader. Yuusen, as he’d expected, was bareheaded, the wind stirring his brown hair, his mustaches and pointed goatee impeccably waxed.

“He says that they appear to be, sir,” he said. “One of the scouts, at least, saw the rebels dragging a mother and child out of one of the prefabs, just as we arrived.”

Yuusen nodded, his eyes cold, his lips tightly pressed together. Gaumarus understood. The rebels were going to see their own slaughtered to make their point.

He turned back toward the village just as the Tancredus Knights’ skimmer entered the outskirts, the Knights themselves piling off and lifting their powerguns. More tech that the Provenians couldn’t afford.

Gaumarus settled in behind his coilgun, watching for an ambush to materialize. He was sweating, far more than he should have been with the cool breeze coming off the distant mountains to the east. His hands were trembling a little. He’d never actually shot at a human being, or even an indig, before.

The Knights were spreading out, their red armor glinting slightly in the sun. They formed a line abreast and began to advance into the village.

A shot rang out and was answered by a storm of powergun fire, which thundered like a lightning storm in the early afternoon. Gaumarus imagined he could smell the ozone, though the village was too far away. He just kept his eyes on the village, looking over his coilgun’s sights as he waited, trying to ignore the crawling feeling in his stomach, which was only getting worse.

The Knights were mostly obscured by the prefabs and shacks of Bar by then, but their skimmer was still hovering on its ground effect bubble just outside, the turret traversing slightly from side to side. The twin powerguns in the turret suddenly spoke, sending white-hot lances of plasma into the village, and Gaumarus found himself blinking the greenish-purple afterimages of the brilliant discharges out of his vision.

Something exploded deeper inside the settlement, a deep, heavy whump that vibrated through the ground even as a great, dark cloud of dust and smoke billowed into the sky above the shantytown. More powergun fire crackled and thundered, answered by the lighter barks of the scrounged, surplus PDF rifles that the rebels were using, accompanied by a few different, deeper cracks that sounded like coilguns.

The skimmer’s gunner opened fire again, pouring brilliant, golden-hued discharges into the prefabs and shacks. Thunder rolled and rumbled across the open ground, and Gaumarus had to shut his eyes against the bright flashes. Even his polarized face shield wasn’t quite enough to block out the sun-hot brightness of the powergun bolts.

Several more explosions thumped down in the town, and more powergun fire crackled and thundered, but the return fire sounded more and more sporadic. Gaumarus squinted down the slope, but the village of Bar was increasingly obscured by smoke. It seemed that several of the structures were on fire, belching ugly black fumes into the air.

The shooting started to die down. The skimmer’s gunner was no longer punching bursts of plasma fire into the prefabs. From the sound alone, it appeared that the rebels’ resistance had ceased.

Gaumarus glanced to his right. Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff was still there, watching with his unblinking, vaguely insectile eyes. His compact, rounded torso was close to the ground, his long, bristled arms and legs splayed out in the curiously arachnid-like position the indig tended to adopt when at rest. They did not sit like humans did. His old rifle was clenched in one clawed hand, off to one side. The scouts’ rifles were probably considerably older than anything the rebels had had down in Bar. Blue Moon Above the Salt Cliff’s was old enough that the patina on the metal was turning brown.

The fires below seemed to be spreading. The sun was now a weak, washed-out orb in a sky increasingly gray from the smoke. Gaumarus could see a few figures moving around down there, occasionally silhouetted by the rising flames. It looked as if the entire village was on fire, or soon to catch.

The red- figures were coming out of the smoke and climbing back into the skimmer, which was kicking the ground-level smoke into strange patterns as air leaked out of the ground effect bubble beneath its skirts. The Knights seemed unaffected by the blasts of air, but simply grabbed handholds and lifted themselves up into the skimmer’s troop compartment. Once it was loaded full, the skimmer rotated and started back toward the cordon.

Gaumarus felt the same fluttery, sick feeling in his stomach. He hadn’t seen the Knights bringing any of the hostages out with them.

 

The Defense of Provenia comes out on Kindle and Paperback on July 20.

 

 

The post The Defense of Provenia Chapter 1 appeared first on American Praetorians.

Valdek Falls. The Unity Wars Have Begun

Today is the day. The Fall of Valdek is live once again.

Starships plunge through a powerful blockade…

…Below them, a world burns.

Is the galaxy soon to follow?

Centurion Scalas and his brothers ride the thundering ships toward the surface. Some of the finest and most respected warriors in the galaxy.

Their code is strict: If you target the innocent…You will fall.

But the horrific foe descending from deep space isn’t like anything they’ve faced before.

Can they hope to stand against the rising new power in the galaxy?

The Fall of Valdek is now available on Kindle and Paperback.

The post Valdek Falls. The Unity Wars Have Begun appeared first on American Praetorians.

The Unity Wars – Caractacan Honor

The dropship came to rest with a barely noticeable thump.  It wasn’t so much a landing as a docking; the anchor cables had just been reeled all the way back in.

The hatches folded away silently; the dropship’s troop compartment had been depressurized all the way in, the twenty-man squad of Caractacan Brothers sealed in their armor and plugged into the dropship’s life support to spare the air supplies in their sustainment packs.  As the hatches opened, all twenty men unplugged their packs from the hoses attached to their acceleration couches.

They had landed on the dark side, the asteroid’s bulk masking sun and planets alike.  The stars were brilliant pinpoints of light against an otherwise pitch-black emptiness, shining bright and hard with the crisp clarity of total vacuum.  With the dropship’s drives pointed at it, the asteroid appeared to be “down,” as much as that direction had any meaning in microgravity.

Gripping his VK-40 assault shotgun in one hand, Squad Sergeant Erekan Scalas found the control arm for his maneuvering unit with the other.  “Keep close to the surface, combat dispersion,” he told his squad, as he jetted out of the hatch.  The asteroid designated Akela-Z84 was far too small to provide enough gravity for walking, so the Brothers were essentially going to have to fly to the target.

The squad deployed quickly, their armor shifting colors to a mottled gray and black that almost perfectly blended with the darkened shadow side of the asteroid.  Scalas propelled himself about fifty meters from the dropship before retrofiring to bring himself to a relative halt, taking a moment to look around and orient himself, while checking on his squad’s deployment.

The silvery, rounded spearhead shape of the starship Dauntless was barely visible where she hovered, some fifty kilometers away.  She was a bright, hard glint of light in the distance, as she was holding station outside of the asteroid’s umbra.  She was still masked from detection by the cylindrical pirate ship that was moored at the main docks of the asteroid’s mining colony, though.

Five Caractacan Brotherhood dropships, truncated cones on stout landing legs, were clinging to the asteroid’s surface by anchor cables, and the entirety of Century XXXII of the Avar Sector Legio of the Caractacan Brotherhood was deploying, armored figures armed with assault shotguns, cutters, and heavy submachineguns, floating along the asteroid’s surface on nearly-invisible puffs of propellant gases.  They were forming a wedge, curving around the contours of the irregular rock.

“Squad Sergeants, report,” the heavy, bored-sounding voice of Centurion Michael Kranjick came over the comms.

“First Squad, deployed and moving toward the objective,” Scalas reported crisply.  Kranjick always spoke in the same droning monotone, but Scalas had served under the massive Centurion long enough to know that he expected his men to be responsive and alert.  Kranjick himself always was.  The immobile features and flat voice were deceptive; the big man’s eyes were always watching, always calculating.  Scalas knew of at least one squad sergeant who hadn’t lasted more than a day in the position under Kranjick, because he had taken his superior’s dull exterior at face value.

“Second Squad, moving up on First Squad’s left flank,” Squad Sergeant Cobb called a heartbeat later.  Scalas and Cobb had been novices together, and had taken their final oath as full-fledged Caractacan Brothers on the same day.  Cobb was a gruff, no-nonsense sort, and, Scalas fully believed, the best soldier in the Century, behind Kranjick himself.  When Kranjick inevitably was elevated to Brother Legate, Scalas was sure that his friend would become the new Centurion of Century XXXII.  Scalas believed that he would accept Cobb as Centurion, better than any of the other Squad Sergeants.

“Third Squad, on the right,” Vong Nu reported.

“Fourth Squad, left,” Richter called.

“Fifth Squad is center, behind First,” Maximilian Soon finished the roll call.

A large figure drifted closer to Scalas.  He recognized the Centurion by his size, if nothing else.  If Caractacan armor had not been custom-built for each man, Kranjick would never have been able to be a Brother at all; he was too big.  Well over two meters tall and weighing over one hundred thirty-five kilograms, he was a giant even among the hardened warriors of the Caractacan Brotherhood.

“Acknowledged,” Kranjick said over the comm.  “I will be with First Squad.  Fast and quiet, Brothers.  No more emissions until we are on target.”  It would seem to be a superfluous caution, in the vacuum of space, but there were several other asteroids within a few thousand kilometers of Akela-Z84 that a signal might bounce off of, not to mention some of the debris from the reportedly brief fight when the pirates had attacked the colony.

Kranjick came up beside Scalas and pointed forward.  Slightly intimidated at having the Centurion with him, Scalas was glad for the emotionless, ridged faceplate of his helmet, and simply nodded, rotating to face away from the dropships and toward the enemy.

Silently, one hundred of the finest soldiers in the galaxy drifted across the face of Akela-Z84.

***

Going in through the main docks was out of the question.  The pirate cruiser was anchored just above them, and it would be next to impossible for the ship’s gunners not to notice a hundred armored men making entry right below them.  It was conceivable, given that they were pirates, that they might just be too lazy, figuring that they had the asteroid locked down, but relying on the enemy’s incompetence was not how the Caractacan Brotherhood had lasted so long, or built its fearsome reputation.

Fortunately, the asteroid was honeycombed with tunnels; the ekuz colonists of the Vakkea system had been mining it for over a decade.  Which meant there were alternate entrances and exits that the pirates couldn’t cover from one ship.

One of these entrances was little more than an inflatable dome with a semi-rigid airlock, anchored to the surface of the asteroid at the end of a rough, unfinished tunnel.  Scalas had no idea why it was there; it was entirely possible that an ekuz miner might have found a rich vein and followed it until he accidentally breached the surface.  Or, maybe, the vein had been closer to the surface in the beginning, and the miners had come in from that direction.

It was, ultimately, irrelevant.  All that mattered at the moment was getting inside, securing the asteroid, and rescuing any prisoners or hostages that the pirates might be holding in there.

Pointing his assault gun at the lock, Scalas waited.  Five years of novitiate plus however many years of experience that came after that ensured that the Caractacans rarely had to speak much for such a common task as breaching.  They knew the drills, they knew the tactics.  They played off each other’s actions as they went, finding a job that needed doing and doing it.

Somewhat to Scalas’ surprise, Kranjick slung his submachinegun and moved to the lock.

He realized that he should have known the Centurion too well by then to be surprised; Kranjick was not going to send his men into the breach while he hung back and watched.  He would be the first man in, if possible.  He didn’t just command; he led.  It was the Caractacan way.  And therefore, it was Kranjick’s way.

The entire assembly was translucent, so they could see that there was no one in the lock or the dome.  It was also flimsy enough that even their close-quarters weapons would shred the walls in short order.  Which would quite possibly depressurize the tunnels, killing anyone inside who wasn’t wearing a suit.  So, they had to be careful.

Kranjick looked over at Scalas and signaled that the lock was already depressurized.  He unzipped the outer “hatch,” and Scalas pushed inside, keeping his shotgun pointed at the inner hatch.

The lock wasn’t large; it could probably hold four miners in bare-bones pressure suits, but could only accommodate two Caractacans in armor with maneuvering units.  Kranjick moved in behind Scalas and zipped up the outer door, while Scalas continued to cover the inner.

With the lock sealed, Kranjick reached past Scalas and touched the control pad built into the wall.  The lock material began to billow slightly, and after a moment, they could hear the hiss of air as the lock pressurized.

By the time the walls were rigid and the readouts on the inside of Scalas’ visor showed just below one atmosphere, both of them had their weapons pointed at the inner door.  If the airlock’s mechanism was tied into the asteroid’s main life support system, then someone had to have noticed that it had just cycled.  Surprise could well be gone.

With Kranjick covering, Scalas locked his shotgun to his gauntlet, making it a rigid extension of his arm, and then reached forward with his off hand and unzipped the inner door.  Using the maneuvering unit precluded having both hands on his weapon, so he permanently freed that hand.  Kranjick had already done the same with his subgun.

The small space was big enough for about a squad, even with the equipment scattered around it.  Most of the drilling rig appeared to have been cannibalized for parts; it looked like the theory of the tunnel having been bored from the surface was correct.  There was no sign of anyone else inside the dome, even as Scalas and Kranjick came out of the lock, splitting to either side and moving quickly to check the dead spaces around the dusty old equipment.

Scalas moved to barricade on the tunnel leading deeper into the asteroid, while Kranjick recycled the airlock.  Fortunately, the cycle did not take long, and in a few minutes, the majority of First Squad was inside the dome and ready to push in.

“Chamblin, Rowles,” Scalas picked two of his more senior Brothers out, “hold here and run the airlock for the rest of the Century.  The rest of First Squad, with me.”  Time was pressing, and they were out of space inside the dome anyway.

He jetted into the tunnel, which was still lit by work lights affixed to the rock every few dozen meters.  His visor adjusted to the dimmer light, and he could soon pick out details as if they were standing in direct sunlight.  Keeping his shotgun up and the sights just below his eyes, he drifted down the tunnel, his mind shifting his perception from the idea that he was going “down” to going “in.”

The tunnel curved slightly, and the lines of ore and tool marks along the walls confirmed that it had followed a vein of ore deeper into the asteroid.  For the first hundred meters, it was abandoned, but then the light ahead began to brighten, and Scalas slowed his advance, keeping his weapon ready.

A junction appeared ahead, walled with metal, and lit by multiple permanent light strips.  It was also a sentry post.

There were four ekuz in lightly armored spacesuits stationed at the junction, armed with stubby submachine guns.  Scalas frowned as he drifted slowly closer.  Those black and green suits looked strangely uniform; pirates were usually far more eclectic in their equipment.  Scalas had fought quite a few pirates in the last four years of his Brotherhood; he was familiar with most of the bands, ad hoc and organized, in the Avar Sector.

And none of them wore a uniform.

He was nearing the point of no return.  Settling his weapon’s sights on the nearest ekuz, he drifted closer, his finger resting lightly on the trigger.

The shotgun was specially designed for microgravity.  Counterweights reduced the recoil to next to nothing, and the main charge of the round fired after it had cleared the barrel.  It was almost a rocket launcher, in many ways.  So he wasn’t worried about being thrown backwards when he fired.  He only hesitated because there was something about this situation that bothered him.

He could feel Kranjick close behind him, but the Centurion hadn’t opened fire, either.  In fact, the tunnel was wide enough in zero-g that there were actually four of the Caractacans now advancing almost abreast, their weapons aimed in.  The ekuz were targeted and helpless.  They apparently hadn’t seen the chameleonic armor drifting closer.

“This is Centurion Kranjick of the Caractacan Brotherhood,” Kranjick’s voice boomed in the narrow space, speaking Trade Cant, the odd lingua franca of the spaceways, instead of the Brotherhood’s regular Latin.  “Each of you is about a quarter of a kilo of trigger pressure away from death at this moment.  Surrender, or die.”

The ekuz started.  They really hadn’t detected the Caractacans’ approach.  One of them twitched his weapon toward the sound, and Scalas’s finger tightened on his trigger, but a barked command from another halted the ekuz before a shot could be fired.  Very slowly, and very carefully, weapons were unfastened from retaining slings and gingerly pushed away from open hands.

The ekuz were hexapods, with a pair of legs, a pair of hands, and a middle pair of intermediate limbs that could be used as either.  Their triangular heads were rather flat in the front and back, with small eyes shrouded by bony ridges and blowholes at the tops of their heads, that could be sealed against water.

All four were keeping both their primary manipulators and their intermediate limbs as far away from weapons as possible.

“We wish no fight with Caractacanzzz,” the ekuz who had given the order said in Trade Cant, with the peculiar buzzing accent that most ekuz, regardless of their native tongue, seemed to use.  “There has been mizunderztanding.”

Kranjick drifted forward, his submachinegun still held ready.  “Seizing an established asteroid mining operation from the Kz’fai Administration is a ‘misunderstanding?’” he asked.

The ekuz started a little.  “Iz that what Kz’fai told you?” he asked.

“The Caractacan Brotherhood’s mandate includes suppressing piracy,” Kranjick said, sounding like he was reading a particularly dry news article.  “That is why we are here.”

One of the other ekuz made an outraged noise.  The leader shushed him, then turned back to Kranjick and carefully turned to display the insignia on his spacesuit’s sleeve.  It was an abstract, interwoven design that meant little to human eyes, but probably involved considerable meaning to an ekuz.  “Pirates, they call uz?” he demanded.  “We are Defenze Forzez of Lezzer Zh’khen!  The zame Lezzer Zh’khen that Kz’fai illegally ztole thiz baze from!”  Even through his helmet, with his alien features, the ekuz leader managed to look incensed.  He positively quivered with outrage.  “Zixty-two Zh’khen vanished; zpaced!  Only becauze Kz’fai’s inzultingly low offer to buy baze out was fittingly rejected!”

Scalas glanced at Kranjick.  Of course, the Centurion’s expression was invisible behind his visor, and would have been blank and unreadable anyway.  But Kranjick had warned the ekuz before opening fire, which meant that he had sensed something amiss, just as Scalas had.

“If what you are saying is the truth, we should get to the bottom of it,” Kranjick rumbled.  “However, I cannot simply take your word here and now, while the rest of your men are possibly maneuvering to flank us.”

“Like I zaid,” the ekuz replied, “we want no fight with Caractacanzzz.  I will call Commander Vo’izzh.  I am zure he will zurrender baze to Caractacanzzz until matterz can be zorted out.”

“No,” Kranjick said.  “You will come with us.  No comms.  You may offer your comrades a chance to surrender as we reach them, but only once I have told you to.  Any other action will doubtless result in your deaths in the following firefight.  Do you understand?”

The ekuz “nodded,” which for an ekuz was a peculiar wave of his intermediate limbs.  “Yez, yez,” he said.  “No treachery.  Treachery againzt Caractacanzzz folly.  Kz’fai trick.  Beneath Defender of Lezzer Zh’khen.”

Kranjick nodded, as Scalas, Torg, and Shanda covered the four ekuz with their weapons.  “Brothers,” he called over the Century comm net, “we have encountered some of the ‘pirates.’  They claim they are part of the Defense forces of another faction within the system, taking back an installation that our beneficiaries illegally seized.  They have offered to surrender to us.  We are proceeding to Central Control, with our prisoners.  Deploy as we go, stay alert.  Remember Hostile Act, Hostile Intent.”

It was standard Brotherhood Rules of Engagement.  Waiting to be fired upon was often suicide when the battlefield saw the use of such weapons as hypervelocity coilguns and near-lightspeed powerguns.  The Brotherhood took its Code of Honor very seriously, and every Brother had it drilled into him from the first day of his novitiate that he was ultimately responsible for every shot he took.  Legal responsibilities were less important than the eternal ones; every Brother knew he would answer for every life he took at the Last Judgement.  But to point a weapon at a Caractacan Brother was to die.

Kranjick waved at the ekuz to precede them.  “If you are telling the truth,” he said, “you may retrieve your weapons later.”

The lead ekuz gave a strange ekuz salute, involving both upper and intermediate limbs, and led the way, grabbing handholds to propel himself down the tunnel.  The other three followed, with the Caractacans in trace.

The ekuz were very careful to move slowly and deliberately, apparently acutely aware of the weapons in the hands of men who were known for light-years as deadly shots at any range.

***

The ekuz commander, Vo’izzh, was as conciliatory as the junior officer had said he would be.  “Thiz iz Lezzer Zh’khen inztallation, Zenturion,” he said, “but I will zurrender it to Caractacan Brotherhood.  We truzt Brotherhood for juztize.  Kz’fai lied to Brotherhood.  Well iz it known, prize of lying to Brotherhood.”

“Indeed,” Kranjick said.  “I accept control of the base.  Instruct your men to stand down and fall back to the docking area.  Leave their weapons behind.  My men will hold them there until we can determine what to do.”

Vo’izzh saluted just as his subordinate had, and hastily gave the orders in a buzzing, clicking ekuz language.  Scalas couldn’t pick out which one it was; all but the three major dialects sounded much the same to him.  Soon the ekuz command squad was pulling itself hand over intermediate limb toward the exits from the control center.

“Not you, Commander,” Kranjick said, as Vo’izzh started to follow.  “I need more information.”

Vo’izzh stopped dutifully just short of the hatch, holding onto a handhold with one hand and one intermediate.  Once the last of the ekuz had disappeared down the tunnel toward the main docks, Kranjick nodded to him.

“Now,” he said.  “Tell me everything.”

***

The whole story was long and involved, as most local political struggles tended to be.  There were egg-line rivalries that crossed planetary and interplanetary boundaries, old grudges, old slights, new outrages taken over minor comments and actions, and a whole lot of political and economic backstabbing involved.  Neither faction appeared to have clean hands, something which Vo’izzh freely admitted.

Kz’fai was a major player on the planet Vakkea, though it wasn’t so much a country as an oligarchical cross between an alliance of city-states and globe-spanning corporations.  To hear Vo’izzh’s version, Kz’fai was practically the stereotype of rapacious robber barons, looking out for each other’s egg-lines at the expense of everyone around them, even those who depended on them for livelihood.  There were no laws in Kz’fai except what the Kz’fai Administration Board decided was convenient for the moment.

Lesser Zh’khen was an independent colony, set up on Zh’khey, the next world out from Vakkea’s sun.  Right on the edge of the habitable belt, it was a harsh world, and existence was difficult, but the Lesser Zh’khen were determined to remain apart from the corruption of the Kz’fai Administration.  If they were perhaps a bit fast and loose with Kz’fai property, they justified it by pointing to Kz’fai’s basic lawlessness in the first place, essentially pointing out that whatever they had taken had probably been stolen by the Kz’fai Administration first.

But Akela-Z84 had been purely a legitimate Lesser Zh’khen claim from the beginning, Vo’izzh insisted.  It had taken a lot of the struggling colony’s resources to divert the asteroid from its lethal orbit—which would have impacted barely five hundred kilometers from the colony itself—into a stable trajectory, where it could be mined, both for raw materials for the colony, and trade goods with outsystem ships, since they didn’t want to trade with any of the Vakkean factions.  Kz’fai had demanded they sell the asteroid once word had gotten out about just how rich it was, and the Lesser Zh’khen had, understandably, refused.

“They tried to wipe all recordz of attack after,” he said.  “But we were ready, and ztruck before they could.”  He pointed to a nearby console.  “Not all are ztill intact, but worzt atrozity iz ztill there.”

Kranjick nodded his assent, and Vo’izzh moved to the console, bringing up a holo.

The ekuz being herded down a tunnel were clearly wearing the same green and black as Vo’izzh and his men.  The ones doing the herding were wearing gray and blue pressure suits, with recognizable Kz’fai markings.

The unarmed ekuz were herded onto the docks, then the doors sealed behind them.  They huddled together, some trying to bang on the massive doors.  None of them were wearing space suits.

A moment later, the wind began to pluck at their clothing, as the outer doors of the docks cracked open.  They clung to each other, a few holding on to the nearest handholds to the sides of the inner doors, but it was no use.

It took very little time for the air in the docks to evacuate altogether.  By the time the wind died away to nothing, none of the ekuz were conscious.  Without a doubt, after another three minutes, they were all dead.  The corpses began to drift in the asteroid’s microgravity.

“My ship was cloze enough to rezpond within hourz,” Vo’izzh said.  “The Kz’fai criminalz are zecured aboard her.  I can offer you a chance to interrogate them, if you chooze.”

Kranjick nodded thoughtfully, then turned to face his Squad Sergeants, his helmet’s visor moving like a turret.  “Thoughts, gentlemen?” he asked in Latin.

“They tried to use the Brotherhood as hitmen,” Cobb said flatly.  “We can’t let that stand.”

“No, we cannot,” Kranjick said.  “If that is indeed what has happened.  We only have part of the story.”

“It seems pretty straightforward to me, sir,” Vong Nu said.  “If they really were pirates, would they have surrendered to us so easily?”

“Perhaps they would have,” Kranjick mused.  “Pirates tend to place self-preservation quite high on their list of priorities, and the Brotherhood’s reputation precedes us.”

“If we still aren’t sure,” Scalas said, “it shouldn’t be too difficult for the Dauntless to do some data mining, and find out if that ship over the docks really is a Lesser Zh’khen patrol ship.”

Kranjick turned to him and nodded.  Somehow, he managed to put a note of satisfaction in the gesture.  “Good thinking, Squad Sergeant Scalas,” he said.  He pointed to the comm console.  “Hail the ship.”

It took a bit of maneuvering to reach the console, and some study before he could decipher the ekuz controls.  “Dauntless, Scalas,” he called.

“Go ahead, Squad Sergeant,” the comm officer replied.

“The asteroid is secure.  We need to know: is there an ID readout on that ship anchored above the docks?” he asked.

“Stand by,” was the reply.  “We will have to maneuver a bit to get line of sight.”

“Acknowledged,” Scalas said.

It took several minutes while they waited.  When the comm officer came back over the circuit, there was a faintly puzzled note to his voice.  “Squad Sergeant, the ship is showing as the Ik’zhirzh, a local patrol cruiser of Lesser Zh’khen.  It looks military.”

“Apparently, it is,” Scalas answered, glancing at Kranjick’s faceless visor.  “We seem to have been fed some bad intel.  Possibly maliciously.  Stand by.”

Kranjick was nodding.  “So, it appears that you were right, Squad Sergeant Cobb,” he said.  “The Kz’fai Administration thought to use the Caractacan Brotherhood as their personal dirty-tricks squad.  Which, from what Commander Vo’izzh has said, rather fits their attitudes.”

He looked around the assembled Squad Sergeants.  “Get your men back to the dropships,” he said grimly.  “We have an appointment with the Kz’fai Administration’s Board of Directors.  They need to learn the price of attempting to blacken Caractacan honor.”

***

“Centurion?” Captain Sekor called over the intercom link.  “We are being hailed by a Kz’fai patrol cruiser, the J’zhem.  They are asking if we have secured the asteroid.  And Centurion?” he added.  “Their energy weapons are primed and their missile pods are open.”

Scalas could not see Kranjick’s expression, but he could imagine it, as the Centurion’s heavy voice replied.  “Indeed?  Tell them that the asteroid is secure.”  He paused for a moment, and his voice turned grimmer.  “Let them make the first mistake.”

The infantry Brothers were back aboard the Dauntless, still strapped in aboard the dropships, ready to redeploy immediately.  Kranjick was expecting trouble; and failing its appearance, he had made it clear that he intended to start it.  Scalas still had his shotgun in its cradle next to his couch, but his powergun was nearby, just in case.  He watched the holo display overhead, and waited, keeping his breathing slow and even.  He didn’t like being a passenger for a space battle; none of the infantry Brothers did.  But there was nothing he could do about it.

So he watched and waited, and trusted Captain Sekor’s skill and judgement.

***

The J’zhem was a stubby cylinder with three massive thrust bells at one end, not particularly dissimilar from the Lesser Zh’khen patrol craft that was still tethered near the asteroid installation’s docks.  In fact, on close observation, it appeared to be almost identical except for its markings; it was entirely likely that the poorer independent colony had obtained an older model of the same Kz’fai ship for its own use.

The Kz’fai ship was currently about ten thousand kilometers from the asteroid, invisible to the naked eye except as a tiny glint against the darkness, but blazing brightly on more advanced radiation detectors.  Ten thousand kilometers was nearly knife-fighting distance as far as space combat went; most engagements happened at more than an order of magnitude greater distances.

Captain Sekor formally informed the J’zhem’s captain that Akela-Z84 was secured, as the Administration had requested, though none of the civilian personnel had been found alive.  It was a testament to the Captain’s self-control that he kept his tone even as he added that last part.  He had seen the recording of the murder of the Lesser Zh’khen miners.

The J’zhem acknowledged the information.  “Will Caractacanzzz be departing zoon?” the ekuz captain asked.

“Our Centurion wishes to meet with your Administration first,” Sekor replied.  “All communications were conducted via messages; he wishes to meet those upon whose behalf we fought.”

There was a pause.  The ekuz voice that came across the comm a moment later sounded…hesitant?

“I am afraid that will be impozzible,” the ekuz captain said slowly.  “The Adminiztration iz extremely buzy, and haz many other matterz to deal with at the moment.  We thank the Caractacanzzz for their azzizztanze, but we will handle the azteroid inztallation from here.”

Sekor’s hand was poised over the control that would signal his tactical officer to go weapons-free.  So far, this was playing out exactly as Centurion Kranjick had expected it to.

“And I am afraid that we must insist,” he said in reply.  “The Centurion wishes to discuss some…irregularities that our men found on the asteroid.  These irregularities could well damage relations between the Caractacan Brotherhood and the Kz’fai Administration if they are not addressed.”  Not that there had been any other interaction with the Vakkea system, at least not within living memory, but the threat of becoming one of the Brotherhood’s enemies was a serious one, and even these backwater brigands had to know it.

There was no response; at least no spoken response.  Alarms whooped in the Dauntless’ command deck as the J’zhem’s active targeting scanners went live, and weapons were launched in the next moment.

Captain Sekor was a moment faster, however.  As soon as the ekuz captain had not replied, he had tapped the “Weapons Free” icon, and unleashed Brother Koll.

Brother Koll had only needed the go-ahead from his commander.  He had been using the Dauntless’ passive scanners to line up the distant Kz’fai ship for powergun shots.  The 50cm powerguns the Dauntless carried were already at full extension on their firing booms, invisible to the ekuz because the powerguns fired from discreet cartridges and did not require the kind of priming that High Energy Lasers and particle beam cannons did.

All four powerguns fired at the same time, the ravening bolts of coherent copper plasma crossing the ten thousand kilometers almost at the speed of light.  They were, briefly, solid lines of blue-white luminescence connecting the Dauntless with her prey.  At the same time, Koll punched the countermeasures control, releasing clouds of chaff and “sand,” charges of small shot that would sleet through oncoming missiles and even kinetic rounds.  The chaff flared brilliantly a tiny fraction of a second before a similar, if dulled, flare blasted vaporized metal off the Dauntless’ flank.

Sekor felt the kick of the impact shudder through the frame of his ship.  He didn’t wait to see the results of Koll’s shots.  He had already been reaching for the controls at the same time Koll had fired.  He activated the starship’s Bergenholm field, canceling out her inertia without going tachyonic, quickly rotated her through three axes, and blasted away at very nearly the speed of light.

The short hop was only a little over a second long.  He cut out the Bergenholm and the Dauntless returned to her previous vector, two hundred ninety-six thousand kilometers away.

He was already spinning her around to point back toward Akela-Z84 when Koll called out, “Target acquired.  Firing.”  The distant thumps of the firing powerguns vibrated down through the booms and into the hull.  Supposedly, the powerguns had little enough recoil that no one aboard should feel them, but Sekor felt them every time they fired, just like he felt every other minute vibration going through his ship.  She was the Brotherhood’s, but even more so she was his, and he knew her more intimately than he would have his wife, had he had one.

This time, it took nearly two seconds to see the effects; slightly over a second for the bolts to reach their target, and slightly less for the light to reach the Dauntless.

The J’zhem had already been hit, a direct strike from one of the first salvo of powergun bolts, and was spinning from the impact, a jagged, glowing hole blasted in her flank.  Her maneuvering thrusters were firing madly, trying to bring the tumble under control, when the second salvo arrived.

One bolt hit just forward of the first, blasting another glowing crater in her hull and slewing her to one side.  The next two missed.

The last one slammed straight up a drive bell.  The feedback loop of the drive coming apart made the reactor lose containment.

For a brief moment, the surface of Akela-Z84 was lit up brightly as a tiny sun went supernova barely three hundredths of a light second away.

“Damage report,” Sekor demanded.

“Light hull damage, Section Five,” the damage control officer reported.  “No penetration, but I’ll have a crew going to shore up the outer hull as soon as we have a chance.  Some thermal damage to systems in that area; it looks like it was an HEL strike.  No other major damage reported.”

“You heard, Centurion?” Sekor asked.

“I did,” Kranjick replied from below.  “If you are ready, Captain, I believe we have an appointment on Vakkea.”

“Agreed,” Sekor said.  “We shall be there within the hour.”

***

The headquarters of the Kz’fai Administration was a cyclopean, vaguely organic-looking tower looming above the center of the biggest city on Vakkea, a sprawling metropolis of gleaming buildings at the center and increasingly miserable slums toward the edges.  It was as much a symbol of the Kz’fai’s domination of the planet as it was a luxurious estate for the cronies and bureaucrats who ran the Administration.

It was also relatively heavily defended, given the on-again, off-again wars with Lesser Zh’khen.  Missile banks and lasers ringed the expansive grounds around the base of the flaring tower, far enough away that they could cover the entire sky above it.

Those defenses had not been built with the Caractacan Brotherhood in mind.

Most of the missiles were picked off by HEL beams before they could impact.  There was nothing the Kz’fai Administration’s defenses had that could deal with powergun bolts, however.

The Dauntless had opened fire from ten light seconds out, before going inertialess again and darting in close.  The missiles and powergun bolts seemed to come down out of an empty sky, just before the silvery spearhead of the Caractacan starship appeared above the tower, already standing on her tail, her brilliant blue-white drive flare like a second, smaller sun in the noonday blue.

The powergun bolts hadn’t been as precisely aimed as Koll would have liked; the distance had precluded it.  But 50cm powergun bolts have a certain area of effect, and while not all the emplacements ringing the tower were destroyed outright, there was certainly enough disruption as the plasma vented its white-hot fury on the grounds that the surviving weapons stations didn’t have enough time to target the starship that was suddenly descending through the atmosphere before Koll could direct follow-up shots to clean up what he’d missed.

Titanic flashes of heat energy, hammering explosions, and fountains of atomized dust blasted into the atmosphere momentarily obscured the gigantic tower.  Shockwaves rippled out across the city and rocked the tower on its very foundations.  A second and third salvos were unnecessary, but Koll kept up the fire, while searching for more defensive positions that needed attention.  There were a few patrol ships in orbit, but so far, they were running for cover, either activating their Bergenholms and running for the nearby moons, or deorbiting as fast as they could, desperately trying to get below the horizon before they could be shot out of the sky.

It hadn’t taken long for their captains to figure out that the Caractacan Brotherhood was bringing a reckoning.

Dropships spilled from the Dauntless’ bays and plummeted toward the grounds on their own, smaller pillars of white fire.  Their drives, though significantly less powerful than the Spear–class starship’s, still roared loudly enough to rattle any windows that had survived the thunder of the initial bombardment.  Unopposed, they settled on the grounds in whorls of smoke and splashes of flame that vaporized the reddish grass-analog that covered the largest open space in the city.

In First Squad’s dropship, Scalas hit the release on his harness as the hatch dropped open before him, snatching his powergun out of its cradle as he surged to his feet and pounded down the ramp.  He took a knee at the base of the ramp, scanning the smoky, dust-filled air as the rest of his squad debarked.  His Centurion would always be one of the first into the fight, so Scalas had determined to follow that example.

Kranjick appeared next to him, a looming statue of gray armor in the artificial gloom.  “With me,” the Centurion rumbled.  Somehow, even in the hell of destruction they had unleashed, he still managed to sound so calm and disinterested that he seemed bored.

In a loose, fighting wedge, the Caractacan Brothers trotted across the scorched and blasted landscaping toward the entrance of the tower.

The wide doors led into a massive lobby, clearly designed to overawe anyone who entered.  The lines were slightly off to human eyes, the colors strange.  The ekuz saw farther into the ultraviolet, and not as far into the red as humans did, and the colors they decorated with showed it.

There was what was unmistakably a security desk in the center of the cavernous room, but it was abandoned.  A door was closing another fifty meters behind it; the security guards had clearly fled.  The Caractacans advanced across the shining floor, powerguns up and ready, their armor turning a sort of charcoal color to reflect the smoke and dust that filled the air.

“Fourth and Fifth Squads, secure the lobby,” Kranjick ordered.  “Third Squad will secure the elevators.  First and Second are with me.”  He strode through the doors where the guards had disappeared.  Scalas and Chamblin fell in on either side of him, their weapons held ready.

No sooner had they cleared the doors than there was a flash, a boom, and something struck Scalas in the chest plate.  The impact was bruising, but the armor attenuated the shock and the shot didn’t come close to penetrating.  Without a moment’s hesitation, he flicked the muzzle of his BR-18 powergun toward the shotgun’s muzzle flash and stroked the trigger.  Thunder rolled through the hallway, and an eye-searing flash momentarily blinded anyone not wearing an auto-polarizing helmet visor.  The ekuz with the shotgun fell to the ground, a smoking hole blasted clear through his torso, just above his intermediate limbs, the shotgun falling to the floor with a clatter.

The other guards dropped their weapons and held their hands and intermediate limbs out to show they were no longer a threat.  Kranjick pointed, and Second Squad moved to secure them, binding their hands and intermediate limbs behind their backs.

Kranjick had barely broken stride, and was continuing toward the elevators beyond.  Scalas and the rest of First Squad hurried to keep up.

Elevators were a less than ideal approach; they channelized an attacker and made them vulnerable.  But time was a factor, and so far, the opposition hadn’t shown that they were ready to repel Caractacan Brothers in full combat armor.  None of the guards they had passed had carried anything but low-powered shotguns.  That might change higher up, but Scalas doubted it.  The Kz’fai Administration had not been remotely prepared for this.  Even their exterior defenses were apparently mostly for show; even a Caractacan starship should have had a bit more difficulty flattening them by itself.

As soon as they were on the elevators, the Caractacans knelt, keeping back from the fatal funnel directly in front of the doors, their powerguns trained on the openings.  The elevators swept upward, heading for the top levels, where the Administration’s Board could look out on their domains.

The ascent seemed to take a very long time.  The tower was quite tall.  Scalas felt himself tensing up; the longer they were on the elevator, the more time the opposition had to get ready for them, or simply to send the elevator car plummeting to the bottom with all of them in it.

But they continued to ascend, and a few moments later, the doors swept open.

A flurry of light small arms fire crackled through the doors, the bullets hitting the back wall with hard little bangs.  One struck Aken’s helmet, snapping his head back, but did not penetrate.

A storm of precisely aimed powergun fire knocked the brave but foolish security guards off their feet, the thunder of the shots slapping the surviving ekuz with their shockwaves.

Kranjick strode through the doors, his own BR-18 held muzzle-high in one hand.  Three of the ten security guards had survived the initial exchange of fire, and were lying flat on the floor, having thrown their weapons away.  Beyond them, readily identifiable by their more colorful and refined clothing, lay the Board, quaking.

Kranjick stepped up onto a strangely-shaped ekuz chair—more like a bench—and then up onto the table.  He said nothing at first, simply gazing at the leaders of the Kz’fai Administration from behind his expressionless visor.

“Squad Sergeant Scalas,” he intoned.  Scalas shifted his powergun to one hand and drew the small holoprojector out of his utility pouch as he stepped forward to stand beneath Kranjick.  He didn’t need any further instruction; he placed the holoprojector on the table and keyed it to play.

The massacre of the Lesser Zh’khen miners played out in real time.  All eyes in the room were fixed on the holo, while Kranjick loomed over the Board, unmoving, threatening.

“You ordered the mass murder of sixty-two ekuz, in order to seize a mining installation you had no claim to,” Kranjick rumbled once the recording had stopped.  “Then, to make matters worse, when the Lesser Zh’khen retook their asteroid, you attempted to ensnare the Caractacan Brotherhood in your crimes, lying to us and counting on the fact that the Brotherhood is death on pirates to use us as your attack dogs.”  That the ekuz likely did not know what a dog was Kranjick ignored.  “And to cap it all off, you attacked my ship when you thought it was all over, rather than let us confront you.  I do not know if that was the plan all along, or if your captain, whom I would call stupid were it not ill courtesy to speak badly of the deceased, simply panicked.”

He looked around at them again.  “Did you truly think that we would not notice?  That we wouldn’t find out?  Worse, that we would simply go along and stain our honor with the blood of those simply fighting for their own?”

None of the prostrate ekuz answered.  This was doubtless the first time any of the Board had been faced with such consequences for their actions, and they were in shock.

“Justice is a part of the Caractacan Code,” Kranjick said grimly, “and we will see it done.  Squad Sergeant Scalas.  Take the Board into custody.

“We will see what the Lesser Zh’khen have in store for them.”

***

None of the Kz’fai ships in the area dared move against the Dauntless as she pulled for orbit.  A few patrol craft shadowed her from several light seconds away, but broke off and returned to the planet when Koll swept them with an active targeting beam.

The controllers on Zh’khey hadn’t quite known what to make of the Dauntless’ request to land, but apparently Vo’izzh had sent a message ahead with news of what had transpired on Akela-Z84, so the Caractacans received clearance fairly quickly.  When the descent cage had reached the still-smoking landing pad, and Kranjick, Scalas, and most of First and Second Squads stepped off, herding the manacled Board of Directors of the Kz’fai Administration ahead of them, there was a welcoming committee waiting.

The ekuz goggled at the Caractacans and their prisoners, and the leader quickly got on a commlink and started buzzing and clicking for reinforcements.  Then he looked up at Kranjick, who was still in his armor, his helmet in place.  All of the Caractacans presented the same armored, faceless implacability.

“These are the men who ordered the mass killing of your miners, and attempted to kill us from ambush,” Kranjick said.  “I leave their fates in your hands.  Let justice be served.  And if anything like this happens again, send a message to the Avar Sector Keep on Kaletonan IV, in the Tokanan system.  This is why the Brotherhood exists; to defend the defenseless and right such injustices.”

He took a step closer, looming over the ekuz, who took a nervous half-step back.  “But remember this, as well.  Part of why I have done this is because they sought to undermine Caractacan honor through treachery, to make us party to their crimes.  Do not make the same mistake.  Or you will find yourselves in their place.  If you survive.”

Without another word, he turned on his heel and led the way back toward the ship.  Their business was done.

Back in the cage, as they ascended, Kranjick turned to Scalas.

“Remember this well, Squad Sergeant Scalas,” he said.  “There are those who mistake honor for rigidity and gullibility.  They must be disabused of that notion.  You will be a Centurion yourself, one day, and you need to remember this lesson.  It is not, strictly speaking, part of the Code, but there is a saying that you should take to heart.

“’Speak the truth, deal fairly with all, and always be prepared for treachery.’”

***

I hope you’ve enjoyed these little previews of the universe of The Unity Wars. The Fall of Valdek comes out on Kindle and paperback on June 22.

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The Unity Wars Returns

So, about three years ago, I tried something new. Entitled The Unity Wars, it was my first published bit of science fiction (though I’d been writing SF in my free time since high school).

While it was generally well-received by those who read it, it didn’t sell well enough to keep going. That was largely my fault. I used a pen name, kept it separate from my primary author brand, and made a few other marketing mistakes. I had regular readers telling me that they didn’t even know it existed.

So, last year, I decided to try relaunching it, with new covers, under my primary brand. I was working on this when an opportunity popped up. Aethon Books put out a call for a military SF series for this year’s release schedule. I answered, they liked it, and now The Fall of Valdek is about to come out again, this month.

The series got its start in June 2015, as “Alternate Star Wars Prequels.”  (This was about six months before The Force Awakens was released, so the dumpster fire that is the Disney/Lucasfilm sequel trilogy had yet to begin.)  I had been dissatisfied with the prequels (and the direction they led Star Wars as a whole in) for quite a long time, as much as I hadn’t wanted to be, and had a weird little writing prompt pop into my head one day.  “How would I do it differently, more in keeping with what was hinted at in both the original movies and novelizations, as well as some of the West End Games material and the Timothy Zahn Heir to the Empire trilogy?”

I scribbled some notes, but later abandoned it, because I had no desire to get sued into oblivion by the juggernaut that is The Mouse.  I always kind of wanted to finish it, but I had other projects.

It was Galaxy’s Edge that showed the way, with Nick Cole’s “StarWarsNotStarWars” brand, and I’ve since made The Unity Wars it’s own thing, even though it still follows many of the elements I wanted to explore with the alternate Clone Wars.  Clone tech is supposed to be as scary and dangerous as Zahn posited in the Thrawn trilogy, and the clones are supposed to be borderline psychotic enemies of the good guys (though I scrapped the Republic altogether, for various reasons). Not only that, but I wanted to explore some of the ethical problems with mass-producing expendable human beings for labor or combat.

So, now the series is coming back, and hopefully I can at least finish out the initial arc. There are a lot of stories to be told in this universe, as I’ve only begun sketching out a galaxy full of aliens, mysteries, and wars. I’ve got a number of background files of history and alien anthropology that I might post here, if you, the reader, are truly interested.

I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

The Fall of Valdek releases on June 22.

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Red Vengeance – SOBs 14

When a counter-piracy mission goes bad, the SOBs find themselves hunting a secret society of pirates–the Red Vengeance.

This was probably one of the best of the SOBs books I’ve read recently. While it has some connection with the real world (mainly through the Vietnamese Boat People), it’s a pretty self-contained adventure, with the SOBs going toe-to-toe with some of the most evil antagonists they’ve faced yet.

Published in 1986, this book touches on a rarely-mentioned part of the aftermath of the Vietnam War–the boat people. Between 1975 and 1992, almost two million Vietnamese fled what had been the Republic of Vietnam, braving the South China Sea in rickety, overloaded boats rather than endure the new Communist regime. And where there are refugees, there are those who would prey on them. Red Vengeance sees the SOBs go after some of those predators–just turned up to 11.

The book starts with a mission for the Thai Royal Navy going bad. It’s not the SOBs’ fault–it had already gone bad before they went in. But it puts them in a rough spot. They failed, whether it’s their fault or not. And that puts them off contract and pissed off. But one of their liaison partners got a lead on the pirates–the Red Vengeance. And when he gets them a Thai Navy helicopter to hunt with, they go out after revenge.

The Red Vengeance is clearly Robin Hardy’s invention, and they are just about the perfect pulp mercenary action-adventure antagonists. They are the most sadistic, irredeemably evil enemies that I think have been featured in the series thus far. While it never gets too graphic, just the bit of what they do to their prisoners that is described will let your imagination go the rest of the way, and will probably turn your stomach a bit.

There’s no regret when they finally go down.

There’s some character development among the team, too. Nanos has gotten to be more and more of a loose cannon as the series has progressed, and it finally comes down to Barrabas needing to put his foot down. Billy Two just gets weirder–the aftermath of his torture at the hands of Russian Spetsnaz in Red Hammer Down.

I read Red Vengeance cover to cover while editing War to the Knife. That’s how quick some of these old Gold Eagle paperbacks go. Considering they had a pretty hard 50,000-word limit, that makes some sense. But this one was also tight, fast-paced, and well put together.

 

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Welcome to the Jungle – War to the Knife is Live

The Brannigan’s Blackhearts series drives on, with War to the Knife, the 9th book in the series, going live today.

I’d had this book in mind for quite some time, now. In fact, I’ve been looking forward to writing it from the series’ very inception. Some of the inspiration came from playing Jagged Alliance 2, and its remake, Jagged Alliance: Back in Action (which isn’t nearly as bad as some old-school JA purists would say). Furthermore, the premise of a small team of mercenaries going in to liberate a city or a nation under a tyrannical government is something that all of us who have carried a gun in hostile climes has probably dreamed of, at least once or twice. It’s kind of like every red-blooded American boy quietly wishing that something like Red Dawn would happen for real, so that he could be a Wolverine (the American guerrillas from the movie, not the comic book character).

Well, there’s a reason I call some of my stuff–especially the Brannigan’s Blackhearts series–“Shooter Wish Fulfillment.”

I really enjoyed writing this one, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it.

***

A border city is in the grip of a ruthless criminal…

…And he might be working for even more sinister backers.

But will killing him be enough?

Ramon Clemente was a general in the Colombian Army. Now he has seized the city of San Tabal, deep in the jungle on the border between Venezuela and Colombia. He hasn’t sworn allegiance to Venezuela, but he is turning the city into a drug-financed Communist hellhole.

And his connections with narco-terrorists has put a bullseye on his back.

Since he’s got the Colombian authorities thoroughly penetrated, no one has managed to get close to him. So Brannigan’s Blackhearts are going in dark, undeclared to the Colombians, to kill or capture Clemente.

But the Americans and the Colombians aren’t the only ones who want Clemente dead.

He’s made enemies much closer in his grab for power.

And Brannigan and his boys will discover just what is at stake if they kill Clemente and leave.

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War to the Knife Chapter 2

The Rocking K Diner was quiet, but it was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. Most people in that neck of the woods had to work. John Brannigan had plenty of chores to do around his cabin up the mountain, but his situation was a little different.

And the message he’d gotten from Mark Van Zandt had been more than a little intriguing.

Brannigan threaded his way between the tables toward the back, trading a friendly wave with Ginger, Mama Taft’s granddaughter and permanent waitress, who would probably inherit the diner whenever Mama passed away. Granted, Mama Taft was hard as nails, and probably wouldn’t die until Death himself came and dragged her away, cussing and punching him in the face. It would be a long time before Ginger inherited, but the cheerful, bouncy young redhead was fine with that.

Van Zandt was sitting in the corner booth, all the way in the back, nursing a cup of coffee. He’d dressed down a bit since the first time he’d come to the Rocking K, wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. The first time, he’d been in slacks and a corporate polo shirt.

Brannigan and Van Zandt had a history. Not a particularly pleasant one at all points, either. It had been Brigadier General Van Zandt who had supervised the unwilling retirement of Colonel John Brannigan from the Marine Corps, because Brannigan had ignored politics while deployed in East Africa, and had done what he’d thought was right. He’d rescued the people he’d set out to rescue, but killing local soldiers to do it had stepped on some toes, and so he’d been sacrificed. And Van Zandt had been the one to wield the knife.

But that was all behind them. Because they were both in the private sector now. And that was why they were meeting in a diner in the middle of nowhere.

Brannigan slid into the booth across from Van Zandt. “Hello, Mark.”

“John.” Van Zandt nodded to him as he glanced toward the door. He seemed almost nervous, which was odd for him. He’d always been a bit of a stuffed shirt, but he’d been a Marine. Flighty wasn’t in his nature.

He held his peace as Ginger came by and slid another cup of coffee in front of Brannigan. “Anything else I can get you?”

“No, thanks, Ginger.” Brannigan cradled the cup in his hands. “It’s still too early in the day.”

She dimpled and patted him on the shoulder. The Tafts had developed a sort of familial attachment to him, since he’d started coming down the mountain to eat, especially since he often brought some venison with him during hunting season. “You have a good meeting, then.”

Van Zandt raised an eyebrow. “She knows this is a meeting?”

Brannigan gave him a long-suffering stare. “You’re not from around here, and Hector’s come to meet me here before you became a part of this operation, Mark. Of course she knows it’s a meeting.”

Van Zandt sighed and looked down at the table. “I guess you’re right.”

Brannigan took a sip. The coffee was good, and scalding hot. “You’re not usually this jumpy. What’s up?”

“I’ve got another job for you.” Van Zandt still wasn’t looking him in the eye. Brannigan’s frown deepened. Something was off. “But it’s… not exactly standard.”

“We’re mercenaries specializing in deniable operations, Mark. Everything we do is ‘non-standard.’”

But Van Zandt was still frowning. “Not like this. This is… weird.”

Brannigan leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms. “Okay, lay it out for me.”

“Have you ever heard of a city called San Tabal?” Van Zandt brought a thin folder out and put it on the table.

Brannigan’s eyes narrowed as he saw just how thin that folder was. Their target packages were usually much more substantial. “Can’t say as I have.”

“It’s a small city in northeastern Colombia, awfully close to the Venezuelan border. Most of its economy is entirely dependent on farming and ranching in the mountains nearby.” Van Zandt pulled a map out of the folder. It didn’t look like there was much else in there. He slid it across to Brannigan, who studied it.

Awfully close to the Venezuelan border is right. It looked like the city was less than ten miles from the line. And there wasn’t much more than mountains and jungle covering that ten miles.

“Two weeks ago, a disgraced Colombian general named Ramon Clemente seized control of the city with a small army. They don’t have a name, but they are generally referred to as the Green Shirts, because that’s the closest they’ve got to a uniform.” Van Zandt ran a hand over his face. “There’s close to zero information on these people aside from a handful of pictures that have gotten out. Pictures of a mass execution in the town square and the mayor getting lynched shortly thereafter.”

“That’s pretty close to FARC territory.” Brannigan looked up at Van Zandt, who was still looking down at the map, his hands folded in front of his face. “Are they FARC? ELN? Or somebody new?”

Van Zandt shrugged. “We don’t know for sure. The one statement that’s made it out sounds really Communist, but like I said, there’s not much information readily available.”

Brannigan turned his eyes back down to the map. It wasn’t much more than a topographic map of the Colombia-Venezuela border region. San Tabal, nestled between two taller mountain ranges, had been circled, but that was about it. The map was about as informative as the rest of Van Zandt’s brief so far.

“So, what’s the mission? I’d suspect something like Khadarkh, where we had to go in and rescue some hostages, but you make it sound like it’s something different.” His expression turned thunderous. “If it’s some half-baked takeover attempt, count us out. I want no part of any Silvercorp nonsense.”

Van Zandt’s mouth thinned. “Yeah.” He pulled a single sheet of paper out of the folder and slid it across the table. “Someone with all the right clearances wants Clemente dead. And he’s already got everything planned out.”

Brannigan didn’t even look at the sheet of paper. “No way in hell.”

Van Zandt sighed. “I know. That’s why I said it’s non-standard. It’s sketchy as hell.” He ran both hands over his face and dropped them to the tabletop, looking around helplessly. “Unfortunately, we’re in a crack.”

“How so?” Brannigan was starting to get that distinct sinking feeling in his gut. His voice took on a dangerous edge. “What have you gotten us into, Mark?”

“It wasn’t my doing.” The protestation of innocence might have sounded petulant under different circumstances, but right then Van Zandt just sounded tired. “Unfortunately, the fact that most of what your little crew has done has been for Uncle Sam means that this little operation can’t be entirely airtight. It was probably inevitable that somebody was going to try to stick their oar in.”

“That doesn’t mean we just have to take every Good Idea Fairy mission that comes along.” Brannigan’s voice was as hard and unforgiving as his stare. “We’re contractors, not employees or sworn agents.”

“And I’d agree with you, if this particular politico wasn’t a very powerful and very unscrupulous asshole.” Van Zandt sighed again. “We don’t have much of a choice on this one, John.”

“Who is it?”

Van Zandt’s glance got suddenly sharp, as he detected the threat implicit in Brannigan’s tone. “Don’t even think about it, John. There’s no scaring this one into line. Not now.”

“Who. Is. It?” Brannigan was relentless.

Another sigh. “It’s a Senator. One with a chair on the Intelligence Committee, who can cause us a lot of difficulties if we give him a reason. And it has been made abundantly clear to me that turning this mission down will be considered that reason. You might have been in the right—we might have been in the right—but that won’t stop him from digging us up and finding something to nail us all to the wall. And given the generally illegal and under-the-table nature of your missions, that isn’t going to be hard.” He sighed. “Hell, all he’s got to do is get wind of that business down in New Mexico, and you’re screwed.”

Brannigan’s silence was thunderous. His knuckles whitened around his coffee cup. He stared at the map, searching it for a way out.

Because he knew that Van Zandt was right. They’d run that risk as soon as they’d taken on the Khadarkh job. Mercenary operations in foreign countries were not something that American politicians liked to go public. They were embarrassing, despite how many other countries did it without even bothering to shrug. That made them a political weapon, never mind how justified they might have been.

And it made Brannigan’s Blackhearts targets.

Van Zandt steepled his fingers and lowered his voice. “Now, before you lose your temper, hear me out. There’s more to this than meets the eye. Like I said, it’s sketchy as hell, and it has me very suspicious. I’ve dealt with this particular Senator before. Calling him an arrogant jackass is an insult to arrogant jackasses the world over. And I say that as one of them.”

Brannigan raised an eyebrow, but otherwise didn’t comment. He’d never heard Van Zandt be self-deprecating before.

“I guaran-damn-tee he’s got some kind of angle going here. I don’t know what it is, yet, but the fact that we got a canned plan—all the way down to the timeline, ambush site, and everything—tells me a lot. He wants Clemente dead, and no questions asked. Well, he apparently thinks that your little hit squad is just that—a no questions asked hit squad. And he’s arrogant enough that he figures that we’ll just go along with the plan because we don’t want to be exposed.”

He jabbed a finger at the paper that Brannigan still hadn’t read. “We’ve got three weeks before this is supposed to go down. That’s a lot of time, if you get moving now. Plenty of time for reconnaissance.” He leaned forward. “Possibly enough time to learn what has the Senator so interested in one man’s death.”

Brannigan’s eyes narrowed, but he held his peace. He could kind of see Van Zandt’s point. If the Senator was on the Intelligence Committee, and therefore had some access to whatever shadowy office Van Zandt worked for, he might be able to blackmail both Van Zandt’s people and the Blackhearts to do this. For certain, not all of their operations had been sanctioned and aboveboard—and even if they had been, Brannigan had enough experience under his belt to know that politicians really didn’t care about such things. If they wanted, they could turn a legit mission into a perceived rogue operation overnight. He’d seen it done before.

Hell, it was why he was retired.

“We might have to take this mission.” Van Zandt was in earnest. “But there’s nothing saying we’ve got to be patsies.” He jabbed a finger at the map. “Get in there and do what you do best. If nothing else, you should be able to find out what the Senator’s interest is, and we can adjust as needed from there.” He grinned like a death’s head. “If we’re really lucky, we’ll be able to use that interest against him. He’s got to have a reason why he doesn’t want you doing anything but flying in, setting charges, blowing up one vehicle, and leaving.”

Brannigan thought about it, finally sipping his coffee. It had cooled, though Mama Taft always served it scalding hot to begin with, so it wasn’t cold.

As much as he hated to admit it, Van Zandt was right. He’d seen it before. The only reason that this Senator—and he had a pretty good idea who it was—might risk something like this would be because he figured that he had the Blackhearts—and Van Zandt’s office—over a barrel. Such people always thought they were untouchable. And if they turned it down, he had no doubt that the FBI would be knocking on their doors within the week.

He wouldn’t apologize for anything they’d done. They’d been on the right side, even if the law could technically be brought to bear against them for any of their past operations. He’d made sure of that. They were warriors, not thugs.

But he had a responsibility to the other Blackhearts. He might be an aging widower who could stand to go to prison if that was the price for doing the right thing. But many of the others weren’t. Flanagan was due to get married before the end of the year. Santelli had saved his own marriage and was now a father. None of them deserved prison for what they’d done. They’d killed terrorists and rescued innocent people, and possibly prevented countless deaths.

He’d never apologize for that.

So, despite searching his mind for an alternative, the best option he could come up with was Van Zandt’s plan. Play along until they could find out what was really going on.

Then cram it down the Senator’s throat.

He sighed. “Why haven’t the Colombians intervened? This is technically a Colombian problem.”

Van Zandt shrugged, even as he visibly relaxed. Brannigan might not have said as much, but the question had already established that he’d taken the job. “Nobody knows for sure. It’s possible that Clemente has something to hold over someone important’s head in Bogota, or he’s got an arrangement with somebody in high places. More likely at the moment, the proximity to Venezuela and the remaining FARC and ELN camps is a deterrent. Apparently, the Venezuelan Army has been running exercises in the mountains on the other side of the line for the last month. Colombia’s got all kinds of problems since their peace deal with the FARC didn’t result in sunshine and rainbows, and we believe that a potential war with Venezuela is more than they’re willing to risk.”

“That suggests that this Clemente has connections in Venezuela.” Brannigan stroked his graying handlebar mustache.

“It would fit with the Communist rhetoric,” Van Zandt agreed.

“What about logistics?” Brannigan finally pulled the plan toward himself and started to skim it.

“We can arrange transport via charter air. I’ll get on it as soon as I get back to the office.” Van Zandt pointed to the page in Brannigan’s hands. “Weapons will have to be procured down there—that’s already in the plan. There’s even a local contact, but I think that you should consider him compromised.”

Brannigan nodded, then folded the page and slid it into his shirt pocket. “I’ll need to start making some arrangements. The less that you know, the less that Senator can pry out of you when he comes sniffing around.”

Van Zandt nodded in turn. “Agreed. Can’t say as I like it, but you’re right.”

Brannigan downed the last of the coffee and stood up.

“John?” Van Zandt was looking up at him, concern in his eyes. It was an expression that Brannigan wouldn’t necessarily have expected to see on the other man’s face even a few years before. “Watch your back.”

“You too, Mark.”

War to the Knife is out on Kindle and Paperback May 18.

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War to the Knife Chapter 1

There was no warning.

Miguel Jurado was a heavy sleeper, especially when he’d eaten well and had downed about half a bottle of aguardiente. So, he didn’t hear the door open, despite the noise outside. He was dead to the world until he found himself shaken roughly. “Mayor Jurado! Mayor Jurado, you need to wake up, Señor!”

He cracked one eye, his head already starting to pound. He couldn’t handle the aguardiente as well as he had when he was younger. It took a moment to register that it was Sebastian Casas, his chief of security, who was shaking him.

That can’t be good.

He sat up in bed with a groan, squinting against the light that spilled through the open door. He wasn’t really fat, not yet, but his body was going soft as he got older and balder, and for some reason, that meant that he always hurt when he got up, despite the alcohol.

Maria, his third wife, twenty years his junior, didn’t have that problem. She was sitting up in bed, covering herself with the sheet, staring at Casas with large, dark, frightened eyes.

“What is it?” Jurado peered blearily at the clock beside the massive bed. “What time is it?”

“It is just after one in the morning, Señor.” Casas’ voice was taut. “Please, you have to come with me. We have to get you and the señora to safety.”

That got his attention. Casas was not a man easily frightened. “What has happened?” He was already pulling the sheets aside, casting about the darkened room for his trousers.

“There was a bombing at the rancho, Señor.”

That made Jurado’s blood run cold. Juan Fernando had been throwing a party there. His eldest son and easily a hundred of his friends, many of the scions of the wealthy farmers and businessmen of San Tabal, would have been there. “My son?”

Casas shook his head. “We don’t know yet, Señor. All we know is that there was an explosion next to the house, and that there are casualties. Please, we need to get you to a safe haven.”

The Mayor’s mansion, overlooking the Grand Plaza in the center of San Tabal, was not exactly the most secure building in the city. Left over from the Spanish colonial days, its aging construction meant that another car bomb could very well level half of it, and it had never been built with defense in mind in the first place.

Jurado had always found that odd, given the history of the place.

He dressed quickly, urging Maria to do the same. She was frightened and pale, but quickly dressed. Jurado was no stranger to the threat of violence. While Colombia was much more peaceful than it had been during the days of La Violencia and the cartel wars around Medellin and Cali which had followed, the ever-present narcos and revolutionaries such as the FARC and the various other groups—many of them influenced or supported by neighboring Venezuela—meant that violence never really went away. Maria, however, hadn’t lived through the periods he’d seen. He’d been a child during the very end of La Violencia, and had come of age during Pablo Escobar’s reign of terror. She’d grown up since the peace arrangements with Medellin and Cali, and while Colombia could not have been called peaceful since then, with FARC and ELN waging their perpetual narco-revolutions, it had been nothing like the old days.

Pulling on his shoes, he shooed Maria toward the men in suits standing just outside their door. “We have to go.” He looked up at Casas. “I need to know what happened, and that my son is all right. Get me Manzano.” Carlos Manzano was the San Tabal chief inspector. If he wasn’t already aware, he would need to act quickly.

Jurado didn’t know why someone might have tried to kill him or his son. That could wait.

“Manzano is already heading that way.” Casas ushered the mayor and his young wife toward the stairs and the doors below. “All the police are on alert. They are locking down the city as we speak.”

“Then where are we going?” Maria still sounded like she was on the edge of panic.

Jurado put his arm around her as they descended the richly carpeted stairs toward the grand entryway. “The police can only do so much if the terrorists are truly committed. There is a safer place for us, up in the mountains.” That had been the old Jurado villa, which hadn’t been built for defense, either, but after the last threat—when one of the smaller cartels had wanted to seize several of the farms that were San Tabal’s lifeblood for coca production—Casas had had a bunker put into the mountainside behind the house.

Casas and the other bodyguards formed a box around the two of them and hustled them across the vast hall and toward the massive wooden front doors. Two more security men flanked the doors, Uzi submachineguns in their hands. It was only then that Jurado really registered that Casas had drawn his sidearm, and held it in his right hand, pointed up at the ceiling.

As the mayor and his wife neared the door, one of the men with submachineguns put a hand to his ear and spoke, listening for a moment before he nodded, and the two of them opened the doors and moved out onto the driveway in the mansion’s courtyard, where a pair of Mercedes G-Wagens waited for them, their engines already running and two more security men standing nearby, also carrying Uzis. Casas was taking the threat seriously.

That was why Jurado had always trusted Casas. He wouldn’t have kept him on as chief of security otherwise.

Maria was whimpering a little as Jurado rushed her into the back seat of the rear G-Wagen. He wondered briefly if he should have married her, or just kept her as a mistress. She was stunning, and her physical charms were unmatched, but she wasn’t exactly the most blinding of intellects. He did care for her, but sometimes he wished she was more like Consuela. She had been nearly as tough as Casas.

She’d been a harridan, and he hadn’t been able to avoid a faint pang of relief when she’d died, but she’d been tough. He wouldn’t have needed to practically drag her to safety.

Or maybe he would have. She would have been leading the charge, berating the guards and grabbing a gun.

Jurado climbed into the vehicle and Casas shut the door before hurrying around to the front seat and getting in. The lead G-Wagen was already pulling out the gate and turning left, heading for the mountains.

Jurado patted Maria’s hand, and she seized his and hung on as if it were her only lifeline. But she calmed down. Then he reached into his pocket and cursed.

“I forgot my phone. Casas, give me yours.” He needed to start getting control of this situation. He needed information.

Casas had just handed the phone back to him when the lead vehicle slowed. At first, Jurado couldn’t see what was happening. He just saw the brake lights suddenly blaze red ahead of them as they neared the slums on the edge of the city.

“What…” He never got a chance to finish the question.

He didn’t see the RPG round in flight—the ambush was far too close for that. He just saw the armored Mercedes ahead suddenly disappear for a moment in a bright fireball. Seconds later, the vehicle was burning fiercely.

“Get us out of here!” Casas was looking back over his shoulder as he yelled at the driver. Maria was screaming, and Jurado could only stare at the burning wreck, his mind momentarily frozen. He’d thought himself prepared for anything, given his country’s history, but this was far more immediate and personal than he’d really been ready for.

Casas got all the way around and finally got a good look out the back window, as Maria shrieked and clutched at her ears. He blanched, and yelled at the driver to stop.

Jurado twisted around to look. It took him a moment to realize what had prompted his security chief to stop them.

Another man was standing in the middle of the street behind them, an RPG leveled at the vehicle. Half a dozen more came out of the tumbledown houses on either side, carrying rifles and a machinegun.

“Who are they?” Maria had stopped screaming, but was now staring at the men with guns, her eyes wide with terror.

“I don’t know.” Jurado was suddenly calm. In fact, he could see in the dim light that all of them were dressed the same. He had his suspicions, now that he had a better look at them. There had been rumors floating around the farms in the vicinity of San Tabal for months now. “Just stay calm. I think they want us alive. Otherwise, they would have blown this car up, too.”

He glanced at Casas, who was clearly struggling to maintain his own calm. Even with two Uzis in the front seat, they were no match for the gunmen outside. As soon as anyone showed a weapon, that man with the rocket launcher would kill them all.

Casas kept staring at the gunmen as more of them came out of the shacks to their right. Jurado wondered that there weren’t any on the left. But after a moment, he realized that even if they tried to run for it, the gunmen would probably shoot them down before they even got all the way out.

Finally, Casas met Jurado’s eyes. His expression was lost, helpless. They were trapped, and he knew it. He’d failed.

There was no point in berating his security chief, even though a spiteful part of Jurado wanted to. He didn’t want to die. He desperately wanted to live. He could feel the panic bubbling up in his chest as the gunmen closed in on the vehicles. “Do something!”

But Casas just shook his head as he unloaded his Uzi and laid it on the floorboards. “Don’t resist. Like you said, if they wanted to kill you, they already would have. If you’re alive and in captivity, something can be done.”

Jurado wasn’t sure about that. But if Casas wasn’t going to fight, what could he do?

“Lock the doors.” He wasn’t just going to go out there and let these people take him prisoner. He surely didn’t want to let them have Maria. She might not be the brightest young woman, and she might occasionally be tiresome outside of the bedroom, but he still cared for her. He didn’t want to see what might happen to her if she fell into these men’s hands.

But Casas shook his head and started to open his own door. “Then they will kill us all.” He swung the door open and called out, “We surrender!”

Jurado lunged across the seat and tried to grab him, cursing, but it was too late. Casas stepped out of the vehicle with his hands raised.

A burst of gunfire cut him down, slamming him into the open door. He left a bright smear of red on the inside of the armored glass as he slid lifelessly to the ground.

Maria screamed again, and the driver, a wiry little man named Escudero, cursed and grabbed for his Uzi. But he was too slow. A figure appeared in the open door, standing above Casas’ corpse, and shot him through the head. Blood and brains spattered off the window and the ruin of Escudero’s skull bounced off the steering wheel before resting between the dash and the door, dripping gore onto the floor.

Jurado froze, staring at the rifle muzzle pointed at his face from a mere three feet away. Maria was shrieking in sheer panic, made worse when an arm reached in around the other gunman and unlocked her door. She was suddenly and roughly dragged out, still screaming until a hard blow knocked her to the ground, where she huddled, whimpering in pain and fear.

Another man lunged into the back of the vehicle and grabbed Jurado. The mayor of San Tabal tried to struggle, but he’d never been much of a fighter, even in his younger days. A hard punch to his jaw drained all the fight out of him.

The gunmen dragged him out onto the ground and one of them shone a light in his eyes. He squinted against the glare and tried to lift a hand to shield his eyes. A boot slammed down on his arm, pinning it to the roadway.

“It’s him. Bring him.” The voice was cold and emotionless.

“What about the girl?” Jurado thought he could hear a leer in the other voice, but right then he couldn’t do anything about it.

“Bring her, too. Maybe he’ll be more cooperative if the alternative is watching his whore gutted in front of him.”

Rough hands grabbed him under the armpits and dragged him to his feet. A savage blow to his solar plexus finished off any vague idea he might have had to fight back. Then he was dragged toward an old five-ton truck.

Just before they threw him in the back, they pulled a sack over his head. The last thing he saw before darkness descended was one of the gunmen, grinning from ear to ear, dragging Maria by one arm toward the truck.

***

Dawn had only been a few hours away when they’d been ambushed, but it felt like far longer while Jurado waited, his hands tied with zip-ties, the bag still over his head and leaving him in complete darkness. As near as he could tell, he’d been imprisoned in a room by himself. There was no other sound after the door slammed. He waited in darkness and silence, as his imagination started to run away with him, painting increasingly gruesome and vivid pictures in his mind of what these savages might have in store for him and his wife.

Finally, the door slammed open, and he heard boots on the concrete floor. Hands grabbed him under the arms and yanked him to his feet.

“What is happening? Who are you people? Where are you taking me?” Another punch to the stomach shut him up. He wheezed in pain as they dragged him out of the room.

He was in too much pain to keep track of direction and distance as they hauled him through several turns. He was fairly sure he was still inside, but he couldn’t tell much beyond that.

They dragged him up a couple of flights of steps, and he stumbled repeatedly, since he couldn’t see the steps. The next stretch was on carpet, and then doors opened ahead, they went through, and he was forced to his knees. The bag was yanked off his head, and he squinted, though the room was not particularly brightly-lit.

He was in the entertainment room, which opened onto the balcony that faced the Grand Plaza. And he was not alone.

Three men stood by the balcony, watching him. The small one in the center he recognized at once.

Ramon Clemente had been a general in the Ejército Nacional de Colombia, the Colombian National Army, before he’d been forced to resign in disgrace two years before. Increasingly credible accusations of corruption and drug trafficking had finally become too loud for the government to ignore, and he’d been offered the option of resignation or prison. He’d resigned, but not gracefully. The last anyone had seen of the small, unassuming, mustachioed man standing in front of him now, he’d been cursing every member of the government and vowing bloody revenge.

Now he was standing in Jurado’s house, dressed in camouflage trousers and a dark green shirt, a pistol belted around his middle. And the stare he leveled at Jurado was as cold and dead as a shark’s.

Jurado looked at the two men who flanked Clemente, but found no comfort there. One of them he knew. Julio Ballesteros had been a local rancher who had always had just a bit too much money to throw around—and he’d used it to buy influence for himself wherever possible. No one had ever produced proof that the fat, sleepy-looking man had worked with the narcos or the FARC, but it had been common knowledge, nevertheless.

Somehow, Jurado did not find it surprising that Ballesteros was here.

The other he didn’t know. Whip-lean and rangy, he had sunken cheeks, sharp indio cheekbones, and burning eyes. A single glance at those hard, feverish eyes was enough. Jurado looked away hastily.

Clemente and Ballesteros might be thugs, but this man was a predator, of a class far beyond them. This man was to be feared.

“Get him on his feet.” Clemente had a slight speech impediment; his voice was thick and faintly slurred.

The men to either side of him seized him and hauled him up until he was standing unsteadily in front of Clemente. He towered over the little man, but right then, the difference in size really didn’t matter.

His guards were dressed in simple trousers and dark green shirts. In fact, everyone was wearing some variation on the same green shirt. It appeared to be these terrorists’ uniform.

“Come to the balcony, Señor Jurado.” Clemente’s tone was vaguely polite, but he couldn’t quite manage to completely conceal the vicious, underlying malice to the words. Jurado’s knees shook and he wanted to vomit. If he’d had anything in his stomach or his bladder, he probably would have voided them some time ago.

The Green Shirts dragged him toward the balcony. The doors were already open. He staggered out as they shoved him through, and he stumbled against the railing and looked down.

The sun was coming up over the Grand Plaza. Ordinarily, there was some little traffic around the Plaza in the morning, mostly the early risers, those business owners who opened their doors for breakfast. The fountain at the center was usually in the shadow of the forested mountain above until nearly ten in the morning.

Now it was bathed in white light from the headlights of a dozen trucks. And a dozen familiar people knelt in front of that fountain, pinned by those glaring headlights. Some of them wept. Some cowered. Some stared into the light defiantly.

The dark shadows of twenty men stretched out from those headlights toward the kneeling figures. Each man carried a rifle.

More gunmen, backed up by pickup trucks mounting machineguns in their beds or atop their cabs, herded hundreds of the people of San Tabal toward the square. Clearly, Clemente wanted a lot of people to see this.

With a sudden, sickening shock, Jurado realized what was about to happen. But he couldn’t even summon up his voice to protest. He could barely hold himself up against the railing.

Clemente stood next to him. “I want you to see this.” Malevolence dripped from every syllable. Jurado didn’t know why. He’d never met Clemente before this moment. Then Clemente lifted a bullhorn to his lips.

“For too long, these rich farmers and puppets of the American imperialists have oppressed the people of San Tabal! Now, the hour of justice has come! San Tabal is an independent city state as of this moment! And all those who have sucked the blood of the poor who scrape out their living from the cleared jungle, giving the best to these parasites while they live in tumbledown shacks in the slums, will pay the price!” He turned to the wolfish man who stood on Jurado’s right hand and nodded.

“Firing squad! Do your duty! For the revolution and for Ramon Clemente!” The man’s voice was as raw and harsh as his eyes.

The twenty on the square lifted their rifles. With a ragged crash of gunfire that echoed off the mountains, they emptied their magazines into the twelve men and women kneeling by the fountain. Crimson spattered on the stone, while bullets chipped away at the two-hundred-year-old sculpture.

When the gunfire fell silent, a dozen twisted bodies lay leaking their lifeblood out onto the stones of the square. The old fountain was pocked with bullet holes, and one of the spigots had been shot off, dribbling water down into the pool below. Those residents who had been dragged out to witness the atrocity could only stare in shock and fear.

Clemente turned to the wolfish looking man again. “Take him away and finish it.”

The man with the burning eyes stared at Jurado without a word, and jerked a hand at his guards. Rough hands grabbed him by the arms and dragged him away from the railing. He went without resistance, still staring down at the bodies below. Some had been friends. Some had been enemies. Some had been competitors before he’d become the mayor.

Wordless and shaking, Jurado let himself be led away.

***

When the sun finally topped the peak to the east, spilling its rays down onto the bloodied plaza, it illuminated the body of Miguel Jurado, formerly mayor of San Tabal, as it swung gently beneath a lamppost at the edge of the Grand Plaza. Above, a red, black, and yellow flag drifted in the morning breeze, declaring a new order in the city of San Tabal.

***

 

War to the Knife comes out on Kindle and Paperback May 18.

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