The Good, the Bad, and the Merc: Even More Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 8) Page 9

  HERO OF STYX by T. Allen Diaz

  1

  Captain Karen Margolis had always referred to herself as an “Ebony Goddess of War,” but the scream passing through her swollen throat, now, was no war cry. It was a horrifying, visceral manifestation of pain and suffering few humans would ever experience, and it made me understand with absolute clarity why hell had always been portrayed as a place of fire and brimstone.

  I stood at the foot of her sterile cot, near the prefabbed room’s partition wall and felt the slim hope I’d held onto during my run from the muster yard slip away. Nanites or no nanites, Karen Margolis was dying. I tried to see the woman I’d known and loved so well in the ghastly wreckage of her body, to find some semblance of the Nubian warrior I’d followed for so long, but nothing had been spared: her magnificent braids, her mahogany skin, even her eyelashes had been swept away by flame, replaced with a grotesque mannequin of angry pink flesh and pain so visceral I had to turn away.

  A dark-haired man stood next to me, gaping behind wide, revolted grey eyes, his normally pale skin the consistency of puke green candle wax. He had a pretty face that had been smeared with soot but was blister-free. The green-grey uniform on his back was unburnt, but soiled with soot, ash, and gore I tried not to notice. Despite his grisly, disheveled appearance, Jake Hollis, our senior lieutenant, might’ve been the luckiest man in the company. He’d been with Karen when the command post, the CP, had been hit and, depending on the outcome of another woman injured in the airstrike, could soon be the sole survivor from that devastating moment.

  I felt the involuntary frown of my lips and wrinkle of my nose, and regretted it was Karen and not him on the bed. Perhaps he read my thoughts. His features morphed into a different kind of disgust, and we stared at each other for several long moments, Karen’s tortured screams a kind of soundtrack to our mutual animosity.

  “Got an IV, Doctor,” the nurse had resorted to the veins on Karen’s foot for access. The jump boots had done a better job protecting her than the duty uniform had.

  Doc Thar-cha looked at her with yellow cat’s eyes, his furry tiger face cast in grim determination. “Two hundred mics of Opyl-3 should take the edge off.”

  The nurse complied. “Two hundred going in.”

  Karen’s screaming slowed, then abated, but she didn’t look anything close to peaceful. Her body moved and twitched in a restless struggle with death. That’s when our eyes met: “Thom! Thom!” Her voice was little more than an urgent whisper. A pink hand, dripping curtains of ruined skin clutched the air between us. “Come, Thom!”

  I moved to her bedside. “Yes, sir?”

  The sound of her breathing made me think of a harmonica, and it was getting softer and less distinct. “I heard the tac feed on the medivac,” she said with a deep, wheezing breath. It carried the sickly odor of roasted flesh. She was burnt inside and out. “You saved the company—after—after the drone attack.”

  I frowned. It was true: I had assumed command after the CP went off-line and orchestrated a more-or-less textbook withdrawal, but it was the enemy who had failed to press their advantage that allowed us to slip away unscathed. Besides, running away expertly done was still running away, and I wasn’t especially proud of that. “The company performed admirably.”

  Something like a smile cut through her mask of agony. It lasted but a moment, then she erupted into a hacking cough of leather-on-leather that produced dark, fleshy phlegm. Her eyes grew wide with fear, and she heaved with sharp, strangled breaths. Time was short. Her brown eyes found Doc Thar-cha’s yellow ones. “Doctor…you will…wit…ness this.”

  Thar-cha gave a single, grave nod. “As you wish, Captain.”

  “Lieutenant…Thomas Aaron Harper…I promote you…to captain…effective…immediately. The Fusiliers…are…yours.”

  I looked at her and then at Thar-cha with stunned disbelief. I reached for her hand, but remembered the angry burnt cinders they’d become. I stood instead at rigid attention and gave her the sharpest, crispest salute I could manage. “Thank you, sir! I shall carry the weight with honor.”

  A fixed gaze stared through me. “Doctor,” she managed. “Please.”

  Thar-cha looked at the nurse and gave a solemn nod. She stood ready with a syringe of medicine. Nimble fingers pushed the plunger and the bluish fluid flowed into Karen’s veins. Time was measured in her pained, labored breaths—one, two, three, four—and something like peace crossed her features. Her head lolled, and her chest heaved less and less.

  Arms held out in pained agony drooped and then fell to her side. Her tired body slumped backward into Thar-cha’s waiting arms. The big man-cat laid Karen on her back. Her chest bucked and twitched as her body made its last, desperate appeal to fate, but her mind was long gone.

  I looked for several long moments, remembering the tough, hard-nosed woman with whom I’d spent so many hours in consultation and war planning, a commander who’d provided an example of how to lead, and a good friend who’d shared many meals and much wine. I grabbed for her hand and held it now that I couldn’t hurt her, and let the first of many anguished tears roll down my cheeks.

  I looked back at the compartment doorway I’d shared with Hollis. He was gone. I turned back and bawled like a baby.

  2

  “What’s the word, LT?” Caydence O’Hare was a small-framed woman who’d be lucky to pull fifty kilos in a one-G environment. It would be easy not to think of her as a stone-hearted angel of death capable of showing you your insides as you died, but that would also be foolish.

  I glanced into her small, flushed face. A pair of orangish red sprouts more reminiscent of bristled devil horns than pigtails jutted out from the sides of her head. The normally cocky smile that lived there was drawn into a deep, concerned frown that weighed down her entire face. “Gather the company, Cay.”

  That frown deepened, and she bellowed with a baritone roar borrowed from a man thrice her size or, perhaps, a lion. It took only a moment for the company to muster amidst the collection of green-grey, prefabbed buildings and come to a ragged semi-circle under the cool, autumn-like afternoon sky. The warfighters wore the same skin-tight charcoal grey and black haptic suits O’Hare did. The techs wore the drab olive grey jumpsuits of the Tycho City Fusiliers.

  “Listen up!” I said with more assertion and confidence than I felt. “Captain Margolis—died in the infirmary minutes ago. She was under the care of Doc Thar-cha.” I wanted to tell them that she hadn’t suffered or that she was at peace, now, but such words were lost on this crew. We all understood what death meant and had seen enough of it to know she’d suffered plenty.

  All 85 men and women seemed to sigh the long, sad breath they’d been collectively holding. A few even began to show signs of tears. No one would begrudge them that, not here. “The captain was a good leader, tough and fair.” I hesitated, not quite wanting to make the second part of my announcement, but this company was still an instrument of war and had to keep running. “In her final moments—with Doctor Thar-cha in attendance—she promoted me to captain and gave me command of the Fusiliers.”

  The troops were silent. I looked over the faces before me. Most were human: Billy Garza, the tall, lanky kid born on Cz’Gosha, a Gtandan penal colony; Jordan Grazetti, a thick woman with olive skin and more metal in her face than was in her CASPer; J’quall ShoChe a HecSha whose purple and orange lizard-like body required special modifications to his CASPer. There were the techs, too. Marcus Grigsby, our Goliath-like chief mechanic who ran the apparatus floor. Miley Rix, a farmer’s daughter with long, thin arms for reaching into tight spaces. And, meter-tall, grey-furred Kravix, a Maki, who looked out with interested yellow eyes, rounder and more energetic than Doc Thar-cha’s.

  “Right now,” I continued, “we’re all shocked and devastated. But, there’s work to be done: Sergeant O’Hare, you’re to go temporary duty to the lieutenant of First Platoon until further notice. I need an after-action report of damage and casualties and refit needs ASAP.”
She hadn’t time to acknowledge this order before I looked to a Zuul. The aliens were supposed to be dog-like, but his red fur and slender features always made me think of a fox. “Ma’Coe, you’re Ops now. I want terrain and enemy strength assessments on my desk before dusk, along with three battle plans to burn those sonsabitches to the ground tomorrow morning. Questions?”

  Ma’Coe seemed taken aback. “Three plans, sir?”

  “I need options right now, Mac,” I said. “They killed the captain and let us live. They’re gonna pay for that. We’re gonna end this goddamned civil war and get the hell off this dirtball before we donate any more blood to this contract.” I looked out at the audience. “Anyone have a problem with that?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Alright, get to work.” I turned and left the business of carrying out the after-action routine to the junior officers. I had less pleasant duties to attend to.

  3

  K’vaal Horteth was the great city-state rival of our employer, the P’tan. We had entered the war just six short weeks ago with the K’vaal on the P’tan’s doorstep, and we had driven the Royal K’vaal Army from the walls of the coastal town, inland to the very slopes of their fortified city. But, that was before. Now, it stared down from behind its misty mountain top as if taunting us, as if saying: “This far shall thou go and no farther.”

  It didn’t have to be that way, of course. There had been a chance…before. I turned from the great unconquered bluffs looking down at me and approached the tent city that had followed us on our as-of-yet unrealized quest. The tents were large and spacious; the largest was more than two hundred square meters of roof and stood two stories. A prefabbed platform had been installed as the upper floor complete with a long, cantilevered balcony that ran the front face of the massive tent.

  And the tent, perhaps mimicking the bird-like P’tans’ plumage, was composed of deep blues and vibrant reds and yellows splashed over the canvas-like kulvar walls and roof. The doorway was protected by a pair of warriors. Each was a head taller than I with arms that still hinted at the wings of their avian lineage. So, too, did their faces look like birds’ , complete with a sharp beak and dark pupil-less eyes. Golden breastplates and crested helms were the only items worn. A keratin claw emerged from the feathery wrist, gripping a long, ceremonial pike that could do plenty more than look pretty if its wielder knew how to use it. The guards stood on thin, rear-folding keratin legs with sharp, mean-looking talons. They made no move to stop or salute my approach.

  I passed through the threshold and into an antechamber where another P’tan crouched on his rear-folding legs. The creature issued a loud, squawking cry. The pinned translator behind my ear filled my head with flowery words of announcement. He listened to the reply and squawked in my direction. The G’dar says you may enter, the translator said to me.

  I pressed through the door flap and into a room that glittered and sparkled in a way men rarely saw. There was gold and silver and jewels of every kind. The P’tan had a bird’s love of all things shiny, and the G’dar had an appetite for all the M’sha city-state could muster and then some. I suppose I should’ve been glad for that.

  G’dar Xergo Qi of House Bre’Lyn was poised on a golden, bejeweled pedestal, his back to a tent wall covered in gold and silver-threaded tapestries ingrained with gems of all shapes and sizes. There were no pictures or messages I could see in the patterns, just the sparkling glitter of precious metals and stones. The room had no furnishings save the ornate pedestal on which the G’dar sat and a pair of tables to either side. The P’tan had no need of chairs or couches, since they could nestle comfortably on their rear-folding legs, though some did have special cushions reminiscent of birds’ nests I’d seen in vids and pics of Earth. The G’dar, it seemed, for all his indulgences, shunned these cushions, preferring, instead, to sit on his haunches and gaze down from his pedestal.

  He was, for an alpha male, small in stature, more in line with my one-point-eight meters than the two-plus of his body guards at the door. His plumage was a deep blue with a bright crimson breast. His head was blue, save the face, which was crimson, and it was crowned by a crest of gold feathers that ran from above his close-set black eyes to the base of his dainty bird skull.

  A small, but impressive court of suitors filled the great kulvar chamber. There were P’tan of greens and oranges and purples and every combination imaginable. One in particular stared at me with hateful eyes. It had a deep blue plumage with an orange chest. I did my best to smile and nod, but the avian just stared, exchanging some hushed conversation with a forest green P’tan to its right. Jake Hollis was here, too. He’d taken the time to shed his gore-splattered uniform and replace it with a Class B dress: charcoal tunic with a thick, glossy black belt over a red waist sash, gold buttons, black trousers, and a pair of knee-high black boots polished to a mirror finish.

  The high, piercing cry of the G’dar pulled my attention back to the matter at hand. I have heard of the demise of Captain Margolis, my pinned translator said to my brain. A tragic loss for us all. My condolences.

  I knelt, as was the custom. “We all weep at her loss, My Lord.”

  You have come as the new captain?

  New captain. I didn’t like the sound of that: “Yes. I have come to report and discuss strategy.”

  The G’dar stood and motioned with a claw toward a panel of kulvar to my right. We both moved that way, followed by more aliens I recognized but couldn’t call out by name. One, I knew to be a general. Another was the angry orange-breasted creature whose gender I could not identify. The others I was less sure of—royal family, perhaps.

  Once we were inside, the G’dar turned, squatted on his inverted haunches and bid me to speak. His advisors gathered behind him, their faces grave and interested.

  “This afternoon, during the fight that claimed Captain Margolis, our company contacted enemy reinforcements—mercenaries like us.”

  The room erupted in the trill shrieks from the advisors. My interpreter couldn’t keep up. The feathers on the creatures stood on end and rippled with unrestrained excitement. Foreigners…mercenaries…lost control…peace…occupation…death…forever.

  Only the general and the G’dar remained impassive. He silenced the crowd with an upraised claw. His avian eyes studied me. These mercenaries. Do you know them?

  I thought about that: Mark 8’s well maintained, excellent fire discipline, the swooping raven sigil…and that sloppy, amateurish pursuit. “Too early to tell.”

  The G’dar studied me. Could he see I was hedging my bets? They are human.

  It wasn’t a question. “Based on their use of CASPers, yes.”

  CASPers, or Combat Assault Systems, Personal, were bipedal, servo-driven suits of armor that stood just over two to almost two-and-a-half meters, depending on the model, and sported an impressive array of modern, sophisticated weapons. They were the ultimate equalizer for us puny humans when we tangled mano y mano with other, heartier races.

  Another P’tan, the orange-breasted one who’d been glaring daggers at me, broke into birdsong: I told you father! We should have accepted our defeat with honor, not brought these trespassers here. Now, their friends have come! They will bring more!

  The G’dar brushed away the son’s anger. Daughter’s? I couldn’t tell. How many?

  “At least a company’s worth, though there could be more.”

  I didn’t have to be a specialist on P’tan culture to see the G’dar didn’t like that. Can you defeat them without—expanding this war?

  I suddenly recognized my missed opportunity. Explaining the realities of warfare to civilians, especially alien civilians with incomprehensible values and priorities was daunting. It was also Liaison Officer Jake Hollis’ military specialty. “The mercenaries had deployed their CASPers inside the city and engaged us from zones ordered off limits by the House Bre’Lyn rules of engagements.”

  I paused. They were waiting for me to make my point, but I could see the protests already form
ing on their faces. “I have come to ask permission to lift the ban on striking the city, and ask that you—”

  A shriek that could only be outrage in any language rose from the protesting son/daughter. Absolutely not! My translator said to me. We have changed our society’s fabric, father! For what!? Victory? G’dar Gor’det would have given us honorable terms. Now, your thugs ask to bomb our cities! Where will it stop?

  I held my anger. “With respect, that should have been discussed before you hired us. We were brought in to bring this war to a speedy conclusion. Yet, we were held back from racing ahead and cutting off the retreating enemy so you and your entourage could entertain a victory parade for every skirmish won. We could not perform strikes on their fleeing columns unless we could first get them to turn and face us, and we had to give their army ample opportunity to deploy before beginning combat operations.

  “Now, we stand at the gates of victory, but your opponents have resorted to mercs of their own, and we are fighting more than ranks of light infantry supported by obsolete armor. If G’dar Gor’det’s merc commander is more persuasive than I, this tent palace might be the first thing they target.”

  A ripple of nervousness flowed through the feathered body of advisors. Even the angry son/daughter seemed sobered by the notion.

  “I can bring this war to an end, but I need your blessing.”

  The G’dar looked at me in grave contemplation We will discuss what you have said, Captain. Thank-you.

  4

  I strode from of the meeting, through the kulvar tent, and stepped out under a blue-black sky. Dusk had come and gone during my session with the G’dar, and there was still much to do.

  “They don’t like the change we represent.”

  I looked to the voice—it was Hollis. A young P’tan hung on his arm. He fed her, I assume it was a her, from a handful of berries. Her green plumage seemed familiar. I frowned. “Enjoying the local hospitality a little too much, aren’t you?”