The Bad Company Read online

  Timmons, Sue, Shonna, Merrit, Aaron, and Yanmei were crouched in the bottom of a shell crater.

  “One artillery round and you’re all toast,” Terry declared.

  “They already shot here once. It’ll be a while before they drop a second one,” Timmons replied confidently.

  “What in the hell kind of logic is that?” Terry asked.

  “It’s the best I got, boss,” Timmons answered with a shrug.

  Terry wanted to argue, but couldn’t. They were all pinned down, and any cover was good cover. “Has anyone seen my dog?” Terry asked.

  I’m not your dog, dumbass, Dokken told him.

  Where are you, buddy?

  Next hole. Is there anything you can do about that screaming whine? It’s bugging the shit out of me.

  I only hear the explosions, Terry replied before thinking about what Dokken had meant. Terry changed direction. Kae, can your suit sensors detect sounds beyond human hearing? Dokken hears something.

  There was a brief delay. Terry prepared to run to the next position where other tactical team members were hunkered down.

  Got it and triangulated. Want me to shove a rocket up their ass? Kae asked.

  Terry smiled. Make it two.

  In moments, two rockets screamed skyward and raced toward the Tisker lines. The rockets juked back and forth before diving into a rear area.

  Thank you, Dokken said.

  Terry bolted for the next position, zig-zagging as he ran, even though there was no incoming fire. He kept his head down and dove into the position, nearly landing on the German Shepherd.

  On board the War Axe

  “What do we do now?” Clodagh Shortall asked her department head. Commander Suresha shrugged. The engines were idling as the ship waited in the gravity neutral nexus between the seventh planet of the Tissikinnon system and its largest moon. The captain expected to hold position where they would remain undetected until Terry Henry signaled for a pickup.

  “Let’s focus on keeping our power signature minimized. Thrusters only to maintain position. Gravitic engines idle and the gate engines shut down,” the captain replied.

  The four department heads and their deputies filled the captain’s small briefing room located to the side of the destroyer’s bridge. One hatch led to the bridge, and the other to a corridor. The bridge was located toward the rear of the ship at nearly its highest point.

  For space combat, the design wasn’t optimal, but that wasn’t what the War Axe was built for. It was uniquely suited to deliver a ground combat unit into hostile territory, because at the end of the day, the people calling the shots lived on space stations or planets.

  And those were the ones that Terry Henry Walton’s Direct Action Branch dealt with. The DAB, a private conflict solution enterprise, was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bad Company.

  It was Micky San Marino’s job to deliver Terry and his people to the hot spots. The Bad Company signed the contracts, received half payment up front, and then inserted the teams where they decided they could most quickly accomplish the mission. Terry did the dirty work and Micky acted as a high-speed space taxi and security service.

  That was the premise anyway. This was the first such effort. Micky had listened to Terry’s conversation with Nathan Lowell and General Lance Reynolds. The captain wondered if every mission would be the same.

  “No plan survives first contact,” Micky said aloud, then clapped a hand over his mouth. Those were the last words that Terry shared before boarding his drop ship and launching from the War Axe.

  “Tissikinnon Four,” Commander Oscar Wirth, head of ship’s stores, started, looking at his fellow department heads. “I get the impression that they are burning through ammunition more quickly than they anticipated. What is the resupply plan?”

  Commander Blagun Lagunov, ship’s structure, blew out a breath and shook his head. “We just finished fixing the ship from our last trip into orbit,” he complained. “Those fighters are small, but they pack a punch. Did you ever figure out where they came from?”

  Micky nodded slowly. “A small resupply station in orbit. Looks like the rest of them, little more than a ground-mapping satellite, but that’s where the surviving fighters recovered.”

  K’Thrall rubbed his mandibles together. The Yollin’s carapace was pressed against the table as he leaned forward from his chair. “I think we will purge the sky of them should they attempt another attack on the War Axe,” he stated boldly in Yollin, which was instantly translated into the language that each member around the table best understood.

  The advantages of Kurtherian nanocyte programming and the engineering marvel known as the Pod Doc. Every member of the crew as well as every warrior from the Bad Company was modified in some way by the Pod Doc.

  They were all better for it. They could communicate without radios. They could understand other languages, instantly, as if raised speaking them.

  “That’s what you said last time!” Blagun said, contorting his face and scratching his head.

  “Ballistic drop?” Suresha suggested. A high-speed pass of the planet where they would shoot an unpowered canister into a target window, and it would then guide itself toward designated coordinates.

  “Possibly.” Micky stroked his chin in thought. He looked at Commander MacEachthighearna, but Mac simply shook his head. As the environmental department head, he was focused exclusively on the War Axe’s internal systems.

  “Take the War Axe to the surface?” Suresha asked skeptically.

  “Not my first choice,” the captain answered candidly. The destroyer was unable to protect itself when on the ground. “You think those fighters are exo-atmospheric only?”

  Suresha nodded confidently. “Those are space fighters only. I’d bet my engines on that one.”

  “I don’t like that option at all,” Commander Lagunov said, wincing at the thought of exposing the ship to fire from above and below.

  The captain looked from face to face. “Blagun. Prepare a ballistic canister, just in case. We’ll pray that TH and company can accomplish their mission with their initial deployment stock.”

  “We can hope,” Blagun replied, nodding, his lips turning white as he pressed them together. “I’ll have that canister ready within eight hours.”

  The captain tipped his chin to the stores department head. “If there’s nothing else?” he asked. No one had anything. “Break’s over. Back on your heads.”

  Blagun shook his head, recalling the captain’s favorite joke. A man dies and goes to hell. He gets put in a room where people are standing in a knee-deep cesspool smoking and joking. He looks at them and says, “This isn’t so bad.” That’s when the demon says, “Break’s over, back on your heads.”

  Blagun didn’t think he served in hell, but sometimes, it was hellacious work, and he needed to get back to it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Tissikinnon Four

  Team leads, meet me at my position in three, Terry passed to the company via their internal comm chips. Forty-eight souls were counting on him to lead them successfully in battle. He wondered briefly if any of them wouldn’t be going home.

  With a snarl, he forced his errant thoughts down. He popped his head over the small berm, looked, and ducked back down. A bullet slammed into the berm, sending a dirt shower over him.

  Kae. Did you see where that shot came from? You’d think a stalk-head with spindly arms wouldn’t be a good shot, but damn!

  The mech’s cannon opened up, spitting thunder. The air sizzled as the railgun rounds screamed downrange. Chew on that, you piece of shit, Kae growled as he ran over the top of a ridge and headed toward his father.

  Char, Joseph, Timmons, Marcie, and Aaron loped from five different directions. They varied their speed and zig-zagged, diving into the hole one by one. Dokken ducked behind the big human to avoid getting crushed.

  “Would you look at what the cat dragged in,” Terry said.

  The cat? Dokken said, looking past Terry’s leg, expec
ting to see the good king Wenceslaus.

  “Sorry, buddy, just an expression.” Terry nodded toward the enemy lines. Kae scanned the horizon before carefully entering the hole and sitting down.

  “No movement. With the death of that last sniper, they seem to have lost their desire to stick their necks out,” Kae replied using the suit’s external speakers.

  “Stalk-heads sticking their necks out. Nice one,” Terry Henry told his son. Char groaned.

  “I still don’t get you, TH. We’re in the middle of the shit and that’s where you find the most stuff to laugh at,” Joseph said slowly.

  “It’s his way,” Char answered. She smiled at her husband, her purple eyes sparkling under the muted Tissikinnon sun.

  Marcie showed no emotions as she watched the others. Timmons and Aaron shook their heads, a werewolf and a weretiger, friends. Even though they’d been raised in two different societies, they were all members of Char’s pack. Even Joseph, the vampire.

  And Terry had conscripted all of them to be members of the Bad Company.

  “Bunch of crap, huh?” Terry said with a chuckle. “I’ve already made a note that before we sign another contract, whoever wrote the RFP is going to get tortured until we get the straight scoop. And for the record, after we finish this, I am going to beat the shit out of that pencil-necked dweeb of a president.”

  “You’re not going to torture anyone and you know it, but I fully support a good pummeling of the Crenellian president. That lying fuck deserves a knuckle massage of his face.”

  Marcie smiled and nodded. “In the meantime,” she said, eyes narrowing, “we’re going to beat the shit out of some Tiskers. I know that we don’t want to kill them all because we don’t want them vulnerable to other enemies, but I really want to send these fuckers back to the stone ages.”

  “I hear that,” Kaeden said. He wanted to unleash his mech unit on the Tisker forces, but they still didn’t know the breadth of the Tisker forces or firepower.

  “We’re surrounded,” Terry said matter-of-factly. “We’re surrounded and no matter which way we shoot, we’re going to hit something. That may seem like it makes sense, but it doesn’t. I want to dictate the terms of this engagement, not respond to what they’re doing. So, I’d like to move us to high ground, on their flank, and start rolling them up.”

  Kaeden vibrated with anticipation. He wanted to be turned loose. He’d trained with the other members of his small team on board the War Axe, but the simulators didn’t do the suits justice. There was nothing like feeling the woosh of an actual rocket launching or feeling the impact through the soles of the mech’s boots, leaning into the kick of the massive railgun.

  Terry slapped a hand onto the cold metal surrounding his son.

  “Kae’s team will create a diversion that will look like the main attack. Stay low, hit fast, and hit hard. Keep moving.” Terry used his silvered knife to draw in the dirt at the bottom of the crater. Dokken sniffed at the ad hoc map. Terry blocked him with his leg to keep the German Shepherd from peeing on the diorama.

  “Marcie and Joseph. I’ll need you and your people to hold that flank as we head up this ridgeline.” Terry pointed at the ground with his knife and then pointed over the berm toward the high ground to their right.

  “Aaron. I’ll need you and your people to head up our right flank. You’ll be on the military crest on the far side of that ridge, which means we won’t be able to see you. I suggest you change into Were form and cover the ground at top speed.”

  “We can do that. Christina, too?” Aaron asked.

  “Unleash the Pricolici, but you are not to engage. I want you to get into place here—” Terry stabbed his knife into the map. “—and cover our approach. Timmons. You’re with us. We’re taking it right up the gut, but I expect the mechs will be drawing all the fire. Questions?”

  “What do we do when we get there?” Joseph asked.

  “We find the flank of these bastards, and then we roll it up.” Terry pondered his statement. “What are the drones seeing?”

  “Blue stalk-heads for as far as the eye can see in all directions. They aren’t massed in any one place, just scattered, and a metric fuck-ton of them.”

  “I’m going to kill that president,” Terry snarled.

  “I’ll hold the door for you,” Char told him while darting glances over the berm. Terry watched her before risking a look.

  “Motherfuck!” Terry pulled his Jean Dukes Special and dialed it down to five. “Get ready to run back and prep your people. We leave as soon as we repel this blue tide. Kae, I think it’s time for you and your people to unleash a little hate and discontent.”

  Kae spoke within his helmet to the other team members. Within ten seconds, the thunder of their footsteps echoed over the crater. With a nod to Kae, Terry leaned over the berm and fired as rapidly as he could pull the trigger.

  Kae stood and unleashed his railgun across a wide arc. Terry ducked down and covered his ears after the first hundred rounds raced past his head.

  The others jumped up and ran from the crater. Rounds from the other mechs joined Kaeden’s. He stepped beyond the berm and then started running toward the enemy. Terry holstered his pistol and bolted after Char.

  ***

  Aaron loped across the cratered area and dodged behind a small bank where Yanmei was crouched, uncomfortably holding her railgun. She was a hand-to-hand warrior, preferring combat while in weretiger form. She maintained her disdain for weapons, even though she carried one. Aaron leaned close to be sure.

  It hadn’t been fired.

  “Christina!” he shouted at a figure braced against a small rock, firing with nearly reckless abandon. “Conserve your ammo!”

  She turned with a guilty look. He waved at her to join him. She jumped up and fired sideways as she ran. Aaron wondered if she was hitting anything, although the more he learned about her, the more he discovered that she was a gifted warrior, trained to a level most of them couldn’t imagine.

  No wonder she was frustrated.

  She stopped short of cover and took aim, firing methodically. “AAHHHH!” she yelled after sending ten deadly slivers at hypersonic speeds into the enemy.

  “Do you believe that? Takes two shots to finish them. No matter where you hit them, you need to blast ‘em again.” She started to lean out from behind cover before Aaron pulled her back.

  She relaxed. He held out a hand in a calming gesture.

  “We’ll need to change into Were form and then run as fast as we can over that way.” Aaron pointed indiscriminately. Yanmei tried to see what he was trying to show them. “And then we go up there and cover the rest who will be approaching from that direction.”

  More non-specific waving. The two women looked at each other and shook their heads slightly. Neither had any idea where they were supposed to go.

  “Jones!” Aaron shouted through cupped hands.

  “Sir!” came the reply from somewhere out of sight. Can I help you?

  “I keep forgetting about these things,” Aaron complained, before putting a finger to his temple and closing his eyes.

  “He really works at it, doesn’t he?” Christina asked.

  “You have no idea,” Yanmei replied, watching her husband’s lips move as he communicated using the chip in his head.

  “Okay,” Aaron said, smiling as he opened his eyes. “They’ll follow us up, quick as they can. Can you carry our weapons when you’re, you know, a wolf?”

  Christina ducked her head to look at Aaron and Yanmei from beneath her eyebrows. Her face started to change, and she grew in height. She snapped her jaws. “Yeessssss,” she said, flexing her muscles and reaching out a talon-like claw.

  Yanmei handed over her railgun. Christina slung it over her back. Aaron handed his to her and both the weretigers quickly undressed. They bundled their clothes into their backpacks and held them out.

  Christina rolled her eyes. “Toddddday, a paaaack muuuuule, but noooow, we fiiiiiiightttt,” she said before thro
wing the packs over her back. She pointed her snout skyward and roared her joy at being in Pricolici form.

  Two weretigers appeared at her side, jaws wide, showing their great fangs, as they dug their razor-sharp claws into the dirt. With a monumental leap, Aaron was off. Yanmei and Christina bolted after him. The Pricolici looked unbalanced running upright, but the strength in her legs propelled her.

  Still, the great cats were faster as they flowed over the ground in their race toward the ridge. Christina stopped to adjust the gear she carried, her eyes flashing yellow in her anger at being relegated to servant.

  weretiger snarls and screams galvanized her into action. She accelerated, sending clods of mud behind her as her claws ripped into the ground.

  Ahead, four Tiskers and two weretigers were engaged in a melee with blue blood and tufts of fur flying through the air. The Tiskers fired repeatedly at point-blank range, but the weretigers kept moving in a deadly feline dance.

  Christina forgot about the weapons strapped across her back. Her eyes glowed yellow as the Pricolici within raged to the fore. She darted through an opening and dove, her front claws digging into the neck of the blue creature.

  She pushed off the shell with her back legs and spun around the creature’s neck, digging deep into the stalk. With a violent jerk, she ripped through and tore off the blue head. Christina launched herself at her next target.

  The Tiskers fired again and again from their hand blasters, but the weretigers were moving quickly, foiling the aim by erratic direction changes, but some rounds still hit.

  Both weretigers were bleeding heavily from multiple wounds, but they hadn’t slowed down. Fangs and claws struck again and again. The shells protected the creatures. Aaron and Yanmei knew that, too. They sought to get closer, rip the stalks with their claws.

  Kill their enemies.

  Christina was blown sideways by the force of the bullets hitting her. She twisted mid-air, rolling so when she landed, she was on all fours. She tore the ground up as she surged into her enemy.