The Bad Company Read online

  She only saw the one before her, focused on its vulnerable neck, protected by two spindly tentacles that flowed like wheat under a summer breeze. The fire was deadly accurate when a target stood still long enough.

  Christina had no intention of being that target. She hit the Tisker’s shell and jumped to the side, catching a tentacle on her claws and using that to pull herself inward. She ripped the muscles, rendering the tentacle useless as she let go. With a great overhead slash, she tore the creature’s eyes from its head.

  The Tisker flailed, firing haphazardly in the direction of the Pricolici. She ripped its arm off before attacking the stalk on which its head spasmed.

  Aaron jumped, wrapped his front paws around the Tisker’s tentacles, and pinned them to the stalk rising out the middle of the creature’s shellback. He sunk his fangs into the Tisker’s neck, growling and twisting as he tried to tear out his enemy’s throat.

  Yanmei had been more graceful, attacking in quick hits, slashing the stalk, jumping away, and diving back in. Blue blood flowed down the creature’s stalk and onto its shell. Its tentacles hung slack, the weapons having already fallen from numb digits. Her target was walking dead.

  She pounced one last time and slashed through the creature’s head, splitting it open and spilling its blue brains over its shell. Yanmei stumbled off the shell as the Tisker’s stumpy legs failed, and it dropped to the ground.

  Christina staggered away, finally taking stock of the damage done to her. The healing process was already well underway. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

  Tisker bullets hurt like hell.

  From nearby, the sound of four mech-sized railguns consumed the world of sound with its relentless noise.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Kaeden was on the point of the diamond formation, rushing forward. Praeter was to his left. Cantor was on the right, and Duncan followed in reserve, ready to exploit success or reinforce failure, whatever he was needed to do.

  The railgun burped twenty rounds. Kae swept the weapon from left to right, sending short bursts of the hypervelocity rounds screaming into the enemy ranks.

  Like skirmishers of old, they were scattered across the field of battle as the mechs surged quickly forward, angels of death sweeping the area clear of the blue Tiskers.

  Praeter and Cantor followed suit, yelling as they unleashed the destruction that such weapons made possible.

  “Easy on the ammo,” Kae cautioned before turning his attention back to the enemy, which seemed to be scattered across the rolling plain in front for as far as they could see. “Eyeballs.”

  Immediately, two micro-drones vaulted from the back of the mech suit and raced skyward. Kae picked the targets that were shooting at him to fire on. He kept his formation from moving in a straight line. They sped up. They slowed down.

  It wasn’t long before the artillery arrived, exploding where they’d been, not where they were, not where they were going to be.

  One hit too close and threw Duncan on his face. The mech scrambled to get up.

  “Ramming speed!” Kaeden ordered.

  ***

  Terry waited until the first round of incoming artillery hit. The rest of the Bad Company’s Direct Action Branch was loaded and ready to move.

  “Go, go, go!” he shouted the order for a tactical movement to the ridge and further up the valley until they held the high ground on what was originally their flank.

  Tactical movement. Terry’s euphemism for run like hell. Kimber barked an order and her platoon of FDG warriors turned mercenaries ran in squads, organized by fire teams, keeping their spacing but still looking like a mob as they raced over the broken terrain.

  The Pod Doc enhancements had made them all stronger and faster. Their teamwork and attitudes had made them what they were well before they were enhanced.

  With pride, Terry watched the unit he’d built back on Earth with standards from the old Marine Corps. He knew that the Marines would have been happy to see that their brand of warfare would transcend the Milky Way, and be considered the premier combat unit within the growing Federation.

  At least Lance Reynolds and Nathan Lowell considered Terry’s Force de Guerre that way. Terry Henry wondered if he’d been set up with the mission to Tissikinnon Four.

  A rite of passage.

  “I’ll be damned,” Terry said as he signaled the other teams to head out. Joseph and Petricia ran, staying between the four warriors and the incoming rounds. They slowed their pace so the warriors could keep up. Vampiric speed was a completely different gear. When Joseph and Petricia moved as fast as they were able, they turned into a blur.

  In combat, they were deadly, but it wasn’t in their nature to fight. Terry watched the two vampires protect the warriors by using their bodies as shields. He expected no less from his leadership team.

  He watched Marcie, Ramses, Auburn, and Cory staying close to the platoon. Kim and Ramses provided the military leadership while Auburn and Cory were in support. Marcie was second to Terry Henry.

  She was with the others, for the moment, but would promptly dart off in a different direction. She needed more information, to help the colonel best manage the battle.

  Auburn didn’t look happy, not because he was assigned to his wife’s unit, but because he was the Direct Action Branch’s logistician.

  He had nothing to issue. He carried a radio that he could use to contact the ship and order supplies. That was the extent of his purpose on the ground. He carried a shotgun for close quarters combat, for defensive purposes only. He could run as fast as most of Terry and Char’s inner circle, but he wasn’t a fighter either.

  Cory was the unit’s healer. Terry and Char’s natural daughter, she was born with a mutated version of her parent’s combined nanocytes. She could heal injuries, coax the wounded back from the brink of death. She always stayed near her husband, Ramses, just like Terry and Char stayed close to each other.

  Cory was one of the best in hand-to-hand combat, she had been raised that way, but she didn’t want to fight. Many considered her to be the nicest person they’d ever met. She preferred that to taking lives. She kept the others calm with her presence and helped keep her father from embracing the rage that tickled the dark corners of his being.

  Terry’s family from before the fall of mankind had been murdered on the fateful day, the World’s Worst Day Ever. When TH found them, he’d gone on a rampage and killed everyone who was there. To this day, he carried the knife of the gang leader. Kaeden carried the other knife that Terry had taken from the man after he’d cut his head off.

  To intimidate the others.

  It worked, and they ran. But Terry was a Marine and they were punks. They died tired. And Terry had gone into a self-imposed exile. It wasn’t his place to eliminate all humanity for the crimes of a few. He had wanted to, so he disappeared. For twenty years, he stayed away.

  He had returned one hundred and thirty-one years ago with a singular focus to help drag the people back to civilization.

  Now, he was doing that on an intergalactic scale.

  For money.

  Terry was okay with that because he got to pick which side he fought for. And this was his test. He needed to find the head of the serpent and cut it off, save the lives of the Tisker warriors.

  The werewolves Timmons, Sue, Shonna, and Merrit followed the vampires, at a distance, separated to limit their vulnerability to incoming explosive rounds. The warriors on Timmons’s tactical team followed, using a similar box formation to the four Were.

  Terry, Char, and Dokken were last, waiting until there was enough distance before running out.

  Music started playing in the direction of the mechs. It wasn’t hard to hear, even over the noise of combat.

  “Is that Johnny Cash?” Terry asked.

  Char nodded. “Yep. Kae discovered it in the archives. He always has music playing now. His tastes are rather extensive. The War Axe seems to have it all.”

  “How did I not know this?” Terry leane
d left and right as he scanned the battlefield, ready to alter the plan if the enemy countered in an unexpected way. But the Tiskers were singularly focused on the four mechs tearing through their haphazard ranks.

  “Too busy preparing for war to live the life of a Gen X-er?” Char offered.

  “Is that what I’m supposed to be?” Terry replied with a chuckle. “I never thought of myself that way. I’m not the most cultured. You may have noticed.”

  “I may have,” Char answered, shaking her head. She peered around Terry’s shoulder, then checked the progress of the company. “It’s time, lover.”

  I wondered, Dokken added, before launching himself from the small depression and flying over the open ground, pounding with all four feet. Terry and Char took off after him.

  After one hundred meters, Terry spun in a circle, seeing that the Tiskers were advancing toward the positions that the Bad Company had just abandoned.

  “Good enough,” he said as he turned back and accelerated to catch up.

  Start working your way toward the ridgeline, he ordered the mech unit using his comm chip.

  Yes, sir! Kae replied happily. The mechs went from jogging to running, increasing to maximum speed. They stopped firing to save ammunition, using the power and momentum of the mech suits themselves to run over intransigent Tiskers. At full speed, the mechs bowled through the enemy forces. The tentacle-held weapons were useless against the Kurtherian-designed armor.

  Kae and the others swung in an arc on a tangent away from their real goal, headed up and over a ridge in the distance. They’d swing around and approach the high ground from behind. Terry saw the dark dots of the micro-drones as they weaved back and forth ahead and to the flank of the mechs.

  They disappeared into the distance, just like Johnny Cash’s dulcet baritone.

  Char and Dokken had sped up. Terry redoubled his efforts until a cascade of dirt rained down on him from the impact of incoming artillery. He dove for cover.

  ***

  Aaron and Yanmei started to run again. The artillery pounded at the back of their senses before they realized that the others were already on their way and the weretigers were supposed to have been in position. Yanmei took the lead, loping with a limp as blood trailed down the golden fur covering her back leg. Her chest fur was coated in red and blue blood.

  Hers and that of her enemies.

  Aaron trotted after her, weaving as he ran. Christina had been shot too, repeatedly, but the Tiskers hadn’t hit anything vital. “Damn, sluuuug throooowersssssssss,” she grumbled as she ran past the injured weretigers. Their wounds were healing, but not as quickly as the Pricolici’s. She ran a hand down each of their sides, letting them know as she ran ahead. They both rubbed their heads on the Pricolici’s thigh, letting her know that they were okay.

  She still carried their weapons and backpacks, despite the gymnastics of her attacks.

  Christina ran ahead, staying on the military crest as Terry had directed. Running on the top of a hill skylined the individual. Staying near the top, but below head level, they used the hill to block the line of sight. Although there were Tiskers far to the right of them, the bulk of the blue forces to their left couldn’t see the Weres.

  For the win, Christina thought as she continued toward the target ahead. Two Tiskers ambled out of nowhere, slow, but quickly in how they managed to get in the way.

  She slid a railgun from around her and stabbed a claw through the trigger housing. She pulled back. “Wellllcooome to myyyyyy nighttttt marrrrrre,” she panted as the railgun sent a stream of hypervelocity needles through the two blue bodies.

  The Pricolici chuckled as the weretigers caught up with her. She waved an arm and started to run toward their goal. It wasn’t much farther ahead. The impact and explosions of artillery sounded far off. She wondered how long it would take the others to reach the hilltop.

  ***

  Marcie surged ahead of the others, racing along the side of the shallow ridge. Her eyes scanned side to side, up and down as she looked for an enemy.

  She found none. Smiling darkly, she slowed to let the others reach her. Over one shoulder, she saw the Pricolici and the weretigers loping toward the goal. They’d all reach it at the same time.

  It was the first time she’d seen Christina in her Were form. Terrifying. Walking upright, back slightly hunched, fangs prominent in a canine muzzle and claws, unlike those of werewolves, more like the weretigers. Pricolici—with the deadliest features of all the Were.

  And she carried a railgun with a claw on the trigger.

  Terrifying. It was the only way to describe her. Marcie committed to spending more time with her, befriend her. Stay away from her bad side.

  Ramses, Auburn, and Cory arrived next. They’d passed Kimber and her platoon when they realized that no one was shooting at them. They took advantage of the opening to run faster in a straight line.

  Cory waved to Christina, signaling that she wanted to look at Christina’s injuries, along with those of the weretigers.

  “Oooookkkaaaaay,” Christina managed and tipped her chin toward Aaron and Yanmei. Cory didn’t argue. The Pricolici looked past her to the battlefield beyond as she stood guard over the others.

  Both Aaron and Yanmei changed back into human form. Two backpacks landed with a thud beside them. Christina waved a claw at them. Aaron groaned as he reached for it, then stopped and smiled.

  “I remember,” he said. For more than a century, Aaron had been plagued by the fact that he never remembered what happened when he was in Were form. After Yanmei joined him, she would have to tell him what he did. He suspected she left out the grizzly details to spare him from being afraid to change.

  But now he could remember his recent time as a weretiger.

  All of them, every single one of the FDG who boarded the War Axe, had spent time in the Pod Doc, getting nanocytes if they had none, and tweaks if they did. Aaron’s nanos had been fixed.

  He looked at the wounds on his chest, but shrugged them off. Cory put her hands on her hips and looked them over. She was limited in how many people she could help in a day. The nanocytes would flow from her into the injury. It exhausted her to share them, but her body would put her to sleep before she lost too many.

  Sometimes that happened when it was most inopportune. Ramses stayed close by, to carry her to safety should she pass out. He kept one eye on her and one eye on the platoon running up the last incline. Kimber was already directing them to establish a perimeter, start digging in.

  “We’ll be fine, Cory,” Aaron told her as he and Yanmei started to get dressed.

  “What happened back there?” Cory asked, still concerned.

  “Some Tiskers showed up and they aren’t as easy to kill as we would like,” Aaron stated simply.

  “Uh huh,” she replied, frowning. She turned away from the weretigers and sat next to Ramses. He watched the platoon settle into position, while keeping a wary eye out for the rest of the company.

  “It’s quiet,” Cory said.

  “Sometimes the silence is the hardest thing to hear,” Ramses added. “The diversion has run its course, I suspect.”

  Ramses kneeled and put his hand to the ground where he could feel the rhythmic thumping of mechs running toward them. “Can you feel it?”

  Cory nodded.

  The landscape was mostly barren, short growing stumps barely passing for trees. There was no grass, only spiky weeds. It was an inhospitable environment except for one thing: it was oxygen-rich.

  The humans embraced the boost to their metabolisms. It also made for bigger explosions.

  There was no warning besides the final whistle of the approaching shell. The lightning reactions of a well-trained force drove them all prone before the explosion.

  All but one. Christina was picked up and thrown as if carried on the wings of a tornado.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Terry shook his head, his ears still ringing from the nearby explosion.

  “Char!” he yelled an
d started scrabbling through the rocks, pulling himself in the direction he’d last seen her.

  Here, she said using the comm chip. Terry stopped and turned his head back and forth.

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Right here,” she said from a short way ahead. “I need a little help.”

  Terry jumped up and ran the few steps to get to Charumati before ducking back down after a number of snap-fired rounds ricocheted from the rocks around him. Char was seated, but buried up to her chest in debris. Terry pulled the rocks and threw them down the gently sloping hill behind him.

  More rounds impacted the dirt and rocks. Terry pulled faster, digging with his hands until he could pull the purple-eyed werewolf free. She couldn’t stand because both her legs were broken. He lifted her up and started to run.

  “Wait!” she cried. “Dokken was underneath me.”

  Terry gently put her on the ground. A slug slammed into his chest and a second one tore through the meat of his upper thigh. “We’re sitting ducks out here. Order covering fire!”

  Char closed her eyes to concentrate on sending the message.

  Terry started digging again until he found a dog’s paw. Terry stepped into the hole and carefully removed debris until he could pull the German Shepherd free. The dog was unconscious, but breathing. Terry held Dokken in his arms, looked at Char, and put Dokken back down. He pulled his Jean Dukes Special, took aim, and braced himself as he dialed it to ten.

  In a rapid sequence, he sent the rounds across the battlefield behind him, firing at anything that hinted at blue. Terry thought he might have taken a shot at the sky in his rush to stop the incoming fire. After forty-seven shots, his shoulder started to ache. He put the pistol away and reached for Dokken.

  The dog started to stir, his eyelids fluttering as he came to. The fuck?

  “Damn, buddy. I thought you were more cultured than to swear like that.”

  The human I seem to have adopted is a bad influence. I seem unable to walk at present. May I impose upon you for a ride? Dokken asked.