Chapter One

I run the status on Mary Mayking, my power-armor, one more time. Jump will be any time. Soon Mary will be the only thing between me and the blue sky that I’ll be launching into—or whatever color the sky will be on this world. Mary is the outer me—she’s what matters most where we’re headed now.

I and seven other power-armored mercs have been riding “the bus”—a ship-to-surface transport—as it has dodged its way in for the last twenty minutes. I felt some hard knocks earlier but I’m still alive and we aren’t floating weightless, so the signs are good. Getting us down is a hard ride, but few mercs complain about the knocks on the trip in—if you can bounce away from the bus, there’s nothing to complain about.

Sometimes those knocks screw up the suits, but so far the diagnostics show no change. I watch the tactical channels and start another diagnostic.…

There are three close-spaced shudders. My stomach tells me I’m floating. This is bad; the bus has stopped dodging. I check. The comm lines are dead. This is really bad. “Everybody out!” I shout into the platoon link and hit the Red Emergency release button. There’s a slam and the groan of tearing metal. “Shi—” and I’m out! Behind me is a fireball where the bus had been. They don’t get any closer.

A scan shows three of us out. This is bad; five of us aren’t going to bitch anymore. I pull up the external scanners on the suit display while I look around visually. The scanners tell me Chin and Al made it. My eyes tell me I’m floating high above a blue planet with white clouds.

Damn! Why didn’t that space jockey launch us twenty seconds ago? I’d have a full squad and this battle would have been a cake walk. What happened? Now I’m going to have to earn my living. Just once I’d like to see one of those remote jockeys come down on a live run. I don’t live for this kind of excitement anymore; these kinds of screw-ups get old.

The three of us are going down in a shower of debris from the immolated bus. “Leave ’em off,” I order on the short range channel. “We’ll play dead.” For the moment we leave the ECM’s off. We’re still 50 kilometers up and if we look like dead meat then maybe we won’t attract any more attention.

Around us stars are shining and below the planet is coming up. There are brief flashes in the distance—some barely a flicker, others too brilliant to watch. There are too many brilliant ones. I go to long-range scan and link back to Landing Control. The news gets worse. Control isn’t saying so but it’s a merc’s nightmare: We’re getting hung out to dry. The invasion is over. The capital ships are leaving and our butts are hanging out 46, correction 45, kilometers up.

“Back to the bus,” I order.

“What?”

“Back to the bus!” Chin and Al know I won’t say it a third time. It’s unusual, but these are unusual times. “The capitals are pulling out; there’ll be no suppression. The wreck is our only cover.”

We use our stabilizers to jet back. The bus is now a slowly spinning hulk surrounded with a starburst of straight rays of hydraulic fluid mist. The mist rays are starting to bend and soften in the thin atmosphere but there’s still not enough air to support combustion or break our fall. We latch on like fleas, burrow deep in the wreckage, and wedge in with only seconds to spare.

“This is our express ticket down. If we float we flame too.”

“Got it,” says Chin.

The bus slams into the upper stratosphere and deceleration takes us to over 40 G’s in a fraction of a second. Before the second is complete we’re back to one G and falling free at subsonic speeds. The suits can take it, barely. We can take it within the suits, barely. The bus has dissolved into a fireball of plasma behind us.

It takes a few more seconds to recover. My suit is all screwed up with a layer of metal and carbon over everything. The sensors hardly function. I can hardly see out the faceplate. But this is no time for bitching. We’re well to the west of target and over a snow-covered young mountain range in the temperate zone. I spot a round, ice-free lake in a volcanic caldera below us. Al and Chin are floating my way. I motion at the lake and down we go.

At five hundred meters up the streamer chutes pop. They’re still fun to watch. The chute deploys progressively as ground level approaches; the effect is a steady deceleration. The chutes are diaphanous affairs made of a fabric that oxidizes spontaneously on contact with air. After thirty seconds the chute immolates and I look like a mini-Hindenburg wreck. Before it burns up the chute brakes me to a landing speed of about 50 kilometers an hour; after it burns up there is no sign I ever landed.

Ice-free lakes tend to be deep. That’s why I pick it, we can come down fast and disappear quickly by simply hitting the water and slowing down underneath. I splash, then swim towards the edge—if one can describe going through breast stroke motions in power armor as swimming. I reach the slope; it’s steep, almost vertical. I climb up towards the surface. Climbing isn’t hard but the slope is covered by huge logs with sheddy bark. The bark slips in my grip and fills the water with dense mud. Once a log shifts. The logs aren’t heavy enough to crush, certainly not buoyed in this water, but if I get caught in a dozen-log avalanche it could twist off an arm or leg.

I’m at the surface. Al and Chin are a hundred meters away, nearer shore. They motion up, then for me to come their way. I high-sign back then walk toward them at the five-meter-deep level.

We meet. They head down. I follow. At ten meters down they head into a hole. Hey, what’s this? Air? At ten meters down? Smart guys! They’ve spread out a reserve chute covered with a tarp under some crisscrossing logs and filled an air pocket with compressed air from the armor. I crack my helmet. It stinks but it’s breathable.

“Diagnostics,” I order with a sigh. “Let’s find out where we stand.”

“That was some hammerin’, Frank,” says Al. “My armor’s at 80%. Ammo’s only 60%. A lot shook off. I’ve got rockets but I lost the heavy laser.”

“Scanners?”

“Mostly shot. But I think it’s this bus gunk. If we get that off a lot may come back.”

“Start at it.”

“The big problem is mobility.” Al pats his suit. “Jessie’s balance is all shook up. It’ll be a couple hours for her to fix.”

“A couple hours? How’d you get her to go this far?”

“It’s like I’ve been piloting one of the training robots, man—I made every move myself. That’s why I set up this shelter. I knew with Jessie in the shape she’s in we weren’t going anywhere fast.”

Chin is mostly desuited now. She has blood running from her forehead and maybe her nose. “If we’ve got a couple of hours, Se-jong’s okay; that’s as long as he needs. I’ve got weapons, but the left arm’s mangled. I’m not about to use it for a while.”

“How about you?”

“Concussion, but the bone’s okay and the drugs will be enough to control the cranial swelling.”

I look at my own diagnostics and read aloud, “Sensors, heavy damage; armor, 70%; comm link, inactive; mechanical, light damage to left and right legs, heavy damage to right arm, medium damage to gyros; weapons, functional; ammo, 25%.”

“Shit, did we finish this war or just land?” asks Al. He’s scrubbing the sensors vigorously and chipping off flakes of ex-bus. Chin is doing the same, but slower—concussions don’t brighten one’s day. I join in on Mary. One thing never seems to change in this or any man’s army: You still clean things forever.

“You catch any news while I was swimming?” I ask Al.

“Yeah, we were on the news, but it was too early to tell anything other than something was real wrong. They were still into patriotic songs and stock footage.” If the jump had gone as planned, they wouldn’t even be putting that crap up, we’d’ve had the comm stations by now.

“Well, I guess this is no temporary glitch. We really are on our own.” I am now working over the laser sights. “How do you want to proceed from here? We can take the suits and go out in a blaze of glory. We can leave the suits and go out as mountain men. We can wimp out, although as I recall from the briefings these people run to the fanatic side.”

“They always tell us that,” says Al.

“True, but sometimes they’re more convincing than others. I guess we need to watch some more news to find out. Speaking of which, can you rig an antenna up?”

“Sure,” says Al. He suits up and jumps down the hole. I move over to Chin. She scrubs diligently. Gently I stop her and pull her to face me.

“What’s the matter, Chin?”

“This headache…”

“It’s more.”

She stares at me. “How much longer, Frank?”

“Hell of a time to bring that up.”

“If not now, when?”

“When we’re off this rock, of course.”

“That’ll be too late. You’ll be locked back into the system again. Now. We decide now. Now, while you’re free to make a decision.”

“What do you mean? When am I not free?”

“Think about it.” She pulls away and continues cleaning. I go back to my armor and do the same … and start thinking. Our power comes from our armor. While we have it we’re invincible. Oh sure, there are conventional weapons that can wear us down if we’re stupid, but if we use this stuff like it’s designed to be used and it’s in good repair we can dodge what hurts and overcome the rest. How many defense facilities have I taken out? I can’t count any more.

That’s our job. The power armor comes down first. We’re the first wave and chaos is our game. There aren’t many of us—fifty were launched this time—but we’re fast and mighty hard to stop. We create confusion in the defense and destroy anything on the ground that would take out a landing transport. While we do that the capital ships take out everything up above. While the defenders are so screwed around that they can’t tell which end is pointing up the transports bring in the security forces to consolidate. We help out if needed, but it’s mighty expensive to keep this stuff on the move and usually the landing of transports is quickly followed by the arrival of the silver-tongued diplomats, and the fighting is pretty well over.

That’s what usually happens, but the “Boy General” has really fucked up this time and now we’re down on our own with suits looking like the end of a battle not the beginning. It’s just incredible! No general walks away from the first wave. He won’t survive this, no other merc will follow him now, but the real question is: How will we?

Al surfaces again. “Here we go.” We plug into the antenna and start monitoring planetary news while we clean and patch.

“… The interstellar invasion forces have been completely crushed, the local plotters uncovered. The enemy was surprised by the approach of the 2nd Planetary Fleet under loyal Vice Commander Riswalki and they withdrew. The handful of invaders that reached the surface have all surrendered and been rounded up. The president has scheduled a special announcement for ten o’clock tonight.”

“When is that?” I ask

“Six hours,” says Al. “And, say, wasn’t Riswalki supposed to be on our side? At least, that was the word around the ship.”

There are a stream of pictures of distant sky battles, screeching rocket launches, rumbling tanks—most of it stock stuff except for the scenes of two of our mercs surrendering, being pulled out of their armor and bullied into a ragged prisoner line. I feel myself snarling. The Boy General has totally screwed it up this time. Mercs never get treated like this! The enemy should never get a chance to treat them like this. The mercs should die first. But then again no one drops a first wave and walks away from them, either. Fifty have dropped and two are left to suffer this indignity. I’ve seen these two around, Gunther and Johann. Young wild ones, still full of piss and vinegar.

The pictures and sound switch to man-on-the-street stuff. I work harder on the cleaning until all of a sudden I realize that Al and Chin have both stopped. The man being interviewed is wearing an outlandish costume of the sort that says clergy. “… of course there are those who hold that Ka-sharma is unnecessary and they may be there to demonstrate, but it seems quite obvious to me that our faith has served us in good stead. When we burn the inner and outer devils our glory is assured.”

The pictures show a series of burnings at the stake. People are being roasted singly or in groups. Some spectators are cheering, a few others protesting. In a scene that is probably a classic on this world one of the protesters gets too close and is thrown on the fire by a pair of enthusiastic supporters. He jumps off and disappears into the crowd. The picture cuts to a large plaza where the captured power armor is being buried under cordwood and a platform for the two prisoners is being built over the top.

“This is a merc’s worst nightmare,” says Al.

“They’re getting raped. They don’t deserve this. Frank, we should nuke’m rather than let this happen,” says Chin.

I strip off the last of the bus gunk and move to help Chin. “Weren’t you just talking about getting out of this?”

“Later.” She’s moving slow. I check her vitals. The drugs are losing ground. The pressure in her skull is rising. She needs to relax.

“Take thirty and dream happy dreams,” I say.

“Bullshit.”

“Look at your chart.” She does. Rubs her forehead, climbs into the suit, and sleeps. Within seconds the cranial pressures are dropping. It’s like magic if you give it a chance. You’ve just got to know when the chance is. Al and I work on her suit.

“We could nuke’m, Al,” I admit. “Take over one of their missile stations and shoot ’em with their own stuff.”

“That’s being generous. You’d certainly relieve Gunther and Johann of their worries but it wouldn’t do much for ours. We’d just replace them at the stake.”

“We should nuke the Boy General for putting us here.”

“We won’t have to, Frank. When word of this gets out, he’ll never command another first wave. I wonder what he was thinking of?”

“Support from some sort of rebel group, I gather.”

“They’re probably still out there. Maybe we could join ’em.”

“Right. Join a failed plot? What group of people could you find that would be more nervous about strangers? Even if we could find someone willing to admit to being part of it, they’d love nothing better than to turn us in to show their patriotism. Next idea.”

We finish Chin’s suit. Al stretches. “Well, if they can’t take a joke, nuke’m.”

I smile. “You know, Al, I think we’ve got a spectacular rescue to enact.”

Al switches to his lame bandito imitation. “Ah, Franky, amigo, I love it when I see that gleam in your eye. It means a plan, a good one, no?”

“Those newscasts speak of rounding up all the invaders. They don’t even know we exist but we know where they are, don’t we?”

“Six hundred kilometers from here, at a provincial capital—a heavily guarded capital.”

“Can we get there in time?”

“We’ll have to hijack something. Where’s the nearest town?” We check the battle maps. There’s a suitable town an hour away.

We hop into our suits for a “cat nap”, then wake up Chin and start hoofing.

This is the fun part of the job. We come out of the lake onto a stunning scene. The sun is low, shining through a giant lenticular cloud. It doesn’t cut the brightness but softens the shadows. We lope up the caldera slope. Sometimes running, sometimes swinging like Tarzan through the trees. Snow is everywhere, but the chlorophyll-based vegetation is thick so this is winter, not an ice-world.

We mount the crest and look upon a forest-covered slope that descends to a flat, cultivated plain. Our destination is a settlement that lies at the edge of forest and plain. Our scanners show air traffic in the distance but nothing seems to be tracking us—not that it’d make much difference at this point. We’re in our element and now we’re mad and bad!

“Let’s show these folks what being a merc is all about,” I mutter and we lope down.

Twenty minutes later we’re on the outskirts. On the way in we IR scan the uphill outskirts for heat plumes. We pick a cluster of likely targets. If these people have nouveau riche instincts we’ll find that subclass up here. The first couple of heat plumes are over hovels—we pass them by. But bingo, the third’s just what we’re looking for! The place is four stories high, ostentatious, mostly glass, and blowing out gobs of heat in this winter clime. We pause a moment for an acoustic scan.

“Look at that, twenty or thirty ground vehicles,” comments Al. “Party time?”

“For real? What incredible luck! They’re probably celebrating our defeat. We’ll certainly make this a celebration they won’t forget,” I  promise.

“There’s still people coming,” Chin observes. “Yeah, these’re the people we want. Look at those costumes.”

“I hear activity on all four levels. Let’s start at the basement,” I say.

“This thing’s mostly above-ground. I put the important ones at the top,” says Chin.

“The top?”

“Some cultures like the view. That’s why they have all that glass.”

“Sounds weird but logical. We’ll give it a try.”

You can open doors in armor; you can even pick up eggs. But if you do, enemies giggle at you. Instead it’s Theater of Terror time—I love it. We really get to clown around. I walk through the front door scattering glass right and left. Chin jumpjets to a porch and Al shows off by dropping straight through a two-foot-square skylight—he loves that sort of stuff as much as I do.

I shoot the place up a bit with my projectile weapon—much more dramatic than the nearly noiseless lasers—and motion everyone to the floor. It works quite well; in seconds I have twenty bodies prone from which to pick hostages.

Hostage picking is something of an art. Each culture reacts differently to hostages in general and to different classes of hostage specifically. Some will roll over if you threaten the chief; others will rise up to a man if you do. Some don’t care what people you take but will do anything you want to protect a sacred object. I’ve found the best clues lie in their popular entertainment: Who or what do their “bad people” threaten?

“Okay upstairs?”

“Situation stable. I’m going down to the basement,” says Al. There is more crashing and glass-breaking.

“Let’s get ’em all down here, Chin. There’s a comm console in this room. I want to find out who we’ve got here.” “Right.”

I walk over to the console and tap it gently. Then I motion over the crowd for a volunteer to operate it. After a bit more motioning and a shot into the wall a young woman finally gets up and sits at the console. Volunteers: The best kind of hostages.

Our translators are quite good but I crank the output ability way down and way weird and the volume way up. After all, I am the alien from space on this world!

“I want to know: Who is in this room? You can tell me or you can use the machine.”

The girl starts babbling so fast the translator can’t keep up, but the comm console in front of her can, and from it I’m getting quick bios as she mentions each one. Volunteers can be incredibly efficient!

And we were right. Mid-level leaders of all sorts were there that night. Business leaders, religious leaders, political, and even some military. Ahah! a military pilot shows up on the screen. I look up. There he is, and I’m in luck. He’s young, handsome, and he’s got his arm over a pretty woman in a protective fashion. I motion both of them to come forward; we have our second and third hostages. As Chin brings the others down somebody mumbles “It’s the governor” and as soon as I find out which one he is, our fourth choice for hostage is made.

“Enough,” I tell the young woman still at the terminal. “Is your boyfriend here?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Your father?”

“No.”

“Who’d you come with?” After a moment’s hesitation she points to a woman in the crowd. Chin pulls Hostage Six up to my left.

“Now point out the governor’s wife.”

“Right there.” I line up flyboy, the woman volunteer, and the governor on the right and handcuff them while Chin puts the governor’s wife, the flyboy’s girlfriend, and Hostage Six on the left.

“Chin, manacle the secondaries. Al, time to go.”

“Right,” says Al. There’s more crashing in the basement as he heads out for the front.

I crank the output ability to medium; I want to be sure I’m understood. “People in this room: These people are our hostages.” I motion to my right. “These hostages come with us. Hurt us and you will hurt them.” I point to the three on my left. “These hostages stay here.” Chin is working on her three hostages. She cuffs their wrists behind them and fastens around each of their necks an elaborate collar with flashing lights. “Those who stay are being equipped with time bombs set for 20 hours. These bombs are tamper-proof and proximity-sensitive. If anyone else gets within three meters of these people they will lose their heads, literally. If these people get further apart from each other than six meters they will also set the bombs off. I would suggest to you and them that no one move around too much … and you may want to think a moment before calling your police force.”

“When our mission is complete we will give you the deactivation code. Pray we complete it within 20 hours.”

It’s been less than five minutes since I crashed through the door. We bound out—gently, since each now carries a hostage. Phase One complete and it’s beginning to feel more like one of these missions is suppose to feel.