Gingerkid
From SSDC, Inc.
A beak flexed, forming a word no human mouth could duplicate in a voice no human throat could produce.
Responding to its master’s command, the desk displayed the contents of the hidden, encoded message that the computer it contained had just received and decrypted.
For long moments a pair of black ovals, fully two inches wide, stared at the data displayed before them. As the eyes gathered information and relayed it to the cool brain they served, plans formed within it. They were evaluated, modified or discarded with ruthless speed. This mental winnowing resulted in a rapid cognitive evolution that produced one survivor, a plan that could withstand the most rigorous of scrutiny the experienced mind that had produced it could bring to bear against it.
Satisfied that the plan was the best available, the brain that had just birthed it set about bringing it to fruition.
Impulses flashed like winter lightning thru cold nerves, a quartet of tentacles responded, rising like cobras scenting prey. They preformed a graceful serpentine dance across a keyboard that bore little resemblance to one meant to be operated by fingers.
A message was written, encrypted, double encrypted, deeply concealed within what would appear, for all purposes, as nothing more than a simple advertisement, then dispatched thru a network of redirecting systems that would make tracing its point of origin as likely as tracking a single flake of methane snow thru a blizzard on distant Phena, the sender’s homeworld.
It was a great deal of effort to dispatch a single line of plain text and a signature, but when the message arrived it would be the start of much.
COME TO ME AT ONCE. -SANQUINARIOUS PHENTARI.
Andrew Hackard gulped as he read the message, then reread it several times, searching for some hidden bit that would let him escape obeying the simple instruction it conveyed.
There was no escape, and eventually this realization won out over his fear-begotten hope. The squid had demanded a face to face, in his office, and there were no acceptable alternatives to complying, unless one considered a lengthy stay in a maximum security prison acceptable.
He tried to reassure himself as he began the process of complying. “Maybe I’ve finally earned a bonus. That last bit I gave him was sure important enough.” He muttered to himself as he pushed the button on his phone that would connect him to a local cab company. He would ask to be taken to a certain destination, and a cab would be dispatched to his doorstep.
The cab would take him to the specified location, a large nightclub, where he would wait until he was approached, a password given and he was lead into a room where a hidden elevator would lower him to a sub basement. There, a tunnel that appeared on no city planner’s map would serve as his claustrophobic pathway to a room in another building. A vehicle with windows that concealed the occupants would be waiting to convey him on the last leg of the journey to his personal meeting with his secret employer and blackmailer for the last eight years.
The squid’s office was even colder than the last time he’d been summoned to it, and the survival suit provided to warm blooded oxygen breathers like Hackard by a guard on the way in was just enough to make survival likely, comfort was not even a remote possibility.
The coldness was made more intense by the scant blue glow that pretended to illuminate the large, circular room. The few, scattered L.E.D. emitters seemed arranged to produce more shadows than light.
The squid was clearly visible, though, seated at his massive, semicircular desk in a huge, deeply upholstered chair that Hackard would have bet (successfully) was covered in masterfully tanned and sewn human skin. The glow from at least half a dozen monitor screens, none of them facing Hackard, made him the most visible object in the room.
A regular office chair, common as grey carpeting in any human staffed building, sat facing the desk with its back to Hackard. He’d been forced to stand the last time he was here, was this a good omen?
A tentacle, glossy black on the dorsal surface and illuminated a pale green on its normally pallid underside, gestured. “Sit.” the Phentari said in the typical raspy hiss of his species’ voice, but the word was unmistakable.
Learning another species’ tongue often gave you valuable insights into its psyche, and any good Phentari took every edge it could get, so Sanquinarious had learned to speak passable English long ago for dealing with Humans.
A twinge of hope stirred in Hackard’s chilling breast. He was being treated much better than ever before. “Maybe that info was important enough to earn me some respect at last.” He thought as he sat, trying not to visibly shiver as he settled into the chair, which was at room temperature for a methane breathing life form.
“You have done well, human.” The Phentari’s beak rasped. “The data you have relayed to me is of extreme value, hence my summons. We have much to discuss, yesssss.”
“Um, yessir.” Hackard replied automatically. He was still uncertain of the gender of the alien that had blackmailed him into serving as a corporate spy, but the Phentari had never objected to the male term of respect.
“I see that your overt employer has discovered the location of our Phlogistonium mine on Elohim. This is unfortunate, yes. We worked quite hard on keeping that a secret, its discovery is unsettling. Perhaps they have a spy in our midst, yes?”
“Maybe they blackmailed one of your people like you blackmailed one of theirs, so your little tactic is now biting you on you ass.” Hackard thought with some much welcome heat, keeping his mouth as firmly shut as his incipient shivers allowed.
“Nonetheless, the secret is out, we must deal with that as a given, yes. Now, I see that your corporation is planning to hire an elite force of mercenaries, Battlelords in fact, to seize our operation, knowing we can’t go to the authorities if they do, as there is a human population on Elohim we have enslaved to mine the Phlogistonium.”
Silence hung in the chill methane atmosphere of the Phentari’s office chamber, until Hackard realized a reply was expected of him.
“Well, sir, it’s unfortunate that a hidden asset of great value has been compromised, but surely you have adequate forces at the site to defend it. I mean, if you’ve managed to.. enslave an entire populace….” A tentacle swayed at him, like a viper charmed by a fakir, in an unmistakable, but polite by Phentari standards, gesture for silence.
“You did not read the entire document carefully, did you?” The question was no louder than a hoarse whisper, adequate in the otherwise complete silence of the chamber, and carried no accusation.
“Um, no, sir. Once I saw how vital it was to your corporation, I expedited its transfer to you, as I surmised you’d wish.”
“Yes, yes, all well and good. I am pleased with your conduct in this matter, yes. Now, however,” The sibilant rasp of the Phentari’s voice paused a moment, just enough to allow tension to rise and freeze solid in the human before continuing. “I must explain some factors to you, so that you can sufficiently grasp the situation to play your part in it with maximum efficiency, yes.”
The human swallowed hard at the implication that he had a ‘part’ to play in the situation.
“As you accurately surmised, we do maintain a mercenary force on Elohim, yes. We need it to keep the locals working in the Phlogistonium mines with adequate vigor to meet our needs for the ore.
“Now, a fact you may have overlooked in your zeal to supply me with the information we are currently discussing is that the population of Elohim was essentially of a low technological base. In fact, they had willfully abandoned all technology above the level needed to maintain a basic agrarian lifestyle. You have heard of such humans, yes? I believe they call themselves ‘Amish”, if I am not mistaken.”
“Well, I haven’t heard of these ‘Amish’, sir, but I do know that some, well, nut groups as most of us call them, do choose to live like primitives, so I think I broadly understand what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, that will do then. To continue, these ‘Amish’ had effectively no weapons to speak of, let alone any military or even a way of calling for aid if attacked. I cannot help wondering how such fools believe they can continue to exist, leaving themselves defenseless in the universe.”
“I, uh, guess it’s some sort of religion, sir. I’ve never gotten into that sort of thing, so I can’t explain it, even if they are human.” The man shrugged slightly to emphasize his inability to fully understand the workings of other human minds.
The rasping hiss went on in a firmer tone. “The workings of obviously defective minds are irrelevant in any case, yes. All that is relevant is that the inhabitants of Elohim never knew they were sitting on top of a rich deposit of one of the universe’s most valuable resources, and when one of our scouts found it by accident they had no way of stopping us coming to Elohim, setting up a mining operation and enslaving them.”
“So, you understand that we hardly needed an ‘elite’ force to impose our will on the populace of Elohim, yes? Even the most basic of obsolete military weapons was more than adequate firepower, body armor of equally low quality and cost was sufficient, a few old ground vehicles and aircraft gave us utter military supremacy, yes.
“But the one thing we needed was numbers, you see. There is a large population, we needed a large number of troops to keep order over such numbers, to prevent sabotage, to hold children hostage and so on. We needed at least a few hundred or so mercenaries, plus the technical staff, and the whole operation, from the mines to the shipment point, all must be guarded, yes.
“So, this set of circumstances lead to what may be a regrettable decision, in the retrospective view. Some of my superiors in the corporation chose to hire what could scarcely be called ‘mercenaries’ without demeaning an often noble profession. Anyone who could use a simple weapon was offered employment, often right out of jails, bars or even street corners. Indeed, much of our so-called ‘forces’ on Elohim are little, or in fact no, better that what you humans call 'street punks’. Our recruiters simply offered them more money than they were likely to make in any other occupation, which did not cost us much, gave them some cheap wargear, put them under a few former military officers, many of whom had been expelled from the service or actual mercenary units, and set them to impose our will on the locals. After a few summary executions, things worked out in an acceptable fashion, yes.. Until now.”
“So, what you’re saying is, that your forces on Elohim won’t be able to stand off an attack from a Battlelord unit, then?” Hackard couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to do about that, which made him even more nervous.
“Yes, that is what I am saying, precisely. While it might seem obvious to solve our problem by hiring a more competent mercenary unit to garrison Elohim there is a problem with that.
“You see, given the nature of those we were employing, and the fact few, if any, cared about them, my superior in charge of the program decided that in the interests of security and economics, the best way to discharge most of our forces upon completion of their contract was to terminate not only their employment, but their lives as well. It’s not hard to make unwanted rabble disappear, yes, and ships carrying such back home can easily have a life support failure, or divert to a slave labor planet, or even a Phentari food processing facility, in the case of former human employees.” The squid’s tongue, rough as a rasp, slid along the edges of his beak for a moment in a reflex meant to keep them sharp at the thought of food.
Hackard cringed. He knew that the squids ate human…meat whenever they could, but didn’t need to be reminded of it, not here, not now.
Not while alone in a sealed room with one of the goddam things!
“While my superior might be commended for his effective method of cutting costs and ensuring secrecy, it has lead to an unfortunate situation. Our corporation has acquired a reputation among mercenaries as an untrustworthy employer. Rumors, they can penetrate any security level imaginable, yes. Now we have difficulty employing any professional or even competent mercenary force, and we have little time to shop around before your corporation launches its raid on Elohim to seize our assets there, yes.”
“Ah, it seems to me, sir, that you have an opportunity here, to simply see to it that your superior takes the blame for the fiasco and possibly move up….” Again, a tentacle waved him into silence, somewhat more sharply than before.
“A clever thought, from an outsider’s perspective, I grant you, yes. However, in a ‘fiasco’ this size I fear that more than one head would have to fall, and that given my position it is unacceptably likely mine would be among them. No, I must resolve this situation, then see to it my superior is blamed for a near disaster while I am clearly seen as the hero who averted it, yes.”
The cold was creeping into his bones now, so Hackard felt emboldened to get to the point. “So, sir, I’m not sure I see what I could do to help you…”
“Fortunately I have a wider perspective. I see a way in which you can be of great benefit to both my situation and yours, yes. I have formulated a plan and have made preparations to implement it, but we must move quickly. I already have, now the need for alacrity is yours. When your corporation hires Battlelords to take the Elohim facility, they will send along an observer, yes?”
“Uh, yes, they usually do…..” What was that damn squid thinking? It had just admitted to slavery and mass murder in an almost casual manner, now what was it up to?
“You must be the observer on the mission. Volunteer for it, if need be.”
“M-Me? Go along on a merc raid?!” Hackard squeaked in shock.
“You must go along with the mercs, yes, but there will be no raid, not if you do your part adequately. Now, listen carefully and do not protest or question the plan until I have finished. Time is limited, yes.”
Raising all four of his tentacles in a coercive pose, the Phentari explained his plan. The human remained silent under his cold gaze and the points of his tentacles, but was gaping like a fish by the time the plan had been laid before him.
When he was apparently allowed to speak, Hackard began his protestations. The first was “But, I’m an executive, not a….killer!”
Sanquinarious whipped his tentacles in a curt gesture of rejection while hissing a snort of contempt thru his beak. “Fool! You’ve been involved in dispatching mercenary units into action before. What did you think you were doing when you hired armed warriors to enforce your corporations will? You were causing deaths, you were killing, thru remote means, yes, I grant, but killing all the same.
“Also, when you turned over certain information to me, what do you think I did with it? Remember when you sent me that file which revealed the identity of a spy within this corporation? Did you really think I just had her fired? Hhhhhhhessssssssssshhhhhh! “ Another Phentari expression of contemptuous dismissal.
“I personally tortured her until I was satisfied that she had told me everything she’d told your corporation, then.” He rose, leaning over his desk to face the human at much closer range. “I killed her and ate her body, over a period of time. Human organs, you see, must be eaten quickly for maximum flavor, while the muscle meat, if properly wrapped, can be frozen for some time. It took me 3 weeks to fully consume the spies’ body, and she was delicious.” The rasp that served as the Phentari's tongue slithered into view and ran along the edges of his beak in a slow, erotic fashion at the memory, bare feet from Hackard's terror-widened eyes.
Andrew Hachard was frozen in horror. He remembered turning over the info that a human woman working for the squid’s company was spying for his, he tried and failed not to remember her face from the picture on the file….
Sitting back, the squid made one last dismissive gesture and added. “So don’t tell me you suddenly have an aversion to killing, Hackard. You’ve been responsible for quite a few deaths. Remotely, of course, but responsible all the same.”
While the human was slowly crushed by the cold truth in the Phentari’s hoarse words, more followed. “Now that that objection has been terminated, the rest should be easy. Remember, all you need to do is place the capsule in the right place, the poison will do the rest of the work. I can personally vouch for its effectiveness, yes.
“Also, you will have some help.” The squid’s tone was much warmer now. The human was beginning to sway in the right direction, time to be comforting.
“There’ll be someone else on board the merc transport?” Hackard asked with near pathetic hope.
“Not exactly someone, no, but rather something of great help and value, yes.” A tentacle pulled a drawer open. It slid in and withdrew something dark in it’s coiled grip. The tentacle extended towards the human across the desk.
Taking it while trying not to touch the cold living flesh that held it, the human examined the unmarked case for a moment and was about to ask if he should open it when he was told to.
The case was made for human hands, Hackard had no trouble releasing the catch. He looked the contents over for a moment, then his eyes widened. “Is this what it looks like?” He finally asked.
“Yes, a personal assistant construct, especially programmed to assist you in this mission. It will appear to all examination a normal PAC, only in it’s programming is there anything to cause alarm, and the programming is heavily encoded and encrypted, yes. Quite indecipherable.”
The device looked like a large, though very stylish, pair of goggles with a very thick and heavy frame. It was in fact an artificial intelligence construct that could in many ways ‘think’, and do so with incredible speed and precision. It was regarded as one of the greatest status symbols a man on Hackard's level of the corporate ladder could hope to own and he’d been Jonesing for one for years, but had never been able to save up nearly enough money to afford a good one.
“The PAC is yours to keep after the mission, yes.” The squid hissed soothingly. “It will assist you in it’s completion.”
Still looking down at what had until now been an unobtainable dream for him, Hackard dared to ask a critical question. “And afterward? I won’t be able to go back to my old job after this, that’s for damn sure.”
“Hackard,” the Phentari all but cooed, “you’ve been a valuable asset to us for 8 years now. I recognize that, yes, and of course a valuable asset must be taken care of. Afterwards, we can find you a position in our company, and even a sizeable bonus could be arranged in light of the tremendous losses you’ve saved us from. You could find yourself in a comfortable management position with a large bank account after the difficult part of this business is behind you, and remember: It’s all just business, in one form or another.”
The human nodded, a gesture the Phentari had learned to understand. Almost there, just a little more nudging. “While you have several options, this one is the best for you, really. You must see that, yes? What are your other options? Refuse and have me expose your rather intolerable, to human society, sexual activities, resulting in a long prison term for, I believe your people call it ‘statutory rape’, yes?”
The human nodded again, submissively.
“Of course you would likely not reach prison, would you? Not after your current employer found out how much information you’ve given us over the last 8 years, yes? I imagine you’d be terminated by them in more than one sense of the term. Of course they would want to interrogate you thoroughly first, yes, to find out all you had revealed.
“Then again, you could try to flee, perhaps reach the frontier, if you believe that your current skill set would enable you to survive as a fugitive on the frontier. Do you think you could reach it, or survive long there if you did?”
“No, of course not.” There was a trace of insolence in the human’s reply, but the Phentari did not make an issue of it.
“So, then, your best option is to play your role in my plan, yes?”
“Yes.” Then human sighed in resignation.
“Good, good. Yes, very good. Now, the capsules and protective suit will be delivered to you before the mercenary transport leaves. You may take the PAC with you and familiarize yourself with it. You must immediately arrange to be the observer on the mission AMC will soon be dispatching to Elohim, you will do all this, yes?”
“I’m sure I can, it’ll look like I want to pad my resume’ with a little field work.”
“Excellent! Then all is settled, yes. I will await details from you and send you the necessary items later, for now I must get to work on other matters, and I believe you wish to find a climate more to your species’ liking, so you may go. I will expect to hear from you soon, unless you decide to explore the ‘fugitive’ option, although I would be disappointed if you turned out to be that stupid after all, yes.” The squid’s left tentacles gestured towards the sole visible exit from the office.
As the human left, Sanquinarious Phentari hissed softly, his races’ analogue of a chuckle. The human had been a useful fool for 8 long years, but even the most useful of fools eventually ran out of usefulness, and was then nothing but a fool.
But a human fool always had at least one use left, to a Phentari.
A black, tubular tongue rasped along sharp beak edges that quivered in anticipation.
It was 6 hours to drop, and the rest of the platoon was getting a final briefing. Because his role was so different from the rest of the platoon’s, Bob Stark had been briefed earlier and was excused from the main briefing in order to have time to prep his equipment for the mission. This was necessary not only due to the fact that Stark’s part of the mission was so different from the rest or the troops, but because he had so much more equipment than anyone else in the unit to prep.
The fact he had so much more equipment than anyone else in the unit could have been a bone of contention in other circumstances. It might have marked him out as getting preferred treatment except for the fact that he’d bought the gear himself.
If he’d been a rich dilettante spending his family money of fancy toys to play Battlelord with that too could have caused friction, but he earned the money he bought his gear with, or salvaged his gear after a successful engagement, as many mercs did, so no one in his unit did more than occasionally cast a wistful gaze at his extensive panoply of weaponry and armor.
They all knew he was no play Battlelord, but very, very much the real thing, and that quenched any possible friction between him and the rest of the unit. That and the fact that the unit needed him, both for his gear and skill, while he could find another unit within days, at most, or go solo.
Either option wouldn’t have bothered him, if things ever came to it. He was part of the unit, but only so long as it served his purposes.
His prep routine was simple: Attach the option modules he’d chosen for the mission to his armor, load the ones that required ammo, fill the ones that required any sort of material to operate, then activate the armor’s AI and cyberneural network and tell it to run a full diagnostic, 30 times.
While most of his mind watched the display screen that his armor’s brain was displaying the results of it’s self analysis on, a deeper part of him did what it did every time before a drop, and many other times as well.
It remembered. It retraced the steps that had lead him to become what he was, where he was.
The other kids had always singled him out for abuse because of his skin and hair, they always called him “Gingerkid”. Some of them picked fights with him, one on one, and he usually gave as good as he got so they mostly left him alone.
Then the Orion kid had moved in to his neighborhood.
The other kids began busting on him, of course, making fun of the fact he had 7 fingers and toes, and those pointed ears. For a while the new kid was the target of the taunting and abuse.
That had suited Bob fine.
Then the Orion kid, Seamus, his name had been, got the other kids together for a little stunt that would make him one of the kids on the inside.
It involved a red permanent marker, 6 other kids, and Bob’s face.
He was walking home from school when he’d heard the Orion’s voice call out behind him “Hey, Gingerkid.”
Turning, he’d seen the damn alien there, with 3 human kids on each side of him. They all had smiles on.
Bad ones.
The Orion had gone on “Don’t you know Gingerkids are supposed to smile, Gingerkid? That you’re supposed to have a big smile on that pale, freckley face of your, Gingerkid.” The Orion kid’s smile had gotten bigger as he taunted Bob.
Bob had said a couple words, one of which he was never supposed to use even thought he heard it from his mother almost every day, and the other kids had made “Oooooooh!” sounds at the mention of the queen mother of dirty words.
Unfazed, the Orion smiled ever broader and held up a slim object. “Well, anyway, Gingerkid, since you’re s’posed to have a smile on that doofy face of yours, we’re gonna put one on it, and there’s…nothing.. you…can…do.. about…it. HA!”
Bob went into the Orion kid, knocking him flat on his ass, but the other 6 pig piled him and beat his torso with fists and feet until he couldn’t move much. Then they held his head still while the Orion kid drew a big, goofy smile on it, along with extra freckles and big eyebrows with the permanent red marker he’d brought.
It was a while before Bob could move again, and when he could it was dark. He staggered back to the apartment block he lived in. When he reached his mother’s apartment he found a brown paper bag waiting for him at the base of the door. It contained a cold cut sandwich and was a clear, unwritten message that said his mother had a man inside and he wasn’t to come inside until the John left.
Hackard took another pair of blue capsules, just like he’d taken before he boarded the transport ship carrying the merc unit as the official observer for his employer. They kept him calm and from sweating or looking nervous. If the mercs had discovered the special gear the squid had given him, he’d have been lucky to have been shoved out an airlock, naked.
But he’d gotten onboard Ok, except for a few sneers and intentional collisions from some of the mercs who relished every chance to shove a suit around. Afterwards he’d been essentially a non-person. He’d been able to walk around for a while with the PAC on, and it had seen a few good places to put the nerve gas capsules that were well disguised as a pen and a recording unit, but contained enough sophisticated poison to kill everyone on the ship who wasn’t wearing full sealed protection so fast they’d never know what hit them. One of them was a system access panel near his assigned quarters.
The PAC informed him that the panel likely had security systems, which the PAC disabled by itself when Hackard held it close enough to transmit a virus, then showed him how to open it and insert the capsules into the ship’s air circulation system after setting them for the right time delay.
The mercs were busy in their briefing, the crew was on watch for any hostile craft so no one paid him any mind at all as he rapidly walked back to his cabin. There he opened a hidden panel in one of his travel cases and removed a protective bodysuit from it. The suit had an air supply system that would neutralize the poison in the air and allow him to carry out the next part of the plan.
He stripped to his underwear, donned the suit, made damn sure the air system was working and waited.
It had been exactly 2 weeks since the day he’d marked up his face that Bob had managed to catch the Orion kid alone. He’d been real popular after setting up the pack attack, a real cool kid. But eventually he went somewhere alone, and Bob was waiting.
His guts still hurt, but he didn’t leave blood in the toilet anymore. Days of scrubbing had left his face raw and sore, but had removed the markings. Now, there was just one more thing to take care of.
He was behind the Orion, and no one was within sight. “Hey, thief.” He’d whispered.
The Orion had half jumped, half turned. They hated to be called ‘thieves’ for some reason. Then he saw Bob, alone, and smiled. “Oh, hey, Gingerkid. See you got rid of the smile I gave you. Don’t worry, I still got my pen here, I’ll just give you another one.” He reached into his pocket.
Bob ripped into him like a chainsaw. The Orion was bigger, taller and heavier, and he was flat on his back bawling after the third time Bob had hit him. He punched the Orion in the head, hard, several times, until he shut up. Bob hadn’t wanted his cries to attract attention.
Then he beat the Orion kid’s face until his fists hurt and his arms ached and couldn’t swing so fast or hard anymore. It had felt so good to do it, to make him pay for hurting Bob like everyone else had, and for enjoying hurting Bob, and getting to be popular and cool because he’d hurt Bob. It just felt so good, like a nuclear reactor roaring inside him, filling him with power, and with that power came the knowledge that he never had to let anyone hurt him again!
It felt good to do the hurting, instead of being hurt!
When Bob was breathing like a Python Lizard too long out of water and his fists weren’t really hitting hard enough to hurt anymore, he slowly got up. He was suddenly aware of the terrible stiffness in his underwear. He’d had that before, usually when he got up or sometimes when he looked at girls lately, but never so bad as this, it actually hurt, it ached!
The pain made Bob mad, and he tried to shift the stiffness to a less uncomfortable position, with no effect. His arms were tired but his legs weren’t, so he kicked the Orion kid. He still had a lot of anger left to get rid of.
The sudden motion of his thigh made his raging erection shift against it, and it felt good! Bob had actually gasped and twitched, nearly losing his balance, but it still felt good.
So he kicked the Orion in the ribs again, and it felt good again. Laying his right palm against the alley wall for balance, Bob kept kicking the Orion’s ribs and feeling the good feeling it caused every time his stiffness shifted across his thigh.
When his first climax came, Bob had gasped and collapsed, knees driving broken ribs into the already dead Orion’s lungs and heart.
The armor checked out, all attached modules checked out, all loaded ordnance checked out, all power levels checked out and all backup systems checked out.
Bob stripped down to his skinsuit and stepped into his armor, letting the cybernetic form enfold and seal around his body. He closed his eyes and smiled. It felt good to be inside the armor again. It felt strong to be in it again. He sighed in contentment.
According to the timer, the capsules had just deployed the gas into the ship’s air system. According to the squid, everyone on it should be dead in 60 seconds. Hackard waited, wondering what would happen if anyone survived the attack. He decided if they did he’d just rip off the air mask and let the poison do him in, it was probably better than what the mercs would do if any of them survived.
They’d given him 2 years in juvie for killing the Orion, and none of them had listened to him when he’d tried to tell them what the Orion had done to him! He’d heard all the time that life wasn’t fair, but this was just too damn much! He’d screamed in rage and launched himself at the judge, way up on his high chair behind the big table, and almost got his hands on his throat.
Just like that, another year!
While in juvie, he got another year added on for beating up a kid who’d tried to take his stuff. First they don’t do anything about him being hurt, then they punished him for defending himself!
He was 18 when he was finally released, having spent most of him time in juvie in a grey concrete cell that was so small he could lay his palms against the left and right walls when he stood in the middle.
He never even thought about going to his mother’s place, even if she was still there. He hadn’t heard a word from her in 4 years. He went straight to the nearest mercenary recruiting outfit.
The recruiter was a big, old Gen human who had apparently suffered a scalp wound that left him bald, perhaps a plasma burn. His serial number tattoo was visible on his exposed pate, though it was distorted to the point of being nearly unreadable. That was supposed to be illegal, but obviously he didn’t care much about laws either.
He applied and said he was ready to go at once, and didn’t care where.
The Gen looked him over and said “You’re a little on the young side for this, aren’t you?”
He shrugged. “I’m ready. I’ve been planning this for years, I’ve been working out a lot, doing pushups, chinups, that sort of thing.” He took off his prison issue shirt to show the muscles underneath it, and slowly, so as not to be threatening, flexed his arms.
“Hmmmm, not bad, not bad at all.” The Gen had nodded approval at Bob’s physique. Then he asked “Why are you so hell bent on becoming a merc anyway? Want to be a Battlelord, have lots of intrepids and all that crap?”
Bob had looked him in the eye and said “No sir, I just want to fight, and be able to fight without people punishing me for fighting when I was right to.”
The Gen had looked back into Bob’s eyes and said “Alright, kid, tell me your story, all of it.”
Bob did, leaving out only the reference to the orgasm as he'd learned that it tended to put people off.
The Gen had looked very carefully at Bob and listened to him with equal intent. When Bob was finished the man had nodded, then rose. He reached across the table with an open hand and a look Bob had never seen before anywhere in his eyes.
As Bob reached out to take the merc’s hand in his own, the old Gen had said “Welcome home, son. Welcome home.”
Training had been easy. The only hard part was long distance running. While Bob had exercised his arms to near perfection because he never wanted them to get tired while he still needed them, he hadn’t been able to do much about his legs in the small cell. But he kept at it and his ability to travel long distances with a full load and make rapid sprints increased quickly.
Weapon training had been the happiest times he’d ever had. He loved the feel of a well made gun in his hands, and the power one game him. He’d passed the basic proficiency drills without a single error, for he devoured his lessons like they were fine cuisine.
Once in the field, he took every last cred he made and bought himself better gear. He knew other mercs put a lot of money into other things, like retirement funds, bank accounts to buy things, sending money to their families and so on, but all Bob wanted was better gear so he could do his job better, so he would get more jobs.
That was why he now had so much gear, he spent all him money on it, and occasionally salvaged some choice item from the field. The more and better gear he had, along with a better record, the more jobs he was offered. Some mercs like to take time off for things, so they didn’t rack up as many kills and successes as Bob, so they didn’t advance as fast as he did.
That was the whole ‘secret’ to his success, he’d explained it a couple times when people asked him how he’d become a full fledged Battlelord so quickly, and many of them just shook their heads in disbelief at how simple it was. There were no ‘tricks’ to it.
“ALERT! DANGER!” His armor's voice broke his reverie, and he was instantly focused on it. In addition to the vocal signal, a transparent display had popped into the corner of his visor HUD.
The armor's AI informed him that it had detected a highly potent chemical warfare agent. The CWA was not one the suit had in it’s data files, but was very sophisticated and quite deadly. The warning ended with an advisory not to open his suit as it’s environmental seal and air filtration systems were all that was keeping him alive.
The sensors in his rigged PAC told him that the gas was at lethal levels in the ship's atmosphere, and no alarms were going off, meaning the ship's sensors had not been acute enough to pick up the CWA. The Phentari had lived up to his race's reputation as masters of the science of poisoning.
The gas would decay in about 20 minutes after exposure to free oxygen, and then it would be safe to remove the suit. Hackard would normally have sat still until then, given a choice, to avoid tearing the polymer envelope that was keeping him alive, but the PAC prompted him to go to the ship's bridge and carry out the rest of the plan he was a part of, unless he wanted to die.
He searched the corridors carefully, passive sensors set to max gain, stealth systems at full. Moving with hard earned proficiency he covered the deck he was on in minutes, with no sign of a boarding party or traitor. All the mercs in his unit were dead, all the crew on the main deck were dead, but his sensors picked up a warm, moving object that his AI tagged as most likely a live human on the control deck above him. The engine deck was awash with heat, EM and other noise that kept his sensors from spotting anything as weak as a lifeform's emissions, but if given a choice between checking the engine deck or the control deck first, he would check out the control deck as that was the most likely place to find a traitor who had just, he likely believed, killed everyone else on the ship. From there he could shut down the ship's engines and await aid from his allies.
He headed for the control deck, carefully and silently.
Moving with excessive caution that actually created danger thru clumsiness, Hackard reached the control deck. The body of the ship's captain, an Orion, was slumped over the main control board. The panel was covered in the partially digested remains of the Rogue's last meal, the nerve agent that killed him had also triggered the vomit reflex, soaking the panel and, seconds later, half the Rogue's face and his expensive, flashy tunic when he collapsed dead on it.
The Captain had been the only person on the ship to greet Hackard in a friendly fashion, for some reason an uncomfortable feeling stirred in him as he gazed at the man he'd murdered. Thankfully his PAC prompted him to turn his gaze to the main computer interface terminal.
The terminal, and the computer it linked to, were no more sophisticated than the chemical agent sensors in the ship's life support system. The bleeding edge technology crammed into the circuitry and software of the PAC were at least 5 generations ahead of the ship's computer, they had little trouble overcoming it's defenses and inserting new instructions into the system.
According to the squid's instructions, the new program being inserted into the system would cause it to drop out of paradrive on schedule, transmit a coded message to the base on Elohim, then land itself at the Elohim ship facility after receiving a reply. There it would be “turned around” and put into service under a new name as part of the new owner's corporate fleet, earning him and Sanquinarious a handsome bonus.
Andrew Hackard didn't scream when a massive, heavy, metal hand dropped onto his shoulder and spun him around. He pissed himself, filling the lower legs of his protective suit with fresh, warm urine. Otherwise he simply went as rigid, silent and stiff as a corpse in the middle of rigor mortis, staring wide eyed down the barrel of the largest gun he'd ever seen.
Bob Stark had taken a second to assess the man in the NBC bag, after remembering what little he'd seen of him. The corporate observer, nervous as a Cizerack in a room full of Ram Pythons sitting in rocking chairs. He'd assumed the suit was simply nervous to be around a crew of people who could all easily slap him around at will, and generally didn't care much for suits looking over their shoulders. Even by those standards the suit had seemed nervous, now he understood why.
He'd chosen to level the grenade launcher mounted on his armor's left forearm in the suit's face for maximum intimidation value. It would have been a ludicrous gesture against anyone with even a granule of expertise in warfare, no one would fire a grenade launcher at a target less than a foot from the barrel! Nonetheless is was a terrifying sight to the wholly ignorant.
“Alright, just tell me what you did.” Stark asked in a flat tone that held no menace or comfort.
After gaping for a second, Hackard began to make his excuse. “A Phentari, he..forced me..”
Bob patiently tapped the barrel of his grenade launcher to the suit's quivering chin. “I'm not interested in why, just tell me exactly what you did, unless you want me to shoot you.”
Oblivious to the stink of urine that filled his lungs, mouth and nostrils, Hackard explained every detail of what he had done, and what the PAC had done, quickly and concisely.
Stark thought for a minute, without wasting a second doubting that the suit had told him the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. After a few seconds, he came up with the best plan he could.
He had some things to do, but also had time to get them done, the ship would not drop out of paradrive into the Elohim system for a couple more hours.
Dealing with the minor issue of the traitor was at best a trivial afterthought. As he turned to get busy, Stark casually pulled the air filter off the front of Hackard's chemsuit hood.
Andrew Hackard managed not to inhale for almost 3 minutes before his reflexes forced him to take a deep, ragged breath. By then the nerve gas he'd deployed into the air systems of the ship had mostly decayed.
What was left took much longer to work. Andrew Hackard died a far slower and remarkably more unpleasant death than any of the people he'd murdered some 18 minutes earlier. By the time his body collapsed to the deck, his killer had forgotten him.
“There she is, boss, right on time, too.” Ed Charlton called out to the base commander unnecessarily as the sensor panel he manned showed a small vessel exiting paradrive at the edge of Elohim's gravity well.
“I can see that, dumbass.” Steve Jackson said in a cross between a sigh and a snarl. It was bad enough that most of the people he had to work for him were lazy, stupid and unqualified, but what really burned him up was the way they always tried to look so hardworking and professional when he was right over their shoulders. Ed Charlton was a fat toady who apparently thought that the commander of the base he worked at needed to be told what he was seeing on a monitor screen as he looked at it, and that doing so would make him look good.
“God, he can't even suckup right.” Jackson thought. “Hell, he can't even wipe his ass properly either.” He added to himself as he tried not to gag from standing so close to the unhygienic cretin.
Stung by his overseer's rebuff, Charlton debated several seconds before relaying the next bit of data. “Well, it's transmitting the code too.” He finally said in peevish tones.
“Then transmit the response telling it to land at the field, DUMBASS!” Jackson sneered with satisfaction. “God,” he thought “I'm surrounded by idiots and slobs who can't get any decent legal job, so they end up here. How in the hell did I end up here anyway?” He shook his head in bewilderment and disgust.
The landing field for the Elohim facility was at the western edge of the base, somewhat removed from the main facility due to the fact that ships sometimes crashed or suffered other mishaps. The small building next to it served as an emergency repair facility, meant to provide limited resources to aid a ship in sudden need of servicing due to unforeseen circumstances. This was rare as the freighters sent to pick up the processed Phlogistonium were excellent vessels kept in prime condition due to the value of the material they hauled.
A few people watched the ship as it came in for a landing, mostly bored mercs who'd been told to keep their eyes open and weapons ready “just in case”. Many of them had relieved boredom by ingesting, in various ways, different types of alcoholic compounds or narcotics made from local plant life. They watched, eyes glazed with boredom or chemicals, as the small transport came over the facility on a perfect trajectory that would have placed it precisely in the middle of the landing field, which was made to accommodate ships many times it's size.
It would have landed perfectly, if it had not suddenly burst into a cloud of flaming fuel and chunks of shattered metal several hundred meters above the main facility. A few of the bored mercs were still looking at the fiery, smoking mass of wreckage that had been a flying ship seconds ago with excitement or bemusement as it crashed down upon some of them.
His plan had worked perfectly, he saw with pleasure. He'd had plenty of time to load up his gear and tell his K-sats what he needed them to do. As the ship entered the atmosphere, he and his entourage of combat drones had exited via the dorsal airlock, with maximum stealth engaged. The bulk of the ship blocked them from easy view, and their distance from the facilities poor sensors had made detection virtually impossible. The anti-gravitic flight systems that Stark's armor and K-sats used gave them smooth, silent flight that was easily masked by distance and the technological camouflage that they all carried. They'd had no trouble circling away from the base till they reached treetop altitude, then closing in until they had to transition to ground level movement. For Bob and his armor, this meant quick walking, the K-sats just skimmed above the forest floor.
He'd been worried about the timing of the explosion, but had listened to the little voice in the back of his mind that told him when to set the timers to detonate the explosives he'd placed in the ship's fuel and reactor modules, and it had been pretty much right. The wreck had done a lot of damage to the facility, and had to have caused more than a few casualties.
As he observed the base from a distance, aided by telescopic visual enhancement technology, he imposed the current image over the map of the base he'd been provided with.
It looked like the main hab buildings hadn't been hit too bad, but the power plant was a burning wreck. The “condo unit” where the higher ups lived in much better conditions than the proles had taken a hit from the largest chunk of the transport, meaning, hopefully, a lot of the most competent personnel the base had on hand had died or were dieing in it.
“So,” Stark told himself, “I ended up making a decapitation strike, more or less, and took out their main power too.”
He was quite happy as he surveyed the burning chaos he'd created. He'd have hated to have hit the main habitat buildings and killed most of the base's crew that way. But now, as things turned out, he had killed most of the command staff, probably, and had disrupted it's functions by killing it's power supply, but he had left the majority of the people in it alive.
So he could kill them all, himself.
Bob Stark was as happy as he had ever been, and as happy as he could ever be. There had to be nearly 500 people, 500 enemies, running around in the base before him, and he was going to get to kill every single one of them, by whatever means he chose.
He didn't have to share them with anyone, the rest of the mercs hired were now gone and he was glad for that. He wouldn't have to stop killing when an officer told him to, he wouldn't have to stop killing because the enemy tried to surrender because he wasn't going to be paying attention to anything like that, he was just going to kill and kill and kill until there were no more enemies left to kill. He and his K-sats had enough ammo to kill the entire base compliment, plus he'd grabbed some spare ammo the others wouldn't need and loaded it into his cargo carrier sat, giving him far more than he needed to do what he wanted.
The only flaw in his personal heaven at the moment was the painful erection that made him slightly uncomfortable in his armor, but soon that would be gone. Years of experience had made it possible for him to keep fighting, and killing, without a missed move even thru an orgasm.
His hand caressed the icon adorning the chest of his MBA, at least when it wasn't in camo mode. The one that reminded him of the day he'd learned how good it felt to kill
Beneath the mechanical fingers of his armor's hand, a silly looking red cartoon face smiled above the scrawled word “Gingerkid.”
CODA
