Ann Aguirre - Havoc

Katur tilted his head, presumably listening for movement. “There’s a patrol one level down, directly below us.”

He raised a brow, impressed. “Hold or move?”

“We don’t want to be out in the open if they climb to this deck, so get to cover as quickly and quietly as you can.”

Tam followed the other male, boosting silently into the ducts, then he pulled the grille back in place. The repair work made a metal ping, and, beside him, Katur froze. That might be enough to alert the aliens, but—then he heard voices.

“My audio picked it up, too. This way, I think.” Tam recognized Vost’s voice, and soon the full group of mercs appeared.

He took a head count and was dismayed to see how many were left, despite all of their small victories. Beside him, Katur was so still as to seem catatonic, hardly even breathing. If they find us, we’re dead meat up here. Since rifles added weight and weight added to the sound of passage, both he and Katur were armed only with small knives in case fighting became unavoidable. Long moments passed while the mercs tromped beneath them.

“There’s a trail in the dust leading off this way,” a merc said.

“Looks like one of the maintenance units.”

Vost sighed. “Then maybe that’s what we heard just now.”

“Probably. We’re not gonna find a hidden way into this zone, so let’s go kill some more of those smelly mooks. Their turf isn’t nearly as well defended.”

Dred will be glad to hear that. Tam counted it as a blessing that the mercs couldn’t find the paths the aliens had carved because if they woke up some morning to find this many armored soldiers wreaking havoc inside their borders—with only a single Peacemaker for counterattack—then the game would be done, and he hadn’t yet put all his pieces in play.

Katur waited a full five minutes after the mercs departed before moving or speaking. “It bodes ill for us that they’ve decided we’re too strong for a frontal assault. Sooner or later, they will find a vulnerable gap, some weakness no one has foreseen.”

“Unless we kill them first,” Tam said grimly.

The alien’s eyes gleamed in the dark, hinting at better-than-human night vision. “How do you propose we do that? It has taken some of our finest people and all of the resources we can scrounge to kill a few.”

“I’m not sure yet,” he admitted. “But it’s been proven time and again that if one is cautious and watchful, the opponent will make a mistake that proves to be his downfall.”

“The same could be said of us,” Katur murmured.

Interesting. He’s a pessimist.

Tam didn’t address those words. If you focused too hard on the dire nature of reality, it could paralyze you. “Let’s get the intel for Dred and warn her that we spotted mercs pretty close to our perimeter. I have some plans to make.”

VOSTled his men away from well-defended territory. So far, he’d found only abandoned rooms and corridors though some of them showed signs they had seen recent use. Guess we’ve forced them to tighten the border. It was small comfort when his men had expected the facility to be clean by now; none of them had predicted losing a full squad to the scum incarcerated within, convicts with primitive weapons, no less. Vost led the column through the corridors, checking each turn while he mentally mapped the facility. He was down to his last few drone cams, and he still didn’t have an accurate picture of the layout given the way the cons had barricaded some shafts and hallways and cut holes where there had been no passages before.

“You all right, boss?” Redmond fell into step with Vost. Since the unit moved two by two, nobody seemed to think anything of the maneuver.

If he wasn’t the unit commander, he’d admit to being worried. But even though Redmond had been with him for a lot of turns, he couldn’t say so out loud. An odd sensation skittered down his spine. “Fine.”

“I feel like someone’s watching us.”

“Me too.” That much he could acknowledge. “Probably some enemy scouts have eyes on us.”

“I don’t like it. I don’t like any of this. You think maybe we should pull out? There will be other jobs.”

None that pay like this one.

“We’ve taken some losses, but we’re not out of the game. Once we wipe out the other two pockets of resistance, we can fix full attention and resources to burning down the bastards who hit us with the poison grenades and acid pellets.”

“If they’ve got the know-how to build shit like that, I wonder what else they can come up with,” Redmond said.

It was a prudent concern, one Vost shared. “They also have that Peacemaker. The suit never said anything about their having heavy droid defenses.”

“They must’ve hacked it,” the other man guessed.

“There are others on station. If they can, I can.”

“Is that your plan to minimize losing more men?” Redmond asked.

Vost nodded. “We’ll go kill some mooks because they die fast and easy. Too bad there are so fragging many of them. After that, I’ll program my last drone cam to look for a Peacemaker. Even a broken one would serve. I’m sure I can get it running again.”

“Then we’ll send it in to soften up the smart ones?”

“That’s the plan. While it draws their fire, we can roll in behind and wipe them out.”

Redmond smacked his armored fist against his palm. “It’ll be fun to see their faces when we surprise them for a change.”

“Agreed. I’ve had enough of their ambushes. This may be their home ground, but I’ve won harder battles against cleverer men.”

Redmond seemed to take heart from his tone, and when he punched the air in anticipation of triumph, the rest of the men followed suit. The mood was much improved as they moved toward the stinking compound full of carrion eaters. Vost had encountered cannibals before, and now he wondered if eating human flesh made you stupid, because these men had no grasp of strategy or tactical advantage whatsoever.

Then a stink hit him, so foul it almost made him puke inside his helmet. He choked down the bile while quickly adjusting the filters on his sense array. No, definitely don’t want to smell this. The stench made him think there must be a group nearby, but instead his unit stumbled into a huge room full of grisly artifacts. There was human skin stretched across a tanning rack and a pile of polished bones on a crafting table. Through his faceplate, it looked as if someone once used this place to create armor and weapons out of the dead.

“This . . . this is seriously fragged up,” Casto said. “No wonder the Conglomerate wants these monsters dead.”

“They should’ve just been executed in the first place,” someone else muttered.

“If we execute people who kill, we become murderers, too.” Casto seemed to be imitating the political commentary of some talking head. By the tone, Vost guessed Casto thought they should bring back the death penalty.

“We must’ve taken a wrong turn,” he said. “This doesn’t look like the way.”

“I think we’re close to the silent watchers,” Redmond put in.

Duran muttered, “Those bastards are creepy. They cut out their tongues.”

This place sent a chill down his spine. In his time as a merc, he’d seen some awful shit, but superstitious as it sounded, this place felt saturated in evil. He gestured for the men to move out by whirling his finger in the air.

“There’s no battle here. They’re watching, but they won’t engage in a stand-up fight.”

Casto shook his head. “Man, I hate this place. We can’t leave soon enough.”

“I understand. But we finish the job done first.”