Aftermath - Ann Aguirre [85]
[Muted sounds, rustling, unsteady breath]
The air was thick with clotting blood, the ground a morass of churned mud. Blueflies droned in the distance, laying eggs in the corpses of men I called comrade. This plan had been doomed from the beginning, and if I owned anything like a conscience, I’d have told the soft little Nicuan nobleman where he could stuff his credits because clearly he already had his head wedged up there.
Instead, I checked my account to make sure I received payment, then obeyed his orders, no matter how stupid they were. That was why I—and a handful of my men—lay pinned atop this hill, having failed to take the property our employer wanted sacked. Success or failure; it was all the same to me. I got paid regardless, as I never took a job without money up front.
The only time I worked on down payment was if my employers gave me complete latitude. If they didn’t care how I got the job done, then I gave them a little financial leeway. On Nicu Tertius, that didn’t happen much. These empire-bred pussies were all convinced they were the next great military genius and only needed one good battle to prove it. They didn’t care if they sacrificed real soldiers to test their half-assed theories.
Of the forty men I led to the Ja-Win estate, only five remained: Buzzkill, Ringo, Surge, Vikram, and Franken. Faces smeared with blood and Thermud, they looked to me for guidance, so I took stock of the situation. The mission could only be deemed a complete failure. Ja-Win defenses had proved much more robust than the idiot who hired me had believed. At this point, we could only hope for a successful retreat.
The men’s thoughts whirled nearby, shrieked and prodded in my head until I was bombarded with a white-hot noise that crossed the threshold into pain.
Oh, Mary, I may never see Kora again. Should’ve woken her before I left.
When I get back to town, I’m shoving a shiv through his eye.
If I live through this, it’s time to retire.
Fucking March, I’ll kill him nice and slow.
I’d lost the ability to tell who was thinking what. It all blurred together in a nauseating ball of fear, pain, and anger. At least I could use the latter.
To the east, we had Ja-Win gunmen. To the north, the compound defense grid. To the west, fuck if I knew what. To the south, jungle. After no more than a few seconds’ consideration, I rotated my fingers, giving the silent order to move out. I’d take the dangers of the jungle any day; the terrain would make tracking us a bitch, and it would give us the guerilla advantage when it came to taking greater numbers.
We slithered down the hill on our bellies, staying to the tall grass that yielded to swampy ground heralding thicker undergrowth. Tangled greenery provided much-needed cover as the Ja-Win gunmen charged the hill, only to find their quarry gone. I heard their shouts in the distance. We had to get into the trees before the enemy tracker took a good hard look at all that churned earth. Their trackers would figure it out sooner rather than later, and we needed a head start to survive this brutal game of hide-and-seek.
I motioned to Surge to take the lead. He fell behind the last man, Franken, and aimed toward a distant hill. I only used this as a last resort, but we needed the time. While my men disappeared into the trees, I fired in the opposite direction. When the holo shell hit, it broke wide open and showed the streaky movement of men running covertly. As I’d hoped, it drew the attention of the Ja-Win gunmen. This thing wasn’t widely available yet; I bought mine on Gehenna, and I’d be pleased to report its success to the inventor, who’d given me a discount for proving its combat viability.
As I ran, the heat hit me like a closed fist. Nicu Tertius had only two seasons, hot and wet, which made fighting on the ground a bitch. I tried to avoid it whenever possible, but the pay for this job was too good to pass up. That should’ve tipped me off.
I swallowed a curse as I heard the sounds of pursuit, booted feet