Star Force: Marauders (SF63) Read online

  A Protovic stood behind it with weapon in hand, stepping to the side to let them enter, but making sure no one else slipped through before he had a chance to shut the door again.

  When he did the eight individuals pulled back their hoods and slipped off their robes, revealing themselves to be a mix of ADZ races. One was Critel, another two Protovic, a fourth was Bonpar, and the other four were Human…all ex-Star Force military, coming from Axius to the mainline branch and everything in between.

  “Lieutenant,” the Protovic greeted one of the Humans, recognizing him but not the others. That wasn’t uncommon, for Brayden’s Marauders had over 12,000 regulars, with that number growing each decade.

  “Le’han’trel,” the Human replied, knowing every one of the men under his command personally, not counting the affiliates like the Donklap, who were local hires. “Is the client here?”

  “Not here as in the base, but he’s in a hotel nearby. I can arrange for you to meet with him whenever, wherever.”

  “Arrange it,” Mason Harkor said, tossing his cloak bundle onto a nearby table with the others. “Somewhere private, but not here.”

  The Protovic nodded then gestured to one of the six locals in the room, which doubled as their lounge/comms center, then rattled off instruction in a language that the Lieutenant couldn’t identify. A spindly creature that looked to be little more than bone with skin draped over responded and got on the comm, sending out a text transmission and nothing that would give anyone information as to the details or location of their outpost.

  It was a legitimate business acquisition, for the Marauders were renting the facility, but as far as the landlords knew it was just a warehousing slot allotment, and as long as the demaks, their local currency, kept flowing in they never bothered to check up on the tenants. Similar arrangements were common on this part of the planet, and it gave the Marauders the anonymity they needed, for while mercenaries weren’t uncommon on Tieor they were something best kept out of sight.

  Especially high level mercs that had better equipment than the local defense force.

  “Alright guys, settle in. We’re going to be here at least a few days.”

  “Left, then two rights,” Le’han’trel said, gesturing to a side door that led into other areas of the fairly large facility that housed and equipped a force of more than 200 on a regular basis, though at present less than 50 were currently on site. “Quartermaster is a Kiritak called Gargi, she’ll set you up.”

  “What do we have in the mail bag?” Mason asked when the other 7 in his strike team had left the room and he had appropriated a nearby stool to sit on.

  Le’han’trel grabbed a datapad off a shelf and tapped it on, pulling up an inventory list of all the requests coming in to the mercs for work, most of which they would have to turn down. The Marauders only did defensive work, and didn’t take any contracts that would conflict with Star Force standards. While they weren’t officially affiliated with them, the unit had been created by Brayden Yen, a high ranking commando in Clan Caitlyn that had ‘retired’ to civilian life.

  Upon leaving the military he spent the next 60 years acquiring the credits he needed through a variety of work, all non-military, then recruited a handful of other former Star Force commandos to create the first of what would come to be called the Marauders. Mason was one of those originals, and spent the next few decades working security assignments in the undesirable sections of the ADZ where Star Force security had no presence and where businessmen were willing to pay for personal security.

  Over time Brayden collected more exiting Star Force personnel, citing that he wanted to establish a unit that could go where Star Force couldn’t, into the darkest corners of the galaxy and root out the nastiness there, essentially doing the same sort of thing they’d always done, but doing so on their own volition and own orders. They would be free to act as they chose, but at the same time wouldn’t have any backup, for they weren’t part of Star Force anymore.

  That changeup on an old priority appealed to a decent fraction of the retired personnel that Brayden solicited, coupled with the idea of getting paid for the fighting they did. They’d be serving Star Force indirectly, but getting rich at the same time. That alone was reason enough for many who got the invite to join up, and for the others it was Brayden’s future plans for the unit.

  The former commando didn’t want to just hunt down trash in the dark corners of the ADZ, but he intended to go outside Star Force territory to the truly wild regions of the galaxy and bring a little civilization to the chaos. Nothing grandiose, just a mission here or there to get rid of some scumbag. Star Force had a huge territory, but the galaxy was far bigger, so after the Marauders were firmly established and making enough credits in the ADZ to support themselves, and then some, Brayden began pushing operations beyond the ever moving borders, staying a step or two ahead of Star Force’s creeping territorial lines…which were now surging head over heels outward.

  The Marauders were still ahead of the curve, for the Noop System was way beyond the ADZ, but not so far that some of the races here hadn’t established diplomatic contact with Star Force. It was in that gray zone between known and unknown that they chose to work, banking on Star Force’s reputation to give them leverage and credibility while still operating outside their sphere of influence. This system and others weren’t too unimportant for them to care about, they simply couldn’t protect everyone, and it was those places that were beyond Star Force’s help that the Marauders chose to operate within.

  “We’ve got four requests for assassinations,” Le’han’trel began to read off. “Two hijackings of freighters, sixteen requests for permanent defensive deployments ranging from a personal security guard to an entire moon, and an assortment of transport missions along with a few odds and ends. Mostly trash stuff that we’ve told people time and again that we won’t do, but they still ask anyway.”

  “What about the moon?” Mason asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Not something we’d want. It’s a vice den and they want us to set up to keep any other merc units or law enforcement out.”

  “Anything worthwhile?”

  “Some small stuff, wouldn’t take more than a squad of three or four. Fuel costs in getting there would eat up most of the profit though, because none are local.”

  “By local you mean on Tieor?”

  “Yes.”

  Mason waved his fingers in a ‘give me’ gesture and the Protovic tossed him the datapad. “Still haven’t got these guys up to speed on English yet?”

  “Passable, but anything complex is better handled in Klixet. Between them all they know 19 other languages, so I’m not pressing too hard. The earpiece translators we’ve gotten configured to Klixet pretty well, so as long as they can translate into that we can manage with our clients…mostly. For a few we’ve had races that barely spoke Klixet, and didn’t know any of the others. This planet is a mess linguistically.”

  “What isn’t out here?” Mason asked as he flagged three requests that he’d be willing to assign the Marauders to. One would make for a decent payday, the others would offer a slim profit margin. Normally they would be booked constantly, but at the moment they had a bit of flexibility and he intended to handle one of the small ones himself after he was done here.

  “Log these,” he said, tossing the datapad back to the base chief, which the Marauders referred to as a ‘handler,’ for he handled all the local assignments and reported directly to the Lieutenant in charge of this Marauder sector, which was Mason.

  “How are things back home?” Le’han’trel asked as he moved over to one of the suitcase-like computer stations.

  “Seems like Star Force is taking a planet a day from the lizards,” Mason exaggerated. “They’re steamrolling them now, on multiple fronts.”

  “Just not in this direction?”

  “Fortunately there are no lizards down here, but no, this region isn’t a priority yet, and I doubt it will be for some time.”

 
“Good for business.”

  “Bad for the galaxy. We can always move further as needed, and even a single Star Force ship in this system would do more good than we can.”

  “I know, but we’ve still got bills to pay, my salary included, and a unit like ours has to go where the trouble is to cover our considerable overhead…and that’s just the small part that I’m number crunching.”

  “Brayden knows what he’s doing,” Mason assured him. “He’s got enough resources put back to cover us if business suddenly dries up, so don’t worry about that.”

  “Good to hear. Don’t want to get back to the ADZ and find out that I’m not getting paid.”

  Mason laughed. “No worries there. Your account is kept separate from the general fund. We won’t be raiding it even if things go horrifically bad. You thinking of getting out?”

  “And do what? Sit on a beach watching the sun rise and set along with 50 billion other people? No thanks. It may be scummy out here, but at least it’s not overcrowded. Axius worlds are too jam packed for my tastes.”

  “There are a lot of other options. The Clans, for example.”

  “Thought those were Human only.”

  “They’re badass only. Get your skill scores high enough and they’ll let you in.”

  “So I’m assuming you got kicked out then?”

  Mason raised a finger and pointed it at the green and purple skinned Protovic. “Easy there. I’m still your commander.”

  “Guess that’s just my question regarding why you left.”

  “I didn’t come from the Clans. I was born on Earth.”

  Le’han’trel frowned, with his glowing facial patches making the gestures stand out more than they would on a Human. “I thought you served with Clan Sangheili?”

  “I did at the end. I spent most of my time in a mainline unit, then wanted to see something more specialized. The Clans offered a bit of that, but not enough, so I eventually quit.”

  “Quit?”

  Mason smiled. “I took a leave of absence to try and figure out what exactly I wanted to do, traveled around the ADZ, just lost myself in the crush of people that you were talking about. That was when Brayden found me and offered up the type of challenge I’d been needing. I was never going to go truly civie.”

  “Good. Thought you lost your head there, and maybe your self-sufficiency at that. I could have swore I saw a gray hair or two.”

  “Stop listening to rumors. Hairs can malfunction for a number of reasons, and they often fix themselves over time. It’s not a tell-tale sign of degradation, and no, you didn’t see any on me.”

  The Protovic shrugged. “If you say so. Never could understand the hairy races.”

  “At least we don’t shed skin layers.”

  “Yes you do, just in tiny pieces constantly.”

  “I guess, but you don’t see us doing it. First time I saw a Protovic pulling his skin off it nearly made me puke.”

  “Why? It’s just a thin layer. Looks the same underneath.”

  “It’s creepy. Like you’re a snake or something.”

  “You don’t like snakes?”

  “It’s just creepy,” Mason reiterated.

  “So glad we could have this bonding moment,” Le’han’trel said as the affiliate at the comm station got his attention and the Protovic walked over to confer with him. “Mason, we’ve got confirmation. Tomorrow morning in a private lounge at what passes for a restaurant not too far from here. We’ve used that site before, and it offers some concealed cover for backup if you want it.”

  “Translator?”

  “I’ve got three that speak their language, or rather a communal one.”

  “Good. We’ll take whoever’s the most reliable.”

  “We?”

  “You’re coming too.”

  “Ok, but why?”

  “Does he speak English?”

  “Passable.”

  “I’d like better than passable. Miscommunication has cost us one payday already, I don’t want to risk another.”

  “Alright, I’ll translate the translator for you. But I’ll have to go in armor, unless you want a walking glowlamp drawing attention.”

  “You can hide your ugly face, it won’t bother me,” Mason quipped.

  Le’han’trel grimaced. “Next time we’re eating together, I think I’ll peel my arm just for fun.”

  The Lieutenant stared at him for a long moment. “Hide your beautiful face, then.”

  “That’s better,” he said, pointing to the doorway. “Don’t know when the last time you slept was, but tomorrow here begins in 4 hours, and our contact is set to meet us in just under 9.”

  “I’d better catch a crash nap then. Do we have any donuts on hand?”

  “If the rest of your guys haven’t eaten them all up, sure. If they have there’s more in packaging, but they’ll have to be baked.”

  “Always the last one to the food,” Mason grumbled, getting up off his stool and heading for the cafeteria.

  6

  May 5, 2735

  Noop System

  Tieor

  Mason, Le’han’trel, and a local named Varsa sat in a secluded booth listening to a potential client explain to them what was happening in a nearby star system. Coming through double translation, Mason wasn’t sure he was getting the gist of all of it, but from what he could tell the number of militants had doubled since the initial offer had been made that had prompted the Lieutenant to come out to Tieor. They were set up in a confiscated complex that had originally been a livestock processing plant, but had killed off the surrounding herds and were using it for their headquarters while they raped and pillaged, literally, the surrounding cities.

  The local defense force had been killed earlier, having gone up against the militants and been beaten badly over four years ago. With no resolution to the matter and the militants gradually reaching out to more and more distant cities, the locals had put together a fund to hire someone to come in and clean up the mess before it got any worse.

  Those mercs they hired, which were on the very low end of the respectability ladder, took their money and ran. It had been another two years since that point, with the militant base expanding and setting up the planet as a haven for more and more offworlders to come to, escalating to the point where they were running rough shot over most of the planet. The other cities’ civil defense forces couldn’t stop them for more than a single instance before the other militants would retaliate by blowing up a building or two, or perhaps just strafing the streets from the air with one of their aerofighters.

  Eventually the entire planet had banded together and put together the funds necessary to hire a respectable mercenary agency, and had come all the way to Tieor to do it, which was how they’d found their way to the Marauders.

  Mason had already known this wasn’t going to be a milk run, and through his double translators he pressed for more specific details. The Batarank that they were speaking to produced a series of plastic sheets of paper with information and images on them from a briefcase it was carrying, and Mason began to sort through it while Le’han’trel continued with the questioning on his behalf.

  The militants were offworlders, but they didn’t belong to any faction known to the Marauders. They were collecting more and more personnel, including some tanks that were giving the locals all kinds of headaches. A few of the militants had been killed by vigilantes, who were striking back despite the reprisals, but they couldn’t scratch the tanks nor stop them when they often went in to wreck a local village.

  They also had four aircraft. Two were shuttles, one was an orbital dropship, and the other was an aerofighter. Or at least as far as the Bataranks knew. They’d only seen one operating at a time, and from the markings it appeared to be the same craft, though Mason wasn’t going to assume that as confirmed. All in all, there were probably some 2,000+ militants on the ground, but with the more recent updates it seemed that several new ships had arrived to deposit more in the facility, of whi
ch the Bataranks had no knowledge or counts of.

  Mason dismissed their guesses, knowing that he’d need to do a proper recon before committing any ground troops, but this didn’t sound like something the Marauders couldn’t handle. Which only left the question of payment remaining.

  That wasn’t a straightforward deal, for there were numerous currencies that didn’t all transfer between worlds. Eventually Le’han’trel got it sorted out, using various materials in exchange for the currency, and gave Mason the approximate credit value, were it back in the ADZ. It added up to 12% above the posted rates that the Marauders advertised for an operation of this scale, and as long as there were no additional surprises they were set to go.

  Normally, additional surprises included a surcharge, but the type of operation this job had been solicited as hadn’t changed, just the numbers involved and those were really inconsequential given the team he’d brought. They needed the money for operating expenses, but beyond that they weren’t going to try and squeeze more credits out of their clients as others might do. That was a decision made on principle, but it also worked as a good marketing rep as word of mouth got around.

  A few more questions about the local geography and weapons capability of the locals, which was almost nonexistent, and Mason agreed to take the job. The Batarank was visibly relieved when they signed the operating contract, which was unnecessary in mercenary work, but Brayden wanted the agreements officialized if for no other reason than to have a record of what the deal actually was rather than relying on the clients’ memories in case something didn’t turn out as they’d hoped. It was rare, but sometimes they’d ask for a small task and expect you to fix other problems once you were on site, and the contract was good to have on hand to point out what you were actually getting paid to do.

  After a few more unnecessary words that Le’han’trel didn’t bother to translate for Mason, the Batarank left in a hurry and the Protovic, clad in a full body suit and face mask underneath his robe-like garments, turned to the Lieutenant.