The contract’s simple, old friend, but it won’t be a short one.
You are familiar with the Sunset Coalition, yes? Our old friends from across the wall, the little goblins in charge of some very big Old World guns. I’m sure you’ve taken a few contracts here and there for them. Let’s just say they won’t be providing you any more of those. Not after we’re done with them.
Our dutiful RISIKO operatives have told me of a growing rebellion in their territory, one that’s quickly becoming a legitimate threat to Prime Minister Chayapon’s regime. It’s splitting up their territories, causing public confusion and turning divisions against each other. Of course, we’ve been doing a good job making sure they have enough bullets and fuel to fight back, but you didn’t hear this from me.
That, however, is not why I came here personally. At least… not entirely.
I want your company to spearhead our invasion of the Sunset Coalition. Three battalions of your best mercenaries, more if needs be. Any equipment you deem necessary for your efforts. Logistic costs will be covered by me under the guise of a charity for farmers. If you need steel, then it will be yours. Any spoils of war, if within reasonable permits, are also yours, alongside a hefty payment sponsored by parliament immediately after contract completion.
Oh, and I want him to lead the charge. You’ve done more than enough to ensure the Merah even stands, my friend. Let your newest mercenary superstar, the one who slayed the Blastfang, shine on the eve of our country’s biggest leap forward yet.
How about it? You in?
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The siege of Sapland Airbase was going well. Well enough that already an hour in, half of the base had been either seized or turned into smouldering ruins. However, Dylus was now currently finding himself retreating to somewhere safer. He ran past one of the many runways in the airbase. At that moment, he wasn't sure of its condition, imagining that there were only craters, crackled asphalt and smashed aircraft left. The loud boom of an artillery shell slamming into the ground making his ears ring next to him left him wondering if his employers really planned to keep this intact for their needs. Yet the thought didn’t really stay in his mind for long, what with more bullets whizzing above his head.
There was foreign shouting from where he came from, remnants of a job left unfinished. He was surprised to even be able to hear them amidst all the carnage around him. What didn’t surprise him were the sounds of heavy machinery. The weight of several mechanical legs fell on the earth hard, shaking the ground, letting him know there was a very good reason he couldn’t finish them off.
“Shit.”
The shouting was getting closer, so were the bullets. It was then something punched through his back; luckily, not through a vital organ, just a way off from his kidney. The wound didn't hurt at all for a few seconds, like a needle prick, then the burning sensation that came after made him squirm. It would heal up quickly, his thoughts went on one end, and there wouldn’t be much to worry about. The other end of his thoughts, however, was too busy sinking in pure rage.
“Damn it, you dirty fucks!”
Something in him stirred. Some kind of soft whispering came into his head. Undoubtedly malevolent, but weak in the words he could make out. Even then, the whispering overloaded his senses, making him feel lightheaded. Dylus instinctively pivoted his mechanical arm forward and opened a small hatch where his shoulder used to be. There was a glass tube in there, almost fully filled with sickly green energy. The sight both incensed him and provided an evil idea.
He kept his nearly empty rifle, pulled out the tube and replaced it with another. He closed his eyes for a moment of clarity, allowing his head to come back into normality. The chaos around him died down for that moment, then it came back roaring at full volume when his eyes opened. From behind the cover, that tube was thrown as hard as his prosthetic could allow towards the enemy. All the while, he dropped a fleeting quote for the Coalition soldiers.
“Here’s a shocker for you, assholes!”
They instinctively leapt out of the way, treating it as a live grenade. The tube was much worse than that. A blurry whip of his rifle and a single, precise shot later, only one of his pursuers was now screaming their burning lungs out. The rest were instantly killed, charred by the release of eldritch energy.
For any person, such a sight was horrific. For him, it was cause for a smug smirk. He watched the still-alive soldier squirming, then bid him farewell as the earth began to rumble violently.
Where his legs took him, there was no way to consciously know in this battlefield. What he knew was that after a minute of gaining ground, there was heavy munitions zipping past his head. Like many people he had met and pissed off, the mercenary had no clue what caused the ire of this particular pursuer. He did know that he had nothing to punch through its armour at the moment. Upon seeing Wally and a beleaguered group of fellow mercenaries huddled behind a ruined vehicle firing off in a different direction, he ran even faster.
Just then, one of the rounds headed his way struck him. Again, it was non-fatal, this time through his mechanical arm. As soon as Wally saw the sight of his friend in full retreat, his shout was quick to comment on it as his friend finally found the rest of his men.
“Chum! Who the hell did you piss off now?!”
“Can it, Wally!” Dylus said after sliding into cover, reloading his rifle one bullet by one, “Get your RPG up, we’ve got an inbound walker coming in fast from the eastern depot!”
“Reloading here! Need the right payload, hang on.”
The mercenary turned his head. Immediately there was someone else familiar here; one Lieutenant Brenner, stacked in heavy combat armour He was older than Dylus by at least twenty more years, but remained his subordinate purely because commanding too many people made his head hurt. Being an old man with a quick hand, however, paid very well. He quickly popped up from his spot, gunned down two more Coalition soldiers and ducked again, just in time for Dylus to crawl up to him.
“Yeah, kid? We’re a little busy!”
“You’re ‘bout to get even busier.”
The sounds of bursting metal filled the air. The Coalition’s four legged walker had made its entrance with a grandiose roar, bolstering the morale of its own soldiers. Its operators looked around for the man they were chasing down before realising that in the distance, a pair of Merah IFVs were turning their guns towards it. Multiple loud thumps and whooshes screamed out from its launch of wire-guided missiles. They soared over Dylus’s head and slammed into their hulls before the mercenary could even register the colour of their warheads.
“You had to bring that fucking thing here, kid?!”
“Would’ve killed the crew if I had the right arm, Brenner!” Dylus shouted, “Take two of your guys, load up on grenades and flank left! I’ll take the other two plus the croc, try and see where its weak spot is!”
Brenner’s head spun, his hands busy checking his rig for his own grenades. His voice came out just as soon as he found them, “You hear that, boys? On me, load up explosives! Double time!”
The two other men nodded behind their berets, taking out another Coalition soldier about to toss a grenade their way. On the sound of it exploding on the soldier’s limp body, the three of them took off. The walker noticed, opening fire on them with its dual-linked machine guns. Dylus immediately popped out of cover, taking advantage of the distraction to find out where the ‘eye’ of the machine was. His pulse quickened and electricity ran through his skin. Eventually, he focused on a swirling mount just on the snout of the walker. Reasoning that it must have been some kind of camera, he took aim.
“Light’s out.”
The first shot went wide and hit the side of its hull. Newly arrived Coalition soldiers saw what he was doing and attempted to suppress the mercenary. Without flinching, he eventually punctured the camera unit of their fire support with a volley of bullet fire. The crew inside fumbled and scrambled to restore vision, causing the machine to retreat backwards slowly, firing blindly.
“Nice shot, kid!”
Dylus turned right. There was a two-storey office they could take cover in. It only required sprinting past a firefight between Merah forces and a Coalition machine gun team. The risk was high, but it was better than sitting here waiting for the walker to switch to backup systems.
“Alright, reload whatever you got. See that building over there?”
He pointed towards the office. Wally and the mercenaries nodded.
“We’re running for it. Just as…”
The machine gun still chugged away at its target. It chewed up several of the Merah soldiers, who were flailing and calling for backup behind their ruined transports. The barrage didn’t end until about four seconds later, their ammo belts going dry, and was followed up by the team’s riflemen suppressing the Merah soldiers.
“Sir?”
Dylus seemed to want to run. Eventually, he did with a loud bark.
“Go, go, go!”
All three of them ran like hell. The Coalition soldiers immediately opened fire on the new targets, giving the other side time to regroup and reload. They didn’t have time to stabilise their shots before the mercenaries disappeared into the building. They briefly celebrated with wild hooting before looking for a way up. Dylus quickly called for Brenner as he left the three of them to scout ahead.
“Yo, still kicking, old man?”
“Yeah, and not the bucket just yet,” Brenner said, as he adjusted his grenade launcher’s sight just above the walker’s midsection, “Nice shooting back there, cowboy. Our turn.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Dylus smiled. The familiar thud of their launchers was audible over the sounds of the airbase battle. The walker barely had time to respond when the grenades slammed into its right leg joints. Fortunately for them, they were armoured enough to withstand the first salvo. With backup cameras activated, they turned their guns towards Brenner’s crew. It started spewing white smoke just as it opened fire, concealing its position.
“Gada kuta, fucker doesn’t give a damn about their own SAM site, huh?” Brenner cursed, loading up another grenade, “Too bad, it’s ours now.”
The exchange of fire between the mercenaries and the walker continued as Dylus’ side found a way up. They ascended quickly and surveyed the chaos of the airbase siege. The sheer scale of the battle did not fail to make Dylus gape in awe.
By all means, he should’ve felt some kind of horror over being part of a spearhead into enemy territory and starting a war. The life of a mercenary wasn’t peaceful, but what he did today was a different ballgame. Instead of mulling it over philosophically, all Dylus did was take a deep breath in and enjoy the carnage. Dylus coughed it out as soon as he realised some of the air was from a recently fired SAM that shook the building. He didn’t know where it had gone, but it probably had slammed into one of the Coalition’s rapid-response aircraft up high thanks to some hotwiring and grease. That wasn’t his concern now, only the deploying walker as it tore Brenner’s cover to shreds.
“Wally, up and centre! Think you can hit the roof from here?”
Wally floated up high on his rocket legs. He pulled out a comically oversized pair of binoculars and nodded, “yup, I can hit it, chum!”
“Clear backblast!”
Dylus patted Wally’s shoulder and took the other mercenaries with him outside into the corridor. The crocodile adjusted the sights on his launcher, stuck his tongue out calculating the trajectory of attack and pulled the trigger. To his surprise, the walker immediately deployed some kind of countermeasure, prematurely detonating his rocket.
“Friend? Friend, it’s got some kind of active protection!”
The walker slowly turned his way. Wally quickly flew back in.
“Find cover!”
A hailstorm of lead hit the building, ripping concrete and metal into shreds. Dylus found himself huddled up in a corner, slowly reloading his gun. He let out a loud curse and contacted Brenner.
“Old man, thing’s got some kind of AP system, ya read?”
“We saw, kid!” Brenner shouted. His mind formulated a quick attack plan with the explosives they had, “I think we can take out its legs, but I need a hand from one of the Merah vehicles. Can you get one of the line?”
Dylus grunted, pulling back on the bolt of his rifle. He considered pulling out one of his experimental rounds to deal with the walker, realising he was out of those, before agreeing with the idea, “Will do, no guarantees.”
“Don’t mind doing it myself, if you ask me.”
“I need you alive, old man,” Dylus sternly said, “everyone else, in fact. Regalia reinforcements don’t come in ‘till we clear the airfield, you got that?”
“I’m fucking around, kid,” Brenner laughed, “call that fire support, will ya?”
Dylus motioned for one of the mercenaries near him to twist the knobs of his radio pack. Soon, he was speaking to one of the nearby Merah radiomen.
“This is Captain Dylus of the Pursuit Specials, requesting ID of the current receiver, over.”
Someone squeaky came through.
“This is PFC Abdul, Second Mechanised, reading you loud and clear!”
“Abdul- sorry, fuck ranks for now- can you get me on the line with one of the IFV commanders?”
“Ah, the commanders?” The sound of an explosion played twice in his ears. One just outside the building as a Coalition tank exploded and one through the radio, “Purpose, Captain?”
“We’ve got a Colly walker near SAM site bravo wrecking havoc. It’s pinning some of your men down. We need precise fire support on its legs before it removes our captured anti-air. Target will be marked with orange smoke, over.”
“Request read, transferring it to… uh… Commander Lo! His IFV should be near the taxi runway. ETA undetermined, yeah?”
“Just get the word out-
The walker fired on the building again.
“Let him know now!”
Abdul signed off. Dylus prayed that someone would deal with the walker before it guts them all. In the meantime, he motioned for Wally to load up another round to try another attack. There had to be a limit to the protection system. Nothing lasts forever.
“Loading up, but I ain’t going out there if it's spewing lead!”
“I’ll get Brenner on it.”
Three minutes later, the airbase exploded again. Someone had mistakenly hit a fuel tank, causing it to detonate and engulf most of the back end in blazing flames. Dylus didn’t see the explosion directly, only feeling the shockwave in his guts. The walker seemed to be distracted by the blast. The mercenary immediately acted on the lull.
“Up front and center, clear backblast!”
Wally took aim. He fired once more. This time, the projectile went further before being intercepted. At the same time, one of the Merah soldiers had the same idea to fire alongside their attack. His rocket struck the hull of the walker, sending it lurching into a nearby crashed helicopter.
“That was fucking lucky. These Merah guys aren’t so bad.”
“This is just the first skirmish,” Dylus said, seeing if there was an open shot at the machine gun team from before, “I’ll make judgments when the war’s three months in.”
His radio pack flared up. One of the mercenaries alerted him to the hail. On the other end, it was a completely different voice.
“Commander Lo of the Kiryu-Kai here, we got your request. Where’s the target?”
Shit, the smoke signal!
“Marking, give us a minute-
He changed frequencies.
“Brenner! Are you loaded up?”
The sound of his grenade launcher thumping cleared up any doubts.
“Not anymore. What’s happening?”
“Load orange smoke, I got your fire support ready.”
“Affirm, loading smokes. You should see it in a bit, sir.”
And so he did. The sight of orange obscured the walker. The added benefit of confusing its crew did not immediately make itself clear until Dylus realised its ‘head’ was swerving madly. He took the opportunity to move everyone back into one of the edge-most rooms, where Lo was called for again.
“Captain Dylus here, you got your target?”
“Affirm, Captain. We see it. Engaging hard target.”
The autocannon rounds hit the walker first with blinding speed before the missile did. The impact site was buffeted in a cloud of black smoke and fire. Kiryu-kai kept firing for over ten seconds before stopping. Lo dialled back to Dylus with a proud tone.
“You saw that, Captain? We got him good! Returning to helping our boys, good luck over there!”
“Likewise, thanks for the support,” said Dylus, taking out the remains of the machine gun crew from before, routed by the arrival of a Merah light attack vehicle. He watched as the Kiryu-kai, identifiable by the several racing red lines on the side of its silvery hull, reversed and turned its gun back towards the hangars, firing its machine gun. Armoured vehicles were such joy to watch, he thought. It stuck with him up until Lo’s IFV exploded from a rocket punching through its mantle. The man who saved their arses was now burning alive, just like the soldier from earlier.
Their sudden deaths was both a stunning sight and a harsh reminder of this battle’s intensity. He racked his gun and started loading up rounds again. One of the mercenaries near him had crawled up to the Captain, having also seen the explosion. His comments were incredulous.
“By Tuah’s grace, they’re just gone. What the hell hit them? I… I didn’t see anything at all.”
“A lucky rocket,” Dylus finished reloading and looked at the mercenary with a cold gaze, “but there’s no point mourning them now. Let’s kill that walker.” he turned to Wally, who was screwing in another warhead, “You’re up. Let’s hope that last shot finishes off the damn thing.”
“Aye, warhead armed. Stand back!”
“Clear backblast!”
Wally fired again. This time, there was no protection system in place; the IFV’s barrage had penetrated the cabin, killing most of its crew and its electronics. The walker was a sitting duck, capitalised by the sight of its rooftop bursting into white-hot flames. What ammunition remained in the walker began cooking off high into the air, signalling its true demise. The caricature celebrated its kill with raucous whistling and a mad jig. The humans celebrated by sighing and counting their rounds. Dylus called Brenner again.
Yo, you guys good?”
“Somewhat,” Brenner reported, holding on to the leg of one of the mercenaries as it bled profusely, “someone got lucky and hit Nguyen in the leg, not sure who. Patching it up now, over.”
Dylus scratched his skull cap, his fingernails caked in grime and someone else’s brains. Brenner’s team could rest for now and defend the SAM site against the stragglers at the very least. A medic from either his side or the Merah should be around to help out properly. He made that clear over the airwaves.
“Alright, you’ve done enough. Do an ammo count, take a swig of your canteens, do whatever to keep yourselves from going nuts. Stay put around the SAM and defend it, let the army carry out the offence.”
“Sounds good, kid. What about you?”
Dylus got up and surveyed the airbase again. He could see two faint blue shimmers within one of the hangars. He looked through his rifle’s scope and saw those shimmers come into full view, bisecting a soldier in half. A jet black gas mask steaming with purple haze and a mantle that flowed like water as its user danced between targets all but confirmed it was his best friend.
He never said that around her however, unless he fancied getting shivved in the ribs like the last time they fought. Seeing that she and her team was getting overwhelmed by soldiers wising up to her fighting style, the mercenary turned into Brenner and spoke.
“I’m going to cover Yumiko. Gotta keep moving, right?”
“That, you do,” said Brenner, “remind me to salvage you one of those survey drones so you don’t have to run around like a mad chicken one of these days. It’ll save your legs in the long run.”
There was a shrug that came right after ordering the two mercenaries to go back downstairs and join Brenner’s team. He looked at Wally, gesturing for his friend to follow him to the hangars. Only then did he respond, “I prefer running around, old man. The action keeps me awake.”
Brenner chuckled. The commander’s kid wasn’t that young anymore, but he was still headstrong to a questionable degree even with an otherworldly minder by his side. His last words to him before tending to his wounded comrade were, “in this kind of job, you sleep well when you finish a contract or are ten feet under. Earn the first one, not the second, sir.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”