Hunting Party (Tall Tales)

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=Hunting Party - By JA Baker=
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The Jihad was a profitable time for freelancers, provided you lived long enough to spend it.
I'm a headhunter, I'm not going to lie. It ain't honorable, and a lot of people consider us to be assassin's, not mercenaries, so there's always the risk that, shit goes south, you're not seen as protected under the Rules of War. Not that there were many rules during the Jihad. No, it was pretty much a knife-fight in a dirt-floored bar, and in a situation like that, there's always someone who wants someone else dead, and will pay you a big, fat stack of your currency of choice to make that happen.
Hence, headhunters.
I've killed business rivals, former lovers, rivals for a potential lovers affection, ex-husbands/wives, family members higher up the line of succession to a big inheritance... yeah, I'm an opportunist scumbag. Even says so on my business cards (if I ever get around to having business cards...), but that's the job: you pay, I slay. And I've worked for the "good guys" before, even collected a few scalps during Operation Bulldog, but the real money started to flow when Vic and Kat started to throw down over the FedCom throne.
Oh yeah, the good times they sure did roll during that little family disagreement. But, given my motto has always been "Work Hard, Party Harder!", I often find myself keeping one step ahead of the debt collectors, so I kept working.
Start of the Jihad, I was on Sunny-Boy Liao's payroll, mainly keeping the Free Worlds League looking the other way by stirring-up some internal tension. Take out the right nobles son/daughter/niece/nephew/who-cares while they're out playing at being a MechWarrior, and they start looking round for who stands to gain the most from pruning their family tree. And, with everything else that was going on, it wasn't too hard to get the desired results. I know some of you may be shocked, but I actually take a certain amount of pride in getting the job done with the minimal effort. I kill as quickly and cleanly as possible, and I've never killed anyone who wasn't in a position to at least try to fight back.
And no kids. That's a deal breaker, no matter how much money you offer: I won't kill anyone under the age of legal majority.
I may be a killer, but I'm not a bastard.
Okay, by the dictionary definition of the word, yes I am technically a bastard, but you get my meaning, right?
Work was steady and paid well, but then the wheels really started to come off, and I started thinking about finding somewhere nice and quiet to sit out the proceedings. Not actually that hard to do, if you actually put your mind to it: something like 2,000 inhabited systems in the Inner Sphere alone, and not all of them have anything worth the time and effort to attack. Just find a world far enough from the boarder that you're likely to see a raid, but not so far in that some idiot thinks its safe to build a factory or something else that attracts trouble like shit attracts flys. Find that sweet spot, make sure you've got a cover story and hunker down.
Unfortunately, that can be hard to do when a couple of major intelligence agencies are looking for you, and it wasn't long before I found myself listening to the amazing employment opportunities someone with my particular set of skills had. Although, the fact that they'd impounded my Thor may have had something to do with it. And I know it's not as sexy as the Mad Cat, but it is still a remarkable adaptable weapons platform, and I had managed to 'acquire' enough parts for a couple of interesting configurations.
Personally? ER-PPC and Gauss Rifle, tied into a targeting computer. You have to loose a heat sink, but it's all good, so long as you don't get your arms shot off.
So, I was "invited" to join a special unit being put together by the Grand Alliance that was fighting against the Toaster Worshippers. I knew the others, but reputation at least, as rep is everything in this line of work.
Miyu was former Black Dragon, her boss having come off worse during an internal power struggle, leaving her little choice but to take her Hatamoto-Hi Assault 'Mech and go Ronin. I'd actually worked with her on a couple of jobs, and we soon came to an agreement to watch each others backs.
Connor had been a kid on Huntress when Task Force Serpent wrecked his Clans shit. He'd been in one of those Sibco groups, but had been deemed too young to be of any actual use on the battlefield. Left him with a giant chip on his shoulder, and he'd taken to collecting heads as a way of working through his hurt feelings. I trusted him about as far as I could throw his Ryoken OmniMech, but nobody was asking me.
Finally, there was our "minder", Mr Gideon, no first name or rank given. He did his best to his it, but I recognize a St Ives Russian accent when I hear it, and he had the look of someone who could never go home again. He piloted a somewhat battered looking, but mechanically sound, Awesome Assault 'Mech, that had been rebuilt with Clan-tech ER-PPC's and double heat sinks. He was there to keep an eye on us, make sure we "stayed on mission", as he put it. He was a jerk.
Where am I from? Little place called Go ****** Yourself, that's where. You get what you pay for, and trust me, ain't nobody can afford that.
Anyways, first couple of missions, they were just milk runs: take out this target, destroy this facility, eliminate some insurgents, that kind of thing. It was pretty obvious that they were testing us, making sure we could live up to our reputations,. Didn't bother me, because it was easy money, but sure enough, they started giving us the fun jobs. You know the kind: sort of missions they need to keep 100% deniable, kind of mission that they can't leave a paper trail on. So yeah, we, shall we say, retired a few 'friendlies' who were a little too friendly with the Blakists, couple of incompetent twits who owed their position to nepotism rather than having more than two braincells to rub together.
Cutting away the dead wood, so to speak.
No body likes to admit it, but on occasions, "training accidents" are carefully planed out long in advance, and one "dead hero" today may save more lives tomorrow.
But, soon enough, things started ramping up for the Main Event: the invasion of Terra, so Miyu and I started looking for the nearest exit. We may not exactly be adverse to risk, but that was a meat grinder in the making that we had no intention of jumping into. Fortunately, or so it seamed at the time, Mr Gideon told us we had another mission. Seemed that the Blakists had been up to something on an airless rock orbiting a dwarf star somewhere or another, and they wanted us to go see if there was anything, or anyone, still there.
I know it sounds shady as ******, but truth is, back then, we had a lot of missions like that: the Good Ship Word of Blake was sinking fast, and the rats were starting to jump over the side. One of our jobs was to hunt down the worst of the worst, and either bring 'em in, or kill them on the spot. No judge, no jury, just straight to executioner. Fortunately, one of the rats had jumped into the arms of our benefactors, bringing with them a ton of useful information concerning hidden troop movements and equipment transfers, so we at least knew that we weren't going to be dropping into the middle of an entire division trying to lay low.
Getting there was an ordeal in and of itself: the system wasn't just off the charts, but had actually been removed because it was so difficult to jump into without getting your shop fried that they didn't want people to get themselves killed trying. I don't know how or where they found her, but they managed to snag us a genuine Spacers Guild JumpShip willing to take us where no military or mercenary ship would dare. I did hear talk that the Blakists had royally pissed off the Guild in some way, broke some unwritten rules and got on their bad side, but that was never anything I was able to verify. All I know is that a ship was waiting for us as the rendezvous point, and that the airlock had been welded shut, making it very clear that we were not welcome to visit.
The Guild are a crazy bunch at the best of times, but their Master Navigators can thread the eye of a needle, and they were the only ones willing to jump us into hell.
And hell was an apt description for that godforsaken rock. Around any normal star, it probably would have been a nice place to visit, but around an unstable dwarf prone to letting off massive solar flairs? 200 degrees in the sunlight, minus 200 in the shade, canyons of razor-sharp rocks, unpredictable radiation storms that could kill you in minutes, unexpected eruptions that left a labyrinth of old lava tubes and magma chambers, which only someone crazy enough to let someone replace parts of their bodies with cybernetic upgrades that slowly kill you in unimaginable pain would want to call home. So, of course, that's exactly where the Intel said that a particularly nasty group of Manei Domini known as the Seven Deadly Sins were hiding.
They were bug-shit crazy, even by the standards of other Domini's, apparently into some really weird shit involving prophecy and demons. You know, proof that they'd been smoking stuff that'd make even a Nova Cat call for an intervention. I have no idea where the Blakists found them, or why they thought that giving them access to cybernetics and weapons of mass destruction was a good idea, but each and every one of them was a walking, talking, all be it to the voices in their heads, war crime. SOP for if you even suspected they were in an area was the pull back and drop fire on the immediate area until there was nothing left but ash. They were exactly the kind of people I didn't want to find myself going up against, but the price on their heads was just too damn high.
The deal was simple: we go in, kill them with extreme prejudice, and walk away, all sins forgiven and more money then we could spend in a dozen lifetimes. I can't speak for Gideon or Connor, but it certainly had Miyu and I interested.
Landing was, as a Davion might say, more than a little rough. Which, translated into human, means we were shaken every which way imaginable as the pilot struggled with the controls like a man possessed, dodging mountains and lightning bolts big enough to vaporize a 'Mech in an instant. I normally like to see the shit I'm getting myself into, but that was one time I was more than happy to cut the feed from the external cameras.
My blackened and much abused soul may be bound for hell, but that doesn't mean that I need to see a preview.
We hit the ground so hard I chipped a ****** tooth, the DropShip actually skidding to a halt across the rock strewn surface. Light went from red to green, and we hit the ground running, weapons up and ready to go loud. Not that you'd have been able to hear anything above the storm: even in our cockpits, it was almost deafening. Add to that, there was so much dust in the air that RADAR and LIDAR were worse than useless, while the lightning was so bright it made relying on visuals just asking to have your retinas burned out. Fortunately, more by luck than anything else, the pilot had put us down maybe a hundred meters from an entrance to the underground cave network that our friendly turncoat claimed held the Domini base.
Only, they weren't there, we were, and we had no way of knowing if we were walking into an ambush or not.
Connor took the lead without being asked, crazy fool still looking for a warriors death. Gideon followed, leaving Miyu and I to play Tail-End Charlie. The caves were, well, caves: big, mostly round holes in the ground, but at least they got us out of the storm. Able to hear ourselves think for the first time since breaching atmo, we started to look around for any signs of the Sins. Times like that, you keep your eyes on a swivel and your fingers on the triggers, ready to go loud in an instant. I've developed pretty good instincts over the years, and I've learned to trust them. Well, every fibre in my being was telling me to run, but, damn it, I needed the money so badly that I kept going.
Everyone feels fear... okay, maybe not everyone: I've met a few guy, really nice, polite fellas, who seemed to have no fear of anything, but most people who say that are either lying, or crazy. But, like anything, you can learn to overcome your fears, master them so they don't master you. You don't want to get rid of them completely, because they serve an essential part of your survival instincts, but you want to be able to ignore it when needed. So you learn to put your fear into a box and close the lid. Only, something was just off, big time. Something indescribable, unexplainable, was making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, my skin crawl. I could taste the bitter hint of adrenaline in my mouth, my senses running on rocket fuel as I switched between every sensor my 'Mech had to try and find something to explain it.
I've seen every kind of ECM known to man, from camouflage paint to stealth armor; I've even seen a genuine Void Signature System in action, and I've picked up a few tricks to at least tell when their in use, but... nothing. All my years of combat experience was telling me that we were being watched, stalked, by something, but I couldn't for the life of me say who they were or where they were hiding.
My com panel blinked, indicating an incoming message on the private channel Miyu and I had set up for ourselves.
"Känner du det också?" she asked, her crisp, sharp Japanese accent at odds with her native Swedish.
"Like someone's tap-dancing on my grave? Yeah, I feel it."
"Vi borde lämna: hela uppdraget var ett misstag."
"Too late for second thoughts now, and there's no way Gideon or Connor would agree. Last thing we need to be doing is trading fire with them when shit goes sideways."
"Så, vad är planen?"
"Same as ever: we keep our eyes up, our weapons hot, and always know where the exit is."
"Lycka till, gubbe."
"Right back at ya, sweetheart."
Heeding my own advice, I kept my eyes constantly moving, looking for any sign of the enemy. But, try as I might, they always seemed to be just on the edge of my vision, and if I tried to focus on what I thought I saw, it would up and vanish like the proverbial fart in the wind. I could Gideon and Connor felt the same, only they'd never admit to it, even to themselves.
We'd gone in, expecting to be the hunters, but it was increasingly feeling like we were the ones being hunted.
The first indication of just how FUBAR everything was came when we reached what was left of the massive airlock that the Sins had installed to separate their base from the outside world. It had been ripped to pieces, with some parts looking like some with had used them for target practice, while others had what could only be described as claw marks. But, you know, when you spend enough time hunting Domini's, you see some crazy shit, like an entire company of troops who'd volunteered to have the part of the brain that needs sleep, and feels things like pain and empathy removed, then had a pair of giant lobster claws grafted to their sides.
So yeah, no much really surprises me when it comes to those freaks.
Well, the airlock was firmly in the past tense, and it was obvious by the bodies that very few people had been ready for explosive decompression, and that's a nasty way to die, even by my standards. There was further signs of fighting, and we even got a positive ID on one of the Sins, earning us at least a partial payout, as proof of death was good enough for some. But, the further we advanced, the clearer it became that we were following the parth of a running firefight, with fire scorched walls and the twisted remains of hastily assembled barricades. Now, there were plenty of side tunnels, and someone could have been hiding in some sealed broom closest, but we were MechWarrors, not PBI's, and we were there to ensure that the base was put beyond use and, if possible, collect the money on the heads of the Sins.
The base wasn't that big, and we soon came across what had obviously been the site of a desperate last stand.
How do I know what one looks like? Because I've seen plenty; been the cause of more than a few, down the years. Everyone fights like Old Scratch is after them when the time comes, and given the state of the chamber, the Sins and their support staff had had access to a pretty extensive arsenal, and had used it all against... well, I'm getting ahead of myself here. But suffice to say, they'd put up one hell of a fight, and each and every one of them had died with their faces to the enemy.
I remember one body, a ComTech by the looks of what was left of their uniform, lay against one wall, still clutching a belt-fed machine-gun, empty ammo crates scattered all around. They, and I honest to God, couldn't tell you if they'd been a man or a woman, had gone out like a Boss, and I couldn't help but be a little impressed.
Now, you may be thinking, "Well, all the better for you, right? Sins dead, base beyond use, mission accomplished and all that?" Well, you'd be wrong, because the first thing they'd ask back at base was what the hell actually happened there, and we'd need to have an answer for them. Unfortunately, as I've already said, we were MechWarriors, and with the airlock blown, we couldn't exactly step outside and have a look around. Best we could do was document the scene with our gun cameras before pulling out.
And that was where the fecal matter impacted with the air-conditioning unit.
First warning I had that things were officially going FUBAR was the strobing of Connors large and medium pulse lasers, followed by the dull, distant sounding crackle of his LB 10-X Autocannon as he let rip with about a half ton of cluster ammo. This was followed by a string of curses in Russian from Gideon as he let lose with a one-two-three with his ER-PPC's, his shots tracking up a wall and along a gantry. I turned my Thor as quickly as I could, the gyro complaining about dangerous instability, and I saw some thing scuttling about out of the corner of my eye. I didn't have the time to identify it, or to even get a solid lock: I was running C configuration, and soon as my Ultra AC20 came round, I opened up, punching massive holes in the wall as I tried to follow... whatever the ****** it was.
Well, the problem with going weapons free like that is you run the risk of hitting something that doesn't react well to weapons fire. I have no idea who hit what, just that there was a massive blast and I was sent stumbling backwards. This pushed my already strained gyro over the edge, and I had a moment of weightlessness as my Thor fell onto its back. By ears rung like a church bell, and I tasted blood as my vision cleared enough to see Miyu standing over me, giving something a broadside from her medium pulse lasers. Getting your feat back under you isn't easy in a 'Mech with no hands, but I managed to somehow pull it off in time to see what looked like a boiling mass of shadows envelope the chest and head of Gideons Awesome, massive rents appearing in its armour. I could hear him curse and rant over the open channel, then there was the unmistakable sound of armor being peeled back like an orange... and silence.
The Awesome stood still for a moment, then toppled forward, hitting the ground at Connors feet with an earth shattering thud.
"****** this for a game of soldiers." I hissed over the radio, "Bug-out time, people."
"Go." Connor countered, moving his Ryoken between our downed leader and Miyu and I, "I will buy you what time I can."
At this point, you're probably expecting me to say I gave some speech about comradeship, honor and duty. Well, I guess you can't have been paying much attention, because we turned and ran as fast as our 'Mechs could take us.
Unfortunately, my little trip to the ground had evidently done some damage, and I found myself limping along. I yelled at Miyu to leave me, to save herself: I wasn't looking to die, like that mad bastard Connor, but she was the closest thing to a friend I have, and I didn't want to see her die.
"Rör dig, din tjocka ursäkt för en man!" she cursed me out even as she laid down covering fire with her PPC's, shooting past the burning remains of Connors' Ryoken at whatever it was that had killed him and Gideon, "Jag har inte för avsikt att dö på denna gud övergivna plats."
"Neither do I!" I yelled back as we reached the remains of the airlock.
I turned and fired off the rest of my Autocannon ammo and all my missiles, fast as the launcher reloaded: the re-enforced walls and ceiling cracked and crumbled, collapsing behind us even as we back up down the old lava tube. Unfortunately, the same formless mass of pure darkness moved through the cracks and around the debris, reaching out towards us like a thousand grasping hands. We opened fire with out lasers and PPC's, trying to keep it at bay even as we backed up, taking it in turned to move, then covering to other. Our weapons did no apparent damage, but they did seem to slow it down, especially the lasers, the bolts of coherent light almost making it recoil.
We reached the entrance and turned to run when we saw them, just standing there in a semi-circle around us: two whole lances of Black Knights, looking factory fresh and painted a deep, vibrant green with black highlights. One took half a step forward, and a voice crackled over the radio.
"Go." the 'Mech gestured with one massive arm, "Get back to your ship, and leave this place while you still can."
"The ****** you say!" I hissed back, already starting to feel light headed from all the adrenaline in my system, "What the hell happened back there? What was that... that thing?"
"Something that the Word of Blake should have known to leave well enough alone." the Black Knight gestured again, "Now, go. We will finish this."
Well, they didn't need to tell us twice: we turned tail and ran for the DropShip, which had thankfully was already to go when we arrived, taking off as soon as our 'Mechs were secured. It wasn't until we' d reached orbit that they explained that a second JumpShip, also Spacer's Guild, had arrived and deployed its own DropShip, and that was apparently where our mysterious friends had come from.
I don't know what I was expecting when we got back to base, but it sure as hell wasn't to be told that Miyu and I were free to go, our debts to society paid in full, and the bounties on the Seven Deadly Sins paid into our accounts. They even gave us official certificates of gratitude for all our hard work, and then very sternly showed us the door and told us to beat feet.
Miyu... I guess what happened affected her worse than it did me, because she almost immediately signed up with the then newly formed 'Republic of the Sphere', while I...
Killing is the only thing I'm good at, and it still pays well. Especially now everyone is looking to turn their swords into ploughshares. So ****** it: all the more work for me.
The End
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Hunting Party
Hunting Party
Hunting Party