Tatyana Maine pretty much commanded the table, what with her being the only and, coincidentally, a strikingly attractive woman at the table. It wasn't just that though - her demeanour demanded attention and respect, at a level the other mercenaries could identify with. A cross between the loudest, and quietest, voice at the table. Plus, she knew the most about what they were getting into, but that was by the by to the mercs, who cared little for such details outside the paycheck.
"Our client seems to have some kind of vendetta against a particular bureau of the Senate, and has hired numerous groups like ours to target some of this bureau's assets across the Empire. Simultaneously. Whoever the guy is, he's going to make a pretty big statement. As our pay would suggest..."
She kept bringing that in, to keep their attention. Tatyana Maine was a 'good' mercenary. You could make that definition by the way she planned meticulously. Lots of mercs in the Empire were simply stupidly well-armed, gung ho ex-soldiers who made a lot of noise but generally achieved nothing. That was clearly why she was heading this show up - whoever hired her knew mercenaries and knew her reputation and skills. In fact, this team in general was pretty good.
"Karlim, are you listening to this?"
Karlim Angleright didn't shift his eyes from their empty gaze into the centre of the map, but turned his head slightly and said "Yes." Tatyana rolled her eyes and continued with her briefing.
"The place we're going to hit is called Dakkan's Ridge..."
At the mention of the name, every muscle in Karlim's body went tense. He bit his lower lip until it bled, just a trickle. The pain made him feel better. Made the inevitable easier. The gesture went unnoticed by the mercenaries. That was a relief. But there was no relief from what was to come. No escape. No retreat...
"Apparently it was the site of some alleged conspiracy or atrocity. Legend has it that some pretty bad s*** happened there and the Senate's hand was well and truly covered with the stuff..."
* * * * * * * * *
Dakkan observed broodingly in the smoky shadows. Galetheia's shattered outer wall still towered above them, but it also paved their steps, and mighty chunks and holes caused by massive explosions reduced its one-time splendour to a broken, charred husk. As he watched, captured rebels were being herded out, their patchwork uniforms of earthy red and brown melting into a single dark tone in the night. Some were wounded, slings on arms and legs radiant in the moonlight. All were tired, dirty, bloodied and looking at their feet.
The hellbringers beat, prodded and barked the rebels into a ramshackle mass of bodies, kept tightly together by a string of rabid, bluecoated mutants. Their tails, wings, talons and snapping, drooling jaws formed a gibbering choir of horrible sounds. The rebels faces, though stained, were pale in the darkness.
Dakkan tripped a rebel prisoner, one of a great many who were 'cooperating' with the cleanup operations. The man cried out as he fell, driven hard to the ground by the weight of the wreckage he was carrying, and Dakkan grinned silently. Clearing the city after a siege was a mammoth task, and required thousands of people to accomplish in any short space of time. Normally, cities were taken as part of army-sized deployments, but not in this instance. No, the hellbringers, all three hundred of them, had erupted into the city with much enthusiasm, tore out the guts of the rebel garrison there, and subjugated the entire city in one night of rampant violence. Fearing for their lives (And wishing they had never heard of the term 'independence'), the civilians meekly adhered to the punishing martial law the hellbringers had imposed. Now they were whipped, beaten, mauled, bitten, scratched, scraped, tripped and barged into clearing the wreckage the hellbringers had caused.
Not that Dakkan or his motley company saw it that way. If the rebels hadn't rebelled, their city wouldn't be rubble. If they hadn't tried to kill anyone, they wouldn't be dead. If they hadn't hurt anyone, they wouldn't be getting hurt right now. If they had killed all the hellbringers and won the battle, they wouldn't be prisoners. It was logic. The Way Things Are. And things had taken their natural course.
He decided he had better show his face, in case any of the little shits in his company decided he'd been killed in action. Fat chance. His grandmother, rest her soul, could have taken a score of these dummies with her. It was like bayonet training in some of the tenement blocks. Stepping out of the shadows, Dakkan picked his way through the rubble toward where a dozen of his mutated brethren were menacing three hundred rebel prisoners. His stride was naturally quiet thanks to their conditioning and training, but even more so for Dakkan as it pleased him to prove that he could, if he wished, kill those beneath him if they let their guard down. It encouraged them not to do so. While he wasn't really trying, he scowled at a mutant who heard his approach, who warily resumed his vigil over the prisoners.
Dakkan paced behind the straggle of mutants, surveying the rotten prisoners that quivverred and huddled and, in some cases, tried their best to keep their heads high and eyes defiant. One man glared at Dakkan as he lazily padded by, and his eyes held such impudence that Dakkan spat acid at them. As the man screamed and his face sizzled, Dakkan chuckled quietly and came to a nonchelant halt at the far end of the huddle. He scratched at his horns, frowned as caked dried blood refused to dislodge itself from under his talons.
"How are you enjoying your independence, scum?" He said with relish.
"How are you enjoying slavery, you mutant filth?" Someone snapped back. There was a frantic chorus of shushes, as the frightened prisoners tried to salvage their predicament by not aggravating their captors.
Dakkan pretended to ignore the comment. He gazed pensively out across the valley that extended away from him, high mountains lit by the moon, the tops of forests black in the mist. With a sigh, he turned back to the enemy.
"'Too late, too late!' will be the cry when the man with the mercy has passed you by. Has anybody seen him lately?" Dakkan looked at his men in mock query. They grinned, baring blood-soaked fangs, and shook their heads. The prisoners huddled tighter, backing away from the leering mutants who slowly advanced toward them, anticipating the coming order.
"Private Angleright."
"Yes sir?" Angleright angled his face toward his officer without taking his eyes off a particularly wide-eyed rebel prisoner. The malevolent glee in his voice could not be hidden.
"Make sure they are sufficiently disposed of."
"With pleasure sir..." Karlim's grin widened as he led his squadmates in the frenzy.
Dakkan turned away from the slaughter. His own appetite for violence had been slaked for this evening, and now he felt the quiet satisfaction a father feels when he sees his children playing with toys crafted by his own hand. The satisfaction of a God, watching his children playing with their lives.
He reckoned this must be how the Progenitors felt.
* * * * * * * * * *
"Hey, are you still with us, lizard-boy?" Tatyana thumped the table, the noise jarring the mutant from his phantoms.
Karlim glared at the b***h for a moment, before muttering "Yes, I'm with you."
"So, Dakkan's Ridge was the scene of this big slaughter and its been an Imperial Gaol ever since. And our job is to blow it up. Wreck the place. But before we do that, there are supposed to be burial sites right beneath the prison dungeons. Our client says their worth to his cause cannot be priced...if you're interested in a little extra retirement money."
"So how come he told you about all this stuff, and not us?" Magnus O'Reily demanded gruffly.
"Maybe he didn't trust you, a pack of money-grubbing mercs? I certainly wouldn't" Karlim remarked scathingly. It was true. He hadn't trusted them an inch when he hired them.
* * * * * * * * * *
This is a stab at explaining some of our esteemed Mr Angelright's history - and as I hope it conveys, he's far from a hero with shining principles. Essentially most of the book is his long, violent road to redemtion, erasing the locations and characters of his past so he can finally rest in peace. I'm sure its all been done before, but hey ho.
DJW
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