“This is Cavalier. I’m inbound with a load of frozen meat,” Eli said into the mic.

  The response was instantaneous, “Cleared for immediate nding in Bay Four.”

  Docks and hangars were arrayed around the ship’s twisting surface. Jagged angles met gentle curves. The lines of the hull bulged and tightened again in a seemingly random fashion.

  Eli flew into the designated hangar. The interior was simir. He noted that they preferred open spaces.

  The things themselves were about as tall as him. They walked on four legs, which were positioned around a torso that had features that reminded the lone traveler of both reptiles and insects. The rger pair of arms were tipped with razor pincers. A smaller set were positioned in the front, these having hands which were more utilitarian in nature.

  The aliens manned their odd-looking forklifts and quickly unloaded the shipment. Eli was cordially invited to dine with them. He accepted, his upbringing demanded it. The egan food tester was put to heavy use as Eli sampled meats from across the gaxy.

  As they dined, they talked about the pces they had seen. The ship had recently been to a world where several spaceborne species had fought a war in high orbit. The bones of those void bound warriors now orbited that world, forming a grim ring.

  “You are a mercenary?” the aliens’ leader asked Eli.

  Eli finished chewing up a hunk of beef, “I can be.”

  “It is a supreme sin for us to kill one of our own, even when they are in the wrong.”

  “And you know some of your kind that are in the wrong?”

  “A certain cn has gone rogue. Their love of carna has taken them to dark pces. Intelligent beings have fallen victim.”

  “Send me the coordinates and I’ll take care of it,” he said ftly.

  “And your payment?”

  “Fifty thousand Atth Sterling, and a cut of this stuff,” he pointed at a sb of something that tasted a lot like Buffalo meat.

  ***

  “This is Cavalier. I’m inbound with a load of frozen meat,” Eli said into the mic.

  The response was instantaneous, “Cleared for immediate nding on Pad Two.”

  The site consisted of a single building, a wide structure that was roughly U-shaped. There were several nding pads in the middle of the U. Cargo containers were haphazardly stacked. Shuttles and small freighters sat at refueling stations or in maintenance areas.

  Cavalier touched down. The boarding ramp lowered. The rear doors opened. A Trio of aliens scuttled up to it.

  The hold full of delicious meat was absent. Eli stood there in fatigue pants, a drum fed grenade uncher in his hands, the business end pointed directly at them. A shotgun was slung across his back. The loops on his armored vest were full of shells.

  He squeezed the trigger. The first shot wasn’t technically a grenade. It was one of the special canister rounds that basically turned the weapon into a massive shotgun.

  The gigantic bst tore the trio of aliens to pieces. Bloody chunks were bsted off of their shredded bodies, the remains of which didn’t so much colpse, as lost their structural integrity.

  The cylinder rotated, bringing the next round into pce, good old HE. A group of them were standing around a pallet of equipment. Eli put the grenade into the center of the gathering. The rapidly exploding cloud of fme and smoke mixed with a mist of green blood and yellow gunk. A pincer sailed across the pad, imbedding in the side of one of the spacecraft that was parked there.

  A group of them moved into position, bringing weapons to bare. Next, Eli hit them with a barrage of three frag rounds. Shrapnel ripped them apart.

  One of them charged toward him, armored ptes yered over its exoskeleton. The final round was a slug. The hunk of metal punched right through the target.

  Smoke drifted across the nding pad. Blood ran across the deck ptes. Eli dropped the empty uncher, picked up a light machine gun, and exited the ship.

  Enemies poured out of the building’s main entrance, responding to the disturbance. Eli put long bursts into them. They were cut down in bloody swaths. The sound of the gunfire echoed off of distant hills. He picked his way past the dead and entered the building.

  The first room was rge, multi-tiered. It had likely been the lobby of a proper corporate facility before the current residents acquired it. Enemies scrambled across walkways and onto balconies.

  Eli worked his way across the chamber, spraying, ignoring the shimmering lightshow as the incoming energy bolts unraveled themselves upon his personal energy shield.

  The belt ran out. Eli dropped the LMG, unslung his trusty shotgun, a simple pump-action whose model had seen service across the known universe. He was deep inside the base now. A network of corridors and small rooms y before him.

  A bst of buckshot. Blood and shredded organs spttered against the wall of the corridor. He racked another shell into pce. Another bst. Another shower of gore. Methodical movements as he worked his way through the facility.

  Eli looked at the computer on his wrist. It was wirelessly linked to the ft box on his left hip. His shield only had two charges left. He checked the field emitter integrity, reached down and wiped the fine mesh screen on the front of the box off. Even a thin yer of dust would disrupt the field.

  His opponents were using energy weapons, which were powerful, but could be blocked by a shield, so long as it had charges left. He avoided this issue by sticking to projectile weapons, although the nearly guaranteed one shot kill that an energy weapon provided was certainly tempting.

  One of them managed to get close. His arm was sshed open before he could bring the shotgun to bare. Letting out a cry of pain, he stepped backward and bsted the thing’s head clean off.

  Eli reached into one of the pouches on his vest and grabbed a tube. Moving a guard aside, he flicked a slider, a thick needle popped out of one end. Coldly, like this was a totally normal task, he stuck the needle into the wound and pushed a button. He filled the ceration with a green gel. The colony of specially modified bacteria that was the Iredell worked to stop the bleeding, heal the wound, and kill the pain.

  Thumbing more shotshells into the internal magazine, he approached an important looking room. One charge left on his shield. One more chance left.

  The memory flooded back, managing to briefly bob to the surface, past the carnage around him. The explosives were pnted. He turned and fled. The psma round struck his arm just below the elbow. The super-heated tissue exploded. He sat there on his knees, staring in disbelief at the sharp ends of the bones, the smoldering meat, the fyed skin, the tattered sinews, the spurting blood. Sad’Daki troops surrounded him.

  Eli automatically pushed the memory away. One bst at a time he cleared the control room. The st charge was used up, its absence signaled by a screeching arm. He still fought, ducking behind cover to press more shells into the scattergun.

  Shrieks of pain and rage filled the room. Blood spttered against the gleaming silver walls, ran down controls and across screens. Reaction fire drills had honed his skills. With each bst he called upon those skills, killing the enemy before they could get a shot off.

  The final enemy charged. The shot bsted a gaping hole in its chest, yet, it kept coming. The feral alien crashed into him. The shotgun was torn out of his grip. It cttered to the floor.

  Pinchers closed around his torso. He let out a primal shout as they squeezed down hard. The only thing keeping his body from being ripped open was his combat vest. Panic threatened to set in as he struggled to breathe.

  He tried to draw his sidearm, found that he couldn’t reach it. More shouts as he punched the alien in the face with his powerful robotic arm. A jet of blood sprayed out of its mouth. An eye exploded into a blob of nasty jelly. More blood as the exoskeletal skull fractured.

  The thing finally dropped him. The human nded on the floor, gasping painfully. The alien staggered backward. Even as his body fought to take in the air it had been denied, Eli drew his pistol and dropped the wounded enemy.

  ***

  Eli walked down the line of cages, unlocking each. He didn’t look at the prisoners. They avoided looking at him. Those glimpses he got were of dirty, ragged individuals, each near or past the breaking point. They began the process of seeing to it that those that were injured were treated. Others went to the nding pads to prepare their captors’ ships for departure.

  As soon as he was satisfied that the situation had been resolved, Eli collected his weapons and headed back to his ship. In one of the little bathrooms, he cleaned the blood off of his face. In the mirror he caught a glimpse of the brand on his neck, of the three tattoos under it. The transtor forced him to understand their meaning, as it always did when he saw his reflection.

  War Sve – Most Dangerous Grade – Susceptible to Conversion