This is an unfinished draft of an unnamed novella. It is the third rewrite of four and is unlikely to be finished in this state. Likely, aspects of this story will be used in the fourth / fifth rewrites until I have something that I'm confident in.
If you like what you read here, you can add me on discord - yayo#7777 - and I will give you the full draft file so you can read up to Chapter 10, the point where I put this version on hiatus.
Also, I have no experience with web design. You'd be best off reading this zoomed in or something.
In the turbulent orbit of Venus, lives were lost everyday.
A bulky silhouette flung itself from one point to the next, its movements almost blending against the burning atmosphere. Even the bright jets of light that propelled the armored body across space were difficult to make out.
In the central bridge of a battle-cruiser, thousands of external cameras provided high definition coverage of the ship’s surroundings. Not a single angle was left unseen.
Lunging through space, the Bharal Neuro-Armor only had the edge of its figure barely visible. An experienced observer could make out its shape, but that was it. Venus and the active camouflage system obscured everything else. With its back facing the planet, the Bharal’s thermal signature didn’t even show up.
The Bharal’s four arms finally ripped through the camouflage cloak, its claws extended as the particle guns in its palms quickly lit up. The high output blasts demanded the reactor’s full power, heating up even the well cooled cockpit. The pilot had no time to notice the sudden warmth – he was too focused on tearing apart the enemy in front of him!
The battle-cruiser’s diffusion field was not meant to disperse particle attacks at close-range. The blades of light struck the hull having only lost a tenth of their original strength, vaporizing everything in front of them. The armor was melted straight through as four burning holes were pierced through the spaceship. The hallways that had been caught by the attacks were filled with fire, burning up entry level spacemen that were, a second later, sucked out into space. Only when the bodies were so numerous that they managed to seal the breach did anyone survive.
At the bridge, the most armored point of the vessel, the captain was quick to sound the alarm. The Bharal fired again and again, each time tearing out four new holes into the cruiser. Power connections were caught in one attack’s path, an ammunition depot in another. Explosions ripped across the entire megalithic structure as the Bharal leapt away, back towards the blurry heat of Venus. Vengeful soldiers rushed to man the dying ship’s defensive turrets, but they were too late. The enemy disappeared as swiftly as he appeared.
The battle-cruiser, burst apart by the secondary detonations of its own warheads, found part of it flung away from Venus, while the other half was knocked close enough to be pulled in by the planet’s gravity. Its slow descent began, pulling the ship’s disfigured rear-end and half of its survivors into the burning inferno of the jungle planet’s upper atmosphere.
Watching from the debris of a long dead ship, the Bharal’s pilot laughed. Even as Venus’ orbit became a graveyard for battleships and cruisers, more kept coming, just asking to be sunk.
He was still laughing when a line of tracers came from above. His instinct commanded the Bharal into another jump, bounding from one dead ship to another. In an instant joy had turned to fear. His eyes and the Bharal’s many optics worked in tandem to seek out the enemy as another set of tracers raced towards him. One claw opened and out came a burst of light, burning up the bullets just before they could reach him. The Bharal leapt again, heading straight for the attack’s source. Another burst of spinning ordnance shot from the enemy’s rifle, but the Bharal’s vernier-covered legs kicked it away, letting the armor-piercing rounds slip by. The rifle followed the Bharal, but every burst was fired just as the monster changed direction. Then the claws lunged forward, two of them gripping onto the rifle and the mechanical arm that was guiding it. As one ripped the weapon apart, the other pulled the arm to the side to expose the machine’s chest. The lower arms opened up their guns and blasted out blinding light, melting through the entire torso in an instant. The enemy pilot, housed right where the Neuro-Armor’s heart would be, was washed away into nothing but dust before he could even scream.
The Bharal flung the burning arm away as it burst away from its opponent’s remains, swinging around and flying into the open carcass of an old, rotted out cruise-liner. The luxury ship’s large ball room had been left exposed to space ever since it had been destroyed. The Bharal latched itself to the ceiling, next to the chandelier, its camera’s blinking as the pilot set the computer to auto-scan for any other threats. Sweating, he breathed in, then out. His heartbeat had been racing, but as he let himself relax, it returned to normal.
One his vitals were displayed on the cockpit as ‘OK,’ he started laughing again.
Laughing so, so hard, that even the dozen wires connected to his skull were vibrating, almost like the computer was laughing too.
“What’s the pay like?” Garreth Cottonmouth lit a cigarette with an antique lighter, the flames illuminating his scarred face in the dimly lit bar. It was such a seedy locale that the engraved lighter and the premium cigarette between his lips were signs of wealth. All the other smokers were puffing on synthetic tobacco, and the cheap kind, too.
“It’s very good. Do you think I’d consider a job if the pay wasn’t good, my friend?” replied a far cleaner, prettier face. Adonis Giselle raised a glass, sipping down liquor. His voice was far too smooth to risk smoking. His good looks were obviously unnatural, but not many could afford cosmetic enhancements.
“True. With how you spend, you can only take the best paying, riskiest jobs...” Cottonmouth leaned against the wall, glancing across the bar. The large room was mostly dark, lit only by table lights and the attractive glow of the main counter, where patrons of all shapes and sizes sat drinking.
“Still, you’d earn even more for you to uselessly save, isn’t that worth the risks?” Adonis sat down his glass on the table in front of them. Neither had taken a seat, and instead had been standing around.
Cottonmouth smirked, shaking his head. “Saving is useless, huh.”
“So are you in, or what?” Adonis glanced over at the glowing bar, his eyes flickering as they adjusted and focused in on every face. The expensive optics analyzed and scanned each drunk like they were an enemy target, identifying weak points and revealing concealed weapons. Knives, pocket pistols, brass-knuckles, and weapons that were far harder to regulate, like fists made of electrically charged steel.
“Yeah, I’m in. But Venus is going to be a harsh mistress, so I’ll negotiate us some kind of ‘alien environment’ bonus.” Cottonmouth smiled, pushing himself off of the wall. “But why are we here? It’s a shitty meeting place.”
“Because,” Adonis grinned wide as his eyes picked out a familiar face. He then nudged Cottonmouth, pointing towards a thin man with a large nose, but otherwise flat and pudgy face, that was ordering another drink.
Cottonmouth snickered, and tried not to laugh so loud. The unimpressive face was none other than the assistant minister of defense for his homeland’s government-in-exile. Despite his position, he perfectly fit in with the rest of the dysgenic losers that lined up for cheap drinks in this pitiful hole-in-the-wall. This joint was the first - or last - stop of men who could only find excitement in the inexpensive underbelly of society, where the natural passions of the human spirit were sold for cheap and even the poorest and ugliest could live out a crooked version of their fantasies… as long as they waved their last few dollars around.
“I wanted to show you another place we’re financing,” Adonis smiled. “I even found the two prostitutes he frequents. They’re experienced salary-drainers, my friend! Very experienced!”
Cottonmouth shook his head, smoke rising from the cigarette between his fingers. “You’d think he’d go to the real red light district, at least.”
“But that’s regulated,” Adonis winks. “The girls there have lots of rules.”
“They do?” Cottonmouth blinked a few times, a little surprised.
“They have a lot of rules if you’re like him! For us, those rules disappear,” Adonis grabbed his glass, shaking around the last bit of booze left within.
“Let’s get out of here,” Cottonmouth was amused by the absurdity of it all. When he was just starting to grow up, the ministers of defense were all obviously warriors. Anyone could tell just by looking at them. They had faces and bodies shaped by a lifetime of training, both physical and mental. Now their sacred office contained this sorry excuse for a man, because the only people who ran away to found the government-in-exile were spineless cowards who didn’t want to stay and fight.
Adonis finished his drink and left it on the table, shrugging. “Sure, sure! Let’s celebrate our future payday! I haven’t seen Nadia in such a long time…”
“Sorry, I’m going to the range. Take Bruce with you, he’ll want to have some fun before we ship out.” Cottonmouth pat Adonis on the back as the two of them left the bar, catching glances as they let the doors slam shut behind them. Both had stood out like sore thumbs, but they each had an intimidating aura. Unlike well-off businessmen that sometimes wandered into this sector of the city, they looked less like money bags and more like landmines.
For the same reason the professional girls of the red-light district let them do whatever they wanted, the street-thugs of the city’s gutter left them alone.
As the two parted ways at the train station, Cottonmouth waited for the less popular line that would take him straight to the military’s headquarters. Finishing his cigarette, he looked across the dreary city that was both a monument to man’s ability and his vices. Before his eyes was a never ending metropolis with streets and buildings in every direction, both horizontal and vertical. The bottom and top were hard to make out through the web-like developments and the night’s traffic added to the visual noise.
The line soon arrived and alongside a mix of drunk soldiers and “salary-drainers,” Cottonmouth got aboard. Once the doors closed shut, the small train zipped forward fast. Even as a long, less popular line, the city’s rail system moved so swiftly that owning a car was reserved for show offs. The rich didn’t even bother, instead opting for private lines so they wouldn’t have to rub shoulders with the unwashed masses.
Just a few minutes later and Cottonmouth was getting off, following the stumbling troops and their whores back to base. The officers didn’t care if women were brought back to the barracks, as long as they got a taste. It was just a minor garrison, after all. The soldiers knew more about mops than their rifles.
Soon Cottonmouth was no longer on the sidewalk, but instead squinting at distant silhouettes with a rifle in hand. Six hundred meters away he had placed the man-sized targets. The garrison troops only shot that far with the aid of a smart-scope, but Cottonmouth was gazing through the long gun’s iron sights. He took a breath and squeezed the trigger, letting the gun fire before he reacted to the recoil’s fierce kick. The barrel stayed straight as fire spewed from its end, a deafening bang ringing through the range as a bullet the length of a dagger spun towards the target. The silhouette was shattered as the dart-like projectile passed through head-on, stopping only when it dug into the armored stop at the end of the range. If it wasn’t a target bolt, it would have carved straight through the stop.
Cottonmouth worked the lever, ejecting nothing at all. The ammunition was caseless, and so everything was either burnt up or sent flying out the barrel. The action merely cycled in the next round in the gun’s wide internal magazine. Once the chamber closed, Cottonmouth took a breath again, squeezed the trigger, and the second silhouette was ripped to pieces.
By the time the last target was cut through, the barrel was smoking. Locking the chamber open, Cottonmouth set the rifle down on the table in front of him. It was a Makhai Model 7, designed for destroying malfunctioning robots on the frontier. Makhai had opted for a lever-style action to keep the rifle legal in more restrictive stellar territories, where some guns were barred for being too “militarily viable” for civilians. The Makhai Model 7 could punch holes into tanks, but it was difficult to shoot prone, was slow to reload, and was quite heavy and cumbersome.
Nevertheless, it was Cottonmouth’s favorite. It was easier to maintain then the high-tech alternatives and with a steady, fast pair of hands, three shots could be let off in rapid succession. Paired with a sidearm for close and medium range engagements, and targets that weren’t so demanding, the Makhai Model 7 was definitely “militarily viable.”
Satisfied with his shooting, he departed for the indoor range. There he slung lead at moving steel targets, metal silhouettes that ran along rails at varying speeds. The Astarte PDW, which could be fired reliably with one or both hands, contained another ammunition loaded into the grip to make ancient tommy-gun wielding gangsters blush. It too was caseless, packing two-hundred rounds into a stick that stuck out of the grip. Its fire rate was adjustable through a built-in computer that made the weapon easy for even the most amateur or amateurs. By linking the gun’s computer with an eye-piece or a visor, the weapon’s trajectory was simple to make out, allowing rapid point-shooting. There was no need to aim down any sights, and so the gun lacked a set normally, but Cottonmouth had installed a pair anyway. The Lunar military had reasoned that by excluding non-computerized sights, the weapon would become almost useless in the hands of a thief.
But thieves were smart and knew how to reprogram such a simple computer. Excluding sights just meant that if systems went offline, the PDW went from pin-point to spray and pray.
Once the last speeding target had been dinged with a tight group, Cottonmouth took off the eye-piece and went about cleaning his two guns. As he pulled them apart in his suite, he could hear one of the “salary drainers” screaming a few floors below. She wasn’t so good at her job, after all… a few guys hadn’t paid, and she thought making a scene would fill her purse.
Well, she was wrong.
Cottonmouth flicked a switch and his room was soundproofed, drowning out what was sure to be tomorrow’s tabloid headline. Not that anyone would get seriously reprimanded for it, besides the prostitute. A sex worker with a bruised face was unlikely to pull in customers. Even her regulars would probably try someone else until she healed up. If she had a pimp she was kicking up to, he was sure to be pissed, and if she was independent, well, Cottonmouth doubted she had a savings account or an emergency fund. Not because her career paid poorly but because many in that “field” had drug habits.
As he finished reassembling both of the weapons, Cottonmouth didn’t feel too sorry for the poor girl. It wasn’t because the enlistees beating on her were in the right, though. They were definitely in the wrong. Cottonmouth couldn’t feel sorry for her because she was just being stupid.
He didn’t think much else about it. Lights out and then he was quickly asleep. Just eight hours later, on the dot, he was stretching in bed and forcing himself back up.
Being able to fall asleep and wake up on command were the two most important skills of a professional soldier.
He left his suite with a tablet in hand. It was a folding computer, capable of being reduced to the size of a pack of cigarettes. Both a tool for leisure and utility, Cottonmouth read through the news as he brewed some coffee at the officer’s mess. He ignored most of the stories about the Moon, Earth, Earth’s colonies – he could care less about his current surroundings, really. He was more concerned with Mars, his birthplace. Faraway, on the red planet, his brothers and sisters were fighting behind enemy lines, trying their best to restore the Horatian Consulate’s meritocratic government. He wanted to be there with them, but he knew that his own individual ability had little influence on the war. If he used his skills on Mars, he’d probably free a settlement after years of exhausting, tooth-and-nail resistance fighting. But if he used his skills across the solar system, offering them up to the highest bidder, he could come back with a private army.
It was an overambitious plan. While he dreamed of using his savings to launch a counteroffensive that would push the enemy off of Mars and back past the asteroid belt, Cottonmouth was realistic. He only expected to use what financial power he accumulated to shift the war in the Consulate’s favor. That included winning favor for its deadweight government-in-exile, the only way his conquered nation could gain clout in the Godforsaken United Nations.
The situation in Mars hadn’t changed for months. The only stories coming from the red planet were about slow, tedious tank battles around the last holdouts, the few city-states that had resisted the invasion with the Lunar Republic’s backing. Even the orbital engagements had been small-scale. Neither side could afford to make any serious movements, since the real deciding factors were occurring millions of miles away. Cottonmouth took slow sips of his coffee as he flipped the digital page to updates from the asteroid belt. There, a United Nations fleet was facing off with the Outer Planets Trade Alliance. For the last three days, both sides had been fighting an indecisive, yet incredibly destructive head-on battle. Twelve light cruisers lost yesterday, Cottonmouth found the U.N. casualties easily, but the OPTA losses were buried beneath paragraphs of exaggeration. So the enemy was badly beaten, but they really only lost two cruisers. It doesn’t even say if they were light or heavy cruisers. What a joke.
After he was done with his coffee, Cottonmouth folded up the tablet and headed for their employer’s office. Captain Ken Yuri-Smith of the Lunar Marines’ Special Forces.
“Captain,” Cottonmouth pulled out a chair across from the old man’s desk and sat down. “Adonis and I have came to a decision. We will take the job if you’ll account for the unique environment on Venus. It’s alien, even for professionals like ourselves, and especially for our subordinates.”
Yuri-Smith laughed. The old man was missing his right-eye. He had replaced it with a camera hooked up directly to his brain. It was a cheap solution, though it wasn’t pretty. He wiped a tear from his surviving eye and collected himself, a toothy grin across his face. “Just like you, you damn Martian! Of course you came up with a way to ask for more pay!”
“Not just more pay,” Cottonmouth put both of his hands up. “No, no. We’ll need environmental bonuses and a guide. With that, I assure you, we will complete the mission.”
“Ahahah! Brilliant! You want more money and us to provide a guide!” Yuri-Smith nodded, still grinning. “Alright, you damn Martian. You’ll get your bonuses if you can capture the first target. We’d like to pick his brain.”
“Capture the first target…?” Cottonmouth rubbed at his chin. “The Bharal pilot? What’s so special about him?”
Yuri-Smith scratched at his scalp, shrugging. “Like hell I know. Don’t ask me. All I know is he’s a tough customer, the damn jungle mutt pilots that Saturnian mech way better then he should. Maybe they think he’s enhanced and it won’t explode when they pry the chips out of his brain, since he’s a Venarian.”
“Well, it’s doable.” Cottonmouth stood up, stepping towards the desk, extending his hand. “Get me a guide and that capture bonus in writing and we’ll make it all happen.”
Yuri-Smith took it, giving Cottonmouth the firmest handshake of his life. It always seemed to get firmer. “Deal, you conniving Martian.”
“Says the Lunarian…”