CHAPTER 1
Most of the villagers had never even seen a starship before. Not up close, anyway. Only bright specks of light moving high above the badlands on their way to the trade depots at Jeriko, Haazor, and Ai. Those flying machines never stopped at the village. They never had any reason to.
Until now.
Rona Gideon stood in the doorway of her hovel and watched the ship make its quiet descent, a big armored warbird gliding down out of the sky on matte-black wings. Rona wasn’t alone in her watching. The whole village had come out to bear witness to the offworlder’s arrival. She could hear her neighbors murmuring to each other, their voices a mixture of hope and apprehension.
Help had finally come.
But what manner of help, and at what cost?
As the ship came in closer, Rona lifted a hand to shield her eyes against the sun, and she studied the underside of the vessel. It was hard to judge the exact size of the thing, but she guessed it was bigger than any building in the village, with the exception of the Common Hall. Mean-looking tri-barreled guns were mounted beneath the wings, and closer in, nestled against the ribs of the fuselage, were racks of deadly missiles and bombs.
But the deadliest weapons of all, Rona knew, were the onesinsidethe ship. The ones manning the controls. The ones looking out through the deeply tinted windows of the cockpit.
Looking, perhaps, at her.
She shivered.
The ship was only about twenty yards up now. The ventral thrusters kicked on, sending up swirling plumes of dust that came billowing over the village like a miniature sandstorm. Rona retreated back into the dim confines of her hovel, letting the heavy curtain of her door fall closed behind her, blocking out both daylight and dust. Her heart was slamming hard in her chest.
The Mercs had arrived.
CHAPTER 2
The Common Hall was a big circular building slapped together out of disused pieces of mining equipment and corroded slabs of sheet metal. From the outside, it looked like a huge pile of trash. The inside wasn’t much better. There was standing room on the raw dirt floor below, with bench seats along the walls, and a precarious balcony running all the way around the upper level.
Rona had chosen to observe the proceedings from the balcony. Rickety though it may have been, it was still preferable to being down there in that crush of bodies on the ground level. Not that there was much breathing room up here in the balcony either. It was a full house tonight, and the hall was hot and muggy from the hundreds of sweating bodies crammed inside. Smelly too. Seemed like the whole damn village was here tonight, mostly men, but with a few women scattered throughout the crowd as well.
“They’re coming!” someone shouted near the entrance. “TheMercsare coming…!”
Rona ran her grimy fingers through her close-cropped hair and sighed. About damn time, she thought. The ship had landed while the sun was still in the sky. Since then, nightfall had come and gone, and the villagers had been packed inside the Common Hall for hours, awaiting the Mercs’ arrival. People had started getting restless. Fights had broken out. Busted lips. Broken noses. Nothing too serious.
“Hey there, sweetcheeks.”
Rona simultaneously flinched at the gravelly voice in her ear and cringed at the reek of rotten breath that accompanied it. She’d been so engrossed by the goings-on down below that she’d failed to notice the huge, sweaty miner who had sidled up next to her at the railing.
She certainly noticed him now. In particular, she noticed his big, meaty hand squeezing her butt through her jeans, its callused fingers delving precariously close to her other, more sensitive places.
Rona didn’t bother pulling away from him. She couldn’t in this crowd. Instead, she dipped her hand inside her jacket and drew her knife. In a blink, the blade was out, and its tip was pressed against the miner’s crotch.
“Hands off or dick off,” she hissed. “Your choice.”
As expected, the fingers relinquished their hold on her butt. A few of the men standing nearby laughed. The one who had grabbed her reddened and backed off.
“Dyke bitch.”
Sticks and stones. As long as the creep’s hand was off her body, Rona was happy. She slipped the knife back inside her jacket, but kept her hand on the grip just in case.
Down below, a hush had fallen over the groundlings, and now it was spreading to the balcony as well. Every eye in the house was turned toward the entrance, so that was where Rona put her eyes too. As she watched, the people standing by the door moved back, and three men stepped inside—the three biggest men Rona had ever seen.
The crowd split as the Mercs strode forward, moving in a triangular formation, one in front, the other two following close behind. All three wore tactical vests that left their arms exposed, and their powerful muscles glistened with sweat in the harsh overhead lights. Their heads were hooded, their faces drenched in shadow. All Rona could make out from a distance were the suggestions of grizzled beards and an occasional gleam of wolfish eyes.
Suddenly, the air inside the Hall didn’t seem quite so hot anymore. A chill had come over the place, as if the Grim Reaper himself had stepped into the room. Only instead of one reaper, there were three of them, and they had rifles slung over their shoulders instead of scythes.
But… onlythree?
Rona knew the reputation of the Mercenaries Guild. Everyone in the Outworlds had heard the stories. Genetically modified warriors augmented to the gills and subjected to years of intense training and torture until they felt no pain and desired only killing and war. Their services were not to be employed lightly—or cheaply.
