Osdal (Harmony War Series Book 3) Read online

  “I don’t think we need to go over the weapon familiarization course,” Holm said.

  “And we can do enough of kicking one another around the inside of the freighter, so cross off the hand-to-hand familiarization,” Jerome added.

  They went through training objectives, seeing what they could condense, since they knew everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, it was almost intuitive by now.

  It didn’t take long for them to slim the list right down, four rounds of beers had came and went as they plotted and planned. People still owed them beers after Masoul. The triple twos had a large credit in the mess.

  New people looked to them with questioning eyes, those that knew them raised a glass in greeting or gave a wave, seeing that the three were working.

  Mark heard the accusatory whispers and disbelief from the new people but he didn’t care; people could know what he did or not. Those that really knew what he’d done were alive today, and that was all the gratitude he needed.

  Tyler and Alexis walked in and Alexis ordered two more beers from the Trooper who was picking up some extra pay working at the mess.

  “Coming right up Alexis,” Claire said with a smile, her eyes darting to Mark, who chose to not pay attention as he sipped from his beer.

  “Why don’t you ask her out?” Alexis asked Mark when Claire left.

  Because if she dies I’ll lose another part of myself, Mark thought, remembering Sylvia. They’d had some good times and hooked up, but she’d died on Masoul Actual.

  Even though people tried to not get attached, it was easier said than done.

  “I’m not that interested,” Mark shrugged.

  “Come on, Claire’s a good looking girl, she’s funny, smart and she could kick most people’s ass,” Alexis said.

  Mark smiled, liking how Alexis was looking out for him.

  “Oh dayum looking good there, the things I would do to you,” someone said from behind Alexis. Mark knew that it was directed at her and he put the glass down carefully, precisely.

  “Screw off,” Alexis said back, her face clouding over with annoyance but she didn’t turn to look at the talker. Trying to keep the conversation with Mark going.

  “Oh, I’d love for you to help me,” he laughed and the new people laughed with him.

  “Hey buddy, the lady doesn’t like that talk,” Tyler said, irritated.

  Mark felt warm coals in his stomach heating his frame, his muscles tensing as he turned off his augments that wanted to pump a fighting cocktail through his veins.

  He didn’t know how to deal with the loss of his friends and his flings, but someone trying to hit on his sister-in-law. He knew how to deal with that.

  “What? I’m just talking to the pretty girl; damn thing shouldn’t be let out with those looks.” The talker wandered over, his rank slips showed that he was a Captain.

  He was closer, and Mark saw the excitements on the other’s faces, looking forward to a fight. Mark only felt a calming chill run through his body.

  Mark clenched his hand, newly reinforced with metal coverings over his bones.

  “Come with me honey, I know how to treat you real good, you won’t be able to walk when I’m…” Mark got out of the booth intercepting the man’s hand that was making for Alexis’ ass.

  “…done with, hey!” Mark ripped the man towards him and brought his forehead into the other man’s nose.

  It crunched, the man’s hands going to his face as blood flowed and he fell to the decking.

  Mark’s fist moved like a press, punching the man so hard that his head rang off of the decking.

  “Don’t you ever talk to my sister-in-law like that,” Mark said to the unconscious man.

  He grabbed the man’s collar and started dragging, then the load got easier, and Mark looked back to see that Tyler had the man’s legs.

  “The fuck?” One of the new guys asked as people went back to talking and living their lives.

  “Don’t fuck with the triple twos, and never fuck with the Victor brothers,” Mark heard someone else explain.

  “You guys are fucked, you know that, fucking Reclaimer fucks,” another newbie said.

  There was a loud noise and someone yelled out in pain.

  Mark looked back to see the loud mouth was face first in the floor with a Relcaimer trooper holding their arm in a hold.

  Mark felt nothing but pride, recognizing the hold he’d taught.

  There was a spine tingling sucking and popping sound as the man’s shoulder came out. They screamed in agony, clutching their hand, the Reclaimer trooper stepping back to their table like nothing had happened.

  “Better watch your back out there, boot,” Jerome said. “Cause if you ain’t one of us, you ain’t fucking nothing.”

  The door to the mess opened, and Mark and Tyler dropped the man on the floor.

  Tyler checked his pulse as Mark watched; he didn’t much care if the man was alive or not.

  “Well shit,” Tyler said, looking at the rank on the man’s arm. “This fuck is a goddamn Captain.”

  “Didn’t want you punching him out and getting in shit for it,” Mark said, the two of them going back into the mess.

  “Thanks man.” Tyler said, clapping him on the shoulder.

  “Don’t mention it bro,” Mark smiled. “Hey Claire, what time do you get off?” Mark asked as she handed out beers.

  “About an hour, if you’re not totally drunk,” she said, dimpling cutely.

  Nothing quite got Mark’s blood up like a fight, or reminded him that life was short and he’d best embrace it. Sylvia was gone, as much as he missed her he needed to move on.

  “Oh, I think I can stay sober for you, though you’re going to need to get some drinks to get on my level,” Mark said with a smile.

  “That won’t be a problem,” she said, taking the beer from his grasp and drinking half of it. “Though only if you’re buying.”

  “Doable,” Mark said.

  She smiled again and went back to the bar, Mark’s eyes following her the entire way.

  ***

  Ortiz looked at the Captain standing in front of him; he looked woozy on his feet but the medics said that he was functional and they’d sorted his concussion out.

  Ortiz took a breath, pinching his nose as he looked at the man. Captain Heok had just pissed off Mark, Tyler and Alexis Victor and, by extension, the entire company he commanded.

  “Do you understand the policies that the EMF has about fraternization?” Ortiz asked, keeping his voice level, mostly through a power of will.

  “Yes sir: don’t ask, don’t tell,” Heok said.

  “Good, so you know the other one about, if it causes a problem then higher ups will come down like a sack of shit?”

  “Yes sir!” Heok said, the man looked pleased.

  “What do you think that will mean?” Ortiz asked, genuinely curious.

  “That since the lady’s in a relationship with the man that punched me, they will be separated,” Heok said, barely restraining a smile.

  Holy shit, Nerva was right when he told me they were scraping these people from the bottom of the barrel.

  “Wipe that fucking smile off your face! First, the big man was her brother-in-law, second she’s married dipshit and third - I was talking about you!” Ortiz said, his famed anger rising to the surface.

  “Sergeant Alexis Xin has been an exemplary Section Commander; she led her section across Masoul and has recommendations for upward movement. Hell, I’m looking to have her as a warrant by the end of this! Mark and Tyler Victor, as well as all of the people that were at the table drinking with them, are the reason that Fearless and Reclaimer even have Troopers on them right now. They went behind enemy lines and they secured our victory. The fucking Ministry gave them a recommendation and want to give them fucking medals and you, a brand fucking new Captain with two drops under his belt and less than three years of being awake, just pissed them off.” Ortiz sank back into his seat.

  “I pulled the
recordings from the mess; your people from back on Indomitable allowed you into the mess, but your actions are bordering on sexual misconduct. I can’t have an officer that’s hitting on my sergeants and pissing off the others. Your advances were unwarranted, but you continued without finding out further information on the system. You didn’t have alcohol in your blood but still you deemed it appropriate to treat one of your Sergeants as a sexual fucking object,” Ortiz slammed his fist into his desk, making the Captain wince. Heok’s face had drained of all color as Ortiz had been talking.

  “I’ve talked to your former chain of command; they’re not willing to take you back, so you can sit this out in cryo.” Ortiz said.

  “Major!” Heok started, but Ortiz cut him off.

  “You just pissed off a section that currently has the gratitude of two veteran carriers. The Victors are fucking war heroes, as much as they would hate the title. Hell, all of the triple twos are. You undermined your command and position with that stunt. Agree to what I say and you’ll be shuffled off to some job not on the front lines. As it stands, the Troopers are more likely to shoot you than follow you.” Ortiz was tired and done with dealing with this jackass and his shit.

  “Sir, I…”

  “Think really carefully about what you’re going to say. You take my offer and you wake up after all of this and do something menial. You don’t, and you go through Osdal and can’t even trust the people you’re fighting alongside. I will also let the case of sexual harassment go through; do you know what will happen if you are found guilty of sexual harassment?”

  The other man swallowed, and his face would have given an albino a run for their money.

  Yeah, you go into an air lock and you don’t get a mask, Ortiz thought looking at the man sweating in front of him.

  “Yes, sir. I will take your offer.”

  “Good man,” Ortiz sighed. “You’ll have the information about being put into cryo soon. Dismissed.”

  Heok saluted and left the room.

  Ortiz used his hands linked to his implants to open a channel he saw on his projected HUD.

  “Need a new Captain?” Nerva asked as the line connected.

  “Yeah, you want to talk to Mark?” Ortiz asked, knowing how Nerva regarded Jerome, Mark and Tyler like sons and Alexis as a daughter.

  “You bust him down and I’ll have a talk with him,” Nerva said.

  “Gotcha. Hell, I hate doing this shit, he was in the right! He’s been fighting for his life for so long now that punching someone barely feels like it warrants a dressing down.” Ortiz sighed.

  “We’ve been at war since we arrived on Sacremon. With only a few weeks of rest at Earth and leaving Masoul, and the rest being filled up with training, I don’t expect he’ll be the last person to react a bit aggressively to situations. He’s not even the first case I’m dealing with. People are stressed, and they know this is only the beginning,” Nerva said.

  “Yeah,” Ortiz said, weary from fighting and heavy with the knowledge that there was no end in sight.

  Before, Sacremon rebellions hadn’t been all that well organized, and most times it had just taken one Earth Military Force Carrier showing up in a system to get the rebels to agree to their planet’s partnership terms. Few had real weapons, and certainly no grenade launchers, or heavy machine guns.

  Chapter 5

  Mining City Twenty-One

  Osdal Actual, Osdal System

  2/3266

  Caroline Evers was woken by the banging on her lean-to. Harmony didn’t waste their time transporting people to and from the strip mines, they simply had them build lean-tos around the strip -mine, and they collapsed there into sleep while others worked.

  She pulled herself up, feeling worse than when she’d gone to sleep. The metallic taste of Osdal Actual’s air filled her lungs; thankfully she had an augment to clear out the metals before they got into her system. Too many of her fellow workers sounded like they had metal lung, judging by their coughing.

  She touched her face, and felt the disfiguring scar which ran from her forehead down her nose and through her lips.

  Bored Chosen with guns watched from inside their air conditioned air car that floated above the ground. Caroline didn’t look at the Chosen, instead she pulled up the rags around her face. A pretty girl like her was just prey for the Chosen. The scar across her face had been self-inflicted, a promise to her parents and a way to get passed over as ugly.

  The pretty ones had it the worst. So far she had escaped their attentions, and she hoped to keep it that way.

  She looked at Ellie who was rubbing sleep from her eyes, she was older and wiry, she wasn’t beautiful, but sometimes the chosen weren’t picky.

  Ellie and Caroline smiled at each other. They’d survived the night and they were alive. There wasn’t anything else they could look forward to.

  She trudged with her shift, some went into the bottom of the pit, and she took over her place on a massive truck. She had been a shuttle pilot, and she loved the freedom of space. Now, just looking at the stars made her eyes itch, and made her want to cry out at the unfairness of it all.

  Instead, she pressed the start-up button on the truck. Her mobile prison. It rumbled to life and a route was overlaid on her glass window.

  Turning her truck, she saw a Chosen beating on a small boy. It would be so easy for her to run them over with her truck, but she didn’t do it. Shame built in her; it would end the boy’s life, but sometimes, most of the time, she thought that death would be better than living. Yet, she still woke up, ate her meager bar each day and continued on.

  Her mother and father were dead already, and her brother had screamed for days as the Chosen tried to skin him. She had wept with guilty relief when his screams had died on the ninth day.

  Her truck rumbled after the others in line, and crushers with massive rotating bits ate into the walls of the strip mine and it was scooped up and dumped in passing trucks. Then the trucks ran back out and dumped their load off at the processing plants.

  Those that didn’t know how to drive carried fuel, oil and parts, they kept the machines in working order.

  Harmony, in their infinite wisdom and need for specific materials, were using shaft mines across the planet. With the entire planet being made from metal, it was just a matter of time until the strip mine got what they needed.

  The mining gear on Osdal wasn’t made to create shaft mines. Thankfully the infusion of Earth Sympathizers meant that there were plenty of people to swing pick-axes. The rate of people contracting metal lung was astronomical. Workers did two runs in the shafts for every run in the strip.

  Caroline saw a commotion at the side of the mine as she descended, people were running away from it as a rising plume of dust told the reality. Another shaft mine had sunk.

  Caroline felt pity for those that were undoubtedly stuck in the mine. Harmony would have people in the mine within the hour, not to save lives but to clear it out and continue their progress.

  They were lucky that they hadn’t aggravated one of the few native species still left on Osdal. The Diggers lived off of the metal of the planet, there were tunnels all over the planet. Diggers crapped out rare metals, making them a CEO’s wet dream.

  Problem was Diggers didn’t give a shit what they ate and they were massive, kilometers long and with skin made of whatever metals they’d eaten.

  Some days Caroline wished that a Digger made it past the countermeasures and ended her hell.

  Caroline looked away and focused on driving truck, trying to not think of the stars, or the Chosen, or anything. Reality was a place she seldom wanted to live.

  Chapter 6

  EMFC Reclaimer

  Moving from Masoul to Osdal System

  2/3266

  Mark walked into Nerva’s office, and after Ortiz’s tongue lashing he didn’t know what to expect from Nerva.

  “Sit,” Nerva said, his arms crossed on his desk. Nerva took a breath, revealing a momentary break in his almost manicur
ed features. He looked like he was about 35, but his eyes and manners pegged him as older. Those eyes were tired, they’d seen a lot, little of it pretty.

  “So I guess that Ortiz told you how you could have easily killed that man, and that you better think about your actions before you carry them out? Probably something about striking someone in a higher position?” Nerva said.

  “Yeah,” Mark said wincing; he looked up to Ortiz and Nerva, they were leaders, the kind of person he hoped to be. Hearing those words from them hit home.

  “I think it’s time we had a talk about shit,” Nerva said, standing from his chair and moving to the couches. Mark rose and followed.

  “Shit?” Mark asked.

  “Life, troubles, worries.”

  Mark sat on the opposite couch, pulling the beret from his head and stuffing it in his leg pocket. He didn’t really know what to say.

  “We’ve been at war for longer than most carriers are operational in a given decade. None of our fights have been anything less than wars. Which means that’s a lot of stress and little down time. Throw in the fact you were down on Masoul Actual in the midst of things… That stuff tends to wear on the mind.”

  Mark didn’t feel pressured to speak; he knew that Nerva was just making it clear that if Mark had something to say then he’d listen.

  “I think I’m losing it,” Mark said, leaning forward and looking at his clasped hands.

  “Losing what?”

  Mark looked him in the eyes, his fear clear.

  “My humanity,” Mark said, fear chilling him to his core, but also feeling the seductive release of letting go of rules, pushing them aside.

  Without rules he would be free to kill, free to wage war. He felt alive when he was fighting, it was exhilarating, the universe’s sickest joke on the human being. Humans hated war, but a part of them, a part of them loved the thought of violence, a part of them showed their best and worst qualities in war.