Page 30

CHAPTER 30

I t was late afternoon when the Talionis finally touched down on the outskirts of the village.

Rona could scarcely believe it had only been three days since she’d watched the Mercs’ arrival from the curtained doorway of her little hovel.

A lot had happened since then.

A lot .

This time, she wasn’t watching from afar.

She was in the cockpit, sitting in the burly copilot’s lap and looking out through the tinted windscreen at the shabby little village below.

Tiny, cautious faces peered out from the windows and doors like burrowing animals getting ready to retreat at the first sign of aggression.

Rona was not going to miss this place.

Not in the least. She didn’t know where she was going to go next, but she knew it would be better than here.

It had to be.

Aeron set the ship down right at the edge of the village and shut off the engines.

Then he turned and looked at Rona.

“You can wait here if you want.”

“Hell no,” Rona said, grinning.

“I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

By the time she and her three Mercs had disembarked, the villagers had already started making their way to the Common Hall.

Rona walked among them, dressed in her jeans and tank top, which she’d had to tie up after Murdok had torn it.

Now it left her midriff exposed, a sexy alteration to her previous style.

She drew wary looks from the crowd.

She’d known she would have to show her face here again sooner or later, and she’d expected it to be a shameful experience.

Today, however, she didn’t feel the slightest bit of shame.

None at all. She kept her head held high and let the people stare.

They could say or think whatever they pleased.

Rona honestly didn’t give a shit.

Inside the Common Hall, the air was still hot and muggy, but the mood was much more positive than before.

The village councillors must have received word of the Mercs’ arrival, because they were already gathering on the platform at the far end.

Brundage was there among them, the little stinker.

Rona suppressed an evil grin when she saw him.

“Greetings, gentlemen!” Brundage called as the Mercs approached the stage.

“You were gone so long, we had feared you might never return.”

Rona rolled her eyes.

It had only been three days.

“We Mercs do things on our own schedule,” Aeron replied.

He scanned his eyes coldly over the stage before finally locking on Brundage.

“Killing isn’t something you can rush. There were certain preparations required beforehand.”

Brundage smiled pleasantly.

“Of course, sir! Of course! Please do excuse my manners.” He stretched his short arms to encompass the crowd gathering before him.

“I am merely eager for the mine to be reopened so that the people of my village may prosper once more.”

Rona rolled her eyes a second time.

Prosper once more? Yeah right.

The village had never been all that prosperous in the first place.

The shareholders had, but not the people down in the mines doing the actual work.

“We heard some commotion this morning,” Brundage continued, “coming from the direction of the mines. I take it the job has been completed?”

“It has,” Aeron said.

“The mutants are gone.”

A collective exhalation of relief rippled through the crowd.

There were even a few joyful cheers.

Aeron went on: “You’ll have a bit of cleaning up to do before you can get back to work. Three of the four entrances are blocked, but you should have no trouble clearing the rubble with your machines. And of course there are the dead bodies to dispose of.”

“What of the raknids?” Brundage asked.

“I hope not too many of them were harmed in the process.”

“Not a single one,” said Aeron.

“Which, when you think about it, is a bit strange, no?”

Brundage’s expression faltered.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, have you actually stopped to think about what those raiders were doing in your mine in the first place? They didn’t kill any of the raknids. They didn’t gather any of the precious silk.” Aeron turned to face the gathering of miners.

“Have any of you stopped to ask why? Why would a bunch of mutants take it upon themselves to raid your mine?”

Here it comes , Rona thought gleefully.

Aeron nodded to Zeth, and the young Merc took a small handheld device out of his vest. He aimed it at a section of the wall—a section that was mostly flat and devoid of rust—and pressed a button on the device.

An image projected onto the metal, a video showing a man sitting behind a desk.

The point of view was high, as if viewed through the eyes of a very tall man.

“I recorded this two days ago,” Aeron said, “using my optical implants. The location is the Bursa in Jeriko. The man is a stock broker.”

An audio track played from the device in Zeth’s hand, matching the video projection.

Despite the device’s small size, the sound was still loud enough to fill the Common Hall.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the broker was saying, “but I’m afraid we’re not allowed to reveal any information about our clients.”

In the video, a massive hand darted out and seized the man’s tie, dragging him halfway across the desk.

He tried to shout, but his tie was now constricting his throat, making it impossible for him to do anything but speak in a raspy whisper.

“W-what was that name again? W-Walther Brundage. Y-yes, he was in here the day before yesterday. H-he bought ten thousand shares of Riadne stock.”

“What is this?” Brundage protested from the stage.

Aeron ignored him and nodded to Zeth again.

The young Merc tapped the device, and the image on the wall changed.

This time, it was outside at night.

The point-of-view was peering over the top of a boulder at a group of mutant raiders gathered around a small thermal unit.

“How much longer do we have to stay here?” one of them asked.

“It was fun at first, killing all those miners, but now this shit is getting boring as hell.”

“Yeah,” another one answered.

“But think about the money.”

“We’ve already gotten paid.”

“Idiot! We’ve only gotten paid half. The other half will come after our employer tells us we can leave.”

“Well, it’d better be soon, otherwise I’m outta here.”

Aeron nodded again, and Zeth changed the image one more time.

This time, the image was familiar to Rona.

She’d been there when it was recorded a few short hours ago.

It showed the raider they had taken prisoner.

He was chained up in the holding cell of the Talionis .

He did not look good.

“Okay! Okay!” the raider cried.

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know! Just keep that woman away from me. She’s fucking crazy!”

“Who hired you?” Aeron’s voice asked in the recording.

“His name’s Brundage,” the raider said.

“Walther Brundage.”

Zeth cut the video off.

“So, there you have it,” Aeron said, projecting his deep voice so everyone in the hall could hear.

“Mr. Brundage here paid the mutant gang to take over the mine, killing hundreds of your fellow miners in the process. His goal was to crash the price of Riadne stock. He bought as many shares as he could afford, knowing they would be worth a fortune after the mines reopened. Then he hired my comrades and me to get rid of the problem he’d created. He knew our fee would be high, but that didn’t matter. The village would foot the bill. A decent little plan, except that Mr. Brundage failed to account for one thing. We Mercs can be kind of nosy when we want to be, especially when our lives are on the line.”

For a long moment, the hall was almost completely silent, but Rona could feel the tension in the air.

She loved it.

“Get ’im!” someone shouted.

“Get Brundage!”

“Kill the bastard!” suggested someone else.

Aeron lifted his arms and let out a loud and savage roar that shook the entire Common Hall.

For a second, Rona was actually worried the whole thing might collapse on top of them.

When Aeron lowered his hands again, silence reigned.

He had the crowd’s attention.

“What you do with Brundage is your business,” he said.

“But there’s one thing I want to make perfectly clear. Our contract was with the village, and we expect to be paid.”

“But the whole thing was a scam!” some brave soul shouted from the back of the crowd.

“I don’t give a shit,” Aeron answered.

“I didn’t know that when I accepted the job, and if not for me and my companions, none of you would have ever found out either. We’re not heroes. We’re killers for hire, and we expect to get paid. We’ll be back in a few months to collect our money. If you’re worried about how you’re going to come up with the cash…”

He whirled around and pointed at Brundage.

“That man has ten thousand shares of Riadne stock. Those are about to be worth a whole lot of money. More than enough to pay our fee. So, before you go caving his head in, you might want to figure out where he’s got ’em stashed away. Oh, and one more thing.”

The crowd seemed to hold its breath waiting.

“Hiring those mutants couldn’t have been cheap. I doubt Mr. Brundage here had the means to pay them all by himself. My guess is he had some kind of backing. Just a hunch. Anyway, like I said, we’ll be back to collect our money in a few months. You’d better have it. If you don’t, we’ll be unhappy. And I promise you, you don’t want to see us when we’re unhappy.”

With that, he and the other two Mercs headed for the door.

Rona went with them.

She glanced back at Brundage on the stage.

The little man probably would have liked to leave the Common Hall too, but the crowd was already pressing in around him, blocking his escape.