Walker's Weremen: Following the Wild Geese
Chapter One
“I have a strange feeling as if for mercenaries it was also a matter of honour. The Military Vocation had a certain dignity that raised soldiers above commoners... Maybe strict observance of contracts was another matter of honour: if a nobleman enters into contract with common soldiers, he raises them to equal ground. If a nobleman breaches the contract, that may be perceived as a sign of contempt, as if he does not consider contracts with lower classes as binding ones. The ultimatum ‘pas d’argent, pas des Suisses,’ literally ‘No silver, no Swiss,’ may have been a way to say ‘we are equal, therefore respect the contract!’ or perhaps more simply ‘Nothing for Nothing!’” ~ Old Earth Historian
“It couldn’t be more obvious, let’s raise a freikorps!” said Her Royal Highness, Mathilda 'Mattie' Mary-Marguerite von Hapsberg-Hohenzollern y Rhomanov-Stirling, the Princess of Dixie, as she settled gracefully down to sit, ruffled sable riding skirts doing their best impression of an accordion as she sank, back straight, into a dignified cross legged position, head held high and chin elevated, entirely proper, the fruit of long hours of comportment training, balancing books on head, onto the picnic blanket the royal conspirators had spread out in clearing they had come across in their little hike. Once settled, Mathilda removed her ceremonial head-gear, the tall, furred hussar's busby of her notional command, and settling it beside herself just so, deployed her matching black lace fan to partially hide her noble features, as proper to her station.
Icy blue eyes stared out at her conspirators over the top of the fashionable accessory, hard eyes, the hardness of those frozen orbs, and perhaps the aristocratic strength of her nose, were the only thing that kept her features from being fully glamorous, instead she had to settle for 'handsome'. She did not mind this at all. Hair the colour of corn piled atop shapely head, in severe service buns and white gloved hands darted to push a stray lock behind a well formed ear.
“And how does that help us?” asked Her Grace, Lady Arocheben Lizrael 'Lizzie' Ingleri Angweron, Vas of Pharos Planetos, seventh Princess of Zindar, the Emperor of Alfar-kind's daughter, as she sat in the air and floated gently down, bending the aetheric streams of formal immaterium to her royal will. Where Mathilda was aristocratically handsome, Lizrael was frankly and exotically beautiful. Her elfin features were sharp enough to cut, her almond shaped violet eyes inhuman in symmetry and proportion, her hair, a platinum so stark, one could call it silver and not be accused of hyperbole.
If not for the grace and generosity of her spirit, her features on another could have been called aggressive, or hard, frightening even, instead they were so softened, just enough, to produce an eerie but peaceful calm an all who beheld their visage. She wore the simple and unpretentious black warrior’s fatigues of an arocheben knight of Zindar, for in this place, at this time, such was her role. Her mission was to locate the rightful yet uncrowned King of the ur-Atani, and secure his alliance with the the Ebon throne of Zindar, and if that meant grooming him while teaching him and his sister and their principle followers the ways of Zindari Da'ath Lords, then so be it. That was all, pure business, it wasn't like she liked his boyish looks or roguish charms, that was crazy-talk, slanderous even. Not that she was upset that he was easy on the eyes or quick to good humour, these things were simply to be expected, that's all.
“Well, from our shared dream-visions of the trials to come, we certainly could use good troops at our backs when we get there, I mean, Pharos Planetos is your ancestral home, and your personal demesne, you do want to save it, right?” answered His Royal Highness Arcturus 'Archie' Pendrakul von Hapsberg-Hohenzollern y Rhomanov-Stirling, Hegemon-presumptive and First-Lord apparent of the Solarian-Hegemony-In-Exile, Grand-Duke of Earth, etc, from over his shoulder as he unpacked their picnic lunch, if the household staff could see him, they would - justifiably - have kittens.
Luckily, this was a training hike with their instructor in the Formal arts of the Zindari, the Lady Lizrael, and the only retainers following were a small group of Black-Watch body-guards at a respectable distance, out of ear-shot. He was dressed in his usual form-fitting jack and hose, which complimented his athletic physique quite handsomely, and his wide matching sword belt carried plain sword and dagger and revolver with well worn grips that shewed long and sweaty practice. And despite being a callow youth of seven and ten summers and lanky in the way of young men not yet finished growing, his frame already showed clearly a leonine power and grace far beyond his natural years. A page-boy cut mane of wavy sand coloured hair completed the leonine impression, the hair framing a strongly featured Germano-Slavic face with hawkish nose and grey-green eyes whose exact colour changed seemingly every time one looked.
“Besides, we, acting as our persons as heirs-presumptive and designate to the Ducal-Princhepate of Earth and incumbent Hegemon of the Solarians couldn’t just take off on an adventure, just because we wanted to, that would be rather irresponsible and selfish…” said Matty. “But if we were acting as legal persons distinct from our royal selves, as say Officers and Partners in a Martial Contractorship, why, then we would be under contract from our employer!”
“And Mother would be in danger of Tortious Interference of a Contract, which is very ‘Serious Business’, doubly so in a Court of the Blood” finished the Hegemon to be.
“You Solarian Atani, why from the way you bend the letter of the law to serve the needs of the spirit, you could be Zindari, verily, we have found alfar-kindred among the stars, and it is as pleasant as it is terrifying. Very well, how much coin will we need?”
“Oh, in Solars we're talking about five hundred million, more or less for star-lift, armour, air, artillery, infantry, and - of course - marchen, but who will we get to command?" Mathilda answered Lizrael's question with her own as she tapped her chin with her collapsed fan in concentration.
"No question, we simply must get Uncle Ollie to command, didn't you know, he used to run a mercenary company, before Grandfather recruited him, by capturing him no less!" Archie's decisive answer referred to the famous Colonel Ulysses 'Ollie' William Walker, the Count of Landing, the man who had saved their Queen-mother Elise from Tubal-Khan's palace coup and stood by their cause in the grinding civil war that followed and further the eventual evacuation of all Solarian Hegenomy forces from the fallen Earth Duchy once it was clear that the marcher-lords of the astral estates intended to contest Archie's ascension as First Lord and Queen-Mother Elise's Regency.
"Yes, yes! Mother-dearest is quite desperate to keep him from taking command of the planned joint Solarian-Zindari expedition against the 'shrooms, and if he is with us, why, Mother will hardly be able to object that we lack protection, very good pick brother-mine!" Mattie snapped open her fan once more and proceeded to smugly fan herself in triumph before she paused and added, "but more importantly, we shall call them the Grey Company, and their song shall be, Jine the Cavalry!”
Arcturius belly laughed then and when he could breathe again added, “very droll sister-mine, very well, so mote it be, and when I am anointed and crowned, they shall be my coronation gift to thee, it is well that the Princess of Dixie should have her own horse guards, and it’s not like we’re in a position to re-found the Second Life Hussars after all.”
At that name, Mathilda gave a little gasp and cast her eyes to the ground, with one white-gloved hand she snapped her fan shut and gripped it so hard that it creaked in protest, and her other hand reflexively stroked the soft bear-fur of her doffed hussar’s busby, the embedded brass death’s head decoration and enclosing oak leaf laurel marking the bearer as the Regimentschefin - regimental chief - gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the green leaves of the trees swaying in the afternoon breeze as she whispered her habitual promise, “until that day, I am the hussars.”
Her down-cast eyes closed in memory of awed and reverent hours spent listening to garbled but lovingly preserved recordings of the last moments of the thousands of men and women who gave their all, their last full measure of devotion, that she and her brother might live. Memory gushed up from the well of her mind, unbidden, and the very rustling of leaves took on the notes of a radio badly out of tune and broken by the bursting of fission war-heads over Diana-base on old Luna, “negative Konigsber… ‘re taking tactical atomi…, w’ ‘on’t be lifti… break orbit now Konigsberg! Our liv’… the Queen, our lives for the Princess-infante, hoch lebe unser kaiserin!”
“And what, pray tell, will these…” Lizrael paused as her eyes visibly flickered under half closed eyelids as she ran the numbers, dividing by three for an equal partnership, “call it a hundred-fifty Zindari mega-credits buy me, exactly?”
“With that investment, we can raise you a combined arms battalion, or since these are mercenaries, ‘cohort’ is approved nomenclature, comprised of six centuries; one headquarters, three marcher, a panzer dragoon century, and an artillery century,” said Mattie, cheeks still red from her brother’s mild teasing, or perhaps the watered lambrusco they were sipping, “the three line marcher centuries are three maniples of four panzerkampfmarchen each, plus a security maniple of panzer-grenadiers in tracked fighting vehicles, while the dragoon century is three maniples of jump-pack equipped assault infantry in fast attack hovercraft, plus a hover-mobile mortar maniple, and artillery century is three batteries of four tracked guns, plus a security maniple of grenadiers.”
“And the headquarters century?” said Lizzy.
“That’s all the rest,” Archie added, “staff and planning, logistics and supply, medical, dropships and aerospace, reconnaissance, engineering, and of course, a maniple of heavy-assault marchers and another of microtalos-suited cuirassiers for security.”
“Ah yes, those heavy power-suits I have seen your elites wearing, I was skeptical about their performance, but seeing your Black-berets in action in your Olympos wargames has converted me to a believer!”
“You think they’re fun to watch Lizzy? If you’re going to drop with us, you’ll need jump-wings, which means you’ll be putting on a suit and riding one down from orbit!” laughed Mattie.
“Don’t worry, we’ll jump with you,” said Archie with a grin that only grew wider at Lizrael’s startled look of concern.
“Crazy Solarians!”
...
“It has been three days Xenextia.” The two blue-green skinned Melyae, walking plant-women and self proclaimed ‘tree-wives’ stood below a smallish drift, taking what shelter they could from the slashing knives of the polar winds, bundled in robes of snow-white bear-fur, watching as the black robed goat-men of the Wall’s Watch marched past in ranks almost silent save for huffed breath and hoofed feet crunching the snow pack. Serried spear points twinkled in the pale light that filtered down from grey and ominous clouds that seemed to loom threateningly over the small force.
“Why do you tell me this, Aethlyta, when I know it well?” Xenextia adopted the third position of ‘bemused tolerance’ if abbreviated due to the confining skins.
“We are still within a day’s march of the Abolith, does this not contravene the Master’s word?” In response to the subtle slight, Aethlyta shifted from ‘polite query’ to ‘impolite challenge’.
“How so, Junior-Sister? We are making a return march to the Wall as instructed.” Xenextia’s body assumed the rigid lines of ‘unamused impatience - senior to junior’ in a way that would have been rude and hasty in any situation other than the desperation of here and now.
“I note that our route of march is most circuitous and I am not aware of any transmissions to the Great Galad, Senior-Sister.” Aethlyta shifted to ‘junior reporting to senior’ in an ingrained and near instinctual response to the martial tone of Xenextia’s new stance.
“As I recall, a required time-segment for my report to the vessel above was not specifically specified by the Master, thus the particular time-segment of my report is at my discretion, do you disagree?”
“No.”
“Then why do you mention it, dear?”
“Since we are following our instructions, if perhaps with casuistry, then surely dispatching a scouting element on our reverse-track to check for and ambush potential pursuing forces would be within our discretion?” Aethlyta’s stance shifted to ‘eagerness of the hunt’ with a hint of ‘cheeky malicious compliance’ hiding behind, a master-stroke of the art of body-speech, especially given the circumstances.
“And if no such follow on force was found?” Xenextia’s stance shifted to ‘tentative agreement’.
“Surely it would be the duty of a reconnaissance detachment to make entry to the Abolith… for acquiring vital military intelligence of course.” Aethlyta, sensing the moment was balanced on a knife’s edge, stilled herself into ‘awaiting judgment - junior to senior’.
“Of course, approved. And Junior-Sister?”
“Yes Senior-Sister?”
“Be careful, and bring back our damn-foolish Master.”
“By your command, Xenextia-Dear.”
As Aethlyta saluted smartly and about-faced to take off at the double-quick, shouting for volunteers, Xenextia turned to face the South again, viciously suppressing the part of her that was being left-behind, again. It was like the losing of her own home, all over again and she felt like she was drowning slowly in the anguish. Still, orders were orders.
“Column, at the double-quick-time!”
Xenextia smiled, if but slightly, at the groans and whimpers of the smelly primitive goat-men of the Wall’s Watch, they surely hated to run, quite used, as they were, to manning static fortifications, which made it all the more a pleasure to run them.
“March!”
...
"Archie-lad, as pleased as it makes this old man to hear your question, the answer is the same is it was previously, 'show don't tell'. There's nothing for me agree to unless you can show me a formed company to command."
"Very well Unc-Ollie, I hope to have something to show you soon then."
"Besides, if I did agree to take command, not saying I am, but if I did, we're not calling it 'the Grey Company', whatever your sister wants. Any wild-goose outfit I'm in command of is going to be Walker's Weremen, tradition, see?"
"So you will!"
"I didn't say that lad!"
"But if you're giving conditions, now we're just negotiating your price, uncle!"
"Humph, remind to smoke your punk-ass next time I see you."
"Yes uncle!"
"Walker out."
Archie hung up the call and suppressed the warring flushes of annoyance and triumph that threatened to wash over him. Why should Uncle Ollie throw his important general staff work aside to command a mercenary company that existed only on paper? No he was right, until there was something concrete to show him, it was all idle chatter. Focus on the real.
Luckily, recruiting and staffing up a new free company was not terribly difficult in the Solar Hegenomy in exile, between the boredom of life on the farm, the excitement of off-world action amongst - until quite recently legendary - aliens on strange new worlds, and the boyish romance of following the wild geese; keeping that activity from mother-dearest, however, was more so. A few hushed conversations in polite society from Lord Paul 'Shep' Shepherd Savoy-Metaxes, the rightful Doux de Novo Megas Hellenika, and Lady Joanna Joletee 'Jo-Jo' d'Avion-Genke, Lady-in-waiting to Her Royal Highness Mathilda, with various members of the younger generation of the Lords soon set up a network of MarchenRitters ready to volunteer themselves and their privately owned panzerkampfmarchen, sufficient to fill out the table of organization and equipment of the new cohors libertas, free company of mercenaries.
A front company - Grey Developments GmbH - soon purchased land and training commenced. Infantry and other arms recruitment was even easier, first Paul and Joanna and then latter others of the young lordlings, would show up at a remote settlement while on perfectly normal martial inspection tours of B-list territorial reserve units and spend time at the local public house spreading word of a new Freikorps being raised for service with Empire of Zindar. Phone calls to the in-place private line were machine-answered by instructions to be at such and such a place at such and such a time, with such and such personal effects.
Still, Archie found himself rather out of sorts as he wanted for his next call to connect. His personal netmail address, itself a state secret, had received an unsolicited netmail with a curriculum vitae along with a quite complete and thorough intelligence briefing and analysis that clearly showed exactly what the royal twins were up to and who was involved. It didn’t have everything, but there were enough pieces of open source intelligence to make the case if one could put the pieces together, which the sender obviously had, thanks to the ever present royal watching media and various bland disclosures of corporate deeds.
“Good-day, your Highness” said the voice as the line connected.
“Am I speaking with Mr. Hosea Forrester?”
“Yes, highness.”
“Please dispense with the formality, I trust you have secured your end?”
“Yes sir.”
“OK, why should I hire you as my battalion intelligence staff officer?”
“Well, I think the fact we’re having this conversation at all clearly shows my ability as an analyst in synthesising multiple data-points from various sources into a coherent picture, and that my reading of those tea leaves was more correct than not.”
“And what would you say if I told you that your prior military experience as an enlisted active duty specialist in ordinance and your civilian career in information technology shows you to lack the experience and social background to operate as an officer and gentleman?”
“I would say that was entirely your prerogative sir. I only offer you my services. Use me as you will, until I die or you find someone better, sir.”
“Why?”
“I’m dreadfully bored sir, and the wife is a nag.”
“Running away?”
“If you like. Does that bother you?”
“It would be quite hypocritical of me if it did, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I couldn’t say, sir.”
“You’ll do, I trust you know where to report?”
“Quite.”
“Do you have anything else to report S2?”
“Well, since you’re asking sir, if you don’t already have someone in mind, I know a man who would be excellent in Logistics…”
Archie smiled as he took notes about his next contact. Yes, things were shaping up quite nicely indeed. Still he needed to have a talk with Father-Brother Ignatius about getting Lady Lizrael and her class on the schedule for orbital jump school, which of course meant getting Lizzy airborne jump qualified first. Archie, Mattie, Shep, and Jo-Jo already had their drop-wings of course, but they needed to jump regularly to keep their active status, and he’d understand the need to bond with their instructor, heck, he’d insist on coming along for sure.
...
Wall-Brother Pa’an-Tang brayed as he rushed the worm-ridden dead-thing that suddenly appeared in the dripping tunnel, moaning in chill and hunger, there was a crunch as Tang’s spear entered and ran through desiccated flesh, then a crash as both figures went down into flickering shadow, disappearing from sight behind a pile of rubble.
Aethlyta shuffle-stepped forward, clearing the mound of rubble which blocked her line of fire before she stamped a boot clad foot on the struggling pile of goatman and zombie limbs, pressing down with a hidden and unexpected strength, like a tree root pushing up a paving stone, as she lined up her sidearm with the worm-host’s head, the crimson trace of the aiming module glinting like sprinkled blood in the dust, before her custom mass accelerator, covered in swirling gilt-work, barked twice and splashed the gnashing face of the worm ridden walker across the black tunnel wall, red-hot ceramic thermal sinks tinkling to the tunnel floor to sizzle in the damp.
“Come, Wall-Brothers, we have little time,” she said as she led them further into the dark.
From there it was seemingly unending maze-like tunnels and corridors, whose organic shapes still seemed to hurt the eye with alien and unsane geometries. How long Aethlyta probed those depths she could not say. Within the first hour they lost Brother Tsu-Tsan to a great albino worm-thing that pulled him screaming into a hole in the wall with a sickening crunch. Aethlyta had dropped an incendiary grenade down the hole and savoured the eerie cries of the burning worm, but the damage was done.
Brother Stra’ange disappeared the second day. Or at least it was the second day according to Aethlyta’s chronometer when she noticed his absence, although time seemed to flow differently within the Abolith, and according to her own experience it could have been twenty minutes or twenty days, in the tunnels there only seemed to be a single eternal now.
Sometime the third day, again according to the mission clock, sudden waves of grubs had almost got them. Aethlyta had passed her carbine to Knight-Brother Tang then, his spear now broken and useless against the swarm after an encounter with an armoured corpse-beetle. He was no great marksman with it, but in close amongst the tunnels and debris and with the smart-matter ammo-block set to fragmentation instead of penetration, he didn’t have to be.
“Just don’t shoot me, little brother, it makes me cranky” she’d told him when he tried to return it after the last of the swarm was shot to pieces, with her best stern expression, modelled after her own old drill-matron once upon an age.
He had just grunted and ran the function check as she had demonstrated. For her part, Aethlyta drew forth her sidearm and arthame, the ritual dagger-wand of her true art, using the enriched-neutronium core of the blade to channel dark energy by way of nano-scale abiotic nodules of neutronium woven throughout her body. A dark halo of shadowy green wytch-fire formed above and around her head, waving forward and back, like flames seemingly eager to consume something or someone, to unite with a chosen target in an ecstatic moment of destruction. Satisfied with their preparations they started again, moving deeper into the cancerous nail driven into the flesh of the world.
An hour or so later, according to the clock, moments by dead reckoning, they came across an opening of the tunnel, the walls opened up into a black abyss of untold depths. Aethlyta dropped her visor down over her face and activated the built-in infra-red torch with a thought, giving their surroundings a scan. The walls of the chamber pulsed in her sight, like some sort of vast lung. Then what she was seeing clicked. The walls of the chamber were covered in living sheets of the grubs. And she sensed her Master on the path ahead. Nothing for it then.
They were halfway across the danger zone when Pa’an Tang put a hoof wrong and knocked a loose stone over the edge to tumble down the cliff face in a clatter that seemed like a death knell for the world, or at least this pair of foolhardy adventurers, before splashing into something wet. Aethlyta’s arm snaked out to grab ahold of Pa’an Tang’s cloak before he went over the edge with the loose stones that continued to clatter down the abyss. Her sidearm barked in rapid fire fragmentation mode, blasting gaping holes in the waves of grubs that leapt at them, and when another wave tried to come at them from behind, she finally unleashed the green-flame knives hovering above her head in an explosion of power invisible to most mundane senses. Expending all of her abiotic missiles in one go gave them room, but barely.
Aethlyta pulled Brother Tang up close to her and back onto the ledge as the buzzing and chittering grew in volume threatening to beat down their psyche’s with a sound that more than sound, a pressure on the mind itself, urging the food to be still, give in to the ecstasy. Putting her face in his horned goat visage she hissed at him urgently, “Run!”
...
“Stand up!”
Lizrael and the rest of her party as well as Alpha Company, 1/327 Infantry (jump) obeyed the order, struggling under the mass of gear and rigging and jump packs. This was madness, why did she let herself get talked into this? She was *their* instructor, what did she have to prove? And that damn boy would just smirk and let it go, dismissing her martial prowess just like that, damn his eyes. Grey eyes that sparkled and laughed, like pools of mischief. No. Bad thoughts. Down girl.
“Hook up!”
The vibrating roar of the old fashioned aerofoil, not even an a-grav repulsor boat or baroque ornithopter with beating smart-metal feathered-wings, but a simple aerodynamic tube between two static wing-planes pulled forward by droning aeroscrews driven by combusting hydrogen, seemingly consumed the sound of one hundred and twenty-three hands reaching up to snap the snap fastener of their static lines to the anchor cables that stretched over the left shoulder of each row of jumpers.
Archaic! Barbaric! Too loud by far! The cabin smelled of men, hydrogen fuel, well oiled weapons, fear, and excitement, but mostly sweaty men. Very well, she would play this game, shunting everything else aside, she pulled the mantle of her power around her and entered that exalted state of her warrior training. She was already dead, victory and life, was over there, on the other side of the enemy.
“Equipment check!”
Lizrael first checked her own harness, tugging on each clasp and strap, testing for any give that betrayed an incorrect or deficient load out. Then she turned to inspect Arcturus’s rear jump pack side for anything out of place or improper, satisfied that all was in order she slapped his shoulder as she felt Mathilda slap hers, after which she faced front once again. That he trusted her for this sent a thrill through her inner being, but this feeling was by this point remote, almost like it was happening to someone else, here and now there was only the struggle, life and death.
“Sound off!”
The shock of Arcturus slapping her rear as he shouted his readiness almost brought her out of her combat trance, almost. Instead she slapped Mattie’s rear and sounded off her own readiness, “Six-two ready!” into the mic of her jump-armor’s fully enclosing helmet. Almost there, nearly time to fly.
“Green light, go, go, go!”
Lady Lizrael Vas Pharos Planetos, arocheben Ingleri-Angweron of Zindar, marched in step right out of the air frame of A1357 ‘nightrider’, a C221 ‘condor’ four engine heavy lift aerodyne transport, down the cargo ramp and into the night sky. She felt the shock as the static line pulled free from her jump pack removing the safeties that prevented the jets from spinning up prematurely, and simultaneously, kicking those same jets started with a thump and roar that was felt more than heard. As the main power in her jump-harness came alive and her free-fall turned into powered-flight, she adjusted her trim and angled in for the landing zone, just like in the simulator; but better, far better, primal, thrilling, dangerous, as close to combat as she could get without sticking her beam-razor in another man and running him through.
“Uhz Rha! This is better than rolling in the hay!”
Dearest readers this is the first chapter of my new series, Walker’s Weremen, documenting the affairs and adventures of a panzermarcher mercenary company in the far future. Future instalments will be behind a paywall. As they say, the first one is free. I hope to see you there.