Wholesale Slaughter
Pirate Raid

Lon Rekker shivered, hugging his heated jacket tighter against the cold wind blowing in from
the northwest. He hated guard duty almost as much as he hated the damned planet they were
holed up on. Large and made of light metals, the world had a rotation of two hundred standard
days, giving it a "night" of over three months long. The temperature gradient that resulted caused
high winds and violent storms on the night side---and it seemed to Rekker that he had duty
whenever the weather was at its worst.
Another cold blast hit him and he slung his rifle over his shoulder, shoved his gloved hands in
his jacket pockets, where the electric coils could heat them up. He snuck a worried look back
beyond the perimeter fence to the main compound. If the Sarge found him on duty with a slung
weapon, he'd beat the crap out of him...But no, Lon shook his head. Sergeant Cabrillo wouldn't
come out on a night like this---his fat ass would be back in the nice, warm compound, enjoying
the spoils from the ship they'd captured.
Damn, he wished he could be there. He'd heard there were quite a few women on that ship,
and he would have liked to get in on the fun before they were sold to the slavers. The men would
be a good sport, too---especially the officers. They were a FedCom crew, so Captain Kane would
probably make it a nice, slow death. And Mithra knew, there was precious little in the way of
entertainment on this hellhole.
So engrossed was he in his imagining of what the scene was like back in the compound, that
Lon never noticed the light footsteps coming up behind him, didn't suspect a thing until a
muscular arm snaked around his neck. He tried to struggle, tried to cry out, but an
laser-sharpened dagger plunged down into his chest, ripped him open like a gutted pig before
coming quickly back up to slice through his throat.
The black-clad figure let the corpse fall away from it to avoid being splattered by the blood
spraying from Rekker's chest and throat. Hesitating for a moment to be sure the guard was dead,
the commando bent down and sliced through the dead man's weapon sling, picked up his rifle and
examined it.
Typical bandit weapon: six millimeter caseless, polymer construction---simple and sturdy. The
commando pulled out the rifle's clip, stripped the chambered round and tossed the rifle back into
the jungle. No use leaving a loaded weapon behind you. With a wave, the commando brought
the rest of the team forward to the edge of the fence. One produced a compact pair of
wirecutters, while another went to work on the fence's electronic detectors, clipping a dampening
wire across the area to be cut.
Once the commando connecting the dampeners stepped back and nodded, the one with the
clippers went to work, opening a man-sized hole in the fence. Silently, the commandos began
filtering through the hole. To the side, the one who had taken out the sentry watched them go
through, then pulled out a small hand comlink, keyed it twice. The radio replied in kind, whoever
was at the other end breaking squelch twice. The commando refixed the comlink in its pouch,
followed the others through the fence.

The inner compound of the bandit camp was virtually deserted, but for a pair of light 'mechs
shuffling back and forth on guard duty. More of the ten-to-fifteen-meter-tall anthropomorphic
tanks stood in haphazard lines, unpowered and unmanned, near the landing pad for a pair of
high-thrust orbital cargo shuttles.
Nearly everyone else was gathered in the camp's main hangar, where, in the shadow of the
sleek, dual-environment fighters, a sort of horrible two-ring circus was providing entertainment.
At one side of the spacious hangar, the handful of male crewmembers and passengers from the
captured cargo ship were being tortured to death, one by one. Two of them, the ship's engineers,
were already lying at the side, one having bled to death from the dozens of cuts all over his naked
body, the other dead of shock.
At the moment, they were working on a passenger with heated tongs and knives, while the
others were forced to watch. His pitiful screams echoed across the hangar to where the female
members of the crew and passengers were being raped. Circled by a throng of male and female
bandits, the ten women, ranging in age from fourteen to sixty, were bound to stakes driven into
the hard-packed dirt floor of the hangar.
Kathren Margolis wasn't sure if she was lucky not to be at the other end of the hangar. At
least then there would have been a promised end to the horror. As things stood, after the pirates
were through with her, she would be sold to the slavers, facing a lifetime of servitude to some
petty warlord.
Kathren had grown numb to the shock and humiliation days ago, on the ship. Now it was just
a collage of pain and sweat and rancid body odor and breath. She felt worse for the two teenage
girls. Their parents had been killed in the taking of the ship, and now...Jesus. Kathren didn't
know what she'd be thinking if she'd been a virgin.
It was bad enough the way it was. She was only twenty-one, just graduated from the New
Avalon Institute of Science, and on her way, she had thought, to graduate work on Tharkad. It
was only now sinking in that her life had been destroyed. Oh, she would survive---they wouldn't
seriously harm her if they were going to sell her. But the nice, neat life she'd constructed for
herself as a graduate historian was gone. Even if she somehow escaped...or she could kill herself.
That might be better than a life of degradation.
Trying to let her mind wander from the fat, greasy bandit hovering over her, Kathren let her
eyes travel away from the gathered crowd, her ears travel away from the screams of the tortured
man, the pitiful moans of her fellow victims, to dwell upon one of the fighters.
It was a wonderful machine, she thought. Sleek and powerful, beautiful and deadly with disc
wings and stealth lines, weapons mounted at hardpoints. Her father had piloted one until his
death, so many years ago. She tried to remember him, tried to remember his smile, how she felt
so safe in his arms...She wished he were still there to protect her.
She squeezed her eyes shut to force back the tears. She didn't want to give her attacker the
satisfaction of thinking he was raping her emotionally as well as physically. When she opened
them again, her eyes went wide. For sneaking carefully up behind the fighters were a dozen
figures clad in black, compact assault carbines cradled in their gloved hands.
She let a slight thrill of hope run through her. They were commandos. Whose, she still wasn't
certain, but at least they were the enemies of the bandits. If nothing else, there was at least the
chance she'd die quickly...
She tried not to stare at the advancing figures---she didn't want to give them away---but quick,
stolen glances told her that they were fanning out across the hangar, still unnoticed by the
intoxicated bandits.
Then, without warning, a hoarse stutter of gunfire filled the hangar. The carbines were
suppressed, but enough expanding gasses escaped to produce a heavy coughing. Bandits began
falling all around her, some too stoned to realize what was going on.
The bandit above her spun around in alarm, then snapped back as half of his skull blew off,
splattering Kathren with blood and brain tissue. She bit back a scream as he slumped on top of
her, barely noticed the remainder of the pirates going down because of the blood in her eyes. She
heard the firing die down to isolated shots as the surviving bandits were finished off, and then
heard a hoarse, scratchy voice speaking, she assumed, into a comlink.
"Target One is down," the voice reported. "All unfriendlies neutralized. We have two
innocent dead, one badly injured and several traumatized."
"Roger, Blue Leader," a tinny comlink voice replied. "White Team's on its way."
The voice fell silent, and the next thing Kathren felt was the fat bandit's corpse being lifted off
of her, someone slicing through her bonds. Her hands and forearms were numb from the cords'
constriction, but she managed to wipe the blood from her eyes with her upper arm, found herself
looking up at the commando she'd heard designated Blue Leader. The black-uniformed soldier
reached up and pulled off a face hood, revealing a not-unattractive thirtyish female with short-cut,
spiky brown hair.
"Major Lita Randell," the woman told her. "Commando unit of the Wholesale Slaughter
mercenary company. Are you all right?"
Kathren stared at her, gratitude and relief suddenly transforming into hard-edged anger.
"I was kidnaped," Kathren growled with surprising ferocity, "watched people around me killed
and tortured, and been...been...Of course," she screamed her throat raw, "I'm not fucking all
right!"
"Good," the female commando smiled, helping her to her feet. "Realizing that's the first step."
* * *
Cinching his harness tighter, Lieutenant Bryan Slaughter stamped down heavily on the foot
pedals at the floor of his cockpit, was slammed back into his seat as his Griffin's jumpjets ignited.
The jets mounted on the back of the vaguely-humanoid battlemech lifted it over the low ridge on
streams of blinding fury, setting it down just outside the fence of the bandit compound.
Not waiting to see if the other members of his Attack Lance were following, Bryan
immediately launched a flight of LRM's from the pod mounted on his Griffin's left shoulder. The
flight of missiles slammed into one of the two light 'mechs patrolling the compound a Commando,
covering the machine in a fireball of multiple explosions as the warheads sheered armor from its
chest and legs.
The other machine, a squat Urbanmech, swung around, managing to fire off a burst from the
autocannon mounted beneath the cockpit. The heavy, depleted-uranium rounds slammed into the
Griffin's chest plastron, sending chunks of armor flying, but not penetrating to the engines and
gyro within.
Muttering a curse, Bryan steadied his fifty-five ton machine and brought up the mech's right
arm, lining up the weapon mounted there like some kind of ridiculously large pistol with the
enemy machine. Bryan thumbed the firing stud on his joystick and a coruscating beam of charged
particles took the Urbanmech dead in the cockpit, incinerating the entire cockpit structure and the
pilot within it. The Urbanmech, bereft of any control, went limp, and Bryan scanned for more
targets just in time to see the Commando he'd hit with his missiles suddenly emerge from the
wreath of smoke that had engulfed it.
Its right arm was gone, and the SRM launcher therein, and most of the armor had been
stripped from the machine's left chest. But it was still moving, its pilot showing surprising
courage for a bandit, and the SRM launch pod in its chest was still intact...
Bryan tried to swing around and line up his PPC, but was beat to the punch when a round,
silvery shape streaked from somewhere behind him and slammed into the Commando's torso. The
SRM launch pod exploded with a starburst of light that cut through the misty darkness. The
missiles cooked off in a huge secondary blast that blew the entire upper torso of the mech apart in
a burst of plasma from the reactor. The mech's legs and lower torso collapsed to the ground, still
on fire.
Bryan turned his machine, saw a huge Atlas assault 'mech plodding up behind him, the barrel
of the Gauss cannon still glowing red at its right hip.
"Thanks, Dad," Bryan let out a deep breath.
"Wait for your Lance before you rush in headlong, Bryan," Colonel John Slaughter chided
him. "These may be bandit trash, but don't underestimate them."
"Yes, sir," the younger Slaughter acknowledged, abashed.
Behind him, the rest of his Lance had moved in and was fanning out across the compound.
"Keep your eyes open, Attack Lance," he cautioned. "There's no telling how many of the bandits
weren't in the compound."
His Griffin walked through the fence as if it weren't there, the remaining three machines in his
squad following behind him in a wedge, while Colonel Slaughter hung back in his grey-tinted,
fifteen-meter Atlas.
"Lieutenant Slaughter," Sergeant Emma Sandino radioed from her hulking Warhammer.
"Scout Lance reports multiple heat sources to the southwest at .21."
"Sergeant Sandino," Slaughter ordered, "position yourself around the main hangar with Singh
and Lee. Langella, you and I are jumping two hundred meters southwest, fifty meters up."
"Right," Lieutenant Mark Langella acknowledged, bringing his Enforcer abreast with Bryan's
Griffin.
"On my signal," Bryan intoned. "Three, two, one...now!"
Both 'mechs rose on columns of hot gas, arcing over the camp to the wide, dirt trail that led up
the plateau from the valley below. While he was still in mid-air, Bryan picked up half a dozen
medium 'mechs bounding up the trail, coming back, he guessed, from a patrol.
And then he and Langella were in the midst of the machines, landing back to back. Bryan cut
loose with a flight of LRM's, knowing the distance was too short for the missiles to lock but
knowing he could hardly miss. The forty-ton Sentinel that was his unfortunate target was
consumed in an incandescent cloud of smoke as the warheads ate through the its armor and into
the fusion bottle. Plumes of plasma shot out from the machine and the bulbous torso burst in a
nova of starlight, consuming the pilot before he could eject.
Langella, meanwhile, opened fire with the LBX autocannon that was his primary weapon,
mounted in his Enforcer's right arm. The blast of cluster rounds scoured armor from the left leg
of a birdlike Cicada, and an incandescent beam from the large laser in the Enforcer's left arm
sliced completely through the stripped leg, sending the bandit machine lurching over to crash
heavily into the sandy ground.
The remaining bandit 'mechs tried to return fire at near point-blank range, but they were
frightened and confused---what missiles, lasers and cannonfire didn't go streaking off into the
night actually wound up striking their own machines. For Slaughter and Langella, it was like
hunting baby whales in a bathtub.
Bryan cut loose with his PPC, savaging the cockpit of a bandit Clint, killing the pilot in a
torrent of man-made lightning and sending the machine falling backward without a head.
Slaughter felt an oppressive wave of heat crash over him as his 'mech's heat sinks struggled to
compensate for the tremendous thermal output from his primary weapon. Bryan ignored the
discomfort, counting on his cooling vest to keep him from blacking out, and fired the PPC again,
blasting a beam of ions through the cone-shaped torso of a Crab, destroying the large laser that
jutted out from the 'mech. He launched a flight of ten LRM's at the Crab at point blank range; the
warheads had no time to arm, but they crushed the bandit 'mech's right hip through sheer kinetic
energy, freezing the right leg in place. The bandit pilot, unable to move his machine, punched out,
his ejection seat flying into the night sky on a trail of fire.
Langella advanced toward a Firestarter, slicing through its right shoulder with his large laser.
The right arm went limp as the laser severed the myomer muscle fibers leading to it and the
Firestarter pilot desperately tried to get in close and use his left-arm flamer. Langella jammed the
muzzle of his autocannon against the mech's "chin," fired. The burst of cluster munitions tore
through the cockpit, vaporized the pilot within and soared upward into the sky. The headless
machine tottered backwards, fell with a shriek of rending metal.
The last mech, a Valkyrie nearly stripped of armor by Langella's autocannon, tried to jump out,
the jumpjets in its broad feet carrying it about fifty meters off the ground before Bryan's last flight
of missiles slammed into it. The warheads struck along the Valkyrie's right flank, stripping armor
from the leg and chest and, most devastatingly, blowing out the right-leg jumpjet.
The 'mech's left leg jerked upward from the unbalanced boost of the remaining jet, tore loose
of the main body with a shower of hydrogen plasma and the Valkyrie spun crazily back to the
ground. It laid silent for a moment before the hydrogen fuel went up, consuming the torso in a
shower of flame.
"White Leader, this is White One," Bryan radioed his father.
"Go ahead, White One," Colonel Slaughter replied.
"Neutralized six unfriendlies," Bryan reported. "All mediums or lights. Going to make a quick
sweep of the area..."
Bryan's words were interrupted by a jolt that slammed him violently against his seat restraints,
an incandescent cloud of smoke drifting across his view.
"Incoming PPC fire, sir!" Langella's panicked voice shouted in his ear.
"Where, damn it?" Bryan spun his 'mech, trying to determine the source of the beams, turned
just in time to see Langella's humanoid Enforcer rock back, a burst of autocannon rounds catching
it in the left shoulder. Then a PPC beam tore off the 'mech's left arm in a shower of sparks,
spinning the machine around and sending it crashing onto its back.
Bryan slammed his booted soles down on the pedals, shooting his Griffin into the air in the
direction from which the lightning bolts had come. He came down, much to his shock, almost
directly on top of a huge Marauder II assault 'mech.
Ostrich-legged, the Marauder II outweighed Bryan's Griffin by nearly fifty tons and mounted
much deadlier weaponry. An LBX autocannon was fixed to the top of its podlike torso, and each
of its claw-like arms mounted a PPC and a medium laser. It was one of the most fearsome
fighting machine in the Inner Sphere, and Byran was staring at it nose to nose. His jump,
however, had taken the big 'mech's pilot by surprise, and Bryan was enough of a warrior to take
advantage of the situation. Moving in closer to the assault 'mech, Bryan slammed his 'mech's
articulated left hand into the Marauder's cockpit. The blow shattered the cockpit canopy and
stunned the big 'mech's pilot, giving Bryan the opportunity he'd been looking for.
Slaughter gritted his teeth, grabbed the Marauder's right arm with his 'mech's left hand,
jammed the muzzle of his PPC against the enemy mech's particle cannon and fired. A wave of
smothering heat washed through the cockpit and the earth shook beneath him as both weapons
exploded in a fireball of liberated energy, blowing off the lower half of the Marauder's arm and
turning Bryan's own PPC into a smoking hunk of scrap metal.
The Marauder II pilot pulled his 'mech back, freeing it from Bryan's grasp and knocking the
lighter 'mech off-balance. Bryan struggled to keep his machine upright as the maimed assault
'mech's left arm came around and slammed into his Griffin's shoulder, crushing a ton of metal
beneath it. The bandit pilot tried to back his machine up, knowing he was at a disadvantage at
this close a range, but Bryan stuck to him like a boxer trying to get under a bigger opponent's
guard.
Trying to apply his unarmed combat training to the situation, Bryan received a sudden
inspiration. Regaining a hold on the Marauder's maimed right arm with his 'mech's left hand,
Bryan ducked his machine's shoulder under the Marauder II's torso pod. Planting his 'mech's feet
solidly beneath the enemy machine, Bryan hit the jumpjets. The plasma flame turned sandy
ground to polished glass, pushing the heavy Marauder II backward off its feet, slamming it to the
ground with a crash of metal.
Bryan's neurohelmet slammed forward into the control panel as he came up tight against his
harness, his head lolling, blood trickling from his nose. Knocked half-conscious from the
concussion of landing on top of the other 'mech, Bryan shook his head to clear it. He tried to get
the Griffin's legs beneath it, but couldn't get any purchase on the sandy earth. The Marauder II, at
least, was equally helpless, unable to roll over and regain its footing with the fifty-five tons of
mech laying across it, and unable to reach Bryan's machine with any of its weapons.
Then Bryan saw the escape hatch beneath the strike mech's chin swing open, a rope ladder
spilling out of it.
Damn, he thought. Can't let this guy get away.
Using the quick-release to free him from his harness, Bryan nearly fell straight into the canopy
of his cockpit. He stopped himself with an outstretched arm, hit the emergency canopy release
switch, allowing the transplas dome to swing outward on its hinges. Drawing his sidearm, Bryan
threw off his neurohelmet and climbed carefully onto the upper section of the Griffin's chest,
found himself directly below the Marauder II's escape hatch.
Climbing out of that hatch was a tall, rangy male in his late forties, with long, braided black
hair. He wore a pistol in a shoulder holster, but hadn't yet tried to draw it. Bryan braced himself
against the side of the 'mech's chest, brought up his heavy pistol and tried to draw a bead on the
man.
Slaughter's gloved finger was squeezing on the trigger when the bandit's head suddenly
whipped around and he threw himself away from the Marauder II's hatch, caught the hanging rope
ladder about five meters down. Swinging back towards the main body of the downed strike
mech, the bandit drew his weapon faster than Bryan thought humanly possible.
Bryan ducked as the bandit opened fire with his needler, plastic darts from the small-caliber
weapon ricocheting off the armor on the Griffin's chest, but none hitting him. Bryan returned fire
with his large- bore semiauto slugshooter, managed to hit the bandit pilot in the upper chest,
knocking him off the rope ladder. He twisted in midair, rolled to absorb the impact as he hit
about five meters below.
Bryan cursed, realizing the bandit's kevlar cooling vest had absorbed at least some of the
round's energy, jumped after him. Bryan tried to roll with the fall, but it still half-knocked the
wind out of him, and, in the seconds it took him to stumble to his feet, the bandit opened up again
with his weapon.
The burst of tiny needles struck Bryan in the left chest and he grunted, fell back heavily as a
sharp stinging shot through his left arm. Even as he slumped to the ground, Bryan knew that at
least one of the rounds had missed his armored cooling vest and buried itself in his left bicep---not
serious, but it still hurt like hell.
The bandit pilot tried to turn and run, but Bryan brought up his own pistol, aimed carefully and
fired. The heavy-caliber slug smashed the pilot's right forearm in a spray of blood and the tall man
screamed, dropping his machine pistol and stumbling to his knees.
Bryan struggled back to his feet and stepped cautiously up to the man, covering him with his
sidearm. He knew he should just blow the pilot's head off, but shooting an unarmed man
face-to-face was a few factors harder than shooting into a cockpit.
"You want to die quick," Bryan told the bandit, "this is your one chance. Otherwise, you can
come back to New Avalon and stand trial---then be executed. Your choice."
By way of reply, the bandit lunged for his fallen weapon. He was fast; he had already wrapped
his fingers around the grip before Bryan's slug took him in the side of the head, exploding out the
other side of his skull in a spray of blood and brains. The man dropped, twitched once and then
lay still.
Bryan took a deep breath then fell heavily to one knee, his arm on fire with pain. He bit back
the wave of agony, looked up in time to see Mark Langella walking towards him from his
still-downed Enforcer, sidearm drawn.
"You okay?" The junior officer helped him to his feet.
"I'll be all right," Bryan nodded. "You'd better call the Colonel, Mark. Looks like we're going
to need a ride."