CASPer Alamo Read online

  The Four Horsemen: CASPer Alamo

  Book Nine of the Revelations Cycle

  By

  Eric S. Brown and Jason Brannon

  PUBLISHED BY: Seventh Seal Press

  Copyright © 2018 Eric S. Brown and Jason Brannon

  All Rights Reserved

  Get the free Four Horseman prelude story “Shattered Crucible”

  and discover other Seventh Seal Press titles at:

  http://chriskennedypublishing.com/

  * * * * *

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  * * * * *

  Cover Design by Brenda Mihalko

  Original Art by Ricky Ryan

  * * * * *

  Contents

  CASPer Alamo

  Devils

  Four Horsemen Titles

  Connect with Seventh Seal Press

  About Eric S. Brown

  About Jason Brannon

  Excerpt from Book One of the Revelations Cycle:

  Excerpt from Book One of The Psyche of War:

  Excerpt from Book One of the Kin Wars Saga:

  CASPer Alamo

  The stars were beacons of light, positioned strategically across the heavens as if to prevent an uprising from the darkness. Scattered across the black expanses of the galaxy, they seemed to be a final line of defense against whatever might be coming through the bleak void of space. This stand between light and darkness was an eternal struggle, seen just as frequently in the hearts of men as it was in the lonely emptiness of the black depths.

  Considering how close most men were to the darkness brought about a sense of melancholy that wasn’t good for anyone traveling through the vast reaches of space. Those were thoughts best suited for soldiers whose feet were set firmly on terra firma. Lieutenant Blair pondered the idea of good men turning bad until he heard the rhythmic clang of boots on metal, and was grateful for the distraction. Or at least he was, until he smelled the stench of cigar smoke that accompanied Colonel Travis everywhere he went, even when he wasn’t actively smoking.

  That was not what he needed right now.

  Lieutenant Blair snapped to attention, almost dropping the data pad in his hand, as Colonel Travis entered the hold. ECS Sawyer had just dropped in-system and was decelerating toward Durin II.

  “May I help you, sir?” Lieutenant Blair stammered as Colonel Travis walked toward him, an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth. The colonel took one last smell of the heady tobacco before sticking the cigar into a case and pocketing it. The further out in the galaxy they got, the harder those were to come by. Given the distance from Earth, the cigar might have been more valuable than gold.

  “The Mark VIs,” Colonel Travis said, flashing his nicotine-stained teeth. “I’d like to see them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Blair said, barely resisting the urge to salute the colonel. “Right this way.”

  Lieutenant Blair led Colonel Travis toward the rear of Sawyer’s hold. They passed rows of Mark VIII CASPers where they stood, secured for the transit, before they reached the section of the hold that contained the Mark VI suits. Each suit was polished to a dull gleam, like futuristic suits of armor—what King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table might have worn if Merlin had given them ceramic composites and magnetic accelerator cannons.

  “We barely managed to get them all on board in time, sir,” Lieutenant Blair said, “The dealer you acquired them from arrived at the port late.”

  “All that matters is that they are here,” Colonel Travis said, trying to put the young lieutenant at ease. “We’re going to need every last one of them. Things are sure to get a little thorny before all is said and done. But we wouldn’t have it any other way. Right?”

  “Yes, sir,” Blair replied without thinking. He had learned to just agree with Colonel Travis, even if it wasn’t truly the way he felt. It was easier that way.

  Lieutenant Blair entered the security code that opened the secondary section of Sawyer’s primary hold. The door slid open to reveal a room full of older mecha. Each of the Mark VI suits stood close to nine feet tall and weighed in at nearly a ton, like sarcophagi for space-age mummies. The suits had been retrofitted to make them as close to the Mark VIIIs as possible, although they were still heavier and slower than the Mark VIIIs. Colonel Travis didn’t need speed, however. He needed suits that could take heavy damage and continue to hold their ground, and the CASPer Mark VI delivered in spades. Many mercs considered them to be some of the best defensive suits ever built.

  The Mark VI CASPers all bore the scars of battle—scratches too deep to grind out, dents, the occasional deep gouges in metal—but they were fully functional. “Battle-tested” is the way the dealer had positioned them when attempting to close the negotiation. Having been around the block once or twice when it came to the mech game, Colonel Travis had known better than to take the word of his dealer and made sure his techs checked out all the units before agreeing to purchase them.

  These suits had served their previous pilots well, and Colonel Travis trusted they would do the same for his men. Each of them had cost only a fraction of what a new Mark VIII suit would have cost him. Even so, they had stretched his already-strained credit to its breaking point.

  The last year hadn’t been kind to his business. His unit, Bowie’s Marauders, had suffered from a string of low yield contracts that had brought him to the edge of bankruptcy. The current contract was his only chance of digging himself out of debt and getting the company back on its feet.

  If the contract with the colonists of Durin II wasn’t fulfilled, that would be the end of Bowie’s Marauders. Creditors were already lining up to seize his assets on Earth, and Colonel Travis would be lucky if he didn’t end up in jail for failing to pay his debts, bankruptcy or no. Everything he had, and everything his father had left him, was tied up in the merc company. It was the unchanging nature of war—since the days of the Romans, money had been the sinews of war. Or maybe the savagery of this line of work was precisely why it had the potential to be so profitable. Either way, Colonel Travis was at the point of desperation. He would do what he needed to do, even if it meant killing.

  Although he would never show anything other than a cool, steely exterior to his men, Travis was a wreck. So much was riding on this mission. It was a matter of life and death, feast or famine, profitability or financial ruin.

  Needing something to calm his nerves, Colonel Travis thought about lighting his cigar, then thought better of it. It was his last one. Who knew how long it would be before he got any more? Instead, he removed the pack of smokes he carried in the pocket of his uniform, slapped one onto his palm, and lit up as he stared at the three rows of Mark VI CASPers, wondering how he had gotten roped into this mission.

  Of course, the answer was simple: money. It always came down to the money.

  The folks on Durin II were a religious order. God only knew where their money came from, but they had enough to offer three times the contract fees that Bowie’s Marauders normally got. That alone might not have been enough to convince Colonel Travis to take the contract, given the circumstances, but they were offering even more than that.

 
Durin II was a mineral-rich planet, and the leader of the cult, or order, or whatever you wanted to call it, Father Valero, had added on a whopping twenty-five percent of all profits made by the colony over the next twenty years.

  Such an offer bordered on insanity and was nearly unheard of. It was simply too good for Colonel Travis to resist. The fact that the offer was too good bothered him on a marginal level, but he wasn’t in any position to look this gift horse in the mouth. The fact that the horse might be Trojan had occurred to him, but it wasn’t enough to sway his decision. This deal could set him up for life.

  The leader of the colony’s almost non-existent military/security force, Commander Neill, had seemed greatly relieved that Bowie’s Marauders had opted to take the contract. The security force was desperate, and Colonel Travis had thrown them a lifeline by accepting the deal. The commander had been present in the video conference with Father Valero when the contract was finalized, and the look of relief on his face was proof enough that these folks were in trouble. Travis’ company wasn’t the first they had approached with the offer. However, everyone else had turned them down. He knew he probably should have tried harder to find out why everyone else had said no to Father Valero’s offer, but the prospect of solvency made him overlook the obvious problems with the job.

  Travis took a long drag on his cigarette. A tiny bit of ash smoldered at the tip and fell to the ground. “Sir,” Lieutenant Blair stammered weakly, gesturing at his cigarette. “You can’t do that here.”

  Laughing, Colonel Travis blew a lungful of smoke at the young lieutenant. “I’m aware of the protocol. I just don’t care. For what I’m paying the captain of this ship, his deck monkeys can clean the air filters some more.”

  The tone of Colonel Travis’ voice made it clear that if the captain did try to make something of it, he would have far bigger issues to deal with. Lieutenant Blair, pale-faced, took a step back from where the colonel stood.

  “I want your staff to make sure each of these suits is fully loaded-up and combat-ready by the time we reach the surface of Durin II,” Colonel Travis ordered. “We’re going to hit the ground running when we get there. Time’s a wasting.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ll get it done,” Lieutenant Blair assured him.

  Colonel Travis knew that the lieutenant and his staff were pulling extra duty on this one. Normally, they would only need to worry about the unit’s two dozen Mark VIII CASPers. Now they had an additional three dozen Mark VI suits to deal with, too. They were overworked and underpaid, and morale was starting to suffer. But that would all change soon if things went according to plan. Besides, no matter how much Lieutenant Blair might complain and gripe about the extra work to his staff, he would never say anything to Colonel Travis’ face. Good thing too, because Colonel Travis had never tolerated insubordination.

  With thoughts of profit floating around in his brain, Colonel Travis took one final glance at the Mark VI suits before he tossed his cigarette onto the floor of the hold and ground it out with his boot. Lieutenant Blair gave a disapproving look but decided not to say anything. Instead, he went back to his work, readying the CASPers and contemplating the line between light and darkness.

  * * *

  Commander Neill backed away from the wreckage of the car. Its hood was a tangled mess of metal that looked like entrails ripped from the bowels of some fallen steampunk god. Spilled fluids steamed and pooled beneath the twisted frame.

  The driver’s door had been torn from the vehicle and tossed aside, where it now rested in the bushes at the side of the makeshift road. The car’s roof was folded inward from where something appeared to have jumped onto it. The driver’s compartment was caked with dried blood, and its forward windshield shattered. Pieces of broken glass were strewn about everywhere.

  Johnson’s corpse—or rather, what was left of it—lay in a crumpled heap next to the car. Most of the man’s face was simply gone, as were his right arm and leg. Tooth marks scarred his decaying flesh. The heat of the day hadn’t been kind to Johnson’s remains. The red-slicked cords of his exposed intestines were swollen, some even bloated to the point of rupturing, where they lay like purple serpents around his body.

  The only sign of Johnson’s partner, Page, was his right hand, which still clutched his pistol. The hand rotted in the floorboard of the car’s passenger seat. Only the gold wedding band identified it as belonging to Page and not Johnson.

  If the two men were able to kill any of the fiends that had attacked them, the other creatures had surely dragged the bodies of their kin away. The few spots of black blood on the car and along the road gave Commander Neill hope that they had managed to at least hurt some of the monsters.

  Neill heard Robbins vomiting up his lunch behind him. He held a hand over his own lips to prevent himself from doing the same. The whole scene reeked of rotting meat, blood, and emptied bowels. He cursed himself for the deaths of the two men, and cursed them for not being able to save themselves. Things were officially out of hand at this point, and he was out of his depth. This was supposed to be a comfy job running basic security for a religious order that had no known enemies, not a war zone where each excursion outside The Sanctuary’s walls resulted in bloodshed and the need for body bags.

  The monsters grew bolder with each passing day. Whatever initial fear of the colony’s technology they might have felt was clearly gone now. There had been no distress call from Johnson and Page. The monsters had hit them too fast and too viciously. Commander Neill took comfort in the fact that God had finally allowed Father Valero to find a merc company willing to take on a contract to defend their new, fledgling colony.

  The mercs were supposed to be arriving later today. The Commander prayed they would keep their intended schedule and not be late. The danger to the colony grew with each passing hour. If the monsters showed up at its gates, he knew that he and his handful of men wouldn’t be able to stop the things.

  “Commander Neill,” Dustin said as he helped Robbins to his feet. “I think we need to go. There’s nothing we can do for them.”

  Nodding, Commander Neill turned away from the grisly scene and walked to where Dustin and Robbins were waiting for him next to their own car. He moved past them to open their car’s passenger side door and slid into its cab. His trembling hand reached to activate its comm.

  “Central, this is Commander Neill,” he said over the comm. “Order the other patrols to return to The Sanctuary at once.”

  “Sir?” the confused voice of the on-duty officer answered.

  “I said order the other patrols in, Brooks,” Commander Neill growled. “It’s too dangerous out here for them now. We found Johnson and Page not ten miles from The Sanctuary, and they’re dead, ripped to pieces by those monsters we’ve been dealing with. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

  “Roger that, sir,” Brooks said after a moment. “Calling in the other patrols right now.”

  “I think that’s a good idea, sir,” Dustin said.

  “I didn’t ask you,” Commander Neill snapped and instantly felt bad for doing so, as Dustin took a step back from him.

  “Look, just get Robbins in the car and let’s get moving. The longer we stay out here, the more chance we have of ending up like them.” Commander Neill sighed as he gestured at the wreckage of the car across the road.

  Dustin started to help Robbins, but the younger man shoved him away.

  “I’m okay,” Robbins assured Dustin. “Seeing Johnson and Page like…that, just threw me a bit.”

  “No need to explain,” Dustin responding, gesturing to the blood-soaked carnage the monsters had left behind.

  Robbins climbed into the car’s rear behind Commander Neill, and Dustin took the driver’s seat. The car’s engine roared to life as Dustin got them moving. He guided the car around the wreckage and brought it about in the direction of The Sanctuary.

  Commander Neill pulled his automatic shotgun free from the floorboard and checked the weapon over to make sure it was ready for use.
It had been a while since he had fired one, yet the adage about old habits dying hard was true, and the weapon felt comfortable in his hands, as if it had been constructed with him in mind. “Look sharp, boys,” he told the others. “Those things could come at us from anywhere out here.”

  As the car raced along the makeshift road, Commander Neill wondered how everything had gone so wrong for The Sanctuary. Before Father Valero had chosen it for their home, every scan of the planet had indicated it was devoid of threatening life forms.

  When the religious order first arrived, Durin II had seemed like a paradise. It was so close to Earth in its atmosphere and ecosystem that it truly seemed like God had provided the perfect world for them to call home and make their own. Months had passed without trouble, until The Sanctuary’s mining operations got underway in the distant mountains on the horizon. Then everything had gone to hell, fast.

  Miners had started dying, their bodies found partially eaten and torn apart. Funerals became first a weekly occurrence, then a daily one. The miners were frightened, but bound by their contracts.

  Commander Neill had figured those first deaths were the work of some sort of predator the orbital scans had failed to recognize as a threat. As the numbers of deaths continued to increase, he began to revise his opinion. Despite his attempts to stop the flow of blood on Durin II, men kept dying.

  Eventually, the mining operation had to be shut down, and soon the miners would be pulled back into the safety of The Sanctuary. So far none of the monsters had dared to come at The Sanctuary’s walls, but Commander Neill knew it was only a matter of time before the fiends launched some sort of offensive at the place every human on Durin II called home. It was why he had petitioned Father Valero to seek outside help. Ordinarily, Father Valero would have refused to do such a thing, but the growing number of corpses convinced him otherwise.