Or Die Alone - Remastered

Boyd ignored the derogatory nickname, pressing the man for more details.

"Try to focus. So, this Syndicate snatched the weapon shipment? I need to get that hardware back. They can't have had time to move the goods off-world yet, not when they're so hot, so how are they planning to fence them? Do you know if they have any buyers lined up?"

"No, you're missing the big picture," the informant replied with a bitter chuckle. "Thought you Ninnies were supposed to be smart? The Syndicate wants control over the colony, completely. They want to drive the pencil pushers out and claim Hades as sovereign territory. Billions of credits worth of resources get extracted from this dust bowl every year, and the Syndicate wants control over that wealth. If they can direct the cash flow, then they'll become more than just petty criminals. They'd have the resources to stake their claim, and to defend it, from both corporate security and the UNN if need be. All of the infrastructure they need is already here."

"Why would they try to take over the planet?" Boyd asked, his brow furrowing behind his goggles. "Why piss off the corp? Why rock the boat? All the intel we have suggests that the criminal organizations on Hades have an unspoken truce with the corp - one that benefits them both. What changed?"

"They want the whole pie, not just whatever slice the suits are willing to give up to keep the peace. This colony is remote enough and poorly defended enough to give them a shot. Not everyone living here is a criminal, of course. There are plenty of families here, people who came to Hades for work, for a shot at a new life. The Syndicate is telling them that the UNN can't protect them, and that they're the only ones who can. In a way, they've already proven it. The Navy can't even keep their own freighters safe out here. They're banking on you not responding, banking that you won't divert fleets from the war effort to put down an insurrection on some shitty backwater nobody gives a fuck about."

"If nobody gave a fuck, I wouldn't be here sweating my balls off," Boyd grumbled. "It's a full-blown insurrection, then? The situation is worse than I thought - much worse. If that's all you have to tell me, then I need to get this intel off-world as quickly as possible. The UNN needs to be warned."

"Yeah, absolutely," the man replied with a nod. "You know everything I know. You got a ship in orbit, anything like that? Anyone to back you up? I'm not a big player - I can't get a message out without some gangster or suit picking up on it."

"No, I went undercover on one of the colony ships," Boyd replied. His hand slowly wandered inside his duster, reaching for the sidearm on his hip. "But why would you need to know that?"

The informant's demeanor changed abruptly. Gone was the anxious, pacing man, his darting eyes now fixed confidently on Boyd.

"Thank you, Agent Boyd. That was all we needed to know."

Boyd pulled his handgun from its holster with practiced speed, but too late, he heard the sound of the door panel sliding open behind him. Something hit him in the back of the head, and his world went dark.

***

Boyd awoke to darkness. His mask and goggles had been removed, and he could feel coarse fabric brushing against his face as he struggled to turn his head. There was a throbbing pain in his temples, like someone was driving an ice pick into his skull, and he could taste blood on his tongue. When he tried to move his hands, he found that they were bound behind his back, a metal chair creaking beneath him. He wasn't dead, then. At least, not yet...

The burlap sack was unceremoniously torn from his head, the light blinding him, Boyd blinking to clear his vision as the dark shapes that surrounded him slowly came into focus. He found himself in a spacious building with a high ceiling - some kind of warehouse, maybe - filled with rows of shelves that were packed with nondescript crates and containers. He was tied to a folding chair in the middle of a concrete floor, surrounded by five men. Three of them were wearing full-faced helmets with opaque visors - the same kind worn by Marines. Military surplus, maybe? Their uniforms identified them as members of the colony's PDF, and they were all holding XMRs, likely the same rifles stolen from the freighter. The magnetic coils on their barrels made them easy to identify.

One of the remaining men was immediately recognizable as his would-be informant, producing a butterfly knife from his pocket, playing with it as he began to circle the chair. Boyd turned his head to follow him, the rest of the group looking on in silence. The last stranger was standing a few feet further away, his hands buried in his pockets. He was an older man, and he was smartly dressed, sporting a tailored suit in a shade of slate grey that matched the streaks in his thinning hair. He wore a pair of expensive loafers, and there was a glint of gold on his cufflinks. This was a mob boss if Boyd had ever seen one - his rap sheet might as well have been tattooed on his forehead. He scrutinized Boyd with a pair of cold, blue eyes, as sharp as razors despite the crow's feet at their corners. His calm, commanding demeanor made him far more threatening than the fool swinging the knife around.

"I gotta be honest, boss," the informant began as he circled back into view. "When you said you wanted to bait a Ninnie to Hades and take him alive, I thought you'd lost the plot, but here we are." He stopped in front of Boyd, then brought the tip of the blade close to his face, seeming annoyed when he didn't flinch away. "We have our Ninnie, along with enough hardware to take out an entire landing force of UNN dropships. If they park a carrier in orbit, they won't be able to get a single boot on the ground."

"You kept me alive," Boyd groaned, his headache still lingering. "Why? What do you want with a UNNI agent?"

The informant stepped aside, giving him a view of the man in the suit. He had produced a fat cigar from his pocket and was shielding a lighter as he lit it, taking a few quick puffs to get it going. He exhaled a cloud of smoke, then cleared his throat, his voice a gruff baritone as he began to speak.

"As my colleague has already alluded to, Mister Boyd, I brought you here for a purpose. Cooperate, and no further harm will befall you. Everything that you have been told so far is true. I represent the Syndicate, and we aim to take control of Hades."

"You can't steal an entire planet," Boyd replied incredulously. "It's impossible. You'd have to be very poorly informed to think that you could pull it off."

"I think you'll soon come to realize that you are the one who is poorly informed, Agent," the man replied as he took another leisurely puff from his cigar. "Ironic, considering that HUMINT is your organization's specialty. I'd have something to say about the UN wasting tax credits, but issues like taxation aren't going to be a concern of ours for much longer."

"If you really try this - if you try to take control of Hades and cut the colony off from the rest of human space - you're going to have a lot more than one carrier breathing down your neck," Boyd spat.

The man took a few steps closer to the chair, exhaling a cloud of acrid smoke in his direction, Boyd fighting the urge to cough.

"You don't get where I am today by being risk-averse, Mister Boyd," he continued as he tapped his cigar to dislodge a small shower of ash. "How's that little war of yours going, Agent? Things aren't looking too good, I hear. The fleet is spread thin all across the frontier, without enough ships or men to protect every colony, and a Bug fleet could drop out of superlight almost anywhere. That's why the weapon shipment was coming in to begin with - because in the event of an invasion, you'd have to rely on our good friends in the PDF to hold the line until the boys in blue could arrive to save the day," he said with a gesture to his armed goons. "It doesn't instill a great deal of confidence."

"Do you realize how many people you'd be putting in danger by diverting resources from the war effort for this nonsense?" Boyd demanded.

"I don't think you can spare a fleet," the boss continued, ignoring his question. "Ask yourself - what's a higher priority for the Admiralty? Helping some corrupt corp maintain control over a backwater like Hades with less than a million inhabitants, or denying the Bugs a foothold in human space? The Navy can't be everywhere at once, and the choice is an obvious one."

He became stern suddenly, his weathered features wrinkling into a frown.

"You know as well as I do, Ninnie, that the UNN would expend more resources maintaining their tenuous hold over uninhabited wastelands like Kruger III or Chara II than they would defending this strategically insignificant colony. I am not a dishonest man," he continued, bringing the cigar to his lips again. "The reasons my colleagues and I want control over this planet are purely selfish and monetary in nature, but when I say that the Navy won't protect the people of Hades, I tell no lie. The Syndicate, on the other hand, defends its assets. The colonists are an asset to us, and we will defend them against any and all threats. The Bugs, the corp, the Navy - it doesn't matter. Our price might be economic domination over the planet, sure, but that control is already exerted by ExoCorp and its subsidiaries. The locals won't even notice the change in management."

The man leaned down to eye level with Boyd, taking another long drag from his cigar.

"What do the people of Hades have to lose by cooperating with us? The protection of a UNN fleet that wouldn't arrive for weeks if they called for help? The employ of a corporation that cares even less about their welfare than smugglers and pirates? Nobody is being hustled or coerced here," he added, spreading his arms. "We merely offered the people of Hades a choice, and most of them have already made it."

"So, not everyone is on board with your scheme?" Boyd asked with a smirk. The boss stood again, brushing a spec of ash off his lapel, his confidence faltering a little.

"Not as of yet, but that's where you come in."

"What can you possibly expect me to do?" Boyd scoffed.

"We can't strong-arm the holdouts," the man replied, watching a wisp of smoke rise lazily towards the ceiling. "Coercion would defeat the purpose of everything we've tried to accomplish on Hades, but what we can do is convince them. Or rather, you can convince them," he added with a gesture to Boyd. "What I have sitting before me is living proof of the UNN's incompetence - of their inability to maintain control of Hades. We baited a Ninnie and trapped him like it was nothing, we made a mockery of the Admiralty's most feared operatives. If those who are still on the fence hear about the UNN's disregard for Hades from the horse's mouth, so to speak, it would help tear down the final barrier that's preventing us from taking full control of the colony."

"You're asking me to be...what, exactly?" Boyd asked as he shifted his weight uncomfortably on the metal seat. "Your poster boy? A mouthpiece for mobsters? You have to know that I won't cooperate."

"Oh, but you will," the man replied with a sinister smile. "Because if you don't, I'll just put a railgun slug through your skull and dump your body in the desert. The only people who even know you're here are your handlers in UNNI. We'll just repeat the process with the next fool they send to investigate until we find someone who's more amenable. I'm sure your replacement would come around if he heard about what happened to his predecessor," he added with a chuckle. "A little video of your grisly execution could prove to be very persuasive."

"You're going to get the same answer from the next guy, and the next," Boyd protested.

"Does it surprise you that we know UNNI operating procedures? Until recently, we had a man in the Admiralty, someone by the name of Rawling. I'm sure this isn't news to you. While you did a good job of covering up the scandal, Rawling did an equally good job of covering his tracks. Evidently, you were never able to tie him back to us. We know that standard procedure requires the deployment of another agent to investigate the disappearance of the first. Can you be sure that they'll be as stubborn as you are? Would you stake your life on it?"

Boyd had to admit, the Syndicate had really tied this affair up in a neat little bow. If the organization had the support of the population and an inside knowledge of how the UNN and its intelligence branch operated, then every agent that was sent here would be walking into the same trap. Only Boyd could stop this, and until the Syndicate changed the minds of the people who were still resisting them, there was still time. He had to get the information he had learned off-planet by any means necessary. If his captors were monologuing like this, then they were confident that he was screwed, but he wasn't out of the fight just yet.

The weight of his handgun was absent from his hip, and his duster was gone, his captors having stripped him down to his UNNI-issue environment suit. The grey-blue garment was skin-tight, snaking wires and tubes that resembled veins crisscrossing its surface, connecting small electronic devices and life support systems that were embedded beneath its surface. He had been stripped of his weapons and equipment, but they must not be aware of the suit's capabilities. It was highly classified tech - nobody outside of the organization would know how it worked, and it would just look like a fancy pressure suit to the uninitiated. Even the traitorous Admiral Rawling wouldn't have been privy to its secrets. It was too early to play his hand, however. He had to wait for the perfect moment to strike.

"It's not too late to back out," Boyd began. "I'm authorized to make deals on behalf of the UNN. This situation hasn't yet escalated to the point that we can't come to a solution that works for everyone."

His captors began to laugh, the PDF goons included, their voices taking on a robotic timbre through their helmet speakers.

"What makes you think you're in a position to make deals, Ninnie?" the portly informant chuckled, the butterfly knife dancing between his deft fingers. "You're drifting with a dead drive. The options are to do as we say, or like the boss said, we're gonna bury you in a shallow hole in the scrublands."

"Then, I guess we're done talking here," Boyd replied with a sigh of resignation. "I won't help you. Do whatever you need to do."

"I respect your resilience, Mister Boyd," the man in the suit said. He took one last puff from his cigar, then tossed it to the concrete, putting it out beneath his loafer. "Your loyalty is admirable, but those you serve would never extend the same courtesy to you. You're a deniable asset, one that they'll claim never even existed once you're gone. Such is the fate of UNNI's fallen heroes."

"Comes with the territory," Boyd replied.

The boss scrutinized him, searching for some show of fear or apprehension, but found none.

"In a few moments, I'm going to ask these fine PDF militiamen to take you out to a truck, zip you up in a body bag, and then dump you down an abandoned mine shaft out in the desert. Maybe the fall will kill you, or maybe they'll be merciful enough to put a few slugs in you first, but your sacrifice will serve no purpose. You'll be dying for nothing. One of you is going to crack," he added, one corner of his mouth lifting in a sneer. "One of you will have weaker resolve than the last, and if I have to go through half a dozen agents to find him, that's what I'll do."

"That's it?" Boyd asked, tilting his head. "You're not going to offer me a bribe - a seat on your pirate council? Not going to torture me for good measure?"

"I am a businessman first and foremost," the man replied with a dismissive wave of his hand, the gold rings that adorned his fingers glinting. "I have no interest in inflicting undue suffering, and your type are too opinionated for bribes. Besides, I know that you won't break under torture - not someone with your level of security clearance. I've heard enough," he added, turning to make his way back towards an open door at the far end of the warehouse. "Dispose of him."

The man wielding the butterfly knife stepped forward, his lips peeling back in an ugly grin. At the informant's direction, two of the PDF troopers approached and lay their hands on Boyd's shoulders, the third waiting nearby with his rifle at the ready.

"In a way, I'm glad you refused the boss's offer," the informant said, flicking his knife closed with a click before stowing it in his pocket. "I'm gonna enjoy this. Take him to the truck!" he barked, turning his attention back to the troopers. They hooked their hands beneath Boyd's arms, hauling him out of his seat, his hands still tied behind his back.

"I have just three words for you," Boyd grunted.

"Oh yeah?" the informant asked, cocking an eyebrow. "What's that? Don't kill me?"

"Parakeet, hyphenated, Monroe."

There was a brilliant flash of light accompanied by a shower of bright sparks, the high-density battery packs that ran down the suit's spine releasing a two-hundred-milliamp electrical current into its lining. The two troopers who had been holding him up tensed for a moment, going as stiff as statues, then toppled to lie motionless on the concrete floor. Wisps of smoke rose from beneath their helmets, their nervous systems fried by the electrical discharge, their hearts stopped dead in their chests. The ropes that bound his hands burned away, turned to ash by the intense heat, Boyd ducking low as he charged towards the remaining soldier. The suit would need time to recharge before it could deliver another shock like that - he'd have to fight his way out of here the old-fashioned way.

The militiaman was already raising his XMR, preparing to fire from the hip, but his complacency had cost him valuable seconds. Boyd crashed into him like a linebacker, knocking him to the ground, his helmet bouncing off the concrete. The man struggled to point the barrel of the weapon at Boyd, but the agent pinned it against his chest with his weight, the two grappling on the floor. The trooper managed to get his finger around the trigger, Boyd angling the rifle away as it let off a burst of gunfire, the deafening crack ringing his ears. The magnetically-accelerated projectiles blew through a crate off to their right, showering the pair in an explosion of packing peanuts.

The goon managed to get a hit in, Boyd feeling his lip split open as the butt of the rifle connected with his face, but the man didn't have enough leverage to stun him. The agent planted a boot beside the trooper, then reached for his ankle. If the mobsters had used a metal detector to scan him for weapons or had simply frisked him, they would have missed the concealed ceramic blade. He drew the push-knife, plunging it beneath the man's helmet and into his throat. His adversary gurgled for a moment, dark arterial blood forming a spreading pool on the concrete beneath him, then went limp. Boyd tore the rifle from the man's lifeless hands, slicing through its sling with his blade, blood from his split lip dripping down his chin.

As the ringing in his ears began to abate, he heard the sound of echoing footsteps, looking up to see the informant fleeing towards the exit. For all his bluster, the man was smart enough to know not to bring a knife to a gunfight. Boyd reached behind his head for the hood that was connected to his environment suit, pulling it over his face, the garment creating an airtight seal around his neck. The flexible visor slid over his eyes, the built-in hearing protection activating to filter out the ambient noise in the warehouse. He dropped to a knee, taking aim, the recoil kicking the rifle into his shoulder as he fired. The hypervelocity slug caught his target between the shoulder blades, throwing him off his feet, gore spraying as it blew a fist-sized exit wound in his chest.