Boss

Johnny Boss has what it takes to fight and win. His Ogre Fist Company is loaded with raw talent... and a few problem children.

Boss was originally published as a short story in the For a Few Credits More: More Stories from the Four Horsemen Universe (The Revelations Cycle Book 7).

JOHNNY Boss looked across the interior of the rented assault ship. The broker had spent an hour describing how reliable it was for a planetary assault, and Johnny hadn't argued. The fewer people who knew about this highly illegal insanity the better. Infiltrating an Ultra Max Prison had nothing to do with a planet in the traditional sense.

He wasn't sure if he had talked his XO, Gabriel Davenport, into the scheme or if it had been the other way around.

The facts of Johnny’s situation were as follows:

The last three contracts he secured for the Ogre Fist Company (OFC, LLC) had made 10% profit. Problem was, he needed 75% to pay back money he'd borrowed to repair and upgrade the CASPer mechas in his unit. He needed everyone functioning at full capacity on every mission. Davenport had disagreed, as always, and claimed it’d be smarter to get special upgrades for the best performers in the OFC.

“Everyone wins or everyone dies in this unit,” Johnny said.

Davenport snorted. “Idealists die first, Boss.”

“Tacticians lead from the rear,” Johnny retorted, holding the XO’s gaze.

A moment passed. “Not this tactician.” He shifted his weight, then tightened something on the cuirass of his armor.

Johnny settled against the bulkhead, his armor already tuned and synced.

He needed money; that was the first fact.

The second, and this was bad, Jessup Moran, one of his better mercs, had been arrested for murder. Some of his Ogres thought it was a frame job, and some thought Jessup had always been too quiet and had been storing up rage that came out at the wrong time. The thing was, Jessup wasn't the type to go rogue.

He was responsible.

Level headed.

Idealistic.

So why had he run off to Calista at exactly the time this mysterious, worth-more-money-than-a-battleship slate went missing? Johnny'd never seen a contract with this type of bounty attached to it — not for equipment recovery.

“This would’ve been easier if Jessup’d come to us in the first place,” Davenport said. “You need better control of the men.”

Johnny looked at him. “You’re my executive officer.”

“And you don’t let me do things the way they need to be done. We’re all killers, Johnny. If one of our mercs disrespects either of us, we need to land on them with both feet. You know I’m right.”

Johnny stared at the wall, concentrating on all the things that had to go right if they were to survive an assault on a space station.

“You let Jessup off the leash. He stole a slate worth all our lives plus the price of a new house back on Earth, then got arrested for murder. Now you and me and the rest of the OFC have to break him out. Don’t get me wrong, it’s gonna be a good time, but some of us are gonna die,” Davenport said.