Monster Hunter Memoir: Saints Read online

  Table of Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  BOOK ONE CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  BOOK TWO CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD

  MONSTER HUNTER MEMOIRS

  SAINTS

  Larry Correia & John Ringo

  Look for the final version on July 3, 2018

  Advance Reader Copy

  Unproofed

  Baen

  Monster Hunter Memoirs: Saints

  Larry Correia and John Ringo

  The No-Holds-Barred Final Entry in the Monster Hunter Memoirs Series from New York Times best-selling authors Larry Correia and John Ringo.

  "This is New Orleans." That mantra had rung in Chad Gadenier's ears since his first day working in the Big Easy. Everything was different in New Orleans. The food. The climate. The monsters. Even the shadowy and reprehensible MCB was different. But that's just the beginning.

  The real reason New Orleans is so different is a larval Great Old One growing day by day in power and just about ready to pop. If Chad can't convince "the powers that be" to get involved not only New Orleans but the entire world is going to fall under the power of the nastiest of nasties.

  Now on the outs with the US Government and in exile from his usual job of saving the world, Chad must rally the forces of light against the coming darkness. The problem is one guy with a sword and a sub-gun isn't going to solve this one.

  Fortunately, Chad's made a few friends over the years. And the Fey hate Old Ones as much as God's people, and they're not about to give up this world without a fight.

  If the Saints don't come marching in on this one . . . there won't be a Final Battle. There will be a final massacre.

  Now, where'd he put that number for the ditzy fey princess . . . ?

  IN THIS SERIES by LARRY CORREIA

  THE MONSTER HUNTER INTERNATIONAL SERIES:

  Monster Hunter International • Monster Hunter Vendetta • Monster Hunter Alpha • The Monster Hunters (compilation) • Monster Hunter Legion • Monster Hunter Nemesis • The Monster Hunter Files

  MONSTER HUNTER MEMOIRS (WITH JOHN RINGO):

  Grunge • Sinners • Saints

  MORE BAEN BOOKS by LARRY CORREIA

  THE SAGA OF THE FORGOTTEN WARRIOR: Son of the Black Sword

  THE GRIMNOIR CHRONICLES: Hard Magic • Spellbound • Warbound

  WITH MIKE KUPARI: Dead Six • Swords of Exodus

  MORE BAEN BOOKS by JOHN RINGO

  BLACK TIDE RISING: Under a Graveyard Sky • To Sail a Darkling Sea • Islands of Rage and Hope • Strands of Sorrow • Black Tide Rising (anthology, co-edited with Kelly Lockhart)

  TROY RISING: Live Free or Die • Citadel • The Hot Gate

  LEGACY OF THE ALDENATA: A Hymn Before Battle • Gust Front • When the Devil Dances • Hell’s Faire • The Hero (with Michael Z. Williamson) • Cally’s War (with Julie Cochrane) • Watch on the Rhine (with Tom Kratman) • Sister Time (with Julie Cochrane) • Yellow Eyes (with Tom Kratman) • Honor of the Clan (with Julie Cochrane) • Eye of the Storm

  COUNCIL WARS: There Will Be Dragons • Emerald Sea • Against the Tide • East of the Sun, West of the Moon

  INTO THE LOOKING GLASS: Into the Looking Glass • Vorpal Blade (with Travis S. Taylor) • Manxome Foe (with Travis S. Taylor) • Claws that Catch (with Travis S. Taylor)

  EMPIRE OF MAN (with David Weber): March Upcountry and March to the Sea (collected in Empire of Man) • March to the Stars and We Few (collected in Throne of Stars)

  SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES: Princess of Wands • Queen of Wands

  PALADIN OF SHADOWS: Ghost • Kildar • Choosers of the Slain • Unto the Breach • A Deeper Blue • Tiger by the Tail (with Ryan Sear)

  STANDALONE TITLES: The Last Centurion • Citizens (ed. with Brian M. Thomsen)

  To purchase these and all Baen Book titles in e-book format, please go to www.baen.com.

  Monster Hunter Memoirs: Saints

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Larry Correia and John Ringo

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4814-8307-0

  Cover art by Alan Pollack

  First printing, July 2018

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data t/k

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed in the United States of America

  As always

  For Captain Tamara Long, USAF

  Born: May 12, 1979

  Died: March 23, 2003, Afghanistan

  You fly with the angels now.

  * * *

  And

  Sir Terence David John “Terry” Pratchett, Kt, OBE

  April 28, 1948–March 12, 2015

  I hope the Reaper liked his portrayal.

  For what hope is there but the Care of the Reaper Man?

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  While I was writing these books, the great English fantasy author Terry Pratchett passed away.

  There have been many great words spoken about Terry. I cannot really add to them. I can simply say that his passing was a great loss to the written word, to SF/F and even to SF/F fandom. For various reasons, my reading (as noted in a previous acknowledgement) has dropped off sharply since becoming a professional author. Pratchett was my comfort read. He was always there for me when I needed to escape both the mundane world and the worlds in my head. Because his worlds were even more rich and textured. And oh-my-God were they funnier!

  If you have never read Pratchett, you’re wrong. My suggestion is pick up a copy of Guards! Guards! and start there. There are some of his works that are lesser (I detest Sourcery personally) but the same can be said of any author. (Ahem. Ghost. Ahem.) However, do start with his earlier works. Learn the background of the Witches (Equal Rites) and the Guards (the previously noted Guards! Guards!) And Death. Oh, my, Death. Only Pratchett could have made Death himself an approachable and even humorous figure. One of the best novels I’ve ever read is Reaper Man, followed closely by Hogfather. I’m sure that when the Reaper came for one of modern English’s greatest authors, he had a few words to say. Hopefully they were “liked your books.”

  If you have read Pratchett, I hope you like the occasional less-than-subtle homages in this book. I’m still trying to fit in the Librarian but I think that might be in a later book.

  —John Ringo

  * * *

  We wrote about how the MHI Memoirs novels came about in the previous acknowledgements. It isn’t often that you get surprised by a really successful author saying “Hey, I wrote a bunch of books in your universe, want them?”

  Th
e hard part for me was tweaking things to fit the rest of the Monster Hunter universe, while trying to not change John’s vision or voice. Editing is tough. To me, writing is easy and fun while editing is hard work. So I just want to say I couldn’t have done this project without the help of our excellent editor and publisher. So thank you, Toni Weisskopf, for putting up with us.

  And again, I want to thank John for creating the memoirs.

  I hope you guys enjoy this one.

  —Larry Correia

  PROLOGUE

  You know that feeling when the worst is over? When you realize you might just live through this? For anyone who’s reading this who isn’t a Hunter (and how the hell did you get your hands on this book?), say you’ve just been in a car wreck. Everything stops crashing and you realize you’re still alive. Uninjured even. Relief floods your body like a physical force.

  That was what we were feeling right before a slime and tentacle covered Rottweiler literally came through the fucking wall and tore into one of the drillers. It kept shaking the guy even though he’d dropped stone dead as soon as it bit him.

  I just opened up the spout on the fire hose and hit that Rottweiller bastard with a full-power blast of holy water. It began rolling around and shrieking.

  “We’re surrounded,” Sam Haven said from behind me.

  “Cut the water!” Milo yelled to Boss Shackleford as slime ghouls started piling through the nearest hole. “I need to go flame on!”

  “Fuck this!” I shut off the valve and dropped the hose. “Flame on, go hot!”

  I lifted my 203 and launched a grenade. The round hit a ghoul in the head and the explosion shredded the undead around him. But it wasn’t stopping the tide. The dark god’s tentacles picked them up like puppets on strings and put them right back in the fight.

  I realized I was surrounded by a nimbus of light. Looking over my shoulder, I saw that Father Ferguson had his cross raised above his head. The undead were quailing back from it, but they were still being driven forward. The Old One did not care about their pain.

  “That’s got them stalled,” the boss said. “Let’s rest in peace these sons of bitches!”

  I just ignored the M-16 part of the 203 and started laying waste with the grenade launcher. Sam was right next to me hitting the masses of undead as fast as he could reload.

  Then the light started to fail.

  I looked over my shoulder and Father Ferguson was sweating like a pig. “Father?”

  “It’s fighting me. It’s pushing back against the power of God. And it is quite powerful.”

  I recalled the fragmentary scroll I’d discovered, which had eventually led us to the truth about this monster, Even the power of Buddha was insufficient against the monster of the deeps. While Father Ferguson had a lot of faith, he wasn’t more powerful than an Old One. Even a larval one.

  “We’ve got to hold this rig ’til its dead!” All I knew at that point was we had to keep killing as long as it took. As long as we lasted. “We can’t give another inch!”

  The undead were pressing forward, a solid wall of red eyes and grasping hands. When they got under the range we could fire grenades, we switched to kinetic but 5.56 barely pisses off wights. The vamps had their fangs out. I looked down and there was a fucking Siamese cat with enormously long incisors. It looked like a baby saber-tooth tiger. I think it might have been a fucking cat vampire. A vampire cat. Was that even possible? That was just too wrong to begin to describe. It was even sort of cool looking.

  It was just at the edge of arming range for the 203 so I blew it away with a 40mm grenade.

  They were getting down to hand-to-hand range and I drew my sword from the sheath. Maybe this was the battle for which the Lord had returned me to this vale of tears. At least it would be a battle to tell Saint Pete about.

  As the undead closed in, I started servicing hands and arms first. Keep them from grabbing me, keep them from grabbing the Padre. Whenever I could, I slashed through the slimy cords tethered to their backs. Once severed from the Old One, the undead were quickly destroyed by the ward stone.

  But there were just too damned many of them.

  “We’re about to be overrun,” Boss Shackleford said, pulling out a grenade. “Seems like now’s a good time to see the other side.”

  As he said that, there was a sound like thunder. A low, deep, rumbling followed by the blast of a horn. It wasn’t your normal horn. It was a terrifying sound that struck right into the bowels and said, This is evil. Run.

  A massive gate opened in the floor of the warehouse and with a crackle of Fey energy, a Wild Hunt erupted in all its eldritch horror.

  How bad of a day are you having when a Wild Hunt showing up is a good thing?

  You might be wondering how I got myself into this predicament.

  I blame, well, myself. Fully. This was unquestionably entirely my fault.

  My name is Oliver Chadwick Gardenier. Call me Chad.

  This is my job. I’m a Monster Hunter.

  Note:

  This is the last of the three memoirs Albert found in the archives. They’d been in the section damaged during the Christmas Party incident of 1995, and lost ever since. I hadn’t even known these things existed until Al brought them to me. Heck, I was surprised Chad had ever written anything other than stuffy academic papers for Oxford or strongly worded letters to congressmen.

  What you are holding in your hands is the complete manuscript. The version we’ll eventually put in the library—that any regular newbie could just wander in and read— is going to have a few bits redacted for obvious reasons. Like secret identities, or any parts where the company might have kind of sort of accidentally broken the law and worked with PUFF-applicable entities, that sort of thing.

  Chad wrote these so that future Hunters could learn from those who came before. Except obviously he couldn’t tell the story to the end. I started writing an afterword myself, but I just couldn’t do it. It brought back too many memories and I ended up standing in front of the memorial wall for a long time, reading names. I’m going to show these memoirs to Earl Harbinger. He and Chad didn’t always get along, but I think he needs to be the one to finish the story. People need to know how it ended. Iron Hand deserves that.

  Milo Ivan Anderson

  Monster Hunter International

  Cazador, Alabama

  BOOK ONE

  Embrace the Suck

  CHAPTER 1

  In primus, I quit.

  Ray III had called. Happy Face was inbound. It was two days after Mardi Gras and I was finally going to get some reinforcements. I told them I’d be in the office and the door was open.

  I was in Trevor’s office behind the desk, pushing all the paperwork involved in a Class Four event, when Earl walked in with a really closed expression. Sometimes you gotta do another contract even when you know the shit was probably going to hit the fan. Right? MCB’s Special Response Team was in town. How bad could it be?

  I was the only survivor of Team Hoodoo. Every other member had died on Fat Tuesday, along with all the regular field agents of MCB, New Orleans, and most of the Sheriff’s Special Investigations Unit. That’s how bad.

  Team Happy Face, Earl’s team, heavy hitters for Monster Hunter International, the MHI elite, our designated SWAT, had been chasing down a pishtaco in Peru while the rest of my team had their skulls cracked and their brains sucked out. When New Orleans was already out of control and it was Mardi Gras, they’d taken a contract out of the country and left us hanging. Earl should have known. He should have been there.

  I’d told Agent Myers, regarding the incident that caused him to leave MHI, “Sometimes, shit happens in this business. Get over it.”

  Those words burned now. Shit had happened. Generally, I got over it. I’d blown my best friend’s head off to save him a long, lingering, death. New Orleans had seen a bunch of Hunters come and go, most of them dead. I was at the point of not bothering to learn their names.

  But Fat Tuesday had been a
bit much. I was done. With some help, a lot of help really, I’d handled all the arrangements. Remi, my “gentleman’s gentleman,” had handled shipping the urns of the recently deceased to their families—those that had them. Trevor’s and Fred’s were sitting up on a shelf in the team shack. Madam Courtney had arranged the funeral procession. Most of the time I’d been writing reports and filling out PUFF paperwork.

  Then there was the government. The Monster Control Bureau agents I’d worked with for a year were dead. We’d fought together, worked together, partied together in a way that was unique for both MHI and MCB. I understood why they did what they did. I didn’t like it. They didn’t like it. Nobody liked it. It was brutal and awful…and it was necessary. New Orleans was the test case for when the First Reason no longer worked.

  I’d had one meeting with the incoming MCB replacements. That hadn’t gone well.