Monster Hunter Legion-eARC

Monster Hunter Legion - eARC

Larry Correia

Advance Reader Copy

Unproofed

Baen

Chapter 1

Most of the things Las Vegas has to offer to its hordes of tourists don’t hold much appeal for me. Having been an accountant, I am way too good at math to enjoy gambling. As a former bouncer, I’m not big on the party scene. Strip clubs? Happily married to a total babe who could kill me from a mile away with her sniper rifle, so no thanks. Sure, there were plenty of other things to do in Vegas, like overpriced shows, taking your picture with Elvis, and that sort of thing, but as a professional Monster Hunter, I’m pretty jaded when it comes to what constitutes
excitement
.

However, there is one thing in Las Vegas’s extensive, sparkling arsenal of tourist-from-their-dollars-separating weapons that I’m absolutely powerless to resist, and that is a kick ass buffet.

The flight in had taken forever and I was starving. So first thing upon arrival at our hotel, I had called up every other hungry member of Monster Hunter International that I could find and we’d set out to conquer the unsuspecting hotel buffet.

This was a business trip. Normally,
business
for us
meant that there was some horrible supernatural thing in dire need of a good killing, but not this time. Las Vegas was the site of the first annual
International Conference of Monster Hunting Professionals.

The conference was a big deal. Sponsored by a wealthy organizer, the ultra-secret ICMHP 1 had been billed as an opportunity to network with other informed individuals, check out the latest gear and equipment, and listen to experts. There had never been an event like this before. Every member of MHI that could get away from work had come, and though we were the biggest company in the business, we were still outnumbered five to one by representatives of every other rival monster hunting company in the world. In addition, there were representatives from all of the legitimate supernaturally attuned organization and government agencies, all come together here to learn from each other. Despite just oozing with all of that professionalism, we had all taken to calling it
Ick-mip
for short.

The conference started tomorrow morning, which for most of the Hunters meant a chance to party or gamble the night away, but for me, it was buffet time. As a very large, high-intensity-lifestyle kind of guy, I burn a lot of calories. I may lose at the gambling table, but I never lose at the dinner table. Plus the food at the upscale establishments tended to be above average, and since Hunters made good money, my days of eating at the dumpy places were over. Besides, all of the ICMHP guests were staying at the new, ultra-swanky, not even totally open to the public yet, Last Dragon hotel. The Last Dragon’s buffet had actual master chefs from around the world, and was supposed to be one of the best new places to eat in town. The internet had said so, and who was I to argue with the Zagat survey?

My team had just gotten back from a grueling mission and most had simply wanted to crash. I’d only been able to coerce Trip Jones and Holly Newcastle into coming, though Holly had complained about watching her figure and said that she was going to
take it easy
. When it came to food I had no concept of easy. Despite his aversion to being around humans, Edward had been tempted by my wild tales of hundreds of yards of glorious meats, none of which needed to be chased down and stabbed to death first. However, his older brother and chieftain, Skippy, had forbidden it. Turns out that it is really difficult to eat in public with a face mask on. It is tough being an orc.

There had been an incoming flight due shortly with a couple of Newbies onboard, and Milo Anderson had volunteered to stay and be their ride to the hotel. Earl Harbinger had said these particular recruits were especially talented, so they’d earned the field trip. Lucky them. My Newbie field trip had been storming the
Antoine-Henri
and fighting wights.

Last but not least for my team, my lovely wife Julie had said she was tired, encouraged me not to hurt myself at dinner—she knows how I can sometimes be over-enthusiastic for things that come in serving sizes larger than my head—and then went to bed early. She had been feeling a little under the weather during the trip.

After ditching our luggage, which mostly consisted of armor and guns, we’d snagged a few of the other Hunters staying on our floor. Most of the floors of the Last Dragon hotel were still in the finishing stages of construction, so the place hadn’t even had its grand opening yet. Officially, the hotel wasn’t ready yet, but since ICMHP was supposed to be secret anyway, it was a perfect place for several hundred Hunters to stay, and the ICMHP organizers had even gotten us a killer discount. ICMHP would be the first ever event for its conference center, but luckily, the casino, shops, and—most important—restaurants were already open to the public.

“Wow…” Trip whistled as he looked down the endless food trays of the top-rated all-you-can-eat place on Earth. “That’s one impressive spread.” It really was. Lots of everything, cuisine from a few dozen cultures, all of it beautiful, and the smells…They were absolutely mouthwatering, and that wasn’t just because I’d spent most of the day squeezed into a helicopter smelling avgas fumes and gun smoke, this place was awesome. “This is how Vikings eat in Viking heaven.”

“Valhalla,” Holly pointed out. “Viking heaven is called Valhalla.”

“I know that,” Trip answered. “Surprised you do, though.” It was a lame attempt at teasing her, since everyone present knew that Holly just worked the dumb blonde angle to manipulate people who didn’t know her well enough to know that she was an encyclopedia of crafty monster eradication.

“Sure I do. I had this really sexy valkyrie costume one Halloween,” Holly answered, completely deadpan. “The chain-mail bikini was
so
hot…Though it did chafe.” And then she started to describe it in graphic detail. Watching the always gentlemanly and borderline prudish Trip get too embarrassed to respond coherently was always fun for the whole team, but luckily for him, the hostess called for Owen Pitt and party of ten, and seated us before it got too bad.

I’d managed to gather several other Hunters who hadn’t been too distracted by the pretty flashing lights and promises of loose slots to forget dinner. The Haight brothers were from Team Haven out of Colorado, and though Sam was dead and Priest had been promoted to be their leader, they would always be called Team Haven. Cooper and my brother-in-law, Nate Shackleford, were from Paxton’s team out of Seattle. Gregorius was from Atlanta, and since the last time I’d seen him he’d decided to ditch his old military grooming standards, and I had to compliment him on the quality of his lumberjack beard. My old buddy Albert Lee was stationed at headquarters in Alabama and he was always fun to hang out with. VanZant was a team lead out of California and Green was one of his guys. I’d worked with all of them at one point or another, either from Newbie training, battling Lord Machado’s minions at DeSoya caverns, or fighting under the alien insect branches of the Arbmunep.

The Last Dragon’s buffet was in a large, circular glass enclosure inside the casino’s shopping mall. The whole place slowly rotated so that the view out the windows was constantly changing murals, gardens, and fountains. The diners got to watch as one story below us, hundreds of consumers blew all their money on overpriced merchandise. It was kind of neat if you liked people-watching as much as I did. Inside the restaurant there were even ice sculptures and five different kinds of chocolate fountains.

After heaping food on our plates, we took our seats. It had been a while since I’d seen most of these particular coworkers, and in short order my arm had been twisted into talking about the case we had wrapped up just that morning. In fact, my team hadn’t even thought we’d be able to attend ICMHP at all, because we’d spent two fruitless weeks trolling the crappiest parts of Jackson, Mississippi looking for our monster. It was January, and we’d gotten rained on the whole time. Bagging that aswang at the last minute had been a stroke of luck, giving us an excuse to pack right up and hightail it to Las Vegas where we could be much warmer and dry for a bit. I like telling stories, but whenever I started exaggerating to make the monster even more disgusting, Trip would correct me. He always was good at keeping me honest. Besides, since the damned thing had been an imported mutant Filipino vampire with a
proboscis
, you didn’t need much hyperbole to make it gross. This was not the sort of dinner conversation that you would have with polite company.

MHI tended to be a noisy, boisterous, fun-loving bunch, and as you filled them with good food and drinks they just got louder. Soon, everyone else was cracking jokes and telling stories too, interrupted only by the constant trips back for more food. Green was skinny, and VanZant’s nickname was “the hobbit” because he was maybe a stocky five foot four, but even our small Hunters had appetites, not to mention that Gregorius was about my size, so we were putting a hurting on the place. However, as Nate pointed out, at seventy bucks a head, we were darn well going to get our money’s worth. Luckily, they had seated us far enough to the side that we weren’t bugging the other, more normal patrons.

They had stuck together a few tables into a long rectangle for us. I was sitting at one end across from Green and next to VanZant. Green was bald, hyperactive, and had been a San Diego police officer before MHI had recruited him. I’d accidentally broken his collarbone back in Newbie training, but he’d never seemed to hold a grudge about it. Green was a scrapper, one of those men that wasn’t scared of anything, so getting severely injured in training was no biggie. I’d lost count of how many beers he had drunk, and apparently he’d already hit the minibar in his room before coming down. The waitress just kept the refills coming, because since we had to walk past slot machines to get out of this place, the management probably wanted their guests as incapable of making good decisions as possible. His boss, VanZant, just frowned as Green got into a noisy argument with bomb expert Cooper over the proper use of hand grenades.

VanZant was a courteous man, so he waited until there were several different conversations going on before leaning in to ask me quietly, “So how’s Julie doing?”

The question was understandable. VanZant had been with Julie when she’d been injured during Hood’s attack on our compound. He was one of the few who knew something about how she had survived, her lacerations sealed by the lingering magic of the Guardian, leaving only black lines where there had once been mortal wounds. “Pretty good. Mostly we don’t think about it.” Which wasn’t true at all. The thought that she had been physically changed by magic from the Old Ones was always there, gnawing away at our peace of mind, but there wasn’t much we could do about it.

VanZant’s concern was evident. “Has there been any…change?”

He meant to the supernatural marks on my wife’s neck and abdomen, reminders of things that should have killed her. “Still the same as before.” The marks had saved Julie’s life three times, from Koriniha’s knife, a flying undead’s claws, and even the fangs of her vampire mother, but there was no such thing as
gifts
when the Old Ones were concerned. Everything from them came with a price. We just didn’t know what that price was going to be yet. “We’ve been trying to find more information about the Guardian, who he was, where the magic comes from, maybe even how to get rid of it, but no luck yet.”

One of the Haights was telling a story about parking his truck on a blood fiend when the hostess led another big group into our section of the restaurant. There were a dozen of them, they were all male and all dressed the same, in matching tan cargo pants and tight black polo shirts that showed off that they all really liked to lift weights. Every last one of the newcomers was casually scanning the room for threats. It was obvious that the half of them that couldn’t sit with their backs to the wall were made slightly uncomfortable by that fact.