The trouble with Mercenaries

I've said it before. Mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, guns for hire, what ever you want to call them, have their place. People willing to take money in exchange for fighting under someone else's flag is a tradition as old as history. They are not a new phenomena. They're not even an uncommon phenomena. During the war, the Indies made extensive use of mercenary units since it was often easier to higher a complete unit than to try and raise one of your own.

There were multiple problems with mercenary units, of course. There have been instances of them turning on their employers, executing a coup d'état and taking over whatever hapless colony had hired them. There were instances of mercs being summarily executed by the local army after an operation was over, obviating the need to pay them for their services. There were examples of a victorious adversary treating the mercs like criminals or terrorists, quite unlike the regular military. Or, in some cases, the mercs changing sides in the middle of a fight because they got a better offer.

Since the war, the mercenary business had seen a rather precipitous decline. Mostly, they'd gone to more legitimate or small scale prospects. With the Alliance's tendency to outsource security on a lot of Border and Rim colonies, there were quite a few units that had converted from Military to "Security." The results weren't always stellar.

Then there were the units that were hired by private interests for internal security, body guard duty, or whatever else they were being paid for. Again, not always with with spectacular results. Or, perhaps, not always spectacularly good results.

We'd had mercenary units on Hale's before. I hadn't liked it then either. Each time, whoever hired them hadn't done so to augment our existing Militia. They'd done it for their own reasons and, while the results hadn't always been bad, they had always caused friction between the mercs and the local militia and law enforcement unit.

Seems "Ask the local authorities first" never crossed their minds.

I had a fair idea who'd hired the unit on the ground now, which I would confirm one way or another in short order. But their presence complicated things. While they'd but a few impressive dents in Ravish, they'd also attracted the attention of the Alliance regulars.

That, I did not need.

I'd already gotten a message off to Colonel Silvermane that the mercs weren't ours. They weren't here in any sort of official 'with the blessing of the Colonial Government' capacity. If it came down to a confrontation between the mercenaries and the Marines, our Militia would stay the hell out of it.

I hoped it didn't. But, from my perspective, the mercs were more trouble than they were worth. If it came to a fight with Ravish, they'd be in the thick of it, giving the Milita more trouble getting a clean line on their target. If it came to a confrontation with the Alliance, I could just hope whoever Silvermane had on the ground wasn't of a mind to ignore collateral damage and just deal with the issue.

Whoever hired them would get a talking to. But that could wait. I had more pressing matters to hand.