by A. K. DuBoff
“To each their own, I guess.” Kira said.
The shuttle set down behind a rock outcropping a kilometer from the capital building. Kira and the team moved to the back of the shuttle and checked their stealth armor.
“Everyone ready?” she asked.
“All set,” the three soldiers acknowledged.
“And you have the…?” Kira prompted.
They all patted compartments on their hips containing a sedative.
“We won’t need it, but we’re ready,” Nia assured her.
Kira secured the shuttle while the others scrambled up the side of the surrounding rock outcropping to get eyes on their destination. She joined them on the lip of the ridge. “How’s it look?”
“Clear, as far as we can tell,” Ari replied.
“Then let’s go,” Kira ordered.
The four soldiers loped across the harsh landscape, keeping to the shadows of rocks as much as possible. Stealth armor or not, there was no need to run right out in the open in case the enemy had some means of spotting them.
They covered the single kilometer quickly. As they neared their destination of the back-entry door, Kira motioned for Ari to take point and scope out their final approach. She waited with the other two members of the team behind a boulder.
“Two guards are posted outside,” Ari reported into his comm. “There’s cover on the approach. We should be able to get close enough for a sonic blast.”
“Do it. We’ll cover you.”
Ari slipped ahead while Kira jogged along several meters back with Nia and Kyle to either side. They darted to the various rocks along the way.
When he reached the boulder closest to the door, Ari took cover and aimed his multi-handgun at the two guards, set to sonic stun. He fired.
The two guards dropped to the ground.
Kira ran forward with her weapon drawn in case additional guards emerged from the building. “Okay, time to find out if that code Ellen gave us for the door works.” She located the access panel and keyed in the code.
Nothing happened.
She tried it again. A red light illuminated.
Shite! She glanced at the other members of the team. “Kyle, think you can crack it?”
He hesitated. “Sure, but what does it mean that this information was wrong?”
More than Kira wanted to admit. “We proceed with the mission.”
“All right.” Kyle jogged forward, drawing the compact device he used to interface with computer terminals. He synced with the keypad.
“I don’t like this,” Ari muttered under his breath.
“This reeks of a trap,” Nia added. She tightened her grip on her weapon.
“We’ll fight our way in if we have to.” Kira pressed her back against the side wall, ready for action.
“Almost got it,” Kyle said. “There!”
The light on the access panel turned blue, and the bolt unlocked with a clang. Kyle swung the door open with one hand while aiming his weapon inside with the other.
Ari ran up behind him, staring down his sights. “Looks clear,” he reported, then paused. “Did you hear that?”
Kira listened. “Shite, they’re coming!”
CHAPTER 19
Kira motioned her team backward around the cover of the building. “Hold your fire.”
She listened to the swift footfalls in the hallway, halting just inside the door.
“Do any of you have line of sight on the enemy?” she asked her team over their comms.
“Negative,” Ari replied. “I can see where they found cover, though.”
Fok, there’s no way to handle this without making a scene. She took a deep breath. “Toss in a flash grenade.”
Kyle glanced at her. “That will give away our posi—”
“Do it!”
Ari pulled out a grenade from his belt and activated it. “Not like they don’t already know we’re here.” He tossed it inside.
The hallway was bathed in white light as the flash grenade detonated. The guards inside stumbled from their hiding places, dazed.
Kira and her team fired into the hall, striking the guards with sonic blasts. Half a dozen guards dropped to the floor.
A volley of kinetic rounds buzzed past Kira.
“Back to cover!” she ordered.
Kyle and Nia took the left side of the entry door while Kira and Ari braced themselves on the right wall.
“This is off to a great start.” Nia assessed the enemy’s positions on her HUD. “Six disabled, another four firing from seventeen meters back.”
Kira confirmed the survey on her own HUD. “We need to secure a position inside.”
“The air is clear when they aren’t firing. They won’t be able to see us in the stealth suits,” Kyle observed.
“Not until we’re right on top of them.” Kira crept into the corridor.
The drywall along the hallway was now pitted from the kinetic rounds. Better the walls than her armor.
She picked her footing carefully around the unconscious guards, jogging between the minimal cover afforded by recessed doorways.
Kira tried the handle on the first door she encountered, but it was locked. All right, straight ahead it is. She advanced, trying each door with the same result. By the time she reached the final door, she was a mere three meters from the four guards hiding in a hallway T-intersection.
There was no way to get a direct shot, but she could see her targets just beyond her sightlines.
“I’m going for it,” she told her team.
Without hesitation, she sprinted forward, firing a perfectly aimed sonic blast into the right-hand hallway as she passed through the intersection.
The four guards dropped to the floor before they knew what hit them.
“All right, that worked rather well,” Kyle admitted over the comm.
“Not exactly a best practice, but whatever works.” Kira edged back to the intersection and looked down. The HUD showed the way was clear. “Let’s find a communication room. The original plan is off. We need to find out what went wrong.”
They made their way down the hallway, scouting for an access terminal. Eventually, Nia spotted a dataport.
Kyle initiated an interface and burrowed into the system. “There’s a communications room about ninety meters away, down a couple corridors to the left.” He sent the map to the team’s shared HUD overlay.
“Looks like a pretty easy route,” assessed Ari.
“That’s our best bet to get deeper into the database,” Nia said. “If we can get to that room, we can likely procure all the access codes we’ll need to get into the chancellor’s chambers.”
“Agreed,” Kira said with a nod. “Reinforcements are almost certainly on their way.”
Not a moment later and the sounds of scuffling footfalls carried down the corridor.
“Shall we?” Kyle held out his hand in the direction they needed to go.
“Let’s test out this stealth tech for real.” Kira jogged ahead of her team.
Twenty meters down the hall, she spotted their opposition. Unaware of Kira’s stealthed team, the soldiers were in the middle of the corridor, leaving a narrow margin along either side.
Kira continued forward carefully, keeping her footsteps silent. Though her stealth suit was invisible to a casual observer, there was still a risk of her solid form casting shadows, so she didn’t want to draw attention from any sudden movements. When she was almost to the soldiers’ positions, she pressed herself into the narrow recesses of a doorway. She waited.
The guards passed her by, leaving a clear path down the hall.
“Like a pro,” Nia said with an audible smirk.
“Get your asses over here,” Kira told her team.
Using her technique, the three other soldiers slipped past the Mysaran guards.
Ari chuckled into the comm. “Poor bastards won’t know what to do when they can’t find us.”
“Let’s not get cocky. This is far from over.” Ki
ra jogged down the corridor along the course Kyle had indicated on the facility layout.
They saw no other people in the halls on the rest of the way to the communications room, but Kira suspected others must be close.
Outside the communication room itself, Kira used the sensors on her suit to look through the wall. “Two occupants,” she told her team.
“Sonic blast may mess with the equipment,” Nia cautioned.
“Then we lure them out.” Kira beckoned for Kyle to crack the security lock on the door.
“What’s your plan?” Nia asked while her colleague worked.
“Stealth tech is great and all, but sometimes to get results, you need to do things the old-fashioned way. Follow my lead.” Kira smiled, even though her team couldn’t see it.
As soon as the door lock clicked open, Kira stomped her booted foot against the door. It flew open. She deactivated the stealth on her armor and pointed her gun through the door. “On the ground!” she demanded over the external comm.
The two occupants dropped to their knees and then lay down, placing their hands behind their heads.
“See? Easy,” Kira said on the private comm channel.
Ari and Kyle grabbed the two techs by their wrists and dragged them into the hall. As soon as they were clear of the sensitive equipment, Ari hit the techs with a sonic blast to knock them out.
“I have to say, I really love this gun.” Ari said.
Nia patted him on the shoulder. “Oh, and you handle it so well.”
Ari cocked his head. “That sounded dirty.”
“Did it? You must be desperate for some attention.” Nia sauntered back into the communication room.
Kira sent a private high-five to Nia’s HUD.
Ari grabbed the two techs and dragged them back inside the room, closing the door behind him.
“Stealth back on,” Kira instructed. “I’ll contact the Raven to let them know what’s going on.”
Kyle and Nia immediately got to work hacking into the system.
Kira opened up a secure connection to their ship using the suit’s comms. She advised the Raven’s captain of the change in plan so he could keep Guard command apprised of the situation.
“Can’t say I’m surprised,” he replied when she was finished.
“Me either, but we’ll adapt. Given that, Nico and the Elusian ship should probably get out of here,” Kira advised.
“I’ll pass on the message. Be careful down there.”
“Talk to you soon.” Kira terminated the connection and then joined Ari in standing guard while Kyle and Nia worked.
“We’re in,” Kyle reported after two minutes.
“Wow, there’s some strange stuff going on here,” Nia observed while she browsed through the database. “Either they have a lot of public infrastructure projects that never get constructed, or there’s some sort of code at play. It looks like there’s a public-facing part of the government, and then… whatever this is.” She pointed at the screen.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Kyle agreed. “There’s clearly a part of the database that’s used for real administration and then another part that’s likely related to the work the Mysarans are doing for their alien overlords.”
“And you say I’m the one with the flare for the dramatic,” Ari commented from next to the door.
“The alien overlords are more real than I’d like,” Kira interjected.
“Holy shite, yeah, they are!” Kyle exclaimed. “Take a look at this.”
Kira read over the text he was pointing to on the screen. “Is that a record of MTech’s research projects?”
“Yeah, it is. And half of these projects are using tech that seems to have mysteriously appeared,” the soldier explained. “Whatever is going on here, Kira, it’s definitely beyond just MTech and the chancellor. The entire government is in on it.”
So much for taking out the chancellor and single-handedly eliminating the threat to this system. Kira took a slow breath. “Okay, so how do we determine which members of the government are involved and who’s doing the normal business around here?”
“Should we assume there’s a distinction?” Nia asked.
“Maybe we can’t,” Kira realized. “I mean, Ellen didn’t know anything was amiss when she was working here.”
“So, maybe all of the administration is being controlled by the aliens, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who’s performing those tasks knows what they’re doing,” Kyle said. “If no one knows any better, anything could be made to look legitimate.”
“We’ll need to vet everyone after this is over,” Kira agreed. “Only a test to look for the TR Leon identified will reveal who’s been completely subverted.”
“Willing collaborators may be worse,” Nia grumbled.
“I can’t disagree with that. But I think anyone who’s gone along that willingly, knowing what they’re doing, will be easy to spot,” Kira told her.
“Speaking of collaborators,” Kyle interjected, “I think I found out what happened to Ellen, but you’re not going to like it.”
“Oh, shite.” Nia slouched in her chair.
Kira looked at Kyle’s terminal. Displayed on the monitor was footage of a woman a few years older than Kira strapped to a chair in a concrete-walled room. “Foking great. Looks like Ellen got herself found out and caught.”
“They must have realized she had defected for good,” Nia murmured.
“Of course, they did!” Kira groaned. “It was idiotic of her to think she could fool them.”
“What do we do?” Kyle asked.
Kira took a slow breath. “First, we go for Ellen. Then the chancellor will have some explaining to do.”
— — —
The room was dark and surprisingly cold. Ellen’s thoughts were fuzzy, but she knew she was still on Mysar. I must be somewhere… underground?
“Ah, you’re awake.” A female voice pierced the darkness.
“Chancellor?” Ellen questioned, trying to see who’d spoken.
“I have to give you credit for trying,” the voice continued. It was decidedly female, but there was an alien quality to the vocalization. Whether it was adrenaline clouding her judgment or something much more deeply rooted, Ellen had the distinct impression that her captor was not the woman with whom she’d spoken only hours before.
“What did you think you would accomplish here?” the voice asked.
“If you want me to share my secrets, then at least show your face,” Ellen shot back.
“Such vigor! It’s a shame you weren’t willing to work with us. You could have been such an asset.”
“Is that all you have to say?” Ellen flexed her hands, realizing they were bound behind her back.
“I won’t ask you again. Why are you here?”
The question was as much in Ellen’s mind as she heard it spoken aloud. It bored into her, demanding a response. She tried to fight it, but the compulsion was too strong to resist.
“I’m—I’m here to learn,” she stammered.
“Learn what?” the voice snarled in her mind and out loud.
“What you are doing here. So we can stop you.”
The voice chuckled. “Of course, you are. The foolish always think we can be stopped, but you never know where to look.”
Ellen strained against her restraints in her chair. “If others keep coming for you, I’d think you’d eventually take the hint.”
“You really are more spirited than most. Or very stupid. If you truly understood who I am, you’d never speak to me in that tone.”
“Then tell me!” Ellen glared into the darkness.
Finally, a light faded on in front of her. The chancellor stepped forward.
“You shouldn’t meddle in what you don’t understand.”
Ellen glared into the woman’s pale green eyes. “If you think I have so much potential, then try me. Maybe I’ll see it your way if I understand.”
The woman stared back. Ellen could feel her assessi
ng her mind. “No, you’ve already decided. There’s no swaying you.”
“Then just kill me.”
“Oh, no.” The chancellor took two more steps forward. “Don’t you get it? You’re still a Valtan. The rest of you don’t have nearly the potential of the Readers, but you’ll make a fine Robus.”
“What are you talking about?”
Hale cocked her head. “Oh, your friends in the Guard didn’t tell you?”
“About what?”
The chancellor laughed. “Oh, Ellen, you’re in for quite a surprise when you see Kira again.” She stepped forward until she was only a half-meter in front of Ellen, then extended her hand and ran her index finger down Ellen’s face. “You’ll make a lovely host.”
They’ll come for me soon. I can get out of this. Ellen tried to keep her thoughts to herself.
A smile touched the chancellor’s lips. “Yes, they’re already here. But no, Ellen, there will be no escape for you. We’ve been expecting your friends. It’s what we counted on.”
CHAPTER 20
Kira couldn’t shake the feeling that she and her team were being watched. “These hallways are too empty,” she said into her comm.
“It is the end of working hours,” Nia replied. “But yeah, I know what you mean.”
They had made it out of the wing where they’d initially entered the building and were now traversing a hallway on the ground level that would lead them to a stairwell. The chancellor’s administrative chambers were on the second story, but the layout indicated an underground facility beneath them.
According to the information Ellen had passed along, the meeting with the Sovereign would take place in an underground conference space. However, considering that Ellen was now strapped to a chair and Kira’s team had been welcomed by armed guards, everything they thought they knew going into the op was clearly bad intel.
Kira had to trust her instincts, and those told her to check the chancellor’s office. This is probably the very trap they want us to walk into, but these aliens are also cocky bastards. The chancellor will want to witness our supposed defeat herself, and that’s when we’ll get her.
