by Tim C Taylor
So this is the Cairo uprising. No wonder the aliens weren’t on high alert, we arrived too early.
As he sidestepped away, he heard a roar of triumph directed at the battle scenes. His suit chimed in with a translation: “Humans die good!”
Not as good as you butchering skangats.
He was past the chair now, and about to take the final few steps to the position Giant had assigned him, when he felt something clatter against his back and saw the ears of every Hardit twitch at the noise.
Frakk!
Every Hardit snout turned his way.
But Reed Fallaw wasn’t hanging around to make polite introductions; he’d already flung his head back and felt the satisfying meaty smack against a Hardit head. Before the Janissary who had stumbled into his back could react, Reed crouched low and spun around like an ice skater so he could bring his needle around and stab it into the Hardit’s flank.
The alien didn’t look like it was in uniform, but its clothes must have been spun from armor weave because Reed’s needle snapped in two. It didn’t even drop the gun that it had accidentally whacked against Reed’s back.
Undeterred, he dropped the useless needle and stood up, thrusting from his exomuscle-enhanced hips as he grabbed the Hardit by its throat and lifted his arms to fling the vile creature back over his head. He overcooked it, though, and sent his foe flying up to bounce off the ceiling. No matter. That would do for now.
Janissary rounds sizzled through the air just over his head as he hit the deck, sliding away along the tiled floor on his belly like a penguin. By the time he slammed against the wall, he had unsnapped his SA-71 from his back and was bringing it around to the side. With a scrambling flip through one-eighty he was sitting back up against the wall with his carbine rails charging and pointing at the mass of Janissaries who were belatedly closing the blast doors, but still didn’t know what they were facing. The ACE-6(S) was a dream.
“Ready with the lullabies?” queried Giant who was in the opposite corner, her presence not yet suspected by the Hardits.
“Ready as hell.”
“Light ’em up, Grenadier!”
Giant was firing before she even finished speaking. With the ACE suits still stealthed, a human enemy would struggle to see where the fire was coming from, but Hardit hearing was on another level. They turned around to the corner where Giant sang them lullabies to endless sleep, and as they moved to face Giant’s withering fire, Reed opened up with his own song.
Triple-tap lullaby darts left the muzzle of his carbine at 4600 feet per second, the relatively low speed being the cost paid for the near-perfect noise suppression. Even the normal muzzle flash of ionized air was absorbed into invisibility by the magic of the SA-71. Lullabies weren’t a distinct round, but a different firing mode of the carbine itself. And they were damned effective.
The ammo bulb was uncannily abundant, and the recoil dampener a work of genius. Reed felt the mule kick of Janissary rounds hitting him, but the incoming fire was inaccurate because the enemy only knew his rough location, and with the doors now shut, there was nowhere for them to run.
Reed sat on his butt and took down any Hardit who looked about to fire his way. Then he took out any that weren’t.
“I can see you,” said Giant when the Hardits were all down and had stopped twitching.
Damn! He switched out his HUD overlays for a moment and saw himself in real-sight. When had those chunks been taken out of the armor on his thigh and shoulder? He ran a suit diagnostic. At least its basic functionality was still registering green, although armor integrity was compromised and stealth lost. “Can’t detect any alarms,” he said. “Do you think their weapons fire was overheard?”
A threat alarm icon flashed in his right peripheral vision and he twisted to face it.
There was a camouflaged door set flush against the wall ten feet to his right. Of course! It must lead to the spy holes they’d seen looking out onto the main passage.
The door was open a fraction, just enough for three yellow eyes to peer out from a Janissary surveying the slaughter Reed and Giant had made of its comrades.
Before he could finish getting to his feet, those sulfurous eyes focused their hate at Reed.
He reacted on impulse, lifting his right arm and firing his wrist-mounted micro-grenades through the doorway crack.
The Hardit slammed the door shut. Too late. The grenades it had shut inside exploded, shaking the guard post so violently, it kicked out a thick cloud of dust and dirt.
“Hmmm. Do you think they overheard that?” remarked Giant wryly.
“I can’t help it, Corporal. I’m a grenadier.”
“Guess nobody’s perfect,” she replied, gesturing for him to check there were no survivors while she covered the other two exits. “Giant to Kraken,” she said, looping in Reed, “we seem to have revealed our position.”
“No kidding,” replied Sergeant Kraken. “We’re right behind. Hold that position. Raschid and Spurrell will reinforce you. Then Blaze Squad will ghost through and move against the target.”
“Roger that,” said Giant.
The race to kill Tawfiq was on!
——
Captain Grace Lee-McEwan
Holding station near the Tawfiq Memorial.
“Well, this is fun,” said Grace to Karypsic’s flight crew. “Anyone think to bring some dice to play while we wait?” Even as she joked, she kept watch on the tactical map showing Morris and Blaze Squad progressing deeper into the Hardit warren, and worried about the implications of the apparent absence of any support from her father’s forces.
Ensign Jackson’s signature belly laugh erupted from the co-pilot’s seat. “Isn’t this operation a gamble big enough for you General…? Sorry, Captain?”
No, she thought. Not when my father took on the White Knight Empire with a few dozen half-trained Marines. And won. But she pushed that idea down deep. The lives of her personnel were not hers to risk, and neither was the mission objective.
“Just messing with you,” she said instead. “We’ve traveled back in time to kill Tawfiq in her own bunker. Anyone would think that was putting you on edge.”
“Captain,” said Francini who was plugged into the long-range sensors, “I’m picking up an energy spike below ground.”
“Weapons fire?”
“Negative. Wrong signature. Also, it’s deeper than our teams should be. And moving… moving toward Blaze Squad.”
Grace hooked into Francini’s view. That looks bad.
“Lethal Dancer this is Tawfiq’s Bane. We’re seeing an energy pattern below your depth consistent with maglev transportation headed your way from southwest. Over.”
“Chodballs,” replied Lieutenant Morris with feeling. “We don’t see anything.”
“Whatever it is has passed below you and is coming to a halt,” said Grace with half her mind on the decision that might soon come her way. Did she abort and pull her team out while she still could?
“Lethal Dancer, how copy?” she asked when the lieutenant didn’t reply. “Morris?”
“It’s no use,” said Jackson, “we’ve lost all comms except to the gun team in the obelisk. It’s a jamming field.”
Grace began rising Karypsic higher above the pool, heading for the roof of this fake temple to Tawfiq. “Jackson, update gun team on our situation. Captain to troop compartment. Get ready to drop with signal wire onto the memorial roof. You will secure that position and reestablish signals with Arrow and Blaze.”
“Roger that,” replied Sergeant Chen who commanded the Vengeance Squad reserve. “We’re good for drop.”
Below the Karypsic, the white stone steps of the memorial looked empty to Grace. With comms lost, Blaze Squad was as invisible to her as hopefully they were to the enemy, but she was reassured that there were no signs of the New Order either. “Ready to drop in 4… 3… 2… 1… Drop!”
——
Sergeant Simpson
Blaze Squad. Nearing Tawfiq’s quarters
An urgent threat indicator pulled Sergeant Martin Simpson’s head to his left and his SA-71 to his shoulder. Range 100 yards, four Hardits were dashing for safety along a cross corridor. They didn’t make it.
Before Simpson could get off a shot, Salas acting as flank guard took them out with four triple-tap bursts. It seemed the Janissaries had not yet found a way to see an ACE-6(S) whose wearer wanted to stay hidden.
“This is only gonna get harder,” Simpson growled to himself as he waved his squad onward, ever onward, toward Tawfiq. The relatively straight lines of the passageways beneath the memorial statue had turned into a nightmare warren of twisting confusion, with Janissary stragglers frequently darting just out of sight. Marine fire would catch a few, but after their initial shock at this human invasion, they would now be rallying. And as for the report from the captain that there might be reinforcements arriving deep beneath the ground…
“Keep moving!” urged Simpson and Lieutenant Morris simultaneously.
They advanced into tunnels that sloped deeper beneath the ground and became colder and darker. Simpson kept to the rear, continually assigning and reassigning his Marines to watch the many side tunnels they passed, and through which he fully expected Janissaries to emerge at any second. Lieutenant Morris took point with Garst and Tompkins, picking their way through the tunnels to Tawfiq. At the squad’s center, pushing on a hover trolley, were Jones and Khatri. They would need luck to put a dart through Tawfiq’s ugly skull today. The Marines had all acknowledged that, ever since the General had declared she was a captain for the duration and that they were going to win the Legion’s battle with the Hardits before it had even started. Which was why they were bringing Tawfiq a present, just in case. A six-hundred-kiloton, quick-prime, cardioid blast pattern thermonuclear gift. Morris had even stuck on a gift tag.
Salas spotted movement and opened fire, missing. The defenders were grouping, and Simpson was convinced their response wouldn’t be long coming. He looked at the PFT. It didn’t look much, more like an oversized equipment crate with a simple control panel on its side. If they primed it ready to blow, getting out alive could get very tricky, which was why Blaze Squad were all volunteers. Even before they had known their mission, they had their reasons for being here, and none of those reasons mattered anymore.
“Update from Arrow Squad,” said Lieutenant Morris over Squad Net, “signal wire is dropping down from the sky. Brace yourselves, Marines, looks like the captain’s connecting us up and we’ll soon have to endure her unique sense of humor.”
Simpson grinned and tried not to be distracted by memories of the pranks Grace Lee-McEwan had played, but when his HUD reported a change to connection status it took him a few moments to register what it actually said.
= Warning! Connection lost. =
They hadn’t re-established a link to Karypsic; they were now cut off from Arrow squad too!
He saw the other Marines falter – just half a step, but he knew these people and he saw the hope that they would make it out alive take a body blow.
“Simpson, I intend to ignore the other teams and press forward with all speed,” the lieutenant said on a private channel. “Do you concur?”
Simpson made himself think through the limited options, because he knew Morris was seeking a genuine second opinion. “For all we know,” he replied, “we’ll hit less resistance pushing forward than heading back to the Arrows. I’m sure we’re carrying these Fermi drills on our backs for a reason, sir. Once we’ve killed Tawfiq, we can drill an escape route up to the surface. It’s our best chance. I concur, we press on.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. I do hope we are not on a wild goose chase. The captain was extremely evasive about the source of our intel.”
“We must be getting close,” called Garst from a hundred yards up the passageway, “come take a look at this.”
Simpson accepted the option displayed on his HUD to look through Garst’s helmet-cam view. The passageways had increasingly begun to look like underground caverns hewn by pick and hammer through the bedrock, and here at a fork in the route, the left-hand path was marked by a pair of rocks protruding from each wall. To anyone approaching the fork, they displayed a pattern of three interlocking ovals made from glistening white crystals. The lower two were stretched wide into teardrop shapes, while the upper oval was smoothly symmetrical. The pattern was instantly recognizable: Hardit eyes. They looked as if they had been grown within the natural rock for millions of years.
Suddenly, the ground shook with the throb of a powerful motor close by. Simpson shook away Garst’s cam view and kept still so his suit could identify the source of the noise. It seemed to be coming from below, but with this confusing environment, even the 6(S) could tell him no more. Then a metallic clang, like battleship hangar doors closing, brought the motor’s rumble to a shuddering halt.
They ran down the left-hand path.
——
Sergeant Simpson
“Almost there,” cried Morris. “Just a little farther. It’s a race against time now.”
Simpson was backpedaling now; it slowed him down, but it meant he could face any attacks from the rear.
He gasped in surprise. Less than 30 feet away, a Hardit snout appeared in the passageway they had traveled through moments earlier. It looked straight through him. Frakk! Janissaries using stealth tech good enough to defeat his ACE-6(S). They could be all around him!
Then the flared tip of a tail materialized and pointed at the rest of the Blazers. With a sickening lurch in his gut, he knew what had attracted its attention.
Of course, the Hardits couldn’t see through the human stealth tech any more than Simpson could see through theirs. But there was one party that was sitting out this little game of hide and seek in clear view of everyone: the Present for Tawfiq.
“I’ll buy you some time,” he said. “Kaur, you’re with me.”
“Good hunting,” said Morris.
Simpson and Kaur retraced their steps halfway to the point where the Hardits had appeared, and now vanished once more.
“You ready?” Simpson checked of the grenadier.
“Yes,” she replied with relish. “I’ve loaded nano penetrators, standard fraggers, concealment nerve clouds, and a flash bang to blind the little bastards.”
“Just the way the Hardits love it. I’ll fire first, and then you bombard on my mark. As soon as you’ve finished, we hightail it out.”
“Copy that,” said Kaur.
Simpson fired from the hip, not using his railgun this time, but the SA-71’s x-ray beam mode. It was a bastard for draining his ACE’s energy cell from the connector plugged into his suit, and it didn’t deliver much stopping power, but as he counted to three while spraying the passageway with his ultra-high-energy directed beam, he was slaughtering the fancy tech the Hardits were hiding behind.
It worked! A comically surprised line of Janissaries appeared, hiding behind white plastic shields in an overlapping wall. Twenty yards behind the shield wall, the passageway was filled with nervous rifle-wielding Janissaries. By the way they looked at each other, they were suddenly wondering why their technology was failing all around them.
“Fire!”
At her sergeant’s command, Grenadier Kaur launched a salvo of grenades from the launchers mounted around her wrists, which she held high as if she were about to dive off a cliff. Blinding flash bangs tuned to wreak maximum havoc with delicate Hardit vision burst simultaneously with nano shredders, which were designed to score tiny gashes through armor and facemasks, not that these Janissaries seem to have either. A second later, conventional fraggers sent shards of exotic metals through the enemy, and thick orange gas choked the passage with its poison.
Simpson and Kaur turned to run but were overcome by the hot wind that threw them 20 feet along the floor on their bellies. Once he’d caught his breath and waited for the thunder to stop echoing in his skull, Simpson checked they were both okay. Their suits were reporting no serious damage to
themselves or their wearers, although Simpson had drained his power cell by his x-ray fire so much that his stealth mode had failed.
“Reckon the blast was constrained by the enemy’s own shield wall. Eh, Sarge?” said Kaur as she got to her feet.
“I knew that,” Simpson replied with a grin. “What, you thought I was bringing you on a suicide mission?”
Laughing, they raced away to join the others.
——
Sergeant Simpson
“Breach team, go!” ordered Lieutenant Morris as Simpson and Kaur caught up with the rest of the squad. They were trapped at the end of the passageway, their progress halted by a shutter that carried the same stylized Hardit eyes as before, but this time in gold. The barrier looked ornate, but if the team hadn’t yet penetrated it, then it must be sturdy indeed. The big question, though, was whether it was strong enough to protect what was beyond from the PFT.
Simpson organized Kaur, Salas, and Chinbat into a rearguard while Garst and Tompkins worked their magic on the door.
Wisps of poison gas stretched their tendrils to lick against the rearguard position, but there was no sign yet of another attack by the Janissaries.
“Fire in the hole!” he heard behind him, followed by an earsplitting whine.
“Yeah, baby,” whooped Garst in triumph. “We’re in. What the…?”
“Keep your eyes on the passageway,” Simpson warned his rearguard, although he himself turned to see what had robbed Garst of his excitement.
It was a blast door all right. Six inches of metal sandwiched between decorative outer layers. But the breach team had gotten one side partially open. What lay beyond was concealed behind thick gray gas that was impenetrable even to his scout model armored combat exosuit.
“Prep our gift for delivery,” Morris ordered the bomb team.
He’d barely finished speaking when heavy automatic weapons fire poured out from the smoke, rounds bursting into the Blazers. Simpson felt a sting on his thigh and he knew he’d been hit. Then again on his chest. A further round found his stomach.
