Of course, if Dr. Dash happened to be on the GS Prime, the team leader wouldn’t hesitate to grab her and declare victory.
The leader of Team Two charged through the blown hatchway between the dock and the interior of the Elysian Fields.
He had to hustle to sow chaos here and get across the gangway to the Chiron. He knew what the Alliance planned to do to the Elysian Fields, and what would be left of the ship afterward. He had no desire to be a part of that barbecue.
As intel had predicted, there wasn’t anyone around. The tourists had all fled as soon as the Alliance had been announced. Somewhere around here, he could find some people to shoot if he wanted, but he was fine with just getting across to the next ship. Intel had not predicted, however, how easy it would be to race through the passages. No one seemed to have bothered to seal the interior hatchways.
Finally, they came to the main promenade deck, with the walls rendered in the Las Vegas Strip theme. Buildings covered in moving neon lights blinked at him all up and down the passage, constantly trying to distract him, making it hard to keep his eyes focused on the openings where peacekeepers might lurk.
He found the way to the aft gangway that should take him onto the Chiron and accelerated down the passage.
In his opinion, Lieutenant Lebedinsky, leader of Team Three, had the most important mission. The higher-ups had reinforced this belief by giving him twice as many men as the other teams, even though his mission was not to seize Dr. Dash.
Sure, the overall plan was to get the doctor, but the key to success was first to gain control of the Command Information Center here on the Chiron.
If he and his team managed to capture the CIC, they could just pore through the vidcam footage until they tracked her down. They’d be able to direct the other teams to intercept her, then they’d identify the shortest path with the fewest defenders to get out and comm for pickup.
At the moment, he was confident he could comm Teams Four and Five, which were close at hand on the same ship. But there was little doubt he’d already lost the ability to contact the Russian fleet. The Chiron was made of solid steel, so radio waves had no chance at all of getting out.
So up the ramps he ran, carrying, in addition to the usual weapons, explosives for the doors and smoke bombs for the vidcams in the passages.
He was not looking forward to using the smoke bombs. They were brand new for this assault, releasing not only smoke but also pesticides. He dreaded inhaling the stuff, but the brass figured a lungful of DDT was better than a sting from a hornet. He supposed he’d find out.
As Lieutenant Goncharov, leader of Team Four, led his people down to the Wenara Wana deck of the Chiron, he knew he had the most important mission. Not only was he charged with assaulting the deck where Dr. Dash was most likely to be found, but he alone of all the team leaders knew the purpose of the special wristwatch he’d been issued.
A month earlier, an FSB agent had lounged around the BrainTrust until he finally got a chance to make a smooth inconspicuous swipe across Dr. Dash’s lab coat. He’d left behind a tiny device the size of a small seed, deep in the well of the left pocket.
The device was covered with tiny hooks like a burr, and even had a rough organic covering that felt like a burr. When jostled, it would bury itself even deeper in the coat until it became undetectable, even to the most sensitive touch.
The device had the tiniest speck of Strontium-90, and used miniaturized duplicates of the electrodes used in the BrainTrust’s beta batteries to collect the electricity. The total wattage was miniscule, but it was enough.
The device listened to the radio waves around it for a code. If it heard the code, it would send the alert signal for anyone listening to home in on its location.
Goncharov knew his wristwatch constantly emitted the code and listened for the alert. If he or any of the other team leaders got a beep from the watch, they were off to the races. They’d have Dash in custody in seconds and be out of the BrainTrust in minutes.
As the leader of Team Five led his people up to the Appalachian Spring deck of the Chiron, he knew he had the most important mission. Not only was he charged with assaulting the deck where Dr. Dash had her cabin, he alone knew the purpose of the special wristwatch he’d been issued.
As Teams Three, Four, and Five reached the ramps and split up on their different assignments, he smiled. He would be the one to bring the prize home.
Colin watched the displays in the CIC and continued to explain his plans for Dash.
One of the requirements laid upon the on-board Board Members for the BrainTrust Consortium was to learn to operate the systems in the event of a Condition Red. Dash still felt the occasional urge to smack Ben upside the head for tricking her into this duty. Sure, she could directly connect to the entire BrainTrust to issue a Condition Zebra, which would have been handy during the UVR Rubola attack. But all the controls for all the stuff for every Condition Red?
Anyway, she had dutifully memorized those controls, so now she was Colin’s assistant. Amanda was ensconced in the backup CIC on board the Argus, the only other ship owned by the Consortium that was made of steel. Putting the HQ for the battle in a steel ship was important, Colin had explained, because they were able to take considerably more damage than the newer ships built of calcium carbonate and magnesium.
“It’s time,” Colin announced. He looked questioningly at her.
Dash sighed. This was so not what she had signed up for. “They’ve all penetrated deep enough into the archipelago so they’re cut off from outside comm, although the teams on the Chiron might be able to reach each other.” She reiterated his words from the first battle she had sort of participated in years earlier. “Confusion unto our enemies.”
Colin smiled gleefully. “Exactly.” He turned to his boards and told Keenan he had a go.
Dash did the same for Wolf and Aar.
On the GS Prime, Team Leader One’s two forward scouts had almost reached the Midas Touch promenade when, from no visible source, a hail of bullets tore through the golden passage. The scouts fell instantly. The rest of the shots ricocheted all over the place, or at least it appeared so to him.
Team Leader One was not surprised that his smooth sailing had turned into stormy weather. He wasn’t happy, of course, but he was prepared. He dropped to the deck and yelled, “Smoke now!”
A pair of smoke bombs flew overhead and landed between his team and the attackers. As the white cloud covered them, he inspected his men.
Damnation. Half his people were severely wounded. The ricochets had not been as random as ricochets were supposed to be.
He’d been warned that the BrainTrusters had special guns that computed the bounces and landed the shots wherever the shooter wanted after a number of reflections. He’d been warned to use smoke at the first hint of trouble since those guns required input from the vidcams to do their magic.
Well, he’d obeyed the warning, but the first hint of trouble had been enough to slash his team in half.
He tried to look on the bright side. He didn’t think any of his men had been killed. Although the BrainTrusters could aim ricochets with frightening accuracy, a ricochet still lost a lot of power and couldn’t penetrate body armor.
Still, a soldier who’d lost an arm or a leg did not make for an effective fighting unit.
Another flurry of bullets ricocheted around him. He couldn’t see well enough to determine whether the smoke had defeated the attack or not.
Keenan lovingly ran his hand down the barrel of his BounceBoss rifle. It had been a long time since he’d had to use it—not since he’d led the team that captured the American Seals on Assault Night.
No one except a true geek would have loved his rifle, of course. It was big, heavy, and clumsy, largely because of the vidcam receivers and the compute server built in to calculate the ricochets.
He put the weapon to his shoulder and watched the display, whereupon he could watch the Russians trotting up the corridor toward his position
on the main promenade. A rose bush that Midas had touched accidentally, coated in gold, sat at the entrance to the park. Keenan waited near the gold bush, ducking behind a substantial berm erected by bots earlier.
The Russians came within easy range around the corner down the passage. Keenan spoke in a voice of quiet command to his team. “Yippee ki-yay, motherfuckers.”
His entire squad of BounceBoss buddies from the Goldman Sachs Gun Club unleashed their weapons. He figured they’d nailed about half the troops before the smoke made it impossible for the BounceBoss to zero in on any more targets.
The leader of Team One thought furiously while his men crawled up behind him. The enemy was able to shoot around the fucking corners? How could he counter that?
The answer required almost no thought. Most of his men had GP-34 grenade launchers slung under their Kalashnikovs. He ordered a salvo fired into the promenade.
A satisfying number of screams came from the hidden enemy, and he ordered his men to charge, half with grenades at the ready, half with rifles.
As they charged, he started to cough in the remains of the DDT-laced cloud. Figuring it was probably better to inhale that awful soup than to get walloped by a hornet swarm, he tossed a smoke grenade into the promenade for luck.
Keenan shook his head to try to clear it as a couple dozen grenades exploded on the far side of his berm. He wasn’t hit, but the concussive force felt like it had split his skull.
He had no doubt what would happen next. “They’re coming!” he cried for his fellow financiers.
Another smoke grenade went off, and Keenan and his men fired, determined but frustrated, into the cloud.
Then another wave of grenades flew from the cloud in all directions. A couple of them necessarily came his way. One blew up behind him.
Pain flared, consuming both his legs in inconceivable agony. He forced himself to crawl around the berm, dragging the far-too-heavy Bounce Boss with him. Everyone in his team yelled for him to stay where he was.
It made no difference. By the time he cleared the berm, the smoke had dissipated, and the enemy had departed. He could see the last of them as they headed for the starboard gangway to take them to the next ship, and thence onward to the Chiron.
Dash turned in horror from the screen where she had seen Keenan’s team face the Spetsnaz on the GS Prime. “We must not let that happen again. Our strategy and tactics simply must be improved upon.”
Colin did not look up from his command and control responsibilities. “Have something in mind?”
Dash directed her gaze at the other two people in the room. “First, my ability to think might be enhanced if my personal bodyguards would back off a bit.”
No one doubted that the sole purpose of the Russian boarding action was to capture Dash. Indeed, no one doubted that the entire Alliance and its declaration of war had been maneuvered into existence by the Premier just to acquire her and her rejuvenation technology. Therefore, Chance and Jam had assigned themselves, with vigorous support by Colin and Amanda, as her last line of defense.
Chance and Jam mournfully backed off a few feet. “Enough?”
Dash threw up her hands. “I guess.” She turned back to her mentor. “I have several ideas, but the best is to use your idea, Pak Colin, on a smaller scale.” She explained, and they moved to implementation.
On the Elysian Fields, Wolf looked at his BounceBoss with distaste. “Clumsy thing.”
Aar smiled wickedly back. “I, on the other hand, have a very fine Ping’s Big Gun at long last.” He ran his hand lovingly down the barrel. “About time.”
They’d agreed that Wolf should be the one to carry the BounceBoss since it was so heavy. Aar could of course have carried it, but he couldn’t help using the excuse of being a pitiful weakling in comparison with his boss to escape the duty.
Wolf sighed. “Time.” He lowered his rifle to firing position, lined up the rifle’s screen on where to put the first bullet to bounce into the leading soldier, probably the team leader, and fired.
When the survivors popped their smoke grenades, Aar stuck his head and Big Gun into the passage just long enough to fire a missile into the ceiling. It exploded on impact, raining death upon the survivors of the rifle fire.
A flurry of machine-gun fire tried to catch him, too late. Wolf watched for the first enemy trooper to get clear of the smoke, then both he and Aar ran through the passage, leading the survivors down another corridor. Once Wolf was sure they were following, he ducked into a side compartment, with Aar right behind.
The second in command of Team Two led his surviving men around the corner into the room where the two peacekeepers had disappeared. His men crowded behind him as he tossed in a flashbang, then charged through. They saw the enemy duck out through a hatch on the right side of the surprisingly tiny compartment.
As all the men ran toward the fleeing peacekeepers, they saw a bot step up and clang the hatch shut. Then the hatch through which they had entered also clanged shut.
His team was trapped in a tiny box with two locked doors.
His man with the explosives ran to the hatch, then stopped and let out a frustrated oath.
The second in command demanded, “Well? Blow it already.”
The explosives expert shook his head. “Can’t.” He pointed at the confines of the room. “The backblast would blow us to cherepki.” He grimaced. “And worse, this place is made of magnesium. If the blast didn’t kill us, the flaming walls would.”
The leader of Team Five shouted encouragement as his men came off the ramp onto the Appalachian Spring deck.
He had memorized the deck layout and the location of the target’s dwelling long before. He led the team with unerring accuracy through the passages, whose walls were rendered with rhododendron bushes taller than a man.
As he hurtled down the final passageway, he saw three men standing in front of the doctor’s cabin. The men were dressed much like himself. Spetsnaz! How did they get here before he did?
He stopped suddenly as he recognized them and did a double-take. “Yuri! Vasily!” And, most surprising of all, “Gleb?” He half-raised his AKM assault rifle into firing position.
Vasily released his hold on his pistol grip and waved. “Abram!” His voice turned urgent. “Come with us; we have to hurry.”
Abram didn’t quite believe it. “I thought you joined the BrainTrust?” He glared at Yuri. “And you were bodyguarding Mikhailov against the Premier.”
Yuri shook his head. “Haven’t you heard? We snatched Mikhailov and packed him back to Moscow.” He glanced at his watch. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re having a reunion as we speak.”
Abram guffawed. “Complete with polonium?”
Gleb chuckled. “Been there, done that.” Gleb was the one who’d poisoned Dmitri with polonium in the first place. “I suspect skinning knives are taking a more prominent place in the discussion this time.”
Abram relaxed. He would have liked to have commed back to HQ so he could verify their stories, but lacking that, the answers seemed valid. He had heard that Dmitri had disappeared off the BrainTrust, and even the most frantic search had turned up no sign of him. “Where’s Dr. Dash?” He glanced at his wristwatch, surprised it hadn’t flashed a signal at him yet.
Vasily nodded down the hall. “This way.” He trotted off, confident everyone would follow.
Abram shrugged and followed Vasily.
As they hustled along, another disturbing question started to bother Abram. “Why haven’t any of the peacekeepers showed up? How can you three be here alone?”
Yuri answered this time. “We disabled the vidcam network for about half the ship. That was our most important mission. There are probably peacekeepers wandering around here somewhere in a panic, searching for people like us.”
Abram nodded.
Eventually, they slowed down. Vasily held up his finger in a silencing gesture. “I think she’s inside this classroom.”
Abram’s suspicion went full-
blown since his wristwatch hadn’t emitted a spark of light or sound. “What is this?” He shouldered his rifle again. “I know for sure she isn’t here.”
Vasily looked surprised, but Gleb nodded. “She probably left again, then.” Gleb continued into the room.
Abram did not lower his rifle just yet. “If she’s not here, why are you going into the room?”
Gleb turned and smiled mischievously. “Don’t you want to find out where she went?”
Abram frowned. “Yes?”
Gleb waved for everyone to come with him. “Follow me, and I’ll ask her.”
Okay, then. Wonderingly, Abram followed once more.
Once they got into the room, Gleb hustled to the primary wallscreen and rolled a bookcase in front of the accompanying vidcam. “We shut down the surveillance network, but not the comm network.” Finally, he turned to all the assembled troops. “I need everyone to be really quiet now.”
As silence fell, Gleb commed Dash. She appeared on the screen, with control panels behind her and a tall man with silver hair working intently over them. She smiled brightly. “Gleb! How can I help you?”
Gleb offered in an exasperated voice, “You can tell me where you are. I have someone you need to talk to. From what I can see behind you, it looks like you’re in the CIC. Is that right, or are you somewhere else?”
Dash nodded. “CIC it is. But I’m really busy, so it is best if we teleconference.” She peered intently into her screen as if trying to see something besides the bookcase. “Are your friends from the Spetsnaz with you?”
Abram felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.
Braintrust- Requiem Page 28
