The squad went to the back door, where a crate waited. “Private Harris, you have crate duty,” Sergeant Hanson said. “Grab that crate, bring it along, and take good care of it.”
“What’s in it?” the private asked as he picked up the box. “A bomb?”
“No,” Hanson replied. “It’s a shipment of drugs the Wolves intercepted. They laced it with something—I don’t want to know what. We’ll leave it in their warehouse, assuming we leave any of it standing. Either they’ll find it and distribute it, killing their folks, or the authorities find it and put any of them we miss in jail. It’s a win-win.”
“I’ll take good care of it,” the private replied.
“Please do.”
The technician opened the door, and the squad filed out into the night.
* * *
Nicholas Imports and Exports, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Earth
“Squad, check in,” Sergeant Hanson transmitted as she approached the warehouse complex from the north. It sat just to the northwest of the starport that was previously Tashkent’s international airport; the facility had easy access to the starport as well as a nearby railhead for distributing the import company’s items. A 10-foot-tall fence encircled the facility, but that wasn’t much of an issue. The site had three buildings; the biggest was the one closest to her and her target, which is why she had three troopers with her. It was about 30 meters wide and 100 meters long. The other two buildings were a smaller warehouse, about half the first building’s size, and a much-smaller auxiliary building, which was probably an operations or administration building. Unlike the other two buildings that had fleets of trucks coming and going 24 hours a day, the third building only had people going through its doors. “Team One is in place.”
“Team Two in place,” Corporal Silinsky said from the south as he approached the smaller warehouse with two privates in tow.
“Team Three in place,” Corporal Enkh said from the east as he led two privates toward the operations building.
“Okay, folks, here’s where we make these bastards pay for all the people—their own people—they killed with the shit they did to us. Destroy the facility and kill everyone you find—we don’t have any friends here.”
“And if there are any aliens here?” Silinsky asked.
“We don’t have any friends here,” Hanson repeated. “Everyone here, whether Human or not, is doing their best to kill us. Kill them first!”
“You got it, Sarge!”
Hanson took one last look at the feed from the two small drones she had circling the facility. The larger warehouse was lit up as brightly as if it were daylight, and trucks continued to come and go, but no one seemed to be acting any differently than they were a couple of hours ago. “Go!” she ordered. “Attack!”
She raced forward, toggling her jumpjets to go over the fence without stopping. A glance at her peripheral monitors showed the three troopers were just behind her, but were keeping up. As she landed on the other side, she fired a rocket at a hovertruck that was being unloaded at one of the docks, and it leaped ahead to detonate on the side of the vehicle, the explosion scattering bodies in all directions as a cloud of powder was thrown into the air.
She raced past the truck, firing her magnetic accelerator cannon once into each of the people who were just starting to move. Private Steinam split off to enter the door on the south end of the building as she led the other troopers around to the east side of the building with its main loading docks.
The other troopers began firing as they cleared the corner, and she had more targets than she could service by herself. Symbology on her display popped up, showing which people or vehicles other soldiers were targeting, to keep from duplicating each other’s shots. Gunfire and flashes from the south showed the other two fire teams were engaged as well.
Private Mayer continued up the loading dock, destroying vehicles and people with equal abandon as Hanson and Private Bataar jumped into the warehouse. An alarm sounded as she touched down, and a blue strobe started flashing. As she entered the building, she realized she had underestimated the scope of the task. Giant shelving units ran the length of the building in rows, all the way up to its 10-meter-high ceiling, and most of them were full of crates, bags, and loose items. Destroying everything would take much longer than she’d anticipated.
Fire blossomed from the south end of the building as Steinam threw a grenade, and one of the rows of shelving wobbled. That was it, she realized; they needed to take down the shelving. She triggered three missiles at the stanchions holding up the furthest row of shelves and smiled a predator’s smile as the row collapsed, throwing material into the air and damaging the row next to it as it fell.
“Teams One and Two,” she transmitted, “target the shelving supports and bring them down. Use your grenades and rockets if you have them!”
Private Bataar’s right arm went red in her status display. “I’ve got enemies with lasers!” he transmitted.
Leaving the rest of the shelves for Steinam, she turned and jumped, rocketing over Bataar as he engaged three people with laser rifles. They’d obviously never seen CASPers in action before, because they followed her flight open-mouthed as she roared toward them. Belatedly, they started to raise their rifles as she dropped down on them. She shot the one on the left, Bataar shot the one on the right, and she landed on the one in the center, squashing his head flat in the process.
More people were coming from the offices at the end of the building, armed with a combination of laser and slug-throwing rifles. “Steinam, Bataar, finish destroying the shelves,” she ordered. “Mayer and I have these.”
The enemy force raced toward her, firing, and Private Mayer hit them from the side with his laser. Two went down before they noticed they were under fire, then Hanson’s missile detonated in their midst. She put a MAC round into each of the three who were still moving as she sprinted toward the offices.
The icon for Private Enkh, one of Corporal Enkh’s men, went red, and she stopped. “What’s going on, Enkh?”
“I don’t know,” the corporal replied. “He went down into the basement. Something got him.”
“Don’t go down there alone,” Hanson ordered, knowing that would be his first response. “Silinsky, finish what you’re doing and take your team to join Team Three.”
Both agreed, and she started toward the offices again. The door opened, revealing a group of dog-like bipeds, all armed with galactic tech. She fired another missile without thinking, then fired her railgun through the door as fast as it could cycle.
“I’ve got Zuul mercenaries,” Hanson transmitted. “Watch out for them—they will be better armed and armored.”
When nothing else showed itself, she approached the door, with Mayer at her side. Five Zuul lay inside the room. One had a MAC-sized hole through its chest; the others had been killed by the missile. She scanned her aft cameras; Steinam and Bataar were approaching, and the warehouse behind her was ablaze.
“You may have done too good a job,” she noted. “We’ll have to go quickly; we don’t have a lot of time before this section will be engulfed, too.”
The room on the other side of the door was some sort of administration space for the warehouse—there were at least six desks and most of them had at least two slates sitting on them. Based on what she had seen going through the warehouse, this was probably the front for the organization—the legitimate side of the operation that provided a cover for the less-than-legal side of the business.
Still, you never knew. “Steinam, bag up all the slates you can find there. Bataar and Mayer, you’re with me.” They did a quick search of the office spaces, but Hanson quickly saw it was a waste of time—everything here looked aboveboard.
“We’re finished in the other warehouse,” Silinsky radioed. “There aren’t any offices here, just a bunch of quasi-legal and black-market shit. We set part of it on fire and left our present on the other side of the building.”
“Good,” Hanson replied. �
�We’re almost done here. Go join Team Three, but do not go down into the basement. We will be right there.”
“Got it, Sarge. We’ll need to hurry. The flames from your building are pretty high, and I think it’s starting to draw some attention. I can hear sirens in the distance.”
“Got it. We’re on our way.”
Sergeant Hanson led her team into the parking lot. Although still technically “night,” the flames from the two buildings made it easy to see without thermal optics, and her group crossed to the last building. She left Private Mayer outside to keep watch, then she entered the west end of the building to find several troopers standing by a trap door that had been thrown open. Private Enkh’s mech could be seen in the hallway on the level below, along with the bodies of two dead Zuul a little beyond the CASPer. “What have you got, Corporal?” she asked.
“The rooms in this building are storage space for high-value merchandise,” Corporal Enkh reported. “There’s also a room full of credit chits. The private went downstairs while we were looking through it, and we heard shooting. The Zuul got the private and tried to come up here, but we drove them back down into the basement. There are more of them, further down the basement hallway than we can see from above. I lowered a camera down, but it was destroyed before it could see much.”
“Got it,” she said. “Take a couple of troopers and grab all the credit chits you can load into your storage spaces.”
“You got it!”
Hanson smiled. The corporal had grown up in an orphanage; a room full of credit chits probably seemed like Shangri-La or some other paradise to him. She moved back to the trapdoor. “In the basement, we’ve got you surrounded,” she yelled. “Come out with your hands up, or we’ll blow up the building.”
“Why would we do that?” a voice with a Russian accent answered. “I’m comfortable here where you can’t kill me. This bunker is well built, too—we can probably survive having you blow up the building.”
“Sergeant Hanson, the police and fire department are here!” Private Mayer reported from outside.
“Don’t kill them if you can avoid it, but fire some of your weapons or blow something up so they have to think about it before they come in. We need a couple of minutes.”
“I’ll try,” the private sounded skeptical, “but I don’t think I can bluff them for long.”
“That’s fine.” Hanson switched back to her speakers and yelled, “In the basement! I’m coming down for a parley. Just me. Don’t shoot.” She took her last grenade, held it carefully in her left hand, then pulled the pin from it and tossed it aside. Making a fist around it so someone in front of her couldn’t see it, she started down the stairs.
The steps were large and well built, and she was able to negotiate them in her CASPer and get down to the next floor. A 10-meter-long passage ran off from the landing, with a ‘welcoming party’ about halfway down its length. A Human and a Veetanho stood at the front of the group; her sensors identified five Zuul standing behind them. The passage was five meters wide—enough for her to see they were all armed and had their weapons pointed at her. Even better, several of the Zuul carried lasers heavy enough to hull her CASPer. Shit.
“Thank you for coming down,” the man said. The accent identified him as the man who had spoken earlier. “Since I never actually agreed to a parley, you are now my prisoner.”
“Fine,” she replied. “You’ve got me. I’m Sergeant Hanson. Who are you?”
“I am Igor Ivanovich of Nicholas Imports and Exports,” the man said.
“Just the person I hoped to meet,” Sergeant Hanson replied. “Sansar Enkh sends her regards.”
“That is very droll,” the Russian said. “I’m sure you stayed up late last night trying to come up with it. Well, you have found me, and I have just one thing to ask you.”
“Oh? And what is that?”
“Do you know just how fucked we are?”
“How fucked we are?” Sergeant Hanson asked. “I understand pretty well how fucked you are. We’re the ones with the heavier weapons and the higher ground. At a word from me, we can drop this building on your head and kill all of you. Yeah, I get it; you’re pretty fucked.”
“No, you stupid twit, not the members of my organization; I mean humanity. Everyone on this planet is doomed if you keep on with your stupid attempts to free us from the Merc Guild. It’s more than just the Merc Guild, the Science Guild is involved, too, and probably other guilds as well. We can’t win. There’s no way we can. We’re outnumbered. They have the greatest tech agency in the galaxy supporting them. Anything they need, they can have produced for them.” He shook his head. “We can’t win.”
“So what are you saying? That we should just quit and give in to them?”
“Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying. They may kill some of you in reprisal, sure, but the race will survive. If you Horsemen continue in the direction you’re going, they’re likely to kill us all. If they see that we’re ungovernable—that we won’t see reason—that’s what they’re going to do. They will slag Earth, nuke our colonies, and kill all of us.”
“They can’t. That’s against the law.”
“Where have you been? Of course they can! The Merc Guild is the one with all the guns. Who’s going to stop them? The only other agency with weapons is the Peacemaker Guild, and there aren’t enough of them to do anything. How do you protect something? Do you call a policeman or Peacemaker? No, you hire a merc. When all the mercs in the galaxy—all of them—are against you, you’re fucked. We’re fucked. The only way we’re going to win—the only way we’ll survive—is to give in to their demands.”
“You’re a traitor to humanity,” Hanson said. “Just because you bought into their propaganda doesn’t mean we’re going to.”
“No, you’re the traitor, you and your Horsemen. If you don’t surrender, you will be the cause of our destruction.”
“He is right,” the Veetanho alongside him said. “Give in now. It is a matter of simple math. There are 37 mercenary races. Who are your allies? None of them. The entire galaxy is against you—there is no way you can win. How do you think you can kill us all?”
The ground shook with a couple of detonations.
“Whatever you’re going to do,” Private Mayer said over the squad net, “you better do it soon. I’ve got police circling the facility. Lots of them. They haven’t decided they want to come in yet, but it looks like they are working up the courage to do so. I threw a couple of grenades to discourage them, but I doubt that will last very long.”
“We’re on our way,” Hanson replied. She changed to her speakers. “You asked how I thought I could kill all of you, and I’m reminded of the question someone once asked me of how I would go about eating an elephant.”
“What is an elephant?” the Veetanho asked.
“It is a creature that weighs about 6,000 kilograms.”
The Veetanho’s face crinkled as she processed the information. “So, how does someone your size eat an elephant?”
“Easy,” Hanson said. “One bite at a time.” Her targeting reticle had been centered on the Veetanho the entire discussion; a single thought through her pinplants, and the MAC on her left arm snapped up, fired a single round, and removed most of the Veetanho’s head. Simultaneously, her right arm whipped forward, launching the grenade down the hallway. A second round went through the Human’s head as he turned to flee.
Hanson dove to the side as the first Zuul fired, then the grenade went off, with the confines of the passageway magnifying its blast. Hanson jumped to her feet and charged down the hallway, but all of the mercenaries were down. One struggled weakly; her sword blade snapped out, and she put it out of its misery.
“Perimeter breach!” Mayer called. “The police are on their way in, and I can’t stop them short of killing them.”
“I’m on my way back up,” Hanson replied. “Set some explosives to level this building.” She gave the passageway a wistful look. She was sure there was informat
ion in one of the rooms, but it wasn’t worth getting caught by the police to get it or having to kill a bunch of people who were just doing their jobs to get away. She shrugged inside her suit and raced back up to the main floor.
“Blow it!” she ordered. “Let’s go!” she added as she sprinted for the door. The rest of the squad followed her out the door, and they headed to the south, away from where the authorities were coming through the fence.
The squad blasted off on their jumpjets, hurdling the fence, then used a combination of running and jumping over obstacles in their way. The night turned to day behind them as the building blew up. Hanson shrugged; whatever evidence was in the building was either buried or destroyed.
The squad stayed low as they crossed between Tashkent’s airport and its starport so they would stay off the radar at the two facilities. Within a couple of minutes, they reached the Tashkent Lakeside Golf Club and landed in the large lake next to the 9th Hole in a series of small, controlled splashes.
After a couple of minutes, nine people waded ashore with plastic bags under their arms. As they reached the shoreline, they pulled dry clothes from the bags and changed into them. A man driving a large truck pulled up on the road to the clubhouse as the eastern sky began to lighten.
“Let’s go!” he exclaimed, pointing his thumb toward the back of the truck. “Quickly!”
Sergeant Hanson flipped the man one of the stacks of credit chits they’d liberated, then led the rest of her squad into the back of the truck. With a start, she realized the man driving the truck, a snappily-dressed, clean-shaven man, was the same Gray Wolf she had spoken with earlier.
* * *
EMS Excalibur, Transition Point, New Persia, Torgero System
“I’ve got contacts!” the sensor operator exclaimed as the EMS Excalibur transitioned into normal space in the Torgero system.
“What do you have?” the ship’s CO, Lieutenant Commander Derek McQuay, asked. As this was the first time he’d taken the ship out as CO, he couldn’t be blamed if his voice was a few notes higher than normal, especially since he was commanding a frigate, which would have been easy prey for most other warships.
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