His second goal had been to destroy the ship, preferably after taking everyone off of it first. That was now considerably more difficult, as they were down to one Avenger. They could try using the Arion’s shuttles, but those were unarmed and unarmored, and they probably wouldn’t last long, even against the relatively modest defenses the ship had. Getting everyone off would require the Avenger to make two trips, and he doubted Captain Teenge would want to go head to head with the rogue ship again so Thorb could land to make its second pickup, assuming it got that far.
Blowing the ship up with all of his troops still onboard was an option, although not one he particularly wanted to contemplate. It was better than the destruction of Capital Planet in his eyes…but not by much. He liked that idea about as much as he knew Captain Teenge would want to go up against the rogue ship in a space battle, should he fail. She would do so if required, though, just like he would, but another option would definitely be preferable.
“How quickly is it making robots?” he asked.
“One every 98 seconds.”
“Okay, our first mission is to make it to the manufactory and turn off its ability to make robots. Then maybe we’ll have some peace and quiet where we can figure this shit out. As it stands, we can kill its bots over and over, but the ship only has to kill us each once, and we’re dead.”
“That makes sense,” Sato replied.
“Have you been able to figure out where its next jump will be to?”
“Yes, it will be going to the El Dorado system. That is a very interesting system, as its star is unique—”
“Does the star have any bearing on our mission?”
“I’m sorry. What?”
“Does the star’s unique whatever-the-hell-it-is matter to our mission?”
“Well, no, but I thought you’d be interested in why it was named—”
“Sorry, Doc, but unless it helps me either recover the ship or kill its bots, I’m not interested in it at the moment.”
“Oh,” Sato said.
Walker could tell the scientist was somewhat peeved at his lack of interest, but he honestly didn’t have time for the scientist’s foibles while a ship full of robots was trying to kill him. “So, we get to El Dorado, then what?”
“Shortly after we arrive in the system, the ship will be ready to begin its attack run. Once that happens, it will accelerate to its final speed prior to making its jump to the target system. We won’t be around to see it, though.”
“Oh no?” Walker asked. “I’ve got a MAC and a bunch of explosives that say I will.”
“If we are still onboard this ship when the attack run starts, it will become most unpleasant for us. That is why this ship was built to function totally without a crew and without many moving pieces—they couldn’t survive its operation. You see, the ship can accelerate at almost 100 Gs once it is in its final assault mode. It will start with a slow acceleration—one G, five Gs, and so forth—but then it will build rapidly beyond our tolerance to withstand it. We will be knocked unconscious somewhere around the 8-10 G point, and then we will die as it continues to accelerate. The SalSha will last longer than the Humans, but the final acceleration phase will be beyond even their ability to withstand it. When the ship makes its jump to hyperspace again, all biological life aboard this ship will be dead.”
“Well, shit. That’ll suck.”
“Yes. Anything you are going to do to stop the ship must be done in this system or in hyperspace. Once we arrive in El Dorado, it will be too late.”
“We copy that,” the voice of Captain Teenge said over the comm system.
“Sorry, Captain,” Walker said. “I didn’t know you were up this frequency.”
“I set the bomber to retransmit any comms it received,” Thorb explained. “I didn’t know if we would be able to contact our ship once we went inside, so I used the bomber to boost our signal. That way we wouldn’t be cut off from them—”
There was a moment of unmaking, then the squad was surrounded by the white of hyperspace.
“—unless we jumped into hyperspace,” Thorb finished lamely.
“Well, shit,” Walker said again. He turned his suit so the men and women gathered around him could see him facing them. “Okay folks,” he added on the squad net. “I don’t know if you heard all of my conversation with Dr. Sato, but we’ve only got one week from right now to find a way into the ship and kill it. When we come out of hyperspace, it’ll be too late.”
“But if we kill it inside of hyperspace,” one of the troopers asked, “won’t that kill us, too?”
“Good question,” Walker said, “and I wish I had a good answer for you. We’ll have to work that out once we get inside and destroy the manufactory. Until we do, though, nothing else matters, so let’s find a way into this ship and figure out a way to take this damn AI offline.”
* * * * *
Chapter Eighteen
Outside Israel Military Industries Manufactory, Be’er Sheva, Israel District, Earth
Colonel Narkis surveyed the giant walled manufactory from the crest of the last hill. The plant was well lit in the dark night, making the approach to the wall surrounding the facility more challenging than it would otherwise have been. Everything appeared quiet at the plant, though, as his intel had said it would be. He slowly turned his head to Major Avram, his executive officer, as he slid the mini-binoculars into a pocket underneath his sand-colored ghillie suit. “The plant is vacant,” he said, “aside from two guards patrolling the grounds.”
“I still don’t like this,” his XO said. “We’re killing Humans—our own people. Where is the justice in this? How is this right? Arrowhead Industries has never taken a contract to do anything like this.”
“When one of the Horsemen calls, you take that call,” his CO replied. “This is necessary to the war effort. We’ve already been through this a number of times, and this is not the time to argue it further. Everyone here is a volunteer. If you want to un-volunteer, all you need to do is slip away. You can consider your employment terminated; just leave all your company gear at the HQ before you go.”
“You know I’m not going to do any such thing,” Avram replied. “I’ve been with you too long.” He put away his own binoculars. “I will help you do this; I just want to make sure you’ve really considered what it is the Golden Horde lieutenant colonel is asking of us.”
“I’ve thought about it plenty,” Colonel Narkis replied. “That’s why we are attacking now. The guards are Arabs. If we have to kill Humans to advance our cause in this war, better it be Arabs.”
Avram snorted lightly. “Well, in that case, I guess I’m all right with it. Just don’t let Corporal Farooq hear you say that, or we’ll have a full-scale riot on our hands.”
“Never,” the CO replied. “That’s why he wasn’t chosen for this mission.” He looked to both sides, then waved two fingers forward slowly. “Let’s go,” he added, ending further conversation. The platoon began crawling down the side of the small hill.
* * *
Inside Israel Military Industries Manufactory, Be’er Sheva, Israel District, Earth
“Here they come,” Major Brantayl said over the secure comm. She took another look at the feed from the drone, orbiting high over the facility in the cloudless sky. “Let them get to the doors of the factory before you hit them.”
“You’re going to let those savages get that close?” the plant’s manager, Abdulla Bashar, asked. “I will not be responsible for any lost work if they break anything or cause delays in the production schedule.”
“Talk to me again,” the MinSha officer replied, her head turning slightly to look at the Human with one eye, “and I will be looking for a new plant manager while your family looks for a place to dispose of your body.”
She went back to looking at the drone feed. Although the suits they were wearing were very good at hiding the troops from observation in the visual spectrum, they caused their wearers to expend additional effort to move in them.
The heat signatures from the men—and women, too, she supposed—were quite visible in the infrared spectrum.
Twenty-two targets approached the facility—a platoon’s worth, as the informant had said. Although Brantayl had wanted to kill the informer—the typical penalty for breaking a contract—Peepo had disallowed it, mentioning something from Earth’s past that she had learned about “hearts and minds.” Instead, she had sent Brantayl’s squad to the facility and had ordered her to pay the mercenary for turning in the members of his own company if it turned out to be true. Brantayl’s eyes widened in disbelief as she thought about the payment. One million credits. For turning in members you had taken an oath to. Still, if it helped cause rifts between the various Human factions, that was all to the good, right? The sooner this horrid planet was pacified, the sooner she could go home.
The Human-sized shapes crept up to the back gate, slowly enough to avoid triggering the motion alarms, which Brantayl had already turned off. Reaching the wall where the cameras mounted above them couldn’t see them, the Humans stood up, took off their camouflage suits, and one of them approached the gate. He reached into his uniform pocket and pulled something out, which he used to unlock the door.
Brantayl decided to have a look at whatever the trooper had, assuming his body was in good enough shape afterward to allow a search.
The soldier opened the gate slowly, and, when nothing happened, stepped inside and ran across the courtyard to the building while the two patrolling guards were out of sight. He crouched up against the building, hiding in a shadow, waiting for the next guard to go by.
“Should we sound the alarm?” asked Sergeant K’rto. “It looks like the mercenary is preparing to kill the guard.”
“What do we care about Humans killing other Humans?” Brantayl asked. “That is collateral damage of their own making…and one less Human on this miserable planet.”
The sergeant laughed quietly. “In that case, I suspect we should let them eliminate the other guard as well?”
“It does solve our targeting issues for when we hit them,” the officer replied. “That way, we can say we weren’t responsible for killing them.”
“Is that the ‘hearts and heads’ thing General Peepo was talking about?”
“Hearts and minds,” the major replied as a second mercenary slid into the compound, and both guards were eliminated simultaneously without a sound. She motioned to the Tri-V display with one of her primary hands. “They are quite good at stealth. If we hadn’t been warned, they would have been into the facility before any of the staff here would have been aware.”
“Just like they’ve done in other places.”
“There have been thirteen other sabotage events,” the officer replied, nodding, her attention never leaving the display. “I’m going to enjoy surprising them for a change.” She waited a couple of seconds longer, then transmitted, “Here they come. Be ready.”
The first person through the gate—Brantayl thought it was the same one, anyway, but the Humans had gathered up, and she couldn’t be sure—had made it to the door of the plant, and he put his hand on the entry mechanism. He paused, turning to look at one of the others as they gathered around the door. Receiving some indication of assent, the man at the door turned the handle and was blown 20 feet through the air as the explosives behind the door detonated.
* * *
Outside Israel Military Industries Manufactory, Be’er Sheva, Israel District, Earth
Colonel Narkis was thrown from his feet by the force of the explosion, stunned, along with most of the members of the platoon. As his senses returned, and he started climbing to his feet, he knew he need not bother checking on Corporal Kishon; he’d seen IEDs in action before, and the soldier had taken the full blast. He was dead.
The second thing he realized was, there wouldn’t be explosives waiting for them if the plant personnel hadn’t known they were coming. “It’s a trap—” he started to yell before a laser took him in the face, ending his yell and his life.
From all around the courtyard, hidden hatches sprang open, and MinSha boiled out from their underground blinds, firing at anything that stood on two feet. Within seconds, it was over; no quarter was asked for or given.
Major Brantayl came out of the facility a few seconds later as several of her troopers were going through the Humans and terminating any that still showed life signs. “Any issues?” she asked.
“None, sir,” the platoon sergeant replied. “We have one trooper with a small laser burn, probably from friendly fire, but that’s our only wounded. Most of the enemy was stunned by the explosion and unable to respond in time to our emergence.”
“Good,” the major replied. “Make sure you run some simulators to emphasize trigger discipline and target identification when we return to headquarters. They won’t all be this easy.” She walked over to where the body of the door-opener lay. The bomb her troops had built had obviously included a lot of shrapnel, judging by the mangled mass of meat that used to be a trooper. She gave the MinSha equivalent of a shrug; she’d have to find out what the soldier had used to open the lock another time.
* * *
SOGA HQ, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Earth
“Come in,” General Peepo said, waving in Major Brantayl. “How did the mission go?”
“It went exactly as planned. The attack on the rifle manufactory was thwarted, all the attackers were killed, and the informant was given his million credits.”
“Good. With a few more of these successes, the remaining malcontents here on Earth will either be killed or marginalized enough that no one wants to help them anymore. Take away a few of their luxuries, and they chitter like newly-hatched younglings. While annoying to listen to, offering them big rewards to turn on their fellows is the way to encourage more of them to do it.”
“It appears so, General.”
“I almost wish we’d been the ones to take away the Humans’ Tri-V sets,” General Peepo remarked. “That really got the chittering started.” The major watched as she turned and walked to the window to look at the city below. A large scar crossed it from where the fires had burned during the riots that followed after one of the most popular sets had suddenly gone inoperative, an event that had happened several times, and to several models, all around the planet. “Have you found out who was responsible for that?”
“We have been chasing down a number of leads,” Major Brantayl replied. “It took us a while to understand how all the sets could fail at once. Once we realized it was a virus that was attacking the biological superconductor that made it operate, it narrowed down the number of candidates significantly. So far, we’ve been through most of the major medical facilities, cross-referencing them with known mercs.”
“Why mercs?”
“It was a hunch I had, General. These appear to be very targeted attacks, which were almost military in nature. If they were civilian, they’d be a lot more random.”
“Makes sense,” Peepo said, nodding. “And? Have you found the person or people responsible yet?”
“I believe so,” Major Brantayl replied. “There is a pharmaceutical company that deals with lifesaving and life-extending treatments by tailoring viruses to target the cells that go bad in Human bodies. The head of the company is a Doctor Ezekiel Avander. When I ran his information through the Merc Guild databases, it turned out he was a member of the Golden Horde, one of the—”
“I’m well aware of who the Golden Horde is,” Peepo said with a fiery look in her eyes that made the major step back and bow her head.
“Yes ma’am, sorry,” she said. She kept her face down, not looking at the senior officer.
“Continue,” Peepo ordered after a couple of seconds, her dominance restored.
“Yes, ma’am. Doctor Avander was a member of the Golden Horde. That much is common knowledge. But when I had my staff try to learn more about him, one of them found an AetherNet article about his life. As it turns out, Dr. Avander was captured and sold into slavery with
the HecSha for a while. Guess what the article said he did there?”
“I don’t have time for questions. Just tell me.”
Brantayl hurried on. Already having made one mistake, she didn’t want to risk completely displeasing General Peepo; nothing good could come of that. “In the article, he stated his annoyance with the fact that he’d been forced to work on creating this new product and wouldn’t be receiving any royalties for it. When asked what he’d worked on, he replied that he had created a biological superconductor base for a new generation of Tri-V sets that would make all of the current models obsolete. It took a while, but the biological superconductor he created is now the backbone of many of the models currently in service…including all of the ones that have failed over the last several weeks.”
“That’s our man,” Peepo replied. “Bring him in and kill anyone who has been helping him. I would prefer him alive for questioning, but that is less important than keeping him from getting away. If it is a choice between killing him and letting him get away, you are to kill him at all costs.”
* * *
Avander Estate, Chattanooga TN, United States District, Earth
Zeke put the old-fashioned phone on its cradle on the equally-old-fashioned desk and sighed. “Well, that fucks the duck.”
“What’s going on?” his grandson asked from where he sat in a high-backed chair reading a slate. The man still looked no more than thirty, though he was into his 50s now.
“We’re blown,” Zeke said. “Just got a flash from one of my sources in Sao Paulo; they’re coming for me.”
Zeb stood up, his eyes wide. The slate he’d been reading fell to the floor with a thud. “We gotta get you out of here, right now!” He touched his pinplants to make a call, but Zeke held up a hand.
“Too late, the call went out six hours ago. My source couldn’t contact me until now; he works in the SOGA HQ building.” He sighed, then shrugged. “I hoped I’d have another month, at least. Had some great stuff in the works.”
Dark Moon Arisen Page 24
