We Dare

by Chris Kennedy

  “And we’re unaffected because of our systems?” Janus asked.

  “Exactly. We’re immune, our synthetic systems filter out anything sketchy without us even noticing. Ms. Linares was wearing her drybag suit and rebreather, keeping it out, and the Ridians were in armor,” Nephilim nodded. “PSG was open to the elements, unsealed, unfiltered, au naturel. I seem to recall Apex Energy was invaded by a nanoswarm once upon a time, and they take their air quality very seriously. Sticking to their standard counter-nano protocols saved their lives. We didn’t detect it, because it’s neither fish nor fowl—our systems aren’t tuned to detect recreational opiates or elephant tranq, and to be frank, it’s a huge gaping hole in our sensor systems. Some evil motherfucker knew it would go undetected, and I’m a little appalled.”

  “Bigger picture: one, I assume there are more crates like that, elsewhere in town, and two, who in the hell set these crates of poison death up?” Keeso asked. “That crate on the roof could have held kilograms. A simple timed bursting charge, and they’re dumping this shit everywhere downwind.”

  “Live feeds from drones suggest most of the city is affected. If so, they’ve just murdered a million people, give or take,” Bellerophon said flatly. “Wars have started over far less. Some very serious people will be asking some very serious questions, and we need answers for them. We will all undergo class one decon before getting back aboard Pandora’s Hope. I don’t care if we spend the entire trip back to Rideau in Pegasus. If Kari, Mick, or Ben were to OD on this…” he gestured expansively, “poison, then it would be our fault. If the ship’s crew were to go down, we would be well and truly hosed.”

  “Leftenant, you said they got hit by those Spetznaz contractors after everyone started dropping. Their ship was still in orbit when we arrived,” Daedalus said. “They’ve gotta be the prime suspects.”

  “They didn’t hit AE very hard though. Is that because they’re opportunists?” Artemis wondered. “Or did they think everyone would be dead? Was Apex Energy their primary target? Why kill everyone?”

  Bellerophon shook his head. “Motivations can wait. Destroying that AA site has probably just pissed off whoever is still alive and in charge. We’ll have to file a complaint with the Council once we’re out of this mess. Primary objectives are complete, and we have two clipped ears for AE’s geeks to study. Speaking of AE, we have a megascraper to destroy.”

  * * *

  “All problems can be solved with the proper application of enough Deton-8,” Kratos whispered to himself. He’d laid in cascading EMP charges in the server rooms, and used an electromagnetic switch as the primary detonator for the incendiaries above. When the EMP scrambled the servers, it would disable the EM field holding the gate open. When the gate closed, the det cord would explode, virtually instantaneously, along its entire length. The lab had plenty of highly energetic chemicals on hand, and hydrogen lines with which they could saturate the entire lab with hydrogen gas, just by turning some spigots open wide. The overpressure protocols of the building made it even easier to turn the lab’s three floors into one enormous thermobaric fuel/air bomb.

  To bring the building down, he’d laid in breaching charges around the support piles in the vehicle park. The front of Apex Energy was the riot grounds, and it would be…tacky, to drop the building on the hundreds of dead out front. The reverse side of the megascraper, though, was a ground-level eight-lane freeway, a sound-absorbent barrier wall, and then broad, open park. Kratos wasn’t too worried about the local squirrel-analogues’ homes, and rigged the charges to drop the building in a “safe” direction. Thor was the team’s other demolitions specialist, and he’d double and triple-checked all of Kratos’ work from top to bottom.

  Keeso’s Lancers had mounted their Coyote suits again, and stood by the park-side exit, ready to roll out. Ocelot and the Myrmidons were back aboard Charlie, and Kratos followed Thor aboard. They transitioned through the scrubbers one last time, and then the Coyotes led the way into the pre-dawn morning.

  “Sensor hits,” Keeso advised. Coyotes were, by long Ridian tradition, armored reconnaissance and had a superior sensor suite. “Multiple, heading this way. They probably had a track on Pegasus and saw where it made pickup.”

  “Run,” Bellerophon urged. The Coyotes took long strides along the parkside freeway, and Keeso knew his way through the city. Janus goosed the throttle to keep up, and pretty soon they were tearing along the lanes of the freeway, dodging wrecks at ninety kilometers an hour.

  “Contacts are closing fast,” Daedalus called from the gunner’s station. “Looks like multiple warbots and low-flying VTOL. IFF isn’t saying a thing, which is weird. Keeso, is this the government response you were expecting?”

  “Fuckin, nope,” the armor lieutenant replied. “On one hand, we’ve been waiting for hours and nada. On the other hand, Murphy does love his fuckery. No IFF at all probably means The Black Jaguars. I’ve seen some footage of these savages since everything went to hell, they are Bad Dudes.”

  Bellerophon studied the map with the sigs overlay. “Copy, Kratos, stand by to send the detonation signal on my mark…three, two, now,” he ordered. Kratos triggered his primary charge, and a kilometer behind them, the EMP grenades fried the electronic server farm.

  The EM switch, sans electricity, closed and ignited the det cord. The explosive cord propagated at nine klicks a second, simultaneously igniting two dozen incendiary charges throughout the multi-storey laboratory. The hydrogen-air mix detonated, shattering equipment and fracturing the blast-resistant aliglass. The Deton-8 charges burned hot enough to ignite the very metal structure of the lab, even as the blast wave fragmented walls and floors. The guts of the lab burst outwards from the building like so many oversize fragments from a ship-sized grenade.

  But that was only the beginning.

  Two more spools of det cord ran from the lab down through the stairway to the parking garage. They branched again, fanning out to multiple shaped charges set against the columns and support structures holding up the eastern three quarters of the building. The pressures on those ground level supports were immense, given they were holding up ninety floors of corporate headquarters. There were limits to what they could do, and while the building had been designed to survive a truck bomb, it hadn’t been built to withstand two professional combat sappers with time to scheme. The sudden loss of integrity in the laboratory and the destruction of the base supports meant Apex Energy Headquarters, Montoya III, Republica del Escobar, was doomed.

  So, too, were two of the three VTOL pursuing Charlie and the Ridians. One flying shard of aliglass punched through a ZP-24 Havoc cockpit’s window like a dinner-plate sized shuriken. It decapitated the pilot, whose death spasm veered the gunship into a scraper wall at top speed. Another shard bisected the trailing ZP-24’s port-side fan ducts, crippling the engines instantly. The VTOL had been flying low to delay detection by the Coyote’s sensors, but the low altitude meant the pilot didn’t have time to recover from the sudden engine loss; the assault VTOL, belly laden with troops, barrel rolled into the ground, killing everyone aboard.

  Then the three hundred meter tall building began to fall.

  Several of the ZAZ-60 APCs racing to scene stomped on their brakes, not recognizing that they had time to race through. Instead, they were crushed. One driver even slewed his vehicle into a hard left turn, smashing through the sound-barrier wall in an effort to cut through the park, but failed to escape the shadow of the falling tower and was smashed to parts and paste.

  Several of the heavy bipedal Santa Muerte warbots were able to halt their dash and backpedal, escaping the catastrophe by mere meters. One pilot managed to avoid the initial impact, but more frag blew out from the building as it impacted and a polycrete boulder the size of his torso hit the walker at several hundred meters per second. The bot was thrown over backward, badly damaged by the impact, the pilot concussed and out of the fight.

  One pilot though, raced all the harder when he saw the building coming dow
n. Capitán Hector Garcia had been fighting in bots since battle college and knew he had time to shoot the gap before the building came down. Speed and aggression were key, and the Santa Muerte suits were the finest armor Los Jaguares Negros had in their inventory. They could sprint at highway speeds, and Garcia redlined his throttle to get under the catastrophe before access to the fleeing criminals was cut off. Indicators on his control panel winked grey as the ZAZ-60s were crushed, and it enraged him all the more—they were getting away. Only one of the ZP-24s had avoided the explosion and falling megascraper. It flared hard and banked counter-clockwise around the falling building, passing over the dead rioters. The pilot rejoined Garcia on the far side and stayed at his six o’clock, racing between the scrapers, staying a hundred meters above and behind him.

  Garcia’s warbot was running at well over a hundred thirty kilometers an hour, and his sensors told him the mass-murdering scum ahead of him had left the freeway and were zig-zagging through the roads to break line of sight. He rounded a corner and caught sight of the last two stragglers in their puny Coyote armor, and tagged both with his shoulder-mounted micro-missile system. He queued six missiles to each and mashed the firing stud. A dozen missiles streaked away, their HESH warheads slamming into and penetrating the rear of the suits, spall shredding the Ridian Lancers on board. Both Coyote suits collapsed, and Garcia howled in triumph as he closed the distance.

  * * *

  “We just lost Dales and Johnston,” Keeso shouted. “Split up, keep behind cover, we can’t outrun this guy.”

  Janus stomped hard on the brakes and used the M.A.T.T.’ s swing arms to jink sideways into a broad alley. He rotated Charlie in place, bringing his admittedly too-light-for-this armor to the fore, and popped the ramp. “DISMOUNT!” he barked, “EVERYONE OUT!”

  He followed the other eight passengers down the ramp, switching from active to remote control. Ocelot followed Janus to cover where he could run the M.A.T.T. uninterrupted. Artemis and Nephilim activated their ANGEL systems and jumped for the rooftops, and the remainder formed up in the alley in a hoplon-shield wall they could use to buy Janus time.

  Lt. Keeso and his three surviving Lancers also scattered. The Coyotes were a mere four meters tall compared to the Santa Muerte’s seven, and Keeso chose to barrel through the front wall of a restaurant to disappear into the debris. The four Coyotes were outclassed by the much larger mech and couldn’t stand toe to toe with the larger, heavier warbot. They would have to hit and run to stand a chance.

  “Streaming a feed now,” Artemis sent over her comm, and opened a channel from her own optics for Janus. Janus spotted his target via the feed, and knew where the Santa Muerte was before rolling Charlie out of cover. With the cannon primed and missile rack on standby, he punched the M.A.T.T. out from the side street and fired.

  The APFSDS dart roared forth at four kilometers per second, hitting with 280 kilojoules of force. It had been a snap shot, however, and the round impacted wide of the pilot compartment, taking the warbot in the shoulder. The Escobaran robot returned fire, stitching Charlie’s front glacis with bolts of railgun fire, and then Charlie was across the intersection and out of the line of sight again.

  “Keeso! Do you have anything that’ll kill that thing?” Bellerophon asked over his comm.

  “Hard no! We’re going to have to wear it down,” Keeso replied. “Go for the legs!”

  “Incoming VTOL!” Nephilim advised from another perch above them. “Assault bird is dropping troops to support the warbot. I’ve got laser on it.”

  “Moving now!” their M.A.T.T. controller said, and Charlie jinked out of cover and into the street. Missiles found Nephilim’s targeting laser and streaked up and away. The ZP-24 ate two, belched flame, and came apart mid-air. The troops already safe on the ground scattered as their ride came crashing down, but those still onboard died. The survivors were too busy diving for cover to notice another micro-missile swarm from the Santa Muerte warbot. One of Charlie’s front swingarms was blown clear of the frame, crippling its mobility, and another missile severed the command link between the chainblaster and Charlie’s autonomous controls.

  Janus ignored the damage and stabilized as best he could, bringing the gauss cannon to bear. He was too late, the turret too slow, and the warbot was already in motion. The cannon round flashed past, harmless. The Santa Muerte bot disappeared around another corner, and Janus stitched the building, but the gauss rounds couldn’t find the warbot.

  “We gotta move!” Janus shouted. Kratos hadn’t been wasting time in the alley, and threw up his e-shield to protect Ocelot as he detonated a charge, blowing a passageway into the building adjacent. Janus shrugged and drew his AE gauss pistol, passing it to Ocelot with a reload. “You might need this,” he said, before charging through the breach.

  The interior appeared to be the back room of a custom ladies’ clothier. Designer suits and dresses hung on hangars and raw material sat in piles, all thoroughly coated in plaster dust and brick from the demo charge. Kratos paid them no mind as he kicked in the door. That provoked fire from the surviving Black Jaguar troops across the street, and he threw up his e-shield again to deflect the incoming bolts. The Myrmidons kept on the move, covering each other as they moved up to the front of the store, laying down a thick base of fire. A gauss round cracked down from above, and Artemis commed, “Their commander’s down.”

  Another fusillade of ion bolts crashed through the front of the store, and the textiles inside ignited, adding to chaos. Thor swore. “Medic! Arm’s off! Pulling back!” he shouted, and crawled back from the window front where he’d been hit. The forearm that bore his hoplon energy shield had been blown off at the elbow, one of the BRUTE armor’s few weaknesses. He dragged his damaged forearm with him deeper into the store.

  “Here!” Daedalus shouted, and dropped his carbine on its sling so he could pull a cylinder from his harness. He adjusted the settings on it as Thor crawled to him, and when his teammate reached him, he clamped the cylinder over the damaged ruin of his stump, with the forearm laying just below.

  “Two minutes!” Daedalus yelled to be heard over the firefight, and flashed two fingers. Thor nodded, and Daedalus crawled forward again. Inside the cylinder, lasers cut away the damaged ends of the artificial bone, synthetic nerves, and polymer muscles on both halves, restoring it to some semblance of functionality with 3D printing tech. A nanite slurry fabbed a weaker, temporary replacement for the destroyed joint, getting Thor back into the fight. It wouldn’t be nearly as robust as what he’d had, but it was better than losing the limb completely.

  Kratos tapped into Artemis’ feed, still streaming from above, as he withdrew more Deton-8 from his harness and began shaping it into baseball-sized lumps of good news and fit each of them with a remote detonator. He found the warbot, angling for a better flanking position on the group, still out of Charlie’s LOS. Losing the heaviest weapon on the field sucked when going up against heavy armor.

  All problems can be solved with the proper application of enough Deton-8, he repeated, and then rolled out from cover to whip the spheres of plastique at the warbot. He had cocked his arm to throw, when the first ion blasts struck. They sizzled against the shield and overloaded it. Three more blasts punched through, and he stumbled. Internal diagnostics flashed yellow and red, but he ignored them, so long as he could hit what he was throwing at. The plastic explosive mashed itself into place, and then he sent the command to explode.

  The five quarter-pound explosives blew as one, crippling one of the warbot’s legs and damaging an arm at the shoulder. Micro-missiles in its shoulder rack cooked off, adding to the damage, but the bot was still semi-mobile and returned fire with an ion blaster on a small shoulder turret. Most of the bolts went wide, but without his shield, Kratos was exposed and took another in the leg, but the BRUTE armor held. His internal systems were scrambled from the first salvo, and he dropped in place, calling for a medic.

  “Standby!” Daedalus yelled. Thor’s limb needed another fo
rty seconds before the repairs would be complete.

  * * *

  Combat is no place for a cat-girl, Ocelot grimly reflected. But then again, neither is this planet, any more. The gunfire between the Ridian suits, these strange hoplite contractors, and Los Jaguares was hard on the ears, as her ears were far more sensitive than any ungifted human. The explosions were particularly painful. But when hunting, one used whatever concealment one found. She’d followed Janus through the door, and immediately hugged the floor. A heavy impact blew open a side wall from the dress-makers into the fancy restaurant next-door. She leapt through the gap headfirst and stayed low in case more bolts penetrated the walls. The dining area let her slip out the front foyer, using the faux Mediterranean columns for cover. From there, she crept between two ground cars, dashed across the narrow street, exposed to the warbot for a moment, but the pilot was distracted. She burst through the front door of a cantina that was the very opposite of ritzy, and surveyed the walls.

  There.

  She leapt onto a booth’s seatback, and pressed up at the cheap ceiling tiles, which slid aside at her touch. The void above the tiles was open to the storefront next-door, and she leapt straight up, nearly three meters, to cling to the underside of the rafters. She crawled along their length by her modified, freakishly-strong fingers and toes, until she was directly above one of the security troops exchanging fire with Keeso’s Coyotes.

  A brief lull in the firefight was all she needed. She hooked her knees over the rafter, released her hands and hung upside-down for a moment to orient herself. Her first three targets were ducking down behind concealment, snap-firing at the Coyote power armor, and one glanced up just as she was lifting Janus’ pistol. He started to react, but the gun barked, and a gauss bead took him between the eyes. The shot was lost in the cacophony of gunfire as she shifted targets, shot again, shifted, and killed the third. She released her knees from the rafters and curled mid-air to come down among two more. The three shots had been so quick, the survivors hadn’t even realized their squad mates were dead, let alone located the threat. She landed in a low crouch and rose to throat-punch the Jaguares NCO with her claws. Blood mixed with dust and shattered plaster as she tore his throat out, and she pivoted into a low kick that staggered the next trooper. She ripped the Tavor-26 from his grip and fed him the buttstock, shattering the supposedly shatter-proof visor on his environmental helmet. He hit the floor, stunned, caught a whiff of nanogram-potent opiate, and drifted off into oblivion, never to wake.