“You’re coming up on your closest approach, sir,” Jordan said. “We are pulsing the site…now.”
The lightspeed delay shouldn’t have registered to human senses, but the fractions of a second before the data processed seemed to take forever.
“Confirm we have a concealed underground complex,” Jordan reported. “Downloading maps to your computers and flagging entry points. One is through the casino, linking in to the underground structure we IDed from above. Another is from the parking lot, large enough for vehicles and even small shuttles.
“At least four more personnel-sized entrances are scattered around the complex. Looks like four or five levels, mostly buried under the casino basement. Probably just dug deeper than anyone announced.”
“Understood,” Roslyn said grimly. “Herbert: hit the parking lot.”
“Inbound,” the pilot replied. “Shall I knock on the door, sir?”
The odds that this was their target were high…but it wasn’t a guarantee. Opening the trip with armor-piercing missiles could cause all kinds of trouble.
On the other hand, the Nueva Portugal Guardia had over a thousand people who were going to die if Roslyn didn’t find answers very, very quickly.
“Knock away, Lieutenant,” Roslyn ordered. “Make a road.”
She brought up a feed from the shuttle’s lead cameras running on her helmet heads-up display. The HUD had the outline of the underground complex highlighted on it—and the armored and concealed door blinked in red as Herbert dropped the shuttle’s targeting system on it.
“This is Huntress shuttle seven,” the Lieutenant announced on the Navy tactical channel. “Rifle One. I repeat, Rifle One.”
A single air-to-ground missile blazed away from the shuttle, accelerating at speeds no spacecraft carrying a human could match, and slammed into the highlighted door at several times the speed of sound.
Armored or not, the missile warhead shredded the access point. It had been designed to rise out of the ground and uncover a ramp down into the underground complex—and now only the ramp remained, covered in debris as Herbert brought the shuttle down into the hole she’d just created.
“We’re down,” she reported. “Access is clear. Good luck, Marines.”
There was no way Roslyn was going to lead the charge out of the shuttle. Even if she’d been so foolish as to try, the Marines wouldn’t let her.
But she was still the Mage in the team, and that meant she was in the middle, following two three-Marine fire teams out into the now-uncovered tunnel. Powerful shoulder-mounted lights from the exosuits lit up the cavern, showing a ramp descending into the ground toward the casino.
“Negative contacts, negative contacts,” Knight reported crisply on the tac channel. “Moving forward.”
“Don’t go too far,” Roslyn admonished. “You may want to protect me, Corporal, but I can protect you as well.”
“Never stray too far from the Mage, right,” the Marine replied with a chuckle. “Sending drones ahead; scanning for life signs.”
The drones that Knight threw into the air were bigger than the ones they’d investigated Killough’s apartment with, pigeon-sized robots with enough wingspan to keep airborne without rotors or jets.
“Move up, move up,” Mooren ordered. “Stick with the Commander but keep moving. Something is down here, and if it’s our target, we’re expecting Augments and we’re expecting them fast.”
The Marines moved. Roslyn moved with them, keeping a mental eye on Killough as the spy brought up the rear. Like her, he was only armed with a standard stungun. Unlike her, he wasn’t a Mage capable of handling almost any threat unarmed.
“Drones have contacts,” Knight snapped. “Multiple drones down, but we have contacts moving up the tunnel. They’re bringing vehicles with them as cover—what scans I have suggest the vehicles are armed.”
“Hold position,” Roslyn ordered. “Covering.”
Her hands flared out in front of her, palms forward, as she wove power through the air ahead of the Marine squad. Air concentrated and stopped moving, forming a solid barrier that could resist incoming fire.
She managed it just in time, as three ordinary-looking vans appeared out of the darkness at speed. The drivers knew what they were doing, twisting the vehicles in a synchronized maneuver that blocked the entire tunnel—and allowed the van’s side panels to swing open, revealing tripod-mounted penetrator rifles.
The high-powered weapons fired discarding-sabot tungsten penetrators, designed to go through the heavy armor Roslyn’s Marines were wearing. Trapped in the tunnel without cover, the three automatic weapons could have easily mowed down Mooren’s entire squad in seconds.
Instead, the tungsten darts hit Roslyn’s magical barrier and stopped dead. Dozens of rounds hung in the air for a few moments before they clattered to the ground, but the heavy rifles kept firing until their magazines ran dry.
“Nix!” Mooren barked, the Marine Sergeant lifting the automatic grenade launcher she’d kept for herself.
“Clear,” Roslyn replied, measuring her timing carefully. She wasn’t as good at this part as a proper Marine Combat Mage would be, but she knew the theory.
The launcher made a sharp triple cough, firing a burst of gas grenades down the tunnel, and Roslyn opened a hole in her barrier for the weapons to pass. A second triple cough followed, Mooren sending that burst over the vehicles into the approaching hostiles behind them.
The gun teams in the vans hadn’t been expecting the gas. A follow-up round of penetrators started—and then trailed off as the neutralization solution took effect and the defenders fell unconscious.
“Move up,” Mooren barked. “Hostiles are unarmored; stunguns first.”
Roslyn was tempted to argue—the penetrator rifles could have easily wiped out the entire squad in seconds, and the defenders were not playing nice. It was the Marine’s call, though. Roslyn wasn’t going to micromanage her escort.
The vans were modified civilian vehicles and were easily moved aside by the powered muscles of the exosuits. With the pathway cleared, it became obvious that Mooren’s Nix grenades had been the right call.
“Andrews, hold your team with K and secure the prisoners,” Mooren ordered.
Corporal Natal Andrews led the fire team at the lead with Killough, who apparently was being referred to by initial to pretend some level of discretion. They gestured for their Marines to fall in around them and began shuffling through the storage compartments on their armor for cuffs.
“Everybody’s down,” the Sergeant continued after a moment. “Watch for a second wave; teams one, two, three, keep moving with me and the Commander.”
Nine Marines moved forward with Roslyn as they carefully stepped around the unconscious defenders.
“No Augments,” Mooren murmured on a private channel to Roslyn. “Regular mooks, mixed weaponry, no body armor, no gas masks. They had the vans with the rifles, but I wonder if those were meant for Marines or the Guardia’s armored cars.”
“What are you thinking, Sergeant?” Roslyn asked, glancing over at the unconscious bodies. The woman closest to her was wearing standard worker coveralls without markings.
“I don’t think this is our target, sir,” the Marine admitted. “On the other hand, they shot at Marines without saying anything, so I figure we’re in a right place.”
“Let’s see what we find,” Roslyn replied. “Keep pushing forward.”
The lights were now picking up a set of heavy security doors. Clearly designed for standard transport trucks, they were easily large enough for all three vans to have come through at once.
They were also now closed and sealed. Roslyn considered the doors for a moment, then turned to Mooren.
“Standard civilian security. Do you have this?”
“Of course,” Mooren replied. “Fast or clean, sir?”
“Fast,” Roslyn said immediately.
Exosuits completely encased their wearers from head to toe. They were very bad at trans
mitting body language, but Roslyn somehow picked up the Marine’s amused glee at that order.
“Fall back; sticky grenades,” Mooren barked. She lifted the grenade launcher and aimed carefully. Eight single shots followed, the grenades sticking to the door as their name implied.
The Staff Sergeant glanced around, checking her people’s distance.
“Fire in the hole!” she announced—and all eight grenades detonated simultaneously in the white-hot flash of thermite explosives.
Most of the door fell backward, away from the Marines. The exosuited troopers were already moving when the metal crashed to the concrete floor, leading the way into the main target of the complex.
As soon as Roslyn stepped over the wreckage of the door, she knew that Mooren was right. They were definitely in the wrong place. The facility was definitely illegal—concealed, defended with restricted weapons, etc., etc.—but it was a shipping-and-storage facility.
Not a laboratory.
“Well, that’s been an annoying waste,” Roslyn muttered. “I guess we finish the job, since we’re here.”
“Spread out,” Mooren ordered. “Sweep for security and anyone in charge. Herbert, are you airborne?”
“I am,” the pilot replied. “Watching the exits. No one has made a run for it yet, but… What’s the call?”
“Commander?” the Sergeant asked.
“Call in the Guardia, Lieutenant,” Roslyn ordered with a sigh. “Track anyone who emerges, and pass the chase off to the locals. We appear to have broken a smuggling ring…not a secret ex-Republic lab.”
“Damn. I suppose that’s still a win?” the Lieutenant asked.
Roslyn looked around the massive, automated racks containing hundreds of containers of likely illegal guns and drugs.
“I suppose,” she conceded. “But it’s not helping our victims.”
24
“Sir, I think we have someone who wants to talk to you,” Knight’s voice said drily over the tac channel. “We’ve found the offices. They’re mostly empty, but one gentleman was sitting waiting for us.”
Roslyn hadn’t been expecting that.
“Sergeant?” she asked Mooren.
“We’re secure if you want to go chat with the locals,” the Marine replied.
Herbert hadn’t spotted anyone leaving, but the facility was almost entirely empty. The defenders who’d ended up gassed had likely been planning to provide cover for an evacuation rather than to truly hold off Marines for an extended period.
“Most people left through the casino and we have no ability to separate them from the crowd,” Roslyn noted. “Why would someone stay?”
“Either they figured we were going to ID and catch them anyway, or they think they’re invincible,” the Marine told her. “Or both.”
Roslyn snorted.
“Well, I guess I’ll find out,” she told the Marine. “Knight, flip me a waypoint? This place is big and confusing.”
“There you go,” Knight replied. “Do we have any good news, sir?”
“There’s no people in those containers,” Roslyn said grimly. “That was my first concern.”
Despite everything the Protectorate—and the Republic, during its existence—could do, sex-slave trafficking was a continuing problem. Most of the victims were teenagers from worlds across human space, convinced they were signing up for a better life somewhere else.
Some went to the Core, some to the Mid and some to the Fringe. The point wasn’t so much supply and demand, as Roslyn understood it, as to separate the victims from any potential support structure they knew of.
The Protectorate would deal with the organized criminals running guns and drugs, or evading taxes and tariffs, but they reserved their harshest punishments and most dramatic efforts for the human traffickers.
That thought carried Roslyn across the underground warehouse to the office, where Knight’s fire team gestured her to an office they’d barred shut. Knight herself was standing guard over the door, though the wires from her armor to one of the warehouse consoles suggested she was multitasking.
“What have we got, Corporal?” Roslyn asked.
“John Doe, wanted to speak to our commanding officer,” the Marine replied. “He was calmly sitting in the office when we arrived and hasn’t moved. He’s acting like he’s in control of the situation, which strikes me as particularly nervy.”
“Indeed,” Roslyn murmured. “Well, let’s go see what he has to say. Back me up, Corporal? You’re a far more visible threat than I am.”
“Can do.”
The two women entered the office in step. Knight remained by the door, turning her blank faceplate to focus on the prisoner in a clear glare.
The office was much nicer than Roslyn had expected. Unlike the concrete floor of the rest of the warehouse, it had been carpeted in a thick, soft material she didn’t recognize. The walls were decorated with what Roslyn suspected were original art pieces by Sorprendidan artists, and a pair of cat statues sculpted from a glittering local black stone stood on either end of the desk.
The man behind the desk stretched languidly, like one of the cats the statues depicted, as Roslyn approached. He was a dark-haired and stunningly pale-skinned man dressed in an all-black suit and wearing silver rings on all of his fingers.
“At last, some decency and etiquette,” he observed. “You invade my place of business, abuse my people, damage my facility and you don’t even have the grace to greet me in a timely fashion.”
He shook his head.
“The galaxy has gone so downhill. Now tell me, whoever you are, how exactly are you planning on justifying this blatantly illegal invasion of private property?”
“It isn’t private property if it doesn’t exist,” Roslyn replied with a chuckle. “This entire facility is missing from all official records. That’s questionable enough, Mister…”
He glared at her in silence.
“And that questionable suffices for probable cause, given the use of a bioweapon in Nueva Portugal,” Roslyn told him. “The Royal Martian Marine Corps is operating on the authority of the Protectorate to investigate the use of a weapon of mass destruction.
“You will find, I’m afraid, that under the authority we are granted in that circumstance, our actions are entirely within our remit.”
Some of the glare faded, but the man did a good job of concealing his surprise.
“You have no grounds to decide that this warehouse is a source for bioweapons,” he argued.
“That’s a discussion for the courts,” Roslyn noted. “But believe me, we have more than sufficient grounds to investigate any unregistered covert facility in Nueva Portugal with whatever level of force is necessary.”
She gestured around.
“Even the most basic scans of the contents of this warehouse suggest a long list of felonies we can level against everyone involved,” she told him. “I don’t know what game you think you’re playing, but I do believe you lose.”
The pale man chuckled and spread his hands.
“I own this casino, officer,” he admitted. “I have no desire to flee Sorprendidas as a penniless vagabond, so I must defend my property one way or another.
“I see that our final battle shall be in the courts, but I think you still overstate your position. This illegal incursion could easily render all of your evidence against me invalid.”
“You’re stretching,” Roslyn warned. “And it won’t save you. If you have nothing of value to offer, I suggest you begin planning your discussion with your lawyer.”
“Wait.” He held up a hand as she turned to leave. “While I am a…casino owner, let us say, I am also a citizen of Nueva Portugal and Sorprendidas. I was once a citizen of the Republic and am now, as I understand, once again a citizen of the Protectorate.”
“Your point?” she asked. That was as close as he was going to get to saying he was neck-deep in organized crime.
“I voted for reintegration, officer,” he told her. “I believe in a un
ified humanity and that I have civic responsibilities. I will assure you, with absolute certainty, that no bioweapon of any kind has ever been transported through this facility.
“I have no idea what kind of weapon was used in my city, but I have no desire to see the people I rely on as customers injured in this way. If there is a way I can be of assistance, before you throw away the key, I would be delighted to help.”
Roslyn glared at the mob boss. He wouldn’t be able to see her glare through the hazmat helmet, but she suspected he got the idea.
“Someone used Republic resources to build a secret laboratory in this city roughly around the time of the Secession,” she told him. “They’ve been kidnapping human test subjects from Nueva Portugal—and probably the rest of the planet. Any ideas, Mr. ‘Casino Owner’?”
He looked at her in silence, his hand still languidly raised as he considered.
“I assume you have access to the Guardia prison population?” he asked slowly. “There is a woman—I will neither grace her with the title of lady nor say I ever worked with her—who is serving a prison term for trafficking.
“While I cannot be certain of anything, it is possible that the organization she was working with cut her off and provided evidence to the Guardia of her activities because she was causing trouble close to home,” the man said. “It is possible that she was engaging in more aggressive personnel acquisition than that organization would tolerate, and it is possible that she wasn’t kicking enough cash upstairs to justify her actions.”
“Possible, huh?” Roslyn said grimly. She’d hand the recording over to the Guardia. The lack of trafficking victims currently in the warehouse didn’t mean that no one had been trafficked by the man she was facing.
“Her name is Josephine Jackson,” the mob boss told her with a flick of his hand. “You may make of the possibilities what you wish, officer. I will say nothing further until I have seen my lawyer.”
“Given everything the Guardia is dealing with, that may take a while,” Roslyn warned. “I hope you like cells.”
A Darker Magic (Starship's Mage Book 10) Page 12
