The girl nodded and left with the dress.
“Why?” asked Vidya.
“It’s bullet proof. Diamond will be here within the hour. You’re leaving tonight.”
Day One
“I hate to break it to you, but your Green Zone girlfriend? She’s a dude.”
High beams first, the Cherokee Armored Fighting Vehicle turned on to the alley. A desert rat hid in a ditch as six solid wheels crunched past. Green lasers lanced out from hardened sensors and scanned dark buildings. Up top, the gatling laser and rocket pod cast shadows in the street lighting.
Inside sat a fire team of six, bored, tactical body armors. Assault rifles were slung, helmet displays glowed green, gum was chewed.
“Hey, fuck you man!” ORTIZ was written on his patch. From under his sensor-laden helmet his magnificent facial hair was sadly, not ironic.
“I know, right?” said AZIZ. The brown man lacked a beard but compensated with a sergeant’s stripes. “That’s what he said!”
The other men Ohhhed! And Aww, Manned!
The skeletal, grey, UNAID streetlights petered out. The dark street narrowed and became pot holed. Ruined and retasked pre-Invasion buildings tottered and leaned. Between them, cruel gods perched on garish roadside shrines. Beggars and pilgrims huddled in shadows, dusty faces with sullen, bright eyes. The temple city of Kashi watched.
The AFV screeched still. “Hey, Humanity’s finest,” its cabin speaker snapped, “I’m picking up Calcium Ammonium Nitrate ahead.”
Sergeant Aziz spat out his gum. “Good work. Back us up to estimated safe distance.”
The AFV reversed back twenty meters. It screech-stopped again and the rear ramp banged down. Boots pounded, the Droptrooper riflemen took cover in the street, backs against walls. Their visors reflected back the glaring streetfolk.
Aziz: Control, this is Charlie Patrol. We’ve picked up a possible roadside IED.
Battlefield Control: Roger, Charlie Patrol. Company Command has been notified. An Explosive Ordnance Disposal team is being dispatched to your location. Secure the area.
Aziz: Roger.
His world was night-vision green and overlay red. Heat signatures were staring at the soldiers. Some stood up and chattered to each other. The Cherokee’s spectrometer lased the oblong, buried shape in the road ahead. It was, the sergeant thought, poorly disguised. In daylight, they would have been suspicious even without spectrometer support.
So what was really going on?
Aziz: IED for sure, follow up ambush probable. Stay in cover everyone.
Ortiz: Shall we call for back up?
Aziz: Not yet. We should be able to handle this. Cherokee?
AFV: Standing by.
Aziz: Get the civilians out of here.
The transport starting inching forward. Launchers popped and rounds arced high into the sky. The flares descended, lighting the ground up like an international cricket stadium. Red warning lights began flashing on its roof.
“This is a security operation,” boomed a loudspeaker, “clear the street immediately. This is a security operation, for your own safety, please clear the street immediately.”
“Alright people,” Aziz called out from behind an upturned barrel, his helmet speaker amplifying his voice. “Clear the area, now!” The heat signatures stared for a bit, then slowly starting cursing and getting up.
The Droptroopers braced – but there was nothing.
Aziz: They didn’t remote trigger it. Cherokee, are you microwave jamming?
AFV: I’ve been jamming since we left the garage.
Aziz: You picking up anything?
AFV: There’s a microwave tower two blocks from here. No way I’d be able to tell if one of those signals was a phone trigger.
“Hey,” a rifle round chambered, DASILVA took aim, “Stop right there!”
The child was walking towards them. He must have been no more than nine or ten. People started getting up and leaving in a hurry. They looked back at the boy, and hurried faster.
“Hey, stop right there kid!” the others took aim at him.
AFV: He’s not carrying any explosives.
Ortiz: Then why the fuck is he coming towards us?
“Get on the ground!” Ortiz aimed the Squad Automatic Weapon, a bipod heavy laser. “Get on the ground now!”
AFV: Repeat, no explosives detected.
Aziz: X-ray him!
“He’s got a fucking vest, Sarge!”
“Permission to fire!”
AFV: X-ray complete. The vest is packed with shrapnel. Engaging.
The massive Cherokee lurched forward, and thundered towards the tiny child.
“Bio-bomb! Take cover!”
The boy detonated.
The pressure wave picked up the ten ton Cherokee, and flipped it end-over-end. The soldiers were hurled away, cratered into mud walls and arcing over the street. Aziz landed on his faceplate – a nanoseconds later, micro-electric charges fired through his armor. Smart fluid hardened and carbon strands aligned – the shock was spread out. Thrifty micro-turbines in the suit fabric spun, capturing the energy for later.
He got up on his elbows.
Alarms triggered in his helmet, his screens were flashing red. Some of the red was from his fast-clotting, broken nose. A reboot sequence bar crawled towards completion - his eardrums were being restarted. A corner window displayed his fire team’s vitals. Agitated yellow lines showed racing heart rates – but all accounted for. They started smoothing out as hormone reservoirs dumped performance-nicotine into their bloodstreams.
Most of the heat patterns were gone – and the rest were fading or fleeing. His ears came online and gave him men wailing like children.
“I can’t feel my leg!” he heard. It was DaSilva.
“Quit bitching!” yelled Ortiz, staggering into view. He looked about, then knelt by a woman’s corpse and rolled it over. He pulled out his SAW heavy laser free from underneath. It read his IFF and retracted its blast plating.
“Need a little help here!”
DaSilva was pinned under a rubble pile. He flailed like a baby with the family dog sitting on it. The buildings around the blast site had been flattened. Plaster and concrete crumbles rained down, plinking off armor. Grey dust started to mist the air.
“Help him up Ortiz,” Aziz started towards the casualty. “Everyone else okay?”
Some grumbles but mostly can-do attitude came back.
Aziz: Cherokee?
AFV: Drive train is damaged, self-repair won’t do it. I also can’t do much on my side.
Aziz: Battlefield Control, we just got suicide bombed. I need a recovery vehicle – something with a crane. We have one soft-body casualty, needs –
DaSilva snarled through gritted teeth. Ortiz and Franklin pulled him clear, one leg stayed under the pile. The stump had already fast-clotted, his leg armor seals had clamped tourniquet-style.
Aziz: - Needs immediate medevac. I got no numbers on civvie casualties, but it’s a lot.
Battlefield Control: Affirmative, we picked up the blast. Company Command is sending in assistance. Just sit tight Charlie Patrol.
The dust cloud thickened - the world tinted urban-warfare gray. Aziz could barely see four meters.
The grey broke: sputtering flashes of unsuppressed small arms fire.
“Insurgents!”
DaSilva screamed. Ortiz and Franklin pelted for the sideways Cherokee, dragged him bumping and scraping. Dust kicked up where bullets spattered around them. They got behind their moribund armor.
“Motherfuckers that hurts.”
“My tactical display is down,” Franklin tapped against the side of his helmet. “How many out there?”
“Twelve heat patterns,” said Aziz, crouching beside him. “Just stay here and shoot anything that moves. I’m going behind that wall before we get flanked.”
Aziz: Natraj, Khan, go right and get in that building if you can.
Natraj: On it!
Khan nodded from acro
ss the street, and went back to shooting.
“Ortiz, give us covering fire.”
“On it!” He stood, braced, and let loose eight hundred bolts a minute.
Aziz waved to Natraj and Khan, “Go!”
The three men were up and running.
Bullets spattered around Aziz, one plinked off his back. His tac armor caught, hugged, and squashed the dum dum round. He crashed down behind a shattered wall. A severed, charred, head was there for company. He recognized it by its size. Suicide bombers don’t leave corpses. Just heads that take off like rockets.
Inhale.
He swung his rifle over the wall and aimed.
His helmet picked out several shooters, shading them in red. Three were shooting at him.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Exhale.
Eagle DNA took over, striking with full metal jacket rail rounds. One splashed through a skull, another tore through a chest. The third blew off a shoulder. The victim went down – then slowly rose and picked up his arm, with his other arm.
Someone shot him in the head.
More angry red men appeared in his helmet. The counter below went up to 18 HOSTILES.
Khan: I’m hit! AP round, right through my tac.
Natraj: They’re setting up a machine gun!
Aziz: Control, this is a major ambush, we’re fighting a platoon-strength -
The air cracked and howled. The RPG detonated against the Cherokee, the massive vehicle rocked.
Aziz: They have anti-armor weapons!
Control: Dragonfly gunship inbound. Sit tight Charlie Patrol, you’re not on your own.
Screaming from above.
The dust cloud parted and sand whipped against his helmet. The shaded reds squinted, hunkered down, and ran for cover. He looked up: a black, tank-sized wasp was orbiting them. Thrusters tilted down in hover-mode, shimmering hot air fountained down. Under its nose, a six barreled chain gun began to swivel. The barrels started cycling.
“Where’s your alien god now, beetlefuckers?” yelled Ortiz from behind the smoking Cherokee. Beside him, the crippled DaSilva waved at the gunship.
The chain gun opened up.
Nine hundred armor piercing rounds a minute, sprayed at the AFV. It’s armor shredded like paper. The soldiers behind it evaporated in red spray and shredded armor. A piece landed by Aziz. It was a sliver of fabric, steel-hard, locked in shape.
The drone stopped firing, ascended on its thrusters, and arced away. The scream of its engines faded as it became a dot.
Then the crew serviced insurgent machine gun began firing.
Havelock VIII
Ice. It was everywhere.
I had to grab a stanchion to stop myself from sliding away. I felt its cold through my glove like the bony finger of a witch. Helmet light beams cut back and forth through the inky dark. They skidded off walls and gantries, bulkheads and pipes. The ice on them stole the attention and gleamed with it. Our boots tink, tink, tinked, treading on bare metal.
“Minus twenty in here,” his breathe steamed through the SWAT trooper’s balaclava. He held his boarding shotgun ready. “The heaters in our armors can handle it, but the batteries are going to run down. That limits our radius unless we bring the generator.”
“We won’t need to,” I smeared grease over my lips, they were already splitting. “Minus twenty is good. Outside, it’s almost absolute zero. Life support is definitely up and running, and will get warmer the closer we get to our targets.”
Behind us, more helmet lights bobbled as the last troops followed. The airlock iris sealed. They gathered round us.
“Alright, now just like we planned,” I began. “It doesn’t matter how many of them there are, we take control of these critical points and the ship is ours. Team leaders, you know your assignments. Everyone, you’ve got your maps. If you get separated, you know where to regroup. We have the element of surprise, so if you get killed, you were careless. Don’t get captured, they have to kill you first. Now team leaders, I will stress this – if you think for one moment, that you can’t hold your critical point - you go to plan B. Leaving this ship an unserviceable wreck is still a win. Everyone is counting on us. Good hunting.”
They disappeared into the dark, as if they’d never been.
“Sir, I need your authorization to mount a raid on the Atlantis.”
Deputy Director Goddard was not feeling very personable that day. His wife spent the night before reminding him that she was the center of the universe. This was nothing new though. What was new was that he found his hair was thinning. He’d barely checked his treacherous scalp eight times when the alert came. Now here he was, all morning, day, and now all night. He needed a shower, hot food, and another quick snort of stims. A shag would have been nice, but not with his bloody wife.
Havelock stood blocking the doorway like an attack dog. His rolled up sleeves showed the trauma marks of deep tissue bone repair. His eyes were hard, direct, caffeinated.
Goddard looked up from his screens.
“You’re Havelock, right?”
“Yes Sir.”
“Fuck off, Havelock. Aliens are invading.”
“Sir, if we can shut down the antimatter bomb factory – “
“We don’t know there’s an antimatter bomb factory, Agent. I know all about your investigation – contrary to some opinions, I do actually read all our agents’ reports.”
“Well then Sir you know that this could change everything.”
“What I know is that all you have is a single lead from an untrustworthy informant. I can’t spare people to raid a maybe-factory.”
“Sir I really think you should – “
“Havelock, abductions are being carried out across the human fleet. It’s not just the Nautiloids and the Worms. Other races are buying captives from them so they don’t have to get their hands dirty. You think we have agents to spare on a search and seizure goose chase?”
“Sir, what you can’t do is expect us to be able to stop the abductions. We’re outgunned, outnumbered, and that’s exactly how things are meant to be.”
“Defeatism,” he nodded and wagged his finger, “There, that’s something else I just don’t have time for, Havelock. Is that the best you can bring to the table at a time like this? An unverified lead, and defeatism? I have no idea what the director sees in you.”
“Maybe he sees what I see, that if you put us in the way of the raiders, you’re just going to end up with a lot of dead agents. How do you expect to keep order then when this is over? Who are the human ships going to turn to for support? You’ll be handing them to the terrorists, wrapped in a bow.”
Goddard said nothing.
“Forty-eight hours, that’s all I ask. Give me four teams, a shuttle, and forty-eight hours.”
“Four teams? Four? Why not ten teams while we’re at it!”
“Fine, I don’t give a fuck. Give me a dead cat and broken chair. All I need are forty-eight hours. If there’s a bomb factory there, I’ll find it in that time. You used to be a detective too; you know we have to chase up on every lead. Forty-eight hours. Worst case scenario, we’re still outgunned and outnumbered and there’s nothing you can do about that anyway. Best case scenario, we can end this.”
Goddard templed his fingers and rested his chin on them. The two men stare battled.
“You really need four teams?”
“I really need four. Engineering; life support; bridge; and the fourth for back up if it gets too nasty.”
“Alright. Forty-eight hours, and you have your teams. You better find something out there Havelock, or we’re going to have words when you get back.”
“You won’t regret this.”
“I think I already do. Wait, before you go.”
“Sir?”
He leaned forward.
“If that bomb factory is really there, as the man on the ground I’ll need you to make a judgment call.”
“Blowing it up? It’s antimatter. Not sure I should be doing that.”
“No, not blowing it up. Capturing it.”
“Sir?”
“Don’t be naïve, Havelock. No one is ever going to raid our ships again.”
The Atlantis wasn’t a derelict flying freezer by circumstance. It was designed to be just that.
The Alliance travelled between stars in truly massive craft. The bigger they were, the better. However, because of this our travel times are measured in generations. More massive ships mean more greenhouses, workshops, dormitories. However, it also means more fuel is needed. Alliance megaships coasted, sliding down the star ways. They lacked fuel to do anything else –even to slow down. The Liberation was completed in a single swing of the fleet through our system.
Humanity, or rather the machines controlling it, was just too impatient. I’m told they use a relic system left behind by aliens. They reached Paradiso instead by light sailing smart dusts, powered by immense lasers.
The Atlantis was something in-between. It was built by self-exiles who wanted passage to another star. A star away from all other humans. Perhaps they had realized the danger of thinking machines? They needed to make the voyage, but with fully formed humans.
They solved the problem of fuel by carrying the most efficient possible – antimatter. With an antimatter engine there was no waste to speak of. A few tons were all they needed. Making that amount would take decades – decades the Atlantis would spend on the go. Its antimatter factories would cook and deliver up its fuel as it went. Meanwhile, its crew froze – their bodies saturated with amphibian, anti-freeze proteins. They would travel like that for centuries if needed, thawing back into life at the other end.
Except that’s not what happened. The Atlantis was captured before its departure and packed with liberated humans. Its engines kept up easily, but its life support couldn’t handle the load. The ship was abandoned though it was completely space worthy. It just wasn’t a very worthy space.
“Sir,” Carl whispered through his balaclava, “temperature readings are holding at minus five.”
“That makes sense. That must be the optimum temperature for the crew freezers. The air feels – thicker.”
Burning Eagle Page 25
