by Dan Moren
There were three black hovercars in front of the embassy – standard security procedure for transporting any sort of VIP. It would be a smash-and-grab, that much was clear, and Kovalic presumed that the target was the same very important P that he had been sent here to warn the rest of the team about.
That, however, was about where his insight ended. Who would want to grab the heir to the Illyrican throne off the street was still a question – and the “why” depended very much on that “who.” Most of all, Kovalic wasn’t exactly sure that he should care.
If the general were here, Kovalic was certain that the old man would have something to say about how they shouldn’t allow what would surely be a major disruption of the galactic-political stage. Then again, there were some people that the galaxy would be better off without, and from the intel that Kovalic had seen on Emperor Alaric’s firstborn son, the crown prince was one of them. He couldn’t stop his stomach from roiling at the thought of Nat running afoul of the prince, but she was more than capable of handling herself.
Besides, his assignment was to courier a message; he’d already exceeded his brief as it was. He was pretty sure that it was worth it to at least observe and report on whatever little tableau was about to unfold before them – that kind of firsthand intelligence was invaluable. But he was happy enough to stay out of it.
There was movement from one of the embassy’s side doors; he raised the binoculars to his face once again, leaving the night-vision mode engaged. Grainy green-white ghosts shimmered as they strode down the side of the building, arm-in-arm. Early party poopers?
The taller of the two strode towards the front of the embassy in a gait that Kovalic found himself unconsciously describing as “imperious,” while the other one – a woman in a dress reaching to her calves – matched his pace, though she walked with the more precise step of one who has to be careful where they put their feet, lest their footwear betray them.
As they rounded the corner of the embassy, he saw the guards in front perk up and move to intercept, then suddenly fall back into a more deferential position as they got close enough to recognize the imperious man. Which just confirmed Kovalic’s initial guess: a high-ranking guest – from his relative youth, most likely the crown prince himself – leaving with a lady from the party.
Activating the tightbeam rig, he trained it on the van. “Movement at the front,” he murmured. “Whoever our party crashers are, I think their target is on the move.”
“I feel spectacularly useless down here,” Tapper grumbled. “Can’t see a damn thing.”
“Well, if they weren’t jamming us, I could send you the binoc telemetry, but hooking it up to the tightbeam would take more time than we have.”
“Was that supposed to make me feel better? Because it didn’t work.”
“I never did finish that six-week course on morale building.”
Out in front, two of the guards had formed an escort, and were ushering the prince and his guest towards the cars parked out front. The pair was led to the third of the cars, where one of the guards pulled open the back door and let the two honored guests slip in. Unsurprisingly, to Kovalic, the prince slid in first – chivalry was not known to be the man’s strong suit.
As the woman moved to enter, accepting help from one of the embassy staff, she shifted her weight and turned, such that she didn’t leave the guards at her exposed back – the kind of thing a trained soldier might do. Kovalic sucked in his breath sharply, even as the woman disappeared into the car. The embassy guard slammed the door shut on the pair and patted his hand on the top of the vehicle.
The three-car convoy began to pull away from the curb, and Kovalic swung his binoculars towards the van lying in wait. His gut twisted; there wasn’t enough time. Cursing, he trained the tightbeam back down on the van.
“Nat’s in the car. I’m on the move.”
He caught only the beginning of Tapper’s surprised response as he broke line of sight and made for the edge of the roof. He shoved the binocs and tightbeam rig into his pocket, and swung over the lip to land on the fire escape.
The iron juddered beneath his boots as he made his way down it, but he was still a few stories from the ground when a white flash emanated from the street, followed a split second later by a thundering explosion. At the lowest level, he kicked at a lever, which released a ladder that clattered down to the ground. He slid down it, his feet and hands scraping against the sides, and dropped the last few feet to the pavement, landing in an almost sprinter’s crouch and immediately pushing off for the mouth of the alley.
As he ran, he drew the knockout gun and flipped off the safety. A series of rectangular green lights glowed to life, showing a full charge. It might not be as useful as a real gun, but it wasn’t as though someone was about to deliver him an assault rifle.
Emerging from the alley, he took in the scene: the van that he had spotted had taken out the lead car; meanwhile, an almost identical van – probably the group Kovalic had seen them signaling with their lights when he was on the roof – had smashed into the second car. That created a roadblock for the third car, the one that actually contained the prince. Someone had tossed an incendiary at the front of that vehicle. Even as Kovalic rounded the corner onto the street, the driver was bailing out, only to drop to his knees at the sight of the half dozen masked figures who had jumped out of the rear of the vans.
Suppression fire was being directed back towards the embassy, though nobody seemed to be putting up much of a fight from there – they were still too shocked. A sniper shot pinged off the chassis of one of the cars, but it didn’t even come close to any of the assailants.
Kovalic pressed himself against the wall, keeping his eyes peeled for an opportunity. Flattened into the darkness as he was, none of the assault team seemed to have noticed him, giving him an opportunity to study their moves. Their precise, efficient moves. The assailants were undeniably trained and, more to the point, they were a trained as a team.
Two moved as a pair to flank the fiery car. Each raised their rifle; the one on the passenger’s side held up three fingers and counted down to one, and they each yanked open their respective door, seized the person inside, and yanked them out.
The prince – in the light flickering from the flames on the hood, Kovalic could at last positively identify the man – was blustering loudly, but to the man’s credit he didn’t look afraid of his attackers.
The other man wrenched Nat to her feet by her arm, and a sympathetic lurch tugged at Kovalic’s stomach. His grip on the gun tightened and he raised it to gauge the shot. But they were easily fifteen meters away – too far outside the dissipation range of the KO gun.
He tried in vain to catch Nat’s attention, to reassure her that he was here and had her back, but she was too busy being hauled off by the attacker to see him concealed in the shadows. Grimacing, he lowered the weapon.
Most of the crew were still laying down fire, while the two men – Kovalic assumed they were men, anyway, given their bearing and general build – dragged the captives back behind the impromptu blockade created by the vans that they’d crashed.
Kovalic had only just begun to wonder how they planned on getting away when a screech of tires and flash of headlights signaled the arrival of a third van. A door in the side slid open, and the two prisoners were shoved unceremoniously inside.
Staying low, Kovalic jogged alongside the building’s front facade, heading towards the van. Raising the KO gun into a ready position, he tried to get a bead on one of the captors, but the range was still iffy.
Swearing to himself, he stole forward to close the distance. He never even saw what it was that he kicked – a discarded can, some piece of detritus from the crash – only heard it skitter away into the darkness. He froze, hoping it would go unnoticed in the general excitement, but one of the black clad soldiers was on the alert and swung a weapon in his direction.
With only a split second before the man opened fire, Kovalic beat him to it, squee
zing the trigger on the KO gun. A blue shockwave rippled out of the barrel, but Kovalic didn’t wait to see if he’d hit his target – he dashed towards the man at top speed.
Kovalic’s injured shoulder seared in pain as he drove it into the man’s solar plexus, knocking him backwards. The commando stumbled, but managed to keep his footing, even as his free hand flew to his chest. The gun had been held out to the side, forgotten, and, gritting his teeth against the flare from his shoulder, Kovalic tried to wrench it from the man’s grip with his good hand. The tangled strap made it impossible to wrest entirely, so he went with the flow, using the band to tangle up the commando’s gun arm.
The man’s finger grasped for the trigger, and Kovalic twisted the gun away from him, trapping the digit and pulling it back against the trigger guard; there was a snap. The commando grunted in pain, but he didn’t howl or scream, again reinforcing Kovalic’s assessment that these guys were professionals.
Professionals that didn’t work alone, he thought, looking up just in time to see another pair of black clad men advancing towards them. Spinning the commando into a chokehold, he unhooked the gun from the broken finger, but kept the strap encircling his captive’s wrist, then swung it around and under the man’s arm. With the man’s gun arm behind his back, Kovalic had both control of the weapon and a human shield.
Both of the other commandos snapped their guns up, bringing them to bear on Kovalic’s head.
“Easy,” said Kovalic, trying to ignore the throbbing from his injured shoulder. “Let’s all just take it easy.”
An audible whine sounded from behind Kovalic, a twin to the one that had come from the knockout gun in his own belt, and he huffed a bitter laugh. Outflanked.
The lead commando shrugged. “Better luck next time.”
Kovalic tried to swing the gun around, but the tangled strap made it impossible – in any case, he was hardly fast enough to beat the stun field that enveloped him like a warm blanket, turning his vision into a blurry rainbow aura as his own heartbeat, irritatingly loud, echoed in his ears and his limbs turned to jelly.
He barely registered hitting the ground, though his senses persisted long enough that he felt someone pluck the KO gun out of his belt where he’d stowed it. Multiple boots stalked away from him – he could feel the vibrations thudding in his chest – and then it was just easier to let consciousness slip away.
Upon waking, Kovalic’s first thought was that, surprisingly, he wasn’t dead. The second was that he really had to stop passing out. He eased himself up from where he lay on the street, wincing as the pain spiked from his injured shoulder. Gingerly, he prodded at his torso; there were some bruises here and there, but he didn’t seem to have sustained any serious injury. His ears were buzzing fiercely, as though he’d decided to take up intracranial beekeeping.
Debris skittered off him as he sat up. It took him a moment to get his bearings, but they flooded back when he saw the multi-car pile-up in front of him. Two of them, a long hovercar and a black van, were currently on fire, blazing merrily away. Of the van that the kidnappers had dragged Nat and the crown prince into there was no sign.
But they hadn’t killed him. Perplexing, that. He’d have to give it more thought later, when his head wasn’t a beehive.
His arm buzzed, and he started. Brushing off his sleeve, he saw an alert message for a local emergency, advising him to avoid the area near the Illyrican embassy. Which in turn meant that the jamming had come down. Of course: the second the Illyricans realized what happened, they would have killed it to allow them to coordinate a search and rescue operation.
A search that he was right smack-dab in the middle of. Well, that wouldn’t look good. Especially if they ran his non-existent ID. It was probably time for an opportune exit.
Getting to his feet was about as exciting as he’d thought it would be. He ached all over from the residual effect of the stun blast, but he estimated he’d only been out for a couple minutes, tops.
He wobbled his way back towards the building where he’d taken up his listening perch, using the wall for support. Tapper and the van were only about a hundred meters away by the most direct route, as long as he could avoid the Illyrican and Bayern security patrols.
Which, admittedly, was a big if.
Still, his legs felt stronger and less gelatin-like with every step, and he was fairly well concealed in the shadows next to the building. Thank god it was nighttime or he’d be in real trou–
Almost as he thought it, the pale white light of what appeared to be a giant spotlight came on with a clunk, bathing the entire street in the pure illumination of day. Because, of course, Bergfestung wasn’t an ordinary city with celestially imposed night and day; it was inside a giant cavern with lighting that could be directed at will. All the authorities needed to do was override just a portion of the diurnal illumination routine, and presto – instant search lights.
Good for search parties, bad for Kovalic.
He sped up, trying to keep under overhangs where possible to shield himself from the light, but, as he glanced across the street, he could see personnel in both crimson-and-gold and blue massing already around the embassy. No one was going to be sleeping tonight, that was for sure.
There was no way he was going to make it to the van on time. If he could contact Tapper, the sergeant could come pick him up, but the tightbeam rig needed a clear line of sight, and he couldn’t even see the van from where he was.
He blinked and stopped in his tracks. The jamming was down; he could just call Tapper on the civilian comm network. Except he had no idea what Tapper’s contact info was. Well, then, he could reach M’basa at the embassy easily enough, and have her connect him to the van.
His fingers were on his sleeve, halfway through swiping up the embassy before he stopped himself. If the Illyricans or Bayern security were monitoring comm calls in the area, or pulled the logs later, they’d know somebody had called the Commonwealth embassy from the crime scene. And that would not look good at all. His head must be fuzzier than he thought.
With a sigh, he started walking again.
They said hindsight was 20/20, but his seemed to have been sharpened with laser vision at this point. So many poor choices thus far; he was kind of shocked that he wasn’t already in custody. Reluctant as he was to admit it, maybe the general had been right not to put him in charge of the mission.
As he rounded another vehicle, he caught sight of the embassy’s van; to his amazement, he’d crossed about half the distance so far. And if he could see the van… he patted down his pocket until he found the laser transmitter rig, then aimed it with unsteady hands at the dome atop the vehicle.
“Hey, Bulldog, this is Smartass. Copy?”
There was no response, but his hands were still shaking, so he couldn’t be sure he’d aimed it correctly; it was a lot harder to hit the receiver from this angle than it had been from the roof, but he didn’t think he was going to be climbing a fire escape anytime soon.
The search parties were out in force now, but, fortunately for Kovalic, they had a huge car accident and flaming vehicles to occupy their immediate attention. Hopefully, they’d be less interested in a random, injured passerby.
Taking a breath, he held it and aimed the laser rig, holding one hand steady with the other. “Bulldog, you there?”
There was a pause, in which Kovalic started to worry that the sergeant had abandoned his post once the lights had come on. He wouldn’t have blamed the man, but he’d known Tapper for twenty years, and there was no way he would leave Kovalic behind.
“Goddamnit, Smartass, where have you been?” barked a familiar voice in his ear.
He sighed in relief, then toggled the rig on again. “Oh, you know, here and there. Really, I’d love to chat, but I could use a ride.”
There was a much-suffering sigh. “You give and you give and you give, and still they want more. Where are you?”
“Not far. I’ll see you at about,” he eyed the angles, “eleven o’
clock?”
“Roger that,” said Tapper. There was a flash from the van’s lights – it would have been a beacon in the dark, but in the blaring light the only people noticing it would be those looking for it. Which, hopefully, was Kovalic and Kovalic alone. “See you then.”
The van pulled slowly away from the curve, puttering towards Kovalic. Most of the search party had their backs to it, still trying to put out the fires at the scene of the crash, but some of them would notice soon enough. He began limping towards it, hoping to meet Tapper halfway.
There’d be an interstellar incident if they were caught fleeing the scene of a kidnapping and identified. M’basa would probably get shipped back to Nova, her first station chief assignment a disaster, and Kovalic and Tapper would likely be hauled off to an Illyrican detention facility. He couldn’t speak for the sergeant, but he’d spent enough time in one as it was.
“Hey!” a voice called from across the street. “You there.”
Kovalic didn’t stop, didn’t look up, but out of the corner of his eye he could see a blue-shirted Bayern security officer advancing upon his position.
“Stay where you are!” the man yelled, his hand going to the knockout gun on his belt.
Kovalic ignored the request, heading towards the van, which was speeding up.
“I said stop,” said the man, breaking into a jog. His gun was in his hand now, held low. “Security services!”
The van leapt forward suddenly; Tapper must have seen the officer. The man was running now, gun up, but the van slid between them.
Kovalic put his last burst of energy into a limping lope of a sprint, and circled around the back of the van in a run, yanking open one of the doors and throwing himself inside.
“GO!”
Tapper gunned it, and Kovalic narrowly avoided rolling out the open back door, which swung wildly on its hinges. Behind them, he saw the security officer fire off a stun blast, but it dissipated harmlessly in mid-air as they peeled away. Reaching out, Kovalic grabbed the interior handle and swung the door closed behind him.
