‘Well, I suppose,’ Veronica answered him, not sounding convinced.
‘My guess is that there will be more inside and it’s probably not a high-value target for them. Sure, it’s useful to put their POWs in, but they won’t want to be wasting their forces and guarding it,’ Cole said.
‘Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Come on, let’s get past it,’ Frankie said.
They started moving again until Frankie heard the sound of an engine being revved.
‘Car,’ Frankie said through the link. Everyone ducked while scanning around for the vehicle.
From back the way they had come, a dark coloured van came barrelling around the corner and accelerated up the road until it slowed and turned into the large loading dock area on the side of the prison and skidded to a halt.
‘What the hell,’ Frankie whispered to herself as she watched the van.
Its side doors opened and two armed soldiers jumped out shouting for the two guys on the ground to come and help them. They all moved around the back of the van and opened it up, revealing four guys in there in Democratic Union camouflage, their wrists bound and their mouths gagged.
The Chinese troopers shouted at them and made it quite clear they wanted them out of the van.
‘Shit,’ she muttered to herself before he addressed her team over the link. ‘What do we do, guys? Leave them or not?’ she asked.
‘What’s going on,’ Karla asked over the link.
‘We have a van making a delivery of four DU soldiers to the prison,’ Frankie said.
‘Don’t jeopardise the mission, that’s your first priority, but if you can get them…’
‘I think it’s too risky,’ Gibson said, and then turned to Frankie, ‘But, I will defer to you.’
‘We can take them,’ Veronica said, already lining up her sights on her rifle.
‘Cole?’ Frankie asked, turning to him.
‘If I were in the back of that van, although, I wouldn’t want others dying for me, I know I’d also like to be rescued,’ he said.
‘Damn it,’ Frankie hissed. ‘Okay, marking targets,’ Frankie called through the link as she tagged the Chinese soldiers so that numbers hovered above them in her HUD. She relayed the info through the link so everyone could see the overlay in their augmented vision.
‘I’ve got one and two on the roof,’ Veronica said.
‘I’ll take three and four,’ Cole said.
‘Then I’ll take five, and you take six,’ Frankie said to Gibson.
‘Copy that,’ Gibson said.
‘Take them in three, two, one, fire,’ she said, counting down calmly and firing off her shot.
All six troopers dropped to the floor in a matter of two seconds, leaving the four DU forces standing there, looking bewildered and trying to spot who had fired. Frankie stood up, along with the rest of her team and waved for a moment.
A couple of them quickly started to take knives from the dead Chinese and sliced off the cable ties that bound their wrists before they were soon all free and picking up the weapons that were on the floor.
Moments later, they were jogging over to Frankie and her team.
‘Thanks for the assist,’ one of them said. ‘Who are you with?’
Frankie noticed out of the corner of her eye Gibson and Veronica looking at her, not quite knowing what to say.
‘We’re private contractors working with the DU to extract a high-value target,’ Frankie said. ‘You’re free to go, or you can stick around and help us.’ She watched the lead guy turn to his fellow captives to talk amongst themselves, using their neural links before they turned back to Frankie.
‘We’ll take the risk and come with you,’ the lead guy said. ‘I’m Jon, this is Scotty, Erik, and Will.’
‘Yeah, we can be your bitches now,’ Will said.
‘If you say so,’ she answered, bemusement on her face. ‘I’m Frankie, this is Gibson, Cole, and Veronica,’ Frankie motioned to her teammates. ‘Glad to have you on board.’
‘Lead the way, this is your mission,’ Jon said.
They only needed to move a little way further along the road before the Emergency Management building came into view. It was a small white building, a few stories high, and given its built-in lines of communication from back when it once ran and coordinated the emergency vehicles of the city, it made the perfect place for a man fighting the war with information to hole up in. He’d be able to get his message out to the masses from here quite easily.
But things had not gone to plan. First, when the frontline moved, putting him one mile behind enemy lines, and now, when his hideout had been discovered.
Frankie could see several armoured cars, Chinese troops, and a mech out front, firing up at the building in sporadic bursts. The pop of gunfire was now quite clear to her.
‘Is that where we’re going?’ Gibson asked.
‘That’s it,’ Frankie said, watching the spectacle that was happening three hundred meters away as they walked along the tree line to the next intersection.
‘I don’t fancy taking on another mech,’ Gibson said. ‘There’s no more of those disused fuel dumps around, is there?’
‘Not that I can see,’ Frankie said absent-mindedly as she looked on at the bombardment of the building by the Chinese. Somehow, they needed to get in there.
2.09
Frankie pulled up the map of the area and looked around. After a few moments of giving it a scan over, she closed it down again.
‘We’ll take a wide birth, go around the building in front of us, and approach the target building from the rear. We need to get in there, but the front entrance is out, for fairly obvious reasons. Also, we need to move quickly, ready?’
They all nodded, agreeing with her, and when she turned to run, they all followed suit.
They ran down along the westbound road they were already on towards an intersection. But rather than turn north and head towards the front entrance of the Emergency Management building, they continued west, putting another huge building and a field between them and the target building, giving them excellent cover.
Frankie jogged forward, still marvelling at how her cybernetic body just didn’t seem to tire. She didn’t feel any muscle ache, she wasn’t out of breath. In fact, she felt great.
She looked back and made sure everyone was following her before continuing on her way. It took them a little over a minute to run around the back of this large building and turn north towards a line of trees and a fence that gave them some more cover. They could see the large white building through the trees and the burst of gunfire that came from the front of it.
Frankie made sure to keep checking her peripherals to make sure they weren’t being flanked, but so far they were in the clear. Frankie led the way and made the fence beneath some trees, waiting for the rest of her team to join her before she peered around the side of it. She found herself looking into a residential property, complete with two story house, driveway, and gardens that looked a little overgrown.
Over the trees and bushes in the garden, she could make out the top of the E.M. building, but could not get a clear view of the base of it and any Chinese forces that were camped out the back. They couldn’t wait though, so Frankie moved out from behind the fence onto the sidewalk and then vaulted over a waist-high metal fence into the house’s front yard and started to make her way over towards the house and its rear garden. She noticed the smashed windows and debris outside the building that had once been someone’s home. It had apparently been looted some time ago and now sat empty on the frontlines of this war. As she led her team through the garden, she stepped over discarded plastic children’s toys that had been left out here and were now looking dirty and mouldy.
She wondered what had happened to these kids. Where they still alive somewhere, living their lives, for better or worse? Or had they become just a few more victims of this senseless war. She could go in there, find their details and track them down, but for what? There would be little point to the
exercise other than to satisfy her curiosity. But seeing those kids’ toys left there and abandoned had hit home more than all the death and destruction she saw around her.
The thoughts of children and their parents got her wondering what her own mother and father think of her new body? She’d been a victim of violence and was now living a life very different to what she had expected because she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, not too different from the family that had once lived here, she thought. The vast majority of her never wanted to see her parents again, but she couldn’t help that a small part of her was curious to visit them. To show them what she had become. She had no idea how they would react but was kind of curious to find out. Maybe.
But that would mean she would need to see them again, spend time with them. Not something she really wanted to do. She saw her parents as complicit in the machinations of the Corporate machine, and so were as culpable as the Corporation they worked for when it came to the atrocities that these unimaginably wealthy conglomerates committed in the name of business.
She shook off the thoughts of displaced families and children without their parents for a moment and continued through the garden towards the back fence.
Looking over the chest high fencing, Frankie could finally get a good look at the back of the building. There were a few derelict vehicles out there, but alongside them sat a huge armoured personnel carrier with a huge cannon on top of it. Standing around it, their backs to Frankie and using the APC as cover, were four Chinese troopers aiming their guns at the building and the four rear doors, another in the turret and one in the driver's seat, his door open as he talked to the others. It was also possible there might be more inside the APC itself that she could not see.
Between Frankie and the APC was a large grassy area with bushes and trees that could hide their movements, meaning that covering the sixty meters between them, she hoped, would be quite straight forward. The building itself hid them from the forces at the front of the complex, so, if they could move quickly, they might be able to take them out before they could signal they were under attack.
Frankie vaulted over the fence and landed cleanly. She focused her gun on the APC and waited for the others to make their way over as well. Once a couple of her team were over, she moved with them to the closest bushes and took cover there. The rest of her team followed and were, so far, unseen.
They moved slowly and carefully and soon found a good vantage spot, quite close to the APC where they could see everyone.
‘Vi, take the driver and the guy in the turret. Cole, the one on the far right next to that car. Gibson, you take out the one on the right side of the APC. I’ve got the two guys on the left. Once they’re down, sweep and clear, make sure there’s no one left inside the vehicle; then we’re heading inside,’ she said over their group link.
Frankie then turned to the four DU soldiers. ‘Provide cover while we take out these guys, then commandeer the vehicle and hold this area while we head inside to retrieve the target,’ she whispered.
‘Copy that,’ said Jon.
‘Karla,’ Frankie sent through their link.
‘Here,’ Karla replied.
‘We’re at the building about to head inside via the back entrance. Make sure the target knows we’re coming, I don’t want any friendly fire,’ she said.
‘Copy that,’ Karla said.
‘Team, we go in three,’ Frankie said, counting down. ‘Two, one, go,’ she sent through the link. There was a sudden flurry of short burst gunfire, where, over the space of little more than a second, all six of the enemy troopers dropped down dead.
Frankie didn’t waste time and immediately broke cover running for the APC where she yanked open the side door, her gun up and ready. Movement caught her attention right away, and she fired without actually getting a good look at what she was shooting at, only for another soldier’s body to hit the floor inside the APC.
She looked left and right but saw nothing else.
‘Clear,’ she called and noticed that her team were already with her and covering the various directions they could be attacked from.
‘My team, follow me inside,’ she said and moved around the APC towards a set of double doors that looked like service doors. They had small windows set into the top of them, which Frankie glanced into but saw little through.
Veronica stood to one side of the door while Gibson stood on the other. Frankie and Cole stood in front of the same door, and once they were ready with their guns up, Frankie gave Veronica and Gibson the nod. They opened up the doors to reveal a corridor that led deeper into the building. They could see doorways on either side of the hallway before it turned right at the end, but next to the double doors was another set of doors with a sign above it that read, “Stairs”.
‘Karla, where is he?’ she sent through the link.
‘Top floor. He knows you’re coming,’ she sent back.
‘Copy that,’ she said and led her team inside, the door shutting behind them with a bang.
One inside, the sound of clattering and scraping metal mixed with actuating joints and some digital grunts caught all of their attention from down the corridor. Suddenly, a four-legged robot ran into view at the end of the hallway, the powerful looking guns on its tall body targeting them while a red light, like an evil eye, glared.
Frankie had already aimed down the hall before the mech had appeared, and assumed her team, who stood behind her, were doing the same.
The spider-like mech grunted at them with a digitised noise that sounded deep and guttural as it cocked its guns with a “ka-chunk” sound.
Frankie teased the trigger on her gun, waiting to see what this sentry mech would do as it sat there and looked at them.
Seconds later, it lowered its weapons and the red light flickered to green before it turned and walked away, disappearing out of sight.
‘I guess that was one of Animus’ guards?’ Gibson mused, lowering his weapon.
‘Seems to be, and it looks like it knew to expect us,’ Frankie answered as she relaxed slightly and pulled her finger away from the trigger.
‘Which is a good sign, I’d say,’ Gibson agreed.
‘Let’s hope so,’ she said, moving through the door into the stairwell. She looked up the centre of the stairs, but could see nothing above her. ‘Let’s go,’ she said and started up the first flight of steps.
Less than a minute later, she turned the corner to look up the final section of stairs and found herself facing another sentry mech, flanked by two tan-coloured dolls, both of whose arms were split open, revealing guns inside.
Frankie paused, her team stopping as well; their guns aimed at the mech and androids.
The sentry mech grunted and moved sideways, away from the top of the stairs.
‘Welcome. Animus is expecting you,’ one of the dolls said in a soft but slightly digitised voice.
Of course, dolls could mimic human voices perfectly, so as to be indistinguishable from an organic sound, but many people preferred that they had a hint of artificialness about them to distinguish them from the voices of humans.
Frankie lowered her gun and followed the direction indicated by the doll, but watched the robots carefully in case of a bluff.
Up ahead, Frankie could see a large office or work area with glass partitions, and within it, through the glass, an Asian-looking man. Dressed in black with a trench coat on, he was running around his office, gathering stuff into a backpack while breaking down some of the computers, by either smashing them to bits or salvaging the hard drives from them.
‘Animus?’ she asked.
He looked up at her. ‘Huh? Oh, you’re here. Thanks for coming, I just need to finish up and we’ll get going,’ he said.
‘We don’t have much time,’ Frankie told him, putting some weight and authority into her voice. The Chinese forces had been firing on the building the whole time, no doubt with Animus’ mechs shooting back, but they could only defend the building for so long before
the enemy broke through.
‘Look, yeah, I know… My mech’s are handling it. I just need to grab a few bits. I have sensitive data stored in here, you know.’
A loud explosion at the front of the building made the whole structure wobble. Frankie looked around her, hoping it wouldn’t just collapse with them inside of it. The building seemed to hold steady, but that was the biggest explosion yet, and if they got any worse then they’d be digging themselves out of here. They had to leave, Frankie concluded, sensitive data be damned.
‘Animus, you have to come with us, now,’ Frankie barked at him.
Gunfire echoed through the building, loud and clear. Frankie listened to it. There were several different distinct tones to these gunshots, meaning several types of guns. If she had to guess, she’d say that Chinese troops had entered the building and were fighting with the sentry mechs. They’d probably blown the front of the building off and had stormed inside. If there was ever a cue for them to leave, that was it, she thought. They simply could not stay here any longer.
‘They’re in the building, Animus,’ she said, walking up to him. ‘We have to go, now.’
‘But, but…’
‘You’re no good to anyone if you’re dead,’ she said, grabbing his arm in her vice like grip. ‘We’re leaving, and you’re coming with us.’
She marched him, dragging a backpack filled with tech, out of the office over to her teammates who stood with their guns ready at the stairway, watching for trouble.
‘Clear so far,’ Gibson said.
‘Let’s move, they’ll be here at any moment,’ Frankie said.
Frankie practically dragged Animus, who was still protesting and insisting he destroy the data left in his office, down the first few steps of the stairs when she heard a door bang open below them. She stopped in her tracks and looked down the central gap between the stairs.
She caught flashes of movement on the ground floor. Some troopers were on their way up.
2.10
Seeing the enemy forces enter the stairwell below, Frankie turned to Gibson. ‘Don’t let him out of your sight,’ she said to him.
Promethean Files 2: The Prometheus Gambit Page 11
