Recon- the Complete Series

by Rick Partlow

  “Go!” He urged me, pushing against my shoulder. “There’re four of them out there and they’re heading this way!”

  I assumed he meant Cultists, but I guess he could have meant Sung Enforcers as well; each group was as likely to be shooting at us at this point. I found the light switch for the carbine and activated its infrared weapons light and suddenly I could make out details with my contact lens again, including the stairs in front of me. I took them two at a time, trading caution for speed, hitting two more landings before I reached the bottom and a narrow, cement-block hallway with an unfinished look to it.

  There were intermittent dashes of chemical strip-lighting glowing a soft green at intervals, each above a doorway. The first one Calderon and I came up on had no door mounted in it and the room inside was bare block set in a grey, cement foundation. If anyone had ever been held in it, there was no sign of them. The next three rooms were the same and I began to wonder, as we followed the corridor around the perimeter of the mansion, if they were all still under construction.

  Then we came upon one that was finished, and had been in use. The door was metal, crudely made but heavy. Its physical lock had been blown out by what looked like a Gauss rifle shot, and whoever had been locked inside was gone, leaving behind a cheap, flimsy cot, a chemical toilet and two dead guards. They’d been the Sung Brothers’ men by the looks of them, and each had taken a Gauss round to center mass. It had probably killed them instantly, and they’d certainly never had the chance to fire a round from the rocket carbines lying next to them on the blood-soaked floor.

  “Who was down here?” Calderon asked, eyeing the dead men dispassionately.

  “Somebody named Marquette,” I told him, stepping out of the cell. “He’s the one the Cultists are looking for. Come on, there’s another way out of here.”

  Koji had told us about it; he’d gotten the plans for the place from the construction workers the Sungs had brought in when they’d had it built. He hadn’t been able to get us anything else, but this had been enough.

  I led Calderon farther down the curving hallway, past a few more chambers, some that looked like cells, others like storage rooms. I knew we’d found what we were looking for when we came to another curve where the foundation of the house turned to the right, but an open doorway, narrow and short and oval-shaped, offered a passage straight through that foundation. I was about to duck through the door when the Cultists who’d been chasing us upstairs finally caught up with us.

  I heard the scrape of rough-soled sandals on the floor an instant before the micro-rocket struck the wall centimeters from my head, throwing bits of shrapnel hard enough for a piece to sink into the back of my neck. I bit back a gasp of pain and opened up on them. There were four, running single file in the narrow hall, and the burst of laser fire from my pulse carbine only hit the one in the lead.

  Before he had the chance to fall, I was diving through the doorway with Calderon only a half second behind; and then we were running as fast as we could, crouching over in the claustrophobic confines of the tunnel. It led upward at a fairly sharp angle and the return fire from behind us expended itself uselessly into the rocky floor. I knew they’d be coming after us in seconds, so I didn’t waste time on shots that would have been just as ineffectual, concentrating on getting through, up and out as quickly as possible.

  The slope turned into stairs, still making their way inexorably upward, and my quads burned with the effort of taking them two at a time. I counted my steps in unconscious habit as I climbed: I’d hit thirty already and sweat was pouring down into my face and I could feel the surge of adrenalin from the fight-or-flight response starting to give out and my pace starting to slow down. Calderon was falling back already, at least three or four meters behind me and losing ground.

  Did I care? He’d picked the right side of this particular fight, but he was still responsible for God knew how many civilian deaths and Prouty and O’Neil. Maybe getting himself killed holding off the Cultists would make up for it. I had no problem at all leaving him behind if it came to that.

  I was spared having to make the decision because I nearly ran face-first into the exit hatch. It was a solid chunk of heavy metal with a simple but heavy-duty physical latch that had been left unlocked by Bobbi and the others when they’d passed through it. I braced myself against the top step and pushed it open with my shoulder, hearing the squeal of the rusted hinges.

  The cold, night air rushed in through the opening, slapping into my face, and I shoved the pulse carbine out ahead of me. We emerged out of the side of the hill past the tree-line on the other side of the wall; I looked back the way we’d come and saw the flickering, faceted glow of the mansion burning, heard the far-away whine of the assault shuttles’ turbines as they circled. Ahead of us, a barely-visible trail was etched out of the grass and dirt and a dusting of fresh snow, leading down the bare, rocky hillside and into the trees at its base.

  I couldn’t see anything through the thick trees, but I could hear gunshots: the distinctive sounds of pulse lasers and Gauss rifles, less than a hundred meters away, and I knew the only people around here who’d be using Gauss rifles…

  I heard the hatch begin to creep open behind us and I glanced at Calderon.

  “Got any grenades?”

  He shook his head, patting at his tactical vest helplessly.

  “Goddamn officers,” I muttered, grabbing a spare magazine for my pistol from my chest pouch. “Never any use at all.”

  I stood to the edge of the hatchway and watched the door swing outward a few centimeters, then I tossed the magazine through the gap and yelled: “Grenade!”

  There was yelling and screaming and scrambling and the door began to slam shut, but I caught it before it could, then stuck the muzzle of the laser carbine inside the gap and pulled the trigger. Light and heat and screaming leaked out from behind the hatch and I let it slam. If any of them were still alive and interested in coming after me, I figured at least that would make them take their damn time about it.

  “Come on if you’re coming,” I snapped at Calderon, then sprinted towards the shooting.

  Running downhill without tumbling forward head over heels was almost as hard as running up those stairs, and I could hear the mercenary officer’s boot soles scraping against the dirt as he tried to keep his balance. The ground evened out as we hit the tree line and I began to see flashes of light through the tightly-packed pines. That meant pulse lasers, and if those were Cultists, they’d probably stolen them from the Sungs. And I was rushing into it headlong, like an idiot.

  “Stay behind me!” I told Calderon. I didn’t bother to explain why; I assumed he’d know it was so my people didn’t shoot him on sight.

  The trees thinned out after fifty meters, and I had about ten seconds to figure out where my guys and the Cultists were before the Captain and I were in the middle of it. The laser pulses were coming from my left, and there were at least a dozen of them. They were sheltered only by trees, and I knew that our Gauss rifles could cut through them if my people had the time and opportunity to get out from under the suppressive fire flashing in a coruscating light show of ionized air between them. I could see the IFF signals coming off of their armor here at line-of-sight distances, and my IR lens could make out the bulk of our mules with their legs folded beneath them, acting as cover.

  I paused, digging my heels in and sliding to a halt on the trail and trying to catch my breath as I grabbed a spare magazine for the carbine from my leg pouch and held it alongside the receiver with my left hand.

  “Don’t stop running till I do,” I cautioned Calderon.

  I didn’t wait to make sure he heard me, just sprinted downwards into the chaos; I angled behind the line of Predecessor Cult fighters and held down the trigger pad, yelling at the top of my lungs. I didn’t have the time or luxury to aim; that would have required slowing down too much, which would have made it likely that I would be exposed to friendly fire once my stupid plan worked. I just hosed the
area as I ran by it, keeping my steps high to avoid tripping over a root or rock. Everything was a blur of polychromatic after-images and a cacophony of shouts and screams and the high-pitched thunder-cracks of pulse guns discharging.

  I didn’t remember swapping out the magazines, but I knew I had. I emptied the new one too, the last round flashing out as the warning vibration coursed up my arm from the pistol grip, and then I was around the other side of the enemy lines and yelling at the top of my lungs.

  “It’s Munroe! Open fire now!”

  I could hear the deep thrum and hard crack of the Gauss rifles discharging, all of them firing in antiphonal chorus like a never-ending echo. Beneath the sound of the discharging weapons was a higher, sharper snapping bang that I knew was the splintering of the trees that the Cultists were using for cover. I threw myself down behind a deadfall log, and I could feel Calderon hit the ground beside me, though I couldn’t hear it over the din of the battle. The electromagnetic slug-shooters kept firing through what had to have been a mag-dump by everyone on the team, and when they stopped, there was no reply by the lasers.

  “Clear!” I could hear Bobbi yelling into the sudden silence.

  I pushed to my feet, feeling my hand sinking into the cold, clinging mud as I did. I could see Bobbi and the others coming out from behind the mules, rifles held at a cautious low port.

  “We didn’t know if you’d got out of there in time, Boss,” Sanders said, waving towards the conflagration back at the Sung compound. You could just barely see the glow of the flames from here, and even the whine of the jets from the shuttles was distant.

  “What the hell is he doing here?” Victor growled, levelling his rife at Calderon.

  The mercenary officer took a step back, about to bring up his pulse pistol before I moved between the two of them.

  “Take it easy, Victor,” I said, holding my hand up to restrain him. “He’s on our side, for now. Let’s not spoil things by killing him, yet.”

  The big man grumbled, but his rifle barrel went back to low ready.

  “Where’s Marquette?” I asked, turning to Bobbi. She was wearing a helmet, of course, but I could see her IFF transponder on my contact lens. Even without it, she was the shortest of us here.

  “Kurt,” she ordered, “bring him out.”

  Victor’s brother emerged from behind one of the mules, half-carrying a spindly, wild-haired man dressed in rags, with eyes that seemed half-mad to me.

  “We got him,” Kurt said, “for all the good it’ll do. They pumped him so full of drugs that he’s about bugnuts.”

  “We have to get him out of here before they find us,” I said to Bobbi. “Get the mules on their feet and get everyone loaded up.” I turned to Calderon. “You’ll have to ride with me, Captain.” I tried not to scowl at the words. “Unless you’d rather walk.”

  “And go where, Munroe?” He demanded, shoving his sidearm into its holster, sounding like he was starting to get a bit of his bluster back. “If the Cult is brazen enough to attack here, they’ll be all over the spaceport.”

  “Kane won’t be back yet anyway,” Sanders reminded me from where he was hitting the controls to activate his mule. His voice was mild, as if he wasn’t that upset about it.

  When the hell had he gotten so fatalistic? I remembered a time when Sanders had been the crybaby of the group. Did I miss that, or was I just worried about what this life was doing to him? Or maybe I was really worried about what it was doing to me…

  I shook the thought away and powered up my own transport. There was a hydraulic hum as it unfolded its long, metal legs and rose to its full height.

  “Where would you suggest, Captain?” I asked, vaulting up into the saddle of the mule.

  “I need to get to my people,” he said, taking my proffered hand and climbing up behind me. “I can’t reach them because of the jamming, but if you take me there, I can let them know who’s really behind this.”

  “They have weapons and numbers,” Vilberg finally spoke up. He hadn’t said a word since I’d shown up with Calderon, and his old boss hadn’t recognized him dressed up in our armor. “They can help, if he’s being on the up and up.”

  His voice, like everyone else’s, was being carried over his helmet’s external speakers, and I saw Calderon’s eyes narrow.

  “Is that you, Vilberg?” He asked, disbelief in his voice. “We thought you were dead! How the hell did you wind up with this bunch?”

  “We’ll get into that later,” I interrupted. “Everyone loaded up?”

  There was a general affirmation that I confirmed with a quick look around.

  “Head for the Savage/Slaughter base,” I ordered. I glanced back at Calderon. “We’ll just have to hope we make a good second impression, since the first one was for shit.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “End of plan A,” I murmured, feeling a weary disappointment. “What was plan B again?”

  “There’s always a plan B,” Bobbi said in dry counterpoint.

  What was left of the Savage/Slaughter compound crackled and smoldered and billowed clouds of black smoke into the dull blue of false dawn. We’d approached it from the woods, taking the mules through the mountain pass back down into the river valley but coming in away from the town. It had been rough going, and slow, but it had kept us away from the assault shuttles that we could hear overflying the valley. Unfortunately, they’d already made a visit here ahead of us.

  “Shit,” Calderon hissed, slipping down from the mule, his eyes wide. “Those fucking bastards…”

  “We should go down and check for survivors,” I suggested half-heartedly, dismounting to stand beside the mercenary officer. I didn’t really want to be walking out there in the open trying to help a bunch of assholes who’d been trying to kill us earlier, but it felt like the right thing to do. “Bobbi, keep Victor, Kurt and Sanders here with Marquette.”

  The ragged, skinny older man hadn’t said a word the whole ride down the mountain except once when he informed us that he had to urinate. Even now, he merely stared dully through the trees at the carnage left behind at the mercenary camp, huddled inside the oversized jacket we’d brought along for him, as if not even the cold penetrated through his haze. I knew that wasn’t true, though; we needed to get him to shelter or he was going to get hypothermic.

  “Waugh, you and Vilberg are with me and Captain Calderon. Keep your interval and be ready to hit the dirt if anyone sees a shuttle.”

  As the four of us approached, I could feel the heat radiating outward from the conflagration, burning away the bitter chill of the morning. Wreckage was strewn everywhere, and from how far it was scattered and the heat of the fires, I guessed that the shuttles had hit their ammunition stores. The guard towers were down, the scorched shadows trailing behind the positions they’d occupied indicative of the proton blasts that had vaporized the gun turrets and most of the top half of the structures.

  I led the others through the shredded, melted remnants of the perimeter fence, stepping carefully around bits of charred and smoking buildfoam and twisted metal still glowing red hot. There was too much heat and smoke pouring off the main building for us to approach it, but Calderon shouldered past me and shielded his face with an upraised hand, peering into the ruins with slitted eyes. There were no bodies, no sign of his people, but blasts of accelerated protons that could level buildings would vaporize even armored humans without a trace.

  “This is maybe an hour old,” Vilberg said, his voice sounding hoarse and shocked even over his helmet speakers. “Do you think they knew we’d come here?”

  “I think they knew we got out with Marquette,” I told him. “They wanted to make sure we didn’t have any place safe we could hide with him.”

  It was depressingly well planned for a bunch of lunatic cultists, and I reminded myself that just because someone was a fanatic didn’t mean they were stupid.

  I looked over at Calderon; the man seemed deflated, his face collapsed in on itself and the confidence and bl
uster that had made him seem like a media star gone as if it had never been. There was a realization in his expression, an understanding of how deeply he’d fucked this up. I sympathized, but it didn’t make me like him any better.

  “Munroe,” I heard Bobbi’s voice in my ear over the line-of-sight comms, “there’s movement on the other side of the main building. At least two of them.”

  “Stay where you are,” I told her. “Don’t fire unless they shoot at us first.”

  I motioned for Calderon and the others’ attention. “We have someone coming around the other side of the wreckage,” I said, pulling the butt of my Gauss rifle into my shoulder. “Vilberg, Waugh, spread out and cover us just in case.”

  Calderon ignored my attempts at caution and ran around the perimeter of the main building, yelling “Is someone there?” like we weren’t on a planet with at least three different groups of people who’d be happy to kill him. I cursed under my breath and followed behind him, figuring he would at least be a workable human mine detector, if nothing else.

  “Captain?” I heard the voice before I saw them. It was a female voice and it didn’t sound like it was coming from helmet speakers. Another few steps confirmed that; she was tall and muscular and dressed in black utility fatigues, a pulse carbine tucked into her shoulder. “Is that you, Captain?”

  She started as she saw me, raising the muzzle of her weapon, then swung it back and forth uncertainly when she spotted Waugh and Vilberg.

  “At ease, Sgt. Sato,” Calderon snapped quickly. “They’re friendlies.”

  Sato’s blue-eyed gaze looked me up and down for a moment before she lowered the pulse carbine. Behind her, a junior enlisted man in the same dark field uniform seemed to relax as well, but he still clutched at his handgun like a totem.