by William Cray
The executive transport curved around the tethered moon as it swung into the landing pattern, its momentum cut further by the firing of forward thrusters. It entered the station through a secondary dock gate, below the main gate that famous man-of-war had passed through on their way to glory in decades past. Regan glided the transport in until captured by one of the stations internal magnetic grapples that guided it to the designated landing pad.
Regan powered down the ships systems and stretched his tired muscles from the long journey, feeling the effects of a long boring run in cramped confines. A dull thumb and a green light indicated the gangway had attached and sealed on the starboard access hatch. The crew chief in the passenger compartment called forward to request the hatch be opened. Their passenger was anxious to exit. The veteran pilot flipped a switch and the door was unlocked with a hiss of air and equalization of pressure.
Regan leaned forward to look out of his port window to watch his mysterious passenger disembark. In the dark receiving area, a Commando Colonel waited near the end of the ramp.
Their dangerous passenger, Anne Braiselle, stepped off the gangway.
NOVA EVENT DETECTED
0 Lat 285 E Long
New Meridian City, Mars
25
Emergency Coordination Barge 1
Habitation Dome 11
Radiation Exclusion Zone
Duran waited outside alone. He puffed on a cigarette as he rearranged and optimized the layout of equipment and ammunition on his vest one more time, checking each item for functionality and ease of access. He moved a few of the items to higher priority slots and replaced one of his High Velocity Armor Piercing clips with anti-personel slasher rounds. The HVAP might pass through a flesh and blood target without killing its target, and without the linked fire control to Hansen’s Talon, he would have to aim manually, so slasher rounds would be more effective with a less well aimed shot.
The magazine buzzed as it began to reconstitute the rounds for their new load out. The other changes he made were minor, but the vest was heavy with grenades, infiltration gear, sensors and demolition charges. He replaced his vermiform knife in its sheath and did a quick systems check on his infoboard. He synchronized his infoboard into the military network orbiting above him. The data streamed down to him from the satellite umbrella. Unfortunately the dome’s shielding interfered with the data flow and he switched it off.
Duran stabbed out the cigarette and ripped open four replacement gel packs, slapping them on his neck and exposed arms, feeling the familiar burning sensation, taking in the molecular building blocks for his body to convert and use as needed.
The warbling of the barges suspension generators rose in pitch and Duran looked up to see the cityscape begin to slowly retreat. The barge was turning slowly. It was pulling back, using the low buildings, streets and parks as pathways to the dome’s exit. Lifters that were preparing to land, pulled out of formation with the barge and headed out on their own, leading the barge like a squadron of dolphins leading a great whale out to sea between pillaring icebergs. They were on the run, away from hunters who wanted their flesh for the cauldrons of their ships.
Operation Clean Sweep was in full retreat and time was running out. Duran could feel the taint of the Intruder all around him now. It wasn’t a strong feeling yet, just probing. If the Intruder was able to bring the mind control device on line, he had no doubts the city would be sterilized from space by the lurking fast attack spotted by Cochrane. If Duran failed, the Emperor wouldn’t hesitate to destroy the city.
The Intruder presence around him was not the stark, abusive penetration of the confrontations at the club and Rachenko condominium. No, Duran recognized the more subtle and subversive immersions as the amplified thoughts of Celeste. Somewhere she was out there, using her gifts as the child of two Intruders, doing the bidding of a psychotic killer bent on some narcissistic plot of revenge. The Intruder had traversed a hundred light-years to New Meridian City to find her. She was the only one left of his kind. She had said she was different. The Intruder needed her somehow.
The Intruder had used her as bait draw out Eric, then himself. The Intruder would try to bring Duran and his team into a confrontation, one at a time, eliminating them before they could bring their full strength to bear. Then he would flee before the Empire wielded its massive arsenal against him. He could exact a measure of revenge by creating the situation alone and the Emperor would overreact.
But that didn’t seem his game. The Intruder was responsible for the brutal murders, but he could have committed those atrocities anywhere in the galaxy and gone undetected. Instead he had risked everything to bring this entire episode to a head here on Mars, risking himself in the process. There was still another piece missing.
Celeste had slipped his rigid defenses. She knew everything about him. She knew what he was capable of. She knew that he was there to kill her and her master. Why did she let me live?
During their moments of passion, had her feelings been genuine? Had his?
In the end it didn’t matter, his purpose was clearer than ever. Her betrayal had cast the final lot. She was with the Intruder now and her mind was reaching out into the city. The gentle caress of before had been replaced by the brutality of mechanization. If she helped the Intruder, the city would be eviscerated. That couldn’t happen.
As Duran finished checking the functionality of the Mag-gun and loaded a variable submunition magazine, the sound of the barge’s suspension lifts was drowned out by the sharp hiss of a twin engine lifter as it swept over the moving platform. The lifter slid into a hover over the barge’s makeshift landing pad. My ride is here, Duran thought.
Satisfied Axe’s Mag-gun was operable; he slid it into its holster and gathered up his things. He walked towards the landing pad as the heavy thrust of the lifters engines washed over him.
Duran looked up into the deep orange and brown shaded military craft, seeing the black-clad NMCPD raiding party inside, leaning out of the open door. They were arrayed on either side of the doors, as they scanned the barge with their weapons, cradled in their arms.
Duran sympathized with them. They were returning early from a mission before it was complete, they would be physically spent but a sense of frustration would settle on them when a moment’s peace was given. He also knew they would take pride in their accomplishments from earlier in the day once some time had passed.
Elijah Cole had to explain to the Prime Minister why the operation was being called off. Cole would have the toughest job right now. He said earlier that he wouldn’t hold back the truth from his superiors, but no one would believe him, at least not initially. There would be a massive cover up that would cast the entire incident in doubt. Duran suspected the bombing at the Ulysses was the initial stages of one. But all of that was beyond him right now.
Duran approached the settling lifter as its forefront skids nestled on their shock absorbers. He shifted the weight of the heavy L-bag over his shoulder and trotted towards the squatting craft as a wave of mental energy swept over him. It was Celeste. He could feel her now, but it was different this time, amplified and directed. She was controlling someone nearby, no longer probing.
Duran halted unevenly, dropping the bag as the powerful thoughts flooded him. It was like looking at a heat wave shimmering across the barge. He focused his mind, closing his eyes in an attempt to block out the activities around him. The energy broke all around him at first. He used his training to filter out the noise and zero in on Celeste’s target.
Duran snapped his eyes open as the first weary trooper stepped off the lifter … and raised his weapon.
26
Phobos Commonwealth Military Depot
Docking Bay
John Cochrane traversed the corridor with his rapid gait. The limp he had worked so hard to mask now revealed itself with a mild hop in his pace through the hallway. Anne Braiselle followed behind him, her long strides unchallenged by any possible speed he could conjure,
even in his two legged youth. She followed in silence as indicated by Cochrane at their greeting. The personnel passing them in the hall looked back at Braiselle as she passed. Some gawked at her, others watched with eyes wide as she moved like silk among the mere mortals. The Colonel tried to keep in front of her with his with degenerative nerve hop-step.
The station was already on edge. Word of unusual events on the surface had raced up the length of the Stratospire and reached them with the urgency of crisis. The military prepared, for what they did not know, and the appearance of this magnificent being seemed to hasten their unease. Cochrane ignored them, waiting for bystanders to pass before speaking in hushed tones between strides. Anne looked down at him from the corner of her hazel eyes.
“Lieutenant, when can you expect reinforcements?” Cochrane asked.
“The rest of team is coming up from Earth.” She said. “They should be on approach to orbit now. No more than ten hours out.”
Cochrane nodded. “Surface access has been shut off. I will divert them here and arrange for transport down to the surface, if there’s time that is,” he added.
“What’s happening?” She asked.
Cochrane checked the hallway as they walked, his voice dropping to a whisper. “A battle has broken out on the surface…the entire area around the Stratospire has erupted in chaos. Bombings, Blue on Blue casualties, suicide attacks…”
“Major Duran?”
“I haven’t heard from him in almost eight hours. I can’t make any assumption other than he is continuing the mission. Almost fourteen hours ago the Prime Minister declared martial law inside the radiation zone and sent in police and territorial guard forces to secure the area…” Cochrane paused as a Navy Master Chief passed on his way to perform some task. “At the request of the head of Martian law enforcement, Elijah Cole, we did a scan on the surface with a pair of H-Band arrays. This is what we found.”
Cochrane handed a filament paper image of the antennas sprouting from the Stratospire six kilometers into the air. Braiselle scrolled the image up and down, zooming in to look at the configuration. H-Band.
“This is under a Tri-Lum dispersion field?” She asked.
Cochrane waited to answer as another person passed in the hallway, turning back to look at Anne when he passed. “Yes…has to be some kind of apparatus for an Intruder device. It’s consistent with what we saw on the Intruder homeworld and on Earth. We picked it up a few hours ago.”
Anne Braiselle studied the image closer as they walked, saying under her breath. “It must be active. The battle on the surface.”
Cochrane nodded as they turned a corner to an exterior ring of the base, near the station’s maintenance access ports. “There’s more. Yesterday we picked up signs of a fast-attack ship passing between Phobos and the surface. We caught it firing its maneuvering thrusters on the planets far side about an hour ago. It’s not Commonwealth and the thruster motion analysis would be consistent with executing an axis change. Could be unmasking weapons to the surface. We speculate it’s an Imperial ship. Can you tell me anything?”
She shook her head no, but remained silent. Cochrane suspected she knew exactly what it was. She didn’t seem surprised or concerned in any way about the news of an unidentified craft circling the planet in an attack profile. They entered a secondary corridor, leading to a series of storage rooms aligned along the exterior of the corridor.
“I relayed this information to Major Duran,” Cochrane continued, opening one of the storage rooms. “But as I said, he’s out of communication and he was in the vortex of all this last I spoke with him. His last instructions to me were to get you in the fight as soon as possible. He didn’t say he was in trouble, but he seemed concerned… disoriented.”
“How many Intruders?”
“He speculated one…possibly two.”
“I have to get to the Major.” Braiselle said, the first crack of humanity showing in her expression with a crease of worry on her oval face.
““No.” Cochrane shot back. “That tower has to be knocked out. If there is an Imperial fast attack in orbit I suspect it has a secondary protocol to your mission. If trajectory is correct, it will pass below us in orbit every six hours. That antenna has got to be down before it makes its attack pass. I share your concern, but there isn’t time to worry about Major Duran.”
Braiselle looked again at the filament sheet, still frowning. “Even if I were dirt side right now it would take hours to fight my way up the tower and to the array, and I can't carry enough explosives by myself to knock out those antennas.”
Cochrane led Lieutenant Braiselle into a compartment labeled Bay 11, adjacent to a rover airlock. As the compartment opened Cochrane stood aside. “We'll attack from the top.”
Braiselle entered the compartment. Under the gleam of lights she saw a row of silver suits recessed in their mounted power couplings. A ragged strip of tape with names stenciled above was adhered to the head rack above each of the silver and black monsters. She followed the names until she reached the second one from the end, her eyes narrowed to predatory slits.
SWIFT
27
Emergency Response Platform 1
Habitation Dome 11
The Zone
Duran watched a second officer with broad shoulders and a dark patch of cropped hair under his helmet step off the squatting lifter, his face a distorted mask of purple and yellows. With wide eyes that bore right through him, the ghoulish face stared for a moment in Duran’s direction. Then he righted himself and turned towards the cluster of command vans in the center of the barge. The ghoul began tearing at his radiation suit, ripping open seals in the front like his skin was engulfed in fire.
Duran opened his mouth to shout a warning when the first shot crackled through the air and a slug slammed into his chest. The round impacted hard on the ballistic dispersion panel of Duran's tactical vest, throwing him back onto the deck plating of the barge. The impact of the round drove him into an idling police cruiser behind him. Duran winced from the hit, air punched out of his lungs from the double slam of being shot, then slammed into the cruiser.
Unable to breathe, he tried to force air in, and the sharp pain out. Duran gathered himself, rising to one knee. Before he could begin to recover and counter, another round impacted above him, showering him with fragments from the dented door of the police cruiser. Still gasping for breath ejected from his lungs by the first blow. Duran slid down under the impact, trying to roll beneath the chassis of the car. As he scrambled under it he glanced towards the position of the bomber now starting his awkward amble towards the command van. Duran reached for his gun, maneuvering to bring it to bear, but a hail of fire splashed around him and he had to duck again. Reflexively Duran hunched, trying to protect his extremities and head with the thin body armor he had hastily strapped on. Another round scored a hit, driving into his back like blow from a hammered spike, but the armored and padded info-board took the brunt of the impact, punching him hard in the back. The low-velocity settings on the cop’s guns weren’t slicing through his ballistic armor.
Eyes bleary from the punch, Duran reached down to his vest, ripping loose a grenade and tossed it in the direction of the attackers. The MS flare belched then shot up into the air three meters using tiny rocket bursts, hovering, spinning. The flare began to spew out dense smoke from one side and strobed with intense flashes as it clouded the area. Tiny metallic strips ejected into the air, degrading any targeting or EM guidance systems. The flare burned white hot at his back, throwing off thermal viewing devices buying him precious seconds.
A series of additional gunshots and small detonations rang out near the command center. Duran scooted away from the white heat being put off by the flare, using the chaotic screen of chaff, smoke and strobes to reposition and regain the initiative. Rounds from several guns nearby impacted around him again, firing blind, flinging chips and fragments into him at flesh tearing velocities. Duran flinched as a jagged fragment bit into the u
narmored flesh of his arm, stinging like a nasty bite as he used his arms to push out from under the cruiser.
Ignoring it, even before his cybernetic enhanced body could release localized pain killers, Duran pushed to his feet on the opposite side of the cruiser, behind the its solid motivator block, Axe’s Talon snapping into his hand in a quick motion from the vest holster. Without the link to his personal weapon he had to rely on the gun’s manual modes, limiting the amount of firepower his cybernetic-gun combination could unleash. The flare billowed, pulsing an EM and thermal barrier between them, screening his opponents from this vantage. With his feet under him and his gun out, Duran reacted on instinct with the speed and long experience of combat at close quarters.
With his free hand he popped a second MS flare and tossed it a few feet to his left. Giving it a moment to bloom, then moving quickly right, behind the cruiser, his gun selected to L.D.S. slave. The second flare crackled as the dominated tactical team swung their combination of weapons onto the second plume now forming to Duran’s left and firing, riddling the smoke and chaff with a terrific volume of fire. Their exalted expressions revealed no surprise as Duran swung around the line of sight of the first flare, to their exposed flanks, leveling the Talon. Two of the attackers fell as the direct fire rounds crashed into them and catastrophically exploded, dropping them headless and instantly dead.
With a staggering hiss, the lifter leapt off the platform and into the air, revealing five more attackers that exited the crafts opposite side. Duran did a quick count.
That leaves eight.
He evaded behind a nearby P.F. decontamination truck sitting idle on the deck near the platform edge. More rounds adjusted to his attack and impacted around him. Duran felt his flesh tingle as a paralyzing neuro-disruption beam swept near him, trying to disable him by scrambling his nervous system. Duran slid behind a solid bank of big insulating orb wheels and the tingling subsided. He could see the blue waves passing across the barge as they arced over the edge of the platform.
