The youngest of the agents, a woman, stared at him. “But not you.”
“I’ll hang for a bit, take in the sights.”
“Kayar has a half-dozen mainline Soviet era T-72s battle tanks, twice as many BTR-60s, and enough RPGs and assorted Soviet hand-me-downs to kill you.”
“Then I’ll play hide and seek until they get tired.”
“It’ll be a short game.” She snapped a picture with the cell phone, then turned it toward Kell. He zoomed in.
Kane had been painted black for the mission, but its whole left side had been scoured silver by the Claymore. Armor on his leg and arm had a lot of pitting. Damn. Another mine or a clip from an assault rifle and bullets would be banging around inside.
Kell shook his head. “The job is to get you out of here. Move.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Let me just Tweet that while you’re loading up.”
The three agents piled into the Mercedes and pulled out into the street. Kane followed. The driver hit the gas, swerved wide onto the harbor road, and barely missed the BTR-60 at the square. The warmech raced after them, the right arm coming up. Kell tightened his finger on the trigger.
The AR-15 lipped flame. Bullets flew above the Mercedes’ roof and tore into the troops on the street. Kayar’s men had used an APC to set up half a roadblock, and soldiers had been moving debris to cut off the street’s east side. Kane’s bullets scattered them.
The Mercedes fishtailed around the APC and vanished.
Kell cut to the east himself, trotting through Predator scraps. I hope that doesn’t come out of her paycheck. He laughed. I hope Kane’s new paint job doesn’t come out of mine.
He pushed on north, hugging storefronts and watching west. As long as he kept moving and shooting, Kayar’s men would have to react—and the agents could get clear.
The radio’s continued silence told him everything else he needed to know about his situation. There was no way the Agency could let Kane be captured. Too much tech, too new and too secret. Once the agents were clear, the Agency would direct a NATO cruise missile strike to obliterate the warmech.
If I knew where that rat-bastard Kayar lived, I could park there—two birds, one Tomahawk.
It surprised him that he didn’t feel angrier about being abandoned, but he’d known that was a distinct possibility the second he’d started working on black ops. It occurred to him that he only had two regrets: that he’d not been able to break Trask’s nose again, and that he’d not been able to thank Mock for saving his life.
The BTR-60 from the roadblock pulled forward, its turret swiveling around to cover him. He brought Kane’s left arm up. “Kane, load API.” As the turret gun on the APC opened up, Kell dropped the blue crosshairs on the boxy vehicle’s front end. A gold dot flashed and he pulled the trigger.
The fifty-caliber rifle fired a single round of M221 Armor Piercing Incendiary ammunition. The 671 grain bullet punched through the BTR-60’s side armor easily and reached the center of the vehicle. To get there it passed through the driver. Once there, the incendiary charge detonated, filling the APC with fire. The vehicle continued rolling forward and clipped the burned-out BTR before smashing into the obelisk’s base.
Kell keyed external microphones. “Give me that car, and you don’t have to die!” He shouted it again and again as he drove toward the corner and rounded it. Survivors of the initial roadblock attack ran, arms waving, screaming in terror.
He cut north down the harbor road, then ducked east onto a side street. He leaned the machine left for a second so his sensors could take a reading, then ducked back behind cover. Another BTR was traveling south fast, and infantry trotted behind it.
Not giving them a chance to think, Kell stepped into the street and covered the BTR’s turret with the blue crosshairs. He got the gold pulse and triggered another round. As fire flashed within the BTR, he continued crossing the street and launched two smart bullets from the XM-25. They burst amid the advancing infantry squads, and the light show caught the attention of another vehicle further down the line.
The computer identified it. Oh, shit!
The T-72’s main gun belched flame. The corner of the building behind Kell exploded. The blast knocked him forward, tumbling the warmech into the sliding steel door protecting an electronics shop. Metal screamed then pulled from the rails. Kane’s heavy feet tromped their way through display cases. The warmech scraped its head against the ceiling. Kell considered shooting out the security cameras in the shop’s corners, but that would have been a waste of bullets.
The collapsing facade spilled bricks, shattered dishes, and dented pans into a heap behind Kane. A smoldering couch teetered on the edge of the second story apartment. Little fires burned below, and a hole had been blown into the next building west.
Kell brought magres up enough to catch the metal from assault rifles and a knee replacement on infantry as they advanced. The T-72 lumbered along after them. He could deal with the infantry, but for the tank, he had nothing. The T-72’s armor was fifty times thicker than that of the BTR-60, and it sported machine guns and an anti-aircraft cannon that could rip him apart.
He took one step toward the street and fired a round from the XM-25. It burst in the crowd that had started swarming over the debris. Then he turned and smashed Kane backward through the store’s stock room. Two more steps and he crashed through the store’s rear wall.
That worked well.
He slammed his way through the next shop—one chock full of carpets, draperies, and linens. He got to the middle of it before he realized it had no stock room. The far wall was its back wall. A step later, the floor’s center-joist snapped beneath Kane’s weight. The floor crumbled. Kane fell through splintered boards down into a deep basement filled with piled carpets. The store’s display stock fell, draping him. That cut off all visual sensor data, but the shock of the landing jogged the infrared sensors back full time.
That small miracle did not help. The basement had been dug to a depth of twenty feet and filled with shelves, most of which he’d crashed through. Kane, with a bit of a running start, might have been able to leap over a six foot obstacle, but it had never been built for climbing out of a square-cut hole. He was as trapped as a tiger in a pit.
He caught ghostly images of men peeking down at him. A few thrust their assault rifles into the hole and burned clips. The bullets clicked like hail on a tin roof. Then a couple other soldiers appeared, holding up what had to be cell phones, snapping pictures. Kell imagined that Kane looked like the star of some forgotten cartoon titled When Casper the Friendly Ghost Went to War.
He was tempted to shoot back, but there was no sense to it. Magres and IR showed that two other T-72s had joined the original, one to the east, and the other to the west. They all pulled back sufficiently far that their main cannons could depress enough to blast him out of the ground. It might take a few shots, but they’d get him.
He popped open an access panel and reached for the circuit board controlling the hyper-spatial imaging apparatus. If he smashed that, then redlined the engine and used the excess energy to melt the polymeric muscles, that would pretty much take care of recoverable tech. The fact that doing so would also fill the shell with toxic gasses really didn’t please him, but if Kell wasn’t getting out, he could at least go out on his own terms.
One of the soldiers stepped to the edge of the pit with a video camera salvaged from the electronics store.
Kell brought one of Kane’s arms up and waved bon voyage.
The soldier waved back, then gave him the finger.
Then vanished.
A Hellfire missile streaked down and hit the nearest T-72 just aft of the turret. The warhead exploded on impact, creating a fireball so hot that it fried Kane’s IR sensors completely and disintegrated the soldier. The explosion evaporated the tank’s armor and melted through the chassis. The turret, looking to magres like a blocky lollipop, flipped high into the air, turning over and over.
Two more blasts shook the area, raining more draperies and debris into the cellar. The buildings to the west collapsed beneath the tandem assault that destroyed the two tanks over there. Another explosion, followed by a pair shortly thereafter sent thermal plumes into the air.
“Kell, tell me I didn’t get you, too!”
He laughed and closed the access panel. “I’m fine, Mock. Need a carpet? There’s a fire sale here.”
“Screw the souvenirs. No room on the sub.”
“Package made it to the dock?”
“Said they weren’t leaving without you.” Mock laughed. “Go. This Reaper has eight more Hellfires. I’ve got your back, now get yourself home.”
“Obliged, Mock. I imagine you’re going to be in a world of hurt for this. Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be, I think we have it covered.”
He smiled at the joy in her voice. “Then I owe you one.”
“Come to Vegas. I’ll be happy to collect.” Mock chuckled. “First round is yours. Mock out.”
Sarah watched as the sheet-shrouded warmech climbed up the debris pile and out of the basement. She fed him her gun camera visuals and Kell ran Kane straight up the harbor road. At the docks a small boat pulled away as the warmech plunged into the waters. By the time she took one more pass over Zlitan’s docks, a bobbing boat adrift in the harbor was the only sign anyone had been there.
She punched the controls over to automatic recovery, then swiveled in her chair. Frost stood there, looking down at Trask’s crumpled form. “You finished?”
Frost nodded and tapped his tablet’s screen. “Okay, done.”
Sarah dropped to a knee beside Trask and slapped him. “Wake up.”
The man groaned, a hand snaking down to protect crushed manflesh. “I am going to bury you, Major.”
“Yeah, about that.” Sarah grabbed the man’s tie and used the knot to force his chin up. “Frost works in your section, gets all your assets together, is eager to run an op. You have him set up this op, knowing it’s a loser, but you generously give him his shot. If he pulls it off, it’s a miracle, and you get the credit. If it fails, he’s burned, I’m burned, Kell’s burned. You came here to stop us, but it was too late because Frost went rogue and we went with him. That the picture?”
Trask eased himself up against the wall. “Worked like a charm.”
“Not really.” Sarah jerked a thumb at Frost. “Frost got me a Reaper, so Kell’s coming back. And the agents in Zlitan had their cover stories built around being humanitarian aid workers. They’re just normal, bleeding heart, innocent kids. In the last fifteen seconds, those kids have posted updates to Facebook that tell about their rescue from Zlitan by a super-soldier, complete with wonderfully grainy and indistinct photos of the XMWP-1. Couple more folks in Zlitan have been Tweeting about the fight. #ironmaninlibya is trending. Your field test is going viral. So, this op, it’s a big success, but your ability to keep a secret project a secret, not looking good.”
Trask lay there, gasping. “No, you couldn’t. You didn’t.”
“Oh, but we did. Well, Frost mostly. And it will get worse, depending on what your report reads.” Sarah straightened up and turned away from him. “You’re done, Trask.”
He scrambled to his feet. “Now you see here.” He grabbed her left shoulder and spun her around.
She reacted.
Kell was right. After breaking Trask’s nose, she felt much better.
Michael A. Stackpole is a New York Times bestselling author, best known for Rogue Squadron and I, Jedi. The author of over forty novels, he’s won awards for his work in the fields of game design, computer game design, podcasting, screenwriting, graphic novel writing, novel writing and editing. He has an asteroid named after him. His most recent novel is Of Limited Loyalty, the second in the Crown Colonies series. He lives outside Phoenix, Arizona and in his spare time plays indoor soccer and enjoys swing dancing.
Trauma Pod
Alastair Reynolds
When I come around I’m in a space about the size of a shower cubicle, tipped on its side. I’m flat on my back, resting on a soft padded surface. Curving around me, close enough to touch, are walls of antiseptic white. They wrap around to form a smooth ceiling, broken by hatches and recesses. Cables and tubes emerge through gaps. There’s the soft whirr of pumps, the hiss and chug of air circulation. And looking at me right now, peering down from the ceiling just above my own face, is a pair of stereoscopic camera eyes.
I twitch, trying to raise my head enough to get a good look at myself. I’ve been stripped of my armor. I was wearing combat exo-cladding, but the outer shell’s gone now. All that’s left is the lightweight mesh suit, and that’s ripped and shredded pretty badly. I try and get a better look at my extremities but a pair of hands gently pushes me back down. They poke through a pair of hatches above my sternum, as if there’s someone just outside, reaching in.
They’re perfectly normal human hands, wearing green surgical gloves.
A woman’s voice says: “Stay still, and don’t panic, Sergeant Kane. You’re going to be fine.”
“What…” I start to say.
“That’s good. You can hear us, and understand my words. That’s very positive. You can speak, too. That’s also encouraging. But for the moment, I’d like you to let me do the talking.”
They must have pumped something into me, because for the time being I don’t feel like arguing with anyone or anything.
“Okay.”
A panel has slid open to reveal a screen, and on the screen is a woman’s face. Green uniform, black hair tied back under a surgical cap. She’s looking right at me—close enough that it’s almost uncomfortable. Her lips move.
“You’ve been wounded, Sergeant.”
I manage a smile. “No shit.”
I remember fragments, not the whole story. A deep recon insertion gone wrong. Me and the two others…I’ll remember their names in a moment. Loiter drones above us, enemy Mechs too close for comfort. Armored support too dispersed to help us. Extraction window compromised. Not the way it was meant to go down.
The white flash of the pulse bomb, the skull-jarring concussion of the shockwave.
Someone screaming “Medic!”
Someone who sounded a lot like me.
“You were lucky. One of our field medical robots was able to reach you in time. The bot deployed its trauma pod and hauled you inside. That’s where you are now: in the pod. It’s armored, independently powered, and fully capable of keeping you alive until we have an extraction window. The field medical unit has secured the area and established an exclusion volume around your site.”
My mouth is very dry, and now that I have some sense of location I begin to pick up on the fact that my head doesn’t feel quite right.
“When,” I say. “How long. Until extraction.”
“Waiting for an update on that right now. Best guess is six to twelve hours, but that may be wide or short of the mark, depending on how things evolve in theatre.”
For a second I think: operating theatre, and wonder why the hell that should be my problem. Get me the fuck out of here, then worry about when you can slot me in for surgery.
Then I realize she’s talking about a different kind of theatre.
“Have I got that long?”
“That’s what we need to talk about. Your injuries have been stabilized, but you’re not out of the woods just yet.” She pauses. “I’m Doctor Annabel Lyze. I’m linking in from the forward surgical unit in Tango Oscar. My colleagues and I will be with you the whole time you’re in the pod, and we’ll be handling your case once you’ve been extracted. I know you feel pretty isolated right now, Sergeant Kane, and that’s only natural. But I want you to know that you’re not alone.”
“Call me Mike,” I say.
“Mike it is.” She nods. “And you can call me Annabel, if that helps. I’m right here, Mike. Never more than a screen away. Look, I can even touch you. These are my hands you’re feeling.”
&n
bsp; But they’re not, and she knows it.
Under the surgical gloves lie bones and sinews of plastic and metal. They’re teleoperated robot hands which can emerge from any part of the trauma pod that the situation dictates. Somewhere back in Tango Oscar, Annabel’s wearing haptic feedback gloves—similar to my own mesh-suit—that provide an exact tactile interface with their robot counterparts. She can feel every bruise, every swelling, as if she’s right here in the pod with me. I couldn’t ask for better care.
But she’s not with me, no matter what she wants me to think.
“You said my injuries have been stabilized. Are you ready to tell me the score?”
“Nothing that isn’t fixable. You took a bad hit to your right leg and I’m afraid I had to amputate. But we can grow that back easily enough. That’s not our main concern here. What I’m worried about is a bleed on your brain that we need to treat sooner rather than later.”
So the pod’s surgical systems have already been busy. While I was sleeping my damaged leg was removed, the stump sewn up, my ruined limb ejected through the pod’s disposal vent. I know how it works with trauma pods, and she’s right; they’ll grow me a new leg.
But brain surgery?
“You want to cut into my skull, while I’m still in this thing?”
“Minimally invasive intervention, Mike. There’s a risk, certainly. But there’s an even greater risk in leaving things until later. You may not make it unless we intervene now.”
“I was under, and you brought me back to consciousness. What the hell was the point of that?”
“I wanted to talk things through. Give me the word, and I’ll go in. But if you’d sooner take your chances and wait for extraction, I’ll respect that decision.”
The tone of her voice, the look in her eyes, make it abundantly clear what she thinks of my chances if I decide not to opt for surgery. About as good as if I was still out there in the battlefield, gushing blood into the dirt. But I can’t just give in, without knowing the odds of rescue.
Armored-ARC Page 22
