In school, their instructors loved that phrase—on target. Every task had a start point and an end point. Any deviation from that end target wasn’t allowed. In their analogy, some spindrift was built into the task at hand. If they were to assault a bunker, all that mattered was that the bunker was destroyed. How the squad did it wasn’t really important, except there were only a few tried and true methods leading to success. Here, success remained undefined. In three minutes and a few seconds, they’d divert the Consortium’s attention to allow their de facto commander, a Peacemaker, to enter a war relic and attempt to do the impossible.
“You think she can do it?” Kirkland asked.
“No,” Howl said. “There’s nothing on that Raknar that works, much less a weapons system that can help us deflect the attack that’s going to come.” She looked into his eyes for a moment. “Do me a favor, will you?”
“Sure, Kei.”
“When the time comes? Hide. Surrender if you have to—don’t do something stupid like fighting to the death.”
Kirkland blinked. “Why?”
“I’m not sure that any of this is worth it,” Howl said. “We don’t even know what we’re being paid. If we die, what will they tell our families? I’m not saying I won’t fight like hell, or tell you not to fight either. Just remember there’s going to be a time when it’s okay to put up your hands.”
In her deep brown eyes, there was the hint of tears gathering. She loved him, he knew. In that moment, he knew the depth of her feeling was much deeper than either of them let on. He touched her cheek with a finger. “I understand, Kei.”
She laughed. It was a quick bark, something on the order of a snort except that she smiled and wiped at her face. “You don’t, Neal Kirkland. But you will. Maybe here, maybe someplace else. You will.”
He frowned. “I wish you’d tell me, Kei.”
She shook her head. “When this is over, maybe. Right now, we have to focus on our mission, Neal. Get your CASPers moving, and I’ll do the same. You’ve got three minutes to be in position.”
He chuckled. “Two minutes and forty-five seconds.”
“Go,” she slapped his shoulder with an open palm. Her smile came back and it was genuine. They cared for each other, but there was no indication she had thought any deeper about their future than he had. Their drill sergeants warned them about relationships in combat units. Friends would always be friends but lovers would die slow, agonizing deaths. He had never understood it until he and Kei made love the first time. Losing a friend was terrible, and they’d lost two during training alone. Losing a lover, though, would be worse.
He walked away and waved before he jogged toward the command center and his position for the diversion. She smiled and turned away to climb into her CASPer, but he kept looking. For half a second, he could see her a million light years away, or wherever Earth was from here. Maybe there he could tell her how he would feel if he lost her.
Infinitely worse.
* * * * *
Chapter Seventeen
Victory Twelve’s external antenna array locked onto to Jessica’s position automatically; locating her owner’s transponder took milliseconds at best. Victory Twelve readied her cameras to conduct the aerial reconnaissance requested by Hex. Sensors on, the Victory Twelve swept up and over the target area. Targets appeared. Processors engaged and relayed their findings in picoseconds to the main computer which triggered Lucille to wake from a sleep state. She—even though a non-gendered program she thought of herself as she—found several messages and quickly made sure the Victory Twelve was ready. Reconnaissance pods came first, and she ensured they snapped into position and began recording as directed. Bursts of electromagnetic interference appeared in the target area, and Lucille adjusted the sensors to null out the offending sources and frequencies to take in as much spectrum data as she could.
The second message brought the engines online and adjusted the ship’s orbit as if preparing to land or take on the cargo shuttle on the next orbit. The calculations were loose and in Jessica’s style. Humans were smart, to a point, but even the brightest threw up their hands in frustration and asked their computers to do the work. Pictures and preparation meant the mission was over. Logic circuits engaged and decided that battle damage assessments should come next per Jessica’s standard operating procedure. Even with Hex Alison in command, Lucille knew that Jessica was on the surface and would want to know the situation from orbit.
The imagery target area passed below, within the scope of the sensor suite. Visual imagery was clear of targets. Infrared showed a few possible enemy vehicles in the target area, but nothing conclusive. Multispectral imagery, though, showed a bevy of vehicles had moved through the terrain between the ship’s current orbit and the previous imagery pass. Lucille collected the data in milliseconds and packaged the imagery for transmittal.
The third message directed a laser engagement. Lucille found the target, four Conquest Mark Seven tanks used in sequence and locked on. Within two seconds, the chime for connectivity sounded, and Jessica was on the line.
“Victory Twelve, Bulldog. How copy, over?”
Lucille checked the signal parameters. “Read you five-by-five, Bulldog.”
“Prepare secondary download, full personality.”
Lucille readied the batch file system in a 100 milliseconds. The target antennae would accept the download, but she needed a specific target. “Location, please?”
“Mobile three, Lucille. I need you in several places at once,” Jessica said.
“I recommended to Commander Alison that specific course of action. He did not feel ready to have my assistance.”
The sound Jessica made appeared, at 85 percent accuracy, to be a chuckle. “He’s not, Lucille. No one is, really. Set up the Victory Twelve for autonomous ops—including combat operations. Emergency comms and jump protocols are still valid.”
“Affirmative for all actions. Reporting will commence immediately according to SOP.” Lucille marked the time. In precisely 10 minutes, she would report all current functions and back them up to significant file locations. This would continue for 24 hours. In the event of Jessica’s death, the ship would automatically jump to Luna and lock down until the Peacemaker Guild came for the reports. “Any further instructions?”
“Download, Lucille. Bulldog, out.”
Lucille checked the systems aboard the Victory Twelve again and commenced the download. At 500GB per second across four channels, her multi-petabyte system would download in a matter of minutes. The transmission window would hold. Lucille checked the surrounding orbits and the ground below for threats and found nothing. Accelerating the download, Lucille moved back to her list of tasks as the Victory Twelve raced across the fallen Raknar.
Sensors indicated a radiation leak, small but steady, from a vent on the Raknar’s upper left shoulder. Lucille classified it as a minor Class Three leak and decided to report it on the next pass. There was more important information to transfer and way too little time to process it all.
* * *
Hex moved slowly toward the command center. Keeping up the act was vital. Bouncing around like he was ready for combat operations would not work. The surveillance systems would give their efforts away. Head down, hands at his sides, he tried to mope through the colony and avoided all eye contact with the Altar and the other humans. In his earpiece, he heard Lucille’s download commence and listened to Jessica give the Victory Twelve orders in case of trouble. He moved north along the main corridor and up a series of wide, flat steps built for the Altar but definitely not for humans without a CASPer.
At the top of the stairs, he ducked past two Altar guards and into the command center. Klatk stood there looking to the south at the GenSha colony and a rising, unexpected storm surging over the distant mountains.
“Looks like rain,” he said. Klatk did not turn around.
“The rainy season isn’t for two more months. That’s another example of the Consoritum’s failure to delive
r on their promises.”
Hex shrugged. “You can’t control the weather.”
“They said they could and we took them at their word, Hex.” She turned and looked at him, her black eyes cool and distant as they studied him and moved back to the storm. “The GenSha would be wise to attack in a storm. They are better prepared for that fight than we are.”
“You think they’re coming?”
Klatk’s antenna wavered. “They would be stupid not to. Any advantage they can press is one to pursue, regardless.”
Hex was about to answer when Jessica’s voice clicked on the frequency. “Lucille is down. Angel One, you’re cleared to engage at your discretion.”
“Bulldog, Angel One, 30 seconds.”
Hex looked at Klatk again. “Where is our party downstairs?”
Klatk cocked her head. “Level Five and proceeding to Level Six. Taemin has counted the brood and is pushing hard to get to the lower levels. He is uninterested in the precious metals we mine.”
“What’s he trying to find, Klatk?”
Klatk spoke slowly. “Something that’s not there, Hex.”
“F11? Oil?” Hex looked to the south at the coming storm. Something in the sky glinted against the clouds and disappeared. Hex strained to see it again, then dismissed it as a bird on a reflection of twilight.
“Ten seconds,” Kei called over the secure laser comms.
“I hope this works,” Hex said and casually grabbed the consoles in front of him as if looking at the sensor displays. Up the hill, near the cave entrances, the colony’s pre-manufactured solar power station connected to a series of Consortium servers monitoring all critical systems in the main complex. The whole shooting match came down to whether a new CASPer pilot could trip on command.
* * *
Kei carried one too many boxes in her CASPer’s arms, and they’d made sure more weight rested on one side of the armload to help tip her balance. That had been the easy part. CASPers could balance in almost any situation with a good pilot at the controls. Convincing the CASPer to remove all safety protocols and keep her right arm rail cannon loaded and capable of firing in a loss of balance situation was another entirely. Disengaging accelerometers and keeping the targeting system online at the same time took sheer wizardry, but it had been doable. All she had to do now was trip in the right place, fall on her right arm and blast the server bank to hell.
Up the slope, she worked the CASPer easily into position. A series of cables snaked across the terrain. The probability that a CASPer would trip and fall there had to be a few hundred thousand to one. While she’d trained for her VOWs all through school, Kei enjoyed stage performances and excelled in the most physical. Comedy was the hardest of all, and the pratfall bordered on insane. How some of the professional actors could get up from some of them seemed impossible, yet she’d learned. Doing one in a full combat-equipped CASPer, with a live railgun on her arm, felt an awful lot like suicide.
She spotted her mark. Carrying boxes for an hour provided several chances to practice the whole charade and time her approach carefully. “Ten seconds,” she called. No one responded, and it was just as well. Focused on her steps, Kei counted out the approach.
Left. Right. Left. Stagger slide right. Left—quick and unbalanced. Right foot under the cable trunk and...
She fell. A quick shove sent the boxes in the opposite direction. She whirled as if to catch them and kept falling toward her right shoulder. In the chaos, she sighted the rifle at the periphery of her vision. From five meters away, she wasn’t going to miss the servers, but she wanted to make sure the camera banks would fail. Kei sighted the weapon precisely and used her pinplants to move the selector switch from safe to fire as she fell. As planned, nothing was in her field of fire as the CASPer tumbled forward. Her shoulder impacted the ground and she squeezed her palm with her fingers. The railgun lit off with a single soda can sized round at 5,000 miles per hour.
The server bank, and the cameras it powered, never stood a chance. It was the last thing she saw.
* * *
Safety disengagements for the rail gun left an open conduit in the system’s power supply. The trigger squeeze fired the weapon effortlessly. In the picosecond after ignition of the rail, the conduit failed and unleashed an electrical wave that crashed through the disengaged safety barriers, through the insulation of the gun, and into Kei’s armor where it found a weak spot and punched through. Tearing through the armor, 20,000 volts of electricity overcame the protections of her haptic suit before her body fully hit the ground. Kei died a millisecond later, well before the rampant electricity overcame the last safeties on the CASPer’s hydrogen-powered engine and exploded, taking down everything and everyone within a 200-meter circle.
* * *
The force of the blast froze Jessica at the Raknar’s abdomen. Up the hill, behind the command center, a large fireball rose and turned black in the evening wind. Something was wrong. A simple railgun shell wouldn’t have detonated a server complex like that. Either there was something else in the target, or something terribly wrong had happened. Stomach knotted in fear, Jessica started for the command complex, forgetting the Raknar. “Hex! Report!”
“Bulldog? What the hell—”
She sped up, breaking into a run. “Hex! What happened up there?”
“Cameras are down, Bulldog. I’ve got no contact with Angel Two. Nothing. Four other CASPers down. Altar reporting mass casualties,” Hex said. “Moving to investigate now.”
Jessica grunted, “Hex, I’m on my way. We’ll get eyes on the—”
“Bulldog! No!” Hex said. “Cameras are down. Get to the Raknar and get inside.”
Jessica skidded to a stop along the inner colony wall. She heard skittered screeches from the injured Altar at the site. Her own slate showed five of the twelve CASPers at her disposal were offline, and one tank was partially damaged. She needed to help them, to do something. A Peacemaker’s job was to be first on the scene, but Hex was right. There wasn’t going to be another chance to get into the Raknar’s control segment without resistance. Hex could handle the situation and assess the damage. She should get into the Raknar and try to make a difference. “Hex, get a handle on things. Figure out what happened and keep me informed.”
“Get going! That explosion had to trigger Consortium orbital assets, Bulldog. Get in the Raknar now! You’re not going to make it if you don’t go now!”
<
Jessica spun and ran down the steps, jigged around a 90-degree corner, and sprinted down the hill to the control segment of the fallen Raknar. A cacophony of voices sounded in her ears, and she twitched her head to clear the channels one by one, leaving only Lucille’s toneless, urgent voice.
<
On the beach, Jessica slowed down in the soft, yellow sand. Legs burning, she pushed forward with her eyes on the Raknar’s central control segment. External lights lit her path to the Raknar and up its torso. She’d planned the route earlier, looking at each piece of the climb like she’d done a few years before in Utah. Twenty-four hours of leave was all she could manage, and a rock climbing class was the perfect way to avoid the crowds at the bars and get a workout in before the next mission. They’d climbed all day, but only three or four good pitches. The rest of the time was preparatory. Studying the rock, as her guide said.
Every chance she’d had since landing, she’d walked past the Raknar and studied the route she’d take when the time came. From the moment she touched the rusting hull, she had a plan for every movement—where her feet would go and what her hands would grab. There were cracks and gouges in the Raknar’s hull that she could use to her advantage. Jessica slowed her pace as she reached her planned starting point and began to climb.
Her right foot found a space in the Raknar’s armor, and she used it to vault onto the hull. Her hands grabbed a maintenance handhold and her left foot found the sam
e space as her right. Jessica moved up the hull quickly and easily. The Raknar’s control segment loosely resembled a human cockpit. It opened the same way as the clamshell of a CASPer, but the interior space was big enough for at least three humans. As she grabbed the cockpit rail, Lucille barked at her.
<
Gods!
Jessica vaulted into the exposed space and promptly struck her head on the partially open hatch. She winced, pulled her legs into the space at the top of the cockpit’s rail, and rolled backward into thin air.
Shit!
The thought and the impact on the side wall of the Raknar’s cockpit came simultaneously. Her right hip hurt and she pressed a hand to the top of her head. There was no blood, it just hurt like a sonuvabitch. She tapped her earpiece. “Lucille, do you read?”
<
Jessica exhaled sharply in relief. “Relay to Hex that I’m inside the cockpit and beginning my assessment. Have him get me a SITREP as soon as he can.”
<
“Notify me if Hex or Klatk want to contact me. For everyone else, I’m unavailable until further notice. Code me in emergency mode.” Jessica reached into the left thigh pocket of her coveralls, withdrew a small, bright flashlight, and snapped it on. Lucille replied, but Jessica didn’t pay much attention. Unlike the last Raknar she’d seen up close, the cockpit was a mangled mess of cables, roosting sites for a few dozen skittish lizard-things, and strange, furry carcasses. The surrounding stench nearly overpowered her. Stomach roiling, Jessica pushed herself to a standing position and fought disorientation. Walking on walls would take serious effort to keep her sense of orientation. After a minute or two, and some deep breathing that nearly made her retch, Jessica used the flashlight to orient herself to the cockpit, recalling her Raknar training from her Besquith instructors.
Peacemaker (The Revelations Cycle Book 6) Page 20
