Standish

by Donald B McFarlane

  Bender didn’t need to ask who had taken the shot. Only one person could have made the shot: Reyn.

  Flipping forward, Bender looked down, checked his position over the pad, and fired his leg thrusters on maximum, and brought his knees up slightly before slamming into the landing pad. The force of the impact put dents where he landed, but the armours shock absorbers, along with his physical enhancements meant that he didn’t feel a thing.

  Bringing his rifle to bear on the hatch to the landing pad, Bender quickly moved towards the door, and positioned himself to one side, out of view of anyone on that level of the palace that might walk past. Checking his weapon was ready to fire, he used his helmets rear camera to watch as the other three members of his team completed their landings. When the final member of the four-person assault team landed, Bender got on the net and sent a broadcast.

  “This is Prime. We are making entry.”

  Reyn moved up into a position on the opposite side of the hatch, his rifle up and ready.

  “Go.” Bender gave the command over the secure team net and watched as his point-man moved up to the door, hit the access pad, and slipped into the palace once the double doors had slid wide enough.

  Once inside, Reyn dropped two guards with stun rounds just inside the doors and stopped.

  “Door front.” He said in a low, calm voice.

  The three team members behind him didn’t need instruction, they quickly stacked behind him, and once they were set, Reyn moved forward up to the hatch, opened it, and proceeded inside.

  Reyn was from nowhere. That’s what Bender said when he found him years earlier drifting through an uninhabited system in an unidentified ship. He possessed unmatched skills, but what separated Reyn from anyone else Bender had ever met was his ability to do things that appeared supernatural. Bender knew that Reyn held those capabilities back most of the time. He didn’t want to rely on them to tilt the field in his favour and only used them when no other alternative was on offer because he knew that there were consequences for using his powers. Sandura 26G had proved such a case.

  As soon as the quartet were through the second door, Reyn cut left, Bender right along the long hallway they suddenly found themselves on, each followed by their battle-buddies. Moving just two metres down the corridor, both pairs stopped.

  “This wasn’t on the schematics.” Reyn said dryly.

  “Launch a Whisper Drone, Clar.”

  “Drone away.” Clar reported.

  “We need to get up to the top level.” Bender said. “Reyn, push in your direction, Ver and I will take this route.”

  Reyn acknowledged with a single click of his communications suite. The hunt for the Prince was on.

  59

  The Present

  Fury 161

  It was like waiting to get into a night-club. If you wanted to speak to Jintana Fu, you waited in the queue. The length of the line wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Jintana-Fu was either on drugs or drunk. Either way, she took ages to deal with each supplicant before her, answering questions in any which manner she preferred. While waiting, with all the patience that Standish had developed in her almost seventy years in the galaxy, she noticed a few things about her surroundings. The security increased the closer she got to Fu, who was sat with a young male sat next to her. He had a light green beard and looked focused.

  When Standish finally reached the head of the line, she was greeted like most of the others preceding her.

  “What you want.” Jintana Fu leaned forward. “You not one of my clan!”

  Standish played the supplicant and dropped to one knee. “Your grace.” A flattering opening. “I was told that you, Jintana Fu, were the one to first approach on this world if one was in search of information.”

  The level of courteousness threw everyone surrounding Fu. The realisation that they were in the presence of someone who was so formal was a shock.

  Her next words were chosen more carefully. “Information. What sort of information?”

  “I’m am in search of someone.”

  “Do they have a name?”

  Standish let her eyes dart to the figure sat next to Fu. He was wearing very modern Coalition armour. No doubt about it.

  “Nal Liboa.”

  There was a long pause.

  “What do you want from him?’

  Standish smiled. Fu had given away the fact that she knew her target. She could sense it.

  “I’d just like to speak to him.”

  Fu smiled. “He’s here.”

  Standish didn’t want anyone else involved. She wanted to handle this in private.

  “I’ll bring him here. Now.”

  Fuck.

  She wanted to confront him away from a crowd.

  60

  The Past

  Qera

  AO Bronze

  “Station is secured.” Jun reported. He flipped up the blast shield on his helmet and looked at the operators that were standing around him. “Val, Mils, stay down here and secure the outbound platform.” He looked over to the team leader from Beta Five-Zero. “Let’s get the rest of the teams back up top and secure a perimeter around the entrance to the station.” He flipped his blast shield down and charged off towards the escalator ramp with the rest of the operators leaving Standish and Mils alone in the cavernous sub-three level.

  Standish watched as the rest of the team ran after Jun with a sense of disappointment. Flipping up her blast shield, she looked around the massive chamber they were in, then up to Mils who was standing right next to her. “This sucks.”

  Mils flipped up his blast shield and looked down at Standish. “Was this the plan?” He asked.

  Standish shook her head. “Who the fuck knows?” She said with a heavy hint of sarcasm, then looked over to the empty platform that was at least two-hundred metres long running away from the main concourse they were standing in the middle of. After looking at the empty, rather featureless tunnel that stretched away from the platform, she had an idea.

  “How about we send a drone down the tunnel?” She asked.

  Mils shook his head. “We don’t have instructions for that.” He said solemnly.

  Standish rocked her head from side to side, then quickly dropped to one knee, pulled off her backpack, and pulled out a tiny drone with two rotors, and switched the unit on, and tossed it into the air. Flipping her blast shield down, Standish quickly synched with the drone’s footage and gave it a simple set of instructions to proceed down the tunnel as far as possible. Once the drone had all the information it needed, it moved away at a slow twenty kilometres per hour.

  “That thing is not fast.” She said, flipping up her blast shield.

  “Think it will find anything?” Mils asked.

  Standish pursed her lips. “Maybe.”

  It took a while for the drone to travel half the length of the roughly ten-kilometre long tunnel, and in that time, it had nothing out of the ordinary to show. It took the exact same amount of time to cover the final distance to the central park station. When it got within one hundred metres of the station, Standish took control of the drone and guided it into a position to check for activity with care, and what the drone saw developing on the platform gave her serious cause for concern.

  “Mils, check the drone feed.” She said.

  It took Mils a moment to drop his blast shield and activate his helmets HUD, but once he had access to the drone feed, he quickly confirmed his teammate's concerns.

  “I know what those are.” Mils said.

  Standish’s eyes hadn’t left the six large orb-shaped objects that were sitting on the platform which were being attended to by Coalition military personnel.

  “Those are Dita 7805D’s.” He said in a serious tone. “Heavy weapons assault droids. Built-in shielding.”

  Standish looked down at the rifle that she was holding in her hands. “Will the ballistic rounds penetrate the shielding?” She asked.

  “Yes, but their armour is too thick for
the rounds we carry. They were mentioned in a report that came out last month.”

  Standish looked up at her teammate. “I didn’t think anyone read those reports.” She shook her head. “How do they move?”

  “They roll.” He replied. “Those big guns on the side stay fixed in place while the rest of the droid moves like a wheel.”

  “And how fast did that report say these things were?” She asked.

  “Very.”

  Standish quickly changed to the team-wide comms channel and got Jun on the line. “Boss, we’re expecting enemy reinforcements down here soon.”

  There was a crackle in the communications connection for a second, then the call came in the clear. “All clear up top.”

  That was it. Standish thought to herself. The Coalition built the underground network as a rapid counter-attack system. The attacks weren’t going to come from the air or the ground, but underneath it.

  “Jun.” Standish tried the comms again, but she was met with just as much static as the last call. “Isn’t there a drone on sub-two to bounce the signal up to the surface?” She asked Mils.

  Her big teammate just shrugged his shoulders.

  “Cryne.” Standish tried the team’s second.

  “Go.”

  The line was clear.

  “We sent a drone down the tunnel. Looks like the enemy is about to come at us along the tracks.” Standish reported.

  “What explosives do we have left?” Cryne asked.

  Standish looked at Mils’s armour, then gave her reply. “We have four spider charges down here.” She replied.

  “That would barely scratch the surface of the tunnel.” Cryne replied. There was a pause for ten seconds, then he came back. “Mils, set up your weapon system in a position to repel any attack. I’m coming down.” He cut the channel.

  It took two minutes for Cryne to arrive at the lowest level of the station, but once he did, it didn’t take him long to figure out that the team was in serious trouble.

  “You’re certain they’re Dita 7805D’s?” He asked.

  Mils nodded. “Yes. There was an intelligence report on them last month. They’re brand-new.”

  Cryne nodded. “Fine. If we can’t blow the tunnel, and we won’t be able to hold them here either, we need another option.” He turned and scanned the level, his gaze stopping on the escalator. “We blow the escalator.” He said with confidence. “That should block their route to the surface.”

  Standish looked at Cryne, then over to Mils. “I’m not sure four spider charges are going to do the trick. That thing looks rather sturdy.”

  Cryne looked back to the escalator. “It’s not supported in the middle. If you put the charges there, you’ve got a chance to snap the damn thing in half.” He looked at Standish and Mils. “Get on it, I’m going back top-side.”

  Standish watched as he moved off at a run, charging back up the escalator, then out of view. Once he was gone, she looked over at Mils. “I suppose we should get started.”

  Mils nodded, then flipped down his blast shield. He moved over to where he had set up his heavy weapon, just at the end of the platform, and just as he was bending down to pick the weapon up, he stopped, frozen like a statue.

  “Standish.” He said it almost in a whisper.

  She quickly flipped down her blast shield.

  “I hear it.” She moved over to where Mils was standing, and took a kneeling position, and aimed her weapon down the tunnel. Using her helmet’s advanced optics, she scanned down the tunnel, but nothing came up. “I’ve got nothing.”

  “Same.”

  As the pair held their positions, the whirling noise grew louder, until a small red light appeared in the lower right-hand corner of Standish’s HUD.

  “Missile alert!” She yelled, springing to her feet, she turned and started running towards the escalator.

  Mils was hot on her heels, his large energy rifle carried loosely in his left hand. With every second that passed, the noise grew louder. The helmets were supposed to have kept the noise to a minimum, but the sound was disturbing, and the worst part was that the noise wasn’t from the approaching missile, but the Dita’s.

  When the ordinance got within fifty metres, and with only fractions of a second to spare, Standish’s HUD flashed red, and without hesitating, she threw herself down towards the ground, and away from the entrance to the tunnel.

  The missile, only a small micro-weapon with a two and a half kilo charge was fired semi-smart from someone at the other end of the tunnel, and raced past the barricade at the end of the rail line, and slammed into the far wall, unleashing a roar as the explosive charge exploded.

  Rolling onto her back, Standish propped herself up and looked at the damage that the missile had done, it was negligible. Looking over to Mils, she watched as he sprung to his feet, grabbed his large energy weapon, and started sprinting towards her.

  “Those Dita’s are getting close.” He said as he stopped next to her, spun and pointed his weapon at the exit of the tunnel. “Take my charges, and place them on the underside of the escalator, I’ll provide cover.”

  Standish hopped to her feet, and quickly pulled the two spider charges off Mils’s armour, then turned and ran towards the escalator. She wasn’t sure how useful the explosives would be, but doing something was better than nothing. Reaching the underside of the motorised walkway, she stuck the first two charges up as high as she could reach, then armed them.

  “First charges set.”

  “Moving.” Mils started walking back towards the escalator, never allowing his weapon’s barrel from coming off the exit from the underground rail tunnel. At the same time, Standish moved up the escalator to a point directly above the location where she had placed the first two charges, and stepped off the moving belt onto the sides, and pulled her last two charges off her armour, and set them at her feet, and armed them.

  Once the charges were in place, Standish got her hands back on her weapon and took up a firing position covering Mils as he continued to walk back towards the escalator. Checking her helmets systems, she got an AI estimate on the arrival of the Dita’s based off their approaching noise, and they were close.

  “Mils, we need to leave!”

  Standish watched her buddy turn, and start to run towards her, and just as he reached the bottom of the escalator, the first Dita came into view. In the time it took Standish to appreciate the size of the machine, she was already firing at it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Mils had hit the ground and was rapidly crawling to the escalator.

  With her attention focused on the Dita’s, Standish tried to make herself as small as possible, and stepped onto the upwards moving escalator, and allowed herself to get carried towards sub-level two.

  As soon as the first Dita had arrived, it swiftly engaged Standish with its weapons, blasting huge chunks out of the wall below the escalator. After the initial barrage, the circular shaped weapon moved five metres closer and then fired off another volley, but this salvo went over the escalator and slammed into the far wall.

  Standish ducked down as parts of the wall fell onto the ramp. She didn’t know if she was getting lucky, or if there was something wrong with the unit that was firing at her because its aim was terrible, but she wasn’t taking her chances. Flipping onto her stomach, she started crawling up the moving ramp, she wanted to get out of the firing line as soon as possible.

  When she reached the top of the belt, she quickly spun herself around and checked on Mils’s progress. The big fella was right behind her, and when passed the point where she had laid the spider charges, she quickly cycled through her systems until she found the activation switch for the explosives and keyed it.

  The four spider charges didn’t make a loud band when they went off, but they packed just enough explosives to tear a one-metre wide gash into the escalator, stopping the moving belt dead in its tracks. Looking past Mils, Standish anticipated the arrival of the Dita at the bottom of the ramp, so she quickly pulled
out an anti-mech grenade, primed it, and not wanting to wait until the hostile robot was in a firing position, she lobbed it down towards the bottom of the ramp. As soon as her hand was free, she reached down, and grabbed Mils outstretched hand, and yanked her large team-mate the rest of the way up and off the non-functional escalator.

  “Is that anti-mech grenade going to stop them?” She asked, dragging Mils out of the line of fire.

  “No. Their shielding protects them from any EMP type weapons.”

  Before he could finish his sentence, the Dita rolled to a position at the bottom of the ramp and tried to roll up it, but it was too broad, and after a few attempts to barge upwards, it stopped, aimed its weapons towards the top of the ramp and started firing wildly.

  Crawling backwards, Standish looked up to see the ceiling of sub-two start to get shredded where the Dita was hitting. When she was safely out of the firing line, she rolled to her side and got to her feet. Mils did the same, then took up a firing posture facing the escalator.

  “They’ll probably send reinforcements. Something that can get up that ramp.” He said dryly.

  Standish nodded, then got on the communications channel. “Jun, this is Standish.”

  The team leader responded quickly. “Go.”

  “We have lost sub-three.” She said matter-of-factly.

  “Explain.”

  “Heavy mecha arrived.” She replied. “We blew the escalator, and we’re holding on sub-two.”

  There was a pause in the conversation, but eventually, Jun came back. “Standish, I’m not getting any other reports of mecha attacks through the underground network.”