With a full team, Cap Owens is watching our progress from a combat sled positioned to serve as a quick reaction force. Just in case we run into trouble. It’s part of a three-sled team loaded down with legionnaires. He’s got eyes on us through a TT-16 observation bot that’s flying somewhere above us.
Our HUDs show the two red dots, and we get a visual on them through the open doors while the stealth shuttle quietly hovers in place. I can’t imagine how much it costs to make repulsors this quiet. A Repub accountant must shed a tear every time one of these is shot down. Thankfully that’s a pretty rare occurrence.
Wraith answers Owens. “Copy.”
We’re all communicating over the squad channel of our L-comm. We don’t have a name for our kill team, but we did have Twenties paint us a new team logo on our armor: a koob skull resting on two bolts of lightning. Let the koobs fear the survivors of Victory Company until their species dies out, replaced by something that will better serve the galaxy. Like parasitic flesh-flies.
“Twenties,” Wraith says, “these guys are going to make running around inside the compound difficult. I’m thinking we take them out now and insert you and Kags on the roof.”
“I can make that shot,” Twenties says. “Probably best if someone else lines up target number two. I think I can get ’em both, but I wouldn’t want one of them to go running down the stairs to tell their friends that we’re here.”
“Chhun,” Wraith calls out. “You’re up.”
I pull out a secondary N-18 and lie down on the deck of the shuttle, the muzzle of my long rifle sticking out of the open door like the quill of a ryhnocine. I find my target and watch through the gentle bobs of the shuttle as it hovers in place.
Twenties, for his part, takes a seated shooting position. That’s technically more difficult, but it’s really about how the shooter is most comfortable. If this is how Twenties feels the shot needs to be made, no one’s going to argue with him. The guy could probably stand on his head and still make the shot. He’s that good.
Our targets might be chatting, it’s tough to say. But they’re more or less staying in position. Well, mine is. Twenties’s target keeps walking to the edge of the compound room and looking over the side. I don’t know if he’s spitting or just admiring the bushes, but makes these periodic trips back and forth. He’s at the edge right now.
“I’m gonna wait until my guy moves away from the lip of the building,” Twenties says calmly. “Don’t want him falling into the courtyard.”
“Worried he’ll knock on the front door on his way down?” says Exo.
Twenties doesn’t reply.
I’m keyed in, listening for the sound of his suppressed N-18. My finger is ready to squeeze and end the zhee in my scope.
Crack-bdew!
I gently squeeze my trigger. My own rifle parrots the sound, and two zhee are dead on the rooftop. I don’t feel bad. These zhee might not be in pitched warfare against the Republic, but they are militiamen working for our target. They’ve probably captured Republic citizens, held them for ransom. Possibly ate them. And if that wasn’t on the menu, these are the types who fire rockets into the green zones of Ankalor. Just for laughs.
They say they do it because we’re here. But we’re here because they do it—plus a whole lot worse when left to their own devices.
Whatever.
Two less bad guys in the world.
“Two donks down,” Twenties announces.
That’s what we call them. Donks. Because the zhee look like donkey people, you see.
We wait to see if the sound of their bodies hitting the roof brings up any curious buddies. When it looks like no one’s coming, Wraith orders our pilot to bring us over the roof.
This is when we’re most vulnerable. A dumb rocket aimed from a window would take this bird down. A rocket that slipped into our open door would send us flying, and I doubt all of us would survive the blast.
But the featherheads in the cockpit are cool. They’re pros. These guys are picked to fly Dark Ops around because they’ve got nerves of steel, showing unbelievable cool and calm in the face of furious conditions. Often escaping death by razor-thin margins and then going back to do it again.
With Twenties and Kags on the roof, the shuttle lowers into the drop zone. The compound consists of a single building inside a walled courtyard. We’re hovering about as far from the house as we can, so close to one of the ten-foot walls that I could reach out and touch it. We’re quiet, but even a system as sophisticated as a stealth shuttle can’t prevent the dust and debris that gets kicked up by the repulsors.
We jump out, dropping five feet to the ground. When the last leej lands, the shuttle lifts off. It’ll fly out of attack range, circling until we need it again.
So far, so good.
The building isn’t huge. Flat-roofed and maybe eighteen hundred square feet. It does have two stories, so we’ll rely on Twenties and Kags to clear the upper floor from the stairway leading down from the roof.
I run up to the compound’s front door, Masters following to cover the swing side. My bucket’s audio sensors pick up scurrying inside. A good indication that the zhee suspect someone may be outside. But just suspect. If they saw us for sure, they’d be shooting. Exo and Wraith disappear into the dark corners of the compound, taking an angle sufficient to catch any zhee looking to flank us from the rear entrance.
“I hear a lot of scurrying inside,” I announce over L-comm.
“We’re set to move downstairs on breach,” Kags says in reply.
Wraith chimes in. “Chhun, blow the door. Don’t bother with an ear-popper through the window. If they know we’re here, the risk of them tossing it back out on us is too great. We go in hard.”
I stick an explosive disk in place, then Masters and I run about eight meters to get clear of the blast. I press the thumb switch on the cylindrical detonator, and the compound goes boom. Dust and smoke swirl around the entrance of the building. The door is gone. My bucket can see through the smoke and into the darkened house. Zhee are scattered on the floor, attempting to push themselves up.
Exo is inside first, followed by Masters. Then me. Then Wraith. Two more donks hit the floor. Exo dusted one, Masters the other.
The front door lies on the floor at the far end of the room. The wall behind it sports a large dent where the door hit it, as well as a bloodstain from the zhee who was standing behind the door when it blew. That zhee’s not dead, though. He’s struggling to his feet and looking at me with those lifeless eyes. He moves a hoofed hand inside his cloak for something, and Wraith drops him with two quick blaster pistol shots to the head. A zhee knife drops onto the floor as the donk goes down.
A knife.
It was going to try and cut my bucket—and head—off. Given the situation, I’m hoping whatever zhee are left in the house try the same thing. I’d much rather run into bad guys with knives than bad guys with stolen Repub blaster rifles.
I move across the room—a spartanly furnished sitting room—to an uncleared doorway. I can see the stairs leading to the second level just inside this next room. I’ll need to keep sharp, because that leaves a number of potential firing positions open.
“Target acquired,” Kags reports over L-comm. “I’ve detained him in the second-story bedroom. Twenties is clearing the rest.”
“Yeah, it’s clear,” Twenties chimes in. “I’m overlooking a banister at the top of the stairs. Second floor and stairs are clear, so don’t shoot me if you come my way.”
“I’m heading toward the stairway now,” I say, glad that I only have to worry about what’s on the ground floor.
The entryway by the staircase has a door, but it’s open, giving me a clear view into a wide hallway branching off into bedrooms or bathrooms. Going through a doorway is the most dangerous part of clearing a house. There are two angles on either side where shooters like to sit, hoping to empty a blaster pack into you as you storm through. It’s a random cube shoot, because once I go through, I can glim
pse left and then right to make sure no one’s hiding in the corner, but I also have to watch to make sure hostiles don’t pop out of one of the rooms to open fire down the hall. This is the place where a lot of leejes test their armor.
I move swiftly through the doorway, hoping my bucket’s night vision in the darkened house will be enough to give me the edge over anyone looking to join the fight. I glance to my left and right, and see only empty corners. There could still be a zhee behind the door, though.
At that moment, one of the donks jumps out into the hallway, ready to unload.
My reflexes are faster. I double-tap my NK-4, hitting the zhee twice in the head.
But then my heart stops and a cold sweat builds on the back of my neck, in spite of the bucket’s temperature maintenance systems. Because I hear a vengeful braying behind me, and the sound of the door being kicked open. I drop and spin.
A quick blaster bolt sizzles down the stairs, hitting the zhee center mass. It slumps dead in the corner.
“Yeah, you’re good, Chhun,” Twenties says over L-comm.
Exo enters the hall from one of the far rooms. We point our rifles at each other for a minute. “Oba, Chhun!” Exo calls out. “I almost shot you. One room left.”
We take the final room, the one the zhee I dusted jumped from. It’s a bedroom, and on the bed are three little zhee… I dunno, colts, I guess. They’re unarmed, which isn’t always a sure bet with zhee kids. I look down at the dead zhee and see that it’s a woman. These kids just saw their mom get iced, right in front of them. No doubt her husband is dead somewhere else in the house, making these kids orphans.
“House is clear!” Exo announces.
I report the exception to Exo’s report over L-comm. “Yeah, I got a room full of donk kids in here.”
“We’ll send in a translator bot to bring them to the nearest neighbor,” Cap Owens says in response. “Is the courtyard clear of any leejes?”
“All clear,” Wraith says.
“Shot-drop inbound.”
Exo leans down to look at the kids. “Hey, donk kids, don’t grow up to be like your parents. We’re not the first legionnaires to lay the smackdown on some zhee, and there’ll be plenty more of us in the future.”
“Masters,” I call over the L-comm, “swing over by the stairs and help Exo watch these baby donks until the bot shows up.”
“On my way.”
I hear the buzzing of the shot-drop grow in intensity, followed by a whump as the package embeds itself in the dirt of the courtyard out front. I’m looking outside, watching for a counterassault, but just by habit. We’ve got so many Legion eyes on us, we’ll get the report of trouble coming long before it gets here. For now, it looks like the zhee are done for the night and don’t feel like mixing it up with a crew that just took down the neighborhood badass.
“Translator bot’s here,” Kags says. “We bringing the target downstairs?”
“Hold him up there,” Wraith says. “We’ll exfil from the roof so the featherheads don’t have to squeeze between the house and courtyard walls again.”
I return to the sitting room and find Wraith checking the dead zhee for intel. “Anything?”
“Nah. But we should have some scanners along with that translator bot.”
As if on cue, the bipedal translator bot steps awkwardly through the open door. Early on in robotics, someone got the idea that these bots should look like elegant servants. Most have polished metal casings, and higher-end models come encrusted with jewels that mimic various cultural or species-specific patterns. The Legion orders its translator bots in matte gray.
“Hello, sirs,” the bot says. “What is your directive for this evening?”
Wraith points down the hall to the room where Masters and Exo are babysitting the donk kids. “There are some zhee children in the room down there. See if they have any family in the area. Escort them to the family if they’re within a few blocks. If not, take them to the nearest neighbor’s house and leave them there.”
“Of course, sir.”
The bot moves off stiffly. I can hear it conversing in the odd, braying language of the zhee. Soon it’s returning with the zhee kids in tow.
“The zhee deskha—that’s their term for young children—claim to have an uncle two houses down. I will lead them there. Will I be going alone, or under escort?”
“It’s all you,” Wraith says.
The bot takes a step back. “Oh. I see.” It turns to face the children, saying something in their language that I assume means, “Come along.”
They file out of the house just as two scanner bots float in, each about the size of a melon. These came in the shot-drop, too, and probably just finished up a surveillance of the exterior. As soon as they enter, they begin the process of scanning the room, recording everything and cataloging the dimensions and materials of all they see. When the report is done, we’ll know how long the curtains were and what type of woods the rods were made from.
The bots flutter down and extract four legs from their spherical bodies. They crawl over to the dead zhee and take over for Wraith, rifling through the corpses for intel. They’ll check the whole house for us. Kind of nice having a forward-operating Legion base in the green zone of Ankalor.
A boom sounds outside.
“What the hell was that?” Exo calls over the L-comm.
“Shotgun blast,” Cap Owens announces. “Saw it on overwatch. Translator bot delivered the kids, and the uncle didn’t take too kindly to it. Blew the bot’s head off.”
“Better it than us,” Kags says.
“Copy that,” replies Wraith. “Everyone upstairs for evac.”
I wait for Masters and Exo to file up the staircase, then I climb the steps after them. Twenties and Kags each have an arm on the target. A sensory deprivation hood specially designed to fit a zhee covers its head.
What’s this donk going to tell us?
21
“I’m afforded certain freedoms by the House of Reason!”
The reporter in front of us is saying it, but I can tell from the look in his eyes that he doesn’t believe it. Not anymore. Not when a kill team pulled him off the street after a night of carousing in the green zone. No, he doesn’t believe a word of that anymore. His red eyes still show the same fear they did when we pulled up in an unmarked speeder, kicked his date—I’m being generous using that term, because the guy we knocked over looked like he’d been paid to keep company with the reporter—into a fruit stand stocked with mullies and clot citrus, and then sped off after placing a sensory hood over his head.
We hauled him into an empty prep room inside an Ankalorian diner. A few credits convinced the kitchen crew to close down early and leave the place unlocked for us. We tied the reporter to the stool and pulled the hood off, flooding his senses with the hum of refrigeration units working against the Ankalor heat and the unnatural glow of cheap overhead lights, buzzing too-white and casting no solid shadows.
We’re not wearing our armor. We’re in our civvies, with only our shades, haircuts, and biceps hinting at our place in the Legion.
The first thing the reporter said, when he saw that we weren’t zhee looking to chop him up in this kitchen, was about his rights as a reporter. He says it again.
“I’m afforded certain freedoms by the House of Reason!”
“You’ll be afforded a kick to the junk if you don’t shut up,” Exo says.
We nominated Exo to do the talking for this part. Because he’s good at it. Because he means it.
“No,” Exo says, pacing like all he wants to do is pounce on the guy. “You know what? I don’t want to hear this bleeding-heart journalist whine about his rights. Put the hood back on him. Guys like him are why I prefer journo-bots any day of the week.”
“No!” the reporter screams in protest. “I’ll… I’ll calm down. I just… it was the shock of coming back into reality when the hood came off.” He looks to each of the six of us, pleading. “I’m calm. I’m a professional reporte
r. I’m paid to be calm and factual. I’m calm. I’m calm.”
“Okay,” Exo says, bending over at the waist and putting his face within an inch of the reporter’s. “Hood stays off. Man oughta be able to live out the last few minutes of his life seeing the world around him.”
“You’re going… to kill me?”
Exo shakes his head. “Nah. I’m not. My boss probably will, though. You screwed up, Steadron. You screwed up big and now we know about it.”
Steadron, the reporter with the gray skin and red eyes, a ridge of pinched, leathery skin running along his jawline, Steadron of the Spiral News Network, gulps. He begins to sweat more than the Ankalor heat alone could claim responsibility for.
We don’t actually know all that much. The zhee we caught isn’t from Ankalor. His home world is Nidreem. But Ankalor has a larger Republic presence, so our zhee came to do double holy work: shoot rockets at the infidels and convert the Ankalor to the one truth—that the zhee gods created their people first on Nidreem. Which makes the Nidreem superior to all other zhee—the chosen ones. Any other zhee—and of course, all other species—must be subservient.
Of course, if you’re an Ankalorian or from one of the other two planets, you believe the exact same thing—except you insert your planet’s name in place of Nidreem and fight any zhee who says otherwise.
But Steadron’s not a zhee. He’s just the guy our zhee pointed out. The guy who knew about the supply officer with the MAROs and tipped off the MCR. The guy who, for what I have no idea, got thousands of Republic soldiers killed.
The door to the restaurant’s dining area is flung open, and Cap Owens strides through. He passes the shut-down line kitchen and into the prep kitchen. He’s pulling a chair behind him, shades still on and looking like a hungry sand bear just woke up from hibernation. He practically tosses the chair in Steadron’s direction, then sits on it backwards, his arms resting atop the chair’s back.
“I’m establishing three facts, right up front,” he says. “First, you’re Steadron Poerwa of the Spiral News Network. Second, you told someone something you shouldn’t have. Third…” Owens leans toward the reporter menacingly. “I’m the living embodiment of your worst nightmare.”
Kill Team (Galaxy's Edge Book 3) Page 16
