“This used to be a respectable place,” the man said as Darius hurried by, his voice dripping with contempt. He ignored the man and turned down another corridor, this one nearly empty compared to the main hall. Here the mood was far more somber, with the inscriptions of past senators engraved upon the marble walls. It was not the usual place a senator wanted his office, but the McCarroll family had held their office in the Hall of Memory for more than a hundred years, when it had more humble roots as a quiet memorial for the 53rd Mechanized Infantry, the unit which had been the core of David Lukas’ revolt against the Caliph and the formation of the Dominion.
“Laird,” Darius said as he pushed open the office door. “Laird?”
Silence. Darius frowned and looked around. The office, which should have been bustling with people and energy, was eerily empty. Darius skirted a few chairs which had been left in the open and moved towards the second door, where the Laird kept his private office. Darius tapped on the door.
“Laird?”
Nothing. He opened the door and looked inside. The Senator was gone. Darius pulled his comm out of his pocket and dialed. Immediately the Lairds’ Security Chief, Rhinaldo Malik, answered.
“Go.”
“I’m in the Laird’s office and he’s not here,” Darius said as he began to inventory the items in the room. “Has there been a scheduling change I was unaware of?”
“Checking...no. The Laird should be in his office at this time.”
“Maybe he’s in the head?” Darius muttered as he walked over to a small door. He knocked twice and waited. Nothing. “No. He’s not here.”
“He may be wandering the halls, preparing for his speech,” Rhinaldo said. “One moment.”
“Where is his security detail?” Darius asked, the faintest hints of panic creeping into his tone. “Where are the other aides?”
“With...no, check that,” the security chief stopped himself. “I’m not showing them, either.”
“How are you missing a dozen people, including the Laird?” Darius demanded.
“Working on it. Shit, they’re not in the building at all.”
“Where’d they go?”
“I have no idea. I don’t show them anywhere on the planet.”
“The man has a speech in front of the Senate in two hours! He wouldn’t just up and vanish! And he wouldn’t go off planet!”
“His skiff is still in the docking bay, Hangar Twelve,” Rhinaldo stated. “So he’s either turned off his locator and the security team’s, or he has misplaced it.”
“I don’t get paid for dealing with this crap,” Darius growled. “That’s your job. Find him. It’s an emergency.”
“Looking over past traces...I got a skip. Hangar Twelve, third level. I have ghost elements there,” Rhinaldo stated. “Not near the docking bay, though. That’s strange...”
“Thanks. On it.” Darius closed his comm and raced from the room, past the tranquil memorial to past senators and to an available powerlift. He boarded it and waited a moment before he keyed in his access code. “Hangar Twelve, third level.”
The doors closed and the lift began to descend, picking up speed as it plummeted into the depths of the Capitol. Quiet music played in the background as time dragged on, and Darius began to hum along with the familiar tune. As the lift neared the hangars it began to slow until finally it reached the proper hangar. He stopped humming as the lift stopped and the doors slid open.
He hurried past a few surprised maintenance workers and into the cavernous hangar, where he could see a small cluster of men walking towards him. The security detail, he recognized instantly. Behind them he could see the Laird and a smaller individual. He hurried over and was immediately stopped by one of the largest guards he had ever seen in his life. He tried to squeeze past but was detained by the man.
“Senator! It’s me, Darius!” he said, trying to see past the guard.
“Let him through,” he heard a familiar voice say. Darius could see some jostling as a smaller security contingent broke off, leaving the Laird.
“Sir! I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Darius gasped as he approached the Senator. He ignored the small shape being hustled away by the security detail and focused on his boss. “Princess Katherine is using her vote by proxy to approve more funding for the war. Nobody’s there to counter it!”
“What?!”
“It’s only been a little while, sir,” Darius continued. “If we hurry, you might be able to counter the final tally with a filibuster until the rest of the Senate can arrive and call for an official recount.”
“That little bitch...” the senator hissed. “Just like her father, subverting the will of the Senate.” He looked at Darius. “Did you inform any others? Senator Duncan?”
“He was there, milord,” Darius replied as they approached the powerlift. “He was speaking with me before the announcement was made.”
“Well, at least someone in my bloc knows what is going on,” Laird Christophe grumbled.
“Oh! Laird, I forgot to tell you something,” Darius said as the rest of the security detail filed into the lift. “Senator Duncan told me to tell you these words, exactly. He said, ‘the storm looms on the horizon’.”
Christophe stared at him. “Those are his words, exactly?” He asked, his voice carefully neutral. Darius nodded, confused.
“Yes, Laird.”
“Thank you.” He pulled out his comm. “Justin? Christophe. I just heard.” A pause. “Yes, I agree. Immediately would be preferable, but...yes, yes, of course. Falcon is fully under my control. He’ll do whatever I tell him to.” A longer pause. “What do you mean, Vijay is horning in on this? He’s been seen a lot with Hawk? Oh, hell...okay, no, I have this under control. Find out who’s on our side and who isn’t. It’s only midway through the first act of the play, after all. We have some time before the intermission.” Christophe killed the comm and looked at Darius once more. “I need you to go to the Justice of the Lord and tell him that I wish to meet with him in my office.”
“Shall I comm him, Laird?” Darius asked. The Laird shook his head.
“No, I said go and tell him,” Christophe repeated. “The less ears that hear, the safer we all are. And if you see the Justice of the Service, ask him to meet me in my office at his earliest convenience.”
“Yes, Laird,” Darius agreed and bowed his head.
What the hell is going on around here, he wondered. His mind began to replay the events in the hangar. And who was that person meeting with the Laird before I got there? What’s so secret that he’d shut off his tracker for?
Chapter Thirteen
Newcastle was the only metropolis on Ibliss and was the focus of almost all trade on the small planet. The nomads who lived in the vast plains brought in the game they hunted, while local farmers struggled to grow crops in the alien soil. A backwards city much like the frontier towns which dotted the old American West, Newcastle still had all the amenities of a modern Dominion capital city, even attempting glitz and glam. They had, at least, before the Abassi invaded.
The outskirts of the city were flattened, the ruins from the orbital bombardment the Abassi had hammered upon the planet a telltale sign of the invasion. The titanic skyscrapers which formed the core of the city remained, their shiny metallic skins nearly unblemished by the carnage wrought by the aliens. At the outskirts, however, nothing left standing was half as tall. This suited Gabriel and the rest of the Wraiths just fine.
Heavy and oftentimes noisy, the original Mark I Combat Suits were not the quietest inventions known to man. However, the designers had been made aware of that flaw after feedback from units meeting an enemy in combat in the open fields. The next generation suits were designed to be extremely mobile, for urban assault and city combat. Although the upgraded mobility was a matter of evolution, the very capability which had given the Mark II Wraith suits their name was based on a revolutionary technology. The designers, thinking ahead in the war against the Caliphate, had develop
ed the Chameleon program.
With synthetic fibers out of the question, the suit designers needed to give the metallic machines camouflage. Paint was out of the question, since atmospheric entries would instantly strip the paint off the suit. Nanotech was considered but was deemed too expensive. A breakthrough finally came when interwoven nanites were taught to camouflage the armor to the surroundings, so no matter what angle someone was looking at the suit, all they could make out was a faint outline. The nanites projected the image of the surroundings onto the suit, making it an effective camouflage. It worked, to a degree, and while not always spoofing electronic systems, it did fool the naked eye.
Moving quickly through the ruins, Gabriel tracked the underground power line with sensors attached to his suit. He was almost certain the laser emplacements scattered throughout the city were being powered by the underground fission reactors built when the planet was settled. He was just as positive that if he followed one large power line he would eventually find his way to one of the Abassi lasers. He glanced around at his surroundings but, as he had suspected, the human inhabitants had moved out of the wreckage long before. The insurgency would be either out on the plains or deeper in the city, he recalled from one of the many military manuals they jammed into his brain via the implant. If it had been his choice, he would have run the insurgency out of a comfortable beach resort hotel somewhere near the Core worlds, with Sophie on his arm in a skimpy bathing suit. Such is my luck, Gabriel thought as he signaled for the next two Wraiths to leapfrog him and move deeper into the city.
He watched as the forms of Esau and Twist flitted past him half of a ruined block away, their Chameleon programs compensating as they moved. The two of them stopped short and suddenly dove into cover, their landings causing a small avalanche of rubble from one of the nearby buildings. Gabriel cursed and crouched down, wondering what had caused them to go to ground so quickly.
“Esau, what’s going on,” Gabriel asked over the secure link, confused and alarmed.
“Seeker,” Esau whispered back, terror in his voice. Gabriel immediately look to the darkening sky for the hunter drone.
“Where?” Gabriel questioned after a few seconds of near silence.
“Eight blocks up, just hovering,” Esau responded after taking a quick peek around a corner. “I’m not sure what it’s doing.”
Gabriel accessed Esau’s feed and rewound the digital images until he spotted the Seeker in question. It was hovering above the middle of an intersection, motionless, like a guard on station. Exactly like a sentry, Gabriel decided a moment later.
The drones were identified as a damned nuisance early in the war between the aliens and the Dominion, Gabriel recalled he rewound the recording and watched again. It simply hung there, waiting for something to come across and trigger a reaction. It would relay the coordinates then approach the intruder, getting as close as possible before detonating in an orgy of fire and destruction. Or run away and sound an alarm. Later the Abassi would come by and investigate whatever remained, meaning the squad had a limited number of options. Gabriel watched the recording a second time before he came to a decision.
“It’s on sentry detail,” he told the others. “Passive only, I bet. That’s why our suits didn’t detect it initially. Twist, you loaded up with HEAVY rounds still?”
“I got ten of ‘em left, doos. Why?”
“Can you take out the Seeker from here?” Gabriel asked him carefully.
“Well...yeah, I guess I could,” the Boer answered slowly. “But Gabe...these HEAVY rounds are inaccurate as all hell against something that small and not shielded. You saw how hard it was for the damnable Zulu to hit them earlier, and he’s a better shot. It’ll spot me and sound an alarm as soon as I fire.”
“Esau?” Gabriel asked his second-in-command. The man from Solomon was quiet for a moment before responding.
“I can jam its comm the moment Twist fires,” Esau suggested. “Slave your firing sequence to mine, Twist, and that way it’ll be simultaneous. Jam too early and it’ll come for us and blow up. That would not be good.”
“If you’re off by even a millisecond, the alarm will sound and every Abassi on the planet will know we’re here!” a whiny, frightened voice protested over the comm. Gabriel sighed and closed his eyes, wondering if he had done the right thing in letting the Avalonian live.
“Joshua, what part of ‘overwatch’ do you not understand?” Gabriel asked quietly, his patience with the tall Imperfect on the verge of deserting him. “Sit in that damned building and keep watch. Shut up or the next thing that’s getting a HEAVY round is you, got it? The only thing I want to hear about is if the Abassi are mucking around or if anything is headed towards us.”
“Okay,” came the sullen reply.
“God, he annoys the hell out of me,” Gabriel muttered to himself. He glanced back over at Esau, who was waiting patiently for Gabriel’s decision. “Go ahead and slave your system, Esau, Twist?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t miss,” Gabriel told him.
“I won’t,” Twist assured him, though with less confidence than Gabriel hoped. Working together, Esau activated his jamming signal the instant Twist fired the HEAVY round at the drone.
The jamming worked just fine; there would be no calling for help by the Seeker drone.
The HEAVY round, however, missed horribly, crashing into the side of a building halfway down the block past it. The round exploded, showering the street below with sharp debris. Gabriel stared in stunned silence for a moment before he stopped watching through Twist’s vid feed.
“Damn it! Just once would I like for something to go right!” Twist screamed out loud as the Seeker drone activated and began to accelerate quickly towards the Wraiths.
“Take it down!” Beeker shouted.
Gabriel rose and began firing controlled Lynx bursts, but the Seeker was now moving erratically as it approached. Gabriel, frustrated and annoyed, began to fire one long, continuous stream of rounds. His anger, though, did nothing for his aim and within seconds the Seeker was among them.
“Get down!” Gabriel ordered as he threw himself flat. The others followed suit as the Seeker stopped, reoriented itself for a moment, then exploded.
Gabriel felt the heat of the explosion wash over his suit and saw his HUD flicker for a moment before returning to normal. He glanced around and saw the others were slowly picking themselves off of the ground, and followed, carefully extracting himself from a bit of debris which had fallen off a building.
“Everyone okay?”
“Busted a servo in my knee,” Markus reported. “It works okay, I think. Just don’t make me run.”
“Anyone else?” Gabriel asked.
“Just peachy,” Esau said.
“Well, that would not have made a normal Zulu warrior happy,” Beeker groused as he kicked over the remains of the Seeker. The shattered body split into two pieces as the heavy metal foot of the Wraith impacted, sending random bits everywhere. He knelt down and picked through the Seeker but found nothing that could be useful. He looked back up at Gabriel. “Thank the Emperor none of you are Zulu. Think they know we’re here?”
“They probably do now,” Gabriel admitted with a shrug. “I would’ve thought taking out those Sharks earlier would have triggered an alarm or something. This is...weird.”
“Where’s the real enemy?” Esau asked after a moment. “Yeah, we’ve seen some Sharks, a few troops, but where’s the real danger? Other than getting hosed on our drop, we haven’t seen anything really, uh, alien, you know?”
“Good point,” Gabriel nodded. He glanced around the intersection but it remained deserted. “They inhabited this planet, so where are they?”
“Gabriel,” Joshua’s voice came over the comm.
“Go ahead,” Gabriel sighed quietly. What does he want now?
“Somebody came down from the hills a few minutes ago and they’re picking apart the Sharks we destroyed,” Joshua informed him, reluctance in his
voice.
“Really?” Gabriel asked, surprised. He switched the feed relay to Joshua’s and stared in amazement as cloaked humanoid figures rummaged through the destroyed vehicles, picking them clean.
“Yeah,” Joshua said, unaware of Gabriel’s intrusion into his suit. “They look human too.”
“Ah, okay,” Twist suddenly laughed. Gabriel glanced at the other Wraith, confused. Twist chuckled and explained. “With a Boer around, anything mechanical that looks abandoned will get picked apart. Those Boers out there are probably getting rid of the evidence, and getting some excellent technology as a bonus.”
“Joshua, come on down and catch up,” Gabriel ordered after a moment’s thought. “The first laser’s nearby, judging from the power signatures I’m reading here. The rest of you, spread out and stay hidden. Look for the laser. Esau, get up in that building over there–” Gabriel designated the building with his HUD, standing tall in the midst of a row of tall, partially ruined buildings “–and set up for overwatch.”
Darkened clouds filled the sky, causing the sun to disappear. Rain drops, fat and cold, began to fall upon them. The rubble on the ground quickly turned to mud as the rain began to fall in earnest. Gabriel closed his eyes and let the rain wash over his suit, wishing he could luxuriate in the water as he used to on the farm, standing near the banks of the river with Sophie.
For a moment, the war was forgotten. He lost himself in his memories, her face filling his mind as only she could. Everything he strove to do was because of her, he reminded himself. It was easy to forget, he realized with a start. It was easy to forget just what, exactly, he was doing while on some godforsaken planet, light years from home, with men considered beneath humanity’s contempt. He was there for her, to find her, to bring her home once more.
“This is kinda creepy, Omelet,” Esau observed quietly, breaking the spell. “Where is everything? This is just plain weird.” Gabriel opened his eyes.
“War is weird,” Gabriel muttered to himself. Pain, suffering, loss. He looked at the rest of the squad. They couldn’t know what it was like, losing one’s true love. They wouldn’t ever know what it was like. He gathered his fond memories and, one by one, shoved them into the deepest, darkest place he could find in his soul. After a minute of contemplative silence, Gabriel was a killing machine once more; the memories of Sophie, the family, his life before that fateful day, pushed beyond, gone. His throat was scratchy and raw when he spoke again. “Well, since trouble refuses to find us, so let’s go find it instead.”
Wraithkin (The Kin Wars Saga Book 1) Page 18
