by Worth, Dan
‘Yeah I do. No-one trusts a new face.’
‘Exactly, and you don’t have the time to earn their trust. Plus, I think I know a few places we can use for a safe house in the city. There’s a few “no questions asked” type hotels near the spaceport that should do us nicely.’
Steven looked thoughtful for a moment and folded his arms across his chest. ‘Okay, maybe I could use some assistance. But we do things my way. No heroics.’
‘Fine by me,’ said Isaacs.
‘First we need to figure out how to get there and start sniffing around without getting ourselves noticed.’
‘Come with me and talk to some of our people,’ said Baldwin. ‘They can fill you in properly. Captain Isaacs, perhaps you and Captain Favreaux might show Ms Velasquez here where you’ve stashed all the weapons inside your ship and her people can start unloading them.’
‘Sure. One other thing,’ said Cal. ‘Is there anywhere in this place I can have a shower and get something to eat that approaches actual food?’
‘I’m less sure about the latter, but yeah, we can fix you up,’ said Maria. ‘This place has all sorts of home comforts. You’d be surprised. Come with me.’
There was a makeshift mess hall of sorts, further inside the hill. Somehow, at some point in the past, the Hidden Hand had acquired what looked like a portable Army kitchen from somewhere and had set it up inside one of the large chambers. Isaacs and Anna, clad in a fresh change of clothes, sat at one of the long trestle tables and demolished plates of fried food. At first Isaacs had felt guilty about the amount of food they had been given, assuming that the Hidden Hand would be short on supplies, until the cook had explained that they had ample food supplies in refrigerated storage that had been pilfered from who knows where. After weeks of ships’ rations, it came as a welcome relief.
Isaacs, having cleared his plate, sat with a mug of tea in his hand and beatific grin on his features as Anna slowly finished the last of her bacon and eggs.
‘That hit the spot,’ he said and belched.
‘Charming,’ replied Anna. ‘I have to admit though, risking my neck does help me work up an appetite.’
‘Maria’s back already,’ said Isaacs and nodded towards the door, where her purposeful figure could be seen striding towards them. Maria grabbed a glass of water on her way and sat down next to them, a sheen of sweat on her brown skin.
‘Man, you weren’t lying ‘bout those weapons. Admiral Chen must be filling in for Santa Claus,’ said Maria and took a long gulp of her water.
‘Ah yes, that’s what I always wanted in my stocking: a high powered assault rifle,’ said Anna and chuckled.
‘We just offloaded the last of them, unless you think we missed any. We got more guns than people now. They’ll certainly come in useful.’
‘Glad to hear it. I hope you’ll put my ship back together once you’re finished.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry about your precious baby. We’ll take care of her. So, you guys are headed into the city with Agent Harris, huh?’
‘Cal and I have been talking about this. We feel that we can help him out. Both of us know the place quite well,’ said Anna.
‘You need to watch yourselves,’ warned Maria. ‘Harris is SOC, you knew that, right? There are some real nasty things on this moon. My bet is that he’s going looking for them.’
‘We’ve fought the Shapers before, Maria. We know what to expect,’ said Isaacs.
‘No, no you haven’t. You’ve fought their agents, their slaves and their ships. But there’s a rumour going around that they are actually here, on this moon. One or two people claim to have seen them in the jungle, or heard from people who said that they had. They kind of look like...’
‘I’ve seen them before,’ said Isaacs, cutting her off. ‘I used to see them in my nightmares for about fifteen years. Remember?’ he added, casting a look at Anna who nodded slowly in acknowledgement. ‘So if Steven is going after those things to get Admiral Haines out of their clutches, then I’m in all the way.’
They found Steven in one of the makeshift offices, poring over a screen displaying a map of Bolivar City. A number of points had been marked on the map and certain major roads picked out in a livid red.
‘Come up with any sort of plan, yet?’ said Isaacs, as they entered the room.
‘Yeah, I think so,’ replied Steven, without looking up from the display. ‘I’ve been talking to Maria’s people. They’ve given me some useful insights into the situation down there.’
‘And?’
‘Oh, I think we just drive straight in. Shouldn’t be too difficult.’
‘Excuse me?’ said Isaacs, incredulously. ‘Did the whole thing about police and army patrols, not to mention the lurking threat of the Shapers and their agents not get through to you?’
‘Yes it did, which is why we shouldn’t attract attention. Mingling with the crowd is our best option. In fact we’re more likely to get pulled over if we try and enter by the side roads. Apparently they have roving patrols in the suburbs stopping anyone who looks like they might be trying to sneak into town. Okay, look. These roads leading into the city are all major arteries,’ said Steven jabbing a finger at the highlighted roads on the map. Morgan has shut down the air routes in the name of security, so everyone is having to drive the old fashioned way. There are manned checkpoints on the main roads, but there’s far too much traffic for it to be practical for them to search every vehicle that’s going in and out of the city, especially since Morgan’s trying to pretend that it’s “business as usual”. They’re just scanning vehicles as they pass by and pulling over anyone who gives them room for suspicion.’
‘I think a car loaded with guns might do that,’ said Anna. ‘I’m assuming that you’re intending on taking some.’
‘The Hidden Hand have a truck that we can use. We modify the rear compartment and replace the floor with a double layer of that stuff the Navy used to hide the guns in your ship, since we don’t need it for that anymore. We hide the guns and other gear between the layers.’
‘And if we do get stopped?’
‘If we do get stopped, then we stick to the cover story. I’m a businessman in the import-export field here to do a few deals in the city, and you two are hired security.’
‘So what were we doing out in the countryside?’
‘I was staying with friends and got stuck here. Look, it’s easy. The fake IDs will confirm everything. If they ask us questions, just follow my lead, and stay calm. If we look nervous, even the dumbest cop in the city will know something is up.’
‘Fine, okay. When do we leave?’ said Isaacs.
‘Well, we need a little time to make the modifications to the truck and a few military craft have over-flown the area in the last hour, so I think it’s best if we leave things until tomorrow morning. We’ll head into town with all the other morning traffic. Okay?’
‘Makes sense to me,’ said Isaacs. ‘Okay, let’s do it.’
High above Orinoco, flashes of light in the night sky illuminated the upper cloud layer as more harvested asteroid material was fed into the maw of the vast Shaper vessel that hung there. Crushing energy fields shattered the metal rich rocks, rendered them molten and funnelled them into the waiting ship where they were separated into their component minerals as Shaper craft goaded yet more captured asteroids from across the system and beyond into that hungry mouth. It was a process which had been repeated every few hours for the past several days and nights. Now, loaded with millions tonnes of refined metals, the five great arms of the ship began to move and lengthen, coming together mere metres apart from one another. Primordial energies began to crackle along the inner surfaces of those two-hundred kilometre long fingers and then, like a spider constructing the beginnings of its web, the great ship began to weave something out of the materials that it had gathered in its belly.
The sun was just cresting the horizon when the chunky, four wheel drive vehicle snuck out of a secondary entrance of the Hidden H
and’s refuge and made its way down through a meadow to the rough track that ran through the jungle in the direction of the nearest paved road. Electric wheel motors whining, it bounced over the rough terrain before reaching the unevenly surfaced track and heading off in a cloud of dust.
‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Isaacs, in the front seat, rubbing his head where it had collided with the roof. ‘Could you at least slow down at little?’
‘Sorry,’ Steven replied, his gaze fixed on the road ahead. ‘I’m trying to get us away from the base as quickly as possible in case someone sees us.’
The track reached a sharp bend, flanked by tall, overhanging trees. Steven neatly drifted around it, keeping the truck perfectly lined up all the way as foliage whipped by on all sides. Straightening up, he gunned the engine and powered the vehicle down a long straight section that.
‘Where the hell did you learn to drive like this!?’ cried Isaacs, hanging on for dear life and the truck bounced and rattled over the bumps.
‘Same place you learnt to fly, I guess,’ said Steven, grinning. And with that, the car raced onwards into the jungle.
Eventually the dirt track became a narrow, metalled road, and as the trees began to thin and gave way to cultivated fields and rice paddies, it broadened into two lanes. Steven reduced their speed and drove more sedately so as not to attract attention and they began to see other traffic on the roads – mainly agricultural vehicles – which became more frequent as they headed out across a broad, fertile plain.
By the time they reached the main highway into the city they were amidst five lanes of swiftly moving traffic. There were a number of police and army vehicles among the hundreds of other assorted cars and trucks and PDF gunships and police AG shuttles periodically flitted overhead. There were also an unusual number of police vehicles parked in lay-bys and slip roads where the occupants appeared to be monitoring the passing traffic. Steven stuck to the speed limit but refrained from handing control of the truck over to its automatic navigation systems – all the better to make a quick getaway should the worst happen.
As the skyline of Bolivar City began to show in the hazy distance - the needle-like spires glinting in the early morning sun - the traffic began to slow to a crawl. They soon saw the reason why: low speed restrictions had been enforced where the traffic passed through what had once been a toll barrier and was now an armed checkpoint. Armoured personnel carriers flanked the road, whilst troops in body armour, toting rifles and other weapons manned the barrier. Meanwhile, their comrades used tripod mounted devices to scan the flow of vehicles as they passed slowly through the open toll gates.
Trapped in the one-way river of traffic, Steven, Isaacs and Anna had no choice but to head onwards. There were no exits where they could pull off beforehand, and no way that they could cross into the opposite carriageway.
‘Well, this doesn’t look good,’ said Isaacs nervously as the checkpoint approached, his eye lingering on the turreted weapons of the APCs hunched low at the side of the road.
‘Like I said before, we play it cool and we’ll have no trouble,’ replied Steven, though he couldn’t help but feel the butterflies in his stomach as they drove inexorably towards the soldiers.
‘Let’s hope so,’ said Anna, softly. ‘There’s no way that we can realistically make a run for it in this traffic. They start shooting and we’re trapped.’
Carried along in the flow, they were soon mere metres from the barrier. Isaacs tried to get a good look at the troops manning the checkpoint, doing his best to make his actions seem nonchalant. The armoured figures were talking, even joking with one another. They looked bored by the task that they had been given and many of them weren’t really paying that much attention to the traffic passing by. He breathed a sigh of relief. They looked reassuringly human. He commented on the fact to the others.
‘The intel. that the Hidden Hand had gathered suggested that a lot of them still are,’ replied Steven. ‘The Shapers only need the officers, and the loyalty of the men under them, for the most part. It’s only the Marine Corp and Army units and the full time PDF that have been completely enslaved. Look at these guys, look at the physical condition they’re in. They aren’t full time soldiers. This guy on the left here looks more like an insurance salesman to me.’
‘So what, the Shapers are choosy about who they enslave?’ said Isaacs.
‘To an extent, yeah. We think that there are limits on how many enslaved units the higher ups – the ships, command nodes and the Shapers themselves - can control. It probably comes down to processing power and the limits of their communications. Besides, why bother doing it when you can replace or co-opt the elites and get the rest to follow? These guys here are probably too scared by the chaos of what’s been happening lately, the war, Morgan’s coup and so on, not to do as they are told, particularly when they start to hear about what happens to those who don’t. None of them want to be singled out and they all want to do their bit to restore order. Plus it gives them a chance to feel involved, to feel important, to do their bit.’
‘Great. Amateurs with guns,’ said Isaacs.
They were almost at the barrier now. The car in front was waved through. Steven edged the truck forward as an armoured figure stepped out in front of them with a hand raised in a stop signal. His colleagues on either side, four in all, eyed the occupants of the truck through dark, tinted goggles.
‘Shit!’ hissed Isaacs. ‘Just our kind of luck. Hope you’ve got a plan to get us out of here.’
‘Let me do the talking,’ said Steven, as a podgy sergeant ambled over, rifle held slackly in his right hand, and made motions for him to wind the driver’s side window down.
‘Morning, Sergeant,’ said Steven as the man approached the open window. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘This vehicle has auto-drive systems, correct?’ said the Sergeant.
‘Yeah, of course it does,’ Steven replied.
‘You aren’t using them. Why?’ said the Sergeant, accusingly.
‘Ah, you know. I used to live on a frontier planet without a nav-sat network in place. Got used to doing my own driving. I guess I like to keep my hand in, once in a while. Can’t beat the feeling of being in control, you know?’
‘What planet?’
‘Huh? Oh, Bishop’s Claim, Woomera system. Real shit hole,’ Steven replied and laughed a little. The Sergeant’s expression didn’t change. Overhead, there was a sudden roar as a PDF gunship appeared over the road and began to circle
‘I see. You got any ID?’ said the Sergeant.
‘Sure,’ Steven replied, and handed over the license he had chosen as part of his faked identity. The Sergeant glanced at it for a tense moment, appearing to scrutinise the picture printed onto its plasticised surface and then passed it back to him without bothering to scan it.
‘Okay, well, we got a lot of traffic on this road today with the new security restrictions in place,’ said the Sergeant. ‘You might want to use the auto-drive like everyone else. In the interests of safety, you understand.’
‘Yeah, of course. Sorry,’ Steven replied, feigning sheepishness.
‘Have a good day, sir,’ said the Sergeant, before stepping back from the truck and waving him through.
As the truck pulled away, and Steven engaged the auto-drive as instructed, Isaacs let out a long sigh of relief.
‘Well that was fun,’ said Anna.
‘He was an idiot,’ said Steven. ‘Guy didn’t even check my license properly. He was having too much fun playing cop. The old adage about the little man with the badge is still true, it seems.’
‘Well if that’s the calibre of troops that the enemy have at their disposal, then we shouldn’t have too much trouble,’ said Isaacs.
‘Don’t get complacent,’ said Steven, darkly. ‘There was a full company of marines under Cox’s command when the Shapers took them, and god knows what other Army and Marine Corp assets have been enslaved and moved in-system. The Hidden Hand have seen a lot of troops and activity in an
d around the bases here, not to mention the main spaceport. I had a word with Commander Baldwin, too. Her people saw groups of enslaved troops backed up by air support combing the jungle on their way here, probably looking for survivors from the fleet. Luckily, they managed to avoid engaging them, but it was a close run thing, I gather. Make no mistake, the Shapers have control of some serious military assets in this system. They just aren’t using them to man checkpoints. Then of course, there are the ones you don’t notice so much. Any of these cars could be carrying a Shaper agent assigned to watch us, and we don’t know who might have been watching at that checkpoint.’
‘Shit, I get the picture, okay?’ said Isaacs, uneasily. ‘Isn’t there a silver lining to all this?’
‘Not while that thing’s hanging in the sky above us, no,’ Steven replied and jabbed a finger at the shape peeping out from a gap in the clouds above the city. Even from this distance, it was clear that the ship had changed shape, its long jointed arms coming together like grasping claws. As they watched there was a flicker of light from between those massive limbs which quickly faded in the morning sky.
As the city grew nearer, the volume of police and military traffic in the sky above increased markedly. Police AG shuttles appeared to be regularly patrolling over the roads leading into Bolivar City, sweeping low over the mass of moving vehicles, red and blue lights pulsing on their undersides. Army gunships moved at speed at higher altitudes, ferrying troops to and from missions in the surrounding countryside like industrious bees going about their business, and Isaacs, Anna and Steven were heading straight into the hive.
Entering the city without incident, they headed downtown towards the spaceport, although Steven remained on edge and on several occasions, began to become suspicious of other vehicles on the road that appeared to be shadowing them. If they were being followed, those doing it were careful to disguise themselves. Steven took evasive manoeuvres, regaining manual control of the car, changing lanes and making sudden turns once they were off the highway to shake off potential pursuers. Those he suspected did not follow, and in the end he concluded it was just his healthy level of paranoia at work.
