by Mel Odom
Faceshield and programs are back online, the near-AI whispered into his ear.
Dropping the faceshield back into place, Sage checked on Kiwanuka and Noojin’s status, seeing that they had each taken down their targets. Jahup stood over the man he’d been assigned to.
At the alley mouth, feeling the strength and speed back in the hardsuit once more, Sage followed the jumpcopter’s laser designation and spotted Vekaby and the other ambusher hijacking a crawler. Vekaby held the large-caliber pistol on the driver, then hauled the man out of the vehicle.
Sage ran toward the crawler and saw Vekaby’s head swing around as the man spotted him. Vekaby fired another gel charge but missed by a meter as it sailed past Sage. The resulting explosion struck a neon sign and tore it to shreds, raining debris over the street but not doing much more damage. A plume of writhing orange flames and gray-black smoke clawed toward the night sky.
Vekaby engaged the crawler’s magnetic drive and sped forward. The passenger tried to shoot Sage with the Arayo Defender and spread a line of carnage along the street on both sides as he cycled the magazine dry.
Fifteen meters from the crawler and closing, Sage saw the passenger reloading the Defender, then aiming at him through the rear window. Vekaby yelled at the man, no doubt expressing what would happen if the gel charge hit the window and triggered detonation. The man reached down for another weapon, coming up with a solid projectile machine pistol. The near-AI identified it as a new German-made firearm.
Five meters away and accelerating, Sage holstered the Birkeland, threw himself forward, and landed on the crawler’s top hard enough to dent the surface. Momentum exceeding that of the vehicle, Sage started skidding forward and slammed his left hand down as he pulsed a magnetic charge through the glove. Vekaby took evasive action and tried to shake him off.
Sage allowed his body to swing around, anchored by the magnetized glove. He slid over the crawler’s windshield till his legs trailed across the front of the vehicle. Sage pulled himself to his knees, pulled his left glove to the side, and spotted the passenger wheeling around with the large-capacity machine pistol in both hands. The man fired, stitching a line of holes through the transplas windshield. The bullets ricocheted off Sage’s armor with bruising force.
Driving his hand forward through the windshield, Sage fisted the passenger’s shirt and jerked to the left, bouncing his head off the side window. Fractures ran through the transplas and the man dropped the machine pistol as his eyes rolled up into his head. The seat belt held him in place.
Anxiously, Vekaby swerved and reached for the Arayo Defender between the seats. He’d just managed to fist the weapon only a split second before Sage grabbed it and tore it from his hand.
“Stop the crawler,” Sage commanded.
Instead of obeying, Vekaby accelerated and whipped the crawler sideways. The sharp right turn, especially with the combined weight of Sage and his armor making the vehicle top-heavy, caused the crawler to flip onto its side and slide across the plascrete.
Before Sage could demagnetize his glove and kick free of the crawler, the vehicle overturned again, rolling onto its top and pinning Sage beneath it. A momentary flicker of panic filled him, but he kept himself calm as the suit held and he could breathe.
Warning, the near-AI said. Sustaining this much weight can cause armor to—
Ignoring the hardsuit, Sage continued getting battered on the rough street. He managed to get his right arm into position to provide purchase and shoved as hard as he could. Slowly, the crawler overturned onto its side and freed Sage.
“Are you all right, Top?” Blue Jay 12 asked.
“Yeah. I’m good.” Still sliding out of control, Sage got his balance and got to his feet while skipping like a stone behind the rolling vehicle. Ahead of him, the crawler hit a closed electronics store and demolished the front wall. Arriving only a second later, Sage raced around to the front of the car, which sat upside down.
Battered and bruised, cut in several places—but none of it life threatening—Vekaby struggled to get out of his safety harness. When he saw Sage standing in front of him through the shattered windshield, Vekaby slumped back into his seat in surrender.
Red Light District
New Makaum
0108 Hours Zulu Time
“Are you and your people all right?” Colonel Halladay asked.
“Yes sir,” Sage answered over their private comm channel. He stood on top of a three-story plascrete building where one of the jumpcopters had touched down to take on the prisoners. He and his team had taken them into custody, bound them, and carried them up the stairs that led to the rooftop. People in the streets and in the surrounding buildings stared up to see what was going on.
Sage was uncomfortably aware that the jumpcopter made an attractive target for anyone who wanted to try for it. In anticipation of that, Sage had stationed his team around the rooftop. Armed drones deployed by the jumpcopter circled the area, feeding vid of the crowd standing down in the streets. Most of them were just gawkers, but there was a large gathering of anti-Terran protestors as well. They cursed and made offensive gestures at the soldiers.
“This didn’t turn out to be the quiet arrest we were hoping for,” Halladay said.
“No sir. Things went sideways pretty quickly. Vekaby and his people were outfitted with high-tech armament that we hadn’t expected, and they didn’t want to be taken into custody.”
On board the jumpcopter, the crew secured the five prisoners in the cargo area.
“Where are they getting the weapons?” Halladay asked.
“Vekaby’s not saying, but two of the other men say they got them from a supplier in Cheapdock.” Sage turned and gazed to the north, where the Offworlders’ Bazaar lay. The location was only minutes away. He didn’t mention that to Halladay because the colonel would know that.
“Who’s selling the hardware?”
“The two men who told me where the weapons came from don’t know. They went with Vekaby to pick them up, but they weren’t party to the negotiations.”
“Where did Vekaby get the credits to buy the munitions?”
“That’s another unknown, sir.”
Halladay cursed. “I want to know if the attack yesterday morning is an isolated event or just a preview of what we can expect.”
“Yes sir. My team and I are ready to pursue that line of the investigation.”
“I know, Top, but I don’t have to tell you how General Whitcomb is taking this police action.”
Through the HUD’s feed with the other jumpcopter cycling the area, Sage saw the line of destruction that trailed out of the Weeping Onion and flared out into two trails, one of them leading to the building where he stood.
“No sir, you don’t.” Sage had already formed a good idea of what Whitcomb was all about. The general wanted to end his career with a quiet posting.
“It’s a nightmare for the diplomatic corps, and believe me, they’ve already been contacting me to let me know they’re not happy.”
“Yes sir.”
“Luckily, Quass Leghef has gone to bat for us and is taking some of the pressure off. She wants to know where the weapons are coming from too, and she’s made sure the general knows that.”
Sage’s hope rose a little. He didn’t like the idea of not following up on the weapons trail, and there was no time like investigating while the trail was still hot. A few days, or even a few hours for that matter, and the trail to whoever sold those weapons to Vekaby and his people would vanish.
“General Whitcomb knows we have a limited window of time to act, so he’s cleared your team for this follow-up, but he wants to speak to both of us at oh eight hundred in the morning.”
“Yes sir.”
“You and your people are up for this?”
“Yes sir. I wouldn’t have it any
other way.”
“Then get moving, Top. Good luck.”
As the jumpcopter cleared the rooftop and headed back to the fort with the prisoners, Sage gathered his team.
Offworlders’ Bazaar
Makaum Sprawl
0132 Hours Zulu Time
Sage left the crawlers a block from the Offworlders’ Bazaar with a driver in each vehicle to provide support in case they needed an exit strategy. The air support—both jumpcopters, now that delivery of the prisoners had been accomplished—was left in the area too, so they wouldn’t alert the Cheapdock personnel. Then, dressed in cloaks that blunted the straight edges of their armor, the remaining six soldiers followed Noojin and Jahup into the area while maintaining comm silence.
Noojin and Jahup were used to working together as scouts and hunters, and they had been to the Offworlders’ Bazaar on several occasions, so Sage had them lead the troops in. Corporal Culpepper walked slack, covering the soldiers with a heavy plasma blaster that was barely hidden under the cloak.
At the northern end of the bazaar, a three-story building stood above a loose ring of one- and two-story buildings that all faced the dirt-packed courtyard. Sporadic lights lit the rooms and sec lanterns hung over the entrance to the main building, keeping the darkness at bay.
Keeping ten meters apart, Noojin and Jahup stayed to the right and kept to the shadows as much as they could. Other people walked through the marketplace, but they kept to themselves and all conversations were low rumbles. A few of the shops were open, nearly all of them catering to vices: flesh and drugs and alcohol.
The offworlder businesses looked grafted onto the old Makaum buildings. The neon and sec shields and vids stuck out like cancerous growths against the smooth symmetry of the buildings grown from trees and built from cut stone. The bazaar had been built to be a permanent fixture for the Makaum people.
Sage remained amazed at the changes the corps had wrought in the amount of time they’d arrived before Fort York had been established. He’d seen vid of Makaum as it had been when it was discovered. The sprawl had been primitive by comparison to what it now was, and several areas still remained so.
But the sins of the universe had come knocking. In one generation, the planet would be so changed that the new generation would have little in common with the last. Technology transformed things that fast, mostly because it homogenized all the cultures in an area into one entity. It didn’t build bonds as much as it dropped everything into the lowest common denominator.
They skirted the area and kept moving.
Outside Cheapdock
North of Makaum Sprawl
0145 Hours Zulu Time
Cheapdock lay to the northeast of the bazaar three klicks distant. Small shuttles from cargo ships and space stations landed there when they couldn’t get a berth at the main ports. Cheapdock was an oval that was 2.3 klicks in diameter across its widest point east to west and 1.9 klicks north to south. The stardock was open-ended from east to west and had hangars and cargo areas on the north and south sides that were several buildings deep.
It was the old port, quickly built and used by the corps when Makaum had been discovered, then quickly abandoned when the profits started to roll in and the new starport was built. The Terran Army fort planners had considered the site for the post, but they were too far away from the sprawl to be as effective as the Terran Alliance wanted them to be. On top of that, Cheapdock was separated from the sprawl by a slow-moving river, seventy-three meters across and eighteen meters deep, which provided a natural choke point for a land-based attack.
The corps had built a retractable bridge across the river, which was controlled by bashhounds on the Cheapdock side. Green Dragon Corp still managed the bridge, provided upkeep, and charged for access, but the execs also ran a lot of the black market as well.
Sage and his people stayed off the main road and stuck to the north side of the slope so they could peer down on the terrain. They made their way through the jungle and only had to dispatch a few predators before they reached the Tekyl River.
Crouched along the bank, Sage studied the river. The retractable bridge was 217.4 meters downriver. The jungle had been cleared out at either end and bashhounds stood guard in small forts on either bank as well. Drones sailed along the surface of the water and swept the waterway.
“Security’s pretty tight,” Kiwanuka commented. She knelt down only a short distance from Sage.
“On the surface, yeah,” Sage agreed, “but I’m not picking up anything in the river.”
“Jasulild live in this river,” Jahup said. “I know we can walk across the river bottom in the hardsuits, but if we chance upon a jasulild while we’re down there, things could go badly. This is the spawning season and they’re even more aggressive now than they normally are.”
“The hardsuits have sonar capabilities,” Sage countered, “and the jasulild aren’t going to pick up a scent trace from us.”
“Jasulild hunt based on movement.” Noojin sounded pessimistic. “Not scent.”
“We’re crossing. The answers we need are over there.” Sage pulled his cloak off, put it into his equipment pack, then closed the watertight seals on the Roley and shoved the Smith and Wesson .500 Magnum into an expandable waterproof thigh pouch. “Jahup, let’s go.”
Jahup nodded, stored his cloak in his pack, and remained crouched down under overhanging branches as he eased into the river. In seconds he was submerged. No trace marred the river to show his passing.
Sage started forward, but Noojin intercepted him.
“Wait,” she ordered. “I need to be over there with Jahup.” Without waiting for a reply, she stepped into the water and disappeared as well.
Sage let thirty seconds tick off the chronometer on his faceshield and started down into the river. His boots sank several centimeters into the mud and grew heavy with accumulated mass. The hardsuit’s skeletal system quickly adjusted for the weight of the mud and the restriction of the water.
Right before his helmet sank beneath the river, Sage heard the whisper of the seals closing and saw the air supply indicator form in a soft glowing blue line, marking the time he could be submerged. Provided he didn’t overexert himself underwater, the hardsuit could filter oxygen from the river water to extend the oxygen in the reservoir.
Darkness and sediment restricted visibility in the river. Night vision was only slightly better, and thermographic vision was problematic. Sage used echolocation, bouncing sound waves off his immediate surroundings. The sonar provided a reliable image of the riverbed and surrounding water, but didn’t reveal the soft areas covered by a thin layer of mud. Sage sank three times, once up to his hip, and had to extricate himself with care so he didn’t sink deeper.
Echolocation revealed another hardsuit behind him when he reached the midpoint of the river. A discreet ping identified Kiwanuka.
Ten meters from the opposite bank, on the slow rise toward the surface, the echolocation beeped a warning and revealed a huge mass coming toward him from sixty meters away and closing rapidly.
At first, Sage thought someone had a small submersible in the water. The object was seven meters long and three meters in diameter. Then its tail flicked in a movement that was too organic for a marine vehicle.
“Kiwanuka,” Sage called out in warning over a short-range comm frequency.
“I see it.” Kiwanuka hunkered down till she was lying in the mud.
Sage did the same thing. He gazed up at the surface of the river as the current swept silt and debris over him. If neither of them had a profile and there was no scent, whatever the creature was should pass them by without noticing them.
Instead, the creature came at him, closing swiftly. The echolocation revealed the jasulild in limited terms. Sage knew the creatures were usually covered in blue and purple scales and looked like Terran cuttlefish, only u
glier and with teeth like a piranha.
The jasulild swam over to Sage, held its position with its fins, and scraped at the hardsuit with its teeth in an effort to pluck him from the muddy river bottom. The sound echoed inside the armor because there was no way to filter that noise.
Swimming backward a short distance, the jasulild approached Sage again and once more tried to dig him out of the mud. Reaching up with his left hand to touch the jasulild’s massive underjaw, Sage blasted the creature with a short burst of electricity that flared for only a second.
The jasulild shivered and only moved weakly afterward. The gills still worked, so Sage knew he hadn’t killed the thing, but it was stunned. He pulled himself up from the mud with difficulty and continued toward the opposite bank.
He came out under low hanging branches and remained within the shadows. After confirming Noojin’s and Jahup’s positions farther up the bank at the ridgeline, Sage knelt and watched as Kiwanuka surfaced and came out as well while he readied his weapons.
After Culpepper and Pingasa and the other two soldiers crossed and there were no more incidents, Sage gave the order to continue to Cheapdock. The answers to the weapon supplies lay ahead of them.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Cheapdock
North of Makaum Sprawl
6123 Akej (Phrenorian Prime)
Show me your pass.” The Green Dragon bashhound was blunt and direct. All four limbs were cyber replacements and whatever was left of his original flesh and blood had been enhanced by steroids. His armor was olive green, almost black in the night. A yellow Chinese dragon reared proudly on his chest plate. He carried a double-barreled plasma blaster on a sling at his side. He had not put in an appearance till after the retractable bridge had clanked back across the river.
Mato sat behind the controls of the Phrenorian aircar and extended his PAD to the bashhound. The five warriors that accompanied Zhoh and Mato sat in the two backseats of the vehicle.
In the passenger seat, Zhoh remained calm and assumed a look of disinterest, but his eight eyes took in everything around them. Three other bashhounds worked the outpost and they were connected to a team inside the Cheapdock sec offices. If anything happened on the bridge, automated defense systems would pop up and reinforcements would be on the way in seconds.
