Star Force: Deceit (SF34)

by Aer-ki Jyr

  2

  “I think I see one,” a Brazilian guard said nervously from his position on a pedestrian crossroad in Region 13 of the city.

  “Where?” another of the six guards asked, looking down through a sea of people. Some were going about their daily activities given the fighting hadn’t reached this section of city, while others were scrambling about trying to get to wherever they thought would be safe, with still others buying up anything and everything they could in the way of supplies, intent on holding out in their quarters until the danger had passed.

  “Just beyond the courtyard,” the Brazilian said, hefting his plasma rifle. They’d been dispatched to this location on the report of Archon movements in the area, but so far this was the first sighting in more than 2 hours.

  “Take cover and watch your aim,” the squad leader ordered, kneeling down behind a short barricade fort they’d set up. “Wait for the people to run clear. We don’t want to hit any of our own. Then concentrate all shots on the first Archon. They’ve got tough armor, so it’ll take a lot to take one down. Scatter fire and they’ll own us.”

  “Here they come,” another said, hearing the screams of the civilians just before the road in front of them cleared with people ducking into side stores and walkways as fast as they could.

  “Steady,” the squad leader said, but as the first of the pair came into view the distant Archon didn’t charge them, nor fire. Instead he took a large object off his back and laid it on the ground some 100 meters away from the checkpoint, then the second one came up and put an identical piece on top, connected the two, then pushed a button and took off running the way they’d come, ducking down a side street while the other Archon went a different way.

  “What the hell?”

  “Hold position and watch our flanks. On my order everyone turn and focus on the same target. I get the feeling they’re going to hit us simultaneously from both sides and divide our firepower.”

  “What’s that thing they dropped?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s…” the squad leader said before a huge plume of blue smoke began billowing out of the canister the Archons had just laid down. It expanded so fast that the street around it was filled within two seconds, with the cloud rushing down towards the guards and filling into the side crosswalks and stores, including the ones that had their ornamental doors closed, for the gas seeped in through the cracks.

  The blue smoke wall rushed over the guards before the squad leader knew what to do, and he expected to have the Archons on top of them at any moment, taking them down hand to hand or with pointblank rifle fire…but that didn’t happen, nor did anything else. The six guards, unable to see each other, were left alone, though the screams of the people in the surrounding buildings and those that had been stuck outside behind them made the otherwise silent environment horrifically creepy.

  “Check in,” the squad leader finally said after forcing himself to take a breath of the blue smoke. He coughed on it, but was still able to get some oxygen in.

  “Here,” one of them said, followed by a chorus from the others.

  “Orders, sir?”

  “Hold position,” he said, waving a hand in front of him but still unable to move the smoke away from his eyes. Everything looked blue, with lighter hues above where the walkway lights were pushing through it.

  “Face out so we don’t shoot each other. In fact, move back to back,” he said as the tactic jumped to mind as the screams began to die down, replaced by more further away and thus not as loud, returning some semblance of order to the place.

  The squad leader retreated a couple of steps, holding out an arm until he made contact with the man on his left while holding his rifle in his right. From there they all got ahold of one another and made a small circle back to back.

  “Take a knee,” he said, still unable to see anything. “Let them come to us.”

  Then they waited…and waited. Nothing happened, save for the smoke began to thin out ever so slightly.

  A few more minutes passed, and the squad leader found himself starting to get light headed from all the smoke, then he heard a slump/crunch as one of his men keeled over behind him.

  “Manuel’s…down,” one of the others said, coughing.

  “Is he hit?”

  “I don’t…” the man said, before he too collapsed.

  “Damn…smoke,” another said, with the squad leader starting to get tipsy himself. He stayed upright for another minute, the last to fall, then tipped forward and landed on the ground with his hands forward as he dropped his weapon. He kept himself on all fours but awake for a bit longer, then heard a few drops of water underneath him.

  After that he blacked out and fell to the floor on top of the blood drops coming out of his nose.

  18 minutes later in Region 4 a larger checkpoint leading into a shopping complex spotted another pair of Archons coming their way. This time the walkway leading in was three times as large and already clear of people, all of whom were taking refuge inside. There were two dozen guards entrenched behind barricades with plasma rifles drawn when, in the distance, a silver-suited Archon stepped out of a side street with a red one following a few steps back. The silver knelt down, pulling a canister off his back while the red one stood by, raising his rifle and taking a pot shot at the guards.

  The blue plasma lance hit high, already having diffused slightly, but none the less it melted out a bit of the glass above the guards’ heads, leaving a hole into the complex. Two more plasma shots came down their way, one of which hit the ground shy of the barricades, but the Brazilians held their fire, waiting for the Archons to come closer.

  The red and silver ones switched places, though the silver didn’t fire. He merely waited behind the red as it unslung its canister and set it atop the other…then the silver one jerked in sudden warning and twisted to his left, raising his plasma rifle halfway up when another silver blur came out of a side street and laid a running Archon punch into his chest.

  The real Archon’s armored elbow punched through the fake chest plate of The Word operative, driving the fragments into his ribs and knocking the impostor entirely out of sight down the opposite walkway. Lio spun around and grabbed the red one by the neck and pulled it back from the double canister, smacking him onto the ground before punching him in the helmet three times, cracking the ceramic material and knocking him unconscious in the process.

  “Got it,” he reported over the comm. “Just in the nick of time too.”

  “And the operatives?” David asked.

  “Oh yeah,” Lio said, glancing at the pair of bodies wearing the knockoff Archon armor. The red one was unmoving, but the silver was stirring a bit. He’d deal with that in a second.

  “Deal with the canister, then get moving,” David said, enroute to his own intercept.

  “Copy,” Lio said, walking out of sight of the guards and pulling out a stinger pistol, whereupon he shot the operative in the chest, splattering the hole in the fake armor and stunning the man’s wound. He fell still and the real Archon walked back out, eyeing the distant guards, and walked up to the canister. A quick inspection found him the release latches and he pulled the two pieces apart.

  Knowing that he couldn’t babysit the thing he took a chance and started jogging down towards the barricades, stowing his pistol on his back rack and raising his hands in the air while amping up his external mic.

  “Hold your fire,” he said, knowing that if they did start shooting that he’d have to duck into a side room pretty quick. That many plasma rifles on him would eat through his shields in a heartbeat and chew into his armor like a chainsaw through wood.

  Lio kept his run smooth and sluggish, with his hands held high and got halfway down to the guards without them returning fire. He’d guessed they’d seen him take out the others, and was relying on their confusion to keep their trigger fingers at bay.

  “I need your help,” he yelled through the mic, and he could see several heads, some helmeted, some not
, twitch to the side as they glanced at each other.

  “There are Star Force imposters roaming the city,” he said slowly as he approached their lines, transitioning from a jog to a quick walk when he got within 50 meters. “I just took out two of them before they could detonate a chemical weapon. They’ve already set off several others within the city, and we’re trying to get to the rest before they can set them off. I need to go after the next closest one, but I need you to take possession of that one,” he said, thumbing his left hand backwards, “so it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

  “Stop there,” one of the guards said, and Lio obliged, coming up within 20 meters of the shooting gallery.

  “Star Force is responding to a request by the Brazilian government,” Lio explained. “There’s a rogue faction on Tyr that we’re rooting out, and they’re attacking you dressed as us to cause chaos. Our personnel are equipped with stun weapons. If you see one that has a plasma rifle, like those two jokers, shoot them down. They’re wearing fake armor too.”

  “Stand down,” the Brazilian commander ordered, and the guards half lowered their weapons as he stepped up to the front barricade. “What’s going on?” he asked Lio.

  “It’s a long story,” he said, lowering his arms, “so I’ll give you the short version. Tyr has been infiltrated by a criminal organization, at all levels, and has been quietly cut off from the Brazilian government, though very few people were aware of it. Finally Brazil got word and sent a strike force to reclaim the city. That strike force went missing and they asked Star Force to investigate before sending a larger force in. We’ve been here a few days picking apart the rogues, but since they control the moon they tagged us as enemies and ordered you guys to stop us…then they started dressing up like us and killing people. All caught up?”

  “No, but I’ll take your word for it,” the Brazilian said, running his fingers through is black hair. “That answers a lot of questions. What sort of chemical weapons?”

  “Deadly smoke, from that thing down there. Can you keep it safe?”

  The Brazilian nodded. “What about the imposters?”

  “Hang onto them too, and be careful, they’re a devious lot. We’ll collect both later, but right now I have to go before they set any more off.”

  “Go,” the Brazilian said, with the Archon not wasting any time. He turned around and ran back the way he’d come, sprinting faster than the commander had ever seen a person move.

  “Six man retrieval team,” he ordered, pointing ahead. “Grab that device and those men and get them back here.”

  He pulled a large comm unit off his belt and held the phone-like device up to his ear as he watched his men move out. “We have a situation. There appears to be two sets of Star Force in the city, one genuine and another group of imposters. I just saw one attack the other, then the Archon came to us and explained that the imposters are setting off chemical weapons within the city. Can you confirm any of this?”

  There was a long pause.

  “I believe him. We’re recovering the device now, along with the two fake Archons he took down. It appears to come in two pieces which they have to assemble on site. They were doing so at range, and took a few shots at us…with plasma weapons. The Archon said all of Star Force’s troops are equipped with stun weapons, so the imposters will be the ones with plasma.”

  There was another pause, during which the Brazilian commander watched his men haul the canisters back down towards him, with the others dragging the two suits of fake armor lagging behind.

  “I know…but can you confirm any chemical weapons usage in the city?”

  The commander waved the first canister piece over to him, then pointed to the ground where he wanted to set them down.

  “Dear god…how many?” he asked, watching the fake Archons dragged up towards him…as well as the breach point in the silver one where the real Archon had punched through. The commander knelt down and pulled at a fragment of the armor over his chest, with it breaking off after he tugged twice. Cheap imitation it was, more like a costume than armor.

  “I’m looking at the imposters now. Their armor is fake. A single plasma shot should get through. The Archon said they’re trying to sow confusion. He also said they’re here on the request of Mars…yes, I said Mars. Claims they sent a team in previously to investigate a hostile takeover and then promptly vanished. Star Force said they were asked to investigate. If that’s true then we’re working contrary to our own good.”

  “No I don’t care. When’s the last time you heard of them using chemical weapons? They’ve got enough firepower to lay waste to the moon if they wanted, which makes this whole assault implausible. What the Archon said makes sense, so at least try and make contact with them. I saw one intercept and disable a weapons canister, so let them keep doing it. If we slow them down more could be released.”

  The Brazilian commander sneered and pulled the comm away from his head, shutting it off and clipping it back onto his belt.

  “Orders?” one of the guards asked.

  “Contact the other checkpoints in the mall. I want them reporting to me and only me. Command has its head up its ass right now, so we’re going rogue. Don’t shoot at any Star Force personnel unless they’re firing plasma at us…that’ll be the imposters.”

  “What do you want done with these?”

  The commander looked down at the two canisters. “What can you make of it?”

  Another guard stepped over and knelt down, pulling off the outer shell with practiced ease. “Some sort of liquid, binary mixture. If this transforms into a gas it’ll pump out enough to cover a wide area, more than enough to get to us from their detonation point.”

  “Is it safe?”

  The man nodded. “I think so…so long as the two compounds aren’t combined. I’d prefer not to test that theory.”

  “Find a closet and post a permanent guard…and keep it disassembled. And get these two out of that armor and restrained.”

  “Who are they?”

  “You can ask them when they wake up, just keep them away from the device and make sure they don’t escape. I don’t know what’s going on here, but if Star Force really is here to help then they’ll sort it out in good order.”

  “And if they’re not?”

  “Then you might as well kiss your ass goodbye,” the commander said with a scoff. “I used to work for them, and they can drop the hammer whenever they like, more so than any of you know…but don’t worry, they’re as good as good guys get, and you saw for yourself how that Archon disabled them and the canister. So sit tight, watch your approaches, and keep an eye out for more imposters. We have to protect the people inside, regardless of what command has to say about it. If you see real Star Force personnel, Archon or otherwise, inform me immediately. We’re going to help them protect our people however we can, so check those itchy trigger fingers.”

  Before he could utter another word the commander was shot in the back, not once, but four times in succession by one of his own guards…who even before the man fell, ran towards the barricade and hurdled it, then took off at a run down the walkway, sprinting for his life.

  At first the other guards didn’t know what was going on, but a couple of them snapped into action and fired plasma streaks down at the traitor. One hit him in the shoulder, but the armored vest he wore caught most of it. The man veered to the left, with several more shots missing, then ducked into a side door and disappeared.

  The other guards got to and flipped the commander over so that he was face up, but there was no signs of life in the man. The pointblank plasma fire had blown right through his vest and exploded his heart.

  “What just happened?” one of them asked, aghast.

  “The Archon said Tyr had been infiltrated,” another said, his plasma rifle shaking slightly in his hands. “I guess Pao was one of them.”

  “No. That’s…”

  “He just killed him! What is unclear here?”

  “Who’s in command n
ow?” another guard asked.

  “I am,” one of the fully armored ones said, stepping up from behind. “Carry out his orders…and put his body somewhere out of the way. And I want 3 men on the canister. Who knows how many more traitors there are.”

  When nobody moved he dropped the butt of his plasma rifle to the ground and smacked it against the tile floor three times. “Move before we’re all dead!”

  Half of the guards seemed to snap out of their haze, with the others following suit after the men started to deploy to their tasks.

  3

  “Do you think we’ll be safe in here?”

  Ben Morrison looked his wife in the eye, then glanced around the shelter that was already near capacity. “Better than out on the streets.”

  “What do we do if they come in?” she whispered, barely audible over the din of hundreds of different conversations. The shelter had several thousand people packed into tiered platforms with staircases running up and down the levels at multiple spots, but otherwise it was a large empty complex they could use to pack people into in times of need.

  “They’ll have to get by the soldiers to do that,” he reminded her. “And there are none back in our apartment complex.”

  “Right,” she said unconvinced as she looped an arm around their 5 year old daughter, who’d been silent for the long walk out to the shelter, but whose eyes were wide with terror and worry.

  Someone behind Morrison bumped into him, and he turned to look.

  “Sorry,” the old woman said as she tried to find a place to sit down. Most of the floor space had already been taken, with only narrow cracks in between families and clusters of people available.

  “You’re fine,” he offered, ignoring the elbow as she walked on, trying not to stumble over the tangle of arms and legs sticking out everywhere.

  “How long do you think this will last?” his wife asked him after the woman walked by, though there were several other people wandering around trying to find a spot to sit down.