by M. D. Cooper
Lyssa saying,
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
STELLAR DATE: 01.15.2982 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Raleigh, Heartbridge Corporate Headquarters
REGION: High Terra, Earth, Terran Hegemony
As the maglev approached the South delivery dock for the Heartbridge Spire, Brit checked the overlay Petral had provided showing Tristan’s location. The mech was following them in a sewage system below the train tube, pausing in places then leaping forward.
They were riding in a cargo transport maglev with narrow windows, stacked with crates locked to its floor. Wind blew through gaps in the outside wall and the air tasted like a mix of scorched plas and oil. The cargo line had been two levels below the lab section at the TSF facility, left unmonitored as the Quick Reaction Forces responded to the lab breach and were then drawn off by Tristan as he dug his way out of their headquarters, wreaking havoc chaos the whole way. The Weapon Born had seemed immensely pleased by his task, and Petral kept smiling when she received his updates.
The cargo transport followed a non-priority track away from the Heartbridge spire and into an industrial section of Raleigh, thirty levels below the inner surface of the ring, where it shot through factories filled with fabrication lines leaking sparks, storage areas that stretched as far as Brit could see, and even a low-ceilinged reclamation center filled with scummed algae vats, air humid and cloying.
When they returned to the inner surface and the light, Brit breathed deeply of the fresh air. She didn’t have to check the train’s path to feel centripetal force as it started a long curve back toward the Heartbridge spire. While it wasn’t a direct path, there wouldn’t be any stops before they reached the private delivery dock.
On the other side of the car, Petral’s brows knit and she craned her neck to look out the slim windows at the approaching buildings.
“Jirl hasn’t delivered my package yet,” she said.
“Can you hit her up over the Link and find out what’s going on?”
Petral shook her head. “Too risky. They monitor all traffic in that place. If they even see she’s getting a connection request from outside, it could set off security.” She considered. “I could try routing it through Mars 1 and pretend to be her son.”
“If she hasn’t inserted the key yet, that means she’s in some kind of trouble,” Brit said.
“Without Jirl, we’ll have to make our own diversion,” Starl said. He patted the grenade bag in his lap. “We can still cause some chaos but are we going to be able to get into the control room?”
“Tristan is going to cause plenty of physical havoc once he hits their building,” Petral said, “which is happening shortly. It’s not the building I’m worried about, it’s the network. I need to lock their comm backbone open so they can’t sequester the building from the network. If there’s a network access station near this stop, I might be able to do something from there. I was hoping to have the payload delivered from an admin area so they couldn’t track it back to anyone.”
“Can’t you see if there’s network access on your maps?” Brit asked.
Petral shot her a frustrated glance. “I’m looking. Their maps aren’t the best and they’re out of date on top of that. What looks like a network drop on the original plans could be a sewer temperature sensor now.”
As the delivery dock came into view, Starl let out of low whistle. He nodded to Burroughs and Fletcher before looking at Brit.
“Get ready, Major,” he said. “We’ve got a welcome party waiting for us.”
Brit tightened her grip on her rifle and looked through the scum-covered windows for what he was talking about. The dock was visible as a gray horizontal line, stacked with shipping containers, the arms of a yellow spider-like crane reaching from above. Movement between the containers caught her attention as she made out the telltale signs of a squad-sized element setting up a crew-served weapon. One of the black-uniformed shapes knelt to set up a tripod while two lowered the gun into position.
“Are you sure they’re looking for us?” Brit asked. “The TSF didn’t seem to know we left their facility.”
Petral shook her head. “I don’t know. I know Jirl got out of the TSF headquarters about the time the alarms started. If their reaction team sent back imagery, they might have ID’d one of us and alerted Heartbridge. You’re not exactly unknown, Brit.”
The crew-served weapon opened fire, a high-calibre projectile rifle of some kind.
“Hit the deck!” Brit shouted. “Get behind these crates.”
She had time to get behind a scarred metal crate when rounds hit the skin of the maglev car, punching holes where she had been sitting just seconds before. Sunlight streamed through the holes, followed by screaming wind.
As soon as she answered, the car slowed abruptly. Without the need to account for passengers, the train went from three hundred kilometers an hour to a hundred and then fifty. Brit grabbed the edge of the nearest cargo crate as more rounds punctured the car. A flurry of muffled shots hit crates.
Starl laughed with irony.
Brit said. She studied the inside of the car again, seeing Starl’s fine leather shoe sticking out from behind a crate, and Burroughs squeezed between two narrow containers.
“Damn it,” Brit said under her breath. The train was reaching a stop. Parts of the wall over their heads burst as the gunner walked rounds from the top of the car to its deck. Bits of molten metal ricocheted inside the car. Storage crates provided scant cover, absorbing rounds or deflecting them back into the wall. A plas container began burning and black smoke streamed to the top of the car before blowing out the holes in the walls.
The car stopped but the main door didn’t open as Petral had said it would.
Starl just laughed at the question.
Starl said.
The gun stopped abruptly. Brit figured it was going through a cool-down sequence. She threaded an optic over the side of the crate she was crouched behind and identified seven soldiers in light infantry armor. Two were operating the cannon while five were arrayed around the dock in overwatch positions. Aside from the cannon, they looked to be armed with rifles. She tilted the optic up and picked up a surveillance drone hovering near the roof of the maglev tunnel.
Passing the information to the others, she brought her rifle t
o her shoulder and aimed through one of the larger blast holes in the side of the car, increasing the rifle’s power to account for distance.
Brit fired several three-round bursts. She caught her first target in the chest while the others all scattered behind cover. Starl grabbed the moment to push himself up against a slash in the car wall and sent a propelled grenade into the plascrete next to the cannon, which exploded on contact and tossed the weapon several meters in the air. It came down on the edge of a nearby crate and clattered back to the deck.
Burroughs and Fletcher were already throwing themselves against the cargo door, which was dented from the cannon fire but hadn’t suffered any punctures. It seemed warped on its track but after a minute of grunting, the two mercs had it open a meter. Brit lay down covering fire as they worked.
Starl threw another two grenades through the opening, then rolled through with Burroughs and Fletcher after him.
Brit fired on the drone, but it jerked away, assuming an erratic path around the ceiling.
While Brit had been engaging the drone, Starl and his two bodyguards flanked the soldiers trying to get the cannon back on its tripod and hit them with close-range pulse blasts.
A rending sound behind her made Brit turn to check the back of the space, worried that the cargo doors would open with reinforcements. Instead, she watched a bubble form in the metal of the deck that split in the center as Tristan clawed his way from below. The mech crouched in the crater he had made, scanning, then leaped forward to toss a crate aside before landing on a Heartbridge soldier who had been hiding behind it. Tristan put one of his front claws on the soldier’s chest and lifted the other in a striking motion that looked like it would tear his head off.
Rounds ricocheted off the mech’s dull black shoulder plating as the remaining soldiers tried fruitlessly to save their comrade.
Starl’s people hit the remaining soldiers with more pulse blasts as they were focused on the mech.
The soldier was reaching uselessly for the mech’s claw on his chest. Petral walked over to them, making an adjustment on her pistol, she fired at the soldier’s helmet and it released a puff of electronics smoke. The soldier stopped reaching for Tristan and struggled to get his helmet off.
Starl shot her a smile and fired a reduced pulse blast at the soldier, knocking him unconscious.
Petral holstered her pistol and put her hands on her hips. She looked around with an eyebrow raised. “Well, this certainly isn’t how I meant to arrive. We’re not going to go rappelling down Tristan’s hole, so I’m going to find the nearest network control node like I planned before. That means getting through the cargo door, which appears to be stuck in security lock down. Brit, would you put your torch to use?”
Brit threw her rifle over her shoulder and pulled the cutting torch from her bag. “I do enjoy this thing,” she said.
Starl laughed. “I see a fulfilling future for you at the Lowspin docks on Cruithne, Major. You can chop things apart to your heart’s content.”
Brit gave him a withering smile and crossed the dock for the exit doors.
Another automated maglev car pulled up the dock, paused, and accelerated away, a reminder of how much damage their car had taken.
Petral shook her head.
When they reached the door, it was locked as Petral expected. Starl hung back in the corridor, his rifle at his shoulder.
Brit approached the secure metal door, a warning icon flashing on its lock panel.
Hefting her cutting torch, Brit asked Petral, “You going to hack the lock?”
Petral sighed. “Go ahead, chop away.”
Brit fired up the torch and started cutting.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
STELLAR DATE: 01.15.2982 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Raleigh, Heartbridge Corporate Headquarters
REGION: High Terra, Earth, Terran Hegemony
Jirl’s Link defined the SAI’s name automatically: Protector. Setting the information aside, Jirl did her best to maintain her composed posture, pretending she had just met some new visiting executive probing a hostile takeover.
The holodisplay projecting Camaris was impressive. Jirl thought she could make out pores in the woman’s cheeks as she smiled warmly. No matter how friendly her demeanor, however, nothing overcame the cold, solid black of her eyes. The combination of her black eyes and blood-red skin reminded Jirl of a Black Widow. She found herself studying Camaris’s long fingers, likening them to spider’s legs.
Camaris made and arcing motion with one hand and the holodisplay spread to the center of the table. A small planetoid with rings that Jirl recognized as Ceres appeared near the center. Mars, Eros and several other small bodies came into view in their various orbital positions, relative to an invisible Sol. Just like the TSF display Yarnes had shown her only hours before, the incoming armada appeared on a path that was still halfway between Jupiter and Ceres.
Camaris said, pointing at the incoming group of ships.
Seeing Arla’s frown, Jirl explained,
Camaris smiled. she said.
small in her ears.
Arla had been watching Camaris with an expression of rapture. “They’re going to take everything away, Jirl,” she said out loud, her voice barely above a whisper. “Everything I worked for. I thought it was all going to come crashing down. And then I realized I really did help build something. We helped build the future, and here she is.”
Jirl shifted her gaze from Arla to the red-tinted woman, uncertain if she’d heard what Arla said.
Camaris seemed to understand her expression. she said.
The images of all the dying on Ceres flashed in Jirl’s mind.
Camaris shrugged.
Jirl said. She nodded toward the collection of dots floating over the table.
She reached for Arla, meaning to take her hand. Her boss pulled away from her.
Jirl pushed back from the table.
