Baen Books Free Stories 2017

by Baen Books

  “Okay Freeman, take the stairwell on the east side and move quickly. Keep your exits covered. You have ninety seconds to reach the door. Then my team will be hitting the windows.”

  “Affirmative!”

  “All right, Team A, we are scaling this wall to the fourth floor and bursting into the rooms adjacent on each side. We’ll go in through the walls. Private Jones, get that Barrett up the wall across the street and keep us covered. You’ve got sixty seconds.”

  “Hooah,” Jones grunted and bounced to a second floor fire escape in the alleyway behind them.

  “We’re on the clock people, let’s move!” Markus started a countdown timer clock on his HUD and had it transmitted to the team. He took two big steps and bounced his armored boots against the sidewalk. The brushless superconducting high torque servos in the ankles, knees, and hips of his suit sprang loose like a jackrabbit’s hind legs, throwing him upwards at least ten meters, taking him across the street and onto the second floor balcony. Passer landed next to him almost as soon as he hit the surface. The concrete balcony made a crunching and screeching sound underneath the armored soles of their boots.

  Quickly, Passer dropped to cover stance at the edge of the balcony while Markus scanned the connected room for danger. So far so good. Two more of the squad bounced on and then up to the third floor. Markus kept up with his squad’s movement in the blue force tracker. Somehow PFC Jones had already made it to the top of the building across the street. The kid probably had them sighted in with the auto targeting functions on the ballistic optical computational ranging and targeting system. He half-heartedly prayed that the sniper’s blue-on-blue safety protocols were functioning properly.

  “Twenty seconds . . .”

  “Passer, command that insulin pump to start sounding the worst alarm it can and stay stuck on,” Markus ordered.

  “Done, Cap’n.” Markus could suddenly hear the beeping in the distance.

  “Maybe that’ll distract a couple of them.”

  Markus was the last to make the leap to the fourth floor. The four of them, including himself, on the left side of the target room were ready and the four on the right side were in place. The tracker showed Freeman’s team just outside the door, stacked up in the hallway. The HUD still had no view of any inbound aircraft. Somehow their sensors were being jammed and that worried him. He came to the realization just how sophisticated these unfriendlies must be and was beginning to hope he hadn’t underestimated them.

  “. . . three, two, one, go!”

  The sound of the sniper rifle was unmistakable. There were three loud cracks from Jones’s Barrett across the street and then nothing for a few seconds. Markus burst through the window, firing a couple of rounds into the wall to soften it up before he punched through the drywall and studs. The armored gauntlets of his suit made fairly light work of the Third World construction materials. Several rounds of 7.62 by 39 mm plowed into his chest, stunning him lightly. But they were old school lead and steel jackets not modern armor piercing and had little effect on the powered metamaterial super dense long chain polymer coated polar aligned nanotubes the new suits were made of. He also noted that the red dots of thirty started counting down quite rapidly as the AK-47 fire rang loud in the room.

  “Push in! Go!” Markus ordered as he forced himself through the hornets’ nest of enemy fire. Targeting Xs appeared in his HUD flashing red all around the large room. He returned single deadly shots at each of the Xs in his path as he pounded through.

  Freeman’s team burst through almost simultaneously, dropping several men by the door. Passer dropped to a knee beside Markus, firing two shots to the left. Then he rotated like the hands on a clock, dropping a target at the two, four, and five o’clock positions.

  There were two more cracks from the sniper rifle, two more of the unfriendlies fell, and then it was quiet.

  “Captain Sanchez, I’m showing clear of red!” Freeman announced over the tacnet.

  “Clear outside,” PFC Jones added.

  Markus scanned the room and quickly out the window but there was nothing yet. He knew those birds were coming. They needed to hurry.

  “All right, let’s spread out in here and find that box! Watch for booby-traps. We’ve got one minute and nineteen seconds. Passer, turn off that dang insulin pump. Move.”

  Staff Sergeant Demarcus Jackson bounced to a stop as the MULE navigated itself about a bit of rubble in the middle of the street almost three blocks from the rest of the team. The “top” sergeant climbed up the runflat wheels onto the rearmost weapons rack where the dome covering the beam director for the Anti-Unmanned Aerial System Directed Energy Weapon was mounted and then ordered the vehicle to keep moving toward the captain’s present location at top speed.

  It was a bit of a bumpy ride but the MULE and the high energy laser weapon were designed to take a beating. The DEW was also designed to take down most UASs in the Third World and, in a pinch, could be turned on auto for counter rockets, artillery, and mortars. That, however, required a link to at least two radars in theater. So far, the extremists and unfriendlies they’d encountered had shown no use for mortars, but they had used the occasional MANPADS or rocket propelled grenade.

  Quickly, Jackson did the handshaking between his suit and the control system for the AUAS-DEW and the beam director turret spun halfway around clockwise and then up, down, and then back around to forward pointing. The window in his HUD told him that the system was online and awaiting further commands. It first asked if he wanted it to connect with two radar systems mounted on MULEs in two other units at separate locations on the outskirts of the city. Jackson told it to go ahead but to put the system on “fire when ready” and in “manual targeting” mode. As the MULE continued its bumpy ride over the potholed and bombed out street the sound of machine gun and sniper fire filled the air and echoed off the city buildings. Then it stopped abruptly.

  “Hooah,” Top muttered to himself after checking the blue force tracker and seeing that all his men were still safe. Then he looked at the countdown timer in his mindview HUD and realized that he had better get his butt in gear or they wouldn’t be. He strapped himself into the “engineer’s cubby” at the back of the MULE and brought up the targeting system. “Now if I can just find something to shoot at . . .”

  It hadn’t taken the team long to locate the QKD box. It was the only metal pelican box filled with paraffin in the room. Inside it was the system that could connect to the high data rate communications network of all the systems in the region. It had the passcode encryption key entangled and ready to go. Had the insurgent army had time to reverse engineer it, they could have brought the defense network across several countries in Africa down. Fortunately, it would have taken them several PhDs in advanced physics and engineering to do so without corrupting the entangled keycode. In any case, the Army certainly didn’t want the classified communications equipment to fall into enemy hands. It was more likely that the unfriendlies had intended to sell the system to China or Russia.

  Markus packed the box back into the metal pelican case and then dropped a charge in with it. He closed the lid on the box and then bent the metal hasp together to hold it in place. After a second or two of handshaking with the explosive charge he readied it for detonation.

  “Fire in the hole. Fire in the hole. Fire in the hole!” He shouted and then toggled the control in his weapons list to detonate the charge.

  The case expanded and burped but didn’t fly apart. White smoke leaked from cracks in the seal around it. Markus dug his armored gauntlet fingers into the metal and ripped it open. There was nothing discernable left of the QKD box.

  “Target destroyed. Let’s get out of here.” No sooner than the words had left his mouth than something that felt like a rocket powered sledge hammer pounded into the upper right side of his chest, knocking him backwards several meters and into the far wall, leaving an armor suited infantryman shaped indention.

  Suddenly everything appeared to be moving in s
low motion. Markus could see Passer spinning and dropping to prone position, firing rounds out the window of the balcony. Freeman’s left leg was taken out from under him and Markus could see bright red blood squirt from a hole in the armor for a brief second before the interior seal layer had time to close the armor damage and fill the wound with organic sealants, antibiotics, and pain killers. To the far left two more men were down and the others were taking cover. Passer seemed to be the only one reacting.

  “Return fire!” He shouted as the image from one of his skyballs showed him two unmanned hexacopters with miniguns hovering just over the building across the street chewing away at the floor they were on. There were three helicopters with sixty caliber barrels pointing out each side and the ones on the side facing them were firing nonstop. The room buzzed like a hornet’s nest as chips of stone, wood, glass, and metal flew randomly in every direction all the while the heavy caliber rounds tore through his team.

  Then there was the crack of the sniper rifle and one of the helicopter guns stopped briefly. Crack. Then another. Jones was hitting them back.

  “Come on Top, where the Hell are you?”

  Staff Sergeant Jackson finally managed to pull the MULE into a position where he could get a clear line of sight with his team. To his horror, the high caliber weapons fire he had been hearing was coming from three choppers and two UAV gunships. He used the direct-to-mind interface with the beam director and placed the targeting X directly on the nearest UAV and told the system to fire.

  There was no beam of light like in the movies. Their training had taught them there would not be. The invisible infrared laser beam burned through the surface of the engine housing on the left side propeller. After a couple of seconds, bright orange and white sparks shot from the interior of the engine and then the propeller choked out. The hexacopter was suddenly a pentacopter and the guidance software couldn’t overcome the loss of the engine. The copter swayed and dipped to the left and bumped into the building across the street as it attempted to move backwards. One of the other propellers crashed into the building slinging the vehicle sideways and then it flung itself apart.

  Crack. Crack.

  The sniper rifle continued at the three manned helicopters but it looked as if Jones was getting himself pinned down and the other UAV gunship was still tearing into the captain and the squad. Jackson directed the targeting X of the DEW system onto the other UAV and fired. Two seconds later there was a repeat sequence of the previous crash.

  “Hooah!” Jackson instinctually grunted.

  “Enough of this!” Markus shouted as he lunged to his feet in the full speed the powered armored suit would allow and then jumped from the edge of the balcony directly into the nearest helicopter.

  Two rounds passed so close to his head that he could hear them buzzing by. His feet came to a clanging stop onto the deck by the gunner as he bear-hugged the soldier manning the weapon. Spinning in an aikido style movement to absorb his momentum he tossed the guy out the other side of the helicopter.

  The copilot turned with a hand gun and fired it several times into Markus’s helmet. This did little more than piss him off. Markus punched the guy in the head, likely killing him, and then he slapped the pilot sideways, rendering him unconscious. The bird started to list to the side and then banged into the adjacent helicopter. Blades enter tangled throwing twisted metal in all directions. Markus managed to bail out onto the top of the building below, almost landing on top of PFC Jones who was taking shots at the final manned helicopter. Then Markus noticed the tail rotor caught ablaze and black smoke started pouring from it. Top must have been lasing it.

  “Don’t die on me, Freeman!” Markus yelled at him. The man had gone into cardiac arrest. Not only had he taken the hit to the leg that Markus had seen, but he’d also taken one in the chest. His suit was doing all it could to fill the holes with organic sealant but his heart also had to keep beating.

  “Injecting epinephrine. Clear for defibrillation.” The suit’s automated voice said. “Three, two, one.”

  Freeman’s suit sent a shock of electricity directly to his chest and then the blue force tracker showed his heart kick started and soon his blood pressure began to stabilize.

  “Evac drones are here, sir,” Passer told him. “You should probably get on one, too.”

  “Huh?”

  “Looks like it hurts, sir.”

  “Well crap!” Markus finally noticed the sealed hole on the right side of his chest where he’d taken a hit. He watched as the drones snapped onto the rigidized suits of the wounded soldiers and then picked them up and out the window they went. They were banged up, but they’d be all right.

  “There’s another drone on the way, sir.”

  “Nah, I’ll be fine till we get back to the FOB. Great work today Specialist Passer.” Markus wasn’t leaving his men. “Top, get the men on the MULE and let’s get out of here.”

  The Powhatan

  Tony Daniel

  One

  Wannas Kittamaquand placed nine arrows into his quiver. How many to carry was a toss of the bones. He needed to be able to run as fast as he possibly could, but he also needed protection from the Romans and Sandhaveners who would be trying to kill him. He considered for a moment, then took one arrow, an armor piercing bodkin, out.

  Eight.

  Okay, eight it was. Four bodkins. Four barbed.

  That was about the right balance. Had to be.

  He knew himself, and if he had more it would be hard to keep from using them instead of doing what he must: running away.

  It would be really satisfying to have a straight shot at one of the soldiers who had been starving the people of his city for the past month. Really satisfying and deadly where he was about to go.

  It would be a mistake unworthy of the task he had before him.

  He almost ordered the others who would be with him on the breakout to pare down the number of arrows they were carrying. But no. He had chosen them, almost in the same way he’d picked his arrows. He had chosen the best from the warriors he knew. Some were friends. Some competitors in the city games he’d faced time and again.

  Wannas didn’t like several of them one bit, especially those from the pan-Skraeling Anmik clan, who dripped with hatred for anyone who wanted to get along with the Kaltemen, much less the southern colonials.

  He didn’t like them. But he trusted them to make the right decision about arrows. And how to die in the most effective way, if need be.

  Should he take his knife? It was added weight.

  Now he was getting fuzzy-headed.

  If he lived, he still had over fifty leagues to travel. He must carry at least a knife.

  Wannas picked up his knife and put it into the sheath just as his father came into the guardhouse armory.

  His father stood silently while Wannas sheathed the knife and picked up his bow and arrow.

  “No armor?” his father finally said.

  “You know we can’t wear it.”

  “Not even a mail shirt?”

  “Nope.”

  His father, Chogan Kittamaquand had had his children late in life. Wannas when he was forty. Wannas’s sister and brother at fifty and fifty-one. At almost sixty now, Chogan looked old. He looked like an ancient elder. To Wannas, who was seventeen, he appeared more like a wrinkled grandfather than a father. But looks could be deceiving. Chogan was still nimble.

  And he still ran the Kittamaquand clan with an velvet touch and an iron hand.

  “Not everyone in the family understands why I am letting you do this," his father said. “They say there's glory enough for the clan if you remain a warrior on the wall.”

  “Let me guess," Wannas replied. "They want to send some boys from Atakaadjeiwan or Noahtactai to do the dirty work?”

  “I won't lie to you," said his father. "If you die, it will weaken the clan’s position. We would probably lose the tobacco market.”

  Wannas chuckled. "It's your own fault, Dad. After you had me, you and
Mom should've gotten busy churning out some brothers and sisters for me. Who has babies at fifty years old, Dad?”

  His father’s face wrinkled into a wry smile. “It wasn't for lack of trying,” he replied. “I don't know why the manitous played that little trick on us, giving us you so late to begin with, then putting ten years between you and your sister and brother." He shook his head. “Numees is seven and Kitchi is little more than a toddler. I know they'll grow up brave and smart like you, my son. But not everyone will be willing to wait.”

  “I don't even know if I want to work at the market, much less be a factor in the pits. Much less run the pits. I don't even smoke, Dad!”

  “We may have to correct that one day. You should at least take a few ritual puffs from the sacred pipe when it gets passed around.”

  “But I can't stand tobacco," Wannas replied. "You know that. I never could, even when I was a kid.”

  “You are a strange and sensitive boy," Chogan said. “I've never understood you. Fortunately that hasn't prevented me from loving you with all my heart and soul.”

  “I love you too, Dad."

  “Then you will run like the wind when you get outside these walls," his father murmured. Then the old man smiled crookedly.

  “And the canoes will be there?”

  “That is what we’re counting on.”

  “You and the Elder Council.” His father was a member of the upper house of the city-state’s bicameral legislature. He’d been elected three times in the last eighteen years, following six years in the lower house. Not all of his winning was because he plied the tradespeople with free beer prior to every election. Wannas believed half the people who voted for Chogan Kittamaquand actually liked his father. It was that kind and wise grandfather look. Then you got to know him better, and see the steel underneath, Wannas thought. And the deviousness. “Think the smugglers can be trusted?”