“Excellent. I have rigged the shield to the same power module as the elevator,” Garotte said.
“And we’re just about done with the last load,” Mei said.
“Lovely. All aboard then,” Garotte said.
Silo took the navigator/gunner’s seat. For the three workers, now having to deal with the presence of their commander, it was standing room only. But despite the inconvenience, that was far preferable to the alternative of being left behind.
Garotte guided the ship a short distance into the cleared path to the mine, then reached down to fetch the ground-penetrating viewer that had granted their initial glimpse of the facility’s layout and aimed it upward.
“Everyone in position?” Silo asked.
“One moment… Yes. I do believe all response teams have arrived and are in position, raining doom down upon us from above.”
“Care to give the people one last chance to clear out?” Silo asked.
“No, but I shall offer nonetheless, as I very much doubt they have the wisdom to take advantage of the rare and precious warning.” He keyed the communicator. “Attention, Broadline Syndicate. Any and all personnel would be well advised to leave the area immediately. We are about to return fire.”
A voice replied, explosions audible in the background. “Just how do you suppose you’ll manage that?”
“You do realize what sort of equipment is being stored here,” Garotte said.
“Sure, but you’ll never live long enough to fire a single round in our direction.”
“Quite a reasonable observation,” Garotte said. “Do I take then that you don’t intend to heed our urge to retreat?”
“Quit wasting your breath and prepare to meet your maker.”
Silo shrugged. “We tried.”
Garotte nodded and activated a timer, then piloted the ship at maximum safe speed through the narrow tunnel. “Some people are simply too foolish to survive.”
#
Above, the bombardment continued. Though their weapons weren’t quite as powerful as the military equivalents, the sheer volume of attacks had made considerable progress. The top three floors had collapsed, requiring most of the ships to move into position directly above the damaged section in order to most directly assault the facility. Already a few secondary explosions suggested stray bolts were reaching the first few ammunition caches.
With the arrival of the rest of the reserves, close to two hundred troopers were on hand. Two or three piloted the larger ships. A handful more issued commands to the drones. The rest waited with weapons ready on the off chance that some person or vehicle might make it through the onslaught. The lead trooper huddled behind cover about a third of the way down the mountain. It was near enough to the attacks that stray fragments of shattered stone and steel still sprinkled down around him. A flimsy but capable datapad cycled through the video feeds of the ships. Now and again he would issue an order to this pilot or that, but it was mostly just for show. When the target is as vaguely defined as “this mountain,” the finer points of direction aren’t quite necessary.
“Sir, considering how destructive they have illustrated themselves to be so far…” fretted his second in command, who had taken up a position a few meters farther from the action, as though that crucial bit of distance would be the difference between life and death.
“Relax. What can they do from in there?”
“They’ve got all of those man-portable warheads. One or two of those could take down one of our ships.”
“But how are they going to deliver them? They show their heads, we’ll blow them off before they can pull a trigger.”
A flashing indicator drew his eyes to the screen.
“What is it?”
“Some of the drones are sensing large-scale motion on the lower levels.” He opened up communication. “Be ready to focus on the elevator shaft. Seems like they might be trying to charge us with that ship of theirs.”
The attacks intensified. He watched expectantly for the ship to emerge and succumb to the attacks. That is not what his view screen showed him. What did present itself lasted only long enough for his brain to partially register it before the consequences of its appearance made further logic impossible. It was the elevator, rocketing upward along the angled shaft so swiftly that sparks sprayed from the rails. The platform itself was mounded with sturdy crates, each packed with six warheads. In total, there were probably thousands. The whole mess rumbled along behind a flickering, flashing shield that was just barely shrugging off the constant rain of attacks. When the elevator hit the end of the intact shaft it lurched to a stop, grinding and racking against the damaged rails. The momentum launched the explosives and shield generator in roughly the same trajectory as the shaft’s travel.
A stray plasma bolt struck a crate, and instantly the top half of the mountain was swallowed in a spectacular pyrotechnic display. The explosion went on for minutes, some crates lasting longer than others before their own contents detonated. Then other explosives in storerooms exposed by the initial blast shook and fractured the core of the mountain. When the flames and bursts finally died down, the whole of the mountain was utterly ruined, either blasted to rubble or collapsed down onto the mining tunnels and hollowed-out chambers. The Broadline Syndicate fleet was almost unrecognizable, most of it melted to slag by the intensity of the blast and the rest torn to bits. As for the personnel, it turned out those last few meters weren’t quite enough to spare the second in command.
#
A few hours later, Garotte and Silo brought their ship to within a few kilometers of the nearest town. They unloaded the three workers and the commander, the only survivors of the ordeal at the mountain.
“I hate to do this to you, but at this point it might not be smart to take this ship all the way back to civilization,” Silo said to the workers. “So you three are going to have to pile onto this skimmer here to get back home.”
The workers seemed reluctant to complain. This was motivated in part by the fact that their obedience thus far was the only reason they weren’t at the heart of the fireball unleashed a few hours prior.
“Wh-what do we say when people ask what happened?” Stan asked.
“I appreciate this may be the first time you have been a part of a situation such as this, but instructions will be forthcoming from both what’s left of the Broadline Syndicate and this fellow’s superiors,” Garotte said, indicating the commander. “However, I would request that you leave out any descriptions of the devastatingly handsome spy, breathtakingly beautiful soldier, and the preternatural skill with which they achieved their goals.”
“R-right,” the worker said, nodding vigorously.
He and the others piled somewhat gracelessly onto the skimmer and set off toward town.
“Now, as for you,” Garotte said, hoisting the commander to a sitting position and removing his gag. “I think we both know that were the deeper details of this situation to come to light, there would be rather significant consequences for the TKUR. The sort of consequences devised by tribunals and meted out by ‘peacekeepers.’ So I’ll be blunt. I took some souvenirs during my visit. More than enough to provide conclusive proof of your military’s unauthorized presence and construction here. If I catch wind of any further attempts to weaponize this planet that is still, by treaty, neutral territory, those souvenirs just might surface again. We wouldn’t want that, now would we?”
The commander held his tongue, but his expression was as withering as any human had ever directed at another.
“And because you’ve had lousy manners, you’ll be walking back to town,” Silo said. “Now get.”
She delivered a boot to his back, causing him to tumble a meter or two from the cargo door to the ground. Garotte tapped the screen of his slidepad and the restraints on his ankles and wrists clicked open. The commander finally found his voice at this point, but Silo and Garotte had already slipped inside and begun their trip out of the atmosphere.
“There,
my dear. That wasn’t so bad, now was it?”
“If it wasn’t bad, how come you flinch every time you move your right arm and this cockpit smells like burning body armor? Are you hurt?”
“Bah. Anything worth remembering leaves a few scars as keepsakes. Seriously, though. It beats babysitting vacuous luminaries of society’s frivolous distractions.”
“Does this beat a steady paycheck, comfortable vehicles, decent food, and paid time off?” She rotated the chamber of the grenade launcher beside her, shutting her eyes as it produced a satisfyingly solid click. “Yeah. This beats that by a long shot. But if this is going to happen again, there are going to have to be some changes.”
“I’ve never been part of an organization that didn’t have room for improvement.”
“First, that Dr. Dee is going to get an earful. His gadgets are the best and worst things I’ve ever used.”
“The man leaves something to be desired with regard to user experience, I’ll grant you.”
“And two people just isn’t enough team for anything this big.”
“You think we should expand?”
“Yeah. I’ve got some names in mind too. You ever work with… heck, I don’t know that I ever learned his real name either. Last codename I remember was Claymore.”
“Not familiar with him.”
“He’s a real whiz with strategies. This seat-of-the-pants stuff isn’t going to work forever. If he’d taken a few minutes to plot things out, this whole project would have gone a lot smoother. And another thing, we’ve got to think about medical. Not just a medic on the team, but treatment for after.”
“What’s a mercenary group without a dental plan?”
“You can joke, but if we’re going to get the folks we need to pull jobs like this regularly and actually survive, that’s the sort of thing that could be a deal breaker. And then there’s the issue of how steady the work will be.”
He grinned. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. If there’s one thing society can be trusted to do, it’s to produce enough dysfunction to keep its soldiers busy.”
From The Author
Thank you for reading! If you liked this story, or perhaps if you found it lacking, I’d love to hear from you. Below are links to some of the places you can find me online. For free stories and important updates, join my newsletter.
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Discover other titles by Joseph R. Lallo:
The Book of Deacon Series:
Book 1: The Book of Deacon
Book 2: The Great Convergence
Book 3: The Battle of Verril
Book 4: The D’Karon Apprentice
Book 5: The Crescents
Other stories in the same setting:
Jade
The Rise of the Red Shadow
The Redemption of Desmeres
The Big Sigma Series:
Book 1: Bypass Gemini
Book 2: Unstable Prototypes
Book 3: Artificial Evolution
Book 4: Temporal Contingency
The Free-Wrench Series:
Book 1: Free-Wrench
Book 2: Skykeep
Book 3: Ichor Well
Book 4: The Calderan Problem
Collections:
The Book of Deacon Anthology
The Big Sigma Collection: Volume 1
The Free-Wrench Collection: Volume 1
Other Stories:
Between
Fallen Empire: Rogue Derelict
Structophis
The Other Eight
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