by Jean Johnson
“I don’t let through anyone I don’t know,” the leader of the trio growled. He shifted his weapon toward her, a black surplus projectile rifle with who knew what loaded into its c-clip. “And I don’t know you.”
His two companions did likewise, pulling their attention from the perimeter of the building. That was the moment she was waiting for. Ia spread her hands up and out. “Then send up my report!”
Deep red zapped in from three angles, triggered by her gesture. Ia snapped her hands down and across, shoving the muzzle of the lead guard’s rifle away from her stomach. The move pressed the trigger guard into his hand, rather than pulled it away . . . which helped prevent his spasming finger from tightening too hard on the trigger. The weapon didn’t fire. Ia sighed in relief, sidestepping the falling, skull-charred bodies. That had been her biggest concern at this step.
Projectile weapons had been chosen for this post because the cartridges were noisy when they exploded, and that would have alerted the people inside to her attack. Knowing in advance that the raiders themselves had accidentally damaged the surveillance system for this building was a bonus. It allowed her to step into the foyer without hesitation. Foreknowledge also had her choosing the correct emergency stairwell, the one the invaders hadn’t booby-trapped.
It was, however, barricaded. Someone had tapped into the building’s security measures and activated the force fields built into each doorway. They were meant to slow any intruder trying to break in and make off with any sensitive information. Since it was impossible for her to logically know the pass code without revealing how—though she could have just checked in the timestreams—Ia simply put up her hand to the doorway and leaned on the near-invisible barrier. Leaned, with both body and mind.
Static crackled into her palm. Up the bones of her arm. Down into her stomach, where it coiled and burned. The field shorted out. Ia ducked through and bounded up the stairs. This building was the structure where the critical research information was being stored for Oberon’s military contracts. In specific, the contracts covering the composition of the focusing crystals for Terran laser weaponry, and in very specific, the hottest, hardest-hitting starship cannon crystals available.
Several years from now, she would need what this company was striving to create. She didn’t dare let it fall into the hands of criminal masterminds. This seemingly simple mining company was on the edge of a major breakthrough in refraction materials science. If she hadn’t been assigned to Ferrar’s Company in specific, she would have had to manipulate events to affect the outcome here anyway. Having the Grandmaster of the Afaso meddle so effectively in her initial career path had saved her a lot of stress and worry.
Mindful of the Marines rushing toward this building, she finished the last two flights at a full run, unfastening her wrist unit. Slapping her empty hand on the field surface, she drained it to the point of collapse as well, and touched the controls to open the door panel. Then flung up her hands in a “surrender” pose as the quartet of gunmen on the other side aimed their weapons straight at her chest and head. She didn’t move. Neither did they.
“Who the frag are you?” one of them demanded. He was wielding a laser rifle instead of a projectile weapon, but his rifle looked like it had been ripped off of a full-mechsuit, or maybe a small armored vehicle. He was also quite muscular, almost as much as her half-twin, Thorne. Ia didn’t let the comparison rattle her.
“Berrimoon, from Kittrick and the backside squad. I blew up a Marine and managed to get the wrist unit off her arm. Kittrick told me to bring it straight to the boss,” Ia rattled off quickly. “He thinks it’s a command unit. Said she’d want to see it right away.”
“How’d you get up here?” he demanded, inching forward. “Nobody called up.”
“Someone was talking with Tubrik when I came up. Said something about the comm channels being compromised. But he knew who I was, and told me how to get through—”
The building rocked from an explosion somewhere below; her fellow Marines had picked the wrong stairwell door. Ia didn’t let herself wince. Knees flexing to keep her balance, she unleashed the energy pooled inside her body. The shockwave of electricity burst from her body like the tendrils of a plasma ball, zapping the quartet of men even as they staggered and tried to recover from the unexpected quake.
Pain slashed through her left shoulder, making her drop the wrist unit. Ia hissed, twisting too late to avoid the last-moment firing of the leader’s gun. Smoke billowed upward, along with the scent of burned meat. “Sonova shakk!”
Teeth bared, she slapped out the flames of her shirt with her right hand, grunting with each agonizing blow. Her body ached from collarbone to trapezium, and her left arm half-dangled at her side, too many muscles and tendons charred down to the bone. Gritting her teeth, she stooped and snatched up the wrist unit. Being shot had not been a part of her plan, not when it had been less than a two percent chance at best in the most dire of her calculated probabilities. Eating the energy like a full-blooded Feyori could, even in matter-form, was out of the question; laser fire was too hot, too fast, too much for her to handle.
Great. Can’t do Plan A, Ia thought, hissing under her breath as she reclipped the thin plexi unit onto her left forearm. Can’t do Plan B, especially since I can’t lift a two-handed gun right now. Plans C and D are out as well; they’d see me grabbing the grenade, and I cannot afford to let anyone know I can do that, right now. Ia tugged her shirtsleeve back into place over the device, wincing as each move hurt her burned flesh. Somewhere up there, God is eating snacks, pointing, and laughing at me, I swear.
That left Plan F, since she didn’t have a Plan E. Somewhere down below, projectile fire rang out in staccato bursts of noise too loud to be muffled even by the most modern of construction techniques. The 2nd Platoon had encountered resistance.
Eyeing the walls, Ia quickly searched for what she needed. A fire alarm went off, but the sprinklers didn’t burst into action on this floor. Yet. Several doors hissed open up ahead. The rush of bodies that poured out aimed various weapons her way, but haphazardly. Pointing their weapons in other directions as well, it was clear they were busy looking for a mechsuited enemy after those explosions, not one more body among the many in shades of green.
“You! What happened in here?”
That was the voice she needed to hear. Lilian van Trijkell was a trusted lieutenant of the Lyebariko, the “Library” of forces that ruled the undergalatic elements, and a crime boss in her own right, specializing in selling arms and armor on the black market. Clad in a simple, tasteful dark skirt-suit with a white blouse underneath, the dark-haired woman looked like she should have been one of the office workers—and in fact had been, having infiltrated the Oberon Consortium personally in order to pull off this tech theft.
Ia staggered and slumped up against the wall, doing her best to look dazed. Under the cover of cradling her arm, she flicked her comm unit’s recorder on with a subtle press of the outer buttons through her borrowed sleeve. “Uhh . . . Marines . . . force fields . . . They’re in the building.”
“Tell me something I don’t know. Slap some sense into her,” Lilian ordered one of the others. “And get ready to take me hostage. I will not have this operation fail completely!”
Sagging against the wall, Ia palmed the knife she had stolen and slid downward. Just to her right was a power socket, the kind meant to be used by the cleaning crews at night. Reversing her grip on the steel blade, she eased the tip into the recessed opening just as one of the men stooped and peered at her face.
“I don’t recognize this one.”
“Yeah, I keep hearing that a lot,” Ia muttered.
The unnamed thug frowned and lifted his free hand to her head.
She shoved the knife into the socket just as the man yanked off the fabric covering her scalp. Electricity crawled up her wrist, soaking into her flesh. Off-balance already from the pain in her shoulder, Ia hissed in another breath from the sharp stinging in her bones and
focused on containing it. This was a lot more energy than two static force fields being drained nice and slow and easy; this was a live power conduit that tapped directly into the trunk line supplying energy to the entire floor.
It was also the wrong amperage, and that meant setting herself up for the conversion. She didn’t want to kill anyone if she could prevent it, just render them helpless. One innocent woman’s death was more than enough to regret, plus the six who had been violating her.
The man peering down at her squinted, then grabbed her head, scrubbing at her hairline with his thumb. He scraped off more of the grit remaining from her jaunt past the laser drills, and frowned.
“Wait . . . white hair? Shakk, this isn’t one of ours! It’s that goddamn white-haired Marine!” The thug hastily stepped back out of range, no doubt in case Ia attacked after having been revealed. Ia, however, didn’t move. She was right where she needed to be for Plan F.
“Kill her!” Lilian snapped.
“Already on it, boss!” He raised the over-clocked laser pistol.
Ia unleashed the energy in the tapped conduit. Arcing it between herself and the man in front of her, she shoved it through the air, leaping it from body to body, weapon to weapon faster than conscious thought. She screamed as she did so, not because it was a battle-cry, but because it hurt like hellfire. Electrokinetically transforming the current so that the amperage wouldn’t kill anyone in the hallway meant that she had to suffer the leakage flux inside her flesh.
Triggered far too late, the thug’s laser shot went wild, scoring the wall and ceiling well off to one side. Bodies twitched and slumped. The lights directly overhead and down the hall exploded and shut down, but the ones in the rooms beyond the hall continued to glow, protected by capacitors and circuit breakers.
Panting harshly, heart pounding from too much energy coiled too high, Ia locked it back down with sheer force of will and yanked out the knife. Letting the blade drop, she carefully cradled her left arm in her lap, taking some of the strain from her shoulder, and thumbed off her recorder. Some of the tech raiders continued to shudder, bodies spasming from the electrical attack. Others fell limp, though several moaned, letting her know they were still conscious, if in no condition to notice anything other than the racing of their own blood and the screaming of their own nerves.
What she needed was in one of the rooms farther down the hall. Thankfully, she had a way to convert the excess energy crackling through her nerves from electrokinetic to telekinetic. As the men and women around her groaned and tried to regain their senses, Ia cast the last of the excess energy outward, and back again. Catching the silver and white egg that zigzagged through the air toward her, she fumbled it around until she found the trigger, and thumbed it with her good hand. A harsh burst of white static light pzzzztsed outward, washing down the hall.
The electrosonic shock added yet another layer of pain to her injuries. It took her a few moments to realize the salty metallic taste in her mouth was blood: Ia had bitten through her lip. Letting the egg clatter onto the floor, Ia gingerly touched her mouth and stared at the crimson stain on her fingertips.
Lovely. Yet more pain to endure . . . No more than what I deserve, though.
. . . Thoom thoom thoom.
The stairwell she had used shook with the sound of approaching mechsuits. Grey silvered figures darted into the hall, crouching and taking up firing positions in rapid progression before easing back up onto their feet. She rolled her head against the wall, looking at her fellow Marines. She spotted Estradille’s name embossed on his shoulder plates. “Hey, Estradille. Took you long enough.”
“What the shakk happened up here?” he asked, stepping over a couple of the fully unconscious bodies. Behind him, the others made way for Lieutenant D’kora.
She had her breath back by now. “Stunner grenade. See the lady in the navy blue suit?” Ia added, lifting her chin. “Don’t be fooled. She’ll probably come awake protesting she’s just another civilian hostage, but she was giving a lot of orders to these creeps. One of ’em called her ‘boss.’ I think I got it recorded on my wrist unit. I don’t know, though; the grenade might’ve damaged it.”
“Yeah, right. If a stunner grenade went off up here, then what are you doing still awake?” she heard Hooke asking from her spot by the stairwell door.
D’kora replied, sparing Ia from having to say anything. “In case you haven’t noticed, Bloody Mary here has a few oddities up her sleeves. This isn’t the first static shock survival trick she’s pulled in her career.” Though the lieutenant had her blast shield down, Ia could tell by the body language of her mechsuit that the older woman was sizing up the needs of the situation. “Sergeant Baker, get up here. Seems the corporal here needs your med kit again.
“The rest of you, strip and zip!” D’kora ordered, meaning they were to strip the prisoners of any and all gear, and lash their ankles and wrists together with zip ties. “Anyone who isn’t in a mechsuit . . . excepting Corporal Ia . . . you are to presume is an enemy. You will presume they are dangerous even when disarmed, and you will secure each and every one accordingly. The Justice Department can pay a psi to tell the real hostages from the fake ones. Our job is just to strip and zip, today.”
The others hurried to comply. Ia dragged her feet into a cross-legged position, giving them more room to work around her. She wasn’t in a hurry to move. Now that the worst of the battle was over, her adrenaline was beginning to crash. Baker thumped up next to her and flicked up his blast shield, peering at her through the crystal of his inner helm plate. She could just make out the tufts of blond hair above the brown headband circling his brow, and the light blue of his eyes.
“Report, soldier,” he ordered, activating a light on one servo hand so he could shine it in her eyes.
Ia did her best not to flinch. “One of ’em tagged me in the shoulder. Hurts like a sonova, Sergeant . . . can’t move the arm much, but I’ll live. And I bit my lip. Obviously.”
“That . . . is one ugly wound, soldier. But I’d still take a laser burn over a bullet hole any day,” he muttered, opening up his thigh compartment again. “So would the docs on board the ship. This stuff, Doc Keating can regenerate without needing to stitch everything back together. Of course, you’ll be stuck in a goo tank for days, and carrying a goo pack on your shoulder for weeks.”
He poked around in his supplies with his flexor-glove controlled digits and grimaced.
“Shakk. There’s dust all over the compartment. I think you’ll just need a sling to keep that shoulder immobile, though. Move it around, and you might crack open the burn and start bleeding from more than just your lip. That’d be bad. There’s still a lot of fighting left to do.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” That was the other reason she hadn’t tried to attack her would-be killer. The less damage she did to her shoulder now, the more quickly she would be back in action again. Oberon’s Rock wasn’t the only battle the Liu Ji would be seeing this week. Nor was today’s little war the only fight they would see in this particular system.
With luck, the Lieutenant will now be open to any suggestions I have on subtle little schedule changes. He’ll be calling me in for a private, off-the-record debriefing, and if I steer the conversation right . . . ow, dammit . . . he’ll wind up asking for a weekly “Anything you want to tell me, Soldier?” briefing . . . Plus other, larger alterations to our future plans.
Not that I’ll hold my breath, given how badly I miscalculated this hit, she thought, eyeing her black-charred flesh. Then sucked in a deep lungful and held it, trying not to grunt as her squad sergeant bent her elbow and started wrapping the bandaging around her neck and forearm, forming a makeshift sling.
Ow, dammit . . . Okay, maybe I’ll hold my breath a little.
CHAPTER 17
The incident on Oberon’s Rock—the first one—earned me the trust of my commanding officer, and the respect of my peers. I’d had some respect from the very first battle, but I guess it was my fe
llow Marines seeing me charge into a fight just about bare-handed, putting my life on the line without any protective armor, and without any hesitation, that gave them the faith to put their trust in me as well.
Shortly after the incursion on Oberon’s, I was granted my second . . . well, technically my third promotion, if you count my First Class stripes right out of Basic. I was shifted up to Squad Sergeant, our current sergeant got passed over to B Squad, and Pleistoch got promoted to Platoon Sergeant. Hooke was shuffled around to be Estes’ teammate . . . and an old friend from Basic wound up replacing her as Knorrsson’s teammate on A Squad Epsilon, a rather colorful fellow by the name of Spyder—one of those surnames where you didn’t have to earn a military nickname to stand out. Then again, he was colorful, himself. And a good soldier.
He earned a promotion, too, replacing Estes as lead corporal, who in turn opted for planet-side duty when the end of her six months came up. I, of course, opted to stay on board. The DoI and my psych evaluations said I could handle it, so on board I stayed.
Lieutenant Ferrar earned a promotion to Captain. Lt. Cheung cycled out, and we got a new 1st Platoon leader, Konietzny. Captain Davanova was replaced by Captain Sudramara, and other faces came and went, both in the Company and on the ship. The border was heating up. You didn’t have to be a precog to know Something Was Up . . . and it wasn’t just the Salik trying to break through the Blockade seventy or so light-years away.
~Ia
JUNE 14, 2491 TS
BATTLE PLATFORM HUM-VEE
ALBEDO ICE STATION, SJ 723 SYSTEM
“Hey, Sergeant.” The redheaded chaplain jogged a couple steps, catching up with Ia. She smiled and nodded at the younger woman. “How’s the shoulder?”
