by Rick Partlow
I led Deke to the shadows of a loading dock set around the other side of the fusion reactor complex, built at the end of a dirt road which led a few kilometers westward away from the mountains towards a small landing field. The doors were carelessly left open, probably on the assumption that anything that could get through the security perimeters wouldn't be stopped by a closed door, and we slipped inside. The loading docks were dark and deserted, though the plant would still be crewed: you didn't leave a fusion reactor unmonitored.
Light filtered through a partially closed cargo gate further into the loading area, casting eerie shadows among the loading jacks and pallets of securely boxed spare parts and raw materials for the fabricators. We hugged the right-side wall, staying in the deep shadows as we approached the gap in the cargo gate and I tried to open myself to all the sensory input that my implants allowed me. There were the normal sounds of a small fusion plant: the rush of water through cooling conduits, the whine of Magneto Hydrodynamic turbines, the occasional loud switching of circuits. The smells of lubricants, dust, sweat and heat permeated the loading dock but I didn't see or hear or smell anyone around at the moment.
I slipped between the open sections of the gate and passed through what looked like a maintenance bay, dimly lit and unoccupied at the moment, with rows of fabricators against one wall and repair drones resting in their charging bays along the other, meter-tall robotic soldiers ready to go into battle against entropy with an array of arms ending in a variety of tools.
From there, the hallways narrowed even as the ceiling ended and the machinery of the plant began to stretch above us and around us, accessible through a series of catwalks, gantries and staircases which surrounded the MHD turbines like a spider's web. Water pipes snaked around the massive generators, drawing from the river to feed a sophisticated cooling system that weaved between the turbines and the reactor itself. I knew exactly how it all worked thanks to a tutorial loaded into my headcomp, and more importantly, I knew how to make it stop working. That was what the hyperexplosives in Deke's backpack were for.
We moved around the perimeter of the installation, still detecting no sign of any occupation...which was starting to worry me. Yes, it was the middle of the local night and there would be a reduced staff, but we should have at least seen or heard someone by now. Aborting the mission wasn't an option however, so we pushed on to the maintenance access tunnel that was our target. Basically a meter-diameter biphase carbide pipe, it ran under the base of the MHD turbines and all the way to the heat shield of the fusion reactor, and it was meant as a corridor for the drones we'd seen earlier.
So, you wanna' flip a coin? I asked Deke, staring at the entrance dubiously.
I don't know how you laughed into a mental link, or how the computer translated it into something my brain understood, but somehow, I got that Deke was chuckling at me.
That's okay, I got this one, he told me.
He shrugged out of his backpack, slung his carbine in its place and crouched down to duck-walk into the tunnel. I watched him disappear into the shadows, then looked around for a spot to keep a lookout for him. Things were close-in all around us, packed with water pipes, power conduits and shielding, which left only one direction to go. I sprang upward with the combined force of muscles born in higher gravity, byomer muscle augments and Reflex armor assist, and cleared the guardrail of the catwalk six meters above the floor. The metal gridwork of the catwalk rattled under the spiked soles of my boots as my knees bent to absorb the impact.
I crouched down behind the gridwork panels of the guardrail and held my pulse carbine low across my chest, then used my biofeedback loop to slow down my heart rate and breathing low enough to keep from registering on any audio monitors, and opened my mind up to my sensory input. There was still no sign of anyone and I just knew it wouldn't be that fucking easy.
In another two minutes, I discovered I was right. It wasn't much, just a faint scraping of a boot on a rough patch of floor that barely registered above the background noise, but I knew there was something coming from off to my right, probably twenty meters away around the curve of the lower corridor. I didn't have to turn my head thanks to the facemask's optical sensors, just waited for whatever it was to come into view.
Then I heard the second one. This one was above me, in the upper catwalk near the roof, probably coming in from the main control booth for the reactor, all the way across the building. A faint rattling from a loose section of guardrail, maybe thirty meters away.
Deke, I transmitted. We got incoming high and low. You got the charge set?
Negative. Have to pull the safety shield off the junction or it'll kick too much of the blast outward. Gonna' take another couple minutes.
Shit. All right, I'll buy you the time. Feel free to lend a hand when you get a second.
Then I tuned him out and put my full attention to the two bad guys approaching. The one on the ground would be here first, but the one up high worried me more. I could probably pick off the one coming around the curve of the wall before he saw me, but if I did that, I'd be revealing myself to the one higher than me. If he had a gun...and I knew he would. In these circumstances, there was no way he wouldn't.
But if I ignored the one on the ground and dealt with the one up high first, the one down in the corridor could hear or see Deke and trap him in that tunnel. So... I’d have to try to distract him first, then go after the one on the catwalk and hope the other guy followed me instead of sticking around and investigating.
That sounds so easy.
It was only ten seconds before I spotted him. It wasn't easy; he was blending in with the shadows, his suit masked his thermal signature, and he moved with a deliberation that could have been honed by years of training and experience...or from a headcomp just like mine. I took in a deep breath, then stood and swung around my carbine in one smooth motion and opened fire.
When I pressed the trigger pad, the carbine didn't sound or feel like it had on the live-fire ranges; there was no vibration from the ignition of the hyperexplosive cartridges, no flare from the multi-kilojoule pulses burning a hole of plasma through the air and, most importantly, no explosion of vaporized flesh when it hit. Instead, there was a line of low-power laser light, no more intense than a sighting beam, visible only because of my infrared filters.
It only touched him for a fraction of a second, because he was damned fast and was already moving, and I knew it wouldn't be enough to put him out of action even had this been real, because it wouldn't have taken me out either. I didn't wait to see his reaction because standing still meant death...or, in this case, losing to Kel and Cowboy, which would be almost as bad as death. I sprinted up the stairs to the next level, the soles of my boots banging against the grating once every few meters. I could tell from the height that the one I'd hit was Kel Savage, and I knew the training settings in his Reflex armor would be limiting his motion severely at least for a couple minutes to simulate the damage, which meant that he wouldn't be able to follow as quickly as normal…and I was faster than him, anyway.
But Cowboy was up there ahead of me, and now he'd know I was coming. And he was a hell of a shot. We were all of us jacked up and augmented and wearing identical Reflex armor, so the organic differences between our original starting points, plus a little bit of our personality, were the only things that separated us. And Cowboy had already been a hell of a shot, while I had been more of a blunt instrument. So, time to do what I did best.
The upper catwalk was just above me now, and I could hear Cowboy moving down it, could hear a bang as his feet bounced off the metal gridwork and I knew he was coming down. So, I went up. I didn't bother trying to shoot, just let my carbine fall, let its sling retract it back to its rest position on my back and slammed into Roger West shoulder first in mid-air. The collision knocked his carbine out of his hands and left me in charge of our orientation when we landed. I was on top when we hit the biphase carbide shielding a couple meters down and then spun wildly to the floor.
I was already punching him before his back impacted the bare, aggregate floor, and I kept at it when we did, landing at least four solid blows before he even got a hand free to tangle my arms with his. I sensed Kel Savage hobbling up from behind us and I knew he was about to open fire; I already had a firm hold on West's arms and I used it to flip him around bodily, using him as a shield. Kel had touched the trigger just before I moved and Cowboy caught the full blast of it across his back; I could actually feel his armor locking up from the training computer's judgment of his injuries.
I was trying to keep him propped in front of me while I reached around for my carbine, but as it turned out, I didn't need to. I could see the infrared glare of the training laser where it touched Kel’s head, then I saw his armor lock up and he tottered almost comically to the side before hitting the ground hard. Deke walked casually up from behind him, whistling tunelessly somehow in my head.
How the hell do you whistle over a neurolink? I asked him, disentangling myself from Cowboy, then pausing to aim my carbine at his head and fire off a fuck-you shot.
Just takes practice, he told me. Let's get the hell out of here before the charge blows. Hate to lose now.
I followed him this time, running at full speed toward the cargo bay, but keeping my eyes open for any more surprises. Murdock hadn't told us that this would be force-on-force against other members of the team, and while I didn't think he'd complicate it more by adding, say, a squad of Marines to the mix, you just never knew. But the only surprise we got was when we got outside and found Colonel Murdock waiting for us there, along with the rest of the team.
The others were dressed in Reflex armor as well, but with their hoods off. Holly was grinning at me and even Mat seemed pleased as he nodded to me. Murdock, of course, looked as if he'd stepped out of a staff meeting and his expression was neutral. I pulled off my hood and slung my carbine, assuming that the exercise was over.
"Fancy meeting you all here," I said.
"Did we miss the memo?" Deke was wondering, looking around at the others, his hood in his hand.
"You two were the last to run through the drill," Mat told us.
"And the quickest, by the way," Holly told us, her smile widening, "by a good ten minutes."
"We could have finished faster," Brian Hammer said with a sniff, gesturing to himself and Holly, "if the computer hadn't decided we deserved a live patrol delaying us."
"Congratulations," Murdock told us, ignoring Hammer. "I have some news, but we'll wait until West and Savage make it out here."
"If they can still walk," Deke muttered and I heard several snickers. Mat cocked an eyebrow and they quieted.
I inhaled a breath of the warm night air. Even near the river, night on this part of Inferno was never really cool. We'd been from one end of the continent to the other these last few weeks of training and the only cool weather I'd felt was in the mountains. It wasn't like home, not at all. I didn't much like the place, but I was sure I wouldn't like a lot of the places I'd be fighting.
Holly walked over next to me and squeezed my arm and I smiled at her. We'd been pretty busy the last three months, but at least we'd had a few chances to be together. I was trying hard not to think about what we had or where it would lead, and neither of us wanted to talk about it; things were just too uncertain.
I saw Kel and Cowboy walking up slowly, their hoods peeled off, dried blood visible on Cowboy's face from where I'd hit him. He didn't look happy. Kel had his usual cold-fish stare going on and I'd never been certain he'd ever been happy.
"You're one dangerous motherfucker," Kel told me earnestly, shaking his head. "Glad we weren't doing that for real."
"Felt pretty fucking real to me," Cowboy said sourly, wiping a hand across his chin to clean the blood away.
"We heal quick," I reminded him, not feeling sorry at all. "Anyway, I knew if I let you get a shot off, I was dead." He shrugged acknowledgement, and I figured that had soothed his ego enough to smooth things over.
"This has been your last training exercise," Murdock announced without preamble. He met our eyes, his gaze mild and unreadable as always. "The teams you paired off into today are going to be your initial operational pairings until further notice. You're being activated as of now and you'll be stationed on Hermes."
"Why not here?" Valeria wondered and I wanted to shush her. Who would want to be stationed on this humid swamp if they could avoid it? Still she had a point: this was the hub of all Commonwealth military activity.
"People talk, Captain Dominguez," he reminded her. "You'd be more likely to run into fellow Academy students and friends from your previous lives here on Inferno, and that would compromise security." I glanced at him sharply, his words not running past me, and I could see from the narrowed eyes around me that I hadn't been the only one.
"Did you just call me 'Captain Dominguez,' sir?" Valeria asked him in a subdued tone.
"Yes," Murdock replied, with as much of a smile as he ever showed. "I've been authorized to promote all of you to Captain...except for Mr. M'voba, who will be a Major and will be my second in command as well as an active member of Special Operations Group Omega."
"Damn!" Reggie said, pounding Mat on the shoulder in congratulations. "Major! Holy shit!"
"Congratulations Mat," Daniela told him, smiling broadly.
"Special Operations Group Omega?" Deke repeated, cocking a dubious eyebrow.
"If you find the name a bit pretentious, Captain Conner," Murdock said, "perhaps you'll be comforted by the knowledge that most people even in Fleet Intelligence will never hear it. To everyone in the military you encounter for the foreseeable future, you'll be crew for missile cutters in the new Attack Command. It will be sufficiently large enough that no one will doubt your credentials. You'll also be given false ID chips to back up your new identities."
He looked around at us somberly as a light rain started to fall, pattering softly on the broad leaves of the local grass analog. "This is important, ladies and gentlemen, so I will reiterate it. The people you were are dead. Your friends and your families believe them to be dead and it's vital to the continued existence of this Special Operation Group that they keep believing this. If things go as we'd prefer, no one outside a very small and well-vetted support squadron and a very few senior officers will ever know who you are or what you did."
"Wow," Deke commented with a sardonic chuckle, "we're a real bunch of glory boys, aren't we?"
I laughed at that, feeling water matting my hair as the rain began to pick up. "Yeah, well at least that sounds less cheesy than 'Special Operations Group Omega.' Jeez, that's like something from a bad action movie."
"You know, that's not bad," Reggie said, waving his fingers demonstratively, water dripping off them. "For a name, I mean. 'Glory Boys.' Kind of an unofficial, official name."
"If you're into irony," Daniela said, raising an eyebrow.
"I like it," Mat commented, his deep and commanding voice with a note of finality in it. "It'll help with security as well. 'Special Operations Group' whatever would make people listen harder if they overheard it. We have to have something we can call ourselves without compromising security; 'Glory Boys' is as good as anything else."
"Is that your first command decision, Major M'voba?" Murdock asked him drily. He was ignoring the rain, even though I knew it had to be soaking through that dress uniform.
"I believe it is, sir," Mat said.
"All right then, Glory Boys. Get your asses into the hoppers." The Colonel jerked a thumb back toward the next clearing, where the two ducted-fan helicopters were parked, waiting for us. "Our transport leaves orbit in four hours and we have a shuttle to catch."
The shit, as Elder Pratt liked to say back home, had just got real.
Chapter Twelve
She was sleek and black, with the curves of a predator and the look of mystery and danger and I instantly fell in love with her.
"This," Major Huntington told us with a note of pride in his voice as
he gestured almost theatrically, "is the Raven."
Deke and I paced around the reinforced fusion-form slab that was the floor of the massive hangar, taking in every centimeter of her. She was about the size of one of the new missile cutters that were already being pushed out of the shipyards and into service against the Tahni, a bit over twice the size of a typical assault shuttle at one hundred meters long and half that wide.
"She's a hybrid ship, like the new missile cutters," Huntington told us with pride in his voice---justifiable since he was part of the team that had designed her, and the only one of them allowed to know who they'd designed them for. "She has turbines in the wings to run air through the reactor, and belly jets to assist with vertical take-off and landing, so you can take her down on any planet with an atmosphere."
Her ability to fly in the soup was evident from her broad, delta-winged design but I didn't interrupt the dark, skinny, little man. He deserved his minute in the spotlight. But I only half listened to him as I ran the fingers of my right hand across the surface of her belly, savoring the odd feel of the material.
"She also has coldgas jets; they're not very powerful and you can't take off with them, but they'll allow you to land undetected for something better than a controlled glide when you can't afford the thermal signature of the main engines."
"What about the drives?" Deke asked from the rear of the ship, staring with a keen eye at the magnetic coils twisting around the inside of the fusion drive bell.
