by Rick Partlow
We’d made nearly five kilometers before the rain finally stopped. I could feel sweat drying as the pores of my Reflex armor opened to let in the slight chill of the breeze, and I could see stars winking at us where the clouds that had covered them were blown southward along with the storm. I looked behind us and saw that we’d been moving from one oak hammock to another through small clearings. And I saw eyes watching us from the trees.
What the hell are those? Deke asked, spotting them just after me.
Let’s not find out, I suggested, waving him along as I broke into a loping run.
It felt good to be able to see well enough to run, and I reveled in the feeling of raw power that it gave me. It felt like the clean side of what they’d done to me, the good side; not like the damn talons. We covered ground quickly, with long strides that ate up distance and made up time. We had to be at the rendezvous point in an hour and we still had over ten kilometers to go over rough ground. We made it in half that time, running on an uphill grade beside a small creek the last four kilometers.
At the rendezvous point, the creek ran through a small hydroelectric generator built across both banks of the river and mostly concealed by overhanging limbs. It had been built to power a biological research station that monitored the reintroduced fauna and it blended into the background by design, dug into the side of a hill and camouflaged by sod and brush. I wouldn’t have seen it even with my enhanced vision if it hadn’t been for the subtle flashing of an infrared beacon at the base of a nearby oak tree.
I’ll go right, I told Deke.
Just because we didn’t detect any threats didn’t mean there were none to detect. We were going to circle around the installation and check the perimeter for a kilometer around. Of course, if the Tahni knew we were here, they could just drop a kinetic-kill missile on us from orbit, but there was always the chance of a random patrol or a recon drone.
I’ll head left, he confirmed.
It was only the purest coincidence I spotted them, just a flicker of motion against the backdrop of stars and hanging oak limbs. I thought it was moss, at first, but the motion was wrong. I knew that and I wondered if it was from instinct or training or my headcomp telling me. I wondered if I could tell the difference between those anymore. When I focused more intently on the area, I could see the barest outline, invisible on thermal and just a faint ghost on infrared as the figure crouched on the tree limb, watching the clearing towards the other side of the hill.
I had a hunch.
Holly? I transmitted, keeping the broadcast local and line of sight.
Behind you.
A finger tapped on my shoulder and I nearly shouted with the shock of it before controlling myself. I turned around and there she was, a short, slim hole in the night until she peeled off her face hood and let her short, spikey hair spring loose of it, exposing a smugly satisfied smile.
“Hey Cal,” she said aloud. “Have a good trip?”
I heard a solid thump back the way I’d been watching and I knew Brian Hammer had dropped from the tree limb.
“We had some rain,” he said, in his clipped, harsh accent.
“So did we.” I turned and saw Deke coming up behind Brian, his pulse carbine held at low port across his body.
Brian shot him a grin, acknowledging the touch, and I gave Holly a quick hug.
“Glad you guys made it okay,” I told her. “Where’re our contacts?”
“Inside,” Holly replied, gesturing with her free hand back at the research station a hundred meters away. “It’s all clear, as far as we can tell.”
I nodded and headed back for the front entrance, feeling suddenly exposed since I’d taken off my hood. The door was thick, grey metal and the latch was a keypad. I banged the butt of my pulse carbine against it with a ringing clunk and stepped back. There was a long pause before the door unlatched with a barely-audible hiss of escaping air and swung inward. It was dark inside, but I could see the tall, dark-skinned woman waiting a couple steps into the entrance hall, her hands filled with the bulk of an older model Gauss rifle.
“Razor?” She asked, using our codename for the mission.
I nodded in return. “Archer?”
“That’d be me.” She stepped back, lowering her rifle. “Get inside.”
After all of us had moved through the door and into the broad entrance hall, the woman pushed the hatch shut and pressed a control to seal it before she turned the lights on. She looked us over appraisingly with dark eyes and I returned the stare. She was exotically attractive, I decided, with high, angular cheekbones, and a broad nose, and eyes that looked coldly dangerous. She was dressed in civilian work clothes but she looked like she knew her way around that Gauss rifle.
“What’s that shit you’re wearing?” She wondered, nodding at our Reflex armor.
“Classified,” I responded automatically. “I’m Cal, this is Deke, Brian and Holly.”
She sniffed dubiously. “So that’s how it’s gonna’ be huh?” She asked. “All right, I’m Jaden, nice to meet you.”
“You’re DSI,” Holly said. “When do we meet with the civilian militia?”
“Two hours,” she said. “They’re gathering now in the hills overlooking the Tahni base outside Amity.”
“Amity, Sanctuary, Hesperides,” Deke muttered. “What is it with these touchy-feely city names out in the colonies? Doesn’t anyone have any imagination out here?”
Jaden laughed at that, then waved for us to follow her deeper into the research station. “Come on, then, we need to get going. I’ll brief you on the way.”
I frowned curiously at the others, wondering how we were going anywhere by heading further under the hill, but we followed her anyway. The entrance hallway led into a room full of video monitors, none of them currently active. Having some of the data about the place stored in my headcomp, I figured the research staff kept an eye on the wildlife with insect drones, but they were probably turned off at the moment to avoid attracting unwanted attention.
Through that was a storage room for equipment and then a few bunkrooms for the staff, and past that…was a tunnel.
“I’ll be damned,” Holly said, looking down the length of the narrow, low-ceilinged passage.
An open cart was parked at our end of it, and there looked to be enough seats for all of us.
“The biological science crew had this dug over fifty years ago,” Jaden told us, slipping into the driver’s seat of the cart and hitting a button to power it up, turning the headlights on. “It runs through several observation posts between here and town so they could come out and tranq animals for study when needed without spooking the rest too badly.”
“Shotgun,” Deke called, sitting down in the front seat next to her.
I rolled my eyes but let him get away with it, then took the longer seat behind him, with Holly and Brian squeezed in next to me. Brian had barely pulled his foot inside when Jaden hit the accelerator and the little cart jerked into motion, careening down the tunnel fast enough that my side came centimeters from the smooth, laser-drilled rock wall. I bit back a curse and thought I saw the corner of Jaden’s mouth turn up. I think she didn’t care for us too much.
“Which of you mystery guests are going to coordinate the diversionary attack?” She asked, raising her voice slightly to be heard over the hum of the electric motor and the rasp of the tires over the stone track.
“Us,” Holly told her, pointing to herself and Brian when the woman looked back questioningly…and alarmingly, given that she was driving. We swerved too close to the wall again before she looked back.
“Well, Brian and Holly,” she said, acting as if she didn’t believe those were their real names, “I’ve been training and working with these people for months. They’re scared and desperate but they’re good people and they’re fighting for their homes. Don’t waste them.”
“Trust me, Jaden,” Holly said, “we’re not here to get these people killed.”
“Yeah, I wonder why the hell yo
u are here,” she shot back.
“That’s…” I began but she interrupted me.
“Yeah, it’s classified, Junior, I got it.” She glanced back at me and shook her head. “How you two fucking kids are supposed to infiltrate the damn base and shut down the security systems I have no clue. And you have to do it physically, you know that right?” She shot me another look and swerved again. “The Tahni don’t network that kind of shit, it’s all hardwired fiber optics, and they’re buried inside the security perimeter. They might not have armed drones, but they do have a couple squads of their High Guard battlesuits stationed here and those fuckers can jet in anywhere along the perimeter in a couple minutes.”
“We’ll hold up our end of things, spook lady,” Deke assured her. “This is what we do.”
“I would feel better if we didn’t involve the civilians or the Marines,” Brian said with a skeptical grunt.
Jaden looked back at him with disbelief in her eyes, then shook her head and went back to driving. “Anyway,” she went on, “we’ve rigged up some indirect fire weapons for the militia---mortars mostly, along with a couple rocket launchers. They won’t take out the battlesuits, but they’ll keep the regular troops occupied, and we can set up the mortars for remote fire to keep the High Guard hopping around the wrong places for a while.”
“Do you have an exfiltration plan for the civilians?” Holly asked her.
“They’ll split into groups of three or four,” Jaden told her, with what might have been a touch of respect in her tone at the question. “Dump their weapons and make for town. We have safe-houses where they can hold up until the fighting’s over.” She snorted. “One way or the other. What about you four? How’re you getting out?”
I exchanged glances with the others. We couldn’t tell her that, either.
I answered for all of us. “Alive, hopefully.”
Chapter Sixteen
"I'm Georgia Matias," the woman said, shaking my hand.
She was probably in her mid forties or fifties, with the weathered look of someone who spent most of their time outdoors in the sun and wind, something the normal antiagathic treatments couldn't erase the way they did the other marks of the years. Her skin was the brown of turned earth and her grip was firm and dry, with the rough feel of someone who worked with her hands. She wore work utilities with the look of use to them and had an old Gauss rifle slung on her left shoulder.
I liked her. She reminded me of mom.
"Cal," I told her, which was as much as I was allowed. "Nice to meet you."
"You're the leader of the militia?" Holly asked her, stepping in to introduce herself as well.
"I suppose I'm as close to a leader as there is for this little mash-up," Matias said with a sigh, glancing around at the hundred-odd armed civilians loosely arranged in a security perimeter under the cover of the forest canopy.
We were only three kilometers from the outskirts of the city, less than that from the Tahni base and the whole situation made me squirrelly as hell. I knew that we had to have them formed up this close or they'd get intercepted en route; but we were very vulnerable to drones and satellites here despite the overhead cover of the tree canopy and the electromagnetic full-spectrum jamming that Jaden and her partner, a chubby-faced little man named Abel, had assured us would keep them undetected.
The two halves of the DSI team designated "Archer" were huddled with Brian and Deke among the massive roots of a century-old oak, discussing the plan for the attack. I don't know why I had followed Holly to meet the leaders of the militia; part of me didn't want to think about them at all, since all I could think of was how much they reminded me of my neighbors, and how many of them would probably wind up getting killed.
"How well are your people drilled?" Holly asked her, cross-checking what Jaden had told her. I nodded slightly to myself; Holly was smart, and she was picking up this game faster than I was, faster than anyone but Mat, I thought.
"We practiced as much as we could," the older woman answered with what felt like pained honesty in her voice and a wince in her expression, squatting down in the wet grass as if her instinct was to get low to avoid observation. It was probably more psychological than practical but we dropped down also. "But we couldn't gather in very big numbers till now, or we'd have been detected. Mostly the squads drilled together in groups of ten or fewer."
I looked at the militia members closest to us, saw a guy probably younger than me laying flat on the ground beside a downed tree, grasping his rifle like a totem, lines of fear around his eyes. He had long, blond hair tied into a ponytail, and it reminded me of dad. Spare magazines for the weapon were stuffed into the pouches of his harness but he wore no armor and neither did any of the others.
"And I guess range time has been problematic too," I said glumly.
Matias nodded. "We've all put a few magazines into trees for familiarization, and did a lot of simulation firing with the electronic sights. But we couldn't let anyone take the weapons home because they might get discovered."
I suppressed a groan. No armor, mostly small arms that they didn't have much experience with, and the only organization they had was from a couple of DSI agents. I shot Holly a glance and I could see an almost imperceptible shake of her head.
I know, Cal, she said over our neurolink. But what can we do?
I didn't try to answer, just squeezed her forearm. At least we were still friends. I hadn't thought we would be, after, but I guess the friends part was always the more important part anyway.
Matias seemed to sense our unease and she bristled slightly. “We’ll do our part, child,” she said sharply. “We’re not soldiers, but we’re not cowards or idiots either. We’ll fight as best we can.”
“I know you will, ma’am,” I told her earnestly. And I wish you were cowards because you’re not even close to being soldiers.
“'Ma’am,' he says,” Matias rolled her eyes, snorting. “I’m not sure anyone’s ever called me ‘ma’am’ before.”
“Sorry ma’am,” I said with what I hoped was a smile. “I’m just a farm-boy.”
Matias laughed at that, and then I saw Deke walking up from across the forest track, shifting his pulse carbine to his back, and I rose to meet him.
"It's time," he said. "We gotta' move, bud."
I pulled out my face hood and slipped it on, saw him do the same. The world took on a different quality with the hood on, as its cameras fed me a more complete sense of my surroundings. It felt like ViR in a way, so real it was almost unreal. I noticed Georgia Matias and the pony-tailed kid staring at us wide-eyed.
"Be careful, you two," Holly said softly.
I waved a goodbye and followed Deke out into the darkness.
***
You ready? Deke asked me, his arm poised to throw the Spoof.
I took one last scan around before I replied. The stretch of dull grey wall that faced away from Amity was three meters tall and change, looming ominously in the glare of the security spotlights. It was more to keep out animals and errant civilians than to guard against attack: the sensors and remotely-operated laser turrets were the real defenses. Those were what we had to take out, but we could only do it from the inside. The Spoof was to get us inside, but it had its limits: the Tahni security system would notice the alterations in its sensor patterns within thirty seconds, and we would have exactly that long to get inside its perimeter.
That’s why it had to be us that did this and not some Marine Force Recon or DSI team; no one else could even get close, not across fifty meters of cleared, featureless plain on every side of the place. I didn’t see any live Tahni around, which meant it was time. I turned to Deke and flashed him a thumbs-up.
Do it.
I could almost see Deke’s grin through the hood as he wound up and tossed the polymer ball at the sensor pod fifty meters away. Just like in training, it went straight as a guided missile and slapped against the pod with a sticky sound as it burst. A haziness enveloped the bulbous pod where it stuc
k out from the ground, its hardwired base buried meters further down, physically connected to the system by fiber-optics. The nanite cloud couldn't live long outside the biotic fluid inside its delivery shell, but it would be just long enough for us.
We had to wait ten seconds for the Spoof to penetrate the system, then we were in motion. We ran too fast and too fluidly for a human nervous system to follow or control, but I had a sense of what we were doing as we did it thanks to the headcomp's interface with my senses. I knew that I was sprinting across that short distance as fast as a groundcar, clods of dirt flying up in my wake, covering the ground in the space of two breaths. I wasn't conscious of jumping, but I knew I was flying through the air with only centimeters to spare over the wall, then touching down for a fraction of a second on the soles of my boots before I rolled forward smoothly to absorb the impact.
The main buildings of the base were thirty meters in front of us then, dimly lit in the deep of the night, during the Tahni sleep cycle, but day-bright to my implanted optics. Simple, prefab boxes of corrugated aluminum were connected to each other by enclosed walkways and insulated by spray-on foam in the arrogance of an occupier who expected little to no organized resistance from the locals. We crossed that distance in a heartbeat and then hugged the walls and blended with the shadows, trusting our camouflage to hide us from biological eyes that might be watching while the Spoof hid us from electronics. We had seconds left and we had to get inside.
Deke was in the lead, and he chose a door around the side of the largest building, one we knew in the past had led to the crew dining facilities. It had a simple, key-pad entry, and a small module the tech types had worked up for us penetrated it in nearly no time at all. We slipped inside, shutting the door behind us just as the timer in my head counted down to zero. The Spoof was deactivated and exterior security was back online.
