by P. R. Adams
He knew the layout well enough that he didn’t have to consult his BAS.
Overcoming communications systems defenses was part of the training Rimes personally conducted for his ERF team, so this part was easy for him. He popped a panel, exposing a circuit, then he went to work connecting a device Meyers had constructed aboard the Valdez. It would overcome standard communications security systems.
Time seemed to race by as Meyers’s device first cracked the security, then synchronized with the communications signals. While the device worked its magic, Rimes laid explosive charges along three critical areas. The explosives weren’t enough to bring the dishes down, but they were enough to cripple critical electronics and shatter wire casings and the wiring within.
A magenta light flashed on Rimes’s BAS display as he activated the final timer. Meyers’s device was now fully embedded into the communications system. Rimes headed back to the device and connected to it using the BAS’ near-field communications. His system filtered out thousands of inactive frequencies before identifying hundreds of active channels.
Meyers had developed an application years before that quickly classified traffic: data, voice, a combination of both, encrypted packets, and now the distinctive packets the proxies persistently transmitted and received. While it searched, Meyers’s device also busily insinuated bots into the communications system. When triggered, the autonomous software packets would attack, overwhelming the targeted communications channels by using the system’s own security against it. The first channel to be choked: the proxy’s.
While waiting for Meyers’s software to do its thing, Rimes sorted through the pure data and known channels. When that was done, he began working through the remaining channels, listening in for a few seconds and then moving to the next. It was tedious work, perfect for software, but he was hoping to luck into what he was looking for. Meyers’s software flashed a notice: it had located a channel of interest.
Rimes listened in.
“Everything is under control now,” a male voice said. “The fools chased after the assault force while I was incapacitated. The last one is back now. I will speak to their noncoms and give the post a good look. They need discipline and leadership.”
“How many casualties?” asked a second male voice, almost condescending.
Rimes pulled up video. There were three involved in the conference, two men and a woman. One of the men was a proxy, his skin almost waxy in appearance; the other man and woman were apparently aboard ships in orbit. All three were Indian or Pakistani, their fancy uniforms adorned with insignia far too similar to T-Corp’s security to be coincidental. Rimes assumed they were senior ranking officers.
“Thirty at most,” the first voice—the proxy—answered. He waved dismissively. “We are in the process of reassessing our defensive posture now. I will remind the Brotherhood of their obligations when I’m on patrol. This is of no concern. What about the fleet?”
“As I said before we have driven the attacking force off.” That was the woman. She spoke emphatically, proudly, her dark gold skin glowing. Aside from a too-strong nose that actually almost worked with her face, she was pretty. Her dark eyes were accentuated with glittering eye shadow, her soft cheekbones with rouge. “Our fleet now stands at nearly half-strength. My force suffered minimal effect in the engagement aside from losing a gunship.”
“Half-strength?” The proxy’s voice held anger his face didn’t seem capable of fully reflecting. “Amit, you waste time discussing the loss of a few mercenaries, and you’ve lost half the fleet?”
“Shriya was slow to arrive with her contingent,” Amit, the human male, said. Human or not, his voice was flat, almost robotic. “Had she come to the scene expeditiously we would have been—”
“I followed established protocol,” Shriya said, her voice rising slightly. “You should not have deployed your attack ships without the frigate support. That is doctrine and protocol, and it is how we trained for this.”
Is it the command team? Kapoor and Talwar? I thought there were four task forces. Did we wipe out the capital ships of the fourth force?
“I did exactly what I needed to do,” Amit said calmly. "Without deploying those attack ships, Eswar’s fleet would have been destroyed sooner. We could not know they were going to use nuclear weapons."
“Is Eswar dead?” the proxy asked.
“His command transport was destroyed in the initial attack,” Amit said. “None of his forces survived. We did not have the facilities to attempt rescue of the wounded. You would not understand the destruction without seeing it with your own eyes, Sunil.”
“What remains of their fleet?” Sunil—the proxy—asked, clearly fighting back anger. “And what about Srinivas? Did he command my force well?”
“Srinivas was slow to engage,” Amit said matter-of-factly. “I would characterize his command as timid and unhelpful to the objective. I intend to file a reprimand with HR. As with Shriya, his unwillingness to operate aggressively cost us dearly.”
“I followed protocols, Amit.” Shriya’s voice rose even more. “Mine is the only force to have survived the battle largely unharmed.”
“We need to consider abandoning Plymouth,” Amit said, physically turning, as if to ignore Shriya. “At our current force level, we cannot hold this position. The losses have made it necessary to abandon our patrols. We are no longer able to position ships for agile responsiveness above the planet. We could drive off another attack from this fleet of theirs, but if they were to gain reinforcements we would be at terrible risk. Of course, the bulk of the blame will fall on Eswar, but my report will make clear who else failed to operate at optimal levels and thus contributed negatively.”
“I too will file a report,” Shriya said. “I—”
Sunil waved dismissively. “The arguing gets us nothing. Amit, if you intend to abandon Plymouth, you force us to do the same. We would have to leave the mercenaries behind to hold everything we have fought to gain until reinforcements can be sent. I told you, I would be the one to kill Colonel Rimes and break his Elite Response Force.”
Amit shrugged. “Then stay and kill him.”
“My fleet cannot operate alone,” Sunil growled, a sound that was once again jarringly incongruous with his almost-calm face. “You will damage the Kapoor name if you flee now. Kill Rimes and we break the ERF. Once the UN learns the ERF is broken, it will not resist further. We don’t even know yet how the other attacks have gone. We must stay until we know that at the very least.”
“The Kapoor name will survive, as will I,” Amit said. “You should be concerned about your own name, and more importantly, your own survival.”
Shriya chimed in, “Sunil, we really should—”
Rimes disconnected and smiled. Commander Kapoor. A lion! The angry one, is he Talwar, then? A proxy. So, he’s down here on Plymouth. From the sound of it, on post.
As he exited through the hole he’d burned, Rimes studied the post’s overlay on his BAS. Based off the recon data, he estimated the building most likely to hold officers would be a temporary structure erected fifty meters from the quadrangle.
Rimes cautiously jogged northwest, heading for the munitions depot.
16
13 December, 2173. Plymouth Colony.
* * *
Rimes squatted in the darkness of the concrete stairwell that led down into Munitions Bunker Four, straining to hold his breath and listening intently to the amplified sound coming in through the BAS. All he could hear was the whistle of wind in the stairwell. Pinprick sensations spread throughout his left hand, burning away the numbness caused by a blow he should have seen coming. The lifeless body of the sentry who’d landed the blow was at the base of the stairs, lying next to the other sentry Rimes had dispatched. The two had been less sloppy than the sentries guarding the communications uplinks, but they’d been easy enough work.
When he was sure no one was coming, Rimes poked his head out of the stairwell and scanned the munitions depot. As
with the communications uplinks facility, a fence that was normally electrified surrounded the depot. Its gate was closed and unguarded now.
Rimes sucked in fresh air and settled against the stairwell wall.
Sloppy. Got to stay focused. Stay focused.
Blood trailed down the stairs and pooled around the corpses. In the moonlight, the liquid was black, like the mold growing in the corners of the stairwell. Rimes tasted the distinctive metallic saltiness—blood—on his bottom lip and realized it was split, another strike that had gotten through.
He felt naked and vulnerable inside the munitions depot. It was a slightly raised area, fairly remote from any other structures. There were no towering satellite dishes to hide behind, no generators or maintenance shed. Everything was underground.
Quietly, he descended to the bottom of the stairwell.
Explosives had left scorch marks, divots, and cracks in the concrete vestibule when the mercenaries had blown open the bunker door. Most of the blast had been contained, but there were pieces of concrete and metal at the base of the stairwell. Rimes wasn’t surprised to find simple chains holding the warped, sagging doors closed. He laid another thin strip of thermal cord over the chains and stepped back. Seconds later, the doors were open. After doing another quick scan of the surrounding area, he dragged the corpses inside and flipped on his helmet lamp.
Rimes’s shopping list was short, and explosives were at the top. Everything else was optional.
He stopped at the cage entry that sealed off the heavy ordnance from the rest of the bunker, which held bullets and similar, less dangerous munitions. Once more, he used a thermal cord strip to burn through the gate’s lock, then he moved inside. It was quick work searching the shelves, as he took only what he needed, stuffing everything into a backpack taken from one of the mercenaries killed in the forest. As he added items, he made sure to keep what he’d need first on the top.
Before leaving the cage, he grabbed a grenade launcher and a handful of grenades, stuffing them into suit pockets.
From the start, his plan had been very loosely structured, with plenty of room for improvisation. Even so, there was one thing that wasn’t flexible: his mission needed to be done within an hour, or he wouldn’t be leaving the post alive.
If the plan had gone off the rails, he would have simply loaded up on munitions, stimmed up, and made for the nearby northern perimeter. So far, the mercenaries’ lax security had made that sort of hasty decision unnecessary. He was actually running ahead of schedule.
He tested the backpack. It was full, secure, and not straining at the seams.
Rimes headed for the open areas of the bunker, where he gathered conventional ammunition and more magazines for his carbine. Loading the magazines seemed to take forever, but he was experienced enough to know that a person’s perception of time and reality were quite different under stress. When he was done, he dug out a suppressor for his carbine.
All told, he spent less than ten minutes inside the bunker. The last several seconds were allocated to placing a timed charge among the explosives. Even if his mission failed, he would leave a reminder of his visit.
At the top of the stairwell, Rimes hesitated, warily scanning his surroundings. To the north, he could make out the perimeter fence’s outline. To the east, he could see the building that he suspected held the metacorporate proxies. To the south and west, it was largely open ground to the quadrangle and to his destination: the tower.
Everything seemed clear, but Rimes held his position for a moment more to be sure.
He sensed movement at the same moment he heard the sound: the depot gate opening. Rimes saw a form he’d missed in the dark. It was moving through the gate.
Standing stationary.
Rimes slowly retreated into the bunker, leaving the door open behind him. He backed away from the door, angling to his right and slipping down an aisle until he could barely see the entry. He brought his carbine up and locked the suppressor onto the end of the barrel, sighting on the slightly lighter rectangle that marked the doorway.
The door opened wider, slowly revealing the form Rimes had seen earlier. The form—male—stepped in cautiously. He squatted, examining something on the floor.
The sentries’ blood.
Hoping it would enable him to take the sentries down quickly, Rimes had used a knife. It had been the right call, but the blood had rightly worried him.
The man drew a kukri knife and edged forward, following the blood trail.
Rimes had the man’s head in his carbine’s sights and was ready to fire but hesitated. The man wasn’t wearing an earpiece. There was no threat of him calling for help. More importantly, something about the man’s silhouette and movement seemed vaguely familiar. It wasn’t until the man turned, brandishing the kukri, and stared at Rimes that he realized it was Talwar.
“I can see you,” Talwar said. “Your gun, at least. Show yourself.”
The mission dictated Rimes shoot Talwar and head for his final objective before anyone could respond to the sound or to Talwar’s disappearance. Instead, Rimes stepped out from his hiding place and lowered his carbine. He shrugged off the backpack and set it on the ground beside the carbine, then he pulled off his headgear. He drew his own knife, and a smile spread across Talwar’s plastic face.
“Colonel Jackson Rimes.” Talwar slowly lifted the knife he held until it was at chest level. “My first inspection since your attack, and I find you. We were destined to meet.”
Despite the rage roaring in Rimes’s mind, a coldness settled over him as he stepped forward. Rimes took in details: Talwar’s movements, the kukri’s design, the form-fitting armor that seemed on par with Rimes’s. They were of roughly similar build, Rimes thicker of chest, Talwar broader in the hips and longer-armed. In the video, Talwar’s proxy had reflected someone in his late twenties or possibly early thirties. That led Rimes to assume their combat experience would be somewhat similar. Talwar slightly favored his right leg, possibly due to a wound or the last vestiges of the EMP damage. Or a ruse.
“I don’t believe in destiny.” Rimes dropped into a slight crouch.
“Yet here you are.” Talwar slowly circled and tested Rimes with a quick thrust. “How can that not be destiny?”
While Rimes wanted to gauge Talwar’s skills and attack style there was also an overpowering desire to close and plunge a knife into Talwar’s throat. Rimes tried to find a middle ground, probing with his own feints earlier than he normally would. He received a gash on his left forearm for his troubles.
“That armor of yours,” Talwar said with a chuckle, pointing with his bloody blade. “Quite good, but not against this blade, I’m afraid. Special material. I can cut through most anything with it. But you know that now, don’t you?”
Talwar was even quicker than Theroux had been.
They’ve made advances. Not surprising.
Another feint, and Rimes had a second gash, this one on his right shoulder.
“You came to steal ammunition?” Talwar’s tone was teasing. “One man? We have hundreds here. We have been hunting your soldiers for weeks. And you came alone? Are you that desperate, Colonel?”
Rimes stepped in again, this time chopping Talwar’s arm as he slashed. The strike gave Rimes an opening, and he struck, driving his knife up at Talwar’s throat. Talwar shifted and took the blow in the ribs. Rimes’s knife sank deep. He twisted it as he pulled it free and backed away.
Talwar gasped softly.
“You’re quick as well, Colonel.” Talwar stretched. His voice had an edge to it, but he forced a strained smile. “You cannot possibly hope to escape, of course. Tell me how you escaped us the first time?”
“We were on Sahara when you attacked. We destroyed the force that attacked there.”
“Ah. You have a history of not logging your operations. This should not be surprising, but it was. The last of your surprises.”
Talwar leapt in and slashed with a speed that surprised Rimes. An instinctive le
ft jab drove Talwar’s head back, reducing the power of the attack and deflecting it somewhat. Rimes caught the blade with a desperate parry, but he still felt it slide across his own, gashing his knuckles before cutting into his wrist.
Without his armor and his parry, Rimes guessed the kukri would have cut his hand off at the wrist. As it was, he was bleeding and his hand felt weakened. Rimes flexed the hand and realized a lethal thrust would be nearly impossible against Talwar’s armor and his enhanced proxy body. With the rate of bleeding Rimes was facing, he needed to change to more aggressive tactics.
“You have probably never seen my like, Colonel?” Talwar seemed more entertained with his taunting than intent on provoking. “The perfect mixture of nature and science. Man and machine, synergized.”
“What happens when your true body dies? Are you ready to spend the rest of your life in that shell?”
Talwar smiled, but it seemed unconvincing, regardless of the plastic-looking face. “Why not? This will eventually be indistinguishable from my birth body. I could live forever if I wanted. I can have a new body grown when this one begins to fail me. Like yours is failing you now.”
Talwar was giving ground, changing to a more defensive posture, despite knowing that Rimes was bleeding. Or because of. It would make sense to let the bleeding weaken him.
Or, once again, it could be a ruse designed to draw Rimes into a risky attack.
No other choice, really.
Rimes lunged, feigned a stumble, then fell back just as Talwar slashed. Talwar let out a quiet, surprised grunt just before Rimes drove the palm of his left hand into Talwar’s nose, shattering it. Blood spurted across Talwar’s mouth and chin. He cried and fell back. Rimes moved close and left his abdomen exposed; Talwar fell for the ploy, and overextended with a disemboweling thrust. Rimes hooked Talwar’s right forearm with an elbow, then brought a knee up, hyperextending and dislocating the elbow.
