Duty, Honor, Planet: The Complete Trilogy

by Rick Partlow

  “We didn’t have autodrive out where I grew up,” he reminded her as he brought the car into the loop that ran in front of the station, braking to a jerking halt about three meters from the curb. “You never really forget.”

  Manning ignored the mild honking from the two cabs Franks had blocked in with his parking job---the taxis were driven by onboard AIs, so she wasn’t worried about hurting their feelings---and jumped out the passenger’s side door. Patel, Arellano and Carr were off the escalator now and heading into the courtyard that bordered the street, only a hundred meters from the car and heading their way.

  She tried to keep scanning for threats, but there were hundreds of people coursing through the area, heading in a dozen different directions; even to her trained eye, they began to blend together. But as the Intelligence officer, the CIS agent and their prisoner drew closer, she happened to catch a movement that didn’t seem to fit, a group of young men cutting across the natural flow of traffic.

  Manning was moving forward, her hand drifting down to brush aside her long-sleeved overshirt to get at the holster beneath, when she heard Franks announce, “Gun!” over her ear bud and saw him dive out of the car through her open door.

  She yanked her service pistol from its concealed holster and held it down by her leg as she took off at a sprint, dodging through throngs of distracted people who barely noticed her. She tried to keep an eye on the group of men and on her people, but the crowd was just too thick and she gritted her teeth as she was cut off by a pack of teenagers walking together and talking loudly and heedlessly to each other.

  Manning was trying to cut around them when she heard the gunshots---a string of loud pops muffled by the intervening bodies but unmistakable in nature. And then the screaming began…

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Leading a silent and submissive Timothy Arellano out of the Sunset station, Caitlyn Carr couldn’t shake the twisted feeling in her stomach that had been with her for days. It wasn’t just the operation she was on at the moment, though that was part of it. She’d arrested plenty of suspects through the years; but this wasn’t an arrest, it was a kidnapping and it seemed wrong somehow. Everything seemed wrong.

  She’d worked her whole life to get to where she was in the CIS, and now that was over, no matter what happened. Even if they managed to stop the bratva or the Protectorate or who the hell ever was behind this from killing anyone else, even if they caught or killed everyone involved, even if the President himself issued an Executive Order that she be kept on at her job…she couldn’t go back. She’d made that decision back on Luna, when she’d decided to help Franks.

  So where did that leave her? What the hell was she going to do?

  She was just telling herself that she should get out of her own head and concentrate on the task at hand when she heard Frank’s voice in her ear yelling “Gun!” and countless training sessions kicked in without conscious thought…

  Her compact carry gun was in a holster on her left hip and her hand went to it instinctively, slipping under her jacket to yank the weapon out as she fell into a crouch, scanning for threats. She saw, peripherally, a few of the civilians who’d been close to them recoil in surprise at the sight of the gun, but she barely registered them. Her gaze went instead to a group of four men who were cutting across the courtyard, elbowing their way through the crowd and heading straight for her. They were young, or at least they were dressed in the fashions that young, lower-class Angelenos favored, and their faces were partially concealed beneath the kind of conical Vietnamese non la hats that had become popular in the city in the last few years.

  What wasn’t quite so fashionable were the ugly, slab-sided polymer handguns they carried. She’d seen the like before: highly illegal in the cities, they were mass-produced by black market fabricator shops and usually disguised by specially designed pouches that made them very difficult to detect. It was only a matter of a second between the time she’d pulled her gun and the time she spotted them, but before she could adjust her aim, the lead boy in the group had already extended his handgun out in front of him and opened fire.

  Carr barely heard the loud pop of the gunfire; she was focused like a targeting laser on the lead gunman, the sight of her weapon transmitted to her corneal implant, projecting an amber reticle where the bullet would hit. She put that reticle on the gunman’s chest and pressed the trigger, her handgun held in a classic isosceles stance. The little gun barked sharply, pushing against her hands, and she could see the ceramic-jacketed tungsten rounds punch into the young man’s brown and grey-checkered poncho. He staggered and stumbled, tumbling into an uncontrolled roll across the grass and Carr shifted her aim to the next man in line; but before she could fire again a weight fell across her back and knocked her flat to the ground, her right elbow striking the pavement and her gun flying from her hand.

  Carr felt panic rising in her gut like bile and she tried to lunge forward to retrieve her pistol as she saw the muzzles of the remaining three weapons aiming her way, but dead weight pinned her shoulders to the ground. Beyond the panic, beyond the certainty she had less than a second to live, came the dim realization that the dead weight pinning her down was a human body…

  Abshay Patel wished Agent Carr would walk faster. He was dividing his attention between keeping Arellano walking straight---the man was having a pretty strong reaction to the sedative and was trying to wander off at random every few seconds---and keeping an eye on the groundcar to keep his bearings through the thick crowd. Agent Carr was leading the way, supposedly guiding them through the mass of humanity embarking and debarking at the station, but it seemed to him that she was moving in slow motion.

  He supposed she was doing her job, trying to keep a wary eye out for any possible problems, but…

  “Gun!”

  It took just a heartbeat for the warning to register, for it to penetrate the inertia of his forward movement and put his training into motion and then he was suddenly trying to do three things at once…but he only should have been doing two of them. He did the right things, the things that had been ingrained into him: he ducked his right shoulder and reached under his jacket to pull his sidearm, while his left arm stretched out to grab Arellano and bring him under control, drag him to the ground.

  The problem was his eyes. He didn’t keep them on Arellano; he let his vision flicker outward, searching for the threat, even though he knew that was Carr’s responsibility. That was why he let Timothy Arellano slip out of his grasp for just a scant moment…and that was the moment the shooting started.

  Abshay had never heard a shot fired in anger before, but he recognized the sound immediately and swung around to the right, his gun following his eyes as he finally saw the four men coming their way. One was already down, rolling on the ground on his back, and he wondered if Agent Carr had shot the man…then he saw that Agent Carr was down as well, and that Timothy Arellano had collapsed on top of her. The three on their feet all had guns, so Patel just targeted the one closest to him and fired.

  Unlike the CIS agent, who had simply shot to center-mass, Abshay followed Tom Crossman’s training and delivered a Mozambique Drill: two rounds to the chest and one to the head. Abshay felt time slip into slow motion as he fired, and he could see with preternatural clarity the first two slugs punch through the loose, colorful poncho the man wore over his skinny, lanky frame…and the lack of blood. The clinical, logical part of his brain was screaming “Body armor!” at him, but he had already fired the last round on instinct and training and watched it smash into the bridge of the thin man’s nose just under his conical Asian headgear. The hat flew off and so did the back of the man’s head. It seemed to Abshay that the gunman stood in place there for the space of a heartbeat before he flopped forward to the ground, landing only a meter from where Caitlyn Carr and Timothy Arellano lay on the pavement.

  Patel was transitioning to the next gunman, trying to ignore the fact that he had just killed another human being, when he felt a sledgehammer smash
into his right shoulder and the wind went out of him with a pained grunt. His right arm went numb and he stumbled backwards, trying to hold onto his pistol, trying to stay on his feet even as his vision spun around him. Then another round speared into his left thigh and he went down face first. He saw the grey pavement rushing up and then nothing at all…

  Tanya Manning wanted to scream in frustration. She was less than thirty meters from Patel, Carr and their prisoner, but she couldn’t see them because of the rush of increasingly panicked humanity trying desperately to get away from the shooting. She caught a heartbeat-long glimpse through the throng, like a still-frame picture that showed her Carr on the ground with Timothy Arellano atop her, limp and soaked in blood, and Patel about to fire his own weapon. Then a screen of people blocked the sight and she could hear more shots…then another fleeting glimpse that showed another of the gunmen down and Patel collapsing as well…

  Now she did scream with rage and fear and desperation as she slammed through the people in front of her heedlessly, knocking a few to the ground, stepping on them as she ran. She had a vague sense that a woman dressed in business clothes was screaming at her, but she ignored that and bulled on through until she finally had a clear shot at the two gunmen still standing. One was aiming at Carr, who was still struggling against the weight of Arellano’s body on her, while the other was stepping over to Patel, raising his handgun to give a finishing shot.

  Manning knew that she would never get both of them in time, but she didn’t have the luxury of any internal debate; she just shot the one closest to her, which happened to be the one aiming at Caitlyn Carr. He was side on to her, so the first round took him in the right arm just above the elbow and his pistol flew out of his hand as he jerked in shock. The second round was high: she’d been aiming for his chest and instead hit him in the side of the neck, a spray of arterial blood exiting with the spent ceramic shards of the jacket as the tungsten penetrator zipped through and impacted a tree. The third round was superfluous but was already on its way as the conclusion of a routine she’d practiced thousands of times. It punched through one side of the target’s conical hat and out the other just before he toppled to the pavement, dead twice over.

  She didn’t hear the shots. She found she rarely did over the roaring of adrenaline in her ears.

  It had taken her a second and a half to kill the man, but by the time she shifted her aim to the one who’d been about to finish off Lt. Patel---knowing in her heart even as she did it, that she would be too late---she saw, much to her surprise, that the last gunman was already pitching backward with a small hole in his right temple and half his skull gone on the left. She looked back over her left shoulder and saw Drew Franks coming up behind her, his 10mm service pistol extended in a ready position, a look of cold rage on his face.

  She also saw that they were alone. The gunfight had lasted seconds, but in those few seconds, the courtyard had cleared. In the distance she could hear sirens---the police would be only a minute behind the sound---and behind them alarms were sounding in the train station, alerting everyone to evacuate the building.

  “See to our people,” Franks snapped, nodding toward Patel and Carr. “One of them got away…I’m going after him.”

  Manning glanced back around and saw that the man Carr had shot wasn’t there. She’d had tunnel vision during the brief gunfight and hadn’t seen him get up and make a run for it with the crowd. She looked back to Franks to counsel him to let her go after the man, but he was already sprinting towards the public train terminal. In two seconds, he was inside the entrance tunnel and out of sight.

  Manning cursed under her breath as she holstered her weapon and bent down to roll Timothy Arellano off of Agent Carr. The Special Operations NCO blanched slightly as she saw that half of Arellano’s skull was gone. She swallowed bile and turned back to Carr.

  “Are you all right?” she asked the woman, helping her to sit up. Carr’s earth-toned jacket was stained crimson with blood, but Manning couldn’t tell if any of it was hers.

  “I’m not hit,” Carr insisted, pushing her away. “See to Lt. Patel. I’ll check Arellano.”

  Abshay Patel was laying face-down in a pool of blood and the sight of it sent a cold shudder through Manning. She’d been on the same stage when the then-Academy cadet had received the Medal of Valor awarded posthumously to his father. Manning knelt over the young Intelligence officer and felt a surge of relief as she saw a slow, shallow, shuddering breath make his shoulders rise ever-so-slightly.

  Manning slowly, gently rolled him over, fishing in the cargo pocket of her pants for one of the smart bandages she’d stashed there. Patel moaned softly as she rolled him onto his back, and Manning noticed a pressure cut over his left eye, probably from where he’d hit the pavement---that was the blow that had left him unconscious. There was a ragged hole in his jacket over his right shoulder, but no blood: she put a hand under the jacket and noted the bulge of the mostly-intact slug imbedded in-between layers of bullet resistant polycarbide weave. They’d all worn the protective garment: they were a standard issue item for Intelligence field operations. The thin sandwich of fibers wouldn’t have stopped a rifle round, but it had done its job against the black-market ammo this group of hitters had been using.

  The only serious wound, and the one causing the disconcertingly large puddle of blood around the young man, was a bloody, tattered hole in his left thigh. She didn’t think the bullet had severed Patel’s femoral artery, but it might have nicked it. She ripped away what was left of the young officer’s left pant leg and slapped the smart bandage over the wound. If the artery was damaged, the bandage’s sensors would send a dedicated army of genetically-engineered bacteria in to seal it up. She let out a breath. That was all she could do for him until the ambulances arrived.

  Manning rose and stepped over to where Carr was seated beside the still form of Timothy Arellano. She was staring at the man, her mouth set in a hard line, her eyes downcast.

  “How’s Patel?” Carr asked, her voice so quiet it was barely audible.

  “He’ll be okay,” Manning assured her. “Bad leg wound, but help’s on the way.” She nodded towards the approaching sirens.

  “Arellano’s dead,” Carr told her, unnecessarily. “How the hell did they find us so fast? How did they know?”

  “Drew’s trying to chase down the one you shot,” Manning told her. She moved over to the closest of the bodies, the one she’d killed, and drew aside his poncho to reveal an older model military tactical vest. “They were wearing body armor and I guess it stopped your rounds. He took off into the station and Drew went after him.” She shrugged. “Maybe he can get us some answers.”

  “Speaking of answers,” Carr said, nodding across the courtyard to where three police flitters and an ambulance had touched down. “They’re going to want some.”

  “That’s too damn bad,” Manning muttered, raising her hands and going down to her knees as the armed and armored Special Response Unit officers poured out of the ducted-fan helicopters, carbines trained on the two women. They’d pick up her military ID and authorization soon enough, but she didn’t feel like getting shot before that happened. “They don’t have a need to know.”

  Drew Franks sprinted through the stale, white corridors of the train station, trying hard to control his breathing…and his rage. This was his fault. The whole thing had gone to hell and it was his fault. The target they were counting on to provide them with the intelligence they needed to prevent another slaughter was dead and maybe Lt. Patel was dead with him.

  He’s just a kid and I got him killed, Franks thought with the bile of failure rising in his throat. Jesus, what about the General? What would he say?

  Franks angrily suppressed those thoughts as he tried to shut out the blaring alarms echoing through halls gone bare white with the advertising holos shut down due to the emergency. The only holograms streaming were on the official message boards and those were ordering all civilians to evacuate. Hundreds of peop
le were rushing by him, so preoccupied with getting out of the building that they didn’t notice the gun in his hand, even when he brought it up to chest level to avoid having it knocked out of his grasp as he squeezed through the tightly-packed rush.

  Just brilliant. There’s a gunfight outside, so let’s kick everyone right out into the middle of it.

  He’d hooked his ‘link to his corneal implant and was running a filter on all the people who passed by, based on the body shape and proportions he’d noted as the hitter had run away from the gunfight; but so far there had been no match. If the gunman were smart, he’d have doubled back and tried to merge with the crowd. Franks was hoping he wasn’t that smart.

  The outpouring crowd began to thin as the corridor expanded and, by the time he reached the terminal, it had slowed to a trickle. Franks skidded to a halt there at the entrance, touched a control on his ear bud.

  “Tanya?” he said after a moment when there had been no reply. Nothing. “Dammit.”

  That was when he saw the cop. He was young---Franks could tell that even through the transplas face shield of his helmet---and very short, and skinny even with the added bulk of his armored utility vest, which likely meant his family was on the dole and couldn’t afford either the genetic surgery that would have adjusted his height in the womb or the nano-injection therapy that would have corrected it afterward. The fact that he’d applied for and got a job in law enforcement despite that background meant that he wasn’t lazy and stupid the way all too many of the non-taxpayers were in Franks’ experience.

  The TAPD officer was shepherding the last few civilians in that section of the terminal towards the corridor when he caught sight of Franks. He did a double–take at the sight of the pistol in Franks’ hand and started a furtive movement to draw his own sidearm when he stopped himself abruptly. Franks guessed that the cop had seen the IFF display on his helmet visor pick up the signal from Franks’ ‘link and identify him as an Intelligence officer authorized to be armed.