by Steve Perry
The courier struggled for a few seconds, then his eyes glazed over and rolled back to show white.
Jo picked him up, slung him over her shoulder, and took him to the garage. There was a large cart parked in one of the three bays, and she dumped him into the back.
Gunny came into the garage from outside, shut the other bay door, pulled off her coverall, and slid into the cart’s control seat.
Wink shed his oily coverall and got into the back with the unconscious man, and Jo entered the front and sat on the passenger side. They opaqued the cart’s windows, save for the front windshield, opened the bay door, and backed the cart out. Gunny wheeled it out of the parking lot and drove away.
They left the jammer running, just in case.
“How long, you think?” Wink asked.
Jo said, “Maybe ten minutes before anybody gets worried they can’t see anybody, another five minutes before they go check, and then they have to think about what happened and what to do about it. We’ll be back to the base before they get their shit together and realize it was us.”
“You think this guy has anything to give us?”
“Won’t know until we ask him; whatever he has is ours,” Wink said. “My magic potions will not be denied.”
– – – – – –
Kay caught the residual scent as she moved through the forest bordering their position. Not fresh, but not too old; maybe two hours past, Grey had been here.
Come to check on them.
To check on her . . .
He wasn’t here now, but she drifted through the woods, sniffing and looking. Plenty of sign to view.
The scent was thickest just ahead. She examined the spot. He had lain prone; there was a faint imprint of his body on the dry needles. A good place to observe the camp.
Had he known she was here? She was convinced it was so. He could have seen her, and once the rain and breezes had stopped, caught her scent easily enough since this spot was downwind of the camp.
What was his intent? Maybe he could have assassinated her from concealment, and certainly that would have been a smart move. An enemy Vastalimi would be a target of choice. If she had the chance, she would kill him once the war began.
Really? If he popped up right now, would you shoot him out of hand?
Certainly. Well. Probably.
She grinned to herself.
She had seen the video of the killed troops at MB4, and she could see it had been a Vastalimi’s work. She agreed with Cutter Colonel; likely Grey had taken them all out. With his superior speed, he could have shot several, then elected to slay the last couple with claws rather than a gun. She could understand that need to challenge one’s self; any Vastalimi worth the name would understand that. Going against an armed opponent who could kill you as far as he could see you with naught but your own claws? That was a better test of one’s prowess than shooting him.
He was adept. That was pleasing even though they were on opposite sides of a conflict. Yes, he was an enemy, but he was also an attractive male, with qualities that gave him some depth. Even on Vast, with others around, such qualities were not always easily found. It would be a shame to have to kill him though she would have to if she had the chance.
Duty was supposed to triumph desire.
Even if it would be a terrible waste . . .
TWENTY-FOUR
In the colonel’s office:
“And . . . ?” Rags asked
“Dhama,” Jo said.
“As in the man who offered you and Gunny seven million noodle to help throw the war?”
“That’s him. That’s pretty much all we got out of the courier, but it seems like it might be a good idea for us to have another little chat with M. Dhama.”
“You think you can call him up and arrange a meeting?”
“Probably not. He is in the middle of an action, and I suspect that when his courier doesn’t show back up with the secret knowledge that gives his side victory, he might become a tad suspicious if we contact him for any reason. Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.”
“The finish line is in sight, and probably we could let this go,” Rags said, “but . . .”
“. . . something isn’t right about all this,” she finished.
“That’s what it feels like. I don’t see them pulling out any magical tricks to beat us, we have this, and failing a massive attack of the stupids, we should win it going away.”
“And yet.”
“Yes. And yet. What do we know about where Dhama might be?”
“We have a general idea. And maybe Kay and I could, you know, ask somebody who had more specifics. Then drop round and see what Dhama had to say about it.”
“Okay. Have a look. I don’t want you killed doing it since it probably won’t matter anyhow, but if it is doable, let me know.”
“Absolutely.”
– – – – – –
They waited until dark, and it was just the two of them. They separated as they entered the forest and checked with each other via the com. When they could make a connection, which sometimes didn’t happen. There were a lot of trees down, and they blocked straight-line transmission when they were in the way.
Kay said. “I’m almost there.”
Jo replied.
“You are breaking up,” Kay said. “I got only part of that.”
Jo checked her internal PPS and adjusted her course a hair to port. Six hundred meters, though the forest was thick enough so that was way past visible even in full daylight, which was hours gone.
The ground had not dried out, all the rain that had fallen. Downed trees here and there slowed movement as well as breaking up the com’s sig.
She dodged the trees, keeping up as steady a pace as she could, her augmented vision making the run almost as manageable as if the sun were up.
The sentry turned to look at her, and while she couldn’t see his face, she imagined he was frowning. No ping on his helmet transponder, so she wasn’t one of his, but neither was she IDing as enemy. Until he saw her, he wouldn’t have known she was there.
It made him hesitate a heartbeat as he lifted his carbine. Who . . . ?
Jo shot his right thigh. The little amped-up AP pistol round punched a neat hole through his armor, the muscle and bone on the way in, and the muscle and armor on the way out. He fumbled the carbine, went down, and Jo was on him before he could recover. She kicked his carbine away and pointed her sidearm at him. “Easy does it. Sudden moves will be fatal.”
He froze.
“The wound is a through-and-through, probably broke the bone, but it’s an AP hole, so you probably won’t bleed out even if the armor doesn’t plug it. I ask, you answer. If you don’t want to play, tell me now, and I’ll find somebody else, but . . .” She waved her pistol.
The sentry was an SoF veteran; she watched him weigh his response. “Ask.”
“I’m looking for Major Dhama.”
The suit’s smart armor whirred and whined a little as it sealed itself and the bullet holes in the man’s leg. The sentry frowned around his pain. “Dhama? He’s a no-dick lackwit, I can’t understand why anybody in their right mind hired him. Talks the talk, looks the part, but he can’t find his ass with both hands.”
“Tell me where he is, you collect a WiA bonus. I’ll take your boomware and helmet, so no recording, and nobody knows we had words.”
“I could send you to the wrong place.”
“And I could come back and express my displeasure.”
“Not if I sent you into a trap.”
“Or, I could light you up now and go find somebody less devious. Tell you what, I’ll give you something: Dhama is not what he appears to be, he’s got his own agenda, and both your side and ours will be better off without him.”
“Maybe.”
“We have o
thers looking for him. We will compare notes as soon as we all get a location, and if they line up, you are golden; if not, I come back and smoke you. One way or another, we will find him. Only question is, will you be dead or alive when we do?”
“How do you know I didn’t yell when I saw you?”
“You didn’t. Your com’s not working.”
“You think?”
“Try it.”
He did, but she knew her short-range jammer was killing his signal. Hers, too. She’d never be standing here having this conversation otherwise.
After a couple of seconds, he knew it.
“Well, fuck-oh-dear,” he said. He considered it for a second. “Okay. He’s at the Mobile FB Op Center. I don’t know exactly where it is at the moment, somewhere in the woods, and the fucking trees screw up transmissions.”
She nodded. That made sense. A heavily armored crawler, at least a squad of troops, he’d feel safe enough there, but not too far away from the action. “Pop the helmet, toss it and your sidearm over here.”
He complied.
“Nice doing business with you. Have a good rehab. If you need work down the line, look us up; always room for a smart soldier in CFI.”
“I just rolled over and gave somebody up.”
“And in this case, you did everybody a favor. You live to fight another day, which is smart. No use for another dead dumb-ass.”
She ran a hundred meters into the dark forest and tossed the arms and helmet into a bush. Maybe they’d find it, but the helmet’s cam was thoroughly dead, and chances were, it would be all over when and if they did find it.
She killed her jammer.
“Got a location,” Jo said into her coded opchan. It was a crackly connection. Under the trees, it sorta worked. Getting the sig out? Not gonna happen. This forest was something else when it came to radio waves.
“As do I,” Kay said.
“Let me guess. FB Ops?”
“Yes. There are only a couple of places it can reasonably be.”
“Yes. I’ll check the north, you the south. If you don’t see it, come find me.”
“Stet.”
Jo started an easy lope. Couple klicks, shouldn’t be a problem. They’d figure out how to pry Dhama loose when they got there, then they’d have a little discussion with the bastard . . .
– – – – – –
Kay got to the right location a minute before Jo Captain. There was much activity ahead, but the combination of metal-bearing trees and the dampers she and Jo Captain wore should be enough to fuzz any sig recognition from the opposition; given that her com couldn’t parse the enemy’s ID sigs, that would seem to be the case.
Kay began marking targets she could see and smell and hear.
Jo arrived.
“What do we have?”
“The Mobile FB Op is three hundred meters to the northwest, camp lights bleeding all over the night. There are seventeen soldiers on the ground around it. They are not moving around much.”
Jo nodded. “It’s still mostly a mire out here. So, you want to distract or fetch?”
“Distract. I am faster than you over this ground.”
Jo consulted her onboard timer. “Four minutes. Mark.”
“Mark.” Kay’s sense of time was innately better than most humans, but she had a clock on board.
Kay slipped off into the soggy night.
– – – – – –
Kay circled the crawler and its troops. She had a dozen small grenades, frags, flashbangs, strobes, and an EMP spewer.
She approached the mobile base, dropped to her belly in the mud, and crawled the last few meters.
The nearest guards were no more than twenty meters away.
Five seconds. Four seconds. Three . . .
First the EMP. It wouldn’t do much against heavily shielded electronics, but it would douse the camp’s lights and maybe affect some suit elements.
She threw the spewer, triggered two of the pulsars, and threw them, one, two. The strobes, weighted to fall diodes up, would begin flashing as they fell and keep doing so until the batteries died, twenty seconds or so. Anybody wearing augmented night vision would be hobbled as the automatic shield cut in and stayed on to protect the wearer’s eyes. They’d have to remove the goggles.
While the first two grenades were still arcing upward, she triggered two flashbangs and tossed those.
The camp lights went out—
About the time the first flasher ignited, she added two of the frags.
Blasting light, loud noise, and shrapnel erupted in the darkness.
Temporarily blinded soldiers screamed, began firing wildly at nothing, and dived for cover.
Kay came up to one knee, unslung her carbine, and fired two quick five-round bursts at the crawler. The rounds wouldn’t penetrate the thing’s armor, but they would get their attention and keep those inside there.
She rolled, crawled quickly a dozen meters away, and fired another full-auto burst.
She kept moving. If they managed to figure out where she had been and returned fire, she wasn’t going to be there anymore.
– – – – – –
Jo came in fast, her inbuilt polarized optical filters set to mostly zero out the strobes’ shifting spectrum. That was doable if you had the frequencies. Made for funny lighting, but enough to see. She had her carbine up, and she fired at the scrambling troops, tapping several hard enough to put them down.
The unit was in major disarray, shooting at trees and each other. They had not been expecting an attack, but the surprise wasn’t going to last long.
Jo reached the crawler, which was—no surprise—buttoned up. She didn’t have the codes to open the hatch, and they probably weren’t going to let her in if she knocked, but she did have a twenty-centimeter length of oxycord. She arranged it in a ragged circle around the hatch’s latch, thumbed the trigger, and ran a quick three meters, dropping, turning away, and closing her eyes as she shut her optical aug completely off.
Three seconds later, the oxycord lit, and anybody facing that way when it ignited was going to be blinded if their eyes were open; even with the lids closed, it would sear an image onto a viewer’s retina. Oxycord burned with a star center’s heat and created enough light in the process to turn night into day for the few seconds it lasted.
Even three meters away, she felt the heat on her back and saw red behind her closed eyes.
It went dark. Jo restarted her opticals and turned around.
The edges of the hole glowed orange with residual heat.
Jo moved fast, peeled the door open by grabbing it well away from the ragged hole, and tossed a flashbang into the crawler.
Again she turned away, and the light and noise spilled past her and out into the forest.
There was a lot of yelling going on, inside the crawler and out, and she dropped to her belly and dragged herself through the opening.
Somebody fired her way, but the rounds were aimed at chest level, half a meter above her. She saw the unarmored trooper, shot him several times, and kept crawling.
Men and women were holding their ears or rubbing at their eyes. Some of them were trying to get into armor. Some of them were frozen in shock.
She didn’t see Dhama, so she shot everybody she could spot.
She scuttled through the mobile command center, knocking down targets.
Things got quieter.
She came to a closed locker.
Somebody was inside; she could hear the rapid heartbeat.
The door wasn’t armored.
“Weapons down, come out, or I put a couple AP through the door. Three seconds. One . . . two . . .”
“Don’t shoot! I surrender!”
The door opened, and Dhama stuck his head out.
She turned the hypojet ring
on her right middle finger around, thumbed the trigger cover off, and slapped him on the neck.
There was a psst! of compressed gas as the injector punched trank through his skin and into the underlying vein.
Better living through chemistry . . .
He screamed. After a second, his eyes rolled back, and he fell.
She dropped the carbine and dragged him to the hatch. Along the way, she used her sidearm to shoot two people still moving.
Outside, she paused long enough to toss a couple of fragmentation grenades to clear a path, then hoisted Dhama over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry and hurried into the night. He was heavy, but with her augmented strength, not so much she couldn’t move.
Two soldiers shouldn’t be able to pull off a raid this way, but part of why they could was because nobody expected to be attacked by two soldiers. And part of it was because one of them was heavily augmented and the other was a Vastalimi.
Four hundred meters away, Kay joined her. “Should I carry him?”
Jo smiled. “I’ll let you know if I get tired. Let’s go.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The interrogation room at the base was nothing but an empty cube, no windows, no furniture except a single chair bolted to the floor, and the door was electronic, no knobs or latches accessible from inside.
“Let’s just head this off, save ourselves the threats, the bribes, like that,” Jo said.
Dhama seated in, but not strapped to, the chair, ignored that. He started with bluster: “You are breaking all kinds of laws! I will have you all buried under the jail!”
Nobody paid any attention to that. He waited a moment, then moved on to money . . .
“My people will pay ransom—”
“You aren’t real bright, are you?” Jo said. “We turned down seven million noodle the first time we met. If we wanted money, wouldn’t it have been a lot easier to collect it then?”
He glared at her. “Then what?”
“Information.”
“I’m not required to give you any. Rules of Industrial War say that—”
