“Three, two, one,” Frey pulled her left hand down to securely grip her rifle, “mark.”
There was an intense oval of light as the plasma charge cooked off, followed by a BANG-thump as the charge propelled the wall section inward.
The operation went well immediately, with the wall being flung across the open office. A heavy chunk broke off and cartwheeled over the floor to slam a stunned guard across the open space. The guard’s mouth opened wide in shock, arms flung to either side, rifle bouncing on its strap, helmet violently bobbing back and forth. The guard came to a stop sprawled against a closed door, and before he could gather his wits and roll to one knee or unsling his rifle or swing down the protective faceplate of the helmet, Grudzien put two rounds between his eyes. That guard’s body was still falling when the Polish soldier raced through the blown-out section of the wall, swinging to the left where Skippy expected there were two doctors or nurses, or however the Kristang designated the people assigned to making sure their human property did not die before they could be sold to the Thuranin.
Within a half meter of the location predicted by the synthetic view projected onto his visor, Grudzien saw two startled and frightened Kristang, lurching back in their chairs and throwing up their hands. He dropped them with two shots each. Maybe they were civilians and maybe they had weapons in the desks where they had been seated, what he did know is they could cause trouble and the rescue team was not leaving witnesses. With that task completed, he planted his left foot on the floor that was coated with dust and pebbles from the concrete-like substance of the wall they had punched through. He had to cover the stairwell to prevent reinforcements from interfering, while the two officers took out the second guard and turned right toward the isolation area. The boot adhered to the floor, power-assisted ankle, knee and hip motors pivoting him toward the open stairwell-
And he was hit by a truck from behind. The force slammed him forward into the wall and he hit hard, his visor’s synthetic view and icons going blank. Using training rather than instinct, he hugged the rifle to his chest when his muscles had wanted to fling his arms out wide to ward off the wall.
Bouncing off the wall, he fell backward and was spun around as something struck him behind his right thigh, the leg shooting out from under him and throwing him upside down to crash down on top of his helmet. That time one hand had the rifle torn away, and the weight of the weapon wrenched at his shoulder with sharp pain. Without him needing to think or act, the hand that still had a death grip on the rifle pulled it back toward his torso, the suit’s computer anticipating his need before his own muscles could react. That was great except the suit’s shoulder joint pivoted while his actual meat shoulder wasn’t ready, and the motion ripped tendons.
Grudzien did not think about the pain or wonder what had happened, he did not think at all. He acted. There was a threat behind him and with no information being displayed by his dead visor, he had no idea what had hit him or whether the two officers were still alive. With the helmet on, he could hear muffled gunfire and through the clear visor he could see debris and possible ricochets flying all around.
Need to move now, his instinct told him. The rifle was still effective and held plenty of rounds. Still on his back, he spun-
No. He didn’t spin at all, he awkwardly flopped to his right. Suit power was out and he had to move the heavy suit of armor with his own muscles. Kicking his feet against the wall got him rolled over onto one knee, the disabled suit working against rather than with him. Just moving his neck to tilt his head up was a strain, the helmet was heavy. Lifting the rifle without power assist was also-
“Grudzien!” Captain Frey was shouting at him, her rifle barrel smoking as it pointed to-
The shattered armor of a mech-suited enemy soldier. The lizard’s chest was torn open, sticky red blood splattered everywhere. In a flash, he knew what had happened, all of it. One of the heat sources Skippy had noted was not any type of medical equipment, it had been the radiator of a mech suit. From the warrior’s position slumped against the wall, the lizard must have been resting or asleep when the wall was breached. Grudzien had not seen him on the other side of a partition, because he had been looking to the left.
That asshole had shot him in the back. It explained why his suit had lost power, most of the powercells were clustered there along with the main power distribution node.
“Blah! Blah Blah!” Frey was saying, her own face unseen behind her opaque visor. He tapped the side of his helmet with a finger, indicating that he couldn’t hear. With a thumb and forefinger, he got the faceplate unsealed and cracked it open only a few inches. Though no one was shooting at the moment, he didn’t want his face unprotected.
“Can you move?” Frey asked.
“Suit is dead.” He tried to shake his head but the helmet only wobbled. “Help me up, I can still cover the stairway.”
Frey’s response was to flick a selector switch with a pinky finger and launch a grenade from the tube under her rifle’s barrel. The weapon hit the sloped ceiling of the stairwell, glanced off and fell to the right before exploding in antipersonnel mode. “That will discourage any sightseers. Give me your hand.”
“Ma’am, I can-”
“Hand, Sergeant,” she demanded. Just then, the mech suit she had blown open lurched on its own in a shower of sparks. She yelped and turned in the blink of an eye, sending two more rounds into the torn-open cavity. Blood and gore fountained as the rounds hit the back interior of the suit and rocketed back and forth inside until their momentum was spent. “Shit!” She took a step back, suppressing a shudder. Too much adrenaline, she had overreacted to the enemy suit suffering a power surge as it failed.
“Better safe than sorry,” Grudzien noted while he held up his free hand.
She took a firm grip on his hand and tugged gently at first. “Those damned suits can move on their own when the occupant is dead.” The Sergeant was not rising to his feet. “Can you-”
“I think the right leg is locked up,” he explained, gritting his teeth while he tried to straighten that limb. The hardshell armor there was not cooperating.
“Hold on, I’ll drag you.”
Grudzien kept an eye on the smoke-filled stairway while the officer dragged him to screech across the debris-strewn floor, the heavy suit protesting. He passed through the now-open doorway to the isolation room, his legs banging against the door frame. Frey rolled him onto his back. “Best to get out of that suit,” she advised.
With effort, he lifted his rifle, the dim indicator light still showing green. “I can cover-”
“I need you mobile, Sergeant,” Frey wasn’t going to waste time arguing. “Ditch that suit, now.”
Cradling the rifle in his lap, he reached up to remove the helmet first. Right then, for the first time since he had been shot, it occurred to him that he was lucky to be alive. He had been shot at close range, the parachute pack he wore over his suit must have absorbed-
The parachute pack. That was Plan A for him getting off the planet.
He did not like the thought of Plan B.
Katie Frey had already turned her attention to the immediate problem. During Frey’s very short and violent fight with the mech-suited soldier, Durand had pursued the second guard who was running toward the isolation room.
The guard was down and Durand uninjured, that was all Frey knew, she had been too busy engaging the enemy soldier and assisting Grudzien. Information was available on her visor, it was faster to see for herself. Even before she released the sergeant’s hand, she had swept her vision left to right across the isolation room. There was Durand, her rifle pointed toward the ceiling with her right arm, while her left hand was held out toward a man crouched in the corner, two children behind him. On the floor between Durand and the man sprawled the body of the alien guard, a hole in the back of his head and probably a bigger hole in front, based on the blood splatter on the floor, wall and on the man huddled in the corner. Shit, Frey bit her tongue. These people are a
lready traumatized, and their first encounter with us is to see a lizard’s brains blown all over the room. They should-
She saw it. When the lizard guard fell, he must have lost his pistol, and that weapon was now in the man’s left hand, shaking as it pointed toward Durand.
Something else. Not two inches from the man’s head there was a hole in the wall. A small hole, too small to be caused by rifle ammunition. The guard must have gotten off a shot at the people in the isolation room, before Durand dropped him. Good riddance. Except now they had another problem.
With a dull Whomp-hiss sound coming from outside, her attention was drawn to yet another problem, when a flare shot up from the hospital grounds and exploded just below the rain-soaked low cloud layer. She cringed instinctively, automatically training her rifle at the brightly pulsing light. Two more flares surged up from behind a wing of the hospital.
Durand looked at Frey. “The lizards know their comms have been hacked.”
Great, Frey bit back a curse word. Focus, Katie, she told herself. Focus. Tearing her eyes away from the hypnotic effect of the slowly falling flares, she looked at the man. Skippy had identified him as Lee Ching, a Chinese national. “Mister Lee,” Katie took the risk of slinging her rifle and making her faceplate go clear. “We came from Earth,” she told the man softly. “We are here to rescue you. To bring you home.”
The man looked at her, back to Durand, then her again. He shook his head. Lank, stringy dark hair fell in front of his eyes, and a patchy beard covered his face. The children behind him did not speak, or cry or whimper, they did not make any sound at all. Simply stared with unfocused eyes. Eyes that had seen too much in their short lives.
“Skippy?” Frey whispered. “Does he understand me?”
“He should. Your translator is set to Cantonese. Try again.”
“Do you understand? We must leave here, quickly. Can you walk?”
“You will bring us home? To Earth?” He spoke broken English with an accent she couldn’t identify, his eyes suspicious.
“I am Captain Katie Frey of the Canadian Army,” she said slowly, trying to establish a rapport, aware they were running out of time. “Sir, we need to get moving.”
Lee blinked for the first time. “We walk out of here?”
“No,” Katie wasn’t going to lie. “We run.”
“I cannot run,” he shook his head. The pistol lowered, until it was resting beside him on the floor, still in his hand. “The children. Take them with you. I am too ill to travel,” he said.
Durand spoke to Frey on the private channel. “We need to get moving, now.”
Before Katie could reply, Skippy added “That is correct. I count five soldiers in powered armor, coming out of a building they must have been using as a barracks. You need to move immediately.”
“Ma’am?” Grudzien got her attention. “I can’t run either. Think my right knee is sprained. I’m bleeding from my back somewhere too.”
Frey turned around to see the sergeant mostly out of his armor, the hardshell pieces scattered around him. Shit! They didn’t need any more problems right then. Kneeling beside him, she saw the back of his shirt was peppered with burn marks and blotches of blood. At least one bullet fragment must have punched through the armor, and the powerpacks had scorched him when they shorted out. The blood wasn’t bad, it wasn’t soaking his shirt. “I can carry you,” she decided.
“Ma’am,” Grudzien grabbed her arm as she turned away. “Those people can’t walk. You can’t carry them and me. My chute is gone also.”
She stared at him. “Shit!” Stupid, Katie, stupid, she reprimanded herself. She should have known that. Two parachute balloons for five people. They couldn’t all get off the ground. With the thick jungle cover all around, the only place for a dropship to land was the hospital or the abandoned town, and that was not an option. The retrieval plan called for each soldier to carry a rescued person, and be pulled up by balloon, to where a dropship could hook onto them. With only two parachutes, they needed another plan.
“Leave me here,” Grudzien volunteered. “Take that guy and the children.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Frey said harshly. “We are not leaving anyone.”
“Take them,” Grudzien insisted. “I’ll hold down the fort until you can come back for me.”
“That is not a solu-”
“You cannot bring us all with you?” The man asked. He leaned forward to make room for the children to crawl out from behind him. A boy and a girl, gaunt, dark circles under their unblinking eyes. “Go, children,” he urged them gently. “Go with them, with these nice people.” They moved robotically, eyes swinging slowly from the man to the mech-suited soldiers. The point was, they moved. Slowly, too slowly, they crawled out from behind the man.
Durand slung her rifle and knelt down, holding her hands out to the children. “I can carry these two,” she told Frey. “Come here.” The girl and boy stared at her, halting just beyond her reach.
“You go,” the man made a weary waving motion. “Leave me here.”
That set Frey’s teeth on edge. “We are not leaving any-”
“You cannot bring everyone. This soldier here,” Lee pointed to Grudzien, “is young and healthy. He should live. My wife, my son, my daughter are all gone. I could not save them. These little ones,” he smiled, a sad twitch that faded, leaving his face more careworn than before. “Are all I have left. Take care of them for me.”
Make a decision, Frey, she told herself. Make it quick. It’s math, simple math. Someone has to stay behind. Grudzien had the best chance of surviving until she could come back, but what chance was that? Realistically? She would be dooming the sergeant if she-
“I will join my family now,” Lee’s face suddenly took on a peaceful aspect as he raised the pistol to his temple. “Thank you.”
“No!” Frey lunged as the pistol cracked. Her momentum carried her forward onto her hands, which slipped only slightly in the fresh blood on the tile floor.
“Gowno,” Grudzien swore in Polish, while Durand gasped as she reached forward to shield the children from the horror.
The children did not react at all, except the boy looked at the corpse, back at Durand, and slowly blinked once. Camille Durand’s hands shook despite the automatic stabilizers built into the gloves. What horrors had these children seen, that a man they knew killing himself in front of them had no effect?
Frey stayed on hands and knees for a long second, stunned. She was supposed to rescue three sick and abused people. One of them was now dead. One of her team was injured and unable to walk. It was her responsibility.
“Captain,” Skippy urged. “I don’t want to seem callous, but you need to move now. Now! The enemy will be at your location within a minute. I am scrambling their communications, but I can’t stop them.”
“We go,” Frey stood up stiffly. “Grudzien, I’ll carry you, leave a grenade to blow up your suit. No arguments. Durand, you go first.”
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
From orbit, I was trying to monitor three ongoing operations at the same time. Smythe’s team had secured their two Storks at the seaside resort. Fabron’s team was loading the former prisoners aboard a Dragon on the island, they should soon be lifting off for orbit. The tender services of Mad Doctor Skippy’s scary medical bots would have to wait until the people were aboard the Flying Dutchman, there was still a long ascent through the atmosphere, a flight out to the rendezvous coordinates, and a tense wait for the other dropships to get into position before the Dutchman could jump in. A whole lot of things could still go wrong before our pirate star carrier jumped away to safety. Plus, Smythe now needed to fly the pair of Storks out to Objective Dixie, to rescue the prisoners there.
Speaking of things going wrong, my attention shifted to Captain Frey’s team. “Skippy, what the hell is going on down there?”
“Katie is-”
“I know what she is doing. What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, jabbing a finger at the
display, which showed multiple hostiles approaching the hospital from the old military base that lay to the north. “How are those lizards reacting so quickly? You are supposed to be jamming their communications!”
“I am jamming their comms,” he insisted with a tone that was defensive instead of snarky. “I sent an order that directed troops at the hospital to patrol to the north, and three soldiers did get into a recon vehicle and drive away. I can’t stop a simple flare, Joe. When those flares were seen from the base, they knew there was trouble, and they knew they couldn’t trust their comms. The Kristang have procedures to follow when they suspect their communications have been compromised. The soldiers at that base are not going to trust anything I tell them now.”
“Damn it!” Sometimes I forget that, while the Merry Band of Pirates was an elite force, the enemy also was a professional military organization, and they had been fighting this war for a very long time. Hacking the enemy’s communication systems was a great advantage, until they realized someone was screwing with them. “Contact Frey and get her out of there, now.”
“Already did that, Joe. Her team is climbing down the outside of the hospital.”
“Can you slow down the enemy?”
“From up here? I can mess with their targeting sensors a bit, that’s all. Kristang gear is simple and rugged, their powered armor is difficult to hack into, unless I am close enough for direct action. Joe, her team has a decent head start.”
There wasn’t anything I could do to help Frey’s team. The dropship I was flying was not equipped with hooks to pick up balloon tethers, and in the dense jungle, there was no place for a dropship to set down. They would have to hold off the enemy until one of the Dragons assigned to Smythe was available to pick them up.
Valkyrie (Expeditionary Force Book 9) Page 56
