by Paul Barrett
“LZ in view,” Ashron said as he guided the Star next to a three-story stone building. “Stand by!” He pulled back hard on the stick and reduced the throttle. The shuttle’s soft whir dropped to nothing as the craft hovered. “Go!”
All instruments and cabin lights went dark as Laura tapped a panel and the shuttle door slid open. She jumped from darkness into the night. Ashron flew off before the door finished closing, heading for his landing point. “May Ssarra guide us this night,” he said to the air, hoping the Lorothian goddess of fortune listened to prayers so far from her home.
Laura hit the alleyway in a crouch, her landing cushioned by her short-burst gravity repellant packs. She stayed low, checking left and right for any movement. Her multivis contacts, set to light intensifier mode, lit up the lane in a bright green haze. A squat-bodied, six-legged animal rummaged through a can.
“Cartas,” Ship said, her contralto voice vibrating through the receiver in Laura’s collarbone and sounding in her head. “Planetary version of a cat. Harmless.”
Laura nodded, even though Ship couldn’t see her. The animal hissed at her and its mottled orange-black hair puffed out in a threat display. She stepped toward it; it hissed once and ran into the night, stubby tail flicking in agitation. Laura slipped to the opposite side of the alley and stopped before descending the stone stairway.
“Talk to me, Gerard,” she whispered into the com pickup. Gerard monitored the operation from aboard Ship, playing eyes and ears for the crew. He also controlled the light support drones heading for the fortress.
“No electronic devices in the stairwell, and no life forms other than the one you chased away, watching you from the alleyway. You owe me a dinner.”
Laura smiled. During the briefing and strategy session, Gerard had pointed out this entrance as the easiest way to the roof. Laura had been convinced it would be monitored in some fashion. Gerard had disagreed; they had placed the bet.
“Roger,” Laura whispered. Only a smooth metal door stood between her and the stairwell to the roof. The blueprints had shown a lock. They hadn’t shown that it was a one-sided lock with no visible mechanism on the outer side. Even though she’d anticipated this, that didn’t make it any less inconvenient. She reached into one of the many padded pouches that lined her pants and extracted a six-inch piece of sturdy metal with retractable hooks on one end. With practiced ease, she slid the bar between door and jamb. A few moments of deft maneuvering produced the desired result. Using the hooks, she pulled the door open.
It stopped after opening eight inches.
What the— Laura thought. She looked through the gap. A length of thick chain looped through the handle and locked to an eyebolt in the wall. It was too far away for her to pick.
“They weren’t totally unprepared,” she whispered to Gerard. “What’s on the other side of the door?”
“One guard standing still inside the stairwell. Can’t tell which floor he’s on.”
Laura knew that meant one of two things. The guard was leaning against a wall somewhere above her, taking a break from the tedious routine of patrolling the stairs, or he had been on the first floor when she opened the door and now stood on the stairs waiting to see what was going to come through.
Can’t anything be simple? She thought, reaching into another pocket and pulling out a small camera on a telescoping rod. Lying on the cold concrete, she extended the rod and slid the camera through the door.
Shots didn’t ring out immediately; a good start, but it didn’t guarantee no one was there. She scanned the hallway, its image projected to her contacts. Switching through the various spectrums the camera allowed, she saw nothing close. The small amount of light leaking in from the open door didn’t allow her to view the entire area. She retracted the camera and stowed it back in its pocket. She then pulled a three-inch long box of flat gray metal from her shin pocket and a magnetized wand from her left sleeve. She attached the box to the rod, laid it on the floor inside the doorway, and activated it. A burst of ultrasound fired through the room. The return information traveled up the wand, into a micro-transmitter on her waist, and up to Ship.
“Hallway clear up to level two,” Ship responded.
Laura relaxed and dropped into the proper breathing pattern for what she was about to attempt. She had always been a small, lithe woman. This would require her to be more of both. She was using up too much time, a precious commodity, but it couldn’t be helped. She concentrated on her breathing.
A minute passed before she felt sufficiently relaxed. She quietly slipped off the rifle and laid it to the side. Grabbing the door with her hands, she pulled her head through the portal and glanced around to make sure nothing had changed. Cool stone and stairs in the hallway. Getting her head in was easy. Now came the tough part. She paused and focused on the task. She exhaled. With a concentrated effort, she condensed her upper torso. With one hand on the door and the other against the concrete, she gave a quick shove and slipped through the opening, her hips and legs following. She rose to her knees, reached back through the door, grabbed the rifle, stood, and quietly closed the troublesome door.
It took a moment to recover from the dizziness that hit her. She rotated her shoulders to loosen them. Once the disorientation passed, she trotted to the end of the hall. With a glance up the stairwell, she treaded up two steps at a time. Her padded shoes and years of training made her so silent she would have amazed a cat, providing it heard her.
“Okay, Laura, your man is still in the stairwell. He hasn’t moved more than two meters in any direction.”
Laura clicked her teeth twice, the code that indicated a message was received, but the receiver couldn’t speak. She continued up the stairs. One flight, pause, look. Two flights, pause, look. According to the plans, the building had five levels. Three flights, pause, look. Four…
She stopped, her body going into a crouch almost before her brain issued the command. She slowed her breathing, escalated from the jog up the stairs, as fresh cigarette smoke assailed her nose and the soft scrape of shoes against stone reached her ears. A slight flick of her wrist released the neuralizer concealed in her sleeve pocket; it slipped smoothly into her hand. She waited, silently cursing every second of delay. The walking stopped. A shoe ground against the concrete as the man extinguished his cigarette. Ten seconds passed, followed by a ruffling of clothes and a poorly suppressed yawn.
Good, he’s inattentive. The man did not resume walking. Not having time to wait for him to come to her, she went to him.
He appeared average, just another thug fighting for a cause he did or didn’t believe in. A small machine gun rested against his stomach, held in place by a shoulder strap. His eyes were closed. His back rested against the wall. Perhaps he was getting off duty soon, or maybe making the rounds and catching a little catnap. Laura slipped the neuralizer back into its holder. First and foremost, she was a healer and did not kill unnecessarily. This man was not an active threat; she could take him out without his death.
She pulled a black rod from a static pocket on her leg, pointed it toward the man, and squeezed the tube, activating two triggers. With a soft sound of compressed air, a dart launched from the tube. The dart’s targeting computer centered on the man’s carotid artery and struck. The man slapped at his neck and opened his eyes. They widened as he spotted Laura. Before he could react, the nano-tranquilizer raced to his brain faster than his blood. Nanobots surrounded the hypothalamus and bombarded it with GABA, a sleep-inducing neurotransmitter.
Laura could almost see the man’s brain switching off as his eyes glazed and he slid to the concrete, unconscious before his body settled.
There goes two thousand credits, she thought as she slid the rod back in its pocket. She smiled as she recognized Hawk’s voice in the thought. When they debriefed, he would grumble about the “wasteful” use of such expensive devices. Laura would give her standard value of human life speech, and he would offer his usual blank—and completely insincere—stare.
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br /> That’s assuming we survive this thing, she thought as she ascended the final flight of stairs and stopped at the penthouse leading to the roof. “I’m at the roof, Gerard,” she whispered. “What kind of welcoming party have I got?”
“Twenty soldiers on the roof. Only two men in position to be an immediate threat. They’re at the edge, approximately five meters from the door.”
“Twenty? These people are serious. We’re not going to get out of this without trouble.”
“Thank you, Miss Optimism,” Ashron’s voice cut in.
“No unnecessary chatter on Tacnet,” Hawk said. “That means you, Ashron.”
Laura pulled out her silenced pistol. Fortunately, the door hinges were on her side. She grabbed a small tube of liquid graphite from another pocket and applied a generous amount to each hinge. She replaced the container, took a deep breath, and eased through the doorway.
As she closed the door, she spotted two figures directly in front of her, roughly six meters away. Floodlights lined the parapet, creating artificial daylight in the courtyard. The guards faced the quadrangle, oblivious to Laura’s presence. Shooting them was the easiest and quickest solution, but also the riskiest. One of them could easily pitch off the roof’s edge to the pavement below. She had one more “sleep rod.” It presented the same problem, with the bonus of attracting attention from the one she didn’t tranquilize and allowing him to cry out before she could stop him. She needed to figure out how to get them away from the edge.
As if to make up for the trouble with the door at the bottom, luck swung her way.
“Damn, it’s cold,” one of the guards said, his voice coming through in the androgynous sound of her translator system. “You got a cigarette?”
“Nah, I left ‘em in my room.”
“Go get ‘em.”
“And get raked because you wanted a smoke? You get ‘em.”
Laura slid to the side of the pentice and melted into the darkness. Gravel crunched as the unnamed voice headed for the door. With regret, Laura slipped the neuralizer back into her left hand and pulled her silenced slug thrower into her right. The nano-tranq darts were ineffective at this close range.
As the man’s hand touched the doorknob, Laura deftly reached out and put the neuralizer against his temple. A small white spark flickered like an arc of electricity. The man dropped, the nerves in his brain instantly destroyed.
Laura wheeled to face the other man, who had realized something was wrong and was bringing his machine gun to bear. She raised her pistol and fired. The weapon gave a soft thwit sound. The slug caught him in the throat and punctured his larynx. Moist gurgling noises came from the man as he reached for his throat; blood coated his hands.
He began stepping toward the edge. Laura dashed to his side, dropping him to the ground before he toppled off the roof. He died quickly, and she watched until he stopped breathing. She tried to ignore the half puzzled, half pleading glaze in his eyes. A flicker of remorse rose in her. She pushed it down, remembering why they were here and why she had been forced to do this.
Sure he was dead, Laura moved to her position at the roof’s edge. The floodlights did a beautiful job of illuminating the quad and making it impossible to see anything on the roof while standing in the courtyard. No doubt the planners of this little rendezvous wanted it that way, but she doubted they had planned on someone unfriendly to their cause reaching the roof.
The fluorescent lights gave off very little heat, but they obscured her night vision. She closed her eyes and touched her lids once. When she re-opened them, the world stood out in thermographic shades, the bright orange flare of eighteen guards appearing between the aqua glow of the lights. She marked the closest at ten meters. She clicked her teeth five times, her signal that she was in place.
“Roger, Laura. Stand by.” Gerard said.
“I’d rather be in Tuscany,” she murmured to no one. With a wry smile, she unlimbered her sniper rifle.
Ashron settled the air raft on the roof of the building Gerard had picked as an ideal location, or as ideal as circumstances allowed. Signaling to Gerard that he had reached his position, he settled back and took the lid off a jar of spicy mustard. Grabbing a bag of cookies, he dipped one into the mustard and tossed it into his mouth. Nothing to do but wait until it all went to shit.
Wolf pushed open the door and stepped into the old warehouse that sat adjacent to the back wall of the fortress. He swung his massive weapon out before him, an electromagnetic flechette gun designed by Gerard and dubbed “Wolf’s Minigun of Awesomeness” by Ashron.
Wolf scanned the building for inhabitants. Unlikely as it was anyone would be stationed here, he didn’t take chances. Bulging muscles, armor-thick skin, and a gun that could chew through steel didn’t give him a right to be careless.
The scant light filtering in through cracks in boarded up windows and the open doorway revealed only the shapes of unwanted or obsolete machinery; they took on the aspects of dead mythical beasts in the scarce illumination. Wolf closed the door and sidled through the maze of metal, his large feet stirring up dust. It drifted into the air, creating a shifting haze in the dim light. His bulky body was not exceptionally agile, so he had to be extra cautious not to knock anything over.
He reached the back wall of the warehouse without incident. The warehouse and fortress shared this wall, and it surprised Wolf that the fortress’s designers let such a glaring weakness remain. Perhaps they hadn’t been residents long enough to make all the modifications they wanted, or maybe the warehouse was added long after the fortress had been abandoned. Either way, he was more than willing to exploit the weakness. Probing the wall with his fingers, he found what he felt to be the weakest spot. Satisfied, he signaled to Gerard that he was in position, then stepped back, relaxed and waited.
11
Ambush
Hawk and Thomas sat in the four-person mini-shuttle, five hundred meters from the imposing stone fortress. They had arrived with a few minutes to spare, so Hawk had landed on the side of the road to wait for the rendezvous time.
Thomas scratched at his chest. “This chemarmor smells bad and itches.”
“I’ve got the remover if you want to take it off,” Hawk said. “Personally, I’d rather smell like a chemical factory than have a slug or laser plow through my chest.” Hawk didn’t mention he would have preferred standard kinetic or combat armor, but the chemarmor, applied directly to the skin and adding minimal bulk, stood a better chance of going unnoticed by their opponents.
The faux courier looked at him, continuing to scratch. “Captain Grey, I’m not going to survive this, am I?”
Hawk studied the nervous man. Thomas had spent almost every waking moment on the FATS machine, honing his skill as much as he could in the two days he spent under Ashron’s tutelage. In between mission planning and his own training, Hawk had watched Thomas’s progress. The man’s adeptness and ability to retain what Ashron taught him had impressed Hawk. He had wondered more than once if Thomas’ problems with Force 13’s training were because of the trainers or the trainee. “Just remember: once the shooting starts, find some cover. Don’t do anything heroic. If someone comes near you, shoot him. Otherwise, stay hidden.”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
After a pause, Hawk said, “No, it didn’t. If it’s any consolation, none of us may survive this.” Hawk stared out the window a moment, then turned and regarded Thomas. “Weapons don’t care. They don’t care who you are, how well trained you are or how good your physical condition is. They don’t care if your cause is just or evil. They simply don’t care.”
Thomas didn’t respond. His face turned pale. He nodded and swallowed.
Hawk frowned. Your pessimism isn’t going to make it any easier for him, he thought. Thomas was scared, but he was here. “You have a better chance with us than you would with most. We have equipment these guys have probably never seen, and that smelly chemarmor is triple the strength of anything the public can buy
. The crew backing us are experts at what they do. Remember, when the shit hits―and it will―stay low, get under cover, and shoot only when you have to. We’re all going to die. Let’s make sure it’s not today.” Hawk glanced at his watch. “Showtime. Gerard, we’re going in. Positions?”
“Ready and waiting,” Gerard’s voice told him.
“Be careful,” Trey said.
“Always.”
Hawk fired up the shuttle and flew toward the fortress. When he was thirty meters away, a harsh spotlight split the night. Its dazzling beam blazed through the windshield. Hawk squinted until the glass polarized, cutting the glare. He landed the shuttle and shut off the engine. The cab grew quiet as the turbines wound down
“Looks like we walk from here,” Hawk said, removing his restraining strap. “Turn on your nullifier.” He reached back and powered up the small device strapped between his shield dynamo and pistol. It would hide the devices from spying machinery so the terrorists would think the two were unarmed, unprotected little sheep; the exact impression Hawk wanted to present.
“Captain, will the power cell last long enough?” Thomas asked as he powered his on.
“We’re not here for lunch. There should be plenty of battery.” He fixed Thomas with his eyes. “And from now on, call me Hawk.” He offered a reassuring smile, winked and said, “Put on your game face.”
Thomas gave a nervous nod, grabbed the sealed tube that served as their fake plan holder, and removed his restraints. As they stepped out of the craft, the spotlight went out.
Abandonment and harsh weather had not been kind to the gray stone fortress; large cracks spider-webbed their way across the building’s face. Creeping green vines crawled halfway up the fifteen-meter wall. The road led to a large archway blocked by an ancient iron portcullis. Hawk stopped and scanned the area; he spotted a camera inside the entrance.
