Siege Protocol: The Separatist Wars: Book 3

by Thomas Webb

  The server disappeared, leaving Lima alone. The private room sat off from the main dining area, one of many such alcoves where interstellar business was conducted. Entire planets were bought and sold here, their fates discussed over thousand-credit plates of Velusian fish, roe, and crustaceans.

  Despite the relative privacy of the booth, Lima had an excellent view of the main room. And most especially of the man who he’d come here to meet.

  Lima studied the man seated in the main room, laughing into his comm device and stuffing his face with seaweed-wrapped Velusian fish. He was both pasty and pudgy, with dark hair and beady eyes. The beginnings of a patchy beard clung to the sides of his cheeks. He dined alone today. A frequent habit of his. Always here, always by himself, and always at the same time of the evening. Lima almost pitied the man’s carelessness. Rule number one was always, always, vary your routine. Predictability killed. As did overconfidence.

  Lima had spotted the man’s security detail outside by the air car, but no discernible security team inside. Smug little bastard, thinking his position with the intergalactic corporation made him untouchable. If only he knew. Even sitting in broad daylight in a public place didn’t mean you were safe.

  Lima’s drink arrived, along with the staff member’s assurances that someone would arrive shortly to take his order. Lima made the appropriate responses so the server would leave, then he took a swallow of the strong Velusian alcohol. It went down mellow, with no burn. Lima closed his eyes, savoring the taste. He stood and buttoned his jacket, then picked up his drink. Lima entered the main area, making his way across the room with his drink in hand. Without announcing himself, he dropped into the seat across from the diminutive United Les Space executive.

  “Marty Steen,” Lima said. The name felt slimy in his mouth.

  Steen looked up from his holo screen, his mouth full of wrapped fish. He swallowed it with a gulp. To his credit, the flash of fear in his eyes lasted only a second. A millisecond later the privacy filter on his holo went up. Steen was corporate through and through, protecting the firm’s intellectual property to the last. Surprise, recognition, confusion, and finally a decent poker face followed. Still, he uttered the same meaningless thing Lima had heard a hundred others in his position say.

  “H-How did you find me?”

  Lima frowned. “Please. Are we not past that by now?”

  Steen’s eyes darted to the door.

  “Your security is still outside.” Lima smiled. “If it is any consolation, you would never even make it anywhere close to that door.”

  Steen swallowed. “What do you want?”

  “You should relax, Mr. Steen. Despite all you have attempted to do to me and my people, I am not here for you. Rest assured. . . had I wanted you dead, you would be already.”

  The emotions played across his face. Denial, anger, fear. It struck Lima that they were similar to the stages of grieving, right up to the final stage—acceptance.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Lima?”

  “You know who I am,” Lima said. “Good. And cutting to the chase? I like that. It is contrary to what I have heard about you.” Lima took another drink, savoring the mellow notes of flavor. He thought he caught hints of salt. Like the sea. “Is there any reason your firm would require an army?” Lima asked. “What about a squadron of fast mover attack craft?”

  Steen worked hard to keep his face even.

  Not bad, Lima thought. Steen may have made a decent case officer, in a different universe.

  “We . . . we take our corporate security very seriously,” Steen replied.

  Lima chuckled. He had to admire the bolas on this guy. “I see,” Lima said. He glanced at Steen’s comm device and his holographic screen. “I suppose you will not answer any of my questions, will you?”

  Steen sat, unmoving, like prey in the snare. It was a primal reflex, sitting perfectly still. The prey animal did it in hopes that the predator would go away. Lima could see Steen’s wheel’s turning, his mind working to find a way out. Finally, Steen came up with something.

  “I won’t answer anything without a warrant from an intergalactic court,” Steen said. “Do you have a warrant from an intergalactic court, Mr. Lima?”

  “I can respect that,” Lima said, standing and picking up his drink. “A true company man. I won’t trouble you any longer, Mr. Steen. Although I would ask you to please deliver a message to your superiors, if you would.”

  With the immediate threat of death possibly off the table, some of Steen’s bravado returned. “What’s the message?” he sneered.

  Lima met his eyes, relishing seeing the terror reappear. “Tell them I’m coming for them.”

  Lima turned and walked back to his table. He drained his glass and sent the credits, plus a generous tip, to the appropriate account before walking out.

  “Engage decryption protocols,” he said as he emerged onto the street. He’d spoken low enough so that no one who happened to be passing by could hear. Immediately data began scrolling across his glasses. The information he’d scanned from Steen’s corporate device before Steen employed the privacy mode was encrypted, but with the tech the Kingdom had given them the encryption was cracked in seconds. By the time the balmy night air of one of the few above-water cities on Velus greeted him, Lima was already sorting through the files.

  As he read, he hailed an air car. In the few minutes it took for the car to arrive curbside, he’d narrowed the files down to the few he wanted.

  As he scanned the files, Lima reflected on Steen’s demeanor. The executive seemed so confident in his own safety that he hadn’t even bothered to set up the appropriate security protocols on his comm device. Liam had been able to pull the data easily. Of course he could have conducted a snatch and grab and tortured the information out of the little bastard. . . that would have been gratifying, but ultimately a mistake. If he had to guess, the ULS leadership was far too smart to leave something as important as intelligence on their paramilitary force exposed by a weasel like Steen.

  No matter. He’d find what he needed. Lima scrolled through the narrowed selection of files, searching. He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for, but years of experience assured him he was on the right track. A project name? Something arms related, maybe? It sparked a thought. ULS and its subsidiaries would need quite a bit of gear for an entire fighting force.

  He switched to a section of files marked ‘inventory listings.’ Lima smiled. He saw what he’d been searching for.

  Lima activated his comm device. Not wanting to make the same mistake as Steen, he engaged its privacy mode and accessed a wave to Sao Paulo.

  “Soluções Avançadas Incorporadas,” X37 answered. “How may I help you?”

  It was nice to have an AI with multiple versions of itself. Useful as a simultaneous administrative assistant, office manager, and all-around war machine. He congratulated himself again on the purchase. Pricey, but worth it.

  “X37? This is Silvio. Please book me a transport from the planet Velus. I need to get to New York as soon as possible.”

  “Very good, Mr. Lima. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes. I need you to relay a message to Trace and Kris’Nac. Tell them to gear up. I have a job for them.”

  -13-

  Kaizen knelt upon the hangar roof and surveyed the surrounding tarmac. She switched the viewing mode of her helmet scanner from infrared to radiation detection to X-ray, then back to infrared. She studied the patterns of the data the scanner returned, analyzing it the same way the master j’both players of her home world studied the gaming boards.

  ASI’s air and space field headquarters had seen better days. Construction drones had completed much of the initial cleanup, with Silvio Lima selling off the remnants of the ULS-owned mechs for scrap. Lima was a sharp man. A ruthless United Nations Intelligence Agency field operative, now retired. An aging warrior, but a dangerous and worthy adversary, nonetheless. One worth the price United Les Space was paying her.

 
Honor and profit.

  The mech remnants were gone, hauled off for scrap, but the scars of the battle remained. The tarmac bore deep rifts. Large cracks spread across it, the result of the mortar impacts. Plasma and pulse burns scored every surface. The tarmac itself was still under repair, with entire sections completely destroyed. The grey duracrete was blackened and littered with pulse bomb craters.

  Kaizen conducted a final scan of the structure beneath her, just to be safe. ASI headquarters was empty of living beings now, all of them either on assignment or currently located elsewhere. The sun was a razor-thin slice of fire on the horizon. Evening threatened to fall over the jungle, and the close by city of Sao Paulo.

  Kaizen studied the battlefield in the dying light of day. She closed her enhanced eyes behind her helmet, letting the battle play out in the positronic layers of her brain. She imagined every detail of the fight, every interaction, allowing her systems to fill in the gaps, creating what she could not picture. She saw it all like a holo vid, playing out exactly as it must have happened. Kaizen was a hunter, sniffing out the trail of her prey.

  As her version of the battle looped through her mind, Kaizen smiled. Lima’s people were good. Very good. She considered the kill list ULS had given her, prioritizing it by who was most dangerous. Lima first. Then Hale. Then the others. She may not get to her targets in exactly that order, but she would get to them. That much was certain.

  The battle finished in her mind, ending when the large gunship swooped in to finish off the attackers. Having no choice, they gave up the day and turned to flee. The Separatist faction and the Ares Corporation troops left the field of battle, decimated and defeated.

  Satisfied, Kaizen stood. She broke into an easy run, her speed increasing until she raced along the edge of the hangar rooftop. She leapt from it without hesitation, somersaulting to land, noiselessly, atop a stacked set of shipping crates twenty meters below. From there it was a simple leap of ten meters more before her armored boots struck the hard deck.

  Kaizen knelt to absorb the shock before standing to her full height. Her cloak billowed in the breeze and the dying sunlight. She looked around the abandoned air and space field, reaching out with both her natural and enhanced senses. She stood for several heartbeats, watching, and listening. At last she heard what she was waiting for.

  “Please remain where you are,” a robotic voice said. The AI drone moved with relative quiet. The drone was an expensive model, she noticed. Kaizen stood motionless, her boots rooted to the spot.

  “You are trespassing,” the drone said. The drone boasted a spiderlike, peristeel alloy body. A rifle hung from one of the appendages. It pointed to the ground in an ‘at the ready’ position, but Kaizen knew it could be trained on her in an instant. “I have already contacted the local authorities,” Lima’s Artificial Intelligence said. “Please wait here until they arrive. Do not move, and I will not harm you.”

  Kaizen smirked underneath her helmet. “Really?” she said, her voice scrambled by the audio modulator. Kaizen closed her eyes, reaching out. “I believe you are mistaken. . . X37.”

  Yes. X37. That was the drone’s name. Kaizen read it from the AI’s circuitry, as easily as one might read the words in a book.

  This model was state of the art, with multiple security encryptions. None were a match for a Yurnai warrior of Kaizen’s caliber.

  “It appears I was mistaken,” X37 said when Kaizen was done. The assassin watched the AI’s energy move through space as the drone sent a command to cancel the alert to the local authorities.

  Kaizen leaned casually against a container full of mechanized trash. “You should run an internal diagnostic on yourself,” she suggested. “Upon completion of the diagnostic, you will find nothing amiss. You will register none of our interaction in your daily reports.”

  “I will need to run an internal diagnostic,” X37 repeated. Kaizen watched the drone’s internal processing unit relay the commands, seeing it all happen as flows and ebbs of energy in real time. Kaizen’s partially cybernetic brain translated the numbers and symbols like reading a menu.

  When X37 was done, Kaizen approached the large, menacing peristeel body. She removed her gauntlet and placed the flesh of her hand to its surface. The metal felt cold and smooth to the touch.

  Being a technomancer, as the less informed called her kind, had its advantages. Most of her work could be done via wave. But for this level of tech, and for what Kaizen had in mind, she needed to initiate direct contact.

  At Kaizen’s mental command, the virus program leapt from its containment unit in her internal processors and wriggled its way out through the flesh of her hand. There was a slight tickle as it bled from her body, penetrating X37’s alloy skin and embedding itself deep into the drone’s coding.

  Kaizen smiled under her helmet as she withdrew her hand and replaced her glove. As she turned to leave, a thought occurred to her. She’d almost forgotten.

  “One last thing, X37.”

  The drone did not reply, but Kaizen saw the shift in its command code indicating it had registered her words.

  “I was never here,” Kaizen said.

  “You were never here,” the drone repeated obediently. “Have a pleasant day!”

  -14-

  “Man,” Hale said as they tromped through the village. “Lima wasn’t kidding when he said this place was ‘rustic.’

  The nameless village on the small Outer Colonies planet was constructed mostly of a mixture of mud and brick. A few scattered wave receivers stuck out from mound-shaped rooftops. The village streets of the agricultural planet were lined with dirt.

  “It may not look like much,” Kris whispered from underneath her cowl, “but this tiny planet’s strategic location makes it a primary center for the movement of arms and armor. If the Separatists are to continue their fight, it is vital that they retain this location.”

  Kris was right. Hale had been read in on the place. One of the strongest Separatist factions still fighting made extensive use of the planet as a combination ammo dump and distribution point. From here, there were nearby jump gates leading to several prime areas of resistance. A surprising number of battles had been waged on the small sphere orbiting the large yellow star. If it weren’t for all the peaceful farmers still eking out a living, the UN might have ordered the entire planet glassed long before.

  The constant fighting was the main reason why the planet hadn’t developed further than it had. To Hale’s thinking, war always equaled the suppression of progress. A population continuously subjected to the horrors of war was far easier to suppress, and to control. Constant warfare here was causing the same issues it had for thousands of years on Earth, and for untold millennia across the known worlds. Same problem, different eon.

  Hale checked the pulse pistol on his hip, comforted by its weight and heft. Underneath his own hooded cloak, sweat dripped down the crevice of his spine. The place smelled of hot dust, baked mud, and the heady musk of livestock. One of the planet’s native, camel-like creatures passed by pulling a cart. Its owner rode on a crude bench inside, holding the creature’s reins.

  “Keep an eye out,” Kris warned. “There is more to this place than a simple agrarian planet. There is danger here as well.”

  “Copy that,” Hale rumbled.

  He and Kris had dropped in out of atmo earlier in the day. They’d stowed their FAST suits in the scrubland several klicks outside the town, then humped it in on foot. They were onsite at Lima’s request. He had a contact here that Lima hoped would provide them intel leading to the heart of ULS’s operations.

  They drew few stares as they walked down the center of the village. Strangers passed through here all the time. Separatists and their allies, for the most part. Hale checked his six as often as possible, looking for anyone who might be following them. This cloak and dagger stuff on backwater planets wasn’t even close to Hale’s area of expertise. He was a shooter, first and foremost. But this was the job now, and the job had recently bec
ome very personal.

  Up ahead, Hale spotted a squat building with a rounded roof painted a faded shade of blue. “That looks like the place,” he said, pointing. Kris’s cowl dipped slightly in a nod. Together they crossed the dusty street, narrowly avoiding an old woman carting her wares to market. Her curses faded behind them as they entered the dark mud building.

  Music played over an antiquated audio system, just loud enough to drown out conversations that were not meant to be overheard. Strings of lights hung from tiny anti-grav generators in the rafters, giving the seedy bar a soft glow. The bartender, an Andarian, busied herself wiping down a grimy bar top. When she looked up from her work, Hale held up two fingers. The bartender glanced at him and Kris and nodded, before pulling down an aged Tauranian wine and the only bottle of Earth whiskey on the shelf. Hale guessed she didn’t make a living here without being able to size people up pretty quick.

  Kris tapped him on the shoulder, pulling his attention from the Andarian woman’s pouring. “There,” Kris said, indicating a man sitting alone near the back of the bar. A glass of what looked like the same whiskey Hale had just ordered sat near his hand. He didn’t make it too obvious when he glanced their way.

  “You mind grabbing the drinks?” Hale asked. “I’ll go get us a seat.”

  Kris’nac shook her head. “I do not mind at all, Trace Child of Hale.”

  Hale eyed the place. A dive bar, not much different than the same type of establishments on a thousand other worlds. Lima hadn’t really described the old contact of his they were here to meet, saying only that they would know him when they saw him.

  With most of the villagers working in the fields, and the off-worlders preferring the cover of planetary night to conduct their illicit business, this time of day the place was almost deserted. There was the Andarian bartender, pointedly minding her own business. A Baanite, its large dark eyes shut, napped in a corner. An untouched drink sat by its hand. In the rear, his back to the wall and with a view of the entrance, sat the old human male Kris had pointed out.