by TR Cameron
He’d studied elevator shafts as part of his infiltration training. The vast majority of them included some way to move up and down that didn’t involve the car. Larger ones had mounted ladders; this was not one of those. Instead, indentations in the side made the ascent a lot like climbing a rock wall with uniform protrusions. He climbed it easily and braced himself outside the third-floor doors. The sensors wouldn’t penetrate here, either. He pulled them a bit apart and put his eye to the seam. Not sure what I was expecting, but it looks like an elevator hallway. Imagine that. He forced the doors the rest of the way, took a breath, and dove out into the open in a shoulder roll.
Bullets and energy whined as they passed above his head. He came out of the tumble in a crouch, smoothly grabbing and lifting his rifle, his finger depressing the trigger as soon as the barrel intersected a target. The stun blast only managed to hit a guard’s arm as he pulled back into cover, but the way the power cascaded once it hit would take him out of the battle for a minute or more, anyway. The armor Jax wore and the SF version would dissipate a stun blast as long as it struck one of the plates cleanly.
He stayed in position, waiting for anyone else to appear. If he’d been alone, he would have tossed a grenade and followed it in, but it made more sense to wait until the rest of his team arrived and evened the odds. Or put us at plus-one, if my guesstimate at the count is right. His helmet filled with quiet instruction as Verrand came out of the elevator and told the others it was safe to follow. He said, “About time. We’ve got at least one ahead who’s up, and one who’s down for probably thirty seconds more. Only winged him.”
She replied, “We figured you’d have them cleaned up by now.”
Jax smiled despite the seriousness of the situation. “Remember, the Academy is all about learning. How would you learn if I just did it for you? And on that note, Kimmel, give the others your grenades.” With his hands full of tablet, they’re not doing him any good. “On my mark, one of each kind.” He kept his gaze trained ahead. The room looked like it was some sort of collaborative working area, with at least one rolling display in the section he could see, and maybe part of another. The hallway he was in continued on the opposite side of the open space, but he didn’t have an angle to determine what was down there, other than the far wall it ended at.
Sirenno said, “We’re ready.”
“Affirmative. We follow them in once they detonate. Three, two, one, mark.” The canisters sailed over his head, each of them well-thrown. The guard jumped out into the hallway, presumably thinking he’d found the perfect moment to shoot the throwers. Jax dropped him with a stun burst. “In we go. Watch out for the webs.” Each of them had a canister of spray that would melt the sticky strands, but it would be embarrassing to find yourself needing to ask for help because your hands were stuck. He led the way, but there were no more guards. He pointed at the one he’d hit first, who was conscious but clearly dazed and covered in webs. “Someone put him out.” The sound of a stun rifle going off behind him confirmed it was done.
“Okay, into the far hallway. Scans aren’t showing anything, so we’ll go room by room. Sirenno, you’ve got rear guard. Verrand, follow my lead. Kimmel, keep fighting the good fight against the AI, and if you can find a way to locate the thing we’re looking for in your spare seconds, well, that would be downright fantastic in my book.”
He picked his way through the web lines, spraying a couple he couldn’t avoid, and entered the other hallway. Heavy doors were set on each side, and given what he’d seen so far, they were likely to be locked. “Kimmel, can you do anything with these, or do we have to blow them?”
He muttered, “Wait a sec,” then said, “I’ve got nothing. Try the lock pick in the wristcomm before you go exploding things, though.”
Holy hell, I forgot about that. He growled inwardly, frustrated with himself. Another part of the Academy’s comm toolbox was a software program designed to defeat electronic locks. He moved next to the door and activated it. A broken line with eight parts appeared, and numbers filled in on top of them in short order. When the last one materialized, the lock clicked. “Damn, that’s nice. Thanks, Kimmel.” He nodded at the handle and positioned himself to charge in. He yanked the door open, and with rifle raised and ready to fire, he charged into the messiest storage room he’d ever seen.
Jax cycled through imaging options, looking for any hidden enemies, but none appeared among the furniture, crates, and unidentifiable pieces of equipment that littered the room. He locked down his mind’s desire to wonder why there would be such a place in an otherwise logical and orderly building since it was nonproductive and exactly the sort of question he might wind up obsessing over. They repeated the process on the next door, which was on the other side of the hall, and this time the rush inward was worthwhile.
Two guards crouched in cover positions, and both opened up on him as he crossed the threshold. One was using projectiles, the other energy, and both of them hit him. The energy blast burned into the shoulder of his prosthetic arm, which gave him a vibration to warn him that normally he would have just received a lot of pain, making him grateful to have technology there instead of flesh. The bullets came in a stream of fully automatic fire that felt like repeated jabs to the chest. They knocked him off-balance, and he managed to turn his fall into a dive for cover. His squawk of alarm alerted his partner, and Verrand made the smart choice to loft a flash-bang into the room. His helmet detected its signal and closed off vision and sound as it detonated, then reactivated them.
She eliminated both dazed enemies with stun blasts and announced, “Clear.”
Sirenno asked, “Everyone okay?”
Jax groaned as he pushed himself to his feet. “Affirmative. Functional. A little scuffed.” He looked down at his chest armor and shook his head. It was great stuff, but still, it could only absorb so much damage before something would sneak through. He checked his display, which still didn’t show the item they were looking for. “Damn it. When I saw the two guards in here, I was sure it was the right place. Okay, there’s got to be at least one more room on the other side. Let’s take a look.”
Getting shot so many times had apparently worn out the jinx he’d inflicted on the group. The device, a storage brick about the size of his hand, managed to emit a strong enough signal that they were able to follow it to the hidden safe. The Academy’s lock pick software did its job, and just like that, they had it.
Jax put his hands on his hips and nodded. “We’re halfway there, people. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
They opted out of giving the second floor a once-over, and intelligently, the enemies on that level stayed put. There’s no way they’re paid enough to deal with the likes of us. The climb down the shaft was easier than going up had been. Jax carefully disarmed the trap he’d left and secured the grenade, then handed it to Verrand. He dropped warily into the car and stepped out into the hall, covering the lobby with his rifle. There was nothing to be seen. The emergency response hadn’t arrived yet.
“Verrand, point. Next, Kimmel and Sirenno. I’m rearguard. Move it out the doors and into the tree line.” His team moved quickly but cautiously through the open area. Something rippled at the edge of his vision, causing him to slow and turn toward it with a frown. A series of loud snaps echoed around the room, like a fuse trying to spark a reaction, and then it apparently succeeded. A wave of energy washed over him as it rushed through the lobby.
Several bad things happened more or less at once.
First, the rifle in his hands made a popping sound. He’d never personally experienced that malfunction, but instructors had played it for the recruits during training. They’d been very serious about it, too. The lesson he remembered was, “Special Forces rely heavily on technology because we have the most badass equipment in the universe.” His teacher at the time had possessed a square-jawed head on top of a mountain of muscle, with a two-inch high blond flattop that looked to have been sliced with a laser. “But t
here’s one situation that screws that dominance, my friends—screws it hard—and that’s an electromagnetic pulse.” He’d lifted a hand, “But Lieutenant, you’ll say, surely our gear is hardened against that?” His expression shifted to the one Jax expected he would wear if that conversation were happening for real. “And I’ll reply, ‘Of course we do, you master of the bloody obvious. And it’s good enough to handle the sort of small EMP that you’ll mostly find in the field.’ But, my friends, what if there’s a bigger one?”
That question’s answer was in Jax’s hands. The sound the weapon had made was the internal components frying, which meant it was now nothing more than an obscenely expensive club. The same would be true of the pistol at his side. His grenades were fifty-fifty; the discharge would have fried the chip inside. If the damage activated the proximity sensor, the canisters would be inert lumps of metal. If it deactivated the sensor, the grenade would work fine, but the sphere of protection keeping it from doing so at his feet if he screwed up was gone.
This wasn’t particularly relevant because, second, the transponder in his gear would be as lifeless as his display, which had just vanished, leaving him only the view through the transparent front panel of his helmet with no overlay, and utter silence. The experience always made him feel like he was suffocating, and despite attempting on several occasions to train himself to overcome it, he faced a severe disadvantage if he tried to fight in a dead helmet. But, on the upside, at least we’re not wearing powered combat suits. Being frozen while feeling like you’re dying would suck even more.
His instructors had prepared them to the best of their ability, but they hadn’t had the foresight to warn him about the third thing, which was understandable since it was mission-specific. The EMP discharge had fried the tablet Kimmel was using to hold off the building’s AI security, which was apparently sufficiently hardened or distant enough to weather the blast. A thin metal panel descended from the ceiling along each of the walls, trapping him in the lobby. A rifle in energy mode might be able to chew through them, like the one he’d until recently possessed. He could probably beat on them for a year with his rifle-club and still not get through.
That would have been bad enough, but the universe had one last present left to reveal. The EMP had deactivated the active camouflage suits that the others in the room with him wore. Ah, so that was what I spotted. Apparently the emergency response did arrive, and when they saw us, decided to separate out the trailing member. Hopefully they don’t have a team waiting outside. He pushed the worry aside and turned slowly. Four of them against one of me. Sounds about right. They were each armed with a baton and a knife and wore the private security version of his body armor. It wouldn’t hold up as long as his would, but the numbers might make that a moot point since they’d be dishing out four times as many blows.
Jax detached his helmet and threw it aside. It struck the closest metal panel and confirmed his suspicions about the thing’s solidity. “Nice play, scumbags. Let’s dance.” He didn’t surrender the initiative but ran for the right side, angling toward the one nearest the elevators. They’d positioned themselves two-and-two, and it would buy him a couple of extra seconds before the others could wade in. He’d already acknowledged he’d have to accept whatever initial hits the enemy wanted to give him in exchange for a quick attack that would hopefully take them out and reduce their numerical advantage. His left leg locked up suddenly, turning his run into a stumble. Every vile curse he’d ever heard shot through his head at the realization that the EMP had messed with his prosthetic. At least the arm seems okay. Probably better tech. Have to see about replacing the leg, too.
He reached his opponent, who was a pale, stocky man with a ratty mustache, and interposed his metal arm along the path of the baton that whipped down at his skull. A slight clang echoed as they met, and then the hot pain of a knife cut into his right hand as the man attempted his own defense. It didn’t stop Jax’s fist, carrying the momentum of his run behind it, from slamming through the plastic face shield of the guard’s helmet and connecting where his nose met his forehead. His foe looked surprised for a moment before his eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed to the floor.
The plan had been to grab the guard’s weapons, but the other one on that side had attacked, rather than choosing the polite route of allowing him to get his stuff together. She looked like a female version of the first—muscular, strong, and seemingly practiced with her weapons. The baton was already in motion toward his head when he saw her coming, so he fell into a backward somersault to evade it. She didn’t surrender her advantage by waiting for his response but was attacking when he rolled to his feet. The knife she stabbed at his chest was a dumb play against someone in combat armor, which made him think maybe her training was more for civilian encounters. If so, she’s wicked; that was a kill shot. He ignored it and sidestepped, catching the wrist bringing the baton around in a horizontal swipe at his head and pulling it hard in the direction it was already traveling.
The move caused the woman to stumble, and he stepped in and used his hip to lift and throw her into the wall. She hit the metal hard and dropped to the ground harder. He kicked the side of her helmet, causing it to smash against the wall again. Jax had the baton in hand when the next pair arrived, which caused them to halt their rush and backpedal, looking at each other for support or assistance. He used the moment to grab the other fallen baton and walk slowly sideways toward the corner nearest the entrance. He didn’t want one of them getting the clever idea to jump off the reception desk at him.
Apparently having come to some sort of agreement, the pair charged him before he reached it. They were both men, their faces unremarkable and bodies of a type with the others’. Shared pain in the gym drives unit cohesion—another maxim from his instructors that had proven true in the real world. His foes weren’t dumb. One raced to his right to cut him off from the protection of the corner, and the other looped around to his left to force him to defend against both. It was a decent tactical choice but didn’t have a lot of experience behind it. He ran into the center of the room through the opening they created, muttering angry words at his leg as it misfired again, turning his cool move into something less than graceful. He turned back to face them, shaking his head, and they paused to listen as he raised a baton-holding hand to stop them.
“Gentlemen, this is not going to go well for you, so what do you say you put down your weapons? I’ll tie you up rather than breaking your heads like I was forced to do to the others, and we’ll call it a day. I’ll give you some bruises for deniability with your bosses if you need them.” He let his hand fall and twirled the batons. “Or, we can do this your way, but if you couldn’t beat me four on one, what makes you think two on one will work?”
The one on the left said, “Sure, let’s talk about this.” It distracted him for only a moment, but that was enough for the other one to pull a grenade and throw it at him. Jax twisted and ran for the reception desk, diving over it with his eyes closed and his hands over his ears. The flash-bang detonated, and the shattered glass from the ceiling lights rained down on him. His body was protected from the concussion by his armor, but even through his gloves, it assaulted his eardrums, the ringing now occluding all other sound. He popped up in a fury and stalked around the desk, his boots crunching on the slivers of glass.
The pair of guards looked unsteady, which brought a grim smile to his lips. Thought your puny riot gear would protect you, huh? Welcome to the big leagues. The first one lifted his batons in a respectable defensive stance, one held in front of him low and the other, in his back arm, high. But Jax was done restraining himself for fear of killing them. He didn’t run at the man, fearing his foot would lock up, but walked straight to him, smashed his feeble attempts at blocks out of the way, and front-kicked him above the belt and below the chest plate. The force of the blow knocked him into the other guard, and Jax used the distraction to smash his batons off that one’s helmet in three fast strikes that left his
foe wobbly. He spun and delivered a back kick that blasted his foe into the wall behind him.
As the one he’d front-kicked tried to climb to his feet, something unexpected occurred: the metal sheets covering the walls lifted. He turned and ran for the entrance, hoping he could get there in time to escape. The possibility that it was more guards arriving was a consideration, but if that was the deal, he’d rather take the initiative with them, too. His leg seemed to be on the same page for a change and didn’t hinder him as he burst out into the night. His wristcomm had a single word on it. Grace. His team had made it to safety, and now he was free as well. Jax considered running for the ship, but that would most likely draw anyone pursuing him to them. Once he hit the tree line, he messaged back, “Go. Expedite.” Cia understood that if he used that word, it meant no argument, just do it.
He crept carefully back toward the resort, stopping before he could be seen to strip off his combat armor and hide it as well as he could. With his helmet fried, the gear was pretty standard aside from the wristcomm, which he took off and slipped into his pocket. The uniform pieces came off next, leaving him in his boxers and t-shirt. He closed his eyes and imagined the character he was about to portray, then wobbled out of the trees, drunkenly calling, “Hello? Little help? I seem to have lost my,” he paused, turned in a circle like he was looking for something, “clothes.”
He hid a grin as a uniformed staff member walked toward him with an expression that hid most but not all of their irritation at having to deal with one more wealthy tourist who couldn’t handle his alcohol.
Chapter Thirty-Six
He’d stayed at the resort only long enough to arrange passage to Earth but had enjoyed every minute of it. Cia had ridden his rental motorcycle down to meet him in Inverness, and he took the controls on the way back. They talked about silly things on the road, keeping it light.
