A brief smile ghosted across Boone’s face. “No, sir, I guess not.”
Gabe gave him a pointed look. “Not a lot of call for a sniper weapons system on a platform this size.”
Boone lifted the now-assembled rifle and attached a sling to its mount before placing it around his shoulder. Looking up at the special agent, he said, “No, sir, but I figure it’s better to have it and not need it, than not have it around and wish you did.”
Thad grunted out an Ooh-rah at the sentiment. It was one he fully understood and endorsed.
Boone moved aside, making room for Thad, Asha, and Gabe. Thad set the top box aside and opened the next one. He grunted in satisfaction as his eyes landed on a P-SCAR. Handing one over to Asha, he grabbed one for himself, along with a few extra magazines and a spare battery for the CUSP.
Asha had broken into a third box; this one had tactical vests and synthsilk shirts. The synthsilk was light armor at best, but he wasn’t going to complain. He quickly pulled one of the shirts over his tee and grabbed a vest.
“Okay, amis.” He glanced from Gabe to Asha and then over to Boone. “It’s pretty obvious these guys aren’t much concerned about collateral damage, so we go in weapons free and neutralize them before they have a chance to do any harm. Agreed?”
There were nods all around.
Pounding footsteps sounded, and the four wheeled, backs to each other as they prepared to meet the newcomers head-on. Thad lowered his P-SCAR a fraction when he saw two young men Boone’s age rounding the bend at a fast jog.
He shot the corporal a quick look. “They with you, hoss?”
“Yeah.” Boone pointed. “The one on the left is Lance Corporal Ramirez. PFC Davila’s on the right.”
Thad’s hand snapped up, the P-SCAR’s barrel pointing skyward. The two Marines stumbled to a halt, breathing heavily, their gazes bouncing from Gabe to Thad and then back again. One of them darted a glance toward Boone.
“What’s going on?” Ramirez asked.
“Consider yourselves recalled to duty,” Thad said shortly. “Know how to handle one of these?” He brandished the rifle.
“Yessir.” At Thad’s tone, both men had snapped to attention. Thad slapped the P-SCAR into Ramirez’s palm. He was pleased to see the Marine handle the weapon proficiently, performing a quick magazine check before shouldering it and accepting a spare mag.
He saw Gabe had done the same for Davila. Boone was back at the boxes, pulling out more weapons. These were passed around as Thad filled them in on the situation.
“We have four down, but eight tangos are still at large,” he told the two young men. “We’re going to need to split up. It’s not ideal, but we don’t have much choice.”
He turned to Boone, jerking his chin toward the sniper rifle and scope slung around the corporal’s neck. “Need you to go high again, hoss. You’re overwatch. And while you’re at it, find me that sixth man, the one who installed the swamper.”
Boone nodded, his eyes looking over Thad’s shoulder. He pointed to the tallest building at the center of the sky park, the replica of an old-Earth clock tower. “I’ll head there. That’ll give a good view—and hopefully a bit more cover than my previous spot.”
Gabe chuckled at that. “Good call.”
Thad handed out assignments and the group split up… just as the deep rumble of an explosion sent the platform beneath their feet shivering.
27: DETONATION
“Go!” Thad barked, and the small band broke apart, each person racing to their assigned areas. They’d be able to cover all but the wide-open spaces around the three pools and the main entrance. These, Boone would cover on his own from his position high above their heads. They’d meet up beneath the clock tower once all threats had been neutralized.
{That explosion’s not a good sign,} Gabe sent privately as Thad headed for the lazy river.
{Yeah, but think, ami. They scale this up from theft to murder, they’ll never see starlight again and they know it,} he said. {Plus, that didn’t feel like a big boom to me. Felt more like a ‘scare the shit out of them’ boom, if you know what I mean.}
{Still, we’d better wrap this up before they get desperate enough to escalate}, the agent warned.
{Ooh-rah.} Thad sent his agreement, cutting the connection as he hauled himself atop the thatched roof of a nearby hut that sold funnel cakes. The small standalone building didn’t have nearly the height of the clock tower the corporal was headed for, but it gave Thad a quick-and-dirty visual of his immediate surroundings.
It was enough. He caught sight of his next target, an enforcer. The man was bearing down on one of the smugglers, just outside the perimeter of the lazy river. The other man had holed up behind a half wall of fake rock that separated one of the park’s lavatories from the public area.
Hopping back down to the ground, he set off at a quick jog, weaving around abandoned food trays and discarded pool paraphernalia—towels, floats and the like—as he pushed toward his objective.
* * *
Before transitioning to Beryl’s space station, Chris Reid had spent decades commanding ships of war. He’d fired his share of missile salvos, and occasionally been on the receiving end when one impacted his own ship’s hull. He instantly recognized the shiver of an explosion traveling through a superstructure, transmitted through the soles of his feet. The accompanying low rumble merely confirmed it.
“Was that—?” Amy bit off the rest of her words, in response to his grim expression, no doubt.
“It was,” he confirmed, as panicked shouts sounded all around them. Where before there had been an orderly move from the pools into the concession huts, now there was a stampede.
People pushed against him in their haste to flee. Where they planned to go, he had no idea. He suspected they didn’t, either.
Abruptly he realized that the group of youngsters they’d been shepherding had been rent asunder. Two of the girls were still with them, Asha’s niece and one other. There was no sign of the other two.
“Stay together!” he shouted at Chase, motioning to his boy to lock arms with the kids on either side. “Get to the hut,” he instructed Amy. “I’m going to go round up the rest.”
Her worried gaze met his. “Be careful.”
He smiled. “Always.”
28: UNEXPECTED COMPANY
Clock Tower
It took a few minutes for Boone to reach the base of the clock tower. When he did, he stood studying it for a moment before walking its perimeter.
Access must be from inside, he decided, seeing no obvious way to ascend. There was only one problem: the building’s ES field was already activated. Turning the corner, he found his solution in another group of civilians nearing the entrance. He fell in at the back of the crowd, slipping inside along with them.
A small voice sounded about chest high and to his left. “Are those real guns? Cool!”
It was followed by a gasp and a shouted, “Gun!” from the mother.
Quickly swinging the HK around so that it hung from its strap behind his back, Boone raised both hands and said with as much reassurance he could pour into his voice, “Don’t worry ma’am, I’m Corporal Brady with the Geminate Marines.” He pitched his voice to be heard over the murmurs of those assembled. “We have some intruders we’re tracking down, but it’s all under control. You’re safe in here. I just need to get to the top of the clock tower.”
People stared back at him, mouths agape. One man asked, “Wait. So, there really isn’t any damage to the sky park’s ES field?”
Boone shifted uncomfortably. “We can’t say for certain,” he hedged, “so for now, it’s safest for you to remain inside. If you see someone dressed like a visitor, feel free to let them in. They’re safe. The people we’re after are dressed like park employees.”
He turned to make eye contact with the lone park employee standing beside the store’s register. The girl was young and looked half scared out of her mind. Her hand hovered, frozen, beside a holographic
control board.
“Ma’am, I assume you know most of the employees here on sight?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he cleared his throat and looked pointedly at her. “Ma’am?”
With a start, she nodded.
“How long have you worked here?”
“This is my second summer.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“Good. That’s good. Then you’ll recognize the regulars. Can you show me how I can access the clock tower?”
Her hand swung away from the controls, where he felt certain it had been hovering over a panic button, to point toward a display in the back.
“Wait, does the ES field cover the roof?”
Boone turned back to the crowd to see who had spoken. A young girl had stepped forward, concern on her young face. Concern for him.
Boone knelt so that he was at eye level with her. Smiling, he admitted, “Probably not. But that’s what the Geminate Navy does. We go into dangerous situations, so you don’t have to.”
“But there’s really no breach out there, is there?” The girl’s father pushed forward, laying a hand on her shoulder. His expression was skeptical.
“Honestly, sir?” Boone kept his tone neutral as he rose to his feet. “I can’t really say.”
“Can’t? Or won’t?” The man’s voice grew louder, more belligerent.
Boone locked his expression down as he turned to face the man. “We’ve secured four intruders already. Armed intruders. In every encounter, we had an audience. Onlookers, who behaved as if what they witnessed was some sort of entertainment.” He let his gaze sweep those assembled, and he added, “Any one of you could have been hit by a stray round. Now, the Navy will go to great lengths to protect Alliance citizens, but organized crime doesn’t much care.”
Boone crossed his arms and waited. He’d placed as much emphasis as he could on the phrase ‘organized crime.’ He saw comprehension begin to dawn upon the faces around him as his words sank in.
With a chagrined expression on his face, the girl’s father stepped back, raising a hand in apology. “Sorry,” he told Boone. “We’ve traveled light years from Earth, colonized distant star systems, and figured out how to bend spacetime, but I guess we still haven’t figured out how to cure stupid, have we?”
That pulled a wry grin from Boone.
“Ooh-rah,” he agreed. He backed away, unslinging the Kingsolver as he headed for the display the woman had pointed out to him. Behind it, he saw a door with a discreet ‘exit’ sign projected above it. Nodding politely to the park employee, he opened it to find a set of narrow stairs. At the top was a second door, marked ‘emergency exit only.’ He pushed through it and stepped out onto the roof.
Boone spotted the man immediately. He was kneeling beside a block of equipment that looked like it had seen more than its share of repairs in its lifetime. He lowered the Kingsolver’s barrel until it pointed straight at the man, who had turned startled eyes his way.
“Who are you, and what are you doing up here?” he demanded.
* * *
The sound of footsteps at the roof’s door had Jay blanking the small, portable holofeed and spinning around to face the surprise visitor. The sight of a total stranger, one who obviously wasn’t with Mastai’s enforcers, was a shock and completely unexpected. And it wasn’t something Jay had factored into the mix.
The man’s bearing screamed military. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t someone to mess with; the business end of a very lethal-looking rifle made that very clear.
“Hands in the air and show me some ID,” the man barked.
It wasn’t too difficult to appear startled and a bit freaked out. “I work here.” Truth. “I’m with Maintenance.” Also truth. “Security reported there was some sort of jamming device in place on the platform somewhere. I was sent out to find it.” Lie.
The man holding the rifle relaxed his hold slightly. “They’re called swampers,” the warrior said, stepping carefully forward.
His gaze was intense and unblinking, the effect more than a little unsettling. This man was clearly the predator, Jay his prey.
“Oh, really? I, ah, wouldn’t know.” Yeah, very convincing there, Jay. Maybe it’s time to change the subject. “So, what are you doing up here?”
Annoyance flitted across the man’s face at the question, and Jay realized another thing: this soldier hadn’t expected to find anyone on the roof. This meant he was up here for some other reason, one Jay suddenly desperately wanted to know.
“It doesn’t matter. You should get below with the others. Didn’t you hear the SI’s warning?”
Jay tried out a shaky laugh. “Yeah, well, I thought it might be more important to find this jammer-swamper thing and get it turned off so we could call in reinforcements, you know?”
The man blinked at that but said nothing. Jay tried to get a read on the warrior, but the man’s expression had gone perfectly blank. Whoever the guy was, he was good.
He nodded toward the jumble of comm arrays and repeater stations. “You find anything in there that doesn’t belong?”
Jay swung around to stare at the messy rooftop collection. The park’s aging network node had a bit of a Frankenstein look to it, thanks to the expansion bays the unit had acquired over the decades as upgrades were made. This, plus the snarl of cabling, both inside and out, made it the ideal place to stash the swamper. Tucked in behind one of the arrays, it looked as integral to the unit as anything else did.
“Everything here’s supposed to be here,” Jay evaded and then motioned to the rifle in the man’s hand. “What’s that? It looks a bit more official than anything I’ve seen. You with the Navy?”
“Marines,” the man said dismissively, his gaze already focused outward. He walked over to the half wall that ran round the edge of the small rooftop and laid a hand upon its ledge. He peered over it and then straightened and looked around.
Jay stepped up beside the man. “How’d the Marines get notified so quickly? Did they send up an entire squadron of you folks or something?”
“No one sent us,” he said. “We were up here on our day off.”
“We?” Jay knew instantly that the single, sharp word had been the wrong thing to say.
The man’s head turned, eyes narrowing in suspicion.
Backpedaling, Jay shrugged nervously. “Security said there was a shootout down there, that someone dressed to look like a park employee was walking around firing at people. They said he wasn’t alone.”
The man’s expression turned hard. “He’s not.”
“Yeah, well…” Jay’s throat cleared. “I’d feel a hell of a lot better if I knew there were more of you up here to take these folks out, is all.”
The man said nothing to that, just walked over to where the comm node closest to the roof’s edge butted up against its half wall. He pressed down on it, as if testing its steel housing.
Jay watched in frustration as the young Marine continued to examine his surroundings. It was sheer, rotten luck that some vacationing Navy guy would stumble upon Petra’s operation today, tell his buddies about what he’d found, and then decide to put a stop to it. Apparently, he and his friends had already taken out Bobby and Ike. Who knew how many enforcers they’d already bagged?
Did they have to be so damned good at what they did? They’re going to ruin everything!
Jay had worked too hard to orchestrate the conflict between these two groups to let this stand. What had started out as a nice, promising little war was now in serious jeopardy of fizzling completely out. Not even a skirmish, unless one counted the takedowns the military was enacting. It was all thanks in large part to the Marine standing mere meters away.
Jay sized the man up, coming to a fast conclusion that it would be impossible to go up against him; the disparity in their respective sizes and skill sets was far too great. Still, there had to be something that could be done to upend this balance of power…
Jay’s eyes landed on the toolbox sitting unobtrusively beside
a large metal enclosure, and abruptly recalled there was one other thing that might throw a wrench into the works for this man and his team.
“There are six of us. Don’t worry; we’ve got this.”
The voice was startlingly close. Jay whipped around and stared, shocked at how silently the man moved.
He lowered his chin, expression uncompromising. “You need to go. Now. Join the others downstairs.”
“Yeah, umm, you’re right. I’ll just…” Feeling uncomfortably exposed, Jay sidled away from the man, hastened over to the toolbox, scooped it up and ran for the exit.
Letting out a breath when the Marine turned his attention elsewhere, Jay slipped through the door and then used the electronic master key to lock it. It probably wouldn’t stop the man, but it might slow him down a bit.
With a new goal in mind, Jay wove through the people crammed into the store below, exited onto the sidewalk, and turned toward Maintenance, where a small yet powerful spherical device lay hidden, deep inside a locker.
* * *
Since arriving to discover the roof already occupied, Boone had maintained a careful but discreet watch over the maintenance worker. He’d known instantly that she was a woman masquerading as a man, but hadn’t let on that he knew. He had some thinking to do about it first.
As a general rule, Boone tended to respect others’ privacy, something he understood and even craved, himself. Given the circumstances, he couldn’t help but wonder about the woman’s motivation. Her actions had a certain furtiveness to them that raised his suspicions.
Clearly, she was an employee. She was able to access the door, she’d been working on the equipment, she had no trouble turning off the ES field to get back downstairs. What he hadn’t figured out yet was if she was that elusive sixth person on the gun runner’s team, the one the leader had referred to as Jay, their ‘inside man.’
Sudden Death (A Military Sci Fi Thriller) (The Biogenesis War Files) Page 13
