Sudden Death (A Military Sci Fi Thriller) (The Biogenesis War Files)

by L. L. Richman

  {Negative. Wake turbulence interfered with my final shot. Waiting for it to settle.}

  Even as he sent the thought, he could see that the turbulence was dying down. It, too, had a rhythm. Pushing every other thought from his mind, Boone settled behind his scope once more and began the targeting dance…

  45: POSSE COMITATUS

  Tiki hut

  Saltwater pool

  Chris Reid stood between the people crammed inside the concession stand and the woman holding a pistol against Tatiana’s temple. His back was to his wife, his son, and the rest of the evacuees. The ES field that hemmed them in glowed faintly around the edges of the hut, backlighting their captors in an eerie and vaguely threatening glow.

  Chris knew his body wouldn’t provide much protection against the threat, but it was all he had to offer, and he’d be damned if he would stand by while some cartel thief threatened innocents.

  “You need to keep a cool head,” he advised the woman holding the gun on them. “Theft of military munitions is something you can walk away from after serving some time. Hell, kidnapping, too. But you’re going to want to think long and hard before you use that thing.”

  He tilted his head to indicate the pistol in her hand. She was a little more than two meters away. He’d tried to maneuver himself closer, find a way to get inside her guard and disarm her, but the woman was nervous, not stupid.

  She’d hit him with a hard look and then ordered him to step back. He retreated, but not by much.

  “You wound or kill any innocents and the Alliance court system will not let you walk. You know this.” He kept his voice low and even. He let the weight of his words carry the implied threat.

  She glared back at him. “What are you, a lawyer?”

  He gave an easy shrug and smiled, playing into her assumption with his non-answer. His attention ratcheted up a notch when her eyes darted to one side, and she brought her free hand up to her ear.

  He hadn’t noticed her wearing an earpiece, but her mouth was working as if there was something foreign and uncomfortable in it. He’d heard of such devices, ancient bone transmitting technology that operated on underpowered, narrowband frequencies too low for the jammer to block.

  As a former boat driver, Chris knew a Dazzler’s core targeted only the civilian and military comm frequencies currently in use. The fact this woman had such a device was proof that someone had come prepared to circumvent the jammer once it was turned on.

  * * *

  {I’m on my way to the tiki hut,} Asha said, projecting steel into her voice. {Going to recon.}

  Thad sent her a headshake. {Can’t let you do that, cher.}

  {My niece is in there, Thad.}

  “I know. That’s exactly why you shouldn’t be the one to go,” a low voice called out behind her.

  Asha spun to find Thad closing on her position. She tilted her chin in the direction of the cables that flew above their heads.

  “I thought you were needed elsewhere.”

  Thad crossed his arms and sent her a flat stare. “Boone’s got it handled. Gabe’s on his way, too.”

  Asha licked her lips. By the look on Thad’s face, it was going to take some convincing before he’d see things her way.

  An incoming ping from Chris Reid had her holding up her hand. She brought Thad in on the conversation.

  {I have an idea,} the Navy man said. {You wouldn’t by chance happen to have come across a device that looks like an earpiece or a microphone, would you?}

  Asha and Thad exchanged a surprised look.

  {Actually, yes. One fell out of the mouth of an enforcer we took captive. Agent Alvarez called it a molar mic,} she told him.

  {Why, Colonel?} Thad asked.

  {Because the woman holding Tatiana hostage has one. She’s using it to communicate with someone, I think. Maybe you can use it to talk to her.}

  “Worth a try,” Thad murmured. “Especially since Gabe’s en route with the damn thing in his pocket.”

  {Thanks for the heads up,} she told Reid. {We’ll do that.}

  * * *

  By the expression on her face, the person on the other end wasn’t giving her news she wanted to hear. Suddenly, she spoke, and Chris realized why.

  “Tell Aunt Asha that I have her damn niece,” she snarled. “And if she wants to see her alive, you’ll all back the hell off and give me safe passage to the loading dock.”

  Chris kept his face impassive, but inwardly, he smiled. Based on her words, Asha’s team had figured out a way to communicate with her.

  Mentally, he composed what he was about to say with the same care he would approach a war game on the Navy ship he'd once commanded. While she was distracted, he used that opportunity to take another step toward her.

  “You’ve swamped the pubnet,” he said, pushing his words to Asha at the same time so that she could hear. “No signal can get through. But even if they could call for reinforcements…they wouldn’t. It’s illegal. Posse Comitatus.”

  The woman’s expression morphed from irritation at his interruption to confusion—exactly as Chris had hoped. Very few civilians were familiar with Posse Comitatus. He was banking that she didn’t know about it either.

  “The military has no jurisdiction inside Geminate space,” he explained. “Besides, there’s no Naval officer around to authorize such a takedown,” he carefully emphasized the key words he wanted them to hear. “Even if there were, they’d be crazy to try to take on an armed cartel agent, holding this many people hostage.”

  Her glare heated. She advanced on him, her pistol swinging away from Tatiana to center on his chest. He now had an opportunity to disarm her, but he’d have to do it carefully, and he’d have to do it fast. There were too many civilians around who could get hurt.

  Come on, he thought, just a little bit closer…

  “Look,” he added, “with the pubnet down, there’s no way anyone could inform the authorities about this anyway. Besides, you’re the one with the weapon—”

  On those last words, he moved. He grabbed the hand holding the gun, forcing it down. Something shifted in her eyes and she went wild, fighting like a woman possessed. Chris recalled too late that, though he kept himself fit, he was a man who’d been driving a desk for the past two decades. Perhaps this hadn’t been the smartest move after all.

  He heard three fast pops, felt something impact his torso. He took a step back, surprise suffusing him. That same surprise seemed to cross the cartel woman’s face, as if her finger had involuntarily tightened on the trigger without her conscious knowledge of it.

  He took another step when he heard his wife scream his name. He turned toward it, some vague sense of urgency telling him he needed to go to her, while the analytical part of his brain registered that he’d been shot.

  For some reason, his legs weren’t working right. He fell, eyes widening in horror as his eldest son rushed toward the woman, rage written across his face.

  “Chase, no!” he shouted, but the words got stuck in his throat as something warm and wet clogged it, and the words came out more of a garbled whisper.

  He felt hands on his face, so warm, and looked up through blurred vision to see Amy, his wife, kneeling over him, a sharp, panicked expression on her face. She jerked her head up at the sound of their son’s voice.

  “You shot my dad! I’m gonna kill you!”

  The hard slap of a fist against flesh sounded as Chase’s voice cut off and another one took its place. “Kid, you just volunteered to be my next hostage.”

  Just before he lost consciousness, he heard the cartel woman who’d shot him order the ES field off.

  And then his vision tunneled into one narrow, dark hole…

  46: MAN DOWN

  Sky park grounds

  Approaching Tiki Hut

  Gabe grabbed Asha’s arm before she could launch herself down the pathway toward the tiki hut.

  “Wait up.” When she pulled against his hold, he gave her a slight shake. “Listen to me. We have a ma
n down—”

  “And a kidnapper holding my niece hostage,” she interrupted.

  “—so, when we go in, Thad and I will go after her,” Gabe said, and then talked over her incipient protests. “You’re on Reid. You’re the only one here who has a hope in hell of saving his life.”

  “That’s a low blow. You all have triage training, and the tiki hut won’t have anything but a standard med kit. You’re both capable of stabilizing him as well as I am,” she countered.

  Thad nodded toward two security men in park uniforms running their way. They carried a stretcher between them, loaded with paraphernalia. “Looks like your argument just flew out the window, cher.”

  “I ordered them to pack up and follow before I took off,” Gabe explained, turning back to Asha.

  Reluctantly, she nodded. “Copy. I’m on Reid.”

  After the security team handed over the medical supplies, Gabe and Thad helped Asha carry them to the tiki hut. As they neared the building, Asha tried repeatedly to raise Colonel Reid, but there continued to be no answer.

  They came to a stop well before they reached the hut. {Full recon before we approach,} Thad ordered.

  They split up, clearing the surrounding area.

  {Nothing. No evidence anyone’s nearby,} Gabe sent as they reconvened at the rear of the hut.

  {She’s got to be long gone by now,} Asha said.

  Thad inclined his head. {True, but I still want eyes on before we go in.}

  Asha shook her head. {Wish I’d thought to grab a canister of surveillance drones when I kitted up.} She pointed at the back entrance and then up to the roof. {I’m lightest, least likely to be heard. I’ll go up, peer inside.}

  {Don’t forget the basics. Stay frosty, cher.}

  Asha spared Thad a mildly peeved look. {Yes, my niece is involved, but this isn’t my first rodeo.}

  {It’ll be your first that involves family. That changes things. OODA. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.}

  Not bothering with an answer, she marched over to the hut and began stacking nearby boxes until they were tall enough to gain roof access. From there, she eased her way down the hut’s sloping front until she came even with the glowing blue light of the ES field lining its edge. Sliding forward until her head just crested the roof’s threshold allowed her to take a quick, careful peek at the tableau inside. She pulled back and ordered her optics to display what the brief glimpse had recorded, then sagged in relief when she caught sight of Tatiana.

  {Target’s gone,} she reported. {I’m going to drop down, get them to turn off the ES field.}

  Her comment was met with two-clicks.

  She grabbed two fistfuls of faux palm leaves in her hands, piked herself into a forward roll over the edge, and dropped lightly to the ground below.

  The movement caught the attention of several park visitors. Frightened faces looked back at her, and she abruptly realized they were staring at her P-SCAR, slung tightly across her chest. Lifting her hands, palms open, she smiled encouragingly and took slow, deliberate steps forward. Stopping just outside the ES field, she motioned for them to let her in.

  There were several headshakes, and no one ventured near the hut’s controls. Quashing her frustration, Asha peered around those in front, trying to find her niece. She didn’t see her, but she did see Amy, the colonel’s wife. Pointing frantically at the woman whose tear-stained face remained downturned, hands cradling her husband’s head, Asha mimed that she was here to render assistance.

  One of the teens near the front turned to the woman and said something Asha couldn’t hear. When Amy looked up, her eyes widened in recognition. She shouted something to the people by the ES controls, beckoning wildly for Asha to come in.

  The moment they dropped, dozens of voices assailed her, all demanding to know what was going on.

  “Medic! Coming through,” she shouted in a voice that would have made her Drill Sergeant proud. Shoving her way to where Amy crouched, she knelt beside the fallen man.

  Amy Reid’s eyes met hers, the other woman’s desperate. “Please… do something.”

  47: RECALLED

  Transport outside sky park

  Once he and Gabe hauled the medical gear into the hut and handed it over to Asha, Thad pulled Davila off swamper duty long enough to use the private’s P-SCAR as a poor man’s scope. It wasn’t as good as having Boone on overwatch, but the PFC was able to use infrared to identify hot spots. Most weren’t moving; there were two that were.

  “The one by the town center’s most likely park security,” Gabe said thoughtfully. “Those men who delivered the gear to us.”

  Thad scraped a hand down the stubble that had begun to form on the side of his jaw. “Agreed, but we can’t afford to assume.” He shot a look at the agent. “You good with the town square again, while I track the other one?”

  Gabe nodded. “Makes sense. You’ve already cleared that lazy river area once. You know it better than I do.”

  That settled, the two men separated. Thad had just reached the border where the lazy river began when Boone called in over the net.

  {Target down,} he reported. {I’m going to take down the others, too, just to be safe.}

  The corporal’s voice was calm and easy. Unruffled, as if he were taking practice shots at the range, not hanging twenty-five kilometers above the planet’s surface, out an open cockpit door, and firing on a platform’s tether.

  Boone had asked his prisoner about each device’s yield. Thad was as surprised as the corporal had been to learn the woman neither knew nor cared. What kind of fucked up person does that?

  Thad stifled the urge to pepper him with questions. How many shots did it take to unseat the crawler? Did you have any trouble taking the shots? Any indication of failsafes?

  Thad forced his mind back on his own objective, the woman who, even now, was stealing through the dense undergrowth with a teen held at gunpoint.

  {Negative,} he told the young Marine. Quickly, he filled him in on the hostage situation. {Need you back inside, Marine, you copy?}

  {Yessir. On my way.}

  * * *

  The chop around the platform had kicked up since he’d taken down the crawler with the defective bomb. He peered through his scope’s optics and saw exactly what he expected—the second crawler he’d intended to target was bouncing around inside the viewfinder like a kid on a sugar high.

  Guess it’s a good thing I’ve been recalled, then.

  Disengaging the shuttle’s autopilot, he flipped the craft into a loop that would bring it even with the platform’s lower level. Sealing the cockpit’s outer door, he dropped the partition that separated him from the cabin, allowing the cockpit to repressurize.

  As he neared his destination, a warning popped up, alerting him that the sky park dock’s ES field was still up and that the landing would be aborted. Overriding the transport’s safety protocols, he forced the small vessel to land on the narrow lip that jutted out beyond the ES field. It was a tight fit, but by slewing the craft sideways, he managed to set it down. The transport’s magnetic locks secured the shuttle in place.

  A quick scan of the dock’s exterior revealed a maintenance door just to the left of its ES field generator. Boone grabbed the nitrox cylinder and reclaimed the strap he’d used as a sling for his rifle’s barrel.

  He stopped to add the strap to the restraints securing his prisoner, and then moved aft to the cramped cargo area. Sealing the partition that separated cabin from cargo hold, he donned the cannulas once more and cycled the shuttle’s rear hatch.

  Boone wasn’t sure how much air was left in the nitrox canister, so he wasted no time. Pulling Davila’s LockPik from his pocket, he slapped it onto the door’s keypad and silently urged the small unit to hurry up and work its magic.

  A few seconds later, he heard a click and a hiss as the maintenance door opened and its atmosphere evacuated. Boone stepped inside.

  The door slid shut behind him, and his optics cycled to night vision when the area didn’t a
utomatically illuminate. He was in a tunnel. Boone broke into a trot, rounding a corner and then coming to a stop when the short dogleg terminated at the main docking area.

  Closing the tunnel’s inner door behind him, Boone shut off the nitrox canister and dragged in a lungful of fresh air as he looked around. Built into the near wall were a series of lockers. He headed over to look inside. The first contained an atmospheric suit with a CO2 scrubber that looked like it had seen better days. He pulled it out and studied it carefully. The seals looked cracked, the material brittle where it had been folded.

  “Damn thing looks like it’s been stored in here longer than I’ve been alive,” he said under his breath. He knew beggars couldn’t be choosers, but he’d look long and hard for something else before he’d trust his life to that thing.

  He moved on to the next locker. This one looked promising. Sitting at the base of the locker was an ES field disruptor. Unlike the atmospheric suit, the disruptor looked well-maintained. Boone stared at it for a long moment, debating the wisdom of using the disruptor to breach the airlock’s ES field versus trying to find a way into the sky park’s system and cycling the airlock using a computer override.

  He was familiar enough with disruptors; they were commonly used by his platoon to breach abandoned mining platforms where smugglers had holed up. But they took time. It wasn’t an easy feat, either. ES fields looked transparent to the naked eye, but they were anything but that. The two-layer quantum stasis field was a topological construct, generated from a toroidal field-inside-a-field, with dark matter axions comprising the inner ring that was then encased in an electromagnetic field.

  The quantum stasis was strengthened through thousands of invisible threads spun from 2-D graphene. Each time an ES field was turned on, the filaments cascaded from the field’s frame, directed along a precise path governed by the axion-EM field.