by Marko Kloos
“I don’t give a shit if he does, Corporal. Gyrofoils can get shot out of the sky. And I don’t ever want to get caught in the open again without hardshell around my body and a long-range weapon in my hands.”
If the deputy high commissioner thought Idina’s team overdressed for the mission, he didn’t show it when they boarded the gyrofoil together. Only Color Sergeant Sirhan, the leader of the DHC’s primary two-man protection team, gave her a raised eyebrow when she took her seat across the aisle from him and stowed her rifle in the weapons bracket next to her. She returned his gaze and shrugged a little, and he grinned. Both main bodyguards wore soft armor again, hidden away under their regular uniform tunics. Idina’s section, in contrast, were all clad in standard medium-weight infantry armor, the ideal compromise between protection and mobility.
The gyrofoil they had boarded was a reconnaissance version, fitted with big windows covered with Alon bulges that afforded an almost perfect all-round view of the craft’s surroundings. They lifted off from the Green Zone’s landing pad and climbed straight up at full power to remain in the protective envelope of the IBIS emitters on the government quarter’s perimeter. Idina watched as the Green Zone receded underneath the gyrofoil, a heavily guarded enclave that looked smaller and more inconsequential the higher the ship climbed.
The flight to the Gretian police headquarters took them across the center of the city, where the corporate high-rise buildings stood in a tight cluster around Principal Square. Even from a thousand meters up, the crowds on the square were evident, concentrated on the side that faced the park and the Green Zone.
It’s not all of them, Idina reminded herself. It’s not even most of them. The majority of the city’s population was not down there on the square and waiting for passing Alliance vehicles to vent their anger upon. Most of the civilians were down in the streets and in those office buildings, going about their daily business, not caring too much who set the rules as long as they had food and security and opportunities for leisure. The ones who cared enough to take to the streets were only a small fraction, and it was easy to forget that fact when the Alliance soldiers only dealt with that loud and hostile group. They all needed the JSP patrols to resume, if only as a reminder to everyone that both sides really were pulling on the same rope.
The Gretian police headquarters was part of a large semicircular complex on the western edge of the city’s center. Idina had been here numerous times in the course of her JSP patrols with Captain Dahl, and she knew the general layout of the police section well by now. The inside of the semicircle had dozens of landing platforms for patrol gyrofoils jutting out of the side of the building, and from the air, the arrangement of landing pads looked like a giant cascading staircase. The combat gyrofoil descended above the Gretian government complex and landed on one of the large platforms that made up the lowest level. Idina saw curious faces peering out of the nearby windows as the huge war machine settled on its skids, dwarfing the Gretian patrol gyrofoils parked nearby.
The Gretians came out to greet them as soon as they stepped out onto the platform. Idina didn’t recognize any of the police officers in the small group that was waiting for them, but she could tell by their insignia that they were all high ranking. She kept her distance as Color Sergeant Sirhan introduced the deputy high commissioner to the Gretian brass. When the higher-ups walked off toward the platform’s access doors, she motioned for her section to follow. Inside, the access door led out onto a wide catwalk that overlooked the atrium from three tiers up. In front of her, Colors Norgay slowed his step a little to let her catch up with him while the VIPs strode on toward the nearby skylift, still exchanging introductory pleasantries through their translator buds.
“They’re going to have their chat upstairs at the top tier,” Sirhan said.
“You want us to shadow you and wait outside the conference room?”
Sirhan shook his head.
“No need. You can stand by down here. Kapoor and I can handle the bureaucrats if they get testy.” He grinned at the apparent ludicrousness of the idea. “Take a break and get some tea. I’ll let you know when we’re coming back down.”
“You’re in charge,” Idina said. “We’ll keep an eye on things.”
He nodded and turned to hurry back to the group of VIPs, who were stepping onto the skylift that had just arrived.
Idina turned toward her section.
“You’ve been here before. You know where the canteen and the toilets are. We’re going to stand around and look important for a bit.”
Down in the lobby, a small group of Gretian officers in green-and-white patrol skin suits caught Idina’s eye. One of them was a woman who wore her hair in a familiar-looking silver-colored braid, and Idina smiled to herself in recognition.
“I’m going to go downstairs to get some tea from the canteen,” she said. “Shakya, put someone out by the gyrofoil. I’ll be right back.”
Down at the refreshment counter in the lobby canteen, she felt out of place for the first time as she chose a tea mix from the dispenser, keenly aware that most of the people sitting down for their breaks were shooting her curious glances. When her cup was full, she withdrew it from the machine and walked off hurriedly, trying not to rattle her rifle against her armor as she did.
The group of officers she had spotted earlier was still standing in the same place near the large reflecting pool in the center of the atrium. One of them spotted her as she approached and pointed her out to the others. When the woman with the silver braid turned around, Idina was briefly convinced she would be someone else, that her wishful thinking had led her to misidentify a stranger. But the face she saw was a familiar one, and she felt a swell of relief and joy.
“Sergeant Chaudhary,” Captain Dahl said with a smile. “What in all the worlds are you doing here? I thought you were long back home on Pallas.”
“I was supposed to be,” Idina said. “I was already on the shuttle. But then they canceled all troop movements when Rhodia was attacked. Now I’m stuck here for a while still.”
“Well, I cannot say that I am too sorry about that. It is very good to see you again.” Dahl offered her hand, and Idina shook it in the Gretian way, to the amused glances of Dahl’s colleagues.
“It’s good to see you, too,” Idina said. “How have you been these last few weeks?”
Dahl looked back at her fellow officers.
“I will be along shortly, right after I catch up with my friend here.”
The Gretians nodded and walked off without hurry, chatting among each other as they crossed the atrium toward the entrance vestibule.
“Things have been a little tense lately,” Dahl said. “I did not anticipate they would end our joint patrols so suddenly. On the bright side, I did not have to get used to a new Alliance patrol partner.”
“If that’s the good side of things, then I bring bad news. One of our Alliance commissioners is upstairs to talk to your bosses about resuming the JSP patrols. It appears someone agreed that it was a dumb and hasty decision.”
“Is that so?” Dahl smiled. “That would not be so terrible, I suppose. If that were to happen, are you going to be on patrol with us again?”
“Gods, I hope so,” Idina replied. “Right now I’m either supervising gate guards or I am babysitting bureaucrats.”
“So you did enjoy the police work we did together. And you kept telling me that you did not have the right temperament for the job.”
“I still don’t think I do. But at least it’s never boring.”
“And that is precisely why I have been wearing this uniform for as long as I have,” Dahl said.
From the landing terrace above, Idina heard the engine sound of another arriving gyrofoil, muffled by distance and multiple layers of building. Even in the middle of a new interplanetary crisis and increased civil unrest, the police headquarters didn’t seem much busier than before. Patrol units were arriving and leaving at a steady, seemingly unhurried pace. In the canteen where s
he had just gotten her tea, people were eating their lunches and chatting with each other. There was a sense of quiet, determined purpose to it all that she realized she had missed, something she hadn’t felt since they had assigned her to the Green Zone and given her military busywork for the sake of appearances. Dahl and her colleagues had no crisis of purpose, no doubts that the work they were doing was making a difference for the planet.
Outside, the engine sounds from the landing gyrofoil increased sharply in volume and pitch. Dahl looked up at the ceiling of the atrium.
“Colors—” someone from her section shouted on the tactical channel. Idina felt her next heartbeat all the way in her throat. For a moment, time seemed to stand still around her.
There was a resounding, ear-splitting crash from high above the atrium, the bright, sharp breaking of glass and the tortured scream of bending steel. A fraction of a second later, the entire building shook so violently that Idina and Dahl had to hold on to the side of the reflecting pool’s marble edge to keep from losing their balance. The lights in the atrium went out all at once.
Then the world blew apart around them.
The explosion was far beyond loud. It felt world ending, like someone had just dropped a nuclear charge at her feet and granted her three seconds of immortality so she could experience the primal force of the unleashed energy to the fullest before disintegrating. The shockwave knocked her down and ripped the rifle from her shoulder. All around her, bits and chunks of debris rained down from the atrium’s ceiling, leaving huge holes that belched fire and dark smoke. She saw Dahl on the ground nearby and crawled over to shield the other woman from the rain of glass and steel shrapnel with her hard-shell armor. Next to her, the water of the reflecting pool sloshed over the edges of its retaining wall in big swells, spilling on the floor and drenching her and Dahl. When Idina’s earpieces gradually restored her hearing after filtering the sound of the explosion, she heard people shouting and screaming, accompanied by a chorus of alarms going off in every direction. She looked up to see that the black smoke from the explosion was already clouding the semidarkness of the unlit atrium.
“We need to get out of here,” she said to Dahl. “Are you still with me?”
“I am here,” Dahl said in a voice that sounded like she had just woken up from deep sleep. “I think something just blew up in a big way.”
“That fucking gyrofoil,” Idina said. “Someone stuffed it with explosives and flew it into the side of the building. Come on. The ceiling is going to come down on us.”
She helped Dahl to her knees. The Gretian police captain coughed sharply and wiped her face with the back of her skin suit’s sleeve. Nearby, Idina saw her rifle in a puddle of water that was spreading steadily. She staggered over to it and picked it up. There was still a constant rain of debris coming from the ceiling, bouncing off the floor or splashing into the reflecting pool.
“Red Section, sitrep,” she said into her headset. “Talk to me, troopers.”
For a moment, there was silence on the channel, and the thought that she may have lost another section to an ambush made her nauseated with fear. Then someone shouted a curse into the tactical channel.
“Fuck,” Corporal Shakya said. “We just got it in the face, Colors. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Give me a head count.”
“I think Patel is gone. He was out by the ship. The whole platform collapsed. We’re all wounded up here, but we can move.”
“Good,” she said. “Find a way to get down here. We need to get out before the building comes down on us.”
“What about Colors Norgay and the DHC?”
Idina activated the sensor screen of her helmet, turned on the infrared filter, and tilted her head up to look at the floors above the atrium. There was a ragged hole in the building where the ceiling had been, and the entire side of the structure where the landing pads had been was now wide open to the outside. She could see hundreds of fires burning in the darkness on the shattered remnants of multiple floors. As she watched, a stream of burning fuel ran down from one of the floors and cascaded onto the marble of the atrium fifty meters away, where it set the debris of a smashed and overturned corner seat on fire. Somewhere high up in the building, a secondary explosion went off, but it sounded weak and feeble after the earthshaking bang of the first one. She switched to the platoon-level channel Norgay would be monitoring.
“Norgay, come in.”
There was no reply. She repeated the challenge two more times, but the channel remained ominously silent. Idina toggled back over to the section.
“He’s not on the network. Either his comms gear is out, or they’re gone.”
“We can’t leave them behind, Colors,” Corporal Shakya protested.
“We can’t go up there,” Idina said. “The whole side of the building is gone, and whatever’s left is on fire. If their kit is busted, they’ll make their own way out somehow. Norgay knows his business. Now get down here with your section. Acknowledge.”
“Affirmative,” Shakya said after a moment of tense silence. “Red Section is on the way.”
Next to Idina, Dahl coughed again. The air carried the acrid smell of burning fuel and melting polymers. Somewhere in the distance, a fire-suppression module released its contents with a loud hiss.
On the other side of the atrium, a loud alarm began to blare. Idina looked up to see that it was coming from the entrance vestibule, where the access control arch had started to blink in an insistent red to match the cadence of the alarm noise. Through the smoke and the falling debris, Idina saw the outlines of several people rushing into the vestibule from the outside. For a moment, she thought they were part of some rapid response team or maybe a returning patrol unit coming to help. Then she saw that everyone in the group was wearing military-grade armor and carrying bulky weapons. Several people were crossing the atrium toward the vestibule to escape the building, but instead of stepping aside to make way or helping, the first newcomer aimed his rifle and opened fire at the officers rushing toward the exit. The harsh staccato of automatic gunfire cut through the din of alarms and shouts.
“Contact,” she shouted into the section comms. “Entrance area, multiple shooters!”
Her rifle came up almost as if it were moving of its own accord. She used the low edge of the reflecting pool’s wall as a rest for her left elbow and took aim. The newcomers—she counted four—were moving like a well-drilled fire team, spreading out and covering each other as they passed out of the vestibule into the lobby. For a few moments, she couldn’t get a clear shot on either of them because of the people in the atrium who were now scattering in all directions before the gunfire. She watched in horror as one of the Gretian officers pulled out his own sidearm and fired at the closest attacker, then fell to a quick burst from the rifle of one of the others. Idina selected the armor-piercing ammunition feed, aimed her targeting reticule at the one whose armor had just shrugged off the round from the fallen officer’s sidearm, and fired a three-shot burst. The attacker collapsed, dropping his own rifle as he went down.
Next to her left ear, a gunshot boomed. She turned her head to see Dahl, both hands holding her sidearm, squeezing off another shot with careful aim. Idina shifted her aim to the next attacker. They were quickly recovering from the surprise of taking return fire from a heavy weapon. She grabbed Dahl and yanked her down behind the cover of the wall just as one of them fired a burst their way, and the impact of the rounds nearby sprayed them with water and chunks of rock and marble. Behind Idina and Dahl, something in the canteen had caught fire in a major way, and the flames were billowing out of the door, bathing this part of the atrium in flickering red-and-orange light.
The gunfire kept coming. From the way the sound of the bursts started diverging, Idina could tell that the remaining attackers were spreading out and covering each other, taking turns firing and moving.
Three left, she thought. They have to split up to get both sides. Pick the side that has less firepower
.
She switched her sensor filter to Sonic/Acoustic. In the noise and the chaos of the atrium, it was an imprecise way to locate her attackers from behind cover, but the gunshots were loud enough to show as a little light bloom on her screen even through the thick marble of the retaining wall. Two of them were moving off to the left to flank her from that side, which left one on the right. Idina motioned to Dahl to stay low and cover the left. Then she got up into a crouch and rushed right, glad for her low and stocky Palladian build.
When she came around the right side of the reflecting pool, the gunman closest to her still had his rifle aimed at the spot where she had opened fire initially. He saw her movement out of the corner of his eye and brought his rifle around, but she had hers aimed at him already, and her burst caught him in the middle of his chest plate and spun him halfway around. Idina fired another round into the side of his helmet as insurance, and he slumped over sideways. With her cover two steps behind her and her momentum going the other way already, she shifted her aim toward the remaining two attackers. For the second time since they had rushed into the place, she had taken them by surprise, but just as before, their reaction time spoke of excellent training. They shifted their stances as she took aim, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to drop them both before at least one of them got off a burst.
A short but intense fusillade of fire rang out from Idina’s left, multiple automatic rifles set to burst fire. She could see the bullets tearing through the armor of the two remaining gunmen in a dozen places, and they fell where they stood, crumpling to the ground in the particular way bodies did when they were already dead before they hit the floor. On the other side of the reflecting pool, in the firelit space between the edge of the pool and the canteen, Corporal Shakya and three of the Red Section troopers stood in firing stances, scanning the atrium for more attackers.
“Four down,” Idina sent on the section comms. “That’s all the ones that came in through that door. Keep that vestibule covered.”
