by A. K. DuBoff
Monica still had her eye on one Reader who she’d be all too eager to turn into her pet. And if the Guard landing vessel parked a kilometer away was any indication, Kira would be walking right through the front door and into her hands any minute.
CHAPTER 18
“Beast mode activated,” Kira said with a grin to her team, detaching her plasma rifle from her back.
“Be careful in there.” Concern filled Leon’s face, but his tone was confident, making Kira feel even more energized.
Nia cast another appraising look between Kira and Leon. “It’s the enemy that should be worried.”
“They’ve messed with the home of someone on the best tac team in the whole foking Tararian Guard.” Ari’s eyes shined. “And we won’t stand for injustice.”
Kyle laughed. “You sound like a recruitment ad.”
“I would make a great spokesperson, and you know it,” Ari replied with a grin.
“Or there’s Kira’s latest video entry,” Nia offered.
Kira rolled her eyes while she grabbed her helmet from the mount on her shoulder. “I have a very long memory, my friends. Payback is cumulative.”
“It’s all empty threats. Secretly she likes it,” Kyle said.
“I guess you’ll just have to wait to find out.” Kira slipped on the helmet, and her vision was replaced by the view on her HUD. “Comm test?”
Her team slipped on their own helmets and sounded off.
“Check clear,” Kira acknowledged. She turned back to Leon and activated the external speaker on her armor. “See you soon.”
He nodded. “I’ll be here.”
Kira returned the suit settings to internal comms and then loped down the hill in the direction of the MTech lab. Her unit and three other teams of four fanned out in formation.
Another two dozen Guard soldiers had gone ahead to scope out the opposition from inside a tree grove that stretched between the landing area and MTech. Her team slowed as they entered the trees, eventually arriving at the other side of the grove near the MTech entrance. The advance teams had taken up positions along the tree line.
Kira pressed her back against a tree with sightlines to the entry door and peered around the trunk. The lab’s parking area nearby was now occupied by a matte gray transport ship. Two military assault mechs were patrolling the entrance, accompanied by eighty visible soldiers, plus the automated assault gun on the roof.
“Well, those weren’t there before,” Kira said on the private channel to her team.
“Yeah, figured you probably would have mentioned that,” Kyle replied.
“What do you think—MTech private security or Mysaran military?” she asked.
Nia peeked around her own tree. “Tough call. I don’t see any distinguishing marks on the ship or mechs.”
“My guess is mercs,” Kyle chimed in.
“I’m inclined to agree,” Kira replied. She switched over to the common band for all teams present. “Looks like the welcoming committee sent us our favorite kind of gift basket. Let’s go for a meet and greet, but try not to damage the goods.”
Acknowledgements lit up on the periphery of her HUD. She took a deep breath and centered her mind. “Go!”
As one wave, the forty Guard soldiers dashed across the darkened plane toward their target.
The mechs’ thermal sensors picked them up first, and they pivoted their mechanized firing heads toward the group. Each fired an RPG, but the team’s distributed formation made the mechs’ aim ineffective, and the grenades detonated on open ground between two soldiers.
The Guard soldiers shook off the blast and continued their charge.
Enemy mercs opened fire with a mix of kinetic rounds and plasma blasts, illuminating the battlefield in a purple electrical glow. With the strobing weapons fire, the action unfolded in freeze-frame motion before Kira’s eyes, and her HUD adjusted to minimize the fluctuation in light level.
She spotted a clear path to the right that would take her near some rock formations, and she sprinted down the hillside, firing at the ground near the enemy mercs in the front line to drive them into a tighter clump.
Sensing that the grenades hadn’t hit their marks, the mechs switched to plasma beams. Two beams shot out from each mech, slicing scorched trenches through the ground.
Foking beam weapons! Kira dove and rolled to the side to barely avoid one of the glowing beams as it crisscrossed in a random pattern across the field.
Her powered armor’s integrated electromagnetic field could deflect plasma fire for short durations, but more than one full second of exposure and the nanocarbon would turn to useless goo.
Kira leaped to avoid another beam arc and took cover behind a boulder protruding from the ground five meters away.
She took aim with her plasma rifle around the edge of the boulder, firing a shot into the rotator plate between the first mech’s upper weapons array and main body. The mech lurched backwards as a shower of sparks and smoke erupted.
The second mech pivoted its beams toward Kira’s position.
That wasn’t part of the plan! She ducked behind the boulder just in time to avoid a clean plasma sweep through the air where her head had been moments earlier. The rock wouldn’t last another three seconds.
“I need some cover!” she shouted into her comm, then dashed out from behind the boulder to the left.
Her team responded in force, laying waste to the second mech and then finishing off the first.
The next critical target was the gun on the roof—no armor-melting plasma rounds, but a couple high-powered ballistic rounds could be even more dangerous when their aim was true.
Kira strafed diagonally toward the entrance door. Her fire combined with the team’s quickly tore the gun to shreds.
Seeing their main line of defense deteriorating, most of the armored mercs pulled back to the main entrance door, but others held their ground; some brave souls even began advancing toward the approaching soldiers.
“Non-lethal shots,” Kira reminded her people over the common channel. They switched over to handguns.
The soldiers took aim with sonic blasts, but the mercs appeared to have in-ear comms, and the weapons had no effect.
Just had to make things difficult! Kira switched her handgun to kinetic rounds and ran to a rock twenty meters from a group of five mercs who’d opted to seek cover in some shrubs. Bad move, fellas.
Kira lined up a shot using the aim assist on her HUD and fired a kinetic round, catching one merc in his right thigh.
He dropped to the ground with a yelp, scrambling to get his rifle back in firing position. His comrades looked around wildly for the source of the shots while she let loose four more shots. If these guys were military, then the Mysarans’ armor had nothing on the Guard’s. Unfortunately, shooting the mercs in their legs only served to immobilize them. She ultimately needed them unconscious, but so long as their comms remained in, the sonic stun mode on her weapon was useless.
Two of the mercs squeezed off poorly aimed shots in her direction, having finally located her, and she shot both of them in their dominant arm.
Kira cycled through the comm frequencies until she spotted an active channel not controlled by the Guard. This must be them. She opened a link. “So, I really don’t want to hurt you because I know you’re just the hired help, and probably underpaid, at that. If you want to take out your comms, I’ll just knock you out and we’ll call it good. Otherwise, I’ll put a bullet in each of your arms. Up to you.”
One merc laughed. “Is this a foking jo—”
Kira shot him in his right arm. “No joke.”
He let out a cry of agony and ripped out the comm earbuds with his good arm. His companions followed suit.
“There! Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Kira shouted at them using her external comm. She switched her handgun to the sonic pulse mode and fired.
They dropped to the ground.
The rest of the Guard soldiers had already dealt with the remaining m
ercs around the door. Kira ran toward one of the mercs who was still conscious, having been at the periphery of the sonic blasts’ cone. She kicked his rifle away from where it had fallen next to him.
“Who do you work for?” Kira asked, pointing her handgun in his face for good measure.
“MTech hired us!” The man cowered with one hand in the air while the other gripped his bleeding knee.
“Yeah, no shite. But who are you?”
“My name is Anders,” he replied.
Kira groaned. “No, who do you work for? Mysaran military, merc…” She couldn’t form a direct link in his mind due to the full helmet on her armor, but she sent out a subtle telepathic prompt to facilitate his response.
Anders swallowed. “We’re mercs, but my unit is Mysaran ex-military. We’ve been stationed in a moon base for three years—get a call out on ops now and then, like today.”
“Always for MTech?”
“Recently, yes, but there have been others. I don’t remember the names.”
His tone indicated he was speaking the truth, so Kira released her hold on him and removed the pistol from his face.
“Time for a new career,” Kira told him.
Twelve Guard soldiers were working their way through the mercs, applying stasis cuffs that would anchor them to the ground, with their hands and feet tethered behind their backs. It would be uncomfortable with bullet wounds, but that’s what they got for resisting.
Kira handed over the merc she’d questioned to her comrade and met up with the rest of her team at the entry door. Well, what was left of the entry door. The previous engagement had shattered even the ballistic glass and left scorch marks and holes along the once-pristine back wall.
“That’s convenient.” Kira walked right in.
— — —
“Shite! What are we going to do?” Jared paced across the observation room, distracting Monica from her work.
“Let them come. This is a necessary phase of our plan,” she soothed.
The newest test subjects were locked in their holding cells, useless to her after the mistake with the latest nanite strain. Monica needed her new subject to come looking for her.
But first she had to lull the Guard into a false sense of security. They’d need a challenge to overcome—a distraction to make them feel victorious so that the next phase could unfold just like she and her collaborators had planned.
“Release the Stage Two subjects,” Monica instructed her companion.
“But they… We’ll be ripped to shreds! And then they’ll be on the loose!”
“We’ll barricade ourselves in the back lab and then wait for the heroes to arrive. They’ll take care of the rest.” She calmly rose from her seat and strolled toward the sealed room.
Jared sat in stunned silence.
“Or stay here. I don’t really care,” Monica added.
He hurried after her.
All they needed was one viable sample; that was the deal with the collaborators. Once Kira was transformed and had a grasp of her abilities, she could be presented as the deliverable that would ensure Monica’s bright future. All of the pieces were almost in place.
— — —
Colonel Kaen didn’t like the way things had gone so far. It was one of those hunches he just couldn’t shake—the kind he’d gotten on critical ops his entire career. But this… this was even more intense. He was certain this was one mission for which he shouldn’t be on the sidelines.
Needing to clear his head, Kaen excused himself from the communications hub set up outside the landing craft.
He released a long breath and began pacing toward the far side of the ramp. As he came around the slope, Kaen spotted Leon Calleti staring into the dark in the direction of the MTech lab.
“Can’t see much from here,” Kaen said by way of greeting.
“Yeah, I know.” Leon sighed. “I don’t want to be in there, but I also don’t like being left out here.”
“You care about her, don’t you? Kira.”
Leon swallowed. “I’d given up on ever having anything with her a long time ago, but now I’m not sure what the future holds.”
“Didn’t quite expect that turn when I set her up with you as the local contact for this op,” Kaen said with a chuckle.
“Maybe it was inevitable.”
“Well, if you go down that route, you’ll need to get used to her being in situations like this.”
“I know. That prospect doesn’t thrill me, but we can’t have career decisions control all aspects of our lives.”
“Guard is life, for many.”
“And for Kira?”
Kaen shook his head. “Kira will always find a way to have what she wants. If that’s you, you’re a lucky man. And if she decides that you’re dirt under her fingernails…” The colonel chuckled softly. “In that case, I wouldn’t want to be you.”
“We’ll see what happens after this is over.”
“Indeed.”
They stood in silence for a minute, staring into the dark.
“We could use you in there,” Kaen said. “Once we have the access codes from the director, you’d be an asset to help navigate the computer network and retrieve the relevant information. No one on my team is particularly versed in genetics or nanotech, so it’d be difficult to know what’s important.”
Leon hesitated. “Kira told me to stay here.”
“Once the all-clear is given, it’ll be perfectly safe.”
“All right,” Leon agreed after a short pause.
Kaen nodded. “I’ll tell you when. Standby.”
CHAPTER 19
The MTech lobby was clear, but Kira knew that Monica wouldn’t have only one line of defense. “There have to be other mercs,” Kira said over the internal comm system to the soldiers inside. “Not that it was an insignificant force out there, but that transport ship can hold way more.”
“The facility is set up in wings, correct?” Kyle asked.
“Yeah, behind those three doors there,” Kira pointed to the access points around the lobby, “and the hidden D Wing. My guess is the additional mercs are camped out in each of those corridors.”
“Waiting for us to go in?” Nia speculated.
“If they’re smart—” Kira cut off when she heard the telltale clink of a concussion grenade hitting the tile floor.
She dove to the ground, facing toward the exit. A blast rippled through the air, rattling what remained of the windows. The pressure wave caused the inner padded layer of her armor to cinch protectively around her.
Kira landed hard and skidded across the floor. Her armor filtered out the worst of the grenade’s punch, but her ears were ringing slightly. She looked behind her to see where the weapon had come from and saw that the door to C Wing was ajar.
“C Wing!” she shouted over the comm. “Anyone hurt?”
Acknowledgements lit up on her HUD that there were no injuries, and the soldiers dispersed around the lobby to find the best line of sight to the enemy.
Kira pressed her back against a concrete support column and took a quick look at the enemy’s position. She moved her head back behind her cover and then brought up the still image on her HUD. The door to C Wing was now half open, indicating that mercs were likely behind the two partially open doors to either side of the passageway. Given the fortress-like construction, the doors were likely rated to withstand the kinetic weapons she had on hand; however, concentrated plasma fire was sure to do the trick.
While the intent was to limit casualties, force needed to be met with force.
“Let’s drive them to the back of the hall. It ends in an elevator, so they won’t have far to go,” she told her team.
She grabbed both concussion grenades from her belt clip and lobbed them through the opening. That ought to send them running.
A second later, Kira heard a stampede of footsteps as the mercs retreated further into the corridor. The grenades exploded just inside the opening.
“There’s
no exit! May as well come out now with your hands up,” she called to the mercs while the debris settled. No response. “Well, I offered.”
With a signal over the comm, the Guard soldiers released a barrage of sonic blasts, advancing toward the open corridor.
To Kira’s consternation, she didn’t hear any mercs drop to the floor. “They might have sound-cancelling comms in,” she told her team, switching her gun to kinetic rounds.
She was about to reposition to get a better look down the corridor when a miniature armored assault mech sped into view from down C Wing. You have got to be kidding me! Without hesitation, Kira whipped her plasma rifle from her back and fired at the mech.
Her team had done the same, and the gun mounted to the top of the mech became a glowing molten mass. Disarmed, the mech reversed its treads and zoomed back into the corridor at full speed.
Shouts rang out from the corridor, followed by a crash, an explosion, and the screech of rending metal.
What the…? Kira peeked from behind the support column. No mercs were visible, so she switched her handgun back to the sonic setting and advanced.
The C Wing entrance was in ruins, with a black scorch mark running its entire length where the molten mech must have rubbed against the surface as it sped past. Two mercs writhed on the ground with burns, and moans from others indicated that there were more injured further along in the corridor. Kira removed the comms from the two barely conscious mercs near her and knocked them out with a blast from her gun.
Ari and Nia passed her by to scout the hall.
“Oh, shite!” Ari exclaimed from ahead.
With the two mercs disabled, Kira ran to meet him.
Her eyes widened when she saw a pile of mercs to either side of the hall, seemingly torn apart by a frag grenade—and a mech-shaped hole in the elevator doors.
“Shite…” Kira breathed. “Did they try to blow the thing up?”
Nia shook her head. “Looks like it. Got themselves instead.”
Kira inspected the two piles of mercs but didn’t see any life signs. “Tough break. Should have come out when I offered.”