Navick cracked his neck and massaged a shoulder. “Try eighteen.”
“Damn. I hesitate to ask, but if they transmit their feeds to remote receivers, can’t they transmit them somewhere else? Why are you here?”
“Official guidelines about HumInt backing up automated intel whenever possible. And to be fair, I’ve had to modify their parameters a couple of times based on activity in the compound. Yes, it’s grunt work, but it’s probably necessary grunt work.”
“As opposed to my grunt work.”
Navick tilted his head in concession.
Chattered erupted on the mission channel, and David perked up, his gaze instinctively scanning the horizon. “The infiltration squads are moving in. Can you get a cam on the northwest perimeter?”
“I can do better.” Navick produced a scope and zoomed it in to the northwest.
David scooted closer to be able to see the scope’s screen. When their shoulders touched, he peered over at Navick. “You’re not going to try to kiss me, are you?”
“Nope. You are not my type.”
David frowned. It had been quite subtle, but the lieutenant had cased him on his arrival, and not for potential threats. “Are you sure?”
“I am. ”
“But—”
“You’re far too gregarious, and I suspect inherently arrogant. Also Russian—I mean, how have you not lost that accent yet? Give you a little time, and you’ll doubtless turn out to be a showboater, too.”
David frowned. “I won’t dispute the criticisms, but what you don’t know is that I’m also a fantastic cook—my mother taught me everything her mother knew. And I’ve been told on multiple occasions that I have seductive eyes.”
“Oh, dear Lord. You can stop now.”
“I also—”
“Please don’t tell me your ‘also.’”
David worked to keep a straight face. “Fine…consider me put in my place.”
“Good, because the fireworks are about to start.”
Instantly on alert, he watched the scope screen as a dozen figures advanced toward the south façade of the command center from the west. They neared to twenty meters—
“Tai’s on the move.”
—an explosion rocked the east third of the building. Flames and debris exploded outward, then collapsed in a concave arc as the roof crumbled. The Marines fanned out and rushed forward to infiltrate the structure.
Navick tracked movement on one of the holos, zooming in as close as the visual allowed. A figure moved slowly, possibly limping, down a hallway into a larger room. “The strike missed Tai, at least partially.”
“Shit.” David accessed the mission channel. “Commander, Target One is still active. I repeat, Target One is still active and on the move.”
Commander Becker (mission): “Copy that. Drone is tracking and—”
Laser fire erupted on the south side of the command center from both directions.
Captain Cassano (mission): “Turret fire on the perimeter! Take cover!”
Cadet Rove (mission): “I’m hit! ”
Commander Becker (mission): “Retasking drone to disable turrets.”
Screams filled the gaps in weapons fire to permeate the air. “Christ, they’re getting torn apart! Where the hell did the turrets come from?”
Navick frantically adjusted cam angles. “It looks as if…they must have been buried underground. Shielded by dampeners so we wouldn’t detect them.”
Smaller explosions plumed as the drone fired on the turrets. On the mission comm, calls for help overlapped one another.
“We have to help them.” David unlatched his Daemon and engaged the augmented barrel extension, braced on his elbows and sighted down in search of a target—
Navick’s hand landed on his arm. “You’ll alert them to our location.”
“Not in this chaos.” But he hesitated. Did it matter if the enemy knew where they were? They had the height advantage and could pick off advancing attackers without difficulty.
Unless they were going to do something crazy to salvage the operation.
He laid the weapon down and studied the scene. The crisscrossing fire died off as the drone succeeded in taking out the active turrets and adopted a defensive posture facing the command center. Protecting the Marines. Several guards rushed outward to continue the counter-attack, then were driven inside when the drone opened fire on them.
Captain Cassano (mission): “We’ve got four people down and five injured. We’ve retreated to defensible positions, but I don’t know how long they’ll stay that way. Orders, Commander?”
Commander Becker (mission): “We can’t let this opportunity to take out OWS slip away. Hold for reinforcements.”
From the Brisbane ? It would take twenty minutes at a minimum for a new squad to reach the compound, during which time Tai’s people could maneuver around the drone’s envelope and start picking off the pinned-down Marines. Plus, if they had hidden turrets, what else did they have ?
David breathed out through his nose. “Tai still on the grid?”
“Him and three of his people are moving around the interior. I assume he deduced he was being tracked and is trying to make that harder.”
“All right. The fact he didn’t blow the chemical factory when the attack began means he doesn’t want to blow the chemical factory. He thinks he can survive this, escape and even salvage some materials before the cavalry arrives to obliterate this place. I see one of three scenarios playing out here.
“One, the reinforcements from the Brisbane get inside and corner Tai, and he blows the factory when they breach his bunker of choice. Two, OWS takes out our people on the ground before the reinforcements arrive, then a new firefight erupts throughout the compound when they do arrive. If our people win, we’re back to the first scenario. Three, Tai and his people escape before the reinforcements arrive.”
“None of those scenarios have us winning.”
“They do not, which is why we need to make a fourth scenario happen. To start, we need to disable the remote detonation connection to the explosives rigged in the factory.”
Navick didn’t respond, and after a few seconds David looked over, eyebrow raised. “Well?”
“I’m thinking.”
“Think faster.”
Navick shot him a glare, but it faded as his lips pursed. “You’d need to get inside the factory. If I can see the circuit flow, I can tell you how to disable the signal receiver.”
David contemplated the large building down the hill. “I’ve got stealth, but we’ll need to distract the guards out front briefly. Assume for now we can make that happen. What do I do once I’m inside?”
David crept toward the chemical factory, shrouded in a cloaking shield cranked up to full. Distant sounds marked the standoff on the other side of the command center, but here there was only eerie silence.
Richard: “Your CO give you the go-ahead for this?”
David: “I didn’t exactly clear it through Becker. If I told him the plan, he’d order me to stay put and wait for the reinforcements. But the way I see it, I can’t disobey orders if I don’t have any.”
Richard: “It’s your career.”
David: “So far. Here goes.” Fifteen meters from the factory entrance, he palmed one of the grenades he’d brought. Cocked his arm back and let it sail.
It landed well past the two guards posted at the entrance and bounced off the façade of a nearby building. The next instant it detonated, tearing through the walls and igniting whatever was stored in it.
The guards jumped, then almost fucked the whole thing up by being unable to decide whether they should run toward the explosion or away from it. They finally opted for a third tactic, running parallel to the explosion like they intended to root out the perpetrators.
David sprinted lightly for the entrance and slipped inside, holding the door open an extra second to make certain the cloaked cam bot accompanying him made it in as well. The locations of the four explosive pac
kages were marked on his whisper, and he skulked along the right interior wall until he reached the first one. In a minor boon, no human laborers worked on the lines, though the lines were running.
Just below eye level he found a bulky, rectangular module mounted on the wall. A smaller module was attached to it. “I’m at the first explosive.”
Richard: “Slice the cover off the smaller module, no more than a centimeter deep. ”
David unsheathed his kinetic blade and activated it, slicing into the metal as fast as he dared. The front cover fell into his waiting hand, and he stuck it in a pocket of his tactical vest. “What now?”
Richard: “One second…see the square bundle at the junction of three fiber lines? Stab it.”
David: “…stab it?”
Richard: “Yes. With the tip of your blade. Skewer it.”
David’s face screwed up. “You got it.” He positioned the tip of his blade in front of the bundle of circuitry and jabbed it forward. He waited, but he didn’t get so much as a sizzle. “Nothing happened.”
Richard: “Yes, it did. Get to the next explosive and do the same thing to it."
David moved swiftly once he knew what he was searching for and what to do with it, and in less than two minutes he’d skewered the final explosives package. “Done. What’s the guards’ status?”
Richard: “Turning back your way now. Hurry and you can make it out before they come in sight of the door.”
David sprinted for the entry and outside, taking a hard left toward Navick’s perch on the hill above. “I owe you a beer, Lieutenant. As soon as I get to a safe distance, I’ll inform Becker the drone can pepper the command center at its leisure without worrying about Tai blowing—”
A massive explosion lit the sky to daylight, and he rushed for the retreating shadows. “The hell was that?”
Commander Becker (mission): “Report!”
Captain Cassano (mission): “SAL on the roof took out the drone!”
David’s shoulders sagged. Well, shit.
David: “Drone’s down. Time for a new plan.”
Richard: “Now that Tai can’t set off the explosives, maybe you ought to wait on the reinforcements.”
David: “Negative. Now they can fan out and search for the holed-up Marines. They’ve got a SAL on the roof, which means they can take out our people en masse when they find them. Get a cam bot on the roof, please. ”
Lieutenant Solovy (mission): “Alpha and Bravo Squads, you need to find new cover right now, and find it quietly. I’m coming to you, so kindly don’t shoot me.”
Commander Becker (mission): “Solovy, return to your post.”
David sighed. So much for not disobeying orders….
Lieutenant Solovy (mission): “Commander, Lieutenant Navick will relay intel on the rooftop SAL activity to you and Alpha and Bravo Squads. Mendoza, if you can use the cam feed to target the SAL’s wielder and get a shot, do it.”
Becker continued to bark protests at him and instructions at the others, but David tuned them out to concentrate on avoiding detection as he crossed the breadth of the compound toward the scene of the initial ambush.
Cassano relayed the squads’ new location to him on the sly, and he slipped past the rear façade of one of the ancillary buildings to reach them.
What was left of them, anyway. Near as he could tell, only two Marines were free of serious injury, and they did not include his captain.
He crouched beside Cassano. “You guys are a sorry lot.”
Cassano had a death grip on a medwrap held over a thigh wound. “Yeah, yeah, we got our asses kicked. What’s your excuse?”
“I was working on my tan. Did the remote detonation bombs make it here?”
Cassano winced and tilted his head in the direction of one of the other Marines propped against the exterior wall. “Gianno’s got them. What are you planning?”
“To finish the mission. Hang in there.” He clapped his captain’s shoulder and moved to where Cassano had gestured.
Captain Eleni Gianno and three members of her unit had joined the Brisbane a week earlier to bulk up the Marine tactical detachment, and he’d never worked with her. But there were no strangers in a foxhole, as it were, so he skipped the introductions to kneel beside her .
A full roll’s worth of medwraps wound around her upper arm, shoulder and across her neck; he didn’t want to guess at the extent of her injuries.
“I need your bombs and the trigger signal.”
She nudged the pack beside her over to him. “Coverage is twenty-eight square meters per. There are eight in the pack, more than enough for the whole building. Stick them, toss them, it doesn’t matter. They’re fairly stable, so don’t throw them in a fire or one of the chemical vats and they won’t detonate prematurely. The trigger signal is FK41B on a 52 MHz wave.”
“Understood. Thanks.”
She jerked a sharp nod despite her injuries, and he stood and slung the pack on his back.
“Take us with you.”
He pivoted to Mendoza, who stood next to one of Gianno’s men. “You have grenades?”
“Four of them.”
David reached in his pack and retrieved a grenade. “Now you have five. Mendoza, get on your rifle and take out that SAL on the roof. When the terrorists come for this location, light them up with grenades. I’m counting on you to protect your injured squadmates.”
Mendoza frowned, then straightened up and saluted. “Yes, sir!”
Behind him, Cassano grumbled under his breath. “The commander is yelling at me to stop you from doing something stupid. I explained to him that the restraints we brought for the terrorists were lying in tatters forty meters away next to Ovale’s body, and since I couldn’t walk I lacked the ability to physically keep you here. Don’t make me regret it.”
“No promises, Captain.” David reactivated his cloaking shield and headed for the command center.
David: “Navick, you’ve got to be my eyes now. You and the cam bot. I’ve named him Yevgeni.”
Richard: “You can tell me why over that beer.”
David: “Sounds good.”
He palmed his now sole grenade and studied the main entrance, where three guards paced in agitation and whispered to one another in hushed shouts. He figured they were trying to decide if they should go in search of the Marines so the SAL could take them out, but were worried what the infiltrators might have up their sleeves.
He readied himself and lobbed the grenade at the front door.
Bodies went flying in the wake of the detonation, and he took off running through the chaos. The grenade had ripped apart the doorframe, so he hopped over the burning debris and inside then veered right. He stopped long enough to remove two of the remote bombs from the pack and stuff them in open pocket before continuing on.
Richard: “Two guards in the room on your left. Arguing, it appears.”
Seemed it was a theme. Amateurs.
David: “Excellent. They’ll be distracted.”
Blade in one hand and Daemon in the other, he sneaked into the dimly lit room and closed on the nearest of the two guards. His blade hand wrapped around the man’s neck and sliced across it while his gun hand extended over the man’s shoulder to shoot the other guard in the face. If the target wore a defensive shield, it buckled under the point-blank force and the man’s face…well, David was glad the room was dimly lit for more than one reason.
He dropped a bomb in the corner, checked the hall—though Navick would have alerted him if it was occupied—and continued on.
Richard: “Lots of utility rooms on this hall. Take the next left to reach the heart of the building. First open room is a dining and break room. One person is in there gathering up water packets into a satchel.”
David: “They’re getting ready to make a run for it. ”
Richard: “Looks like.”
When he reached the break room, he leaned inside, shot the man in the base of the neck and kept moving.
Richard
: “Twenty meters ahead take another left, then the second right is the room Tai and three others are holed up in at present.”
David: “Got it.”
Richard: “You did hear the part about there being four of them?”
David: “I did. But it’s a small room, right?”
Richard: “Relatively.”
David: “Perfect—”
Something slammed into him from behind and sent him sprawling to the floor. A body-sized mass landed on top of him. The glimmer of a gamma blade flashed in his peripheral vision.
He threw all his weight into shoving his shoulder up and back, knocking the attacker off-balance. It bought him a bit of space, which he used to wrench his left arm around and open fire.
Blood splattered on him as he shoved the faint outline of a cloaked body backwards. When it ceased fighting him, he flipped it on its stomach and felt around the waist band for the shield module. He removed it and tossed it down the hall, and a bloodied, now dead terrorist revealed itself.
Richard: “What happened? “
David: “I hate to break it to you, but some of the terrorists have cloaking shields.”
Richard: “Crap. The thermal seekers won’t pick them up unless the bot is practically on top of them.”
David: “It’s fine. I’ve got this. Ahead and left, second right.”
He leaned against the wall long enough to catch his breath, dropped a bomb on the floor and pressed on, with renewed attention to his surroundings after the unexpected melee.
He didn’t actually intend on bursting into the room and opening fire on four people. Not when he had bombs which could do a far more thorough job of dismembering them.
He worked his way down the hall in question to silently approach the door. He stuck a bomb to the right side of it, then to the left. Two additional bombs he’d designated for the rear section of the building, and he should have full coverage.
This time he heard the telltale scuffle of an advancing attacker. Again, he wanted to call them amateurs—stealth was about more than a cloaking shield—but he reminded himself that the amateurs had slaughtered 64,000 innocent civilians and counting.
Short Stories of Aurora Rhapsody Page 15