by M. D. Cooper
Fred worked his way across the concourse to get a better view of the second level. On his right, in the direction they’d come, people were milling about, but to his left, there was a long space where only a few police were visible.
Kor stopped and let out a long groan.
Fred saw the active channel to the combat net disappear, and then a new team network came up. He joined the channel and was immediately bombarded by Alison’s anger-filled voice.
A groan came from Alison.
Kor passed the information he’d gleaned on the public feeds, where people were helpfully posting where the cops and Niets were.
Alison made a hmmming sound.
Jenisa made a strangled sound.
Randy added.
Alison’s voice cut out, and the combat net registered a full disconnect from her.
ESCALATION
STELLAR DATE: 12.23.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: ISS Quadaros, approaching Maltese Falcon, Malta
REGION: Iberia System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
“OK…” Saris said, her brow furrowing. “This station was nice and quiet twenty minutes ago, and now it’s like all hell’s broken loose.”
“Mechs,” Borden muttered, shaking his head. “This is why we can’t have nice things.”
“How do you know it’s mechs?” Lieutenant Gemma asked from her seat behind Saris.
“Really?” Saris asked, remaining focused on her approach vector. “Flip on the public feeds. There’s video of Alison leaping onto a mezzanine level and firing a DPU at some truck with a chaingun in the back.”
Gemma didn’t respond for a moment and then sighed. “OK…mechs.”
“What do you think is going down, Colonel?” Saris asked.
Borden grunted and shook his head. “Damned if I know. My money is on Alice using the mechs as a distraction to do whatever the hell it is that she came here to pull off.”
“Which is?” Saris pressed.
“Lieutenant, what do you think I am, some mystic who is gonna roll the bones and divine that woman’s plan? She’s here to get something that she lost
during the war. It’s either a person, or something of such immense value that it’s worth throwing away everything she’s done since to get it.”
“Which is unlikely,” Gemma added. “Just the armor we provided the Marauders is enough to set a person up for life in a lot of places. If she wanted to live large, she didn’t have to sneak in here.”
“What if her play is selling five mechs, upgraded by the ISF, and with said armor?” Saris suggested.
“Good point,” Gemma replied.
Borden shook his head. “Won’t work.”
“Oh?” Gemma glanced at him. “Why not?”
“Our people saw to it. They left the ports for the Discipline chips in there, just in case they want to fake anyone out, but they won’t work anymore. Try to chip a Mark 4, and you’re in for a very, very bad day.”
“Huh,” Saris grunted. “Sneaky.”
“Finaeus’s idea. I think sneaky is his favorite way to operate.”
“There’s another angle,” Gemma suggested. “This could be some sort of revenge play on Alice’s part. Maybe we got close to Iberia, and she figured with a few mechs in her back pocket, she could get some payback against someone who wronged her.”
“I think that theory falls under my ‘person’ category. There’s one other possibility, though,” Borden ventured, drawing the words out. “She could be operating on orders from her organization.”
“The Marauders?” Saris asked. “That would be a dumb move. They’d lose Rika in a heartbeat.”
“Think so?” Gemma asked. “She’d just ditch her outfit?”
Saris twisted in her seat to meet Gemma’s eyes. “If they treated her mechs like they were expendable? Anyone who does that better start running now.”
Gemma’s lips twisted under Saris’s steely gaze. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Rika doesn’t have a lot of patience for that sort of shit.”
“Any commander worth their mass doesn’t,” Borden interjected, then paused and shook his head. “Shit. Station just reached out. They’re denying our docking request. Telling us to move into a holding pattern.”
The two lieutenants looked to him, eyes questioning.
“Oh, cut it out, you two. Gemma, get back there and make sure the teams are in order. Saris, keep us on course for our berth. I’ll just give them the fuel excuse, and tell them to shoot us down if they feel so strongly about it.”
“Stasis shields make you bold, sir,” Saris said with a soft laugh.
“Well, unlike that contemptible woman, Alice, I’m not going to leave our people high and dry.”
“The Marauders are ‘our people’ now?” Saris asked with a smile.
Borden frowned at his lieutenant and still-bedmate. “Don’t give me that. You know they are. Now get us down there already. Mechs like to blow shit up, and it would be nice to not have this station falling through the atmosphere by the time we reach them.”
“I kinda like to blow shit up, too,” Saris replied quietly.
“I’m sure you’ll get your chance.”
LAST KNOWN LOCATION
STELLAR DATE: 12.23.8949 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Maltese Falcon, Malta
REGION: Iberia System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
“Forget it, Kor,” he said aloud, gesturing to the concourse they had to cross. “Door to the command center is just on the other side of that nice little road out there. Well, other side and down a few hundred meters. We get over there, get in, and take control of this station.”
Fred considered a response, but decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.
“There’s a lot of shit out there,” he said to Kor. “I count at least fifty cops. They have CFT and grav shields set up in four locations, plus I see a lot of autoturret portals.”
“Sure wish we had Potter here. She’d knock that shit out.”
Fred patted the railguns mounted to each of his forearms. “Well, I suppose these’ll just have to do. I hear they can take out autoturrets, too. OK, here’s the plan. You backtrack into the service corridor behind the shop, and then come out at the position they have set up on the right. Do what you do best. Once you have them engaged, I’m going to hit them in the center, and we’ll see if we can make them break and run.”
Kor lifted his arm, and they smacked their railguns together. “Let’s ring their bell.”
“Eh?”
“Just made it up. Trying some new sayings.”
Fred shook his head and turned his focus back to the feeds from his drones as Kor moved to the rear of the shop. One of the enemy emplacements was directly ahead of him, and had a clear line of sight on the storefront. He knew that if he engaged it, they’d light the whole place up before he could get past their shields.
Think, Fred. There’s gotta be a way to take them without going into that killing field out there.
He studied the corridor, his examination moving to the overhead, which was vaulted with transparent plas, providing a clear view out into space between support arches. It probably looked beautiful once, but in the years the station had roved around Malta, someone had seen fit to add a series of conduits and pipes above the concourse. One bore the unmistakable markings of a water main.
Oh, yeah, this’ll be good.
He waited patiently for Kor to launch his assault. It didn’t take long; just a scant minute later, the sounds of weapons fire erupted from further down the thoroughfare.
Having pre-set his weapon’s aim, Fred moved through the furniture store, each arm aligning with the ends of a thirty-meter stretch of the massive pipe.
He braced his right foot against a column a few meters back from the front of the store, took a deep breath, and opened fire.
Railshots blasted through windows and streaked up toward the pipe, striking it on either end of the segment, blasting holes clear through it—a few slamming into the thick, clear plas overhead.
Fred was unconcerned with a vacuum breach—in fact, he’d welcome it. Many of the squishies on the concourse weren’t wearing EV-capable gear.
What he was concerned with was that the pipe hadn’t fallen, though water was spraying out from the holes. A few shots came his way as he fired at a brace in the pipe’s center, and then again at one on the far end. Following his final rounds, there came a thundering groan, and the massive main finally came down on the defensive emplacement.
sked.
Fred took aim at a group of enemies—no, just local cops doing their jobs, he reminded himself—who were retreating further up the concourse, sloshing through the water that was now ankle-deep, as a torrential flow still came from one end of the broken main.
Fred wasn’t shooting to kill, but the cops fell further back, a few flat-out running to the next position further to Fred’s left.
A high-pitched whistle caught his attention, and he realized that the rounds that had struck the clear overhead must have cracked the thick plas.
With the corresponding arm still firing pot shots at the retreating defenders on his left, he raised his right arm and sent a series of rounds toward the weakened plas above.
Each of his rounds hit the same location, their staccato impacts audible over the general cacophony. For a moment, the plas held, but then, with a terrible screech, an entire ten-meter section fractured and exploded out into space.
“Hell yeah!” Fred shouted as he stepped out and took aim at the autoturrets further down the concourse, as the human defenders began to retreat further from the mayhem.
Emergency grav shields snapped into place high above, their fields holding the air in the station, but Fred casually fired at the emitters, blowing away enough of them that the air once again began to vent out into space.