“Sergeant Davis reporting, sir, and the prisoners have escaped from the jail. I thought I should let you know.”
“What?” roared the officer, slamming to his feet. “You let the prisoners escape?”
Mac hung his head, his demeanor one of shame. “Yes, sir. We were attacked by a large force, and they freed the prisoners.”
“Where’d they go?” yelled the officer, highly agitated.
“Into the jungle to the west, sir,” said Mac. “I think.” Mac held his head as if in pain. “I was knocked out, sir, but that’s what I was told.”
The officer, clearly disgusted with Mac, turned to one of his nearby guards.
“Corporal! Take them up to Command HQ and have them report to the adjutant!” he yelled.
The guard jumped up, waved at the three of them, and headed for the door. Mac, Olivia, and Frank followed. In the darkness, no one seemed to give them a second glance.
Climbing the dark stairwell to the top of the unfinished building, Olivia wondered if their ploy would work. Turgenev was no dummy; many of the colonists hated him and would kill him in a heartbeat if given the chance. He had to know that; so there would be tight security around him. And surely, they would take away their rifles first.
Other soldiers went by them, some running for the top of the stairs, some running downward, as Turgenev’s messengers came and went to the various combat units of his militia. Slowly they climbed, Mac still holding his head from time to time, pretending to be injured.
Olivia felt for the pistol tucked deep into her pants, the butt just barely reachable under the top of her waistband. That pistol - and those of Mac and Frank - might not be enough. Or they might be searched at the top of the stairs, and those pistols taken from them.
She knew Mac and Frank had combat knives, tucked into the back of their pants. She didn’t have a knife; but she had one more weapon, one that she could use as a last resort. If all else failed.
And then, suddenly, they were at the top of the stairs. At the other end of the hall, she heard the drone of an electrical generator. Lights were hung from the ceiling, wires running down the hallway. There were dozens of people moving about, tables set up in the hallway, security guards. It was the chaos of a military headquarters in the middle of a battle.
Two burly security guards came to them and gestured for their rifles. Mac and Frank unslung their rifles and handed them over. Then the guards gestured to Olivia. She unslung her rifle and gave it to them. They began patting down Mac and Frank, looking for other weapons. Quickly they found their pistols and combat knives and removed them, tossing them into a large box to one side.
Then one of them moved to her. He leered at her and began patting her down. He clearly was mostly interested in touching her - roughly, harshly, he roamed her body as she stood stock still. He quickly found the pistol in her waistband. After searching for other weapons, he stood back and waved them through.
Olivia exulted. He missed it! He missed the other pistol! He was so busy feeling me up he missed it!
Then the thought sank into her, the thought that felt like a cold wind on her back.
Then it’s up to me to get Turgenev. I’m the only one that can do it now.
Their original guide led them forward, down the hallway to a large double door on the left. Rick Moore had told them that each apartment block had a large rooftop garden, and that this building’s garden would be unfinished, leaving a large open space on the roof.
“That’ll be the most likely place for Turgenev to set up his HQ and Observation Post,” Rick had said. “It’ll be double doors about half-way down the top hallway, on the left.”
Looks like Rick called it.
They were led through the double doors and immediately fetched up against a row of desks blocking their way. There was one desk in the center and two to each side. The light here was dim, just barely enough to make out faces. Past the desks, Olivia could see the darkened roof. There was just enough dim light for her to see a row of officers at the edge of the roof, looking over a tall parapet wall with binoculars and night vision equipment. They were talking among themselves, gesturing, pointing to the battle going on to the south of them.
And the one in the center was Turgenev. Olivia had seen pictures of him. Even from the rear, even in the darkness, she could recognize him. He was a good two inches taller than anyone else on the roof and had the broad shoulders and bull neck she had seen in the photos. She estimated he was only twenty yards from her now. Could she get to her gun and shoot him before his guards killed her?
No, she decided. I have to try to get closer.
“What?” snapped the officer sitting at the middle desk, glaring at their escort.
“These are the guards from the jail, Major,” said the corporal. “The prisoners have escaped.”
The officer shot to his feet. “What? How?” He snarled at Mac, who was slightly in front. “How could you let this happen? Idiots!”
The officer turned and went out to the roof, went up to Turgenev and whispered to him quietly. Turgenev turned, stared at them, his face an impassive mask. He gestured to them to come forward.
This is it, Olivia thought. If I can get the pistol out. If I can shoot before they shoot me. If I can hit my target - I’ve never been that good of a pistol shot. Maybe I should toss the pistol to Mac.
But…no, I won’t have time for that.
I’ll have to do this myself.
Steeling herself, Olivia stepped forward toward the tall Russian, her hand already drifting backward, where she had stuffed a small pistol right up the crack of her ass.
***
Kim Geun-shi was ecstatic. He had assembled hundreds of people - mostly Asian, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, some few others - into a tightly knit yakuza gang, helping Turgenev take over the colony. But those yakuza also allowed him to blackmail Turgenev; he might only have a few hundred adherents, but they were the most ruthless ones in the colony. Removing their support would seriously weaken Turgenev’s position. Turgenev knew it and didn’t dare cross Kim at this point.
So Kim had forced Turgenev to make him a colonel in their militia. And now Kim was in charge of Turgenev’s Southern Force.
And Kim was happy. Beating back the initial charge of Tatiana’s Battalion West, he had fought them to a standstill. Now his troops advanced on them, pushing them back into the jungle.
Even better, his radio messages told him that the Northern Force was doing the same to Misha’s Battalion East.
They were winning. It was just a matter of time now. Within a couple of hours, they would have eliminated the last threat to their rule. They would hunt down the stragglers of the Ukrainian bitch’s army and kill them to the last man.
But not to the last woman. Kim had other plans for the women. Turgenev had given him the slave concession for the colony.
The women would be captured and sold on the open market.
Except for a choice few. The choice few that Kim would keep for himself.
And maybe - if he were lucky, if he were really lucky - he could capture that Ukrainian bitch, Tatiana Powell.
Kim would make her his personal slave. He practically salivated at the thought.
“Sir!” came a call from his Chief of Staff, “something strange down south!”
Kim snapped out of his daydream. “What?”
“We have reports of rifle fire coming in on our flank, from the south!”
“Show me!” snapped Kim. He rushed to the map on the desk.”
The major pointed to an ‘X’ marked on the map. “Right there, sir, about one klick south. There’s something…wait…”
The officer clutched his earpiece, obviously receiving another report. He looked up at Kim, distress visible on his face.
“An assault from the south, sir. A large one. They’ve managed to flank us somehow. They’re attacking from the south!”
***
Turgenev was standing at the edge of the roof,
looking over the parapet toward the south. He had been shocked by Kim’s report of a fresh assault on his flank.
Another assault force? From the south? How? How did that bitch do that? She doesn’t have enough troops!
Looking through his night-vision glasses, though, Turgenev was forced to admit reality. He could see heavy enemy fire to the south. More, in fact, than he was seeing from the jungle to the west.
Somehow, Tatiana had gotten a large force around to Kim’s left flank. Turgenev realized Kim was in trouble.
It doesn’t matter how she did it, he thought. All that matters is how to counter it. I’ll have to pull troops from the Northern Force to help Kim.
“Major!” he called to his Chief of Staff. “Order Cerutti to withdraw one company from his assault on the east and turn them south to help Kim. Quickly!”
“Yes, sir,” called his Number Two.
Turgenev fumed.
That damn Ukrainian bitch. She’s tricky, all right. But not tricky enough. I’ve still got her. With a company from Cerutti, Kim will have plenty of troops to push her back. We’ll still have the bitch dead by noon.
“Sir,” came a voice behind him. Turgenev turned. His aide behind him was pointing to three troopers by the entrance. He didn’t recognize the three at all. And something about them looked a bit off, he thought. It struck him instantly.
“The prisoners have escaped from the jail,” his aide said. “These three came to tell us.”
Turgenev waved the three closer. When they were a dozen feet from him, he gestured to them to stop. They did, pausing behind his aide. “Report!” he barked.
One of the troops stepped forward one step and began speaking.
“Sir, we were attacked at the jail. I was knocked out. When I came to, the prisoners were gone. We searched for them, but we can’t find them.”
Turgenev nodded. He saw the female standing at the rear of the group moving her hand. She was moving it toward her ass.
And he knew. A lifetime of survival in the Russian underworld sent up flares of warning in Turgenev’s mind. He grabbed for his pistol, and at the same time the female moved quickly, diving to one side and reaching deep into the back of her pants.
It was an old trick, and Turgenev had used it himself on occasion. Men tended to search women in a certain way. They would focus on the front of their bodies, because - well, because they were men. They would often not search their rear very well. This woman had taken advantage of that.
Even as he saw her hand come out of the back of her pants with the pistol, Turgenev was firing. He dove to the side, taking shelter behind his aides, sacrificing them for his own survival, firing at the woman as fast as he could. He saw the muzzle flashes from her pistol, the barrel tracking him as he moved. She was lagging him, though. He had moved just fast enough. She was firing a bit behind him. One round went close to him, so close he felt the buzz, felt the tug of the bullet as it pulled at the sleeve of his shirt.
In front of him, his adjutant went down like a sack of potatoes, a bullet in his chest. Turgenev continued to roll to the side, the bitch tracking him, firing, the noise deafening even on the open rooftop.
And then it was over. Turgenev lay on the roof, breathing hard, trying to accept that he was still alive. In front of him, two of his aides lay dead. Beyond them, the woman also lay dead, his last couple of shots taking her out. Around them his staff stood frozen in shock.
Turgenev stood and stared at the two other troopers who had come on the roof with the woman. He knew both of them were the enemy. Both were now held tightly in the grip of four of his security guards, who had finally reacted.
“Take them out of here!” he yelled. “Lock them up! Idiots!”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Phoenix System
Cerutti’s Northern Force
Cerutti shook his head. He had received the order from Turgenev to detach a company and send it south to reinforce Kim. He had done it; but he didn’t like it. His attack to the east, into Misha’s Battalion East, was encountering strong resistance.
Once they had entered the thick forest, the enemy had gone into some kind of guerrilla warfare mode. They hopscotched back and forth in front of his troops. First a group would appear on his right, ambushing his troops from an unexpected direction. And then, just when he got his forces re-directed to assault into them, they were gone. Another group would appear suddenly on his left, another ambush taking out one or two dozen of his people.
His troops were getting shy about moving forward in the thick forest. Every time they did, they got waylaid from an unexpected direction. His Northern Force was not that large; losing a couple of dozen people every fifteen minutes was whittling away at both his numbers and the morale of his troops.
A couple of hundred yards behind his lines, Cerutti was moving forward when the new attack hit him. One moment, he was gazing ahead in front of him in the darkness, trying to determine where he wanted to direct them next. The next moment, tracers were flying all around him, not from the front where the enemy should be, but from the rear, from the northwest.
From a place where there should be nobody. No enemy could be there. They had watched so carefully with their drones.
Nobody can be there. It’s not possible!
It was his last thought as a bullet smashed into the back of his head.
***
Tatiana looked at her makeshift battle map in satisfaction. It showed Cerutti’s Northern Force falling back in disarray, his troops running in panic as their left flank was rolled up. The end-run she had sent around to the north had caught Cerutti by total surprise. His troops ran toward the west, throwing down their weapons and making for their apartment blocks, hoping to hide from the onslaught that was killing them by the dozens now.
To the south, Kim’s Southern Force was not much better off. Even with the reinforcements Cerutti had sent, they were also being pinched in between opposing forces. Tatiana’s second end run to the south had come around Kim and attacked into his left flank, pushing him back to the north, pushing him into the center of the colony.
And Tatiana’s Battalion West - only a skeleton force now, after she had taken most of the troops for her end runs to the north and south - was still strong enough to keep Kim penned up, prevent him from moving farther west. Kim was in a bottle. Outnumbered now, his troops flailing to hold their positions, the only place he could go was back into the open area of Central Park.
And that did him no good. Once Cerutti’s force had collapsed, Misha’s Battalion East had no opposition to speak of in front of them. Misha had left one company to mop up the remnants of Cerutti’s Northern Force; the rest of his troops were now attacking into the center of the colony, pushing Turgenev’s small Center Force back. Misha had already taken the center of the park and was holding the shuttle parking area.
It was all over, Tatiana realized. There was no way out for Kim, and no way out for Turgenev. She had them. Sooner or later, they would realize it too, and they would surrender.
Or she would kill them all.
Tatiana sighed.
Always so much death. Why did I have to be so good at this? Why couldn’t I just be a nice, quiet mother, with a couple of kids to raise, a nice quiet husband, a nice quiet life?
But…somebody has to be good at it. Somebody has to be good at killing our enemies.
You just have to make the best of what Fate doles out to you.
She glanced over at her aide, Major Granville.
“Tommy, I think it’s about over. See if you can get a message to Turgenev and also to Kim. Offer them a surrender. Remind them it’ll save a lot of lives. And Major…”
“Yes, milady?”
“Point out to them the alternative is that I’ll kill them both.”
“Aye, milady,” Granville smiled, as he went to carry out her orders.
2,885 Lights from Stalingrad
The Darkstar had settled into the dull routine of a long voyage. Captain Ostend sat at
his desk. A good simulated whiskey - the best the AI of the Darkstar could produce from the synthesizers - sat in front of him. Across from him, Commander Woh sat, a glass of the same concoction in his hand. Behind them, back toward Stalingrad, lay light years of nothingness as they bored on toward the center of the galaxy.
“To distance,” said Ostend, his words slightly slurred. Woh raised his hand and grunted.
“Distance,” he answered.
They drank, and then pulled their glasses down. Ostend shook his head.
“Tagi said go at least 10,000 lights before we start looking. So we’ve got another 7,115 lights to go. Another 148 days.”
“Yeah,” Woh answered glumly. “A long damn way.”
“But…” Ostend mused. “We did our duty. We followed orders.”
“That we did,” agreed Woh. “We followed our damn orders. I really wanted to punch holes in Stree ships, though.”
Ostend broke a grin. “You realize, with this old tub, they’d have punched a lot more holes in us that we would in them.”
Woh shrugged. “I guess.”
“But still…,” said Ostend. “I wish we could have given it a go.”
They sat in silence for a bit. Then Ostend raised his glass again.
“To orders, even when they suck.”
Woh nodded. “To orders.”
Far in the back of the cruiser, in the cargo hold, thousands of small crates sat. And in each crate was a well-padded electronic device containing thousands of dormant scans.
The children of the Goblins sat unaware in their electronic storage, waiting for a time when their Human guardians could find someplace for them to live without fear.
Waiting for the day when they could live again.
Phoenix System
Colony Headquarters
Mark Rodgers sat at a conference table in the command tent, the strain of the last hours still evident on his face. Around him sat Gillian, Tatiana and Misha, Luke, Rick Moore, Zoe DeLong, and several members of their staff. All of them were shell-shocked, dirty, and exhausted. The air of the camp stank of gunpowder and death.
“How’d you do it, Tat? How’d you flank them like that?” asked Mark.
Remnants: Broken Galaxy Book Five Page 28