by David Ryker
It was a huge space filled with hundreds of vehicles — ground cars and hover, trucks, transports, riot vehicles, hovercycles decked out in the same green and white striping as the F-Series standing blind and limp on my left. I narrowed my eyes and scanned the space, my Arcram still raised, the plasma pistol raised below me. Nothing was moving, which meant no alarms had gone up. We’d neutralized the F-Series before it could send out a distress call. But we weren’t in the clear by any means.
I swallowed and looked into the swirling clouds overhead. Flakes of snow above the sun line glittered gold as they wound toward the earth. The clouds swallowed up the tower at around the fiftieth story, but I knew it went on for another forty after that, and every floor was filled with droids, or guards, or Free, or a mixture of all of the above, and the second we were discovered, they’d come down on us like a swarm of ants, descending the tower to neutralize the threat.
I climbed back into Greg and turned to look at Fish, who was waiting for my go. “Ready?” I asked, my voice thin and quiet.
His rig faced me for a second, exterior blank and giving nothing away, and then he stepped forward into the garage. I pushed the button to close my hatch, and then followed him in.
The noise of the city died behind us until the only sound was our footsteps on the smooth concrete floor. Mac streaked out ahead, a bag slung over his shoulder, and made for what looked like an office at the far end. It was glass fronted, and inside was a creature I’d never seen before. It was reptilian looking, with a long neck and orb-like eyes on stems coming out of a flat head. What was even stranger was that below the long neck I could see a white shirt and tie. I didn’t think I’d ever cease to be amazed by what the universe had to offer.
Mac was heading straight for it, sticking to the shadows of the vehicles, hulking and tucked against the walls. Fish did his disappearing act and went after him. I watched as he dematerialized, his cloaking tech a marvel to watch — thousands of tiny cameras and projectors that detected the environment around him, and displayed what was behind. If you looked really closely, you could see him shimmering as he moved, like an apparition, or a trick of the light, but either way, it was amazing. And effective. The only thing he couldn’t cloak was the shotgun, so if the reptile with the tie was to look up, he’d get a look at a flying shotgun bobbing toward him through the air. But he didn’t — not until they wanted him to, at least.
I moved behind a pillar and listened as a whistle rang out. The reptile looked up and into the garage through its windows. The open door at the far end was no doubt an attention grabber, but the light changes and the distance meant that it couldn’t make out quite what was going on. It pushed back from the computer it was working on and got up, moving toward the door of the security office. The moment it opened its muzzle flash lit the garage and a shot rang out. The reptile flew backward in a shower of sparks and Mac leaped out of the shadow of a truck that would have fit my F-Series behind the wheel. The door started to creak shut and he slipped through the gap. Fish’s cloaking tech stuttered and he stepped forward, shouldering the shotgun, and pushed the door open with his hand. I caught up with him a few seconds later and stepped into the office last.
Mac was standing on the chair that the reptile had been sitting on, looking like a toy soldier with his rifle across his back. He was tapping on the keyboard, accessing the security protocols of the tower.
I turned my attention to the reptile in the corner. It was slouched against a filing cabinet, a beanbag lying on its stomach, knocked out. The shotgun wasn’t a real shotgun — it was more like a riot control weapon by the look of it, firing electrically charged taser-beanbags.
I stared at the creature for a second, and then turned to Fish. “You knew that wasn’t a real shotgun, right?”
He didn’t say a word.
Mac hit a key, and then dumped his bag on the desk, fishing around inside it. He pulled out a small black box and plugged it into the terminal. It came to life and a blue light started flickering on top of it. He swung round on the chair and gave me a thumbs up. “Okay, we’re good,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief. “All their internal communications are disabled. But it won’t be long before they realize and come looking, so I’d get up there while you can.” He looked at the reptile and then back to me. “We’ll wait for your signal, okay?” He got off the chair and headed for the door, letting himself out through the bottom half, which split off, designed for humanoids. He paused and turned back. “I’ll see you on the other side. Good luck.”
The door clacked shut behind him and then he ran for the exit. I didn’t blame him. If they all descended on the garage and it was just Mac here, he’d be crushed in seconds. And in such close quarters, his HAM would be no good either. It was slow and cumbersome and wouldn’t be able to lay down any of that impressive cover ordnance that I’d come to admire. No, he’d done his part, and now it was down to Fish and me.
I clenched my jaw and watched him go, turning to Fish after a few minutes. “Well, I guess this is it.” I sighed, pulling my Samson over my shoulder. “You ready for a fight? I don’t think they’re going to just hand them over willingly.”
Fish gurgled out loud gleefully, and then went for the door.
22
My comms were static. Mac had plugged in the scrambler, and it was feeding continuous feedback loops into the network in the Guard Tower, which was sludging up the airwaves and making it impossible to receive anything other than white noise, no matter who you were or what you were trying to get.
I sighed, trying my best to drown in it as the elevator trundled upward. We were heading for the forty-fourth floor, which is where the holding cells and interrogation rooms were. That was our first stop, for Alice. Our second was eighty-five, for Kera’s man. We needed to get them both out to get away with something that even resembled a win. If we didn’t get Kera’s man, then they’d roll, spill their guts about us hitting that transport, killing the Guard, and then we’d all be fucked. She said that Fox having her man was insurance, and threatening to rat us out to the Federation was hers, to make sure we didn’t grab Alice and then cut and run — which we had to admit was something we’d all thought about and discussed at length to see if we could figure out a way that we might be able to. It didn’t seem like there was — at least not without doing some real cold shit, and if we did that, then we’d still face Greenway’s wrath, so we were going through with the whole thing. Rescue Alice. Rescue Kera’s man. Then get the fuck off Telmareen, and never look back.
The elevator rode smoothly upward, the stillness inside not indicative at all of the shitstorm about to unfold.
I thought it was odd that they’d be so high up until Volchec explained that half of forty-four was prepped as a landing pad for transport craft, and that it was much easier, and safer to bring ships and prisoners in and out at altitude, and that setting them down on the ground only provided more chance for escape. At least on the forty-fourth floor if the prisoners were that desperate to make a break for it, there was only one way down, and it wasn’t a slow descent. But it hadn’t gotten to that yet with Alice. They hadn’t shipped her anyway, and the Federation armada hadn’t arrived either, which meant we still had some time left.
We had it on good authority that the Guard were exercising every minute of the holding period before they officially put her under arrest and tossed her in a cell. Everett had been insistent on preparing me for the worst. Under section seventeen of the Federation of Planets’ Galactic Protectorate Act, any persons deemed to be a threat to the welfare of the Federation, and/or any citizens living in it, the Federation and any authorized and appointed agents — in this case the Telmareen Guard — were allowed to forgo their obligations to adhere to the Species Rights Act while questioning detainees. Which was longhand for ‘They’re allowed to torture her if they want.’
Considering what Kera had told us about the whole operation, I thought there was a chance that wouldn’t have happened — I mean, why would
Free interrogators interrogate someone who was attacking a shipment on their orders? It made no sense to me. Though Volchec and Everett had again been insistent that I prepare myself for the worst: that despite the Guard acting autonomously, they still reported to the Federation, and would have to report something like this. So, whether they were turned or not, if they wanted to keep the charade alive, they’d have to keep up appearances, and if that meant torturing some dumb merc who’d gotten themselves swept up in all this, then that would be no problem. It would have been what was expected of them, and not doing it would have raised suspicions.
I swallowed and flexed my hands around the Samson, watching as the digits climbed above the door, taking us closer to Alice, but also to a whole host of Telmareen guards who were about to have their otherwise quiet evening seriously fucked with.
“Your vitals appear to be elevated,” Greg said softly. “Are you nervous?”
I took a deep breath. “You could say that. We’re sort of in the lion’s den here.”
“Would you like some music? I am aware that it has therapeutic effects on humans during times of stress.”
I had to chuckle. For all his sass, he was a pretty caring computer — I had to give him that. “Sure, Greg. Something relaxing,” I said softly.
When the doors opened, Bach was just striking up on a fleet of cellos. The languid drawing of bows, the resonating hum of strings — they rang inside the cockpit as we stepped out.
Fish fired first, wasting no time. The jig was up now and there was no point pussyfooting around anymore. We hadn’t shed blood downstairs because we hadn’t needed to, but now it was kill or be killed, and the narrowness of the corridor didn’t leave much room for anything else.
The schematics told us that the elevators broke into corridors that split left and right as well as running straight ahead. They were arranged like blocks, with offices and interrogation rooms laid out next to each other. Alice was in one of them, though we didn’t know which — Kera’s contact didn’t have that sort of pull. She wasn’t the only person being questioned either — there were dozens of suspects being processed. Telmareen was an endless city, after all, and there wasn’t another tower for a hundred kilometers. But, for every prisoner, there were at least two arresting guards, which wasn’t good news for us. Plenty of them were huge autonomous peacekeeping droids, too — basic AI implanted with the laws of the planet they were operational on, which might not sound too rough, but considering their shoot first and ask questions later programming, they’d be quick on the draw. The rest of the Guard were a mixture of modified Federation F-Series like the one at the gate, being piloted by humanoids, and other large species. Wints seemed to be common, as did the reptilian things with the long necks. Other than that, it was hard to tell the others in all the muzzle flash.
Dead ahead of us were two figures — one droid, and one F-Series. The hatch was open on the latter, and I just caught a glimpse of the widening eyes of the woman piloting it before Fish put a round into the droid, sending it flying backward, squawking with a siren-like alarm wail. I swallowed every shred of trepidation I had and just tried to make it quick. We were here for Alice, and that’s all there was to it. These people were corrupt, or about to be embroiled in a war anyway. If they were Free, they’d die fighting the Federation, and if they were Federation, then they’d just as likely die fighting the Free. This wasn’t our fight, and we were only doing what was necessary to get Alice back. I kept telling myself that, but it didn’t dull the wrench of nausea as one of the rounds from my Samson hit the exposed woman in the chest. It exploded in a flurry of blood and she slumped sideways in the cockpit. The F-Series wobbled and then fell without her control. By the looks of it, if the Telmareen Guard’s rigs were outfitted with an AI, it wasn’t one that had any functional control, which was good. Meant that I could go for cam domes and spare some lives with any luck.
The siren wail from the droid was apparently contagious, so even before its bulbous body hit the ground, bucket-shaped head spinning, the others on the floor started screeching too. It was like a wolf pack howling — one started the other, and that was it. Every droid on the floor went crazy. Sirens blared and the whole floor descended into a deep shade of flashing red as someone flipped an alarm. I took solace in the fact that at least the other floors would remain unaware of the situation for a little while, so long as Mac’s jammer did its job. But that was a pretty thin supposition, and we still needed to move fast.
“You take right,” I barked at Fish. “I’ll go left.”
He acknowledged with a nod of the cam dome and charged off in the opposite direction.
I took a breath and went left. “Greg, talk to me. How many rooms are we looking at here?”
“There are sixty-eight possible rooms in which Pilot Kepler may be held.”
“Shit,” I groaned, sliding around a corner and shouldering my rifle. A droid was hammering toward me, nearly as tall as my rig, wide-shouldered and propped up on a pair of tank tracks churning furiously on the concrete floor. Its face was a screen displaying a warning sign and its arms were raised. Both were gun barrels. I didn’t know what sort, but I didn’t want to find out. They were peacekeeping droids — heavy duty and cold, but not too smart — and I guessed with shotguns for hands a lot of their peacekeeping involved blowing away whatever wasn’t being peaceful.
“Smokescreen,” I yelled, pulling the droid into my crosshairs.
Greg smoked the corridor with a quick burst, throwing off the targeting system of the approaching droid, and I pinned the trigger, watching as the muzzle flash pulsed on the cloud, the bullets punching through and hitting steel on the other side.
A loud crunch told me the droid was down and a second later I was dashing over its corpse toward the first door. It was locked but didn’t put up much of a fight. I put my heel through it and it splintered inward, banging on the wall and swinging loosely on its hinges.
Empty. Shit. And it wasn’t even like I could call Fish and ask if he’d turned anything up with Mac’s scrambler running. The sound of gunfire echoing in the hallways told me he was working hard, at least.
“Can’t you do anything?” I shouted at Greg, pulling myself into the doorway of the empty room just as bullets started flying past me.
“I’m unable to locate Pilot Kepler’s biometric profile. This area is too large and is saturated with heat signatures.”
I growled inside my helmet, stepping back into the hall and letting off a stream of fire. A Wint at the next junction shuddered as the rounders hit it in the stomach, chest, and then shoulder. It spun to the ground and a pool of greenish blood began pooling on the concrete. I grimaced and pushed forward. “Can you at least tell me which rooms aren’t empty? We’re wasting time here.”
“That I can do,” Greg said. “Enabling an infrared pulse.”
The screen in front of me started to strobe. Every few seconds, it shimmered in blues and yellows before turning back to a normal display. In the sea of cold colors, splotches of heat swam beyond the walls. I breathed a sigh of relief — this was going to make it easier. I could already see a bunch of rooms that were empty and could be skipped.
I pushed on to the edge of the corridor, seeing a yellow shape moving slowly to intercept me from an adjacent hallway. I pulled my rifle up to my shoulder, watching it out of my peripheral as I closed the distance.
I paused just as I reached it and held fast on the rifle. The shape slowed and stepped cautiously to the corner. I watched as its legs shuffled to the edge and then stepped out, putting one in the thigh. The Wint there, huge and hairy, sagged, letting out a high-pitched scream, which I quickly extinguished with two rounds to the upper chest. The light from its eyes faded and it slumped backward, bulbous nose lolling limply over its forehead.
It seemed like a lot of the bodies on the floor were scrambling for cover judging by the heat signatures diving around. They definitely hadn’t been expecting us — that much was clear. And I knew Fish was wreak
ing havoc wherever he was, too — it was just his way. Without any communications to aid them, the Guard must have been shitting themselves more than just a little, and that suited us just fine — we wanted to be in and out as quickly as we could, and if that happened to be before they even figured out what the hell was happening, then that was even better.
I stepped forward, scanning the yellow blobs for anything human-sized, when one of the reptilian creatures slithered around the next corner. It reared up and pumped off a few shots from a huge shotgun. The scatter clanged into my hull and my screen lit up and flashed red. That one definitely wasn’t shooting beanbags, and I hadn’t even seen it coming.
“Greg, what the hell?” I snarled, diving sideways out of the path of another load of buckshot. I hit the wall and tried to raise my arms, but one was pinned. “For fuck sake!” I grunted, releasing the Samson and reaching for my pistol.
More pellets dinged my hull and my screen cracked, a white line lancing down from the top and disappearing off to my left. Some of the fire must have hit my cam dome.
I heaved the pistol up and squeezed off a round into center mass, blowing a hole right through the creature’s guts. It wailed and twisted in the air, tail writhing, as its yellowed insides spilled onto the floor. I hauled myself onto my knees and then back to my feet, picking up my rifle. “Well?” I said, “What the fuck was that? Why didn’t we see him?” I demanded, circling its twitching corpse.
“It appears that as a reptilian species, they are cold-blooded, and won’t show up on thermal scans.”
“Well, that’s fucking helpful.”
“I would say that it is probably the opposite.”
I growled. “Sarcasm, Greg. Sarcasm.”
I put my heel through another door and stepped in, sirens still wailing from the droids and the ceiling. Lights flashed in circles and muzzle smoke and blood mist lingered in the air, thick and pungent. My teeth were grinding and my head was pounding. With each splintered door and each empty room, the gnawing feeling in my guts that this was about to go seriously wrong was getting worse and worse. It felt like fuck-up number three was right there for the taking.