by Rick Partlow
“You know where I’m gonna be, Marc,” he told his friend, grinning tightly. “I’m going to be in the shit.”
Jonathan clenched his teeth, hit his jump-jets and headed into the fight.
16
Who the hell did Magnus think he was kidding? “The Red Brotherhood” was a dumbass name, something a ten-year-old besotted with adventure stories might have come up with on the spur of the moment, and this attack was a stupid idea. Sungurlu had tried to warn the man—well, the half-a-man—not to make decisions when he was pissed off, but no, Magnus fancied himself a pirate and pirates “don’t take shit from any two-bit colony world!”
Mehmet Sungurlu spat off to the side and tried to shed his anger and frustration with the gesture. He had a job to do, and the only way they were going to survive this was if he did it perfectly. Another piece of advice he’d given that Magnus wouldn’t accept: if the Arachne colonists had risked shooting off a nuke at them, it meant they wanted them to get mad and come here, which meant they’d managed to prepare defenses. No, no, Magnus couldn’t accept the idea. The colonists were sheep and he was a wolf and there the story ended.
Shut up. He forced his attention back to the deserted streets of the city, dark and humid and miserable and why the hell do we want this place again? Ahriman give me strength…
His shoulder rested against the limestone block of an office building, something about interstellar trade, he thought; he hadn’t read the sign too carefully. It wouldn’t matter much longer. In a few hours, the people they allowed to live would be slaves, either for them or for sale on the open market and that would be the only interstellar trade they’d have to worry about.
Hmmph. Might buy one myself. Been a while since that flakey Mbeki girl hung herself. Starting to get lonely.
“Back up, you moron,” he growled at Rao. “If you want me to hold your fucking hand, you’re going to have to buy me dinner first.”
The wiry little exile from the Shang Directorate quickly backed away from him, scooting down the wall and gesturing for the line of men behind him to maintain their interval. Sungurlu scowled at just the sight of them. They were strung out and clumped up all the way from the front of this trade office back nearly a kilometer. There wasn’t one of them with the makings of a good foot-soldier, but Sungurlu took what he could get. Everyone they recruited wanted to be a mechjock or a shuttle pilot, and he usually had to beat it into their heads they couldn’t start at the top.
He pulled the radio off his belt and touched the key to send. It was cheap and easily fabricated and not much more secure than a child’s toy, but they weren’t dealing with a Dominion military unit here and it should be enough.
“Krieger,” he said. The other sergeant was only a couple hundred meters down the street, but a residue of military training prevented Sungurlu from just yelling his name out to get his attention. Nothing for three seconds. He tried again. “Krieger, are you listening you fat son of a whore? You better have this thing turned on!”
“Calm down, Mehmet,” the former Starkad Supremacy Marine said, always casual as if he thought feigning unconcern would make people think he was in control. “What do you want?”
“I want you to get your lazy ass up here along with that sorry bunch of rejects you laughingly call a platoon. We’re only five hundred meters from their government center, their ‘palacio’ or whatever the hell they call it. You’re going in first.”
Another pause and Sungurlu began cursing under his breath, about ready to run back down the line of troops.
“Why us?” Krieger finally demanded, the affected cool replaced by a plaintive whine. “We went first last time.”
Sungurlu’s head popped up, eyes darting around behind him, trying to make out faces through the cheaply-fabricated infrared goggles, bringing his rifle up to his shoulder. He was going to kill the bastard, going to put a round right through his fat head in front of everyone just as a lesson not to screw with the senior sergeant. Krieger wasn’t stupid though, for all he was a coward; he was blended in with his men, keeping his head down.
“Ahriman take his balls,” Sungurlu murmured. He abruptly realized Rao was staring at him, the whites of his eyes visible because he’d taken off his night vision glasses again. “Rao, put those damned goggles back on before I shove them up your ass.”
“I can’t maintain my interval with them on,” the man complained, hurrying to do it anyway because he was smart enough to be scared of his senior NCO. “It kills my depth perception.”
“After we take this damn planet, I’ll buy you the latest gear and you can fucking walk point instead of me.” Sergeant shouldn’t be walking point anyway—just can’t trust these idiots to do it right. He keyed his radio again. “Krieger, you can either get your worthless excuse for a platoon up here in the next thirty seconds, or I’m going to come over there and execute you. And if you try to run, you’ll just die tired.”
“I’m coming, damn it.”
Sungurlu shoved the radio back into its pouch, sniffing in satisfaction.
“Damn right you’re coming.”
“Sgt. Sungurlu,” Rao ventured nervously, half raising a hand as if he were a child in a classroom. “Why aren’t we going in first?”
Sungurlu favored him with the sort of pitying look one might give the slow-witted when they said something especially stupid.
“Because there’s no way in hell I’m going to be first through the door, Rao! Shit,” he scoffed, “a man could get killed doing that!”
Wilhelm Krieger was staring at the public, street-level entrance to the Palacio and planning ways he could get away with killing Senior Sgt. Sungurlu. It wouldn’t be easy. Sungurlu was Magnus’ favorite—some people even speculated they were lovers, but Krieger knew the thought was ludicrous. Sungurlu fancied himself a ladies’ man and Magnus lacked the equipment to satisfy anyone, including himself, which was probably why he was such an ill-tempered son of a bitch. Magnus liked the hairy, greasy NCO for whatever reason, and had defended him from more than one challenge to his authority.
But Krieger was going to do it, he’d decided already.
If he lived through the next few minutes. He scanned the area around the street entrance carefully, searching for any obvious signs of a trap. These people weren’t professionals and he remembered the lessons the Starkad Marines had taught him well enough to spot any amateurish booby traps or mines or ambushes they might set up. There were none. They were probably just inside the main entrance, maybe with barricades set up for cover and whatever their largest crew-served weapons might be, if they even had any left after the Brotherhood mecha had destroyed their pitiful attempts at gun manufacturing last time. The doors up front looked pretty sturdy, about three meters tall and no doubt a few centimeters thick. They probably figured they could hold up in there, dumbass civilians.
Still… he was at the last cover before the courtyard, fifty meters of open space between the brick and wood public restrooms and the entrance to the Palacio. He liked this cover and he didn’t really want to give it up. Luckily, he was a good enough NCO to have actually trained his subordinates.
You have to delegate these things.
“Red,” he said, pointing at the man he’d designated as a corporal, a tall, skinny, goofy-looking kid out of Modi. Long, jet-black hair stuck out from beneath the man’s battle helmet and Krieger couldn’t for the life of him figure out why people called him “Red,” but it wasn’t his job to ratify nicknames. “You got the explosives?”
Red nodded, the same dumb look on his face he always had whether he was eating lunch or putting a bullet into somebody. He pulled off his backpack, patting it demonstratively, as if Krieger would have thought he was carrying five kilograms of plastic explosives in his hip pocket.
“Then take Mortensen and Grundig and set me a nice, big door-busting charge over there,” he instructed pointing at the double-doors at the end of the walkway, covered by a canvas awning for those days it was raining. Which is proba
bly like, every day here. “Set it for three minutes.”
He glanced over his shoulder and found the closest of his squad leaders.
“Dobrev, you take Tiger Squad and go cover him.”
You couldn’t just call them “first squad” or “third squad” with these doofuses. They thought they were badass pirates, so you had to call them something dangerous-sounding. “Tiger squad,” and “Wolf squad,” and Mithra alone knew if there’d be a “Shark squad” someday if they kept getting more people. He wanted to laugh, but he wasn’t dealing with disciplined soldiers here, much less Starkad Marines, but he did what he had to do to keep them motivated.
Dobrev looked doubtful, no matter what fearsome name his squad was called, but he did what he was told, undoubtedly figuring Red had the tough job. They jogged across the courtyard, likely would have run if it hadn’t been for all the weapons and ammo and armor they were hauling around with them. He wanted to yell at them to use overwatch and move by teams, but in open ground like this, it didn’t really matter. Speed was probably better.
He didn’t watch their motion, instead keeping his eyes on the windows, the terraces, sure there would be sharpshooters there. It would be a shame if they took out one or two of Dobrev’s squad, but it would reveal their positions and he could have them handled. And if Sungurlu got a few of his people killed, it would make it easier for him to justify fragging the man.
He was holding his breath, not wanting to miss the shot, not wanting to miss the muzzle flash. There was nothing. He frowned. Were these people cowards or just incompetent?
“Ah well, works either way,” he mused quietly.
The squad was in place, sort of. Not exactly a textbook perimeter, but they were clustered around the doors in sort of a messy half-circle while Red directed his two helpers planting what was basically all the explosives they’d brought with them. It was overkill, but when it was his ass on the line, overkill was just enough kill. Maybe. He wished he had more explosives.
Red gave the set-up a last look-over, then flashed a thumbs-up back at Krieger… and stood there grinning like an idiot.
Oh, you got to be shitting me.
“Get away!” Krieger tried to mouth the words, waving his hand, but only received a confused look in return. He hissed a sigh and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Move away, you idiots!” he bellowed, the yell echoing off the cyclopean walls of the government center.
He ducked back slightly, trying to put more of the brick wall of the public bathrooms between him and any snipers who still might be watching. Again, nothing. It was quiet enough for him to hear the patter of light rain on the roof of the restrooms.
Had they evacuated the damn city? Was that their plan?
Red and Dobrev and the others were running back to cover and Krieger abruptly realized he hadn’t been counting down the time. Red had just scrambled behind the wall and covered his ears, so Krieger did the same thing, not bothering to order the rest of the platoon to follow his example. If they were too stupid to cover their ears, maybe the ringing and the headaches would at least let them learn from their mistakes.
He’d sat there for over a minute when he began to suspect Red was as big of an idiot as he looked and had mis-armed the charges. He’d just let his hands slip out of the edges of his helmet and off his ears, just begun to straighten to sneak a look when the door-breacher blew. He was fifty meters away, but the concussion still knocked him off balance and the sound of the blast left a high-pitched whistling in his ears. Lights flashed in his eyes and he put out a hand to steady himself against the wall, too stunned to even muster anger at his own stupidity.
He shook his head and finally his vision cleared enough to see the cloud of dust and debris and smoke rolling out across the courtyard, billowing upward high enough to nearly mask the whole front wall of the Palacio. Not only were the doors blown completely off their hinges, but the awning over the walkway had collapsed and part of it was on fire.
Yes, perhaps he had used too much explosives.
“Go!” he yelled, motioning at the doorway with one hand and unslinging his rifle with the other.
He jogged just fast enough to not be the first one there, leaving that to Dobrev, who seemed to be more enthusiastic and bloodthirsty after the display of pyrotechnic prowess. He was yelling at his squad to follow him, waving his gun in the air like he was some action hero in a movie. Then he disappeared into the smoke and billowing dust enveloping the front of the building, Krieger clenched his teeth and kept running behind him even though it went against every instinct he had.
No one inside could have lived through that blast.
And he was right. No one inside had lived through the blast… because there was no one inside. The entrance hall was large, with a vaulted half-ceiling, half open to the landings of the upper floors, and all he’d managed to accomplish was the utter destruction of some nice looking waiting area furniture and a security/information kiosk.
He slowed from a run to a jog to a slow, scanning walk as he entered the vestibule of the government center. The interior lights were out, either left off intentionally or short-circuited by the explosion, and wisps of smoke teased at the green-tinted view in his night-vision goggles, but he couldn’t see anybody, any bodies, any body parts.
“Shit,” he said aloud. He turned to the rest of his platoon as they rushed through the smoke and into the lobby, waving for their attention. “They’re hold up somewhere in this building,” he told them, speaking loudly now, not caring about being overheard because there was no one around to hear but them. “They probably have some kind of bunker. Wolf squad, you’re going to take the west wing of the building. Second, stop standing around like we’re on a damned smoke break! Get…”
“Sarge!” Dobrev yelled. He was pointing up at the mezzanine between the second and third floor balconies, fumbling with his rifle one-handed. “There’s somebody up there!”
Krieger’s first thought was that Dobrev was just jumping at shadows, but he brought his rifle up to his shoulder anyway, scanning along the railing and had just caught a hint of motion.
Somebody hit him. That was what it felt like, like someone had wound up and hit him right in the chest with a club, but there was no one near him. He staggered back, putting a hand to his chest instinctively. He wore gloves with the fingertips cut off, both because it allowed him a better feel for his equipment and because it looked badass; but now his bare fingertips felt a warm wetness on his chest. He held up his hand, frowning in curiosity, wondering what could have spilled all over the front of his tactical vest. It was too dark to see what color the liquid staining his fingers was; it seemed inky-black in his night vision goggles.
Maybe there was something wrong with his goggles, he thought, because his vision seemed to be getting blurry…or was something wrong with his head? He stumbled and suddenly, he was on his knees and didn’t know how he’d gotten there. He was vaguely aware of the rest of the platoon running, yelling, shooting at something, but the sounds were muted, filtered through a haze of unreality.
I’ve been shot, he realized. The sniper he’d been worrying about had finally got him.
Not just a sniper, either. Dobrev was trying to take shelter behind the wreckage of what had once been an expensive-looking leather sofa, but bullets were slicing through the ruined furniture as if the wood and leather and stuffing weren’t there. Full-auto fire from a machine gun, something crew-served. It took all the energy he had left, but he managed to tilt his head back and look up at the mezzanine.
Yeah, there it was. Pintle-mounted, screwed onto the railing up there with a quick-detach clip. Standard military issue for Starkad Marines or Spartan Rangers, but who the hell were these guys?
He would never find out. The full auto fire had raked through Dobrev, leaving him lying sprawled out behind the sofa, blood pooling around his body. It walked its way backward and there was just a single half-second of bright, sharp pain before everything went black, leaving only one,
last, fleeting thought.
Damn it, Sungurlu…
17
This was more like it. No screwing around in space with no gravity to speak of, no atmosphere for control surfaces and the only way you could tell how fast you were going was how much it hurt. Lt. Kathren Margolis took her assault shuttle through a banking turn, trying to come in behind the enemy birds. The four aerospacecraft had split up, two of them circling around the western edge of the town, and she’d left them to Lt. Lee and Sub-Lt. Gutierrez in the other assault shuttle.
She and Acosta were on the two swinging eastward, and for once, he was keeping his damned mouth shut. It might have just been the acceleration, but it sure made it easier to concentrate. The control yoke was an extension of her arm, the shuttle her own body soaring on the night wind, instinctive and liberating.
This was why she’d become a pilot, why she’d gone against her family and left for the Academy. This was why it was all worth it. She flicked up the arming switch for the lasers, snarling in savage joy. And this part was just gravy.
The targeting reticle blinked fitfully over the right-hand bird, not quite settling. The pilots weren’t bad, not for pirate trash anyway. They rolled and yawed across the sky, doing their best to stay on their objective despite the maneuvers.
And their objective is to kill my boyfriend, so fuck them.
She fired, not waiting for a perfect target lock, and the night exploded with a flash of ionized air, heated to plasma by the laser burst. The actual laser was outside the visible spectrum, but she could see its passage clearly from the lightning flare passing only meters behind the enemy shuttle. It was a near miss, but the superheated air threw a wave of turbulence into the bird and it tumbled wildly, barely regaining control. But the pilot overcompensated, bringing the plane level and forgetting to keep maneuvering. The targeting system displayed a steady green and she fired again, draining the capacitors in one, long burst.