"I…uh…yeah, I guess it would, LT," MG stammered. At first, he looked pissed at being reprimanded by the rookie, then looked away. The pair continued to casually scan their fellow passengers and the city they were approaching in uncomfortable silence.
"You pick up on anything?" Murph asked once they'd disembarked at their desired stop and had regrouped.
"Nothing," MG said, seeming to be over his pique at being reprimanded.
"Let's keep the same separation for now," Jacob said. "Murph, your team will take point. We'll follow around fifty meters behind you. Actually, on second thought, I'll take Taylor and Mettler, you and MG have point. Don't break com silence unless absolutely necessary."
"You got it," Murph said, waving for MG to follow him.
They reconfigured into two groups and made their way down off the platform and into the neighborhood that was just on the outskirts of what would be considered the metro area. The buildings were still that same light-gray color, but the tallest in the area only rose to a height of twenty stories. The one they were heading to was five blocks away from the mag-lev platform.
"So, what were you guys doing the last time you were on this planet?" Jacob asked.
"You'd have to ask Captain Mosler about that," Mettler said evasively. "We're not cleared to talk about it."
"Even though you were there? And I'm now in charge of this team?"
"I don't make the rules, LT."
Jacob saw Murph and MG stop in front of the building their objective was supposed to be in and picked up the pace to catch them. Both looked apprehensive when he got to them.
"What's up?" he asked.
"She's not answering the building's page system." Murph gestured to the glass panel near the door he'd been using. "It's not a secure building so we can still get in, but she's not known for liking unexpected visitors."
Jacob thought back to the intel package he'd read on their objective. Weef Zadra, who went by just "Zadra," was a natural born Veran who still held citizenship on her home world of Ver, though she rarely visited. It was unknown where she'd received her training in intelligence and counterintelligence, but she was widely regarded as one of the best at what she did. In other words, she would always see you coming. She was also rumored to be more than capable of defending herself should the need arise, which explained why a lone Veran had thrived for so long on a rough planet like Niceen-3.
"I assume you tried the dead drop com addresses she gave us?" Jacob asked.
"Of course. I tried those as soon as we were off the mag-lev," Murph said.
"No choice but to go up," Jacob sighed. "Let's hope she doesn't have an itchy trigger finger before we can identify ourselves."
The team piled into two different lift cars that whisked them up to the tenth floor of the building where Zadra's office was located. Once the doors opened up, everyone on his team pulled their primary weapons out of concealment, so Jacob followed their lead and unslung the plasma carbine from where it hung inside his long coat. They advanced with Murph in the lead, followed by Jacob, and then MG with the others trailing slightly behind. A few doors slid open up along the hallway and, after one look at the heavily armed humans marching by, closed just as quickly.
"It's not locked," Jacob said when they reached Zadra's door. The touch panel on the frame was ringed in white, not the customary blue that said the door was locked.
"We going in?" Murph asked.
"We're going in," Jacob confirmed, raising his weapon and waiting until his team was in position. A simple breach was one of the things they'd trained on in the Corsair's cargo bay, so no verbal commands were needed. Once he saw they were ready, he pressed and held the "Open" icon on the wall panel and moved aside as the door whisked open silently. MG and Taylor rushed inside while Murph cleared immediately to their right. Jacob and Mettler stayed outside to cover the hallway and as a reserve force should the entry team hit resistance.
"Clear."
"Clear!"
"All clear, LT!"
Jacob motioned Mettler in before moving into the office/residence himself and closing the door. It wouldn't obey his command to lock, so he left it unsecured and stuck a motion sensor on the wall. The device would at least give them warning of anyone approaching, as well as how many individual targets.
When he entered the residence, he was struck by how normal the place would have appeared had it been on Earth. The first two rooms of the apartment looked like any typical small office with a door separating it from the living quarters beyond. What wasn't typical, however, was that the place had obviously been ransacked.
"Someone got here before us."
"No shit, MG," Mettler fired back. "Any other nuggets of wisdom to offer?"
"Just this one; your mom is the best I've—"
"Let's focus on the job so we can exfil and let Captain Mosler know we don't have the objective," Jacob interrupted. "Murph, where the hell do we even start with this mess? Murph? Murph!"
"Huh? Oh, sorry, LT." Murph shook off his distraction.
"What is it?"
"This looks…staged," Murph said. "Whoever trashed this place would know she wouldn't be keeping anything of value out here, especially in hardcopy or on an unsecure tablet. I don't see any signs of a struggle. No weapons fire, no blood, none of the other furniture fucked up, just a mess right here near the desk."
"That seems to be good news for us," MG said. "Maybe we can assume she's still alive."
"I think you're missing the point, MG," Jacob said, his eyes never leaving Murph. "If this is staged, who was it done by? More importantly, who was it done for?"
"That's the question, isn't it?" Murph asked. A split second later, the motion sensor Jacob had planted sent an alarm to the mission computers they all wore on their wrists letting them know that ten beings were quickly converging on their position.
"I guess that answers that question," Jacob sighed. "This is an ambush."
Chapter 12
"Smooth move with the motion sensor, LT." Murph clapped Jacob on the back as the team took up defensive positions in the apartment. "Do you remember what the other function of that particular device is?"
"Uh…" Jacob's mind had gone completely blank. He stared at Murph in disbelief as he could now hear the assault team outside the door. "Maybe this isn't the best time for a training session, Sergeant."
"The Mk.4 Spider is a multi-spectral scanner that can monitor an area of sixty square meters and has a maximum transmitting range of two kilometers," Murph lectured as the first sounds of someone messing around just outside the door became apparent. "What most people forget is that the device is also an anti-personnel mine that can be set to detonate on proximity or"—Murph gave a predatory smile and poised his finger over the screen of his combat computer—"remote signal." He pressed the green icon, and there was a hard whump that shook the door in the frame.
"Yeah, but it's not that powerful," MG said. "That probably took out the two closest to the door but that's about it."
"Better than nothing," Murph said. "Taylor, get the door."
Jacob could feel his heartbeat in his ears and his mouth had gone completely dry. This was happening, and nothing could stop it. When the door opened, a group of aliens were going to come in shooting, trying to kill them, and he'd have to shoot back. All of his training at the Academy seemed to evaporate, and when Taylor hit the door control and scuttled back into a defensive position, he just stood there, rooted to the floor. Even when the first shots were exchanged it seemed to be happening in slow motion through a haze.
"Goddamnit, LT!" Murph shoved him so hard his feet left the floor, and he landed behind the oversized desk. "Get in the fucking fight or get out of the way!"
Jacob's paralysis was snapped as soon as he hit the floor and everything seemed to speed up again around him. He heard the snarl of plasma weapons and the acrid stench of burning building material and upholstery where wild shots scorched whatever they hit. He grabbed his own weapon, flicked the saf
ety off, and came up from behind the desk to see what was happening.
The enemy—he had no idea what species they were—had hit the chokepoint created by the doorway while his own team, having had the luxury of a warning, had picked their positions smartly and were able to overlap their fields of fire to turn the entry into a kill box. Jacob looked as two dead aliens were dragged away and a third appeared, this one wearing a bulky pack with thick power cables that ran to a device it was holding.
"This asshole has a shield generator!" Mettler yelled. "Falling back!" Mettler had to give ground from the enemy's advance since he was the closest to the door. Jacob could now see that what he first thought was a weapon was actually a portable shield generator, a miniature version of the type that protected the Corsair. The Marines' fire slammed into the energy barrier and was dissipated. Jacob knew the weapons they carried weren't powerful enough to overwhelm the shield, even if they concentrated all of their fire on it, and that the enemy would soon be able to get past the doorway and into the relative open area of the office where they could use their numerical advantage.
"Everybody, clear out of the doorway!" Jacob shouted, letting his plasma carbine fall and hand by its sling. The massive L-shaped desk he'd been behind was actually two pieces and made of some sort of smooth synthetic material that had some real heft to it. He grabbed the shorter of the two sections and, pivoting on the ball of his right foot, flung it at the alien carrying the shield generator. The energy shield could absorb and dissipate blasts from energy weapons, but when it deflected a ballistic projectile, it transferred the energy back to the source. In this case, it was the emitter strapped to the alien's forearm.
The desk slammed into the shield and the room lit up like the sun from the arcing and flaring, forcing everyone to shield their eyes. Jacob had been expecting that and had been focused on the floor in front of him when the desk knocked the alien into the door frame with a warbling cry. It also raised its arms up to keep from being knocked down completely, exposing its feet and shins. Jacob drew his sidearm and snap fired a dozen shots, scoring nine hits on both the alien's unprotected feet. The warbling cry of surprise turned into a piercing shriek of agony, and it collapsed backwards, the edge of the energy shield cutting into the chest of its comrade that had been standing too close at the time.
"Light `em up!" Murph barked and the Marines started hammering into the three remaining aliens, putting them down in short order.
"Cease fire!" Jacob shouted. "Mettler, check the ones we killed outside. Is anybody hurt?"
"I got a flash burn from a near miss, but I'll live," MG said, holding his side.
"Anybody else?"
"We're good, LT," Murph said, looking at Jacob oddly. He went over and helped Mettler move the desk out of the way so they could go out and assess the damage in the hallway.
"So, what the hell are these things?" Jacob asked.
"They're a species called the Ull," Taylor said quietly. Before Jacob could ask if they were the same Ull that Mosler had been telling him about some days prior, he was called out into the hall by Murph.
"We have a real problem here," the sergeant said, gesturing down to two dead bodies. The anti-personnel mine had made a mess of things, but when Murph rolled the one over, it was unmistakable that it was human.
"What the fuck?" Jacob asked. "Did we just frag our own?"
"Not likely," Murph said carefully, seeming to hold back. "These may have been…contractors…working with the Ull here."
"Mercenaries?"
"Sure, why not? Let's say they're mercs."
"What would you say they were?" Jacob asked.
"Fucking traitors," Mettler said with enough venom to make Jacob take a step back. The corporal spit on the corpse and walked back into the room to help the other.
"That would be more accurate," Murph said. "We'll fill you in later. Right now, we need to get the hell out of here. Niceen-3 is pretty lax on gunplay if it's well contained, but setting off the explosive in the hallway may get their security force's attention."
The team scrambled to drag the rest of the bodies into the ruined apartment to at least clear the hallway. During the firefight, the automated fire suppressant system had triggered, which forced them to blow out one of the floor-to-ceiling picture windows so they didn't asphyxiate from the gas that was being pumped in. Apparently, the building designers were far more concerned about the structure than the survival of the occupants in the event of a fire.
"Standby."
Everyone froze. The voice was obviously computer generated and had come from the overhead speakers. The Marines all just looked at each other, unsure what was going on. A moment later a holographic projector hidden in the wall sputtered to life and the image of a Veran female resolved itself into an impressively solid looking likeness. At a glance, Jacob would swear she was standing in the room with them.
"Humans," she sighed. "I suppose it was too much to hope for that you wouldn't demolish my Niceen home looking for clues. Is all your species this directly savage or have I just been unlucky in the ones I've met so far?"
"Weef Zadra, I presume," Jacob said, taking the lead when nobody else made any move to speak.
"You look familiar," Zadra said. "Have we met before?"
"I guarantee we haven't. My name is Lieutenant Jacob Brown of the United Earth Navy," Jacob said. "We've come all this way to…rescue…you. Any chance you're hiding out in a panic room within this apartment?"
"Not a chance," Zadra laughed. "I left Niceen-3 after the second ConFed hit squad came into that neighborhood looking for me. I've been remotely observing over a secure slip-com link until one of the contractors I'd reached out to showed up to extract me. I have to say I'm somewhat surprised it was Marcus Webb's group. I assumed it would be one of Saditava Mok's teams."
"I don't know who that is," Jacob said, though he caught Murph blanch out of the corner of his eye. "Zadra, time is a little critical right now—"
"Yes, of course, now that you've demolished half the floor of my building, Niceen's pitiful excuse for a police force will be arriving to shake down the perpetrators for money," Zadra said. "I'm not on that planet, Young Lieutenant. The location of where I'm hiding is there"—a red line shot from Zadra's extended finger and pointed to a spot on the far wall—"and you better be quick about it. The authorities are on their way even now."
Before Jacob could ask her to clarify, the hologram disappeared just before Murph took the butt of his weapon and bashed it into the wall right where the line had pointed to. It took a few hits to make it all the way through the fibrous material they used for walls on Niceen-3, and then two people to tear the cladding back so Jacob could look inside. There, in a small shelf built into the metal wall supports, was a case containing two standard data cards.
"Smart," Murph said. "She can't guarantee that her slip-com transmissions aren't being intercepted so she didn't say her location over the link. Hopefully, these aren't encrypted or, if they are, she used a routine she knows we'll be able to unlock."
"Let's get out of here," Jacob said, pocketing the cards. "Did we get images of the two dead humans to see if we can ID them later?"
"Got it," Taylor said.
"Then let's move."
They made it back down to the street level without any interference from the locals and were a block away from the building when the first aircars began landing on the roof. Jacob could see the smoke roiling out of the window they'd broken as Zadra's belongings continued to smolder after being peppered with hundreds of plasma bolts. Jacob didn't know what sort of public surveillance the planet might have, but given the reputation of the Reaches, he had to assume that even if the city put up cameras, the locals would likely destroy them before too long.
"Split now," Jacob said. "Head back to the Corsair."
As they'd planned before even landing on Niceen-3, they peeled off one at a time and took separate routes back to different mag-lev platforms to catch a ride to the starport. There had
been some argument during the initial mission planning about the risk of moving individually through the city when one of the team members was as green as a new sapling, but Jacob overrode their objections. Eventually, they'd learn about his…gifts…but for now, he'd let them think he was just another pain in the ass second lieutenant who needed constant supervision.
Jacob was tempted to run to his designated platform so he could get back to the Corsair sooner, but since he was carrying the data cards, he decided that trying to blend in was the wisest course of action. It wasn't as if Captain Mosler could leave before the slowest of them made it back anyway.
Maybe it was the perspective gained from just having been in a firefight in the last building, but the city streets didn't seem nearly as threatening to Jacob as they had on the way in.
Niceen-3's immigration control only cared about tracking who was coming in, not who was leaving. Jacob was able to simply flash his credentials that showed him as a member of the Corsair's crew, and they let him through. He jumped on one of the automated trams that ran along the perimeter of the active ramp. The ship was parked nearly four kilometers away since Mosler didn't want to be too close to the terminal building itself in case they had to make a hasty retreat.
The open-air tram was only moving at around twenty kilometers per hour, so Jacob didn't bother pressing the button to get it to slow down, instead leaping off and hitting the ground at a brisk run. The Corsair was sitting just as he'd left it, but there was a tickling at the back of his mind that something was…off. He resisted the urge to break com silence and call ahead, shaking off the feeling and jogging up the ramp and dropping off his gear in the armory. When he made it to the bridge, however, he wished he'd listened to that nagging feeling and had at least kept one of his sidearms.
"Look, Brown, I know how this looks, but I—"
"You mother fucker!" Jacob raged. "I knew it! I knew it when I caught you messing around in that box!"
Murph had beaten him back to the ship. The tall Marine was standing over Mosler's lifeless body, his sidearm still in his hand. Jacob could see that Sully was slumped over in the seat but couldn't tell if the pilot was still breathing or not.
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