by Piers Platt
“I don’t think so. The energy being transported is undetectable. And it passes through other objects – walls, for instance – without disturbing them. It just collects in the object that you designate. Then, when the energy reaches a certain level, the object explodes, releasing the energy.”
“Where does it get the energy from?” Dasi asked.
“An external power source, and it needs to be a big one. The Hurasu’s batteries, for instance.”
Beauceron walked around the table to look at the schematic from a different angle. “You can designate any object to receive the energy? Anything at all?”
“Yes,” Paisen said. “According to their research paper, the material you use determines the explosive force that results. Paper just bursts into flame immediately, for instance. A ceramic mug would produce a result similar to a fragmentation grenade.”
“So density affects the explosive yield?” Rath asked.
“Mm-hm. Metal was the most destructive. They tested it on a twenty-pound lead weight – it had explosive force equivalent to a very low-yield nuclear detonation.”
Rath rubbed his chin. “The concept has very interesting possibilities.”
Beauceron shook his head slowly. “What you’re describing sounds like the ultimate terrorist weapon. It uses everyday objects, which are easily carried through security checkpoints, then activated remotely, with extreme lethality. This is … an abomination.”
Paisen gave a wry smile. “Perhaps. But it’s our abomination.”
“It’s not just ours. You stole these plans, and sold them to a third party,” Beauceron reminded her. “Who?”
“I was hired anonymously,” Paisen told him, exasperated. “I have no way of knowing who bought it.”
“My god,” Beauceron said. “We have to find out.”
“You’re welcome to try, when all this is over. But right now, we need to decide: do we build this thing with our remaining Forge capacity, or not?”
“No,” Beauceron said, at once. “It’s too dangerous.”
“We may need it,” Paisen argued. “Just building it doesn’t mean we have to use it.”
“If we’re captured, and the Group finds it, we’ve armed the most dangerous organization in the galaxy with a super-weapon they’re bound to abuse,” Beauceron replied.
Dasi held up her hands. “It scares me, but I’ll defer to the experts.”
Paisen turned to Rath. “You’re the tie-breaker.”
“I thought you said this wasn’t a committee,” he reminded her.
“We’ll need to use the last of our Forge reserves,” she replied. “That potentially puts us at a major disadvantage.”
“Fuck,” he exhaled noisily. “This thing is terrifying. But I’m sorry, Martin. I say we build it, just in case. And we destroy the plans, and destroy the device itself as soon as we’ve taken down the Group.”
* * *
“That’s the last component,” Rath said, wiping sweat from his brow. “Hook it up.”
Paisen lifted the Hurasu’s deck plate and slid the power cable into an open port on the ship’s auxiliary battery pack. “It’s attached.”
Rath turned on the datascroll affixed to the side of device, which served as a makeshift control panel. On the screen, he opened the Settings menu, and selected Power On. They both took a half step back.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Rath said, after a few seconds.
The door slid open, and Beauceron walked into the cargo bay. “Done?” he asked.
“It’s on,” Rath told him. “I think.”
“We need to test it,” Paisen said. She checked the time in her heads-up display. “We’ve got less than an hour before we arrive at Emerist.”
“Martin, can I have your notepad for a second?”
Beauceron pulled out his notebook and handed it to Rath, who tore out a single sheet of paper and then handed the book back. Rath placed the paper in the device’s scanner tray, and then tapped on the control panel. A grid of red lasers appeared momentarily, criss-crossing the sheet of paper.
“The scanner works,” Paisen observed.
Rath picked up a small bracelet from the workbench, and slid it onto his wrist. He tapped a button on the bracelet. The control panel on the main device lit up and beeped back at him. “Detonator bracelet’s got a good signal connection to the base unit.”
Paisen picked up the sheet of paper, and they followed her as she left the cargo bay and walked up the ship’s corridor to the cockpit. The door slid closed behind them.
“This is about as far away as we can get. Maybe fifty meters, with two bulkheads in between us and the base.”
“Ready?” Rath asked.
“Ready.”
Rath tapped the button on the bracelet again. In Paisen’s hand, the sheet of paper burst into flames, disintegrating in an instant. She dropped it hurriedly, and stamped out the cinders when they reached the floor.
“I’d call that a successful test,” Rath said, grinning.
“Yeah,” Paisen agreed.
Beauceron grimaced. “God help us.”
They found Dasi reading a datascroll in the lounge.
“Are you ready?” Paisen asked her.
“Sure,” Dasi agreed.
She stood up and faced the older woman. Paisen studied her face: the curve of her jaw, her cheekbones, the color of her eyes. Dasi watched, fascinated, as Paisen’s face transformed, her skin darkening, the hair changing color and lengthening.
“I feel like I’m going to be sick,” Dasi said, when Paisen was finished.
“I feel like I’m going to be sick,” Paisen echoed, testing the vocal match. Then she walked over to the table and called up the hologram of Lizelle’s airship. “Let’s walk through it one last time.”
“From our infiltration?” Rath asked.
“No, we’ve covered that enough. We’ll skip ahead to starting positions on the airship.”
Rath pointed to a small, wooded rise on the grounds of the estate. “I’m in a concealed overwatch position here, ready to support-by-fire.”
“I’m with Rath,” Dasi said.
“Doing what?” Paisen prompted.
Dasi patted a set of binoculars at her waist. “Scanning the mansion, helping Rath gather intelligence.”
“Right,” Paisen said. “Martin?”
“I’m on the hoverbike, with you, out of visual range.”
“I signal that we’re in position,” Rath said. “And that Senator Lizelle is in the building.”
“I bring the hoverbike in, and drop Paisen off close to the front entrance,” Beauceron replied.
“In this clearing, here,” Paisen pointed, enlarging the model for a better view.
“Right,” Beauceron agreed. “Then I fly out of there, back to the Hurasu, and wait for your next signal.”
“I approach the front entrance and gain access, unarmed, posing as Dasi,” Paisen recited.
“I monitor your conversation over the radio,” Dasi said, “and feed you personal details via your heads-up display, to ensure Senator Lizelle believes that you are me.”
“Contingency plan,” Rath said. “If they don’t buy it, and attempt to capture you, I provide suppressive fire while you withdraw. We call in the Hurasu for extract.”
Paisen continued: “Assuming I get access, I isolate the senator from his guards, and maneuver him outside the mansion. When ready, I signal Hurasu for pickup.”
“I’m not clear on how you’re going to get the senator alone,” Beauceron said. “His guards are going to be on alert, assuming the Group warned them about our attack on Fusoria, and Dasi’s disappearance. How are you going to get him where we need him?”
“With my feminine charm,” Paisen said, flipping her hair and giving him a coy smile. “Or rather, Dasi’s feminine charm.”
“Ah,” Beauceron said, blushing.
Dasi shuddered. “I feel like I need to take a shower.”
“When Paisen signals for pickup, I
toss noisemakers and open fire on the house as a diversion,” Rath said, continuing the rehearsal.
“Pickup complete,” Paisen said. “Lizelle and I are on board the Hurasu, with Beauceron. We swing around and pick up Rath and Dasi.”
“… and make for deep space,” Rath finished. “As fast as fucking possible.”
They stood silent for a minute, studying the hologram.
“It sounds so simple,” Dasi commented.
“The best plans are the simple ones,” Paisen told her.
“There is another contingency we haven’t covered,” Rath said. “What if the Group predicts our next play, and is able to get contractors on Emerist ahead of us?”
“I’m not getting captured again,” Paisen told him. “So that’s what these are for.”
She set four small metal discs on the table, each marked with a letter, along with four detonator bracelets.
“You intend to scan the discs with the high energy device?” Beauceron asked.
“Yeah,” Paisen said. “Each of us carries one, along with a bracelet.”
Dasi picked up a bracelet and examined it. “The bracelets will only detonate our own disc, or everyone’s disc at once?”
“They each have a dial, with five settings. It can detonate whoever’s disc you select, or all of them at once,” Paisen said. “I twist it to ‘P’ for Paisen, and click the button. That way, if one of us is captured and can’t do it themselves, the others can … help them. If needed.”
“How big will the explosion be?” Beauceron asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” Paisen said. “Definitely big enough to kill you. Probably big enough to take out anyone nearby, too.”
An uncomfortable silence settled over the group. Rath picked up the disc labeled R and eyed it distastefully. Then he slid it into his left shirt pocket, and eyed each member of the group in turn.
“If anyone blows my disc without making a solid effort to rescue me first, I’m going to haunt their ass for the rest of their life.”
14
“Here it comes,” Rath warned Dasi.
She sat behind him on the hoverbike, and despite being attached to him via a harness, he could feel her arms squeezing him tightly around the waist. They hovered inside a thick cloud, and Rath knew that Dasi could only see a few feet in each direction – nothing but yellow-grey mist on every side. But his thermal vision penetrated the cloud, and through it, Rath could see Senator Lizelle’s airship approaching above them.
Probably best that she can’t see anything … she’s nervous enough.
Rath’s Forge was empty, its canisters depleted to construct Paisen’s high energy weapon prototype. But he wore it anyway, reluctant to part with it after so many missions. He felt strangely naked knowing it was empty, however. He caught himself adjusting the strap again.
“Is something wrong?” Dasi asked.
“No,” Rath told her. He pulled the grappling gun out of a makeshift holster along the side of the hoverbike. “Ready?”
“No,” Dasi said.
Rath shouldered the grappling gun, tracking the blimp-like vehicle as it slid slowly overhead.
“Just make sure you don’t drop me,” Dasi pleaded.
“I won’t,” Rath promised.
He fired the gun and the grappling hook streaked up, disappearing into the cloud above, trailing the wire behind it. After a few seconds, the wire went taut, and Rath felt the hoverbike begin to slide as the airship pulled them forward.
Here we go.
Rath activated the winch on his vest, and suddenly they swung free of the hoverbike, rising quickly. Dasi gave a yelp of alarm. Rath patted her hands reassuringly. The hoverbike disappeared into the cloudy gloom below them a second later. Soon after that, they emerged from the cloud entirely, and Rath got his first good look at the underside of the airship.
The hook’s a little low – we’re going to have to do some climbing.
He had harpooned the massive vehicle on one of the spherical gas balloons that supported it as it floated through Emerist’s upper atmosphere. But the balloon was in no danger of losing air pressure – it was built of self-sealing material, impossible to permanently rupture. Rath focused on the grappling hook above him, which was approaching fast.
As the balloon loomed closer, he spread his hands and feet wide, ensuring the magnetic pads on each were oriented toward the surface of the balloon. They landed hard, but Rath pressed himself against the skin of the balloon, ignoring the sharp pain of the impact. The magnets held.
“Are we on?” Dasi asked.
“Yeah,” Rath grunted. “That hurt.”
“Are you okay?”
“Uh huh,” he said. “Okay, I need you to shift a bit, and try to get your hands and feet on the balloon, too.”
“With the pads, right?”
“Right.”
Dasi let go of Rath with one hand, and he saw it appear next to his own on the skin of the balloon. He felt her legs press against his a moment later.
“Good,” he told her. “Now undo the harness.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You gotta try, Dasi.”
“Um,” she said. “I just looked down. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Okay,” Rath said. “Just feel for the clip with your hand.”
Rath heard a metallic click.
“Good, now put your hand back on the ship. There you go. I’m going to duck under your arm.”
Rath slid his own arms under Dasi’s, keeping the magnets pressed against the balloon, and then extricated his feet, until he was hanging by her side. She looked terrified, and he could see her arms and legs trembling. He gave her a reassuring smile.
“Alright, that’s the hard part. Now we just have to go up.”
It took them nearly fifteen minutes of slow, cautious shuffling, but at last they reached the top of the airship. Rath stayed still for a minute, hanging from cramping muscles and panting with the exertion.
God damn it … were my hemobots really helping me that much?
Carefully, Rath slipped his head up over the rim of the airship. He found a thick glass safety wall running along the top side of the ship; through it, Rath could see a sprawling park, and far off to his right, the senator’s mansion.
“What the fuck …,” he breathed.
A thick column of smoke poured out of the woods near the house, and as he zoomed in through his cybernetic eye implants, Rath saw that the house’s main entrance had been blasted in by a massive explosion, and several of the windows showed bullet holes.
“Paisen, come in,” Rath radioed. He made himself exhale, and count to ten.
“Paisen or Beauceron, this is Rath, over.”
Dasi pulled herself up next to him and gasped. “Oh my god,” she said. “That’s the senator’s shuttle landing pad.”
“What is?”
“The smoke, from the trees over there. That’s where they park his shuttle. What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Rath said. “Paisen, do you read me? Dasi, try radioing them, I’m not getting through.”
“Paisen, are you there?” Dasi said into her throat-mic. She shook her head.
Rath frowned. “Are you hearing me on your earpiece when I broadcast? Radio check, over.”
Dasi shook her head. “No. What does that mean?”
“It means someone’s jamming our communications.”
“What do we do?” Dasi asked. Rath could hear the panic in her voice.
“We quit dangling out here, for starters.”
He detached a tool from his utility belt, and with a swing of his arm, punched it into the glass. He sawed left first, then right, cutting a rough triangle of glass out, before pushing it inwards. Rath boosted Dasi through, then pulled himself up. He set the triangle of glass back in place, then grabbed Dasi’s hand, and they sprinted for the nearest set of trees.
“Paisen, come in,” Rath said, pushing his way through the undergrowth. “I’m not re
ceiving you, but if you can hear me, we’re on board, moving to the overwatch position. Someone’s already attacked Lizelle – they torched his shuttle and it looks like they fought their way into the house, too.”
He stopped as the trees began to thin out, and pulled Dasi down to the ground beside him.
“We crawl from here. That bush over there will work.”
When they were under the bush, Rath pulled a camouflage net out of his rucksack, and draped it quickly over himself and Dasi. Then he unslung his auto-rifle, unfolding the bipod and snugging the weapon into his shoulder, before flipping the dust cover off the rifle’s scope. Dasi took out her binoculars and wriggled closer to him, propping herself up on her elbows.
“Paisen, if you can hear me, we’re in position,” Rath reported.
“I think I see a body,” Dasi said.
“Where?”
“By the main entrance, just to the right.”
“I see it,” Rath said. “Fuck.”
He spent a minute scanning the house, switching from window to window, searching the house and the grounds in his field of view.
“Paisen, this is Rath, over.”
He swore again, then pulled the camouflage net off.
“What are you doing?” Dasi asked.
“Getting Paisen’s attention,” Rath said. He selected High Explosive on the weapon’s variable rounds, programming them to detonate after five hundred feet. Then he pointed the rifle into the air and squeezed off three rounds.
BOOM … BOOM … BOOM.
The hoverbike appeared out of the clouds less than a minute later. Rath saw Beauceron brake when he sighted the airship, then change course, heading for Rath’s location. He set down behind the copse of trees, and moments later, Paisen led Beauceron to the bush. They lay down next to Rath, and Dasi passed Beauceron the binoculars.
“If anyone’s alive in there, they know we’re coming now,” Paisen told Rath, with some annoyance.
He shrugged. “I couldn’t think of any other way of signaling you.”
“Any signs of life?” she asked.
“No.”
“Who did this?” she asked.
Beauceron set the binoculars down. “Did the senator get any threats while you worked for him, Dasi?”