Chimera Company Season 2 - Deep Cover

by Tim C. Taylor

  “In a heartbeat. Sure, I’d feel sorry for the families, but that’s only because we have a tradition of tolerance and compassion. Why?” Ignet gave him a suspicious look. “Wouldn’t you kill them if you could?”

  “If it came to a fight, then yeah.”

  “Waiting for a fight makes no sense,” said Ignet, steel back in his soul and looking around for his rifle. “We need to kill those WCDs first. They’re not people. They’re something less. Sub-people.”

  “Funny thing,” muttered Vaylen-Zis. “I reckon they think the exact same of us.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  Damned Militia. Where the hell are they? Situation’s going to flash into disaster any moment.

  Ignoring the crazy human glaring at him, Vaylen-Zis raised his hands high and stood on tiptoe so he was clearly visible to the WCD fighters.

  “I’m not surrendering,” he announced in a loud voice. “I’m going to ask them what they’re doing.”

  “I told you,” shouted Ignet, “they’re sub-people. You can’t reason with them.”

  That won grunts of approval, so Vaylen-Zis replied, “The longer I stall them, the more time we buy for reinforcements to arrive.”

  “Reinforcements?”

  “Is the Militia coming?”

  “I heard the Legion was setting up killing zones to wipe the WCD stain from the galaxy.”

  Vaylen-Zis left the rumors flying and clambered over the barricade and down the far side.

  Conscious that he had the starring role in a thousand sight pictures, he lifted his hands and strode toward the WCD army. The blue band around his right arm felt more like a target with every step.

  He closed about half the distance before stopping and yelling at the invaders. “I ain’t surrendering. I just want to know what you’re doing there. I ask as the elected leader of this citizen armed response team. The people’s militia.”

  “We’re the Revolutionary Forces of Reconciliation,” came a shouted reply. “It’s we who are the true people’s army.”

  “People’s army? That’s the Militia.” Vaylen-Zis couldn’t help but shrug and add in a quieter voice, “Wherever the hell they are.”

  “The Militia and the Amilxi people forever,” sneered the WCD spokesperson – Vaylen-Zis couldn’t see who he was communicating with. “The corrupt Militia has made a bargain with In’Nalla to suppress disorder in return for the riches of the asteroid mine. Wealth that rightfully belongs to us all. The Militia is not the people’s army. They’re mercenaries. Oppressors. We are the true people’s army.

  “Then why don’t you attack?” asked Vaylen-Zis, immediately cursing himself for saying something as stupid as a human. “We will fight. You will kill us, but there are barricades across all the main approaches, and you will have to go over our dead bodies first to take this city, because we will stand up to you.”

  “What’s your name?”

  He hesitated. The WCDs could twist the most innocent of words into their perverted narratives, but he couldn’t see the harm in it. “I ain’t ashamed of my own name. I’m Vaylen-Zis.”

  “Well met, Vaylen-Zis. Tell us, what is it you do for a living?”

  “A butcher. Got a shop just off Restitution Plaza.”

  “Then I say to you, Vaylen-Zis, the butcher, this city needs people like you. I hope you survive this day. And to answer your question, we hope we won’t need to fight, but if the city does not yield to us willingly, then we will seize it by force.”

  “That saddens my old heart, because we will not yield, and many must die today.”

  “Have hope, butcher. This day will be long, and it has barely begun. Now, return to your friends.”

  Vaylen-Zis took a last look at the enemy and then turned back to the barricade.

  Where the hell was the Militia?

  MAJOR LYSSIN

  “Where the fuck are your people?” demanded In’Nalla. “There’s an army outside my city. Where are your air assets? Why don’t you bomb them into atoms?”

  Major Lyssin silently cursed the woman fuming out of his wrist slate.

  This he knew, was the end of a good posting. He’d be lucky to survive the day.

  “Why don’t you answer, damn you? Is this mutiny, Lyssin? Where is the Militia?”

  Lyssin ground his jaw, searching for the right words.

  The real answer was that the system marshal, safe in her asteroid belt command post, had redeployed assets to the north to defend against what even the most incompetent of trainees would realize was a feint attack. It was a half-baked military deception that wouldn’t fool a semi-trained baboon. Had it fooled the marshal, though? Lyssin thought it just as likely that she’d been bribed or decided it was time for regime change.

  Lyssin guessed the latter. This smelt of politics and bribery. Somebody had already decided what the fate of the city and its regime would be.

  “Revered Leader, I regret that the sector marshal called away our air assets and rapid deployment battalions in error. I have recalled them.”

  It was a lie, of course. He’d done no such thing.

  “Idiots! How long?”

  “About an hour,” he told her. “In the interim, I’m organizing a zonal defense with what assets I have. We just have to hold on until reinforcements arrive.”

  “Make sure you do. But your contemptible handful of troopers won’t decide the city’s fate. I will go ahead with my planned speech from Execution Square, but now it will be a rallying cry to call the people to the barricades. Make sure I am protected, Lyssin.”

  “Of course, ma’am.”

  Her face vanished as she cut the connection.

  “Shit!”

  What to do… what to do… what the hell could he do?

  To start with, he took deep breaths and calmed down. It was a fearsome ordeal to be the target of In’Nalla’s temper, but the old bitch wasn’t his mistress. That was the sector marshal, and her last words to him this morning had been: “Protect the city”.

  He had five understrength companies and they were not contemptible. It was time to remind the galaxy that the Militia could be more than ceremonial prison guards and do more than carry out reprisals for rebel atrocities. When pressed into service, they could be proper soldiers too.

  GENERAL GZEITER

  For once, Gzeiter was in agreement with the Trucker. Their combined assault force would first attempt to scare away the civilians manning the barricade across Western Approach before blasting through to seize the objectives in the city center. After all, their aim was to win over the citizens of Kaylingen to the PHPA cause, not to slaughter them.

  All the approaches into the city had some kind of blockage, but none were held in any strength that Gzeiter could see, and most of the citizen armed bands were facing Commander Slinh’s Reserve Brigade on the far side of the city. Gzeiter’s plan had been to bypass the main barricades and infiltrate the city across a wide zone, but the Trucker had argued they needed to move fast, hard and… dramatically.

  Indeed, the man had emphasized his last point with a curling smoke ring. Now that Gzeiter had seen the mysterious RevRec leader close up, he wondered whether this was all about the drama. The fate of the world could change today, but to the Trucker, it was just a performance act.

  “Ready on your order, sir,” reported his artillery commander, Ipstein, through his earpiece.

  “Fire at will, Lieutenant.”

  “Shots away,” Ipstein reported a few seconds later. The artillery battery only boasted three light pieces designed to be carried on dropboats, plus a couple of missile launchers, but Gzeiter’s ears were ringing with the battery’s roar.

  Here to the west of the city, the terrain was dominated by the broad Pa-Hukshen River, which curved along a valley floor to flow through the center of Kaylingen.

  The area was littered with boatsheds, jetties, cafés, and other facilities for enjoying the gently flowing Pa-Hukshen. After scaring off the civilians with an a
dvanced force, the combined RevRec strike company, and Gzeiter’s direct command, had quietly deployed behind this concealment.

  A series of crumps assailed the barricade.

  The first salvo fired crowd dispersion rounds. Thick clouds boiled out, comprised of choking gas and skin irritants, which were set roiling when the flash bangs burst inside them. To drive home the point, one of Gzeiter’s two missile launchers fired from the upper veranda of the café from which he was watching events. A standard explosive warhead hit a spot painted twenty feet in front of the barricade, sending up a plume of dust and road surface fragments through the gas clouds, and leaving a deep crater in the road.

  “Loading HELBeR,” reported the artillery commander.

  High Explosive Limited Blast Radius. If any brave fools still held the barricade, they would be churned to mincemeat when those HELBeRs hit.

  “They’re fleeing,” said Trucker.

  Gzeiter looked for himself, the enhanced view through his binocs showing the armbanded rabble jumping off the heap of doors, vehicles, planters, and who knew what other crap happened to have been within reach. Its defenders were now desperate to get away.

  “Take that barricade down, Ipstein.”

  “Consider it done, General.”

  As the next salvo arced through the air, the mountainsides echoing with its firing, the RevRec leader began removing his clothing.

  Behind him, Corporal Woods edged his hand toward his sidearm, but Trucker pretended not to notice as he stepped out of his stained coveralls like an insect bursting free of its pupa.

  The man revealed within wore a chic brown smuggler jacket and an elaborate thigh holster that held an exotic hand blaster.

  “The game is on,” said the Trucker, extending his hand to Gzeiter.

  He looked at the man’s dirty hand dubiously, then at his face. Trucker seemed to have shed a couple of decades along with his coveralls. He was surprisingly young.

  Then the annoying man took off his shades and stashed them in a jacket pocket.

  Gzeiter recoiled at the sight. Those eyes! Trucker was a damned mutant!

  “You’re…”

  “The hero who’s gonna save your ass, General? Or were you going to say something else? Tell me, does the PHPA have a policy of discriminating against my kind?”

  “No. Of course not.” Gzeiter shook hands.

  “To victory,” said Trucker.

  “Indeed.”

  “By nightfall, the city and Eiylah-Bremah will be ours.”

  “To our victory,” Gzeiter repeated, but he wasn’t anticipating a joint victory. Power would fall to the Pan-Human Progressive Alliance alone. RevRec would be decimated, and Trucker’s lilac eyes would be staring lifelessly out of his corpse.

  Trucker’s two captured GAC-19s shot out from cover, and Gzeiter narrowed his focus to the here and now.

  The attack was on.

  MAJOR LYSSIN

  “Ren Kay, update!”

  “No change,” the lieutenant reported. “The main rebel army remains in position to the east of the city, awaiting orders. I’m not detecting the tension I would expect if they were planning to attack imminently.”

  “The longer they wait, the happier I’ll be,” said Lyssin. “Wait long enough, and they’ll be chewed up when the embarrassment gets so much for our absent air wing that they finally come back here and do their job. There’s nothing more you can do there. Return to the city and rejoin my command squad.”

  “Roger that.”

  “And fast. The fighting’s already started. Out.”

  Lyssin wished he hadn’t sent Ren Kay to scout out the rebel forces. He would have been better here, helping to put backbone into the defense force he’d scraped together, but regrets were for after the battle.

  For now, he had to do the best he had with the hand he’d found himself with.

  Much as it pained him to risk Militia personnel and equipment in In’Nalla’s defense, the key to the city was Execution Square, where the pallid old hag was playing the demagogue this afternoon.

  Lyssin keyed the commander of his armor column, which consisted of two tanks and a squad of dependable infantry. It wasn’t much, but he hadn’t been able to form up his troops before the enemy made their move, and it was all that he could get to Execution Square in time. Just five more minutes and his mobile strike force would have been ready to counterattack any advance from the enemy.

  “Lieutenant Atiff.”

  “Sir.”

  “Advance on Execution Square. Defend it to the last trooper.”

  “Roger that.” Outside the window of the school building he’d commandeered as a command post, Lyssin heard the sounds of tank engines revving up. “Any rebels get in my way, they’ll be in for a big surprise.”

  YAT DARANT

  The flying machine juddered as its quad blasters spat heavy bolts from its nose. It was loud too, but what made Darant’s ears bleed were the pilot’s whoops of delight.

  “I’d tell you to calm down,” he told Lily, “but I’ll need my breath to scream when you crash.”

  They were in a GAC-19a, the red crosses of the REEDs still visible under its coating of forest green paint. Unlike the hover fliers they’d seen at Krunacao, this variant had a rear-facing gun. Which meant Darant was watching Fitz’s RevReccers and the Panhandlers move up to assault and not whatever Lily was flying them into.

  It was no use. He couldn’t resist. Darant twisted around for a look.

  The GAC was traveling slowly. Although flying parallel to the ground, its nose was pitched down and unleashing red bolts of energy that screamed into a barricade already mostly wrecked by the artillery.

  Flames and debris erupted under the devastating pounding.

  A little higher and to their right, Bronze was shooting the shit out of the obstacle from the other GAC. From the rear seat, Vetch grinned at Darant, giving a thumbs up.

  Darant stared at Vetch dumbly. He would give anything to swap seats with the hairy one. He didn’t trust that Bronze character, but he seemed to know how to do pretty much anything. Flying a GAC-19 was no exception.

  Suddenly, his stomach backflipped and their craft dived through the gap they’d blasted into the mound of smoldering debris, so low that their armored belly scraped sparks off the road.

  “Holy shit, Lil’! That was totally unnecessary.”

  “I know!” she screamed excitedly.

  “For fuck’s sake! Please, Lil’. The last time you flew one of these, you crashed.”

  “Bite my ass.”

  The flier gained ten feet of altitude. “Not a chance. There isn’t enough beer in the galaxy to wash away the foul taste. I’ll get Hubert to bite you for me – assuming he’s survived Enthree’s tender care.”

  Darant’s screen showed nominal damage hitting the belly armor as a few bullets pinged their underside. He remembered that he had an autocannon and was supposed to be shooting at people.

  By the time, he’d reset his screen to targeting mode, the GAC had left the remains of the barricade behind, following a curve in the road surrounded by four-story stone buildings.

  “Do you think this crazy scheme will work?” he asked. “I mean, Fitz sounded convincing, but I don’t like the trust we’re placing on that jack you tortured.”

  “Who cares?” Lily replied. “I got to fly again.”

  “Asshole.”

  “You’re just jealous. When this is done, you can sit on my lap and I’ll teach you.”

  “I’d rather sit on Bronze’s lap,” Darant replied, but his retort died before he could think of a good punchline because the walls looking down on them as they flew into the heart of the city were making him itch. Kaylingen wasn’t properly fortified militarily at the best of times, and the rapid response unit based just outside had been led away on a false trail.

  Even so, it wouldn’t take much to swat them out the air.

  Even with the improved upper armor of the GAC-19a variant, autocannons on rooftops could
shred them. Or SAM pods deployed at major crossroads.

  It wouldn’t take much.

  Could they really make it to their target so easily?

  “Armor ahead!” said Bronze in Darant’s earpiece. “With squad level infantry support.”

  “Ahh shit!” Lily shouted.

  Darant wanted to turn and look so much, but he kept quiet and focused on his gun’s targeting display.

  “Two light hover tanks,” Bronze said calmly. “Aim at the weak rear armor over the powerplant vents. You’ll see it easier in infrared. Follow me.”

  Their GAC wiggled its butt in the air as Lily adjusted position. Then the horizontal thrusters growled as the craft picked up speed.

  He could hear Bronze fire, and then their own GAC shudder as Lily joined in.

  There was a sudden screaming pulse from the gravitics, and their craft jumped up in the air.

  A tank round shot through the air just below them.

  The flier passed the tanks. Darant noted they were light reconnaissance models pressed into a duty they weren’t suited for. One tank was on fire with its crew baling out. The other looked badly scratched and scorched but still very much in the fight. It was traversing its turret and elevating its main gun, expecting Lily to fly overhead.

  She didn’t.

  Lily brought the GAC’s nose up.

  And kept lifting it up. They were making a vertical ascent, engines screaming to the accompaniment of blaster fire lashing them from the troopers on the ground.

  “Five Hells, Lily!” he said under his breath.

  Darant wasn’t built for this. It felt like his internal organs were shifting into unnatural positions, but he realized what Lil’ was doing.

  “Make it quick!” she yelled.

  The blocky rectangle of the tank took center stage in Darant’s targeting screen, surrounded by a score of shadowy humanoids with bright heat signatures in their chests.

  Brightest by far was a strip behind the tank’s turret – the exhaust vent.

  “Quick! I can’t hold it much longer,” screamed Lily.

  Darant gestured on his screen to lock the targeting on the vent. Then he closed both firing grips and unleased a long burst at the tank: full 3,000 rounds per minute cyclic rate.