Maelstrom of Treason

by Michael Anderle

  “At least from the surface,” Emma replied. “I’ll attempt to open it once I bring down the field. You’ll lose contact with me once it goes back up. I might not have time to hack open the door.”

  “Take that time to figure out how to permanently cut the power to the field.” Erik slung his TR-7 over his shoulder, pulled the rocket launcher off his carryaid, and grabbed one of the two rounds he’d slotted onto it. He inserted it into the tube and set the launcher on his shoulder. “I brought my own key.”

  Jia nodded slowly. “I’m ready.”

  “Very well,” Emma replied. “Good luck. I’d prefer it if you didn’t die.”

  Erik grinned. “So would we.”

  The containment field wavered, the buzz modulating. The field vanished. Erik and Jia rushed forward. The dome reappeared.

  “That was close,” Jia commented.

  “She did warn us.” Erik looked back at the field. “Emma, can you hear us?”

  There was no response.

  “It’s just us fleshbags now,” Jia joked.

  “All that matters is that we’re inside.” Erik lined up his shot. “Backblast area clear?”

  “Clear!”

  The missile hissed away from the launcher, leaving a trail of smoke as it made its short flight. It collided with the door, exploding in a resounding boom that shot chunks of metal and a cloud of smoke backward. He notched the launcher back onto the carryaid before pulling down his TR-7.

  “What a loud key,” Jia joked.

  “A bit, but it got the job done, didn’t it?”

  Smoke billowed from the gaping hole in the front of the building. There was nothing like a nice, low-key missile battle with gangsters to get the blood pumping.

  Jia inclined her head toward the hole. “I think we’ve officially left low-key behind.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Erik and Jia walked through the smoking hole, covering each other and then the opposite directions, ready to fire. They’d expected heavy resistance but found an empty hallway with open doorways lining it. The only sound was their footsteps echoing down the empty space. They slowed to a stop and listened.

  Nothing.

  “They were guarding this building for a reason,” Jia whispered.

  Erik nodded slowly. “Not disagreeing. Keep your guard up.”

  Jia edged up to the first doorway and nodded to Erik. She readied her rifle and rushed in, sweeping the room for targets, but no gangsters or captured agents awaited her. Two long tables and their accompanying chairs were inside. Plates with half-eaten meals lay on one of the tables. A pungent scent wafted from bowls of thick orange soup. She didn’t recognize the smell or the soup—some Martian dish perhaps.

  Erik poked his head into the room and grinned. “Good thing we messed with them on an empty stomach. No wonder we keep winning.”

  “This building isn’t big enough to hold all the men we fought,” Jia observed. She swept the room one last time before jogging across the hallway at an angle toward the next open room. Weapons lockers and racks lined the walls. Most were empty, but some held rifles or stun pistols. Crates of ammo were stacked in one corner. One lay on its side, mostly empty, but a single belt of huge rounds was halfway out.

  “I wonder if this was the ammo for the car.” Jia nudged the belt with her foot. “Look at the size of those rounds.”

  “It could be.” Erik frowned. “Or there’s someone waiting for us somewhere with a very big weapon.”

  She looked around. “That’s not a comforting thought.”

  The next room was empty except for a small mat. There were several bloodstains on it and the wall. A lingering stench of body odor managed to beat out the acrid smell of smoke that had infiltrated the room.

  Erik pointed toward a thin line in the wall and an access panel. “That’s a folding toilet.”

  “A cell, and they kept someone here until recently,” Jia observed. “I stopped believing in coincidences last year.”

  Erik frowned. “A lot of blood. They must have beat or tortured him. I wonder if they found out he was a ghost.”

  Jia crouched by the mat. “If they knew that, I suspect they would have given him up. It wouldn’t make sense for a syndicate to go up against the Directorate.” She wrinkled her nose. “And judging from the smell, he was alive enough to stink.”

  They continued down the hallway, checking the other open rooms. There were several additional empty cells, but unlike the first, they appeared to be long out of use. Another room was an office, and one was a restroom. One storage room was filled with jewelry. Jia didn’t need sophisticated scanners to know it was all fake.

  She was a Lin, after all. She might not follow in her mother’s footsteps, but the woman had taught her daughters everything she could.

  Their trip ended at an elevator. Erik hit the access panel, but the doors didn’t open.

  “Smart enough to lock it down,” he muttered. “I wonder why the other doors were open.”

  “They were in a hurry.” Jia motioned toward the elevator. “I’m betting this one is always specially locked.

  Erik nodded. “We might have to wait for Emma to kill the containment field.”

  “She might not be able to from the outside.” Jia gestured toward the hole in front of the building. “When the power switched over earlier, that was probably a generator. We have no idea how long they can keep the field up. We’re going to have to take the power out from the inside to get her help.”

  Erik grinned and slowly lowered his gaze to the floor. “We already know there’s something underneath here.” He reached for the rocket launcher. “It might be the generator.”

  Jia stared at her partner like he’d gone crazy. There was adapting and overcoming, and then there was being insanely reckless.

  “Are you planning to do what I think you’re planning to do?” she asked.

  “We’re not going to be able to hack these systems by ourselves, and you just got done telling me that they might be able to keep that field up for as long as they need to.” Erik stood the launcher up, yanked the other missile off his carryaid, and shoved it in. “We don’t have any decent explosives left other than this, and the laser rifle’s empty.

  “But still…”

  “Think of it this way. I didn’t just bring my own key, I brought my own shovel.”

  Jia backed away from the hole. “I don’t believe this is the smartest thing you’ve ever done.”

  “Nope.” Erik set the launcher on his shoulder and backed up, angling the weapon toward the ground. “But it’s far from the stupidest.”

  Jia made a face. “I don’t even want to know what qualifies as the stupidest.”

  “No, you don’t,” Erik admitted. “Hey, I just thought of something.”

  “What? You have a better idea about how to get downstairs?” Jia asked. “One that doesn’t involve firing a missile at the floor?”

  Erik shook his head. “No. I was thinking about how this whole thing ended without anything crazy. No yaoguai. No nanozombies. No full-conversion Tin Men. Just some thugs who don’t know when to quit.”

  “It is a nice change of pace,” Jia admitted. “Sometimes it feels like we’re caught up in the center of everything insane in the UTC.”

  “Well, we kind of are.” Erik adjusted his aim closer to the elevator. “I can’t just fire anywhere. Don’t want to cave the roof in on Sukorn if he’s down there. Be kind of pointless to go through all this and kill the guy ourselves.”

  “You think?” Jia rolled her eyes. This was either a brilliant improvisation or a horrible mistake. She regretted not keeping some breach disks.

  Apparently, there were dangers in overly relying on Emma to open every lock for them.

  “Backblast area clear!” Erik shouted. She replied, and he launched. The smoke from the missile filled the hall, and the projectile didn’t travel far before finding the floor. A deafening explosion blasted debris toward Erik and Jia, pelting them despite the distance an
d leaving a jagged smoldering hole in front of the elevator. Pieces continued to smolder, but no fire broke out.

  Jia coughed and waved her hand to clear the air. “Every time I think I might be getting a little too comfortable with blowing things up, you remind me how I got that way. You’re a bad influence.”

  “It’s not me being a bad influence. It’s called training.” Erik dropped his carryaid to the ground and inclined his head toward the hole. “I don’t think it’s big enough for us to get through with all our gear.”

  Jia pulled the extra magazines from the carryaid and shoved them into her pocket before dropping the device to the ground. “I hope some gangster doesn’t grab our stuff.”

  “If he’s brave enough to come in here through a smoking hole to get it, he deserves it.” Erik readied his TR-7 and jogged to the hole, pointing his weapon down. “We’re in luck. Another corridor, and it’s not that far a drop.” He waited for Jia to catch up before jumping down and sweeping both ways.

  After Erik moved out of the way, Jia dropped through the hole, knocking some of the smoking rubble out of the way. At one end of the hall was the elevator, but it then turned and widened. A rhythmic hum sounded from the bay.

  They walked that way, stopping at the corner. She nodded to Erik and counted to three with her hand. He rushed across to take up a position on the opposite side.

  Both pointed their weapons inward.

  The hall opened to a large underground parking garage. Stacked rectangular cargo containers occupied the space closest to them. The other end of the garage angled up to what appeared to be a rock wall, but the thin edges revealed it was a disguised door. More armored hovercars with machine guns were parked on one side of the garage, while conventional luxury cars and sports flitters lined the other.

  There was a smattering of mini-flitters in one corner. A decent-sized hover-APC with twin machine guns on either side was parked near the door. A large generator was installed in the wall across from the APC, cables spreading from it like the arms of an octopus. Chetta Sukorn lay against a wall near the generator, unconscious, his hands and feet bound and his face bloodied and battered. His chest rose and fell, however.

  Jia spun toward a movement she saw out of the corner of her eye. Someone crouched behind the APC. She slid behind a cargo container. Erik spun to conceal himself behind another.

  “Give it up,” Jia shouted. “Almost everyone upstairs is dead or has run away. You should have just given us Sukorn when we asked.”

  “Who are you people?” the man demanded. “What syndicate are you from? You don’t understand what you’ve done. We’ll get our revenge.”

  “Just call us freelance troublemakers,” Erik offered, a merry smile on his face. “And you can’t bitch. It’s like she said: we tried to give you your chance. We didn’t even care about Thomas Draven. We only wanted our guy back. Since you didn’t kill him, you can still walk out of this breathing.”

  The man let out a harsh laugh. “I’m Thomas Draven, you bastards. You think I’m letting you walk away from this? I’m going to have to explain to my boss what the hell happened here. I’ll admit your guy’s tough and he wouldn’t talk, but we can make one of you do so.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Jia shouted. “You’re outnumbered and outgunned.”

  She ejected her magazine and put in an AP clip. Erik did the same. There were too many places to hide in the parking garage.

  Thomas laughed. “You don’t get it. I’m going to tear you to shreds.” He threw open the door of the APC and jumped into the driver’s seat. Jia popped up and fired a burst. The bullets pelted the transparent metal of the windshield, but even AP rounds had their limits.

  One of the machine guns swung her way, and Jia ducked as the gun roared to life. The bullets ripped into the cargo container, some coming out the other side. She crawled toward the other end. Erik pulled out the EMP and threw it toward the APC.

  The machine guns blasted the device into bits before it’d gotten close.

  “I didn’t think it’d work, but I figured it’d at least get there,” Erik complained. When the machine guns fell silent, he risked a burst from his TR-7. The machine gun pointed toward him and fired, and the rounds ventilated the container. Erik crawled to the edge before hurrying around to duck behind a flitter. Jia moved toward an armored car. They both risked another burst, earning return fire. Thomas swept the machine gun across the garage. The bullets didn’t penetrate the car, but they shredded the unarmored flitter. Erik grunted in pain and fell backward, blood pooling beneath him.

  Jia’s eyes widened, and her heart galloped. “Erik!”

  Her jaw tightened, and she licked her lips. If Thomas Draven had killed Erik, she didn’t care if she had to charge directly at the APC to finish him off.

  “It’s fine,” Erik called back. He rolled to the other side of the vehicle and managed to lift his left leg. There was a huge hole in his pants and a gaping wound in his upper leg. “The bastard didn’t even get me directly. I think it was shrapnel from the car. We just need to keep hitting the windshield and we’ll get him.”

  Jia let out a sigh of relief. They needed to finish this. Sukorn was alive, and that meant all they needed to do was kill Thomas Draven.

  “I’ll draw his fire.” Jia took a few more breaths to steady herself.

  Erik frowned. “What the hell? That vest can’t stand up to that kind of gun.”

  “Use all four barrels and make the shots count,” Jia recommended. “You’re always saying size matters.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Prove it!”

  If they weren’t in such a desperate situation, she would have loved to stay and enjoy his slack-jawed look before he realized he needed to close his mouth.

  Jia slung her rifle over her shoulder. “I’ve got the cars to hide behind, and they can take at least a few rounds. The quicker you kill this guy, the less I have to risk.”

  “What’s the matter?” Thomas taunted from the APC’s speaker. “You were so sure before. I knew we should have come out with this baby to begin with. If you want to surrender, I’ll only kill one of you. The other one can tell me what syndicate you work for.”

  “Do you ever shut up?” Erik yelled.

  Another volley from the machine gun riddled several of the flitters. He swung it back toward Jia. Her barrier car jerked under the onslaught but didn’t let any bullets through.

  “My plan isn’t a recommendation, Erik,” Jia declared. “And it’s not like you’re going to be moving like that. Get ready to take him out.”

  Erik narrowed his eyes and reloaded. “Damn it, Jia. Why do you always have to surprise me? Just when I think I have you figured out.”

  “Because you make me better than I was, but we can talk about that later.” Jia took a deep breath. “On three, two, one.” She rushed toward the back of the next car. Thomas opened up again, a bullet zooming so close her hair fluttered. Her stomach lurched.

  Erik opened fire, the four barrels of the TR-7 screaming. On full four-barrel automatic, the gluttonous weapon consumed the entire magazine in seconds, but the stream of AP rounds did its work. The windshield weakened under the first hits. Thomas swung the machine gun back toward Erik, but the TR-7’s final bullets ripped through and into the driver. He jerked as the rounds tore through him. Blood sprayed all over the windshield, and the gangster slumped forward.

  “Some assholes never learn,” Erik muttered.

  Jia sprang up and rushed over to Erik. She yanked a medpatch from her pocket and applied it to Erik’s wound. She grimaced. “Next time, we strip down and wear the full tac suits if we’re going to do something stupid like this.”

  “I don’t know about that, but I like the stripping part.” Erik set the TR-7 down. “That was a good plan.”

  “It was the only plan that made sense.”

  “Still a good plan.”

  “I…” Jia shook her head and slapped her cheeks. If she could distract a heavy machine gunner, she could express how she felt.
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  Heart pounding, Jia leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his. He opened his own and accepted her deep kiss. They stayed that way, Jia leaning over the wounded man, kissing him deeply before she pulled back to take a breath and lick her lips.

  Erik grinned. “Not that I’m complaining, but what was that about?”

  “Just trying to remind you that you have something more to live for than vengeance,” Jia murmured.

  “I know,” Erik replied, softly dragging a finger down her cheek. “I know.” He forced himself to stand, then winced. “Let’s go get Sukorn and carry him out that door.” He leaned over and picked up his TR-7. He slapped in a new magazine and pointed it at the generator. “All we need to do is knock out the generator.” He pointed the weapon and held down the trigger.

  The generator sparked and juddered as bullets penetrated it or ripped into the cables. Right before Erik emptied the clip, the main lights of the hangar shut off, replaced by red emergency lighting.

  Jia produced an EMP from her pocket. “We could have just used this.”

  “Not as fun.” Erik shouldered the TR-7. “Emma, can you hear me?”

  “Yes, I can,” she reported. “Whatever you did in there brought down the containment field.”

  Erik’s gaze slid between the smoking generator and the unconscious Sukorn. “The Lady played some tricks on us today, but it looks like our guy is still alive. I’m out of keys. Please open the door.”

  “My pleasure, Erik.”

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  November 16, 2229, Unity City, Mars, Hotel Caldanza

  Erik lay on the bed, his hands under his head.

  His leg was sore, but the medpatch had healed more of the wound overnight, and the anesthetic was effective. He wouldn’t require more extensive treatment.

  They had taken Sukorn to the Rabbit for first aid and then contacted Alina. She’d arranged for them to transfer the agent to Kalei so she could get him advanced treatment from a trustworthy source. He had not regained consciousness before the transfer.