by W. C. Bauers
Jordas looked behind her and caught a glimpse of one of the OnWae launching itself from its perch high above. She looked back and down and saw the stage the mayor would soon occupy, surrounded by the residents of Nexus. Armed guards in gray uniforms and android enforcers stood along the perimeter, forming a solid line at the front of the stage.
A woman’s voice sounded in her ear. “One minute, Agent Tarakov.”
“Copy that.”
Jordas took one last look at the stage. She bent down to Dietrich’s level and turned him around. “Now, let’s straighten your collar and tame your hair. Hmmm, ah-ha, there. Right as Korazim rain. Now, put on your biggest smile and go get ’em.”
“Who am I gonna get?”
Jordas’s smile faltered. She simply nodded as Agent Strauss opened the door.
“Agent Tarakov, the mayor is ready for Dietrich.”
Jordas cleared her throat. “Be right there.” She pulled out the small sphere from her bag and triple-pressed two buttons, which started the device’s internal countdown. “Here, I bought you a gift. It will help you learn … and help you remember me.”
Dietrich held out his hand. “Wow, thanks!”
Jordas almost aborted the mission. Just might have if Dietrich hadn’t grabbed it out of her hands. “Cool, a starsphere.”
“You don’t have one, right?”
“I do now.”
“I … I just want you to know how much I love you, Dietrich. You mean the ’verse to me. Do you understand?”
Agent Strauss cleared her throat. “Jordas, we really need to go. Can it wait? Dietrich will have to leave that here.”
“Can I take it with me? Please, please, please?”
Jordas felt something die inside of her. This was all part of the plan. Part of the commander’s plan, part of why she’d infiltrated the mayor’s security detail more than two years ago. The innocent-looking toy, giving it to Dietrich here, now, just before Mayor Engel’s speech, knowing Ditti would want to take it with him, knowing Mia would object over security concerns. Knowing Strauss had zero patience for Ditti’s tantrums. She’d carefully scripted every move.
“Mia, would you mind holding Ditti’s toy for him when he joins his mom? He won’t take it onstage, will you, Dietrich?”
“Nope.”
“See—problem solved.”
“I promise, Mia. Okay?”
Mia hesitated. “Jordas, that’s not been cleared by security. You should know better.”
Jordas dipped her head in apology.
“All right—hand it to me.”
“You’re right, of course. I’m sorry. I just couldn’t…”
Mia pressed several buttons and played with the language setting. “I saw one of these in the window at Tiniford’s and thought about buying it for my niece. Does it really project any constellation you ask for?”
“Over four hundred and twenty-five worlds,” Jordas replied without emotion. “Imagine looking up at the sky from Hold or Meridian Prime or Wayland, or even from Earth before, well, you know.”
“You don’t sound too excited about it.”
Jordas froze.
“All right, Dietrich. I’ll hold this until after your mom’s speech, okay? Then you may have it back. Do we have a deal?”
“Deal, Mia. Bye, Jordi. Oh, thank you. Love you. See you soon.” He blew a kiss to Jordas as he walked toward the door.
Jordas fought to keep her composure. “Ah, Mia, I’m going to buy Ditti a souvenir. I’ll meet you back here after the mayor’s speech.”
Mia nodded and held out her hand. “Come, Dietrich. We don’t want to keep your mother waiting.”
Jordas waited a few minutes before making her way to the ground level. She needed to leave the building before the event. You need to leave now. Instead she found herself in the stairwell and then on the ground floor and midway through the crowd. She stopped six meters from the stage as the mayor appeared.
Mayor Amelia Engel was dressed in a finely tailored silver pantsuit and six-inch cherry heels. Her blond hair was smoothed back into a bun that added severity to her already thin face. “Greetings, citizens. Thank you all for coming. This is a momentous day for our humble planet. I’m so glad you and your families decided to share it with me and my son.” The mayor turned and opened her arms. “Ditti, please come out and say hello to everyone.”
Jordas watched Dietrich bound across the stage, watched his wispy hair bounce with each stride. She saw Mia standing in the wing, holding Dietrich’s starsphere. She glanced at the minicomp on her wrist as it ticked below two minutes. Jordas, what do you think you’re doing? She looked back at young Dietrich, as he waved at the crowd. His eyes found her, freezing her in place. The doubt she’d managed to push down deep slowly worked its way up, until it cracked her resolve. She scanned the sea of parents and children. A teacher and her class stood nearby dressed in matching orange shirts. She saw little Dietrichs all around her, their smiles and joy and innocence. How can I take that from them? When she once again looked at Dietrich, her resolve shattered. Without thinking, she began to push her way through the people, and toward the wall of security.
“Excuse me, I need to get through.” Jordas pushed with urgency. People started turning toward her, others complaining as she shoved them aside. She inhaled deeply. “Bomb!” The crowd morphed into a panic-stricken sea as people bolted for the exits. Jordas heard a sickening crunch to her left. A young woman lay on the ground nearby, leg badly canted, a small canine whimpering at her feet.
Several armed guards moved to intercept Jordas. As she lunged for the stage, a local enforcer grabbed her arm, his hand knifing her in the throat. Jordas went down, doubled over. Couldn’t breathe.
* * *
Agent Mia Strauss closed the distance between her and the mayor, pulse weapon drawn. Strauss crashed into Mayor Engel and Dietrich, taking both down. The sphere in her off hand rolled out of her grasp and crashed into the base of the dais, then rolled backward, within reach of little Dietrich.
“Keep your head down, ma’am, and shield your eyes. Dietrich, we’re going to play a little game. Close your eyes and count to twenty, just like hide-and-seek. Okay?” Several agents took up flanking positions to either side of the mayor, pulse weapons tracking their line of sight. Agent Strauss reached back and produced a handful of flat metallic disks from a thigh pocket, slid several into position, and tossed the others over her shoulder. She raised her wrist. “Activate shield wall!” The disks began to glow as a charged current arched from one disk to the next, until an invisible field enveloped the mayor and her security detail.
Strauss tossed a small sphere to Agent Morg Neiliech, who threw it straight up in the air and yelled out, “Cover!,” and a split second later, “Clear.”
When Strauss opened her eyes, a semitranslucent barrier stood between her and the mob. She barked into her comm. “Situation Orange. I repeat, Situation Orange. Position not secure. I need immediate evac on the south lawn and a HIRT team, now! And sniffers, and a med tent for casualties. Move!”
Strauss pushed up to one knee and turned her attention to Jordas.
“Stop! Enforcer—stand down. She’s one of mine.” Then to Jordas, “Agent Tarakov, you made the call. Now, explain it!”
* * *
Jordas tried to respond. She grabbed her throat protectively as the guards let her go. All she could do was look at Agent Strauss in horror and guide her to the starsphere by her knee. The toy she’d given Dietrich just minutes before. Her lips formed the word “bomb,” and her eyes were wide with panic.
Recognition and then shock crossed Mia’s face. “Agent Neiliech, you’re in command. Get them out of here and to the aerodyne. Tell flight control to shut it down and make a hole. Now! Don’t wait for clearance. Just go. Run!”
For a man built like a warship, Agent Neiliech moved with the grace and speed of a light attack craft. He holstered his weapon, scooped up the mayor and her son, and tucked one under each arm. Turned to his subor
dinates and said, “Stay on me until the package is secure. What doesn’t move aside goes down, clear?” Nods all around. Mayor Engel had turned pale. Dietrich looked nervous, caught between a little boy’s excitement and fear. Neiliech sprang forward with his charges hugged tight, ran through the energy barrier, jumped off the stage, and bolted for the rear exit.
Agent Mia Strauss leveled her weapon at Jordas. “Why, I ought to … How much did you sell out for?” Her eyes bounced to the sphere. “What’s the blast radius?”
Jordas rasped out words loud enough for Strauss to decipher over the comm. “Quarter klick.”
“God help us.”
Jordas cleared her throat hard. “Lower parking structure. Go.”
“How long?”
“Twenty-five seconds.”
The last thing Jordas saw was Agent Mia Strauss disappearing through a service entrance before a brilliant white flash of light brought the dome down on top of her.
Forty-six
MAY 25TH, 92 A.E., STANDARD CALENDAR, 0903 HOURS
THE KORAZIM SYSTEM, PLANET SHEOL
COMBAT OUTPOST DANNY TRUE
Captain Yates commed Promise as her chrono approached go-time. “Ready, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, ma’am. Victor-Two is green-to-go.”
“Stay sharp. This should be routine.” There was a hint of doubt in Yates’s voice. “Kick your boots out first. Victor-One will follow once we touch down. Good hunting, Lieutenant. Yates, out.”
Promise did one last visual count of her Marines, which was when she noticed Atumbi’s pale face. His visor was still up and his helmet’s internal lights were on. And he was breathing hard. Promise opened a private link with him. “Private, nice and slow. In … and out. Good. Again. Now, listen to me. Stay with your platoon sergeant and you’ll be fine. Pop your visor only if you have to. Even in this atmosphere you’ll survive. Just don’t take too long sealing up. Speaking of which, you need to do that, now.”
Promise opened a company-wide channel, to all four toons under her direct command, including the two in the aft compartment of the dropship. “Watch your six and watch out for your toonmates. The air is a fogged mess. I want clean kill lanes. The ash is going to cut down visibility and screw with our thermals. Keep them off and stick with visuals. You shoot it, you own it. Whiskers won’t survive long in this stew so don’t bother deploying them.” That meant her people wouldn’t be able to use a lot of their mechanical ears and eyes to look for hostiles, and that was a real concern. Promise couldn’t see any way around it. The tiny probes were invaluable reconnaissance platforms, and if you snuck one behind an enemy’s lines you could literally shoot around corners with eyes-on-target. Except the ash in the air was throwing off a ton of interference, and the whiskers’ shielding wouldn’t last long in such a corrosive environment.
“Remember, you aren’t authorized to cloak. The atmosphere is throwing off too much interference for it to hold.” The Kydoimos-6 mechsuit’s recent upgrade had included a field infantry cloak, the Witchfield. When activated, it dampened heat and sound by slightly phasing the space around the wearer in a null field. Given the radiation and ash in the air, the colonel had benched it. And it was still a closely guarded secret. There was no sense showing it off if the odds were good it wouldn’t work correctly.
“Maintain visual contact with your platoon sergeants. Confirm before firing. The Greys are known for their unpredictability, and we’re off-loading a lot of remotely piloted platforms. That’s a lot of mechs and boots on the deck, all at once. We need to get them into place quickly, and then make the handoff to their ground-based operators. No sane civvie is going to be out in the ash. The Greys might just try it. Verify before you fire. If it doesn’t squawk a RAW-FF I-dent and it refuses to surrender, kill it.”
“Suits in motion?” Prichart asked again.
Promise’s HUD was blinking on double zeros and she was running late. The incident with Sindri and Atumbi had distracted her and eaten up precious time. She made a note to talk to Sindri about his timing when they could hash it out.
“Let’s make some commotion,” Promise replied.
Prichart popped the forward hatch on the starboard side of the dropship as Maxi popped the hatch on the port bulkhead. Howling winds and ash flooded the compartment.
“Red Toon, go. Blue Toon, go.” Promise gave the order while triple-checking her weps. Still green-to-go, just like the last time you check. Stop fretting, P.
The captain preferred colors to 123s, so Promise’s platoon was “Red Toon,” which made her “Red-One.” Sergeant Sindri, as the platoon sergeant of Blue Toon, was “Blue-One.” In the aft compartment of the dropship, Black and Gold Toons waited to debark with the third and fourth waves of remotely piloted platforms, once the perimeter was secured. It was simple catch and release. One mechanized Marine could slave up to five RPPs to her suit with her AI running traffic control. The captain had given them fifteen mikes to get the RPPs to their assigned positions around Combat Outpost Danny True. It had seemed like plenty of time.
Promise was quick on Prichart’s six as she jumped out the hatch. On Red-Two’s six, she thought. She tapped her suit’s boosters as she dropped the ten meters to the ashy deck below. The full tug of Sheol’s 1.21 gravities clawed at her suit. Ash mushroomed as her boots touched down in a hellish winter wonderland, ash as thick as the freshly fallen powder in the foothills of Montana. Van Peek was out next, and then two more Marines followed after him.
“Red and Blue, get to your positions first before you ping your assigned RPPs.” Her people already knew that, but the operation was already behind and Promise didn’t want one of her boots trying to rush it. “Then confirm the link and wait for your mechs to join you. Hold position until you hear from me.”
Red and Blue Toons fanned out around both sides of the dropship to form a defensive shield shaped like a clock, with the nose of the dropship oriented to high noon. Her HUD looked like a light board of primary colors, all moving in concert, each pinprick a RAW-MC soul. There was Blue-One—Maxi—at roughly nine o’clock, on the other side of the vessel. Good. His Marines were quickly moving into position. Promise settled in at the three-o’clock position. She and Maxi were the farthest out from the dropship and they’d have the best chance of spotting something amiss. In theory.
Over her externals Promise heard the dropship groan as its aft hatch yawned open to disgorge the mechs. Tightly packed rows of surface-to-air and surface-to-surface weapons platforms began tromping down the dropship’s primary cargo ramp, which was situated aft and between the craft’s two massive fusion engines. They marched five-by-five, just like RAW-MC toons of mechanized Marines. No other military in the ’verse deployed platoons of five. Most preferred eights or tens, and some even twelves. Not the RAW-MC, which had always set precedent instead of following the conventional wisdom, even if it was centuries old. “Pull twice the weight with half the metal.” “Lighter, faster, better.” Those were the mantras. So had the tradition been since the Republic’s war of independence from the Terran Federation nearly three centuries before. Toons of five, companies of forty, just like the storied “First Company” of militiamen fighters who’d rallied a planet to the cause of independence and won Hold its freedom.
The remotely piloted platforms looked like top-heavy birds affixed to armored legs. Instead of arms, each platform sported two carryalls laden with missiles or energy mounts. Bulbous noses housed onboard guidance systems and point defenses. Promise’s suit reached out for her toon of RPPs as they hit the top of the ramp.
That’s odd, Promise thought. The row of platforms in front of hers looked off. Two RPPs were swiveling left and right, and then one of the two deployed its weapons. Another appeared to be scanning the sky like it was targeting something. She queried her HUD to find out whose platforms were acting up. They were Bohmbair’s. She’d expected better from him.
“Cut the antics, Red-Four,” Promise said.
“Not me, ma’am,” replied Priva
te First Class Bohmbair, the fourth member of her toon. He was two positions to her right. Bohmbair’s RPPs reached the bottom of the ramp and quickly picked up speed. “My links are cutting in and out … must be the atmospheric interference.”
“Not at this range.” Promise turned inward. “Bond, give me a SITREP on my links.”
“Holding, ma’am. Your RPPs are forming on you, as ordered—” Bond’s voice stopped abruptly. “Correction, I lost the feed for a millisecond but now have it back.” Then, “Ma’am, I just lost it completely.”
“What?” She opened a company-wide channel. “All toons, report to your platoon leads.” Then she tightened the comm loop. “Red Toon, give me a SITREP on your slaves.”
Static and snow answered her while ash accumulated between the barrels of her minigun, as if the weapon had sat in a storage room, collecting dust for years.
“Red-Three, do you copy? Lance Corporal Van Peek, do you copy? Kathy, do you read, over?”
“Lieutenant … links are dropping in and … getting significant inter…” Kathy was cutting in and out. There was no word from Van Peek.
Promise did a three-sixty in her suit, looked skyward; saw nothing but ashen sky. Turning back to scan the ramp, she said, “Mr. Bond, I don’t think we’re alone.” Her formation was falling apart. The platforms were not fanning out the way they were supposed to. A toon of mechs was wandering away from the dropship and toward several nearby buildings. Maybe it was her paranoia, but that toon of mechs appeared to be flanking her position. “Bond, can you clean up the net? What’s going on with my HUD?”