by Evan Currie
“Assassination attempt,” she said. “Don’t know if they were aiming for you or me, but with that weapon it wouldn’t have made a lot of difference.”
She paused a bit, sweeping the area another time before deciding to move.
“Okay, we’re clear for now. Up!” Sorilla stood up quickly, pulling Eri along with her as he struggled to get his feet under him. “Are you armed?”
“What?”
“A gun, do you have one?”
“No! Grant carries my pistol in the Red Room,” Eri said.
“Grant? The dark-haired man who was with you when Dalton introduced us?” she asked.
When he nodded, she swept the area again. “I don’t see him. Okay, stay behind me.”
It probably wouldn’t do much good if a warp hit her, but at least if he were behind her he wouldn’t be getting in the way of her gun. Sorilla hefted the awkwardly heavy weight of her Metalstorm pistol, gripped it in two hands, and twisted. The pistol came off easily and she shifted it forward so that the weight of the weapon would rest more on her wrist and forearm. Designed primarily for use in armor, the weapon was front-heavy in its normal configuration, but since it used electronic ignition to fire, it had been designed to be configurable according to needs.
As she did that, Sorilla linked into the implants of the rest of the team and got an instant update of threats in the area layered over the grid map they had been accumulating since they’d arrived.
“You’re bleeding!” Eri gasped out.
“It’s only shrapnel.” She put him off, not because it wasn’t serious but because she didn’t have time to worry about it.
The chances were that she’d gotten lucky. The lightweight table had taken the hit, so most of what struck her would be plastic and whatever else it was made of. Nothing that would hold its velocity over range, and nothing that would penetrate deeply in comparison to properly selected shrapnel materials.
Of course, it had been at basically point-blank range, so the saving grace she was counting on certainly had a limited value.
As her link to the others was synced, Sorilla swore.
Fully half the signals in the area were red.
*****
When the explosion above them tore through the air, Strickland twisted around and his hand went to his hip on instinct, only to find nothing there. He swore and shifted to reach under the jacket where his own M-Tac was slung, drawing the big pistol but keeping it pointed down as he held a hand out to hopefully stave off anyone shooting him by accident.
It took only a few seconds for him to realize just how useless that gesture was.
Snarls of gunfire erupted all around them, causing both Strickland and Kriss to hit the ground hard and fast.
“What are they shooting at!?” Kriss swore, grimacing as he struggled to get his sidearm out of the human suit he was wearing.
“I don’t know!”
Actually, Strickland had his doubts if any of the shooters knew either.
A few seemed to be panic-firing, though that could be deceiving. In any event, those few had instigated return fire from another portion of the crowd, and that seemed to set off a wave of back and forth firing that had no apparent targets as far as he could see. No one seemed to have a plan or be working toward anything but total mayhem. However, that might have been the plan.
With as many guns as there were in the room, in the hands of people he simply didn’t know, Strickland had no way to judge what the hell was going on.
“Look for people who look like they know what they’re doing!” he snapped, crawling for a nearby wall so he could have at least one direction he didn’t have to cover.
“And when we find them?” Kriss demanded.
“Either we hook up with them, or we kill them,” he answered. “Situational answer!”
There was a dry rasping sound from the Lucian that initially concerned Strickland until he realized, with some horror, that the unnatural sound was the Sentinel laughing.
“So Sentinel Aida is not the only warrior among humans, I see.” The Lucian grinned an utterly terrifying grin in his direction.
Strickland brutally suppressed the shudder that his body wanted then. The jagged teeth of the Lucian would be something he saw in his nightmares if they got out of this alive.
*****
Corporal Nicholas Farrel sat bolt upright as the alarms screamed over his implants and all the potential targets in the room with the bosses went from green and yellow to yellow and red in an instant.
“What the hell is going on?” Corporal Sanders blurted from beside him.
“You know what I know,” Nicky snapped. “Watch the door. If it’s a double cross, they’ll be hammering us anytime now!”
Sanders and Private Smith shifted their guns to cover the door while Nicky looked around nervously, palming remote sensors from his load-bearing kit. He tossed them into each of the adjoining rooms where the armor and kit for the others was waiting, then queried the network to see how his superiors were faring.
Strickland seemed to be fine, as was the Lucian, as best he could tell, but the life scans from the colonel were all over the map.
“Colonel Aida’s been hit,” he announced. “Can’t tell how bad, but her white blood count is climbing, nerve block has been administered. She’s active, and her gun is firing.” He got into the tactical net. “Major, Colonel, do we assist?”
*****
Sorilla was trying her best to pick valid targets out of the crowd, but everyone appeared to be armed and none of them seemed to have any idea what the hell was going on. Most seemed to be civilians, completely oblivious to the situation, waving around guns that they had no goddamn clue how to use.
The real threats would show themselves occasionally, through the crowd. She’d put down two others since the first, charging her position with alien guns in their fists. Sorilla still didn’t know if they were after her or Eri, however.
‘Major, Colonel, do we assist?’
“Negative! We’re coming to you, Corporal. Prepare for exfil. Call in the APC,” she ordered.
“Who are you talking to?” Eri demanded.
“My team,” she said without missing a beat as another alien weapon appeared through the crowd, charging her and Eri’s position. Her sidearm roared, recoil slamming her arm back into her body, rippling her flesh violently as the nearly half-inch-diameter round designed to perforate medium vehicle armor was launched from the lower muzzle of the weapon.
The round crossed the range in a split second’s travel and, finding no armor to perforate, punched into the man’s chest with ease. At that point, the second-phase design of the round came into play. As the light tungsten tip hit the water content of the body, it began to slow down faster than the heavily depleted uranium slug wrapped around the base of the round.
The slug tumbled almost instantly in the body, caving in the man’s chest as it transferred enough force to blow an engine block to shards directly into the internal organs. His heart and lungs weren’t shredded by the round; they were liquefied.
The body hit the ground as she kept moving, Eri pressing close behind her.
“Four up, four down,” Sorilla said. “Anyone have eyes on the attackers?”
‘Lots of apparently panicked civilians down here, Colonel,’ Strickland replied. ‘Not seeing anyone I could define as a definite bad guy. Shooters everywhere.’
“Local guns or Alliance?” Sorilla asked. “Attackers here used warp blasters.”
‘All local guns down here. I think there are plants shooting at random, just to fan the flames.’
Sorilla caught a hint of movement to her left and twisted, reaching back with her free hand to yank Eri off his feet as another Alliance warp blaster discharged.
The ripple of the space warp passed over their heads, impacting the far wall and tearing a chunk out of it in the compressive wave before letting it snap back out and explode as chemical bonds were torn apart in the process.
Sori
lla rolled, dragging Eri down and to the ground and twisting over him, coming up on the other side of him to her knees. She extended her sidearm out and fired, dropping the shooter in place.
“They’re after you,” she said, climbing back to her feet and dragging Eri up.
“What? How do you know that?”
“They planted shooters in the crowd below to make them panic,” Sorilla said. “The attack is too organized. They didn’t have time to set this up since we arrived. Our presence may have triggered it, but this was aimed at you.”
“No one would want me dead!” Eri objected, then hesitated. “Well, no one would want me dead and have the resources to pull this off. I control the importation of alien technology on Arkana. Believe me, I know where every one of those weapons wound up.”
“Well, someone did an end run around you,” Sorilla scoffed. “Imagine that—arms dealers without a sense of honor.”
‘APC inbound, Colonel.’
*****
Master Sergeant Chavez growled as he hung onto the strap above him, the APC rocking back and forth as they hit the paved section of road, bouncing a little as the suspension adjusted to the new surface.
“How far out?” he demanded.
Private First Class Kieran didn’t look back. “Depends on traffic, Sarge… Unless you want me to drive over these people, I’m going to have to be gentle.”
“Don’t kill anyone,” Chavez snapped, “but fuck being gentle! The colonel is out there!”
“On it.”
The APC accelerated into traffic, a siren screaming out of its loudspeaker as Kieran ran the vehicle over another car’s front end, the airless tires collapsing as they wrapped around the car and rocked the APC side to side as they drove right over it.
“Get out of the road!” Kieran yelled over the loud speaker, pushing the accelerator down.
The heavy vehicle shouldered its way onto the road, taking up the better part of both lanes heading into the city. Local cars, trucks, and the more common bikes veered out of the way as he pushed the APC as hard as he could, heading for the location mapped out on his HUD.
*****
“Evac is inbound,” Major Strickland said as Kriss followed him, pushing through the crowd. “We need to join up with the colonel and get to our gear. Stick close, try not to kill any civilians.”
Kriss laughed. “Do they count as civilians if they’re trying to kill me?”
“On this mission? Unfortunately, yes.”
“I do not like your mission parameters, Major,” Kriss grumbled.
“Not terribly fond of them myself right about now,” Strickland admitted.
A screaming man charged them with a pistol in hand, pulling the trigger constantly despite it clicking on empty chambers with each pull. Kriss intercepted him bodily, lifting the man and tossing him aside to slam into the wall and slide to the floor.
“Too much?” he asked when Strickland paused to look at him.
The major looked down at the now unconscious man for a couple seconds and shrugged.
“I’d say that’s about right.”
“Good.” Kriss grinned again, hiding the grimace of pain as he felt his side growing wet. “Shall we go?”
Strickland nodded. “Right. Yeah. Let’s move.”
The two continued to push across the room, heading for the stairs.
*****
“Grab the blaster,” Sorilla ordered, giving Eri a push in the direction of a blaster dropped by a now very dead attacker. “Try not to kill anyone with it unless they’re trying to kill us, will you?”
Eri glared at her, stumbling as he came down to one knee by a cooling body and gingerly unslung the blaster from the former person. He glanced it over as he picked it up, scowling as he recognized it as one of the same model he had personally signed off on importing.
“Someone tried to kill me with my own guns,” he gritted out.
Sorilla yanked him upright by his collar, near choking him in the process.
“Get mad later,” she ordered. “It’ll just get in the way of surviving right now. Come on!”
She dragged him down the stairs, nodding when she spotted Kriss and Strickland pushing their way through the fighting to meet them.
Shoving Eri ahead of her, Sorilla swept the crowd with her implants, spotting only local guns and plenty of accelerant spikes in the air. If she were in armor, she’d ignore them and focus entirely on the blasters, but in a shredded ball gown of all the damn ridiculous things, she had to worry about every gun in the place.
“Form up, the Elder to the center,” she ordered. “I have point. We’re heading for the back rooms and our gear in the rear. Move.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Strickland responded, taking position as he pushed the blond-haired Elder into the center of the group.
Kriss intercepted the Elder, relieving him of the weapon he was carrying as he holstered his sidearm. "I will take this.”
“Hey!” Eri objected, right up until Kriss grinned at him. “Right. You can take that.”
“Get down!” Sorilla snarled, trying to push through the crowd of people. “Everyone on the ground!”
The crowd was buffeting them as they pushed through, no one paying her or anyone else any mind. They were making progress, but it was slow and treacherous.
Kriss made an adjustment to the weapon he had taken from Eri. “Stand aside.”
“Wha…?” Sorilla’s eyes widened as she saw the big blaster leveled at him, twisting out of the way on instinct as she felt the gravity shift of the weapon firing.
The warp pulse rippled past her, slamming into the people ahead of them and throwing them in all directions. People crashed into the ground, walls, and each other with cries of shock and pain from all quarters.
“What the hell was that!?” Strickland demanded, slamming a hand into Kriss’s chest.
Kris flinched, though just barely, and covered it by grinning again.
“Blasters have more settings than we normally use,” he said. “They will live. Bruised, but alive.”
“Never mind, come on!” Sorilla started moving, dragging Eri along with her and forcing the other two to follow. “We need to get out of here.”
*****
Nicky gestured to the door. “Here they come. Open up!”
Smith yanked the door open as Sanders stepped out with his rifle to his shoulder, sweeping the corridor.
Aida, Strickland, the Lucian, and one other rushed in past him, and he backed in while keeping the area covered. At the last moment, as Smith swung the door shut, Sanders pulled his rifle clear and stepped back.
“All clear.”
“We’re alive,” Sorilla said, checking her weapon. The magazine was almost empty, so she cracked it open and let the barrel assembly fall to the ground as she walked to the room, tearing the useless red gown off herself with her other hand. “I’ll be right out as soon as I get dressed for the occasion.”
“What she said,” Strickland grumbled, fighting with the oversized suit he had on, tearing at the tie and tossing the jacket aside.
The three soldiers looked at their superiors briefly, then slowly turned to the Lucian, who just looked back.
“What? This isn’t bad. Rather comfortable, frankly,” Kriss said, focused more on fiddling with the weapon he was carrying than anything else.
“APC is inbound, ma’am,” Nicky called. “ETA is three minutes!”
“Got it!” Aida’s voice filtered back from the far room. “We’ll be ready to move in two.”
Kriss seemed to scowl, glaring openly at the weapon he was carrying.
“That isn’t right.”
“What isn’t?” Nicky asked, curious.
“One moment,” Kriss said, tossing the weapon down and walking after Strickland. A moment later he emerged with the gear he had left there, pulling a small device from his pouches. He passed it over the rifle, then glared again at the result he read from its display. “We have an issue here.”
“W
hat’s wrong?” Sorilla asked, stepping out into the room, now clad in her armor with helmet in hand.
“This is not an Alliance weapon,” Kriss said.
“Bullshit,” Sanders snorted from by the door. “Where else could it come from? It’s sure as hell not Earth design.”
“It is Alliance design,” Kris conceded. “However, the weapon is not serial-registered. It is a blank. This is…illegal in ways I cannot stress.”
“Black ops?” Strickland asked, also stepping out of the room in armor.
Kriss shook his head. “My scanner can read those serials.”
“He is Alliance black ops,” Sorilla reminded them before turning back to the Sentinel. “So what is it then? I know we’re reverse-engineering Alliance kit, but I don’t think we can make them ourselves yet. Of course, the Admiralty wouldn’t tell me if we could…”
“No,” Kriss said, “the manufacturing is extremely high level. If it was not made by Alliance factories, the replication of them is perfect. Someone fabricated a run of untraceable warp blasters and then sold them to insurgents. This is not acceptable.”
Sorilla turned to Eri. “You said you imported Alliance tech. All Alliance tech. Where’d the guns come from?”
Eri held up his hands. “All gear I import has the appropriate certifications. I strictly operate aboveboard!”
Everyone gave him skeptical looks, but the blond didn’t budge from his position.
“This is getting us nowhere,” Sorilla said as she fitted the helm over her face and let the clamshell mechanism close around her head. Her voice altered through the speaker as she picked up her pistol and shifted the grip back to the rear of the weapon. “VIP protection formation, Kriss and Eri in the center. Nicky, you have point. Move to the APC and exfil. Hopefully we can draw the attackers away from the civilians and deal with them then. We move in thirty seconds. Grab your shit.”
Chapter 12
They hit the corridor together, rifles covering all sides as they moved. Sorilla took up the rearguard position as they walked, heading back for the main ballroom and the foyer that led out to the front of the building.