by Evan Currie
*****
Sorilla was trying to keep her mind on all the different factions that were converging while attempting to figure out how it would play out once everyone realized just what the hell was about to go down. It was easier to think than it was to do, however, if for no other reason than because she knew there was at least one entire faction she had no intelligence on at all.
The WMD storage has to be guarded, and if they have any sense, those will be the best and most trusted people the Elders can call on, Sorilla knew.
It was possible they were stupid enough to use fodder for the job—she knew that a lot of the militia idiots on Earth that had made up the colony ship here were that level of stupid—but she couldn’t count on that.
Didn’t want to count on that, frankly.
Stupid enemies were always nice, but only for certain levels of stupid.
Stupid enough to easily outthink, that was good. Stupid enough to trust morons with the protection of WMDs was the sort of stupid that burned everyone, however. She would generally prefer her enemies to be just a hair smarter than that, as a good rule of thumb.
“Bunker ahead,” she said, designating the target building on her HUD and pulsing it out to the squadron as she cocked her head slightly. “Drop team inbound. ETA to reinforcements… eight minutes. Confirm receipt.”
Lights on her HUD lit up green as the team signaled confirmation back, leaving her to only have the Lucian team to worry about.
She needn’t have bothered. Kriss was already beside her.
“Our team is coming just behind,” he told her. “Half again the estimated arrival.”
Sorilla nodded, logging that as twelve minutes on her HUD. “Understood. Watch for security. They should have their best people on that.”
“One would hope. However, I long ago lost faith in such things,” Kriss snorted. “Do you really have your best people on such things?”
Sorilla considered some of the stories she knew about strategic weapons depots and cringed.
“Point,” she conceded.
Guarding WMDs was a vitally important task, but it was also a mind-numbingly boring one. In theory, only the best of the best went in, but the duty was a mental meat grinder that could break damn near anyone.
“Assume otherwise, however,” she ordered. “If they’re incompetent, all the better, but I’m most worried that someone onsite will have the codes.”
Kriss shot her a startled look. “The weapons are in the middle of their Elders’ compound and the primary colony site. Surely they wouldn’t do something that insane!”
“Remember what the admiral said?” she asked dryly as they proceeded toward the bunker. “These people began as xenophobic by nature, whatever they may be now. It’s entirely possible that some of them will literally turn their city to expanding radioactive gasses rather than allow aliens to take over.”
“You have a disturbing culture,” Kriss snorted, seemingly amused. “I believe I might rather enjoy it.”
Sorilla rolled her eyes, though he couldn’t see it.
Lucians.
“You and they deserve one another,” she said dryly.
They paused, covering behind the last building before the bunker she had identified from the files they’d dumped from the aircraft’s computers. It didn’t look like much, but she supposed that it was too much to ask that they have an actual proper munitions depot to secure weapons that could practically crack the planet’s crust.
“Team’s in position,” Brackston informed her. “Do we wait for the drop team?”
Sorilla debated that for a moment, trying to determine their best move. The team was now a little more than six minutes out, but the garrison reinforcements were less than three away from the depot. That put her and the local team in a tough position.
If they couldn’t take the depot in three minutes, they’d be caught in between two forces for three more while waiting for backup.
If they waited, then the reinforcements would have that three minutes to join up with the garrison. Not good if they wanted to blitz the depot and secure the special weapons as quickly as possible.
Sorilla sighed. “Kriss?”
“Take the depot,” the Lucian grunted. “The weapons are the primary mission at this time.”
“Major?” she asked.
Brackston sighed. “I want to hold back, Colonel, but concur with Sentinel Kriss. Take the depot.”
“Roger that. All units…take the depot.”
*****
Guard duty was the worst.
Harold Macks grumbled to himself as he walked his post, passing his fellow as they moved around the front of the depot building.
“Militia is coming in,” George Crumm told him as they approached one another. “Looks like the Elders are in a bit of a spit.”
“What else is new?” Harold asked, rolling his eyes. “They’re always in a twist over something.”
George shrugged. There was no denying that.
“Still, has to be something big, don’t you think? Looks like they called up everyone,” he said. “We were told to expect a pretty big reinforcement.”
“Probably the Xenos,” Harold said. “Rumors are that they’re messing about on Arkana again.”
“Rumors are that some humans from Earth are with them,” George laughed.
“That’ll be the day.”
The two shared a chuckle, but Harold cut off abruptly as he caught a hint of motion in his peripheral vision.
“What the hell…?”
He twisted, voice trailing off as he found himself staring at something in the shadow of the building that just…didn’t look right. He was trying to figure out why when it moved again, suddenly lunging right at him and changing color abruptly to become an armored figure seemingly blending right out of the shadow and becoming real in front of him.
“Holy—!”
He started to swear, but his voice was cut off by a diagonal strike that snapped his head around, sending the world to black as he pitched into the ground.
*****
Brackston dropped to a knee and cleared the guard’s rifle as a slight tussle beside him signaled that the Lucian Sentinel had taken out the other guard just as neatly as he had his own.
“Guards down. Move!” he said, snapping the rifle in two pieces and tossing them aside as he rose back to his feet and nodded curtly to the Lucian. “We have two and a half minutes.”
The alien grinned at him, sending a chill down his spine.
“More than enough time.”
It wasn’t the teeth, exactly, but there was some eerie, uncanny sensation in seeing the alien flesh move in a way that was almost but not quite human. He suppressed the sensation and gestured to the bodies.
“Let’s get them inside,” he said. “That may buy us a minute or more while they try to locate the guards.”
The Lucian nodded and they pulled the bodies through the dust and dirt, inside the front door where two Lucians and an armored human were already setting up to hold the position from any attack.
*****
Sorilla brought her knee up, folding the target nearly in half over her leg before tossing him aside by the back of his BDU jacket.
“Main entry secure,” she said, looking around. “Kriss, move your people to find and secure the munitions. Major, hold the front door.”
“Roger, ma’am,” Brackston replied. “Holding the door.”
Kriss was already moving deeper into the depot, which was in reality just a large aircraft hangar, as best she could tell. Sorilla swept the large area as best she could, eyes focusing up on the rafters above as she spotted movement.
Her pistol cleared leather in a moment, barking once as it fell into line with the target. Across the hangar a figure silently fell from the rafters, the impact with the ground only audible to enhanced hearing.
“Sniper down,” she said. “Watch the rafters for designated marksmen.”
The cat was out of the bag at that point,
and almost instantly she heard shots fired from varying points around her.
“Weapons free,” she ordered, unnecessarily in reality but in keeping with protocol. “The stealth portion of the evening is over.”
Chapter 21
Kriss twisted, a pulse from his warp rifle expanding out from the weapon to smash a charging man into the far wall with enough force to buckle the steel wall. He made one check to ensure that the target was down then looked around before sliding his weapon back behind him and leaving it to hang on the straps as he approached the large Alliance Standard containers.
“This is all wrong,” he grumbled in Alliance Standard, retrieving his tactical scanner and sweeping the ceramic canister.
A chirp from the device, barely audible over the sound of warp blasters and gunfire, refocused his attention, and he swore softly in Lucian.
“Don’t know those words, but I know the tone,” Sorilla said as she approached from behind him. “What’s the situation?”
“More blanks,” he growled. “These containers don’t match any documented numbers in Alliance systems.”
“They blanked containers?” Sorilla scowled. “That seems…excessive. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just buy actual containers?”
“Yes,” Kriss grumbled, reaching to pop the seal on the container. “Cover me, as you say?”
“Got it,” Sorilla responded, turning to examine the area as she slowly swept her guns across the interior of the cavernous building.
The lid of the container opened smoothly on its pistons, just as he’d expect from the real examples he had encountered in the past, and Kriss swore again as he examined the contents.
“Still don’t know the words, still know the tone,” Sorilla said dryly.
“A moment,” Kriss said, scanning the contents of the canister.
The little chirp went unnoticed this time, because he was already intently examining the outcome of the scans.
“This is not possible,” Kriss said. “No one has this capability. NO ONE.”
“Blanks?” Sorilla asked.
Kriss reached up and tried to slam the lid down, but was undone by the pistons fighting to soften the blow. “There is no possible way anyone could blank a singularity fabrication line. It can’t be done!”
“Say that when we’re not dealing with something that has obviously been done, Sentinel,” Sorilla reminded him. “Can we demilitarize them?”
Kriss looked up the line, counting off ten of the doomsday devices.
“In three minutes—?”
“Less than two now.”
“No, we cannot,” Kriss snapped. “These are not devices to be rushed. Demilitarizing them will take hours.”
“Right,” Sorilla growled, opening her command channel to all the forces under her command, including the drop team that had now cleared the entry heat. “All units, WMD threat is confirmed. We will hold this location. Sending op orders to your HUDs. Confirm receipt.”
As the team began steadily confirming her orders, Sorilla drew her second pistol and started walking back to the front of the depot.
The Elders’ compound was about to become a warzone, and she doubted any of them had the slightest clue just what that meant…let alone that it was coming.
Too bad for them.
*****
Carson McLaran, Commandant of the Arkana Elder Militia—which was the oldest paramilitary group on Arkana—was not in a particularly good mood as he led his group toward the armory depot under orders from the Elders. Normally they would give at least some decent warning before requiring a full call-up of his entire group, but this time events were proceeding at a pace he wasn’t particularly fond of.
“Hey, Car,” one of his men called, “something looks strange up here.”
Carson looked over, noticing that the line had paused and stopped as well as he walked over. “What is it, Sam?”
Sam Sprite, one of his marksmen, pointed to the depot. “Where are the guards?”
Carson scowled, shifting his focus as he realized that Sam was right. There weren’t any in sight. He growled under his breath. “I swear, if those idiots are drunk again, I’m going to skin one of them alive and leave him out in the sun. Okay, let’s do this right. On your guard, approach slowly. Chances are they’re inside taking a break, but since this is all screwed up anyway, we might as well be the only group acting like we know what we’re doing.”
His men chuckled, as intended, but did as he’d told them and hefted their rifles and Xeno blasters as the column started moving forward again.
The closer they got to the depot, the more a quiet alarm began to sound in his mind.
Sure, the guards were prone to reckless disregard for their duty, so it wasn’t entirely unusual for no one to be immediately obvious, but usually there would still be someone kicking around. He called a slow-down as they got closer, fingers twitching on the Xeno blaster he carried as he tried to guess what the hell was going on.
Is this some idiot kind of test?
“Sam,” he called.
“Yeah, Car?”
“Take three men. Go on ahead. Rouse those idiots if they’re sleeping at the switch,” he ordered.
Sam nodded slowly. “And if they aren’t?”
“Then we’ll have you covered.”
Sam looked at him evenly for a moment before calling up three of the guys nearest him and starting on ahead. Carson gave the signal for his group to spread out, wondering if he was just being paranoid.
Sam’s team walked up to the front entry, looking around nervously, but nothing happened to them.
If something were up, they’d have spotted it by now, wouldn’t they?
Carson was forcing himself to relax by that point, assuming that he was just paranoid. Any enemy force would have to trip the ambush by this point, otherwise the risk of Sam’s group sending up the alarm would have blown the whole thing.
He was calming down as Sam walked up to the main entry to the depot, just as another voice called out for his attention.
“Car!”
Carson shifted, looking over to where a man was holding something up. “What is it?”
“Busted rifle. Something snapped it in half, Car.”
He frowned, tilting his head in confusion.
Busted rifle? Why would anyone just toss it like that? he thought, before he realized.
They wouldn’t.
“Sam!” he screamed, snapping back around.
Sam was halfway through pushing the big door open, and looked back at him.
“Wha—?” Sam started, his call being cut off sharply as he was suddenly yanked off his feet and into the dark interior of the depot.
“Shit! Set up for covering fire! Interlocking…” Carson started, only to be cut off like a light switch had been flipped.
He never even heard the round that took him out.
*****
“Hit. New target,” Craig grunted, shifting to the next target on his HUD, prioritized by estimated importance combined with how far he would have to move his rifle to draw down the bead on the man.
“Kill,” his spotter confirmed. “New priority target. Looks to be second in command. One-thirty, fifteen degrees elevation. Three hundred forty meter.”
“Roger that,” Craig replied as his rifle bucked again. “Hit. New target.”
Three hundred forty meters was a chip shot for the rifle he was using—almost any boot could hit a man-sized target at that range with all the computer-aided systems integrated into the system—but he treated each shot like it was an over-the-horizon target.
Methodical, slow, with utmost confidence.
The round went out, crossing the distance in the blink of an eye. It wasn’t even sniper ranges, honestly, but he’d tuned his rifle down to subsonic speeds for just that reason. It made accuracy a little harder to achieve for him, but it made the electromagnetic rifle nearly whisper-quiet. With no muzzle flash or sonic boom to give away the position, he and his spotter wer
e all but invisible.
“Hit. New Target,” Craig intoned.
“No priorities,” his spotter said. “Can’t tell who’s in charge. Targets of opportunity.”
“Roger, shifting to tee-oh.”
The rifle started to bark slightly steadier and quicker as Craig just began picking off targets—first come, first served.
*****
Sorilla ducked back as a burst of automatic fire raked the door, just ahead of wildly fired pulses from Alliance warp blasters.
“That’s a lot of men,” she griped, focusing on the fight through her HUD and the details being fed to her from Craig, his spotter, the SOL, and the approach drop forces that were now in final approach before they popped their chutes at the end of the OLO drop.
“Too many to hold forever,” Brackston said grimly, firing a burst through the door.
“Don’t need forever, and they’re not organized.” Sorilla grinned. “We can hold long enough.”
“Only if they don’t figure out that they’re on a clock,” Brackston said, risking a glance through the door and up.
No sign of chutes or figures in the skies, yet, but he knew that with as few clouds as there were, the time was short before they’d be visible to the naked eye. At that point it would be anyone’s guess whether the approach would be noticed. Normally a shootout would keep people focused on the ground level, but anyone who looked up would be more than enough to alert the rest to the threat.
If they chose then to charge the depot, Brackston believed that they could probably take it back. They’d have to be willing to absorb a lot of casualties first, however, and he wasn’t sure if they were likely to be willing to lay down on the wire.
Still, the threat was there.
“This is a damned screwed up thing, you know that, right?” Brackston said, using the command channel directly to Sorilla. “Helping the Alliance against a human colony.”
“These weapons shouldn’t be here,” Sorilla said firmly. “We’d take them out anyway, if we knew about them, and you know it.”
There was truth to that, he supposed. No way they’d allow any group as clearly unorganized and slapdash as the Arkanans were proving to be to control an arsenal of WMDs of any stripe. Strategic weapons were bad enough in the hands of groups that were capable of using them strategically. The same weapons in the hands of groups that could only act on tactical scales were a nightmare and a half in the making.