More fire came from the other windows on that floor. Now people were screaming and running. Many rushed out of the courtyard. Many others rushed through the doorways to either side which led into little restaurants and storerooms. Still others cowered behind columns, fallen tables or benches. A few lay dead on the ground, either shot or trampled.
“Charlie,” Soma shouted, “base of fire on that position. Bravo get that girl under wraps. Alpha, get Doff behind cover. Move!”
The only reason his men could hear his orders against the crackling of fire, was due to the heavy noise-cancelling phones mounted in their helmets. The armor’s software was designed to tune out gunfire and amplify spoken words.
Soma fired burst after burst into the darkened windows. A quick look to one side showed that Charlie was behind cover and joining their fire to his. A glance to the left caught Kornall and Keln also firing, covering for Axelin who had grabbed Doff’s arms dragged him beneath the shadow of the colonnade. Axelin kicked one of the side doors open and then dragged Doff through it.
Mako dragged Remnant with his left hand while firing his repeater with his right, and his teammates covered and followed.
Soma backed up, still firing into the windows. When he came under the shadow of the colonnade he ducked behind a column, tossed his spent energy cell away and slapped a fresh one into his repeater. He did a quick headcount, switching his HUD to the medical screen.
The HUD reported three men wounded. Doff was on the list. Soma expected the red blinking bar over his name, listing him KIA, but in fact Doff was listed as stable.
Mako and Remnant were nowhere to be seen. “Mako?”
“Here,” Mako called back over the channel. “I’ve got the girl in this giftshop with Alpha team. She’s unharmed.”
“Good thinking.”
“Sergeant Cross,” came a voice he didn’t recognize, not from the squad’s channel. “This is Lieutenant Riza, APC. We have a platoon oscar mike to your location to assist. Hold position and continue to form a base of fire.”
“Affirmative, Lieutenant,” Soma said. “Thanks for the help.”
The courtyard was empty besides the dead and dying, or those pretending to be the former. The fire continued pounding his position. He checked his medical screen again to find the names of the other wounded in his squad. Mako had been hit in the leg. Innis had taken a glancing shot to the abdomen.
“Innis, get to the gift shop so someone can check you out.”
“Negative, Sarge,” Innis replied. “I’m fine.”
Soma opened his mouth to argue, but Lieutenant Riza’s voice returned. She whispered in his ear.
“Hold your fire on my mark, Sergeant.”
“Copy that,” Soma said, then to his squad. “Hold fire on my mark.”
“Three, two, one, mark.”
“Mark,” Soma said at the same instant.
Soma held fire and watched. A flash as bright as sunlight shone the windows, then lesser flashes accompanied by the rattling of distant fire. The fire on Soma and his men ceased. Between the cracks and booms came shouts of men and women, then silence. A second later he heard another crack, another scream, more silence, then again.
Soma counted ten seconds of silence, then the lieutenant’s voice came back.
“All clear, Sergeant.”
“Thanks again,” Soma said.
“Sergeant Major Cross, this is Colonel Tho, do you read?” The new voice’s pompous tone couldn’t quite negate the air of immediacy it commanded.
“I read you, Colonel.”
“You must get your prisoner into custody immediately, do you hear?”
“I read you, Colonel, but I’ve got wounded down here.”
The colonel tsked. “Medivac is on its way. In the meantime, leave a few of your men to watch after the wounded and get the girl in here now.”
Soma gritted his teeth, considered arguing, but gave it up. He wouldn’t get anywhere but deeper into trouble. A colonel in the Peace Corps didn’t have any real authority over a marine NCO, but with the Ministry of Defense looking so closely on all this, Soma didn’t want to chance a problem.
“Yes, sir.”
Soma turned to the men still under the colonnade with him, read their quizzical expressions and shaking heads. If the trouble was over, what danger was the prisoner in that was so bad they had to leave wounded behind?
“Okay,” Soma said. “Regroup on the prisoner.”
Soma left the security of his column and stepped inside the giftshop. His men huddled around Doff’s form. The girl held the wounded private’s slack hand in her own, whispering words Soma couldn’t make out. Meanwhile Gora finished applying a bandage to Mako’s leg.
“Fireteam leaders, name one man to accompany me, and the rest of you stay here and wait for medivac.”
“This is some sawking—” Axelin began.
“That’s enough, private,” Soma said, turning on him.
“I would like to stay with—” Remnant said.
“You don’t get a say in the matter.” Soma’s response shocked him. Why was he angry at her? She hadn’t done any of this. Remnant beheld him with sad eyes. Soma refused to make eye contact.
His team leads each picked a man and Soma led Keln, Dunnis and Fel towards the main doors of the palace. The four men formed a diamond around Remnant as they walked through the battered courtyard. They passed three dead, all civilians, one was a child. Soma turned at the sound of a gasp and saw tears falling down Remnant’s face. She dropped beside the child, reaching her hands out but Dunnis lifted her back up.
“Keep moving,” Dunnis said. His voice was stern but not cruel. None of them liked seeing a civilian killed, not least of all a child.
Soma led his men through the big palace doors into a massive foyer with wide, spiraling staircases leading to a tall balcony. Above it all a massive crystal chandelier hung. The signs of battle were evident in here too, but Soma guessed that was due to the Alliance’s initial assault.
A tall man with white hair in a military haircut and distinguished medals on his Peace Corps uniform waited with a fireteam of Peace Corps military police.
Soma tried to keep the sneer off his face. Likely some big name in the MOD had wanted the Defense Force to pass control of the palace to the Peace Corps in order to reassert normalcy. This had been a mistake. A system as powerful as Antarus would have its own defense force which would be well-armed and fiercely loyal to the system’s leadership. Based on the attack he’d experienced Soma figured they were a little more than the local APC could handle.
“Sergeant Major Cross,” the gray-headed man said.
“Colonel Tho,” Soma said. He shook Tho’s hand. “Pleasure to meet you—”
“Yes, yes, sergeant. Let’s be about our duty first.”
The officer spun on his heel like a dancer and marched off before Soma could respond. His MPs followed suit, eying Soma and his men before turning to follow the Colonel.
“Keep up the pace, Raven Squad,” Soma said. He nudged Remnant forward and followed suit.
As they strode through the halls of the palace, Soma remembered leading his squad through the governor’s suites on the Elpizio. Then, he was sure he had seen the penultimate in luxury. Now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe it was the requirements of a combat-ready starship, maybe the governor didn’t travel much, but for whatever reason the palace made the suite on the Elpizio look like a low-budget holovid’s version of a wealthy governor’s home. Massive slabs of veined marble, huge crystal chandeliers, larger-than-life paintings and sculpture, brilliant hand-stitched rugs, every nook and cranny that wasn’t blown to the Void was exquisite. Soma bet he could pick the smallest room in the palace, sell its contents and have more from the sale than he’d have in a lifetime of pay plus pension.
But the fancy tour ended soon. The colonel stopped at a lift and tapped the ‘down’ button. Colonel Tho kept his gaze toward the lift door, the ultimate awkward way of distancing himself from the others. Meanwhi
le the MPs went about checking the corridors left and right, as if an attack might come at any time.
Soma felt an awkward distance with Remnant. So far, the only words he’d said to her were harsh orders. In the observation chamber Soma felt like he had a connection with this girl, no matter how crazy that seemed. The girl had known his name back on the Elpizio, had greeted him like an old friend. He had wanted to talk to her, to find out how she knew him, but even now no opportunity presented itself.
He found himself staring at her and looked away. When his eyes went on her again, she returned his gaze. Her eyes still red from crying, her face still that slight pallor. Soma would have killed someone for a moment of privacy.
Then the lift dinged, Remnant broke eye contact and they were piling into the lift car. The lift had a lot more buttons than Soma expected. He was on the ground floor and yet the buttons in the car suggested there were several floors below him. The Colonel tapped a button marked S-7. The doors slid shut and the lift car descended.
After a few awkward seconds the lift car stopped, dinged again and the doors slid open, revealing a small concrete antechamber with S-7 painted on the wall in big block text. Soma filed out with the rest of his men.
“Doesn’t look like much of a prison.” Soma spoke the thought before thinking and expected another querulous response by Colonel Tho.
“It isn’t,” Tho said. “This level is part of the palace’s service and maintenance complex. Most of the systems here are automated, though, making it a good location to seclude a troublesome prisoner. The facility we’ll be visiting was constructed here for such a purpose.”
Soma just nodded.
The Colonel re-established himself in the lead and guided them through vaulted concrete passages that, to Soma, appeared ancient. According to some of the info he’d read on the palace, much of its underground works were older than the Great War.
Remnant seemed to pay no mind to being discussed as if she wasn’t there.
“What do you mean—”
A deep boom rocked the hall followed by a lingering, low groan. Dust cascaded from the ceiling. The light strips above flickered and shook.
“What the—” Soma said before a storm of voices filled his ears.
“Colonel Tho! Colonel Tho! We are under attack in Sublevel Eleven—”
“All available units. Repeat all available units—”
“Contact! Contact on—”
“There she is! Open fire! Open—”
Soma turned to Colonel Tho. Tho was red-faced with rage. He started speaking and his voice added to the mess of all the others. At first Soma figured he was seeing the stereotypical ineptitude of the Peace Corps. This command structure was not able to deal with a real enemy threat and so it was buckling under the pressure of holding against an organized and aggressive opponent that also had the home-turf advantage.
But Soma had worked with Peace Corps forces before and had always known them to be well coordinated and highly skilled. Whoever was causing them all this trouble was a serious threat.
Must protect—
“Lieutenant Riza, report!”
Soma switched over to the private channel the colonel had opened with the lieutenant and listened in.
“Sir, we have an enemy agent somewhere between S-8 and S-12. We’re still not sure but she managed to use a shuttle under maintenance to produce a massive explosion. She might be after the prisoner.”
Tho looked ready to yell into the radio but Soma cut him off.
“Lieutenant Riza. This is Sergeant Major Cross. Can you tell me the saboteur’s last known location?”
“Affirmative, Sergeant. Sublevel Eight heading south from the north lift terminal.”
“Colonel,” Soma said. “I need live-access to the compound layouts.”
“Sergeant Major,” the Colonel spluttered. “I don’t—”
“Lieutenant,” Soma said over him. “We’re Oscar Mike to assist.” Then back at Tho. “You and your men get the girl to her cell. We’ll help track down your enemy agent. Let’s move, marines.”
A hand gripped his arm. He turned to see Remnant looking up at him, her eyes serious. “Please,” she said. “Don’t kill her.”
Soma couldn’t agree not to use lethal force on an enemy that might be using lethal force against he and his men. He didn’t want to lie, and he didn’t have time to explain.
“I’ll do only what I must.”
Soma pulled free and led his men in the direction Riza had said, hoping the Colonel would oblige and get him the schematics he asked for. This hunt would turn into a blind chase if he didn’t have a map to this underground maze.
Only when the girl was out of sight did Soma wonder how Remnant knew the saboteur was a woman when she didn’t have a headset.
Chapter Twenty:
Who Scheme Iniquity
Ganyasu held onto the transit shuttle as it sped across the wide thoroughfare from Habitat Module 1 to the central body of Lodebar Station. As he clung to the bottom of the shuttle car by magnetized hands and feet—where he was able to disengage his suit’s active camo without fear of being caught by surveillance cameras—he reviewed his layouts of the station and plotted his way to the administrative sector where he would be able to find a direct terminal to the station’s central communications hub.
A station like Lodebar was not only a nerve center of physical travel in and out of its local system, but also a major communications terminus also. Disparate people could communicate within the same solar system using standard radio transmissions, but to effectively communicate with someone outside your system required expensive and power-hungry N-space beacons. Most of a system’s population depended on stations like Lodebar serving as a communications linchpin. That went for civil, trade and military transmissions as well.
This meant, however, that these communications were under extensive encryption and decryption protocols. Gan was going to have to challenge his suit’s capabilities to crack those protocols.
The shuttle glided into the transit station and Gan reactivated his camouflage. The central transit depot was a massive cavity in the middle of the station. Here alone did the station start to look like a planet-based city. The false sky above was ten stories from the bottom. Something like legitimate free-standing buildings rose throughout the space, surrounded by wide atria dotted with trees, shrubs, gardens and parks, all to make it look like someone’s home planet.
As the shuttle Gan rode on pulled into a stop, Gan released the magnets on his hands and feet and swung to one of the wide terraces, landed in silence surrounded by dozens of passersby, and dropped into a sprint towards one of the central lift shafts. Twenty lift tubes stood at the central terrace with cars designed to carry anywhere from six to twenty people. In addition, the tubes and cage walls were all transparent.
Gan watched and waited. Doors opened and closed. People got on and off. Security guards, engineers, admin staff, civilians and tourists. They came and went individually, in groups of twos and threes and in various family unit sizes with a child holding a balloon or mom or dad pushing a stroller.
Finally, a door opened and a man in a service uniform got off. Gan leapt at it, sprinted into the lift and interfaced with the panel. He watched as a pair of men holding cups of coffee stepped up to the lift. He smiled at their disgruntled expressions as the doors slid shut on them. He hit the button for the highest public level and waited as the lift cage rose up towards the false sky.
He seemed to rise through an actual cloud layer before the exterior turned into gray metal and the cage walls went opaque and filled with advertisements.
All the while Gan let his suit cut through the security, permitting him access to the administrative levels. As it did, Gan found an interesting loophole in the system. The protocols keeping him from accessing specific levels were a lot more complex than the ones keeping the lift from rising into the administrative sector.
Gan double-checked his layout, found the communications c
enter was on A-04. He told his smartskin to program the lift car to rise to that floor. The doors wouldn’t open, but that didn’t matter. He leapt up and magnetized his hands and feet, sticking him to the ceiling and then opened the car’s maintenance access panel and crawled out onto the top of the car.
The lift tube was a long, thin cylinder of dull, gray nano-carobonate. Three magnetic acceleration tracks fitted into the lift tube lifted the car. Blue LED fixtures filled the tube with dull illumination. Each set of doors displayed the level they opened up to in white. Above each set of doors he passed as the car lifted, Gan found a ventilation duct behind a closed grill.
Gan waited for the car to come to a stop and crouched down before the duct. The grate was hot-locked into place with four welded bolts. His smartskin could produce a tool with enough heat to unlock the bolts, but he opted for the quicker option. Gan closed his hand and into his grip formed a bladed weapon made of thousands of tiny interlocking nanites. Four quick cuts could bypass the hot-locked bolts and open the grid. It wasn’t a perfect solution. Eventually a maintenance tech would find the cut grid and the station would know a spy was about, but Gan could hope they wouldn’t discover his entry any time soon.
Gan lifted his blade and then paused. The elevator car chimed. Gan looked down, saw a man entering the car and made a snap reaction. He closed the maintenance hatch silently. Then he swung, making his cuts to bypass the hot-locks.
Four clean cuts with a monofilament blade was plenty to open the grate. Gan pulled the grate, but before he could crawl into the duct a whine emanated from below and the lift car rose, blocking the hole he’d made.
Gan set the grate onto the lift car’s roof and waited. The car rose one, two, three, four levels, then the car’s brake clamps squeezed on the acceleration tracks and the car stood still. Gan used his smartskin’s residual connection to the lift car to access its security camera. A window opened in a corner of his vision, showing the man stepping off the cage. The doors closed, and the car descended.
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