Rath's Redemption (The Janus Group Book 6)
Page 6
Paisen chuckled. “Sir, if you let them off the leash, they’ll get Yo-Tsai’s attention. They might even draw some of his forces off of Tarkis in response.”
“If we want to try this, we need to move fast,” Dasi commented. “Every minute that passes, the Jokuans make more progress on Tarkis.”
Hawken exhaled noisily. “Let me recap, then. Option A: the plan we just described. Capture Yo-Tsai and his drones, establish a beachhead on Tarkis, shuttle reinforcements in from nearby planets, and fight a delaying action until the Fleet Reaction Force can counter-attack.”
He looked around the room, then licked his lips. “Option B: attempt to bribe Yo-Tsai, which probably won’t work. Option C: do nothing, and hope Yo-Tsai departs on his own, and leaves the rest of the Federacy alone.”
“I don’t think Option B is viable. But the main advantage of Option C is that we’re not committed to a particular course of action,” General Childers noted. “We can wait, observe, and potentially figure out something better down the line. It gives us more time to plan.”
“That’s fair,” Hawken said.
“But we’re buying that time at a high cost,” Beauceron pointed out. “Potentially the lives of Tarkis’ citizens.”
>>>The Jokuans have already killed several hundred civilians, Six told Dasi. That number will likely continue to rise.
Which option do you think we should do? Dasi asked.
>>>I do not believe any of the options currently suggested will yield a favorable outcome. But I do not have an alternative at this time.
“Okay, we’re going to go around the table,” Hawken decided. “I want a recommendation from each of you.”
“We’re going to vote on it?” the fire chief asked.
“It’s not a vote,” Hawken explained. “I’m just asking for opinions.”
“Then how do we decide?”
“I decide,” Hawken told him. “You asked me to lead the government, so I’m leading.” He pointed at the utilities management head first. “Shoot.”
“Option C,” the man said. “Wait and see. Option A – attacking the Jokuans – it’s just too risky.”
The head of air traffic control went next. “Option C.”
“I agree,” the director of hospital services said.
The representative from public relations shook her head. “I vote for A.”
“C,” the fire chief said, without hesitating.
Hawken looked at Beauceron. “Detective, I assume you and your colleagues vote Option A?”
Dasi saw Beauceron glance at Atalia and the two guildsmen. “Yes,” he said. “We’ll make an attempt, if that’s what you decide.”
Hawken turned to Childers, sitting next to him. “General?”
He pursed his lips. “Option C.”
Hawken nodded. He stood up and walked to the room’s window, which looked out over the main roadway leading through Anchorpoint’s cavernous holds. A pair of fire trucks, their sirens flashing, drove past on the street below, heading for what remained of the Senate Chamber. Sighing, he turned and faced the committee again.
“Whatever happens, I’ll take full responsibility,” he said. “It’s my decision, so if Yo-Tsai kills everyone on Tarkis, or launches those darts on other planets, it’s on me.”
“What is your decision, sir?” Childers asked.
Hawken took a deep breath and then stood taller, as if straightening up from carrying a heavy load. “We go with Option A.”
“I’ll go with them,” Dasi put in. “I have a feeling I can help.”
Hawken nodded, and turned to Paisen. “Notify your team on Jokuan. The use of deadly force has been authorized.”
10
In the tree line at the edge of the landing field, Wick flipped the cover off of his rail rifle’s scope.
“In position,” he told Rika.
“Almost set,” she replied, over the tactical radio. He glanced over his shoulder. Several yards behind him, Rika was settling the mortar tube onto its base. As he watched, she screwed it into place, then checked the tube’s alignment, before moving to one side, where a neat row of mortar rounds lay waiting on the mossy ground.
“Okay,” she said. “Jacque, I’m set.”
“Roger,” came the reply, over the tactical net. “We’re about twenty meters to your left. Huawo?”
“Set,” Huawo reported.
Jacque continued to check in with the team as they moved into position – Wick tuned them out. “I’m going to start designating,” he told Rika. He turned back to the airfield and let his finger rest on the rifle’s laser designator. Just a few yards in front of him, the trees gave way to a grassy field ringing a long, packed earth runway. At the far end of the field, next to a large, empty hangar, a mechanized unit was in the midst of servicing their vehicles – checking fluid levels and conducting routine maintenance.
The radio chatter died down, as the team settled in to their final positions.
“Looks like the full battalion’s turned out for maintenance today,” Wick reported. He scanned across the rows of vehicles. “I’ve got fifteen tanks and … thirty plus armored gun trucks. Call it three hundred troops.” He spotted an officer chatting with a group of NCOs, and zoomed all the way in, studying the man. “Well, hello.”
“What?” Jacque asked.
“This must be one of the units that was chasing us,” Wick said. “That captain out in front of the formation is the guy that gave the order to shoot Tepper.”
Rika grunted. “Good. I was starting to feel sorry for them, for what’s about to happen. Now, not so much.”
“Yeah. Dibs on the captain,” Wick said.
On his heads-up display, a graphic overlay from Jacque appeared, showing the right and left boundaries of his engagement zone.
“Check your internals for field of fire assignments,” Jacque told the team.
“Got it,” Wick acknowledged. He started at the left side of his assigned sector, selecting a tank to begin with. He let the rifle’s cross-hairs rest on the tank, and then pressed the laser designator button. His heads-up display flashed once, and a targeting symbol popped up on top of the tank.
“Target one, tank in the open, roger,” Rika said, receiving the designation in her own heads-up display.
Wick worked across the sector, locking in each vehicle in turn. When the last one had been designated, he keyed the net again. “We’re set over here.”
“Roger,” Jacque said. “Wick, you’ve got the best angle. What can you tell me about that spacecraft that landed just before we moved in?”
Wick shifted his point of aim, surveying the smallest of the three spacecraft on the field. “Long-range transport,” he said. “Private craft, pretty swank, somebody important. Wait a second.” He zoomed in on the craft, frowning slightly. “It’s got Federacy markings. Why the fuck is a Federacy craft here on Jokuan?”
“Beats me,” Jacque replied. “What about the passenger?”
Wick swung the rifle again, this time lining up on the hangar. “I don’t have line of sight on the passenger anymore,” Wick said.
“I’ve got him,” Huawo said. “Guy in a suit and tie. Middle-aged. Two bodyguards. The Jokuans with them don’t look too happy to see him.”
“Well, if he’s Federacy, then he’s off limits,” Jacque decided. “His spaceship, too. I’m activating the communications jammer. Stand by.”
“Holy shit!” Huawo exclaimed. Wick heard two pistol shots in the distance. He scanned over the enemy unit, but they were all looking in the direction of the hangar.
“What was that?” Jacque asked.
“Sorry,” Huawo said. “The Federacy guy in the hangar just iced both of his bodyguards. What the fuck is going on here?”
“Goddamn it,” Jacque swore. “That asshole is going to fuck this whole thing up for us. Wick, what’s the battalion doing?”
“Looking alarmed,” Wick said. “Confused, but a whole lot more alert than they were a second ago.”
“Shit,” Jacque said. “Is everybody set?”
“Yes,” Wick said, and the other members of the team echoed their readiness.
“Okay, Arclight: go loud,” Jacque said.
Wick heard Rika drop the first mortar round into the tube, and with a distinctive THUMP, the round launched up into the air overhead. Down the line, three more rounds fired nearly simultaneously, and each of them adjusted their arcing flight path as needed, homing in on the targets designated for them by the team’s snipers.
Behind his rail rifle, Wick took aim at the enemy captain, and sent his first round downrange. He saw the man jerk backwards and fall over, blood spurting from a center-of-mass chest wound. An instant later, the mortar rounds dropped onto the unsuspecting Jokuan vehicles, crashing down from above and exploding with deafening force. Rika had already dropped a second round into their tube, and Wick shifted aim, knocking down an NCO running for cover, and then taking out another soldier who had dropped to one knee and was aiming his rifle in their direction.
“Shooters, stay in your lanes,” Jacque reminded them calmly. “Aim for officers, NCOs, and machine gunners first.”
Another set of four vehicles exploded in the troop’s assembly area under the mortar barrage; one of the mortar rounds impacted on a tank’s ammo racks, causing a spectacularly large secondary explosion that showered sparks and smoking metal across the motor pool. Wick spotted an NCO climbing into the front seat of a truck, and put an armor-piercing round through the windshield, killing him before he could start the vehicle up.
His enhanced hearing picked up the whine of spacecraft engines – Wick glanced up from his scope and saw the private spacecraft lift off from the field. “Federacy transport is bugging out,” he reported.
“Roger, let it go,” Jacque replied.
Wick settled back behind his rifle, and quickly fell into a rhythm: acquire, shoot, scan … acquire, shoot, scan. The pattern was punctuated only by mortar rounds exploding among the parked vehicles. Then, suddenly, the field was clear of enemy soldiers. Wick switched to scanning the trees behind the burning vehicles, where he had seen some of the Jokuan soldiers running for cover. As he searched, he saw multiple muzzle flashes: enemy rifles firing back from among the trees. The volume of fire picked up suddenly – bullets plucked at the leaves over his head, and thumped into the tree trunks on either side of him.
“They’re trying to suppress us,” Wick reported.
He heard Rika key her radio.
“Rounds complete,” she said. “All targets destroyed.”
“Roger,” Jacque said. “That’s all four tubes done – looks like a handful of vehicles are still intact, but that will have to do.”
“Getting hot over here,” Huawo remarked. “They’ve located us. I’ve got a large enemy element massing over there, preparing to maneuver on us.”
“Okay, Arclight: get ready to fall back.”
* * *
Senator Foss turned away from the two dying Senate Guards. The pistol was heavy in his hand, and he felt his pulse racing. The Jokuan troops in the hangar were covering him warily with their rifles, so he let the gun fall to the ground. He faced General Yo-Tsai on the viewscreen.
“Well, General? Do we have a deal? Let me return to Anchorpoint and I’ll ensure the Fleet Reaction Force never deploys against you.”
Yo-Tsai’s eyes narrowed, and then he nodded. “We have a deal, Senator. But let me warn you—”
Abruptly, the screen went black. Foss turned to the Jokuan officer. “What happened?”
The officer pulled out his holophone, flipping it open. “I don’t know. The signal dropped.” He looked up, frowning. “Someone’s jamming our communications.”
Foss heard a series of muted concussions in the distance, and then the Jokuan officer’s head disappeared in a misting spray of blood.
“Simi save us!” Foss swore, throwing himself to the ground.
Another soldier in the hangar fell over with a gaping wound in his chest, and a series of thunderous explosions rocked the field. Foss saw several vehicles on fire, and hundreds of soldiers on the field running for cover. He scrabbled for the pistol he had dropped, then looked around wildly, the gun shaking in his grip. He could see no sign of the shooters, but the Jokuan soldiers were firing back now, aiming at the woods across the airfield.
He heard more explosions, and they seemed to galvanize him into action – Foss stood on weak legs, and ran out of the hangar. As he emerged, he saw his ship waiting across the airfield, unscathed. He breathed a sigh of relief and sprinted for it, breathing heavily. He heard bullets passing close by him, but he ignored them, focused only on the ship. He was a gasping, sweaty mess by the time he reached the boarding stairs.
A crew member was taking cover inside the door as he hauled himself up.
“What’s going on, sir?”
Foss pushed him aside, heading for the cockpit.
“Go!” he told the surprised pilot. “Now!”
“What about your guards, sir?”
“The Jokuans shot them,” Foss said. “Now get us out of here!”
The pilot’s eyes fell on the pistol in Foss’ hand, but he nodded and turned to his controls. Foss heard the ship’s engines light with a roar, and the craft rose smoothly up into the air. Foss turned and hurried back to the ship’s lounge, stopping in the galley to drop the pistol in one of the ship’s trash receptacles. When he reached the lounge, he bent over to peer out the windows. They cleared the treetops as he watched, and then the ship angled upwards into a steep climb, the ground disappearing rapidly below them.
Foss sat down heavily on the ship’s couch and breathed a deep sigh of relief.
11
“Are you sure about this?” Jaymy asked Rath.
“Yeah, trust me,” Rath told her, leading the way across the grass toward the cluster of Jokuan armored vehicles. “Just stay quiet – these guys all speak a local dialect amongst themselves.”
Rath waved at the nearest tank’s commander, gesturing for him to dismount. He and Jaymy stopped in front of the tank, and Rath saw her bite her cheek in nervous anticipation. He glanced back at the flagship behind them. Flames were already licking through the sealed edges of the front loading ramp, giving the massive spacecraft the appearance of a fire-breathing dragon, its jaw clamped shut.
Rath thought his response, and the phonetic translation appeared in his heads-up display.
Rath shook his head.
The man frowned.
Rath pointed at the other vehicles.
The man nodded, and hurried over to the other vehicles. Rath climbed up onto the tank, and he and Jaymy clambered down into the turret hatches. Jaymy took a seat in the cramped space next to Rath, setting her medical kit on the floor. Through the viewports ringing his hatch, Rath saw the tank commander have a brief discussion with soldiers from several of the other vehicles, and then he shouted an order, and the rest of the soldiers clambered down, shouldering their weapons. They set off in a gaggle through the grass, giving the burning ship a wide berth.<
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“They bought it,” Jaymy said, sighing with relief. “I didn’t think it would be that easy.”
“People trust their senses too much,” Rath told her. “If something looks and sounds really similar to what they expect, their conscious mind overrides anything out of the ordinary, and they just accept what they see. He didn’t realize I was wearing a navy uniform, for instance.”
“How did you know what to say to him?” Jaymy asked.
“My internal computer runs a real-time translation for me,” Rath said. “And in general, if you act like a pissed-off supervisor, people are more likely to just do whatever they’re told, rather than get yelled at.”
She frowned. “Sounds like you were winging it.”
Rath laughed. “You sound just like my training avatar – he was always on me for improvising through missions, without having a plan.”
“So what’s the plan now? Is there some place we can hide?”
“No,” Rath said.
“Well, let’s get out of here, then,” Jaymy suggested. “Maybe we can find a ship to take us off-planet.”
“No,” Rath said again, shaking his head. “Jaymy, I can’t run.”
“Why not?” she asked.
Rath sighed. “Because I’ve been running my whole life. It feels like every time I made a bad decision, I just ran away from it. It’s time I took some responsibility.” He pointed out the hatch windows, at the city beyond the grassland. “This is my home. The Jokuans are going to tear it apart. And I brought them here.”
She studied him for a second, and then nodded. “Okay. So what are you going to do? You can’t fight a whole army yourself.”
“No,” Rath agreed. “But I can find General Yo-Tsai … and kill him.”
“You think they’ll just fold up and go home once their commander is dead?”
“Possibly,” Rath said. “More likely I’ll need to impersonate him, and order them to pull back.”