Ardent Red

by Harry Schofield

  "Now any of you who's got any balls left – ON US!" the captain shouted around him.

  An ersatz testudo now on the advance, the quartet behind the car slowly albeit steadily made their way toward the wound in the city hall. The mercenaries on the car's sides shot any terrorist that manifested to either side of the phalanx, just as Frost had instructed. The other mercenaries, sensing that the advance was now going their way, followed them from cover to cover. The captain glanced and blinked as some dropped dead, but he continued with the awareness that overall progress was good.

  A sudden blast from a heavy coilgun surged over Frost's head, making him shiver as the solid slug darted somewhere ahead of him. Where could not be seen, though he had a distinct feeling that White was about to laugh over the radio.

  "Hey, boss! You owe me a beer later."

  Just as predicted.

  "Why's that?" Frost enquired with a wince.

  "Because I just pegged an RPG that was about to fist your little charge to death."

  The captain shook his head. "Why the hell didn't you tell me there were RPGs in there?"

  "How was I supposed to know you were going to use a car as a shield?" White protested.

  "Fair enough..." Frost could find no argument against that. "Now you three, focus up front! Drop the car on three! One, two, three!"

  The hovercar was promptly flipped onto its roof with an almighty crash in front of two hapless insurgents, left behind when the rest retreated into the city hall. Their halfhearted attempt at resistance met a response when their chests burst into red clouds under gunfire, courtesy of Frost's two charges at his flanks.

  "That's how you make an entrance!" one of the mercs at his side cheered.

  "Entry is one thing, getting out again is another!" Frost barked, rifle prepared once more as he stepped over rubble in his way. "And anyone who thinks about going back the way we came can fuck off!"

  ~

  Elsewhere, the screaming of alarms marked that a fresh battle was about to erupt. Inside of a narrow dull grey corridor, behind crates and doorways leading elsewhere, soldiers adopted cover positions to face the heavyset security door at the corridor's end. These soldiers were no corporate mercenaries, however – their dark suits and ties, coupled with their light armament of Mk.45P handguns, indicated that much. Silence united the stoic faces of the chamber's soon-to-be defenders, only the howling alarms and the thud of boots on the door's other side serving to break it.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  The corridor rocked with a thunderous bang, the door crashing to the ground with a brilliant thud as a thick fog of smoke poured in. The rattle of assault rifle fire filled the halls to mark an onslaught by masked Iron Knights charging through the breach. Though they maintained a stalwart defence as their pistols barked bone-shattering fury at the invaders, the chamber's custodians were quick to fall, with a river of crimson soon trailing down the walls and forth from the bullet-ridden husks of the dead. Within the miniscule space of ten seconds and with minimal losses from the attacking knights, the gun battle here was over.

  Following the other invaders through the smoke shrouded doorway, there entered a new figure, each heavy footstep of their ironclad boots booming through the chamber. This Knight was fully power-armoured in brilliant platinum white, that much could be readily ascertained through the mechanical whine preceding each thumping step of their march, taken with perfectly syncretic distance from one another. The breastplate was embossed with the bright silver visage of a wolf's head; surrounding the visor of the Knight's rounded power helmet were rows of razor teeth, painted on with machinelike care, alluding to the dread maw of an eyeless beast threatening to devour those who would stand before it.

  Across the Knight's left shoulder was a cinnabar-red shoulder cape trimmed in red-gold, barely obscuring the holster for a huge pistol-like weapon. When the Knight drew to a halt several paces into the chamber, infernal breaths wailed through the helmet's mouth grill like a ghostly cascade. Twin dimmed crimson lights could be seen behind the dark visor, their occasional blinking betraying them as sophisticated cybernetic optical sensors.

  The other fighters in the corridor at once stood to attention, their right fists slamming against their chests in a salute to greet their commander.

  "My lord," one of them addressed the newcomer, standing a head's length shorter and half as broad. "The codes we got were correct. The vault will be open once we find the garrison captain."

  "Bring him to me." Curt and authoritarian was the Knight Lord's voice, endowed with a minor yet readily noticeable metallic resonance from within. Whether this was the work of a microphone embedded into the helmet or his own augmented vocal cords was indeterminable.

  "What of the assault at Central?"

  "It is being repulsed, my lord," said the knight levy.

  The Knight Lord paused to consider the news. His breath remained unchanged.

  "And Strachen?" he asked.

  "He is dead, my lord," said the knight levy.

  The Knight Lord granted a curt nod.

  A mere three breaths later would mark the return of two of the lord's levies. They came back dragging by the arms an older looking man, somewhere in his fifties, wearing a dull grey military officer's uniform with an Occator emblem on his badge. The captive commandant looked up with his bruised, battered eyes, blood running from his nose evident of a struggle prior to his acquisition.

  "I see the Hound of Sokolova graces us with his presence..." he remarked with a bitter taste in his mouth. "You're not busying yourself with burning another Belter settlement?"

  "Port Royal itself lies ablaze as I speak," the Hound stated. "A shame that you are too busy hiding to see that for yourself, Agent Merley."

  "So you're getting others to start your fires for you now?" the addressed Merley laughed. "How pathetic. Not something I wouldn't expect, though."

  "The game I seek is of far greater importance than a handful of corporate stooges," said the Hound. "I do not believe I have to bore you with the details of why I am here."

  "You're already boring me with your drivel, so you may as well!" Merley spat with a thunderous laugh. "It's funny. You shove your knotted cock up Sokolova's snatch and fuck her brains out. And all she can spare in gratitude for your company are a bunch of bloody miners with rusted-out museum pieces in place of proper guns?"

  He then turned on the invaders.

  "Seriously, you can afford the latest Sleipnir shoes, but none of you could get anything better than a Kalash?" he laughed.

  Some of the levies glanced toward their feet, then toward their wood-furnished assault rifles, almost in shame.

  "Look at you all," said Merley. "You're not knights, or even knight levies. You're just a bunch of arse-clowns who just got their hands on a few peashooters without having a remote bloody clue what it is any of you are even fighting for! And the best bit is that you've no idea what's coming to you all once a real army catches wind of your pompous gallivanting around the Belt!"

  A curt period of silence granted the knights time to consider the agent's words, only the Hound's respiration piercing it.

  "Shall I cut out the insolent rat's tongue, my lord?" one of the Hound's levies holding Merley asked.

  "That will not be necessary," so stated the Hound, before he turned once again to face the ever smug Agent Merley.

  "So what are you gonna do, dog – scare me into giving up the codes for the vau-"

  He was cut off when an armoured hand clamped around his throat like a vice and lifted him from the floor with transhuman might.

  ~

  "The vault is this way, my lord," one of the levies directed the Hound through the corridors of the facility, more warriors in tow.

  The heavyset door soon stood before them, not unlike that found guarding a bank vault. The Hound did not doubt for as much as a moment that the entire vault complex would be Faraday caged – no communications in or out, to defend against a powerf
ul electromagnetic pulse. Beside the steel grey frame of the door was a console, outfitted with a retina scanner and a holographic code input. The Hound stepped forward first; he gripped Merley's severed head by the length of spinal cord under it and held it to the console. The machine scanned the agent's lifeless eyes for a moment, the light changing green with a short bleep; the Hound motioned one of his levies forward to key in the necessary code. Moments later, a booming clank resonated from under the floor, soon followed by a hiss of compressed air. Finally, the vault door peeled open, the guarded interior now revealed to all.

  The Hound threw the now meaningless head to the ground as he entered, his bootsteps ringing through the insides of the vault. His destination: one of the numbered storage boxes that were built into the walls and formulated a ring around the vault. The entire room was easily the height and breadth of an entire city proletarian's apartment, blinking server boxes positioned all in tightly formatted groups of six forming the guts of the vault from the centre to near the edges.

  Then with a single mighty yank, the Hound ripped the door off of wall box 86 by the handle, revealing its contents. From within he plucked a small data key, coloured silver and red, with the eagle emblem of the Federal Intelligence Agency appended to it.

  "Return to the ship," commanded the Hound, bringing the key in tow as he exited the vault. "We have what we came here for."

  "Yes, my lord," a levy acknowledged, gesturing for everyone else to start vacating the chamber before turning back to his commander. "What about the brothers still in the city?"

  "Their sacrifice will be remembered," was the Hound's icicle of a reply. For now, it was time to return to Sokolova with his prize. She would no doubt be expecting the return of her attack dog.

  ~

  "For such a dreaded bunch of bastards, these Knights sure were pushovers..." one of the mercenaries remarked, kicking aside an empty helmet that had once belonged to a terrorist shooting at him.

  "I seem to recall some of your comrades were busy shitting themselves when these apparent pushovers were overrunning them," Frost stated without any facial expression.

  "They might have shat themselves more had you not come and saved the day," the same mercenary laughed.

  Arrogant bunch of thugs, thought Frost, hardly better than the scum they often beat down or shot at. Despite their formidable state of the art armaments, most of these corporate mercenaries were recruited from the same kind of people they fought against. Cutpurses, muggers, criminal enforcers – made to take the blue only because otherwise they would face time in one of the various corporate labour camps dotted throughout the Asteroid Belt. Or they would simply be executed by men like Frost, men who fought because they genuinely believed in the defence of the common people. Even the former pirates who fought for corporate security, like White, could fall into that last category – at least, unlike the feared marauders who roamed Wild Space beyond the Kuiper Belt.

  In any case, the mission was all but complete. Frost and the three mercs that had spearheaded the charge into the hall were now present on the main entrance to the city hall. A trail of dead invaders and many a spent bullet casing left in the wake of their onslaught. Most of the attackers had refused any prospect of surrender, firing until their magazines ran out and then cutting their throats. All of it in the name of a higher cause. Whatever that cause was – Frost could not remember nor did he really care.

  "What's your name, by the way?" the captain turned to the mercenary at his side and enquired.

  "Wilkins, sir," the merc seemed surprised that the gruff captain would even bother to ask – a surprise that Frost spotted immediately and grunted.

  "You know, Wilkins..." Frost began.

  "What?" Wilkins acknowledged.

  "The Iron Knights have never been known to be so sloppy," said Frost.

  "Maybe they've finally overextended," Wilkins reasoned. "Pushed their luck too far and paid the price for it all."

  "Or more likely, they were here for a different reason," Frost continued. "Where do you think the Hound was in all this?"

  "The Hound of Sokolova?" Wilkins wrinkled his brow behind his helmet.

  "Yeah," Frost affirmed. "He's always front and centre in these sorts of high-intensity assaults. He lives for the thrill of war and wouldn't ever be caught dead anywhere but at the front of it. It's his greatest strength and weakness rolled into one."

  "We might have got him before you arrived. After all, how many have we taken down? Forty? Fifty? Maybe he's among the dead."

  Frost broke into an outburst of wheezing laughter, almost doubling over.

  "What? It's true, in'it? Aren't you the one who always goes on about a thousand kills meaning nothing if one bullet's all it takes to end you?"

  "If you seriously think any of the clowns out there would have stood a snowflake's chance in hell of killing the Hound of fucking Sokolova..." Frost paused to catch his breath. "You have another thing coming! Most of you are only in this outfit because you want to impress the ladies by proving yourselves to be such a vicious bunch of badasses. The rest of you are only here because you were made to be, else you end up in prison."

  "So ... why would the Hound suddenly decide to take a rain-check this time around?" asked Wilkins.

  "I don't doubt we'll be finding out shortly, though I have my theory that this was a distraction for something else..." Frost said.

  He then spoke into the radio. "Captain Merley, this is Frost! The city hall's clear. Report status!"

  Silence.

  "Captain Merley, this is Frost!" he tried again. "Report your current status!"

  Silence.

  Frost turned to the tactical computer on his left gauntlet, using the haptic interface on it to scroll his way toward a map. A complete readout of the immediate area blossomed from the screen as a cerulean blue three-dimensional hologram, marking the locations of streets, buildings, combat personnel and individuals of interest. It also showed a detailed layout of Port Royal's undercity – a layout which caused Frost to grimace.

  "What the fuck's he doing in the service tunnels?" he grumbled.

  "Chasing down stragglers?" Wilkins suggested.

  "He'd have called in," Frost rebutted. "He's a pain in the ass for regulations."

  "So ... what now?" asked Wilkins.

  "Better go find the old bastard, or at least what's left of him," the captain announced before turning to his headpiece once more. "White!"

  "What is it, boss?"

  "It seems Merley's gotten himself lost in the undercity. I'm assigning temporary command to you while I go get him."

  "Captain Frost, this is Precentor – that's a negative on that diversion. Remain where you are at the city hall and await further orders."

  At the sound of Precentor's voice coming onto the channel, Frost's expression turned stone cold. Corporate security command seemed to impress the point of leaving no men behind on a consistent basis, often to the point of annoyance. Not to mention, there was the matter of ensuring that no officer with valuable intelligence could be compromised. Frost, however, knew all too well the implications of Precentor's refusal to allow him to retrieve Merley. He was too smart to believe that there was no bigger game in all of this.

  "Message received, Precentor – White, forget about that last command."

  ~

  Elsewhere...

  LOCATION: Washington, District of Columbia.

  United States of America, United Federation of Earth, Core Space

  "Edward James Frost. Born January the Fifth, Twenty Ninety-Two, in Glasgow, United Kingdom, Earth. Served with the Royal Marines from 2124 to 2127. Was invited to serve with the Royal Navy's Special Boat Service from 2127 to '33. Fought during the Second Interplanetary War with distinction, crippled the Martian Seventh Fleet after destroying the Deimos shipyard, including two Indominus-class light dreadnoughts as part of Operation Second Sun, earning him a promotion to the rank of Captain. Now serves the same rank as a security officer for the Occat
or Conglomerate's Corporate Security division at Port Royal, Ceres. Father of two, former wife Marilyn, 2096 to 2125, thought to have died following a drug overdose. Youngest son Jason, born 2120, currently working for Hermod Interplanetary Logistics as a HGV mechanic."

  Two well-manicured feminine fingers danced along the data tablet, scrolling through the Federal Intelligence Agency-marked dossier. The holder's emerald eyes scoured the words of the tablet, armed with quasi-mechanical precision that could be bestowed upon only a chestnut bun-haired woman of science. The whine of the hovercar's countergravity plates thrumming throughout the cabin could do nothing to distract her from her present task; nor could the surrounding daytime skylines of Washington, D.C.

  "You've told me enough of this man, Miss Sparrow. What you have yet to tell us is why he interests you so."

  Rupert Winchester, the bald, suited Englishman, the director-general of MI5 and one of Sparrow's closest friends and subordinates, sat to her right. Ahead of her was posted a hard-faced man, platinum-blond of hair, wearing a dark-blue suit and red tie, flanked on each side by square-jawed men in suits, shades and ties matt-black. The individual at the centre was Michael Tureau, due for re-election in the coming November as the President of the United States of America, the most powerful member of the International Treaty Organisation and the United Federation of Earth.

  "Men with Frost's degree of determination are no easy catch for their prized rarity, Mister Winchester," Sparrow answered in a tightly refined, authoritarian voice. "Do you recall the raid on Babel to hunt down the warlord El Hadid, eleven years back?"

  "The raid that installed your contact, Captain Assad?" Winchester determined.

  "The same," said Sparrow, returning her tablet's stylus to the pocket of her own smoke-grey suit. "I believe Frost managed to neutralise some twenty five insurgents before being shot in the leg. Even then, he still managed to jam a knife through El Hadid's eye socket. That, Winchester, is just one such instance of his unique breed of ferocity – during his time with the SBS, he outdid himself on many more occasions. The hunt for Ellis the Razor on Europa, the attack on the British embassy on Titan. And obviously, blowing up one of Mars' biggest armadas during the last war. None of those operations could have been successful without him. He may work for Occator now, but any offer of higher level work would draw him away from such a dead-end position."