“You comin’ to save people or dust ’em?” I ask.
“Maybe both,” she says with a smile. “Hopefully I won’t have to do any saving.”
She looks to Hopper and then gestures at her athletic stretch pants. “Would have been nice if you’d brought some BDU bottoms. No pockets in this get up.”
Hopper nods at a group of his guys who aren’t even trying to hide the fact that they’re enjoying watching Lana move away in her hybrid warrior-workout attire. “My men would kill me for that.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’ve got some in my ruck. I was prepared. For the record. Just need a place to change before we roll.”
“The van will work once all the doors are closed,” Hopper offers.
Lana pulls down her jacket, shoulders her ruck, turns and shouts, “Eyes off the prize unless you want your medic to suddenly remember you’re a creeper. No skinpacks for creepers. Now clear out. I need this van.”
Hopper is shaking his head. “How did you get all the misfits, Carter?”
“No idea,” I say. “I thought all the teams were like this.”
“Haha. Definitely not. My crew is as solid as any SOAR outfit I was ever in. And Tedman Jess is practically leading a Dark Ops kill team.”
“Guess they just see me as the type to keep the misfits out of trouble. They’re good warriors.”
“I believe it. Lashley alone could take down a koob village if you let him loose.”
“Or die trying.”
“Probably. So, hey, how much longer do you think until Surber comes out? They told us to double-time it here and I was kind of thinking we’d be moving now. Gonna be cutting it close if we want this done before daylight once we factor in travel and setup.”
I see over Hopper’s shoulder that Surber just emerged from the chieftain’s lodge, with Winters a step behind.
“Looks like it’s…” I make air quotes with my fingers, “‘go time.’”
“It’s go time, gentlemen!” Surber barks. “We’re moving into an exciting new phase of world building. The Pekk tribe are to be viewed as allies and will be supporting us on this operation.”
That complicates things. No time for mission planning and now we’ve got to coordinate with an indig force on the fly. This is gonna turn out bad. I can feel it.
“Carter, Hopper,” Surber shouts. “You’re riding with me.”
I nod, expecting that this is where we’ll go over whatever planning can be done. In the Legion, we planned meticulously. Here, I feel lucky to get a day’s notice of an op.
“Abers,” I shout, “get the team loaded back into the truck.”
“No,” Surber says. “They can ride in the van. Our Pekk allies will transport the truck.”
“Change of plans,” I call, “you get to ride in style inside that van. But knock before entering or Lana will shoot you.”
The men laugh and begin to queue up as Easy gently knocks on the side panel.
Hopper and I move with Surber to his luxury sled. Errol and Wick are standing by the doors, waiting. I notice that Winters is still with us.
“Link up with the rest of the team, Winters,” I say.
Surber overrides me again. “No, he was part of the planning. You’ll want him with us.”
Part of the planning? What the hell?
“Planning, sir? I assumed that’s what we’d be doing en route to the—”
“Don’t assume.” Surber ducks inside the sled after cutting me off. He waves an annoyed hand. “Inside.”
Hopper and I exchange a look and then file in, with Winters closing the door behind us, looking sheepish and apologetic.
“Sir,” Hopper begins. “From what I’ve been briefed, an op like this requires significantly more planning than what we’re capable of doing tonight.”
“And so it does,” Surber says, pulling a datapad out of a compartment built into the smooth, black leather seats.
He punches a few buttons and a holodisplay pops up in between us. It’s a zhee temple compound.
“This is our target. And this is how the assault will work…”
“You’ve… decided on the assault ahead of time?” I ask, doing my best to hide the frustration I’m feeling.
This is something my team should be doing. So that every man knows every part of the operation. So that we’re redundant and each person can be aware of what our mission is, what our role is, what success looks like, and what needs to be done if one of us fails. I’m not trying to be a big dog here. It doesn’t have to be me specifically who comes up with the plan; I’ve followed lots of good plans devised by other legionnaires in my time. And I’ve made the best out of some terrible plans at the insistence of points back when they were a thing.
Right now, with the vibe I’m getting from Surber, it feels like points are back. And this time, they wear suits.
“That’s right, Mr. Carter,” Surber says as he brings up more schematics. “This operation has been planned for a long time and I assure you that the battle plan devised is as good as anything you may have come up with. Be thankful for one less thing to do.”
“Roger, sir.”
“Our only holdup was securing a firm alliance with Pekk. We now have that and so things are going to begin to move very quickly.
“Your team has wanted action; that doesn’t escape me, Carter. Well, you’ve been critical in getting us to this point. Soon I suspect your team will be wondering when there’ll be an end to all the… action.”
I set my jaw. Hopper does that thing when he’s a little nervous where he pinches the end of his nose and keeps sniffing.
This is what we’re here for. What we’re paid to do.
I lean forward, trying to take in everything that is unfolding on the holodisplay before my eyes. But in the back of my mind, I can’t help but think…
I should have tried calling Mel again.
13
“Two guards, on the wall,” I whisper. “I can hear ’em up there.”
It took us hours to make the drive, moving with lights out slowly through the Kublaren mountains, the hard pan, and out around the zhee village set up on the north side of their temple, the towering height of its walls serving as a buffer to the wind storms that regularly blow in from the south. After that, my team and Hopper’s team parted ways to make our individual assaults per the battle plan. Each of us has to scale opposite temple walls before clearing the compounds inside.
“I can see ’em,” Abers whispers through the comm. He’s far enough away that he doesn’t need to whisper, hiding in the rocky folds of a big stone hillside eight hundred meters away. But it’s a nerves thing. It’s psychological. You keep your voice down until you can’t. “Hang back for a while so I can take out the one without the other noticing. They’re too close right now.”
I stare up at the stars. It’s still dark, but light is only a few hours away and we need to be gone without a trace by then. “Roger. Standing by.”
We wait for a full minute before the comm in my ear comes back to life. But it isn’t Abers, it’s Hopper from the opposite end of the square temple compound.
“Alpha One to Bravo One, how copy?”
“I hear you, Alpha One.”
That’s at least one thing I appreciate about this op. We’re falling into tighter comm discipline. I haven’t heard from Brisco yet, who would be most likely to foul things up on the comm. But I’m not sure if I will since everything seems to be running through myself, Hopper, Surber, and the koobs waiting somewhere out in the desert. So at least for one night, things are back to being professional. It feels right and comfortable. What I was trained for. What I signed up for.
“We’ve secured the wall and are preparing to move on Alpha Target Two,” Hopper says, his voice barely a whisper. I have no doubt his team is en route even as we speak. Alpha’s Target Two is a co
lonnaded building separate from the temple itself that intel believes to be a brothel. It should be quiet, if not empty, but Alpha’s job is to clear it of any zhee hostiles. There’s no telling what they’ll find inside, though.
“What’s your status, Bravo One?”
I look up to the top of the walls. I can see the elongated ears of one of the donkey-like zhee guards and I’m pretty sure I can dust him if I step back and line up a shot.
“Should be up the walls in a few,” I say.
“Roger. We’ll try not to steal all the glory once we move on to T-3. Alpha One out.”
I push my tongue against the inside of my mouth. At this rate Alpha team will be dusting the zhee inside the temple before we get our butts to the top of the wall. I key in Abers on the comm.
“How’s it looking, Abers?”
“At this range, I’m not sure I can get two shots off in time. I can drop one for sure, but the other guy will probably have time to drop down out of sight.”
“Roger. I can tag one of them from my position.”
I step away from the temple wall, the eyes of the rest of my team on me as they crouch in tense silence. I shoulder my suppressed blaster rifle—Mel R.—and thumb a switch on the attached ultrabeam so it sends up an IR laser beam that I can see dancing on the body of the donk stationed above me.
“Painting my target,” I tell Abers.
“Copy. Okay. Say the word and I’ll drop the other.”
I take a few short breaths. “Go.”
I send three suppressed shots up toward the zhee. The sound is something like a soft wick and the flash is hidden by the sizeable suppressor screwed on to the end of my blaster rifle. The light of each bolt is like a glimmer of moonlight shimmering up the walls—not the sort that will harshly brighten up the darkness like a blaster bolt shot at full power.
The trade-off is that I have to be close enough to the target to get a kill. And I am. The three bolts hit center mass just as a similarly dim bolt races across the quarter-moon sky and strikes the other donk on the distant parapet. Abers’s shot makes a slight buzzing sound, like an oversized insect as it races at subsonic speeds across the distance to make the kill. Not an easy shot, but Abers makes it look simple.
“Target down,” the sniper says coolly.
“Roger. Target down,” I say. Even though he knows it; saw the whole thing.
In the pregnant silence that follows the death of the two sentinels, as my team strains for sounds of trouble, I pull out a small drone and send it up to the top of the wall. The little bot reaches its zenith and hovers, sweeping for targets with a miniature holocam that sends a real-time visual to the smartwatch on my wrist.
“Looks clear,” I say. “Winters, you’re up.”
The young merc nods and then adjusts his gloves and boots. He presses a button on a sort of console strapped to his arm and the slightest sound of vibration hums into the night. The gloved fingertips have these little nanite claws which can dig into a wide variety of surfaces, same as on the toes of his boots.
Winters reaches up, grabbing a seam in the wall, which is built of massive cut stones stacked on one another, and begins to climb his way to the top.
My back to the wall, I watch my holofeed, wanting to see any potential trouble that might be in store for the kid. But things look quiet. And why wouldn’t they?
Big Nee picked an ideal night for this op—the festival of Kash the Unrepentant. Most of the donks would be blackout drunk, except for those unlucky souls fated by the four gods to perform watch and other essential duties. They would have to wait another year for a chance at the revelry. Another year that wouldn’t come, because we’re about to KTF the lot of ’em.
Two synth-ropes unravel from the top of the wall, and Winters covers the parapet steps that lead down into the temple’s outer compound as my team begins to climb their way up to the top. First Easy, then Lana, and finally Lash who, despite his size, gets moving up the wall like a hellcat climbing a Togus palm.
“Alpha One, this is Bravo One. We have secured the wall and are en route to Bravo Target Two, how copy?”
“Roger,” Hopper replies, and he sounds a little winded. “Running into more resistance than we thought—nothing we can’t handle.”
This surprises me a bit, because I haven’t heard any noise at all coming from inside. No sounding of the alarm and certainly no blaster fire.
“You need support?” I ask.
“Negative. Nothing like that. Just… complications. I’m on comms with Surber to get things cleared up. Over.”
I leave Hopper to do whatever it is he’s doing within the columns that surround Alpha Target Two, and free climb the rope to join my team at the top.
“How’s your climb, Abers?” I ask. The sniper is supposed to be moving to higher ground—the top of the hill—in an attempt to better support us on the other side of the walls if the need arises. He’ll have to switch to full power to be effective at that range, but if we run into trouble inside, the need for stealth will be out the window.
“It’s a short trip to the top, Carter,” Abers huffs. “Arms are tired from holding my rifle more than my legs. This hill ain’t no thing.”
“Copy. Bravo One out.”
That’s the last time I intend to speak out loud until I absolutely have to. You get used to talking in the Legion all throughout an op. Your bucket hides your voice from any hostiles, and the L-comm has never been cracked as best I know. But here, that isn’t happening. Other than Winters, no one has a full-body suit or an enclosed helmet. Those are expensive, and while Big Nee supplies a lot of goodies, it’s up to us to buy anything above and beyond… and if we had the credits to spare for something like that, well, why would we even be here?
I tell the team that I want Easy on point with Lana trailing me and Lash pulling up the rear as we move down the steps of the parapets and into the outer compound courtyard. I step over one of the dead zhee and peer over the edge. It’s empty, just as the bot represented. I’m not surprised. It’s a pretty chilly night, and whatever zhee are here likely opted to stay indoors where the revelry took place.
We stream down the staircase and then flow through the shadows cast by the high walls, moving with purpose toward Bravo Target Two—a sort of barracks for lack of a better word. It’s where all the zhee warriors living in the temple compound sleep. I have no idea how many of them stumbled back to their beds, but our objective is to eliminate any warriors we find.
I can see the IR lights attached to my team’s weapons bouncing as we move, sweeping the compound for targets that aren’t present. They begin to concentrate on our point of entry—a slick impervisteel reinforced door with a nice high-tech lock. It seems out of place on a compound that otherwise looks ancient, even though the zhee only built it perhaps three years prior. Everything is stone and wood. Dusty and dry from the Kublaren heat and moisture-wicking dust that constantly blows along the hard pan.
Lana hustles to the door, grabbing a slicer box from its place inside one of her med bags. She’s not a tech per se, but these military-grade boxes are pretty much foolproof. Even I could use them. The box attaches to the lock’s access panel and makes a direct interface with the lock/alarm system. It’s then a battle of two programmed wills as the box seeks to exploit and override whatever security is in place and the door does its best to stay closed until it’s convinced it really should swing open.
Expensive door locks can be set to trigger an immediate alarm as soon as something like this begins stomping in its yard, but we’re not worried about that for a couple of reasons. The first is that Big Nee definitely can outspend these donks. He’s giving us Dark Ops tech, make no mistake. The second is that even when that level of tech is in place, it isn’t long before it gets shut off. A few clumsy attempts by people who are authorized to enter sets the hairpin trigger off and puts the base or compound on lockdown an
d then someone in the decision-making chain decides that all the false alarms just aren’t worth it and they disengage the security layer.
Humanoid nature.
It takes all of fifteen seconds for the slicer box to work its magic and flash green with an audible click of the door’s locking mechanism disengaging. Lana tries the handle, modified slightly for the zhee’s hoof-like claws to manipulate, and then pushes the door in just a few centimeters or so.
“Go,” she mouths, nodding her head and moving to the side of the door so there’s no mistake: It’s time for us to storm this castle.
We debated this part quite a bit back in the sled. Everyone should be passed out drunk, and tossing in bangers is sure to wake up at least a few donks in this compound. At the very least alert the guards still up by the front gate. In the end, we decided to keep the noise down until we neutralized our respective Target Twos.
I take the lead position, my silenced rifle sweeping in the darkness with Winters right behind me and Easy and Lash bringing up the rear. The smooth, new door swings inward on alloyed hinges as quiet as a tomb. I move in hard, but quietly. A sort of aggressive silence, I guess you’d call it.
The entryway opens up into a small antechamber lined with rifles and other gear—the stuff the zhee warriors sleeping inside would grab on their way out the door we just breached. Some of the rifle slots are empty though, which means they either belong to the guards or maybe that a few of the zhee are like me and won’t go to sleep unless they’re within arm’s reach of a weapon.
I thought that was just a leej habit. My wife hates it.
There’s a round wooden table just big enough for one positioned in a corner by the door leading inside the barracks itself. Its lone occupant is laying his head on its surface, tongue out and a puddle of drool slowly inching toward joining a brackish puddle spilt from an overturned glass of krippa, that foul zhee liquor guaranteed to give any non-zhee the feeling of a hangover on the first sip. One last round that the zhee in question couldn’t quite finish before passing out.
Galaxy's Edge: Takeover: Season Two: Book One Page 10