by P. R. Adams
Two buildings glowed amber to reflect the targets. At ten and six meters, respectively, they were the complex’s tallest structures. The storage building was at the eastern curve of the semicircle of buildings and afforded the best view of the complex. If the assault was intended to take and hold the station, there would be a force atop the building. The main research building was at the tip of the southern leg of the buildings. If the storage building couldn’t be taken, any team atop the research building would come under withering fire. If both buildings could be taken, there was no place safe on the outcrop.
“The other shuttles make strafing runs, then harass the gunships?” Rimes was painfully aware of the odds being against them now that they were taking on the role of attacking force rather than remaining holed up in the mountains. They would need audacity and luck if they hoped to last beyond initial contact.
“That’d buy our shuttles enough time to drop us, and you’d have four on three if their ships are airborne. It may not be pretty, but it’s about as good as we can do.”
“I think that’s the way to go.” Rimes turned his attention back to the shuttle’s scanner feed. “Hold tight, though. Those numbers may change.”
Activity lit up the shuttle’s sensor display as the crawler took to the air. It headed west, just as directed. Gleason hadn’t been exaggerating—the crawler was easily managing double the airspeed of any commercial crawler Rimes had ever seen. Even so, that wouldn’t be enough to outrun one of the gunships if they pursued.
For several seconds the gunships held formation. They were closing on the outcrop, decelerating to fifteen hundred KPH. At five klicks out, they fell into line and began a strafing run at the compound. At the last moment, the trailing gunship peeled off the formation and gave pursuit to the crawler.
Headey’s excited voice filled Meyers’s channel. “Colonel, we’ve got a solo gunship pursuing a single crawler. That crawler’s doing three hundred, easy. I don’t know how they got it to do that, but it’s wobbling like crazy. That gunship’s going to close awfully fast, assuming the crawler doesn’t tear apart first.”
“Lieutenant, we have an opportunity to down that gunship. Let’s do whatever it takes. The second we’ve got lock, I want your pilots to open fire.”
“Roger, Colonel.” Headey joined Rimes to the pilots’ channel. “New orders. Intercept and down that single gunship. Confirm.”
“One-Six-Three, copy. Changing course, locking on.”
“Three-Oh-Three, changing course, locked on.”
“Two-Seven-Two, changing course. Attempting lock-on.”
The faint pings of targeting systems attempting acquisition provided background to the chatter, and the shuttle suddenly pulled Rimes in his harness as the pilot adjusted course. Rimes focused on Meyers’s channel.
Meyers opened a private video channel. He was squinting, and his eyebrows were bunched—whether because he was worried or angry over the change to his plan, Rimes wasn’t sure. “Colonel—”
“We’ve got an opportunity, Lonny. I asked the station to launch a vehicle. One of the gunships is pursuing it.”
“But my plan—”
Rimes held back a sigh. “It’s still a go. We can’t pass on something like this.”
“Understood, sir." Meyers killed the channel, but not before Rimes got a clear look at the resentment in Meyers’s eyes.
The same things that made Meyers such an asset—unequaled attention to detail, rigid structure in his planning, and the ability to account for numerous variables—were also his greatest weaknesses. He fared poorly when forced to adjust on the fly. He and Rimes were almost yin and yang, which made the command structure almost perfect, allowing for a natural compensation and correction.
Rimes reopened the private channel to Meyers. “Lonny, just think about it for a moment. We’ve got a solo gunship. Even if it’s empty, if we take it down, we’ve just reduced their airpower by a third. We can’t afford not to do this.” He couldn’t bring himself to say what he was thinking: The research staff was dead the second the gunships headed for the outcrop.
“I know.” Meyers’s face made clear that he was unhappy with the decision, and no words would change that. “We’re giving them more time to attack the station, that’s all.”
“Lonny—” Rimes stopped as another request came in; it was Headey. “Go ahead.”
“We’re getting intermittent lock-ons, Colonel,” Headey said. "They must have countermeasures we haven’t seen before. We could fire, but it’s going to be naked eye and gut instinct. That crawler’s still airborne somehow, but it can’t last too much longer.”
“See what you can do.” Rimes’s heart sank. Their rail guns had more ammunition than they could carry for a machine gun, but it was still a finite supply. Pilots hadn’t seriously trained for blind fire in centuries. He didn’t imagine that would bode well for their engagement against the other gunships.
Rimes reconnected to Meyers. “I know you’ve been trying to crack their communications, but we’ve got a new problem. The shuttles can’t get a lock-on.”
Meyers seemed to perk up at the thought of a new nut to crack. “No lock-on? A software attack, or something physical?”
“Possibly both.” Rimes wondered if the shuttle’s systems would be sophisticated enough to capture what was going awry. “We’ll need to check the system logs later, retrieve whatever we can from the gunships if we manage to bring one down. Let’s assume for a moment we can’t bring this thing down, though. Given the inability to lock-on, any changes to your plan?”
Meyers closed his eyes. The shuttle jerked and twisted, and Rimes felt more than heard the bass hum of the belly gun firing. A loud popping sound echoed through the passenger bay as something bounced off the hull. Rimes watched Honig’s soldiers for any sign of panic. They took it in stride, most of them observing him and Honig for some guidance on how to react. While his guts flopped and threatened to fail him, Rimes did his best to maintain a calm veneer.
Headey reopened the channel. “Got him, sir. He’s spewing smoke and losing speed and altitude.”
Rimes pumped his fist. “Good work!”
“That crawler’s still airborne,” Headey said with a laugh. “I think you need to recruit whoever’s flying that thing. We could use a shuttle pilot with guts like that. He’s actually buzzing the gunship.”
“Get us back to the station, Lieutenant.” Rimes watched the crawler for a moment, saw the pilot flip the gunship off before falling into a trailing position. Rimes shook his head and opened a channel to all pilots, Meyers, and the squad leaders. “All right, scratch one gunship. We’re heading in now. Plan is still to secure the roof of the supply and residence buildings. I want to know when we’re thirty seconds out. If you have any concerns, now’s the time to voice them.”
The communications channel went silent. Rimes inspected Meyers’s face and saw only calmness. On the video feeds his squad leaders—Bo, Honig, Lazovic, and Morant—seemed ready. In the time they’d been under Rimes’s command, the squads had taken on their squad leaders’ personalities. If they were ready, their squads were as well.
“Thirty seconds,” Headey said calmly.
“That’s the signal, folks.” Rimes synchronized everyone’s BAS timers. “Let’s show them the error of their ways. Ready to bring some pain?”
“Bring some pain,” the squad leaders shouted in unison. Each turned to his squad and called out orders. Rimes watched over the video feeds and hoped for the thousandth time all the training and the tactics they’d worked out would result in minimal losses, despite the odds. For a fleeting moment he wondered what their counterparts aboard the gunships were thinking. Then, he realized he didn’t really care.
7
20 November, 2173. Sahara.
* * *
Lieutenant Headey had the shuttles flying nap-of-earth to minimize sensor signature; the pilots pushed the engines as hard as they could. Watching out the belly camera was both thrilling and nauseati
ng for Rimes, nearly inducing nausea twice as the shuttle jerked at the last second to avoid boulders invisible to the naked eye. Bitter, hot acid shot into his mouth. He swallowed it back down and sucked flavorless water from his suit’s recycling system. His breath came out hot and fast, and the suit’s bio monitors flashed a caution at him. He tried to bring everything under control, but it was a struggle. The lack of any sign of the other gunships at least offered some hope.
One hundred meters out from the base of the outcrop, the shuttles climbed to begin their strafing runs. The maneuvers threw Rimes against his harness, and a few hollers and shouts bled into the open channels. Rimes smiled at his soldiers’ fearlessness. He could only hope it wasn’t misguided.
Switching from belly camera to belly camera, he finally spotted the gunships. They were in the center of the compound, airlock doors open, ramps down. Gunmen were boarding at a casual pace.
The gunmen froze.
Rimes knew the feeling, a sickening sense of dread. Only luck could save you when you were out in the open and an aircraft had a clean run at you.
The shuttles opened fire. The hum of the belly gun became a steady beat filtering up through his boots. One after the other, the shuttles adjusted course and ran a relatively straight path over the station’s open center. Stationary, the gunships’ countermeasures were ineffective. By the time the last shuttle completed its run, both gunships were mangled ruins. A dozen gunmen lay sprawled on the ground outside the airlocks, some sporting fist-sized holes, others missing extremities.
On the second run, Bo’s squad dropped to the storage facility roof and Morant’s squad dropped to the main research building’s roof, while the other two shuttles fired on anyone still out in the open. Meyers dropped with Bo. Two soldiers running for the administrative building panicked and opened fire on Headey’s shuttle. He returned the favor, taking their legs off with a quick sweep of the rail gun.
When the complex exterior was clear, the shuttles climbed and hovered thirty meters up.
Rimes opened a channel to Meyers. “Captain Meyers, please confirm station is secure.”
Meyers used his BAS to build a composite video feed of the research facility. The ERF soldiers already on the ground, along with the sensors contained within the shuttle cameras and security systems in the area, provided imagery that the BAS refined on the fly.
“Station secure, Colonel.”
Rimes’s guts churned at the sight of the heavy damage done to the complex’s buildings. “Set us down, please, Lieutenant Headey. I want your shuttles on a tight patrol, one at two klicks out, the rest within a klick.”
Lieutenant Headey passed the assignments along to his pilots as the soldiers disembarked. The final two squads were dispersed among the ruined gunships before the last shuttle was one hundred meters up.
Rimes glanced at Sergeant Honig, and after the sergeant signaled he was ready said, “Captain Meyers, we’re ready to begin building-to-building sweeps.”
Meyers pumped out an overlay of the complex, marking half the buildings in green, half in red. “Sergeant Lazovic, proceed to the buildings marked in green in the order indicated. Sergeant Honig, please proceed to red buildings in the order indicated.”
Each squad’s first assignment was to clear the gunship they’d taken cover behind.
As much to set the tone as for old time’s sake, Rimes took the lead for Honig’s team. With the CAWS-5 carbine at the ready, Rimes sprinted to the gunship’s ramp. One of the wounded moved, and Rimes brought his carbine up. The movement stopped and hands—palms open—slowly rose away from the body.
Rimes jogged over and kicked the wounded gunman’s weapon away. It was a woman, Asian, her ashen face covered in blood. She was short and light-framed, but her uniform and armor made it impossible to guess anything more than that. She’d taken a round in the hip. The wound wasn’t too deep—maybe five centimeters—but it had completely displaced the flesh it had traveled through and liquefied her armor on impact. Some of the fabric of her uniform and pieces of armor had fused to her seared flesh. The wound seemed incapable of the sort of normal elasticity flesh exhibited.
“Who do you work for?” Rimes asked. The woman looked away. She seemed remarkably calm. It wasn’t as if she was slipping into shock, either. Rather, she seemed…resolved.
Something about the woman’s uniform caught his eye. He compared it to the uniforms on the corpses. Although they lacked any insignia or badges indicating an employer, they were consistent in design and appearance. These people weren’t simple mercenaries.
Corporate security forces operating clandestinely?
He inspected the guns scattered across the open ground. They were assault rifles but of an unfamiliar design. At first he thought they might be knock-offs of some German weapons company, but a second look left him thinking they were authentic—some sort of prototype probably crafted on contract. That would have been expensive.
Shoving aside the mysteries of who the forces worked for and the strange wound, Rimes tried to raise Gleason or Dr. Vance. After three attempts he gave up. The shelter would be buried, shielded.
Or they could all be dead.
While Rimes watched the wounded mercenary, Honig led his team into the first gunship. Several meters away, Lazovic led his team into the second gunship. Each squad dragged out the dead, many of them in pieces. They arranged the bodies in two gory lines. Shots rang out from the complex’s eastern edge.
“Stragglers,” Meyers said. “All clear.”
Time slipped away with terrifying speed. Finally, with the last of the dead removed and the gunships cleared, Lazovic and Honig took their teams into the buildings.
Rimes paced along the ramp of the least-damaged gunship, still eyeing the wounded woman, his mind toying with the question of whether or not the pilots had managed to dump their system data before the strafing runs or if there might be something to retrieve.
“Sergeant Honig?”
“Yes, Colonel?” Honig’s video feed showed he was braced against a corridor wall inside one of the buildings. One of his corporals was shifting focus from Honig to something down the corridor.
“The gunship pilots, did it look like there was any chance they were killed before they dumped their systems?”
“No pilots, Colonel,” Honig said. He motioned as if gripping a flight control stick. “Remote piloting.”
Remote piloting. From where? Orbit? They must have a booster somewhere. “Could you send Corporal Dengler to tend to the prisoner, Sergeant? I’d like to join you.”
“He’s on the way, sir.”
While he waited, Rimes took the opportunity to more carefully survey the compound. The attackers had faced no resistance but had done a great deal of damage to the buildings. Bullet holes marred every building. Windows were shattered. Smoke slowly drifted from a building Rimes recognized as the medical facility. It looked like a missile had been fired into it. The tactics were impossible to figure out.
Sighing, Rimes sent a message to the Valdez that the gunships had been eliminated. He hoped the third gunship had reached the ground without suffering too much damage. He wanted a prisoner to interrogate, and he didn’t think he was going to get one from the complex.
Rimes connected to Lieutenant Headey. “Lieutenant Headey, can you get me the location where that gunship went down? I want to give those folks an opportunity to surrender. We’re going to need help figuring this attack out. Maybe one of them would be willing to tell us who they’re working for and for what purpose?”
“Shouldn’t take long, Colonel,” Headey said.
Headey’s shuttle left the tight overhead patrol and quickly disappeared. Rimes knew Headey would push the shuttle to its limits, and that’s exactly what they needed at the moment. Until Rimes could see the crash site and hear from even one survivor regarding what was going on, it would all remain like a crazy, desert-birthed mirage to him. Just hearing an explanation, no matter how improbable, would make things seem more real.
Dengler squatted next to the wounded woman, and Rimes jogged off to join up with Honig’s squad.
“Colonel?”
Rimes turned back to Dengler, who was waving frantically. He looked like a scarecrow—gangly, long-limbed, blond hair spiked out now that his helmet was off. Rimes jogged back. The prisoner was perfectly still, her chest not visibly rising and falling. Rimes knelt beside her.
“She is dead, Colonel,” Dengler said. He sounded as if he thought it was his fault. “Her vitals were strong. She should have been going into shock by the time I got to her, but she was fine. Her eyes…she was exhibiting symptoms…” Dengler pointed to his head. “It was as if she was mentally slipping into shock, but her body was fine. Then, she just shut down.”
“Shut down?”
“No breathing, no pulse. Shut down.”
“Drugs?” Rimes felt for a pulse. “Some sort of stim?” Or one of Perditori’s crazy animated corpse tricks.
Dengler nodded slowly. “It would be possible, sir, I guess. We have blood samples to check. But to see her simply stop…” He shrugged.
Once again, Rimes found himself shivering. It was an ugly wound, but not a lethal one. He looked at the woman’s face again. She was probably in her early thirties. Something about her face seemed plastic, unreal. Plastic surgery?
It was a disconcerting image. Moments before she’d been alive, breathing, destroying. Killing? He searched her body for any form of identification. He wasn’t surprised to find nothing.
He connected to Sergeant Honig. “Sergeant Honig, did you find any identification on any of the corpses?”
“No identification on anyone, Colonel.”
Dengler held up a small vial filled with blood. “We can run a DNA check once we return to Plymouth, sir. On all of them. We should have answers in two or three months.”
Answers on who they were, but what about who they worked for? What was their mission? “Gather some of the weapons and uniforms,” Rimes said, frustrated. “Anything you think might help us figure this out. See if we can get anything out of their flight systems or computers.”