Head Space

by Andrew Vaillencourt

  “That’s not a lot of time to get set up...”

  “I know,” she said, fanning herself theatrically. “And I haven’t a thing to wear!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Comm check!”

  Pike’s voice was a touch tinny over the encrypted channel, though clear and loud all the same.

  “Go for Breach,” Roland grumbled.

  “Honey Pot, check.” Mindy’s drawl was next.

  Manny did not have the clear professional confidence of the veterans, but he tried to sound firm and strong. “Lefty is, ah, good to go.”

  Finally, Lucia answered for her fire team. “Mama Bear and the Rejects, in position.”

  “Command copies. We move on Lefty’s signal. Lefty, you just hit your objectives and don’t think about nothing else. Honey Pot, you’ll get ten seconds to secure and extract. Rejects? You guys are crowd control and containment. I don’t want party crashers before we are ready to leave.”

  “We’ll keep this shindig nice and private, Command,” said a man’s voice.

  “If you don’t,” Pike warned, “nobody’s ever gonna call you ‘Pretty Boy’ again.”

  “Copy that, Command.”

  “Breach?”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t need to tell you what to do. Just remember, every piece of shit pirate you take down tonight is one less bastard we’re gonna have to deal with later. No reason not to front load some of the work. You copy?”

  “Understood.”

  The three syllables rumbled through the open channel like distant thunder. When she heard the uttered acknowledgment, the cold and indifferent detachment in Roland’s voice promoted the twinge of fear souring her guts to a large lump in her throat. It was easy to forget, in the pedestrian bliss that was their typical day, that Roland had the potential for violence and carnage on a level few would understand. Most of the Dockside problems they fixed held no real threat to him, so the terrifying cyborg rarely operated anywhere near his full destructive capabilities. Though she had been reminded of the fact many times, Lucia hated to admit that she was not in Dockside right now. They were in a war zone surrounded by enemies with very little back-up. The part of her brain that remained detached and tactical understood that their best chance of success and survival lay in everyone operating with the maximum violence of action. What she feared was witnessing exactly what that looked like when Roland did it. With a conscious effort, she forced herself to breathe slower. She was not naïve, and she had seen what her partner could do when committed to an objective. He was going to kill a lot of people and do it very quickly. Her job was to make sure he had the room and the time to get it done. She resolved herself to what came next, and wrestled her insecurities into making peace with it.

  She felt Patton shift next to her and looked over her shoulder. She found the man staring at her, though his face was obscured by the full helmet and combat visor he wore.

  “You good, ma’am?” The question seemed innocuous enough, but Lucia understood the meaning behind it.

  She poured a liberal quantity of un-felt nonchalance into her reply. “We are hunkered down behind a bunch of crates in a cargo bay, surrounded by hostiles, horribly outnumbered, and I can’t see the main action. I’m just peachy, Pretty Boy.” She rolled her eyes behind her own visor. “I’m not going to choke out there. It’s not my first time.”

  Patton tapped his visor with two fingers in a sloppy salute. “I wasn’t worried. Just checking in. This shit gets real for all of us.”

  Lucia could not stop a smile. “Even Bubba?”

  “Okay. Maybe not Bubba. But he’s too dumb to understand mortality. That’s probably an asset in his case.” Patton shifted gears, possibly to calm her frayed nerves. “So what’s the deal with this Breach character? He some kind of big deal? Why’s he get all the action?”

  “I can’t give you specifics, but I can tell you this. He gets all the big action because our enemy hates him and wants to kill him, and thus he is an excellent distraction for the other operatives. Once he hits that party, all eyes will be on him, and I mean all of them.”

  “He that tough? That place is going to be full of hard-ass Galop pirates. I grew up here, you know. I can tell you that even though they may not be real disciplined, these bastards will fight like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

  Lucia doubted that last bit very much. The things she had seen Roland do would probably beggar the mercenary’s imagination. “Will, Roland is probably the single most dangerous human you’ve ever met. He is going to tear into that bar like a bear after a beehive.”

  “He really kill Grim Roper? Bernie says she did it, but I heard stories from folks who were there.”

  Lucia answered truthfully. “Sergeant Rothschilde killed Roper, but he was already crippled and running from Roland when she caught him.”

  “Damn,” Patton whispered. “He must have a lot of slick shit under the hood to bang it out with that freak.”

  “I could tell you, Pretty Boy...”

  “But then you’d have to kill me?”

  “Exactly.”

  The combat helmet swung back and forth emphatically. “No thanks. I like my balls intact, thank you very much.”

  “Smart boy.” This time she shifted the conversation. “We sure Bubba can hold the intersection by himself? It’s a tall order. There’s still time to put Hollis somewhere she can cover him as well as Winston.”

  “Don’t sweat it, ma’am. Winston will need the cover fire more than Bubba, and Bubba? Well, don’t you worry about him. If his job is to hold an intersection, the intersection will get held. He’s a dumbass, but he’s a reliable dumbass. I’ve tasked two of my little buddies to observe and back him up, just in case.”

  Lucia still did not know how she felt about the man’s swarm of semi-autonomous drones. She was capable of some spectacular feats, but how he managed to control and direct eight well-armed flying machines at once she would never comprehend. Just imagining it made her cross-eyed. Nevertheless, prudence dictated that she trust the man and his assessment of his team, and the current plan appeared to be a prudent one indeed. Her thoughts returned to the mission and their hastily assembled plan. Rum Runner’s was as ugly a hole as any other on Vinland. Little more than a hollowed out storage deck, the cantina would comfortably hold a hundred or so patrons. The walls and floor were slate gray metal, but tables and chairs of assorted materials had been installed. There was a long bar along one wall that served whatever improvised hooch passed for liquor this far from Earth. A raised stage ran along another wall where girls danced or bands played with equally depressing levels of talent and enthusiasm. Against the far back corner several vape booths had been added, and one VR station advertised the latest games in blinking holographic neon. Manny’s recon of the establishment had yielded several methods of infiltration and extraction, though they had all settled on a noisy raid featuring Roland’s signature methods. Any of Paulsen’s crew was likely to remember the big cyborg, and the assumption was that his presence would create an environment of incautious zeal among the pirates. Once Manny identified Marceau in the crowd, he would sever communications and power inside and Roland would kick the door in. The hope was that within the ensuing melee, Mindy would be able to grab the drug dealer and pull him clear with none the wiser.

  Lucia’s fire team had been tasked with sealing off access to Rum Runner’s so reinforcements would be slow to arrive. No one expected Roland to fight the entire station, though anyone who understood his capabilities agreed there would be no issue with him tearing into a bar full of lightly armed pirates as long as help did not show up with bigger guns. Making life difficult for those bigger guns fell to Lucia’s squad. She had put Bubba Riley in the linchpin position, tasking the giant with disrupting the closest intersection of large passageways. With luck, this would force reinforcements to approach the bar on foot using narrower halls. Winston was covering the largest of these alternates, with Hollis perched on a nearby gantry t
o support him. Patton’s drones would secure communications and supply real time intel, as well as reinforcing fighters as needed.

  Lucia’s job was to command, and this irked her more than she thought it would. Command meant she would not be directly in the thick of things where her speed and skills might be put to better use. While she was not so naïve as to think she would escape this mission without enemy contact, she found herself irritated at having to hold herself back. Someone had to cover Patton while he flew the drones, and someone had to make real-time tactical decisions. Both of these jobs fell to her, and she could not find any logical reason why they should not. Holding a choke point was something a behemoth like Riley was more suited for than she would ever be. The man was wearing enough plate armor to eat grenades like apples and he had two heavy machine guns mounted to his harness with motorized brackets. With his back to a wall, Riley could probably hold a defensible position for hours against any foe stupid enough to try him. She was no great hand with a rifle so sniper overwatch was not a good place for her either. Winston had rigged his zone with demo charges, so she would only be a liability at his position as well.

  Stifling a sigh, she checked her flechette rifle and cinched her armor harness tighter so it would not rattle. Knowing Patton would see her nervous shuffling she pre-empted his question. “Don’t give me that look, merc. I’m just not used to hanging back. Normally, I’m right behind Roland when he does this sort of thing.”

  The man did not look at her. “No problem, ma’am. Like I said, this part’s real tense for all of us.”

  “Heads up, team.” Manny’s voice startled both of them. “Target is entering the zone. Looks like plus seventy-five hostiles inside. Stand by for my signal.”

  “Copy, Lefty,” said Pike. “Breach, you’re up. Honey Pot, you’re on deck.”

  Lucia’s heart quickened. She keyed her fire team’s private channel. “Saddle up, guys. Bubba, you will wait for my call or so help me god what I did to your balls will feel like a back massage when I’m done with you. Copy?”

  Riley replied with a brisk, yet also sheepish, “Uh, yes ma’am. Roger that.”

  “Zone secure,” Manny broke into the channel. “Target is inside. Killing power and communications in five.”

  She inhaled a deep breath, held it a second, and when Pike said, ”Go for Breach,” she let it out.

  She did not see Roland’s charge into the now-dark cantina, but she heard it. First there was the crash of the door and a good portion of the doorframe getting smashed from its moorings. This was followed immediately by the pounding chatter of Roland’s heavy machine pistol. She listened to the noise with a cocked head and said to no one in particular, “He’s using beads on full auto. Hope he doesn’t hit our guy...”

  “Those are beads?” Patton’s incredulity was obvious. “They sound like grenades!”

  “Fifty caliber,” she remarked. “He calls his gun Durendal because he’s a giant child. It takes fifty caliber loads for explosives, slugs, flechettes, and beads.”

  “I guess it’s good we ain’t in there with him then.” The man sounded legitimately relieved.

  Lucia let the gunfire go on for another four seconds before making the call. “Bloody Mary, you have anything on scopes?”

  “Just a bunch of folks milling around confused at the racket your boyfriend is making. What the hell is he doing over there?”

  “He’s baking cookies, what the hell do you think he’s doing?” She pressed on, “Bubba! Almost time to shut down that intersection. Winner, expect incoming in less than two minutes. I want reinforcements committed to the easy way right up until the last second, Bubba.”

  “Copy that, Mama Bear,” Riley replied.

  “Hold up, Boss,” Patton hissed. “Something’s not right.”

  “What is it?”

  “Bubba,” Patton nearly yelled it. “Eyes right! We got bogeys coming out of the storage units!”

  “Contact!” was Bubba’s roared reply, punctuated by the sound of a burst of gunfire from a large fully-automatic weapon. Then came a shrill, “What the fuck are these things?!”

  “Patch it through to my visor, Will!” Lucia hissed, encroaching fear putting a bite into her words.

  Her HUD blinked to life with a video feed from one of Patton’s drones. In the feed she saw hulking humanoid forms crawling from storage units along a long corridor. Orange streaks from Riley’s guns raked the first with a rope of armor-piercing flechettes. As the shattering projectiles lit the narrow passage like lightning flashes, Lucia clearly saw their blank featureless faces and smooth alabaster musculature.

  “Oh no...” she whimpered. “Oh shit, no!”

  “Command,” she screamed it into the open channel. “Command, this is a trap. Be advised, it’s a trap! Breach, I have eyes on four Better Man armatures. Repeat! Four Better Man armatures!”

  “What the hell does that mean...” Pike did not sound pleased, but Lucia was already giving orders to her fire team.

  “Bubba, blow all charges and fall back! Now!”

  “But the intersection...”

  “Blow it!” Lucia shouted, “You cannot compete with those things. You have got to fall back toward Mary! Mary! How big is your rifle?” In the heat of the moment, she had forgotten.

  “Twenty-millimeter anti-materiel, ma’am.”

  “No headshots, Mary. Aim for hips and knees.” The deck plates beneath her feet leapt as the first of Riley’s charges was detonated. She ignored it. “Patton, I need every ECM your little friends have got amped up to eleven right now. If those things are controlled remotely, their brains are electronic. Try to fry them.”

  “Roger,” he said. She could almost hear the ten thousand questions swarming around inside his head, but the mercenary had the presence of mind to stow them for now.

  “Command!”

  “Go ahead, Mama Bear,” Pike snarled back.

  “We cannot compete with opposition. These are Brokerage-built armatures, either manned or unmanned. Armor and capabilities comparable to Breach. We’ll do what we can but you don’t have much time!”

  Another explosion rocked the deck, and Winston’s voice crackled across the airwaves. “I have contact. I didn’t bother trying to engage, I just dropped the tunnel on them and... Uh... Yeah. That’s not going to buy much time at all. Falling back.”

  Lucia experienced a strange calm overtaking her. The situation was so far out of hand that she could not even be panicky about it. There was literally nothing left to do but roll with the punches and try to stay alive. This perspective put her in a very meditative state, which she much preferred over the looming pressure of an impending panic attack. “Everybody except Mary fall back on me. We’ll annoy them from here. Small arms are useless on these things, so let’s get creative. Lefty!”

  “Go, Boss.”

  “These things have an AI, very high-tech. We need a countermeasure!”

  “In the next two minutes?” He sounded shrill and panicked.

  “Preferably sooner!” she replied, still hustling. “Do what you can. Roland can take them but he’ll need an edge. Find him one!”

  “On it.”

  Lucia sincerely hoped that he was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  On Pike’s signal, Roland hit the front door of Rum Runner’s with a headlong charge of nearly fifty miles per hour. The metal door buckled like tinfoil at impact, and both door and frame tore free of their moorings to tumble inside the cantina. The flopping metal pieces scattered the men inside and immediately Roland figured out something was not as it should be. The people inside were not arrayed for a night of drinking, they had hunkered down behind the bar and tables as if they knew someone intended to crash their party.

  This changed nothing in his mind. They had watched the crew file in, and none had been wearing heavy armor or toting heavy weapons. This knowledge precluded any alteration to the tactics he intended to employ. Durendal rose in his right hand, and an ear-shattering burst of fifty
-caliber ceramic beads left the muzzle with streaks of orange light and the sharp roar of hypersonic travel. Behind the silver skull face of his helmet, Roland’s HUD scanned for Marceau as he swept the room with a twenty-round burst that turned the dark interior into a hailstorm of furniture shrapnel, shattered glassware, and the greasy detritus of gross bodily harm. Within a second, return fire started to lance into his chest. The smaller beads shattered against his armored skin in showers of white sparks. Durendal’s magazine was fully indexable, and Roland’s initial burst had drained both bead reservoirs. Roland thumbed the selector to high-explosive and aimed for the source of the gunfire. As he squeezed two rounds off, he was also moving to his right and pulling a stripper clip of beads from his belt.

  By the time his explosive ordnance had torn two three-foot holes in the front of the bar, he was slamming home a second ten-bead stripper clip and rising to engage again. More of the pirates had found their weapons, and the rate of incoming fire swelled from a light drizzle into a serious deluge. Beads smashed against his helmet and his torso, tearing chunks of his harness and shirt away. Despite the spectacular pyrotechnic display, none of the impacts hurt him. Roland ignored all of it and began squeezing off shots with a measured staccato rhythm. When the large projectiles found fleshy targets, men went down with cantaloupe-sized holes in their bodies. Some were decapitated, others merely torn to pieces, all died. When they struck hardened surfaces the shattering beads became swarms of razor-sharp ceramic shrapnel. Unsuspecting foes lulled into false confidence by the illusion of cover found themselves lacerated by the cloud of tiny white-hot scalpels that sliced through clothes, armor, and flesh with equal ease.

  Back on Earth, Roland might expect his overwhelming materiel superiority to quickly turn a fight like this into a one-sided rout. But he was in Galapagos, and for all the varied faults of Galop society, it bred very few cowards. The pirates fought gamely and without fear, and Roland found out why as he was reloading for the second time.