Dangerous Data (The Meridian Crew Book 2)

by Blake B. Rivers

  Taking another look, she figured out the general patrol pattern of the men on the platform that she was on, followed by those on the four other platforms above. Amelia realized that if she stayed hidden, firing from the shadows, she could pick off the mercs on by one, avoiding an open gun battle entirely.

  Slipping her submachine gun from her back, Amelia double-checked the suppression chip to make sure it was in working order.

  She was going to need it.

  ***

  After several minutes of climbing, Benkei reached the bottom of the ladder. He withdrew his slate and hit the power button, allowing the dim home screen of the device to provide a small amount of illumination. He saw that he was standing on yet another access point, this one marked with the same lightning scoring as the one above. Through it, however, he could hear the unmistakable thrumming of a power plant operating at full capacity, the bassy vibrations rattling his teeth.

  “B,” said Sasha, his voice a whisper through the slate. “Whatever you’re doing down there, do it fast. If these schematics are accurate, they’ll be able to fire that thing in less than ten minutes.”

  “Got it,” he said. “I’ll secure the room and you co—”

  He didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence.

  In mid-word, the access point upon which Benkei was standing gave way with a shrill creak, ripping from its hinges and sending Benkei down, his body slamming on the latticed grate of the floor ten feet below.

  His arm throbbed with pain from where he landed on it.

  But that was the least of his concerns.

  His gaze snapped around the room, and he saw that he had now gained the attention of around ten mean-looking mercs, all of whom stopped right in the middle of whatever they were doing to stare at whoever had just crashed in from the ceiling.

  Benkei’s eyes whipped from man to man, but before any of them had a chance to react, he yanked Madchen off of his back, aimed it at the nearest merc, and fired off a charged shot of superheated plasma, the emerald-colored blast screaming through the air and slamming like a truck square in the center of the merc’s chest, the force of the blast enough to crack his ribs and mash whatever organs were underneath.

  The other mercs dove behind cover as they realized how easily this weapon took out one of their compatriots, and Benkei rolled away from where he landed, a few gunpowder rounds spraying into the ground where he previously was, the bullets whizzing and pinging as he shoved out of their way. He took cover behind a nearby desk, keeping his large profile as low as possible. A merc attempted to surprise him from the back, but Benkei spotted him just in time and, flicking the fire-mode from “charged” to “pulse,” sprayed a triplet burst at the merc, the pulse charges hissing through the air and tearing without effort through the merc’s torso.

  Bullets panged into the wall behind Benkei as he remained behind cover, and even more rounds connected with the desk he was hiding behind, the bullets slamming into the wood of the thing with heavy thwocks.

  Benkei checked his slate, and saw that he had only eight or so minutes to clear the room. And to his right, sure enough, was a massive, cylindrical power reactor, the glass of the machine clear, the interior filled with a swirling blue and white mass, the colors of a bright, partially cloudy day.

  Keeping the reactor in mind, Benkei took a deep breath before heaving Madchen over the desk, ready to cut down the mercs like blades of grass.

  ***

  Amelia opened a small, square vent that led to the main upward passage, the vent covering held carefully with her fingertips as she set it down. She looked to the left, and saw that it was clear. Then, she looked to the right, at the heavy clanging of the nearest merc’s boots on the dura steel grating. Her submachine gun extended in front of her, she took a deep breath and, kneeling through the vent, exited.

  Her movement was silent, her steps without sound as her crouched body tracked behind the guard. She glanced upward, seeing that the next guard up was facing away. She moved toward the guard in front of her, and placing the skull tattoo at the back of his shaved head in her sights, squeezed the trigger. The shot was silent, no sound emitting other than the wet thump of the bullet catching the guard exactly where she aimed. Amelia rushed in his direction, catching his now-limp body before it crumpled noisily onto the ground. Holding his massive weight, she guided his body onto the ground.

  There was one more guard on this floor. After tracking his path, she ended up behind him. But she took in a sharp draw of air when she saw that he was now standing before a rack of orange canisters marked with the unmistakable cross-out flame sign of a flammable material. She trusted her aim, but she knew if the shot went wide, or through him, she could initiate an explosion that would rip through the passage.

  She slipped her submachine gun into her back holster and carefully withdrew her junction knife from the sheath, taking it out a centimeter at a time, for fear of the blade making even the slightest sound. She looked down at the knife, named for the angled, hinged joints of the blade, which was a clean gray bordered with orange, able to assume different angles and shapes depending on the user’s needs. With her thumb, she pressed the side of the blade, giving it a gentle curve.

  Then, taking careful steps toward the merc, closed the distance between them.

  At the last minute, however, he sensed the presence of someone behind him and turned on his heels. But he wasn’t fast enough.

  Right at the second his mind processed the sight of someone standing before him, Amelia drove the blade deep into his neck, cutting through both his windpipe and jugular, ensuring that no sound escaped his throat. The life drained from his eyes as Amelia worked the blade into him, and as he dropped, she caught him, just like the other.

  The floor clear, she wiped the blade off on the shirt of the downed merc and slipped it back into her sheath.

  Then she looked up. One floor clear, five more to go.

  ***

  More bullets whizzed through the air, clanging into the wall above Benkei, orange and white sparks spraying from the points of impact.

  “Hey, B!” shouted Sasha through the slate. “What’s going on down there?”

  “Ah, I may have been too proud to admit it, but I think I could use some backup,” he said, keeping his head low.

  He aimed Madchen behind him over the desk and blind fired at the mercs, taking care not to aim in the direction of the reactor. He fired another triple burst of plasma rounds in the general direction of the mercs, the shots going as wide as the last ones and connecting with the wall behind them with a dull hiss.

  “You know neither of us can shoot a gun worth a damn, right?” asked Sasha, his voice calm and unaffected, as though he were in the middle of a crossword puzzle that he’d rather be focused on.

  Benkei considered this. Sam and Sasha would be more likely to be shot as soon as they dropped down from the ladder.

  The mercs still forcing him down with heavy fire, Benkei plotted his next move.

  Poking his head above his cover just enough to see what was beyond, he scanned the mercs, counting around eight. As more fire cascaded above him, he sighed as he thought about how much smoothly this process could’ve gone had the access panel held his weight for just a little longer, his eyes drifting down to his small paunch as he shook his head.

  “B?” asked Sasha. “What’s the plan?”

  ***

  Amelia looked over the three corpses on the second floor, each one dispatched a single shot to the base of the brain or a quick poke through the neck with her knife. A trickle of sweat darted down her forehead as she re-tied her hair into another simple ponytail, her eyes cast up to the floor above.

  She watched the guards’ paths. The first one simply walked back and forth along the rightmost wall. She noted, the second sitting on a red storage crate, playing on his slate. She figured he’d be the best bet for the first to be neutralized, but that the third guard was stationary in a position in which his vision crossed over where t
he sitting guard was. If she did take him out first, the rest of the guards on the floor would know as soon as the shot was fired.

  Crouching down, Amelia moved to the other side of the platform. Looking up, she now faced the back of the merc, and noted that he was standing precariously close to the edge of the platform. Looking down, she saw the drop was around fifty feet. A smile crossed her lips as a plan occurred.

  She positioned her body just below the standing merc, then took a small step back, placing her at a slight angle under him. Then, she waited for the pacing guard to turn his back. When he did, Amelia drained her lungs of breath, aimed the gun, and fired a single round.

  The shot fired with the sound of a puff air, and the round connected right where she aimed, the guard stammering a soft urk as the shot hit home. Then, just as Amelia was hoping, his body leaned backward, hanging for just a moment.

  Now it was time.

  Moving quickly enough to cover ground but not fast enough for her muffled steps to sound, Amelia rushed to the ladder to the platform above just as the merc’s lifeless body titled and fell from where he stood. Amelia scaled the ladder to the top just as the body hit.

  “Huh?” said the sitting guard, now rising. “What was that?”

  Amelia closed the distance between her and him with incredible speed, jamming her junction knife into his neck and easing his body to the ground just as the other guard noticed the first missing merc. The slack-jawed, stabbed merc now supine, in a fluid motion Amelia sheathed her knife, took hold of her rifle, aimed it, and cracked off a silent shot that hit the guard square in the temple, his body shooting spear-straight for a moment before collapsing in a heap.

  Amelia let out a quick sigh, realizing just how easily this plan could’ve gone sideways. Looking up at the remaining floors, she saw that the guards were positioned in much more manageable fashions.

  After taking a minute to catch her breath, Amelia moved to the next floor, ready to clear it.

  ***

  “B, you have about five minutes,” said Sasha.

  Benkei drummed on Madchen as he considered his next move. Then, in a flash, it occurred to him.

  “Sasha, you see my small, brown satchel that I left up there with you?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Would you be so kind as to open it and withdraw a grenade?”

  “Why? You’re going to use a grenade down there? Are you serious?”

  “Just do it.”

  More fire slammed into the wall above Benkei, hissing and popping. He heard the mercs yell something about a plasma sweeper.

  “Fine. And can I have this protein bar you have in here?”

  Beknei heard Sam sigh over the comms. “Fine, fine. Now, you see the timer?’

  “Sure do,” said Sasha, the crinkling of the protein bar wrapper audible over the comms.

  “Set it to, ah, let’s say, ten.”

  “Okay, done.”

  “Now, press the red button. That’s going to activate it. When you do, drop it right down the ladder.”

  “That’s going to set it off, you know that, right?” he asked, his mouth full of protein bar.

  “Yes, Sasha, that’s the plan.”

  “Just, uh, don’t let this thing hit the reactor. That would be very, very, very, bad.”

  “Noted. Now, do it.”

  “Here goes. Dropped…now.”

  Benkei moved to the side of his cover, and switched Madchen over to “suppression wave,” a setting designed to knock down targets over a wide distance. He aimed, and the second the silver sphere of the grenade dropped, he fired, the wave warping the air in front of the gun and traveling at incredible speed in the direction of the grenade.

  Any object not nailed down between the end of the gun and the grenade blew backward as if hit with a great wind, and the grenade was no exception. The wave hit it in midair, the grenade changing trajectories as if slammed with a baseball bat, arcing into the cluster of mercs.

  It didn’t even have a chance to hit the wall behind them before detonating. The contained, orange blossom of the grenade explosion ripped through the air, consuming the mercs, the shrapnel cutting into them. Benkei winced as the grenade went off. It was far enough away to not hit the reactor, but an explosion that close made him nervous.

  Taking advantage of the chaos and the reduction in merc numbers, Benkei rose from his cover position, switched Madchen over to full-auto, and strode through the reactor room, blasting any remaining merc he came across with a storm of plasma fire.

  After a time, the room was clear.

  “Okay, Sash. You’re up.”

  ***

  Amelia cleared the next few floors without issue. But one more remained, and to her dismay, she was that it had more mercs than the rest. She positioned herself out ofview as the mercs spoke to one another.

  “You have any idea what this guy has planned?” said one.

  “I don’t know, but him shooting this thing right down at New York, I’m thinkin’ this is all more than I signed up for,” said another.

  “No kidding. The payday’s nice, but I’m not down with getting on the bad side of that navy.”

  Another chimed in, “I was talkin’ to Chim when he was takin’ a leak, he said that this guy’s planning on using this cannon to wipe out the New York government.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. I mean, he could do it. This thing’s got more firepower than anything I’ve ever seen.”

  “Nice!” cried one of the mercs. “Then we get the pay and we don’t have to worry about those rich pricks going out for revenge.”

  But before the conversation could continue, a stomping sounded, followed by the metallic clanging of mechanical feet on the latticed, durasteel floor that Amelia was watching through.

  “Hey, hey!” called a voice over pneumatic hissing. “Lookie what I found!”

  Amelia watched as a merc entered, clad in an old-model, military-grade exoskeleton, a suit of durasteel painted yellow and armed with shoulder-mounted machine guns.

  “Holy shit!” cried one of the mercs. “Where’d you find that?”

  “There’s an armory down the hall. It’s full of this shit.”

  Amelia’s heart sank as she heard this. One merc in a suit like that would be nearly impossible to content with. A roomful would make her job impossible.

  But as she looked over the back of the suit, her eyes scanning the tubes and joints of the thing, she remembered something about this particular piece of hardware: they were made for drop-pod insertion and open combat—close-quarters fighting exposed the delicate machinery of the back of the suit. She’d fought these before, and knew the model had several structural issues. Namely with the power supply.

  The mercs gathered around the suit, and Amelia moved under and behind it. Aiming her submachine gun through the floor, she took aim at the warning sign on the back of the suit, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger.

  The round hit with a thin ping, and at first, Amelia was unsure it would do the trick. The mercs heard the shot, and raised their weapons, looking around their position. Then, Amelia watched as the blue light on the back of the suit turned from a soft blue to a deep, menacing red, and a small smile crossed her lips as she saw that the bullet did its work.

  The arms of the exoskeleton began to flail on their own, one slamming into a nearby merc, a sickening crack sounding as the impact broke his humerus in half instantly. Then, a blue flame shot out of the back of the suit, and puzzled cries sounded from the mercs as alarms blared from the suit, instructing the wearer to step out of the thing immediately.

  Then, a blue explosion ripped across the floor, spreading out from the suit as the power plant overloaded and melted down. The flames cooked the merc wearing the suit instantly, and blew back the mercs nearby, send some slamming into nearby support poles, others flying off the platform and down to their deaths dozens of meters below.

  Silence replaced the chaos, and Amelia sighed with relief, the entire pass
age finally cleared.

  “All right, Al,” said Amelia into her comms. “Let’s do this.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Benkei and Sam watched with nervous eyes as Sasha went to work on the reactor, a long piece of blood red licorice dangling from his mouth as he his blurred fingers typed at the control computer keyboard.

  “Are you gonna overload it?” asked Sam.

  Sasha said nothing, instead raising one hand and sticking up his finger, asking for silence.

  Warning screens filled the display, and Sasha brute-forced his way through every one of them. Finally, after another half-minute, another warning, this one seemingly more severe than the last, was front and center on the monitor.

  “That it?” asked Benkei.

  “Yes,” said Sasha, slurping the licorice into his mouth and chewing it. “This will override the cool-down process, meaning the reactor will be put in a permanent supercharged state. He can still shoot the thing from up in the command center, but it won’t be pretty.”

  “What does that mean, exactly?” asked Benkei.

  “It means it’ll shoot one last time, and we better be far away from this thing if it does.”

  “Then do it,” said Benkei.

  Sasha raised his finger in the air with a dramatic flourish then brought it down on the “enter” key. A progress bar filled within seconds, and just as it finished, the blue and white swirl in the reactor shifted into a dark, sickly green.

  “That doesn’t look good,” said Sam, her eyes on the reactor tube.

  “That’s because it’s not. At all,” said Sasha. “We should get the hell out of here now, by the way.”

  “I’m inclined to agree,” said Benkei as he slung Madchen onto his back, his eyes on the soupy swirling into the reactor, which by now looked as though it contained some kind of terrible thunderstorm.

  The three of them exited via the ladder and climbed their way back up to the ring room where they arrived, the reactor now sounding a fearsome roar.