Kris Longknife: Defiant: Defiant

by Mike Shepherd

  “Nice of you,” Kris said and signaled Jack, Sergeant Li and, for good measure, Abby, to settle down around the battle board and study the Convention Center layout.

  “Captain,” Kris said slowly, “if you wouldn’t mind dropping a longboat down to Brisbane full of standoff sensors and techs to use them, with firm orders to stand off and not get involved.”

  “Very firm orders,” Santiago said.

  “And if you could have the longboat fly by the convention center at seven thousand meters aboveground and five klicks offset.”

  “That radar would pick up troops making a drop.”

  “In full combat gear, I agree,” Kris said.

  “And I’ll ride the longboat up,” Penny said.

  “No,” Kris said. “I need you at the command center, pulling what strings you’ve got. There’ll be another longboat along next orbit. And the next one. I promise.”

  Santiago rubbed her chin and said nothing.

  And one of Penny’s strings yielded a surprising fish. “Kris, remember that gunman you lugged out of the center?”

  “Yes.”

  “His girlfriend showed up at the hospital, with another girl. Both are talking to our women cops there. They’re singing like two very worried canaries.”

  “What do they know?”

  “A lot. These jokers may have all kinds of fancy toys, but professional they ain’t. And they like to brag a lot in their pillow talk. These girls are terrified because you got out. They figure you’re going to come back down here and stomp heads, slit throats, be really pissed.”

  “Somebody’s been reading too many comics,” Santiago growled.

  “Anyway, they’re willing to do anything to get on your nice side so you’ll go easy on their boys. And they want you to know they weren’t after you. It was your grampa they really wanted.”

  “My grampa!”

  “You heard right. With Queen Ha’iku’lani dying, they figured King Ray would come charging out here, order everyone to show up, and then dictate a new world order for Hikila for his old war buddy’s grandkid. They figured on killing him and taking down an old war hero and freeing the universe from the real dictator.”

  “Good Lord, what have they been smoking?” Kris breathed.

  “The girls swear that’s true. And I think they believe it.”

  “Even if they do believe it, is that really what’s going on down there?” Santiago said.

  “And if that was what they thought two weeks ago, why’d they do what they did today?” Kris shook her head slowly. “No matter how confused their motivation is, they still have a lot of guns. They’re killing people and, if I have any say, they stop doing it tonight. Penny, is there anyone down there who can step up to the plate as a SWAT team?”

  “A couple of police departments back in the mountains have high-risk rescue teams. Some of their members also double as their rifle marksman squad. Get me some armored suits and M-6s down here, two, three specialists to train them, and some time, and I think they could be ready.”

  “For tonight?”

  “Maybe. Tomorrow night more likely.”

  Santiago’s scowl had an upward quirk as she raised an eyebrow. “I’ll have my spare suits and rifles added to the next long boat going down.”

  Kris eyed the battle board. “Now, where do we peel this Convention Center? Anyone downside see any way directly in to the hostages?”

  “No,” Penny said. “We’ve set up a camera on the hotel roof to cover the center. The four shooters they have up on the roof look to be in full body armor, with ceramics. That has to be as good as anything our Marines have got. Maybe better.”

  Sergeant Li said something obscene under his breath.

  “Assuming you got control of the roof,” Penny said, “blowing holes in the ceiling and either shooting the terrorists or rappelling down into the hall doesn’t look fast enough to stop them from blowing their explosives. We need more time to look things over with heat sensors, but that’s my first call for now.”

  “What about the receiving dock on the south side of the building?” Jack asked.

  “No access from the main roof, so any detachment that goes there is on its own. And we’ve already taken heavy fire from what they have defending that end. I don’t recommend it.”

  “Do you recommend anything?” the captain asked.

  Penny was silent for a long while. “Not really.”

  “Well, assuming we occupy the main roof,” Kris said, “how do we get inside?” Kris ignored Santiago rolling her eyes.

  “There are four accesses to the roof. Along the east side, there are two stairwells that take you down to the top level of breakout rooms.”

  “They’ll be booby-trapped,” Santiago said, “and exit from the stairwells is easily covered by fire teams here in the top-level gathering area; they also can cover the middle-level access to where the hostages are. Two fire lanes toward two threats. Bound to be well-covered.”

  “So we don’t use them,” Kris said. “Penny, you said there were four stairs. The two others are . . .”

  “On the west side of the building, leading down into the building service and support area above the lowest level of breakout rooms. That’s where they have the electrical, air-conditioning, heating, that sort of stuff.”

  “These folks don’t strike me as the type to leave if we mess up the bathrooms,” Abby said.

  “I don’t think they’re letting the hostages take bathroom breaks,” Penny reported.

  Commander Santiago gave them a look.

  Jack just shook his head as if to say, “You don’t really want to know.”

  “Sounds like these stairs will be booby-trapped and well covered,” Kris said.

  “I’d expect that. Heat may give us better info later.”

  “So . . .” the Captain began. Hand up, she raised one finger. “You can’t make a standard drop because they have radar to lock on to your armored suits and pick you off as you drop. Two ...” another finger came up. “If you get on the roof, they’re in full armor, and the M-6 will be as like to bounce off them as shatter their ceramics. Three”—another finger—“even if you get control of the roof, you can’t get off it. Excuse me, Princess, but I think your pumpkin is staying home tonight. No fairy godmother.”

  Kris had nodded as each digit came up. She reached across and gently folded one of the Captain’s fingers back into her fist. “So we don’t do a normal drop mission. We don’t use the usual stairs,” she said, folding a second one. “And do you have any of those dandy new M-6A4s?” she asked as she half folded the last one.

  “Where’d you hear about the A4s?” Santiago asked.

  “I read a lot.” Kris shrugged.

  “There are four targets on the roof, I’ll think about loaning you four. You still haven’t persuaded me you can do anything. Keep talking, Longknife.”

  Kris tapped a vent on the building. “This leads down to the fast-food kitchens. I plan to enter the building down it.”

  Santiago zoomed in on the air exhaust. “It’s only a half meter square, and it doesn’t go all the way down. Even if it did, you couldn’t get battle armor down that.”

  “Don’t plan to go all the way down. Abby, you ever use a hand laser or welding torch?”

  “Had to use a welding torch to fix my employer’s jewelry.”

  Jack just shook his head.

  “Would you happen to have one handy?” Kris said as she followed the exhaust’s plunge down until it shared a support with an air-conditioning duct of equal size. “Think you could cut us a hole from the exhaust to the duct?”

  “Easily, ma’am. I’ll even anneal the edges so no one can scratch themselves.”

  “You are not taking my Marines bare-ass naked down that air vent. Not against terrorists with fully automatic weapons and ceramic body armor,” Santiago announced in full-force Captain. Even Sergeant Li looked a bit pale.

  “Don’t worry, Sergeant. You won’t be totally bare-ass naked,”
Kris said. “Abby, just how many of those body stockings did you get on sale?”

  “They were selling them by the dozen, ma’am. I bought two.”

  “Body stockings?” The Marine gulped.

  Jack pulled his up above the collar of his shirt. You could easily see his fingers through it.

  “I warned you, Sergeant. Longknifes!” Santiago spat.

  “Abby, you have a knife on you?” Abby nodded. “Stab Jack somewhere he’s got his stocking on.”

  “It’s full body,” Jack drawled without looking back.

  Abby produced a knife from nowhere and stabbed Jack full in the back. He grunted as he leaned forward to absorb the blow. “You didn’t have to do it that hard.”

  “Princess here didn’t say how hard, and I’ve been wanting to do that for oh so long.”

  “Sergeant, take Abby’s knife and stab her anywhere you have a hankering,” Kris said. He took the knife and went for the gut.

  “Is that any way to treat a lady?”

  “I don’t see any here,” Santiago drawled. “Okay, so you have some Super Spider Silk undies. I’ve got some chutes that don’t give back a radar bounce. M-6s are mainly plastic, and what isn’t we can tape. I imagine you only want Marines that will fit down a half-meter hole, so I get to keep the big mean ones, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sergeant Li responded, still looking a bit unsure about leading a squad of Marines dirtside in translucent underwear.

  “And Abby will provide you with black body paint that ought to meet the modest requirements of the corps,” Kris said.

  “If you ask me real nice,” the maid added.

  Shortly after midnight, liberty launch 2 departed the Halsey. Intended to carry the ship’s official car dirtside, its rear opened. The manual said it could open in flight. This would be the first time this crew ever attempted that maneuver. They were optimistic it would cause them no problems.

  Kris hated optimists on a drop mission.

  Santiago had granted them the loan of four M-6A4s. Rather than fire the 4 mm standard carbon steel darts from a spool, these shot 2 mm tungsten flechettes, twice as long as the normal round and with twice the normal load behind them. No sleepy darts for those who put on ceramic armor.

  Just who got to use them had been decided at the Marines’ shooting range. The Sergeant had shot a near perfect score first, followed by Jack matching him. The other nine who could fit down a half-meter exhaust duct shot next. All did well except one fellow who got razzed bad when he shot his worst in six months.

  Kris shot last. And shot between Jack and the next-best Marine. That surprised her. Then Abby surprised them all by stepping up to the next firing slot and picking up an M-6.

  “Where do you load this thing?” A Marine showed her.

  She shot one round. Missed high and outside. “Need to sight this thing in.” A smiling Marine showed her how. She made an adjustment. The next round was in the center. So were the next eight. “Am I doing as good as you, Jack?”

  “Better. I had a round that edged into the nine ring.”

  Abby’s next round nudged the nine.

  Behind Kris there was murmuring in the Marine ranks. “Even a Longknife’s maid’s got to shoot as good as a Marine.”

  “As good as a Marine Sergeant,” another corrected.

  When the liberty launch dropped its rear ramp, Kris and Abby, Jack and Sergeant Li led off with the M-6A4s. Penny jumped with the other Marines. The last two out were the combat engineer and his assistant, carrying loads that, hopefully, the radar would be turned off before it got too strong a return from.

  Free-falling at eight thousand meters was cold. Not as cold as Kris expected it to be. The body stocking did nothing to stop the freezing air, as Kris had learned on Turantic. But tonight, Abby had outdone herself. Ceramic girdles protected guts and butts and what the guys considered most important. Gauntlets and leggings reinforced arms and legs. Abby even had something for chests and backs that she claimed she got at an after-Christmas sale at a toy store. They were round and glided nicely. The Halsey’s stores provided tape that should absorb enough of their radar signal for them to get close before any alarm went off.

  They’d know in a few moments.

  The sapper and assistant pulled their D rings first, opening their chutes and beginning a slow, circling decent. They would have a minute to hang in the air. If things went bad on the roof, they could aim themselves away from the disaster.

  Penny and the other Marines waited longer, then opened their chutes next, planning on coming in a mere fifteen seconds behind Kris and the leaders.

  “They’ve finished their comm check,” came from the Halsey’s intel boss, now at Penny’s place in the police incident command center. “You have fifteen minutes before they call them again.”

  Kris didn’t answer. She was three hundred meters above the ground as she opened her chute. She had just enough time to stabilize her canopy, spot her target on the roof turning away from her, and pull up her rifle.

  She aimed for the weak spot at the neck between the helmet and back, easier to hit from this angle. “Ready,” she said.

  “One.” “Two.” “Three,” came back to her.

  “Shoot.”

  Her target crumpled as she fired, riding the trigger to let more rounds go as she moved her aim up to the helmet. It shattered under her stream of darts. Maybe the armor wasn’t as good as advertised.

  A quick glance around showed her no one still standing on the roof. Kris let her rifle drop by its sling, got her hands back on her controls, and tried to aim her chute for a nice, soft, walkaway landing.

  An updraft off the cooling building spoiled that, or maybe it was the concrete below. Part of her canopy lost lift early. She ended up standing on the edge of the roof, half her chute with her, half trying to drag her over the side. With an effort she tumbled awkwardly onto the roof ’s gravel floor and lay there, struggling with her lanyards until Jack trotted up.

  “You want a hand?” he said, grabbing a fistful of line.

  “I don’t know that I’d applaud that landing,” Abby said, joining them and hauling the canopy up where they wanted it.

  “Even out on a cold night, all a girl finds is critics,” Kris said. She’d caught a glance of her handiwork lying in blood. It was better to laugh at this than think of that.

  Out of the night, a chute came down. The Marine was out of it in a second and racing for the radar. She nodded happily and plugged a black box into it. If the codes were right, the radar would only make happy noises from now on, no matter what it saw.

  Penny was also out of her chute, riffling through a downed roof lookout and muttering to her commlink. “We got the comm codes for them. They did have rockets, but they’re really stupid SAL-9s. Any kind of countermeasures should take care of them. Nothing on the explosives frequency though.”

  “Appreciate what you gave us. Dump those rockets over the side, please. No use the skipper having to face them if, you know, you screw up tonight.”

  “We understand,” Kris said as Jack helped her up.

  “You kind of rubbed your black paint off your ass,” Abby told her cheerfully. “I didn’t bring along any spare paint.”

  “I’ll just have to keep my enemy in front of me,” Kris said, trotting to the airshaft. The sapper cut off the lock and lifted off the cowling. Abby rummaged in his bag of tricks, pulled out her own smaller bag, slipped into a harness, and got ready to go into the shaft as they snubbed down her line to a nearby air-conditioning unit. Ready, Abby went in with professional panache, then waited for a second while the sapper put a bit of armored cloth between her line and the sharp edge of the shaft. Then she dropped. The sapper shined a laser range finder over her shoulder. He blinked it, and she stopped.

  A second later, light showed from her torch. Warm air, then cooler air came up the shaft. “We’ve struck air conditioning,” the Marine combat engineer said. The torch lasted a bit longer, followed by the sound of metal
bending and tape ripping. “She sure is a professional. Asked me for tape to take care of the sharp metal ends.”

  “Professional, yeah,” Jack muttered. “I just wonder at what?” Kris could feel the Marines’ curious stares in the dark.

  She’d gotten into harness while watching this. When Abby’s line went slack, Kris did a somewhat less graceful repeat of her maid’s drop, carrying Abby’s rifles and grenade load.

  Abby’s harness and line passed her on the way up as she came down. She snaked herself into the air duct, passed a rifle to Abby, and wiggled out of her harness while Jack came down. By the time Kris was ready to move forward, Abby was in a larger section of air duct, at a vent.

  “Want out of here?” she mouthed to Kris in the dim light from the grille.

  Kris shook her head. There could be cameras out there. Or trip wires. Or terrorists walking around. Since they started checking out the center with the heat sensors this afternoon, no one had gone near the air-conditioning vents.

  Or was that because they’d already done them?

  Kris paused as that thought kicked the tire of her plan . . . and air leaked out. What had those two guys they’d shot this morning been up to? She signaled Jack to hold.

  “Get nanos down here,” she ordered.

  A minute later, they released the nano scouts. Another minute more, and they had identified four trip wires to something.

  “Abby, open the vent,” and out they went. Penny knew where their own cameras were. They sent out their own nano scouts to search, report back, not destroy. Not so much as breathe.

  Slowly, they began a zigzag course through the meeting rooms that brought them up, a hundred meters from the door that led into the exhibit hall that held the hostages a good five minutes before the next comm check with the roof.

  Problem was, covering that last hundred meters.

  Directly ahead of them in the central gathering area, several tables had been upended. Behind them, heat signatures showed four terrorists asleep. Two were seated in chairs at a table playing cards and glancing every once in a while at security camera feeds or at the wide corridor where Kris and her team lurked in the darker shadows.