by T. R. Harris
“I’m told you’re killing natives who have already surrendered, murdering them in cold blood.”
“The enemy dies in battle; that’s hardly murder.”
“It is after they’ve laid down their weapons and surrendered.”
“A technicality, Mr. Cain.”
“I don’t care what you call it. I order you to stop immediately.”
Graham frowned. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see anywhere in my charter that I work for you. You can’t give me orders.”
“I can … if you don’t want the full force of the Enforcers down on your head. We haven’t taken sides in this conflict yet, but that’s about to change.”
“Relax, Cain. This will all be over in a few minutes. You see, the natives in question took something from me. I’m simply retrieving my property.”
“Then take it and let the prisoners go.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. But as I said, don’t worry. Once I have my package, I’m leaving this godforsaken planet. You and the damn natives can have it. After you killed my friend and benefactor, Wolfgang Stimmel, there’s not much left to keep me here.”
Peanut caught Adam’s attention, having just gotten off his ear comm. “A shuttle’s on the way down. ETA, ten minutes.”
“I heard that,” said Graham. He grimaced. “Unfortunately, I can’t allow the shuttle to land. You see, my little operation here is off the books, and the fewer people who know about it, the better.”
“I know about it,” Adam countered.
“Yeah, but not for much longer.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Adam gasped. “I’m the head of the Enforcers.”
“That you are. But, you see, I checked with the Garrison. They have no record of you being on Korash-Nor, and unfortunately for you, the natives have begun disguising some of their units as Enforcer peacekeepers to keep their vehicles from being attacked. And since we checked, all we can assume is that you are one of those fake units.”
Adam bit his bottom lip. In his haste, he didn’t check in with the Enforcer Garrison on Korash-Nor. All he wanted to do was drop down to the surface for a few hours and take in the smell of battle once again. Graham was right. No one on the surface knew he was here.
And that was when the missile struck the APC.
Chapter 2
Fortunately, the armored vehicle was of Human design with a reinforced undercarriage to protect against IEDs. The missile came in low and struck the ground just under the rear bumper, sending the APC flipping into the air. Adam wasn’t belted in and was thrown first against the back of his seat and then the windshield. His forehead hit the padded dashboard, nearly knocking him out. He went limp, which helped him survive the tumbling as he bounced around the interior of the vehicle. The APC landed on its roof. It was built strong enough that the cab didn’t collapse, leaving Adam battered inside but not crushed.
He looked over at Peanut. His friend’s face was in agony, but he was alive.
“Are you okay?” Adam asked.
“Arm’s broken; this sucks. What’s wrong with that guy? There’s going to be hell to pay for this.”
“I don’t think he’s done. He has gunships in the area; that’s where the missile came from.”
No sooner had Adam spoke the words than another powerful explosion rocked the area. He’d come with two APCs, and it looked as though both were now out of commission.
“Can you get out through the window?” he asked Peanut.
“Yeah, I think so. Let’s hurry. More missiles will be coming our way.”
A moment later, Adam had Peanut’s left arm hitched over his shoulder and was helping him to cover in a low depression in the hillside. Tim Robertson was there, along with three of the surviving alien Enforcers, all members of Adam’s escort team. He’s started with twelve. Tim handed Adam a BAR, one of the big-ass super rifles exclusive to the Enforcers.
“Troops behind us, down the hill,” Tim reported. He was another former SEAL, an aging warrior who had seen better days. Now his decades of combat experience were kicking in. “We control the high ground, and we have the BARs. The shuttle’s on final approach—”
Another missile streaked in and hit Adam’s APC, this time striking it directly and blasting it into an unrecognizable hunk of twisted metal.
“Why are they shooting at us?” Tim asked. “Don’t they know who we are?”
“They do,” Adam answered. “That’s why they’re working so hard to take us out.”
“We can hold off the ground troops until the shuttle arrives, but it’s that god damn gunship that’s the problem. The shuttle can’t land with that thing hovering nearby.”
Adam rolled over on the frigid ground and looked over at the gunship about half-a-mile away and five hundred feet off the ground.
“All right, form a defensive line against the troops,” Adam said to his Human friends. “They’re coming up the hill and should be within range in a couple of minutes. Let me see what I can do about the gunship.”
“You mean by using your brain-linking-device-thingy?” Tim asked.
“That’s right, now let me concentrate.”
Only a few Humans in the Enforcer Corps knew of his ATD besides Adam’s inner corps of long-time friends and associates. Tim and Peanut were two of them, although they professed not to understand how it worked or knew of its full potential. The device could detect and then link with a multitude of electronic devices, even going so far as manipulating the controls remotely. Adam’s mutant friends, Panur and Lila, built his latest ATD, and it had all the bells and whistles. The gunship was well within range of the device.
It wasn’t hard to locate the massive energy signal coming from the gunship. Once connected with the ATD, the image of the hovercraft glowed in Adam’s mind from a plethora of electronic signatures. The problem was he had too many options. Finding which energy lines would produce the most damage to the aircraft was the challenge. He decided to trace down the power controls for the rotors. The hovercraft had four of them, two on each side. The enclosed blades could rotate forward or backward, and speed controlled the altitude.
The gunship continued to spit rockets at Adam and his small entourage as precious minutes were spent tracing the hovercraft’s control circuits. Finally, Adam had them located. He concentrated on the portside rotors, and once he had a firm lock on the junction boxes to the power units, he shut down the motors.
The effect was dramatic and immediate. With the portside rotors off, the craft pitched sharply to the left, while the starboard rotors whipped the body up and sideways, placing the gunship into a wild, corkscrew-like spiral. With no sustaining lift, the ship barreled into the ground a few seconds later, catching the troops below it unaware. A roiling bloom of flame and smoke rose up from the ground. Adam did a quick survey of the energy signals from the variety of weapons the PC mercs carried, those who were being covered by the airship. There were few still registering.
That still left the second group of PCs coming up the hill from the west.
“There it is!” Tim shouted, pointing into the air above the smoky valley.
Adam noticed the glint of sunlight off the metal hull of the shuttle and saw the craft approaching at incredible speed. The pilot was good—very good—and leveled out only moments before touching down, the rear loading ramp already down and locked.
Yellow flash bolts began to fill the air around Adam and his troops, coming from down the hill. Blue bolts from the Enforcer’s BARs answered the attackers, but even then, the PCs had over four times as many fighters as did Adam.
“Peanut! Get everyone on board. Tim and I will provide cover. Now, go!”
Peanut was off a moment later, cradling his broken arm as he ran while barking orders at the variety of aliens that made up the Enforcer Corps. He positioned himself at the open doorway to the shuttle bay, firing with his BAR one-handed at the quickly approaching mercenaries.
Adam patted Tim on the shoulder. “Go; I’m right behind you.
”
Tim took off, with Adam only a heartbeat behind.
Adam scampered up the ramp, welcoming the thud of his footfalls on the hard metal surface of the loading ramp. His gaze met Peanut’s, and the ginger-haired former SEAL turned and yelled into the cockpit, “Liftoff, emergency procedures!”
The experienced pilot didn’t have to be told. He gunned the spacecraft and shot off over the frozen landscape before angling up sharply, heading for space.
Adam staggered back from where he stood, at the inner boundary of the loading ramp, still cradling the BAR. Just then, the pilot made a radical shift to port to avoid an incoming missile.
Adam lost his balance, dropping the BAR before tumbling head over heels for the back of the shuttle and the still open loading ramp. At the last second, his desperate right hand gripped the bottom locking rail to the ramp and held on, while the rest of his body dangled out the back of the shuttle. The craft was still rocketing for space, using full thrust to avoid the enemy missiles. The ramp was also closing under emergency procedures with no override. The entire closing procedure would take three seconds.
With his hand about to be sliced off, Adam had no option other than to let go, freefalling backward through the cold air, five thousand feet above the surface of Korash-Nor.
Chapter 3
Of course, five thousand feet was only a guess, but Adam had enough experience with HALO jumps with the SEALs to have a pretty good idea. He extended his arms to stabilize himself and saw the shuttle suddenly slow and begin a wide turn.
What were they hoping to do, catch him in mid-air? That was crazy.
Another missile shot past the shuttle, missing it by only feet. A split-second decision was made. Adam Cain was gone; there was nothing left to do but save the rest of the team and bolt for orbit.
Relieved that the people aboard the shuttle would survive, Adam returned his focus on his current predicament. He’d already reached terminal velocity, and from his training, he knew he only had about thirty seconds before impacting the ground. He had a little longer in the lighter gravity of Korash-Nor, but that time was wasted by realizing he had extra time.
Adam didn’t panic, knowing he could use his ATD to conjure up a static electricity field to compress the atmosphere into what he called a magic carpet and then ride it safely to the ground. The problem was he was nearly frozen in the sub-zero air and was having trouble concentrating. Creating a field of static electricity strong enough to compress air to several thousand times normal pressure took complete concentration and a Herculean effort. That was under normal conditions, and not while falling at two hundred miles per hour while quickly turning into an icicle.
He closed his eyes to concentrate, but that didn’t help. All that did was make his heart race, not knowing how close he was to the ground. He opened his eyes again, feeling the tears begin to freeze as he fell.
Desperate people can do heroic feats when required. Eventually, Adam began to see the sparkling lights forming below him from the accumulation of static electricity drawn in by his ATD. The lights gave him hope. He could now feel a denser patch of warm air on his face and body. He was slowing down, although the ground was still rushing to meet him as if the scene were a video set on fast forward.
As they say, it’s not the fall that kills you, but rather, the sudden stop. For Adam, the stop was sudden, but not fatal. His air cushion formed just in time to soften the fall. He landed on the semi-frozen ground with a thud and a splash. The air was knocked out of his lungs, and he began to slip into unconsciousness. If it weren’t for his face sinking into a shallow pool of icy water, he would have passed out.
He lumbered to his feet, glad to be alive. But that only lasted a second.
There was a steady north wind blowing, not strong, but at the current temperature, wind chill was a factor. He was standing in sub-zero weather and soaking wet from the icy tundra. A body lost heat twenty-five times faster when wet, and his training told him hypothermia would set in within minutes.
Adam staggered out of the Human-shaped depression in the frozen ground to find drier ground. He then quickly set about conjuring up another static electricity ball, just a basic concentration of crackling light and heat. He had to get dry, or else he’d be unconscious in a matter of minutes and dead soon after.
The warmth was invigorating, if wanting. Adam had to constantly turn around to keep half of his body from freezing again. He was shivering uncontrollably, and although hypothermia was his major concern, he also had to think about frostbite. His shoes were soaked, and his hands purple and numb. He placed his hands as close as he could to the soothing warmth of the sparkling ball before willing the heat source to move lower, closer to his feet.
It took twenty minutes before Adam felt reasonably warm and dry. He looked out across the desolate plain of rolling, barren hills and low valleys. The smoke from the recent battle was about five miles away to the west. He scanned the region with his eyes and ATD and found no trace of the gunships. Graham and his troops had withdrawn, probably on a desperate race to get off the planet before Adam—or his people—could report what happened. That was fine. Let the rat scurry. He wouldn’t get far, not in the Zone. There weren’t a lot of places he could go.
Adam then took a personal inventory. He had no comm unit or weapon, and he was dressed in only a thin Enforcer uniform and combat boots. He had no food, and the only source of heat was his static electricity balls.
The other concern was that the Enforcer Garrison was over two hundred miles away, ostensibly to the east, from what he could remember. He’d never been there before, which he now realized was a mistake and a break in protocol. None of this would have happened if he’d checked in with them first.
The good news was Adam had a means of transportation: his magic carpet of compressed air. The bad news is he couldn’t create a heating ball and a platform at the same time. It was one or the other, not both. And traveling through the frigid air of Korash-Nor would be deadly. Although the magic carpet produced a little heat, it was not enough to sustain him for a journey of two hundred miles. Not only that, but he’d never attempted to maintain a cushion for as long as it would take to make the journey. He would need frequent stops to rest his mind and warm up.
Adam looked at the setting sun to the west. He had no option other than to try. Waiting in one spot until morning with a static electricity ball to keep him warm wasn’t an option. He could only keep the ball intact while awake, and falling asleep would be the end of him. He would never wake up.
And to top it all, no one would be looking for him. To Peanut, Tim and the others, he was nothing more than a bloody puddle of smashed flesh on the tundra of Korash-Nor. There wouldn’t even be enough left of him to bury.
Reluctantly, Adam focused his concentration on forming another cushion of air. He made this one wide enough so he could lay on it rather than stand. That would cut down on his exposure to the wind. He lifted off and steered a path toward the east, in the opposite direction of the setting sun.
Initially, he set off at a pretty good pace, skimming barely a hundred feet off the frozen landscape. He could tolerate this for only a few minutes before having to slow down to keep his head and hands from freezing. Ten minutes into his journey, he had to land again and create a sparkling ball of energy to warm up. He estimated he’d only covered about five miles, maybe more.
As he thawed, he began to think about how he would locate the Garrison. He knew the general location, but not the specifics. But he had an idea.
The Enforcers at the base were armed with BARs, as were a lot of his troops. The weapons were of a unique construction and energy signal that Adam could detect with his ATD—if they were within range. The rifles came from the Dead World of Hax’on, and there were twenty thousand of them initially. As the story went, pirates absconded with the huge cache, and they were not seen again for almost four years. When Adam’s Enforcer Corps formed, five hundred of the weapons mysteriously appeared and were given
to the police force.
From the beginning, Adam suspected the Kanac kingpin Dal Divisen was behind the original theft of the rifles, although it was never proven. But then six months ago, Dal approached the government, saying he was acting as a broker for a group of Zone pirates who now wanted to sell the weapons to the Enforcers. The Union and Expansion thought nothing of the implications and agreed to the purchase, although five hundred of the superweapons were not part of the contract. After that, a few of the rifles began turning up on battlefields across the Zone, either part of the lost five hundred, or those stolen from the Enforcer inventory.
If Adam could detect a concentration of the unique power signals, that would lead him to the Garrison—and salvation.
This raised another issue. His ATD had limited range while on the ground, having to deal with hills, mountains and other obstructions. The effective range was only about five miles under these conditions. But higher up, Adam could scan for a hundred miles; however, that would require him to reach the frigid reaches of the upper atmosphere. He was already on the verge of hypothermia. Besides that, he couldn’t scan for the weapons and maintain the magic carpet at the same time. He would have to dissolve the platform and then freefall while he performed the scan, and then hope he could reengage the cushion before he hit the ground.
Adam winced. He hated it when his mind recited the fateful words: You have no choice. It was fatalistic. But in this case—as the thought reached his consciousness—he was right. If he ever hoped to reach the Garrison, he would have to risk it.
Adam huddled near the flickering light, absorbing all the heat he could. He had to stand because the ground was frozen. The Korash-Nor sun was beginning to set, which meant he would make the majority of the journey in the cold of night.
Firming his resolve, Adam dissolved the static ball and created another magic carpet of air. He climbed on board and then set off, going much slower this time while bunching the top of his Enforcer uniform on his head and sticking his bare hands inside. As the cold permeated his body and mind, Adam had trouble focusing. More than once, he tumbled to the ground as the platform disintegrated unexpectedly. He wasn’t too high nor going that fast for the falls to cause damage, and the jostling helped to snap him back to reality.