by J. J. Snow
The problem was, now that they were on mission, Reilly was beginning to wonder and not for the first time if something didn’t stink about this job. She thought back to the trouble that had started almost four hours earlier when they arrived in orbit and headed for the surface.
“Coming up on Vervian 813, Captain!” Duv flipped a few switches and turned the gunship slightly as he began to descend. Reilly stepped through the hatch and onto the deck to look at their destination.
“Anything?” she asked quietly as she manipulated a touch screen on the console in front of her.
Duv turned a trained eye to his scopes and gauges, then swung back around. “Nope, I’m not picking up any emissions, so looks like low security, if any at all. Should be an easy payday!”
Reilly smiled. “Good, that’s what I like to hear. Head on in and put us down within walking range of the compound. I’ll grab Ty, and we’ll get this knocked out.”
“Maybe even in time to be back for dinner?” Duv grinned evilly as Reilly shot him a look and walked out the hatch.
“I’ll take that as a no!” he called after her.
Reilly kept walking as she pulled on her chest plates and tactical rig. Her former gunnery sergeant and longtime mentor, Forlan Chang, had been on one of his rare superstitious kicks again. She shifted the harness, tightening it down as an uneasy feeling swept over her. Chang was a hell of a fighter and had taught her everything she knew from her days as a new lieutenant. He wasn’t one to back down easily, but every now and again he would go off. After listening to him spout a bunch of prophetic bullshit followed by dire predictions of some kind of dark cloud hanging over this mission, Reilly had finally threatened to tie him to the bulkhead as their new hood ornament if he didn’t shut up. He had gotten surly and retreated to the mess, slamming around the kitchen gear, mumbling to himself about dark days, which told all of them that dinner was likely to be less than mediocre, if it materialized at all. Chang loved to cook, but when he was in a mood, the chow and the crew suffered. Reilly shook off her unease and was punching in the code to release a rifle when the ship gave a sudden violent lurch, tossing her between the walls in the corridor.
“What the hell was that?” Joby Ty was staggering up the hall as the ship stabilized again. Reilly shook her head as they headed for the bridge.
Duv hollered back to her as he heard the footsteps coming up the metal stairs. “Restraint field, Captain! It almost had us for a second there, except I got a prox alarm at the last minute telling me to pull up. No warning at all…pretty strange…I’ve never seen one like this before…”
Duv pointed at the three-dimensional hologram of the restraint field’s spiked dome that appeared to hover over the dash next to him. Below the dome was an accurate map of the surface, showing the moon’s rugged terrain.
Reilly flicked the image with her finger, and it spun slightly as the computer coughed up details on the restraint field. Duv whistled softly as the computer indicated that a full-system lockdown would have occurred if their ship had entered into the field’s engagement zone. Duvall “Duv” Jackson had also been in Reilly’s unit and was one of the best pilots she had ever met. Only his quick reaction to the security warning had prevented the bird from being captured and held tight to the moon’s surface, making them easy prey for salvage crews or other dangers.
Reilly shoved the uneasy feeling back again and pointed out one of the nearby canyon areas that appeared to be clear. Duv nodded as he guided the gunship over and gently set it down. The crew began their system checks automatically before Reilly could say anything. She smiled briefly as Ty disappeared down the hall to do an integrity check while Duv pulled up the systems network operations center to run a scan. Five years out of the military, but everyone was still in synch with their training. Reilly leaned in to look over Duv’s shoulder as the scan finished. Even with his quick reaction, several of the primary systems had been tweaked and would need to have components replaced before they would be able to get space-borne again.
Duv grimaced and then cursed, punching the comms button. “Skeeter, I could use a hand up here with this piece of…” He trailed into a string of curses as he clicked off the mic, grabbed a well-used coffee mug with the slogan “To Hell with Gravity” imprinted on the side, and filled it to the brim with the thick, dark brew before slamming the coffee maker back into its slot.
“How long, Duv?” Reilly asked, calculating the amount of time they had already spent on the surface.
“At least a couple hours—we got lucky, but we didn’t get off completely free. Skeeter will get ’er up and running again.” Duv took a swig from his mug and pulled out a tool bag and some parts from a small side compartment.
A few minutes later, Duv’s fourteen-year-old prodigy of a son, Skeeter, was scrambling around the ship working his magic to test out repairs while his father cursed in the background, handing him parts and downing cup after cup of black coffee like a fiend. Reilly paced impatiently, jamming the comms button to on when Ty called in his report. She could hear the echo of his digitized voice bouncing around the cargo hold, causing feedback on the mic. Just another thing she needed to get fixed when they finished this mission. Ty’s frustration came through loud and clear.
“That must have been a hell of a field, Cap. Looks like it killed all the modulators in the heavy blasters. I checked every one, and they’re all dead. We’re going to have to go old school on this mission.”
Reilly cursed. This was bad news. If they had the misfortune to come up against any advanced machines during the mission, they’d lack the ability phase shift their fire. This meant the machines would be able to adapt their shields and defenses to the team’s weapons after only a few shots. Then their weapons would be useless. She held the mic for a moment and glanced down the corridor to see Chang briefly flit across the hall. The uneasy feeling came back, but she stubbornly shook it off.
“Ty, grab a backup weapon and some grenades, then get Maude ready.”
She clicked off as Ty’s “Roger that” faded away and grabbed her gear. Duv gave her a surly wave and turned back to his work while Skeeter disappeared under part of the raised flooring, hauling a bunch of wires along with him. She walked down the hall and then jogged the stairs from the catwalk down to the floor where Ty waited with the Tactical Off-Road Retrieval Rover, or TORR, its motor grumbling loudly in the mostly empty bay. Chang had dubbed the four-person, heavily armed, high-speed tactical vehicle “Maude,” although no one really knew why. The name had stuck. Maude had saved their asses on more than a few occasions, and the vehicle was almost like family now.
Reilly nodded to Ty as he climbed up to man the rear turret gun. She turned the vehicle tightly and headed down the ramp into the dusty canyon. The unexpected restraint field, the damages to the ship and the weapons—it was enough to set them all on edge.
Reilly watched their surroundings for any sign of danger while the vehicle holo-display projected the fastest route to the compound. The lack of activity only made her more wary. One thing was certain, when things went wrong early on a mission, they tended to keep going wrong until they ended with unusually bad results. The sensor suite on the vehicle was going haywire, creating a field of static and causing random energy spikes on the system. The TORR grumbled to a halt as Reilly pulled up to the edge of an open field area.
“I’m getting some strange readings. It could be from that restraint field, but everything is too jacked up to tell for certain. Let’s leave Maude here. We can take the handheld and check it out on foot first.”
She turned the TORR off and Ty jumped down from the turret, landing next to her, as she began to wade out into the field of tall grass. Her handheld was picking up an electrical emission that was different from the natural noise of the moon. Patiently, she watched as the device scrolled through threat profiles for restraint fields and security systems, attempting to match the signal to a known entity. She continued to walk forward, her rifle slung, w
hile Ty cautiously took in the landscape around them. Halfway across the field, she paused. The signal was stronger here. Ty took a knee next to her, his height just enough for him to peer above the top of the grass around them. Reilly looked up, scanning out across the ocean of vegetation, looking for signs of trouble. She stood stock still as the device gave a quick beep, affirming the identity of the signal. The grass continued to ebb and flow in waves around her, waist high, like a sea of gold in the afternoon sunlight.
There. As the wind blew, there was just the slightest deviation along the right edge of the field. The pattern sought to mimic the wind, but the movements were too precise and stood out to her trained eye. She flipped open the screen in her left hand again, queued up the pattern analysis program, and smiled grimly as it confirmed what she already knew. Ty still crouched, head and gun low, unmoving.
The machines had already targeted them, so silence and stealth no longer mattered. “Three on the way, heading in from two o’clock, all class threes, and if there’s more I can’t see them through this damn interference.” Vervian had strange magnetic patterning due to the surrounding rock layers in the hills that played hell on electronics.
Ty grimaced. “Well, isn’t this just turning into the most fraggin’ awesome job ever.” He punched the button on the side of his rifle, which whined to life as the blaster cells charged up.
“Hmmmm.” Reilly calmly pulled her blaster and thumbed off the safety. “I seem to remember a mission not too long ago that a certain someone told me was the ‘golden ticket,’ the one that was going to keep us in credits until we were a hundred…you remember that mission?” She kept her eyes on the handheld as the dots moved closer.
Ty muttered something under his breath that sounded like “Never lets it go…” and pointed his blaster out and left.
Reilly waded a few steps forward, watching the three lines snake towards them in the grass. “I seem to remember getting shot four times, rolling down the side of a mountain, and having to hide out for two days with no water in some dark hole filled with bat guano. After which we had to hike miles to find the landing zone because someone told the crew to take shore leave without my permission. Oh yeah, and then when we got there, we had to fight off a bunch of locals who were salvaging parts from my ship.” She gestured in the direction of the approaching threat as Ty turned in response.
Ty moved slowly, still slightly crouched, a twinge of annoyance in his voice. “How was I supposed to know that we were being set up? We’d done a bunch of deals with Father Darcy and he never crossed us before! He was a priest—ain’t they supposed to be trustable like?”
Reilly rolled her eyes. “He was a smuggler and in with the Aman Brothers Crew…and he was a Catholic! He can kill five folks before lunch and drop some credits to atone for his sins!” She quickly stowed the handheld in her tac-gear and brought her blaster up.
Ty grumbled, “I’m a deception expert, not a mind reader. I actually have to be in the same room with someone to…” He went quiet as Reilly raised her fist.
The breeze stopped and the grass went still. They both tensed, waiting, frozen in place.
“Do you see them?” Ty whispered. “They should be right…” He poked lightly at the grass just in front of them.
The ground erupted. Two machines launched at them, crossing in midair.
“Enforcers!” Ty shouted. He unleashed a spray of laser fire at the nearest threat.
The machines were made of metal coated with nano-polymers that changed with the environment, allowing them to better blend in with the grass. As they leapt, the gold and brown stripes changed to a dull metallic gray. A single eye-like sensor emitted green as it tracked the targets, recording height, weight, armament, armor. Reilly rolled to the right, hitting the ground and firing up as the machine attempted to adjust to her movement, rolling and twisting in midair itself. Its knife-like claws grasped at where she had been as she blasted upwards into the thin underbelly plating. The primary processor resided there, and damaging it would limit or completely destroy the machine’s ability to prosecute its target. The first shot missed, and she dove again as the Enforcer hit the ground and leapt in an arch above her, firing as it moved. The machine hit the ground on its forelegs, and Reilly swung her boot, placing a kick against the closest joint and forcing the machine slightly off balance. The rear legs compensated, and the Enforcer turned again in a dizzying circle, launching directly at her head and chest. At the last moment, Reilly threw herself backwards and punched up with her blaster firing several rounds. The machine fell to the ground, fading between gray and grass stripes as it lurched forward, attempting to reach its target. The mouth snapped open, revealing a set of titanium fangs that receded only to be replaced with a rifled laser shot barrel, forcing Reilly to roll as it blasted two large holes where she had been. She shot it again, this time just behind the plating that guarded the neck and shoulder connection, severing the metallic head.
Meanwhile, Ty had blasted his machine in the face, blinding the sight and heat sensors, forcing it to revert to secondary tracking mechanisms. The machine searched for vibrations by sending out a quick sonar ping to detect his heartbeat and movement. It came at him a second time, swiping with sharp claws and metal fangs that could easily cleave body parts. Whoever had set these machines up liked to see them play with their prey first. He twisted away and rolled, landing on his stomach as the machine seemed to turn on a dime to come back at him. Ty pulled a black, segmented grenade off his tac-vest and rolled it out. The device split into six pieces that began to give off heartbeat signatures that mimicked his own and immediately spread out around the periphery. The machine, confused for a moment, turned, trying to decide which one was the appropriate target. Ty lurched forward, put his weapon under the metallic beast’s head, and pulled the trigger, obliterating the entire front end. He staggered up, getting to his feet just as the third machine emerged from the grass behind him.
“Ty, drop!” Reilly ordered. He fell to the ground like a rock, rolling onto his back as he realized what was happening. He shot twice into the machine’s undercarriage, paralyzing the back legs and taking out the processer as it passed over him. He lay there a moment getting his breath, then jumped to his feet. Reilly was a few feet away looking down at the last machine. She had shot it as well in the front visor, blinding it, but not before it had torn a nice slice down her arm.
“Shit.” She was bleeding all over the place. Ty jogged over. “Looks like it got a piece of ya.” He quickly elevated her arm, tore the tattered sleeve away, and then pulled an olive drab cloth out of his side kit, wrapped it twice, and cinched it down to stop the bleeding. She winced.
“You think? That’s just fraggin’ great!” Reilly angrily tested the arm. It was painful, but she could wait until she got back to the ship to get it looked at. The muscle was intact, so she could still pull or lift with it, which was good.
Ty wiped his brow and looked around. “Well, what do you want to do, Cap? We weren’t expecting any kinda welcome, but we’re sure getting one. Not in the price I remember getting quoted for this job.”
Reilly swept angrily at the thin trickle of blood that was seeping out from beneath the makeshift bandage as she looked around. She pulled out her handheld and scanned the area again while she thought. At this rate, who knew what else was going to come up. She had half a mind to turn around and forget the whole thing. But she had never failed to complete an op before, no matter what came up, and she was damned if this cursed mess was going to be the first.
“I got nothing.” She met Ty’s look. “Let’s get Maude and finish this.”
They jogged back to the TORR and continued cautiously on to the squat gray concrete building that was currently the cause of all their troubles. It was nothing special. Small, made of cinder blocks and cement, with a standard tactical force field around it. Reilly used her handheld to run a quick security hack, and then they pushed the heavy metal door open. The inside was equally u
nimpressive. Three walls were lined with metal and mesh lockers, while the floor was covered in green crates. Ty shot the locks off the cages and looked for the box they had been sent to retrieve. Once he found it, he secured it in his pack and turned to Reilly.
“Got it. What now?” Ty walked over to where she stood and gave a low whistle.
Reilly stood staring at the contents of the containers she had opened. The two crates up front were loaded with weapons and HEAT grenades which could blast through titanium plate like a knife through butter. Another crate had breacher charges which could be put out an airlock, remotely guided to another ship’s hull, and then detonated. This was top-grade military weaponry, hard to come by even on the Allied-controlled planets, let alone in someplace like this shithole of a moon.
“What did we get us into, Captain?” Ty muttered.
“I don’t know, but we’re here now. Let’s load it up. All of it.” She glanced around again. “I think me and Welch are going to have a bit of a chat when we get back to Arias.” Reilly tossed her torn, bloody jacket aside, cinched down the black bandage, grabbed a crate, and headed out.
They had been working for around twenty minutes, loading all but a few of the crates up, when their earpieces crackled to life.
“Um, Captain?”
“Duv—yeah, I’m here, what is it?” Reilly responded as she finished tying down a set of crates on the TORR. Ty carried out a couple more boxes and went back in to get the last of the crates.
“We’ve been getting some real odd readings up here. Where are you exactly?” Duv asked. “You aren’t by chance those two little dots by that itty bitty little building, are you? Damn interference is making it hard to see…uh oh.” Duv inhaled sharply.