by J. J. Snow
“That would be us. We’re finishing up the load-out, should be done here in the next ten minutes or so. Is there a problem?”
“Well, if by problem you mean five class-four Enforcers coming out of nowhere and moving in on your position from the west at about eighty clicks per minute…then yes, a big damn problem!”
Reilly dropped her crate in the vehicle and jumped on the TORR. “Ty! We got company! We gotta move!”
Ty ran out and jumped into the seat next to her. “Bad?” he asked as she strapped in and hit the throttle, jacking Maude into high gear and swerving out onto the road. She nodded tersely. He climbed into the back and snapped his harness into the turret post, looking out backwards over the cargo.
“Five class fours heading our way at eighty clicks from the west.” Reilly focused on driving, ignoring the ruts and hoping that they would come out of this best case with some of their haul, or at least with their lives and most of their limbs still intact.
“Maybe Chang was right; maybe this job really is cursed!” Ty turned the turret west as they bounced along the edge of the field towards the ship. “Where the hell did they come from? We scanned everything!”
“I don’t know. Maybe they were activated by something we moved, or maybe they were just hiding in the noise,” Reilly said as she touched her earpiece. “Duv, I need you to come our way. We’re going to need some cover fire to get to you.”
“Roger that. You know I have to lift off to fire, though—we may have to get creative with getting you guys on board.” Duv fired the engines, pulled on the comms-mic, and announced to the rest of the crew, “Lock it down, folks. We’re on our way to pick up the Captain, and we may experience turbulence, gunfire, and explosions.” He slammed the mic back into place and turned the ship low and fast, moving towards the canyon.
The grassland turned to red dirt as the TORR sped into the stretch of canyons. Right now, all they had going for them was speed and a laser turret, and that wasn’t much against class fours. Enforcers had been created by the black-market programmers as mobile security systems. They were relatively cheap and more reliable than regular human security forces. Over time, they had developed numerous forms, although many looked like overgrown metallic lizards, cats, or wolves, depending on the designer. Class ones were the cheapest models and could be easily defeated by anyone with the right training. The versions Reilly and Ty had encountered in the field had been class threes. It was rare to come across them, but someone with the right connections and enough cash could pick up a few and save some change on the care and feeding of regular thugs to watch over their stash. The machines were much more reliable and completely loyal to their programming. Each machine had its own unique code that was generated securely and provided to the owner to ensure that the system had not been compromised. After receiving the code, the owner could set up any number of daily tasks or situations for the machines to respond to, create a schedule, and then let the program run. A computer log and updates could be sent to the owner’s handset as well as alarms and resolution reports when a threat had been stopped or neutralized. The Enforcer series went up to class five. During her time in the ISUs, Reilly had only ever seen one class four. It had taken apart an entire platoon and a half of elites before the firepower from two other platoons and an interplanetary tank round rendered it a smoking hole in the ground. For someone to have not one but eight upper-class Enforcers running around in a small, uninhabited area on a semi-vacant moon was not a good thing.
Ty looked through the holographic sites, watching the horizon. He couldn’t see them yet, but the system was tracking the dots coming up on the outer proximity ring. Two split off and stayed west, while the other three headed south and east.
“They split—looks like they are trying to get above us on top of the canyon walls while the other ones run us down from behind,” Ty hollered to Reilly over the rush of the wind.
Reilly focused on the dirt track up ahead. The Heads-Up Display showed the rock outcroppings and the canyon walls beginning to narrow. Several box canyons off to the right would make great ambush spots for the machines. To their left, the rock wall was solid until they got to the main ridge. Then it disappeared into thin air with a thousand-foot drop to the canyon’s floor.
The red rocks flew by as Maude bounced and jolted along. Ty watched behind them. The three Enforcers coming from the rear were now visible and seemed to be speeding up.
“Probably because they have target acquisition and are waiting to get within range of the old girl to blast her to pieces,” he muttered to himself. A shower of rocks tumbled down on his left. He glanced up to see another Enforcer above them on the canyon’s ridgeline. The head was lizard-shaped and an odd metallic gold color. A sudden bright light flashed, briefly blinding him.
“Incoming!” Ty yelled.
The rockets slammed to the right of Maude as Reilly swerved behind a boulder using the terrain as cover for the vehicle. Two more augured in just behind them as she reversed direction and skidded back left down the track that led to the main ridge.
Ty blinked furiously, trying to clear his sight. The turret gun gave an audible tone indicating that a threat had been locked on. Ty gripped the trigger, pulling back hard. As his vision turned from splotchy dots to a gray haze, Ty saw the rounds connect with the target, knocking the Enforcer on the ridge back several feet. Smoking, it shook itself off and leaped forward, disappearing from view. The holo-sights showed the machine moving behind the ridge line but still keeping pace with them. He trained his gun to the rear on the three Enforcers there. He made solid contact with the first machine, laying down a stream of laser-propelled molten tantalum rounds until it dropped into a heap. He grinned and fired at the second one. The rounds bounced off like rain. Crap. They had phase shifted. He turned the dial to shift the laser and try again. The gun thundered, and a second Enforcer lay smoldering in a heap of molten metal.
“Yeah! Take that, you metallic bastards!” Ty unleashed another stream of fire, but this time nothing happened. These Enforcers had phase-shift adapters, which meant that they could read the gun’s output and adjust to the rate and type of fire as well as predict and defend against any variances that the system could produce after two shifts by the weapon.
“Uh, Captain? I think we’re in trouble.”
Reilly glanced back “Shit! Look out!”
An Enforcer had launched from the top of the canyon ridge, using the high ground to propel itself down onto the TORR. They watched as the machine opened up, revealing laser-rifle barrels and titanium claws as it fell.
Suddenly, the Enforcer disappeared in a bright blue flash. Reilly looked over to see Duv on her left providing top cover as they made their way down the canyon. He swung the gunship sideways, facing in towards the canyon wall, watching for any other movement. Ty gave a whoop and kept the gun trained behind them as they continued to jostle down the canyon edge. Reilly motioned to Duv, gave the rally sign, and pointed at the end of the canyon. “You sure?” he asked in her earpiece.
“Yeah, we gotta get off of this rock before we die here—and we’ve still got two more Enforcers about to be on us in a hot minute.”
“Alrighty. I’ll meet ya there!” Duv veered off, the ship’s engines roaring overhead.
“Hey! Where the hell is he going?” Ty hollered out. The last two Enforcers reappeared and began to gain ground again. He unloaded another stream of fire at their pursuers. When Reilly didn’t answer, Ty glanced over his shoulder. And then did a double take.
Duv had positioned the ship at the end of the canyon ridge and was opening up the cargo bay doors.
“Oh, hell no! We ain’t doing this!” Ty looked back to find an Enforcer almost on top of them. He blasted a few more rounds, which the machine dodged. “Shit, go faster, go faster!”
“I thought you said we weren’t doing this,” Reilly yelled back at Ty.
“I changed my mind!” Ty fumbled with his gear rack and pulled out a
smoke grenade. It wasn’t much, but it might just buy them a few seconds while the machine switched sensors. He pulled the pin and lobbed it in the back of the TORR. White smoke whirled out, obscuring his view and hopefully the Enforcer’s, too.
Ty turned to look forward as Reilly reached the cliff’s edge and launched the TORR. He looked back again behind them just in time to see the Enforcer’s head burst through above the smoke.
“Duck!” he yelled. A laser round sizzled in the air above them and was gone. Maude hit the rear ramp, skidding a bit as Reilly floored it to prevent them from sliding backwards into the canyon. The wheels caught and gained traction, flinging the TORR into the cargo bay and promptly flipping it upside down as the bay doors closed behind them. Maude grumbled, then wheezed and became silent as the engine cut out. Reilly and Ty dangled upside down in their harnesses, gasping for breath and surrounded by the scattered cargo that had broken loose.
“Well, that was a first,” Ty noted as he painfully moved his limbs to make sure they were still all there. They could feel the gunship lurch upwards and then gain altitude. Reilly slowly unbuckled her harness and let her feet slide down to the ground while hanging onto Maude’s now-dented frame.
“That was awesome!” a voice called down from the catwalk up top.
They looked up as they climbed out of the TORR to see Duv’s son, Seth “Skeeter” Jackson, bouncing along the catwalk excitedly.
Reilly gave a crooked grin and shook her head, then continued digging her way out of the crates surrounding Maude. She examined the dent and decided it could be hammered out. It wasn’t the first time they had had to give poor old Maude some body work.
“Well, quit your blabbing and get your skinny butt down here. You can help me get this mess cleaned up, starting with moving this cargo up to the front of the hold,” Ty groused as he worked to free himself from his harness. “Damn. I think I dislocated my shoulder again!”
“You know that entire sequence had a twenty percent chance of working? I mean, the physics was totally against it, and if the right trajectory and speed hadn’t been met, you guys would be dead right now!” Skeeter happily reported as he jounced down the steps to the cargo bay floor.
“Yeah, great, thanks for that!” Ty leaned over and slapped one of the smaller crates to Skeeter while still probing his shoulder with his index finger. “What were you doing down here anyway?” Skeeter normally stuck close to Duv on the bridge when things got tight.
“Oh, yeah. Duv wanted me to look at the laser damage and see how bad it was. It fried some of the circuits to the main engine room and some of the ones to life support, too.” Skeeter pointed up to the blackened front wall of the hanger bay.
“What? Shit, would you look at that!” Reilly gazed up at the front of the loading bay. The last laser round that had missed them had gone into one of the main control boards above the first catwalk. “It wasn’t shooting at us. That thing was trying to bring down the ship.”
Most cargo-class gunships had two control boards on the loading bay deck. Disabling the lower one could cause all kinds of issues and if hit with a high enough voltage could even short out the engine in older models. Reilly had spent extra to make sure the electrical system was protected against any kind of overload or interference and had built in a backup electrical system just in case. That was the only reason the ship was still in the air now instead of at the bottom of a canyon.
“One Enforcer jumped on the back—Duv says he’d never seen them do anything like that before. He was jinking and getting ready to roll to shake it off”—Skeeter reached the bay floor and picked up the small crate—“then it just dropped back off again…pretty weird.”
At that, Ty looked over at Reilly. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
Reilly punched the comms speaker on the deck. “Duv, run a scan for foreign objects on the hull. Tell me the minute you find something.” She clicked off. “Ty, I want you going through all of this cargo, everything, and tell me what has us getting so much attention since we started this mission.” She glanced down at her arm, which was bleeding again. “I’m going to go find Gunny and get this stitched.”
Reilly stepped up and onto the catwalk, continued climbing, and then turned down a passageway that opened into a common room where the crew took their meals. Just off of the main area was a smaller kitchen area, and past that another room and then a bunk area. She found Chang in the kitchen.
“So, you made it back in one piece, huh?” he said, turning and then raising an eyebrow as he took in Reilly’s bloody arm. “Hmmmm, or maybe in a few pieces…sit down here.” Chang pointed at a small stool in the corner by some potato peelings and then pulled an ISU medical kit out from under the counter. Reilly obediently sat as he began to unwrap the black cloth. He hissed appreciatively.
“This is pretty deep—you always did suck at knife fighting.” He pulled out some disinfectant and supplies along with a needle and stitching thread as she gingerly rolled up the sleeve on her t-shirt. “It’s going to leave a pretty scar for you to add to your collection.”
“It was an Enforcer, a class three. It was going for Ty. And I don’t remember ever losing to you in a knife fight!” Reilly grimaced as Chang jabbed her with a needle to numb the site and started to stitch up the wound.
“Overconfidence is a fickle creature that if not tempered with humility can lead to a sudden precipitous fall.” Chang smiled brightly as he continued stitching. “You just ignore the odds, and someday it will get you killed. My grandfather used to say, ‘One who drives like hell is bound to get there!’”
The shipboard comms crackled to life. “Captain.” Reilly picked up and hit the transmit button while Chang focused on his sewing.
“I found something—looks like a tracker on the starboard hull of the ship,” Duv reported. “I don’t know if it has a detonator, but it’s definitely sending out a signal. What do you want to do?”
Reilly looked down and thought for a minute. “Duv, can you jam it out? Try just enough noise to cancel it so it still transmits but at a reduced range, in case it does have an anti-jam detonator on board. We’ll have to wait to touch down to get a better look at it. And keep scanning to see if we have any company.”
“Strawberry or grape? I’m on it.” The mic clicked off as Duv hung up.
Chang watched Reilly’s face from the corner of his eye. He had been a master guns when she was a new lieutenant earning her bars in some of the ISU’s bloodiest battlefields. The captain had been fearless in defense of her soldiers, earning their respect daily by fighting with them shoulder to shoulder. She took bullets for them, charged hills, bandaged wounds, negotiated their freedom with cunning, lasers, and tantalum rounds, was there for the victories and to steady the dying and bury the dead. Chang knew if she was worried it didn’t bode well for any of them. Her intuition and instinct had saved a lot of lives in battle, including his. Besides, the signs didn’t lie. Something bad was coming. If only he knew what. Chang finished up the last stitch and tied it off, covering up the wound with a clean bandage.
“So? Now you believe me about the bad luck, huh? I can sense this stuff. Got it from my grandmother.” Chang smiled as Reilly rolled her eyes. He wadded up the bloody fabric and tossed it into the chute for the ship’s incinerator, then wandered over and used sterigel from a wall dispenser to clean off his hands. He wiped them on a small brown cloth and began chopping vegetables again.
“I believe in cause and effect. And yes, we are having some bad luck. But I also believe that at the bottom of that bad luck is a sniveling backbiter who set us up for his own benefit.” Reilly looked down to admire his handiwork. “Thanks,” she said looking over at him. “Stay frosty, Gunny. This job stinks and I don’t like it. When we get back to Arias, Welch better have some answers for me.” She stood up to leave.
Chang waved his knife at her as she went out the door. “Sometimes the only thing more dangerous than a question is an answer.” He began to whi
stle a cheerful marching tune as Reilly shook her head and kept walking. Once she was out of sight, Chang threw three knives into a wooden block above the door frame, rapidly one after the other, and then continued merrily dicing up the potatoes. He was always frosty, that’s why he was still alive. He shot one more covert worried glance at the captain’s retreating back before turning back to his cooking.
—————
Reilly made her way forward to the bridge. Duv was at the flight controls working a jamming solution when she stepped through the hatch. He pretty much ran everything on the bridge when she was on world or working an operation. They still had several crew slots open, but Reilly was particular about who came to work on her ship. Duv had been hinting hard at getting some more help, so she’d finally made him a deal that they’d look for new crew members once this mission paid out. If it pays out and doesn’t cost us more than we bargained for, Reilly thought to herself.
She punched up a holoscreen at the back of the deck. “I want all records on Welch, Errat Kelvin, and his brother Welch, Razam Rian.”
The Holographic Automated Intelligence Linked Ethernet or HAILE, pronounced Hail-lee, whirred to life. The system had been designed to speak in a soft, feminine voice that was supposed to be soothing in stressful situations. During her time in the ISUs, Reilly had seen many of these units upgraded with more authoritative masculine, computerized voices. In combat, the pilots tended to tune out the female voice, much like they would tune out a spouse or girlfriend at home or a mosquito buzzing in their ear. Either event could result in disastrous outcomes, but even more so when the information turned out to be critical to flight operations. This particular unit had been modified so that it sounded like a woman with a really deep, grating voice who had just downed multiple cups of Duv’s heavily caffeinated Iram coffee—not a good combination. Reilly frowned. She’d ask Skeeter if he could take a look at the voice modulator program once they made port.