“Another @#$% $%^& milk run. When are we going to get some @#$% $%^&& real action around here?” Red Legs was a bit miffed at not getting to kill much of anything, “Just a couple of agromechs with grippers, no %^*&^ real weaponry.”
Sam poured himself another bourbon and plopped down in one of the big chairs. “Ahh, cheer up Red, at least you got to shoot somethin. The rest of us didn’t get to fire at anything but a couple a ground vehicles. Nothin’ fired back, just a few civilian hunting rifles. That don’t even scratch the paint.”
Cristoph stared out the window blankly, “Yah, at least now I can go into town and find me a filly or two. A little luv’n and I just might be smiling again. Some cards, maybe…”
Sneak sneered and grimaced as he downed his drink. “Whad’yah wanna go and do that for? Didn’t you lose enough playin’ cards last time?”
“Where are Flowers and that lazy good for nuthin’ #$%^ #$%^ Kaz? I want those two @#$%% to wash the windows of m’ mech” Red muttered glaring around the room and snarling. Red wanted someone to yell at.
“They’re on truck drivin’ duty.” Sam interjected. “The crews are still unloadin’ all the trucks and doin’ inventory and #$%^&.”
“What kinda stuff’d we get this time?” Christoph wondered, walking over to look out the side window out onto the tarmac where all the activity was. “Did anyone get a look at the pallets on the trucks? All I saw was crates and crates of fruit.”
Sneak looked out the window and pointed at one of the trucks on the far end of the tarmac just about to head off to the unloading area. “That one. Computers and @#%%^. That tech @#$%^ is always worth somethin’.”
The black truck had a flatbed trailer on back, with removable stake sidewalls which made it easier to load and unload. The truck had all of the computer equipment racks on it, along with some other technical equipment, a small fabricator, and some office equipment. It wasn’t worth anywhere near what Sneak hoped it would be.
The driver gunned the engine under the weight and took off down the road to take his load to the unloading pad a kilometer or so away. After a few minutes the truck pulled into the unloading area and was flagged over onto a black square on the concrete. The crews efficiently removed the sidewalls of the trailer and began the process of unloading the equipment with the forklifts.
Roche the Quartermaster walked up with a tablet wielding technician in tow. “What do we have here, more office equipment? Log it in and put it in the warehouse with the rest. We have a load going out next week, it’s on it’s way to Justinian City on the other side of the moon.”
“Yes sir. I see a fabricator, a rack mounted Voxelspace 2350, a rack of storage drives, some network gear, a wireless transmitter for the network in the first rack. I’ll climb up on the trailer and see if I can figure out what the rest of the electronics racks have in ‘em.”
“See that you do. I want a complete listing of the hardware by tomorrow along with estimates of what we can get for each item for the Captain. Take care of the serial numbers and reflash the network gear so they can’t be traced. Have Owens go through the contents of the drives, see if there is any corporate financial data buried in there anywhere, then wipe the drives for resale. Especially check the drives on the copy machines and printers. Valid ID’s are really useful when you can match them up with all of the personal data people put on the individual tax documents they run through the copiers. Those drives can hold over a years worth of data, sometimes more. Have Marishka hack into the computers and salvage whatever data he can find.”
“Roger. I’m on it.” The technician already knew his job, Roche didn’t have to tell him a thing. He smirked to himself, everyone knew Quartermaster Roche was a complete moron when it came to computers, he could just barely paste a picture into a word processing document, let alone do anything complicated. Programming was a total mystery to him, black magic for all he knew. He didn’t know a compiler from a motherboard. He covered his ignorance by yelling at everyone. He got angry and screamed at people whenever he felt challenged, which was most of the time. He was a coward in front of authority, afraid of being exposed.
Quartermaster Roche marched back to the administration building now that the last truck had begun the unloading process. He snarled at the secretary “Get out of my way!” as he went by the front desk. She skittered quickly to the side to let him by, making a face behind his back to the other receptionist as he went up the stairs. Roche stomped up the stairs to the main office and stopped outside the doorway to compose himself. He needed to get a handle on his temper before he went in front of the boss, he could get drawn and quartered if he slipped up in front of Captain Razin. Stenka Razin had the temper of a volcano. He routinely threw morons out the second story window when he found one who had done something particularly stupid. Roche had already had that experience once, he didn’t want it to happen again. He got a broken leg and wrist the last time.
Roche knocked on the door and went in, standing at attention in front of the huge carved desk. The Captain was in his chair with his feet up, the first officer Mr. Gustav Skytte was off to the side in the easy chair smiling. “So Roche, tell the Captain how we did this run, eh?”
“Well sir, most of the goods are perishable fruits as expected. Our informer timed it just right, they had most of the current harvest all nicely packaged up for transport. Captain Antares should be able to load up tomorrow and move the goods to the markets on the other side of Wayfarer. We’re in the process of removing all of the identifying markings on the containers tonight.”
“Good to hear it.” he said growling, blowing a cloud of cigar smoke into Roche’s face. Roche blinked, but stood at attention. “Hand me that pad and get out of here before I throw you out…” he said snarling under his breath. Roche complied, snapped a salute, and quickly left the office.
“You enjoy doing that, don’t you Captain.”
“Do what?”
“Reminding that idiot what you do to morons.”
The Captain smiled knowingly, leaning forward in his carved wood and leather chair. “It does have a certain… flair doesn’t it. They seldom make the same mistake twice.” He was grimacing again at the memory of what Roche did last time. It had cost him more than the man was worth. Roche was lucky all he did was throw him out the window. He fingered the dagger hilt in the sheath at his side and looked out the window.
Both men stood up. “Well, we might as well go down and see for ourselves, Captain.”
“Yah, I guess it’s time. Lead on, Skytte. Our crew awaits.”
Chapter 9 “Pirate Raid” –––––––––––––––––––
Captain Razin walked from the mech pilot’s wardroom across the tarmac towards the hanger. It was a cool evening, the silhouette of the gas giant was just setting and the light levels were dropping off into warm colors of reds and oranges. A little violet tinged the atmosphere in the opposite sky from the setting planet. He had heard on the news the timing of his raids were getting too regular from what the announcer had said, so he decided to mix things up a bit and run a raid within two weeks of the last one. Most of the merchandise from the last raid had already shipped out. His crew was still fresh, they hadn’t had any casualties on the last run, nor had they lost any equipment. First Officer Skytte had briefed the crew that afternoon on all of the particulars of their next target, all Captain Razin had to do was show up and pilot the dropship to the landing site.
His ship, the Bono Salvatore, wasn’t really a dropship. It was a converted freighter he and his crew had stolen on the capital planet of Kendall four years ago. The capital was fourteen light years away, not very far considering the sheer size of the Free World’s League. He really should have ran a little further, but the ship was low on fuel and needed lots of repairs at the time. It was all he could do just to get it this far. After several years of raiding, he’d solved those problems, but had gotten a bit too comfortable on Wayfarer. Razin decided he neede
d to upgrade to a real dropship as soon as possible, then get the @#$% out of there to a new planet before someone caught up to him. The ship didn’t have any real weapons, nor did it have any armor plating like a real dropship, which is why he landed the ship far away from the targets. If the ship was fired upon and damaged, his entire crew would be in a world of hurt. It was very maneuverable, light enough to land just about anywhere, but it was vulnerable.
The Captain entered the hanger through the open main doorway and watched for a few minutes to see where things were at. The trucks had already been loaded into the back of the cargo bays by Roche under the watchful eye of his First Officer. Walking over in Skytte’s direction, “So are we about ready? I see the mechs are just about to load. Has Red Legs been bitch’n as usual?”
“Yes Sir, but nothing we can’t handle. We’re just about ready for you to take over and do your thing, Captain. I can watch over this while you finish firing up the ship’s systems and get the engines warmed up.”
“Very well. Carry on.” Captain Razin walked briskly to the side hatch, climbed up the ladder and entered the ship. A cold air conditioned breeze hit him in the face as he stepped into the narrow cross passageway behind the bridge, smelling of ozone and lubricants. The walls of the narrow passageway were filled with racks of electronics, communications gear, control modules, and the like. The electronics always had a particular smell right after it was powered up. Opening the metal door, he stepped onto the bridge.
“Captain on deck!” the chief announced as Captain Razin walked to the command chair in the center of the bridge and took his seat. “All stations report!”
“Piloting ready.” “Navigation ready.” “Communications ready.” “Countermeasures ready.”
The chief acknowledged each of the bridge crew as they reported, then turned to the Captain. “All bridge watch stations report ready, sir.” Keying his microphone, “Engineering, report!”
“Bridge, Engineering. The reactor is fully operational. Ready for main engine start. Standing by.”
The Captain nodded to the chief, “Proceed with main engine start.”
The chief keyed the announcing system inside and outside the ship and announced “All personnel stand clear for main engine start!” Keying his headset to Engineering, “Engineering, Bridge. Proceed with main engine start.”
“Proceeding with main engine start. Engineering, Aye.”
The Captain felt a low rumble from the aft end of the ship, then a low whine as the four atmospheric reaction thrusters began to spin up. They had to idle for fifteen minutes to warm up the lubrication systems before full lift power was available. That gave the loading crew just enough time to finish loading the mechs and to close the cargo bay doors and clear the hanger. Startup procedures were all abbreviated since they weren’t leaving the atmosphere. The crew didn’t even bother tying down the vehicles all the way, they needed everything ready to exit the ship immediately upon landing.
After idling for ten more minutes First Officer Skytte stepped onto the bridge through the doorway. “Cargo ready, Captain. Heading aft to prepare assault teams.”
“Very well. Pilot, take us out. Countermeasures, cut in the jammer. We don’t want anyone to be able to trace us on satellite.”
The ship lifted off the ground with a surge of the lift fans and hovered briefly. The Pilot slid the ship sideways out the hanger and taxied out into the center of the runway. With a nod from the Captain, he pressed the throttles forward and the ship lifted smoothly up into the cool air of the night.
It took less than an hour to transit to the drop area. The navigator kept the radars turned off and all communications were passive, no transmissions at all during the flight for the local Guard to home in on, just the jammer making it hard to detect their position. The Captain was counting on the lack of active aircraft tracking on Wayfarer to keep the locals in the dark. GPS navigation was all he needed to maneuver the ship to the correct location in the darkness. Low light cameras allowed the Pilot to identify the small clearing where the ship was headed, he descended slowly and set the ship down smoothly. The landing site was now ‘home base’ to the crew for the rest of the night. The pilot kept the lift fans idling to keep them warmed up for a fast exit, if needed.
With the ship nestled down amongst the trees, the First Officer gave the order to disembark. The crew opened the cargo bay doors, allowing the mechs to exit the dropship. Sneak was out first in the Commando mech, his job was to scout the road north to the target and make sure there weren’t any surprises when his lance followed him in.
“Sneak, this is Red One. Get your @#$% movin.”
“Roger, on my way. Going Infra-red passive.”
Sneak trotted his mech off through the trees towards the road he had marked on the mission map on his mech’s tactical display. Finding the road, he checked for vehicle lights before turning north to take the road the two kilometers to the logging and coke operation they were targeting that night, Kintaro Forestry. The light Commando mech was the smallest and most covert of the bunch, though it was rather old tech. Sneak kept his cameras moving, he didn’t want to get myopic and lose his battlefield awareness. “Nothin’ so far”, he muttered to no one in particular. He slowed as he approached the break in the trees on the edge of the facility and edged his mech off the road into the trees. Crouching, he watched and waited for a few minutes to see if anything moved.
Sneak spotted a guard up on the roof of one of the buildings on the IR thermal camera. The mech had been modified at his request with a long range, single-shot rifle mounted beneath the IR camera. Using the camera, he sighted in on the guard and dropped him in one shot. The rifle was silenced just for this purpose. “If there’s one guard, there’s more…” he muttered scanning the area with the thermal camera. He didn’t spot any more guards, not right away.
“Red Legs, this is Sneak. Area clear. No big hostiles, just a couple’a guards.”
“Roger. Movin’ in.”
The other two mechs, the Raven and the Vulture fell in behind the big Loki mech Red Legs was piloting and headed off up the road towards the north. The pilots maintained radio silence as ordered, they didn’t want to tip off the target in any way until they were all in place for the assault.
Sneak began his second task for the night, taking out the communications dishes at the target facility. He used the optical zoom on the IR camera to inspect the roofs of the buildings and look for any dish antennas. Shutting them down was simple, all he had to do was put a rifle round through the transmitter receiver in the center of the dish. He picked off three dishes without much difficulty.
Up on the hillside above the logging facility Stan was playing cards with George in the cab of his vehicle, a wheeled mobile missile launcher. The two vehicles were partially hidden behind a few sparse trees up on the hill above the logging facility. The men were listening to the audio of a comedy routine, piped in by the supervisor down in the front office. The radio was their way of communicating. Radio on, all is well.
“I got yah Stan, full spread!”
“No way! @#$% I can’t stand it when you do that. That’s three hands in a row! You’re not cheat’n, are yah?”
“Nope. Just lucky, I guess.”
Crackle, Pop, Snap… Silence.
“Uh oh… the radio’s dead. Is this a drill?”
Picture Pack: SRM Mobile Missile Launcher
“I don’t think so, that didn’t sound right. Grab the binoculars and take a look around. See if Ben is awake over in the other truck.”
“He’s wavin’ and shrugging his shoulders. He don’t know nothin’ neither.”
Keying his headset, George called in. “Hey Supe, what’s up? You turned off the radio.”
No answer. The supervisor had been on the roof a few minutes ago. Sneak didn’t know it down in his Commando, but he’d just stepped on a trip wire.
“#$%^&. Fire up the passives, we need to find out what’s goin’ on
.”
“Can’t see anything down below through the binoculars.” Stan kept scanning, swinging his view wider to see past the facility.
“Wait… Somethin’s comin’ down the main road towards the front gate.”
“Hey, Ben’s signaling us. Let me see those binoculars so I can see what he’s sayin’.”
“No way. $%^&&&*, Mechs! Fire everything up!”
“Ah, ^&**#$%!, Pirates! I can see them now, they’re forming up on the other side of the fence!” The three mechs Stan could see were fanning out along the south fence outside the facility. “Call Ben, tell them to take the missile mech (the Vulture) and we’ll take the big ugly one in the middle.”
Stan held the target designating UV laser on the chest of the Loki on his screen and waited a moment for the guys in the other launcher to give the thumbs up. “Ready, target locked. Firing!” Two swarms of Streak SRM-9 Missiles arced over the trees and straight up over the logging facility. Following the maneuver the missiles came screaming straight down onto the Loki. A split second later two more swarms of missiles came screaming out of the trees from the other launcher towards the Vulture. Neither of the two larger mechs had functional anti-missile batteries, all of the missiles struck home. The Streak missiles traveled so fast the alarms in the mechs had barely gone off when the first wave of missiles hit.
The Vulture, with it’s reactive armor, took very little damage. Reactive armor explodes outwards in segments, blowing up and shredding missiles into very small pieces away from the outer skin of the mech. Other than the exploding segment, the bulk of the armor remains intact. Great for missiles, but not so good against regular munitions.
“Got’m!! Reloading, two more seconds! He’s breaking right, don’t lose ‘im! Turning on the active radar!” The Loki had turned and was jogging along the fence to come around the perimeter of the facility. Red hadn’t returned fire, he wasn’t sure what had hit him or even where it was quite yet. He was confused and didn’t like it. He only knew he had to keep moving.
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