by M. D. Cooper
Tanis said.
“It appears we have a situation.” Tanis scanned the MSF unit. Most of them were arrayed behind Folsom, though a few were slowly easing into flanking positions. “You see, I can’t find any validation of your orders. And there is no way I’m just going to surrender to you without them. You’ve got to know there is no way these Marines will surrender to you under any circumstances.”
A few of the cops looked uneasy at that and the stone-cold looks from one/one and one/two only solidified the knowledge that these Marines would go down fighting. Even death here would be more preferable to the Marines than going back to their platoon having been arrested by civilian cops. Especially since they were only outnumbered two to one.
“Nevertheless, you will surrender,” Folsom said. “We have reinforcements on the way. You’ll be subdued.”
“Like hell we will,” Williams grunted. “I’ve faced more threatening odds on my own. You station fairies are going to die today if you get in our way.”
Tanis grinned; there really was nothing like having a sergeant put it in the simplest possible terms. Several of the MSF men and woman were looking a lot less certain and she decided to push it home.
“You have ten seconds to stand down before I log this as an official violation of the Federated Space Treaty, Section 4.2—TSF Charter, paragraph 9. Such violation authorizes TSF forces commanded by an officer ranking commander or higher to respond with lethal force against anybody, official or otherwise who is interfering with TSF actions.”
Folsom still looked resolute and Tanis began to count.
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
Several of the MSF men and woman put down their weapons and slowly began stepping back, out of the line of fire.
“Five.”
“Six.”
A couple more left, bringing the MSF numbers down to twenty.
“Seven.”
“Eight.”
No one else moved. Everyone tensed.
“Nine.”
Tanis waited the space of a second and then dove to her right, knocking Trist to the ground while raising her rifle and taking aim at Folsom. He ducked as well and her shots cut through the air where his chest had been.
Cassar opened up and in moments six of the MSF were down and several more were stunned by the rapid fire of his weapon. Perez, one/two’s heavy gunner, was less than a second behind in releasing his barrage, and Williams, taking his pissed off look to a whole new level, leaped through the air, horizontal and low, taking out the legs of several MSF officers.
Five seconds later it was over. Taylor had been hit point blank center mass, but his armor had absorbed the impact, leaving him merely sore and embarrassed. Murphy had taken a shot in the shoulder, where his armor creased to allow flexibility. The limb hung stiffly, already suffused with med-nano stemming the bleeding and stitching his sinews back together.
“I’m five by five, Sarge,” he grunted. “Can shoot just fine with my other arm.”
“Never doubted it for a moment,” Williams said. “You keep to the back of your team, though.”
“Aye, Sarge.”
“I’ve reported this to the station and local Terran Space Force. A unit is on the way to clean this mess up. As much as I hate to split up, we can’t leave all this hardware laying around. One/two, you stay here until the TSF arrives. Don’t let any station security in until our people have the scene. Provide your recordings of the event and take up your positions for return route beta; we won’t be coming back this way.”
“Sir, yes, sir!” came the course of responses.
“One/one, let’s move out.”
Their route moved into more populated and public areas, an unfortunate necessity. Tanis could see station security forces shadowing them here and there. She was also paying half attention to the web of reports, accusations and threats that was flooding the nets. The MSF was claiming ignorance of Folsom’s actions and simultaneously accusing the TSF of assaulting its personnel. The TSF for its part was opening inquiries and launching inquests into the MSF faster than even an AI could read the orders. Someone’s head was going to roll for this and Tanis just hoped hers would still be attached by the end of the day. Sanderson was most likely going to want to take it off himself.
The public had gotten wind of what happened, and leaked security vids were already circulating the nets. It didn’t take long for people to figure out where Tanis and her entourage were going. From there speculators posted probable routes, one of them being the actual route Tanis was using. The upside was that those areas started to clear out. Some oblivious folks still wandered past, but for the most part Tanis’s group had a very clear path to the federated buildings.
“Coming up on the second projected ambush point,” Williams observed.
“What do we expect here?” Joe asked.
“Previous set was Trent’s boys. I expect we’ll get more of them, or perhaps some other STR special ops unit of some sort. Two/one and Two/two are in position in the buildings I’ve lit up on your HUDs. We have a safe room in that building across the concourse there and there is a weapons dump hidden in that trash disposal across the street.”
“Not expecting much here, I see.” Cassar chuckled. Tanis wondered about him. He hardly spoke, except when he was expecting to kill someone.
The space was an open square. It was the intersection of two broad thoroughfares—a long stretch with nothing but three small vertical conduits for cover. An ambush here would be hairy. Tanis gave the signal and Jansen and Lang moved over to the left side of the corridor, while Cassar and Williams moved ahead. Murphy stayed back with Trist, Joe and Tanis.
“You guys take me to all of the best places,” Trist said. “Why don’t we just take a car?”
“Too risky down here,” Tanis replied. “Too many things we can’t see when we’re moving that fast; that and we’re bunched up, we get attacked and we’re sitting ducks. This way we can approach each danger zone carefully and with the appropriate cover.”
“Somehow I really don’t feel covered,” Trist muttered.
Joe smiled. “But just think; you’ll have the most interesting stories to tell your children.”
“I don’t plan on children.”
“Well…then you can tell them to your cats.”
They moved slowly and carefully through the square. A few civilians had been approaching from their left, but upon seeing the Marines slowly creeping along the passage, they found another route. The hum of the station seemed to fade until they heard was slow breathing and the sound of boots rolling across the deck.
Tanis cocked her head as they reached the middle of the area with no cover.
“Something…” She didn’t get to the next word before an invisible blade whistled toward her; only her augmented sense of smell notified her of the shifting air currents and gave her the split second she needed to take the blow on her shoulder plate and not in her neck creases.
“Stealthed attackers!” she cried out as her vision was overlaid with the ghost of the person who had nearly killed her. Other figures danced in and out of her olfactory range, like shadows slipping in and out of visibility.
“Fall back to a wall,” Williams yelled, and the Marines complied quickly, not firing, but fingers on their triggers. Tanis pushed Trist back behind her as she ducked a blow and fired a shot with her pistol, catching her attacker in the chest. There was a grunt and he hit the ground, his suit failing in that spot as blood spurted out.
“How many?” Joe asked.
“I can’t tell.” Tanis’s head swept side to side. “I think there are at least a dozen of them.”
“Fuck!” Murphy spat. “Nothing in my suite is picking them up. I can’t see a goddamn one of them! How do we take them out?”
“A flesh wound,” Williams said regarding his own injury, and proceeded to randomly send out pulse blasts, hoping to catch the enemy or at least keep them pinned down.
Trist knelt down and felt for the body that Williams had dropped. She located it and extruded a probe from her left index finger. It disappeared into the cloaked form and her brow furrowed.
“Their suits are like yours.” She glanced up at Tanis, who was doing her best to put holes in the shapes she could see flitting in and out of her vision. “They’re one of the latest revisions, but it looks like we’re in luck, they’re based off the fashion silsuits that are all the rage back in Callisto. That’s a poor choice in base technology.” She grinned and extruded another probe, this one into another location on the fallen form.
“One of the neat features of the latest silsuits is that they can download new designs and when they’re in demo mode can even have the designs loaded without user interaction.”
“I think I know where you’re going with this.” Joe grunted as his armor absorbed a blow from an invisible blade. “What’s the ETA?”
“Minute or two.”
Tanis put a slug in the attacker that had hit Joe. “Go faster. Jansen and Lang are taking a beating over there.”
“Working on it.” Trist’s brow furrowed.
Across the square, Lang went down and Jansen let out a primal scream, rapidly sending pulses out where she hoped there was someone to hit. At that same moment two/one and two/two showed up and took in what looked like a scene of absolute madness. Marines were firing at nothing and yet seemed to be taking casualties.
“Got it!” Trist cried out. She removed her probes from the dead body on the deck and grinned triumphantly. “Wait for it…”
And then it happened. Several human outlines flickered in and out of visibility across the square before the suits reset and every attacker became fully visible. Trist had chosen a bright red covered in bulls eyes for the attacker’s new look.
“See them OK?” she asked.
“Plenty OK.” Tanis grinned and in less time than it took to say the words, every attacker was down.
Joe looked at Tanis and coughed back a laugh.
“Uh, Trist? Major Tanis is looking a little red around the collar.”
Trist looked up at Tanis to see red showing at the edges of her armor where the stealth suit showed.
“Oops, passing Angela the info to fix it.”
Tanis had an unreadable look on her face for a moment and then smiled at Trist. “Good work, that could have been messy.”
Williams was already halfway across the square to check on Lang. Tanis raced after as the two new fireteams secured the area and the attackers.
She arrived as the sergeant knelt beside the fallen Marine; Jansen looked on, her eyes misting.
“Cut halfway through his neck…armor went into stasis, but I don’t know…he lost a lot of blood, it may have been too late.”
“He’ll make it,” Williams grunted. “But he’ll get a nice bit of R&R time while they put all his tendons and arteries back in place.”
He rose, calling for the leader of two/one. “Corporal Salas! Lang is your number one priority. Two/two can stay here; you take Lang to TSF med facility AR13, it’s only a thousand miles from here. Get him there safe.”
“Aye, Sarge.” Salas nodded and gestured for two of his Marines to unfold a field stretcher for Lang. Within moments they were trotting down the cross corridor to the nearest maglev.
Tanis looked at Jansen. “You good, Marine?”
The corporal’s eyes had cleared up, a steely determination having set in. “Sir, yes, sir.”
“Glad to hear it.” Tanis smiled. “OK team, we need to recharge, reammo, and head out. Cassar, breach that ammo dump and pass out power packs and slugs.”
“Aye, sir.” Cassar nodded and went to work. Two minutes later they had left the plaza, Lance Corporal Olsen having been left to fend off the MSF unit that had arrived and was trying to take control of the situation. Having heard what happened at the last run-in between the two forces, the MSF weren’t eager to get in a fight with the Marines. Two/three was on its way to back them up before everyone dispersed to cover the beta return route.
The escort only had a quarter mile more of corridor to pass through and then they took a tubelift up to the highest level of the ring. Like many of the planetary rings, the upper level on Mars 1 was effectively an open eco-space. The landscape was filled with rivers and lakes and grass and trees. Hovering above them, almost as though it was suspended between the arching arms of the ring, was the planet of Mars.
Spread out across the terrain were various buildings, mostly museums and cultural centers. While the crush of humanity was mostly in the lower levels, this upper area was designed with aesthetics as the primary consideration. No other artificial habitat in the Sol system had even half as much parkland as Mars 1. Off in the distance was the low hill that housed most of the higher SolGov courts on Mars. It was a towering edifice of white marble that gleamed brilliantly in the reflected sunlight.
“That just looks effing cool,” Perez said. “Gotta record this on full sensory.”
“Stay frosty, people,” Williams said. “You can gawk on your own time.”
“Besides, even you can’t jerk off to a sens recording of a planet.” Cassar grinned at Perez.
“Like Staff said. We don’t have any more marked positions that we’re expecting to be ambushed at. But that doesn’t mean we’re in the clear.” Tanis gestured for Jansen to take the lead.
They trotted along in silence, the way before them virtually clear of locals for a time, but as they neared the federal buildings they moved into more populated areas until they were just a small island in a sea of foot traffic. The judiciary loomed ahead of them and minutes later they were moving up the steps toward the main lobby.
They passed through security and the guards didn’t look too happy to be allowing armed Marines into the courthouse. At the entrance to the courtroom Tanis signaled the Marines to wait outside and handed Williams her pulse rifle.
Tanis checked the time and smiled. “We’re actually going to be right on time.”
“Well, we did plan for some interruptions,” Joe said. “You pretty much nailed how long they’d be.”
“To be honest, I expected them to be longer,” Tanis replied. “That was really too easy. I can’t believe Trent didn’t put in an appearance. I don’t think he’ll attack after the testimonies have been entered; what would be the point in that?”
She nodded to Trist and they turned and entered the court.
“What would be the point indeed,” said a voice from the judge’s seat, which was facing away from them. Tanis and Trist approached as the chair turned. Sitting in it was Trent, a rather unflattering smile on his face.
“It’s good to see you again Tanis, Trist. I really am sorry that it will be the last time.”
With those words, the doors slammed shut behind them and heavily armored troops spilled out of the judge’s antechamber while more lined the balconies above them.
“It would seem that I finally have you where I want you, you meddling bitch,” Trent spat, “now pass over your sidearm and we’ll get started.”
CHAPTER 24
STELLAR DATE: 3227284 / 11.27.4123 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Mars 1 Ring (MIR)
REGION: Mars Protectorate, Sol Space Federation
Tanis took a long moment to consider the odds. At least twenty-five men surrounded her and Trist—ten on the balconies and fifteen down on the floor below. Angela and Sue were desperately trying to get control of the door’s mechanism and release it, but it seemed to be in some sort of lockdown. Small sparks in the air hinted at a full battle of nanoprobes occurring all around them.
“I have to admit,”—Trent clasped his hands with what appeared to be genuine glee—“I really didn’t expect you to be quite this easy to catch.”
“Not sure how seventh time’s the charm is easy,” Tanis replied. “From where I stand you have a pretty poor batting average.”
“Yet in the end, I still win.” Trent’s voice turned dark and menacing. “You have no idea what it has cost me, personally and professionally, to bring you to heel. With you out of the way we’ll finally be able to stop the Intrepid.”
“Why?” Trist asked. “Is she the only decent Micky in the TSF? No one else can tell guards to guard and politicians to fuck off? I thought skill like that was something the military had in spades.”
“They may.” Trent’s smile looked sour. “But they don’t seem to be assigning them to take care of the Intrepid. It really will be nice to be done with this job; it’s taken years off my life.”
“I have to ask,” Tanis said. “You’re pretty implicated here. What’s your endgame?”
“We’ve got an exit plan. We may not all make it, but the pay is high enough to make up for the risk.”
Several of the armed and armored figures chuckled. “Way more than enough,” one said.