by Graham Brown
Davis studied a readout on the handheld display. “This is the main intersection in sector four. The tunnel branches on the other side of the door. Access to the detention area will be found a hundred yards to the right. The left tunnel will lead to the government buildings, about five hundred yards onward.”
With that confirmation, Hannah pulled a piece of electronic equipment from her pack and began to override the security protocols.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Isha asked.
Hannah nodded, “Let’s just say it’s not the first place I’ve broken into.”
The electronic lock pick finished its job and began flashing.
“Divide and conquer,” Hannah said. “Here we go.”
She pressed the green button and the pressure-sealed door released and slid open. Before it reached its maximum width the sound of plasma blasts rang out and several of those standing beside her were thrown to the ground, their clothes on fire, their skin melting and charred.
Hannah slammed herself against the wall, taking cover behind the doorjamb, and instinctively fired back.
A quick glance confirmed what she already knew. Mercenaries by the dozen were firing from covered positions in the long underground tube ahead.
CHAPTER 51
Out on the open plains, the storm was fading fast and the convoy of MRVs racing towards Olympia was rapidly becoming more visible.
As the dust tapered off, the green fields surrounding Olympia came into view. For the first time James saw them in the light.
“Beautiful isn’t it?” Dyson said breaking his trance.
“Worth dying for,” James said.
“You may get that chance,” Dyson replied. “We’re jamming all radar signals, but they’re gonna see us before too long.”
As if to prove his point, a warning light began to flash. A target appeared on screen.
“What it is?” James shouted.
The third member of the crew, a systems officer name Lasky shouted the answer. “Recon drone.”
“Do they have us?”
Lasky locked in on the drone with the MRV’s cameras. “It’s turning back to Olympia. Trying to get home. I’ll jam the frequencies, but if she gets through…”
Instinctively, James grabbed the firing controls and rotated the cab upward.
With great speed, he locked missiles on the high-flying bird and pulled the trigger. Two missiles ripped from the housing, trails of fire streaking toward the fleeing craft.
The recon drone crossed the barrier into the reddish-brown mass of dust. The missiles followed quickly, disappearing into the clouds.
The next seconds seemed like hours, and then an explosion lit up the clouds of dust from the inside, like the back lighting of a huge electrical storm in the dark of night.
“It’s a kill,” Lasky said.
“Did she get the message out?” James asked.
“I’m not sure, Sir. It was on its second cycle. But the data may not have passed through the storm.”
Almost immediately gunfire lit out from the dust cloud, tearing into the MRV beside them. James whirled and spotted a lone machine, half hidden in the dust, standing guard on the approaches to the city.
Before he could fire, another unit lit up the sentry with a battery of cannon fire. The old mercenary rig was no match for the assault and was quickly reduced to a burning pile of junk.
It was bad news. Half of their strategy depended on getting into the city unnoticed, but there was almost no hope of that now.
Dyson looked at James. “Well?”
“Keep going,” James said.
“If they meet us at the gates, we’ll be decimated before we get inside,” Dyson said. “You know that.”
James did know that. It didn’t matter. “There’s no turning back now. Signal the other rigs. Things are about to get hot.”
CHAPTER 52
In the tunnels beneath the government building, a firefight was raging.
Gault and Cassini were in the rear of a large squad of mercenaries as they tried to advance down the tunnel.
Cassini took cover as Gault launched a series of grenades down the tunnel. The explosions sent shockwaves flying in both directions and even Gault was knocked off his feet.
When the smoke cleared he saw the rebels had backed off, but not by much. He couldn’t believe they were dealing with such stubborn resistance. Since the initial wave of gunfire, they’d moved forward by only fifty feet.
As the dust cleared, Cassini looked up furious. “Why don’t you just blow us all up?” he shouted. “Then we’ll have nothing left to worry about.”
Gault ignored him and yelled into his communication device. “Bravo Team, where the hell are you?”
A voice came back. “We’re doing our best to get in position. They’ve changed the codes on the doors. We’re having to cut through everything we come to; it’s slowing us down.”
“How long will it take?”
“We’ll be in position in five minutes. Just keep them pinned down and we’ll have them trapped.”
“Make it quick,” Gault grunted.
He fired a random shot down the tunnel and then ducked. As the next wave of return fire ricocheted around them his comm squawked.
“Gault do you read? This is the command center. You’d better get back here. We have a problem.”
“I’m a little busy right now,” Gault grunted. “You’ll have to deal with it yourself.”
“I think you’re going to want to deal with this,” the voice said brazenly, “or we’ll all be dead.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“One of our drones spotted a column of heavy units moving toward the city. They’ve already taken out the sentries.”
“Heavy units? What kind? From where?”
“The video is sketchy, but I’m pretty sure they’re leftovers from the regular army.”
“Damnation!” Gault cursed. “Scramble everyone. I want everything we got out on the streets, now!”
Gault stood to leave, but a panicked Cassini grabbed him. “Where are you going?”
Gault handed the comm to Cassini. “Our nightmare is now complete; the army you should have destroyed is marching on the city.”
“What do we do?”
“We win,” Gault said, “Or we die.”
As the tunnel rocked with plasma blasts, Hannah and her people found cover wherever possible. After several minutes of fighting, the tunnel had filled with a smoke from burning debris and gunfire. Even then, Hannah realized the mercenaries at the far end of the hall were not pushing very hard.
“Julian, we need to break up into groups,” she shouted. “They’re probably surrounding us.”
Julian was not a fighter. He put on a brave face but he looked to be falling into shock.
“Julian!”
“What?” he finally replied.
“Take half the group back to the last intersection,” she shouted. “Do whatever you can to hold it while I figure out a way to get through.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“Not yet,” she admitted, “but our path is straight down this corridor and the mercenaries are in our way.”
“That’s suicide. There’s got to be a better way?”
“There’s no way around this junction,” she shouted. “Now move before we get caught in a cross fire.”
Julian nodded and waved a few of his people over. They spread the word and soon half the team was abandoning their positions and racing back down the hall.
As they went, Isha moved up beside Hannah, ducking behind a stack of equipment as a new wave of plasma fire came in. “So how are you going to get through that army?”
Hannah wasn’t sure. In fact, considering the density of the smoke she couldn’t even see the enemy. She looked up, scanning the array of piping and electrical conduits. An idea came to her. “Who works down here?”
Isha thought for a moment. “Santiago,” she said. “He works pri
marily on the cooling units.”
“Get him up here.”
CHAPTER 53
As the last of the dust vanished, the outline of Olympia took shape ahead of James and his army. A silver city gleaming in the red light.
“Approaching the west gate,” one of the units called out. “Small arms fire coming at us from the towers.”
James tapped the transmit button on the comm. “Take out the gate and towers. Hit them hard. The heavy units will be waiting on the other side, so be ready and launch as many smoke grenades into the area as you can. If we don’t break through the choke point we’re dead. Once inside, scatter and make your way to the center of town; if we take the command building the rest of them will not fight that hard.”
Confirmation came in from the various squad commanders and the convoy continued to charge.
Small arms fire increased as they reached the outskirts of the city and the big guns of the MRVs began to answer. Soon the mercenary defenses were silenced and the 41st began streaming into the city.
The radio chatter decreased but took on a strange tone.
“Alpha Two, do you see anyone?”
“Negative, no resistance on the north road, continuing on.”
“This is Charlie Three, nothing but small arms fire on Main Street either.”
James and Dyson weren’t even dealing with that.
James and Dyson passed the west gate to find several structures reduced to burning rubble, but to everyone’s surprise there were no MRVs there to greet them.
“Where’s the welcome committee?” Dyson wondered.
“No idea,” James said. “Not waiting around to find out either.” He grabbed the comm. “Blue Team, you’re with me. Everyone stay sharp. In case this is some kind of trick.”
It was no trick. At that very moment, the mercenary army was trying—and failing—to get out onto the battlefield.
“Clear the hangar doors!” Gault shouted from atop his rig.
“We’re trying,” one of the mechanics said. “They’ve been welded shut. It’s sabotage.”
Gault could hardly believe what he was hearing. The army was bearing down on them and they were trapped in the parking garage.
“We’re getting a cutting torch now,” the mechanic shouted.
Gault wasn’t waiting. He dropped into the gunner’s seat, flipped off the safety and opened fire. The mechanics dove helplessly out of the way as the rotary cannon stitched a hundred holes in the huge doors and a missile released an instant later blew the central section of the door apart and out onto the street.
“Go!” Gault shouted.
The pilot shoved the MRV’s throttle forward and Gault’s machine rumbled to life, knocking down what remained of the doors and pushing out into the sunlight.
Within minutes the mercenary forces were flowing from three different hangars and massing for a counter attack.
James heard the sudden uptick in fighting clearly as the yellow and red groups ran headlong into the charging mercenary forces and explosions lit up Olympia’s central boulevard.
Desperate radio calls went back and forth. Tracers and plasma fire filled the sky and the pall of black smoke from burning buildings and machines grew rapidly. It looked bad.
“We need to get in there,” James said to Dyson.
Dyson nodded, and James hit the comm. “Units Three and Four, you’re with us,” he said. “The rest of you continue on to the main square.”
The blue squad split up, with three units continuing to the center of the city and the others following James, Dyson and Corporal Lasky towards the main battle. As they neared the brawl, they came across six or seven MRVs burning and down.
“Ours or theirs?” Lasky asked.
James shook his head. The machines were too charred to identify as friend or foe.
Several blocks ahead, a trio of enemy vehicles crossed their site line at an intersection.
In the blink of an eye, James let four missiles fly, and seconds later, two of the three were obliterated. The first machine in the group survived, making it safely across the opening.
Before they could follow up, new enemies appeared, this time firing from the right. By the time Dyson had maneuvered the MRV into a firing position the enemy rigs had ducked behind one of Olympia’s housing structures. James held his fire.
“We’re at a disadvantage here,” he mentioned to Dyson.
“How’s that?”
“We actually care about the people in these buildings.”
“They clearly don’t share that worry,” Dyson mentioned.
As another building took the brunt of someone’s gunfire, James could not disagree. Looking around, it seemed like half the city was burning already.
CHAPTER 54
The catacombs beneath the city had begun to shudder from the battle going on up above. While most considered that a bad sign, Hannah knew better. It meant the 41st had finally arrived.
Hannah scanned the infrastructure with Santiago and Isha. “Which of these pipes carries the superheated water?”
“What are you planning?”
“This tunnel is downgrade toward the mercenaries,” Hannah said. “If we blow one of the main lines we can flood them out of their position.”
Santiago scanned the various conduits above them. “There,” he said pointing to one of the large diameter pipes. “That’s the one, high pressure water from the Core Unit, keeps the city toasty while cooling the reactor. I’m guessing you plan on breaking it?”
Hannah nodded.
“Don’t get any of it on you,” he said.
“Why? Is it radioactive?”
“No,” Santiago replied. “But it’s three hundred degrees. Half of it will turn to steam as soon as the pipe bursts.”
“I’ll be careful,” Hannah said.
“You’ll need to be more than careful,” he warned. “You’ll need to be at least fifty feet away or you’ll be broiled alive.”
Hannah took that to heart. There were a lot of ways to die, none of them good, but being steam broiled sounded worse than most. She began prepping two explosive charges.
“I’ll go find a cut off,” Santiago volunteered. “That way, once it’s blown, we can divert the flow.”
Hannah nodded and looked up at the conduit above them. She needed a way to get the explosives down range and yet keep them close to the conduit. Taking the strap from the rifle, she hooked the explosive charges to it and then handed the rifle to Isha.
“Make sure you cover me. It’s wide open up there.”
“I’m not a good shot,” Isha said.
Hannah pointed down the hall. “Just keep firing that way. It doesn’t matter if you hit anything. Just keep them pinned down.”
Isha nodded, rested the rifle on the edge of a stack of equipment and waited.
“Now,” Hannah said. As Isha and a few others began firing, Hannah climbed the maintenance ladder with all the speed she could. Despite the suppression fire, stray bullets and bursts of plasma fire still came her way, but she kept going and was soon hidden in the nest of conduits and perched next to the steam pipe.
She unhooked the rifle strap, looped it around the pipe and connected it back up again. That done, she set the timer for fifteen seconds, hit the start button and shoved it down range on the pipe. It slid about a hundred feet before stopping and exploding.
Hannah never saw it, she was back on the ladder, sliding down the rails and hitting the ground floor just as the explosions blew the pipe apart.
The foot wide conduit burst and a large section dropped toward the floor. A gusher of high-pressure water blasted out the end and the entire passage way instantly filled with steam. In seconds, a boiling torrent was surging down the tunnel toward the mercenaries.
From his position behind a stack of equipment, Cassini heard and felt the explosion. For a second he exalted, thinking Gault’s pincer movement had finally worked, but the wave of steam and boiling water came blasting through the tunnel towards
him. The steam blinded him, burning his face. Screaming, he turned away and tried to walk, only to stumble into the flood. Trying to get up he was trampled by his fleeing men.
The water seared him and he opened his mouth to scream again but instead swallowed some of it. Shaking and convulsing in a kind of pain he could not believe, his nerves shut down and he passed out, falling face first back into the scalding river, drowning and boiling simultaneously. As the flow built further, his body and those of his men were washed down the corridor to the low point where the water drained away.
As the hideous screams faded and the corridor grew unbearably hot, Hannah became certain that the mercenaries had fled their positions or been killed.
She called out through the swirling steam. “Santiago, shut off the water.”
As Santiago diverted the water to another channel, the sound of the torrent began to fade. Meanwhile Hannah crawled forward to where Isha remained crouched in the fog.
“Ready?”
She got no answer and it took a second before Hannah why. Isha was dead. Her body propped up by the wall, a bullet wound through her neck.
She cursed silently, but there was no time for sadness. She took the rifle back and called to Davis. “Get the rest of the team up. We need to move now!”
CHAPTER 55
As the battle for the city raged, Gault directed his men from a fixed position in front of the main buildings of government square.
Watching a bank of monitors in his machine, he had seen the battle in the city go back and forth, but the strange geometry of Olympia’s streets had begun to play into his hands. By using the buildings for cover his units could fire with impunity, and then back off and force the men and women of the 41st to move out into the open or risk destroying the very city and civilians they were trying to save.
It all seemed to be working perfectly. His people were bleeding the 41st dry in a war of attrition. Though the regulars were winning on a 2 to 1 ratio, that would not be enough especially with the last of the units from the outlying areas yet to arrive.