Message for the Dead

by Jason Anspach

  The boat’s AI pilot went to work taking itself out of its mooring and steering Chhun to the mouth of the harbor, where it would anchor. That would make any boarders have to be serious about their task, and would alert Chhun that he wasn’t just dealing with some drunken vacationer walking up the wrong gangplank.

  Usually a Dark Ops commander liked to employ observation bots to provide aerial views of the mission field. This was easier to do on planets and regions that weren’t highly developed, or at least weren’t highly bureaucratic. In those places, no one would much notice or care if just one more bot was flying through the air. But Gallobren was different. Regulated bot traffic was a significant source of income here, and the local governments took seriously any bots flying about without proper registration. That didn’t make getting an observation bot up an impossibility, but the bot would certainly be tracked and observed by some desk jockey checking to make sure that the machine traveled in its stated lanes and didn’t try to earn any extra revenue without the proper fee application. Even that could have been overcome with the right contacts, but there hadn’t been time for the necessary greasing of wheels. So Chhun was forced to rely on the data that was transmitted through the Dark Ops secure relays.

  Task Force Granite looked to be moving at a good pace in spite of the delay they had experienced on the beach. Chhun broadcast a short, encrypted tone over Dark Ops L-comm to let them know that Big Fish was now Mother Bird and in the nest. He was available for any additional support the teams needed to call in.

  Sitting in a swivel chair, Chhun instinctively reached up to remove his helmet, but then thought better of it. The bucket’s audio receptors would be an advantage in the event that an unwanted element started to move about the deck above him. And the bucket’s comm and HUD could relay him information faster than if he were simply taking in the sum of all the various holoscreens with his naked eyes. Further, his chronometer was still displaying the countdown to the Intrepid’s estimated time of arrival.

  After about five minutes of setting up, fine-tuning his equipment, and tapping into his legionnaires’ buckets for quick-reference first-person observation, Chhun received his first status update from Bear’s team.

  “All right, we’ve reached the ship. This thing is huge. Capable of sea and space travel. Delegate Arushi is rolling large.”

  Aren’t they all? Chhun thought to himself.

  Bear continued. “Outlaw is planting charges on the hull, but man, we’re gonna have to really make one hell of a boom to sink this beast.”

  “Sink or disable,” Chhun clarified. “Either way.”

  “My concern isn’t whether we can do it. But there are ships docked on either side of the target. A blast like what we’re preparing could take them down with it—plus whoever might be inside.”

  Chhun brought up a visual from a sliced observation cam monitoring the marina. The visual was from twenty minutes ago, as all the security cams had been adjusted to show an all-clear loop so the Dark Ops teams wouldn’t be detected. It gave a clear view of the delegate’s big yacht and the smaller vessels docked around it.

  “First thing,” Chhun said, “is to make sure the delegate isn’t already on her yacht. If she is, you’ll be capturing her, and blowing up the yacht is a moot point.”

  “And if she’s not? Should I risk an active life-form scan of the other vessels?”

  The weight of this decision rested on the back of Chhun’s neck. “No. We’ll just have to take our chances and hope no one else gets hurt. If you see somebody, by all means, apprehend and get them clear. Otherwise, keep moving.”

  “KTF,” said Bear somberly.

  “Exactly.”

  ***

  Chhun watched with gritted teeth as Kill Team Outlaw made their way through the delegate’s luxury yacht. He was viewing a live-feed transmitted through Masters’s bucket, seeing everything the jocular legionnaire saw. It was like viewing an FPS cut scene, and it made Chhun want to get out of his seat and swim to join them. This would be a tougher transition than he’d imagined, going from team leader to sector commander.

  Someone called out that they’d dusted an armed guard near the ship’s engine room.

  Chhun watched as Masters’s hand came into view, gently pushing open a portal door. He swung his blaster into the room, and the cam caught sight of two kimbrin playing cards, blaster pistols set out on the table. The kimbrin reached for their weapons, but they were too slow; Masters double-tapped with his NK-4, dropping both. He proceeded to call the room clear.

  More rooms were cleared, and in rapid order. The team was tearing through the ship, finding no further opposition.

  “Ship’s empty,” Bear announced. “She’s not here.”

  Chhun nodded, as though his team leader were in the room with him. It certainly felt like they were. He performed a quick-slice program to pull up the guest registry of the hotel where the delegate was suspected to be staying. He had held off on this move, as high-end hotels usually had layers of security that would alert someone to tampering. But they needed to find her room number, and hopefully even if the tampering was observed, Kill Team Outlaw would be in and out before anything could be done about it.

  “Intel confirms reservations on the top floor of the Hotel Djakka, overlooking the harbor. Two suites on that level. You want 22-A. Make your way there. I’ll transmit an access key to get you inside via the service entrance.”

  “Copy.”

  Chhun switched holofeeds to watch the marina, wanting to give Outlaw a heads-up should he see any obstacles. It was very pretty, even by night. Everything was neat and clean. The piers were still fashioned from wood, the promenade seemingly cut from whole stones. It was probably gorgeous by daylight. Hopefully, all of Outlaw would be at its extraction points before they had a chance to see it in the sunlight.

  “Granite here. We’re in position beneath the camp.”

  Chhun checked on the task force. They had moved clear through the storm drains, encountering no obstructions or security

  He shook his head. Core worlds.

  They took everything for granted. Because, if any place in the galaxy was safe, it was a core planet. The Legion, and most alien species, for that matter, were light years away. Kill teams weren’t supposed to show up on places like this, so why bother paying for security beyond what was visible on the surface?

  They were about to find out.

  Task Force Granite found several storm water drains opening into the suspected POW compound, one of them directly underneath an impervisteel-frame guard tower. They would be able to come topside right in the midst of any defenders, like rodents tunneling into a farmer’s garden.

  Chhun switched among the various feeds for a while, then focused in on Kill Team Outlaw when they at last made their way through the shadows to the hotel. No one was up. No one was out. It was that magical hour when everyone was forced to sleep off whatever revelry had occurred in the passing of one day to the next. Chhun watched through Bear’s visor as the team entered through a back door into the hotel’s kitchen. Someone sent an ion blast into the bot working the dish machine, disabling it.

  “Granite,” Chhun said, keenly aware of the exciting tightness in his chest. “Begin moving yourself into position. Kill Team Outlaw will reach its target soon. Report once each team is in position.”

  The wait for Outlaw was probably more taxing for Task Force Granite than it was Chhun, but that didn’t stop the captain from nervously rocking back and forth as the kill team moved through the hotel.

  Bear panted over the comm. “We’re almost up. Ten more flights. Speedlifts were too open.”

  The view from Bear’s visor moving up the stairwell gave Chhun a sense of vertigo. He switched to a feed inside the darkened compound. The kill teams had all come up to the surface and were moving silently through the camp, undetected.

  Finally, Outlaw reached the top floor. They set up their breaching positions, then Bear announced, “Outlaw is in position, ready to cle
ar the hotel room.”

  The other teams reported in as well.

  “Kill Team Lethal, in position.”

  “Riot in position.”

  “Kill Team Viking, in position. Task Force Granite is go.”

  This was it.

  “Acknowledged,” said Chhun, checking his chronometer one more time. “Intrepid is five minutes from arrival. Expect immediate starfighter flyovers and Legion drop pods. All teams: you are green. KTF.”

  The feeds and relays in Chhun’s command center all came alive with action. It was almost overwhelming as Chhun tried to watch everything at once. The explosives placed aboard the luxury yacht were detonated; should Outlaw somehow miss nabbing the delegate, they’d leave her nowhere to escape to. Task Force Granite cut down the warehouse defenses almost immediately, and were swiftly moving to find prisoners. A few elements were shooting it out with planetary security. And in the hotel—Chhun again channeled Masters’s bucket feed—the door to the hotel room was blown open and kill team members poured in, finding armed security stumbling awake from the stupor of sleep. The kill team dropped them with double-taps to the head or chest, then began moving through rooms. The hotel suite was massive.

  Masters came to a closed door and stood to the side, waiting for another legionnaire to join him. He nodded, and the legionnaire kicked the door open. Masters bounded inside.

  Chhun could see the target delegate from Masters’s POV. She was in bed, screaming, covers pulled up to her neck. Her husband lay prone, his eyes wide with fear and confusion. He pushed himself up on an elbow and began to protest. But the legionnaire with Masters, SPC Brent Brown, moved bedside and struck the man in the jaw with the butt of his blaster, sending him tumbling out of bed and onto the floor.

  Delegate Arushi screamed even louder, and then began to hurl profanities at Masters as SPC Brown ener-chained her husband. Masters grabbed her roughly by the neck and forced her face-first onto the bed. He ener-chained her hands behind her back and draped an isolation hood over her head, silencing her screams and curses. He then pulled her out of bed—more gently now that she’d been subdued.

  “Did you search her?” SPC Brown asked.

  The delegate was wearing an expensive, shimmering white nightgown and was barefoot. She looked perfectly attired for a sub-tropical climate. The paradise she had been residing in. A paradise now lost.

  “Dude,” Masters replied, “not exactly any place to hide a blaster in that thing she’s got on.”

  It was surreal to Chhun, watching all of this remotely from his command center, his arms crossed, knowing there was very little he could do to help beyond coordinate support fire. He again found himself wanting to be with the kill team. To be in that room, helping to take care of the situation. He wondered how many times Major Owens had done the same thing he did now. It was no wonder that Owens would occasionally still insert himself in missions. Chhun didn’t think he could do something like this forever. Being out of the fight. He couldn’t abide it. This couldn’t be the rest of his career.

  “Looks like the delegate’s got a kid. Single child, female. She’s pretty upset.” The report came from Specialist Tuttle, from another room.

  Chhun instinctively opened his mouth to speak, to issue a command. He was so engrossed in what was happening that it took Outlaw’s actual team leader speaking first to snap Chhun out of it.

  “Masters,” Bear said, “get the delegate out of the bedroom and keep her detained in the kitchen. Don’t want the kid to see her when we bring her out of the bedroom to her father. Brownie, you tell Daddy dearest that we’re bringing in his kid and that he needs to help her get through this. He can play it easy, or he can do it with an isolation hood on, his call.”

  The legionnaires did as they were instructed, removing the delegate from the situation and bringing the sobbing girl to her father, where she thrust her diminutive frame into his arms. The father seemed unsure what to do. He awkwardly stroked her hair, repeating, “Try not to be upset, now.”

  It was consolation that, to Chhun, seemed entirely devoid of affection. Chhun wondered if this was the first time the father had ever even been in this position—having to actually father, actually comfort his own offspring. The galaxy’s ultra-wealthy tended to be that way. Chhun had seen it on a thousand core and mid-core raids. Say what you want about those on the edge fighting in tribal skirmishes for the Mid-Core Rebellion or whatever insurgency was popular on their particular dust hole—cultural exceptions aside, they at least cared about their children.

  There was more happening, and these thoughts that drifted through Chhun’s mind, un-beckoned and unexamined, left as swiftly as they had arrived. Task Force Granite had taken the compound. They’d encountered no Republic marines, no legionnaires still loyal to the House of Reason, no Republic Army basics. It was a funny thing. The House of Reason was more than happy to send the Legion and the Republic’s various military branches throughout the galaxy, so long as it wasn’t to a core world where the delegates actually lived. That was always too intrusive. The entirety of the facility’s resistance was local—city or planetary security details. They wore white uniforms, making them look more like boat hands than a military force.

  Now that their presence in the city was known, Chhun no longer needed stealth. He sliced into whatever he saw fit, including the compound security itself, which was slave-linked to a local government channel. Sloppy. Easy to hack. And evidence that the delegate and her planetary government were all in on the detainment.

  And there was, indeed, a detainment. Proof of that came to Chhun through the bucket visors and holocam feeds of Task Force Granite. Legion Commander Washam—Chhun didn’t know how else to refer to the man—hadn’t led them astray.

  At least, not yet.

  Familiar faces appeared in his feeds inside the barracks—Dark Ops legionnaires. They were physically chained to the floors, not with ener-chains, but real chains, heavy metal links. Each man had maybe five feet of length in which to move from a tiny cot to a shared toilet.

  The rescued leejes were elated at their luck. Cut free of their bonds, they began distributing what weapons they could find, pilfering the dead and defeated security forces, or borrowing secondary weapons from the kill teams.

  An explosion sounded somewhere in the middle of the city.

  “Hey!” shouted Riot’s team leader. “That was hella close! Is Intrepid starting an orbital bombardment?”

  Chhun had wondered the same thing at the sound. His chronometer had just reached zero, meaning the blast happened almost on Intrepid’s arrival, unless it had showed up early and unannounced. He keyed in the direct bridge comm. “This is Captain Chhun. We’re hearing explosions down here. Are you firing?”

  “It’s not us, Captain.” Admiral Deynolds answered directly. Her voice sounded urgent, stressed, concerned. “Someone else is already here. It’s a ship the likes of which I’ve never seen before.”

  “Say again.” Chhun couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Of all the ways things could go sideways, an orbital battle between rival capital ships was about the worst. He didn’t see any way that whatever was up there could be friendly.

  “Sir, this is Comm Officer Lambert,” a new voice replied. Chhun didn’t feel slighted in the least that Deynolds handed him off to a comm officer. Things were probably hectic up there. “We are sharing planetary space with another capital ship of unknown make and origin. This appears to be the source of the fire you’re reporting. We are unsure why they fired on the planet, but they’ve now stopped to focus on us, it would seem. We are preparing to engage.”

  “What’s the status of our drop support?” Chhun asked.

  “Seventy percent of the planned Legion and marine units dropped on arrival. They’re on their way down.”

  “Understood,” Chhun said. If they were going to be stuck on planet while Intrepid duked it out with whatever was up there, at least they’d have some extra muscle to hold off planetary forces. “Where does that leave
us with exfiltration?”

  “We’ve launched fighters to make sure the drop pods arrive safely. When they’ve established superiority, we’ll send shuttles down as planned. Stand by.”

  “Roger that. Good luck up there.”

  No reply came back over comm.

  “Listen up, Dark Ops,” Chhun said over his DO comm channel. “An unidentified capital ship sent that orbital blast into the city. Intrepid is engaging, looking to chase it off, but we might have to sit tight for a while. Good news is that most of the Legion and marine force dropped. Their assault pods are on their way down.” Chhun checked his monitors. The Legion forces were already landing, and blocking positions were already being set up on the pre-determined street grid to give Task Force Granite and the liberated POWs a clean exit route into the heart of the city, where multiple shuttles could land. “Scratch that. Legion forces are down and securing their objectives. Follow through and link up until exfiltration can arrive.”

  “Copy.”

  “Captain?” It was Bear.

  “Go for Chhun.”

  “Yeah, we’re hiking up to the bluff to await exfiltration. Seeing some drop pods landing pretty wide of the target zone. Looks like they’re hitting the suburbs from my vantage point. I’ll plot location to your HUD. May want to let Intrepid know.”

  “Copy that.”

  Chhun keyed in a comm channel for the destroyer’s logistics wing; he didn’t want to bother the bridge during a fight. “This is Captain Chhun here on the ground. I’m getting report from a team that drop pods are in the northwest corners of the city just beyond marina. You may want to correct drop coordinates.”

  There was a pause before the response came over comm.

  “Captain Chhun, that’s not us. All drop pods launched have arrived on target. Ask your spotter to verify. Over.”

  Chhun keyed back to Bear. “Bear. They’re saying it’s not them. You’re sure of what you saw?”

  “Yeah,” Bear said. “Seen so many drop pods come down, I wouldn’t miss it. Tell Intrepid a whole lot more are still falling. Like… a bunch.”