“You think the deepynines are still there,” Trace breathed.
Romki smiled. “Oh certainly! And we’re allied to them through the Triumvirate Alliance, on whose behalf we just fought a hundred and sixty year war and lost tens of millions of lives to secure.”
“And are now about to welcome their chah'nas allies into our space as full partners,” Kono muttered.
Romki made a grand gesture, as though proud of them. “Exactly! And now you know why Fleet wants me dead.”
“Wants us dead,” said Trace. “They killed Captain Pantillo on Homeworld.”
Romki turned pale. “They what?”
“Court-martialled him with some trumped up nonsense, then murdered him when he wouldn’t play along, and pinned it on our LC, Erik Debogande.”
“Debogande,” Romki murmured, aghast. “Of course!”
“We got him out, and ran here, via Merakis. We came here because word hadn’t reached here yet. But we didn’t count on the alo — there were no alo at Homeworld, we didn’t think any other ship was fast enough to beat us here. But clearly there was an alo somewhere nearby, because Chankow apparently knows, and now we’re screwed unless we can get the hell out of here soon.”
“Well I was going to say,” said Romki with alarm. “I wouldn’t mind a lift, I had a ship arranged for tomorrow, but that schedule now looks a little too relaxed.”
28
Lieutenant Dale was not happy. “We can’t just sit here and let some fucking Worlder lunatics do whatever the fuck they’re planning to do to Hoffen,” he said. They stood in the master bedroom, alone before the wide view of the park, and the vast hub-facing transparent ceiling above. “I don’t care what our beef is with HQ — HQ is not Hoffen, and I didn’t fight through thirty years of war to stop the Froggies blasting places like this one to just sit back now and let some local crazies do the same thing.”
“I agree,” said Erik. “What’s your plan?”
Dale blinked at him. “My plan?”
“That’s right, your plan. If I’m in charge of this boat, I don’t just want criticisms, I want alternatives.”
“We could question the girl harder. I’m sure she knows more.”
“You going to break her fingers?”
Dale scowled. “If that’s what it takes.”
“Why not just hand her back to Hoffen cops? They’ll do it for you. Be easier if you hadn’t told them to fuck off.”
“We don’t need station cops to…”
Erik’s uplink blinked, and he turned his back on Dale. “Go ahead Phoenix.”
“LC,” came Shilu’s voice. “Transmission from the Major, ended ten seconds ago, no reply possible on this relay it’s all one way.”
“Copy Phoenix, send transmission.”
“Hello Phoenix, please transmit to the LC.” It was Trace’s voice, crackling with light static. From Faustino, it would be coming in at least a few seconds delayed, more with the com relays. “We have who we came for, his information is dramatic. We’re leaving now, could get hairy. Keep your eyes open.”
Click, as Shilu came back on. “That’s it LC, did you get all of that?”
“I got it Phoenix. The Major’s last words apply to you too. LC out.” He disconnected in frustration. None of them could say more with Fleet listening. He turned to Dale. “That’s Trace, she’s got Romki, says his information is dramatic, she’s getting out now. Thinks it’s about to blow up by the sound of it.”
Thud! Something distant reverberated through the walls and floor. Thud! Thud! “Those are explosions,” Dale said on coms to his squad. “Something’s going down. Everyone defensive, I want one observer at the windows, everyone else keep the hell away from them.” He disconnected, and strode for the main room. “LC, this way.”
In the big suite, marines were refastening helmets, and moving away from the big observation windows. One of them took Ivette, looking bewildered as she went to stand by a bedroom doorway. Others opened the suite’s big doors onto the hall, where two more marines were stationed, with another two up the hallway at the elevators and stairs. “LT,” said Lance Corporal Carponi on coms, “I’m hacked into the elevators, but I’ve got no reading on those stairs.”
“Just keep a door open and listen,” said Dale, striding to Ivette. A main room screen showed station news feed, a reporter doing a hurried piece to camera, words scrolling across the screen, warning of multiple bombings and a code red. “Girl, what’s happening? Are you in on this?”
“It’s started,” Ivette said breathlessly. Outside the observation windows, huge red lights began flashing, and a siren echoed across the park. Walls and floor began a low rumbling as blast covers rolled slowly across the transparent ceiling.
Dale grabbed her by the collar, threateningly. “Are you in on this?”
“No!” She pawed ineffectually at his fist. “No, I just… know the people who are.” Thud. More distant this time, as Dale looked up, measuring this detonation in his mind from long experience of such things.
“What comes next?”
“I don’t know! This is just a distraction though, it’s much bigger than this.” Dale looked at Erik, who took his rifle from its shoulder strap, and wondered if he’d ever feel comfortable with its heavy weight.
“The security weakpoint is all the ships on the rim,” Erik said grimly. “Hoffen’s security clearance hasn’t been high enough to access all of them, especially not the big corporate freighters. I think they’ve underestimated the threat. If something big is still to come, that’s where it’ll come from.”
“While all the security is responding to these explosions,” Dale muttered. “LC, the Major’s moving, I say we go pick her up and get the hell out of this system.”
“I agree,” said Erik. “But if we move immediately we could trigger a security response. We’re certainly being watched, if we dash now they’ll assume we had something to do with it and hit us. Let’s give it ten minutes and see what’s unfolding in response to those explosions.”
“That’s a good thought,” said Dale, “but I’m concerned we don’t have ten minutes…”
“Get down!” yelled Private Tong by the main windows, as Dale grabbed Erik who was diving anyway. An earsplitting crash as everything went sideways, and the air was full of flying glass and things breaking.
“Get in!” someone was yelling, hauling Erik up as he ran and dove into the ensuite bathroom adjoining this bedroom. Other marines piled in, and Erik joined the armoured pile on the tiled floor as suddenly the walls were shaking with rapid, repeating impacts. Hands grabbed Erik and dumped him into the bathtub, then Ivette and Private Reddy piled on top, and someone elbowed Erik in the head.
“Down, stay down!” Dale was shouting, as walls thudded and more things broke. A chain gun, he realised. At least one, fired from somewhere across the park, through the main windows… that first shot had been an RPG of some kind. It sounded like hailstones outside, but in these bedrooms and bathrooms away from the main window, bullets had to travel through multiple walls.
“Hallway!” Sergeant Forrest yelled, and the sound of shooting over coms. Forrest had been one of the four guarding the hall stairwell and elevators. “Under fire!” And in the background… “Get him!” “Watch the corner!” “Masks! Masks!” Meaning someone was using gas out there. They were trying to storm the suite, Erik realised. Who ‘they’ were, he had no idea.
Then Private Reddy was yanking his own facemask from its pouch, and Erik cursed as he realised the marines had theirs on already… he grabbed it, fastened over his nose and mouth, and flinched as a bullet broke tiles somewhere overhead. Even as he pulled it tight, cold, compressed air flowed into his lungs. Another tile smashed, and someone swore.
“Stay down!” Dale told them. “Let ‘em spend ammo! Woody, status?”
“Lots of gas, can’t see shit!” came Sergeant Forrest’s reply. More gunfire. “They’re in the stairwell, and they tried explosive egress into the next apartment! Came out the
door, we killed about…” more gunfire, and some shouting. “…killed about five! Ricky and Hap are clearing that room, we might have just got another way out!”
“Let’s go!” someone else snapped, and some hard breathing that sounded like several marines sprinting. “LT, this is Kalo, I’m out the door with Buzz. Sarge, where to?”
Wham! as something else hit the room outside, and the air itself seemed to gasp in shock. Another RPG, Erik reckoned. “Can’t stay here all day LT,” said Reddy against Erik’s ear. “The LC’s not that pretty.”
“You just volunteered, Spots,” Dale told him.
“Thank you sir,” said Reddy as he rolled out of the tub and onto the tiles with a clatter of armour. The bullet impacts paused, and Reddy scrambled out of the doorway.
“You okay?” Erik asked the terrified girl in the tub with him. Ivette nodded wordlessly, her nose bleeding again.
“Got an exit,” came Private Ricardo. “Upstairs through the hole they made. Dumb fuckers didn’t leave enough reserve, all dead now.”
Bullet impacts in the room outside resumed. Erik tried to get his rifle out from where he’d managed to get it wedged beneath him, lifting his head just enough as he shifted to see a round bullet hole in the tiles just above him. He stared. When the hell had that gotten there? Another loud crack!, and he flinched.
“LC!” said Dale. “You’re next! Leave the girl!”
“I’m not leaving the fucking girl,” Erik retorted. “They’ll kill her.” He got up to a crouch, expecting to get a hole in him any moment. It wasn’t that he was not frightened, he thought, it was more that he didn’t know what he felt. Everything was too fast and too intense, and if he didn’t do exactly what his marines told him, he’d cause them an inconvenience that could get one or a number of them killed. And that scared him as badly as getting hit himself.
The bullet strikes paused again. “LC go!” Dale snapped, and Erik grabbed Ivette and leaped from the tub. Ivette was slow getting around the bathroom corner and he half carried her with his left arm, through smoke and debris from a barely recognisable presidential suite, everything aflame and shot to bits. As he made for the main hall doors the bullets started up again, and for the first time he felt real terror to hear their shrill staccato shweet-and-thud as they tore the air. Then he was out the door, and abruptly hit from behind as someone dragged him down and rolling on the hallway floor as bullets struck nearby. It was Dale, he realised, lying on top of him for protection as the bullets came, then hauling him up and shoving him on as he in turn collected Ivette and ran.
“You gotta leave her sir!” Private Tong yelled at him from the doorway opposite the elevators, catching his arm. “She’ll slow us the fuck down!” As Erik stared at the hole in the ceiling of the room beyond, where attackers had blown the floor and come charging in. Their bodies lay sprawled about the room, the walls sprayed with blood. Evidently a marine had come in the door after the ceiling had blown, and shot them all as they jumped through the hole. Another of those things that might work against criminal gangs and terrorists, but weren’t worth shit against Fleet marines who’d seen it all before.
And Erik saw Dale coming up behind Ivette as he paused in the doorway, and thought for a wild moment that Dale would just shoot her to save him the decision. “Go down the hall!” he yelled at the girl. “Get in one those rooms, hide, and surrender to the first security who enter!”
“I want to come with you!” Ivette protested.
“You can’t!” Dale yelled, and shoved her down the hall. “Go!” Several other room doors had been kicked open by marines to save time at the next explosive entry from above. Then he shoved Erik into the room, and he went. Erik shouldered his rifle, found firm footing amidst the debris on the floor, and leaped. He was not marine-augmented, but he had enough of a vertical leap to grab an exposed rim even in armour, and haul himself up.
Above, he was in another hotel room, rolling on scorched carpet to find more armoured bodies against the walls, and a marine in a combat crouch by the doorway — Private Ricardo, he saw, and waving him past. She joined him as he ran up the hall, saw another armoured body on the ground, neck and face punctured by rifle fire. Then a T-junction, and a left turn to an engineering access door, god knew how the marines had found it, only it was their job to know these layouts, as Trace had told him, and then he was being hustled inside. A scramble along a narrow steel grating, ducking low pipes overhead, then a tight steel stairwell with another marine at the top, gesturing them to stop.
Barely ten seconds later, Dale and the remaining marines arrived behind, footsteps thundering on the steel grate. “That’s it, we’re all here?” Erik gasped. Dale ushered him on without an answer, and he went down the stairs fast. Another rushed and stupid Fleet HQ decision, he thought — both here and on Homeworld, Fleet made the same mistakes with them, making panicked, hasty decisions on the spot. They’d not used marines in this assault, probably fearing that marines would have refused, and couldn’t have given this assault team much time to prepare. Attacking on short notice against marines the caliber of Alpha First Squad was always likely to end badly. He still didn’t allow himself to believe they were all still alive until they reached the access to an adjoining hall outside of the hotel complex, and saw that Kalo, Chavez, Lauda and Reddy, the four he hadn’t seen since the Presidential suite, were all waiting ahead and unhurt.
Lance Corporal Carponi shouldered past to take his place at the lead with Second Section — Ricardo, Halep and Yu. “Let’s go,” he said, and out into the corridor at a jog.
“LC,” said Dale, and yanked him along with the rest of First Section, as Third Section brought up the rear. These corridors were residential, with lines of doors broken by shop windows and random offices. All lights were tinged red, and an alarm siren was sounding. Mostly there was no one else around, and the one civilian they passed seemed not alarmed to see marines doing what marines did in emergency alerts — running in formation with weapons.
“We need to call PH-4 for pickup,” said Erik to Dale at his shoulder. He recalled not so long ago, jogging with Dale along the green and wealthy streets near his family home. So familiar, yet it seemed like another universe, and another age. “We’re not getting back to Phoenix through the hub.”
“Already done it,” said Dale. “They won’t leave yet, they’ll want to make it as fast and direct as possible. We won’t be at the pickup point for a while yet.” And if they got held up on the way, PH-4 would be left waiting for someone to blow them out of the sky.
“If the girl’s right, a whole bunch of shit might be about to break loose,” said Erik. “Might make good cover.”
“Yep,” said Dale. “Watch this corner.” They slowed as the marines ahead cleared it. “That girl could have been their target. Might have thought she was recruiting us to join the Worlders.”
“Fuck no,” said Erik, as they resumed a regular jog. “That’s no reason to shoot up a nice hotel. That was a panic move — Fleet HQ panics a lot with this stuff, which might tell you something.”
“Tells me they’re a bunch of fucking fools,” Dale growled.
“It has to be Trace. She’s found something she wasn’t supposed to find, and they don’t want us to go get her. They’re not up to shooting at Phoenix yet, but if they kill her commander they won’t have to.”
“That means the Major’s about to get hammered next,” said Dale.
* * *
“Go Hiro,” said Trace as she bounced along one of the big service tunnels in the midst of her marines. Romki was right behind her, and thank god he wasn’t one of those delicate academic types or he could have really slowed them down. Stanislav Romki was a traveller, a man accustomed to making his own way in all sorts of environments, and to judge from the way he moved, Trace reckoned he even had some physical augmentations of the high-performance variety. Doubtless it gave him a respectability among the chah'nas that would come in handy.
“Major you need to get out,” said H
iro. “I’ve run through local manifests for arrivals on the Crondike secure mainframe. I’ve got three local shuttles from nearby bases with no ID, and the local manifest refuses to query them, against all regulations.”
“We’re moving now,” said Trace. “ETA on those shuttles?”
“One in five minutes, all three in ten. I also can’t find another thirty personnel who’ve arrived within the last two hours. I think they’re already here… and we were in transit for six hours.”
“Who, do you think?”
“Marines would be conspicuous, and loyalty could be a problem if they knew who their target was. At a guess I’d think Star Force commandos. Heuron’s been a problem for a while, HQ has been building local elite security, far better than your usual cops. Not marine standard, but then this is their home ground.”
“Copy Hiro, we’ll make it fast.”
“One more thing, I had to take out a couple of people to get access to the mainframe. I’ll be fine once the other distractions start, but if you hear other alarms shortly, that’ll be me.”
Trace shortened her bounces a little, and let Romki draw up alongside. “What’s your combat training?”
“Uh… chah'nas martial arts, some basic firearms.” Nervously. “And I can curl up into a very small ball. Nothing that will be very useful in a firefight.”
“Curling into a small ball is sometimes very useful. Basic first aid?”
Romki nodded. “Of course. Moderately advanced, actually.”
“Good. If there’s shooting, the non-shooter gets to treat the wounded. That means you.” She flipped to coms, seeing the access tunnel ending ahead. “Guys, tunnel end ahead, watch for ambush.”
Two more bounces, then, “Down!” yelled Corporal Rael up front, and marines in mid-jump caught rails and swung themselves violently down or to the sides as shots echoed ahead, seeking cover against the big pipes or beside and beneath the walkway. Trace bounced sideways under the pipes as Kono pulled Romki after them, and bullets cracked and whined off the steel. Rael and Second Section opened fire ahead, keeping heads down while Trace came up on the far side of the pipes, where there was no walkway, only a tangle of support struts, cables and air venting.
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