by G T Almasi
The other Vindicator reloads his Bitchgun, a wildly destructive but notoriously challenging heavy weapon. It’s basically a mortar that’s fired like a rifle. The one time I tried it the recoil nearly dislocated my shoulder, and don’t even ask where my shot flew off to.
In addition to tremendous strength, an effective Bitchgun operator must possess superb balance, outstanding flexibility, and the stoic discipline to master what I’ve heard described as square-dancing with a bucking bronco. But the payoff is big. Those few agents who wield The Bitch dispense more damage per pound than almost anyone.
Mr. Bitchgun walks toward us, waving away the Wild West pea soup. “So,” he says, grinning. “Still haven’t given up smoking, have you, Shortcake?”
Raj.
48
TEN MINUTES LATER, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 12:57 P.M. CEST
LEIPZIGERPLATZ, BERLIN
King splits us into three units. “Scarlet, you and Raj take care of the buildings on the east side of the street, I’ll deal with the west side, and Patrick, I want you to hang back and trail us.”
Even though he’s not armed, my partner usually follows me into the thick of things. “King,” Brando says. “I’ll be a lot more useful if—”
King interrupts. “You’ll maintain our situational awareness from the roofs. We”—King indicates us gun-toters—“will be practically blind and we’ll need the oversight.”
“Oh,” my partner says quietly. “Good idea.”
Patrick is usually the one to think of that sort of thing. King passes a canteen of water around as we reload our weapons.
“Hey.” I bump my elbow into Brando’s arm. “You all right?”
“Yeah, fine.”
“I’m not used to you being outsmarted by a big lug like King.”
Patrick glares at me with twin steak knife factories.
Maybe that wasn’t such a good thing to say.
“Sorry.” I pinch his side. “That didn’t come out the way I meant it.”
Brando sighs and wraps my fingers with his. When the Vindys aren’t looking, Patrick and I give each other a parting kiss.
“Give ’em hell, Hot Stuff,” my partner comms.
Raj and I find the stairs to the upper floors. On the way we discuss how to play this. Our infrareds indicate dozens of armed troops in this building. We agree the only way we’ll keep up with a murder-train like King is to eschew stealth for speed.
We reach the entrance to the second floor. A group of soldiers crouch in the space beyond. I look at Raj, who raises his Bitchgun to his shoulder and nods at me. I dive through the open portal and handspring toward an office across the hall.
Our approach has been anticipated. Slugs zing past my spinning limbs and rip holes in the carpet. The shooters all wear black SZ uniforms. Once I’ve attracted their undivided attention, Raj marches into the passageway and grinds the pigdogs into Butthead Stroganoff.
“Clear,” Raj comms.
I return to the hall with my guns ready. Raj takes point as we move away from the stairs to the floor’s interior. The competitors in here are all crouched by the windows, so we come at them from behind no matter which direction we go. Their positions are strongest if they coordinate their fire with the defenders across the center boulevard to the west. But some of them also have to cover the back-side approaches from the streets to the east.
Raj and I move toward the west side of the floor. I scout ahead for more SZ defenders. When I find them I again draw their fire with another dazzling gymnastics move. Then, as before, Raj steps up and Bitchslaps ’em to Pretzelritaville.
Boom! Down.
We approach the windows overlooking Leipzigerplatz.
“King,” Raj comms, “we have eyes high. The plaza looks empty.”
“Good,” King answers. “Can you and Scarlet suppress the windows on the far side?”
“Yes, sir,” Raj comms. “Commencing now.” He slings his Bitchgun around his shoulders and pulls out an LB504. I keep my two pistols in my hands and squat next to a window. Leipzigerplatz is ringed with heavyset buildings nearly identical to this one. Their rows of windows glare at the plaza like grouchy, square-faced bureaucrats.
“Ready, Scarlet?” Raj comms.
“Ready,” I comm. “Open fire.”
We lean out the windows and spray bullets at the plaza’s west side. The drifting smoke makes it hard to identify targets over there, so we shoot out every window we can see. Beneath us, King charges across the wide street. The big marauder rushes a small shop full of ceramic vases, wineglasses, and porcelain plates. The front door yields to his size four hundred boot, and he disappears inside.
“I’m in,” King comms. “Raj, Scarlet, continue your sweep.”
“Yes, sir,” Raj comms. “Darwin, how do things look from your position?”
Patrick replies from his station, one building south. “The street’s clear of enemies, but I see a lot of rooftop lookouts farther up the axis.”
“Okay,” Raj comms. “Stay put. We’ll advise you when to shift position.”
“Understood,” Patrick comms.
Most of these buildings consist of three stories of monotonously stacked rows of square offices and endlessly long hallways. Speer had a lot of ambition but not much imagination. Everything he built is like an enormous collection of children’s blocks glued into rectangular stacks, one after another. I don’t know if Speer designed the defenses himself, but his Brutalist aesthetic certainly lends itself to fortification.
Raj leads the way upstairs. At the top of the flight, he moves left toward the rooms overlooking the axis. I turn right to violently evict everyone from the east-side offices. I activate Manhattan Radar Mode to let me see and hear as much as possible.
I follow my pistols down a short hall and enter a passage lined with office doors. Beside each door is a little plastic plate with someone’s name printed on it. Within HERR SCHENBOCK’s office lurk a trio of gun-toting orange humans. I aim at the warm shapes. Li’l Bertha and Punx bang a bunch of holes through the door, the meatbags, the furniture, walls, radiators, everything.
Doors up the hall open and belch out a string of mooks. Each is armed with a K-110 rifle and a belt full of grenades. I drop to the floor and fire fast bursts as they step from their doorways. After losing three or four of their pals, the rest of the jerkoffs retreat to their defensive posts.
I run into the long hallway and stop to relieve Deadie number one of his grenade supply. Then I continue my race up the sweat-stinking passage. When I pass an office door, I throw a grenade. I do this five times before the first blast goes off. I bomb the last office and kick open a stairway door to hide from the rapidly approaching snake of detonating pocket-boomies. The scorched walls shake as chunks of plastered cement drop from the ceiling. Each explosion very abruptly compresses my eardrums. When my ears recover, I hear a popping sound.
Blam! Pa-pop! Blam! Pa-pop!
My Madrenaline is flowing faster than fortified wine at a hobo hoedown. I bound up the stairs and burst slathering onto the roof like a crazed WereScarlet. A group of SZ buttcakes line the parapet overlooking the main avenue. They fire their rifles into the street. Volleys of incoming bullets splatter against the heavy stonework, showering the defenders with bits of rock and dust. The Fritzes duck into cover, then stand to resume shooting at our Loyalist allies below.
I hold Li’l Bertha in front of me. Her targeting system paints rectangular outlines around the men. She knows we’re in a heavy situation so she spins herself up and slams a .45-caliber Incendiary into each of the schlubs’ backs. Two of her victims topple off the roof, and the rest drop burning to the deck. The small-arms fire from the street stops.
“Who was that?” someone comms on an open channel.
I comm, “Who’s this?”
“It’s Jade. Scarlet, that you?”
>
“Oh, hey!” I pull us to a secure comm-channel. “Yeah, it’s me! Is Pericles with you?”
“No,” she comms. “He’s…” She suddenly stops talking. I think we’ve lost our comm-connection until she says, “He’s dead.”
“What? When?”
“We were taking the Friedrichshain Flak Towers. A ceiling fell in and crushed him. I was up ahead…” She stops again.
Oh shit. This just happened.
I’m not sure how long Pericles and Jade were together, but the short time we spent with them on Operation ANGEL earlier this year showed me how much they meant to each other.
“Jade, I’m so sorry.”
A pause, then, “Thanks.”
I look over the roof’s rim. Jade’s slight figure sneaks up the street, moving from one hiding place to the next. A lancing line of tracers from the north pound the pavement at Jade’s feet. She dodges the shots, jumps over a parked car, and flings herself across the avenue toward a ministry’s pillared entrance.
Jade’s next move defies physics. She leaps then jackknifes around a burst of bullets so sharply I swear she changes direction in midair. She rotates 180 degrees to complete a backward somersault, having begun her leap rolling forward.
Her tumbling form springs into the safety of the shadowed entryway. I have to replay her acrobatics in my Day Loop to understand it.
“Jade,” I comm. “You all right?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“Hell of a move, J-J.”
“Tell that to my chiropractor.”
I move to the northern edge of my roof. The next building is bristling with Gestapo ratskis. They busily load and fire automatic artillery pieces and belt-fed machine guns. It appears to be the last major stronghold south of the fortified hedgehog huddled around the Volkshalle.
“Raj,” I comm. “How you doin’?”
“The interior is secure. How’s the roof?”
“Vacant, but the emplacement next door looks like a real doozy. We’ve got help across the street.”
“That’s Jade?”
“Yep.”
“King,” Raj comms, “be advised you have a friendly Interceptor in your sector.”
King’s comm-voice sputters from an extended burst of gunfire. “Understood, Raj.”
“Jade,” I comm. “Did you hear all that?”
“I heard it, Scarlet. I’ll rendezvous with King and we’ll work this side of the axis.”
It takes a minute for the four of us to get in position. Jade runs inside to climb to the rooftops. I freshen the ammo in my pistols while my neuroinjector preheats my chems. We check in when we’re ready, then begin our sweep north.
Jade and I wait for the big boys to start the show on the lower floors. King runs into the plaza then charges north up the street. The donkey-dongs on the next roof lace the street with bullets and 20mm cannon fire. King reaches the next building, bashes his muscular bulk through a door, and vanishes inside. Jade’s much smaller shape flits high above the street, alighting on the roof above King.
Raj, meanwhile, takes a more direct route. He shoots a big hole in the wall two floors below me, blasts another hole in the wall across the alley, then jumps the gap between.
“Raj,” I comm. “You carrying more ammo than normal?”
“Ha,” Raj comms. “No, your father converted my Bitchgun to MultiCaliber so I can use ordnance I find in the field. Found myself a pile of forty-sevens from the anti-tank guns.”
I’m distracted from our conversation by an indoor fireworks show on the other side of the avenue. The shadowed rooms across the street strobe with angry yellow flashes before explosions blow the windows out. Writhing figures follow clouds of broken glass down to the pavement. Some of the enemy soldiers seem unwounded. I think they jumped out the windows to escape King’s March of Dooms.
Across the axis, Jade catches a group of SZ eggsuckers as they emerge from a smoke-filled stairway and stumble on to the roof. Her sidearms fire clip-draining hails of slugs that wipe out the entire squad.
“Great work, Jade,” I comm. “What’re you packin’?”
Jade approaches the rooftop’s exit. “My 503 and a new Mantis.”
“Nice.” I click Punx in and out of her magnetic pad in my palm.
Meanwhile, Raj commences his own Sturm und Drang next door. The explosions from his outgoing fire aren’t as dramatic as they normally are, but they come in very rapid succession. He’s using 47mm anti-tank shells scrounged from our competitors.
The spudheads emplaced across my alley watch their pals dying on the far side of the boulevard, and anxiously listen to Raj’s approach from the floors beneath them. What they aren’t watching is little ol’ me. I consider chucking grenades at them, but the armor-piercing anti-tank shells stacked around them makes me think that isn’t a good idea since I’m only fifty yards away from these jokers.
“Jade,” I comm. “You’re on WhackNet?”
“Yes.”
“Tap into my feed. Tell me if you can put a lid on my next objective so I can move in close.”
“Will do.”
I point Li’l Bertha at the rooftop strongpoint. My opponents’ heads barely show above the double wall of sandbags surrounding them. My pistol can’t get a lock, but at least Jade can see what I see.
King joins the comm-call. “Scarlet, I’m with Jade. We’ll suppress that position so you can advance.”
“Understood.”
Without further ado, my teammates across the axis open fire on the SZ competitors in the gun position. One of Jade’s shots sneaks through a viewing slot and actually hits a guy. King’s Gatling-fed fusillade is less precise but still very effective. All the dickwits in the sandbag fort hit the deck.
I jump across the alley, run at the stronghold, then launch myself up and over the position’s perimeter. Jade and King lift their fire.
My feet land amid the cowering gunners. I swing my arms from my sides to spray a double helix of slugs into the howling mass of gas and ass. My murderous redecorating job produces a nice new carpet of meat.
This place needed sprucing up anyway.
“Objective neutralized,” I comm. “They never saw me coming.”
“Good work,” King comms. “Raj, what’s your status?”
“The building beneath Scarlet is clear, but some of its defenders may have escaped north, toward the dome.”
“Very well,” King answers. “We’ll get ’em sooner or later. Scarlet, Darwin, and Raj, rendezvous at the Pariserplatz U-Bahn. It’s the next station north of here.”
“Yes, sir,” we all comm.
49
THREE MINUTES LATER, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1:36 P.M. CEST
BENEATH WILHELMSTRASSE, BERLIN
Patrick, Raj, and I jog along a dark passage beneath the north–south axis. Back home, a tunnel this old would be half full of water and rat shit. Here in Germany, the sum-bitch is cleaner than the toilets at a janitors’ convention.
These are the people who paint the undersides of tables.
Raj fills me in on what has happened around the “office.” The day the Executive Intelligence Chairman tried to shut us down, Director Kennedy spurred everyone in ExOps to a frenzy of motion that could have outpaced a stampeding herd of buffalo. The office-jockeys swept the contents of their desks into their trash cans, tucked them under their arms, then ran like hell. Admin staffers mummified their file cabinets with strapping tape before heaving them into the back of a truck. The Information Department tore open cushions from the lobby couches, then stuffed their desktop terminals and comm-gear inside. The only pieces of ExOps property handled delicately were the budget-busting jackframes, which were gently hustled out to a waiting row of taxis.
My father’s shop was the heaviest room, yet he packed in minutes. Dad had his assistants
tip a bunch of industrial-sized shipping crates on their sides. Then he used the shop’s forklift to bulldoze his tool cases and pricey raw materials into the crates. The assistants nailed the crates’ lids shut before the equipment could spill out, and they were outta there. Raj said that even four floors away, the screeching and clattering from the machine shop was so loud they had to shout to make themselves heard.
“I thought your father was trying to carry away the entire basement.”
In one hour the entire agency was on its way to the harbor—personnel, hardware, files, everything.
“Christ,” Patrick comms. “It sounds like you Grinched the place.”
“Absolutely,” Raj comms.
I ask, “How long is that exercise supposed to take?”
“A month,” Raj answers.
This incredibly rapid departure meant Tech, Info, and Admin had to reboot the servers, reorganize the files, and rearrange everyone by what they do instead of how fast they run, all in a completely inadequate setting none of them had ever seen before.
Once at sea, Bobby officially designated my father as Acting Front Desk of the German Section. During the voyage there wasn’t much for a Front Desk to do, so Dad fulfilled his Technical Department responsibilities by sketching ideas for a few new toys. One of the ship’s engineers gave my father permission to use the vessel’s machine room.
Big mistake. My father co-opted every piece of heavy equipment along with every sailor who knew how to use it. It wasn’t long before the machinists began to feel like elves in Santa’s workshop. They made supersized MultiCaliber for heavy weapons, rocket-powered sniper’s ammunition, and Frisbee-shaped grenades that could be thrown ten times farther than a normal pocket-bomb. The captain would have been pissed, except my father’s inventions were the most awesome gadgets he’d ever seen.
Not everyone had this much fun. The trip was rough on Cyrus. Honestly, I couldn’t believe someone so badly injured would have been part of ExOps’s disappearing act. Recovering double amputees aren’t supposed to leave the hospital, much less the fucking continent. The Meddies couldn’t keep his environment sanitary and sure enough, and Cyrus got a goddamn infection. My boss suffered from fevers and respiratory problems all the way to the Baltic Sea. The ship was still being secured harborside in Szczecin when the Med-Techs rushed Cyrus off board and straight into the nearest medical facility. Dr. Herodotus augmented the hospital staff with two of his Med-Techs because of Cyrus’s cybernetic upgrades. Three days later they commed Dr. H that their patient had stabilized enough to move out of intensive care.