Turning Point (Galaxy's Edge Book 7)

by Jason Anspach

  “Hey, Fish,” Chhun called. One last thing before he allowed himself to sleep. “How’s your ankle?”

  “Probably jacked up, but I took a narco-shot to cut off the pain receptors. If it still hurts, I won’t know until tomorrow.”

  “Roger.” Chhun closed his eyes. I could probably fall asleep right now, he thought to himself.

  And then the crack of the sniper rifle sounded, and Chhun’s mind, which had been slipping along the current to some tropical island, was violently brought back to the here and now.

  “That was quick,” Masters said as he fiddled with the scope’s range.

  The HUD in Chhun’s helmet showed a black dot where Masters had made the kill. Just around the corner of a building several hundred meters to the east. “There’s probably more with him,” Chhun said. “Watch the area.”

  “Oooh, good idea, Cap,” said Masters mockingly. “Guys, listen to Cap. Apparently the donks are working together to kill us. Whatever you do, don’t kill one and then strip your weapon and call it quits. Guys… there are more of them.”

  Chhun rolled the back of his bucket against the door on which he sat propped. As Bear and Fish laughed, he felt a profound thanks that the fighting here in the slums had slowed enough to allow for such a moment. The leejes down below from the quick reaction force were probably feeling the same way. It had been a while since they’d communicated. Chhun decided to check in with Sergeant Vix.

  “How’s your lieutenant?” he asked, not bothering with call signs.

  “Stable, thanks,” replied Vix. “We’re thinking of making a push for Camp Rex. What do you think?”

  Chhun considered a moment before responding. “It’s gotten quieter, yeah. Streets home are probably hiding a few more IEDs than when you first came.”

  Vix paused, considering as well. “Thing is,” he finally replied, “we’re pretty much all black on charge packs. Twins are pretty good, but even the tanks only have a few blast canisters left.”

  Chhun could empathize with the sergeant who found himself stuck in an ambush he’d never asked for, tasked with assuming a command he also hadn’t requested. The leej was probably second-guessing himself between every trigger pull.

  “We could use a resupply ourselves,” Chhun said. Victory Team had jumped down loaded with everything they’d need for the fight, but nothing lasts forever. “Tell you what. We’re not exactly high priority right now, but the fight is winding down. I’ll see if I can pull some Dark Ops strings.”

  The truth was that Dark Ops didn’t have any magical ability to get things done. But the image of an elite, if not pampered and privileged, class of legionnaires persisted among the rank and file. Chhun used to think it himself when he first joined the Legion.

  Vix seemed upbeat upon hearing the words. “That would be great,” he said.

  Chhun hailed Major Owens over his comm, vaguely aware that he wasn’t getting the rest he was supposed to be enjoying. Oh well. No one to blame but himself.

  “I was just about to call you, Captain,” Owens said.

  “Oh yeah?” Chhun went right into a sitrep brief. “Things are quieting down here. Most of the zhee have fled the streets. A few armed elements rally enough to try a charge, but they’re paying for it. Buy stock in Republic Robotics because this planet is gonna need some serious sanitation bots out in force to clean up all the dead.”

  “Okay,” Owens said, sounding just distracted enough that Chhun figured maybe the call he’d mentioned wasn’t to get an update. “Listen, the guy we wanted, Bum Kali, he’s not where he was supposed to be.”

  And that’s why you send Dark Ops in to make the grab before you invade the planet. But Chhun kept that thought to himself. Keller had his reasons, and they were usually correct.

  “Is he on planet?” he asked.

  “He is. I made contact with some of the zhee from off-world—you know how much they hate each other. One of the shared contacts we have with Andien Broxin sold us some intel: the location where the shuttle pilot was killed. We compared our aerial measurements of the building with interior readings taken from the footage of the execution. It’s a match.”

  A map snaking from Chhun’s position to a warehouse in the middle of the slums appeared on his HUD. The report of the sniper rifle split the silence, and Masters let out a quiet whoop into his squad comm.

  Chhun studied the map—and the holo of the target, a nasty-looking zhee with a pompous air that made him want to jump in and punch the donk in the face. Chhun’s team could get this done. He was sure of it. But something else nagged at him.

  “Sir,” he said. “About the source. I’m not sure that Andien Broxin’s contacts should be on the white list.”

  “Because of the thing with Captain Ford?” Owens let a sigh escape into the comm. “Look, I know you two go way back, and he led us to Nero. But I still have major issues with how he’s choosing to deal with this situation. If you’re asking me to trust Ford, I’m telling you to trust this intel.”

  “Yes, sir.” Chhun looked around at the darkening sky. Fires were lit in the streets, whether to prevent or spot movement or to keep warm, he didn’t know, but their localized glow made the badlands of Ankalor City pulse and throb with malice. “We can go now, but the QRF is hoping for a way home.”

  “They can try it,” Owens replied, “but I only have limited assets on hand, and those are to support you. Most of what we’ve got is either out cleaning up or held in reserve.”

  Chhun squeezed his eyes shut, then blinked away a sudden fatigue. “Can you get us a minor orbital and some buzz ships?”

  “I can…” Owens’s reply seemed stuffed with unspoken caveats. “What did you have in mind?”

  ***

  Sergeant Vix had the wounded loaded in sleds. He mixed them with combat-effective leejes so that they could fight back no matter where the donks might strike the column on its way back to Camp Rex. He’d had the dead tied to the tanks, trusting that the warriors being borne on those hulking war machines would somehow understand that Vix was only doing what he had to do to get them all out of there. Doing what needed to happen so that no leej was left behind.

  “We all set?” he asked over company comm.

  The beat up Grinders and Reapers of the QRF gave an affirmative just as the low drone of the incoming Republic—no, Legion—buzz ships approached from the Grodan Wastes. Vix smiled. These ships were as ugly as a Ffajan warthog, but Oba could they dust everything in their path.

  Through his bucket’s visor, Vix watched the buzz ships assume a holding pattern out over the wastes, free of any care of being shot down now that the Legion recon team had disabled or destroyed the anti-air defense network. Vix hopped into the open maw of his waiting combat sled, not wanting to be outside for what was coming next. He thought of the kill team, probably still on that roof, and gave a quick prayer that the operators who’d risked their own lives to save his would be all right.

  No sooner had he sat down on a jump seat next to Keystroke—whose right sleeve of armor was stripped away, the blaster-burnt flesh covered in skinpacks—than the ground rattled from the orbital bombardment.

  “Turn on holofeed,” Vix ordered, wanting a glimpse of the very fist of god as it crashed down on the buildings surrounding what had once been a legionnaire last stand.

  Massive blaster battery shots streaked down like meteors, obliterating buildings, gutting them, causing them to collapse and crumble until the forward holoscreen was useless to relay anything but a massive cloud of dust.

  The thunderous assault stopped, and the buzz ships began to settle in above. As the dust settled, and the drivers reported in sufficient visibility to get going, Vix gave the order for the caravan to begin its winding trail back to Camp Rex. A tank driver called out zhee targets in the open, fleeing from the wreckage of the orbital strike that had laid waste to this part of the badlands. The buzz ships swooped ahead slowly, their heavy chain blasters methodically sending pieces of zhee and permacrete misting into t
he ether, paving a path of absolute ruin for the depleted QRF to follow.

  Vix knew his men would reach the safety of Camp Rex without having to fire another shot in anger. His thoughts shifted to Captain Chhun and the Victory Kill Team.

  Their night was just beginning.

  ***

  Chhun stood motionless in the shadows at the base of the building his team had defended for so much of the day. His leejes were unseen ghosts hiding in the black of night. A chrono in his bucket counted down from five hundred as he looked through his visor at the unequivocal ruin that spanned for what passed as four city blocks before him.

  Dust hung heavy in the air, as though the blast had freed it from the shackles of gravity, allowing it to just hover like a fog. Small fires burned among piles of rubble—the toppled buildings from the orbital strike. Exposed power conduits sparked and popped, their raw energy calling out portents of death to any who would touch them. The strike had cut power from the neighborhoods. All was dark.

  A slight breeze sent paper and other debris gently sweeping down the rubble-strewn streets. Dead zhee from the day’s combat lay covered beneath fallen stones and dirt, the dust stanching their blood, making everything look like it rested under a layer of volcanic ash. It seemed as though the entire galaxy had died, and all that remained was the dark and those who operated within that darkness: the black-armored Dark Ops legionnaires.

  The counter reached zero. No sounds. No movement. No survivors.

  “Let’s go,” Chhun whispered over L-comm. “We stay unseen. Ooah?”

  The three other members of the team grunted their assent and followed Chhun into the darkness. Their feet made soft crunching sounds in the loamy streets as they followed the pathway superimposed on their HUD, trusting their night vision, thermal, and IR to expose any zhee before they themselves could be seen.

  As they moved to the edge of the flattened sections of neighborhood and into the intact streets—the place where the zhee might not all be dead—they encountered a lone fifty-five-gallon drum burning excrement and scrap wood in the middle of the street. One by one, each legionnaire of Victory Squad moved swiftly past it, weapon shouldered and ready to fire, so that the soldiers needed only to lock eyes on a target before pulling the trigger. Chhun crossed first, then Masters, Fish, and Bear. Each man covering their exposed brother. Each man’s shadow appearing as an inhuman giant as the orange light from the fire flickered before an abandoned building.

  Safely returned to the dark, the team moved through trash-ridden alleys and narrow streets like avenging angels—visitors from the spirit realm.

  When they reached a crudely constructed eight-foot-high wood fence that blocked off an alley, Chhun motioned for Bear to come forward, and the two of them held out their hands to providing footing for Masters to use to boost himself over.

  Masters put his food in the makeshift stirrup and peeked his head over the fence before slowly lowering himself back down. “Big group of zhee coming this way,” he whispered into his comm.

  The legionnaires pressed themselves against the walls, sinking into the liquid ink of the blackest shadows, as a company-sized element of zhee marched down the street, waving their battle flag and screaming some unified battle psalm. They were headed toward the retreating column, no doubt hoping to kill just a few more legionnaires before they had the chance to reach the Green Zone and Camp Rex. This was by Chhun’s own design—what he had hoped for. That the noisy departure, coupled with the buzz ships and word of a battered force running, would bring the zhee out, leaving Victory Squad room to operate freely.

  A few zhee paused and stared with their soulless eyes through knotholes in the fence, looking directly at the Dark Ops legionnaires that hid only meters away, but not seeing them in the shadows. Soon the entire element was gone. This time Masters and Fish formed the boost, intending to get the biggest legionnaire over first.

  From the opposite end of the alley, Chhun heard a crunch of broken glass. He raised his rifle and watched as a lone zhee turned a corner and began walking in their direction. The donk stopped, and it was clear that it could see Chhun… or at least see his form in the darkness.

  On a thousand other worlds, Chhun would have put a finger to his bucket’s mouth, telling the interloper to keep quiet. Then he and his team would disappear. But this was Ankalor. Chhun aimed down his sights and sent a suppressed shot into the zhee’s forehead, dropping the alien in a crumpled heap in the middle of the alley. He lowered his rifle, letting it hang on the sling, then boosted up to the top of the fence with Masters’s help, straddling the top and holding out his hand for Masters to pull himself up after.

  The team moved quietly toward the target warehouse. The building was just a few blocks away, but if the intel was accurate, the threat factor would rise exponentially. Chhun halted the squad before a street lined with dented and beat-up speeders parked on either side. He knew that Owens likely had an observation bot watching from overhead.

  “Does the peeper have a clue on what our optimal approach looks like?” Chhun asked.

  “Don’t have one nearby,” Owens replied. “Your idea was a good one, and we’re running with it. So not only are the buzz ships, QRF, and other assets moving out of the city to the Green Zone, we’ve pulled all observation bots. Don’t want to risk Bum Kali getting paranoid and thinking we know where he’s hiding by spotting a peeper overhead.”

  That made sense. Chhun wasn’t crazy about it though. “Acknowledged.” He motioned for his team to cross the road, moving in pairs, each man covering the next.

  “Okay,” Chhun said on reaching the darkened shadow of a building on the other side. “We’ve got no observation bots in the sky.”

  “That sucks,” moaned Bear.

  “For real,” whispered Masters. “There’s, like, an entire fleet up there in open warfare, and we’re running around like this is another off-slate grab on a friendly planet.”

  “They don’t want to spook the target,” said Chhun, peering around a corner to spy farther up the street. He could see the corner prow of the warehouse, but his bucket didn’t detect any beings on the ground or in the lone visible window. “And we don’t want that either. If we miss him here, we may not get another chance.”

  “That,” Fish added, “or someone else is gonna have to go in and finish the job. Always tougher the second time.”

  “Exactly,” Chhun agreed. “We’re almost at target, so let’s keep frosty and quiet. We don’t want ’em to know we’re even in the room with them until out boots are on their donk necks.”

  The three legionnaires nodded.

  Chhun moved along the shadows, leading the team through the quiet of the night to the warehouse perimeter. Somewhere in the distance, an animal gave a bark, probably guarding the place. Victory Squad moved to the warehouse terminal, passing bay after bay, looking for an unrolled door that would provide them entry. The place was huge. They needed to get inside without alerting anyone—making their big push only when they could be sure the target was in range.

  “All these doors are shut,” said Bear, “but I can probably tear one of ’em open. Don’t look strong.”

  Chhun looked up at a high window just above a corrugated metal awning that protected a double-sized terminal door. The window had a protective cage that was bent and twisted enough that it no longer served its purpose. They would be able to make it through. “Let’s get in through there,” he said, pointing at the breach. “Masters, you first.”

  “Yep.” Masters slung his rifle over his shoulder and moved to the awning, jumping to grab the ledge with both hands and pulling himself up. He made the most minuscule of clattering noises, then crept to the window’s opening and peered inside. “Bit of a drop, but I don’t see anyone.”

  “You two stay here,” Chhun said to Fish and Bear. “I’ll go in with Masters and we’ll let you in.”

  Chhun followed Masters’s route and unspooled a length of synth-rope while Masters kept his blaster ready, scanning for
trouble. But just as he’d gotten one end of the rope tied around the security bar as an anchor, a sudden squealing from below indicated that the door beneath him was abruptly rolling up.

  Chhun and Masters were unable to see anything below them.

  “Two zhee,” reported Fish. “One of ’em is squatting to take a leak, the other is lighting a joint.”

  Bear’s voice bespoke an obvious portent. “We slipped into the shadows, more or less, but if they look this way…”

  “C’mon,” Chhun ordered Masters.

  The two men took hold of the synth ropes and quietly lowered themselves into the warehouse, ending up directly behind the zhee. The aliens, each of whom had a PK-9A blaster rifle slung around his shoulders, were talking quietly to one another, passing the joint between them.

  Chhun pulled a thin stretch of impervisteel cable from his gauntlet armor and nodded at Masters, who did the same.

  Bathed in the shadows, the two Dark Ops legionnaires threw the cables around the necks of the zhee in tandem. They pulled tight and twisted.

  The zhee clutched and clawed instinctively at their long necks, their vocal patterns completely silenced by the attack. Chhun and Masters pulled harder, helping the dying aliens to their knees as their claws scraped away the flesh from their throats in panicked attempts to resume the flow of air.

  When the struggling stopped, the legionnaires released their death grips. Bear and Fish peeled themselves off the wall and hopped up onto the dock plate to enter the warehouse. Bear drew a knife from his webbing and slit the zhee’s throats.

  “Just in case,” he said as pools of blood formed beneath the two dead sentries, spilling in rapid drips off the terminal dock.

  The terminal entry point they’d breached was an open area, probably used for staging or unloading freight. Farther in was row after row of racking that towered up to the ceiling, most of them bare. To the team’s left was a sort of open break area with dilapidated tables and toppled lockers. Behind that was a walled-off area.