by M. D. Cooper
“The heck?” Kal whispered, taking a step forward.
“What? Did you like him or something?” A woman’s voice came from his right, and he spun to see a trio of soldiers in SSF armor come into view. “He seemed like a bad guy, so I put him down.”
“Who the hell are you?” Kal whispered, still trying to put together a coherent flow of events for the past few minutes.
“Commander Maureen of the SSF.” The soldiers with her moved forward and disarmed the other three bounty hunters. “We ran into some trouble with our shuttle, so we decided to come down the old-fashioned way.”
“The old-fashioned way?” Barry had struggled to his feet, and was eyeing his rifle.
Maureen shook her head. “Best to leave that where it is, pal. This isn’t the sort of situation where we make friends quickly. Enemies, yes, friends, no.” She turned back to Kal. “And the old-fashioned way is called jumping.”
“Damn…”
Another group of soldiers emerged from further down the ravine, one of them shaking his head. “Kal Lance. Why am I not surprised to see you mixed up in this?”
The soldier’s helmet covered his face, but Kal would have known that voice anywhere.
“Grayson?”
“Colonel Grayson to you, Lieutenant.”
“I’m not SSF anymore.”
“Right,” Grayson said, as though his word was the thing that made it so. “What are you doing out here? And who are these people?”
“We’re hiding,” Kal began, but Grayson interrupted.
“Not so well, it would seem.”
“We had it handled,” Barry muttered.
A laugh came from the commander. “Sure you did, buddy. Handled right into a body bag.”
Kal shot Barry a quelling look, and the other man subsided. “We rescued these people from The Shade, but got trapped outside the dome. I was working on getting us transport to another city when…well…I guess I was wrong about the SSF not giving a shit about Gedri. I thought you’d be forming up against Scipio.”
“A lot’s changed in the last two weeks,” Grayson replied. “Silstrand’s allied with Scipio now. Plus a lot of other people. It’s our job to shore up the Fringe, and that starts with Gedri…and Maverick.”
Barry’s head snapped around. “You’re after Maverick?”
“Of course we are,” Grayson snorted. “Who else do you think we’d come down here for?”
“Then I’m coming with you.” Barry took a step forward, only to find several rifles pointed at his head.
Grayson shook his head. “Sorry, buddy. We need to get into The Shade and nab Maverick. That doesn’t work with civvies in tow.”
“He has my sister,” Barry insisted.
“He has a lot of people’s sisters.” Grayson’s tone contained no compassion. “And more of them will live if we get in fast and take him out. Then the GFA falls, and this mess gets cleaned up properly.”
“Have fun with that,” Kal chuckled. “People have been trying to ‘clean up’ Gedri for, well…just about ever.”
Grayson took three long strides forward, stopping in front of Kal. “How’d you get out here? Can we use it to get inside the dome?”
Kal nodded. “There’s an aqueduct. Runs to the Atmo Tower. Halfway through, there’s a pumping station. If you go through it, you’ll get to a lift shaft that will take you into the Red Zone, almost under The Shade.”
“Good.” Grayson nodded to his soldiers. “You can come with us. I’ve heard what a labyrinth the tunnels under Montral are.”
“Nope.” Kal shook his head. “You don’t need me. I can pass you the route.
Grayson reached up and pulled his helmet off, the same steely eyes Kal remembered from a decade ago boring into his own.
“I heard rumors about what happened to you, Kal. It was a raw deal. Samuel has a rep for screwing people over—but Maverick played a part in it too. Don’t you want to be there when we bring him in?”
“Capture, not kill?” Kal asked.
“Those are the orders.”
“And if something happens to him?”
The colonel straightened. “I imagine that would only be the case if our quarry put up an unreasonable resistance. Shit happens in the field, though. You know how it is.”
“Yeah,” Kal nodded. “I sure do.”
Barry looked as though he was about to explode, but Kal shook his head.
“I’ll bring her back, Barry. I promise. You keep everyone here safe until we come for you.”
“You’d better.” Barry sucked in a deep breath. “How will we know if you won?”
“There’s no ‘if’,” Grayson ground out the words. “And trust me, you’ll know.”
* * * * *
Grayson had given Kal a tactical cloak and fresh powercells for his rifle, then told him to stay in the rear of the formation. The rest of the troops had wordlessly accepted Kal’s presence, having picked up on the reference to his former rank in the military.
He couldn’t see their faces behind their helmets’ faceshields, but he wondered if they made room for him out of respect for his service, or because Grayson ordered it.
In a firefight, will they cover my back?
During his days in the SSF, he would have never doubted it, but years of living on Jericho had taught him that you could never really trust anyone.
Even so, he was sure they were glad for a guide. He’d been through the same training as the men and women around him, and he knew that they’d prepared for a lot of different combat situations, from storming starships to seizing cities. But none of that would prepare them for what it was like to fight in a Jerichan city.
Kal was surprised to hear such a nuanced viewpoint from Grayson. The man he remembered lived in a world without shades of grey. He wondered what had happened to change that.
The scouts updated the combat net with where Maverick’s people had barricaded the passage through the pumping station, as well markers for a dozen defenders.
Grayson moved to Kal’s side as the soldiers activated a-grav systems to avoid climbing the old ladders.
Kal nodded. He didn’t disagree, he’d just hoped they could make it further in before alerting Maverick to their presence.
A second later, the sound of combat broke out, the report of rifles echoing down the long tunnel. Kal was watching the battle unfold via the feeds on the combat net, when suddenly, one of the SSF soldiers fell
, his vitals flatlining.
“The fuck?” Kal muttered aloud, looking for the enemy who had taken the shot.
A flash of light distracted him, and he glanced up at the two massive pumps that sat in the upper section of the aqueduct.
Kal turned his on as well, glad that the soldiers had also given him a new powercell for it. Grayson was angling toward the more distant of the two snipers, so he moved toward the one on the closest pump.
The top of the pump was a low dome, with heat vents set at regular intervals. The sniper was inside, firing through the vents. Kal took aim at where he thought the shooter must be and fired a stream of projectiles from his rifle.
A second later, a white-hot blob shot past him, and he swore, dropping until he was below the sniper’s cone of fire. He landed on a rickety staircase that circled around the pump, and rushed toward the top, rifle in one hand, the other drawing his sidearm.
Sure enough, before he reached the landing, the sniper leant over the edge of pump, looking for where Kal had landed. A series of pulse blasts from his sidearm forced the enemy back, and a few seconds later, Kal made it to the top of the pump, scanning the area.
A warning flared on his HUD, and he dove to the side as another blast streaked overhead. He rolled to his back to see the sniper hovering above him.
He fired his rifle, causing the sniper drop, avoiding the stream of projectiles.
“Dammit!”
Kal wished he had a pulse grenade. That would knock the sniper out to of the air.
The enemy was circling around the top of the pump, coming around to get another clear shot, and Kal watched, timing his next move.
The sniper came around the dome and fired again, but Kal was already moving. He rolled across the top of the pump, fired his pulse pistol at the sniper to slow the enemy, and then kicked off the ground, pushing his a-grav harness to the max.
He flew up into the air and slammed into the sniper, pushing the rifle to the side while jamming his pulse pistol under the man’s chin and firing five times.
The enemy went limp, and Kal wrenched the rifle from his hands, and then lowered back down to the top of the pump, leaving the mercenary hovering in the air. Once his feet set down, Kal checked the weapon for a biolock, and was pleasantly surprised to find that there wasn’t one.
He took aim and blew the sniper’s head off.
From his vantage, Kal had a clear shot on two of the enemies. He marked a target on the combat net to keep his line of fire clear, and tucked the rifle against his shoulder. He fired once, selected the other target, and fired again.
Two mercs dropped. Without their cover, the final three were exposed, and the soldiers finished them off in seconds.
The colonel grunted.
Grayson pursed his lips.
TOWER DEFENSE
STELLAR DATE: 10.10.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: City of Montral, Jericho
REGION: Gedri System, Gedri Freedom Alliance
Maverick settled into a chair in his command room, watching the feed showing combat in the warrens beneath The Shade. He didn’t see any sign that Grayson was present—though it was hard to be sure, with the armor the soldiers wore.
There were only fourteen SSF goons working their way through the tunnels, and though the enemy was pushing his forces back, their progress was slow. His troops would grind them down.
Jerrod said in his quiet voice.
The AI was silent for a moment.
Jerrod fell silent, and Maverick returned to watching the feeds from below The Shade for a moment before turning to the visuals of the battle above the planet.
The two destroyers bearing ISS tags had defeated his forces surrounding Valhalla Station, but they had not moved toward Laerdo Station and the space elevator, nor had they deployed forces to secure Valhalla itself.
The Polis Fury had completed three orbits of Jericho, moving to a higher altitude before settling into an orbit that had them passing over Montral once an hour. No messages had come from the ship, nor had it made any attempts to deploy more troops.
“You can’t take a system with three ships,” Maverick said, a smirk on his lips. “Blockade is the most you can hope for.”
“There are more ships coming,” Francis pointed out from where she stood near a holotank. “A dozen SSF destroyers and two cruisers.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Maverick said. “Unless they plan to nuke us from orbit, they can’t do anything.”
“And if they do?” she asked.
The president shrugged. “I’ll be gone before that happens.”
Francis’s eyes narrowed, and he saw a spark of fight in them that hadn’t shown in some time.
“That a problem for you?” he asked. “You’ll be with me. We’ll be safe.”
The threat and promise hung in the air for a moment before she nodded.
“It’s not a problem, thank you.”
He nodded, glad that she understood that safety could only be found with him. “Good.”
* * * * *
The AI was silent for a few seconds.
Grayson considered what that could imply.
A simplified diagram of the central atmospheric processing tower appeared on Grayson’s HUD.
A frown settled on Grayson’s brow.
* * * * *
One squad remained below, situated amongst the pumps at the head of the aqueduct, guarding the entrance carefully cut into the pipes that once carried water to the top of the tower, where, in centuries past, atomizers had heated and dispersed it to maintain the planet’s atmosphere.
Of course, if Alice was right, those atomizers wouldn’t be there anymore. If she was wrong, they’d find out soon enough.
The pipe was just over a meter wide, and the soldiers rose through it on their a-grav harnesses in single file, a corporal in the lead carrying a demolition pack. It took just a few minutes to soar up the two kilometers to the top of the tower to the location Alice had marked. Grayson knew they might be tripping sensors, but he was relying on speed and surprise at this point, not stealth.
Get in, get Maverick, get it done.
The blast shook the pipe, a hot rush of air pushing the soldiers down. Once it was past, Grayson looked up to see light shining through the hole. Then it was blotted out by the first fireteam moving through.