by Gavin Smith
She pulled her own ghillie suit over her head and moved around the mech’s head to survey the situation. The Sneaky Bastards first squad, of which Kaneda was a member, had split into three four-man fire teams and had taken up covering positions. Second and third squad were cautiously advancing between the two columns of mechs, still all but invisible, towards the concrete bunker and the drop shuttles, respectively. The biggest threat was the trailer-mounted point defence lasers. They were designed to shoot incoming artillery, mortar shells and missiles out of the air but they could be repurposed for an anti-personnel role. The Bastards were relying on stealth and having the mechs between themselves and the point defence lasers to keep them safe. So far the Sneaky Bastards had mostly been engaging the spider sentry drones, leaving small smoking piles of wreckage in their wake. There were, however, more than a few dead guards hanging from the mech cradles and lying on the ground.
Miska’s audio dampeners filtered the otherwise deafening roar of the Bofors rail sniper rifle firing. She assumed the electromagnetically propelled, hypersonic, half-inch titanium penetrator had just blown a sizeable hole in something, or someone. Despite the noise there was no muzzle flash, and the near-invisible Kaneda would still be difficult to spot.
Miska peeked sideways into the net again.
Now let’s see if the command codes work. She turned to look at one of the point defence lasers. It was spinning, stopping, and then spinning in a different direction. It had been repurposed. It was searching for targets.
‘Hangman-One-Actual to all Sneaky Bastards call signs,’ Miska subvocalised over their own comms net. ‘They’ve repurposed the point defence lasers, everyone hold their positions.’ C’mon, she added silently. Things were going to get interesting very quickly if the virus with Raff’s command codes didn’t work.
‘Heavy-One-Actual to Hangman-One-Actual, what about me?’ Mass asked over a private link. Despite being the commander of the Heavy Bastards, Miska’s virtually trained, currently hypothetical mech platoon, the Mafia button man had come in with the Sneaky Bastards. While parachuting in Miska had checked his biometrics. It hadn’t looked like Mass had enjoyed the experience.
‘Very quietly, Mass, I want you to make your way up to the third level of the closest cradle to you, the one I’m on.’
‘Understood,’ Mass said and then over the command net: ‘Heavy-One-Actual on the move.’
‘Sneaky-One-Seven to all Sneaky call signs,’ Kaneda said over the comms net, ‘we’ve got movement from the maintenance hangar.’
Miska glanced that way and saw a squad of Triple S guards making their way cautiously towards the mechs.
‘Let them close,’ Miska subvocalised over comms and then admonished herself for not using the correct protocol. She glanced at the net feed again. Suddenly all the mech base’s systems and those of the vehicles present opened themselves to her. The expert system contained in the virus took over. It had a simple command: attack any personnel that weren’t members of the Bastard Legion until Miska told it to stop.
Three of the point defence lasers were firing. Where the Triple S squad that had emerged from the bunker had stood there was now just red steam, the dirt streaked with glass.
‘Hangman-One-Actual to all Bastard call signs. We’ve got control of the base’s systems,’ Miska announced over the command net. ‘Heavy-One-Actual, the Medusa is all yours.’ She heard movement on the cradle below her.
‘Understood,’ Mass replied.
Miska checked her IVD to see who was closest to her.
‘Hangman-One-Actual to Pegasus-One and Two, we’re ready for you.’
‘Pegasus-One to all Bastard call signs, myself and Pegasus-Two are inbound,’ replied McWilliams, an OG, or original gangster from the Hard Luck Commancheros prison gang, who was piloting the first of the two Pegasi assault shuttles. ‘Please be advised, if you haven’t switched off the air defences this will be a short flight.’
Then the ground shook. It had been a while but Miska instantly knew what it was. It was the thing that infantry feared the most.
‘Hurry the fuck up, Mass!’ Miska snapped, forgetting comms discipline for the second time. At least it had been over a private comms line.
Backlit by the hangar’s lights a huge shadow was thrown across the ground.
‘I mean it, Mass!’
The Mafia button man still didn’t answer.
‘Hangman-One-Actual to all Sneaky call signs, continue to hold your position,’ Miska told them
The Medusa-class mech stepped out of the hangar. She guessed its comms had been taken offline due to whatever work they had been doing on it. That would explain why the virus hadn’t suborned it.
With a thought, Miska dialled down the power on her M187 and prepared to ‘lase’ the mech. She could then send the targeting info to the inbound Pegasi, who could feed it to their missiles’ guidance systems. The world went red again as the base’s point defence system targeted the mech, to little effect other than scoring up its paintwork. The mech raised the 30mm chain-fed railgun it carried like an oversized carbine and fired a short burst at one of the offending point defence systems. The electromagnetically-driven cannon rounds tore the laser to pieces. The 200mm mass driver on its back unfolded and fired, and another point defence laser ceased to exist. The show of firepower was, as ever, awe inspiring and terrifying if you were that way inclined, Miska supposed. She might not have felt the fear but there was a sense of mounting concern, and she quite wanted Mass to get his Medusa up and running.
Another point defence system was sent tumbling into the jungle as 30mm rounds ripped into it. The enemy Medusa was moving towards the two columns of mechs. Miska knew that advanced sensor systems would be searching for her Sneaky Bastards. Suddenly all the umbilicals connecting Mass’s Medusa to the cradle exploded away from the mech. It stepped out from the cradle, the 30mm railgun already firing. Mass put round after round into the other mech, shooting continuously as he moved far enough away from the cradle for the back-mounted plasma cannon to swing into place. Both weapons firing, Mass’s mech advanced on the Triple S Medusa. Plasma fire ate through the other war machine’s thick armour. Doubtless the Triple S pilot was competent enough but they hadn’t expected the sheer ferocity of Mass’s attack.
Mass concentrated all of his fire on the torso. It was the most heavily armoured area because it was where the pilot sat. Mass was firing plasma bolt after plasma bolt into the chest and concentrating the railgun fire in the same place. The Triple S mech came to a halt. Material that shouldn’t burn flamed as the huge armoured humanoid figure became a pyre. It was quite beautiful, Miska decided, as she became aware of the base’s forces broadcasting their surrender on all frequencies. She ordered the expert system embedded in the virus to stop killing.
Chapter 2
There was running. The Sneaky Bastards’ first squad remained with the mechs. Second squad raced past the still-burning mech for the hangar. Third squad were running for the two Harpy-class heavy lift drop shuttles. Miska could hear the Harpies powering up as she walked between the mechs, making for the hangar.
‘Hangman-One-Actual to Heavy-One-Actual, I want those Harpies covered by your mech,’ Miska told Mass over the comms link, using her command override to cut through all the chatter.
‘The … uh … what, boss?’ Mass asked.
‘The heavy drop shuttles, the mech carriers,’ Miska told him. She could feel the heat of the burning mech as she closed with it. There was something primeval about the huge, humanoid-shaped war machine on fire. She felt the ground shake as Mass passed her in his own Medusa, railgun and plasma cannon levelled at the two heavy shuttles.
She sent a command to the virus to have the SAM emplacements missile-lock the two Harpies. The virus responded immediately but Miska still wasn’t happy. She knew she should have a hacker in the net. The expert systems were too vulnerable but she needed to be out here. There were a number of good choices for combat hacking, legionnaires who’d all but fu
lfilled the role when they had been career criminals. The problem was they presented the biggest threat to her failsafes, to the tiny nano-explosives she’d replaced the bomb collars with. The deactivation codes for the nanobombs were well protected but nothing was completely safe and these were people whose job it had been to break through computer security. Miska could have done it herself but she was supposed to be command now, something she had never wanted.
‘Under the articles of conflict agreed upon by—’ a husky-voiced woman started over the same comms link the Triple S commander had used to surrender.
‘One of those Harpies leaves the ground by even so much as an inch and I’ll blow you out of the air. Leave the engines cycling. If you’re not out of that shuttle and face-down in the dirt in thirty seconds flat, I’ll blow you into the air.’ She cut the comms link. Her dampeners kicked in as the Bastards’ two Pegasus assault shuttles screamed overhead, manoeuvring engines burning as they bled off speed. The two vaguely insectile, armoured pieces of airborne military tech, bristling with weapons, circled over the base. The first Pegasus touched down while the other covered it from the air. The loading ramp was already down, her Bastards sprinting from the shuttle. Time was key here. They had maybe twenty minutes before Triple S’s quick reaction force reached their position. If they had fast-movers, atmosphere fighters, then they’d be there all the faster but that was what the multi-role missile launchers were for.
The Bastards had been able to take the mech base because it was far enough behind the New Sun’s forces’ lines that they were overconfident with their security protocols. Triple S were far too reliant on their automated systems as well. Such things were only as good as their weakest link, and said link was almost always found in the pinkware, a person. It appeared that her handler, Raff, had found the weakest link and exploited it. They would not have been able to pull this off without his help.
Thank Christ for the weird no-orbit rules, Miska thought. She could understand why the articles of conflict for this particular little mercenary proxy war stipulated no space combat. Ships were expensive and she wouldn’t have wanted to risk the Hangman’s Daughter in a space battle. The huge prison barge had been built as a troop carrier close to a hundred-and-fifty years ago. She might have been well armoured, designed to take a pounding getting troops into place, but she was no warship. The no-orbit rule insisted on by the New Sun megacorporation, the aggressors in this particular undeclared war, and Stirling Security Solutions’ employer, was just one more thing that didn’t make any sense. It did, however, mean a lack of satellite surveillance, and that meant that bases didn’t have geosynchronous orbital coverage that could hit the Bastards with particle beam weapons, or drop a Quick Reaction Force on their head as fast as terminal velocity in the moon’s .75G would carry them. It was, however, just another part of this war that didn’t make sense.
The first Pegasus clawed its way back into the humid air. Even with her inertial armour’s coolant system running hard Miska was covered in sweat. The air was so humid it was like inhaling liquid.
The passengers from the Pegasus were sprinting towards the hangar, the low loaders and the heavy drop shuttles. Miska was gratified to see that the Harpy crews had emerged and were lying face-down in the dirt, covered by one of third squad’s four-man fire teams.
The second shuttle came down to land but stayed on the ground, leaving the first Pegasus to provide aerial cover. Again, Bastards sprinted down the already-lowered ramp. Everyone knew their job. Their orders were simple. Steal absolutely everything except the missile launchers – they were going to leave those as a booby trap.
Seven large Maoris in battle dress inertial armour, carrying snubby personal defence weapons, came sprinting towards her from the second assault shuttle. They were members of the Whānau, or family. The Whānau had originally come from disparate mine gangs working the subterranean rock of Lalande 2. They had banded together for self-protection during the war with Them. Since the war they had become one of the biggest organised crime syndicates within the Lalande system, with a ferocious reputation for violence, born of their warrior heritage – so they claimed. Many of their ancestors had piloted mechs during the war. Even today a lot of them had worked in civilian mech piloting jobs like cargo handling, construction and mining. A few had even seen military service as mech pilots, and all of them, apparently, played on virtual mech simulations. Not surprisingly, when the opportunity to put together a mech platoon had arisen, the Whānau had all volunteered. The nine best had been picked for the armoured platoon commanded by Mass. The Mafia button man, or hitman, had become obsessed with heavy armour ever since he’d worn a Wraith combat exoskeleton during the battle for Faigroe Station.
Miska startled the Maoris by flicking the ghillie suit over her head, practically appearing in mid-air. Suddenly seven snubby Martian Military Industries PDWs were pointing at her.
‘Easy, boys. Where’re the rest of you?’ She was directing her question to the six-foot-four, powerfully built leader of the Whānau on the Hangman’s Daughter. His details scrolled down her IVD. Kohere, Hemi, thirty-five years for distribution of narcotics but with a long history of violence, and suspected of being behind at least five murders. He had long, black, braided hair. The spiral and fern-like designs of chiselled out and dyed tā moko markings made his face look as though it had been carved out of hard wood. The two lower canine tusk implants protruding from his bottom lip made his face look brutal, like a monster from a fantasy viz. Miska had asked Mass about the tusks. He had told her that it was in tribute to his favourite viz, and that the fantasy in question had somehow been of import to the Maori people back on Earth at the time of its making.
Hemi stopped running, leaving the rest of his crew to sprint towards the mechs.
‘There’s a scout mech in each of the drop shuttles, they’ve gone to grab them,’ he told her, his voice a deep, impassive growl. ‘You want them with us, boss-lady?’
It made sense, most mech platoons went out with one or two Satyr scout mechs for recon and forward observation.
‘Yeah, as soon as they’re powered up I want you running them full-tilt, tell Mass,’ Miska said. Hemi just nodded and resumed sprinting towards the mechs.
‘Hey, boss,’ Hemi shouted. Miska glanced behind her. He was jogging backwards. ‘Did you want that lenshead with us?’
It took Miska a moment to work out what Hemi was talking about.
‘Oh shit!’ she groaned and changed direction making for the second shuttle, Pegasus 2.
Miska was pretty sure that Raff had been a journalist before he had been recruited and trained by the CIA. The Epsilon Eridani conflict had given him a chance to brush up on old skills. It also worked as an excuse to keep an unusually close eye on Operation Lee Marvin, the deniable black operation that had seen Miska steal the Hangman’s Daughter and form the penal mercenary Bastard Legion. Pretend to be a journalist, however, and get treated like one. Of African-American descent, Raff had the kind of open, handsome face that made people want to tell him things. He had what Miska thought of as a gym body. He was in good shape but it was all show, she doubted there was any real endurance there. He was also bound and gagged and lying on the dirty floor of the Pegasus assault shuttle. Judging by the boot marks on his designer outdoor clothing, some of her Bastards had been using him as footrest. Miska would have laughed except for the attractive Hispanic still sat on one of the benches glowering at her. Torricone pointed at Raff and opened his mouth to say something. Fortunately Raff had his back to the other man.
‘Shut the fuck up, hippy!’ Miska snapped. Torricone looked as though he’d been slapped. Miska gestured for the ex-car thief, and her self-appointed conscience, to get out of the assault shuttle.
She walked him away from Pegasus 2.
‘That—’ Torricone started. Miska held up her hand. She knew Raff’s ears would have been augmented to filter and amplify sound. Being able to listen in on people’s conversations from afar was as good for a jou
rnalist as it was for a spy. His artificial eyes were almost certainly lenses as well. That’s how war correspondents had got the name lensheads.
‘Comms,’ Miska subvocalised, opening up a private, secure comms link to Torricone as she turned to face him. His shaved head had a crown of thorns tattooed around it. He had an inked tear on his cheek, in memoriam for the gang member he’d killed in self-defence. It had been that killing that had resulted in him being sent to the ultra-max prison barge. She knew he had other tattoos, mostly religious iconography. His battle dress inertial armour covered a body that Miska knew was all hard, tight street muscle, little fat, and no pumped steroid muscles. Not that you ever look at him naked in his pod, right? There was anger in his brown eyes. There always seemed to be these days.
‘Who is that guy?’ Torricone demanded over the comms link. Respecting the chain of command had never really been his thing. ‘You met with him on the May ’68, the free port in the Tau Ceti system.’
Miska was getting an IVD headache. The various feeds – biometrics, gun-and helm-cams, lens feeds from the shuttles, the net feed, the tactical overlay, the comms icons – may have been minimised in her IVD but the sheer amount of information that was incoming was nearly overwhelming, and Torricone wasn’t helping. Not for the first time Miska decided that she far preferred operating to command.
She watched the mechs stepping out from their surrounding platforms as she tried to decide what to tell Torricone. The platforms folded down onto the backs of the low loaders as their engines rumbled to life and they pulled away from the mechs, making for the drop shuttles.
‘You’re surprised I know war correspondents?’ Miska asked.
‘Bullshit, I watched you, it was more than that,’ Torricone snapped, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.
Is he jealous? Miska wondered. She’d had a brief, ill-advised drunken fling with Raff when she’d found out about her dad’s murder. Raff had carried a bit of a torch for her. She wondered just how much of that had been apparent when she’d met him on the May ’68.