by Thomas Webb
Thomas Webb
Siege Protocol
The Separatist Wars: Book 3
First published by Valiant House Press 2020
Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Webb
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
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Contents
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The Separatist Wars
You Can’t Keep a Good Marine Down
Also By Thomas Webb
Glossary of Terms
Interested in a FREE book set in the Separatist Wars universe?
Details can be found immediately following the end of Siege Protocol.
-1-
Honor and profit.
The creed of the Yurnai rang in Kaizen’s brain as she walked the halls of the Unites Les Space corporate headquarters building. For the Yurnai race, there existed a constant war between the two seemingly opposing ideals. The nobility of the pursuit of honor, counterbalanced with the obvious benefits stemming from profit. Honor and profit, and not always necessarily in that order.
Her footfalls made no sound on the bright, red carpeted hallways. Only the swish of her heavy cloak marked her passing. Kaizen elicited stares from the office workers as she walked by, though far fewer than she would have thought she’d receive. She imagined the office personnel witnessed much, working for a firm like ULS. Her cybernetic eye scanned the employees as she moved, registering each being’s species, heartrate, and adrenal levels, among other things. Most planets afforded the Yurnai as much space as they wanted, given their reputation. Even the armored Shemari security officers, their stone-faces unreadable, gave Kaizen a wide berth. She smirked behind her helmet.
Her stroll through the halls decorated in nouveau Earth corporate sheikh led her, inevitably, to a corner office. She approached the entrance and knocked three times.
“Enter,” a voice from inside called. The doors of Andarian black oak, a bit ostentatious to her thinking, opened seemingly of their own volition.
The far office wall was transparent, opening to a commanding view overlooking the city and the sea in the distance. It was tastefully decorated in a minimalist style, with a set of chairs that looked more like pieces of modern art than something someone would wish to sit upon. Behind a solid peristeel desk with the holo screen up and marked to ‘private’ sat a pudgy, clean-shaven executive. His dark hair was styled in short spikes. Beady eyes stared out at her, and the man’s plump hands worked the holographic keyboard.
“Kaizen, right?” The executive grinned, displaying a set of teeth far too perfect and white to trust. “Thanks for coming. Please,” he said, indicating the seat in front of him but not bothering himself to stand, “have a seat.”
Kaizen swept her cloak aside and sat, crossing her armored legs in one smooth, graceful motion. The former soldier-tracker turned mercenary assassin assessed Marty Steen with a practiced gaze. She frowned beneath her helmet. She could practically smell the entitlement on this one.
Honor and profit, she reminded herself. Honor and profit.
“Can I get you anything?” Steen asked.
“No,” Kaizen said, her helmet’s voice-altering system manipulating the sound to the point that it was almost robotic. She was far from an android, though. Only 40% cybernetic, in matter of fact—much less than the 85% threshold required by the Planetary Alliance to be classified as such. “No thank you,” she added. She needed to try and keep this conversation on at least a somewhat professional level.
“Sure.” Steen shut down his holo screen and swiped the image aside. “I’ve gotta say, Kaizen—you came very highly recommended.”
Kaizen leaned back in her uncomfortable chair, draping an arm over its rounded back. “I have never failed to complete an assignment.”
Steen laughed. “Your exorbitant fee would seem to indicate that.”
“Oh?” Kaizen asked. “Will there be an issue with my compensation?” She was careful to keep her voice even.
“No,” Steen said. “Of course not. This is ULS you’re dealing with. Credits are no object here.”
Kaizen relaxed a bit. “That is very good to know. Do you have the data I requested?”
“I do,” Steen said. The ULS executive reactivated his screen and his fingers went to work. Soon a set of files floated before Kaizen’s enhanced eye. She opened her hand. As she closed it into a fist the files disappeared, transferred from Steen’s mainframe and absorbed directly into her processing system’s storage.
Steen raised a brow. “Well that’s a neat little trick.” He leaned across the desk, as if he were about to share a secret. “Hey,’ he said. “You’re Yurnai, right?”
“I think we have already established that.”
“I heard you people were. . .you know—technomancers.”
He’d lowered his voice, whispering that last word like a child uttering something that they knew their parent would not approve of.
Kaizen stifled a laugh behind her mask. This man was obviously an idiot, but he was also a paying idiot. And an extremely well-paying one, at that.
Technomancer. It was a foolish term, used by foolish people. Akin to the races of the primitive planets and their belief in what they referred to as ‘magic.’ To the more advanced worlds, so-called magic was simply technology that was not yet understood. The only magics Kaizen’s people enjoyed was the joining of technology and flesh over several millennia, the natural evolution of such, and the enhanced cybernetic implants that they used as a way of life. She ignored the idiocy before her, instead absorbing the data in the files before having to store it away for later.
As Steen prattled on, Kaizen studied the information in the coding. The targets were. . . interesting, to say the least. Tougher than most it appeared, but achievable all the same. She pulled up an image of a human woman. Blonde hair, green eyes. A former Air & Space Command captain. A pilot.
She shouldn’t be too difficult.
Kaizen shifted to the next image. An older human male, but still attractive by that species’ standards. A retired United Nations Intelligence Agency field operative, it appeared. Much of the man’s file was redacted.
Interesting.
He might be a bit more challenging than the pilot. But she relished a challenge. She flipped through the rest of the files. A special operations soldier, and the pilot’s significant other. A Salayan and a Tauranaian. She’d have to plan something special for the Tauranin. They had a reputation for being notoriously hard to kill. Finally she flipped to the last file.
Now what have we here?
A United Nations Reconnaissance Marine. Dishonorably
discharged. Now working as a private military contractor in the employ of the retired UNIA assassin. Private military contractor, or PMC—just a more polite word for the same work that she herself did. A killer for hire. Something about this last one struck her, though.
Kaizen closed her eyes, focusing inwardly on the image in her half-positronic brain. The man’s haunting stare. His eyes-blue as the ice of the polar vortex-peered at her. There was something unusual there. He would be a worthy adversary. She could feel it. And he would be profitable, to boot.
“—and that’s what we expect of you from ULS,” Steen said, coming to the end of his one-sided conversation.
“Of course,” Kaizen replied. She had no idea what he’d just said, nor did she particularly care. “You have tried to remove these targets before?” She asked him. “And have been unsuccessful?”
“Yeah,” Steen admitted. “We ran into a few snags.” Steen puffed himself up. Perhaps a subconscious attempt to cover his firm’s injured pride? “We have a plan in place, but taking the Soluções Avançadas Incorporadas team out has proven to be, uh, problematic.”
“You have a plan in place?” Kaizen asked. She couldn’t resist goading him. “I assume that to mean that you do not require my services?” She rose to her feet as if to leave.
This time Steen did stand up. “Hold on a second—I wouldn’t say that, exactly. You’re a, uh, a contingency. It’s why we called you. You’ll be working in tandem with us.”
“I see. And you will not get in my way?”
“We won’t get in your way.” Steen ran a hand through his spiky hair. “Look. . . we’ve tried to manage this problem before, on our own. But we would like to utilize your talents as a last resort. You know, in case things don’t go the way we want.”
Kaizen smiled and sat back down, waiting for Steen to follow suit. “I trust you are familiar with my terms?”
“Familiar enough,” he said, resuming his seat. “But a refresher might be nice.”
“I work only on retainer,” she began. “Half before I begin, half upon completion of the contract.” With a thought, Kaizen activated Steen’s holo screen and sent a number to it.
Steen looked at the number and looked up at her. “Are you serious? This is more than the initial estimate.”
“That was before I saw the target files. Are you unable to pay this amount?”
Steen swallowed hard. “You’ll be paid.”
“There is one other thing I will require.”
“You mean something besides this fortune in credits?”
“Yes. I will need the experimental ULS decryption sequence.”
“How did you know about—?” Steen shook his head. “Whoa there, lady. Sorry. No can do. That’s proprietary and privileged info.”
Kaizen shrugged. “As you wish.” She stood to her long, armored legs a second time.
Steen closed his eyes and placed a hand to his temple. “Wait,” he said. “Why do you need the decryption sequence?”
“That is not your concern. Suffice it to say that there are limits even to the abilities of the Yurnai, and that the sequence is necessary for me to do the job.”
“Ok,” Steen conceded. “I’ll see if I can clear it. But you’d damn sure better be worth it.” Steen stood and waddled around his desk after her. He stuck a pudgy hand out and looked up into the blank plate of her helmet. “So we have a deal?”
She looked down on him for several beats before taking the offered hand. “Our bargain is struck,” she said, her thoughts already turning to the assignment. She knew exactly who she would start with.
-2-
Shane leaned back in her chair, enjoying the steam and the fragrance from her cup of cappuccino. She closed her eyes and smiled, listening to the sound of Gina’s voice as she debriefed the team. For a while, there was a real chance that she’d never hear Gina’s voice again. So she was relishing it now.
Still dressed in her sweat-stained flight suit, Shane listened intently. She was glad she’d at least been able to remove the modular body armor she’d worn over it, but not half as glad as she was to see her girl up and about, back in the fight at one hundred percent.
Just a few short months back, Gina Romero’s chances of survival had been touch and go. After being grazed in the skull by a pulse round during the operation on Cetov-9, Gina’s fate had by no means been certain. They’d very nearly lost her. Shane had very nearly lost her. But thank Christ she’d come back, and after some rehabilitation combined with extensive nanotherapy courtesy of the Kingdom of Kush, her convalescence was over in record time. Gina’s recovery had gone smoothly, with only a nice puckered scar and a new, half-shaved haircut to show for it. Either way, Shane loved it. It all fit her girlfriend’s personality-both the scar and the new hair.
With Gina’s injuries, the mood at ALS had undergone a less than subtle change. The missions, just business before, had quickly become much more personal. With Gina back on her feet, their energies shifted from encouraging her healing to retribution and revenge against the ones who’d hurt her. The Separatists numbered among those, certainly. But as it had turned out, the rogue faction of Separatists they’d fought were little more than puppets on strings. Their real enemy was the intergalactic corporation United Les Space. In some ways, ULS had been the real enemy all along, even before any of them had met one another.
On the holo screen at the front of the room, a list of names glared down at Shane. It was, essentially, a kill list. One filled with all the highest-ranking executives on ULS’s payroll. They’d been prepping for ULS wet work missions almost as soon as Gina took her first tentative steps of physical rehabilitation. Probably even before, if Shane were being honest. Now they were pursuing the fight against ULS with the same bloodthirsty discipline as the daily operations they’d conducted in-theater while on active duty. Now they were going straight for the throat.
With the word out that ULS was getting on the wrong side of intergalactic law, their quarry—namely the executive leadership—had begun to go to ground. And just like those operations they’d conducted in service to the UN, this one would start with solid intelligence gathering.
Through a series of methods both legal and not so legal, they’d obtained a trove of intel on the ULS company heads. Board of director dossiers, schedules, financial data—everything. With those tools in place, they’d instituted remote surveillance. That had given them enough to work up a few preliminary operations.
This last op had been a quick one, and easy by their standards with hardly a shot fired. An intel bread crumb had led them on a quick jaunt into the wilds of Yanos 3A, a moon orbiting a gas planet in the Moravian cluster. In modular body armor and soft fatigues only Gina, Lash, and Kris had hit a small remote villa hard, grabbing a mid-level ULS exec in the process.
They were in and out after a brief skirmish with some second-rate hired security, then had shaken the target down for the intelligence they needed on the trip back home. Now they were safely in Sao Paulo, where Shane sat in a comfortable chair, sipping her pricey coffee in a climate-controlled HQ briefing room. Lima requested an immediate update, and since she’d been busy with post flight checks, and since Gina had led the ground operation, and since Gina was raring to get back into the action, Shane had let her girlfriend do the honors of handling the debrief.
Gina waved a hand above the briefing table. “You both reading me ok?” she asked.
An image of Hale and Silvio Lima floated to the left of the screen. Both were en route to Sao Paulo, on their way back from a meet in New York. “We read you Zombie,” Lima said. He wore one of his trademark tailored suits, a crisp white shirt, no tie. Hale sat beside him, the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled over massive forearms. His tie he’d pulled down at the throat and allowed to hang loose. The cabin of a private luxury transport could be seen behind them. “What were you able to find on Yanos 3A?”
Gina smiled. “I was just giving the rest of the crew a preview of the full rundown. That mid-leve
l suit was nice and cooperative. After we got passed his shitty security team, that is. He sang like a Korvathian canary on the way here.” Gina looked up at the ceiling. “X37—do me a favor and bring up those images I just fed into the system?”
“My pleasure, Sergeant First Class Romero.” The disembodied voice of X37, the resident advanced Artificial Intelligence, sounded as chipper as ever. A second passed before a bank of images appeared above the briefing table. Gina slid one of them up.
Having been too busy flying them out of the op, Shane hadn’t had a chance to examine anything they’d found. She leaned in and studied the information. A structure of some sort hung in stationary orbit above a small planet. Two disc shapes, connected by a long line. A small cargo ship floated halfway outside the shot.
“Can you enhance the size of that image please, X37?” Shane asked. “Thirty percent?”
“Right away, Captain Mallory.”
The image expanded.
“What are we looking at here, Zombie?” Hale asked.
Gina smirked. “It’s a space station, Hale.”
“Ok smart-ass,” Hale laughed. “So what does that have to do with the target?”
“You’ll see,” Gina said. “Give me that next image please, X37.”
A second holo image appeared. A human woman, maybe early forties. Fit, brown hair. A plastic smile. It looked like a promotional image of some sort.
“Meet Julia Clayton,” Gina said. “Senior Vice President of Interplanetary Mergers & Acquisitions for United Les Space. This image is right off the corporate holo site.” Gina swiped through a few more images of the woman—at a charity event, a ribbon cutting, ringing the chime to signal trading to begin on the intergalactic exchange. “She’s a key figure in the ULS organizational chart. She was next in line for a seat on the board of directors, as a matter of fact.”
Lima considered a moment. His eyes narrowed. “Are you telling me that this Julia Clayton—one of these ULS executives—has her own space station?”