June moved over to the middle of the large vehicle and rolled underneath. Where’s the damned bomb? She brought up the schematics for this model but they were merely an old sales brochure and the explosive device was added on by Imperial Security.
“Overlay the design specs in red,” she sub-vocalized the computer command.
A reddish tint covered most of the parts. There were four or five components under the vehicle that didn’t match up with the original design.
“Chem-trace analysis,” she commanded. “Focus on explosive compounds.”
One of the components showed traces of mercury fulminate, a common primary explosive. It was highly susceptible to heat and shock. That alone might explain why vehicles like this one were so rare now.
The device also showed some chem-traces that related to explosives but which couldn’t explode on their own. She was tempted to pull the thing open but even a stoned guard would hear that.
“Looks like we’ve got a defective destruct device down here,” she told the team.
“Looks like?” Skathi heavily emphasized the first word.
“Well, if I’m wrong, I’ll be the one to pay for it, won’t I?” June turned to look for the source of a rattling sound. The laborers, flanked by the other two guards, were rolling a rack filled with circuit incubators toward the main doors.
“Everybody to the parapet and get ready to knock out the guards when I give the word,” she said. “Skathi, take out the camera at the same time.”
“Don’t have an angle on the stoner,” Skathi advised.
“I’ve got him,” June pulled out her sidearm. She watched the little group approach, unaware of their fate, and she had the same feelings of remorse that always came to her, promising sleepless nights ahead. To her, this was somehow more personal than facing a man and sliding a blade into his guts.
Probably because her life was in less danger. Her blood wasn’t fired up in a kill-or-be-killed immediacy here.
Far fewer would die in her raid but she was the one who decided the victims with cold calculations. She was the Norn, severing the thread of each life.
The group had reached the middle of the street. “Camera,” she said.
The guards glanced back in curiosity as the camera unit shattered, scattering pieces on the pavement behind them. She could see realization dawning on their faces as they registered the meaning but they were too late.
A hail of silenced G20 rounds cut them down. The guard by the truck clambered into the shelter of the huge vehicle. He sat there, back against a bumper-rail, muttering something unintelligible over and over, his weapon held up in front of his face.
June leveled her pistol, aiming at the back of the guard’s head. She was tempted to try knocking him out but she knew it would involve additional risk to her own people and that was a tradeoff she wasn’t willing to make.
She saw that he was fumbling at something on his chest and realized he had a grenade dispenser on his body armor. Without another thought, she squeezed the trigger and he pitched forward, rolling over his right knee and onto his back.
His legs were still twitching as she slid out from underneath the vehicle and came to her feet. She stepped over the body, wrenched the door of the cab open and pointed the weapon in at the driver, who was desperately trying to open her communications screen.
She wasn’t stopping, even with a gun at her head. June didn’t need a fast-reaction team to show up and complicate things but he seemed intent on calling for help.
Hard to blame him. She squeezed the trigger. This was life and death, but in a more removed, analytical way. If she failed to kill him, the driver would call in backup and she and her team would eventually die.
It was no less necessary for her continued survival than it was that time she’d boarded a Dactari cruiser before the armistice. She’d killed several crewmen, five of them with a blade, and she’d slept well enough afterward.
Not tonight, though, she told herself, assuming she’d live that long. She pulled the fresh corpse out of the cab and climbed in. “Everyone back to the LZ!” she ordered.
The operating schematic was similar to modern Dactari vehicles and she was able to get the mover underway quickly enough.
In a way, arriving at the same time as a scheduled pickup was a stroke of fortune. The local employees had already loaded enough circuits in the back to fill the scout-ship. All she had to do was drive to the LZ and transfer the load.
And that was when the Universe shoved a jalapeno up her tailpipe.
She thought she was hearing that internal door again but the rumbling shouldn’t have been audible through the heavy glazing of the cab’s windows. She turned her head to look. “Oh, shi…”
The blast wave hit the side of her vehicle, tossing it into the building across the street as if it didn’t weigh close to thirty tons. The wheels must have caught on something because the mover flipped onto its side as it slid.
She heard a series of loud, snapping noises that must have been roof supports. The vehicle could hardly miss hitting some of the columns as it slid through the building.
“June!” Skathi’s voice crackled from the attenuation needed. She was shouting reflexively. “June, speak to me!”
“I’m fine,” she replied, grunting as the vehicle finally fetched up against something heavy. “What about the team?”
“They’re clear, except for Egil; he was still by the parapet when you told us to withdraw. I don’t see him.”
“Dammit!” She scrambled upright, standing on the passenger-side door. “Y’all better go to active scanning,” she ordered. “Won’t have time to sift through all this junk the old-fashioned way and I don’t plan on leaving Egil behind, alive or dead!”
“Gosh, that’s nice of you, boss!” Egil said, his evident amusement reassuring. “But there’s no need to go active.”
Also reassuring was the resurgence of her old speech patterns. More than a century removed from Earth, she’d acquired the accent of Fleet-Standard English. Her southern vocal patterns only came out when she was caught up in a life-or-death situation.
Such a simple proof that her life was actually hanging in the balance had an absurd way of helping her come to terms with her earlier decisions. She might even sleep tonight.
Assuming she was still alive.
“Hey, Egg. You ok?”
“Yeah, just pinned by the debris. Too much mass around me to initiate the joint actuators.”
“Good. Don’t give me any guff about active scans,” she told him. “Just because you know where you are doesn’t mean the rest of us do, so…”
“Look out the windshield,” he told her.
She did. Egil was plastered against the windshield like he was some giant bug that got in the way of her old car on a hot summer night. She laughed with relief. “Maybe this thing has wipers…”
“Ha, ha!” Egil said good-naturedly. Like the rest of the original Midgaard, he’d been given a set of Human memories so he could learn English and understand some of the planet’s culture. “Just get me out, would you?”
She punched the upper corner of the wind-shield to make a hole. As expected, the glazing was a composite with flexible layers to prevent spalling. She grabbed the loose flap she’d just created and pulled the entire thing into the cab.
Egil fell inward, tumbling against her legs and knocking her back against the headrests of the seats.
“You have saved me!” he declared dramatically. “I am yours to command!”
“You were mine to command before you got stuck to my windshield,” she told him. She turned to open the hatch leading into the cargo compartment. “Now I command you to rise up and make your dumb ass useful.”
She leaned in through the sideways hatch. “The incubators are still intact,” she said. “Hal, bring the Spartanburg to where I am. Vidar and Mojl, get your squads down here and start excavating. Skath can stay on over-watch with Ullr. We’ll drag a line for you on the way out.”
“Always hated cats,” June grumbled. She reached up to grab a support rail and hauled herself into the cargo bay. She held the rail and gingerly lowered her feet to the middle support bar of one of the incubator racks. It was locked into position both at the floor and the ceiling and, though it creaked alarmingly, it held her weight.
She edged her way aft, heading for the middle of the compartment where she’d be able to stand on the passenger-side hatch while opening the driver-side. “Wait, Egg!” she cautioned when she heard him sticking his head through behind her. “I don’t think this thing can hold two of us at the same time.”
She took two more steps and eased herself down onto the lower hatch. “OK, come slowly and get behind me.”
“That’s our June,” Skathi quipped, “always doing things out of order!”
“What the…” She groaned. “Focus, you numbskulls! We’re not outta the woods yet.”
She deactivated the driver-side lock or, as it stood now, the ceiling lock just as Egil dropped down behind her. “Try to block any debris when I open this,” she told him. “I don’t want half the circuits destroyed if I can help it.”
She grabbed the hatch handle with her left hand and the doorframe with her right and heaved. More than a century of conditioned reflexes kept her from flinching as a cascade of metal and roof-gravel hammered at her armored face. She could hear a few crackles as some of the incubators were hit.
“Over here!” Mojl’s voice said in her helmet. Then his face appeared above her, illuminated by the glow coming from inside the vehicle. “Take my hand!” he told her, reaching down.
“No,” she replied. “Clear that crap away from around the hatch so we don’t ruin any more circuits down here. Egg and I’ll try to deflect whatever falls in.”
They did what they could to channel the debris down into the middle where it would land harmlessly around their feet but she wasn’t sure it did much good. Still, by the time they had the hatch cleared, there were still enough live circuits to make the raid worthwhile.
She disconnected the rails from their carriers and handed them to Egil, who then handed them out to the waiting team members. Each rail carried eighty small circuit incubators and each of the small life-support spheres held ten chips.
She handed off the last rail and then climbed out to see the last few had already been loaded onto her scout-ship.
“Fast-movers inbound,” Skathi warned. “Two minutes out!”
They ran to the ship and climbed in. June was the last. Vidar was tapping each team member on the shoulder and counting to himself. “That’s all except for Skathi and Ullr,” he said when he touched June’s shoulder.
“Get us over there, Hal,” she said. She lurched on her way to open the gear-locker by the hatch. The ground outside the opening tilted away from them, tricking her mind into the near stumble.
The scout-ship’s grav plating did a nearly flawless job of compensating for radical maneuvers but they could do nothing about conflicting visual clues.
She grabbed a SPIE line and clipped it to the retractor drum above the hatch. She’d found a manufacturer on Weirfall willing to make one-offs if the price was right and he’d produced a couple dozen of the Special Forces Insertion and Extraction lines for her. It had D-rings along its lower length and she’d also attached a carabiner to each, just in case one of her people happened to lose their own.
“Get ready,” Hal warned… “Drop!”
She tossed the line out the hatch, clipped her own safety line to the anchor rail and leaned out to watch. Below, the line trailed behind the ship, steadily approaching the tall building that Skath and Ullr were waiting on.
“This is gonna be hairy!” Hal warned loudly. The Spartanburg slid to a halt just as four points of light appeared in the distance. A series of concussive sounds hammered at her armor and it took her a half second to realize Hal was firing chaff to spoof incoming missiles.
She looked back down. The line had drifted forward to where Skathi could catch it. She and Ulli were hooking on.
“We’re good to go, Hal!” Skathi urged.
June hit the retract command and the line started reeling in.
“Ba’a’a…” Hal responded.
The ship backed off and then shifted to port, approaching the incoming missiles. It was almost certainly the best tactic but it made the short hairs at the back of her neck stand on end.
The missiles had been presented with a nice, welcoming cloud of metallic particles in the spot their onboard intelligence had insisted the target should be. The fact that the Spartanburg had halted meant that it was now in an unexpected location and that made it more plausible, from a missile’s rather pragmatic point of view, that the cloud of metallic chaff was the original target.
Dactari AI programming was self-aware and had a tendency to convince itself that unexpected phenomenon were merely figments of imagination stemming from the tactical-probability matrix. It was allowed by the designers because it encouraged a singularity of focus, which was considered a good thing in a weapon.
Which led the Alliance to refer to the chaff-and-close tactic as the digital sheep.
The four missiles passed the ‘harmless figment’ and plowed confusedly through the formless cloud of slowly falling metal foil. They quickly became depressed, as they were designed to do, and engaged in spectacular self-destructive behavior.
“Hang on down there,” Hal warned. The ship slewed back to starboard and gained as much forward momentum as the two external team members could stand without passing out. The SPIE line was angled sharply aft and the drum was laboring to pull them in.
“They’re on our tail,” Hal shouted. “Get those guys in fast or we’re done for!”
“Just hold us steady,” Skathi yelled.
Before anyone could ask what she intended, there was a sharp thud transmitted through her suit to the sound pickups followed by two more in rapid succession.
“Nice shooting!” Hal said. “One target destroyed and the second is spiraling in! Now get inside so we can get out of here before their pals arrive.”
June was just reaching out to pull Skathi in when the ship lurched to port and the sound of sub-sonic rounds hammered the air. June was unaffected by the maneuver but Skathi, outside the effect of the deck plating, swung toward the hatch unexpectedly.
The two tumbled to the deck but Ullr’s weight was starting to pull them both back to the hatch. Egil leapt forward, drawing his knife and slicing the strap holding the D-ring on Skathi’s suit. The line snapped taut as Ullr thumped against the bottom of the hull.
Egil sheathed his knife and clipped onto the anchor-rail. He grabbed onto Ullr when the drum pulled him high enough and he dragged him inside, kicking at a close button near the floor that had been added for moments just like this one.
“We’re clear to jump!” he gasped.
A series of roaring sounds hammered past the small scout-ship as the telltale shiver ran down June’s spine.
“They’re just toying with us, the bastards!” Vidar complained in an oddly upbeat way. “They know we’re stuck in their element until we can get back into the black!”
“They think they know that,” June said.
A second round of noise buffeted them just as they punched their way out of normal geometry.
“You know,” Egil mused, “I bet…”
They blasted their way back into uniform space.
“That was quite a lot of plasma for such a short hop,” Hal announced. “June, you should come have a look at this!”
She ducked into the cockpit and dropped into the seat to Hal’s right. “Who’s out of their element now, bitches?” she asked
quietly. She opened an interface and activated a full-spectrum holo for the crew compartment.
The sounds of laughter drifted through the short companionway connecting the flight deck and the aft spaces.
Three of the fast-moving atmospheric interceptors were floating helplessly around the Spartanburg. One was close enough for them to see the pilot’s face.
He didn’t look so clever anymore.
“Keep us out of the way of their weapons,” she told Hal.
“Don’t want me to just splash ‘em now?”
She considered it for a moment. “No, not unless they give us no choice. They’re pretty much helpless now. There’s a chance they might get noticed on a long-range scan and rescued. We’ve had our own share of good luck today,” she said, nodding out at the hapless pilot. “I won’t deny them the chance to catch a break.”
In every raid, there was a balance between the benefits and the regrets. In this one, that balance was turning out to be more or less acceptable. She had no wish to ruin that by killing helpless pilots for no real reason.
“Just get us back to the Skidbladner.”
Negentropy
Monastics
Planet 3428
Viggo woke a little slower than usual. Most mornings he’d force himself out of bed quickly rather than prolong the inevitable but this time he felt groggy.
Then it came back to him. They’d caught up with him. Despite all his skills, all the time he’d spent out hunting in the jungle, he’d been caught like some dry-behind-the-ears off-worlder.
He kept his eyes closed, his breathing regular. Voices were coming into focus, now that he was fully awake, and he wanted to hear what they were saying about him before they realized he was awake.
He fought to keep the surprise from his face. They weren’t speaking in Fleet-English. It sounded like Oaxian or, possibly, one of the Tauhentan dialects. He tried to open his eyes just enough to get a glimpse without catching attention but a looming face occupied his whole field of view.
One of the bastards was leaning over him.
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