by David Ryker
I pulled up, turned a quarter on, took a breath, and then drew fast. The barrel of my plasma pistol swung round, the holes in the muzzle whistling in the cold air and let loose with a single blob of white-hot ionized gas. It zipped through the air, buzzing like a wasp, and hit the F-Series square in the camera dome before it could do anything about it. The orb of electrics and lenses exploded and melted at the same time, erupting in a fountain of sparks. The round burnt its way straight through the top section of the mech and burst on the concrete wall behind it, leaving a charred black star as a reminder.
By the time the first plume of smoke rose into the frigid air, I was already down the ramp. Greg propelled us forward with a burst of thrust and I landed, skidding on the cold ground, spraying the body of the F-Series with a shower of ice shards.
The Wint tried to draw, but before it could even lift the shotgun halfway, the strap parted, and the weapon was pulled from its hands. Its eyes went wide for a second and then it staggered backward into the roller door, cheeks bloated like a toad’s neck. Fish materialized next to me before leaping up and finishing the Wint with a heavy right cross. Its head lolled backward and it slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Before it did, the hatch on the F-Series ahead decompressed and opened. The pilot was totally blind inside without the cam dome, though when he regained his sight, we probably weren’t what he was hoping to see. A measly-looking human, pudgy-faced with thinning orange hair stood up in the cockpit as though he was about to jump out, but froze when he realized that I wasn’t fifteen meters away anymore.
I reached out and watched Greg’s hand close around his midriff. Greg plucked him out of the body of the mech and held him aloft, tight enough so that he couldn’t scream.
I pulled my hand out of the glove and touched the seal above me, opening my own hatch. I drew as I stood, bracing against the cold wind, and leveled my Arcram at the Telmareen guard. There was no way to tell if he was corrupt or not, but letting him go wasn’t an option just then. I put my boot on the lip of the hatch and leaned out, reaching with my free hand for the chest of the guard, and the keycard hanging off his breast pocket.
He made a strangulated attempt to beg for his life, but I didn’t want to hear it. There was no time, and I didn’t want to kill him anyway. If someone was shooting at me then it was fair enough, but I wasn’t quite there when it came to executions. I sighed, thumbed down the Arcram to non-lethal, and put an electrified blob between his eyes.
The sparks arced over his head and his eyes rolled before Greg dropped him back into the cockpit and lowered his arm. The guard lay there, unconscious, legs akimbo and half out of the F-Series, which was making no attempt to do anything — it was either a much milder form of AI that was shitting itself currently, or there wasn’t one installed at all. The militarized arm of the Federation were emphatic about their AIs and the level of autonomy and control they had — in the heat of battle, it was imperative so they could keep their pilots alive.
I’d only ever been in one and I could attest to that. But for civilian application? Maybe it just took one look at us, realized that it was outgunned, and decided playing possum was its best chance of survival. The plasma round would have blown out the entire camera dome and all broadcasting capabilities it had, anyway. A well-placed shot would do that — straight through the core components built into the top of the body. So if it did try anything, it would be fighting blind.
Though it wasn’t like the design was that bad. Plasma weapons were highly illegal for civilians to possess, after all, and pretty rare, so protecting against them was likely a design cost they couldn’t afford to incur on a grand scale for an unlikely occurrence like that. Even just carrying them was a corporal offense on Federation planets. And it wasn’t like a regular pistol would do the same — plasma weaponry did serious damage — far more than the Federation was willing to prepare the F-Series for. The Alpha Series, the officers’ mechs — well, they were a different story. They actually wanted to keep the guys flying those alive.
I stayed hanging out of Greg’s mouth as he approached the card-reader next to the roller door and touched my finger to the skin behind my ear. “We’re at the door now. Did Kera’s contact come through on those schematics?”
“Amazingly, yeah,” Volchec said, hope in her voice. “Everett’s uploading them to you now.”
“Humph — well, if there were no schematics, there was no deal,” I grunted, touching the card to a reader suspended five meters off the floor.
“We’re not out of the woods yet, though,” Everett’s voice added. “Kera’s contact in the Guard may have given us the location of Alice’s holding cell, but getting there’s still not going to be an easy task.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I know, but still, at least they didn’t tip them off — we could have come down this ramp facing an army of Telmareen Guard looking to shred a couple of Federation idiots before they managed to get a shot off.” I waited but no one said anything. “But we didn’t — so that’s a good start, right?”
Volchec cleared her throat. “Stay on point, Maddox. There’s a long way to go.”
The light on the pad turned green and the door started rumbling upward. Footsteps echoed behind me and I leaned around the hatch, watching Mac running down the ramp. He had a rifle in his hands, but it looked like a pea shooter compared to the shotgun lying across the stomach of the Wint.
Fish pulled it off the hairy body, held it up and kept it pointing forward as the door ahead revealed an underground parking garage.
It was a huge space filled with hundreds of vehicles — ground cars and hover, trucks, transports, riot vehicles, hovercycles decked out in the same green and white striping as the F-Series standing blind and limp on my left. I narrowed my eyes and scanned the space, my Arcram still raised, the plasma pistol raised below me. Nothing was moving, which meant no alarms had gone up. We’d neutralized the F-Series before it could send out a distress call. But we weren’t in the clear by any means.
I swallowed and looked into the swirling clouds overhead. Flakes of snow above the sun line glittered gold as they wound toward the earth. The clouds swallowed up the tower at around the fiftieth story, but I knew it went on for another forty after that, and every floor was filled with droids, or guards, or Free, or a mixture of all of the above, and the second we were discovered, they’d come down on us like a swarm of ants, descending the tower to neutralize the threat.
I climbed back into Greg and turned to look at Fish, who was waiting for my go. “Ready?” I asked, my voice thin and quiet.
His rig faced me for a second, exterior blank and giving nothing away, and then he stepped forward into the garage. I pushed the button to close my hatch, and then followed him in.
The noise of the city died behind us until the only sound was our footsteps on the smooth concrete floor. Mac streaked out ahead, a bag slung over his shoulder, and made for what looked like an office at the far end. It was glass fronted, and inside was a creature I’d never seen before. It was reptilian looking, with a long neck and orb-like eyes on stems coming out of a flat head. What was even stranger was that below the long neck I could see a white shirt and tie. I didn’t think I’d ever cease to be amazed by what the universe had to offer.
Mac was heading straight for it, sticking to the shadows of the vehicles, hulking and tucked against the walls. Fish did his disappearing act and went after him. I watched as he dematerialized, his cloaking tech a marvel to watch — thousands of tiny cameras and projectors that detected the environment around him, and displayed what was behind. If you looked really closely, you could see him shimmering as he moved, like an apparition, or a trick of the light, but either way, it was amazing. And effective. The only thing he couldn’t cloak was the shotgun, so if the reptile with the tie was to look up, he’d get a look at a flying shotgun bobbing toward him through the air. But he didn’t — not until they wanted him to, at least.
I moved behind a pillar and listened as a whistle r
ang out. The reptile looked up and into the garage through its windows. The open door at the far end was no doubt an attention grabber, but the light changes and the distance meant that it couldn’t make out quite what was going on. It pushed back from the computer it was working on and got up, moving toward the door of the security office.
The moment it opened its muzzle flash lit the garage and a shot rang out. The reptile flew backward in a shower of sparks and Mac leaped out of the shadow of a truck that would have fit my F-Series behind the wheel. The door started to creak shut and he slipped through the gap. Fish’s cloaking tech stuttered and he stepped forward, shouldering the shotgun, and pushed the door open with his hand. I caught up with him a few seconds later and stepped into the office last.
Mac was standing on the chair that the reptile had been sitting on, looking like a toy soldier with his rifle across his back. He was tapping on the keyboard, accessing the security protocols of the tower.
I turned my attention to the reptile in the corner. It was slouched against a filing cabinet, a beanbag lying on its stomach, knocked out. The shotgun wasn’t a real shotgun — it was more like a riot control weapon by the look of it, firing electrically charged taser-beanbags.
I stared at the creature for a second, and then turned to Fish. “You knew that wasn’t a real shotgun, right?”
He didn’t say a word.
Mac hit a key, and then dumped his bag on the desk, fishing around inside it. He pulled out a small black box and plugged it into the terminal. It came to life and a blue light started flickering on top of it.
He swung round on the chair and gave me a thumbs up. “Okay, we’re good,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief. “All their internal communications are disabled. But it won’t be long before they realize and come looking, so I’d get up there while you can.” He looked at the reptile and then back to me. “We’ll wait for your signal, okay?” He got off the chair and headed for the door, letting himself out through the bottom half, which split off, designed for humanoids. He paused and turned back. “I’ll see you on the other side. Good luck.”
The door clacked shut behind him and then he ran for the exit. I didn’t blame him. If they all descended on the garage and it was just Mac here, he’d be crushed in seconds. And in such close quarters, his HAM would be no good either. It was slow and cumbersome and wouldn’t be able to lay down any of that impressive cover ordnance that I’d come to admire. No, he’d done his part, and now it was down to Fish and me.
I clenched my jaw and watched him go, turning to Fish after a few minutes. “Well, I guess this is it.” I sighed, pulling my Samson over my shoulder. “You ready for a fight? I don’t think they’re going to just hand them over willingly.”
Fish gurgled out loud gleefully, and then went for the door.
22
My comms were static. Mac had plugged in the scrambler, and it was feeding continuous feedback loops into the network in the Guard Tower, which was sludging up the airwaves and making it impossible to receive anything other than white noise, no matter who you were or what you were trying to get.
I sighed, trying my best to drown in it as the elevator trundled upward. We were heading for the forty-fourth floor, which is where the holding cells and interrogation rooms were. That was our first stop, for Alice.
Our second was eighty-five, for Kera’s man. We needed to get them both out to get away with something that even resembled a win. If we didn’t get Kera’s man, then they’d roll, spill their guts about us hitting that transport, killing the Guard, and then we’d all be fucked.
She said that Fox having her man was insurance, and threatening to rat us out to the Federation was hers, to make sure we didn’t grab Alice and then cut and run — which we had to admit was something we’d all thought about and discussed at length to see if we could figure out a way that we might be able to.
It didn’t seem like there was — at least not without doing some real cold shit, and if we did that, then we’d still face Greenway’s wrath, so we were going through with the whole thing. Rescue Alice. Rescue Kera’s man. Then get the fuck off Telmareen, and never look back.
The elevator rode smoothly upward, the stillness inside not indicative at all of the shitstorm about to unfold.
I thought it was odd that they’d be so high up until Volchec explained that half of forty-four was prepped as a landing pad for transport craft, and that it was much easier, and safer to bring ships and prisoners in and out at altitude, and that setting them down on the ground only provided more chance for escape.
At least on the forty-fourth floor if the prisoners were that desperate to make a break for it, there was only one way down, and it wasn’t a slow descent. But it hadn’t gotten to that yet with Alice. They hadn’t shipped her anyway, and the Federation armada hadn’t arrived either, which meant we still had some time left.
We had it on good authority that the Guard were exercising every minute of the holding period before they officially put her under arrest and tossed her in a cell. Everett had been insistent on preparing me for the worst. Under section seventeen of the Federation of Planets’ Galactic Protectorate Act, any persons deemed to be a threat to the welfare of the Federation, and/or any citizens living in it, the Federation and any authorized and appointed agents — in this case the Telmareen Guard — were allowed to forgo their obligations to adhere to the Species Rights Act while questioning detainees. Which was longhand for ‘They’re allowed to torture her if they want.’
Considering what Kera had told us about the whole operation, I thought there was a chance that wouldn’t have happened — I mean, why would Free interrogators interrogate someone who was attacking a shipment on their orders? It made no sense to me. Though Volchec and Everett had again been insistent that I prepare myself for the worst: that despite the Guard acting autonomously, they still reported to the Federation, and would have to report something like this.
So, whether they were turned or not, if they wanted to keep the charade alive, they’d have to keep up appearances, and if that meant torturing some dumb merc who’d gotten themselves swept up in all this, then that would be no problem. It would have been what was expected of them, and not doing it would have raised suspicions.
I swallowed and flexed my hands around the Samson, watching as the digits climbed above the door, taking us closer to Alice, but also to a whole host of Telmareen guards who were about to have their otherwise quiet evening seriously fucked with.
“Your vitals appear to be elevated,” Greg said softly. “Are you nervous?”
I took a deep breath. “You could say that. We’re sort of in the lion’s den here.”
“Would you like some music? I am aware that it has therapeutic effects on humans during times of stress.”
I had to chuckle. For all his sass, he was a pretty caring computer — I had to give him that. “Sure, Greg. Something relaxing,” I said softly.
When the doors opened, Bach was just striking up on a fleet of cellos. The languid drawing of bows, the resonating hum of strings — they rang inside the cockpit as we stepped out.
Fish fired first, wasting no time. The jig was up now and there was no point pussyfooting around anymore. We hadn’t shed blood downstairs because we hadn’t needed to, but now it was kill or be killed, and the narrowness of the corridor didn’t leave much room for anything else.
The schematics told us that the elevators broke into corridors that split left and right as well as running straight ahead. They were arranged like blocks, with offices and interrogation rooms laid out next to each other. Alice was in one of them, though we didn’t know which — Kera’s contact didn’t have that sort of pull.
She wasn’t the only person being questioned either — there were dozens of suspects being processed. Telmareen was an endless city, after all, and there wasn’t another tower for a hundred kilometers. But, for every prisoner, there were at least two arresting guards, which wasn’t good news for us.
Plenty of t
hem were huge autonomous peacekeeping droids, too — basic AI implanted with the laws of the planet they were operational on, which might not sound too rough, but considering their shoot first and ask questions later programming, they’d be quick on the draw.
The rest of the Guard were a mixture of modified Federation F-Series like the one at the gate, being piloted by humanoids, and other large species. Wints seemed to be common, as did the reptilian things with the long necks. Other than that, it was hard to tell the others in all the muzzle flash.
Dead ahead of us were two figures — one droid, and one F-Series. The hatch was open on the latter, and I just caught a glimpse of the widening eyes of the woman piloting it before Fish put a round into the droid, sending it flying backward, squawking with a siren-like alarm wail.
I swallowed and just tried to make it quick. We were here for Alice, and that’s all there was to it. This wasn’t our fight, and we were only doing what was necessary to get Alice back. I kept telling myself that, but it didn’t dull the wave of nausea as one of the rounds from my Samson hit the exposed woman in the chest. It exploded in a flurry of blood and she slumped sideways in the cockpit. I was still new to killing.
The F-Series wobbled and then fell without her control. By the looks of it, if the Telmareen Guard’s rigs were outfitted with an AI, it wasn’t one that had any functional control, which was good. It gave us the edge.
The siren wail from the droid was apparently contagious, so even before its bulbous body hit the ground, bucket-shaped head spinning, the others on the floor started screeching too. It was like a wolf pack howling — one started the other, and that was it. Every droid on the floor went crazy.
Sirens blared and the whole floor descended into a deep shade of flashing red as someone flipped an alarm. I took solace in the fact that at least the other floors would remain unaware of the situation for a little while, so long as Mac’s jammer did its job. But that was a pretty thin supposition, and we still needed to move fast.