Sudden Death (A Military Sci Fi Thriller) (The Biogenesis War Files)

by L. L. Richman

  He drew in a deep breath when the last leg snapped and the thing tumbled free, sparking once where it hit the platform’s ES field on its way down to the ocean below. He sucked in another lungful of air before pocketing the cutter and easing the ascenders back down the way he’d come.

  He paused when the connection he’d had with the transport, which he’d forgotten to dissolve, notified him that the vessel was being powered up. Concerned that the thieves had made their way to it, he overrode the startup sequence, shutting the system down once more.

  He reached out to Gabe. {Are you sending someone out in one of the transports? The shuttle I just docked has powered up.}

  {No,} said Gabe. {The only person we sent down there was a security team member to round up your prisoner. Hang on; let me check in with them.}

  Gabe came back online, voice tight. {They haven’t made it there yet. You think it’s the maintenance worker you captured?}

  Boone sighed. {It’s possible. I underestimated her once before,} he admitted. {She took a pulsed CUSP blast, full-strength. I suppose it’s possible she’s recovered.}

  {I’ll send Davila down to check it out. You said you were alerted?}

  {Yessir. I’d forgotten to release the override codes when I left the shuttle, and I got a notification on my wire.}

  {Davila’s on his way,} Gabe told him. {He’ll be on the lookout for your hostile. What’s your status?}

  {Bomb’s on its way down to the ocean. The right one, this time. On my way back down now,} he said.

  {You tethered to that cable, son?} Gabe’s voice was sharp.

  {Sir, yes, sir. This soldier does not have a death wish, sir.}

  As he spoke, he released the bottom ascender and pushed it down by another half meter. Mentally re-engaging its clamp, he eased himself down while releasing the top ascender and sliding it down to meet the first one.

  {Copy that. Keep us apprised.} With that, the connection closed.

  Minutes later, the high-pitched whine of a shuttle hit his ears. He twisted to try to locate the sound’s origin and was dismayed to see a familiar sight. Apparently, Davila hadn’t made it to the dock in time.

  Boone expected Jayden to head for the coast, but the woman flipped the shuttle and headed back for the platform instead. More precisely, she angled the transport up, toward the tether. Boone’s heart sped up when he realized that it was on a heading that would bring it perilously near him. And it was closing fast.

  He attempted to raise her on the guard frequency all ships were legally required to monitor. When nothing happened, he shot off a warning broadband across the pubnet.

  {Vessel approaching sky park: Break off, break off, break off. You’re getting dangerously close to the support cables!} He repeated the warning, dismayed to see the vessel angling carefully so that is drives wash were pointed directly at him.

  {Sitrep!} the command sounded over his wire just as he looked up to see the woman crouched inside an open hatch, weapon raised.

  Damn fool! Boone clung to the cable as it whipped back and forth in a frenzy. His hands gripped the ascenders until his knuckles were white, his legs wrapped around the cable as his body was flung back and forth, helpless victim to the crazy resonance the wash from the engines had induced.

  {Corporal! Sitrep!} The words snapped at him over the combat net, but his focus was entirely on the shuttle as it hovered a scant and perilous thirty meters away.

  He heard the whine of the weapon’s discharge and realized he was being shot at. Oddly, that made him laugh.

  Good luck with that, he thought. The crazy woman didn’t realize the engine wash was by far the more deadly of the two. It was clear, even from this distance, that she lacked the training to know the weapon tucked securely in the pocket of her shoulder would do him no harm. Forget thermal bloom rendering the weapon useless at this distance; the wild swinging of the cable made targeting him next to impossible.

  Abruptly, he realized he’d yet to respond to Gabe’s command. {Searcy transport, lone shooter,} he reported, the words staccato in their brevity. {Engine wash. Can’t hold on much longer.}

  He heard Thad swear. {You’d better hold on, hoss. We’re on our way.}

  But Boone knew they’d be too late. He had to act now if he wanted to survive this.

  His assailant disappeared into the shuttle, apparently coming to the realization that killing him by laser-fire was a nonstarter. Then the shuttle began to move. The first pass nearly ripped him from the cable. He wouldn’t survive another.

  Her pass had been so close, he felt like he could practically brush his hand against the engine’s nacelles. The thought gave him an idea. It was batshit crazy, but it just might work.

  He waited until she was at her furthest distance, turning for her next pass. Releasing one of the ascenders, Boone reached a hand down, unclipped his tether, and began to coil it, just like he’d done countless times back on the ranch. Holding the coil in the same manner he’d use when roping a calf, he braced himself as best he could, clinging to the cable with one hand and both feet, and then waited for the next close pass.

  He’d only get one chance at this, and timing would be critical. Even then, he knew there was a better than fifty percent chance this stunt would take him down, too.

  The shuttle began its run. Boone’s muscles strained, pouring every ounce of strength he had into his grip on the ascender as the cable began swinging wildly once more. He waited until the shuttle’s air intake was within throwing distance, then swung the tether with all his might. It flew true, in a long looping arc, directly toward the nacelle’s air intake, but Boone didn’t wait around to see. With both hands now gripping the ascender, Boone sent the app that controlled it a mental command—and suddenly he was in freefall, the ascender plummeting half a kilometer toward the platform below him.

  Above his head, he heard a horrible grinding noise as the tether fouled the shuttle’s drive. The cable he was connected to shuddered as the tether snapped tight, and Boone prayed that the ring that secured it wouldn’t hold.

  The numbers ticked down on his app and he knew he’d have to engage the ascender’s grip once more if he wanted to avoid splattering himself against the maintenance hatch below.

  He ordered the app to begin braking in short pulses and quickly felt heat begin to build up through his gloves. With a sudden snap, the tether gave way, and out of the corner of Boone’s eye he saw the shuttle fall away.

  He wasn’t slowing enough. Worse, a warning telltale began to flash, signaling the ascender in use was overheating. Boone braced as best he could and freed one hand, the other blindly grasping for the second ascender clipped to his suit.

  Affixing it to the cable while the carbyne line whizzed past at an alarming rate was like trying to thread a needle while racing along on horseback. On his third try, it snapped into place. He began engaging it mere seconds before the first ascender went into shutdown.

  The plunge took thirteen seconds before he began to slow. It was the longest thirteen seconds of his life. He braved a look down and saw to his relief that the hatch was open, with both Thad and Ramirez braced to catch him.

  He was still falling at a good clip, though the ascenders had done a fair job of slowing him. He winced in anticipation as the last few meters flew past—and then he was in, snagged by the combined strength of his platoon mate and the Unit operator.

  All three went tumbling to the floor of the maintenance tunnel, the impact rattling Boone’s bones.

  Beside him, Thad rolled to his feet with a groan and with hand signals, ordered Ramirez to seal the hatch. Boone decided he’d just hang around on the floor for another few seconds.

  “Well, hoss, I’d say you’ve just about used up your quota of damn fool stunts for the day,” the operator drawled.

  Boone cracked open one eye. He waved a hand in half-hearted acknowledgement to Thad’s statement. “Sir, yes, sir,” he managed.

  A dark-skinned hand came into view. Boone grasped it, and Thad drew
him to his feet.

  “The shuttle?”

  “Being escorted back to Port Defiance,” Thad said. “And a Novastrike filled with Marines just docked. You can stand down now. Reinforcements have arrived.”

  52: AFTERMATH

  Sky Park Grounds

  Early the next morning, Boone received a summons, inviting him to the Port Defiance branch of the National Security Agency. Mystified and a little unnerved, he complied. He arrived to find Thad and Asha waiting for him outside. Shortly thereafter, Ramirez and Davila showed up.

  “Are we in trouble or something?” Davila asked, nervously looking about.

  Thad dipped his chin and looked at the private from beneath lowered brows. “You got something to be nervous about, hoss?”

  When Davila’s eyes widened, Asha dug her elbow into the operator’s side. “Lay off, LT. You’re scaring the crap out of him.”

  Ramirez took a wide step to his left and shot Davila some side-eye. “Dude. Not literally, I hope.”

  Ignoring the antics of his platoon mates, Boone turned questioning eyes on Thad. “Why were we called here?”

  The operator hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Duncan Cutter invited Gabe to question the suspects. We,” his finger helicoptered around, indicating their small group, “get to watch.

  Duncan Cutter? Ramirez mouthed to Boone. Director of the NSA?

  Boone lifted a shoulder in a half shrug.

  Asha looked at Thad. “Who arranged this?” she asked.

  Thad crossed his arms. “Chris Reid. Cutter dropped in to check on him at the hospital.” His lips twitched. “Apparently, he and Lane double-teamed him. Cutter gave in, after the colonel cited Gabe’s familiarity with the case.”

  Asha nodded. “Nice of him to do that. Of course, Chris has a vested interest in the case, considering they held his son hostage and nearly killed him.” Turning, she began to climb the steps, calling out over her shoulder, “Well, come on. We don’t want to miss the good parts.”

  * * *

  The woman seated across the table from Gabriel Alvarez looked defeated. As Boone, Thad, and the rest watched from an adjacent room, the NCIC agent pushed a plas sheet forward and tapped a finger to call her attention to it.

  “That’s the woman who flew the shuttle I spiked?” Boone asked quietly as they stood around the holoprojection that showed the interrogation being conducted next door.

  “Yep. Name’s Delia,” Thad said in an undertone as Gabe began questioning the woman. “The Navy tracked her all the way to the orbital station. They were waiting for her when she docked.”

  “Lone surviving member of the smuggling operation,” Asha murmured. “Talk about bad career choices.”

  They lapsed into silence when Gabe’s voice filtered in from the other room once more. “So, you didn’t know your boss had ordered the person you knew as Jay Henson to plant bombs on the platform?”

  Delia shook her head wearily. “No. Like I said, when Petra finally told me about it, she was livid. Jay was only supposed to set charges to scare people into thinking there was an attack. No one was supposed to get hurt, and we sure as hell weren’t out to kill anyone. That would have brought too much heat and attention down on us.”

  Gabe nodded. “That’s what I figured. Did you know Jay Henson was Jayden Harte?”

  “The newsnet anchor?” Delia looked startled, and then a thoughtful expression crossed her face. “I honestly didn’t, but now that you say it, yeah, I can see the resemblance.”

  “And you didn’t suspect her, when she joined Mastai six months ago?”

  The woman shrugged. “A lot of folks in the cartel don’t like to talk about their histories, where they came from, that kind of thing. We don’t press. All that matters is they do their jobs, and they do them well.”

  “And Jay—Jayden—was one of those people. So, you really didn’t know anything about her?”

  She shook her head. “Only that Jay had a reputation for being a hard worker, and responsible. Those two qualities can move you up pretty quickly in the ranks.”

  Gabe shot her a speculative look and then asked a final question. “Whose idea was it to place those charges?”

  The woman looked embarrassed. “Petra said it was Jay’s,” she admitted. “But she’d been led to believe they were harmless.”

  Thad pushed away from the holo and began to pace.

  “A frickin’ news anchor,” he said with disgust.

  Asha shook her head. “Hard to believe she’d go to all that trouble. Staging an internecine war between Mastai and the smugglers, then faking a Secede Sirius attack? All for ratings to boost a flagging career.”

  Boone lifted his hands, and then let them drop to his sides. “That’s what she told me, yes.”

  They’d held an informal after-action report among themselves while waiting for law enforcement to debrief them. Unfortunately, the confession Boone had extracted from Jayden was inadmissible as evidence since it had been done under the influence of the med-bots.

  Thad hooked a hand around the back of his neck and looked up at the ceiling. “I looked her up last night. Something about her name…” His voice trailed off. He tilted his head, his eyes seeking Asha’s. “Did you know she was a war correspondent? A reporter, embedded with the Navy during the Zosher incident in the Sargon Straits.”

  The medic’s brow creased. “Wow, that was decades ago, but…” Her gaze grew distant. “Now that you mention it, she was everywhere on the newsnets back then. I even saw her dressed in SDU baselayers, reporting live alongside Marine fireteams.”

  Thad grunted. “It’d explain how she was aware of Posse Comitatus, too. Never known a civilian to have the first clue about such things, and the news usually gets stuff like that wrong, too.”

  Ramirez’s head had been bouncing back and forth between the two like a spectator at a tennis match. “Dude, I don’t remember any of that…” he said to Boone under his breath.

  Asha shot the young Marine an amused look. “That’s because you’re just a pup.”

  Thad ignored the exchange, his gaze riveted to the holo once more. Boone turned to look.

  Delia’s interview had drawn to a close. An NSA agent had arrived to escort her from the room. In the hallway just beyond the agent stood Jayden Harte, flanked by two more agents.

  Boone studied her as she entered. She had a confidence bordering on arrogance, and her carriage held an almost regal bearing, despite being dressed in orange coveralls with her wrists bound in front of her by mag-cuff bracelets. The woman looked nothing at all like the maintenance worker she’d imitated the day earlier.

  “That was some acting job she pulled yesterday,” Boone said, his amazement at the transformation drawing him closer to the projection.

  “Un-frickin-believable,” Thad repeated. “And all for ratings.”

  They observed as Gabe questioned Jayden thoroughly. It slowly became clear to them all that the woman held no remorse for her actions. By the end, even Gabe was having a difficult time remaining impassive.

  When the session came to an end, they trooped out of the Agency’s viewing room and were guided by a service SI to a nearby break room to await Gabe’s return. On the newsnet holo playing in the corner was splashed the headline, ‘Former Geminate Nebula News Reporter Jayden Harte Held for Questioning on Sky Park Attack.’ The sub-header read, ‘news anchor accused of inciting skirmish to reinvigorate waning career.’

  Boone glanced away as live images from the sky park filled the screen. With an annoyed growl, Thad grabbed the controls and turned off the newsnet feed. Asha moved over to a credenza where carafes of coffee sat behind small stasis fields. She poured Thad a cup, then offered one to Boone.

  He wordlessly waved away the offer and began to pace, too restless to take a seat. For the first time in more than twenty-four hours, his mind wandered back to the decision he’d have to make upon his return to Ouray base.

  He was startled to feel a hand come down on his shoulder. He spun, shrug
ging the hand off, only to freeze when he realized what he’d just done… and who the hand belonged to.

  Asha’s knowing look met his. “It’s normal to be a bit punchy after what you’ve been through. I won’t tell you to relax; you’ll unwind at your own pace soon enough.”

  Her gaze shifted from him back to where Thad and Gabe were discussing the results of the questioning. A long moment passed, and then her voice sounded quietly beside him.

  “You couldn’t find two better role models to pattern your career after,” she murmured. “Stars know, Thad and I have pulled each other’s asses out of a sling more times than we can count.”

  Her words made Boone realize how intently he’d been studying the two men. It was obvious that she’d noticed.

  “I’ve seen you watching them, Asha confirmed. “Let me guess; newly promoted lance corporal, trying to decide exactly what direction you want your military career to take?” She inclined her head once more to the two men. “Either one of those would be a fine role model to pattern your life after. Though they pursued two completely different paths.”

  “What’s it like, being with the Unit?”

  Asha’s expression took on a contemplative cast. She looked down and her hand came to rest on the weapon holstered at her waist. After a beat, she looked back up at him.

  “I’ve only just been tabbed, mind you. But I’ve been deployed in places where operators were inserted. I’ve seen them work, and I am honored to call several of them friend.” She looked off into the distance, seeing something only she could see. “In some ways, it’s a study of extremes and contrasts. You see great sacrifice. You see the worst of humanity, but you also see the best as well. I do know this: I’ll never regret my decision to join the Unit. The missions they run and the actions they take under cover of night and out in the deepest black are what keep billions of people safe back home.”

  Something in Boone shifted. Her words drew him, had him responding to a calling deep within, a purpose he’d not truly known existed before today.