Merkiaari Wars: 04 - Operation Breakout Read online

  Konuhara was certainly escape proof from an inmate’s perspective. She doubted anyone would even consider trying to leave. Outside the walls they had a thousand klick walk without water or hope of shade in 60° heat to reach the nearest settlement, and all the while trying to evade recapture from well equipped guards searching for them from the air. Without outside aid, escape was impossible and the no fly zone ensured any such aid could not reach the walls by air. So much she knew from publicly available sources, but she was out here to scope the place for herself and determine whether those sources had it right.

  Her sneaksuit regulated her temperature. She was actually pretty comfortable as she ran through the desert heat, but that didn’t make things easy. The sand wasn’t firm underfoot and travel was taxing even for her enhanced body. She didn’t think she would have been able to make the journey before becoming a viper and that was a serious problem right there. She hadn’t reached the prison yet, and already she doubted her brother’s ability to make it out on foot even with her help. She would check the place out, but the further she went, the more she realised this wasn’t going to work. She needed another plan.

  Finally after hours of slogging over dunes, she climbed a rise that revealed the prison. She lay prone in the sand to study it. The heat and blinding light made the place ripple and shimmer like a mirage, but this dump wasn’t a mirage. It was a place of misery, containing the worst scum Northcliff had to offer. She was no bleeding heart, but she’d rather be dead than held there. Then again, she’d rather be dead than mind-wiped too, so there you go.

  Everything in life was relative depending upon how you looked at it.

  She switched to X3 to study the walls and defences. Solid plascrete walls twenty metres tall without gates ringed the cell blocks. There were towers of course, and her sensors were tracking targeting emissions from the sentry guns. She watched a shuttle arrive and land within the compound. It had been tracked all the way in by missile batteries located in bunkers outside the walls and upon the roofs of the cell blocks. These guys were serious. The no man’s land around the prison was mined and too wide to leap across even by a viper, and the defences didn’t end there. She watched hunter killer android guards patrolling the mine field and the walls. The mines weren’t motion activated then; they must be set to detect bio forms. Basically, anything with a heartbeat would be taken out. That was why the prison used droids outside the walls. Clever.

  Kate pulled her camera from her backpack and recorded everything, but with a sinking feeling in her gut she already knew attacking this place would be a lost cause. She frowned as the shuttle lifted and flew away having delivered its cargo of prisoners. She snapped away at it, getting some good shots, and wondering if she might get in that way. If she could get aboard one of those shuttles, and if she could get the codes to make the defences stand down for her, and if she could find her brother quickly in a prison containing thousands of prisoners, and if she could get him back to the shuttle, and if...

  She shook her head at her fantasy. Who was she kidding? It wasn’t going to happen. She might get in that way, but as soon as she tried to get Paul into the shuttle alarms would sound. It would be targeted and blown out of the sky even if it had time to lift. Somehow she doubted it would. She didn’t have an answer to that problem. Anything she did here was a huge risk and Paul was so vulnerable, so Human. Maybe she could bundle him into armour or something, but even if she had the time, armour didn’t make anyone completely safe.

  She opened her pack, pulled out one of her bottles, and briefly raised her hood to take a good long drink of water. She needed to think what to do. She eyed her comp and the dish she’d brought. In conjunction with some of Stone’s nano spies, she had planned to use her comp to snoop on the prison’s computer network. Some of his gifts were purely for data gathering, others were designed to attack in various ways. She hadn’t come to breach the prison today, so she hadn’t brought the weaponised versions, but she did have the ability to properly scope out the place. Did she still want to?

  She frowned down at the walls and made a decision. It was an easy one to make. She was here and might as well gather all the Intel she could. No point in wasting the trip. She had originally thought to learn the frequencies used by the prison and listen in to any chatter. With luck, she might have picked up more serious intelligence like pass codes, safe routes through the mines, guard schedules and more.

  She delved into the pack again and pulled out an aerosol. It looked like any other beauty product, one of many available in any number of well known stores, but this one didn’t contain moisturiser. She twisted the bottom and pulled. A metallic cylinder slid into her hand. To the naked eye it looked empty, but it wasn’t. A microscope would have revealed thousands of nanobots awaiting activation, each programmed by a master spy named Stone. Activating them was easily accomplished using TacNet. She had a dedicated channel for things like this or for monitoring the feed from remote sensors. She had never used TacNet this way outside of the classroom, but vipers never forgot anything once learnt. They literally couldn’t forget anything. Nothing at all. She gave the bugs their target and away they went. She discarded the empty cylinder upon the sand.

  She plugged in the dish to the comp and aimed it at the prison before calling up one of the handy apps she’d paid through the nose for. The system was completely passive. It sucked in data and gave nothing back, which was essential. She couldn’t afford to be detected by anyone, especially not droids that had no other purpose than killing stuff in the shortest possible time. She watched the comp’s screen as it trawled for emissions. It would pick up more than the data directed her way from the nannies busily vacuuming data. The system was sensitive enough to collect any unshielded signal no matter the type or frequency. When it found something, it briefly analysed and recorded the data unless it fell outside of the parameters set to validate the signals received. In others words, it stored the good stuff and dumped the bad before moving on and performing another cycle. It was a way of sampling everything and allowed her to quickly narrow down her search for useful Intel.

  Kate watched its progress and gave the computer a nudge in a different direction here and there. For example, the droid’s guard frequency was very active but of no use to her. She instructed the comp to ignore that one from now on. The droids communicated with each other all the time to keep their spacing, to alert each other when targets were sighted or eliminated, or to call in backup. None of it interested her. Another tweak of parameters eliminated the prison’s general housekeeping channel. That one monitored lighting and the like. Things like climate control and water recycling were computer controlled and monitored in any building. Again, unless she wanted to back up the toilets and flood the place, none of it was any use to her. Dump it.

  She watched and waited, allowing the comp to compile its data until she was sure she had everything of interest. She sent her spies their suicide command and packed her gear. She had a long run back to the shuttle. She wanted to reclaim her deposit and get back to the hotel before dark. With a prison break impractical, she needed to think of other ways to get Paul away from Northcliff. She needed to research the justice system and figure out whether she might spirit him away during his processing.

  She shouldered her pack and headed back.

  Crowne Hotel, Kastoria City, Northcliff

  Her brother was here. His ship had arrived during the night while she slept, but the alert she’d set woke her as soon as it docked at the station and the ship-list updated. He was here. They were on the same planet together for the first time in years. She didn’t know what to feel. Excitement, apprehension, fear? All three, she decided. She was excited to see him again, and glad he had made it this far in one piece. She was apprehensive because she knew what needed to be done, but not how to do it, and feared she might fail. She also feared their first meeting. Would he still know her? Would he blame her for their father’s passing, and his own less than stellar life since then? Would h
e hate her, be disgusted with her? Would he understand the choices she’d made?

  She was going to drive herself crazy thinking about it.

  Paul was in Konuhara Penitentiary right this minute awaiting trial. She hated that, but there was nothing she could do about it. She had analysed every byte of data she had vacuumed out of the place, and knew a prison break was out of the question. That knowledge at least opened up other possibilities. She could discard the prison and concentrate upon other avenues. There weren’t many, but what there were had advantages over a frontal assault on a maximum security prison. She could think of five possibilities, and each had their own difficulties associated with them, but none sucked as hard as a prison assault. Freeing Paul while he was in transit between the prison and spaceport, or between the spaceport and the courts were both good possibilities; especially the second. Paul would be transferred to an armoured car at the port. She should be able to ambush it relatively easily despite the escort it was sure to have. Attacking the court itself was another, but less satisfactory, option. After sentencing, there would be a last opportunity to get to him on route to the medical centre where mind-wipes were conducted—there was little doubt what the sentence would be. His guilt and that of the other prisoners wasn’t in question. Justice in the Border Zone was swift. The trial would be little more than a tick box exercise and chance for the media to witness the law being upheld.

  The final option was an intercept within the medical centre itself. That one was the easiest option because it was a public place with no security. She could just walk in, disguise herself as one of the techs and almost literally walk out with him after taking out his escort. The risk was that if it didn’t work for any reason at all, if she were delayed for example, Paul would cease to exist. His body would be walking around with someone else living in it. That was a horror she was determined to prevent. No, she didn’t like operations without a fall-back position. She was leaning toward intervening in the journey from the court to the medical centre.

  That decided, she needed to scout the route. She could do that later but for right now she needed more hardware. Specifically, she needed something to stop an armoured car without killing everyone inside. She needed artillery, and she needed it yesterday. She didn’t have the contacts, but she did have a pocket full of platinum and a starting point. Felix, the squirrelly little arms dealer she’d bought her pistol from might have something or know someone who did.

  She left the hotel and took a taxi to Felix’s store. It was a legitimate business that sold legal weapons for personal protection, but it was his under the counter stuff that was the main attraction. The computer and nifty applications came from under that counter. It was like magic that thing. If she asked for a tank, she would be only mildly surprised if he reached under there and pulled one out. She snorted at the image that popped into her head, and her driver cocked his head at her.

  “Nothing, just thought of something funny.”

  He nodded.

  The taxi dropped her outside the store and drove away. Kate checked her sensors and ran a security sweep, but it came up negative. She was half expecting Stone to pop out of the shadows and say boo, any time now. Realistically he should still be en route if he was coming at all, but she had no intention of being caught napping. She looked around one last time and opened the door into the store.

  “Oh no, no, no! No refunds!”

  Kate smirked. “Relax, Felix, I’m looking to buy not bust your balls.” She didn’t care what his real name was, but she highly doubted it was Felix. “I need something special.”

  His eyes narrowed. He approached slowly, just like the nervous squirrel he reminded her of. Looking beyond her and outside for a moment for anyone snooping, he locked the door before regarding her with calculation. “How special?”

  “AAR kind of special.”

  He hissed between his teeth. “Illegal on Northcliff. Mil-spec stuff needs special permits. Do I look like a merc company to you?”

  “You look like a man in need of money to me,” Kate said. He also looked like an unscrupulous little weasel, but she wouldn’t hurt his feelings by saying so. “I have a pocket full of platinum with your name on it.”

  She could almost see the credit signs flash into his beady eyes, but then he shook his head. Her heart sank. She didn’t have time to shop around.

  “I don’t know why you need an AAR,” he said and raised his hands in a warding gesture. “And I don’t want to, but I have something else that packs the same kind of punch. Cyclic rate is low though and magazine cap is tiny, but stopping power is off the charts. Still interested?”

  “Penetration?”

  “Armour piercing, it will go through 75mm ballistic plate no sweat. It’s a 20mm cannon... sort of.”

  She frowned. “A 20mm autocannon?”

  “Not an autocannon, more like an overpowered HTR.”

  That was intriguing. “Show me?”

  Felix beckoned Kate to follow him and led her into the back. He had a machine shop back there for making one off items for customers, but he swept through without stopping and went down a set of stairs into a basement area. It was a firing range for testing his products. There was a single plascrete lane with a target at the end and not much else. He unlocked a cabinet and stepped back.

  “I call it a bastard gun, because I made it out of this and that. It’s unique. Fires these,” he said offering her a huge projectile.

  She took it from him. It was as long as her hand from wrist to fingertip. She looked at him in disbelief, and he had the decency to look embarrassed. It was a god-damned bullet! A sure as shit chemical propelled bullet almost big enough to be mistaken for a mini-rocket.

  “You built a smoke pole... why?!”

  He blushed and mumbled something. “I just wanted to see what I could do with one. You know, just to see how far I could push things? Look, if you don’t want it that’s fine. You can find your damn AAR elsewhere, and good luck!”

  “Whoa now, no need to get testy.” She weighed the bullet in her hand and inspected the tip. “Armour piercing?”

  “Of course.” He sounded insulted she’d needed to ask.

  She tossed the bullet back to him and approached the cabinet. She stared at the monstrosity he had built and fell in love on sight. It stood on its stock at the back of the cabinet gleaming in understated brushed black finish. It was as long as she was tall with a muzzle brake as big as her fist. A recoil compensator like that was a warning of serious power. A bi-pod had already been mounted. It was an absolute beast of a gun. She doubted Felix had thought it through and designed it to be a crew served weapon, but it must be too heavy for an unenhanced person to tote easily.

  “Come to mama,” Kate whispered reaching for it, and Felix smiled with pride. Credit signs were back in his eyes. She scowled at him as she cradled the weapon. “How much?”

  “Well, like I said its unique. Priceless.”

  “How. Much. Felix?”

  “Twenty.”

  She gasped in outrage.

  “That’s about what you’d have to pay for that AAR you ain’t going to find!” He was getting bullish now. “You’re in a hurry; I can smell it on you. You’ll pay.”

  She gritted her teeth. She could just kill him and take the damn thing, but she knew she wouldn’t. “You can smell that, huh?”

  He nodded seriously.

  “Can you smell how I’m going to kill you if you don’t throw in a decent optic and fifty rounds of ammo?”

  “Fifty!” he screeched. “The magazine only takes five rounds! This isn’t an autocannon. I told you that. One round per pull of the trigger is all you get. I’ll throw in two mags fully loaded, no optic.”

  Ten rounds should be more than enough, but for twenty thousand he deserved to bleed a little. “Nuh-uh, fifty rounds and the optic. I could have squeezed you for a laser targeting system, Felix, be thankful we’re friends so I won’t, but no money until after a test firing, and you supply the ammo fo
r that.”

  Felix’s eyes bulged.

  “Breathe, Felix.”

  He gasped, sucking in air greedily. “Twenty rounds and the optic... a decent quality holographic model, but not top of the line. I won’t budge on that.”

  Kate pursed her lips. With her abilities she didn’t need top of the line. After the first round down range she would adjust to the weapon and be pin point accurate from then on. “Twenty rounds, the optic, and you still supply the test fire ammo.”

  Felix growled, but he licked his lips, and Kate knew she had him. “Platinum in my hand, no credit.”

  Credit, as if! “I have the platinum in my pocket right now. The test?”

  He bowed to her like a gentleman and swept a hand toward the firing lane.

  She regarded it doubtfully. “If this works as advertised, your lane isn’t near long enough.”

  “It works. I have battleship armour built in to that wall. Nothing here will breach it, not even that.”

  “If you say so,” Kate said doubtfully. “If it blows out your wall, I’m not paying for the damages.”

  “It won’t. I’ve fired it before.”

  “Yeah?”

  “One round. It was enough to prove the concept works.”

  Hmmm. One round didn’t work for her. No way to be sure it wouldn’t jam on subsequent shots. “I’ll need to put at least a full mag through it. Just to be sure.” He shrugged unconcerned, and that made her feel a little better. “Okay,” she said and grinned in anticipation. “Let’s do this.”

  * * *