Merkiaari Wars: 04 - Operation Breakout Read online

  20 ~ Bang Means Stop

  Kastoria City, Northcliff, Border Zone

  Kate watched her brother’s trial on the net. She had a window open on her display so that she could see the coverage while staying in position snugged behind her weapon. She had chosen a rooftop OP along the route the armoured car would take from the courts to the med centre. She had scouted the entire route after leaving Felix yesterday, and there were plenty of good spots to choose from, but this one worked well from the point of view of a quick withdrawal.

  She watched as one by one the prisoners were sentenced. Paul’s lawyer stood with him, but didn’t say much that was in any way helpful or new. He tried to apply mitigation again to reduce the sentence. Paul had killed the crazy pirate captain and saved many lives, he said. A lot of good marines owed their lives to him blah blah blah, and he would like to throw himself upon the mercy of the court pretty please? The judge glared, said no, and the next prisoner was up. None of it surprised Kate or anyone else. The court would go through the motions with each of the prisoners and then sentence the lot to mind-wipe, nice neat and completely legal. The Border Zone would be down one entire crew of raiders, and Northcliff would gain a nice new batch of docile citizens ready to work.

  Everyone’s a winner.

  Kate scowled, except for the poor saps who were about to get their brains turned to mush. Well screw that. She wasn’t letting it happen to her brother. Not while she had breath in her body. She stroked The Beast’s trigger guard, anticipating what it would do to the enemy vehicles. The armoured car and escort was the enemy now. She had nothing personal against the city’s law enforcement, but they were in her way. That wasn’t a good place for the KSD (Kastoria Security Department) to be. She would save her brother, and they would leave Northcliff safely. There would be no trusting to luck, nothing left to chance. Anything she needed to do to make it happen she would do. This was just another op. Like all of her previous ops, she would succeed.

  “Luck is not a factor,” she whispered her personal mantra. It never was with proper mission planning in place.

  As expected, the armoured car containing today’s batch of prisoners entered the street in convoy escorted by Kastoria and prison security. There were four cars in the escort; two in front and two behind. Prison guards rode in two of the four, and those were the most dangerous. Each one had two Human guards inside, but each had a hunter killer android from the prison battalion riding shotgun. The androids provided the firepower while the Humans gave the things their orders. She was familiar with the model used.

  Hunter killers weren’t particularly stupid examples of droid design like say a sentry droid, and that was a problem. If the guards gave the correct commands, she would have a real battle on her hands even if she took out their Human masters first. Tell an HK to prevent any escapes for example, and it might well kill all the prisoners reasoning that they couldn’t then escape. Very logical, clever almost, and job done. On the other hand, tell it to kill any attackers, the damn thing would chase her off world and across the known universe to fulfil its programming. So a lot depended upon how good the Human guards were in a crisis. If they panicked and said the wrong thing from her point of view, they could make life difficult.

  The two Kastoria security cruisers escorting the convoy were nothing to worry about; they were traffic units at best. She still needed to neutralise them of course. If they did nothing to oppose her, they could still go vertical and follow her withdrawal by air. That was something she couldn’t allow. She anticipated the officers driving those two units had orders to clear traffic and enable a speedy journey to the medical centre, not to actually defend the convoy—that’s what the droids were for. If they had any sense they would call for backup and stay in their vehicles when the attack came. She was pretty sure it was SOP on Northcliff as it was on most civilised worlds. Shootouts between the white hats and the black hats like in the early days of colonisation were long gone from here.

  BOOM! Clack-ching!

  The Beast’s recoil was massive, but she had practised in Felix’s basement. In the end she’d run two full mags through the thing despite his bitching about costs and production time for the rounds. Her viper targeting and reflexes were fully dialled in. Somewhere in her database there was a listing for her new toy, probably entitled Weird 20mm Frankengun or something like that, containing its specs and the parameters she needed to fire it accurately. Whatever the case, the spent brass was still spinning through the air when she sent a second round downrange to join the first through the armoured car’s engine bay and turbine casing.

  BOOM! Clack-ching!

  The armoured car shuddered to a halt as its turbine self-destructed, its titanium fan blades splintering and screaming outward at high velocity. The engine casing had been compromised by her shots, but she had no fear that the prisoners would be hurt. Most of the shrapnel would still be caught by the casing as designed, but the engine bay itself was armoured and would catch the rest.

  She turned her attention to the escort. All four cars had stopped, but only the droids had emerged. SOP was standing her in good stead. She targeted the closest droid. She could have taken its head off, but androids didn’t generally keep their brains in their heads. Heads were just for sensing and looking good to Humans. Hunter killers had their processors in their chest cavities encased in heavy armour proof against most commonly available weapons. Nothing man or droid portable was strong enough to prevent penetration by mil-spec artillery like hers however. Nothing short of battleship armour was stopping her today.

  BOOM! Clack-ching!

  Droid down.

  BOOM! Clack-ching!

  Droid down.

  Both androids were cut in half, their torsos blasted open and internals obliterated. They were inert junk now. No threat, but she was far from done today. She wanted the guards too scared to exit their vehicles and force her to kill them. She used her final round to kill the first cruiser’s turbine stone dead before replacing her magazine with a fresh one and giving the same treatment to the other escort vehicles.

  She leapt to her feet and withdrew from the roof as soon as the escort was out of commission. She had minutes at most to secure Paul and disappear. It was a shame, but she had to leave The Beast behind. It didn’t matter; it had served its purpose. Felix had really come through with his Frankenstein’s monster. Overpowered smoke pole or HTR... it didn’t matter what he called it, that thing was fun and effective.

  Once on the street, she pulled her sneaksuit’s hood up and over her head and face before sprinting to the armoured car. She was monitoring law enforcement channels, and backup had been called as she knew it would be. She had a window open on her display to monitor the time-line, another with sensor data told her the guards were staying put in their vehicles, and a third would be put to good use in a moment. She pulled a tub of face cream out of her pocket, discarded the lid and slapped it down—open end flush against the lock controls of the armoured car. She held it there as data flashed into the once empty window. The nannies in the cream had gone to work. It took just a few seconds.

  Working...

  17...

  17390...

  17390SJI37...

  17390SJI3790AWQ278... Done.

  Kate let the tub fall to the ground and punched the code into the keypad. The door unlocked and she heaved it open to slam against the sides of the car. She jumped up and into the dim interior. Her sneaksuit adjusted to the new light level quickly, and she could make out the terrified faces of the prisoners staring back at her, trying to shield their eyes against the glare of the sun. Their wrists were shackled with cuffs linked by chain to their ankles. She would have little trouble snapping those chains, but time was pressing. She would just snatch her brother and carry him to safety.

  She searched faces but didn’t see him. “Paul! Paul Richmond!”

  No one stirred. They just stared at her, hopeless resignation in their eyes.

  “Where is Paul Richmond?” sh
e snarled at the first prisoner sitting to her right. She grabbed and dragged him to his feet. “Where?”

  He gasped and shook his head.

  “Where is he?” she said to another man, this time thrusting her pulser in his face.

  “Who?”

  “Paul Richmond. He was in court with you. He killed your captain. Where is he?”

  Fear flashed onto his face and he pointed deeper into the interior. Kate snarled and looked again. A man tentatively raised a hand and she grabbed him. An alert popped up onto her display. The guards were getting brave. They had exited their cars, probably with heroic thoughts of taking her while she was in here. Without turning to look, she fired half a dozen shots out the open door. The red icons on her sensors stopped advancing.

  “I’m Richmond,” the scared man said.

  She slapped his face twice for wasting her time. “You’re not him. Where is he?”

  He cowered back, trying to protect himself. “I’m Paul Richmond... please don’t hit me again. I’m him. I’m Paul.”

  She growled and looked to his nearest neighbour and pointed her pulser at his chest. “Where is Richmond?”

  He shrugged.

  “You want to die? Tell me where he is!”

  He smiled mockingly and she shot him dead. She moved to the next prisoner. “Paul Richmond, where?” He pointed to the impostor and glared a challenge at her. She shot him in the face and moved on. “Your turn.”

  “Take me with you, and I’ll show you... please!”

  Disgusted she turned away. He didn’t want to be mind-wiped and would say anything. She turned back to the impostor. He was the only one who might know something. She blasted the anchor pin on the floor to release his chains, and snatched him up. He weighed nothing to her enhanced muscles. She put him over her shoulder ignoring his cries to be left alone, and leapt out onto the street. Pulser fire, badly aimed, peppered the side of the armoured car behind her. She ducked and returned fire, before turning to sprint away with her unwanted booty screaming bloody murder as he bounced on her shoulder. She hadn’t tried to kill the guards. They would heal from the wounds, probably.

  Sensors reported security cruisers converging on the convoy, but she had a plan for this. She ran at Human normal speed, assuming she was being observed. Indeed, she was being pursued now as the random shots sent her way revealed. She zigzagged more for form’s sake than any real fear. If hit, she would survive though if her passenger were to be hit it would seriously upset her. He was her only lead to finding her brother.

  “Drop me! I have to go back. You don’t understand, I made a deal!”

  “No.”

  “Drop me you crazy bitch! You don’t know who you’re dealing with! They’ll kill us!”

  “Shut it, or I’ll leave you here without a head.”

  That shut him down, but she wouldn’t make good on the threat, at least not until after she had squeezed him dry. A deal he said. What deal and with whom? She would find out.

  She checked her time-line, but she was on schedule. Security would be circling the convoy overhead about now, and headquarters would be ordering checkpoints and barricades set up in the surrounding streets. They wanted her trapped within their lines, but they didn’t know what she was or what she was capable of doing to evade them. An unenhanced Human would find it hard to breach their lines. One encumbered by a felon who didn’t in fact want to escape would have zero chance. They were well trained and had practised scenarios where the OPFOR (Opposing Force) pretended to be terrorist cells. She had read reports on the last games as part of her research for Operation Breakout, so she knew what their first response had been, and what their future moves should be if they followed their SOP, which so far they had to the letter.

  She had her street map open on her display and the first waypoint was coming up. She ducked into the street out of her pursuer’s line of sight and accelerated to max. Keeping an eye on sensors, she managed to avoid being seen by zigzagging her way across the map heading generally west until she reached the depot. There were other ways out of the zone, but this one appealed to her on a number of levels. It was fully automated for one thing. No one to see her arrive or depart. Another was the timing. If the convoy had been even ten minutes later, she would have used an alternate escape route. And lastly the use of a recycling depot harked back to the origins of her self-imposed mission to find her brother. It was at a similar site that she had lost him in the first place. It felt right that they emerge together from this one.

  She scowled beneath her concealing hood. They wouldn’t emerge together, because she had failed to save him. Again!

  She entered the depot and headed for the trucks. The noise inside was incredible. The building-sized machines towered high above her, crushing and shredding the contents of their hoppers so that their nano disassemblers could get to work. She didn’t know much about nano-engineering, only the basic stuff taught at school, but she knew the molecules stripped from the trash by the nano-d would be combined in other machines here by nano-a to create cubes of raw materials for later use in the factories. She ran between towering walls of such material. The blocks produced were piled high all along here ready for shipment. There was a dizzying array of colours and types, each made of various metals, glass, even the basic fibre and minerals used within the autochefs found in every home in the city for food.

  “Are we there yet?”

  Kate growled. “Shut. Up.”

  “Come on, I’m going to be sick.”

  “Then puke, don’t bother me.”

  The entire depot was automated including the recyclers and the trucks that delivered the trash. The timing of her attack upon the convoy was important because the trucks were due to leave the depot precisely on the hour and...

  “Shit!”

  The bay doors were opening. She needed to find the right truck before they all started leaving on their programmed routes. Each truck had a number. Each number was linked to a zone within the city and she needed truck 16 to reach her third waypoint. She finally found it after a long and frustrating search almost too late. It was next to leave. She opened the inspection hatch, dumped her burden inside, and scrambled in to join him before locking the hatch behind her. The aroma of rotting garbage was... interesting. Okay, it was sickening, but she had more important things to do than puking. Her guest was doing enough of that for both of them.

  Before doing anything about him, she made certain to disable the truck’s compactor by jamming its sensor with a scrap of trash she found lying on the floor. The trucks were very basic machines and didn’t have much autonomy. They simply used GPS to find their destinations and stopped where they were programmed to stop to make collections. She had no fear her tampering would throw up a fault that might prevent the truck from leaving the depot. It wouldn’t try to use the compactor until it was something like half full. Until then, it would go about its business.

  Just then the truck jolted into motion, proving her right.

  She kept a window open on her display to track her progress through the city, and turned her attention to her prisoner. It was dark inside the truck, but she didn’t raise her sneaksuit’s hood. She wanted to stay anonymous in case she decided to let him live, unlikely as that seemed right now. Her anger was still simmering just below the surface. The lenses protecting her eyes had turned clear, but it was still too dark. She wanted to evaluate his answers by watching his eyes and face, so she switched to low light amplification mode. Colours bled away to monochrome and her surroundings brightened enough to make out details.

  “Who are you?”

  She ignored his question. “Let’s not pretend I’m going to answer any of your questions. Instead, let’s pretend things can remain civilised between us. You really don’t want to experience the alternative. Believe me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Who are you?”

  He couldn’t see her face. It was too dark and besides that she was still wearing her hood. He did try
though. He stared into the darkness at the shadow she had become to him, and attempted to lie. That was just too much. Her frustration exploded out of her, and she was across the space in one leap so fast he didn’t have time to flinch. She lifted and slammed him bodily against the side of the truck.

  “You’re not him!” she screamed, and hammered him into the side of the truck. “You.” Slam. “Don’t.” Slam. “Want.” Slam. “To lie.” Slam. “To me!” she shrieked the words into his face.

  He gibbered in terror, saying something about his family and money, and doing a deal. It was all jumbled and confused; too confused for her to make sense of. She forced herself to show calm, but she wasn’t calm. She was so far from calm, he should be dead already. Lucky for him, she needed what was in his head.

  “Start...” she took a calming breath and made her voice pleasant. It was really hard to do. “Start from the beginning. Name.”

  He swallowed his panic back. “Danny Cole. I’m—”

  She raised a hand and he flinched, but she hadn’t meant to strike him, just to silence him. “How do you know Paul Richmond?”

  “I don’t, but I knew his lawyer.” He bit his lip. “Is that okay?” he added fearfully.

  “His lawyer’s name is?”

  “Malcolm Redding? He did some work for my company before... before it went under. He knew I needed money.”

  “Hmmm. Go on.”

  “I own... owned a construction company. I was doing really well, but I expanded too fast and overextended. My loans came due and I couldn’t pay. A client of mine defaulted on a big job, and I had to eat the loss. I lost everything. I have a wife, kids... I need the money for them! You have to let me go back and do this! You have to! Please, it’s all for them. If I don’t go through with it, they’ll take the money back!”

  She was starting to get a picture of what had happened, but it didn’t add up. Where would Redding get the kind of money he would have needed to bribe a man to take Paul’s place, and why bother? Certainly Paul would have paid any amount to avoid mind-wipe, but he wouldn’t have had that kind of money... would he?