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Bob turned the ATV off the main road and started to slowly cruise along the narrow suburban streets. Head office had told them over the radio that there were some anomalous signals coming out of Campton Downs, one of the many new sprawling housing estates. The whole estate was filled to the brim with shoddy prefabricated modular houses. Cheap construction with cheap rent and packed in by the square meter just to keep the pretence of the great Australian dream alive of owning your own home. It was a perfect place for new immigrants to settle and a perfect hiding place for illegal ones.
Bob tapped heavily at the touch screen console in the centre of the dashboard with blunt stubby fingers. The electronic equipment in the rear of the ATV hummed to life and various aerials extended from pods on all corners of the vehicle.
“Ok Sam, this is where you earn your wages,” said Bob pointing at the display and the controls. “Did they teach you how to work a tracking unit?”
“Yes Robert,” replied Sam.
“How about I do the sarcasm and you watch the screen. There is supposed to be an illegal transporter around here somewhere. Head office reckons it might be this slick Indonesian smuggling ring.”
The boring part of the job then kicked in as they cruised leisurely around the rabbit warren, along a winding tangled mess of streets and lanes. It didn’t take long for Samuel to start chatting. For the first twenty minutes Bob simply tuned him out, but then he started asking questions that Bob could not simply nod or shake his head to.
“Would you just shut up and watch the bloody tracker!”
Samuel opened his mouth as though he was going to speak a few divine words of his own, but then thought better of it and looked intensely back at the screen and fiddled uncomfortably with some of the controls. Fortunately for Bob the uneasy silence was suddenly broken when the tracker started beeping loudly.
“I have something!” shouted Samuel excitedly. Bob pulled over immediately and slapped Samuel’s hands away from the console controls.
“Well done, but it’s no good unless you lock it down!” reprimanded Bob sharply as he tapped roughly at the touch screen. Then to Bob’s complete surprise Samuel suddenly slapped his hand away from the controls.
“How about you do the driving and I do this,” he snapped. “You’re too slow. Anyway that first signal is just a decoy. The one you want is this one.”
Bob was about to give Samuel a mouthful, but his eyes were drawn to the screen. Sam’s fingers moved rapidly across the touch screen, in a way that only someone who had grown up using nothing else could. In short time he had managed to weed out the decoy signals and was homing in fast on the real one.
“Well?” he asked without stopping to look up. “Are you going to drive? The signal is at least two kilometres northwest.”
Mouth sill agape and suddenly feeling very old Bob slammed the ATV into limited hover and the ATV rose a foot of the ground, its wheels tucking in neatly underneath. As soon as it was in limited hover mode he floored it down the street. At each intersection Bob called loudly for directions and Samuel shouted them to him.
“Yes, I’ve locked it!” bellowed Samuel triumphantly.
“Then put it into the navigator and call head office for backup.”
Bob raced them the remainder of the way to the origin of the signal until they were just one street away where he suddenly pulled over and stopped.
“What are you doing, it’s the next street over?”
Bob turned to Sam and put on his best ‘don’t give me any shit’ face.
“Listen Sam, this is going to be the real thing. You have your weapon drawn, you stay on your toes and you do exactly what I tell you.”
“Yes sir,” replied Samuel an edge of fear creeping into the excitement.
Bob pushed a few more buttons on the control console to put the ATV into silent. He then gunned the engine and the ATV went hurtling around the last corner oddly silent despite its frantic pace. He drove straight down the street and directly toward the tiny synthetic grass ‘front lawn’. As the ATV cleared the gutter Bob reefed on the emergency brake and the ATV dropped to the earth again and ground to a halt. At the same time with his other hand he flung the driver’s side door open. Even before the vehicle came to a complete stop he had leapt out. As he half ran, half hobbled to the front door he drew his stasis gun with practised ease.
He stopped to the left of the front door and threw his back against the wall. He quickly reached for a small thermal charge from his belt with his free hand and stuck it onto the door.
Meanwhile, Samuel was still scrambling out of the passenger side, unprepared for Bob’s manoeuvre with the emergency brake. As he rounded the ATV Bob raised a hand to signal for him to halt.
“You take the back,” he whispered loudly. “Shoot anyone that comes out that door!”
Samuel nodded and eagerly disappeared around the corner and jumped the fence into the backyard. Sweat beaded on Bob’s forehead as he mentally counted to thirty before setting off the door charge. He hated this part, no matter how much experience you had at forced entry it was always a lottery. He just hoped that this lot were runners and not fighters. He raised his eyes skyward as he reached thirty in the small hope that someone up there was watching out for him. He pushed the detonator button and hunkered down. The charge went off with a hollow pop and the door, along with some of the surrounding wall, disintegrated into a puff of grey smoke and ash.
Bob burst inside through the grey cloud and found himself in a short hallway facing down a nasty looking Indonesian guy wielding a plasma burst rifle. Bob pushed off his good knee and threw his body flat up against the wall. The plasma burst sizzled past him, close enough to singe his shirt and cause burns to the skin underneath. He ignored the pain and as he bounced off the wall he fired the stasis gun, hitting his adversary square in the chest. The guy froze solid and went a shimmering blue colour.
With the immediate threat neutralised Bob inspected the hallway, there was only one open exit at the far end. It was a pretty typical setup to keep one path to the transporter and it was probably booby trapped. To his left and right were two more exits, but they were both heavily boarded up. Based on nothing more than instinct he chose to go left. He popped a second thermal charge on the wall, ducked back out the front door and set it off. Another pop and another neat hole appeared where the wall used to be.
Bob burst back into the house and through the hole in the wall his weapon trained and at the ready. His guess had been correct and he had ended up in the lounge room. In the far corner there was a large semi circular control console. Sprouting from the sides of the console were bunches of power conduits that ran up into the ceiling, no doubt to various mini fusion generators located there.
There was another Indonesian guy, covered in tattoos, at the controls. As Bob burst into the room he looked up angrily, tapped one last command into the console and ran from the room towards the back of the house before Bob could get a shot off. To keep Bob from following too closely he pulled a plasma pistol and squeezed off a few haphazard rounds before he disappeared.
Bob kept low and avoided being hit. He was about to chase the guy when he noted a distinct change in the sound of the fusion generators in the ceiling above. He raced to the console and looked at the controls. He cursed vehemently and bashed at the touch screen. The asshole had managed to scramble the incoming signal. These guys really were slick. There was no way they would be able to link them to their supplier now. He would have to shut the unit down, if he didn’t it would blow the fusion generators and take half of Campton Downs with it. At least intact the tech guys might be able to scrounge some information out of it.
As he started the shutdown sequence he realised to his horror that they had caught the people smugglers in the middle of a transport cycle! He stopped what he was doing and grimly completed the transport cycle instead...the one they had just scrambled. When it was complete he shut the unit off and hung his head. At that same moment he jumped
at the sound of a series of plasma bursts followed by a single stasis round and then silence.
Bob made his way carefully through the rest of the house towards the back door. When he got there the back door was wide open and everything outside was silent. He stopped short of the doorway just in case.
“Sam it’s me, you still alive out there?” he called.
“Yep, I got him Bob!”
“That’s great kid, I’m coming out now so don’t get carried away and shoot me.”
Bob stepped out into the corridor like backyard to find Samuel barricaded behind a wheelie bin with his stasis gun trained on the back door. There were several deep scorch marks on the wall and the side fence behind him. Halfway over the back fence frozen like a shimmering blue statue was the guy with the tattoos. He was still wielding the plasma pistol and had been right in the middle of squeezing off another round at Samuel when he’d been frozen.
Bob stepped over to the smuggler and prised the pistol from his stiff fingers, pulled out the charge clip and threw the weapon to the ground. Then he turned to go back into the house, his stasis gun once again at the ready.
“They were in the middle of a cycle so we have to go back inside and flush out any jumpers. You stay no more than two steps behind me at all times and watch our backs.”
Bob slowly and carefully moved back through the house checking each room as they went. It did not take long to locate the actual transporter portal. It was inside the bathroom where the shower recess should have been.
“Stay back, don’t come inside the bathroom,” he ordered, but it was too late Samuel was already standing next to him. The smell was so sickening it sparked a morbid curiosity.
Even after almost twenty years on the job that smell still made Bob feel sick to the core. The sight before him was even worse. He did not want to look but he had to, it was his job. Whoever it had been coming through when the smugglers had scrambled the signal was now no more than a churned up mixture of meat and partially cooked organs. If that wasn’t bad enough the longer Bob stared at it the more he could make out parts of what used to be a person, a woman by the looks. Beside him Samuel lurched backwards and then ran from the house. The sound of his violent retching echoed back down the corridor.
There was only one thing he could do to ensure the woman was not in any pain, sometimes scrambling left them somehow alive and conscious. Bob slowly pulled out his disintegrator pistol and unlatched the safety. He fired the weapon and with a sizzling flash the woman was a pile of grey ash.
Bob was about to go and check on Samuel when he heard a muffled whimper. He whipped out his stasis pistol again like a gun fighter. He quickly realised the sound was coming from the bathtub. He stepped over to it pulled back the screen and looked inside. There was a boy, maybe eight years old huddled naked inside the tub, he was clearly petrified.
By the look of him he was American. Bob sighed, it was such a common sight these days, ever since the US lost their war with China. He felt genuinely sorry for them, but he didn’t make the rules he only enforced them. Like any other illegal jumper he’d be sent down to Tasmania for processing, it was the only place not on the main land these days big enough to hold everyone.
“Come on kid,” said Bob as gently as he could. “Let’s go.”
“But I’m waiting for my mother,” the boy pleaded, tears welling in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” said Bob choking out the words. “Your mum isn’t coming.”
Bob lead the boy out of the back of the house holding him firmly by the arm. He found Samuel there sitting down and looking pale. Once they were in the backyard Bob let go of the boys arm and stepped away from him. Before the boy even noticed Bob froze him with the stasis gun.
Bob then approached Samuel and crouched down in front of him. Samuel was staring blankly off into space. Bob shook his head and frowned, it was looking like he was going to lose another noob.
“Samuel are you ok?” he said shaking him gently.
“I’m so sorry...” mumbled Samuel.
“You have nothing to...” Bob was cut short by the feeling of the square stasis gun barrel against his chest. “Don’t you even think about it!”
What felt like an instant later Bob found himself still crouched down in front of Samuel, except Samuel wasn’t there anymore. Bob stood quickly and looked around the backyard. The kid was still standing frozen where Bob had left him, but where the smuggler used to be was only a smattering of grey ash.
Bob checked his holster and sure enough the disintegrator was gone. He still had his stasis gun however and he drew it as he moved back into the house. Sure enough the other smuggler inside the house had also been turned to ash.
He finally found Samuel sitting inside the ATV, the disintegrator on the dashboard in front of him. His eyes were red from crying and as Bob approached he wiped his nose with the back of his hand, a gesture that made him look even younger than he was. When he saw Bob’s stasis gun he raised his hands in surrender.
“I had to Bob or I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”
“You are going to have trouble with that anyway Sam whether you like it or not, trust me.”
“What happens to me now?”
Bob kept the stasis gun trained on Samuel as he leaned carefully into the ATV to grab the pistol and put it back into his holster. Once he had done that he holstered the stasis gun as well.
“Nothing happens Sam. I had to use lethal force to stop these guys. You never got out of the vehicle so you didn’t see anything and we never speak of this again.”
“Buy...why?” stammered Samuel.
“Because I made the same mistake on my first day.”
END
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About the Author
Shane Griffin lives in Australia near the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. He is a part time author and full time scientist. He has been writing science fiction and fantasy since age 19. He has published over 20 short stories in magazines and ezines such as Potato Monkey, Antipodean Science Fiction, Ripples, Eclecticism and Masque Noir.
With stories like Accident Man, Border Patrol and the Duel proving popular with readers Shane is now focusing on e-publishing under his own label - Poupichou Press.
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Other Titles by This Author
Science Fiction Short Stories
Accident Man
Antipodean Collection
Antipodean Collection2
Barkley's Body Swap and Pawn Shop
Blue Pelagic
Cancer Stick Addiction
Cure Overdose
Deathday
Drifter
Generation Next The Real Thing
Manjac and the Nosebleed Section
Necrofairies
Shady Hazy and the Subliminal Criminal
Fantasy Short Stories
The Duel
The Mercenary
Visions of Magic - The Kidnap of Gabrielle Ulan
Novels
Apocalyptica - Rogue Memories
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