‘We’re never going to get in there,’ said Akiya.
Jarle was inclined to agree. The emplacement that housed the DSF-80 cannon that was keeping them grounded was held by a UNAF squad: six warm bodies that they could draw a bead on, plus anyone who happened to be inside the blast doors. Those weren’t bad odds for a refracced VIPER team with the drop on them, but comms chatter pointed to another squad nearby, along with a Harlequin tank. If things got noisy, they’d have a very limited window before hell came bearing down on them, and that blast door was thick.
‘Sure we will,’ said Gibbs. Jarle started. It was the first positive thing he could remember her saying this whole operation. ‘I can hit four of them from here inside of—’ She raised her railgun and peered through the viewfinder, lining up a sequence of shots. ‘—three seconds. You and Sarge will be down there already to pick off the stragglers. They won’t have time to call for help. EWPs’ll take care of the door.’
‘That only works as long as there’s no one inside. If there is—’
‘So get drones in the air, deadzone it as we go loud. That should kill any comms long enough for us to get through.’
Jarle pondered. It was a good plan, if Gibbs could actually score four hits in the time she said she could. He’d seen her performance reports, and they were exceptional—she’d been with SPECWAR before VIPER, after all—but they were taken from VR sync simulations. Even with all the hardware and software augmentations afforded VIPER, those performance numbers always came down significantly in the real world.
‘Can you shit hit four targets that fast.’
‘Yes, Sergeant.’ Gibbs’s voice was defiant.
Jarle shook his head, then shifted it to a nod. ‘All right. We can pick up the slack from the ground. Akiya, let’s get down there. I want you nice and close on the left hand side. There’s a chance the APR will go through that door, in which case, our problem goes away anyway. I’ll pitch up on the right.’
They’d found a deserted rooftop which gave them a good view of the emplacement which squatted on the edge of the business–industrial district. It had been used to safeguard shipments coming out of the Minos facilities at a time when Ariadne’s shipping of raw materials to the UN had attracted violence from criminals out for their own enrichment. The local UNAF forces had recommissioned it. Jarle didn’t know whether that was in the vain hope that it would do shit against the Ascendancy, or whether they’d brought it into play specifically to disrupt VIPER’s operation.
‘Sarge, do we know that these guys are the same ones gunning for us? How do we distinguish between them and UNAF loyalists?’ Akiya asked.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Gibbs. ‘They’re between us and our targets.’
‘Lidding UNAF personnel wasn’t where I saw today going,’ Akiya replied.
Jarle didn’t like to tolerate comms-chatter while the squad was moving, but it was true; going up against humans in UNAF uniforms did not sit well. Better to deal with this than let it develop into a real distraction when it counted.
‘That gun is keeping our Manticore locked down. That’s not an accident.’
‘But these guys might have no idea. No one’s going to tell them shit about why they’re guarding something. You know how it is.’
‘Can it. Our orders give us absolute discretion. It might not feel good, but, whatever their reasons, these people are on the wrong side. If they pose a threat to us or our mission, we do what we have to. Everyone here is on borrowed time, anyway.’
Akiya didn’t press the issue, but Jarle figured she wasn’t totally convinced, either. Frankly, he didn’t care. She just needed to keep it together long enough for them to finish the mission.
They both got into position on the ground near the emplacement. They got close—tucked round the corner of buildings with a view of the bunker entrance—before the low buzz of data chatter started up over their squad band.
‘You getting that too?’ Jarle asked.
‘Yep,’ Akiya confirmed.
LRIS was probing their defences. It made sense that the emplacement would have its own EW pods. They had a few minutes before it broke through their electronic camouflage and lit them up for all the local UNAF forces to see. Jarle kept his breathing steady. It shouldn’t matter—if they didn’t have the situation wrapped before then, they’d have bigger problems. Still, the machine noise added an undercurrent of anxiety, the sense that the enemy were actively working against them even as they stood there, oblivious.
‘All right, Gibbs, we’re in position. Drones up. Let’s keep this tight. Trigger the deadzone and hit your targets on my mark. We’ll be incomm until the DZ comes down, so keep your eyes open.’
‘Ready,’ Gibbs confirmed.
Jarle switched to a private channel with Akiya. ‘Be ready to pick off the extras if she fucks this up.’
‘Roger.’
Jarle went back to the squad band. ‘Three, two, one, mark.’
He already had a bead on his target—the trooper in the right-hand window of the building that covered the entrance to the bunker—but in the time it took him to pull the trigger and drop his target, Gibbs had taken out two of hers. Jarle’s man’s body hit the floor in time with her third. The fourth followed as Jarle was shifting his aim.
Damn.
Akiya and Jarle moved forward, joining at the door of the outer building.
‘Check it.’
Akiya swept the wall in front of them with her resonance scanner.
‘Clear.’
They moved inside. It was a small UNAF field office, formerly abandoned, a few desks and an adjoining locker room huddled round the heavy blast door that protected the gunnery controls.
‘APR’s not getting through that,’ said Akiya.
‘Agreed. Try and get it open.’
Akiya hit the door controls with her Mantix EW pod, trying to overload the system with garbage data and confuse the control subroutines enough to trigger the door. They had twenty seconds before their drone deadzone came down and anyone beyond those doors could get a distress signal out to the nearby UNAF contingent. Breaking through the firewalls in such a short space of time would normally have been an unrealistic prospect, were it not for the fact that they were up against their own side, combined with the poor quality of the dated hardware.
‘Okay, I’ve got it, stand by.’
Jarle stepped back, raising his railgun and moving off-line, ready for whatever opposition they might face inside. Their deadzone failed right as the door came open. It didn’t matter—they could disable the emplacement and have their air cover there before reinforcements pulled their thumbs out.
Then everything went sideways all at once.
‘—peat: UNAF reinforcements INBOUND,’ Gibbs was shouting. ‘That tank’s going to be right on top of—’
A hail of railgun fire came from inside the bunker as the door opened. Jarle put an answering burst through the entrance, though it took his targeting systems a moment to adjust as their sensors could finally penetrate the bunker. Akiya twisted out of the way, but got caught by her damaged leg, leaving her exposed for a second too long. A tungsten slug caught her in the shoulder and she spun away from the entrance.
Jarle cursed, returning fire. ‘Gibbs, report.’
‘Someone must have been watching. The second squad started moving right after the deadzone went up. We’ve got infantry and that Harlequin coming down on us. Thirty seconds, tops.’
‘We’ve got resistance, but we’re nearly through.’
Akiya struggled into an awkward, crouched posture, bringing the APR to bear. It must have been a lucky hit; the emplacement’s EW pod was yet to breach their refrac.
‘Sarge, those others get here, you’re going to be trapped. We can’t toe-to-toe with a Harlequin.’
‘We’re almost there.’ Jarle punctuated each word with a report of railgun shots. One of the soldiers holding the bunker went down. ‘We need that Manticore. One Alpha needs us airborne.’ His HUD sounde
d a blaring alarm—their refrac was about to fail. He silenced it. ‘We can punch through.’
‘That tank’s right on top of you!’
Jarle let out a cry of rage. They were so close, but to stay was to die. He slipped a microgrenade from his belt and hurled it into the bunker. The fire from within paused as the occupants scrambled for safety, and Jarle dashed forward, grabbing Akiya by the back of her gorget and dragged her backward. The grenade detonated. There was a chance it hit something vital and did their job for them, but UNAF gunnery systems didn’t tend to be that fragile. They hit the street running, right as the Harlequin rounded the corner
‘Go!’ Jarle shoved Akiya forward into cover of the next building as the Harlequin’s dual cannons started up, carving twin furrows through the street towards him. Jarle dived clear, pelted with shards of churned-up concrete. He got to his feet in time to see the Harlequin’s twin cannons re-orienting on him. He could run for cover, but there was no time. He’d be cut to shreds before he took his third step.
Hell with it, he thought, setting his shoulders and charging for the next building as the high-pitched whine of the cannons spinning up took over his ears. He’d pulled Akiya out of the fire. At least he’d go down on his feet.
There was the heavy whoosh of a micromortar, followed by an explosion off to his left. The cannons fired, but, thrown off by the blast, they ran clear of him by a hairsbreadth. He rounded the building and kept going, slowing only to tap Akiya on the back.
‘Go, go.’
They regrouped several streets away, dodging the various UNAF and police drones scanning the skies. The Harlequin and remaining UNAF forces were hunting for them, but they’d put enough distance between them to hide among the sensor-noise of the city.
Gibbs’s well-timed micromortar had saved Jarle’s life, though she at least had the good grace not to make a big thing out of it. Akiya was more or less in one piece. The shot had been enough to punch through, but her armour had taken most of the hit. They patched her up as best they could.
Their abortive assault hadn’t been enough; the emplacement was still operational, and the Manticore was still grounded.
They had a new problem, too.
‘Sarge, I’m picking up something you need to hear.’
Jarle sighed. ‘What is it, Jinn?’
A recording of intercepted comms traffic played—a couple of UNAF officers co-ordinating squad movements. Jarle listened, unclear on why Jinn had singled this out until a few key words cropped up.
‘Shit,’ he said.
‘What is it?’ asked Akiya.
‘UNAF just name-checked our remaining targets—Alina and Victoria van Shel. They’ve got troops inbound to the East Side compound.’
‘To kill, capture or safeguard?’
‘Unclear. We need to get there, now.’
‘Are we going to chance the Manticore?’
‘Negative. If they hit that thing, we won’t make it out of the city, let alone offworld. We’ll try and get a vehicle, get as close as we can that way, then continue on foot.’
‘We still need to secure that AA emplacement,’ said Akiya. ‘It’s no good getting to the van Shels if we can’t get them out of Minos. If we give them time, after that hit, they’re only going to double down on defending it if they figure they’ve got us trapped.’
‘Safeguarding the VIPs is our first priority,’ said Jarle. ‘We’ll need a new plan to clear the skies.’
‘How are we going to take on that tank?’ asked Gibbs.
Jarle ground his teeth. Both of them had valid points, but the situation was a clusterfuck as it was. They had to focus on their priorities and the things they could control.
‘Enough! We know our mission, and we’re going to do it. One step at a time.’