Counterstrike: The Separatist Wars Book 2 Read online

  Thomas Webb

  Counterstrike

  The Separatist Wars: Book 2

  First published by Valiant House Press 2020

  Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Webb

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  First edition

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

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  Contents

  FREE BOOK

  -1-

  -2-

  -3-

  -4-

  -5-

  -6-

  -7-

  -8-

  -9-

  -10-

  -11-

  -12-

  -13-

  -14-

  -15-

  -16-

  -17-

  -18-

  -19-

  -20-

  -21-

  -22-

  -23-

  -24-

  -25-

  -26-

  -27-

  -28-

  The Separatist Wars Continues. . .

  You Can’t Keep a Good Marine Down

  Also By Thomas Webb

  Glossary of Terms

  FREE BOOK

  Interested in a FREE book set in the Separatist Wars universe?

  Details can be found immediately following the end of COUNTERSTRIKE.

  -1-

  The sun dipped toward the lone mountain in the distance, casting its shadow across the plains below. Until some two hundred years ago, the lands beneath the majestic peak were part of an ancient Earth nation called Kenya. That was before mankind found its way to the stars. Before the unification of several countries on this continent, and before the rise of the mighty Kingdom of Kush.

  The plains and forests beneath him stretched into the distance, the elevation shifting into a low set of foothills before the craggy, snow-covered heights of Mount Kenya rose in the distance. The lands were made up of a myriad patchwork of colors and shapes. Some places, like the mountain pass he stood upon, were a deep, almost crimson red, the parched earth sunbaked for millions of years. In some parts of the patchwork valley below there was rich life and lush vegetation, the stunted trees of this place shimmering emerald green. In others, vast swaths of dry savanna sprawled, where nothing but the occasional banyan tree reached above the long grasses to dot the landscape.

  All around, the land basked in varying shades of lush vermillion and weathered brown. Arid in some places, rich in others. The place was a living study in contrast.

  The tall stranger set his pack down and pulled a hydration bottle from one of the pouches. You had to stay hydrated. It was rule number-one when operating in desert environments. They’d pounded the information into him during his training and selection for the Outer Colonies Special Forces. He opened the alloy bottle and put it to his lips, drinking in the lukewarm water.

  In the valley below, dust rose from the savanna as a herd of antelope raced toward a watering hole. It was an awe-inspiring view, seen from a single dusty outcropping within the borders of Kush. The Kingdom existed as a place of immense grandeur and breathtaking beauty. He appreciated natural beauty in all its rawest forms, having been raised in poverty amidst the wild splendor of New Eden. New Eden, or OC Planet #4 as it was called by those living under the yoke of the U.N. A population which included, to his dismay, almost everyone here on Earth and most of the inhabitants of United Nations controlled space.

  Gazing on the mountain in the distance and the vistas below, it was no wonder the Kingdom repeatedly rebuffed the advances of the United Nations. Why would they want to share this magnificence? Not that they needed the UN—he supposed their vast natural resources and advancements in tech and weapons didn’t hurt in that regard. It made him respect the Kingdom even more. He was sorry he had to get them involved by invading their borders, but they’d taken the first step by agreeing, even in a limited fashion, to allow the UN to house its facility here.

  He closed his eyes and breathed in deep, choosing to forget for a moment the nasty business at hand. Instead he inhaled the clean, honest scent of parched earth and bone-dry air.

  He opened his eyes—eyes as blue as the waters of his home planet—again. He rubbed the stubble of his cheek, absent conscious thought of the action. He went on to touch his nose, his chin, and his forehead, each in turn. He ran his tongue along a set of teeth that were still a bit alien, a bit foreign, inside his mouth. He hadn’t anticipated just how difficult getting used to this new face would prove to be.

  Jordan Ramsey frowned. It wasn’t that he disliked his old face. Not at all. On the contrary, having possessed it his entire life, he liked it very much. So much so, in fact, that he planned to willingly undergo the pain of having it replaced once this was all done.

  Unfortunately, his old face wouldn’t do for what he needed to accomplish. His old face would have betrayed him as soon as he’d hit United Nations-controlled space. He’d never have made it here, to his destination, looking like Jordan Ramsey. Having his face changed had been no easy task. The bone and skin grafts, the three-dimensional flesh printer, the weeks of internal and external healing. Then there was the creation of the false ID holos and the fake background story, the trip here through several jump gates so as to be untraceable, finally gaining entry to Earth space, and then passing through the security checkpoints. All of it had taken time. The old Ramsey, his face known to every United Nations and Allied Planet Artificial Intelligence-monitored watchlist, would never have gotten past the first hurdle.

  But with this new face and identity? It hadn’t been a problem. Getting into the Kingdom, a completely closed-off nation, was even easier. It was a simple matter of a quick trip to the continent and entering into the adjacent nation, a place that was much less regulated. It was easy enough to infiltrate into the Sudanese wilds and simply cross the border. Although almost no one did. No one wanted to chance the tight security of the Kingdom’s borders. It was easy if you didn’t mind being taken into custody to do it. In Ramsey’s case, he didn’t just hope he would be apprehended. He was counting on it.

  He checked his chrono. He could feel the slight tingle of annoyance begin to tickle at the nape of his neck. Until he saw the plume of dust rising from the battered road below, that was.

  He nodded. Good. The border guard is just as efficient as I was told.

  With his invasion into the lands of the Kingdom of Kush complete, there was no turning back. The plan had been set into motion, the initial outcome as inexorable as the river’s flow to the sea, or the tide, or a planet’s orbit around a star. Everything depended on the border guards getting wind of the invader, and immediately coming to apprehend him. And now here they were. Just like clockwork. If all went according to plan, he would soon strike a powerful blow for the Separatist cause.

  The United Nations had someone in custody that his people desperately needed to get out. Someone with a very specific skillset, who was the best at what he did. Someone who the so-called leaders of the Separatist factions had abandoned to a UNIA black site.

  The main factions had always been prone to that kind of abandonment, and also to failure. They’d remained that way over the years, preferring to accept the credits of their corporate benefactors over the freedom to choose their own fate, and thus sealing the fates of their own people in the process. The members of the Council of the Outer Colonies Wor
lds had always preferred the luxury of a soft bed and a holo screen to the discomfort and sacrifice required to win the Separatist Wars. Ramsey and others like him were doing their patriotic duty, preventing the lead factions from caving to the pressure from the United Nations.

  Yes, he would be striking a blow for the cause. As a bonus, he would finally be able to get some payback against the men and women who’d captured him and tortured him. Against the same ones who’d forced him to turn on his sworn brothers and sisters, and the same ones who had very nearly gotten him branded as a traitor and subsequently be executed by his own people.

  He wanted to see his revenge, and he wanted to see it all up close. He wanted a front row seat to the looks on their faces when they found out who he was, and what he’d done to them.

  But there was still that one tiny, nagging detail. Hale, a hated enemy and a representative of all he despised, had saved Ramsey’s life back in that village on Mios. Even though Hale had done it for his U.N. masters’ own selfish reasons, Ramsey owed the United Nations Marine his life. He hated owing people with a passion—most especially those that he also wanted to kill.

  Soon the hydrogen powered off-road vehicle roared up the incline, bringing Ramsey back to the present. Ramsey raised his hands in surrender as the transport rolled up. The vehicle rolled to a stop in a cloud of dust, not ten meters from where he stood.

  He closed his eyes against the dust and grinned, feeling it settle on his new face. As expected, the well-trained border guards leapt from the vehicle, their pulse rifles pointed in his direction.

  “Usinange!” one of them shouted. Ramsey’s Swahili was rough, but years of hardcore military service allowed him to recognize the intent behind the words well enough.

  Don’t Move.

  He kept up his jovial smile, the sensation of moving the new-formed muscle around his lips and cheeks still feeling a bit off. “Do you speak Earth Standard English?” he asked.

  “Please drop your bag and get down on your knees,” one of the guards said in heavily accented Earth Standard.

  “Oh you do?” Ramsey replied. “Excellent.” He set his pack down and lowered himself to his knees, just as he was told. “I was worried that we may not be able to communicate.”

  “You are an illegal entrant into the Kingdom of Kush,” the first guard said. “You will be processed and placed into custody accordingly.” The second guard came and applied a set of comfortable but secure powercuffs to Ramsey’s wrists. The guard was no rougher than he had to be. A professional. Ramsey appreciated that. He flexed is hands in the cuffs, feeling a surge of vibration as they shifted to resist his efforts.

  Over the years, Ramsey had developed a strange love-hate relationship with being taken into custody. He shared the same unusual kinship with pain—a good quality for someone in his line of work.

  Ramsey felt another momentary pang of regret. Regret that he had to invade the Kingdom at all. The Separatists had no quarrel with the Kushites. At least they hadn’t until now, after the Kushites agreed to play host to the United Nations Intelligence Agency and its own private secret prison.

  No, he reminded himself. The Kingdom was implicit now. At least in part. That made them fair game.

  The two guards walked a cuffed Ramsey to the waiting vehicle. Careful to push his head down beneath the vehicle’s door frame, they placed him in the rear seat. Immediately a clear energy field materialized, separating the front area where the guards would sit from their vehicle’s newest occupant.

  Both guards hopped in. The one in the driver’s seat fired the engine. Despite his seeming predicament, an easy smile spread across Jordan Ramsey’s face.

  He was right where he wanted to be. In a few days’ time Hale and his team would come looking for him. And then they would be right where he wanted them to be. He would have his revenge and gain a victory for the cause, all in a single move.

  -2-

  Shane sipped her latte and adjusted the view on her holo-enhanced aviators. She sat beneath a forest green umbrella, her chair black peristeel woven into a beautiful pattern of filigree.

  They’d shifted the artificial sky on the dome above from the standard blue to a randomly selected, overcast gray. It suited the mood of the day. As far as anyone in the city of Luna knew, Shane was just another tourist or resident, enjoying her mid-morning caffeine fix.

  An Andarian pigeon, imported from the mostly-forest planet, hopped and skipped about. The fat birds gobbled the dropped pastry crumbs of the coffee shop patron’s before Luna’s robotic cleaning corps could come through and brush them away. Shane took pity on them and tossed a chunk of her half-eaten orange scone onto the sidewalk.

  “All elements,” the deep voice in her ear said. “Check in.”

  “Razor Two standing by,” Gina said. Shane grinned at the sound of her girlfriend’s voice.

  “Razor Four standing by,” Kris said. As usual, the Tauranian sniper’s voice barely registered above a whisper.

  “Valkyrie set,” Shane replied. “How about you guys?”

  “Thanks for asking,” Hale said. “Razor Three is talking my ear off. But there’s worse ways to make a living I guess.”

  Shane laughed. “That’s for sure.” She knew firsthand that Lash, the Salayan on the team, was quite the conversationalist—whether you were in the mood for said conversation or not.

  Hale seemed to be settling well into his new job, and his new life, the same as she and Gina were. Of course there were things she missed about being on active duty, but this new gig wasn’t so bad. At least now she no longer felt like she was spinning her wheels, running combat missions on an endless loop and seeing no discernable result. From Shane’s perspective, it had amounted to little more than standing by, watching and waiting for her friends and fellow soldiers to die.

  Shane glanced up to the third story window in the apartment building across the intersection. She tapped her glasses and zoomed in. Gina’s lone heat signature made up the only living thing in the empty loft apartment where she kept watch. Satisfied that no one was sneaking up on her girlfriend’s shapely six, Shane shifted her line of sight to the small utility vehicle parked across the street.

  Two hulking heat signatures sat inside. Hale, the smaller of the two, and Lash, his sig slightly cooler due to his reptilian physiology. The two of them were acting as a close-proximity combination of added surveillance and, if they needed it, hasty QRF. She smiled at the thought of them—the large human Hale and the even larger Salayan Lash, crammed inside the tiny maintenance van.

  “Perhaps next time we could secure a larger vehicle?” she heard Lash complain. It was as if he’d read her thoughts.

  “My apologies Razor Three,” Lima chimed in. “It was all we could get on short notice.”

  “Ignore Razor Three’s last,” Hale shot back. “We’re fine.”

  “TOC this is Razor Two,’ Gina said. “So you really think we can turn her?”

  “I have been at this a long time,” Lima’s smooth Brazilian voice came back over the comm wave. Lima sat in an office two Moon city blocks away, coordinating the operation with a small team of backups on loan from the United Nations Intelligence Agency. “Her psych evals said she was the most likely executive in the United Les Space corporate structure to flip. And her senior-level access should ensure that she is able to provide us with what we need.”

  “Can someone tell me again why we don’t just murder our way out of this problem?” Gina asked. Shane grinned at that. Textbook Gina Romero. Why keep the body count at zero when a wet mission would do?

  “Cynthia wants this mess-free,” Lima said. “No fallout to make the UNIA look bad. Now how about we cut the chatter? This channel is as clean and secure as it can get, but it is still open.”

  “Copy that TOC,” Hale said. “You all hear the man. Let’s maintain our comms discipline.”

  The team was working well together. They’d all blended splendidly, the talents of each all complementing the others. The salacious a
mounts of credits they were earning definitely didn’t hurt. All consummate professionals, among the best at what they did, moving together for a common cause. Today that cause was taking down United Les Space.

  Last year, they’d discovered the mega-corporation was playing a major role in propagating the Separatist Wars. ULS was secretly supporting the Separatists, playing both sides against the middle and profiting from the sale of arms. The team didn’t yet have enough hard evidence to nail the company, but Shane was confident that they soon would. She hoped that taking ULS out of the picture would help put a stop to the endless drudge of the Separatist Wars themselves.

  Several meters away from Shane sat their target, a middle-aged Velusian woman. The Velusian paid her bill with a wave of her hand, then collected her briefcase and stood to her tentacles.

  “Valkyrie this is Razor One,” Hale’s voice came in over the comms. “Target looks to be ready to move. How copy? Over.”

  Shane rested her chin on her hand, covering the movement of her lips. “Good copy Razor One. We’ve got her.”

  Shane set her data pad aside. She watched the target as she moved. The woman was tall and multi-tentacled, her skin a healthy pea soup-green. She had high cheek cartilage and large, dark eyes. Her tentacles swayed with a nervous energy. She checked over her shoulder as she stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  Shane caught sight of a cloaked and hooded Kris’nac, appearing as if from nowhere to pick up the Velusian woman’s tail. She deactivated her data pad in anticipation of having to move.

  After the last operation, the team secured a pivotal clue linking United Les Space to the Separatist cause. They’d pleaded their case to the United Nations Security Council, but without more concrete proof could not secure a green light for taking down a corporation with the size and influence of ULS. That first clue, along with the UN’s disapproval, had prompted Silvio Lima to do some serious digging. He’d reached out to a few of his old contacts and come up with the perfect target to help them nail the deeply-entrenched corporation. That target’s name was Talia V’Trasta—a native of Velus, and Executive Vice President and leader of the United Les Space Interplanetary Accounting division.