Siege Protocol: The Separatist Wars: Book 3 Read online

  Gina nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

  Hale shook his head. “You gotta be shitting me.”

  Lash hissed his laughter. “There is a saying on my world. “Stee-zak mit cor lavath.”

  “Crime pays,” Kris whispered.

  “Quite right, Tauranian. Your Salayan is excellent. Apparently it pays quite well, judging by Ms. Clayton’s choice of habitation.”

  Shane was surprised, to say the least. The economies of some small planet weren’t able to afford modest orbital defense platforms, much less full-on space stations. Yet this single executive had one of her very own. She’d apparently fled there, once the proverbial shit hit the plasma cooling fan. And now she had the audacity to live on the damned thing, like some kind of mega-fortified orbital resort home. Smart of her, though, sitting tight in non-UN or Alliance-controlled space while things hopefully blew over.

  Shane scrutinized the three-dimensional image. “This Clayton. . . she’s the one the target gave up?”

  “Affirmative,” Gina said. She glanced over at Lima’s holo image. “I think we lucked out on this one, old man. Clayton should have everything we need for the rest of the dominoes to fall.”

  “Alright,” Lima said, nodding to himself. “It looks like we have our next target. Well done, Zombie. And good job to the rest of you as well. Excellent work.” He leaned over to Hale and said something Shane didn’t catch, before facing back toward the holo screen. “If all goes to plan, we will secure this new HVT. Perhaps she can give up the locations of the rest of the board of directors. If zombie is right, it may well be the last piece of intel to set it all into motion. One more piece of the puzzle is one step closer to wiping ULS off the star map.”

  Gina nodded. “That’s the plan.”

  Shane eyed the platform. Something about it seemed familiar. “Could you zoom in on the lower section of that station please, X37?”

  “Enhancing, Captain Mallory.”

  Shane squinted, noticing something. “What are those markings?” she asked. She stood and walked through the image to the opposite side, then pointed to the bottom section of the holo image. “There, on the bulkhead. In that lower left quadrant?”

  X37 pinpointed the area Shane indicated, then increased the size of the image further. The swirling markings, punctuated with dots and dashes, came into clear view.

  “Good eye, Captain Mallory.” X37 sounded pleased. “Those appear to be Shemari armed forces markings.”

  Gina shook her head. “This lady not only has her own space station, she has her own military grade space station?”

  X37 rotated the image. “It would appear so, Sergeant First Class.”

  “That’s in direct violation of UN and Planetary Alliance edict,” Shane said.

  “So much for following the rule of law,” Hale said.

  “These people care little for the rule of law,” Lima added. “X37—research the markings, please.”

  “Certainly, Mr. Lima. Accessing. . . Retrieved. The markings belong to a decommissioned Shemari military space station. An orbital defense platform removed from service over twenty Earth years ago. It says it was sold to a third-party scrapper out of the Orion system. It was supposedly slated for destruction and re-use as raw materials.”

  “Thank you, X37,” Lima said. “Alright people. We have a new target.” He peered at the holo image, himself a holo image generated from thousands of kilometers away and closing fast. “Any ideas for how to assault that platform?”

  “Space Station takedowns are an Army thing,” Hale said. “What you got, Zombie?”

  “Never done one myself,” Gina said. “Trained for it a little, but that’s not the same thing.” Gina thought for a second. “I have some contacts over in British SAS that might be able to help.”

  “We will need Shemari access codes,” Kris’nac said. All eyes, local and remote, turned to Kris.

  The Tauranian sat cross-legged, her cowl up, sipping a citrus tea native to her home planet. It was easy to forget she was there sometimes. She didn’t say much, but when she did? It always paid to listen. “Those codes will be the only way to gain entry to that facility,” she continued. “Without them, we are dead in space.”

  “That complicates things,” Gina said.

  Shane had an idea. “Silvio—could you use your intelligence contacts to get us those codes?”

  Lima frowned, then shook his head. “The UNIA would not have those. That type of information would be outside their area of expertise. That is off-world classified military intelligence. Only someone with access to a military database could retrieve those codes.”

  Shane lowered her eyes and sipped her coffee, thinking. Classified military intel. That type of information wasn’t easy to get. It wasn’t like you could just hack a simple feed and pull it. No, there was only one place where they could get what they needed, and only one person they could get it from.

  When Shane looked up, five set of eyes from three different planets were focused on her. It may have been only her imagination, but Shane swore she could feel the AI staring at her, too.

  Shit, she thought.

  “ASI is gonna owe him on this one, Silvio.” Shane exhaled loudly. “We’re gonna owe him big.”

  -3-

  The gunship drop chute popped open, ejecting Hale with a muffled whoosh. His guts leapt into his throat as he was thrusted and propelled into the cold, dark vacuum of space.

  Hale steadied his breathing. He’d never been one for claustrophobia. Scuttlebutt was that some troops had issues with that particular fear, but Hale didn’t count himself among them. He recalled other Marines saying the FAST suits felt like coffins, more so than standard combat armor. Hale was a negative on that sentiment, too. To him, the Forward Atmospheric Stratospheric Tactical suits always felt more like a miniature, one-person battleship than a coffin. To him the suit was a safe haven—his center of operations, mobile gun platform, and a fully operation tool of battle all rolled into one. And, maybe most importantly, the suit was the only thing between him and the deadly environment of deep space.

  Odd thoughts for someone rocketing toward the planet’s surface like a meteorite, he would admit. His field of vision had already begun to redden with the atmo friction burn, and the black void of space was temporarily lost to view. X37 was serving as their stand-in pilot for the evening’s activities, and somewhere above them the gunship’s burners were fading off into the stars as the AI flew off into a holding pattern.

  Hale counted out three other meteorites as they broke atmo—Zombie, Kris, and Lash. All three seasoned pros, showing good discipline and good spacing as they fell. All were intact, in so far as he could visually confirm. Comms would be inactive for the first part of the insertion, rendered useless by the interference from burn-in.

  Hale checked the numbers on his HUD as soon as it came back up—speed, vector, and FAST armor tolerances were all in the green. The crimson fire outside his immediate view cooled to orange, then indigo, then the black of a nighttime, sub-atmospheric planetary sky. Next the stars—a different view than from Earth-reappeared in all their brilliance. The O2 pumping through his armor felt cool on his face. Clouds were fast approaching from beneath him as he plummeted, snatched from the sky by the planet’s gravitational pull.

  Now came the fun part.

  The FAST insertion shifted to planetary freefall. Hale’s comms pinged back online. He went to his belly, flattening himself out. His palms up and his knees slightly bent, Hale checked his HUD’s altimeter and made a minor adjustment to his freefall heading. The FAST insertion had transitioned to a straight freefall, and then freefall shifted to a good, old-fashioned HALO jump.

  Hale and his team hurtled toward the ground at the planet’s terminal velocity, moving now according to the pre-programmed vectors in their armor. At this point all he could do was enjoy the ride. A HALO-or High-Altitude Low Opening insertion—was a tried and true method. Operators had been careening into combat this sam
e way for centuries back on Earth. The technique consisted of a silent entry ‘pop’ below the enemy’s sensors, then a gentle float followed by quietly slipping into the AO. All that was assuming everything went well, which it usually did. . . with ‘usually’ being the operative word.

  Soon enough, the altimeter beeped a warning in Hale’s ear. He reached back, grabbed the handle, and pulled. The chute yanked him upwards, like a ragdoll ripped from a child’s grip. The chute allowed Hale and all one-hundred thirty-six kilos of his armor to drift, slowly, toward the waves of the alien sea beneath his boots. With several meters left to the surface Hale cut his chute away. With a loud splash, he plunged into the dark depths of the planet’s ocean.

  At twenty meters below the surface, the FAST suit’s thrusters kicked in with a hum.

  “Razor one to all Razor elements,” Hale said. “Check in. Over.”

  “Razor Three, up,” Lash reported.

  “Razor Four, up,” Kris whispered.

  “Razor Two here,” Zombie chimed in. “All present and accounted for, boss.”

  “Good copy, all. Set your bubbles for eight meters depth. Follow my lead to the shore. Over”

  Double clicks all around told Hale they’d heard and acknowledged his order. He adjusted his suit’s buoyancy controls to level the armor out, then made for the shore at full thruster maneuvering speed. The distance from the ocean bottom to the feet of his armor decreased along with the depth. It wasn’t long before he set down, feeling the odd sensation of armored feet sinking into soft bottom silt. The team spread into a wide diamond patrol formation, and together they stalked forward on foot.

  They soon emerged from the sea in the same diamond patrol pattern. Hale’s rifle on point, Zombie and Kris to his port and starboard sides, and Lash, the big Salayan, at the rear. Dripping seawater, their green and black patterned FAST armor glistening in the moonlight, they more resembled prehistoric sea creatures emerging from the primordial depths than modern warriors assaulting an alien beach.

  Hale signaled for them to spread out. Their target—a bunker-like structure—lay just past the coarse dunes a hundred meters distant. As they fanned out, Hale’s thoughts turned from the task at hand, pivoting to one specific thought, and the one exact thing he’d promised himself he would not think about.

  Anesu Chewasa.

  Kushite Royal guardswoman turned journalist turned. . . what? Royal operative? Spy of the Kingdom? Anesu had been off the grid for the last two months. No holo communications, no comm wave, no nothing. She’d returned none of the messages he’d left for her. She’d gone comms silent on him. He’d even tried her earlier, just before the briefing for this op. To no avail. Hale wasn’t sure what to think. This was new territory for him, both caring for someone and having been the one on the receiving end of the traditional pre-deployment ghosting.

  “Check your spacing, One.” Zombie’s voice broke into his thoughts. In the midst of his musings he’d wandered from the patrol pattern.

  “Copy, Two.” Hale said.

  What the hell is wrong with me? he wondered.

  He was acting like some lance corporal who’d hooked up with a SpacePAC widow while on weekend libo. He moved his ass back into position. Screwing up on an op was also a new experience for him. With respect to the relationship issues and the screwing up, he found he very much disliked the feeling of both.

  The remainder of the approach occurred in total silence, the team low-walking in toward the structure from several dozen meters out. As they leapfrogged quietly from dune to dune, Hale considered how ULS, it’s leadership now on the run and the corporation on alert, had upped its surveillance capabilities. With Lima working his end and manning the TOC, Shane off intelligence gathering, and only the core ground team here Hale wondered, briefly, if they were spread too thin.

  Focus, Hale, his inner voice growled.

  The prior service Marine chided himself again before getting back on task. They needed this one to go off seamlessly.

  A dark duracrete structure loomed ahead. “Razor One this is the TOC,” Lima’s’ voice came in over the comms. “How copy, One? Over.”

  “Good copy, TOC. Approaching the target now. You picking anything up on ISR?”

  “Affirmative, Razor One. You have two robotic sentries forty meters ahead of your position,” X37—the version of X37 in the TOC, not the one who’d flown them in, said. “No other activity sighted. You are clear to proceed.”

  Hale paused and dropped to the prone position, signaling the team behind him to follow suit. “Roger that, TOC.” Hale switched his HUD to infrared and began scanning. He spotted the two robotic sentries off to the west. Their frames, warm from their energy sources, glowed in the infrared vision. “One to Two and Four,” Hale said softly. “Clocking two tangos to the west. How copy?”

  “Good Copy, One,” Zombie said.

  “Copy,” Kris’nac whispered. “Seeing same.”

  “You both have the shot?” Hale asked.

  “A-firm,” Zombie said.

  “Same,” Kris replied. “Waiting on your go, Razor One.”

  No use delaying the party.

  “Take ‘em,” Hale said.

  Hale watched two robotic head pop, the peristeel bodies crumpling to the sand. “Got two down on the perimeter,” he reported. “Move.”

  Hale didn’t wait for a response before getting his eye in his rifle sights. He stalked ahead, his vision sweeping left to right. As far as he could see was nothing but sand dunes. Hunks of semi-rounded shapes in night-vision blue, hulking in the darkness. Alien reeds grew scattered among the dunes, blowing in the ocean breeze. The crash of the waves faded behind them, as they approached the structure. Hale zoomed in on the entry point. A second later the team reached the door and stacked on it.

  Hale made a fist and pounded the lid of his helmet three times. At the signal, Lash shifted up into the breacher position. The oversized Salayan inspected the bunker’s locking mechanism with a professional eye. A second later he detached a large shotgun from his armor—a breaching special. Lash chucked it, inserting a specially designed shell, then placed it in his shoulder. He looked to Hale, his red eyes invisible behind the lizard-shaped helmet’s visor.

  Hale nodded. “On your go, Three.”

  Lash held up the gauntleted fist of his non-shooting claw. Three taloned digits went up, then dropped to two, then to one. His claw shifted back to the shotgun’s pump action. He pulled the trigger.

  The locking mechanism disintegrated in a cloud of peristeel ball. Hale kicked in the door, and the game was on.

  He moved down the hallway controlling his breathing, checking his spacing, looking for corners, and simultaneously executing a hundred of the other minutiae and micro-decisions required during room clearing. He spotted a door to the left.

  “Gimme one,” Hale said.

  He moved into the open room with a smooth, sure step, knowing someone would be right behind him. As he crossed the threshold, an android raised its weapon. Hale pumped two into the machine’s central computing unit and kept moving.

  “Clear,” he said, seeing no other threat.

  “Clear,” Zombie said from behind him.

  “TOC this is One,” Hale said. “We’re in. Proceeding to clear structure. Over.”

  “Copy, One.”

  “Two coming out,” Hale spoke into his comms, alerting Kris and Lash that he and Zombie were exiting. They stepped into the hallway, then it was on to the next room.

  The four intergalactic operators moved like a pack of wolves, clearing each room in a well-choreographed dance. After more than year of working together they worked almost interchangeably, as if they could read one another’s thoughts. Two more androids went down before they reached the final room. Having worked the structure using a technique known as a ‘revolving point,’ Hale now found himself back at the front, with Kris at the number two spot.

  “Last room,” he announced, just before he shouldered his rifle and drove the barrel insid
e.

  Hale hit the threshold, banging the door against the wall on entry. He spotted two androids, both holding plasma rifles to the head of a tied and hooded prisoner. Hale didn’t even blink as he pulled the trigger.

  One shot was one kill, the pops of the pulse rifles near simultaneous as both Hale and Kris eliminated their targets. It was a matter of seconds before Kris declared the room clear and posted security at the door. Hale swept his way over to the hooded hostage, drawing his Ka Bar knife and slicing the person’s restraints. Without a word he got the hooded subject to his feet.

  “TOC this is Razor team. Jackpot. We have the HVT.”

  “Copy, Razor One. You are clear to exfil.”

  “Copy TOC. All Razor elements collapse on me. We are running and gunning to exfil now.”

  Zombie and Lash joined Hale, Kris, and the HVT inside the last room. Hale babysat the package while Lash took point on the way out. Zombie followed. Hale and the HVT shuffle-walked out next. Kris exited last, covering their six as they made their way back through the structure.

  The roar of the ocean greeted them as they emerged from the bunker. No sooner had they stepped foot from duracrete onto sand than a bright set of lights flooded the area.

  Hale froze, covering his eyes, before a familiar voice rang out from behind the blinding light.

  “You all made excellent time,” X37 said. The AI’s drone ambulated from the shadows. This version of the AI sported a humanoid two-legged body.

  “Thanks X37,” Hale said. He wondered if he’d ever get used to the AI being able to split herself between several places at once. The locks on his helmet blew with a hiss before he pulled it from his head. The crisp, salty night air felt good on his hot skin. The rest of the team followed suit.

  “I agree,” Lima said. He’d also stepped from the shadows to join them. “That run was even faster than the last one.”

  “You handing out bonuses along with those compliments?” Zombie asked.

  Lima laughed.

  Zombie frowned. “Ummm. . . I wasn’t really joking, old man.”