Venusian Uprising Read online

  Williams wasn’t sure if they’d comply, but something in his voice must have convinced them that this was not where they wanted to die. However, as the helmets came off and the second soldier he had selected began to apply the L-PACs to her comrades, the dozen enemies approaching from the rear burst through the underbrush.

  Williams gritted his teeth, refusing to turn from his charges. It was a good call, too, as one of the soldiers not yet under the effects of an L-PAC leapt up and lunged for him. Williams didn’t hesitate even a moment; a twist of his hips, and his sights were aligned right between the Disker’s eyes.

  Grey matter sprayed across the other Diskers, and two of them screamed as pieces of bone and brain hit them.

  “No more bright ideas,” Williams screamed.

  He didn’t break eye contact with the group in front of him even as he watched Perez, Weber, and Koller fire into the Diskers behind him via the combat net.

  Ten seconds later, it was over. Four of the second group of enemies were down, and Weber was leading the survivors over to the clearing where their friends lay on the ground.

  “Nice work there, Gunny,” Commander Lauren said as she came into view, easing around the trunk of a massive maple tree.

  All around them, the Marines of First Platoon appeared. A squad surrounded the Diskers and began checking the L-PACs that the Disker woman had applied, and then finished the job after locking her down.

  “Didn’t even need us, it seems,” First Sergeant Onada added as he approached.

  “You provided a useful distraction.” Williams shrugged. “Always happy to see a friendly face on the field.”

  Grenwald reported over the combat net.

  “I’ve a squad going over the south ridge,” Vonda said aloud as she approached. “We’ll pick up any stragglers.”

  Jansen chimed in.

  Williams saw from the combat net’s feed that Jansen’s fireteam was halfway down the valley, and would have a clear view of the west ridge that separated the valley from the steppe. He tapped into her visuals and saw what he feared: the rest of the Disker battalion.

  “There’s more of them than we first estimated,” Lauren said. “Easily another fifteen hundred.”

  Williams shook his head. “They know we’re here, and they know our numbers. There’s no way we can stage an ambush on a force that size.”

  “Gunny’s right,” Onada said with a nod. “We have to fall back.”

  The company leadership moved away from the captured soldiers to discuss their options.

  “Choices are shit,” Williams said. “This valley dumps out into a low plain, almost no cover. We have over a dozen casualties, so we’re going to move slow. They’ll mow us down.”

  Commander Lauren called out over the combat net.

  A chorus of ‘oo-rah’s echoed over the combat net, and the Marines finished locking down the enemy combatants before following their platoon leader’s directions to take up positions on the valley’s slopes.

  Over the next few minutes, as the TSF Marines retreated, things began to look grim. A thousand Diskers were already in the valley…not rushing, but pressing hard. Williams knew that when the Marines finally backed out into the wide, lower end of the valley—where there was little cover—the enemy would have a clear line of sight to fire their heavy weapons.

  Not that they were waiting.

  All through the valley, trees fell, and fires broke out, as full-scale warfare erupted between the two groups. Williams’ mind wandered for a moment, and he wondered who would clean up this mess, or if it would be left to regrow on its own after the radiation began to dissipate.

  Then a flash of light in the sky above them caught his attention.

  At first, he wondered if it was starfire, falling from the fleet onto the Diskers, but he knew that couldn’t be it. The Disker stealth shield covered this area, and Fleet was usually too chicken to target off data from the ground troops’ combat net.

  Williams cycled his vision and zoomed in on the skies above. A soft chuckle escaped his throat.

  Nearly a thousand figures were visible in the skies above the valley. The men and women of the 8th Battalion, 242nd Regiment weren’t called Force Recon Orbital Drop Marines for nothing.

  Colonel Ender’s voice came over the combat net.

  The dim Venusian morning lit up with the lights of a thousand jump jets flaring, slowing the Marines’ descent and giving them opportunity to take aim at the Diskers below.

  A thousand proton beams rained down from the sky, tearing apart the Diskers’ leading line, pulling targeting data from Bravo Company’s combat net. Two minutes later, every boot in 8th Battalion’s five combat companies stood on Venusian soil.

  It was time to finish this fight.

  * * * * *

  Williams nodded to Commander Lauren as she approached, casually walking down from the valley’s southern ridgeline as a group of Disker prisoners were marched past.

  “Botched that nicely, didn’t we?” she said as she leaned against a maple tree.

  “Did as well as we could,” Williams replied. “Our intel was sorely lacking. We came down expecting to fight a bunch of separatists, and ended up facing what I bet is one of the federation’s militaries.”

  “Think that’s how they’ll see it up the chain?” Lauren asked.

  Williams wondered why Lauren was asking his opinion and not Onada’s. Maybe the first sergeant wasn’t good at commiserating.

  “If we really are looking at Venusian and Scattered World separatists working together, then there are bigger things to worry about than who got the intel wrong on the op, and who executed it poorly. We lost seventeen Marines today…. If we did make mistakes, we’ve already paid for them.”

  “That we have. Now onto the next,” Commander Lauren replied.

  UNRESTRICTED ACCESS

  STELLAR DATE: 3227466 / 05.27.4124 (Adjusted Gregorian)

  LOCATION: IntelliCore Headquarters, La Jolla, High Terra

  REGION: InnerSol, Sol Space Federation

  The late afternoon sun on High Terra cast the long row of receiving docks in shadow. Still, the feed from the microdrone had no trouble picking out the two figures guiding a maglev utility cart, clad in IntelliCore security garb.

  The drone floated within a cloud of sensor-dampening nano; active scrambling ensured the dock’s own security monitoring system experienced a convenient sensor blackout while these two made their exit.

  The maglev cart held a large crate, the kind used to securely transport sensitive equipment within a cushioned stasis field.

  The two figures stopped before a freight airtruck that bore the name of a locally-owned Terran shipping company. They lifted the crate into the back, and then secured it.

  The airtruck’s doors slid shut and began to slowly move away. The two security guards retreated back into the shadows.

  Minutes passed. The drone’s view shifted to a nearby employee entrance where two people, dressed in civilian clothes, stepped out into the bright afternoon. An autotaxi pulled to the curb, and the two slid inside. Shortly thereafter, the vehicle departed.

  The drone’s view shifted once more, curving around to IntelliCore’s main entrance. Fifteen minutes later, a humanoid frame exited. The individual set a brisk pace, turning down the sidewalk that led from the industrial park into a small area of local shops and eateries.

  The man watching the feed sat with his back to the coffee shop’s interior, his gaze appearing to idly skim those who walked past its plas window. He took a sip from his coffee, just as the figure who ha
d left IntelliCore passed in front of him.

  Admiral Urdon lowered the cup he held in his right hand, ignoring street traffic as the AI frame passed by, its pace unchanged. Three minutes later, Urdon rose, discarded his coffee in the recycler, and strode down the sidewalk in the same direction.

  Urdon’s signal, drinking from his right hand and not his left, had conveyed to the passerby that the route was clear and the package had been extracted successfully.

  The admiral kept one mental eye on the tracker that the two security guards had affixed to the package, gratified to see it was well on its way to its destination. The two operatives who had loaded it wouldn’t arrive back at the ship for another hour, following standard counterintelligence protocol to ensure they hadn’t picked up a tail.

  Urdon pulled up the schedule for the maglev train as he approached the platform upon which the humanoid frame stood. He increased his pace as he saw a shimmer of movement in the far distance along the maglev track.

  Stepping up onto the maglev platform, he moved to stand beside the person he’d followed, and waited patiently for the car to arrive.

  As the car slowed and the doors slid open, Urdon moved to enter, stumbling slightly as the toe of his shoe caught on the platform’s plascrete surface. Bumping into the AI standing beside him, he apologized and quickly righted himself. The individual smiled politely and stepped forward, Urdon following behind.

  He passed the frame by, moving to the back of the car, settling back for the ride back to the spaceport.

  Mission accomplished.

  He smiled in spite of himself at the unexpected bounty that Peter’s root-level access had unearthed for the Scattered Worlds. Although the Anti deSitter hypernode alone had been well worth the risk taken to acquire it, top-level access to a secret TSF military contract had been a boon not even the IntelliCore employee they’d recruited had known about.

  Urdon’s smile widened. He could envision all sorts of ways in which this intel could benefit the Scattered Worlds—starting with an operation currently underway, masked as a Venusian uprising, in Tarja.

  A very good day’s work, he mused, his glance sliding over the figure that sat several meters in front of him, as the tracker he’d placed on the individual’s frame pulsed bright on his overlay. A very good day’s work, indeed.

  UNEXPECTED HANDOFF

  STELLAR DATE: 3227469 / 05.30.4124 (Adjusted Gregorian)

  LOCATION: The Mango Mule, Highspin, Cruithne

  REGION: InnerSol, Sol Space Federation

  The Highspin precinct was nothing like Katelyn had imagined it would be. Sleek and orderly, the interior hummed with a quiet energy. Data streams commanded one wall, and she could hear the soft murmurs of the precinct’s occupants that accompanied the digital flow of information.

  Another pair of magcuffed suspects sat beside desks as police spoke to them in low tones. At a third desk, an officer was taking a statement, while her partner manipulated a holo, optically shielded so that no one else could see what it projected.

  The only thing that felt remotely like it belonged on Cruithne was the snippet of conversation she caught as they made a close pass by one of the desks. Both cop and thief sounded bored, almost as if they were reading from a script, exchanging well-rehearsed lines about a confiscated weapons cache. She snorted mentally as she envisioned the perp free within the hour, with the weapons misplaced and the cop’s palm nicely greased.

  The corridor that she and Rory were led down was unremarkable, as was the interrogation room they were ushered into. She tried once more to protest their detainment, but the CPD cops who had brought them in just ignored her with practiced silence.

  After the escort exited the now-locked room, Katelyn tried again to connect with her sister for a private conversation, but the Link suppression nano the officers had dropped on them as they entered the squad car was still active.

  “What’s going to happen, do you think?” Rory subvocalized, her eyes roaming the seamless plas walls.

  Katelyn sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Ignoring her sister’s question, she stood and began to pace as she puzzled out exactly what must have transpired.

  “I hate to say I told you so, but that bartender was acting way too friendly.”

  “You think Aaron planted the drugs.”

  Katelyn shot her a sardonic look. “How often do you see a clumsy AI? Yeah, I think he purposely spilled that drink. Most bars have some sort of monitoring system so they can watch their patrons.” She shook her head. “Once he saw your shoulder bag sitting there on the floor, it would have been child’s play for him to calculate the trajectory needed for that spilled drink to hit it, square on.”

  Rory sighed. “So Aaron’s friendliness was all an act.” Her voice sounded disillusioned.

  “And while you were busy being touched by how contrite and conscientious he was, how he sprang into action to clean up the mess….” Katelyn heard the censure creeping into her tone, so she let her voice trail off.

  Rory’s gaze grew dark. She crossed her arms and slammed herself back into the chair.

  “Well, don’t I feel like the naïve idiot. Contrite, my ass. He just wanted an excuse to plant that briki-whatever-it’s-called in my purse,” she growled. “Just wait’ll I get my hands on his core. I’ll reprogram his processors so fast, he’ll be—”

  A tsking sound interrupted Rory’s diatribe, followed by an amused voice. “Temper, temper! I thought it was the redheads that were supposed to be the hotheaded humans.”

  Rory’s mouth dropped open as Katelyn whipped her head around to see Aaron standing just inside the interrogation room.

  “You—!” Rory jumped out of her chair as the AI sauntered toward them.

  “I’m truly sorry about the deception, ladies, but I needed a way to get you off the street as quickly as possible before someone else intercepted you. Apparently, the TSF knows the Evans sisters are on Cruithne.”

  “The Evans…” Rory’s voice sounded faint as she sank back down in her chair.

  Katelyn hurried to cover for her sister.

  “You mean Blevins,” she corrected, nodding to indicate Rory. “Lauralee Blevins. And I’m Casey.”

  “Uh-huh,” he grinned as he pulled out a chair across from Rory, swung it around, and straddled it. Crossing his arms along the chair’s back, he nodded to her. “Rory…” he turned, “and Katelyn. Nice to meet you both, officially.”

  Katelyn narrowed her eyes at the AI. “I don’t know who you think we are, and I don’t know what game you’re playing at.”

  “You planted briki in my bag!” Rory erupted, shoving her chair back and leaning across the table to glower at him. “I have never used an illegal substance in my life, and I’m not about to let some asshole frame me for possession!”

  Aaron smirked at Rory as the door swished open, and a CPD officer entered—a lieutenant, by the rank shown on his uniform.

  Turning to address the newcomer, Aaron asked, “Do all Diskers have such wicked tempers?”

  As Rory sputtered, Katelyn turned to face the CDP officer, pointing to the AI.

  “That's your guy, right there. He’s the person who planted the drugs on us!”

  “He knows that, sunshine,” Aaron drawled, ignoring the twin looks of ire Katelyn and Rory shot his way.

  The CPD officer turned to Aaron. “You secured the room?”

  The AI nodded. “Full spectrum scramble. Nothing getting in or out.”

  Looking satisfied, the lieutenant turned back to Katelyn, who eyed him with a dawning understanding. He nodded. “Aaron and I are undercover SWSF. Planting the briki was the most expedient way we could get you off the streets and somewhere secure.”

  “But why?” Rory asked, a perplexed look on her face. “I thought Cruithne was the kind of place where the law was paid to look the other way when a drug deal went down. What gives?”

  “Wait.” Katelyn’s eyes narrowed, and she waved a dismissive hand at her sister. “I don’t care
about the briki. What do you mean by secure, and why would that be a concern?”

  The lieutenant and the AI exchanged a swift look. “We got word that a Mickey was after you,” he admitted. “We’re not sure who tipped her off, but she knows about the data drop.”

  Katelyn’s eyes widened. “A Mickey, as in….”

  Aaron’s eyes met hers. “As in Division 99, M-I-C-I, yes.”

  Holy shit. Katelyn’s butt hit the chair next to Rory as she fought to process what he’d just said.

  The TSF’s Military Intelligence and Counterinsurgency division was notorious throughout the Scattered Worlds. Sea stories of missions attributed to MICI agents were often swapped by battle-hardened Diskers after many a long night of drinking.

  And then there was the MICI-led team that butchered those held prisoner in Toro.

  “You said ‘she’,” Katelyn began, forcing her mind back to what the lieutenant had said. “I saw someone. Thought it was our contact, actually. Tall, lean, built like a runner. Dark hair. She ducked into one of the restaurants when CPD approached us. Was that the MICI?”

  The officer’s expression turned grim. Turning to the far wall, he activated its built-in holoscreen. “This her?”

  Katelyn nodded.

  “That’s not good.” Aaron’s casual attitude vanished as he and the officer exchanged glances.

  “What?” Rory demanded, looking from the holo to the two from Cruithne.

  “Janiss Jones. One of their finest.” The AI’s tone was uncharacteristically somber. “Last I heard, Harm’s still her handler, too.”

  The lieutenant nodded. “But you’re here now. We’ll get you off Cruithne as fast as we can.”

  “I’m good with that.” Rory’s face took on a pinched look. “I’ve had my fill of Terran prisons. I’d prefer to avoid anything that might lead to that again, if you don’t mind.”

  “Okay, then.” Katelyn pushed to her feet. “What do we need to get out of here? Where’s the data we’re supposed to deliver to Venus?”