Gabriel's Redemption (16 page)

They had passed three pairs of LR drones, and were coming up on the last pair. Gabriel sent a burst to the team to hold formation as he sent a query to the two drones near the compound’s entrance. One pinged an immediate reply, but the other didn’t respond.
Almost like it wasn’t there
, he thought to himself. He sent commands to the team to spread out to their preassigned positions, and they slowly inched forward to the last probe line.

Gabriel initiated a wide-range passive neuretic scan. While not very specific, a passive scan had a very low probability of being detected, and would at least give him an idea of the opposing force’s size and location. The scan showed him four bodies outside the main entrance, a double door on the end of a long building leading into the rest of the complex. Two appeared to be concealed behind a huge snowdrift away from the door, the other two in front of the doors themselves, but none showed any active energy signatures. It didn’t mean they weren’t armed, he knew, but it was unlikely those four had any type of heavy weapons. He tagged them in the team net as Target Alpha One and Alpha Two.

He pushed his scan further, not wanting to go active unless it was absolutely necessary. The scan caught an electronic whiff of two more bodies in an L-shaped alcove near another set of doors further along the complex, closer to the tallest building, a two-story structure with windows lining the upper floor. He designated them Target Beta.

He sent a silent burst to Lamber and St. Laurent with orders to flank the main entrance. He sent Sowers and Jimenez wide, avoiding the main entrance, to position themselves near the Beta. He had Takahashi stay with him to back up Lamber and St. Laurent, and had Brevik hang back and set up one of his plasma cannons on a small rise; a last resort if a major firefight broke out.

He watched in the heads-up as his four people approached the two targets, and he and Takahashi slid in behind Lamber and St. Laurent. He sent a quick burst to Sabra to watch Alpha in case things went south. Sabra’s neuretics clicked in response, affirming his order.

With one last electronic reminder for absolute silence and to stay non-lethal if at all possible, he ordered Alpha and Beta taken out.

“Hey Q, you ready?” Ran asked, walking in on Santander, who was watching a wallscreen boxing match in the passenger lounge.

Santander didn’t look up as he took another drink of his beer, grimacing again at the taste. “Ready as I’ll ever be. How long?”

Ran checked his wristwatch. “We’ll hit the last gate in just under an hour.” He looked back towards the door he had just walked in. “The team’s all in the CIC, you want to join us?”

“Hell no,” Santander spat. “The less I see of Yao and his crew the better.” He rose from the shabby couch he was sitting in and stretched his back, reaching to the ceiling.
 
“I gotta hit the john. Call me after we transit, we’ll get together here and go over the plan one more time.”

“You got it, boss,” Ran replied, headed for the exit. “By the way,” he said before he left. “You never told us who the team is we’re supposed to be cleaning up.”

Santander smirked. “You’re right. Don’t worry about it until we get there. Let’s just say it’s an old acquaintance of mine.” With that, he turned and headed for the bathroom at the back of the lounge.

Ran pondered that last statement for a moment with a bit of concern. Santander had always been vague about certain things, but he had an odd feeling about this one. He shrugged to himself and headed to the CIC.

Lamber and St. Laurent crept up on their first two targets, red outlines in their IR sensors showing the warm bodies huddled behind a ten foot snowdrift about forty feet away from the doors, where the other two figures stood. St. Laurent reached her target first, a man wearing a civilian environment suit. His visor was so iced over that she would have been invisible even without the active camo. With the camo and silent approach, she was able to get within just a few feet of him before he even turned his head. She punched with her battlesuit’s armored fist.
 

The hardened carbotanium caught the man squarely in the chest, knocking the wind out of him as he collapsed around her arm like a rag doll. She caught the falling body, hoping she didn’t break too many ribs, and lowered the gasping figure to the ground. Taking one of the personnel autorestraints from her belt with the other metal hand, she slapped it over his head and activated it. The net-like device expanded and covered his entire body in less than a second, cinching itself at his feet and sealing. The mesh surface tightened and immobilized him, cocooning the man in a sound- and electronics-deadening Faraday cage, preventing any outbound transmissions from comms, neuretics, or anything else short of two tin cans and a string. The body struggled in the net, but made no sound. She moved on to her secondary target.

Meanwhile Lamber had taken out his primary a little differently, St. Laurent noticed out of the corner of her heads-up. His immobilized target, while showing life signs, also showed no signs of movement, and appeared to be bent at a very unnatural angle.

On the other side of the compound, Jimenez and Sowers were in position. They crouched on the opposite side of a mining vehicle from Beta, two figures that appeared to be smoking and talking in low tones. Sowers sent a quick burst to Jimenez, signaling him to go around the back end of the vehicle as he rounded the front.

They both slowly made their way around the truck, stepping carefully around waste containers. Just as they approached arm’s reach, Jimenez tripped over a half-buried container and fell forward into the snow, not being able to compensate quickly enough for the mass of his battlesuit.

The two sentries looked up in alarm, seeing the indentations in the snow as Jimenez struggled to right himself. One of the men shouted and raised a weapon as a cigarette fell from his lips. Sowers cursed as he caught a burst of a comm. He snapped an active jamming signal out, blocking any further communications from the sentries, but most likely alerting others to their presence.
 

Stepping forward quickly, Sowers was able to disarm his sentry with a quick chop of a steel arm. He heard the bones snap in the man’s forearm as he screamed in pain. A careful smack to the side of his head knocked him out cold, and his body dropped into the snow.

Jimenez wasn’t so quick as he staggered upwards from his fallen position in the snow, and the second sentry’s weapon spat rounds rapid fire. Jimenez stumbled back under the onslaught of the rounds, but his suit’s carbotanium shell withstood the kinetic impacts. Sowers took a few steps forward and grabbed the assault rifle, yanking it from the sentry’s hands and crushing it, the loud firing immediately ceasing. With his other hand he grabbed the sentry by the front of his environment suit, picked him up, and threw him into the side of the mining vehicle with a loud thump. His unconscious body slid down into a sitting position in the snow.

Sowers went over to where Jimenez was standing to assess the damage. He sent a quick burst to Gabriel to let him know the targets were down, but that it wasn’t exactly quietly. Jimenez sent a neuretics apology to Sowers, who snorted in his helmet.
You owe me, buddy
, he thought.

Meanwhile St. Laurent and Lamber were both approaching the doors where the other two sentries stood. St. Laurent watched the passive scans in her heads-up, puzzling at one’s unusually small size. Before they were within twenty feet, they heard rifle fire from the other side of the building.
Double time,
she sent to Lamber, and the two of them sprinted the last few feet to the two figures at the door.

The sentries were alerted, and their figures went into crouches in St. Laurent’s heads-up. As she got within arm’s reach, she skidded to a halt in shock. In front of her, in a combat stance, was one of the Poliahu aliens she had seen in the briefings, wearing partial body armor and holding a laser pistol. Before she had time to react, the alien fired, and the light blast splashed across her armored chest plate.
 

Her electronics squealed in protest as several systems were overloaded. The battlesuit was able to take laser blasts in stride, but not entirely unscathed from such point blank range. Servos froze up, immobilizing her, as the energy pulsed its way throughout her suit. Her training kicking in, she frantically sent commands to her backup systems, rerouting alternate power and e-links in a split second. Freed up from the pulse, she dropped to one knee and reached out, grabbing the alien’s weapon before it had a chance to fire a second time. Fighting the urge to fire her suit’s arm-mounted pulse rifle, she pulled the alien’s arm downwards and pulled the gun from its grip as her other hand grabbed the alien’s armor to restrain it. A detached part of her brain noted the lack of claws on the alien’s hands, unlike what Gabriel had showed the team in the initial briefing.

Lamber had already immobilized the other sentry and turned to help St. Laurent. As he stepped towards the struggling duo, the alien’s small chest suddenly erupted in red gore, splattering on the doors behind it. The lifeless body fell backwards and St. Laurent let go of it. It landed in the snow with a wet thud, and blood pooled around it, quickly freezing in the super-chilled atmosphere.

“Cease fire!” St. Laurent screamed, breaking comm silence. She quickly got to her feet, checking her scans for nearby activity. Finding it clear, she sent a burst to Gabriel.
 

Gabriel was monitoring from the back and caught not only St. Laurent’s yell, but the angry tone of her burst. He quickly contacted Sabra, knowing it was her Burton round that just took the first life of the mission. He received an emotionless neuretics click in return. He shook his head.
Loose cannon
, he thought. He sent another burst to Sabra to recall her.
 

He called for a rally at the main colony entrance, and the team moved out.

Chapter 18

The team gathered at the initial sentry point forty feet from the main doors, on the opposite side of the snow drift from the main building. Jimenez and Sowers arrived after Gabriel, Takahashi, and Brevik joined St. Laurent and Lamber, after having secured their two prisoners inside the mining vehicle cargo hold. Gabriel noticed the missing nanocel camo patches on Jimenez’s chest and guessed he was the one who had taken fire earlier. The petty officer was obviously fine, but he made a mental note to talk to him afterwards about what had gone wrong.

Sabra arrived a couple of minutes later, by which time the rest of the team had dragged the three immobile sentries back over to join the others in the mining vehicle’s cramped cargo hold. Gabriel saw the barrel of Sabra’s long Burton sniper rifle sticking out above her camo, the barrel not fully cooled to ambient temperature. She crouched down with the rest of the group, and Gabriel’s heads-up now showed all team members accounted for. He sent a burst on the team net to have them go to short range voice comm, undetectable at more than a few dozen feet.

“Sentries are down, good work everyone,” he said, keeping an annoyed tone out of his voice as best he could. The rest of the team, save for Sabra, probably realized the same thing he did - that the shot wasn’t necessary. He was hoping for a clean non-lethal entry, but that was out the window.
 

“Sowers, I need you to breach the door security system, and quietly. There’s still a slim chance the rifle fire wasn’t heard. Get those doors open for us in the next minute, and bypass any alarms or signals that may get sent. Can you do that?” Gabriel asked.

“Absolutely, sir,” Sowers replied. “Standard prefab entry pad on a remote backwater planet, wouldn’t be surprised if the pin code was still four zeros.”
 

“Jimenez and Lamber, I want you first in, cover both sides of the corridor. We will leapfrog the two of you, who will then bring up the rear as we approach the door, which leads to the master hub. Schematics show fifty feet to the end to the second door, which is listed as being non-secure, so it should just be a matter of opening it. I don’t expect resistance in the hub itself, as the room is too large and has several exits.” Gabriel sent the images to each team member to view in their helmet HUDs.

“Once inside, we’ll be taking the second corridor on the right, which leads to the main operations center. As we discussed, we’re bypassing the direct routes to the labs and housing facilities, as we need to get in and get a hold of the colony’s communications, power, and defenses most quick.” He illuminated the corridor in the display. “Sowers, you may need to breach this door as well. Once it opens, St. Laurent and Takahashi will enter first and cover the corridor. Here I
do
expect resistance, so stay sharp.”

Takahashi looked up from the alien’s body, which the team had decided to bury in the snowdrift to avoid detection. “Sir, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take some samples, have my pack do some background processing while we move.”

“Make it quick, Ensign,” Gabriel said. “Lieutenant Brevik, you’ll be bringing up the rear in the second corridor, as you’re the slowest.” He held up a hand in the increasing light, 46 Scorpii’s star just about to crest the horizon. “I mean that with all due respect, of course. It’s the heavy weapons you’re hauling - we may need those in the operations center, so we’ll try to clear a path in.” Brevik clicked his assent.
Silent as always
, Gabriel thought.

“Once that operations door opens, any plan we had is going to fall apart, like a quarterback taking his first hit. Stick to the basics we went over on the flight in. Make it quick, make it overwhelming. By all rights, our armor should be able to stand up to any weapons they may have, but by no means do I want anyone to take this assault lightly.” He turned to Sabra, knowing she couldn’t see the look through the camo, but directed his next comments in her direction anyway. “And I want loss of life held to an absolute minimum. I want primary weapons to be stunners or physical force, secondary energy weapons. Is that clear?”

A chorus of ‘aye aye sirs’ answered him, Takahashi just a bit behind the rest as he finished up his sampling and swept snow over the body and blood.