Guerilla (20 page)

“Corporal Rasheed,” Sage called over his comm. The first Lemylian grinned broadly as he hurled more curse words in his language and threw another big punch. Sage caught his opponent's fist in one hand and managed to stop the blow centimeters from his faceshield.

“Yes, Sergeant,” Rasheed responded.

“Five men just left this building headed your way. All are armed and presumed hostile.” Sage dodged the Lemylian's blow with his other hand and still hung on to the one he had. The Lemylian jerked Sage off balance but Sage recovered.

“There are more than five, Top.”

Checking his HUD, Sage saw that a torrent of ­people was leaving the bar.

The Lemylian behind Sage tried to hit him. He sidestepped the Lemylian's blow by sliding, and shoved his gloved hand to his opponent's throat. He pulsed an electric charge through his glove and watched the Lemylian jerk and stutter-­step backward, then fall to his knees gasping for air through his partially paralyzed throat.

“Find them, Corporal. Don't let them—­”

A deafening explosion roared from outside, and the door Vekaby and his men had gone through blew into the bar in plasteel shards that struck Sage and the Lemylian he still held.

 

TWENTY-­FIVE

Zorg's Weeping Onion

Red Light District

New Makaum

0039 Hours Zulu Time

K
nocked off balance by the concussive wave and the debris, Sage tried to recover and got hammered again by the Lemylian he had hold of. The Lemylian didn't seem to register the explosion. Sage was his total focus. The blow to his chest knocked Sage back and he lost his grip on his opponent.

“Rasheed!”

There was no answer.

Armor has taken 13 percent damage
, the near-­AI stated.

Advancing with his fists in front of him, the Lemylian grinned and shouted more invective in his language. Around them, several bar patrons lay stunned and bleeding. No one appeared dead, but they hadn't caught the brunt of the blast. Most of that had occurred outside in the alley.

Setting himself in an L-­shaped stance with his left foot behind him, Sage blocked the Lemylian's left-­handed blow with his right forearm, then swiveled his hips as he swung his left hand into his opponent's face. The blow rocked the Lemylian's head back, but he set himself to return the attack. Blood trickled from a split lip and he pulled his chin farther down on his barrel chest.

Small-­arms fire chattered out in the alley and muzzle flashes tore holes through the darkness and the neon.

“Blue Jay Twelve,” Sage called over his comm. “Can you see my team outside the bar?” He focused on the Lemylian, concentrating on removing one obstacle at a time. He'd forgotten how dangerous Lemylians were in close quarters.

“Top, this is Blue Jay Twelve,” the jumpcopter team leader called. “Your team at the back of the building is down. Looks like they were hit with a high-­explosive round. Maybe an Arayo Defender munition.”

“Copy that, Blue Jay Twelve.” Stepping forward, Sage shifted his lead foot, blocked the Lemylian's right hand with his left forearm, and swung his right foot in a roundhouse kick that caught his opponent in the face. While the Lemylian tried to recover, Sage placed his right hand on his opponent's face and pulsed an electrical charge.

Overcome, the Lemylian staggered back with his hands covering his face and fell onto a table, shattering it and dropping heavily to the ground.

Sage turned toward the door and pulsed electrical blasts into the next Lemylian that tried to engage him and caught a third Lemylian in the throat before he could block the blow. Both went down.

“Rasheed.” Sage strode out into the alley as his software sorted out his ­people inside the confusion raging inside the bar. All the Terran Army soldiers inside the bar were still on their feet, heading for the back of the Weeping Onion while the bar's clientele headed for the front door because they'd recognized it as the path of least resistance. The explosion had sealed the deal.

Jahup took up a position behind Sage. Overhead, both jumpcopters continued to circle the area. Sage patched into the overhead feeds and saw himself looking around the downed bar patrons in the alley. The dizzying spin provided by the jumpcopter views almost proved disconcerting, but Sage dealt with them.

“Here, Top,” Rasheed croaked. He and his fellow soldier lay sprawled on the ground, only now trying to get to their feet. Their armor glowed phosphorus white and made them stand out in the night and the neon. “Caught us by surprise. Wasn't expecting something so powerful.”

Sage figured the explosives Vekaby and his ­people had used were Arayo Defender rounds. The Defender was used in close proximity to blast opponents back and disorient them, throw their tech off-line for a short time, and mark their armor for suppressive fire and snipers.

Kiwanuka and Noojin, followed by the remaining two soldiers, joined Sage in the alley.

“These guys are carrying serious hardware,” Kiwanuka said as she observed the other two white phosphorus soldiers stirring on the other side of the door. “Somebody's bankrolling them. There's no way they got that kind of tech on their own.”

Sage silently agreed, and that was going to be one of the first questions he asked the ambushers when he caught them. He scanned the alley as bar guests ran toward either end. “Which way did Vekaby and the others go?”

“Don't know, Top,” Rasheed answered. The other recovering soldier answered similarly. “They were in front of us, then we got hosed.”

“I've got your targets, Top,” the jumpcopter leader announced. “Two of them caught trace blowback from the phosphorus and are lit up. I'm assuming the group is staying together. Sending coordinates now and we'll keep them in sight.”

“Copy that.” Sage waited till the signal relay popped up on his street map overlay, then turned and ran past Rasheed and his men while assigning the two soldiers who had followed Noojin and him inside to remain with Rasheed and his team till they recovered.

Sage pounded down the alley, pouring on the speed available to him through the hardsuit. The AKTIVsuit's power drained faster when the bumped-­up strength and speed and electrical shocks were used, but the levels remained satisfactory.

Several ­people, most of them offworlders but with a few Makaum mixed in, had come out to the street to find out what all the noise was. As they took in the Terran Army hardsuits running toward them, they dodged back inside the nearest building or alley. Several of them reached for weapons, then relaxed when Sage and the others passed them by.

The op had already exceeded the parameters Sage had hoped for, but if Quass Leghef could manage it, he planned on stepping up the police action in the red light district. More weapons than they'd believed possible were hitting the streets. The Terran Army had to make more of an appearance.

Sage spotted the phosphorus-­stained figures 53.67 meters ahead and locked on to them. He drew the coilgun as he ran and made sure it was set to stun. He wanted the men alive so he could talk to them about the attack and about the weapons.

An old man driving a cargo cart pulled by a
dafeerorg
unintentionally blocked the street when he tried to turn around. Seeing the Terran Army soldiers bearing down on him, he struggled to turn the big lizard around. Already frightened by the loud explosion and the action going on around him, the
dafeerorg
fought the reins, shaking his head and bawling in deep-­voiced terror.

Without breaking stride as he closed in on the cart, Sage leaped the
dafeerorg
, which stood 1.5 meters tall at the shoulder. Covered in light gray scales, the lizard stumbled in the harness as it tried to avoid Sage.

Effortlessly, Sage landed four meters on the other side of the cart, gaining quickly on the fleeing men. Vekaby spun and brought up the big-­barreled Arayo Defender and fired a gel round at Sage. Already twisting, anticipating the trajectory of the round, Sage dodged to the left, dropping down far enough to put his fingers on the ground to keep his balance.

The Defender munition zipped past his shoulder, missing him by millimeters. Five meters behind him, the gel HE round slammed into the corner of a massage parlor. The blast shredded the building's corner, reducing it to a cloud of flying plascrete shards. A section of the roof collapsed onto ­people gawking beneath it.

Sage lifted the Birkeland and fired at Vekaby, but one of the other Makaum men with him stumbled into the stun charge and went down like he'd been poleaxed.

“Jahup,” Sage called over the comm. “Secure that man.”

“He's down,” Jahup argued. “He's not going anywhere.”

Vekaby and the other four men split up. Two of them went to the left and two of them ran to the right. All of them disappeared in the tangle of ­people in the alleys.

“He's alive and we have him,” Sage said. “I don't want him to disappear.”

Jahup cursed, but he dropped out of the chase and took the unconscious man into custody.

The jumpcopters split up as well, staying out ahead of the chase so they could provide support in case other ­people tried to stop the soldiers.

“Sergeant,” Sage called as he slowed and took the corner, following Vekaby and his companion. A knot of ­people blocked the way. Sage ran toward the wall on his right, leaped, triggered the boot sole claws, and hit the wall with both feet. For a moment his velocity held gravity at bay and he managed three long strides across the wall with the claws digging purchase. As gravity pulled at him again, he leaped from the wall and landed in an open area past the crowd bottlenecking the alley. He stumbled for a second, then retracted the boot claws.

“We have the others,” Kiwanuka replied. She and Noojin were stride for stride together as they veered off in pursuit of the other two men.

Twenty meters ahead of him, Sage saw Vekaby turn to the right, following the twisting path of the alley.

Red Light District

New Makaum

0041 Hours Zulu Time

Your blood pressure, respiration, and heart rate are elevated outside of recommended parameters,
the near-­AI said.
Do you require adjustment?

“No,” Noojin replied. “Leave me alone.”

Her anger flared at the AKTIVsuit. Even after all the training she'd endured to learn to operate the hardsuit, just trying to keep up with Jahup's new interest, she still resented the combat gear. She didn't like not being able to feel the air around her, to hear sounds in their natural environment rather than the electronically enhanced versions of them the hardsuit provided, and she missed the smells of everything around her that told her so much. The Terran soldiers didn't realize how much they gave up by being in the armor.

Then again, when the hardsuit's mechanical “muscles” were engaged as they were now, she was faster and stronger than she'd ever be on her own. Taking meat from the jungle wasn't just about strength and speed, though. A hunter had to be clever, had to know the terrain, and had to be patient.

Noojin watched Mosbur running ahead of her. He was easy to spot because he was one of the men who had gotten marked by the phosphorus blowback. When the man glanced over his shoulder and saw that she was within twenty meters of him, panic widened his eyes. She enjoyed that more than she knew she should, but she couldn't help remembering how Mosbur had tried to kill her and would have killed Telilu as well if he'd gotten the chance.

Mosbur split off from the other man and they went in different directions in the same alley. Turning, Mosbur fired a particle-­beam weapon that threw up a cloud of dirt and rock and grass in front of Noojin. She ran through it and leaped the crater that had opened up in the ground.

“I've got Mosbur,” Noojin said as she and Kiwanuka closed on the intersection.

“Be careful,” Kiwanuka told her.

Unable to turn right as sharply as she'd thought she could in the soft dirt of the alley, Noojin bent her knees and lowered her center of gravity, shoving her left foot out to broaden her base. Her feet skidded through the dirt, leaving tears centimeters deep. Then, when the majority of her momentum had been exhausted, she started forward again.

Above, the jumpcopter trailed after Kiwanuka.

Mosbur continued running, but the AKTIVsuit's amplified hearing picked up the ragged breaths he was sucking in. Sometimes the hunting band had to run down creatures as well, but usually they ran in teams, some resting while others gave chase as long as their prey was boxed in.

The alley wasn't a proper box. Realizing he was going to be overtaken, Mosbur darted left into a bar, shoving through three Makaum ­people coming out.

Noojin switched over to thermographic vision and tracked the hot spots on Mosbur as he ran through the building. More patrons choked the doorway, making a human barrier.

Checking the other side of the large plate-­glass window that took up a three-­meter by two-­meter area on the wall a short distance from the door, Noojin saw that no one was there. She drew the Birkeland from her hip holster and leaped through the window.

Noojin crashed through the transplas. Shards flew in all directions and ­people still inside the bar dropped to the floor. She landed on the plascrete surface and slid for just an instant before locking down.

Panicked, knowing he'd exhausted whatever lead he'd had, Mosbur seized a young Makaum woman who had been trying to escape unnoticed with a young man. Her companion protested and reached for Mosbur. Mosbur slammed his weapon's barrel into the young man's temple and he slumped to the floor, unconscious.

Mosbur pulled the woman in front of him as a shield and pressed the barrel of the particle beam weapon against her neck. “Stay back, Terran! Stay back or I'll kill her!”

“I'm not a Terran.” Noojin cleared her faceshield so that her features could be seen.

Several of the ­people in the bar were Makaum and recognized her.

Mosbur grinned, but his breathing was still ragged. “Noojin. So you're responsible for the Terrans hunting us.” He raised his voice. “Do you see? The Terran Army is here to make us their slaves. They're already luring away the young ­people among us, turning them against those of us who wish to remain true to our ­people.”

Anger surged inside Noojin and she switched the Birkeland from stun to lethal.

“Noojin,” Jahup said over the comm. “We agreed that we would bring these men in alive.”

“He's a killer,” Noojin argued. “He doesn't deserve to live any more than a
khrelav
who's learned to hunt at the fringes of the sprawl.” Killing the occasional flying lizard that turned to hunting ­people was dangerous because they were big enough and powerful enough to take down a jumpcopter.

“If you shoot him, he may kill the woman.”

“I'm not going to let him go.” Noojin addressed Mosbur: “Lay down your weapon and you won't be harmed.”

“So the Terrans can lock me up?” Mosbur shook his head. “Maybe you're going to turn traitor to your ­people, Noojin, but I'm not.”