Merkiaari Wars: 02 - What Price Honour (38 page)

“You were right,” Takeri whispered with respect. “Where to now?”

“If we work our way around, we should see what he’s got. I hope Gina waits for us to find it all.”

“If not for the time limit she would.”

Kate frowned. Takeri should know Gina better by now. “She won’t care about that. Winning the battle is more important.”

“But the Captain said—”

“He
said
what he had to, Selin. He wants us under pressure.”

“Maybe,” Takeri said, sounding unconvinced.

Kate decided to risk going active on her sensors.

Takeri gasped and started to protest when Kate began another sweep—an active sweep—of the area, but then she realised what was done could not be undone. She settled down to wait. Gina had given Kate this part of the mission for a reason. She was good at this kind of thing, and Gina trusted her to do the job right. The ground cover didn’t give her licence to be blatant about what she was doing, but it did allow her to do the job—as long as she was very careful.

Kate was careful, and Takeri was careful of Kate.

Slowly, painstakingly, she found the launchers and mines. Stone had used every trick in the book to hide his trip wires. He chose to place mines in positions where tripping would cause intruders to fall on them. The wires were made of some kind of synthetic, almost invisible to her sensors. Sneaky bastard.

“I have something else,” Kate whispered and Takeri nodded. She had gone active now as well. “It’s faint, it’s almost as if…” she frowned. “Let’s go back, I have what we need.”

Takeri didn’t argue.

Kate scooted back carefully, and retraced her path back into the hills. Once she was far enough away, she trotted keeping low, but gradually picked up speed until she ran like the wind. She loved the feeling of flying that came upon her as she topped out at seventy-eight klicks an hour, but it was soon over. Her sensors detected the others waiting in a hollow for her return.

“It’s about damn time,” Gordon said testily. “You do know we should have been there a quarter of an hour ago?”

“
Shadaaap,
” Kate drawled. “Better late than dead.”

“What did you find?” Gina said eagerly.

“Synthetic trip wires that don’t show on sensors. You trip and fall right onto his mines. He has auto grenade launchers dug in and hidden from sight. They’re zeroed to cover the only open corridor in.”

“The
only
one?”

“Yeah,” Kate said. “It was so obvious, we looked further and found the launchers. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to find the tunnel so quick.”

“A tunnel?”

Takeri nodded. “We picked up a faint trace on sensors. The only reason for that I can think of is a tunnel.”

Gina frowned. “Can we take out the defences?”

“Easy,” Kate said. “Nothing to it.”

“That’s good, because that’s what we’re going to do.” Gina went to talk with the others. “I need one squad to take out the grenade launchers for me. Who wants it?”

“We’ll take it,” Wevers said for Second Squad.

“Okay, talk to Kate. She knows where they are.”

Wevers nodded.

Gina glanced at the Captain where he stood observing, and then back to her friends. “That leaves the rest of us to investigate the tunnel, and look for the second target the Captain was talking about.”

Callendri just glared in silence.

* * *

Eric watched Fuentez deploy her people; it was reminiscent of Thurston. Oh, the mission was completely different, and so were her men, but she handled the situation confidently as she had back on Thurston.

During the earlier stages of her training, she had become a mascot to First Squad, not that Fuentez saw herself that way, or would have been pleased with the description, but it was true nonetheless. When she survived her enhancement, the superstitious recruits decided it was a miracle, and promptly made her their mascot—quietly and unofficially of course. Then had come the battle to catch up with the others, which she had done with, perhaps not ease, but she did make it
seem
easy. She wasn’t a complainer, so she worked on and caught up earning her place as unofficial leader of her squad. She was a natural, and seemed to have fallen into the role completely without prior thought. She was literally doing what came naturally.

He turned away from his study of Fuentez, and targeted Roberto Callendri. His earlier attack on Cragg had been completely out of the blue. He would bear watching. There was something in Callendri’s silences that set alarm bells ringing, but anyone could lose their temper. It was no reason to scrap him. Eric watched Callendri glaring at Fuentez and worried. If the man was going to have a whigout, now was not a good time. Training rounds or not, their weapons could still be deadly if they struck an unarmoured target at close range. Eric eased his hand onto his pistol, and watched Callendri intently, but nothing untoward happened barring a lot of hateful glaring.

Fuentez gave the word, and ten units from Second Squad took out the dummy launchers Stone had placed yesterday. The timing was perfect. First and Third Squads moved down the safe corridor, quicker perhaps that he would, but the few extra traps he had ordered set were found and disarmed in short order. Fourth Squad played a covering role on the look out for a sneaky bastard named Stone.

Fuentez raised her arm, and then waved everyone down. “First two men, into the tunnel and secure the entrance.”

Cragg and Hiller moved forward. Without hesitation, they fired into the darkness before stepping forward and dropping out of sight through the hatch in the ground. Rutledge grinned. He had warned Eric that the recruits wouldn’t fall for a booby trap at the hatch, but Eric hadn’t been so sure. He had ordered one placed directly under it. Cragg and Hiller had just fried it.

“Clear,” Hiller called, his voice faint and echoing from the tunnel walls.

Fuentez ordered half her squad into the tunnel before joining them. Eric jumped the queue; he didn’t want to miss anything.

The tunnels had lighting, but of course, Stone had shut it down. As soon as Eric landed, he ordered his processor to go to light amplification mode, and the recruits suddenly appeared in the monochrome he always associated with his use of it. Fuentez had set a perimeter roughly ten metres down the tunnel, and was scanning the surroundings.

“Richmond takes point,” Fuentez said in a hushed voice. “Cragg is rear guard. I want half on the left wall, half with me on the right… don’t bunch up people.”

Eric stayed in the open with Rutledge of course, and received a very annoyed glare from Fuentez and Richmond. He supposed it was a little unfair giving the game away like this. He moved to the right wall while Rutledge took the left.

“Move out,” Fuentez ordered, and the recruits crab-walked with their backs firmly against the plascrete following Richmond.

So far, Fuentez had handled the platoon well, but then she should. Her promotion to lieutenant, though of short duration, had been well deserved. She was doing what she knew to do, and doing it well. All the recruits were good; many had been non-commissioned officers in their regiments or gifted PFCs. It was a shame there weren’t more slots for officers available, but a single regiment needed only so many. The others would have to be satisfied with doing the job. Not many would be satisfied, but they had years to get it out of their systems. It would take a while for them to realise that rank meant nothing when you had centuries ahead. Only the job and the Alliance mattered as the years rolled by.

Richmond raised a clenched fist and everyone froze. “I have something on sensors… very faint,” she whispered. “Like something trying to hide, but poorly shielded.”

“Check it out,” Fuentez ordered.

Richmond didn’t respond. Instead, she went to her belly and eased forward to look around the next corner. She kept very still for a moment then eased back.

“Merki squad. Ten males and three females, all heavily armed. They have a combat gravsled armed with a twin barrelled extended range pulser.”

“Manned?” Fuentez asked intently.

“Yeah, but it’s targeted the other way.

“Range?”

“Seventy five metres.”

“Okay.” Fuentez turned to evaluate the recruits. Her eyes skipped over Roberto, but then almost reluctantly came back to him. “Callendri, you and your squad take them out. Second Squad will cover you.”

“What about First Squad?” Callendri sneered.

“We’ll cover this tunnel.”

“There’s nothing here.”

“Just do the damn
job,
” Fuentez said, fast losing patience.

Callendri clutched his rifle angrily. A moment later, he led Third Squad around the corner in a rush. The move took Wevers completely by surprise, and her squad belatedly moved to cover him. The moment Third Squad opened fire, all hell broke loose.

Callendri had advanced forward of his people, and was firing his rifle from the hip on full auto when the flash-bangs went off to blind him and his squad. Wevers was lucky. Due to the suddenness of Callendri’s foolish move, her squad was farther back and survived unscathed. Third Squad however was killed to a man, evidenced by the green fluorescent dye spotting their body armour and uniforms. Eric could almost hear Stone’s laughter as his paint-filled simunition rounds annihilated Third Squad. Wevers and Second Squad went to ground, and hammered the Merki-shaped targets to splinters. They never lost a man.

Back in the tunnel, First Squad had their own problems to deal with. Cragg, still facing back the way they came, was rear guard and saw the enemy coming. He opened fire while calmly informing his squadmates that some kind of vehicle was approaching. In fact, the vehicle was an old mine car fitted with an auto guidance system set to follow the tunnel walls. It had two automated splat guns, mounted fore and aft, to simulate Merkiaari gauss cannons. Had they been real, the entire platoon would have been in serious jeopardy. Ten rifles opened up, and the splat guns were turned to slag before they could fire more than a couple of their paint filled simunition rounds. The mine car glowed red; the metal of the car was thick, and it took a lot of punishment before Cragg blew off a wheel to stop it. The two dummy troopers were turned to ash a moment later.

“Cease firing!” Fuentez shouted, and the hiss-crack of pulser bolts stopped on the instant.

Eric quickly stepped forward. “Dead recruits will remain out of the way while observing the rest of the mission. You know who you are.”

First Squad had one man hit. Cragg had taken a paint pellet early in the fight, but he had a point of view about being left out of the rest of the mission.

“It’s a flesh wound, sir,” Cragg protested.

“You heard the order, Cragg,” Rutledge growled.

“But sarge, it really is only a flesh wound. Look.”

Rutledge made a show of inspecting the ‘wound’, and glanced at Eric.

Eric smiled briefly, and eyed the single splat of paint on Cragg’s shoulder. “Hmmm, might have been a railgun, Cragg. It would have taken your arm off, or it might have been a rocket or incendiary.”

“Yes, sir,” Cragg said visibly crestfallen.

“However, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.” He raised his voice to announce the decision. “Cragg has a light wound, upper left shoulder.”

Fuentez went back to work. “Gordon, Takeri, check Third Squad for wounded. Richmond, Hiller, move up and check the Merkiaari for anything useful. Wevers, move your squad up and cover them.”

“Copy.”

“Affirmative.”

“Copy that, we’re moving.”

Eric followed along and heard some commotion ahead. Pushing between the recruits, he found Callendri arguing with anyone who would listen. No one did. Most moved by the paint spattered and infuriated recruit without twitching an eyelid, but when Fuentez appeared everything went to hell.

“You set me up!” Callendri roared at the sight of her. “You sent us out here to draw their fire!”

“Don’t be a fool,” Fuentez said, sounding disgusted with his whining. “You walked into it after Richmond told us there was a heavily armed squad here. You took no precautions at all.”

Callendri angled his rifle up at Fuentez before Eric could think to intervene.

Kamarl Dolinski, a well liked member of Third Squad and Callendri’s best friend, reacted instantly. He drew his pistol in a servo-enhanced blur and pressed it hard against Callendri’s ear. “Don’t you
fucking
move.”

Everyone backed away, but Callendri kept his rifle centred on Fuentez. He stared coldly at his nemesis, taking no notice of the pistol in his ear.

“You won’t shoot me, Kamarl. I’m your friend… remember?” Callendri said without a flicker of fear at what his friend might do. His face was coldly calm. If he was feeling anything, it didn’t show on his face.

“I remember a good man named Roberto. I don’t know who the hell you are, but you ain’t him.”

Eric was moving when the decision came into Callendri’s eyes. “
Shoot him!
” he roared even as Callendri fired. Fuentez leapt aside, but too late.