Rich Man's War (14 page)

As she spoke, daylight and the roar of the engines broke through the first cracks between the hull and the cargo bay ramp. Tanner stepped forward with Cervantes, unlocking the safety catch on the pulse rifle in his hands. Up ahead he saw the urban skyline of the capital city. Thus far, the city all around them seemed to hold steady. None of the towers showed smashed windows or other damage, though plumes of smoke rose in every direction further out.

He glanced left and right, checking on his teammates. Booker gave Tanner a wave as soon as the ramp lay parallel to the deck. Tanner moved forward, finding the rooftop of the consulate less than two meters below. Assured the fall wouldn’t likely injure him, Tanner jumped. The others followed.

Something small, loud and shockingly fast streaked over Tanner’s head and straight into the cargo bay. He fell forward as he heard the explosion, flinging himself to the rooftop and then rolling to his side to look around. All three of his shipmates made it out before the small missile hit.
Joan of Arc
lurched up and away.

“Motherfucker!” blurted Sanjay.

“Stay down!” ordered Booker. “Anyone hurt?”

“I think I’m fine sir,” said Cervantes.

Another missile flew overhead, striking the underside of
Joan of Arc
with a loud boom that forced all four men to cringe.

“I think they figured out how to jam face to face communication, sir,” warned Tanner. He scrambled for the nearest cover, which only amounted to the damaged electronics gear boxes on the roof, but it was better than nothing. A bullet ricocheted across the rooftop just a foot away, causing him to reconsider his placement.

Sanjay and Cervantes took advantage of the small parapet that rose at the edge of the roof. It offered less than a meter of coverage, but it was better than nothing. Sanjay lay alongside the parapet and raised his pulse rifle over its edge, firing back along the line drawn by the contrails of the first missile to an apartment window several blocks away. Blue bursts of energy struck against the windowsill and the wall around it, but more than a few made it inside.

“Sanjay,” Booker shouted, “do you have a target?”

The crewman paused. “No, sir,” he admitted angrily.

Tanner stayed behind his cover for only a moment before moving away. Another shot struck the damaged boxes. It couldn’t have come from the same directions as either of the rockets. “Snipers!” he yelled out. “Don’t stay in one place! They’re on more than one side!”

Cervantes rolled away from his spot in time to avoid a bullet that struck the parapet. He pushed himself up and dove for another spot while two more rounds hit the roof near him. “The fuck do we do?” he demanded.

Tanner glanced up to the sky.
Joan of Arc
swung around in a semicircle beside the consulate, trailing smoke but putting herself between the building and the side facing the missile fire. Whatever damage the first missile had done to the cargo bay didn’t seem to impede the ship’s maneuverability. Tanner suspected that the missiles were portable infantry weapons rather than anything heavier. The corvette could only provide cover in one direction, though, leaving the men vulnerable at several other arcs.

More shots rang out all around them, close enough that Tanner could hear the weapons—but not the impact. He realized that someone below the roof was shooting outward to offer the team some further protection. Looking to his t
eam again, Tanner found the XO hustling to the rooftop access hatch. It flew open before the XO got there. “Get inside!” someone yelled from within.

“Cervantes! Sanjay! Let’s go!” Booker waved. The electrician’s mate came first, swinging his legs over the side and all but dropping down below. Sanjay hustled to
ward the hatch but fell to his left with a sudden jerk and an angry cry.

Tanner instantly understood the implications of Sanjay’s fall, and came up with a way to deal with it while rushing to his shipmate’s side. He aimed his pulse rifle at the parapet as he ran, firing off several bursts that kicked up a cloud of masonry dust and debris. If the snipers targeted with motion sensors, bounced signals or ordinary optics, the debris would offer at least a momentary disruption.

“Sir, jump down!” Tanner yelled. “I’ve got Sanjay!”

“I’ve got myself, goddammit,” Sanjay growled, pushing himself up before Tanner reached him. “I’m moving, just go!”

Another boom split the air around them as a third small missile hit
Joan of Arc’s
side. Though some few infantry weapons offered enough firepower to damage to a corvette, they would need to land an exceptionally well-placed shot to inflict critical harm.
Joan of Arc
shook but held her position until Tanner jumped down the rooftop hatch after Sanjay and Booker. Then the corvette rapidly rose in the sky, turning and shifting to evade further targeting.

Tanner
took the landing as he’d been taught in basic, crouching down with one arm out and rolling forward to redirect the energy. He found himself on his back in a darkened hallway among his three shipmates and a pair of armed Archangel marines in service uniforms. One of them wore lieutenant’s bars.

“Everyone okay?” asked the lieutenant.

“I’m good,” grunted Tanner over a similar response from Sanjay. He found Cervantes already on his feet, clearly unharmed by his fall. The XO seemed to have fared just as well. Tanner got up and moved to Sanjay’s side, finding a bleeding hole in the tall crewman’s shoulder. “Jesus, Sanjay, sit down. You took a hit.”

Sanjay pushed the faceplate of his helmet up with one hand before he shook his head. “Can’t be too bad if
I’m still moving okay.”

“I’m Lt. Adams,” said the marine officer, “head of the garrison here. Glad to see you.” He reached out to the XO as much to help him up as to shake his hand. “If you’re all well enough to move, we should regroup in the security office downstairs.”

“Good enough,” nodded the XO, accepting the tug back to his feet. “Lt. Booker,
Joan of Arc
. What’s the situation here?”

“Not good. Snipers took out our rooftop comms gear about the same time that fleet showed up overhead. We had reports of fighting here and there about a minute or three before that, but we didn’t know we had threats in the vicinity until I sent a couple guys up to check on the gear. A sniper killed one of them. The other’s in bad shape but we’ve got him stable.”

The group walked quickly through the halls as Adams spoke. All of the doors were closed. Drapes covered most hallway windows, though Tanner spotted desks propped up on their sides to block a couple of others. They found another marine standing by the stairwell door, holding a laser rifle and still wearing her dress uniform.

“I’ve got fifty-three civilians here and my ‘garrison’ is about a squad and a half of marines. That and a couple of armed Intelligence Service agents is all we’ve got,” Adams continued. He led the group down the stairs. “That’s not enough to send out teams to hunt down snipers and guard the building at the same time. Worst thing anyone ever planned to deal with was a protest riot or the like.”

“Yeah,” said Booker as they exited the stairwell, “we were hoping to move everyone to a landing spot nearby, or hover over the roof with the cargo ramp extended at worst. But with those snipers out there, I’m thinking those aren’t such a good ideas anymore.”

“
Right. Hell, when we first saw that invasion fleet appear over us, we figured you wouldn’t make it through,” Adams confessed.

“I wasn’t sure we’d make it, either,” Booker agreed. “We moved as soon as we
got word.”

“Yeah, that’s another story there,” muttered Adams, but soon he came to an armed marine standing guard outside a secure room. The lieutenant exchanged brief words with the sentry before the door opened and then ushered
the Navy team past.

Inside they found a large security and communications room. Hard screens and computers lined the walls, though more than a few of them displayed static or standby graphics. Only a couple of the people inside wore marine uniforms. The others dressed in civilian clothes.

Tanner looked over to Sanjay again as the officers moved off to meet with the consul and a pair of his staffers. “Sanjay, take a seat,” he said, gesturing to the table. “Let me look at that wound.”

“Yeah, okay,” the other crewman winced
. He sat down as instructed.

“Is it getting worse?”

“Well, now I’ve had a couple minutes to feel it,” Sanjay shook his head. “Still moving okay, though.”

Tanner unslung his medical pack as Cervantes helped Sanjay pull off his combat jacket and helmet. He glanced around the room wondering if there might be a dedicated medic on hand, but seeing no one step forward, Tanner pulled off his helmet and then saw to Sanjay’s shoulder.

“Doesn’t look too bad,” observed Cervantes. “Pretty nasty gash, but it doesn’t look deep.”

“Yeah,” Tanner nodded. He drew the fabric shears from his kit and cut away the sleeve of Sanjay’s vac suit at the shoulder, then gingerly peeled it back to give him a better look. “The plating in the combat jacket must’ve forced the bullet to turn a bit. You don’t have a hole here, you’ve got a tear.”

“I’ve got a tattoo to get fixed, is what I’ve got,” Sanjay corrected.

Tanner pulled a chemical-laden sponge from his kit and held it to Sanjay’s shoulder. “Yeah, you do,” agreed Tanner. The sponge worked quickly, creating a foam that drew little bits of inorganic matter from the wound while cleansing it with antibacterial agents.
Sanjay endured the pain without complaint. With that finished, Tanner held a second sponge to the wound to fill the affected area with a mild numbing agent and clotting boosters to aid in natural healing. Then he set to stitching the skin together with a pen-sized auto-suture.

“Congrats, Crewman Sanjay,” said Tanner. “You just earned your first Purple Heart.”

“For that? I could get hurt worse from slipping on a banana peel.”

“You got shot
. Bananas don’t actively try to kill you.”

“XO?” Cervantes
called, looking up from his holocom and walking away from the two crewmen. “We were right about the comms gear. I’ve got the ship on the portable.” His voice drifted off as he joined the officers and consulate staff.

Sanjay nodded toward one of the monitors against the wall. “Good thing, too,” he
noted. “Looks like the ship’s pulling way off.”

Tanner followed Sanjay’s gaze and saw what he meant. Though the consulate had been rendered deaf and mute, it wasn’t yet blind. Cameras and scanners mounted outside the building still worked.
Joan of Arc
flew up and over the buildings surrounding the consulate. It appeared her attackers decided to hold fire after the shore party made it inside.

“What do you think?” Sanjay asked.

Glancing around the room once again, Tanner shrugged. “Somebody’s gonna have to clear a path to one of the landing sites. Those snipers won’t go away until somebody makes them.”

“That marine just said he didn’t have enough people to do that.”

Tanner’s grim frown held in place. “He’s got four more people here now, and we’re all wearing better protection than anyone else. And somebody’s gonna have to do it before those tanks get here.”

“Tanks?” blinked Sanjay. “What tanks?”

“Oh, I guess nobody had time to tell you. They might not come here. Maybe they’ve got other shit to do.”

“You don’t sound like you believe that.”

“I’m hoping,” Tanner replied sincerely. “We’ve dealt with enough bullshit already today.”

“Hey, excuse me,” spoke up one of the other marines in the room. The two crewmen glanced up to the man, who stood with two of his comrades. “I just… wow. I was right. You’re Tanner Malone.”

“Um. Yeah?”

The first marine smiled broadly, stepping back and punching one of his fellows in the arm. “I told you we’d get out of this mess.”

Tanner’s mouth fell open as he tried to process this. He tried to formulate some sort of response, but nothing came to mind.

“You don’t get that often?” asked a woman standing nearby. Her long black hair hung limply to her shoulders while her lips curved into a smirk. Her clothes seemed closer to civilian attire than military wear, but the gun belt, black long coat and rugged boots marked her as something quite different
from a consulate staffer. Tanner realized she’d come over from the conversation between the officers and the civilian bigwigs.

“Tanner Malone, poster boy for the Archangel Navy, and this surprises you?” she pressed mildly, gesturing to the three marines.

“…yes,” he finally answered, getting his brain back on track once again. “It’s weird. I’m still not used to people telling me who I am.” He glanced at the marines once more, meaning to say something friendly or at least to add, “No offense,” but they had already returned to other matters. That didn’t stop them from looking over their shoulders toward him—or toward the woman beside him.

“Who are you?” Sanjay asked.

She hesitated, glancing between the two crewmen, but offered her hand. “Vanessa Rios. Archangel Intelligence Service.”

Both young men blinked. Tanner shook her hand mostly out of reflex, but recovered from the slight surprise quick enough. A consulate seemed like a reasonable place for an intelligence agent to be. “This is Crewman Sanjay,” he said, gesturing to his companion.