Rich Man's War (2 page)

Alicia surveyed the field again. She saw Janeka’s heel come down on a man’s neck and saw Ravenell rise from the body of his defeated opponent. Alicia did a quick body count: the three she took out, plus the captain, Ravenell’s two, and the three men lying at Janeka’s feet. They’d made a clean sweep of their enemy.

“You’re both okay,” observed the gunnery sergeant, receiving nods of confirmation in return.

“I got the captain,” huffed Alicia.

“Is she dead?”

“Shouldn’t be,” replied the younger woman, kneeling down to check. “No, she’s still good. Dunno if she’ll be up for answering questions right away, though.”

“Doesn’t need to answer anything yet. We just need her warm and breathing in case we need her biometrics. And her holocom. See if you can find it.”

The order wasn’t necessary. Alicia had already turned to searching their captive. “Wow, I am never wearing my hair long again after this,” she said, still rocky with adrenaline.

“Take a couple deep breaths,” said Janeka. “Shake it off. Stay focused.” As the gunnery sergeant spoke, she slid one finger over the holocom riding her wrist and then tapped it twice to signal the rest of their team.

“Ravenell, watch the
tunnel entrance,” Janeka instructed. “Stay calm, you got me? Breathe. Focus. Get over there, stop and breathe again, then watch. Understand?”

“On it,” Ravenell nodded and hustled off.

“Got a couple of data chips here,” Alicia announced quietly, stuffing her pockets with items taken from her unconscious captive. She kept patting Hannah down until her fingers touched the pirate captain’s earrings. One of them let out a beep. “Got it,” she said, and then worked to unclasp the large, pricy jewel that held Hannah’s personal holocom. “Pretty sweet miniaturization here. These are expensive.”

“
Lotta money to be made in her trade, I guess,” Janeka muttered. Her attention was focused on a small black orb in her hands. It projected a small screen of orange light, into which the gunnery sergeant waved her fingers. The lights quickly went out with a beep.

“Anything else we should grab?”

“Just collect the guns. I’ve got the bag. We’ve gotta get gone.” She knelt beside the dead man at her feet and placed the orb in his pocket. Inevitably, some random passerby would discover the bodies. That person would likely then try to call for help with a holocom, but the orb would jam signals going out of the tunnel. It would buy at least another minute or two for their getaway.

“I’ll take her,” said Janeka, stepping up to Alicia and her captive. She grabbed the unconscious woman’s wrists. “You’re on point. Head out and let’s get to the car.”

* * *

Spaceport security and control varied dramatically from one planet to the next. Some worlds could afford tight restrictions and offered considerable equipment and infrastructure. Planets with sparse settlements sometimes had no control over interstellar traffic at all, and an incoming vessel could land practically wherever
its crew pleased.

Edison fell somewhere in the middle. All of the heavy lifting to create the spaceport’s infrastructure had been done long ago, but the planetary government couldn’t afford to keep its systems up to date.
Old scanners and chem-sniffers were easily spoofed. Sparsely-allocated guards and other personnel could be bought. Alicia found it all mind-boggling, especially in light of what their captive and their remaining targets had done on Qal’at Khalil little more than a year ago.

T
argets
, she thought, crouched in the shadows with the other plainclothes Archangel marines and their Intelligence Service “liaisons.” That’s what those people were now. They had to be. If she stopped to think of the bastards as people, she might hesitate. She couldn’t have that.

Fuckers didn’t hesitate to drop a fuel-cell bomb on a city
, she reminded herself once again. Nor did these pirates, to be more specific, hesitate to hose down a spaceport with their ship’s illegal weaponry.

Nor had anyone done anything about these particular pirates until now.

The spaceport berth was little more than a circular wall. Earlier reconnaissance revealed that the retractable roof was open and possibly inoperable. Inside the berth sat the
Guillotine
and her remaining crew, estimated to be around eighteen or so in total. After the fight in the tunnel, it didn’t sound like such bad odds. Alicia wondered if perhaps the quick and dirty skirmish had made her cocky.

“Corporal Wong?” said Agent Willis, interrupting her thoughts. “Sorry, I mean Lance Corporal, right? Looks like we’re partners for this one. You ready?”

Alicia blinked. The Intelligence Service agent hadn’t spoken to her much during the mission, but he hadn’t been standoffish, either. He worked mostly with the higher-ranked marines. “I thought you were with the gunny?”

Willis shook his head. “Doesn’t fit with the layout. We need her in the middle guiding the operation with Lieutenant Crowder.” He smiled a bit. “Don’t worry, I’ve been through most of the same training you have.”

Though she kept her thoughts to herself, Alicia’s eyes flicked over to Ravenell and Janeka. For all the agent’s training, she doubted he had run nearly as many mock boardings on as many different spacecraft as they had. Still, Alicia nodded, and when her holocom buzzed with a final check-in signal, she tapped it to confirm her readiness.

Sound-suppressed rifles coughed up above her on the wall of the spaceport berth. Knowing his cue, Ravenell activated the electromagnetic breaching pads on the nearby bay doors, forcing them open. “Go,” ordered Janeka. Alicia and three others rushed through the entrance, weapons out and ready.

Though barely longer than a corvette, the
Guillotine
offered a broader profile to allow for extra space and comfort. She’d been built as a luxury yacht, but her original design hosted hidden weaponry and military-quality hull reinforcement, along with a power drive to match any corvette. Her crew, however, was not up to military grade service, demonstrated by the way her entry ramp was still down and extended. The bodies of two sentries, shot by the snipers on the walls, lay to either side.

The
Guillotine
didn’t take up the full space offered by the landing berth. That left the marine assault team with a few uncomfortable yards to cross before they came under her curved wings, but they’d been trained for actions like this. The team knew how to stack up, how to cover one another upon entry and how to pick targets. They also knew not to squander the element of surprise, moving inside aggressively and gunning down the first handful of pirates they found with their pulse lasers.

Ravenell’s team, leapfrogging Alicia’s, broke off to head for engineering. Alicia followed Agent Willis through the passageways, eyes sweeping this way and that for targets as shouts and gunshots rang out. A tattooed, scraggly-haired man at the bottom of the steps leading
up to the next deck had his weapon out as Willis and Alicia appeared. His panicked shots hit neither of them before they put him down with quiet blasts of blue light that burned through his torso.

Willis ran for the
ladder well. Alicia followed, then felt her heart stop when he yelled, “Grenade!”

She saw the little orb clatter down onto the base of the ladder in front of them. Willis jumped to the side. Alicia grabbed the body of the man they’d just killed and heaved it over the grenade before jumping back and away to curl up in a ball on the deck.

Despite the body smothering the grenade, the explosion still shook the passageway. Alicia felt bits of debris and gore strike against her body. Something burned her leg, but she knew right away that it wasn’t serious. When she raised her head, she found that Willis had recovered a heartbeat faster than she had, and now hurled his own grenade up the ladder. Unlike the pirates, Willis knew how to time his before throwing, thereby leaving the enemy above less of a chance to react.

They heard screams amid the boom of the grenade. A bloody, smoldering woman fell dead through the ladder well. Willis covered the opening with his pulse laser while Alicia got to her feet and followed up with a second grenade, this one built to stun with flashing light and booming sound. As soon as it was out of her hand, Willis followed afte
r it. Alicia stuck close to him.

As expected, they found the bridge locked up tight. Alicia set up
her breaching kit while Willis shouted, “Surrender now and you’ll live through this!” By the time they were ready, other marines caught up to them. Perhaps two minutes had passed since the first sniper shots took down the sentries outside.

The team stacked up at the hatch. Alicia got behind Willis, passed the breaching activator to the marine behind her and held her weapon ready.
As soon as the breaching unit opened the hatch, Willis and Alicia opened up with their guns. The team did everything right, yet that didn’t make anyone invincible. Willis caught a gunshot in the face. He went down in front of Alicia, who in turn cut down one of the three remaining pirates on the bridge.

Lasers and bullets flashed by her in both directions. Alicia looked for targets and fired. Another gun went off beside her, almost right next to her head, thankfully firing lasers rather than solid shells that would have deafened her despite the miniature baffles plugged in her ears. Someone else on her side screamed. She stepped into the bridge
compartment, took cover behind a console and forced herself to aim before shooting lest she wreck vital controls.

Again, the laser rifle beside her flashed distractingly close to her head. It cut down the last of the pirates, ending the fight. “Clear,” Gunny Janeka announced, placing her hand on Alicia’s shoulder.

The younger marine swallowed hard. “Clear,” she replied, and looked back at the others. She didn’t know when Janeka got there. Of the three men who’d breached the bridge with her, only one still stood. Willis lay dead in the entryway. Another marine slumped against the wall, clutching a wound on his arm that wouldn’t likely be fatal.

“Breathe,” said Janeka once more, looking each of her marines in the eye. “Stop and breathe.”

The quick pause made all the difference. “Wong, take the helm. Fire it up. Lieutenant Crowder, do you copy?” Janeka asked over her holocom link. She glanced at the wounded marine, who winced but nodded. Then she grabbed the hatch to the bridge and pulled it shut again, setting the magnetic locks to reboot.

“Lieutenant Crowder took a pretty bad hit, Gunny,” reported another voice. “We’re working on him, but I don’t know if he’s gonna make it.”

“Engineering is secure,” added Ravenell. “Not much damage. Primary systems were kept warm. Life support looks good. We put down a bunch of targets in the galley, too.”

“Exterior remains secure,” reported one of the snipers.

“Then I’m assuming command,” said Janeka. “Everyone get on the ship and secure for lift-off. We are extracting immediately.”

She sat down beside Alicia, who dutifully h
ad her station powered up, but Alicia’s eyes were turned toward the closed hatch. Agent Willis lay dead on the other side. He wasn’t alone.

“Wong. Listen to me. Breathe.”

“I’m breathing,” Alicia said, nodding and turning back to her work. She checked the skies and traffic above them and started up the systems diagnostic. “Are you breathing?”

“Breathing is for lesser mortals,” said Janeka, her hands moving over the controls.

Alicia froze. She blinked and turned to Janeka. “Okay, now I know I’m too ramped up, because you made a joke and I’m not laughing.”

“You did
good,” Janeka told her. “Real good, like I knew you would. You fought like a marine and now you’re gonna run the helm like a navy crewman, just like you were taught. We’re gonna make our rendezvous and FTL it straight home to Archangel. We’ll be back on the
Los Angeles
in a week.”

Alicia nodded. She turned back to her controls and watched the condition tracks run up toward full readiness. “Gunny, thanks. For picking me for this, I mean. Not ‘
cause I enjoyed the fight, but…”

“I knew you had what it took. That’s why I picked you.”

Again, Alicia nodded. She glanced once at the gunny, then away, and then something jerked her attention back to the older woman. “Did you just smile?”

“I did not smile, marine.
I do not smile
.”

“Right. Understood,” said Alicia, turning her face dutifully back to the controls.

“You’re bleeding from your leg,” Janeka observed without looking. “Tend to it when we get clear. I’ve gotta look after Hernandez over there.”

Alicia looked down at her thigh. Sure enough, she had taken a bit of shrapnel from something—probably the grenade on the lower deck—and hadn’t noticed.

Janeka rose from her station to see to the other wounded marine. As she passed, she laid a hand on Alicia’s shoulder and gave a single, warm squeeze.

It occurred to Alicia that it was just as well that this whole op was covert and classified. No one would ever believe Janeka would show such affection anyway.

* * *