Authors: Joel Shepherd
Devakul was still firing amid the blinding dust, she leapt across the line of fire behind him, slid flat behind the raised podium of the central eating area, then popped up to scan between the clustered table legs ... ducked back as target-warning flashed and fire sent chairs and tables smacking around the open hall like tenpins, plastic and wooden pieces crashing and clattering all about. She rolled behind the podium, headed away from Devakul, then Bjornssen arrived and laid down fire — she popped up, managed a brief burst at the glimpse of a departing figure, hitting nothing.
"Get him! Watch the angles, no rushing!" as Bjornssen hurdled forward through the dust, Singh behind and Devakul after ... she saw brief movement on her right as she followed, spun fast and found a very unthreatening man lying flat on a restaurant floor where the glass front had collapsed in on him, looking stunned and terrified. "That way!" she yelled at him, a fast flick to audio, pointing back the way she'd come, then turned and raced after her guys.
Another grenade shattered windows up ahead, Bjornssen ducking and rolling through the smoke ... more firing on tac-net, the position showed clear on visor and internal-vision, Kuntoro returning fire somewhere on levels up above. She held herself back, more sporadic fire smacking walls and breaking glass up ahead, checking through tac-net and tac-sim, measuring the angles, watching the distances ... a grenade took out a shopfront ten metres away, window frames collapsing on Singh's helmet with a heavy crash ... they were falling back to a major thoroughfare, she saw in that moment of frozen time, multi-level shopping that connected to the nearby major hotel where they'd been staying and had apparently been surprised.
"Singh, Dev, first right turn, right flank and hold! Work it forward! S-5, flank left! Don't let them get past tac-C-2!" Heavy fire in front, Bjornssen and Devakul covering for Singh's dash across to the right-hand corridor ahead. "S-2, forward and spread, I want a crossfire on that atrium hall! Box and hold people!"
Ahead Devakul followed Singh's dash and Vanessa ran up through shattered debris and smoke, ploughed headlong through a protruding side display window, kicked her way through mannequins and display shelves into the store proper. And had the surreal experience of running down a fashion store aisle parallel to the mall, full armour thumping the carpet ... ducked and fell as shots hammered the surrounding walls, kicking clothes out and stands crashing over, hit the ground amid a hail of shredded fabric and wallboard ... tac-net showed Bjornssen already running at the distraction ... then all vision blanked as a grenade went off somewhere over her head and brought half the ceiling down.
Up and struggling, some indeterminate split-second later, through flames and smoke, ruptured water-pipes and malfunctioning spurts of foam retardant, smashed a damaged partition wall aside with her rifle arm, burning fabrics clinging like so much bonfire ash ... tac-net showed a target down in the main hall ahead, several troops covering, and now fire zipping up and down from right to left in front of her position.
She scrambled further forward, found the dividing wall to the next shop to the left and kicked it — her foot went through with a massive thud, took a square metre of brick wall with it. She aimed two more kicks to clear space then squeezed through the crumbling hole. Rolled low, now finding herself in a fancy net-interface monitor display shop, and ran at a low crouch between elaborate stands and displays ... tac-net calculated fire positions, acquired an exact fix from Hiraki's arms-comp (it was Hiraki on the next level up, she gathered), and from that she guessed the required angle for herself. Stopped scrambling by the shop's far wall, crouched and aimed out the display windows, past the holographic interference of window dressing. Outside was the broad mall, ten metres wide, the multi-level, glass atrium overhead and flanked by balcony walks. A man in a dark coat crouched behind the foundation support for the overhead crosswalk, edged close to the corner, weapon ready, unaware he'd been flanked. She shot him, close enough to see the blood spraying as he spun.
Leapt out through the windows in a crash of collapsing glass, rolling on the floor ... fire whipped past, tac-net showing two other targets further up, sheltering behind the sporadic cover of stone flower boxes before the opposite side of the broad mall's windows. She fired one-handed as she ran, low and crouched, shots erupting fragments and dust about flower boxes and splintering wooden bench seats ... abruptly outflanked on another angle as the target tried to change cover, shots knocked him flying before Vanessa could adjust. She skidded in behind the overpass support, flipped to audio, full volume ...
"
This is the CSA! Surrender to arrest now or you will die!
"
The reply was a volley of fire, aimed blindly over a further row of decorative flowerpots and miniature trees. Return fire shredded the greenery in seconds, erupting concrete and tile fragments sharding the air through curtains of dust ... she noted even as she fired that the last target behind her was down — Kuntoro and Tsing had got him. She hadn't entirely taken her eye off that potentially fatal threat from behind since the firing started, especially not now in the main mall surrounded by overlooking balconies ...
"
Watch!
" came Hiraki's warning yell a fractional second before something whooshed past at speed and the entire right side of the mall exploded. A shocking confusion of concussion, flame and debris and she was shooting without targets, more blind fire hammering about ... dimly realised through the flaming chaos that something was cutting the air like a saw, staccato blue light flaring through the debris as everything it touched exploded ... she rolled frantically back behind full cover as the light swung her way, and half the ferrocrete support detonated in a spray of flaming wreckage.
Fire converged heading the other way, leaping red tracer, tac-net showed the fix ... she spun left around the support, locked and firing as the far mall end collapsed beneath the hail. Ran, because that was textbook, directly at the target, spraying fire to cover possible invisibles, adjusting her suited stride to the recoil as she accelerated through the smoke, spreading destruction before her at will. Got far enough forward to see pieces of another bloody corpse where tac-net said the last should be, and slid to a skidding halt amid a confusion of broken chairs, flower banks and snack vendors, covering the last position of the previous target... empty.
"
Cease!
" she yelled, and the carnivorous hail of tracer above her head abruptly vanished. Propped to her knees and scanned on full motion/multi-light, easier now things were no longer disintegrating, and saw ... nothing. Things collapsing in delayed shock, displays, windows, plants, walls ... smoke everywhere and things burning. Target-IDed corpses. Nothing else. Someone had evidently surprised them. There could be more. But nothing that end of the mall had survived that last barrage. So she was one corpse short.
"Missing one." Tac-net showed Sharma, Kuntoro and Hiraki already converging along the flanks up the far end, and more following — even without her order they blocked the exits. She rose and walked, a clear enough view now to have faith in vis-scan's warnings if surprised. Feet crunched over rubble, avoiding upturned tables and mall-walk attractions not so much bullet riddled as eviscerated. No sign. A measured, steady pace up the centre of the wreckage, rifle braced, a visor display warning of barely 220 rounds left in the magazine. The dismembered corpse was strewn about something that looked like a V-9 APL. Anti-Personnel Laser. Not merely military, but frontline. That had been the blue light. What had made the five-metre crater at the mall wall back there she didn't care to guess.
Blood-trail, she saw then, through the drifting smoke. Heat residue, past the sporadic fires and round-impact spots. Held up a fist, the several marks moving behind in cover formation halted on tac-net, covering with interlocking, integrated fields of fire. Stepped carefully forward, looking right, the location of the blood trail. It made a right turn after barely a metre, and entered a doorway recess. This one was metal framed, and afforded more protection. Another step, and she saw the booted feet sticking out, and a hand limply dangling. Another, and she saw a woman seated, curled up as if for protection. A warm body, and much blood. Vis-scan detected no pulse on IR. A short, snubbish machine gun lay alongside, muzzle warm. Something unidentifiable in her lap, small and apparently plastic. Or something like.
"Got one," she said calmly, rifle levelled unerringly. "Hit and unmoving. Something in her lap. Could be a bomb." Tac-net showed more of her team sweeping, covering. She heard their comments, terse and brief. Someone's horror at discovering several civvies, huddled in a corner. But there were always some. Vis-scan read her voice, analysed the visuals and went into threat assessment without her urging. And came up negative on the bomb.
She paused. Trust it? Only if she was feeling suicidal. She wasn't. Took another step forward across the mall. Another. Bjornssen went past behind, ignoring her target, covering further up the mall. Smoke drifted, fires burning, localised fire retardant hissing, adding to the clouding mist. A situation light blinked on her lower side-visor, someone off-net wanting an update.
"Hitoru," she said calmly, "talk to central for me would you?" He did, the blinking stopped. Another step. The pool of blood beneath the curled woman had grown larger. The body fractionally cooler. And the black, flat plastic whatever-it-was had a bullet hole in it. She knew some forms of bomb didn't mind that. But it lessened the odds drastically, and she closed the remaining distance. At close range she could look down on it, beyond the woman's obscuring hand and folds of her long coat. Definitely no bomb. More like ... data storage? "I got it, Hitoru. I'm clear here."
Knelt on one knee — squatting was mostly impossible in armour — and pulled the flat plastic square from the woman's unresisting hand. Noted only one bullet hole, and that only in the stomach. Apparently. Grabbed the woman's face in one armoured hand, pulled the jaw open ... foam, saliva, general unpleasantness — self-inflicted, probably in capsule form. Jesus.
"
Lieutenant
?" Krishnaswali's voice, invited now on
tac-net. "Vanessa, what happened
?."
"I just wrote off a mall." With forced humour. Only realising now as she spoke just how hard her heart was hammering. She felt suddenly out of breath. "I hope that's okay."
"
Fuck the mall
," said the CSA's head-SWAT, with typically clear pronunciation. "
What happened
?"
"Um ... well," she took a deep breath. The woman's blank eyes stared into hers. European, not unattractive and now very dead. The unsteadiness deepened. "They had basically a military arsenal holed up around here somewhere ... God knows how in a hotel district... and they basically blew up the mall." Krishnaswali at least did not need to ask if her team was okay — he had all the vitals in front of him. "And I got a dead girl here I'm guessing might have been in charge, she took a non-fatal round, crawled off to try and do something to what looks like a data-storage unit, then it looks like she topped herself. So it's not just GIs that are expendable, looks like."
"
Do you have the DSU
?"
"It's got a bullet hole in it," she said, holding it up for closer examination. "But yeah, I got it." There was some kind of ID patch on the side of it, maybe a fingerprint patch. "Looks like she might have been trying to erase it or something."
"
I'm guessing Intel will be very interested in looking at that. Please keep it relatively undisturbed. And the bodies. We'll pick up the pieces
."
Vanessa gazed bleakly about through the smoke, and wondered if Krishnaswali realised just how literally appropriate those words were.
The coffee should have tasted good. She usually liked Naidu's coffee. But this tasted sour in her mouth. Her tongue tasted of sweat, bile and that slightly acrid inside-the-helmet smell that hung around after having worn armour for too long.
"Not good?" Naidu asked with dismay, seeing her expression.
"It's fine." Wincing slightly and wrinkling her nose. "It's just the taste in my mouth that stinks."
"Indians should neither make nor drink coffee," Krishnaswali added from his seat over by the window blinds, long legs crossed, cradling a steaming cup of tea in his lap. "Very bad form."
Naidu said something derisive in a language Vanessa didn't know ... Telugu, maybe. Or possibly Tamil. Naidu was Old Earth, born in Bangalore. Krishnaswali was Tanushan born and bred, less than half Naidu's age. He held to a notion of Old India Naidu found pathetically unrealistic, and typical of offworld romanticism of the 'mother country' they'd never visited and knew only from stories and news-bytes. Whatever he'd said, Krishnaswali only smiled and sipped carefully at his tea past his handsome, clipped moustache. Naidu gave Vanessa's shoulder an affectionate pat and walked back around the side of the main desk.
They were gathered in Naidu's main fifth-floor office amid the networking maze that was Intel. A nice office, large and roomy, blinds drawn across the broad windows that otherwise overlooked the CSA compound interior. Krishnaswali occupied a comfortable spot on the big-cushioned sofa by the windows. Hiraki and Kuntoro at the back of the room, behind Vanessa. At the front of the room various Intel Agents gathered about Naidu's desk, now crowded with scanning and other electronic gadgetry Vanessa's SWAT-grunt training supplied neither recognition nor interest for. The centre of their attentions was a single black, hard-shelled rectangle, pierced off centre by a single high-velocity bullet hole.
Vanessa stood in the centre of the room, coffee in hand, and surveyed the group with bland interest. Naidu, Intel Chief, at one side, looking even more rumpled than usual, suit and unbuttoned shirt collar in disarray, a cup of his own coffee steaming in hand. Zhong and Suarez crouched over the desk in fascinated absorption — both Intel techs, hardware, software, security gadgetry in general. Chopra standing over them, supervising — with a planetary and military security brief, he usually complained Tanusha had little need for him and spent his time researching things happening in the war just ended far away. Now his eyes gleamed with delight and he positively bounced with enthusiasm.