Different Paths (35 page)

Reaching his entry spot, Jay took a deep breath
and signaled ready. Almost immediately, Iaido and DJ’s lights went from green
to red signaling that they were breaching. His HUD automatically started a
sixty second countdown in the upper right-hand corner of his vision. Since he
was going to be the over-watch, he was supposed to enter one full minute after
the others. This would enhance his odds of entering undetected in the confusion
created by the other two. Of course, this would be one of the longest minutes
of his life… ranking right up there with standing in the pass on Gilese as the bugs
charged.

Jay smiled slightly.

This entry might be bad but after living through
Gilese…nothing was ever going to be as dire as that.

Chapter 29

As soon as Iaido saw Jay’s light turn from red to
green, he fired off his first crater charge and rode the rubble down.

His HUD displayed a countdown and graphic display
of his entry. When he was two seconds from hitting the next floor, he set off
the next crater charge and so on and so on.

There was no way that Iaido could know exactly
where everyone in the Rotunda would be standing during his entry. Knowing full
and well that it was dangerous to assume when going into battle, Iaido didn’t
have the luxury of a full recon and was forced to make several educated guesses
given the overall layout of the auditorium.

He presumed that the General would be in one of
two places; either sitting in the Speaker’s chair, which was the highest spot
behind the podium or pacing back and forth in front of the accused during his
interrogation. The members of the High Council would be seated to the left and
right of the Speaker’s chair.

The Galactic Marshals would probably be positioned
near the members of the High Council and flanking the notorious thief and
criminal, Jagger Jax. Iaido also knew that somewhere there would be a news crew
filming the whole procedure; there was no way that the General would pass up
this type of photo op.

Breaching the final floor, the room erupted into
chaos.

As Iaido followed five floors of rubble down the
three stories opening that was the Grand Rotunda, the only analogy his brain
could come up with is that it must be akin to riding an avalanche straight down
to hell.

With a flick of his eye and a simple thought, he
engaged his inertial dampeners which shifted his body weight to half of normal.
This wouldn’t slow his fall but would make surviving the impact at the bottom
easier.

His ARC suit’s AI began scanning and correlating
data at a staggering speed. Instead of the seven Galactic Marshals that he was
expecting, his HUD showed twelve red circles spread throughout the room. The
only good thing was that there weren’t any questionable tangos; well not really…his
HUD did mark Jagger Jax with a yellow circle.

Trusting his instincts and training, Iaido fired
five shots even as he was falling. He knew the moment he fired that only one
was a kill shot. Nevertheless the resulting blasts knocked the Praetorians away
from the five most senior High Council members.

On the upper left corner of his HUD, four icons
with corresponding numbers popped up. The first was a small white skull with a
one underneath popped into view, confirmed kills. Next to that was a red cross,
injured combatants, with the number four beneath it. The fourth was a set of
crossed swords to mark the number of combatants within a hundred foot radius.
The last was a yellow smiley face for friendlies in the same area.

It was a tad low tech but he had developed this
method during his years in the military to help track his killed and wounded
count in the chaos that was battle. It followed the simple analogy of
K.I.S.S…Keep It Simple Stupid.

Once Iaido engaged an enemy, numbers became
secondary but keeping an accurate count was a necessity. However, combat for
him was more primal, almost instinctual. If someone confronted him with a
weapon, they were an enemy and Iaido did what he did best. He attacked. But not
every assault was designed to kill. Some were just meant to delay or
incapacitate an enemy. In the pandemonium that was battle, how could he
accurately count or keep up with those that were just wounded instead of
killed?

Enter his tally system.

Long ago he had reasoned that if the AI in his
suit was advanced enough to analyze and recognize threats, than it could also
track tangos if they were alive or dead after they engaged in combat. Iaido’s
AI also identified and marked the camera crew with a yellow box to signify them
as non-combatants. His smiley face tally system showed a dozen friendlies in
the room; the nine members of the High Council, the General, the glamorous reporter
and her liberal holo-recorder. Luckily, the media types were to the south end
of the room and out of the line of fire.

Five of the remaining seven Galactic Marshals
pulled out two weapons, a powered gladius and a Peregrine Disruptor Mark II.
Judging from their choice of weapons, it was obvious that their orders were to
kill and not take prisoners. However, the two Praetorians which were the
President’s bodyguards did something that was completely unexpected. One
grabbed the General and held a powered gladius to his throat while his partner
freed the criminal Jagger Jax.

Using the advanced optical capabilities built into
his suit, Iaido scanned the faces of the Galactic Marshals and ran their image
against his memory and the Omega Squadron database. Unfortunately, they all
came up negative. None of these Praetorians were his brother’s clone.

None were Aeneas.

Not waiting to see how the Praetorians would
react, Iaido attacked and his world seemed to slow down as his combat senses
kicked into overdrive. Even as the debris and rubble were still falling, he was
on the move. His next shot, and kill, was to the Marshal holding the General.
As much as he hated the man, he was still the elected President of the
Coalition and it was his duty to save him.

The resulting blast from his THAB took the
Marshal’s head off and scorched the right side of the General’s face. If they
both survived this encounter Iaido knew that the General would be pissed and
would chew him a new ass but that was an argument for another time.

Tackling the President, Iaido engaged his force
shield on his left forearm and twisted his body to place the energy barrier
between the General and the incoming disruptor blasts. All five shots hit his
shield center mass. Any of the shots would’ve easily killed the unprotected
politician or damaged his ARC suit but not his energy shield; it was designed
for just such a purpose.

Iaido smiled inwardly at the slight advantage the
Praetorians had given him. Even though the PDMkIIs were some of the deadliest
weapons in the known universe, they had a very slow rate of fire. Only about
one shot every one point nine seconds; which in this type of combat was an
eternity.

Tossing the General behind him and over the
prosecutor’s desk, Iaido snapped his THAB back to his shoulder and trained it
on the five Marshals who were preparing to fire their second volley. He got off
three kill shots before the incoming rounds hit him. Luckily, two of the
disruptor blasts hit his shield and were deflective harmlessly off to his left.
The other three he wasn’t so lucky with. Two blasts caught him in the waist and
right leg. The carbon alloy steel absorbed much of the blast, enough so that
Iaido didn’t lose any body parts but the composite alloy began to immediately
break down. The last incoming disruptor blast hit the barrel of his THAB just
as he was shooting his fourth round and the resulting explosion destroyed both
the carbine rifle and much of the weakened armor on his right side.

Iaido was knocked aside. Instinctively, he went
with the energy and rolled with it instead of resisting the blast. His roll
took him to the corner of the podium. He left a trail of metal and blood in his
wake but he was still alive. Just before his armor completely shut down, Iaido
took one last look at his tally marks; five kills, five wounded, two
combatants, nine friendlies and one unknown.

Even as his HUD flicked and died, he attacked. Not
having any other choice, Iaido shifted his left side toward the lone threat on
the podium, drew his energy blade and jumped. It was a binary solution, either
this attack worked or it didn’t. He was out of options and out of time.

The Praetorian had one shot left before Iaido
could close the distance and he took it. The disruptor blast seared the entire
left side of his armor and Iaido felt the heat building on his skin but ignored
the pain. Landing gracefully, Iaido’s energy blade sliced right through the
Marshal’s neck, completely beheading him.

Even as the remnants of his ARC suit fell off of
him, Iaido heard someone clapping behind him. Turning back toward the remaining
Praetorian, he paused when he saw who was applauding.

Standing next to the last Marshal in the same
outfit that Jagger Jax had been wearing earlier was his brother’s clone…Aeneas.

Chapter 30

Lt. Kristopher was standing in the lobby of the New
Atlanta Hall of Justice waiting on an elevator with five SWAT officers in full
tactical armor.

Judging from the alarms going off and the mass of
people fleeing the building, Iaido had begun his entry. He called up the
evacuation plan of the Hall of Justice to see if there was any faster way other
than the main elevators for them to get to the twenty-eight floor. There was a
freight elevator on the south end of the building that could take them to the
maintenance floor. Shunting this information to his team, the six NAPD officers
headed to the opposite end of the building.

“El-tee, I’m curious as to why we are here,” asked
one of his SWAT escorts.

Kristopher called up the identifiers and basic
records of his team. The officers were drawn from two different tactical teams.
He scanned the list of names, he had three from SWAT-Four; Sgt. Hamilton,
Officers Muncy and Buchannan, and two from SWAT-Six; Officers Ernspiker and
Spurgeon.

These had been the only officers on hand at the
NAPD headquarters when he had noticed an inconsistency in some of the data
Iaido had collected from the Major’s files. It was those discrepancies and his
own insights to Major McDowell which had led them here so he answered, “We’re
following a hunch.”

The officer who had asked the first question
continued. “You want to explain that? The rest of the teams are off looking for
bombs that are supposed to be spread out throughout the city and we are here on
a snipe hunt.”

Kristopher checked the identifier; it was
Ernspiker. For some reason that name rang a bell in his brain but he couldn’t
recall it right off the top of his head.

“I found an anomaly in the information that
Spartan shared with us that makes me think that one of the bombs isn’t on the
original list and located here on the twenty-eighth floor.”

“We’re hoping to find a bomb here?” asked
Spurgeon.

Kristopher nodded. “Hopefully, if my hunch is
correct then we will be eliminating Major McDowell’s final component of his
GOTH plan. If not, then we will be in position to assist Spartan.”

Sgt. Hamilton joined the conversation. “Roger that
El-tee. Now, you three tighten up and get your minds on the mission. Muncy
while we are enroute to the floor make sure you review all data concerning
these bombs.”

“Roger that Sergeant,” replied Muncy. As a veteran
officer of the NABS, New Atlanta Bomb Squad, he was already familiar with the
general type of bombs that had been found at the other five sites but since his
life, and those of his team, were on the line, he slaved his armor to follow
the Sergeant and began pouring over the data the other teams had uploaded to
the tac-net.

Arriving at the freight elevator, Kristopher used
his police override authority to immediately call the car down to the lobby and
they stepped on. Punching up the twenty-eighth floor, they felt the car begin
to move. Since it was a freight elevator, it was nowhere near as fast as the
main elevators but it was still faster than running up the stairs.

Kristopher smiled inwardly at the efficiency of
his hastily thrown together team.

Sgt. Hamilton was accessing the schematics of the
building and assigning roles and fields of fire to the rest of the team, which
left him time to delve through the officer’s files and records.

Those that were assigned to SWAT-Four were the
easiest since he had worked with them many times before. He knew from past jobs
that Sgt. Hamilton was soft spoken and meticulous about details but refrained
from micromanaging his team. Buchannan was a veteran of the team and a solid shooter.
Muncy was the newest member to the team but his service record was exemplary
and his bomb squad experience would especially come in handy.

The two officers from SWAT-Six were enigmas.

Even though Kristopher had known and worked with
Lt. Brown over the years, he hadn’t worked many cases with his men. But then,
the names of Ernspiker and Spurgeon were just too familiar. Running a quick
search, he noticed that it had been SWAT-Six that had been the first team to
breach the Safehouse on the night Iaido had knocked him out. That’s when he saw
an odd notation in his file, T. Ernspiker – KIA.

Ernspiker. That was the name of the officer that
had been killed by friendly fire during the raid. Kristopher glanced over at
the man. If he had been killed in action then this must be a clone.

Quickly, he pulled up a query concerning the
cloning option on all five of his escorts. Every single one of them had opted
to be cloned in case of their deaths during the line of duty. Thinking back to
his earlier conversation with Jay about cloning, he remembered Iaido’s comment
about not knowing the difference.