FORT LIBERTY: VOLUME ONE (4 page)

Meanwhile, the battle’s raging. Attack drones lift off in a burst of blue jets, reconfiguring in midair for seek and destroy, running on thermal and releasing streams of laser sighting. One catches a missile before it leaves the wire, disintegrating with a clap of fire, metal and glass hurtling into the night sky.

“Get the team and get to the wall,” Voss yells at Wyatt.

No time. Enemy drones incoming. They soar over the wire like giant insects, rotor wings singing, glass control units sweeping fans of red laser sighting over the tarmac in search of human targets.

Wyatt’s engaging, crouching low on the launch pad and switching the M1050 to heavy rounds. He sits back, balancing his elbows on his knees with the gun’s barrel hanging out in front of him, tracking enemy drones through his sight. The weapon’s muzzle flashes, claps, the recoil punching his shoulders back.

Explosive rounds tear through drone armor. Two enemy machines bust apart, spilling debris across the tarmac.

Assaulter teams are scrambling out of the barracks, suited up and headed for firing positions on the wall, their outlines black against the hot shimmer of fire and smoke, shadows charging through chaos.

Voss holds the woman close, turning back to find the president’s aide down on the pavement behind him, a twisted piece of shrapnel torn through the thick layers of his suit and lodged under his ribcage. Heavy spurts of crimson are flooding from the wound, blood splattered on the inside of the visor.

A moment of sheer disbelief hits Voss, trapped out in the open with no way to move, no way to fight, to rage in the way the situation calls for.

“Voss,” the aide cries, anguished. He’s bleeding out fast, and Voss is no surgeon, though he knows it wouldn’t matter now if he was. The aide is about to die, his eyes frozen wide, yellow arcs of tracer fire streaking across his visor.

Voss crouches next to him, seeing that he’s still trying to talk.

“Launch,” the aide hisses. “They’ll kill her… ”

“What?”

The aide can’t see him, maybe can’t see anything, his eyes shining with tears, his body shuddering badly. “Important. Get her to Liberty. Use any methods, any force necessary.”

Voss stares at him, confused.

“Launch,” the aide mouths, out of breath and unable to draw more. He spreads his gloved fingers wide, offering Voss an auth key drive.

It’s something no one would give an Assaulter unless the world was about to end, a digital drive capable of unlocking any door in the NRM empire, requisition any piece of equipment, approve any payment, to anyone.

They’ll kill her.

Parts of the inner wall collapse, barriers consumed by fire and rippling smoke, a massive inferno so hot it burns along his skin, turns him into something small. Auto-gunners and 1050s are lit and pounding air, big rounds streaking through bright haze, a war zone from nothing.

All this… for her?

Launch. Turn their attention skyward, away from the base. Let them chase a cloud puncher streaking at mach 25 through a channel of magnetic force barriers. There’s no way they catch that, not with what they’ve probably got. If the objective is to kill one woman, then the assault ends as soon as she’s gone.

“Out!” Wyatt calls out a warning as his rifle clicks empty.

Voss snatches the auth key from the aide and draws himself up from the tarmac. “Find the team!”

“Team’s here,” Gojo appears from the murk, suited up, with his 1050 raised at shoulder level. Logan’s at his back.

“We go!” Voss jerks his head toward the cloud puncher.

“Our gear isn’t loaded,” Wyatt reminds him.

“We’re not waiting for it.”

There’s an exchange of looks, but no dissent. Every team guy lives for what he’s called to do, and a hard call like this doesn’t get questioned.

Gojo’s on the comms, requesting the launch sequence from ATC, and his expression says they’re giving him hell, but he pushes it through, and the cloud puncher powers up. The hatch unlocks and pulls back, seals sliding away.

Voss is first in, ducking through the hatch with the girl. He shifts her up onto his shoulder and climbs into the cramped passenger cabin, its interior organized like a life raft, a circle of horizontally angled seats with full harnesses… a blind rocket ride into the upper atmosphere.

Muffled booms reverberate through the small craft’s hull, and Voss is sweating, trying not to think about the drone, the mortar, or the missile, that could be bearing down on them this second. Six minutes into the battle and here he is, still unable to fight, unable to do anything but mentally tick off seconds.

He dumps Niri in one of the seats, losing patience as she slumps like an uncooperative rag doll, head lolling to one side, strands of black hair getting in the way. Voss fastens her harness then pulls himself into the cockpit.

Two chairs are bolted down under the bulkhead, pilot and co-pilot, though punchers don’t need either one. A wrap-around hologram display mimics a windshield, presenting the outside view as a semi-transparent image, segmented by blocks of status report data, launch calculations, flight check line items, communication with tower… all on exhibit for the sake of some dumb monkey in the chair, some guy like him, who has zero skill or degree in piloting, but needs to feel like they’ve got control of the situation anyway.

Friendly drones loom close in the display, having positioned themselves around the launch pad to provide cover.

“Hatch is closed,” Gojo yells from below.

Voss glances down, seeing him already strapped in, his gun slung loose but not surrendered, which is as secure as it’s going get.

“All go?”

“Go!” Wyatt confirms.

Voss doesn’t know how to kick the damn thing off the pad, but it starts counting down on its own anyway, a disembodied female voice filling the cockpit and the cabin. “Liftoff, t-minus ten… nine… eight… ”

In the holo display, he can recognize the suits of other teams, guys holding their positions along the wall, guns blazing. He counts guys from Ghost, Seminole, Archer, all getting their fill, giving back twice what they’re taking.

“Six… five… four… ”

The puncher’s engines are lit, power surging through the small craft, seats shaking, equipment rattling.

Voss feels his teeth grind, knowing that Blackheart should be with the others, should be raining down retribution, not strapped into a pillow puncher, heading for zero G, their brothers under fire and left behind. It’s out of his hands, some clusterfuck brought down on them all by the NRM.

They’ll kill her.

Why? She’s just a kid. It can’t be about her.

“… liftoff.”

The engines roar on all sides, a hard shudder passing through the cabin, followed by a rough shove back into the seats. The puncher takes off, riding a roaring column of fire, blasting into the sky at full tilt.

Its three-dimensional image tracks along a glowing trajectory in front of him. Voss grimaces, his vision blurred, trying to find the window that shows what might be behind them. But there’s no rear view, no looking back after the sound barrier breaks, and Earthbound becomes a memory.

Only there is traffic in the comm link, blurred text scrolling where he can still sort of read it, a flash report of the enemy disengaging from Ticonderoga.

Disengaging… right after it’s clear we’re gone.

So it is about the girl, which is insane, impossible to accept. But he’s got a warning and auth key as proof. The aide knew exactly what was happening, and knew enough to hand over both with his last breath.

Didn’t name any names, but Voss is no idiot, and the logic isn’t that hard to follow. The threat might just be internal. It might not have been left behind at Ticonderoga. It might have manifested as an Earthbound attack, but the intel, and the motivation, might have come from inside the fence.

They’ll kill her.

“Who the fuck is ‘they’?” he mutters.

The puncher’s image sails through layers of atmosphere on the holo display, rotating in precise half-turns, the altitude readings climbing. Voss feels himself grow lighter in the seat, the force of ascent giving way to zero G, to grabbing onto handholds and floating between walls, hands spread, a cat without a floor.

Another image appears in holo, the docking station orbiting in the distance, with a bright corridor drawn to intercept. The launch rockets shut off, leaving the team sitting in utter silence.

“Enemy at Ticonderoga is in retreat,” Voss says, reading the flash messages in display. “Total of ten KIA, ground crew, but one from Archer.”

“Was it the kid?” Wyatt asks. “Whitman?”

Voss frowns, touching the comms feed window. The thing expands, highlighting the Ticonderoga reports. “Vashnu.”

“Fuck,” Gojo voices it, frustrated. “Rest in peace, brother.”

“Docking permission granted,” the puncher’s computer announces in its annoyingly passive female voice. “Copernicus Station. Dock Nine. Docking in seven minutes and forty-three seconds.”

Voss watches the image of the docking station slip closer in the holo display, the glowing representation of its ringed skeleton exact. At least six other vessels are docked, only one of them large enough to be a cruiser. He stares at it, periodically glancing at the comm link, the damage reports still coming out of Ticonderoga, scrolling text, highlighted acronyms for destruction, for a surprise attack that left too many dead.

He grimaces, hearing the voices of his guys in the cabin, family members he’s not about to lead into ambush, line them up like sitting ducks on the one NRM cruiser that every insider spy expects them to be on.

“Gojo,” he calls over his shoulder.

“Sir?”

“Get up here and patch into the station’s computer. We need to know who all these other ships belong to. Get me details.”

“We looking for something in particular?”

“Yeah,” Voss says, perusing the glowing outlines in the holo screen. “An alternate ride to Liberty, something no one expects us to be on, something small, preferably with a captain we can bribe.”

“Bribe, sir?”

“Yeah,” Voss mutters. “Or force. Force works too.”

EARTH ORBIT

STATION COPERNICUS, DOCK 6

MERCHANT CLASS TRANSPORT VESSEL WC2077
SPARROW

EARTH DATE: APRIL 30, 2225

Docking station trash, the kind of old thief who wonders through airlocks uninvited during the loading of important cargo… a smuggler from the old days who’s come to ask for favors, as if she owes anyone a damn thing.

Petra keeps her hold on the
Sparrow
’s cargo rail, one hand free to reach for the knife in her boot, should the man prove to be the same old Max, the same not-too-bright gutter thief she remembers. For certain, he seems to be. He’s pedaling the same lies, offering worthless creds and clearly operating on the impression that she’s the same girl she used to be, as wide-eyed dumb as she used to be.

She’s not, and maybe he’s finally coming to realize it, because he’s starting to look nervous, positively green in the cold fluorescent glow of the cargo hold, his black hair greasy and streaked with grey, his cheeks sunken under skeletal ridges.

“C’mon Petra,” he says. “Damn, why you gotta be such a hardass?”

“I got my own ship, my own operation now.”

“So?”

“So, you think I’m gonna jeopardize all that? For you?”

“No jeopardy. Hell, I know you got places to put me.”

“Nothing that breathes, Max.”

“Ah shit, you telling me you’re only smuggling food and shiny objects? Can’t be. You do what pays. I know you, more resourceful than most. I bet you got every check point agent from here to Fort Liberty on your payroll by now.”

“Payroll doesn’t cover you. Not enough bribe money in all of big sky for that. Whatever I do, whatever I got, it doesn’t cover smuggling you to Mars, into Red Filter. I don’t do living things, or things that blow up, or things that can’t be explained away for the right price… like convicts.”

“So you’re broke.” He grins, real funny.

“Idiot. Small time thief all your life.”

“Big enough to have taught you a thing or two.”

“Yeah, on what not to do. Try and get this. Try real hard… Operating mostly clean is how you keep the right clients, how you’re allowed to pay off the guys that watch big sky traffic through plasma cannon sight. They don’t give credit to morons who got big big plans, and shakes to boot. You can’t sell yourself to those people, not looking like you do, not willing to do what you’ve done.”

“And what you’ve done,” he says, half-sneer on his lips, his eyes hard and cold, just like old times. “Or don’t you remember your own sins, pretty Petra?”

She tries not to let that get in, but he’s got a way with it, bringing up old damage as if it’s a negotiating point. And it is, if you barter dirty. Twist the knife. Petra’s no Sphinx and everyone damn well knows it. When she’s angry, she’s bat-shit angry. When she’s upset, she’s throwing shit upset. When she’s happy, everyone’s happy, or else. A thousand years in flight wouldn’t be enough to get what’s wrong out, what’s damaged to set right. The old days saw to that.

Just the way it is. Crew knows it. And Max knows it. Of course, he thinks he can use it to some advantage, but that’s a hard tiger to ride.

“Get off my ship,” she says.

“Bad move, Petra.”

“I’m full of ‘em.”

“I’m going to find a ticket, you know I will.”

“Sure. There’s a cruiser out there. Go bang on their airlock. I’m sure a bunch of cruiser guards would be happy to let you hitch a ride, and get strung up by President Wexler for their trouble.”

His expression changes, all shadows and deep creases and bared teeth, the face of absolute viciousness. “Always were a skinny little ingrate. I should kill you now, let your crew find you here with your throat slit and your panties down around your ankles.”

She glares, fighting that furious kind of panic grabs on deep down, so deep that she’d rather hit, destroy, than say one more word because she can’t say anything that would make sense. “Get off my ship.”

It’s not clever, and the words tremble, her fists clenched tight, ready to tear at him, fight him with everything she’s got, including the knife in her boot. In zero G, fighting is a matter of using momentum, of getting into places that can be pushed away from, and being armed with something that doesn’t require a lot of muscle, being prepared to make the most of contact.