Her Brother's Keeper - eARC (28 page)

“We need more information, Captain,” Marcus suggested. “I doubt any of us would be able to blend in with the locals in town, but we have other tools at our disposal. We need to determine what kind of security measures are in place and whether or not the people keeping him can be bribed or threatened.”

Wolfram nodded thoughtfully. “What if they will not be bribed or threatened?”

“It’s risky, but…we have less-lethal options at our disposal. The people holding him won’t grant us any such consideration, of course. It’s like bringing a pillow to a knife fight, but with good intel, a good plan, and a particularly firm pillow, we may be able to pull it off.”

“They may still complain to the Concordiat authorities,” the executive officer said.

Marcus nodded in agreement. “They may. But we’re a long way from the nearest Fleet patrol. It would be weeks before anyone even hears their complaint, and probably months before an investigation is launched,
if
an investigation is launched, which is not likely. I seriously doubt the Fleet would send an envoy all the way out here because some privateers sprung one of their guys from the clink. If we go in guns blazing and shoot up the colony, well, that’s different. But if we do it quietly and cleanly…I can’t make you any promises, Captain, but I think I can get your man back without causing an interstellar incident. All the rumors that they execute people for minor infractions work in our favor. They refuse to confirm or deny it. Extreme measures seem more reasonable if you’re trying to save your man from the gallows.”

Catherine’s brow furled in concentration as she thought for a few moments. Nodding to herself, she looked to Marcus again. “Very well, Mr. Winchester. Enlist the aid of the crew as necessary. Find out everything you can, and come up with a plan as quickly as possible. We’re still on a schedule here.”

“Consider it done, Captain,” Marcus said, heading for the hatch. “I’ll brief you as soon as I know more. I need to go talk to my team.”

* * *

The darkened sky of Opal shimmered with the light of a thousand stars and two small moons as Marcus and his team made their way through the dense alien forest. The foliage glowed blue, green, violet, and indigo through natural bioluminescence. Countless tiny creatures, some flying, come crawling, went about their business in the darkness, themselves glowing faintly like fireflies. The pseudo-trees swayed and shifted in the darkness, and shuddered slightly when bumped, as if startled by human touch. It was beautiful, ethereal…like a vivid dream.

Marcus noted thankfully that the native life didn’t seem interested in the human mercenaries. The weird forests of Opal weren’t anything like the vicious jungles of Mandalay, where every single lifeform seemed to be out for blood. He felt peaceful, despite the tension of the situation. The flying creatures emitted a melodious hum as they passed by, and the pseudo-trees would answer with a deep, rhythmic pulse of their own. It was still warm and murderously humid, but of the many alien ecosystems Marcus had found himself in over the years, this was one of the more pleasant ones.

Devree Starlighter’s calm soprano voice piped into Marcus’ headset. “Cowboy-6, Overwatch. In position. Eyes on the BOI. Almost no activity in the street. Multiple security cameras around the structure. Over.”

“Cowboy-6 copies,” Marcus replied. He grinned at the first official use of their unofficial team name. Devree, with Randy Markgraf serving as a spotter, had crept into town under the cloak of darkness and active thermoptic camouflage. Devree had found a good sniper’s hide for herself, high above the town, on a maintenance access platform of a communications tower. The remaining five mercenaries approached the town from a different direction. They didn’t have enough thermoptic camouflage garments for the entire team, so Marcus thought it best to give them to the sniper team.

“
Andromeda
copies as well,” said another voice. “There’s very little activity across the entire colony. Early to bed, early to rise, it seems. Over.” Kilometers away, on the command deck of the ship
,
Captain Blackwood and her crew were monitoring the entire mission. They had a small, stealthy, nearly silent drone circling above the colony, providing real-time information to both the ship and the ground team.

Marcus was pleased that Captain Blackwood didn’t seem interested in micromanaging her people. She was observing and acknowledging, but didn’t try to tell Marcus how to run his team. He greatly appreciated the professional trust in him she displayed. “Roger. We’ve reached Waypoint Charlie,” he said, indicating that his team was on the edge of town. The foliage abruptly ended in a vast clearing, in which the colony was situated. The Office of the Peacekeepers, a bland, windowless structure, stood less than a kilometer away from the edge of the forest. The colony’s streets were narrow and cluttered, which would aid the team in approaching undetected.

“Cowboy-6,” a crewman on board the
Andromeda
said, observing through the multispectral cameras of the drone, “I’ve mapped a route for you, sending now. This will get you to the building of interest.”

Devree spoke into her radio once again. “I’ve got the cameras identified and targeted. Standing by.”

“Copy all,” Marcus said. His eyepiece blinked. “Received. Moving.”

Captain Blackwood herself spoke into the communications link. “Good luck and Godspeed.”

The team didn’t have a direct line of sight to the Office of the Peacekeepers as they wove their way through the cluttered town. This was good, as that building had security cameras on it, mounted on the corners of the roof, whereas most of the other structures didn’t. Hugging walls and crawling through ditches, the team approached their target in silence. All of their gear had been secured so as not to make noise. Smart glasses enhanced their vision in the low light, and active headsets enhanced their hearing. From what he’d observed, Marcus didn’t think these Peacekeepers had any such modern equipment at their disposal.

Still, he wasn’t about to let his team get complacent, not on their first real operation. They communicated through hand and arm signals as they moved swiftly through the darkened colony. Half the team would move up while the other half held position and provided cover. In this way, they approached very close to the Office of the Peacekeepers before Marcus indicated that they should hold up and take cover. “Overwatch, Cowboy-6. Holding at Waypoint Delta.”

Devree acknowledged. “Roger. Stand by.” An instant later, a pivoting security camera in a transparent protective bubble shattered, followed by a sonic crack, as a high-powered rifle bullet punched through it. From her elevated vantage point, Devree angled her scoped, sound-suppressed rifle and rapidly snapped off several more shots, destroying every security camera in her line of sight.

At the same time, Marcus pointed to Ken Tanaka, who was positioned across a narrow street from him. He and Tanaka each lobbed two screening smoke grenades forward, filling the narrow streets with dense white smoke. The thick, humid air and lack of wind enabled the smoke to hang over the street like a bad memory, limiting unenhanced vision to a couple of meters and interfering with even multispectrum cameras.

As planned, the team quietly rushed forward through the smoke. The front door to the Office of the Peacekeepers was reinforced, not something you could just kick in, but Wade was prepared. As the others provided cover, the explosives technician vaulted up the short steps to the building’s front door. He unrolled a linear shaped charge along the hinge-side of the door, pressing it into place as he did so. That done, he jumped down from the front steps and crouched by the wall. He looked to Ken, who was scanning the doorway with a handheld scanner. The Nipponese mercenary shot Wade the thumbs up when the scanner told him the other side of the doorway was clear. Wade nodded back and readied his initiator. “Fire in the hole!”

BOOM!
With a loud, metallic bang and another cloud of smoke, the door was blasted off its hinges and clattered to the steps. Marcus and the team were moving in an instant, weapons up and ready. In a tight stack, they maneuvered up the stairs and into the now-open airlock as alarms blared and fire-suppression systems sprayed purple retardant. The interior door of the entryway was locked, but the team was prepared for that as well. Halifax and Hondo stepped forward, aiming their big-bore flechette guns at the hinges.
BA-BLAM!
Powdered tungsten breaching rounds disintegrated the door’s hinges. Marcus raised his foot and kicked the door in, sending it flying to the floor. Without breaking his stride, he led the team through the door and into the Office of the Peacekeepers, amongst the scream of klaxons and the shouts of men.

“Contact front!” Marcus shouted, firing off a rapid shot at a Peacekeeper who was stumbling out of a room, having barely finished putting his mask on. His flechette gun bucked against his shoulder, launching a less-lethal round into the unsuspecting constable. The slug hit its target with enough blunt force to cause him to double over in pain, and latched onto him. Then it shocked him senseless, disrupting his central nervous system and causing him to black out. The shock rounds were about seventy-five percent effective against nonaugmented humans, and were the most reliable way to put a man down short of killing him outright.

“Contact rear!” Ken Tanaka said, his voice elevated but still calm. Several frantic gunshots rang out in the building’s main corridor before a shock round put the pistol-wielding Peacekeeper on the floor. “He’s down!”

“Bishop, Halifax, on me!” Marcus ordered. “Tanaka, Hondo, secure the entry point.
Andromeda
, Cowboy-6, we’ve breached the BOI and are conducting our search. Overwatch, move in.”

To a chorus of acknowledgment, Marcus, Wade, and Ben Halifax moved down the corridor, searching for the way down to the detention facility. The doors were labeled, but the signs were in Esperanto and were hard to read. “I think this is it!” he said, indicating another reinforced door which was labeled “malliberigon facilecon.”

“I’m picking up his locator beacon again,” Halifax said.

“The door is secured,” Marcus said, trying the handle. The whole building went into lockdown the moment the door was breached.

“On it!” Wade said, stepping forward with another, smaller breaching charge. He attached it to the door as Marcus and Halifax took cover behind a corner. He ducked behind cover himself, shouted, “fire in the hole!” and mashed the initiator.

BOOM!
The concussion in the corridor was head-splitting, and had it not been for the mercenaries’ active hearing protection they’d all be deaf. Wade moved forward first, checking his shot. The door, mangled and twisted, barely hung on by one bent hinge. Wade booted it once, then twice, then a third time, which broke it free and sent it clattering down the stairs below. “We’re through!” he announced.

Without missing a beat, Marcus and Halifax rounded the corner, guns up, and headed down the narrow stairwell. Lights flickered in the aftermath of the blast, and the corridor was filled with smoke. Even with vision enhancement, it was hard to see.

Tanaka’s voice crackled in Marcus’ ear as he made his way carefully down the stairs. “This is strange. We’re encountering almost no resistance. The two men we’ve dropped are still incapacitated, and there’s been almost no sign of anyone else.”

“The building went into an automatic lockdown when we breached,” Halifax said, breathing heavily in his mask. “And it’s the night shift. Probably only had a couple Peacekeepers on desk duty. More will come, lads, so keep your wits about you. The whole town knows we’re here now.”

“This is Overwatch,” Devree said breathlessly. “The whole town lit up when you guys breached. People are mostly staying indoors, but the feed from the ship shows multiple personnel on foot, headed our way.”

“We’re in the detention center,” Marcus said, static fuzzing over his transmission.

“Roger,” Devree acknowledged. “Extraction Team, now would be a good time!”

Mazer Broadbent responded. “Understood. Extraction team moving.” Kilometers away, at the outskirts of the spaceport, the
Andromeda
’s security officer and another volunteer from the crew sped toward town in a ground van they had rented from the traders. At the same time, Captain Blackwood was running her crew through the final checks for a short-notice emergency launch. The powerful fusion reactor of the
Andromeda
was running hot, ready to lift the ship into the safety of space at a moment’s notice.

Down in the subterranean detention center, Marcus and his team found themselves shrouded in darkness and smoke. They hit their vision enhancement as they came around a dogleg in the corridor. He gasped aloud as a dumpy Peacekeeper, mostly clad in ill-fitting riot armor, crashed into him coming the other way. The startled colonist dropped the helmet he hadn’t yet put on as he tried to bring his carbine to bear, but Marcus grabbed the barrel, shoved it aside, and cracked the constable upside the head with his flechette gun. Before the Peacekeeper could recover, Marcus shoved him back a bit and hit him with a full-on butt-stroke from his weapon. The Peacekeeper’s weapon clattered to the floor as he collapsed against a wall, coughing and wheezing.

Wade slung his flechette gun full of less-lethal rounds. He faced the injured colonist, kicked his carbine away, and leveled his big 12mm revolver at the man’s face. “Stay down!” That gun was loaded with
especially
lethal rounds, and the dazed jailer gaped at it wide-eyed. He raised his hands slowly and didn’t move.

Across the detention center, Marcus and Halifax had located a bewildered Cargomaster Kimball. They handed the spacer a respirator mask through the bars of his cell as they struggled with the door controls, trying to figure out how to let him out. He might have to run, and Opal’s thick atmosphere made aerobic activity difficult if you weren’t used to it. Wade marched the injured jailer over at gunpoint and sat him down in his work station. It took a couple of prods with his big sidearm, but the Peacekeeper relented and shakily tapped the controls.