Pax Imperia (The Redemption Trilogy) (5 page)

However, these were not the high-pitched, spitting whine of a pulse rifle, but the
crack, crack
of a bolt of lightning in a storm. First one, then another, in close succession. This was followed a few moments later by the
thud
of a body impacting the ground from a great height. Cautiously Jon peered over the rim of the upturned table, spotting the motionless body lying a dozen meters away, the pulse rifle twisted and broken at his feet. He knew with absolute certainty the man was dead. After all, if the fall had not killed him, the fact that a good portion of his chest was missing confirmed that he was dead.

Jon heard a pair of heavy boots walking across the uneven surface of the square and, craning his neck, observed Gunny approach the body of the shooter, the large rifle looking like a child’s toy in his huge arms. Stepping out from behind his temporary barricade, Jon approached the Marine Sergeant, as Gunny professionally kicked the remains of the rifle away from the body. Not that Jon thought that the dead man would have much need of it.

“Good shooting Gunny,” Jon congratulated him.

“He was well hidden,” Gunny replied in a grudging tone of respect for the dead assassin. “I only managed to pinpoint his position after he got off his first shot. You okay?”

“I’m fine, he missed,” Jon replied. It was only then that he remembered he had not been alone at the table. Glancing around, he cursed out aloud, when he realised that maybe the assassin had not missed after all. Jack Finch was lying across the square, his eyes open, staring sightlessly in their direction, as if accusing them for his death.

“You want me to check for a pulse?” Gunny offered, motioning towards the other body.

“No need Gunny, you need to have a chest, or at the very least a heart to have a pulse. He doesn’t have either. Not anymore.”

“Perhaps he has a data-chip on him, you know like the last one. I read your report,” Gunny admitted, as if embarrassed to be confessing he did occasionally glance at his memos.

Jon nodded his head in agreement, as that was actually a good idea. Approaching Jack Finch’s body, he quickly checked his clothes but found no data-chip. In actual fact the youth did not have anything on him, no identification, money, datapads—nothing. As if he purposefully didn’t want anything found on him that could identify him or his mysterious master.

Sighing in frustration, Jon stood up, glancing up at the sun, which was already quickly climbing into the sky. He shook his head, thinking how badly this day had already gone and the wedding ceremony had not even started yet. “We’ll take him back with us,” Jon stated out aloud, annoyed. “Perhaps Jason can find out something from the body.” Although Jon knew Jason was going to be less than impressed to be presented with yet another corpse. Following the last incident with Admiral Harkov, he had made a desperate plea to the Commander to try and keep them alive long enough for his intelligence team to interrogate them first.

“Sure, you can carry him then Commander,” Gunny replied easily. “I’ve already got my hands full,” he added patting his rifle fondly.

“What?” Jon cried out in disbelief. “I cannot carry him. For crying out loud Gunny, in a little under an hour I’m meant to be getting married. Again,” he added under his breath. “You remember who to? That princess, currently the Confederation President? How do you think it will look if I turned up at the wedding ceremony with a dead body slung over my shoulder?”

“You could always claim, that he was some previous lover—”

Whatever Gunny was going to say next was abruptly cut off, as for the second time that morning, the high pitched whine of two pulse rifle bolts filled the air, the shots hitting Gunny squarely in the chest, spinning him around. The third bolt, coming soon after, would have taken his head off, had Jon not a moment before slammed into Gunny’s side, knocking him to the ground and going down with him. Hence the third shot, instead, hit Jon squarely in the back as they both hit the floor, hard, in a pile of entangled arms and legs.

Lying on top of Gunny, Jon frantically tore at the other man’s blackened shirt, sighing with relief when, instead of finding burnt flesh, he found the tactical armour they had all donned prior to boarding the shuttle.

“Commander,” Gunny uttered in a pained voice. “I would like to report that there seems to be more than one shooter.”

“You think?” Jon replied sarcastically, relieved that Gunny appeared to be unhurt. He had spent far too much time over the years burying friends and loved ones. Meanwhile he fingered the hole in the back of his own jacket angrily; he had to stop wearing his favourite jackets to these sorts of meetings, otherwise soon he was going to run out of them.

Glancing around, Jon noticed they fortunately had fallen amongst a number of table and chairs, obviously spoiling their attackers’ aim. However, the fact he could not spot any of their assailants did not bode well. Glancing up, he confirmed his worst fears, as he could see the barrel of a rifle slowly appear from one of the upper balcony windows. As expected, the assailants had taken the high ground and now had a clear, one-hundred-and-eighty-degree field of fire into the square. There was nowhere for them to retreat to.

They were trapped.

Making use of the brief respite from more weapons fire, Jon took the opportunity to once again kick-over the nearest table, sliding some chairs against it to make a temporary barricade. Out of the corner of his eye, he observed Gunny doing likewise. This lull in gunfire did not last long, as their attackers realised they were still alive and renewed fire with gusto. The air seemed to suddenly ignite with a firestorm of pulse rifle fire. Rolling himself into a tight ball, to make as smaller target as possible, Jon leaned into his makeshift shield. However, he could see it would not last long, as the stream of energy weapon fire was already starting to eat away at the table.

“Gunny,” Jon shouted over the noise of the weapons fire. “Pistol?” He had purposefully not brought one for himself, on the off chance the informant wanted to check him for weapons. After all, there was little point attending the meeting only to scare his informant off before it had even started.

Gunny, meanwhile, was trying to bring his large rifle to bear on the attackers, but their high elevation and his need to stay sheltered behind his barrier made this difficult. Checking to make sure the safety was on, he tossed a pistol in the Commander’s direction.

Unfortunately it fell a couple of feet short of its intended destination.

Jon just shot Gunny an incredulous look, to which he replied with a nonchalant shrug before turning back and trying to get off a few shots at their attackers. Cursing Gunny’s inability to throw straight, Jon rolled out from cover, grasped the pistol by the grip and, in the same motion, flicked the safety off. With his back now to the floor, facing upwards, Jon drew a bead on the nearest attacker a couple of meters above him and pulled the trigger.

The bullets flew straight and true, tossing both the attacker and weapon back into the apartment, but the assailant reappeared only a moment later. Obviously they were not the only ones wearing tactical armour.

With a startled curse, Jon quickly rolled back under his temporary cover, wondering if the day could get any worse. This was quickly answered when, in a brief lull of the enemy gunfire, something bounced off his temporary shield and dropped at his feet. Jon had handled enough grenades in his life to be able to instantly recognise one.

“Shit!” he cried, making a desperate grab for it, moments before it exploded.

*****

Jon snatched up the grenade that fell at his feet and tossed the grenade back over his temporary barrier.  It landed, with a
plop,
in the small fountain in the middle of the square. Exploding only a moment later, showering the square with water and small pieces of shrapnel. Glancing back up, he noticed the fountain was completely gone and all that remained was a small hollow in the ground. He hoped it had been a replica and not an original. There was a sharp pain in his forehead and he reached up, wiping away a smear of blood from his face. Obviously one of the fragments had caught him a glancing blow.

Looking to his side, Jon was relieved to see that Gunny appeared unhurt, their makeshift barricades having protected them from the majority of the flying fragments. The temporary reprieve was cut short when, a moment later, their attackers’ gunfire returned with a vengeance. Cursing, he curled up into a ball, once again trying to bury himself underneath the pile of tables and chairs he had formed around him.

Where the hell were the rest of their squad?

However, that question was soon answered. With the sound of breaking glass, the apartment block opposite disappeared in a ferocious volley of automatic gunfire and smoke, as the marines opened fire with their heavy assault rifles.

One by one the apartment windows the assailants were using for cover exploded, sending glass, masonry and shrapnel flying everywhere. For a minute nothing else could be heard but the continuous sounds of automatic gunfire echoing around the square, trapped just as Jon and Gunny had been. Finally Jon had to lower his pistol and cover his ears as the noise grew to a crushing crescendo.

Then suddenly all was silent.

The only sound was the tinkling of the spent shell cases, as they landed on the cobbled paving of the square. Jon was astonished at the size of the pile. Meanwhile everything else was silent, their assailants either dead or having departed. The brick façade of the apartment block opposite, which had once shined a pristine white, was now littered with bullet holes. All the balcony windows had long since been blown out. Broken glass and torn window curtains, blowing in the breeze, were now all that remained.

Picking up the pistol that he had dropped earlier, Jon cautiously got to his feet, gingerly stepping around what remained of his temporary barricade. He surveyed the square, agape in astonishment at the destruction that had been wrought in such a short time. The local residents were going to be in for a serious shock when they returned home later in the day. It would take some major renovation to fix this mess. Jon winced internally at the thought of trying to explain it all to Sofia.

Sofia. The wedding!

“I am
so
dead,” Jon muttered aloud.

“Look plenty alive to me, Commander,” Gunny quipped, giving him a quick glance to reassure himself of the fact.

“No, I mean that I am late for my wedding.”

“Oh, that,” Gunny replied. “I’m sure Sofia will understand when you explain how we had to fight off at least a dozen heavily armed, determined assassins.”

Jon just gave him a sceptical look.

“Then again, perhaps not,” Gunny admitted. “Rather you than me.” Slinging his rifle back across his shoulder, he headed for the nearest exit from the square.

Chapter Two

The Indomitable, Destroyer, Confederation 12
^th
Fleet

None of the crew had seen Captain Harrison for the best part of three days. He had explained his absence by saying that he had been suffering from flu. While modern medicine could do miracles, able to practically bring somebody back from the dead, they still had not yet invented a cure for the common cold. Instead, doctors recommended plenty of bed rest and lots of fluids.

With the ship in a stable orbit and many of the crew on shore leave, which had been approved a week earlier, the ship was staffed with only a skeleton crew. The few crew that the Captain did pass on his way to the bridge noted his sick appearance, seeing the pallor of his face, dark rings under his eyes from lack of sleep and the obvious trembling of his hands. Fortunately, as the Captain made no effort to converse with any of the crew, he had little need to perpetuate the lie regarding his health. It was true Captain Harrison was not a well man, but what the crew did not know was that flu was far from the true cause.

Stepping through the door, Harrison was displeased to observe that his Executive Officer was on the bridge. He had approved the Executive Officer’s request for shore leave only yesterday and had expected him to be long gone. The two of them had known each other for many years, having graduated from the Naval Academy together. Harrison counted him as one of his closest friends and, therefore, had wanted him to be out of the way so as to play no part in what was about to happen. In addition, his friend’s presence would make his next orders more difficult to be carried out.

As he approached, the Executive Officer hurriedly vacated his chair and Harrison gratefully sat down, unsure if his legs would have continued to support his weight for much longer. Always in the past this seat had reassured and comforted him with the knowledge such a powerful ship was his to command. Today, though, it felt suffocating, the weight of command pressing heavily down on him. “Status report?” he enquired, disinterestedly, as he already knew what the answer was going to be.

“Nothing to report Captain,” the Executive Officer replied. “We are still in a stable orbit around Eden Prime, most systems are powered down, undergoing regular maintenance. As you know, most of the crew are on shore leave attending the wedding at the Senate. The celebrations are scheduled to get underway very soon.”

Harrison nodded, barely hearing the response from his Executive Officer. Taking a deep breath in preparation for what he had to do next, he queried, “What is the status of our weapons’ systems?”

His Executive Officer looked up in surprise at the unexpected question, as they were in orbit around Eden Prime, maintaining close formation with the rest of the 12
^th
Confederation Fleet. What possible reason did the Captain have to need to know the status of their weapons’ systems? However, he was still the Captain, so the Executive Officer replied promptly, “All weapon systems are on-line, but currently powered down. I do not understand—?”

“Activate them. Now,” Harrison interrupted his Executive Officer.