Rich Man's War (20 page)

“More or less,” Vanessa answered, watching the little holographic display projected by the bandage’s circuits. “Probably have a limp until he sees a doctor.”

Gritting his teeth, Tanner huffed, “Hooray for modern medicine.”

“Where are we going?” asked Sanjay from the front seat. He drove like a madman through streets lined mostly with houses and lower buildings than the neighborhood they’d just escaped.

“Away from here,” said Booker.

“Yeah, but—“

“We’re going the right way. The spaceport is only a few dozen kilometers out. If we’re lucky, we can get there before
Argent
lifts off and hitch a ride.”

“Won’t there be bad guys around the spaceport?” Sanjay pointed out.

“Captain said there’s fighting underway, yeah, but I don’t know where we might find another ride home. We’ll see when we get there. Might have to shoot our way through.”

“This your plan all along, Lieutenant?” asked Vanessa.

“Pretty much. I’m open to suggestions if you have a better idea.”

“No, it’s good,” she replied. She focused most of her attention on her patient.

“What?” Tanner scowled.

“I’m sorry?” she asked.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Vanessa hesitated, but then seemed to disregard her concerns. She tilted her head toward his injured knee. “I guess it’s nice to see you’re a mere mortal like the rest of us after all.”

Tanner opened his mouth for an exasperated reply but never got it out. A sudden explosion outside the rover interrupted him. It lifted the rover several inches off the ground on one corner, peppering the windows and hull with debris.

“Aw, fuck, that tank is back!” shouted Sanjay. He put the rover through a hard right turn and pushed the accelerator to the floor, then wrenched the vehicle to the left again as soon as he rounded the corner. “Shit!” he yelled out, weaving left and right to avoid the fleeing civilians he found in his path.

Tanner sat up and watched as the locals scattered. His eyes swept the truck for his rifle, but Vanessa had already grabbed it. All he found within reach was the hunk of vehicle security circuitry that Sanjay had slagged and his combat jacket. Tanner snatched the jacket and sat up to throw it over his shoulders. The jammer that Booker had confiscated from the sniper and a few other bits of gear fell from within one pocket to clatter to the floor by his seat.

Vanessa leaned over Tanner and fired his rifle, blasting through the rear w
indow at something behind them.

“What good will that do?” he asked. “You won’t make a dent.”

“Depends on how experienced the tankers are,” Vanessa explained as the vehicle swerved hard, breaking her line of fire. “Most people flinch when someone shoots at them. And it makes me feel better.”

Tanner couldn’t fault her for that.
I’d rather shoot back than just sit here, too
.

Sanjay drove on, then suddenly put the rover through a hard turn punctuated by another particle beam blast
. “Shit, there’s the other one!” he yelled. Tanner caught a glimpse of it as they rolled past the new pursuer emerging from another side street.

“They could probably overtake us if they wanted,” noted Vanessa. “Why haven’t they—?”

As if in answer to her question, one of the hovering tanks shot forward in a sudden burst of speed. It tilted forward to allow the main gun to dip low enough for a decent shot, but all that the effort produced was a short, smoking trench dug through the middle of the street. Recognizing the move as an attempt to ram more than a try for a point-blank shot, Sanjay braked and spun hard. Though the tank’s anti-grav systems and computer-assisted controls made for excellent handling, its driver was not quite up to the task; the hovering tank turned but couldn’t slow down quickly enough to avoid crashing into a two-story house nearby.

The lost mom
entum left the rover open for a shot from the other tank. Once more, Sanjay acted just in time, slamming down on the accelerator, racing past the tank and swerving to evade the blast from the twin anti-personnel guns atop its turret. Before the tank could follow, Sanjay rolled between a pair of houses and through their back yards. Environmental control pylons and lawn furniture flew everywhere as the rover battered away any small object in its path. Soon, Sanjay had the vehicle back out onto a clear street, but knew pursuit would catch up fast.

“XO, how many more chaff grenades have you got?” Sanjay asked.

“I’m fresh out.”

“Shit. Hold on,” Sanjay warned, putting the rover through
further sharp weaving just before another particle beam shot past them. Again, he made a hard turn at the nearest corner. “Y’know, if they use the missiles on those things, we’re fucked.”

“I can’t believe they haven’t tagged us already,” said Vanessa.

“Me neither,” confessed Sanjay. “Must be on manual targeting.”

“Sanjay, just pretend like you’re running from the police,” suggested Tanner.

“Got a lot of experience with that, Malone?”

“I will after I get my hands on the guy who decided not to let us evacuate this rock early.”

“You and me both. XO, am I going the right way anymore?”

“I don’t know, I’m trying to track too many things. Tanner! You up to handling comms for us? I’ve got to navigate.”

“Sure,” Tanner grunted. He fired up the communications interface on the holocom on his wrist. With a few swipes of his fingers, he joined a channel with their ship. “
Joan of Arc
, this is Malone, do you read?”

“We’ve got you, Malone,” came Stan’s voice. “We’re coming in over the consulate for a rooftop pick-up now. No hostiles in sight. Marines all back inside. Stand by.”

Tanner glanced up as Vanessa fired his rifle out the back again.
Nope. No hostiles where you are
.
All the hostility is focused on us.

* * *

“That invasion force is about to become the least of your problems, kid,” Casey snarled. Despite being fully preoccupied by the stresses of their own tasks, several of the bridge crew visibly cringed. The captain had a singularly intimidating voice. Though only a few specific officers on the ship knew the truth about him, no one who’d met the man doubted that he was fully capable of murder.

The young Hashemite officer on Casey’s screen quickly came to much the same conclusion, but he at least didn’t have to share space on a ship with him. “Captain,” said the spaceport officer in flawless English, “we have several battles within the spaceport right now! Surely you can see this! The enemy had at least one of their ships already here, maybe more. If I open the
checkpoints between your ship and your assembled passengers, they will be exposed to great danger. If you will only wait for us to secure the spaceport, we can—“

“You and I both know you can’t hold this port,” interrupted Casey. “You think the enemy would attack here without enough people to take the place? Look at your map, for fuck’s sake! You have too much territory to hold and not enough troops to do it.”

His assessment wasn’t wrong. An overhead map of the spaceport floated near Casey with markers for known firefights and security threats. As with most similar facilities on developed worlds, the spaceport sprawled across several square kilometers. Though much of the layout allowed for wide open spaces for ships the size of
Argent
and larger vessels, it also made for numerous internal choke points.

Only two such points concerned Casey. They lay between the landing zone occupied by
Argent
and the designated assembly area for the majority of Archangel’s civilians. Things at that site had gone swimmingly up until now. The consulate had foreign service people on site around the clock for the last few weeks to make sure someone would be there to oversee collection, take care of head-counts and other such crowd control, and apparently they’d done a damn good job. Now the only problem lay in getting those refugees from point A to point B.

Casey bristled at the thought of putting his life on the line for the sake of a couple thousand tourists, expats and other worthless fucks from Archangel. The thought of not even pulling off the job had him ready to strangle someone.

“I have armed security teams of my own,” Casey growled. “Get your guys out of their way and let them retrieve the civilians themselves and we won’t have any problems. Maybe my guys will take out a few of those attacking assholes along the way. But buddy, if you don’t get this shit moving, I will open fire on this spaceport myself. This boat might not be a military ship, but I goddamn guarantee you I have more than enough firepower to waste that fucking control tower you’re sitting in.”

“You’re insane,” the officer blinked. “You would never make it off world!”

“Who’s gonna stop me? All those balls of fire raining from the sky are the remains of your local defense forces, kid! And it won’t make any difference to
you
if I make it off world or not when your ashes are floating around the spaceport!”

The officer swallowed hard. He looked away from his screen, probably hoping to get someone senior to him to take over this issue, but found no
such help available. “Captain, you will be sending your people through the shooting! Many will be hurt!”

“That’s my problem, not yours,” Casey pressed. “You let me decide on acceptable losses. Just unlock those check points and get your people out of my way.”

“I cannot—“

“God dammit, have it your way. Tactical!” he called out. “Target the control tower!”

“Sir?” stammered the man at the fire control station across from Casey’s command chair. “We can’t fire on a civilian—“

“Mother
fucker
!” Casey roared. He rose from his seat to storm over to the tactical station a few meters away. The crewman at the station stood as he saw the captain approach, clearly unsure what he would do about his predicament. Casey had not a shred of doubt, which anyone could recognize it in his voice. “You will follow orders or I will pitch you off this bridge with my bare hands!”

“But sir, that’s a civilian—!”

“You’re relieved!”

“But I—!”

Casey’s fist rammed straight up into the man’s gut, leaving him crumpled on the floor in a winded, helpless heap. He then shoved the fallen man out of his way and keyed in the commands to assume full weapons control. His eyes swept the bridge.

Every officer stared back at him. Some had the visors of their helmets down, but others did not. Casey saw nothing but silent surprise. No one stepped up to challenge him, let alone drew a weapon or tried to defend their fallen shipmate. Not the ops officer, nor the comms officer, nor the pair of armed security specialists at the bridge entry hatch. No one.

He took for granted that many of these people had military experience. At the very least, they’d all been vetted by Archangel Intelligence for service on the ship. A couple of them probably had training and experience in combat. None of them stopped him. He didn’t see loyalty, to be sure, but he saw an understanding of the situation.

He was the captain of a ship in the middle of a crisis. He had to be obeyed.

With a few commands on his holocom, Casey routed the spaceport control comms screen to the weapons station. “Okay, asshole, I’m done discussing this.” His hands turned to the weapons controls. “That little buzz you’re probably hearing is the sound of your tower sensors realizing they’ve been targeted.”

“Stop!” blurted out the control officer. In the background, several people began to cry out in alarm as they heard precisely the warning buzz Casey described. “Al
l right! We will open the check points! Have your security team open a communications relay on this channel,” he instructed hurriedly, sending along computer commands. “Just cancel your targeting solution!”

Casey’s eyes narrowed. Clearly the port officer was worried about keeping his people at their stations. Between all the security feeds and their bird’s eye view of the spaceport, they probably already knew everything was going to hell. Casey revoked his
targeting commands, turning
Argent’s
small turrets away from the tower. In truth, he could have targeted and destroyed the tower without using active signals to aim his weapons, but the technique served as a meaningful shot across the bow.

“Thank you,” he nodded, his gravelly voice dropping a few notches. “You’ll hear from my team.
Argent
out.” Then his eyes swept the bridge again. “Anyone else gonna have a problem following orders? No? Then someone get this dick off my bridge. I’ll handle tactical myself.”

One of the security guards came over to haul the fallen officer off his knees and off the bridge, but Casey paid it no mind. He patched himself into the tactical comms net and signaled Hawkins. “Landing team, bridge,” he said. “We’re dropping the gangway now. Control and I have come to an understanding. I’m sending you a comms channel for their security teams. Be advised, you might have to shoot a few fuckers to get this job done. I recommend extreme prejudice.”

“Acknowledged,” came the response. “We’re on our way.”