The rain scoured the streets clear of much of the crowds long before the UNAF forces did.
‘Funny, isn’t it,’ Sev said as the three of them watched the grey troop transports roll down Independence Boulevard from the executive meeting room on the third floor. ‘All that anger, all that emotion… Now they’ve given up and gone home because of a bit of rain.’
It was a strange light, brighter than dusk, but darker than evening, a wan beige light as though their Mantix visors had activated amber filters. The air felt charged with electricity. Summer thunder rumbled through the atmosphere, while rain swept through the near-empty streets.
The arrival of on-world UNAF forces had not come as a surprise. Following to Toshe’s call-to-arms, they had used their personal drones, as well as the Governorate VI, to monitor the conclusion of the brief civil war and the subsequent journey of the victors through the city. Seditious, Ariadnian elements had won out in the end, as they had predicted, but a couple of things had still played out in their favour.
‘Nothing heavier than man-portable ordnance,’ Sev said, reading through his drone scan readouts. ‘Some assault lasers and high-ex, but nothing that can punch a hole straight through these walls.’
‘We might be in luck here,’ Kgosi said once his Mantix electronic warfare pod had cracked the troop transports’ meagre refractive shielding. ‘Ten, fifteen… twenty-five… fifty. Fifty men. They sent one platoon.’
‘Must have taken a pounding,’ Vasco murmured. The transports were basic; just large, boxy APCs, each sitting on six airless smart-tyres, their hulls set to default urban camouflage grey. Each had a top-mounted unmanned RRG and a few sponson-mounted light assault lasers, but nothing that could get through the reinforced walls of the Governorate compound. They would have to debark and storm the building, and that meant choke-points, closed corridors and killing zones. It was not an attractive prospect for hardened SPECWAR operatives, let alone colonial draftees.
‘There are more,’ Sev murmured, scanning through a live map of Theseus. ‘They’re spreading out through the city. Looks like some kind of martial law effort. Still, only a few thousand.’ He paused. ‘Where are the rest of them? They can’t all have been killed.’
‘Could have deserted,’ Kgosi said. ‘When do you think the last time anyone out here actually fired a weapon? Ten thousand reservists probably got a taste of blood and bolted.’
Vasco grunted. ‘Doesn’t matter. These guys mean business, which means we mean business. K, get on that RRG. Sev, start in the south wing and run a mobile defence.’
‘You got it.’
They both left. Vasco scanned the approaching UNAF forces and found out who their CO was; a local man called Halim Emmanuel. He was a lieutenant.
‘Lieutenant Emmanuel,’ he said, hijacking the traitors’ platoon-wide comlink. He made sure that every man and woman in the APCs could hear him. ‘This is Captain Adrian Vasco, EFFECT. You are approaching a UN exclusion zone with what I believe to be hostile intentions. You should know that my men are refraction-shielded and well-armed. You, conversely, have nothing that can penetrate these walls. You are carrying SIRs with no chemprop backup and two light assault lasers. Your Mantix is two generations out of date. If you attempt to enter this compound, you and your troops will die.
‘We have no intention of harming any of you. We simply wish to leave. But we will defend ourselves with lethal force if we have to. Please; disperse. There is no need for bloodshed tonight.’
If his words had had any intimidating effect on the approaching forces, then it was not obvious from Lieutenant Emmanuel’s tone. ‘Captain Vasco,’ he replied. He did not sound like the deranged, bitter psychopath Vasco had imaged. Instead he sounded reasonable, almost genial, and mildly amused that Vasco thought they had a chance in hell. ‘I agree; there is no need for bloodshed. If you and your men surrender your arms and step outside, no harm will befall you.’
‘Bullshit!’ Kgosi snapped over the private link.
‘Lieutenant, please be assured that we have no intention of leaving this building,’ Vasco said firmly.
There was a pause. ‘Captain, please come off our platoon bandwidth. I would like to talk to you privately.’
Vasco did, but kept Sev and Kgosi in the loop.
‘All right, look,’ Emmanuel said. ‘I’m not an idiot, Captain, and I won’t treat you like one either. You and I both know that three of you can’t hold out against fifty of us. Even if you kill ten men apiece, you’ll still die. By the same token, I don’t want to lose half my men either, and as you’ve already identified,s I probably will thanks to the retrograde tech that the UN has left us with. So let’s make a deal.’ He paused, but it was only to stifle a deep, booming cough that seemed to rumble the pits of his lungs. ‘Give us Yashego, and we’ll let you exfiltrate in peace. You and your men in Minos.’
Vasco sighed. ‘Lieutenant, I appreciate your attempt at pragmatism. But you know I can’t allow that to happen. This is not a negotiation. For one thing, you have no authority to negotiate.’
‘Captain—’
‘Thank you, Lieutenant. That will be all.’ Vasco cut the feed. ‘K, get your drone ready with directed-EMP. The second they start advancing, hit them with it.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Kgosi replied. ‘I’ll probably only be able to get one. These transports are old but they still have anti-electronic warfare countermeasures.’
‘I know. Sev, you do the same. See if we can take out twenty guns before they even start.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He watched through the arched windows as the line of troop transports idled along Independence Boulevard. Most of the civilians in the vicinity had dispersed, though a few diehard protestors remained, spectating like they were at a hypersled race. For most, the combination of thunderstorms and the chance of being shot had been enough to return home—for the time being.
After a few minutes of indecision, the transports began to move again. Vasco would have given his right arm at that point for some precision orbital strikes to simply wipe these clowns off the map, but he did not have that luxury.
‘Some are moving east. They’re going to surround the compound,’ Kgosi said.
‘All right. Both of you hit the lead two APCs with EMP. I want us to deal the first blow.’
Above the convoy, Kgosi and Sev’s personal drones, small, bird-sized rapid intervention drones that could be slotted into a Mantix holster, targeted the old troop transports and fired their directed-EMP beams. The caged headlamps on both vehicles immediately went out, and they rolled to a stop as every electrical circuit within the invisible cone of electromagnetic pulse shorted and died.
‘Yeah! Take that you motherfuckers!’ Kgosi shouted over the comlink. Even Vasco allowed himself a thin smile. He could only imagine the chaos and confusion inside the APC holds as everyone’s railguns were turned into expensive clubs and their Mantix suits became heavy, lifeless prisons of medieval plate armour. Most modern arms and armour had some EMP resistance, either through shielding or backups; but the junk the Ariadnians had been issued by UNAF left a lot to be desired.
It didn’t take long for the firing to start. The laser sponsons and pintle-mount RRGs of the three functioning APCs all opened up at the same time, dousing the concrete perimeter wall and the armoured wall of the Governorate building itself in kaleidoscopic fire. It sounded for all the world like a sudden blitz of hailstones. The glass, reinforced with diamond, barely cracked as the rail rounds bounced off them, and the light assault lasers simply refracted into harmless multi-coloured beams. The perimeter wall, however, did not fare so well. After a minute of concentrated fire, large sections of it were bubbling, molten pools, hissing in the rain—and that was where it hadn’t been pulverised into dust by the hailstorm of tungsten rounds.
‘Well we knew that wasn’t going to last for long,’ Sev said, inspecting the damage.
‘How are you two doing?’ Vasco asked Jennifer Brock.
‘We’re fine,’
she replied tightly.
Vasco turned his attentions back to the front of the compound. The fire died away. One of the APCs was driving round to the east; the other two were surmounting the rubble of the walls. The two transports which had been disabled had trundled into the wall to the north of the compound. The first of the occupants, looking somewhat relieved at having been rendered combat-ineffective, climbed out of the rear hatch and into the rain.
‘Are we weapons free?’ Kgosi asked.
Vasco pursed his lips. These men and women were traitors to the UN, and would happily kill the three of them. But they were also fellow humans, and had been dealt a lousy hand. Vasco wanted to avoid a massacre if he could.
‘Lieutenant Emmanuel,’ he said, hijacking the man’s comlink again. It shouldn’t have been so frighteningly straightforward, but he had the very latest codebreaking suites, whilst Emmanuel’s encryption software was embarrassingly rudimentary. Compared to the Veigis worlds, Ariadne really was the land that time forgot.
‘Captain Vasco,’ Emmanuel replied, his voice tight with anger.
‘Pull your men back,’ Vasco said in his most commanding tone. ‘That EMP was the only nonlethal force I am going to use to protect this compound. We pose no threat to you and your men. If you insist on pressing this attack, you will be responsible for the bloodshed that follows.’
‘You are responsible!’ Emmanuel suddenly shouted. ‘You shouldn’t even be here! We will—’
Vasco cut the feed. ‘All right, K, fair warning. See if you can lid a couple of them.’
‘Fuckin’ A,’ Kgosi replied.
Vasco watched from the window as the APCs front hatches decoupled and hit the ground, and the first Mantix-clad troops rushed forward across the grass. There was a keening whine as the RRG bucked into action, and a stream of hypervelocity slugs tore into one, two, three of the emerging troops, like someone was high-pressure hosing them with liquid gold. The larger calibre of round, coupled with the sheer rate of fire, put all three soldiers on the ground, with two definitely killed and one with so many broken ribs they were as good as dead. Those troops that made it out alive sprinted for the compound for all they were worth; those who didn’t remained trapped in the APC, too terrified to brave the hail of fire.
Once again, rail rounds and lasers raked across the front of Government House, mostly concentrated to where Kgosi was. It was heinously amateurish, but even an amateurish laser beam could carve a brain in half.
‘Ah, shit,’ the corporal said as he was forced to yank the RRG off its impromptu firing step and withdraw into the building. Some of the windows were starting to crack now. The building’s armour plating would not last forever.
‘Emmanuel, enough!’ Vasco tried one last time, but now there was no response at all. He shrugged; his conscience was clear. ‘All right, everyone weapons free; we are shooting to kill. Sev, get downstairs with that magma pulse and waste anyone who tries to make it up.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sev replied, and Vasco tracked the man on his Mantix HUD as he relocated. He also checked that Brock, Rhodes and Yashego were still where they had left them; they were. They didn’t look like they’d moved at all.
Vasco pulled a microgrenade from a webbing pouch, activated the adherent strip, and slapped it on to one of the north-facing windows of the meeting room. It detonated, punching a hole thirty centimetres wide in the diamond-reinforced glass, and he stuck his railgun out of the fresh aperture and laid down some discouraging fire into the back of the open APC. Then, as the troop hatch started to close, he yanked one of his micromortars from his waist and put one of the high-explosive antipersonnel rounds plum into the middle of the hold. Immediately, his warm-body scanner removed another four soldiers dead or CI.
‘I’m tracking three, in the lobby,’ Sev said. ‘Want me to hit them with the high-ex, Chief?’
‘I’d rather save those if we can,’ Vasco replied, dialling into his personal drone view. His HUD was overlaid with a top-down map of the compound and surrounding environs. Of the initial fifty, they had already taken twenty-seven out of the equation. ‘Hit them with the pulser.’
‘Roger.’
Vasco cancelled the drone view and switched to Sev’s helmet cam. He watched as the man, fully refraction shielded and audio-damped, moved silently and swiftly down the stairs to the ground floor, then down the south wing into the entrance hall. There, the three troopers who had made it in from the now-dead APC were clustered anxiously in cover, behind one of the hall’s pillars. They had no means to detect Sev.
‘Say goodnight,’ Sev said, and shot each trooper with a chest-full of molten metal. The magma pulser was a tank-killer, capable of severing heavy composite turrets, and the troopers simply exploded into fragments of armour and clouds of blood vapour. It was horrible, destructive overkill, but Vasco wanted to send a message to the rest of the UNAF platoon. Most, if not all of them would have seen their comrades die via the same way Vasco was watching Sev kill them. The psychological effects would be profound—battle winning, even.
The effect was instantaneous. The other APC which was in the courtyard, with a desultory cloud of fire from its linked guns, raced back towards Independence Boulevard to join Lieutenant Emmanuel’s. A brief foray into the vehicle’s comlink bandwidth revealed something of the terror and panic which he had instilled. All three APCs then retreated to half a klick down the boulevard and stayed there.
Vasco knew as a military strategist he should have been thrilled at the withdrawal—though it was almost certainly temporary—and as a human being he should have been happy to prolong his own survival for at least another few hours. But as the citizen of a civilisation locked in bitter total war with the provar, all he felt was despair at having to kill fellow human beings.
He set his drone to a passive scan of the UNAF frequencies, and retreated back into the room. He pulled a chair out from under the desk and sat down heavily.
‘All right, guys,’ he said to Kgosi and Sev. ‘If you want to catch some sleep, now is the time. ‘We’ve got a long night ahead of us.’