VIPER One: Countervalue

Winter bit hard in Minos. Jarle noted the external temperature on his HUD and added another item to his list of reasons why he was thankful for his armour. He led Akiya and Gibbs along the walkway—its surface heated to avoid the formation of treacherous ice—that ran from the landing pad into the Burrow–Garrett Industries complex as the Manticore’s turbofans slowed to a dull whine. When they reached the door, it stayed closed.

  ‘Motherfucker,’ Jarle seethed. ‘Akiya, see if you can raise someone inside.’

  His irritation ran high. They’d already been given the run-around trying to track down Burrow. They’d been hoping to catch him at home, in the East Side Compound where Minos’s rich and influential invariably had their homes, but Burrow’s secretary had, eventually, confirmed that Carl Burrow, mining magnate, was in his office on the north side of the city. Not that they’d been able to contact the man directly—the secretary had tried to get them to make an appointment, never mind the fact they were broadcasting high-clearance military authorisations.

  And now, a closed door.

  ‘They’re asking if we’re on Burrow’s schedule,’ said Akiya, over the squad band.

  ‘Tell them either they open this damn door, or we’ll do it. They’ll like our way less.’

  There was a pause of a few seconds, then the door slid open to admit them to the top floor lounge that looked out over Minos’s business–industrial district.

  Gibbs shook her head. ‘VIPER, fearlessly defending the UN from corporate bureaucrats.’

  ‘Stow it,’ Jarle growled. Gibbs had done nothing but wear on him her entire posting with VIPER thus far, but they were on the clock, and he didn’t want to burn time giving her the attitude check she needed.

  They marched through the complex and rode a maglift to the seventh floor. It felt odd, marching through a civilian building fully armed and armoured, even with the provari threat that would be there in short order. The place seemed too calm. The few people they encountered were certainly flustered, but still going about their business, no doubt setting in motion BGI’s disaster contingency procedures. The arrival of a Mantix-clad trio in their administration building startled, but didn’t stop them.

  He ignored Burrow’s secretary and marched straight past his desk and into the executive office. Carl Burrow stood up as they entered, surprised. He was a big man, formed of a broad, muscular bulk which a CEO would not have had the time to maintain without significant biotechnological help.

  ‘Carl Burrow?’ Jarle asked through his Mantix helmet speaker.

  ‘What is this?’ The man looked scared, his eyes moving rapidly between the three of them.

  ‘I’m Sergeant Jarle of the UN’s Very Important Person Recovery unit. In light of the provari threat, we have orders to ensure your safety and extract you from Ariadne.’

  ‘Nonsense. The UN knows how vital I am to securing their supply lines here. You need me to…’ He quirked his mouth, looking between the faceless trio in front of him. ‘Things are really that bad?’

  Jarle nodded.

  ‘I heard Yashego saying the UN weren’t coming for us, but I still thought… Well.’ Burrow’s expression went glazed as he consulted his IHD. ‘The war effort will suffer without the facilities here, but the provar certainly aren’t going to get a hold of them.’ He smiled. ‘The UN were smart enough to insist on safeguards to ensure that. Maybe I should have fought harder on that particular issue. Then who knows? They might actually have come to protect us.’

  ‘It is what it is, Mr Burrow, but we really have to move.’

  Burrow looked into Jarle’s blank visor. He paused, cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘What about my family?’

  Jarle just shook his head. That was the mission. No choice.

  Burrow swallowed, shut his eyes, then nodded.

  ‘Is that it?’ said Akiya on the squad band. ‘The guy hears he’s leaving his family to die and he just shrugs it off?

  ‘Frankly, the quicker he accepts it, the better,’ Jarle said. ‘We don’t have time to burn handwringing.’

  They led Burrow out of the office, Jarle in front, Akiya and Gibbs at Burrow’s back. They exited the office, Burrow ignoring his secretary’s panicked questions, and headed for the maglift.

  Burrow stopped short. ‘Wait. James’s office is down this way.’

  ‘James?’ said Jarle.

  ‘James Garrett. My partner, our COO. He runs half of our operations. He’s on the Roster as well. If the UN wants me out, I expect they’ll also want—’ He stopped. ‘You’re not here for him.’

  Jarle grimaced. ‘We have our orders.’

  Burrow took a deep breath. ‘Okay.’

  They were almost at the elevator when a short, goateed man came running after them. ‘Carl! Where are you—what the hell is this?’

  ‘I have to go with them, James,’ Burrow said, apologetically.

  ‘Go?’ Comprehension dawned in Garrett’s eyes. ‘They’re pulling you out? You were just going to leave me here? All your fucking toadying up to the UN finally paid off, then?’

  Burrow bristled at the barb. ‘We’ve always needed them. UN investment practically built this company.’

  Garrett laughed, a sharp, bitter attack. ‘You were always quick to forget your roots. And now, the first sign of danger, you’re taking the quick path out. What about Jane? Does she know you’re going?’

  Burrow said nothing.

  ‘Of course not,’ Garrett sneered. ‘You’re a coward, Carl. Ariadne deserves better than you.’

  Burrow rounded on him angrily. ‘Minos was a shithole. Without the UN money this company brought in, it would still be a shithole. You ‘Ariadne First’ believers were the only ones deluded enough to think that we could do this on our own.’ He pointed up at the sky. ‘Now, it’s time for you to prove it. But I’m taking my ride out of here.’

  The sound of a distant explosion cut through the air. Gibbs dialled up her audio sensors. ‘Railgun fire,’ she said.

  Garrett smiled. ‘Looks like Ariadne decided it was time to take back control.’

  Jarle grabbed Burrow by the shoulder. ‘We need to move, now.’

  Burrow allowed himself to be dragged towards the maglift. ‘I just got a wave from security. UNAF troops are approaching the building.’

  ‘Just what we need,’ said Gibbs.

  ‘Enough,’ snapped Jarle. ‘Do you have contingency plans in place with the garrison? Would you expect them to assign people here in case of an emergency?’

  Burrow shook his head.

  ‘Then we have a problem.’

  Jarle’s comlink pinged. ‘Sergeant Jarle? This is Captain Ali Mathis, UNAF. You and your squad are to stand down immediately.’

  ‘I’m afraid you don’t have the authority to order that, Captain.’

  ‘This comes from UNAF command Minos, Sergeant. Things are nuts here; we need you to cease your operations and help us maintain order until we can execute Ariadne’s defence contingency plans.’

  Jarle muted himself. ‘The hell you do,’ he sneered, before opening the channel again. ‘Captain, our instructions come from outside the local chain of command. We’ll finish our mission; we have our orders.’ Jarle selected the top floor, and the doors slid closed with a ping. The lift silently ascended.

  ‘You have your orders, Sergeant, and I have mine. If you don’t stand down, we have authorisation to—’

  Jarle terminated the link. ‘One Bravo, UNAF HQ has marked us and is trying to interfere with the mission.’

  ‘They shouldn’t even know we’re on world,’ said Akiya.

  ‘I don’t want to get pulled into a firefight with our own side. When we hit the top floor, double time to the V14 and let’s get this done.’

  The lift’s emergency brakes kicked in with a squeal and jerked to a spine-compressing stop. Their Mantix compensated for the force, but it threw Burrow to the floor. ‘It’s locked it down,’ he groaned, scrolling furiously through his IHD. ‘I can’t raise security.’

  ??
?Can you override it?’

  Burrow’s pupils flickered. ‘They’ve cut off my access.’

  ‘Just great,’ said Gibbs.

  ‘Cut the shit. Get that door open. Akiya, cover the opening.’

  Gibbs’s exoskeleton fingers scrabbled for purchase on the doors. ‘Don’t just stand there,’ she said to Akiya. ‘Give me something to work with.’

  ‘Stand clear,’ said Akiya, putting a shot from her Assault Plasma Rifle clean through the doors. Given a handhold, Gibbs’s Mantix was more than enough to lever the doors apart with the groan of grating metal.

  Jarle pulled up a 3D model of the building on his IHD. They’d stopped between floors, the narrow gap Gibbs had opened affording them a carpet-level view of the thirteenth floor. It would be a squeeze in their armour, but they could make it out. Then they’d have to climb another five to make it to the waiting Manticore.

  ‘Looks like there’s a service ladder on the far side of this level,’ said Jarle. It was fortunate that the BGI Headquarters building wasn’t one of the towering megastructures commonly found on the Veigis worlds. It was small enough to still have some nod to manual transitions between floors. When buildings spanned several hundred storeys and maglifts rarely failed, stairs and ladders were often a pointless affectation.

  ‘Gibbs, get up there.’

  She hauled herself through the gap, wriggling as the edge of the doors scraped the outer shell of her Mantix. The rim of the lift doors warped as she pushed against them.

  A high pitched whining sound started up from their right. ‘There are a couple more lifts on the way,’ said Burrow. ‘They’ll be here in about thirty seconds.’

  ‘Gibbs, move faster. We’re fish in a barrel here.’

  With a grunt and a grinding of metal, Gibbs hauled herself clear of the doors, leaving a Mantix handprint on each.

  ‘This is taking too long. Gibbs—I need you to keep our incoming busy. Set them up a nice surprise,’ Jarle said. A few seconds later, munitions detection indicators popped up on his HUD as Gibbs set a couple of microclaymores to cover the elevator bank.

  Jarle threw himself into the gap.

  ‘Ten seconds,’ said Burrow, a tremor in his voice.

  ‘Akiya, you’ll have to stay put. Keep Burrow behind you, and be ready to hit them from the side. On my signal.’

  Jarle twisted and thrutched his way through the narrow gap in the doors, pulling himself free just as the first lift gave a soothing ping. Jarle rolled away, trying to get clear of the explosives’ splash zone. In his tumbling vision, he saw the first of the UNAF troopers step out of the lift, railgun raised. Jarle forced himself to wait a fraction longer, until he heard that second ping.

  ‘Now!’

  The microclaymore blast ripped the first man to shreds. Whatever was left of his hand must have been enough to clench the trigger in its final moment, because as his railgun pinwheeled up, it sprayed a line of tungsten rounds over Jarle and into the ceiling. Those behind him didn’t fare much better, the wave of force and heat pulverizing them against the reinforced back of the maglift.

  The reflected blast wave threw Jarle through one of the partition walls that separated the elevator lobby from a meeting space. It wasn’t painful – comfortably wrapped as he was in Mantix – but it was disorienting. As he tumbled, he saw movement in the back of the near lift, then two close streaks of light as Akiya put a couple of plasma bolts through the side of the elevator.

  ‘Gibbs, sitrep,’ said Jarle as he found his feet.

  ‘We’re clear, Sergeant.’ Her voice was smiling. ‘Nothing left but pieces.’

  Jarle emerged through the hole in the meeting area and saw she was right. The UNAF soldiers’ armour might stop a railgun shot—on a good day—but even the nanogel shock dissipater and ballistic mask hadn’t been enough against the microclaymore. Gibbs’s ordnance had shredded most of their attackers, smearing the lobby and the insides of the elevators with a layer of viscera. Two cauterised, goreless bodies struck a sharp contrast where they’d been put down by Akiya’s APR.

  It had been brazen of them to come up in the lifts. They must have thought they’d had Jarle’s team trapped, or they’d just underestimated VIPER. Still, if the local UNAF contingent were gunning for them, their job just got a lot more difficult.

  ‘All right, let’s get moving. Akiya, give Burrow a hand out.’

  Burrow could fit through the gap much more easily, unencumbered by a bulky suit of power armour, but he paused halfway through when he saw what was left of the UNAF troops.

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘It was them or us, sir, let’s get—’

  The lift they’d been riding gave a distorted ping, and the misshapen doors fought to close.

  ‘Shit,’ said Akiya, throwing her hands up to keep the doors open.

  They must have recalled the lift. ‘Get clear,’ yelled Jarle.

  The lift gave up fighting Akiya’s exo-powered arms and started to descend. Akiya threw herself into the gap, wedging herself—and her armour—to stop the lift from cutting Burrow in half. The man screamed as her weight was driven onto his legs by the struggling elevator.

  Jarle dashed forward, but Gibbs was already there. She grabbed Burrow and hauled him through. He yelled as she pulled him loose. His right ankle was twisted out of line. Gibbs practically threw him out of the way and went to help Akiya.

  ‘Sarge,’ she grunted, ‘gonna need a hand.’

  Jarle and Gibbs each grabbed one of Akiya’s arms, while she pulled back, adding her own strength against the tension of the lift on her midriff. Jarle was again thankful that this wasn’t a Veigis megastructure. The lifts there were specced to haul dozens of people a few kilometres vertically. If it were, they’d have been hauling Akiya around as a CI torso.

  ‘On three. One, two, three.’

  Jarle and Gibbs pulled Akiya from the gap against the elevator’s shearing. Most of the way. One leg lagged behind, servos whining as Akiya’s armour slowly lost the battle.

  Akiya gave a desperate cry as she lay hands on her APR and pointed it back towards the lift. For a moment, Jarle thought the crazy bastard was about to blast her own leg off, but instead, she put three bolts into the roof of the lift. The weakened metal groaned, before finally bursting loose as the lift shot downward. Akiya screamed in triumph and rage as she pulled herself onto the floor.

  ‘Quick thinking,’ said Jarle, exhaling.

  ‘No fucking way I’m going CI again. Even if the leg had come off, I’d fucking hop the rest of the way rather than be deadweight.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Gibbs.

  ‘We can’t wait around. They’ve got control of building security and they’re gunning for us. Let’s get to the Manticore.’

  Burrow’s ankle was badly damaged, several bones crushed and the joint twisted out of alignment. To the man’s credit, he didn’t complain—even insisted he could walk on it. But he collapsed on his first attempt, so Gibbs threw him over one shoulder. Akiya was fine, physically, but the leg of her armour was badly damaged. It worked, but slowed her down with a forced limp.

  ‘Sergeant Jarle?’ VIPER’s Manticore pilot came onto the squad band.

  ‘Jinn, we’re coming in hot, be ready for immediate dust-off.’

  ‘Uh that’s a negative, Sergeant. We’re getting pinged with multiple targeting solutions sweeping the airways from some heavy ordnance.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Some kind of fixed emplacement. Maybe a DSF-80.’

  ‘Goddamn it.’

  ‘Looks like our new friends aren’t the only UNAF forces to have switched sides,’ said Gibbs. ‘They must have overridden the IFF if they’re trying to target us.’

  ‘Any immediate risk?’

  ‘No, Sergeant, not from here. But we’re effectively grounded while that thing’s watching the skies.’

  Jarle cursed into his helmet, then came back on the squad band. ‘Jinn, you should have more than enough firepower to hold your position if a
nyone comes calling. We’ll bring Burrow to you. One Bravo, we’re going to have to get down on the ground and deal with that arty.’

  ‘We’re taking on UNAF now, Sarge?’ said Akiya.

  ‘These turncoat motherfuckers shouldn’t have even known we were coming, and yet they’re looking for us. Something doesn’t sit right.’

  The squad reached the top floor and crossed the walkway to the waiting Manticore. Jinn, flight-ready in his black pressure suit and helmet, slipped out of the cockpit as the rear doors slid open with the hiss of pressure equalisation.

  Gibbs hauled Burrow into the hold. The man, winded by the bumping journey on her shoulder, collapsed into coughing.

  ‘Jinn, any read on the location of that arty?’

  The pilot transmitted a map location. They could get there in thirty minutes on foot, if the city streets weren’t too clogged. Thankfully, from up here, he could see that the business–industrial district below them was relatively deserted. The solstice celebrations had put much of the population in the central district when the announcement hit.

  ‘We should stick to the air,’ said Gibbs. ‘Anyone out there might be willing to take shots at us. Plus, we could have the whole of UNAF gunning for us for all we know. The Manticore’s got drone cover; that should buy us more than enough time to get to the East Side compound.’

  Jarle thought about it. It was tempting. The Manticore’s EW capabilities, with its suite of slaved CODOR drones, should let them run over the city invisibly.

  ‘Too much of a risk,’ he decided. ‘We’re not dealing with cobs, we’re dealing with UNAF, and somehow, they know we’re here. The V14’s our lifeline and our route back to the Captain. I’m not about to get blown out of the sky because we got cocky.’ He turned to the pilot. ‘Don’t let anyone who’s not us even get close. Doesn’t matter who they claim to be. We going to clear the skies, then you’re going to come to us. Monitor comms chatter, and let us know if you pick up anything useful.’ Jarle turned away as the heavy hold door slid back into place.

  ‘One Bravo, let’s move out.’