Human, page 3
part #1 of Humanity Ascendant Series
Marduk knew that Tir Uttur had never quite felt up to the job of ruling an empire and those feelings of inadequacy were behind his deep-seated desire to keep his emotions to himself – at least at night, when official business was at a minimum.
The Emperor had been unwilling to do it Marduk’s way – a diplomatically phrased warning here, an offer to use imperial prestige to close a negotiation there… The office of the Holy Quailu Emperor was a potent force, when used to the best advantage, but the emperor was too convinced his nobles were plotting to vote a new dynasty into power.
Marduk would have to go back up to the palace and tell his oldest friend that an imagined danger had now become very real.
He squared his shoulders. “Start tracking the response to this data in the open streams,” he ordered. He nodded at the media officer. “Take charge. I’ll be in the residence.”
He didn’t need to add that he’d be closeted with the emperor till suns-up.
Promotion
T oo soon, Ethdu thought. I’m nowhere near ready for this.
He looked down at the indicator on his assault rifle – one hundred forty-eight rounds left. A few drops of blood spattered across the readout from the man coughing next to him.
“I’m a dead man,” Abdu insisted. “Too much damage to heal…”
“Shut the hell up. This is your fault for breaking cover.” He had to use a harsh tone or, he knew, his voice would break. Is this what it’s like for a mushkennu when they lose family?
“That damned Quailu got in the way. Someone had to save him or we’d all be terminated when we got back to Kish.” Abdu coughed again, frothy pink blood from his lungs dribbling down his chin. “Did I ever tell you about the ceremony they put me through to take over this platoon?”
Ethdu didn’t answer, disturbed by Abdu’s sudden willingness to open up about his past. He took a couple of deep breaths before pushing away from the low graphene planter they were covering behind. He came up on one knee and fired three bursts in the direction of the enemy’s security forces, certain a round would impact his skull at any moment. “Noadu!” he shouted as he took cover again. “You said you could get this done through any public node. What’s taking so fornicating long?”
“I could make a list,” Noadu shouted back, “and right up there, at the top, would be the need to answer dumbass questions. It takes as long as it takes.”
Funny how a firefight makes you feel the need to yell to a guy who’s almost within reach, Ethdu thought irrelevantly. He noticed the blood drying on Noadu’s face. A jagged scar on his cheek was rapidly closing – genetically enhanced healing abilities pushed even farther by medical nanites.
“That all your blood?”
An irritated shake of the head. “Mostly from that Chironian security officer I gave that grenade to. Silly bastard exploded all over me.”
Everything had gone wrong. The original plan had been to land on Chiron as commercial passengers and proceed to the lab where the local government ran research on stolen tech. They would use Noadu’s skills to gain entry during off-shift hours and steal a data module that the Chiron government had already stolen from Heimdall 4.
The only problem with the whole plan was that it was a plan , and plans never survive contact with real-world variables. Halfway to the lab they’d been caught up in a routine traffic stop at eight thousand feet. The team had still been unarmed but the scanners on the security vehicle picked up the combat focus in their genomes.
Things had deteriorated rapidly from there and now they were trying to hold on long enough for Noa to make Plan-B work.
If some random event throws your plan out the window, it’s probably a surprise to both sides and a prepared operator can usually gain some kind of advantage out of it. There was no reaching the labs now, but they wouldn’t want to, not with a small horde of DSOs on their tail. They’d end up trapped inside.
Far better to seize a piece of territory they could actually exfiltrate from.
And speaking of exfiltration… “Oliv, take nine men and get behind that big planter to the south. Our ride will be here in a moment so make sure you only use stun grenades on it, no frags.” He chopped his hand toward the large collection of trees and bushes in the dead end, just beyond where Noa was working. “Take Hendu,” he added.
He fired another burst toward the DSO’s who were unwilling to push forward from the ramps. Their own weapons were a pretty effective deterrent when they had to face them.
No sane species wanted a metallic hydrogen crystal converting directly to a gaseous state inside their armor or their bodies.
“They set up a table,” Abdu wheezed, “on the flight-line, right in front of the drop-ships and the platoon watched while Geddu and I drank shots of expensive whiskey and talked about all the crazy shit we got into over the years. He was an old man but, Gods, he could soak up the sauce!”
“You’re still talking about that?” Ethdu looked over as his leader broke into a painful coughing fit. The blood was all over his tunic, plastering it to the light armor underneath.
“Lord before the horde,” Abdu croaked, a sad chuckle turning into another coughing fit. “We finished the last drop in the bottle and then I put a ceremonial bullet through the middle of his forehead.” A tear welled up and shook loose with another round of wet coughing.
Ethdu fired four more bursts at the security forces, preferring the raw fear of combat to the dull ache of having to kill his mentor. He dropped back against the low wall, pulse racing, breath shuddering. Chiron was a hot world, but he felt cold, nonetheless.
“Loyalty… must be affirmed,” Abdu said weakly. He tried to reach for the pistol in his belt but he was too weak and his hand flapped down onto the graphene floor. “Lord before the horde…”
A conventional round fired by one of the DSOs hit the top of Ab’s planter, spraying graphene fragments between them.
“No, Gods-dammit!” Ethdu flared. “I’ve seen men survive worse.”
“Bullshit. I might survive long enough to do a ceremony but I’ll never fight again after this. I’m not going all the way back to Kish just to wait for a bullet. I’m in a bad way. They’d have to strap me into the chair.” A gasp. “I’m not going out like a damned invalid. Shoot me.”
Ethdu flinched as a flurry of rounds glanced off the top of the low wall. He controlled his breathing and popped up to return fire. He ducked back into cover, feeling the rush – holding onto it rather than face what needed to be done.
“I trained you better than this, boy!” Some of his old sternness emerged through the frothing blood. “You always knew you’d be taking over our unit. You were grown for this.”
No answer.
His voice deepened. “Well, now the gods have made it easier on you…” Abdu spit out a large bloody mass. “I could never imitate Quailu the way you do,” he admitted with a chuckle that quickly turned into a bloody cough. “Look here. You can take casualties trying to drag my dying ass back to the extraction point, just to put a bullet in my head a week… later, or you can end my pain now.”
“Got it!” Noadu shouted, waving his left hand, the data chip pulsing green through his skin.
Ethdu nodded then pushed himself up to a kneeling position, firing over the low wall as Noadu broke the cover of the heavy data-glass terminal and raced across the open space. He slammed down into cover next to Abdu and pulled out a capsule of wound-sealant but Abdu waved it away.
“You got the process data?” Ethdu demanded.
“Got it all,” Noadu said. “Also, interesting tidbit, they have Human genomes on file, those naughty Chironians. I burned them out, but we have a copy of their file roots, so we have some leverage on them if they try to complain about this raid.
He looked at Abdu. “Been an honor to serve with you…” His voice faltered. “You’ll be missed, you cranky old bastard!”
They clasped hands just as a deep whining sound announced an armored transport some fifteen meters south of their position, sidling in close to the walkway.
The front bore the symbol of the Chironian security forces. It was out of sight from the enemies currently shooting at Ethdu’s small group, but the DSOs it carried would easily flank the Humans. There would be no place left to take cover.
Ethdu looked at the hovering vehicle, his face unreadable. “I was starting to wonder if they’d ever notice how easily our position can be flanked.” He looked down at Abdu’s suddenly firm grip on his right arm.
“Don’t let them take me.” Abdu handed him a plasma grenade. “Let me take a few of them with me.”
Ethdu took the weapon.
Abdu broke into a series of weak coughs, bringing up more blood but with little force. He sighed. “I had a good run,” he whispered.
“I wish it could have been a little longer.” Ethdu took his hand, looking him in the eye. He returned his mentor’s nod, took a deep breath, brought his pistol up and fired a round into his forehead, killing the closest thing he had to family.
He shifted to the right, setting down his rifle and transferring the grenade to his right hand. Before he could activate it, he heard the distinctive crack-whine of a sublimation round hitting one of the massive carbon beams above him.
Damn it! They’re not complete idiots after all…
The crystalline metallic-hydrogen round converted directly from a solid to a gaseous state, the newly released gas expanded rapidly, slamming Eth against the floor and tossing Noa back toward the armored DSO shuttle.
Their armor saved them but Eth could swear he’d actually felt his brain collide with his skull and half of his sensors were now flashing warnings in his HUD. There may have been alarms sounding in his helmet as well, but they were over-ridden by the high-pitched tone his ears were already sending to his brain.
He could see that one of his team icons had gone red. He rolled over onto his right side. Fredu was there, head up against one of the planters at an impossible angle to his body. His head must have been partially over the planter when the blast slammed him down onto the floor.
Only in charge for a few seconds and he’d already lost someone.
“Noa!” he shouted, trying to compensate for how garbled his voice sounded in his own ears. “Get ready to withdraw!”
Noa waved groggily. Eth heard something garbled in his helmet.
He looked down at his hand – he still held the grenade. He set it for bio-proximity detonation and slid it behind Abdu’s back. A series of faint lights flashed out from under the body, growing increasingly fast as it calibrated for the current bio-signatures in the immediate area. It melded into a continuous glow and then shut off.
The weapon was armed and they were out of time. The shuttle would disgorge more armed officers and the Humans would be rolled up.
At least, that was the plan from the Chironian side.
He grabbed his rifle. Ten meters to his right, the armored shuttle dropped a ramp in the side of the fuselage, bridging the three-meter gap between ship and sidewalk. A slip on the ramp would result in a fourteen-hundred meter drop to the city’s ground level.
A split second before the ramp made contact with the sidewalk, a stun grenade sailed out from the small collection of decorative hydroponic trees where he’d sent Oliv and her small team. It flew into the transport and detonated, overloading the occupants with noise and light.
Oliv’s fire-team broke from the cover of the foliage and raced up the ramp. The fight was short and tightly controlled and Ethdu had no way of knowing whether the Humans – his responsibility now – were winning or losing against the armored security troops.
He had to proceed as if they were winning or all was lost.
He looked to Noadu, relieved to see that he was now covering behind another planter and watching for signals. The ringing in Eth’s ears was starting to attenuate but this was no time to take chances with orders.
Eth made a fist, then splayed his fingers to indicate a grenade, waggling his hand to denote the stun variant. He and Noadu both pulled small flat disks from dispensers on their chest plates. They were roughly half the size of a man’s palm and half the thickness of a finger. They set them to stun, wanting their witnesses half dazed but still lucid enough to think no further pursuit was needed. Both men dropped two more disks at their feet, set to smoke.
Noadu threw his overhand from a position of cover. The instant it detonated, Ethdu came to a kneeling position and tossed his deeper, reaching a point where it could incapacitate the security forces covering behind the five-meter-wide support column at the corner of the ramp they’d descended earlier.
Noa rose and tossed his next stun grenade just over the lip of the ramp leading down to where another team of DSO’s were stalled. The detonations would easily overpower the sound attenuation of the cheap security armor.
His inner ear was still in a mischievous mood, after the sublimation blast, and it let his body keep rotating after releasing the grenade. Eth nearly spur a full circle before his body dropped, arms flailing for balance. He bounced off the side of the planter with a grunt and he landed on his back, looking up at the brilliantly pulsing light of his grenade washing across the ceiling above him.
At least he’d been planning on taking cover anyway.
Seconds after the detonation, the armored vehicle slid forward until it was directly opposite the two remaining Humans. Ethdu stayed on his back, raising his hands in surrender as figures in orange and white Chironian security armor emerged through the swirling white smoke.
They grabbed him and Noadu, dragging them into the vehicle and dumping them into seats against the portside wall. The ramp swung shut as they pulled away, and Ethdu leaned back, blowing out an explosive breath. “You look like something from a puppet show,” he told Olivdu who was loosely encased in Chironian armor. It wouldn’t stand up to a review of the security footage, but it should buy them enough time to get away.
“Where’s the boss?” Olivdu asked voice slightly muffled. She tossed a Chironian arm-brace to the back of the craft and started unlatching the breastplate.
Noadu waved a hand. “Eth is the new boss,” he yelled, causing her to pull her head back.
She grimaced. Tossing the breastplate aside, she came over to place a hand on Eth’s shoulder. “Sorry,” she said. “They don’t make many like old Ab.”
“That’s ‘cause his genome’s so damned expensive,” Noadu shouted, digging at one of his ears with a finger.
“Twice what it cost to make us,” she agreed. She took her hand from Ethdu’s shoulder and gave it a light punch. “Alright, Boss, how are you and your expensive genes gonna get us out of this ass-pounded mess?”
“Well, I…”
“They’re hailing us,” Hendu shouted back from the cockpit. “Get Ab up here immediately. We’re gonna have to tell ‘em something if we want to reach orbit in one piece.”
Ethdu was glad of the interruption. He didn’t have an answer for Olivdu and he needed a chance to get his head in the game. Being in charge of a team like this was a terrifying prospect.
He raised an eyebrow at her – a vague enough gesture for the moment. It would help if they had Mishak with them. He turned and headed for the short corridor to the cockpit his path weaving only slightly, enhanced healing abilities making short work of his injury.
Mishak.
Having a member of the ruling race would give them the ability to bullshit their way out of atmosphere but Mishak wasn’t just any Quailu; he was the governor of Kish. He sent teams like this out on economic raids. He could hardly run a planet and play soldier at the same time.
And the political impact, should he be captured in a situation like this, made it improbable that any off-world Quailu noble would ever be involved.
He stopped, one foot inside the cockpit hatch.
A local Quailu might conceivably be aboard this craft, if it was carrying out an important mission.
He stepped in, grinning as he leaned past the pilot, who looked over at him in surprise before assuming the expression that Ethdu was quickly coming to hate – that mix of personal loss as well as sympathy for what he’d obviously had to do to his mentor.
Lord before the horde. Eth tapped the synch icon on the control board.
He dropped into the co-pilot seat and linked his auditory implant.
“…deviation from your assigned transit corridor. Please advise, over .”
He looked to the center console, grabbing a holy relic of some sort and yanking it from its gold chain. He tossed it back down the corridor before reading the call number that had been hidden behind the religious object.
He took a deep breath, holding his diaphragm tight and forcing his throat to constrict. “Control, this is Chel-Ineth-four-five-eight-two,” he rumbled. “Explain yourself.”
There was a long pause and he could imagine the consternation in the control room. He didn’t need to look over at Hendu to know the pilot was grinning in amusement.
“Sire,” the voice replied, alarmed. “I apologize but your current trajectory…”
“We are taking the prisoners to orbital detention,” Ethdu told him, his deep gravelly voice dripping with confidence.
“But there’s no detention facility in…”
“I would strongly advise you to stop talking,” Ethdu snapped. “You don’t wish to draw further attention to our flight path, do you?”
“Certainly not, sire,” the controller squeaked. “I will erase the records immed….”
Ethdu cut the link. He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.
“The sooner we get aboard the Coronado , the better,” the pilot muttered.
“Why aren’t they shooting us down?” Noadu almost sounded as though he were complaining. He poked his head into the small cockpit. “We should be dodging or weaving or something, shouldn’t we? Maybe at least drift lazily to the left?”
“Wow!” Hendu glanced up at the tech specialist. “You know a few moves, huh?” He chuckled, turning back to the instruments. “Eth convinced them we got a local Quailu lord running the show,” the pilot replied.
