Captain Navarre, page 18
“Plague of locusts, M-E,” Zakhar laughed. “Two hundred of them against twenty defenders isn’t even remotely fair, so they can do things even here. Without us, it would be much different.”
“Captain, I’m picking up the first alert signals from the planetary defense network,” Suvi overrode everything. “They’ve picked up the ships down in closer to the planet finally and are starting to react.”
“Alert me if anybody locks onto us with a weapons system of any kind,” Zakhar replied. “Your guns are clear, but hold things for defensive fire only at present.”
“Acknowledged,” Suvi replied.
“Piet, start us in,” Zakhar ordered.
Time to see what kind of game the pirates had planned.
Part 2
Stacia had filmed the Vinogradov woman and her small crew over several days on the flight from Syntha to Surayya. And noted when Navarre shared the woman’s bunk for a few hours, but not longer than that. If it was anything like her own hammock, Stacia honestly couldn’t see what you could accomplish with two people.
Even in zero gravity, you needed to be strapped to things so you didn’t fly off. Her bag wouldn’t even hold two people.
Still, Stacia kept her opinions to herself and filmed Vinogradov mostly. Sometimes Navarre, when he nodded to her that he had something to say. Frequently, leading questions that Vinogradov would answer in ways that told Stacia how much information someone was feeding those pirates.
And how much of it came from Valadris, which was the part she really cared about.
Supposedly, Afia and Bethany had a list of names, but they’d split off at the start and Stacia hadn’t even had a chance for a quick goodbye kiss.
Had to be professional. Shoot your footage and spend your time scripting it into a narrative that could be played back later on the evening news. And in courtrooms.
Vinogradov was piloting. Her ship was a long tube of steel and other materials, with most of the wiring below the single deck. Three days in zero gravity had been educational, but Stacia had managed to eat and go to the restroom without too much trouble.
Two long sleeping chambers down the sides, with extra hammocks hung until you were cheek-in-jowl with folks. Or slept in shifts, which she’d taken to doing.
Common space for food, entertainment, and just waiting around. Right now filled with three of Vinogradov’s people in an uneasy alliance with all of the Dragoon’s killers, as everyone checked weapons and engaged in the sorts of crude locker room talk Stacia had learned to ignore.
None of it was aimed at her, after Iqbal and Demyan had pointed out to the men that she wasn’t interested.
She floated forward, pulled along by Suvi’s probe, which was a great way to travel around this ship.
Navarre in the copilot’s chair, next to Vinogradov. Stacia let go and grabbed the door frame.
“Is it okay to film while you’re making the run?” she asked politely. “The probe can sit in the corner for good face shots, and be out of your way.”
Vinogradov looked over at Navarre and got a shrug.
“Go ahead,” the woman said in a surly voice that now had to deal with one more thing.
Stacia would keep it easy from here.
“Probe. Access Command Node,” Stacia began. Suvi was good about waiting for orders, then understanding them better than Stacia framed the words at times. “Move to the forward left corner, reverse yourself into the notch, and begin filming.”
“Acknowledged,” the woman said in her mechanical voice.
Stacia waited. Outside the window, the horizon was coming up as the ship started to dive. If she understood things correctly, Captain Kovalev was already ahead somewhere, in a four-crew ship, leading. Her as pilot. A turret gunner. A navigator who doubled as squadron communications, and a fourth that concentrated on food and cleanup. Butler, maybe, so the others could be on duty and fighting at any moment.
“Madame Vinogradov, since most of my viewers will have never launched a pirate raid against an unsuspecting world, could you walk us through things as you go?” Stacia asked in the most banal tone she could manage while about to kill innocent people. “Don’t worry about gaps. I’ll edit those out later.”
Vinogradov again looked over at Navarre, like she didn’t believe that this shit was really happening.
Trick’s on you, babe. This was all his idea in the first place.
But Stacia didn’t say anything.
“We’ve come out of that last jump only covering a short distance,” Vinogradov began narrating. Confessing. Something. “All the ships are currently starting to cluster, but not too tightly. Partly, there are no defenders in the skies to threaten us at present. Partly because we need space to maneuver this many vessels. We’ll attack in a spiraling dive, rather than a horizontal glide, because it is faster to the ground, and every minute we give those people to prepare is that much longer someone has to arm themselves. Easier if we just overwhelm them at first, both intellectually as well as psychologically. Get them to just stand around. Usually, we only have to kill a few people to get our point across. Surayya might be different, because they have a fairly large police force down there. Teams have been assigned to strafe the police headquarters and suppress them from organizing, while others will land on the edge of town and assault the museum that is our target.”
“Is this normal for you?” Stacia pressed, letting herself take nine long steps back in her head, away from what was happening.
Navarre had given her no words, but seemed confident that the raid would go badly at some point.
“Not the strafing part,” Vinogradov acknowledged. “Usually, we just buzz somebody to let them know we’re serious and here in large numbers. That’s generally sufficient to make them behave while we rob them blind.”
Stacia ground her teeth, happy that nobody could see her right now except Suvi. She could cut and frame these shots later, considering what her face probably looked like.
“Will all two hundred ships land, then?” she continued her interview.
“Probably three-quarters,” was the answer. “A few need to remain at low altitude against ground-based attack craft, since we have your ship protecting us up in orbit.”
Definitely chopping that part out. Assuming that Navarre and Sokolov weren’t pulling a fast one on Stacia now and had decided to join the pirate women.
Navarre/Aritza didn’t look like a man who would be led astray by his penis. And Sokolov was more or less married to the Dragoon, though that was part of a larger poly cluster in ways she didn’t need to explore for this documentary.
Not as complicated as Aritza, though, which was good.
“And the museum?” Stacia pressed forward, marching in her mind as if to her own hanging.
“Someplace we’ve wanted to hit for a while,” Vinogradov laughed. “But it required too many moving parts to pull off. Navarre helps. Stand by, atmospheric turbulence is going to get heavier. Move to the jumpseat and strap yourself in.”
Stacia pushed off and did so. Not that comfortable, but she supposed that gravity was going to take hold soon, and the ship was pointed more or less straight down like a falling arrow at this point.
Better safe.
Outside, the windows started to glow with the heat of reentry. That was fine. Stacia was about out of questions.
Most of the interesting bits would occur on the ground.
For evil or good.
Part 3
Djamila had taken the time to study the planetary information available about Surayya and had Del bring her and her team temperate climate gear when he’d come for Afia and Bethany. Nothing as fancy as Hadiiye normally wore, but that worked in her favor, as she was in speckled gray and tan that would be hard to focus on at any distance. Same for her team.
While it wasn’t the first time they’d done something like this, it had been a while. Not since they’d stole the Land Leviathan for the team. Not that she’d let them slack one bit in their training. If anything, they’d all ramped it up a full notch since then.
Like they expected to be doing crazier things, having finally joined Javier in his crusade to save the galaxy.
“Final approach,” the Vinogradov woman said from up front.
Djamila had taken command of the other three gunslingers, at least until everyone was on the ground. At that point, she presumed that Vinogradov or Kovalev would issue contrary orders.
How Javier planned to betray everything was the final piece that Djamila was watching for. And the when.
She had no doubts that it was coming. She’d come to know the man’s face well enough by now.
Poker player, which was something she’d never understood. However, she could watch his eyes get perfectly flat and emotionless when things got serious. Back at the table, sitting on a hand that could win big, if he bluffed and finessed it just right.
Yes, he had that look in his eyes.
Djamila turned to the oldest of Vinogradov’s goons. She’d barely rate the man as a qualified infantry trooper, but it wasn’t her army.
“You’re her bodyguards when we hit the ground?” she confirmed.
“That’s right,” the man nodded. “Normally, she’s in the second wave for something like this, bringing up the ground troopers, once some of the pilots shut down their sleds and join us.”
“Fine,” Djamila replied. “You stay with her then. We’ll move up with the first wave.”
“Really?” he asked. Sounded like he expected them to let the others take the risk.
Normal junior enlisted thinking.
“There’s no Land Leviathan around here for us to steal, but we’re capable,” she said.
The man fell silent, as did his two cohorts. They’d previously asked and been told about that mission. In Djamila’s mind, it was still one of the best ground assaults anyone had pulled off in recent memory. Possibly living memory, not counting Suvi and her kind.
“Landing imminent,” Vinogradov said over the speakers.
Everyone grabbed hold of something stable and waited.
The ship landed fairly conventionally, coming in at a fast glide, then stalling and settling. Aft, three thrusters on pylons left space for the rear to clamshell open into a loading ramp. Given the available volume, Djamila could see important cargo normally being stashed back here, except that adding all these bodies and supplies had filled a lot of it.
There were a few other ships with big cargo bays available. Djamila wasn’t in charge of logistics for packing loot. That was Galal’s specialization, when he wasn’t being a Grenadier.
Djamila nodded to her people and moved to the rear. Weapons were live, but Vinogradov’s three were in front of them. It wasn’t that Djamila didn’t trust the woman.
She didn’t. She also didn’t trust the situation.
She did trust that Javier had a con job going that would be another one spoken of in hushed tones between people sitting in quiet back rooms.
He had that sort of impact on lives.
They landed.
Djamila nodded and the one trooper opened the hatch, letting her people hit the ground and establish a perimeter. Djamila moved to one side and waited for Javier and Vinogradov to emerge.
Didn’t take long. The woman wore a pistol on her hip, with a pulse carbine slung across her back where it was absolutely useless in any sort of engagements. Plus, the carbine barrel would hardly improve your engagement range over the pistol itself.
Djamila had upgraded Hadiiye’s rig to a pair of long-barrel pulsars that probably ranged better than the carbine. Pinpoint deadly at two hundred meters, at least in her hands.
Javier had the gear Djamila had assigned him. Interchangeable power packs with everyone else not firing slugs or explosives. The sword in case he needed to look threatening or knight someone along the way.
Djamila qualified him as last among her people, and probably still better than at least two of Vinogradov’s troopers. But then, Stacia might be more dangerous than those two. She’d be happier when they were far enough away as to only be random threats.
Vinogradov studied Djamila in combat gear as she emerged, Javier in her wake.
“I’m planning on heading in first,” Djamila announced. She nodded to Stacia, just now coming out into the late morning sun. “Stacia, you can wait here and send the probe, or join us and leave it here.”
“I’d like to see it happen in real time,” Javier announced.
Everyone turned to Vinogradov. There was an air of challenge hanging. Did she want to hang back and organize things while the others were possibly shooting? Or dive into the thick of things?
Vinogradov turned to her three and sorted the leader from the fools.
“You two remain here and guard the ship,” the woman ordered. “You find Zhenya and let her know what we’re up to.”
Everyone nodded and Djamila set her pathfinders into motion.
Edge of town. The ship had landed in a field and scared off a small herd of cattle, at least for now. If there was a bull, he might be a problem later.
Other ships had landed haphazardly around them, stretched out backwards from a large building that looked like a shipping container with a single clocktower on the…south corner. Men and a few women were all moving towards the building that Djamila assumed was the museum about to be robbed.
Sascha and Hajna moved at a jog. Not that they needed to run interference up front, but because their job was to scout.
“Testing audio,” Djamila said.
“Six and zero,” Hajna replied.
Perfect signal. No static.
Others spoke up and Djamila was satisfied. For now. The pirates didn’t seem to have personal comms, relying on word of mouth or radios in ships to talk.
Stupid, when assaulting a ground target.
But nobody had hired her to run this operation.
She paused, waiting and locking eyes with a deadly serious Javier as they started into motion.
Djamila corrected herself.
Javier had hired her for a specific purpose.
She simply didn’t know who he needed killed yet.
Part 4
Javier focused on being Navarre-the-killer. That rude, vicious, MEAN son of a bitch who made people piss their boots when he was around.
Or something like that.
Mila had been fun in the sack, once she stopped trying to be tough all the time. Ticklish, if you took the time to look. Never gonna make a housefrau, but he could see a few choice decision points in her past where she might have been another Zakhar Sokolov. Or a successful corporate exec somewhere.
Today, they were about to rob a museum.
And not even a caper, damn it.
Just another smash and grab job.
Amateur hour.
He stretched his stride enough that Hadiiye’s impossible legs would be comfortable. And the rest would have to half-jog to keep up.
O’er yonder, he could see a mob of goobers in the parking lot, milling around as they tried to find their own asses with both hands, a map, and a flashlight.
Looked like the map was winning.
He identified Zhenya Kovalev in the middle, counting noses and getting people psyched up to execute a frontal assault.
At least he didn’t have to worry about cops, as a pair of fighters zinged by overhead, explosions in the distance where they’d hit police headquarters again. Place was already burning, but Javier understood that juvenile delinquent drive to blow shit up.
He shouldered a skinny punk out of his way and walked up to Kovalev.
“Anybody hit the building yet?” he asked.
She scowled at him.
“About to,” she replied.
Javier looked around at the mismatch of weapons and gunners. Damned near every kind, make, and model of personal-portable firearm or blaster he could think of off the top of his head. And more than a few he’d have to ask to identify.
He felt like being a shit. A bigger shit.
The king-badass of shits.
He turned to Hadiiye. Scowled up at the woman in her guise as the Ballerina of Death.
“Stun weapons only,” he ordered. “Rapid assault. Prisoners so we can interrogate them as to whatever I want to know later. Questions?”
She paused, digesting, then turned to her Gunbunnies.
“Galal, you have the front door,” she said. “Assume they’ve managed to lock it.”
That one nodded.
Then the seven of them were off at damned near a dead run across the parking lot. Javier watched a few of the more ambitious pirates start out in their wake, but piracy didn’t lend one’s self to four-hundred-meter wind sprints in full gear. They fell behind quickly. A few even tried to keep up, but most stopped after about twenty meters and looked back.
He hadn’t even tried. Instead, Javier started walking, nodding to Kovalev and Vinogradov to join him on his saunter.
Something like seventy-five or one hundred folks went with him.
Javier paused and looked around for Suvi’s unblinking eyeball staring back at him.
“All of you hold your fire,” he snarled in an uglier voice than the situation really required, but he was making a point. On film. For eternity, as it were. “My team will neutralize the guards, then you can go in. In fact, best if most of you put away your guns now so you don’t accidentally shoot anyone friendly. Hadiiye might stop her assault and hunt you down if you did that.”
A few looked like they wanted to get pissy with him on that point, until Galal put a rifle grenade into the main doors of the museum with the sort of precision those lunatics preferred, followed by the rest charging through, firing as they went.
They hadn’t even broken stride.
A few mouths fell open as they watched real professionals work. Javier liked to tease those men, but he’d honestly never known another small arms unit of that caliber.
