Through the Nether, page 19
part #4 of Order of the Centurion Series
“Everyone loves a parade.” Verdier smoothed out his suit and adjusted his hair before stepping through the holo wall.
Sunlight shone through domed archways at the top of a flight of stairs running along a hallway that curved in the distance. House of Reason and Senate staffers stood in little knots, vaping and checking their datapads, oblivious to the celebration happening just beyond the archways.
Security guards waved the senator up the stairs and didn’t give Soren a second look.
The stairs let out to a raised platform wreathed with flowers. Senators and House delegates stood against the railing, waving at the parade marching past just a few yards below. A cheering throng could be felt as much as heard, as aliens and humans from throughout the galaxy mixed and added their diverse voices to the celebration. Music and a scripted account of the parade blared from floating bots mounted with amplifiers. A wide boulevard ringed the entire capital, the inner lanes were fenced off and manned by Capital Police, forming a thin line between the crowds watching the parade and those marching.
Soren’s instincts went into overdrive as he searched for any threats. Following Verdier to the railing with his true face exposed made him feel as though he had a giant target on his back. He looked down just as a mob of college students carrying poorly written signs with numerous spelling and grammatical errors walked past the review stand. Soren wasn’t sure what they wanted, but they made up for the ambiguity with volume and vulgar slogans.
Small media drones crisscrossed back and forth along the stand, stopping to zoom in on the Republic’s senior politicians as they waved and clapped.
The undisciplined mass of students paused to orchestrate a mass shout of mourning, where they stood in front of a gallery of House of Reason delegates, threw back their heads, and screamed in mourning for whatever was troubling them this semester. After a respectful period of observance, Capital Police wielding unpowered shock batons prodded them until they moved.
Next came several ranks of horses rode by men and women wrapped in bright colored sashes and carrying flags with embroidered sigils.
“Should have put the cavalry in front of the protesters,” Verdier said, leaning over so Soren could hear him. “Let them deal with some actual horseshit.”
“They’d have thrown it at you, Senator.”
Soren looked up and down the review stand, still scanning for anyone with a weapon. An N-4 wasn’t easy to conceal, but neither was it impossible. But he saw nothing. And the skies were clear but for hovering capitol police air sleds. Soren imagined that just how many snipers had a bead on his position was anyone’s guess.
Verdier reached into the flower box stocked with fragrant, yellow-petaled annuals and flicked a pebble out. The pebble’s progress halted with the hiss and snap of a force field.
“We’re fine here,” the senator said. “The appropriations committee lets a lot of pork slip through, but none of my fellows complain about spending tax payer dollars on our protection. Isn’t this grand, Soren? Relax your vigil and enjoy yourself. This is a once in a lifetime view for you, I’d imagine.”
Verdier waved to a lovely young woman on a horse as she ambled passed. She tossed a flower with brilliant silver petals at him that fell short of the force field.
“My father brought me to a Unity Day parade when I was a child,” Soren said. “And we certainly didn’t have seats this good.”
“This is the Republic.” Verdier said with a swelling of pride. He set his hands on the railing as a formation of Dawhser followed the horses. The elephantine aliens had drums slung in front of them and beat out a marching pace with a stick grasped in their trunks.
“There’s ugliness in it,” the senator continued, “but you look hard at anything and you’ll find something not to like. The Republic can be glorious, just as unified as the final decades of the Savage Wars, but it takes those of us that believe in what we could be to have that vision, that drive to lead people to a better future that remembers what made us so great in the past.”
“I believe you, Senator.” Soren glanced around to be sure Verdier wasn’t just opining for a camera drone, but the drones were focused on a tight group of dignitaries a dozen yards away.
Boos went up from the crowd as the Dawhser went by.
Elderly men and women in old Republic Army uniforms came next. The front rank carried a sign proclaiming them as the Savage Wars Veteran’s Association. These were the last of a generation, many relying on cybernetics to even be present.
The boos intensified as the veterans continued passed the review stand. Somewhere from the crowd, a unit of water was hurled at old soldiers, nearly missing a spry little man wearing sergeant stripes.
“There’s always a couple bad apples.” Verdier tried to signal to a Capitol Police officer on the street below to point out the individual who threw the objects, but the officer either couldn’t see the senator or was ignoring him completely.
Soren looked down the gallery at the politicians, sick of the scene unfolding below him and wondering how they might respond to it. The knot of representatives broke up and Soren saw Delegate Karr and Senator Dryden standing together, smiling for a camera bot. Soren kept up on galactic politics as part of his Nether Ops duties—spies had to understand who they gathered information and acted for—the two men were long standing icons in the House of Reason and Senate respectively. Each was quite capable of bending the body’s will to their own.
A bot zipping from spot to spot around them had no media markings. Soren suspected it belonged to one of the senators and they’d cherry pick the best photos for release later.
“Senator Verdier!” someone called from behind them.
Soren braced himself as Brent McCarty, Verdier’s aide, made his way through the crowd. He wore a coat two sizes too big and his face was flush from running.
“Senator!”
Verdier spun around and grabbed McCarty by the arms and spoke to the staffer in hushed tones.
McCarty looked over at Soren, his eyes widening in recognition. He continued listening, his eyes growing wider still and giving way to a sneer before the aid nodded quickly.
The senator gave the young man a pat on the arm and went back to watching the parade.
McCarty, the top of his lip quivering, stood beside Soren. “I want my coat back, dick.”
Soren shrugged. “Sorry not sorry.”
“You know you could have—”
“No.”
“Seriously, you had my attention and—”
“Don’t make me regret letting you live.”
McCarty’s mouth opened and closed a few times, then he opted for silence.
The boos from the crowd got even worse, and Verdier clapped harder as if seeking to counter them. The sound of marching feet, hundreds strong and in perfect time with each other, carried over the jeers. Soren stepped closer to the senator and looked over his shoulder.
A Republic army company made their way down the boulevard. The men in the ranks looked tired and some were pushing the upper limits of the army’s weight standards. The first ranks went passed the reviewing stand and Soren looked hard at the rifle’s they carried. Mock ups and not of N-4s. Solid hunks of plastic meant to look like the real thing. The uniform patches on their shoulders were for the logistics command, not a line combat unit.
“Couldn’t they have found some poor bloody infantry for this?” Verdier shook his head. “Unity Day parade and the joint chiefs send…what would you call them, Soren?”
“Rep Army would call them REMFs,” the agent said. “Read Echelon Mother…”
A glint of silver through the back ranks caught his eye. He leaned forward slightly to get a better look.
The boos died away to near silence as the next element of the parade passed by.
Two rows of a dozen total legionnaires in gleaming silver armor followed the Rep Army soldiers. The legionnaires stomped the heels of their sabatons against the road, each footfall promising violence and fury.
Soren didn’t doubt that the crowd hated what the Legion represented as much as the army. But the Legion commanded a certain respect. Perhaps even a certain fear. As though, in response to the boos, they just may decide to take target practice on those delivering them.
They all carried N-4s. Real N-4s with charge packs loaded. Fraggers hung from their belts and a legionnaire on either end of the front row had an Aero-Precision rocket launcher strapped to his back.
“Oh no.” Soren looked back to the exits and saw Senator Dryden leaving Delegate Karr. A few others went with the Senator.
Verdier clapped, his face beaming with pride as the legionnaires marched closer. The bot floated slowly from Karr towards the Oliphant senator.
Soren grabbed Verdier by the elbow. “You need to leave. Now.”
Verdier pulled away and shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Senator, they’re carrying the rifles I delivered,” Soren said, pointing at the men in the new gleaming “shinies” now standard in the Legion. “Those aren’t legionnaires. This is how they managed to bring them in. I’m telling you we need to leave right—”
A legionnaire called out “Detachment…halt!”
The crowd mumbled with confusion.
Another group of student activists behind the legionnaire’s slowed, causing an accordion affect that made its way down the rest of the parade.
The legionnaires with the rocket launchers slipped them off their backs. A Capitol police officer timidly approached the legionnaire leading the element. He opened his mouth to speak and promptly received a back hand that knocked him onto his back.
The crowd gasped at once.
Verdier took a step forward at the surprising spectacle.
“Senator!” Soren grabbed Verdier’s shoulder to pull him back, but McCarty wrapped his arms around the agent’s waist, wrenching him away.
“Leave… him… alone!” the aide managed to huff out as he dragged Soren a few steps away from the railing.
“The Mid-Core Rebellion will not be extinguished!” shouted the legionnaires, the amplifiers in their helmets turned to maximum output.
Soren sent an elbow in McCarty’s temple and shoved the stunned man away. He leaped toward the senator as a legionnaire fired a rocket at the review stand.
Soren tackled the Senator and covered him with his body as an explosion burst against the force field. The blast immediately caused the shields to fail as well as collapsed part of the review stand, spraying members of the House of Reason with shrapnel and hunks of concrete.
It felt to Soren as if knives raked across his back as pulverized permacrete dust washed over him and the senator as part of a gray dust cloud. He coughed and pulled Verdier to his feet. The older man’s face was covered in grey soot and his eyes were wide with shock, but he appeared otherwise unharmed.
Screams from the wounded and panic from the crowd washed through the haze of smoke and dust.
“No,” the senator managed, “not the Legion too.”
“It’s not the Legion.” Soren grabbed Verdier by the wrist as a second rocket screamed through the air over their heads and smashed into the outer wall of the House of Reason itself. The marble façade cracked and crumbled, burying a senator and her aides before they could escape back into the building.
The hum of powered batons from capitol police sounded from the street as they swarmed to faction the false legionnaires. They were answered by quick bursts from N-4 assault rifles.
22
“Still want to stay?” Soren pointed to a partially blocked opening back into the House.
Verdier broke into a run. “Where’s McCarty?”
“Doesn’t matter!”
Soren looked up as the unmarked bot from earlier trailed Verdier. He picked up a hunk of masonry and hurled it at the drone. The throw clipped the machine and sent it spinning away.
Verdier struggled over the broken marble as more shots from the legionnaires’ rifles broke through the din of terrified people. Utopion police were woefully unprepared for something like this, never imagining that they would need blasters in a blaster-free zone. It would be precious minutes until the tactical unit—or better still the Legion garrison—could respond to the threat.
Soren grabbed the senator by the belt and manhandled him through the gap. They had nearly outrun the firing angles afforded to the attackers down on the street when a legionnaire opened fire.
Pain blossomed in Soren’s left calf and he rolled down the other side of the rubble, hitting every sharp angle on the way.
There was a smoking blaster hole in his pants and his lower leg throbbed with agony, but the armor weave had stopped the round from tearing through his flesh.
Senator Verdier sat in the middle of the hallway, bewildered. Staffers ran around in a panic. Capital security ran around seemingly at random.
Soren got up and limped to the senator and hauled him up. “Passageway.”
He prodded Verdier toward the holographic wall. The senator vanished on the other side of it and Soren heard a sudden girlish shriek. He rushed inside and found McCarty covering against the armored door leading to the underground passageways.
“Senator?” the aide asked. “I-I came here to get the door for you.” He gave the control panel a quick pat.
A rifle fired from somewhere in the hallway and Soren put himself between the senator and the holo wall. Armed personal security arrived with blaster pistols and joined the fire fight as red-hot blaster bolts sizzled by the opening. A round bounced into the polished floor and then whacked into the alcove.
McCarty yelped and shrank into a ball.
“Door!” Soren twisted the senator to unlock their escape route.
Verdier held up his bracelet and the mote of light ran around it, but the door didn’t open. “What?”
He tapped it against the sensor again. “They…they’ve got the capitol on lock down. Wait, there’s an override code…”
Verdier slid a panel aside and stared at a keypad.
More gunfire streaked through the holo wall. Soren saw a legionnaire move through the holographic opening, firing all the way. He twisted to one side, arm hanging loose, then jerked as more bolts from the private security hit home.
“I don’t,” Verdier put his hands on his hips, “I don’t remember my damn code.”
An N-4 opened up just feet from the doorway, close to the wall that ran flush with the recessed security panel. Soren slid Nix’s knife out from his belt and raised his arms to his head. A legionnaire backpedaled right in front of him, engaged in a firefight with more security.
Soren slammed his arms onto the legionnaire’s shoulders and stabbed the knife into the synthprene around the man’s throat. The blade slipped into the seam, but stopped when it bit into the chest armor with just barely the point through.
Soren used the shock of his sudden attack to wrench the legionnaire off balance and into the alcove wall. The legionnaire’s gleaming helmet took the brunt of the blow and cracked from the force. Still, the man was able to jab an elbow into Soren’s chest that knocked the breath out of him.
The agent slapped his palm against the butt of the knife and rammed it up into the legionnaire’s throat. There was a wet gargle and the legionnaire shoved Soren into the other side of the alcove, pawing at the knife in his throat as blood poured from the wound in gouts. He tried to lift his rifle but instead dropped it to the ground. He sank against the wall, chest heaving then went still as his head lolled to one side.
Soren snatched up the N-4 and checked the charge counter on the buttstock, mostly full. He pulled charge packs off the dead man’s webbing and looked at the senator and the aide. Both stared at him slack jawed.
“The door!” Soren shouted as he removed three fraggers from the legionnaire. He pulled the knife free with a wet slurp.
“Your wife’s birthday backwards!” McCarty said and Verdier snapped his fingers.
“Watch out! Watch out!” came from the hallway.
Soren turned to look only to have a blast wave smack him off his feet. More rifle’s opened fire, all directed at the private security and bodyguards that the MCR must have hit with a fragmentation grenade.
Verdier leaned against the armored door, his eyes unfocused. The control box had six of eight numbers in it.
“Thirty seven!” McCarty squeaked.
Soren finished the code and McCarty pushed his way through the door as it opened before the agent could get the senator through. Soren hit a button to shut the door and looked for anything in the dark and damp tunnel to bar the door.
“This can’t be,” Verdier said. He was bleeding from his arm now and seemed disoriented. “Why? Why are they doing this?”
“Worry about how we get you out of here.” Soren flipped the grip on Nix’s knife and stabbed it into the seam of the door’s frame. He beat the pommel with the rifle’s buttstock.
“There’s a series of panic rooms nearby.” McCarty pointed a shaky finger down the tunnel.
“No.” Soren whacked the knife again and wedged its blade deeper into the door. “That’s the first place they’ll go. And if they could get in this deep, they’ll have a plan to get inside even those rooms. We need to get into the city, disappear into the crowd while Cap cops or the Legion get this under control.”
“There’s a shuttle pad on the roof,” Verdier said, breathing hard. “The local police should be on their way here in force.”
“Want to trust just anyone we see?” Soren grimaced and touched his back, feeling where shrapnel had torn through the jacket. He brushed passed a rip in the flex weave and his came away with blood on it.
