“Do we know anything about where this man is from? Who he works for? If the resistance gets his kind of training we'll all be in a lot of trouble.”
Her Captain sat down hard in his rough chair. It was safe, they were surrounded by half a platoon. He still wore his helmet though, and his dark grey combat armour was always sealed. Captain Bourne looked over the holographic map hovering over the table while scrolling through assignment lists on the table surface. It was linked to the communications and intelligence unit built into his helmet. Every soldier was marked in blue, while the enemy was marked in green and unknowns were red silhouettes. Most of them were in shelters beneath the ground, or safe rooms deeply embedded in the core of the more well constructed buildings and households.
“He's a hunter. From his direction I'd say he's headed towards the mountain, trying to find a way under the shield. He won't make it in time, the shield will be down and we'll have two regiments assuming control of the area by noon tomorrow.”
“Sir, begging your pardon, but that doesn't make sense, sir.”
“Oh? You have a better theory?”
“Sir, maybe he's just a rogue andie, one of the police automations, sir.”
“We have control of three hundred seventeen andies and none of them have gone rogue. In fact, they've taken the lead over some of the greener West Keeper soldiers when things are going south. No, this is no andie. Maybe this is one of their exceptional soldiers, trapped outside the shield, it could even be this Valance character that was reported in the area. There's no way to be sure unless we manage to catch or kill him when we take mount Elbrus. You're going to see some real combat tomorrow. We're taking the mountain shoulder to shoulder. Their strike and fade guerilla tactics won't be worth much.”
“Yes sir. Who am I getting?”
“Reinforcements from the Diplomat. Five squads of West Keepers with basic training, they're assembling across the street now in building two one eight.”
“Sir, thank you sir.”
“Don't thank me, just keep the greens in line. Here's a new command decryption chip, just in case yours is out of date.”
Fiona took the three by one centimetre wide flat chip and slid it into the socket on the inside of her helmet. “Sir, cleanse the West in defence of the East, sir.”
“That crap is for civilian cannon fodder and gullible sheep Sergeant, use them well.”
“Sir, yes sir.” Fiona saluted before turning on her heel and starting out of the room.
The few soldiers who remained from the first to land on Pandem were all being promoted. Everyone left from her squad had been given new squads from arriving reinforcements except for her.
Seeing so many comrades and positions taken out by one person nagged at her, she still wanted to see him stripped, in jail, or at the business end of her rifle. Fiona shook her head. She had five hours to introduce herself to her new charges and get a little rest before they had to move.
It would be good to get back to the fighting, and if she caught sight of the man she'd spent so much time tracking she'd send everything she had after him, orders be damned. She was tired, the way down the stairs and across the street seemed long and Fiona was thankful for the quiet of the stairwell as she turned to start downstairs.
“So that's how you officers reset biometric security and stay tapped in to secure communications. Glad I decided to listen in on you and your CO,” a man whispered into her ear from behind as her helmet was grabbed out of the crook of her arm. Fiona's sidearm was half out of its holster when the long coated killer's boot planted firmly on her back and sent her flying down the stairs.
It all happened too quickly. She brought one hand up to break her fall, the other was let go of her sidearm so she could try and control herself when she hit the wall and touched the floor on the landing but when she hit the wall her one hand sent her down the next flight of stairs head first.
An incredibly intense pain flared at the base of her neck and shot up the back of her head as her face struck the concrete landing. He was there, standing at the top of the stairs in that familiar armoured black and crimson vacsuit. He was taking the command and clearance chip out of her helmet. She couldn't move her arms, her legs and everything was starting to seem very distant, faded.
Jake knew he was surrounded, but finding out how the officers maintained communications over an encrypted network and getting access was the only way he could find a way through their lines. He pulled the three grenade belts he had collected from soldiers over the last twenty six hours and set them all for thirty seconds.
Arming the first he tossed it into the command room down the hall. Arming the second he tossed it down the stairwell so it went well past the corpse on the landing. The third belt went outside, and he couldn't have been more amazed that the release mechanism actually worked. He'd never seen one like it, but when the belt of grenades was half way down to the milling crowd of West Keeper soldiers the simple spring mechanism activated and sent grenades flying in all directions.
Sounds of alarm rose up all around him. The soldiers who were sent to investigate the Sergeant crashing down the stairs cried out; “grenade!” as did the Commander in the next room and three storeys below the crowd were scattering. The chances of anyone in the assembly on the street actually getting killed were low. Someone spotted the grenades before they hit the ground, and that suited Jake's needs perfectly. If he had just left the body in the stairwell it would be seconds before someone sounded the alarm. At least with grenades going off in and around the building there was chaos, confusion.
He sprinted up the stairs, through the room at the top and leapt out of the window on the far side, landing soundly on his feet across a narrow alley on a large second storey balcony. The guards that held the post there were already dead, and the makeshift barracks beyond the dark balcony door was quiet.
The explosions started as he took his third running step and he jumped across the five meter span to catch the lower half of a railing one storey up. Just days before he wouldn't have even considered such a leap, but the reassurance of his new found healing abilities and his armoured vacsuit fortified him. He had seen thousands of soldiers coming down in drop ships to occupy the island and load just even more of the displaced citizens into those same dropships to be taken off world. It fortified him. The need to get through the city, find out what happened to Jason and Oz then get back to the Triton pressed him forward.
As he hurtled through the air towards the nearest balcony those thoughts couldn't have been further from his mind, however. He pushed his arms through the air ahead of him and caught the lowest metal bar of the railing under his armpits, striking the brick and mortar chest first. It knocked the wind out of him, his vacsuit prevented him from being seriously harmed but the misstep would slow him down, and considering the hundreds, perhaps thousands of soldiers concentrated on four city blocks, that was something he couldn't afford.
The pain faded much faster than normal and in the next second he was pulling himself up onto the balcony. The framework system must have activated when they hit me with the electromagnetic pulse bombs. I can't say I'm ungrateful, but if I ever get some face time with my own personal Geppetto I'll have some questions.
Jake climbed up on the opposite railing and jumped before he was ready, forcing himself into making a desperate flailing grab for the railing of the next balcony just around the corner. He barely caught it and couldn't help looking down to the hard, brick paved street four storeys below before pulling himself up. I might be able to survive that kind of fall now, but it doesn't mean it wouldn't hurt like a bitch. I'll have to start making plans that don't include so much vertical movement.
He was thankful for the vacsuit stealth features that still worked as he climbed up onto the balcony and peeked onto the rooftop. There were two sentries. Thanks to his thermal shielding and sound suppression systems they didn't hear him grappling with the railing just a moment before and they didn't see him through the walls.
Motion detection was next to useless outdoors, it took forever to tune so every little thing didn't set it off and it didn't have close quarters to rely on for sensing disturbed air or localized shifts in gravity. Regent Galactic's soldiers didn't bother using their motion detectors, that was something he knew from experience.
They did have eyes, however. Jake braced himself against the wall while standing precariously on an imitation marble railing and drew his sidearm. He poked the barrel just above the rooftop edge and used the video sighting system, the only part of the weapon that still worked, to watch a pair of sentries.
He looked down to make sure no one was looking up at him and waited for the pair to turn away so he could pull himself onto the rooftop. They weren't the pacing sort, or the most vigilant as it turned out. Instead of noticing the explosions just a building over right away, they were busy talking about something. Jake could see the muscles
