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As the Mikhail Kalashnikov sidled into position next to the Silverfish, Roland checked his gear one more time. Inside a shipping container in the cargo hold, well-shielded by layers of smugglers blankets, the big cyborg sat in darkness with Lucia and Mindy.
“You and I spend way too much time in shipping crates, Roland,” Lucia pointed out with an irritated pout. She and Roland had used a similar trick to get into Marko’s compound when they invaded Big Woo several months before.
“At least this one is big enough for all of us,” Roland pointed out, “last time we were squished like sardines.”
“Lucky you, iron-britches.” Mindy gave Lucia a hungry look, “Some guys get all the breaks”
Lucia knew that Mindy was just trying to have a little fun at her expense, and since it made Roland uncomfortable, she thought it pretty funny herself.
“Maybe next time, Mindy” she said amicably, “but my tastes run a little on the bulky side,” she slapped Roland’s tree trunk of a leg, making him jump.
“You ain’t kidding, kitten,” Mindy laughed, “You got some kind of bionic pelvis—”
“Ladies! Please!” Roland begged.
Both women dissolved into good-natured laughter at his discomfort. Mindy poked more fun at him, “How can you be such a prude? Weren’t you in the army? I thought army guys were all dirty-minded hound dogs? I swear you’d be blushing right now... You know, if you had capillaries that is.”
Lucia rescued him, “Roland is a gentleman, Mindy. He isn’t used to rough company like you and me.” Her words were cordial, but her face sent a message to the other woman that was clearly a warning. Lucia was likely the only person who knew exactly how deep Roland’s psychological scars ran, and she tried to spare him excess pain whenever she could. He wasn’t fragile, but thirty years of self-imposed celibacy had made the big man a little defensive about his relationship with Lucia.
It took a half-second, but Mindy eventually caught on and changed the subject, “How long until we dock?” When she wasn’t slinging poorly concealed sexual innuendo around, Mindy was all business.
Lucia checked the external feeds, “Any minute now,” she exhaled heavily, “everybody ready?”
The look on Mindy’s face was all the answer anybody needed. Roland slid his helmet into place and engaged the mag-locks, “Good to go.”
“God, I hate that ugly thing,” Lucia said as the faceplate closed, “It’s hideous.”
The white metal skull face, with its narrow triangular eyes and smoothly molded features stared back through her. Roland’s voice, metallic and hollow over the speakers, answered her. It sounded like a different person altogether.
“It’s supposed to be.”
He was not trying to be dramatic. He was just telling the truth. The helmet had been designed to evoke very specific reactions on the battlefield, and no one who had seen it though the haze of gun smoke or the flickering orange light of explosions was going to call it ineffective in doing so. But it frightened Lucia more than she cared to admit how much the helmet changed his whole character. This wasn’t her Roland anymore. This wasn’t her tired old soldier who had just wanted to be a hero but instead ended up the monster. It wasn’t ‘Tank,’ the gruff but good-natured fixer from Dockside, either.
This was Breach. Breach was a faceless, remorseless, and fearless engine of pure devastation. Breach was a destructive force of myth and legend, existing solely to kill and destroy. Most terrifying of all, Breach was neither a man nor a monster. A man might kill because he had to, and a monster might kill because the wanted to. Breach was a machine. Machines killed because they had been made to.
She understood the psychology of the helmet and working with Roland was teaching her a lot about the nature of soldiers and combat. Lucia was very much aware on the cognitive level that Roland and Breach were not separate entities, and under that death mask was the same man she loved. But she also understood how powerful and transformative the act of putting a uniform on could be. War was Roland’s business, and right now he was wearing a business suit.
Lucia put on the last of her own armor. Her normal Level II plates were replaced by the composite armor from Tommy Guns, leaving most of her body covered with the molded panels. Her favorite CZ-105 flechette pistol was in her thigh holster, extra magazines and power cells attached to strategic locations about her harness. Lucia had elected not to bring a rifle, to everybody’s surprise. But she preferred to rely on her superhuman speed and agility to avoid direct firefights, and slinging a rifle would degrade that capability. The CZ hurled armor-piercing needles more than capable of defeating most normal body armor, and the Sasori were not terribly durable. As long as she didn’t run into anything too well-armored the weapon would be adequate. Roland had convinced her to wear a helmet and a HUD visor at least, despite her discomfort with both. The need for both head protection and real-time tactical data trumped her personal comfort-level, and so she had acquiesced.
The last thing she put on were the PC-10 gauntlets. The powerful electrical discharge from the gloves, coupled with the speed and precision of her strikes made these a personal favorite. Mindy ogled them with naked avarice, “Those sure are pretty! What do they do?”
“When I hit people, they go to sleep” she grinned wickedly, “Instead of having to chip away at big ugly goons, one or two shots with my opera gloves here and they just lay down all polite-like.”
“You should get a bone-job and some weave,” Mindy suggested, “the boys are always so surprised when they see you toss a guy in power armor like it ain’t nothing.”
“I don’t really want hard body-mods.” She leaned in and winked, “Weave has regular upkeep that I’m just not interested in. Plus, right now all my stuff flies under the radar, if you know what I mean.”
“I get it,” Mindy nodded, “I replace weave every damn year in this business. I wish somebody would develop a self-repairing version.” The busty assassin licked her upper lip, “As for flying under the radar?”—she pointed to her expansive cleavage—“A lot of my stuff doesn’t.” She tried to see if Roland was looking down her décolletage, but the helmet betrayed no such interest.
Lucia stifled a chortle at that, “You ain’t lying about that! Now put those away before Roland gets ideas.”
Mindy was wearing her reinforced jumpsuit and a harness, and she began fitting the armor plates in place. When she had finished, she checked her bead rifle and then drew something long and dark from her duffel bag. She strapped it to her thigh and then flexed her leg to test the fit. Lucia’s eyes grew wide when she recognized it, “That’s one of those android’s blades!” she remarked, surprise and awe turning it into a squeak.
Mindy looked up, and her eyes, normally bright and filled with wicked glee, were smouldering with deeply burning anger.
“It sure is,” she said quietly, without any of her signature glibness, “I pulled it from Mack’s body so I could return it to Vladivostok myself.”
“Does it work?” Lucia asked, “I mean, does it cut through everything or does that only work when they are holding it?”
Mindy raised an eyebrow and smiled just a little bit, “Oh. It works. It works real nice.”
“Nice,” Lucia grinned wickedly and put a hand on Mindy’s shoulder, “Good hunting in there.”
“You too, hot stuff,” Mindy’s jokes were back, it seemed.
They waited in silence the last few moments, each lost in their own thoughts as they contemplated individual mission goals. Shortly, they felt the subtle nudge of docking grapples, and then the rough bump when airlocks aligned. Distantly, they heard alarms whining as the two vessels clung to each other in a slow, graceless, spinning dance.
“Ready, ladies?” Roland checked on his team mates. Both nodded assent.
Inside the container, there was no way for the women to watch what was going on outside, but Roland keyed his HUD into the ships monitors to observe the airlock. The red warning lights that framed the hatch blinked patiently while the system cycled and equalized the pressure between the two ships. After a brief interlude, the light switched to a helpful solid green when it was safe to open the hatch. He saw Pops standing in front of the airlock, alone and unescorted. Roland thought
Pops was a useless kleptocrat, but he respected the bravery it took for him to stand there unflinching. There was no guarantee that whoever was boarding his ship would not simply shoot the man on sight. All of them all felt that this was unlikely, however. Vladivostok’s arrogance and Laura’s intense pride virtually demanded that they take him prisoner, and the promise of whatever untold riches that Winter had stashed in this system further enhanced their chances. This did not make the situation any less tense when the hatch finally hissed and opened and Marcus Roper clumped through to secure the hold.
There was no boarding party, which Roland found strange, but then again, Roper could be considered an entire boarding party unto himself. Roland could not risk an active scan on the lumbering metal man, so he strained his eyes and wound the monitor to its maximum magnification in an attempt to determine Roper’s current loadout.
The news was not catastrophic, but it was not particularly good, either. He grumbled out loud to keep the women up to date.
“It’s just Roper. Looks like he’s mounted a 15mm EM flechette driver, and a bead cannon. No ‘droids yet, no pirates either.”
“Is that bad?” Lucia asked, feigning a calm she did not feel.
“The beads aren’t an issue,” he shrugged, “but the flechette driver? That’s the sort of thing they use to bring down power armor or reinforced vehicles...” He saw her stiffen, saw the anxiety start to draw the corners of her mouth tight, “It has a very low rate of fire and produces a crap-ton of heat. I’m probably way too fast for him to get me with it. He may not even try. I’ll just have to be careful is all.”
He wasn’t sure if this placated her mounting panic, but he also refused to lie to her. She was tough, and she would work through it on her own. He knew that from experience.
Mindy had a different take on the strange choice of boarding party, and she hissed through clenched teeth, “He smells a trap.”
“He’s certainly playing it very safe, isn’t he?” Roland’s voice was a thoughtful murmur, “Does he really smell a trap or is he always this paranoid?”
Lucia looked concerned, “Are we blown?”
A shake of the helmeted head followed, “I don’t think so. I think he just doesn’t trust Pops not to try something dramatic. Roper can survive all sorts of shit, and since there is no one here to repel boarders, why risk a whole party?”
“I guess so,” Lucia did not sound convinced.
“Remember, we just need them to bring Pops on Board,” Roland reminded them, “Whether or not he suspects a trap is largely irrelevant after that.”
This was true. The plan treated their enemies’ suspicion as a foregone conclusion and instead relied upon misdirection and violence of action for success. “Stand by. Looks like we are ‘go’ in a minute.
Roper and Pops were heading into the airlock, Pops leading and the hulking cyborg following closely behind. As the pair passed out of sight of the monitors, everyone with a tac feed in their HUD began to get a transponder fix on the Chairman’s vitals.
“I have a fix,” Mindy hissed, adrenaline making her words clipped and tight.
“Me too,” Lucia agreed, fiddling with her visor.
“Wait until he stops moving,” Roland advised unnecessarily, “and stay out of the way of the engineers.”
Lucia tossed the big man a scowl, “I know the plan, Roland,”
“I know,” he growled, “I was talking to myself.”
The visor did an admirable job of disguising her eye roll, and they all waited for what seemed like hours for the glowing red pip on their displays to stop moving. It took almost four agonizing minutes for Pops to come to a stop. Two hundred and sixty tactical AI units all cross-referenced the old man’s spatial coordinates with the known Layout of the Kalashnikov at the same time, and the gravelly bark of Chris Pike crackled over a previously dormant comms channel:
“We have him. GO!”
With that syllable, things (as many who were there that day would later opine) got out of hand very quickly.