It was the quiet that made Daniel Imoke’s skin crawl.
No matter what shift, no matter what part of the station one was in, you could always hear other people bustling about on Ileri Station. Music was always in the background, solarfunk or fēiwǔ or Second Weave jazz on speakers; sometimes just a busker with a guitar or drums. Conversations between people, friendly or heated or simply the neutral acts of buying and selling. The whir of electric vans zipping down the alleys. The shuffle of feet on the grass or tiles, sandaled or shoed or booted, the rustle of neosilk or the swish of fabber-made linen. People moving, people doing business, people living their lives.
It wasn’t silent, really, where he crouched a block away from the airplant’s entrance, but it was still too quiet for his nerves. Imoke heard the people around him, a mixed squad of constables and troopers, as they checked their equipment and cracked the sort of bad jokes one told at these moments. But the civilians had been carefully, quietly evacuated to shelters blocks away, leaving the area around the airplant quiet as a grave.
Something else was missing: bots. Not entirely, of course; some bots performed basic maintenance and cleaning tasks, picked up refuse, inspected seals on the great quartz-crystal windows that let reflected sunlight in, or sampled the air to check for anomalous chemical traces. Okafor told him that life support and many infrastructure systems ran on a separate hardened network that seemed to be operational even while the primary infonet was down. When he asked why they couldn’t piggyback Constabulary traffic on that net she responded with a load of jargon about special-use protocols and air gaps and a dozen other terms he didn’t follow. ‘Incompatible systems’ seemed the heart of it, though.
At least the rebels couldn’t use it against them. He hoped.
“All teams ready, Inspector,” said the sergeant assigned as his deputy. It took him a moment to realize that ‘Inspector’ meant himself. Toiwa had elevated him a few hours earlier, just before handing him command of one-third of the force now set to retake the airplant. Another Constabulary officer led a second assault team, while an Army lieutenant led the third, and commanded the entire ad hoc unit.
“Very good, Sergeant.” He toggled his squad’s status to green and hoped the portable network repeaters worked as advertised.
“All set, boss?” the sergeant asked. His eyes ran over Imoke’s equipment, one last visual check. ‘Check your gear, check your partner’s gear’, was a mantra drilled into every constable from the first weeks of training.
Imoke flashed the hand sign for ready. He was as prepared as it was possible to be. He’d even broken down and sent Noo a message, though who knew when she’d receive it. Word of her planetary escapades and dramatic rescue had filtered through amidst the other reports, so he’d chased his temporary roommate out of the tiny cubby they shared in headquarters, taken a deep breath, and composed a message to the person who meant most to him in the world. Because that’s the sort of thing you did when you got ready to launch a frontal assault on a fortified position.
The last squad’s indicator flipped green. Imoke brought his shotgun up to port carry position. Ahead of him, his four Army troopers, hulking forms in their heavy body armor, snapped down their visors and hefted their carbines. Behind him, the rest of his team did the same.
The Go indicator lit and he heard the distinctive chuff of a pneumatic grenade launcher from their tiny fire support element atop a three-story apartment building across the street. The laser-guided projectile burst squarely in front of the airplant’s entrance and dense gray smoke billowed forth. Without prompting, the soldiers at the head of his column took off at a dead sprint, and he followed.
Keeping pace with the soldiers turned out to be harder than he’d expected. He was fit, still put in his time on the football pitch when he could, and ran in the park regularly. But running in a pair of shorts and a jersey, in proper shoes, was one thing; running with fifteen kilos of body armor, weapons, and gear, with a tactical visor over one’s face, was quite another. Still, only two of his people managed to pass him before they reached the far side of the street and stacked up beside the entry.
The airplant, one of three in the ring, rose above them, a cylinder thirty meters wide and sixty tall.
Unlike the majority of the station’s structures, its walls were substantial, nearly a meter thick here at the base. There were two entrances at ground level, on opposite sides of the cylinder. Imoke’s team had this entrance, while the Army lieutenant took the other. Surya’s team remained in reserve.
Imoke’s troopers wasted no time in slapping cutting tape around the door frame. One soldier snapped the igniter and Imoke’s visor briefly polarized as the entire rectangle flared with eye-searing brilliance. He felt the quick wash of heat and the harsh smell of burnt metal flooded his nostrils. That reminded him to pull up his collar and fix the chemical seal. It trapped the scent in, but was far better that than succumbing to any chemical surprises the rebels might have for them.
The door fell outward and one of the soldiers lobbed in a flash-bang. He must have set it to go off on contact because it burst two seconds after he’d thrown it. The soldiers rushed through in the explosion’s wake and Imoke followed, his officers behind him.
A sharp bang from the far side announced the other team’s entry. Weapons and sensors swept across the room, a large workshop occupying a good third of the tower’s base. He was relieved to see that its dimensions matched the blueprints he’d been given. He toggled a wireframe view of the layout and set his wayfinder to mark the path to the stairs. Imoke detached two constables, one carrying their portable network repeater, to remain by the entrance, and signaled the soldier on point to lead them out on their prearranged path. They cleared the ground floor and found it unoccupied. Seconds later they made contact with the second team.
“Nothing so far,” he told the infantry officer, who reported the same. The reserve squad moved in to secure the ground floor. Imoke collected his door guards and flashed the hand sign for up to the soldier on point, while the Army squad took the stairs down to the sub-levels.
After passing through chambers filled with gleaming tanks, mechanical valves, and a truly astonishing variety of gauges, the team found themselves at the bottom of a large open space, twenty meters from floor to ceiling according to his rangefinder. A dull gray column, five meters wide, rose through the middle of the chamber. A strong, steady current of air pushed outward from the center towards the outer walls, which in this part of the tower consisted of engineered fullerene mesh designed to trap particulates. So the overlay claimed, at any rate. A wide ramp spiraled around the circumference of the chamber leading to the intake pumps above. Imoke signaled to his scouts to lead the way up the ramp.
The rebels made their move.
Automatic fire lashed out from the top of the ramp. The rebel gunner ignored the well-armored troopers in front, instead pouring rounds into the constables in the middle of the column. Even with their ballistic ceramic inserts, Constabulary tactical armor couldn’t stop the high-powered projectiles. Rounds punched through the vests of two officers who went down screaming. Imoke dropped prone as the line of tracers roamed across the space where his column had been.
His constables dropped in place, some scattering before hitting the deck, and began to return fire. The soldiers instead charged up the ramp, spraying suppressive fire from their autorifles. “Use the grenade launcher!” the fire team leader called as the hidden gunner switched targets, turning their fire onto the onrushing troopers.
“Wei’s down!” came the call. Imoke looked over his shoulder and saw Wei’s body a few meters behind him, the precious launcher a meter beyond her outstretched hand.
“On it.” He flipped his shotgun’s safety on, and crawled on hands and knees over to Wei, grabbed the launcher and snatched the bandolier from her body. He didn’t need the status display to tell him she was dead; she’d taken three rounds to the torso and one to the head. There was blood, so much blood, like he’d never seen except for the charnel house inside the Second Landing Social Club, and bile rose his throat. Above him, the fire from the troopers’ rifles quieted and he had a fleeting hope that they’d silenced the opposition, but that hope was dashed as the rebels’ heavy weapon opened up again.
Something large and dark and not at all human-shaped fell past him as he raised the grenade launcher. His djinn synched with the weapon and he checked the load: an antipersonnel flechette round. He came to his knees and raised the launcher, sighting in on whatever had dropped from the ceiling. His heart raced and he fought to steady his hands as his aiming reticle tracked across his target.
Fuck, it’s a combat bot. It was two meters tall and as many wide when one took the full breadth of its six insectile legs into account. The armored central carapace was much smaller but sported two turrets. Tongues of fire leapt forth as the bot turned its weapons onto Imoke’s people.
“Focus on the enemy bot!” he called across the all-hands channel. No need for radio discipline now; the enemy knew exactly where they were. He fired the antipersonnel round at the bot, knowing the flechettes were virtually useless against the armor but hoping for a lucky hit anyway. His left hand swept along the bandolier in vain; they’d carried no explosives into the airplant for fear of damaging the infrastructure. He grabbed a ballistic rubber riot-control round and loaded it. “Fall back to the second level,” he ordered. “Grab the wounded and pull back!”
He was sighting on one of the bot’s legs, hoping to knock it off balance, when something lifted him and threw him into the central column.
Toiwa heard the rebel machine gun open up, the sharp rattle distinct even from two blocks away. Her stomach fell with the knowledge that her people were in deep trouble.
The personal feeds from the assault team became virtually impossible to follow as the soldiers and police scrambled to respond to the onslaught. Both Imoke’s team on the upper floors and the Army-heavy team sent to clear the lower levels were caught in a devastating ambush.
“Sweet Mother, that’s power armor,” someone said. Toiwa glanced over to see the Army sergeant, wounded during the midnight coup but ambulatory enough to run overwatch for her comrades. The expression of horror on the woman’s face matched the yawning pit that suddenly opened in Toiwa’s gut.
“Combat bots engaging the top team,” Shariff said. “Dammit, Daniel, get out of there.”
“Cut the chatter!” Toiwa snapped. “Surya, get your people up to support Imoke’s team. Sergeant Mohammed!” The Army sergeant turned to her. “What have we got that can take out the power armor and the bots?”
“Not much, ma’am,” came the reply. “The fire support team has the only armor-piercing ammunition.”
“Get them in the fight now,” she ordered. The sergeant relayed commands as Toiwa scanned the status windows. So many red icons, so quickly...
She heard Valverdes call her name and turned to see zer at the doorway. Pericles Loh stood beside zer, hands clasped before him, a somber expression on his face. “Ma’am, Mr. Loh was quite insistent.”
She locked eyes with Loh. He knew what we’d run into. He knew it was more than we could handle. She was certain of it, knew it in her bones. Anger and frustration welled up, but she took a deep breath and shunted them inside. “You have something to say, Loh?”
“I can help,” he said. He held her gaze. There was nothing gloating or triumphant about his tone, or his expression. He affected the role of supplicant, even as he held people’s lives—her people’s lives, the people who’d placed their trust in her, the people who were now bleeding and dying because she’d refused to make a deal with the devil.
And if we can’t even take a single airplant without these kinds of casualties because the rebels are armed to the teeth, how can we take back the station?
She knew she couldn’t.
This was the choice, then: capitulate to Miguna and let him remake her world; spill gallons of blood and kill dozens, if not hundreds, in a doomed attempt to take it with the resources she had; or climb into bed with the biggest criminal on the station, if not in the system.
The hook was in. She knew it. Loh knew it. They both knew what she’d choose. But she’d be damned if he’d reel her in without a fight.
“Can you save my people in the airplant?” Her face was hot, her chest felt tight. The gunfire rattled on, punctuated now by the thumps of grenade launchers.
“I can,” Loh said. “My people can hit the sub-levels from the maintenance passages.”
Waving him forward into the room was the hardest thing she’d ever done. “I won’t forgive violent crimes,” she said. “No murders, no assaults, no sexual violence of any kind.”
Loh moved to stand before her. Fathya Shariff came up to stand at her left. “It’s the right decision,” Shariff said.
Loh’s eyes never left hers. “We can agree to that,” he said.
“And any evidence of those kinds of crimes we might uncover is outside the scope of immunity,” Toiwa said. Her throat was tight and she swallowed to try and loosen it. She heard, as if from a great distance, her staff directing reinforcements to aid her beleaguered forces, the breathless calls for focus fire on one of the enemy bots, the curses as the enemy troops relentlessly ground forward.
Loh hesitated, then nodded. “We accept that as well. Do you have any other stipulations?”
She leaned forward until they were practically close enough to kiss. “You’ll give me everything you know about the rebels, and you’ll do it immediately after we rescue my people, and if you hold anything back, I’ll cut your balls off myself and wear them as earrings,” she hissed.
That seemed to catch him by surprise. Loh’s eyes widened and he actually shuffled a half-step back. He started to say something, then seemed to think the better of it. At last he nodded. “Message received, Governor.”
“It had better be.” She turned to Valverdes and Shariff. “Inspector, M. Shariff, I ask you to witness my offer of conditional amnesty to M. Loh and associates he will designate, in exchange for the complete and total cooperation of he and his associates in suppressing the rebellion.”
The two women gave their affirmations for the record. Loh extended his hand and she took it.
He reached his left to his chest and tapped twice. “Myra, it’s done. Execute.” The floor shook, and she heard a series of muffled thumps. “Shaped charges to breach the sub-level walls,” Loh said. “My people are going in.”
She felt detached from her body, moving as if controlled by some distant puppeteer as she turned back to the displays. She forced herself to witness the results of her mistakes and prayed this wasn’t another.
Is this the first step to becoming like Ketti?
She looked again at the swath of red icons as Loh ordered his people, who were poised in even deeper sublevels than the rebels, into the fray. If she had to pay that price so those beneath her didn’t, it would be worth it.
It would have to be.