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“Geosynchronous orbital platform destroyed, sir,” Harfang’s gunnery officer reported. “No other artificial satellites found.”
Captain Junius Pellea, a wiry, olive-skinned man in his fifties, grunted in acknowledgment as he stroked his short salt and pepper beard. Like the rest of his crew, mercenaries working for a shadowy private military corporation based in the Protectorate Zone, he wore an unadorned black battledress uniform and carried a blaster on his hip.
However, unlike them and the crews of Harfang’s sister ships Faucon and Busard, Pellea was an undercover Sécurité Spéciale operative, one of several who’d infiltrated the Nexcoyotl PMC and turned it into one of the agency’s unwitting black ops arms. He always led the missions carried out on the Sécurité Spéciale’s behalf, but this one left him somewhat uneasy. PMCs usually avoided contracts that would see them go up against the Commonwealth Armed Forces because losing meant death. Sometimes, even victory might see the offenders hunted by undercover naval units if word got out.
And Tyrell was not only a Fleet installation. It also housed a Marine unit. Of course, his colleagues should be in control by now, and the Marine threat neutralized. He also enjoyed an overwhelming advantage in numbers compared to a small, dismounted rifle company and had surprise on his side.
“Signals, any contact from the surface,” Pellea finally asked, turning to look at the communications alcove behind him.
“No, sir. Nothing on subspace, not even a carrier wave, let alone normal radio. The place is pretty much dead for coherent EM emissions.”
Pellea stroked his beard again. There could be many explanations for Tyrell’s silence. The plan included seizing the transmission facilities or, failing that, destroying them. Perhaps they hit a snag during the seizure operation, and Tyrell’s communications were rendered inoperative. He shrugged. Anything could have happened.
“You may scan the surface using active means now.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.”
On either flank of Harfang, a few kilometers away, Faucon and Busard mirrored Pellea’s movements. Though not Sécurité Spéciale operatives, their captains were former Navy officers whose careers didn’t progress as they wanted.
“The base’s four main guns appear unpowered. They are in the rest position and cold, barely warmer than the surrounding rock. Life signs are clustered in the lower modules.”
Pellea frowned. Shouldn’t the life signs be more dispersed?
“Scan the surrounding area for emissions, life forms, or anything that shouldn’t be hiding on the surface of Keros beyond Tyrell’s perimeter,” he ordered, suspicion raising its ugly head. Paranoia was a necessary survival trait in the Protectorate. “And search the high orbitals, especially the Lagrangians, for any ships running silent.”
“Scanning.” A few minutes passed in silence, then, “We’re alone out here, sir. No indications of ships hiding in the Lagrangians or running silent in high orbit. Nothing beyond Tyrell itself that shouldn’t be there.”
Pellea felt a twinge of unease, his instincts telling him something wasn’t quite right. But he suppressed his nascent misgivings. After all, what could a mere company of Marines do against the cream of the Nexcoyotl PMC assisted on the ground by the finest undercover operatives money could buy, fanatics who’d rather die than fail?
“Send to Faucon and Busard, begin the descent.”
**
“Come to papa, little mercenaries,” Testo softly muttered, smiling, as he watched the three needle-shaped sloops. “I got yours right here.”
He opened a frequency on the company net.
“Niner, this is Zero. Three targets coming down. They appear sloop-sized, and I estimate a hundred and fifty crew per ship, two hundred tops. The odds are heavily in our favor. Any bets?”
“Niner here. Is there anyone crazy enough to bet against us?”
“I can always ask those jokers when they land. We may earn some easy money for the company fund.”
“Let’s stick to looting their ships after we seize them.”
“Roger that.”
“Niner, out.”
Sitting behind the polarized transparent aluminum window of the landing pad control center, Delgado searched the star-spangled black sky for signs of the oncoming sloops. The easy banter with Sergeant Testo belied his growing tension as pre-battle jitters tried to take hold, making him question his plan and its chances of success even though it was far too late for last-minute changes. But he knew the moment the enemy appeared, all that would vanish, leaving nothing but a cold clarity of purpose.
Standing by the door, darkened visor masking his impassive face, Kuzek held a plasma carbine loosely in his hands, muzzle pointing downwards. Unflappable as only those with a phlegmatic temperament could be, he simply waited, ready to cover his commanding officer when the action started.
Beside Delgado, Hak sat unmoving, his face also hidden by a helmet visor. He, too, held a loaded carbine. If Delgado didn’t know better, he’d suspect the first sergeant of taking a quick nap. But then he spoke.
“I figure this will be the biggest ambush we’ve ever set. Hell, maybe even the biggest in the regiment’s annals since the Shrehari War. Making history, we are, sir.”
“Only if we succeed. Remember, winners write the history.”
“And that’ll be us. Dumb bastards won’t know what hit them.” Hak sounded supremely confident. “They’re expecting friendlies in control of Tyrell’s systems and a garrison of mutts from a line regiment.”
He paused for a few heartbeats. “Contact, sir. I make three moving shadows occluding the stars a hand-span above the triple peak straight ahead of us.”
Delgado searched for them, then, “Seen.”
The company net came to life at that moment. “All call signs, this is Zero, three contacts on final approach to the north-west, altitude two thousand.”
One after the other, the four troop leaders replied to confirm, including Command Sergeant Saxer from gun emplacement number one.
**
After what seemed an agonizingly long descent, two of the three sleek, mercenary ships lit vertical thrusters and slowly descended toward the pad on piercingly bright columns of energy, heavy landing struts fully extended. The third, Busard, remained at altitude and began flying a figure-eight pattern above Tyrell. A last-minute change in plans, but one that Pellea’s gut insisted on.
His mercenaries were now dressed in nondescript, pressurized battle armor of a type legally available on the Commonwealth arms markets. Not as good as what Marines wore, but still better than unarmored suits. Their ordnance was a more eclectic mix — Shrehari small arms and Fleet-issue long arms stolen from weapons depots, along with a variety of non-lethal antipersonnel grenades such as flash-bangs, vomiting agents, and knockouts.
Harfang landed by the retractable gangway next to the hangar entrance while Faucon set down near the smelter’s cargo doors. As Jannika Hallikonnoen promised in her last transmission, the gangway snaked out and latched onto the ship’s main upper airlock. Only, it wasn’t Hallikonnoen or any of her agents at the controls.
Inner and outer pressures equalized, and the raiders opened the heavy door sealing off their ship. At the other end of the tube, a figure dressed in civilian coveralls waved and smiled, signaling they should follow him. Then he turned on his heels and walked through the inner airlock and into a long and cold passage. Sixty mercenaries in pressurized armor under the command of Harfang’s second officer, thinking he was one of Hallikonnoen’s men, made their way along the tube toward the reception area.
Below, the ship’s belly ramp dropped open, and another sixty mercenaries under Pellea’s command warily walked out in a single file. Pellea felt more unease. None of Hallikonnoen’s agents came to greet them or even tried contacting them over short-range radio. Yet if the Marine garrison still held the base, why let them land? Once inside, the raiders could wreak havoc. No, Jannika and her operatives were there, working the controls and opening the way. Something must have gone wrong with the communications.
An airlock, set beside the huge hangar doors, swung open as the raiders approached, and an anonymous figure wearing a miner’s pressure suit leaned out. He waved at the raiders, making impatient come-on signals. Equally impatient to enter, Pellea crammed his people into the airlock. It cycled, and when it was fully pressurized, the inner door swung easily on its hinges, revealing an immense, brightly lit space, empty but for old commercial shuttles and tired ground vehicles on the far side.
Their guide walked rapidly toward the left-hand portal leading into the station proper. Behind him, the raiders fanned out into two groups, one following the pressure-suited man, the other heading for the right-hand portal connecting the hangar with the smelter.
Upstairs, the first group of raiders reached the empty reception area, but their guide had long since vanished, causing puzzlement among the mercs. As one wag in the advance guard commented nervously, the lights were on, but nobody was home. Pellea’s second officer looked around with growing unease.
A former Pacifican National Guard officer, she once pursued a group of terrorists into an abandoned factory with a so-called informant guiding her through the maze. The factory covered several square kilometers and was a favorite hiding spot for subversives who opposed Pacifica’s ruling oligarchs. The informant, a rebel posing as a loyalist, disappeared, and they ambushed her company. She lost a third of her troops before the terrorists fled. Needless to say, she didn’t pursue.
Right now, Harfang’s second officer, who’d left the Guard in disgrace because of the incident, was overcome by an all too familiar sensation and didn’t enjoy it one bit. Still, she had her orders, and her assault group moved deeper into the base, following the directions on their maps that would take them to Hydroponics Module Three.
But the corridors remained empty, and their handheld battlefield sensors, also stolen from Fleet supply depots, showed no nearby life signs. She succumbed to her need for increased caution and flicked on her radio.
“Take it easy, people. We have lots of time.” Still, she wondered why the agent who’d guided them earlier didn’t wait.
“No sweat, boss,” Harfang’s senior bosun’s mate and her landing party’s point man replied. “Marines can’t hold a place like this against us, not if they want to protect civilians. Especially with our insiders screwing them around.”
“Don’t underestimate them. Just be careful where you step. Falling into an ambush can really ruin your day.”
Something in the second officer’s tone, rather than her words, kept the bosun from replying, and he turned his eyes back to the sensor in his hand. He stepped through the bulkhead separating the arrivals area from the cargo handling section. On the far side of that underground maze lay the first of the modules.
The eerie stillness of the base and the absence of even a hostile face gave more than just the second officer an uneasy feeling. By now, everyone was wondering what happened to the man who’d waved at them from the station end of the gangway.
Meanwhile, Pellea’s two-pronged assault group neared the pair of large, armored doors leading out of the hangar, and his disquiet grew. He looked around the large space, glancing up at the ceiling for the first time. Abruptly, he stopped and scrutinized the metal canopy above. A jolt of fear ran up his spine when he recognized the shapes of command-detonated anti-armor mines stuck to the roof of the hangar, cunningly camouflaged but just visible at this angle.
The left-hand door whooshed open, and their guide, who was ten paces ahead of the raiders walking point, stepped through.
Up in the hangar control room, invisible behind polarized transparent aluminum windows, Command Sergeant Dyas witnessed Pellea’s frantic gestures toward the ceiling and knew it was time to trigger his part of the ambush. With his man safely out of harm’s way after the door slammed shut, he picked up the detonator control tablet.
Across the landing strip, the assault group from the Faucon, one hundred and twenty strong, had split into four groups, each aimed at one of the smelter’s four massive loading dock airlocks. Besides preparing the smelter for destruction, their mission was to backstop Pellea’s strike groups and pin down any defenders pushed out of the upper modules.
As they neared, the outer doors slid open, in keeping with the plan, and the raiders entered. Once all were inside, the exterior doors slid shut, and the airlocks were quickly repressurized. Then, the inner doors opened, and Faucon’s captain realized they’d just made a massive mistake.
In the nearby hangar, Pellea opened his mouth to warn his people when a frantic message crackled over the raiders’ frequency.
“Take cover. It’s a trap!”
Pellea barely had time to recognize the voice of Faucon’s captain before she screamed once and fell silent. Then, the mines attached to the hangar ceiling exploded, showering him and his mercenaries with high-velocity shrapnel that punctured their pressure suits’ vulnerable joints.