Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Turmoil (24 page)

"Tell me how
you know all that trivia, young man," the Lieutenant asked weakly, trying
to hold her head up to see Web.

"I know
somebody who's dealt with them," Web answered vaguely.

"Don't
move," Merritt cautioned and put his palm on her shoulder to keep her
down.  "We'll help you up together and then get you out of here; we don't
have much time before those Drisk come back through."

"Then let's
stop gossiping like little girls," she said gruffly.  "And somebody
hit that alarm button under the countertop."

Salvor was pleased. 
They'd pacified the reception area with ease thanks to the information Tana had
given them.  He'd left two men to guard the area and clear an interrogation
cell while the remaining seven had marched down the cell block to
Representative Velk's holding cell.  He even knew which door to access.

One of his team
placed a small breaching charge on the lock mechanism and stepped back, showing
three fingers.  They all turned away, and exactly three seconds later the
charge blew inward to completely punch through the metal plating.

In an instant, two
of the others were attaching magnetic clamps to the smooth door and pulling the
halves apart to reveal the sparse cell within.

Standing there in
the middle of the room, hands clasped behind his back and a calm look on his face,
was Representative Velk.

"Representative,"
Salvor began as he walked in and stood at attention before the senior official,
the former Commander of the entire Priman military.

"Operative,"
Velk replied calmly.  "Excellent work.  What is your plan?"

"I have a team
of twelve, nine inside and three outside waiting with vehicles.  We have a
short timetable so if you are prepared, we'll leave immediately."  He
offered Velk a handgun, which he took and inspected.

"I shall follow
your lead."

Salvor led the way
back to the reception area, but something was wrong.  It was too quiet; his two
operatives were nowhere to be seen.  His other men noticed it as well and
quickly fanned out into a skirmish line as they crossed the open space. 

"Sir!" one
of them called, hand waving to get Salvor's attention before the man bent to
his task.  Salvo arrived to see the two men dead, each expertly shot twice in
the chest where they must have been inspecting the interview room that they'd
gone to clear.

"These
soldiers' rifles are missing as well," added another of Salvor's
operatives, indicating the fallen Marines.

"Our presence
is no longer secret; we need to move fast," Salvor commanded.

"Is there a
problem?" asked Velk.

"There appears
to be at least one enemy combatant on the loose, most likely armed with a rifle
gained from these dead soldiers," Salvor explained with clinical
precision.  "We need to move before alarms are triggered.  If need be, I
will call in my men from outside to attack any position this enemy soldier tries
to defend.  We will still escape, Representative." 

Loren and the rest
had decided to try to hold the outer reception area adjacent to the
Lieutenant's armored redoubt.  From there, they could at least withdraw into
the maze of corridors in the building proper and make the enemy fight for every
junction along the way.  Hopefully, those Drisk would eventually run out of
ammo, and Loren was also spending a lot of time wishing the building's security
staff would arrive faster.

The Lieutenant had
configured her computers to send the data to a small data pad they'd found in a
drawer.  The device had been powered down, and upon inspection it started right
up.  With Loren and Web carrying the big guns and Cory holding up the injured Lieutenant,
Merritt watched the pad so they could monitor the security feeds without being
seen from the end of the long corridor.

"There they
are," Merritt muttered softly as life signs showed up leaving the hatch at
the far end.  There were seven Drisk and one Priman. 

"What does a
bunch of Drisk want with Velk?" wondered Cory, grasping her SSK as she
readied herself.

"We can ask
them after we shoot them," Loren replied grimly.

Loren and Web, by
virtue of carrying the rifles, were poised on each side of the hatch, with Web,
Cory, and the wounded Lieutenant piled up behind them on either side.  The
hatch was dead, a victim of the same EMP that had knocked out the Lieutenant's
station in the reception area.

"We'll let them
get about halfway here before we shoot," ordered Loren, eyes on the life
sign monitor in Merritt's hand.

Salvor was as
nervous as he was ever going to get.  Walking down this hallway was driving him
mad.  They were totally exposed, and the fact that there were no alarms or
troops wearing powered armor waiting for them at the far end did nothing to
calm his nerves. 

He was contemplating
throwing his precious spare EMP grenade just as a precaution, and grabbed it
with his left hand and thumbed it into standby.

Chapter Eleven

"Now!"
Loren yelled, and he and Web each leaned around the door frame just far enough
to bring their rifles up to their shoulders and fire.  There was no need for
finesse or subtlety; in the confined kill box, the enemy had nowhere to go. 
Loren just let a long burst of blaster fire go on full auto and noticed
peripherally that Web was doing the same.  In a split second Loren saw all
seven Drisk plus Velk at the back; the next instant the first two men in line
were toppling backwards, blasterfire scorching their bodies as they fell in a heap. 

Salvor saw it coming
and grabbed Velk by the front of his prisoner uniform, pulling them both down
to the ground behind the operatives.  Two of his men went down instantly, cut
to pieces by the withering fire from the powerful assault rifles being fired
from behind the doorframe.  Everyone hit the ground, unceremoniously using the
lifeless bodies of their comrades as makeshift barriers to the continuous fire
coming from down the hall.

As soon as everyone
was down, they returned fire.  The handguns plus two repeating carbines spewed
high energy blasts back at their attackers, taking great chunks out of the
interior wall, doorframe, and even the corridor out beyond the reception area. 
Salvor could hear screams from bystanders in the distance now and knew stealth
was no longer a consideration.

"Grenade
out!" Salvor yelled and tossed the small device towards the door.  His men
knew what to do, and he reached over to Velk to grab the Representative's
weapon and place it in standby mode so it wouldn't be fried by the EMP.

"Grenade!"
yelled Web as the little device came flying through the threshold and landed in
their midst.  Everyone leapt away from it and ended up flat on the floor, hands
over their heads.  All they heard was a quiet thump and a whine that rapidly
escalated up beyond the range of their hearing.

"Why didn't we
just explode?" asked Merritt.

"Who
cares?" yelled Web as he scrambled back to the door.  "Just keep
shooting!"

Web and Loren each
made it back to their original positions in the doorway and sighted down their
barrels.  Loren pulled the trigger and was rewarded with nothing.  No click, no
priming charge whine; the weapon was a brick.

"What the
hell?" he said as he looked desperately at Web, who had discovered the
same fatal problem with his own rifle.

Web's potential
response was interrupted by a torrent of blasterfire which chopped away further
at the doorframe, sending shrapnel and shards of cinder block from the
reinforced walls flying.  Loren couldn't help himself; without realizing, he
risked a peek around the corner and saw the remaining five Drisk and Velk
charging full speed at their position; they had only seconds. 

"Fall
back!" yelled Loren, and reached across the open doorway to grab the
wounded Lieutenant as Cory darted across during a let-up in the firing.  The
five of them shuffled, dragged, and pulled each other down the side hall as
fast as they could to the next junction where a crossing corridor met with
theirs.  They ducked around the corner just as the five soldiers plus Velk
burst through the hatch, expertly dividing up the sectors to cover all angles
as they decided what to do.

"Motherless
sons of..." Loren muttered as his hand brushed his SSK.  He tossed the
dead Hammer rifle on the floor and drew his SSK.  If he was going down, it
would at least be with his trusty sidearm in his hand.  To his amazement, he
heard the weapon's priming charge recycle.  Thinking fast, he manually forced
it to prime itself again, and this time was rewarded by a fully functioning shots-remaining
display. 

"Web!"
Loren called excitedly.  "Reprime your SSK; mine survived that EMP in
standby mode."  Without waiting for a reply, Loren swung out into the
hallway and sighted on the first Drisk he saw, who caught Loren's movement a
second later.  By that time, however, Loren had sent a double tap downrange at
him and hit him in the chest, dropping him as his comrades turned to pour fire
back at Loren's position.  Loren drew back behind the cover of the intersection
as blaster fire flew down the hallway.  Then, as suddenly as it had started, it
was quiet.

"Oh no they
don't," he said angrily as he peered around the corner to see two fallen
Drisk alone in the corridor.  Overcome by emotion, he wasn't thinking about
concealment or covering fire as he sprinted headlong down the hall to the
intersection he and his people had initially been defending.  He looked around
the corner in the direction of the screams he heard in the distance and saw the
fleeing forms of the five enemies.

"Right behind
you," Web yelled as he caught up to his boss, and Loren took it as his cue
to move.  Together, the two of them raced for all they were worth, Web edging
ahead.

Despite the tasteful
and bright decor outside of the military holding area, they were still several
levels underground, and found themselves always a few junctions behind their
quarry as they ran, occasionally trading potshots with their quarry.  The alarm
had locked out all the elevators and lift tubes, so they raced up stairs and
across ramps, getting farther and farther from the likelihood of security
forces intercepting them; it was up to Loren and Web to stop the escapees.

They reached an
entry atrium, a two story area which was the terminus of a dozen different
corridors and moving walkways.  A pair of civilian security guards was just
reaching their place at the doors as the Drisk charged across the space. 
Without breaking stride, the first two men shot the security guards down and
ran past them through the doors. 

There were too many
civilians to fire while running; Web drew up short and looked down the sights
of his SSK, blowing out his breath as he tried to line up the long shot across
the expansive lobby.  He pulled the trigger once; he was rewarded as one of the
soldiers covering the rear jerked and stumbled off course, dropping a few steps
later.

"Go!"
yelled Web and he and Loren again charged for the doors, determined to cover
the space and catch up outside.

"Halt or we'll
open fire!" they heard from behind and above them, but it didn't register. 
A few well-placed blaster bolts hit the ground between Loren and Web and the
doors, causing them to pull up short. 

Loren spun in place
to look at whoever had fired the shots and saw a dozen armed civilian guards
wearing full body armor, on a second floor balcony overlooking the atrium, each
one pointing a HMR-12 at him and Web.

"Drop the
weapons!" yelled the one in charge.

Loren was careful to
keep his SSK pointed towards the ground but couldn't bring himself to drop it,
not yet.  "We're with Confed!" Loren yelled angrily.  "You have
an escaping Priman and three Drisk running through the streets and getting
away!"

The guard wasn't
budging.  "Drop the weapons or we fire," he repeated.  "I don't
know who's involved with what.  They're outside and long gone; you're in here. 
You could be with them disguised in Confed uniforms, so, we're going to verify
who you are before anything else happens."

Loren raged.  He
didn't want to have a shootout with a bunch of civilian guards, not the mention
the fact that the had the guards had the drop on them from an elevated position
and he and Web were out in the open.

"Shiefah!"
Loren cursed, then safed and placed his SSK on the ground, looking at Web and
indicating he should do the same.  

The identity and
credential verification took all of fifteen minutes, but by then there was no
hope of picking up the trail of Velk and his rescuers.  Loren and the rest were
released with their original full access to most of the facility, and they
decided that the least they could do was investigate the scene of the crime. 

They passed the
initial checkpoint with its kill zone hallway, and Loren thought about the
Lieutenant whose life had been saved by the nanites she mistrusted.  Had it not
been for them, she would have been killed instantly instead of complaining
while sitting on a gurney on the way to a medical facility.

"Well,"
Loren said without much enthusiasm, "here it is."  He gestured to the
scene around him in the large detention facility's reception area.  He looked
at the shot-out windows of the interview room he'd been talking to Krenis in,
then let his gaze sweep across the rest of the lobby.  Bullet holes, blaster
scorch marks, and debris were the order of the day.  The room had been shot up
enough that the powers that be had ordered the facility closed temporarily
while they repaired and 'examined their security', something Loren found
appropriate as well as unnecessary.  It had been perfectly appropriate for its
original mostly-civilian task, but keeping a team of skilled Drisk operatives
out was just too much for most places Loren could think of.

"So what are we
looking for?" asked Cory as she nudged a toppled chair with her boot. 

"Well,"
Loren replied, "the crime scene techs are just about done, so I figure we
should start ripping the place up the same as everyone else.  We look for
anything obviously Priman because of Velk, Drisk because of the team that broke
him out, and any other new tech like those EMP grenades they used on us."

"Some of our
tech nerds will not be sleeping tonight," Merritt observed.  "They'll
be tearing those things apart trying to figure out why our regular EMP
shielding was worthless."

Loren watched as the
techs finished up their work.  They had brought in some large cameras that
they'd used to shoot the entire room in microscopic detail; they'd build a life
sized 3D holo which investigators could interact with, even going so far as to
move objects.  The scanners/cameras could see right through almost anything,
and once the scene was captured in the cameras, investigators could tear apart
the actual crime scene without worry of destroying evidence.

Loren saw the person
he assumed was the lead investigator; a severe looking human female in her
middle years who was ordering everyone around with the ease of years of
experience.  She was comfortable being in charge.

Loren approached
deferentially and waited for her to notice, then offered her his hand, which
she shook.

"Evening,
ma'am," Loren began. 

"Evening,
Commander," she replied.  She looked at Loren and then the rest of them
with a critical eye, then something clicked into place.  "You're the
soldiers who were involved in the shootout down here," she stated.

"Guilty,"
Loren said with a grimace.  "I wish we'd been able to stop it entirely,
but at least we have some of the perpetrators down here to show for it."

"I'm Captain
Romica," she continued.  "Anything you can add here that you didn't
put in your statement of record?"

Loren grinned.  She
was asking the age-old question: did he want to tell her anything that was best
left off the books for various reasons?  Maybe it made someone or something
important look bad, maybe it was a ridiculous hunch, maybe he didn't trust
everyone hearing it.  For whatever reason, did he have something to say in private? 
It was the mark of a seasoned investigator, one that was accustomed to working
in a politically charged atmosphere like the capitol of the Confederation.

"All I can
think to say is that they were well trained, definitely military or
mercs," Loren finally said.  "They worked well; they must have
drilled together for a long time.  My concern is that they were so familiar
with the facility; they knew to bring the EMP grenades, they knew where to go
find Velk."

Loren caught the
curious expression on Captain Romica's face.  "They never stopped to
access a terminal," he added.  "They never slowed down; they knew
exactly where they were going, and if I was the suspicious sort I'd say that it
was odd that staffing was so low here.  I can't imagine a handful of crew and
two Marines is what the usual personnel levels are."

Captain Romica gave
a 'harumph' as she seemed to roll those observations around in her head. 
"I can't really find anything to take issue with, Commander," she
admitted.  "All good points."  She seemed lost in thought for a
second, then snapped to attention.  "Alright; if you four want to snoop
around, be my guest.  I just ask that if you find anything interesting, tell me
before you go."

Loren nodded and
thanked her again, then started working on a game plan as she walked off.  He
saw a coroner examining one of the Drisk soldiers that had met his end at the
interview room where Loren had been pinned to the floor by gunfire, and he
decided to see what the man had to say about the Drisk in question.

As Loren approached
the Drisk coroner, the rest of his group peeled off in search of their own
clues.

"Evening,"
Loren said by way of greeting.

The coroner looked
up and nodded, then returned his gaze to the body.  "How do you do,
Commander?" the man replied.  He was stocky, almost overweight, something
uncommon among Drisk, and his light gray smock's pockets were filled to the
brim with equipment, probes, data pads, a few scraps of paper, and what looked
like a few ration bars.  "Here to see our man of mystery?"

Loren nodded before
realizing the coroner's back was to him and couldn't see him anyway. 
"Correct.  I figured now that the imaging was done, you might find
something when you started breaking down the scene."

The man squatted
down and placed his knees on the floor, then rested his hands on them. 
"Nothing interesting yet," he started.  "Just ran another
biometric scan; he's a healthy young Drisk.  Well, other than the blaster bolts
that scorched his insides, you understand."