Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Turmoil (29 page)

"So we have a
half hour starting a minute ago," Halley concluded.  "Web, how long
to get here?"                   

"Five
minutes."

"Ok," Halley
said, gathering everyone around but leaving the comm channel open for Web. 
"We're going to do this right now."  She glanced at the time on her comm
device.  "She
’
ll roll
in around twelve thirty a.m.  By the time Starr gets here we'll all be in
place, and most reasonable people will be asleep, so hopefully we can worry
less about collateral damage.  So, a minute or so after she enters, we go in. 
We all know what she and Velk look like; those are our two primary targets. 
I'm not saying wipe out everything else you find in there, but unless it's one
of those two you can shoot first and ask questions later."

"Everyone have
their body armor ready?" asked Cory.  She reached to the ground and
grabbed her one-piece shirt and shrugged into it.  It was made of a heavyweight
canvaslike material with an interesting physical property; while it was usually
quite loose and pliant, it hardened exponentially in response to kinetic
energy.  Swinging your arms back and forth wouldn't stiffen the material, but
the impact of a bullet or large force like a pipe or heavy blow would cause a
local area to harden.  Sheathed in a thin layer of the best energy-absorbent
anti-energy plates Confed could buy, it was the current state of the art in
personal armor; it was lightweight enough to wear daily and effective enough to
stop most pistol ammunition.  Assault rifles and repeated close hits with a
blaster would still win in the end, but it was better than nothing.  Cory
pulled the long sleeves into place and then pulled on the snug-fitting pants to
match.

"Safety first,
I always say," she replied with a grin as she buckled her gun belt.

"Where's
Web's?" asked Merritt.

"He's wearing
his," Halley replied.  Loren looked at her as if to ask if she really
meant it.  "He wears it everywhere," she said again. 

"I wore it to
your wedding," came Web's voice over their comms.

"Seriously?"
asked Merritt.  "What sort of party were you expecting there?"

"Hey,"
Halley interrupted, "something he even wants to wear it while we-"

"That's just
wrong," Loren broke in.  "We get the idea."

Tana Starr walked
with new purpose down the second tier of the block.  She'd return to ground
level to arrive at the safehouse, but she still enjoyed the view from up here
and would take it in as long as possible.  After soul-searching the day away
while thinking about her role in Velk's impending demise, she realized she'd
gotten over it.  It was part of the mission; no one person was more important
than the destiny of her people, their purpose in once again taking up the
mantle of leadership in this wayward galaxy.  She wondered if the same fate
would await her someday. 
Live by the sword, die by the sword
, or so the
humans said.  It was fitting. 

She arrived at the
front door of the safehouse at close to twelve thirty in the morning.  She
didn't knock, since she knew somebody would be watching the approaches.  She
simply waited until she heard the door's locks disengage, letting the old
fashioned wooden door swing inward.  Salvor had come to meet her personally, and
he held the door open for her, closing and locking it after she'd entered. 

She took stock of
the first floor and saw that Salvor's men hadn't changed the layout at all. 
There was a living space in front, with lots of comfortable seating.  A large
dining room that adjoined a well-appointed kitchen filled out the rear of the
first floor along with a small bathroom.  Salvor led her to the staircase in
back and up to the second floor.  There was a loft area at the top of the
stairs, with three bedrooms and two full bathrooms taking up the rest of the
space, a single hallway giving access to them.

Representative Velk
was hunched over a table, reading an old paper book by the light of a floor
lamp.  He noticed Starr and Salvor arrive and stood to greet them, hand on his
chest in the way of the Primans.  They returned the gesture.

"Representative
Velk," Starr said deferentially.  Despite the plans she meant to carry
out, she respected the man and his ways.

"Ms.
Starr," Velk replied.  "Thank you for bringing those supplies so
quickly," he said, indicating the small shoulder bag she carried.  "I
was just reading some works of the philosophers that our children have
produced," he said with some hint of pride, like a parent whose child has
done especially well in their schooling.  "They've come up with some
marvelous ideas about everything from morality to personal enlightenment."

"What are you
reading there?" she couldn't help but ask.

"The works of
an ancient philosopher from a little-known backwater planet.  Not a threat to
us, but still our children.  He posits the following question: if you had to
live your life now, from beginning to end, over and over until time itself runs
out, with every joy and every sorrow, would you view it as a curse or a divine
gift?  Have you lead your life in such a way that you'd be happy to experience
it repeatedly without end?  Or would it give you pause and make you reconsider
what you've done and will do in the future?"

The woman pondered
the question for a moment.  "A worthy consideration," Starr allowed.

"I see it more
as the ramblings of a person with too much time on their hands," Salvor
grumbled. 

"See it as you
will," Velk allowed.  "You don't have to agree with a philosopher; if
their words cause you to examine your own life, they've served their
purpose."

It was time. 
Halley's running clock told her she had about twenty seconds to the door. 
Everyone would breach on her action.  She strolled along slightly wobbly,
trying to look the part of someone who's had too much to drink.  She kept her
hands in her pockets against the faintest of chills in the night as a hazy
ground-fog began developing.  She made several false stops, like she was
looking for a particular home.  Her act wouldn't fool them once they realized
she was coming through the door, but any tiny bit of indecision or hesitation
on their part was worth it.

She'd used her
contacts' zoom ability to watch the door as Starr entered.  There were three
hinges on the right and a reinforced bolt at the pressure plate on the outside
where it was meant to be pushed on.  She'd thumbed her SSK to solid
armor-piercing ammo and would just shoot the hinges as she charged the stairs. 
No finesse tonight.

She stumbled along
the walkway, then abruptly turned and headed unsteadily towards the short
flight of steps to the front door of the Priman safehouse.  By the time she got
to the bottom step, her SSK was out.  At the top step, she'd fired three rounds
into the hinges on the right side of the doorjamb and two into the locking mechanism. 
When she got to the door, she had started a dash and was leading with her left
shoulder. 

Halley crashed
through the door, sending the weakened barrier falling into the room with a
practiced shoulder block.  She wasn't big enough to do it with brute force
alone, but having shot the door free of all support made it easier.

No sooner had she
bounced back upright than she saw two Drisk, one in the living room, one in the
dining room beyond, both holding nasty looking cut-down repeating blasters that
they were in the process of training on her.  She put one round in the chest of
the closest one and he fell back onto a heavily stuffed couch, then quickly
shifted and double-tapped the farther one where he stood in the dining room. 
Before his body hit the floor, she swung back and put one in the head of the
first man she'd shot, just to be sure.

Loren and Web ran to
the patio door and shot the glass out as they each jumped through one side of
the double doors.  Amid the crunch of glass as they turned, a Drisk man jumped
off the bottom stair onto the first floor and fired a shot at Loren, who was
forced to hit the floor, cutting his exposed hands on some of the broken
glass.  Web retaliated with a salvo of three rounds, all of which connected,
sending the man crumpling to the floor.

Web reached down and
helped Loren up, who grimaced at his wounds but said nothing more.  They nodded
at each other and quickly stormed the kitchen, securing the area. 

"Clear,"
they heard Halley call from the front.

"Clear,"
Web replied. 

The first floor was
theirs.

Merritt jumped out
of the hovercar and Cory was gone without even touching down.  With any luck,
they'd never even know she was there.  He dashed past a parked hovercar,
figuring it must be their getaway vehicle.  He reached the door and steeply
protruding stairwell that lead down onto the third floor and reached for the
touchpad to open it.

Instead, the door
flew out, swinging on its hinges as it was forcefully pushed open from inside. 
A Drisk man raced out of the opening within a handspan of Merritt, and he
distractedly realized that he'd taken too long; they were already alerted
downstairs and this guy was in charge of getting them out of there.

Merritt spun at the
same time the Drisk man did, each raising their weapons in unison.  The range
was so close, though, that they both did the same thing; they jumped inside the
reach of each other and grabbed for the other's gun.  Merritt thought quickly
and just let the man have his gun; he balled up his fist, lead with his middle
knuckles, and punched the man squarely in the throat.  The Priman/Drisk had
been expecting a fight for the gun and had left his upper body undefended.  As
he staggered back, hands clenched to his collapsed windpipe, Merritt stepped
towards him. 

The Priman swiped at
Merritt with his right hand, which Merritt blocked and trapped with his
forearms.  He grabbed the man's wrist, then rotated and lifted it over his head
as he spun one hundred eighty degrees, in the process lifting the man's
outstretched forearm over his own rifght shoulder, palm up.  Merritt savagely
yanked down on the man's wrist, using his own shoulder as a pivot point for the
man's elbow, which snapped out of its' joint with a sickening wet clunk sound. 
For good measure, Merritt jabbed backwards with his left elbow into the man's
sternum, a move that disrupts the nerves and can temporarily make the muscles
'forget' how to breathe right. 

Before the Priman
hit the ground, shock had overtaken him and he was unconscious.  Halley had been
drilling them all on close-in fighting lately, and the first thing she'd made
them accept was that fights don't usually last long, especially once hits start
landing.  The long, set-piece fights popular in the holomovies just don't
happen in real life.  People get wounded and tired too quickly.  Merritt knew
he was lucky to have gotten the first hit in and even with the short length of
the fight, he was sucking air, trying to recover.  He forced himself to shake
it off, then grabbed his SSK from the ground, checked the charge, and ran to
the stairs.

"One
unconscious on the roof, Cory," he said breathlessly as he ran inside. 
"Keep an eye on him, ok?"

Salvor wasted no
time in getting everyone barricaded upstairs.  He left one man at the top of
the stairs to pour fire down to the first floor and sent one up through the
vacant third floor to the roof to get their hovercar ready.  He kept Starr and
Velk behind him in the hallway as he faced the loft area, ready to stand as a
last line of defense should any of the unidentified attackers make it up to the
second floor.  He hadn't heard from the man he'd sent to the roof, and was
already writing him off as well as the three others on the first floor that
were obvously not stopping the attackers below.  That left him with Starr,
Representative Velk, himself, and one other.

Salvor turned to the
steep staircase that led to the third floor and started firing rounds upwards
as fast as he could.  Starr could only stand there with Velk and try to
formulate some sort of plan.  Their only chance might be to attempt to exit
from one of the bedrooms across the gap between homes and into the house next
to them.

Halley was starting
to worry; the assault was bogging down and the Primans were settling in.  They
held the high ground, and even though Merritt was blocking the way out through
the roof, a stalemate was potentially as good as a loss.  They might be under
orders to kill Velk instead of letting him be recaptured, and she couldn't
accept that.  She switched to thermal vision and saw the red outline of the
Priman at the top of the stairs as he held his repeater around the corner and
sprayed energy blasts down the stairwell.  She took a brief lull in the firing
to lean out and fire a half dozen armor piercing rounds at the red blob where
it was hiding behind a support column, and was rewarded with the sight of it
falling to the floor in a heap and not moving.

She then charged the
stairs, activating the aiming camera on the bottom of the SSK and having it
send the image to her contacts.  In her right eye, a semi-opaque video feed
appeared, showing her what her gun saw and projecting a red dot on the impact
point of any shots fired.  She lay flat on the top of the stairs and held the
gun around the corner to the left and saw the Priman standing resolutely in the
hallway, his own gun pointed towards her.  But not at her; above her head,
where he expected some poor bastard to poke their head up and take a look. 
Instead, she fired a single shot, hitting him in the forehead and sending a
spray of brain matter over Starr and Velk behind him.

She jumped up into
the loft and charged at them again, adrenaline coursing through her veins even
moreso than a normal person would feel thanks to the commands sent by her
nanites.