Loralynn Kennakris 2: The Morning Which Breaks (3 page)

Lakskya Compound
Lacaille, Praesepe Cluster

Lieutenant Gomez, lying in a shallow depression a hundred meters from the north wall of Mankho’s compound, and six hundred nine light-years away from Mars, watched as his explosion lit up the sky like a sheet of lightning. The entire compound before him instantly went dark and silent.

It could not have gone better. Mankho’s people had stopped the convoy just fifty meters from the gate and sauntered out with the security enclosure wide open. He brought his systems out of EMP lockdown as the glow faded, brought his HUD back online and checked his people: everyone was just where they should be and passive sensors confirmed the compound dead.

He rose to a crouch and signaled Carson and Mates, the two men who would snatch Mankho with him. The other five were already fanning out to their assigned cover positions. There was no need for orders now: Aries had dropped the two voyeuristic sentries simultaneously with the explosion and his people were deploying with swift, silent precision. In a few minutes it would be all over—but a lot could happen in a few minutes.

At the drop of his hand, the three of them sprinted forward. Their light combat armor was not powered to stay off the compound’s sensors, but it had a regenerative assist system that allowed them to cover the hundred meters to the wall in just under ten seconds. Gomez made a powerful leap as he approached, timing it so that he touched the wall just past the top of his rise, three meters up. The molygrip gecko pads on his boots, knees, gloves and elbows adhered to the wall instantly. Mates and Carson landed a split second after him and together they swarmed up to the third floor window, some ten meters above.

As they reached the dark window, he took one side, Carson the other, and Mates moved around them to hang spider-like above. Still no response from the compound. It had only been about thirty seconds since the explosion, but shouldn’t they be hearing
something
by now? He shoved the thought away—this wasn’t the time to worry about that—and stuck a small hemispheric charge to the window, while across from him, Carson did the same. The charges were preset for standard armor-glass and sensors in their base measured the thickness. Two seconds later there was an anticlimactic pop and a web of fine cracks spread all across the surface. Mates swung down in an acrobatic move, bursting the window inward with a shower of glass crumbs. Gomez and Carson vaulted through the opening and hit the floor of the dark room. Then he heard the screaming.

The screaming was coming from two naked girls in the middle of a huge, ornate bed in the room’s center, and it took Gomez a split-second to realize they were not screaming at him. The heavy door to the room had burst open and now a hail of gunfire tore through it. Gomez dropped behind the bed, nearly colliding with the girls as they dived off it. Carson lunged for the far corner but Mates, fatally distracted for that instant, caught the burst full in the chest. It lifted him up and slammed him into the wall beside the window, pinning him there for a long, gruesome moment before the wreckage of his body slithered to the floor amidst a welter of blood mottled with gobs of tissue and splinters of bone. Gomez swung his rifle around the foot of the bed and pumped two grenades through the doorway. The explosions shook the walls and blew a hot rush of air into the room that sent unseen items crashing to the floor, and there was silence.

Except for the ringing in his ears. As that died, he heard a piercing noise behind him, a shrill, broken keening, half-strangled, and Carson across the room, behind a large console of some kind, swearing vehemently but softly through clenched teeth. He spared a glance for the girls. One was an exotic-looking brunette and the other was a pretty blond, and it was the brunette who was making the appalling sound. The blond was holding her, with her hand over the brunette’s mouth trying to keep her quiet, and there was a glistening pool of blood under them. From the outside, a dull rattle punctuated by sharper popping sounds was making itself heard.

Gunfire.
Distant
gunfire. That could only be Bravo, and it sounded like they were engaged well away from where they should have been.

He checked his HUD. It showed all his people exactly where they were supposed to be—three minutes ago. Getting Carson’s attention, he tapped his helmet and mimed a question. Carson shook his head.
Fuck
. Either the building was shielded or they had an ECM drone overhead. He prayed it wasn’t a drone . . .

Still nothing outside the room. All dead? Or waiting? He and Carson needed to get out of there
now,
but Carson couldn’t cover him from where he was. Gomez pointed to the door, signaled three fingers followed by a fist. Carson nodded. Gomez fired a sustained burst through the door as Carson bolted across the open space and slid in beside him.

“We’ve been fucked, huh Six?” Gomez nodded. It was obvious Mankho wasn’t here and hadn’t been, perhaps not for days. They’d been set up. It didn’t matter how. All that mattered was getting his people clear. He knew, without even looking at his displays, that
Hermes
was on the far side of the world right now, out of comms range for another ten minutes. It would take twenty minutes after that to get shuttles to the extraction point if they burned in hard—assuming
Hermes
was still up there . . .

“What’s the play?”

He looked at Carson, noticing for the first time the rip in the shoulder of his armor and the dark stains around it. “You hit?”

“Crease. It’s nothin’. What’s the play? Back out the window or take it forward?”

“Forward,” Gomez answered. He had no way of knowing what was waiting for them in either direction, but if they’d been set up, the outside perimeter was almost certainly covered. With their retreat cut off, they might as well attack.

“What about them?” Carson nodded past Gomez’s shoulder at the girls. The brunette was limp now—unconscious or dead, he couldn’t tell—and the blond was whimpering, a soft, smothered sound.

He turned away. “Can’t.” They were better off here anyway. “Look,” he said after a moment’s pause. “Scans say there’s a mezzanine out there with a half-wall and a stairway to the right. The floor below is supposed to be open space. Access is a stairwell just opposite. I want you to put three grenades through the door, set to three, five and ten meters. I’ll take post next to the stairway and provide cover while you come up. Got it?”

“We gonna force that stairwell down to the second floor?”

“No. We clear this floor and see what’s up in the compound. Play it from there.” Carson looked dubious. “You all good?”

“Not quite, Six. Lemme go first—you lay down the grenades.” Gomez tightened his jaw, contemplating a direct order. Carson shrugged. “If the boys are gonna get outta this shit, they’ll need you a fuck-tonne more than me.”

As much as he hated it, the logic was compelling. “Alright. Get ready. On two.”

On two, Gomez leaned out and fired. Carson, timing it a shade too nice for safety, snap rolled through the doorway as the blast of the third explosion slapped at them. There was an exchange of fire even before the reverberations died, and Gomez was through the door and flat down next to him as it ended. Everywhere was the evidence of the grenade’s work: a heap of corpses at the base of the stair and two more beyond it, torn by the hundreds of small metal cubes each APS grenade packed around its core of explosives; an arm by itself a few meters away, still clutching a heavy rifle; blood in a mist on the floor and nearby walls, in spatters and trails down the stairs and across the floor below, the bright acrid smell of it lingering in the air with the heavy stench of C-12. Carson was keeping up a deliberate fire at anything that showed itself in the stairwell across the large open space below.

“Ten or so down there—maybe more,” he grunted and blew off a hand that incautiously appeared. There was a shriek and a confused thumping as the owner tumbled down the stairwell. Gomez trained his rifle through a break in the wall next to Carson. “Check the compound.”

He could still hear firing outside, but only rifles and the sharp rattle of a SAW—not the dull thump of mortars or the whine of RPGs. There were windows on either side of the mezzanine; the window to the right overlooked the compound and the building’s flat second-story roof, the one on the left some sloping ground outside the compound to the east. Going out the east window gave him the best chance of linking up with Bravo but the terrain was open that way—too open for them to have much of a chance. Whoever they were up against—it couldn’t just be Mankho’s people and probably not even Lacaille’s meager military; their ground forces were no better than glorified cops—there were way too many of them and they were way too well equipped. But dropping into the compound might be worse.

Carson scurried to the right-hand window in an almost inhuman crouch, remarkably low to the floor. Moments later he was back, skidding the last few feet. “Compound’s full of runnin’ fucks but I saw three fireteams coverin’ this building. There’s most of a company forming up by the gate and I think they’re settin’ up mortars.”

Shit
. “You see anything uptown?” His use of the codename for Bravo’s position was reflexive.

“Not really. Just some flashes. Could be they’re sendin’ up seekers.”

Shit
, he repeated inwardly, eyes not leaving the stairwell. They couldn’t go out the windows; remaining in the building bought them less than nothing. That left the—“Roof?”

“Crack it?” Carson asked. Gomez had no idea how thick it was or exactly what it was made of, but it looked like plasticrete, which was not designed to be blast-proof. And armor-glass was tough stuff. Two charges, though—all that he and Carson had between them—wouldn’t do it. “We’ll need the charges Mates had.”

“I’ll get ‘em,” Carson said without hesitation.

Gomez jerked his head sideways. “Go.”

It took Carson a full minute longer to retrieve the charges than it should have and as he returned, he shut the door with exaggerated care. Crawling up to Gomez, he handed over Mates’ charges without a word. Gomez didn’t ask what the delay had been. Nor did he ask if Carson still had his trauma kit. All he said was, “We gotta clear that stairwell.”

“You want me to do it?” Carson’s voice was strangely tight. “Bad angle for grenades.”

“No,” Gomez answered, his tone clipped. If only he had a couple of APS mines—if only he had a lot of things . . . “We’ll lob it.”

“Will it arm?”

“We’ll find out.” Grenades were armed by launch shock—it made them safer to handle—but he thought a good hard rap might do the trick. Gomez selected an HE variant and set it to a five
^-
second delay, wishing he could risk using an incendiary. But in this confined space—a space they had to occupy for at least another few minutes . . .
bad idea
. He ejected the grenade into his hand. “Ready?”

Carson nodded. Gomez swung the grenade in an overhand arc and slammed it against the bare floor as hard as he could. The arming ring blinked red.

“Sweet!”

Allowing himself the trace of a grin, Gomez hooked it towards the stairwell. It bounced off the far wall and rattled down the steps. Two seconds later a fiery jet erupted through the opening. The whole building shook and then the stairwell collapsed in a fountain of dust and smoking debris.

“That oughta choke the bastards,” Carson cackled as they climbed the walls.
For a few minutes maybe
, Gomez thought as he placed his charges. Carson placed his as well, making a rough square a meter and a half on each side, a little out from the corner. They pulled back and Gomez set them off with a typical dull, flat pop. Cracks appeared, chips rained down. That was all. Swearing, Gomez pulled the plasma knife from his thigh pocket and probed the widest crevice, a good arm’s length out. The ceiling was plasticrete, a good fifteen centimeters thick; it sparked and smoked as the blade burned into it. More chips flew and then chunks began to fall. Carson had his knife out too, prying at a fissure nearer the wall, and suddenly the whole section, broken along the diagonal, slumped. Together, they levered their knives into the break and twisted. The blades buzzed and crackled, throwing a broad shower of sparks, and all at once a triangular slab shifted, then fell with a crash. The other half, unsupported, followed and Gomez levered himself through the opening onto the rooftop—and almost directly into the path of a soldier who was stepping off the ladder coming up from the second-floor roof, carrying a crate of mortar rounds.

Turning at the noise of the falling blocks, he gaped and dropped his burden, but in the instant before he could yell or draw his weapon, Gomez sank the plasma knife into his chest. The hissing blade cut through to the spine and he toppled into the hole, narrowly missing Carson, who was just reaching for the broken rim. The man’s two companions at the roof’s southern edge twisted around as one and had hardly more time to regret the fatal mistake of leaning their rifles against the parapet before Gomez’s sidearm barked twice.

“Hey look! A mortar!” Carson cried as they dragged the bodies to one side. It was—a light two-inch man-portable mortar. Seven boxes of rounds were already open beside it.

“Set it up,” snapped Gomez—Carson was being unnecessarily gleeful. “I’m gonna raise Bravo.” His system was giving him a position fix now but not much else. He could tell Aries was down and that Bravo had retreated to some rocky ground east of the road; Delta was not showing up at all. He keyed his mike on. “Bravo, this is Six—report status.” He repeated it twice before he got an answer.

“Six, this is Walsh. Ananian is down! We got ten effectives here. Must’a been two—three hundred of the fuckers came outta nowhere! Another group of about fifty tried to push around us to the north but we took ‘em out. We’re in deep shit here!”

“Where are the hostiles? Where exactly?”

“They’re in this gully along the far side of the road. Can you see ‘em from where you are?”

“Negative. What’s your ammo status?” He heard Walsh calling for an ammo check. “Two mags per man and only eight grenades left.” Bravo had carried eight magazines and fifteen grenades per man into this operation and had expended most of it in a fight that wasn’t ten minutes old yet.