Outriders (33 page)

Fortunately, there was no one directly on the other side of the door, and he was able to close it behind them without drawing notice.

“We’re in the hold,” Lincoln said.

“Still clear,” Wright answered.

“Keep us posted,” Lincoln replied.

He and Sahil worked quickly, moving amongst the long aisles, using their suits’ sensor suite to scan the various cargo containers and identify the contents. The vast majority of goods were undoubtedly stolen, smuggled, or otherwise black market material. Damaging any of it was likely to cause someone some heartache, but as long as they were here, Lincoln figured they might as well try to do a little good. He wanted something with impact. It took a couple of minutes to find anything that could definitively be said to be a target of opportunity, but eventually he found one. In a container in the middle of the hold, there were pallets of what appeared to be medical supplies packed in an outer layer. But beneath and behind that were several stacks of long crates with high metallic and chemical content. Weapons. Lincoln didn’t have access to the shipping manifest, so he couldn’t say for sure where they had come from or where they were headed, but it was a safe bet that they weren’t going to the good guys.

“Here,” Lincoln said to Sahil. The sergeant appeared a few moments later from around a corner.

“What ya got?”

“Weapons cache.”

“How you want to handle it?”

“Melt it down, then blow it up?”

“Sounds good,” Sahil said, and he started pulling charges off his harness. “Two minutes.”

“Get a move on,” Wright said over comms. “They’re getting it sorted out over here.”

“Two mikes,” Lincoln said.

“Sooner’s better,” Wright responded.

Lincoln provided security while Sahil crouched to prep and arrange the charges on the container. A minute and a half later, Sahil was back on his feet, ready to move.

“We’re ready to come back out,” Lincoln reported to Wright.

“Group’s breaking up, but they’re still in the hangar,” Wright said. “You’re good, if you hurry.”

“On the way,” Lincoln said. And then, when they’d reached the door. “At the door now. Clear?”

“You’re clear, go,” she answered. Lincoln swung the vault door, did a quick double check. Clear. But a moment later, Wright called.

“Wait, wait!”

Too late. Lincoln was three steps into the open when a young guard came out of the hangar across the thoroughfare, no more than twenty meters away. Unmarked, none of the team had picked him up before. He was maybe sixteen years old. Younger than the rifle he was carrying.

If the guard had been any older, Lincoln wouldn’t have hesitated. As it was, the barrel of the boy’s rifle was nearly on target before Lincoln squeezed his own trigger. His rifle puffed once, then again, putting two rounds center of mass. The boy staggered with the impact and in a spasm, fired a single round from his own, unsuppressed rifle. Whatever the effectiveness of Wright’s distraction, the unmistakable clap of the gunshot drew all attention back towards Lincoln.

The reaction was quick, and vicious.

“Back, back, back!” Lincoln shouted at Sahil as he backpedaled into the hold. The first guards were just emerging from the other hangar as he crossed the threshold, and they didn’t waste any time unloading in his direction. Rounds popped and pinged off the wall and the still open vault door. Sahil dropped low and returned fire, a steady
tap-tap, tap-tap
of calmly paired shots, sent with deadly accuracy.

Lincoln took cover on the other side of the hatch from Sahil and added his own fire to Sahil’s.

“Downtown, Highrise is in contact,” he said, “Repeat, we’re in contact!”

They hadn’t planned on kicking off the hostilities while they were still in the hold. That was going to complicate matters.

“Roger, Highrise,” Thumper answered. “We’re at the relay now. Keep ’em busy for me.”

“Not a problem!” Lincoln replied. The volume of fire had dropped off as the security guards scrambled for cover; the initial torrent was reduced to sporadic bursts, poorly aimed. Some of the guards weren’t aiming at all, in fact, they were just holding their rifles over their heads or around corners and firing blindly. But the situation was still deadly, and Lincoln knew every second they spent pinned in the hold was tipping the balance in favor of the bad guys. Reinforcements were surely on their way.

Lincoln looked over at Sahil, still crouched on the opposite side of the doorframe. On Sahil’s back, high along his right shoulder blade, were four canisters attached to his suit. Two smoke grenades, two flash. Lincoln had his own set of options on his belt, but the ones on Sahil’s back were there precisely for team use. Better to keep his own handy for later. He checked across the thoroughfare, fired twice at an exposed guard, and then crossed the gap to Sahil.

“I’m gonna pop smoke,” he said. “I’ll follow you out.”

“Yep,” Sahil said.

“Wright, smoke coming!” Lincoln called through the comm channel.

“Copy that, pop it!” Wright said.

Lincoln pulled the top two canisters off Sahil’s back, primed them, and then tossed them out into the thoroughfare, one to the left and one to the right. Three seconds later, the grenades hissed with violence, billowing storm clouds from both ends.

As the thoroughfare filled with the dense, grey smoke, Lincoln’s suit filtered out the visual noise, reduced it. In that view mode, he could still tell where the smoke clouds were heaviest, where their edges were, how much concealment they’d provide, but he could also see clearly across the thoroughfare.

“Smoke’s good,” Lincoln said. “We’re coming out!”

“Roger,” Wright said. “Covering!”

A few of the guards, emboldened by the smokescreen, popped out of their hiding places and sprayed rounds. Sahil squeezed off a quick series of shots, then ducked back into cover.

“Reloading,” Sahil said. And then two seconds later, “Up. Moving.”

“Move!” Lincoln answered. Sahil came up out of his crouch and burst through the door, headed right. Lincoln followed, staying low and not bothering to engage the enemy. Cover first. Shoot later.

Sahil found a position in the next hangar over, and the two of them took cover behind a pair of large metal containers.

“We’re in place,” Lincoln said over comms. “Wright, bound back.”

“Roger, moving,” she answered. And in his visor, Lincoln saw Wright’s outline drop as she leapt from her perch twenty feet up, straight to the floor. The suit absorbed most of the energy from the fall; she barely registered the impact before she broke into a sprint out of the hangar, barreled towards them. Behind her, the guards were emerging from the hangar; some advancing on the hold, others fanning out. And further down the thoroughfare beyond them, other fighters were starting to trickle in.

Wright rounded Lincoln’s container at the opposite end, slammed her back against it.

“Primary’s back the other way,” Lincoln said. “Assault through?”

Wright shook her head. “Hostiles are all coming from that direction. Scrub it.”

“Downtown, Highrise,” Lincoln said. “We’re not going to make primary. Cut the Coffin loose, we’ll pick it up at alternate.”

“Uh, OK, roger Highrise,” Thumper answered. “I’m sending the Coffin to alternate extraction.”

The alternate extraction point was the opposite direction from their primary, but down on the same deck. Lincoln did a quick scan, found the nearest access to lower deck, marked it for his teammates.

“Wright, you’re one, I’m two, Sahil is three,” Lincoln said. “Peel back to that beacon, on my go.”

“Roger,” Wright said.

“Got it,” said Sahil.

They all topped off their weapons with fresh ammo. Lincoln checked down the thoroughfare. A quick estimate of the bracketed guards they’d marked before plus the new ones he could see through the smoke put the bad guys at fifteen or so. A cluster of them were closing in on the entrance to the secure hold, weapons raised. The guards had clearly lost them for the moment, but some had emerged from the smoke cloud, and there was no way Lincoln and his teammates would cross the thoroughfare unnoticed.

“Sahil, how long for the charge on that cache to burn through?” Lincoln asked.

“Six seconds to burn, six more to boom,” Sahil answered.

“Get ready to touch it off.”

“It’s set,” Sahil said. “Say when.”

“Wright, go on the boom.”

“Go on boom, roger,” she answered.

Lincoln judged the distance between the men and the entrance to the hold. A few more steps. A few more seconds.

“Hit it.”

“Detonating,” Sahil said.

Lincoln counted the seconds. Three. Four. The men continued to advance on the hold. Three others cautiously patrolled in Lincoln’s direction. Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

Thirteen. Fourteen.

“You sure you hit it?” Lincoln asked.

“I’m sure,” Sahil answered.

Seventeen. Eighteen.

The three guards reached ten meters away.

“You sure you used–” Lincoln said, but he was cut off by the muffled thunderclap of a contained explosion. The men near the hold entrance threw themselves in every direction, and the guards closest to Lincoln’s position whipped around back towards the sound. Wright didn’t miss the moment.

“One, firing!” she called, and she opened up with long bursts on the guards.

“Two, moving!” Lincoln responded, and he rolled out five meters into the open, then dropped low and added his suppressive fire to hers. “Two, firing!”

“Three moving!” Sahil called, and he dashed out of cover, passing behind Wright and then Lincoln. Seconds later, he said “Three, firing!”

Wright answered an instant later, “One, moving!”, and she bounded past Lincoln, past Sahil, took up her position. “One, firing!”

Repeating the maneuver, the three bounded back to the point Lincoln had marked. He was the first to reach the access, a narrow stairwell. The stairs were clear going up, but below three more guards were on their way up from the lower decks. Lincoln drove them back with a few well-placed rounds, but couldn’t get an angle to do any real damage. Sahil rolled in behind him.

“Up, we gotta go up,” Lincoln said. Sahil shifted gears immediately, started up the steps, scanning for targets. Wright swung into the stairwell, and fell in right behind Sahil. Lincoln fired off a few more shots at the guards below, and then joined his teammates on the upper staircase. As he cleared the landing, he pulled a small thermal grenade off his belt and dropped it at the entrance. A few seconds later, white-hot sparks erupted from it, promising a searing shower of pain to anyone unlucky enough to get too close for the next minute or so. Assuming it didn’t just melt its way through the landing.

That would buy them a little time and space from their immediate pursuers, but there was no telling from how many different directions they were going to have incoming. Trying to make their way back down to the alternate extraction point seemed like a great way to ensure they ran into more trouble.

“Downtown, Highrise,” he called. “Alternate’s blown. Thumper, pull the Coffin to you. Once you’re out, you come get us.”

“Roger that,” she said, perfectly steady and calm. “Where are we picking you up?”

“Contingency,” he answered. “Unless I tell you otherwise.”

“Copy.”

“How long you got left on that box?”

“Five minutes. Less if you quit asking.”

“Sahil, we’re going to contingency!” Lincoln called.

“Yeah, I heard,” he called back, and for the first time, there was a hint of urgency in his voice. Lincoln set a new destination; his suit mapped a route.

The three emerged two decks up, Deck 47, where they intended to extract from a service dock. There were already people waiting for them. A brief but intense exchange of gunfire broke them free and left their would-be ambushers dead or dying, but there was no doubt now that fully breaking contact was impossible. The plan had been to cause a stir, and then escape in the confusion. What they’d lost in surprise, they’d have to make up for with speed and violence of action.

“Think we made a bigger racket than we meant to,” Wright said.

“A bit,” Lincoln answered.

Deck 47 was a residential area, a rat’s nest of narrow corridors and patched-together apartments. A shantytown that spread like a fungus into any available space, without rhyme or reason. Sahil led them aggressively towards their goal, with shouts and sounds of pursuit trailing close behind. And, Lincoln now realized, running parallel. There were too many people on them, coming on too fast, to just be Flashtown’s official security response. The citizens were getting involved.

As the team pushed down the corridors, doors started opening, heads peeked out of windows and then quickly disappeared. Some reemerged with weapons, others just seemed to be watching for fun. Lincoln’s suit went hyper, scanning for weapons and trying to help Lincoln prioritize threats. But it was getting overloaded. Each new person was a threat to be evaluated, and there were just too many popping up and vanishing to be able to process them all meaningfully. Lincoln shut off the threat assessment assist, trusted in his instincts.

A round snapped past Lincoln’s head, fired from behind. He turned just in time to see an old woman ducking back inside her door. Lincoln backpedaled, keeping his weapon fixed on the woman’s door until it was out of sight, but she didn’t reappear. Just an opportunist with no interest in leaving her home.

Lincoln swiveled back around, caught back up the extra few paces he’d lost on Wright, and then ran smack into her when she stopped abruptly in front of him. She pushed off him and dropped to a crouch, instinctively providing security down one corridor. Lincoln followed suit, bringing his weapon around to cover the direction they’d just come.

“What’s the problem?” he called.

“Door’s a wall,” Sahil said.

“What?” Lincoln said, and he glanced over his shoulder.

“I mean there ain’t a door here,” Sahil answered. “Ain’t nothin’ but a wall.”

Sure enough, the route on his visor was leading them right through a sheet of solid steel. With the new data, the suit’s navigation system tried to reroute, but after a few seconds flashed a warning. NO ROUTE. Either there was no way to get there from here, or the suit realized it didn’t have enough data to plot a new route. The result was the same either way. Lincoln’s element was stuck in the middle of Flashtown with no idea how to get out.