Loralynn Kennakris 1: The Alecto Initiative (25 page)

But with Mankho being suspected
of working for the
Dominion of Halith—and no one took the Archon’s weasel words seriously, not
even the Archon—it was quite possible he’d managed to cadge better sensor technology
out of them. That would change the situation considerably, so the plan assumed
the worst-case assessment that they faced a Halith sensor suite.

The drawback to this assessment was that it made their
operational timelines very tight and denied him much flexibility—flexibility
he could really use right now. Critically, his people had to start moving when
the convoy was thirty klicks out, which would give them up to thirteen minutes
to get into position. That was plenty, but then the convoy had to arrive at the
compound and Mankho’s people had to open the security enclosure and start their
checks within the next seven minutes and Gomez was becoming seriously concerned
that would prove to be unrealistic.

But if he couldn’t expect his team to remain undetected that
close to the walls in the growing light for much longer than that—
if
 indeed
Mankho had Halith sensors—he also could not wait to start them and still hit
the opening. Worse, he realized his callout that they were Buster—only five
minutes from now—had been premature.

Buster was based on either the enclosure not being kept open
or the EMP grenades not making it onto the convoy at all. Now he was looking at
neither case and if he executed Buster, he ran the risk of the convoy arriving
in the middle of his operation, between the compound and his team’s extraction
point, armed with a lot of sophisticated grenades.

That their whole plan was far too dependent on a single
worst-case assumption was nice useless insight, coming this late, but his only
other option was to call Zulu, and scrub the entire thing. That meant not just
the failure of a very elaborate operation, months in the making, but it would
also compromise the valuable assets that had identified Mankho on Lacaille in
the first place, and most especially the agent in Kapustin Yar who had arranged
the whole thing.

Three more minutes—still no word from Bravo.
Dammit
.
The only way forward was break out of the timeline and hope they either didn’t
have state-of-the-art sensors down there or they weren’t play attention. He
checked his dragonflies for any sign of new activity in the compound. The
little airborne sensors—some almost the size of the Terran insect they were
named for but most much smaller—orbiting about the compound reported no
unexpected movement, no comms activity, no active sensors, no sudden power
draws.

He slid out from under the overhang of rock, crawled through
the waist-high native vegetation with its tough flexible ribbed stalks and
long, fine, tubular that leaves grew thickly around the base of the outcropping
to an opening where he could sweep the compound with his scope. That itself
risked his being detected if a optics scan picked up a boresight flash off the
scope but the geometry would have to so precise isn’t wasn’t much of a risk,
especially compared to what he was contemplating.

The sweep showed him nothing new either: just the sentries
he’d seen before, making their rounds when they weren’t stopping to smoke,
chat, wander into the buildings to grab a bite or take a piss. Sloppy—certainly
no sense of urgency there. He rolled back behind the cover of the rock. Maybe a
bit too sloppy? His sight-line wasn’t the best: there was a good third of the
compound he couldn’t see. Aries was at least fifty meters above him—that was
maybe enough. He clicked on Aries icon to activate a secure circuit. “Aries,
this is Six. You all up?”

“I’m up, Six.” Howarth’s voice with its distinctive accent
was thin and distorted, but still recognizable over the ultrawideband burst
link.

“Are you seeing anything new at all downtown?”

“Besides those two fat guys down there lookin’ through a
third-floor window, nothing.”

“Any idea what they’re looking at?” The hi-def orbital scans
indicated Mankho’s living quarters were on the third floor of the residence and
there were big windows in the three external walls with two-centimeter
armor-glass in them.

“No idea, but they sure seem to find it fascinatin’.”

Spying on the Boss in the middle of the night
? Gomez
resisted the urge to shake his head. “Aries, I’m going to ping Bravo. Get hot.
We’re either Buster or Zulu if no joy on the package.”

“Roger, Six. Buster or Zulu if package is no-joy.”

“Roger. Six out.” Gomez cut the link but before he could
reconfigure a dragonfly for OTH relay, his command circuit alerted: Bravo’s
call-sign. He clicked it. “What the hell, Bravo?”

“This is Fife, Six. We got ‘em in sight.”

“You read the package?”

“Five by five. Package is still wrapped.”

Deep in his gut, a huge knot of tension unwound. “Affirm
package okay. What range?”

“Got ‘em at fifty-two klicks. Making one-forty.”

“Roger, Bravo. Get hot—I’m calling in. Wait for clearance.”

“Roger, Six. Waiting for clearance. Bravo out.”

Gomez acknowledged, checked the corvette’s ephemeris, got
code-lock and activated his uplink. “Erebus, this is Alpha Six.”

“Go ahead, Alpha Six.”

“Package in sight. Request clearance.”

“Wait one…”

Wait one? What the hell for?
“Erebus, we’re at minus
twenty-five. Half-light in twenty-five.”

“Acknowledge, Alpha Six. We’ve got unexplained activity down
in Kap-Yar.”

Unexplained activity
? Kapustin Yar was three-hundred-eighty
klicks to the southwest—close enough to be a big problem if someone was on the
way. “Erebus, clarify what you mean by
activity
.”

“We picked up some energy spikes. Trying to get a read now.”

Energy spikes? Was that all?
“Erebus, do we have
clear air?”

“We read nothing in the air, Alpha Six.”

Goddammit!
Were they clear or not? He needed to move
now—one way of another. “Erebus, I mean to execute now. Do you order Zulu?”

A pause on the line. Gomez waited, fuming, tapping his
gloved fingers on the rifle’s stock.

“Negative on Zulu, Alpha Six. You are cleared hot.”

“Roger, Erebus—we are cleared hot. Executing now. Alpha Six
out.”

The corvette acknowledged and he killed the uplink and
pinged Bravo. “Bravo, this is Six. What is range to package?”

“Package at thirty-four—closing at nominal.”

“Roger, package at thirty-four, Bravo. Nominal closure.”
Lieutenant Gomez opened the burst link to his team. “All Alpha units, this is
Alpha Six. Package is in range. Execute prime. Repeat: execute prime. Angels,
move in one. We’re going downtown.”

# # #

We hope you’ve enjoyed this sneak peek at the next Loralynn Kennakris novel.
Please visit
www.loralynnkennakris.com
to see when
The Morning Which Breaks
will be available.

Jordan Leah Hunter is a writer, artist and model living in
Northern California. Descended from Irish High-Kings, Vikings and Native
Americans, she brings all the passion of her turbulent ancestry to her work. A
true devotee of Nature, she can be found outdoors at all hours and in all
weathers, and when she suffers to have a roof over her head, it is usually to
sit by her fire and read or play one of several instruments. Her Celtic fantasy
novel,
The Erl King’s Children
, is soon to be released on Amazon for
Kindle.

Owen R. O’Neil is a physicist, a writer, an amateur historian and the
descendant of a long line of engineers. After three years working for the US
Navy as a missile-systems engineer, he became a member of the intelligence
community and spent the rest of his career there. One of the last generation of
Cold Warriors, he worked on topics as diverse as satellites, infrared
semiconductors, telecommunications and C4ISR. He is an expert on technology
projection and threat assessment, and did groundbreaking work on IW/IO before
it was cool.

These days he writes, exercises a passion for
photography he inherited from his father, and indulges in his two principal
vices: cooking unhealthy food and ferreting out exceptional but
underappreciated wines. He lives on nine rural acres in northern California
where, when not engaged in the foregoing, he listens to his tenants (bullfrogs
and coyotes) and watches over his infant vineyard.
The Alecto Initiative
 
is his first novel.