The Expendable Few: A Spinward Fringe Novel (18 page)

What was more important about those ships was the people they brought. Tens of thousands, enough for the Order of Eden military to take control of the ghost city Preacher’s Landing had become. Everyone in Davi’s five person team was uneasy except for Judge, his second in command. A gust of air struck them in the face as an airlock door opened to admit them onto a larger, tube enclosed street.

“Welcome to Preacher’s Landing,” said an android with human features. His skin was flexible, probably well synthesized to feel human, only it had a sickly grey sheen. “You are the four hundredth and twentieth group of travellers to stop here since the Order of Eden liberated the station, congratulations. Do you have any questions?”

Davi breathed an inward sigh of relief, glad that their fake Order of Eden identification cleared the android’s scans. “Where is the Bloated Barfly?” He asked.

“That establishment is adjacent to the main Port, not far from the terminal you just came from. If you take sub-car road thirty three and announce your destination you will be taken directly there.”

“Thank you,” Davi said. He started for the side door beside the android that read: SUBTERRANEAN ROAD 33

“Since you are one of the first groups to visit here since new ownership, you can receive fifty percent off all accommodations,” the android rambled with an inviting smile.

“Thank you,” Judge said as he passed by.

“Ask me how! Did you know that the Longshadow system has many tourist attractions? Try a shuttle safari, where you can see the dragon dogs of Longshadow Seven and how mines operated in ancient times, all in one day!”

Judge looked directly at the android and said; “Thank you,” with a note of finality that brought the machine’s promotional rambling to an end.

The lower streets were carved from dense, rust coloured stone. Lightweight hover vehicles swept past trundling wheeled transports. The heavy load bearing tires made a deep hum as they rolled down the hard road. Yellow lights shed only enough illumination for someone to safely see by. The rest of the light came from old signage advertising for shops along the row, most of which were still empty. Their owners were dead, or had escaped and those broken store fronts looked like cavernous wounds, hollow and dark.

“Looks like we missed the fire sale,” Jack Kipley said. He was a whip thin man, who was constantly checking every corner.

“A little respect,” retorted Miir Coral. “Most of the shop owners were murdered when the virus made AI’s go berserk. This is a tomb as much as it is a street.” She wasn’t what one would expect a covert marine to look like, with golden hair and a figure born out of fashionable genetic manipulation. She was conceived during the fad to have petite, shapely daughters. Fortunately, her small size served her well in her job. More often than not she was the one who was able to venture where no one else could fit.

“Sorry,” Kipley said. “Did you know someone here or something?”

To Davi’s relief, Coral didn’t reply. Extending that conversation with someone as impossibly dense as Private Kipley was pointless. He was one head trauma away from being declared brain dead, but an incredible fighter. “There’s the Bloated Barfly,” Davi said as he saw a holographic image of a robust bottom shifting on an almost too-small barstool hovering in front of one of the few lit shop windows.

“Looks like a prime night spot,” Stanley Foster said. He was the other half of the genetically altered duo in Davi’s group. He was conceived around the same time as Coral, and it was fashionable then to have tall, square jawed male children. He was fully a head taller than Davi, who was of average height, and very happy his parents didn’t care about offspring fashion.

“We’re not going inside to meet someone special. This is a kidnapping, remember?” Davi replied.

“What?” Kipley replied. “Seriously? We sneak in through a huge hole in the Order’s security, walk right past I don’t know how many port patrol guys on the way here without any trouble, and now we don’t even get to sit down for a drink? I mean, if we’re not going to see some real action this trip, we may as well get glossed, they must have a serious selection in there, with the Order stocking the place.”

“We got in so easily because of the guy we’re retrieving,” Judge whispered. “Where do you think our Order of Eden idents have been coming from?”

“Oh, so this is the guy,” Kipley said.

A crowd of technicians in filthy yellow and brown jumpsuits emerged from the bar ahead.

“Did you even bother reviewing the mission brief?” Coral asked in a harsh whisper.

“Enough to know where we were going and how long I have to watch your backs for,” Kipley said. “Don’t need to know much more.”

“I’ll never get used to the idea of you being a member of
Intelligence
when the word could never describe anything you do or say,” Coral said.

“Quiet,” Judge told them as the technicians came within earshot.

Davi made eye contact with one disheveled woman with half slumbering eyes. She looked like she had been drinking something other than alcohol, something that was probably concocted in a laboratory. He didn’t see a hint of suspicion in her eyes, only the evidence of a temporary paradise of altered perception. If everyone in the pub was half as intoxicated as she was, the mission would go off without a hitch. “Judge, you go ahead and check the place.”

“Aye, be back in a minute,” Judge replied.

Before they ran into anyone else, they were through the side door of a burned out shop on the row. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark. When they finally did, he took a look around. There had been some looting, but not nearly as much destruction as he expected. “Law took control here fast,” he muttered as he pinched the edge of a silky blouse hanging off a display.

“It’s like the owner closed up shop and pickers just took his cash and the more valuable jewelry,” Coral said. “I knew things were bad out here, but I never wanted to see this myself. You look at how much work went into this shop and know someone, maybe a whole family cared about it, they worked here day in, day out. Now they’ve been killed, or pressed into service in the mines, and it’s just…” she sighed, taking the dark interior in. “Empty.”

“At least it’s not New Vickers,” Kipley said. “If this were a shop there, you’d find the shopkeeper and a few customers smeared across the walls. Now that was an eye opener. Almost like seeing Pandem like the First Light guys did.”

“At least there was still fighting when they got to Pandem,” Foster said. “New Vickers was just a never ending slaughterhouse. Androids rounding up leftover humans so they could get loaded into slave transports.”

“Or so they could give them a hundred K and join the Eden side,” Kipley added. “Never seen anything more messed up than someone giving a ‘bot a bunch of coins, getting a hot meal and turning slave driver all in one hour. Totally fucked up.”

Davi remembered watching that, and somehow it didn’t surprise him. It should have, he should have had more faith in people, but when one of the prisoners paid his way into the Order of Eden from the marching line and turned on his fellow captives within the hour, it just made him want to leave. They watched that processing station, where androids and robots infected with the holocaust virus stripped starving humans, de-loused them, met their minimum survival needs with salvaged food and medical supplies then marched them into cargo containers.

Davi and his men didn’t do anything about it. They were there to gather intelligence, not be seen or caught fighting a hopeless battle. Otherwise he would have wrecked the whole installation himself.

They accomplished their mission before leaving. The
TRF Peter
had dropped several transit shuttles, probably looking for supplies, or offloading dissidents but the ship itself was long gone. What happened to the people aboard their shuttles was a mystery. They were missing, most likely dead or taken into custody. Two of the three shuttles had already been cut up into scrap, the third was clamped to the landing platform, it’s doors hanging open and systems running as if it were expecting the owners to return any moment.

Davi was snapped back to the present as Judge returned. “Our target is sitting next to the door with a cyborg. There are about a dozen more people inside, only three we have to worry about - they’re hard shell.”

Hard shells - it’s what they’d started calling the Order of Eden soldiers who wore heavier armour plating. Their metallic dark green armour made them look like they beat up a giant cockroach and stole it’s carapace. “What about the bar?”

“Automated dispensers, no android servers either,” Judge replied.

“Okay, this is almost too easy,” Coral said.

“Want to hear the punch line?” Judge asked. “There’s a door at the back leading upstairs - though an empty dance floor into the main port.”

“You’re shitting me,” Kipley said. “Straight retreat to home free? It’s like this guy wants to get taken.”

“Maybe,” Davi said to himself. “How did you know his buddy was a cyborg?”

“Metal plates instead of a skull cap, and a sensor array instead of eyes and a nose,” Judge replied. “Probably has other augments too.”

“That’s disgusting,” Coral said, cringing. “How can someone do that to themselves?”

“Maybe his lid got shot off and all they had were antique parts?” Foster offered.

“Didn’t look like Plague Age tech,” Judge replied as he checked the charge on his stunner. “More like the Home Machinist’s Self Improvement Kit. I think we should hit him first. Not with stunners either, that would probably just make him angry.”

“You’re right, the cyborg wasn’t on the mission plan,” Davi said. “Coral, Kipley, use rippers. Hit that cyborg until it’s a pile of scrap and meat.”

“Knew I’d get a chance to use this on this hop,” Kipley said as he pulled his ripper, an old fashioned blade shooter out from under layers of clothing. It was a snub-nosed version of an ancient design that fired one point five millimetre wide blades that were thirty to fifty microns thick. On the lowest setting the weapon’s projectiles zipped through the air at just under the speed of sound. On the highest setting, the blades could move at many times that speed and pierce medium-heavy personnel armour. The clip he slipped into the grip was filled with rounds that would slip through skin, or even thin metal before shattering into tiny fragments that tore through the body. It didn’t use a power cell or explosives so it passed as non-lethal on most worlds’ port scanners.

“Foster and I will grab the target, Judge will clear the room,” Davi looked to Kipley specifically. “When you finish with that cyborg, help Judge, but make sure you switch to your stunner. The intel on this world tells us specifically that most of the law enforcement doesn’t see infighting as much of a priority until they have a death on their hands.”

“What about the cyborg?” Kipley asked. “We’re going to shred him like coleslaw.”

“There’s no helping that, and he’ll probably survive anyway.”

“Definitely,” Judge added. “Looks like his brain is cased in some kinda heavy armour. Too bad he couldn’t afford to do the rest.”

“Right,” Davi said. “Everyone set?”

He waited for nods all around then let Judge lead the way back to the club. It was a run down watering hole with faded plastic seats and walls that featured more grime than paint. Their target sat near the door with his cyborg friend facing them. He wore a dark green long coat over well made, clean city dweller’s clothes - a loose shirt and dark pants. He was out of place, wealthier than anyone else there by far.

The cyborg had his back to them. Judge started things the moment they were all through the door. He expertly tossed a pair of stun grenades towards the back of the room where several unsuspecting patrons were having a few drinks. One landed in a pitcher of Naganto Red ale, the other glanced off of a drinker’s shoulder.

Davi leveled his stun pistol at the kidnapping victim, a well dressed, well kept man wearing a crossover belt and a pair of holstered heavy pistols. Silence descended upon the bar room, and it felt as if it took Davi an hour to check his aim and squeeze the trigger. It couldn’t have been more than two heartbeats. The instant the bolt of energy flew from weapon’s emitter and stunned his prey, the world around him started up again, only in fast forward.

The stun grenades went off, disabling most of the patrons at the other end of the club. Coral and Kipley opened fire on the cyborg, sending flesh and bone fragments from the half-man’s torso, neck and arms spattering across the table. Judge took stun shots at patrons who scrambled for weapons or scurried for cover, he didn’t make the distinction between anyone running for cover or drawing a weapon. There was no time.

Davi knocked the nearest table over so it rolled between himself and the cyborg. With all regard to speed and little to safety, he snatched his target’s long coat and dragged the stunned man behind cover.

He caught a glimpse of the half-ruined cyborg getting to his feet as though whole sections of his torso wasn’t hanging in tatters. He caught Davi in the side with an inhumanly quick kick, sending him half way across the width of the bar room. A bar stool stopped his progress across the floor abruptly, and Davi knew immediately that the light armour he wore wasn’t quite good enough. At worst he had three broken ribs, at best he’d feel the bruises for days unless he got treatment. Either way, breathing was painful. He pulled a patch from his pocket as quickly as he could and slapped it onto his cheek. A cocktail of pain killers and a rush of emergency nanobots surged from the it.

He looked up in time to see the cyborg stand up, his head hanging at an awkward angle on his bloody neck. His remaining arm - made of old metal, gears and wires - snatched Coral by the forehead.

She fired into its face, only to scrub the flesh away from the half machine’s visage, revealing an armoured skull beneath. Kipley buried the muzzle of his weapon into a rip in the cyborg’s back and bashed the thing’s encased spine with his free hand. The shock was enough to drive it to the ground twitching.

Davi heard a sickly crunch. The cyborg’s hand had closed around Coral’s head. Whether the act was involuntary or intentional didn’t matter. The metal fingers mingled with blood, bone and grey matter. Kipley’s boot came down on the cyborg’s spinal support column, finally crushing the case protecting critical veins, muscles and nerves.