THE GUARDSMAN: Book 1: Honor of the Fallen – Chapters 8-10

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The Guardsman, Book 1: Honor of the Fallen:

Chapter 8)

John shook his head and laughed to himself now that he was back in his apartment. He thought about being conned into buying the broken container with the mismatched lid that said ‘Junk’ from the old man because John had not specified a ‘new’ container and left it to the other man’s discretion. Riding home last night on the public tram, past two dozen security scans, holding a ratty, broken, old container full of parts, of illegal weapons, and a top-end concealment container with enough rounds to start a war, tossed in on top of his already illegal weapons, all because he had not specified a new container for that piece of equipment either.

John took that lesson to heart and reminded himself to not make the same mistake again in his future commercial dealings. But that would be a modest discomfort on his conscience that John would count as another learning experience.

The most unsettling was the lack of real security, and only the illusion of security. John wondered if the scanners were even plugged in, or that the guards knew anything about security beyond pressing their pretty uniforms. Since he could never remember being stopped, nor seeing anyone stopped, he never remembered seeing anyone stopped that he could ever remember in his months.

Life was good again.

John shook his head, while he sat at the kitchen table, and wondered how life would have been different if he had instead wanted to be a spy when he grew up… He wondered if sneaking past security on other corp’s worlds was that easy too.

John picked up a delicate weapon cleaning file from his assorted tools and began to file the rust out of the ignition coils, while he muttered to himself, “That’s a laugh. I would never be able to pull that off with a straight face. They would catch me in a heartbeat.”

John had been working steadily on his project for hours. Things that had started as a piece-by-piece cleaning followed by an assembly process, were no longer as simple as he had planned. Breaking down to clean and reassemble the weapons was now an exercise in armorer’s basic repairs and maintenance, assembly line style.

Components were sorted based on type and cleaning requirements. Everything needed to be stripped and cleaned to the smallest components, all the while looking for rust, wear, and missing parts. Permanently ‘damaged’ components were removed from the piles and returned to the ‘Junk’ box. No point in disposing of perfectly good ‘broken’ weapons, when all you need to do is swap back to a broken barrel and you no longer have an illegal working weapon.

The internal ignition power cells were the most troublesome. He was two short on the final count and one was ‘iffy’, which that meant of the eight total cells, primary and secondary, over the four complete but broken weapons, there were only five operational cells. That meant he could have two weapons and a third that was ‘iffy’, useful as a disposable hold-out piece, or extra spare parts.

Ignition cells were the first piece to wear out on any Gauss weapon. They were also the most heavily tracked and controlled as replacement items. Gone were the days of ballistics tracking on replacement barrels, because ideally, the Gauss pellet never touched the walls of the barrel. Now, the best way to make illicitly acquired weapons useless was to run them out of internal power and starve their firing power source. Once starved for power the cells were nonchargeable. You could recharge the control unit that coordinated firing, but the ignition cells themselves were another matter.

That worked great unless you were on the receiving end of one of the tens of thousands of discharges each cell was capable of emitting, into the electrochemical back of a pellet cartridge, which powered the coils and spat the projectile out of the barrel.

Still, the cells were the first part to burn out and they were also the hardest to replace. The natural expiration of the cells passively took some weapons out of circulation. It was probably cheaper than hunting them down and actively collecting them.

Talking to himself, John speculated, “If I could come up with a way to recharge these little babies, I could make a million credits a day, and quit my day job,” John gripped as he wiped corrosion off the last power cell end.

Switching back to coils, John methodically stripped the magnetic focusing casings off the power transmitters and began stacking the casings, one for one as he stripped them for cleaning.

His comm blipped, showing the boss’s comm incoming.

Without thinking, John reverted to long training and cleanly snapped, “Yes, Sir?”

Obviously oozing his foul mood over the comm, John’s boss snapped harshly, “Don’t give me that ‘sir’ crap! Where the hell are you!?”

Careful not to let the other man see the weapon components that were spread before him, John held his video comm a respectful distance from his face. He continued to work on the highly illegal Gauss pistol components, in front of him. John carefully replied, “I’m on the location mission you gave me yesterday.”

The angered boss snapped, “Bullshit! What are you doing? You are not even paying attention to me! I can see you working on something.”

John calmly recited, “I’m repairing my spotting camera and lenses. Do not worry; I’ll bill it as mission prep and equipment assembly time, so you can bill the client.” John fumbled and dropped the magnetic carrying coil he was working on. It dropped, rattling into and knocking over, his neat pile of sub-components. “Damn.”

His boss snapped, “Pay attention to me, Smith! Where the hell are you! It looks like an apartment! You better not be at home! I swear you’re fired if you are at home and you’re wasting my client’s money!”

John’s grunt of irritation smoothly transitioned into, “I’m not wasting any client money.” He paid less attention to the coils and more to the conversation, “Whoever fed you this assignment sure knows how to pick them. This thing could take a while. It’s a big world out there and this guy has lots of places to hide. And this target has plenty of muscle to cover his moves. Does your client know this assignment may require a body count?”

Irate again, his boss snapped, “That is none of your business, you asshole! You just shut the hell up and get the job I told you to do finished. Stop wasting time!” The comm image blinked to black, removing the fat sweaty face from view.

John babbled to no one in particular, “Really? I would have thought getting myself shot would make it my business. That one truly belongs on the ‘pay no mind’ list.” John put the comm unit on the kitchenette counter next to his already pristinely maintained and functional surveillance camera.

He quietly went back to work on the coils.

 Chapter 9)

His boots made the planet fall.

His atmospheric descent wings broke free of his combat armor. He tried to dislodge himself from what was left of the heat ablative capsule, so he could leap into the fray.

Every Brigade in the Corps was now engaged, over the entire front. All hell was breaking loose in the South, where the heavy armored forces from three empires were tearing each other apart, in the open plains where they could actually move without hanging up on the broken rocks and canyons in the North. Infantry units were slugging it out all over the map.

‘The Sons of Wrath Independent Corporate Separate Brigade’ was a fancy way of saying that they were just another mercenary outfit. But they were having their asses kicked up around their ears. The pricks were not even from the incorporated Chroynos Empire! They were freebooter mercenaries. They were men with no homes, who were just jumping from one Genesis world to the next, capitalizing on the empires fighting by sucking down premium credit rates while delivering substandard performance. He hated useless mercenaries; they were a waste of good money.

All the idiots from ‘The Sons of Wrath’ had to do was hold an impassable ridge line and let the rest of the Division maneuver. ‘How fucking hard could that be?!’

Instead, everything had turned into one big tangled mess.

The twenty-year-old Chroynos Imperial Guardsman and his platoon had dropped from orbit into the middle of the now three-way fight over this strip of rock. His black and gold combat armor suit finally broke free of the charcoal black mass of heat ablative shielding that had wrapped him like a cocoon during his rapid descent and burnt to nothing on the way down.

It burned to nothing, except the parts that tangled his feet and refused to detach the descent wings.

Someday, he needed to find the bastard who came up with the idea of loading shock platoons into giant space-borne cannons to fire them at the surface of a planet like oversized black spitballs, so he could beat the crap out of that moron engineer. ‘Stealth entry my ass’, he grumbled to himself as he finally knocked his boot free of the last of the crumbling black material.

He could see fellow platoons dropping in the distance. The meteoric streak of their heat ablative shielding burning on entry before releasing the descent wings was visible to the naked eye. There was nothing stealthy about sending a burning fireball across the sky.

He checked his ammunition load in the Gauss rifle. Just as he stepped forward after checking the rifle, his right shoulder hung up on the broken drop wing, again. He whacked the twisted frame with his elbow and rifle’s butt stock and it finally broke clean from his armor.

Two red circles already showed on his platoon display out of the forty they dropped. ‘Five percent casualties and none of us have fired our fucking weapons yet. Ain’t life grand?’

‘The Sons of Wrath’ had in their contract an ‘escape clause’, like all standard mercenary contracts, at thirty percent casualties they were entitled to break contact with the enemy and were automatically released from their contract. At forty percent losses, they were entitled to break their contract and to ‘reparation’ to rebuild before their next assignment. This was called an ‘escape clause execution’.

The problem with using mercenaries was any Corporate Empire that wanted to use mercenary units in the future needed to keep their record clean of ‘escape clause executions’ in the Mercenary Guild books. It was literally decades before an Empire could hire outside help if they were forced to pay reparations to mercenaries. The hosting Empire would be deemed a ‘risky business proposition’ by the mercenaries in the guild and avoided like a poisonous leper, with the flu. Empires had fallen because of less. If they could not defend themselves, they were eventually devoured by neighbors.

It was almost cheaper to let a mercenary unit die to the last man than pay reparations. But woe to the Corporate Empire that was caught engaging in that type of underhanded business practice. Mercenary corporations were known to grant discounts and package deals, for the ability to fight against that type of unscrupulous employer. They would even invade the Corporate Empire’s home worlds for free if they were granted a share of the ‘spoils rights’ by contracting an attacker.

He took a few shaky steps to recover as the suit and its user adjusted to the new gravity and characteristics of this particular world. The weight of his first steps crushed rocks and gravel under his boots and ground out the noise of the first rounds snapping overhead, in the frigid atmosphere.

The teeth-rattling crunch of several hypersonic rounds ricocheting off his back as he moved into position, dropped him to a kneeling prone position, to face the oncoming platoon of hostiles.

He had targets in sight and dealt with them methodically: aimed burst, aimed burst followed by a third aimed burst. His fire sent the point men of the hostile platoon into scattered chunks of flash freeze-dried meat and shredded armor. The rest of his platoon took covered fighting positions. ‘Fuck with a heavy Guard rifle will you!? I’d like to see you bastards fix them in a field hospital repair shop’, he grumbled to himself.

His comm crackled with spotting and contact reports as his Armored Guard platoon came under fire from two hundred ninety of the available three hundred sixty degrees, around their landing zone perimeter. Three-quarters of their perimeter was in enemy contact within seconds of landing, his squad included.

More enemy targets took cover behind the rocks and then moved forward.

He moved his own position and waited for the next enemy wave to move. He knocked two more down, that was five on the day so far. He could still kick the broken drop wings with little effort, and that was how far he had moved. His platoon had not gone anywhere, but the enemy kept pouring into their position.

The sound distortion from the thin frigid atmosphere added a surreal pale to everything; it was like everything was just a little off-center on this world. Things did not sound right and somewhere in the back of his brain, he noted the ‘strangeness’ it created.

The platoon’s senior Guardsman called artillery and air support, the first was granted, and the second was denied. The support call was for ‘high explosive low fused’ rounds from the friendly artillery batteries behind the lines and support from the monsters above, in their stately geosynchronous escort orbits. When the artillery arrived, the rounds would detonate only two meters above the solid mass the fuses determined was ground level. The explosives and shrapnel would cut through the exposed enemy infantry like so many diamond-tipped saw blades through soft, warm, pink flesh. It would take two minutes before the tubes were realigned, from prior assignment completion, then thirty to ninety seconds of flight time. This was going to be a long five minutes…

His wingman took a hit in the knee, at the seam in his armor between lower and upper leg armor. The junior man’s armor had automatically sealed the breach from the hostile atmosphere and squeezed blood flow by constricting the damaged interior liner around the wound, while automatically administering antibiotics, and pain medication.

He quickly checked his wingman’s digital vitals on his squad leader display, and it showed his battle buddy’s wound was not critical. His quick visual check of the injured man confirmed that he was up and firing from a seated position on a rock but was exposed to hostile fire.

The injured Guard’s pain meds had kicked in and he was not remembering his training. His brain was overwhelmed by the powerful drugs. He watched, feeling strangely detached, as he launched himself through the air. He crashed into the younger man’s armor as he tackled the seated man from the side pushing him off the rock and into a shallow depression. His armor registered multiple hits on the back and legs; none were critical or deeply penetrating. They were both alive.

His gauntlet smashed the other man’s helmet, with a jarring impact. He shouted over the inner-squad net, ‘Snap out of it, the meds are rotting your brain, get your head out of your ass before you kill both of us!’ The injured eighteen-year-old nodded but didn’t reply. The young replacement in his squad shook his head to clear the drug’s foggy effects from his brain. He needed to clear his vision before he started to return disciplined and aimed fire as targets presented themselves over the low ridge.

They were not up against an enemy platoon. This was a company at least in their squad sector. More of the enemy crested the broken rock barrier. They were crossing the crest of rock faster than he could track and engage that many targets, even at that close range. The enemy found rock cover within sight of the platoon’s landing zone. More of them poured over and into cover. Everyone, in the squad was knocked down with shattered suit armor, three more crossed the barrier between his squad and the enemy company and began intensifying fire into his squad and the rest of the platoon’s position beyond.

He highlighted the enemy-occupied area with a squad-level priority artillery target, with a few twitches of his left thumb activating his squad leader display and targeting matrix, while he was tracking targets and pulling the trigger with the right hand.

The platoon’s lead Guardsman snapped, ‘artillery confirmed.’

Glancing at his timer, he saw that only seventy-three seconds had passed since the fighting had started. One hundred twenty seconds plus ninety remained before artillery support arrived in the best case. He knew the math cold. It meant over three minutes remaining before the artillery rounds arrived. In less than a third of the time that would elapse before the artillery support arrived three squad members were wounded. It was a squad of eight. That meant if this kept up everyone was probably going to get hit, as it got worse before it got better. It always got worse before it got better.

And all that was dependent on arty support actually arriving, and not being diverted. Best of all it depended on that same support being on target when it finally arrived. ‘Ain’t life grand?’

He saw them before they could track targets, and he switched his rifle to automatic. ‘A-A-M!’ He heard his voice shout over the squad and platoon push. He hosed the low rise with his remaining twenty rounds. Two of the three enemy gunners fell into flash-frozen pink mist and body parts, to his fire. The third was both lightly wounded and remained standing, or there were ‘just not enough rounds in that magazine’ to reach that target.

The enemy fired his Man Portable Intelligence Guided Anti-Armor Missile. To save critical life-saving time, the cumbersome full acronym had been shortened to ‘A-A-M’ for short. That shaved half-second could mean the difference between understanding a critical warning with time to react and being stuck trying to figure out what your buddy was trying to tell you before you exploded catastrophically.

The white blossom against the tan/gray rock backlit the whole area in a pristine and beautiful glow, as a Guardsman from the next squad over in the perimeter hammered the gunner with enough hypersonic gauss rounds to liquefy the enemy target through his light armor and then churn the rocks into dust, where the rocketeer had stood. That much-concentrated firepower literally carved a chunk out of the rocks, leaving a large permanent notch in the rocky landscape.

He heard, ‘I got him!’ over the platoon push as the triumphant Guardsman cheered his first kill. The same instant he finished his cheer, the white-hot, silver lance of propellant from the tail of the kinetic warhead connected the ionizing launch plume to the chest of the victor. The enemy Anti-Armor Missile went terminal with an additional brilliant flare, as he was falling back into cover. The first charge only expelled the missile from the launch tube, while the missile’s warhead sought a ‘clean’ target within its launch path.

The fluffy red ice crystals from the blast inside the armored chest hung momentarily in the thin atmosphere while the flash from the blast faded. The dead Guardsman’s legs and lower torso stood in place balanced perfectly on servo-mechanics as the high-tech life support system was confused into inaction. The upper half of the armor and body had been ripped away in chunky gore. The red circle highlighting the lost connection to the platoon net was already visible when he looked down at his squad leader display. The dead man had been a second squad replacement.

He was glad it was not one of his own, ‘fucking new guys.’

The chorus of grunts from veterans told him he had not only said that aloud but over the platoon push. That breach of communications protocol would earn him a serious ass-chewing if he lived to see it.

New high-end A-A-Ms were now being deployed with two propellant stages. First was the sighting stage and second was the attack stage. Some engineer had figured out how to delay the terminal propellant then warheads could acquire their own optimal targets for greater kill efficiency. That was why the new missiles appeared to float before they were killed. That was another thing they did not teach in combat training yet because those missiles were so rare and expensive to employ. They used a high-end targeting computer that bordered on a low-grade artificial intelligence, which visually sorted through tens of thousands of pieces of targeting data in a fraction of a second before engaging the ‘best’ target available. The missiles ‘preferred’ operator selected targets but when launched without guidance they would find the best target available on their own. Because they were tied into the fielding Army’s Friend/Foe identification system and they were capable of making their own targeting decisions while avoiding their Army’s troops. The new missiles were very difficult to trick with conventional countermeasures because they operated and decided ‘visually’, mimicking the process a sentient human rifleman used when engaging a target with his rifle.

The field troops had learned after devastating effect in their ranks, not to take the new missiles lightly.

The use of advanced weaponry also meant that this was not some ragbag mercenary outfit picking up scraps, these were the real deal. These had to be troops from the core world of another Empire. Since they were enemy core world troops, they would be better trained, better supported, and better equipped.

The day kept getting better and better.

The only saving grace so far was that the heavy armor and mechanized forces were fighting many kilometers to the south, on the open plains and rolling hills. The grunts got to slug it out in the broken rocks of this particular hellhole.

Commanders on both sides were smart enough to realize that the steep, irregular, admittedly low, ridges at the base of this rock formation would make horrible terrain for tracked armor of any size. The dispersed and fortified infantry above could target them for kilometers with guided missiles and artillery strikes. The armor would have to move extra slowly as they picked their way across the rocks trying not to get themselves stuck and crushed by orbital ship-launched anti-armor missiles. Armor’s two greatest advantages of speed and overwhelming firepower at range, both became a handicap in the close confines and restricted terrain of these rocky badlands. At these engagement ranges, the armor would be exposing the bottom of their hulls to fire for far too many precious seconds, while the tanks were unable to return fire every time, they crested a ragged jumble of rocks. Their gun tubes could not depress low enough for the tanks to defend themselves before they died uselessly.

That small piece of good news rattled around in the back of his brain like a ball bearing inside his waiting steel coffin.

He calmly thought back to before they loaded for the drop, ‘Gentlemen’, the briefing officer droned, ‘this rock is AN-42576-22B, so named because no one lives on it to give a name so far. This is a simple dispute over ownership, mining, and eventual colonization rights. This one is inside our sphere of influence but somehow the Terraforming Commission screwed up again and it ended up on someone else’s colonization roster. It is strategically important to us because a rival can use it as a base of operations to attack three dozen of our other systems that are still relatively new and vulnerable. So, we are going to take it back. There are others interested too, but for now, the enemy is…’

He smoothly shifted from target to target, recalling the mission preparation briefing. He was unable to maneuver as he would have liked, tied in the fixed defense, pinned by enemy fire, and waiting for the artillery support higher promised was on the way.

Getting all excited and jumpy was no way to win, let alone survive a firefight. His two and a half years engaged in fighting on this or that rock taught him that lesson the hard way. He would not let his adrenaline take over until they closed the distance and went tooth and nail.

Massive quantities of adrenaline caused the hands to shake. He needed both, steady hands and a steady controlled heart rate to provide the solid platform necessary to return accurate and effective fire now.

This was the razor’s edge of a war between three interstellar Corporate Empires coming to blows. Behind him was his own Empire. To his front were the bastards he was killing. To his left along the platoon perimeter were the bastards his buddies were killing. Somewhere out there in the distance, the two enemy empires were chewing on Chroynos Hegemony forces everywhere they could find them. They were both equally busy chewing on each other too but that was just more ‘dead enemy’ and that was a good thing. The place was a mess, with three empires all fighting in such a confined area.

He took a deep breath and let the exhale slip as he recalled the overly calm briefing officer, ‘As usual combat bonuses are paid based on profit returns, from the acquired world’s first ten years, to all forces engaged, after reparations,” blah-blah-blah, “you will find the handsome little rock below us contains the standard elements of interest: Aluminum, Titanium, Silicon, Iron, Copper, Zinc, Palladium, Silver and everyone’s favorite two, Iridium for our little gauss rounds and the crowning jewel of all worlds we fight for: Gold. The standard setup for the bonus package, all Chroynos Corporate forces involved by hours spent on planet fall or space combat, diminishing for distance from the front, averaged out over all troops in theater, deductions for infractions, additions for citations, valor, performance, and wounds etcetera.’

Every single rock to his front was pitted or cracked from his gauss rounds shredding the terrain and more importantly the enemy. Enemy weapons, expended ordinance, bodies, frozen fluids, and wounded piled higher and higher as more tumbled over the top of the inter-visibility line formed by the small crest. It seemed as though the enemy were trying to backfill their fallen comrades and join them in a tangled charnel pit.

The wounded kid to his right was doing much better. He might actually survive this if he kept his cool. He had his head balanced, and his meds under control. His bursts were a touch sloppy, but he was hitting and knocking down enemies more often than not. Most importantly the replacement was holding his ground, giving more than he got, and staying calm.

Then he saw them.

The white and purple colors of his counterparts, the enemy’s elite Guardsmen equivalent, first the armored helmet crests, then royal purple shoulder pauldron. He shouted over the platoon push, ‘Armored-Guard! Third squad sector!’

His own black and gold armor was stained with gray rock dust and didn’t reflect the light as theirs did. They were still clean. He suffered a flash of pride filled with jealousy not looking his best in front of the enemy’s elite, before the platoon leader replied, ‘Understood, third. Engage… Artillery-Shot! Thirty seconds, over.’

He heard himself reply, ‘Roger!’ Confident he was not saying it aloud this time, he thought to himself, ‘What the fuck does he think I’m doing, sitting here with my thumb up my ass?!’ His three-round burst, shot from his rifle, up the slight rise, and kicked the white helmet up and to the side. His second burst punched through the relatively soft, flat underside of the helmet, at the neck joint. The Iridium projectiles bounced around the inside of the armor shredding everything they touched. The enemy armor danced and dangled while the kinetic energy from his very powerful Guardsmen rifle exhausted itself inside the armor. The liquefied enemy target fell lifeless.

Armored guard troops of any Empire take it personally when you drop one of their own. They also take it as a personal offense requiring retribution. This occasion was no different. A blistering hail of enemy Armored-Guard heavy projectiles tore into his rock cover. The much more powerful rifles cracked and crushed the rock like none of the light infantry before had been able to manage.

He could not see his wounded replacement, but at least he was not lying there dead, which meant he could have been up fighting somewhere.

‘No wonder the bastards were fighting so hard, not only were they core worlders, but they had an Imperial house unit behind them.’ He primed and tossed a grenade as hard as he could over the rock ledge, hoping it would land near where the enemy platoon leader should be advancing behind the point man he had just killed.

‘Splash! In five!’

He rebuked himself, ‘Shit. That was a waste of a grenade.’ The platoon leader had told him ‘Shot thirty seconds’ and he had not been paying attention to the countdown for the artillery support.

The grenade’s explosion was lost in the horrific thumps of large artillery rounds from orbit and ground units. They ripped through the enemy light infantry and Armored-Guard forces. They crumpled white and purple infantry and Guard armor alike. The artillery rounds were amazingly accurate as the fuses pinged ‘friend/foe’ signals from the platoon’s suits to the guided inbound rounds.

He checked his squad status while the artillery hammered the enemy: one killed, and five wounded out of his eight to start.

The artillery battalion called, and announced ‘rounds complete’ on the final protective fire mission, and that the guns were continuing the mission and walking fire away from the platoon’s position. As one, the operational platoon members attacked into the carnage of broken enemies, in two directions out from the platoon perimeter. His sector was still, with no visible enemy hiding behind the low rise.

The arty slowly walked off into the distance cleaning up support troops and follow-on units before they could find cover.

Then he saw it.

Movement left.

Turning.

A broken, stained, and seeping white and purple armored suit, missing a left arm and two legs.

The enemy’s remaining arm pointed the Gauss rifle at him.

It discharged with a flash…

John Smith sat up in a cold sweat.

His right hand closed over the raised and perforated scar, where the round had punched through the thinner abdominal armor, on his left side, below his chest plate. His wounded battle buddy finished the attacker off. Because the enemy fired a Guardsman equivalent Gauss rifle, the round had entered his armor, blew out his left side kidney, ripped out several feet of intestine in its wake, bounced off his thick armored back plate, and narrowly missed his spine. The slowed and tumbling round dragged pieces of his guts out the new second hole in the soft flexible lower abdomen of his suit, just above his right hip, between leg armor and lower chest piece.

His hand traced over to a spot three inches above his front right hip, to the jagged scar. He could not get the picture of his suit’s inner liner closing around his guts as they froze a sickly blue-white in the sub-zero chilled near atmosphere, out of his mind.

It was pitch black in the windowless room, and he had only slept a few hours, but that image would not leave his eyes. He could see it clear as the day it happened, looking down from his back as his intestines flash frozen, hanging from his suit while oozing frozen shit, blood, and flesh, on a world that did not even warrant a real name.

There would be no more sleep this night. He would see that image all day no matter what happened, and there was no way he could get to the cure for that condition now.

“Combat bonus my ass,” John griped as he turned on the light, slipped his foot into a shoe, and felt a roach crunch under his bare foot, grinding into the bottom of his foot and the insole of his shoe.

He exclaimed in extraordinary frustration, at forgetting to shake out his shoe before putting it on, “Fuck Me!”

Chapter 10)

John knelt in the shadowy bowels of the warehouse.

If an Imperial capital world’s megacity could be said to have an ‘undesirable outskirts’, he was in it. Granted it was almost over the curvature of the planet from the Imperial Citadel, but it was hardly the opposite side of the world. In fact, it was still in the same sprawling mega-city. Since he had seen it with his own eyes from the deepest black of space, he knew that the city did not, in fact, cover the entire world. In fact, it covered a tiny fraction of their pristine green world and ended abruptly at specifically delineated artificial boundaries.

The building he was in was only a little over a hundred kilometers away from the Imperial Citadel and corporate headquarters building.

As a younger man, John had always wondered how a world with so much developed commercial, residential, and industrial space, when compared to its registered population, could still have such a crowded, milling mass, of compacted humanity, squished into such a small area of the planet. He could only conclude people ‘liked’ living on top of each other because there was plenty of space out there.

Some mythical alien species could invade the world in this blighted section of the mega-city and think that the place was not worth keeping and move on to the next galaxy.

During the many years of his education, ‘spiritual philosophy’ had never been his thing. But math and science were. His fellow Astro-Navigation students had once upon a time debated the mathematical probabilities associated with finding ‘naturally occurring’ life on other worlds. The grizzled old professor had only sat back and allowed the Astro-Navigation class to run wild into tangential subjects, like biology, statistics, physics, and spirituality. Since he was an honorably retired Guardsman Colonel himself, he could periodically indulge his class.

Finally, the debate had devolved to the point where it frustrated John. He had finally stood and taken control of the debate from the front of the class. He asked how many worlds, other than humanity’s home world Earth, were there where we had encountered life. He then asked, ‘How many worlds has humanity covered’? He then divided the seven worlds where single cell and plant life were found, plus humanity’s home world of Earth, by the millions of worlds that humanity claimed. There were many worlds where life tried and failed, but those were counted as void of life for the obvious reason nothing was living there. The result was an astronomically small number. That astronomically small number was the chance of finding life on a new world given the enormous available sample size.

Multiply that number by the total number of ‘estimated remaining worlds’ in the galaxy, and you get an approximate number of possible occurrences for finding additional life in the galaxy. Multiply that reduced the number of worlds by the again astronomically small but still unsolvable variable chance of finding ‘intelligent life’ and you get a number almost to ‘zero’.

The professor laughed at John’s impromptu dissertation and pointed out that it was not in fact a variable because we had the known number of one over eight, which in itself was a percentage. The correct answer was ‘Earth’ divided by Earth plus the other seven planets to get the chances of intelligent life discovered among any worlds where life was discovered.

John had realized his mistake and had recomputed the odds of finding intelligent life other than humanity. He still had a tiny number, but he ended with the caveat that humanity was exploring from the starting position of our own perspective, so we automatically started with a whole number of ‘one’ or one hundred percent as our incidents of intelligent life. Therefore, any additional planets we found with life that did not qualify as ‘intelligent’ were only going to reduce the odds and further unbalance the equation in his side of the debate’s favor.

The presentation was flawless until John heard his antagonist say something along the lines of ‘Whatever world you came from obviously had no intelligent life’. He had turned and flicked the board’s writing stylus at his antagonist. He struck the other boy in the center of the forehead.

While his violation of the Academy’s strict discipline had landed both himself and his antagonist in hot water, he had still captured the top score in the class.

Of course, he had not been ‘John Smith’ at that time either. His pleasant memories slipped away as his mind fell back to the grim task at hand.

John flipped open the dead man’s cloth overcoat and riffled the next chest pocket.

It had taken him almost two and a half weeks to come this far. Days of examining trash cans and snooping in back alleyways and dark corridors. There are just so many questions you can ask when looking for a criminal before the people you are talking to get suspicious and tell that criminal about you for a monetary reward. Then that criminal picks you up to answer a few questions of his own. Most of his search had centered on looking for the illicit ‘businesses’ surrounding the target. That way he could improve his overall picture, while still moving forward and minimizing direct dangerous questions.

To minimize the chances of his discovery, John did not even carry his comm anymore. It was too dangerous. If he turned it on, he would invariably receive a call or a barrage of noisy messages from the boss demanding his location. That racket would have him dead before he could press ‘mute’.

The thirty-one-inch double-edged, straight blade dripped more blood in the cool damp warehouse. Irritated by the noise of the dripping blood, John pulled up a handful of the dead man’s outer jacket and wiped the blood off his blade. All the while he searched the darkness for other lookouts that might stumble onto his grisly work.

As dark as the warehouse was and as well concealed as he was, John still did not like knowing that there were more hidden lookouts lurking in the dark. There was enough space in the cavernous warehouse that this one had strayed far too close to his hide position and had to be dealt with. Even in his dark overcoat, dark hooded top, and dark pants that all did little to hide him from a guard standing so close John could see every hair on the back of the guard’s head, in the darkened warehouse. All the man had to do was turn around and gasp in surprise and John would have been swarmed by other criminals working as warehouse security.

John had taken the dangerous expedient of slipping his blade into the gap between the man’s first vertebrate and the base of his skull while pinching the man’s mouth and nose closed. The trick was to get your blade all the way through the spine without it either hanging up on the skull which happened if you pushed it in too far or catching on the spine if you didn’t pull back hard or fast enough.

John had lots of practice with this sort of stuff, just not with a blade as long as the one he was carrying now. It made the job awkward. The blade was not crafted for that type of precision work. It was designed for close-quarters chopping and slashing work. It was designed specifically to hack chunks out of enemy guards when trickery and evasion had failed. The ancient shadow warriors, who designed it in medieval Japan, had used it as a weapon of last resort.

Removing the blade had been an irritatingly slow process. He needed to maintain silence and avoid any grotesque bone-crunching sounds that would be heard by anyone nearby. He was paranoid about the sound of dripping blood in the already dripping and damp warehouse and that sound was much less of a threat than the cracking of bones, or the thump sound of a carelessly dropped body.

The key card and gauss pistol John had already recovered in his search, were between his own boots. He sorted through the rest of the tough’s clothing, finding nothing of interest until he reached the right boot. Concealed under a pant cuff and tucked into a boot was a blade. It was not just any blade. This one was special.

This blade sent John’s thoughts into a giddy state of overdrive.

This blade was high-end and extremely expensive. It was totally undetectable except to a tactile scan, better known as an ‘old fashioned pat-down’. Its ceramic and carbon fiber polymers were specially designed to pass any electronic scan as if it were passing through a few millimeters of flesh. The minimal metal content meant metal detectors and magnetic scans fell short of detecting it. The smooth sleek profile of the blade meant it was almost possible to see as a ‘bump’ or ‘irregularity’ in clothing if properly concealed. This lookout may not have been some meat shield thug or foot soldier. This guy carried a very expensive tool, so he probably knew what he was doing, and he was doing tasks important enough to require a concealable ceramic blade. This was not ‘hired help’ or some ‘neighborhood tough’. The implications unsettled John immensely.

The nylon and plastic quick releases that humanity had used for eons opened silently, releasing the blade from the leg. John pulled the whole assembly into view and smiled. John inspected the blade visually before he slid the edge along a plastic shipping container, and he watched the material curl and slice clean.

The blade was extremely sharp; it was not something you would want to drop on your foot. You would not know it penetrated until you tried to take your next step and discovered your foot was pinned to the floor.

John’s new assessment of the dead man on the warehouse floor left a sinking but at the same time excited feeling that he was finally getting close to his target.

Finally, the thought occurred to John that this ‘lookout’ not only owned but was carrying one of these high-end weapons but that he was also carrying keys. This meant that this fellow would most likely be missed in short order.

John had to get moving. John pocketed the pistol and the key card. Unsure where to put the ceramic blade, and without time to adjust the straps, John only slipped the blade and clasps into the back of his pants.

There was no way to disguise the jagged bloody wound in the man’s throat that oozed into his inner clothing or the surgical entry in the back. John was careful just to snip the spine and not open the circulatory system, otherwise the gushing blood would have made a horrible mess and more noise. Anyone who found this fellow would know that he was dispatched brutally and efficiently. The best John could do was to tuck the body away in a corner and move fast.

The cleaned Ikazuchi blade stayed out, any encounter in these confined spaces would be at arm’s length, and the sword was faster than a pistol, at the extremely short engagement ranges in the warehouse.

John ghosted to the office on the elevated platform at the far end of the warehouse, moving from crate to crate. The opening of the warehouse’s exterior door, near the office, startled him so badly that he almost voided his bladder. He was glad he had taken care of that biological function before he entered the warehouse. He skidded to a halt and faded into the shadows as quietly as possible.

A dark luxury skimmer and two commercial cargo skimmers settled to a halt between himself and the office. John melted into the shadows of a stack of crates. John cursed his luck and gripped the blade as the hatches opened on the vehicles.

Four men exited the dark skimmer, in the lead of the two other vehicles. The first two to exit were the guard and driver from the front. They were followed by two from the back of the vehicle. The three guards and a boss in a suit were soon joined by the fourth and fifth security men from the passenger side of the two commercial vehicles. The drivers were apparently reluctant to join the rest and remained on the driver’s side milling between the two commercial vehicles. John wondered if they were not part of the criminal’s normal crew, and just hired for the driving job.

Then he was there! Larger than life standing on the top of the platform was the man himself. The person John had been looking for, for the last two weeks. Qudir Dardan Kimikon Dardanos stood at the top of the landing, looking magnanimous and babbling pleasantries loud enough for the dead guard to hear.

John noticed that the commercial affiliation on the cargo vehicles was not on his list of known associates. That oversight irked him. He knew he would need to record the information for later investigation to close this assignment. Quietly setting his blade on the ground, he drew his most useful tool, his pencil and notebook. John set to work copying the company name, contact information, and vehicle numbers followed by the registration plate on the luxury skimmer. He snapped several quick images of the vehicles with his passive low-light lens camera as a backup to his notes.

While he continued scribbling the last of the information in his notebook, the business associates finished their greetings and entered the office.

Immediately after pocketing the notepad, pencil, and camera, John heard the distinctive sound of someone kicking a chair, followed by the flat hollow sound of someone else hitting the ground, hard. “Well get your ass out there and find him!” The authoritative rant continued over an unheard objection, “I do not give a rats ass if that retard Benjamin Superior-Gauss is just taking a piss or not! You go get you’ mangy ass out there and help him shake i’d’off!” … “No, I do not care what you think about that! Get your ass moving ‘fore I shoot you in the head myself!” Qudir chased the underling out of the office and kicked him once in the back for good measure to keep him moving out the door. Qudir shouted after the fleeing man, “Do not make me shoot you and send someone else!”

Since his authority was firmly reestablished with his criminal gang, he laughed as he wandered into the office again.

John’s time just got shorter.

John reassessed his risks and looked at his enemies again. The two remaining, newly arrived, guards with the vans had moved to the rear of the trucks and the drivers had moved to the front. There was at least one roving guard now that Qudir had sent the man looking for the dead man who was probably Benjamin. If he had not killed Benjamin but got someone else instead, that meant that there could be the searcher, plus Benjamin, plus anyone else on the floor other than the dead man, John had not yet accounted for. There were at least three security personnel now in play, the two drivers, the searcher, one dead man, and the possibility that Benjamin could still be alive and wandering around. There was no realistic upper limit on how many ‘could be’ out there among the tens of thousands of square meters of warehouse space he had not explored yet. John quickly checked the two guards who remained with the vehicles, while the three guards from the lead vehicle had remained with the two principals. There were also however many of Qudir’s guards who were already in the office but had not shown themselves.

‘Idiot!’ John cursed himself as he flittered from one set of crates to the next. ‘You do not need to kill them all. Just tag and track Qudir! Stop making this more complicated than it has to be!’

He aligned his surveillance camera, with his left hand, at the vehicles in the dock as he silently passed from one set of shadows to the next. He captured additional images with every step.

Crossing the front of the stationary vehicle line, John ducked into the packed and twisted jumble of crates and discarded packing material that was haphazardly stacked under the elevated office.

In his haste to avoid the commercial vehicle’s guards, John almost ran into the pack of guards on the far side of the office. This group of three leaned against a gaudy skimmer. The skimmer had started out as some sort of luxury model but had so many after-market modifications and additions hanging from every centimeter of hull, that he could hardly tell what it looked like at the start of its life.

Their compact assault gauss rifles were still slung, and they were passing a cigarette of some kind, talking quietly.

John silently uttered a raft of frustrated profanity that could have lit a battle cruiser on fire.

He was trapped on three sides. Office and junk above and behind. Warehouse exits to the left and right both occupied by hostile skimmers and guards. His only option was to carefully back out into the crates and risk the possibility of encountering any number of roving guards and security personnel.

“You like it!?” The shouted question from above gave John the chance he needed. The three guards, leaning on the gaudy skimmer, turned to look up the stairs on their side, for an instant. That instant allowed John to silently cross the lit gap between the junk pile where he was trapped, and the relative safety of the warehouse stacked full of shipping containers. “I got one too, same as yours! Look at mine though!” … “No, I do not know where that idiot Superior-Gauss is hiding, he probably found himself a plastic woman in a container and can’t stop fucking it!” Qudir laughed fiercely at his own joke to make up for the lack of laughter from the businessmen he was entertaining.

The one-sided laughter died down as John ducked behind the second set of the warehouse shelves and looked back. The three guards stood passively, still passing their cigarette, while the senior visitor and one of his guards, stood next to Qudir looking down at his vehicle. “I got the XBC-5000 lift injector, upgraded front, sides, rear, top and bottom armor package, threat evasion countermeasures…” John displaced and worked his way around in a long arc to the far side of the discussed skimmer, placing it, with its guards, between himself and the office. “I even had the real lamb skin fur seats imported from Tarfona!” … “No matter that-is in some other empire! I can get anything I want! I’m connected!” … “Of course, I can! The babes Luuuvvvv-iiiittttt!” The coarse but lonely laughter echoed through the enormous warehouse. John was not even seventy-five meters distant but searched for a vantage point to capture better images of the two on the platform.

“Paint job?! … Wuza mada’ wi’da bain’ job!” The slip caught John’s attention; the guy was acting! He was an uneducated thug, trying to make himself look smart. He was full of it trying to hide what he was, a little fish who got lucky and was in the big leagues, as he switched back to properly enunciated dialect, “The paint job is fine! I want to stand out! It makes people notice me!”

John used the distraction to close the distance to less than twenty-five meters, by floating from shadow to shadow into the far side of the vehicle. All attention was either on the vehicle or on Qudir, just like he wanted when Qudir started blithering about his monstrosity. John used the opportunity mercilessly.

Frustrated by his angle of approach John was forced to silently sheath his sword, only a few meters shy of his objective, and backpedal to an exposed steel ‘I’ beam. He gently grasped the camera in his teeth, while he examined the column. His vice-grip strong fingers clasped the near side of the beam as his feet silently pressed the far parallel, on either side of the central core. And he began to monkey climb the beam.

His right side was closer and the open corridor between the shelves and shipping crates offered a clear view. John carefully removed the camera from his mouth, with his right hand and hooked his left foot around a post on the metal shelving scaffolding, for stability, while he leaned out into the open space of the corridor, slightly above and only a short distance away from his target. The camera angle was perfect. He captured the vehicle, the three smoking guards, the guest, and his guard, plus Qudir, in the same image. It was a perfect package, but he kept silently snapping images ensuring each tracked progress while recording sound and video from the useless conversation about Qudir’s skimmer. By flagging the still images along with the video, he could pull both into a coherent report later with less annoying clerical and editing work.

As the conversation ended and the trio on the top of the office’s catwalk moved inside, John took the opportunity to slide silently down the column to the floor and fade into the shadows. The only task remaining was to mark the vehicle for later tracking.

That was easy enough. But when you add three guards to the mix, with automatic railguns, things could get ‘complicated’ to the point of making him dead, in an expanding pool of his own fluids.

He decided the driver-side, back window frame would be the best place for the tiny tracking emitter. It would only last a few weeks but that would be long enough for the clients to track this Qudir bastard down again. At the last second before peeling the seal, and arming the transmitter, from its coded nesting station, John decided to place the device in the same area but instead of at the window. He decided he should tuck it inside one of the after-market modifications that would create a vacuum in the air, while the vehicle was moving, behind its cosmetic presence. That way the device would have less chance of falling off or being discovered since it was stuck between a cosmetic component sheet and the vehicle’s hull.

John peeled the device off its nest, which activated the adhering goo that would harden into the materials of the vehicle for the duration of the tracker’s life and then fall harmlessly to dust leaving no trace.

“What!” The shouted question startled John. The vehicle guards thundered up the metal stairs to the office, from the far side of the skimmer, while John was still crouched, frozen, on the far side. “What the hell do you mean you found him dead?!”

John was blown.

He slapped the transmitter into place and made as quick an exit as he could manage. He ran out of options at the column where he had started only moments before.

The irate gangster roared, “You’s not goin’ nowheres! No one leaves this warehouse until we find whoever it was kill’t Benjamin!”

John cursed again as he silently slapped the meaty underside of his fist to the ‘I’ beam in frustration. He looked left and right for a place to hide and saw the utility lines along the ceiling. They might be close enough.

John monkey climbed all the way to the top of the ‘I’ beam this time, past the level of the shelves where he had taken the images and video. As the guards fanned out and security personnel, he had not previously seen, poured out of corners and hidden security stations onto the warehouse floor and dispersed among the cargo containers.

From that height in the warehouse, he could easily see he was right to take the air ventilation duct into the area. The primary lifts and stairs were each covered by squads of guards. John could see the two hundred plus meters away from this exterior wall office and ‘I’ beam, that three squad strength platoon controlled all the normal entrances and exits.

John realized that above the suspended overhead lighting he would be difficult to see. He could hide in the shadows and glare, but he could not stay attached to the column for much longer.

John had to make a gut-loosening change of position to reach the utility line. The support was just out of reach. From twenty meters up, John had to let go with his right hand, pinch the beam with his left hand, and push off with his feet to be able to reach the supports of the utility bundle.

His fingers brushed the support and fell just short of being able to make any purchase.

Frustrated, John pulled back to the ‘I’ beam. He shifted his feet to straighten his spine to eke out that last available inch.

His bottom foot slipped.

He pushed with the left leg while spinning that hand around to meet the right.

His fingers clasped.

His hands thumped together solidly on the ceiling support screws.

He slipped, grinding flesh from his palms as he slapped into the bottom support cracking several knuckles and fingers.

His feet swung over nothing but the floor far below.

Focusing on his grip and not the ripped hand, John levered his weight up to the utility lines.

The awkward pull-up finally allowed a leg to find purchase and to get a little weight under it from the side.

A patrol passed far below, directly under his nose which at that moment was pointing at the floor. Their light wands and automatic Gauss rifles tracked quickly from side to side, searching shelves, crates, and corridors.

Silently, scissoring legs together, more weight came off the now bleeding hands.

The patrol passed.

He watched in slow motion as a dribble of blood fell to the floor. It splashed into a black seam in the concrete floor and disappeared.

His entirely too loud exhale reminded him he needed to keep moving.

He crawled back on hands and knees onto the utility lines; the direction he was facing when he made it to the top of the line was the direction that John followed to the far wall of the warehouse. He just chose the direction he was facing.

Once to the wall, he could stop. His hands were shaking and bleeding while he stuffed them into his overcoat pockets, as he focused on calming breaths during the first two hours, he was trapped on the ceiling utility conduit.

After five hours in his ceiling perch, John used his new knife to cut a hole into a large data conduit line that was accompanied by the power, and water lines for the floor. The thought of relieving himself on Qudir’s digital transmissions amused John infinitely as he unbuttoned and took care of his urgent personal business into the plastic conduit shell. It was not the best solution, but it created fewer problems than if he had let it pool on the floor under his position, for the roving guard patrols to find.

After six hours Qudir had finally admitted his business deal soured and he grudgingly let the customers leave. They had been unwilling guests with him the whole time. Reason finally won out over Qudir’s anger and vengeful nature, as he realized, there was no way any of them could have committed the crime. The guests were with him the whole time or were within sight of the office.

John sat and watched Qudir’s men tear apart the warehouse for two days.

Finally, in a fit of screaming rage, Qudir had fired fifty rounds from his Gauss pistol into walls, crates, and shelving, of the warehouse, and ordered his men to pack up the records, cash, and valuables. They dumped Benjamin’s body out one of the bay doors, into the mists that drifted past the loading bay doors and locked the office. They were leaving.

John waited another twelve hours before he looked over the edge of the utility bundle. He did not see anyone remaining in the dark, silent warehouse. He spent the extra time because he wanted to make sure he left undetected. After that much time John felt secure enough to slide down the much closer ‘I’ beam next to the wall he was leaning on.

When he found the ventilation system duct, he used to enter the now ransacked but deserted warehouse, his climb out was entirely anti-climactic.

Thank You!

Thank you for reading this chapter!

Your next chapter is HERE.

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