Lost heir, p.32
Lost Heir, page 32
Each took a guard and fumbled through plasti-cuffing their wrists and ankles together. Ward checked the guard he had hit before rattling the doorknob. Definitely dead. Light streaming in from lamp posts outside showed people wandering around aimlessly in the street near him. Ward saw there were enough of them that if they rushed the doors, there could be a problem.
Grabbing his closest two men, he ordered, “Guard the doors and these men. Keep everyone out of the warehouse unless I tell you different. Shoot only if you have to.” To the other two he said, “Follow me upstairs.” On the com, he ordered, “Make sure the men downstairs know they are guarding the warehouse against intruders and let’s go.”
As they neared the stairs, Ward smiled evilly. “I can smell you, Vinnie. Better hope the men upstairs don’t figure out where that odor is coming from.” Klostermann’s silence constituted the perfect response in Ward’s mind.
Getting back on the com, he briskly directed, “Head up the stairs. Wait at the top for my word.” Slinking forward up the right front stairwell, he followed Klostermann, barely able to breathe for the rankness spreading all around him. Ward commed the other three Marines, “We’ll go in fifteen seconds and call on them to surrender. If they don’t, Jebet’s laser rifle should be able to cut through anything they hide behind.” Speed now became paramount, stealth a distant second because surprise had helped them as much as it could. At any moment, someone upstairs might discover them and turn this into a real battle. They had too few protecting the doors downstairs to fight those outside and inside at the same time.
Reaching the second floor, Ward tapped his com, signaling Jebet to fire his laser rifle into the ceiling. A searing bolt, terrifying enough for trained soldiers on a battlefield, paralyzing when fired in the dark and by surprise, lit up the room and took a divot out of the cement roof.
Ward bellowed in his loudest parade ground voice to get their attention. “This is Sergeant Major Ward, Imperial Marines. We have control of the ground floor. Drop your weapons if you don’t want your women and children killed in a crossfire. You will not be harmed if you comply immediately. This is your only warning.” Even before he finished speaking, a clatter of weapons hitting the concrete floor could be heard. Using his night vision, he carefully scanned the large room, not finding anyone holding a weapon anywhere.
Comming the others, he asked, “You guys see anyone with a weapon?” Negatives answered him from all four. “Okay, lights on,” he ordered. All around them, the prisoners as well as his locals shielded their eyes from the sudden glare. The Marine’s night vision in the visor adjusted automatically, allowing Ward and the Marines to continue seeing normally. Speaking again in his parade ground voice, Ward directed the prisoners, “Everyone walk to the east side wall and sit down.” Comming Dunn and Klostermann, he directed, “Send your men to collect the weapons and then have them cover the side doors. Don’t worry about cuffs; we’ll just have to keep an eye on them. Chameleon skin off so our people will know where you are.” He left his on. It paid to have an ace in the hole. Last, he sent out the code for objective secured.
Comming Jebet, he said, “Head back to the ground floor. Get those forklifts moving downstairs and block the doors with pallets ASAP. I’ll keep my guys with yours up here. Once you do that, you are responsible for the front doors.”
“Aye, Top.” The smell disappeared a minute after he did. As for Klostermann, his smell trailed behind him as he moved around this second floor. But by now Ward had zoned it out. It amused him to see that some of the prisoners began to look sick as he walked near them, though.
After the prisoners were secured, Ward commed Dunn, “Let your men know Klostermann is in charge of them now. Get back downstairs and take control of the back doors until they’re blocked. When that’s done, you’ll be in charge of both ends so Jebet can work from up here. Use the men at both ends as a reaction force and let me know if there’s a break-in you can’t handle. We’ll try to do most of the shooting from up here at the office windows.”
“Aye, Top.” His boots clattered down the stairs a minute later.
“Fleisch, block the side doors up here.”
“Aye, Top,” she answered from the opposite side of the second floor.
The sounds of forklift motors starting up and the rumble of tires filled the cavernous building. Things seemed to be going well, but, after a bit, he began to get real itchy, that funny feeling he got with a planet about to fall on him. “How are you guys coming?” he commed.
“Just about there,” Jebet’s voice rumbled in response.
“Help is on the way, but His Highness says we may have company any minute. Jebet, Dunn is taking over when you’re finished, so make sure your men know that. I want you up here as soon as you’re done blocking the doors. Your lightning bolt thrower will do more damage from up high.”
“Aye, Top.” Jebet became laconic when in combat, saying only what he needed to.
Ward ticked off the tasks he had set in order to secure the building. They had taken control of all the people inside. The upstairs and downstairs man doors, which opened inward so as not to expose their hinges to potential break-ins, were almost all blocked with pallets of containers. The others would be soon. Lookouts posted at the office windows were watching for anything that might be an organized assault on the building.
One more thing occurred to him—something always did— “Dunn,” he commed. “Make sure the sewer entrance is secure.”
“Aye, Top.”
On the dot, as the five minutes expired, shots began to ring out from the buildings surrounding the warehouse compound. People chanted, yelled, sang. Two more strongpoints went up in flames. Maeve watched her screen as, inside the complex, forces rushed to the stretches of walls now undefended with their loss. Five minutes into this noise and confusion, an icon flashed blue over the food warehouse.
“Objective secure,” Maeve reported in a neutral voice, although she felt like singing and jumping for joy. The primary objective had fallen without any serious fighting. Even though her sensors couldn’t see inside the building, she guessed there were probably bodies in that warehouse. Not as many as a pitched battle would have created, though, which made this much better.
Hugh’s voice rolled over the area again, calm and triumphant, “We have one of the food warehouses. If you surrender immediately, you will not be harmed, although you will be exiled from the city. Throw down your arms now!” Guns began to drop out of some of the strongpoints and men came streaming down to the courtyard. Maeve’s drone-eye view saw whole sections of wall empty, including a back corner. If they needed to breach, that would be the place. But many strongpoints were still defended, and from those streams of bullets began indiscriminately hosing down men, women, and children in the courtyard.
Speaking one last time to the compound, urgency filling his voice, Hugh directed, “All those surrendering, go to the corner warehouses. We’ll try to protect you there.”
Cutting off the amplifier, Hugh’s voice lost all emotion as he gave his orders in a businesslike manner, “Pam, Karen, take out the strongpoints that are still firing, all of them. Ward, get ready for company.”
Spears of light stabbed from the darkness, destroying the remaining towers along the walls. As if that had been the planned signal for a general assault, a wave of people rushed toward the broken walls, rifles sparking in the dark as they fired. On Maeve’s screen, she saw them as heat signatures, the wave of bodies racing across the street from every side.
Interrogating the system, she realized her gut estimate to be right, there were many more people in that wave than had been with them at the assembly area. In the four hours since Hugh had agreed to work with Dr. Jacques to take these warehouses, word must have spread like wildfire about a chance for food, free of the tyranny of the People’s Committee, as well as a chance for revenge on the hated secret police.
Maeve suddenly felt worried. None of these new people had been even spoken to by Jacques, much less had the fear of the Almighty drummed into them by Hugh or Klostermann. This could be a blood bath, and they would be partially responsible because Pam and Karen had blown up the wall based upon her target designation on Hugh’s order. Thousands surged forward, tearing down the walls where Pam and Karen hadn’t opened a way. In an instant, the wave crashed through, rolling forward. Maeve watched it all, frozen. One moment they had been facing a fortress, the next, they had taken it. White flags began sprouting all over the compound. They had won!
And then a fire sprang up in the warehouse on the left front corner. Random shots became ragged volleys. Another fire sprang up, this time in a warehouse on the front row. Focusing on the area, she magnified her view. Maeve gasped. A row of people kneeling on the ground fell over, shot as she watched. Someone is shooting prisoners! Beyond the windrow of corpses, a third warehouse burst into flames, white flags still hanging from the windows!
“No! Why are you doing this?” Maeve cried out, not even aware she had spoken aloud, hot, angry tears springing up, “We’ve won. Don’t spoil it. There doesn’t have to be more killing!” But the sound of shots firing rose to a roar. Those people don’t care. Nobody cared. The killers, the people she and Hugh had let in by ordering Pam and Karen to destroy the defenses, were crazy with blood lust and the secret police were fighting back. But the people in those strongpoints had been killing the helpless, too. What choice did she have but to agree with Hugh in wiping them out? What could she do? Her heart bled as she watched.
Maeve’s head snapped around as Hugh groaned, “Oh, no,” and sped off. She heard his voice over the com, “Sergeant Major, there is a mob trying to burn people alive in some of those warehouses. I’m on my way to stop them if I can. I promised those people safe conduct.”
She barely noted Ward’s, “Roger,” as she watched Jacques and his command group follow Hugh, Jacques speaking into his com as he hurried after him.
At the door, Jacques paused, “I need someone to stay here and provide security. Cascade and I will be very unhappy if something happens to any of his team.”
A snaggle-toothed man grabbed four others. “We’ll make sure nothing happens to them,” he stated boastfully. Jacques nodded before disappearing through the door. The five men settled down at the windows to watch the battle across the street.
“Hurry,” she whispered to herself. “Save them, Hugh.”
Imperial Military Training Standards
Army Cadet Training Course
Leadership is not management. It consists of personal qualities that inspire trust and confidence in others even in the face of certain death. Leadership cannot be taught but can be learned. This may sound paradoxical but is nevertheless true. The cadet will demonstrate leadership by example and understand what motivates those under his command.
24
* * *
Battle of the Warehouses
Spreitenbach, Alpine
1905 Local/ 2005 BBMT 8 November 3473
Sergeant Major Sean Ward kept fretting, something prodding him from the back of his mind. What had he missed? Minutes passed slowly until Abdul Jebet came back to the top of the stairs, puffing a bit as he lugged his laser rifle and its power pack. A sudden rattle of rifle fire and a hollow booming against the truck doors downstairs echoed up from below. Those truck doors would only go up if powered from inside, so they were safe for the moment. “Jebet, you’ve got the front up here, I’ll take the back.”
Jebet nodded before walking to a window to watch. Ward headed to the back, a very long way away when an attack could break out at any moment. Calling ahead to Vinnie Klostermann, he said, “When I get there, take two men as a reaction force. Rotate front to back and along the sides as you need to.”
“Long walk between positions, Top,” Klostermann observed.
“Use a forklift, find a scooter if you have to, but cover ’em both. We’re spread too thin to do anything else.”
Ward had been walking at a brisk pace, but still it took more than a minute and a half. Stopping to catch his breath a little, he realized he still had not fully recovered from being wounded on Bring It. He waved at Klostermann to go, but Klostermann didn’t move until Ward deactivated his nanocamo, causing one of the men waiting to jump. Klostermann and the two men with him ran off at a sprint.
This is going to be a long night, Ward thought as his head ached. Comming the team, he asked, “How many guards are tied up downstairs?”
Kevin Dunn responded, “I got three.”
Klostermann answered a terse, “Four.” Tabi Fleisch chipped in with six. Jebet added, “Eight.” Ward chided them, “You guys are becoming softer the older you get.”
Klostermann came back with, “How many did you take, Top?”
Fleisch chimed in before he could even start to answer, “Four?”
“Four.”
The other Marines whooped at him before he could defend himself, blocking the com circuit for a few seconds. “Okay, wise guys, knock it off. With the thirty or so up here, that gives us fifty-five prisoners.” Killing solved some problems, but enough nightmares accumulated from the dead you had to leave behind that a normal person wouldn’t kill if given a choice. He hoped he still qualified as normal. Unfortunately, a profession that killed for a living attracted a few warped souls who really liked it. Ward wouldn’t tolerate having someone like that around, too unstable. Creepy, too.
Dunn added, “Things are pretty quiet down here. I’m sending up two of the men.”
A clattering on the stairs announced their arrival before heads popped up from the rear, left stairwell. Ward eased the trigger finger that had subconsciously tightened before the first one appeared. The locals as a group, to Ward’s practiced eye, looked like they might be okay. Now, if Jacques’s outside people would get here quickly, they could load up and be gone in another twenty minutes to an hour, depending on how things were stacked.
An ocean of sound snapped Ward’s head up, the level of firing rapidly increasing outside. Tapping the com unit for map function, he swore as it came up. Icons representing people not from any of Jacques’s four groups were pouring into the area. He looked closer, trying to figure out the best route for getting his team, and the food, out of there.
The chatter of automatic weapons filled the air inside the building. Ward almost jumped. His concentration had been so complete a moment before that Fleisch firing on the ground floor of the building startled him. A loud crackling noise came from the other end of the building. That sounded like Jebet up front. The map clearly showed icons grouped around the man doors of his warehouse, in back also. He enabled his chameleon skin as things became hotter.
They’re trying to get in, but those pallets make serious barriers. More firing, this time Fleisch and Jebet almost simultaneously. It seemed to be getting hotter. A little backup would be nice about now. “Pam, Karen, clear the perimeter.”
Pam’s voice came in clearly, “We’ll sweep past in ten seconds. Watch for anti-air missiles when we do, though. We’ve been picking up electronic signatures down there we don’t like.”
After that wild assault wave washed over the walls, every anti-air weapon left in the compound had to be considered hostile. No matter who held those missiles, they posed a live danger to Pam and Karen. But the danger couldn’t be helped, for the mission to succeed everyone had to take their chances.
“Roger.” Ward headed for the windows overlooking the back. His night vision took over flawlessly as he looked out.
A minute later, a warning broadcast blasted the eardrums of anyone without protection in the area, Gail’s voice filling the air, ordering the mob to back off Ward’s warehouse. Ten seconds later, Pam and Karen strafed the mob outside his position. Many fled into the night, but some merely backed away, still circling the beleaguered building like wolves baying for blood. There were a good many that lay still or twitched slowly on the ground, though.
Involuntarily, he ducked as a river of rifle fire roared toward him. Glass rained down on him as bullets whizzed where his head had been seconds ago. “How stupid could I be!” he shouted aloud at himself. Luckily, with the torrent of sound caused by that swarm of deadly bees flying through the windows, no one but him could hear what he said. What a green mistake! He had almost been killed by forgetting that even chameleon skin couldn’t completely match a high-light background to a dark outside. He had given everyone with a gun out there an easy target.
Ward took hold of himself. Interesting that, after all these years, a little thing like almost dying could still get him in a sweat. If he’d gotten himself killed, Gail would have been seriously angry with him. He smiled at the lame, but nevertheless true, joke. He’d have to be more careful.
He turned off his chameleon skin, both to remind himself and to give his people something they could hang onto in this mess. Picking up his head to look around the floor, he saw terrified civilians and former secret police alike groveling, including his four locals. Well, three locals, the fourth lay in a spreading puddle of red, killed by Ward’s mistake. Shouting again, so he could be heard over the din of battle throughout the loft, he ordered, “All women and children to the middle of the floor.” No one moved.
Standing, he strode forward, repeating himself as he walked. Bullets zipped through the air as he did, but, if he didn’t show some courage, none of the civilians would even crawl away, and the blood of these kids and their mothers would be on his hands. “Crawl to the middle of the floor, now!” Pointing at the security men, he ordered, “Get pallets all around them for safety.” At first, just a couple began to stir, then a few more, and finally a flood of people fleeing, some even standing to run to safety.
“You men,” he shouted at the security people randomly pushing around pallets with forklifts, “build a fort of those boxes to protect the women and children.”
Some of the men, though not all, began to work together, walling off both sides of one of the alleys with boxes of cans and sacks of flour and sugar. Flour and sugar would stop bullets as well as sandbags. At least some of them were thinking.
