Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Pursuit (22 page)

He drew his sidearm, then grabbed it by
the barrel with his left hand before handing it over to the three women.  The
first one inspected it quickly and then gave it to one of her associates, who
tucked it into the folds of her outer wrap.

"Follow me," she said.

The group weaved their way through the
crowd on the upper balcony.  To his surprise, they didn't stop.  Instead, they
continued on through a doorway in the back wall.  They passed through a
makeshift hallway and then into another large open space, and then Loren
realized what had happened.  They'd gone through the exterior wall and into the
next building, leaving the nightclub altogether.  Now the group of four stood
alone in the middle of a large space on the top floor of the new building.  It
had an air of abandonment, much like the rest of the district appeared to be
sporting.  A series of bright artificial lights illuminated the space, leaving
the corners and whatever stairs or elevator there was in shadow.

"Commander Loren Stone," he
heard a voice from the darkness.  He resisted turning to look, instead staring
at the woman guard who'd been watching him since their entrance.  He raised an
eyebrow at her, as if to question the theatrical nature of the introduction. 
She tried hard but failed to completely suppress a grin of her own.

"That would be me," Loren
replied, now turning towards the footsteps that approached him.  There were
three of them, all young males; a human, Drisk, and Qualin.  They all wore
fashionable clothes and looked as if they'd spent the previous interval in the
nightclub waiting for him. 

"Please forgive the cloak and dagger
routine," the Drisk began.  "We needed time to run your profile one
more time and give Sharah there a chance to make sure you weren't a one man
assault team or anything."  He inclined his head to the woman who'd been
escorting Loren, who simply nodded her own head in reply.

"Did she frisk you?" the Drisk
asked. 

Sharah looked at Loren, then gave a
mildly disapproving look to the Drisk.

"I'm just saying she has great
technique; you should try it sometime."

"I told the young lady I had plans
for the evening and my wife and I have a strictly monogamous
relationship," Loren countered, giving Sharah a wink in the hopes of
indicating no harm done.  "But if it makes you feel better, I'll go
through whatever you want.  I promise to not like it, though."

"We scanned him," Sharah
stated.  "No knives, active comm units, any of that.  He's clean."

"You say so," the Drisk said
with an air of disappointment.  He walked over to Loren and held out his hand. 
"Name's Mako.  That's all, just Mako."

Loren shook the offered hand and waited
for the introductions.  "That's Lex," he said, indicating the human,
"and the quiet one is Chordus."  The Qualin simply blinked, something
Loren knew as a sign of greeting among their people.  He blinked twice in
return, and the Qualin's ears twitched in surprise at Loren’s knowledge of the
culture.

"You're here because your government
is secretly interested in whether you can get AIs to fight for the
Confederation, eh?" began Mako.  He put his hand on Loren's shoulder and
steered him towards a random corner of the room, leaving the women behind as
the human and Qualin trailed a few paces after them.

"That's the idea," Loren said
from the script.  "Emphasis on secret.  Let's be honest with each other in
the interests of building trust, ok?  Your group and several members are on
more than one watch list for your activities and interests.  I'm not here
because of that.  In fact, if you can help us out, I'm sure my superiors would
be more than willing to reconsider your classification.  But the truth is that we
want to know if anyone out there has AI technology ready to use.  Forget the
laws, of course; I want to know who's got something developed and ready to put
into play, legal or not."

"Well, you have the right people as
far as our interest in AI tech goes," Mako replied smoothly, "but I'm
not sure what we can offer as far as further information.  You see, we're all
upstanding citizens, wrongly accused of subversive activities.  Perhaps we
might be able to dig up some contact information and steer you towards a less
law-abiding citizen who pays less attention to the AI Accords."

"That would be more information than
I have now," Loren conceded, though he was sure this was not the end of
their verbal sparring, "so let's start there."

On the ground floor of the nightclub next
door, three patrons stood still among the dim around them.  They held drinks
that were untouched.  They barely noticed the pulsing music that virtually
compelled a being to at least tap a foot or snap a finger in time to the beat.

"Commander Stone is upstairs, I
believe," said the first one.  He was a handsome human male, tall and
athletic and waved through to the front along with his companions.  The other
two were a Drisk male, also the object of much attention from others, both female
and male alike.  The third was a human female, also tall and athletic, with
sharp features and dazzling hazel eyes. 

"Why do you say that?" asked
the woman.

"Regular patrons are not being
admitted to the upper levels," the first one answered.  "The first floor
contains only locals carrying on in whatever this ritual is called.  The people
upstairs, at least the ones I can see on the balcony from here, are more
observant.  They're watching, talking carefully.  Upstairs is where we'll find
the Commander."

"Then we need to get upstairs,"
concluded the Drisk.

The human male, first name of Hata, was
eager to carry out their orders.  They were part of the special security forces
aboard Captain Vol's ship and were in disguise under orders from Representative
Ravine herself.  The orders were simple; find and capture Commander Loren Stone
and any other Avenger crew on the surface.  If they couldn't capture them,
execution was an acceptable alternative. 

They'd arrived as part of Representative
Ravine's diplomatic detail, promptly donned their disguises and started looking
for their Confed enemies.  They'd searched for Loren Stone's name and found him
at a mid-level lodging near the government quarter, but by the time their team
arrived all but the commander had left.  They'd followed in the hopes of
catching the rest of his crew but based on this location it seemed like they'd
managed to follow him to a clandestine meeting of some sort.  They'd taken as
many pictures of the occupants as they could in the hopes of identifying whom
the Confed man had come to meet, but that was secondary to their capture/kill
objective, and it was time to get that mission in gear.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

"So what do you think about the AI
Accords, then?" asked Mako as they walked the perimeter of the room.

"I've seen AI used in combat,"
replied Loren.  "Well, as much AI as was legal.  We used some fighters
with limited intelligence to attack some Priman ships once.  It was fairly
successful.  Now, I'm as worried as the next guy about machines trying to take
over the galaxy, but the pragmatic part of me has to wonder if they might be
the answer to how we avoid destruction.  I was hoping somebody like you could
reassure me that the same problems wouldn't occur if we tried widespread AI use
again.  Fifteen hundred years is a long time to work on that angle, don't you
think?"

Mako shrugged.  "My group is
passionate about the prospect of AIs living among us.  I think building them
and sending them off to war is a perversion of what they are, which are living,
self-aware intelligences.  What you're imagining amounts to slavery."

"So give me another option,"
Loren countered.  "That's why I'm here.  Could they pilot drones, design
ships, wage electronic warfare?  Maybe something else entirely?  I have very
little hard and fast direction about that I'm supposed to find here; rather, I
am hoping you and I might find some common ground where we both see the
acceptable and moral employment of AIs in an effort to not lose the entire
galaxy to the Primans."

"And you really think they'll come
for us here, in the galactic core?" replied Mako doubtfully.  "With
regrets, I can see why they'd go after your holdings and those of the
Enkarrans, Talarans, that sort.  But while taking a spiral arm is one level of
monumental task, subjugating the whole galaxy is quite another."

"They did it once," Loren said
seriously.  "If we don't stop them, they'll do it again."

"And if we can't or won't help your
cause?" Mako's question hung in the air, the implications obvious. 
"Are you and I still to be friends?"

"We're not friends or enemies,
Mako," Loren reassured the man.  "I told you I'm not here to come
after you or your group.  Confed has bigger worries right now than what you're
doing.  If we part ways, whatever the condition, I just leave and that's it. 
No troops, no surface bombardment, nothing.  It's a measure of how seriously
the admiral takes this meeting that his instructions were worded that
way."

Mako just nodded as he stared ahead, lost
in thought.  Loren was beginning to wonder if the man actually did know
anything useful, or if he'd be willing to share what he had.  Loren could care
less about using AIs in warfare, of course, but his orders were to find out if
the AIs still existed.  Putting out a call to send them into battle seemed like
a sure way to send up some warning flags which might point him in the right
direction, if nothing else.  If they were out there, he needed to find them,
and if he could find them, he needed to know if they could tell him whether
there was a weapon that could win the war for Confed.

They had reached the corner of the room
farthest from the point of entry between the nightclub and their meeting place
when Loren noticed the reappearance of the three women, menacing looks on their
faces.

"Something wrong?" asked Mako,
a worried expression on his face.

"Three people just barged onto the
balcony," Sharah replied.  "They're operatives for somebody or
other."  They both turned to Loren, accusing glares on their faces.

"I have nothing to do with whatever
may be going on out there," he stated.  "I know you don't know what
my word is worth, but I gave it to you when I said I was alone."

"Excuse me if we don't quite believe
you at this point," said Sharah accusingly.  She looked at Mako and his
two cohorts.  "We need to get downstairs and to the exit."

Mako was just about to reply when there
was gunfire at the makeshift doorway into the nightclub.  Blaster bolts came
flying through the door along with a human Loren recognized from the upstairs
balcony that he'd walked by.  The man had a smoldering scorch mark on the front
of his chest; he staggered through the door and tumbled face first onto the
floor.

"Down!" Sharah called, and
everyone dove behind what cover they could find.  Loren was next to the woman
guard with his SSK, but she was already setting up on the far end of the pile
of empty drums with her own small blaster and firing at the doorway.  He
noticed with approval that she wasn't simply pouring fire through the door,
which could end up killing innocents on the balcony. 

Sharah was next to Mako, virtually
sitting on him to keep his head down.  A renewed fusillade of fire came through
the doorway and everyone was forced down.  The third woman guard refused to
duck and was hit in the process of returning fire, falling backwards amid a
pile of garbage that had been stacked against the wall.  Loren shuffled over to
check for a pulse and found none.  He turned to see the other guard watching
him and he shook his head quickly, then rejoined her at her position.

He looked over to see Mako's human
associate make a run for the door against the back wall and get cut down amidst
a barrage of withering fire.  Mako cried out, then clamped his jaw and squeezed
his eyes shut before gathering himself and turning to face Loren.

"Who are these people?"

"I don't know!" he replied,
"but I'd be happy to help you shoot them."

"Not a chance," Sharah replied
as she swapped power cells in her own blaster.

Their attackers took advantage of a brief
lull in the shooting to make an advance.  One of them came diving through the
doorway and immediately upon righting herself dove sideways to cover, then
added her fire to the mix coming from the doorway.    

"They're determined, I'll give them
that," Sharah admitted through gritted teeth.  "We need our
backup."

No sooner said than a pair of young human
men appeared behind them in the doorway to whatever escape route that had in
waiting.  They carried submachine blasters of some sort, full auto blaster
bolts slamming into the far wall and keeping the attacker's heads down.  That
kind of rate of fire didn't lend itself well to accuracy, though, and there was
still an occasional well-aimed shot fired at them from the hole in the
nightclub's wall.

Loren saw an opportunity.  Everyone was
using blasters- energy weapons.  It was hypocritical to think, but many places
that allowed carry of blasters banned armor-piercing slugs, hence a relative
lack of solid projectiles on the civilian market.  Loren's SSK, however, had a
magazine full of armor piercing ammo that would make quick work of the cover
the female Priman was hiding behind.

"Give me my gun!" Loren
commanded to the woman guard next to him.  "I have AP ammo!"

"Not going to happen," she
said, concentrating on the task at hand.

Loren realized it was a losing battle, so
while he regretted striking someone who wasn't ready to fight back, he punched
the woman in the left side hard enough to send her crumpling to the ground.  As
soon as she was down, he kicked her weapon behind them and grabbed his SSK from
within the folds of her outer tunic.  Flipping the selector over to
armor-piercing, he took two steadying breaths, then popped up from behind cover
and fired four shots in rapid succession at the Priman's cover, walking his
rounds across the pile of debris providing her protection.  He heard a yell and
saw a pair of booted feet on the floor where she had previously been firing.

He put his weapon at his side and turned
to his left where everyone else was.  Sharah was pointing her weapon at him,
though the two reinforcements had noticed but ignored Loren's actions and were
still pouring fire at the far wall, covering each other as they changed power
cells.

"Can we get out of here?" he
asked.  He shuffled over to the woman he'd hit and started picking her up,
getting her arm over his shoulder and preparing to stand.  "Covering fire,
perhaps?"

The two reinforcements opened up again,
but this time Mako, Chordus and Sharah made it through the doorway.  Loren
dragged the guard through and dodged sideways just as the two young men came
through amidst a barrage of blaster fire.  They each dodged to the other side
of the doorway, smiling at their accomplishment.  The smiles turned to shock,
though, as the last man through looked at the cauterized blast mark on his
upper chest.  He looked at the other man, then at Loren, as he slumped to the
ground, back up against the wall.  His repeating blaster fell to the floor with
a clatter, the sound piercing in the silence of the short interval between the
racket of blaster fire.

Loren looked at the other young guard,
who had a confident and determined look on his face.  "Ready?" Loren
asked, and the man just nodded.

They each fired a number of rounds back
through the doorway to slow down pursuit, then hammered down the old rusted
metal stairs to the ground floor.         

Upon reaching ground level they stepped
off the stairs and out onto floor of the warehouse.  Other than evenly spaced
support columns, it was utterly devoid of cover or any clue as to its former
use.

"I assume your evac is coming?"
Loren asked as he switched from supporting the woman guard to simply helping
steady her.  She wasn't ready to run sprints yet, but she was composing herself
and trying to stand solo.  Her expression at Loren switched from dangerous
anger to surprise as he handed her the blaster she'd dropped when he hit her.

"Sorry," he said, "but
somebody had to take out that woman behind the cover up there and my SSK had
the only armor piercing rounds I knew of."

She shifted her head subtly, something
between a nod and courteous incline.

Loren saw movement out the corner of his
eye and his head snapped around to his right, SSK up and level before his eyes
could focus and look down the sights.  There was a tall figure dodging through
the shadows towards them, weapon in hand and swinging towards him and the
group.  He pulled the trigger quickly once, something he never would have done
a couple years ago.  If the war had forced him to learn something, it was that
he had to learn to make decisions in a compressed timespan; there were
occasions that his gut reaction was all he had time to process- there were no
rules, academy classes or war college courses that could teach what it was or
how to react and then live with it.  All he knew was that so far, he'd always
been right.

The echoes from the shot were still dying
down when Sharah reached the fallen man and inspected the body.

"He's dead," she announced.

"Notice anything that will tell us
why he was in here with a weapon?" Loren asked.  The guard he'd helped
through the building had taken up residence at the foot of the staircase and
readied herself to fire at the upper level when their pursuers showed
themselves.

"No documents," Sharah reported
clinically as she rifled through the man's pockets while Mako and Chordus
watched in shock.  "Burner comm unit, unfamiliar make of blaster, lots of
rings and jewelry..."

They heard the pulsing vibrations of a
repulsor field outside, and Sharah got up to defend the sliding door that
granted access to the building.  She looked through a hole in the wall and then
slapped the release button on the doorframe next to her.  The door obediently
slid open into the opposite wall and a high-end repulsor car drifted into the
building.

"That's our ride," she said,
somewhat unnecessarily in Loren's opinion.  "Now all we need is to find
out why we were attacked."

Her blaster again began to drift towards
Loren, who made it a point to draw on her, freezing her in her tracks.  "I
find it professionally disappointing that after all we've been through,"
he began in a tired voice, "you still want to shoot me.  I'm not here for
you.  You can go, and in fact you should go, right now and to a place far from
here.  Because the Primans are in town and with that always comes chaos and
bloodshed."

"Primans?" asked Mako, standing
near the young man with the repeater who'd come to their aid upstairs. 
"How can you be sure?"

"Because these two are tall and good
looking, I don't have any other enemies that would go to this much trouble, and
at least one of those rings you found on the dead man over there is a Priman
biosensor scrambler.  If you want to waste some time, go look on a ring finger
and bring me the simple brushed gold band.  It'll have a nickel colored ring
around the inside where it touches the skin."

Sharah decided to call Loren on his
challenge and raced to the body even as Mako and Chordus piled into the
hovercar.  She returned in a numbed state, then gently placed the ring in
Loren's outstretched hand.  "How do you know about this?" she asked
quietly.

"I have a small collection,"
was all Loren would say.  "You need to get out now."  He turned to
the young man with the repeater.  "What's your name?"

"Winn," was the simple reply. 
Loren looked at the man and gestured to the door with the hand that still held
his SSK.  "You can lead me out of here, Winn.  I don't think these folks
want anything more to do with me."