Homeworld: A Military Science Fiction Novel (24 page)

Checking In On Old Friends

What had followed was a conversation in which Colonel Miller came as close to being insubordinate to a superior officer as he had ever done in his long career. There had been no shouting, no hysterics but while he had a great deal of respect for Admiral Clarkson there had been a subtle questioning of his soundness of mind but in the end he had, of course, followed orders. That’s how he found himself armed and armored on the roof of an fifteen story apartment building looking through a night vision scope at the spaceport below. The Coalition had not been kind when they had taken it. From the looks of things, they had not only blown the hole in the surrounding wall but had destroyed at least one cargo vessel.

“I count three sentries being covered by a sniper on the roof of that warehouse building.” Miller reported over the specialized communications system he and Drake were using. “Check the top of the spheroid cargo ship closest to the damaged section of wall,” the traitor replied. At first, Miller found it slightly disorienting how it appeared that Drake was talking directly into his mind, but in reality, his inner ear was being stimulated by a low powered laser that would do no long-term damage but in effect made their conversations absolutely silent. You simply concentrated on what you wanted to say and that signal was transferred to a receiver that translated and retransmitted the signal into concentrated light pulses that were detected by the inner ear and passed along to the brain.

Miller looked where Drake had suggested and amended, “You’re right, two snipers. You know those guys better than I do. Do we take them out from here? Miller questioned the former Coalitionist. He wanted to know if Drake would be willing to kill those he had once fought beside and fight beside those he had once killed.

“Well, we’ve been watching this position for an hour now and I haven’t seen anyone so much as touch their com gear so I don’t think they are checking in with any sort of centralized command. Sloppy, but it works in our favor. Which sniper do you want?” Drake asked as casually as if he were asking a man what kind of beer he wanted to drink.

“Seeing as how you’re the ex Rapier Commando, I’ll take the warehouse,” he said attaching a silencer to the end of his rifle. “Think you can take our friend on top of the cargo ship without making him fall? His body will make quite a loud sound once it hits the ground if not,” Miller said lining up his sight on his target.

“You just worry about your shot. I’ll make sure of mine.” Drake paused and said, “Ready?”

“Affirmative,” Miller replied. There were two gentle trigger squeezes with the only sound being the action on their rifles and a low “woomph” as the specially made bullet was sent spinning through the atmosphere to its intended target over three kilometers away.

Miller looked down his sight at the target and approximately two seconds passed before he saw the impact of his bullet in the “sweet spot,” or as it was more commonly known, the medulla oblongata, and the former coalition sniper slumped over his rifle. “One confirmed kill, and you?” Miller asked as he readjusted his sight on the three sentries near the large hole in the wall that the Coalition had created on their way in.

“He won’t be feeling anything for awhile.” Miller quickly looked up from his scope and picked up his binoculars. He zoomed in on where Drake’s target had been. Drake’s shot was an impressive one. It had been almost half a kilometer farther away and at a trickier angle, but the sniper certainly wouldn’t be getting up. “Fraggin hell! I’m glad I haven’t been on the wrong end of your crosshairs before,” Miller uttered, clearly impressed. “Most people who have been haven’t complained,” Drake said with a shrug.

“How do you want to handle the next three? There’s always the chance the third could raise an alarm as soon as his buddies drop,” Drake commented as he adjusted his aim on the group below. “Well, if the question is near or far, I’m going to have to go with far. We don’t have the time it would take to belly crawl across three hundred yards of open terrain and eliminate them silently close up. So I’ll take the target on the left. You can have the target on the right and we’ll meet in the middle?” Miller asked as he looked over at Drake’s black silhouette on the rooftop next to him. “Tricky, but possible and I agree we don’t have the time to do this the slow way. Let me know when you’re ready,” Drake said, adjusting a knob on his scope.

Miller pulled the butt end of his rifle close into his shoulder and looked down the sight. “Ready,” he said again. There came two trigger squeezes but this time Miller didn’t wait to see his target fall. He quickly readjusted on the third Coalition grunt and squeezed off another round just in time to watch his intended target’s head explode. Drake had beaten him to the punch.

“I’m beginning to see why your elite social club has the reputation it does. Shall we go see what the spaceport has to offer?” Miller asked, grinning in spite of himself. Then he remembered that the man he had just complimented had spent most of his career killing Earth Republic citizens and the grin faded away. “After coming all this way, it would seem a shame not to see what is still inside.” Drake nodded and began collecting his gear.

Admiral Clarkson had provided them a manifest of every ship known to be docked in the port and their declared manifests. When Drake had read the manifest earlier that day, one particular ship had caught his interest but he had made no mention of it to any of the Republic Infantryman or to Clarkson. No, he needed this one for a personal mission he had.

However, the manifest could be completely wrong, considering the Coalition had a full day to go over and take whatever they wanted, but Drake doubted that they had done that. The Coalition had come in well supplied and with the exception of a greedy Coalitionist or two taking a peek to see if there was anything he could make a profit off of, Drake imagined the manifest to be about fifty percent correct. Captains of cargo ships always lied on their declared manifests. It made the docking costs cheaper even after bribing the port’s inspection officer. Drake was thinking of all this while he and Miller were making their way downstairs through the empty and blacked out tenement building.

As he sidestepped a child’s toy, abandoned on the third floor landing of the wooden stairway, the question he had been waiting for Miller to ask this entire time finally came out. “Why are you doing this, Drake? A man like you has to be about as close to the Chief Executive Officer as you can get and that has to come with certain advantages.” Drake let out an audible sigh as he answered, “Oh yes, wine woman and song and killing, lots and lots of killing.”

Drake stopped moving and leaned against the railing of the staircase with his back to Miller. “I have no idea how many I’ve killed over the decades but I can tell you I’ve waded through their blood on over twenty of the known worlds. Some were full out invasions and some were just simple sniper missions. I’ve killed Infantrymen like you. I’ve killed Defense Forces of local colonies. I’ve killed civilians of all ages. I’m very good at what I do, Miller, and what I do is kill. If you want to put that round through my head, you would be doing me a favor.”

Drake hadn’t turned around but he knew Miller had quit moving which most likely meant he had his rifle trained on him now. “I won’t even try to stop you. I’m so tired of it all. I can’t end all war but I can help put an end to this one and for now that will have to be enough. But if you continue to tighten your grip on that trigger, then I won’t have that opportunity.” Drake finished and stood still, his back to Miller.

There was a long silence as Drake waited to be ushered into the beyond. Then finally, Miller spoke, “I’ve done my share of killing, Drake. My hands aren’t free of blood. The difference between us is that I have never intentionally killed a noncombatant. Besides that, and the fact that we’ve done our killing for opposing political factions, I don’t see that much difference between us. So I’m not trying to be your judge, jury, and executioner.”

Both warriors stood in the darkness of the stairwell unmoving during another long pause. “What I am trying to do is make damn sure that you never have the opportunity to kill another Earth Republic citizen again. I am trying to make sure that while my back is turned, you won’t put a round through it. I can’t imagine the complicated scheme this must be if it is a double cross, but I’ve now seen what you can do and I know you haven’t done it to me yet, even though you’ve had the opportunity. So I suppose I am going to have to trust that you won’t do it for a while longer, because this mission, Drake, is our last chance at getting the Coalition off our world before they have a chance to rape the women and kill every last one of us. So if you think you can help save a few billion people, then maybe that will help balance your ledger. I’d better stop wasting our time. Let’s get moving.”

Behind Enemy Lines

Miller flattened his body against the exterior wall of the spaceport while he slowed his breathing. He and Drake had just sprinted across the three hundred yards of open space that would have made a perfect killing field if there were any snipers remaining that they had not spotted. Peering around the corner to make sure no enemies were waiting to gun him down, Miller ran over to the men they had shot moments ago. With Drake’s help, they dragged the bodies out of sight. They could not do much about a blood trail but that would be hard to see in the dark anyway. To the casual observer Miller hoped it would look like the sentry had just gone to take a leak.

Drake and Miller manipulated their rifles to convert them to a close quarter sub-machine gun by collapsing the butt stock in on itself and bringing the barrel back into the forestock. Finally, they switched out magazines loaded with a different type of ammunition. Miller silently appreciated more than one thousand years of firearm design that left him with this highly versatile weapon. He also stowed the bulky high-magnification, night vision scope in his pack and chambered a round readying his weapon. He decided to leave the silencer on however. No sense alerting everyone within a half mile he was here if he didn’t need too.

“If it’s possible, I’d like to make sure the Earth to space missiles system is still working,” Miller said to Drake as the other man finished converting his weapon. “If possible, we will, but I suggest that our first priority should be to see how heavily defended this place is.” Drake motioned to a craft that looked roughly like a skyscraper with an engine attached. “That should offer a pretty good vantage point,” Miller agreed. They both warily set out with weapons at the ready and moved as silently as possible with Drake taking point.

When they had been in their sniper’s nest in the building just beyond the cleared area around the spaceport, Miller had guessed somewhere between thirty and forty craft were docked in the port. He was now moving under their shadowed struts and around their silhouetted engines as he and Drake attempted to avoid any sentries that might be in the area. However, the place seemed as quiet as a tomb with the exception of the slight groaning and popping sounds of the ships hulls contracting now that the sun had gone down.

It was very, very, quiet and even though he knew that Drake and himself barely made a whisper as they moved, each footfall sounded like a thunderclap in his ears. Where was everyone? Finally coming to the craft, they were looking for. Miller stopped and looked up at its thirty-story height of the angular black hull. If they could get in there should be a great view from the bridge of not only the spaceport but of the surrounding area as well.

“I don’t have the entrance codes and I never was very good at hacking into a ship’s system. So I’m hoping you know some of that old black magic or we’re going to have to climb our way up the hard way,” Miller mentioned as he noticed Drake digging through his pack.

“Behold the voodoo doll,” Drake said with a grin as he pulled out of his pack something that looked like a vid with an information transfer cord attached and at the end of the cord, there was a bulky plug. Drake opened the entry hatch control panel by sliding a small section of the solid black hull in and down. “Cover me while I work my magic. This could take a while as I’m out of practice,” Drake said as he slid the bulky plug into a port and began tapping at the vid.

Miller suddenly heard footsteps coming their way. By the sound, it was only one person. He looked at Drake who was looking at him and jerking his head in the direction of the sound. Then he went back to tapping on the vid. Miller slid deeper into the shadows and with all the stealth his years of training had granted him, he soon found himself behind a male Coalition ground pounder whose rifle was slung over his right shoulder. He disinterestedly walked up and down the rows of ships, turning to look side to side. He was almost to the point where he would be able to see Drake when Miller finally got close enough behind him.

Miller silently drew a knife from its thigh holster. The eighteen centimeter long blade had a blackened blade but its silvered edge gleamed in the light of the moon. Quickly and with adrenaline pumping through his veins, he simultaneously clasped his left hand over the Coalitionist’s mouth and plunged the blade into his back and under his rib cage at an upward angle. He held the struggling soldier until the struggling stopped, as the unfortunate man had died of shock or he had drowned in his own blood.

As quietly as he could, Miller dragged the dead weight of the former Coalitionist behind the landing strut of a large vehicle and dropped him there. As he quickly wiped the blood off of his blade and onto the dead man’s uniform, he couldn’t help but notice that the sentry kept the shocked expression in death that he had worn in life. As he did so, he noticed that the man smelled strongly of whiskey. “Well, my friend,” Miller thought, “I hope it dulled the pain of your passing”

Something seemed very wrong to Miller. So far, they had crossed half the complex and had found only six sentries to guard a spot of such potential strategic importance? No, something was wrong. It was time he high tailed it back to Drake. He rounded the corner that led back to Drake and noticed something missing, specifically one Drake. He ducked back into the shadows and considered the options. The first that came to mind was that Drake was inside the craft and had not wanted to leave the door open to announce to any passing soldier, “Hey, I’m this way! Come on in!” The second was that he was about to be captured by Drake and his Coalition friends and the third was that Drake had to hide himself in order to take down another sentry.

Miller decided that if it was any of the options, it was better to stay where he was. If it was an ambush, then here was as good a spot to die as any and if it was the other options, Drake would be expecting to rendezvous with him here as their non-vocal com system was short range only. It would be best to wait where he could be found. Figuring it was worth a try anyway, he tried their com. “Drake, I notice you’re not by the ship anymore,” Miller observed casually “Actually, I couldn’t be much closer to the ship if I tried. Hold on a second. I’m almost back down to the entrance,” Drake said in response.

The door hissed open and Drake slipped out of the black interior of the ship and came to stop by Miller. As soon as he was out, the door hissed closed again. “I didn’t wait because I didn’t want a patrol to come find me next to the ship,” Drake said by way of explanation while he handed Miller a vid. “Not to worry though, I recorded the recon for you and your Admiral Clarkson’s review. It seems as if they are using the spaceport as bait with only a few more men wandering the interior. The main force is hidden as well as a company of tanks and several companies of infantry can be in the city on the other side of the spaceport.” Drake finished his story and lit up a smoke, offering one to Miller who gratefully accepted and producing his own lighter lit his up as well.

“I take it the others wandering the complex won’t be a problem,” he said, noticing that Drake’s rifle had been converted back into its long-range mode. “Not unless you think the smell they’ll be making in a few hours is a problem but we plan on being long gone by then. Turns out this tub has a handy airlock that also serves as an excellent sniper’s nest. I even saw your handy work with a blade. Nicely done and you know, Miller,” Drake paused to inhale from his nicotine stick, “after what I’ve seen of your skill, I’m glad I was never sent after you as well. You would have been one royal pain in the ass to kill.” Drake finished with an exhale as the two men grinned like a couple of predators as the orange glow from the cigarettes lit up their faces.

Drake finished his smoke and crushed it out on the ground, then tucked the butt into his left breast pocket. “I suggest we split up. With the sentries eliminated, we shouldn’t run into any more surprises and we can cover more ground in the hour we have before the sun starts to come up. You want the control center or the far missile silos?” Drake asked.

Miller saw some wisdom in this plan. Besides he hadn’t encountered anything here he could not handle on his own anyway. “I’ll take the control center as I have the codes for those doors. You take the far silos and we’ll meet back up at the Coalition made entrance in say a half hour,” Miller suggested.

Drake nodded and without another word started heading towards the far end of the port. Miller crushed out his smoke, tucked the butt away in his pocket, and began jogging towards the spaceport’s control center.