Rich Man's War (17 page)

“Don’t turn it off, lieutenant,” warned Vanessa. “Not yet. Tanner’s right, we can’t let them know we’re up here.” She moved to look out the window, taking advantage of the curtains to conceal herself. Tanner slipped up alongside her.

The consulate sat at the end of a T-intersection, surrounded by its walls and neighbored by a pair of smaller buildings. A single tank rolled up along all three roads. Tanner suspected a fourth sat somewhere on the far side of the consulate. They heard someone’s voice over a loudspeaker. “I can’t make out what they’re saying from here,” he muttered.

“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” asked Sanjay. “Gotta be demanding everyone come out with their hands up before they level the place.”

“The building does them no good,” Vanessa explained. “By now every bit of sensitive tech or recorded data has been
slagged. That’s half the reason the marines are there. They’d know that. They don’t want the building, they want live prisoners. Listen closer. They’re offering ‘protection’ so they can grab everyone without a fight.”

“Is this what the
intel said?” asked Tanner, still watching the tanks and the men below. “The info that warned the consulate was in danger? Did it specify tanks?”

“It didn’t have a full layout of forces involved,” Vanessa shook her head. “Just a list of certain people who’d be involved in the operation and plans for what to do with prisoners.”

“So why don’t we shut off the jammer, call in the ship and have it blow the shit out of these assholes from the sky?” pressed Sanjay.

“At least one of those ships up in orbit is bound to have eyes trained on this situation,” Vanessa answered. “They don’t necessarily know what’s going on with this op, but if they see
your ship fire on the ground, they’ll open up on her. They can’t complain about us evacuating our people or even taking out a couple of crazy random snipers in a warzone to do it, but an Archangel ship firing on Hashemite tanks complicates everything. Archangel can’t afford to get involved in this war—and the people who sent those tanks know it.”

“Hey, XO?” said Tanner, still looming at the window.

“What is it?” Booker responded. “Anything changed?”

“No, sir, but… they’re arranged in a really thin line. And they’ve got a couple of huge weak points.”

Booker’s already grim expression turned doubtful. “What are you suggesting?”

Tanner glanced over to the camouflage jacket on the bed and shrugged glumly. “Nothing I haven’t done before.”

Absolutely Minimal Violence

“NorthStar is committed to peace and stability. I look to the turmoil within Hashem, to the growing distance between Archangel and the Union and the economic struggles of so many honest, hard-working people across all our sister worlds, and I see so much work to do. But we will do that work. In the words of
Abraham Lincoln, ‘We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.’”

--NorthStar CEO Anton Brekhov, Letter to Shareholders, April 2276

“Get back inside the goddamn tank, you stupid asshole.”

“Excuse me?” asked the Hashemite tank driver. He turned to Harris, who leaned in beside him at his station within the tank. “Are you—
oh. You are talking to your friend, not me.”

The frown on Harris’s face shifted slightly as he nodded. “Yeah, yeah, sorry,” he grumbled, pointing to the solid viewscreen in front of them. The tank’s control compartment offered enough room for half a dozen crew and one or two extras, as long as the crew all remained in their seats. There certainly wasn’t need for anyone to stick his head out of the turret in his tank, or in the tank at the bottom of the T-intersection shown on the screen. At most, the tank’s commander had an excuse, since that allowed for a human face to be seen delivering the offer of “protection” to the people inside the consulate.

Sadly, no one in the tank seemed to have pointed that out to Abnett. He stood in one of the open hatches in the top of the turret, right next to Major Basara. Both of them had their heads and torsos fully exposed.
All that armor and anti-targeting tech,
Harris thought,
and you decide all you need is your helmet. Without even pulling the visor down past your eyes.

Harris turned his attention briefly from the scene unfolding at the intersection to the status feeds at the crew stations around him. As he’d warned Abnett, things did not go according to plan. The slight delay in transit from the freighter to the consulate was predictable enough. Civilians rushed home from work
. Mommies and daddies risked their lives to retrieve their kids up from school or day care or wherever they might be. All things that one might expect people to do the second their whole world goes to hell. Though the tanks could smash their way through most obstructions with their weight and powerful treads, and though they had anti-grav capability to float over trouble they could not drive through, chaotic streets could slow anything.

Yet what concerned Harris—and surprised Abnett—was the arrival of those Archangel
ships almost in tandem with the invasion fleet. Their presence in the system was no surprise, but they shouldn’t have been able to get through the fleet’s cordon around the planet, let alone show up so quickly. The fact that the corvette managed to drop some people onto the roof and get them in past the snipers offered further concerns—could they have comms gear that would defeat the jamming? Did they know this was coming in advance? What if they dropped anti-tank weapons along with those guys?—but Abnett seemed focused only on the most obvious complications.

“Harris,” came Abnett’s voice over the comm net, “do we have a location on that corvette?”

If you were inside the tank looking at a status screen, you’d know, dipshit
, Harris thought bitterly. “Still over the civilian spaceport. Abnett, she could take to the air and fly high enough that we can’t touch her, and we’d still be at point blank range for her turrets.”

“It’s
only a corvette crew,” Abnett countered. “That thing can’t have anyone higher than a lieutenant in command. You think anyone that low in rank is gonna have the balls to risk an all-out war?”

“If that ship fires upon us, our vessels in orbit will destroy her instantly,” added Major Basara. “But unless she threatens us, the fleet cannot take action against a ship of a sovereign state.”

“Ain’t sayin’ they should, major,” replied Harris. “My point is, just having her in the atmosphere is a serious problem. Everyone at this card game has a shitty hand.”

“These people know they have more to lose than we do,” Abnett assured him. “They’ll fold.”

“Yeah. If they don’t flip the goddamn table.”

* * *

They only risked taking the elevator down to the second level before shifting to the stairs. Thankfully, they found the lobby unoccupied, without a single soldier in the street directly outside the apartment tower. As Tanner had noted, the force surrounding the consulate did so with a thin line.

Hiding behind the couches, chairs and plants near the exit, they watched the troops down the
street settle into positions. They counted no more than a couple dozen soldiers, though the number of others covering other directions outside their view had to add up to a much greater force.

“Tanner, I don’t think I can let you do this,” Lt. Booker frowned. “It’s too crazy.”

“Sir, I don’t
want
to do it, but we need to resolve this fast,” Tanner maintained, speaking as calmly as he could. In truth, he already felt his heart pounding. “Waiting for the ship only gives the bad guys time to get a better grip on the situation. She can’t fire on them. We have to step up and do something.”

“Yeah, I understand,” nodded Booker, “but we are seriously outnumbered and outgunned.”

“We don’t have to destroy the enemy, sir,” he countered. “We just have to wreck their plans.” Vanessa let out a grunt. Tanner found an amused grin on her face. “What?”

“Sun Tzu? That’s your secret weapon?”

He let it go without a response. Booker still looked skeptical. “Sir, I’m not looking for any more medals. I just wanna go home alive with everyone else. But we have to get this ball rolling or nobody will make it out of here.”

“XO, what about those other marines?” asked Sanjay. “The ones who went after the other snipers?”

Booker gave it a moment’s consideration, but shook his head. “They must’ve seen this mess by now. They’ll have to move when they see the opportunity.” With that, he turned to Tanner and gave his nod of assent. “Okay. If you’re sure you’re up to this?”

“You have to stay back and coordinate, sir. Rios and Sanjay would both stand out too much.” Tanner took a last look out at the scene. “Helmet’s probably gonna be a dead giveaway, too,” he muttered,
handing that, his jacket and his rifle off to Vanessa.

In return, she held out the sniper’s
coat. Grenades still dangled from attachments on the chest. “
’All warfare is based on deception,’
” she quoted with feigned gravity.

Tanner blinked at her. “Are you enjoying this?”

“Maybe a little. You could, too, if you’d let yourself,” Vanessa winked.

No witty retort came to mind.
Tanner donned the sniper’s long coat before he moved toward the exit. Sanjay followed, but split off from him once they were out in the street to take cover behind a large concrete planter. He glanced back into the apartment lobby to see Vanessa and Booker ready themselves. Booker had the jamming unit out on the couch in front of him, ready to deactivate it at the right moment. He hissed instructions to the others, coordinating their selection of targets.

Down the street waited a monstrous engine of destruction and at least a platoon of
soldiers. With the deep tan common on Michael, the dark stubble of his hair and the collar of his coat popped up, Tanner could at least pass as one of the locals at a distant glance. The sniper’s coat disguised him from his shoulder down past his hips, but offered nothing like the protection of his combat jacket. The vac suit pants complete with Archangel bloodstripes remained a dead giveaway, though. His only real defense lay in the likelihood—on which he bet his life—that all those soldiers had their eyes on their target rather than on one another.

He stepped out of cover and into the street, walking down a sunny lane devoid of life but for the tank and scattered troops up ahead. He glanced this way and that, seeing nothing but empty storefronts and apartment lobbies. Just off to his left was a NorthStar Educational Testing Facility.

“
’Do what I’m doing. Join the military,’”
Tanner muttered.
“’You don’t have to go infantry or marines. There are more non-combat roles than you can count.’”
His hand fell to the grenades hanging from the jacket. He wished he could spare one of them to throw into that stupid testing facility.

Tanner
shifted into a jog, but not a run. Moving too fast or too slow would draw attention. He needed to look enough like a part of the operation that no one would look at him twice.

“God, I wish I could just go to college,” he grumbled.

His jog took him past one set of buildings, then the next. He marked the halfway point, and then half of that distance, soon having much the same thoughts that he had about running through a sniper’s field of fire. The hull of the tank rose a little more than two meters in front of him, resting fully on its tractor treads rather than floating in the air via its anti-grav engine. Tanner reached the tank without obstruction, pointedly not looking left or right lest he jinx himself and draw the attention of the foot soldiers crouched behind trees and parked vehicles.

He jumped up to get his arms over the hull, throwing both arms over the side. His right hand still held the sniper rifle; his left grabbed hold of a sturdy cleat, allowing him to hoist himself up. The pair of men standing in the tank’s open turret hatches didn’t seem to notice him until he’d heaved a foot up over the edge. Tanner ducked his head but waved one hand, calling out in Arabic, “
Ustaaz! Ustaaz,” hoping the Hashemite dialect didn’t have some other more accepted way of saying “sir.”

The turret was little taller than a single meter. The pair of men in the hatches stood within arm’s reach of one another. Tanner got to both feet, glanced up at the two men just as the officer in the hatch on the right did a surprised double-take, and then launched himself onto the turret.

The butt of his rifle came into the right-side officer’s cheek hard, crushing bone and leaving the man stunned with pain. Tanner immediately shifted left, meaning to slam the middle of his rifle into the head of the other officer, but the Hashemite reacted too quickly and grabbed hold of the rifle right with both hands. The struggle lasted only a heartbeat. The officer with the epaulets on his shoulder was no slouch, twisting the rifle hard and wrenching it from Tanner’s hands, though he, too, lost control of it as it flew away.

Tanner planted the back of his left fist into the officer’s face, knowing he couldn’t let up. Once more, though, the major managed to get the better of his young opponent, catching hold of Tanner’s ankle with both hands and yanking him off balance.

He landed on his shoulder on top of the turret, but kicked back hard while trying to get control of himself. Tanner heard shouting all around him at that point and knew he couldn’t let this struggle continue. While he kicked again, slamming his foot into the major’s shoulder, Tanner yanked one grenade off of his jacket. He twisted the activator, rose to his knees and hurled it down the major’s hatch right between his legs.

The major let out a cry of alarm and pushed himself up out of the hatch, shoving Tanner out of the way as he moved. That sent Tanner rolling right off the turret, flailing for anything he could grab. Thankfully, he managed to wrap his arms around the tank’s cannon before he fell off entirely.

On top of the turret, the major could only scream out a useless warning before the grenade went off. Tanner saw smoke and a little flame burst from both open hatches on top of the turret. The man in the other hatch, apparently still reeling from the blow to his cheek, screamed out in agony before falling down inside the hatch. The major shot Tanner an enraged glare and drew the scimitar from his belt.

For a brief instant, Tanner considered abandoning the tank. Then he noticed the trio of soldiers in the street nearby who now had a clear shot at the idiot hanging in front of them.

Okay,
Tanner decided.
My plan sucks.

* * *

Discipline hadn’t come naturally to Sanjay. Had he been better about doing what he had to do, when he had to do it, he’d probably have been a better student and a better son. He might’ve had better things to do with himself after school than fuck around with dumber kids than him, stealing shit and getting into fights and generally making bad choices.

To his credit, Sanjay never chalked those decisions up to the circumstances of his upbringing or the influence of his peers. He’d been smart enough to know right from wrong. Stealing might have helped put food in his stomach, or covered the rent when his mother came up short, or made the difference between clearing the family’s monthly debt payments or slipping further down the economic ladder. Yet all of those outcomes came after the crime; Sanjay might have done good things with the money, but he didn’t steal to make that happen. He stole because he was frustrated and bored, and in the few
times when some adult tried to set him straight, they told him so. He’d known they were right.