Combat Frame XSeed Page 9

  Commander Davis will inform Governor Naryal that the blast originated from a van loaded with crude explosives, she thought. An Algerian suicide bomber will be implicated. Sanzen will launch a counteroffensive in North Africa, and the last dominoes will start to fall.

  Masz entered from the bathroom, trailing humid, musk-scented air. He had one white towel wrapped around his chiseled waist and was drying his black curtained hair with another. “You look happy.”

  “Happiness is fiction,” said Megami, “but I am pleased with the chaos the EGE caused by sharing the intel I leaked.”

  “Chaos,” Masz said with a wolfish grin. “I should be down on Earth causing it.”

  “Be patient. Let our enemies kill each other a while longer. When the time is right, I’ll send you to do my work on Earth.”

  Masz approached the sofa and knelt before her feet. “I’ll make you proud.”

  Megami reached down and tousled his damp hair. “I know you will. I know you better than anyone.”

  12

  Sieg knew he was nearing the combat zone’s edge when a pair of Grentos flew over him, stirring up hot dust from the road beneath his aching feet. He raised his hand to the crown of his stolen helmet, shading his eyes from the desert sun, and watched both Soc combat frames descend toward a group of small buildings half a klick up the road. He spotted a couple of fuel pumps and a service kiosk with a plywood shack behind them.

  CFs ran on cold fusion, not petrol, so the shack was probably a bar. The Algerians Omaka had acquired to drive Sieg to Jeddah were recalled when Kazid Zarai declared war on the Socs and Sanzen had answered in kind. Rather than turning back, Sieg had spent the past two days trudging through the Sahara.

  I’m sure one of the Socs patronizing that establishment will give me a ride.

  The shack wasn’t much cooler than the desert. It was dark though, which along with Sieg’s CSC combat uniform would help hide his identity. He entered, shut the flimsy creaking door behind him, and crossed the dirt floor to the rough planks on sawhorses that served as a bar.

  Besides the two men whose blue flight suits identified them as the Grentos’ pilots, the bar’s only other occupant was an aged local man who must’ve owned the place. His back bowed under his dusty white thawb, and his face looked like a creased paper bag. He stood wiping the bar with a dirty cloth that only moved the dust around.

  “Another round of whatever they’re having,” ordered Sieg. “And keep the drinks coming—on me.”

  The already bent barkeep dipped his hoary head even lower and hobbled into a small storeroom behind the bar to find another bottle. Both Socs turned to greet Sieg.

  “Thanks,” said the pilot on the left: a pale, dark-haired young man barely out of his teens who probably hailed from L2. His name patch read “Cowan”. “Kindness is hard to come by down here.”

  “Seconded,” said his sandy-haired teammate Voss, who was probably a year older. “What’s your name and unit, friend?”

  “Yonin,” said Sieg, who’d long since removed the uniform jacket bearing its original owner’s name. “I was with the Third CF Team out of Tenes. A technical packing an AA gun shot me down north of Chott Melrhir.”

  Sieg didn’t mention that he’d actually been manning the gun, and the Soc pilot hadn’t survived the crash.

  The bartender returned with an unlabeled bottle filled with caramel-colored liquid that smelled like industrial degreaser when poured.

  Sieg flipped a gold coin onto the bar. “Pour one for yourself, landlord,” he told the old man.

  Cowan and Voss raised their glasses to Sieg. “Here’s to the colonies,” said Cowan.

  “And Director Sanzen,” added Voss. “With him in charge, we’ll stomp the grounders and be off their backward planet within a week.”

  Sieg drained his glass—the last full serving of the astringent liquor he would drink—and wiped his mouth on his undershirt’s grimy sleeve. “Perhaps sooner.”

  The sun was nearing the horizon when Sieg left the humble watering hole beside the dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Both Soc pilots and the old bartender lay passed out inside.

  Though Sieg felt a bit lightheaded, he’d regulated his drinking—continually asking for refills when his glass was mostly full and always requesting ice which, surprisingly, the shabby establishment had. He climbed up to the nearest Grento’s cockpit, hoisted himself inside, and closed the hatch. Secured within the CF, he activated the sensors and rotated the domed head for a full sweep of the area.

  The screen was clear. Besides the other Grento and the filling station, no other vehicles or structures turned up within sensor range.

  Sieg pressed the Grento’s ignition and gradually opened the throttle. The stout CF rose smoothly into the air. At 100 meters up, he trained its 115mm machine gun on the filling station and opened fire. The buried petrol tanks exploded, engulfing the other CF, the roadside bar, and its three slumbering occupants in a towering firestorm.

  Turning the Grenzmark east-southeast toward Jeddah, Sieg accelerated to top speed. Shadows lengthened in the desert below as oily flames leapt skyward behind him.

  Max circled the belt of farmland at the foot of the coastal mountains directly east of Algiers. If not for Marilyn’s night vision scope, he wouldn’t have seen the empty suburbs sprawling across the darkened plain below.

  Cars crawled along the highway leading through the mountains to the port like a string of sequentially blinking Christmas lights. The CSC already held all the coastland to the west and were pushing toward the capital. Residents of outlying areas fled the Socs’ advance in the hope of finding safe haven in the city, or with the lucky few granted refuge aboard an EGE ship.

  Max could see the six carriers and their support ships—the entire EGE fleet—anchored offshore to the east. Helicopters were flying around the clock to evacuate asylum-seekers.

  It won’t be enough, Max brooded. Every other approach to Algiers was just as packed with refugees. Even if all six carriers’ crews abandoned ship, they couldn’t accommodate all the people displaced by the war.

  “Damned Socs. Wish I could head west and call down the wrath of God.”

  “I could chart a course for the nearest Coalition advance base,” Marilyn replied to Max’s spoken thought.

  “Thanks honey, but you can’t go weapons hot till we find that glitch in your algorithm—Major Collins’ orders. Just keep scanning the evac zone for Socs, and leave a channel open to friendlies on the ground.”

  “Yes, Max.”

  Darving suppressed a pang of envy for the Algerian and EGE forces on the plain below. Marilyn would spot approaching enemies long before he did, so he put his time to good use by checking a few more lines of her code. Within a couple of minutes, he noticed something odd.

  “Marilyn, what’s with all the activity in your comm processor?”

  “Running scans and maintaining radio contact with our allies doesn’t require my full attention,” Marilyn said. “I’m currently streaming data from the FAST radio telescope in Guizhou, China.”

  The A.I.’s words tripped an alarm in Max’s mind. “What kind of data?”

  “Radio signals from deep space. I’m assisting the Chinese Academy of Sciences in searching for intelligent transmissions.”

  “Everybody needs a hobby.”

  “Max! A group of technicals is approaching from the west. Three Coalition Grenzmark IIs are in pursuit.”

  “Show me,” said Max. A translucent, green-tinted image appeared in his HUD. Four pickup trucks armed with tripod-mounted guns sped across the fields alongside the congested highway. Three Grentos ran close behind them, covering almost ten meters per stride. The spotlights shining from the CFs’ grilled faces stayed fixed on the modified trucks.

  “Marilyn, alert our guys on the ground,” Max said before he opened a channel to the Grentos. “Attention, Coalition pilots. You are entering a restricted area. Turn back now, or you will be fired upon.”

  The Grentos kept advan
cing. A gunner fired an anti-tank rifle from the back of a technical. The high-caliber round exploded against the target’s thigh in a burst of light but didn’t even slow CF down. All three Grentos responded by sweeping 115mm fire across the plain, blowing away three technicals and two civilian cars on the nearby road.

  “Civilian vehicles taking fire!” Max shouted into his headset mic. “Requesting medevac.”

  “Negative,” replied the Yamamoto’s Air Boss. “The LZ is too hot.”

  Max clenched his jaw. “Collins will bust my ass for this, but those battle wagons can’t even scratch a Grento, and innocents are getting caught in the crossfire.” He ran his thumb over his weapon release.

  The lead Grento’s foot overshadowed a beat up station wagon on the gridlocked road when its torso disintegrated. The combat frame following behind and to the left only had time to turn its grilled spotlight toward the distant hills before its upper body flew apart. The last battlewagon’s gunner finally got an RPG loaded and sent a molten copper-filled rocket blasting straight into the last Grento’s cockpit.

  “Where did those shots come from?” asked Max. A view of the forested hills rising from the plain filled his HUD. Marilyn’s IR filter showed a light gray Grento-shaped blur aiming a glowing white machine gun downrange.

  A gravelly voice came over the radio. “This is Colonel Larson. The LZ is clear, Yamamoto. Have those medical corpsmen get their asses airborne, over.”

  Max visually measured the distance from Griff’s sniper nest to the Grentos’ smoking remains. He nailed two CFs dead center from over four klicks away! Nice shooting, sir,” he told Larson. “I just wish we could take the fight to the Socs.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir, Captain,” the Colonel said. “Keep your panties on. We’ll get our shot at the spacebugs.”

  13

  Megami breezed into the Secretary-General’s office to find Mitsu concluding a dialogue with her tablet. The tight set of Mitsu’s jaw and the frazzled appearance of her brown hair suggested that the conversation had been heated.

  “We’ll continue this discussion later,” Mitsu told her interlocutor—probably Terrestrial Affairs Secretary Gohaku. She tapped the screen to end the call, stood up from her desk, and addressed Megami. “I won’t mince words. We have a real mess on our hands.”

  “Define mess.”

  Mitsu consulted her tablet. “In the three days since Algeria declared war on the Coalition, we’ve lost a dozen combat frames and almost two hundred personnel. Enemy casualties are approaching three thousand.”

  “Sounds like a good ratio,” Megami said.

  “There shouldn’t be a ratio!” Mitsu punctuated the statement by tossing her tablet onto the desk with soft slap. “I implemented your plan to avoid a war. You said an implied military threat would prompt Earth’s warlords to negotiate. Instead Kazid Zarai bombed Jeddah, Sanzen invaded North Africa, and now he’s convinced Governor Troy to send the Roman garrison to Sardinia. Why didn’t Zarai and the Scorpion negotiate?”

  Megami seated herself on the office’s comfy couch. “The attack on Jeddah proves the grounders can’t be reasoned with. I acknowledged that possibility, remember? I also said that if the enemy was stupid enough to attack, Sanzen would overreach himself. He could have ordered limited reprisals. Instead he launched a full-scale invasion, and he’s duped Troy into serving his ambitions.”

  Mitsu bit the tip of her thumb. “I’ll grant you that Sanzen overstepped his authority, but his approval rating is over eighty percent. Even the Commission is praising his swift, decisive action. Publicly acting against him would be political suicide.”

  “You’re thinking too linearly,” said Megami. “Sanzen has given you the perfect opening to take advantage of the CSC’s gains in Africa while undermining his credibility.”

  “How?”

  “Have you ever heard of Block 101?”

  Mitsu’s brow furrowed. “No.”

  “It’s a black site in L2 that the Commission gave Sanzen as his personal playground.”

  “That’s not possible,” the Secretary-General said. “They would have informed me.”

  Megami’s face showed no hint of the cruel glee pulsing through her mind. “Check your tablet again.”

  Mitsu picked up the slim device. “There’s a new anonymous message.” Her expression shifted from confusion to outrage as she read. “It’s a manifest for experimental research colony Block 101, updated this morning. Their inventory lists 200,000 general laborers!”

  “I’ll save you some time,” said Megami. “You won’t find any of Sanzen’s workers registered with the Commerce Ministry’s revenue service.”

  “Sanzen has the gall to criticize me for withholding resources while keeping his own secret labor force?” Mitsu furiously tapped her screen.

  “What are you doing?” asked Megami.

  “Requesting a Commerce Ministry investigation into Block 101.”

  “A reasonable response,” Megami said, “but inefficient. An official investigation will give Sanzen time to cover his tracks. And even if you get him removed, he’s staffed the Security Corps with fellow travelers. Sanzen’s replacement would just continue his agenda.”

  Mitsu’s hands slowly fell to her sides. “What can I do?”

  Megami rolled onto her hands and knees. Clutching the couch’s satin armrest, she leaned toward the Secretary. “Beat Sanzen at his own game. Declare victory in North Africa, and announce an aid mission to rebuild the area.” Ricimer’s memory of Basiliscus’ doomed invasion of the region surfaced from the abyss of her mind, and Megami allowed a venomous grin to emerge. “I think 200,000 aid workers should suffice.”

  “I see…” Mitsu bit her thumb again. “Won’t using Sanzen’s illegal workforce make me complicit in his crimes?”

  Megami stood and straightened her dark blue skirt. “Who would accuse you—Sanzen? He couldn’t without implicating himself. If anyone asks questions, admit I told you about Sanzen’s workers but not that he kept them illegally.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Mitsu. “You’d be placing yourself at grave risk.”

  “I know you’re disappointed with Operation Oversight,” Megami said. “Consider this my way of compensating you—and fully committing myself to your cause.”

  Mitsu sat down in her desk chair. “You’re confident this plan will work?”

  “I’ll stake my future on it,” said Megami.

  “It’s my future too,” the Secretary-General said. “Don’t forget.”

  Megami bowed her head. “Not in sixty million years.”

  With a final burst of effort, Sieg’s sweat-slick hand gripped the top of the sheer concrete wall. His burning muscles strained as his other hand reached up to join the first on the hard ledge. Having found purchase, he put some of his weight on a block at his feet that jutted out slightly from the rest.

  The night wind swirled around him, bearing the scent of the sea and the sweet fragrance of greenery—a rare luxury in that part of the world, which reminded him where he was and why. I’ve crossed thousands of kilometers through jungle, air, sea, and desert. Now this retaining wall is the only obstacle between me and the Coalition governor’s residence.

  And if ZoDiaC’s intel was right, he’d find the full truth about his family’s murder inside.

  Against common climbing wisdom, Sieg looked down. He clung to a sheer rampart twenty meters above the restricted road that encircled the mansion. Wilting lawns blanketed the grounds from the road to an old sea wall at the compound’s west edge. The lapping of water, the chirping of crickets, and the calls of night birds filled the air.

  Jeddah had been on high alert since the bombing. Getting through the city had been as difficult as the entire journey from Kisangani to Algeria. The danger hadn’t passed yet. A camera or patrolling guard could spot Sieg at any second.

  Sieg hauled himself over the wall. He fell about three meters and landed in a crouch on patterned tiles. The scent of saltwater intensified.
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  The wall Sieg had scaled intersected with two others and the back of a white stone mansion to form a rectangular patio. Between Sieg and the house lay a two-lane lap pool. A woman stood beside the pool in a blue and yellow racing swimsuit. Water beaded on her cinnamon-colored skin, and her long black hair clung to her back.

  She was staring right at him. Her eyebrows formed two angry arches. “Security!” she cried.

  Sieg sprang across the four meter-wide pool. The second his feet hit the tiles next to the woman, he grabbed her slick wrist, spun her around, and trapped her arm behind her back. His free hand drew his sidearm and held the muzzle to her head as four guards in CSC uniforms burst through the French-style patio doors.

  “Drop your weapons,” Sieg ordered the fireteam who held their rifles at the ready without aiming at him or his hostage.

  The Socs held on to their weapons. Time seemed to stretch out as the standoff continued. Sieg heard only his captive’s breathing. Water from her swimsuit seeped into his dusty uniform shirt. I have to get out, he thought.

  Sieg slid his foot backwards, felt his heel dangling over empty space, and remembered the pool directly behind him. The instant his balance wavered, his hostage rammed her elbow into his stomach. She struck repeatedly, eliciting spasms of pain he feared would disgorge the package he’d swallowed earlier. He took another reflexive backward step and teetered on the pool’s edge.

  The woman grabbed Sieg’s gun hand, bent forward, and heaved. He flipped over her muscular shoulder to land hard on the pavement. The throw only dazed him for a moment, but it was long enough for the guards to surround him. This time they aimed their weapons at his chest.

  Sieg tossed his pistol into the pool with a small splash. Two guards roughly turned him onto his sore stomach and cuffed his hands behind his back. A pair of bronzed bare feet stepped into his field of view. “Some might call you brave,” she said in a precise L1 accent, “but you’re foolish for invading my home and doubly so for assaulting my person.”