Tactical insertion

In theory, the plan was simple. I would go in and provide some low impact distractions that wouldn't produce a full alert, while Niki infiltrated the vehicle hangar and repossessed the stolen AR3. When they objected, she'd level the hangar on top of the other three vehicles while I upped the ante on the diversions. After that we'd evacuate and wait for pickup, which was already on station in orbit.

Of course, there were quite a few places in the plan where large fuzzy contingencies came into play. We had, effectively, zero support. While we would get some communications assistance from Saule Silencieuse, there wasn't anyone playing Archangel on this Op. And, while we had transport ready to pick up the rig when we recovered it, the boat was an unarmed civilian hire rather than a Navy drop ship. Functionally, this mission was entirely in our hands which meant improvise when necessary.

That was OK too. I'd dealt with improvised operations many, many, times. This would really be no different.

"Ready when you are," Niki said softly, surveying our separate planned ingress routes for the 5th or 6th time.

I nodded, confirming our communications links were good. "See you on the other side."

We took off in different directions with specific goals in mind. There were a lot of places where pre-planning hadn't been an option, but our general approach was to avoid contact as much as possible and try not to leave a trail of bodies in our wake. When Niki fired up the AR3 and started leveling the hangar around it there'd be enough wanton destruction. But we still weren't here to kill anyone. At least not specifically.

I'd already partially jacked the installation's comms, so we had a good idea what was going on. This time of night, the only people up would be a few guards and, possibly, anyone doing out doors testing on one of the rigs. They didn't do that often. Though, in our favor, unless they were refitting something, they usually kept the stolen AR3 fueled and armed. That would make Niki's job much easier.

She and I were able to keep track of each other's location using an encrypted comms relay. Nano bursts were difficult to track and, if you didn't know to look for them, easily overlooked even when they did nudge someone's detector's. That made it much easier for us to time our approaches and hold up when the other needed to reroute around an "obstruction" of some form: at least one of which wound up folded up, unconscious but alive, in a janitorial closet.

My job was, on many levels, the easier of the two. I had a lot of experience at avoiding detection in close quarters like this. Niki was surprisingly good, given her pure military background, but she'd have a tougher time of it getting into the hangar unmolested. The real tough part would be the startup sequence.

It took several minutes to fire up one of those big walker chassis. Much of it would be done without alerting anyone outside, at least if they weren't paying attention, that something was going on. It was only when the final power systems came on line that everyone in a 20 meter radius would know that the machine was about to come to life. When she flipped that last switch, she'd have about almost a minute and a half before she could start moving. The weapons would come on line almost instantly, and she'd be able to slew the torso, but she'd be stuck in the gantry until the legs came up and the cradle swung away.

That was when I'd have to work a miracle with their internal alarm systems. Because as sure as Lily liked candy, someone in that room would throw the alarm as soon as the AR3 came to life.

When the time came, I was well in position . I'd jacked into the installation's security feeds and managed to catch Niki on the screen as she deftly incapacitated one of the technicians and climbed into the AR3's cockpit. Whether the tech would survive the next few minutes, though, was a question I doubted either of us were going to stay around to answer or worry about once we were out of here.

A few minutes later, I saw the telltale motion of the motivators coming on line and the torso slew around the bring the guns to bare on the two partially completed chassis sharing the hangar with the stolen machine. The alarm started to sound almost instantly, but I was ready for that: silencing it before it could alert the base. Unfortunately, silenced alarm or not, there was no masking the thunderous racket of the auto-cannon lighting up to turn the other vehicles, and much of the hangar, to wreckage.

I altered the diversions: rerouting their communications and mucking about with their power, security, and everything else I could get into from my hide near their communications center. They had good systems, but they hadn't been prepared for this.

"Sea. Where's the fourth rig?"

There was concern in Niki's voice over the comm as she shouldered her way through the hangar door, the sheet metal not giving the forty five ton walker much resistance. Where was the fourth vehicle?

Between the sensor array in the AR3 and my patches to the installation's feeds, it didn't take us long to find it. Three miles off and closing at a run, one of the pilots must have taken it out for a joy ride as there wasn't anything specifically in the logs about it being out. Still, it meant Niki had a fight on her hands and I would have to start evacuating the installation now if I had any intention of making it out at all.

"Coming your way, Niki. Bearing 159 degrees, range about five thousand meters. I'm going mobile. Transport's inbound to the LZ. Just need to keep that rig busy for eight minutes, and we're out of here." Niki gave me a grunt of acknowledgement and turned her attention to other problems.

By the time I'd cleared the building a few minutes later, Niki and the other pilot had engaged. Even with the enhanced optics it was hard to follow the action in the darkness, but Niki's calm voice over the inter-vehicle freq was clear and calm as death.

"Son. You've got one opportunity to power down and walk away. Those gun ports aren't closed in 5 seconds, I'll end you where you are."

The other pilot didn't bother answering, but simply turned and opened fire.

Bad mistake.

From the records, Nikolasi Mombasa was the best pilot the unit had ever had. Now, I knew it was true. While I'd seen folk who were damn agile in a fighting suit, a suit was something you wore. The AR3 was 11 meters tall and 45 tons and Niki could make the thing positively dance.

It was over in under a minute. While her rig had taken some damage, her opponent was little more than a smoking crater. Not that either of us stayed around to watch the remaining fireworks. The installation had finally managed to muster some coherent response from their security force and had turned their attention to the escaping armored walker. Meanwhile, I took off in the opposite direction. While the transport would drop in to take the recovered AR3 back off world I had to get back to Wave Equation, which lead to a tense hour and a half cross country trek back to the hidden skimmer, and roughly the same amount of time back to my boat.

The post mission debriefing would be, at best, interesting. But it would have to wait. Right now, first priority was getting the transport and its cargo vectored some place we could stash it.

Plan comes together

New toys come at a great price

Will they be worth it?

Perimeters

Businesses are all about the bottom line. When they're looking at developing a new product, or changing something internally, they do an extensive cost/benefit analysis to determine whether there'll be a payoff and, if so, when. Usually some bean counters will hash it out with whoever came up with the idea they're looking at, and they'll come to a decision that'll hopefully help the company. At least if they're a smart company, they will.

The security side of business is somewhat more complex. There, the cost benefit analysis isn't so clear. It's all about risk analysis. What's the chances of a given scenario happening? How much will it cost to defend against it? How much damage will it do if it happens? Which is more economical: accepting a risk and paying for the consequences, or spending the coin to keep it from happening in the first place?

From our vantage point overlooking what amounted to an abandoned industrial park, it appeared the company that had stolen the AR3's had chosen to skimp a little on physical security. Given the planet's situation, they'd been making a safe bet. If I hadn't taken an interest in the theft, chances were they could have gone out here for months, if not years, with no one being the wiser. "Catch the attention of a Dragon" was probably not listed on their contingency plans.

Niki and I had been keeping up surveillance for several days, getting to know the routine of the bored-looking guards and the limits of the perimeter security fencing. We knew where they had the cameras, where the blind spots were, where they parked the stolen AR3 and, it appeared, the two knockoff's they'd partially completed. We'd also, rather, I'd also, jacked into the communications system undetected, giving us everything we needed.

They did most of their mobility testing at night, away from prying eyes. They'd even done some live fire with the machine's on-board weapon systems, figuring, correctly, that even the auto-cannon wouldn't be heard in the nearest settlement some 50 kilometers away.

"So, what's the plan? The real plan. Besides finding the rig."

I hadn't been keeping Niki from my plans, so much as working out details as the information came in. "Overall? We go in, take the rig. Use it to secure the facility, then transport the rig off-world. You, obviously, drive the rig. Details? Still working out a few specifics. I'm still debating how to handle these Corpers. Other then that, our transport is inbound for Highgate, about 18 hours out. An AR3's obviously too big to lift out of here in the Matagi, and the Corvette's on station doing comms relay for us, so I ordered up some help."

Niki gave me 'that' look, frowning slightly. Smart lady. Intel and Black Ops experience. She knew there were things I'd left out.

"Not sure why we're doing this, rather than calling in a Commando unit to hit this place with a couple drop ships. Unless . . ." She let her voice trail off for a minute, looking at me with those intense, dark, eyes, before finally saying what she'd probably been thinking the whole time. "Unless you've got no intention of giving it back, or even telling SpecOps you found it. Steal the rig from the people that stole it. Question is, what're you gonna do with it when we're done here?"

Part of me wanted to laugh. She was right, of course. I wasn't giving it back to the ADG or letting SpecOps know we'd recovered it. "Question is, what are you going to do with it after we're done, Niki. I'm not qualified to drive it. But no, we're not giving it back, and I'm not telling them we have it. I've got my reasons and I'll explain them on the boost out of here. But I'm going to ask you to trust me on this, ok? I know your reputation and I respect it. I just need you to trust me until we can get the rig out of here."

She just looked at me for a long moment. I could almost see the gears turning over as she decided whether or not to keep trusting me and whether she could take me if she decided this was all a bad idea. "Our deal holds, Niki. You can walk. Now, if you want. No coercion, no threats. I don't play that way. We do this recovery, I'll read you into the rest of it. After that, you don't want to play along any more, you can still walk. Hell. If you don't agree at that point, we can hard land the rig into a rock somewhere and make sure no one gets it. So you still in?"

"I'm in. I think you're crazy. But I'm in."

Plans come together

Crazy is as crazy does

All for a good cause

Back on the ground

With a population of less than three million, Highgate was the third most populous world around Qing Long. The entire subsystem had a population of under twenty million, a third of which lived on the system capital of Meridian. Which made Blue Dragon, the star's other common name, by far the least populated star of the five that made up the 34 Tauri system. In contrast, the metro area around the Alliance capital city on Londinium, had roughly twice the population of the entire Qing Long system.

It hadn't helped that the Miranda incident had cost nearly all of that world's three million people. The thirty thousand odd "survivors" had become Reavers, who'd gone on to kill countless thousands more in the years since through the Rim and Border worlds. While the Reaver threat was active, and the Alliance was actively denying they existed, the population around Qing Long had dropped even more as people evacuated for more densely populated worlds. Or, at the very least, moved from remote communities that the Reavers could easily target into the major settlements.

That had left entire towns abandoned. With the Reaver threat abated, those towns became prime grounds for squatters of one form or another. Smugglers. Pirates. Political refuges. Communes. People trying to get away from active civilization, but not so far away that they were completely out of touch.

It was also a near ideal place to set up a clandestine research center. Ready made infrastructure. Far enough from the center of things to glide under the radar. Close enough to population centers and resources that you didn't have to bring in absolutely everything from the outside.

That was what brought us to Highgate.

Tracking down the transport with the stolen AR3 had been a challenge, but we'd done it. Fortunately for us, they hadn't bothered with extensive secondary precautions at the abandoned industrial complex they'd chosen as a remote base. Also working in our favor, they were close enough to Highgate's main city that we could do fly close enough to the facility to get a basic recon without arousing any suspicion. We were just another boat on final for the capital, rather than an ELINT boat doing a preliminary pass on a target.

There was still work to do on the ground before we could attempt an infiltration, but we knew where we were going and had a good idea what we would face when we got there. Now, it was ground work and arranging a transport of our own.

If we pulled this off as I intended, we'd be coming home with some very expensive kit.

Back into the Black

Anyone looking at the modern Alliance Military structure, from Infantry on the ground to the Cruisers in orbit supporting them, would think Electronic Warfare was a lost, neglected, art. For the most part, the Alliance relied more on throwing people at problems than technology. After all, people were cheap. For the cost of just the electronics package on my Ritter&Lau, the Alliance could equip a whole squad of line infantry. If you threw in the cost of training? A single well equipped sniper cost more to put in the field than an entire platoon.

Pound for pound, the sniper was more effective. But to the Alliance bean counters, losing one sniper meant the entire investment was lost, whereas losing, say, two fire teams, just meant the platoon was weakened. It was a lot cheaper to replace a few lost infantry than to train and equip a replacement sniper.

The view may not have been especially popular with the men and women on the line, but it was certainly practical. Which led to the lost art of Electronic Warfare. Top shelf equipment was anything but cheap and it took a well trained crew to interpret the results. Intel was important, to be sure, but when you didn't care about loses and your primary enemies were backwater colonists who were lucky to have rifles, let alone encrypted FTL comms, you could afford to skimp on the EW suite.

I wasn't in the mainstream military.

Electronic Warfare ships were a wildly mixed lot, based on a variety of hulls with an even larger variety of specialties. General purpose ELINT boats like Saule Silencieuse, for example, had a different mission and, thus, a different load out than, say, an Early Warning Picket or a dedicated communications monitoring ship. The differences lay as much in crew specialties as differences in antennas and signals processing equipment. Fortunately, a creative crew could gather quite a bit of information from a target regardless of what their arrays were originally designed for.

The Corvette's EW officer contacted me shortly after we cleared Beaumonde's traffic control area. Between intercepting navigation beacons and the ELINT Corvette's own arrays, they'd managed to identify and track the transport through two more stops before losing it to the deep Black between Kalidasa and Qing Long.

"They shut off their pulse beacon after the last port, but we were able to track their power plant signature until they got out of range. Our navigator worked out the probable destinations given their known course. Qing Long's navigational net is incomplete but we'll update you if they come across the net."

I thanked him, then signed off. Qing Long, Blue Sun, was the most sparsely inhabited, most distant, star in the 34 Tauri system. The isolation was a mixed blessing though. You were far from prying eyes, but you were also far from resources and support, and travel times could become tedious.

"You play chess, Seana?" Niki asked after I set course and filled her in on our destination.

"I little. Though I suspect I'm about to be schooled on the finer points." I had to laugh. Even with Wave Equation's performance it would be a long flight, but I could think of worse ways to spend the time than learning chess from a rated master.

Could think of better ways too. But that was neither here nor there.

Recruiting

Nicolasi Mombasa was a compact woman, maybe 5 centimeters and 3 kilos bigger than I am. Short curly dark hair, dark eyes, and nearly as dark skin. Quite pretty, in a rugged, athletic, sort of way. We were much alike on some levels, from a lethality out of proportion to our compact size, to a military background neither of us publicly acknowledged. But we were also very, very, different.

Since leaving the service some years ago, she'd settled on Beaumonde and taken a job at a Tier II university as a Lacrosse coach. Kind of like me taking a job as a small town Mayor. No one would really look too deeply into that buried military background. Her affiliation with the university was, outwardly, the hook I'd used to arrange the meeting, claiming the local KHI parts warehouse was looking to get some advertising and good will by sponsoring the uni's Lacrosse program.

It was a thin cover, but plausible: something she'd see through but would hold up for the uni and anyone who asked.

"Miss Kawanishi, why are we really here? This isn't about new equipment and logo jerseys for the Lacrosse team."

She'd taken roughly fifteen minutes to get to the question, doing an excellent job of staying with her new identity the whole time. I smiled cheerfully and slid another couple of flimsies over to her across the table to join the list of gear and logo jerseys we'd been talking about. She gave it a cursory glance, then looked back over, trying to hide her recognition.

"Unit insignia and part of a tractor on a pallet? Not sure I understand."

ADG9, " The Chessmasters," were nearly as obscure as my own final unit had been, and their unit insignia was the kind of thing that showed up on Cortex shows about elite military units that were usually nothing more than rumors. Overall, the Advanced Defense Group was its own animal in the military. A combat evaluation unit specializing in exotic hardware, they tested new equipment and developed tactics to utilize it if it looked promising. The Chessmasters had been formed to test some very specific equipment, which was what had brought me to Beaumonde to meet Niki Mombasa.

She was doing a good job of concealing her reaction, but I could still tell what was going through her mind. I'd have been thinking much the same thing: how much does she know, and will I have to kill her? Not exactly a comfortable situation but one I was familiar with on either side of the table. It went with the job.

"Captain Mombasa. Let's just skip the rest of the game, OK? We're on the same side. At least were. I'm hoping we will be again. Give me a few more minutes of your time and, if you don't like what I have to say, we walk away. You go back to coaching Lacrosse and I try to find someone else who can do what you do."

"What is it exactly you think I do? And why the . . . ?" she replied, motioning to the images, deciding to not try and kill me for the time being.

I smiled faintly. She wanted to know ow much I really knew about her, the unit, and the piece of equipment on the pallet. All questions I'd be asking myself if our positions were reversed. "Captain, I know you recognize the unit insignia and the vehicle. At least by type."

She paused, then nodded towards the image. "Core of an AR3b. Minus the manipulators and legs. I'd guess it was Buskirk's rig from the partial markings, if Buskirk's rig wasn't in a warehouse. Where was this taken?"

"That was taken two weeks ago at a loading facility on Notterdam. Got loaded onto a small transport and shipped out here to the Kalidasa system, but it's not the only one that's missing."

She looked at me curiously for a long moment, then frowned, obviously not liking what I was implying. "Most of them got shipped back to the Fab when our mission ended and they idled the Chessmasters. They mothballed a Lance worth. Eight rigs."

"Yes. Four of them are missing from the warehouse. Dessault-Nissan can account for the rest of the ones that were returned, but there's four AR3b's on the loose. And you know the kind of threat that poses."

The AR3b "Archer" was, more or less, an anthropomorphic Roller. Based on a rough terrain construction vehicle, it had legs rather than tracks or wheels and manipulators for moving equipment. Unlike its marginally useful civilian kin, the AR3 mounted anti-personnel armaments, auto-cannon, and enough racked missiles to level several city blocks. As a military weapon, they weren't especially useful. More expensive and easier to hit than a Roller with the same firepower. But for pure shock value? An Archer shouldering a house out of the way was a good deal scarier than, say, a pack of Reavers.

"You're here because you want to get them back. I get it. But why me? Why not Buskirk or Sandoval?"

"Buskirk and Sandoval both have more covert operations experience than you do, true, but you've got as much experience piloting one of these things as anyone alive. Besides, Buskirk's on Sihnon and Sandoval's with another ADG unit. Who, I might add, doesn't know about this. Leaves you as my first and best choice for this recovery op. So. Are you in? You can say no, Captain. No threats. No coercion. You say no, I head to Sihnon and see if your old CO will come."

I'm sure her decision was made as soon as she realized why I was here. Lacrosse coach or not now, she was still a soldier at heart.

"I'm in. And call me Niki. Not active military any more so rank's don't matter. Just need to grab my jump pack and let the Uni know I'm taking some leave."

"OK, Niki. My boat's at the municipal pad. You be ready in eight hours?"

"I'll be ready in two. Just wonder where we're going."

Where we were going? First step was easy. Saule Silencieuse to get a final destination for the transport. Then? Then we would see.

This is what they pay me for

I feel like I've been neglecting my duties, even if the Colony usually manages to run itself. When it doesn't, Genni's stepped in to deal with things in my stead, or she's passed them on to Lionheart so the Alliance Liaison will actually earn her keep. While Hale's Moon is still, technically, under Martial Law, the fact is they haven't even been sending more than two man patrols to make sure things are as they should be. Why are we still under Martial Law? No idea. Something lost in the bureaucracy no doubt. We just ignore the mandate unless it suits us, and go on with our lives.

I've spent what time I can with family. Lily's constant curiosity and AuroraBlue's constant, well, confusing behavior is all I can say sometimes. Brilliant child. Or not-child, as the case may be, but she can be near impossible for me to figure out. Love her dearly. Will till I draw my last breath. Her and Lily both. But I won't claim to really understand either of them. Least not completely, or even as well as I'd like.

Lately, my 'other' job has been keeping me busy. The job I can't talk about, and only a handful of people even know exists, but takes an inordinate amount of time, and keeps a godawful lot of data flowing across my desk.

It was a conscious choice. I could have passed on the job, but then the data would be flowing across someone else's desk, and the spooks gathering the data would be reporting to someone else. Someone I probably wouldn't trust and would have to end at some point. So here I was, doing the other job.

Here, being a cafe on Beaumonde.

I'd seen a lot of data come across my desk since I started the position, but it was very rare that I found anything that would drag me out of the office to take it on directly. This was one of those situations. I'd found something that, potentially, tied into issues I'd been dealing with on Hale's Moon for far too long, and I'd come to Beaumonde to talk to the only person I considered a likely source for good information.

The question, of course, was whether she would even show up, and whether she would talk to me if she did. If not, this particular situation could become very . . . complicated.

Bucket full of Crazy

Owl once told me of a belief the North American First People's had on Earth that Was. How they revere the Mad as Spirit Touched. Other cultures had similar beliefs. Unfortunately, or, maybe not so unfortunately, the Mad were rarely revered on the Rim colonies. Maybe Beaumonde, or one of the other high population worlds, could afford the luxury of coddling the Mad. Small time operations like our little slice of Heaven couldn't.

But that didn't stop us from getting our share of Crazy.

Sometimes by the bucket full.

Lily called him Stig. Or "The Stig," as the case was, based on some character from some Cortex feed out of Londinium that she liked. One of her "News" shows. Another offworlder, in my office, talking a bit crazy. In this case, some selective amnesia and a delusion about being married to me. At least that was how he started off. The married part vanished quickly, in part, I suppose, from not wanting to get shot for trying to push the issue.

While it may have been a while since I'd spent time with my wife, I wasn't too keen on someone, anyone, making the claim they were married to me when they weren't. I also wasn't too keen on folk coming into my office armed, and not being willing, or able, to take off the full coverage EVA helmet they were wearing. Just didn't sit right after the last stranger who walked into my office.

Thinking of which, neither Gallagher or any of the locals had any insight into who the man was or where he'd come from. Just another enigma in the series. A long, long, series. Which didn't seem to have any sort of end in sight.

Lily didn't know anything about either Stig or the guy in the freezer. But she did need a favor, something about recovering some information from an Alliance officer. She made me promise not to ask why she needed it. I made her promise not to ask how I was going to get it.

It seems that Major Siamendes had some images that Lily needed. While I could, probably, go directly and acquire them myself, I had other options. Considering how much additional pain the Intel position was causing me, it was time I exercised a minor abuse of power in order to benefit my kinfolk.

Using the secure link, I sent a message up my own food chain that would, very shortly, trickle back down Pepper's food chain, to her, with orders to turn over the information to someone up her chain of command, and to delete any copies of it. The data would get passed up a couple more layers, over a couple of silos, and then back down to me. All "above the boards." Where "above" translated into the deep realms where Intel liked to do what it did.

Getting the data back this way might interfere with Pepper's investigations into x0x0, which was something I ultimately didn't mind. Had never been entirely comfortable with that in any case. As for why Lily needed the information, I was curious, but I would also keep my promise.

My daughter needed it. In this case, that was enough.

Buckets of Crazy

The Mad play by their own rules

So we join their game