Star Force: Marauders (SF63) (8 page)

Mason sprinted ahead, and now that their prisoner camp
had been ‘rescued’ the rest of this mission was just hunting down the army of
militants and taking them out in one form or another, with most of these guys
going to have to be killed given their armament and the fact that there were
only 19 of his men here to work through well over 1,500 of them. How many Mason
didn’t know for sure, but the numbers didn’t intimidate him. These were scum
and had the skills to match, and he’d fought far harder training simulations
than this.

So long as his people kept their heads and watched
each other’s backs they’d be fine. Between their equipment and experience
advantage, not to mention their unit coordination, they could take out as many
of the enemy as needed so long as they didn’t let them draw them out into the
open.

Mason wasn’t green enough to let that happen, and he
knew the faster they made kills the less chance there would be of the militants
mounting any type of cohesive counterattack, which was why he and the other
four ran into the next firefight without bothering to find cover, coming out
into a foyer behind a group of 20+ targets that were firing the opposite direction.

The Lieutenant barreled in first, knowing his job was
to disrupt and set up shots for the others, so he didn’t shoot more than one
initial shot, then used his rifle along with his arms and legs to batter the
militants aside, knocking some down and others out of their cover for the
opposite team to shoot while his own squad pounded the armor of those on the
ground trying to get up until they stayed down.

It took more than a minute to kill them all, and some
of his men took glancing armor hits, but their personal shields, coupled with
Frank using his auxiliary to block a lot more shots, had kept the militant
plasma off them long enough for the firefight to snowball in their favor,
leaving the 11 of them standing over the bodies and kicking aside the enemy’s
weapons just in case they weren’t fully dead yet.

“Anyone hit?” Mason asked, just in case.

“Nice flank,” Jarod said in thanks.

“Take that way,” the Lieutenant said, thumbing to the
right indicating the next adjacent building. “Running sweeps, don’t slow down
and give these guys a chance to think.”

“On it,” Jarod acknowledged, taking his team that way
while Mason moved on to the left with his squad.

8

Mason ran in tight formation with the other four Marauders,
all tucked around Frank in the center with his auxiliary shield extended to
cover them as they charged the militant bunker on the exterior of the facility.
It had only been made recently, more piled dirt than anything, but it held a
pair of plasma turrets and a fair amount of infantry, with open tarmac
surrounding it in a sea that very easily could become a kill zone.

Most of the militants in the rest of the base were
dead or incapacitated, but there were plenty of holdouts that had found some
type of advantage and they were camping out there. Mason would have offered a
call to surrender, except that he didn’t want to give away their position to
this group before starting their run, for even a single second of
invulnerability could make the difference between them getting to the bunker or
not.

So far this one had been sitting totally uninvolved in
the fighting, and the Lieutenant wanted to hit it before they could go on full
alert…and he didn’t want to wait for the tank to work its way around to this
side of the base. Currently it was on its way in and blasting the crap out of
the militant versions, and more importantly keeping them off his infantry.

Picking their spot early on in what they thought might
be a blind spot, the five Marauders started running behind cover so they hit
the open area on the move and headed straight towards the bunker on an angle
that put them directly in line with one of the window slats.

They’d made it nearly a third of the way across before
someone bothered to notice them, firing a rifle shot that hit and splashed
against the bubble shield before the main turret on that side swiveled to the
right and took aim.

Mason and the others held tight, knowing that the
shield could take at least two good hits before popping, then they’d be down to
their weak armor shields, all of which were at full power, but none of them
could take a square hit from the tripod turret and remain intact. Their armor
would protect them from whatever plasma made it through, but a second hit would
almost certainly breach through the dark blue plates.

But the ex-commandos were quick, and before the turret
could fire off a second blast they were on the bunker and the five of them
broke apart, running out from under the energy shield and jumping through the
window holes as Frank slid underneath the turret barrel, running into the short
wall below and reaching up to grab the weapon. As he did so, locking it in
place where it couldn’t shoot anyone, he reached up his left hand with a pistol
and fired a shot inside where he had a clean line of sight between the other
Marauders.

Mason had dove through head first, barreling into two
of the infantry stacked inside that were just now getting to the open-air
windows. Playing bowling ball, he knocked them down and tripped a third while
Zaeb
followed him through, staying on his feet with a more
gentle leg slide, and shot one of the standing militants beyond him twice in
the gut before turning his rifle on those the Lieutenant had knocked down.

A shot from Frank finished off the standing militant
while Navo and Willis entered through a different side of the bunker, with the
Critel
taking Mason’s roll of cannonball and diving
through, further messing up any cohesion the defenders might have had. Both
Marauder’s shields went down, either from plasma shots or the physical impacts,
but their armor underneath was sturdy enough to take a few more hits while they
fought a quick, pitched battle inside the small bunker with the four of them
going hand to hand and getting in what shots they could, while Frank stayed on
the outside firing in from the window wall.

Between their quicker reflexes, better equipment, and
familiarity of fighting with one another, the Marauders came out on top in the
fight, taking down all 13 of the militants with only a shoulder wound to Willis
to show for it. The plasma damage had burned through and seriously
incapacitated his right arm, but he was still able to stay on his feet and
fight one-handed, finishing off one of the last militants with an overhead
smash of his fist followed by an angry uppercut from his knee that knocked the
helmet clear off the red-skinned alien.

Mason shot his exposed cranium with a stun blast, then
began policing the bodies as Willis groaned and sat down on a nearby gunnery
chair.

“You hit?”
Zaeb
asked.

“Oh…yeah,” Willis said. “I think I’m done for today.”

Mason circled around behind the man, flinching when he
saw the charred hole in his shoulder that was only starting to seep with blood.
Everything else within the inch-deep cavity had been cauterized on contact with
the plasma. He pointed the others away, with them dealing with the dead and
wounded while keeping an eye on the outside as Mason pulled open a small pocket
on his armor’s thin backpack and took out a tube of healing gel.

“Hold still,” he said, popping the cap open and
spraying the sticky foam into his shoulder. Star Force might not sell weapons,
but they were good about making their top line healing technology available for
public purchase, and he would have lost several people in past years had the
Marauders not stocked up loads of it. They valued their personnel as much as
Star Force did, though the same couldn’t be said of other mercenary units
operating in the region.

“Thanks,” Willis said as the pain number kicked in,
reducing his agony to an uncomfortable ache in his now invisible shoulder, as
far as his senses were concerned.

“You’ve got to head back now. This is bad.”

“How the hell did they hit the same spot three or four
times?” he complained, knowing the statistical improbability of that in a
chaotic firefight.

“It happened,” Mason said, getting on the comm.

“I’ll get him out,”
Zaeb
offered. “Go finish off these bastards.”

Mason clapped the Marauder on the shoulder as he
passed him by, heading for the windows since there were no doors on the crude structure.
“Tank’s on its way.”

Navo slid out ahead of him, with the pair joining
Frank as they ran off back into the buildings, checking with the other strike
teams and seeing what targets were left, as well as the external spotters
they’d left on the perimeter. If any of the militants tried to get away they’d
run them down, one way or another. This mission had to be a clean sweep, and
Mason wasn’t about to have to report back to their client that they’d gotten
almost
all of the militants.

With the primary bunker covering the access road now
out of commission, all that remained were small barricades that held a few
militants hoping to hold out or just clinging to whatever cover they could.
Mason headed for the nearest one of those, with the trio immediately taking
fire down a long hall that led to a park-like lounge.

“Not that way,” he said, backtracking and quickly
consulting what passed for a battlemap on his helmet’s HUD, which had the
facility’s blueprints on hand for easy reference but with no active position
markers for the rest of his troops. Without the secure
comm
tech that Star Force possessed, and didn’t sell, an enemy could pick out the
locator beacons and cause considerable trouble for any units using such a
system, hence the
Reen
and other suppliers didn’t
bother to manufacture them. Nor did anyone outside the ADZ, as far as the
Marauders knew, though they were looking for such a system to use against
technologically primitive opponents.

“Stay here and get their attention,” he told Navo as
he thumbed Frank a different direction. They looped around to another approach,
a shorter one, then with Navo taking badly aimed shots down the hall the pair
rushed the barricades from the side, again getting a few steps of
invulnerability thanks to the distraction, with Frank’s auxiliary shield
soaking up the rest of the damage.

Mason jump-kicked over the barricade and knocked down
one of the four militants while Frank simply ran up and began shooting, again
using the cover to his advantage while Mason went hand to hand. The combination
worked well, with them downing two of the militants before Mason took a shot to
his chest that melted the top layer of his armor.

A blue streak past his right arm hit the enemy as Navo
sprinted up to them, then another from Frank in the exact same spot on the
militant dropped him, leaving only one for the three of them to deal with.

That militant immediately dropped its weapon and sunk
to its knees, yelling something in a language that none of them could
understand, but it was obvious that he was surrendering.

Mason kicked aside its rifle and pulled out another
set of easy-snap restraints, securing the militant’s hands behind its back then
yanking its helmet off. A quick stun shot from Frank sent it into dreamland and
Mason dropped the body back to the ground. They couldn’t play babysitters right
now, but they’d be back for him later and the cuffs would be an easy clue that
this one wasn’t dead.

They checked the others, finding one still alive but
unconscious, so they pulled his helmet off and stunned him too before they got
moving again, hunting down the last bits of resistance they could find and
coordinating with the other teams until the militant facility was theirs.

“Tell him no,” Mason said to Le’han’trel, who was
working through one of their hired translators as the Marauders were having a
discussion with the
Batarank
security teams that
they’d called in to help search the complex. Any possessions of the militants
that they’d brought to the planet and not stolen from the locals were, by
contract, the rightful claim of the Marauders, so the
mercs
had been escorting the search teams around for that reason in addition to their
own protection, just in case a militant or two had been hiding out somewhere
and chose to make a last stand of defiance.

There had been three that they discovered, all of
which were out of armor and either base support or fighters that had been
caught off guard and couldn’t get to their armory in time, which the Marauders
had already emptied and loaded up on some trucks to take back to the ship. They
had four altogether, tucked inside the
17
s
bay along with the tank, Valerie, and some other craft they hadn’t needed to
use, and had found on previous occasions that it was better to haul their own
loot out rather than to have to rely on the locals to assist them, for on
occasion there were arguments and the Marauders didn’t like giving other people
leverage on them.

And today was one of those days.

There was a flurry of words between the translator and
the
Batarank
representative, who wasn’t the same one
that had hired them. That often caused complications, but in this case it was
the local government who had done the contracting, so technically it was the
same party they were dealing with.

“They insist,” Le’han’trel said from behind his helmet
faceplate, “that the prisoners face justice.”

“Meaning they want to kill them?”

“I think that’s a safe bet…or worse,” he added as an
unpleasant afterthought ran through his head.

“If there’s any killing to be done it’s at our
discretion,” Mason said. “Remind them of that fact.”

The Protovic issued the translation to the translator,
who intentionally kept his own voice as neutral as possible, as per standing
Marauder orders. If there was to be any intonation it would come from the
mercs
themselves, which
Le’han’trel
added by removing his helmet and staring the shorter
Batarank
down with his almost tattoo-like glowing facial patches giving him an
intimidating visage as the translation was carried out.

There was a back and forth that followed, with Mason
out of the loop as Le’han’trel handled whatever was going down. Eventually the
client backed down, or at the very least he stopped talking, which Mason
assumed meant he was capitulating.

“Care to clue me in?” he asked when the talking had
stopped.

“We need to pack up and go sooner rather than later,”
the Protovic suggested. “They refused to give us the remainder of our payment
until the prisoners were turned over to them. I informed them that if they
didn’t make the payment we’d take it ourselves, in a manner of our choosing. I
think I called his bluff, but I wouldn’t want to give them extra time to get
brave…or stupid. I think local politics are also coming in to play, with some
of these idiots thinking they can gain traction by making an example of the
militants.”

“Remind him that our contract gives us the right to do
with the prisoners as we wish and that we expect payment before we leave the
spaceport, then walk away with me.”

Le’han’trel did as he was told, then when the translator
issued the order the three of them turned and walked across the building they
were in that had been used by the Marauders to store captured gear that the
Bataranks
were now inspecting to make sure it wasn’t native
to the planet. Outside was one of the trucks being loaded up, but there was
still enough odds and ends to fill two more, which they’d have to wait on since
they were already headed back to the ship with some of the prisoners.

There were 78 in total, most of which were wounded,
some badly enough they might not survive anyway, but Mason wasn’t going to let
them remain here to suffer further injustices. One didn’t right the other, and
the Marauders were about preventing such things. If they couldn’t stop them
from happening then they’d avenge them, but that never involved torture or
reprisals of the sort that many ‘peaceful’ civilizations resorted to when they
had a chance for some payback against their former victimizers.