Desperate Measures Chapter 49

Chapter Forty-Seven

“I think all you conspiracy bastards would know that by now,” Erik shouted. “You throw men at us. You throw Tin Men at us.

Yaoguai

. You even threw damned aliens at us, and we keep surviving. You think you can scare us off with fancy new weapons? We’ve fought shit that would make you wet your bed and never be able to sleep again. We’ve risked our lives in ways you’d think were insane, and we’re going to keep doing it. Keep coming back and killing until there’s none of you left.”

“I see,” Luca called back, sounding more amused than angry. “You are a dedicated man. No one could doubt that. It’s brought you far, but dedication and bravery aren’t guarantees.”

Erik kept low as he walked to a thin seam between the stacks of crates and peered through. The maze of containers made it difficult to see anything. Something large and dark moved among the crates on the opposite side of the hangar. He needed only the briefest of glances.

“More Elites,” he whispered.

“To be honest, I didn’t believe the minimal leftover forces we had here would do much to stop you,” Luca continued, now sounding impressed. “Or it might be more accurate to say I hoped they wouldn’t. It would have been disappointing to see the great Last Soldier and Warrior Princess fall to what amounts to leftover scraps in this place. Your two friends are impressive as well. Our intelligence doesn’t suggest any close allies who left the department with you, and this doesn’t have the feel of a military operation, so I’m assuming the ID has lent you some ghosts.”

Anne frowned but didn’t say anything. Kant cracked a smile as if pleased he was being recognized. He should have been in the Army, not the Intelligence Directorate, with that attitude.

Erik gestured for Kant to move to the other side of the stack. If they could flank the enemy, they would have the advantage. The Elite they’d fought earlier had cannons but not a turret.

All it would take was one solid hit with the laser rifle, and Luca’s toys would break.

“I hate having to kill people I respect,” Luca explained. “It’s happened more than you think in my current career. Must we fight, Erik? Is there no way around it?”

“I’m not here for you, Luca,” Erik shouted. “We just want what’s on the flitter. All you have to do is walk away.”

“No, you didn’t come for that.” Luca had returned to sounding amused.

“Pretty sure I didn’t carve through all those bots and monsters because I needed the exercise.” Erik laughed. “You’re the one who set up the clever little trap. Too bad for you we have some tricks and traps of our own.”

“Of course you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here, but I’m afraid you’re misunderstanding me.”

“Then explain it to me, because I’m getting impatient, and I’m itching to finish off my little flitter robbery.”

Erik winced at a spike of pain in his back. Considering how many med patches he’d slapped on, the fact that he was still feeling things meant he’d need to spend serious time in bed resting and letting the nanites do their jobs.

“I understand loyalty,” Luca replied. “I understand it far better than you realize.”

“Do you?” Erik asked. “Is that because you’re a psycho like the doctor they poisoned in Provence, or is because you’re afraid to die?”

“My life is in my employers’ hands. I’m loyal to the people I work for not because of that, but because I believe in them. So much so that I’ve willingly made sacrifices, as have my men, to become stronger for them so as to be better able to serve them. I understand what it must feel like to have lost your soldiers on Molino, but I’m willing to share some information with you. Consider it a down payment in good faith because I understand loyalty.”

Erik motioned for Anne and Jia to move farther down the maze of crates. They kept low, and their movements slow. The jamming remained active, killing Luca’s access to cameras, and there were no drones around for laser comm tricks. Depending on what was in the crates, it might conceal their thermal signature. Surprise remained a possibility.

“I’m listening,” Erik replied. “Like I said, we’re not here to kill you, so anything you want to do to make us less likely to do that is to your advantage.”

“It’s about Molino and the men responsible. A group of men with no loyalty, mercenary scum. I have no more respect for their kind than you do.”

Erik didn’t respond. He already knew the chain of responsibility for Molino, but pointing that out might stop Luca from giving up something new.

“You saying the conspiracy wasn’t responsible?” Erik asked. “That some mercs were? That I’ve been chasing my tail around the galaxy for no good reason?”

“No, that would be too much. We both know you understand far more than that. It was ultimately my organization’s needs that led to the death of your soldiers, but if this is about revenge, it should be about the people who were there and those most directly responsible, should it not?”

“You think so?” Erik quietly set his rifle on the carryaid and grabbed the laser rifle. He doubted Luca was depending on a single Elite to save him.

“Those mercenaries were hired by the Ascended Brotherhood, a group I know you’re well-acquainted with,” Luca continued. “A group you battled on many occasions, a group of cyborgs you took out with surprising and impressive skill.”

Erik snickered. “You mean the losers we gutted on Venus? All that fancy cyborg tech didn’t mean much in the end. How much do they tell you, Luca? Did they tell you how their little factory blew up? It sounds to me like the conspiracy disposed of them. So much for loyalty.”

“Oh, I’m aware of the end of the Brotherhood, but I don’t consider it tragic if that’s your intent.”

Muffled clangs came from two different positions across the hangar. Erik had been right. There was more than one Elite. If they set up a crossfire, this team was done.

“Then what’s the point?” Erik asked. “The Ascended Brotherhood is dead. Why bring them up?”

“Yes,” Luca replied, practically hissing the last consonant. “They

are

dead, and that’s exactly why I mentioned them, but let me show you something else relevant to this discussion.”

Erik whipped his rifle up at movement in the center of the hangar. A large hologram appeared, a group of men on their knees with their hands bound behind their heads. Gunshots rang out, and a man fell forward with a hole in his head. The other men tried to stand and flee, but their unseen assailant kept shooting, and they were all dead in less than thirty seconds, lying in a growing pool of blood.

“Those were the survivors of the mercenaries who killed your soldiers,” Luca explained. “Some of the others perished on their way back from Molino for unrelated reasons. The ultimate point is, you’ve achieved your revenge. The Ascended Brotherhood is dead, as are the mercenaries. Those responsible for the deaths of your unit on Molino are all dead.”

Erik waved his hand at Jia in the distance and then gestured to her missile launcher. She nodded in understanding and switched weapons. With quiet, careful deliberation, she reloaded the missile launcher, leaving her with one last missile.

He snorted. “That’s like saying if I shot someone with my TR-7, they should get their revenge on the gun. The mercs did what they did because they were paid, and the Brotherhood did what they did because they were ordered to. They’re nothing more than the gun. I want the shooter. If you claim to understand me, you must know that.”

“Yes,” Luca replied. “They were ordered to kill your men by Sophia Vand, who is also dead.”

Erik’s heart sped up. He had no regrets about what had happened to Vand, but if the conspiracy was only Sophia Vand, he wouldn’t have been so busy since Venus. A man didn’t need to be an expert in psychology to know when someone was trying to manipulate him. It’d be convenient for the conspiracy to place all the blame on a dead woman to throw him off their tail.

It might have been true, but he doubted it. If the conspiracy wanted mercy, they could surrender to the ID and CID. The more they hid and played games, the more they begged Erik and Jia to come and kill them. They had hundreds if not thousands of deaths to answer for. Erik thought by the time this was all over, he’d find out they had millions.

Today, though, Erik wasn’t there for immediate satisfaction. He was there for whatever Alina’s analysts and Barbu’s records had helped him find. There was something important enough in the cargo flitter to cost ten men’s lives already, and its appropriation or destruction would wound the conspiracy a lot more than taking out a couple of Elites.

It was time to turn everything around on Luca.

“This is your last chance,” Erik yelled. “We’re not here for you and your toy bots, but if you want to fight us, we will kill you.”

“Bots?” The echoes made it sound like the entire hangar was laughing. “Is that what you think an Elite is? Oh, you deluded fool.”

“You programmed it to try to intimidate people.” Erik crept toward another gap between the crates, wondering if it was wide enough to not block the beam of his laser rifle. “I’ll give you credit, Luca. It was a tough bastard, and if we had not been properly geared up, it might have taken us out, but a bot’s just a machine in the end. And that’s the problem, a person can always outthink a bot. Your jamming is going to prevent you from directly controlling them, and even if you could, it’d be too hard to deal with all four of us and my friend outside.”

Erik didn’t consider Emma a bot. He no longer knew if “artificial intelligence” was a good description, considering how she was created. Making a human-like intelligence starting with a human was about as natural and non-artificial as he could imagine.

“Oh, I’m disappointed,” Luca replied. “But you and the Warrior Princess can’t always know what’s happening. The Elites aren’t bots. Don’t you understand? The Ascended Brotherhood was nothing more than a prototype of something grander, a better class of servant. Can you outthink a man who has the strength of a machine?”

Jia shivered in revulsion, resting her launcher’s tip against a crate. Anne and Kant didn’t look happy either.

“You’re saying that was a Tin Man we fought?” Erik asked.

“No, that’s the problem. A Tin Man is just that, a man with modifications, stuck in a basic humanoid shape. The Elites are something grander, a human brain in whatever shell needed.

We

are the ultimate soldiers.”

“It’s just a matter of time before Cybernetic Psychosis Syndrome sets in,” Erik countered. “You sick bastard. I don’t know what tricks they pulled with the Ascended Brotherhood, but at least they were closer to what the human brain evolved to handle. You really think you can run around like a spider and not have every part of you reject that? It might not have happened yet, but it’s going to.”

“You’re sure?” Luca asked. “You’re confident you understand. Humanity could have accomplished so much, but my employers aren’t bound by the feeble fears of the past. That’s why they’ll win.”

Erik frowned. Luca had sacrificed an Elite and an entire complex of bots and

yaoguai

to slow the team. Even his pathetic attempt to convince Erik the revenge was done seemed like a stall tactic. That suggested he wasn’t as confident as he sounded about his Elites.

Reinforcements? More Elites? That was a possibility. The other most likely explanation was that they’d planned to escape, but something had stopped them, something outside. Maybe Emma had contacted the locals, and the police, CID, and militia had the facility surrounded. There might already be piles of destroyed Elites outside.

“I bet most of the people who run the conspiracy are a lot like Sophia Vand,” Erik began. “And it’s hard not to notice she wasn’t a brain in a bot body. You’re an idiot. You’re being played, and we’re leaving this place with that flitter. If you want to live, you better find the back door to this place and skitter away to find someone to swap out your parts.”

Luca scoffed, derision thick in the sound. “Did you really think I’d agree to that?”

“Did you really think I’d walk away because you murdered some mercs and blamed everything on a conveniently dead woman?”

“A pity, Erik. Your death and Jia’s will make the UTC a worse place, but you, like those on Molino, are a necessary sacrifice.”

Kant replaced his magazine with AP rounds. “Ouch.” He whispered, “It’s like Anne and I aren’t here.”

Anne flipped the safety off her rifle. “I’m fine with not being on a first-name basis with a conspiracy nut.”

Erik nodded at Jia and kept his voice low. “Blow away the front of the cargo flitter.”

Jia stared at him. “What? Are you insane?”

“Take it out. The cargo’s not going to be in the front.” Erik inclined his head toward the doors. “We need to make sure they don’t get away. I don’t care what kind of souped-up can he’s riding. We saw it earlier. They can’t fly.”

“I’ll only have one missile after that.” Jia hoisted the launcher onto her shoulder and edged toward a break in the crates that gave her a clear shot at the flitter. “You sure?”

“It’s fine.” Erik patted his laser rifle. “I’ve got all the Elite remover we need.”