War Criminals by Gavin Smith (ereader for textbooks .TXT) 📕

mechs. Miska knew that advanced sensor systems would be searching for her Sneaky Bastards. Suddenly all the umbilicals connecting Mass’s Medusa to the cradle exploded away from the mech. It stepped out from the cradle, the 30mm railgun already firing. Mass put round after round into the other mech, shooting continuously as he moved far enough away from the cradle for the back-mounted plasma cannon to swing into place. Both weapons firing, Mass’s mech advanced on the Triple S Medusa. Plasma fire ate through the other war machine’s thick armour. Doubtless the Triple S pilot was competent enough but they hadn’t expected the sheer ferocity of Mass’s attack.

Mass concentrated all of his fire on the torso. It was the most heavily armoured area because it was where the pilot sat. Mass was firing plasma bolt after plasma bolt into the chest and concentrating the railgun fire in the same place. The Triple S mech came to a halt. Material that shouldn’t burn flamed as the huge armoured humanoid figure became a pyre. It was quite beautiful, Miska decided, as she became aware of the base’s forces broadcasting their surrender on all frequencies. She ordered the expert system embedded in the virus to stop killing.

Chapter 2

There was running. The Sneaky Bastards’ first squad remained with the mechs. Second squad raced past the still-burning mech for the hangar. Third squad were running for the two Harpy-class heavy lift drop shuttles. Miska could hear the Harpies powering up as she walked between the mechs, making for the hangar.

‘Hangman-One-Actual to Heavy-One-Actual, I want those Harpies covered by your mech,’ Miska told Mass over the comms link, using her command override to cut through all the chatter.

‘The … uh … what, boss?’ Mass asked.

‘The heavy drop shuttles, the mech carriers,’ Miska told him. She could feel the heat of the burning mech as she closed with it. There was something primeval about the huge, humanoid-shaped war machine on fire. She felt the ground shake as Mass passed her in his own Medusa, railgun and plasma cannon levelled at the two heavy shuttles.

She sent a command to the virus to have the SAM emplacements missile-lock the two Harpies. The virus responded immediately but Miska still wasn’t happy. She knew she should have a hacker in the net. The expert systems were too vulnerable but she needed to be out here. There were a number of good choices for combat hacking, legionnaires who’d all but fulfilled the role when they had been career criminals. The problem was they presented the biggest threat to her failsafes, to the tiny nano-explosives she’d replaced the bomb collars with. The deactivation codes for the nanobombs were well protected but nothing was completely safe and these were people whose job it had been to break through computer security. Miska could have done it herself but she was supposed to be command now, something she had never wanted.

‘Under the articles of conflict agreed upon by—’ a husky-voiced woman started over the same comms link the Triple S commander had used to surrender.

‘One of those Harpies leaves the ground by even so much as an inch and I’ll blow you out of the air. Leave the engines cycling. If you’re not out of that shuttle and face-down in the dirt in thirty seconds flat, I’ll blow you into the air.’ She cut the comms link. Her dampeners kicked in as the Bastards’ two Pegasus assault shuttles screamed overhead, manoeuvring engines burning as they bled off speed. The two vaguely insectile, armoured pieces of airborne military tech, bristling with weapons, circled over the base. The first Pegasus touched down while the other covered it from the air. The loading ramp was already down, her Bastards sprinting from the shuttle. Time was key here. They had maybe twenty minutes before Triple S’s quick reaction force reached their position. If they had fast-movers, atmosphere fighters, then they’d be there all the faster but that was what the multi-role missile launchers were for.

The Bastards had been able to take the mech base because it was far enough behind the New Sun’s forces’ lines that they were overconfident with their security protocols. Triple S were far too reliant on their automated systems as well. Such things were only as good as their weakest link, and said link was almost always found in the pinkware, a person. It appeared that her handler, Raff, had found the weakest link and exploited it. They would not have been able to pull this off without his help.

Thank Christ for the weird no-orbit rules, Miska thought. She could understand why the articles of conflict for this particular little mercenary proxy war stipulated no space combat. Ships were expensive and she wouldn’t have wanted to risk the Hangman’s Daughter in a space battle. The huge prison barge had been built as a troop carrier close to a hundred-and-fifty years ago. She might have been well armoured, designed to take a pounding getting troops into place, but she was no warship. The no-orbit rule insisted on by the New Sun megacorporation, the aggressors in this particular undeclared war, and Stirling Security Solutions’ employer, was just one more thing that didn’t make any sense. It did, however, mean a lack of satellite surveillance, and that meant that bases didn’t have geosynchronous orbital coverage that could hit the Bastards with particle beam weapons, or drop a Quick Reaction Force on their head as fast as terminal velocity in the moon’s .75G would carry them. It was, however, just another part of this war that didn’t make sense.

The first Pegasus clawed its way back into the humid air. Even with her inertial armour’s coolant system running hard Miska was covered in sweat. The air was so humid it was like inhaling liquid.

The passengers from the Pegasus were sprinting towards the hangar, the low loaders and the heavy drop shuttles. Miska was gratified to see that the Harpy crews had emerged and were