Part One "The Point": Section One "Ready to Rock"

“In position, Kel?”

“No imposition at all, boss.”

Kel could see Armand’s profile through the scope against the campus lawn. She could see the side of his face as he stopped and turned to the side, throwing a glance over his shoulder in her direction. She could almost make out his eyes, and with the noise filter engaged she could hear his every breath over comms.

“Are you ready or not?” His voice was hard.

She pushed the safety up with her thumb and touched the trigger with her index. The scope’s inner halo went lime green and the reticle appeared over the image, crisp and sterile. “Ready to rock.”

Armand hesitated. The thought of walking away crossed his mind. This new gunner gave off a vibe he didn’t like. The cowboy thing. It’s always like that, he told himself. With someone new it’s always like that.

“How about you, T.S.?”

“We’re guns up,” said Tirion. “Engines are hot. My guy in the P.A. has our clearance ready to log through once we get in the air."

Armand looked at the sky. The day was cold and overcast, with patches of pale sunlight bleeding through in places. The campus was quiet, like they were waiting for it, like they knew it was coming. The air was heavy and Armand wished it would rain. That would dampen noise and decrease visibility. That would help.

“Why doesn’t it rain?”

“It’s not going to rain,” said Tirion. “It was never going to rain.”

“You never know.”

“It never rains on Paris-16.”

“You never know,” said Armand. “Where’s the package?”

Armand’s eyes flicked as he scribed a message that appeared across the top of Tirion's retinal display.

[Armand: i dont like her]

Tirion let a grin escape as he scribed back — [Tirion: trust me]. At the same time, Tirion responded in voice over the team's open channel: “The package is still in the faculty office. They’re waiting for their alpha to come down before they escort him over. Alpha’s a couple floors up. He's rolling towards the elevator. ETA two minutes plus however long he wastes chatting up administration.”

[Armand: shes a cowboy]

[Tirion: her reps good - shes out to make a name]

[Armand: her last team got wet]

[Tirion: nobody blames her for that]

[Armand: “ready to rock” ?? ]

[Tirion: im telling you]

Armand was following the manicured trail that branched from the center of the quad. He was itching to do a press check, visually verify that there was a round chambered in his pistol. He knew it was there. He had gone through it beforehand because he had known he wouldn’t be able to now with corp-sec walking around all over the place and digital surveillance covering them from every angle. Even so, it gnawed at him, the urge for that life-saving obsessive-compulsive ritual—to tilt the barrel down and press the slide back just enough to peek down into the port, to glimpse that little bead of color winking back off the copper jacket. He could still hear his Uncle Steve saying: “The two loudest sounds in the world are a bang when you expect a click and a click when you expect a bang,” but a press check now was out of the question, and he knew it.

He could see the second-floor mezzanine where the hit was going to go down, the enclosed walkway of natural glass the size of a freight container that Franz Aikins, Stellar Core's V.P. of marketing, would have to pass through before and after the symposium. He was here to deliver a guest lecture, and the marketing studies building across from the symposium hall was where the reception was scheduled following his talk. The corporate photo-op that Aikins intended to create before and after—framed by that famous glass relic of the twenty-fifth century and surrounded by the autumn gold of ten thousand oak leaves—that photo-op was about to cost him, because Soul had found the access node controlling the shield projector their security had rigged for the event. In a couple minutes, Soul was going to drop the shield and there would be nothing left between Aikins and the barrel of Kel's heavy auto cannon but a couple inches of ancient glass. It was all going to come down to those HAC rounds.

Armand eased his right hand inside his coat and slid his palm over the pistol grip to refresh his muscle memory, then let the hand drop back to his side. The pistol was for effect more than anything, to get the V.P. on the ground so that Kel could put a few rounds on center mass. Armand had no idea how she’d handle the HAC once it started. T.S. had recruited her out of the Blithiol Chain, an enormous system in the heart of the United Euro Empire. He insisted that she was solid even though her last op had been a total wipeout that only she had survived. Still, Armand trusted Tirion's judgment. There was no time for anything else. That's why Kel was in, that and the fact that Team Blackout was down to a skeleton crew. There was just Armand, Soul, T.S., Finch, and now Kel. Soul and Tirion didn't like Finch much, but getting rid of him was a luxury they really didn't have. Finch knew what he was doing, and they needed the extra gun. For the time being, there was nothing to be done about his mouth.

The symposium building loomed above Armand as he approached it. A door led into a stairwell that would take him up to the second floor at the opposite end of the mezzanine that Aikins would use to cross from building H. Armand had walked himself through the procedure countless times in the past week on top of all the talk-throughs he’d done with his team, but it was only a plan and they’d had no way of conducting live runs, just sims in the ship’s computer based on maps that Soul had pulled off the university database.

There’s the plan, and then there’s the way it will go down.

Armand imagined himself coming to the top of the stairs and turning right, gray light from outside pouring through the glass dome, his eyes adjusting as he emerged from the stairwell. He would be ahead of Aikins by about fifteen seconds and, coming out in front of them, he would draw the attention of Aikins’ security. At this point he would have five to ten seconds before the sec-team would stop Aikins no matter where he was, but Aikins needed to come to a halt in the center of the mezzanine. All Armand had to do was pull that 10mm at the right time.

When they got a look at the pistol, security would take over and do all the rest for him. They would respond like any professional security team. It was the most rudimentary bodyguard reflex. Standard operating procedure: get the package on the deck. That would be priority one. Not even Aikins himself would be able to prevent that from happening. At that point, it would all be up to Kel.

Armand’s only job then was getting to the roof. Security would be busy trying to protect Aikins, and Kel could go to work. Once she started in with the HAC there would be glass flying everywhere. Students would be screaming. Nobody would bother chasing the guy who had flashed the pistol as long as the V.P. was under fire. It was an excellent plan, simple and clean, right up to the dual roof extractions at the end with the Recluse. That was going to be a little dicey even with T.S. in the chair.

But then, that was the design of the plan. There were no hard military assets allowed on campus, not even for a Stellar Core V.P., and the Recluse would chop their rifle teams apart in seconds. Stellar Core would scramble assets from off-site, but by then the Recluse would be headed for the point, and they’d make it through if Tirion’s phony clearance bought them even a little time with Paris-16 naval ops. The Recluse—a converted Constellation-class smuggling ship—was built for speed, and with T.S. flying her Armand wasn’t worried, but what they really needed was a dedicated pilot to free up Tirion. A good pilot wasn’t easy to come by, especially not a professional willing to take on the corps. They needed a rare commodity—a professional anarchist, and a sane one at that. A tall order.

Armand reached the corner of building S at the edge of the quad. There was a solid metal door set into a brick facade. He took the handle, pressed the latch, and felt the crisp release and the suck of air. Stepping inside at the bottom of the stairwell, he stopped as the door sealed shut behind him. Pulling out some university pamphlets, he stood under the surveillance array, pretending to read through the symposium program booklet as he waited for the count to start.

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