“Copy that, Poe, same on our approach vector. Marius can’t see it from Sword Base on any of his instruments, so it’s got to be something in the environment messing with our gear,” Womack responded in their comm-beads. “No clue why we feel the cold spots either.”
“Probably ghosts,” said Ranec, taking one hand off the grip of the machine gun to finger the combat knife he had mounted to his chest plate, a ceremonial blade from his home world of Polonia, “People everywhere used to believe in that sort of thing.”
“Well, if that’s the case, then we’re about to make a whole lot more of them,” quipped Womack. “Spin back up and stay on mission, let’s get this done.”
The six mercs in the canyon looked at each other, none of them feeling good about the scanner anomalies, though each knowing that there was a task at hand. Poe broke the silence by gunning his engine and rolling out, quickly followed by Strega and Berg.
Jada had experienced a great many oddities in her time as a Reaper and had learned, much like the other mercs, to take the bizarre in stride. Necrospace was a Pandora’s Box of terrors and treasures, and everyone present had long since accepted that some things were better left alone. A smart contractor did the job, got paid, and didn’t ask questions, either of the employer or the universe, because some answers were simply things no sane person ever wanted to know.
“Well, whatever they are, it sure hasn’t stopped the Basepholon working stiffs from making a play at the ink-rock deposits,” observed Jada as the three ATVs sped through the canyon, doing her best to ignore the continuous hits on the scanner and the inexplicable cold spots that made her body shiver. “Maybe it’ll help mask our approach.”
Ten minutes later, they were close enough to the objective that Jada could see the smoke stacks of the refinery.
There were six of them, much larger than she had anticipated, and their size indicated a truly massive refinery compound just out of sight. The startup corporation, Basepholon, was indeed placing all bets on this operation.
It was common for there to be startup corporations attempting to make their initial profits through exploiting the lawless sectors of necrospace. Competitors in the forgotten places of the universe were somewhat less numerous, though no less ferocious. These sorts of ‘smash and grab’ tactics were common among start-ups since they usually lacked sufficient funds to finance both industrial and military operations in tandem. They either hired cheap mercenaries to secure an initial holding, or set up an operation and hoped they could make a profit before anything more deadly than a few scavengers came looking for prey.
If a fledgling company like Basepholon could recoup their startup capital with such an operation, they could infuse their investment portfolio with raw cash and begin the grindingly slow process of becoming a player in the great corporate game. The fact that they’d been able to field both an industrial element and a military element meant that somewhere in the vastness of corporate space, there were a number of high-end investors waiting greedily for their rate of return and that the on-site management team would likely fight until the bitter end.
As Jada scanned the canyon edges, the HUD in her helmet’s interior pinged on a carefully concealed anti-aircraft battery. Had she been wearing her former Reaper helmet, the battery would not have been noticeable until she was nearly on top of it.
The Dire Sword rigs were far more advanced, and she was able to pick it out of the rock face with relative ease. She counted herself lucky that during the battle on Gedra Prime, she had not been one of the many Grotto soldiers to be faced with the Folken counter-attack. She was positive that such ocular tech was devastatingly effective in poor visibility conditions. The battery was stout; sporting a quad-cannon that likely fired flak rounds capable of shredding even the Dire Sword’s armored dropships.
While Basepholon might not have high-end Augur sentry droids or mercs from the Merchants Militant, they had scraped together enough funds for an impressive array of hardware none-the-less. For a company with the resources to land an industrial complex while also fielding armor units and a gunslinger cadre, they were taking quite the risk to put all of their efforts into this single play.
Such was the lure of the ruined worlds this side of the Ellisian Line, thought Jada as she let go of her machine gun and leaned over the side of the vehicle to grasp one of the tube-rockets mounted on the weapons rack.
Had the Basepholon facility gone unnoticed by the rightful claimants of this world, House Indron of Grotto Corporation, the company could have tripled or even quadrupled their investment if the ink-rock deposit was even half as large as the data suggested.
Too bad for Basepholon, thought Jada to herself as she hefted the tube launcher to her shoulder and peered through the target finder, because Boss Aiken seemed to relish opportunities to field the Dire Swords, like a child playing with deadly new toys.
This was the first time Jada had attempted to use the tube launcher in motion, not to mention while standing upon the ATV as it hurtled down the canyon floor. To her amazement, it was inexplicably easy and she felt the micro-fibers of her muscles and reinforced skeletal structure moving to compensate for the subtle shifts in pitch and balance.
Unlike the bulky plates of her former Reaper combat rig, the mag-armor was segmented, and it protected her while giving her unrestricted movement. It was positively exhilarating, and Jada realized there was a gentle growl deep in the back of her throat as the target finder locked onto the battery and coded red.
She squeezed the trigger and the tube launcher bucked with the blast of the rocket’s ignition. A projectile easily the length of her arm left the tube and shrieked towards the gun battery. Jada felt her mag-armor lock up, as it was designed to do in moments of impact or extreme g-force, and lend its support to her enhanced physique to keep her standing.
Instantly, Jada realized that had she been her former self and fired the weapon, which would have already been difficult considering the tube’s natural weight, she would have broken her spine and fallen off of the ATV.
The hardened tip of the rocket punched through the armor plating of the battery’s metal frame, exposing the compressed plasma warhead just behind the rocket’s tip.
Jada wasn’t familiar with that specific make and model of anti-air battery, but it had certainly looked expensive. Most of the Fenrir Industries anti-air models, and gun nests for that matter, kept their ammunition drums mounted on the outside of the gun for easy exchange. The engineers of Fenrir were well known for favoring weapons that had high rates of fire and cheap ammunition. This particular model, of unknown origin, must have kept the ammunition stored inside the armored frame, as the plasma explosion inside the rig ignited a secondary explosion that tore the battery apart from the inside out.
Jada and Poe were already speeding down the canyon by the time the secondary explosion hit. When she looked back, Jada couldn’t see any bodies being flung into the air. Likely they were slagged by the initial plasma blast, and judging from the size of the battery, it was likely that Jada had just ended the life of easily four to six individuals.
“Strega, battery two on your left!” shouted Poe just before swerving the vehicle to narrowly avoid a series of shots coming from a sentry crouching just inside one of the side passages above. “Sniper high and right!”
Jada had already slapped the empty tube launcher back into its place on the rack and was bringing her gun online. The merc saw that she didn’t have the angle to get her mounted weapon to bear, as they were already nearly past the shooter’s position, so she swiftly drew the sidearm holstered on her thigh. Jada took aim at the shooter, trusting in her instincts and experience to line it up perfectly, and squeezed the trigger twice. The shooter was in partial cover, but the standard Dire Swords sidearm fired magnum rounds, designed for maximum impact.