Millie the Gunsinger

Day Four – Morning

We met Daniel-san at the appointed time in an underground carpark close to his office. It serviced a number of local businesses but at this time of the morning there was no-one else around.

Twenty was all alert and sparkly. I was downright grumpy and tired. My entire body felt like one big bruise. Daniel-san had a little laugh when he saw me and handed me a coffee and Danish that he thoughtfully brought along. You can have me bright or you can have me early. Pick one.

His war buddies were already here. I had met one of them before at the office – Luke Chang. He was a Malay Chinese of average height but very solid. He had a buzz cut hairstyle just like Twenty’s. His left eye was a cybernetic replacement, caused by when he got the wicked scar that ran from his forehead all the way down to his cheekbone. I did not know what his role was back in the days of the war, but Daniel-san always used him to bring in bounties known for armed assault.

The other person I did not know. She was a tall, blonde haired Aryan type with hooded blue eyes. Daniel-san introduced her as Gudrun Thorsfeldt. She looked mature but surely she was too young to have fought alongside my boss in the war? There were no obvious implants other than a subtle induction port on her temple. When she greeted myself and Twenty she had a hint of what sounded like a Scandinavian accent. But with my talent for accents she could have been from New Zealand for all I knew.

Both were dressed in black tactical gear and boots. Daniel-san was in urban camouflage with similar boots. They all had webbing and pouches with some cool looking items attached. Gudrun even had a short Ninjato sword strapped to her back. Way cool!

Twenty was in her Guard uniform, vest and gear. She had even found time to clean her boots and mine. The Demons cap was on her head with the red logo providing the only colour.

For my outfit, I had chosen my favourite black t-shirt, black cargo shorts and my Doc Martens. Sal’s Akubra was tilted back at a jaunty angle on my head. I had brought my vest but I was not sure it was up to the coming fight. My backpack was sitting snugly in place with the usual stuff inside.

“What the hell are you wearing Millie?” wondered Daniel-san, eyeing off my skinny legs poking out of the shorts.

“These are my Tactical Shorts” I assured him.

Before he could doubt my military fashion sense further, a black van appeared at the top of the ramp and drove slowly down into the lot. The professionals all tensed and looked alert. I stifled a big yawn and slumped against a wall.

The driver pulled up near us and got out of the van. It was a Jack from the Guard, wearing a uniform identical to Twenty’s but no armour. I guess that was a sign of good faith.

He walked over to stand before the group but his flat, expressionless eyes focussed on Twenty and I.

“Good morning, Millie and Twenty” said a surprisingly chipper voice. I realised it was Jericho-Three speaking directly through the Jack. “This the rest of the team then?” he continued and looked over our companions with interest. “Yes, this will work” he concluded.

Daniel-san and his Freelancers were still tense and wary I could see. Most of us had avoided interaction with the Guard before now, and this energetic conversation was unnerving.

Luckily he got down to business after that. The side doors of the van were opened to reveal a smorgasbord of guns, grenades, body armour and combat helmets. A large black bag and a long, heavy plastic case were given specially to Twenty by the Jack.

“Consider this your retirement gift from the Guard” said Jericho to her.

She looked in the bag and found a folded black uniform and armour vest. It was in her size and looked very much like her old outfit but was in a basic black instead of Guard blue. There were no insignia either. Stacked in there were a half dozen magazines of ammunition for her pistol too.

The black case had snap releases down the longer side. She flipped it open and I gaped at the two meter long weapon inside. It was some kind of rifle on steroids.

“What the hell is that thing?” I demanded as Twenty was running her hands over it.

Daniel-san had come and stood beside me and was looking with interest.

“Rail Gun” he said at the same time as Twenty answered “It’s a Linear Accelerator Rifle with depleted Uranium smart rounds”.

I swung my gaze between the two of them. “It’s both” said Daniel-san in answer to my unspoken question. “It uses electromagnets to accelerate metallic shells up to hypersonic velocity. You can kill a tank with one round from these things. Hell, you can probably shoot a hole in the moon”.

“It looks heavy” was my observation. To prove me wrong, Twenty hefted the hardware onto her shoulder with ease and looked at me with a gleam in her eye. It was like Christmas for gun nuts I guess.

In short order we had collected what we needed. I strapped on a new black armour vest that seemed to be a good fit. Daniel-san knocked my Akubra off and placed a black helmet on my head. He tightened the chin strap and asked me how it fit.

I jiggled my head around and said It felt loose. He told me to stop jiggling my head then.

Daniel-san had selected an Assault Rifle similar to the Guard ones and half a dozen magazines of ammunition. His buddies had selected the same, plus some grenades.

“Are they all Armour Piercing?” he inquired of Jericho as he inspected each one.

“Yes” said Jericho. “The Guards will deploy with Suppression Rounds only, ostensibly to avoid any risk to the cargo in a firefight. The drones in support will be carrying AP though, so they will need to be a priority target”

“The drones are yours, Millie and Twenty” said Daniel-san. “Chang, Thorsfeldt and I will engage the Guards”.

“Very good” said Jericho. He faced us all. “Good luck to you all. This is not how I wanted to get Otaki and Emily out of Yamaguchi’s hands, but I thank you for taking this risk”.

He bowed deeply and then got into the van. Just before he drove off he gave a nod to Twenty. She nodded solemnly back and the vehicle moved away.

I sidled up to her. She was trembling just a little. “Are you OK?” I asked.

“That was my Squad Commander, Unit B-Nineteen” she answered. “He will be leading the convoy this afternoon”. What a load of crap this was turning into I thought.

=====

Across the lot was a big van. It was a faded green, with a lot of rust visible in the body. It had tinted windows and new tyres though. When we clambered into the back door, I could see the interior was lined with Ceramite plates and ballistic weave.

Daniel-san and Chang took the front seats and Twenty, Thorsfeldt and I took seats in the back. They were solidly mounted and had proper harnesses to hold us in place. I wondered who my boss had borrowed this from.

Twenty took a seat right beside me of course. Thorsfeldt looked at the two of us, smiled to herself, and sat down directly opposite me.

The electric drive started up and the big vehicle smoothly moved out and up the ramp. In no time at all we were rolling through the streets of the Spit. There were no windows in the back section so I could only see our route by looking out the front windows.

Thorsfeldt watched me for a bit and asked me if I was really a Gunsinger. She said she had not met a lot of the Awakened until she came to the Zone. I was surprised, as I had thought there were a lot of various Psykers scattered around the world.

“Not so many as you think. Most of those who attend an Awakening Centre are disappointed. The success rate even for those with the right genome is very low” she responded. “The outside world does not like the idea of powerful humans running around. They try and keep tabs on them at all times”

I had always considered the Zone to be a closely watched and governed place. Maybe in some ways it was more free than I had thought. There were plenty of Awakened here at least – I kept running into them all the time!

As we drove, Twenty took out the new black uniform that Jericho had delivered. Without a care she stripped off her old Guard uniform and dressed in the black outfit. Thorsfeldt and I admired her toned body as she did this. Then I noticed Chang was watching the show from up front and glared at him until he looked away.

Once we were clear of the city, Chang handed us all small earpieces. These were all secure communication devices, linked by heavy duty algorithms that even Archimedes would take time to crack. That was the theory anyway.

With mine stuck in my ear, I tried talking to Twenty.

“Twenty, Twenty, do you copy?” I said to the microphone against my cheek.

“Yes, Millie, I can hear you” she replied. She looked at me sitting next to her. “I can hear you quite clearly”.

“Maybe give it a try once we are in the field” suggested Chang from the front and in my earpiece.

“Copy that” I said professionally and leaned back in my seat. I could see Thorsfeldt looking at me with a smile. She winked at me then turned her gaze to the front windows.

Our route was deliberately chosen to avoid the major roads. We raced down deserted side roads, gravel tracks and even cross country at one stage. The van had good handling and negotiated it all with ease. It was a bumpy ride in the back so I spent a lot of it laughing and hanging onto Twenty’s arm. She seemed quite happy with that.

The destination was a stretch of country road about twenty kilometres south of Pan City. This was the route that the convoy was planned to take to reach the private airfield.

There was a large international airport at Pan City plus a couple of smaller fields for VTOLs and helicopters to use. Jericho-Three had set it up that for security reasons Otaki and Emily would be sent offshore using this field instead. He apparently used it regularly for other clandestine flights in and out of the Zone. I could not help but appreciate the irony that this gave us exactly the opportunity to snatch them back.

Our plan was to intercept the convoy here about midway between Pan City and the airfield. This gave us theoretically about a five minute window before any support aircraft or drones could reach the ambush site from the city or airfield.

In that time we had to neutralise the defences, get our people into our own transport, and be clear of the vicinity. Once we were in the open we would head to a different location where Jericho-Three would have a stealthed smuggler VTOL waiting.

A simple plan. It could go pear-shaped in any number of ways but we were committed to it now. In principal we knew what we were facing and had inside help. It just had to work.

Daniel-san had summed up our situation quite neatly before we headed out.

“We have been given a job to do. It won’t be pretty and there will be some people who won’t go home afterwards. But our Client is also our Target. He wants it to look good but the odds are as stacked as they can be in our favour. Let’s go earn some Pandas” he finished.

“Yes Lieutenant!” chorused Chang and Thorsfeldt. They gave him a snappy salute.

“Aye, aye, Captain!” I added and gave my version of a salute. My hand bounced off the oversized helmet he was making me wear so it was kind of sloppy.

Twenty did not say anything but she added her own salute to the rest.

=====

Day Four – Afternoon

“I’m hot” I complained to Twenty.

We were lying in the shade of some gum trees looking down from a low ridge at the dusty road below. A camouflage net was tied above us to obscure our heat signature and outline from any drones flying overhead.

Twenty was lying comfortably on the ground beside me, her oversized Rail-gun against her shoulder. She was studying the road and area around it with the weapon’s integral sighting array. She had a visor that fed to the sights and relayed tactical data to her. It was all very cool but I was bored and sweaty now.

“Just stay still and drink some water” she calmly replied. ”The convoy is going to arrive soon and you need to be ready”.

My role had been explained in some detail by Daniel-san. We were Team One, Chang was Team Two and Daniel-san and Thorsfedt were Team Three.

I was to help Twenty reload her weapon and replace the charge packs that powered it. The magazines carried ten long shells each and we had four of those in total. There was one charge pack fitted to the rear of the rifle already and we had a spare one beside us. At full output the packs would fire twenty shots each before being expended.

If we took any return fire I was to use my Gunsinger to shield us. We were too far from the road for me to use my offensive powers.

I knew Daniel-san had planned all of this to keep me as far as possible from the actual fighting. This bummed me out, because it meant he did not think I was capable of being in combat. He also wanted to keep me safe, that was obvious.

I had been given a pair of electronic binoculars by Chang. They could zoom in and out at the touch of a button and even record what was being observed. I picked up them up and once again tried to spot our companions.

They had set up in small hollows down near the road. Chang was to my left and Thorsfeldt and Daniel-san were together on the right. Their positions were covered by the same kinds of netting that Twenty and I were under but lower to the ground.

I had seen them get into position but ten minutes later I was unable to accurately locate them by sight. They were good at this kind of work. I imagined them laughing behind my back at how clumsy I was. My eyes burned a little as I pondered the risk I had blithely asked them to take on my behalf. If this went bad and they got killed I doubted I could live with myself. Assuming I was not dead already.

“It will be fine” said Twenty at my side. She must have picked up on my apprehension.

I reached out a hand and laid it on her shoulder.

“Thanks Twenty, for being here with me” I said softly.

She might have been about to say more when she stiffened slightly and spoke into our earpieces “Contact”.

A drone was buzzing down the road about fifty meters in the air, the sunlight glinting off its body and whirling rotors. It passed by overhead without pausing. Not long after there was a dust cloud visible. Three vehicles appeared on the road, moving steadily, and two more drones escorting them in the air, keeping pace.

I felt my Gunsinger stir as my adrenalin began to surge. I crossed my fingers for good luck and asked the Universe to let this go as planned.