Obsidian's War The Winter City

Gel sat down on the chair held for him by Theo at Fort Apache’s entertainment complex.

“How’s life on the perimeter Squad Leader?”

Theo had passed his much shorter squad leader course well before Gel finished his officer training and had been posted to a front line company. Before he left, Gel had read Theo the riot act over not messing with any female soldiers in his squad. After arriving at Fort Apache he had also spoken with the squad leader’s female platoon leader who declared that the former hit man had proved a useful person to have around.

“Cold Gel.. sir,” he added when Gel looked at him. They had agreed that outside of the apartment and social situations on Lighthold Theo would call Gel “sir”.

“Parkinson,” said Gel acknowledging the other infantryman sitting at the table. He was one of the school leavers who had survived the jungles of Outpost-3. “Still on the storm cannon?”

“Yes, sir,” said Parkinson, grinning. “Keeping it firing in the cold is a real problem.”

“I bet,” said Gel. “Much to fire at out there?’’

“A few shots,” said Theo. “Hoodies always testing our perimeter. One of the platoons let its guard down and copped a couple of wounded, but we did okay. Now it’s one week defrosting, then two weeks having our butts frozen off again on the perimeter.”

“He’s not kidding about the butts, sir,” said Parkinson. “We have to be careful even dropping our pants to do a shit. One guy in another company was found dead with his arse literally frozen. Its cold out there.”

“Thought you’d be out with us... sir,” said Theo. “But I hear one of the dock workers got thrown through a door.”

“I just got out of the way when he rushed about,” said Gel. “It’s hardly my fault if he was that anxious to get back to work.”

“Seems a lot of stuff happens when you’re around that ain’t your fault, sir,” said Theo.

“Maybe,” said Gel, “but I want to ask your advice about a problem I have.”

By that time the evening’s live entertainment had started on a stage at one end of the complex. A string of bare-shouldered beauties led by a striking, raven-haired Italianesque model type went into a spirited rendition of Venus.

She’s got it

Yeah baby, she’s got it

Well, I’m your Venus

I’m your fire

At your desire

Gel thought the singing may have been slightly off-key. The mostly male audience didn’t care.

“Got a thing for the one at the end,” said Theo.

“The blonde? She’s cute but the dark-haired, tall Italian type lead is more me.”

“Talking about hotties,” said the squad leader, “please tell me this problem is about Athena – man that lady is so hot.”

Athena/Heather had come to the apartment a few times while Theo had been there, telling him the previously agreed cover story that she was “in administration” in a private trust. As it was a private trust, she could not give any details about the work. Theo had also brought ladies home, picked up from the bars of Five-ways, which Gel tolerated on the strict understanding that his real name was not to be used. He was officer-cadet Brandon.

Theo listened, keeping his eyes on the stage, while Gel told him about the arms shipment, speaking loudly to be heard over the music. Parkinson, absorbed in the performance, paid no attention.

“Arms mean a lot of volume to ship in, man… sir. Guns and ammo take up space – and the real bulk is ammo. Did an arms dealer once who was having trouble getting his product onto Lighthold.”

“Don’t tell me what you’ve done,” said Gel, sharply. “I don’t want to know. What should I be looking for?”

“They wouldn’t bring it into the port if they could help it. Maybe they’d do what they use to do with drugs – air drops. The transports into Apache don’t worry about being over Hoodie lines if they’re high enough – no high-alt Hoodie missiles. We’ve seen the lights of transports above us on the perimeter. Need containers that wouldn’t show up on radar and be small enough for parachute drops. The parachute w’d be set to open real low and it’d drop into snow.”

“Maybe they load in orbit after they clear Lighthold station, so no record at the loading end?” said Gel.

“Like ships smuggling drugs on Earth... sir,” said Theo. “But in drugs a few kilos of product goes a long way. Arms and ammo mean volume, and they’ve been shipping combat helmets – older models and not all the Hoodies have got ’em but it all adds up to bulk. Even one of the space freight containers wouldn’t go far. You’d need a heap of ’em.”

Theo was not talking about the big shipping containers that had been standard for sea freight on Earth for decades but the much smaller version that was easier to fit inside an interstellar transport, and more flexible in organising different types of cargoes.

Gel thought that he did not have the authority to require checks while the transport was still in orbit. The group on stage had switched to another, more recent song, the dark-haired lead going solo for a time. Parkinson had not looked around at all.

“What gets me, sir,” said Theo, “is why would they smuggle through here?”

“What’s wrong with here?”

“All the action’s at Fort Bravo. It’s just three companies here, holding the line and picking up refugees who get through the snow to us from Jasper. They have two whole regiments at Bravo getting ready to fight their way into Crown.”

Like Jasper just to Fort Apache’s North, Crown had also been completely ruined in the civil war and was now an icy, unforgiving wasteland.

“Bravo has its own transport port, doesn’t it?” said Gel.

“Bigger than ours and more stuff going through,” said Theo. “That’d be the place to go.”

Gel thought about this while watching the lead singer and wondered whether a search of the port records would turn up anything at all.

***

Yvonne Winter was wearing a simple, backless, silver dress which was attracting a lot of male attention at the harbour side bar when Gel, still on his officers training course, walked in.

“I thought that people in your line of work tried to be inconspicuous,” he said sitting in the booth across the table from her. “The guys are all checking you out in that dress.”

Yvonne smiled and shrugged her bare shoulders. She had declined attempts from two men to buy her drinks and sit at the table. She smiled. “You complement well, Mr Obsidian. The people who trained me tried to tell me to keep a low profile, but I might draw more attention to myself meeting handsome men while dressed as a frump.”

“Handsome – I’m complemented back but while out socially my name is Brandon. My real name attracts too much attention.”

“I suppose it would,” she said. “Very well Mr Brandon, and as we’ve been keeping tabs on you I know its officer-cadet Brandon, we do have one piece of business to attend to. I was followed in here.”

“Heavy-set guy with a drink at the bar seemingly absorbed in the news program?”

“Very good, Mr Brandon,” she said quietly. “How did you spot him?”

“I got caught out a while back at being followed. Since then I’ve been practising at noticing what’s going on around me. He doesn’t fit the crowd. He has a sports-coat thing but he’s too down market, plus he’s about the only guy here who doesn’t have one eye on you, at least not obviously, despite today’s news being boring. This isn’t a gay bar.”

“If you ever feel the need to change careers, Mr Brandon, then The Eye has a place for you.”

“Thanks, but at least as a soldier I know which way to shoot,” he said. “How come you’ve got an entourage anyway? Who has it in for The Eye on Lighthold?”

“A good question,” said Yvonne. “I started getting this attention after I gave you my card. Did you show it to anyone, like that gorgeous sex-worker girlfriend of yours?”

“Hmmm! I didn’t show her the card. Athena saw you and asked who you were. I told her you were a journalist looking for an interview and that seemed to satisfy her.”

“Okay but you didn’t destroy the card?”

“Didn’t think I had to,” said Gel. “I put it in a desk drawer at home.”

“Who’s been in your place, then?”

“I have a lodger – the other guy with me in the bar at the Easy Spice shootout. You know about that I guess.”

Yvonne nodded.

“Athena has been there as well as various young ladies my lodger has picked up at bars in Five Ways. He used to work as an enforcer there.”

“Classy suspect list,” said Yvonne. “We can worry about all that later. Right now, I’m concerned about walking around at night in this dress with heavy set at the bar and his partner outside - boyish face, thin moustache – tailing me. I sort-of got the impression they were seizing me up for a snatch.”

“You didn’t drive here?”

“Took a taxi, and they can be difficult to get about now. In any case I want to ditch my tails before I get into a taxi.”

“I drove. I’m in a car park down the street, but would they try anything in the club precinct?”

“A club area is good for that sort of thing, if the snatchers know what they’re doing. Lots of people around, but some of them drunk and plenty looking for hook-ups. A lot can go unnoticed.”

“Your business I guess, but I can still give you the lift.”

“If you want to help,” said Yvonne smiling, “you can pretend to break up with me.”

***

Gel and Hartmann were not making some progress in their hunt for arms shipments.

“About all I could find that wasn’t flagged in the initial search was this,” said Hartmann, showing Gel a list of containers on his screen. Gel’s first act on the day after his conversation with Theo, was to visit the former hacker at his desk in the admin centre. “I had the base AI scan for container loads – how much was in each container, compared to similar containers.”

“That’s a refrigerated container,” said Gel looking at the list, “and its already left the port.” As had been standard for many decades, all shipping containers had Radio Frequency Identification chips which meant they could be tracked constantly.

“It’s back in a warehouse in Lighthold,” said Hartman. “What’s interesting is that the same container has made the trip a couple of times and each time it seems to carry less than an identical container with the same load I found.”

“Hmmm, false compartment maybe?” said Gel. “All containers go back empty from here I guess?”

“No industry to export anything, sir.”

“Okay, worth a look if and when it comes back. Good work. We’ve got no news on when it might return?”

“It’s not inbound, sir. I can flag it, so we’ll know when it turns up again.”

“Do it, also I want you to look at flight paths. Theo says the guys on the perimeter see the lights of transports above them sometimes. What about Bravo? Do the transports often go over Hoodie-controlled territory there?”

“I can check, sir, but I know the transports coming to here have been warned not to do that, as we never know when the Hoodies might get hold of some missiles, but some seem to do it anyway. Something about cutting travel time.”

“Can you check if any one transport company does that and if there’s anything odd about the journey to here for those transports?”

Hartmann thought about this for a moment. “Air drops, you mean, Lieutenant?”

“One possibility,” said Gel. “Just concentrate on those for the moment, if you can.”

“Sure,” said Hartmann.

***

To the man at the bar, the couple looked to be having an intense relationship discussion. Ostensibly watching the news feeds on the bar screen he could see the couple out of the corner of his eye. He passed on the information to his confederates via a microphone in his coat sleeve. The bar tender noticed the man apparently talking into his sleeve and realised it must be part of a surveillance operations but couldn’t work out who was being targeted. Then he figured that, if nothing happened in the bar, it was none of his business.

“Trouble between our two friends,” the man whispered.

“Can see it,” said the confederate just outside. “Looks intense.”

“Do we know who the guy is?” said a second confederate, a woman driving a van used by the unit. She had not been spotted by Yvonne.

“We’ve got his pic,” said the man at the bar, “we’ll match it later. Hold on.”

The woman went through what seemed to be a “its not you it’s me” speech with the man sagging apparently in despair then putting his hand on her arm as she rose to go.

“Give it up, kid,” muttered the confederate outside. “Once it’s gone that far you can’t salvage it.”

“This is from your vast relationship experience?” said the woman.

“I know all about being dumped, sure,” retorted the outside confederate.

“Game on guys,” said the man at the bar. “She’s going.”

“What about the dumpee?” said the man outside.

“Later for him,” said the inside man. “We’ll have a close and personal discussion with this Yvonne first.”

Yvonne marched out of the bar head high, leaving an apparently dejected former boyfriend behind. Gel continued to act dejected, peering into his light beer, until the man at the bar had left, then he got up and followed. The bar tender also noticed some of this but figured that, as the surveillance operation had moved on, it still wasn’t his problem.

Outside Gel found that following his target, the heavy-set man, was comparatively simple in the club-district crowds. The spy had told Gel to get clear while she walked to the self-drive rank of cars at the far end of the club district. From there she would drive away, lose her admirers and set about the business of changing addresses and identity. However, Gel thought that the least he could do was to see she got safely into the self-drive, then vanish himself. So, he followed the people who were following Yvonne.

As the spy had said the crowd was mostly about getting to a club or a restaurant or about hooking-up, not about noticing what everyone else was doing, and Yvonne’s followers never thought that they would be followed by anyone, let alone their target’s supposedly dumped boyfriend. Gel soon identified the confederate who was also walking behind Yvonne and to her left.

This procession of followers and those following the followers led by Yvonne reached the self-drive car rank, only for the spy to find that all the cars had been rented. The last one drove away just as she reached it. Then she realised that the crowd had thinned out. The club district buildings had been built out of brown stones and the streets paved with cobbles to give it what the developers hoped was an old world feel, many light years from the old world of earth. That old world feel extended to a dark alley branching off the main road just beyond the self-drive rental point. The two man closed on Yvonne, laughing and saying “Hey Yvonne”. She turned to face her abductors grabbing for something in her handbag. Then the younger abductor, still laughing to allay suspicion, pressed a hand to her neck and she went limp.

“She’s had a skinful again,” said the heavy set man loudly, as the two abductors stopped Yvonne from falling. A panel van came down the road and turned into the alley. Realising what was about to happen, Gel started running.

***

A couple of days after asking Hartmann to look at flight paths, and with little happening at the docks, Gel dropped in find out whether the technical private had made any progress.

“I’m still checking, sir,” said Hartmann. “But there’s some weird shit going on in other areas, as Alyssa might say. Captain Barastoc asked me to check excavations in the area and I found two containers way outside the base.”

“Excavations?”

“Sure, sir, a lot of facilities are underground on Dimarch ’cause of the cold, but you still can’t go around digging holes without getting a permit or authorisation which gets lodged with one of the Dimarch departments. The captain told me they’re looking at expanding the base and want to know if there are any handy holes.”

“You found these handy holes?”

“Found this.” Hartmann brought up blueprint on his screen. “It’s some sort of buried bunker, offsite HQ, something a couple of klicks out along the main access road to the perimeter.”

“You’ve got the blueprints – there’s nothing to say who built it or why?”

“Some corporation, sir. I couldn’t find anything more on the corporation, but my guess is some sort of off-site IT crash recovery centre. Lots of open areas labelled server rooms. But the scan also shows RFID chips for two containers.”

“That is interesting,” said Gel. “Where are the containers from? What’s in them?’

“That’s where it gets really weird, sir,” said Hartmann. “They’re cargo containers, but the numbers aren’t in our systems. Queried Lighthold but haven’t got an answer yet.”

“I see,” said Gel. “Just two kilometres out off the main road, you say.”

“Well, yes, sir,” said Hartmann, sensing that he was about to be dragged away from the warm admin block. “The facility will be completely buried under the snow. Even finding the entrance might be difficult.

“Will Captain Barastoc release you for a quick field trip to help me find the entrance?”

“Well, sir, I..”

“Going out into the field will look really good to a certain squad leader under my command, especially if I go out of my way to emphasise your heroic role.”

“Hmmmm,” said Hartmann, then sighed. “When will we go, sir?”

***

Busy manhandling their captive into the van, neither man saw Gel until he hit the bigger operative hard and low. All three sprawled onto the floor of the van, Gel on top. The soldier had a weapon, a collapsible stick. He could hardly carry a police baton around with him, but the collapsible stick could be extended to the length of his forearm in a moment. A half twist turned it rigid and a hard rubber knob at the end meant that a blow from it would sting, hopefully without causing death or permanent injury. When Gel had ordered it from Earth after his encounter with Dwight and Leo, the catalogue description had said that the device might not be “carried legally in some jurisdictions”. Gel was not sure about the weapon’s legal status on Lighthold but thought it would be better if the police did not find it.

The soldier had the stick out and rigid as he fell into the van and swung it hard at the moustache’s right arm, as that individual reached inside his coat, probably for a gun. The man yelped. His arm went limp.

“What the hell,” said the woman driver turning around. She saw what was happening then grabbed for something under her seat. Gel dropped the stick, dragged the thickset man up by main force and rammed him hard, face first, against the wire netting which screened off the driving compartment from the storage space, stomping on the moustache man’s face in the process. Gel glimpsed a shoulder holster strap on his opponent. He reached under the man’s coat, grabbed the pistol while his opponent was still pinned, flicked the safety off and pointed it at the driver who was now pointing her own pistol at the pair.

“You want to shoot first,” said Gel from behind his opponent. “Your friend seems thick enough to take a couple of bullets for me.”

“Bastard,” said his opponent, face hard against the wire, pinned by the soldier. Gel ignored him.

The woman, a hard-faced 30s something, dropped her weapon.

“Now drive,” said Gel, throwing his thick set opponent hard against the van wall and stepping back to hook the legs of the still inert Yvonne out of the way before shutting the van’s sliding door, just as a club goer looked in.

“What going on…” the clubber said, before the door was shut.

The van had not moved.

“Drive you fool,” said Gel pointing his newly acquired pistol at the driver, “or there’ll be a flock of concerned citizens in here, and you’ll have way more explaining to do than me.”

As they drove away Gel saw, out of the van’s back windows, the clubber on his phone.

***

“You want sidearms, sir?” said the squad leader at the front counter of the base armoury.

“Yes, two of us are going to check out some bunkers inside the perimeter,” said Gel, “and want to be safe rather than sorry. I’ve been caught without a weapon before.”

“I can’t just issue side arms, sir.”

Gel had come prepared for that with a special authorisation letter from the Colonel Lee which the squad leader examined suspiciously then checked with Lee’s assistant, before reluctantly handing over two standard issue pistols with spare magazines, a box of ammunition, holsters and combat helmets.

“All to be accounted for, sir,” said the squad leader, as Gel and Hartmann signed lengthy disclaimer forms. “They’ve been really down on issuing weapons inside the base.”

“I understand,” said Gel. “Our Hoodie friends are getting them from somewhere.”

They grabbed a lift to the bunker in one of the perimeter supply snow tractors, checking that the comms on their combat helmets were linked into the base communications.

“Shouldn’t we have long arms and grenades for this, sir?” asked Hartmann.

“The side arms were difficult enough to get as it was and they’re just a precaution,” said Gel. “We’re well inside our own perimeter.”

At the drop off point they put on snowshoes – standard equipment at Fort Apache – and trekked to where Hartmann thought the main entrance should be, to find level snow.

“Nothing for it,” said Gel as they took out small entrenching shovels brought along in anticipation of having to clear away snow, “we have to dig”.

Just under the snow they found the tip of a concrete arch and, after much digging, a metal door under the arch with a sign on it.

Gometal Inc

Private

Authorised Persons Only

“Gometal?” asked Gel.

“Just the name of the company,” said Hartmann. “Couldn’t find anything more about it.”

“Somebody’s been here,” said Gel picking up a padlock from the ground. “This has been shot off. So much for advanced lock picking techniques.”

They went in cautiously, stood and listened. All they could hear was the moaning of the wind outside. Gel thought to examine the floor by their standard infantry torches.

“Boot prints,” he said. “They look recent but otherwise not much traffic. Not what you’d expect from a smuggler’s den. How would they get the containers here anyhow?”

“Another entrance?” said Hartmann. “The plans show an access road on the other side of the bunker.”

“When it’s not covered with snow, I guess,” said Gel, “then what? The perimeter’s a few klicks away and this bunker isn’t connected with anything underground?”

“Nothing shows on the plans, sir,” said Hartmann.

“Not looking good as our smuggling missing link but let’s find these containers.”

They moved down two flights and looked into what might have been an office space broken up by concrete pillars, but which had long since been stripped bare.

“Not this level,” said Hartmann looking at the display on his tablet.

“How come you can get any display this far underground?” asked Gel.

Hartmann shrugged. “Haven’t looked at the detail, sir, but maybe part of the bunker control system is still working.”

They moved down another flight and Gel suddenly felt uneasy. He pulled out his sidearm and nudged Hartmann to do the same. They switched off the torches and put the faceplates down on their combat helmets, switching to infrared. Why did he feel uneasy? Gel had to think for a few seconds before realising what the problem was – he felt a breeze. Somewhere the lower levels of the bunker were open to the outside world.

***

“The boyfriend from the bar,” said the thickset man lying against the side of the van, getting his first good look at Gel.

“He’s no boyfriend,” said the woman.

“Drive to the warehouse district, wharf road,” said Gel, thinking fast. He stooped to pick up his baton, keeping an eye on the thickset man. “You know where that is?”

“I know,” she said.

“Then get there fast,” said Gel. “That guy who looked in was calling the police, and they’ve got real time tracking with city net - unless you’ve disabled the tracking chip in this thing… have you?”

“No,” said the thick set man, reluctantly. “It’s even worse if you disable it.”

“Then you’ve got just minutes before they’ll be all over this fine vehicle,” said Gel. “The good news is that once we get out, taking your hardware with us… that reminds me, you in the front pass your piece out, slowly, through that slot.”

The woman did this with ill grace, the pistol landing with a clatter on the van floor.

“You on the ground with the moustache, take out your piece slowly, holding it with thumb and forefinger.”

The moustache man, who had recovered enough to sit up reluctantly complied. By that time Yvonne was also stirring.

“Put the gun down,” said Gel to moustache man, “and push it across. As I was saying, once we get out, taking these various bits of hardware with us, you can tell the police whatever you like.”

“Fuck you,” said the thick set man.

“Oh charming,” said Gel. “We could’ve been such good friend too.”

“Must have hurt to be dumped like that?” said the thick set man, “younger guy dumped by an older woman.”

“Life is a vale of tears,” said Gel, “or some philosophical shit like that. I used to think it was veil as in a bridal veil but it’s not, it’s vale as in valley. We’re going through a valley of trouble and sorrows before reaching a better world in hitman heaven.”

“We’ve drawn a loony,” said thick set man.

“Sadly, many people would agree with you,” said Gel. “Unless you want more examples of lunacy, maybe we can ride in silence.”

“What’s going on?” asked Yvonne, pushing herself off the floor. Dazed as she was, she managed to keep out of Gel’s line of fire.

“What’s happening is we’re about to get out,” said Gel. “Grab the guns on the ground and stick them in your handbag. That reminds me,” he said to moustache man, “you must have used an electrical shocker on my friend, pass that over too – put it on the floor and kick it over.”

Yvonne collected all the hardware and stuffed it into her bag.

“This is good,” said Gel to the driver. “Turn the van around and then stop.”

“Not much here,” said Yvonne looking out the back window.

“Enough for me,” said Gel. “Try following us, and I’ll put a bullet in one of the tyres. That’ll be fun to explain to the police.”

“C’mon,” he nudged Yvonne, “remember your shoes.”

The pair got out of the van through the back door, slamming the doors behind them. Then Gel dragged Yvonne to a rusty wire fence, pushing open a section of the wire he knew was loose, then dropped down an embankment with her, underneath a derelict pier and out of sight, as police sirens wailed.

***

The two infantrymen pushed open the door to the next level and examined the open space beyond warily.

“Containers are on the other side of the room, a few metres away,” whispered Hartmann into his suit mike. Gel had previously told him to be wary.

“Doesn’t look to be anything there at all,” whispered Gel. There was something about the space that unsettled him. Apart from no crates being visible at all, it was too open. On an impulse Gel flicked on his standard issue torch and tossed it to about where the containers would be. A shot knocked it to the ground and then a storm of fire made both infantrymen dive to the ground.

“Ambush. Hartmann, move. Back up the stairs, and I’ll cover you. Get to the top and cover me.

“Gotit, sir,” said Hartmann and crawled away as shots punched through the wall above him. The ambush party had a storm cannon operator who, forgetting anything he might have been told about short, controlled bursts, filled the air with bullets, punching holes along the wall. The noise in a confined space was deafening.

Gel fired twice at the storm cannon flashes and the weapon stopped firing. He rolled across to the other side of the door, as two better aimed shots clipped the door frame just above where he had been. Then the storm cannon opened up again. Hartmann, who was a few steps up the stairs yelled in pain and fired blindly into the wall. Gel fired most of his magazine at the flashes then, in a few moments of silence, picked himself up and ran for the stairs. He found Hartmann holding his leg, which was dripping with blood.

“Move,” he whispered then grabbed the private and heaved him up the stairs as the firing started again. They paused at the top, where Hartmann leant against the wall.

“I’m alright,” he said, although he obviously wasn’t.

Gel fired twice more down the stairs, just to give their ambushers something to think about, put his arm around Hartmann and the two soldiers dashed for the next set of stairs.