Shadell Rohnes was not having a good week. He was still aching from getting thoroughly thrashed by the VISOR agents he had confronted under the mistaken belief they were rebel spies. Worse still, he was now working directly under them, as part of the task force to find that escaped mystic girl. Nearly everyone at Outpost Raven had been put onto the task force, and now VISOR agents frequented the station to meet with Kase at his new office there, never stopping to talk to someone as lowly as Shadell. For all the crap he gave Kase, he liked the guy; friendship between Enforcers just naturally contained a lot of mockery and barbs. It was embarrassing that he had needed Kase's word to ensure he hadn't been summarily executed for getting fooled by the same orphans who had led Kase around by the nose time and time again, but Shadell wasn't enough of a jerk to resent Kase for it. And now they shared something; a desperate, overriding need to get revenge on those little jerks. Shadell was again thankful that Kase had put him in the vanguard of the operation; while Kase was busy investigating some gun fight between some bounty hunters and the dockworkers, Shadell would get the satisfaction of being the one to deliver the arrest to the kids.
It had taken five days of legwork to find the twerps' lair, an unused room in a Magellan Mechanical administration facility. The locals had been slow to talk, even after being dragged off the streets into interrogation rooms. Some people wouldn't even admit to knowing who the brats were, while most just claimed to have not seen them in a few weeks. The increased rate of arrests and threats had made the dockworkers antsy, leading to more violence and difficulty dealing with the public. Shadell had taken an empty bottle to the head a day ago; an attack blunted by his helmet, but an attack nonetheless. While the woman responsible was behind bars now, Shadell was under no impression that things were getting less heated. Each day that passed, this task force felt less like a law enforcement unit and more like soldiers behind enemy lines.
It had been the top administrator of the facility who had finally given the kids away, hoping that a resolution to the conflict would ease the tensions that were making daily operations increasingly difficult. Keeping an administration facility running was hard if the workers were more concerned with the Enforcers showing up than logging their spreadsheet or whatever it was they did. The administrator leaked the information on the condition their identity be protected, as the Dockworker Syndicate tended not to be too kind to someone like that working with the Enforcers.
For now at least, people were keeping their distance. A squad of Enforcers in full combat gear, armed with full military grade weapons, frightened them enough to overcome any urge to play hero. Shadell adjusted the choke on his scattergun; the weapon fired multiple small blasts of plasma over an area, something that the VISOR agents claimed would be more effective against the target's mystic defenses than a regular blaster, but would also make it quite good at dispersing an unruly crowd. If he didn't have an important task to be doing, he'd almost wish some of those cowards would try something. They were so mad about a few arrests and beatings, he'd love to show them what happened when Enforcers truly got mean.
He was surprised how empty the administration building was. Space was at such a premium on a space colony, especially in the poorer parts of town, and yet this place seemed to be about half rooms full of just filing cabinets and the corridors that lead to them. Or maybe the workers were just hiding, everyone he did see was cowering in their cubicle hoping not to draw attention. He supposed they didn't know if he was here for the kids or to find someone else to drag into a cell and try to force information out of. They were all idiots. Any one of them could have gotten two hundred thousand credits to tell them where the kids were. That would be almost two years' salary for these grunts; more than enough to skip town to avoid Castle's goons.
They reached the door to the room they had been told the kids were hiding in. Shadell gripped his scattergun; as much as he hated VISOR, he was inclined to believe their assessment that this girl was dangerous. For all VISOR's faults, being too cautious about putting Enforcers in danger wasn't one of them; he knew that the Specialist Major would happily trade the lives of his squad to secure this capture. He wasn't quite pessimistic enough to presume he was being sent to die, still thinking he had been chosen by Kase to get the glory here, but he wasn't about to let the children get one up on him again.
"Zeus unit, in position," he said into his comms. He had five Enforcers with him to storm the front room, and there were two more teams watching the building's exits if the kids made a break for it. Poseidon and Hades units reported they were ready, and Shadell gave a nod to a woman on his team named Maxio Luckrehiem. She was the only member of the team to have seen real combat before, having been stationed on Rockwater until being badly injured in a fight against Silver Scarf bandits. He outranked her as team leader here, but he trusted her judgment as much as his own. She silently knelt down, producing a polarity blade, and cut through the door's deadbolt. Readying for a fight, Shadell kicked the door open, moving in with his gun raised.
The room before him could barely be called a living space. There was a table around a basic kitchen setup that was clearly made from repaired appliances scavenged from the trash, a work desk for repairs barely an arm's reach away, a place too small to even feel like it could hide four fugitives. It was, of course, completely empty, and looked like it had been picked relatively clean some time ago. He opened the fridge; there were still near empty bowls of leftovers that stank, nobody had done the work of properly cleaning this place before they left. Hopefully forensics could get something useful from that. There was a single door left slightly ajar, he focused in on it. There was almost certainly nobody here, he had to admit to himself. He shouldn't have been too surprised that they would run for the hills when they learned of the size of the bounty on their heads, but he was going to be thorough. He raised the scattergun back to eye level, nudging the door open and-
A bucket full of bright green paint fell from where it had been nuzzled on top of the door to his feet, splashing his feet and shins with a half-dried mess coloured like a cartoon would paint something radioactive. It was a classic, childish prank, and it had even failed; the bucket obviously was supposed to fall on the head of someone who entered the room a bit less cautiously. Nonetheless, it was the most humiliated Shadell had ever felt; more so even than when he and his team had been thoroughly defeated by the VISOR team. He could feel a number of excuses for being in this situation fly into his brain, excuses he had heard from Kase a million times. He scowled under his helmet.
"You okay?" Maxio asked, looking at the paint. He sighed. It wasn't the end of the world. Nobody would think this operation was a failure for not apprehending the targets, finding an old hideout was still progress.
"It's going to take forever to get this off my armour," he complained, trying to appear less bothered than he was. "Maybe I can make one of those orphans shine my shoes as payback when we get them." He looked around the room that was now equally splattered in paint, a glorified closet covered with sofa cushions he'd guess were used as bedding. These kids did not live glamorously, but they deserved so much worse than cramped sleeping conditions.
"Maxio to Hades team. No contact. Anything on your end?" As his colleague interfaced with the other teams, he looked at the paint on his feet. There were large flakes where the surface had completely dried out. Forensics should be able to analyze those and figure out when the trap was sent. This little adventure had to accomplish something. "Looks like we got nothing, Shades," Maxio informed him.
"Lock the place down. We need people to know sheltering fugitives ends poorly," Shadell said. He didn't really have the authority to order anything more severe, but he was sure VISOR would have similar thoughts. There was simply no way an enemy this ridiculous, this childish, could surpass the hammer of the Hegemony's military in ability. This was all a temporary setback, he told himself. They'd have them soon.
He had heard Kase say that so many times before, too.
YOU ARE READING
Outer Olympus
Science FictionIt is ten years since the rebellion in Outer Olympus was put down by the forces of the Hyperion Hegemony. As orphans living under this cruel empire, Viola, Taroh, and Geode have had to beg, steal, and lie to make a living on board Maintenance Six, a...
