Body Count: Prologue

Sonia Fairchild crouched behind the low stone outcrop and stared off into the cold night. Ahead of her, snow sliced sideways through the howling wind, a wall of white that all but swallowed the dark, sulking shape of the geothermal plant a hundred yards distant. Fairchild didn’t need binocs to see the guards moving on their patrols. The augmetic implants inside her eyes already gave her all the amplification she needed.

She’d been watching them for almost an hour now, studying their patterns. There were two of them stationed beside the eastern entrance, and two more patrolling the perimeter, just inside the fence. It took them an average of five minutes thirty-seven seconds to complete a circuit. Fairchild had timed it.

“Predictable bastards,” she said, her voice muffled by her face mask.

Beside her, Dane nodded in agreement. The team leader was dressed in the same white thermal suit as Fairchild, though his was bigger to fit his larger frame. The suit covered everything except his stern eyes. When he spoke, his voice was low, but Fairchild could hear it loud and clear through the com-speakers built into the cowl of her own suit.

“Undisciplined,” Dane said. “They’re fanatics, not soldiers.”

True. If this mission were a simple matter of clearing out the terrorists, it would have been a piece of cake. Unfortunately, the situation was a bit more delicate than that. Two days prior, Planetary Governor Halden Quale had been touring this remote geothermal site when he’d been ambushed by a revolutionary group calling themselves the Broken Chain. They’d managed to wipe out the Governor’s security detail, along with the entire staff of the plant. Now they were holding Quale hostage somewhere deep inside the facility, and it was the Mercs’ job to get him out alive.

Fairchild glanced over Dane’s back at the other two members of the team. Rook was a woman like herself, and the resident sharpshooter. She had her long-range rifle locked and loaded, waiting for the go-ahead from Dane. Beside her was Bryce, the team’s sapper and explosives expert. The two of them were an item, though they weren’t exactly exclusive. They’d even invited Fairchild to join them in bed on one occasion. She’d politely declined. When it came to sex, Fairchild preferred to be the dominant one, and she knew there was no dominating a guy like Bryce.

“Alright,” Dane said at last, “Here’s how we’re gonna do this. Rook, on my signal, you take out the two guards by the entrance. Bryce, you’re in charge of breaching the fence.”

He turned and looked at Fairchild with his stone-gray eyes. She could see the augmetic implants glowing like embers behind his pupils, the same way hers did when she looked in the mirror.

“Fairchild, you and me are gonna take out the other two guards as soon as they come around the corner. You go left, I’ll go right--got it?”

She nodded.

“Remember,” Dane said. “Quick and quiet. If the terrorists realize they’re under attack, they’re liable to kill the governor.”

“They won’t know what hit ’em, sir,” Fairchild said confidently.

The lines beside Dane’s eyes crinkled slightly, and she knew he was smiling behind his face mask. It was a nice smile, when it wasn’t covered up. The kind of smile that made most women melt.

Fairchild wasn’t most women, though. She was a Merc.

“Good,” Dane said. “Okay, get ready...”

For a long moment, nobody moved. The only sounds were the wailing of the wind, and the softer whisper of snow crystals skittering across the outcrop in front of them. Fairchild’s heart was beating slow and steady inside her, an icy sixty beats per minute.

“Now,” Dane growled.

On the other side of him, Rook fired twice, the shots muffled by the suppressor on the end of her gun. The guards by the facility entrance slumped to the ground like marionettes with their strings cut, a pair of red starbursts staining the wall above them.

Fairchild was up and running before the second guard even hit the ground. The other Mercs were right beside her, driving forward through the whipping wind like a pack of white direwolves. Bryce reached the fenceline first and sliced through the chainlink with his lascutter. Then he pulled it back for the others to pass through. Dane went first, and Fairchild was right behind him. They broke off in opposite directions.

Fairchild reached the corner of the facility just as the patrol was coming around the corner.

Right on schedule.

Before the man had a chance to react, Fairchild rushed him and grabbed hold of his submachine gun with her left hand, wedging two fingers behind the trigger, so he wouldn’t pull it when he died. With her other hand, she jammed the tip of her knife straight into the center of the man’s throat, blocking his windpipe. She swung him around the side of the facility before slashing through his carotid, painting the snow red with his arterial spray.

Fairchild’s own pulse remained a chilly seventy-five bpm as she stashed the body behind some crates and kicked snow over the stain. When she returned to the entrance, the rest of her team was already there waiting for her.

“What took you so long?” Dane teased.

“Very funny, sir.”

Bryce was working on the security keypad beside the door. It took him less than a minute to hack it. As the door slid open, Fairchild and Rook rolled into position, aiming their rifles down the long corridor within.

Empty.

“Rook,” Dane said. “You stay here and guard the exit. Bryce and Fairchild, you come with me.”

The air inside the facility was sweltering compared to the frigid temperatures outside. Fairchild’s bodysuit automatically switched from hot to cold to maintain her body temperature. She moved swiftly but cautiously down the corridor, keeping pace with Dane in front of her while Bryce brought up the rear. The bodies of dead plant personnel and security guards lay strewn around the floor in pools of congealing blood.

About a hundred yards in, Dane halted and raised one hand.

“Bryce, get up here and take a look at this.”

A brick of plastic explosive was wedged between a pair of ducts. A small black device was wired to one side.

“Remote controlled,” Bryce said after a quick inspection. “Want me to defuse it?”

Dane shook his head once. “No time, and no point. You can bet the Chain’s got a couple dozen more of these stashed around the facility. Probably planning to blow the whole to kingdom come at the first sign of trouble.”

“But where are they?” Fairchild whispered. She hadn’t seen a single one of the terrorists since entering the facility.

“Don’t know,” said Dane. “But keep your eyes peeled. Anything moves, take it down.”

“Unless it’s the package,” Bryce said wryly.

“I have a feeling the Chain’s not letting Governor Quale wander around freely,” Dane answered. “Rook, what’s the situation outside?”

Fairchild could hear her teammate’s voice over the vox.

“No activity, sir, but I’m freezing my damn ass off out here. You guys find the package yet?”

“No joy on the package,” Dane replied. Then he motioned to Fairchild and Bryce. “Come on, let’s hurry up and find the governor so we can get the hell out of here.”

-—-

They found him two levels down in the main turbine room, a huge cylindrical chamber with a massive metal fan spun by heated air rising up from the guts of the planet below. There was a walkway running around the outside of the chamber, and Quale was bound to a chair on the other side. A blindfold had been tied around his eyes, but Fairchild recognized the rest of his features from holoscans she’d seen of the man.

“I don’t like this,” Bryce said under his breath. “Feels like bait.”

Dane nodded thoughtfully.

“We’ve got no choice but to take it,” he said. “Bryce, you guard the left and I’ll keep an eye on the right. Fairchild, you go retrieve the package.”

“Yes, sir.”

She rushed around the far side of the circular walkway, her footfalls so quiet that the blindfolded man didn’t even hear her approach. He whimpered when Fairchild yanked the cloth away from his eyes. She lifted a finger to the front of her facemask, signalling for him to be quiet.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I’m with the Mercs Guild.”

“Oh, thank God,” the man breathed.

“Look at me.”

Her augmetics performed a quick retinal scan, confirming that the man was indeed Governor Quale. Fairchild cut the bonds holding him to the chair and helped him stand up. He was unsteady, and his clothes were soaked with sweat, but Fairchild didn’t see any major injuries. Probably just a combination of fear, dehydration, and being tied to a chair for so many hours.

“Can you walk?” she asked.

Quale nodded.

“Good. Let’s get you out of here.”

They moved back around the walkway to where her teammates were waiting. Dane sent another com to Rook.

“Rook, we have the package and we’re proceeding with exfil. What’s the situation topside?”

Seconds ticked past with no reply.

Fairchild saw Bryce cut a glance in Dane’s direction. He masked his concern, but not completely. He was worried about his woman. So was Fairchild. So was Dane.

“Rook,” Dane repeated. “Do you copy?”

Nothing.

“Shit,” the team leader muttered under his breath. “Okay, let’s move it. And be ready for trouble.”

Fairchild hoisted the Governor with one arm and tossed him over her shoulder, keeping her right arm free to use her gun if she needed to. She knew it probably wouldn’t do much good for the man’s ego getting carried to safety by a woman, but he was too slow to keep up with her and the other Mercs on foot, and she wasn’t about to wait around in this deathtrap any longer than necessary.

-—-

They raced back down the main corridor in the same formation they’d used on their way in--Dane in front, Bryce in the rear, Fairchild in the middle with the governor. They were almost to the exit when they spotted the first enemy.

The man came charging in out of the snow, screaming like a banshee. He managed to squeeze off a couple shots, but they flew wide and sparked off the wall next to where Fairchild was standing. Dane dropped him with a quick double tap to the head.

“There’s more of them behind us!” Bryce said over the com.

Fairchild kept charging forward with the governor. She could hear the blurt of the enemies’ guns behind her, and the softer phut-phut-phut of Bryce’s suppressed rifle. Then she heard him grunt in pain.

She spun and took out the last of the attackers with her rifle, but Bryce was down, and he didn’t look good. A slug had caught him in the knee, and the lower half of his leg was hanging on by a bloody thread.

Dane rushed past her toward their fallen comrade.

“Get the package out,” he said. “I’ll get Bryce.”

“But--”

“That’s an order, Fairchild!”

Right. Of course. The mission took precedence over everything else. That’s what the Mercs were known for. They got the job done--or they died trying.

Fairchild turned again and raced down the remainder of the corridor, her speed only marginally hampered by the weight of the man flung over her shoulder. She hit the exit at close to thirty miles per hour and burst out into the freezing night air.

Rook was sprawled on the ground by the exit, face down in a circle of red snow. There were a dozen bullet holes through her back. Fairchild wanted to stop, but she knew she had to keep going.

How the hell had these untrained terrorists gotten the drop on Merc like Rook? How?

Fairchild didn’t have time to think about it. She needed to get the governor to the extraction point, and she needed to do it before hypothermia set in. She had to fulfill the mission objective.

Fairchild reached the fence in seconds and pushed through the gap Bryce had made with his lascutter. Once she was on the other side, she whirled around to check on her surviving teammates. Dane was still inside the facility, charging down the corridor with a wounded Bryce slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. Bryce was firing his gun back at a group of pursuers.

They were almost out when the world turned to fire.

Flames belched from the corridor like dragon’s breath, consuming the running Mercs in heat and light. Then the real explosion hit, roaring upward out of the earth, splintering steel like matchsticks. The shockwave rippled the snow and threw Fairchild hard to the ground. Above her, the fireball unfurled into the snow-filled sky, a miniature mushroom cloud with a burning halo whirling within its depths.

Then the debris started raining down around her--clods of scorched earth and steel and bits of burning flesh that hissed as they hit the snow.

>> READ CHAPTER 1