Gods Dogs, Book 3

Keep doing what works until they make you stop.

John Madden

“Well,” Moss grumbled once they were safely aboard Satya. “That wasn’t much fun at all.”

The shuttle exited the rebel free trader on a ballistic course under full stealth and maneuvered slowly to where Satya could retrieve them.

“The next op should be more fun,” River promised and clapped him on the shoulder. “Simple mayhem.”

“Are those implants still good?”

Quinn answered, “According to Solomon, they should be. The bracelets implanted each of the elders with an on-demand tracking device that will activate when we sent the proper codes.”

“He does play the long game,” Pax commented about the ASI.

“And we’ll know which one is Sembol?” Moss persisted.

“So Solomon says,” Quinn answered with a smirk.

“Okay,” Moss said and relaxed into the mess hall chair. “What are we going to do with Elder Sembol?”

“Get him to commit political suicide,” Quinn answered.

“Do we get to blow anything up?”

“Probably.”

Satya moved back to her station above the capitol city and continued the reconnaissance it began when the Coyotes dropped for the fortress.

The crew mapped the movements of the council of elders, monitored media broadcasts, military and civilian comm traffic, and generally took the pulse of the city. By now, they had a pretty good idea of the elders’ habits.

The team studied the reports over the next week. The flurry of activity surrounded Anjevin’s escape died down. Normal routine was returning.

They inserted this time from low orbit in pods. The launch was on the other side of the planet so they could use a slowly decaying orbit to make a stealthier entrance into the atmosphere. They would look like meteorites that burned up at high altitude, because once through the plasma burn, the pods were equipped with the heat shield and stealth hulls that would render them hard to detect.

The insertion complete, the pods landed by a different lake twenty miles from the city. Like before, they intended to hitch a ride on a passenger shuttle to the space station for their escape. Since this routine worked before, and the enemy didn’t know what the team did to get on and off the planet, they were happy to exploit that continuing weakness in the enemy’s defense.

The trek was through the marshlands to one of the wooded strips of greenbelt that entered the city. Once in the woods, they found one of their old campsites. Since it was undisturbed, they camped there. After placing perimeter sensors, they took turns sleeping until night fell. Then they went hunting.

They knew where the cluster of buildings that housed the elders was. They began there. Sending out the pulse to activate the locator beacons, they saw that the elders were in small groups near the center of a mostly square building. The building was the dining and recreational center for the government complex. Two stories tall with a couple of levels of sub-basement floors, it was a busy place. The team positioned themselves one to each side of the building to wait for a chance to close in.

That didn’t happen until after midnight. The traffic slowed, and many of the elders returned to their homes. Apparently Sembal was still inside, as they hadn’t seen him leave. He was one of the four red dots on their HUDs. Those dots were clustered, still at the center of the building.

“Well, they could be playing cards,” Pax sent on the tac-net.

“Or plotting to overthrow the galaxy,” Moss replied.

“More likely, it’s a bitch session about Anjevin escaping,” River offered. “They’re arguing over who to blame.”

“They do like the blame-game,” Moss agreed. “I think they like crisis more, though. It gives them cover for their plots to rip off the citizens.”

“I still think they’re playing cards,” Pax said. “And maybe discussing their next scheme while doing so.”

About an hour later, the group broke up, and they headed for the south exit, which led to the housing complex. Quinn was set up to observe that exit.

“I’ve got him,” Quinn sent. “He’s got four bodyguards, and he’s apparently heading home.”

The other three dropped down from the roof perches they used and headed for housing. Quinn stayed high, using his grav-pack to get from roof to roof.

“He’s inside, second floor, northeast corner apartment,” Quinn sent a while later. “River, see if we can get in through a window.”

She clicked an affirmative and slowly scaled the exterior wall. Then, using a nano-string, she tested the window casings. She reported, “I guess he doesn’t like fresh air. These windows don’t open, but there are no sensors on them.”

“Pax, check the roof.”

A while later, Pax sent, “It’s like a patio up here with a keypad entrance to the stairs. Max has the code.”

“Hold there, but if someone comes out, sneak in before the door closes.”

Moss said after a bit, “This is pretty sketchy.”

“I’m not feeling good about it either,” Quinn answered. Then he said, “On second thought, hold where you are. River, stay there and get some sensors on the window so we can know what’s going on in the room. If this is a trap, let’s wait them out.”

Clicks affirmed his orders. River secured another tether to the wall so she could lay out parallel to the top of the north-facing window. Her suit camo blended her to the stone-faced wall. She affixed a vibration sensitive sensor to the window to pick up any noises in the apartment. There were none.

Pax climbed onto the patio door overhang and laid out on the flat roof. Moss held at the rear entrance to the building, while Quinn watched the front.

Two hours later, a military patrol of four soldiers in a utility vehicle showed up. Another soldier exited the front entrance to check with those in the truck. The conversation was a confirmation that all was secure in the building, and the building NSAI reported no anomalies and no intrusions.

When the vehicle drove off, Quinn sent, “River, it’s a high-tech building. They probably built it with the sensors integrated into the design. Then they visually confirm everything is okay with physical check-ins.”

“If they built this after we blew up Citadel City, that’s a sure bet,” she answered. “The NSAI is probably in the basement and not easily accessible.”

“Well, this is a bust,” Moss declared. “We’ll need to nab him out in the open.”

“Yeah,” Quinn agreed. “When he exits the building in the morning. Moss, you drop on him and collar him. The rest of us will deal with the guards. Then we scatter and rendezvous back at camp. Then we wait for Sembal to contact us.”

The collar they carried was similar to the bracelet Solomon used, except it fastened around the neck and it did contain explosives. The team planned to release Sembal after he released his financial records for a forensic audit that would be made public. That should be the end of his political life.

Over the next few hours, they slowly repositioned themselves. Moving slowly made it less likely the external sensors would twig to their presence. So far, that was the case, and their discipline to maintain stealth and move slowly was probably why they hadn’t raised the alarm already.

River found a sniper hide a block away with a clear, wide view of the entrance. Moss found a corner in the arch over the door to hide in. Quinn and Pax were on nearby rooftops in flanking positions.

Three hours after dawn, Quinn told them, “He’s on the move.”

Clicks were his answer.

Elder Patonon Sembal was as ruthless as he was wealthy. His aggressive management style cowered most people, and the rest wished they could cut through their enemies the way he could – without any consequences to his outrageous behavior. Laws didn’t apply to him. Social convention was something he ignored. He got what he wanted by running over people, or they got out of his way and cosigned his right to do as he wanted. He was every narcissist’s role model.

As such, he strode out of the building at a leisurely pace, two guards in front of him clearing the way, and two behind him alert to any threat from the rear. Sembal was in a bubble and Moss dropped soundlessly into the bubble, clamped the collar around his neck, shoved a data cube into his pocket, and broke to his left at an armor-enhanced run.

Pax and Quinn dropped the guards to the front. River took care of the ones to the rear. Then they retreated along their prepared routes.

By noon, they were back at their camp in the woods. Sembal called them later that afternoon.

“You think you’re clever,” was his opening remark.

“We have our moments,” Moss replied. “Release the results of a forensic audit of your finances by the firm we listed, and we take off the collar. It’s on a timer. It’s tamper-proof.” Then Moss cut the connection.

River said, “They tried to track the signal, but it’s bouncing around so much, they’ll never figure it out.”

“Probably,” Quinn said, “but I think we need to move. He’ll have all the dogs out trying to find our trail.”

“Where to?” Moss asked.

“That warehouse at the spaceport. If it’s clear enough, we’ll head back to Satya tonight.”

They skirted around the city and made it to the little-used warehouse by late evening. Surveillance at the spaceport was as tight as they remembered, but it wasn’t enhanced.

Then they made their way to the underground rail system for transporting shuttles to their launch pad. Climbing into one of the shuttles at the NSAI maintenance hatch, River took the NSAI over.

Once the shuttle launched, it needed to make an adjustment burn to line up with the space station. That’s when they pushed off on a ballistic heading for the waiting Satya. An hour and a half later, they were onboard.

“No word from Sembal,” Jerry, the XO, told them. “We are monitoring the accounting firm’s correspondence, and it looks like he may have contacted them.”

Quinn said, “Lornalie gave us a contact person there. We’ll get cleaned up and changed and give her a call.”

“Sounds good,” the XO said. “Welcome back.”

River asked him, “Did the trader make it out okay?”

“Yeah. No problem there. Anjevin is on his way to Upana.”

“Have the drop pods finished reconfiguring?” Moss asked.

Jerry said, “The first four are at their destinations. The second four are still en route. They should be in position in twelve hours or so.”

Moss grinned and headed off to the showers.

Once they were cleaned up and in fresh skin suits, they headed to the bridge. Captain John ushered them into his ready room and activated the comm station there.

River dialed up their contact person at the accounting firm, gave her the rebel validation code, and switched on the encryption software.

“Mango Two, answering. Who is this?”

“Friends of Lornalie,” River answered. “We are forcing Elder Patonon Sembal to release his finances for a forensic audit. Has that been initiated?”

“It has, and it’s causing quite a problem for us. He is demanding control of the audit. We’ve made it clear that is against the law.”

“How long will it take to complete it, once you have the data?”

“It depends on how much he will try to hide. Once it’s all in a clean format, the NSAI will complete it in a matter of hours.”

“Will the NSAI catch what he’s trying to hide?”

“Easily. That’s what slows things down. Some of the court-ordered ones take up to a year to complete.”

“Okay,” River concluded. “Use this frequency if you need to contact us.” Then she closed the channel.

Moss said, “Looks like we light a fire under Sembal.”

“Call him,” Quinn ordered.

River reset the comm controls to do so, and Sembal answered. “I’m complying with your demands.”

“Not really,” Moss said. “You’re engaging in your normal tactics of trying to rig the game in your favor. So I’m sending a signal to the fashionable collar I put around your neck, and it will start heating up – about five degrees every hour. You keep screwing around and I won’t have to blow you up. The collar will burn your head off.”

Moss closed the connection and shook his head. “I hate ops like this.”

Captain John said, “It’s no fun using their tactics against them, but it is what they know and fear.”

“It makes us no better than them,” Moss said with a long sigh. “I know that’s not true, but it’s what it feels like.”

“Let’s get some sleep,” Pax suggested.

Captain John said, “We’ll monitor the comms. The pods won’t be ready for a while. So, yeah, good time to catch some sleep.”

When they awoke and got some real food in them, they hung out on the mess deck drinking coffee. The captain joined them a while later.

“Mango Two left a message that they had all the records and the audit is running. She knows we’re copied in on the final report.”

“Satya,” Quinn called to the ship’s A.I. “When we get the audit, would you mind making sense of it for a lay person?”

“Not at all, Quinn. I should be able to extrapolate the use of the funds as well.”

“A nice easy picture of how he bilked the system, who he bribed, who he paid off, all that?”

“Yes, Moss. That should be no problem.”

Moss grinned. “Don’t you just love our A.I.s?”

They chuckled at that.

A few hours later, the report came in. Satya worked with it for another hour. Then they sent both reports out to the media and to the local rebel offices. They would forward it by ansible to other Chert worlds.

Once that was done, Moss talked to Sembal one last time. “Seems like we’re good, Sembal. I hope you have a good escape plan. I’m sending the signal to release the collar.”

Moss did so and cut the connection. He smiled. “And now the fireworks.”

The eight pods exploded over eight major cities on the planet. Once again it was a fireworks display with a recorded message.

“It’s a great day for the Chert. The war mongers in your government are out of business. They have been exposed as the crooks they are. Now is the time to clean up the government and find trustworthy people to lead you into an age of peace and prosperity. Do you think you can do that? Do you have the courage to do that?”