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Raid, The
A raid goes bad, of course politics and treachery abound
by Jon Selbo ''Bunsin'' |
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Waters Edge
TRDC research facilities
3058
So it was true. A raid on the Trathion Research and Development Center (TRDC) was underway and no doubt the raiders would be here shortly. Trathion was not a very large complex by most government standards. The main building was only four standard levels tall with two usable underground levels and a large sub basement for storage. There were two other support buildings on the grounds which were designed to house a machine shop and an extended storage facility. The TRDC or Trash R and D as it was so affectionately called by the local pacificist organization, was located on the edge of the university district in an older but well maintained engineering building. The original building had been used for testing hydraulic systems and industrial lifts at extreme pressures and temperatures. Because the structural properties of the building had been over compensated for that use and the location was already set up for minimal access to the general population, it was the perfect building to be renovated for the TRDC. The real research had begun after the regional baroness had been able to obtain a full copy of the Grey Death Legion's memory core from a close friend within the mercenaries command. Full copies of the memory core were not being released by the central governments of the successor states because of the bounty of military information contained within it, and as such outlying worlds like Water's Edge had received mainly agricultural information designed to improve crop production for export to the more important heavily industrialized worlds.
Water's Edge was the fourth planet in the Denada system. It rotated on a 29 hour terran standard day, and as its name might imply, it was a water laden world. The three continents were affixed within a twenty degree arc of the equatorial center and were roughly spaced evenly apart. Its three major and one minor moons made for spectacular gravitational pulls on the planet and the tidal storms were often very fierce. The largest continent, including its three subcontinents, was the most habitable to humans and as such the planetary government and the major population centers were located within it. However pleasant the world may be to live on, it did have its drawbacks. Water's Edge was located only two jumps coreward of the periphery, and as a mainly agrarian economy, who was not in the path of the clan invasion, it suffered from a lack of protection from the Federated Commonwealth, or at least what was left of the Commonwealth. The local baroness had been forced to bolster what little planetary defenses she had with mercenary contracts. Most fighting on the planet was centered around smash and grab raids by pirates or other periphery worlds attempting to steal what they themselves could not produce.
*****
An explosion outside his office window made Ken hit the floor under his desk. "Damn that's getting close." He pulled a small splinter of the window casing out of his scalp. "I'm gunna bleed like a stuck wulderdat for a while with this one." He smiled as he recalled raising the furry little native creatures on the farm where he grew up. The phone on his desk, which amazingly still worked after all the glass had flew across it, began to ring.
The whiney voice on the other end was of course that piss-ant little lieutenant. For the past thirty minutes he had been keeping everyone unlucky enough to be working this late at night stuck inside the building.
"Sir, I'm afraid to inform you that we won't be able to hold the area." Now there was a surprise. Ken Rethew's thoughts dripped with sarcasm. If only I had taken my vacation this week. "Sir if you would please come down to the..." The phone and the electricity went dead, and an explosion, probably the one that had taken out the phone or that lieutenant , was sucking the air from the office .
*****
"Yes sir, our teams are through the outer security ring and have just hit the main exchange boxes." Captain Lorentz was the perfect man for this mission thought colonel Kelly. He might be a royal pain at times, but when it came to hunting for programs and designs that would be stored within the TRDC he needed an anal retentive paper pusher with some kind of computer background to locate the stuff. Besides, the real fighting, and hence the best prizes, was going on at the TRDC's testing grounds seventy kilometers south of Capital City. His employer had been clear that the TRDC computers were useful and if possible they should destroy the security floor located on the top of the building, but the production facility and the warehouses at the testing grounds was what they wanted most.
*****
Ken had been on the floor for what seemed like an eternity before he could breath again. During his brief moments of near suffocation his mind wandered to what had brought him this half shredded office. He had always been interested in the military and on his seventeenth birthday he joined the local reserve force. The local unit near his home was a light armored infantry unit that specialized in small unit tactics. The kings of the battlefield, the mechwarriors who piloted their 30 meter tall battlemechs could crush a small force, especially infantry, if it was caught in the open, but when a small unit engaged in hit and run or preemptive strike operations, sometimes before the enemy could get into their battle units, they could do a lot of damage to those walking hulks of metal and their over ego drivers. Those mechwarriors who just happened to get fracked outside of their nice little armored bathtubs were just getting paid back for every infantry man they had slaughtered. His reserve status had meant a two year active engagement in training and operations before he could play weekend warrior. Ken thought the trade off was well worth it.
One benefit of being in the reserves was Ken had his undergraduate schooling paid for and it had led him into working on military projects being researched at the university. It was serendipity, or maybe, given the current situation, just bad luck that his engineering professor had approached him about getting a graduate degree by working for her on a top secret project. He would be permanently detached from the reserves and could only be called up in cases of extreme emergency. 'Would this count?' he whispered.
Early on in his graduate work Ken realized that the research being conducted at the TRDC was not of the level produced by the successor states bests laboratories, however, it was far beyond anything this region had seen since the fall of the star league nearly half a millennia ago. He was personally working on guidance systems, rudimentary as they were given the specifications and design capabilities listed in the memory core. The overall programming and integrated circuits needed to control the target acquisition within a missile had been some of the most difficult parts to construct. Those alone had taken three years and twenty seven specialists to complete The other modifications to the long range missiles were much more simple and within realistic limits, they had created the first guided LRM system this planet had seen for a long time. They had just a few months ago set up their last successful test run and had gone into production outfitting the local militia force at their test range.
Ken snapped out of his asphyxia induced daydream in time to hear a rapid burst of slug fire from the ground floor. It wouldn't be long now before stuff really hit the fan. The floor guards had probably been doped off their positions by the initial attack, so he might not get shot by friendly fire when he cleared the office. "Oh well... I might even live." He chuckled to himself quietly. He had the presence of mind to grab his keys and a set of infrared goggled that he regularly used when using the titanium-sapphire infrared laser. They were the standard military issue that allowed for more than one wavelength range to be viewed, but his lacked any sort of emitter that could illuminate an area. The emitter had its good and bad points though, if the person you were tracking had similar gear you lit up like a Christmas tree on a dark winter night. Often times that was fatal to the Christmas tree.
As the adrenaline began to kick in again, Ken's clarity came back on line. A nagging voice in the back of his mind kept telling him that he had better make a decision quick. "If I ever get out of here I'm going to punch that old hag of a drill instructor." His old DI had always said that in a fire fight it didn't matter if the decision you made was right or not. Whatever you did it was better than sitting there and getting killed .Ken was pretty sure that all the main exits would be watched and who knew what the TRDC forces still controlled. He thought that he might be able to survive if he could get into the maintenance passageways that moved through the complex.
Ken looked at the buck-knife his dad had given him for a birthday present long ago and said a quick prayer. Suddenly his mind clicked. He did have an ace up his sleeve! They had recently brought down a LRM from the TRDC test center to do a check on the calibration of the movable tail fin assembly. The warhead had been removed but the casing and more importantly the solid fuel booster was still there. Ken quickly yanked the motion sensor devise off the hallway emergency lights, they were on battery power now an would stay that way until disabled manually. The sensor could be operated by a standard five volt system and as an added feature the relays attached to it could withstand larger currents. He had needed to "borrow" the system once before to kill some rodents that were chewing on wire casings going to one of the laboratories instruments. Unlike now, he had been able to discharge large capacitors charged by the now disabled electrical system, across the rodents. To get the propellant in the LRM to ignite he would need an electrical discharge not nearly as large as the rodent shocker. A fact easily noted by the conductive floor paint and the anti- static devices located everywhere in the room. Ken ran to get a flashlight and the battery backup for the kiamonc computer.
*****
"Colonel, we are almost in position to take the west entrance." Captain Lorentz gleefully announced over the radio.
Colonel Kelly replied, "Very well Captain Lorentz. Proceed according to the plan."
"YES SIR!" Colonel Godwin Kelly, commander of Kelly's Killers, thought that at least one thing about this night might yet go right. Kelly commanded a slightly oversized company of mechwarriors and infantry whose reputations were not high enough to get them into a regular merc unit. Most of his guys were one step away from having to turn pirate if they screwed up, so they towed the line.
Anytime someone would get out of line, their commander, whose own reputation for anger was noteworthy, would make life very painful for everyone. After a few demonstrations to the newer recruits problems usually policed themselves.
Kelly had anticipated a cake walk at the testing grounds and that was proving to be a bad preconception. It was inconceivable that the local militia was on top of things. They had been hit from within by a raiding force from his own mercenaries that had been part of the local defense for six months now. They should have had complete surprise and taken the entire production facility with minimal losses, however, some bright pencil neck had probably had a wild hair or needed to punish some half drunk mechwarriors and the effective guarding force around the center had been more than doubled. The mechs on patrol had slowed up the attack well enough that most of the militia housed near the facility was able to get into the action. If only striker lance had been able to take out that barracks at the same time the original attack was hitting the testing center, he would not be in a stand up battle for the facility right now. When he found out where striker lance was he was going to mount on the wall of his office the butt of whomever was responsible for them not showing up on time.
*****
Holding a box with all the necessary material in it, Ken moved quickly to the secured top floor. The floor had been built on top of the existing building so that if an accidental detonation occurred the blast effect would not destroy the entire building. The windowless floor was made almost entirely of reinforced ferrocite. It would not withstand a direct assault from battlemech forces, but it would stand up to a lot of punishment . The entrance was on the north side and made use of an access code, voice print analysis, and a retinal scan. The whole system could operate off the reserve power source. After getting through the security, Ken ran down to his lab on the south side.
The circuit was so simplistic that Ken was done wiring in less than three minutes. It had taken another five minutes to get all the material down to the end of the hall. If all went right someone would step within fifteen meters of the motion sensor, it was much better at picking up an object larger that a mouse, and the rocket motor would get fired down the hall. Without recessed entry areas and the small width of the hall, it might actually do some damage. The thought that one of the retreating TRDC guards might accidentally set it off was a little disconcerting, but with as strict as the security was for this floor it was unlikely any of the guards left had the ability to get in. Ken picked up the remainder of the tools he had brought with him and keyed open the access panel behind him. The panel was made from the same material as battlemech armor, and the security features required a manual override of the now dead main system. Ken punched in the code for the manual override and allowed the active system to scan his retina. Once in the shaft he closed the access way and smashed the interior override panel. If someone was able to find the maintenance crawlway and was inclined enough to try and blow their way into the floor through the maintenance hatch, the inner sections, but not the structural integrity, of the shaft would collapse in on itself and kill anyone inside. The resulting carnage would take hours to clear and the raiders would still have to blow though the internal wall structure. No, their only way in now was through the main entrance to the floor, and that should take them a good half hour to burn through. |
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