Comms Load 21. Sharren Re-do.

been doing some serious editing lately, here is the most recent update, a complete redo of chapter one. Vastly improved.

comments re more than welcome, they are encouraged. 

She was enjoying the rain, the sound it made as it fell to the ground. It played out across the landscape in whispers and plops, a random pitter patter that gently washed away the silence of the colonial country side. While the soft white noise of shipboard life was pleasant, it was not loud enough to drown out her thoughts. The rain was.   

She paused for a moment, enjoying the peace. She held out her right hand, and caught a few drops, watching them splash against the flexible polymer skin of her palm. They were to light to feel, but telltales scrolling along the edges of her peripheral vision showed her that it was a cold, heavy rain; the kind she would have hated as a child. Different times, she thought. She quickly brushed the thought aside; her father had taught her better than to dawdle when there was work to be done.

She was crouched low, her double jointed legs compressed tightly and leaning forward on her left hand.  She was at the edge of her targets’ property, having come on foot through the forest that hemmed in the large farm. She was taking cover behind an earthen windbreak at the south edge of the fields. Her feet were sunk several inches into the mud.

The other side of the artificial ridge sheltered some kind of cabbage. Vile stuff, she remembered. Why do I only remember things I didn’t like? Sharren shook the memories away again, wondering why they came unbidden at times like this.

There was work to do. She crawled forward like a giant cat, moving carefully on all fours.  The windbreak was only a meter or so high, and it took an effort to stay low enough as she crept closer to her goal. The ridge ended some 50 meters later, Sharren dropped on her belly and  slid her body as close to the edge of it as she dared without exposing herself.

A thin aerial slid out of her left shoulder, no more than 2 millimeters across.  It was tipped with a series of tiny camera beads, hardly larger than the antenna itself. She extended it to its full length, allowing her to peer  over the edge of the ridge without risking the rest of her body. The only way these hillbillies would be able to see it at all in this weather would be with thermal imaging gear.  She was wiling to bet they had no such thing.

She let her point of view change from that of her head to that of the camera. She had gotten used to the sudden shift years ago, but it still took her a moment to adjust.  The night was dark, and aerial’s optics were not as good as her primary system.

Her onboard Virtual Intelligence was showing her a composite of night vision and thermal mode. The view it created was a pretty mix of green tinged with thermal hot spots overlaid in reds and yellows.  There was a farm house across a large unkempt lawn, and a barn further to her right, nearer the other corner of the field. The house was glowing hot on the thermal spectrum, but the barn was cold, and there were vehicles parked near it.

She focused her attention on the house.  Her VI started to bring up relevant structural data in the lower left corner of her vision, but she ignored it. The main house was a prefabricated model, standard on most UNW colonies. It was a single floor, with one door in front, and one in back. The windows were a thin light-weight plastic, with simple internal locks.  The owner had added a two story wing on the eastern side of the house. He had used local wood and stone, the effect was quite pretty. The siding panels had been painted in alternating blue and white horizontal stripes.  

The main door was clearly the original prefab’s front door. There was a pretty little garden wall surrounding a quaint yard in front of the house, about 5 by 5 meters. There was a guard near that door, and a window just to his right. He was the only person in sight.

The guy was leaning against the house in a feeble attempt to avoid getting rain on his face.  The heavy poncho he wore made it difficult for Sharren to determine if the guard was wearing armor. The poor bastard was just huddled under the eve, trying not to shiver in the cold, sloppy rain.

The house had some external lights, but nothing like a search light. The glow they cast did not reach far beyond the garden.

 Sharren’s lips would have curled into an evil smirk, but she had not kept her face in the last upgrade. You poor, dirt-eating hillbillies. These are your security measures?  She shook her head. I can’t belive they expect to stand up to us. She felt like the villain in a children’s story.  The people, they were the villagers.

Why do they do this? She thought. Captain Marcotte had given these locals five days to come up with a metric ton of untainted food, and at least a kilo of gold or platinum. He had come armed. He had been specific, with the usual death threats and show of force. He had even calculated in advance what these people could afford to lose, using data from orbital flyovers.

These goat-fuckers had messed it all up. They had not paid. Now they had to be shown that defiance was more expensive than compliance. Her orders were clear: Find their leaders and make an example of them. Tear them limb from limb and leave behind a nightmare; those were the words Captian Marcotte had used.

Sharren looked the area over one last time. Her VI calculated the distance to the door and feed it to her Heads Up Display, almost exactly 112 meters. She retracted the camera, and checked her rifle as the ariel slid back inside her shoulder. It was an older Prussian model, a heavy 12mm bull-pup set up with an excellent optics package.

The rifle’s scope had been hardwired to her VI through a data connection in the gun’s grip. She could see ammo quantity, gun status, and point of aim through her H.U.D., showing her exactly where the gun was pointed via a little red X. She preferred simple graphics over some of the more modern versions.

Despite the system showing her green lights, a manual check of the gun made her feel better. She released the plastic ammo block, and confirmed the first round had already been chipped off.  Sharren slapped it back into the feed and checked the chamber, then made sure her side arm was secure in its magnetic holster on her left leg. Once she was sure everything was in place, she waited for the storm.

The storm did not disappoint her. Lighting flashed, and brought with it the thunder she had been waiting for.

She was ready for it. Her powerful electro-polymer muscles launched her two hundred and forty kilogram frame over the ridge and into a sprint, the rolling sound of thunder hiding the noise of her foot falls. Sharren cleared the distance in just over five seconds. The guard saw her as she skipped over the garden wall, he let out surprised yell and tried to raise his shot gun.

The gun never reached level. Sharren used the momentum built up on her sprint to deliver a stomp-kick to his chest.  Ribs collapsed beneath her armored foot, and her talons scrapped against the house as she pressed his corpse to the ground.

It seems he was not wearing armor, she noted to herself.

Without looking at her handy work, she side stepped and punched through the window nearest the door. The clear polymer sheet gave way to her fist, leaving the window a spider web of cracks. She released a flash-bang from her forearm and whirled around. Her VI knew what she wanted, and detonated the grenade remotely, not waiting for its timer to expire. Sharren turned her attention back to the door, and kicked it. The door’s bolt failed under the force, slamming it open. Her forward momentum carried her across the threshold like death's bride.

She could see the people in the main room easily, despite the dark. Most of them were reeling, blind and deaf from the flash bang.  The ones that could see were stricken with fear, wide eyed and open mouthed in shock. They hid behind makeshift barricades of over turned furniture.

She rose from her usual combative crouch to her full seven foot height as she strode one more step into the room, letting the light fall on her demonic armored form. Slowly and deliberately, she  swayed side to side. She had seen a snake do this once, and enjoyed the way it menaced folks.

“Do you have our payment?” She vocalized. Sharren was using a voice she had calibrated just for such occasions, female, but harsh and dark. No one moved, and for a moment the world seemed frozen. Distant lightning highlighted the open door behind her, and its thunder passed by a moment later.

The Locals were trying to study her face, but there was nothing to gauge but an unmoving armor plate, sloping back from a central riser. Her armor was red and black, in a camouflage pattern, except for her fingers and hands, which were solid black.

“Well? Does this end here, or do I need to make good the Captain’s words?” She vocalized the last line slowly. Internally, she had assigned her VI to assume control of her right hand, and prioritized targets for it to shoot. 

The man closest to her seemed to find his courage. He was still young, but perhaps old enough to be called a man in some places. He had his right hand on a pistol butt, and squared up his shoulders though his eyes were still watery from the dazzle of the flash grenade.

“Fuck. You. You come here and demand our crops? Our money? What are we supposed to eat after you clean us out?” The young man stood his ground, glaring at her and seething with rage.

“Life is hard little boy. We need to eat as well. We have the strength to take what we need, so we do.” She softened her voice a bit, in hopes he would back down.  “It’s a small price, compared to the alternative. Last chance to buy peace, little boy. Will you pay or will you die?”

The defiant young man started to drawn his gun, and some of the others began to follow his lead. Sharren did not even think about it, 30 years of experience made her an old hand. She grabbed the boy, her left hand shot out quick as lightning. Her VI used her right to begin shooting the others. She paid the gunfire no mind as she slammed the boys head in the ceiling one handed. She felt his skull crack, so she tossed him aside like a broken toy. The room was silent.

The after image of the boy reminded Sharren of herself at his age. Things almost worked out better for you, eh boy? Back to work. She chided herself. These distractions were going to be a problem if she could not lock it down.

Five seconds, six bodies; not bad work she thought.  The VI was trying to put names to faces, but none of them matched the Mayor's picture profile.  More work to do.

The VI was letting her know there were thirty rounds left in the gun’s ammo block as Sharren noted the stairway on her right. It seemed to go up into the newer part of the house.  She moved carefully towards it, the floor softly creaking under her weight.

There was a closed door blocking her view. She listened for breathing, but the rain was giving her too much white noise. She put two rounds through door, and got what she wanted. A startled yelp slipped out of someone, a someone which her VI highlighted faster than thought. She sent two more bullets that way, and heard the target fall over.

The pushed through the feeble wooden door and saw a male body, holding some kind of heavy fire arm. It was big enough to have possibly put a hole in her.

This is why you never advance blindly. These folk might be a challenge after all.

She slung the rifle and it magnetized itself to her back. She picked up the dead man’s boom-stick and fired through a wall, leaving an enormous hole where it blew through, showering the room inhabitants with wooden splinters.

Or maybe not, the thought as she tore the rest of the way through the wall to finish her work.