The four legs of the combat drone hit the ground and flexed to absorb the impact. Saying Jacob had been plummeting through the air was technically true, but the fall was only three meters. The ship ramp didn’t even have time to close fully before he landed on the ground. As Jacob got his bearings, the ship rose out of the campus’s large garden courtyard and took up an overwatch position with one of his avatars in control.
Jacob would have asked Katherine to assist with this mission, but she had made her feelings on Franky abundantly clear, so he hadn’t even mentioned the operation to her.
He turned the drone to face a startled worker who had been sitting on a nearby bench, enjoying the weather and scenery, a baloney sandwich still in his mouth. “Hey, you don’t happen to know the way to where they store stolen alien artifacts, do you?”
The shocked man shook his head slowly.
“Oh well, thanks anyway,” Jacob replied
He turned away from the worker and started walking in the direction of the artifacts as an alarm blared through the facility, joining the people who were screaming and running away from him in a panic. While he was doing a rendition of Judgment Day, the avatar in the ship overhead dug through the building’s security systems and intranet to find a floor plan.
A security guard rounded the corner, pistol out. The man took one look at the combat drone, then wisely decided that his job didn’t pay him enough. He turned around and ran.
Jacob encountered a few more guards during his slow jog across the massive campus, but only one was dumb enough to fire at the drone. The round ricocheted off the upper sphere, leaving a smear but otherwise not damaging the material. The guard just stared in shocked surprise.
“Dude, seriously?” Jacob asked through the drone’s speaker.
Thankfully, the other guard with him was the smarter of the two and yanked the younger man away before the first guard could make any more poor life choices.
It was good to get confirmation that the BX-100 material was resistant to small arms fire, but what the hell had that guy been thinking? Yes, he stole the US naming convention for the material because the Concord Imperium sucked at naming stuff. If they bothered to name it at all. For example, the station’s name was just military shipyard fifty-two, and Melody was just called planetary conditioning vessel seven. Ridiculous!
If the US didn’t like him stealing their name, they could sue him.
Jacob chuckled maniacally at the thought of the US trying to sue him over naming rights for the alien material. His laughter sent a nosy individual who had been watching from down the hall fleeing for his life.
Note to self, no more maniacal laughter while in the combat drone.
It sent the wrong impression.
The building plans and ship sensors had Jacob turning down a dead-end hallway. It was filled with closets full of cleaning supplies, if his sensors were reading correctly. The four barrels of his void cannons glowed an eerie blue for a moment, the color reminiscent of Chernikov radiation before discharging.
The wall barring Jacob’s path vanished with a booming pop, caused by the collapsing air.
A group of heavily armed men who had been rushing up the stairwell, hidden behind the wall, froze in shock, and the two sides stared at each other for a moment before all hell broke loose.
Half a dozen men fired grenades at him, and the hallway Jacob was standing in exploded into a shower of deadly shrapnel that would have torn a person to bloody chunks had they been standing there.
One grenade impacted the upper portion of the drone and exploded, yanking it sideways and throwing off his aim. The main sphere was undamaged by the blast, but one of his weapons was nearly torn in half. The three shots from his void cannons had missed their intended target as well.
Jacob winced as the closet, nearest the new entrance to the stairwell, ceased to exist. He quickly reoriented back on target and made a mental note to improve the stabilizers on the next drone. Then he opened fire once again. The armed men blocking his advance ceased to be.
He thought he would feel different about killing humans versus aliens, but he didn’t. He chalked that up to the fact that they attacked first. They were also dressed in similar nondescript black tactical gear as the group that had attacked the Brooklyn dig site, so they probably had plenty of blood on their hands before he arrived.
The drone stepped through the opening in the wall and made its way past the few bloody chunks that remained as it stomped down the steps toward its destination.
Jacob glanced up the stairwell to see if anyone was coming down, but he couldn’t detect anything. Considering the only thing on the top floor of the five-story headquarters of Redline Dynamics was the executive level, and above that, a helicopter pad with a helicopter doing its best to try and spin up its blades in a desperate bid to get away, he wasn’t surprised that none of them were trying to flee for the parking garage.
A quick blast from the ship’s energy cannon took care of the tail rotor of the helicopter, grounding it, and a second blast ensured the elevator and door leading back inside were no longer an option for the leaders of Redline Dynamics to flee from their fate. Jacob decided to leave them up there for the US to deal with.
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Redline leadership must not have been ready to give up, however, because a hidden anti-air missile battery on an adjacent roof popped up and fired at the ship. The missile exploded harmlessly on the ship’s shield, and another blast from its energy cannons blew the hidden weapon battery apart.
“I don’t recall seeing that on any building plans!” Jacob said in surprise as he reached the sub-basement.
Then again, the sub-basement wasn’t on any plans either. The building plans showed the executive stairwell ending at the upper parking lot, and he was two stories below that. Jacob increased the power output and hurried the drone along as the artifact signals began to move. He needed to get down there before the artifacts left the facility or the drone’s two power cores ran out of power. Damn thing was a power hog even without a shield. He could see why the Astryx model used three of the damn power cores.
The next door vanished, and Jacob clomped into a hidden parking garage, interrupting a group loading crates into a van. Two armed men vanished before they even had a chance to fire, then he leveled his weapons at the trio of scientists.
They hastily dropped the plastic crates, throwing their hands in the air.
“Smart choice,” Jacob said, “but I’m actually going to need you to finish loading everything into the van.”
They looked confused and startled by the request, but slowly bent down and picked up the crates to continue loading them into the back of the large panel van.
It took the scientists a few more trips back into the laboratory to grab the rest of the material. By that point, one of Jacob’s drones had strolled through the facility to meet him there.
Jacob watched in amusement as the drone shook hands with each of the terrified scientists, thanking them for their assistance, before it got into the van and drove up and out of the concealed parking lot, into the greater underground parking structure below the Redline campus.
The ship was waiting for the van when it reached the surface, and the vehicle was small enough that it could drive up the vessel’s ramp.
Jacob joined the van a minute later in the combat drone, the thing running low on juice as he pushed its power reserves to the limit to eke out a bit of extra speed. He could hear sirens approaching, and he didn’t want to be around when the cops showed up.
While the recovery had gone as well as possible, considering his lack of preparation, things were much different back in the White House and with other leaders.
“Jacob, you can’t just attack people on American soil!” the president yelled after getting a call about the attack.
Jacob rolled his eyes. He was getting the same tongue-lashing from multiple people.
As it turned out, Redline Dynamics had a lot more friends than Jacob had anticipated, and they had leveraged their contacts to make his life miserable. Even though he was getting an earful from multiple world leaders and powerful business insiders, he found the efforts of Redline’s leadership to be amusing. Jacob likened it to a toddler throwing a fit after having its favorite toy taken away.
The admonitions about his actions, while many, lacked any actual bite. Even President McConnell’s was performative, going by his bio signs. The only person Jacob was in contact with who seemed to have any real emotion about Jacob’s actions was General Roberts, who looked smugly satisfied.
Jacob decided he liked the old warhorse quite a bit. Maybe he would make him an offer after he dealt with the mess he had created. He could use more people like the general at the station. Those who prioritized results over politics.
Speaking of, Jacob cut the president off. “Mr. President. Can we please stop with the theatrics? I understand you have to take a certain stance for Redline Dynamics because of its importance, but I don’t care. I also don’t think you realize that their importance will be non-existent soon enough, assuming you wish to continue negotiations with me?”
“Are you laying out an ultimatum, son?” There was no accusation in the President’s tone, just a general question. Almost hopeful even.
“Yes?” Jacob replied hesitantly.
The President smiled. “Well, why didn’t you say so. I’ll make sure to inform my cabinet that your continued negotiations will be contingent on the arrest of these vile traitors. You can cut the recording.”
“What just happened?” Jacob asked in confusion.
“Politics,” the General said in disgust.
“Pah,” President McConnell waved them off. “Don’t act like you didn’t play the game, Roberts.”
“Just because I had to play it, didn’t mean I had to like it,” the gruff older man replied.
The President just shook his head and turned back toward Jacob. “So, you said three days, and you’re leaving, correct?”
“Five,” Jacob corrected.
“Good, good,” the President said. “A definitive end date will definitely move things along. None of the world leaders working with you is stupid enough to throw away this opportunity. To do so would mean their countries would quickly fall behind. I’m honestly surprised you put up with our bickering and positioning for so long. I would have set a deadline long ago.”
“I didn’t even know that was an option,” Jacob said in annoyance.
He just got fed up and wanted things over with so he could focus on the station again.
“You’ll learn soon enough,” President McConnell chuckled. “It isn’t like there is a definitive guide for what politicians do.”
“I guess I’m a bit confused,” Jacob admitted. “With your admonitions, I thought you’d be a whole lot more upset about my actions.”
“As you said, that was performative. Captured and recorded for anyone who needs to see it. I’ve disabled the recording systems in here so we can talk candidly. I’ve wanted a reason to get rid of Redline Dynamics and their sleazy business practices since I became president. The problem is that they have friends high up in the Department of Defense. They also contribute a ton to the campaigns of over two dozen governors and many more state representatives, making them essentially untouchable…until now.” The president smiled predatorily. “If you can provide me with video evidence of their crimes, not even their most stalwart supporters will go near them for fear of committing career suicide.”
“Will this suffice?” Jacob asked as a video appeared on the screen nearby. It wasn’t a video of Jacob’s attack on their facility, but of the Redline Dynamics mercenaries being dropped off in Brooklyn. It was impossible to tell who the mercenaries worked for since they didn’t wear any identifying items, but a few of the body cams recording their attack swung around and clearly showed the RD logo plastered on the side of the van they were exiting.
“Alone, no,” McConnell admitted, “but with the dental records from the attackers’ bodies, which were traced back from the attack to Redline, yes.”
Roberts shot to his feet in rage. “You knew who was responsible for the attacks!”
“Of course we did,” the president replied. “We aren’t stupid. Only one company had remote access to those satellites that were brought offline.”
Roberts looked disgusted as he stormed out of the room. Jacob couldn’t blame the man; he felt disgusted as well.
The President sighed and shook his head, then he turned to Jacob. “I think that discussion is over. Perhaps we can end this meeting with something a bit more positive. My people believe they have located your friend.”