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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 107: Kondor 291
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Slade 286
Kondor’s scriff sense connection to the plastic diktar coin told him he was on the right path as he goosed the powerful engine of his hefty motorcycle up a short but steep incline. Powdery snow spun right and left under his wheels. Climbing up the small rise with the valley going up to his right and left, he picked up a bit of speed over the next longer rise. His bike began to skew to one side and the other until he leaned back as the trainers had taught him which gave more traction to the rear wheel and let the front one find its own course.
Throwing his body to the left and right, he hit a flatter spot with the snow blown off, and raced across the stone with the mountain walls to his right and left echoing back the sound. Rising further, he went onto the path and followed it into the snow as it switched back and forth. Seeing a rock in his path he hit the brakes and slid right into it. This tossed him off over the handlebars, but happily past the rock.
Getting up, he stood on the side of a long fairly steep climb with cutbacks, and he checked to see if he was dizzy or nauseated. Going over any body or mental ailments or impairments, he diagnosed himself as good to go, although the thin mountain air and the occasional bashing was taking a toll. No doubt he would sleep well tonight, provided he got the mission done.
Lifting his bike upright, which was harder than before due to the slippery footing, he tried to start out, but the narrow passage made that difficult. Shrugging, he popped up a cover and hit a green button. Several dozen inch long spikes popped out of his back wheel even as the wheel deflated by about five pounds to make it wider. This would give more traction with the risk of a stone piercing the back tire increasing. Kondor had hoped to get over the mountain pass without resorting to the spikes, but he had placed no great hope in the possibility.
The spikes sent him surging down the track, and he bucked and wobbled as he made the next turn up. Moving more quickly, he went to the next and then the next, and finally out over an icy sheet which ran all the way to the top of the pass. Once there, he took the spiked back wheel gently over the clear stone of the pass, and stopped on the far side.
Below him two miles of ice and snow sloped down to a little snowmelt lake with no outflow, and a collection of buildings alongside them. The varied buildings were toughly built of stone and concrete, and ranged from one to three stories tall. Encircling them was a ten foot tall chainlink fence. Adjusting his Meritronics eye and putting the eye patch over his natural one, he spied out any potential targets (guards) and found none which was probably due to the extreme cold. Using that infrared, he verified the location of the power generator, which to judge by the barrels nearby ran on a petroleum fuel. A half dozen trucks were parked nearby with two running. The other four had cold wraps and charging stations on them to keep the batteries operational for their diesel engines. It was cold enough to freeze lungs if you ran, or cause a bare hand stuck to metal to require an offering of several layers of skin to remove. No guards or dogs were outside. The track ran down the valley and toward another mountain pass, and only a single rutted lane of an offshoot ran to the lake and the building.
Looking at it, Kondor decided to run the risk. He could go down the track and then cut right, but it would take longer, and be expected, and he thought someone in one of the main buildings would be behind one of the windows looking that way. He might as well drive up and honk. ‘Hey, I’m here to sabotage your facility, mind letting me in?’
Kondor shoved off with his engines barely turning over, and began to glide over the snow and ice downhill. Every so often, he goosed the engine a bit, either to get up some more speed or to push through a sudden deep spot in the snow that threatened to slow him down. The objective was to get down there as quickly and as silently as possible. The Reptile House team was nearby, ready to jump into the bowl-like small valley, which was an easy rifle shot from one side to the other--and who knew what these guys were planning on doing with their cold fusion device.
Snow flew to his right and left in rooster trails, and his front wheel zagged and zigged. He threw himself to the right to counter a right slide and pull his bike back under control. Righting himself from nearly falling over and crashing into a pile of stones poking up out of the snow, he suddenly found himself airborne as he went over a small cliff he had not spotted. Coming down on the far side with a thump to his bum, he felt intensely relieved to be going still.
Hitting the last hundred yards of flatland, he threw it all into the pot. The noise of his motorcycle was probably waking up soldiers who pretended to be deniable mercenaries for this project for the greatest power in the area. Running forward, the speed of his cycle hitting ninety miles per hour, he hit the fence. Slamming into it, he felt his bottom rise up, but he clamped his legs tightly to the side of the cycle even as he kept the throttle to full. The fence offered almost no resistance as he tore metal poles free, snapping them off because the metal, as Gear had predicted, would not like the cold that much.
Surrounded by chain link fencing he gradually slowed, and his attempts to free himself only got him more entangled. Now deliberately slowing he came up behind the parked trucks and dumped the still moving cycle. As he went off, he yanked the black gas spewer which threw out an impressive amount of black smoke to billow into the air. It also triggered a loud recording of official military voices shouting various orders in Mandarin.
Scrambling free of the chain link fence, he came to his feet behind the trucks. Part of this had been Gear’s plan, but much of it had to be made in the moment. Popping his head up, he saw a Chinese soldier poking his head out the front door of the main building. A single bullet, to conserve ammo and make it harder to track him by sound, had the man ducking his unhelmetted head back inside. Kondor took the opportunity to run to the right between the main building and another smaller, two-story building which had one of the feared ZSU quad-autocannons on top of it.
Sprinting across the hard-packed snow, he made it past the main building on the left, and up to a long block building on the right. He heard noise inside, and so yanked open the door and shouted as he tossed a scooped-up rock inside, ‘Grenade!’ Hopefully, the Mandarin speakers inside had watched enough Western action movies to know the word ‘grenade’. Running past the slamming door, he heard shouts and shrieks from inside, but not a boom. Directly ahead of him was the power generator, and on the far side of the square-block concrete two-story was the fuel tank.
The front metal door opened as he galloped forward, and a startled-looking Han opened his eyes wide, shouted something even as he slammed the metal door in Kondor’s face. Kondor heard the clicking of a lock, and skidded to a halt in the wet gravel near the building. He slung his M-16 over his shoulder; there was a better tool for the job. Out came his kinetic blaster. It took four shots that boomed through the small valley, but the door hung open, only attached to one hinge.
Slipping the blaster back in his holster, hearing the shouts of men coming his way, he entered the building with his M-16 on three-round burst ready to fire. His goal was to knock out the radar control for the multiple ZSU’s so that Reptile House could land. One idea had been to go directly at the radar control, but it was in an awkward, well-frequented position. The decision had been left up to him, and on the mountain pass he had made it. Take out the electric power, and bye-bye radar. Now, he could have done this in part already. A stream of autofire at the fuel tank might do the job of taking out the fuel and the generator--but he needed a place to wait until Reptile House got here.
If he turned off the generator without blowing the fuel, the response would be muted as they did not want valuable, heavy, and hard to transfer equipment damaged. They would think to themselves they had just one man, or a small team on the place, or so was his best theory. They would think they could convince him to surrender. Indeed, if their communications were par for armies of his experience, the people at the top would probably just think there was a power failure and dispatch a technician to solve it. In truth he was not sure that was how it would play out, but he was hopeful. But first, he had to get control of the building, and the generator, and the people inside.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #532: Versers Chilled. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
