Shattered Union by Steve P. Vincent

Author:Steve P. Vincent [Vincent, Steve P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steve P. Vincent

14

Stiler’s heart pounded hard and fast as the truck approached the base’s main gate. He reached up to pull his grey baseball cap lower, then turned to the driver sitting beside him. “Here goes nothing.”

“It’ll be fine.” Gary, a name Stiler assumed was fake, rolled his eyes. “I thought you Marines were meant to love riding into dangerous situations.”

“Usually I’m riding in something a bit tougher than a delivery truck, armed with more than a data pad…” He looked down at the pistol he had sitting in the footwell – not much in the way of armament, but then there was no way he’d shoot a fellow Marine who was just doing his job, if it came to it. “And teamed up with more rowdy motherfuckers than you, Gary.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” the Syndicate enforcer said with a laugh. “I’ll see what I can do about the rowdy motherfuckers once we’re inside the base, though.”

“If we get inside the base…”

A Marine had emerged from the guardhouse next to the gate and was now waiting to meet the truck. When they came to a stop, Gary rolled down the window and greeted the guard with a wave, before holding out his arm. All business, the Marine said nothing, just lifted his data pad to scan Gary’s wrist. The pad beeped after a second, the spoofed identity chip in Gary’s arm confirming he was part of a two-man food delivery crew.

One down, one to go.

Stiler played it cool as the Marine walked around the front of the idling truck, one hand holding the data pad and the other wiping sweat from his brow. The daytime heat of Shellanth was back with a vengeance, so even a few minutes outside the air-conditioned guardhouse in full uniform would be miserable. Stiler held his arm out the window, ready, and feigned disinterest; in truth he was more nervous than when facing a combat mission.

If the Marine found out who he was, Stiler was in loads of trouble.

The data pad beeped, then the Marine looked up in confusion. “What the hell are you trying to pull here, pal?”

Stiler kept his face neutral to hide his panic. He’d agreed to let the Syndicate techs replace his normal ID chip with a false one that would tell anyone who scanned it Stiler was named Ted Buloski. Ted was a menial labourer working for the Shellanth Fine Foods Distribution Company, a Syndicate-controlled outfit that delivered food and beverages to office towers, restaurants, grocery stores…

…and military bases.

It had been the only way to get him inside the base, but it had required a huge leap of faith in McGuire and the rest of his organisation. Identity theft was a trillion-credit industry in the Union, and because Stiler was a citizen – and a soldier – his genuine identity chip would be worth a huge pile on the black market. If his current mission succeeded, Stiler wanted his own chip back in his own arm as soon as possible. He figured it was a fifty-fifty proposition at best.

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