Prologue
Los Angeles Region – Central Sector – 2172
The transport hauler bumped over the uneven asphalt, jostling the team. Sergeant Rowan Lockwood grabbed hold of the strap hanging from the ceiling to prevent knocking into the sweating squad member sitting on either side of her. A total of twenty guards jammed the two benches that ran down the sides of the hauler. She ignored them and stared at the glass imagers above their heads. The imagers currently displayed an aerial map but were unreadable with the rough road, but once they stopped, each team member could review maps and other pertinent data regarding the pending raid. The jittering screen gave her double vision, and she lowered her gaze to study the man across the aisle. His helmeted head rested on the hard metal side of the transport, eyes closed. She envied anyone who could nap on the way to a raid, but she’d been tasked with leading the squad that evening. Barely five years since graduating from the academy, this would be her first command. What a cluster. The butterflies had been playing roller derby in her gut since the team had entered the vehicle.
She tugged at her braid and played with the band that held it together. On instinct rather than thought, she reached into the pocket of her black tactical pants and wrapped her fingers around the old timepiece she’d found on a reclamation run. The guy at the pawnshop in the Yards had told her it was over a century old, maybe two, and though it no longer worked, she liked looking at the old-fashioned black numerals and the delicate arms of the minute and second hands. After tucking the watch away, she double-checked her sidearm and both knives. One blade was kept in her light-armored vest, the other in a holster above her combat boot. She would grab a high-velocity pulse long rifle from the armory cage when she exited the transport.
Without warning, a wicked pain pierced her head as if she’d been struck by a crossbow bolt. She blinked back tears and bent over, elbows on her knees, head lowered as she attempted to rub away the headache. She’d had these blinding headaches before, back when she’d been a kid. They came with visions—images from a child’s imagination. From what she could remember, the headaches and visions both stopped sometime after puberty. Now, she’d had two crippling episodes in as many months. Fortunately, the pain should stop in a minute or two.
“Here, Rowan. Take one of these.”
At the gruff voice, she slowly turned her head to glance at Dozer, who held out a bottle of stims. He smiled, his perfect white teeth glowing in the dim darkness of the hauler, accentuated by the dark grease covering his face. Her own teeth must cast the same eerie vision, emphasized by her pale-green eyes. Cap had once told her she looked like a Valkyrie when she swooped into a barrage of smugglers—braid whipping around, teeth bared, eyes wide as saucers, her long rifle primed.
Dozer nudged her arm. He was a grizzly old man, not old enough to have been around for the Climate Wars that changed the world, but young enough to have fought during the two years of the Uprising. That had been twenty-five years ago, and the old man was just as quick and lethal as the younger hotheads in the unit. But his face showed his age, emphasized by the deep crevice of a scar that ran from the left side of his mouth, across his chin, ending somewhere under his jaw. In the dim green light of the transport, his steady glare could make a full-grown man piss his pants.
Unwilling to shake her head, she managed an “I’m okay.” To prove it more to herself than him, she sat back and closed her eyes to clear her vision. When she opened them, the pain had receded.
“Hear you passed on the earlier call.” Dozer studied her.
“Yeah.” She yelled over the noise of the thrusters sliding into reverse as the hauler made a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn to get into position.
“Take a stim. It’ll clear away the alcohol.” His expression turned soft, though his tone sounded more like a command. The old man had taken her under his wing when she’d first joined the unit, and his bluster didn’t scare the shit out of her anymore.
She grabbed the bottle and fumbled the handoff. The canister rolled down the aisle, and she swore as she unclipped the safety harness and stood. The quick movement made her head swim and legs shake. Between the hangover and the remains of the piercing headache, she waited a heartbeat before she was steady enough to walk, then made two attempts at retrieving the bottle before one of the guards picked it up and tossed it to her. After settling back and re-engaging the harness, she shook out a pill, dry swallowing it before placing the bottle back in Dozer’s hand. The bitter taste was a minor payback for ignoring the earlier call.
As if he’d read her mind, Dozer said, “It’s okay to pass on a call when you’re off duty. That’s not on you.”
“I know.” Yet, she couldn’t kick the guilt. Zach had taken the call, and now his squad was pinned down, waiting for them to bail him out.
Dozer grunted, and after all these years, the best sense she could make of his grunt was confirmation he had her back—just one more of his cranky charms. Tonight, she latched onto it like a lifesaver.
Cap, dressed in the same combat gear as the squads, walked into the cargo area from the driver’s cage. The hauler idled, its heavy engines vibrating the vehicle.
Dozer elbowed her. “You need another stim?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m already buzzing.”
“Lockwood,” Cap yelled.
Rowan jumped up and met him at the central display console, tucked into a corner of the wall dividing the compartments. There were three squads on this raid, and tonight, they’d follow her commands. She sucked in a breath. “What we got?”
Cap frowned and shook his head. He punched keys until a map lit up the console and the two rows of imagers for the other guards to follow along. “Our team is pinned down on the backside of this abandoned building.” He zoomed in on the interior shot, then moved the pointer until it hovered where a barricade had been set up in front of the back wall.
She could make out movement behind what looked like part of the crumbling ceiling. Abandoned buildings were commonplace in the Yards. That ceiling could have come down yesterday or twenty years ago.
“The team received a call about an illegal tech sale. The informant was either misinformed or it was a setup. We have an unknown crew of suspected contraband runners directly across from them, pinning them down on three sides.”
She studied the image as Cap split the visual, adding a map from the outside of the building. “How thick are the walls?”
“At least a foot.”
“A single pulse grenade should take care of it, but…” She pushed her helmet up to scratch her temple. “Have the team move to the west side, as far as they can go. It wouldn’t hurt to put a couple sharpshooters in position over here.” She tapped the left side of the screen, outside the range of the image. “They can provide cover fire.”
“A grenade could take down the whole wall.”
She nodded and gave him one of her know-it-all grins. “We’ll have to be careful.”
He nodded. “Let’s round ’em up.”
Five minutes later, after taking the long way around the building at a fast jog, she placed six of their team around Hernandez, who used a laser GPS scope to pin her target. Rowan typed into her wrist unit and waited for the response. Ten seconds later, a single word came onto the screen. “Green.”
She knelt next to Hernandez. “Make it a nice clean hole about head high.”
Hernandez nodded, and within seconds the grenade hit the wall. Chunks of cement and layers of dust filled the air. Rapid gunfire followed. That would be the cover teams laying down suppressing fire as the trapped team moved toward their escape.
When the dust settled enough to see the expanded hole, she gave Hernandez a questioning glance. “I thought I said head high. That hit wasn’t more than five feet.”
She shrugged. “I’m short.”
Rowan snorted as she watched the first of the pinned-down unit crawl through broken scraps of the hole. The second person had to be helped through. They dragged their leg, a field dressing leaking a dark stain. As another guard climbed over the dusty rubble, she noted movement from the right, outside of the building where the exterior wall had crumbled away.
A single-person Airborne Vehicular Unit, or AVU, was positioned alongside the building. It hadn’t been there when they’d run a patrol around the building, nor had she heard it land. It must have come in when the grenade went off. A dark figure, feminine in movement but difficult to identify in the dim lighting, slid along the farther side of the vehicle until they stopped where the windshield leveled off to meet the hard surface metal. They leaned over the AVU, and several seconds ticked by before Rowan understood what she was seeing.
The person had a scoped rifle, and Rowan tracked where the muzzle pointed, directly at the crumbling wall where the team was evacuating. The person currently climbing through had their arm clutched to their chest and stumbled on the debris before one of their squad moved in to assist.
Zach, as the team’s commander, was the last to emerge. She turned her back to him and stood as she drew up her long rifle, shouting a warning to the team. “Rogue shooter!”
“Zach. Drop!” someone else yelled.
The shooter was quick. They’d already tossed the rifle in the AVU before jumping in behind it. Rowan zeroed in on the driver’s compartment and released three rapid-fire shots as it began to lift. The shots went low, one hitting a wheel, the second piercing the back panel of the AVU, and the last one disappearing into the night sky. The vehicle moved so fast, she wasn’t able to catch the identification tag. It would have been a miracle in the low lighting.
She spun around as the “all clear” command was given. Guards stood in a loose circle around the med unit. A knife twisted in the middle of her chest as she ran for the growing group, skidding to a stop but still managing to barrel through two burly squad members. Two people hovered over Zach—one pumping on his chest and another trying to staunch the bleeding from a neck wound.
No. No. No. She froze, searching his face.
She didn’t need anyone to call it to know her brother was already gone.
Chapter One
Los Angeles – Six months later
The lights from the imagers cast a blue glow within the command transport. Rowan listened to the chatter in her earbuds, still thirty minutes until the mark was due to show. Dozer and Mahoney played cards in silence. The two old-timers wouldn’t be needed until the target’s vehicle entered the net—the area between where the deal was going down and where the team had surrounded the area. The size of the net depended on the raid, and this one was narrow, barely a block in circumference.
She leaned back, her combat boots resting on a console—the cool squad leader showing no worries. But her outward demeanor didn’t reflect the tingling of excitement before an imminent raid, the light sheen of sweat along her spine, or the crickets jumping around in her belly. If this raid failed, it could end her short command of the squad. Cap had said as much before they’d left the barn, the name long ago given to the garage of the Internal Security Agency, or ISA.
The ISA was a worldwide agency, a mixture of the old world’s police, military, and international investigative units rolled into one. The agency cared for internal Earth issues ranging from simple property disputes to murder to corporate espionage. They were the unseen force that people subconsciously knew was there, took comfort from it, but rarely saw, except through occasional video feeds in the media. Lately, at least in the L.A. Sector, the ISA’s primary focus had been on the Yards.
Topside—a moniker derived long ago from the Terrestrial Origination Project and where seventy percent of the world’s population lived—enjoyed the utopia of the new world order after the global destruction wrought by the Climate Wars a hundred and fifty years ago. The Yards was its underbelly. When Topside was being built, railyards circled the city, and the workers lived near them. Now, almost all the railyards were long gone, but the term Yards remained, as did the housing. Most of the people had moved to the mainstream Topside, but others hadn’t wanted to leave their culture-driven neighborhoods. Life in the Yards was now driven by the old world’s phenomena of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Rowan preferred the Yards on most days. The grit made everything seem real, rather than the almost too-sterile Topside.
“Hernandez?” she whispered into her headset. “What do you see?” She didn’t expect anything yet. This guy, whoever he was, she’d never been able to get a name or a face, was too slick, a professional who timed everything with exacting precision. She’d learned that, if nothing else, in the last two failed attempts at catching him.
“Nothing, boss.” Her voice was smooth and steady. “Wait.”
Rowan sat up, swinging her boots to the floor, and caught the quick glances from Dozer and Mahoney before they went back to their cards.
“There’s a single-person AVU rolling through. Might be a lookout.” Silence, except for the humming of the radio signal. “A woman. Looks like she might be lost.” A few seconds ticked by while Rowan tapped her fingers on the arm of the chair. “She’s parked on the far side of the lot, behind a small shed.”
“Marco,” Rowan whispered. “Keep an eye on her.”
Two clicks from the radio said he heard.
Ten squad members were spread around the net. Two were marksmen: Marco and Jess. Jess was the better of the two if the mark was on the move. She had a natural flair for timing movement with her shot. The other eight would rush in commando-style, weapons hot. Sometimes Rowan would call for a larger backup team, but this was a small meetup based on what little intel she’d scraped together. One commercial cargo transport with the contraband and one AVU with the target.
A quick buzz sounded, and the dispatcher’s voice filtered through from a secondary feed. “Sarge, you have a call. It’s on the command channel.”
Damn it. This wouldn’t be the first time Cap called during the last minutes before a raid to shut the whole thing down. It was annoying, and while it wouldn’t be a mark against her leadership, it would be weeks of work for nothing.
She caught the two men’s glances again. They’d be just as disappointed. Once the raid started, they were the cleanup crew. They’d run toward anything going haywire and mop it up. The whole team was lethal, but these two could crawl up behind someone while they stood stock-still in the middle of an empty field. They were scary crazy.
She nibbled at a nail. Better to get this over with. It would be easier to pull out now before the target showed up and destroyed any chance of moving on them in the future. She tapped her earbud. “Go ahead, dispatch.”
“Rowan?”
“Kendra?” For fuck’s sake. Her sister-in-law. Rowan’s chest tightened, and she turned her back on Dozer and Mahoney.
“I’m sorry, Rowan. Your mother gave me the link to contact you.”
She blew out a breath and ran a hand over her hair, cut short after that horrible night, and was now a messy mop of untamed auburn reaching her shoulders. Only command personnel should be calling on this line minutes before a raid. Her mother could only have gotten the link from her father—General Thaddeus Lockwood—known lovingly by some as Bear, an old academy nickname, known in terror by others as the Grizzly. Her name would be listed under the terror column.
“I’m in the middle of a raid, Kendra.” She held her tone level. Whatever this call was about had nothing to do with her sister-in-law. She’d been through enough these last six months, now trying to raise her two kids all alone. And it was Rowan’s fault.
The silence was deafening. The two could sit for long moments with just the silence. Kendra had a heart of gold. This particular silence swelled with apprehension, and they both knew it hadn’t been her choice to call.
“What do they want?” Rowan couldn’t stop the bitterness from leaking out.
Kendra sighed loudly. “They’ve called a family dinner. It wasn’t my choice. I tried to tell them it wasn’t necessary.”
“Don’t tell me. Mother is intruding.”
Kendra let out a shaky laugh. “You have no idea.”
“Hmm. I have some.”
“I suppose you do.” Another pause. “Listen, Rowan. They called it for tomorrow. I’ll understand if you discover you have…I don’t know…maybe another raid?”
She snorted. “Will one of my drunken binges do? They’ll believe that.”
“Oh, Rowan. You need to stop beating yourself up for something you couldn’t prevent.”
“Do you really want me to find an excuse? Or would it be easier to just get this over with?” She hadn’t seen her parents for weeks. Kendra had been to their place numerous times with the kids, but it required an official family dinner before Rowan would be allowed in the house.
“Zach would never blame you, and your parents are asses.”
She laughed, mostly to cover the first part of Kendra’s statement that would always sting. But her sister-in-law could turn into quite the tiger when she had her back against a wall.
“Message received, Kendra. Could you pass a message to my loving parents that I have a previous engagement and require more notice next time?” She was happy to take the hit for Kendra. God knows the woman deserved whatever break she could get.
“Thank you, Rowan.” There was a brief pause before she finished. “Zach is watching over us. I believe that with all my heart.”
Then all she heard was static until the air she’d been holding rushed out, releasing the clamp around her heart. She blinked, then turned to the second imager, getting her head back in the game. The center of the net was the parking lot of an old warehouse that opened into an old-fashioned farmer’s market on the weekends. The team had become rigid, and the chatter had quieted.
“Talk to me, Hernandez.”
Hernandez was tucked into a high-level nest in a nearby building. She used to be the sharpshooter of the squad, one of the best in the unit, but her true talent was as a techrat. There wasn’t a computer she couldn’t tame into submission. Right now, she would be watching several cameras—the team’s eyes and ears.
“Nothing, boss.”
Rowan’s heart sank. She checked the clock on the console, less than five minutes until the meet.
“Game time.” Hernandez’s voice had moved up an octave. This was the real deal.
Dozer and Mahoney dropped their cards and stood. They checked weapons and moved toward the door, their bodies tensing for the order to be given.
“Everyone, hold back until you hear my command.” Her voice was calm and controlled. “We wait until after the exchange.” The squad knew that, but everyone got jacked up, eager to jump into the fray. The words were meant to keep everyone settled.
“Here comes the cargo transport. I see the driver but can’t see the passenger side.” Hernandez would call out everything she saw to advise the squad where the players were and how many.
“We don’t know the size of the team traveling with the package. Be prepared.” She continued her mantra with the same calm voice she always mustered up, having learned long ago how to keep the nervous shake out of her tone.
“The AVU is coming in from the north. It looks like the right color and model.”
“Marco, you have eyes on that first AVU?” Rowan asked.
“No movement.” His voice was nothing more than a whisper.
“Keep on her.” She leaned toward the imager, the camera confirming Hernandez’s report. “Patience.” The AVU was a flashy green, easy to spot, but down here in the Yards that meant nothing. Flashy AVUs were all the rage, especially for the street races held outside the Yards, away from prying ISA security monitors. The races could be picked up by satellite if they were worth ISA’s time. They weren’t.
The cargo transport was commercial grade, the type that could be found on any street during delivery times. In Topside, delivery times were in the early predawn hours or late at night to prevent hampering traffic during the day. In the Yards, delivery was whenever.
The two vehicles stopped ten feet from each other, each parked slightly toward the right, making for an easy escape.
“Tighten the net. Slowly.” Her command brought the squad in closer, erasing the target’s comfortable exit.
“Boss, another vehicle. A rammer.” Hernandez’s voice was urgent. “They’re coming in from the east side alley and moving fast. They’ll pass our lone woman.”
Rowan leaned toward another imager to get a better angle of whoever was approaching. Was one of the players breaking the rules, or had they missed something? Maybe this was someone in the wrong place at the wrong time. But with a rammer? A rammer was a street-modified, four-seater AVU rebuilt like the old armored vehicles before the Climate Wars. They were illegal and only had one purpose, as the name suggested. Having it show up in the middle of their raid screwed with her plans, but the squad could adapt.
“Dozer, Mahoney, grab the pulse grenade launchers on your way out.”
They smiled as they opened lockers, grabbing weapons that could launch grenades up to three hundred yards. One grenade would be enough to take out the rammer, but they might as well play it safe.
They were out the door before the rammer reached the spot where the marks had parked.
“Hold steady.” She scooted up in her seat, her right leg bouncing. She nibbled on a nail as she watched, partially wishing she was down there, waiting for the signal to go in.
When the rammer was almost to the center of the net, a female voice shouted, “Go. Go. Go.”
Who the fuck was that?
“Hold your positions,” Rowan screamed into her headset. “Hold your positions. I said hold.” She jumped up, hands twisting in her hair.
It was too late.
The squad was moving. Shouts and weapon fire prevented her screams from reaching anyone. The occupants in the AVU and cargo carrier hadn’t even gotten out of their vehicles. Tires screeched as they each took off in different directions. The squad might have stopped them, but the rammer surged into the fray—weapons fire streaming from the windows.
Then everyone was firing and all she could do was yell, “Weapons down. Weapons down. The op is scratched.”
Either Dozer or Mahoney released a grenade that missed the rammer circling the parking lot, still firing. The grenade took out one corner of an abandoned building, but it wasn’t enough to take it down. Thank god for small favors. Squad members were everywhere as they pulled back, returning fire on the rammer. She had no doubt another pulse grenade would be released. The raid had taken on a life of its own, and everyone wanted a piece of that rammer. No one wanted to walk away empty-handed.
Before pushing back from the console, the last thing she noticed was the tiny AVU with the lone woman that raced past everyone as it screamed down the alley. She caught its taillights as it lifted off toward an open fly zone but missed the opportunity to track it. Their only hope would be to review the security monitors spread throughout the Yards, though most of them were constantly stolen or destroyed by the locals.
She grabbed the closest thing not nailed down—a coffee mug—and threw it against a locker. It crashed hard, but the only thing the metal cup did was bounce off the locker and slam into a holo-monitor before falling to the floor. They’d had them. The target had been in their hands. As much as she wanted to know where that rammer had come from and who the hell that woman was—it wouldn’t matter. Three strikes on this one, and Cap would have her ass for breakfast.