Virtues of War Read Free Page A

fucking hands!”
    The man tried to comply, holding up his free hand higher, but his companion buried her face in his shoulder and gripped even tighter.
    Katja activated her comms. “Alpha-One: warning shot.”
    Her weapon snapped up to point at the wall above their heads. She squeezed the trigger. A single, teardrop-shaped explosive round raced down the electromagnetic rail inside the barrel. The wall exploded in a deafening shower of charred plastic and titanium.
    She dropped the barrel back onto target. “Show me your hands. Last warning!”
    With some effort, the man pulled his left hand free and held it up. The woman, still huddled against him, revealed her palms.
    “Stand up!”
    Both of them slid their backs up the buckled wall until they were more or less upright. Katja assessed their eyes, and did a fast inventory of any bulges in their pockets or objects on the ground.
    A door hissed open behind her. She snapped into a crouch.
    Another man in a lab coat stood in the doorway with a jar of liquid gripped in his hand. His eyes flicked between the two troopers, and she raised her rifle.
    He threw the jar and tried to run.
    His chest exploded. Blood and shattered bone sprayed through the doorway.
    Katja realized then that her finger had depressed the trigger of her rifle. She stared at the carnage, at her first real kill.
    She saw a flicker of movement in her peripheral, and smashed the butt of her rifle into the man’s face. Her backswing smacked down the woman with a sickening crunch. Both targets collapsed in bloody heaps. Katja winked in quantum-flux and scanned through the walls.
    “Quantum clear.”
    Hernandez was also scanning. “Quantum clear.”
    She activated comms. “This is Alpha-One. Shots fired, three targets neutralized. No threat. Bravo-One, over.”
    “Bravo-One, roger.”
    Katja looked down at her unconscious targets. There was blood everywhere. Her stomach tightened painfully as she fought down the urge to vomit. She forced herself to breathe deeply through her nose. It took a few moments, but her stomach settled and she was able to speak.
    “Alpha-Three, DNA-check deceased target.”
    “Roger.”
    As Hernandez took a DNA sample of the bloody remains, Katja knelt down and did the same to the unconscious figures, her gloved hands struggling to hold the delicate instrument steady. A prick of skin from each was enough to reveal that neither of these was the individual she sought. Frowning, she quickly searched them for anything of interest.
    Hernandez loomed behind her. “It isn’t our guy.”
    “Neither are these two.” She stood, and motioned toward the inside door which had revealed the newcomer. “Continue clearing.”
    * * *
    It took four minutes to clear the rest of building seven, plus another three to clear building four—the medical clinic. Within ten minutes of touchdown, Katja and her troopers had reassembled at the strike pods. Twenty-seven detainees lay facedown on the ground.
    Sergeant Chang and his search partner, Squad Leader McKevitt, had found a teacher and nine children in the school. Chang approached Katja as she surveyed the detainees.
    “Including your three, that’s everybody, ma’am,” he announced. “We’re ready to DNA-check.”
    Katja looked up at her second-in-command. He was tall and heavy-set, with thick, powerful limbs, a flat face and square jaw. Although his eyes were hidden behind his darkened visor, Katja knew that they were peering at her with bright, penetrating intelligence.
    “Do the checks—but not on the children.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    Chang barked instructions and under the cover of pointed rifles, three troopers began moving slowly along the lines of prone detainees. Each DNA check was quick and only briefly painful, and in just over a minute revealed the bad news.
    Their target of interest—a Centauri spy who was selling weapons to the Cerberans—wasn’t among this crowd. Every DNA check revealed its subject as a descendant of the