“Okay…here they come…now….fire.”
Sturm squeezed the trigger of his hunting rifle once. He watched in pained fascination as the slug surged silently through the night air, and into the breast of a bewildered Xucaphra policeman. Screaming, the man pressed his hand tightly over his heart. Alexander winced.
Poor guy.
He tapped the trigger again.
Seconds later, another one of his slugs passed through the officer’s body.
The policeman collapsed to the ground, a new stream of blood gushing down from his head. He was silent now; he was at peace, in the midst of chaos; in a chaos in which none of the other officers noted the man’s untimely death.
And why should they?
One does not stand around and gape when bullets were whizzing by.
Sturm wasn’t the only sniper. Several other Ashern and other rebels were taking out police officers and military persons at random with their own silenced slugthrowers. It was not a terribly difficult task, with XC-16 and its area being bathed in light from the towers. It was the perfect shooting gallery, from the perfect point. The snipers were hard to locate, from the alhazi undergrowth, from the darkness, and from no sound or visible light coming from their weapons.
Yet the chaos wrought by those rebels was insignificant to the main event.
Brief gouts of flame sporadically leapt up from the darkness which enshrouded the fields which surrounded XC-16. Rockets and missiles of various makes soared through the air, and reigned fire and terror on the good Samaritan firefighters of the Imperial Armed Forces, setting up to battle the blaze.
In a rare moment of irony, firefighting equipment succumbed to the blazing fires and fireballs of rebel explosives. Shrapnel from the hit vehicles and the equipment shot through the air, ripping into the flesh of the Imperial firefighters, and into the few Xucphra policeman and firemen nearby. Several of the wounded fireman rose, and promptly fell under the bullets of the snipers. Sturm drew his bead on an Imperial serviceman, and pulled the trigger; the fireman officer fell, in the middle of issuing orders to his men. Sturm’s wrist chrono buzzed.
Crap. Got to run. Local forces are probably going to start getting here in a few minutes.
The rebel immediately lowered his rifle, and quickly disassembled it. Hurriedly stuffing the weapon into a small duffel bag, the man immediately began to jog away to his cell’s escape vehicle; one of the countless landspeeders used by Alhazi Inspectors across the planet. He ran several hundred meters to the craft parked by the side of the road. Already, he could make out the dim shapes of the cell’s three other members.
“Hurry up!” demanded Lantern, “we don’t have that much time.”
Sturm clammered into the back of the vehicle, and the landspeeder pulled away into the night, flitting among the chaotic traffic of civilian onlookers, news groups, firefighters, other company vehicles, and more likely than not, several law enforcers. Their skimmer casually drifted through traffic, being passed on several occasions by racing Xucphra policemen. Sturm, having removed all of his hunting gear into the trunk, idly watched the work of their destruction. Fires had spread into the nearby alhazi fields near XC-16, whether from the rebel racketeers or from the blazing complex, Sturm did not know, nor did he care. What he did know, is that Xucphra would be taking more losses from the field’s damaging, and that any traces of the rebel’s presence were being disintegrated. Turtle lightly tapped him on his arm.
“Do we have back-up, if we need it?”
“Back-up is already here, just hidden in case we need it.”
Turtle nodded. “Cool. Most of the other rebels are out…right before the cavalry arrive.”
“Classic hit-and-fade…”
***
Previously…Rebel Planning Session
“Are you serious? You want me to stay hidden in a field, and watch the Vratix blow up a refinery?”
Sturm nodded. “Yes.”
“Are you crazy? Risk my life for nothing, and give suspicion to other people by taking off of work?” replied Handy.
Sturm smiled corruptly.
“It’s a bit more complex than that. It’s a trap. Hitting a refinery is nice, is does economic harm to Xucphra, and to the Empire. But it has its problems. But that can be changed by hitting it in the evening.
Why? Because if we hit in the late evening, the refinery is going to have minimal staff, or to us, minimal civilian casualties. Secondly, we’re all going to be off work, living our own lives from work; it won’t be hard to concoct an alibi for where we were during the blast…we were out drinking, enjoying the company of our friends at the start of a new weekend…”
“You haven’t explained why we’re there in the first place…” reminded Turtle.
“True,” smiled Alexander, “but do you really think I’d have us go out just to see fireworks? Really, the explosion is the bait for an ambush; one that we’re going to set.”
“What?”
“What happens when a building catches fire?”
Lantern shrugged. “People evacuate, firefighters and police come to deal with the flames…”
“Exactly. Firefighters, police, military personnel all come to take care of the disaster. Who do we want to kill? Policemen, soldiers, and other government workers…just who we have all arriving at the scene in a rush.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Handy, “I understand killing the policemen and soldiers, but why the firemen?”
“Because they’re government workers…” mused Turtle, “and without workers, a government fails. Even supposing that the attack doesn’t kill that many government workers, how many of them are going to want to show up for work? Not many, it’s demoralizing. They’re going to want to find new and safer work…and not in the government or Xucphra…”
“Which destabilizes both organizations…without people to run them, they’ll collapse eventually,” added Sturm.
“Until they get droids,” grinned Lantern.
“Which we get to blow up instead…” replied Handy with a twinkle.
“In any case, the attack demonstrates that the neither Xucphra or the Empire is all powerful; and we, Xucphra, the Empire, and everyone else needs to be reminded of that,” stated Sturm, “and I’m sure neither the Empire nor Xucphra are going to love the dent in their pocketbooks from the operation…”
