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Latch stares at the locked blast door, the blinking countdown above it, and the six armed smugglers arguing in the warehouse beyond the security glass.
Their extraction route is on fire.
Their backup route is currently occupied by a loader droid that has somehow wedged itself sideways in the corridor.
Ghost’s slicer spike is smoking.
This is not how the briefing said the mission would go.
To be fair, Guard briefings tend to describe objectives using clean phrases like discreetly retrieve the stolen medical shipment. They rarely include useful predictions such as the smugglers have illegally modified thermal detonators or the building’s automated defense system will identify Latch as an escaped zoo animal.
The latter feels personal.
Ghost crouches beside the ruined control panel, examining the melted circuitry with the focused expression of someone considering whether violence can repair electronics.
Latch checks his pistol’s charge.
“I don’t think we can mansplain, manipulate, or malewife our way out of this one.”
Ghost looks up and cracks her knuckles.
“Manslaughter it is.”
Latch nods. “That feels like a reasonable escalation.”
The smugglers finally notice them through the glass.
One points.
Another raises a rifle.
A third slaps the emergency-release control.
The blast door begins to open.
Ghost pulls a palm-sized charge from her belt.
Latch looks at it, then at the industrial storage tanks stacked behind the smugglers.
The labels read GORGANBERRY PRESERVE, COMMERCIAL GRADE.
“You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
Ghost arms the charge.
“That depends. Are you thinking?”
“Rarely.”
“Then no.”
She throws it beneath the nearest tank.
Latch has three seconds to question every decision that brought him here.
The charge detonates.
Jam drips from the ceiling.
Jam coats the walls.
Jam covers Ghost’s black-and-red armor from helmet to boots, making her look like she has personally fought an entire murder scene and won. Latch knows he doesn't look much better.
Six smugglers lie unconscious around them.
One is face-down in a shallow red puddle. Another is slumped across a crate with preserves coating half his head. Two have been stuck together by their jackets. All six are breathing, but from the doorway they look extremely, spectacularly dead.
Latch surveys the scene.
“Good news.”
Ghost wipes jam from her visor. “They’re alive.”
“That was going to be my second point.”
“What was the first?”
“We’ve found the shipment.”
The stolen medical crates sit untouched behind the ruptured preserve tanks.
Ghost walks toward the nearest smuggler and checks his pulse.
“He’ll wake up.”
“Happy?”
“No.”
“Understandable.”
Latch activates his comm.
“Command, this is Latch. Targets are secured. Medical shipment recovered.”
Thire answers. “Casualties?”
Latch looks around.
A red glob falls from the ceiling and lands on Ghost’s shoulder.
“No fatalities.”
There is a pause.
“Why did you hesitate?”
“Scene complexity.”
Ghost turns her helmet toward him.
Latch continues quickly. “We’re going to need six prisoner transports, one cargo hauler, and possibly an industrial cleaning crew.”
“How possibly?”
Another tank groans behind them.
Ghost grabs Latch by the chest plate.
The tank ruptures.
A second wave of jam crashes over both of them.
When it passes, Latch is sitting on the floor with Ghost standing above him, one hand still locked around his armor.
Thire’s voice crackles through the comm.
“Latch?”
He spits jam out of his mouth.
“Make that definitely.”
Ghost releases him and examines the warehouse.
The unconscious smugglers are now even redder.
She sighs.
“Fox is going to ask questions.”
Latch gets to his feet.
“We’ll manipulate him.”
Ghost stares at him through a jam-covered visor.
“We’ll tell him the truth,” he corrects.
“Good choice.”
Behind them, one smuggler wakes, sees Ghost looming over a room painted red, and immediately passes out again.