Saul aimed the gun at Jacob’s chest, deliberately fumbling with it to create the impression this was the first time he’d ever held such a weapon.
Jacob tried to struggle out of his chair, and Saul noticed a curious look on Tanner’s face. The street soldier moved to one side of Jacob, while keeping one meaty hand firmly clamped over his mouth.
‘It’s cool,’ Saul said to Jacob, the wood panelling on the walls writhing furiously, like wheat in an autumn gale. ‘They’re just testing us.’
Saul pulled the trigger. The gun made a loud popping sound and a lozenge-sized chunk of pykrete punched a hole through Jacob’s chest. It sounded, thought Saul, not unlike a cork being pulled from a champagne bottle. Jacob jerked back with sufficient violence to tip his chair sideways on to the floor, dead before his cheek touched the carpet.
The sound of the gunshot seemed to resonate through every cell in Saul’s body, startling him into something more closely resembling sobriety.
After a few moments’ prolonged silence, Tanner turned to Kwan with a delighted grin. ‘Well, fuck me, you won that fair and square.’ He turned back to Saul. ‘I’m seriously fucking taken aback. I really,
really
didn’t think you were going to do it.’
‘Why not?’ Saul managed to croak, his tongue suddenly thick and heavy. He stared down at Jacob’s slumped form in horrified fascination, then noticed, as he brought his gaze back up, that Tanner had momentarily lowered his own weapon until it pointed at the floor.
‘Because we already knew the both of you were fucking cops,’ Tanner replied, levelling his Koch at Saul once more.
Saul reached down with his free hand and grabbed one corner of the open briefcase beside him, whipping it around and up with as much force as he could muster. The briefcase struck Tanner on the side of the head. He dodged back with a yell, arms raised in defence, nearly stumbling over Jacob’s body as loose banknotes went scattering through the air.
Already moving forward, Saul grabbed Tanner by the shoulder, pulling him close and twisting him around before the street soldier, who had been standing directly behind the pharm manager, could get a clear shot at him. He reached down and clasped his hand around Tanner’s fist, where it held the pykrete gun, aiming the weapon at the street soldier and squeezing. As if by magic, a line of fine red dots appeared across the soldier’s neck and chest, and he dropped to his knees with a gurgling sound.
Saul tore the flechette pistol from Tanner’s grasp, then ducked beneath the table before Kwan had a chance to fix him in his sights. He could hear the sound of chunks of compacted cellulose and ice water thudding into the wood a second later.
Kwan dropped on to all fours, to try and take aim a second time. His head flowered red as Saul fired, the flechettes tearing into his vulnerable flesh. Kwan collapsed, his legs and arms twitching spastically.
Tanner stumbled away to hide behind the couch. Saul looked around and saw Hsingyun fumbling desperately with the door, cursing in his panic to get out. Saul fired a stream of flechettes towards his ankles. Two intervening chairs spun away from the side of the table, as if shoved aside by invisible hands, and Hsingyun went down screaming.
Saul darted back out from under the table, and meanwhile glanced towards the couch. Several bottles previously standing on the table next to the TriView rolled noisily across the tiled floor.
‘Tanner,’ Saul shouted hoarsely, ‘if you so much as twitch from where you are, I swear I’ll blow your fucking head off. Do you understand me?’
There was a muffled reply, just audible over the sound of the chainsaw and the combined shrieks of both the torture-doll and Hsingyun.
Saul backed towards the door, and Hsingyun, and a moment later Tanner’s head popped back up over the top of the couch. Saul fired without thinking, the flechettes ripping gouts of foam out of the couch. Tanner made a strangled sound and fell backwards, crashing into the TriView, its sounds of carnage cutting off instantly.
He turned back to Hsingyun and found him slumped half-conscious against the door in an ever-widening pool of blood, his lower legs now a mess of pulverized meat. Saul kept a tight grip on the Koch, and used his free hand to rifle through Hsingyun’s pockets until he located the device that could get him past the minefield.
Now all he needed to do was get to the surface alive – and pray the ’copter was still parked where they’d left it.
And if it wasn’t, he was totally, irretrievably, fucked.
He dragged Hsingyun out of the way and cautiously pulled the door open. When he leaned out, he could see no one bar the distant figures of white-suited workers going about their business.
There was so much noise out there that no one had even heard the fighting.
Saul had got most of the way back to the spiral staircase before someone finally raised the alarm.
A high-pitched whine filled the air, followed by a muffled shout from somewhere nearby. Saul started to rn, and heard shots echoing through the cavernous space behind him. In that moment he remembered that his parka was still back there in the conference room. That was going to be a problem once he got outside.
He reached the stairs and clanged his way up them as fast as he could go: three, four, five steps at a time. There came more shots, one ricocheting off a step ahead of him as he climbed higher. He glanced back to see the street soldier who had departed with Hsiu-Chuan, waving his hands as he yelled at two other men in white worker gear, both with pykrete rifles gripped in their hands.
Saul reached the dome and burst through the outer door and on to the ice. The cold came as a brute physical shock that brought him to a sudden halt, gasping as he filled his lungs with freezing air. Saul was wearing nothing more than a light business suit, barely sufficient to keep him warm on a January afternoon in New York or London, let alone amid Kepler’s half-frozen oceans.
Hands shaking and teeth chattering, he fumbled Hsingyun’s mine detector out of a pocket. Peering across the ice, he felt a surge of overwhelming relief when he saw the ’copter was still exactly where they had left it. He tried to estimate how long it would take him to work his way past the minefield, and how long it would take the men chasing him to catch up. Then he decided to think of something else.
Hsingyun, he remembered, had pressed a red button . . . here.
Ah
, thought Saul, as a screen blinked into life on the device, accompanied by a beep. He saw a grid of dots appear on the screen, a blinking zigzag line superimposed over it. A circle at the centre of the grid clearly represented the dome.
He walked a few metres forward, and the zigzag line began to blink faster, finally changing colour as he found himself standing almost directly on top of a buried mine, its dark shape visible just millimetres beneath the ice.
Still grasping the Koch in his other hand, he stepped forward, half convinced he was about to get blown to bits – but nothing happened. He walked faster, then began to run, stopping only when the screen began to blink again.
Hearing shouts from behind, he turned and fired in the direction of the dome, but wide of the mark. Two figures that had just emerged from the dome’s entrance ducked back inside.
It occurred to Saul that if one of his pursuers thought to shoot at the mines to either side of him, that it might just set them off. He crouched low as he ran, filled with an overwhelming sense of urgency, keenly aware of just how good a target his dark suit made him against the ice.
More shots came, and Saul stumbled forward, landing on his knees. For a moment he thought he’d only slipped on the ice, then realized with numb shock that he had been hit in the shoulder. He twisted around, raised the pistol and once again fired towards the dome, but his hands were shaking too badly for him to be able to take proper aim.
Get to the ’copter, you fucking idiot
.
T worst thing – the
nasty
thing – about pykrete bullets was that they melted, leaving a mass of difficult-to-extract and potentially poisonous cellulose fibres buried deep in the tissue of your body. You didn’t need a fatal wound to be in serious trouble.
He pushed himself back upright, ignoring a sudden spell of dizziness that threatened to overcome him. He checked the screen on Hsingyun’s gadget: all he had to do was move three mines to the right, and then it was a straight run all the way to the ’copter.
He glanced back once again, as he loped towards the aircraft, and heard something whine past his ear. He could just make out one of the white-suited men, his head appearing to float above the ice like a ghost, kneeling as he readied for another shot. Saul stopped and took a two-handed grip on the pistol, holding it steady just long enough to empty the rest of its chamber in the direction of his assailant.
He was rewarded by the sight of ice and snow kicking up a flurry directly in front of his target. It wasn’t a direct hit, but his assailant leaped up and darted to one side.
Which turned out to be a bad move. The ice erupted beneath him, and the sound of the accompanying detonation echoed across the flat expanse of the ice-pharm like a peal of thunder, before staining the ice red.
Saul knew it was now or never. He tried to change his grip on the Koch but realized the sheer cold had welded it to the skin of one hand. He turned and ran as fast and as hard as he could, praying he was far away enough now from the dome that the lone remaining gunman would have a hard time taking proper aim. One bullet pinged off the carapace of the aircraft as Saul pulled himself inside it.
‘Police emergency override 256,’ he gasped, collapsing back across the seat as the door automatically slid shut. ‘Officer Dumont, department code six nine zero slash alpha. Take off now.’
‘Please be aware that any attempts to gain control of this craft by the use of illegally acquired overrides may be punishable in a court of law by a fine or a possible jail sentence,’ the ’copter replied, in a smooth tone. ‘If you wish to confirm, please—’
‘Confirmed!’ Saul screamed, realizing that the slick dampness beneath him was his own blood, pouring out of his shoulder wound. ‘Just fucking do it!’ he screamed.
The rotors quickly built up to a high-pitched whine and, as it lifted, the ’copter angled to one side, showing him the flat landscape of the station beneath. One or two faint sparks of light from the direction of the dome told him somebody was still trying to shoot him down.
‘My systems suggest you may be injured,’ the ’copter continued, its tone blandly untroubled. ‘Are you in need of any medical assistance?’
‘Yes, I am,’ Saul replied weakly, aware that dawn was already spreading pale fingers across the sky. ‘I need to get to a hospital.’
He could still feel the Koch cold and hard against his fingers and palm. The ’copter dipped again as it angled across the sky, and Saul felt like he was falling into a grey blank eternity that swallowed up the last of his thoughts, as he finally slipped into unconsciousness.
Florida Array Exclusion Zone, East Coast Republic, 18 January 2235
The road stretched ahead, a black asphalt line dividing the world in two, with the APC carrying the rest of the squadron just a couple of dozen metres ahead of him. Monk leaned forward to peer up, past the curve of the truck’s windshield, at black clouds incipient with rain.
He sat back, shifted his grip on the steering wheel and glanced to his side. Naz had placed his taser attachment and extra magazines of ammo on the upper part of the dashboard while he checked and rechecked his Cobra, snapping open the feed assembly and pushing two fingers inside.
Monk studied him with a growing sense of irritation, before turning back to the road. Small drops of moisture landed on the glass, while a sudden wind stirred the tops of the trees lining the ditches on either side of the road.
‘Eyes on the road, Sergeant,’ Naz muttered without looking up.
Insubordinate son of a bitch
, thought Monk.
The clouds finally broke and gusts of rain billowed across the expressway. Monk caught a glimpse of a sign telling him that Orlando was fifty kilometres away.
‘How many times have you already checked that damn thing?’ Monk demanded, but Naz only grinned as he snapped the feed assembly shut once more and started to reattach the taser just under the Cobra’s barrel. The Faraday mesh, wrapped around the weapon’s targeting systems, glittered softly.
‘Not enough times, Sergeant,’ Naz replied. ‘Knew a guy back in the day got blown to shit when his gun jammed. Ain’t gonna let the same thing happen to me.’ He slid a magazine into place, studying the weapon with the kind of fascinated admiration that most men Monk knew saved for Orlando’s strip clubs.
‘Islamabad?’ asked Monk.
Another sign, so badly rusted that he could barely make out the words, told him they were coming up on what had been a marsh conservation area. Not that anybody bothered with that kind of thing any more; he checked the local network through his contacts and saw nothing about anything getting conserved. The bushes and cypresses lining the road looked wild and unkempt. The traffic was light: most vehicles on the road this close to the Florida Array were either army or supplies, although they had also passed a few private cars belonging to Array staff.