Fox Hunt (Fox Meridian Book 1) (28 page)

‘A patrol cop would be backing out and calling for backup,’ Prentice said.

‘Maybe,’ Marshall replied. ‘Maybe they’re thinking the building structure is interfering. Network signals are weak out here anyway. Killian, get out to the core stairwell and take her legs out as she comes up the stairs.’

‘Marksman,’ Killian mumbled as he set off out of the door.

Marshall ignored him, taking a ball gag from a bag at his feet and reaching for Terri. ‘And you aren’t going to be giving her any warnings.’

‘I don’t need to,’ Terri replied, opening her mouth wide to allow him to gag her.

~~~

The building had been designed as an automated factory floor back when ‘automated’ had meant a lot of dumb robots in cages working on carefully placed objects moving along a conveyer belt. The ground floor was all machinery with walkways between the belts aside from a loading bay at one end, a workers’ refuge at the other, and a gantry staircase which rose up from the middle to an office and control structure mounted over the main floor. The idea was that this allowed the supervisory staff to watch all the machines below as well as keep an eye on the humans who made sure the machines kept working. There had probably been more supervisory staff than maintenance staff back then. Now there was no one aside from the terrorists and the armoured figure walking up the stairs.

Killian settled himself in the doorway of the main control suite. Here, there were screens which had been used to monitor the robotics, half of them now cracked or pulled down. Outside was a balcony-like structure from which the supervisors could look down upon their minions. Killian had never been a really enthusiastic anarchist, his primary reason for being there at all was Chelsea Remen, but even he viewed this obvious expression of worker/management class structure as mildly offensive. It did make life easy though: just sit here and wait for Meridian to walk up the stairs and then shoot her.

He lined up his sight on the top of the stairs, infrared imaging making the structure obvious in the darkness, and waited. And waited. And…

‘Where the fuck is she?’

‘She stopped on the stairs,’ Caravel’s voice stated. ‘Spinner went out the back down that rope we rigged and she stopped. Must’ve seen him, even through the structure. Colonel’s gone down after Spinner to come up behind her.’

‘So what do I do?’

‘Colonel’s at the bottom. Move in to the top of the staircase now. Keep it quiet. If she moves up, shoot her. If not, she gets hit from below.’

‘Right,’ Killian replied sourly, but he began edging across the balcony’s metal floor, trying to keep the sound to a minimum. It was dark and he had no visor, so his vision was limited to what was displaying through his implant from his rifle sight, but that gave him effective, if limited, vision. As he reached the top of the staircase and tilted his rifle down, scanning for a humanoid heat signature, he saw… Something was moving very fast and directly at him, and he just had time to lift his head a little to try to see it better without the rifle in the way when it smashed into his face like a sledgehammer.

~~~

Marshall was not the quietest of individuals, but he could move with some degree of stealth when he had to. He had always relied on physical power when working. Even before his back was broken and his arms and ribs badly crushed in the collapse of the Dallas bunker, he had preferred to physically beat his opponents into the ground when he had the chance, and those ‘opponents’ had often been subordinates rather than actual enemies. Now he had the added capabilities a pair of reinforced, cybernetic arms afforded. He wanted to smash Meridian’s face in with his bare hands… but he was going to shoot her in the back with a shotgun.

He frowned as he located her heat signature on the staircase above him. There had to be something in the suit distorting her body heat because it looked wrong. Whatever, he moved up, circling closer.

‘Colonel, can you see Marksman?’ Caravel’s voice sounded concerned.

‘Not now, Spook. Almost on her.’

‘But–’

Marshall took another couple of steps, turned, and saw the armoured figure turning to face him. He lifted the heavy, automatic shotgun he was carrying and pulled the trigger, emptying the magazine of armour-piercing, high-explosive slugs into his target. The noise was deafening and the figure on the stairs staggered back as its torso was ripped open by three internal explosions. And then she was falling backwards over the railing.

‘Got her!’ Marshall cried out aloud. ‘Spook, I got her. Spook?’

~~~

Caravel frowned at the displays from the cameras Remen had set up around the building. She was a good tech and they really needed to get her out of prison when this was over, but that assumed that they got out of this and the ex-NIX spy was having a bad feeling about that.

Losing Sandoval had been a big enough problem. Sandoval had been the contact with NIX, portrayed to the others, even Marshall, as a disaffected NAPA detective who wanted to help. With the MarTech data in hand, Sandoval had been ready and able to bring Caravel back in from the cold. With Sandoval dead… Well, get the data and see where that got him.

But they had to get the data. How the Hell had Meridian found them? There was no way anyone could have located them. Unless they had access to Overwatch… That was impossible. NIX would have had to… No, that was impossible.

Caravel spotted Marshall on one of the camera feeds, climbing the stairs to where the armoured figure was waiting. ‘Colonel, can you see Marksman?’ The kid had gone
far
too quiet.

‘Not now, Spook,’ Marshall’s voice responded. ‘Almost on her.’

‘But–’ He stopped as something, a shape of some sort, moved in the corner of his vision and he turned toward the door. He saw the pistol rising, apparently held by nothing until you looked closely and saw the camouflaged, female shape behind it. He knew his chances were slim, but he went for the gun sitting beside his computer anyway. There was a sound a little louder than the crack of a starting pistol and a slim metal needle blasted through Caravel’s skull.

~~~

There were loud explosions outside, but Terri was more than pleased with what she was seeing as Fox disengaged the active camouflage on her suit and fired a few rounds into the computer Caravel had been using.

‘I think we should have radio coverage,’ Fox said, her voice distorted a little by the helmet speakers. She was already closing on Terri and pulling a knife from a sheath on her thigh. ‘I need you to connect up to the mobile node you should be seeing. It’ll guide you to Sam who will be outside and ready to get you clear.’

With her arms freed of the tape Marshall had used to bind them, Terri got the gag out of her mouth, spat into a corner, and said, ‘Sam Clarion?’

‘Uh-huh. I needed someone who can handle bodyguard work, and I didn’t think you’d mind a pretty face rescuing you.’

‘Two pretty faces. What were those explosions?’

‘I think Marshall’s shot the gynoid I used as a decoy. Even with the jamming down, I can’t contact it. We need to get moving.’

‘He’s going to be on the stairs.’

Fox nodded. ‘So I’m going to take care of him and you are going to head for Sam. You don’t worry about me. You keep moving. Clear?’

‘That’s what you told me the last time, Fox, and you barely got out before the place collapsed on you. You don’t get to be that lucky twice.’

‘Fortune favours the bold, Terri. Now stay behind me.’ Turning, Fox started out of the supervisor’s office and led the way down a short corridor to the control room. She turned into the room and stopped, her visor showing the problem immediately: Marshall was at the top of the stairs, checking Killian’s unconscious body. ‘Stay low,’ Fox hissed to Terri, ‘and get to the other side of the room. When he comes at me, you go out through the window and down the stairs.’

Terri flashed her a glare of annoyance, but she dropped into a crouch and scuttled to the other side of the room. Marshall turned, not immediately seeing the dark shape in the control room until Fox fired, shattering the window between her and him. With a roar of anger, he raised his shotgun and fired, blasting a hole in the wall behind where Fox had been standing, but she had already ducked back into the corridor so he charged through the door after her, hesitating as Terri vaulted through the shattered window and started off across the balcony.

His indecision cost him his gun as Fox kicked the weapon out of his hands. Her pistol swung out to line up on his head, but he caught her arm in one, thick, metal hand, lifting it up. She swung her left arm at him, but he blocked that and gripped her throat in his right hand. The grin on his face was malicious.

‘Looks like you struck out, Meridian. Nice suit,’ Marshall said as his grip tightened on her right arm. ‘One of MarTech’s combat suits, I figure. They’re good, but they’re not so hot on resisting crushing. You get to find out what it was like for me.’

‘You betrayed me and everyone on that op,’ Fox said through gritted teeth as pain shot through her arm.

‘I was following orders. I followed them right through until NIX dropped me, and that was your fault.’

‘How do you figure that one? Your UA buddies shot you.’

‘Because you succeeded, bitch. You got the Martins girl out and you destroyed the research. They couldn’t even salvage any data from the wreckage. And I was supposed to be dead. When I went looking for my contacts, everything had been cleared out. I was forgotten, left in the cold, just like Caravel. Your fault.’

‘You’re demented,’ Fox told him, but her statement ended in a scream as his hand closed, crushing the bones in her arm. She heard her pistol clattering on the metal floor, her vision turned red as pain battered at her senses and Marshall’s hand began closing on her throat, and all she could see was the bastard’s grinning face…

His hands were occupied and he had wanted her close while he crushed the life out of her. He was nowhere near fast enough to push her away as her left thumb slammed into his eye. Her fingernails dug into his skin and she pressed, hard. Letting out a shriek, he threw her back against the nearest wall. ‘Bitch!’ She had not broken the orb, but the pain was incandescent and he could barely see. He saw her on her knees, scrabbling for purchase on the metal floor with only one working arm. He lunged as she turned onto her back, reaching for her throat with both hands, and that was when she jammed her pistol’s barrel into the underside of his jaw and pulled the trigger.

The pain in her arm was incredible and Fox now had a hulking, almost headless, body lying on top of her, and the desire to just lie there and not move was considerable. ‘Kit? You with me? Marshall’s down.’

‘Miss Martins has rendezvoused with Mister Clarion,’ Kit’s voice said into Fox’s head. ‘Your implant is indicating severe limb trauma, shock, and increasing blood loss. Are you able to get out of the building, Fox?’

‘Where’s Prentice?’ Fox said, not answering the question.

‘Mister Prentice has just decided to vacate the area using a personal land vehicle. It is manual drive, but I have instructed one of the drones to track it.’

‘Right. Armed drone?’

‘The drone is equipped with four fifteen-millimetre, light armour-piercing missiles.’

Fox was about to speak when she heard Terri’s voice cutting in. ‘Kit, instruct the drone to attack. Fox, stay put, we’re coming in to get you.’

‘Terri…’

‘No fucking excuses! Let me rescue you for once. Your vitals are all over the place. What the Hell did he do to you?’

‘Uh… Let’s just say that I may never play the piano again.’

~~~

Prentice checked his rear-view screen and set the navigation system. There was no sign of any of the others, the jamming was gone, no one was responding to his queries, and the place was likely to be swarming with cops any minute. He pulled the truck away, heading for the rear, inland gate of the complex.

Meridian was going to have to die for this. He would back out, find a professional who was good with a rifle, and have her brains blown out from a distance. All this humiliation and meaningful revenge crap was… well, it was crap. Marshall was an idiot for trying to string the job out, but he had found out that Meridian had been assigned to the Hunt case and he had used that as an excuse to make life hard for her. Prentice was fairly sure Marshall just had a taste for killing too.

Well, not again. Quick, clean, efficient. The stupid cop would never know what hit her. He looked ahead at the half-open gate and slowed for the slalom he would have to perform to get the van through.

And that was when a small, sleek shape supported on twin propellers dropped into view ahead of him, glossy, black plastic glinting in the headlights. He barely had time to wonder what the drone was doing there when he saw four shapes detach from it, the trails from the rocket engines showing a fraction of a second later as the micromissiles powered toward his windscreen.

‘Oh shit,’ Prentice said, just before the front of his vehicle exploded.

3
^rd
February.

Fox opened her eyes and looked up at the blank, white ceiling of the medical bay Jackson and Terri had had her delivered to the night before. There had been medication and sleep almost immediately which, given the pain, Fox had not been unhappy about. Someone had removed her suit and encased her arm in heavy plastic to keep it immobile while she was out, but the pain was still there, diminished maybe, but still there.

‘You’re awake.’ Fox turned her head to see Terri sitting beside the bed. ‘I was starting to think they’d given you too much sedative.’

‘I’m awake. How are you?’

Terri’s lips twitched. ‘I was checked out. No injuries aside from some bruising and a scraped knee. To answer your next question, Killian’s been handed over to NAPA and the rest of them are dead. Canard wants to talk to you, or have detectives talk to you, but you’re under medical supervision until we say otherwise so we told him to piss off.’

Fox managed to bark out a laugh. ‘Okay, and the third question?’

Terri sighed. ‘Your arm’s fucked. He
really
messed the bones up, and there’s nerve and muscle damage. It’s going to take months to fix it all and you’ll never have full functionality.’