Zero World (32 page)

“So am I,” he said, peeling off her grip, “when I need to be.” He pressed his fingers to his temples once again. This time he turned everything on.

CASWELL TURNED AND RAN
to the hatch, but Melni hesitated. She glanced down at the slender weapon in her hand. Would it be enough? Not nearly, not against the Hollow.
Garta’s light, three of them!

Her pistol would be a toy compared to what these soldiers carried. Melni slipped it into a pocket and gazed at the array of weapons before her. Beneath the shelves of pistols were two wide drawers.

She slid one out and grinned at what lay within.

Despite spending only twenty seconds to equip herself, by the time Melni reached the hatch Caswell had vanished through the ceiling hatch and into Alia’s lander.

Melni slung the riot rifle over her shoulder and jumped for the
open hole above. She hauled herself into the capsule, cursing every sound she made. For an instant she marveled at the change in her perception of Alia’s craft. What had seemed so advanced before now looked primitive compared to the Warden’s vehicle. She wondered if he really was dead, and why he seemed more prisoner than patient in that bed. Why had Alia not moved him somewhere more secure? Questions for another time.

Melni leapt again and clawed her way into the ramshackle boathouse above. The wooden interior was primitive and dark and smelled awful. It was as if she’d just climbed through three epochs of human achievement. She glanced about for Caswell but he was gone.

Wood creaked outside. Melni slipped the riot gun off her shoulder and hefted it in both hands. The damn thing weighed twenty pounds fully loaded. For an instant she debated setting it down. She’d trained with such a gun just once, way back during her first year at Riverswidth, and hadn’t cared for it much then. But the pistol in her pocket seemed a pathetic choice against a Hollow, much less three of them. Fear tore through her at the prospect there might have been even more, off-display.

Crouching, Melni lowered the wooden door that concealed the entrance to the space vessel below. She picked up her heavy weapon again, held it at the hip so that the shoulder strap could lend some support, and crept to the back wall. She rounded gun-first and swept the barrel across the space beyond.

The river drifted by in its lazy journey. The aging boat bobbed gently on the brown water, ropes straining and slackening with each little wave. A cloud of insects weaved and darted in a blur around a conical flower that poked up from the water two dozen feet out. The sky had cleared, pure blue above the distant crater-rim hills.

A black shape fell from the roof at the back of the structure. It landed with a single thud on the boat and seemed to coalesce into the form of a woman. More like a woman’s silhouette. The black of her fatigues was absolute, save the narrow strip of face visible between forehead and mouth. The eyes were dark, narrow slits, just
like Caswell’s. Melni grasped the oversize trigger with her fist and pulled back. The gun’s eight barrels erupted with flame and gray smoke. The sound hit like a physical blow and Melni stumbled back under the violence of it. The walls shook. Birds took flight from trees all along the river.

The top half of the old boat disintegrated in a cloud of shredded wood as the thorny balled projectiles hissed through the air.

She’d wanted a cloud of blood and black fabric, though. The Hollow Woman had dodged, leaping off to the right, bouncing once on the wooden decking beside the watercraft and then leaping in a high forward flip toward Melni. Melni raised the gun as fast as her numbed hands would allow but the heavy gun had not been designed to take on fast-moving targets. It had been designed to convert a cone-shaped portion of an angry mob into shreds of meat and bone. Melni fired anyway and marveled at the circular portion of ceiling that vanished in a haze of splinters. Then the black shape was on her. Melni dropped the heavy weapon, leaning as she did so to dislodge the shoulder strap. At the same time she fumbled for her pistol. The Hollow slammed into her left shoulder, one palm striking Melni’s chin. She bit involuntarily, a searing pain as teeth punctured tongue, then the taste of copper as blood filled her mouth. Melni fell backward, spinning from the impact, her hands unable to grasp the pistol. She tried to turn the fall into some kind of sweeping kick but her foot tangled with the wall beside her.

Clumsy. Utterly outmatched.

The Hollow managed to hit the ground with one foot and vaulted up, her other foot catching the back wall and pushing her into a tight twirling flip to avoid Melni’s leg sweep that never came. The woman landed with a dancer’s grace and swung one arm out of a fold in her outfit. Melni glimpsed something metallic there. A pistol. She had only time to grimace at the bullet to come.

The Hollow Woman’s head snapped sideways. There was a wet slap from the back wall as her brains splattered against the wood.

Melni glanced left and saw a blur resembling Caswell disappear
around the back wall of the boathouse. She struggled to her feet and ran to where he’d been. When she glanced around the edge he was gone. Instead, she saw a black shape in the trees thirty feet distant, just up from the riverbank. She lurched back and ducked just as the sniper’s rifle cracked. A chunk of wood above Melni’s head exploded inward, raining bits onto the boat and the far side of the slip. Melni crawled back on her hands as two more rounds tore through the wall. Fired for effect. Fired to keep her pinned there. She whirled and ran back inside at a crouch, finding and hefting the riot gun with both hands as she went. In the next room she bounded past the hatch in the floor and kept running toward the door at the front of the building. One earsplitting boom from the weapon saw the barrier annihilated in a cloud of smoke and shrapnel. Someone cried out behind that mess.

Melni leapt, bringing her knees up and elbows in as she crashed through the remnants of the front door. She landed knees first on a figure dressed in black, one leg a mangled length of blood and bone. Too close to shoot, Melni swung the heavy gun instead. The thick eight-barrel cylinder met skull with a dull, ringing thud. The surprised Hollow let out an inhuman sigh and slumped sideways into a motionless heap.

Two down. Only the sniper remained, unless more of the killers lurked out there. Where was Caswell? She strained her ears but that was useless. They rang from the close-quarters use of the riot cannon and pounded with the rapid thud of a battle-fueled pulse. She needed to move. Be unpredictable. Act, she realized, on pure instinct. Maybe there was some merit to Caswell’s style after all.

She forced herself to her feet and lumbered away from the smashed door of the building, up the sloped path diagonally until she reached the dense grass near the burial mounds. Something, some survival instinct, made her dive at the same moment a shot hissed through the air where her head had been. The thunderous crack of the weapon followed, echoing off the surrounding trees.

Another bullet whipped through the tall grass a split second later,
inches above her head. She forced herself lower, dirt in her mouth and nose, and crawled on her belly for a tree a few feet away.

“Stay down!” a voice shouted. Caswell’s. He sounded distant, but then everything did.

Something blotted the Sun above her for a second. Footsteps nearby. Her companion rushed past, toward the sniper. Melni heard the crack of gunfire—once, twice. Unable to stop herself she came to one knee, her eyes just level with the wispy fringe of the tall weeds. Caswell was twenty feet away moving toward the shooter at a dead sprint. He weaved, using the thick tree trunks as natural cover. Suddenly he dove, rolled, and came up running at a new angle even as the rolling thunder of another sniper round boomed through the trees. He dodged with uncanny, almost precognizant speed a heartbeat before each whip crack from the sniper’s rifle.

After three such uncanny escapes the sniper changed tactics. Melni saw the black-clad figure vanish into the bushes when Caswell was still fifty feet off. He did not slow. Running at a low crouch he slipped through the branches and shifting grasses like a yacht through calm waters, then he, too, was gone, out of sight, over the next rise along the river. Gunfire echoed off the hills.

Help him!
a voice shouted in her head. Her own voice. She’d been sitting there, clutching the heavy riot gun like some kind of talisman. Melni came to her feet and considered her options. Follow Caswell? Find a more appropriate weapon within the ship? No, secure the bikes. Be ready to flee—

Quit blixxing around and act!

She never heard the person approach. She was utterly alone, and then not alone. The cool metal of a pistol pressed against her neck just behind the ear. Then a black-gloved hand on her collar, squeezing.

“Say nothing,” a woman said.

Melni had heard that voice before, in the archive.

“Drop the cannon and put your hands behind your back. Fingers entwined. Yes, that is good. To your knees, traitor. Lean forward until your face is between your legs.”

“Traitor?”

The force of the hand on Melni’s neck compelled her to follow commands. To fight back now would mean instant death. She’d wait for Caswell. Strike when the Hollow Woman was distracted.

Footsteps from up the trail. Melni felt the hand ease on her neck, inviting her to look. She did so. He emerged from the trees along the trail, a hundred feet up from where he’d sprinted off after the sniper. Caswell walked with his hands clasped behind his head, a Hollow behind him. Then another.

She watched in stunned horror. Six of the black-outfitted soldiers were fanned in a rough half circle behind him, plus a seventh on his heels, some unseen weapon clearly pressed at the small of the Earthman’s back. Melni’s breath caught in her throat at the sight. In all Gartien there were said to be only twelve Hollow. The South had sent the entirety of that elite force after her. Her and the stranger.

For his part Caswell did not appear to be injured. He looked calm, in fact. Disturbingly so. One of the Hollow, Melni noted, walked with a limp. Another’s arm dangled uselessly at his or her side.

“Let her go,” Caswell called out. “I forced her to bring me here. She’s innocent.”

“Your concern is noted, your request denied,” the one holding Melni said in her icy voice. “Now, why did you go through so much trouble to come to this place, I wonder?”

“We are on our way to Combra,” Melni said without thinking. “We just stopped for shelter.”

The handle of the gun cracked against the side of her skull. Stars swam before Melni’s eyes, then the tears came in a single, stinging wave. A trickle of warm blood ran down behind her ear and dripped onto her pant leg. She teetered but did not pass out. The blow had been expertly placed and just hard enough not to send her unconscious. “Remain silent, traitor. Your time to answer questions will come.” She pressed harder on Melni’s neck until Melni could feel her knees against the bottom of her chin and smell the dirt inches from her nose. “Now, stranger. Answer me.”

“Absolutely not,” Caswell said.

A few seconds of silence followed before the Hollow spoke. “Your lack of cooperation is unfortunate.”

“Good,” he replied.

Melni found herself smiling.

The Hollow leader shifted her weight. “They were in the boathouse?” she asked. One of her team evidently replied with a positive gesture—Melni could see nothing and heard nothing. “Search the place,” the leader said.

Melni counted four of them darting off down the trail toward the river. That left her captor, plus three others guarding Caswell. An even split of their number, and as good as the odds were likely to get. She wondered if Caswell would agree, and what he planned to do. Melni tried to remember if there had been a rock or stick anywhere within reach. Something she could wield, however feeble. Then she registered the weight of the slender pistol she had stuffed in her pocket. Bent over like this she’d never get it out in time, but if—

“Hear me!” Caswell suddenly said. His voice was unnaturally loud and he went on with only the slightest hesitation. “Within that structure two Northern agents wait ready to kill anyone who enters. They’re heavily armed—”

His words all ran together as if he had to say them all in a single breath. Why? Melni groped for some hidden meaning and found nothing obvious.