Terminal White

by James Axler

  Grant looked at the garage, its assault vehicles and its milling army of citizens turned soldiers. “And what about us?”

  “Take this,” Brigid said, handing him the spare handblaster she carried, “and help me find a way to stop this army from starting a war.”

  Grant nodded, his expression fixed in grim determination as the next wave of five Sandcats started their engines and began to accelerate toward the open doors of the garage.

  * * *

  THE WIND WAS picking up.

  Clinging to the outside of the Administrative Monolith, Kane moved cautiously around a sharp corner and straight into a gust of wind.

  “Dammit!” Kane cursed.

  He hung on, his feet shifting on the narrow ledge as he struggled to keep his balance while the icy wind drummed into his face, throwing snow and flecks of ice at him like stones. The wind howled with all the passion of a wolf howling at the full moon, a deep moaning that seemed to press against Kane’s bones beneath the protective layers of his uniform.

  Finally, the gust passed.

  Kane was holding his breath, clinging on for dear life, hundreds of feet up from the ground. He scrambled, moving quickly but carefully, shifting his weight and balance as he swung around the corner of the towering building and onto the next ledge. He moved like a spider, finding the tiniest of grips, the narrowest of ledges as he clambered across the building’s facade.

  A moment later, Kane spotted what he had been looking for. Up ahead, almost hidden by the reflection of the silver-gray clouds, was a bank of windows, stretching almost the full length of the wall, taller than a man. This would be the baron’s suite, from which he or she might look out to survey Ioville.

  Kane scrambled along the edge of the building, crab-walking along the ledge until he was close to the window. Inside was what appeared to be a conference room, with a long formal table about which over a dozen straight-backed seats had been arranged. A more forgiving couch had been placed against one wall. There were five figures in the room—four Magistrates standing guard and facing away from the windows, and the fifth sitting on the couch looking out at the majestic vista of the snow-clad ville. The man wore a variation of the Magistrate uniform and had iron-gray hair tied back in a ponytail. Kane looked at the man for a few seconds, recognition dawning. It was Supreme Magistrate Webb, the man who had shown him around the ville all those weeks ago.

  Kane stepped back for a moment, securing his footing on the narrow ledge he stood on before reaching slowly for his holster and pulling loose the pistol. Darts against a window—not ideal, but if he could get the angle right...?

  “Mary had a little lamb,” his Commtact chimed in the background.

  Clinging on to the exterior wall with his left hand, Kane swung himself out as far as he dared and targeted the very center of the closest pane of glass, where the glass was weakest.

  Kane sighted down the barrel of the blaster then fired, sending one of the tranquilizer darts rocketing toward the giant glass pane from just a few feet away. The projectile struck the window dead center and embedded there, fixed halfway through the glass. Around the dart, a spiderweb of cracks seemed to materialize from nowhere, spreading outward in a crazed pattern that emanated from the center.

  The man on the couch looked up in surprise, and two of the Magistrates turned at the whisper of noise that the striking dart had made, sounding like a flint striking stone. Then Kane came into view, leaping across the gap and striking against the window with full force, causing the fractured glass to shatter inward as he smashed against it, feetfirst.

  “What th—?” Supreme Magistrate Webb bellowed. “Stop him!”

  As one, four gray-clad Magistrates spun, turning their weapons on the rolling form of Kane as he came thundering through the window and into the room.

  Chapter 30

  On Zeta Level, Brigid and Grant watched as the third wave of Sandcats shot up the snowy slope and out into the world. Already there were fifteen Sandcats outside now, fifteen that the Cerberus warriors would have to stop or capture.

  Grant was already running back into the garage area, leading the way through a wide aisle toward the massing vehicles. “Come on, this way!” he shouted, and Brigid hurried to follow.

  “I thought you were going to close the door,” Brigid called to him.

  “Yeah, me, too, but that won’t stop those ’cats that already got out, will it?” Grant said as he reached the first of the waiting vehicles. He shoved a citizen aside with a forceful blow.

  “Then what did you have in mind?” Brigid asked as she pushed her way into the crowd after Grant.

  Grant pointed. “Deathbird,” he said. “I’ll pilot, you play percussion.”

  Brigid smiled at his turn of phrase—it was the kind of silly off-the-cuff remark that only Grant could offer in such a fraught situation. The kind of remark no one in the thrall of Terminal White would ever make.

  Together, the two Cerberus warriors clambered up into the cockpit of the Deathbird, with Grant adopting his familiar position in the pilot’s seat.

  “Just hope I can still remember how to pilot one of these,” he muttered.

  Brigid showed him her bright smile. “Kane always says you’re the second-best pilot Cerberus will ever have,” she assured him.

  Grant raised an eyebrow as he ran through the preflight checks. “Second, huh? Let’s see if we can shoot for first.”

  With that, he powered up the engine and the grasshopper-like form of the modified Apache helicopter took off from the deck, its powerful rotors swooping around with a low thrum that echoed through the cavernous garage. The mystified crowd of citizens and Magistrates ran out of the vehicle’s path as it began to surge forward, making its way at a thirty-degree angle toward the open doors to the ville.

  * * *

  SNOW FLURRIES BILLOWED in through the shattered window, icy winds turning the whole of the baronial suites cold in just a few seconds.

  Kane had arrived in the baronial suite in a shower of shattering glass and snow. He rolled as he landed, bringing his blaster up to target the Magistrate at the center of the group of four. The blaster fired with a pfft of expelled air, sending a dart into the Mag’s chest and causing him to sink to his knees even as he squeezed the trigger of his own weapon.

  Kane didn’t like to fight Magistrates—no matter the terms he had left the service under, he still respected these men for doing their jobs to protect the masses, still considered it a noble pursuit. So using the tranq gun on them eased his conscience at least. He knew, however, that being struck by one himself meant he would be sent back to Processing, reprogrammed as a mindless machine, albeit one born of man and woman. It was a terrible fate, he knew now, and one he intended to do his utmost to avoid.

  Kane moved, mentally dismissing the tranquilizer dart that rocketed past over his head.

  The other Mags in the room were targeting him with their own weapons. Highly trained, highly skilled and three against one—Kane’s only hope was to keep moving and use their numbers against them.

  “Stop him!” yelled Webb, getting up from the couch with a look of horror on his face. He had never expected anything like this, not after nine years of Ioville’s strict, orderly lifestyle. It was almost too hard for him to process that it was happening.

  Kane dived under the long conference table as the Mags blasted, sending a triple assault of tranquilizer darts at him. Two darts struck the table while the third embedded itself in the far wall.

  Kane slid on his haunches, rolling under the long table as the Magistrates tried to get a bead on him. He could hear Webb calling for backup—presumably the other two Magistrates he had spotted waiting by the glass wall beside the designated elevator.

  Kane peeked out from under the table, lined up a shot and blasted, sending a tranquilizer dart into the fleshy pa
rt of an unsuspecting Magistrate’s leg as he scrambled past in his search for Kane. The man seemed to tumble in on himself, crashing to the deck in a jumble of splayed limbs.

  Mags turned, two shots firing across the room at the space where Kane had briefly emerged. But Kane had already retreated, scrambling on elbows and knees beneath the conference table, heading back toward the broken window through which he had entered the room.

  He halted at the far end, still hidden by the table and temporarily protected from an assault from above. He eyed the room from beneath the table, listened to the strange—almost eerie—lack of discussion from the Magistrates. Like everyone else in the ville, they had been reprogrammed by Terminal White. They functioned on orders now, not instinct, cared nothing for discussion.

  Kane could see two sets of feet pacing around opposite sides of the table, three more pairs of legs at the end of the room dressed in uniform gray. He could not confirm a clean shot—there were chair legs in the way and he didn’t want to waste his limited ammunition in case there were even more Mags up here waiting to challenge him.

  Kane moved swiftly, scrambling out from under the table even as the two Magistrates to either side of him lunged down with their weapons thrust before them. Twin tranquilizer darts zipped across the space between the table, passing out into the room before disappearing from view—one embedding itself in a far wall while the other sailed off through the open window behind Kane.

  Kane was still moving, leaping atop the table and running along it at full pelt. Both Mags looked up with surprise, realising that their victim had already left his hiding place. A blur of motion, Kane kicked out at the one to his left, striking the man’s exposed jaw with the heel of his boot and sending him flying backward.

  The Mag to Kane’s right drew his weapon up to blast Kane but Kane ducked, dropping beneath the shot like a limbo dancer, then skidding on his knees along the table as the launched dart cut through the space where he had been a fraction of a second earlier. The dart zipped across the room and embedded itself in the Mag to the left, who was still tumbling backward, trying to regain his balance after being kicked in the jaw.

  “Mary had a little lamb,” Kane’s Commtact chipped in, but he was too focused to pay it any attention.

  * * *

  THE DEATHBIRD POWERED through the garage area toward the open doors. Below, the fourth wave of Sandcats was just beginning to launch, picking up speed as the five white-painted vehicles accelerated toward the open doors to the ville.

  “See that switch?” Grant shouted to Brigid, raising his voice over the deep thrum of the cycling rotor blades.

  Brigid looked to where Grant indicated, high in the rooftop where the door frame met empty space.

  “Door mechanism,” Grant said.

  Brigid nodded. “On it,” she confirmed, powering up the Deathbird’s weapons. The Deathbird featured a turret-mounted chain gun, as well as missile armaments, and Brigid brought these to life with a few flicked switches, keeping one eye on the moving Sandcats below them. “Things are about to get messy,” she warned as she jabbed the switch to prime the chopper’s Sidewinder missiles.

  An instant later, the long shaft of a Sidewinder missile went spiraling away from the Deathbird, rocketing toward the target that Brigid had selected—the high-placed mechanism which worked the rollback doors. The missile struck a second later, exploding in a burst of brilliant flames and noise.

  The explosion was followed by an automatic alarm, spinning red lights bursting into life and a low arooga noise echoing through the garage on a repeat cycle.

  Grant fed speed to the Deathbird, driving it for the opening up ahead where the Sandcats had disappeared. He knew what was going to happen next, goosed all the speed he could from the chopper’s powerful engines as he hurried to exit the ville.

  The ville’s central computer responded immediately to Brigid’s assault on the doors. Along with the alert, there came a loud creaking sound, and the mighty rollback doors began to shudder and move, drawing inward to close the opening and seal the ville from the perceived attack. Of course, no assault had ever been imagined from inside the ville, so sealing the doors would only serve to lock the army inside the garage, where they could do no further harm. The doors would seal in ten seconds, powered by mighty motors located in the roof and floor.

  Grant ducked his head as he maneuvered the Deathbird past the flames that licked the ceiling and out through the closing doors, navigating the rapidly closing space. A moment later, his Deathbird came shooting out of the ville as behind it the doors sealed closed on almost three hundred Sandcats, ninety-nine Deathbirds and a whole army of willing, brainwashed soldiers.

  “Now, let’s see if we can put a stop to this mess,” Grant growled as the Deathbird ascended past the sloped ramp and up into the air.

  * * *

  SLIDING TOWARD THE END of the conference table in the baronial suite on Alpha Level, Kane rolled, bringing one leg out to halt his course. Ahead of him, two Magistrates had joined Supreme Mag Webb at the double doors to the room, and Kane saw Webb himself duck out of the conference area to safety.

  Not yet, you don’t, Kane promised.

  The Mag to Kane’s right was taking aim again, striding forward to get closer to his fast-moving jack-in-the-box of a target. Kane ducked his head as the tranq gun fired, and he growled as something struck the hard surface of his Magistrate helmet—it was a dart, impacting but not penetrating the protective headgear.

  Then Kane was barreling forward again, his head still down, feet scrambling on the table and lifting his body up with finesse. He slammed headfirst into the Magistrate who had just fired, with a sound like a crack of thunder. The Mag went flying back under the impact, Kane’s helmet having struck him high in the chest, knocking the breath out of him.

  Kane could not stop his momentum in time and he went sailing off the edge of the table and out beyond, tumbling onto the glass-strewn floor of the conference space. The Mag he had knocked down began to get back up woozily while the other two came charging into the room, their own tranq guns raised.

  * * *

  OUTSIDE, THE SANDCATS were well camouflaged in the snow. Hurtling away from the ville, Grant brought up an infrared display on the Deathbird’s console, homing in on the heat generated by their engines as he navigated through the falling snow. There were fifteen out here, each one showing up as a tiny blip of red on the target grid. The burning door of the Ioville garage showed as a smudge of red behind them on the display.

  “We won’t have enough missiles to stop all of them,” Grant warned Brigid.

  “Missiles versus Sandcats is the obvious choice,” she lamented, “but I guess we’ll improvise after we run out. Any ideas?”

  “I’ve seen a well-placed rifle shot take out a Sandcat once,” Grant suggested.

  Brigid’s eyes flicked to the storage space of the Deathbird, searching all around. “We don’t have any rifles,” she told him. “Anything else?”

  “I’ll get ahead of them and do what I can,” Grant said, driving more power to the whining engines. “After that, we’ll just have to see how the cards get dealt.”

  The Deathbird whipped through the air, following the course of the Sandcats a hundred feet above them. Any moment now, the ’bird would be showing on their sensor equipment. The Cerberus teammates could only hope that the crews assumed that the helicopter was a part of the assault force until it was too late to matter.

  A moment later, the Deathbird overtook the second wave of Sandcats and powered on through the masking curtain of snow to pass the first. Grant urged more speed to the engines, bringing the mechanical death machine farther ahead of the speeding Sandcats before bringing it around in a fast-moving loop.

  A moment later, the Deathbird was set to hover as Brigid primed the missile ports again, launching the first of the Sidewinder missiles a
t the Sandcat leading the charge. The missile left the Deathbird with a cough of propellant, cutting through the air with a whoosh. Even as it left its housing, Brigid launched a second missile at the next Sandcat, a third at the vehicle to that one’s left.

  Grant watched grimly as the Sidewinders hurtled away from the windshield and were lost in the curtain of falling snow. A moment later, three explosions showed like fireworks launched in the whiteness where the first Sandcats were destroyed.

  At the gunner’s panel, Brigid flicked switches and prepared the next cluster of missiles for launch.

  * * *

  KANE LEAPED TO his feet and grabbed for a chair, lifting it by its high back as two of the Magistrates fired their long-nosed pistols. The familiar sound of the expulsion of compressed air cut through the whistling winds that came through the broken window. Kane used the chair to deflect one of the tranquilizer darts while the other went a foot wide of his right shoulder, thudding into the far wall with a thump.

  Still hoisting the chair, Kane ran across the room as the Mags prepared to fire again, launching it at them both with a grunt of effort. The makeshift projectile spun through the air, crossing five feet before striking the Mag to the left hard in the chest, knocking him from his feet. The second Mag fired again, but the speeding dart missed Kane by the merest fraction of an inch.

  The third Mag had recovered and stood now, taking aim at Kane from the distant end of the room where the window had been shattered. Kane spun as the man fired, dipping his head just in time as the dart hurtled toward him. Kane was perfectly in line with the other Magistrate and, as he ducked, the dart missed him and embedded instead in his foe’s right shoulder, ruining his aim even as it loosed its drug into the man’s system.

  Kane watched as the struck Mag fell to his knees, a line of drool appearing almost instantly down his chin where it could be seen beneath the grim visage of the Magistrate helmet.