by James Axler
Webb was watching from the doorway and he seemed to realize how things might turn. He had received the report on Kane after his DNA had been flagged on entry to Ioville, knew the man was a spectacular fighter and survivor. His eyes widened as Kane drew a bead on him through the door, ducked back as Kane stroked the trigger, launching his latest tranq dart at him. The dart embedded into the wooden door, striking so hard that it split the wood and prevented the door from slamming closed.
* * *
OUTSIDE IOVILLE, GRANT was juking and weaving as the Sandcats began to fight back, running the turret-mounted chain gun hot as he sent stream after stream of bullets at his camouflaged targets, turning another Sandcat into an angry ball of flame. Brigid set another Sidewinder missile away, sending it into the heart of the battle where it ripped another Sandcat in two with a roar of splitting metal.
But the Sandcats were fighting back now. Perfectly camouflaged against the white backdrop, their blister cannons functioning via computer program—a positronic brain linking the guidance system to the drive shaft—the seven remaining Sandcats had turned their powerful USMG-73 heavy machine guns to the air, tracking their attacker as Grant dipped in and out of range. Great swarms of bullets propelled from the roof-mounted turrets, tracking the grim shadow of the Deathbird as it was momentarily revealed through the falling snow.
“I can’t keep us from getting hit for much longer,” Grant spat, lifting the joystick and raising the Deathbird thirty feet in a violent swoop.
Brigid felt her stomach rush up into her throat, tamped it down with a gulp, her hands never leaving the fire control panel. She tapped out another command sequence, watching on the targeting screen as the heat trail of a Sandcat glowed amid the chill ground.
“We’re all out of missiles,” she told Grant as she tapped the controls, launching the last remaining sidewinder missiles and tracking their path on her display panel. A moment later, she received confirmation that the two missiles had struck their intended targets, cutting the remaining Sandcats down to just five.
Grant brought the Deathbird around again, strafing low over the fast-moving Sandcats as they weaved past the smoldering shells of their ruined comrades, trails of thick black smoke billowing into the sky. His turret gun blasted again, sending a stream of bullets across the ground as they sought their target, kicking up plumes of snow before meeting with the windshield of a Sandcat and peppering it with holes, continuing up across the roof and destroying the turret blister in a sudden burst of flames.
Another Sandcat spied the Deathbird swooping past to attack its teammate and sent a thick stream of bullets at the fast-moving aircraft. The Deathbird wavered in the air as the line of bullets struck its belly and flank, rattling against it like rain on a tin roof even as Grant tried to lift out of harm’s way.
“We’ve got to stay low if we’re going to finish this,” Brigid shouted as Grant fought with the controls, turning in a tight spiral as he ascended higher through the falling snow.
“How many targets do we have left?” Grant asked, shaking his head at the prospect.
“Four showing,” Brigid told him, “assuming there aren’t any armed survivors out there looking for revenge.”
“And assuming they haven’t got the doors back open,” Grant growled with another shake of his head.
“Grant,” Brigid said in a reasonable tone, “we’ve faced worse odds than this. Get me down there and I’ll keep those Sandcats distracted while you set them up for the killing blow.”
Grant pulled on the joystick, bringing the Deathbird around in a roar of straining engines. “You’re nuts, Brigid—you know that, right?” he yelled as they dipped through another storm of bullets.
A moment later the Deathbird was racing toward the ground. Brigid was out of her seat and working the controls of the door, disabling the catch and holding it in place with a tight grip as alarms went off through the cabin.
“Just get me down there and make sure you’re there to back me up, okay?” she bellowed over the roar of the rotor blades.
An instant later, Grant brought the Deathbird down to the ground with a rough bump. Brigid Baptiste leaped from the chopper, slamming the door behind her before racing away. In a moment she was lost to the obscuring curtain of falling snow.
Chapter 31
Brigid felt the chill of the atmosphere straight away, inwardly cursed the loss of her shadow suit from when she had been inducted into the Ioville population.
Behind her, the Deathbird ascended into the skies, disappearing behind the thick curtain of snow in a few moments, the drone of its rotors lost almost as quickly. She tuned that noise out, listening instead for the rumbling engines of the Sandcats. There were four heavily armed war machines moving on high alert and ready to shoot down anything they distrusted—anything or anyone.
Brigid ducked her head to make a smaller target, ran for the nearest engine noise. It came from her right, muffled by the snow but still audible here on the ground. It sounded like a distant beehive, the angry buzz of the bees as they toiled at their honey-making.
Brigid spotted it a moment later, as the snow fell all around her. Painted white, the Sandcat was well camouflaged in the snow, but its tracks were black rubber and its guns poking out of the blister bubble were black, too. The guns were firing, away from Brigid, up into the atmosphere where Grant had taken the Deathbird chopper.
Brigid ran, pushing herself on against the drag of the snow beneath her, closing the distance between herself and the Sandcat as it held position, blasting into the skies. As she neared, she drew the blaster that she had shoved into her overalls.
Brigid came at the Sandcat from behind, leaping onto the back armor plate—the very plates she had been responsible for securing in the factories of Ioville—clambering up the side. A moment later she was on the roof, running across it toward the protruding blister where the cannons blasted their continuous stream of bullets into the sky.
The blister was empty, Brigid saw; the whole operation was automated. The heavy machine guns kept firing, steam billowing from the hot metal of the muzzles, unaware of Brigid’s presence just a few feet behind them. Brigid took her blaster and slammed it down against the protective glass of the turret, searching for the spot where the guns met the inner workings. She ducked beneath the stream of bullets and pulled the trigger on her blaster, sending a stream of her own into the gun’s housings. The mount shuddered as Brigid’s 9 mm bullets struck it, and one of the twin pair of guns ceased firing with a cough of straining metal. The blister turned, aware now of Brigid’s presence, the remaining USMG-73 still sending that near-ceaseless stream of bullets from its nose as it spun.
Brigid dropped from the Sandcat roof, falling in a swan dive, arms outstretched and handblaster still clenched in her right hand while the Sandcat’s bullets cut the air above her. As she fell, a dark shape appeared through the falling snow, Grant’s Deathbird come to deliver the killing blow. As the Sandcat tried to track Brigid with its lone operational blaster, Grant zeroed in on his target and unleashed a stream of bullets across its armor plating, ripping through it and into the guts of the engine.
In an instant, the Sandcat’s engine erupted in a fireball, ripping through the metal beast in less than five seconds. Brigid hit the ground in those same seconds, landing on her back against the forgiving snow, allowing it to absorb her impact.
As the flames caught the turret gun, the bullets were set alight, and for a moment a stream of flaming bullets spit across the land before the whole vehicle was lost behind a curtain of flame. A moment later, the turret stopped firing.
“One,” Brigid said to herself as the Sandcat melted before her eyes. That still left three more to track and destroy. She only hoped that Kane was having more success wherever he was.
* * *
STILL MOVING, KANE brought his tranq gun around and behind him
, running backward and blasting over his shoulder to take out the Magistrate by the window. The man fired at almost the same moment, and Kane was forced to roll out of the dart’s path as it hurtled toward him, his own shot missing.
Kane fired again and the man fell back as the dart hit him in the gut, flipping him almost over himself as he crashed to the ground amid the shards of window.
The last of the Mags steadied his aim with his free hand and shot at the moving target Kane presented, firing off two more tranquilizer darts even as the Cerberus warrior weaved and leaped his way across the length of the room.
Kane blasted again, sending the last of the Magistrates slamming against the back wall in a blur of ruined armor. He had just one shot left.
He ran for the wooden door at the end of the room, his dart still poking from its cracked face. He saw Webb running ahead, glancing over his shoulder at his pursuer.
“It’s all over, Supreme Magistrate,” Kane bellowed. “I’m shutting this whole place down.”
“Never!” Webb barked.
Kane watched as Webb slipped through a gray service door ahead, accompanied by a momentary roar of rushing air. Kane’s boots slapped against the floor as he chased after the retreating gray form.
* * *
BRIGID STRUGGLED BACK to her feet amid the burning wreckage of the Sandcat. Around her, she could hear the growl of engines as the other Sandcats—three in all—came to investigate, circling to find the attacker from the skies. They didn’t know that she was here—that was the one advantage she had just now and she had to use it.
She hurried through the snow, arms pumping, legs driving, booted feet dragging into the snow. Up ahead, scarcely visible through the falling flurries of white, she saw the familiar black snouts of a Sandcat’s turret guns. The guns were moving, circling as they tried to locate the Deathbird that had attacked them.
Brigid ran as fast as she could, eyes fixed on that swiveling cannon and the man silhouetted in the blister bubble behind it. It would have been so much easier if they had all been automated, but Brigid knew that only a fool wished for a different enemy in the heat of battle. The vehicle was still moving, trying to locate Grant and to present a moving target at the same time.
Brigid ran straight for the sloping windshield, weapon in hand, arms pumping as she clambered over the front fender and ran up the windshield itself.
The driver watched her, his jaw dropping with surprise. Brigid pointed her blaster down and squeezed the trigger as she ran, sending a shot from the Sin Eater into the windshield, at barely twelve inches from its surface. The bullet struck, creating a spiderweb of fractured glass across the windshield, but the glass held.
The gunner had been alerted to Brigid’s presence by then, but she continued scaling up the vehicle, getting off another shot as she targeted the figure inside the gun blister. The protective glass there cracked but held, even as the USMG heavy machine guns powered up and began coughing out their stream of death at the redheaded Cerberus warrior.
Brigid sprang across the roof, moving swiftly, firing again, blasting shot after 9 mm shot into the blister as a stream of bullets cut the air to either side of her.
The blister gave off a loud crack of noise, like thunder in the night, and then the whole bubble-like structure collapsed in a shower of shattering safety glass.
In the air above, the Deathbird seemed to come swooping out of nowhere as Grant arrived to provide backup to Brigid’s fearless assault. The gunner in the turret swiveled his guns again, targeting not the woman who had now sprung behind him, but the mighty helicopter that was stealthily picking off his colleagues, using the snow for cover. The machine guns rattled loudly as they spit their deadly cargo, drilling a flurry of slugs across the front pane of the Deathbird even as it brought its own turret gun to bear.
Brigid kicked the gunner in the face, knocking out a tooth in a brutal twist of his jaw. Before the gunner could say a word, Brigid brought her blaster down and fired, delivering 9 mm death to the man in a instant, skull and brain matter exploding in a sudden burst of blood.
Brigid leaped from the Sandcat as bullets came battering against its front end from the guns of the helicopter. There was a brief clattering of bullets on metal, and then the whole front of the Sandcat seemed to rise up before catching light and exploding in a shower of metal splinters. Its driver had the sense to leap from the ruined vehicle just before the bullets made their mark, and he was buried in a cloud of snow, glass and metal as the vehicle went up in flames.
By that time, however, Brigid was already running, searching for her next target in the masking field of whiteness.
* * *
KANE HESITATED AS the service door drew closed. He was walking into an ambush and he knew it. Whatever was through there, it would give Webb ample time to coldcock him.
Unless Kane moved faster.
“Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow,” the Commtact bleated, reminding Kane to stay sane, remain in control of himself. “And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.”
The door was sealed. Kane tried the handle, discovered it was locked.
“Dammit,” he cursed, taking a step back from the door. He was trying to figure out where the door led, trying to piece together the muzzy, broken map he had for Ioville in his head. He was in the Administrative Monolith on Alpha Level, a level where, strictly speaking, only barons and their most trusted advisors and guards could access. Of course there were no barons left. So what would be through the door?
Steadying himself, Kane kicked out at the lock. His booted foot slammed against it with a crash, shaking the door in its frame. The door withstood the assault, and Kane kicked it again—three times in total, until his final kick was met with the sound of splintering wood as the door, lock and frame all gave.
The door lurched lopsidedly in the frame. Raising the tranq gun in his right hand, Kane pushed against the door with his free hand, thrusting it firmly away from him, into whatever room lay beyond. He was greeted by the roar of rushing air, impossibly loud to his ears.
* * *
IN THE COCKPIT of the Deathbird, Grant looked at the readouts with disdain. The vehicle had taken some serious hits, and it was barely holding together after that last assault.
He scanned the snow below, searching for Brigid and the remaining Sandcats. By his reckoning there were still two of the assault vehicles out there somewhere, and all it would take is a lucky shot to finish the Deathbird.
He circled around, searching the ground for Brigid, using the infrared to find the last of the running engines amid the heat sources of the burning Sandcats.
* * *
BRIGID HAD FOUND another Sandcat, this one creeping beside a high snowdrift that partly shaded it to disguise its silhouette, its turret whirring around as it sought its sky-bound enemy. She hurried toward it, moving in a semicrouch better to not be seen.
Brigid hunkered down, running toward the vehicle, keeping to its left flank. The gun turret circled again, searching the skies and ignoring her on the ground. As it swept past, Brigid straightened up and began to run faster, powering through the snowdrifts until she was at the side of the Sandcat. Switching weapons, she grabbed the handle of the gull-wing passenger door and pulled, hoping it would open for her. It did, recognizing her fingerprints as a citizen of Ioville’s.
Brigid swung inside even as the driver turned to face her, a look of surprise on his face. Brigid brought the tranq gun up and fired, sending a single tranquilizer dart slug into the driver’s chest before he could issue a challenge. The driver slumped in the seat, crashing against the steering column accompanied by a loud honk from the horn and a sudden swerve of the front wheels.
Above her, Brigid heard a second man cry out in surprise. “What is going on down there, Citizen 014M? My aim is being compromised.”
Brigid poked the nose of her blaster through the gap between the seats, targeting the foot of the man operating the turret and sending another dart into the man’s ankle. The ankle blurted out a spray of blood and the man shrieked in pain.
Brigid hurried through the rear of the Sandcat and fired again, this time directing her shot straight up into the gun turret. The gunner had no time to react, and he took the tranq to the gut, openmouthed in surprise.
Brigid took just an instant to catch her breath before reaching for the gunner and dragging him out of his seat. A moment later she had taken the gunner’s place—dangerous in light of her inability to contact Grant to warn him of the manoeuvre—slipping behind the triggers of the turret gun.
Brigid spun the gun, searching for the last Sandcat.
It appeared without warning on the targeting scope, blasting shot after shot at a familiar silhouette that the scope had detected in the sky above—Grant’s Deathbird.
As Brigid watched, the Deathbird seemed to circle on the spot and began to drop from the sky, the roar of its failing engine suddenly loud even inside the Sandcat’s cabin. A moment later the insectile frame of the chopper appeared above her, cutting through the snow like a scythe before slamming into the front end of the Sandcat within which she was seated. The Sandcat shuddered, an alarm sounding as its structural integrity was shattered.
Chapter 32
Air rushed around Kane in a deafening wall of noise.
He was standing on a metal catwalk in a towering cylinder like a turbine, a gigantic fan dominating the tower thirty feet below. The fan’s huge rotor blades were a blur of rushing movement as they sucked air into the ville from outside, delivering it to the ventilation system that fed the Terminal White program to every citizen in Ioville. It was the air processing plant, located inside the tallest building in the ville.
The realization took less than a second. In that time, Webb pounced on Kane, appearing from his hiding place just behind the door and driving one bladelike hand down on Kane’s extended right arm in a karate chop.
