"Cover." He pointed, indicating a building front that was well bombed out but still looked structurally sound. She skipped ahead and entered a ragged hole in the brick face shotgun first. He dived for the hollow and took her back.
She announced, "Clear!" and turned.
"Company, and lots of it," he said. "Which way are those cars?"
"Left," she said.
"So let's move." The swarming threats had deduced their direction and were moving, too. Passing gunmen occasionally shot at them. At least the gunmen didn't have radio or any other signal method apart from shouting. They were coming, though, and at least one had made them and was pointing at them while shouting. He started shooting and they both dropped.
"Grab the spare cassette from my back!" Elke shouted.
Jason fumbled at her ruck, retrieved the drum, slapped her ass, and stretched it over her left shoulder. She reached up and grabbed it.
Jason dropped down and slapped her boot. She shimmied back and over him, intimately close even with rucks, gear, sweat, and incoming fire. There were clattering noises behind and a curse. Then she slapped his boot.
He fired a burst at yet another freak in the street, and shifted back into the crevice. He crawled over her, keeping clear of her muzzle, and she shouted, "Ten meters fast and cover me! Move!"
He glanced at the wall and didn't need to be told twice. Holy shit! He took the warning to heart and backed up fast.
He dumped his magazine at movement as she elevated and flew past him, like some magical elf in dusty combat gear. He counted three as he reloaded, eyes on the magazine. You couldn't shoot while reloading, and if you had someone to cover you, you didn't need to. Just reload as fast as possible and carry on.
Then he turned back to the street, as her voice burst from his radio.
"Now! Now! Covering!"
He turned to see her in a doorway, rimmed by concrete, and sprinted. She started firing, rounds within a meter of him, forcing threats back behind the alley corner. He passed her and took the next doorway, an alcove of sorts with a rolling door.
"Fireinthehole!" she shouted, and clicked a switch.
The cassette was designed so you could fire all twenty rounds at once, as a directional mine. But this one erupted. The blast snatched at his breath.
It had been pointed at an angle from the building's foundation, but left a divot in the ground and a hole in the wall as it blew. Whatever the bitch had loaded it with was just brutal. The sound was that of high explosive, but there was a lot of debris and fragments. A good amount of that was embedded in their pursuers. One torso lay legless in a pool of blood. Virtually every body on the street, still or writhing, was painted crimson, with skin peeling from shattered limbs.
That was all there was time to see as they backed around the next corner.
"Transport!" Jason shouted as he pointed his carbine at a car's driver. The man panicked and tried to accelerate. Jason shot through the windshield and killed him. He needed the vehicle, needed it now, and no lone male around here was enough to arouse sympathy.
He shifted around the bumper of the slowing car as Elke slip-stepped behind. Then they did a little dance step that ended with the body on the ground, Jason sitting on the driver's seat with warm blood against his hair and under his pants—the upper chest shot had splashed—and Elke pirouetting into the rear seat to cover 270 degrees in a moving arc.
"I'm leaving the windows for now," she said.
"Understood." He nailed the throttle and headed back for the rest. He honked at pedestrians and swerved around wreckage that included cars, trash, and the bodies Elke had left.
"Elke, what the hell was that?"
"I stuffed the empty space of the cassettes with Composition G and shotgun flechettes."
"Shit! What happens if someone shoots you?"
"Assumes a weapon energetic enough to penetrate cassette and my armor. As I'm not likely to care after that moment, I've never worried about that question."
"Elke, you're a fucking whackjob."
"Yes." He looked back at her, but she was scanning for threats as they bounced over bodies. That was it. Yes.
"Playwright, this is Argonaut, arriving in ninety seconds," he said into his radio.
"Roger, we're ready. What direction?"
"Blue." South.
"Confirm blue."
Driving through the crowd wasn't any safer. Enough bodies could stop a car, and his window was missing. He trusted Elke, and it was a good thing, because as he headed into the crowd, she shot right past his face, nailing someone who was trying to reach into the car and scrabble for the lock.
"Thanks." He was glad for earbuds and for the suppressed carbine. Her shotgun would have gone past the volume curve they were designed for and deafened him at that range. Not to mention the muzzle flash that would cause scorches.
"They are ahead and see us," she said, "and will clear an area loudly."
"Got it," he agreed. He wondered if the ammo could hold out, even on the Medusa.
There they were, up ahead, and they'd regrouped. That certainly made things easier. The crowd was thinner here, but a lot of people seemed to think the car was a taxi. They'd piled on the roof and tail. He dissuaded the ones on the hood by jolting the brakes to toss them off, while Elke pointed a gun and looked menacing. That mostly worked. Harmless passengers were great for concealment and to soak up any fire, but he had to be able to see.
He kept moving at a fast crawl, and people squeezed or jumped aside, beating on the car, cursing, occasionally raising a club. Someone raised a pistol and Elke shot him through the face.
Ahead, the team was in a huddle around a burned-out sandwich cart. Alex shouted something; it came over the earbuds but was too distorted to tell.
Bart understood it, however, and started shooting. He walked in a rapid circle, aiming his fire in a widening spiral that caused a huge hole to open. Aramis backed behind, picking targets near people's feet, and pointing at still forms for them to drag into the crowd. They seemed to be stunned, not dead.
Jason rolled through a thick cluster that had backed away from the fire, and into the clearing. That simple. Except there was no good way to get the doors open without the crowd trying to swarm in. They saw transport and they intended to exploit it.
"Aw, fuck this," he said, and dug into his pocket. He peeled off a couple of the larger bills and let them flutter into the foot well, then tossed the entire handful into a high arc.
"Free money!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs. "Hundreds of marks!"
It worked. Everyone on this side of the car swarmed toward the fluttering plastic slips. The downside was that the crowd on the other side swarmed over the car to get to it. But they were going over the low areas, not the high roof, which was still occupied. That reduced the torrent enough that Alex was able to get the door open.
Bodies piled in the back, far too crowded. This vehicle was made for four, not twelve. Once Aramis, Bal, and Shaman piled in the back, White wiggled into the hatch. Her three goons shooed people off the deck and sat on it. Bart jumped onto the hood, shaking the suspension and denting the plastic, but making a very good turret. That left the roof for Alex, because Rahul pulled open the passenger door and wiggled under Elke. He had a pistol he balanced on the door sill, as Jason ran all the windows down. Better they have easy fields of fire now.
"Window is stuck," Shaman said, followed by a splintering of the plastic. From the sound, he'd jammed something through it to crack the edge, and then pushed. "Good knife," he said laconically.
Bart dropped the Medusa on the ground next to the car, made clear eye contact with Jason, and said, "Run."
Jason gulped and nailed the throttle. Bart had just set the damned thing to autonomous function and a few seconds delay. They did not want to be around when it started shooting.
Someone fell underneath and screamed as Jason crunched over them, the car bumping, sticking, dragging, and the tires slipping on something wet and greasy—a bo
dy—before regaining traction and rolling. Inside, he cringed. Dammit, these poor bastards hadn't done anything to him. At the same time, it was their own fucking fault for not moving out of the way. He made a snappy comment of "Someone will have to give him a leg up." But he really hoped there wouldn't be any more incidents.
Behind them came the cacophonous roar of the Medusa seeking its own targets, powered necks sweeping around and shooting. The shooting got louder, because the crowd had swarmed it to try to loot it and had made themselves easy targets that muffled the noise at first. Once those bodies were down, it sought targets among those now fleeing. The necks twisted and swiveled and shot, while the grenade launcher neck tossed shells in high arcs to come down and blow frag into the mix. That would continue as long as the ammunition held out . . .
A moderate explosion slapped at them.
. . . and then it would self-destruct.
The windows were down or broken out now. The car definitely blended in better. Some people were trying to climb in, hang on, or take the vehicle. Jason kept his weapon on his right side, balanced over his left arm, and shot single shots whenever someone tried to climb the driver's side. So far, it had only been adult males trying to gain access, but females or children were fair game at this point. What was the French term? Sauve qui peut? Save what you can.
He stopped thinking because there were bodies ahead and someone climbed on the door. He shot, sounded the horn, shouted, revved the engine, and kept driving. Bart shot into the ground periodically to warn people away. Behind him, Elke cursed in Czech, Rahul in some language he didn't recognize, and the rest in English. Those knives and tomahawks were getting use now, chopping and stabbing at groins, guts, fingers, and thighs of anyone trying to stop or board the car. Bal had two stun batons and was reaching out each side to help.
The crowd further back from the palace lightened, and he reached a good speed. He wove a little, forcing pedestrians to dodge and swear at him. They occasionally threw a rock or shot. He ignored that. Bart had hooked his legs around the front pillar to gain a hold while he shot right. Elke shot straight ahead right past Bart's spine, with Rahul reinforcing the middle passenger side. Aramis stood through a hole he'd hacked in the thin roof, offering support in all directions even if he was exposed. Behind him, Jason wasn't sure what was going on. He heard a lot of shooting and brawling. An empty carbine flew out in two pieces, stripped by someone who didn't need it anymore.
He grinned at the promotional video Corporate could make out of this by enhancing Elke's recordings. We only sent six operators. It was only one war.
"Man down, man down!" someone shouted. He didn't recognize the voice but it was someone in this car.
Then four people shouted, "Man down!" in confirmation.
"Orders, Alex?" he shouted back. He slowed a little but didn't stop. Two of the NCOs were hauling a limp mess back up the rear deck.
"Sergeant Buckley is down, he's . . . dammit, keep driving."
Jason nailed it again. Behind him, White screamed curses and emptied her weapon. Buckley was at least her compatriot if not a friend, and he was dead.
"I want all of you skinny little cocksucking illiterati to die!" she shrieked, punctuated by bursts that sounded very controlled.
Well, that was original. He had to wonder whom she was killing, because it certainly sounded as if she knew how to handle a weapon. Her sobs were loud enough to hear over all that. She was definitely having a stress reaction to close combat, not that he could blame her.
"Shaman, give her a hand," Alex said.
"Touch me with a trank and you die," she growled low and loud enough it sounded like an engine tone. Her voice was not at all feminine anymore. She stopped shooting. Her hyperventilating pants and sobs tapered off.
One of the other NCOs leaned down through the hole in the roof and yelled too loudly, so the earbuds muffled it, "Convoy is on Ammonia Avenue
, has just passed this point. I advised them to keep rolling and we will pull into the rear."
"Roger," Jason nodded. "Alex, you concur?"
"Do it."
"On it." He revved up the archaic engine some more. Yes, he could see vehicles passing by down the street ahead. He took that route fast, and the outgoing fire volume increased, though it was strictly warning shots now.
The street they were on teed onto the Avenue. They weren't shot at from the convoy as he turned right behind it, though they were tracked by large caliber weapons, machine guns, and 15mm cannon, among others. The new ranking NCO made contact and they were expected as allied friendlies. There was some significant fire behind now, aimed at the convoy.
Jason was relieved. This group was professional to the nines. Good spacing on the vehicles, good supporting fields of fire. Some of them looked scared, and he could tell because they didn't have enclosed helmets, but they were still performing their mission.
Part of that, as he'd tried to tell people before, was that Aerospace had no "peacetime" mission. If you fucked up in a ship or in ground support, people always died, peacetime or war, and the costs were in the millions at least.
"I have not mentioned who our passengers are," the NCO said. "We are cleared to move in ahead of the rear convoy guard."
"Understood," Jason said, and slowly eased into position, nodding to the crew on the vehicle as he passed them: an angular, jagged-looking Cavalier armored car like that the Company had considered for use, which BuState had ruled "too military." There was little locally that could scratch one of those. It had a 15mm Viper cannon and a 6mm machine gun, and had been upgraded with two more machine guns and a mini rocket pod. Through the thick, armored ports, four Techs could be seen, and they were armed as well as equipped with commo gear. Add the two gunners on bubbles on top and it took a load off Jason.
"I do not believe we are doing this," Bart said. He could be the most conservative member of the team when things got weird.
"Neither do I, but I am impressed," Jason said. "These so-called fairies run a very professional convoy. Don't they, Aramis?"
The reply from Aramis was a mumble.
"What was that?"
"Yeah, they're good. Better than I expected. Better than the Army." He was flushing as he said it.
"Son, smaller forces are more selective, and almost always better. The training and the gadgets are never as important as the discipline. You should know that, serving here."
Aramis said nothing, but did give a single nod.
"What do we do when we reach the port here? Do we want to try to continue on?"
"Not with them. No way," Alex said, shaking his head. "B-metrics will stop us. Bahane is far more freelance and we can get a smuggling craft or stow away."
He confirmed his orders. "Jason, as they pull into the port, we'll wave off and keep driving. No one in the convoy proper should question us. By the time anyone thinks to, we'll be out of town."
"Understood." Jason nodded.
Incoming fire cracked and boomed. Yet one more harassing attack.
There were shouts and orders through the radios. Jason tromped the pedal to keep up with the accelerating vehicles around them. Outgoing fire chattered back, punctuated by two very loud bangs.
Bishwanath started sharply. Aramis said, "Whatdafuckwasthat?" He was watching rearward and didn't turn.
"Sounded like two Peltast missiles," Elke said. "Expensive."
"Looks like," Shaman agreed. "Someone has money to spend."
"Space Force has a bigger discretionary budget than the Army," Jason said. "That's why these vehicles look newer."
"Fucking Space Fairies have gear the Army should have," Aramis grumbled.
"Fucking Army can't unfuck itself long enough to get someone competent in charge of logistics," Jason grumbled back. "Or they'd have it."
White shifted and shouted down, "You seem glad enough of the support. Does it make you feel unmanly?"
****
"Stop." Alex said quietly. He was really getting tired of that debate. Jaso
n had reason to be pissed, but he was overdoing it, though White could use any distraction after losing a friend. If she could be friends with someone whose job was to shoot her to avoid capture. They were all under stress and didn't need the argument. Off to the right, two dark, roiling mushroom clouds indicated the AF security had pegged something with fuel.
"The word is the Army has cleared out of the palace," White said, holding her headset. "They got out with no dead, some minor injuries."
"Oh, good," said Elke, and pulled out a phone. She had to wiggle atop Rahul, then squirm to get it where she could reach it.
She was punching numbers by hand as Alex asked, "Elke, who are you calling?"
"You said the palace was empty of friendlies."
"Elke, no, don't—"
Far to the right and behind, a muffled boom sounded, and a cloud of dust started rising. She giggled and sighed, her chest heaving again.
"Only nine hundred kilos and change, but it will do," she said.
"Scratch one mob," Aramis said, grinning.
"Also scratch one building someone is going to ask about." Alex sighed. Yes, killing freaks was good. Disposing of the explosives so no one else could use it was good . . .
Actually, given that last, she'd made the right choice. They were going to get blamed no matter what. Might as well cause some damage.
He wondered if he could stay out of prison, if he stayed alive through this. Maybe a local exile with Bishwanath was a good idea.
"We're not there. I used local purchase phones. There is nothing anyone can attach to me," she said.
The radio suddenly blared, "Jesus Christ, the palace just blew up!"
"Space Force is good with the satellite intel," Jason commented. "That's potentially bad if they start tracking us."
"We're moving onto another route," Jason said. "Detour through the industrial area."
Once again, there was incoming fire. At least one rocket shot through the convoy, although it didn't hit anything.
"I notice something," Bishwanath said.
"Yes, sir?" Alex replied at once.
"The attacks have occurred at each bend or corner we take on this route."
Better to Beg Forgiveness Page 29
