Sooner Dead

by Mel Odom

  "That's what I figure. With the broken terrain and the thickness of the brush, I'm guessing it'll take us about an hour at almost a dead run to make it back to the mil-plex."

  "At least." Covering that distance while dodging pursuers was the part that worried Hella. Well, that and being pinned between two enemy forces.

  "We do this right, we'll arrive at sundown. Things will be confusing for both sides. We play our cards close to the vest, we can lose ourselves in the confusion."

  Ocastya flowed into a puddle on the ground then straightened out into a prone position. She watched them with interest.

  "All we have to do is stay ahead of them."

  Stampede spoke calmly, but Hella sensed the tension resonating through him. "And not get shot by Riley's people or Trazall's."

  Stampede laughed. "Yeah. I didn't think I'd have to remind you about that part." He took deliberate aim. "Once we start this, things are going to happen pretty fast."

  "I know." Hella's stomach churned, but she knew most of that was from having to wait. Once everything started...

  Stampede fired. The recoil blasted back against him and the harsh crack, rolled over them.

  Peering through the spotter scope, Hella watched. For a moment she believed that Stampede had missed. Everyone in the line of travelers continued what they were doing.

  Stampede fired again. Before he fired the third time, the first bullet punched into one of the hardshells and knocked him from his feet. The second round tore through an ATV and exploded the gas tank, turning it into a flaming deathtrap for the man aboard it. The third round missed its intended target because the group went to ground.

  A few of the hardshells fired back, but their aim was nowhere near where Stampede, Hella, and Ocastya took cover. Stampede managed four more shots before the defense bots vectored in on their position. A barrage of twenty-millimeter cannon rounds slapped into the ground around them and left smoking craters.

  "Pull back." Stampede withdrew just as a fresh onslaught ripped through the trees only a few meters from where he'd been. He slung the large rifle over his shoulder as a hail of broken rock rained down over them. "Let's go."

  Staying low, using the discrepancy between the lower area and the protective ridges, Hella sprinted back to the small copse of boulders where she'd left Daisy ground tethered. Ocastya matched her stride for stride.

  When she reached the mountain boomer, Hella vaulted into the saddle, took up the reins, and kicked Daisy softly in the sides as Ocastya flowed up behind her.

  Panicked by the hail of gunfire and mortars knocking holes in the wilderness around them, Daisy dug in and launched herself into a careening sprint. Hella let the lizard have her head and concentrated on staying on top of her. The creature's muscles bunched and released in great explosions of movement that echoed through Hella.

  "We've only got to be fast over a short haul." Stampede breathed rhythmically over the comm link. He kept pace with the lizard, running faster than anything human could match. "Riley will allow the ATVs out for a brief run, but he'll call them back. He won't chance getting his forces divided and picked apart if he's being ambushed."

  Hella hoped that was true. She stayed low in the saddle, becoming another layer on top of Daisy as the lizard stretched her legs and got up to speed. The mountain boomer plunged through the forest, knocking down small trees and plowing through brush as if it were paper.

  Almost an hour later, Hella reined Daisy up as she spotted the hidden mil-plex ahead of her. Sporadic gunfire pursued them, but none of it had come close enough to hurt them.

  As Hella peered back at the advancing line of hardshells, a bullet slammed into her chain mail and drove the breath from her lungs. She would have slid from the saddle except that Ocastya caught her by the belt and prevented that.

  Stampede took up a brief position beside a thick-boled elm tree, raised the rifle to his shoulder, and took aim. Before Hella could take a breath, Stampede fired. She didn't know if he hit anything at the mil-plex, but the round triggered an instant response from Trazall's guards manning security.

  Riley's hardshells kept coming, and the gunfire increased, accompanied by rockets launched by both sides. Within a couple of minutes, the sun dipped in the west and the shadows swelled out of the forest to fill the night.

  "Time to go. Before anybody from either of those two groups takes our scent." Stampede stayed low and followed a line of trees to the mountain ridge they'd climbed earlier that day. Hella followed on Daisy, and they left the two groups at war behind them. Rockets, mortars, and small cannons lit up the deepening night. Tracer fire streaked the darkness, identifying the positions of both groups.

  Her face streaked with mud to lessen the chance of reflection, Hella trailed after Stampede on foot. They'd left Daisy up in the mountain range while they'd set up to invade the mil-plex. Quiet and withdrawn, Ocastya followed.

  Stampede was barely visible in the darkness. Occasional flashes of light from exploding rockets and mortars highlighted his shaggy fur, horns, and eyes. He gripped his rifle in both hands as he fell into position beside one of the exposed walls of the mil-plex. He focused on Ocastya. "Can you still feel Scatter?"

  "Yes." Ocastya's voice was tight. "But we must hurry. He is weakening. Soon Colleen Trammell's devices will conquer his resistance; then my mate will be gone from us."

  Placing one shaggy hand on the concrete wall, Stampede ran his palm over the surface. His eyes were half closed. His fingers drummed rapidly against the concrete, and Hella knew he was listening to the vibrations given back. He could sense weak spots. That was part of his gift.

  "Okay." Stampede stepped away from the wall, took the rifle in both hands, and lifted his right hoof. After a moment of concentration, Stampede drove his hoof against the wall.

  The contact shivered across the concrete and peeled earth back from the mil-plex. Cracks showed on the surface, but the wall held. Then Stampede raised his hoof and slammed again.

  On the fourth try, the wall dissolved into a hail of flying shards and collapsed inward, Bright, electric light fell out onto the ground. Stampede drew back. "Hella."

  Moving forward, Hella leaned in through the opening, morphed her left hand into a small-caliber weapon that cycled suppressed fire, and quickly shot out all the lights throwing illumination through the hole. The breach went dark. Hella went on inside then waited till Stampede joined her.

  Without a word, his path already mentally mapped from all the drawings Ocastya had provided, Stampede went forward down the hallway. Hella pulled her night-vision goggles up from her neck and fitted them over her eyes. Almost instantly her vision was incredibly clearer.

  The hallway was clean for the most part, except for stray bits and pieces of debris. Farther down the hallway in both directions, electric lights mounted on the walls removed the majority of the gloom. Echoes of shots revealed the battle still raged through the hole in the wall.

  Stampede passed through the halls quickly, without hesitation and without a false step. Hella followed, a shadow at his side.

  CHAPTER 32

  Sensor!" Stampede shoved back against a wall.

  Falling into place beside him, Hella glanced up and spotted the bubble-shielded sensor mounted on the ceiling sweeping the hallway. The wicked snout of a machine gun hung beneath it. A red dot glowed within the smoky gray, bullet resistant material.

  "It is all right. I have hacked the sensors in our area." Ocastya stood in the middle of the hallway. "They will not see us."

  When the machine gun didn't fire and the sensor continued its sweep without pause, Hella let out a sigh of relief.

  "Well, that's handy." Stampede took the lead again. "You didn't mention anything about the security systems."

  "I did not think I had to."

  Stampede held up only a moment at the door leading to a stairwell. "Was that a joke?"

  "I believe so." Ocastya looked confused. "My mate indicated that you and Hella prefer levity when situations appear
grim."

  "It's not exactly something we look for."

  "Oh. I have erred?"

  "No. It's fine. I just didn't expect it."

  "Does humor still work if you expect it? That does not seem possible or logical."

  Stampede growled. "Not a time for a discussion about rhetoric."

  Despite the situation, Hella couldn't help grinning at Stampede's discomfiture. "We can talk about this at another time."

  "I look forward to that."

  Stampede's ears twitched. "Can you do the same thing to the sensors in the stairwell?"

  "It is already done. The building's security will not know we are here."

  Hella hoped that was true. In the meantime, Trazall and the building's security had their hands full dealing with Riley and his forces mounting a full-scale attack along the perimeter. Explosions echoed through the great halls, and the shrill warning klaxons pierced them like surgical steel.

  They went down the stairwells in rapid fashion. Stampede went first and Hella kept him covered till he reached the landing; then she hurried to catch up and repeated the process. When the mil-plex had first been constructed, there would have been more guards. And they would have had the sensor array intact.

  In less than a minute, they reached the fourth-floor landing. A wide, steel door barred the way. Bullet-resistant glass filled a small window that offered a view of a narrow, lit hallway lined with doors. Plaques beside the door indicated the presence of medical equipment and operating rooms.

  Ocastya held a hand out, and a trid presentation took shape above her palm. Although the image was less than half a meter wide and tall, the details stood out sharply edged. The view evidently was from one of the sensors at the front of the mil-plex. "Pardot's team has breached the outer wall."

  In the image the hardshells waded through Trazall's mercenaries. Bombs and rockets knocked down walls and splintered furniture. Bodies and pieces of bodies spun through the air. Out in the wilderness, Trazall's mercenaries stood a better chance, but in the urban combat arena, Riley's forces ripped through them.

  Jack Hart gestured at a group of hardshells, and purple-black spots clustered on them. In the next instant, they plummeted to the floor under their increased weight. Bullets caught in the gravity shield around Hart dropped at his feet.

  Then Riley, his hardshell distinctive enough for Hella to recognize it, sprang out of the shadows. Riley launched himself into the air a moment before purple-black spots started swarming over him. As he fell, he thrust his right fist forward in a savage punch toward Jack Hart's head. An instant before the fist ripped through the gravity shield, a long blade snapped out of the forearm armor.

  Hart tried to evade the knife strike, but there wasn't time. Even as he dodged, Riley's blade pierced his right eye and broke through the back of his skull. In the same instant, bullets hammered past the gravity shield, and Hart's body jerked with the impacts.

  On his knees, Riley yanked his blade free and snapped it back into his forearm. He picked up his rifle and stood then got hit with a twisting mass of flames as Silence breathed on him. Riley staggered back under the onslaught, and the image winked out of existence.

  The suit will protect him. Even as she thought that, though, Hella knew that would only allow Riley to potentially threaten her and Stampede.

  Ocastya shifted her hand. "We don't have much time."

  Another image shimmered into view above her palm. It showed a medical lab. Computers filled the walls, and lights flashed in syncopation. Scatter lay strapped to a chair with a dozen computer leads attached to him. A skullcap covered the top of his head.

  Colleen Trammell stood next to a hospital bed, where a small girl lay on the starched white sheets. The girl looked pained and drugged at the same time.

  Stampede's ears twitched. "Who is the kid?"

  "Alice." Hella gave the name instantly.

  "Who is she?"

  "Colleen's daughter. She has a disease. She's dying."

  A hurt look pulled at Ocastya's silver eyes. "She's only a child. That is horrible."

  Hella silently agreed.

  Stampede shook his head. "There's nothing we can do about that. What's she doing here?"

  "I don't know."

  Colleen held her daughter's unresponsive hand for a moment then settled another skullcap onto her head. The wires led to a computer bank that shared the leads from Scatter.

  "But it has something to do with Scatter."

  The image winked out of sight as Ocastya closed her hand. "We must go."

  Stampede tried the door. A palm print scanner lit on the wall next to the door, and a retina scanner slid out. He glared at the technological security. "Well, that's not gonna happen." He raised a leg and smashed a hoof into the door.

  Pummeled by the energy he commanded, the door shrieked as it tore free of its hinges and flew into the hallway beyond. Before the door hit the floor, a half dozen gunners from Trazall's group stepped into the hallway from nearby rooms and lifted their assault rifles.

  Stampede ducked behind the door frame just before a fusillade of bullets struck the wall and ripped through the open doorway. His ears flattened as he hunkered down. "Could have done without that." He drew his pistols.

  Hella gauged the hallway. To her there was plenty of room to maneuver, but Stampede was so large that he'd have a hard time moving or finding cover. He'd become an instant target. She morphed her hands into weapons.

  "I need a quake."

  Stampede snorted and the ring in his nose stood out briefly. "You step out there, they're gonna put holes in you."

  "We stay here, somebody's going to think of lobbing a grenade in after us, or Riley and his people will shoot us from above. Or maybe Trazall's retreating crew will do it when they hit the stairwell." Hella sucked in a quick breath. "Make it a big quake."

  "Stay to the sides. I'm gonna fill the hallway with lead so they don't forget about me."

  Hella nodded and held her hands up at her sides.

  Stampede swiveled around the door and stomped a hoof on the floor. The metal floor quivered, lifting and falling a few centimeters, but it didn't shatter.

  In motion at once, Hella whipped around the doorway with her hands before her. She fired, filling the air with a buzz saw of lethal projectiles that skittered from the walls.

  True to his word, Stampede filled the open doorway with his bulk and fired his massive revolvers. They sounded like cannons in the enclosed space, and Hella went temporarily deaf before the comm link could compensate.

  One man peeled away from a doorway and sprawled, hit by her bullets or Stampede's, Hella wasn't certain. She ran two steps up the wall, finding just enough purchase to manage that, knowing that Stampede's revolvers would empty quickly.

  Two more men spilled into the hallway by the time gravity started to take over. She kicked against the wall hard and hoped that Stampede's weapons were empty. She flipped through the air, burning through bullets to knock down a fourth man then a fifth. Landing on her feet, she stayed low and took deliberate aim at the sixth man.

  "Reloading!" Even with the comm link, Stampede sounded a million klicks away because of all the noise filling the hallway.

  Surging up, Hella opened fire on the sixth man. Bullets burned by her head, and she felt a sharp nip at her right earlobe. As the last gunman fell to the floor, she felt warm blood running down the side of her neck.

  "Hella!"

  "I'm fine." Walking in profile, always keeping her left foot in front of her right so there was no chance of crossing them up and tripping, Hella closed on the lab doors. She whirled around the door frames and swept the rooms with her weapons.

  Stampede covered her back and filled the hallway behind her. She felt his presence, massive and unrelenting. She went to the next door then the next.

  When she entered the fifth doorway on the left, she discovered the lab where Scatter, Colleen, and Alice were.

  Colleen wheeled away from a sensor monitor to face them. O
n the monitor, the view out in the hallway showed the dead mercenaries, Hella, Stampede, and Ocastya. Colleen aimed a pistol at them and fired.

  Hella ducked back into Stampede just before the bullet ricocheted from the door frame. "Colleen, listen to me."

  "Go away! I can save her! You have to give me more time!" Colleen fired again and the bullet ricocheted inside the room. One of the computer banks suddenly sprayed a cloud of sparks.

  "If you keep shooting, you're going to kill Alice." Hella held her position beside the doorway. When a moment passed and Colleen didn't fire again, Hella stuck her head around the door frame.

  Colleen swarmed over the computer equipment, frantically tapping a keyboard. "Stay out! I'm warning you!"

  Seated in the chair, Scatter suddenly strained against his shackles. His mouth opened and his high-pitched screams reverberated inside the lab.

  Hella whipped around the door and lunged forward with her weapons raised before her.

  Colleen picked up her pistol again and wheeled back around. "Stay back! I said, stay back!"

  Ducking, Hella dodged below the line of fire, but she couldn't shoot Colleen. She felt sorry for the woman and for the small child lying on the hospital bed, but she also knew that whatever had been done to Scatter might be undone by only Colleen. So close in, Hella didn't want to lose him.

  Two bullets streaked over Hella's head. Before Colleen could fire a third time, Hella morphed her hands back and threw herself at the woman. Grabbing the weapon, Hella wrested it away with one hand and wrapped a fist in Colleens lab coat.

  "No!" The woman screamed and struggled, but Hella didn't release her. "I brought Alice here, I betrayed Pardot, to save my daughter. You're not going to stop me. Let me finish what I started."

  Ocastya ran to Scatter and hesitated before wrapping her arms around him. Scatter didn't respond; he did not even look at her.

  Stampede stood guard over the door. "Can you get Scatter free?"