by Rick Partlow
Both of the Guards tossed away the useless weapons and rushed me, serrated sabres extending from housings on either sides of their forearms. Sweeping Damiani's legs from beneath him, I extended my talons with a thought and launched myself into the two Elite Bodyguards. I wished I'd had time to finish that arrogant bastard, but if I let those Guards get an edge on me, I'd be too dead to appreciate it. I hoped maybe Rachel would think to let Kara loose, because it looked like I was going to be otherwise occupied. These Elite Bodyguards were tough motherfuckers, and I had two of them to deal with, both wearing the same Reflex Armor as me.
It was all I could do to keep both of them engaged, but I did have one advantage---they were so close in with me that they had to worry about tagging each other by mistake, while I could strike at anything within reach. I pressed that tactical edge, buzz-sawing my talons in a vertical oval pattern that I'd been taught back in Glory Boy training, slicing off a couple of fingers before the bodyguards backed off, the male of the pair biting out a curse at the sight of his mangled hand.
I used the momentary respite to risk a scan of the room, and what my auxiliary sensors read told me that Trint and Rachel were having their share of problems. Rachel was down, Damiani was heading for the airlock, Trint was trying to stop Damiani and Cowboy was going for his gun...
"Trint!" I heard Rachel scream, just as Cowboy fired.
When the gun went off, it startled me, but not as badly as it did my opponents---one of them actually flinched. It was just a fraction of a second, but it was all I needed. I put one of my right-hand talons through the man's eye and into his brain, fending off his partner with a side-kick to give me the time to pull the blade out and let him collapse.
Now, things were a bit brighter. The other Guard was a female of Earth extraction, and, while she'd had extensive augmentation, I still had an edge on her with upper-body strength, as well as in the sophistication of my headcomp. She knew it, too, and began immediately backing off to get some more breathing room.
That was when I saw Damiani going for the airlock controls. I braced myself to make a jump at him, but my opponent saw my distraction and came at me from my blind side. I managed to brush aside her blade attack, but she pulled me into a close-in grappling fight, trying to get a leg behind mine to sweep me. Desperate to stop Damiani from getting to the controls, I fed myself a double-dose of adrenaline and used the sudden surge of strength to lock her arms straight out just long enough to slam my forehead into the bridge of her nose.
Luckily for me, my opponent had received the usual, cut-rate bone lamination treatment with wraparound strips of polymer instead of the byomer bonding I'd been treated to. The larger bones of her skull and face had been hardened, but the smaller more fragile nasal process had gone untouched; the bone shattered with an audible crunch and one of the longer splinters was driven directly into her brain.
I spun around, letting her drop, but I was already too late. Rachel was still on one knee in the middle of struggling back to her feet; Trint was flat on his back with an ugly hole through the center of his chest revealing a charred mass of bloody flesh, ceramic and metal; Cowboy had tracked his rocket pistol over to cover me, his face grim and bloodied; and Damiani was leaning breathlessly against the back wall, facing away from the lock and toward us, grinning with satisfaction.
Behind him, the flashing red indicator light announced mockingly that the outer door was open and Kara McIntire was dead.
"God dammit, Cal," Cowboy rasped, shaking his head, wiping blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. "Why couldn't you idiots make this easy on yourselves? I didn't want this...any of this."
"Don't be so fucking maudlin, Roger," Damiani muttered, limping away from the lock door. His ordered demeanor was as ruffled as his tailored clothes, and there seemed to be an almost maniacal look to his eyes and his mussed hair. "I must be getting soft in my old age." He bent over with a grunt of effort and retrieved the small hand laser I'd taken from him. "Still, there will be plenty of time for recriminations later."
Hearing the approach of running footsteps behind us, I numbly glanced around to see a handful of Elite Bodyguards rushing into the room, carbines at the ready.
"Is everything all right, Sir?" the lead Guard asked him.
"All taken care of," the Council Exec waved them off. "Just a few small details to wrap up," he raised the laser to shoulder level, aiming it at Rachel's Head.
I was tensing to make a jump at him, knowing it would be the last thing I ever did, when the inner airlock door did the oddest thing...it blew out of the wall with a concussion of hot gas that threw me halfway across the room.
I hit on my back and, suddenly, there was a giant hand pressing down on my chest and everything was black.
Is this, I wondered, what it was like to be dead?
It took me over a second to realize that one of the heavy work tables that had been across from the door had landed on top of me. I threw it off without much effort and found myself surrounded by combat-suited Fleet Intell commandos, faces anonymous under featureless hoods, hands filled with the bulk of electron beamers. I found Rachel, still in a half-crouch amid drifting clouds of pale smoke, and saw that the confusion in her eyes matched my own, but at least she was all right.
Most of the Executive Bodyguards that had come into the bay were already down, but one stumbled to his feet even as I watched, and the commando nearest to me opened up with his beamer. The pulse of charged particles erupted from the muzzle of his rifle like a bolt of lightning, and I could feel the hair on the back of my neck standing up from the static electricity as the shot took the Council Guard in the chest, blowing a hole the size of dinner plate through his Reflex Armor .
Then he swung that intimidating muzzle towards me.
"No!" I heard a frantic cry. "He's one of us!"
My head snapped around at the familiar voice, and I saw one of the hooded figures approaching, reaching up to pull off his concealing headgear. Emerging from under that faceless hood was the most beautiful shit-eating grin I'd ever seen in my life.
"Deke, you son of a bitch," I breathed softly in disbelief, smiling so broadly it hurt my face. "How in the hell..." I trailed off, shaking my head.
"The Bulldog always has a backup plan, Caleb boy." He winked, moving towards me as the commando squad moved to secure the area. Behind him, Kara stood with arms folded in satisfaction. I knew that whatever had gone on here, she had been in on it.
I was about to move toward them, but a little voice in my head told me to take a closer look around. When I did, I found a couple of things missing in the equipment bay...Cowboy and Damiani.
"Oh, shit," I muttered. "Deke, give me a gun, quick."
He frowned, tossing me his beamer. "What's up?"
"Cowboy and that Council Exec, Damiani took off, probably split up," I told him, checking the weapon's charge while I spoke. "I'm going after West. You and Kara take Damiani. If you've got other squads in here, tell 'em not to shoot me."
"Don't you want some backup?" Deke asked me. "I can send a couple of my guys with you..."
"I'll take it alone," I declared. I looked at Rachel, who walked over to put a hand on my shoulder. "This is personal."
"Not quite alone," she corrected me, gesturing at the wall where Trint had lain. A bloody stain marked where he had been, but the cyborg was gone.
Chapter Eighteen
I switched to thermal imaging once I left the equipment bay and was immediately immersed in a forest of ghostly afterimages of the Elite Bodyguards, the Intell commandos, Trint and Cowboy. Cowboy wasn't too hard to follow---his rocket pistol had been fired only a couple minutes before, and its unique thermal signature told me which of the spectral shades was his.
I tried to keep to the shadows, trusting on the self-camouflaging abilities of my combat suit to conceal me from any of the Corporate guards that might still be roaming around. I could take them, but I couldn't afford the distraction...and I wasn't about to let Cowboy get away.
As much as I was aware that all this was directly the responsibility of Andre Damiani, all the rage that burned in the core of my soul was focused on Cowboy. He had betrayed us all---betrayed the very ones who'd trusted him with their lives. He'd put my wife and brother in danger and gotten Mat killed. He was at least indirectly responsible for the deaths of all those people in Mt. Carmel Medical Center. Now, I was going to kill him.
If it didn't end with that, I didn't care. This wasn't about that. This was between us.
I followed Cowboy's trail through the labyrinthine corridors of the dome, hearing the distant tremble of explosions and the sharp cracks of discharging energy weapons. Murdock, I thought to myself with not a little bitterness, had done it again. I suppose he must have had a reason for not telling me about this backup plan and Deke's role in it, but I didn't have to like it.
Approaching footsteps forced me into a darkened corner, but it was only more frightened technicians fleeing the fighting, and they didn't even pause as they scrambled by, probably not even knowing where they were running to. I let them pass, then continued on my way.
Cowboy, I figured, had to be trying for a ship, probably hidden somewhere under the dome---not the same one as Damiani, though. I wouldn't expect either of them to trust the other that much. Still, it limited the possibilities. The ship would have to be somewhere near the surface of the dome to allow it to take off, and I figured that meant it would be under the landing pad---it was the most obvious choice.
And that was just where he was heading. I made my way through the skeletal depths of the dome's circumference, trying to watch all directions at once, including up---I remembered how Secarius had swung into those crossbeams. I wondered where he'd gotten off to...no, I took that back. I knew where he'd be. I felt sorry for Damiani if that scary bastard caught up with him.
As cautious as I was trying to be, I turned the next corner directly into the path of a rocket from West's pistol.
I would have probably died right there with my brains splattered over the floor, except for the fact that the electron beamer I'd appropriated was equipped with a neurolink, and the weapon's muzzle was pointed directly to my front. That was all that saved me: the moment I detected the thermal bloom of the handgun I gave the beamer a mental command to fire.
The ion blast didn't actually hit the rocket---that would have been impossible in the microsecond I had to act---but the pulse of charged particles superheated the air between the rocket and myself, and the heat plume threw the missile off its course just enough to send it careening past my head by a couple centimeters.
I dove to the floor, spraying the end of the hall with electron fire, but Cowboy ducked back into the doorway from which he'd emerged and my shots did nothing but burn chunks out of the far wall. Jumping to my feet, I sprinted down the corridor after him, throwing myself shoulder-first past the doorway and hosing it with the beamer as I crashed into the far wall.
The crackling lines of blue-white fire tore into the maintenance room, blowing tools and scanners out of their wall racks and setting fire to plastic work tables, but Cowboy was nowhere to be seen. Pushing myself away from the wall, I regained my balance and carefully inched into the open doorway, scanning for any niche that could hide Cowboy from my view. The stink of smoldering plastic hung heavy in the canned air, and I began to blink at the clouds of stinging smoke before my augments took over, adding extra chemicals to my tear ducts to wash away the pollutants.
I tried to run a thermal scan, but the burning tables and the sparking of shorted wiring in the banks of computer diagnostic gear made it nearly impossible to pick up Cowboy's signature, so I concentrated instead on audio, listening for his heartbeat. The Reflex Armor would normally mask it, but he hadn't been wearing his face hood, so I might just be able to pick up his carotid pulse...
Nothing. I took a hesitant step into the room, sweeping back and forth with the muzzle of the beamer, the air around it shimmering from the heat pouring off of its cooling vanes. Static electricity from the long bursts I'd fired crackled up and down the metal sections of the stock, making the hair stand up on the back of my neck and sending shivers up my spine. Sweat soaked the small of my back and my neck was starting to itch badly beneath the collar of my Reflex Armor...familiar sensations all.
Only difference was, last time I'd felt them, I'd been fighting side-by-side with Cowboy, hunting down Tahni troopers. Now, I was hunting one of my own, with a Tahni Imperial Guard cyborg as a possible ally. Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor?
I tried to listen again for Cowboy's pulse, but my heart was beating too loudly. I used my biofeedback loop to slow it down and control my breathing, straining my ears and my augment sensors. He had to be in here somewhere.
Wait. There, to my left, behind a bank of diagnostic computers...just a faint trace of a distant drumbeat, fading almost as I detected it. I swung the beamer around and cut loose at the console, the brilliant burst of ions slicing through the computer station, blowing its readout panel apart in a light show of sparks and glowing metal. I knew the beamer's charge was running below half, but I continued to pour it on, not caring for any of the alternative strategies.
Finally, the thermoplastic molding that held the diagnostic bank together absorbed more heat than it was designed to take and the whole station exploded into bits of melted polymer, splitting down the middle, what remained of it falling aside in two hulks of smoking junk. Staggering back from the intense heat washing back from both the burning console and the overheated beam emitter, I ceased fire and tried to get a look through the inky clouds of smoke at what I fully expected to be Roger West's corpse.
Instead, I found myself staring stupidly at a partially-open hatch to a crawlway, previously concealed behind the computer banks.
"Fuck me," I sighed, tension pounding in my temples.
What now? He could wait somewhere in there and pick me off as I came in...but I wasn't going to let him get away. I cursed myself for not bringing a handgun---the beamer was going to be awkward as hell to drag through that tunnel, built for squat worker 'bots, not humans.
Worker 'bots... I spun around, hunting through the wrecked machinery until I saw the object I'd barely noticed when I came into the room. Squat and rounded with a half-dozen articulated appendages, the pair of small maintenance robots sat in the corner on their tracked carriages, deactivated and motionless.
Running over to the machines, I ran a diagnostic check through my neurolink and found that one of them was operational and had a workable charge in its battery. I carried the machine over to the crawlway, used its two grasping arms to mount my beamer across its left side, then set it inside. A little finagling with its primary control system allowed me to see the thermal image view from its main surveillance camera, and I could clearly see West's heat signature heading down the tunnel.
I felt like Captain Mitchell, Armored Command as I crawled in behind the machine, sending it out a couple meters in front of me. If Cowboy wanted to ambush me again, he'd have to go through my little buddy first...and, since I could control both the 'bot and the beamer through my neurolink, my little buddy had teeth.
Viewing the tunnel through the 'bot's eyes helped to alleviate some of the claustrophobia I felt in the narrow tunnel, which was barely tall enough for me to stay on my hands and knees. I consoled myself that it would be considerably rougher going for Cowboy, who was nearly two meters tall. But at least he knew where he was going.
His thermal trail led a twisting path through the tunnel system, taking several turns through the many four-way intersections that seemed to crop up every few dozen meters. I began to think that I'd mistakenly circled around and began following my own heat trail, and that I'd be in the tunnels forever, endlessly chasing my own tail, when the 'bot's viewer picked up the faint light of an exit ahead.
Retrieving the beamer, I let the 'bot continue forward, but began to put more room between it and myself as we approached the open exit hatch, emplaced at th
e juncture of the tunnel I was in and another running perpendicular. Switching back to normal optics in its viewer, I saw that the exit came out into some kind of storage room---heavy lockers were visible through the hatchway, and a hydraulic liftjack stuck out of one corner.
I tried listening again for a pulsebeat, but I was too far away from the opening. For all I could tell, West could have hopped a ride to Eridani, or he could just as easily be standing beside the hatchway with a proton warhead in each hand.
All right, Shorty, I thought at the 'bot, time to earn your pay.
I inched the machine into the open hatchway, hoping that if there was an ambush laying for me, the 'bot would trigger it. I put an arm across my face, worried about possible shrapnel from a rocket hit on the machine, still keeping an eye on the worker 'bot. Once I saw the angle the rocket came in from, I would jump in and use the robot as a shield to get a shot at Cowboy.
I tensed to follow the 'bot through as it edged into the hatchway...and then the machine vanished within a brilliant flash of sun-bright light and a wash of superheated air bounced me off the tunnel wall.
The only thing that kept the plasma blast from flash-frying me in my own juices was the fact that the hatchway was at the juncture of two tunnels---much of the heat was channeled sideways into the other tunnel by the impact on the 'bot. My upraised arm kept my face from serious burns and the Reflex Armor protected the rest of me, but the roasting air filled my lungs, leaving me desperate for a breath, and my head was swimming with the impact against the wall.
I struggled to stay conscious, my implants dosing me with a shot of stimulants, and I vaguely realized that my hair was on fire. I patted it out with my free hand as I struggled to my knees, realizing I only had seconds before Cowboy would stick his head into the tunnel, see me and use the plasma gun he'd acquired to turn me into a black smear on the wall.
