Crysis: Escalation
Page 22
To Amanda, standing amongst the rubble of the brothel, it seemed to happen very slowly. The two VTOLs almost looked graceful as their lights went off, the sky above them a shining fireworks display of electromagnetic radiation bouncing off the magnetosphere.
Psycho was still conscious. Locked in his dead suit. He saw the VTOLs fall out of his view. He couldn’t even turn his head. He felt their impact through the ground. The fury at his helplessness overwhelmed him. He started screaming.
It had felt like sleep. It had felt welcoming, and cold. The ten thousand volts coursing through dead flesh, forcing sluggish systems in the suit’s living technology back to life, felt less welcoming. It felt like fire surging through him. He was screaming.
He rolled onto his front and forced himself onto all fours. Let me die! he screamed silently at the suit. Just one moment of weakness, then he was taking fire again.
Short burst, correct aim, short burst, correct aim, repeat. Walk in on the target. The twelve-gauge solid shot slugs were impacting into the side of the moving armoured figure, knocking him over, battering him across the ground. She emptied the extended magazine of the automatic shotgun into him, ignoring the other armoured figure paralysed on the ground. She dropped the shotgun. She was appalled when he, it, the thing she’d seen far below St. Petersburg, stood up. She grabbed the weapon on her back and pulled it round in front of her. The armoured thing staggered towards her. She brought the weapon to her shoulder. It raised its hand as if reaching for her. She fired the netgun. The weighted high-tensile net, coated in industrial adhesive, spread open in midair, propelled by the four shotgun cartridges in each of the netgun’s barrels.
The weapon’s recoil staggered Amanda and she fell backwards over some of the rubble. She found herself staring numbly at the hand of a young woman sticking out of the rubble. She looked over at the armoured warrior that had killed so many of her friends. The net had entangled him. He was trying to move, trying to get the purchase to break it but he couldn’t. As solutions went it had been around since the Stone Age. He fell over.
Amanda got up and drew the Hammer II from the holster at her hip. It was loaded with explosive rounds. She walked over to the armoured warrior’s prone form. He stopped struggling when he felt the gun against his head.
‘This is what it feels like to be human, motherfucker.’ Amanda pulled the hammer back on the massive automatic. That was when the Spec Ops team turned up. Weapons levelled at her. Screaming at her. She couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t let her pull the trigger. Empty the entire magazine at point blank range into his head. She relented. She spat on the armour.
‘That’s for Mikey,’ she said and walked away.
It shouldn’t have happened this way, the mission, too much was riding on the mission.
‘What do you want done with them, boss?’ the spec ops soldier asked the officer. Prophet was still wrapped in the adhesive-coated high-tensile wire. He could see Psycho. Power had obviously returned to Psycho’s suit but they had him locked into heavy-duty restraints designed specifically for the nanosuits. Psycho was staring at Prophet, both of them being held on their knees, surrounded by a spec ops team with weapons at the ready. They were going to be transported in the APCs, the only vehicles with shielded electronics and therefore the only vehicles still working. More heavy-lift aircraft were being called in, as the ones at the mine’s airfield were inoperative junk thanks to their fused avionics.
‘That one is going to New York,’ the officer said, pointing at Psycho. ‘That one is going to the Deepwinter Facility,’ she finished, pointing at Prophet.
Psycho was still staring at Prophet.
‘We had a chance, Prophet. We had a chance.’
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Published April 2013.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Michael Read, Tim Partlett, Steven Bender and Rasmus Hoejengaard at Crytek for their support, ideas, contributions and hospitality in Frankfurt. Thanks also to Guy Perkins at EA, and Steven Hall, Richard Morgan and Peter Watts.
Particular thanks to a very patient and diplomatic editor, Marcus Gipps. And to Chris Edwards and Cat Halsworth, the former for help with research, the latter for putting up with the research (we were playing video games).
Also by Gavin Smith from Gollancz:
Veteran
War in Heaven
The Age of Scorpio
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Crytek GmbH 2013
All rights reserved.
The right of Gavin G. Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2013 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11584 2
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.gavingsmith.com
www.orionbooks.co.uk
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