He flipped once and crashed through a wide skylight. Amid a cloud of broken window and trailing smoke, Noose splashed into a swimming pool.
He broke the surface with a gasp. Stormer and Wardog still in hand, he dogpaddled to the shallow side of the pool. Screams of surprise filled the room as a dozen men and women swam to the edges of the pool. Most gaped at him in surprise, or frowned in consternation, looking back and forth between him and the broken skylight. A pale, bald man in glasses yelled in screeching German.
Noose didn’t respond as he walked up the pool steps, looking out the shattered skylight. He could see the gunman standing at the edge of his loft window, aiming the Paladin minigun.
Bullets rained down through the roof. One of the calmer men in the room, still swimming like a sleeping hippo, jerked violently and sprayed blood into the pool.
“Get the hell out of here!” Noose yelled, then moved to follow his own advice. Making sure to stay out of the gunman’s line of sight through the skylight, Noose hurried across the room while reloading his guns and holstering the Wardog. He reached the exit amid a cluster of scrambling, panicked swimmers.
Blood sprayed around him, accompanied by the sharp stutter of more gunfire. Noose jerked around to see the pyro-psyker levitating down through the skylight, firing two submachine guns. Fortunately, the psyker wasn’t a great shot, and he ripped into the crowd of frantic people instead of the dwarf.
Noose jumped away from the flailing limbs, falling bodies, and spewing blood. He came up in a low crouch, Stormer steadied in both hands, and fired five times at the psyker.
All five rounds plowed into the neohuman, but ricocheted away from his body in a shower of sparks.
“Psykic shielding, asshole!” The psyker laughed, hovering a meter above the cloudy red water of the pool.
Noose rushed over the quivering bodies and ducked through the exit. He ran down a corridor and around a corner. He aimed his weapons back toward the doorway, and waited.
Another, smaller fireball bloomed to life in front of the door to the pool. Noose squinted and ducked behind the corner, but the blast wasn’t large enough to reach him. The psyker stepped through the door and raised his arms to fire down the hall in each direction. The bullets tore harmlessly into the walls.
Noose jumped around the corner and fired, each round throwing sparks off the telekinetically protected psyker. The dwarf ducked back and pushed through a nearby doorway to find himself in a large shower room, with rows of metal lockers and heavy marble benches. He moved into the rows of lockers, as far from the doorway as possible, and waited.
A few moments later another fireball, smaller than the other two, erupted near the shower room door. Ceiling nozzles gurgled to life, spurting out showers of water. Noose peered around at the door and watched as the psyker jumped into the room, firing the two SMGs in wide arcs, hitting only lockers.
The hitter advanced. He leapt forward and fired down one of the aisles, sparks clattering. One of the gun’s chambers locked open as the last round left it. Dropping it, the psyker took the second gun in both hands and moved to the next row. Leaning against it for a moment, the man caught his breath. Water sprayed down around him and he wiped it from his forehead.
Again he hopped around and into a new aisle, firing blindly. There was no one here either, and he looked down at the weapon in his hand to see smoke drifting up from the open and empty chamber.
“That’s the problem with you overly-cautious types,” Noose said, stepping quickly around from behind the last row of lockers and moving up behind the psyker to thrust his Stormer into the man’s ribs, “you use up your ammo too soon. Up against the locker, fireboy, and drop the gun.”
The psyker complied without a word.
“And don’t try any more brain magic,” Noose whispered. He kicked the SMG across the wet floor and pressed the psyker against the locker. “You won’t get anything off before I blow your guts out.”
The man did not reply as Noose patted him down and found a pistol tucked in the man’s belt. He tossed it away.
“Now, who do you work for?”
“Forget it.”
Noose raised his gun and pushed it up under the man’s chin. “I doubt even you can stop a bullet at this range.”
“You’re right about that.”
“So, answer the question!”
“No.”
Noose frowned and waved toward the exit.
“All right, pal, get moving. Looks like we’re going to have to go some place more private so we can have a little chat.”
The dwarf directed the psyker to the nearest stairway and followed him down to the street level. They exited the building into the same alley that Noose had used just minutes before to get into his own apartment.
“Remember, no funny psyker stuff,” Noose ordered, pushing the man ahead of him toward Cori’s car.
A whine from behind prompted Noose to spin around. An electric groundvan sped down on him in the tight alley. Noose had time only to see that the driver was the Paladin gunman, before jumping aside into a shallow doorway. The van swerved and scraped across the wall, ripping off the fender, then barreled into the psyker, throwing him a good five meters before rolling over him. Noose stepped out from the doorway and fired at the van as it disappeared around a corner.
The dwarf dropped his arms to his side, shoulders sagging. A good lead lost. He walked to the crushed body. The psyker lay crumpled in a very strange pose, neck obviously broken, as well as many other bones. At least one of the van’s tires had run over his face, crushing his jaw.
“I’d say he’s dead,” a bedraggled man mumbled from where he reclined in a deep doorway only meters away. He looked at the dwarf. “Got any spare creds?”
Noose, wet, bleeding, and disheveled, glared at the bum. “Does it look like I’m in a charitable mood?”
“Just checking.”
Noose bent down to examine the psyker’s body.
“Hey, leave some for me, eh, boss?” The bum heaved himself to his feet, three plastic whiskey bottles bouncing on the pavement around him.
Noose ignored him. It took only a few seconds for Noose to search the bloody body and find absolutely no identification. Professionals, of course.
Standing up, the dwarf heard the approach of police sirens. Took them long enough. He holstered his guns and walked briskly, albeit stiffly, down the alley.
Smith’s boss wanted him dead, and it was high time he made himself less of a target. Fading from Atlanta to hunt down Grue and the others would help.
The drunk watched him go and then lurched over to the corpse. He rifled the pockets and found a few cashcards. As the sirens neared, the man pulled off as much of the psyker’s clothing as possible, starting with the Garbielli dress shoes, before scampering off with his take.
44
Noose piloted the rented Ford Mustang skycar down into the dark parking lot of the Amarillo Inn, one of the few remaining hotels in town. Shutting down the high-performance engine, the dwarf leaned back in the bucket seat and let out a sigh: a long, unsuccessful day scouring the plains and deserts for Grue and his crew. Noose rubbed his sore shoulder and eased out of the vehicle. He went to Room 103, unlocked the door, and stumbled across the dark room to flop face down on the bed.
A few minutes later he heard someone opening the door. He spun, Stormer in hand, only to find Cori walking in.
“How are you?” she asked, concerned.
“Better knock next time,” Noose said, and collapsed back on the bed.
“I’ll remember that. How come you didn’t come in and tell me you were back?”
“If you’d rented us just one room, I would have.”
Cori sat down on the bed beside him. “If I’d rented us just one room, you’d be all over me.”
“You say that as if it were a bad thing.”
“It is. But how are you? You didn’t get blown up or shot again, did you?”
“Nope.” He rubbed his shoulder.
<
br /> “Sore?”
“A bit.”
“Then I think you need a back rub.” She pulled him up and helped him take off the armored denim jacket he now wore. He unbuckled the Stormer’s shoulder holster and the combat harness holding the four magazines of assorted ammunition. After the encounter at his loft, he’d visited one of his many weapon caches to collect supplies.
“A rub doesn’t sound half bad.”
“Massage. I’ll give you a massage, Noose. If you weren’t covered in bandages I’d be able to give you a better one.”
“Remind me to take you up on that when this is all over. Did you find anything interesting?”
“Nothing,” she said as she rubbed his back. “There were hundreds of safaris logged by Preserve monitors in the last few days. Satellite scans showed more large moving heat signatures, but that didn’t pan out either. I couldn’t find them.”
“Mmmm.”
“And you didn’t see any sign of them?”
“The only thing out there is barren desert, slag piles, and ghost towns. But even at best speed, they could only just barely make it here by now.”
“So how much time do you think we have before they get here?”
“There’s really no way to tell. Until I call Sweetpea. What time is it, by the way?”
“Almost midnight.”
“I should give Sweetpea a buzz. She may have their location.” Noose squirmed out from under Cori’s massage. He took his phone from his coat and keyed in a number. Sweetpea’s pudgy face appeared on the screen.
“Hey, Sweetpea, how’d it go?”
“It did not go well,” Sweetpea sighed. “I was unable to relocate Earless.”
“Why’s that?”
“To put it simply, someone has masked her, protected her from psykic detection.”
“Who?”
“I have no idea. I only know that I am unable to follow the link from the blood sample back to the pleaser. The far end of the link flaps in the wind, untethered.”
Cori leaned over Noose’s shoulder to look into the phone. “Could Earless have done this? I thought she’d lost her powers.”
“Such concealment requires a psyker of greater power. It is unlikely that one suffering gene failure could do this.”
“Then they’ve hired another psyker,” Cori suggested.
“Or someone else doesn’t want us to find them,” Noose mused. “Remember, we’re not the only hounds on the trail. Smith’s boss may still be involved.”
“That is not for me to say,” Sweetpea said. “I have not looked for that knowledge. However, I can tell you that the frayed end indicates that she is somewhere west and north of the Ozarks.”
“How far west?”
“That, I cannot say.”
“At least it’s something,” Cori said.
“All right. Thanks, Sweetpea.”
“You are welcome, Ichabod.”
“Ichabod?” Cori stood up and looked down at the dwarf with an arched eyebrow.
“Don’t start,” Noose said, hitting the disconnect on the phone. He rose, picked his jacket off the floor, and retrieved his holster from the bed.
Cori watched as he stiffly donned the holster. “Why don’t you ever let anyone in, Noose?”
The dwarf glanced up at her, perplexed. “What are you talking about?”
“You. I’ve known you for three years, and just now I find out your real name.”
“Real names are overrated,” Noose forced a smile, pulling on his jacket. “I prefer Noose to Ichabod.”
“That’s just what I mean,” Cori said. “For three years you’ve been flirting and chasing me and my sister, and we never even knew your name. How can you expect to get close to anyone like that?”
“Who said I wanted to get close?”
“You did! You’ve been trying to date us ever since you met us.”
“Dating and getting close are two different things,” Noose said flatly.
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is –” Noose shrugged and turned from her – “that I don’t want a long-term relationship.”
“What?” Cori asked in a faltering voice.
Noose turned back to her, putting his hands in his jacket pockets. “If you let people get too close they become a liability, a wedge someone can use against you. Liabilities can be…deadly.”
“So, all you have is killing and one-night stands?”
Noose shrugged.
“It doesn’t have to be that way, Noose.”
“Yes, it does, Cori. Wetwork breeds enemies, and enemies like to use friends, relatives, and lovers to get at you. Anyone close to me is in danger. Pamela’s death proves that.”
Cori looked down at her hands. “So, you’re going to keep yourself from loving anyone for the rest of your life?”
“The rest of my life probably won’t be that long. Pretty soon, the odds are going to catch up with me.”
Cori opened her mouth to reply and then clamped it shut. She watched Noose intently. Finally she said, “You don’t like your life, do you, Noose?”
“What makes you say that?”
“You don’t seem to mind the concept of your own death.”
“I mind it all right. But it’s an inevitability. We all die.”
“But we don’t all die violently, or young.”
“In my profession we do.”
Cori nodded. “You don’t like your life.”
“You said that already, Cori. Listen,” he said, taking her hand, “it’s no use denying my work. I’m genetically skewed for this.”
Cori said nothing, but reached out and turned Noose’s face toward her. She gazed into his eyes. “You want to die.”
Noose pulled gently from her grasp, glancing away. “No, I don’t.”
“That didn’t sound too convincing.”
“I’m not here to convince anyone. I’m here to kill Grue and the others. It’s what I do.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“The hell it doesn’t. It’s what I was engineered for. I’ve been killing since they dragged me out of the vat. It’s what I do.”
“And you don’t like doing it.”
“Like’s got nothing to do with it.”
“Why not?”
“It just doesn’t. I’m an assassin, plain and simple. People pay me to kill other people. I don’t ask questions, I don’t evaluate who’s right and who’s wrong. I just take the contract and fulfill it. Period. I don’t know anything else.”
“You can learn something else.”
Noose laughed. “What? Become a corporate wage slave? Can you see me monitoring bacteria excretion rates at a petroleum factory? It’s not going to happen.”
“It could happen, Noose. Just stop. Stop killing. Retire.”
“Nobody retires from wetwork.”
“That’s not a law of nature, Noose. You can do what you want.”
“The hell I can. Cori, I have enemies already. Lots of enemies. And just because I retire doesn’t mean my enemies will stop looking for me. If I retire, I’ll get rusty and sloppy. Rusty and sloppy gets you dead.”
“Those are all just excuses. Your life is your own to live. Up to now, it doesn’t seem you’ve been living it. You’ve just been following what those scientists designed for you. Well, you can leave it, if you want. Instead of pursuing a death wish, you can leave death behind you.”
“It’s just not that easy, Cori. You don’t understand.”
“I understand well enough. You’re miserable with your life of killing. You don’t have anything except your contracts. You don’t have anyone close to you. All you have is meaningless flings while people who care about you sit and worry that you’re going to get killed.”
Noose stopped in mid-step, and looked back at Cori.
She walked to him. “I care about you, Noose. I need you. Now that Pam’s gone, you’re the closest thing to family I have. Neither of us has anyone but each other. We can be our own
family…I love you, Noose.” She took him in her arms. Noose kept his own hands at his sides, and she finally backed away, tears dripping down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Cori,” Noose stated, his jaw firm and his voice forced, “but I can’t love you.”
“Why?”
“You’ll end up like Pamela. I couldn’t bear anything happening to you.” He opened the door. “After I kill Grue and the others, you won’t be seeing me anymore.”
“No…” Cori breathed.
“I’m sorry.”
45
Munk followed old Route 54. He rubbed his eyes, trying to rid himself of the blur that had been creeping up on him ever since leaving the Ozarks. He cursed himself for never having replaced his meat eyes with cybernetic versions like Grue had done. The goon never needed to worry about his Nikon optics getting tired or blurry.
A holographic road sign proclaimed: “You are entering the Amarillo Temporary Urban Zone. Please report to a Global Wilderness Preserve Ranger Station immediately.”
Looking back into the Safari, Munk could just barely see the goon’s thick leg hanging off the bed, and late morning sunshine slanting in through the rear window. He wondered how bad the goon’s hangover would be this morning, and shook his head. If Grue hadn’t been upending beers the whole trip, maybe he could have taken a turn at the wheel. But no, old drunks never change.
Munk had been driving for over twenty-four hours with only a short rest. And cross-country off-roading across 2200 kilometers definitely wasn’t a good way to relieve aching muscles, even in a posh ride like the Safari. Its body-forming bucket seats were comfortable, but even they grew tiresome after a full day behind the wheel. Munk shifted in the seat and stretched an arm, reaching around to massage the back of his neck.
He looked at Earless, sprawled across the passenger seat, mouth gaping open, drool dripping from the corner of her lips. A patch stuck to her neck, just below the bandage. She was off in some narco-dreamland, probably dancing with undead dwarves.
“We sure are a bunch of freaking oddballs,” he muttered to himself.
“Says who?” Grue clapped a hand on his shoulder and Munk jumped with a start.
Dead Dwarves Don't Dance Page 16
