by James Axler
He withdrew the blaster and shifted position. He felt the rafter beneath him shudder as a couple of rounds nicked it. He slid back, weathering the storm of bullets that chewed up the panels only a few inches below him.
The autofire ceased, to be replaced by the rapid scuff and scutter of running feet. Clinging to the rafter with one arm, Kane kicked out several bullet-blasted panels and swung down, hanging above the floor.
The Mag was running down the corridor, back toward the stairwell. Kane leveled his pistol, preparing to shoot when the Mag paused at the edge of the split in the floorboards.
Then the entire building seemed to jump up several inches before sinking. The walls rocked. A terrific explosion erupted from the ground floor, a sound Kane instantly recognized as being caused by a hi-ex gren. Smoldering wreckage spouted up the stairway. The weak floorboards split beneath the Magistrate to let out spurts of smoke and flame. Boards burst upward, then the entire floor collapsed with a rumbling crash. The Mag plunged feet first into smoke-spewing darkness.
Kane clung to the rafter tightly. His eardrums, strained by the initial concussion of the explosion, registered the clatter and thump of wreckage falling to the ground floor. The gren had virtually annihilated the lower section. He wondered who had been responsible for tossing a gren into the building, and with a stab of anxiety he hoped Brigid and Domi weren't still hunkered down by the doorway.
Dust and smoke from the explosion whirled up in a great pall. Coughing, Kane pulled himself up into the crawl space and squirmed back to the ladder in the small room. He could not go down, so he went up, climbing to the open cupola. Looking down into the courtyard below, he saw bodies strewed across the flagstones, lying twisted in pools of blood and body parts. Most of them were Magistrates. Because of the smoke, he could not see much, but he did spot a couple of Tigers of Heaven. Brigid, Domi and Grant were nowhere within his range of vision.
Hearing the creak of wood and metal below, Kane peered through the trapdoor. A black-armored figure was climbing the ladder, doing his utmost to be stealthy. His head turned from side to side, and Kane caught the blaze of wild, panicked eyes.
Pollard grasped a splintery two-by-four in his right hand, and it shook with the intensity of his emotion. He trembled in either terror or rage or a combination. His Sin Eater was snugged in its holster and since Kane didn't see his Copperhead, he guessed the man had expended all the ammo for both blasters. He had evidently lost his combat knife somewhere, as well.
Kane crept to the opposite side of the bell tower, walking on the balls of his feet. He crouched in a smear of shadow and waited until Pollard's bulky body pushed through the hatch. He cautiously moved to the open side of the cupola and peered out. As he stared into the courtyard below, his blunt-featured face contorted in a mask of horror. Most of the sounds of conflict had faded, replaced now with moans and gasping pleas for mercy.
Kane stepped closer to him, and a chunk of brick crunched beneath his boot. Pollard whirled, drawing in a sharp breath. He held the length of wood in a two-fisted grip. Blood streamed from a shallow cut on his forehead, bisected by the bridge of his nose. He squinted in Kane's direction and although he made out the Mag armor he didn't relax. "Don't move."
Kane obeyed him.
Pollard squinted even tighter. "What are you doing up here? What the fuck is your name?"
"Take a guess," Kane replied quietly, slipping a taunting note into his voice. "Down to only a stick, Polly?"
Pollard's entire body jerked in reaction to Kane's voice as if he had received a kick to the groin. He froze, staring in incredulous wonder. His lips worked, and when he was finally able to speak, his voice was a half-gasped bleat. "Kane?"
"One and the same. I haven't seen you since mat little field trip of yours into the Darks. How was your stroll back to Cobaltville? I don't imagine Abrams helped you make good time, not walking on that lame leg I gave him."
He paused and added, "You're looking good, though. Especially after the way Grant kicked the shit out of you in the Admin Monolith."
Pollard's flesh-bagged eyes bulged. "You were there, in the Darks?"
Kane grinned coldly, showing only the edge of his teeth. "I was driving the war wag, Polly. Pretty funny when you think about it—your mission was to find me and Grant, and there we were, right within arm's length all the time. And you were too donkey-shit dumb to know it."
Pollard began to tremble violently, his eyelids flickering, spittle collecting at the corners of his mouth. His shoulders quaked as if he were suffering from a seizure. Then he threw back his head and screamed, a howl of agony, terror and maddened fury ripped from the roots of his soul. Saliva spraying from his mouth, he dropped the two-by-four and charged Kane headlong.
Kane waited for his attack with lips creased in a tight smile. As the man rushed in, he stepped close and delivered a double hammer blow to Pollard's face. His nose flattened beneath the heels of his hands, scarlet spraying from his nostrils.
The man made no effort to ward off his blows but locked his arms around Kane's body, pinioning him. Pollard's arms were like steel bands, and despite his armor, pain shot up and down Kane's spine. The Magistrate rammed the crown of his head savagely against Kane's chin, and little multicolored spirals erupted behind his eyes.
Pollard grunted, snarled and growled in bloodthirsty gratification. "They told me you were dead!"
Kane jabbed his thumbs into the sides of Pollard's neck, seeking out the nerve centers. But all of Pollard's tendons and muscles were tense with the fury of his intention to snap Kane's spine. He writhed in pain but held on, tightening his arms until Kane's breath blew hoarsely out of his mouth. He tried gouging for the man's eyes, but he ducked his head, pressing his face against Kane's breastplate, forcing his upper body to bend over his encircling arms. Despite the armor, Kane knew Pollard's fury-fueled strength could break his back.
Although tempted, Kane did not shoot him. He used the barrel of his Sin Eater as a bludgeon, clubbing and battering the back of Pollard's skull. Caught in the grip of insane blood-lust, Pollard did not react to the crashing blows.
Kane allowed his legs to go slack and limp. He let every ounce of his 180 pounds sag upon Pollard's arms. The man stumbled forward, thrown off balance by the sudden, unexpected deadweight. They lurched drunkenly across the bell tower, and his grip loosened. Kane turned, strained, kicked and fought his way out of Pollard's murderous embrace.
Pollard could have stiff-armed Kane through the open wall, but he showed no interest in escaping. He was intent only upon killing him. He flung himself upon Kane and seized his throat, squeezing it as if wringing out a towel. He pressed with his thumbs against his larynx. Kane did not waste time trying to pry the man's fingers off his neck. He had always known Pollard was an exceptionally strong man, but now his murderous hatred had pumped up his strength to superhuman levels.
Falling backward with Pollard atop him, Kane doubled up his knees and planted his feet against the man's midsection. He straightened his legs like steel springs. The soles of his boots pushed solidly against Pollard's belly and propelled him up. The man flew backward, his stranglehold broken. Strips of skin peeled away from Kane's neck under Pollard's clawing ringers.
Pollard staggered the length of the cupola, his arms windmilling wildly. The backs of his thighs struck a dry-rotted wooden sill, and it crumbled beneath his weight.
With a gargling cry, Pollard tottered and tipped backward, slapping both hands on the molding of the frame. Kane reeled to his feet, lunging out to grab him. The ancient wood turned to powder under Pollard's fingers, and he plunged through the opening.
Arms and legs flailing and flopping like those of a stringless puppet, he plummeted straight down to the floor of the courtyard some fifty feet below. He struck the flagstones with a sound like a bag of rocks dropping into mud. A puff of grit-laden dust mushroomed up around his polycarbonate-enclosed body.
Kane leaned against the window, trying to drag
air back into his lungs and wincing at the deep boring pain in the center of his back. He watched as Pollard stirred fitfully. His twitchings reminded him of those made by the mutie scorpion when its black carapace had been crushed. That memory seemed a year old now.
He saw Brigid, Domi and Grant surround Pollard's body, and he gusted out a sigh of relief. He tried to call to them, but his punished throat muscles and windpipe could produce only a strangling sound, like a dog coughing up a piece of bone. Still, they heard him, looked up, saw him and Domi raised her Combat Master. Kane brought his index finger to his nose and snapped it away to let them know the armored man in the bell tower was him.
Brigid kneeled beside Pollard, peeled back an eyelid and tilted her head back, turning her face toward Kane. She called up grimly, "If you want to question him, I suggest you do so very soon."
Chapter 14
Except for the need to interrogate Pollard, Kane was in no great hurry to find a way down from the bell tower. He knew what would happen once the prisoners were freed. Even he, with all the combat he had participated in and the bloodshed he had seen, had no stomach for what lay in store for the few surviving Magistrates.
But there was no stopping it, not unless he cared to pit himself and his friends against the prisoners and the Tigers of Heaven. He only hoped Grant and Brig-id could protect Pollard long enough so he could wring some information out of him.
After a couple of minutes of searching, Kane found a fire escape and climbed down to the courtyard. His companions were uninjured, although Grant suffered various bruises. The same could not be said for the Tigers. Kiyomasa grimly informed him that Jozure was dead, killed by none other than Pollard. Ibichi had a gunshot wound to his leg, which would impede their travel back to Port Morninglight.
He did not seem impressed when Kane told him he and his samurai had gotten off lucky compared to the Magistrates. Only a few remained essentially unhurt.
Several of the wounded would die of their injuries before dawn. Their former prisoners were in no rush to put them out of their misery. In fact, they preferred to prolong it. They would make sure the killers of their friends and family felt every second of agony before they died.
If not for Grant and Brigid, the people of Port Morninglight would have dragged Pollard down into the swimming pool to be tortured. They had joyfully transformed their holding pen to a torture pit, using knives given to them by the Tigers.
Brigid and Grant kneeled protectively on either side of Pollard, with Kiyomasa and Shizuka hovering just within the reach of their katanas. Kiyomasa's posture in particular put Kane in mind of a ravening tiger, straining at a leash. He glimpsed Domi standing at the rim of the pool, apparently taking a keen clinical interest in the bloody proceedings going on below.
Pollard was conscious, but just barely. Despite the measure of protection provided by his armor, many bones in his body had been broken and he suffered from internal injuries. His ugly face was white and glistening with sweat. He panted through gaping, dry lips. Brigid tipped a canteen over his mouth, moistening his lips.
When Kane leaned over him, his eyelids fluttered and he wheezed, "Unlucky bastard to the last."
Kane took off his helmet and squatted beside him.
"That's probably the truest thing you've ever said, Polly."
Pollard managed a grin, his lips peeling back over red-filmed teeth. "I wouldn't be in your boots…not when the baron gets hold of you."
"Now that you've brought him up," Grant said, "why did he order you into Baron Snakefish's territory?"
Pollard cast his gaze toward him. "How'd you know about that? Preservationist spies in the division?"
Decades before, when Lakesh concocted his underground resistance movement to oppose the barons, he wove the myth of the Preservationist menace, presenting a false trail made by a nonexistent enemy for the barons to pursue and fear. He created the Preservationists to be straw adversaries, allegedly an underground movement whose members pledged to deliver the hidden history of the world to a humanity in bondage.
Even Kane had been surprised to learn the Preservationists were a fabrication, so he didn't bother trying to explain it to Pollard. "Yeah, that's right. Preservationist spies. Why are you taking prisoners here? Where are you taking them? Cobaltville?"
Pollard tried to shake his head and produced the dry crunching of fractured neck vertebrae. He squeezed his eyes shut, his face screwing up in an attempt to control the pain. "Hurt too much to think…give me something…"
Kiyomasa uttered a scornful snort at Pollard's admission. Although they had left the medical kit behind in the riverbed, part of the standard complement of Mag equipment were items to practice field medicine. Grant unsnapped a pouch on his belt and took from it a small squeeze hypodermic. It contained a pain reliever and metabolic stabilizer developed by the medics at the Mag Division. He undid the seals on Pollard's left gauntlet, tugged it off and injected the ampoule's liquid contents into the vein of the man's upper wrist.
All of them saw the string of digits written in blue ink on his flesh, though a couple of the numbers were blurred due to perspiration. Eyes narrowing, Brigid pulled up the sleeve of his Kevlar undergarment so she could see the entire sequence. "What are those numbers?"
Pollard coughed, a rattling hack. He turned his head and spit a glob of bright pink, frothy saliva on the flagstones. None of them said anything, but they knew by the color of the sputum the man's lungs were punctured.
"What do you think those numbers are, whore?" he husked out, curling his lips in a contemptuous sneer.
Kane's eyes flashed in anger, and he reflexively drew back his hand to cuff Pollard's face. Although her lips were compressed, Brigid shook her head at him and he checked the movement. She leaned closer to Pollard's sweat-pebbled face and stated confi-dently, "I think they're the destination-lock codes for a gateway."
Pollard's piggish eyes widened in surprise, a silent affirmation her opinion was correct.
"But," she went on crisply, "they don't correspond to the unit in Cobaltville, the one in the Admin Monolith on the baron's level." Two lines of concentration appeared on either side of her nose bridge. Her lips moved slightly as she impressed the numerical sequence into her eidetic memory. She added, "In fact, they're not the destination-access codes to any of the units we've ever used."
The last was directed more toward Grant and Kane than Pollard. Neither man doubted her declaration, since she had proved time and again her power of total and accurate recall was infallible.
"So, Polly," Kane said, "when you returned to the redoubt with the prisoners, you weren't going to transport back to Cobaltville?"
A smile tugged at the corners of Pollard's mouth. The drug coursing through his bloodstream not only masked the pain but produced a temporary euphoria. "We were," he said dreamily. "Not the slaggers. Gonna send them someplace else. With them numbers."
"Why are they written on your arm?" Grant demanded.
"So's I'd remember 'em, why else?"
"Yeah," Kane muttered. "Why else?"
"Where is the location of the unit you were send-ing the prisoners?" Brigid inquired, lowering her voice and softening her tone, trying to sound friendly.
"Dunno," came the mumbled response. "Griffin didn't tell me, and I didn't ask."
"Griffin?" Grant echoed in surprise. "Why would Griffin assign you this mission?"
"He's the Division administrator."
"That paper-pushing jack counter? Since when?"
Pollard's brow furrowed as he dredged his narcotic-fogged memory. "A couple, three months, mebbe. Since Abrams was removed, I guess."
Brigid said curtly, "Let's get back to the matter at hand. Gossip about the old gang back home can wait."
Both Grant and Kane gave her hard stares but said nothing more. Leaning closer to Pollard, she asked, "What were Griffin's specific orders?"
Pollard's eyes had acquired a glassy sheen. Brigid dribbled a little mo
re water into his mouth and repeated the question. As if by rote, he answered, "To march to Port Morninglight. To round up as many healthy outlanders as we could find and take them prisoner. Chill the rest. Make sure we left nothing to connect Mags to it."
"Why?" Kane snapped. "There are plenty of outlanders in Baron Cobalt's own territory."
"Mebbe there is," Pollard murmured faintly. "Mebbe there ain't. Once we marched 'em back to the redoubt, I was supposed to shove 'em in that mat-trans thing, input the numbers on my arm on the comp controls and send them someplace. Then we were ordered to return to Cobaltville."
Grant's face tightened in a scowl. "This doesn't make a whole lot of sense."
"It just might," Brigid intoned dolefully.
"Kane…" Pollard's voice was now no more than a hoarse rustle.
Kane leaned closer. "Yeah?"
Pollard lifted a trembling hand, his forefinger tracing the outline of the red duty badge affixed to Kane's armored chest. "You're a fucking traitor, but you still wear that? How can you live with yourself?" He shifted his gaze to Grant. "Both of you, fucking traitors."
Grant's jaw muscles knotted. "Watch your mouth."
Pollard forced a slurringly soft laugh. "What are you going to do, chill me? I just want to understand you. We served together for years, flash-blastin' slag-gers and Dregs and outlanders. And you threw it all away—and for what?"
"You wouldn't understand, Polly," Kane snapped.
Pollard swallowed, wincing in pain. "Salvo didn't understand, either. Drove him crazy. Then I was told he was working with you all the time, that he was just as much of a traitor as you three. Is that true?"
Kane, Grant and Brigid silently exchanged glances. With a shrug, Kane said, "No, it wasn't. Salvo wasn't a traitor. He was a scheming, lying sack of shit, a backstabbing murderer and probably insane, but he wasn't a traitor." He paused and added, "I hope that makes you feel better."
Pollard nodded, his lips writhing to form a caricature of a satisfied smile. "It really does. What happened to him?"
