“Head for that door on the building’s north side!” Xris yelled to Jamil.
He piloted the PVC up to a side door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. The Devastator lumbered to a stop.
Xris bailed out of the turret, met Jamil coming from the driver’s side, joined Tycho and Harry crouched in the tank’s cramped interior.
“Tycho, you and Harry rush the door. Jamil guard their flank. I’ll cover you all from here. Right. Got it? Go.”
Xris hit the controls that opened the hatch; then he climbed back up into the turret.
Harry jumped out, his beam rifle swinging in an arc.
A man appeared, coming around the back corner of the building. Harry fired a burst in the air. The man leaped about a foot, turned, and fled.
Tycho and Jamil jumped out immediately behind Harry. Tycho ran for the door, while Harry covered him. Flattening himself against the side of the building to the door’s right, Tycho motioned for Harry to join him.
Jamil kept Harry covered. Xris watched the rear.
Harry dashed over, took up a position flat against the wall to the left of the door. Jamil followed.
A ‘copter flew in. Xris fired a blast from the lascannon, warning it off. A lascannon could bring down a ‘copter. It veered away, but didn’t go far.
Harry tried the hotel door. Locked.
Jamil attached a magnetic explosive charge. Everyone turned away, shielding themselves from the blast. The heavy steel door blew inward, hung crazily on its hinges.
Jamil motioned. Xris abandoned the turret. Thrusting a twist in his mouth, he ran a last-minute check on his weapons hand and his system status LEDs. The lights glimmered comfortingly green.
Xris dove out the hatch, broke into a run, and raced across the short distance that separated the PVC from the side of the building.
A kick from his steel leg knocked the door off its hinges. Xris burst inside, hit the floor, and rolled. His enhanced vision scanned the dark interior of the hallway for heat sources. None. He jumped to his feet.
He stood in a bleak and sterile corridor. A fire door at the end was marked FIRST FLOOR. Concrete stairs, with an iron railing, led upward. Xris adjusted his augmented hearing, listened closely. No sounds from above.
He waved. Harry and Jamil ran past him to the base of the stairs.
“Second-floor landing,” Harry reported. “More stairs from there, going up at a thirty-degree angle.”
Typical fire escape. Xris gave Harry the signal to continue. The big man started climbing. A blast from a beam rifle blew out a section of wall to his left, caused him to beat a hasty retreat.
“That ain’t the nightly news,” Harry said, brushing chips of concrete out of his hair.
Xris sucked on the twist. He hadn’t doubted it. Not really. Not after seeing Dr. Brisbane. But it was nice to be certain. He waved Harry on.
The big man took a stun grenade from his field webbing pouch, tapped the arming code, and tossed the grenade up the stairs to the first-floor landing. He ducked; everyone ducked, eyes squinched tightly shut, hands over their ears.
A cracking sound split the air in the corridor. Before it had died away, Harry raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Jamil advanced, stood guard at the bottom.
Xris grabbed Tycho, drew him back to the doorway.
“Move around to the front of the building. Take a few potshots at the third-floor balcony. I want the knights to have to worry about a frontal assault as well as one from the rear. You probably can’t get a clear shot at the negative wave device because of the shielding around it, but you can take out anyone standing nearby. Hit them with a few iridium jacket rounds. That should make ‘em back off, at least till we get there. Understand?” He looked at the alien worriedly. Sometimes Tycho’s translator did odd things.
Apparently this time the message got through.
“Clearest thing since sliced bread!” Tycho responded.
Xris took half a second to assimilate that one, but was reassured by the sight of the alien loping off to take up his position.
Xris turned just in time to hear Harry yell from the second-floor landing, “Number two!”
He was tossing another stun grenade, probably onto the third floor. Jamil, at the foot of the stairs, gave an alarmed shout. Xris started forward; the blast nearly knocked him off his feet.
Something had gone wrong. The grenade had exploded too close.
Laser fire blasted the staircase. Sparks cascaded over the railing. Harry came stumbling down, wobbling drunkenly, his face contorted in pain. Staggering, he missed the last step. Xris caught the big man as he fell, propped him up.
“Jamil! Cover us!”
Jamil was already dashing up the stairs, firing as he went.
“What happened?” Xris yelled at Harry. “Are you hurt?”
“What?”
Blood trickled out from both Harry’s ears. The big man sucked in a pain-filled breath, leaned back against the wall.
“Stay here!” Xris yelled as loudly as he could. He took the twist out of his mouth, motioned with it to emphasize his words.
“No, thanks, Xris,” Harry mumbled, looking dazedly at the twist. “I don’t smoke.”
“I said stay—” Xris shook his head. “Never mind.”
Damn difficult to hear, when your eardrums have been shattered. He patted the big man on the chest, then raced up the stairs.
Crouched in a corner of the landing, Jamil was trading shots with an unseen enemy.
Xris aimed his weapons hand, fired a heat-seeking micro-missile. It arced upward in a slow spiral. He and Jamil ducked. The explosion rocked the stairwell, filled it with acrid smoke. Xris thought he heard a scream. For the moment, the laser fire from that direction ceased.
“What happened to Harry?” Xris asked.
“He threw a stun grenade up and one of those bastards caught it, threw it right back down! In all my days in the Army,” Jamil added, waiting for the beam rifle to cycle through before firing, “I’ve only known a few people with guts and discipline enough to try that trick, and most of them ended up minus a hand. These are the same well-trained bastards we faced on the Canis Major.”
He fired his beam rifle. A burst of return laser fire took out a section of the step on which he was standing. He moved.
“Well trained, well armed. They have the high ground and they know we’re coming.” Xris peered upward, through the smoke. “Tycho’s keeping them busy out front. Harry’s down for the count. I’ve only got two more of those slow missiles. Can’t use the fast ones in tight corners; they’re liable to blow us up before they do the enemy.” Xris chomped down savagely on the twist. “Any suggestions?”
“Yeah,” said Jamil. “Give me a high-explosive frag grenade. I’ll clean those knights out of the stairway.”
Xris shook his head. He knew what Jamil had in mind. “I’ll do it.”
“Like hell. Half of you weighs in at a quarter ton. You can’t move that fast. Besides, I’m a trained professional.” Jamil grinned. “Hand it over.”
Xris took the grenade from his field webbing, gave it to Jamil.
He tapped the arming button, but didn’t throw it.
Xris automatically began counting, “Five, four . . .”
Jamil dashed up the stairs, grenade in one hand, firing his beam rifle with the other.
“... three, two . ..”
Laser blasts and iridium bullets spattered around him. Right when Xris counted “one!” Jamil tossed the grenade, hunkered down.
The stairwell exploded. A scorching wave of hot plasma hit Xris. He shielded his face with his arm. The sounds of gunfire from above abrupdy ceased.
Xris was up and running.
Jamil should have been, but he wasn’t. Xris found the major sprawled on the shattered stairs, lying beneath the twisted wreckage of what had once been an iron railing.
Lasgun in hand, dividing his attention between the landing above and his fallen comrade, Xris lifted the red-hot iron wit
h his metal hand, tossed it clattering down the stairwell. He rolled his friend over.
Shrapnel and splinters of iron had raked Jamil’s left arm, tearing through body armor into flesh and muscle. He was burned, but not badly, mostly on the top of his head. But he was covered in blood. A quick check revealed that at least no main arteries had been severed, his pulse was strong. He groaned. His eyes flickered opened, rolled, then shut again.
A head encased in a shining black helmet appeared over the railing. Light glinted off the barrel of a needle-gun.
Xris fired his lasgun, must have hit, for he heard a cry and a foul curse. The head disappeared.
Fishing out a pressure bandage, Xris ripped it open. He slid the bandage up Jamil’s arm, positioned it over the worst of the wounds, hit the activator. The bandage inflated, applying the correct amount of pressure to stop the bleeding, formed a seal over the wound.
The helmeted head was back. Xris traded his lasgun for Jamil’s beam rifle, fired it, then sent up another of his slow missiles.
“Catch that, you son of a bitch!” he shouted.
The knight didn’t take Xris up on his offer, but the soldier did have guts enough to fire a round before seeking cover.
Another blast. Xris was on the move, his metal leg kicking aside fragments of concrete and railing. He reached the landing between the second and third floors, finally had a clear view of what he was up against. Black-suited bodies lay in front of the fire door.
Xris started up the stairs. Two more black-suited figures appeared. He had no more doubts. These were the knights, trained soldiers and assassins. And fanatics.
Xris hunkered down, fired, missed, fired again. The best thing he could do was keep moving, keep shooting. Smoke filled the stairwell. He would be a difficult target for the knights to see, while Xris’s heat-seeking vision could pick them out perfectly.
Two knights stood guarding the door, backs against the wall. Obviously they had orders to stop Xris or die in the attempt.
“Glad to oblige,” Xris told them.
Lying prone on the stairs, he opened up with the beam rifle, swept it from left to right and back again. He caught one man across the midriff; his rifle flew from his hands, arced over the broken railing, went clanging down the stairs. The other knight vanished; Xris couldn’t see what happened to him. Probably hit, maybe retreated.
“Waiting for me inside that damn door,” Xris muttered. He spit out what remained of the sodden mass that had been the twist, picked himself up, and made a mad dash for the half-closed door.
He put his metal shoulder to it, burst the door open, beam rifle blasting as he ran.
He was in a carpeted corridor of a luxury hotel. He took cover in a nearby doorway, ceased firing long enough to take a quick look around. Doors to rooms to his left and right. Most were closed. One, about six meters down the hall, was open. The corridor looked empty.
Xris took a step forward.
A knight popped up out of nowhere, directly in front of the cyborg. Xris had no time to think. He just prayed and shot.
The blast struck the knight at point-blank range. The body literally dissolved in a charred and bloody mass at Xris’s feet.
A man with good reflexes and two good legs could have avoided falling over the corpse. Xris’s entire system had to readjust itself, however: neurocomputer responding to electronic impulses from the brain; mechanical side of the body trying to coordinate with the physical. He was struggling to retain his balance when a bullet struck him from behind.
The bullet lodged in metal, not in flesh, but that didn’t make a whole hell of a lot of difference. The impact knocked Xris’s cybernetic leg from under him; shorted out all kinds of complicated electronic circuitry.
He knew, as he fell, that he was dead. Sprawled on the floor, his electronics going wild, he had no way to defend himself. The next shot would blow apart his head or tear open his chest....
He heard the shot, was startled not to feel it slam into him.
Training and experience made up for the frantic microsecond of panic. He had managed to hang on to the beam rifle. Rolling to his left, he lifted his weapon, prepared to fire, stopped himself just in time.
Harry stood in the doorway, lasgun in hand. A dead knight lay on the floor in front of him.
“Thanks!” Xris shouted.
“Huh?” Harry returned. “Did you say somethin’?”
Xris pulled himself to a crouching position, began to assess the damage. LEDs flashed red. He did what he could to jury-rig himself, was making final adjustments when he heard Harry shout.
Xris looked up quickly. A black-gloved hand flicked out of the open door down the corridor. A grenade rolled toward them.
Xris couldn’t move.
Harry had been firing at the hand, now shifted his aim to the grenade. His fourth volley hit it.
Both men cringed, waiting for the blast.
The grenade wobbled to a halt, sat there, blinking ominously.
Figuring he was about as operational as he was going to get, Xris stood up, tried walking. His cybernetic leg dragged, out of sync with his good leg.
“You stay here, Harry,” Xris shouted, loaded two large micro-missiles into his weapons hand. “I’m going on ahead. Keep me covered!”
“I don’t think so,” Harry yelled. “You go ahead. I’ll keep you covered.”
“Fine. You do that.”
Limping awkwardly down the hall, Xris halted in front of the door, fired the two missiles into the hotel room, then hugged the floor.
The explosion’s back blast washed over Xris in a concussive wave. He’d forgotten to turn off his augmented hearing and for a moment was as deaf as Harry. When bits of debris quit raining down on top of him, Xris shook the rubble off him, stood up.
Smoke billowed out into the corridor. Fire alarms sounded, squawking loudly. The sprinkler systems activated.
Harry—backing down the hall, keeping his gun aimed at the fire door—looked up in astonishment as the water hit him in the face. Arriving at the door, he paused a moment, motioned inside with a jerk of his head.
“You hear anything?”
Xris listened. Flames crackled. Someone moaned. But if anyone was waiting in ambush, they were being damn quiet about it.
Xris took the lead. He and Harry burst into the room.
A black form leaped out at them; metal flashed. The knight— knife in hand—landed on Harry. The two crashed back onto a bed, rolled from there to the floor.
Xris lost sight of them. He could hear the two scuffling in the life-and-death struggle, but there was nothing he could do to help. His attention was focused on the phony image-intensifier antenna set up out on the balcony.
The bodies of two “crewmen” lay sprawled beside it. They wore GNN coveralls. Either they were knights disguised as GNN personnel or the knights had impressed these two poor bastards into working for them. It didn’t matter much now. Tycho’s aim was true as ever.
But though its crew was dead, the antenna was still up and running. Xris started toward it to shut it down, saw movement out of the corner of his eye.
Dr. Brisbane darted out from behind a curtain, a needle-gun aimed straight at his head.
Xris lunged sideways—or at least that’s what he intended to do. His mechanical leg didn’t get the message. He tottered, off balance, flailing wildly. The needle struck him in the shoulder of his good arm. His sight blurred red momentarily, the pain unbelievable. But the doctor would have been far better advised to aim for Xris’s mechanical side.
As it was, his weapons hand was working perfectly. He aimed, fired.
The force of the blast blew Dr. Brisbane out the door through the balcony’s railing, and over the edge.
He looked down at his arm, saw it covered in blood. His commlink squawked, demanding his attention. It had, he realized dimly, been squawking for quite a long time now.
“Xris, can you hear me? Xris, dammit! Are you all right?”
It was Rowan. She soun
ded frantic, worried.
“I’m okay,” he said, gritting his teeth against the pain of his wounds. “I’m on the balcony with the negative wave device. Its operators are dead—”
“But the device is alive and well!” Rowan was panting, breathless, almost screaming at him. “It’s almost up to full power. You’ve got to shut it off now! Xris! Now!”
Harry was still fighting. Xris could hear the two men, but he couldn’t take time to help. He dragged himself to the device, stared at it. Lights were blinking; his augmented hearing was picking up an annoying whining sound. Frantically he searched, but couldn’t find anything that vaguely resembled a switch.
“Turn it off!” Rowan yelled.
“How?” Xris yelled back.
A pause. He could hear her consulting with Quong. Xris ground his teeth. Hurry . . . hurry .. .
Quong sounded troubled. “The switch should be plainly visible.”
“You come look for it, then!”
Pain jabbed him. Xris sucked in his breath. Hurry, damn it! ...
Rowan was back. “My guess is that the device is being controlled from a remote unit. Which could be hidden anywhere—”
“Oh, the hell with it!”
Balancing himself on his good leg, Xris swung his mechanical leg like a club. His metal foot connected with the machine.
The device smashed against the balcony. Sparks flew. Xris fired a blast from his lasgun at the generator. It blew apart. The whining sound the antenna had been making ceased.
“That’s it!” Rowan was jubilant. “You’ve done it!”
Xris nodded, too tired and hurting to answer.
Harry came out onto the balcony, wiping blood from his hands on the front of his shirt. He had a cut down one side of his face; one eye was starting to swell shut. He looked with satisfaction at the wreckage of the device.
“Nice job,” he said.
Xris nodded again, pulled out a twist, almost dropped it from his shaking hand.
“You okay?” Harry asked worriedly.
“Yeah,” Xris lied. “You?”
“No, thanks,” Harry returned loudly. “I don’t smoke. What’s Tycho up to?”
The Knights of the Black Earth Page 41
