"Fuck it," she said, and mentally sent the termination signal. A bright flash high, high above ... she barely looked, she'd done it all before too many times to remember. Fire-grid control panicked, rapid projectile fire ripping from five consecutive points, converging in an apex of shredding tracer above the spaceport's east wing ... the media car disintegrated like tissue paper in a hailstorm, pieces spinning to earth in violently random directions.
"No `journalist of the year' for you," muttered the pilot, throttle wide open, engines howling at the flyer's maximum, the treetops rushing ever closer as they lost altitude. The other four target points were clear. She gave the missiles a final OK ... final safeties went red, warheads primed, and she spared herself a brief, upward glance. Thin white contrails in the clear blue sky. Headed in and downward at incredible velocity.
Th-th-th-thud, four rapid impacts, fireballs climbing skyward from four widely spread locations across the broad expanse of spaceport grounds, laden with debris.
"We're in," said Vanessa, SWAT Four already in nearly perfect position south of the spaceport and banking hard inward, barely ten metres off the treetops.
"Four strikes," Sandy said calmly, watching the fireballs rise as yet more confusion unfurled across the tac-net schematic of Gordon, emergency calls, com traffic and general chaos-"Live fire from north of Gordon is still imminent, SWAT Four is inbound, Snowcat is inbound in ..." Rush of schematic data, topography calculations showing the fire-blindspots and calcing that with their present trajectory. "... fifteen seconds when we acquire fireshadow, everyone stay low and keep the chatter down." And flicked channels. "Vanessa, you've got no angle on the north wing with that firepoint still active, I want you to get down behind north wing, check tac-net V-18Q, disperse and secure the building with two shooters high, I'm coming in at V-15R for rearguard, you right flank secure through to main baggage, we hold and pivot, you push, establish contact and hold, then I'll push the left flank and trap them." With mental illustrations across the tac-net display of the spaceport schematic, visual backup to the verbal shorthand.
"Gotcha, Snowcat," came Vanessa's laconic drawl.
The pilot banked hard left-again the Gs shoved down, Sandy holding position comfortably, braced and standing behind the cockpit seats with a good view out the front ...
"Under fire!" the co-pilot yelped as the north grid-point flared ...
"Hold steady," Sandy said loudly, "they can't hit us ..." Even as fire ripped perhaps twenty metres over them with snarling, angry velocity. "... we're in the west wing shadow, they're trying to scare us." Pause in fire, greenery rushing by below, then an abrupt break into open ground. Barely a kilometre to their left, thick, black smoke roiled skyward, bits of debris raining down, pieces of what had formerly been a very expensive, very efficient defensive gun emplacement. Sandy found time to wonder wryly if some fool on the Senate Security Panel would try and bill her for damages. "Five metres lower, we've got a brief gap coming up."
The flyer edged lower ... damn slow machine, turbine-propelled and labouring at barely seven hundred and fifty kph, but at ten metres off the deck it looked plenty fast enough. The north-west to south-east runway was two Ks ahead, access roads, drainage runoffs and observation posts shot past below ... fire from the emplacement and "CLIMB!" she yelled, the Gs smacking them down as the ground fell away, and the burst of fire through the fireshadow gap between west wing and main terminal buildings ripped past below instead of hitting them ... "Down down down, back on the deck." And the nose plunged once more, fire re-targeting their new position, gathering from the full eight kilometres of the spaceport's far north end in glowing, ponderous clusters, then snapping by overhead at blurring velocity.
"That's it, well done." The pilot, she noted, was sweating profusely, a vision-shift showed her a vastly elevated respiration and body temperature ... the co-pilot wasn't much better. For SWAT pilots a hotzone approach typically meant a few smallarms-this was something they'd never trained for nor expected. "Don't look at the groundfire," she warned them both, "that's electro-mag fire, nearly five Ks a second, you look straight at it and you lose spatial perception and your flight track. Trust your flight sense, evade in future-time-realtime is too late, it's too fast."
"I have it," murmured the pilot, breathless as the runway came closer up ahead, then abruptly shot past below ... the terminal complexes growing larger ahead by the second. "By the prophet I have it." His voice strained, breathing hard.
"Allah is with us," Sandy said firmly. "Trust in Allah."
"Allahu Akbar," the pilot agreed in a stronger tone, and entrusted them to a hard right bank at seven hundred and fifty as he readjusted their approach track, the right nacelle barely five metres off the hurtling ground. Sandy wondered if too much trust in Allah couldn't be a dangerous thing.
The spaceport proper was looming up, the SWAT Four flyer already pulling into a close, decelerating hover low past the left side of south terminal ... the size of it struck her as she watched the buildings loom through the armoured windshield, the sprawling southern terminal with multiple wings and covered shuttle bays, layoutgraphics indicating a ten thousand passenger per hour rating for each of the four main terminals. That was forty thousand people per hour all up, north, south, west and east terminals adjoining to the massive central complex, where highway connections looped into multi-level avenues of departures and arrivals, and the maglev connected underground ... And she recalled with a brief flash of memory her own arrival here from Rita Prime nearly two months ago, through customs with fake ID and scant baggage, cavernous, gleaming architecture and masses of people arriving and departing, to and from all corners of the Federation ... and no clue at all of how her life would have changed when she next revisited this massive, bustling, vital juncture that connected half of Callay's population to the rest of the Federation.
They hurtled in low past the broad viewing windows of the southern terminal, glimpses of staring faces, civilians gathered on viewing platforms and staring incredulously at the pair of armoured SWAT flyers that howled low past their heads in the aftermath of heavy weapons fire and massive artillery strikes on the perimeter ... and visual enhancement through the windows showed flaring emergency lights, and uniformed staff attempting to herd hundreds of frightened passengers into convenient directions ... pity the tourists who'd just arrived for their holidays to discover that all the worst stories they'd heard of the "Tanushan troubles" paled to insignificance next to the reality ...
Past the southern terminal, then, and onto the central hub, ducking low past one towering side where automated traffic piled into immobile jams along the elevated departure zones, crowds of panicked people swarming the roads, emergency vehicles with lights flashing, staff directing frantically, parents clutching children and baggage ... it all hurtled past to their right, north terminal looming ahead, Vanessa's flyer already down and unloading atop the furthest edge of the terminal roof, behind the elevated restaurant/observation deck that her schematics had shown her created a fireshadow that the remaining firepoint could not penetrate, a faint glimpse of armoured figures pouring from the flyer's rear ...
The pilot took them low and left, passenger avenues shooting past below through decorative trees, Sandy staring leftwards where the west terminal sprawled northwards in a long passenger wing, shuttle berths breaking the length ... that was where the crossfire would come from, Berth 15 was one of the line of berths up ahead on the west side of north terminal, completely exposed to cover-fire from the west terminal. Gordon schematic showed her passenger evacuation proceeding out of the terminals and back into central, where they would no doubt create an unholy crush. The broad tarmac appeared clear of the usual spaceport personnel and activity, empty vehicles littered across parking zones, shuttles left abandoned in their bays. Berth 11 loomed ahead, a great, cavernous shadow filled with a shuttle's thruster-heavy rear end, Berth 11 connected directly to the north terminal building, then 12 to 14 extended from there in a line along the narrow, ex
tended north terminal wing, 15 at the far end, and 16 to 18 down the other side. The shuttle's massive trans-orbital thrusters filled the forward view as the pilot decelerated into a howling, nose-up flare, engine nacelles reangling forward and crushing all occupants down toward the deck ... roar of noise and wind as the rear doors clacked open and cold air rushed in ...
"Everybody out!" Clackbump! Hard touchdown and still rolling, she turned and went, a fast scramble down the narrow aisle. Got out just after Odano, the wind and roar of flyer engines deafening as she sprinted past the re-angling nacelle for the looming shuttle-tail, quickly overtaking those ahead as the flyer lifted once more behind, and made back the way it'd come. She slowed to a steady armoured run, weapon cradled comfortably, headed under the shuttle's looming right wing, around the ground vehicles and maintenance gear, aiming for the front-right rim of the huge shed ... it seemed empty of people, everyone having evacuated from this position, at least, loose equipment left strewn about the interior, a huge elevator platform left suspended in mid-engine-inspection beside huge undercarriage tyres. Shuttles used covered berths, unlike regular aircraft, all refuelling, engineering, passenger-transfer and other servicing equipment built into the structure of the berth shelter, locking shuttle and terminal into close, mutual embrace. As she scanned about within the echoing, cavernous interior amid the steady clattering of many running, armoured footsteps, Sandy reflected that they also made for very good defensive cover.
Gunfire erupted on tac-net, numerous sources, vaguely audible to the ear through muffling earpieces and armoured helmets ... "Contact," Vanessa said in her ear, and she could see on tac-net the lead elements had gotten down into the main levels of north terminal, advanced as far as the narrow north wing entrance, and immediately been pinned down by defensive positions there. Vanessa had several more on the next level up, three pairs out wide to cover the full hall and maintenance accessways, two more on the tarmac down low where the baggage vehicles docked, and two remaining up on the roof, just as she'd asked ... that was the full sixteen. "Main level's blocked ... that's good defensive position, can't get that out short of cannon. Upper level's the same ... maintenance left is booby trapped, I could run it, but I'd rather not ... "
"No, don't do that, not against FIA." Sandy raced for the forward, right-hand corner of the Berth 11 structure, gesturing the others to stay well back as she slammed her armoured back beside the rim. Snuck a quick look out, and to no great surprise drew fire from well up along the tarmac ... "I'm drawing fire from Berth 13," she yelled over the thunder of rounds that clanged and sparked off the rim or smacked heavily into shuttle wheels or maintenance gear further back in the shed, her team-mates flattening themselves hard to wall and ground. "Heavy-cal, looks mounted, that covers the whole west side of north wing ... hang on. . . " And looked back at her group. "... Weng, take your two and Odano back to the side exit there, get up to level one, spread out and hold this flank. Don't let anyone come back around us, or you'll leave SWAT Four exposed on their left."
Weng, the senior of the three sec agents nodded once and left at a clattering run, the other three in tow ... truth was she didn't trust GSA's security detail much from what she'd seen of them, theoretically better grunts than field agents but with a fixed, immobile conception of "defend" rather than "fight." Right now she preferred Ari and Kazuma, at least they knew what a fluid situation looked like. The fire stopped, replaced by the muffled, staccato thunder on the tac-net, more audible now to the naked ear. Berth 15 was right up the end ... had to get close enough to damage that shuttle or otherwise stop it from taking off. Damn inconvenience that surviving fire-grid emplacement, if it was gone they could just use a flyer to do it.
"Look, Ricey, keep them occupied. Pressing too hard won't help, I'm sure they've booby trapped the whole damn floor, even if they did fall back ... I can make up some ground out here, I'll try and get under them."
"Copy that. "
She turned back to Ari and Kazuma. An looked very concerned beneath serious dark brows, helmet visor up for the moment. Kazuma, she was relieved to see, appeared totally businesslike. "We're going that way," she told them, pointing out around the fire-chewed rim, "if you get shot at, fall flat. If you're not getting shot at, run like hell. Follow my lead, cover each other, don't try to do what I do, because you can't. And, for godsake, watch the west wing over there," pointing left over to the line of berths two hundred metres west that ran parallel to this wing, "'cause that's where the secondary cover will be. I can't see anything yet, but there's any amount of cover, and even I can't see everything, it'll be there." A short, flat nod from Kazuma.
"That way?" Ari said with trepidation. "What about that gun?"
"What about it?" She rolled her back to the wall again, shifted firegrip to her left hand, braced, and leaned quickly out, with the rifle propped to her left shoulder. Fired a brief burst. Three hundred metres out along the tarmac, the man manning the tripod-mounted machine gun past a narrow edge of Berth 13's rim took five rounds through the chest and died. A second burst riddled the gun mount, sent it crashing heavily to the ground.
She ducked out, zagged right, cleared the corner of the north terminal building and got a good view of where the long north wing adjoined-the location of SWAT Four's firefight. Immediately did a full-spectral scan across the wing directly ahead-three main levelsthe middle one for passengers, upper for maintenance-and a lower one for baggage and flight operations. Only the middle passenger level offered a clear run through to the end of the wing ... SWAT Four were pinned down at the mouth. She headed that way at full sprint, weapon trained upon Berths 12 and 13 up ahead to the left as she ran. Hurdled some abandoned luggage rollers and flattened herself to the side wall of the terminal building behind an outcrop of airconditioning complex-back-first to observe Ari and Kazuma following at full sprinther gaze panning to the west wing. An adjoining empty shuttle berth, accompanying ground vehicles and a lot of cover points ... she pointed that way to Kazuma as she arrived. Kazuma smacked the wall beside her and dropped to a one-knee cover, weapon trained in that direction across two hundred metres of exposed tarmac.
Sandy ducked a glance around the corner of the aircon juncture, at the point where the long length of north wing accessway attached to the main building and created the well defended bottleneck ... inside the main-level windows, muzzle flashes were clearly evident, already side windows were riddled in places. Further along, the one-shuttle hangar of Berth 12 opened directly toward them, the entire dark, cavernous interior exposed and presently unoccupied ... she didn't like it. Between here and Berth 12 were more abandoned ground vehicles, a passenger bus parked just twenty metres away, some elevating platforms for accessing tall shuttle cargo bays. Tac-net showed two marks well positioned on the roof of north wing, only one was available to cover them.
"Zago, this is Snowcat, cover please, I am advancing."
An arrived and slid in with a metallic clatter.
"Go, Snowcat. "
Sandy slid around the corner and ran for the bus. Registered movement behind a polarised upper window even as she emerged from the other side, snapped fire upward as she ran, windows shattering, and abruptly drew fire from Berth 12 ... threw herself behind a baggage vehicle as rounds snapped and twanged all about, and then there was fire streaking across the tarmac from the west wing, several-sourced and heavy. The baggage vehicle rocked and lost pieces violently, Sandy rolled fast, doing mental triangulation on the sources, popped to a knee and nailed a burst back across the tarmac ... one source of fire ceased. More fire was coming from An and Kazuma from back behind the aircon juncture, impacts spraying across the various cover two hundred metres away, keeping heads down. She up and ran at a ready crouch, heavy fire thudding overhead from Zago on the roof into Berth 12...
"No fix on the target, Sandy, " came Zago's terse comment, "I'm firin' blind. "
"Keep at it, I got no angle here ..." Angling closer to the side of the north wing that loomed overhead, running on mag-lines
where automated tarmac vehicles normally plied along the sides ... more fire from west wing and she dropped to another roll as rounds struck the wall on her right, then up and scanning ... movement halfway up the interior wall of the Berth 12 hangar. She fired-a body fell on a walkway, weapon clattering to the tarmac below-and flung herself right at the sound of breaking glass above, shots from overhead peppering the spot where she'd been. Kazuma swung around from behind the aircon juncture, firing above her head. Shots ceased, either hit or frightened. Sandy unflattened herself off the wall, duck-rolled again as more fire streaked across from the west wing in flat, clustered bursts, popped up and returned fire across the tarmac on a good fix this time, vision magnification saw a body flung backward and rebound from sight.
"Go go," she heard Ari's voice, "I'm covering." And Kazuma was sprinting from cover ... Sandy watched it all on tac-net, that everpresent sixth-sense that overlaid her consciousness ... the firefight stalemate in the narrow bottleneck in the building above, and now the open path she was trying to carve up the flank here outside.
"Sandy, they just pulled two off the line here," Vanessa said, "they know you're flankin', get ready for company ... "
"Got that, Ricey ... just hold them there. Keep 'em occupied, I want to get a response and see how many they've got ..." Behind her the bus blew up in a flaming explosion, she zagged hard left, headed for the outer rim of the Berth 12 hangar as blazing debris spattered the tarmac about her like rain. Slid into it as Ari went running for Kazuma, yelling at her, Kazuma replying groggily that she was okay ... thunder of more weapons fire from the west wing, new position this time, it sounded like platoon support ... she snuck a glance around, saw the flash of fire-trail and ducked back hard and covered ... WHAM!! as the round hit the hangar wall with a force that dislocated reality and turned the world to flames and noise. Fire ripped past from her left, ricocheting from the inner Berth 12 wall in a violent confusion of lethal metal-coming from Berth 13 ... Dammit, they were communicating, they thought they had her pinned.
Breakaway: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel Page 41
