“That was hacksaw neurotoxin, that your bug was using,” Tif panted aloud, now that there was no one around to hear. “They’re going to guess who you are, when this is over.”
“So long as we have Drakhil’s diary, it won’t matter,” said Styx. “For that diary, I would end worlds.”
25
As Dale drove the car into maglev station parking, a delivery drone followed them in, hovering low behind the car in a way that was probably illegal, if that word weren’t so tenuous in a free-city. Dale let the car park on autos, scanning the dark-lit surroundings with rifle in lap, as Sergeant Forrest reported back from another part of the city.
“I’ve counted about twelve, they’re chasing,” he said through gritted teeth, as the squeal of tires carried even through the uplink connection. “We got drones too… Joker, can you boost your signal, you’re breaking…” The rest was lost in static.
“Jokono!” Dale snapped. “Get him back!”
“I cannot, Lieutenant,” said Jokono with concern. “I fear they are onto me, and onto my network construct. I can still observe Sergeant Forrest and Private Tong’s position, but they’ve drawn quite a crowd. I think you may have gotten off the road just in time.”
“Shit,” Dale fumed, as the car found a park and pulled into a suitably dark corner. “Well we can’t help them now… Joker, if you can get them a message, tell them not to fight if they’re cornered, just surrender.”
“I will try, Lieutenant.” Because Dale knew his Sergeant well, and the thought of what he might do filled him with fear.
They piled out of the car, as the drone obligingly dropped its plastic-wrapped package on the hood and zoomed off. Reddy, Milek and Kadi pulled off the wrapping, to reveal the parren acolyte-black robes they’d left behind at Tooganam’s apartment. Milek pulled his on with evident relief, and the humans followed suit, Dale and Reddy only relieved to no longer be identified as human in public, and to now have somewhere to hide their very large guns.
“I have hidden this location as best I can,” said Jokono, “but I think at this point it would be best for you to head back to my location.” Jokono was at Tooganam’s apartment, which he insisted had excellent network hardware for hiding signal locations — meaning it was old and dilapidated, and uncooperative with modern hunter-programs used by security agencies.
“And what makes you think we’ll be any safer there?” Dale growled.
“I believe that ‘safe’ is out of the question at this point,” said Jokono. “But there are developments here that will cause the security forces considerable delay. Best that you come directly.”
“We’ll do that,” Dale said reluctantly, seeing little other choice. “Let’s just hope they can’t stop trains.”
They walked from parking to the main concourse, where light crowds flowed onto the platform amidst tall displays showing the location of the next train. Jokono simply hacked the station entry gates to let them through without passes, and they moved together, four robed and hooded figures amid the confusion of aliens and a few courier droids. Dale led them down the platform end, where transparent walls gave them a view over surrounding Gamesh, shadows from mesa walls creeping across the city sprawl as the sun lowered in the west.
The train arrived in a decelerating rush, and they entered at the very rear segment. There were few seats in the big interior tube, most of the space reserved for the standing crush at rush-hour, and they held to overhead straps, the other hand inside their cloaks, and trying not to make it obvious that they were carrying something heavy underneath. Dale noted a few looks their way, but not too many — Gamesh was a diverse and crazy place, and there were many odder sights than dark-robed parren in groups.
A location display showed them thirty kilometres from Tooganam’s district, in an entirely different sector of the city. The maglev moved fast, but this route was not direct, and would only get them within five Ks. From there, they’d have to find alternative transport.
“Joker,” Dale formulated silently, “anything from Woody and Tricks?”
“I’m afraid not, Lieutenant. I’ve lost all trace, and now even their location.”
Dale fumed, and worried for his friends. “Keep on it.”
“I will. They are becoming better at masking their movements amidst the general traffic. Stay alert, I doubt I’ll be able to give you much warning if they’re on top of you.”
“Copy that.”
Milek lifted the rim of his hood just enough to catch Dale’s eye, with a hard, indigo stare. He jerked his head back up the train. Dale nodded warily, and Milek went, a slow stroll up the humming train, as urban vistas and red-brown cliffs came sailing by. ‘If they’re onto us’, Milek’s gesture meant, ‘they could already have someone on the train’. Someone, or something. Rapid Response used droids of all kinds.
The train arrived at a new station, this one amid a cluster of tall buildings, and a large number of passengers got on and off. Dale saw some cloaks and hoods amongst them, and wondered, finger on his rifle safety beneath his own cloak. A female tavalai had a pair of children with her. One of the kids held a container of water, with a pet water creature of some kind, eating green moss. Dale had never had much time for human kids, let alone alien kids, but these two were cute, with big eyes and oversized heads. They talked with their mother in Togiri, oblivious to any danger. Dale had seen dead tavalai kids before, on stations and ships during the war, and it wasn’t something he ever wanted to see again. He repressed several bad words, and stared out the big, concave rear window.
Something made him look up. There was a small silver dot up there, gleaming against the pale yellow sky. A drone. Plenty of those in Gamesh, but this one was holding position right over them. He turned back, and looked up the train, past the tavalai family. One of the newly arrived cloaked figures was looking at him. Within the hood, where an alien face should be, he caught sight of steel, and a synthetic red eye. A droid.
Behind the droid, a second cloaked figure pulled a weapon from robes, levelled it at the back of the droid’s head, and fired. The droid fell in a jerking spasm of servos, and slammed into the train door, a rifle revealed within the cloak, clutched in steel fingers. Dale and Reddy pulled their own rifles, while Milek turned, and shot a second droid in the face, lightning fast.
Passengers yelled in shock and panic, some staring, others running. “Go!” Dale yelled at those nearest, pulling back his hood and mask, as those nearest now stared at him. “Go that way, quickly! Tonada-ma! Tonada-ma!” At the tavalai in particular, as Reddy moved fast to help Milek, and Kadi pulled his hand-controller, AR glasses down, seeming to prefer that to any weapon.
Dale turned his attention back to the drone, still trailing above and behind. That would be the controller, tasked to keep eyes on the target while HQ would coordinate the rest of the assault. He could shoot it down from here, but they’d just replace it with another one — and if he exposed himself shooting at it, they could probably do the same to him.
More shooting up the train, as a third droid took out some windows, and Reddy blew its head off. “LT, these fuckers are just shooting past civvies!” Reddy growled, crouched low amidst civilians now wisely flattening themselves to the floor, or crouched behind the few chairs. “It’s like they don’t even care!”
“Yeah, well Tooganam warned us,” said Dale. The tavalai family hadn’t moved, he saw with exasperation — the mother huddled against a wall with an arm around each kid. Not especially stupid, considering that the shooting was happening in the direction Dale had told them to go, and their own automated security force seemed less cautious of civilian casualties than the humans were.
Dale took up cover in front of them, away from the train’s transparent tail, and watched up the train, where several entire segments now lay flat or low, while the train’s far end ran and crowded further up. “Watch those civilians!” he told Reddy and Milek. “Any of those on the ground could be droids, don’t trust it!” As Reddy removed one hood w
ith the muzzle of his rifle, then finding a terrified kratik, moved on. Some others pulled their hoods down, only too happy to show they weren’t droids.
“Station coming up,” Jokono informed them. “One minute, disembarking on the right.”
Dale gestured at Kadi. “Kid, can you get me intercom on this train?”
Kadi blinked. “Sure, I can get you control of the whole damn train if you want?”
“No, leave that to Joker. We’ll need you to get some of these damn droids.” Kadi pointed his handheld at the ceiling, and manipulated a few invisible icons with his other hand.
“Got it,” he told Dale. “Go.”
Dale blinked an icon on his own glasses, and activating the translator’s voice control. “Translator,” he told it, “Togiri standard.” As coms showed him a local network available, and he uplinked. “All passengers,” he said, and heard the translated, synthetic voice booming over intercom overhead. “All passengers must get off at the next station. This train is not safe, all passengers must get off at the next station. Much shooting, get off and run.”
That he might be causing a panicked rush on the platform did not bother him — if there were more droids on the platform waiting to get on, a rush might knock them off their feet. And his microphones caught a kid’s voice behind him, in Togiri, and a faint translation, “Mummy, is that a bad human Mummy? Is he going to hurt us?”
“No baby,” his frightened mother replied. “I think he’s protecting us.” And again Dale experienced the most disturbing sensation of feeling something toward tavalai other than anger and fear — an appreciation for whatever it was in tavalai psychological makeup that repressed panic, and allowed them to make rational judgements where most human civilians would be completely insensible. In combat against tavalai, that instinct was trouble, but here it was welcome. He shook it off, and moved forward to a new crouch-cover behind seats, as the train slowed, and then a platform was whizzing past on the right.
The train stopped, doors opening to a great tumble of passengers onto the platform, as though a giant hand had grabbed the train and turned it on its side. “Down and watch for snipers,” Dale told his team, watching the tavalai mother running with her kids onto the platform. “Joker, I want control of this train, we’re going to run through all stations. If we can get back to you, we will — otherwise we can at least make a giant moving distraction.”
“I’ll try,” said Jokono.
Kadi stared at Dale. “What, we’re just going to go? Make a target of ourselves?”
“We’re already a target,” Dale retorted, peering out a window at the platform. The doors hummed shut, and the train began to move. “We need a defensible position, and this train is the one thing in the city they might think twice about just blowing up.”
The train accelerated rapidly, now empty save for the three humans and one parren. “We should have kept some civilians aboard!” Milek shouted down the train at Dale. “Some hostages would have confused their aim!”
“Yeah, well I think Tooganam might just stop helping Joker if we’d done that,” said Dale. “Mystery Boy, Spots, you two take the front! Kadi and I get the rear!” Milek and Reddy took off running, the parren still in his cloak. The train now zoomed on elevated rail above a sprawl of cityscape, roads and buildings flashing by. “Joker, if they blow this train off the rail it’ll take out half a neighbourhood. They might be casual with civvie casualties but I don’t think they’re that casual, they’ll try an armed entry.”
“That would be my guess too,” said Jokono. “The train ahead has five minutes on you, but station stops cost nearly two minutes each. You will catch up with it before you reach your best destination for disembarking, unless they start skipping stations also.”
“One problem at a time, Joker,” said Dale, crouching to peer out the rear window again, in search of immediate airborne pursuit. “If you can get us a clear station and a couple of vehicles there, and we can get down into the underground levels, we might have a chance of dragging this out further.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Dale went to Kadi, and grabbed his arm. “Kid, they’re after the module. State Department will have told them by now, they’ll do anything to get it back or destroy it.”
Kadi nodded, wide-eyed. “I know. Maybe it’s better if you took it?” He reached to his pocket.
Dale stopped his hand. “No. Your controller is a support weapon — support weapons stay in the rear. You stay close to me, but you stay behind, do you understand? You stay out of my way, and give me support, and don’t let them get that damn module or the whole mission fails and the Major’s team dies.”
Kadi nodded, frightened but intense. Dale slapped his shoulder.
“Yo!” yelled Reddy from up the front. “Drones, left side!”
“And right side too!” Milek added.
Dale went to the right windows, and saw several small dots coming rapidly closer, paralleling them at high speed, weaving between towers that got in the way. “Take ‘em out!” Dale yelled, and put several shots through the hard window plastic to shatter a portion. He stuck the rifle muzzle out, took careful aim, and the tavalai rifle’s auto-sights gave him target feedback to his glasses, indicating a point ahead of the oncoming drone that accounted for the howling crosswind…
Dale fired once, and the drone lurched, then spun and dropped from view. Its neighbour fired, and Dale ducked as more holes smacked the windows. “Stay down!” he yelled for the others’ benefit. “These trains are tough, the walls are good cover!” Sure enough, the windows were smashing, but lower down, nothing penetrated. After fighting in soft-skinned civilian groundcars, that was a relief.
He glanced at Kadi, and found the Petty Officer lying flat on his back. For a moment he thought Kadi had been hit, but instead he was holding both hands up before him, like a kid lying in bed and pretending to fly an imaginary aircraft, hands on joystick and throttle. Beyond the left-side window, something flashed, and Dale rolled across to peer through door-windows for a better look, just in time to see a second drone explode, and another two evade. A fifth drone looked to be chasing them, weapon swivelling as it fired, as the confused machines wondered how to handle their homicidal companion. Another went spinning into the side of a tower with a glass-shattering crash, and the other turned and fled.
“I got a friendly coming in from the left,” Kadi announced to the others. “Don’t shoot it, it’s now on our side.”
“I copy that, I see him,” said Reddy, as a station platform went shooting by at excessive speed. “LT, they’re probing us, they’re just figuring out our capabilities. The real attack comes next.”
“I know,” said Dale, raising his voice to be sure the microphone caught his words above the whistling gale now blowing into the train from holed windows. “Just keep your eyes peeled for…”
“Lieutenant,” came Jokono’s voice in alarm, “I am registering some much larger aerial vehicles converging on your position!”
Dale looked, and where the person-sized drones had been, there now came several big, twin-nacelle flyers, capable of far more speed than this train could manage. “Looks like two are going high!” Dale observed. “And this one’s coming in parallel, hang on!”
He found some bullet holes to get a shot through, but even as he put the rifle to his shoulder, he saw the flyer’s side door opening, to reveal the rotary cannon mount within. And his heart nearly stopped.
“Get up!” Dale yelled at Kadi, grabbing him by the collar and hauling him to a stumbling run as high-velocity projectiles tore through both sides of the train where he’d been. Windows disintegrated and walls punctured with holes, snapping at their backs as they ran, the cannon traversing to follow them up the train as the gunner caught glimpses through the carnage.
Then the firing stopped, and Dale fell flat, rolling for more cover as something heavy hit the train roof, then several more impacts. “Entry!” Dale yelled, bracing against chairs and aiming as something big s
mashed through the already-shattered side windows further back. “Entry, rear!”
The thing that had come through the window unfolded — roughly humanoid with a large weapon where its right arm should have been, reconfiguring to balance and aim as Dale fired on full auto. Reddy joined in, firing above Dale’s head, and the assault droid came apart in a series of sparking impacts… only to reveal the second droid, having followed the first in, and already upright. Its big cannon fired briefly, then stopped.
“I got it!” Kadi yelled, aiming his handheld from cover opposite Dale. “I got it, don’t kill it!” As the assault droid turned its cannon, and pointed it out the window at the flyer several hundred meters away alongside, and fired. The flyer broke away in a hurry, pieces flying off. Then the droid was hit from behind, disintegrating as a flyer on the opposite side hit it amid more exploding windows.
“Yo fuck you!” Kadi yelled and rolled up to point his controller out the window at that flyer, as several more loud thuds hit the roof — the flyers overhead were dropping droids on the roof. Kadi’s flyer wobbled, then ducked left past a glass-sided building, then crunched into a blank concrete wall, with a huge fireball as its ammunition blew.
A droid smashed through the windows near Reddy, who shot it repeatedly as it refused to fall quickly, then Milek shot another point-blank, stunned it further with a blade to the neck, then tossed it from the moving train, out the window it had smashed.
“Move up!” Dale yelled, gesturing them further up the train, squinting at the howling gale that now roared through the smashed windows. “Get up the front, we’re gonna hit the next train ahead in a minute!”
“The preceding train is slowing ahead of you,” Jokono confirmed. “It looks as though central authority is using it to box you in.” Another set of station platforms whizzed by, and Dale did some fast mental calculation — they weren’t far now from where he wanted to get off. But if they stayed under fire on this empty train, Rapid Response would shred it. They needed a new ride, if only for a few more minutes.
Kantovan Vault (The Spiral Wars Book 3) Page 39
