She waited, listening for sounds of alarm. Nothing. She checked their dying AIs. They were not communicating with any of the other soldiers.
It is so easy, said her AI, a sense of shock in its words.
It’s nothing of the sort, thought Helena grimly, her gut churning.
A swell of noise rose from the people in the square. The first load of people were being corralled towards the transport. If they stumbled they were beaten. A number fell to the ground under the blows to their heads and faces.
Some of those who were watching pressed in, trying to help others who had been crushed and injured.
Four of the soldiers standing near the shuttle swung their rifles down and fired casually into the group. Bodies dropped and an infectious mist of screams rose into the air. As the terror rippled through the crowd, Helena heard shots coming from the street directly below. The crowd had nowhere to run. Even if they were thousands while their opponents barely constituted three dozen they didn’t turn on the soldiers.
Her AI was repeatedly informing her that she needed to leave, that her chance of finding the child’s parents were negligible. She tried to get her AI to shut up so she could think through her rising frustration. It loudly demanded that she flee, that she avoid getting involved.
Why don’t they do something? she wondered despairingly.
The crowd gradually quietened down. The sound of gunfire still ricocheted from the centre of the square. A group of fifty was singled out from the crowd. They were moved into the empty space. Then twenty of them were shot where they stood. The remaining thirty or so were not placed in the shuttle but were told to stand at its entrance.
There was no pattern in how they’d chosen the group. There was an old woman, children, grown men and women. Even with the evidence in front of her eyes, she could not believe that they were going to be killed. She felt like a child, battered by feelings of impotence and rage. Denholme’s face came unbidden to her mind, the abandoned baby screamed desperately in her ears.
Helena’s primary AI, seeing what she had decided to do, screamed at her to stop until she shut it out. Slinging the plasma rifle from her shoulders she lay down, perching on the two courses of bricks that formed the toe board at the edge of the roof.
She took aim and then unloaded a single shot at the shuttle, targeting its cockpit. The round blew through the air leaving a trail of ionised atoms. The windows of the cockpit blasted inwards, the inside exploded out. A blastwave knocked down everyone within ten metres of the ruined shuttle.
Grimly, she threw the weapon down beside her and primed a stun grenade. The crowd went wild, punching, stamping and running over each other in a bid to flee. She did not take time to listen to the street beneath her before lobbing a stun grenade over her head into the centre of the square.
It landed just as the first of the soldiers got to their feet. The subsonic woof of the grenade shook the building beneath her. Glancing over the lip of the roof she saw that the guards lay unmoving around the wreckage of the shuttle.
The four guards at the entrance to the plaza were firing wildly into the crowd surging around them as it tried to flee, but no one tackled their attackers.
The scene reminded her of antelope trying to escape lions. She’d always wondered why the herds didn’t simply turn on their predators and overwhelm them.
Helena pulled the pistols from her sides, aiming them at the closest of the soldiers. Her Tertiary AI informed her that the guns were not well enough designed to hit her targets at this distance.
Cursing with frustration, she leapt down onto the lower roof, back the way she had come. She didn’t want to let the anger fuelling her recede lest she discovered the cringing, damaged woman she knew was waiting for her once it was over.
She landed with a grunt and ran to the side of the building. One of the mercenaries had seen her descending. He was scanning the area for where she’d gone. A tracer shot zipped past her, not even close. She brought her pistols up, fired, once, twice, three then four times. The soldiers fell under the feet of a fleeing township who seemed not to notice.
Her AIs picked out the shouts of hostiles from within the bulging mass of hysteria all around. Her Secondary AI painted two mercs onto her vision as bright red outlines. They were separated by hundreds of panicked bodies.
Her Primary AI complained that she would now have to kill all of them if she wanted to escape cleanly. She disagreed, suggesting that disablement would provide her enough time to get clear.
You think this makes it easier to find the boy and get out of Africa?
She realised she hadn’t gotten that far. She had no answer for it.
Her AI glowed triumphantly. You need to think about getting from Swakupmund to London, not simply to Swakupmund. Since the western coast of the Southern States seemed to be under Indexiv’s control, how do you plan on getting away with the boy now you’ve alerted whichever the Indexiv unit is in the region to your presence?
She shook her head, keeping her eyes on the soldiers struggling to fight their way through the chaotic crowd. Her AI’s words sank like stones through her body. She knew she had fucked up.
You’ve murdered for nothing, it said.
Crouching down, she looked back towards the suburbs. She could not risk the time or exposure that dealing with the soldiers properly required. Helena was also nervous about engaging with Indexiv’s own troops, who would be far more effective combatants than the mercenaries she had just ambushed.
What’s the likelihood that Indexiv will recognise my activity here? she asked her AI.
Unity, said the AI.
She asked it whether this was a more certain conclusion than its emphatic statement that vast numbers of Indexiv soldiers would be needed to hold the town to ransom. There was a haughty pause; if it could have, it would have stuck its nose in the air.
Seeing that the guards had given up struggling to push through the crowd, having instead unshouldered their rifles, she leapt across the road to the next block of buildings, hoping she was too quick for them to aim accurately. As a precaution, she let her eyes begin a phased filter of red light. If the soldiers tried to blind her she would be protected.
Shots went off behind her. Bullets whizzed through the air where she’d just been. Turning between leaps, she saw the soldiers weren’t aiming for her but were firing into the crowd. She almost missed her footing in shock.
This is your only chance, said her AI.
Spurred on by a leaden sense of dread she sped over the roofs, driven to abandon any semblance of trying to help the people Indexiv were killing.
She reached the spot where she’d left Denholme only to find he was gone.
Helena stared silently at the empty spot, where he could have gone? The crack of rifles was getting closer.
Whatever was going on behind her, she needed to get to the Hummingbird and away. She hoped she’d made a difference, but cursed herself for acting so recklessly, unwilling to concede that she’d probably just got people killed sooner rather than later. She knew there was a good chance she’d made no impact and had, in turn, ruined her own probability of success. As her AI had said, she’d killed people and had nothing to show for it. The thought almost stopped her dead, sickening herself at the idea that a different outcome might have justified her actions.
Except if those people had gotten free it would have, she told herself. I promised myself I’d never harm another again, but this. She didn’t know what to think, how to talk to herself. I didn’t even know this might be, I couldn’t have guessed.
She came at last to a point where the sprawl of buildings became more sporadic. She bounded down from the last roof, and padded east, using her mental maps to bring her, about ten minutes later, to where she had left the Hummingbird.
She stopped to catch her breath, pulling in gasps of air. On her skin, she felt small beads of sweat forming then being dispersed by her nanomachines. It was a sensation she would normally have stopped to enjoy, the slight
tickle as the sweat was assimilated back into her biomechanical system.
A rifle was propped against the bonnet of the Hummingbird. Denholme had come back to the machine. She was pleased, but knew she would have to remind him of what he had been asked to do. He was useless if she could not rely on him.
Now that’s ironic, said her AI.
She picked the rifle up, setting it for a wide dispersal beam. It would dazzle rather than burn those it struck. She’d had enough violence to last her another life time.
Helena slung the rifle over her shoulder calling out Denholme’s name as she did so, trying to see where he had gone. She guessed he was inside the house where they had hidden the buggy, staying out of sight.
There was no response. It was then she picked up a trace of ammonia in the air, a faint residue of polyamides hovering in the breeze: the smell of detergent, the sterile, sharp smell of the Hound.
The Hound had been where she was stood, perhaps only minutes ago by the strength of his scent. The smell was something to do with the changing colour of his skin; she did not know the details of why or how it worked. All she remembered was that Oligarchs were taught to recognise a Hound by the smell. Families sometimes found ways of eliminating their rivals and Hounds had once been a favoured method until the telltale scent became more widely known.
She scanned the earth around the Hummingbird for signs of a struggle. Nothing.
All she knew for sure, from the footprints painted onto her vision by her AI highlighted, was that Denholme had returned to the buggy presumably before being attacked by the Hound. The door to the house was locked from the outside. Her AI assured her no traces of Denholme’s DNA could be detected within five feet of the door.
She had to face the prospect he was dead, but the lack of a body meant that, more than likely, the Hound had him. Raeph had been right about bringing him. She knew she should leave but couldn’t abandon yet another person whose life she could change.
As if on cue, she heard running feet from the direction in which she had come.
Unslinging the rifle, she hopped onto the first storey roof of the house and positioned herself on one knee, waiting for the mercenaries to come into sight. Her AI counted four sets of footfalls. She hoped they were bunched together.
They emerged into sight, two pairs, one on each side of the road. They were running, but more cautiously than she had anticipated. Perhaps they knew who she was. Her AI said that, on balance, her actions at the square could only have been performed by either a splinter unit of enemy soldiers or a group of Normals. Either way, those approaching now expected a heavy firefight, not a single woman armed with a laser rifle and a couple of pistols.
She shrugged, not feeling any better for its insight.
She aimed and fired. Even behind the rifle there was a flash as the widely dispersed beam filled the road in front of the mercs. She’d aimed directly at the pair furthest from her; they both fell, screaming that they could not see. The other two darted forward, rifles aimed blindly in front of them, trying to make out a target.
Helena was relieved that whatever equipment they had was not up to much. Her own AI would have warned her about the likelihood of a threat from her position on the roof before coming within in range. Theirs did not appear to have done so, even after she had fired.
Then the first round hit the wall just beneath her feet. One of the two mercs was kneeling, aiming towards her position; the other raced forward towards the front of the house. She tried narrowing the rifle’s field of fire, hoping to permanently blind the shooter, but another shot ricocheted past her, this time shattering the lip of the roof on its way through. There was a sharp puff as it exploded on contact. She ducked for cover, trying to suppress the shiver of fear that grabbed her heart. They were using high explosive rounds.
The bastards would have ripped those civilians to pieces, she thought. If those people hadn’t died, they would be maimed and disfigured for life.
If one of those rounds hits you all this outrage will be moot, said her AI. She took the hint to stop worrying about other people and think about her own safety. A slight shaking of the house let her know that the second soldier was inside, trying to find some way up to the roof.
She checked and saw he would have a hard time getting to her since there was no way up. Then shots burst through the floor around her, spreading into the air above. He was working his way across the ceiling haphazardly, towards where she was taking cover from the fire of the other merc.
The second pair of mercs were still crying out. Although no longer in pain, she could hear them calling out that they could not see. The blindness would not last more than ten minutes.
She squatted down, hands on the roof in front of her, then she launched forwards with just enough momentum to reach the roof of the neighbouring house.
She landed, counted to two and turned around to see, just in time, the merc looking back at her from a downstairs window. They raised their rifles at the same time.
She was faster. After firing off a round, she felt the beam returning to her, having coolly reflected off the glass between them. The optical phasing she’d put in place earlier saved her from being any more than slightly stunned. She shook her head and lay low while the stars cleared from her vision. She was relieved when her AI told her the merc had been blinded. Helena could not decide if it was guardedly proud of her or not.
Which left just one merc. She rolled to the edge of the roof and peered over. The street below was clear. She dropped gently to the ground behind the road. Cocking her ear, she listened for her final opponent. An ear splitting crackling of superconducting engines filled the sky overhead; she saw three large planes come in low to the south, flying towards the centre of the town. She did not have long. They were Indexiv transports. Once they discovered the complete chaos she had left in her wake, they would not be long in tracing her position.
A twig snapped. The last mercenary was standing around the corner from her, hopefully trying to figure out where she was. She inched away and felt something soft and smooth in her hair: a gecko. It had been minding its own business on the wall of the house before she brushed against it.
Decoy, said her AI. She threw the gecko past the corner of the house, wincing slightly as it sailed through the air. Stepping out behind it, she picked out the distracted soldier and shot him point-blank with a pistol. With a grunt, he tripped and landed on his back. Helena stepped over him, saw the other two she had dazzled. They were split apart now, wandering cautiously in the street, arms stretched out in front of them, calling the names of their colleagues.
Not your lucky day, thought Helena as she shot them both a second time with the rifle, making the darkness of their worlds hours rather than minutes.
She ran back to the hummingbird and, checking she still had the datastore, she pulled it onto the road and pushed it flat out east, away from the city. She’d have to go around.
“I’m sorry, Denholme,” she said out loud as Noenieput receded.
Helena was pissed with the Hound’s unpredictable behaviour.
There were those in corporate business who were brilliant but unpredictable. They only ever rose so far, not because being unpredictable made them a liability or any less superb at what they did, but because no one else could make sense of what they were about.
When a community can’t understand what its members are doing it will crash. For the Hound to take a Normal when she was not present made no sense. Denholme was irrelevant on so many levels that she struggled to see how holding him would do anything for the Hound except create a burden. Her AI was conspicuously silent but, given its increasingly emotional behaviour, Helena was unsure whether she could trust it in any event.
Besides, she only took advice that she had asked for; her AI knew she was rarely pleased when offered unsolicited help. Its recent outbursts were what told her something was wrong.
Turning north, she took the buggy out over the savannah. The carcasses of solitary st
inkwoods glowed with a pale radiance in the evening light.
As she headed north-west, her AI told her that if she looked behind she’d see a single transport coming in quickly from the east. Less than ten seconds to contact. Helena hammered the buggy to a stop underneath the nearest stinkwood and dived out, taking the plasma rifle and the pistols that were still strapped to her belt.
Running from under the cover provided by the overhead branches, her Secondary AI began changing her skin colour to match the surroundings. Turning a deep reddish sandstone, she rolled down her flight suit and stripped off her top. Her skin provided more protection than the clothing ever would.
She thanked whatever divine power that was listening as she stumbled down into a shallow depression and lay there, looking back in the direction of the buggy. She had left the engine running. At least they wouldn’t be able to tell how long ago she’d abandoned the Hummingbird.
The transport circled overhead for a few moments, before coming down a couple of hundred metres south of where she was hidden. She could make it out in the gloom; a dance of spotlights illuminated the ground around the craft as it settled onto the earth. At this distance, she could barely make out the sounds of disembarking crew over the ambient noise of lizards and insects.
The lights of the transport fanned out, briefly sweeping over the landscape. A number of smaller mammals fled from the probing brilliance into the safety of darkness. A single light passed over her position but didn’t stop. They did not see her. She shouldered the plasma rifle and tried to target the cockpit of the transport.
Stop, said her AI. She paused before firing. You would be in a better strategic position if you could secure control of the plane. She pulled the sights from her eyes and then repositioned them, but did not fire.
What are the risks? She asked.
It is inherently more risky than simply destroying the transport and eliminating its crew. It will, however, give you access to the critical advantage of speed, an element which Indexiv will not factor into their search for you until it is too late.
She mulled the idea over.
A Family War: The Oligarchy - Book 1 Page 12
