by S J Hunter
The external door at the top was unlocked and quiet, and then there was a short hall to the open door from which the loud voices still sounded.
The guards in this tranquil country setting were indeed in a different frame of mind than the ones in Bedford’s showy mansion in the city. Of the three sitting at the poker table, only one even noticed her at the door, and that one got two duoloads before the other two saw his startled expression and turned. She shot the next two while moving diagonally and rapidly into the room, and neither of them got off a sound other than the typical paired grunts as darts hit them. It was so nice not having to face alert men shooting guns at her. She loved the country.
She’d been lucky indeed. The poker room appeared to be the actual security center. One wall was covered with monitors and equipment, all of it functioning perfectly. With wonderment, she saw the monitor that showed an expansive view of the acueye covering the orchard, the route she had just taken to reach the garage. In both modes, photopic and infrared, despite her mud camouflage she must have been captured by the sensors as she threaded her way through the trees. She looked back at the table. The three now-sleeping players were all still flush with chips, to variable degrees, although two of them had scattered their piles as they fell. The quadrant of the table occupied by the fourth chair, the one that faced the monitors, was clear. Someone had lost early, and left the game.
Livvy grinned. She loved poker, too.
Remembering Chris’ admonition, she went over to the wall of monitors and equipment and proceeded to use her Attach’n’smash to access every panel. Exposed quantum CUs were supposed to be very vulnerable to decoherence, and although she knew even less about that than she did molebiol, she did know that stale potato chips, peanut butter cups, and warm beer weren’t good for anything, so she sprinkled them liberally over the exposed CU innards. The mixture should be as effective as Chris’s gunfire, and it was a lot quieter.
She blamed her fatigue for what happened next, because otherwise she wouldn’t have made the easy assumption that the fourth man at the table was sleeping it off somewhere, and she certainly never would have set her Stinger down on the table so she could work with both hands unencumbered. She heard the man’s voice first, just an instant before he came around the corner of the door jam. He was securing his fly as he entered the room.
“Will someone grow some balls and start betting their hand before…”
The very young-looking, slight man looked up to see his fallen comrades and a second later spotted her. Fortunately, although his mouth fell open he didn’t shout – which she took as a sign that there was no one left within earshot – and he didn’t go for a gun – another good sign – but he did take off at a healthy speed. She grabbed her Stinger and took off after him for the same reason she had removed her shoes earlier. Another rule: if you are counting on surprise, gotta preserve it.
He made it down the stairs and out into the open in front of the stable before she could get her Stinger to bear, although in desperation she sent three darts after him that missed. He was well into the courtyard before she got her focus back and hit him with two duoloads, at which point he stumbled into one more step then fell forward and skidded for a foot before he stopped.
She’d had no choice but to follow him, but she knew enough not to waste time looking around before she rushed over to him and dragged him quickly into a box stall. Her shoulders tensed from the expectation of a challenge, but none came. Talking softly to the nervous horse, she listened. No shouted challenges, no running footsteps. No time to dwell on her luck. Her original plan had been to finish in the garage building and then circle behind the stable to get to the cottages, but there was no point in backtracking now.
As she left the box stall she picked up something in her foot, a piece of sharp debris, and she had to stop and pull it out. Very bad for the horses, she thought. She missed her shoes.
*****
Chris had been focusing on Williams intently but when Bedford got up and walked over to the desk his attention was caught by movement within the idyllic scene framed by the French doors. Bedford was already at his desk and turned back into the room when Chris caught sight of a man running into view from the direction of the garage, with Livvy about six meters behind him in full-out pursuit, gaining ground. Several of the horses that had been looking out withdrew their heads. She had her pack still slung over her left shoulder and her Stinger in her right hand, and in the few seconds Chris was watching she aimed on the run and presumably shot, because the man finally went down. It was just seconds, Chris knew, but it seemed to take an inordinately long time.
Chris stopped looking directly and kept his gaze directed at Bedford, but out of the corners of his eyes he watched her efficiently drag her victim into a stable box. When she came back out, she started running across the courtyard towards the cottages, but almost immediately skipped for several steps, favoring her right foot, until she stopped completely and picked up her foot to check the bottom. Chris noticed she was barefoot and covered in mud, and he forced himself to keep his face expressionless and stop watching. When he looked again, she was gone.
Chris glanced back at Williams. He’d seen. Having turned to watch Bedford get the gun from the desk as well, he’d probably seen the whole thing. He did not, however, continue to track Livvy’s progress. When Bedford looked up again, Williams had turned back to Chris and was staring at him with an enigmatic smile. With his back to the window, Bedford returned to the side chair and sat back down. He was carrying the handgun and pointing it squarely at Chris.
Livvy was behind schedule, or to put the blame where it was due, he had not been able to think of anything that new or interesting to say to temporize. He’d made his point with Williams; to belabor it would just irritate him. He’d apparently irritated Bedford beyond the limits of his tolerance. Chris tried to think of something to say that neither of them hadn’t heard many times before. He was very tired, and the arguments were very old, and no one ever seemed to listen anymore.
Livvy must be exhausted.
Thinking of Livvy, he tried again, ostensibly addressing Bedford, but targeting Williams. “You’ve never killed someone before, have you Bedford? At least, with your own two hands. You’ve used your tools. It’s not as easy as you might think.”
“In your case, I expect not to have too much of a problem with it,” Bedford said. “It helps to think that it’s retribution for your pest of a wife as well.”
Williams glanced at Bedford and then looked away quickly.
Chris got angry, which helped. He tried to use the anger to think of something to say that would buy them some more time.
“Once you start, you’ll do it again and again whenever anyone puts a roadblock in your way. And you’ll get caught. Homicide doesn’t mind publicity.”
“Bedford, wait. He’s right.” It was Williams. “Not here. LLE may ignore and even conceal a lot to avoid cases getting to the media, but the murder of an LLE detective in your own home… If McGregor disappears and is eventually found murdered, LLE would never let up. There is too much we don’t know to be able to eradicate all evidence of his presence here, besides the fact that you must have one or two staff members on the premises. I mean, besides your security? No matter what happens with LLE, Homicide loves publicity, he’s right about that, and if you kill him here, there will be witnesses.”
“Not necessarily,” Bedford said, turning the gun towards Williams and shooting him in the chest.
He was moving the gun’s muzzle back towards Chris’ face when Chris pushed hard with his feet and threw his weight against the back of the heavy chair, sending it tipping over backwards. He continued the roll and then scrambled sideways, using his hands and knees, to reach the fireplace. It was excruciating, nauseating really, but he grabbed the poker deftly enough and used his extended arm like a spear thrower to launch it at Bedford, who had moved forward to get a clear shot. The poker hit Bedford on the right arm and shoulder hard enough t
o make him drop the gun and grunt, but it missed his head.
Bedford was cursing and reaching towards the gun on the floor when Chris made another awkward dive to reach Williams. The other LLE detective was lying on the floor where he’d been thrown by the impact of the bullet hitting his side, but he’d been able to draw his Stinger and he was trying to bring it to bear on Bedford when Chris grabbed it out of his hand and fired.
A Stinger dart could hit anywhere and have an almost instantaneous effect, which was part of its charm. The dart hit Bedford in the leg just as Bedford’s groping hand curled around the gun, and he folded before he could aim it. The report of the gun sounded loud in the quiet of the library, and the bullet went off into the fine cherry floor, splintering it.
By then the two guards, no doubt attracted by the first shot, were at the door and Chris had all he could do to shoot cleanly from the floor around the chair legs, hoping that their instincts to focus on a human target and fire were less finely tuned than his. Mostly they were. The first guard through the door got off one wide shot before going down with a duo-load in him. The second got off two poorly aimed attempts, one of which hit Chris in the shoulder and the other, like Bedford’s, went into the floor as the duo-load took effect.
Chris waited another minute, braced on the floor, but no one else came through the door.
“As far as I know,” Williams said harshly, “he only has the two in the house.”
Chris glanced at him. He appeared to be breathing strongly enough, but there was a spreading bloodstain on his side.
“You have a comu?” Chris asked, using a chair to lever himself to his feet. “Call it in to medical. I’m busy. Here, use this. Put some pressure on it,” he added, tossing Williams a silk pillow.
Williams was fumbling with his comu when Chris walked carefully over to each of his three victims, collected their weapons, and put a second dart in them. He shoved Bedford’s gun into his belt and headed for the French doors.
There was a sort of a pop and flare from the direction of the cottages. Chris thought he recognized a firebomb, and lengthened his stride. As he passed Williams, he glanced down. The wounded detective had finished with the comu and was using the pillow to good effect.
“You’re still a… self-righteous bastard,” Williams said, “but you had… good point. About Bedford. One sorry… son-of-a-bitch.”
“I think the house is clear. I’m going after Livvy. If she doesn’t make it,” Chris said, “then neither will you. Other than that, you look reasonably good.”
As he reached the doors he heard gunfire from the direction of the cottages.
*****
Running gingerly on the balls of her bare feet, Livvy raced across the rest of the courtyard into the cover of the smaller cottage, the one furthest from the house. She had been easily visible from the house for a long time. She could only hope that the fact that her assault had been largely silent and that she had just taken out the guards that were probably responsible for acueye surveillance of the exterior would be enough to preserve the element of surprise. If someone had seen her from the house, she might have just killed Chris, and they’d be coming after her with everyone they had. Stop thinking about that, she ordered.
No one came out of the first pretty little cottage. The soft grass around it and the flagstone path up to its front door were a relief. The door yielded to her Masterkey and she went through it braced, sweeping the interior. There was no one in the main room, which appeared to be a hotlab, and no one in the bedroom, bathroom, closet or kitchen. Totally empty.
She moved from window to window, peeking out each, and couldn’t spot any guards rushing to surround her. Nemesis must be playing poker, too, she thought.
The hotlab created a small dilemma, and she paused for the first time, standing in the middle of the neat little interior. She was still running on cold fury. She really wanted to destroy Bedford’s and Josephson’s little private reset facility now, before someone stopped her, but unless she succeeded here otherwise, it would be only temporary, and therefore futile in the long run. Also, although Bruno had given her some nice little firebombs, she didn’t know how things stood in the main house. One of these bombs would draw a lot of attention, and destroy the remnants of their blindside.
There was gunfire from the house, and she realized her dilemma was resolved. Stifling her fear over its significance, she went with rule three: utilize distraction whenever offered.
As she headed back out the door, she rolled a triggered firebomb back into the room. It bounced back towards her when it hit a bank of refrigerator units and rolled under a table before exploding three seconds later. The sound of the explosion, muffled by the cottage walls, was relatively soft, but it was still loud enough to echo across the quadrangle. Also, the firebomb sprayed an accelerant liberally throughout the small space and a majority of the room burst into flames quiet satisfactorily. No one was going to miss the fire engulfing the pretty little cottage. Such a shame.
The next cottage faced the road and had a 5-foot-wide white-columned porch at the front. She made a small concession to her abandoned stealth by going around the back to approach the front door from the side away from the courtyard. Braced with her Stinger ready, she ran in a wide arc around the corner of the cottage into its small front yard. There was a man, she could see part of his gun and arm, standing well back in the doorframe. As her arc brought her forward to where she could get an angle for a body shot, her movement must have caught his eye, because he turned jerkily from his survey of the main house and fired straight for her head. He was either lucky or an excellent shot. The bullet hit the center of her faceplate, whipped her head back and jerked her off her feet. Her faceplate spider-webbed but held, and with a considerable painful effort she lifted her head and aimed her Stinger at the door from flat on her back through her bent knees. The man was gone.
The right window in the front of the cottage opened and a bullet ricocheted off the flagstone to her right. So he’d been lucky the first time.
Then it got very serious. An arm at the second window, the left one, swept forward and threw something that looked like a small, spiked ball at her. She didn’t get a good look, but she knew what it had to be: an armor-piercing grenade. Counting to three, she rolled desperately over and over towards the cottage across the soft grass and then, as she’d been trained years ago, flattened out, trying to meld with the ground beneath her. The explosion sent tiny fragments that shredded parts of her tunic and tore into her left leg and arm in several locations with excruciating effectiveness.
Livvy rolled the few meters more that she needed to reach the cover offered by the foundation of the cottage. They knew where she was, and they had armor-shredding grenades, so she was at more risk than she had been at any time since it all started.
No hesitation. Move fast, and move forward, into the cottage, where they wouldn’t be able to use another grenade. She scrambled clumsily to her feet, charged up the steps, and headed across the porch, toggling her faceplate open as she ran. Her charge was awkward, since she was favoring her left leg and carrying her left arm clutched to her side. The shooter on the right was firing at her but she was moving fast and only one of the bullets impacted, painfully, on her upper arm. Her armor held, but she couldn’t risk another grenade. When she reached the door, she slapped it, and the preset Attach’n’smash she’d been clutching ever since leaving the last cottage did it’s magic. The full force of its power blew the door inward. Following it in and going down on her right side, she managed to land on her shoulder squarely enough to keep her Stinger steady and fire twice at the man at the left window almost on impact. There was more gunfire from behind her in the small room, and ricocheted floor fragments hit her helmet twice harmlessly. She rolled over, and found the man at the other window. He was holding a gun but once she was facing him, he didn’t fire. He just sat there with his mouth open. Slow and not very bright, she thought, but there had to be somebody else in the room, because alt
hough she got off at least one shot simultaneously with the thought, she felt the dull prick of a dart coming through armor and then acute somnolence overcame her. Stinger. So close, she thought just before losing consciousness completely.
*****
Chris started across the courtyard, throwing excess guns into shrubbery and doing his best to run while clutching his ribcage. He saw the last of Livvy’s assault: the grenade, her roll towards the cottage, and then her awkward intrepid dash. It took his breath away. He heard a few more shots from inside and saw Louie come full tilt around the corner of the cottage, take the steps up to the porch in one leap and follow Livvy inside. He’d had strict orders to stay in the car, but he must have seen Livvy and then found the pop and flare of the firebomb too much. Overcome with excitement, he’d gotten out through one of the open car windows and followed Livvy’s trail.
Chris didn’t call out to either of them; he didn’t have anything to say that wouldn’t distract them and possibly prove fatal, and he frankly wasn’t sure he could take a deep enough breath to project his voice that far.
There was no more gunfire but when he got close enough he heard a man cursing and screaming. There was also a great deal of growling.
Braced with the Stinger he’d gotten from Williams, Chris went up the steps about ten seconds behind Louie. It was a small room, so as soon as he got in and did a sweep for anything still moving he saw Josephson with half of his right forearm obscured by Louie’s fully exposed teeth. There was a Stinger lying at his feet, along with an expanding pattern of blood from his arm. Louie was looking up at Josephson with a fixed expression, growling and tugging on the arm enough to keep him off balance.
Livvy was lying at Chris’ feet. He knelt stiffly to check on her. Although her left leg and arm were bloody, the bleeding appeared to gotten very sluggish now that she wasn’t in full-on attack mode, and she was breathing strongly. Williams should have already called for a medivan, which meant that they’d be there in just a few more minutes.
