A Taste Of Despair (The Humal Sequence) (38 page)

Klane was clearly not about to let that happen. Well in advance of the others, who were balking now that actual combat had begun, she strode determinedly towards the low-loader holding the vehicle, laying fire down around her as targets caught her eye.

For a moment, Hamilton was reminded of what had attracted him to her so many years before. The fire in her nature, her fearlessness. There was a momentary pang of regret that things had not worked out between them better.

Then a slug caught her arm, spinning her around amid shards of glittering fragments from destroyed cybernetics. Incredibly, she caught her balance and returned fire, the roar of erupting earth from the pistol shot and the scream of the injured attacker mixing in a familiar cacophony of sound that Hamilton had forgotten how much he had missed.

Since the others were being of little help, Hamilton ran forwards, laze pistol up and firing. He’d probably only get twenty or so shots before the thing exhausted the power pack at his waist, but it was better than nothing.

Since she was intent on the vehicle, he focused his attentions on the nearby troops, shooting for effect rather than trying to kill. Anything to distract them from concentrating fire on Klane.

They had been startled when she came out blasting, perhaps even a little stunned. But they were soldiers, nonetheless. They had recovered quickly and now their numbers were beginning to tell.

A second round struck Klane a glancing blow in the back. The protective armor she wore underneath the Marine suit shrugged off the round, but the impact staggered her, sending her to her knees, gasping for air.

Hamilton whirled, looking for the attacker urgently before he could get off another shot.

There!

One of Klane’s earlier explosions had stunned a group of four men. One of them had recovered enough to take a shot at her from a prone position. He was lining up another with his rifle.

The laze pistol discharged without Hamilton even having to think about it. The beam caught the soldier in the top of the head, punched through and flash-boiled his brain to steam in an instant, causing his skull to explode violently.

Hamilton continued to turn, to resume his protection of Klane’s assault on the vehicle. As he turned, he caught sight of the rest of his group, keeping low and struggling along in his and Klane’s wake. Johnson was staring at him in horror, as if he had become some kind of hideous monster in her eyes.

She saw me kill that guy
. He thought, despondently. There was little he could do about it now, however, so he merely turned and ran after Klane.

She had gotten back to her feet and was continuing on towards the vehicle, firing blast after blast at the techs working on it. Eventually they got the idea and fled, abandoning the vehicle half readied.

The soldiers that had been defending them were more stubborn. Shots whistled around Klane and Hamilton from the six men remaining, mostly aimed at Klane. Six to one odds were never a good bet and it proved no different in combat than it did at the gambling table.

Two rounds caught Klane, both in the torso. Hamilton saw the effects of the impacts rather than the actual hits themselves. Klane doubled over, still on her feet. For a moment, it seemed like she might straighten up again. Then she was falling forwards, limply, to strike the grass of the park heavily.

Hamilton was aware that he shouted out something, some curse or invective, then he was striding forward, laze pistol discharging as fast as it could recycle.

One man lost an arm, another a leg, whilst a third merely leaned forward as if to bow to Hamilton. The bow turned into a topple and then the rest were up and running, away from the area. Hamilton continued to fire shots after them until he reached Klane.

Dropping down beside her he turned her over gently and held her in his arms. For a moment he feared the worst. She seemed somehow smaller than he remembered.

Abruptly there was a mechanical noise from her face. Her cybernetic eye swiveled in its mount to point at him. Her other eye remained closed but her mouth opened.

“If you’re gonna start blubbing over me, I’d prefer it if you put me out of my misery first!” She murmured weakly.

He half sobbed and half laughed with relief and hugged her fiercely.

“Ow! For Chrissake! I’ve been shot, you idiot. I’m not your bloody huggy-toy!” Her voice was firmer, stronger. Her normal eye opened and the look she gave him was best described as a warm glare.

There was noise from behind him as the others caught up.

“Is she?” Carl demanded, flopping down next to Hamilton. The ImpSec agent he had been carrying was dumped unceremoniously to the ground.

“No. She’s not!” Klane told him. “Great! This is just what I need. Two men fussing over me like mother hens!”

She sat up then without apparent effort, but sweat stood out on her face at the effort. She pressed the alien pistol into Hamilton’s hands. “You take that. And you.” She looked at Carl. “Get to lug me around again!”

Hamilton stood up, pistol in hand. There had been a lot of men in the park. A lot of them lay stunned or injured and some were dead. But the majority of them had actually run away. Hamilton wondered how many of them were simple green recruits assigned a show detail to help them get used to their new lives in the military. Perhaps even the one whose head he’d blown apart was nothing more than that.

He glanced at Johnson. Through the faceplate of her suit she was white as a sheet and it looked as if she’d been sick inside her helmet. She refused to meet his gaze.

And, just as easily as that, it’s all over between us
. He thought bitterly.
I’m not the man she thought I was.

In the distance the sound of sirens could be heard clearly. The local law enforcement was on its way. Whilst not as well armed as the soldiers had been, they would still be armed with stunners and light arms. On their heels would be ImpSec agents, better equipped and better skilled. Behind them, the military. A lumbering bear behind the jackals and dogs, equipped beyond their skill set, usually.

It was not a good situation to be in. He glanced at the timer on the transmitter. Seventy minutes remaining. One thing was clear, they’d never get through thirty miles of cops, security agents and military in a standard car.

It was time for alternative transportation.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

By the time the local police turned up in their cruisers, heavily bedecked in bullet-proof vests and armed with assorted rifles and pistols, the scattered elements of the remaining military personnel from the park had thrown up a cordon around the area. They had blocked off the open space with anything they could lay their hands on – skip bins, vehicles, even odd lumps of masonry from empty buildings – and had settled in to wait out their attackers.

The sight of the soldiers so rattled by what had happened alarmed the police, who decided it was in the interests of safety to evacuate the area and set up a cordon of their own, further back from the soldier’s own line of defense.

The park itself had vanished in a vast cloud of smoke. The assailants had, it appeared, activated the smoke generators on one or more of the vehicles to hide their actions. Inside the dome, with no wind to disperse it, the cloud slowly expanded, hiding the tree-line at the edge of the park and then creeping inexorably out across the road that ran around the park.

At the main thoroughfare out of the central park, a dozen soldiers waited. They had already made contact with their base, some fifty klicks south of Olympus, so they knew reinforcements were coming. However, they did not like being told to “Hold the attackers within, at any cost.”

The stealthy expansion of the smoke cloud made them extremely nervous. Even more than that, however, the sudden whine of a gravitic engine starting up somewhere within the smoke cloud had them looking nervously at one another.

The sound of a second engine, moments later, deeper and with more primitive grunt to it, yet scaling up into an almost shriek like intensity, signaled the ignition of a gas turbine motor.

“Best move to the sides now lads.” The lone corporal left with the men advised. He quickly took his own advice, taking shelter behind a parked vehicle.

The other men hesitated, then as the gas turbine roared and suddenly grew louder they scattered to the sides, abandoning the makeshift barricade.

*****

The wall of smoke had reached to within twenty feet of the vehicle they had tipped on its side to block the road. Abruptly the smoke quivered, as if something within it was struggling to get out.

A moment later a huge vehicle surged out of the smoke, barreling towards the barricade at breakneck speed.

It was an Armored Fighting Vehicle, or AFV, sleek and powerful, sporting six huge tires, built to a scale that was designed to make it intimidating. The front was angled up to a point, almost like the prow of a ship whilst a twin plasma cannon turret was the sole weapon it had on display.

It struck the car that was blocking the road, knocked it flat and forced it ten feet down the road as if it wasn’t there before the front tires caught on it and the entirety of the multi-ton military vehicle jumped up into the air. As it came down it smashed the car flat with its mass, the center and rear pairs of tires chewing at the flimsy metal of the civilian vehicle, tearing and shredding the bodywork. As the rear wheels left it they seemed to give it a kick, sending the remains sliding back to almost the same spot it had tried so valiantly to defend.

The soldiers half-heartedly fired after the vehicle. They knew it was pointless with the weaponry they had. The armor plating of the AFV was more than rugged enough to shrug off their slugs without even noticing them.

Behind the AFV, twenty feet up, a Falcon light gunship emerged lazily from the smoke, as if there was no rush at all. Its gravitic engine was drowned out by the shrieking of the AFV’s gas turbine, giving the illusion that it was totally silent. It seemed to pause at the edge of the smoke cloud, as if surveying the scene, before it drifted almost casually after its land-bound companion, the remains of a tree branch dropping from one of its stubby winglets to fall on top of the mangled car.

The soldiers fired a few shots but, once again, there was nothing they had that could do any real damage to the gunship. It ignored them totally and, truth to be told, that was more than fine with them.

*****

In the Falcon, Hamilton watched through the rear belly turret’s transparency as the soldiers took a few desultory shots at the gunship. One round pinged off the transparency harmlessly, but he rotated the turret so that its single laze pulse cannon pointed at them. They swiftly scattered.

He had no intention of shooting at them. He figured they had suffered enough already.

LeGault, naturally, was up in the pilot’s seat. He admitted to never having flown a gunship, but then cursed his honesty by stating “How hard could it be?” Not surprisingly, he had flown straight into a tree on his first attempt at leaving the park.

Behind him, occupying the navigator and weapon’s officer post, was Johnson. She didn’t look terribly happy at the moment. Whether that was because of the general situation, or Hamilton himself, he didn’t know. But she hadn’t complained when told to go aboard the Falcon. Navigation was about all she could do in the position. The Falcon, normally replete with all manner of air-to-air and air-to-ground ordnance, had been stripped of munitions for the recruitment drive. The rear laze cannon and a small plasma tube at the front were the only weapons remaining to it and then only because they were integral to the airframe.

Both the Falcon and the AFV had been brought in on low-loaders, as per standard military procedure when in a civilian area. Likewise they had been stripped of any dangerous ordnance and made “safe” as much as possible to prevent any chance of an accident.

The making safe hadn’t lasted long. Jones, armed with a large number of military engineering codes had found a way in to the vehicle’s computers. Once in, it was little effort for him to unlock all the systems.

The first thing they had done was start the smoke generators that some of the vehicles were equipped with, giving them cover and ensuring they could continue to work without fear of being sniped at by the returning soldiers.

Then they had picked which of the vehicles to use. There was a grav APC that the techs had been working on when Klane had burst out of the Institute. Both Klane and Hamilton had taken one look at it and shaken their heads. It was pretty, but grav vehicles, especially ones designed to only hug the surface, were vulnerable to Pulse mines – smaller cousins of the EMP warheads – and tended to become just a large chunk of immobile metal when one went off underneath them. Given what Walsh was likely to throw at them, it was not a god choice.

The six-wheeled AFV, by contrast, was old and reliable. Both Klane and Hamilton had ridden in the troop compartments of vehicles just like it. The solid tires and heavy construction made it highly battle-resistant. The twin plasma cannons, deactivated for the recruitment drive, quickly came back online. Whatever the AFV itself couldn’t batter its way past, the cannons would soften up or dispose of rather effectively.

The Falcon gunship, though lightly armored in comparison, made up for that lack with agility. Having the gunship run interference for the AFV would improve their chances of escape immeasurably.

The downside with being in the belly of the gunship and facing rearwards was that he had no direct visual input on what was going on ahead of them. A tiny display did show the forward gun’s view of the terrain, but it was subject to movement by the pilot.

Maybe I should have gone in the AFV
. He thought. At
least I could see what was going on.

*****

In the big AFV, Carl was at the wheel. Part of his skill set as a bodyguard involved defensive driving techniques, so he was the best choice as a driver. Klane sat next to him in the two man crew compartment, manning the gun turret.

She was in considerable pain, but they had brought a small supply of battlefield meds along on the mission, expecting at some point that somebody would get hurt. Even so, having two rounds embedded in her abdomen were doing her no favors. Her damaged cybernetic arm was giving out pain signals, too. Once again she mentally cursed the medics at Tantalus Station who had replaced the military-grade limb with a standard civilian prosthetic.

But she had one good arm and the turret was joystick controlled, so she could sit and man the cannons easily enough.

“Uh-oh!” Carl muttered, peering at the view-panel in front of him. The AFV had no physical viewports. Everything was relayed by hull-mounted cameras.

Klane glanced at the turret’s eye view she was presented with.

Ahead, the second cordon, thrown up by the local police, came into view. It was comprised of two vehicles, parked diagonally across the roadway to prevent passage. The standard tactic of police everywhere.

Of course, such a roadblock was never meant to prevent something like the eight ton AFV and the cops manning it knew that. As the AFV barreled towards them, they hastily abandoned the barricade, scattering to the sides. A few of them fired at the vehicle with rifles and pistols. Small caliber, low velocity sidearms that had about as much effect on the AFV as if they had been throwing dried peas at it.

From somewhere overhead, the gunship fired its forward mounted plasma tube, striking the ground just in front of the roadblock, blasting the road surface to fragments and hastening the officers’ retreat.

The gunship fired again, but this time its shot went beyond the cars, again striking the roadway.

“Oh, for…!” Klane muttered, wrenching the turret’s joystick around. A moment to aim, then she thumbed the firing button.

The twin turret’s discharge caused the AFV to rock slightly. Both plasma bolts struck the left hand vehicle, vaporizing the engine bay and sending the rear half of the vehicle cartwheeling through the air to smash into the building next to it.

There was no time for a second shot. The AFV’s size made it look like it was moving slowly, but it was an illusion. Hurtling forward, Carl clipped the remaining vehicle expertly, sending it spinning off the road and into a set of stone steps leading up to a house entrance. The steps and the vehicle came off equally badly, shattered and smashed in equal amounts. The AFV roared past the roadblock.

Carl glanced over at Klane, grinning happily. “I always wanted to do that for real!”

Despite the pain, she found herself grinning back at him.

*****

In the back of the AFV in the troop compartment, Jones sat with a laze pistol in one hand and a stunner in the other. Tane sat across from him, apparently lost in thought. On the floor between them, the ImpSec agent that Walsh had possessed lay unmoving, but breathing. She was still unconscious.

Jones wondered who she was. Someone important in ImpSec, of that much he was certain. It didn’t seem likely that Walsh would implant just anybody. The man’s arrogance wouldn’t allow that. He’d want control of the best and most important individuals. Either way, she was a captive now.

Jones had few scruples. He was a thief, after all. But even he felt a little twinge of sympathy for what the woman would endure, if they managed to escape with her. She was the first obvious link to the alien invasion of human space that they had found. She would be poked and prodded, presumably by Anderton, as they tried to fathom how Walsh’s control implant worked. Unlike her assertions when she had confronted them, her future was not looking terribly bright.

“So,” He said conversationally, more to distract himself from his train of thought than any real desire for discourse. “What’s it like being a psion?”

Tane looked up and smiled. “Not nearly as much fun as you might imagine.”