Drakon (26 page)
"My God, that
was
a gun! A machine gun!"
Breathe slowly. In. Out.
"We've been caught in a coup or something." Henry's words came back to her. "Oh, my God, we're being attacked by drug runners!"
CNN and the evening news flashed through her mind. WALL STREET FINANCIERS TAKEN
HOSTAGE; the
Post
would banner-headline the whole thing. Connie Chung would do a special report.
Jennifer's mother would have a seizure.
The pain in her fingers shocked her back into awareness. She had been gripping the coarse coral limestone of the planter hard enough to bruise. In the silence the loudest sound was her own breathing; she forced herself to take slow deep breaths, lowering her head until only her eyes showed over the edge of the planter and the low flowering vine within. From here she could see a corner of the main central block of the house and the darkened approachway and gardens before it. Tensely she waited. Nothing happened, for long enough that the night air cooled the sweat on her skin and brought goosebumps.
I didn't imagine that,
she told herself. Then again, she hadn't seen anything except lights, either.
She heard the sound of feet on the crushed oyster-shell of the drive. There was a little more light there, enough to tell that a human figure was coming up from the waterfront. It turned and walked toward her; she shrank back. A man, two; black men, in gray uniforms, and each carrying a weapon. Some exotic-looking thing, one slung across the first man's chest, the other carried at port arms. They passed by ten feet away, heads turning alertly, heavy goggles making their faces insectile in the night.
They looked like soldiers, or policemen.
Or rent-a-cops,
she thought, relaxing slightly. Yes. There had been security guards around earlier in the day dressed like that—although
they
hadn't been carrying machine pistols, or weapons of any sort. The men passed by and moved further from the house, vanishing in the darkness.
More footsteps; lighter this time, and quicker. Another dim figure, this one moving at a quick gliding run. Bare legs flashed in the dim gloaming.
Ingolfsson?
Jennifer wondered. Impossible to tell for sure at this distance, and she—he, whoever—was turning away, toward the main block and the entrance. A few moments later there was another sound. A screech, like nothing so much as a cat out prowling for battle and fornication . . . except that it was far too loud, and somehow the modulation sounded like a voice.
"Weird," she muttered, rising.
Nothing cataclysmic seemed to be happening. She rose, feeling a little foolish as she climbed back through the balcony and firmly shut the french doors. There had to be some sort of rational explanation for all this.
Henry's paranoid, it goes with his job.
He was a dear, but she had to watch out for that us-against-the-world attitude, it was catching.
"Urk!"
Jennifer squeaked and jumped. The knock at the door repeated. She opened it a crack, to see Tom Cairstens smiling urbanely in the corridor outside.
I am not nervous.
She opened the door and stood aside, but the IngolfTech executive shook his head.
"Ms. Feinberg?" he said. "I noticed your lights were still on. Sorry about the noise just now. We've got a fair number of construction workers down by the new lab extension, and—well, they tend to celebrate a little hard, sometimes. It seems there was a wedding, or a christening, something like that, and the rum flowed a little freely, not to mention the firecrackers. Our security guards have everything under control, no need to call in the local police, even."
"Oh."
I feel silly.
"I thought I heard gunfire. And why did the phones go out?"
"One of the guards let off a few rounds into the air. Bad habits, I'm afraid—they're Haitians, you see, there isn't much local labor available for this sort of work. Good people, loyal as Dobermans, but a bit rough sometimes. One of them drove a backhoe through the cable to our satellite uplink; it's back in order now."
"Oh. I see. Thanks."
"See you tomorrow, Ms. Feinberg."
I feel
really
silly.
Drug runners. Terrorists. Hostage-taking.
I watch too much CNN.
Suddenly she felt sleepy, in reaction to the adrenaline perhaps, or just because it was late; after one, by now.
"Thanks, Mr. Cairstens." As the door closed, she remembered. "Ohmigod.
Henry.
The poor guy got cut off right in the middle of the call."
She dashed over to the phone and punched the number; a voice at the back of her mind noted dryly that she had it memorized by now. Jennifer told the voice to shut up; it sounded unpleasantly like her mother.
A voice growled in her ear on the other end of the line. "Jesus? No problem, I can get the ticket and you can tell the captain—"
"Henry, it's Jenny."
"Shit. Hell, sorry, I mean . . ."
"You were worried." She paused, and said softly: "You were coming
here,
weren't you?" An emergency flight to the Bahamas was not petty cash on a police lieutenant's salary.
A long silence. "Hell, I've got vacation time coming."
"You're a sweet guy, you know that, Henry?"
He snorted. "I'm a worrywort. Look, I don't want to crowd you, okay? I'm not looking over your shoulder or anything."
"Nothing wrong with a little of that." She gave an involuntary yawn. "We did have a little excitement here; it turned out to be some construction workers driving a backhoe around to celebrate something or other."
"Yeah? You can tell me about it when you get back."
"See you. I've got a working breakfast tomorrow . . ."
***
Kenneth Lafarge ignored the scuba gear that lay around the end of the knotted rope. Life was one footstep after another, until the cord was in his hands. Balance changed as the softsuit ejected its water ballast and inflated temporary air-cells to make him buoyant. A touch of the hands, and he floated upward along the rope. Weight caught at him, and he fought down a scream as he hauled himself over the railing of the boat. He fought back another as rough hands helped him.
"I'm . . . fine," he gasped, waving aside the crewmen. "Get going,
now.
"
The boatmen were mercenaries; they shrugged and obeyed, leaving him to walk in a straight, slow line to his cabin. The boat's diesel blatted, then settled down to a steady burbling. He opened the door—anyone else trying that would get an unpleasant surprise—and let the softsuit fall to the floor in a thin puddle as he stumbled to the bunk. It collected itself and slithered to the table and up one leg, pouring itself into a container the size of a pocketbook to recharge and repair.
This time he
did
groan between clenched teeth as the air rasped at the burns and bruises that covered most of his skin. His right hand was swelling and red as boiled lobster from the two pointblank hits.
According to the techs back home, a softsuit probably couldn't take close-range plasma bolts from a standard Domination hand-weapon. Apparently the United States of Samothrace built its agents better armor than they thought.
Enough better. Just. He staggered to the bunk and fell into it.
The suitcase clicked beneath the bed. He lay panting in the dark, his eyes swimming with the aftermath of the booster chemicals, as tendrils felt their way over and beneath him. They crisscrossed his body in a dense web, creeping into the corners of his eyes, nostrils, mouth. Things pricked his skin, and the pain diminished. Coolness soothed; there was a muted buzzing as dead skin was debrided away and replaced with temporary patches that would speed regrowth. Tentacles thin as wire and stronger than thought manipulated his gun hand.
no serious degradation of function,
the AI said with indecent cheerfulness,
you will recover
full effectiveness within five days, including metabolic stress from the combat drugs.
Which took a little off your lifespan every time you used them—but it was better than being dead.
His stomach twisted at the memory of the fight. Neural-link simulators could feed in scenarios of what it was like to fight a
drakensis
hand to hand, but there was still a difference when it was for real. His gut heaved again at the memory of the raw strength behind the grip that had spun him through the air, hearing again the guttural snarling of a tiger about to kill.
How can anyone mistake it for a human being?
he thought. The face had been like a beast's, too; the sort of expression an antelope would encounter on the very last lion it ever saw.
it was not attempting deception with you,
the machine answered pedantically.
presumably it
takes more care with the local humans.
I failed,
Ken sighed. His hand tightened toward a fist until the twinges warned him.
I should have
killed it!
a scouting operation,
the AI replied.
there will be other opportunities.
After a moment:
sleep.
Thirty hours to the dropoff point near Miami. He could sleep the entire time. Darkness closed over him, as welcome as his mothers touch.
***
Alice was waiting; she gave a jump and squeak of startlement as Gwen appeared. Then her eyes widened at the Draka's appearance. Gwen was still running with sweat, and there were bleeding grazes on her flank and one arm; they clotted with inhuman speed. Her chest heaved as lungs pumped oxygen into the bloodstream. Skin twitched as overprimed muscles sought release. She fought down another snarl.
"What
happened?
" Alice asked, crossing her arms on the breast of her robe in an instinctive gesture of self-protection. The Draka caught an edge of the creamy scent of fear; her mask had slipped a bit under the stress, and the other's subconscious was reacting to what it perceived.
"Bit of an emergency," Gwen replied, watching patterns of heat through the Australian's facial skin.
They made her seem to glow from within, like a lantern. "It's over for now. I'll explain later."
"All right," Alice said, dropping her eyes.
Good, she's learning,
the Draka thought She looked good.
Delicious.
Without looking up: "Do you still want to . . . ?"
Gwen nodded.
"That's fine with me." An uncertain smile. "You
are
very good at it."
"After four-hundred-odd years of practice," Gwen said, advancing, "I should be."
She pulled the blond woman's arms down, then stripped off the robe. Alice shuddered at the musky smell of her sweat, then again as Gwen bent and took a nipple between her lips. She cried out in surprise as the Draka put a hand beneath her buttocks and lifted her smoothly into a fireman's carry across her shoulder. And again as the fingers probed her openings, halfway between a moan and a protest.
"This will be a little different," Gwen said, as she strode easily across the terrace and into the bedroom. "More strenuous."
The scent was intoxicating; she bit at the thigh next to her cheek, just hard enough to draw a squeal.
"I had to go into combat overdrive and didn't have the chance to expend much energy. I'll have the jittering judders for days unless I work it off now."
The squirming within the circle of her arm had no more chance of dislodging itself than it would have from a similar thickness of steel cable; and in any case, it wasn't an attempt to escape. The soft helpless movement was extremely pleasant, like a kitten's paws batting at her hands. It helped flip the savage focus of killmode over into an equally directed urge: lust, but with an edge to it, raw and direct.
She tossed the other down on the bed and climbed onto her, straddling Alice's shoulders and linking hands behind her neck. The Australian's eyes were wide and her mouth trembled slightly. Her heartbeat hammered in Gwen's ears, nearly as rapid as her own pulse. The Draka's thumbs caressed the other's cheeks and the angle of her jaw, then drew her upward as she sank down.
"So play pony for me, Alice."
Thomas Cairstens pedaled faster and looked down at the speedometer of the bicycle.
Twenty. For
ten miles, the way she was going.
He'd cut across the circle of her course.
Jesus.
Gwen was loping along on the foot-trail beside the laneway, keeping pace without visible strain and hurdling boulders and logs with an easy raking stride. The scent of pine was strong in the cool dawn air, but the flicker of light in the east was bright enough to give a hint of the heat that would come later. The Draka moved through the dappled half-light with a wolfs concentrated economy of motion; he could barely hear her footsteps on the rocky limestone soil. She slowed as they angled back into the gardens, down to a trot and then a walk by the freshwater pool.
He dismounted and stood panting as she shed lead-weighted anklets, bracelets and waist-belt.
"Impressive," he said.
Gwen was breathing deeply, and the sweat-wet exercise tunic clung to her. "Ironic," she replied.
He raised an eyebrow.
"The way we're designed, we'd be the ultimate terrors in a world where wars were fought with rifles, or better still swords." She nodded toward the bicycle. "But on that, you're nearly as fast as I am; in a car, much faster. I can see in the dark—so can an IR scope. I can do differential equations in my head, but not as well as a computer, not even
your
computers. I've got a built-in drive to fight—and apart from some infantry mopping-up actions at the end of the Last War, it's been about as much use as an udder on a bull for four hundred years. Until now."
"What do you fight in your own world?" he said curiously. "You said it was very peaceful."
"Animals," she said. "Including ones we designed intelligence into, to make them more dangerous.