Dusk (54 page)

The bald green man kicked the floating bier
around the corner as soon as they rounded it. He then ran behind
the bier toward the five closely packed men before they could
spread out. Winberg was yanked to the side by his collar as two men
fired and Chamberlain ducked behind him. As they fired, the bald
man dropped and slid beneath the bier as it moved into them. Their
bullets trailed across the floor and ricocheted off the top of the
bier and around the sides. The man sliding under the bier extended
one arm and fired at the ankles of the two men, sweeping their legs
from under them. Suddenly, the bier flipped upright, and the bald
man hopped off his shoulders behind it. As he landed, he fired the
guns in both his hands, but Denali’s men were quick and dodged
behind the flipping bier. The bald man fired at the flipping bier
and it sparked as the bullets tore into the top. He must have hit
something vital because the bier landed on the two men who had
fallen to the floor and a third who was sheltering himself from the
impact. Then, as the bald man’s guns began to click ineffectually,
the two at the rear of the phalanx moved to either side of the
pile. But the bald man was already running across the metal slab
that now rested its full weight on the three men. He yelled, “Go!
Now!”

Cyrus pushed Winberg along the wall by pressing the
barrel of his gun into the back of his skull. Winberg saw the bald
man dive from the bier and grab a man to his left by his collar who
was trying to lift a gun. The bald man then stretched his body out
and whipped his legs around to catch the other soldier in the face.
He landed behind the man he had grabbed and brought his elbow
forcefully down on the soldier’s collarbone. Winberg was pushed
even more forcefully from behind and could only make out the muzzle
flashes as the bald man fired the gaffed soldiers assault rifle
into the soldier who stumbled from under the bier trying to raise
his gun.

Heinrick Euston had requested a transfer to
the J.L. Orbital after the fiasco in the Eurydice Gamma base. From
what little he had been told, he understood that the men they had
been overwhelmed by had not even been real espions. They had merely
been a group of scientists. Scientists. Not trained Earth soldiers.
They had been nothing more than a bunch of poindexters on a badly
timed colonization mission. And they had somehow coordinated an
attack with no obvious way of communicating, and with no weapons,
had taken out two battalions in less than twenty minutes.

It was embarrassing. Especially since the
dexter they called Milliken had separated Euston’s shoulder and
broken a bone in his forearm in the process. They had given him a
medal for his supposed valor, and one for being injured in combat,
but those medals had been so much of an insult to him that he had
merely left them in his storage cubby to collect dust. His injuries
had afforded him priority when he had requested to be reassigned to
the J.L., which was the safest duty on Asha. Along with the
transfer had come a promotion to Pentangle. One of the punty
scientists that had somehow helped the Torus sort the whole mess
out had been promoted to Hexad, all the way to Hexad, just because
he knew too much. The sunfried manpunter didn’t even have any
combat training.

…which was probably why he was being dragged
down the hall by his neck. But Euston had his own problems. A bald,
green madman was single-handedly carving up his crew. Even as
Euston reeled from the awkward kick that had caught him in his jaw
and sent him stumbling, he saw Genly Washburn go down beneath the
sparking and sputtering lev-gurney he had been trying to climb from
under. Euston caught himself with his right foot, regained his
balance, and was faced with a decision—turn and help the pathetic,
feist-hound of a Hexad, or take aim at the bald lunatic. Euston
realized it was not much of a decision at all. He had only spent
the last twenty-three Dhekads with the men of his phalanx, but even
if he had spent twenty-three
gyres
with the Hexad, the Hexad
would never truly be a part of his crew.

Euston lifted his gun as the Hexad was shuffled
away. Anno Moony collapsed, his head twisted like a mistreated
doll, and Euston looked up to see an auto-pistol, slide in the
open, empty position, filling his field of vision. He felt his head
snap back, and before his mind could fully register what had
happened, he felt the back of his head smack hard against something
as his consciousness seemed to leave his body on the wave of air
that escaped his lungs.

Cyrus could see the Paracelsus through the
window of the hallway. There was a jetway leading to it from the
main body of the Orbital. Mooring spires held it against a backing
plate, and it was aimed toward the planet as it had already been
prepared for descent by the Ashans. But he couldn’t go now because
there would be too many soldiers in the way, and he still had his
promise to fulfill.

“I have good news and bad news,” Jang’s voice
reported over the earwig. “The bad news is an Echelon ship is
docking as we speak. The good news is there’s a stellar access
point ahead, two doors to your right.”

Winberg made a good shield, but moving with
him was slow as he was neither light nor agile. Cyrus forced him
around another corner and saw the door Jang had mentioned. He
ushered Winberg forward, keeping his collar twisted in his left
hand so he could not scream for help. Perhaps if Cyrus loosened his
grip and allowed him to breathe they would make better progress,
but as Cyrus reached the second door, more footsteps than Cyrus
could count came from down the hall. Cyrus stopped, keeping Winberg
between himself and the hall as at least four men on each side
formed a fan in front of him.

“Make another move and your precious officer
gets finished!” Cyrus yelled, cranking on Winberg’s collar even
more.

“You have three seconds or we finish you
both!” one of the men yelled back, which was not the response Cyrus
had been looking for.

And then gunfire came from elsewhere in the
hall, putting at least three of the men on the ground. Cyrus fired
off a volley of his own and yanked Winberg backward through the
door that Jang had offered to open through the earwig.

Cyrus fell and pushed himself clear of the
opening, and he pulled Winberg down with him as gunfire rang out in
every direction. The door was lit up in a cascade of sparks as it
closed, and they both fell in a confused heap. Then, suddenly,
Winberg was standing with newfound agility, his own sidearm rising
to Cyrus’s face as Cyrus stood and raised his own weapon. For a
moment they held each other in their sights as a concerto of
gunfire and screams played in the hall. There were retreating
footfalls and a banging on the door.

Finally, Cyrus spoke, “You don’t have the
heart.”

“Perhaps not, but I do have the ambition, and
shooting you will add another vertex to my badge.” There was that
smirk again, but his hand was shaky. He had probably never held a
gun in his life unless it was to attach it to his belt, and that
was probably only in the few month cycles since he had been adopted
into this mockery of a military. Jang should have spoofed the
fly-eyes in this room by now, but as Winberg spoke, Cyrus subvoced
to leave them on for just a moment.

If you don’t sell it, they won’t buy
it
. That is what Winberg had told him after he had made his
request. Standing here face to face with the man that, despite
Cyrus’s own inclination, he was gaining more respect for with each
passing moment, Cyrus found it much harder to follow through with
his promise.

And then something Cyrus had not expected
happened. Winberg swung his gun inward into Cyrus’s wrist and
sidestepped. Cyrus fired off a round but missed as the butt of
Winberg’s gun buried into his wrist. Cyrus’s hand went numb and his
pistol fell to the floor. But Cyrus did not let his shock get the
best of him. Winberg had startled him, but before Winberg could
raise his gun again, Cyrus moved his leg up in a crescent and
kicked the back of Winberg’s wrist. Winberg’s gun flew against the
wall, and he stumbled. Cyrus moved toward him, but he realized
Winberg had not stumbled at all. Winberg turned, pulled a hold-out
pistol from behind his back, made a full rotation, and then
fired.

The gun went off, but Cyrus did not wait to see if
he had been shot. He lunged, grabbing the gun, and as Winberg went
to fire again, the trigger stopped against the safety catch that
had been engaged by Cyrus’s finger. Cyrus brought his elbow across
Winberg’s face, spreading a splatter of blood from his right
nostril to the left corner of his mouth. Cyrus snatched the gun
from Winberg’s hands as he fell back against the wall. The banging
on the door increased, and Cyrus heard a cranking sound that meant
the Archons were trying to manually open the door. Winberg slumped
to the floor and Cyrus flipped the gun in his hand. He disengaged
the safety, but as his vision adjusted, he saw Winberg, still
slumped against the wall, but with his original gun in his hand—and
he was raising it.

Pentangle Thurgood Sturgess had pulled the
trigger on the speed-driver to rotate the bolt that manually opened
the door that had slid down between them and the Knight of Wands.
Control in Eurydice had been belting frantically in the earwig for
him to get the door open, but he could not make the tool go any
faster. The bald man wearing the strange green make-up of the
Apostates had retreated back down the hall, drawing the full
attention of an entire phalanx of men. Sturgess and two other
Pentangles had been left to deal with the hostage situation. The
door had only raised half a hand-length above the ground when the
indiscernible screaming rising to a crescendo in the earwig was
drowned out by a gunshot from the other side of the door. Pentangle
Carlsbad had dropped to the floor as another shot rang out. He had
yelled that he could not see anything even as the door continued to
rise and the earwig chatter became scoffs of disbelief claiming the
fly-eyes had failed. Then there were two more shots.

When the door was open high enough, Carlsbad
scrambled inside gun-first and radioed that the Hexad was down.
When Sturgess had finally crawled inside himself, he saw the
strange Hexad from Earth slumped against the wall. The Hexad held a
smoking gun limply in his hand and his upper chest was covered in
blood.

…but it didn’t make any sense.

The only reason they had orders to shoot them
both was the Hexad had been ordered to wear a dual layer Synthlar
vest before even coming up to the Orbital. Synthlar was much
heavier than Comptex, but neither the ordinance on the Hexad’s
person nor that in the possession of his attacker could have
penetrated it—and there was no way his attacker would have known
that.

Then, Hexad Winberg lolled his mouth open,
and it became obvious where the blood had come from as a rivulet of
blood and a spec that could only have been a tooth oozed from his
mouth and dribbled in a thick globule onto his chest, darkening the
stain that had already begun to lighten as it seeped through the
weave of his uniform. The Hexad feebly lifted his hand and pointed
above his own head. There was a panel there that led to a vent. It
was set firmly in place, but there seemed, upon closer inspection,
to have been ruptures in the metal where the screws should have
been.

“Disengage the laser grids,” Cyrus subvoced,
moving through the vent as quickly as he could.

“They are coming in behind you,” Jang’s voice
reported over the earwig. The laser grid that impeded Cyrus’s
progress though the vent disappeared and he was immersed in
complete darkness. The lenses on his eyes automatically adjusted,
and as he moved forward, he realized that what had just happened
bothered him more than he could have ever imagined.

They won’t believe me unless you shoot
me
, Winberg had told him inside the observation hall,
and if
you don’t sell it, they won’t buy it
. Cyrus hadn’t expected the
pompous professor to put up such a fight, but for some reason,
whatever comfort Winberg enjoyed in being in charge, even on this
horribly mixed up wasteland of a planet, was impetus enough for him
to put up a fight like an uberhound on the fritz. He had
made
Cyrus shoot him, even when Cyrus had second thoughts
about it. He tried to shake off the image of Winberg’s body
launched backward by two bullets to the chest at point blank range.
At that range, chunks of flesh should have flown from the wound,
and exit wounds should have splattered the wall behind him as he
lurched away with each shot—but they hadn’t. He had asked Cyrus to
shoot him, but hadn’t let Cyrus know he was wearing a vest. Even in
an admirable gesture, he still left enough doubt in Cyrus’s mind to
make guilt an issue. But that was Winberg’s gift wasn’t it?
Manipulating people. It wasn’t much different than the gift Cyrus
himself seemed to have—only Cyrus did not use it for self-service.
Or did he? At that very moment, he was scrambling through an airway
like a vent-monkey, hurrying away from the echoes that pursued
him—and for what? Was it really for the Apostates? Was it really to
find out what link this place had to human history? Or did he only
want to know what was happening on this miserable rock so he could,
at least in his own mind, absolve his son of that monstrous deed?
Was it all just so he himself did not have to feel like he had
failed as a father?

The thought weighed heavily on his mind, but
when Jang radioed he was reactivating the laser grids to trap
Cyrus’s pursuers, Cyrus realized that whatever guilt he had in
shooting Winberg, whatever self-serving notions might have brought
him to this point, didn’t matter because Jang, Paeryl, Tanner, and
even Six believed in him. Darius believed in him. Villichez,
although Cyrus realized it all too late, had believed in him. Men
and women put their livelihoods on the line because somehow, to
them, even to the notorious Dr. Windbag, scourge of the Los Angeles
Arcology, Cyrus represented a means to an end. And whatever those
ends were, whether he felt he deserved the attention or not, he
felt compelled, in defiance of his own shortcomings, to oblige
them. Cyrus set the timed smoke charge that Aerik had given him,
and used the miniature speed-drive to grab the backsides of the
bolts that held the vent cover in place. As the vent cover fell,
Cyrus dropped into the hallway, which Jang assured him would be
empty.