The Prodigal Sun (17 page)

“The keepers of the city,” Emmerik replied.

Roche remembered the strangely robed figures who had confronted her the previous night, when she had reached out to touch one of the cemetery-rifles. “The keepers? You mean the descendants of the Dominion colonists?”

“They have guarded the city for over five hundred years,” he said. Then, with a wry smile, added: “They are also responsible for the rumors of it being haunted. If it is attacked, they will defend it.”

“But they won’t enter the city, you said.”

“Not normally, and perhaps not on this occasion either. At the very least, they will repel a ground assault, should one be attempted.” The Mbatan grabbed her arm again and dragged her forward. The first of the rebels had appeared in the foyer of the tower, summoned by the wail of the siren. “Come on.”

Neva, still slightly sleep-fogged, led the evacuation from the tower, followed by Veden and Maii. Two rebels escorted Cane with pistols at the ready. Catching sight of Emmerik, Neva hailed him loudly, with words that belied her obvious relief at seeing him.

“I leave you on duty, and look what happens. You unlucky bastard.”

Emmerik gestured helplessly at the storm. The massive clouds had almost reached the northern wall of the city. The wind had picked up to the point where its noise made speech difficult. Briefly, he explained the situation to Neva while Roche went to check on Cane.

“The underground, then,” Neva said when Emmerik had finished. “That’s our only hope.”

“Let’s pray there’s enough time.”

“But not too much.”

“Aye.” Emmerik grinned slightly. “It’s cramped enough down there without Enforcement teams getting in the way.”

Cane’s ankle shackles had been removed, but his hands remained firmly pinned behind his back. The muscles of his shoulders flexed restlessly, as though he could sense the coming battle and yearned to be free. His face, however, betrayed none of this tension; his smile was casual, relaxed, when Roche approached.

“You’re okay?”

A thin smile broke his easy expression. “Fine.”

“Did you sleep?”

“No. I didn’t need to.”

She studied his face. He showed no sign of fatigue, despite everything they had done in the previous day. She reached out a hand to touch his shoulder, and a bright spark of static electricity snapped between them.

“We don’t have long,” Neva said.

Roche raised her head. The storm was on the far side of the tower, but she could feel its rumble in the air and through the soles of her feet. The sky had darkened to the color of dried blood.

As she stared, a flyer swooped around the towers, flying low over the buildings, scanning the area. The high-pitched scream of its motors was barely audible over the noise of the storm. It dipped its nose suddenly, swooped even lower, and dropped a handful of objects into the town: armored Enforcers, drifting on jets of gas onto the streets.

Neva gestured for them to move. As one, they began to run.

At that moment, the storm front hit. A solid wall of dust struck the tower and was bisected, each half curving around the circular wall to strike Roche and the rebels from opposite sides. All was instantly confusion, with opposing gusts of wind meeting and forming a giddying vortex around them.

Someone grabbed Roche’s arm and tugged her along. She let herself be led, confident that the rebels knew where they were going and that the dust would hinder DAOC as much as it would them.

The imposing shadow of the Mbatan drifted closer, and he pressed something into her stomach. Shifting the valise to her injured arm, she grabbed at the object and felt the grip of a pistol enter her hand. The stocky projectile weapon was primitive, but she was grateful to have it nonetheless. At least she wouldn’t be totally defenseless.

Neva led them along one of the arterial routes away from the towers, heading roughly east. After half a kilometer their route switched to narrower streets and alleyways, winding circuitously between empty buildings. Skull-like, empty doorways and windows gaped fleetingly at them as they passed, glimpsed and then gone in an instant, swallowed by the thick, choking dust.

Roche stumbled in a clogged gutter and lost her grip on the valise. The thin cord tangled, causing her to trip and wrench her shoulder. The pain was blinding, and she hardly felt Emmerik’s hands lifting her to her feet, pressing the valise to her chest, and helping her along once again. The fall cost them seconds, during which time the others had disappeared from sight.

“It’s okay!” Emmerik bellowed into her ear, his mouth only centimeters away. “I know the way!”

With her eyes protected by the dust-specs that Emmerik had pressed upon her, Roche peered into the thick dust and frowned. She could barely make out Emmerik, and he was standing right there beside her. “How...?”

He couldn’t have heard her half-muttered word, but he must have read her expression of bewilderment. “Trust me!” he shouted, and quickly moved on.

Roche stumbled along with him, grateful for the Mbatan’s guiding hand on her shoulder. Together they rounded another corner, then another, and finally caught sight of a figure struggling through the wind.

Roche sighed with relief, despite Emmerik’s assurance that he knew where he was going—until she realized that the figure approaching out of the gloom was wearing full ceramic battle armor and carried a cocked percussion rifle in both hands.

She instinctively ducked to one side and dragged the startled Mbatan with her behind a nearby pillar. The domed helmet of the Enforcer, its visor a deep nonreflective black, turned to scan the area around it. She tensed as the impassive gaze swept over their hiding place, then relaxed as it drifted past.

The suit’s gloves tightened on the rifle’s handgrip, and the Enforcer continued onward, heading away from them. “Too close!” she shouted to Emmerik. “Worse than that!” The Mbatan pointed in the direction the guard had headed. “We have to go that way!”

“The others—?”

“I’m afraid so!” Emmerik turned. “We’ll have to get around the Enforcer somehow, to warn them!”

He lumbered off with Roche firmly in tow, heading down another route. The path they followed was even more elaborate, avoiding as it did any connection whatsoever with the road along which the Enforcer and the rebels had traveled. Roche kept her eyes peeled for other Enforcers searching the town, looking for them.

So intent was she on this task that she automatically ducked when a voice spoke into her ear:

Her internal voice wanted to shout, as her actual vocal cords needed to, but she resisted the impulse.

returned the Box,

An explosion ahead cut the Box off in mid-sentence, followed by the high-pitched scream of a low-flying vehicle arcing over their heads and away. The muted thud of percussion rifles pierced the aural veil of the storm and made the Mbatan’s hand grip her arm even more tightly.

Abandoning stealth, he led her along a wide thoroughfare to the source of the noises. Shadowy figures crossed their path—more bulky armor, crunching heavily across the road—but quickly disappeared. Swerving to his right, Emmerik ducked through a narrow alleyway with Roche in tow. At its end, a small courtyard exploded into light as an energy weapon discharged into a wall, splintering the dust-laden air with a short-lived corona of sparks.

They stumbled to a halt and began to retreat. Out of the gloom, before either of them could dodge, an Enforcer appeared. The suit had lost its balance, and seemed more to fall into them than attack, knocking Roche to the ground. Emmerik kicked its left leg out from beneath it, dodged a flailing arm and fired two shots through the matte glass of the visor.

The Enforcer twitched, and the powered armor magnified the motion into a body-racking spasm. One heavy boot caught the Mbatan on the hip and sent him sprawling. Roche fired wildly at the thrashing figure, not caring where she hit. Sparks and spatters of blood issued from the smashed visor until finally the massive body fell still.

Roche clambered to her feet and helped the Mbatan do the same. As he rose, Emmerik grabbed the fallen Enforcer’s percussion weapon. Shadows moved at the edge of the square, and this time she dodged quickly enough to avoid another armored figure as it staggered by, firing its percussion rifle in random, furious bursts.

A second figure danced out of the gloom, catching the armor square in the chest with one firmly planted foot, employing both balance and strength to tip it over its center of gravity. Roche and Emmerik fired as it fell. Black explosions flared on the armor’s ceramic exoskeleton, stitching a ragged path from groin to throat, until something shorted in the power-assist mechanisms and the armor became still, locking its inhabitant in a coffinlike embrace.

Cane, who had delivered the overbalancing blow, nodded appreciatively at the Mbatan, then turned to go.

“Wait!” Roche called him back, then turned to Emmerik. “Free his hands!”

The Mbatan hesitated for an instant, obviously weighing the ease with which Cane, even with his hands shackled, had overpowered two Enforcers in full combat armor.

“Emmerik!” Roche shouted. “We
need
him!”

With a faint and uncertain shrug, Emmerik placed the muzzle of the rifle against Cane’s outstretched wrists and severed the mesh chain with a single shot.

Cane smiled his gratitude at both of them. Then, leaving the second percussion rifle for Roche, he dashed off into the gloom with Roche and Emmerik vainly trying to keep up.

The sharp whiplash of projectile fire became increasingly loud as they ran, interspersed with shouts for help and cries of anger. Then, more ominous still, another sound rose above that of the wind: a deep, bone-tingling rumble that seemed to come from no particular direction. As it grew in volume, the smoke and dust around them began to agitate from side to side—not swirling as it normally did through the streets and openings in the buildings, but vibrating in confined circles. The sharp smell of ozone was almost overpowering.

A pair of Enforcers darted through the oscillating clouds, boots crunching as they came. Emmerik and Roche separated as the Enforcers’ percussion rifles swiveled and spat at them. Returning fire, they ducked and weaved around the pair, using their small advantage of mobility over the suits’ inertia. The Enforcers followed swiftly, however—the whine and clank of power-assist an atonal accompaniment to their every movement. The short hairs on Roche’s scalp stiffened as a bolt narrowly missed her. She rolled to one side with the valise clutched to her chest, wishing she’d had time to strap it to her back, out of the way. Firing over her shoulder, she weaved across the courtyard as though heading for an inviting doorway, then ducked into an alley at the last moment. Running furiously, not knowing or caring where she was headed, she concentrated solely on putting distance between herself and the Enforcer, hoping to lose herself in the dust.

Pursued by the whirring armor, she burst out the far end of the alleyway and ran headlong into another person. Limbs tangled as she fell skidding to the ground. She scrambled to her hands and knees, feeling in the dust for the fallen rifle, while the person she had collided with fought for breath nearby.

The crunch of heavy boot treads arrived at the end of the alley at exactly the same moment that the bone-tingling rumble reached a peak. With a strange sensation—as though every item of clothing on her body had suddenly inflated—the dust around her vanished.

Blinking in the suddenly clear air, she looked up. Hovering not twenty meters directly above her, all black carbon fiber and armored struts, was a troop carrier—slightly smaller than a salvage craft and shaped like a flat-bottomed bullet. The concave panels of the field-effect generators that striped its underside looked like ribs on the belly of some deep-sea beast.

The troop carrier was using its field-effect to clear the dust. “Roche?” Emmerik’s distant shout distracted her from the sight hanging above her. Blinking, she turned away, and belatedly realized that the footsteps of the Enforcer following her had ceased.

The armored figure stood at the entrance to the alley, not five meters from her, its rifle already rising. Her own rifle lay just out of arm’s reach, too far away for a desperate lunge, and the nearest cover was farther away still. The Enforcer would shoot before she reached either. Yet she didn’t feel any fear, just a vague anger for the undignified manner in which she was about to die: on her knees in a dusty square of some forgotten town on a backwater planet.

The black eye of the Enforcer’s rifle stared at her for what seemed an excruciatingly long time before the Surin’s words whispered in her thoughts: Roche gaped first at the motionless Enforcer, and then at the girl sprawled out on the ground next to her, into whom she had just stumbled.

She reached for her rifle and trained it on the Enforcer. “I owe you one, Maii,” she said, preparing to fire.

protested the Box, before she could fire.

Her finger froze on the trigger.

The eye of the Enforcer’s rifle began to waver.

insisted the Box.

She looked around. They were too exposed in the courtyard. Under heavy fire from below, the troop carrier had drifted, and the turbulent edge of the clear space was drawing closer—but the heavy tread of other Enforcers was too close for comfort, and the threat of fire from above was still very real. As she watched, two gun emplacements on the underside of the carrier began to swivel, targeting the source of attack below.