Hegemony (45 page)

The enemy tac net showed three "targets," all clustered near a hyper-bandwidth uplink center. Ylayn moved towards the center, stepping around panicked civilians. The rush of the crowd had started with the first laser fire, and a lot of people were still screaming and running to and fro. The smarter ones, or maybe just the luckier ones, were huddling, crowded behind anything they could find, or just huddled in groups on the ground. Sirens were screaming throughout the mall, and automated voice messages were giving conflicting instructions about staying in place till proper authorities arrived and evacuating in a calm, orderly manner. She had already hacked the security cameras so that the crew of the
Whisperknife
would show up as nothing but faceless blurs, and she could have shut off the alarm, but she liked the noise. In fact, Ylayn relished the chaos echoing through the atrium mall. It was elemental and mad and scary, and she was in charge of it all.

The tac net showed two more of the Coalition commandoes moving towards the uplink center, coming at the "targets" from both sides. None of the
Whisperknife
's crew were there yet. Ylayn was the closest. And the captain had just signaled that he wanted the "targets" alive. That made sense to Ylayn. If the people who had almost blown up the ship wanted them dead, that meant the crew of the
Whisperknife
probably wanted them alive. Maybe there'd even be a reward, Ylayn mused, as she started moving through the panicking crowd towards the uplink center.

One of the enemy commandoes was going to get there before she was; the other seemed to be moving more slowly, probably held back by the milling panicked bystanders. Ylayn focused for an instant, sending the command to trigger her combat injector. She felt the cool prick through her fur as the neuro-chem entered her system. Reality took on a glassy, almost relaxing quality as her body reacted to the combat drugs, and Ylayn broke into a fast, smooth run. There was plenty of time to dodge around bystanders, or just jump over them.

She could see the commando ahead of her, glimpsing him through the mall's still standing foliage and the darting bystanders. The flash of the commando's laser strobed across the atrium mall as she ran.

The commando's shot struck a broad-shouldered, short-haired blonde woman in civilian dress, sending her backwards in a cloud of vaporized tissue. Through her data link, Ylayn could see that the woman had been one of the "targets." Ylayn jumped over a wide planter, turning mid-air to miss the two bright-leafed trees it held. Needler fire was sounding in counterpoint to the hiss-crack of laser fire as she hit the ground and rolled, coming up with her laser leveled.

The first commando jerked back behind a support column as explosive needler darts detonated in small yellow flashes around him. Ylayn dodged around another bystander, trying to get a clear view.

A moment later the second commando pushed through the scattering bystanders and promptly turned into the doorway which the "targets" had stumbled into. A flickering holographic sign over the open sliding doors read 'Ki-Leng Data and Uplink Center.'

Ylayn brought her laser down on the commando's center of mass and fired as fast as she could, walking her fire up the gunman's spine. The man's back exploded in bursts of vapor as the five-centimeter-track laser pulses burned through clothes, polycarbonate armor and flesh. The last shot struck the unprotected back of the man's neck, cutting his head off in a blast of vaporized blood and steam.

The two "targets" didn't hesitate, the one-armed man dragging the blonde woman through an inner set of doors, deeper into the data and uplink center.

On the tactical display, Ylayn saw that a third commando was moving in fast from her right, catching her in the open between him and the one that had taken cover behind the column. Her tactical overlay showed her the situation with perfect, hopeless clarity. The sudden feeling of icy cold fear made her eyes flare wide. There was no cover between her and either of the two Coalition gunmen, and she was too far from the open doors of the data center to clear their line of fire in the scant seconds she had. For a long second, stretched out by her neuro-chemically augmented nervous system, Ylayn froze.

Time seemed to freeze. Freya could see her laser, still gripped in her useless right hand. Her eyes locked on the gunman, his mirrored visor, and the wide aperture of his laser pistol, leveled at her. 

A flicker of three or four rapid-fire laser pulses flash-lit the gunman. Blasts of vaporized body fluids obscured him for a second, and then his decapitated body was falling, trailing steam from the multiple laser hits.

"Go! Come on!" Muir shouted, and dragged her back, through a second set of doors, into the center's main uplink chamber.

A dozen chrome-and-black leather couches were set at even intervals around the perimeter of the round room. The couches faced into the center of the room, putting the head of anyone in them next to coiled interface cables set over the head-rests of each couch.

"What's going on!" shouted a panicked sounding data center technician, as the two Hegemonic officers stumbled into the circular room. "Who the fuck are you?"

"We're Hegemonic Fleet officers," Muir said, kneeling momentarily to take Freya's laser pistol out of her damaged hand and into his remaining hand.

"Our mission requires us to data-link back to our ship, in orbit," Muir said, getting up again. Muir's voice was calm, but utterly intense. A dribble of biosim circulatory fluid was still dripping from his severed arm. "As a lawful Hegemonic subject, you are required to cooperate."

Muir leveled the pistol at the man in the kiosk. "Give me full access to the uplink system, now, please. That's a direct order."

From where she was crouched, Zandy saw the Modified woman, with short tan-colored fur and clearly visible cat ears, dive forward through a barrier of colorful foliage and come up firing. A man, one of the gunmen, Zandy thought, went down under a rapid-fire hail of laser pulses. Zandy hadn't even seen him before the Modified woman shot him.

"What the fuck..." Zandy said, aloud. Who the fuck was this? The Modified woman was wearing a minimal outfit that showed a lush figure and full-body fur. She didn't look like one of the enemy gunmen; for all that they were dressed in bland colored travel cloaks, the gunmen who seemed to want her dead stood out with their mirrored data visors and bulky laser pistols... that and the fact that they weren't screaming, running and panicking like most of the rest of the people in the mall. And there was someone else, some other team, shooting. The intermittent flashes of laser fire throughout the mall had already told Zandy that much.

Now, out of the corner of her eye, Zandy saw another of the gunmen moving fast. He was swinging his weapon around towards the cat-girl, who was standing out in the open, in front of the data center where she had shot down one of the other gunmen. Whoever the Modified woman was, the gunman was the enemy, and this time Zandy had a good shot. She slid over to clear her line of fire and leveled her newly captured laser, trying to put the minimal manual sight on the target's center of mass.

Her first pulse missed well over the gunman's head, exploding a clear display panel of a clothing store behind him, showering him with hot fragments of shattered clear polycarbonate window. The gunman dove forward as Zandy fired again. Her second pulse hit the ground next to him, blasting a spray of debris from the decorative tile of the mall's floor. His return fire exploded vaporized stone from the edge of Zandy's cover. She flinched but kept shooting. Two more pulses from her laser blasted into the ground in front of the gunman, almost obscuring him in clouds of smoke and vaporized tile. The man rolled away, gathering himself to get to his feet. Her next shot flared bright against his mirrored visor. The thin reflective plastic was nothing to a weapons-grade laser pulse; the pulse cut through plastic and bone, vaporizing blood and brain tissue and exploding the man's head in a cloud of flash-heated steam. The already prone body thrashed, the laser falling from its hand.

A rapid sequence of flash-cracks went off to Zandy's left, where the gunman who she had fired her needler at had waited behind cover. Belatedly, Zandy realized that she had unmasked herself to his fire when she had moved to get a clear shot at the other gunman. With a sinking feeling that she had just made the last mistake of her life, she turned to scamper back into her prior cover.

The expected laser fire didn't come. Looking back, what she saw wasn't the gunman's laser leveled at her. Instead, a tall man in a worn black leather jacket was striding over the gunman's body, moving with the glassy smoothness of the heavily augmented as he scanned left and right, a laser in his hand held casually ready. His glance, as it tracked across Zandy, felt like an enemy 'ceptor's targeting radar, but he made no move to shoot.

"Thanks, Captain," said the cat-girl with a sigh, as the man walked up to her. The tall man looked the cat-girl over and nodded.

"Any more of them?" he asked in a hard voice.

The cat-girl paused for a second, fingering a pers-comp strapped to her wrist and closing her eyes. Zandy could see that she actually had a tail which lashed back and forth as she stood there. The unreality of it all was enough to make her mouth drop open.

"Two more, Captain," the Modified woman said. "One of them is pinned down by... Fuck. They just shut down their tactical systems. I've lost them. I guess they figured out it was compromised."

"What about the local law?" the man asked.

"On the way with heavy counter-terrorism units," the cat-girl answered. "About five hundred seconds ETA."

"Fuck. OK. Time for us to go."

"Right, Captain," the cat-girl said. "We should take this one with us," she added, pointing to Zandy. "She saved my ass just now... took out one of the Coalies. And she's one of the 'targets' they were after. I figure if we leave her, the other two will burn her down as soon as they get a shot."

The man looked at her, lowering his dark glasses. Pale blue eyes, cold as ice, locked on her. "Come on, blondie," he said. "We've got some enemies in common, you and I, and letting them kill you would piss me off."

Her unexpected rescuers were moving fast. For a moment Zandy looked towards the uplink center, but the Modified woman shook her head.

"Local security has just shut down the main uplink. Maybe your friends managed to get out, but it's closed now."

"Let's move," the tall man said. He looked at the cat-girl. "You're sure the mall security can't track us?"

"Sure, Captain. They'll have to go in and reprogram the entire camera control system to get them to even be
able
to record our faces."

"Good enough," he said with a hard smile. "Everyone move out," he said again, probably sending his words through a data feed to the rest of his people, Zandy thought. "Time to ride."

They moved quickly but without running, weapons carried out of sight behind travel cloaks. There seemed to be five of these people in the mall, all told. All were armed and most were dressed in flamboyant and aggressive styles, though only the cat-girl was a Modified. There were two more of them in a bulky aircar, already running its engines and waiting with sliding side-doors open.

"Get in, blondie," the Modified woman said, smiling at Zandy with pearly white teeth. Zandy could see that the canines were slightly elongated, like a cat's.

"You're a cat," Zandy said absently, looking carefully at the Modified woman next to her. Her tail, Zandy realized, was an add-on, attached to the back of her tight black briefs. But her entire body was covered with smooth short fur, she had cat ears, and her facial features had been sculpted to hint at the feline without ruining attractive human looks.

"And you're a zombie," the cat-girl answered. "Cute, though..."

"Shut off the noise, people," the tall blue-eyed man said, "and strap in." To the cat-girl, he went on, "Ylayn, get us a launch authorization, maximum priority. And then get an encrypted message to the
Whisperknife
. Tell Senny to have her standing by and ready to break orbit as soon as the shuttle docks."

"Got it, Captain. We might have some trouble with the launch authorization... but only
after
we launch," Ylayn said with a smile. "I think we can make it into orbit and dock with
Whisperknife
before they flag my little modification to their system."

Zandy said nothing, strapping herself in and trying to watch her rescuers without seeming to watch them. Whoever these people were, there was a dangerous edge to their manners and their movements. She still had the laser she had collected from the dead gunman, but Zandy was not at all sure if she was an ally or a captive to these people.

The cat had called the tall, pale eyed man "Captain," and without doubt he was in charge of this group, whoever they were. The title implied some sort of organization and command... or maybe these were the crew of a ship. Zandy contemplated the heavily armed strangers strapping in beside her and wondered worriedly what sort of ship these might be the crew of.

Being back in
the command 'net of the
Ice Knife
was a relief intense enough that Freya could almost imagine her shoulders sagging with the release of tension... though with her humanoid avatar left behind, she had no shoulders to flex. Well, there was still her backup, stored aboard. Underneath the feeling of relief was the bitter knowledge that she had left the interceptor pilot behind as well, but Freya pushed it aside. Her ship and her mission needed all of her attention now.