Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys (22 page)

Although she still behaved like part of the team, Renatta had transferred her after-hours affections from the DNA Cowboys altogether, first to Goshon Mass Goh after he had narrowly beaten Reave at the wandweking and then to, of all people, Clay Blaisdell. After that Billy, Reave, and the Minstrel Boy felt more than entitled to pass the bottle and call her a whore when she was not around.

Tired of puzzling over Renatta's methods of operating, the Minstrel Boy had taken up with an exotic dancer called Mai Last Tango; in fact, she was stark naked and vigorously straddling his hips when the sirens sounded.

As they echoed eerily through the instantly silent city, the Minstrel Boy eased away from her. He was suddenly very frightened.

'The enemy's been detected. The bad guys are almost here.'

— Pressdra Vishnaria

The Human Comedy, Volume 14:

The Damaged Perception

CHAPTER ELEVEN

'THIRTY MINUTES TO ESTIMATED CONTACT,' THE VOICE FROM
the PA announced.

The waiting had peaked. Along with five other mercenaries, Billy, Reave, the Minstrel Boy, and Renatta crouched in the H-quadrant access tunnel that led out to the nothings. In front of them, out on the open platform, the first-line defenders, militia and civilian volunteers alike, stood to in the shelter of hastily erected fortifications. Although the big stasis field that surrounded the raiders was being clearly and continuously tracked and plotted by the central biomass, there was still no clue as to where on the Krystaleit perimeter the first blow would fall. As the raiders had drawn nearer, other questions had been raised. The most pressing was what would happen when the large and powerful reality of the raiders actually touched and then merged with the city's bigger and even more powerful field. For some hours strange things had been happening. Certain kinds of electronic hardware had ceased to function for no detectable reason, domestic pets had started to show signs of extreme agitation, a large number of lights had simply winked out, and a power substation had spontaneously combusted. Now the nothings had started to flash with white fire as though the nonmatter were being overcharged with some form of alien nonenergy. The defenders and fortifications around the edges of the external platforms were thrown into stark, flickering silhouette, and an irrational terror of the unknown was laid on top of the very real fear of the enemy. Some groups of Krystaleit's philosophers were making dire predictions, and the word 'cataclysm' kept being tossed about. To make matters worse, Billy had started to hear muffled, indistinct voices inside his head. He did not know if that phenomenon was a brand-new symptom of stress or
whether it was a result of the physical conditions that were growing more weird by the minute.

'I wish to hell they'd get here — anything's got to be better than this,' he complained.

'Twenty minutes to estimated contact.'

The Minstrel Boy checked the AK 5000 for what had to be at least the twenty-eighth time since they had been deployed in the tunnel.

'What's the betting that they hit right in front of us?'

'The way our luck's been running?'

Renatta was unconsciously chewing on her lower lip. The Minstrel Boy had to admit that despite the way he had been bad-mouthing her over the last few days, she was standing up very well for someone who had never faced combat before. She sighed and flexed her wrists, easing the weight of the laser bracelets.

'This has got to be the worst.'

The Minstrel Boy nodded toward the nothings, where patches of the nonmatter fog had become an incandescent white. 'That's the worst. You could really believe that it was the end of the world.'

Reave, who was nearest to the mouth of the tunnel, glanced back. 'Will you all keep that down? You'll end up shooting each other.' He had dropped naturally into the role of squad leader.

The space became eerily bright as the section of the nothings they could see at the end of the tunnel pulsed blinding white and then faded slightly again.

'You think this is them?'

'If it is, they're early.'

The voices in Billy's head were louder, but he still could not make out what they were saying. 'I don't like this at all.'

'I told you to put a cover on the negative comments.'

The very next moment not even Reave could hold back a gasp of amazement.

'Holy shit!'

Pseudopods of brilliant purple plasma danced out of the nothings and played over defenders and defenses. They seemed particularly drawn to metal. A militiaman cut and ran in panic as the glowing plasma coursed over his bronze armor. He was trying to brush it off with his hands as though he were on fire.

As far as Reave could see, the plasma did not seem to be doing him any actual harm. His sobbing terror was purely a result of the man psyching himself out.

'Everyone sit tight. I think that stuffs harmless.'

In fact, he was certain that it was harmless. It looked exactly like the glowing purple energy he had seen attach itself to the Old Metal Monster inside the ziggurat just before he had deserted from Baptiste's raiders.

The plasma was inside the tunnel, scooting toward them along the floor, walls, and ceiling. It shimmered over their weapons and even the metal fittings on their clothes. Everyone stiffened at its touch, but once they all found that it did not seem to be doing them any damage, they were able to relax slightly; still, none of them seemed to be exactly happy about having bright, cold witchfire dancing on their guns and belt buckles.

'Fifteen minutes to estimated contact.'

The plasma vanished as quickly as it had appeared: It just retreated into the nothings and was gone. Reave wiped the sweat off his face. He did not want to let the others see it, but the waiting and the uncanny special effects were also getting to him.

There was a rumble of thunder from back inside. Everyone stiffened, and heads whipped around. Had the enemy hit on the other side of the spherical city? Back down the tunnel sheets of static were arcing between the buildings. They flashed brightly, and there was another loud clap.

'Okay, okay, it's just an electrical storm inside the city.'

A mercenary called Rat Barstow, whom Reave did not particularly trust and did not particularly want in his squad, was staring back down the tunnel with wide, scared eyes. 'There are never electrical storms inside the city.'

Reave scowled. 'Well, there are now.'

'You think the enemy is doing this to soften us up?'

'Seems like it's working on you.'

Renatta looked at him sharply. 'You do think they're doing it?'

Reave angrily shook his head. 'No, I don't. They don't have the technology. It think it's what happens when two big stasis fields come together.'

'Ten minutes to estimated contact.'

There was something disturbing about the calm of the vaguely feminine electronic voice that was running off the countdown. Reave glanced back at the squad again.

'No more talking from now on. That means everyone.'

Something new was happening. The nothings had started to dim. They were also changing color. From bright white, they faded to a diffused pearly pink that in turn darkened to a deep magenta. Thunder and lightning crashed and boomed inside the city. And then the nothings started to clear. It was like a hole appearing. A vast abyss of empty, clear-air reality was materializing in the nothings.

'This is it! Be ready.'

The voice from the PA spoke for the last time. 'Contact has been made.'

The lightning stopped, and the thunder ceased to roll. In moments it was clear that the abyss was not empty. It had a floor of plain red ocher, basic rock matter that stretched back as far as the eye could see, and on that floor an army was starting to move.

Barstow let out a low whistle. 'Goddamn it to hell, there are thousands of them, and they're coming right at us.'

Above the army there was a bloodred pseudosun that made the parting of the nothings resemble a grim satanic dawn.

Reave nodded. 'It's going to be a long day.'

Billy Oblivion's face twisted in a lopsided grin. 'Let's hope we see the end of it.'

Reave had expected the enemy to be all over them the moment the nothings opened. Instead, whatever combination of warlords that was in command of the army had made their men stand back, leaving maybe a thousand yards of dusty no-man's-land between attackers and defenders, putting them beyond the effective range of the majority of the city's weapons. It was a strange, almost formal move. The initial wave of attackers would have to advance into a hail of concentrated fire. If Reave had been running things, he would never have played it that way, but he guessed that there was no accounting for the insane. The warlords seemed more concerned with grand martial spectacle than with casualty figures. Neoprimitive impis were the first line of assault, a dark mass crested by a sea of waving powerspears, spread out over a broad front. They had no long-range weapons, and very soon they would move forward at that inhuman highspeed run. Possibly, Reave reflected, one of the warlords did not feel too assured of their savage loyalty and wanted to see their numbers thinned out a bit.

Men were coming down the tunnel from inside the city. Reave turned in alarm. His first reaction was that it was a fifth column attack, but it turned out to be nothing more than squads of militia moving over from the quadrants that would not be taking the brunt of the first attack. Reave doubted that the raiders who were already inside the city would make a move until that first shock wave of neoprimitives had dashed itself on the defenses. The neoprimitives were notorious for their very imprecise concepts of friend and foe.

The noise was the first thing to hit: the amplified crash of steel drums, the braying of horns, and the deep-throated, cooing war cry of the neoprimitives. The last grew into a great roar as the impis began to move forward, slowly at first but rapidly gathering speed. The two flanks spread out, curving forward at the extreme ends in the traditional buffalo horn formation, while the center, the head, was compressed into a solid unstoppable mass. All along the barricades on the rim platform, officers were shouting for their troops to hold their fire until the attackers were well within range.

The thousand yards was cut to five hundred, then four, and then three. A mortar shell burst in the air above the leading edge of the assault, and the battle was on. A particle cannon opened up, scything through the impis' front line. At 250 yards, the orders were given and firing began in earnest. A withering blanket of small-arms fire smashed into the howling press of neoprimitives, but they were barely slowed down. They continued to run like roaring maniacs, leaving their dead sprawled in the red dust. With the gap between the opposing forces narrowed to just two hundred yards, the impis received a little help. Three red biplanes rose from somewhere in the rear of the army and buzzed toward the platform fortifications. They made a wide, high turn, staying out of reach of the defenders' fire, and then made a low, fast strafing run, hitting the lines of defenders with cannon fire and small airlite rockets. The crew on the particle cannon struggled to elevate their weapon and managed to loose a burst at the last of the planes as it roared back the way it had come. They must have hit something. The plane did not go down, but it started trailing smoke. A ragged cheer went up from the barricades.

The celebration was short-lived, however. It took what was left of the impis just eight seconds to cover the last hundred yards. They hit the platform like breaking surf, and the defenders were engulfed in fierce hand-to-hand fighting. The spears stabbed and stabbed. The neoprimitives were masters at such brutal, close-quarters combat. As more and more of them poured over the fortifications, the volunteers and the militia were increasingly forced to give ground.

The line broke in front of the tunnel, and a dozen or more of the attackers burst through before the gap could be plugged. It was Reave's first look at the enemy. The neoprimitives were tall, olive-skinned men with highspike hair, feathered kilts, and scarlet battle paint; their powerspears hummed loudly as they raced for the mouth of the tunnel. Reave leveled his pistols and screamed the order.

'Fire!'

The crash of weapons was like a psychic release for the DNA Cowboys. Whatever happened from then on, there would be no more waiting. Billy's multiplex alone took three of the neoprimitives in the first burst. Only two of the dozen actually made it to the tunnel's mouth. One of them was felled by a two-armed sweep of Renatta's lasers, while a second was brought down by a short x-pando burst from the Minstrel Boy's AK. As he fired, he noted that Renatta was exceedingly good with the wrist lasers and wondered where and in what circumstances she had learned the complicated art.

In the wake of the neoprimitives, the rest of the enemy army was moving forward. The most immediate threat was the squadron of lizard riders that was kicking up a dust cloud across the rock surface, charging hard down on the platforms. A particle cannon fired a long barrage, and a cluster of riders came down in a tangle of thrashing legs. By far the majority of the defenders, however, were still engaged with the neoprimitives, fighting for their lives. They had no time to bring their weapons to bear to slow the charge. Reave spotted running figures in among the high-tailed, high-stepping lizards, awkward angular things, too tall to be human. They had to be the green template monsters created by the one who called himself Max Zero.

He glanced back at the Minstrel Boy. 'They can't hold much longer. When those lizard soldiers hit, the front lines are going to be overrun.'

'So what do we do? Move up and reinforce? The idea doesn't thrill me.'

'Me, neither. I intend to try and get us out of this alive and one way is to do the minimum that won't get us shot as deserters.'

'So?'

'So when the lizards hit, we fall back to the second position. Be ready.'

'Just give the word, I'm always ready to retreat.'

A bomb went off somewhere inside the city.

'Nulites?' the Minstrel Boy wondered.

Reave shook his head. 'I doubt it. Not unless they're working for the enemy.'

Two militiamen in bronze armor fled from the fortifications with five neoprimitives in hot pursuit. A pair of powerspears were thrown as one, and the fancy armor offered no protection. One blade stood out a good twelve inches in front of the first man's chest, and the look of horror on his face as it continued to hum at pain vibration inside him was something that Reave did not think he would be able to forget for a long time.

The first lizard came over the barricades. Its rider wore black samurai-style armor and wielded a pair of long pistols similar to Reave's. He seemed to be in the throes of a suicidal frenzy, wheeling his mount from side to side and firing into the fighting pack around the fortifications. He shot four defenders before he was dragged from his saddle by their comrades to be hacked and beaten to death.

Reave gestured to his squad. 'Okay, fall back. Fall back to the second position.'

The squad needed no further urging. They ran back down the tunnel, away from the fighting. Barstow and another merc called Natch were the first out into the open, and they were immediately cut down by a burst of fire from a nearby walkway. The others stopped dead in their tracks.

The Minstrel Boy looked around anxiously. 'Now what?'

Reave edged up to the mouth of the tunnel and peered around the stonework. The wall beside him was spattered by more fire. He quickly pulled his head back. 'There's a bunch of fifth columnists. They've set up a fire point by the big support pillar over on the left.'