Metal Fatigue (42 page)

"This is it?" asked Katiya from the passenger seat, her arms crossed across her chest. She had hardly moved throughout the short trip, locked in her personal misery.

"I'm afraid so," said Roads. "If you'd prefer to wait in the car — "

"No. I want to come."

Roads sighed. "Then keep well back. I'll go first to make sure it's safe. Don't join me until I call you, okay?"

She shrugged, then nodded.

"Good." Roads opened the door, swung his legs out. "Wait five minutes before following, and for God's sake, keep quiet."

Climbing out of the car proved a painful exercise. Every muscle complained and his head throbbed. A cool breeze brought the smell of a blocked sewer across the wasteland of empty buildings. The erratic, high-pitched squeaking of bats was the only sound. Ahead and up, the rusted spans of the bridge hung clearly visible against the night sky.

Hugging his coat tightly about him, Roads started off along the road. The bridge had once housed a hundred or more squatters, unofficial entrants to the city unable to set foot on Kennedy's banks but stubbornly refusing to return to the far side and the ruins it contained. Roads' night vision enabled him to pick out the remains of a handful of old habitats in the tangle of metal. Little more than scraps of cloth fluttering in the breeze, they looked like flags: a constant reminder of the dispossessed who had once lived there. The squatters had been evicted at gun-point or killed outright in the first decade after the War, when the bridge had been mined.

But the bridge had been made to last, and its pylons remained more or less intact. Some sections of the road were still in one piece, and the walkway along one side seemed mostly complete. He imagined it would be possible, with luck, to cross the river unimpeded.

Forgoing the direct route onto the bridge, along the shattered freeway, Roads followed an access road to the base of one of the massive pylons. A rusty ladder took him to the underside of the bridge. After testing his weight on the ancient structure, he climbed rapidly upward. With every step, his unease grew. Gambling his life on a handful or two of corroded metal wasn't his idea of a good time — and it was likely to get worse the further along the bridge he went.

At the top was an unsteady walkway which led to a flight of stairs. The stairs dog-legged up to the western walkway, the one that seemed most complete from the ground. More slowly this time, wincing every time the stairs groaned in complaint, he made his way onto the road-level of the bridge.

There, as his head broached the concrete surface, he stopped and checked his internal clock. He was overdue for the rendezvous by three minutes. If Cati and his controller were nearby, then there was a fair chance they had heard him arrive. Holding his breath, he crawled over the final step and rolled behind the nearest cover: a rubbish bin dented on one side.

The breeze was stronger from his higher vantage point. He could hear nothing over it but the occasional creak from the bridge's infrastructure. He moved in a crouch to the walkway, glancing along its length as he did. The metal platform ran parallel to the road with rails at waist height on either side. Subtle warps not visible from the ground had twisted it like a snake, making it difficult to see very far — which ultimately worked to his advantage. Breathing shallowly but evenly, he began to move south along the bridge, away from the city and into the darkness.

Barely had he travelled a dozen metres when something clanged behind him. His heart froze. The sound had come from the stairs. Katiya, he presumed, following hard on his heels — and making plenty of noise despite his warning not to. He waited ten seconds for any reaction to the sound, heard none, then continued forward.

He passed no-one along the way, and the starlight was too dim to make out footprints; the bridge might have been empty for all he could tell. Part of him wondered if he had been tricked; Morrow's information might have been wrong, or deliberately false. Had the Head wanted Roads out of the way, he could hardly have chosen a better place to send him.

He paused to catch his breath halfway across the bridge. Stretching the aching muscles in his neck and shoulders, he tried to blot out the pain. The small of his back itched mercilessly — although whether from paranoia or a genuine warning he couldn't tell.

"Phil?" O'Dell's voice startled him through the cyberlink. "We've worked out how to tap PolNet's visual transmissions. Can you give me a feed from one of your implants?"

"Good idea, Martin." Roads called up the appropriate menus. "How's that?"

"Clear as a bell. We'll record it, just in case."

"Here's hoping." Roads stood, flexed the muscles of his legs. "Any news from Mayor's House?"

"Nothing, except a few more shots on the inside. It's impossible to tell what's happening from out here."

"Keep me posted if anything changes."

"I will."

Roads recommenced his awkward crouching run, heading silently along the walkway.

Silently, that is, until his left foot encountered empty air where there should have been metal.

He lunged forward desperately. If the gap in the walkway was wider than the reach of his outstretched arms, he had no way of arresting his fall. As he dropped, he had a quick glimpse of dark water rolling far below, and his heart lurched when he realised just how far above the water he was.

He fell spreadeagled across rusty iron a split-second later, landing with a thud solid enough to send that section of the walkway rocking. His feet dangled in midair, but his knees quickly found purchase. The gap had been less than a metre across.

Scrambling to his feet he stood up and looked around. Everything was dark; even to his modified eyes, it was hard to make out anything at all.

Then he froze.

Twenty metres ahead of him, surprised into motion by the sudden sound, three hot blotches stood out against the cold backdrop of the bridge. One was large and wide, almost certainly Cati. The other two were smaller and unrecognisable, but almost certainly men.

Two
men?

Roads ran forward, uncaring now how much noise he made, mindful only of the surface beneath his feet. Although his fall had given his presence away, he probably hadn't been seen. If the controller wasn't biomodified — which seemed safe to assume, since he used Cati to do his dirty work — then Roads' indistinct form would make a difficult target through the shadows. He kept his head down anyway, just in case.

A moment later, he was glad he had. A bullet cracked close by, sending sparks flying from the rail to his right. He weaved and ducked lower. As though startled by the gunshot, one of the smaller shadows ducked away to its left and vanished into the indistinct background of metal. The large shape of Cati remained immobile.

The third shadow was the one which had fired the shot. In infra-red, the man stepped backward along the bridge with both hands held before him, the white-hot eye of the pistol scanning in Roads' direction. This time Roads caught the muzzle-flash as a second bullet whizzed past his head. Clearly the person taking aim was either biomodified or wearing night-goggles.

Roads rolled out of sight behind the guard-rail, hands searching for something to throw.

Among the flakes of rust he found a relatively solid chunk of twisted metal narrow enough to fit in his palm: better than nothing.

When he peered over the rail seconds later, however, the figure with the gun had disappeared as well.

"
Shit
." Only Cati remained where the three had been, frozen in place much as he had been for an instant while attacking Stedman at Mayor's House. Awaiting orders? Roads wondered again.

He could feel the killer's dark eyes watching him through the darkness, but sensed no immediate threat. The other two men he wasn't so sure about. They were clearly under cover, or else he would be able to see them. By the same reasoning, they wouldn't be able see him either. Unless ...

Cati could see in infra-red. The killer could tell the controller where Roads was hiding.

He ducked out of sight behind the guard-rail and crabbed along the bridge to his right. Barely had he travelled two metres when a noise made him look up. There was a fleeting movement in the shadows — a confused flurry, as though someone had stirred the night with a man-sized spoon — then a nebulous shape loomed out of the confusion and lunged for his chest.

He leapt backward before the blow could land. Both hands came up and clutched at the distortion in the air. His fingers met a stiff artificial fabric, ribbed with plastic. He gripped and twisted, and was gratified to hear a hiss of pain. A knife clattered onto the rusted walkway at his feet. His left knee came up and met flesh, and the arm he was holding tried to pull away.

Roads fought the misleading data gathered by his eyes — which told him he was fighting a liquid shadow, not a man — and groped with one hand for a better grip. It found a neck, and teeth. Roads kicked again, heard something crack, and felt the man go limp.

Without loosening his grip, Roads let the body sag to the walkway. Then he felt along its back and shoulders until he found a seam, tugged at it until it tore. Instantly the shadowy cloak fell away, revealing a man lying facedown on the road, dressed in a black and grey body-suit with the distinctive markings of the RUSAMC on its sleeves.

"My God," said O'Dell, his voice brutally loud in the darkness on the bridge.

"One of yours?" Roads subvocalised back.

"One of our nightsuits, anyway. Similar to the Mole's camouflage, but designed specifically for night combat."

Roads studied the suit more closely. From a distance, it might have looked like an ordinary uniform, but close-up the difference was obvious. Bulges at the hips were batteries, he supposed, with wires embedded in the suit's fabric providing the distorting field-effect.

Roads rolled the man over and removed the night-goggles covering his face. His features were unfamiliar: pale skin, lank brown hair, late-forties. Blood trickled from the man's nose where Roads' wild kick had struck: definitely unconscious.

"The suit was stolen, you think?" he asked O'Dell. "Keith again?"

"No," sighed the RUSAMC captain. "He's one of us."

"Then what the hell's he doing out here?"

"I've no idea. And that's the truth."

Roads bent to check the unconscious man for weapons. "Tell me about him, then. He must be here for a reason."

"He's not a career soldier," O'Dell said, "but an engineer. He was drafted a couple of years ago to give technical advice on Kennedy and Project Cherubim. There's a good chance he won't be armed."

"There goes that thought." Indeed, Roads' hands had found nothing under the nightsuit. "Okay. Hang on and I'll see who else I can find."

Roads clambered to his feet and looked around. Cati stood several metres away, exactly where he had been before. His black eyes tracked until he caught sight of Roads, then stopped. The controller must still be watching, although there was no sign of anyone apart from Cati. Banking on the fact that the remaining man would have to step into view in order to fire — and that he could move fast enough to avoid being shot — he bent down and lifted the unconscious man by the collar of the nightsuit. A hostage was better than nothing.

"His name, Martin?"

"Lieutenant-Colonel Sam Betheras."

Roads cleared his throat, making certain the unconscious man was clearly in Cati's line of sight.

"I have Betheras," he called. "Put your weapon down, and step into view with your hands above your head."

He waited for an answer. Cati didn't move. The only sound was the whispering of the wind through the infrastructure of the bridge.

"Can you hear me?" he called. "I have Betheras! We know what you're planning!"

Again nothing.

Roads shifted his grip on the RUSAMC officer's neck and stepped over the guard-rail. Cati watched him as he did so, dark eyes following his every movement. The killer's immobility bothered Roads. The controller had a weapon, so why wasn't he using it? All he had to do was instruct Cati to kill Roads, and that would be the end of it. Bluff called, Roads would lose.

Unless the controller
wasn't
watching any more. He might have fled while Roads and Betheras were scuffling, and abandoned Cati, leaving him to follow orders that hadn't yet been countermanded.

But that was unlikely, for if the controller had fled, he would have run headlong into Katiya by now.

A shrill scream abruptly split the night air.

Roads turned automatically to face the source of the sound. Cati echoed the movement, swivelling his massive torso. The sound came from the direction of the Kennedy shore, not far away.

The scream ended suddenly, leaving a flat echo in its wake. The walkway boomed as something struck it, followed by the sound of scrabbling at metal.

Roads cursed himself. Katiya had slipped in the same gap he had — or run into the controller. Either way, she was obviously in trouble.

Cati took a step forward, to rush to his lover's aid.

Then a gunshot aimed over Roads' head split the night, followed by a voice from behind him:

"Don't move. Both of you!"

Roads stiffened, letting Betheras fall to the ground. Cati flinched in mid-step, took another pace forward. Barely had he made it two metres when the voice muttered something under its breath and repeated:

"Don't move! Do as I say, damn you — you know you don't have any choice!"

Cati froze again, his dark eyes staring helplessly into the blackness.

The back of Roads' neck tingled as the controller's attention returned to him.

"Don't try anything stupid Roads." The man's voice was familiar. "I'm armed, and I won't hesitate to shoot. You've caused me enough trouble. Do you understand?"

Roads nodded.

"Good. Move next to Cati — slowly. Bring Betheras with you. Don't rush it, and keep your hands where I can see them. That's close enough. Put him down. Now, tell the woman to come forward or I'll shoot you dead."

"Katiya?" Roads called, keeping his hands up. "If you can hear me, keep coming. Be careful, though. There's someone here with Cati, and he has a gun. I think we'd better do as he says."