The Night's Dawn Trilogy (304 page)

“Nothing I can do about that,” Sarha said. “We can try calling him through the Tonala communications net.”

“The net: bollocks. You know there isn’t a working processor left on that planet after all this emp activity. I can drop us
down; if we skim the atmosphere we can be above his horizon in eight minutes.”

“No! If we start changing our orbit we’ll be targeted.”

“There’s nothing left out there
to
target us. Access the sensors, damn you. The combat wasps are all spent.”

“They’ve deployed all their submunitions, you mean.”

“He’s my brother!”

“He’s my captain, and we can’t risk it.”

“Lady Mac
can beat any poxy submunitions. Take fire control, I can pilot this manoeuvre.”

“Ironberg trajectory confirmed,” Beaulieu said. “Barnes was telling the truth. It’s heading straight at them.”

“Altitude?” Sarha asked. “Can we nuke it?”

“Ninety kilometres. That’s too deep into the ionosphere for the combat wasps. They can’t operate in that kind of pressure.”

“Shit!” Sarha groaned.

“Get positive, Sarha,” Liol demanded. “We have to get over Joshua’s horizon.”

“I’ve got lock-on,” Beaulieu said calmly. “Two nukes, active seeker heads. They acquired our radar emission.”

Sarha initiated the maser cannon targeting program without conscious thought. Her brain was churning with too much worry and
indecision to actually think. Bright violet triangles zeroed the approaching submunitions.

“Would Josh leave one of us down there?” Liol asked.

“You piece of shit!” The masers fired, triggered by the heatlash in her mind. Both submunitions broke apart, their fusion
drives dying.

“We can beat them,” Beaulieu said.

The imperturbability of the cosmonik’s synthetic voice chided Sarha. “Okay. I’ll handle fire control. Beaulieu, switch to
active sensors, full suite; I want long-range warning of any incoming hostiles. Liol, take us down.”

•  •  •

They were hammering on the maintenance engineering deck’s hatch. Its edges had started to shine cherry-red, paint was blistering.

Cherri gave the circle of metal a jaded look. “All right, all right,” she mumbled. “I’ll make it easy all around. Besides,
what would you lot ever know about fraternity?”

After the hatch’s locking mechanism melted away, an equally hot Oscar Kearn dived through the smouldering rim. Any hope of
retribution died instantly as he saw the figure curled up and sobbing dejectedly in front of the console. The soul of Cherri
Barnes had already vacated the flesh, retreating to the one place where he was never going to chase after her.

•  •  •

Monica finally felt as though she was regaining control of the mission. There were twelve operatives with her in the Disassembly
Shed providing overwhelming firepower, and their evac craft was on the way. None of their processor blocks were working, nor
their neural nanonics. Everyone had taken off their shell helmets so they could see; the sensors were glitched, too. The lack
of protection made her nervous, but she could live with that. I’ve got Mzu!

She applied some pressure to the pistol barrel at the side of Calvert’s neck, and he moved aside obediently. One of the Edenists
claimed his machine gun. He didn’t protest when he was made to stand with his three compatriots, all of them with their hands
in the air and covered by a couple of operatives.

“Doctor, please take your hand away from that backpack,” Monica said. “And don’t try to datavise any activation codes.”

Alkad shrugged and held her hands up. “I can’t datavise anything anyway,” she said. “There are too many possessed in here.”

Monica signalled one of the operatives to retrieve Mzu’s backpack.

“You were in Tranquillity,” Alkad said. “And the Dorados too, if I’m not mistaken. Which agency?”

“ESA.”

“Ah. Yet some of your friends are obviously Edenists. How odd.”

“We both consider your removal from this planet to be of paramount importance, Doctor,” Samuel said. “However, you have my
assurance you will not be harmed.”“Of course,” Alkad told them equitably. “If I am, we all know who I’ll end up with.”

“Exactly.”

Gelai looked up. “They’re coming, Doctor.”

Monica frowned. “Who?”

“The possessed from the Organization,” Alkad told her. “They’re up in the shed’s framework somewhere.”

The operatives responded smoothly, scanning the metal lattice above them for any sign of movement. Monica stepped smartly
over to Alkad’s side and grabbed her arm. “Okay, Doctor, we’ll take care of them, now let’s move.”

“Damn,” Samuel said. “The police are here.”

Monica glanced back to the hole blown into the wall where they’d entered. Two Edenists had been left to cover their retreat
back to the cars. “We can deal with them.”

Samuel gave a resigned grimace. The operatives formed a protective cordon around Monica and Mzu and started to walk back towards
the wall.

Monica realized that Joshua and the others were hurrying after them. “Not you,” she said.

“I’m not staying in here,” Joshua said indignantly.

“We can’t—” Samuel began.

A portcullis slammed down out of the tangle of girders above. It struck two of the operatives, punching them to the ground.
The valency generators in their armour suits were glitched, preventing the fabric from stiffening into protective exoskeletons
as they should have done. Long iron spikes along the bottom of the portcullis punctured the suit fabric, skewering their bodies
to the wet carbon concrete.

Four of the operatives opened fire with their machine guns, shooting straight up. Bullets ricocheted madly, grazing sprays
of sparks off the metal.

Training compelled Monica to look around and locate the follow up. It was coming at her from the left, a huge pendulum blade
swinging straight at Mzu. If her neural nanonics had been on line and running threat response programs she might have made
it. As it was, boosted muscles slewed her weight around to pirouette Mzu out of the blade’s arc. They went tumbling onto the
floor together. The blade caught Monica’s left leg a glancing blow. Her armoured boot saved her foot from being severed, but
her ankle and lower shin-bone were shattered by the impact. Shock dulled the initial pain. She sat up, groaning in dismay,
and clutched at the ruined bones. Bile was rising in her throat, and it was very difficult to breathe.

Something extraordinarily heavy hit her shoulder, sending her sprawling. Joshua landed on the ground right beside her, rolling
neatly to absorb the impact. A burst of hatred banished Monica’s pain. Then the blade sliced through the air where she had
been a second before, a tiny whisper the only sound of its passing. Pendulum, she thought dazedly, it comes back.

One of the embassy operatives raced over to Monica. He was holding a square medical nanonic package and cursing heavily. “It’s
glitched, too, I can’t get a response.”

Joshua glanced at the package glove covering his hand. Ever since he’d come into the shed, it had been stinging like crazy.
“Tell me about it,” he grumbled.

Gelai joined them, squatting down, her face full of concern. She put her hand over Monica’s ankle.

The original intensity of the pain had frightened Monica, but this was plain horrifying. She could feel the fragments of bone
shifting around inside her skin, she could even see the suit’s trouser fabric ripple around Gelai’s hand—her
glowing
hand. Yet it didn’t hurt.

“I think that’s it,” the bashful girl said. “Try standing.”

“Oh, my God. You’re a. . .”

“Didn’t you professionals know?” Joshua said evilly.

Samuel dodged around the pendulum and crouched beside them, alert, his machine gun pointing high. “I thought you’d been hit,”
he said as Monica gingerly applied some weight to her left foot.

“I was. She cured me.”

He gave Gelai a fast appraisal. “Oh.”

“We’d better get going,” Monica said.

“They’ll hit us again if we move.”

“They’ll hit us if we stay.”

“I wish I could see them,” he moaned, blinking away the drizzle. “There’s no target for us. Shooting wild is pointless, there’s
too much metal.”

“They’re up there,” Gelai said. “Three of them are just above the pendulum hinge. They’re the ones giving it substance.”

Samuel jerked his head about. “Where?”

“Above it.”

“Damn it.” If he could have just switched his retinal implants to infrared there might have been something other than mangled
blackness. He fired his machine gun anyway, sluicing the bullets over the area he imagined Gelai was talking about. The magazine
was spent in less than a second. He ejected it and slapped in a fresh one—mindful of how many were left clipped to his belt.
When he looked up again, the pendulum had vanished. Instead, a length of thick black cabling was swaying to and fro. “That’s
it? Did I get them?”

“You hurt two,” Gelai told him. “They’re backing off.”

“Hurt? Great.”

“Come on,” Monica said. “We can get to the cars.” She raised her voice. “Random suppression fire, vertical. I want those bastards
fleeing us. Okay,
move
.”

Eight machine guns opened fire into the overhead lattice as everyone rushed towards the hole in the wall.

High above them, and safe in his web of metal cables, Baranovich looked out of a filthy window at the three Tonalan police
cars drawn up outside. There were long skid marks in the snow behind each of them, evidence of their hard braking. One other
surviving police car was chasing after the twenty-first-century rally car, siren blaring and lights flashing as they both
tore along the bottom of the shed wall. Dark-clad officers were advancing towards the embassy cars.

“Let’s liven things up a little,” he said above the fractious roar of the machine guns and whining ricochets. He joined hands
with the three possessed beside him. Together they launched a huge fireball and sent it curving down on one of the stationary
police cars.

The response was immediate and overwhelming. After having their car processors glitched, then crashing, being shot at by starship
X-ray lasers, losing their suspects, and now having to verify whether the embassy cars were occupied by armed ESA operatives,
the Tonalan security police were by now understandably a little tense. Every weapon they had was abruptly trained on Disassembly
Shed Four.

Monica was twenty metres from the smashed door when the ancient, brittle panels were bombarded by hollow-case bullets, TI
pulses, maser beams, and small EE rounds. Blinding light ruptured the gloom ahead of her. She hit the floor hard as white-hot
fragments slashed through the air. Smoking particles rained down around her, sizzling on the moist concrete. Several landed
on her head, singeing through her hair to sting her scalp.

“THIS IS THE POLICE. ABANDON YOUR WEAPONS. COME OUT ONE AT A TIME WITH YOUR BLOCKS AND IMPLANTS DEACTIVATED. YOU WILL NOT
BE TOLD AGAIN.”

“Holy fuck,” Monica grunted. She raised her head. A huge strip of the wall had vanished; maleficent shifting light from the
orbital battle shone in. It illuminated a multitude of broken girders whose fractured ends dripped glowing droplets. The framework
structure emitted a distressed groan; weakened junctions were snapping under the stress of the new loading, starting a chain
reaction. She could see whole levels of metal bending then dropping in juddery motions.

“Move!” she shouted. “It’s going to land on us.”

A flare of white fire billowed down out of the darkness, pummelling an operative to her knees. Her screams vanished beneath
the plangent crackling of her armour suit and skin igniting.

Four machine guns opened up in response.

“No,” Monica said. That was exactly what they wanted. It was a near-perfect snare manoeuvre, she admitted angrily as she flung
her arms over her head again. And we blundered right into it.

The security police heard the machine guns and opened fire once more.

Baranovich hadn’t been expecting quite such an emphatic rejoinder from the forces of law and order—these modern weapons were
so fearsomely powerful. Twice now the weakened framework had shifted around him, forcing him to snatch at the girders and
reinforce their solidity with his energistic power. That was dangerous. The metal was grounding out the EE rounds, and while
he was some distance away from their impact zone, those kind of voltages were lethal to a possessed and it only took one wild
shot.

When the second around of shooting started he jumped down onto the nearest walkway and sprinted away. His impressive costume’s
shiny leather boots changed to yankee-style trainers with inch-thick soles; a fervent hope in his mind that imagined rubber
would be as effective an insulator as the real stuff. He could sense others of his group on the move, shaken by the ferocity
of the attack.

Joshua looked up to see the last frayed streamers of electrons writhing down the metal pillars. The whole of the smashed-up
framework above and around him was grinding loudly. It was going to collapse any second. Self-preservation kicked in strong—fuck
Mzu, I’m going to die if I stay here. He scrambled to his feet and slapped Melvyn, who still had his hands over his head,
face jammed against the floor.

“Shift it, both of you, now!” He started running, out from under the framework, and angling away from the gigantic hole the
police had blown in the wall. There were a lot of footsteps splashing through the puddles behind him. He scanned around quickly.
It wasn’t just Melvyn, Dahybi, and Keaton who were following him; all the agency operatives and Mzu’s wacko entourage were
coming too. Everybody racing across the Disassembly Shed’s high bay floor in pursuit as if he were showing them the way to
salvation. “Jesus wept!” He didn’t want this! Just having Melvyn and Dahybi coming with him across an open space would have
proved tempting for the possessed, but Mzu too…

Unlike the Baranovich group who had set up the meeting, the ESA and the Edenists who had unlimited access to the Kulu embassy’s
memory files, and the security police who knew their home territory, Joshua didn’t quite appreciate the layout of the Disassembly
Sheds. Even their madcap drive through the foundry yard hadn’t conclusively demonstrated to him that the canals ran straight
through the centre of every shed. So he certainly didn’t know that the only way over the water was a bridge which ran along
the door above the smaller canal.