The Sundering (45 page)

Surely the only sensible thing to do was to order his teams to leave as quietly as they had come.

Sula watched as the truck slowly pulled out from beneath the bridge and disappeared from sight around the corner of the building. The Naxid police drew their vehicles across the road on either end of the underpass as roadblocks.

Hong’s voice came over Sula’s helmet phones, and Sula hastily put on her helmet to better hear him.

“Someone has to signal me when the convoy passes.”

Others hastened to assure Hong they would do this. Sula remained silent.

She looked over the room again, saw the Gueis with their taut faces, the daughter still fierce in her determination to win her video game. Plopping sounds came from the video wall, and odd little cries. Apparently the game had to do with animals jumping over one another in a rather complicated arboreal environment.

More police flashers to the right, far down the parkway, away from the city center. Now that Sula had her helmet on, she turned up the magnification on the faceplate to see a wedge of police vehicles coming toward her, and behind them larger transport, visible only as they passed through the brilliant slices of dawn that fell between the buildings.

“Comm: to Blanche,” Sula said. “I think they’re coming. Comm: send.”

“All teams,” came Hong’s response. “Let me know when they begin to cross the bridge.”

Sula turned to the Gueis. “I want all of you down flat on the floor,” she said. “When things start, I want you to crawl out of here.
Crawl,
understand?” She swiped her hand parallel to the floor in a gesture that meant,
flat on the floor.
“Take shelter in the hallway, or with a neighbor on the far side of the building.”

“Yes, my lady,” said Mister Guei. Sula felt a spasm of amusement: she must be good at being a Peer for Guei to call her “my lady” when no one else had. Guei and his wife looked at each other, then lowered themselves and their infant son to their creamy carpet. The daughter was reluctant to leave her game, but her mother snapped at her and dragged her to the floor by one wrist. The daughter looked as if she might cry, but then decided against it.

Sula turned back to the window. The Naxids were coming on quickly and it was less than half a minute before the first wave of police vehicles came by. They moved at moderate speed, unhurried. Behind them were sedans, then trucks and buses, all moving widely spaced in a long column. Sula couldn’t see the column’s tail even with her faceplate on full magnification.

“Comm: to Blanche. They’re on the bridge. Comm: send.” No doubt every other team leader was shooting Hong the same message.

All the vehicles were dark with Naxids. Some of the trucks were open and carried long weapons, machine guns or grenade launchers, operated by alert crews that scanned the buildings as they passed by. Sula drew farther back into the room and hoped that the grenade launchers weren’t loaded with antimatter grenades.

That would be very, very messy.

“Comm: to Blanche. They’re heavily armed, and there are a lot of them. I don’t think we should engage…”

Her words trailed away as the bomb truck reappeared, booming down the Highway 16 ramp at high speed, the silent electric motors pushing each of its twelve huge wheels at maximum acceleration. Following the truck came a blue Victory sedan, presumably the car that belonged to Team 499.

At Hong’s wild audacity a frenzied admiration sang through Sula’s heart. The group leader was attempting to repair the flaws in his plan with sheer courage.

Sula’s nerves gave a leap as the truck hit the Naxid police roadblock and flung the vehicle aside like a man waving off an insect. A piece of the police car, curved yellow metal, flew high into the air and hit the pavement with a clang that Sula could hear even through the window. A Naxid lay sprawled where his own car had hit him. Another danced aside with surprising speed and then was clawing on the pavement for the rifle that had fallen off his shoulder.

The truck disappeared under the bridge with a series of distant booming noises as its tires vaulted expansion joints in the pavement. The Victory followed. The Naxid grabbed his rifle and raised it to his shoulder, then seemed to dissolve in a shower of sparks.

Each of Group Blanche’s rifles held a box magazine with four hundred and one rounds of caseless ammunition, all of which could be discharged in something less than three seconds. It looked as if the Naxid had just absorbed about half a magazine.

Then the weapon was turned on the police car, and the vehicle leaped and juddered and sparked, then sagged on its suspension as a baleful white mist rose from its punctured frame.

A few seconds later the Victory sedan reappeared, driving in reverse up the ramp at full speed. The Naxid procession continued to roll by, and seemed not to have noticed the fight or to be slow in reacting to it.

“All teams, stand by.” Hong’s voice, ringing with fine triumph, came over Sula’s headset. “Prepare to detonate on my order.”

Sula turned to her team.
“Flat!”
she said.
“Now!”

Rather than dropping on her belly Sula squatted with her back to the outside wall, taking comfort in its solidity.

The explosion seemed to come in several rapid stages, first a great crack that made the glassware in the Gueis’ sideboard rattle, then a huge boom that Sula felt pass through her like a wave, stirring each soft organ in passing, and lastly a massive crash that felt like a kick in the spine, a bass thunder that seemed to lift the apartment building off its foundations, then drop it down again with a bone-stirring impact.

Her head happened to be turned to the left, to the gable window, and she actually saw it bow inward like a bubble about to pop; but the window material was tough, and to Sula’s surprise it rebounded back into the frame.

Oh well. Now they’d have to shoot it out.

She sprang to her feet as debris rattled against the side of the building. The bridge had gone up beautifully, leaving behind vast hole surrounded by a tangle of writhing girders and rebar. Above the destruction a tower of dust and smoke flickered in the dawn light. Debris was still falling onto the roadway. A sinister lick of flame rose lazily from the dark pit below.

It was difficult to tell how much damage had actually been done to the Naxids. Their convoy was widely spaced, and probably no more than one or two vehicles had actually been on the bridge when it was destroyed. If they’d ever been there, there was no sign of them now. One bus lay on the far side of the bridge more or less where the explosion had caught it, intact but capsized, its windows broken and sightless. The rest of the convoy had come to a stop. Naxids boiled off the vehicles like a swarm of dark insects.

“All teams, open fire!” Hong’s sunny, encouraging voice sang in her ears. “Fire, fire, fire!”

Sula looked at her team as if through a light fog: there seemed to be a lot of suspended particles in the air. Spence was pressed flat on the floor, hands over her helmet, and Macnamara was sitting up with a stunned expression on his face.

“Up!” Sula urged, her blood suddenly alight. “Get firing!”

Fire one magazine from each weapon, she thought, then get the hell out. Even given surprise and superior position, the thirty-odd members of Group Blanche couldn’t expect to hold out for long against the hundreds of Naxids in the street below.

At that instant all the windows facing the Axtattle Parkway burst inward, the material that had resisted the explosion now shattering before a torrent of Naxid fire. Sula flung herself to the floor as window shards rattled off her body armor and a sleet of laths and plaster came down from the ceiling. Over her head the machine gun spun on its tripod as rounds hit the long barrel. Macnamara rose to his feet and reached up to take control of the weapon, but Sula shouted
“Get down!”
and Macnamara, his expression startled, joined her on the floor.

“Set the gun to automatic and get out!” Sula said. Through her hard body armor she felt sharp impacts on the floor as bullets came through the windows of the floor below and drove through that story’s ceiling to hit the floor on which she was lying. Holes appeared in the carpet, with little bits of pad and fluff flying up. The building shook as, somewhere, a grenade went off.

The rain of laths and plaster did not cease. Sula scurried to the door, moving in a kind of four-legged crouch, opened the door, and half-rolled into the corridor beyond. Spence was right behind her.

Sula glanced back through the door. Macnamara still knelt behind the machine gun, madly punching the pad that controlled it. His shoulders and helmet were white with the plaster coming down. “Come
on,
” Sula urged him, and then her heart gave a despairing leap as he threw both arms out and fell back as a bullet took him full in the chest. Sula gave a cry and half-launched herself back into the apartment, and then she saw the scar on Macnamara’s body armor, and saw that his hands were moving. She realized his body armor had repelled the attack.

“Fuck that!” she called to him. “Clear out!”

With some effort Macnamara rolled himself to a seated position and with fixed determination reached for the pad again. Sula backed out of the door as the Guei family came scurrying out on hands and knees. Blood poured from Mr. Guei’s left eye socket—he’d lost the eye to a bullet, or maybe to a splinter. His wife shrieked out one hysterical wail after another, and it was the daughter who cradled the infant as she carried him into the hallway’s relative safety, her face fixed with the same single-minded determination that she had displayed when engaged in her video game.

The unexpected sound of a woman’s voice shouting into Sula’s ear caused her to give an involuntary jump.

“Four-nine-one, this is Two-one-one. Naxid fire’s too heavy. We’re pulling out.” Action Team 211 was the other team in this building, the one that had entered first and guided Sula’s team to the Guei apartment.

Sula’s head spun as she tried to remember communications protocols. “Comm: to Two-one-one. This is Four-nine-one. Acknowledge. We’re pulling out, too. Comm: send.”

Macnamara at last got the machine gun programmed. It tracked automatically on its mount as it found a target, depressed its barrel, fired, and promptly blew up—the barrel had been knocked out of alignment by enemy bullets, and the first round fired by Team 491 did nothing but destroy the gun that fired it.

Macnamara stared in disbelief at the ruined weapon, then reached for his rifle.
“Enough!”
Sula shrieked. “Get back here!”

Macnamara thought about it for a moment, then scuttled backward like an ungainly insect till he gained the doorway. Sula rose to a crouch, helped Macnamara rise, then said, “To the stair!
Go!
”

Spence was already on her way, limping. Sula saw that she was leaving bloody footprints in the hall. She shoved Macnamara after Spence, then followed.

Bullets still found their way into the hall, but the danger was much less than that in the front rooms. Spence reached the emergency stair, hurled open the door, and disappeared into the stairwell. Macnamara followed. Sula entered the stair last, after casting a glance back at the Gueis, the bleeding father in the arms of his screaming wife, the daughter looking after the baby with her air of intense concentration, as if trying to will away the whole situation.
Try not to hate us,
Sula thought at them mentally, and then hurled herself down the stair.

There was a snapping sound overhead, and soft rain began to fall from the building’s sprinkler system.

“Fucking brilliant,” Sula breathed. “Absolutely fucking brilliant.” No matter how many times Group Blanche had been over the plan, no one had suggested that the first Naxid reaction to the bombing would be to randomly pump a million rounds of suppressive fire into every nearby building.

At least the stair was on the far side of the building from Axtattle Parkway, and no bullets penetrated the stairwell. As Sula’s boots clattered on the risers, she realized that she should let her superior know that Team 491 was running like hell, and then it took her a moment to sort out radio protocol.

“Comm: to Blanche,” she said, trying to keep her tone even. “Naxid fire is too hot. Team Four-nine-one is pulling out. Comm: send.”

The response came within seconds, crisp over the sound of sprinkler water pattering on her helmet. “Four-nine-one, permission to withdraw granted.”

I don’t remember asking
permission,
Sula thought. The thump of a grenade echoed through the building. Sula could smell smoke despite the gush of the sprinklers.

A chunk of plaster banged off Sula’s helmet, and she brushed wet plaster dust off her shoulder. Her team was making good time despite the water that was now beginning to spill down the stairs in little waterfalls.

The lobby was full of bewildered civilians, many partly dressed or in their night clothes. Some were wounded. The sound of wailing children echoed off the tile walls, and people sloshed in water in bare feet or slippers. There was no sign of Team 211.

“All of you clear out!” Sula shouted. She waved an arm to indicate direction. “Head back two or three streets and wait for the all-clear. If you’re hurt, you can call for help there.”

“What’s going on?” someone demanded.

“It’s the war!” shouted an angry bass voice. “The damn war!”

“But isn’t the war over?” asked the first.

“Get moving!” Sula shouted. “Move back before you get caught in the crossfire!”
You idiots,
she added to herself.

She turned to her team. “Ardelion, how badly are you hurt?” Using Spence’s code name.

Spence looked down at the boot that left red trails in the water. “I’m not sure. I think it’s minor, but it hurts like a bitch.”

“Do you need to be carried?”

Spence shook her head. “I can keep my feet. I just hope I don’t have to run.”

“All right, then. You and Starling pull your hoods over your heads. Rifles completely under the capes. Brush that crap off your shoulders. Move with these people till you get to the car.”