Xenopath (31 page)

Then Denning
wondered where the hell the surveillance team was, and he looked
around the bowl of the valley for any sign of their flier. Seconds
later he made out Vaughan's concealed Bison, and a thought niggled at
him: why had the surveillance team bothered with a ground-effect
vehicle?

Then he said to
the pilot, "Let's get down there, fast!"

Vaughan peered
through the rent. At the far side of the valley, against the grey
slabs of the mountainside, he made out the flash of silver that was
Denning's flier, banking and heading towards the starship.

Beside him,
Weiss fingered his laser. "They'll stop by the off-roader,"
he whispered. "Check the bodies. If they realise they aren't who
they thought they were, they'll come looking... might even enter the
ship."

Vaughan shook
his head. "They'll come looking even if they think the bodies
are yours," he pointed out. "They'll wonder where their
colleagues are. The first place they'll look is in here."

Weiss grimaced,
his nervous tic pulling at his left eyelid. "I can't risk not
getting to Breitenbach with the crystals," he said. "If
there's any chance of them finding the flier, then I start shooting.
You okay with that?"

Vaughan
hesitated, then nodded. The thought of killing, even if it meant the
success of Weiss's mission, filled him with dread.

He turned back
to the slit in the metal, hoping the corpses out there were too dead
and fried to offer up their true identities.

The flier was
slowing and coming in to land beside the off-roader. The two heavies
jumped out before it settled and stood at the ready, big laser rifles
on their hips, looking ridiculous in such confrontational postures
before imaginary foe.

Denning climbed
out slowly, staring at the blackened, shrivelled bodies beside the
off-roader. Vaughan read his squeamish revulsion before he averted
his eyes and nodded to Javinder. Denning's heart rate had increased,
and he was sweating, overcome with apprehension and fear. Below his
strata of fear, an aggrieved voice was telling himself that he was an
executive, not a combat marine. He gripped a laser pistol in a palm
wet with sweat.

Vaughan looked
down on the tableau, his vicarious experience of Denning's heightened
emotion feeding back and increasing his own tension. He wondered, for
a second, if he should deactivate his implant, save himself the
torture of sharing this unpleasant man's craven thoughts.

But that would
be a tactical error. Denning was in charge down there. Whatever he
ordered, the team did. If Vaughan continued to monitor his thoughts,
he could pre-empt any actions they might take.

Javinder,
dressed in her trademark black bodysuit, knelt beside the first body
and closed her eyes. This time there were none of the theatricals she
had used to impress the cops back on Bengal Station. She merely
concentrated for a second, then moved towards the second corpse and
knelt again.

Vaughan looked
down, watching Denning, and at the same rime had a mental image of
what Denning was seeing, along with running commentary of his
thoughts.

Denning was
staring at the Indian necropath, anxious. The executive was no fool.
He knew that something was wrong. If the bodies were those of the
radicals, then where was the surveillance team? If this was the team,
horribly mutilated before him, then their killers, the radicals, were
at large somewhere.

At that second
the executive looked up, his gaze running over the length of the
ship.

Vaughan felt a
stab of alarm—then realised that the sweep of Denning's gaze
had passed the rent where he was crouching.

He felt a hand
on his arm, squeezing. "You reading him?" Weiss whispered.

Vaughan nodded.
"He's suspicious. Wait—"

Down below,
Javinder looked up, shaking her head. At first, Vaughan took the
gesture to mean that she was beaten, that there was no hope she could
read the dying thoughts of bodies so badly burned...

Then she said to
Denning, "It's Rasmussen and Zijac."

A flare of fear
bloomed in Denning's mind, obliterating all other thought and emotion
for several seconds. Then the executive wondered where his
colleague's flier might be. If the radicals had taken it, he
thought...

Vaughan pulled
back his probe, startled by the degree of the exec's fear as he
scanned the sky for his enemy. At the same time, he was heartened
that Denning should be so frightened of what might lie ahead.

Perhaps Denning
would order that they leave the area immediately, not bother to
search the ship.

Denning said to
Javinder, "This is the radicals' vehicle. It looks like they
took the flier."

"They might
be anywhere by now," Javinder replied.

Denning nodded.
Self-preservation vied in his mind with the desire to do Scheering's
bidding successfully: Denning hoped that the radicals had fled in the
flier, but he knew that he had to search the ship.

Vaughan turned
to Weiss, who was peering through the rent, trying to discern
visually what Vaughan was able to read.

Even then, even
though Vaughan knew what he should do, something in him was reluctant
to tell Weiss that they were about to enter the ship.

But what was the
alternative? Scheering's team would shoot first, ask questions later.
Denning had been ordered to take the radicals dead or alive... and
the fact that Vaughan was not a radical was a technicality Denning's
team were hardly likely to consider in the heat of battle.

He said to
Weiss, "They're coming in."

Seconds later
Denning ordered, "Okay. We'll search the ship. Javinder, we'll
go in this way," he indicated a gaping hole in the ship, perhaps
a hundred metres away. "You go in there," he said to the
heavies, gesturing towards the rent that gave admission to the great
chamber above which Vaughan and Weiss were crouching.

Even as Denning
gave the order, Vaughan felt the executive's fear combined with the
ego-kick of being in command.

He watched
Denning and Javinder hurry along the side of the ship, Denning's
thoughts slackening off. Then he turned his attention to the heavies.

He stood, so he
could watch them as they ran from the grass and into the ship. They
passed from sight. He heard them below. "Okay, we take the front
end first, section by section. I'll go in first."

Weiss was on his
feet. He crept towards the lip of the gallery, gesturing for Vaughan
to follow. "I'll take them out. Cover me, okay?"

Vaughan nodded,
his gut tight. They split. Weiss fell to his knees and aimed over the
edge. Vaughan stretched himself out, flat on his belly, and hauled
himself to the edge of the sheared metal.

He peered over.

The heavies were
moving away from where he and Weiss lay, which made what happened
next so sickening.

Weiss fired, a
single quick pulse of blinding blue light accounted for the first
Scheering man, drilling a neat hole the diameter of a coin between
his shoulder blades and killing him instantly.

The second
heavy, alerted, turned and raised his rifle. Weiss's second shot hit
him in the chest, sending him sprawling backwards across the grass.
Vaughan closed his eyes, grateful that the men's dying thoughts were
shielded. Then he considered Denning, whose thoughts he would read as
he died—if he failed to kill his implant in time.

Weiss stood,
staring down at the dead men with distaste. "What now? We wait
for the others to investigate, or go after them?"

Vaughan scanned.
He was aware of the beacon of Denning's thoughts, half the length of
the ship away.

Javinder had
stopped him. "I'm sure I heard something," she told him.

Denning's chest
contracted with fear. "What?"

"Get onto
Dean and Hernandez—"

But Denning was
already lifting his handset and tapping in the heavies' code.

He said,
"Nothing. Maybe the signal's blocked by a bulkhead?"

The necropath
gave him a withering look, and Denning realised that the woman was
one of the few individuals he feared, besides Gustave Scheering.

"What do we
do?" Denning found himself saying, and hating himself for
delegating command so easily.

"Back to
where they entered the ship. I'll go in first."

Denning was
swamped with relief as they ran back up the outside of the ship.
Javinder knew how to handle such situations, he told himself. She'll
pull us through.

Vaughan told
Weiss, "They're coming back. The woman will enter first."

Weiss nodded and
crouched, laser aimed over the edge of the gallery as he awaited
Javinder's arrival.

What possible
alternative to this killing was there, Vaughan asked himself as he
watched Weiss. There could be no half-measures.

Denning and
Javinder were five metres from the entrance, and he turned to Weiss
and hissed, "Three metres, two, one..."

On cue,
crouching, Javinder leapt through the gap, plastered herself against
the outer skin of the ship and scuttled, like the spider she so
resembled, along the wall and below the shelf of the gallery. Weiss
cursed as she passed out of sight.

Denning was
still outside, laser gripped ready, but fearful of following.

Weiss whispered,
"Follow me," and ran lightly towards the back of the
gallery. A fracture in the decking revealed the level below. Weiss
crouched, pistol aimed, waiting for Javinder to show herself.

Vaughan made the
edge, peered down with mounting apprehension, his own pistol
levelled.

Seconds later,
Javinder came into view. How she had worked out—or guessed—that
he and Weiss were above her, he never would know: but as she stepped
into view she was staring up at them, rifle lofted.

She fired a
fraction of a second after Weiss.

Vaughan watched,
immobilised by horror, as Weiss's pulse sliced through the Indian's
lower face, opening a gaping hole into which her brain dropped and
slopped down over her chest, hanging between her breasts as she
slumped into a sitting position against a bulkhead.

Reeling, Vaughan
turned and saw with incredulity that Javinder's shot had punched a
hole in the radical's stomach. Weiss fell to his knees, hands pressed
to the smouldering wound, his expression comprising disbelief and
appeal to Vaughan to help him.

He caught Weiss,
eased him down on the deck.

"In here,"
Weiss gasped, scrabbling futilely at a pocket on the chest of his
thermal suit.

Vaughan ripped
the pocket open, pulled out a palmCom.

Weiss whispered,
"Password: Salvation. Code: 4884. Don't get it wrong, or the
file will self-corrupt. Take the crystals to..."

Vaughan was
aware then of two things simultaneously. Before him, Weiss had died,
and outside the ship Denning had heard the laser fire and his
thoughts blazed with resolve.

The exec's first
thought was to run—his second, fuelled as much by rage as by
the desire not to fail, was to fight.

Vaughan slipped
the palmCom into his jacket.

Denning had
entered the ship and pressed himself against the wall, slipping under
the gallery and out of sight. He had seen the direction of Weiss's
last shot, and knew where the enemy was situated. He realised he was
fighting for his life: it was kill or be killed, and fear sluiced
through his system, alongside hatred for the radicals.

Vaughan smiled.
Perhaps it would make killing Denning that bit easier, knowing what
the man intended.

But he thought
not. No man was purely evil. Denning was fighting for his life,
following orders he thought perfectly legitimate. He didn't know the
full story; as far as he was concerned, the radicals were merciless
killers.

Vaughan
considered boarding the flier, leaving Denning with his life, and
taking the crystals... But there was still one rack left in the ship.
How vital was it to Breitenbach's plans?

He probed.
Denning was below him, staring up at the underside of the gallery's
deck, pistol aimed.

Vaughan looked
across the gallery. A recess in the fallen wall revealed rungs
leading down the shaft. He hurried across to it, careful to make no
sound, and peered. The rungs dropped to a tubular corridor, not
visible from where Denning was.

He lowered
himself into the corridor, moving with exaggerated care, then found
another set of rungs descending to the corridor he and Weiss had
followed earlier.

He probed.
Denning was perhaps ten metres from him, still in the belly of the
ship, still looking up fearfully at the gallery deck.

Vaughan hurried
along the corridor. He'd get the last rack, return to the flier, and
leave while Denning was occupied elsewhere in the ship.

He came to the
section of crushed corridor and fell to his hands and knees. Minutes
later he arrived at the astrodome, and stopped. A quick probe told
him that Denning had heard something, was aware that Vaughan was no
longer on the gallery.

Denning's first
thought was to secure the high ground, and he looked around for a way
to achieve this.

What chance had
Vaughan now of getting away in the flier, if Denning climbed to the
gallery?

Pushing the
thought to the back of his mind, he hurried through the astrodome
along another corridor, and at last dropped into the chamber. He
crossed to the open vault, paused on the threshold to stare in at the
scintillating crystals, and wondered if their safe delivery had been
worth the lives of the six people so far.

He hauled the
last rack from the wall and made his way back along the length of the
ship, slowed by the weight of the crystals, all the time scanning for
the exec.

Denning made his
move, running towards a section of the second deck, which had sheared
and fallen, creating a ramp which led to the gallery where the flier
was situated. Denning saw the flier, and seconds later came across
Weiss. Elation flooded him at the sight of the dead radical, followed
by fear at the thought that at any second he might slam into a lethal
laser pulse.