April (67 page)

It then sliced a groove through eight meters of sheet metal wall before impacting on the next door frame on the hall, creasing a deep groove across the heavy hatch, lodging in the opposite side of the steel door frame of an equipment room. It was sheer luck it didn't keep going until it exited the hull somewhere venting pressure or otherwise killing some innocent resident.

April recovered from the visual shock of that overkill and fired at the legs of the fellow still hanging into the intersection from the South side. There was a buzzing spray of sparks off the ablative coating as she nipped the edge of him, but he was gone too fast. His arm came back around the corner and lobbed a smoke grenade toward them. She snapped a shot at it, but just burned wall in a wailing loud spray of molten metal droplets. Easy nailed the grenade while it was still rolling, vaporizing it with very little smoke. Another hand came around the corner from the North and rolled another smoke bomb toward them, already spewing white. April fired at the corner and switched to infrared. The smoke was opaque in it too. She fired blindly into the haze and the Earthies sprayed an brief and equally blind stream of bullets down towards them, which drummed loudly on the walls.

Easy and she stood to fire around the corner, with a continuous beam. Just hosing the area hoping to catch something, but they were probably past. The green beam was impressive as could be, the pulsing beam which Jeff had designed to shake a target apart, also shook it like a speaker cone. The wail of it as it played across surfaces was bone rattling, but she didn't know if she was hitting anything, or if it carried enough punch through the fog to do damage. It was frustrating to realize the father and son team had two kills for sure with their strange homemade equipment, but Easy and she had no idea if they hit anything.

She stopped shooting when Easy rushed forward into the smoke and she looked back at the boy. He was looking where one of the bullets had snipped his thumb off with a sickly fascination. He had hunkered behind her shield with her but let his hand out too far to brace himself and caught a bullet. "I've got a minor wound," he called to his dad. "Have to get a new thumb grown. You OK? Or did you take any hits?"

"They didn't hit me," he called back. "but the damn machine broke my shoulder real bad. We seriously underestimated the recoil. I think we could take the smaller spring out altogether and add some more weights," he concluded in a huge understatement.

April could see the hazy outline of Easy in the clearing smoke. He had sprinted to the next intersection and let loose a long blast down the way they were running, braced on the corner with his laser. He waited a bit and come back towards her slowly, with her Chinese pistol he had retrieved in his left hand. The ventilation had sensed the smoke and cranked up, clearing it pretty fast, but the smoke alarm was still wailing, needing reset.

* * *

Further South, Jon had earlier met Frank just North of the third ring, setting up their ambush about the same time as April. It was the same corridor as Heather's family lived on, but still North of them. He was talking on his pad to Dave's guys at the
Happy Lewis and
Happy himself, who was rushing to get to the ship. The tug over at the
Cincinnati
was talking to them. They reported some casualties and two crewmen asking to surrender. The flight crew were not combative or armed at all.

 They were moving to find where the ambulance docked and make sure even if the troops were not stopped inside, they would have no scooter to escape. Where they thought they could go in it he didn't know, as it did not have the range to reach another station in any reasonable time. Especially with the load of eight or nine troopers in armor the janitor reported.

Frank joined him, carrying a clear rod carefully in both hands, index and thumbs pressed together on both ends. He looked scared to death.

"You got what I think there?" Jon asked looking at it warily.

"Yup. Our Friend Mister Bucky Braid. Rolled up on an old sapphire laser core. You take the diamond from my right hand and I will keep the left one and we will move slowly apart wiggling them in a counterclockwise motion and the rod will drop out. Reach in my pocket first and get an adhesive gun I have, to position your diamond on the wall. Then come over and do a drop for me." They moved apart and moved slower and slower until Jon definitely felt a resistance to his pulling the diamond further. He looked at Frank.

"I'll swing to the wall in an arc. Waist high OK with you?" They were positioning it on a diagonal as it was longer than the corridor was wide and just before a cross corridor.

"Super. Just no sudden tugs. I'd have to just leave it and get long tongs to retrieve it later. I won't take a chance of getting caught in a loop of it. Be a hell of a note to get caught here holding it when they come down the corridor. Huh?

"I got mine." Jon said he touched the wall with the applicator and slid the little metal clip onto the drop. He stopped and visualized the braid and carefully withdrew his two fingers from the diamond along the wall, then stepped back.

He laid down and looked to see Frank still had it between his fingers and quickly rolled low under the line past Frank to retrieve the rod on the deck and came back with the applicator. He reached in past Frank slowly. Frank slid it slowly along the wall until he could rock the disk a hair away from the wall. Straining to keep his hand flat on the wall Jon put the tip of the applicator behind the disk and pulled the trigger for a single drop. Frank pressed against the drop and just like Jon made a slow and exaggerated withdrawal from the grip.

"Hah!" he said and showed Jon a tiny shiny oval shaved off the finger tip, where there was no longer a print. They heard the rip of an automatic weapon to the North and a low pop, but Frank still paused a moment to pull a manual pump bottle from his belt and point it at the overhead across the Braid and squeeze off a few streams of some clear fluid. The fluid arced as far as Frank could reach with it, wetting the floor to maybe two meters away on the other side. There were more bursts of automatic fire - closer and a shuddering metallic scream like he had never heard. Then the steady wail of a distant smoke alarm.

"Silicone lubricant," he explained, as he finished spraying. "It doesn't look very wet but it's as slick as can be." Then they rushed around the corner and went down to the second door on the North side, where Jon used his master key and let them in. The light came on automatically and he could not see a switch anywhere so he pulled his Taser and fried the light, which went out with a purple flash.

The room was storage of some sort. He could see the intersection if he leaned on the door jamb. Frank leaned out above him, but decided his weapon was too light for armor anyway and stepped back. "I'll just man the door," he offered. "You take one good shot if you get one and roll back in as far as you can go and I'll shut the door.

Jon watched and heard rumbling footsteps of the heavy suits coming. Suddenly he heard an extra loud thump and saw a torso slide through the intersection, followed by a pair of legs still connected at the top. They went past faster than he could have reacted to shoot, leaving a scarlet streak on the deck. But the next thump was followed by a suited figure missing only a foot and it slid at an angle, so it smashed headlong into the corner of their side hall and flailed around trying to get up. Another figure stopped and grabbed the fallen figure by the equipment rack on the front. Jon fed a Taser bolt into the head of the fallen figure and another into the standing one, then back to the bottom one.

The standing powered suit appeared to have its grip locked on the front of the downed one which had gone still. The Taser had fried something in its controls.

A green shimmer flashed and a flare of melting metal walked down the wall and found the head of the one laying on the deck with lethal results.

Crap, I should have put the two shots in the standing one, Jon thought. His Taser showed an amber light behind the sight, meaning a delay to shoot again while the capacitor charged up.

The man in the standing suit finally ripped its frozen grip loose from the headless one on the deck and jumped back with jerky motions. His Taser must have damaged some circuits. The suit computers might trouble shoot themselves in a few seconds, if it had enough redundant circuits. The man sprayed a burst of projectile fire down the opposite corridor, not sure where the trouble was coming from and then started to swing back their way all jerky still in the damaged suit.

Jon rolled away from the door and Frank closed it, throwing himself flat in the dark. A rippling set of slits opened the wall noisily, showing the light from outside. The bullets thudding into the boxes stacked along the back wall. Then they could feel the fellow's retreating footsteps through the deck, as he ran on.

"You OK?" Jon asked with concern.

"Just fine. I landed on something soft."

"That was me," Jon explained. "I thought you were hit the way you came down. Would you mind helping me recover the bucky-braid, before a friend runs into it?"

* * *

After a long wait with no action, Neil ducked into the office briefly to check that Harris was still secure and stepped back out into the Holiday Inn lobby leaving the door ajar. He might want to move through in a hurry. He stood, hands on the counter exactly behind the logo. Soon there was a rumble of heavy feet running in combat armor and he gave his fingers a final free wiggle, before committing to clutching the detonator. He armed it and kept both hands in sight on the counter. There was a rattle of muted automatic weapons fire and more running.

A black armored suit appeared outside the glass doors running too fast to stop. He slid almost past and grabbed hold of the door handle to pivot and shoulder through with a banging of suit armor on plate glass. Neil was amazed the doors didn't shatter. A short machine gun with an oversized drum magazine was hung in a harness on his front.

On his heels two similar troopers with lighter weapons pushed through the doors and stayed back from the leader on each side. There was a glass wall panel on each side of the entry doors and through the right one Neil could see a last trailing trooper stop to point a weapon back up corridor and let off a long stream of fire. The muzzle spewed pulsating cones of purple fire and a rain of golden shell casings rattled against the glass. The leader in front of him had thrown his faceplate back saying something, but the man firing beyond the glass was so loud his mouth worked but nothing could be heard but the weapon.

In the hall the trooper, still firing, was hit with two flares of light, one grew on his chest just below his neck and the other low almost to his hips. The suit ablated for a heartbeat and then the beams cut through with a tooth ache inducing moan, like God's own fingernails drawn down the blackboard of heaven. The suit exploded messily, with a dull thud of rattling parts as the limbs blew off and a red spray across the glass. There were little wet scraps and tatters of pink and yellow, sliding down through the red.

"Shit!" the front soldier said in the sudden quiet, looking over his shoulder at the carnage. He turned back and tried again. "Harris, the manager," he repeated what was lost in the noise, "where is he and where's the back way out of this place? We've got damn devils with death rays behind us."

"I'm sorry, Sir." Neil said in the calmest of voices, "Mr. Harris is indisposed. You'll have to leave. You're not welcome here."

Art glared bug eyed, speechless with rage at this snotty civilian in white shirt and tie. He started to put hand back to his weapon and Neil turned his hand over displaying the detonator with his thumb firmly poised on it. It cut cold right through his rage and silenced him, as he recognized the military device instantly.

"I'm afraid I have the advantage of you, sir. If you'll surrender I'll try to preserve you alive," he offered kindly.

The trooper on Art's left had his weapon pointed away full left, but he took a step away from Art to make room and started swinging the muzzle around full circle to bear on Neil.

"Noooo," Art spoke more in supplication than command, but too late given the soldier's momentum.

Neil closed his eyes and lifted his thumb. The blast reflecting off the armor in front and the counter back shoving on his legs, picked Neil up and threw him through the door behind him like being hit by a ground car. Good thing he'd left it unlatched. He might have passed out a moment, as he seemed to have lost track mentally. Someone moaned pitifully and then he realized, embarrassed, it was him.

For a certainty he was aware next he was laying on his Taser, tucked in the back of his waist band. It felt huge and hard, like he was going to break his back bent over the hard thing. He rolled off it and was looking into the eyes of Harris, still struggling against the tape with which he was bound like an animal. He coughed at the dust and smoky chemical smell and spoke to Harris.

"Might as well lie easy fool. I may not know much, but I know how to truss up a silly little pig like you snug enough." His voice sounded faint and strange, through the ringing in his ears. There were drugs in the first aid kit he remembered, to keep the damage from being permanent. He felt at the tickle by his ear and his hand came away bloody and sooty. Something must have ricocheted off the hard suit and nipped him.

Neil stood and looked back through the door into the lobby. It was dim now, since about half the lamps were out overhead. There were wires and braces hanging out of the gaps in the ceiling too. The reception desk which had been straight, had a big arch of an indent pushed in the front of it by the explosion, so the middle was closer to the wall, indeed it was pushed back until it almost sealed off the doorway. The cupboard doors on his side were burst open and a slope of soap bars and spilled documents was thrown back toward him clear through the doorway.

He picked his footing carefully over this loose pile, bracing himself on the doorway to get through and leaned over the counter to look, still a bit woozy. The carpeting was pushed back off the bare metal deck in a semicircular ridge about three meters from the counter. There were streaks in a fan of straight lines, cut through the carpet by shrapnel, all the way to the pock marked wall panels. The glass doors and the glass walls on each side were just gone. Beyond the hump of pushed back carpet the two flanking troopers were sprawled. One was laying with his leg making little pushing motions. Neil couldn't tell if he was really still alive, or if it was just reflexive. Maybe even just the powered suit stuck on a command.