FALLEN DRAGON (86 page)

The houses remained, though the majority had sheets of bleached plywood fixed over their windows. The grainy dust lay thick on every ridge. Lawrence noticed that all the air-conditioning cabinets had been removed, leaving empty metal brackets on the walls.

He looked over to the hexagonal building outside town that housed the fusion plant. The web of red power cables that used to radiate away from it had been taken down; now there was just a solitary line of pylons carrying a lone cable across the countryside. When he switched to infrared, the walls and roof glowed a light coral pink in comparison to the dull vermilion of the surrounding land.

"They have power," he said.

"Anybody home?" Dennis asked. He was too edgy to make it entirely jovial.

"There has to be somebody," Odel said. "They're still working here. The lights in the shed are on."

"They must have seen us coming," Karl said. "They'll be hiding out there somewhere."

"How did they know it was us?" Amersy said. "We didn't announce we were visiting."

Lawrence's jeep had reached the first houses. He nudged it forward along the main street, sensors sweeping for any sign of movement. "I don't care where they are as long as they're not in our way. Keep going."

"Sergeant!" Odel called. "Airborne. Incoming."

Odel's telemetry grid expanded across Lawrence's vision. Tracking data scrolled down. Three kilometers west, five hundred meters' altitude, holding level at four hundred kilometers per hour. One meter long. No known match found in the armory file.

"What the fuck is that?" he murmured. His own AS had acquired it: there was hardly any infrared signature, and no electromagnetic emission at all.

"It's a goddamn recon drone," Lewis said. "They're hunting us."

Who?
Lawrence wondered. Somehow it didn't seem like the kind of thing that KillBoy would use. It must be Arnoon Province. They had the money and the technology to guard their territory. Despite the alarm at such a thing being deployed against them, he felt happy.
I was
right about them.

"More like a smart cruise," Dennis was saying.

"Amersy, double time," Lawrence said. "Let's get out of here. Odel, use a smart, shoot it down."

"Yes, sir!"

Lawrence accelerated: the main street was the best piece of road since before the ambush; the jeep made a hundred kilometers an hour along it without any trouble. He saw Amersy keeping up with him. A single pulse of bright-orange flame squirted out from the smart missile rack Odel was carrying. His sensors tracked the little missile as it flashed into the sky, arcing around to line up on the unidentified drone or whatever the hell it was.

He pushed the jeep harder, racing across the central square. His display grid flashed a huge silent warning. His Skin was being struck by an incredibly powerful em pulse. Even though all its electronics were ultrahardened, the brutal power of the energy wave had already overloaded several neurotronic pearls. Noncritical internal functions began to close down.

The jeep died on him. Every electrical system simply stopped working simultaneously. The dashboard display didn't even flicker before it blanked out. They were almost across the square, with the main street just to the right. He turned the wheel, but it was sluggish without the power steering. His foot kicked down on the brake. Tires skidded on the loose sandy soil.

Their right fender clipped the building on the corner of the main street. The hood smashed through the wall, shattering composite paneling into a shoal of fluttering fragments. Then the right front wheel struck one of the concrete foundation piers. Lawrence was slammed into the steering wheel, which broke instantly. His beleaguered Skin AS didn't harden the carapace fast enough. The steering wheel's blunt column stabbed straight through his Skin, puncturing his flesh just below the rib cage on his left side.

Odel was catapulted out of his seat and straight through the windshield. He plowed into the hulk of the building, his inertia breaking several more panel sections. Hal's safety straps held on to him as he was flung forward, then reeled him back into the seat. He flopped there limply, his eyelids flickering. Dots of blood began to stain his fresh shirt, seeping out from around the medical modules. Dennis was slung out sideways, his Skin locked solid as he whirled across the road.

Amersy saw what was happening to the jeep in front and yanked the steering wheel around hard. The brake seemed to have virtually no effect on their speed. He saw the other jeep crash into the building, its rear end lifting from the ground as it struck the pier. His steering wheel was already in full lock; he couldn't twist it any farther. They missed the other jeep by less than half a meter. By then they were almost at right angles to the street. Amersy tried to reverse the lock. He could feel the tires skidding. They hit something big in the middle of the road. Momentum rolled the jeep. There was a single bar to protect the occupants. It almost worked. From Amersy's point of view the horizon tilted fast, turning the ground into the sky. It descended onto his helmet. His Skin carapace hardened just in time to protect him from the lethal blow. Then the world rotated again. And again.

Lewis tumbled out of the rolling jeep when it was on its second spin. His Skin had turned rigid, holding him in a spread-eagle pose as he slithered across the dirt road to crash into a building's foundation pier. Despite the Skin's protection the impact stunned him. The Skin released him from its grip, and he collapsed back onto the ground. When he lifted his head he saw the jeep had finally halted, its wheels in the air. The roll-guard bar had buckled, trapping Amersy and Karl underneath. He clambered to his feet and staggered over.

Amersy's upper torso was protruding from the wrecked jeep. He was trying to crawl out, but the chassis had his legs pinned. Lewis gripped the side of the jeep, braced himself and lifted. The jeep creaked as it rose half a meter. Amersy wriggled free.

"Thanks," Amersy said.

"What the hell hit us?"

"I think it was some kind of e-bomb. It blew every circuit in the jeep. Even my Skin's electronics suffered."

"Shit. Where the hell did KillBoy get an e-bomb from?"

"God knows." Amersy looked back at the first jeep. "Sarge?"

"I'm here."

"You need help?"

"Don't think so. How are your guys?"

Amersy saw blood spreading out from underneath the back of the jeep. "Jesus! Karl? Karl, can you hear me?" He checked Karl's telemetry grid, which was almost blank. The Skin suit still had some functions, and there was a heartbeat. But that was about all he could tell.

Both of them dropped to their knees and peered into the gap. Karl's Skin had been split open by ragged twists of metal that had peeled back from the bodywork. Several of them were still impaling him.

Amersy used his speaker. "Hang on, Karl, we'll have you out of there right away."

"We'll have to turn it right over," Lewis said.

"Shouldn't be a problem." They took hold of the jeep. "Ready?" Amersy said. "Okay, lift." The jeep began to emit labored metallic screeches as they slowly tipped it up. One of Lewis's hands slipped, and the vehicle sagged back a few centimeters.

"Hell," Lewis grunted as he found another hold. "The tank's split, this thing is dripping in hihydrogen."

"Great."

They had almost got it on its side when Amersy's sensors detected the little projectile. An intense blue-white spark hit the jeep. The hihydrogen ignited immediately, enveloping the entire vehicle. Amersy and Lewis let go, sending it crashing back down.

"Down!" Amersy ordered. He was already flinging himself flat.

The fuel tank exploded.

Lawrence was unconscious for an unknown time. When the pain pulled him back he guessed it couldn't have been long. Dust was still swirling round the wreck. Amersy called him, and he said he was okay, though he was lying. The end of the steering column was still jutting into his side. The Skin's medical program was scrolling up information: the damaged tissue, chipped pelvic girdle, the suppressants it was pumping into his blood. He placed both hands flat on the dashboard and pushed. His body moved back, sliding off the steering column.

Even with the drugs, Lawrence wailed at the pain as it withdrew. Then his Skin muscles were realigning themselves, sealing up the wound. The suit's internal layer discharged antiseptic, anesthetic and clotting agents into the tear. The whole area turned blissfully cold.

He turned around to see what had happened to Hal. "Oh, sweet Fate." The kid was sitting against his safety straps, head hung forward. All of his medical modules had been burned out by the e-bomb. Lawrence's Skin AS couldn't get a response from any of them. Small patches of blood were staining the kid's shirt where the jolt of their impact had dislodged modules.

"Sergeant?" Odel limped out of the house. There was something wrong with the shape of one leg. "Are you okay?"

"Sure." He levered himself out of the driver's seat. "You?"

"Not a problem."

"Good, let's get Hal out."

"Where's Dennis?"

Lawrence looked around. There was a Skin suit lying in the middle of the street, badly mangled. The second jeep must have hit it full on. "Shit!" Dennis's telemetry grid was flatlined.

Don't grieve for the newly dead
—
they never thank you. Secure the platoon.
Lawrence could hear Ntoko growling it out.

He released Hal's safety straps and lifted the kid out of the rear seat. "Bring the medical kit," he told Odel.

An explosion rocked the street. Lawrence saw a fireball burst out of the second jeep as the wreckage levitated off the ground.

"Amersy, get to cover. We've been ambushed. Seek and destroy."

"Roger that."

The two Skins lying flat on the ground beside the blazing jeep scrambled to their feet and sprinted for the nearby houses.

Lawrence wrapped one arm around Hal, lifting him gingerly, then reached down into the passenger seat for the smart missile rack. He stepped into the house through the demolished wall.

The room inside was empty. He kicked the door open and went through into a dark hallway. There were six identical doors and a stairway. He hurried down to the far end and kicked the last door open. It was another empty room. Tiny cracks of light leaked around the boarded-up window. He eased Hal down in a comer.

Odel put the medical kit down and snapped the top open. "Have we got anything that'll help?"

"I don't know." Lawrence picked out a diagnostic probe and switched it on. He was relieved when the small display pane lit up. The em pulse hadn't damaged electronics that were off at the time of the attack. Data began to flow into his AS.

There was the sound of a carbine firing in the distance. "Odel, go help them."

"You bet."

"Hey, be careful out there. These bastards look like they know what they're doing."

"So do I."

Amersy ran along an alleyway leading off the main street. There wasn't a lot of cover. The prefab houses were spaced a regulation twenty meters apart. The grid of streets almost allowed him to see from one side of town to the other. It also gave the ambushers the same field of vision. And he didn't know where they were.

Lewis had ducked away at the second house, heading off down a side street. Amersy raced on for a little while, then took a turning. He called up the Dixon map file, inertial guidance plotting his position. The Skin AS gave him a rough estimate of where the little projectile had come from. His link with Lewis gave him the other man's location, plotting that on the map as well.

"Lewis, we need to pincer them. You getting this tactical data?"

"It's online, Corp."

"Keep going straight on for a hundred and twenty meters. I'll be three streets to your left. They should be between us."

"Roger."

Lewis jogged along the route Amersy's AS had provided. His carbine slid out of its arm recess. When he got to the intersection he stopped and peered around the corner. There was a flash of motion two houses down. His AS replayed the image. It was a woman in her mid-twenties, dressed in jeans and a yellow T-shirt. She was carrying some kind of pearl-white cylinder in her left hand. The AS couldn't match it to any weapon in its catalogue file.

He switched carbine rounds to depleted-uranium and fired straight through the wall. The composite paneling in front of him disintegrated as the high-penetration rounds went straight through. Nothing in the houses was solid enough to stop one. His Skin AS gave him a spread pattern that had a high strike probability. He stopped firing and started to run to the corner where the woman had disappeared.

"Got a hostile, Corp. In pursuit."

"Roger that. Did you get them?"

Lewis reached the end of the street and jumped. It was a trajectory no hostile would be expecting. He flew past the end house, a meter and a half in the air. Carbine pointing down the street, sensors sweeping. There were puncture holes in the houses left by the depleted-uranium rounds, three foundation piers had shattered, but no body. His feet hit the ground and he was still running. He dashed behind a house and crouched beside a foundation pier.