‘Sonic cannon. They must’ve installed it since the first run. Good job we brought missiles, though we’ve definitely broken
tapu
now.’ Yenemer sounded quite excited at the prospect.
Jarek was beginning to think he’d made a serious mistake coming along. Just because the rules forbade lethal combat, it didn’t mean he couldn’t get killed.
A small explosion marked the end of the doors. The two advance teams ducked inside, Jarek’s unit following behind. His helmet overlaid the dark enclosed space of the building with the internal layout, no doubt taken from the files he’d provided. He saw two heat signatures lying on the ground; others, tagged as friendlies in his helmet display, were heading for a stairwell. Shortly after they disappeared down the stairs Yenemer called a halt. ‘Guards with netguns have set up an ambush below. We’ll need to wait for the men on point to clear the way.’
‘What about the gas?’ Jarek’s helmet indicated that the air outside was no longer breathable.
‘They must’ve managed to suit up before it hit.’
‘Oh.’
Now they weren’t in immediate danger Jarek found that his breath sounded surprisingly loud in his ears. As he dialled down the audio damping he heard a two-tone alarm from outside. It felt both absurd and fucking terrifying, the four of them waiting poised at the top of the stairwell in their ridiculous suits. At least he was too wired to feel tired.
Yenemer’s voice came over the com. ‘We’re clear. Move out.’
At the bottom of the stairs one of the mercs was freeing another from what looked like a giant ball of string, hacking the threads with a definitely lethal-looking knife. Another team member was down, with a liquid heat source - blood - seeping out from under the body. The defenders must be using something heavier than tranq ammo. Further up the corridor three more unconscious bodies lay sprawled, two armoured, one displaying the absurd sartorial combination of sleeping clothes and a rebreather.
They picked their way past, heading for the research labs. The other teams moved off to the accommodation section, where their target was most likely to be found at this time of night. There was a good chance Tawhira-
ngai
had already worked out this was a repeat of the original, failed, mission and now they would be concentrating their resistance there. Jarek briefly wondered what made the man they were after so important that Ruanuku-
ngai
were willing to go to such extreme lengths to get their hands on him. He’d probably never know.
His team advanced by the numbers, checking corners, taking turns on point, moving as a tight unit. Jarek made sure he kept up and didn’t get in the way. He checked doors as they went: the locked ones still showed red; though there was a chance that the mercs might be able to disable the central security, it wasn’t their priority.
They came across two dead or comatose guards who had succumbed to the gas, then, round the next corner a civilian, a woman in a suit who’d passed out with her hand on her wrist-com. According to the plans, a lot of the security was com-activated and as Yenemer removed the com, prising the woman’s limp fingers off it, Jarek was quietly relieved that they hadn’t had to hack out someone’s implant.
Two more junctions and at last they were in the right area. They used the appropriated com to open locked doors and started checking rooms, most of which were laboratories or workrooms. One lab held a couple of scientists who’d been working late and now lay sprawled on the floor. Other than that, everywhere was deserted. Two of the doors had DNA scanners; they’d come back to those if they had to.
Yenemer’s voice came over Jarek’s com. ‘Quin says they’ve got the primary target. We need to get a move on here; there’s a good chance Tawhira-
ngai
is flying in reinforcements.’
Now they tell him. ‘Right.’ His team’s orders were to keep him safe and ensure he got the individual he was after. It had to be his call if they bugged out.
‘We do have an alternative for the doors that won’t open,’ said Yenemer carefully.
‘As in, something that’s a little against the rules, like that missile earlier?’ asked Jarek equally carefully.
‘Correct.’ Yenemer wasn’t a local, and apparently he was less concerned about the whole
ngai
honour thing.
‘Then at this stage, I’d say “Fuck the rules”.’
‘I hear you.’
They split into two teams to speed up the search and checked the last few remaining com-locked rooms first. When that proved fruitless, they met outside the first of the DNA-locked rooms and Yenemer produced a mesh bag of eyeball-sized silver globes. He pressed one into the centre of the door and it stuck there.
‘Everyone back,’ he cried, and once they were safely round the corner, he made a complex cutting gesture with one hand.
There was a muffled bang, and Jarek felt a faint tremor. They returned to find the doorframe blackened, the door a buckled rectangle burning on the floor. The room beyond was another lab, with nothing of interest in it.
The second door they blew led into a short passage with another door at the end, this one a pressure-door not dissimilar to the ones on Jarek’s ship. He didn’t much like the look of that, but they were out of options.
The small room beyond contained a couple of workstations and what appeared to be a silver-grey coffin, wired up to more machinery. Jarek approached the coffin cautiously. It had a clear lid. Inside, lying on white padding and clad in a blue hospital gown, was Taro. His eyes were closed and his skin was as pale as the cushioning around him.
Jarek called the team’s medic over. ‘Is he dead?’ he asked her, careful to keep all emotion out of his voice.
The medic examined the machines carefully. ‘No, just in deep sedation.’
‘Can we move him?’
‘I should be able to unhook him safely, though this is rather an odd set-up.’
‘Odd how?’
‘Well, it’s an auto-surgery and isolation unit - battlefield tech.’
‘Just do your best,’ Jarek said, and left her to it. The mercs were standing around awkwardly. ‘Any of you good with comps?’ he asked.
When one of them raised a hand Jarek pointed to the main workstation and said, ‘How about we download everything we can from that while we wait.’
‘If you like; we’ll have to pass on a copy to the patron.’
‘Fine by me, as long as I get one too.’
The man nodded.
After a few minutes, the medic called over, ‘I’m opening the box now. I’ll put a rebreather on him, but he’ll be out of it for a while. We’ll have to carry him.’
‘I’ll do that,’ said Jarek. He hoisted Taro over his shoulder. The boy weighed even less than he expected.
Getting out was easier than getting in, and the rest of the mercs were already waiting nervously in the aircar. They were barely on board before the driver took off.
The other team had succeeded too: the aircar’s med-bay was already occupied by an unconscious man. Jarek lowered Taro to the floor and removed the rebreather. The medic came over and checked him out.
‘Is it safe to bring him round?’ asked Jarek.
‘Should be. Might take a while.’ She gave Taro a shot.
After what felt like an hour but was probably only a few minutes the boy’s eyelids fluttered, then opened.
‘It’s all right!’ said Jarek. ‘You’re safe now.’
For a moment Taro looked distraught. Then his gaze cleared and he began to shiver. Jarek grabbed a thermal blanket from the medic and wrapped it around him.
‘You c-came . . .’ he whispered. ‘Thank you.’
Jarek was about to say that was what friends were for when Taro tensed again. ‘N-nual,’ he stuttered.
‘Was she in there, Taro? Have you seen her?’ If they’d somehow missed her then they were screwed - there was no way the mercs would go back in now.
‘N-no—N-not here. But . . . I dreamed her.’
If he’d been talking about anyone else Jarek would have assumed the boy was delirious or deluded. ‘Do you know where she is?’
‘Yeah,’ Taro whispered miserably. ‘Somewhere very bad.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Nual opened her eyes. Her throat was dry, implying she had been unconscious for a while. She was naked. She appeared to be in the cabin of a shiftship, though she couldn’t sense the near-subliminal hum she generally associated with space-travel. She got up shakily and walked over to the cabin door. There was no obvious lock, but she was unsurprised when it remained closed. The only other openings were air vents above the door and bed, both far too small to be of any use.
She extended her other senses, reaching out to locate any presences beyond the door—
—and ran up against a mental wall. Everything outside the physical confines of her cabin - her cell - was off-limits to her mind.
Whoever had sneaked up on her in the alley had been able to hide their presence. Discovering she was now under a mental blockade confirmed her suspicions: she had been captured by the Sidhe.
She tested the unseen wall, looking for a weakness, but there was none; the construct was built and maintained in unity: several Sidhe were devoting themselves to making her imprisonment mental as well as physical.
She’d been in this situation before. This time, however, she had no intention of accepting her fate. She extended her mind again, pushing harder.
The wall pushed back.
She realised her mistake just in time and withdrew.
In the brief moment before she disengaged from the other minds she sensed an unexpected emotion:
Disappointment.
She had been blessed amongst her people, yet she had turned against them. They were sad for her, she who should have been a source of hope but had become a source of shame. If she would only repent, then perhaps in time she might be forgiven.
Part of her yearned to do as they suggested. Compared to the communion of unity, human speech was little more than noise, vague and inaccurate. She was being given the chance to return to a state of grace no ordinary human could comprehend, and she had missed that so much.
But the unity was not welcoming her, it was chastising her. Before she could be accepted back into its all-consuming embrace, she must make amends.
It was too late for that. She had made her choice seven years ago.
‘You realise he’s undergone surgery?’
Jarek jerked fully awake. After the adrenalin rush of the mission had faded, his abused body had given in. It needed rest. He looked over at the medic who was examining Taro where he lay on the floor of the aircar. The boy had lapsed back into unconsciousness after a brief and not entirely coherent conversation: he claimed he’d somehow been in mental contact with Nual when Jarek rescued him, and that she’d been abducted by the Sidhe. Jarek was half-hoping Taro was drugged or hallucinating, for that news was about as bad as it got.
‘Surgery?’ he asked the medic. ‘What sort?’
‘That unit we found him in is designed to perform complex medical procedures without the need for a human expert. Someone programmed it to operate on him several times over the last few days, at various points in his abdomen and lower thoracic area.’
‘Will he be all right?’ Jarek hadn’t thought to check Taro over before he’d carried him out.
‘It’s all keyhole surgery, so the wounds aren’t major. I’ll redress them. The only problem would be if there’s much internal work been done. From the location and shape of the wounds I don’t think they were attempting anything serious, but you’ll need to get him checked out.’
‘So what the hell were they doing?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said the medic, ‘but this appears to be exploratory work. If I had to guess, I’d say they were looking for something that doesn’t show up on normal scanning equipment.’