“Squad, shoot out the mechanoids,” he ordered. His communications block informed him that half of the command channels had
shut down. He switched on the block’s external speaker and repeated the order, bellowing it out across the feed roads at a
volume which could be heard above the detonating mechanoids.
A streak of white fire lanced down from one of Moyce’s upper windows. The threat response program in Ralph’s neural nanonics
bullied his leg muscles with nerve impulse overrides. He was flinging himself aside before his conscious mind had registered
the attack.
Two more mechanoids exploded as he hit the concrete behind the parapet. He thought he recognized the heavy-calibre gaussrifle
which the G66 troops used. Then an insidious serpent of white fire was coiling around his knee. His neural nanonics instantly
erected analgesic blocks across his nerves, blanking out the pain. A medical display showed him skin and bone being eaten
away by the white fire. The whole knee joint would be ruined in a matter of seconds if he couldn’t extinguish it. Yet both
Dean and Will said smothering it like natural flames made hardly any difference.
Ralph assigned his neural nanonics full control of his musculature, and simply designated the window which the white fire
had emerged from. With detached interest he observed his body swivelling, the rifle barrel swinging round. His retinal target
graphics locked over a window. Thirty-five rounds pummelled the black rectangle, a mixed barrage of high explosive (chemical),
shrapnel, and incendiary.
Within two seconds the room had ceased to exist, its carved stone frontage disintegrating behind a vast gout of flame and
showering down on the melee below.
The white fire around Ralph’s knee vanished. He pulled a medical nanonic package from his belt and slapped it on the charred
wound.
Down on the feed roads most of the AT Squad had switched to their communications block speakers. Orders, warnings, and cries
for help reverberated over the sound of multiple explosions. A vast fusillade of heavy-calibre rifle fire was pounding into
the loading bays. Comets of white fire poured out in retaliation.
“Nelson,” Ralph datavised. “For Christ’s sake, make sure the troops out front don’t let anyone escape. They’re to hold position
and shoot to kill now. Forget the capture mission; we’ll try it back here, but nobody else is to attempt anything fancy.”
“Yes, sir,” Nelson Akroid answered.
Ralph went back to the speaker. “Cathal, let’s try and get in there. Isolation procedure. Separate them, and nuke them.”
“Sir.” The cry came back over the parapet.
At least he’s still alive, Ralph thought.
“Do you want stage two yet?” Admiral Farquar datavised.
“No, sir. They’re still contained. Our perimeter is holding.”
“Okay, Ralph. But the second there’s a status change, I need to know.”
“Sir.”
His neural nanonics reported the medical package had finished knitting to his knee. The weight load it could take was down
forty percent. It would have to do. Ralph tucked the heavy-calibre rifle under his arm, then bending low, he ran for the end
of the parapet and the steps down to the trunk road.
Dean Folan signalled his team members forward, scurrying around the side of the big mound of crates and into the loading bay
area. Flames had taken hold amid the fragments piled outside.
It was dark inside the loading bays. Projectile impacts had etched deep pocks into the bare carbon-concrete walls. Rattail
tangles of wire and fibre-optic cable hung down from the fissured ceiling, swaying gently. Through the helmet’s goggle lenses
he could see very little, even with enhanced retinas on full sensitivity. He switched his shell helmet sensors to low light
and infrared. Green and red images merged to form a pallid picture of the rear of the loading bay. Annoying glare spots flickered
as small flames licked at the storage frames which lined the walls. Discrimination programs worked at eliminating them.
There were three corridors leading off straight back from the rear of the bay, formed by the storage frames. Metal grids containing
crates and pods ready for the lorries, they looked like solid walls of huge bricks. Cargo-handling mechanoids had stalled
on their rails which ran along the side of the frames, plasmatic arms dangling inertly. Water was pouring out of five or six
broken ceiling pipes, spilling down the crates to pool on the floor
Nothing moved in the corridors.
Dean left his gaussrifle at the head of the middle corridor, knowing it would be useless at close range, the electronic warfare
field would simply switch it off. Instead, he drew a semi-automatic rifle; it had a feed loop connected to his backpack, but
the rounds were all chemical. The AT Squad had grumbled about that at the start, questioning the wisdom of abandoning their
power weapons. Nobody had complained much after the mechanoids went berserk, and their suit systems suffered innumerable dropouts.
Three of the team followed him as he advanced down the corridor, also carrying semi-automatics. The rest of them spread out
around the bay and edged down the other two corridors.
A figure zipped across the end of the corridor. Dean fired, the roar of the semi-automatic impressively loud in the confined
space. Plastic splinters from the crates ricocheted through the air as the bullets chiselled into them.
Dean started running forwards. There was no corpse on the floor.
“Radford, did you see him?” Dean demanded. “He was heading towards your corridor.”
“No, Chief.”
“Anybody?”
All he got was a series of negatives, some shouted, some datavised. No doubt the hostiles were about, his suit blocks were
still badly affected by the electronic warfare field. His injured arm was itchy, too.
He reached the end of the corridor. It was a junction to another three. “Hell, it’s a sodding maze back here.”
Radford arrived at the end of his corridor, semi-automatic sweeping the storage frames.
“Okay, we fan out here,” Dean announced. “All of you: keep two other squad members in visual range at all times. If you lose
sight of your partners, then stop immediately and reestablish contact.”
He picked one of the corridors leading deeper into the shop and beckoned a couple of the Squad to follow him.
A creature landed on top of Radford; half man, half black lion, features merged grotesquely. Its weight carried him effortlessly
to the floor. Dagger claws scraped at Radford’s armour suit. But the integral valency generators had stiffened the fabric
right from the moment of impact, protecting the vulnerable human skin inside. The creature howled in fury, thwarted at the
very moment of triumph.
Radford’s suit systems as well as his neural nanonics began to fail. Even his shocked yell was cut off as the communications
block speaker died. The suit’s fabric started to give way, slowly softening. One of the claw tips screwed inwards, hungry
for flesh.
Even amid his frantic twisting and bucking to throw off the creature Radford was aware of a whisper which bordered on the
subliminal. It had surely been there all his life, but only now with the prospect of death sharpening his perception was he
fully conscious of it. It began to expand, not in volume, but in harmony. A whole chorus of whispers. Promising love. Promising
sympathy. Promising to help, if he would just—
Bullets smashed into the flanks of the creature, mauling the fur and long muscle bands. Dean kept his semi-automatic steady
as the thing clung to Radford’s body. He could see the armour suit fabric hardening again, the claws slipping and skidding.
“Stop!” one of the team was shouting. “You’ll kill Radford.”
“He’ll be worse than dead if we don’t,” Dean snarled back. Spent casings were hurtling out of the rifle at an astounding rate.
Still the beast wouldn’t let go, its great head shaking from side to side, emitting a continual wail of pain.
The team was rushing en masse towards Dean down the narrow corridors between the storage frames. Two more were shouting at
him to stop.
“Get back!” he ordered. “Keep watching for the rest of the bastards.” His magazine was down to eighty per cent. The rifle
didn’t have the power to beat the creature, all the thing had to do was hang on. Blood was running down its hind legs, the
fur where the bullets struck a pulped mass of raw flesh. Not enough damage, not nearly enough.
“Someone else fire at it for Christ’s sake,” Dean yelled frantically.
Another rifle opened up; the second stream of bullets catching the creature on the side of its lycanthrope head. It let go
of Radford, to be flung against the storage frame. The rampant wail from its gaping fangs redoubled.
Dean boosted the communications block’s volume to its highest level. “Surrender or die,” he told it.
It might have had a beast’s form, but the look of absolute hatred came from an all-too-human eye.
“Grenade,” Dean ordered.
A small grey cylinder thumped into the bloody body.
Dean’s armour suit froze for a second. His collar sensors picked up the detonation: explosion followed by implosion. The outline
of the beast collapsed into a middle-aged man, colour draining away. For a millisecond the man’s frame was captured perfectly,
sprawled against the storage frame. Then the bullets resumed their attack. This time, he had no defence.
Dean had seen worse carnage, though the limited space between the storage frames made it appear terrible. Several of the AT
Squad obviously didn’t have his experience, or phlegmatism.
Radford was helped to his feet and mumbled a subdued thanks. The sound of other teams from the AT Squad shooting somewhere
in the building echoed tinnily down the corridors.
Dean gave them another minute to gather their composure, then resumed the sweep. Ninety seconds after they started, Alexandria
Noakes was calling for him.
She’d discovered a man hunched up in a gap between two crates. Dean rushed up to find her prodding the captive out of his
hiding place with nervous thrusts of her rifle. He levelled his own rifle squarely on the man’s head. “Surrender or die,”
he said.
The man gave a frail little laugh. “But I am dead, seÑor.”
• • •
Eight police department hypersonics had landed in the park outside Moyce’s of Pasto. Ralph limped wearily towards the one
which doubled as a mobile command centre for the AT Squad. There wasn’t that much difference from the rest, except it had
more sensors and communications gear.
It could have been worse, he told himself. At least Admiral Farquar and Deborah Unwin had stood down the SD platforms, for
now.
Stretchers with injured AT Squad members were arranged in a row below a couple of the hypersonics. Medics were moving among
them, applying nanonic packages. One woman had been shoved into a zero-tau capsule, her wounds requiring immediate hospital
treatment.
A big crowd of curious citizens had materialized, milling about in the park and spilling out across the roads. Police officers
had thrown up barricades, keeping them well away.
Nine bulky fire department vehicles were parked outside Moyce’s of Pasto. Mechanoids trailing hoses had clambered up the walls
with spiderlike tenacity, pumping foam and chemical inhibitors into smashed windows. A quarter of the roof was missing. Long
flames were soaring up into the night sky out of the gap. Heat from the inferno was shattering the few remaining panes, creating
more oxygen inflows.
It was going to be a long time before Moyce’s would be open for business again.
Nelson Akroid was waiting for him at the foot of the command hypersonic’s airstairs. His shell helmet was off, revealing a
haggard face; a man who has seen the ungodly at play. “Seventeen wounded, three fatalities, sir,” he said in a voice close
to breaking. His right hand was covered by a medical nanonic package. Scorch marks were visible on his armour suit.
“And the hostiles?”
“Twenty-three killed, six captured.” He twisted his head around to stare at the blazing building. “My teams, they did all
right. We train to cope with nutters. But they beat those
things
. Christ—”
“They did good,” Ralph said quickly. “But, Nelson, this was only round one.”
“Yes, sir.” He straightened up. “The final sweep through the building was negative. I had to pull them out when the fire took
hold. I’ve still got three teams covering it in case there are any hostiles still in there. They’ll do another sweep when
the fire’s out.”
“Good man. Let’s go see the prisoners.”
The AT Squad was taking no chances; they were holding the six captives out on the park, keeping them a hundred metres apart.
Each one stood in the centre of five squad members, five rifles trained on them.
Ralph walked over to the one Dean Folan and Cathal Fitzgerald were guarding. He datavised his communications block to open
a channel to Roche Skark. “You might like to see this, sir.”
“I accessed the sensors around Moyce’s when the AT Squad went in,” the ESA director datavised. “They put up a lot of resistance.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If that happens each time we locate a nest of them, you’ll wind up razing half the city.”
“The prospects for decontaminating them aren’t too good, either. They fight like mechanoids. Subduing them is tricky. These
six are the exception.”
“I’ll bring the rest of the committee in on the questioning. Can we have a visual please.”
Ralph’s neural nanonics informed him that other people were coming on-line to observe the interview: the Privy Council security
committee over in Atherstone, and the civil authorities in Pasto’s police headquarters. He instructed his communications block
to widen the channel’s bandwidth to a full sensevise, allowing them to access what he could see and hear.
Cathal Fitzgerald acknowledged him with the briefest nod as he approached. The man he was guarding was sitting on the grass,
pointedly ignoring the semi-automatics directed at him. There was a slim white tube in his mouth. Its end was alight, glowing
dully. As Ralph watched, the man sucked his cheeks in, and the coal glow brightened. He removed the tube from his mouth and
exhaled a thin jet of smoke.