She slowed onto the carpet and every office light rose to full capacity. She started towards the elevators.
‘Not that way,’ cried Tazman, ‘The other lifts! Get to the other lifts!’
A squad of six charged through the passage Luylla had entered. She dived between the desk rows. The machines opened fire.
‘Stay there a spuckon,’ said Tazman.
‘What?’ screamed Luylla, holding the earpiece.
A security door dropped over the passage mouth, crushing the front guard. Its head and weapon sparked and fizzled at the base of the door.
‘Go now,’ shouted Tazman. He had successfully hacked the security system.
Luylla broke in the other direction. She turned a corner and moved down a new corridor, running along another wall of window glass. Two sentinels appeared ahead. Suppression fire forced her behind a pillar on the right. She pressed flat against the wall. A decorative plant exploded in front of her. Pieces of her deteriorating cover bounced past her face. She tightened her grip on the weapon and leaned out. Before she could level her aim, sentinels fired again, pinning her in. They stopped shooting. Luylla breathed hard; she could hear the mechanical clicks of their advance. Their reflections appeared in the window.
The glass vibrated. A dark shape rose into view outside. Circular cannons hung beneath angled wings. Jets fired and sent the craft into a turn. A tinted, hard-edged forward pane faced her. The cannons twitched, locked to her position and began to spin.
Luylla bounded from her cover and blasted at the sentinels. The gunship unleashed a torrential wave of glowing red rounds. Broken glass pelted her from behind, wall debris from the side. She kept a tight hold on her weapon. Blue and yellow sparks splashed from the sentinel bodies. She thinned her body and swiped between their collapsing frames. They were ripped apart by the gunship before they could hit the floor.
She cleared the walkway and found the second set of elevators. She slammed her palm to the call button. The gunship appeared again, lingering beyond the windows across the room. Thrusters swivelled and turned its armoured body. The elevator opened. She slid inside and hit the top button. The doors began to close. The ship spotted the movement. Luylla dropped. High calibre firepower burst clean through the doors. She hugged the floor and rolled to the side, making herself as small as possible. She blocked her ears and closed her eyes. Under her eyelids she could see the room flash and flicker as smoking bits of exploded wall sprinkled down on her.
The elevator shot upwards and the barrage sank. She opened her eyes. Smoking holes, larger than her fist, dotted the door and opposite wall. A spark crackled from a burned hole in her metal forearm.
The elevator abruptly died, leaving her in smoky darkness.
‘Damn it. The elevators have locked down,’ Tazman’s voice crackled. ‘Look up. Is there a maintenance hatch?’
Luylla’s eyes adjusted to the dark and she made out a panel on the ceiling. Placing her boot in a blast hole, she stepped up and punched at the square. The material was thinner than she expected. Two more blows and the panel gave way. Gripping the edge of the opening, she hoisted herself up and into the elevator shaft.
This shaft had no maintenance lift; she found a service ladder and started climbing.
From the Inhibitan’s pilot’s seat, Tazman sorted the hundreds of security feeds splashed on screen. Doors locked down. Security accumulated in every hallway. He minimised the irrelevant feeds and looked to the tower’s upper levels. Movement detection activated another image. Tazman paused. No sentinels. He saw an overhead view of a concrete floor and a set of heavy blast doors starting to open, spilling tufts of sterilisation gas.
‘You’d better hurry up,’ he said. A hulking mass rose in the shadows. The image blinked out. Tazman tried another command. One by one, the vision feeds crashed, fading to a pixelated mess.
A thump vibrated through the Inhibitan’s hull. A figure moved behind the surveillance and output data. Tazman cleared the screen. A Tyde sentinel adjusted its stance on the ship’s nose. Its weapon unfolded and levelled at Tazman’s forehead. He froze. Tail whipped to the side and flipped the appropriate lever.
The energy shield hummed to life. The sentinel opened fire. Bright blue ripples splashed across the pane as the plasma rounds pounded the force field. Tazman glanced at the proximity sensors; multiple signals surrounded the craft.
‘Luylla! They found me. They’ve found the ship.’
Luylla flipped open her remote pilot computer. A gaping slash hole had ripped clean through the screen. The keypad was unresponsive. ‘I can’t remote pilot,’ she said. ‘You’re going to have to take off.’
Tazman’s gaze darted over the controls. After a search of his eidetic memory, he realised the control interface was not the thing that had his attention when Luylla was at the helm.
‘Turn the engines on,’ said Luylla.
‘How?’
‘Above you.’ Tazman glanced up and saw the switches. He flicked them all and moved across to the pilot’s seat. ‘Now press the button on the console. It’s all labelled.’
‘Labelled all right, in some weirded-out language,’ he muttered. He palmed a handful of buttons and the engines shuddered to life with an awkward ignition charge.
The sentinel stopped shooting and stepped closer. It scanned over the pane, adjusting its face lenses. Tazman flipped it an obscene gesture. The plasma weapon folded into its arm and out sprang a smaller nozzle. A concentrated cutting beam appeared and clashed with the energy shield. A small thread of laser breached and made contact with the outer surface of forward pane.
Tazman grabbed the flight controls and applied the thruster. The Inhibitan lifted rear-first. The cityscape horizon wavered behind the sentinel as the ship gained altitude. Tazman threw into a right turn. The sentinel slipped, the cutting laser swung off target.
‘I’ve got you now,’ yelled Tazman, but then the machine’s feet buzzed with magnetism and clamped down.
‘Oh come on,’ Tazman screamed. He steered a hard left but it maintained a firm stance. Distant city lights swept past in a blur along with the stem of the construction crane. The sentinel leaned with the ship, countering the movement, shuffling its feet and locking to a better position.
‘No hitchhikers!’ Tazman mashed a button. Underside thrusters burst. The crane arm swiped across the ship’s nose and smashed the sentinel through the middle, clearing Tazman’s field of vision.
‘Happy landings.’ He grinned.
The projectile shield absorbed more blasts to the underside. Tazman applied acceleration and pulled away from the building.
‘I did it! I’m flying!’ he announced excitedly.
He swivelled towards the Mayogen logo. Tri-blasts streaked the night from hidden places on the roof of the tower. The energy shield crackled across the pane. Tazman pushed forward on the controls, dropped the ship’s nose and dived below roof level. Apart from not crashing, he had no plan.
He levelled and flew against the reflective windows of the tower. He came to the edge and slowed to take the corner. The view swooped again, only to find him face to face with a Mayogen security gunship.
Tazman gasped, cut the accelerator and hit the reverse thrusters, kicking the ship into an unstable wobble. The gunship’s visor glinted as it turned to face him with heating weapons.
Tazman blasted the main thrusters. He pressed forward and away. Warning messages sprouted across the screen. An autoscan outlined the gunship’s weapons and flight capabilities. Below a wire-frame graphic of the menace, a flashing message politely informed: ‘Evasive action is recommended.’ A thumping bleep belted Tazman’s eardrums. Bright hot projectiles shot across his path. A dozen console lights flashed for attention; he had no idea why. He manoeuvred a steep dive. His attacker followed. The two ships barrelled through lines of traffic.
Luylla’s voice wrestled with connection interference.
‘Tazman what’s your status?’
‘I am being marked by a gunsh
ip. The pilot seems very skilful,’ he screamed.
‘Where are you?’
‘Hang on,’ Tazman pulled the flight controls. The Inhibitan swept over a hover car. He pulled harder. The nose of the ship rose and he broke though the next lane at a steep tilt. He glanced at the navi computer readout. The display showed a complicated three-dimensional layout of the city.
‘I’m in the neighbourhood,’ he replied.
Luylla climbed another dust-covered rung. She paused a moment to take a breath. The top of the shaft was coming into view. Not far off. A slamming noise erupted below and echoed through the space. A thin strip of light appeared on the elevator floor below her escape opening. She could hear the doors being forced open and could see long shadows cast over the visible patch of floor.
She frantically looked for an exit. Dropping a few rungs, she reached across and grasped at another set of doors. Her metal fingers scraped along the surface and found the gap. She dug in and pulled back. A spark crackled from her arm. Her fingers slipped. She stumbled but held tight to the ladder to recover. Trying again she buried her fingers harder and the gap widened. She slipped inside.
More offices. The lights in these were still off; the dark made her breathe easier. She jogged to the windows and scanned for the Inhibitan, finding no sign.
‘Tazman?’ No answer. She called louder, ‘Tazman.’
The roof couldn’t be far off. She remembered Tazman saying something about a stairway. She made her way back through the identical workstations and cut to the right towards the exit corridor.
A thundering high-pitched chirp pounded the soundwaves. Luylla grabbed her stream gun and whirled round. Nothing in the room had changed. Her breathing, her heartbeat, the whine of her machine arm and its rattle against her gun were the only sounds in left her universe. She backed away and turned. An explosion burst from the back wall.
Luylla crouched behind the office furniture. Weak light shone through a large blast hole. She levelled her weapon over a desk. Scattered blasts punched though the wall. The desk’s wooden surface shattered. Luylla dropped to the floor and crawled.
With a heavy vibrating buzz, a wide, fork-toed, metal foot kicked through the crumbling wall and thumped onto the carpet. A metallic plated body, crowned with heavy cannons, ripped halfway though the wall. Another screaming chirp rang from the machine. The other foot burst through and a mechanical war drone, twice her height, lumbered into the room. Dangling pieces of wall dropped and crumbled off the glistening curves of the armoured shell. A curved missile array folded back along its top into a compartment. The drone’s torso turned to Luylla and advanced on two all-terrain legs.
Luylla cried out, sprang to her feet and ran, weaving between the desks, towards the exit corridor. The drone sprang into a bouncy sprint and barged through the furniture. It cut into her path and a mechanical arm whipped out and knocked her to the floor. It sidestepped in front of her.
Luylla scrambled upright. The drone clamped onto her torso, pinning her arms to her sides. The stream gun slipped from her grip. The falling strap caught her boot. The drone lifted her off the floor. She flexed her foot, taking the weight of the stream gun and kicked her leg. The gun swung up and brushed against her reaching fingertips. The drone chirped again and jolted its mechanical arm. The strap slipped off. The drone crushed the weapon under its foot.
She was lifted to the main vision sensor. Adel’s voice boomed out.
‘End of the line, Ms Warride. I trust you’ve enjoyed the tour of the building.’ The drone’s grip tightened. ‘I’ve been looking for an opportunity to test this lovely piece of machinery.’
‘Screw you,’ spat Luylla, directly at the sensor.
‘That hurts, Ms Warride. Unthoughtfully disrespectful.’
The drone raised its other arm. A circular saw sprang from the limb and tore at full speed, before twisting to align its cutting line horizontally with her eye.
Luylla squeezed her flesh hand down and reached for the pistol strapped to her thigh. She ripped it from the holster and pulled the trigger without aim. The rounds hit the floor and sparked against the drone’s metal legs. She flexed her wrist as high as possible and fired again. Something burst in the drone’s arm and frosted air spewed forth. The grip loosened. In the leeway Luylla twisted, stretching her neck away from the blade; its heat caressed her temple. The drone’s grasp failed. She dropped to the floor.
Scrambling back along the carpet, she fired madly. Her blasts splashed off the main sensor array. The prototype armour cracked; sparking shards chipped off. The drone twitched and stumbled. Regaining its bearings, it stalked her again. Its foot stomped the floor ahead of her. The heavy arm clamp dipped to knock her but fell off-target. It was blind.
Luylla rolled from the stomping feet. The clamp screwed back into its arm, revealing a circular chamber that continued the rotation. A heating charge sounded. She sprang to her feet, bolted and leapt behind a row of desks. A payload of automatic energy blasts sprayed the room.
Luylla clattered to the ground next to an office chair and straight away a line of holes punched though the desk above her. It was blind but not deaf. She needed a diversion. She grabbed the chair and lobbed it high through the air.
The arc of missile chambers snapped out over the drone’s shell. Flame burst from the rear and a small missile shot out. The projectile sought out the tumbling piece of furniture and blew it apart with a floor-shaking fireball.
Using the blast as cover, Luylla crawled further away, finding herself between the desks and the window. The war drone lurched forward. It bumped into a table and paused before swivelling its torso to open fire on the obstacle. Splintered wood pelted in every direction.
‘Tazman,’ she called, looking out at the city. A thin crack had sliced across the windowpane, a fault from the explosion.
The war drone cut another desk in half with a laser, kicked the pieces away and ploughed through.
A crackle sounded in her ear. She heard Tazman’s panicking voice. The drone turned in her direction. She sank behind her cover.
‘Get to the upper level windows now,’ she said quickly. His reply faded into static.
Outside, clusters of endless skyscrapers formed a maze. Something flashed from a dark corner; what followed was a teeth-gritting sight. The Inhibitan rolled through the air, shattering the corner window of a building. Red blasts sprayed at it from behind. The gunship then appeared in a smooth turn, locked to the Inhibitan’s tail. Tazman steered into a wide arc to make a pass at Mayogen Tower.
Luylla raised her pistol and fired. Pulses cut clean through the window. She spaced her shots evenly. The drone emitted another chirp and accelerated in her direction.
The Inhibitan shot across her view with thrusters blurring the air. On the glass, tiny cracks spread out from her handiwork. Luylla grabbed the chair from the next desk and screamed as she hurled it into the window. The chair burst through the weakened surface. Shattered chunks of twinkling glass spun out into the cool night air.
Across the room, deep inside the drone’s hollow metal tube, a spark flared and burst into a screaming flame. A missile exploded from a silo, spun through the air and veered up over the office floor. The projectile homed into the office chair, as it bounced off the side of the security gunship.
Luylla sprang to her feet and rolled over the table. The gun-ship exploded behind, lighting the office bright orange. The remaining windows shattered, blowing glass against her back armour. The war drone twitched its aim in confusion; its systems were racing to recalibrate its bearings. Luylla raised both pistols and fired as she strode towards the metal monster. Her blasts stung its armour. She adjusted the line into the underside of its shell. It twisted and shivered. With that she holstered her weapons and broke into a sprint. Meeting the machine head-on, she dived, rolling between its legs, turned around and leapt onto its back.
The drone twisted erratically. Luylla held tight, her legs flailing. Her metal fingers tore off the maintenance pane
l. She ripped out a handful of sparking circuitry. A tangled mess of wires and instruments dangled from the open port. She drew her pistol and nailed three shots into the exposed area. The drone slowed under her. She blasted again. A scrambled half-chirp sounded and the machine sank forward, falling headfirst into the floor.
Luylla stood and caught her breath. The breeze cooled her sweating skin. The vapour trail from the missile hung in the air, leading to a dispersing cloud just off the building.
The elevator pinged. Sentinels charged out. Behind them appeared Adel.
‘Kill her,’ the old lady screamed.
Luylla spun and pushed off the metal hill, keeping it between her and them as she ran for the window. They opened fire. The homely sound of the Inhibitan carried through the air. A harsh wind shot into her face. Her ship came into view above. She withdrew her grapple launcher and blasted the craft’s underside. Cable whipped out. The launcher beeped. The Inhibitan ascended. The slack tightened and she swung into the night. Tri-barrelled plasma whizzed past her.
Luylla clutched the launcher to her chest as she swung and turned in the wind. The sentinels gathered at the edge of the drop. Luylla drew a pistol and fired; one of the metal bodies dropped off the tower.
She holstered her gun and breathed deep with eyelids clamped tight. Once she gained distance, the cable turned and she caught a glimpse of Adel, the Krusian crime lordess, standing at the window, utterly pissed off.
Seventeen
Tazman tightened the chin strap on the weighted contraption on his head. Sitting on the counter, he leaned forward and gave the twisted cable some slack. It fed, suspended in the air, from his head to the med computer across the room.
He squinted to see the figures on the distant readout. He had decided to sit but the position was more awkward than he had realised. So far he didn’t recognise anything that looked like an anomaly. Actually he didn’t recognise anything, full stop. The graphic of his brainwave activity highlighted different sections in different colours. He wasn’t sure what any of them meant. He assumed the bright purple was an indication of his overall braininess, which was a strong indication he was healthy, because there was so much of it.
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