Repeth grunted assent, then yelled along with the rest of them as they rounded a curve to find themselves facing a fresh new twelve-foot gated fence topped with razor wire. “Take it out –” she yelled, but Butler had already mashed his thumbs down on the butterfly trigger of the Vixen.
The gun roared like a jet fighter on afterburner, a wall of sound that would have deafened the team had they not been wearing their squadcomm earphones. Bright lines of projectiles like some science-fiction death ray speared the steel fencepost to the right of the gate, concentrating on the base of the white-painted pole. It sagged, cut through by the hail of tungsten.
The Beast crashed through.
“Yee-haw!” Lockerbie cried. Six tons of vehicle crushed the weakened gate, climbed over it, and with a thump continued down the unmarked asphalt road on the other side. No one guarded the entrance, though there was a tiny shack. Still, the newness, the impression of recent use, and the fresh-posted signs they left in their wake argued that they had found something more interesting than a sewage plant.
The fence followed them, lining each side of the road as they roared down its length. Two more quick twists inside the woods and then they broke out into a clearing. That impressive, prison-like fence ran along the inside of the open space, well back from the concealing trees.
Within the cleared space, two hundred yards across, squatted a pair of low, one-storey buildings. Though both were made of ugly grey concrete and mirrored glass, one had large windows, and the other only very small thin ones. This latter structure had an extra fence surrounding it, similar to the one they had crashed through.
“That looks like a jail,” remarked Grusky as they drove toward it. “Windows too small to squeeze through.”
“I got targets, Top, want me to light them up?” Butler asked, sounding eager. His incredible weapon quivered like a live thing, pointing toward the dozen or so vehicles parked in front of the office building.
“By all means,” Repeth replied in a droll voice, “but spare your ammo.”
Butler thumbed the selector switch that chose his burst length. The electric Gatling fired much too fast for mere human control; at 150 rounds per second, he would be lucky to guess burst size within 20 shots. So he clicked on “10” and put ten rounds into each vehicle in turn. “There’s an underground parking garage,” he warned as a tunnel leading down hove into view.
“Lockerbie, as soon as we dismount, push some of these hulks to block that tunnel. Butler, I see windows. I don’t like windows.”
Butler grinned. “Roger that, Top.” He flipped the gun back to full auto and walked a stream of rounds from the building’s corner to corner, holing every window and the front glass doors as well. They didn’t come apart the way they should, though. “Armored glass. Bulletproof. Good thing these ain’t bullets,” Butler muttered.
Profligate with ammo this time, he sprayed the penetrators along the top and bottom of the window line, and great gaps appeared as chunks of the hardened crystal fell to the ground by the hundredweight. “Ammo!” he yelled, and Donovan scrambled to reach over the seat and pull up several 200-round cases of 20mm penetrator. Grusky helped him manhandle the fifty-pound shell holders into the turret hoppers.
Without windows the rooms beyond were visible, well-lit offices with computers, shelves, desks, chairs. Tiny blue lightnings popped from broken electronics. Here and there a small fire started, smoke curling up toward the ceiling to activate the suppression system. In several places inverted fountains of halon gas poured down, obscuring their view.
And a few things, once human, twitched redly in the wreckage. The hundreds of penetrators had probably sliced all the way through the building to burst out the other side, slaughtering everything in their path.
Jill’s conscience banged on its box lid, trying to get out. Shut up, she said to that piece of herself. I’m not wrong about this place. Whatever is going on here, it’s evil. The only thing I am going to regret is if there’s no one left to give me intel.
“Hurry up!” she barked as she shoved the Beast’s heavy door open and dismounted. Her PW10 snugged on its retractable sling under her right arm, and in her hands she hefted the rotary grenade launcher. “Butler, finish loading the Vixen yourself, and keep an eye on that jail. There may be armed guards in there, but there may also be prisoners, so don’t perforate it. Grusky, Donovan, you’re with me. Get moving, go go go!”
The three burst out of the vehicle and followed Repeth as she jogged toward the shattered front door of the office building. Behind them, Butler reloaded his depleted bin as Lockerbie bulldozed wrecked cars to block the underground garage.
Repeth saw movement in a gutted room and resisted the urge to fire a grenade. I need information, not revenge, she scolded herself. For now, that other self listened. She clambered over the sill into the office and through the mess.
Legs struggled weakly beneath a heavy overturned desk. Repeth pointed and the two men heaved the thing off the body while she covered them. Beneath the wreckage lay a man in shirt and tie, bloodied and dazed. She reached down to haul him to a seat in a surviving chair. Grabbing his hair to look him in the face, she lifted an eyelid. Running her half-gloved fingers over his torso, she searched for the wound that had produced all the blood.
She found a moist, bloody but rapidly-closing hole in his abdomen, and she put her grenade launcher down on the desk behind her to pull up her PW10. She set its muzzle to his head. “He’s healing. Nano or bio of some kind. That’s good, he won’t die on us. Cuff his hands, then tie his feet with that lamp cord, Donovan.” Once he was secured and his eyes were starting to clear, she slapped him gently. “Hey, you. You. What’s your name?”
They heard a burst of Vixen fire, then silence. The man looked around wildly, realizing his predicament.
“Hey you,” she repeated. “Focus. What’s your name?”
“Bill,” he said dazedly.
“Okay, Bill, are you an Eden?”
A sly look crossed his face before it smoothed. “Yeah, Eden. It’s legal now, you know.”
“Liar.” Repeth kicked him in the stones, her heel crunching down on his groin.
“Top!” cried Grusky as the man choked and gagged in pain.
“Shut up, David. He’s healing, but he’s not an Eden. He doesn’t deserve your sympathy. I told you, what’s in here is evil. Even if he is just a paper-pusher, he’s part of it. If you don’t want to watch this, go keep an eye on the corridor, make sure no one is creeping up on us.”
“Come on, Donovan,” Grusky said with a sickened expression, grabbing the younger man’s sleeve and pulling him to the office door to watch for enemy.
Repeth continued. “Now, Bill, I know you can heal from that, and you know I can make it happen over and over. Or I can just pop you in the head right now and goodnight whatever you are. You’re either a Psycho or a Nano and either way you’re only staying alive if you give me information. What is this place?”
The man raised his head to look into Repeth’s eyes and all resistance died. She could see self-preservation overrule any qualms he had about betraying his employer. “Look, I’ll tell you everything, just let me live. Once I’ve talked they’ll want me dead so you gotta get me out of here.”
She nodded. “My word on it.”
He took a shuddering breath. “Septagon Shadow. It’s a black cyberware program. Cyberware, implants, enhancements, human augmentations. It’s Triumvir Jenkins’ alternative to Tiny Fortress.”
“Winthrop Jenkins survived?”
“Yeah, from what I hear, in some kind of bunker for the Unie leadership. Scary guy, I met him once. Always going on about how he was going to pay Daniel Markis back for killing his brother Jervis in that first West Virginia nuke.”
“Yeah, he ran the internment camps for a while on his climb toward the top. So…this Septagon Shadow. Cyborgs. Bionic man stuff. Terminators.”
He nodded. “Yeah, kind of. Not machines made into people, but people made into ma
chines.”
“How far along are they?”
A prolonged burst of Vixen fire overrode the conversation, and through the squadcomm Repeth heard Butler say, “Back up, back up. Top, I got some light weapons fire coming from the jail. Returning fire…these people are getting over their surprise.”
“Bill!” Repeth snapped. “Are there prisoners in that jail? And are they above ground?”
“Some are. There are three levels underneath both of these buildings. Listen, we got to get out of here. If they let the Shadows loose, we’re all dead.” She could see the fear in his eyes.
“Cyborgs?”
“Yeah. But they’re hard to control, hard to stop. Listen, I’ll tell you all about it but we have to get out of here. If we leave soon enough maybe they won’t have time to let them loose. They’re normally locked down pretty tight.”
Repeth grabbed Bill by his throat. “There’s a man I’m looking for. His name is Rick Johnstone. Ring any bells?”
“Yeah, he tried to claim diplomatic immunity when they brought him in here. Said he wasn’t a US citizen anymore. You don’t know these people. That was the wrong move. Now he’s up at Pax River.”
“Where?”
“Patuxent River, Solomons Island. Naval facility. That’s where the main labs are. This is just an auxiliary facility. Dammit, I can tell you all about it but we have to go now.” Another burst of Vixen fire punctuated his words.
“Top, we got company working their way into the back of this building,” called Grusky. He fired off a burst with his PW10.
Repeth made the easy decision. “All right, exfil now. Lock, pull up here close. Butler, put some more penetrators into the building off to the side of us or over our heads. You, Bill, on your feet, now.” She sliced the lamp cord holding his feet with her knife, then grabbed him by one bound arm and shoved him toward the opening.
The Beast pulled up next to the broken window and she pushed Bill inside. “Donovan, secure this guy. Search him for weapons, and you watch him close.” She lifted the grenade launcher and fired three rounds in quick succession back into the office building. They made muffled whump sounds and spread dust and fine debris into the air. Over their heads the Vixen roared.
Bullets spanged off the open armored door, and one struck Repeth in her forehead. Her lightweight helmet jerked with the impact so she ducked instinctively into cover. She loosed six more grenades, aiming at the front of the jail building where she could see muzzle flashes coming from the thin windows. They burst harmlessly against the concrete facing, but the cloud of pulverized cement hid them from fire for a few precious seconds. “Get in, Grusky!” She ran to the back of the Beast and flung open the rear loading door. Grabbing a heavy wooden box, she hauled it around and back through the window into the shattered office.
Flinging open the box, she quickly fitted two pressure detonators on the enormous antitank mines inside, and then jumped back out the window. Once inside the Beast, she yelled, “Go go go! Lockerbie, get us the hell out of here! Butler, weapons free, use it up, we’ll resupply later.”
The uprated Humvee spat gravel from its tires as it turned half a doughnut. Lockerbie aimed its nose down the road where they had entered as Butler fired profligate bursts over the back bumper.
Suddenly a wrecked sedan hurtled out of the garage tunnel as if shot from a cannon. Behind it burst forth an armored car of the kind SWAT liked to use for urban breach scenarios.
“Butler!” Repeth called.
“I see it, Top,” he said as he swung the Vixen rightward.
Tracers reached out from the armored car, .50 caliber heavy machinegun bullets that slammed into the Beast, sounding like triphammer blows. Next to Repeth the four-inch-thick crystal armor starred as a round struck it. Armored or not, a few more hits to the vision plates would break through, and huge bullets bouncing around the interior would tear them apart.
Lockerbie drove like a madwoman, slewing the Beast back and forth as the armored car chased them. Butler mashed his thumbs on the trigger of the Vixen, pouring penetrator fire into the enemy vehicle.
Explosions blossomed along the front of their target, controlled pops the size of hand grenades. The armored car drove through the smoke and detritus, showing nothing but odd square pockmark pixels along its front glacis.
“Reactive armor, Butler!” Repeth barked. “Switch to Armorshock!”
“Right…” Butler toggled the selector switch. “Running out of tungsten anyway.” He put his HUD crosshairs on the enemy and fired.
Or he tried to. He couldn’t seem to make his thumbs push down on the butterfly as he stared at one bloody ruined hand hanging by a flap of skin. Then he slumped, grey and unconscious. A piece of a spent .50 caliber bullet rattled down to fall on the floor of the Beast.
“Shit, Butler’s hit!” Grusky cried.
“Keep that evasive, Lockerbie!” called Repeth as she turned around in the passenger seat to help Grusky unbuckle Butler from his turret harness. Frustrated, she pulled out her knife and sliced the straps, dropping the gunner’s flaccid body to flop into the interior. Grusky crawled over him and up into the turret, wedging himself behind the gun.
A string of curses flowed as Grusky toggled gun switches and tried to get his squadcomm HUD synched with the targeting computer. “Screw it,” he finally said, flipping up the eyepieces and shoving his face forward to look over the iron sights. He could barely see through the gap where the Vixen protruded through the turret shell. Lining it up on the pursuing vehicle, he squeezed the trigger.
The gun spat briefly, then spun around with an empty electric whine. More popcorn explosions blossomed on the armored car as its reactive armor deflected the few tungsten bullets with controlled micro-explosions. Cursing again, Grusky finally found the ordnance selector and switched to Armorshock. When his vision port cleared he fired again.
His first long burst was spectacular, but he didn’t see it. The muzzle flash and smoke from the hundreds of rounds hid the target immediately, showing him the limitations of shooting manually. If he had been able to, he would have seen two hundred Armorshock rounds dumping their electric capacitors directly into the relatively insensitive reactive-explosive armor. The entire front of the enemy vehicle detonated at once, taking one of the front tires with it. At over fifty miles per hour the thing rolled like a toy batted by a giant child.
Repeth snarled, “Turn around, Lockerbie. Grusky, burn that thing.”
The Beast slewed sideways, then shuddered into a one-eighty. “Sorry, Top, they’re out of it and I’m not going to just murder them in their vehicle.”
Just then the side door of the armored car, now become its top hatch as it rested on its flank, popped open. A man-figure rose up, hefted a long thin weapon, pointed it at the Beast.
Grusky fired reflexively. The Armorshock rounds, though not designed for antipersonnel work, still had all of their incredible supersonic velocity. They cut the figure in half, and the weapon it held detonated in place, shaking the armored car and leaving a small mushroom cloud as the Beast blazed past.
“Keep going, Lockerbie. Get me just in sight of the office building,” ordered Repeth harshly. “Grusky, keep suppressive fire on that wrecked car this time.”
The Beast pulled to a halt as it rounded the corner of the treeline and the Septagon Shadow complex came back in sight. Above her Repeth heard Grusky firing short bursts at the armored car wrecked on the road behind them. She grabbed her grenade launcher with the three remaining rounds and stepped out of the Humvee.
She could see antlike figures scurrying around the buildings now that they thought the threat had departed. Hefting the launcher, she used her HUD to give her a solution on the window of the office where they had found Bill. Then she deliberately fired the three shots.
In slow motion the fat shells seem to float, up in an arc then down to drop at the pip. The explosions of the grenades were completely subsumed in an enormous roar as the small shocks set off the two antitank mines simu
ltaneously. More than forty pounds of C-4 lifted the roof of the office building into the air. It also threw a lethal burst of shrapnel that scythed down the human figures nearby like wheat.
She felt no remorse whatsoever. You knew what you were getting into, she thought at the enemy. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. “All right. Let’s take a look at that armored car.”
As they drove nearer, Donovan tended to Butler, trying to sew his nearly severed hand back on.
When they’d pulled up next to the burning wreck, Repeth jumped out, dragging Bill with her. “Reload the Vixen,” she growled at Grusky as she manhandled her prisoner, his hands still tied. She looked down at the flimsy bindings, then pulled out her cop handcuffs and slapped them on him. He looked at her but said nothing. She wondered how strong he was, what his healing method was, and made sure her PW10 was aimed at him at all times.
“Is that a Shadow?” she asked, pointing her chin at the charred upper half of a humanlike body. The head was missing, but the torso was crisped and fried with electrical burns throughout. Charge had apparently passed along the metal inside, because she could see shiny laminates on the barbecued bones, and other artificial materials that survived the fire.
Bill replied, “No. That was just an augmented cyborg guard. A Shadow would still be trying to kill us.” He looked around, shivering though it was not cold.
“Shit.” Repeth kicked at the body. “Everybody come here. Leave what you’re doing for a minute.” She checked up and down the road, hemmed in by the trees and fence, to make sure no one was coming, then pointed to the thing on the ground. “Everyone get a good look. This is a small taste of what we’re up against. Cyborgs. Bill here says this guy was just a baby compared to the real thing. But even he came through that wreck unscathed and popped up with some kind of antitank weapon, and almost killed us all.”
Repeth turned to Grusky, who had lost all his color. She thrust her face up close to his. “The next time I tell you to burn something and you don’t do it will be your last. We clear?”
The Orion Plague Page 4