Venus - whose systems were far more resistant to drugs than even the chem nurse had realised - woke from the tranquillised sleep Sledge had put her in and found that she was tied up, but not well enough. Her foot lashed out and caught Sledge on the side of her thigh, sending her spinning into a trolley full of surgical equipment - which clattered loudly to the floor.
Masked by the sound of the clatter, Pietr burst through the door of the vessel, his gun clenched in a hand that was white with stress but still managing to point it straight and firmly at the two body looters.
He hesitated, gun wavering between Bland and Brass, and even more uncertainly, the figure of Sister Sledge pulling herself up from where Venus had kicked her to the floor.
In the second when the gun was pointing at Sledge and not at them, Bland and Brass both reached for the escape chute switch and their two hands slapped down on it simultaneously. They had never been attacked in their own base before - they made it a habit to stay well clear of any battle - but they liked to be prepared for any eventuality. The floor beneath them dropped away, and they tumbled out to the dry earth beneath. They were running even before they'd fully regained their feet.
Pietr wasn't following them, though. Still inside their now abandoned base, his attention was all on Sister Sledge, walking towards him with hands outstretched entreatingly. "You're not going to hurt me, are you?" she asked.
"Who were those men?" he demanded, backing away as far as the confined space would allow him. "Why are Venus and Rogue tied up?"
"She's a traitor, Peter!" Rogue shouted. "Don't let her get close."
But she was a woman, and defenceless, and he still didn't really know what was going on, so his gun dipped slightly, the muzzle pointing towards the floor rather than her chest. Sister Sledge smiled gently. She reached out a hand towards his cheek, as if to touch him affectionately.
At the very last minute, he saw the tiny glint of silver in her fingers and his gun was up again and pointed at her chest and he'd let out an energy bolt into her at point-blank range before he recognised the thing in her hand as a needle.
For a moment, he remained frozen in shock, staring down at her still-smoking corpse.
"You did the right thing, kid," Venus said, her voice sounding groggy.
"Yeah," Bagman's voice added, from somewhere on the floor. "That needle in her hand is coated in chem. Would have killed you instantly."
"Okay," Pietr said shakily.
Before he could add anything else, Helm suddenly said. "I know you! I know your voice, I knew I did."
Pietr, who had been lowering his gun, raised it again - even though the only two other people in the vessel were still bound and immobile.
"I don't think you do," he said.
"Don't try that," Helm said, his voice managing to sound cold and hard even through the mechanical distortion. "Don't trust him, Rogue, he's a Nort. He's one of the scum who captured me right after the Quartz Zone Massacre. Kicked me in the gut when I was lying injured in the bottom of his ship."
Pietr found his eyes caught and held by Rogue's strange, blank gaze. "Is that true, kid? Are you a traitor too?"
Pietr realised that his gun was now trained squarely on the GI's chest. All it would take would be one squeeze of the trigger and he really could finish it, avenge his brother, return as a hero to the Nort ranks. "It's true," he said. "My real name's Pietr Hultz. You killed my brother, back at the Quartz Zone."
"I'm sorry," Rogue said, and sounded like he meant it, "but this is war. And men die."
Pietr stared at Rogue for a long time, but he wasn't really seeing him, he was seeing his brother's face, twisted in the expression of contempt it always seemed to wear around him. "I know," he said eventually. "And you're a better man than my brother could ever have been."
Then he put his gun back into its holster and started working out how to free Rogue from his bonds.
Half an hour later, they paused at the brow of the next hill to watch as the micro-mines Bagman had planted blew Bland and Brass's base into a million red-hot fragments.
"I'm sorry, Rogue," Helm said. "Me and the boys nearly got us all killed, and Venus too."
Rogue shrugged. "Doesn't matter. It's in the past." He looked at Pietr as he said this, and Pietr knew that he was talking about him too. "What matters is what we do from now on."
"And what's that?" Venus said, smiling at him. Tranquillisers out of her system now, she was almost back to normal, though she still favoured her injured leg and it was clear that Sister Sledge hadn't made any genuine attempt to heal it.
"There's still a traitor to be caught," Rogue said.
TWELVE
END OF THE LINE
Kovert was waiting for Rogue at the docks. He was taller than Rogue had expected, but the face beneath his chem mask was every bit as cold and hard, bristling with silver-grey stubble and a ruthlessly trimmed moustache. If he was surprised to see Venus, he didn't show it.
The roar of gunfire from the nearby battle at Harpo's Ferry was almost deafening, but Kovert's voice didn't have any trouble slicing through the din. "So, the famous Rogue Trooper, last of the Genetic Infantrymen." He looked Rogue up and down, then looked away as if he wasn't that impressed with what he'd seen.
"You got us here, Kovert," Rogue said. "Now where's the traitor general?"
"We believe he's directing the attack from somewhere behind the Nort lines. There's some other old friends of yours here, too," Kovert replied.
He held out the remnants of a chem mask towards Rogue, its material a dull blood red. Rogue recognised it instantly and flicked a gaze sideways at Pietr as Gunnar said, "Kashans!"
Pietr stiffened, his face whitening beneath his chem mask, but then his mouth set in a grim line and he held himself straight and firm. Rogue had debated whether to tell Milli-Com who the boy really was, but Pietr had chosen his side, and he'd saved Rogue's life, and that was good enough for Rogue.
"The same scum who wiped us out in the Quartz Zone," Helm said, and this time Pietr didn't even flinch.
"Right," Kovert said, as if pleased by their reaction, "but now the stakes are even higher. We lose Harpo's Ferry, and we lose the whole of Nu Atlanta. After that, we might as well kiss goodbye to holding on to the rest of Nu Earth."
Rogue knew that Kovert was using him, but at the same time he knew that he was right. "You've got a deal, Milli-Com man," he said grudgingly. "Just make sure that you keep your side of it when it's over. I want a full pardon for Helm, Bagman and Gunnar, and when you've patched Venus up she can have a pardon too."
Kovert looked directly at Venus for the first time and seemed to notice her injuries. "Not been taking very good care of my lady, have you, Rogue?" he said. "We'll patch her up, all right, but she's not going to need a pardon. She's been doing exactly what I wanted."
Venus's pale face flushed aquamarine with fury. "What do you mean by that?"
Kovert laughed. "Plausible deniability, my dear. I needed you helping Rogue, but I needed to be able to disown you if anything went wrong. I guessed that I'd be able to depend on your... loyalty, to send you after him, and it appears I was right."
Venus was so furious that she wasn't capable of speech, but Rogue saw her raise and tighten her fist. He caught it before she could do any damage with it. The last thing he wanted was her up on charges for assaulting an officer. "Leave it, Venus. He's military intelligence, what did you expect? Go and get yourself healed up."
She pulled against him for a moment, then seemed to give up and dropped her arm. "Fine, but watch your back, Rogue." Then she pulled him into a sudden and unexpected hug, so fierce it knocked the air out of him, before turning on her heel and heading towards the medical tent without a backward glance.
"She's right, Rogue," Kovert said. "You need to be careful."
"I will," Rogue said, meaning of him as well as the Norts.
Kovert laughed again, clearly understanding both meanings, then headed back towards the command centre, leaving Rogue and P
ietr alone.
Rogue looked across at Harpo's Ferry, only a few hundred metres to their left. Once a thriving Souther strategic centre, the town was now little more than a smouldering ruin. Hoppas attacked what remained of the town and its garrison from the air, Kashans swarmed over the ground towards it like a plague of red ants, and from the sea came the constant, deafening crump of Nort submarines firing at the shore.
He turned to Pietr. "The Southside's losing here, and losing badly. Ready to join them in taking a last stand?"
Pietr drew in a deep breath and saluted. "Ready as I'll ever be," he said.
They turned and, side by side, headed towards Harpo's Ferry and the toughest fight either of them had ever faced.
Unnoticed by either of them, hidden in the low scrub of the dunes rising from the chemical shore, a Nort spy pulled out a radio and prepared to report in.
The traitor general turned from viewing the battle below him - so satisfyingly one-sided, so clearly going the Norts' way - to study the man at his side, finding himself as usual trying to make out the outline of human features beneath the blank black mask.
"The GI, he's here?" Morgan asked. The general could hear the venomous hatred in the master sniper's voice, almost a match in intensity for his own.
"Now you have another chance to get him in your sights," he told him. Then he smiled. "Only this time you'll have an extra advantage." He reached down beside him and pulled up a metallic case, handling it as delicately as he would a new born baby. In a way, it was his baby - Milli-Com would never have bothered to develop this toxin if it hadn't been for his prompting, a kill-switch for their little experiment in case it all went wrong.
Morgan eyed the case suspiciously.
"Something I stole from Milli-Com," the traitor told him. "The same place where the GIs were created. Call it insurance." He flipped open the lid to reveal row after row of vials hidden within, each filled with a carefully calculated quantity of a very specific toxin. "The GIs were created to be immune to all known toxins. All except one."
He smiled again, feeling the movement tear and pull at his ravaged face and for once not caring, and handed the vials over to the sniper.
The fighting began as soon as they hit the outskirts of Harpo's Ferry and never let up. At first it wasn't Kashans, and Pietr was grateful for that, but there were plenty of other Norts, EMP regiments, shotgunners, Hoppa crews dropped from the air along with their contingents of decapitators, and he shot them down without hesitation. They were the enemy now, it was his job to kill them - and he'd finally found the courage and enthusiasm for his job that he'd never felt when he was fighting beside them.
Rogue fought with his usual grim efficiency, clearing a path through the Nort ranks that even their numbers couldn't immediately plug, and bringing him and Pietr step by hard-fought step closer to the nerve centre of the Nort operations, the home of the spider that had weaved this entire web.
First, they were going to have to do something about those submarines. The ships, visible as grey humps far out in the yellow-green waters of the sea, were raining a steady hail of fire on the shattered remains of Harpo's Ferry and the shattered garrison guarding it. If they weren't taken out, there was no way that anyone, not even Rogue, would be making his way deeper inside the city.
"Hell Cannons up there don't seem to be manned, Rogue," Pietr said, nodding to his left as he kept his eyes forward, trained on the Nort sergeant he'd just shot through the head.
"I can hack it if you can get there," Helm confirmed.
"On it," Rogue said. "There's a pocket of Southers hemmed in over there," Rogue said, using Gunnar to point ahead and to his left.
"I see them," Pietr said. It didn't look to be more than ten men, sheltering behind a heap of fallen masonry from at least fifty encircling Norts.
"Look like they could use your help," Rogue said. "Clear a path out for them while I take out the submarines with that cannon."
Pietr shot one swift look at his face, but it was as unreadable as ever. Was he really suggesting that Pietr take on fifty Norts on his own - and he could see, even from here, that there were Kashans among them - or was this some kind of test? Then he looked back at the Southers, slowly clustering closer and closer together as the Norts cut off their last escape routes, and he thought that Rogue had probably meant exactly what he said. These men were his comrades and they needed his help, it was as simple as that.
"I'll see what I can do," he told Rogue. "Good luck. And-"
"Save it, kid," Rogue said. "I'll see you back in the city." Before Pietr could say any more he was off, sprinting up the shattered walls of the city as if they were no obstacle at all.
Pietr didn't wait to see if he reached the cannons. He knew that he would, and besides, Pietr didn't have the attention to spare. Rogue's move had drawn a good two-thirds of the Norts away with him - they clearly knew who the primary threat was - but that still left fifteen men harassing the beleaguered Southers. Among them were two soldiers in the dull red chem suits of the Kashan Legion.
Very deliberately, Pietr headed for them first. He was able to squeeze off two shots before they even saw him coming. One of them took down an EMP trooper with a shot through the head more accurate than any he'd ever managed in basic training. But the Kashan was only winged and now the whole group of them was spinning to face this new threat. He knew that if the cornered Southers used the opportunity to run rather than to fight back, he was finished.
But the Southers did stay and fight, and most of the Norts span back round to face them, and Pietr was in a fight for his life, but at least not a hopeless one. He felt a bullet whistle past his leg, so close it brushed the fabric of his chem suit, but miraculously didn't tear it. A second later, he'd sent back a bullet of his own, and this one was more accurate. He saw the Nort collapse, hands clutched helplessly to his stomach, as the corrosive chem poured in through the breach.
The Southers had emerged from hiding now, and Pietr found himself fighting side by side with them, outnumbered and outgunned, letting off round after round at the Norts as they tried to push them back, to clear a path out.
After that, he was too close in to use his gun, close enough to see his own face reflected back from the blank insect eyes of the chem-suited Nort in front of him. As he pulled out his knife, he realised that it was a Kashan, and then, almost without thinking, his eyes dropped to the small nameplate on the man's chest and he read the name "Schulz". For one second as he looked at Pietr, Schulz hesitated, not quite believing his eyes. Then another Souther came at him from the left and Schulz swung his rifle contemptuously around, aiming at the man's head. In another micro-second he would have killed him, except that Pietr's knife had sliced clean through his back and into his heart and he wouldn't be killing anyone ever again.
Pietr let the body slide wetly from his knife and turned back to the battle, not feeling a moment's regret.
Looked after by a proper medic finally, one who wasn't in the pay of those body looter scum Bland and Brass, Venus was back in fighting shape pretty quickly. The injury hadn't been serious: no ligaments damaged, no tendons torn, and when she rose to her feet after the medic finished with her she found that her leg could bear her full weight again. She still felt a little weak from loss of blood, but that was nothing she couldn't cope with.
As if he'd somehow sensed her recovery, or more likely as if he'd set someone to watch her, Kovert walked up as soon as she was on her feet.
She'd been working for the colonel for two weeks now, her first assignment since graduating from the Dolls' covert ops regime on Milli-Com, so she'd come to know the old weasel fairly well. And she knew straight off that the expression of concern and sympathy on his face was entirely false.
"Venus, good to see you on your feet again," he said.
"Scan out, colonel," she cut across him. "What do you want?"
"Now is that any way to talk to your commanding officer?" he said. "Especially when he's merely come to ensure that you're taki
ng the proper time to recuperate from your injuries?"
That threw her. She'd been expecting him to send her back into the thick of the action, hoping that he'd send her back to Rogue again, where she could at least keep a close eye on the knucklehead. "You don't want me to do anything?" she said, sitting back down.
"Absolutely not," he said. "Can't waste one of my best assets on a mission she's not in good enough shape for."
There was absolutely nothing wrong with this sentence. In fact, it made perfect sense, but as Kovert walked away, apparently satisfied that she would obey him, Venus felt a deep unease. Kovert didn't want her in Harpo's Ferry, didn't want her fighting by Rogue's side. She wanted to know why.
Once Rogue had made his way to the Hell Cannon, taking out the Nort submarines was easy. The thing had auto-targeting, and what it couldn't do, Helm could. There was something immensely satisfying about blowing up the vast machines from such a great distance, a feeling that he was finally doing a little something to pay the Norts back for the death of his buddies, inflicting some damage that would really hurt. After the last submarine had gone, he didn't have long to bathe in the afterglow.
A second after the gush of water from the submarine's destruction had splashed back into the sea, the cannon two hundred metres to the left of Rogue blew up in a searing explosion of noise and heat that Rogue could feel singeing his flesh even from his position.
"They're targeting us, Rogue," Helm said. "Better get out and into the city now those submarines are gone."
Rogue didn't hang around to argue with him. He leapt from the high wall housing the cannon onto the street fifty yards below. It was just as well he did because even before he'd hit the ground, the cannon itself had been hit and the shockwave of the explosion knocked Rogue from his feet to tumble fifty yards further into the city, causing even his hardened skin to scrape itself raw over the blasted concrete of the street.
The Quartz Massacre Page 20