"She's gone around to the other door, hasn't she?" Jane continued. The child's screams resumed with renewed urgency. "I wouldn't advise that, I might have to start breaking limbs in here. Maybe I'll start with the mother."
Another portion of Ari's uplink feed showed the automated cruiser on its way, nearly a minute distant. And the pair of CDF flyers, holding position half a klick distant-easily within pinpoint weapon range, and too heavily armoured to be bothered by any armament of Jane's, but unauthorised to fire in heavily populated areas unless entirely certain of a clear shot.
"She's maintaining shielded uplink to the room system, Sandy, I've got some CSA people onto it but I doubt t h e y can hack her ... "
"We've got you crossed, you bitch!" came Rhian's voice from around the corner, perhaps several metres down the adjoining hall. "Give it up, you can't shoot both ways at once!"
Sandy's mind, which had been processing several fluid possibilities at once, abruptly froze. There was harsh, desperate emotion in Rhian's voice. Damn it, Rhi, what are you doing?
"I can too," was Jane's reply.
"So let the child go!"
"Cassandra!" Jane called warningly. "Your simple friend is making a big mistake, and it will be on your head."
"Ten seconds!" Rhian shouted. "You can't get us both, let him go now! "
"Cassandra, rein her in or I'll start shooting!"
"Five!" yelled Rhian. The boy howled, as if in anticipation.
"Rhi ..." Sandy began, and a single shot cracked within the room. In a flash, Sandy moved, hearing Rhian and Jane moving simultaneously. Another shot, as Sandy rounded the doorframe and dove, but already Jane was gone out the window, glass and frame exploding in her wake even as Sandy's rifle blazed fire that clipped her departing heels ... and Rhian, in that mesmerising, time-frozen moment, was toppling slowly to the floor, a bullet hole in her forehead, just below the hairline. Sandy rolled past the bawling little boy, past the end of the double bed, and rebounded off the wall beside Rhian's collapsing body, diving explosively for the window. Propped and braced, but Jane had already dropped out of sight below the rooftop rim. Sandy's hand grabbed the window frame and prepared to throw herself out and after ... and then it hit her.
She spun back to Rhian, who had fallen half across the unconscious mother's legs, bare beneath her nightgown. Blood dripped on the floorboards beneath her lolling head. Her eyes were closed, and body motionless. And Sandy felt the combat-reflex calm dissolve in a rush, as she flung herself to Rhian's side, and grabbed her.
"Rhian? Rhi!" Tears and panic came in a flood, and a horrible, crushing pain that she'd thought, had hoped, had been banished from her life. "RHIAN!" Cradling the slim, limp body in her arms, supporting her head, staring with stricken agony at the lifeless face, eyes searching desperately for any sign of life ... but a GI's pulse was not visible at the jugular, as all blood supply to the brain went through the spinal column.
And Rhian's eyes flicked open. Sandy's artificial heart seemed to skip a beat. Several beats, as Rhian gazed at the ceiling, looking slightly puzzled. Then at Sandy. Seeming to realise, then, that she was supported in Sandy's arms, and Sandy was crying.
"It didn't penetrate," Rhian admonished her, mildly. "I ducked. I didn't think she'd be that fast, and I knew you were coming in behind, so she wouldn't have time to finish me."
As if she'd had it all planned, and Sandy was just overreacting again. Sandy tried to catch a breath, feeling the simultaneous, overwhelming urge to laugh, scream and cry. Stared at the wound beneath Rhian's hairline-blood welled thickly, but nothing like a straight's scalp-wound would, trickling slowly to her brow. Beneath, she could see a faint hint of ferro-enamel bone ... tough enough to stop many projectiles, but not from a high-powered assault rifle at point-blank range. Unless one were ducking at the time, and moving very fast, and the round struck at a diagonal angle like so ... and then she could see the little flap of skin from the ricochet, just behind the main wound.
"Jane's getting away," Rhian pointed out. "Can't let her take another hostage."
The truth of that hit home also, as did An's clamorous signal in her ear, and the middle-distant roar of hyperfans-doubtless her flyer pilots had seen Jane leave and were after her, seeking permission to fire. She kissed Rhian hard on the cheek, leaped to her feet and sprang through the window.
Rhian watched her go, with a faint, affectionate smile. Then put a hand to her head, feeling dizzy. Alongside, the little boy stood at his mother's side, wailing and sobbing in helpless distress. Rhian moved swiftly to check on the mother-she was bleeding beneath her hair, but the skull seemed intact, Rhian noted with relief. Jane hadn't wanted her killed, desiring a second hostage. Of course, if that had not been so, there wouldn't be a head left to examine ...
"Oh, here now," she told the little boy, "please don't cry." Checking his mother's vitals as she knew how, with straights, rolling her onto her side and checking that the airways were unobstructed. "Mummy's going to be fine. She's just sleeping, that's all."
She pulled the cloth she always kept for cleaning her pistol from her jacket pocket, and held it to her bleeding scalp with one hand, then gathered the little boy in the other arm, sitting him in her lap as she sat beside his mother. There was a single bullet hole in the floorboards directly beside the mother's head, Rhian noted with satisfaction. So it had worked. In combat-focus, all GIs were threat fixated. Anything not a threat, would hardly register. Attack had put Jane on the defensive, and she'd been forced to nearly ignore the hostages completely ... while continuing previous strategy, to keep both hostages alive, and thus useful, for possible later contingencies. One shot into the floor, to provoke a charge, thus regaining the advantage. Maybe, Rhian thought, those years under Sandy's command in Dark Star had rubbed off. But Sandy herself had been more cautious. Why?
"I'm sorry," she told the little boy, in that voice she'd learned to speak with, when talking to small children. Enjoyed speaking with, enormously so. "We gave you a big fright, didn't we? My friend Sandy and I, we came in here so fast, and then all that nasty noise? I know, it's very frightening. I was frightened too. But it's over now, and the nice ambulance people will be here in a minute, and they'll take care of your mummy, and then she'll wake up again and give you a big hug."
The little boy's hysteria was fading now, partly through exhaustion, but partly, it seemed, that he instinctively knew that safety had arrived. That pleased her. He clutched to Rhian's jacket as she held him, crying miserably, but at least no longer panicked and terrified.
"And don't you worry about that mean, nasty woman," Rhian told him smugly. "My friend Sandy's after her. My friend Sandy's the most amazing person in the galaxy. That mean, nasty woman's going to wish she'd never been made."
Sandy didn't need to risk an enhanced data-stream from the flyers via Ari to know where Jane was. She just followed the sound of engines in the sky ahead, and the occasional glimpse of armoured flyer through the trees and rain.
"They're trying to get permission to fire," Ari told her as she sprinted across a garden, then leaped a flying ten metres through the air to land boot-first atop the property wall, shoving off once more to hurtle past foliage, crash land and roll across a paved path then come up running. "CSA's onto it but there's TV watching, someone's got some telescopic feeds and I think a few politicians are putting a word in. "
"It's an A-9, damn it," Sandy formulated as she regained velocity, boots skidding on wet grass as she tore across another wide property garden. Passage down the sides of the house itself looked a difficult maze of paths and garden fences, so she leaped for the roof. "I know that armscomp's capabilities, they should get a clear target." Hit the sloping top of the two-storey roof and held balance with difficulty, racing up the side. "If they get a shot, tell them to fire. "
The next stretch of Canas properties were not so large, midsized houses with smaller yards, nestled amidst a profusion of trees. Sandy leaped directly for the next rooftop, crashed through foliage, th
en rolled across the sloping surface with a clatter of displaced tiles. Cut nimbly across that downslope, leaped to plant a foot on an upper-storey balcony, and used it to shove explosively toward the next rooftop, which was mercifully flat.
"I've got a pilot's feed right here, Sandy," An told her. "They've got motion fixed, but no heat and hardly any visibility. I think she's wearing opto-cam. "
Well, that figured. She leaped from that flat rooftop onto another, then angled toward the cobbled road and jumped, sailing over the stone wall and barely holding her balance upon impact with the slippery cobbles. Then she ran, flat out along the winding street toward the retreating sound of flyers ahead. Jane would avoid the roads, cutting across yards and over rooftops. If the road stayed straight for long enough, she would gain on her ... but Canas roads never did. Rain slapped her face as she ran, and the bends between wet, creeper-covered stone walls were too slippery to take at full speed.
Good opto-cam was not full invisibility, but it was damn close. It didn't fool multispectrum visual capability entirely, save blocking heat, outline, colour and brightness differentiations ... which left a dark, formless shape that blended into any background, and softened the sharpness of motion-sensation. It explained why Jane had been quite so difficult to see in the gardens ... although if she'd had a direct line of sight for longer than a fractional second, Jane would have been dead, so it was not surprising she hadn't noticed. It was one piece of operational hardware that Sandy did not have much experience with-opto-cam was a weapon for thieves and assassins, not soldiers, who operated on the assumption that direct line-of-sight would be acquired by heavily armed opponents, techno-camouflage or not, and thus preferred armour.
"If it's opto-cam," said Sandy as she powered at speed through another slippery bend, "then they can't fire, not in this neighbourhood. Where the fuck is she?"
"Approaching the perimeter wall... hang on, we're almost there, we'll pick you up."
Pick her up? She refocused her hearing, and found a third CDF flyer approaching from behind. Another bend in the road, and suddenly there was a groundcar emblazoned with Canas security insignia blocking the way ahead, two uniformed security officers crouched behind with weapons levelled. Sandy skidded to a halt, as both officers yelled at her to stop ... damn security was out of the loop again, uninformed as to her identity and location. She ignored their shouts to drop her weapon, focusing instead upon the faint, broken visual feed from the first flyer ... it looked like an aircar, zooming in low where no ordinary, civilian aircar should be able to fly. One pilot acquired weapons lock, but had no immediate cause to fire, and unwilling to knock down several tons of airborne machinery over residential housing.
Then the third flyer arrived over Sandy's head with a blasting downdraft, engines howling as both security officers ducked and held onto their caps. The A-9 Trishul slid into a drifting hover five metres above the narrow cobbled road, nearby trees thrashing in protest, the cargo door descending at the rear to reveal the dim hold lights within. Sandy waited until it found the right position, then leaped, boots smacking upon the metal plates as she grasped an overhead handline and ran forward past the harness-locked cargo master. Immediately the door began closing, and the flyer nosed forward and climbed.
Sandy squeezed between the six armoured soldiers in the rear, and found Ari jammed in beside the command post behind the cockpit, peering at the display screens. The occupant of the command post cast a glance over his shoulder as she approached-it was Hiraki, Sandy noted with little surprise. He always seemed to get himself in the right place at the right time for a fight. He moved to get up.
"Stay there," Sandy told him, grabbing an overhead support and bracing. The display screens showed that the unidentified cruiser was now hurtling away from Canas, two CDF flyers in flanking pursuit. "Damn, she got on board?"
"Yes," said Hiraki, and flipped to speakers, considerate of Sandy's inability to uplink. One Trishul pilot was challenging the cruiser to stand down. Another was in terse communication with CSA HQ, who were trying to hack into its CPU with apparently little success. "If we let her have everything, there won't be enough left to hit the ground."
Sandy shook her head. "There's always enough left to hit the ground."
"We need her dead," Hiraki remarked, his businesslike tone as cool and calm as any GI's. "It's cost-versus-gain, I say we come out on top."
"If we kill civvies on the ground," Sandy replied, "the CDF loses its popular mandate. No popular mandate, no CDF. That's a loss, Hitoru."
"So wait until she's over a river," said An.
"Now you're talking," Sandy told him. "Get me an armscomp track plotted, a single STP at the rear field-generators."
"Copy. But I think she might be aware of that." Pointing at the display screen, which showed the cruiser staying low, zooming just above the treetops of suburban Tanusha, weaving between the larger buildings in utter disregard for mandatory Tanushan skylanes.
"Must have removed the navcomp controls," Ari muttered. "Who's flying that thing?"
Hiraki handed Sandy a headset, which she fitted, then connected to her insert socket ... and the data wall hit her with a rush far more intense than she'd been receiving through Ari's relay feed. The flyer's internal network was separate and secure-unhackable, at least in the short term, unlike the broader Tanushan network. Suddenly Sandy had full access to the airborne tac-net, a massively detailed threedimensional picture of Tanushan airspace and the evading cruiser's low-altitude trajectory.
"Can we get a telescopic visual from another angle?" she asked.
"Tried it," said Hiraki. "Too much window tint, we can't see inside."
Traffic Central was doing a good job of diverting local airtraffic out of the way, although most was well above the minimum ceiling that the cruiser was currently violating. They were headed east now, one flyer on each flank, holding back several hundred metres and slightly above, with Hiraki's command flyer in the middle, directly behind.
"Where the fuck does she think she's going?" An muttered incredulously. "Out to sea?" Lightning flashed, disrupting the visual. Then the cruiser's rear, side window shattered, and a large, tubular object appeared, held in the five hundred kilometre per hour slipstream with inhuman strength.
"Incoming!" Sandy announced at the same time as five other voices. "Countermeasures!" The starboard flanking Trishul broke away in a rush, transmission breaking up completely as massive countermeasures disrupted all neighbouring electrics ... the missile fired, streaking back from the cruiser, then flashed harmlessly past the flyer's main engine nacelle to detonate alongside.
"Provocative little bastards," Sandy heard the pilot of that flyer murmur, and realised it was young Gabone, who she'd flown to Parliament with the day of President Neiland's impromptu press conference upon the Parliament roof. Transmissions flicked back to normal with a crackle of dissipating static.
"Lieutenant," called the weapon's officer, "I have a river approaching, no visible boat traffic. "
"Commander?" said Hiraki. Anyone firing high explosive projectiles within Tanushan airspace made their removal from that airspace an immediate civic security requirement. Doing so while violating all traffic codes, having just launched an assassination attempt upon the Callayan Secretary of State, even more so.
"Go," said Sandy.
"If you get the shot," said Hiraki into his mike, "take it."
"We should kill her," Ari warned. Sandy saw the river approaching, one of the numerous branches on the forested Tanushan delta. The cruiser's trajectory appeared to be cutting directly across, not leaving much margin for error. Full sensor scans compiled upon tac-net from all three flyers plus river traffic central told that there were no rivercraft on the water that would be put in danger.
"We need evidence," Sandy replied simply.
"She'll survive and we'll regret it," said An, staring hard at her from his cramped corner. "Blow her apart." Tac-net showed the cruiser making a wide, banking course between midsized apartm
ents that loomed thicker as the river approached, the tall, blazing lights of central Asad district ahead. Sandy met Ari's stare. He was, she knew, watching exactly the same feed as her, on his own uplinks. The cruiser passed the point of no return, and he exhaled hard with disgust.
Gabone's weapons officer fired, a single, high-velocity, selfterminating projectile from one of the unfolding underside racks. It closed the three hundred metres range in slightly less than two seconds, and blew the rear of the cruiser into thousands of flaming pieces. The cruiser appeared to buck forwards, frozen momentarily against the gleaming vista of city lights, then tumbled and rolled through an arcing, shallow dive ... cleared the riverside trees and hit the precise centre of the river with an enormous explosion of water, showered seconds later by flaming wreckage from the explosion.
"Gold six," said Hiraki, "maintain a covering position. "Gold four, dismount on the east bank, gold one, dismount upon the west."
Affirmatives came back, Hiraki's pilot pulling them up into a wide, howling turn as the river approached, engine nacelles angling forward in a broad flare that pressed all occupants hard to the deck. Sandy stood firmly braced, secured only by her cast-bound left hand, rifle braced in the right, staring at the displays on command screens and her own tac-net link. The spray was dissipating, waves from the impact rushing toward the far bank, and crashing against the retaining wall. Flames burned upon the heaving surface of the dark water, and along the east shore of the riverbank, several stunned pedestrians were pausing on a walkway, staring and pointing in disbelief.
Air rushed and swirled through the flyer's hold as the rear doors opened, the pilot losing speed fast as he came in over the river, sliding sideways toward a green space of private property around an apartment building, where a break in the trees provided an available landing zone. The six soldiers in the rear unhooked their restraints, doublechecking weapons and gear.
Killswitch: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel Page 34