by Alec Saracen
“Liberators,” Ceq muttered, shaking her head.
They moved silently down the corridor, ignoring the internal cameras. Shooting them out was more effort than it was worth. They had a much better chance of avoiding detection by just moving quickly and hoping that the remaining occupants of the base were too focused on Landing to waste time watching the feeds.
“Highest security cells are probably underground,” Blue Bull said. “Floor plans say the stairs are central.”
“Understood,” Red Wolf said. They approached a crossroads and Ceq stopped them again, pointing both left and right. Grey Hawk took one side and Blue Wasp the other, and on Ceq's signal they moved out, guns at the ready. Grey Hawk only had one target, an officer, and as he hit the deck she turned to see the third of Blue Wasp's soldiers drop.
“VTOL patrol's coming in,” Blue Bull said. “They'll see the bodies if they're running basic scans. Keep moving, be prepared for pushback.”
They had to melt the lock of the next door with an acid charge, which was quicker than bypassing the code panel. It took them to the stairwell, and they headed down two levels, feet clattering on the concrete. A soldier ahead of them looked back at the noise and took two simultaneous bullets to the forehead from Grey Hawk and Red Wolf.
It really was just like in the sims, Grey Hawk thought. The men and women they were killing were real people, with partners and families and children. She'd expected that to give her pause. It hadn't.
They came to another door, and Grey Hawk moved to set an acid charge, but Ceq slapped her hand away.
Wait, she mouthed, shepherding the three of them to the side. They followed her instructions without question, and were rewarded when the door swung open, concealing them behind it as a soldier stepped out, whistling tunelessly. Grey Hawk silenced her with a shot to the head, as Ceq grabbed the door, and she and Blue Wasp burst into the corridor beyond. Two more soldiers were shouting and scrambling for their guns, and they shot them down.
It was clearly a cell block, lined with blank steel doors with slide-back slots at waist height for inspection and feeding. Red Wolf and Ceq covered the entrance as Grey Hawk and Blue Wasp started ramming the slots open, looking for Thier. As Grey Hawk crouched to look into the second, empty cell, a siren began to wail.
“They know you're there,” Blue Bull said.
“Tell us something we don't know,” Grey Hawk said, and moved on to the next door. It was also empty.
“Here!” Blue Wasp shouted. He stepped back and planted three acid charges on the door. Smoke boiled out from the bubbling metal. “Thier! Get away from the door!”
He wrenched the door open, audibly breaking the locks before the acid had fully burned through, and Grey Hawk arrived at his shoulder as he entered the cell. Grigori Thier was cross-legged on the floor, looking up at them with quiet defiance. His face was an ugly mass of bruises, and his shirt was torn and bloody, but his storm-dark eyes still gleamed out fiercely from his swollen face.
“Come with us,” Blue Wasp said. “Quickly.”
Grey Hawk reached into her backpack and pulled out a loose bullet-resistant shirt, which she flung at Thier. “Put that on, now. It might save your life.”
Thier, to his credit, didn't slow them down once he realised he was being rescued. He heard the siren and the urgency in their voices and understood there was no time to waste.
“You'll have to help me,” he said as he struggled into the shirt, his voice coming out as a rasping croak. There were raw abrasions on his throat, as if he'd been half-strangled. He gestured helplessly at his foot. “Ankle's broken.”
There was no time to debate the practicalities of rescue. Grey Hawk shoved past Blue Wasp and hauled a surprised Thier onto her back with one hand.
“You're Liberators,” he grunted.
“Yeah. Arms round my neck,” Grey Hawk said. “You can't hurt me. Hold on, tight as you can. Let's go.”
She felt Thier's arms grip her neck, hesitantly at first and then more firmly as he realised he really couldn't hurt her.
The quiet sputtering of silenced Liberator assault rifles was barely audible over the siren. They switched to regular rounds. There was no need for stealth any more.
Ceq and Red Wolf took the lead with Blue Wasp covering their rear. Grey Hawk and her precious cargo took the relative safety of the middle, but the instant they left the building, that wouldn't mean a thing. Red Wolf threw an impact-triggered grenade through the door back to the stairwell, which was propped open by a corpse, and the shock and heat of the explosion rushed down the corridor towards them.
The concrete floor was slick with blood as they left the cell block and started back up the stairs. Grey Hawk kept her eyes fixed on the way ahead, forcing herself to ignore the gruesome scene before her. That went out of the window when she stood on something and automatically looked down to see a severed arm under her foot, still in its green uniform sleeve.
“Oh, Twins,” she heard Thier mumbling.
“Exit strategy, Blue Bull,” Red Wolf said, with the intense calm of the battlefield.
“Not the way you came. Hold on.”
Red Wolf fired eight shots in quick succession, and two more soldiers fell on the level above. “Soon would be good.”
Before they reached the corridor, Ceq stopped them yet again.
“Automatic turrets ahead,” she said. “EM 'nades.”
Red Wolf grabbed two from her belt and hurled them through the door, hurriedly pushing it shut as the motion-detecting turrets began to blaze away. The grenades went off, filling Grey Hawk's vision with static for an instant, and the gunfire ceased. They moved out past the turrets, dangling uselessly from their wall mounts, and were about to head through the door when Blue Bull spoke again.
“Go up the stairs. Head for the roof.”
They doubled back and followed his directions, pounding up the steps as the sirens screamed. Nobody met them along the way. Another acid charge did for the locked door at the top, and they came out onto the roof of the prison building, which was also deserted.
“Take the VTOL,” Blue Bull said. Grey Hawk looked around and saw the sleek shape of a VTOL on the roof of the next building, maybe five metres from the edge of theirs and two metres higher up. “Quickly.”
“I can't make that jump!” Ceq said. Gunfire interrupted them. Some of the soldiers who'd rushed outside at the sound of the alarm had spotted them, and Grey Hawk crouched down, Thier swinging awkwardly from her neck.
“Hold them off,” Red Wolf said. She turned, retreated a few steps for a run-up with a look of intense concentration on her face, and took a prodigious running leap. She slammed into the side of the next building, just barely managing to get enough of a grip to scramble up the rest of the way, and was firing less than two seconds later. Grey Hawk turned back and picked off two soldiers with precise shots. A bullet caught her in the shoulder, lodging there and taking a few percent off its mobility, and another whistled past her ear, too close for comfort.
Suddenly, the sirens and gunfire were both drowned out by the howl of an approaching VTOL, and a brilliant beam of light transfixed Grey Hawk. She reacted quickly enough to spin and hurl Thier off her to safety, but she wasn't fast enough to dodge the bullets. Heavy machine-gun fire raked across the roof, knocking her legs out from under her and filling her HUD with blaring red damage warnings, and when she tried to get to her feet, only one leg obeyed her. More fire whipped towards her and she rolled away, several bullets lancing through her stomach for her trouble. It bought her body enough time for some emergency on-the-fly rewiring, and this time she could stand. The dark hulk of the VTOL yawed around the rooftop, revving up its guns for the next attack, and Grey Hawk raised her rifle.
She launched a grenade from her underbarrel, which twisted and cracked the cockpit without penetrating it, and followed it up the rest of the magazine. The bulletproof cockpit, weakened by the grenade, finally gave after the sixth shot, and the seventh to sixteenth were enough to k
ill both pilots. The VTOL immediately went into a wild spin as a pilot slumped over the controls, pitching crazily over and tumbling into the yard. Panicked shouts rose from the soldiers below. The crash hadn't completely disabled it, and it began to scythe around in a deadly circle, its engines damaged but still functional.
Blue Wasp took a look at the carnage below, then at Grey Hawk, then back at the thrashing VTOL.
“Nice,” he said, and grinned.
Another VTOL roared overhead. This one lurched in low, its passenger doors wide open.
“Get in!” Red Wolf called over the channel, and Grey Hawk sprinted over to Thier, who was trying to hobble on his injured ankle, threw him unceremoniously over her shoulder, and struggled back to the VTOL. Blue Wasp, who had already leapt aboard and pulled Ceq after him, yanked Thier up and in.
“Look out!” Ceq yelled, too late. As Blue Hawk reached down to help the damaged Grey Hawk, a missile smashed into the rear of the VTOL and sent it spinning away from her, smoke and fire rising from its tail.
Red Wolf snarled in frustration. “Motherfucker!”
The VTOL pitched alarmingly, still just about flyable but far from stable, and Blue Wasp made an executive decision as Red Wolf wrestled it back under control. He slid out of the door, catching hold of a landing skid and dangling his legs towards Grey Hawk, who gratefully grabbed them.
“Go!” she called, and Red Wolf needed no second invitation. The VTOL powered away from the rooftop and over the walls with the Liberators dangling below. Grey Hawk had to contort herself to avoid smashing into a watchtower. Behind them, two more VTOLs rose from landing pads in the complex, their lights ablaze. Blue Wasp hauled himself up, dragging Grey Hawk with him, and the two of them were inside before the pursuing VTOLs opened fire.
Machine-guns hammered at the damaged rear of their craft, making it buck and judder in the air. Thier, clinging onto a strap for dear life, might have tumbled out of the door if Grey Hawk hadn't lunged to drag him back.
Red Wolf twisted back to face them, her face taut and tense. “Get them off us! Rear guns!”
Blue Wasp and Ceq grabbed the controls of the swivelling side-mounted machine-guns and opened fire with a deafening rattle, but the calibre was too small to bring down a heavy VTOL. Grey Hawk staggered over to one door and started throwing every grenade she had left. Her damaged shoulder and the motion of the VTOLs played havoc with her aim, but her fourth and last EM grenade, set to detonate on impact, was a direct hit. One of the VTOLs suddenly went dark and plummeted out of the sky to crash and burn on the rocky ground below.
“Yeah! Fuck you!” she heard herself shout, the adrenaline wiping out all self-consciousness. She was running low on grenades. All her frags missed, detonating in orange splashes on the ground, but her third sonic scored a glancing blow on the last VTOL, enough to shatter the cockpit shield. That was all the opening they needed. Ceq and Blue Wasp trained their fire on the unprotected pilots, the sparking tracer rounds guiding them, and the VTOL went into a nosedive. Ceq whooped in triumph and high-fived Blue Wasp, wincing at the impact.
“Good job, people,” Red Wolf called.
“More pursuers inbound,” Blue Bull said. “They're stripping all their VTOLs off Landing and sending them your way. Fly low.”
“Not a problem,” Red Wolf said. Their own VTOL had been steadily losing height, and as Grey Hawk looked back at the trail of flaming wreckage they'd left, the rear engine was shredded even further by another flash of sparks. The VTOL dipped sickeningly, lurching up and down and from side to side as its power began to fail. Looking ahead, they were only a couple of kilometres from Landing, but the glaring lights of at least a dozen VTOLs shone like vengeful eyes, their sleek black hulls glinting dangerously in the moonlight.
Thier had managed to find a seat and a safety harness and was buckling himself in with trembling hands, his lips moving soundlessly in what could have been prayer, curse, or anything in between. Grey Hawk knew the feeling. She was buzzing with a deadly energy she'd never felt before, a wild red fire that erased everything but the immediate. The dice were still rolling.
“Brace!” Red Wolf called. “We're going in hot!”
The tortured howl of the engines crescendoed as they screamed in towards Landing. Machine-guns chattered at them, but they were descending too steeply and closing the gap too quickly for many shots to find their mark. Landing loomed large, the evacuation towers merging into a single vast silhouette against the starlit sky, thousands of artificial lights mingling with hundreds of fires on the streets.
Red Wolf steered them straight between the towers, muttering obscenities under her breath. “I can't slow us down enough!” she called. “Strap in, Ceq!”
“Way ahead of you,” Ceq replied, tightening her harness. Blue Wasp and Grey Hawk strapped themselves in next to the non-Liberators just in time. One engine abruptly died, sending them into a spin that Red Wolf could only partially correct by shutting down all power. The VTOL dropped like a stone for three terrible seconds, then smashed hard into the ground belly-first with an almighty jolt. The hull buckled inwards, and the wreck of the VTOL careered wildly down the street, crashing into and through abandoned cars. Metal shrieked, sparks cascaded, and finally the VTOL came to rest with another violent jerk. The beeping of a few intact alarms and death rattle of the engines were the only sounds. Presently, they were joined by Ceq's relieved laughter.
“That was fun!” she said, releasing her harness. “Can we go again?”
Thier's eyes were tightly shut, and his breathing was fast and shallow. Grey Hawk unstrapped him and lifted him out, aware they had no time to recover. She could already hear the incoming VTOLs, buzzing like a swarm of angry bees. Bees with big guns, Grey Hawk thought ridiculously.
“Blue Bull, options?” Red Wolf said tersely, clambering back into the main fuselage.
“Get into a tower. They're enormous, they'll never find you.”
“But we'll be trapped,” Blue Wasp said.
“Until ResTore find out that Thier is alive and holed up, under siege,” Grey Hawk said. She threw Thier over her shoulder, ignoring his pained groans. “They'll come.”
Blue Wasp's face was masked, but Grey Hawk could imagine his doubtful expression. “That's a declaration of war. There'll be no turning back.”
“There's already no turning back,” Red Wolf said. “Tell them. We'll hold out here.”
Blue Wasp saw the majority against him, and relented. “Understood.”
They struggled free of the crashed VTOL and ran for the nearest tower's entrance just as the first government pursuer opened fire, its glowing tracer rounds raking across the wreckage as they fled. They were all but safe as soon as they were inside. The towers were almost perfect for both hiding and for holding out against incoming ground troops, and an eerie quiet descended as they plunged deeper into the vast grey tomb. The gunfire was muffled and soon silenced, and only their footsteps remained.
Landing was in the grip of a deadly storm outside those walls, but Grey Hawk felt a certain serenity now that they were within them. They were protected, safe in the storm's eye, their mission completed. The rest was up to ResTore. War was coming – more than that, war was here. There was no escaping it. Whatever fate awaited Tor, it would be born of blood and fire and bullets, and Grey Hawk couldn't help but feel that was the way it should be. If violence was necessary, then that only confirmed the value of what you were fighting for.
Freedom cannot be bought save with the currency of bloodshed, Yustrid had written, during the darkest, most brutal months of the Biphean War. I deny gold, I deny silver. Worth runs in veins. We are our own treasuries.
Most of Grey Hawk's blood was in cold storage in a basement on Plenty, but what remained was warmed by Yustrid's words. This was why she was here. She had been taken apart from head to foot and painstakingly improved, upgraded, reassembled, built for battle. She was no politician, no spy, no agent, no diplomat, no matter what treacherous thoughts wormed their way
into her mind. She was a warrior, and her war was here.
23
As Zhai watched the footage coming out of Landing, he could feel the situation slipping out of control.
The world was sliding into chaos at an alarming rate. The dramatic moment Ceq and the Liberators had escaped the siege was playing repeatedly on Roshi Comet's feed. Just before dawn, as the latest rebel relief attack was repulsed by the military ringing the tower, a harpoon had been fired from the ground to the roof, trailing hundreds of metres of high-strength wire behind it. Someone on the inside, defying the dizzying drop, clambered out to yank the harpoon free and secure the wire more tightly, visible on the footage only as a dark speck. Nothing happened for twenty seconds or so, and the VTOLs hovering over the tower didn't budge. The wire was too thin for them to see.
Then, in a flash, five figures were sliding down the wire in makeshift harnesses, the first no more than three metres away from the fifth. They accelerated quickly, and by the time the first VTOL belatedly reacted, they were already close to the ground. Machine-guns blasted away at the slippery targets too late to touch them, and the camera caught them zooming between two more towers and out of sight, no more than twenty metres above the ground when they vanished.
At this point, Roshi's footage usually cut to the view from the other end of the wire, which was anchored to a heavy truck. As the five figures rapidly approached the camera, the wire was disconnected and its riders fell the last few metres onto a crash mat that had been rolled out in the street. The camera dipped, buffeted by a swarm of people surrounding the mat, but through the crowd it caught a glimpse of a badly beaten and barely conscious man, being carried away from the mat by a masked figure. It was unmistakably Grigori Thier.
The siege had been lifted an hour later. Rather than slink off with its tail between its legs, the military had moved aggressively in retaliation, seeking to undo its humiliation with enough brutality. All the progress of the previous few days evaporated. A line had been crossed, and Landing was paying dearly for the transgression.