Queasily, borderline hysterically, du Bois was reminded of the sugar skulls eaten on Día de Muertos, as he took the spoon and started to eat the information he needed.
Thunder, wind, light and pain. Something tore at his back, ripping at armour, forging a burning rent through flesh and making him roll across the floor. The air was full of dust and raining gore. Nearby he could see one of the faceless federal employees still sitting at his desk despite the destruction all around him. Tracers drew lines of light through the dusty red air, and the federal employee’s head and chest ceased to exist. They were under fire. Du Bois knew that much.
Pain still lanced through his head, he still wanted to throw up, he still felt the fear, but this he understood, though it sounded bad. His vision was red. He tried to clear the blood from his eyes but it was behind the cornea. He would have to wait until it was healed.
His neuralware was separating the noises. He heard a GAU-19 firing. A triple-barrelled, rotary .50 calibre, electrically driven Gatling gun. The sound of rotors. Short bursts from an assault rifle. Single shots from at least two other rifles, and returning fire from Beth’s Model 0 light machine gun, and he was unarmed. He felt the rotor wash from an aircraft hovering outside the Federal Building blowing the warm air from the desert Santa Ana winds into the office.
He could see through the red film now. He risked a look. The movement sent renewed pain lancing through his head and intensified his need to throw up. The telephone receiver he had picked up was still lying on the institutional carpet, screaming at him. He looked up over the desk he had fallen behind. He got shot twice. In the back and in the chest. He fell back to the floor. The bullets had been armour-piercing. They had gone through his nanite-reinforced clothing, and lodged in hardening skin, but his augmentations were such that he had seen enough. It had been as though everything had slowed down. A snapshot.
A CV-22B Osprey was slowly circling the building. The rotors on the aircraft were tilted upwards, allowing it to act as a helicopter. Rounds from the Osprey’s belly-mounted GAU-19 were tearing through the open plan office. The powerful .50 calibre bullets had chewed through the windows and concrete of the building’s exterior, and were turning the interior furniture into so much flying kindling, the still-working federal employees into so much flying meat.
Mueller, the German sniper, was standing at an open hatch in the side of the tiltrotor aircraft’s fuselage. He had shot du Bois in the front. Beth was just behind du Bois’s position, keeping low through the firestorm. She was firing at another two shooters behind and to her left. One of whom had just shot him in the back. He assumed that was Ezard, the American. The other shooter, he suspected, was Grace. The Pennangalan would stay close to Mr Brown.
If he was here then it was all over.
‘Beth!’ du Bois shouted. More pain. There was no chance of communicating via blood-screen in the rotor wash from the Osprey. The walls were moving like they had in the virtual space. The people fused with them were opening and closing their mouths like hungry koi. ‘The Purdey!’
The LMG stopped firing for a moment, and his incredibly expensive rifle came sailing through the air towards him. He caught it and immediately started working the bolt, ejecting the five rounds the rifle was loaded with and reloading it as quickly as he could.
A .50 calibre round hit him in the calf. He screamed. Augmented physiology tried to cope with hydrostatic shock that wanted to tear the limb off. His system was flooded with endorphins, the information from the nerve endings in his leg were blocked. His leg was hanging on by a few strands of sinew and armoured skin; du Bois kicked it around so it could heal back in place easier. He felt himself becoming radically thinner as matter was shifted through his body.
Du Bois finished reloading the Purdey as flesh, muscle, armoured skin, and bone knitted together. His augmented hearing picked up cries of pain and a thud as Beth was shot multiple times and fell over. He had to drag himself across the floor as the GAU-19 targeted his hiding place. Desks, part of the floor, and the remains of federal employees were torn apart where he had been a moment before. The noise from Beth’s LMG had stopped. He heard his own SA58 carbine being fired instead. He pulled one of the 40mm HEAP grenades from a pouch on his webbing.
‘Beth!’ he shouted as he threw the grenade towards her position. He hoped she could work out the plan. He heard the pop of his carbine’s underslung grenade launcher. Then the explosion of a 40mm fragmentation grenade at close range, presumably aimed at Grace and Ezard’s position. Debris rained down on him. He was aware that the GAU-19 was no longer firing into the office, but it was still firing. The carbine had stopped. Du Bois hoped it was because Beth was loading the HEAP into the grenade launcher. He could hear more distant firing. The minigun on top of the ECV. Alexia. He estimated the range and dialled it into the Leupold telescopic sight attached to the Purdey.
Du Bois popped up from behind the desk, on one knee, not that he could stand if he wanted to. Mueller shot him in the face. The force of the bullet whipped his hair round, glancing off bone and armoured skin. Du Bois brought the rifle up to his shoulder. Behind him Beth was firing his carbine. Long bursts, suppressing fire. Rapidly burning through the rest of the thirty round magazine. Fireworks outside. Tracers from far below hitting the Osprey. The GAU-19 on the tiltrotor aircraft’s belly firing downward. Mueller appeared in the scope, fire coming from the muzzle of his Heckler & Koch G3 rifle. Du Bois exhaled. Squeezed. The gun kicked back into his shoulder. Mueller’s round hit him in the chest. He staggered back but didn’t fall over.
‘Now!’ du Bois shouted. The 40mm HEAP grenade fired by Beth from the grenade launcher flew past him and impacted into Mueller. The German sniper flew backwards into the Osprey and the grenade exploded, blowing a hole in the side of the aircraft. He hoped that the nanite-tipped bullet he had shot Mueller with first would do the rest.
Du Bois managed to twist round. He got shot. He worked the bolt on the Purdey. He got shot again. He couldn’t breathe. He was aware of fast-moving metal travelling through his body. Beth threw his carbine back towards him. He’d given her the weapon but he still had all the ammunition for it. It was effectively useless to her now. He saw the figure he was looking for. Ezard. Then he saw muzzle flash from the American’s M14. He risked a snap shot from the Purdey. Another round caught him in the chest and he hit the ground. His own carbine landed on him.
Blood was bubbling out of his mouth. He was wasting away as any remaining fat was drained to try and heal a multitude of wounds. His neuralware made it known that he could just about put weight on his leg now. He reloaded the carbine. Muscle memory. It was practically autonomous as nanites struggled to rebuild enough of his body to make it a going concern. He could just about function, just about move.
Du Bois left the Purdey on the floor and rolled to his feet, leaking blood, carbine at his shoulder, firing at Ezard, advancing towards the American. Grace shifted aim, firing her N6 at him. Beth popped up from between bullet-riddled desks, her LMG hanging down her front on its sling, firing the compact Benelli shotgun rapidly at Grace as she advanced through the wreckage with du Bois. Ezard shook and stumbled back as he was hit by short burst after short burst from du Bois’s carbine. The sniper staggered into a bullet-ridden partitioning wall and fell through it. Grace was knocked back by multiple impacts but didn’t fall. Instead the punk girl ran for the door to the stairwell. She was staggered as more buckshot hit her, but she made it to the exit and all but fell through it.
Du Bois saw his Accurised .45 stuffed in the back of Beth’s webbing. He swept his carbine to one side, letting it hang on its sling as he took his pistol back. Beth moved towards the exit to the stairwell. Du Bois ejected the magazine on the .45 and replaced it with the magazine of nanite-tipped rounds as he moved towards Ezard. The American was lying in the hole he had made in the partitioning wall, bleeding from multiple wounds, his bloody mouth opening and closing as he tried to reach for his own sidearm. It was clear that the snap shot, nani
te-tipped round du Bois had fired from the Purdey had hit him. The nanites were already eating away at the sniper. Du Bois put two more nanite-tipped rounds into Ezard’s face and the sniper was still.
Du Bois risked a glance behind him. The Osprey’s GAU-19 had stopped firing. Mueller was nowhere to be seen. The hole in the side of the tiltrotor aircraft was smoking, but the aircraft was still hovering in the air.
He looked over at Beth. She had the shotgun at the ready and she was standing off and to one side of the door. Du Bois holstered the .45 and reloaded the carbine, bringing it up to cover Beth as she holstered the shotgun, changed belts on the LMG, and then reached for the door to the stairwell. Grace burst through the top part of the bullet-ridden door, legs curled up underneath her, her knees hitting Beth in the chest, sending her flying back. Du Bois heard something hit the carpet at his feet. He looked down at the grenade without its pin and spoon. He turned to run. The grenade exploded and sent him spinning through the air. The rest of the partitioning wall was demolished. He landed a reddened screaming mess. He was little more than pain now. Bullets were impacting into him. Grace was a shadow in the dust and smoke, fire in her hands from the two fully automatic Berettas. Low calibre rounds trying to beat the hardened bone and skin of his skull. Everything went black. Death felt like a blessed relief.
‘How fucking servile are you? He killed your father!’
The relief hadn’t lasted long. Now most of his nerve endings needed shutting down. He was living in pain despite the stimulated endorphin production. His neuralware was letting him know that he was broken. His body was eating itself as it tried to heal but he had taken a lot of damage. He needed matter and energy. He couldn’t move, let alone fight, he couldn’t even talk. He was a spectator now.
‘I don’t want to kill you, but I will. Why don’t you put the knife away and let’s go and cap dad together?’ Grace’s voice sounded strange. The punk girl had a fighting knife at the ready in each hand. The hilts of the weapons had knuckle-dusters built in to them. Part of the office was burning, but even through the smoke and dust he could see much of the flesh on the side of Grace’s face was gone, he could see bone.
Beth was standing opposite her. She had lost the LMG. Her face was red with blood, deep slash marks in the skin and flesh. Her left arm was limp against her body. In her right hand she held a bloody World War I bayonet.
Du Bois tried to shout something. Instead he made a rattling noise and bone clicked together. He shifted precious physiological resources to rebuild his mouth. His neuralware made him aware of how poor an idea this was.
‘I don’t think he did it,’ Beth said quietly. ‘I think he’s done all kinds of bad things, but I don’t think he did that. I think you know who put those memories in your mind, who raped you.’
Du Bois tried to speak again. He dribbled bloody drool down himself but he had made a noise. They ignored him.
‘It’s him I see!’ Grace screamed, tears rolling down her face. ‘Him I see pulling me out of the pile of corpses, protecting me, training me, making sure I got an education, and then, and then … he was just fucking grooming me!’
‘For how long?’ Beth asked quietly. ‘How long did you work with him before he suddenly changed?’
Du Bois didn’t understand. Beth owed him nothing. Not after what he had done.
‘But it’s him I see! Every fucking time!’ Grace was shaking her head. ‘You’ve got to get out of my way.’ She was practically begging Beth.
‘I can’t do that,’ Beth said. ‘It’s not right.’
Grace stared at her. Du Bois could see the punk girl getting angry again, through the tears.
‘Not right? Not right! He killed your fucking father!’
‘And when it’s time I’ll deal with that, but I don’t think he hurt you.’
‘What? You’ve known him for maybe a week?’ Grace demanded. Beth shrugged with one shoulder. ‘I knew him over a century and he fooled …’ The sobs wracking her diaphragm looked positively painful. ‘Move!’ she shouted, snot running freely down her face. Du Bois read the punk girl’s body language. She was about to attack. If Beth only had the use of one arm she wouldn’t stand a chance.
‘No!’ It felt like the word had been torn from a raw throat. He managed to move and throw his .45 at Grace’s feet. Both of the women looked down at it. Outside, the Osprey still hung in the sky, level with their floor, its rotors beating the warm night air. ‘Nanite-tipped rounds,’ he managed, pointing at the pistol. ‘If it will give you peace.’
Du Bois was grateful that Beth said nothing. She was just looking between the two of them. Grace was staring at the pistol. Then it looked like she had to force herself to look at du Bois. He had no idea what it was that she saw there but she didn’t attack Beth with knives. She didn’t pick up the .45 and kill him. Instead she just sat down hard on the debris-strewn floor, knives falling from her fingers, and cradled her head in her hands.
Alexia crashed through the broken door to the stairwell, assault rifle at the ready. She looked around.
‘Oh,’ she said.
It had felt weird, Alexia carrying him down the stairs and out of the building once they had retrieved their various weapons. He was used to being the one looking after her, but Beth was too badly injured to help, and Grace obviously wouldn’t touch him. When did I stop thinking of Alexia as a he? he wondered briefly.
‘You really messed him up,’ Alexia said. She had laid him against one of the ECV’s wheels and hooked him up to a matter IV. He could feel his body starting to heal faster, filling out where it had cannibalised itself to remain functioning. The boot of the armoured patrol vehicle was open. Beth was sitting on the lip of it eating concentrated energy bar after concentrated energy bar.
The vehicle looked like it had taken a real beating. The armour was pitted and scored. Alexia had moved it from cover to get it into position and then fired the minigun up at the Osprey just enough to draw its fire. She had probably saved Beth and him.
‘Were we friends?’ Alexia asked Grace. Grace was also eating the energy bars. Regrown skin and flesh were slowly creeping across her face.
‘Yeah, yeah we were,’ Grace said a smiling ruefully. ‘Once or twice more than that.’
Alexia stopped fussing with the IV and turned to look Grace up and down.
‘You look like my type, y’know, when you’re a bit less banged up.’
Normally when his sister spoke like this it made him feel uncomfortable but this time, there was something about the familiarity of it. He wished he could remember this strange, angry girl. Woman, he corrected himself. This, more than anything else, this piece of needless spite, this damage done, had made him realise just how much he hated Mr Brown.
‘Sorry about your friends,’ Beth said from the back of the ECV. Du Bois wished the three of them were paying more attention to what was going on around them.
‘You get involved with violence …’ Grace said. ‘I liked Josh but he was …’ She turned to look at du Bois, unable to keep the look of disgust off her face. Du Bois had known Ezard, the American, he had found the man pleasant enough, easy to work with, competent, but had always harboured a feeling of resentment towards him, he’d never been sure why. He hoped it wasn’t anything as petty as the War of Independence. Naturalised British or not, he was still Norman French after all. ‘Mueller, on the other hand—’ Grace began.
‘—Was an arsehole.’ Du Bois had said it at the same time as her. She turned to regard him coolly.
‘It would have been better if we could have spoken to Ezard,’ du Bois said.
‘Are you with us?’ Alexia asked. Beth looked over at Grace.
‘I want that fucker punished,’ the punk said. ‘I’d been having doubts since the Boneyard.’ She shook her head. ‘It was so real …’ She was still looking at him. The intensity of her stare was making him want to look away, making him feel ashamed, regardless of the truth. ‘I’ll help you get him,’ Grace said, ‘but I can’t be near h
im.’ She nodded at du Bois, and then finally looked away, much to his relief. ‘Then I’m for the desert. Maybe I’ll look for the City of Brass.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘See if they can sort out what’s real and what’s bullshit up here.’
‘Is that what we’re doing?’ Beth asked. ‘Getting the bastard?’
‘What else?’ Alexia asked.
‘An escape plan,’ Grace said.
‘I think there’s a chance. When I answered the phone …’ du Bois started.
‘When you spoke to the Seeders?’ Grace said, sceptically.
‘There was something there trying to communicate with me …’ du Bois said. ‘I think there may still be uncorrupted seed pods.’
Alexia and Beth both had blank expressions on their faces. Grace looked dubious. Du Bois could see her point. Hearing it out loud it sounded like wishful thinking, the insidiousness of false hope. He looked down.
‘Whatever we do, Mr Brown cannot be allowed to prosper,’ he said quietly. Grace was nodding in agreement.
‘Killing him might be doing him a favour,’ Grace said. ‘I’d only ever met Mr Brown a couple of times before, but recently I’ve spent more time with him. He’s in a lot of pain. I mean, he gets through industrial amounts of synthetic morphine and he barely feels it.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Alexia asked, straightening up and reaching for her assault rifle.
Grace shrugged. ‘He’s not a normal …’ Grace seemed to be searching for the right phrase as she reached for another one of the energy bars. ‘ … thing.’
‘Do we even know how to kill him?’ Alexia asked, looking at du Bois.
‘Well, the DAYP may have come up with an idea,’ du Bois said. ‘According to what I found out.’ What you ate, he thought, but kept it to himself. ‘The Russians were guarding a nuclear warhead. A suitcase bomb made from a Soviet nuclear-tipped artillery round. The FBI believed that La Calavera was acting as a middle man for the Mexican cartels, who were in turn looking to sell it to terrorists.’
The Beauty of Destruction Page 43