by Mel Odom
Neither of them appreciated what Dani Nighthorse could do. Yet, Hawke told himself. Twitch had never worked with Nighthorse. In fact, Hawke had never included her on a run that involved magic in any way. The current job had gone to the magical side of things immediately.
“She knows what she’s doing,” he said. “I’ll get her.”
“There’s no need. I am here.” Dani Nighthorse stepped out of the shadows and approached them.
Like the others, Nighthorse wore chameleon armor, but hers was embellished with barely visible sigils that changed shades with the suit. They also provided another layer of protection. Hawke didn’t know how old Nighthorse was, but she’d been around the shadows longer than he had.
In spite of the UGE that had changed her into an elf in her early teen years, her Norwegian roots still showed in her blonde hair and tall build. She was tall, curvy, and muscular. In addition to shamanic magic, she was hell on wheels in personal combat as well.
Her purple eyes studied Hawke. “It’s been a long time, min venn.”
“It’s good to see you.” He hadn’t meant to stay away from her for so long, but she’d been the first person he’d run with more than once since stepping out on his own. It was too easy to get close to her, and he thought that attraction would only get in the way, and possibly get one or both of them killed.
Rolla folded his arms over his broad chest. “Maybe you should ask her what she was doing up on the roof.”
Hawke wasn’t going to do that, but before he could tell the troll that, Nighthorse answered him.
“I was making preparations for tonight.” She looked at Hawke, not addressing Rolla. “Those two are too noisy.” Her gaze flicked over the troll dismissively. “And I’m not questioning whether your weapons are loaded.”
“They’re always loaded.”
“You still check before you go into battle. So do I.” Nighthorse returned her attention to Hawke. “Are we ready?”
“Yeah, we’re ready. Perimeter’s secure, and Dolphin has extra video points in place if she needs them.” Hawke walked over to the opening in the wall that looked out onto the Ngola Building.
The cold breeze whipped into the parking garage. Only a few vehicles were parked in the striped zones. They took care to stay away from them, because they probably had better security systems than the parking garage did. Dolphin had gotten control of the garage systems easily.
The Ngola Building was going to be more of a challenge.
“Are you ready, Dolphin?” Hawke watched the street.
“Yes.”
“Javier?”
“I am here,” Paredes replied. He’d left the hotel, and even though his physical body was in a vehicle hidden nearby, Hawke knew the mage was with them, but in the astral world. Paredes could “manifest” an insubstantial representation of himself when not engaged with a spell. For tonight, he was only manifesting his voice. The group could handle the physical threats. Paredes was there to take care of the magical defenses.
“All right, gear up, people.” Hawke took the helmet Twitch had been holding for him. Stripping out of the long coat, he pulled it on. A quick touch of the tab on the suit’s collar sealed the helmet to the armor.
The others did the same.
Hawke nodded at Rolla. The street samurai reached into a large equipment bag and took out a massive crossbow. He pulled back the tungsten string and locked it into place, then added a matte black quarrel as thick as Hawke’s thumb. With practiced efficiency, he slapped a spool of tungsten wire onto the crossbow’s forward stock and threaded the other end through the quarrel.
Setting himself, one foot up on the window ledge to brace himself, Rolla took aim at the Ngola Building.
“Ninth floor,” Hawke said, watching as a sedan rolled across the street. “Wait for the truck to cover the noise.”
“I know,” the troll growled. “And I can count.” He let out half a breath, then squeezed the trigger as the truck’s engine noise echoed between the buildings.
The quarrel zipped across the intervening space and dug into the building only centimeters above the third window from the left. The thock of the quarrel biting into stone was barely audible to Hawke, even though he’d been listening for it. He was certain a casual passerby wouldn’t have noticed. It quivered for a moment as the head burrowed more deeply into the stone. Faint dust clouded around the window, then disappeared in a gust of wind. The tungsten-steel alloy cable was almost invisible in the darkness.
Hawke let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He affixed one of the pulleys to the line, then held it ready. “Dani?”
Nighthorse stepped to the ledge as Rolla secured the other end of the cable to a nearby support pillar. Once the line was taut, she gripped the pulley, stepped up onto the ledge, and took a breath.
“You take out the window. Dolphin’s already spoofed the security on that entrance point. Once you land, move quick. I’ll be right on your heels.”
Nighthorse nodded.
Hawke grabbed another pulley and put it on the line. “Go.”
Nighthorse leaned into the fall down the zip-line and soared toward the Ngola Building. The pulley whispered as it rolled, but that faded away in a couple meters.
True to his word, Hawke launched himself after Nighthorse. The line sagged as it took his weight. He weighed twice as much as she did, and together they accounted for a load. Rolla would stress the line even more.
Shoving the possible issues about the infiltration out of his mind, Hawke focused on what he was doing. Wind whipped around him. The helmet’s sensors counted down the distance to the wall. 50 meters…40…30…20…10…
CHAPTER SIXTY
Nighthorse barely slowed her approach, closing on the wall faster than Hawke would have expected. The security system was temporarily offline, due to Dolphin’s machinations in the security server, which was separate from the mainframe, but the bulletproof transplas was another issue.
A shimmer passed before Nighthorse when she was less than two meters from the window. She kicked her legs up and braked the pulley. Hawke held his breath, worried she was going to hit the window and be rebuffed back into the street. The armor wasn’t enough to save her from a nine-story fall to the pavement.
“Dani—?”
“I’ve got it.” In spite of the situation, with the ground waiting so far below her and Hawke speeding along less than two meters behind her, she sounded calm and unhurried.
Just before Nighthorse’s boots touched the window, the transplas smoked in several places, then disappeared in a dim flash. Arching her body, the shaman sailed through the empty space. Her empty pulley banged into the quarrel and stopped short of the wall.
Stunned by how fast things were happening, Hawke almost missed his release. He released his pulley late and flew through the window, hitting his left hand on the frame, then dropping to a crouch in the spot Nighthorse had just vacated. He rolled forward to shed momentum, and came up on one knee with the Beretta 201T he’d selected for tonight’s op in his hands. The silencer made it slightly longer, but he had no problem pulling it from his shoulder leather.
The helmet’s night vision kicked on automatically, turning the long hallway into a collage of greens and blacks. He hadn’t seen anything on his approach, and Nighthorse hadn’t issued a warning, but he wanted to be ready.
Standing beside the left wall, Nighthorse held her pistol, too. Their primary weapons were loaded with stick-and-shock rounds, designed to knock down targets and render them unconscious with a jolt of electricity. To Hawke’s knowledge, no one in the building deserved getting killed tonight, and he intended to keep it that way.
Twitch flew through the window a moment later, rolled, and came up with pistols in both hands. She moved so fast that Hawke never saw her draw the weapons, but knew she’d couldn’t have been holding them and hanging onto the pulley at the same time.
“Take point,” he said.
Twitch nodded and prowled forward.
Hawke turned back to the window as Rolla released the pulley. Maybe the wire dipped too far from the troll’s weight, or maybe Rolla misjudged his approach, but his feet slammed against the bottom of the frame instead of coming through, and he fell backward headfirst.
Rolla yelped and cursed, waving his arms.
Diving forward, Hawke clamped a hand around one of the troll’s big feet and hung on. Suspending nearly four hundred kilos with one arm, even with his augmented strength and reinforced skeletal structure, was difficult. Hawke was pulled halfway through the window before he could catch his knees below the ledge and ram his left shoulder against the wall to halt his movement.
But he stopped Rolla’s fall.
“I can’t believe you just managed that,” Paredes said softly. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Keep on . . . the perimeter lookout,” Hawke ordered through gritted teeth. He’d forgotten about the mage in the astral. There were too many players on the op, too many things to keep an eye on. Catching one of his people before he took a swan dive onto concrete had been nowhere in the plans.
Shocked, maybe because he was still alive, or maybe because Hawke had caught him, Rolla cursed in a heated rush. He flailed his arms, nearly tearing himself from Hawke’s grip.
“Be still, or I won’t be able to hold on to you,” Hawke ordered.
Rolla ceased moving and became dead weight that seemed to get heavier by the second. “Okay . . . okay. I’m not moving. Frag, that’s a long way down.”
“It’ll go by really fast,” Paredes commented.
“Hey,” Twitch said.
“Sorry.”
Placing his pistol on the ground, Hawke grabbed the troll with his other hand as well. “I can’t pull you up.”
“Well, don’t fraggin’ drop me.”
“I’m not gonna drop you if I can help it, but you have to figure out a way up.”
“Just you hang on then.”
“I’ve got you.”
With astonishing physical control, Rolla bent at the waist and grabbed Hawke’s left wrist with his huge right hand. The helmet masked the troll’s face, so Hawke couldn’t read whatever emotions might be showing. Panic touched him for just a moment when he considered the probability that Rolla would pull them both through the window if things went wrong. More wrong, he corrected himself.
Rolla caught the window frame with his other hand and managed some of his own weight, easing the strain on Hawke’s arms, shoulders, and back. Getting the troll inside the building wasn’t made any easier then, but it was manageable. He came through slowly at first, then more quickly as his balance shifted.
Breathing hard, Hawke stood to one side as Rolla knelt on the floor.
“Gimme a second,” the troll said, his voice hoarse. “Head rush from hanging upside down.”
“Landing on your head would have been a lot more stressful,” Paredes said.
Rolla growled a curse at the combat mage, who only laughed.
“Time’s up.” Hawke picked up his pistol. “We’re behind the clock now.” He waved to Twitch, and they started forward again.
“I’m coming.” Still a little unsteady, Rolla forced himself to his feet and drew his own pistol. “We get time later, I owe you a beer, omae.”
“We get outta here in one piece, and I’ll take you up on that. Right now, just keep our six covered.”
“Done.”
Every minute spent inside a place you weren’t supposed to be increased the chances of getting caught. Aware of that, Hawke had to clamp down on the impulse to hurry Twitch along. Safe was safe, and safe was preferable to almost any other scenario, except arriving too late to do what needed to be done. Sometimes staying safe meant going slower than he wanted. Beneath the armor, his skin crawled in impatience.
He kept himself focused, and slapped wireless button cams on the walls as he passed. They would serve as a secondary security perimeter and spy eyes if they needed them.
Dolphin had the blueprints routed to the helmets’ video feeds. A three-dimensional diagram of the ninth floor overlaid Hawke’s face shield. Three turns later, they reached the hallway where the mainframe was kept.
Pausing at the intersection, Twitch waved them back. Hawke cued his helmet, and picked up the feed from the gunslinger’s point of view.
Farther down the hall, light emanated from a security office. Cams hung throughout the hallway, keeping everything in view.
“Do you have the cams?” Twitch asked.
“I have them now,” Dolphin replied. “They won’t see you until I let them. Or until an alarm is triggered. So don’t—”
“Trigger any alarms,” Twitch said. “Yeah, I got that.” Moving slowly, she crept forward, ducking beneath the bulletproof glass of the sec checkpoint’s window.
Hawke nodded to Nighthorse, who headed down the hallway in the other direction, placing a couple more button cams as she went. The door twenty meters down led to a stairwell. Once in place, she booted a maglock to the door. The barrier wouldn’t prevent a sec team from getting through, but it would slow any guards down.
Nighthorse started coming back. The plan was for her to put the guards inside the checkpoint to sleep with her magic. Before she could do that, however, a click drew Hawke’s attention toward the overhead vent. Through the slits, he spotted a small cleaning ’bot that shifted and peered down at him.
“Dolphin, do you—”
“I see it! I see it!” She cursed. “There’s nothing in the files about a maintenance ’bot active tonight. I’m trying to acquire—”
The ’bot blinked and powered away.
“I’m too late! It just sounded an alarm! I’m sorry!”
Hawke looked at Twitch. “Okay, Plan B. We go in hard and fast.”
At the security checkpoint door, Twitch folded one of her pistols under her arm, then reached into a thigh pouch for three slap charges she’d readied earlier. She placed the charges on the lock and where the hinges would be inside the metal door. When she was finished, Twitch knelt and nodded at Hawke.
Hawke took a breath. Once the charges went off, there was no turning back. Ngola’s sec teams would know they had a problem in the building from the ’bot’s warning, and they’d know where that problem was. They had no choice but to get in, do the job, and get out as fast as they could.
He nodded back. “Do it.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Twitch ignited the charges with a command from her PAN. The thermite charges, a blend of iron and copper oxides, flared and burned incredibly hot. The lock and the other sections of the door turned to glowing, orange molten slag.
Twitch stood and kicked the door, but it didn’t move. Inside the checkpoint, shadows moved across the window. Dolphin wouldn’t be able to keep them masked anymore.
Fire alarms rang through the floor, adding to the confusion. Hawke filtered the harsh whoops out of his audio and ran forward. Stepping back, Twitch held her pistols at her sides.
Hawke slammed a shoulder into the door, shattering the slagged hinges and knocking it free. Following the falling slab of metal into the room, Hawke threw himself forward, landing on his stomach and leaving Twitch’s field of fire clear.
Caught off-guard, the five sec men in the room tried to bring up their weapons. Chairs lined one wall, facing a trideo projector displaying combat biking across an area that nearly filled the available space, placing everyone in the middle of the action. The three-dimensional images of the armored biker teams using clubs and small arms was in full gorefest mode. The camera zoomed in on a ’roided ork who yanked a steel dart from his ruined eye, then spat out blood and broken teeth. The image distorted as two sec men barreled through with weapons blazing and their helmets askew.
Twitch’s guns fired, but none of the men in the room went down. Surprised, Hawke checked the button cams and saw she was dealing with a crowd of sec guards from farther down the hallway. They boiled out of a locker room with guns in their fists.
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br /> On his own, Hawke rolled to one side and gripped the armored door with one hand, flipping it so the line of bullets from the weapons hammered into the impromptu shield. He threw his arm forward, aiming at a sixth sec man coming through a door on the far side of the room. As the door vibrated under the onslaught, Hawke fired two rounds that struck the man in the throat.
Choked by the impact, the man stumbled, then the electrical charges released in bright blue bursts and rendered him unconscious. He fell in a boneless heap less than a meter from Hawke.
Staying low, spinning momentarily from the other sec men in the hallway, Twitch stepped into the room and fired on the fly. Both her rounds struck men between the eyes, released their charges in blue arcs, and dropped the targets in the tangle of three-dimensional combat bikers.
Still on the move, the gunslinger kept firing, dropping two more targets in rapid succession. The last man was fully armored, and recognized he was facing intruders using non-lethal rounds. More confident, he stood his ground and opened fire. The armor-piercing rounds ripped into the walls but didn’t penetrate the thick metal plates enclosing the checkpoint.
Twitch fired a half-dozen rounds that slapped into the man’s face shield as she sprinted, but one of his rounds caught her in the shoulder and knocked her off balance. While trying to recover, she got hit again, this time in the side, and got spun around.
Hawke surged up with the door and rushed the man. The guard wheeled on him, helmet covered with blazing stick-and-shock rounds, SMG chattering in his hands.
Ignoring the bullets pockmarking the door, Hawke drove it straight into the man, shoving him back into the wall. Flattened by the door, the man struggled to free his trapped gun arm.
Holding the man in place, Hawke reached around his improvised barrier and drove a fist into his face shield. The helmet thudded against the wall as if hit by a jackhammer. Probably concussed, definitely unconscious, the man sagged.
Hawke stepped back and released the door and the sec man. He turned to Twitch. Both of them stood in the center of the combat biker arena match.