Ari's signal, then, in her inner ear ... and she took her time, letting her receptor codes analyse and break down the signal key, not wanting a repeat of Ari's last communication attempt. Movement behind her, then, but preceded by Rhian's faint call of "me," Sandy's hearing automatically placing the vocal patterns as authentic. The child's screams grew louder, seeming to shift within the room ahead ... Sandy immediately pictured Jane, weapon in one hand, child in the other arm, moving from window to window for a view.
"Cap," said Rhian as she arrived alongside. "She's got a child." Rhian's tone betrayed more tension than usual for any GI under combat conditions. Stating the obvious was not usual, either. Unless one were Rhian, faced with a predicament from her very worst nightmares, and needing to articulate ... something.
"You've got ten seconds!" Jane shouted. "Otherwise, I'll do it slowly!" Sandy smacked her left arm cast across Rhian's chest before anything suicidal happened. Rhian stared at her, desperately. Sandy accessed Ari's link, and it unfolded with a strange, unpredictably shifting pattern of uniquely tailored encryption that was not regulation at all, but entirely Ari ...
"Sandy! Look, the line's secure for now, I'm sorry for last time, I didn't know she could ...
"I know," Sandy formulated silently. "Ari, tell the flyer to move away from the house immediately. "
"Doing that." Outside the house, the flyer's engines changed pitch to an ascending roar, then faded as it pulled away.
"Good," said Jane above the screams of her hostage. "Now I want a cruiser, on autopilot, to come hovering next to this window."
"You hear that?" Sandy formulated to Ari, having patched her audio through to the uplink.
"Got it. You want me to comply?"
"Yes. "
"Sandy ... the CSA doesn't look kindly on generous negotiations with hostage takers ... "
"I know what the handbook says. Just do it. I need events to unfold, Ari. I want things happening. " Because when they happened, as she'd explained to him before, she was presented with opportunities. All of her combat strategy was based upon that simple philosophy. Keep it moving. Movement makes angles, angles make chances.
"Doing that," Ari confirmed.
"It'll take a few minutes to get here," Sandy called to Jane. "If you kill that kid, you'll follow." Just in case Jane was unfamiliar with how hostage situations worked.
"That's why I'll do it slowly," Jane replied, with something that sounded like feigned patience. "I know you're not allowed to let him suffer." It was all a technical exercise to her, Sandy realised. That was not unexpected. That she herself could feel such cold, murderous fury, however, while still fully immersed in combat-reflex, was utterly surprising. God knew how Rhian felt.
Rhian made several handsignals to Sandy-she would go downstairs, and up the second staircase, to see if there was a second door into the child's room from the adjoining hallway. Thus preventing the need to dart across the open door directly ahead. Sandy nodded, once, and Rhian vanished without so much as a squeak of floorboards.
"Your friend's not as high-des as us, is she?" Jane commented above the screams. "I can tell. She's just a little bit slower, a little more predictable. She could have shot for my head, but she didn't seem to guess I was wearing armour. Not very imaginative."
Rhian had a hand pistol with limited range, Sandy thought in reply, and couldn't be sure she had the firepower to penetrate and kill any GI from where she was. She'd been trying to distract as much as kill, and put Jane off her aim by knocking her over, thus firing into the centre of mass.
If Jane got a cruiser, and kept the hostage with her, she'd be immune ... and they couldn't shoot down a cruiser over populated regions anyway. Of course, a cruiser could hardly hide, being so easy to trace through urban skylanes ... but then, given the degree to which Jane had demonstrated she could manipulate Tanushan networks, Sandy wasn't prepared to bet she couldn't find a way to escape once airborne. Either way, the hostage would be expendable, from Jane's point of view.
"Why kill the Secretary of State, Jane?" Sandy called. Jane seemed in a talkative mood. Perhaps she'd spill something. "Unless he knew what you were doing, bringing the Fleet down on our heads? Unless he knew you were going to kill Admiral Duong?"
"Where did your friend go?" said Jane, as if the questions had never been asked. "I can't hear her out there."
"Sandy," came Ari's voice in her ear, "I'm into the house network-it's occupied by a cousin of the Trade Minister, apparently she's under protection after extremist threats of some kind. .. " And she'd chased every Tanushan's worst nightmare straight into her home. At another moment, Sandy might have sworn and kicked something. "I'm ... hang on, I'm patching into the bedroom ... "
"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 they 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 Ari'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, then 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," Ari 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 th
e 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 Ari.
"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.
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