Mason frowned. “It’s for a friend.”
“Lucky friend. You know there’s no going back?”
“What?”
“To your friend. I assume they work at the Federate.”
“Yeah.” Mason nodded. “I’ll FedEx it.”
Mike clambered into an APC. Before he pulled the door shut, he looked at Mason. “Be careful with the link. They might track you.”
“I’ll be careful.” Mason sighed. It’s just a dress. Leave it. She doesn’t dance. She said so.
He stowed it in the back of an APC anyway, then climbed in the side. Sadie struggled with a vest, the armor plates shifting like the chitin on an insect.
Haraway craned, glancing at them. “Try to help the kids with their clothing, Floyd.”
Mason reached out to the clasps on Sadie’s armor, but she batted his hands away. “I can do it.”
The lights on the inside flickered, the APC lurching as the Metatech driver kicked the APC into gear. Mason stumbled, catching himself on the bulkhead. He looked up, face inches from Sadie’s. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s just that—”
“I know.”
Mason sat on the seat facing her. He watched her fiddle with the armor for a few more minutes, the APC jostling over the uneven road leading out of the town. “I can help.”
She stopped moving. “I can do it.”
“Okay.”
“Are you going to sit there and watch me?” Sadie glared at him.
“No.” Mason turned to the APC’s window, armored glass between him and the rain.
Sadie struggled with the clasps for a few more moments. “There.”
Mason glanced at her. “Oh.”
“‘Oh?’” Sadie frowned. “What do you mean, ‘oh?’”
“It’s nothing.”
“Floyd.”
“No, it’s fine.” Mason nodded at her vest. “It’s just—”
“Christ!” Sadie threw herself back in her seat. “You finished?”
“Sure.” Mason grinned, surprising himself.
“Out with it.” Sadie watched him.
“I wouldn’t say you’ve got it completely wrong, but I’m pretty sure if you get out of that seat it’ll fall right off.”
“It will, will it?” Sadie leaned forward, the armor releasing at the back with a click. The plates slid free, loosening around her shoulders. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” He slid from his seat, helping her with the armor. He couldn’t tell if it would be a long drive back to the city or not.
They passed a blasted tree, limbs grasping at the sky as the APC sped past. Mason’s optics flickered for a second, text spooling on his overlay.
LINK RE-ESTABLISHED. A few more moments passed. ONLINE.
Mason sighed. I wish Carter could have come with us. It’d be nice to talk to her again.
“What is it?” Sadie pulled her eyes away from the window. Rain fell outside. They’d driven with it as their constant companion. Water left silver streaks against the glass, pulling long lines as the APCs chewed up the distance.
“You know where we’re going?” Mason leaned forward, the grumble of the APC building as it scrambled up an incline.
“Yes.”
“You don’t need to come.”
Sadie leaned forward too. “Do you know what it means to be part of a team?”
“Sure, I—”
“Shut up for a second,” she said. “How many cars we got here?”
“APCs,” said Mason. “They’re APCs.”
“What’s an APC?”
“Armored personnel carrier.”
“What do they do?”
“Drive troops around.”
“Like a car?”
Mason gave up. “Sure, like a car.”
“How many cars we got here?”
“Three. There are three … cars.”
She tossed him a hint of a smile, just a quirk of one side of her lips. He noticed that she’d managed to get the black lipstick on again. Where the hell did she get lipstick out here? “Okay. So we’ve got three cars. How many dudes can we get in a car?”
“I dunno. There’s…” Mason looked at the ceiling of the APC, counting on his fingers. “There are four of us in here, what with Rough Wheels MacQueen driving.”
“Hey,” said the driver. “You been told to get fucked today?”
“Sorry,” said Mason. “What’s your name?”
“It’s not Rough Wheels MacQueen.” Their driver turned back to the road. Mason caught a savage slash of rain against the windscreen. The Metatech man pulled up an amber overlay, wireframe lines reaching into the distance. Lightning crashed somewhere, a hint of static chasing pebbles of snow across the overlay.
“You have this talent for pissing off just about everyone, don’t you?” Sadie raised an eyebrow.
“I do a lot of fieldwork. Solo.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t really a question.” Sadie tugged the collar of her armor. “This stuff—”
“You don’t have to go.”
Sadie lowered her hand. “Haraway?”
“What is it?” Haraway looked over her shoulder. “You kids fighting back there?”
“Do I have to go?” Sadie looked at Mason.
“If I have to go, you have to go.”
“See?” Sadie shrugged. “Gotta go. She outranks me.”
Mason shook his head. “You don’t have to go.” He reached out to her, but pulled back, looking down. “It’s not your fight.”
Sadie touched the back of his glove, her hand slow and tentative. The fibers in Mason’s suit kicked the feeling through the hard link. “We’re on the same team.”
He looked up, putting his hand over hers. “I know. I’m sorry I got you into this.”
“Oh, hell,” she said. “You didn’t get me into anything. I’ve been getting myself into trouble since forever. Not your fault you were there this time.”
He thought about that for a moment. “Still, I think I’d have liked to do this right.”
“Like how?” The Metatech logo on Sadie’s armor caught the light. Two crossed sabres gleamed red.
“Hell.” Mason wanted to pull away and wanted to leave his hands still at the same time. “Dinner and a show.”
Sadie’s face was still, but her eyes danced. “Mason?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe after—”
“Fuck me sideways!” shouted their driver. The APC lurched as he yanked the controls. Mason glimpsed a mass of people standing on the freeway.
Mason linked into the APC’s cams. What the hell? There were hundreds of them. The APC’s tires snared, the vehicle bucking as it slewed. A shower of water lifted in front of the windscreen like a bow wave. He requested a tactical link, joining the Metatech combat net.
Their three APCs were no longer in a straight line. One ran through the Armco, chewing dirt on the side of the road. The overlay plotted occupants. The crashed APC held Mike’s blip, blue and safe with another Metatech enforcer. They rode with Laia and Zacharies. The second APC sat in the road in front of Mason’s, four Metatech blips inside.
Haraway came on the link, adding her blip within their APC.
“Link clean,” said Mason.
“Clean,” agreed Haraway.
“Clean.” Mike sounded sour but crashing through Armco would do that.
Mason looked out the windscreen as their APC’s active mapping lased, red lines tracing over the people outside. His overlay filled up with targets, cross-referenced with data from the other APCs.
“There’s something you don’t see every day,” said Mason.
Mike still sounds sour on the link. “I dunno.”
“You seen this before?” Haraway turned at Mason, raising an eyebrow.
“Yes.” Mike paused. “No.”
“Yes and no?” Mason looked to Sadie, mouthing hang on. He held a finger up. She opened her mouth as if she wanted to talk, then sank back in her seat.
“Can you uncomplicate it?” Haraway looked through the windscreen. “I’m counting three or four hundred people out there.”
“Don’t forget the kids.” Mike highlighted them on the overlay. “We had something like this in the city. Zach called ‘em Seekers. Drugged, apparently. They fought like they were insane. These look like they shop at the same store. Whites of the eyes, freaky shit like that.”
“What’s going on?” Sadie touched Mason’s shoulder.
Mason spoke in the real. “There’s four hundred people on the freeway. Mike says they’re drugged.”
She pulled the release on her harness.
“What are you doing?”
She threw him a look that said, what does it look like I’m doing? “I’m going to take a look.”
“Are you crazy?”
“You just said there’s a legion of zombies outside. That’s some shit I have to see before I die.” Sadie yanked the door, the APC opening with a hiss of air. Rain howled with glee as it entered. Sadie hopped out, her boots splashing on the tarmac.
Mason freed himself, snagging a rifle from the wall of the APC. He joined Sadie outside, rain drenching him.
“What’s going on?” Mike’s voice cut over the link. “You’re getting out of the APC?”
“Wait one. We have our own lunatic.” Mason grabbed Sadie by the shoulder. He raised his voice to a shout over the storm. “I said, are you crazy?”
Sadie stared at the people on the freeway. A woman held a Macys shopping bag tight in one hand. A small boy stood, the Pac-Man logo on his T-shirt dark with rain. A man in a ten-grand suit stood, mouth slack as water washed down over him.
Sadie stepped back a pace. “Uh, yeah. I might be.”
A person in the crowd wearing a bathrobe turned toward them. He opened his mouth, keening. The rest of the crowd faced them. All their mouths opened, and the sound was huge.
“Get back in the APC.” Mason raised his rifle. “Get in the APC right fucking now.”
“Yeah.” Sadie backed up. Water made the scales of her armor vest slick and mirror-black. “Yeah. That might be a good—”
A gunship roared past the front of their APC, rotor cowls sucking up the rain and blasting it out like a weapon itself. Mason caught the Reed eye logo on its underside as it banked, light lasing out, the targeting system of the gunship mapping the APC in a heartbeat.
He sank into overtime. Mason could see the blades of the gunship’s rotors spinning, each one slicing the air, the rain drops slowing their fall in the bleached light. The gunship fired, a flare of a rocket giving warning. The lattice pulled him, savage and hard, trying to throw him to the side.
Mason fought it, grabbing Sadie. Her features moved slow in overtime, the shock just beginning to show on her face as he put himself between the APC and her. He held her close in a huddle with his free arm. Reed’s rocket hit the APC, fire and fury tossing them both away like pebbles.
Sadie’s scream started as they spun through the air, and Mason let the lattice have control again. It tucked him as they fell, his back taking the impact, Sadie’s scream cutting short as the breath rushed out of her.
Mason pushed her aside, vaulting to his feet in a single motion, the kip smooth. He turned to her and held out a hand. His mouth felt slow and woolen in the overtime. “Are you okay?”
Her response seemed to come from a long way away. “I’m—”
“Are you hurt?” Mason wanted to massage his lips. He hated talking to normals through overtime. His overlay flicked to thermal, a quick map of Sadie showing nothing obvious, nothing immediate. The lattice tugged at him and he looked up.
“Firing solution online.” The APC’s targeting computer spoke with a woman’s voice. Fire boiled off the APC in the rain. Mason took a step forward as the horde ran at them. The APC’s sync request came over the link and he accepted it, his overlay filling with the targeting solution. He shouldered the rifle, snapping the barrel up.
Mike spoke, calm over the link. “Ice those fools.”
The top of the APC pulled back like a flower, fast even through overtime. A turret snapped, chain cannons acquiring the gunship, and they screamed defiance into the storm. The gunship was pulled apart in the blink of an eye, a last rocket spiraling out and away, lost into the rain.
“How the fuck…?” Mason looked at the APC, then back at the horde.
“Mason, we build weapons for the military. You think a little rocket from a porn company’s going to dampen our mood?” Mason could see Mike had moved out of his own APC, the tactical map showing Metatech enforcers deploying. The targeting solution filled up with firing lines. “Go, go, go!”
Mason let his lattice take over, holding onto the APC’s firing solution as he squeezed the trigger of his rifle. The horde was like a wave surging toward them, but they faltered as the rounds hit. All three APCs fired as well, chain cannons carving lines of red mist through the freeway. Mason let the lattice pull the rifle between targets, each shot perfect and clean.
He could almost feel it as Sadie got to her feet, her movements the slow treacle of normals. He heard her gasp. He swiveled, following her sight line. More of those assholes on our six. They clambered over the freeway verge behind them. He overrode the APC’s firing directives. “They’re behind us.” Mason’s rifle cracked four times, each shot lancing through a person, blood lost in the rain. “Need an exit.”
“Copy,” said Mike. “Get back in the APCs.”
Mason turned to Sadie. She looked up, and he turned to follow her gaze. The heavens glowed, heat building in the air, a pillar of light forming.
Mason overrode the comm channel. “Get out of the APCs!”
The sky opened, the beam from the orbital laser reaching down to touch an APC. The vehicle glowed incandescent for no longer than the blink of an eye before it was reduced to ash and molten metal. The shockwave picked Mason up, threw him into Sadie, and then tumbled them both down the freeway verge.
Four blips died on his overlay, Metatech enforcers gone as surely as if they’d never existed.
“Mike?” Mason pushed himself up, wiping grime from his face. His raised his rifle, firing into the horde. “Get the kids clear.”
“On it.” Mike’s blip flickered as the Metatech man sprinted to his APC.
The sky glowed again, the gentle caress of the light reaching down. Mason’s view was obscured by the bank, but he could imagine the coming of the terrible dawn.
Mike’s blip moved away from the APC. “We’re clear—”
The orbital laser fired again, the air catching and burning down the pillar of fire from the heavens. Rock and debris sprayed into the air, and Mason turned to cover Sadie as fragments shattered around them.
“Haraway,” said Mason.
“I’m out, but I’m—”
“Coming.” Mason grabbed Sadie, dragging her up the embankment behind him, firing his rifle with one hand. His overlay showed ten rounds left in the magazine as he topped the rise.
One APC left. Two Metatech foot soldiers stood with Haraway. She fired a pistol, but her upgrades weren’t mil-spec. She may as well have been trying to score a teddy bear in a shooting gallery with a dollar pistol. Mike, Laia, and Zacharies came up the other side of the freeway.
The sound of turbines rose, quick and loud from farther down the freeway. Two more gunships pushed themselves through the rain, blasting over the tops of the horde. They hovered for a moment before a spray of small objects spat from them, canisters the size of soda cans cascading down like hard rain.
Sadie’s voice came to Mason from far away, overtime making her words slow. “What are they? What are they doing?”
Mason lifted the rifle to his shoulder, pointing it at the gunships. His overlay mapped the aircraft. “Focus, target one.”
“Copy.” Mike fired on Mason’s target, small arms fire impacting on the bubble of glass protecting the gunship’s pilots. The glass shattered
, a spray of red coating the cockpit. The aircraft’s engines rose to a whine, the machine yawing sideways. It touched the Armco as it fell, the machine pirouetting across the ground as metal and parts splintered.
With a sound like lead popcorn, the ends of each canister opened. Gas hissed out.
“Shit,” said Mason in the real.
Sadie’s eyes were wide as gas flowed, unaffected by the falling rain. It was thick, like a fluid floating through the air. “What is it?” Sadie touched the rising tide of gas. She yanked her hand back, sniffing it, then glanced at the horde. They’d stopped, their white eyes sightless, staring in whichever direction they’d faced. They were like puppets, their strings cut.
Mason lowered his rifle. “The good news is we’re probably not going to die.”
Energy cracked through the gas, the network of canisters around them discharging. Sadie went stiff as a post, then convulsed as she fell into the gas.
Mason’s overlay warned of EXCESSIVE DISCHARGE — BUFFERS EXCEEDED. He fell to one knee, dropping his rifle. He pulled the Tenko-Senshin from its holster, trying to raise the weapon.
The cloud discharged again, energy arcing through the gas. His overlay stuttered and went dark, then came back on in a hiss of static. Overtime dropped away, broken like a worn cable, and he could taste chocolate and raisins. The link to Mike and the APCs guttered out. The gunship settled down, rotors pushing the standing water into a spray.
The gas didn’t disperse.
Light reached down from the sky a third time. Mason looked up. He and Sadie were right next to the last APC. He reached into the mist, groping until he found Sadie’s unconscious body. He grabbed one of her hands. If he could just drag her clear…
The link crackled. “I don’t think so,” said Carter. “You can’t have him.”
He could see it from the ground. Energy flared in orbit as the Reed laser was destroyed, a line of white reaching out to touch it from across the heavens. Mason raised his head as men in Reed uniforms disembarked from the gunship, standing at the edge of the shock-cloud. “Carter?”
The gas discharged again, and he convulsed, falling into the mist and darkness.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chromed- Rogue Page 16