Draka 04 Drakon, S. M. Stirling

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"No more time at all."
CHAPTER TWENTY
Work was piling up at the warehouse. There was no more time, and the outer circle of human
servants was beginning to suspect something. She'd had to slap one down with a broken skull to get the
others into order, of a sort. Gwen's lips lifted from her teeth when her transducer pinged an alarm at the
back of her consciousness.
plasma gun discharge,
location follows.
and clumsy, but they worked after a fashion, and the instrument behind her ear could interface with their
input.
Gwen snarled, a ripping, guttural sound full of menace. The enemy must have made up a supply of
energy weapons—easier for him; he probably had a small faber to do the difficult components. Ah. Central
Park. Not too far away, and a good enough place to group for an attack. Why the discharge? It could be a
trap; on the other hand, it was also likely that a cobbled-together group of hastily trained humans had poor
fire discipline.
the machine said,
The antennas on the roof were big
how many energy weapons?
she asked the machine.
well stealthed,
indeterminate; not less than five; not more than thirty of the
same class as the discharge.
it replied.
detection anomalies?
"Damn," she said aloud.
neural interfacer traces, possible.
She couldn't take a chance on those plasma guns getting any closer. This building was shielded and
ran off the power from the fusion generator, but that didn't apply to the surrounding neighborhood. A bad
fire or brickwork collapsing on the fragile walls could ruin everything. And the Samothracian was with
them.
"Listen."
Her humans looked up; it was safer not to make eye contact with a drakensis in the mood
indicated by the sounds she'd made, unless you had direct orders.
"Vulk," she said briskly. "Get the perimeter out as we planned. The rest of you, Option Orange."
Tom's strained face turned to her. "What's gone wrong?"
"The Samothracian is desperate. He's armed a number of locals with improvised energy weapons,
and we have to assume he's coming after us here. I can't allow that; too much danger to the apparatus,
even with the shielding. I'll have to take them out. Hold the fort, and it'll all be over soon."
And if not, this planet gets scoured clean by the biobomb, she added to herself. A nuisance; her
household were all immunized, of course, but they'd have to evacuate until bacteria took care of the bodies.
Seven-million-odd corpses here in New York alone—a severe sanitation problem—not to mention the
longer-term damage industrial spills and runaway nuclear power plants would do to the planet.
Needs must. She stripped and began putting on her blacks, while one of Vulk's men brought the
backpack shield generator she'd cobbled together.
"Isn't that risky?" Alice asked. Dolores whimpered slightly, subvocally.
"Yes," Gwen said. "But at this stage, the maximum priority is protecting the signaling apparatus.
The child comes second, and myself third."
She shrugged into the backpack; with the metal sheathing to protect it from mechanical damage, it
weighed about fifty kilograms. A nuisance, but not enough to slow her down significantly.
"Hold the fort," she said, and trotted briskly away.
***
CRACK
"Hell," Carmaggio said.
The oak tree toppled away from him, its trunk blasted into splinters by the bolt from the plasma rifle
in his hands. The crash echoed through the park, sinking among the treetrunks. Flames licked up and
caught, dancing reddish-gold among splintered wood blasted into kindling-dryness by the energy release.
The firelight glittered over bodies and goggled eyes, extra brightness to the enhanced vision equipment from
out of time gave him.
The others looked suitably respectful. They'd all practiced in Lafarge's shielded firing-range, but
this was a lot more immediate.
He pushed the goggles up on his forehead, and night returned. Blacker night than any he'd ever
seen in New York. You didn't realize how much ambient glow there was until it was gone; the stars were
out over Central Park, a frosted arch across the sky. It was clear enough to see the colors of the stars.
Quiet, too. A little traffic noise—not much, with the streetlights dead—and plenty of sirens. A good thing
I'm on suspension, he thought dryly. Probably lose my badge if I still had it, for not showing up in an
emergency like this. The policeman's part of his mind was shuddering at the thought of what it was like out
there, with power down and communications scrambled.
There were about fifty men and women grouped around him, in the woods just north of the pond
and across from Bethesda Fountain. Saunders and his weekend warriors, in camo-patterned Fritz helmets
and fatigues, all suited up with Kevlar body armor—much good that would do them. Finch and her boss and
some FBI SWAT types. And Jesus Rodriguez and Mary Chen, of course. All with Lafarge's gadgets,
shielding and plasma guns; which would do some good, and the little ECM pod which was supposed to fool
the enemy's instruments into thinking Lafarge was here. He hoped.
Carmaggio took a deep breath of the night air, scented with trees and grass and earth, and now
with burning hardwood.
"All right, people," he said. "You all saw that."
He jerked his head toward the Lincoln Tunnel, which was near enough where the spike of fire had
thrust into the night sky.
"The bad lady is coming, and we have to hold her here. Otherwise it's all over."
He remembered a running translation he'd heard of a bad Japanese animated feature once—the
Admiral up on the screen had talked to the hero for ten minutes, and this guy who knew some Japanese had
said: The fate of the Universe is in your hands, boy. Don't fuck up.
And Jenny was walking into the tiger's den, with only this diversion to protect her.
"Keep together, keep alert, and don't shoot each other." Another deep breath. "Let's go."
***
Jennifer felt numb. I'm a financial analyst, not a spy, she told herself as she pushed through a
panicked crowd in Lafarge's wake. Financial analysts don't do this sort of thing. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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