Kaleidocide (35 page)

“And what's this about Tyra?” I continued, trying to put her—and therefore the baby—more at ease. “You're worried about the mob coming after us if something happens to her, but I already asked Terrey about that a while ago. He said he checked on it, because he was worried about the same thing, and found out that her father doesn't have a problem with what she's doing. Tyrone doesn't want to kill her himself, but he doesn't mind if she dies. I know it sounds weird to our ears, but these people are different from us, and that's the story I got from Terrey.”

“If that's what he says,” she shrugged. “But I have another issue with her being here.”

“Which is?”

“The dream thing.”

“Oh, no.”

“No, really,” she said. “If there's anything to what Stephenson says, then it's not right to keep her here. If you know she's going to die and you don't send her away, that's like killing her yourself.”

“Come on, Lynn,” I said incredulously. “You're making some serious leaps of logic here. It's like saying…” I thought for a moment. “It's like saying, ‘In case Santa happens to exist, we shouldn't buy presents,' or something like that.”

“So what if she gets poisoned and dies? What are you going to think then?”

“I'll think I'm glad it wasn't me, or you.”

“That is
so
cold,” she said, with a gasp before and a shiver after. “We're back where we were a year ago, Michael. Death is everywhere with this job. Lynette, Darien, Saul, Paul, Liria … now it's gonna be this woman and that creepy double and who knows who else. And speaking of creepy, is that big ugly Russian going to be guarding me from now on? I want Min here, if anybody.”

“Min will be back soon. But what's wrong with Korcz?”

“I don't know. Like I said, he's just kind of creepy.”

“He's just kind of from another country, and had a bad case of acne when he was younger. Look, Lynn, we just have to hold on and get through this. It's not like we can change what's going on.”

“Terrey said you could find out something that would stop it.”

“He said I should look,” I corrected her. “But I don't even know what I'm looking for.”

“Well, look for it anyway!” she shouted, and her head was back in her hands again.

“I will,” I said, trying to remain calm. “But in the meantime, just focus on helping Hilly and Jessa and leave the rest to me and Terrey. Okay?”

“Okay,” she finally said through her hands. I thought of asking her to see Lynley on the BabyView app again, but decided not to because I was afraid it would provoke the we-can't-bring-a-child-into-this-sick-world mode she got in from time to time. So I said good-bye and hung up.

When I did, I noticed there were some words again on my second screen.

YON: I MUST DO MORE NOW, BECAUSE MY SISTER IS GONE. I MAY NOT BE ABLE TO TALK TO YOU AS MUCH. WILL YOU MISS ME?

“Can I talk to you like this?” I said, looking around the room instinctively and wondering about her reference to her sister being “gone.” She must have meant “out of action,” because Go hadn't died.

YON: YES, BUT NOT LONG TIME. I ONLY HAVE A SHORT WINDOW BEFORE MY SISTERS WILL DISCOVER ME.

“Which one are you?” I asked.

YON: THE PRETTY ONE. LOL.

That helps a lot,
I thought to myself. But then the words were gone off the screen, and I knew she was gone, too. Bizarre. I thought about asking Terrey if he knew what was going on with this, but gut instinct held me back. For all I knew, it might come in handy at some point to have a “secret” relationship with one of the triplets.

Besides, Lynn's words “Look for it anyway!” were echoing in my head, and I felt like I needed to do something to appease her. I also felt resentful toward her, but then reminded myself that she wasn't used to this kind of death and destruction like I was. So I told the net room to only interrupt me for Lynn or Terrey, and fired up the Taiwan holo again, so I could relive some of the death and destruction that I myself had been responsible for.

 

32

EXTRACTION

I found the spot in the holo recording where I had left off, after I told Admiral Carter that I would be disobeying his orders by going after the fellow officer who was being tortured. And just like that, I was back in the Lungmen power plant, wearing the black insertion suit that was made of a polymer version of plasteel and protected me from most scans and bullets. My enemies weren't hidden, however, because I could see their locations in a display on my cutting edge eye rig, which was programmed with the specs of the plant and uplinked to a surveillance satellite. And they wouldn't be protected from my bullets, because the special caseless ones loaded into my Alliant Trinity couldn't be stopped even by the Spider Kevlar worn by the Chinese soldiers.

I was heavily outnumbered, however, so I had to formulate a plan for the best way to move to the control room quickly and efficiently. I did this while I was trotting up the steps to the spent-fuel room at the top of the reactor, adjusting the settings on the goggles for what I was going to do. When I reached the door, I pulled the Trinity from its spot on the back of my shoulder, and practiced switching between the three barrels with my fingers on the controls, so I was ready to do it rapidly. Then I moved the circular tool array to the middle of my back and secured it there. The small detonators I had removed from the generator room were still magnetized to the array and linked to my goggles so I could control them if I wanted to.

As soon as I felt ready, I pushed open the door and shot the soldier inside it who was facing my way the most. Then I rushed the other one as I shot him, so I could catch him before he hit the ground and use his body as a shield. It didn't work out quite as I planned, and I ended up on the floor with my back pressed against the wall. But I was able to keep the man's body in front of most of mine, so I could line up my next move with that added protection.

The spent-fuel room was the biggest open space in the plant, with a bluish expanse of water stretching away from me in a long rectangle, and a high ceiling that housed a movable crane for manipulating the radioactive fuel cells at the bottom of the deep pool. In the middle of the long room, stretching above the pool from side to side, was a catwalk on which were two more Red soldiers. They had no doubt chosen that spot because they could see everything in the big room from there, and so they saw me now and started firing in my direction. A few of their initial shots connected, but only with their comrade's body, and between his Kevlar and my insertion suit I was in no danger from exiting rounds.

I fired the grappling monofilament out of another barrel on the Trinity and watched as it streaked to a spot above the catwalk and the soldiers. The microscopic line was too small to be seen with the naked eye, but the designers covered the flat sides with reflective material so that its location could be detected, especially in the enhanced view of my goggles. The flat sides also enabled the monofilament to be protracted and retracted by the grapple mechanism inside the gun—it gripped those minuscule sides in a way that could never have worked with the two edges, which were the sharpest objects known to man. The razor-like end and edges of the monofilament were what allowed it to enter any substance toward which it was shot, and a “smart head” on the end of the line caused it to turn sideways once it did. That was how the line adhered to the target surface and could hold a large amount of weight, and the head would contract so the line could be withdrawn from the surface and retracted back into the gun. It also allowed the monofilament to be used as a weapon, like a kind of ridiculously lethal whip.

I gripped the gun firmly with both hands in front of the soldier's body, so I could hold onto it, too, and pulled us both forward and off the ground by retracting the grapple line. When we were suspended above one end of the pool, I stopped the retraction, and we swung across the surface of the pool and under the catwalk, where the two living soldiers were still firing at me. Not for long, though, because the monofilament sliced right through the middle of the catwalk, and they both fell into the blue pool, sinking like stones toward the canisters of radioactive waste at the bottom.

My swing wasn't even impaired by the halving of the catwalk, and it dutifully deposited me on the floor at the other end of the pool, after I dropped the soldier's body in it on the way. Another soldier was now coming through the door on that side, so I backed behind the cover of a wall girder while the grapple line released from the ceiling and flew back into the gun. Then in the next second, I switched barrels and shot the guard around the girder. And the second one that came through the door.

I knew that these Reds had alerted the rest to my presence, but I wanted that to happen so many of them would be drawn away from the control room. I wasn't disappointed.

By the time I reached the elevator shaft between the reactor and the control building, my goggles showed me that a swarm of enemies were already coming up the stairways on each side of the shaft, and that someone in the control room had frozen the elevator at the very top. They had opened all the doors on both sides of the open shaft as well, presumably in case I decided to shimmy down it. Unfortunately for them, however, I didn't shimmy but fired the grapple line into the bottom of the elevator car above me, jumped into the shaft, and dropped down it at a high speed. The soldiers had figured out by now that they couldn't locate me with any eyeware they had, because of my suit, so they were limited to natural sight in the dark stairwells. And they must have turned off their comms to keep me from picking up any chatter with my superior scanning tech. So they weren't coordinating well and ended up making an amateur mistake by trying to shoot me through the doors on the sides of the shaft. The only thing any of them hit were the other soldiers in the doorway across from them—this happened on at least two of the five floors. I could see their forms fall sideways in the goggles window I was using to monitor enemy locations.

This gave me an idea for the bottom of the shaft, so I dropped all the way to the bottom of it and bounced right back up out of sight one second later. Sure enough, the Reds on both sides fired when they saw me, and shot each other there, too. They thought they had me in a killbox, but they were the only ones who ended up dead. And I mean all of them, because while I was suspended just above the bottom floor I grabbed four of the detonators off the tool array on my back and threw a pair into each doorway below me, like grenades. They bounced into the hallways where the soldiers crouched and blew them all to kingdom come when I double-tapped the control pad on the side of my eye rig.

I had taken a bit of a chance that my passage could be blocked from that blast, but fortunately I was able to pick my way through it quickly and then progress to the control room by way of a cat-and-mouse game with the remaining guards. They couldn't scan me, but I knew where all of them were, and I said another prayer of thanks to American technology. When I had almost reached my entry point to the control room, I dropped a bunch of detonators into two hallways on the side of me where most of the remaining soldiers were, and then cut them off with a big explosion that made it feel like the whole building might come down.

A side benefit of this was that General Ho panicked and sent some of his forces out the other side of the control room, perhaps assuming that I'd be where the explosion wasn't, or maybe just to find out what was going on. But he should have kept them with him, because I found it rather easy now to blast a wall open remotely with some more of their detonators, drop through the ceiling on the other side of the room, and have the Trinity next to Ho's head before anyone in the room could do anything about it.

“I am unarmed,” the Chinese general said in perfect English, raising his arms halfway and showing me both sides of his hands.

“Everyone out,” I said to his remaining staff, and I added the Chinese word for “Go”—one of the few I'd learned—in case any of them didn't understand. They all scurried out, the lives of generals being especially sacrosanct in a militaristic and autocratic system like the PRC.

“You all right?” I said to Talon 2, who was strapped naked to a chair nearby, horrible wounds on his torso and the parts below it, and pools of blood on the floor under him. He could only grunt in response. He wouldn't be having any kids without some major reconstructive surgery, but at least he was still alive.

“I have many armed men out there,” Ho said, gesturing to the open door that his staff had exited through. “They will be regrouping and coming for me soon. Your friend can't walk, so you will not be able to carry him and hold me hostage. You will not be able to escape in that way.”

I looked at Ho's bloody hands, and then down at my nearly dead friend.

“You're right,” I said, and shot Ho in the head.

I did so because I didn't have time to tie him up, or watch him while I rescued my fellow officer. It was him or us, like all war. And this Red bastard definitely deserved it.

I untied my friend and hauled him over to the insertion coffin that Ho's soldiers had brought to the control room for him to inspect. I stuffed him into it as tightly as I could, face up, and did the same with myself, right on top of him. Once I located the controls with my hand and synched them to my goggles, I had to toss my tool array and the Trinity out onto the floor in order to get the cover to close on our two bodies. But eventually it did, after some squirming, and I was now ready to burn all the coffin's remaining power for its secondary function as an extraction vessel. I just hoped there was enough to actually get us out.

I extended the fins on each side of the sleek black vehicle and hit the thrusters, softly at first because I needed to maneuver out of the room and through a few hallways to get outside the building. I used the laser from the tool array on the front of the coffin to cut through a locked door, and then left it on to clear out the Chinese soldiers who were coming down the last hallway toward me. The lasers had run out of power by the time I punched through the last door to the outside, but fortunately the thrusters had not. I pointed the nose of the coffin at a 45-degree angle toward the eastern sky, as gunfire from more approaching soldiers clanged off its surface, and sent it soaring up and away from them like a punted football with blue fire coming out of its tail.