Point Apocalypse (33 page)

"
But," dog face started.

"Wait!"
shouted Badry.

Both soldiers
shoved their guns behind their backs and leapt up.

I hate adlibbing. You can never be sure
of the outcome.

The cybers split up. Badry
ran around our side of the pedestal and happened to be with his back to Wladas and myself. Without a moment's hesitation, I grabbed the collar of his bulletproof vest and his neck with my other hand. I kicked the back of his knees and pulled him sharply toward me, my chest pressing at the back of his head.

It was a
perfect lever. His vertebrae snapped. Badry didn't even have time to cry out. Kathy shot up like an uncoiling spring toward dog face and buried her plastic spoon in his eye.

Dog face squealed in pain, his scream
resounding in a multi-voiced echo under the vaulting. Clutching at his face, he stumbled and made an instinctive step toward the membrane trying to retrieve the gun from behind his back.

Now every second counted.
Kathy grabbed the barrel of his gun and tugged it toward her knocking his feet from under him. He was still alive when he hit the membrane which started rippling from the impact, one moment transparent, the next opaque. His scream was cut short when blood gushed from his severed neck as his head, lopped off by the protective field, rolled over toward the operator in his control center.

It took the duty communications officer some
time to realize what was going on. As he started from his stool, I jerked the gun off the dead Badry's shoulder but failed to drag his body to the membrane in order to shoot. I just didn't have enough strength: the cyber trooper weighed over two hundred pounds in full gear.

Wladas came to my aid. He grabbed
hold of one of the corpse's arms while I pulled the other. We dragged the body close to the membrane and threw it in. I raised the gun and squeezed the trigger.

The first pulse struck the stand next to the officer burning a hole in it
and spattering blue flames. The officer cried out and collapsed on the floor. I shot again but the membrane had closed the gap. With a loud hiss, the pulse hit the murky membrane and shattered into flakes of fire enveloping us in a hot wave.

"Shoot, Mark!" Kathy shouted forgetting
that I couldn't hit the target through the membrane. "Can't you see he's getting up! Shoot him!"

The
operator grabbed at the stand and heaved himself up. Rising to his knees, he reached for the keyboard - apparently, trying to press the emergency button to warn Blank.

"Come on!" the girl gasped. "What the fuck are you..."

She finally understood that shooting was useless.

I slung the gun's strap over my head and shut my eyes feeling my heart
flutter in my chest. I took a deep breath and lunged forward.

"
What are you doing?" I heard Wladas and Kathy call after me.

There wasn't time to explain anything to them. I only hoped that the portal machine's intellect that had
included me in its flexible structure wouldn't incinerate me in its protective field. My death couldn't be in vain.

Heat
enveloped my face. The air thickened as the crimson grid reappeared around me. The memory chip screamed signaling an overload and the cracked infrared lens prickled my eye. Then the membrane arched preventing me from stepping through. It shuddered and burst with a crackle like a window pane. Losing my balance, I fell onto my knees and tilted my head back when the dumbfounded officer was just about to lay his hand on the keyboard.

That
was it! I didn't have time to stop him!

Claps from an pulse gun behind my back made me duck
instinctively. Shimmering trajectories traced over my head. Part of them hit the operator's chest and sent him sprawling over his stand. The other part went higher up.

I
turned round. Kathy sat next to the pedestal, her legs akimbo, staring in amazement at dog face's gun in her hands.

"Now that's a recoil," she said with unconcealed admiration. "Now that's a gun!"

Wladas wheezed out loud. Pale, he opened his mouth, pointing at me and at the place where the membrane had just been.

"How? How did you do it?"
Finally, Wladas overcame his excitement and approached cautiously the invisible line and the two dead cybers next to it. He reached out with his shaking hand and felt the air. "But..."

I jumped up and ran
across toward the stand behind which lay the dead operator. The monitor was broken. A ragged hole gaped in the stationary radio with its molten slide gauge dripping black plastic onto the desk.

I thumped the useless radio with
my fist and spat on the floor in anger. Now we couldn't contact the Fort and warn them of the arrival of Blank's cargo. In killing the officer, Kathy had ruined the communications unit. Now we had to find another solution.

Steps and voices came from the hallway behind the equipment.

"Hide!" I prepared to fire my gun and started moving along the equipment cabinets. "Kathy, cover me if I need it."

I didn't think it was the upstairs guards. Probably,
just someone from the former base personnel: laboratory neurotechs who'd heard the shots and had hurried to find out what was going on.

When I took up my position behind a humming server rack,
two men appeared in the hallway wearing light-colored protection suits and masks pushed up onto their foreheads; The lab assistant was persuading the chief neurotech to call the guards. But the neurotech hurried ahead, not listening.

I let both of them pass me and stepped into the hallway. When they stopped dead in their tracks staring at the
corpses, I shouted,

"
Stick 'em up!"

The two
startled but obeyed.

"
Slowly. Now turn round."

They
did.

"How much
more personnel left in the camp?" I asked without letting them get their act together. "And how many of them are guards?"

I glanced across
my shoulder listening. Had the shots been heard up above?

The neurotechs didn't answer. They just
blinked, dumbfounded, keeping their hands raised above their heads.

"Well?"
I lifted my gun.

"Three left," the assistant hurried. "They guard the entrance."

His partner bobbed his head.

"Yes," he swallowed, "plus us two, and the
communication officer with the cybers, but you've already..."

"Have the guards got a car?"

Both shook their heads. The assistant mumbled that Blank had taken all the transports and told them to wait and keep their heads down.

"
Kathy!" I said. "Keep them in your sights. Not a step out of here until I get back!"

I wanted to turn but reconsidered and added, "
Don’t touch anything here. Is that clear?"

"Yes!" The girl
got up from behind the pedestal and trained her gun on the prisoners.

I
ran to the staircase trying to pick out the cracked lens from my eye socket on the way. I passed the "clean" rooms, turned into a doorway and ran upstairs two steps at a time.

I reached the long hallway and
headed for the exit illuminated by the crimson rays of the rising sun. Suddenly I stopped dead in my tracks.

Shots rang out on the surface. Carbines
pinged, machine guns clattered and pulse rifles whooshed. Judging by the latter, the neurotechs had lied to me. There were many more guards there.

The light in front of me faded. A long shadow lay across the floor.
Someone had breached the hallway and was barking orders. I was halfway to the exit next to where the deformed bucket still lay in the niche. I'd completely forgotten about it. My foot got caught on it sending it rattling and I stumbled hitting my shoulder on the wall.

Now I could use the infrared camera!
I infinitely regretted not having taken the cyber's tactical helmet and vest. The element of surprise was lost. The soldier who'd backed into the hallway was in full combat gear. We raised our weapons simultaneously and fired.

He sprang back towa
rd the exit. I ducked onto the floor banging my hip on a stone. The soldier's bullets whizzed a meter above my head; mine also hadn't found their target. I sat up and pushed myself back into the niche with my heels when still more shots rang out in the hallway.

This time the soldier was more
accurate. I was saved by a stone ledge. Bullets sprayed it chipping bits off one and scratching my cheek. The enemy had changed the fire rate and were shooting single rounds moving along the hallway not letting me stick my head out. I pressed my back to the stone and pulled my legs up hugging my gun, unable to do anything.

The soldier's gun fell silent. The magazine clattered
to the floor as it fell from its catch. I jumped up and made a dart for my adversary squeezing the trigger...

I
heard the dry click of the electric discharger. My magazine was empty too. I lunged at him with the barrel of the gun aiming for his neck and jabbed him.

The soldier tilted his head forward.
The anti-recoil system of my barrel had pierced his visor. I swung the butt of the gun into his shoulder and kicked him in the groin when an explosion boomed behind his back. My eyes went blank.

The shock wave sent us
reeling to the floor. Tongues of fire roared along the hallway burning up the oxygen. I held my breath and shut my eyes. The dead soldier's body shielded me. For a few seconds, the flame raged above us and then died away.

I heaved the burnt corpse
off me, turned onto my stomach and crawled toward the exit on all fours. The memory chip started ranting again urging me to report to the medical block. My eye was stinging from the recently-extracted lens. My head rang like a bell and my nose bled.

Forcing
my limbs to move, I crawled to the exit, hugged the wall and pulled myself up. Gasping mouthfuls of burned cordite-filled air, I threw myself out of the building.

I couldn't hear any shooting, only faraway voices and the shuffle of hurried steps.
I wanted to turn on my back and take a lungful of air but I only had enough strength to lift my head and place my cheek on the sand.

"Look, it's Mark!" a familiar voice ca
me from beside me. "Jim, it's him! Big as life and twice as ugly!"

On my left-hand side
, Lars Swenson's thick voice was bellowing commands.

Finally it dawned on me that
the guards' resistance had been broken. Most likely, all the soldiers had also been eliminated. A bit too late, if you'd ask me. I wished Swenson had made it here earlier. But then things could have taken a different turn and Blank with his cyber troopers, combat vehicles and with a squad of duty guards could have made a short job of the loggers' militia.

Someone grab
bed me by the shoulders and turfed me onto my back. Jim's freckled face loomed over me. He was smiling.

"Oakum, what're you waiting for?" Georgie croaked, approaching.
"Lift him. Fritz, help him!"

A
lank man in a pea-coat with faded silver-lace patches on its shoulders pushed Jim aside and bent down to me. He grabbed the lapels of my jacket and jerked me into a sitting position. He had fiery red hair, a mustache and a neat little beard. The still-smoking mouth of a grenade launcher hung on his back.

I poked his chest
with my finger. "Are you Havlow? The tanker engineer?"

He cast me a surprised glance and
shrank back, chewing energetically on his tobacco, the epitome of how Lars Swenson had described him to me. Go to the riggers and find Fritz Havlow, he'd said.

"How d'you know me?"

"From them," I nodded at the loggers.

The giant Swenson was busy ordering his men around
. He bellowed commands and swung his arms as he motioned them each to their own place on the platform in front of the gasometer, telling them what to collect as trophies and what not to touch until he'd had a moment to inspect it.

There were more people buzzing amid the ruins, commanded by a
tightly built stocky man in a sooty captain's cap.

"
Any guards left in the building?" Fritz asked.

"None," I looked at Georgie limping towa
rd us.

He looked considerably fresher than during our last meeting
, except for his leaner frame and sunken eyes on a gaunt face.

Leaning on Jim's arm, I got back to my feet.
"How did you get out?"

"Remember the cellar at the farmers'? The ice room?" Georgie slapped my shoulder. "We took cover there. In the morning, we got to the river and caught the New Pang ferry
on its way to the riggers'. So..." he massaged his injured leg.