Prodigal (51 page)

“Multiple contacts,” she reported. “Three in close proximity, others indeterminate. Probably a full squad, fanning out across the compound.”

“Dammit,” Lea sighed. “We just lost our one shot at doing this the easy way.”

“How far do we have to go?”

“Southeast corner, maybe two hundred meters.”

“That’s a long way, Prism.”

“Thanks for the update,” Lea snapped. “Got any more tactical assessments?”

Avalon leaned into the door. She pointed up at the gun gallery, then over to the second level of cells. “There and there,” she said. “Masked heat signatures—one in the gallery, two others headed this way.”

“Must be the backup rolling in.”

“And a patrol route,” Avalon added. “That’s key. If he gets word out to the others before we can take him down, we won’t make it out of here.”

“Swell,” Lea grumbled, checking the charge on her rifle. “I’m at half. What about you?”

“A third.”

“Somebody should teach these guys how to shoot.” She checked the cellblock again and picked out two distortions moving down the stairs. “Which ones do you want?”

“I’ll take those two. Patrol is yours.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“Just pretend it’s me up there,” Avalon said. “You won’t miss.”

Lea smiled grimly. Both of them hunkered down near the floor, holding their weapons at the ready. The sound of boots on concrete grew louder as the agents drew closer—but she left it to Avalon to make the call.

“No matter what happens,” Avalon told her, “don’t stop.”

“Roger that,” Lea said. “Good luck.”

Avalon nodded, placing a hand on the gate.

Then flung it open, releasing a wave of fury.

Lea dived out into the open, rolling away from the corridor—and the protection of Avalon’s cover. Landing on her feet, she broke into a terminal run, zipping past the agents as they dodged the opening salvo—so busy with Avalon that they barely noticed Lea was even there. One of them tried to cut Lea down when he realized her ploy, and grazed her with a single beam across her arm. Lea screamed and returned fire, hitting the agent in the shoulder and blowing off an armor plate. The impact spun him like a top, until Avalon carved off his right leg with a direct hit.

The agent went down hard, blasting off random shots in every direction. Lea turned back to finish him off, but saw Avalon waving at her through the acrid haze of battle.

“Go! Go! Go!”

Lea bolted, across the entire cellblock with the rifle in her hands. One level up, prowling the gun gallery like a caged tiger, she spotted the third agent. He fixed on Lea immediately, tapping the side of his helmet to boost his hyperband link with the rest of the squad and wrestling with his weapon at the same time.

“Spear, advance!” the agent shouted into his transmitter. “I got a rogue, sector—”

Lea lit him up before he could finish. Cinders exploded around the gallery, metal screeching with primordial intensity. The agent held on as the supports beneath him buckled, leaving him wide open and vulnerable. Lea cut him in half before he could reach his own weapon.

She then swung around, back toward the fight she had left behind. Lea sighted her rifle on infrared, staring down the narrow scope at the exchange of fire near the medical corridor—but it had simmered down into an uneasy peace infused with electrical discharges and dying flames. Out of that backdrop, a single figure emerged—grace in silhouette, a god of war among mortals. She jogged over, surveying the damage Lea had done.

“Effective,” Avalon observed dryly. “Did he alert the others?”

“I don’t think so,” Lea said, “but I don’t want to stick around here long enough to find out. How you doing?”

“This one’s empty,” Avalon said, dropping her rifle on the floor. “You?”

“I still got a couple shots,” Lea told her, tossing her Tiernan’s pulse pistol. “It ain’t much, but it’s better than nothing.”

“Can’t say I like the odds.”

“Probably why you joined the
Inru.
” The two of them walked over to the main exit, where Avalon had a better view of the situation outside. “If we can get to the gate, it’s a pretty clear shot to the inlet.”

“The ground is clear,” Avalon said. “Most of them appear to be on the north end of the prison complex—but watch for a sniper in the south tower.”

Lea shook her head, amazed at the depth of Avalon’s perception.

“Sure wish you hadn’t gone over to the dark side,” she said. “The good guys sure as hell could’ve used you.”

“We used to say the same thing about you.”

Lea grinned wearily.

“So much for the revolution,” she quipped, pressing herself into the open doorway. She took a deep breath, hoping it wasn’t her last, and looked back at Avalon. “You ready?”

Avalon nodded.

The two women dashed out of the dormitory, into the cold, biting light of day. Lea stayed in front, holding her rifle at high ready and aiming for the guard tower, while Avalon swept the rear flank in case she had missed one of the agents. They made it as far as the warden’s house before a sniper round pierced the gravel at Lea’s feet.

They both dived for cover, taking shelter on the other side of the house. The sniper tore straight through the flimsy building, pulverizing bricks and pillars with one bolt of energy after the other. Stone chips exploded around them as they huddled together, with Lea returning fire in a blind volley.

“Must be using magnum loads,” Avalon said, as a huge chunk of the roof caved in. “Zone agents like the big guns.”

Lea tried crawling to the edge of the house to get a clean shot, but the sniper almost seared her face off. He wasn’t about to let her get close.

“He isn’t fucking around,” Lea coughed. “Can you give me some cover?”

Avalon clutched the pulse pistol. “I won’t be able to hit him with this thing.”

“You don’t need to. Just keep him busy.”

“You got an idea?”

Lea pushed her rifle’s output to maximum. “Just sending a message,” she said. “I’m not fucking around either.”

Avalon held up her hand and silently counted down from three…

…two…one…

“Go.”

She punctured the glass of the nearest window with her pistol, then opened fire through the narrow, empty space of the house. Pulse blasts emerged on the other side, stray ricochets working their way up the guard tower. The sniper instantly homed in on Avalon and vaporized the spot where she had been standing—but by then she was on the move, at the next window and drawing his next salvo. Lea took advantage of that opening, going in the opposite direction and thrusting herself out into the open. Nothing stood between her and the tower—or the murderous lightning from above.

At the highest reaches, Lea saw the sniper turn on her.

And she blasted the base of the tower itself.

The main support struts melted, causing the unstable structure to lurch suddenly. Twisted girders groaned in the stiff wind, no match for the shearing forces that tore the tower apart. The sniper jumped from his perch, plummeting to the ground as debris rained down with him. He hit the ground with a solid thump, his armor absorbing enough of the fall to keep him alive—but he barely twitched before the rest of the tower crumpled on top of him, crushing half the warden’s house in the same stroke.

Avalon got out ahead of the destruction, retreating to the safety of the outer fence as all the crunching metal settled into a gigantic heap. Covered in dust, Lea ran over to join her—beaten to a pulp, lungs gasping, wanting nothing more than to stop.

Then Avalon pointed at the horizon.

Rising out of the volcano crater, a combat hovercraft trailed mist from its twin turbines. The rising dawn glinted off its pitted transluminum hull, weapons clusters deploying above its foils. Beneath the gunship, what was left of the Zone agent squad formed a line and marched double time toward the gate.

Directly toward Lea and Avalon.

“Time to go,” Avalon said.

She grabbed Lea and dragged her through the hole in the fence as the agents spread out and closed in on them. Pulse fire bounced off the razor wire above their heads, ground bursts from the advancing troops—but Lea wasn’t concerned about them. The hovercraft, its engines echoing across the prison compound, roared toward them even faster, pitching its nose down to make a strafing run. Unless they got some cover, those cannons were going to tear them to shreds.

“The ruins!”
Lea shouted.

The row of
moai
that greeted her arrival stood tantalizingly close, the only protection on the vast expanse of empty beach. Avalon ran with superhuman speed, leaping over the fallen sculptures even as Lea struggled to keep up. Avalon then popped back up, waving Lea in as she kept her sensors leveled on the approaching hovercraft.

“Faster!”
Avalon yelled.

Lea was on the verge of collapse. Turbines pushed hot wind from behind, begging for her to look back, but she stayed glued on Avalon. Even as the gunship opened up, spitting pulse fire that carved a path around her, Lea forced herself down that straight line—damned if she would let the Zone Authority take her out so easily.

She dived into the ruins.

Avalon caught her, pulling her behind the stone wall just as the hovercraft blasted a hole above their heads at least two meters wide. The ship banked around, its nose pointed down at them as it jostled for better position—so close that Lea could see the pilot under its canopy, zeroing in on them with a predatory determination. Avalon jumped back up, firing at the cockpit with her pulse pistol. Bright plumes erupted around the glass, dispersing harmlessly—but one hit cracked the plate directly in front of the pilot, taking him by surprise. He yanked back on the stick, almost standing the hovercraft on its tail as he withdrew to a safer distance to assess the damage. Avalon just bought them some time—but not much.

She ducked back down, her pistol giving off waves of heat.

“That’s it for me,” she said. “You got anything left?”

Lea threw away her useless rifle. “Dry,” she choked.

“What about that goodie bag of yours?”

Lea grabbed the Pollex cylinder and flicked the cap, handing it over to Avalon. “High-yield explosive.”

“You really come loaded, don’t you?”

“Force of habit,” Lea said. “How’s your fastball?”

“We’re about to find out,” Avalon told her, edging herself over the top of the wall again. Just beyond, the hovercraft throttled up, its pilot preparing to make another pass. The ship descended, just off the deck as it accelerated toward the ruins.

“Here we go,” Avalon said.

Weapons clusters bloomed with intense bursts, laying down a stream of even more concentrated fire. Avalon held steady as the first strike shattered the huge
moai
right next to them, the ancient statue exploding into rubble when it hit the ground. A cloud of dust arose over the ruins, as if the old gods of this place meant to protect them, forcing the pilot to slow his approach—and giving Avalon the precious seconds she needed to calculate her attack. With the hovercraft engines shrieking overhead, she darted away from the ruins. Pulse fire tore up the landscape around her, random shots meant to kill anything within range—but Avalon evaded every one, as if she knew where the pilot would aim before he did.

Come on,
Lea thought, wincing with each explosion, buried under a thickening mound of debris.
Hit him hard.

Out of the fire zone, Avalon suddenly halted. She drew her arm back, the Pollex planted firmly in her prosthetic hand. The pilot locked on her immediately, altering his course and bringing his weapons to bear on her.

Exactly as Avalon wanted.

The hovercraft lumbered clear of the ruins. Avalon hurled the explosive cylinder, so fast that Lea could barely see the thing as it tumbled toward its target. Neither did the pilot, who seemed oblivious to the impending danger—until it struck, and an orange cloud of combustion enveloped his ship. Avalon missed the main body of the fuselage but scored a clean hit on the tail, which disintegrated into a nova of white-hot shards. Without the aft turbine to direct yaw, the hovercraft went into a wild spin—flinging itself out over the ocean, faster and faster as the pilot fought to regain control of his ship.

Lea could almost hear him scream as the hovercraft plunged into the water.

She dragged herself up, dusting herself off as Avalon returned. Lea then turned her attention back to the prison, where the surviving agents had just reached the gate. They cut their way past the wire, spilling through one by one.

“This way,” Lea said, and headed for the inlet.