The Drift Wars (23 page)

The
cacophony of the crowd united in the single scream of a thousand
throats.

—   —   —

Every
instinct told Peter to run, but Linda was trapped. He plunged into
the room, shouldering through the crowd.

The
Typhon’s giant hand swept through the room, plucking up a
technician and lifting him to its shadowed face. The man screamed
and screamed as he was flipped and turned, inspected from every
angle. The room grew still, watching and waiting.

The
Typhon bent his thumb under the man’s chin and popped his head
off. The head plopped to the floor, spraying blood and gore. The
crowd shrieked, retreating. A monstrous smile glinted high overhead.

The
crowd panicked, shoving violently in all directions. Several more
Typhons appeared at the wall. Their large arms swung into the
confusion, grabbing people at random and tearing them apart. The
monsters seemed curious, inspecting the dead bodies the way a child
might look inside a doll. A guard opened fire but only drew
attention to himself.

Peter
bent his elbow to a point and tried to drive forward, but the flow
of the crowd changed every time someone was pulled from it. Linda
dropped from sight and then whipped past a moment later. Peter
reached out too late; his fingers brushed her shirt.

Frustrated,
Peter balled his fists and began to swing, clearing a path by
knocking people down and stepping over them. He reached Linda,
grabbed her arm, and towed her toward the nearest exit.

His
breakout caught the attention of a Typhon. It dropped the nurse in
its hand and lashed out at Peter. The hand swung low, its
shovel-thick fingernails raking gouges in the steel floor.

Peter
dodged to his right, but the hand shifted, staying on him. He moved
to his left, but it was no good—the thing was just too fast.

He
stumbled into a guard, a man about his own size. He tossed Linda
aside and grappled the man’s neck, twirling him in a forced dance.
They spun around and Peter let go, flinging the disoriented guard
right into the approaching hand. The red fingers closed around the
offering, passing so close that they brushed Peter’s jacket.

Peter
hefted Linda over his shoulder, bulled through the crowd, and
escaped from the room.

—   —   —

They
were in a hallway, but Peter wasn’t sure which one. Chiang San had
said that each of the twelve sections was identical, so it probably
didn’t matter.

The
hall was empty. No one else had thought to flee or even to follow
him as he did. The glass door closed behind him, muffling the noise.

Peter
ran through the Purple Area as fast as he could, stopping short at a
door marked Armory. Only then did he notice Linda pounding on his
back. He set her down and reached out to calm her. Tears streaked up
her forehead.

“What
are they?” she asked.

“Typhons,”
Peter said, surprised. He assumed that everyone knew about the Riel.
“They’re too large to follow us here,” he assured her. Linda
nodded, unconvinced.

“So
what now?” she asked.

“We
get out of here,” Peter said. “Off the base.” He turned to the
armory door and identified himself as the General. The door slid
open, revealing a large, long room. Racks of combat suits lined one
wall, crates of weapons the other. Peter pulled Linda inside, shut
the door, and searched through the suits.

“Where
can we go?” Linda asked. “If they destroy the base…”

Peter
found a suit his size. Open and empty, it looked like a tailor-made
casket. He stepped into it backward, closing the hinged plates
around his shins and thighs. Next he pulled a yoke-shaped piece
through his legs, raising it over his torso. He swung the chest
plate down and locked the two pieces together.

A
dull thump shook the room, rattling the equipment. Peter stopped and
listened, waiting for the next impact. None came.

“We
retreat,” he said to Linda. “Head for the Livable Territories.”
He slipped his arm down the suit’s rigid sleeve, wiggled his
fingers into the glove at the end, and snapped it to his shoulder.
He repeated with the other arm.

“That’s
ridiculous,” Linda said. “We’d have to cross the entire Drift.
And then how would we find it? The universe is a big place.”

“The
commandship will have charts,” Peter said.
But will it? Was
there even a commandship left?
He slipped his helmet on, cutting
off the conversation. The control link clicked to the interface port
on his neck, and the suit hummed to life. The pain in his arm numbed
and his body swelled with the strength of artificial muscles. He
soaked it in for a moment, fueling his confidence, then took the
helmet back off.

“We
get off the base and then figure out the rest,” he said firmly.
“Let’s get you into a suit.”

—   —   —

None
of the combat suits were even close to Linda’s size. Peter put her
in the smallest one that he could find, but it was still so large
that she barely peeked out from the neck. Her joints didn’t match
the suit’s, which meant that if Peter tried to drive it remotely,
it would break her bones.

At
least she’ll be armored,
he decided, clamping on her helmet
and opening the communicator link between them.

“You
okay?” he asked.

“No,”
Linda replied. “Please take this thing off of me.”

“You’re
safer this way,” Peter said. He closed the link, cutting off her
reply, and propped her in the corner. He turned to the weapons and
dug in.

Peter
strapped a rocket pack to his back, slid eight explosive charges
into his belt, and clipped a pistol to each leg. He dragged an
X-910, a bazooka-shaped impulsor with a fat rectangular lens at the
tip, off the heavy weaponry rack. It was so heavy he could barely
hold it. He didn’t know if it was strong enough to kill a Typhon,
and he was hoping not to find out.

Peter
wrapped a four-shot powerbelt around his waist and tied some webbing
to the gun’s stock so he could lug it from the top. His artificial
muscles strained as he lifted the gun in one hand and Linda in the
other. He started for the docks.

—   —   —

Peter
moved as quickly as he could, which, with all the weight he was
carrying, wasn’t very fast. His heart skipped at every groan or
shudder; he expected the roof to rip away at any moment. He tried to
push himself faster, but he was exhausted. He stumbled.

Peter
let the gun drop as he fell, spinning so that Linda landed on top of
him. He saw through her visor that she was speaking. He opened the
comm.

“…running
around like a crazy person when I should have…”

“Sorry,”
Peter said. “I tripped.”

“Oh,
you’re listening again? Wanna take this helmet off? My hair is
caught on something.”

Peter
sprung her collar and set her helmet on the floor. Linda shook her
hair out, trying to squeeze her hands up through the hard collar.

“Yours,
too,” she said, nodding at his helmet.

“I
don’t think that’s a—”

“Peter!”
Linda barked. He obeyed.

“Good,”
she continued. “Now, let’s get some things straight. First off,
I’m not in love with you.”

“I
never thought—”

“The
man I love is dead, and…shut up and let me speak.”

Peter
closed his mouth, nodding for her to continue.

“I
don’t blame you or anyone,” Linda said. “I’ve always known
better than to get involved with a marine, that he would either get
killed or discontinued or—the worst—stuck in one version for
months, forgetting everything I told him. But you—
he
was
different. He could remember. And he grew into a wonderful man. But
now he’s gone, and we’re back to…you.

“I
made a deal with the General. Get you through this battle and be
done with it. Put you and him behind me and start fresh. Well, the
battle is over.

“Thank
you for trying to save me. It was very gallant and, in any other
circumstance, I’d count myself lucky. But as it stands, I’d
rather just go ahead and die.”

“You
can’t mean—” Peter started.

“Don’t,”
Linda interrupted. “I know that look, Peter. You don’t believe
me, but it’s true. I want to die. I don’t even care if it hurts,
because
I won’t remember
.”

They
fell silent. Even the distant fighting had grown still.

“Then
why did you come with me?” Peter asked.

“I
was just scared, Peter,” she said, then turned away. “Oh, you
wouldn’t understand.”

“I
understand,” Peter said, though it didn’t make sense. “Things
are different now. We’ve lost the war. No one is coming back.”

“They’ll
figure it out. They always do.”

“Not
this time. There’s no one left.”

“Just
let me out of here,” Linda said, shaking the suit in frustration.
Peter began to reach forward but stopped. Something tickled the back
of his neck, something that wasn’t there. Instinct.

He
threw himself on top of Linda as the wall exploded. A half-dozen
Gyrines raced up the hallway, directed from behind by two men in
elongated white space suits.
Threes.

Peter
shoved Linda into an alcove. He grabbed the large gun by the strap,
pointed it down the hall, and fired. The shot went wide. It ripped a
twenty-foot section out of the wall, punching through several rooms
and continuing out of sight. The Riel scrambled for cover.

Peter
kicked both helmets to Linda, then leaped into the alcove as bullets
tore up the walls around him. He sat Linda up and locked her helmet
in place; then he put on his own and dialed up the gun’s status—it
needed twenty seconds to charge.

The
rest of his visor was unnervingly blank. There was no map, no battle
computer, and no suggested tactics. He opened a new battle scenario,
as Chiang San had shown him, and a diagram of the base appeared.
There were red dots pretty much everywhere and only two blue—Linda
and himself.

He
zoomed in on the eight red dots down the hall. Videos slid in from
the side, fed from nearby security cameras, showing him the Riel
from the front and back. They were advancing, the Gyrines in front
of the Threes.

The
suit offered Peter a firing solution and he took it. He spread the
gun’s focus wide and hefted it up. He eased to the corner of the
hall as it finished charging.

—   —   —

The
gun was too heavy to hold around the corner, so Peter braced it
against his waist and stepped out. Gunfire erupted, but the bullets
never reached him. He aimed down the center of the hallway and
squeezed the trigger.

The
gun surged with power, raising the hair over Peter’s entire body.
A wide impulsor wave rolled out of the barrel, shredding walls and
shattering fixtures as it passed. The bullets melted in midair and
the Gyrines dissolved into green paste. The blast wave knocked into
the Threes, sending them flying from sight. Peter stepped back into
the alcove, giddy.

His
suit counted off the kills. One, four, all six of the Gyrines. But
there were still two red dots in the hallway—far away but coming
fast. The security cameras were destroyed, but Peter knew it was the
Threes. He compared the gun’s charging time against their speed.
It was going to be close.

Peter
checked on Linda. She nodded. He peeked around the corner and was
met by the strobe of machine guns. He pulled back and replayed the
video caught by his helmet’s camera.

The
hallway was dark, but the Threes were visible under
light-amplification. Their white suits had massive rocket packs with
large, round stabilizers mounted on rods that angled up from each
shoulder. Guns were built right into their forearms—short-barreled,
wide-caliber, and piston-driven. They were fast and powerful,
evidenced by the minced walls behind him.

The
Threes seemed unharmed by the impulsor blast, and a quick
spectrogram showed why. Their suits were polyceramic and had plates
of crystal shield fused to the surface—a nearly impregnable
combination.

“What
is it?” Linda asked.

“It’s
bad.”

Peter
peeked out again. This time the Threes didn’t fire; they had
slowed to a walk and seemed to be having a discussion. His suit drew
a trajectory based on their new speed, and Peter tightened the beam
on the large gun, deciding to hit one of them with everything he
had.

The
gun finished charging. He hefted it up to his shoulder, caught his
balance, and stepped out. The Threes stood about fifty feet away,
exactly where they had been before, facing each other. They cast a
glance at Peter and he hesitated, unsure of what they were doing.
But they weren’t doing anything. They just stood there, waiting.
Peter fired, the thin impulsor wave searing the air as it sliced
down the hall.

A
translucent yellow bubble formed around the Three he had targeted,
some sort of personal shield. The focused energy of the most
powerful weapon Peter had ever held in his life slammed against the
bubble and fizzled away in a few green sparks.

Shit.

Peter
leaped back into the alcove as bullets ripped the hallway to
confetti. He stumbled into Linda, knocking her into the corner. She
yelped in surprise but bit it off.

Peter
counted his assets. The X-910 had one shot left. He had two pistols,
but those would be as useful thrown as fired. He had eight explosive
disks, but those had to be stuck directly to the target. In short,
he had nothing.

“Time
to punt,” he said.

“What
does that mean?” Linda asked, alarmed.

The
large gun still needed 30 seconds to charge—the last one always
took the longest. “We’re going to split up,” he said,
unstrapping the powerbelt.

“No,”
Linda said. “This isn’t right.”

“Hold
that thought,” Peter said. He peeled the adhesive from two
explosives and palmed one in each hand. He dove into the hallway,
pressed them to the far wall and twisted to set the adhesive. Then
he leaped to the ceiling, setting two more charges on an exposed
beam. He landed flat on the floor and rolled back into the alcove.
The Threes didn’t fire. They strolled casually up the hall, not
ten yards away.