Outlanders 28 mad gods w.., p.11
Outlanders 28 Mad God's Wrath, page 11
PHILBOYD'S STRIDENT VOICE broke the chains of shock-induced paralysis weighing down Lakesh's limbs and senses. "Who are you people?" he demanded, glad that his voice didn't quaver. "What do you want?"
The long-armed man Philboyd had identified as Maccan took another step forward, rounding the end of the table. He extended his right hand, palm outward, but not in a gesture of greeting or pacification. He stared imperiously at Lakesh, who tried but failed to return the other's fiery gaze with the same arrogant intensity.
He shifted his gaze to the man's gauntlet and felt the moisture dry in his mouth to the consistency of a dusty film Made of a segmented metal, it bore the same Celtic labyrinthine designs as Maccan's helmet. Tiny threads of energy sparked from the fingertips, jumping from one to the other, then back again.
Inset into the palm gleamed a round, convex lens. Miniature lightning played within it. A faint pulsing pattern, like a ripple spreading out on the surface of a pond, surrounded the man's hand, apparently exuded by the lens. Despite his mounting fear, only one thing came to Lakesh's mind: the Silver Hand of Nuadhu.
Maccan glanced toward Neukirk. "So this is the scientist Lakesh, the master techsmith?" His voice was soft, melodic, holding a slight burr of an Irish brogue.
Neukirk nodded nervously, the long barrel of the rail gun in his hand trembling slightly. "This is Lakesh."
"Ah." A smile creased the man's thin lips. "Do you know who I am, Lakesh?"
Lakesh managed a nod. "I do."
"Really? Have we met?"
"No. I observed you in stasis on the Manitius colony.”
"I see.” The fierce molten hue of Maccan's eyes ebbed a bit. Lakesh recalled how Kane described the manner in which his eyes changed color according to his mood of the moment. "You will bring us your interphaser."
Lakesh stared at him in silence, his mind racing and wheeling with conjectures and wild speculations.
"Did you hear me?" Maccan's eyes burned hot orange again.
"Yes," Lakesh answered hastily. "Why do you want it?"
"Obey him!" snapped a sharp female voice. "Don't question him!"
Lakesh cast his eyes to the left and saw a dark- skinned, scar-faced woman with long, tawny hair knotted atop her head. Her gloved hand rested on the square butt of a Gyrojet rocket pistol sheathed in a vacuum- formed holster attached to the right thigh of her space suit.
Forcing a smile to his face, Lakesh wondered what was taking the security detail so long to arrive. Then he heard a scuff of running footfalls from the operations center and he glanced toward George Neukirk, who refused to meet his gaze. Very quietly, but very politely, he said, "You are a treacherous son of a bitch. And I'll bet you weren't much of a physicist, either."
Then he kicked himself backward, away from the doorway, elbowing Philboyd to one side in the process. He shouted, "Clear operations! Evacuate the controls!"
A cluster of people wearing white bodysuits, eight in all, raced down the aisle between computer stations, toward the gate room. He saw only two he recognized, both of them permanent Cerberus exiles—Banks and Auerbach. The other four were Moon base émigrés. All were armed with the little SA-80 subguns.
"Keep them from leaving the gate room!" Lakesh bellowed as he backed toward the main entrance. "Everybody else get out!"
The staff obeyed with surprising alacrity, rising from their stations and rushing in an orderly fashion toward the door. Lakesh noticed Bry hadn't stirred from his console and he shouted stridently, "That means you, as well, Mr. Bry! Move!"
Bry regarded Lakesh with a reproachful stare, then rose and did as he was told. Lakesh sighed with relief, knowing that if he himself became a casualty, at least Bry would still function as the resident technical expert. Other than himself, Bry was the only exile who possessed a knowledge of all the operational systems of the installation.
"What the fuck is going on?" Auerbach demanded as he sprinted past Lakesh toward the gate room. He was a tall, burly man with a red buzz cut. His body language telegraphed fear.
"We've got an incursion," Lakesh snapped. "Apparently from the Moon base."
"Who is it?" Banks demanded as he took up position behind a desk. A young black man with a neatly trimmed beard, he usually presented a phlegmatic facade to everyone, but now he seemed as tense as Auerbach.
Maccan appeared in the doorway, his face still creased in a thin smile, his eyes glowing with blood-red luminosity. One of the Moon base personnel, a balding man named Dylan, stumbled to a halt at the sight of him, shrieking, "Maccan!"
The helmeted man nodded his head in his direction and thrust out his gauntleted hand. With a wave, a whorl of energy sprang from the lens on the palm of his glove and struck Dylan in the center of his chest.
The man threw back his head and screamed, his back arching as if he had received a terrific blow at the base of his spine. He dropped the subgun and clawed at his chest.
With a wet tearing of muscle, a snapping of bone and the crunching of cartilage, Dylan's left pectoral burst open and outward. His quivering heart catapulted from his chest cavity, riding a column of blood. It shot across the intervening two yards as if drawn by a magnet, slapping solidly into Maccan's open hand.
As Dylan fell limply to the floor, his face a cyanotic blue mask of agony, Maccan closed his metal- shod fingers, squeezing the man's still-beating heart as if it were a sponge.
Droplets of crimson sprayed in all directions, splattering walls and speckling monitor screens, even splashing across the slack-jawed faces of Auerbach and Marsh.
The sudden mutilation and brutal death of Dylan occurred in the space of only a few eye blinks. Mac- can contemptuously hurled the crushed organ at Auerbach's feet, the gesture breaking his spell of shock. Roaring a curse, Auerbach stood up in plain view and fired his SA-80, holding the trigger down. The weapon shook and stuttered, bright brass arcing out of the ejector port.
A shimmering, hazy aura sprang up around Mac- can's gauntleted hand. It seemed as wavery as a reflection distorted by disturbed water. The sharp clangs of impact filled the big room and little sparks jumped from the blurred halo surrounding his hand. The deflected rounds struck the walls and smashed into computer terminals with the keening whine of ricochets.
Auerbach emptied the subgun's clip and stood there, gaping at Maccan, who smiled at him in return, hand still raised. Softly, sorrowfully, he said, "Humans. So brave, so stupid, so easy to kill I don't know what I ever saw in you."
He stabbed his hand toward the dazed Auerbach. The ripple pattern surged toward him. Lakesh bounded forward, catching Auerbach around the waist and bearing him to the floor. He heard the crash of metal and the shattering of glass as the stream of force struck a computer station.
Banks began firing his subgun at Maccan, and the other members of the detail did likewise. Lakesh and Auerbach crawled to cover behind a desk and watched Maccan fend off the full-auto fusillade with the force field projected by his gauntlet.
Sparks flew from the energy shield as the bullets struck it. Ricochets screamed and whined all around, but Lakesh felt a momentary sense of relieved triumph when he saw an expression of angry frustration cross Maccan's face. He couldn't rely on his gauntlet to deflect every round fired at him and he knew it. He backed away, retreating into the gate room.
During the brief respite, Lakesh shouted, "Everyone fall back!" Craning his neck, he saw Farrell hunched over by the interior security station. "Drop the security doors!"
Farrell's hands flew over a series of buttons on the console. A moment later the pneumatic hissing of compressed air, the squeak of gears and a sequence of heavy, booming thuds resounded from the corridor. Heavy vanadium bulkheads dropped from the ceiling and sealed off the living quarters, engineering level and main sec door from the operations center.
Alarm klaxons jangled, echoing all over the redoubt. The entrance to the control complex remained open. Lakesh glanced quizzically toward Farrell who declared, "In case we need a place to retreat to."
Lakesh thought it over, then nodded approvingly. A pair of gray armored figures appeared in the doorway to the gate room. One of them was the scar-faced woman. The Gyrojet pistol in her hand spouted a short tongue of flame and five shots ripped across the operations room in less than three seconds.
One of the tiny, flaming projectiles slammed into Marsh, in the process of running out of the control complex. It struck him in the back of the neck and bowled him off his feet, a little finger of blue fire squirting from the entrance wound as the propellant continued to burn for a second after it penetrated his body.
Another rocket round struck a member of the security detail when he rose from cover, sending him sprawling back into a chair, smoke puffing from the hole in his belly. He rolled backward a score of feet, casters squeaking. The third projectile hit only a vanadium-sheathed wall with a spurt of fire and an eruption of acrid smoke.
The fourth and fifth shots scorched their way out of the control complex and into the corridor where, Lakesh prayed, they found no targets at all. The sweetish, sickening odor of burned flesh clogged his nostrils.
Auerbach, wild-eyed with fear, cried, "We need more people, more blasters, more grens in here!"
Lakesh didn't waste time or breath telling him that he had no intention of raising the security bulkheads now. As the woman with the Gyrojet ducked out of sight, another gray-armored interloper took her place, wielding a pulse-plasma emitter, one of the so-called quartz cremators. A stream of blue-white energy whiplashed from the bell-shaped muzzle of the rifle. Auerbach dropped flat onto the floor, screaming, "Fuck!"
The torrent of incandescence engulfed a computer station and the man using it as a breastwork. He burst into flame, transformed instantly into a capering, fire-wreathed scarecrow. He staggered drunkenly, arms windmilling. Then his body exploded from within and viscera splattered the central control complex for twenty feet all around. Nausea roiled in Lakesh's belly when he heard the slap of body parts rain down around him.
"Fuck!" Auerbach screamed again, clasping his hands at the back of his head.
The big, vault-walled room suddenly shivered with a thunderclap. The invader's forehead erupted in scarlet, gelatinous spray, the top portion of his face vanishing in a bloody smear. He fell backward into the antechamber, dropping the quartz cremator, his fingers snatching futilely at the air, as if to grab handfuls of life.
Lakesh turned his head and saw Domi, a white wraith of red-eyed fury, sidling into the operations center, holding her Detonics Combat Master in a double-fisted grip. His head went momentarily light with relief. Her diminutive frame was swathed in one of Lakesh's T-shirts; and he wasn't sure if she wore anything under it. At the moment he was more interested in the Bushmaster machine pistol hanging from her neck by a lanyard and the contents of the war bag slung over her right shoulder by a strap.
She kicked a fallen SA-80 across the floor to Lakesh, who snatched it up like a beloved pet. Raising himself up behind the desk, he fired a short burst into the gate room, feeling a slight pang when he saw the rounds splat against the armaglass walls of the jump chamber. He knew the bullets wouldn't damage it, but since that particular gateway unit was the first fully debugged and operational model in the Cerberus network, he felt a strong degree of fondness for it.
The man Domi had shot was dragged out of sight and although he experienced a little guilt over the action, Lakesh fired the entire magazine at the people recovering the corpse of their comrade. He knew he hadn't hit anyone.
Domi joined him, panting, her eyes gleaming as bright and as hard as polished rubies. Her respiration came hard and fast, her breasts rising and falling under the shirt. "Damn near got squished by a sec shield. What we up against here? Who?"
"It's a little too complicated to go into now," Lakesh answered brusquely, taking the Bushmaster from her. He wasn't an expert with firearms, so he turned it over in his hands, a little dismayed by how the magazine fit into the shoulder-stock, behind the pistol grip and trigger guard.
Swiftly, Domi demonstrated how to use it, saying grimly, "Brace against forearm. Has 30-round clip. Select rate of fire here. Got it?"
Under stress, she reverted to the abbreviated mode of Outland speech. She thrust the weapon at him "Got grens, too."
A male voice, hoarse with fury, wafted from the gate room. "Hey, you bastards! Throw down your guns and throw up your hands or we'll kill every fucking bastard in this place! Do it now!"
Chapter 10
Lakesh didn't know who shouted the order, but he knew it came from one of the armored interlopers, not Maccan. Dropping the empty subgun, he put the Bushmaster stock against his shoulder and groped for the trigger.
"Answer us!" the man bellowed again.
Auerbach looked over at Lakesh with fearful eyes. "What are you going to tell him?"
Domi regarded Auerbach scornfully, then she and Lakesh rose simultaneously from behind the desk. He brought the machine pistol up, putting his left wrist under the stunted barrel. A dark-haired invader peered around the door frame, swinging a rail pistol in Lakesh's direction.
Before Lakesh could fire, Domi blasted off two rounds, pounding dents in the wall next to the man's head. He pulled back out of sight. At the same time, Banks finished switching magazines on his SA-80, his eyes bright with combat heat. He rose from behind the desk, propped his elbows atop it and fired a short burst into the gate room. Answering fire erupted.
Farrell had recovered Dylan's subgun and placed it against his shoulder, opening up with a full-auto barrage into the antechamber. He ignored the bullets whistling through the air around him. The dark-haired invader showed himself again, an Uzi blazing in his right hand.
Farrell suddenly stutter-stepped as a round cored into his thigh, but he remained standing, bellowing in pain and rage. Domi cursed, shooting into the center mass of the man who had wounded Farrell, putting him down but not penetrating his armor.
Farrell half fell behind a desk, clutching at the wound in his thigh. Lakesh called to him, "Raise a shield and get to the infirmary."
The shaved-headed man glared at him. "No damn way, Lakesh. Besides, I sealed off that section first."
A movement at his peripheral vision caused Lakesh to turn. He saw Philboyd elbow-crawling between the desks, gripping an SA-80. He made his way over to Farrell, gave his leg a quick, cursory examination and said to Lakesh, "The proverbial flesh wound."
"What are you doing here?" Lakesh demanded. "I ordered the operations center evacuated."
Philboyd shrugged. "This is my home, too, now." "Do you know any of these people?"
Philboyd shook his head. "I don't personally, but I imagine they're what's left of the Saladin's troop of Maccan followers."
"Can you tell me anything about the armor they're wearing?"
"We called them hard suits, designed for excavation out on the Lunar surface. Unless you've got some armor-piercing rounds, I don't think you'll be able to shoot through them."
Lakesh looked away, gritting his teeth in a combination of frustrated fury and fear. His back ached from crouching in such a cramped position for so long and perspiration slicked his body under his clothes, making him feel like he was wearing a bog.
He realized even if the Cerberus personnel kept Maccan and his warriors hemmed within the gate room, they had the superior weapons and their return fire was destroying precious, perhaps irreplaceable equipment. If the mainframe computer was damaged, Lakesh seriously doubted it could ever be repaired.
Domi inched closer to him, her porcelain face tight with tension. She patted the war bag. "Got some gas grens in here, couple of flash-bangs. Might discourage 'em.'
Lakesh nodded, but he was dubious such actions would work. However, he knew some kind of offensive action needed to be taken soon to break the standoff. He couldn't even speculate on the uses Maccan intended for the interphaser, but he knew whatever they might be, none of them in Cerberus would benefit.
The only reasonable tactic Lakesh could perceive was to make the situation so desperate for Maccan and his people that they would be anxious to gate back to where they'd come from. However, Lakesh couldn't quite figure out how to do it without incurring more casualties.
He found himself wishing fervently Kane, Grant and Brigid were present in the redoubt. When they worked in tandem, they seemed to exert an almost supernatural influence on the scales of chance, usually tipping them in their favor.
Almost as soon as the notion registered, like a cue, Maccan's voice floated to him. "Where is the man named Kane? Bring him to me and perhaps we can negotiate a settlement, find an alternative to all this bloodshed."
Domi and Lakesh exchanged nervous, worried glances. After a moment Lakesh called, "There's nothing to negotiate. I won't give you what you want so you might as well leave. That is the most logical option left to you if you wish to avoid more bloodshed."
