Outlanders 28 mad gods w.., p.22
Outlanders 28 Mad God's Wrath, page 22
"Stay there," she commanded.
David's companion dropped into a crouch, his gleaming eyes darting back and forth uncertainly from Brigid to Grant to his weapon. Grant didn't wait for him to make up his mind. He leaped forward and kicked him hard in the belly. The little man folded up, a keening wail escaping his lips, his hair falling like a curtain over his face.
Stepping around the pinioned David and prone Kane, Grant picked up the three-pronged tool, examined it with a critical eye and tossed it contemptuously behind him, the way they had just come.
Kane climbed to his feet, dragging a deep breath. "All right, enough of this ambush shit. You guys aren't any good at it."
Brigid released David and he sagged to the floor. Reaching down, Kane pulled the little man half erect by his hair. His bloody face twisted in anguish and he half gasped, "Fuck you, big 'un."
"One day," Kane said, "I'm going to get sick of being called that.".
"As far as I'm concerned," Grant rumbled, "today is that day."
Kane released the transadapt, but David stayed on his feet, swaying unsteadily. "Where is Lakesh?" Kane asked.
David shook his head. "Don't know...we hid when they came."
'They?" Kane repeated. "How many were there?"
The transadapt wiped his bloody mouth with a sleeve. "Don't know. Not too many. All I know."
Kane stared down at the little man for a few thoughtful seconds and decided David wasn't lying to him—too much. Stepping back, gesturing to his blond companion, who showed signs of reviving, he said, "Take your pal and get the hell out of my sight. I see you again before we leave, I'll kill you."
David pulled his comrade up and both of them backed away down a tube-tunnel. By way of a farewell, David growled, "You'll die if you stay here."
Grant lifted his Sin Eater. "So will you."
The pair of transadapts scrambled out of sight. Watching them go, Brigid announced with a forced breeziness, "My, that was easy."
Kane looked toward her questioningly. "What do you mean by that? He didn't tell us much of anything."
She shook her head ruefully. "No, he didn't tell us much of anything. But what he didn't say is more helpful than what he did."
The three people began walking down the tunnel shaft again. "Explain," Grant said.
"Firstly, David didn't seem too interested when we told him we knew where Sindri was. That indicates he no longer follows him."
"Which might mean," Kane suggested, "he follows a new leader. Like Maccan."
Brigid nodded. "David could've been coached to say what he did. But if Maccan and his people aren't here in the compound, then it stands to reason they're somewhere else on Mars."
"The pyramid?" Grant inquired.
"That's the only other place we know of on the planet that can sustain humanoid life," Brigid answered.
Grant gestured in frustration. "Hell, we knew we'd be going there before we left Cerberus. So let's get on with it."
"Do you remember the way to the train station?" Kane asked Brigid.
She smiled wanly. "We'll see."
Brigid turned her head very slowly, trying to reconcile their surroundings with the memory of their last visit to the installation. She led them into the mouth of a tube-tunnel opposite the one David and his fellow transadapt had entered. She walked carefully, Grant and Kane following her. She opened one of the iris hatches and stepped through it into another branch of passageways, then to another hatch. This one was not in the wall but in the floor. When its segments irised open, they saw a metal-runged ladder extending into a poorly lit semi-murk.
"This is the place," Brigid announced, swinging her body into the round opening and climbing down.
Kane and Grant followed her. The climb was short, less than twelve feet, and they found themselves standing on a low-ceilinged platform. A dim yellow bulb cast its feeble rays on a dark, bullet-shaped vehicle resting upon a single raised rail. It was about eight feet long, six in overall diameter. Hooked to it were two empty flatcars of about the same length. The track stretched out of sight down a long round chute.
Brigid touched an almost-invisible button on its side, and a man-size section of the hull slid open, revealing a hollow interior. The door panel lowered to form a short ramp. The interior of the bullet car held nothing but four padded seats. They entered and strapped themselves into the chairs, Kane and Brigid taking the first two.
Sindri had told them that the vehicle was automated, built by the Cydonia colonists to ferry them back and forth in relative safety across the Martian surface. There was nothing one could do once under way. Within a moment of buckling their seat harnesses, the hull panel slid silently shut. Their eardrums registered the car pressurizing, and they heard a faint hiss of oxygen filtering in. Then they felt a shock of acceleration, which pressed them against the padded chair backs.
A curving section of the forewall became transparent, stretching out to the sides. They saw the metal walls of a chute racing past and around them at a rate of speed none of them could estimate, but which was obviously very high. Overhead light fixtures flicked by so fast that they combined with the intervals of darkness between them to acquire a strobing pattern. There was no sound of motors or rush of wind.
The bullet car burst out of the tunnel into the full, pink-hued daylight of Mars, and they all felt the lifting sensation in their bellies as they left the synthetic gravity field of the Cydonia compound. The track stretched out far ahead in a straight line, leading to the base of a mountain in the shape of a pyramid.
All of them had seen the colossal structure before, but they gaped at it again, rendered speechless by awe. It loomed astonishingly high, its gigantic red walls climbing sheer toward the sky. They had to tilt their heads back to glimpse the apex, even though the pyramid was at least a mile away.
The monolith was gargantuan, immensely broad at the base and narrow at the top. The bottom covered a square mile and a half and the top rose to over five thousand feet. The enormous structure was only vaguely Egyptian in configuration, but so phenomenally huge that the Great Pyramid of Giza could have fit inside it. Unlike the classic Egyptian pentahedron design, the so-called D&M Pyramid was a tetrahedron.
The sheer size of the monument was almost too awesome to comprehend and Kane had to consciously resist the impulse to pinch himself. It exuded antiquity, a history so incalculably ancient that the Pyramid of Giza had been built yesterday in comparison.
Sunlight glinted faintly from a metal spire stretching from the pyramid's apex. It looked tiny and threadlike in relation to the structure supporting it, but he figured it had to be a minimum of five hundred feet long, perhaps closer to a thousand.
The side facing them bore a deep V-shaped symmetrical depression, extending the entire length of the pyramid from bottom to the conical top. Between the arms of the V great flights of steps led up from the desert floor. The rail wound among bleak dunes that at times towered over the bullet car like giant ocean waves about to break above their heads. Still transfixed by the pyramid, Kane murmured, "This is so hard to believe."
"That's for damn sure." Grant's flinty tone held an undercurrent of apprehension, not awe. "But what are we going to do about them?"
It required several seconds for the strangeness of Grant's query to penetrate the shock clouding their minds. Hitching around in their seats, they saw that Grant wasn't gaping at the enormous monument as they were. Instead his attention was focused on what lay beyond the left side panel. Kane looked out onto the desolation of the Cydonia Plains. Far in the distance he saw the squat, mesa-shaped rock formation, and on the horizon sharp-pointed peaks arose, far too regular in shape to be mountains. Then a dark flitting movement caught his eye.
He leaned forward, over Brigid. Through the unearthly, pumpkin-tinted light they saw long, slim craft swooping from the sky. Kane counted three of them as they skimmed with eye-blurring speed over the desert surface, sucking up plumes of grit in their wake. He recognized the craft as the bobsled-like objects he had seen in the compound.
"Now we know where they are," Grant declared grimly. "And we can make our own guesses about the pilots."
They glimpsed helmeted and EVA-suited figures kneeling inside the flying sleds. One of the craft paced the bullet car and the bulky figure within pointed an arm at them as if trying to wave them down. Little specks of light flashed and flickered from the end of the arm. Flares danced like lightning along the track ahead of them.
"I get the feeling," Brigid said with her characteristic blitheness, "they don't think our trip is necessary."
Chapter 19
A storm of shots struck the hull of the bullet car, banging like hailstones. They glimpsed the release of explosive energy, fiery flares bursting up at the impact points of the projectiles.
"What kind of rounds are those?" Grant demanded, fisting his Sin Eater and leaning away from the portal.
"Gyrojet rocket rounds probably," Kane replied, grimacing at the rattling cacophony. "Both Farrell and Philboyd claimed Maccan's forces used rocket pistols."
Through the transparent panels, they watched the three air sleds swoop headlong in a reckless swarm around the bullet car, englobing it. The appearance of the attackers became clear—the armored EVA suits covering them from head to toe gleamed dully like polished pewter. The visors of the helmets were completely opaque.
"What they hell do they want?" Grant snarled. "We can't stop this damn thing or even slow it down!"
More explosive rounds hammered against the exterior of the conveyance, punching dents in the tough substance of the hull. "We should put on our helmets," Brigid said uneasily. "If the cabin is breached, we'll depressurize fast."
All three of them did as she said, helping one another slip on the headpieces. Since the surface gravity of Mars was less than half that of Earth and its atmospheric pressure only about 8 millibars, if the bullet car depressurized, they would die within minutes. Brigid, Kane and Grant zipped up each other's collar attachments securely. Oxygen hissed into the headpieces and it required a few moments to regulate the flow and to adjust their respiration patterns. They heard not only their own, but each other's breathing over the UTEL comms built into the helmets.
While they were so occupied, the flying attackers loosed a hot barrage of fire at the rail on which they traveled. The bullet car zoomed over the notches and nicks, shuddering and rocking. Gazing at one of the sleds, Kane noted that its motive power appeared to be produced by a boxlike machine at the stern.
"If they derail us out here," Grant stated warningly, "we're deader than skinned scalies.”
Kane and Brigid knew he spoke the truth. Although the outside temperature at noon could reach as high as fifty degrees Fahrenheit, it would plunge to around two hundred degrees below zero at midnight. Neither the temperature controls of their EVA suits nor the shadow suits could handle that kind of extreme low temperature.
Unbuckling the seat harness, Kane rose to his feet, stumbling slightly in the low gravity. "Baptiste, do you know how to open the hatch?"
Brigid swept her gaze over the simplified control board and pointed to a pair of keys. "Here, I think. What do you plan on doing?"
"I don't have a plan, exactly," Kane said. "Just the intention to stay alive." Turning to Grant, he said, "Grab hold of my belt and don't let go."
"Why?" Grant demanded skeptically.
"Because even in this gravity, you weigh a lot more than me and that makes you a perfect anchor."
Grant narrowed his eyes, pondering if he had been insulted or not, but then decided it made little difference. Still seated, he reached out and secured a tight grip on Kane's web belt with his left hand, keeping his gun hand free.
"Open her up," Kane said to Brigid.
The UTEL radio accurately transmitted her sigh of resignation, then she depressed one of the two keys and the curving hatch slid aside. Kane reeled, trying to balance himself on the balls of his feet as the encapsulated atmosphere within the bullet car roared out onto the surface of Mars. He hadn't expected the rush of the wind to be so powerful. The tremendous velocity of the vehicle as it raced along the rail didn't help him to keep his balance, either.
The thin Martian air whipped at Kane's body, snatching at him, trying to yank him from the little car. With a muscle-straining effort, he stood spraddle-legged, jamming the sides of his boots firmly against the hatch frame. "You got me?" he asked breathlessly.
"Got you," came Grant's response.
Carefully, Kane crooked his elbow, bringing up his Sin Eater. He couldn't extend the barrel of the weapon very far past the rim of the hatch due to the bullet car's speed. Cupping his right hand with his left, Kane brought a sled into target acquisition and pressed the trigger stud. He maintained his finger's pressure, sending a long, stuttering burst toward the flying craft, doing what he could to account for windage. Frozen with sudden terror, Kane could only stand and stare with Grant's hand anchoring him in place. He waited for the scorching beam to cleave through his body as cleanly as a white-hot blade through paraffin.
The stream of 9 mm rounds stitched the side of the air sled with a pattern of holes, then the block of machinery astern flamed up in a fierce, flaring explosion. To his complete astonishment, the faceplate of the pilot's helmet suddenly burst outward in a shower of razor-edged shards amid a misting of blood. The EVA suited figure flailed backward, arms flinging up and hurling the pulse-plasma emitter over the sled's side and onto the Cydonia Plains. The craft lost velocity and altitude. It dropped slowly, the blunt nose plowing a gouge in the sand.
The sled inscribed a crazed trajectory, like a meteor knocked off course. It veered away in an east-to-west parabolic curve, trailing a banner of spark-shot smoke. The craft rolled, but it didn't jettison its pilot, so obviously the sled was equipped with some sort of restraint. The sled lanced into the face of a dune, disappearing in a mushroom cloud of rust-hued grit. Face clammy with sweat, Kane turned his head to the right, looked down and saw Brigid half prone on the deck, lying between his outstretched legs. The long barrel of the rail pistol in her fist protruded uncomfortably close to the juncture of his thighs.
Braced against the bullet car's hatch, Kane felt the concussion of more rounds against the hull and even heard the detonations. Sand fountained up all around the rail, scouring the visor of Kane's helmet. He wiped the dirt away and saw a pair of sleds swoop past. "Thanks," he said hoarsely.
"Missed us, dickheads!" Kane shouted at them, even though he knew the pilots couldn't hear his words. Brigid backed away from between his legs. "My pleasure."
He indulged in smug self-congratulation for all of three seconds. While the words of his gibe still echoed within the walls of his helmet, another air sled skimmed into view, flying abreast of the bullet car. The armored figure kneeling within it raised a long, glittering object. The suffused sunlight glinted from the crystalline barrel of a quartz cremator. Kane looked through the forepart of the bullet car as it continued to speed along the rail. He saw no more air sleds. In the distance he was able to discern crumbling ruins around the foot of the immense pyramid. The structures were huge, but dwarfed by the monument. Walls had fallen in and the stone blocks were scoured smooth by windblown sand.
Craning his neck, he looked up, studying the long spire affixed to the pyramid's apex. Like an unimaginably huge needle, it seemed to pierce the wispy clouds.
Grant asked, "Any sign?"
Kane replied, "I think they got the idea to let us go our way."
"Good," Grant grunted. "My arm is getting sore."
He released his grip on Kane's belt and massaged his biceps. It hadn't been that long since his entire left side had been paralyzed, and he still exhibited occasional weaknesses in his arm and fingers.
Before Kane could back away from the open hatch, an air sled roared up from the rear and slammed into the side of the bullet car. The prow battered it like the snout of a killer whale, sparks flying from the impact point. Jarred off balance, Kane teetered on the edge, arms windmilling Brigid's and Grant's alarmed, angry cries filled his ears. Then he toppled from the racing bullet-car, right onto the port side of the air sled.
He landed hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs and while he gasped in a mouthful of oxygen, he almost slid off. He drove the gloved fingers of his left hand between two rails of metal on the side, wedging them in far enough to secure a grip.
The pilot turned around from the tiny control console and pointed a stunted blaster at Kane. He fired, the muzzle flashes flaring like blossoming fluorescent tulips in the eerie sunlight. Bright brass arced out from the ejector port. Kane swiftly lowered his head, pulling it below the level of the sled's raised lip. Even as he ducked, he identified the gun in the pilot's hand as a decidedly unexotic Ingram M-11 machine pistol.
