Skybreach (The Reach #3) (39 page)

Harald scowled at him.  “Huh?”

“A friend of mine told me there were some kick-ass roasted peanuts you could buy up here.  I could really go some of those right now.”

“Uh, no,” Harald said, stepping around him.  “Excuse me, I need to–”

“Don’t hold out on me,” Holger said, moving to block his path.  “Share the goodness, man.”

Harald glanced back at his colleague.  “Mr. Keller?  Can you talk to this guy?”

Keller had been busily ripping open a panel on the comms terminal, and now he straightened, his frustration evident.

“Get the hell out of the way, pal,” Keller said.

“Roast-ed… pea-nuts,” Holger said, enunciating each syllable with great exaggeration, as if he were talking to a simpleton.  He glared at each of the technicians in turn.  “Where are they?”

Keller turned to the Redmen not far away.  “Hey!  Little help, here?  This guy is being a jerk.”

However, the Redmen paid no attention to Keller, remaining in a tight group as they continued their discussion.  Harald started forward again, and this time Holger planted a large hand in his chest and pushed him backward, sending him sprawling.

“Hey!” Keller screamed.  “You can’t do that!  Get away from him!”

Now the Redmen did turn their heads.  The one with gold strips on
his shoulders
moved first, heading toward them with a surly expression on his face.  He was the one
who had led the reinforcements down the elevator and then returned again a short time later, and from Lazarus’ description, Talia assumed this was the captain.

“Time’s up,” Talia said to Silvestri.  She reached down and tightened the leather strap around her forearm instinctively.  “You better–”

A voice suddenly came through her earpiece. 
“Talia?”

“Knile!  Where are you?”

“In the elevator, on the way to the roof.  We’re finally in range with these damn short-range comms.  Couldn’t get you on the earpiece earlier.”

“I hope you brought an army with you.”

“Not exactly.”

“How far away are you?”

“
Take a look over at the elevator, and get ready.  We’re coming through.”

“Take a look over at the elevator, and get ready,” Knile said.  “We’re coming through.”

Talia said something in return, but her voice was drowned out by the sound of someone shouting in her vicinity.  Knile turned the RECS slightly so that he could see the others in the elevator car.

“Ready?” he said.

“Born ready,” Roman said, flexing the arms of his RECS theatrically.

“Now remember,” Remus said, “you’re going to want to avoid any direct physical confrontations with the Redmen if at all possible.  Draw their fire, take a few hits, and you’ll give Team Alpha a chance to come at them from the other side.  That has to be the objective.”

“Yeah, we get it,” Roman said dri
ly.  “We’re basically target practice.”

“Don’t worry, this will work,” Remus said, as if he were trying to convince himself of the fact.  “This will work.”

The elevator slid up the final few metres with far less grace than the last time Knile had made the journey.  A disconcerting whine issued forth, accompanied by a scraping sound, possibly the result of damage that had been caused by the blast, but then it came smoothly to a halt.

They waited for the doors to open, and for a horrible moment Knile thought they might be locked inside, confounded at the last step of the journey, but then the doors slid apart.

The last orange-red slashes of sunlight cut through the twilight above, just as they had the last time Knile had been here.  Ahead, the railcar waited at the foot of the Wire, surrounded by a throng that included technicians, Redmen in glinting metal suits, and Team Alpha.  Knile could still hear shouting through his earpiece, and from the body language of those gathered, it seemed clear that a major disagreement was going on.  Talia was gesturing angrily at one of the technicians, and a Redman was advancing on Holger with his pulse rifle raised.

“Not a moment too soon,” Knile said.  “Remus, hit the emergency stop button on the elevator.  We don’t
want it heading back down to the Atrium to pick up any Redmen reinforcements if we can help it.”

He started forward, and Roman followed close behind in his RECS.  In his rearview camera he could see Duran and Zoe falling in behind and crouching as they came, in order to keep a low profile. 
He saw Remus as well, looking about the interior of the elevator car
.  T
hen Remus threw up his hands helplessly.

“There’s no stop button,” he said.

“Seriously?” Knile said.

“Yeah, seriously.”

“Stay there and bar the door w
ith your arm,” Zoe suggested.  “
We’ll come back for you.”

Remus nodded.  “Got it.”  He hunkered down at the edge of the elevator and draped his hand across the door, keeping low as Zoe and Duran had done.

Knile returned his focus to the task at hand.  Before him was a narrow pathway that opened out into the platform that surrounded the railcar.  There, things were escalating quickly.  The patience of the Redmen had evidently worn out, as they had begun to surround Talia and the others with their pulse rifles held at the ready.

Knile twisted the volume button on the loudspeaker of his RECS as high as it would go.

“Good afternoon!”
he yelled.  Behind him, Duran and Zoe covered their ears, disconcerted by the clamour, and ahead, the Redmen turned as one to look at him. 
“Can someone tell me the way to the observation deck?”

The Redmen stared at them in confusion for a moment, then two of them ran forward and fidgeted with something at their feet.  Moments later, thick alloy floor panels snapped open to ninety degrees, creating a pair of waist-high defensive shields.  The Redmen ducked behind the newly created cover and took aim.

“Stand down!” one of them called out.  “Identify yourselves!”

Okay, the moment of truth
, Knile thought.
  Are these things as tough as Remus seems to think they are?

“Say again?” Knile said, continuing to move the RECS forward.  “I can’t hear a thing through this tin can.”

The Redmen seemed to communicate something amongst themselves, then dispensed with caution.  They opened fire.  The first pulse round came at Knile like a blue thunderbolt, hitting the RECS square in the chest and knocking it backward, creating a sound like a sledge hammer hitting a hollow drum.  Knile’s head smacked painfully against the interior wall, and he thought for certain that the RECS would topple over, but it seemed to compensate for the blow automatically, the weight shifting and the
stumpy
legs of the machine moving rapidly to keep it upright.  For a split second Knile wondered if there might be some kind of gyroscope or accelerometer built in to the system, but those musings were promptly slapped out of his head by the second, third and fourth pulse rounds.

Although it had been jolted badly, the hull of the RECS did not seem to have been penetrated yet.  Another round connected, and a klaxon went off inside the cockpit, accompanied by a bright red warning lamp.

Knile had no idea specifically what that might be indicating, but he could probably guess.  And it wasn’t anything good.

Behind him he saw Roman’s RECS also being buffeted by pulse rounds, which left large black scorch marks in their wake.

“We need to keep moving forward,” Knile called to him.  Another pulse round made him shudder to the side.  “Get off this walkway.  We’re sitting ducks here.”

“Go!” was all Roman replied.

Knile shoved the controls forward, gritting his teeth, trying to weave side-to-side to avoid the barrage, but the going was slow.  Worse, the heat had risen considerably inside the cockpit.  Either the cooling system had been trashed, or the sheer heat of the pulse round impacts was turning the RECS into a giant oven.

What do I do when the heat inside becomes unbearable?
he thought dismally. 
Stay inside and roast like a dinner turkey, or step outside and wear a pulse round in the face?

He pushed forward, sweat running down his cheeks, as another round smacked into the RECS, twisting at the controls in his hands.

The end of the pathway seemed like an eternity away.

Roman brought up the arms of the RECS to brace himself as Knile’s machine was sent sprawling back into him again.  Although he’d taken a few pulse rounds himself, he imagined it must have been infinitely worse for Knile out in front.  The guy was taking a pounding.  The only positive was that the RECS seemed to be handling the punishment so far.

He gave Knile a shove forward and fell in behind again.  Knile grunted as he set off.

“Getting a bit warm in here,” Knile said.

“How’re you doing?”

“Somewhere between medium and well done.”

Roman glanced ahead, seeing the Redmen lined out behind their shields, and briefly wondered what had possessed him to volunteer for this madness.

You’ve got no one to blame but yourself
, he thought. 
You said you wanted to be thrown into the thick of it, so here you are.  Deal with it.

Beyond the first two Redmen, the third stood with his rifle drawn on Team Alpha.  He supposed that, right now, there was not much Talia and the others could do.  Any act of aggression on their part would be met with instant retaliation, and without armour or any kind of cover, they would not last long against a pulse rifle.

Roman and Knile had to make it to the end of the pathway and draw the Redman away.  That would be the only chance Talia and the others had to mount an offensive.

More pulse rounds exploded around them, and the RECS crashed against one another with a bone-jarring thud.  Roman reeled, then steadied his controls.  He gave Knile another shove with the machine’s claws to get him moving in the right direction.

“Goddammit,” Knile gasped.  “They’re gonna have to scrape what’s left of me off the walls o
f this thing, the way this is going.”

Roman moved behind again, and this time he lifted the claws of the RECS, clamping onto the shoulders of Knile’s machine.  He pushed forward with everything he had.

“Let’s go!” Roman said.

“What’re you–?”

“You just got a promotion from target practice to human shield.”

Knile reacted quickly, falling into step with Roman’s RECS, and together they began to build up momentum.  Several more pulse rounds caused them to falter, but then their speed gathered, and they pushed onward through the incoming barrage.  The impacts against Knile’s RECS shuddered through into Roman’s, but they kept at it, careening headlong across the path like a locomotive.

With his field of view restricted by the bulk of the RECS before him, Roman had difficulty figuring out how well they were making progress.  He looked to the side and instantly regretted it – beyond the edge of the path was the curving surface of the roof, and then a great abyss that dropped away into nothingness.

Okay, that’s something you want to avoid–