Crucible (26 page)

"This way," he told Rogue, heading up the same tunnel that the traitor had taken. "I'm still picking up the biochip energy emissions from your missing comrade. As you say, we're not leaving just yet."

"Rogue..." warned Helm quietly, as they followed the sniper up the tunnel.

"Copy what you're thinking, Helm," whispered Rogue. "You too, Bagman. Keep a good eye on our helpful new buddy from S-Three, guys. No way I'm going to turn my back on this freak without knowing someone's watching my six."

The traitor heard the sounds of gunfire echoing along the tunnels. He instantly knew what it meant; somehow, the Rogue Trooper had escaped. The old, familiar fear of once again being hunted by the blue-skinned genetic freak took hold of him. His suit's med-systems recognised the surge of panic and administered a surge of narc-stims into his bloodstream. The traitor relaxed somewhat as the narc-shot did its task, allowing his mind to consider the options available to him.

Even though none of the entrance alarms had been tripped, it was always possible that some advancing unit of Nort pathfinder scouts had found their way into his lair. It was equally possible that some of his own followers had turned on each other in one of their petty squabbles. Such events had apparently been fairly common before he assumed leadership of the group, some of the scavengers routinely murdering each other in disputes over ownership of a ration pack or chem-suit repair kit, but they had dropped away to almost nil when the scavenger band fell under his command, when he made it quite clear to his followers what the penalty for such unauthorised killings would be. Still, the battle still raging up on the surface had created a mood of unease in the minds of his followers, and it was always possible that some of them had fallen back on their old ways.

He barked orders, sending a large group of those here with him in the main chamber to investigate the source of the disturbance. His mood altered by the flow of narc-stims, he sat back in his throne chair to await the outcome.

He didn't have to wait long. A minute or two later, there were more sounds of gunfire, coming from just a few hundred metres up the tunnel taken by his followers. He listened closely to the sounds identifying each one. Most of it was a chorus of hissing, stuttering las-fire as produced by the scavenged, poorly-maintained las-weapons carried by almost all his followers. There was no evidence of the distinctive chatter of the GI's rifle, but of course, there wouldn't be. That particular weapon was here with him, the traitor intending to use it as proof of his capture of the Genetic Infantryman when he went out tomorrow to conduct the difficult task of beginning his parlay with Nordstadt's new masters.

He heard the sound of screams, the death-cries of his followers as they fell before the firepower of whatever force they had encountered but he heard another sound there too. The dry crack of a slug-thrower rifle, a weapon virtually unknown on Nu Earth. It fired with the steady, calm, rhythmic pulse of the beat of a human heart, each shot almost invariably ending in the cut-off scream of one of his followers.

A new thrill of fear passed through the traitor as he heard the pulsing crack of that weapon's shots. He knew of only one man who used such a weapon, or who could fire it with such almost inhumanly-calm and deadly assurance. Of course, it was almost impossible that that man could be here in Nordstadt now, but if he was, then the traitor could think of only one reason why: to kill him.

He stood up, shouting orders to his frightened followers.

Rogue charged down the tunnel, sending tight bursts of las-fire into the milling, panicked mass of enemies before him. Single shots from his new partner's sniper rifle punched through the air from behind him, picking off more targets from amongst the scavenger mob. Leaderless, uncoordinated, more of them dying with every passing second, the survivors of the pack broke and ran, fleeing before the two killers' dual advance.

Rogue and Venner broke through into the large chamber beyond. There were more scavengers there and Venner automatically brought his rifle up to his shoulder and started picking them off. Rogue ran forward into them, emptying the rest of the las-carbine and gunned down four more. Then he reversed the weapon in one smooth motion, and used it as a club. He swung it around him, the butt impacting against flesh and bone, breaking skulls and knocking bodies to the ground. Rogue still felt a shred of pity for these things, trying to pull his blows against the smaller, weaker ones, seeking to drive them away rather than kill them. The sniper showed no such similar compunction. More shots rang out, more bodies fell to the ground. The remnants of the second wave of scavengers finally fled, shrieking towards the other tunnel mouths round the chamber.

Rogue let them go. Venner didn't, dropping three more of them as they ran. The sniper's bloodlust was up. Rogue knew the type; addicted to death, they killed just for the sheer pleasure of taking human life. Rogue took note of the fact, his trust in the S-Three man moving a few notches further down the scale. Whatever the sniper's stated reason for being here, Rogue doubted that comradely concern for a fellow soldier in trouble had much to do with it, and his sense of wary caution toward his new ally increased.

"Picking up a lock on Gunnar's position, Rogue. Twenty-one metres in front of you at two o'clock."

Rogue looked, following Bagman's directions. He found himself looking straight at the Traitor General. The next second he was searching among the dead bodies on the ground, looking for a new weapon with which to kill his enemy.

The traitor watched in consternation as his followers were gunned down before him. Once again, the genetic freak had been responsible for the destruction of another of his bolt-holes. The sight of the Genetic Infantryman was alarming enough, but the figure following on behind Rogue filled the traitor with a fresh rush of fear.

He recognised him straight away, even in his featureless black chem-suit. Venner, the S-Three assassin. Marckand's man, the pet killer of the traitor's old Nort collaborator comrade within the Souther military. Marckand must be cleaning house, the traitor realised, getting rid of the last pieces of living evidence of his own treasonous past.

The traitor screamed more orders, urging the rest of his bodyguards forward, shooting one of them in the back with the GI's own weapon to encourage the others. The GI raised and fired the weapon he had found. Incredibly, the shot missed.

Venner raised his rifle too, drawing a bead on his target. The traitor grabbed one of his bodyguards and began pulling him in front of himself. A shot sounded and something punched a fist-sized hole through the bodyguard's back before he reached the traitor. The traitor ducked behind his throne just as the sniper's weapon sounded again. A chunk of scrap metal was blown off from the throne's back.

The traitor crouched in cover. Gunfire and screams came from the other side of the throne. The traitor considered his options and his luck so far. The two best marksmen on Nu Earth had, between them, fired three shots at him and missed all three times. He doubted his good fortune would hold out a fourth time. He looked down at the GI weapon in his hands. He had reloaded it, but wisely disabled its biochip functions, switching it to manual use. He smiled. How ironic if the GI's own weapon should be the thing that killed him in the end.

Rogue cursed as he saw his shot go wide of its target. Either the weapon's sights were badly calibrated, or the arrangement of las-focussing lenses in the barrel were out of alignment. The sniper fired at the same target twice. He missed both times. Once again the traitor's luck was holding out.

Medium-ranged shots might be a problem, but there was nothing much wrong with the weapon's short-range accuracy. Rogue sprayed tight, controlled bursts of las-fire into the traitor's bodyguards. None of these shots missed their targets.

Venner's gun had fallen silent. Rogue risked a quick glance behind him, nervous about what the sniper might be up to. While Rogue held off the remaining bodyguard, drawing all their fire on to himself, Venner was circling round the sides of the chamber. Rogue realised what he was up to. So did Helm and Bagman.

"Looks like sniperboy's going after the traitor, Rogue."

"So much for that story about him being here to help us. Anyone else get the feeling he's been kinda holding out on us about something?"

"Copy that, Bagman. The traitor's ours. If S-Three want a piece of him too, then they'll have to wait in line."

Rogue broke off, hearing a distinctive coughing roar from behind the traitor's hiding place, as his GI eyes caught the brief flash of something upwards from there. Helm and Bagman's vid and audio sensors caught it too, instantly recognising what it was.

"Sammy! Hit the dirt, Rogue!"

Sammies. The nickname for the miniature surface-to-air guided missiles that Gunnar's auxiliary grenade launcher barrel was equipped to fire. Capable of tracking and downing a low-flying hopper or atmocraft, they gave a Genetic Infantryman in the field a devastating additional source of firepower against enemy aircraft.

But there weren't any low-flying enemy aircraft in the underground chamber. Instead, there was just the chamber's vaulted roof, some six or seven metres above all their heads.

Rogue dived for cover, making for the greater safety of the sides of the chamber. The Sammy struck the centre of the roof, detonating and destroying the central supports there. They gave way almost instantly, the roof splitting open with a thunderous roar. Tonnes of rubble and massive metal beam roof supports crashed downwards, burying most of the chamber and crushing everyone caught beneath. The avalanche continued as soil and rock from the ground above poured down. The air was filled with a choking black dust and something else too. The poisonous tang of Nu Earth's atmosphere. The cave-in had caused a crater-like breach up on the surface and now the atmosphere of the city above was rushing in to fill the tunnels and chambers of the underground complex.

Rogue hauled himself out of the space he had found and crawled over the mounds of rubble that now filled the place. His lungs could deal with the choking blanket of dust that hung in the air, just as they could handle the poison Nu Earth air, and his eyes and the sensors of his biochip equipment could pierce the blinding dust veil just as well as if it were any other kind of chem-cloud.

He scrambled across the rubble, his senses checking for signs of life or movement. There were none. The cave-in had cleared the place as clinically as any precision artillery strike.

Following his memory of the geography of the chamber before the roof collapse, he found the place where the traitor had been hiding. It was still mostly intact. Rogue wasn't surprised. He knew just how calculating the man he had spent years hunting across the face of Nu Earth was. If the traitor was going to collapse a roof in on the heads of himself, his enemies and his own followers, then the only part of that equation that mattered was the coldly-calculated chances of his own survival.

There was no sign of the traitor or Gunnar either, of course. Rogue wasn't surprised. He had been hunting his prey long enough to know that the man always had an escape route planned from any situation.

"Helm?"

"Still got a lock on Gunnar's biochip signal, Rogue. The traitor's on the move, heading back towards the surface. He's about a minute and three hundred metres ahead of us."

Rogue wasn't too worried. On the surface of Nu Earth, moving at GI speed in the environment he was born to fight in, he could run down an ordinary human in a chem-suit. There was just one problem, and the biochips knew it.

"Lost that las-carbine in the cave-in, Rogue. You don't have any weapons."

"Sure I do, Bagman. I've got a vibro-knife and whatever you've got left in the way of micro-mines and grenades. Better than that, I've got you guys and good, old-fashioned GI smarts."

Guided by Helm, he set off in pursuit of his prey.

Venner emerged from the rubble a minute later. Hugging the walls of the chamber, he had avoided the worst effects of the cave-in. Masked by the unique material of his chem-suit, his life signs had gone undetected by the senses of the Genetic Infantryman and his equipment. His left leg had been struck by a chunk of falling rubble and dragged painfully behind him. He suspected it was probably broken, but a quick jab of narco-stim from his suit's chem-kit allowed him to ignore the pain and keep his thoughts clear for the challenge ahead.

He checked the tracker device, noting with satisfaction that all three biochip signals were still coming through loud and clear. The single-source target was the traitor, while the double-source signal pursuing it was that of the Rogue Trooper. They were both up on the surface, hunting each other through the ruins of Nordstadt.

Guided by the dual signals, he set off in pursuit of his prey.

Everything was going to hell in Nordstadt. Colonel Daniels, monitoring the situation from the safety of Milli-com, couldn't be happier. He preferred not to listen to the chatter of the incoming radio traffic from the Souther forces still trapped - Daniels refused to think in terms of words like "abandoned" - in Nordstadt. The panicked tone in those voices as they reported in the latest Nort advances, the curses they used as they begged or demanded that someone in Milli-com do something to help them, offended Daniels's sense of military propriety. His neat strategist's mind much preferred receiving the intelligence in a far more sanitised form, either as hard data dispassionately scrolling across his monitor screen or as visual information projected up onto the strategy bridge's main screen.

The screen was enormous, ten metres on each side, capable of zooming in on any Nordstadt locale and singling out sections of individual streets and buildings. Had they wanted, they could switch the screen to a tactical setting and watch individual firefights in progress, the visual data relayed back to them in almost real-time by the numerous surveillance sats in geo-synch orbit above the city.