Hammerjack (42 page)

“Cease fire,” Avalon said.

The agent took his hands off the trigger. The storm carried on, unabated, with the hovercraft at the center of it. Sparks and explosions erupted everywhere, generating a mass of noise and radiation—exactly as Avalon had hoped. She checked the progress of the sentry drones as they closed in on the confusion and saw them dispersing. Their flight patterns became irregular—a sign of sensor overload. Their guidance systems couldn’t handle all the clutter.

Avalon kicked the turbines back on and pulled up until the hovercraft stood on its tail. She darted in between the transmission beams of the grid, staying hidden in the tangle of vehicles but staring into the freedom of open sky. Directly overhead, a dozen drones swooped down, about a hundred meters distant and closing fast. They banged away on a full active sweep, trying to sift through the civilian traffic in their search for the hovercraft.

“You got them?” she asked.

“Affirmative.”

Avalon eased the hovercraft higher, building up power in the turbines. She held back until it reached a high pitch, then turned it loose. Gravity pinned them in their chairs as the ship catapulted itself skyward. Naked and in the open, the hovercraft instantly got the attention of the attacking drones. They contracted themselves back into a defensive formation, aligning themselves for a combined assault.

The agent took them out before they had the chance.

He fired on the center mass first, destroying the lead drones and breaking up the few remaining others. The explosion disoriented them for a moment, giving Avalon enough time to jockey the hovercraft for a few more quick bursts. As the surviving drones recovered, they tried to assume flanking positions, at the same time letting loose with a few salvos of their own. One of the shots struck at an angle, bouncing off before it could do any serious damage; but it rocked the hovercraft hard, overloading one of the panels in the cockpit and shorting out the tactical computer.

The agent cursed something incomprehensible.

Avalon ignored him. She wrestled with the fire control manually, using her own sensors to take aim. She only fired four more times—four shots, four hits, cutting down the last of the drones. She poured all remaining power into the turbines and got out of there fast.

“That was close,” the agent said.

“What’s our damage?”

“Can’t tell without tactical,” he replied, inspecting the ship visually. “I don’t think it’s bad—as long as the airframe is intact.”

“She’ll fly,” Avalon assured him.

The hovercraft climbed to an altitude just below the overflight grid, then swooped back down in a smooth arc that deposited them on the Volksgott side of the Works plaza. Once there, Avalon let off speed and put the ship into an orbital trajectory. One pass to ascertain what was happening, then she intended to follow Alden’s steps. He had already figured out the way. There was no need for her to do it again.

“We got activity,” the agent said, motioning down toward the plaza. “Must be a thousand people down there, all military. Heavy equipment, too.” He directed an accusing stare at the free agent. “What the hell is going on here?”

“That’s a good question,” she replied, doing a topographical sweep of the airdock complex on the roof. A corporate luxury transport sat on the landing pad—the same configuration she had picked up leaving the power plant. A flip to the high-res confirmed it.

“He’s here,” she said.

“You sure it’s him?”

Avalon checked for heat signatures and found a pair of them moving rapidly through the docking tunnel. She wasn’t close enough for facial recognition, but discerned from their shapes and vitals that there was one male and one female. She then switched over to detailed imaging, plunging sensors into the building itself. The scan crumbled into static eight floors down, but detected nothing in between. Even the electronic spectrum was dead.

Clever boy . . .

“Give me a status,” the agent insisted.

“Two bodies,” Avalon told him. “Heading toward roof access.”

She took a silent inventory of every weapon she had on her body. They numbered in the dozens, from lethal to more lethal—but none with the potency of her own two hands. They craved sweet contact, without the gloves, skin against bone. If not Alden, then his companion. Phao Yin wanted his man alive, but everyone else was fair game.

She guided the hovercraft down.

Among the fusion clusters, two shapes appeared out of the dark.

Turbine engines glowed bright with plasma and steam, picking up static electricity from the wind and rain. Spidering current crawled over the frames of the hovercraft, their ghostly outlines fading in and out of time as the small ships darted along the surface of the ocean. They approached the cluster together, maintaining a tight formation until they penetrated Directorate airspace. At that point they broke away from one another, following an evasive course among the domes, sniffing out detection countermeasures and jamming them. When the run was complete, they met again at the center of the reactor complex. Hovering for a moment below the deck of the massive dome, they faced one another as their pilots signaled back and forth.

It was a go. They were committed.

The two hovercraft swooped over the dome, one at a time, navigating with infrared as they searched for the darkened landing pad. The ships set down as soon as they found it, hatches popping open to unleash eight Zone agents. Camochrome kept pace with the lightning and the rain, their armor taking on the color and characteristics of the steel surroundings.

The station was theirs. They proceeded with the hunt.

Lea fell in step behind Cray. She felt a crushing force pushing her through the tunnel, like some tangible presence bleeding out of the hexagonal walls. Perhaps it was just the vibe of the place, which gave off static malice like a battery holding a charge. Such was the strength of its character. In the absence of all other life, the structure had
become
Lyssa.

“Funky,” she transmitted. “Gimme the short version.”

“CSS just got confirmation of the evac,” Funky replied. “All stations are down, all controls on remote. Nobody here but us chickens.”

“Copy that. Stand by.”

She and Cray stopped when they reached the roof access doors. Lea crouched down and opened up the lock node, running down the list of indicators on the tiny screen. All of them showed up red, with input status set to resist. She looked up at Cray.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” she said. “It’s magnetically sealed. Can’t even jack the code without a bypass authorization.”

Cray shook his head.

“We don’t need to,” he announced, and all the indicators clicked to green. The seal disengaged with a loud hiss, rolling back the thick steel doors and revealing a small corridor beyond. Lea drew back, half out of surprise, half out of amazement. A lift was already waiting to take them down.

“Warn me before you do that next time.”

“It wasn’t me,” Cray said, and motioned for her to follow.

In the elevator, Cray punched the button for the hundredth floor. Lea saw his composure, which had changed since they left the power plant. There, he had asserted a quiet control. Here, he was just a stranger in another domain. This turf belonged to someone else, and so did the rules.

The floors tumbled away as they descended.

“Talk to me, Funky,” she said.

“Still hanging with you,” he signaled back. “What’s your twenty?”

“We’re inside the complex now, heading down to the Tank.”

“Any resistance?”

“Red carpet,” Lea said. “Place gives me the creeps.”

“Keep it tight,” Funky warned. “GenTec traffic is starting to get intense. No telling when they’ll catch on.”

“Roger. Keep us advised of any change in status.” She closed the link, turning back toward Cray. He opened his eyes to take measure of his reflection, which appeared in the mirrored surface of the elevator doors. “Trust me,” Lea told him. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

He smiled wearily.

“So what do you think she’s going to show you, anyway?” she asked. “The answer to everything?”

Cray shook his head.

“Only as much as everything relates to me,” he said. “There’s some purpose at work here. Whether it’s Lyssa, or the
Inru
—I need to know what it is.”

Lea fell into silence for a few moments, before asking the logical question.

“And if she doesn’t cooperate?”

Cray processed that for a time. He then reached into his jacket and pulled out his MFI.

“You’ll know if I don’t come out of there,” he said, pressing the device into her hands. “Give yourself enough time to get out. Make sure nobody else does.”

The elevator stopped. Lea understood Cray’s implication. His aim was to interface with Lyssa—a union no human being had ever attempted. If he didn’t emerge when it was over, his mind would already be dead. The explosive would only finish the job on his body.

She understood the logic of his request, but her emotions gutted her response. She hesitated—but Cray just looked back at her with tenderness, offering her a reassuring smile.

“Let’s just make sure it doesn’t come to that,” Lea said.

He caressed the side of her cheek. “Thank you.”

They exited the lift, walking briskly through the maze of corridors leading to the Tank. Under the klieg of red emergency lights, it was even more severe than Lea had imagined. The blast holes were fresh, the air thick with ozone and electricity and the smell of burning flesh—trace elements etched into the walls by intense violence. And it seemed to resonate with Cray, as if he had been a part of it himself. Lyssa had, after all, created all of this for his benefit. It had been her way of calling him—her way of awakening his dormant potential.

A pair of doors opened into the Tank. Lea stood back and watched as Cray stood in front of them, his features smeared by the sterile halogen light within. His body faded momentarily into the glow, returning when she appeared at his side. He steadied himself with some resistance, but Lea sensed the substantial force drawing him in. It was the same force that pushed her away.

She held on to Cray’s arm.

“Only one of us is welcome here,” she said.

“Not all of me,” Cray replied. “Only one part.”

He took her by the hand. They went inside together, drawing strength and contact from one another, and wandered through the outer sections of the lab. Cray led her straight to the air lock that separated Lyssa from the rest of the world—the boundary between logic and chaos. It was still rimmed with the dried blood of her creators, flanked by the madness that brought them to her in the first place.

“What if she’s already gone?” Lea tried. “She might already be unbound. You saw the way she controls this place. What if she’s in the Axis, right now?”

“It’s beyond her grasp,” Cray said. He looked at her in earnest—not as an accelerated intelligence, but as a man. He was scared, and made no attempt to hide it. “Her only chance at escape lies with the Other.”

Lea was also frightened—almost beyond reason, almost beyond reach. She didn’t give a damn about her own life, because she had always measured it in minutes. It was for Cray’s soul she feared, that he would surrender it to Lyssa without a fight.

“And you’re going to help her find it,” Lea said.

“Yes.”

“How do you stop from losing yourself?”

“I don’t know if I can.”

It was all Cray could do to explain, and on some level it was enough. Lea let go of him, involuntarily, her movements feeling like slow motion while Cray’s seemed to accelerate. In the next moment, she saw Cray step into the air lock. His back was turned to her, and she thought it would remain so; but as the revolving door slid shut, he turned around for one last glance through the carbon glass. His face was obscure and distant, his voice swallowed up by the hiss of escaping air.

“Five minutes,” Cray said, before the door sealed and he was gone.

Avalon set down on the hoverpad next to the corporate transport, turbofans roaring as her ship came to a hard and quick landing. The resulting storm of light and wash easily attracted the attention of the troops down in the plaza—but none of that mattered. Avalon had every intention of being gone by the time CSS managed to pry the doors open. If that didn’t work out, she would deal them all a spectacular death.

She kicked open the belly hatch and dropped down to the roof ahead of the others. In her sphere, she was the only living being. Ignoring her sensors for the moment, she fell back into the instinct of her training—a place where she was hardwired for the hunt. There, she saw Alden as an afterimage in the docking tunnel, his shimmering form trailing electricity and purpose. Gradually, she allowed her sensors to fill in the rest. She could still detect trace amounts of heat from his passing, fading footprints leading to the roof access door.

The three agents assumed cover positions around her. They held their rifles up, scouting out threat zones and awaiting her cue to move.

“Eight minutes,” Avalon ordered.

They headed for the tunnel, running in lockstep down the narrow corridor, with Avalon taking point. She counted off the precious seconds, while the rest of her attention went to the looming doorway ahead of them. It grew beyond its boundaries in her vision, giving off the telltale ghost of a magnetic seal. Another obstacle—but she had expected nothing less. Alden was not going to make this easy for her.