The Beauty of Destruction (30 page)

‘Effectively nil.’

‘Sorry to go all Lando on you, buddy,’ Karma said. Du Bois glanced at him but said nothing.

‘I am not sure what is going on here, Malcolm,’ the one that du Bois had called Mr Brown said. ‘Suddenly there is distrust?’

‘Well, strictly speaking I am in breach of orders,’ du Bois answered.

‘Yeah, didn’t you ask him to kill me?’ Beth said, suddenly angry. It had been such a casual thing, it seemed. He didn’t know her. She didn’t wish him harm, and yet he was prepared to snuff her out on a whim.

‘My apologies, Miss Luckwicke, the exigencies of our work are difficult to justify face-to-face. You are carrying a lot of dangerous technology inside you. If, on the other hand, you are prepared to join us?’

The punk girl sneered. Punks had always given her trouble in the clubs. They were supposed to behave as if they didn’t give a shit. Alexia looked worried. She was glancing between Mr Brown and du Bois. Occasionally she would look at Grace. It was clear that du Bois’s sister didn’t like what she saw on the punk’s face.

‘So?’ du Bois asked. ‘Everything is forgiven? I’m back in the fold? I have a seat on the life raft?’

Mr Brown frowned. ‘Assuming we can get Miss Luckwicke’s sister’s genetic material back, then of course. I’m not sure where you would get the idea otherwise. Malcolm, is there something you want to tell me?’

‘Alexia, walk towards me,’ du Bois said.

‘She looks pretty angry,’ Beth said and nodded at Grace. She had the look of someone who was about to start a fight in a nightclub. She could hear the sound of the servos on the drones as they shifted their weapons slightly.

Alexia stepped forwards. Mr Brown
put his hand out to stop her.

‘Get your hands off me!’ she snapped, pushed his arm away and went to move forwards. The woman with the silver mask had a Sig P220 at Alexia’s head. Beth had barely caught the movement of the semi-automatic pistol being drawn.

Beth had the
LMG
against her shoulder pointing straight at the silver mask. Du Bois had taken his right hand off the SA-58 carbine’s grip and was holding his hand up.

‘Woah!’ du Bois shouted.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Alexia demanded.

‘Nanite-tipped bullets, as I’m sure you can imagine,’ Mr Brown explained. He sounded sad.

‘Okay, there’s no need for this. We just take Alexia and go,’ du Bois said.

Beth could hear the desperation in his voice. She was feeling quite desperate herself. Too many guns. She smiled. It was like one of the films her dad liked. A strange way for her to go out, cut down in a hail of gunfire. She decided she was definitely going to shoot Karma. She was pretty pissed off with him right now.

‘And my question is, what’s changed?’ Mr Brown said, his eyes narrowing. ‘Whom have you been talking to?’

‘Look, everything’s over, what possible difference could any of this make?’ du Bois asked.

‘Well, we appear to be in competition, Malcolm. You are on your way to Los Angeles, aren’t you?’

‘You let Alexia and Beth drive away, and I’ll tell you what you want to know,’ du Bois said.

‘Tell?’ Mr Brown looked confused. ‘That’s not really how we do things. The question is do you get shot a lot before I tear your mind open, or do you spare yourself and your compatriots a lot of pain? Put the guns down and submit to neural auditing.’

‘I’m not doing that,’ Beth said. She wasn’t sure if it was the tech or not but her mind didn’t feel so partitioned now. The knowledge of her death was liberating. She was grinning.

‘Wow, this is really tense,’ Karma said helpfully.

‘So you’re the new sidekick now?’ the punk girl asked.

‘Grace?’ Mr Brown said.

Beth was pretty sure that this wasn’t part of his plan. She didn’t answer the punk. She certainly didn’t like to think of herself as a sidekick, though she had to admit that du Bois called most of the shots.

‘Is he your mentor? Father figure?’
the punk continued. ‘Has he tried to rape you yet?’

Beth actually stepped away from du Bois, though she kept
the
Model 0 aimed at the woman with the silver mask.

‘What?’ Du Bois sounded appalled.

Mr Brown looked down, a pained expression on his face. He reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Alexia demanded.

‘Grace, we discussed this. I removed the memory of what he did so he could still function as an operative.’

‘I didn’t—’ du Bois started.

‘How would you know?’ Mr Brown asked.

One thing that Beth was sure about was that Grace was absolutely convinced. She was aware of the look of concern on Karma’s face as he looked between du Bois and Grace. It was also clear that the accusation had completely rocked du Bois.

‘That the kind of person you want to die for?’ Grace asked her. Just for a moment Beth glanced at du Bois next to her. He looked stricken. That didn’t mean he hadn’t done it.

‘My brother is no more capable of raping someone than he is of unaided flight,’ Alexia snapped. ‘You, on the other hand, you piece of shit,’ she said to Mr Brown, ‘are completely capable of putting a memory like that in someone’s head.’ Beth saw just a moment of doubt on Grace’s face but then it was gone. The memories would be too real, too raw.

‘Oh yes, rape is a stretch for a mass murderer,’ Mr Brown said.

‘All of you are mass murderers,’ Alexia spat. ‘He still believes in chivalry, for fuck’s sake! It’s probably the reason his new chippy’s still alive.’

‘Hey!’ Beth cried. ‘I am trying to help you.’

‘Sorry, I’m a little tense because I’ve got a gun to my head,’ Alexia muttered.

Beth could hear one of the drones trundle to a halt somewhere behind her.

‘Did he tell you that he killed your father, I wonder?’ Mr Brown asked her. Something cold seeped through her. ‘On my orders, of course, but nonetheless.’

Beth took another dangerous glance away from the reticle on the
LMG
’s holographic sight. The guilt was written all over his face. There was not a trace of doubt in Beth’s mind. This he had most certainly done.

‘I … I’m sorry,’ was all he could manage. His outstretched hand dropped down.

Alexia was looking at them both, stricken.

‘You’ve no idea what kind of man you’re dealing with,’ Grace told Beth. ‘You need to put the gun down and walk away …’ She stopped and thought for a moment and then turned to look at Karma. ‘Wait a minute, in the end Lando …’ The shotgun blast caught the punk girl in the side, spinning her round. Karma worked the action on the Mossberg M590 tactical shotgun, firing rapidly again and again into Grace.

Beth wasn’t aware of making a decision. She was operating on unearned, pre-programmed muscle memory. Necessity meant better the devil you know. Du Bois would have to wait. She was moving forwards firing.

‘Alexia!’ du Bois screamed. He used his left hand to move his carbine aside. Alexia was ducking down low. The woman with the silver mask lowered the Sig P220, trying to shoot Alexia in the head as she drew a twin Sig with her right hand. Beth’s three-round burst caught the silver-masked figure in the chest, staggering her. Her own augmented hearing picked out a gun shot from behind her. Karma was hit, he staggered back and was hit again. Something larger fired from further way, a hole appeared in the fuselage of the B-52 on her left, and there was an explosion of sand. Du Bois fast-drew his Accurised .45 from the holster on his hip and fired once. The bullet hit the masked women in her left wrist, knocking it back. The P220 fired, missing Alexia. Du Bois was re-holstering the .45. The nanite-tipped bullet was eating away at the masked woman’s wrist. Suddenly Alexia had a long knife that looked like a small katana. The blade flashed up and the masked woman’s left hand hit the desert sand still holding the P220.

‘Run!’ du Bois shouted at his sister as he brought his carbine up to his shoulder.

Of course the reason that western style gunfights probably only ever happened in the movies was that modern weapons, in the hands of people who knew what they were doing, made such activity a zero sum game.

Grace spun with the momentum of the shotgun blasts. Bringing the N6 up she fired a three-round burst at Karma, hitting him centre mass, his body armour, clothes and skin hardening as armour. Then one of the sniper’s rounds tore part of his face off.

Alexia was sprinting towards du Bois and Beth. The silver-masked lady was rapidly firing her right hand Sig, round after round hitting Beth. They didn’t penetrate her hardening armour but each one still felt like getting hit by a hammer. Beth got shot twice in the back, rifle rounds, armour-piercing, it beat her armoured clothes and lodged in her hardening skin, too close to her spine for comfort.

She spun around to find the sniper. It looked like part of the desert had stood up. The ghillie suit he was wearing had camouflaged him. His face was painted in reds like the desert earth. He was firing his M14 rapidly at one of the tracked
MAARS
drones trundling towards him firing its own machine gun. Beth triggered a short burst at the figure. He staggered, then turned and ran from the drone, diving into the open door of one of the B-52 skeletons. The drone fired its four grenade launchers in quick succession. Air-bursting high explosive grenades followed the sniper through the old bomber’s fuselage.

A round burst through the B-52 nearest to her and passed so close it would have opened her skin had she not been augmented. She was getting shot a lot in the back again, the force of the impacts driving her down on one knee. She managed to turn back, bringing the
LMG
up. The crazy silver-faced woman, her left arm still being eaten by the nanites in the bullet du Bois had shot her with, was firing her Patrol Rifle one-handed. Alexia cried out and went sprawling face-first in the red dirt as a round caught her in the back. Du Bois was firing three-round burst after three-round burst between the masked lady and Grace.

Grace was rocking with every impact but she emptied the rest of her magazine into and around Karma. Karma sat down, hard, covered in his own blood. Beth desperately wanted the masked lady to go away. In the distance she could hear more machine gun fire and the sound of the larger weapon. It seemed the drones were taking on the second sniper. Beth fired a long burst at the masked lady, the barrel of the
LMG
climbing with the recoil. She stopped firing, adjusted her aim, and repeated. The masked woman staggered back, but Beth kept on firing until she fell over. Throughout it all Mr Brown stood stock-still in the chaos.

Alexia sprinted
past them as Grace turned away from Karma and fired
the underslung grenade launcher, dropping the 40mm fragmentation grenade between
Beth and du Bois. Beth and du Bois
were both turning away from the grenade as it detonated. Beth was aware of tumbling through the air. The fuselage of one of the B-52s suddenly filled her vision and then everything went black.

Anything resembling sentience was still moments away for the suffering piece of meat. Pain first. Then identity. She was Beth. Her systems flooded with enough endorphins to cope. Then information. Her back was on fire, her insides were full of broken glass. A lot of the precious red liquid she usually kept on the inside was staining the already red sand. Dying hadn’t felt this bad. The nanotech was trying to fix the broken machine. Her neuralware was letting her know how well that was going. She needed the answer to two questions. Could she move? And was her weapon functioning? She had been turning. The blast had caught her on the right-hand side and on her back. Her body had shielded the
LMG
. She pushed herself up and looked around. Du Bois was a moaning, blackened and bloody mess on the other side of the red corridor. Grace was walking towards him, changing the magazine in her N6. Du Bois’s moans turned to howls of pain again as Grace lifted the carbine to her shoulder and fired a three-round burst into du Bois’s groin.

‘Die, motherfucker!’ Karma screamed. He was sitting up, firing his FN57 pistol at Mr Brown, his bearded face a mask of hatred. He emptied the pistol’s entire magazine into the obsidian-skinned figure. It looked like he was shooting into burned paper. Mr Brown turned around to look at Karma.

A section of the fuselage of the B-52 behind Mr Brown ceased to exist.

The Metal Storm gun, mounted on the
SWORD
drone in the old B-52 behind Mr Brown, had four barrels. Each barrel was loaded with superposed rounds. The projectiles were packed nose-to-tail, the electronically triggered propellant between each round. It meant a firing rate far in excess of anything even a minigun could muster. Karma had fired them all with a thought. The Metal Storm gun had made a fast moving wall of bullets. Most of which hit Mr Brown.

Mr Brown was looking at a flurry of black snow in front of him. He realised this was what passed for the human element of his body these days. It was extraordinary. He had felt the crude nano-tipped bullets that Karma had made with his own blood, and he had felt whatever had just happened. After all these years, after all this pain, it was extraordinary that he was still capable
of sensation. Karma had succeeded in
getting his attention. He really must try and remember what
he had done to the man to get him this
upset. He turned to look at Karma and unfolded.

A wet, tearing, cracking noise echoed between the B-52s.
Karma looked like he had been reconfigured, in a red
way. Pain lanced through Beth’s head as she looked
at Mr Brown. He no longer made sense. She tore
her eyes away from him as nausea threatened to overwhelm
her. She felt a tugging sensation on her back as
Alexia landed behind her, grabbed the Benelli M4 NFA from
the sheath on her back. Beth was bringing the
LMG
up but Grace had noticed the movement and was turning,
bringing her N6 to bear. Alexia fired the shotgun. The
cloud of shotgun pellets caught the punk girl in the
upper torso and face, staggering her. Something exploded against the
side of the B-52. The pressure wave of the explosion
battered Beth and Alexia to the ground, robbing them of
their breath. Grace was flung like a rag doll across
the corridor of red earth between the planes. Du Bois
lowered the carbine and slumped to the ground.