The Omega Cage (23 page)

"No it won't," Sandoz said.

Maro spun just in time to see Chameleon hand Sandoz the laser welder. Sandoz shrugged into the unit's power pack and switched it on. The needle of coherent light lanced out, a hard brightness under the artificial lighting.

"I'm taking the cart," Sandoz said. "Chameleon goes with me."

Maro glanced at the mue. Chameleon shrugged. "Sorry. He's better at staying alive, and that's what I want to do."

"And the albino goes with us," Sandoz added. He grinned at Raze, moving the laser beam back and forth in a lazy arc. It hissed in the quiet air.

Scanner pulled a small box out of his coverall.

Sandoz spun and aimed the tip of the weapon at Scanner's throat. He was three meters away, but two quick steps and he could skewer the smaller man easily.

"Whatever you've got there," the assassin said, "drop it."

Scanner grinned tightly and thumbed a control on the button. There was a
pop
! and spark from the laser welder's power pack. The red needle winked out.

Sandoz wasted no time trying to restart the laser. He shrugged out of the pack and dropped the ruined device. "You're just full of surprises, aren't you, wirehead?" He settled into a wide, low stance.

Maro reached into his pocket for the flare pistol. It wasn't there. He realized that it was still laying on the floor next to the bed, where he'd left it in case of an emergency.

"Never mind. I don't need the laser," Sandoz said softly. He smiled. It was the expression of a man who was about to enjoy himself to the fullest.

Maro knew the assassin could take all of them. Raze was strong and the smuggler was a fairly good fighter, but Sandoz was a master. Juete and Scanner would only get in the way.

The slap-cap, covered against accidental discharge, still adhered to his right palm. He twisted the cap off slowly and extended his hand to the side, palm facing Sandoz. He let the man see the cap, could tell by Sandoz's expression that he knew what it was.

"Where did you get that?"

"It doesn't matter. I have it and you know what it can do. You might kill me, but I'll take you with me. Or a big enough piece of you to keep you from leaving here under your own power."

The moment stretched. If Sandoz attacked, they were all likely to die. Maro knew it, and he knew that Sandoz knew it. They didn't have time for this.

Sandoz said, "Into the cart, Chameleon."

"Huh?"

"Do it. You drive.
Move
."

Chameleon moved.

Sandoz backed toward the cart behind him, holding his hands in a defensive pose.

Maro's gut twisted. He couldn't attack—it would be much more dangerous than defense, and if he committed himself, Sandoz could probably kill him without taking a hit from the slap-cap.

Sandoz continued moving backward. Maro edged forward in a shuffle step, the cap held ready.

Chameleon started the cart. The engine whined into life and rumbled unevenly for a moment, then smoothed out.

Sandoz's legs touched the back of the cart.

"Go," he said to the mue. "Punch it!"

Chameleon obeyed. The slunglas tires screeched on the plastcrete of the shop and the cart moved. Sandoz twisted and dived into the back.

Maro lunged after him, his palm raised to slap. Sandoz came up holding something in his left hand. He threw it at Maro. It was a food container; the heavy plastic carton slammed into Maro's upraised arm, just above the elbow, and the force of it spun him away. His feet tangled and he tripped. He tried to turn the fall into a dive, half-managed it, and hit hard on his shoulder. He squeezed his hand shut on the slap-cap, a stupid move. Fortunately, it didn't go off.

As he rolled over, Maro saw Raze sprinting after the speeding cart. Sandoz laughed and hurled another can. Raze swerved to avoid being hit in the face. It slowed her long enough so that the cart reached the exit. There was no way to catch it now, not unless Chameleon blundered into a wall or one of the rusted machines—which he didn't.

They listened to the engine fade into the night.

Maro came to his feet. "Can you get this one going?" he said to Scanner, pointing to the other cart.

"The ground drive already works," the circuit-rider said. "I can maybe get the GE machinery partially done so we can get some lift. We'll have to have it on bad ground."

"Whatever you can do in ten minutes," Maro said, looking at his watch. "After that, it won't matter."

"How long?" Kamaaj asked.

Stark looked at the clock in the guard tower. The two men stood on the wall, staring out into the night. "Five more minutes. If they're still there, we've got them."

"Five more minutes," Scanner said. "That's all I need."

Juete watched Scanner work by the light of the lantern.

The building was dark again. The man moved at a frantic pace, twisting wires together, pushing circuit boards haphazardly into place, pounding with his hands on the delicate-looking gadgets.

"Is there any way we can keep them from seeing us?" Dain asked.

"I don't have time to rig anything to rascal their heat gear," Scanner said.

"I do," Raze said.

Dain turned to look at her. She held up something, and a small flame flared.

Juete said, "What good will that do?"

Raze grabbed one of the cans of generator fuel. "Just watch." She grinned, then turned and ran toward the exit.

"Dain? What is she doing?"

"She's going to set the camp on fire," he replied. "They won't spot human warmth in the middle of an infemo."

"Good idea," Scanner said, not looking away from his work.

"
What?
"

"Uh, that's affirmative, Warden. We've got a fire about three klicks ahead, right at where the mining camp is supposed to be. Big one. The whole sky is lit up."

Stark looked at Karnaaj. "What the hell is going on?" he said, more to himself than to the other man.

But Karnaaj answered. "I think our quarry is trying to pull something. Confound our sensors, most likely."

Stark said, "Then they
are
there! I want them alive, do you hear? Any of them turn up dead, whoever's responsible will pay with his ass!"

"Copy, Warden."

Maro silently urged Scanner to more speed.
Come on, come on!

Outside, the light from the fires Raze had set turned the night into flickering orange bright enough to see the entire camp. The smell of burning plastic assailed his nostrils, a sharp and bitter tang, and the sound of the flames was a dull, windy sound, shot through with crackles.

"That's the best I'm going to be able to do," Scanner said, leaning back. "If I had another twenty minutes—"

The hum of aircycles overrode the sounds of the fire.

"No time," Maro said. "We've got to move,
now!
"

"Where is Raze?" Juete said.

"We'll find her. Get into the cart."

The aircycles' sound grew louder.

Scanner pushed the ignition button. The cart's engine rumbled, but failed to start.

"Come
on
, Scanner—!"

The engine whined, rumbled, caught—then died. Scanner punched the starter again. The engine rumbled into life, stronger this time. Scanner engaged the drive. The cart roiled toward the exit.

"Ah, Warden, the whole camp is on fire. We've spotted one of them. The bodybuilder."

"Alive," Stark said. "Take her alive!"

Scanner drove the cart into the bright firelight, turned sharply to avoid an obstacle and nearly threw Juete out by doing so. She grabbed at the side. Dain caught her arm and pulled her back into her seat.

"Where is Raze?" Juete was in a panic.

"There!" Scanner said.

The woman was fifty meters to the left, running. Behind her, three men pursued.

Juete heard the cough of a spetsdod. Raze dodged, dived and rolled up, and kept going.

"Scanner!"

"I'm going, I'm going!"

He turned the cart toward the back-lit figures and throttled up. The cart jerked forward in a dusty haze as the tires tore up the dry ground.

Raze vanished behind an earthmover. The men chasing her skidded to a halt.

"Raze!" Juete yelled. "Over here!"

One of the men heard the yell. He turned, saw the cart bearing down on him, and raised the hand with the spetsdod on it. Something clinked against the windshield of the cart. Scanner ducked and Dain tried to pull Juete down in her seat. She resisted. "
Raze
!"

As if in answer, the big woman suddenly loomed behind the man with the spetsdod. She grabbed his head and twisted. Juete thought she heard the man's spine crack.

The other two men turned to see Raze. She lowered her head and barreled into them. All three went down.

Raze came up from the tangle of bodies. Juete saw her stomp down on one of them, hard. He screamed.

"HOLD IT!" came an amplified voice.

Juete saw a hovercraft above them. A bright spotlight arced out and threw its glare over Raze.

Raze sprinted out of the light, too fast for it to follow. Juete saw her outlined momentarily against a burning building.

A dozen men scrambled from the settling craft, which kept moving, dropping more troops in a human line that stretched past the fleeing Raze. She turned, running directly away from where the cart was.

Scanner turned the small vehicle to follow Raze, but there were troops and guards between them.

"Run them down!" Juete yelled.

Some of the men turned and began to fire at the cart. They weren't using spetsdods, but pulse weapons. Bright beams seared the already fiery night, hard sounds and high energy dazzling to the ears and eyes.

Raze was trapped, her back to a melting plastic building.

"They want her alive!" Scanner said.

Raze looked up and saw the cart. She waved it away. "Go!" she yelled. "
Go
!"

Then she smiled, a vulpine expression, all teeth. One of the men facing her raised a spetsdod and aimed it at her.

"Fuck you!" Raze yelled.

She turned and ran into the wall of the burning building. Her body left a dark spot for a single heartbeat before the oozing plastic filled it in.

"Shear off!" Dain yelled.

The cart turned, skidding and throwing up a cloud of fine dust. Another pulse beam sizzled overhead, too high by a meter.

"They want us alive, too," Dain said. "Get us the hell out of here, Scanner!"

To their right, one of the burning buildings collapsed with a loud crash and a shower of burning plastic drops that rained down like shooting stars. Somebody behind them screamed. In the acrid smoke and conflagration, the pursuers must have lost track of them. Scanner drove the cart into the cool darkness past the perimeter of the flaming camp. He did not slow until they reached the forest.

Juete looked back at the camp as Scanner picked his way around the trees. Her tears flowed. "Good-bye, Raze," she said.

She glanced at Dain. In the faint gleam of the cart's instrument lighting, she could see that he was crying, too.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Stark stood at the door of his storage shed, staring at the palm lock. Dawn was coming, but the new day did not matter.

Everything had gone to hell. Six more of his men were dead; three apparently killed by the dead bodybuilder, three more by the collapse of some building during the fire at the camp. It was small consolation, but eight of Kamaaj's men were also dead. The hovercraft in which they had been riding had been blown out of the air by the explosion of a fuel tank in a mining machine. Whatever chance he had of saving his career was gone. When the Confed finished with him, he'd be lucky to escape prison himself. The Confed did not like failure in its officers.

He reached up and palmed the lock. The sliding door, unused for years in the miasmatic tropical weather, squeaked and stuck halfway along its track. He grabbed the plastic panel and shoved it the rest of the way, then brushed his hand over the light plate. The overhead fluoros cast their hard glare down, filling the room.

Stark stared at the Juggernaut.

At first glance, it resembled a standard exoskeleton loader. The unit stood four meters tall, vaguely anthropomorphic in shape—two legs and two arms, with a torso big enough to contain a large man or mue comfortably. But the hands were not hydraulic clips, like a workmech's. The three pairs of "fingers" had been adapted for combat. One finger on the right hand contained the muzzle of a pulse weapon; one on the left had a flamethrower; the other pair of fingers could be used to pinch through plate durasteel or to pick up an egg equally well. Rocket launchers on both shoulders each held five heat-sensitive thermodrill Rodent missiles that could track more than fifty degrees from line-of-flight, once fired.

The main body armor was five-centimeter-thick stacked molecular plasticast and could stop anything up to a 50 MM AP shell. GE repellors and bounce beamers gave the thing the mobility of a small jet to altitudes just below orbital. The control electronics and sensors were state of the art. It was a major piece of war machinery, and it had cost him the equivalent of a small fortune to come by it.

The man who had "lost" it was dead, and nobody knew it was here but Stark. It was his final trump, and the time had come to play it. He would use the Juggernaut to find and kill all of the prisoners except Juete, and then he would use it to get them both to a ship and off-planet.

After that—well, he would have to play it as it came. He stripped his orthoskins away and punched in a code on the lock control of the exoframe. The machine hummed to life, and the hinged hatch swung smoothly open. A climatesuit lay neatly folded in the bodysleeve compartment inside. Stark donned the suit and triggered it into operation. He felt a cool pulse as the circulating fluids adjusted to the air and his body temperature. He pulled the hood over his head and tabbed it into place.

He took a deep breath. Once he climbed into the Juggernaut and slid his feet and hands into the extensors, his motions would be duplicated as exactly as the suit could manage. In a training test he had seen once, a skilled operator had squatted and picked up a tenth-stad coin from a smooth floor with the grippers, flipped it into the air and point-blasted it with the pulse gun as it fell. In personal combat, a man in a Juggernaut was almost invincible— save against another so armored.