The Road to Hell (27 page)

“
KANE,” yelled Harrison from down by the gallows.

Kane turned. Harrison had his arms stretched high above his head, pulling out hard against the handcuffs, stretching the chain tight. The two of them really did work well together, Kane reminisced, instinctively knowing exactly what Harrison wanted him to do. He fired a single pulse at Harrison. The surge of plasma cut clean clear through the handcuffs. Tiny balls of molten metal sprayed outward behind him. The hair on his arms curled and singed in the heat of the blast. Damn, that was close, thought Harrison, thankful he still had two arms.

Olivia was already springing into action. Handcuffs meant nothing to her. She turned and grabbed Rosie by the back of the neck, using Rosie as a springboard to cartwheel across behind the African American, lashing out with her legs and catching two guards with a double flying round-house kick, delivering her blows to the side of the temple. Both guards were unconscious before they hit the ground. Rosie wasn't too sure quite what had happened, but she liked it.

Harrison overpowered one of the guards, knocking him senseless and grabbing his blaster. He tossed Rosie a prison keycard, allowing her to unlock her cuffs.

“
Get them out of here,” he cried, herding Brains and Susan over toward her so she could unlock their cuffs.

Rosie pushed them under the apron of the main stage as Harrison fired on the police storming toward Kane, pinning them down. Olivia was making short work of the prison guards. She moved like a gymnast, thought Harrison, with some kind of lethal ballet. Oh, and there's the Nutcracker Suite, he joked with himself, watching as she kicked one of the guards in the groin.

Rosie disappeared beneath the stage.

“
Hey,” he called out after her, still firing on the small group of police trying to make their way across the vast stage. “Aren't you supposed to reply with something like... No, Harry, I won't leave you.”

“
Hell no,” cried Rosie, and with that she was gone.

And that's what he loved about her, she was irrepressible. He climbed up onto the main stage and scurried over toward where Kane was making his stand. It was instinctive. He could have left Kane to it and slipped away with the others in the confusion, tried to commandeer a vehicle and get the
frack
out of there, but it just wasn't in his blood to leave a man behind.

Olivia scrambled up next to him. She had a blaster in each hand. The barrels were running white hot. She clearly hadn't been taught to conserve her ammo. Kane had taken cover behind the overturned lectern. He flipped up sections of the raised podium, allowing him to move around behind cover. Already, the boxing was beginning to look like Swiss cheese from where the streaks of fortified light had punched holes in the wood.

Kane smiled at Harrison, saying, “Just like old times.”

“
Yeah,” replied Harrison, firing in short, controlled bursts, trying to stay on the move. “And here I am, saving your ass again. Hey, what the hell am I doing? I should be with them, shooting at you.”

Kane laughed at the irony of having Harrison by his side.

“
You realise we'll probably die out here,” said Kane.

“
You optimist,” replied Harrison, pinning down a couple of officers coming up from the rear. “I was slated to die anyway, so not much has changed.”

Robotic flying cameras buzzed around them. One dropped right in front of Kane, staring down the simmering barrel of his blaster, blocking his view of one of the officers moving across the stage. It would make a great shot for the evening news, but it was pissing Kane off, giving away his position. The officer darted for cover. Kane fired anyway, slicing the droid in half but missing the officer. The crowd roared in response, watching the action in realtime as it streamed out across the park.

Harrison switched on the vox-control and spoke into his blaster. “Phosphorous illumination, five rounds, rapid fire, thirty degree spread.”

“
What are you doing?” asked Olivia, crouching down beside them, wondering how the hell they were going to get out of this.

“
Buying us some time,” replied Harrison, turning and firing up at the vast flag towering above them. Five flares shot out of his blaster, spreading out in an arc, igniting the flag at multiple points. Within thirty seconds, streams of burning embers in the colours of red, white and blue began falling across the stage. The crowd roared as the flag burned. Smoke drifted on the breeze, curling as plasma bolts whipped by.

“
There's a law against that,” quipped Kane, watching the fire spread across the flag, exposing the supporting steel framework of the stage backdrop.

“
So book me,” replied Harrison, rolling into a new position and laying down suppressing fire. His body wasn't as subtle as it used to be, his muscles were aching.

Several senate shuttles took flight along with a host of private cruisers, cluttering the air around the stage as they jockeyed for position before fleeing the area.

Harrison fired on part of the steel framework hiding the backstage area. A section of scaffolding fell, blocking the path of several oncoming officers. Again, the crowd roared. They were responding to the surge of action unfolding on the stage and broadcast in 3D to the holographic projectors dotted around the park. And they were singing. With one voice, millions of them had begun singing the old battle hymns. Their voice raised in unison, thundering out of the park and throughout the city.

At least someone's enjoying this, thought Olivia, firing both blasters rapidly, sending out a hailstorm of plasma that was more than enough to make the assaulting police officers think twice about breaking cover.

Suddenly, realising the implications of the broadcast, Olivia grabbed one of the robotic flyers as it zoomed in on her. Holding the camera still she cried, “Taylor. If you can hear me, if you're in position, do it. Switch it on. Taylor, can you hear me? Start the transmission.”

Olivia was distracted. She was thinking about Taylor, hoping he'd stuck to the plan, hoping he hadn't done anything stupid to try and save her. She didn't see a couple of officers outflanking them from the rear. She never even saw the one police officer lining her up, but Kane did.

The officer was methodical, which Kane knew meant he was seasoned. He wasn't going to fire wildly and give away his position. He was lining up for a single shot. Kane fired at him, but he moved back into the cover provided by the stairwell. His line-of-sight, though, still included Olivia.

Kane dove across at Olivia, pushing her to one side as a beam of fortified light sliced through his upper torso. The bolt entered below his right shoulder blade, severing part of his spinal column. It burnt through the back of his lungs and passed out through his left pectoral muscle, searing several arteries, restricting the blood flow to his heart and causing massive internal bleeding around the wound. With that, Kane fell hard, landing in a bloody heap on the edge of the stage.

Harrison didn't realise what had happened. He was too busy looking the other way and shooting at the police cruiser that had dropped down next to the stage, but his blaster was no match for police armour. The sixty millimetre cannon mounted underneath the cruiser spun up. It was over and Harrison knew it. They were losing ground to the advancing police and now they were caught in a three-way crossfire. This was never going to end well, he realised, it could only ever end in tears.

The cannon on the cruiser opened up and Harrison waited to be cut down, but the cannon fired on the advancing police, pinning them down.

“
Well? What are you waiting for? Get in,” came a familiar voice over the bullhorn on the side of the vehicle.

“
Rosie, you absolute beauty,” he yelled.

The side door of the cruiser opened and Brains beckoned them onboard. Again, the crowd roared its approval, loving how this battle had unfolded before them live. Harrison grabbed Dianora, dragging him over and throwing him into the back of the cruiser. Olivia had Kane. For a petite woman, she was unusually strong. She pulled him onboard with ease. It was only then Harrison realised how badly Kane had been hit.

Brains closed the door and Rosie cut up into the sky, merging with the confused mass of police cruisers swarming around the stage.

A senate shuttle lifted off at the same time, racing away from the stage, staying low as it shot out over the crowd barely forty feet in the air. It was low enough that its down draft scorched the treetops, sending the crowd scattering in a panic. The pilot must have had one of the council members onboard, thought Rosie, and was clearly worried that this was part of some broader, coordinated attack. He wasn't taking any chances.

“
Suspects mobile in police cruiser,” came the cry across the police channel.

Rosie countered quickly.

“
Negate that,” she said calmly in her southern twang. “Suspects fleeing in senate shuttle.”

“
Negative,” came the reply. “Suspects in-”

“
I have a visual on the senate shuttle,” came another reply, breaking in over the top of the first officer and radio discipline broke down, with too many police officers on the band all talking at once.

Confusion reigned in the air. Rosie backed off the throttle, slowing the craft and merging with a flight of police transports circling in case of the need for riot control.

Several police cruisers shot out after the senate craft, taking the bait. Rosie smiled as the senate craft broke hard to one side, heading for the relative safety of the towers. It would have been a rough ride for whoever was in the back, she thought. The erratic manoeuvre ensured even more police gave chase. Rosie pulled back gently on the yoke, causing their cruiser to peel away slowly in the other direction.

Below them, the image on the holographic projectors flickered before switching to a three dimensional statue reaching up some forty feet. Throughout the audience hundreds of statues appeared above each of the projectors; the regal image of a proud, ancient warrior. The statute's head was cast in gold, glimmering in the sunlight. The chest was made from highly polished silver, reflecting the image of the park around them. The waist radiated with shining brass, while the legs were solid iron pillars but the feet seemed to crumble. They were made from a mixture of iron and clay.

Lincoln Thomas appeared on the holograph, standing beside the statue. He was scaled to size so he appeared more lifelike as he began narrating a documentary on the role of the daemon on the course of the civil war and their discontent with the subsequent abuse of power.

As the cruiser gained altitude, Brains helped Olivia shift Kane to the rear seat where they could strap in his waist and legs, making it easier for them to tend to his wounds. He was conscious but in shock. His eyes were dilated. Perspiration beaded on his forehead. The damage to his spinal column had partially paralysed his right side and both legs.

Olivia glanced out the rear window of the cruiser as she reached for the major trauma kit in one of the ceiling compartments. She smiled as she saw the multi-coloured statutes spread out around the park. Artemis would have been proud.

She handed Brains a shot of morphine from the trauma kit and he pushed the needle-less syringe up against Kane's neck. Olivia found a bag of saline solution complete with a rapid entry port and fixed it on a hook on the side of the cruiser. Brains applied the port to Kane's arm and started the fluids flowing.

Although the wound was cauterised, blood and lymph fluids seeped from around the entry and exit points. Olivia hunted through the cruiser lockers looking for heavy gauss bandages to apply to Kane's wound. The irony that she was fighting to save the life of the man that had killed her husband struck her, but she dismissed it. Things were different now. He was different. He'd awakened.

Harrison moved over next to Kane. Holding up the severed handcuffs, he said, “Thanks.”

Kane coughed, struggling to speak. “I was aiming a foot lower.”

“
You always were a lousy shot,” replied Harrison smiling.

Kane laughed, but it hurt. He brought up some blood. His breathing was shallow.