Fire with Fire

Chapter Thirty-One

TELEMACHUS

Wiseguy’s eyes widened: he hadn’t thought of what his employers might do if they found out he skipped on the job. If they had meant him to be killed by the cops, they’d need to finish the job themselves if something went awry with that plan. He swallowed. “Okay, okay-but we do it my way. We go to the outpost I choose. And you’re blindfolded until we get there.” He forgot Trevor, started giving orders. “Peak, you get the others: tell ’em we’re moving. Now. Just suits and guns. Mel, you-”

A klaxon started shrilling. Wiseguy whirled, aimed the gun at Trevor, saw it couldn’t be his doing, started a spastic circle dance in search of the cause. “What the fuck, what the-?”

“That’s an enviro sensor, man: we got a leak, or somethin’.”

“Great. Fucking great. Probably broke a seal when you capped that guy in the back. I told you-”

The boss-Mingo-stalked past Trevor, intent on berating his flunky and checking the atmosphere gauges that were next to the inner hatch. Peak was halfway out the door that led further into the compound; Mel was standing flat-footed, following Mingo with slow, heavy-lidded eyes. No one watching and no one close.

Trevor kicked himself over backward in the chair, touching his heels together as he pushed. The contacts in each heel closed, and he felt the base of his life-support unit blast outward, the bottom panel cutting through his suit leg as it went spiraling into the room like a runaway circular saw. White hexachlorathene smoke vomited out of the bottom of the backpack unit in a wide, gushing plume.

As Trevor bounced to a stop on the floor, he joined his hands into a composite fist and hit the sternum-centered strap release: the life-support unit came loose, and he rolled toward the densest accumulation of smoke. Coming out of the snap-roll into a sitting position, he brought his left foot up between his arms, pulling his hands as far apart as he could. He angled his foot sideways, so that the black-painted razorblade taped to the sole of that boot was pressed against the duct tape. He sawed his foot up and down twice, felt the fibers of the tape give-just as gunfire erupted, spanging off the bedrock floor near his chair.

“Mingo, man-don’t shoot! There’s too much smoke: you could hit me-”

“Shoot, asshole-get him! Don’t wait-shoot, shoot!”

By the time they had worked out their sophisticated tactical response, Trevor had pulled apart the remains of the duct-tape cuffs and grabbed down under the collar ring of his spacesuit to pull up the slimline thermal imaging goggles taped there. He tugged hard, felt a moment’s resistance, then heard a plastic pop and a metallic crunch. Shit: busted an eyepiece. He got it out and around his head in a quick motion and snap-rolled again, coming up into another crouch.

The unit-already on-only worked in the right eyepiece now. But with that one eye, he could see the kidnappers’ white silhouettes plainly as they moved around the smoke-filled room, following around the walls, guns out in front, firing occasionally. Mingo was particularly trigger-happy: he’d be dry in another moment. And in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king-

Trevor grabbed one of the mugs off the table, threw it away from himself, against the wall that was directly opposite Mingo.

Who, along with his crew, promptly blasted away at the sound. Mingo’s response was short-lived, however: “Shit! I’m out.” His silhouette jabbed a finger frantically at his gun’s magazine release. Trevor moved toward him, pressed against the same wall, keeping his weight on the sides of his feet.

Mingo had a new magazine out, snapped it up into his weapon-

As he did, Trevor shoved his body against Mingo’s flank, rotating him slightly out from the wall as the thug finished reloading. In the same instant, Trevor reached over the kidnapper’s left shoulder with his left hand and grasped the right side of his jaw, just as Trevor’s right hand locked in a secure grip on the left rear side of the thug’s neck. Trevor uncrossed his arms in a sharp X motion: his left hand yanked Mingo’s head swiftly to the left; the right kept the neck from rotating with that sudden turn. There was a sharp snap, like a piece of well-dried kindling broken over a knee, and Mingo went limp, a shout dying out of him as a breathy gasp.

Trevor snagged the MP-5 in mid-fall as he dropped to one knee, made sure the slide was back, and snapped the selector switch to semiautomatic.

“Mingo-Mingo, man-”

Trevor aimed for the center of Peak’s mass and squeezed twice in rapid succession. Peak screamed, went backward, firing wildly, still screaming without words. Mel froze in place-thank you, stupid-and, taking about half a second to aim, Trevor centered two rounds into him, as well. Staying low, Trevor crossed the room, knowing what he would have to do when he got there.

Peak was still screaming, heard someone approaching. “Help me, man-oh, oh, shit-fuck, help-”

Trevor crouched so he was very close and fired a single round into the center of Peak’s bucking forehead. He snatched up the thug’s pistol-another ten-millimeter Sig Sauer caseless-and headed back to the airlock’s inner door, which he opened wide before returning to the center of the room. He snatched up his life-support unit, reached in through the jagged hole where its base plate used to be, and burned his hands as he yanked out the empty smoke canister that had been installed in place of the second air tank. He reached in again, pulled out a black disk the size of a hockey puck, flipped back a cover, pressed the single concealed button, and placed it in the center of the floor, looking away as he did. There was a flash that he could see quite clearly in his peripheral pickups: the thermite filament fuse had lit-and would burn for about three minutes. He pulled a small packet out of the ruined base of the LSU before strapping the unit back on.

Then over to the table as he pocketed the small packet, found his helmet, latched it on and toggled the communicator as he started moving in the direction of the storm room. “Crossbow, this is Quarrel. Crossbow, this is Quarrel.”

“Quarrel, this is Crossbow. Go.”

“I am in. Beacon is set. Have you acquired lock?”

“Negative, Quarrel. I’ll have to come closer to see the heat from the fuse. Not getting the UV phased-spectrum signal from your beacon at all.”

“Roger. Any sign of laser targeting beams?”

“Negative. Looks clear. No sign of fixed defenses or heavy weapons.”

“Take no chances. Use the antilaser aerosols as you approach.”

“Pretty marginal effect, Quarrel. Wind is over forty klicks, here. And rising.”

Trevor had spun open the storm-room hatch. “Use the aerosols anyway. Out.”

“Out.”

He swung the hatch inward-and found the hostage, taped to a chair in the center of the room. The duct tape was so thick on her that she seemed half-mummified.

He slung the machine pistol, stuck the barrel of Peak’s weapon through a utility ring on his belt, grabbed her chair by the backrest, dragged it out of the door’s sightline, speaking as he went: “We’re getting out. No time to talk. Answer my questions-and only that.” She nodded as he pulled the razor off the sole of his boot, and started sawing at the tape binding her legs.

“Nod for yes. There were eight of them, all told?”

Nod. He moved on to her arms and hands.

“See anything bigger than a machine gun?”

She shook her head.

“You know how to use a rescue ball, right?”

A pause. Then a tentative nod.

Great. That pause meant she didn’t really know. He began to slice at the wraps that bound her midriff to the chair. There were a lot of those. And there was some distant, tentative shouting: the rest of the rogues’ gallery was on the way, no doubt.

He pulled the pack off of his belt, dropped it on the floor in front of her. “Rescue ball. Listen carefully. When you pull the tab, the ball will balloon out at you, so stand back. It’s in two halves, joined by a hinge at the bottom. Sit in the middle. There’ll be a zipper at your feet: pull it up over your head; the ball will expand more as you do. When the zipper can’t go any further, you’ll feel a click. That means you’re sealed in. You’ll find a mask to your right, on the floor. Put it on right away; that’s your O² with chemical rebreather. Gives you about forty-five minutes of air. The hissing you’ll hear around you is okay; that’s inert gas, creating point five atmospheres of pressure in the ball. Wait here.”

Trevor slipped away from the chair, listened beyond the door. The smoke was not quite as thick, but, having filled a single room with only two narrow exits, its dissipation was slower than usual. He knelt, ducked his head around the corner.

One bright white silhouette was just entering the main room, the suggestion of another one, maybe two, hanging back in the corridor’s entryway.

Trevor pulled Peak’s pistol out, sighted carefully, high in the first silhouette’s chest, and fired twice.

The silhouette went down, and after a quick, blind fusillade, the other two ducked back.

So did Trevor-only to discover the hostage trying to pull the tape off her mouth. For one incongruously mischievous moment, he was tempted to make her leave it there-but toggled his radio, instead: “Crossbow, I have the package.”

“Copy that, Quarrel. I see the fuse now, and have locked on. Ordnance is hot and ready to fly. Waiting your mark.”

“Roger, Crossbow. Out.” Turning: “Into the ball. Right now. No talking. We’ve got to go.”

To her credit, she was already pulling the activation tab. The ball’s two halves burgeoned outwards; she sat between them. Trevor nodded approvingly, sidestepped back to the doorway; a thermal glimmer suggested the kidnappers had returned to their earlier covering position at the doorway into the corridor.

This was the tricky part-how to get the loaded rescue ball from the storm room to the exfiltration point he’d chosen. He hoped the last five of the bastards hadn’t had the time to fully suit up; if they had, his plan might not work. But their lack of both time and discipline was on his side. Of course, there was also the backup plan-to call in the heavy artillery-but even in the storm room, there was no guarantee that he and the hostage wouldn’t wind up as corpses themselves. Rockets tend not to be discriminating about who they kill, and the walls of the storm room were designed keep out brief bursts of solar radiation-not hypersonic projectiles.

Trevor turned back, found himself face to face with a Day-Glo orange and reflective-white bubble, topped by a set of heavy handles and a winch loop. He picked up one handle, moved the ball to one side of the pressure door, then set the MP-5 to full automatic. Twenty-five rounds left: not enough to win a gun battle, but that wasn’t his plan anyway. He just had to make sure that they kept their heads down for a few seconds.

Releasing the MP-5 to hang on its sling, and taking Peak’s Sig Sauer in a steady, two-handed grip, he swung to the opposite side of the pressure door and leaned out a bit. From that angle, he could just see the small window in the outer airlock door: a plate-sized thermal anomaly. Taking careful aim, he started to fire. On the third shot, he hit it-

The klaxon started to shriek yet again-now in the triple-time yowling that meant a critical pressure breach. The smoke gusted out in that direction, along with a slow cyclone of papers, napkins, and other rubbish. Trevor stowed the pistol, grabbed the MP-5-just as one of the kidnappers poked his head around the corner. Trevor sent a snap-burst-three, maybe four rounds-in that general direction. The figure ducked back-hit or not, Trevor couldn’t tell.

And didn’t have the time to ascertain: grabbing the top of the rescue ball, he lifted its sixty-three kilos as though it were twenty-five-thankful for the 0.37 Mars gravity that made such a feat possible. He sprinted out the door-the ball and occupant bouncing sharply off the jamb as he went-and then through the already-diminishing maelstrom of escaping air. Halfway across the room, he spun, fired a quick burst at the corridor entry without stopping to check if there were any targets. Trevor just wanted to keep their heads down long enough to get out, because once the kidnappers had all clambered into their spacesuits, there would be plenty of real targets-too many.

As Trevor reached the far wall, he pulled out the ten-millimeter pistol and emptied the remainder of its magazine in two vertical lines, about four feet apart. The rounds did not penetrate, but the metal prefab sheeting was bent, and, at the impact apexes, ruptured. He snapped down his helmet, produced and opened the last small packet he had removed from his LSU: a 1.5-meter cord of C-8 plastic explosive with a pinch-contact igniter-all together, about the size of a shot glass. He stuck one end of the plastique on the wall above the left set of bullet holes, unspooled the rest in a chest-high arc to end at the top of the other vertical line of scars, yanked the four-meter microwire igniter leads out straight-and turned on his heel to fire another burst back at the passageway behind him.

Just in time: an emerging figure ducked back, firing two wild rounds.

Wild rounds, yes-but they weren’t blind, this time: they could see him just as well as he could see them, now that the smoke had been sucked out. Time to go.

Dragging the rescue ball so that it was behind his body, Trevor let the MP-5 fall loose on its lanyard and pulled the safety sleeve off the pinch contacts. He pressed them together.

The blast was not loud in the thin Martian atmosphere, but it tumbled him off the side of the rescue ball. Catching up the MP-5 in his right hand, and the ball in his left, he toggled his helmet’s commo bar with his jaw. “Crossbow, I am removing the package.”

“Quarrel, I see your new doorway. We are locked and off-safety.”

At the jagged hole that he had blasted in the side of the dome, Trevor had to pause to maneuver the rescue ball through without slicing it open on the torn edges of the prefab, all the time keeping his body angled so he could keep an eye on the passageway. Good thing: two spacesuited figures came around that corner, one high, one low-the high one firing with his own MP-5.

Trevor crouched, aimed, dumped the entire magazine: the standing shooter went down, the other one put a crease in the left arm of Trevor’s suit before ducking back behind the doorjamb.

Trevor rolled the rescue ball through the gap-feeling the contents thump awkwardly around as he did so-and popped out into the tan-pink dust swirls of a fifty-kph Martian breeze. “I am out-and it is a hot exfil, Crossbow. Repeat, hot exfil.”

“You call it, Quarrel. I have you only five meters from the target zone, and I see thermal blooms in the building behind you.”

“Do you have smoke?”

“Negative: live warheads only.”

“Give me my range.”

“You are at twelve meters from target. Do you see the gully-at your two o’clock?”

“Roger. Good eyes.”

“You are still danger-close.”

“Just fire on my mark.”

Trevor swerved in the direction of the gully, felt something clip him in the rear of his right thigh as he pushed the rescue ball over its edge. As he dove into the natural trench himself, he yelled, “Mark!”

There was a half second of silence, and then, even through the thin Martian atmosphere, there was a momentary, soaring roar-like an up-dopplering freight train driven by jets-which passed almost directly overhead. It was cut short by a tremendous blast behind him, which sent fragments of stone and metal spattering into and over the trench, and which painted the surrounding rocks with a flickering glaze of orange and red light. Then the light was gone, and, a moment later, the concluding rumble of the detonation had faded as well.

Trevor stood up as the last pieces of debris came down. The entire northeast corner of the dome was gone, some of the edges pounded inward, others torn outwards. Thermal imaging showed the heat of some quickly smothering fires-and one or two prone, rapidly cooling biomasses. Any others were either cowering further inside-or had been reduced to protoplasm.

“Quarrel, we show all clear. Confirm.”

“Crossbow, the LZ is clear.”

“We’ll be there in fifteen seconds. Quarrel, your biomonitors are showing us three suit breaches, two wounds. One of those breaches hasn’t been fully autosealed. Recommend you use suit patches all speed.”

“Already on it, Crossbow.”

Ten seconds later, the transatmospheric assault VTOL-a cubist wasp with ordnance bristling under its wings and belly-swerved into sight, sucking up coils and curlicues of the tan-pink dust as it banked, straightened, and hovered, just a foot off the ground. Trevor picked up the rescue ball, discovered that his left leg was wobbly, got a hand from a tan-and-gray spacesuited figure who hopped down from the payload bay. Together, they hoisted the ball inside the VTOL with one heave.

“Thanks, Carlos.”

“N’sweat, sir. Up you go.”

Leg shaking, Trevor rolled into the VTOL, heard the warning klaxon and saw the orange lights: imminent high-speed closure of the bay’s pressure door. Which it did with a bump and a metallic slap. Trevor lay still for a second, feeling the noradrenal rush begin to fade, prepared to suppress the post-op shakes his body-and mind-always wanted to have, but which he never permitted. Then he propped himself up on his elbows-

And saw a woman emerge from the rescue ball like Venus on the half-shell, her figure still discernible through the heavy clothes and tattered duct-tape remains. She must have seen him looking at her: raven-black hair fanned out as she quickly turned her head toward him. Her startling green eyes smiled when they met his-and tears started to run down her cheeks.

Trev smiled back. “Hi, sis. It’s good to see you, too.”