[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
- between two adjacent buildings. There was activity on the Bharaputran
security guards comm links, he found by keying his helmet to their audio
bands. The first
What the hell. Did you hear that? Joe, check sector four
, stirrings of response. More to follow, he was sure, though he had no
intention of waiting around for it.
Around a corner.
There
. A three-story, pleasant white building with lots of plants and landscaping,
big windows, balconies.
Not quite a hospital, not quite a dormitory, vague, ambiguous, discreet. the
life house it was labelled in Jacksonian double-speak.
The death house. My dear old home
. It was terribly familiar and terribly strange. Once, it had seemed quite
splendid to him. Now it seemed... smaller than he remembered.
Taura raised her plasma arc, adjusted its beam to wide
, and removed the locked glass front doors in an orange, white, and blue spray
of flying, spattering melt. Dendarii bounded through, splitting right and
left, before the glow of the spattered globs of glass died. One took up
station patrolling the ground floor. Alarms and fire alarms went off: Dendarii
killed the noisy speakers they passed with more plasma fire, on the fly, but
units in more distant parts of the building kept up a muted clamor. Automatic
sprinklers made steam and a mess in their trail.
He ran to catch up. A uniformed Bharaputran security guard in brown trimmed
with pink lurched into the corridor ahead.
Three Dendarii stunners simultaneously downed him as his own stunner beam was
absorbed harmlessly by the ceiling.
Taura and two female Dendarii took the lift tube toward the third floor;
another trooper passed them in hope of gaining the roof. He led Thorne and the
remaining troopers out into the second floor foyer and to the left. Two
unarmed adults, one a night-
gowned woman pulling on a robe, were felled the instant they appeared.
There
. Through those double doors. They were locked, and someone was beating on
them from the inside.
"We re going to break the door open," Thorne bellowed through it. "Back away,
or you ll get hurt!" The pounding stopped.
Thorne nodded. A trooper adjusted his plasma arc to narrow beam, and sliced
through a metal bolt. Thorne kicked the doors wide.
A blond young man fell back a pace, and stared at Thorne with bewilderment.
"You re not the firemen."
A crowd of other men, tall boys, filled the corridor behind the blond. He did
not have to remind himself that these were a bunch of ten-year-olds, but he
wasn t sure about the perceptions of the troopers. Every variation of height
and racial mix and build was represented, much more motley than the Greek-god
look one might have anticipated from their garden-and-fountain setting.
Page 43
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Personal wealth, not personal beauty, had been the ticket for their creation.
Still, each was as glowingly healthy as the particularities of his genetics
permitted. They all wore uniform sleepwear, bronze-brown tunics and shorts.
"Front," Thorne hissed, and shoved him forward. "Start talking."
"Get me a head-count," he ripped out of the corner of his mouth as Thorne
pulled him past.
"Right."
He d practiced the speech for this supreme moment in his mind ten thousand
times, every possible variation. The only thing he knew for certain that he
was not going to start with was, I m Miles Naismith
. His heart was racing. He inhaled a huge gulp of air.
"We re the Dendarii Mercenaries, and we re here to save you."
The boy s expression was repelled, scared, and scornful all mixed. "You look
like a mushroom," he said blankly.
It was so... so off-script
. Of his thousand rehearsed second lines, not one followed this. Actually,
with the command helmet and all, he probably did look a bit like a big gray -
not the heroic image he d hoped to -
He tore off his helmet, ripped back his hood, and bared his teeth. The boy
recoiled.
"Listen up, you clones!" he yelled. "The secret you may have heard whispered
is true! Every single one of you is waiting in line to be murdered by House
Bharaputra surgeons. They re gonna stick somebody else s brain in your head,
and throw your brain away. That s where your friends have been going, one by
one, to their deaths. We re here to take you to Escobar, where you ll be given
sanctuary - " Not all the boys had assembled in the corridor in the first
place, and now ones at the rear of the mob began to break away and retreat
into individual rooms. A babble started to rise from them, and yells and
cries. One dark-haired boy tried to dart past them to the corridor beyond the
big double doors, and a trooper grabbed him in a standard arm-lock. He
screamed in pain
and surprise, and the sound and shock seemed to blow the others back in a
wave. The boy struggled without effect in the trooper s iron grip. The trooper
looked exasperated and uncertain, and stared at him as if expecting some
direction or order. "Get your friends and follow me!" he yelled desperately to
the retreating boys. The blond turned on his heel and sprinted.
"I don t think they bought us," said Thorne. The hermaphrodite s face was pale
and tense. "It might actually be easier to stun them all and carry them. We
can t afford to lose time in here, not with that damned thin perimeter."
"No - "
His helmet was calling him. He jammed it back on. Comm-link babble burst in
his ears, but Sergeant Taura s deep voice penetrated, selectively enhanced by
her channel. "Sir, we need your help up here."
"What is it?"
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]