certain to be well armed and invisible under chromaflage capes.
He sprinted down the track and did the obvious thing: commed a desperate call for help to the Bachou police. Find somewhere safe to hide, the cops said; an armed response team was on the way and would be there inside an hour. “We’ll all be dead by the time they arrive,” Michael said tersely before he cut the com. His next was to the sleeping Anna. To Michael’s frustration, she refused to wake up, but finally she responded, sleepy and confused, far too slow to understand the seriousness of the situation. Suddenly she worked it out. Snapping awake, she listened without a word while Michael laid out the only plan he could think of.
Michael broke out of the timber. He ran past his flier sitting silent on the landing pad and across the track that dropped into the valley in a series of horrific hairpin bends cut into sheer walls of rock. No escape that way, not on foot; too exposed, he decided. Pity they did not have a mobibot: He and Anna would have been well on their way to safety. Without stopping, he commed the flier’s fusion microplant to go online-shut down for most of the week, it would be a good ten minutes before it was flight-ready-and prayed that they would live long enough to use it. He prayed even harder that overconfidence would persuade the new arrivals not to disable it.
Without stopping, he ran straight into the house. “Anna! Anna!”
“Here, Michael,” Anna said, no more than her head visible in the gloom, the rest of her body unseen below a hunter’s chromaflage cape. She shoved a second cape and a thin-bladed ten-centimeter kitchen knife into his hands. “Now, if you think I’m going to
Michael placed his hand across her mouth. “Anna,” he hissed, “I know you’re marine-trained and I’m not, but we don’t have time to argue this. I love you, so trust me. If it’s me they are after, and I’m damn sure it is, it’s up to me to deal with it. Let me find out what they’re up to, then we can decide what happens next. Okay?”
Anna’s mouth tightened into a slash of disapproval; she nodded, anyway.
“Good,” Michael whispered, relieved that she was not going to argue the point. “No neuronics for the next ten minutes; they are bound to have scanners running. Set them to standby so they think we’re sleeping. Done that?”- Anna nodded again-“Good. Ten minutes from now, that’ll be at 03:55 exactly, turn them on for ten seconds, I’ll update you, and we’ll take it from there. If you don’t hear from me, go back to standby, wait another five minutes, try again, and so on.”
If I’m still alive to com you, that is, Michael wanted to add, his stomach churning with fear. Anna nodded again.
“Good. Go!” A fleeting kiss, a quick hug, and Anna left, a shapeless blur under her chromaflage cape disappearing into the darkness.
Michael ran out of the house and sprinted hard up the track. Past the lander and he was back into the trees; he kept moving along the path for as long as he dared, gambling that whoever these people were, they would take their time to get close to the house. Why would they hurry on what ought to be a simple job? Provided that they had not picked up his infrared signature from the bluff, they would think he and Anna lay in bed asleep, alone in an unlocked house with no security alarms in the middle of nowhere, with no place to run.
Michael prayed that the attackers-he had no doubts, none at all, that they had come there to kill him- assumed exactly that. The more they believed this was going to be a quick and easy operation, the less prepared they would be when he tore their guts out.
Renewed fear banded Michael’s chest; for a moment he struggled to breathe. He and Anna would have been the softest of soft targets. He just hoped that was what the bad guys reckoned.
An easy job. Remote location. A slow, careful entry. Locate the bedroom. Find the bed. Two shots to his head, two to Anna’s. Couple more for luck. Confirm they were both dead. Withdraw. Fly away. How difficult could it be?
Far enough, he decided. Ahead, the ridge narrowed to a neck that brought the cliffs in close on both sides, forcing the path to negotiate a way through a small tangle of boulders. The attackers were compelled to come this way; they had no choice.
Carefully, Michael positioned himself off the path, his ambush position screened by the boulders at his back. His attackers would have to turn around to see him when they came past. Arranging the chromaflage cape to leave just his eyes exposed, he settled down, knife in one hand and a large rock in the other.
The wait seemed a long one, though it probably was not. Michael was relieved when a faint chink of stone on stone broke the stillness. His heart was racing now, the adrenaline pouring into his bloodstream. All of a sudden, the tiny patch of dirt and rock visible through the slit in his cape became the only thing that mattered in the entire universe. Michael slowed his breathing, exhaling softly downward to minimize the heat signature rising from his body. Please do not turn around, he prayed, his body poised to explode into action; please keep moving.
The first attacker drifted into view, a distorted blur. It appeared to be a man, a worryingly big man, broad- shouldered, tall, dressed in a commercial chromaflage cape-not a good one, thankfully; Michael’s neuronics had no trouble locking on to him-and carrying a small machine pistol sticking out from under his cape and clearly visible, a bulky silencer screwed to the muzzle. Sloppiness like that could get him killed, or so Michael hoped. Head and gun swinging from side to side, the man walked past Michael and on down the track. Michael stopped breathing, but the man never turned to check behind him. Anxiously, Michael waited; there had to be someone backing up the man on point.
There was, and he was not far behind. Backup was a chromaflaged blur in the darkness, his machine pistol visible, swinging slowly from side to side, just like Point’s. Thankfully, he did not look back. More sloppiness. These two were rank amateurs; they deserved to have their asses kicked. But he had a problem. The two men were in sight of each other, so he would get only the one chance. He had another problem. Should he wait to see if there was a third member of the team?
“Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered. The longer he waited, the closer the attackers got to Anna. But if he went too early and there was a third man, he risked a shot in the back.
Michael decided to go with what he knew. He needed to make his move. If he waited and found himself with three men to deal with, his chances of rolling them up one after the other without being detected were nil.
Steeling himself, he stood up; with infinite care, he eased himself onto the path behind Backup, a quick glance back confirming that there was no third man. Reassured, Michael knew he had to get this right. He did not have the luxury of wasting time. The second he neutralized Backup, Point’s neuronics would go ballistic, telling him there was something seriously wrong with Backup’s health. If Michael did not have Backup’s machine pistol pointing at Point when he turned around to see what was up, things were going to get difficult.
Michael closed the gap, but something must have warned Backup. The man started to turn, but Michael was ready for him. He moved quickly, his arm already up, the rock in his right hand slashing down brutally hard and fast, hitting the side of the man’s head with sickening force, the impact barely audible. For a moment, Michael worried that he had not done enough. But he had: Backup crumpled slowly to the ground with a soft
Point glanced back, his confusion obvious. “Jed,” he hissed, “what’re you doing, you dumb son of a bitch?”
For an instant, Michael wondered why the man did not shoot. At that distance, he could not miss. Belatedly, the reason dawned on him. Point could not see him. He would think he was looking at the unlucky Jed, a crumpled shape on the ground under a chromaflage cape. Michael snatched his chance.
“Aaahhh,” he moaned softly, waving his free arm at Point. “Aaaahhh … shit … sorry … tripped … head.”
“What’s up?” Point whispered. “For chrissakes, you clumsy sack of shit. We don’t have time for this. We need to kill Helfort and get the hell out of here.” He moved a few steps back along the track toward Michael.
Michael had not been lying there wasting time. Concealed under Backup’s body, he worked frantically to get the man’s fingers off the trigger guard.
Point stopped. Michael’s heart did, too, when the attacker’s gun swung up.
“Hang on,” Michael mumbled. “Hurts … head.” His fingers closed around the trigger; with a convulsive heave, he rolled Backup’s dead weight off his arm and pulled the gun clear. The instant it came free, he fired one-handed, the machine pistol firing with a stuttering
“Oh,” Point said softly, sounding puzzled.
