'First I'll want every AI-net access code in your possession, which I'll check at random while we speak. I'll next want everything you can tell me about the disposition of ECS forces here, inside information on contacts and the status of ECS commanders. Like, for example, who is running you, who are your contacts, and what do they look like.' She pulled a palm-top out of her pocket. 'I've got numerous pictures in here I'll want you to look at and identify. I know who many of them are, so if you lie, I'll find out.' She gave a metallic smile. 'Next I'll want you to tell me how you found out about Carl, right from the start, listing who ECS has identified in the Jovian Separatists and the double agents there.'
Something quite cold and hard solidified inside Cormac at that moment. In two hours these people intended to detonate a CTD to wipe out two battalions of ECS soldiers. During the time leading up to that, Samara intended to put him through quite easily imaginable agony. But she wouldn't kill him unless it was proven he wasn't an ECS agent. They intended to take him away and continue… interrogating him for
Single-strand monofilament was usually used as a cutting weapon, but never for long since though it was incredibly tough, it could develop faults and would often break. For many applications ECS used braided monofilament because it was tough and still narrow enough for a lot of it to be packed into a small space, but it wasn't usually used for cutting. Braided monofilament would slice through flesh and, with a bit of sawing, would go through bone, but Samara had been exaggerating about the loop about his neck taking his head off if he snagged it, though certainly it would have cut in enough to kill him.
He considered how he was bound: Skyril must have put a double loop through the friction device to go about each wrist, before running the filament back to the pillar. Certainly, the filament cutting in above and below a wrist would cause debilitating injury, severing nerves, blood vessels and ligaments, but cutting in against the hard nub of the radius bone just up the wrist on the thumb side, would still leave him with a useable hand. Of course the other hand would be useless.
Skyril dumped the gas bottle down before him, while Samara stood up and stepped back. Cormac squirmed right up against the pillar as if to get as far as he could from the torch Skyril was now lighting. The flame ignited—a blue spear searing out from a constellation of bright white dots. He played with the controls, shifting that constellation about and adjusting the shape and length of the flame, slipping it from its hole-cutting to sheet-slicing setting and back again. Then holding the torch in his right hand, he stooped over Cormac. Cormac cringed back, turning his right hand behind him to a particular angle, then stretching out the fingers of his left hand and abruptly pulling it against the loop of filament, hard.
It was the worst pain he had ever felt, but it coincided with Skyril closing a hand on Cormac's neck, crushing a knee into his stomach and bringing the torch down on his thigh. Cormac screamed, brought his left arm out from behind him and round in an arc, not wanting to see the bloody thing that had been his left hand as the edge of it slammed back up into the man's throat. Skyril lurched back towards Cormac's head, taking pressure off the knee. Cormac struck again, keeping the pressure on, pulling Skyril closer, then brought out his right hand, sufficient slack in the filament now available, and reached under the man's jacket. He found the flack gun, pulled it out only halfway and pulled the trigger. Skyril disappeared to one side, most of his guts preceding him in that direction. Samara was moving fast, pulling something tucked into her belt behind her. Not fast enough. The second shot folded her in half, one of her legs flipped up like that of some grotesque ballerina.
Up into a squat now, Cormac fired back into the pillar, severing the monofilament. He stood, brought a foot down on where the hose trailed from the gas bottle, snapping it, then kicked the bottle over. Gas mix coming directly from the bottle ignited from the guttering torch, spewing out a five-foot flame. One good shove with his foot sent it rolling across the floor towards the five others, who were only now reaching for their weapons. Cormac stooped and stepped back, going for cover behind the pillar as pulse-gun fire cut overhead and rained hot foamstone down on him.
Another shot with the flack gun and the bottle exploded. Someone shrieked over that way, which seemed a good thing to him. He stepped round the other side of the pillar, towards where Skyril lay. A flack gun like this only contained fifteen shots. He would need more. He fired repeatedly, was satisfied to see someone's arm and head fragment, continued firing as he stooped down by Skyril. Inside the tattered jacket, slick with blood but still intact: two more clips of explosive bullets. A shot seared across Cormac's shoulder. He considered the bastard task of reloading with only one useable hand, and gazed fully for the first time at his left hand. The monofilament had taken off his little finger, paring it away from the wrist. It had skinned one side of his thumb and taken off the end of it, flensed his palm and taken the skin off the back of his three remaining fingers. It was complete agony but, he could still move those fingers and that stub of a thumb. He used this bloody implement to take up the two clips, then dived for cover behind the pillar again.
A press of his thumb dropped the now empty clip to the floor. Cormac fumbled bloodily to put the next one in, got it into place then banged the gun butt against the floor to engage it all the way. What sounded like three pulse- rifles and some sort of projectile weapon were hammering at the pillar. He sat with his back against the foamstone, waiting for a pause, but it seemed there would not be one. Then a great chunk of stone peeled away and began to fall. A pause. He stretched himself on the floor then rolled out. Targeted and fired. Somebody shrieked and dropped, legs gone, stumps coming down on the plasticrete. Another dived for cover. He realised they cared more about their lives than he did for his, for they had not inhabited the place he had recently occupied. The one diving arrived in cover in pieces. Cormac rolled into a crouch, stood upright. The one with the projectile weapon was fumbling to reload. Cormac walked towards him as he opened fire, and just raised his gun to take careful aim. Material slugs whined past him, flicked his trousers, picked a chunk out of his biceps, pinged the side of the flack gun and hissed past his elbow. He breathed out, squeezed the trigger. His opponent's head disappeared and he slumped out of sight.
Something groaned and crunched. Cormac turned, and watched as the pillar he had sheltered behind twisted, tearing away roof trusses, and collapsed. Wiring and optics fell like lianas dragged down by a falling tree, and were followed by sheets of smoked chainglass which rang against the floor but did not break. He swivelled back, searching for further targets as a wave of dust rolled past him.
There was no one left.
7
Since Dax had seen through his little ruse with his p-top, Cormac had ventured into a local hardware store and bought an underwater pencil cam with a 280 degree viewing head and integral microphone. It now rested in a pot filled with pens and memory sticks sitting on a shelf in his mother's room—where she and Dax usually had their little discussions.
'The editing didn't take,' said Dax. 'I thought it might happen—wanted to retain too much.'
Hannah just gazed at him expressionlessly. After a moment she said, 'It was a bit foolish to take Ian out diving when you knew that.'
Dax waved a hand, smiled. 'He was in no danger. I made sure he had a fully cybernetic suit and for good measure requested a city submind to load to it.'
Cormac swore quietly—a word that was a particular favourite of his brother's during these talks he had with their mother. So Mackerel had loaded to his suit at Dax's instruction. That figured.
'Did they get my turbot?' Dax asked. 'As I understand it I speared a right monster out there.'
'You don't remember?' she asked.
He shook his head. 'They had to remove a lot more this time. Apparently the adrenaline and the sight of blood and death, even if it was that of a fish, caused a synaptic link to partially excised memories.' He grimaced. 'There was more to it than that, but it caused something akin to amplifier feedback with the result that the whole circuit was reinforced. They had to remove the lot.'
'Your turbot will feed the customers of this hotel for the next week, and we've had a substantial amount deducted from our bill.'
'Excellent! I look forward to trying some myself.'
Cormac had already eaten some of the turbot while Dax had been away for editing again—it had tasted fine
