side.
It was over in seconds. Then Marten was crawling for an exit. He kicked open a door. A freezing wind howled in, with a dozen stinging snowflakes hitting his face. He needed a parka, a hood and gloves.
Marten scrambled outside, sliding down between two crashed railcars, his feet crunching in snow. Icy, wind- driven particles batted his face. His cheeks were already turning numb. He glanced right and left. Bare trees and rocky ground abounded, and snow, lots and lots of snow. A second glance at the trees showed him some weren’t only bare, but dead or dying, those that couldn’t cope with the new bitter winters.
With slitted eyes, Marten spotted seven armored men crunching through snow. They floundered in the deepest drifts. Three of them cradled heavy machine guns. The other four carried needlers. They were all hard-eyed, their breaths misting against clear visors. Each looked uncomfortable in their armor. It was combat-armor, although not powered. If Marten were to guess, they were used to police armor, which was lighter and easier to wear. Needlers were useless against cyborgs, but they were eminently effective against unarmored humans: namely, he and Nadia.
A man in brown, magnetic-train overalls jumped off a railcar that had tipped onto its side. He staggered over the rail line and waved to the seven men. “Help, help!” the man shouted.
One of the seven aimed his needler at the man.
“No!” the trainman shouted. “I’m in Repairs.”
In the howling storm, Marten never heard the distinctive stitching sound of the firing needler. The mechanic in the brown overalls simply crumpled onto the snow. It caused a watching woman to scream, until they killed her, too.
Marten snarled as he judged the likelihood of killing those seven. They wore combat armor and helmets. His slugthrower fired hardened penetrators, but they would likely fail against armor. The bullets could punch through the visors—those were always the weak points.
Then Osadar appeared. While wearing heavy garments, she bounded across the snow toward the seven. She took ten-meter leaps and moved with amazing speed.
One of the men dropped to a knee, firing his needler. Little metallic flashes showed the stream of shots. A needler at full auto could fire one hundred needles in less than ten seconds. The others now lifted their weapons, aiming at Osadar.
With both hands, Marten aimed his gun and squeezed off a shot. The .38 bucked and one of the combat- armored men staggered, hit but unlikely injured. Several of them turned toward Marten and fired.
Marten dropped behind the rails and the mound of raised dirt it was built on. Bullets and needles hissed overhead.
Then a blaze of gunfire erupted. Nothing seemed to strike the rail mound now. Marten could guess what had happened. The seven would be screaming at each other to kill the cyborg.
Marten popped back up.
Slugs hit Osadar. Needles did, too. The fools didn’t know enough to aim at her head, however, or maybe they tried and missed. Instead, the few hits struck her armored chest-plate. Through it, Osadar moved like greased death. Then she leaped the final distance and landed among them. Her fists punched through visors so heads snapped back hard. One man aimed and let rip with his machine gun, but Osadar kept moving. It meant the man fired at his friends. The heavy slugs tore into combat-armor as he slaughtered two of his team.
Prone, with teeth clenched and with his arms resting on the rail, Marten fired three deliberate shots.
The machine-gun man clawed out his empty magazine and slammed in another. He staggered back then, a testament to Marten’s marksmanship, but it didn’t stop the man. In front of him by ten feet, Osadar twisted the neck of a different killer. She had her back to the machine-gun man and for the first time she had stopped moving. He lifted his weapon. In desperation, Marten shot the rest of his magazine. One of the bullets struck home. The man threw the machine gun into the air as he staggered backward, falling into the snow, his visor a jagged-red ruin.
Osadar disarmed the last killer. Then she grabbed his wrists, yanking them behind his back. She marched him through the snow to the railcars.
Marten was shivering as he stood up. He looked at his hands. They were red. After holstering the gun, he rubbed his hands and put them under his armpits.
Osadar shoved her captive over the rail-line. The man’s visor was open and he grimaced in pain. He had short hair and blood dripped from his broken nose.
“Who ordered you to do this?” Marten asked.
Despite his pain, the man shook his head.
“Twist his arm a little,” Marten said. Osadar complied.
The man grunted in pain and sweat pooled on his face.
“More,” Marten said.
The man winced and breathed heavily, blowing blood droplets onto the snow.
“In the end you’ll tell me what I want to know,” Marten said.
“I know who you are,” the armored man said in a harsh voice. Two of his front teeth were broken.
“Who ordered this?” Marten asked.
The man licked his lips as his pain-racked eyes turned cunning.
“Wrong choice,” Marten said.
“No, wait!” the man shouted, as Osadar began to twist his arm again. “We’re…we’re PHC.”
Marten glanced at Osadar. With her senso-mask, it was even more impossible to tell what the cyborg was thinking.
“Our commander is helping Director Backus,” the PHC thug said. “The director wants you in his custody.”
“Who do you think I am?”
“Marten Kluge, who else?” the man asked. “I saw you on the Nancy Vance Show, you with your talk about everyone going armed. That’s all this world needs now.”
“What does Backus want with me?” Marten asked.
“If I tell you…you have to promise to let me live.”
“If I think you’re telling me the truth, sure.”
“Promise it,” the man said.
“I give you my word.”
The PHC thug swallowed painfully. “And tell your cyborg to let me go.”
Marten shook his head.
The crafty look entered the man’s eyes again. “Okay. I was lying just a second ago. Director Backus wants you dead.”
“Why?”
“Why?” the man laughed, the pain making his eyes bulge. “People like you brought about this war, brought asteroids raining down on Earth. Look around you, at this weather. There hasn’t ever been anything like this in Lebanon Sector. We have to purge the Earth so something like this never happens again. We have to wipe out trouble-makers like you.”
“The cyborgs launched the asteroids, not me,” Marten said. “I tried to stop them.”
“I’ve got news for you,” the man said. “A cyborg is holding my wrists. You’re in league with the world-killers. It’s obvious.”
“He is irrational,” Osadar said.
“At least I’m not a freak like you,” the man said over his shoulder. “Humans need to stick together. Then we’ll win this war. Director Backus knows what to do. The people know it, and so does PHC.”
“Is that why you’re killing innocent people?” Marten asked.
“You’re a dead man, Kluge. Political Harmony Corps remembers its enemies. You’re never going to reach Athens and you’re never going to see your filthy space-borne Jovian marines again.”
Marten stared at the man. This was all so senseless. Why had Hawthorne agreed to go meet Cassius? If only the Supreme Commander could have seen the bigger picture.
“Knock him out,” Marten said. “Then we have to figure out what we’re going to do.”
The man tried to say more. Osadar spun him around and hit him hard, but not hard enough to crack his skull.
