“Stop!” she commanded, her voice booming out of the communication block’s external speaker. “The three of you are under arrest. Put your hands on your head, and don’t move.”
All three men turned fractionally, focusing on her. Her neural nanonics began to report malfunctions in half of her suit’s electronics.
“Screw it! We must break them up, even three of them are too powerful. Will, one round EE, five metres in front of them.”
“That’s too close,” Dean said tensely as Will brought the gaussgun to bear. “You’ll kill them.”
“They survived the first barrage,” Jenny said tonelessly. Will fired. A fountain of loam spurted up into the air, accompanied by a bright blue-white sphere of flame. The blast-wave flattened some of the nearby piles of soil.
Jenny’s neural nanonics reported the electronics coming back on-line. The loam subsided, revealing the three men standing firm. A faint whistle was insinuating itself into the datavise band; her neural nanonics couldn’t filter it out.
“One metre,” she snapped. “Fire.”
The explosion sent them spinning, tottering about for balance. One fell to his knees. For the first time there was a reaction; one of the two farmer-types started snarling and shouting. His face above the beard was black, whether from loam or a flashburn she couldn’t tell.
“Keep firing, keep them apart,” Jenny called to Will. “Come on, run.”
Explosions bloomed around the three men. Will was using the gaussgun the way riot police employed a water cannon, harrying the men as they tried to come together. Blasts that would rip a human to pieces barely affected them, at the most they tumbled backwards to sprawl on the ground. He was tempted to land a round straight on one, just to see what it would do. They scared him.
Jenny’s feet pounded over the scorched creepers. The packs and the TIP carbine weighed nothing as her boosted muscles powered up and took the full load. Will was doing a good job, one of the men had been separated from the other two. He was the farmer-type who had shouted earlier. She brought her TIP carbine round and aimed it at his left ankle, neural nanonics allowing her to compensate for the vigorous motion of her body. If they could disable him, they could chase off or kill the other two. A severed cauterized foot wasn’t lethal.
Her neural nanonics triggered a single shot. She actually saw the induction pulse. A complete impossibility, her mind insisted. But a slender violet line materialized in the air ahead of her. It struck the farmer’s ankle and splashed apart, sending luminous tendrils clawing up his leg. He yelled wildly, and tumbled headlong.
“Dean, subdue him,” she ordered. “I want him in one piece. Will and I will fend off the other two.” Her carbine’s targeting circle slithered round on the soldier as she stopped running. He was taking aim with his revolver. They both fired.
Jenny saw luminous purple tapeworms writhing across the neatly pressed khaki uniform. The soldier began to jerk about as if he was being electrocuted. Then the bullet struck her with the force of a gaussgun’s kinetic round. Her suit hardened instantly, and she found herself somersaulting chaotically, grey sky and black land streaking past in a confused blur. There was an instant’s silence. She landed hard, and her suit unfroze. She was rolling, arms and legs jolting the ground sharply.
The gaussgun was roaring three metres away. Will was standing his ground, feet apart to brace himself, swivelling from the hip to send EE rounds chasing after each of the men.
Jenny scrambled to her feet. The soldier and one of the farmers were fifty metres away. They were facing Will, but retreating in juddering steps from the onslaught of projectiles. Somehow she had hung on to the TIP carbine, and now she lined it up. Radiant purple lines shivered across the soldier once more. He threw up his hands, as if he was physically warding off the intense energy pulses. Then both he and the farmer looked at each other. Something must have been said, because they both turned and ran towards the rim of the jungle eighty metres behind them.
Dean Folan dropped his gaussgun and backpack, which allowed him to cover the last thirty metres in two and a half seconds. In that time he fired his TIP carbine twice. The beams tore into glaring purple streamers which knocked the farmer down into the soft loam. With his opponent out for the count, Dean took the last five metres in a flying tackle, landing straight on top of him. The weight of his own body and the suit and his equipment should have been enough to finish it. But the man started to rise straight away. Dean gave a surprised yelp as he was lifted right off the ground, and went for a stranglehold, only to find a hand clamping round each wrist pulling his arms apart. He fell onto his back as the farmer regained his feet. A booted foot kicked him in the side of his ribs. His suit hardened, and he was thrown onto his belly by the force of the blow. The farmer must be a construct made entirely out of boosted muscle! His neural nanonics combat routine programs went into primary mode. He swung the TIP carbine round, and another vicious kick actually cracked the casing. But he lashed out with his free arm, knocking the farmer’s other leg out from under him. The farmer went down heavily on his backside.
Somewhere in the distance the gaussgun was thumping out a stream of EE projectiles.
Both of them struggled into a semi-crouch, then launched themselves. Once again, Dean found himself losing. The farmer’s impact sent him reeling backwards, fighting to keep his feet. Arms with the strength of a hydraulic ram grappled at him. His neural nanonics reviewed tactical options, and decided his physical strength was dangerously inferior. He let himself sway backwards, taking the farmer with him. Then his leg came straight up, slamming into the man’s stomach. A classic judo throw. The farmer arched through the air, snarling in rage. Dean drew his twenty-centimetre fission blade and twisted round just in time to meet the man as he charged. The blade sliced down, aiming for the meat of the right forearm. It struck, cutting through the cloth sleeve. But the yellow glow faded, and it skated across the skin, scoring a shallow gash.
Dean stared at the narrow wound, partly numbed, partly shocked. Will was right, it must be a xenoc. As he watched, the skin on the forearm rippled, closing the gash. The farmer laughed evilly, teeth showing white in his grubby face. He started to walk towards Dean, arms coming up menacingly. Dean stepped inside the embrace, and ordered his suit to solidify below his shoulders. The farmer’s arms closed round him in a bear hug. Composite fibres, stiffened by the suit’s integral valency generators, creaked ominously as the farmer’s arms squeezed. A couple of equipment blocks snapped. Instinct made Dean switch off the fission blade’s power, leaving a dull black blade with wickedly sharp edges. The hostiles seemed capable of controlling and subverting any kind of electrical circuit— maybe if the knife wasn’t powered up . . . He pressed the tip up into the base of the farmer’s jaw.
“You can heal wounds on your arm. But can you heal your brain as it’s sliced in half?” The blade was shoved up a fraction until a bead of blood welled out around the tip. “Wanna try?”
The farmer hissed in animosity. He eased off his grip around Dean’s chest.
“Now keep very still,” Dean said as he unlocked his suit. “Because I’m very nervous, and an accident can happen easily and quickly.”
“You’ll suffer,” the farmer said malevolently. “You’ll suffer longer than you have to. I promise.”
Dean took a pace to one side, the blade remaining poised on the man’s neck. “You speak English, do you? Where do you come from?”
“Here, I come from here, warrior man. Just like you.”
“I don’t come from here.”
“We all do. And you’re going to stay here. For ever, warrior man. You’re never going to die, not now. Eternity in purgatory is that which awaits you. Do you like the sound of that? That’s what’s going to happen to you.”
Dean saw Will walk behind the farmer, and touch the muzzle of the gaussgun to the back of his skull.
“I’ve got him,” said Will. “Hey, xenoc man, one bad move, one bad word, and you are countryside.” He laughed. “You got that?”
The farmer’s dirty lips curled up in a sneer.
“He’s got it,” Dean said.
Jenny came over and studied the strange tableau. The farmer looked perfectly ordinary apart from his arrogance. She thought of his two comrades that had run into the jungle, the hundreds—thousands—more just like him out there. Maybe he had a right to be arrogant.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
The farmer’s eyes darted towards her. “Kingsford Garrigan. What’s yours?”
