Yes,choma said. I saw.
Where did they get them from?
This is the countryside, hunting is a sport here. Besides, did you think we had a monopoly?
The white fire rivulets had reached the ground. Steam roared up as they floated sinuously along the top of the mud towards Sinon. He scrambled to his feet, and jumped forward. The white fire behind him vanished. Another, brighter, spear lanced out of a shop’s fractured window. He hit the mud, rolling desperately as he brought his grenade launcher to bear.
You’ll kill them,choma warned. sinon’s right leg went dead as the white fire engulfed it. He slamfired the launcher, hand pumping the mechanism with cyborg intent.
Grenades thudded into the upper floor of the shop, detonating instantly. The ceiling split open, hurling down a torrent of rubble as the roof caved in. Three radiant lines of machine gun fire poured through the ground floor windows and into the tumult inside. The white fire evaporated into tiny violet wisps, splattering off Sinon’s leg. He scrambled up, and pushed himself hard for the buildings dead ahead, dragging his useless leg along. Crashing through the first door to land in a deserted bar.
Clever,choma said. I think that’s got them cold.
The white fire had gone out everywhere. Serjeants converged on the little row of prim shops, walking forwards steadily, firing their machine guns continually. The squad had responded to the possessed like antibodies reacting to an incursive virus. Flowing in towards the village from both sides, the reserve squad racing forward. A miniature version of the noose contracting around Mortonridge. They had it encircled within minutes. Then began their advance.
Seventeen of them walked through the smoke that whirled along Main Street, impervious to the flames roaring out of the buildings all around. Their gunfire was concentrated on the shops, aiming their vivid bullets through any gap they could find. Weird lights flickered inside, as if someone had activated a nightclub hologram rig. Steam fountained out through windows and cracks in the wall.
“All right. Enough.
The ring of serjeants held their places ten metres from the central shop, feet apart, juddering in time to the roaring guns.
“ENOUGH. We surrender.” The machine guns fell silent.
Lumps of stone stirred on the mound of rubble which had been the shop’s upper floor, spinning down to splash into the ubiquitous mire. Limbs began to emerge amid a welter of coughing. Six possessed squirmed free, holding up their hands and blinking uncomfortably. More serjeants moved forwards to clamp their necks with holding sticks.
Elana Duncan reached Eayres two hours later. The fires were out by then, extinguished by the rain. She whistled appreciatively as she climbed out of the truck, a sound violent enough to make the marines wince. “Must have been a hell of a fight,” she said in envy. The trucks had halted in the village’s main street. Over half of the buildings around her had been flattened into small hillocks of debris; of those that remained, few were left with roofs. Naked, heat-twisted girders skewered up into the gloomy sky. Black soot stains smeared over entire walls were already dissolving under the rain to reveal deep bullet pocks.
Marines began jumping down from the other trucks in the convoy. It was a familiar routine by now. Urban zones, whatever the size, were occupied by a garrison. They served as emergency reserves and staging post; also a transitory field hospital a lot of the time. The possessed weren’t giving up without a fight. The marine lieutenant in charge started shouting orders, and the troops fanned out to secure the perimeter. Elana and the other mercs began unloading their truck with the help of five mud-caked mechanoids.
First off was a programmable multipurpose silicon hall. An oval twenty-five metres long, with open archways along the sides. It was a standard Kulu Royal Marine corps issue, designed for tropical climates, with an overhang in anticipation of heavy showers, and allowing a constant breeze to filter through. Ordinarily ideal for a place like Mortonridge. Now, they were having to direct the mechanoids to bulldoze up a base from soil and stone which they then sealed over with fast-set polymer. It was the only way to keep the hall’s floor above mud level.
Once that was up, they started moving the zero-tau pods in. A double file of serjeants marched down the main street, escorting three possessed. Elana splashed out to greet them. She enjoyed this part of her duty.
One of the possessed had given up, a man in his late sixties. She’d seen that before. Filthy, torn clothes. Not bothering to heal his wounds. Even the rain was allowed to soak him. The other two were more typical. Dignity intact. Clothes immaculate, not a scratch on them. The rain bounced off as if they had a frictionless coating. Elana gave one of them a long look. A woman in a prim antique blue suit, white blouse with a lace collar, and pearl necklace. Her hair was a solid bottle blonde coiffure that could have been carved from rock for all the wind affected it. She gave Elana a single distasteful glance, defiantly arrogant.
Elana nodded affably at the serjeant guarding her, whose leg was wrapped in a medical package tube. “Humm, she’s the third one of these today. And I thought that woman was unique.”
“Excuse me?” the serjeant asked.
“They enjoy historical figures. I’ve been accessing my encylopedia’s history files ever since this campaign started, trying to place them. Hitlers are quite popular, so’s Napoleon and Richard Saldana, then there’s Cleopatra. Somebody called Ellen Ripley is a big favourite with the women, too; but none of my search programs have managed to track her down yet.”
The blue-suited woman looked dead ahead, and smiled a secret smile.
“Okay,” Elana said. “Bring them in.”
The mercenaries were hooking the zero-tau pods up to their power cells, datavising diagnostics through the management processors. Elana’s ELINT block gave a warning bleep. She rounded on the three prisoners, pulling a high-voltage shockrod from her belt. Her voice boomed out from her facial grille, echoing round the hall.
“Cut that out, shitbrains. You lost, and this is the end of the line. Too late to argue about it now. The serjeants might be too honourable and decent to fry your bodies, but I’m not. And this is my part of the operation. Got that?” The ELINT block quietened. “Good. Then we’ll get along just fine in your final minutes in this universe. Any last minute cigarettes, you can indulge yourselves. Otherwise just keep quiet.”
“I see you have found an occupation which obviously suits you.”
“Huh?” She glanced down at serjeant with the injured leg.
“We met at Fort Forward, just after arriving. I am Sinon.”
Her three claws snapped together with a loud
“We are identical.”
“Glad to see you survived. Though God knows how you managed it. Trying to storm ashore through that weather was the dumbest military decision since the Trojans took a shine to that horse.”
“I think you’re being unduly cynical.”
“Don’t give me that crap. You must have a decent dose of it too, if you’ve survived this long. Remember the oldest military rule, my friend.”
“Never volunteer for anything?”
“Generals always fuck up bad.”
The first zero-tau pod opened. Elana pointed her shock-rod at the blue-suited woman. “Okay, Prime Minister, you first.” Sinon kept the holding stick round her neck as she backed in. Metal manacles closed round her limbs, and Elana switched on a mild current. The woman glared out, her face drawn back with the effort of fighting the electricity.
“Just in case,” Elana told Sinon. “We had a few try to break free once they finally realize their number’s
