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the nighted city. Once she found a column of armored personnel carriers across an intersection, moving out
from some National Guard armory to maintain order in the chaotic streets.
Crock. A plasma bolt slammed into the side of one vehicle, through the thin armor and into the fuel
supply. Vaporized fuel sprayed inside the troop compartment and exploded. The turret with its 25mm
autocannon flipped straight up, twirling end-over-end. The machine behind the one she'd shot tried to halt
and couldn't, ramming into the rear of the burning wreckage. The smell of scorched metal almost overrode
the roast-pork stink of burning flesh. Gwen drove through the gap between the wrecked APC and the one
ahead of it.
"That ought to slow them a little," she said, to the pulse of her breathing as she ran. Eighteen
surviving plasma guns were entirely too many to leave behind her. Most probably the humans were too
terrorized to pursue, but there was no sense in taking chances.
seven minutes.
***
shield down.
the transducer whispered in Gwen's mind.
containment will fail in fourteen point seven three minutes,
the transducer said.
The AI's voice sounded in his mind. Kenneth Lafarge rose from his crouch atop the roof and
pointed a hand.
Ptung. A thread-thin line spun out from the cuff of his softsuit and whipped across the gap,
slapping onto the metal of a support on the warehouse root. He took a coil around a stanchion on the
building he stood on, pulling until the monomolecular thread came taut and sank half a finger's width into the
steel. Then he applied the solvent; the thread cut off from the spool and merged with the glob of ice-clear
material that anchored it there.
There were a half-dozen guards on the warehouse roof, equipped with heavy slug-throwers and
native night-sight goggles. He recognized the make of weapon: designed for long-range sniping and to
penetrate light metal armor. They would probably punch through his softsuit with a square hit, and certainly
do him no good inside even if they didn't. With a slight sigh of regret, he raised the plasma rifle.
Crack. Bits of flesh and metal spattered across the rooftop. The guard's rifle and ammunition
exploded with a run of malignant crackles, like heavy firecrackers. Vaporized metal and organic steam
blossomed upward. The others went to ground and began firing back. Brave men, Lafarge thought. Not
very smart, but brave. Heavy bullets whipcracked through the air around him, or hammered into brick.
Through brick, in most cases; the walls of the apartment building he stood on wouldn't stop hard-point
rounds traveling at that speed. Others keened off metal closer to him, with each leaving a red-yellow flash
of spark behind it.
He traversed the aimpoint of his weapon toward one set of muzzle flashes. Crack. This time the
plasma released its energy on the thin sheet metal in front of a rifleman. The man reared up screaming, his
face and torso ablaze from the finely-divided molten metal. Still burning, he plunged off the edge of the
warehouse roof and into the street like a meteor through the night.
The others broke in horror and fled. Lafarge ignored them. Instead he sprang and hooked an arm
and a leg over the thread between the buildings. It cut through the street clothing he wore over the softsuit
as if the fabric were air, but the smart-armor gripped it in frictionless diamond-hard runnels. He slid down it
in a long arching swoop, rolling over the parapet onto the flat roof and coming erect.
Ten meters away, the glass of a skylight shattered as a heavy bullet struck out from within. Reflex
and the AI's prompting brought Lafarge around, weapon rising. Not even a cyber-warrior's reflexes could
outmove a .50 round already fired, though. It hit him twice, glancing. The first on his forearm, smashing it
aside and making the fingers fly open in reflex. The second impact nicked the plasma rifle.
Lafarge looked down. The guide-coil of the barrel was cut. With an angry snarl he cast it aside and
signaled for the vibration-knife. That chittered out, a yard of wire outlined in the shape of a sword. He
slashed at the tarpaper and sheet metal beneath his feet, sending up gouts of sparks as he savaged the thin
galvanized steel.
biobomb subroutine located,
data follows.
"Damn, there's a self-destruct sequence!"
Even the drakensis wasn't totally insane, then—there was a way to destroy it safely. He levered
up a flap of roof and looked down. Fiberboard panels, forming the ceiling of a corridor below, with power
lines and ventilation ducts.
"Good." Initiate biobomb self-destruct sequence.
initiated, three minutes, counting.
He leaped, relying on his weight to punch through into the space below.
***
do not fire,
the AI said.
the machine told him with infuriating calm.
five minutes,
following peripheral functions lost to enemy infiltration.
No more than two blocks away. Seconds away. Her lungs stretched, feet hammered. Her human
guards were firing from the roof of the warehouse. A plasma bolt arched out from another roof nearby,
another, a third. One man plunged down, burning, and the rifle fire stopped. Something large and dark cut
the angle between the two buildings in a swooping movement, dropped flat on the roof itself. Gwen's snarl
was soundless, but it had the rage of territorial violation behind it.
He dares!
An object dropped from the roof and clattered at her feet as she reached the front entrance. A
flick of the eyes took it in. Plasma rifle. Inoperable. She shrugged out of the backpack shield in the same
motion; it was scorching-hot anyway, and wouldn't take another hit.
The ozone smell of the fusion reactor and the lingering, crinkling scent of the gateway's byproducts
overrode all else in the building. The two guards cried out in relief as she charged through the door.
"Vulk!" she snapped, silencing them.
One pointed. Both followed as best they could.
***
"Get out of my way!" Carmaggio snarled.
The National Guard officer, under his helmet, looked much younger than the policeman. And much
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