She did, unbelieving.
"We keep the dogs back long enough to get in through the wall. The rest of the plan doesn't change."
Dry-mouthed, Clarke watched them circling. "What if they're armored? What if they're wired?"
"They'll be pulse-proof. No electronics. The usual tweaks and nothing more." He zipped up the knapsack and slung it across his back, tightening the straps around shoulders and waist.
"Are these guns pulse-proof? Are—" A sudden, disquieting memory rose to the surface of her thoughts: machinery in her chest, hiccoughing. "What about our implants?"
"Myoelectric. EMP doesn't bother them, much. What's the H&K set on?"
She checked. "Conotoxins. Ken, I've never even fired a gun before. My aim—"
"Will be better than mine." Lubin clambered back down into the tilted cabin behind their seats. "You may get off easily. I rather suspect they'll be focusing on me."
"But—"
"Gloves," he said, sealing his to the gauntlets beneath his clothing.
Clarke pulled her gloves over shaking hands. "Ken, we can't just—"
He paused, fixed her with his sightless eyes. "You know, I liked you better when you were suicidal. You weren't nearly so chickenshit."
She blinked. "What?"
"I'm losing patience, Len. Five years of guilt-ridden self-pity should be enough for anyone. Was I wrong about you? Were you just wallowing, all this time? Do you want to save the world or not?"
"I—"
"This is the only way."
Is there anything you wouldn'tdo, then? For the chance to take it all back? Back then the answer had been obvious. It was obvious now. Freezing, familiar determination reignited inside her. Her face burned.
Lubin nodded, only his eyes blinded. He sat on the floor, braced his back against the bulkhead behind Clarke's seat. "Noseplugs."
They'd improvised them en route, little wads of the same semipermeable tape that blocked her intake. Clarke stuffed one up each nostril.
"I blow a hole in the hull," Lubin said, inserting his own. "That drives the dogs back long enough for us to exit the chopper. Once we're outside, point me at the main entrance. That's twelve o'clock. All target bearings will be relative to that, not to where I happen to be facing at any given time. Do you understand?"
She nodded, forgetting for an instant, then: "Yes."
"They'll charge as soon as we're in the open. Call it. Close your eyes when I give the word. I'll be using the flash grenades; they'll be incapacitated for at least ten seconds. Shoot as many as you can. Keep moving."
"Got it. Anything else?"
"Lose the gloves once we're free of the heat. The sight of a diveskin might start him thinking."
Patient killers paced just past the canopy. They seemed to look her in the eye. They smiled, showing teeth the size of thumbs.
Just the usual tweaks, she thought, giddy and terrified. She braced her back against the canopy, raising her gloved hands to protect her face.
"We can do this," Lubin said softly. "Just remember what I told you."
He's not trying to kill us. She wondered just who that applied to.
"You really think he expects us to survive."
Lubin nodded.
"But does he know you're blind?"
"I doubt it." He pointed his gun across the cabin. The thumbwheel locked onto clusterfuck. "Ready?"
This is it, Lenie girl. Your one shot at redemption.
Don't fuck it up.
"Go," she said, and shut her eyes.
Lubin fired. Clarke's lids glowed sudden, bloody orange.
Her diveskin took most of the heat from the neck down, but in that moment it was as if someone had thrust her head into a kiln. She swore the heat blasted the very skin from her face. She clenched her teeth and held her breath and cursed the chances Lubin wouldn't take: it might tip him off if he sees our hoods.
The air roared and crackled, sizzled with spatterings of liquid metal. She could hear the crack of Lubin's pistol firing again at her side. She realised, distantly amazed, that the pain was gone. Fear and adrenaline had swept it away in an instant.
The world dimmed beyond her eyelids. She opened them. A hole gaped in the side of the chopper. Soft alloy glowed intermittently at its edges; acrylic peeled and blackened. Chunks of shredded canopy guttered on the floor, one scant centimeters from her left foot.
Lubin fired a third time. A spread of incendiary needles shot through the breach and into the darkness beyond, a tiny, devastating meteor shower. Clusterfucks were designed to sow a thousand lethal pinholes across a wide area, but there'd been little chance to disperse across the meager width of the cabin. Almost two meters of solid fuselage had been reduced to silvery chaff and blown outward; a fan of dispersed wreckage steamed and congealed on the ground outside.
"How big is the hole?" Lubin snapped over ambience.
"Meter and a half." She choked and coughed on the stink of scorched plastic. "Lots of little bits past—"
Too late. Lubin, blindly brazen, had already launched himself through the hole. He sailed over the scree nearest the threshold and hit the ground shoulder-first, rolling to his feet in an instant. A lozenge of hot metal smoldered like a branding iron against his left shoulder blade. Lubin writhed, reached around and pushed it loose with the muzzle of his gun. It dropped to the ground, tarry with half-melted copolymer. A ragged hole smoked on Lubin's shirt. The injured diveskin beneath squirmed as if alive.
Clarke gritted her teeth and dove after him.
A bright spark of pain, needle-sharp and needle-fine, ignited briefly on her forearm as she sailed through the breach. In the next instant blesséd cool air washed over her. She landed hard and skidded. Two great carcasses twitched and burned before her, grinning behind charred lips.
She scrambled to her feet, peeling off her gloves. Sure enough, the rest of the pack had retreated for the moment, holding the perimeter at a more discreet distance.
Lubin swept his weapon back and forth, pure threat display. "Lenie!"
"Here! Two down!" She reached his side, pointing her H&K at the circling horde. "The others backed off." She turned him clockwise. "Entrance that way. Twelve o'clock." Remember, she told herself. Bearings from the entrance, bearings from the—
He nodded. "How far are the dogs?" He held his pistol two-handed, arms extended, elbows slightly bent. He looked almost relaxed.
"Uh—twenty-five meters, maybe." Bearings from the entrance…
"Smart. Just past effective range."
Bearings from—"Your range is twenty-five lousy meters?"
"Wide spread." It made sense, of course—a useful cheat for a poor marksman, and blind was as poor as it got. The catch was a needle-cloud so widely dispersed that distant targets passed through it untouched. "Try yours."
Clarke aimed. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking. She fired once, twice. The H&K bucked in her grip. Its bark was surprisingly soft.
The enemy stared back, undiminished.
"Missed. Unless they're immune, Ken, you said they were tweaked—"
Sudden motion to the right, a rush along the flank. "Two o'clock," Clarke hissed, firing. Lubin turned and shot a firestorm of needles. "Eight!" He swung and fired again, barely missing Clarke as she ducked beneath his outstretched arms.
Splinters of fire laced the ground to both sides. Three more dogs were down, lacerated by flaming shrapnel. Two more, fitfully ignited, fled back out of range. Still the pack was mute. The perimeter boiled with silent anger.