Obviously, they still had some hope of taking him alive—otherwise they would have shot him down as he dangled helplessly from the rope. And that might prove to be a bigger mistake than they knew, because by laying down a sleep-fog they had effectively blinded everyone on the roof. Even infrareds and light-amps would be of limited use, especially if they kept overloading their scanners with reflected laser fire. If he could just figure out a way to use that to his advantage.
The soft hum of a flyer interrupted his thoughts. Looking up, he could make out just a hint of blue-violet grav light approaching from the west. Coming in very low.... There were times when stupid chances were the only ones available. Standing upright again, Jensen ran for the stairway shed.
His movement didn't go unnoticed. Before he had taken two steps three lasers had opened fire, two of the beams brushing his chest and arm. But here again the thick fog worked in his favor, scattering away much of the light and leaving something his flexarmor could handle without much trouble. For an instant the heat of the beams burned a path of clear air, and Jensen caught a glimpse of bulky helmets and armor. Doubling his speed, he kept moving, trying to take advantage of his attackers' momentary blindness.
It was a short reprieve. Within a second or two the smoke again exploded with light as laser fire crisscrossed his chest. Gritting his teeth, Jensen twisted aside, hoping he was still going the right direction. Above, the flyer's hum was getting louder.
He almost missed the shed completely, his outstretched hand brushing it as he ran past. Skidding to a halt, he felt around, located the door. It was locked.
Behind him came the faint sound of something moving swiftly toward his head. Spinning around, he threw his left arm upward in a block and countered with a kick to his attacker's midsection. The other went down with a crash; and, as heavy footsteps converged on him, Jensen snatched out his nunchaku. Blinking sweat from his eyes, more acutely conscious of his blindness than ever, he shrugged off his pack and began swinging.
The battle was short but furious. Jensen caught at least two of the attackers with what were probably disabling blows, despite their armor, and took nothing worse than a few bruises in return. Swinging his nunchaku in a wide arc to keep any others at bay, he stepped back to the stairwell door and snapped a kick at the lock.
The panel shattered, and behind Jensen pandemonium suddenly erupted. At least five laser beams caught him squarely in the back, feeling like a giant welding torch beneath the flexarmor. Jensen gasped... but his body was already moving, his legs bending and straightening convulsively, his hands finding purchase on the edge of the shed roof, his arms pulling him up and over to sprawl atop the structure as the lasers continued to blast at the doorway below.
For a moment he lay on his side on the shed roof, breathing as hard as he could through the gas filter and waiting for the pain in his back to ease. He had only seconds before his dazzled opponents discovered he had not, in fact, gone into the stairway and reached the obvious conclusion. Pushing himself up into a crouch, he looked upward. The flyer's gravs were more visible now, and Jensen was able to make out the craft's landing skids and lower fuselage. It was drifting slowly toward him, and for the first time he noticed a quiet spraying sound. His nunchaku was still in his right hand, shifting his grip, he took one of the sticks in each hand, the chain stretched taut between them. Distances were impossible to judge accurately in the fog, and the extra twenty centimeters of reach the nunchaku provided might be crucial. Bracing himself, Jensen watched the light move closer. A few more seconds—
Abruptly, the flyer twitched. Simultaneously, two laser beams shot at Jensen from below. He'd been spotted.
The blackcollar didn't hesitate, but jumped upward with all his strength, hoping fervently the flyer was still where it had been when the scattered laser light cut it off from his view. For a long moment he floated in glowing mist then, abruptly, he was above the fog, and hovering squarely above him was the flyer. Almost out of reach and at the top of his arc Jensen's arms whipped up, catching the flyer's left landing skid with the nunchaku chain.
For a second he dangled there, taking stock of the situation. The flyer was like the ones used as spotters by the collies on Plinry, the underside loading hatch and one of the side doors would be accessible from his skid. Behind the hatch a wide nozzle was directing a rain of heavy-looking droplets to the roof below. An adhesive spray, probably, designed to immobilize all combatants. Twisting up, the blackcollar hooked his legs around the skid, and a moment later was crouching under the boat's left-side door. The crew was undoubtedly aware of his presence, and Jensen had to move fast before they figured out what to do about it. Reaching up, he got a firm grip on the recessed door handle, and with all the speed and strength he could muster began smashing his nunchaku into the window at the door's right.
Boats of this size had never been meant for heavy combat, and their windows weren't designed to take that sort of punishment. His third blow sent hairline cracks through the thick plastic, and his seventh smashed it completely. Standing upright on the skid, his left hand still on the outer handle, he reached in through the broken window and groped for the lock mechanism.
Abruptly, the craft bucked under his feet, twisting and bouncing as the pilot finally reacted. But the maneuver was just a little too late. Jensen had a solid grip now, and all the bouncing would do would be to keep the boat's crew from interfering with him. The boat twisted right, then left as he found the inside handle, strained to release it, and then, as the boat dipped sideways and his feet slid off to dangle in midair, he popped the catch. The door flew open, and as the boat leveled off again the blackcollar swung himself inside.
They were on him instantly—three of them, unarmored, apparently trying to overwhelm him by sheer numbers. Under normal circumstances an easy fight—but Jensen was tired and hurt, and it took ten or fifteen seconds to beat them into unconsciousness. Ten or fifteen seconds too long for as he turned toward the pilot, he saw the wild, white eyes staring at him out of a face of sheer terror. And beyond the pilot the distant city lights tilted crazily in the windscreen.
They hit the side of the building with a cacophony of grinding metal and a shock that sent Jensen hurtling through space toward the broken nose of the boat. He never felt the impact of his landing.
A hundred kilometers south of Calarand, the storm had broken with full force. Lightning flashed almost continuously across the black sky, accompanied by solid sheets of rain and hail that ranged from droplet-size to as big as a fist. None of the latter had hit Kwon yet, but he knew it would just be a matter of time.
Sprawled on his stomach at Kwon's feet, Hawking gave no indication he was even aware of the storm. His face glued to the telescope in front of him, his hand resting lightly on its focusing knob, he hadn't moved for at least ten minutes, ignoring completely the water that was undoubtedly pouring in under his poncho. Kwon admired the other's calmness under such rotten conditions, though he himself was perfectly willing to die for his comrades, some of these preliminaries drove him crazy.
"It's averaging about two meters too far north," Hawking's voice came faintly between thunderclaps.
Peering into the lightning-wracked sky, Kwon located the tiny dot fluttering at the other end of his kilometer-long molecular filament. Directly below the kite the top of Cerbe Prison was visible, the rest of it hidden behind an intervening hill. That the prison staff was unaware of the intruder overhead was practically a given, with no metal in either the kite or the device dangling from it, the prison's radar would show virtually nothing, and the rain and hail effectively neutralized sonic and pulsed-laser sensors. A good thing, too, because this could take a while. Experimentally, Kwon took a step to his right and let half a meter of filament run from his reel. The wind at ground level was generally blowing due east, but the kite had found a layer of air with a slight northern component mixed in. The random thunderstorm-sized gusts didn't help, either. "How's that?" he asked Hawking.