The reading from Rennin’s glasses directs Drake upstairs, so he leaps three steps at a time towards the blasting music. He enters the dance and bar area where people are looking completely smashed and totally oblivious. They don’t seem to notice him since he’s wearing black. A couple of them see the rifle but these people appear difficult to intimidate; he even gets a wink from someone he’s not sure he should be attracted to. Another shot—barely audible—registers to him and his focus is renewed.
The reading is suddenly behind him. He turns to see the entrance to the toilets, and moves into them quickly. The toilet is too small, though he knows Rennin is somewhere in this general direction. The reading comes from much farther out than this little area.
Taking a moment to survey the room he soon spots the broken stall door and the open window. The reading in the glasses suddenly vanishes. He launches himself through the opening onto the roof, rifle at the ready. After taking a moment to secure his position, he starts moving quickly.
“All units this is Four-Niner, I’m on the rooftops of Starsprite and need backup immediately. White Rabbit may be down.”
“Copy, Four-Niner, exact location?” It is Serro Hopper’s voice, Drake’s immediate superior.
“Come down on my transmission. Out.”
He cuts off the communicator and heads over the roof as fast as he can, scanning both left and right with his weapon, maintaining a steady aim. Drake runs over several of the rooftops before seeing a figure clutching its abdomen, approaching the far edge of the local roofing system.
“Contact! Android!” Drake calls into the com-unit and opens fire, taking three shots.
The first two miss but the third strikes the construct in the right shoulder blade throwing it forwards and off the roof.
Drake hears a loud smash and a few people crying out in surprise at street level. He runs across to peer over the edge, in time to see the android rolling off the wreck of a car to begin limping up the street.
“Target marked, heading west of Block G, looks wounded.”
Several acknowledgements come back to him from the other units. Drake is about to find a way down, when he hears a moan of pain. He swings around but sees nothing. He climbs up to the nearest roof peak to see a bloodied, mangled, mess of a man lying next to a gaping hole in the steel roof that is getting bigger as he watches.
“I need a medic at my transmission location immediately, White Rabbit is down, confirmed.”
“Copy, forty-nine, a gunship is en route and almost there. Is he alive?”
“Affirmative. Not for long, though, target did a number on him but it looks like he managed to shoot it. Both his arms are broken, his left leg has been shot up and the left side of his head is crushed.”
“I’ll advise the medic. Out.”
Barely a moment later, the gunship is overhead and lowering across Drake’s field of vision. The down draft increases to a gale as the craft that looks more like one of the old days helicopters than a gunship begins to settle a mere metre above the peak of the roof. It has two main fusion engines midway down the oval shaped body of the craft with a wing extending out from each that hold the main cannons and missile launchers. There are four small stabilizer engines on the bottom and top of the gunship to give it incredible stability.
When the rear access opens up, two medical soldiers jump out with a stretcher. Without speaking to Drake they stabilise Rennin and load the remainder of him onto the gunship. Drake is about to board when he hears more gunfire, this time from street level. Silence falls for a moment, before the screams erupt again.
From the rooftops, Drake can see the crowd in the street below flooding away from a lone gunman. Drake pulls a scope from a pouch in his vest and snaps it to his rifle. The figure is in police uniform, his face crazed and distorted. On the move now, he is firing constantly in one direction. Serro’s voice comes over his com-unit, “All units, arrest the shooter at the top end of Main Road.”
Mia Saker, Beta HolinMech sniper, responds. “Arrest? Why can’t we take him out?”
“I have a clear shot from here,” says Drake.
“We have orders not to kill, he’s a police inspector. Peter Stanner. The target he’s chasing is the Priority One.”
Drake jumps in the gunship as it starts to lift off. “Pilot, land me near the gunman!”
“Yes, sir,” says the pilot. The medics grumble to each other as the craft banks down towards the street.
The crowd is pure chaos. There is no escape due to the sheer volume of people trying to flee. A full-blown stampede is imminent. When the craft gets two metres from the surface Drake gauges the height.
Close enough, he thinks dropping the remainder of the way.
He makes his way straight towards the shooter, who has just reloaded and is firing on the run. There are at least a dozen bodies that he’s shot dead, collateral damage from whoever he’s aiming at. “Four-Niner, we have to make a perimeter to hold the crowd in the immediate area.”
“Negative! This guy is shooting through them. If we hold them in it’ll be a massacre.”
“It’s an executive order, Four-Niner. Priority One is in that cluster of people.”
Drake shakes his head. Whether it’s an executive order or not Drake is going to take this lunatic out. He is getting close enough to the shooter to hear his raving.
The crowd push and shove past, knocking him about from time to time in their mad rush to escape. The shouting and screaming gets louder. Drake guesses some of them have found the blockade preventing them from leaving the area.
Drake gets clear of the crowd and can see the gunman loading another clip into his pistol. “Drop it!” yells Drake loud enough to drown out the cries of the fleeing crowd.
Stanner turns to face him. “It’s going to escape! The infiltrator! Caufmann brought it in!” he yells, raising the gun at the crowd again.
“Do not fire! I will put you down!”
“It’s got to die!” another shot rings out, another cry of pain from a bystander. Another death.
Drake curses himself for following the arrest order and fires off a round that hits Stanner in the stomach, throwing him off his feet. The weapon leaves his hands. Drake slings his rifle, takes out his sidearm, and stalks towards Stanner.
Stanner is clutching his stomach with one hand while attempting to rant about the android through moans of agony, his free hand clutching desperately towards his weapon. “Forty-nine, the target is subdued, stand down.”
“Copy, target will be put down,” answers Drake coldly, squeezing round out. It completely pulverises the hand questing for the gun.
“Negative, negative, forty-nine! Check your fire and stand down!”
“Copy, sir, standing down,” says Drake, satisfied with himself.
The badly wounded progenitor-class stumbles up the alleyway clutching the wound the watchman has given it. The shot from the Beta HolinMech soldier on the roof was easily absorbed, but Rennin’s shot is the problem.
The android isn’t accustomed to being wounded. Its knees would buckle but it doesn’t have the same concept of weakness as a human. It leans against a wall, peeling back its overcoat to examine its wound. It is widening by the minute.
Its diagnostic system doesn’t know what to make of it or how to deal with it. The android’s immunity programming can combat it somewhat; but closing the wound is sacrificing a vast proportion of its power to keep the corrosive nano-virus in check.