“Go to hell, Hardrad.”
For the first time in Drakon’s experience, he saw Hardrad’s composure crack. “You will be the one who dies when I destroy this rebellious city! You and everyone with you!”
“Then I’ll personally kick you through the gates when we both get to hell,” Drakon said with a laugh. “Since when have you made deals with people? You never bargain, you just bring the hammer down. Offering me a deal means you don’t really have those codes.”
“I have them! I’ll use them!”
“CEO Hardrad, if you had those codes, you’d just use them. No threats. No deals. Just take everyone else down with you because dying to you is a lot less important than making sure no one else ever wins. You gave me too much of a chance to watch you work, too many opportunities to see how you do things. But I guess you didn’t spend as much time learning how I do things.” Maybe he had made the wrong assessment about Hardrad’s being more willing to die than to lose, but Drakon knew with absolute confidence that Hardrad couldn’t be trusted to keep any deal. For Drakon and for Iceni, it was a matter of winning or dying.
Drakon broke the connection so that he could focus on the fight once more. If he spoke to Hardrad again before either of them died, it would be face-to-face in the snake command center.
Perhaps the distraction had helped him. Checking the display after not looking at it for a few moments, Drakon could now see an opening that he could exploit in the movements and fighting among soldiers and snakes. Drakon ordered the soldiers with him into motion again, down one hallway, through a door, past another hall, then to a corner. They came out behind two viper fire teams blocking attackers coming from the other direction. Drakon leveled his own weapon as his soldiers hit the vipers from the rear. His targeting sight glowed as it registered a good shot, the weapon jerked as an energy pulse blasted out, and a viper in the act of turning lurched against the nearest wall. Two more hits from other weapons tore the viper in half.
As expected, the vipers fought to the death, the last one turning her weapon on herself to avoid being taken alive by those she had helped torment.
“That way!” Drakon ordered the other platoon, then led the platoon still with him deeper into the complex, following his helmet display’s directions toward the ISS command center.
“—floor clear!” he heard Morgan call, then the connection broke.
“Morgan! If you can hear me, send a few platoons up to clear the top floors and get the rest down here!” According to their information, the upper floors had very little in the way of defenses, being regarded as too vulnerable to attack and bombardment compared to those floors going below ground level where Drakon was. Naturally, that meant those upper floors also held the lowest-ranking members of the ISS, who could be rounded up at leisure once the lower floors had been cleared.
He didn’t know if Morgan had received the command, but his display showed patches of assault troops streaming through passageways above and to the sides, some penetrating to the next floor down, while clusters of defenders blinked in and out of contact, sometimes disappearing as attackers rolled over them.
Something hit Drakon’s shoulder, knocking him back, then the soldiers near him were firing down the hall at another viper strongpoint. One of the soldiers aimed a squat tube down the hall and fired, followed by a terrific concussion that knocked the soldiers with Drakon off their feet.
Drakon lay blinking for a moment in confusion, his armor blaring alarms about damage and a near breach where the viper shot had hit home. His focus on what was happening had broken completely this time, and for that instant he could see and feel nothing but chaos. Drakon clamped down on his nerves, concentrating fiercely until the muddle on his display resolved once again into a recognizable flow of events, then struggled back to his feet. His soldiers were already up and racing to the end of the hallway, where stunned vipers were still trying to gather their wits, only to be slaughtered by close-in fire before they could stand. As Drakon watched them die, he experienced a curious lack of feeling, elation and vengeance also locked away inside him for the moment.
Another soldier loomed through the smoke, stepping out of a hole blown by the concussion charge. “Are you all right, sir?” Malin asked.
“Yeah.” Drakon’s display showed that they were not far from the command center, which was still one more floor down. “What have you got with you?”
“Two squads.”
“I’ve got most of three squads. Head over that way and try to blow an access into the command center from overhead. That may make the snakes think we’re only trying to get in that way. I’ll take mine down and through here, and hit them from the east.”
“Yes, sir.” Malin vanished into the countermeasure-created murk, then Drakon took his small force down some stairs that stretched unnaturally long for a flight only going down one level. But that told him the stolen schematics which had revealed a substantial layer of armor above the ISS command center had been proven right again. The lead soldier in the group finally hit a landing, only to be thrown back and to the side as the explosion of a mine rocked the stairwell. Leaping over the new hole in the landing, Drakon followed as his soldiers pounded down another passageway.
More heavy fire came down the corridor, lashing at the assaulting soldiers. Drakon huddled against one wall, breathing heavily, feeling the sweat coating his face under the helmet and face shield of his armor, wishing that he could wipe off the sweat and wishing that he had another concussion weapon at hand.
A subsection leader dropped to the floor near Drakon. “We think this is automated, sir. Last-ditch defenses for the command center and survival citadel.”
“Pretty damned heavy for last-ditch defenses,” Drakon mumbled, scrolling through his display. As far as he could tell through the interference, Malin’s force hadn’t yet been able to punch through the command center’s massive overhead armor. That was mainly intended as a diversion, though, and other assault forces were converging on the command center. How long do we have left until the snakes activate whatever doomsday defenses they have? Iceni swore that without the codes she held as system CEO the snakes would need extra time to engage the override codes, but she didn’t know how much extra time.
The entire complex shook from a prolonged explosion so heavy that Drakon wondered if the structure overhead was about to collapse. In the wake of the big explosion, the building shuddered again, a prolonged and diffuse trembling as if parts of it were indeed caving in. He felt a chill inside, almost frozen by fear that Hardrad had gotten the codes from Iceni or managed the work-around and carried out his threat to nuke the city.
But his suit hadn’t registered any radiation burst, and the shock had seemed to come from within the building rather than hitting the outside in the kind of seismic blow that would have been felt when the subsurface nuke created a massive ground shock in the center of the city.
Drakon realized that the defensive fire from ahead had faltered substantially. His display had fuzzed out almost completely except for the floor-plan schematics, but then it flickered to show assault forces streaming into the command center from the side opposite him. Red symbols marking snakes and vipers were melting away from the assault, some winking out as they were destroyed and others moving fast toward the hallway he was in. “Hold positions!” Drakon yelled, readying his weapon. “Snakes on the way!”
Armored figures appeared ahead, mixed with others wearing only survival suits, all of them fleeing toward Drakon’s position. He and the soldiers with him opened fire, cutting down the snakes trying to escape from the trap their own command center had become.