They were going to need some more.
Aghostino-Clarke smiled. ‘Scared?’ he said. His voice was deep: the upward inflection of the question raised it to bass.
‘Nervous.’ Bleibtreu-Fèvre coughed and, as if reminded, lit a ciagarette.
‘It’s what we’ve been trained for.’
‘That’s why I’m nervous.’ He laughed briefly and stared again at the distant shapes of the man and the woman. ‘He behaves so normally, it’s as if he hasn’t a care in the world. One might almost think he’s not afraid of us.’
‘He? Or it?’
Bleibtreu-Fèvre looked at Aghostino-Clarke and nodded thoughtfully. ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘We can make no assumptions about what we may face.’
A literal drug fiend, a man with machine-code in his mind, or just a crazy spacist merc…
‘It would be easy to take him out.’
‘Those days are gone.’ Bleibtreu-Fèvre sighed again. ‘I can feel the footprints of those damn spy sats like shadows passing over the back of my neck…Speaking of which—’
Aghostino-Clarke looked at his watch, rotating his forearm slowly as he scanned the lines of data. ‘We have a six-minute window in two minutes,’ he said. ‘The next is four in twenty-three.’
‘Right,’ said Bleibtreu-Fèvre. ‘Let’s go for green, huh?’
‘Smoke?’
‘Nah,’ Kohn said. ‘Time to go.’
He stood up and tossed plates and scraps into the recycler. He put on the helmet and connected the comms to the gun. (Hi.) (Active.) He kept his eyes on the car as they went out through the doors. The car park was now more sparsely occupied, and the Cadillac stood on its own in an airbrushed gleam. How easy it would be to take them out. But if he were to blast them, right now, it would be difficult to hop into the truck and slip away unnoticed. They’d just have to wait. He ran scenarios of turning off into side-roads, jack-knifing the truck and coming out shooting.
The doors of the Cadillac opened; the two men inside got out and stood behind the doors. Janis made some kind of sound.
‘Keep going,’ Kohn said, not looking at her. ‘Stand on the running-board behind the door – just like them – and start up the truck. Do it.’
He veered away from her and began to walk across the fifty metres or so of tarmac between him and the car. The men didn’t react. He wondered if the doors were proof against steel-jacketed uranium slugs. He doubted it. Perhaps the Stasis agents expected him to negotiate.
He was letting the gun point downwards, his grasp light but ready to clench. He stopped.
‘Hey!’ he shouted, above the hum of vehicles. The men looked as if they hadn’t heard him. He opened his mouth again and heard at the same moment a yell from Janis and a rhythmic clatter behind him. He whirled around in a crouch, bringing the gun up. Coming straight at him was a horse, and the wild-haired creature on its back was unclipping a crossbow from a slot beside the saddle and reining in the horse and dismounting all at the same time. Everything went slow, even the sparks from the skidding hooves. He saw another horseman, galloping up to the truck from behind. He fired a burst that ripped through the rider’s thigh and into the horse. He saw the forelegs buckle under the beast’s continuing momentum, saw the beginning of the rider’s trajectory, then turned to his own attacker. A barbarian woman. She was two metres away and was half a second from bringing the crossbow to bear on him. (No time to fire.) (What?) He sprang forward and brought the butt down on the woman’s shoulder. The crossbow clattered away. He punched her straight under the sternum. She fell, balled up around her pain.
Kohn dropped and rolled. Something buzzed over his head. Snap. Sting of stone on his face. Ricochet. The shot had come from the Cadillac. To his horror he saw Janis leap from the truck’s running-board and dash towards him, head down and firing off pistol shots inexpertly behind her with her left hand. Her glades were on clear and he could see her eyes behind them, tightly closed.
The Cadillac roared forward, doors still open, gun muzzles poked above them. Flashes. There was a terrific bang as a tyre blew out. Suddenly the car was yawing. Janis dived past the front fender and down on top of him. She rolled over and sat up, bringing another hand to the automatic’s grip. The rear of the car swung past. Janis fired and a dark body dropped from the open left door.
She turned to him and opened her eyes.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Come on.’ He jumped to his feet and pointed back to the doors of the cafeteria. ‘In there.’ The car, steadying now, was between them and the truck.
They ran for the doors and pushed them open, hurdled the prone bodies of terrified civilians to the stairs. At the first turning Kohn saw a Man In Black just reach the doors. There was no way to shoot at him without spraying half the foyer. On up the steps to the glass-enclosed walkway above the road, leading to a mirror-image service area on the other side. They started the hundred-metre dash across.
Something was coming up the stairwell on the far side. Halfway along was a recess with fire extinguishers and an emergency phone. Kohn hauled Janis into it after him. They flattened back and Kohn glanced out.
Another horseman was cantering along the walkway. In the opposite direction Kohn saw the Stasis man leap to the top of the stairs and hit the floor, a heavy pistol clasped in both hands in front of him. Kohn jerked back.
The padding hooves stopped, close.
‘Throw out your weapons.’ The agent’s voice sounded strained and strange. ‘Don’t say a word or you’ll be shot.’
‘Oh, shit,’ Kohn said through his teeth. Some part of his brain began displaying detailed pictures of what would happen to it if he were captured. He wrenched his attention away from images of bone-saws and drill-bits and trodes in time to catch Janis’s urgent low whisper: ‘…just the guns, then use anything you’ve got left, they mightn’t expect all you’ve got…’
Kohn looked at her and nodded. She tossed the pistol on the floor. Kohn followed it with the gun. It landed on its bipod. Kohn raised his arms and was about to step out when he heard the creak and tinkle of thin glass breaking.
‘FIRE!’ said the alarm, in a deep, calm chip voice.
The gun opened up. Janis stepped smartly forward before he could stop her. She’d grabbed a fire extinguisher. She jumped in front of the horse and aimed the foam straight for its eyes. It screamed and reared, striking the rider’s head against the ceiling. He fell backwards. Janis was at the horse’s side in an instant, shoving at the saddle. The animal tottered, off-balance, rear hooves beating a desperate prance, the fore-hooves hammering at the glass. The rider’s legs kicked until his feet disengaged from the stirrups. He slid down the slope of the horse’s back. The huge window broke. The horse went through the glass in a sickening slow motion and vanished. Janis ducked, scooping up the pistol. The rider was sprawled on his back, one arm underneath him, the other making warding-off motions. Janis stood astride him and pointed the pistol at his face.
‘Don’t!’ Kohn yelled.
The gun continued its scything fire. Kohn threw himself behind it. It was supposed to respond to his voice only. He forgave it, this once. The agent was gone. Must have rolled to the stairs. Nice. None of the holes in the far wall were lower than half a metre.
The gun stopped, out of ammo. Kohn peered through the howling gap down at the mound of meat on the central reservation.
He looked at Janis.
‘That was dangerous,’ he said. ‘You might have killed somebody.’
She glanced back as Kohn slammed another clip into place.
‘We’re in the army now,’ she said, and turned back to the man at her feet.
‘So you can’t shoot him now! He’s out of it!’
Janis shook herself and stepped back. ‘OK, OK.’ She gingerly took an automatic and a sheath-knife from the man’s belt and rolled him off his broken arm. He’d already fainted.