Resolution (20 page)

Ed walked towards the storage room.

Ro could slide out and get away, sneak through the tiny window at the rear ... maybe. Abandoning Ed.

She could not do that.

Instead, Ro stepped into the sunlight with a cheery wave, skin prickling as she sensed targeting beams reflecting from her face and body, and called out: ‘Ed! You made it!’

He moved his mouth, but only a croak came out.

Anaesthetic spray to the vocal cords. Bastards got that right, at least.

Ro gestured back at the building.

‘I brought the others. We’re all here.’

She hoped that would give them pause. The flyer could not hold more than four or five men, but if they were trained that was enough. More of them were outside the courtyard, crouched in the street: close enough that she could sense the trickle-currents of their xaser weapons.

It took more nerve than expected to walk completely into the open, all her senses screaming danger, smiling at Ed as though nothing were wrong. Anguish clawed at his face.

Invisible targeting beams from six different weapons moved across her skin, centred on the same target.

Now.

This was the moment.

Both hands grabbed hold of Ed’s shirt as she spun, threw herself in a sacrifice move which hurled Ed to the dusty ground close to the flyer. Then she was continuing the roll, onto her feet - ‘Stay there!’ - and thrusting forward, into a sprint towards the nearest building.

Coherent X-ray beams torc the ground apart behind her.

But she was faster, diving through an open window, registering a glimpse of startled old-woman features, and then Ro was bursting through a wooden doorway and in a narrow stinking alleyway filled with broken crates and remains of rotting vegetables.

Ro hurdled obstacles, brain on fire as she sensed but could not decipher the bursts of microwave communication among the armoured soldiers in the surrounding streets.

Go right.

The decision was instantaneous and a rusty brazier exploded - xaser beam - as she swerved, ran down a short alley towards an open half-door and launched herself headfirst over it. Ceiling-wall-floor whipped past her vision as she used an aikido roll then bounced off a doorway post and spun into a bigger room - fat man asleep on a couch with a hardcopy newspaper draped over his face - then a thrusting wu shu kick to smash open the next door and she was into the street.

Startled faces looking in her direction -
ignore
- and a skeletal outline beyond the rooftops - there: a half-completed mag-lev station - and she had a place to aim for. There would be cover and few crowds -
‘¡Madre de Dios!’
as another beam cracked through the air - and Ro ran faster, in the open again, spotting soldiers ahead but then there was a turning to the right which she took knowing two men were standing here, but taking them by surprise at close quarters.

Thai-style whipping elbow-strikes pummelled them, then she dropped and kicked from the ground, rupturing their knees with pentjak silat manoeuvres they could not see coming. Helmets muffled their screams as the soldiers fell and she jumped up and ran on.

Sparks like fireflies glimmered in the air.

Moving with her, keeping pace.

Come and get me, motherfuckers.

Stink of disinfectant, dirty window - in holodramas people leap through glass all the time but in real life shards would slice arteries and she had to find another route - there, a drainpipe, and she clambered up like a spider monkey while her growing cloud of sparkling lights followed her.

Roar in the distance. One of the flyers, ascending.

Shit.

Red-clay tiles scattered beneath her feet as she ran and scrabbled across the roof, leaped across an alleyway - helmet’s mirror-visor looking up from below - and then she was on the next roof, slipping - ‘Shit!’ - on her left buttock as she slid down a slope then kicked off, a moment of freefall, and dropped to solid ground once more, rolling to break the fall then up on her feet and running.

The big flyer would have xaser-gatling arrays and more. The situation was closing in fast and reaching the mag-lev station was no longer an option.

Sparks like fireflies.

Run.

Dodging passers-by, rebounding from a group of shoppers, she saw a squad of soldiers spilling into the street ahead of her and she ran left, into a small shop filled with trinkets and a woman gasped and then Ro was through the storeroom at the rear and out into the alley where she collided with a big soldier twice her size.

The man grabbed at her but Ro used a wing chun trap and triple punch to stagger him, slammed the edge of her hand into his collarbone, feeling the crack as she spun him into a judo knee-wheel and took him down. She would have escaped then but he was armed and could shoot a running figure so she followed him to the ground, took hold of his helmet and twisted into a neck-crank that was pure catch-as-catch-can grappling and he was out of it for good.

All fighting styles become one
in extremis,
and Ro had studied every discipline.

Lights in the air. A growing swarm of sparks.

Soon, I’ll stop running.

Moving fast now.

When Ro judged the moment was right she broke into the open, to a wide square where people scattered as the big flyer slid overhead. Its roar pulsed down, pounding the air, drowning the panicked yells of fleeing citizens.

Ro stood in a cruciform stance, arms outstretched, while all around her ten thousand sparks of light swirled and danced. Swarming. Ready to strike.

Gatling arrays swung to target her.

Now.

She lowered her head as the sparks shot upwards.

Sixty seconds later, Ro was walking down a deserted street while in the square behind her wreckage burned, belching black smoke over a gout of orange flames, and no-one was left alive to scream.

The courtyard where she had abandoned Ed was just minutes away, and she knew the small flyer would still be there because she had already seen to that. Only Ro could remove the flight-control block she had induced as she threw Ed to what she hoped was a safe position. So they had a means of getting out of here.

If the other big flyer, currently circling Nogales while firing out bursts of urgent communication, decided to pursue her and Ed ... well, it might find itself entering an electrical storm that was unexpected and more ferocious than anything its flight crew had ever seen.

You will not kill me.

Ro wiped her sweat-slick forehead, and her hand came away red.

Not before the children are all safe.

<>

~ * ~

14

NULAPEIRON AD 3423

Tom sent a courier to Elva, so that she would come to the funeral. He wondered if Axolon was still melded to the wall, or if they had finished removing him.

After a time, he asked a Palace servitrix to enquire about Lady V’Delikona. The young servitrix returned within minutes, curtsied, and told Tom that the Lady was in conference with High Lords of several sectors. Invitations were going out, throughout Nulapeiron; Corduven’s funeral was to be a major affair of state, a farewell to the most publicly heroic figure of the war.

‘Thank you,’ said Tom, and dismissed the servitrix.

I
did that too easily,
he thought a moment later, and considered calling her back to apologize. But it was too late.

Have I removed any injustice at all from the world?

Tom had played his part against the Blight. Perhaps that was enough ... unless the Anomaly truly was coming. Then it was all for nothing.