Rising Sun (10 page)

Vienne waves her light over the cobbled-up mess. Without a word, she walks over to the side and slides a security bar across the doors, which locks them into place.

“That’s good too,” I say. “Not as creative, but, you know, efficient.”

Vienne mimes a turtle poking its head out.

“Very funny,” I say.

“I need eyes on the roof to establish an EZ,” Aziz tells Vienne. “Take the target with you.”

Vienne takes Charlotte from the chief and hoists onto her shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

“Careful,” I say.

“I’m always careful.” Vienne gives me a quizzical look, then jogs toward the stairs. With three long strides, she’s gone.

“What’s my job?” I ask.

Aziz tosses me a metal box. “Locator unit. Find a spot with no interference and turn it on.”

The locater unit is a simple black rectangle with a strip antenna and two LEDs—green and red—to indicate signal. “This is Plan B?”

“Part of it,” He says. “After you set the transmitter, haul butt to the seceding floor, but block every fire door. There are four stairwells. You get one, and I’ll take the other three. Got it?”

I resist the urge to salute. “Loud and clear.”

“Now pipe down and move out,” Aziz says. “We don’t want to get caught in here at night.”

“Why? Afraid the Dræu are real?”

“Oh, I know they’re real,” he says, “but they’re not what scares me, if that’s what you mean.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you think we fought some vicious wobblies today,” he says, “just wait till you see what comes out in the dark.”

After searching a bit for the strongest signal, I set the transmitter on a window in the far corner of the factory. Then flick the switch, and the LED turns green.

“Are we transmitting, Mimi?”

“Affirmative.”

I run back to the stairs leading to the second floor. I slam the door, snatch a fire extinguisher from the wall, and jam it in the panic bar before running to the next floor. I’m grabbing another extinguisher when I hear Pinch’s voice in my earbud.

“Chief!” she yells, a note of panic in her voice. “Come take a look-see!”

Curiosity gets the best of me. I set down the extinguisher and open the door.

“Durango!” Pinch calls from a few meters away. “What do you make of that?”

I shine a light, and the beam finds her standing next to a panel labeled with four white letters:
MUSE
. Then, below it,
DANGER: RADIATION
.

“Whatcha got, Pinchie?” Sarge says as he joins us.

“Something hinky,” she says.

“What’s so hinky about it?” Sarge asks.

She bumps the door with her hip. “It’s locked. From the inside.”

“That’s a high-security door.” I examine it closely in the light of my torch. “Touch activated with duplicative voice protocols, the kind you’d find in a top-clearance facility.” And not tucked away in an abandoned factory next to the Warren.

“Duplicative voice protocols?” Sarge says, tapping my shoulder with his torch. “What’s that mean, mate?”

“It means,” Pinch says, “that you’ve got to stroke it and tell it sweet little lies.”

“Right up my alley!” Sarge pushes past me. He bangs the butt of his armalite against the frame. When nothing happens, he does it again.

“Waste of time,” I say, and grab his arm to keep him from doing it a third time. “I’ve heard that some facilities are wired with shock-sensitive detonators to keep marauders from forcing their way in.”

“That is nonfactual,” Mimi says. “You have never heard that.”

“Of course I have,” I say. “I heard it just a second ago, when I said it.”

“You are exploiting a linguistic loophole.”

A new torchlight shines on us. “What the hell is this?” Aziz asks, his voice agitated, as he puts a hand on Pinch’s shoulder.

“A high-security facility,” I answer, staring at the panel.

“In a guanine processing plant?” Aziz says.

Pinch smirks. “Like I said, hinky. Mind if I try to crack the lock?”

“Let it go,” Aziz says. “Night is coming, and we’re running out of time. Durango, did you block the fire exits?”

“First floor,” I say, looking at the letters
MUSE
. “Like you told me.”

Aziz frowns, still agitated. “Sarge, Pinch, block the other exits on this floor, then the third. Meet up on the roof with Sidewinder. That’s our EZ. Got it?”

“Got it,” we all say.

“Then move!”

But I don’t. They scramble, but I stay put, mesmerized by the panel. “MUSE. I know that from somewhere.”

“Affirmative—”

I put an open palm on the metal and say, “Jacob Stringfellow.”

Click.

The door swings open and I slip inside. Baseboard lighting flickers on, illuminating the space. Stainless steel. From floor to ceiling, the whole place is lined with stainless. It must’ve cost a bloody fortune to build.

But other than the steel, it’s empty. It’s been stripped clean. Nothing here, not even a fingerprint. This is a waste of time. I turn to go, and on the back of the door, there is a word scratched in the metal:
DRÆU
.

“Mimi?” I say. “Any theories on how that got there?”

“I have no data to compute a theory.”

I linger for a moment, chills running down my spine. But Aziz’s warning—“Just wait till you see what comes out in the dark”—rings in my head, and I let it go. After closing the door behind me, I hit the fire exit. Bound up the stairs to the next floor, and then up to the third.

Finally I hit the roof and drop the hatch down. I find a length of pipe and wedge it in the door.

“That ought to hold ’em,” I say, and move to the center of the factory’s roof, where the whole crew has gathered, a signal flare marking the extraction zone.

Charlotte is trussed up, a gag over her mouth. Her eyes dart around like a wonky laser trying to find a target. I feel sorry for her. Nobody with child should be hauled around like a sack of ore. If I were chief, this wouldn’t be happening.

“What took you so long?” Vienne asks me.

“I had trouble with a door,” I say. “What happened to her?”

“She woke up, hit me, and tried to escape,” Pinch says.

“Okay, but why the gag?”

“She yammers too much,” Sarge says. “Talks about things she shouldn’t.”

I glance at her stomach, wondering if she’d said anything about her pregnancy. “Like what?”

Vienne shakes her head, telling me to let it go, which just makes me all the more curious.

“Our ride is late,” Aziz says, too loudly, and checks his watch. “The transmitter is working, right?”

I nod. “Loud and clear. How long before pickup?”

Aziz taps his watch and drifts to the edge of the roof. “Not soon enough.”

In the distance, I see three sets of headlights flash against the red-hued horizon. The sound of the engine is too deep for a Noriker, which means the motors have been souped up.

“We’ve got company,” I say, joining Aziz at the roof’s edge. A wave of vertigo hits as I look down, and I take a step back.

“War trucks,” Aziz says. “Jacked-up haulers fitted out with flame throwers and anything else that will shoot.”

The roar of engines drones in the night, followed by a high-pitched shriek that sends ice- pick shivers up my spine.

Aziz’s face turns white. “Away from the walls!”

He backs up, but I linger, taking in the scene. Below us, the ground is swarming with
đibui
. Thousands of them. Some carry torches lit by scrap fabric and oil sludge. The rest dance in the dark, their faces turned up to us, waiting.

Waiting for what?

I watch as the three trucks bounce down the road. They stop twenty meters from the front doors. The Razor steps out of the driver’s seat of the lead truck. He climbs on the hood.

“Give me Charlotte!” the Razor bellows through a megaphone. “And your davos can walk out of the Warren alive!”

Vienne answers with a shot that shatters the windshield, but the Razor doesn’t flinch. “Should I put a bullet in his engine block?” Vienne says.

“Get away from the walls!” Aziz yells. “The Razor isn’t the problem!”

I’m about to ask what he’s so afraid of when a howl cuts through the night. My skin crawls, and I have to fight the urge to hide. “What the
wa cào
was that?” I ask.

“It came from the Razor’s war truck,” Vienne says, and points to something white chained to the bed of his vehicle. She raises the scope to her eye. “Whatever it is, they’re setting it free.”

“Get back!” Aziz yells. “The
harii
are coming!”

Chapter 8

Peligroso Factory
ANNOS MARTIS
238. 2. 3. 20:52

Vienne and I nod and start drawing back toward the center of the roof. Weapons ready. Not that we know what we’re fighting against.

“Mimi?”

“I have no record of these
harii
.”

Slamming a clip into place in frustration, I take firing position to protect Charlotte and the EZ. A chief should never leave his crew guessing. Especially when they’re facing an enemy that scares the living
wa kào
out of him.

“What’s got him so terrified?” I ask Vienne.

“No idea,” she says, and pops the safety. “But Aziz is nobody’s coward.”

“Cowboy,” Mimi says, “I am detecting six humanoid biosignatures approaching at a rapid rate.”

“Approaching?” I say. “Come again? How’s that possible?”

My answer is a bone-chilling, bloodcurdling scream that I feel in the pit of my gut. “Shut your carfarging yaps!” Sarge cries out, and empties a clip into the darkness.

Silence.

“Maybe that scared them off,” I tell Vienne.

She shakes her head, as if to say, “Yeah, right, Turtle.”

“Get ready!” Aziz shouts.

Then, almost on cue, six figures leap over the railings. By frame and face they are wobblies, but they’re almost naked, and their skin is painted black and their heads are shaved bald. They crouch low, moving like jackals, slow but with concentrated power. They carry machetes and hacked-together metal shields with wicked edges that look sharp enough to slice you open.

“There,” I tell Mimi, “is your data.”

“Night vision!” Aziz yells from behind us. “And show the
harii
no fear!”

Vienne and I flip the night filter on our visors, and the six black figures glow fluorescent green. Their mouths are open—I can see teeth reflected in the moonlight. Globs of spittle ooze from their mouths. They’re growling now, pacing on all fours..

“Fire!” Aziz orders. “Hit the poxers before they can attack!”

Vienne and I both fire. Three-round bursts contained on the closest target. She aims at the head. Me, the chest. Through the night-vision lens, I see our bullets ripping through the air, exploding against the wall. It should have been a kill—an instant kill.

But it’s not.

The
harii
scatter so quickly we can’t trace their movements. Our target is a blur of motion, dropping to the deck and then rolling away, too fast for the night vision to keep up with. He is over the wall again before we can cease firing.

“Holy
kuso
,” I say. “I can’t believe anything moves that fast!”

Vienne pops her clip. “I can’t believe I missed.”

The night is quiet again.

Then I hear Sarge and Pinch moving to our left.

“Status,” Aziz calls.

“No casualties,” I say. “On either side.”

“Keep on your toes!” Aziz says.

A little late for that, Chief,
I think.

“Cowboy,” Mimi says, “I detect movement on the south side of the building.”

“On our six!” I yell, and toss a spark grenade to the far wall.

It explodes, lighting up the roof as all six of the
harii
vault it and charge, impervious to the bright light that illuminates their faces, zeroing in on the EZ, where Aziz is kneeling beside Charlotte.

As I race forward to meet the
harii
, I feel something whistle past my head—a bullet fired by Vienne that strikes a
harii
, knocking him off his feet. He lands hard on the roof, flopping and frothing from the mouth.

An instant later, he’s dead.

Five
harii
left.

I hook-slide in the dirt and old guanite that coats the roof. Come up in firing position and flip my night-vision visor up. If the filter can’t keep up with the
harii
’s super-fast reflexes, then my human eyes will have to do.

My right eye on the sights, I take aim at the nearest target, my armalite set to full auto.

“May I remind you that your right eye is not human?” Mimi says.

“I’m busy!”

In the blip before I pull the trigger, everything slows down. I feel the cold stock against my cheek, the light rain hitting my skin, and the slight recoil that pushes my shoulder back. My bullets spray out in slow motion, striking the
harii
on the leg, then the chest, then the face.

He flies backward, and his machete goes skittering across the roof.

That’s four.

I jump over the fallen
harii
and am moving in on the closest target when he crumples before me. Three.

A quick glance back. Vienne’s flipped her visor, too, and is reloading. I change course to go after the
harii
closing in on Aziz, who is firing recklessly, not realizing that his lens is never going to allow him to hit the mark. I drop to one knee. Switch to semiauto to fire one bullet at a time. Don’t want to hit Charlotte by accident.

A bloodcurdling scream interrupts me. As I turn toward the source, I realize it’s Sarge, who is pinned to the roof under the
harii
’s black shield, the sharp edge pressing close to flesh. The
harii
jumps onto the shield with both knees, his weight forcing the shield closer and close to Sarge’s jugular.

Pull him toward you,
I think, because the
harii
’s weight is overbalanced and one good tug would send him flying. But Sarge doesn’t budge, except to flail at the shield and kick his feet.

I take aim, but Sarge’s fat head is in my line of fire.