Strings (34 page)

Cainsville, April 11

THINGS BECAME VERY confusing in Hangar Four. They were supposed to—Bagshaw Barney had planned them that way. For what had felt like several days, he had been leaning back against a huge black tire, relaxed, yawning and scratching, making lewd comments to the mistrustful gold uniform on one side of him and the suspicious green on the other. But his eyes, like their eyes and six hundred other eyes, had stayed locked on that epochal meeting, that little group of four in the middle of the metal emptiness.

Then Grundy had risen, and Mother Hubbard had pointed. As Cedric leaped, Barney had reacted a split-second before the protectors in his helmet slammed down on his ears and the lights went out. His hand had been ready by the preset dose pack on his belt. He pressed the button and felt the needle slip through the fabric of his pants and pump a double shot of KRp into his hip.

He thought he had already launched himself from the wall and was running before the dome was even dark, which was not exactly likely. But certainly he was moving when the shock grenades went off, and probably no one else was. He could put on a fair turn of speed in spite of his bulk, and the tiny glowworm of the inertial compass in his gun butt gave him direction. Of course, he was expecting the grenades, but even so, the sheer brutality of the noise threw him off his stride.
Nine…ten
…His head felt as if it had cracked open. Hopefully BEST’s troops would be much more stunned, and the Chamber’s, also. Cheung would need time to call off his dogs, and no one could guess which way the golds would jump: throw down their weapons, or go for suicidal vengeance. System’s last signal, before it had signed off, had been to predict that they would split almost fifty-fifty.

Eighteen…nineteen
…

Running at full speed into pitch-dark was unnerving, something he had not done since basic training. His numbed ears could not detect the crackle of the gas bombs, but already he caught a whiff of riot smoke, pungent and bitter. His head was starting to throb. He could also feel the KRp burning through his veins. The visiting bulls would be equipped with that also—it was one of the standard antidotes—but they would not have been all ready to use it, like him. When the lights had gone out they would have needed a few seconds to fumble, and more seconds for the KRp to work—even the good guys were cutting it as fine as he had dared allow—so there should be a few minutes while the enemy were at least groggy and possibly even immobile.
Twenty-eight
…And some of them would fudge the shots, or go for nightvision enhancer before they realized—G9 or Isophot. A KRp headache was bad enough without mixing that junk into the bloodstream, too. A few might even be stupid enough to snap on their darkseers, which would waste time and…
Thirty
…He closed his eyes.

Light blazed pale pink through his eyelids; he felt it warm on his face, and then it faded to an olive afterglow. There went any darkseers presently in use, and who could say that darkseers might not be useful later? And any idiot who had shot himself full of G9 would not be seeing anything at all for days. The night was young.

That had been one of Adele’s sayings: “The night is young and so are we.” She would never return, but she was avenged. The kid had done both of them for him—first Devlin, now Grundy. All that was left to do was rescue the kid.
Forty
. If events forced Barney to choose between the kid and his old witch of a grandmother, he thought he might even go for the kid. The boy had earned it.

Riot smoke was potent stuff for a woman of her age at the best of times, and Barney was planning concentrations damned close to lethal. It might kill her before they got KRp into her, but she had understood the risk and been willing to take it. His own head was pounding as if it were about to burst.

He registered the third flash. Normal lighting would follow. He opened his eyes on a heaving, unworldly landscape of writhing white hills. Even in the troughs the smoke was deep enough to reach his neck, as if he were running through a ghostly giant surf. Briefly he saw other reds sprinting in from all around, but no greens or golds, and then the wave of smoke swallowed him—then cleared. He changed direction marginally, orienting on ceiling fixtures, and again was buried in whiteness. He held his breath as much as he could, still running.
Fifty-two…fifty-three
…A long, gasping breath, and he did not even stumble, so the KRp was working. The hammering in the middle of his forehead was fairly diagnostic, too. His ears still rang from the grenades. He snapped the ear protectors up, out of the way. He was holding his gun before him like a club.

The smoke was almost as bad as darkness, but not quite. Visibility was about a meter. That would allow a little evasive action as they all converged on—

Sixty
! He should be there.

He almost fell over a chair. Gasping for breath, he fumbled around for a moment in the mist. Another figure loomed up, but he was red, also. Where the hell was everyone? The three survivors would have all run outward, of course, so he had come too far. Damned headache was making him woozy already, and the ringing in his ears…

“Jamming has ended,” System told him.

His earpatch had been turned on again—he was glad to have System back. He had felt lonely without it, but with luck the wide-spectrum jamming had wrecked the enemies’ cryotronics.

Then he almost trod on a crouching figure…red….

“Give me a hand,” she yelled, and he could barely hear her over the bells in his ears, but he recognized Smith Lucy. And the flagpole she was trying to lift could only be—

“He’s had a shot?” Bagshaw asked, slinging his torch on his shoulder and bending to take a grip on Cedric. But it was a stupid question; Lucy knew her job. He hoped she had not heard. “I’ll take him,” he shouted. How much smoke had the kid breathed? He might be out for hours. The fight was on now—he could hear screams all around, and sometimes the
phsst
! of a torch, if it was close.

Lucy helped arrange the kid over Barney’s free shoulder—and he weighed a sight more than he looked as though he should. He had also peed his pants, so he was out very deep. Lucy had spun around and started to jog. Barney staggered after, just barely keeping her in sight. Thinks I’m Samson…

“Friend at two o’clock. Friend at nine o’clock.” System had radar.

The redcoat at two o’clock emerged momentarily from the mist and then vanished; the one to the left did not show at all. Oh, this
god
damned headache! If only they had dared take the KRp earlier—but of course each force had done spot-check medicals on the other two, and that stuff would have shown up like red flags.

“Visitor at twelve o’clock.”

Lucy had received the same message. She veered, but not soon enough. A golden figure loomed, size exaggerated by the fog.
Phsst
! Her torch blazed in a fuzzy red blur and the guy screamed as if she had murdered him. He could not have caught more than a blister through his uniform, but he reeled out of the way without returning fire. Riot smoke dissipated lasers, even at that range.

“Veer thirty left,” System directed.

Bagshaw obeyed. He had lost Lucy, which was hardly surprising, for the fog was as thick as concrete, dark gray now. He heard more
phsst
! sounds and more screams. His burden stirred and groaned. The kid was definitely getting heavier. Hanging upside down was not going to help his head—nothing would help his head. Bagshaw’s own head thundered with every step as if it were about to explode, and he had taken the KRp before the smoke. Taken afterward, that stuff was pure hell.

He almost ran into a solid blackness, as big as a truck, a Boeing undercarriage. He sent off a silent curse to System for not warning him. He staggered around behind it, too winded to run farther, and found a gap like a narrow cave between two wheels. It would do. He lowered Cedric, who moaned and began to struggle. Bagshaw sat him on the floor, leaning back against the giant wall of the tire. Then he knelt beside him, puffing obscenely. He was not young anymore.

His ears were calming down, but his forehead was bursting in all directions. Hard to think with an exploding brain.

He threw his gun down. “You alive, Sprout?”

Cedric mumbled and twitched—and suddenly blurted out a loud obscenity. “…my head,” he finished, clutching it with both hands. “No.”

“Yeah. It’s the antidote. It’ll hurt for an hour or so.”

“Hurt? You call this hurt? Sonofa
bitch
!”

“Just relax. You’re safe.” Maybe. Bagshaw wanted to snap on his wrist mike and call for reinforcements, but the baddies would have monitoring equipment in their aircraft. Had Cheung called off the greens yet?

“You did my nose again!” It sounded like “Doodiddydoada-dain.” Cedric lifted his head in both hands. “Wha’ happened?”

“A little fracas. I got you. Others got your grandma, and Cheung.” I hope they did, he thought. I hope they wore red.

Cedric groaned and mumbled something.

There was sudden silence. Here it comes, Bagshaw thought.

The kid’s face came up, a white puddle, peering at Bagshaw through the murk. “I killed him! I broke his neck! Oh,
God
!”

“You didn’t, kid.”

“I did! I rabbit-punched him! Oh hell—hand—” He peered groggily at his right hand, which did not look good, even from Barney’s position.

“Your grandmother did it. She pulled the trigger. You were just the gun.”

The kid made a strangling noise and threw up loudly. KRp did not usually do that. Maybe it was the pain—or just the memory. Or he had swallowed blood from his nose. Cedric straightened back against the wheel and wiped his mouth with the back of his good hand. He moaned again.

“I killed him. I heard his neck break!”

“No. You couldn’t help it. Your grandmother did it. Or I did.”

“Huh?”

“You didn’t learn that karate chop in an organage. Not you, Sprout, me!”

“You?”

“Me. I did it, if you like. Not you. No one can blame you!”

Sounds seemed deadened by the fog, but the fighting was certainly going on—screams and the
phsst
! of lasers in the smoke; and a lot of shouting, as if people were starting to get organized, and those could only be the baddies. Why was System not sending help?

Then Bagshaw heard an amplified voice booming, but between the racket and the echoes and his own pounding head he could not tell—he hoped it was Cheung, calling off his greenies. If BEST’s golds were not disarmed before they knew for sure that they had lost their client, then the gods themselves would never guess what they might do. Some bulls let themselves be imprinted with a code of honor like samurai fanatics—imprinted as Cedric had been, except that Cedric had been tricked. Those bastards had looked at the wires voluntarily—and that was selling one’s soul.

“Why’d I do that?” Cedric mumbled. His voice was even more slurred than before. He was going deeper into shock.

“You didn’t. You couldn’t help yourself.”

“Tell me, damn you!” he screamed.

Boom
! Barney felt the floor shudder, and a red-hot pain jarred his head. His gut twisted—what the hell had that been? There was no loud stuff on the program. Someone was using it, though. Oh, hell! Things were coming unstuck. The BEST guys might be going to take the whole parade with them.
Boom
! There was a sound of falling debris and tearing metal, as if all the cook pots in Creation had just hit a concrete floor.

“Up, Sprout! We’d better get the hell out of here.”

The kid made no move, just sat there with his long legs straight out and his face a blur. “Tell me why I did that thing!”

“I’ll explain later.”

“Now! Now! Now!”

Barney toyed with the idea of giving him a needle, but knew he dared not. Shock was tricky, and the kid had a ton of guilt to carry.

“I checked your retinas, remember?” And I couldn’t believe my luck when you agreed to it. Dumb, dumb kid, green off the farm!

“And they didn’t when I got to HQ,” Cedric mumbled.

“Right. We don’t use retina scanners anymore. Just in old holodramas. Real world—they’re too dangerous. Strobe hypnosis.”

“Huh?”

“Look, we’ve gotta go!” The fog swirled, and Barney felt cold air. That last crash must have been the doors. The smoke would lift…

“I imprinted you, kid. As soon as you focused on the cross-wires in that scanner, you were gone. I put you way down in a deep trance, and I planted a code in your head. When your gran gave the signal, you attacked.”

Cedric muttered something that sounded uncomplimentary.

Barney did not want to hear. He deserved every syllable. It was good to know that Adele was avenged, but he had never felt like a genuine, hundred-percent, unarguable shit before. Not only Cedric had guilt. “I made you into a walking gun, Sprout. No one can resist a strober—no one!” But I know one who came damned close.

“Turd! You’re a—”

“Yes, I am. And I’m trying to help now. We gotta go before BEST’s goons get you. Your princess is waiting. Come
on
!” He hauled at the kid’s arm, and he stayed limp.

“In the hotel,” Cedric mumbled. “That was why it took three hours?”

“Yes. Now come!”

But it should not have taken three hours. It should not have taken five minutes, there in that grubby hotel room. Barney had called in System to help, and even with System calling the shots he had needed all that time to break the kid’s will. They had taken him deeper and deeper, and he had screamed and refused and yelled and fought back. Tough! That was what his DNA had predicted, and even System had found no record of anyone ever resisting a strobe that long, but they had finally exhausted him—worn him out and hammered down into his subconscious till he had no will left and had almost stopped breathing, and finally the compulsion had taken.

That was the only bright thought—that a man as tough as this human cable should be able to handle the guilt.

And he was still refusing to cooperate. Barney dragged him almost out of the undercarriage cave, and he just slid along the floor on his seat.