(eng) Michael Shea - Extra 02 by Assault on Sunrise

Author:Assault on Sunrise [Sunrise, Assault on]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XVII

ACTION

Margolian’s armada swept out of the west. On the roof of the Masonic Temple, Japh prayed that all their improvisations would work. Two hundred pairs of foot patrol on the sidewalks, one of each pair with a gas sprayer, and flanking the sprayer, his gunner. A blast of hot buckshot had seemed like the quickest way to ignite a gas-sprayed body, but would it work?

The whole mid-street was cleared for their armored vehicles: gnarly pickups with gunners in the beds, midsize flatbeds for resupply and rescue of wounded. Wheel Right choppers threaded among them, their sidecars carrying more gunners. All windshields had been covered with patches of chain link, ditto all headlights for the two night battles. The guys in the truckbeds carried equal arrays of twelve-gauges and forty-five cal Thompson submachine guns. Heavy arms, but would they work on what they’d be facing?

Meanwhile every flat rooftop, and even some peaked ones where ladders and platforms were rigged, had a machine-gun nest like Japh’s own. Not an angle of any street they couldn’t sweep from on high, or surveil to shout warnings to fighters below.

So many people so dear to him here, and all this firepower. He scanned the invaders’ raft-bottoms paving the sky. Armored for sure, magnetic deflectors fencing their rims. There was no hurting them with bullets, but what about themselves? All these weapons locked and loaded, muzzles blazing, tracking targets moving fast …

What control did you really have in the heat of a fight? Even now the rooftop gunners were calling back and forth, defining “fire zones” to which each gun would confine its rounds. Yeah, right, once the fight was at full blaze.

“Hey, Soldier!” Kate Harlow slid right up beside him on her raft. “Cover your eyes,” she said to her tail gunner. She leaned out and wrapped her arms around him.

He held her in his right arm, stroking her head with his left hand. This was his “new” hand. Its tactile wiring was state-of-the-art, but still not quite true. To his prosthetic fingertips, the texture of her hair, the softness of her nape were a shade less distinct, felt sketchier, as if she was, or was becoming, a ghost.

He hugged her harder, making her laugh and say, “Don’t crack me, big guy.”

“You be careful, Kate.”

“It’s Val’s gotta be careful, lover. We’ve got a treat for him.”

They kissed. Such a complete promise a kiss was. But when their lips parted, there was only its fading warmth. The ghost of a kiss. Kate skimmed away, hooked into an alley, and left his view.

Japh stood there, afraid for her, afraid for every soul in Sunrise. He remembered those seconds on the set of Alien Hunger just after the spider had injected its venom into his forearm. How many ghosts were left there, on that set, by the time those monsters had done their work?

There was one thing you could count on Margolian for: nightmares. Thank god Curtis had been there. Only he would have had the nerve to swing his axe without an instant’s pause, and chop Japh’s sudden death right off his arm.

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