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wounded dragoon jerk, lurch and fall.
Kane followed him half a heartbeat later, triggering his blaster, bullets
pounding through a red uniform
jacket he glimpsed through the smoke. The dragoon vaulted backward, blood
spurting from three holes neatly grouped over his heart.
The floor was awash with looping liquid ribbons of vermilion, adding to its
already slick quality. Five dragoons sprawled across it, neat uniform jackets
shredded, soaked with their vital fluids, the flesh beneath flayed to the
bone.
Hefting the MP-5 SD-3, Brigid slid around the doorway. She exchanged a quick,
grim nod with Domi, who
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Savage Sun
331
double-fisted her Combat Master. Then both women rushed out into the huge,
egg-shaped chamber.
Five dragoons had regrouped, firing in the direction of Grant and Kane, their
weapons chattering, muzzles flashing with little twinkles of dancing flame. A
couple of them bled profusely from shrapnel-inflicted wounds, but they were
still in shape to fight.
A single shot from Domi's blaster drilled a hole through the jaw of one them,
punching him backward with such force his head struck the floor first. A
scarlet geyser erupted from his mouth and a severed carotid artery.
Brigid framed the dragoon next to him in her sights and fired a burst that
opened up his chest, propelling him backward in a crimson mist. The man was
dead before he hit the floor, but he kept his finger on the trigger even as he
fell.
Grant staggered as the close-range bullets slammed into his coat with all the
driving impact of a series of jackhammer blows. He nearly went down, feet
sliding and seeking purchase on the polished floor. He coughed, and the
contraction of his diaphragm muscles sparked a hot spasm of pain on the right
side of his rib cage. It took an iron will to keep from clutching at his side
and sinking to his knees. He knew at least one rib was cracked, possibly
broken.
Blinking back tears of pain from his eyes, he looked through the flat planes
of smoke for Kane. He glimpsed him racing for the latticework of girders and
posts supporting the elevated catwalk.
Strongbow saw him, too, and he screamed orders to the dragoons manning the
walkways to catch him in a cross fire.
Savage Sun
333
Chapter 32
Grant made a rapid head count and saw at least six, maybe as many as eight
dragoons on the catwalk above him. He raised his Sin Eater and raked the
walkway with a deadly stream of 9 mm tumblers. They struck sparks and gonglike
chimes from framework, bouncing off with angry, buzzing whines.
Only one of his targets went down, clutching at his right shoulder. His
companions fired staccato bursts in Grant's direction. They had him at a
lethal disadvantage, holding the high ground and establishing a triangulated
firing pattern.
Grant backpedaled as fast as his legs and throbbing ribs would allow, as
bullets whizzed near his head.
He yanked another gren from his combat harness, snapping away the pin at the
same time. With slugs humming and slashing through the air around him, he
flung the metal-shelled egg. He had no particular destination in mind for it;
all he cared about was creating sufficient noise and confusion to serve as a
diversion. He whirled away, his Kevlar-sheathed back to the blast.
Kane felt the heavy jolt of the explosion, the sear of heat against the back
of his neck. The autofire overhead stopped abruptly as the dragoons backed
hastily away from the epicenter of the detonation, just in case it was another
fragger.
He began climbing the framework one-handed, his right hand maintaining a firm
grip on the Sin Eater. His feet found a cross-braced girder and he sprang up
from it, wrapping his hand around a steel stanchion. Swinging his legs up, he
locked them around a support post. Using his knees, he shinnied up it as fast
as he could. A fresh burst of fire erupted behind him. He recognized the
stutter of an MP-5 SD-3 and the sharp, door-banging slam of Domi's Combat
Master.
He heard a sob of pain from over his head, and a second later a dragoon
pitched headfirst over the rail like an empty suit of clothes.
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Domi laughed to herself that her shot had found its intended target and
brought down the man who'd drawn a bead on Kane, but the laugh became a snarl
when a dragoon loomed out of the smoke. He pointed a Beretta directly at her
head.
She ducked and sidestepped before he squeezed the trigger, lashed out with a
leg and felt her foot slam solidly against his groin. The red-uniformed man
barely reacted. He uttered a faint grunt and straight-armed her. His slamming
palm caught her in the upper chest, driving almost all the wind from her lungs
and sending her sprawling.
She slid across the floor on her shoulders and back but managed to squeeze off
two quick shots between her outspread legs. The dragoon's tunic sprouted a
pair of holes, and he was knocked off his feet. Dragging air back into her
lungs, she climbed to her feet, seeing Bri-gid sprinting low beneath the
drifting veil of smoke.
Brigid had seen Grant's gren nearly vaporize a pair of dragoons, watched as
their bodies, shredded and scorched scarecrows, flailed through the air, limbs
flopping bonelessly.
She ran for the catwalk supports, where she saw Kane
334
JAMES AXLER
straining to scale them. Before she covered much ground, three dragoons
sprinted to intercept her.
Brigid saw them coming, but she kept going, knowing a retreat back to the
curving armaglass wall would only give them clear shots at her back, while
leaving her friends other adversaries to deal with.
She altered direction, racing toward them, firing from the hip with the
subgun. They returned fire, and she felt a bullet pluck at her hair. Wincing,
she kept her finger pressed down on the trigger, directing precision bursts. A
dragoon's chest broke apart in flying arcs of blood, another was thrown
sideways in a clumsy, crazy pirouette, kneecaps dissolving in a fluid welter
of crimson-and-white bone chips.
Then the bolt of her autoblaster snapped loudly open on an empty chamber.
Stopping or slowing down meant an instantaneous, bloody death, so she
increased her speed, the length of her stride, legs pumping fast and
furiously.
She flung her weapon out in front of her. The metal frame smashed into the
dragoon's face a microsecond before her knee smashed into his solar plexus.
Carried by the momentum of her rush, she bowled into him and both of them went
down, sending a burst from his sub-gun up toward the high, arched ceiling.
Going into a shoulder roll, Brigid cartwheeled up and over the man, using his [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]