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the air at the exact mi-crosecond both blasters trained on him. The bores spat
twin tongues of flame, and the bullets struck the armored men in the torsos,
sending them staggering.
Jozure pivoted, his katana cutting wheels through the fading streamers of gas.
His dodging dance came to halt, no more than a yard from Pollard. The
moon-faced man's lips writhed back from his stumpy teeth in a snarl of fury.
He held down the trigger of his Copperhead, sending a full-auto fusillade
ripping into the metal-sheathed abdomen of Jozure.
His lower torso flew apart in a greasy explosion of blood and bowels. The
Tiger went over backward, and curled into a ball, the silver sword spinning
from his hand, his carbine clattering across the flagstones.
Pollard swung the barrel of the subgun toward Brigid, his little eyes glinting
first in recognition, then astonishment. His finger froze on the trigger for a
shaved shred of a second as he tried to figure out what a convicted
seditionist was doing with a group of ar-mored, sword-wielding madmen.
Although Pollard was momentarily paralyzed by confusion, a Magistrate
sprinting up from the direc-tion of the courtyard entrance wasn't so impaired.
He directed a clumsy burst from his Sin Eater in her gen-eral direction as he
ran.
Brigid threw herself forward in a frantic somer-sault, trying to stay ahead of
the deadly stream of lead.
Dirt fountains erupted behind her, little slivers of stone stinging her legs.
She shoulder rolled across the ground and snatched up Jozure's fallen carbine.
She raised it hastily, surprised by its heavy weight. She put it to her
shoulder, framed Pollard in the blade sights and squeezed the trigger. The
longblaster kicked, the recoil slamming the stock painfully into her shoulder
socket, the barrel pulling upward as the shot boomed.
The bullet cleaved the air well above Pollard's head. Gritting her teeth,
Brigid set herself, drew an-other bead on the man and squeezed the trigger a
second time. Nothing happened except the firing pin clicked with dry, mocking
impotence against an empty chamber.
Pollard stared in astonishment, then an ugly leer twisted his lips.
Bouncing to her feet, Brigid flung the carbine out in front of her. The metal
plate of the stock smashed into Pollard's forehead, sending him staggering
against the Magistrate standing beside him. Both of them yelled in pain, fury
and frustration, but they managed to align her running figure in front of
their blasters.
Then a small, metal-shelled ovoid landed be-tween her and the Mags.
With alarmed shouts, Pollard and the other Mag-istrate started to run, but the
flash-bang detonated with a
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James Axler - Outlanders - Doom Dynasty brutal, bone-jarring thunderclap. Amid
the blaze of light, sand, dirt and pieces of flagstone were flung skyward in a
cloud. The concussion slammed into Brigid, picked her up and dropped her
heavily. She hitched around on her left side, raking her hair out of her eyes.
Grant lunged through the eye-stinging haze. He stroked a short burst from his
Copperhead, but his shots missed by fractional margins.
Pollard and the other Magistrate whirled and ran toward the building. The
magazine of the Copperhead clicked empty, so Grant discarded it. He glimpsed
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Pollard doing the same thing, throwing his subgun aside as he and the Mag
raced into the dark mouth of the double doorway.
Grant halted to one side of the opening to reload his handblaster. Taking a
shuddery breath, he winced at the ache in his chest. Pins and needles burned
through his torso. He coughed, and the contraction of his diaphragm muscles
sparked a hot spasm of pain in his right rib cage. It took an iron will to
keep from clutching at his side.
Blinking back tears of pain from his eyes, he moved into the building at once,
ignoring Brigid's voice calling his name. He crept along the hall, his head
swiveling back and forth to peer into shadows, cursing the fact his comm-link
to Kane was not on-line.
He had gone only a few yards down the corridor when his peripheral vision
caught a twinkle of light reflecting dimly from an egg-shaped object bouncing
down the corridor ahead of him. He dived backward, twisting to land on his
shoulder on the tiled, debris-littered floor, sliding along on his side,
trying desper-ately to roll back to the doorway.
With an earsplitting, teeth-jarring crack, the high-ex gren erupted in a flash
of orange flame and white smoke. A hell-flower bloomed, petals of flame
curv-ing and spreading outward. Spewing from the end of every petal was a rain
of shrapnel, ripping into the walls and ceiling. Fragments rattled violently
against the floor, and Grant felt a few sharp blows against his upraised,
armored arms.
The air went on shuddering with the echoes of the explosion, as ugly black
fissures spread out in a spi-
derweb pattern on the ceiling. The walls cracked open like overripe fruit. The
ceiling split in the middle and folded downward like a double lid.
Before Grant could do more than spit "Shit!" a seething cascade of plaster,
wood, insulation and bro-ken rafters poured down. The rain of splinters,
planks and steel braces half covered him.
Coughing, blinded and nearly smothered, Grant struggled against the pressure
of the debris covering him from upper chest to the toes of his boots. His
visor was occluded by smears of dust, and kernels of grit stung his eyes and
set them to watering. His right arm, his gun arm, was trapped beneath him, the
Sin
Eater's barrel snagged on shards of wood and im-peded by metal reinforcing
rods. Frantically he tried to free himself, but the plaster broke into
fragments when he secured fingerholds. He glimpsed a black-
armored form sliding out of the dust-laden air, then a heavy weight landed on
his rubble-covered chest, nearly driving all the air from his lungs.
"Wasn't sure it was you," the Magistrate said, stomping hard on the layers of
plaster and sheet rock covering Grant's chest. "Couldn't be, I told myself.
But it is, isn't it? Grant the traitor."
The man's voice rang a distant chord of recogni-tion, and Grant cleared his
dust-coated throat enough to whisper, "MacMurphy?"
"One and the same."
Grant repressed a groan. MacMurphy was a man he had served with for many years
and with whom he had shared the dangers of the Mesa Verde pene-tration that [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]