Rogue(37)

Part of me screamed to do something. This was a legitimate raid, well-intentioned, and these fifteen men and three women were going to die. Their families were going to suffer massive anguish. I knew exactly what was going to happen, what it was going to look like, how dreadful it would be to them. Heck, I’d done it myself once, while carrying a baby.

Malcolm said, “Proceed,” and they swarmed the building.

I did not find an opening in which to suggest further caution. I forced myself to remain still.

The tac team got placed fast. They were quiet, efficient and enthusiastic. I looked at their placement and dispersal and cringed. It was literally textbook, as I’d done it twelve years before. They’d learned from the best. Us.

Then the explosions started. A flashbang, some cutting charges. Some shots. Malcolm looked very pleased and comfortable.

Then the shooting continued, interspersed with shrieking screams of agony, gouts of smoke, and more explosions, including one that ripped the side off a floor above. It rained down onto the ground in drumming thumps of debris.

Malcolm gave me a sideways glance, angry and tense, then headed in himself.

I couldn’t fault his courage.

Four very worried officers with carbines followed him. I brought up the rear, not asking, just acting as if I belonged. They didn’t question me, but I think they didn’t notice me.

Power and lights were out in the building. Once that was determined, I followed them up the stairs. Four floors, each of them seeming farther away and with thinner air. I was having emotional flashbacks, traumatic stress pummeling me. Dammit.

We got to the fourth floor, two cops with carbines went first, then the chief and I, then the last two brought up the rear and skipped through between us.

Then they stopped.

There was some illumination here from their weapon lights, and some through a destroyed door. Tendrils of smoke floated lazily past. They didn’t add much to the scene, because it was so outré nothing could add to it.

The squad outside the door still smoked, doused in gelled petroleum, probably diesel or paraffin. Some oxygenating compound had been released, and the glop had burned right through their faces to bone and brain tissue. Guts still sizzled, and the corridor smelled like scorched bologna with the metallic sauce of blood and the tang of fuel, with a hint of ozone. Chief Malcolm turned and spewed, trying to avoid contaminating the crime scene, and splattering his hands and the wall. It wasn’t going to matter much. It did add slightly to the smell.

They’d shattered the door on entry. Textbook. Except Randall had planned for them to do that, and used that as a trigger. Three other bodies were well-bruised sacks of blood from a concussion wave, which had also peeled the wall sheathing. I gingerly moved to the doorway, wary of triggers. There could be more. Malcolm let me take point. Pity he hadn’t believed me earlier.

The room was full of rubble and bodies and lingering eddies of dust. I looked at the traps and could tell which page of which manual they came from.

The two that entered through the door had run onto a hard floor covered in ball bearings. Even their grippy shoes hadn’t helped with that. One had a broken neck. The other had a muzzle burn against his temple, just under the helmet brim.

Two came through the window and caught on a transparent mesh. The first was prone on a bed of caltrops, and he hadn’t died quickly. They were only a few centimeters each. His buddy had landed on him, though, which had probably driven some into his face and throat, judging from the crimson pool starting to skim over. They were probably laced with some neural toxin, since those would be crippling but not lethal wounds. Then I saw some of the window shards sticking out of him.

His buddy had intercepted a spike. It was above the reinforcement on her armor, right through her lower jaw and spine. That had to hurt, too. Her face was in a rictus, and there was a stain under her. The spike had probably been driven in by hand, as she moved in free flight.

The ones who came through the wall had fared no better. Sticky aerogel doesn’t show on sonar scans. They blew a hole, dove in and got gooed, then were exterminated with pistol rounds through the atlas. Randall undoubtedly had garments with a keyed enzyme to counter that specific adhesive. The foam around them looked like soap suds tinged pink.

I heard a faint noise, and very carefully eased through the door, looking for any kind of sensor or trigger.

The one who’d come through the ceiling had carefully selected his spot to place him in a corner, facing into the room, with clear crossfire with his buddies. We have the same manual. The expression on his face could almost be sexual, until you deduced it was pain. He’d hit a bed of long, very slender, almost molecular spikes. A quick leap had pulled his feet free, but then he’d landed ass first on much longer ones back in the corner. He was impaled, right through the pelvic girdle and assorted nether regions, possibly as deep as his diaphragm. He might still be alive, and he might be salvageable, given that the puddle of slime under him was mostly gut contents and only a liter or so of blood. Every tiny twitch caused excruciating agony, though, which caused him to twitch more. He was in so much pain he couldn’t even scream, which probably reduced those twitches a bit. His breathing was very shallow but apneic. He’d been there ten minutes with his brain undoubtedly cauterized by the hormones, convulsions and neural torture. He’d need to be doped to the teeth, then extracted carefully to avoid bleeding out—some of those needles were possibly through his kidneys and inferior vena cava—reconstructed with nanos, all under massive amounts of drugs, then he’d need physical and psychological therapy.