Children of Zanar 1: The Zanari Inheritance Page 23

Alarms began to sound all over the compound. Troops reached for their combat gear. Xaviran Monteagle jerked awake as his bed did the lambada under him. He was reaching for the comms unit beside his bed when a second warhead detonated on the roof, wiping out his sun terrace, buckling several beams, and dropping a lot of plaster into bed with him. The sound of a third and then a fourth explosion followed soon after, though he could not localise them.

  He grabbed his radio. ‘What the diyou’s going on?’

  ‘Sir,’ a voice answered after a second. ‘We’re not sure. We’re under attack. Main comms is down. We think it’s a jammer, but we haven’t found it yet. Whoever it is is throwing some heavy weaponry at us.’

  ‘Get out of jamming range and call in some help from Garaka,’ Monteagle ordered. ‘If this is his fault, I’ll skin him!’

  ~~~

  Out in the bay, Jinny lowered her head and set the aquasled she was riding to negative buoyancy. It was unlikely they would trace the missiles back to source, she had programmed them to take a non-linear course to their targets and the jammer would be making their radar useless, but it was best not to take chances.

  Anyway, she needed to be elsewhere for the next stage. That was when the fun would really start.

  ~~~

  Thea watched as the armoured vehicle carrying whatever troops Garaka had to spare drove past the landing pad. There were a few men in clamshell armour hanging on to the outside of the thing. That had to be ten or twelve of them out of the way.

  Down on the landing pad, the dropship crew were awaiting orders, but they already seemed to know something was happening. They had one of the hatches open and they were standing around watching the sky. The grey-painted, streamlined vessel was already ugly, but with its point-defence/ground-suppression turrets lifted upward and ready, it looked like an oversized hedgehog which had had a lot of its spikes pulled out.

  Thea let them sit for another couple of minutes, just in case, and then moved out of the undergrowth at the back of the landing area. She came at them from behind the ship, but none of them would have seen her anyway. Automatic systems might have spotted her, but anything with a mind would see nothing. She prepped a grenade and rolled it under the ship toward the men on the far side, and then she rushed toward the stern to put a landing strut between her and the blast.

  There was a noise and screams. The noise was not exactly like an explosion, more of a weird combination of a crack and the sound of gas rushing through a tube. Jinny was never subtle when it came to explosives, unless she really had to be. Her idea of demolition was most people’s idea of disintegration. She had loaded the grenade with plasma warheads and, when Thea rounded the ship to finish the job, the results were still obvious. Two of the flight crew were on the ground, their bodies still smouldering, what was left of them. Parts of the hull were still glowing.

  Still, Thea could be unsubtle too. She tossed a second grenade into the cabin and hit the exterior door control. The sound of the explosion displacing air within the cabin could just be heard as a dull thump a second after the hatch closed.

  Dropship’s disabled, she sent to Jinny. Heading for the compound now.

  Great. Troops coming?

  They went through a couple of minutes ago. You should have them by now.

  There was a short pause. I see them. Hurry up at your end. I need to get the comms down here.

  Working as fast as I can. Thea grabbed the disposable missile launcher she had left in the undergrowth and started running for the north compound.

  ~~~

  ‘What’s going on?’ Jay asked when he found Garaka talking to two of his mercs in the corridor outside the main bedrooms.

  ‘Someone’s attacking my father’s place,’ Garaka replied sharply. ‘Go back to your room and stay there.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘Do it!’

  Jay turned and went back to the door of his room. Someone attacking Xaviran’s place need not be coming after Kaya. In fact, how could they even know she was here. Jay knew Thea and Jinny had survived the ambush at the merc HQ, but there was no way they could have followed the Monteagle’s Prize to Giltanish. Still…

  Opening the door, Jay entered his room and went to the dresser where he had stowed his gun. With it strapped to his thigh, he sat down on the bed and waited. Somehow, he doubted that the attack would end with an assault on the south side of the island.

  ~~~

  The missile Thea launched was equipped with a small pressor drive, not a rocket engine. It was silent and fast, and it dropped onto the roof of the control bunker without anyone becoming aware of it. Until, three seconds later, the jammer unit in its payload bay activated and radio communications all across the compound went down.

  ~~~

  You’re up.

  The words sounded in Jinny’s head and she grinned, raising the compact, multi-barrel launcher to her shoulder. The last two missiles in the tubes fired off, one after the other, their guidance systems already programmed. The jammers in them would complete the blanket over Xaviran’s compound, killing all radio comms. Even if Garaka’s people realised what was happening over there and called back the reinforcements, no one was going to hear them over the electronic howl of the jammers.

  Still, better noisy than sorrowful. Picking up a throw-away launcher, Jinny aimed it at the armoured truck the reinforcements had ridden in on and fired.

  ~~~

  Xaviran Monteagle had just made it to his armour when he heard another explosion outside. Whoever was attacking them believed in serious overkill, but so far there was no sign of ground troops.

  With the sound of something else exploding, he lifted his comms unit and hit the stud. ‘What was that?’ When he released the stud, all he got was a sound like wind howling through a narrow pipe combined with white noise. Someone was jamming the entire compound now. That was not good.

  Reaching up, he hit the button to open up the armoured suit. It was time for one old warhorse to ride again.

  ~~~

  Thea slipped in through the gate left open when the truck had gone out and dropped into cover. Leaving the gate open had been sloppy, but then there was a lot of sloppy going around. The friend-or-foe identification system the turrets used was radio-based. With the jammer running, the turrets had been shut down in case they shot a friendly; Thea had been a little disappointed that someone figured that out before someone had got shot, but she had not expected to have everything go her way.

  There were two guards at the door of the building now, and two more up on the terrace. They were wearing night-vision visors, but they were not going to be a serious problem, aside from being in the way. When Thea wanted to be invisible, and it was a sentient mind she had to deal with, she could be invisible. Still, she worked her way around to the side and came up on the door along the wall. That kept the building frontage in the way of the men on the terrace and meant that the door guards were working off their peripheral vision.

  Slipping a pair of black-metal daggers from the collection of them she had across her chest, Thea closed the distance, keeping low, and then moved. One backhanded strike slit the nearest man’s throat and, without a pause, she tossed the second blade at the other guard. The blade punched through the man’s neck and he went down, clutching at the blade. Thea moved in and ripped his problem from his hands, with additional windpipe, then she opened the door and slipped into the hall beyond.

  ~~~

  Some of the mercs had got enough brainpower together to figure out where the last missile had to have come from. There was a raised coppice of trees about two hundred metres to the west of the compound and that had to be the launch site. Nowhere else had the viewpoint to hit the truck that way.

  A team of four began advancing into the woodland, taking cover where they could behind trees. They were just outside the jammer’s reach, but about all they could hear was each other. No one else seemed to be on the air.

  ‘You see anything?’

  ‘Nothing yet. Th
ey have to be here.’

  ‘I’m getting nothing on infrared. Maybe they– Wait, there’s something…’

  Then a voice came out of the darkness, light and girlish, and not the kind of thing they expected to hear at all. ‘Oh come on, guys. At this rate, you’re never going to catch me. Put some effort into it, will you?’

  The radio crackled. ‘There!’ And three needlers opened up on a section of the undergrowth twenty metres away. Four-millimetre darts spat forth at supersonic speed, hundreds of them impacting their targets in the space of a few seconds. Splinters of wood burst from tree trunks, leaves fell, and grass was shredded.

  Jinny stepped out from behind a tree dressed in a bikini top, denim shorts, and combat boots. She was carrying a gun which had to be longer than she was tall and was possibly heavier than her too, and she did not seem to be noticing the weight hanging on the ends of her arms.

  ‘Shit! Is that a–’

  ‘Can’t be, she’s just–’

  ‘You missed me!’ Jinny called out with a bright grin. ‘Guess you need to shoot faster.’ And she pulled the trigger on her gun. There was relatively little sound. The gun had few moving parts, just a pressor beam capable of accelerating the thin plugs of ammo it fired up to a reasonable fraction of light speed in no time at all while a counter-pressor handled the recoil. There was a sound like a crackling fire as a hundred rounds a second sprayed forth, each breaking the sound barrier, and then all Hell broke loose. Trees exploded into shrapnel as the metal needles hit and were instantly turned to plasma. The same process happened when the slugs hit the men’s armour, but here the plasma punched through as though the hardened shells were paper to ravage the flesh beneath.

  Jinny let up on the trigger after a count of two and examined her work. Trees were on fire. Bits of burning cloth fluttered down. Where there had been four men in armour, there was little evidence that they had ever been there. She nodded and lifted her head.

  ‘Come on, guys! I’m getting bored out here!’

  ~~~

  There were no guards visible on the ground floor until Thea got to the back of the house. She figured they were either outside, checking the perimeter, or upstairs, guarding Garaka. Except for the two who were guarding a door for no obvious reason.

  Well, the ground floor rooms had barred windows, which made them a good place to keep a prisoner. That probably meant that this was the room where Kaya was being kept, and those two were in the way.

  Reaching out, she invaded their minds in an instant and then began moving down the corridor watching for any sign that they had noticed her through her clouding. One of them was looking in her direction, which meant that he was going to see her eventually: it was just a matter of how close she could get before he did.

  The answer was point-blank range. Before any sudden motion could betray her, she sent out a pulse of telepathic power at the second guard, stunning him into insensibility. The sound of him falling attracted the nearest of the two and Thea struck as he turned his back, her sword swinging up and slicing through his armour to cut deep into his back. He let out a shriek, staggered forward a pace, and began to turn, but Thea was counting on that. Her blade swung again, this time coming in under his helmet and cutting straight through his neck. Blood sprayed as his head was almost severed and he went down hard.

  His compatriot, still reeling from the mental attack, put up no resistance as Thea finished him off, and then she turned to the door.

  ~~~

  Something was obviously happening. It was night, or maybe early in the morning, and people should be sleeping. Kaya had spent so much time sleeping that she was not really tired and getting comfortable in the stupid restraints was not easy, and she had no idea what time it was locally or on a standard clock, but other people should be sleeping. Instead, there were lights on in the hallway and there had been people running about. Something was happening.

  A surge of hope welled up inside her. Somehow, Thea or Cassandra or Sienna had found her. Somehow they had and they had come to rescue her. Except… How could they have found her? And how were they going to get through all those soldiers? Except that Thea and Jinny had wiped out a filarax hunting party to save Fay. Except that they would have been able to ambush the hunters and here they were dealing with invading somewhere with solid walls, barred windows, and gun turrets. Except that–

  The door opened, light blazed in from the hall outside, and Thea stepped through it, her gaze flicking around the room until she spotted Kaya. Grinning, she closed the door behind her and then flicked on the light. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Been looking for you.’

  Kaya just gawped. Thea was dressed in camouflage pants and a rust-brown tank top, and combat boots which were a dark brown or maybe black. She had a bandolier of throwing knives over her shoulder that, Kaya figured, also held the scabbard for her sword, which was in her hand. The silver necklace with the blue stone was there, as always, around Thea’s neck. She looked ridiculously both just right and way underdressed for a combat mission, but it was the thick coating of blood that was soaking into her top which really drew the attention and held it.

  ‘A-are you hurt?’ Kaya asked.

  Thea looked down at her chest. ‘This is someone else’s. Come on, we have limited time. Get up and hold your hands out.’

  Kaya did not really understand what Thea meant until Thea lifted her sword and pointed it at Kaya’s wrists. ‘Uh, okay. Will that sword cut through these?’ She held her arms out as far from her as she could and spread her wrists as far as the manacles would let her.

  ‘This sword will cut through just about anything,’ Thea replied and swung the blade down. There was an odd grinding noise as the weapon bit into the metal, carving a little more than halfway through the joint. Another swing followed and this time the manacles separated. ‘It’s a vibrosword,’ Thea explained, ‘with a hardened, ultrafine edge. It vibrates really fast. You can hear it humming if you listen closely, but there’s one more thing I need to take care of.’

  Walking around behind Kaya, Thea located the null-field generator on her belt and turned it off while Kaya undid the belt itself, possible now her hands were free. Thea sighed. ‘That is much better. Those damn things are annoying.’

  ‘I’d kind of got that part,’ Kaya said. ‘How did you find me? Jay said the field would block you.’

  ‘Cassandra, not me, but yes, it did. On the other hand, it didn’t stop us from talking nicely to one of the Kraggan mercs from their base. We’ve been here for days waiting for you to turn up. You’re late.’

  ‘Huh. Next time I get kidnapped, I’ll try to be more prompt.’

  ‘Next time you get kidnapped, you’d better have a really good excuse or I won’t come looking for you. That jumpsuit is not your colour, by the way. Just saying. Luckily, there’s a nanofab on the yacht.’

  ‘Yacht? Am I missing something?’

  ‘Long story. Not for now. Wait here while I check outside.’ Thea stepped to the door, turned out the light, opened the door, and poked her head out, looking to the left. Before she could turn to check the right, a hail of metal darts peppered the wall and the door frame behind her and she jerked back inside. ‘Diyou,’ she said.

  ~~~

  Xaviran Monteagle marched out to the side wall of his house where a lot of mercs were standing around behind walls while an armoured car, on its back, burned quietly away behind them. Radios were not working so he switched to the external speakers on his suit. ‘Will someone tell me what the diyou you’re all doing standing here when we’re under attack? You, Thorgsen. Report!’

  ‘Sir!’ Thorgsen was a thickset blonde who generally did not scare easily, but he was looking distinctly worried as he snapped to attention and executed a sharp salute. ‘We’re not sure how many there are out there, but we’ve definitely heard one of them yelling at us. And she’s got some heavy weaponry we just aren’t set up for. I’ve never seen a gun that can do that. It tears people apart like dolls. We’ve already lost two teams.�
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  ‘You’ve “heard her yelling?” There’s some woman out there–’

  ‘Pardon me, sir, but she sounds like a girl, a mad one. She keeps shouting at us to come find her because she’s getting bored waiting, or she’s feeling neglected.’

  ‘She said, “what’s a girl got to do to get any attention around here?” Uh, sir,’ one of the other men reported. Xaviran did not recognise the man, probably one of the ones Garaka had sent over.

  ‘She’s mad, sir,’ Thorgsen repeated.

  ‘Well, she’s caught my attention,’ Xaviran growled. Shifting his weight, he pushed off toward the gate and the trees beyond it. The trees, he noticed, were smouldering in places and looked thinner than they had done. Well, that was just going to make this easier.

  Hefting the minigun he liked to use when he had his armour on, he did not really take aim, but he let loose a strafing stream of lead which decapitated more trees and, probably, anyone in them. He kept marching forward, firing into the brush until his ammo indicator blinked empty and the autoloader on his back swapped the feed to a new magazine.

  ‘I really don’t want to kill you, Xaviran,’ a voice yelled from the trees. It did sound like it came from a rather young throat, and certainly from a woman. ‘But I will if you keep that up.’

  ‘Only if I don’t kill you first,’ Xaviran said back, his voice amplified by his suit. ‘That’s pretty likely considering what I’m wearing and firing. Why don’t you just give up now before you get hurt?’ His infrared systems picked up a dim heat signature through the trees. It was faint, but it was there. Without waiting for a reply, he hit the fire control on his gun and bullets flew out to chew into the wood.

  He thought he heard a shout over the sound of disintegrating links, but all he saw was the flying splinters and the heat signature moving and suddenly becoming more clear. He was about to track his fire across his new, clearer target when the return fire hit him in the chest where his armour was heaviest. It seemed to make no difference. He felt a spear drive through him, then another. The third was a vague flicker of neurons in a dying brain, and then there was nothing.