• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

‘It would be easy to take him out.’

‘Those days are gone.’ Bleibtreu-Fèvre sighed again. ‘I can feel the footprints of those damn spy sats like shadows passing over the back of my neck…Speaking of which—’

Aghostino-Clarke looked at his watch, rotating his forearm slowly as he scanned the lines of data. ‘We have a six-minute window in two minutes,’ he said. ‘The next is four in twenty-three.’

‘Right,’ said Bleibtreu-Fèvre. ‘Let’s go for green, huh?’

‘Smoke?’

‘Nah,’ Kohn said. ‘Time to go.’

He stood up and tossed plates and scraps into the recycler. He put on the helmet and connected the comms to the gun. (Hi.) (Active.) He kept his eyes on the car as they went out through the doors. The car park was now more sparsely occupied, and the Cadillac stood on its own in an airbrushed gleam. How easy it would be to take them out. But if he were to blast them, right now, it would be difficult to hop into the truck and slip away unnoticed. They’d just have to wait. He ran scenarios of turning off into side-roads, jack-knifing the truck and coming out shooting.

The doors of the Cadillac opened; the two men inside got out and stood behind the doors. Janis made some kind of sound.

‘Keep going,’ Kohn said, not looking at her. ‘Stand on the running-board behind the door – just like them – and start up the truck. Do it.’

He veered away from her and began to walk across the fifty metres or so of tarmac between him and the car. The men didn’t react. He wondered if the doors were proof against steel-jacketed uranium slugs. He doubted it. Perhaps the Stasis agents expected him to negotiate.

He was letting the gun point downwards, his grasp light but ready to clench. He stopped.

‘Hey!’ he shouted, above the hum of vehicles. The men looked as if they hadn’t heard him. He opened his mouth again and heard at the same moment a yell from Janis and a rhythmic clatter behind him. He whirled around in a crouch, bringing the gun up. Coming straight at him was a horse, and the wild-haired creature on its back was unclipping a crossbow from a slot beside the saddle and reining in the horse and dismounting all at the same time. Everything went slow, even the sparks from the skidding hooves. He saw another horseman, galloping up to the truck from behind. He fired a burst that ripped through the rider’s thigh and into the horse. He saw the forelegs buckle under the beast’s continuing momentum, saw the beginning of the rider’s trajectory, then turned to his own attacker. A barbarian woman. She was two metres away and was half a second from bringing the crossbow to bear on him. (No time to fire.) (What?) He sprang forward and brought the butt down on the woman’s shoulder. The crossbow clattered away. He punched her straight under the sternum. She fell, balled up around her pain.

Kohn dropped and rolled. Something buzzed over his head. Snap. Sting of stone on his face. Ricochet. The shot had come from the Cadillac. To his horror he saw Janis leap from the truck’s running-board and dash towards him, head down and firing off pistol shots inexpertly behind her with her left hand. Her glades were on clear and he could see her eyes behind them, tightly closed.

The Cadillac roared forward, doors still open, gun muzzles poked above them. Flashes. There was a terrific bang as a tyre blew out. Suddenly the car was yawing. Janis dived past the front fender and down on top of him. She rolled over and sat up, bringing another hand to the automatic’s grip. The rear of the car swung past. Janis fired and a dark body dropped from the open left door.

She turned to him and opened her eyes.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘Come on.’ He jumped to his feet and pointed back to the doors of the cafeteria. ‘In there.’ The car, steadying now, was between them and the truck.

They ran for the doors and pushed them open, hurdled the prone bodies of terrified civilians to the stairs. At the first turning Kohn saw a Man In Black just reach the doors. There was no way to shoot at him without spraying half