The Spell of Rosette - Kim Falconer [170]
The crowd above him was taking heavy abuse. Fifty or so rebels were protesting the perpetual lockdown of ASSIST, masquerading as family members of long-absent scientists, guards and technical staff. They were joined by hundreds of actual relatives, many from other Resistance groups. In the shadows, where only he could detect them, the Lupins waited. Opposing them were ASSIST militia dressed in black Kevlar armour. Their helmeted faces were anonymous, their body-length plastic shields and electrically charged batons imposing as they stood at the entrance, battering and bashing anyone coming too close to the gates. Jarrod grimaced when he saw children in the crowd. Amongst them all were witch-hunters, coursing like sight hounds. His throat tightened.
Footsteps behind spun him around. Kreshkali approached with a large backpack, her smile grim.
‘You’re carrying a heavy load, milady,’ he said.
‘I’ve enough plastic explosives to level all four faces of the Matterhorn. You ready?’
He nodded once.
‘Let’s do it.’
Jarrod sent a message to Drayco. Set for the big bang?
There was a pause and then an affirmation: We’re at the wall.
Jarrod signalled Kreshkali, who took off down the sewer at a jog.
Above them, on the rain-pocked tarmac outside the complex, the riot Jarrod dreamed of two hundred years ago began. The guards didn’t see it coming. One moment the crowd was under control, rallying with their pickets like something from a mid-twentieth-century sit-in and the next moment those picket signs were discarded and fifty wickedly curved swords appeared, their razor-sharp blades glinting as lightning flashed across the blue-black sky.
Those without swords retreated to the edges, giving the warriors room to manoeuvre. From the shadows the Lupins crept, some in wolf form, some bipedal. The unarmed crowd shrank back before following in their wake. If the guards were shocked they recovered quickly, thrusting at the protesters with their batons, but after dealing with generations of passive non-resistance they were ill prepared for the blades that faced them, no matter how raw the wielders. Neither were they a match for the frenzied, unreserved aggression of the other protesters who, for generations, had lived on the fringes of survival and were now fighting back with pipes and makeshift shields. No-one was prepared for the mind work, sword and fang of the Lupins. They were unstoppable, until the rifles came.
The ASSIST troops called for backup, and within minutes guards firing laser repeater-rifles appeared, cutting through the crowd like a mower through tall grass. No matter how skilled the Lupins were with their swords, they couldn’t match such weapons. Jarrod arrived in the Tulpa-body of a guard in time to see the protesters disperse in all directions, some carrying their dead and wounded with them.
Unnoticed, he slipped into the line of guards that were backing into the compound, still firing their lasers. He saw what the others could not—the Lupins melted into the shadows and followed them in. Well done. They were all through the inner gate before the first lockdown, and the first explosion. The shock wave from Kreshkali’s plastics shook the ground. A few of the guards fell and struggled to get up. Most of his rank took off towards the sound while he headed into the main ASSIST complex with four other divisions. He couldn’t see the Lupins now, but he could sense them. A succession of explosions continued to shake the complex.
Drayco, how close?
Seconds. We come.
Jarrod was relieved Kreshkali had been able to blow the wall in three other places by the time he reached the front doors. He hoped desperately that they had made it in through the fourth rent undetected. The success of this venture depended on it.
Jarrod’s in! Drayco sent the message to Rosette, his voice a shout above the peals of thunder and the rumbling aftermath of Kreshkali’s detonations.
Tell him we are too. Rosette ran alongside