Grailstone Gambit

The woman nodded. “Yeah, a big parade down the street with you as the main trophy. A lot of people in this camp don’t like you, Grant.”

The corner of her mouth quirked in a wry smile. “Go figure, huh?”

“Yeah,” he echoed. “Go figure.”

Contemplatively, she continued, “But a lot of people in this camp don’t like taking orders from a scalie in the first place, and they sure as shit won’t like it if they find out they’re really taking orders from a little runt of a doomie on crutches.”

Gusting out a sigh, the Merry Widow ran a hand over the purple-dyed tips of her hair. “Mebbe there’s something we can do about that. Lemme think on it.”

Chapter 6

Kane ran across the rooftop with a long-legged stride. As soon as he had seen the geyser of steam burst from the Cadillac’s radiator, he dropped the OICW, leaped to his feet and started running.

A chorus of outraged screams and panicked yells erupted from the crowd below, and he smiled in grim satisfaction.

“Kane,” came Brigid’s voice into his head. She sounded more indignant than confused or concerned. “What the hell is going on?”

“Keep standing by,” he told her.

“I’ve been standing by. I need to know—”

Reaching up to the Commtact, he cut the channel. He knew she would heap vituperation on him when next they spoke, but he couldn’t afford a distraction. He heard the distant whip-crack of a rifle shot, and the angry yells from the crowd hit a fever pitch of fear. Either Edwards or Brady was taking the initiative.

Kane wasn’t concerned about leaving the OICW behind. His first priority was reaching street level as soon as possible, and so he concentrated on running. The Sin Eater snugged in its forearm holster weighed considerably less than the rifle, although the four grenades attached to the combat webbing beneath his jacket bounced painfully against his ribs.

Racing across the roof, he leaped nimbly over haphazard heaps of unidentifiable junk. He angled away from the cupola enclosing the stairway. He had no inclination to be trapped in the stairwell by enraged Roamers who he was sure were on their way up.

Obeying an impulse triggered by his point man’s sense, Kane had decided to stop Shuma’s vehicle rather than snipe at live targets. He wasn’t sure why he had reached his decision, but he put a great faith in his instincts as a general rule.

When Kane’s point man’s sense howled an alarm, he usually paid attention. His point man’s sense was really a combined manifestation of the five he had trained to the epitome of keenness. Something about Shuma and his big-headed companion—some small, almost unidentifiable stimulus—had triggered the mental alarm.

Sprinting across the flat surface of the roof, he reached the edge and took an alleyway yawning before him in a single leap. He misjudged the distance to the adjacent building and landed too hard, falling onto his right side and rolling over and over. He came to a halt when he slammed up against the brick facade of a chimney.

Biting back a curse, he quickly examined the scrapes on the palms of his hands, then rose to a knee. Across the alley he heard a door slam open and he cast a glance over his shoulder.

A pair of bearded Roamers bulled their way out of the cupola, looking this way and that. Both men cradled lightweight deer rifles in their arms. Kane gauged the weapons to be .22-caliber, and therefore they had little stopping power unless the shooters were very accurate. He assumed the Roamers would be, so he sidled out of sight on the opposite side of the chimney.

The two men glared around with wild, angry eyes and when they spotted the OICW lying on the rooftop, they jogged toward it. Kane took advantage of their distraction to stand up and start running again.

He heard a wordless bellow of rage behind him, then the snapping of a rifle shot. A bullet drilled into a stack of lumber on his right, throwing up a little cloud of splinters. Increasing his speed and the length of his stride, he reached the far edge of the roof and dived off it, to the building fifteen feet below.

Kane landed on the balls of his feet, and he threw himself forward into a somersault. The layer of rotting wood and roofing material sagged beneath his weight and collapsed inward. He dropped amid a seething cascade of plaster, drywall, boards, insulation and broken rafters.

Fortunately, he didn’t fall far, but the impact still very nearly jolted all the wind from his lungs. Gasping, his vision blurred, Kane dragged himself to his hands and knees, hearing splintery shards and timbers crashing down all around him. The swirl of dust and dirt particles stung his eyes and coated his tongue.

Coughing, fanning the air in front of his face, he staggered to his feet, glancing up at the ragged hole his hurtling body had made in the ceiling. Faintly, he heard the Roamers yelling in frustration, but he doubted they would risk following him. They no doubt hoped he had broken his neck or at the very least his back in the fall.

Kneading the small of his back, Kane squinted through the dust, seeing a hallway piled high with the detritus of two centuries. Though the light was dim, he moved toward the mouth of a stairwell. Dark doorways yawned on both sides of the passage. He saw only shambles inside the rooms and evidence they were used as nests for vermin. The interior smelled stale and musty.

Carefully, he went down the steps, wincing as the risers creaked and sagged alarmingly beneath his boots. The banister wobbled whenever he touched it. He could only dimly hear the sounds of commotion out in the street, more screams and sporadic gunfire.

Activating his Commtact, he opened the channel to Brigid. “Status?”

Her tone of voice flat, Brigid responded, “Shuma threw himself over that weird little man. Edwards and Brady have been shooting into the crowd, keeping anybody from getting too close to Grant. I haven’t seen Domi, but I know she was the one who—”

Brigid broke off, then said crisply, “Stand by.”

“Baptiste—”

“It’s your turn to stand by.”

THE GRENADE ROLLED ONLY a few feet before detonating with a brutal thunderclap. A hell-flower bloomed, petals of flame curving and spreading outward. Spewing from the end of every petal was a rain of shrapnel, ripping into bodies and the facades of buildings.

Fragments rattled violently against the half-fallen wall behind which Domi had taken cover. The explosion was followed by the shattering of glass and several keening screams. Domi caught glimpses of men staggering backward with their hands clapped over their ruined faces. Other people stared in wide-eyed shock, frozen in horror.

Two rifle shots, sounding like the snap of dry twigs, cut through the echoes of the detonation. A pair of men standing on opposite sides of the street fell thrashing to the ground, their heads misshapen by the high-powered bullets. Domi knew the bullets had been fired by Brady and Edwards.

The crowd ran in a howling, panicky rush that bowled people off their feet and trampled more than a few of them. Domi stayed behind the wall until the main mass of the crowd had passed. She resheathed her knife then rose to her feet.

She lunged back in the direction she had come, plunging through the smoke. As she ducked beneath an outstretched arm, she drew her Combat Master, appreciating the feel of the checkered walnut grip against the palm of her right hand.

A Roamer, blood streaming from a shrapnel-inflicted gash on his cheek, jumped in her path, his discolored teeth bared in a snarl of rage. With neat precision, she clubbed him across the mouth with the barrel of her autopistol. He reeled away, spitting scarlet and crumbs of his shattered teeth.

As Domi stepped around him, she saw a dark-complexioned man wearing a yellow turban racing toward Grant with a three-foot-long sword held over his head, readying himself to deliver a decapitating blow. Because of the roar of the crowd, she couldn’t hear what he said, even though his lips worked as if he was shrieking a stream of imprecations.

Moving on impulse, almost without thought, Domi leveled her autopistol and swiftly brought the turbaned man into target acquisition. Twenty yards was long range for the handgun, especially aiming at a moving target, but she had made far more difficult shots. When the sword-wielding figure was framed within the weapon’s sights, she adjusted for elevation and windage, then she squeezed the trigger two times.

The big automatic pistol bucked in her hands, sending out booming shock waves of ear-shattering sound. The first .45-caliber bullet hit the man directly in the center of his turban and the other struck his neck. He catapulted backward amid a spouting of blood.

The people around him scattered at the sound of the shots, running in all directions. Because the majority of the crowd was composed of hard-bitten, violence-prone Roamers, they didn’t indulge in a panic-stricken flight. They took cover either in the ruins or they dropped flat to the street, eyes and guns seeking targets.

Domi glimpsed the huge dark bulk of Shuma hustling away from the Cadillac, a limp shape cradled protectively in his arms. She guessed the scalie was ferrying his small companion away to safety, but she couldn’t understand why he would care.

She didn’t devote any further thought to the matter. She kept her gaze fixed on Grant as he strained against the bonds that held him to the hood of the vehicle. Wisps of steam from the punctured radiator still curled around him, like an early-morning fog.

Through a part in the vapors, Domi a saw a scar-faced woman with a bizarre purple-tinged Mohawk haircut shouldering her way through the press of bodies, using the stock of a Stoner machine gun to hammer a path. Her narrowed eyes were turned toward Grant.

Domi came to a halt and sighted down the length of her pistol, aiming at a spot between the woman’s exposed, tattooed breasts. Too late she sensed a rushing body behind her. Arms encircled her in an agonizingly tight grip, lifting her from the ground. She smelled stale sweat and hot, rancid breath washed over her cheek.

As she tried to bring up her pistol, the arms tightened around her in a crushing embrace, pumping all the air from her lungs. Gasping, she kicked backward, the edge of her boot heel striking his shin. Her next tactic was to butt the man with the back of her head. This move was marginally more effective because he swore in pain, but the pressure of his pinioning arms increased, closing like the jaws of a vise.

Through blurry eyes, Domi saw the bare-breasted woman raising her Stoner, resting the stock against her hip, the hollow bore staring at her like a cyclopean eye. Domi struggled wildly.

A short tongue of flame lipped from the muzzle. The sound of the single shot was like a muffled handclap. Domi squeezed her eyes shut. She felt the man holding her jerk violently as if he received a blow. His grip loosened and his arms fell away altogether. Domi stumbled when the man dropped, but she saw the neat red-rimmed hole in the middle of his forehead and the far-from-neat cavity in the rear of his skull.

She threw the Mohawked woman an uncomprehending stare. She smiled at Domi in amusement, inclined her head in a nod and gestured with her autorifle toward Grant.

“He’s all yours, sweetheart!” she called.