“Eóin network suspended,” Jessika reported. “All portal hubs closed.”
“Can you seal the laboratory doors?” Kandara grunted as she hit the ramp and started sprinting. Arntsen and Fasan were in lab five on the second level.
“I think so.”
She could see several people on the spiral, leaning over the white balustrade, frowning as they looked around to see what the problem with the hubs was. Several doors were opening, more people coming out. “Do it fast. There’s too many people exposed here.”
“The police are on their way,” Kruse said. “They’ll help clear the area.”
“We’re way past that point.” Kandara said. Her sensors caught hir, with Zapata’s feature recognition routines confirming. Kruse was walking out onto the black-and-white tiles of the floor below.
“What are you doing?” Kandara snapped furiously. Sie must have followed her from Gloweth.
“I’m responsible for this operation,” Kruse replied levelly. “I’ll supervise the police and start evacuating civilians.”
“Fuck’s sake! Just stay the hell back.”
Two people on the ramp ahead of her turned to gaze in astonishment at the squat armor-clad figure pounding toward them. Surprise and fear rose on their faces in a near-comic slow motion. Then Kandara had barged past, with only one half circle of ramp left before she reached lab five.
Her helmet sensors picked up a drone descending fast down the center of the atrium. It was a standard bracelet shape, twenty centimeters wide, with internal contra-rotating fans. She instinctively knew it was
“I have,” Jessika said. “The only channel in is this secure comm.”
“Then why is there a remote drone in here?”
“What drone?”
Kandara reached level two, the door to the lab seventeen meters ahead, and the drone was drawing level. Her right arm came up and target graphics closed on the little machine. A gamma beam sliced into it.
The explosion turned her armor layer completely rigid and slammed her against the wall. A big chunk of balustrade and ramp vanished in the blast, smoldering debris cascading down onto the tiles two floors below. People who’d been on the spiral ramp were struck by the brutal blast wave, bodies flung into the structure, limbs broken, flesh torn and burned. In the first few seconds’ aftermath, the atrium was claimed by a vacuous silence. Then the screaming started.
“What the fuck was that?” Jessika yelled. “What’s going on?”
“Weapons drone,” Kandara grunted. Zapata splashed a fast suit status for her. External damage minimal, all systems functional. She pushed herself away from the wall and powered on toward lab five. Its metal door had buckled in the explosion. Kandara shot it with a mini-grenade.
Her armor stiffened up again as the grenade detonated, flinging shards of metal in all directions. She skirted the missing hunk of ramp carefully and launched three microdrones through the gaping hole into lab five.
Their images splashed across her tarsus lenses as they flew forward. The laboratory followed a standard layout: big bioreactor cabinets lined up along one wall; benches laden with glassware, tended by robot arms; workstations orbited by complex holographic data grids. A tall cylindrical fish tank stood in one corner. The mini-grenade had reduced the room to chaos: cabinets warped and cracked, glassware shattered into avalanches of shards saturated with sticky chemicals. Arntsen and Fasan were on their knees behind a bench, blood dripping from their eardrums, exposed skin cut by flying glass. Fasan was holding a small black tube that the drone’s sensors revealed as a beam weapon, while Arntsen seemed to be dazed and disoriented.
The drones completed their scan of the lab. There was no one else inside.
Kandara flattened herself against the wall to one side of the ruined door and shoved her hand out across the gap. Three more mini-grenades were fired into lab five, programmed to detonate close to the back wall so the fugitives wouldn’t be shielded by the bench.
The drone sensors showed her the overlapping explosions. She saw the fish tank finally disintegrate, sending water sloshing across the floor, with thrashing fish surfing the churning ripples. Several of them slithered to a halt around Arntsen, who was now facedown, his clothes badly ripped by the blasts. Several of his ribs were visible in the gashes where skin had been flayed and burned from his back.
Fasan, by some miracle, was still relatively undamaged. He was crawling toward the shattered window wall. Kandara selected a projectile for the magrail rifle and spun around the warped doorframe. There were three benches between her and Fasan. Target graphics locked on to his head—a coordinate supplied by the microdrones. The rifle fired, punching the projectile through the benches as if they were holograms. His head exploded in a cloud of gore-vapor and bone shrapnel.