The
surface roads are already almost deserted. The crawler has to
actually slow down to avoid reaching their turn before the storm.
They hit the waypoint just as the wall of sand descends, the flying
grit choking off all light and sound, nothing past the windshield but
a solid red-brown mass.
The
crawler bumps and almost rolls as they turn off the road onto the
rough, uneven terrain, running on instruments and inertial
navigation. There's a jarring thump as they run into the
outer fence – and keep right on going.
-
- - - - - - -
Mara,
Fir, and the prince move swiftly down the darkened hallway, heading
for the emergency airlock, Mara in the lead, Fir guarding the rear.
Sirens are blaring somewhere, competing with the shriek of the
windstorm outside, and she feels a thrill of surprise that the plan
is working, it's working, they're almost there –
just another thirty meters to the airlock, then onto the crawler and
north to the wastes, and she realizes that she had never dared to
think they might actually succeed until this point.
Footsteps
and voices, somewhere up ahead. Mara raises her hand for silence,
then gestures towards a door, and they pile through into a closet
holding cleaning supplies and linens, and the body of the man Fir
killed on their way in, lying in a corner with his neck at an angle
it should not be able to bend at. The MuniPrin swallows and his
face goes pale when he sees him.
Mara
leans against the door, trying to hear through the thick plastic.
Footsteps? No. The door's too thick to hear through, she can't
make out anything. She visualizes the corridor outside, and tries
to estimate how long it would take to walk down. She settles on
ninety seconds, and starts to count. One one thousand, two one
thousand, three...
The
MuniPrin kneels by the side of the dead body. He reaches out and
closes the dead man's eyes.
Fifty
one thousand, fifty two one thousand, fifty three one thousand...
Mara's stomach is tying itself in knots. They're so close,
they can't be caught now. Fifty four one thousand – is that
smoke?
It
is. She can smell smoke, faint but that's definitely smoke.
Nothing to be done about that now. Fifty five one thousand,
fifty six one thousand.
The
MuniPrin stands. His expression is sad, and perhaps scared.
Ninety
one thousand. Mara opens the door two centimeters and peeks
out. Two men are standing just a few meters down the hallway,
dressed in the uniforms of Palace security. “You get him,” one
is saying, “I'll head to the – hey–” and he's seen her and
she aims the pistol and pulls the trigger pop pop pop pop –
-
- - - - - - -
The
crawler is booking now, engine whining as the driver pushes the
throttle to the floor. He catches a glimpse of the inner fence an
instant before they hit it, and then it's down and they're through.
And now he can see the bulk of the Urban Palace just ahead, a
darkness in the haze, and the crawler shudders to a stop.
“Go
go go go!” someone yells, and the extraction team piles out through
the back hatch, wading through the red soup of sand. Someone is
shooting at them, the bang-bang-bang of bullets almost lost in the
wind's scream, but they haven't a chance in hell of hitting them
through the murk. The autogun team replies anyway, laying down
suppressing fire from the crawler while the rest of the squad starts
cutting through the outer airlock door.
-
- - - - - - -
“Move
move move!” Mara yells, and they're running down the hallway, two
bleeding bodies left in their wake, ears ringing from the gun shots.
The MuniPrin looks like he's going to be sick, but for now he's
still holding it together.
Down
a hall lined with priceless antiques, then through a door disguised
as part of the wall, into the servants' halls, dim emergency lights
casting a ghostly glow over the concrete floors and tiled walls.
Twenty meters, a left turn and then a straight shot – but there's
somebody on the other side of the turn, three somebodies with guard
uniforms. Mara pulls the trigger and holds it down, spraying the
corridor ahead with bullets as she falls back behind the turn of the
hall, the guards replying with rifle fire.
And
then she hears shots coming from behind them as well, and the pop of
Fir returning fire, and her guts turn to ice as she realizes they're
pinned down.
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