Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

Sharp cold sunlight fell into the well at a severe angle. Busy preoccupied faces swarmed past, a termite conveyor belt. There was something about arcology dwellers, clannish, almost cyborgs with smile circuitry. She could pick one out of a stadium rock crowd. The Prezda’s well was just their kind of turf, all the primness and carefully calculated nookishness of the small franchise shops. Hardly surprising that visitors tended to use the big domed shopping mall outside.

Greg walked right over to the balcony rail, gripping the smooth brass with both hands, gazing across the well. She followed his line.

“There are two observers left on this level now,” Greg said. “One straight ahead. And I tell you, he’s getting jumpy. Male, thirty, ginger beard, wearing grey trousers, a mint-green polo shirt, sunshade band.”

She scanned the opposite side of the balcony. “Got him.”

“Yes,” Malcolm said.

“OK,” said Greg. “Haul him in.”

They turned right, walking round towards the window. Malcolm headed in the other direction.

“How you holding out?” she asked Greg.

“Bloody painful. I haven’t used that much neurohormone for ten years, not since we had organized poaching teams invading the peninsula.”

“What, lemon rustlers?” There was the most ridiculous image in her mind.”

“No. Deer, as in does and stags. There’s a good herd of them in Armley Wood now.”

He sounded so serious. “Yeah, all right, Greg, spare me the juice. Point is, are you up to drilling this observer’s brain?”

“Yeah. Don’t fret yourself. I’ll find out who hired him.”

They were halfway towards the observer, walking past the window tables. The alps outside were brown wrinkled teeth, small caps of snow a gritty grey in colour. Suzi kept a surreptitious eye on the observer with the ginger beard ahead of them. He was beginning to drift towards the corridor entrance.

She activated her cybofax. “Malcolm?”

“Hearing you clear,” the hardliner answered.

“OK, checking.”

“Christ.” Greg blurted. He took two fast steps to the balcony rail and leant over.

When she joined him she saw he was watching one of the glass cage lifts rising smoothly. It was on the other side of the well, a couple of floors below. An escalator interrupted her view. “Is it Leol?”

“Yep. And there’s six others in there with him. Major hostiles.”

The lift emerged from behind an escalator. She looked directly at Leol Reiger, who saw her at the same time. His arms moved.

“Shit!” Greg’s hand slammed into her shoulder. As she fell she saw white spiderweb cracks blooming across the glass of the lift. The distinct warble of an electromagnetic rifle cut across the well’s bustle. She landed painfully on her shoulder, Puma bag thumping into her side. Already rolling.

A stipple sheet of orange flame erupted across the front of the delicatessen behind her. Fucking explosive-tip projectiles! Heat washed over the back of her neck. The toughened-glass windows of the delicatessen simply disintegrated, long, lethal crystalline shards raining down over the food displays and floor. Screams burst out all around the balcony, mixed with the crescendo of smashing glass. Terrified people around her diving for cover.

Cold fury boiled up. Leol fucking Reiger, like a conditioned lab rat, see her and shoot, never mind there were hundreds of civilians about.

A high-pitched alarm started to shrill. There was a man on his knees in front of the shattered delicatessen, hands held in front of his face, one of the shards transfixing his wrist. Blood was squirting out of the wound. Two young women in identical stewardess suits were clinging to each other, the fabric of their uniforms punctured as if they’d been peppered with buckshot, each hole the centre of a spreading red stain.

Suzi rolled again, on to her chest, bringing her legs up, trainers scrabbling for purchase on the smooth tiles.

“Corridor!” Greg roared above the bedlam. Another volley of electromagnetic rifle fire ripped the air. The plastic sign along the top of the delicatessen’s window flared orange, then ruptured, showering the nearby section of the balcony with fragments of plastic and small chunks of smoking concrete. A fresh round of screaming broke out.

“Tell Malcolm!” Greg shouted. Then he was running, stooping to keep his head below the level of the rail. Moving surprisingly fast.

“Malcolm,” she yelled into the cybofax. “The corridor, get into the corridor!”

Running was easier for her, she didn’t have to bend over as much as Greg. She began to catch him up. An escalator was mindlessly delivering prone bodies on to the balcony; frightened men, women and children, sobbing, holding their hands over their heads. As if that would do any good. She dodged round the outside of the logjam of petrified bodies, nearly tripping on outstretched legs.

More electromagnetic rifle fire poured out of the lift. They were guessing where she and Greg were now. Projectiles twanged and whined off concrete and the metal of the escalators, bursting into bright fleurets.

Thenty metres ahead of her, she saw the ginger-headed observer scurry into the corridor. Beyond him, Malcolm was pressed up against the balcony rail, the Tokarev pointing towards the lift railings. A dense ruby beam stabbed out of the pistol. She watched it strike the lift railings, just above the lift itself. There was a fantail plume of cherry-red sparks, a squirt of white molten metal. Suzi heard a grinding metallic shriek rising above the incessant alarm. It cut off with a crunch.

The shop windows behind Malcolm detonated into flame and scything fragments as the electromagnetic rifles opened fire on him. He hunched down low as glass daggers whirred through the air all around him. Streaks of blood appeared over his suit.

Suzi risked a glance over the balcony rail. The cage lift was stuck three metres below the balcony. She should have done that, flicked up the mechanism. Malcolm had done all right; security people normally played by the rules, but then, Malcolm was one of Victor’s. Someone in the lift was swinging a rifle towards her. She ducked fast.

Greg had made it to the entrance of the corridor. He was looking helplessly at Malcolm, who was lying beside the balcony rail, his face screwed up in pain.

“Get him,” Suzi yelled. She jerked the zip on her Puma bag, spilling the contents on to the floor. Saw the Browning. Grabbed it.

Greg was edging cautiously towards Malcolm. Suzi flicked the Browning to rapid pulse, and twisted fast, hands over the railing, taking aim.

There was no glass left in the lift. Leol Reiger’s team were climbing through the open frame, dropping on to the balcony below. Two of them had already made it. They were helping a third who was spread-eagled on the outside of the lift. The remaining four in the lift were covering the balcony with their rifles. Couldn’t see which was Leol.

She let off three maser pulses; moving the Browning in a slow arc, the way Greg had taught her to use beam weapons in some distant age. One of the figures inside the lift fell backwards, arms windmilling. A small circle of intense flame flared on the back of the man climbing down on to the balcony. She couldn’t tell where the third pulse hit.

Just as she dived back under cover she saw the man clinging to the outside of the lift begin to fall. She scuttled along behind the balcony rail, wincing as the electromagnetic rifle projectiles chewed at the shop fronts.

People were moaning now, rather than screaming. Most of the wounds she could see looked superficial, clothing and skin cut by flying glass, smaller deeper fragmentation punctures.

Greg had one arm around Malcolm, half dragging him towards the corridor. The hardliner’s feet were skating about on the tiles, as if he didn’t have full control over them.