Peter Hamilton - The Mandel Files

The suit ‘ware was pushing out a fast sequence of status graphics. Suzi coughed, feeling sour creamy liquid in her gullet. Tight snaps of pain in her chest made it impossible to focus on any of the graphics. Her knee was hell; she thought the bioware sheath had torn.

“Call in,” Melvyn said.

There was a string of responses, names and curses.

“Yeah, here, Melvyn.”

“OK, everyone into the village cave. There were still some tekmercs left.”

She climbed to her feet. There was very little light in the gash. Her infrared helmet beams came on, showing about five centimetres of water sloshing around her ankles. Where the hell had it all gone? It had looked like a small sea crashing into the village cave. Greg must be up to his neck in it. Wherever the fuck he was.

The graphics were coming into focus now. Nothing seriously wrong, not with the suit; three muscle bands dead, power reserves OK, two sets of sensors on backup. The suit ‘ware was already calculating new load paths for the remaining muscle bands. She could move, she could fight.

Her mike picked up the blast of rip gun fire.

“Three of them,” the radio squawked. It sounded like Robbie. “Cave 3B, hostile and active.”

“Got ‘em.”

“Isaac, let’s have some airbusters in there.”

“Coming up.”

“Lilian, launch a reconnaissance disk down 4C, Isaac thought he saw a hostile in it.”

“Could be one of ours.”

“No answer from Harris.”

Suzi realized her rip gun was missing. She started to walk towards the village cave. The suit responded stiffly at first, almost as if she had to carry the weight herself. Then the ‘ware finished reprogramming the muscle bands, and she began to pick up speed. It was a lot easier on her knee.

“Dennis?”

“No response from Dennis yet, Suzi,” Melvyn said. “Did you see him?”

“Didn’t see shit after that wall went.”

The wave had scoured the village cave clean. The only thing she recognized at first glance was the stone staircase. Where the wall had blown out was a pile of big boulders. It looked like half of the lake cave beyond had collapsed. Two solaris spots were intact, one of them swinging on the end of its wiring, rocking shadows across the walls. All that was left of the village was a line of burnt splintered wood and soggy reeds along the wall opposite the lake. Water was lying a couple of centimetres deep. Torn sheets of crumpled, saturated moss floated past. Fish were everywhere, jumping and flipping about.

Melvyn was marshalling his remaining troops. She counted thirteen others surviving. Plus another two medic cases. One was already out of his armour, Neil, bruised and bloody. Three of the team were working to extract the second casualty from under a rockfall which had crushed his legs.

There were eight dead tekmercs lying about, their armour inert. They looked as if they had been battered by the wave, the metalloceramic was badly scratched and dented. She saw Talbot Lombard, face down in the water, his jumpsuit charred, blackened flesh underneath.

She walked over to Neil. “What happened?”

“Boulder,” he said. “Bastard rolled over me.” She guessed he’d been given an infusion, his mouth had the slack look, face grey with pain.

“Use your rip gun?” she asked.

“Sure, help yourself.”

It was lying next to his bent armour suit. She picked it up.

Weapons Integration: Konica Neutral Beam Rifle.

The key on her left shoulder began to interface with the rip gun’s ‘ware. Red target graphics appeared. She was whole again, size and strength no longer a disadvantage, equal to the rest of the world.

It was time for the last deal with Leol fucking Reiger.

Melvyn was handing out assignments, sending the active crash team members down into the caves and cracks, scouting for tekmercs.

Suzi pulled the guidance package out of her suit ‘ware, and used it to place the five troughs. There was no sign of them, not even when she went over to check, boots splashing the thin layer of water. All she found was flat rock. She stood where the third one had been, amid the contortions of dying fish, and looked back to the broken lake cave, trying to work out the angle the wave had hit the troughs. If she carried the line on, Reiger would have been swept against the wall thirty metres away. There were two possible caves there, 6B, and 7B. According to her suit ‘ware they joined up in a big cavern fifty metres back, another wide cave leading off from the junction.

“Melvyn, I’ll check 6B, OK?” She got it in before he could assign her one.

“Roger, Suzi. Do you want anyone with you?” Something in his tone suggested he’d guessed the reason.

“Nah,” she said. “I’ll solo.”

6B was a pinched oval passage, just under two metres high, five wide, laced with veins of tarnished copper. Her helmet scraped the roof as she walked towards the junction. The rock was slick with water, a steady rain of large drops pattered down from the roof. Light from the village cave illuminated the entrance, but the passage curved, and after ten metres she had to switch to infrared. The water level crept up her legs; she could see fish racing away ahead of her.

She called up the map package, and bled in her suit’s inertial guidance read-out. When she was fifteen metres short of the junction, she killed the infrared beams, using the photon amp as a passive sensor. The image showed her pitchblack passage walls and faint neon-blue water, even the fish were blue blobs. No hot spots, but her field of view was very limited, if Reiger was in the junction cavern, the shit would make sure he couldn’t be detected from the passage.

She took an airbuster grenade from the retainer loop on her waist, a seamless metallic cylinder fifteen centimetres long, six wide, with a locking ridge running along its length. It slotted into the latch rail on her left forearm with a solid dick.

Expedite Grenade Launch Program.

The red targeting circles turned white. She brought her left arm up until the circles interlocked over the junction cavern entrance. Grey droplets were still falling from the roof, hazing the photon-amp image.

Disengage Safety Lock. Set Fuse for Twenty Metres.

The targeting circles turned violet and started flashing.

Fire.

The airbuster grenade streaked into the cavern, exploding into a seething energy cloud a metre below the roof. Stark white light stabbed back down the passage. She saw lightning tendrils whipping violently backwards and forwards, clawing at the rock outcrops above the water.

The spent grenade canister was flipped off her forearm latch rail, spinning away. She moved into the cavern at a run, pushing her recalcitrant left leg hard.

There was nobody inside. Little columns of steam were rising into the air. Dead fish bobbed on the surface of the water.

“Not that easy, Suzi bitch,” said Leol Reiger.

She jumped with shock. He was using a general broadcast frequency. Her electronic warfare gear couldn’t locate the radio transmission source; rock did weird things with radio, bouncing it or absorbing it. But not much, he couldn’t be far away. She checked passage 7B quickly. Empty. That meant the cave at the back of the junction cavern.

“I know it’s you, Suzi bitch. Because you know I’m in here, that’s why you let off the airbuster.”

She clipped a fresh airbuster grenade on the rail.

According to the map, the rear cave twisted to the left after fifteen metres. There was no data after that. She primed the grenade for twelve metres, then fished around for a loose rock.

“Always hiding, Leol,” she said. “But then, running scared is your scene. Right?”

She crouched down, and lobbed the rock high across the entrance of the. rear cave. Two rip gun bolts pulverized it in midair. But she was already diving underneath, twisting.