Jonathan Bond - The Terminus experiment

Julius turned his gaze back to Rachel. “And somehow you still feel responsible?”

Rachel nodded, without saying anything.

Julius was silent. Then, as if to change the subject, he said, “I’ve been working with Short Eyes on a project.”

“Short Eyes has conveyed her appreciation of your cunning, Mister D’imato.” The voice Came from the doorway.

Rachel turned to see de Vries standing there in his dark duster, a small smile on his thin blue lips. “Martin,” she said, and she knew that she’d let too much emotion into her voice. But she was very happy to see him.

“Hello, Rachel. What have you done to your hair?” He smiled and she grinned back.

“Sin got a little overzealous with the shears.”

De Vries looked over at Julius. “We need to talk.”

“Go ahead,” Julius said, leaning forward.

De Vries stepped up close, and though Rachel knew it was only her imagination, it seemed as if the temperature suddenly dropped a few degrees. “They’re on the move. I took a quick detour on my way over here, and they are definitely vacating. At the rate they’re going, the place will be empty by tomorrow night.”

Julius nodded. “That matches the Intel my decker and Sandman have come up with. The compound is being systematically shut down.” He sighed. “I’d have liked another week to finish preparations, but I guess it’s now or never.”

De Vries locked eyes with Julius. “You know that there’s only a slim possibility that Warren is still human?”

Julius nodded slowly. “I’m still hanging on to the hope that, with everything going on there, they might have shut down on all major procedures. But, yes, I do understand that every moment we’re still here is another moment for Warren to be lost.”

De Vries frowned. “And if things don’t turn out as you hope?”

Rachel watched as Julius’ jaw muscles tightened. She’d seen the same look on Warren’s face when someone pushed him too hard. “I know what I have to do, vampire, and I won’t hesitate. For now, we’re wasting precious time. Let’s get back to business.”

De Vries smiled, cold and hard. “Fine. And here’s some business we’d better keep solidly in our minds. When we take the compound, every infected creature has to be destroyed. Every single one. Otherwise, we could see a plague of HMHVV on the scale of the first VITAS epidemic.”

Julius nodded. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Rachel shuddered. Her parents had both died from VITAS, or at least that’s what she’d been told by the people at the orphanage. VITAS killed slowly and painfully, but it didn’t turn people into monsters.

She turned and left Julius and de Vries to hash over the assault, and headed for the showers. As she cleaned up, she thought about what she was going to do tonight, and why. She imagined all of her fear being washed away by the water and slipping down the drain. As she stepped from the shower, she thought about all the people who had been hurt, and how she wanted to set that to rights. She changed into loose camouflage fatigues, and by the time Julius had prepped the troops, Rachel’s heart was as cold and hard as dry ice.

She knew this was about more than getting Warren back now. What she did tonight could affect people halfway around the world. She wasn’t going to fail.

Two hours before dawn, the convoy rolled through Hell’s Kitchen. The residents who were awake at that hour and saw the line of truck after truck rumble down the streets immediately bolted for whatever safe place they could find. It only took an hour for the rumor to spread. The UCAS army was invading Hell’s Kitchen, and they were packing armor and weapons like nothing any of the folks there had ever seen before.

All the trucks bristled with wooden stakes, from every angle, like huge, monstrous porcupines.

Within the hour, every street in Hell’s Kitchen was deserted. Even the go-gangers had gone off to hide. No matter how tough they were, they were no match for the army, who packed milspec caliber weapons.

In the newly revamped Mobmaster, Julius rubbed his eyes. The smell of sweat in the vehicle was nearly overpowering as the men surrounding him finished the last check of their weapons.

Julius looked around one last time, and tried not to think of how he might have better prepared the men for what was to come. Sandman, de Vries, and Killian had given him every bit of information they had, but Julius had been the one to make all the final decisions.

Of the sixty men he’d called in for the assault, only a few of them carried standard projectile weaponry. They had learned, mostly from de Vries, what worked and what didn’t.

Most of the men carried flamethrowers or lasers. The flame-throwers were the most effective, but tended to be fickle. That was why they’d divided each squad into groups of eight, with three men armed with flame throwers, three armed with lasers, and two walking flank with automatic weapons. The men toting lasers were responsible for keeping the vampires from reaching the men with the flame throwers, and the men with projectile weapons were to keep any goblins from wading in and killing the men with lasers.

The plan he, Flak, de Vries, and Biggs had come up with called for a three-pronged attack. The frontal attack would act as a diversion to give the rear attack time to get into position. Truck five would carry Flak’s team, backed by some of the best reserve men Fratellanza had to offer. They were the third prong. If everything went according to plan, while the Fratellanza forces were crushing the vampires between them, the runners would be doing a covert snatch on Warren, provided they could find him.

There were four advance teams, and three long-range teams. The long-range teams were armed with high-explosive and white phosphorous rocket launchers. Their job was to pound the enemy’s rear from a safe distance, while the advance teams cut down the front flank.

Julius sighed as he pulled his helmet down over his face and strapped it in place. When he activated the thermal display, the truck’s interior turned a bloody red, highlighted in yellows where each man sat.

Julius knew that thermal vision would be useless once battle was joined, because the flamethrowers would create blinding tracers on the helmet’s viewer. That, in turn, would limit the men’s vision during the fighting, but it was a risk they had to take. Considering the advantages even the weakest vampire had over humans, there was no way Julius was going to send his men in there with nothing more than a wooden stake and a prayer.

He grinned as he thought of the one exception to this rule. Short Eyes would carry the weapon he’d helped her construct. She had declined anything else. It was a crossbow, but it was fashioned into the shape of a real cross, and there was no crank. Instead, each of the wooden bolts was powered by a jet of CO2. allowing her to belt-feed the crossbow from a pack slung over her shoulder.

Surprisingly accurate, Short Eyes could fire wooden bolts as fast as she could pull the trigger.

Over his headset came the voice of Biggs, who was once again standing up front by the rigger. “Three minutes to show time.”

Julius spoke into the integrated tacticom mic in his helmet. “Trucks five through eight, make the split at the next turn. Good hunting.”

The runners, having successfully navigated the rear entrance once before, were to lead the Fratellanza troops in. The corp soldiers would hit the building itself, which would force the enemy to split its forces and to fight on two flanks. It was a good plan. Julius hoped it would work.