Jack Yeovil - Demon Download

The Colonel had spent the whole morning weeding out traitors, and having them executed. He had found thirteen in the fort's compliment of three hundred and two. What with the other casualties, the fort's tiny morgue was packed to capacity, and the corpses were having to be stored in the hospital beds. Lauderdale noticed that, apart from Colonel Rintoon, none of the other officers had chosen to talk to him since Badalamenti. It didn't matter.

Captain Finney was at her regular console, and seemed to be under control, but Lauderdale knew he had to watch her. She was too in tune with the computer systems. He intended to recommend to Rintoon that her access to them be restricted, or perhaps denied entirely. Still, according to Elder Seth, the thing in the database could take care of itself.

"Cat?" he asked.

"Major," she said, not looking up.

"All systems A-OK​​?”

"Sir, yessir."

She punched keys, and sine curves revolved on her screen.

"You've run the projections the Colonel wanted?"

"Sir, yessir." She handed him a sheaf of papers.

"Good work."

"Sir, thank you sir."

Lauderdale pretended to look at the print-out. He couldn't understand any of the figures. But he knew that the Call of Joseph was nearly upon him.

It was a full three hours since he had last spilled blood. And the blood was an essential part of the ritual. Elder Seth himself had explained it to him on his last covert visit to Salt Lake City. Only through the constant spilling of blood could the Dark Ones keep their purchase on this plane of existence. For them, each sacrifice was like a handhold in a sheer rockface.

Lauderdale considered Cat Finney. She was dangerous to him. He could easily convince the Colonel that she had been a Maniak, that she had been gnawing away at the cybernetic foundations of the Apache database. His hand went to his sidearm.

No. There were too many other operators in the centre.

Finney had too many friends. Lauderdale's position as Rintoon's second-in-command was precarious. There was no telling who the old man would listen to in any given argument. He could as easily be persuaded that Lauderdale was a Maniak as Finney.

"Keep it up, Cat, keep it up," he said.

"Sir, yessir," she replied.

He left the Ops Centre, and hurried through the corridors. He hummed to himself, Neil Sedaka's "I Love, I Love, I Love My Little Calendar Girl". He reached into the tunic, and felt the switchblade snug in its harness under his arm. The next person to come along would do, he felt sure…

A Trooper rounded the corner. Lauderdale didn't know him. That was good. Personal feelings tainted the sacrifice. It was important to spill the blood without hate, without love, without emotion.

"Trooper."

"Lieutenant…Major, sir."

The Trooper stood to attention.

"Name?"

"Brecher, Michaeljohn T., Company B Smoke-Generating, sir."

Lauderdale prowled around the Trooper. There was no one in sight. He looked at Brecher's broad back.

"You're out of uniform, Trooper. Look, your shirttail is loose…"

Standing behind the man, he drew his knife. The blade silently appeared. With its point, he tugged at Brecher's shirt, pulling it free.

"And here, you have a button missing from your epaulette…"

"Sir?"

He cut the button off. It bounced on the floor and rolled away. There was a touch of perplexion in Brecher's eyes as Lauderdale pricked the side of his throat.

"You're a mess, Trooper," he whispered into the man's ear as he eased the knife in through his jugular vein, wiggled it into his windpipe, and scraped it against his vertebrae.

Lauderdale stood back to avoid the arterial spray.

The Maniax had struck again. He went to the wall and sounded the alarm.

The dead man's throat kept pumping a red tide onto the dirty white floor until the guards came.

As his prosthetic hand ground into Stack's neck Tiger Behr was babbling, "It's not me, mister, I ain't doin' this, it's not me, it's not me…"

Chantal brought her gun up, but there were too many people in the way. The Armindariz children had flown into a panic and were running, screaming, around the place like cats on fire.

Chantal made her way through them, gun still raised.

Stack was bent backwards at the waist, limp at the knees. He was feebly scrabbling at Behr's metal-ringed wrist.

Chantal had a good shot now. She took it.

The gun clicked. She remembered she had emptied it at the bell. There was no time to reload.

Through Behr's tattered shirt, she saw a patch of scrawny skin unprotected by fleshplate armour.

She braced herself against a tombstone, and vault-kicked with both feet.

Her kick landed hard, and gouged a gobbet from Behr's back. But she didn't knock him off his footing, and the jolt shocked through her feet and legs. The tombstone tipped over—the sandy ground was too loose to be an anchor—and she fell on top of it, hurting her hip.

Behr straightened, and turned robotically. He held Stack at arms' length, lifting him off the ground. His face was greyish now, and he was bleeding where Behr's fingers were sinking into the flesh.

"What'd ya do that fer, lady," he asked. "I tole you it weren't me. It's these damn doodads. I cain't control them all uv the time."

She tried a double karate chop, either side of his neck. Behr cried out, but didn't die.

His half face was crying, she saw. The pain and the frustration must be intense. But his electronic eye was glowing evilly.

"Tiger, did you have an optic burner implanted?"

The old Angel looked awesomely fed up. "Dad blast it, I did, lady. I wish it weren't so, but…"

The glow turned red, and Chantal cartwheeled out of its path. Behr's head wrenched around on his neck, soliciting a shout of pain from him, and the beam raked the graveyard. A stone crucifix exploded into shrapnel fragments, and weather-beaten 19th Century wooden markers burst into flames.

The mourners had mainly taken cover in the church. Those that were armed had their guns out.

Bullets rang against Behr's armoured chest.

"Careful," shouted Chantal, "you'll hit the Trooper."

No one seemed much to care about that. A long-haired old man in torn leathers jumped out of Father O'Pray's grave with a shotgun, and primed it. Before he could fire, the optic burn had caught him in the centre of his chest, and he tumbled backwards, dead.

Chantal danced around Behr, realizing that she could move faster than be could turn, and that his range with the burner was at best 120 degrees of his eyeline. She got in close, and struck wherever she saw Behr's original body.

He continued to complain. "Don't hurt me, sister. Hurt this thing!"

She had to do something about Stack.

"Shovel," she shouted. Armindariz was cringing between a pair of tombs, still clutching the spade. "Shovel," she repeated.

Armindariz stood up, and lobbed the spade to her. It spun end over end until she snatched it from the air. She got a good hold and swung it two-handed at Behr's flesh-and-bone elbow.

Behr screamed as the blade sliced through, breaking the brittle bone.

"Sorry, Tiger," she said.

Stack fell, gasping for bream, detaching the severed robo-arm from his throat. It continued to clutch automatically as he smashed it against the ground. Wires and transistors leaked from its stump.

Chantal took aim at Behr's head and swung again. The optic flashed, and the spadehead exploded into red-hot shards. She was left with a burning pole, which she shoved at the cyborg's torso. It splintered against his dented chestplate.

Through the glass, Chantal could see red blood leaking into Behr's mechanism, shorting out some of his electronics.