Jack Yeovil - Krokodil Tears

They tore in formation down the main street, firing at anyone in sight. The gas station was an inferno. Someone dashed out of an alleyway, pumping a shotgun. Haggett's sandy expanse of chest was splattered red. "I'm hit, I'm hit," he said, sinking to his knees, his communicator crackling as he faded. Mostyn reacted, and brought the sumpsucker with the shotgun down with a burst of fire. It had been an old-timer, with a long white beard and a Gabby Hayes hat.

They jogged round a corner, and found themselves in what passed for the town square of Dead Rat, Arizona. There was a disused town hall, an abandoned Sheriff's office, and a still-operational five-customer gallows. And the saloon.

"Make the play," Rodriguez shouted. "Now!"

Mostyn and Cheadle humped themselves up the stairs, and crashed into the Silver Shuriken, guns discharging.

She would have to learn to trust her new senses. There had been people out in the desert. And now they were in town, and she had to assume they were after her. It was just like the good old days. Cops and Ops and Soce Workers, all after her pretty little head.

Part of the ceiling had come down, and everyone was panicking.

"Magda," she said, "give me a gun."

"Sure thing, honey, take your pick."

The older woman pulled out a tray of handguns, and used it to push the glasses and drinks off the bar. Jessamyn picked a Smith-and-Wesson semi-automatic pistol, and jammed a couple of extra clips into her waistband.

"Good choice," said Magda, taking a Colt Python police special.

Some of the sandrats were milling around. Some of them weren't, because they were dead.

"Guns on the house," Magda shouted. "Come and get 'em."

Jitters and Curtius Kenne had been knocked flat by the first blast. They stumbled to their feet. Kenne had a proper grip on Jitters's gun now. One chamber, one bullet.

Doc Threadneedle tugged her sleeve. "Remember, don't be too confident. Jitters' revolver was just a pop-gun. Your underflesh won't stand up to depleted uranium or armour-piercing rockets, and you still burn and bleed like the rest of us."

Magda ze Schluderpacheru was unslinging a rocket-launcher from under the bar, and passing it across to the Maniax. Jitters was trying to wrestle his gun out of Kenne's grip.

"You got your Colts, yankee bloody doodle. Give me my gun back."

Two hefty figures in combat suits thundered through the doors, spraying the saloon with fire. The pointman steadied and looked around.

He saw Jessamyn and took aim. She was right. This was all for her benefit.

The pointman pulled the trigger, but his shot went wide. The Maniax had the launcher readied, and put an anti-tank missile into his stomach.

He was torn backwards, his hands flailing, and he got a grip on the doorjamb. He was completely impaled, his combat suit stoved in, the trefoils of the missile sticking out of his gut. The rocket fizzled, and shot through him, exploding against the gallows on the other side of the square.

Jessamyn could see right through the hole in the dead man. His sidekick froze, and was cut down by fire from all quarters.

A phosphorus grenade rolled in through the door, and everyone dived for cover.

She could see the explosion through closed eyelids. Her heat sensor sent pain signals to her greymass.

"Freak," she swore. "You realize, of course, that this means WAR!"

Manolo was pleased. It was all according to the plan. Casualties so far were acceptable. As far as he was concerned, the loss of all personnel in the field with the exception of Bronson Manolo could be classed as an acceptable casualty rate if it got the job done. Not that he was callous. H-M had a hefty policy with General Disaster to provide for the dependents of those lost or handicapped in the service of the Agency.

His mapscreen was lighting up all over. Terhune had laid down all the fire diey needed, and Rodriguez's team was in town, cutting loose.

"Gas station, saloon, hotel, town hall…" He checked off the targets as they flared.

He flicked the counter. 0347. Within a five mile radius of the town square of Dead Rat, there were 0347 warm people, excluding the H-M personnel in their combat gear.

Ooops, 0345. No, 0341. The number fell, as the people cooled.

He dug a brew out from the cooler under his chair, and flipped the ringtop.

This was proving to be a stroll.

As balls of fire filled the interior of the Silver Shuriken, Jessamyn dived for a window. She crashed through a tinsel and spray-snow Christmas decoration and, curled up tight, turned head over end through the air, landing neatly on her feet in the street.

One of the soldiers stood in front of her, presumably awestruck behind his or her faceplate. She shot through the helmet, and the soldier sagged to the dirt.

Two more of the space invaders skidded around the building, bringing up their guns. She got them both with a single burst, and sprinted away, zig-zagging down a side-street.

It was a clear night. The half-moon shone down placidly.

0326.

Jitters had his gun back, with just one bloody buggering round left in it, so he would jolly well have to put it to freaking good use, wouldn't he, by jove.

Curtius Kenne was cut in half by a falling beam, worse luck, so he couldn't use his one shot to spread the cowboy's greymass on the wall. There was no place like the thick of battle for settling an old score. So many people were dying that no one would notice a few more.

Jitters had been splashed with some of the liquid fire from the grenade, but he was lucky enough to have been blown through a hole in the wall by the blast. He rolled in the sand, until most of the flames were out.

There were troops yomping down the main street of Dead Rat. It was like being back at Goose Green. But he wasn't going to withdraw tactically this bloody buggering time, no sir, not with brass knobs on…

He held his gun up in readiness. His hands weren't shaking now.

0318.

Gretchen Turner knew she should never have left Des Moines with Barry, the electrofence salesman. Her mama had said as much, but D-M was such a zeroville. Barry had been a rat, all right. He'd left her in a town just like Dead Rat. Since then, those had been all the places she'd known. But Magda ze Schluderpacheru was better than the other madams, the Silver Shuriken could have been a nice place with a little work. The girls were nice. They had a nice team. Gretchen couldn't feel anything below her chin, and she knew that wasn't good. She couldn't see either. There was fire all around. As she blacked out, she thought it was a pity she hadn't gotten round to finishing the Christmas decorations.

0317.

An armoured ve-hickle trundled slowly through the town, searchlights revolving on the roof. That would be some kind of command module, Jessamyn knew. That gave it a high spot on her list of things to put out of commission.

0314.

Simon Threadneedle, late of GenTech, switched off his pain with the circuitbreaker he had inserted into his own greymass. The combat unit had sprayed napalm or some napalm analogue into the Silver Shuriken, and he was clothed in fire. Nothing would get the stuff off him until it burned itself out. This was the sort of juice that burned even underwater.

It was amazing what modern technology could accomplish. The GenTech labs couldn't do anything about the common cold and no government had been able to develop a workable public transport system, but when it came to deathware, why, there were wonderful new toys on the market every fall, just in time for Christmas.

His blastic-laced flesh melted away, and the durium bonesheaths heated up. He didn't know how high a temperature they could take before they went into shutdown, and he supposed he wouldn't get a chance to record his findings if he did pursue the experiment to the end. His clothes had burned away instantly, as had all his bodily hair and most of his skin. Tarnished metal shone through his musculature as he walked through the fire. He stepped out of the wall of flame onto the steps of the saloon, and strode, still burning, into the street.