Uttering a grunt of irritation, the baron fiddled with the selector switch, put the Copperhead at his waist and depressed the trigger. The blaster stuttered, shell cases raining from the ejector port, tinkling down at his feet. Whooping loudly, he directed a full-auto stream of bullets down the stairs.
Cameron groaned, “Oh, fuck us.”
Kane cursed and skipped clumsily to the far edge of the landing as a hailstorm of slugs chopped out chunks of concrete and ripped long gouges in the walls, striking sparks from the handrails.
Far above, a smear of orange flame danced in the shadows. Over the steady hammering of the Copperhead, he heard a high-pitched yell of exuberance.
Holding his helmet in his left hand, he backed down the stairs, wincing at every step, keeping very low. Ricochets zipped through the air over his head. Pieces of stonework pattered down around him. At the bottom, he began limping down the corridor.
The fusillade stopped, and so did Kane. Taking advantage of the respite, he put his helmet back on, hoping he might be able to eavesdrop on comm-link chat between the Mag squad. He heard nothing, which didn’j/ surprise or disappoint him overmuch. Sharpe-ville Magistrate frequencies were different than Cobalt-ville’s. If nothing else, the visor would protect his eyes from flying pieces of concrete if the autoblaster opened up again.
The baron’s musical voice, raised in a shout, carried down to him easily. “Did I tag you? If I did, you have to tell me! That’s the rule!”
Kane grunted in disgust. Baron Sharpe sounded as fused out as a Pit jolt-walker, and the notion disturbed him. Although he had reason to know the baronial oligarchy was not semidivine, it had never occured to him members of it could fall prey to insanity.
The possibility should have comforted him, since it was another indication of the barons’ vulnerability, that they weren’t the anointed god-kings they claimed to be.
Instead, the madness of Baron Sharpe shook him at a primal level, and he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps his reaction stemmed from thirty years’ worth of conditioning, over half of that spent in the service of a baron.
Intellectually he knew the barons were born of science, of bioengineering, not mysticism, but his ville breeding caused him to hold them in superstitious regard.
Or maybe the concept of a madman wielding the power at Baron Sharpe’s command frightened him the most. Where there was one mad baron, there was bound to be another, sooner than later.
“Here we come!” trilled the baron’s voice. “Ready or not!”
Crackling autofire erupted from above, the muzzle-flash an orange twinkling of flame. Kane looked around for cover, saw very little and decided he was as ready as he would ever be.
Bounding down the steps two at a time, flanked by Crawler, Baron Sharpe fired the Copperhead in short bursts, voicing ebullient shouts each time. Cameron, Miles and Deylen followed at a more conservative pace, spread out across the width of the stairwell.
Into his helmet’s transceiver, Deylen whispered, “Are we just going to go along with this bullshit?”
The question was transmitted to the comm-links of his companions. Bitterly, bleakly Cameron responded to the query with one of his own. “What else can we do? He’s the baron.”
Miles said, “That fuckin’ mutie whoreson is planning something.”
“Like what?” Deylen demanded.
“Like how in the triple-fireblasted hell would I know?” Miles raised his voice a bit in baffled anger. “Like, what the fuck really went on here with the first squad? What’s that black shit all over the place? How’d that guy lose his head?”
Cameron shushed him, but there was no need. Neither the baron nor Crawler could hear anything over the uproar they were making.
“You think we got a Mag down there?” Deylen asked, bringing his Copperhead up to his shoulder.
Miles murmured, “I think we’d be better off if we never found out.”
Kane took up position a dozen yards down the corridor from the foot of the staircase. He flattened himself against a closed sec door within its recessed double frame. He chose the spot because of its location within a patch of shadow. The light strips overhead were completely dark for about ten feet, yet closer to the stairwell, they still functioned, albeit weakly. He would be able to establish visual target acquisition before he was spotted or before he came within the twenty-five-foot range of the Magistrate’s light enhancers.
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