Birthright: The Complete Trilogy Read online

  "Tell me more," I invited, leaning against a surgical table.

  "The first hitters were street trash---hired guns. They caught my partner by surprise, spread his brains all over a back alley in Hermes." I thought it interesting that the emotion evident in her voice when she told me about losing her ship was decidedly missing when she described the loss of her partner. "They weren't so lucky with me. I reported the whole thing to the local cops, but they wrote it off as a robbery attempt, or some kind of ripjack gang looking for a mark. I wasn't so sure---we were armed, and obviously spacers. Rippers usually try for easier targets. But they were dead, and there wasn't a hell of a lot I could do about it.

  "I moved on to Inferno, to see if I could find myself a new partner, and a pair of local hitters came after me outside my hotel. This time, one of them got snagged still breathing, and, after a little friendly persuasion, he told me there was a price on my head. The word he got through the Net was five hundred K, corporate scrip."

  I gaped at her in disbelief. "Jesus Christ," I blurted. "Who the hell would bankroll that kind of a price on a scout pilot?"

  "Well, that's the real question, isn't it, Constable," she cocked an eyebrow. "There aren't too many agencies or people who could. And all of them are powerful enough to have a pretty long reach. And that," she emphasized, "is what I want with you."

  "I think I get it." I had to smile in spite of myself. "You can trust me because no one would bother to buy me off."

  "Put bluntly," Cutter interjected with the answer, not seeming at all embarrassed over it.

  "So why are you a target?" I asked. "And where does the CSF come in?"

  "I have an idea of why." She scratched the back of her left hand unconsciously. "After I found out about the bounty, I contacted the Security Force. They promised to look into it, told me to go hole up someplace safe in the meantime, and to call and let them know where I was. And the local Investigator, he kept asking me if I had talked to anybody about a particular find my partner and I had made a few months back on the inner frontier."

  "A big mineral deposit?" I guessed.

  "More of an archaeological site. I thought it was a bit odd that he even knew about it...it was something pretty big, something the corporates would have kept quiet at first. But I had no reason to distrust him...then. So I found what I thought was a safe place, and called to let them know. Not thirty hours later, there was an attack on the place, this time by a professional hit team. I managed to get out, and got shot at again on the way to my ship. I got offplanet as fast as I could and contacted the Investigator. He told me that his comline had been tapped, that he would meet me at a place of my choosing and take me to a safehouse. I chose the main spaceport at Eden---nice, safe place, out in public. I berthed my ship, grabbed a rifle and hid in an access tunnel across from the landing bay. And watched a Goddamned CSF assault shuttle blow my ship to scrap right in the fucking spaceport. Must have killed a dozen people."

  "For an archaeological site?" I frowned. There was something I wasn't being told, something I didn't think she wanted to tell me. "We're obviously talking something more than clay pots and cave paintings here."

  "Something's wrong," Cutter announced suddenly, head snapping around. "I've lost my feed from the outer sensors."

  "Can you contact the Skinners on the porch?" I asked, sliding off the table. There was this familiar, queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, a soft buzz in my head.

  He shook his head. "They're not answering."

  "We've got to get the hell out of here," Kara drew her pistol. She didn't get two steps toward the hidden exit before the room's heavy, reinforced door blew off its frame with a concussion of superheated air and deafening sound that threw me back off my feet. A white rush of heat, light and noise enveloped me and I hit the floor hard with a whoosh of expelled breath.

  I shook my head to clear the haze of brightness as several things began happening at once. Before my back hit the floor, my implant computer had shifted me into combat mode, powering up my muscle augments, sensor array and wired nerves, and hitting my system with several doses of natural and artificial stimulants. Everything seemed to slip into slow motion, the lights flickering eerily from the damage the blast had done, the smoke from the explosion billowing centimeter by centimeter away from the ruined door frame and across the debris-littered floor.

  As the air cleared, five hulking figures moved through the ruined doorway, dressed in what looked like honeycomb-ceramic hard armor, full visors covering their faces. Four of them were armed with compact, boxy pulse carbines, but the last one was lugging around the heavy tube of a single-shot plasma projector---an obsolete antiarmor weapon that I figured he'd used to blow the door. Before he could clear the entrance, I was up and in motion.

  I had a gun under my jacket, but they were right on top of me, and, at this range, I was a better weapon than any gun. With a thought, the plastalloy blades mounted on the bones in my forearms extended through the synthskin flaps over my middle knuckles, and I threw myself at the lead hitter, twin pairs of talons slicing out. The laser-honed blades ripped through the sandwich ceramic armor over the man's torso, opened up his chest like a rib-spreader, and filleted his heart and lungs in a spray of blood that nearly blinded me.

  He collapsed forward without a sound and I grabbed the laser carbine from his limp hands, swung his body around to use as a shield and opened fire at the others. The pulsegun's magazine fed hyperexplosive chemical cartridges into a combustion chamber and ignited them, pulsing each self-consuming shell's twenty kilojoules of heat energy through a semiconductor lasing rod at a rate of over 300 rounds per minute. The swath of laserpulses was clearly visible in the smoke-engulfed room as a flashing crimson line that caught one of the muscular gunmen square in the visor, blowing his helmet apart in an explosion of vaporized cephalic fluid.

  The surprise factor that had carried me that far ran out as the other two with pulseguns opened up in a panic, spooked by my sudden attack. Incandescent ruby flashes tore apart the corpse I held as a shield, a stray round catching me across the edge of my right thigh. I gave the smoldering body a one-handed toss towards the gunmen, falling forward as I cut across them with a long burst that drained the magazine.

  The point-blank shots chopped across one of the lasershooters and the plasma-gunner, penetrating their chest armor and sending them dancing backwards with fist-sized holes blown in their torsos. But the last guy would have gotten me---I was in his sights and his finger was on the trigger---if a pencil-thin spear of light hadn't intersected his left temple, exploding his brain out the other side of his helmet. He jerked, keeling over backwards and I glanced around to see Kara McIntire crouched on the other side of the room, laser pistol extended outward and gripped with both hands.

  What surprised me the most was how calm she was---my augment sensors, still in combat mode, told me her pulse, blood pressure, respiration and heart rate were still normal.

  "Thanks." I scrambled to my feet, nodding gratefully to her. I didn't look at the wound in my thigh---my headcomp had already told me it hadn't penetrated my subdermal armor, and I just hated the sight of my own blood.

  "Where's Cutter?" She picked herself up, looking around.

  Cutter, as it turned out, was sprawled out beneath an operating table with a twelve-centimeter shard of duralloy from the shredded door impaled through the center of his skull. I didn't need any of my implants to tell me he was dead.

  "Shit." The air seemed to go out of McIntire. "You poor, miserable bastard..."

  "I'm sorry..." I started to say, but I was interrupted by an explosion from somewhere above us that shook the walls, punctuated by shouts, screams and the unmistakable crack-snap of discharging pulseguns. "We've got to get out of here now," I declared, retracting my wrist talons back into their housings. I yanked an ammo belt off of one of the dead assassins and slung it over my shoulder. "There's a lot more of them in the building, and they're probably watching the exits. Is there another way out o
f here?"

  She nodded numbly. "This way."

  Deputy Chen, I took the time to transmit over my neurolink as she led me to the concealed door she'd entered through. Jason, this is Cal.

  I'm here, Cal, came his reply. Trouble?

  I'm hip-deep in shit, buddy. I'm in Cutter's chop-shop in Skintown and the place is full of Gomers with assault weapons. I need backup ASAP.

  Jesus, Cal. I could "hear" the concern in his voice. I'll send the nearest patrol cars over there until we can get a STAT team out to you. You try to get clear, okay?

  I'll do my best. See you soon.

  The secret door led to a narrow, darkened corridor---so dark I had to use my night vision to go on. McIntire seemed to be moving quickly without hesitation, which I found curious---until my thermal filters caught the glowing stars of isotope power packs dotting her body at various key locations. She was either augmented or carrying prosthetics, or maybe both. Her skin temperature was normal, so the dermal material was either natural or cloned. Interesting, but it wasn't the most important thing I had to think about at the time.

  The corridor went on for about fifty meters, twisting around a dozen corners, following a path between the walls, and the whole time we traversed it I could hear gunfire faintly echoing through the building. The invaders were being resisted by the Skinners, but I doubted they'd have much of a chance---most of them were stoned or lost in ViRspace. Maybe they could buy us some time.

  The passage terminated in another concealed door, and McIntire was moving to open it when I stopped her with a light touch on the arm.

  "What's on the other side?" I asked her quietly.

  "Rear entrance hallway," she whispered. "There's a door to the basement---we can get out through the maintenance hatch to the sewers."

  "Hold on." I concentrated my sensor net through the thin walls of the corridor, trying to discern if the hallway was occupied. They'd be covering the rear entrance---but from the inside or the out?

  Jason! I transmitted.

  I'm here, boss.

  What's the status on the patrol cars?

  Approaching the building now, he told me after a moment's hesitation.

  Tell them to do a fly-by of the rear exit, scan for Gomers around it. There was another long pause, and I began to hear my pulse pounding in my ears.

  God's nuts! I heard Jason curse. The cars are catching heavy groundfire, boss. They've got to veer off, but it looks like all exits are heavily covered.

  Thanks, Jase. Tell them to set down at a safe distance and set up observation for the moment.

  "Where's the basement door?" I asked McIntire.

  She tapped the exit door. "Straight across the hallway from this."

  "Here." I handed her the pulse carbine, pulling my Gauss pistol from its holster and checking its load. "I'm going to run for the door, draw any fire. You empty a clip, keep their heads down, then come after me."

  Jason, I transmitted. Do those patrol crews have a clear shot at the rear exit?

  Wait one, he told me. Yeah, they could---but there's too many for them to take alone.

  I need a diversion. Tell them to cut loose in five seconds and keep up a sustained covering fire for at least fifteen seconds.

  Roger that, Cal. In five.

  It was actually more like eight seconds before I heard the loud "bangs" of impacting laserpulses, along with the shouts, commotion, running steps and the crack-snap of return fire down the hallway from the passage exit. At ten seconds, I was in action.

  Sliding the door aside, I shot across the hallway, taking in the scene around me in the second I was out in the open. There were seven of them at the end of the hallway, firing at my patrol crews across the street, none of them noticing me flying across the hall to crash into the basement door shoulder-first. I'd been taking a calculated risk that the door wasn't reinforced duralloy---if it had been, I would've looked pretty damn stupid bouncing off of it.

  But my infamous luck held, and the door was cheap plastic, mounted with cheap aluminum fasteners in a cheap building. I slammed into it, knocked it off its hinges and carried it down a long set of stairs into the darkened basement, my stomach leaping into my throat as I rode the impromptu bobsled. The floor rushed up, seeking to meet my face, but I twisted in midair, introducing it to my feet instead.

  I'd barely turned to head back up the stairs when Kara McIntire flew down them feet-first, landing in a crouch beside me. I didn't have a chance to compliment her on her acrobatics, because one of the invaders chose to stick his head through the basement doorway, and I chose to blow it off with a heavy, tungsten slug.

  "Quick, the maintenance hatch." I took the laser carbine back and she headed deeper into the darkened clutter of the storage basement while I watched the door.

  The body of the beheaded gunman was dragged back from the doorway, and I braced myself for the next attack. To give the Gomers credit, they attempted the right tactic---a grenade. A helmeted gunman flashed into the open for only a fraction of a second, poised to throw the bomb, but it was enough time for me to squeeze off a burst of laserfire from the carbine.

  I heard a muted scream and saw the grenade and his hand drop separately before I threw myself down. The explosion from the weapon blew out half of the wall to the left of the basement doorway, showering me and everything else in the front section of the basement with smoldering buildfoam and burning plastic. It would have blown out my eardrums if they hadn't been protected by the handy gadgets of the Fleet research boys, which was why I was able to hear McIntire when she yelled at me to "Come on!" from the back of the basement.

  Brushing bits of hot buildfoam off myself, I jumped to my feet, danced carefully through the overturned boxes and furniture stored in the basement, and found my way to where Captain McIntire was lifting up a heavy alloy hatch imbedded in a corner of the basement floor.

  She quickly dropped through it, and I followed her just as another grenade flew in through the gap in the wall. I landed ankle-deep in sewer water in the middle of a narrow, rounded tunnel walled with thick plasticrete, had to steady myself with a hand against the wall as the explosion from the grenade shook the ground.

  Cal, I heard Jason transmit as I followed McIntire, I'm coming in with six hoppers full of STAT squads---we're about thirty seconds out.

  Hit it hard, I directed him. We're clear---we're in the sewer, heading for a street exit.

  Gotcha, boss. We'll be looking for you.

  You worry about the Gomers, I said. I can take care of myself.

  I know that for certain. Take care, buddy.

  We were almost fifty meters down the tunnel when my sensor net picked up movement behind us. I pulled McIntire against the wall, aiming a one-handed shot back at the three bad guys coming down the ladder into the tunnel.

  "Go!" I urged the scout captain, hosing the area around the ladder with a magazine-draining burst before taking off after her.

  Reloading as I ran, I tossed the spent clip into the water and slammed the new one home. I ran hunched over, half-expecting to catch a burst in the back, but I must have hit something with the diversion fire. I caught up with McIntire quickly, despite the fact that she was sprinting at something near forty-five klicks an hour. Whatever it was she had, it was pretty impressive.

  At that speed, it took us less than a minute to make it to the first surface access hatch. McIntire threw herself up the ladder in a spray of water, grabbed the top rung with her left hand and swung her body upward, pumping both her legs up to slam the hatch out, then twisted her body through it with the grace of a gymnast.

  I was about to follow her up when a hail of laserpulses cut through the air around me, blowing fist-sized chunks out of the plasticrete wall. I dropped prone, suddenly up to my ears and armpits in scummy sewerwater, and decided not to breathe for a few minutes. There were four of them, hugging the sides of the tunnel wall, visible to me on thermal as pale yellow and orange human shapes, decorated by the dull-red glow of overheated lasing rods. I
tried to bring around my carbine, but before I could get it in front of me they cut loose again, putting their shots low into the water around me. The multikilojoule pulses vaporized gallons of sewage, sending up gouts of steam that filled the tunnel, obscuring my thermal vision.

  I dropped the carbine---the thickening haze around me would absorb too much light energy---and pulled my slug pistol, squeezing off a couple of rounds to keep them honest. I rolled to the right just before they poured a long burst into the spot where I'd recently resided. I was considering trying to take advantage of the steam to low-crawl down there and take them out when a grey-clad figure dropped into the tunnel beside me, hands filled with a heavy disruptor rifle. The armored, helmeted figure hosed a long burst down the tunnel, the maser beam only discernable by the crackling in the air as it cut through the steam. The targets of the beam found it a bit more substantial, as it exploded their cells from within, their ceramic armor worse than useless against it. If they'd had so much as an alloy-reinforced vest, it would have at least partially reflected the microwaves, but the ceramics actually acted as a kind of oven, trapping the heat from the maser until it blew their flash-boiled bodily fluids out through their chests. The maser caught three of them, and I targeted the last with a heavy, hypersonic slug from my Gauss pistol.

  We waited for a moment, but heard and saw no more activity, and finally got to our feet. The grey-armored figure waved me up the ladder, covering the tunnel with his disruptor. I jumped through the hatchway, landed on the street above in a crouch, finally let myself take another breath...and instantly regretted it. I smelled like I'd been face-down in a sewer---which, of course, I had.

  Looking around, I found myself about three blocks down from Cutter's chop shop, standing in the middle of the street, surrounded by half-a-dozen grey-armored STAT troopers. The bulbous, dull-grey shape of a Constabulary hopper squatted in the background, blocking traffic, its belly fans idling with a low-pitched hum. A basic, no-frills, ducted-fan hovercraft, it had been obsolete since before the war, but we couldn't afford better. Kara McIntire was seated on the ground, bared to the waist while a medic checked what looked like a shrapnel wound on her shoulder. Fighting to keep myself from staring at her, I turned instead back to the access hatch, offering a hand up to the STAT troop who'd helped me.