the sides of the green-on-green field were a dozen inset windows with numbers rapidly scrolling up or down. There were complex nuke-turbine function and tank-temperature indicators. Other windows displayed the vehicle’s true course over ground, in latitude and longitude, and its true speed over ground. There were flashing proximity warnings about the vehicles on either side, in feet. The distance to the target was shown in yards, and falling rapidly. In the center of the screen were eight wag-shaped, lime-green blips in a sideways row. Beneath the shifting blips, a shades-of-green, satellite-generated contour map of the terrain unrolled wildly.
Only one of the blips on Mero’s screen ran inside a set of parallel lines—these boundaries indicated her vehicle’s computer-assigned course. The paired lines were constantly moving as the computer adjusted for the deflection of the irregular terrain, and driver error and deflection in the seven other vehicles. As Mero kept the blip within the course boundaries, her decision time was measured in fractions of a second. Allowable, real-world error before catastrophe was measured in inches.
Dredda switched screens again, calling up the biometric readouts of her wag squad. Her heart rate and Mero’s were holding steady at forty-five beats per minute; the men’s were four times that, and their blood pressures were spiking. She quickly scanned each trooper’s current video input. None of them was observing the driver’s screen; they were either beigedout or off-line, presumably staring at the red gloom of the cargo bay. Dredda tried to imagine how Mero’s screen would look to them.
Pure chaos.
An information and threat overload.
A helter-skelter fright ride, their lives in the hands of a gene-spliced maniac.
Dredda couldn’t see their eyes, but it amused her to think they were all shut tight.
The Level Four procedure that she and her officers had endured had changed more than their external physiques, their fat metabolism and resting heart rates. It had expanded and fine-tuned their biological systems to match the extreme limits of the battlesuit’s cyber-capabilities; something the male physiology, gene-doctored or not, could never achieve. Their increased numbers of neurons allowed them to intake and process information a hundred times faster than the men.
As Dredda understood the science, there were built-in bioengineering limits to each of the sexes, based on the amount of body space and chemistry devoted to their differing reproductive functions. In the case of the females, much more of their capacity—hormonally, metabolically, neurologically—was taken up by these duties. If the biochemical obligations of motherhood were removed, there was room for the system to change and grow. On the other hand, men’s reproductive functions took up very little of their bodies’ overall capacity, so removing it had no effect on potential growth. Evolutionarily speaking, the male of the species was already maxed out.
When Dredda uplinked her visor to the infrared image of the target compound, she saw human forms running. Now that the dust cloud was visible to them, the Shadow Worlders were taking up defensive positions inside the fenced perimeter. On their part, it had to be a precaution. They didn’t know what the approaching cloud meant, and they weren’t taking any chances. The important thing was, they weren’t abandoning the compound in droves. Because they controlled the high ground from well-positioned defensive hardsites, with lots of conventional weapons, they believed they were invulnerable. The function of the dust cloak was to maintain this illusion as long as possible—slaves were more profitable caught in large bunches.
Dredda panned back for a broader infrared view of the kill zone. The exhaust ports of the heavily armed gyroplanes registered as six bright spots sweeping around the western flank of Mount Deseret, closing on the compound from the north. It was time for the ground units to uncloak, and she snapped out the order.
As the wags burst through the face of the electrostatic dust cloud, the compound’s twelve-foot-high, wire perimeter fence appeared out of nothing, directly in front of them. Beyond it was the broad parking lot, and on the other side of it, the main complex that snuggled up against the foot of the mountain. The eight landships hit the fence at the same instant, flattening it and twisting it under their huge wheels. As they roared onto the parking lot, a fusillade of hostile fire zinged at them from all sides. The clatter of the gunshots and the ping-whine of bullets deflecting off her wag’s EM shield was so loud it forced Dredda to turn down the audio in her battlesuit.
When she activated the wag’s weapons pods, which were located on either side of the roof, two joysticks popped out of dashboard in front of her. As her gauntleted hands closed on the no-slip grips, a ring and crosshair sight appeared in the center of her helmet visor. Her targets, human-shaped figures in lime green, scattered to either side as the wag continued to rumble up the slope. Dredda flipped off the grip safeties with her thumbs.
Each of the joysticks operated its own cannon pod. As she moved her hands apart, the lone crosshair ring blurred, divided and became two. She simultaneously tracked a pair of men running in opposite directions. One was scrambling out of a foxhole hacked in the asphalt on her left; the other high-kicked to the right as he abandoned a sandbagged, burned-out hulk of a vehicle. When the computer target locks engaged, the sprinting figures turned red, and she jiggled the firing buttons.
Green lances of light stabbed through both runners. Neither completed another step.
Foxhole Man fell in four pieces, sliced cleanly through the chest and both arms above the elbow by a single burst of pure energy. His transected parts landed in a jumbled heap. The other man took the laser slash at waist height. The emerald light separated his torso from everything below his hips. It was a grievous mortal wound, but not immediately so. Though the man had been chopped in half, there was no blood—the laser sliced and cauterized at the same time. Rearing up from the pavement with undamaged arms, he seemed to recognize the severed legs under his chin as his own. His mouth opened wide in a scream that Dredda couldn’t hear. Frantically clawing, he tried to drag himself away.
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