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Yet imperfect though his understanding was, the concept was a gestalt of staggering efficacy. He had internalized it without ever realizing it, and with it he had internalized all those other “human” emotions, after a fashion, at least. For with friendship came fear—fear for a friend in danger—and the ability to hate those who threatened that friend.
It was not an entirely pleasant thing, the huge computer mused, this friendship. The cold, intellectual detachment of his armor had been rent—not fully, but in part—and for the first time in fifty mille
The mighty, hidden starship swept onward in its endless orbit, silent and dark, untenanted, yet filled with life. Filled with awareness and anxiety and a new, deeply personal purpose, for the mighty electronic intellect, the person, at its core had learned to care at last … and knew it.
The small party crept invisibly through the streets of Tehran. Their black, close-fitting clothing would have marked them as foreigners—emissaries, no doubt, of the “Great Satans”—had any seen them, but no one did, for the technical wizardry of the Fourth Imperium was abroad in Tehran this night.
Tamman paused at a corner to await the return of his nominal second-in-command, feeling deaf and blind within his portable stealth field. It was strange to realize a Terra-born human could be better at something like this than he, yet Tamman could not remember a time when he had not “seen” and “felt” his full electromagnetic and gravitonic environment. Because of that, he felt incomplete, almost maimed, even with his sensory boosters, when he must rely solely upon his natural senses, and taking point was not a job for a man whose confidence was shaken, however keen his eyes or ears might be.
Sergeant Amanda Givens returned as silently as the night wind, ghosting back into his awareness, and nodded to him. He nodded back, and he and the other five members of their team crept forward once more behind her.
Tamman was grateful she was here. Amanda was one of their own, directly descended from Nergal’s crew, and, like Hector, she’d also been a member of the USFC until very recently. She reminded Tamman of Jiltanith; not in looks, for she was as plain as ’Ta
She stopped again, so suddenly he almost ran into her, and she gri
Amanda pointed, and Tamman nodded as he recognized the dilapidated buildings they’d come to find. It must have tickled the present regime to put Black Mecca’s HQ in the old British Embassy compound, and it must have galled Black Mecca to settle for it instead of the crumbling old American Embassy the mainstream faction of the Islamic Jihad had claimed.
He waved orders to his team and they spread out, finding cover behind the unma
He checked his team once more. All were under cover, and he raised his energy gun. His fellows were all Terra-born, trained for missions like this one by their own governments or in classes conducted by people like Hector and Amanda. They were skilled and deadly with the weapons of the Terrestrial military, but far more deadly with the weapons they carried now. None was strong enough to carry energy guns, not even the cut-down, customized one he carried, but Nergal’s crew had specialized in ingenious adaptation for centuries, and the fruits of their labor were here tonight, for Hector wanted Anu to know precisely who was behind this attack.
Tamman pressed the firing stud, and the silent night exploded.
The deadly focus of gravitonic disruption slammed into the i
Stone dust billowed. Chips of brick and cement rattled like hail, and Tamman swept his beam like a hose, spraying destruction across the compound while the energy gun heated dangerously in his hands. Tamman was a powerful man, a tall, disciplined mass of bone and muscle, for he’d known he would never have a full implant set. Fanatical exercise had been his way of compensating for that deprivation, and it was the only reason he could use even this cut-down energy gun. It was heavier than most Terran-made crewed weapons, but still lighter than a full—sized Imperial weapon, and most of the weight saved had come out of its heat dissipation systems. It was far less durable, and the demands he was making upon it were ruinous, but he held the stud down, flaying the compound.
The outer wall went down and the closest building fronts exploded in dust and flying shards of glass. Light sparked and spalled, fountaining sparks as broken electric cables cracked like whips. Small fires started, and still the energy blasted into the buildings. It sheared through structural members like tissue, and the upper floors began an inexorable collapse.
A harsh buzz from the gun warned of the imminent failure of its abused, lightweight circuitry, and Tamman released the stud at last.
The high, dreadful keening of the wounded floated on the night wind, and the slither and crash of collapsing buildings rumbled in the darkness. Half—clothed figures darted madly, their frantic confusion evident through the attack team’s low—light optics. Black Mecca’s surveillance systems still reported nothing, and the terrible near—silence of the energy gun only added to their bewilderment, but the true nightmare had scarcely begun.
Three shoulder—slung grav guns opened fire, raking the compound across the wreckage of the outer wall. The sound of their firing was no more than a loud, sibilant hiss, lost in the whickering “cracks” of their supersonic projectiles, and there was no muzzle flash. Most of the deadly darts were inert, this time, but every fifth round was explosive. More of Black Mecca died or blew apart or collapsed screaming, and then the grenade launchers opened up.
There were no explosions, for these were Imperial warp grenades, and the principle upon which they worked was terrible in its dreadful elegance. They were small hyper generators, little larger than a large man’s fist, and as each grenade landed it became the center of a ten—meter multi—dimensional transposition field. Anything within that spherical area of effect simply vanished into hyperspace with a hand-clap of imploding air … forever.
Chunks of pavement and broken stone disappeared quietly into eternity, and the screaming terrorists went mad. Men and, infinitely worse, parts of men went with those grenades, and the near-total silence of the carnage was more than they could stand. They stampeded and ran, dying as the grav guns continued to fire, and then the madness of the night reached its terrible climax as Amanda Givens fired her own weapon at last.