Dark Omega

CHAPTER 26 - TRIGGER FINGER

Haides walked down yet another dusty street. It was well into the afternoon. The sun was halfway between its zenith and the horizon. In the ruined city, it was hot as a baker's oven, unusual this late in the year. There were only a few people out and about, but Haides could feel many more pairs of eyes staring at him from behind barred doors and closed windows. It made the boy uncomfortable. This was not his way. The way of Haides was the unseen way, the way of stealth. But it had to be done. Honor demanded it. He set his teeth and kept walking.

The gun was in Haides's right hand, a heavy weight straining against the muscles of his lean body. The boy loved the feel of it. He didn't attempt to hide it; the gunmetal was plain to see for anyone with a mind to look. It was sort of the point, for his fellow Akakians to see the crazy whoreson coming into town, waving his gun around, looking for trouble. High above, the brace of surveillance drones hovered, tiny dots unseen and unheard by the ground-dwellers. Hidden down Haides's pants, the locator-coin hummed out its invisible signals. And somewhere behind—hopefully not too far—four GIs were coming, armed and ready for trouble. They were taking an awful risk by helping the boy—it was only fair he share in the danger.

Nik roamed to the right, going across what had once been a local green. Haides had a vague memory of having had a picnic there, but it could have been another place like it. Now the little park was a charnel pit, the ground churned to pieces by metal tracks, the trees burned when the ammunition supplies aboard a tank had exploded and set everything in the vicinity ablaze. The wreck was still there. Nik took the opportunity to piss on the scorched and rusted metal before moving on. Bits and pieces of charred bone protruded from the dried mud. Coalition or Akakian soldiers? It was impossible to tell. Nor did it matter. In death, all humans were equal.

On the south-eastern corner of the green stood a mansion that seemed to belong out in the hill country but had been misplaced in the middle of the city. Without a lock and access to the Grid, Haides had no way of knowing who had lived there. It didn't matter. The building had been shelled repeatedly and riddled with small-arms fire. Whoever had owned the place was long gone by the looks of it. A low wall of bricks with a spiked wrought-iron fence framed the compound. The burned-out tank—or maybe another like it—had run through the wall on the north side and exited where the front gate used to sit, facing the green.

Nik had led them true. This was the place where they had taken Mother. Below the walled compound, there was a reinforced shelter, complete with hidden escape tunnels, built long ago to protect the mansion's owners. A ruin atop a secret bunker. An excellent location to set up a hidden base.

Standing near the ruined gate were two men. They looked like ordinary civilians, save they were better fed and carried Akakian issue autoguns. One had a scavenged combat vest, the other made do with a belt with some ammo pouches attached. They seemed bored, talking in low tones and sharing a smoke between them, not caring too much about their guard duties. Haides recognized them both. They had been there.

Insurgents. Terrorists. Militia. Freedom fighters. Guerrillas. Any of those terms might be applied to these men. They were also simple rapists and murderers. Neither had played a very active role in Mother's undignified end, but they had both been present at her 'trial,' and when the 'sentence' had been carried out, which made them, at the very least, guilty by association. In Haides's mind, there could be only one verdict: death.

The distance must have been around sixty paces when the boy brought the gun up. Father had owned two shotguns and an antique hunting rifle. In his younger days, he'd hunted fowl and some game, but when Haides grew up, the guns sat idle in the gun locker. There was his militia rifle, of course, but before the war, he'd never brought it home. His actual shooting experience was limited to the occasional bout at fairs and such. Haides had never actually fired the autopistol. Needless to say, he'd never fired a weapon at another living person.