The Internal Security Directorate tactical teams had been arriving in New York ever since the vac-trains started running again. By the time the assault was launched, there were over eight hundred personnel deployed around the various sect covens. They were all armed with projectile weapons loaded with chemical or electric rounds. Complementing them were the gamma lasers. Intended for anti-terrorist interception situations, they were powerful enough to penetrate at least five metres of carbon-concrete. Such a range would allow the teams to strike at targets holed up deep inside skyscrapers and megatowers. One would usually be sufficient to eliminate an entire room full of hostiles instantaneously.
North America had ringed each coven with nine, while the Leicester skyscraper had fifteen ranged against it. The supervisor’s deepest worry was that the possessed with their extended senses would discover the preparations. To try and deny them any hint, engineering mechanoids had been used throughout the day to unpack and install the gamma lasers in surrounding buildings. Give-away human supervision had been kept to an absolute minimum. As well as the gamma lasers, North America had the exits and service tunnels rigged to electrify anyone who scuttled down them. That was the most dangerous aspect of the work, but again mechanoids with New York’s civic service emblem on their sides trundled along modifying wires and cables without drawing questions or interest.
The tactical teams had assembled several blocks away to avoid attention. North America started to move them forward simultaneously with closing down the vac-trains. He also closed down all road traffic and metro transit carriages inside the arcology, and sealed the domes from each other; an aspect the news agencies didn’t realize until a lot later. According to every asset and functional bug infiltrated into the covens, neither the possessed nor the acolytes were aware of the preparations. They didn’t even know the tactical teams were advancing.
The gamma ray lasers fired at 2:55 EST. The fifteen beams transfixing the Leicester skyscraper swept through the lower eight stories which made up the sect’s headquarters. They used a scan pattern, switching between vertical and horizontal to cover every cubic centimetre. When the beams were aimed right through the core of the skyscraper, the energy was absorbed by the structure, while furnishings and composite walls ignited instantly under the intense radiation barrage. Thick, radiant orange lines were scratched across the carbon-concrete support pillars and floors as the beams traversed the building. The air was superheated, dissolving into its component atoms. Windows detonated outward from the appalling pressure, showering the street below with daggers of glass.
Fire sprinklers burst into life, only for their water to vaporise first into steam then clouds of ions. Glaring blue and violet streamers jetted out of the smashed windows, and fountained up the skyscraper’s elevator shafts. Ruptured air-conditioning ducts provided secondary routes for the heatstorm to pervade the building. The entire lower floors were engulfed in a dazzling fireball.
Human bodies caught within the flexing three-dimensional mesh of beams burst apart from the terrible energy input. Their water content exploded into steam as the carbon combusted. When the beams reached the outer sections of the skyscraper, they were powerful enough to pierce clean though the walls. Surrounding skyscrapers were strafed with the radiation, resulting in vast tracts of damage. Then the sharp spires of ions exhaled by the Leicester played across their outer walls, igniting dozens of ordinary fires.
The gamma ray lasers switched off. The night was filled with the roar of flames and the screams of those being burnt alive. There was enough light thrown out from the fires to light the entire district. Unharmed residents of the nearby buildings lucky enough to live on the lower floors rushed onto the street; while those higher up could only stare out helplessly as the flames took hold. The images they relayed to the news agencies, which were distributed across the planet in real-time, showed the GISD tactical teams marching down every approach road to the Leicester. Against the raging orange flames, their heat-proof flexarmour suits appeared as matt-black silhouettes. Weapons with long snouts were cradled casually on their arms as they walked into the conflagration with astounding nonchalance.
Three times, figures rushed out of the skyscraper’s main entrance doors, making their bid for freedom. They were like fire monsters, flames shooting from every part of their bloated figures. The tactical team guns spat short pulses of turquoise flame with quiet efficiency, and the fiery creatures crumpled to burn unhindered on the wide sidewalk.
It was those scenes of perfunctory extermination which finally convinced the world that the possessed had somehow penetrated the titanic defences of the Halo. The political fallout was considerable. A motion of impeachment was put before the Govcentral Grand Senate, condemning the President for not informing the senatorial defence committee in advance. The President, who could hardly publicly admit to knowing nothing about the situation, fired the chiefs of GISD Bureaus 1 through 4, for gross insubordination and overreaching their authority. The GISD’s New York chief was charged with reckless homicide, and put under immediate arrest. Such machinations went almost unnoticed by the public, who were fed a continual stream of updates of the on-the-ground aftermath by the news agencies.
Once the tactical teams had confirmed that there were no possessed left alive in any of the sect covens, they withdrew. Only then were the emergency services allowed in. It took ten hours for the fire department mechanoids to extinguish the last fires. Paramedic crews followed them through the burnt out floors. The arcology hospitals were swamped by casualties. Preliminary insurance damage estimates ran into hundred of millions of G-dollars. Dome One’s mayor, in conjunction with the other fourteen mayors of the arcology, instigated an official day of mourning, and opened a bereavement fund.
Officially, one thousand two hundred and thirty-three people died in the assault against the New York possessed; nearly half as a result of being hit by gamma radiation. The rest were either burned or asphyxiated. Over nine thousand needed hospital treatment for minor burns, shock, and other injuries. Double that number lost their homes; with several hundred businesses forced to try and relocate. The vac-trains in and out of New York remained closed.
“Well?” North Pacific asked. It was five hours after the tactical teams had finished their sweep of the covens, and B7 had reconvened to hear the genuine results.
“We got a hundred and eight possessed, that’s the best estimate I can provide. There wasn’t a hell of a lot left for the forensic crew to analyse after the gamma lasers finished.”
“I’m more interested in the ones you didn’t eliminate.”
“Eight of the electrocution traps we rigged along possible escape routes were triggered. The teams pulled eleven corpses out of various ducts and service tunnels.”
“Quit stalling!” South America said. “Did any of them get out?”
“Probably, yes. Forensics thinks maybe three or four people got past the electrocution traps. There’s no way of telling if they were possessed or not, but it would take one inhumanly tough mother to survive what we threw at them.”
“Shit! We’re right back where we started. You’re going to have to initiate this kind of slaughter operation each time they regroup. Only now they don’t have any convenient sects to flee back to.”
“Well this time, I’m going to insist on keeping New York’s vac-trains shut,” North Pacific said. “We can’t let them get out of New York.”