Something hard crashed into the side of his head, snapping it around. Hot yellow blobs filled his vision. The world span. And then someone clambered on top of him, straddling him, locking his arms against his sides, pushing him down into the quagmire. Pain burst across his scalp as the woman grabbed a handful of hair and forced his head back. Her fist hammered into Will’s nose, sending warm salty blood pouring down his throat. The next blow closed his left eye, smashing his head further into the mud.

He tried to heave the bastard off, but her weight was solid, pinning him, immobile.

The fist caught Will’s left cheek and he heard, with surprising clarity, a muffled ‘pop’ as the bone broke.

Will’s hands scrabbled in the mud, looking for something, anything to fight back with. His fingers brushed against a boot-the other trooper, the one with no head.

The fist hammered down again. Pain cracked through Will’s mouth as teeth snapped. He retched, blood exploding from his split lips.

A voice above him shouted, ‘Gah! You filthy fucker!’

Another punch.

Will grabbed the boot, working his hand around. Boot knife: please God let there be a…Bingo. He fumbled with the strap holding the knife inside its sheath. The handle was cool beneath his fingers as he slid the blade free. Head swimming.

Difficult to think.

Dizzy.

Darkness…

Someone was yelling at him, bellowing into his battered face, dragging him back to consciousness. He saw, through his one good eye, the woman on top of him curl her fist back again. Will rammed the boot knife into the back of her ankle and twisted till he could feel the hamstring snap.

A scream. The weight fell away. She rolled in the mud, clutching at the knife sticking out of the back of her leg.

‘You bastard! My fucking leg! You bastard! Agghh Jesus!’

Will rolled onto his side and vomited blood, bitter and salty. The roaring in his head came in waves, fading the world in and out, in and out.

‘You fucking bastard!’

He tried to move, but nothing worked. All he could do was lie there as the trooper struggled to her knees and dragged his fallen Thrummer out of the mud. Her face was pale, teeth gritted, eyes angry, dark slits, but there was no mistaking her. The first time they’d met she’d been wearing tribal scars and eclectic rags. The second time she’d been wearing casual clothing and talking to a man in a long black cloat. Big-boned rather than fat. Her ginger hair hidden beneath a combat helmet.

‘Fuck orders, you’re fucking dead!’

The telltales danced along the sides of the assault rifle, and a hard blue crackle filled the air. The lightning caught her square in the chest and Will felt the harsh roar of the Thrummer as all her muscles contracted involuntarily. Blue sparks fizzled out across her rigid body and then, with a wet splatch, she keeled over into the mud.

Will wanted to laugh, but all that came out was a rasping gurgle and one of his back teeth. Still alive. He lay there, bleeding into the rain-soaked earth. Then quietly slipped into unconsciousness.

25

‘What do you mean, you lost him?’ Ken Peitai stood in the darkness of the Hopper’s cargo hold, watching the monitor in front of him and not liking what he saw one little bit. He’d arrived with ten heavily armed troopers, to pick up one guy, and the useless bastards got their asses kicked. One dead in Hunter’s apartment, another unconscious. One in little pieces at the bottom of a lift shaft. Three dead on the path in Kelvin grove Park. One with no head in the bushes and another one out for the count. Only two left and they’d lost the God-damned target.

‘Sorry, sir. There’s no sign of him. We’re widening our search pattern-’

‘I don’t care if you’re sticking a pineapple up your ass: find him! And find that Bluecoat bitch he’s got with him. If either of them get out into the real world I will personally make sure you spend the rest of your miserable life helping research test the next batch! Do I make myself clear?’

‘Sir, yes, sir!’

Ken stabbed the ‘off’ button. The old man was in a bad enough mood already-he’d hit the roof when he found out they’d cocked this up.

Should have been a piss-easy assignment: get in, pick up Hunter and get out; take him somewhere safe; torture, question and kill his ass.

So how come Ken had six dead troopers and two zapped into unconsciousness?

The guy was a Network Assistant Director, not bloody superman.

‘Captain,’ Ken activated the intercom next to the monitor. ‘Get this hunk-a-junk in the air. We’re doing a sweep of that damn park.’

‘Sir? Our orders are to keep a low profile-’

‘You want me to come up there and make you do it? That what you want?’

‘No, sir.’

The engines came online, filling the drop bay with a low pulsing throb. Ken felt the floor surge under his feet and then the Hopper dropped over the edge of the building and accelerated towards the centre of the park.

Hunter wasn’t going to get away from him a second time.

Detective Sergeant Jo Cameron hit the ground like a sack of gravel. Someone scrambled onto her back, forcing her facedown into the wet earth. She lashed out with an elbow and felt it slam into something solid. Her attacker grunted, slipped-Jo dug her knee into the sodden grass and heaved, keepingthe momentum going, throwing the bastard all the way off.

With a twist she came round on top of the guy, and rammed her Field Zapper in his face, hard enough to break four of his front teeth.

‘Bad move, Cuddles.’ She thumbed the power up to maximum. ‘You’ve got exactly thirty seconds to tell me who the hell you are and where you’re from, before I electrify your head. You get me?’

The man just stared at her. Blood trickled from his broken mouth into his beard, before being washed away by the torrential downpour.

‘Twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three…’

He didn’t move a muscle.

‘Twenty, nineteen, eighteen…’ She rammed the Zappper forward again, the sight gouging a slice out of his cheek. ‘I’m not fucking kidding around here!’

‘Twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight…’ She smashed the hilt against the side of his face.

He just grunted.

‘Fuck it.’ Jo looked down into the bleeding man’s eyes and spat. ‘You’re not bright enough to know when you’re screwed.’

She sat back and stuck the weapon’s barrel underneath his hairy chin. ‘Bye, bye.’

She didn’t see the other trooper behind her, but she felt the butt of his Screamer as it smashed down on the back of her head. Hot orange sparks exploded in front of her eyes.

The Zapper dropped from her fingers and she slowly keeled over into the mud.

The Hopper twisted sideways in the rain, dodging the glowing sodiums that hovered over the path. With a deafening roar the engines turned and battered the grass flat before the whole thing settled into the soft earth on three articulated landing legs. It looked like a large metal flea, devoid of any visible weaponry, the logo of a nonexistent engineering firm stencilled on the side in flaking orange paint.

Ken Peitai walked down the rear ramp, a vid-helmet on his head and a fully-charged Whomper in his hand. As he stepped out into the monsoon he flicked his headset onto low-light, the goggles pulling hot green outlines and soft green shapes from the darkness. Three bodies lay nearby: one with nothing between its hips and shoulders; another sporting a large hole where its heart, left lung and arm should be; the third slightly further away, her spine little more than a foggy memory, the tips of white ribs poking through the smooth mess of her back.

Ken flicked on his throat-mike. ‘Get your scaly ass out of that cockpit and get these stiffs onboard.’