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.Team211 eventually crashed their car, and the team leader called that they wouldtry to get away on foot.By that point they were far enough away that theirradio transmissions were breaking up, and Sula, driving in another direction,Page 229ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlheard no more from them.Hong made a last transmission telling the remaining teams to go to ground, andthen he, too, fell silent.Sula stripped back her camouflage hood, took off her helmet, and turned offher radio comm.She took out the hand comm that had been dedicated to thismission, stripped the batteries, flung it from the car with enough force toshatter it on the curb, and then lay back on the seat and gave herself up toweariness and the sense of bitter defeat.We re going to have to get better at this,she thought.If we live.EIGHTEENBy the time they arrived in their own home area Spence s leg was too stiff andpainful to permit her to walk, so Sula had Macnamara drive to the Riversideapartment they all shared.The car was parked in the alley behind thebuilding, and Sula opened the door to the back stair, the one with the doorthat led from the second floor landing to their kitchen.As the laughter ofchildren echoed down the stair, Sula helped the bandaged Spence get onMacnamara s back, and then stayed with the car and its military gear asMacnamara carried her up the stairs to her bed. Some kids in the stair saw us, Macnamara said when he returned. I told themit was a boating accident, that she got her leg caught between a boat and thequay. What made you think of that? Sula asked in amazement, but Macnamara onlyshrugged.She stuffed a pistol down the waistband of her trousers in back,made sure the weapon was covered by her civilian jacket, and left the car toMacnamara. Go to your private lodgings, she told him. I ll look after Spence.Makeyour rounds normally tomorrow morning, but make sure you check the position ofthe flowerpot before coming into the aparrment. She hesitated. If you get asignal that there s something waiting for us at a mail drop, she said,  don tpick it up yourself.Pay someone else to do it, and make sure he s notfollowed when he gives it to you.Macnamara was startled. That ll give away the location of the drop, he said.file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis.d%20Empire's%20Fall%2002%20-%20The%20Sundering.html (313 of 324)23-2-2006 20:21:31Williams, Walter Jon - [Dead Empire's Fall 02] - The Sundering There are plenty of mail drops, she said. There s only one you.She left Macnamara to contemplate this and bounced up the stairs, past thesmall children who had laid out a toy tea set on the landing, and slipped intothe apartment.She moved the flowerpot in the front window fromNo one s heretoSomeone is here and it s safe, and then went in to check on Spence.Sula unbound the field dressing and inspected the wound.As Spence hadsuspected, the bullet had driven clean through the right calf.There was verylittle bleeding.The calf was swollen, the skin smooth and taut as the skin ofa grape and beginning to turn blue, but the wounds seemed relatively clean,with no great amount of tearing, and Sula found no foreign matter in the woundafter she cleaned it, no splinters or bits of cloth.She sprayed onantibiotics and fast-healer hormones, put another field dressing on, adressing that contained even more antibiotics and fast-healer hormones, andthen loaded a med injector with a standard painkiller, Phenyldorphin-Zed.Spence tilted her head back, brushing the hair back from her neck, and Sulapressed the injector toSpence s carotid.Sula s heart gave a sickly throb in her chest.Blacknessrimmed her vision.She realized her hand was trembling. Maybe you d better do this yourself, she said.Sula had to leave the room before the hiss of the injector came to her ears.From the front room she stared down into the busy street, seeing the vendorsPage 230ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlwith their racks and carts, the people who moved along the street in thickcrowds but who never seemed to be in a hurry.Frustration scorched Sula s nerves.None of these people knew that a battlefor Zanshaa had been fought and lost that day.It was very possible that noneof them would ever know unless the Naxids chose to tell them.Sula thought of Guei crawling down the hall with his eye socket pouring blood.The voices of Team317 calling for help as bullets tore the air around them.Caro Sula, her faceslack with narcotics, lying with her golden hair spread on a pillow as herbest friend fired dose after dose of Phenyldorphin-Zed into her neck&Sula slammed her fists down on the windowsill and marched back into the roomshe shared withSpence.Spence looked back at her past half-lowered, drugged eyelids, theinjector still in her hands.The room smelled of disinfectant. Can I get you anything? Sula asked. Would you like something to eat? Can t eat. Spence made a vague gesture at the wall. Video, maybe?file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis.d%20Empire's%20Fall%2002%20-%20The%20Sundering.html (314 of 324)23-2-2006 20:21:31Williams, Walter Jon - [Dead Empire's Fall 02] - The SunderingSula told the video wall to turn on, and settled on her bed to help Spencewatch one of her romantic dramas.The hero was an older man, a Peer, handsomeand cynical; the heroine was young and astoundingly beautiful.Her beautyseemed to unlock the hero s personality, if not unhinge his sanity altogether:he disgorged a perfectly stupendous amount of jewelry, clothing, and trips toexotic climes before dismissing a long-time mistress and installing theheroine in his High City palace.The heroine seemed bewildered and faintlydistressed by much of this, but she understood the meaning of the palace atleast, and consented to the Peer s offer of marriage.Sula, who had more experience with older, cynical Peers than Spence, watchedthe ludicrous goings-on with growing impatience.Her mother, she knew, wouldhave loved this story, had in fact done her best tolive it she had spent mostof her life in service to some man or other, her chief problems being that herbeauty tended to attract admirers from another end of the social scale thanthe Peerage, and that most of these were married already.Her mother, who she had not seen in years.Claustrophobia began to press on Sula s mind with cotton-wool fingers.She wasin the apartment waiting, and for what? A handsome Peer with a fistful ofjewelry? A horde of Naxids with guns? ForMartinez, to carry her off to his palace in the sky, the palace that MauriceChen had bought for him?Sula made sure Spence was comfortable and then went out into the streets.Laughter and chatter rose around her while gunfire echoed in her skull.Thefirst action against the Naxids had been a catastrophe.Action Group Blanche was in ruins, and the survivors in hiding.The Naxidswere doubtless installing their government in the High City at this exactmoment.Simply for a place to go, Sula went to the Grandview apartment, a walk thattook her over the better part of an hour.She studied the building for awhile, then decided that it was unlikely the Naxids were waiting for her asyet.There were belongings she might as well fetch out, and some preparationsit might be worth her while to make [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]