Part 7
Shootout at the Ancient Courtyard
Jude led Dillon through the zigzagging
alleyways in the direction she had seen the ancient structures. The walls around them were primarily
connected to intact buildings, but some were walls that had crumbled a few
meters up. Dillon turned his head time
and again to make sure no one was behind them.
They were racing the sunlight, trying to get as far along as they could
before the sky was alight.
They made it to
a road where they would have to cross into the open to make it to their
destination; which was, in turn, an open-air plaza with scattered stone
structures. They each drew their
weapons.
“Any of your
cybernetics working?” Dillon asked.
“Thanks to you,
I only have my eye bionics. And using
those gives me a headache.”
“Well, you're
going to need to negote a headache if we're going to rec there alive. You ready?”
Jude answered by
heading out into the street. She blinked
her infrared into one eye and targeting into the other. They made her dizzy and she had to walk
carefully, trying to step where she had already looked at the road to make sure
it was clear.
Dillon watched
behind them, almost walking backward, as he also glanced ahead to double check
her view. His one cybernetic eye was set
for high res analysis. It was the same
trick he had used when he took down Jude.
Snapshots were constantly being taken of likely hiding locations and
being analyzed for targets. If one was
found, he could target the spot and point his arm without even looking at it.
They made it
more than halfway down the street and were nearing the plaza on the opposite
side. The antique walls stood out from
the other ruins both because of the stark difference in architecture, and
because they had an artificial appearance to them; like they were plastic set
pieces. Jude knew they weren't. Old alien buildings had a look to them that
was so foreign they seemed unreal.
Still, they caught her attention...
...and for too
long as she missed the merc leaning out a third story window, gun pointed and
ready to fire. Dillon caught the man
just in time and fired. The shot went
through him and his own shot fired off into the distance. Jude eyed Dillon with surprise, and said
begrudgingly, “Thanks.”
“Keep your eyes
on the targets,” Dillon said.
They took a step
down into the courtyard. It looked like
a giant, empty shallow pool with archaic decor littering the grounds, and
crumbled, synthetic mortar walls framing the sides. Somewhere among them would be a statue
pointing them in the correct direction.
Jude blinked her eye out of infrared and into detail enhancement since
the light was getting brighter all around them.
She winced in pain as she did, and the strain of keeping the cybernetics
running were getting to her.
Dillon orbited
Jude as they went, covering every angle.
They passed partial columns whose toppled tops made for low hiding
locations. They passed partially rotted
sculptures whose forms had worn and smoothed over the millennia. They rounded a facade that had once belonged to
a building that was now long gone, and they passed over decorative reliefs in
the floor. All of it would be
fascinating to one who studied long-lost cultures, but the two former enemies
were trying to not become part of the exhibit.
Just as Dillon
moved to Jude's right, one of the mercs appeared around a pillar to her
left. Neither spotted him. He aimed directly for Jude's head and had a
clear shot. But Dillon's high res
detection kicked in and found him. His
hand snapped in the direction of the attacker and fired. The merc ducked back around the pillar just
in time.
Dillon chased
after him hurrying for a better angle.
Jude turned to see what was happening, but the sudden movement made her
dizzy, and she lost track of them as Dillon weaved behind the downed part of
the pillar.
Jude took a
couple steps in the direction Dillon had gone, and found that she was facing
two of the mercs standing under an archway, their guns drawn. Jude's targeting was taking a moment to land
on them, but she didn't have time to wait.
She dodged to one side and avoided a volley from them. Then she shot the archway above them and it
came tumbling down. Both mercs dodged
out of the way, but one of them did so closer to Jude. That was his doom, as she shot him in the
chest.
Dillon's merc
retreated, and he chased him around a corner.
There he was met by the merc who had survived Jude's attack, and she
fired and hit Dillon in the shoulder.
Surprised, he stumbled back, and his own shot went wild. He went for cover, but the woman was on
him. Firing once and just missing, she
adjusted directly onto his back. The
other merc backed her up and they both fired.
The shots were
deflected out of the air. They looked up
to see Jude standing atop one of the monuments.
Her legs were shaking and she grimaced in pain, the result of using
cybernetics that weren't fully healed, but she remained steady, and she shot
them both down.
Dillon sighed
with relief, but then his own enhancement caught a glimpse of the merc leader
bearing down on Jude. He didn't hesitate
to warn her, he just fired, and hit the commander in the face.
Smiling with
pride, Dillon looked up at Jude to see her weapon pointed at him. She was breathing heavy and had a crazed look
in her eye. He couldn't tell if she was
bearing down on him for some plan, or because something snapped. He had heard the bionics sometimes played
with the mind. He said, “If you're going
to kill me, it better not be half way.
'Cause anyone who tries to rub me into the ground and fails will soon be
regretting they did.”
Jude
blinked. Her cybernetics disappeared
from her eyes, and she put her pistol away.
She looked in the direction they had been walking and pointed. “Found it,” she said.
Dillon kept his
pistol ready as they marched forward.“Your friend is still out there,” Dillon
said. “You're going to want to stay
armed.”
“He only wants
you dead. He needs me,” Jude said, and
they came upon the statue. It was a
winged edifice; perhaps the Abnani version of an angel, or possibly of a
bird. The plastement, which held the
alien structures together over millennia still had its limits, and many of the
details had faded over time. The fact
that it was alien made it all the harder to discern what various minutiae were
supposed to be.
But the most
important aspect could not be missed.
One of its wings was pointing toward the southwest.
To
be continued...
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