The metallic shriek of the impact seemed to propel debris savagely outward, heat-hissing shards of metal and plastic corkscrewing over the two of them even as they fell. Screams arose from the protesters. One had gone down, hands clutched to a face shredded by a wave of shattered glass from the kiosk. Others, panicked, fled wildly. One journalist who had evidently been hidden behind the placards was fleeing with the mob. Another was already getting footage of the crash, as well as the blood gushing from the face of the wounded protester. Ms. Bisacquino looked at the smoking ruin of the two cars—a pair of crushed tin cans forever fused and frozen in some savage mating frenzy—her mouth open, mute, and motionless.
“Come on,” said Caine, as the flash-heated synthetics in the cars began to smolder. “We’ve got to get off this platform.”
Chapter Four
The last station’s collision klaxon began hooting as Trevor reached the outer gate area. The emergency access portal dilated and spat out a torrent of terrified humanity. Fighting against the outflow of bodies, the stink of panicked sweat and the choking fumes of smoldering plastic, he pushed his way toward the station’s long, narrow platform—
—and entered a tableau of chaos. Dodging broken glass and smoking metal, the remaining crowd converged upon the main exit, with a few of the rearmost changing direction toward the portal Trevor had just used. No sign of the Shore Patrol—the wireless comm channels had not reactivated yet—and only a handful of people were still on the platform itself, most of those wounded or just rising from where they had taken cover—
Caine swayed up into Trevor’s field of view at the far end of the station, just a few meters away from the mauled remains of the two maglev cars. As he reached down to help a young woman back to her feet, Trevor saw movement a few meters farther down the platform.
From the shadows near a bank of ticket dispensers lining station’s far wall, a tall, lean, knot-muscled man emerged with a knife in his right hand, drawn back for an overhand slash. Trevor took a long leap down to the platform level, yelling “Caine, behind you!”
But Caine was already changing his direction of movement. In the same instant that he released the arm of the young woman he had helped up, his turn accelerated into a fast pivot, spinning him fully around. His right arm cocked back even as his left arm rose swiftly—
—and caught his attacker’s descending forearm. Caine’s imperfect but serviceable rising block pushed the down-slashing knife-hand up and out of the way. Without any break in motion, Riordan closed the distance with a quick step and his already-cocked right hand came forward like a pile driver. The heel of his palm rammed into his assailant’s face, just beneath the nose. Blood spurted, the knife wobbled, the man staggered back a step—
Caine’s momentum carried him through a sideways stance and into a fast left-foot-forward shuffle. As he did so, he drew his right knee up high and, in a blur, shot that leg out straight as his torso leaned back.
Caine’s step-through side kick caught the reeling attacker in the sternum. The man crashed backward into the ticket machines and then down to the ground, groaning faintly. By the time Trevor reached Riordan two seconds later, the platform was empty except for the two of them and the corpse of one protester whose chest had been transfixed by two lengths of blackened metal.
Trevor put out an arm to steady the suddenly swaying Caine, looked down at his would-be murderer. “I guess Opal was a pretty good karate teacher.”
Caine rose, glanced at Trevor. “Oh. You knew about her giving me lessons back on Mars, then?”
“Damn it, Caine.” Corcoran sighed. “Everyone knew.” He gestured toward the prone attacker. “What the hell is going on here?”
“Based on prior experience,” muttered Caine, straightening up, “I’d say that was an assassination attempt. Two of them, actually.”
“Yeah, but how—?”
“Trevor, ‘how’ doesn’t much apply to the attacks we’ve been dealing with since Alexandria. Nor do the words ‘impossible’ or ‘unimaginable.’ Because whoever is behind them has trump cards that we didn’t even know were in the deck.”
Trevor heard movement behind them. The first members of the Shore Patrol trotted through the emergency portal, weapons out. Trevor waved them over, pointed down at the feebly moving attacker, then leaned closer to Caine. “Guess you’ve got eyes in the back of your head, seeing him coming at you.”
“The reporter I helped up saved me, I think. She saw him over my shoulder, and I saw her eyes move. But also, I had this feeling—” Caine stopped.
Trevor waited while the Shore Patrol hauled the attacker to his feet and dragged him toward the exit. “What do you mean, ‘I had a feeling’?” he muttered.
Riordan shook his head. “I don’t know how to say it. Just before he got to me, it felt as though the whole universe was no longer fluid; like I was a small cog in the middle of a very fast, but very stiff and very big machine.”
“And that—feeling—warned you that some guy was about to carve you up from behind?”
“No, just that something nearby was—was, well, wrong somehow. So I defended the place I was most vulnerable: behind me, where I couldn’t see.”
Trevor grabbed Caine’s arm and started moving him toward the exit. “Man, I know twenty-year veterans who don’t have reflexes like that. Didn’t think you had them, either.”
“That’s because I don’t have them. I wasn’t following a fighting instinct, Trevor. It was more like a—a premonition.”
“Well, whatever it is, it sure as hell saved your bacon. And we sure as hell have to get back to the Pearl.”
Caine nodded. “Absolutely. Because there’s one additional thing that needs to be reported, and quickly.”
“What’s that?”
“The guy who attacked me was on the first platform, too. He threw a bottle at me, then ran like hell.”
“What? But how could he know you were going to stop here or—?”
“I don’t know, Trevor. And I don’t know how he managed to sprint through four kilometers of tight tunnels to get here before my maglev. Or how he went from religious zealot to…” Caine’s voice trailed off.
Trevor watched the S.P.s shackling the attacker to a restraint bar. “How he went from being a zealot to—what?”
Caine swallowed. “A madman. No, that’s not right: a killing machine. He was a wild-eyed screamer when I saw him at the first station. But here—” Caine turned to look over his shoulder. Trevor followed his gaze.
The hollow eyes of Caine’s would-be assassin had been following them steadily, calmly, empty of reason but full of a lethal, insatiable hunger.
The CoDevCo special services liaison who oversaw corporate operations on Barnard’s Star Two C stared at the last, frozen image that had been pirated from the maglev security system: Riordan and Corcoran hurrying away from the crash site. The liaison’s jaw worked unevenly; his face grew steadily more red.
His mounting fury was defused by a slow, steady voice from behind, which ordered as much as intoned, “Calm yourself.”
The liaison turned toward the man whom he served, at the behest of his superior CoDevCo Vice President R. J. Astor-Smath. Although having worked under this tall, sunglass-wearing man for almost three months, he still knew almost nothing about him, other than that he had a profound penchant for olives. “I do not know how you can be so calm. Two failed attempts in the course of a single minute? This is preposterous.”