In Death 21 - Origin in Death

Anticipating, Roarke drew a second blaster. "We can expect worse."
    They hadn't made it another ten feet when they got worse.
    They came, front and rear, and at quick march, in perfect formation. Eve counted more than a dozen before her back slapped against Roarke's.
    Droids, she hoped they were droids. They were identical: stony faces, hard eyes, bulky muscle under what were outdated military uniforms.
    But young, oh Christ, no more than sixteen. Children. Just children.
    "This is the police," she shouted out. "This is a sanctioned NYPSD operation. Stop where you are."
    They kept coming, and as one entity, drew weapons.
    "Take them down!"
    She'd barely gotten the words out when the explosion rocked her. She flipped her weapon to full stun, fired first in a sweep, then in quick, focused bursts.
    Something seared her left arm, brought a quick shock of pain. Even as she fired into one of the oncoming's face, the one behind him fell on her.
    She nearly lost her weapon as the force slammed her to the floor. She smelled blood, ripe and fresh, saw the human in his eyes. And without remorse, jammed her weapon against his throat, and fired on full.
    His body jerked, convulsed, and was dead before she shoved him aside. She avoided, narrowly, the combat boot that kicked toward her face. Yanking her knife free she drove it up, into the hard belly.
    Chips of tile flew, sliced at her exposed skin as she rolled. There was another jolt of pain, a pinch at her hip. She caught sight of Roarke battling two, hand to hand. And more were coming.
    She clamped her knife between her teeth, thumbed to maximum blast, and flipped her clutch piece out of its holster. She somersaulted back, took one of Roarke's opponents out, cursed when she couldn't get a clear shot of the other, then began to fire two-handed, like a mad thing, at what remained standing.
    Then Roarke was beside her, kneeling beside her. "Fire in the hole," he said, dead calm, and heaved the miniboomer in his hand.
    He grabbed her, shoved her back, and threw his body over hers.
    The blast punched at her eardrums. She heard, dimly, shards of tile raining down. Then only her own labored breaths.
    "Get off, get off!" If there was panic now, it was for him, so she pushed, shoved, rolled him away, then snatched at him again. He was breathing hard now, and he was bleeding.
    A gash at the temple, a slice that had gone through the leather of his coat just above the elbow.
    "How bad? How bad?"
    "Don't know." He shook his head to clear it. "You? Aw, fuck them," he said, viciously, when he saw the blood running down her arm, seeping through her pants at the hip.
    "Dings mostly. Mostly dings. Backup's coming. Help's coming."
    He looked her dead in the eyes, and he smiled. "And we're just going to sit here and wait for the cavalry, are we?"
    The smile loosened the sweaty fist around her heart. "Hell, no."
    She pushed herself up, offered him her hand. What she saw around them made her stomach pitch and her heart shrivel. They'd been flesh, blood, bone. They'd been boys. Now they were pieces of meat.
    She shut herself down, began to gather weapons. "We don't know what else we've got coming. Take all you can carry."
    "Bred for war, that's what they were," Roarke said softly. "They had no choice. They gave us no choice."
    "I know that." She shouldered on two combat rifles. "And we're going to exterminate, destroy, decimate what bred them."
    Roarke hefted one of the weapons. "Urban War era. If they'd been better equipped and more experienced, we'd be dead."
    "You had boomers. You had illegal explosives."
    "Well, be prepared, I say." He aimed the rifle at one of the cameras, blasted it. "You've only used one of these a couple of times in sims down in the target gallery."
    "I can handle it." She aimed, took out a second camera.
    "No doubt."

F
    rom their position, Diana looked over her shoulder. "It sounds like a war."
    "Whatever it is, it's keeping it off our backs." For now, she thought. She'd estimated she'd had a fifty-fifty chance of coming out of tonight alive. Now she had to survive. She had to get it done and get Diana to safety.
    But her palms were sweating, and that only lowered the odds. Avril had been the only person she'd ever loved. Now even that strong current was tame beside the tidal wave of emotion that swept her. Diana was hers.
    Nothing was ever going to touch her child again.
    So she prayed that the data she and Avril had accessed was still valid. Prayed that whatever was