|
Copyright © 1997 David Gullen.
All rights reserved and reproduction without written permission expressly prohibited.
After Henderson
The lift down to the parliamentary bunker was the only chance I got to
be on my own during the day. I looked forward to the lift. When the
doors opened this time a dwarfy little gonk dude I didn't recognise came
out, his arms full of papers for the incinerator. He was the sort whose
trousers were too short and wore a yellow cardigan with wooden buttons.
I said good morning, he made this snuffly grunt and scurried out. I
don't think he'd evolved enough to own a larynx. I kept my thumb on
the Open button because I heard a shout and saw Henderson had just been
dropped off by another armoured car. The vehicle pulled away as soon as
he was on the tarmac, a clear breach of contract. The terrain was flat,
open and very exposed. It was a headhunt and Henderson knew it. He was
too far from the lift and he knew that too. Give him credit, he got
about half way. Henderson kept himself fit, though how he found the
time among all the meetings and late nights I never knew. The last
thing he ever did was fling his Samsonite across the concrete apron. It
skidded towards geek-man standing by the incinerator clutching his
papers.
The sniper's bullet took Henderson cleanly through the back of his
skull. Solid steel shot, no distortion, no deflection. It snapped his
glasses in two on exit. Henderson died on his feet and folded himself
up into a little pile. He was a tidy man.
The nanophone implant in my inner ear started to murmur. It was
Carl, explaining in his clipped Scandinavian accent that he went to
infra red at Hit plus two seconds and has a target confirmed. "The full
headhunt was captured on the satellite video. I'm running a trajectory
back-track. It's complete ... now. Can we have justification on the
sniper?"
With that sort of evidence I concurred. James burned rubber, the
APC roared away in a high speed curve while Jocasta put six rounds per
second semi armour piercing into a derelict hotel half a mile away.
[End of this extract. The full story was published in Albedo 1 #14,
Autumn 1997]
|
