Blood Will Tell by Christine Pope Read Free Book Online

automatically once the perimeter security system was activated.
    Thorn pushed on ahead of her into the room, heading automatically for the main security console. The viewscreens revealed only dark desert, broken here and there by the bluish glow of the perimeter wards—all screens except the one that showed the rear approach to the compound.
    “What is that ?” she asked, pointing at the dark bulk that seemed to fill the screen. In shape it recalled vaguely the ore processors that moved over Iradia’s surface, harvesting any trace minerals they happened to come across, but otherwise it resembled those slow, lumbering vehicles about as much as the local boys’ hopped-up skimmers resembled a GDF attack cruiser. The unknown vehicle had an oily, gunmetal finish that shimmered oddly in the glare of the activated defense field; its outline seemed to be spiked with a number of strategically placed cannons.
    “Get me into the system,” Thorn commanded, once again ignoring her question, but Miala knew better than to argue. She hastened to the console, tapped in the code, then stepped aside.
    Thorn lifted his bandaged hands to the controls and paused. Then he seemed to shake his head slightly, and pulled at the wrappings that covered his fingers. One by one they came away, revealing mottled, half-healed skin still marked by livid bruises, angry red abrasions, and burns.
    Swallowing slightly, Miala forced herself not to look away. If his hands were still that bad after healing for almost a week, she hated to think what his wounds must have looked like when the mech first treated him.
    Now unencumbered, Thorn’s hands flew over the controls. Miala watched as he poured extra power into the shields that protected the rear of the compound and activated the pulse cannons mounted to either side of the massive front gates.
    “But why—” she began. She couldn’t understand why he was bothering with the cannons if the attackers were coming from the rear. As she spoke, however, the forward perimeter defenses flared as small dark figures came out of the night, guns firing.
    “Take the controls,” Thorn said, and she hurried to take his place at the keyboard even as he moved to the right, grasping the heavy console-mounted cannon grips.
    The compound’s defenses were good against most types of gunfire, whether pulse or projectile, but no defense field could keep out biological attackers, which was why Thorn had increased power to the shields guarding the rear of the facility. Somehow he had known ground forces would be attacking the main gates, and that increasing the force field there would have been of no use.
    He had pushed as much power as he could to the rear shields, but he didn’t know the system the way she did. Miala had spent hours working through its subroutines and codes and knew where she could steal the power they needed—from the back-up generators, the underutilized environmental controls, even the power-cell chargers in the garage. She was but dimly aware of Thorn working beside her as she hacked away at the computer system, shunting power to the rear defense fields. The only systems she considered sacrosanct were the weapons controls, of course, and the environmental support systems for the ground floor of the compound. The last thing she needed was for either her or Thorn to overheat and collapse in the thick of battle.
    No sooner had she completed the first pass through the system than the pulse cannons on the massive vehicle threatening the rear of the compound let loose, bombarding the shields with a barrage of coruscating energy. The ground shook beneath them, but the shields held.
    “Take that,” she muttered, but she didn’t have time to enjoy her victory for very long. Again the cannons opened up, and this time they knocked the shields back by a good twenty percent.
    “Can you hold them?” Thorn asked, not taking his eyes off the viewscreen in front of him. His fingers seemed to move on their own,