BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

This, finally, sent the mob into retreat. They didn’t run far, but they had stopped charging. They might still escape, if only they could get the helicopter into the air.

The rotor was moving, but so slow, so slow!

“People! Our people! We are under attack!” Benjamin shouted. He saw the one KimKim had shot. Dead. One of his people. He had once spoken to the man. Or maybe it was some other man like him—it didn’t matter, all of the people of Benjaminia were his.

Benjamin said, “Captain, open the spheres. Let all of the people out on deck, every one of them. We’ll soon deal with the

se scum. Every one of them! We’ll swarm them with sheer numbers.”

The spheres began to split open like sliced oranges. From their spot on the bridge the Twins could see down into the nearest sphere, down into the structure of catwalks and braces. They saw faces suddenly turned skyward, suddenly seeing the sky for the first time in weeks or months or years.

“Rise up!” Benjamin cried, his voice ecstatic. “All of you, out onto the deck and destroy the traitors. Don’t fear, attack!”

Out into the wind and rain and light they came, stumbling over unfamiliar territory, climbing over each other like ants. The people of Benjaminia, the people of Charlestown, hundreds of them, scraping their shins on sharp metal, banging into bulkheads, mad with excitement.

“Get them!” Benjamin cried. “Kill the men and save the girl!”

A woman tripped and fell into the gears of the sphere; she fell and screamed and was drawn slowly down and out of sight, like meat going into a sausage grinder.

But the sustainably happy did not hesitate. They had their orders. They had their targets in sight.

The dolls of the Doll Ship had come to vicious life.

And then one of the officers on the bridge yelled, “Captain! Captain! We have targets incoming!”

Every eye on the bridge swiveled to follow the direction in which he was pointing. Two Sea King helicopters, moving as fast as race cars and so low and close to the heaving waves that no radar could see them, flew, relentless, toward the Doll Ship.

Binoculars were snatched and sighted. “Royal Navy!”

“Shoot them down! You said you had missiles!” Charles whinnied in terror.

“They’re too close, they’d hit us and blow the ship,” Captain Gepfner said. “And those are Royal Marines.”

“We’re only half a mile from Chinese waters,” the first officer reported.

But it was irrelevant information for the moment, because the nearest Sea King banked sharply, roared overhead like the wrath of God, seeming barely to miss the bridge, so close that Charles could see the faces of the men inside the Sea King’s open door.

With startling speed the helicopter came to hover over the melee in a well-practiced maneuver. The second Sea King floated a hundred feet away. A swivel-mounted machine gun pointed its muzzle directly at the bridge.

Charles felt his heart stop. There was no way the deadly calm Marine behind that gun would miss.

“Stop them!” Benjamin demanded.

“If we’re taken it’s prison for the lot of us,” Gepfner said, ignoring Benjamin and speaking to his officers. “If they take us in Chinese waters it may be a firing squad.” He glanced around sharply and saw the consensus form. “Life or death now, gentlemen. Break out the RPGs and issue them to the mob.”

“No, sir,” a junior officer said. “I am not firing on Royal Marines, sir.”

Gepfner drew a pistol and without warning shot the officer in the chest. As the explosion echoed in the metal box of the bridge, he said, “I’m not ending my career in a Chinese prison waiting for a bullet at sunrise.”

“This is a fight for all we love,” Benjamin shouted into the loudspeaker. “Die if you must. Die for me!”

TWENTY-THREE

For the second time in a very few days Bug Man was shaking. He had run from the club, run straight out the door, raced down the street through crowds of young professionals who now, when they looked at him, did not see a very lucky guy with an amazingly hot girlfriend, but saw instead a scruffy-looking kid who was most likely running from cops.

He forced himself to stop running. Forced himself to walk, but he could not force himself to stop scraping his hand over his head again and again, as if he was trying to scrub something out of his hair.

Jesus, they would kill him for sure this time. They would kill him. But that was only Fact Number Two turning endlessly, endlessly around in his brain. Fact Number One was that she had betrayed him. The bitch! The skank! After all he had done for her, after all he had given her. Gifts and …He was sure he’d given her gifts. A necklace! That’s right, he had given her a necklace once.