Ascendance by John Birmingham Page B

whatevs.’
    The kid grinned.
    ‘Yeah. Whatevs.’
    The two steroid giants by the door pushed a path through the crush of onlookers and out into the street. Karen tapped the accelerator to let them weave through the press without anyone coming into contact with her sword.
    ‘We need to hurry. Come on.’
    They stepped it up through the inert mass of the crowd.
    ‘Should’ve done this while we were eating,’ said Dave. ‘Would’ve saved some time.’
    ‘We can’t save everyone,’ said Warat, which wasn’t exactly relevant to his point, but he sort of got it.
    ‘So how many war bands?’ asked Dave.
    ‘Across the city? A hundred or so. Maybe a thousand-plus Hunn. Call it half a legion’s worth. A lot of them with Threshrendum. But not all on Manhattan. They’re across the rivers too.’
    Karen stopped in the middle of the road, frowning. Dave was struck by the strangeness of the utterly static diorama in which they stood. Like they’d been caught in some sort of giant art installation recalling the atrocities of 9/11. New Yorkers frozen in flight from something they didn’t understand, but knew well enough to flee. One obvious difference though; this close to Times Square there were fewer suits, more children. Tourists.
    ‘They’re not hitting counter-force targets,’ said Karen. ‘Just counter value.’
    ‘Counter what?’ said Dave.
    She carefully threaded a path through a knot of young women. Swedish backpackers, Dave would have bet. They had that Nordic look about them, underneath the terrified bafflement.
    ‘They’re not going after hard targets,’ Karen explained. ‘Military assets, that sort of thing. They’re hitting hardest on the soft tissue. Going for maximum shock and awe. Civil disruption, not military.’
    She favoured him with a cruel smile.
    ‘What’s that feel like? Being attacked by a hostile imperial power.’
    ‘Fuck off,’ Dave said. ‘You up for this or not?’
    ‘Oh, I’m up for it. But there’s something else,’ she said as she set off again, running into clear space now, dodging through a part of the crowd where the crush wasn’t as heavy, forcing him to run to stay in contact. The crowds were as bad as anything he’d experienced, like New Year’s Eve with a terrorist strike thrown in. He carried Lucille gripped just below the heavy steel head. There were half a dozen police cars at the intersection where they’d cut down the war band. Or where Karen had cut them down. Dave hadn’t done that much, really.
    ‘What else,’ he said, catching up with her in a relatively clear patch of road around a headless Fangr corpse. He’d just picked Chadderton and Delillo out of the confusion when Karen took them out of warp and they ‘popped’ into the world of real time again. The roar and chaos of a city in convulsion hit him like a storm surge. Way louder and more shocking than he’d expected. He was certain things had gone south while they’d been filling their faces.
    Chadderton jumped in surprise. His partner let go a little squeal. In a moment of perfect incongruity Dave was certain he could hear a big band playing ‘Mack the Knife’ somewhere nearby. The strobing lights of the squad cars and ambulances laid a stuttering filter of primary colours over the scene. The slaughtered daemonum lay where they’d been cut down. The human casualties had been cleared away. Some assholes were still shooting the scene on smart phones. Even bigger assholes were using iPads.
    ‘There was something about that empath daemon,’ Karen said, raising her voice to be heard over the roar as they hurried up to the cops. ‘Something unusual. I don’t know what yet.’
    ‘Mr Hooper! Ma’am,’ Chadderton called out, looking relieved to see them, even if he was a little freaked out by the way they’d materialised in front of him again. ‘This is Lieutenant Trenoweth,’ he said, introducing a plain clothes detective, a tall rangy man with iron grey hair. Trenoweth put his hand