Outriders Read Online Free Page B

precision, the fluidity, the careful unfolding of each step in its proper time and place. Vector left the big security guard and moved through the crowd towards the Target.
    In the churning chaos, no one was looking four stories up, where Vector was certain the spotter was having just as bad a day as his two ground-level security companions. The Thug was by a table thirty feet away, in a partial crouch, with his hands splayed out to either side like he was trying to keep his balance. He was paralyzed by indecision, with his head turned such that he presented a perfect side profile to Vector. Only one person in the zone was paying any attention to Vector at all. That person was staring right at him.
    The Target.
    He too was standing now, but he was absolutely still, untouched by the confusion swirling around him. His body was tense and coiled, out of sync with the blank expression Vector saw on the man’s face. Recognition of what was happening, refusal to accept it. Powerlessness to stop it. He raised a hand, part shield, part supplication for mercy. Neither had any effect.
    Vector fired two rounds in quick succession, pat pat, into the center of mass, and the small man grunted and winced with the impacts. To Vector’s surprise, the man didn’t cry out; he just seemed to deflate as he sank to the ground, with a strange and sad look in his eyes.
    The Thug looked at Vector with horror, fell backwards in his haste to scramble away. He rolled to his side and writhed in an awkward attempt to simultaneously regain his feet and crawl away, all the while keeping his terrified eyes locked on Vector’s. Vector put a single round through the man’s head, and then another three rounds, haphazard, into his body as he flopped back and lay still. Couldn’t make it look too good.
    Having handled the Thug, Vector calmly closed the remaining distance to the Target with an even pace. On his way out he passed by the man, who was now lying on his side breathing the ragged last breaths of a man as good as dead. Vector didn’t slow as he fired a final round through the Target’s neck and continued with the same stride to the eastern exit of the courtyard. That shot hadn’t been strictly necessary; the first two would have done the job. But it made the hit messier, and that was a carefully calculated component of the op.
    He fired the remaining rounds from the stubby pistol into the walls and floor, and then dropped the empty weapon just before he exited the courtyard, leaving it behind. The Woman had insisted on that particular point too. He hadn’t asked why. Vector had learned well enough that she always had her reasons, and they were almost always good ones. And anyway, there was nothing on it that could be traced back to him, or to his team, or to anyone off-planet for that matter.
    As he stepped out onto the street, the first shockwaves were just spilling out into the general populace. A few patrons had fled the courtyard in that direction, screaming. Several other citizens were standing around on the sidewalks, trying to get a read on what exactly was happening. No one took notice of the white vehicle that pulled to a stop and opened its door just as Vector emerged. Nor should they. It was identical to the thousand other autopiloted vehicles of various colors that moved around the streets at every hour of the day or night. He slid into the seat and closed the door. Kev was sitting in a forward-facing seat, a tablet in his lap and a mess of cables dangling out of the forward dash.
    Before the door was fully sealed, the vehicle was already pulling smoothly away from the curb, under Kev’s illegally manual control. He kept it reined in, enough to look natural for the usual AI-managed behavior. But it was always reassuring to know he could punch it if he had to. Kev fiddled with the pad, kicked off an algorithm that would gradually transition the vehicle’s white exterior to grey and from grey to some other equally forgettable color.