Peter Hamilton - Great North Road

“Of course I fucking didn’t, you cretin,” Angela spat.

Vance grinned. That was Angela. The one and true—

Something moved behind Rebka. “Look out!” he yelled, and brought the pistol up again.

An arm with five fingerblades slammed into Rebka’s side.

Rebka guessed it didn’t matter anymore that her cover was blown. She couldn’t see how it compromised her now. And it had certainly stopped that fool of a colonel from shooting at her. He was left begging Angela to explain. While Angela of course was just angry.

Rebka frowned as the two ancient adversaries barked at each other. Her infrared receptors showed her that the pistol Elston was carrying was positively hot compared with the rest of him. Then he was yelling directly at her, and his pistol was coming up—

Something smashed against her. Even the armor’s amplified muscle functions couldn’t keep her upright from such an blow. Rebka toppled over and skidded along the rock-hard ice. Red icons flared in her grid, detailing the damage her net gun had received. It was effectively ruined. That was deliberate. The monster had sliced at it in the holster. Why that?

Combat analysis routines slipped up into her optic nerves, analyzing every byte of external sensor data, predicting and forecasting options—hers and her opponent’s. She spun hard along the ground, using her momentum to give her extra speed, coming around into a crouch. Not quite fast enough.

The monster had followed her. Its hand swung down again, striking against her neck before she was properly balanced again. The metamolecules protected her from the blade edges, but the blow hurt . Amber caution icons blinked up. The metamolecules were actually straining to maintain integrity against such impacts.

“Shit,” she grunted. Going with the strike again, falling and rolling. Again an apparent ungainly struggle to her feet.

The monster loomed large above her, its arm raised to club her down. Standing close.

Rebka’s foot lashed out. She saw her foot slide along the program’s maximum impact vector, its force amplified by the metamolecules, which even actively corrected her body motion marginally. Her heel connected perfectly against its ankle. The power behind the strike knocked its legs out from under it, sending it crashing down onto the rumpled unforgiving ice. It immediately started to scramble to its feet.

With the metamolecule armor’s help Rebka beat it up. Just in time to see Angela sprinting up to help. “No,” she yelled, flinging out a hand to keep her mother away. That distraction was all the monster needed.

The kick landed full square at the base of her spine. She actually left the ground to half somersault through the gusting snow.

Ball lightning landed behind the convoy vehicles, detonating into a fountain spume of lightning fronds that soared twenty meters up into the blizzard. With her enhanced senses, Rebka saw the scene in perfect monochrome light.

The monster turning to follow her. Angela still charging forward with her hands extended wide. Elston lumbering on behind, trying to keep the warm pistol level on the monster.

“Stay back, Mother,” she cried, as if that would do any good. She watched in disbelief as Angela pulled her gloves off.

Her e-i was throwing up combat options. Weapons were coming online. She cursed herself for being so slow, for letting emotions interfere with her responses. Without the net gun, capturing the monster wasn’t going to be an option anymore. Survival was what drove her now. She started to rise.

The lightning withered down, spent against the frozen river. Darkness collapsed in on them again. Elston’s muzzle flash was bright in her sensors. Which made the monster turn toward him—and Angela. Those fatal blades swept up. Then Angela was jumping.

Rebka screamed: “No!”

But Angela reached out, and Rebka’s sensors perceived the weirdest pulse of electrical energy surging down her arm.

They worked, the old dark cy-tech weapons. Angela felt the tips surge up through the flesh of her fingertips, as she started to jump, to distract the monster from its brutal assault on her daughter. Ten sharp stabs of pain that she ignored. The monster was turning, its blades stretching out as they repeated their ancient dance. And she reached out to stroke its shoulder once again, but this time going low.

The cells discharged. As before, those twenty years ago, there was a blinding flash, and the monster went staggering back through the icy darkness. But this time there was something wrong, some piece of insulation that hadn’t quite developed correctly. Fire burned down the inside of her left wrist. Stunning her, stalling the scream of agony that was in her throat. Her senses blanked out for a moment and she hit the ground, sprawling helplessly, heart juddering wildly.

Five blades slid down amid the snowflakes. And she couldn’t move.

Elston came hurtling out of the blizzard, shoulder down in the old football tackle. Crunched into the side of the monster, sending them both crashing over together beside Angela. She saw him try to bring his pistol up to the monster’s face. Too slow. Five blades jabbed upward, penetrating his parka and the armor vest below, slicing deep into the abdomen.

“No!” Angela wailed.

Elston’s face was inches from her. Shock filled his eyes as he drew down a feeble gasp of air. The blades were withdrawn from his body. He shook uncontrollably as he slumped down onto the ice.

Rebka watched in horror as Elston sacrificed himself to deflect the blades from her mother. Then the terrible creature was recovering, pushing the dying colonel to one side, ready to administer the same fatal blow to Angela. Angela who snarled with savage defiance, and brought her weaponized hands up again.

Rebka jumped, effortlessly covering the distance. She landed on both feet directly in front of it, knees bent, fist clenched. Purple and gold kinetic profile projections blossomed in her optic interface as the combat programs ran options. The armor locked into shape as the five-bladed hand came slashing around malevolently. The edges hit her upper shoulder and rebounded, slewing the humanoid shape around, trailing projections like neon contrails. Three opportunities opened for a counterstrike. Rebka punched with her right hand, seeing her fist slide along the combat program’s trajectory. Impact point was perfect, midtorso while it was still regaining equilibrium from its deflected attack. It left the ground to fly backward, thudding down heavily a couple of meters away.

“Enough,” Rebka said coldly. She drew the e-carbine from her waist. Theoretically it could slice through a two-meter column of metalloceramic armor. But Rebka dialed the power down, and fired. A glaring purple-white beam of electrons stabbed out, hitting the monster’s waist. It juddered frantically under the blast. Rebka switched it off. “Don’t like electricity, huh?” She fired again. The monster’s fists and heels began to beat against the ice river. Slim serpents of electron currents writhed furiously around it in a splendorous cage of agonizing illumination; its hide was smoldering from the points where it was grounding out, thin wisps of smoke mingling with the steam fizzing up from the ice. “They want me to keep you alive. I can’t do that if you keep up the aggression.” She switched the e-carbine off again. “What do you say?”

Her e-i reported a link quest from the prone monster, using Bastian North’s identification tag. “I concede your advantage,” he said.

Angela knelt beside Elston and smiled wretchedly at him. “What did you do that for?” she choked. “That was so stupid. I had everything under control.”

He smiled weakly and held her hand, turning it around slowly so he could see her bleeding fingertips with the talons exposed. “Little girl fought off a monster all by herself. Never did believe it.”