Chris Moriarty - Spin State

“I’m sorry,” she said. She sat back on her haunches and took the knife off the rebreather line.

McCuen’s body turned to water under her as terror collapsed into shivering relief. “Jesus, Li, you scared the hell out of me. I really thought—”

She slit his throat cleanly, making sure the first cut finished it. It was messy, but it was kinder than anything else she could do for him. He died with a confused expression on his face, an idealistic little boy who still couldn’t believe this game of cops and robbers had turned real.

“It’s not personal,” she whispered into the void of his dilating pupils. But that was a lie too, the biggest lie of all. And she knew it even if McCuen didn’t.

Bella was waiting by their packs. She started to say something, then saw the blood covering Li’s hands and clothes and stopped, backing up a step.

Li hated her for that step, for the disgusted, fearful look on her face. She hated her so much she could feel her hands shaking with it. She emptied McCuen’s pack, took what she could carry, and left the rest for the rats. She didn’t trust herself to look at Bella.

“Did he… did you find out how many of them there are?”

Li held up three fingers.

“Kintz?”

“Yes.”

Li was drowning. Suffocating. She shouldered her pack and started down the drift, leaving Bella to follow any way she could.

Neither of them said McCuen’s name, then or later.

Kintz must not have been expecting them to come after him. He’d let his men straggle. He was acting like he expected Li to run, like he thought he’d have to corner her before she’d fight. What did he know that she didn’t?

She took down the first man with a single shot; no hope of surprise anyway, and the best tactic now was speed. Unfortunately, her shot took him in the neck, shattering the feedlines of his oxygen tank. She listened to the air whistling out of the tubes and cursed herself for being impatient. For not having thought things through more carefully. For having hands that shook too much. For not being as sharp as she’d been five years ago. Five months ago, even.

Behind him was another man she’d never seen before. Probably planet-side mine security. He had the instincts and training to duck for cover before she could shoot him, but she’d chosen her point of attack well; there was no cover.

She would have shot him down where he stood if he hadn’t been wearing a rebreather. But he was wearing one. And since Kintz was wired, it might be the only rebreather left down there.

She leveled the Beretta at the guard’s chest, and he froze, staring at her. She listened for Kintz, but all she could hear was Bella’s dress rustling as she shifted nervously from foot to foot.

“You might as well come on out,” Li called up the drift. “I can smell your cheap aftershave from here.”

“I wouldn’t shoot him,” Kintz said from behind a protruding piece of lagging about three meters away. “He’s got the last full tank. And I believe you need one of those.”

“Take off the rebreather,” Li told the guard, “and push it toward me.”

He didn’t move.

“I will shoot you if you don’t do it.” She spoke calmly. She didn’t have to put on a play to convince him; the body of his friend was still steaming on the ground in front of him.

She saw the man’s gaze flick back toward Kintz, behind the lagging. That glance might as well have been a map. She could see where Kintz must be braced between lagging and rock face. She could see the gun that must be in his hand. And she could see what the guard had clearly seen: that Kintz would shoot him down himself if that was what it took to keep Li from getting the oxygen tank.

“Come here,” she told Bella. “And stay back against the wall.”

Bella crept forward, slowly, reluctantly. The look on her face said that Li had let her down somehow by even making her witness this scene. Li pulled McCuen’s gun out of the back of her pants where she’d stowed it.

She looked at it. She looked at the expression of fascinated revulsion on Bella’s face. She thought about the recoil on a big revolver like that, the way joints loosen on an old gun and the long uneven pull it would probably take to fire it.

She gave Bella the Beretta.

“Look,” she whispered, keeping her hand over Bella’s and the gun trained on the guard while she spoke. “Elbows locked. Bead lined up on his chest. And if he moves—if he even breathes too fast—shoot him.”

Bella nodded, tight-lipped. You lose your nerve and we’re both dead , Li wanted to say. But she didn’t. There was such a thing as too scared. And Bella looked like she was halfway there already.

Li flexed her hand around the Colt, felt its weight and balance. She wished to God she’d had a chance to fire it before, but wishing was beside the point. She gave the guard a warning look and started working her way down the drift toward Kintz.

The guard’s eyes followed her, telegraphing her movements, but there wasn’t much she could do about it short of shooting him outright. And Kintz would figure out what she was doing anyway. The thing was to get there fast. And to get there quietly enough that he couldn’t be quite sure where she was and when she was going to round the corner on him. She didn’t need absolute surprise. Just relative surprise. That, and a little help from Bella.

She got one of those things.

She turned the corner around the lagging, leading with her elbows, dropping the gun toward Kintz as soon as she was sure he wasn’t going to kick it out of her hands. And there they were, facing off against each other, each one with a gun to the other’s head. The next stage in the deadlock.

“Drop it,” Kintz said.

She hit him instead of answering. She’d thought it out, run the possibilities and options down in her mind, troubleshot her plan, and now she moved so fast that even Kintz’s enhanced reflexes couldn’t counter her. She turned into him, shoving him into the angle between lagging and rock face, where he couldn’t put his superior reach and height to use. She slammed her foot into his groin, and as he staggered under the kick she spun her gun butt-first and hammered it down on the side of his head.

He was a tough son of a bitch. He didn’t pass out. He didn’t fall. He didn’t even lose his grip on his gun. But he dropped its muzzle a few inches—all the opening Li needed. Before he regained his balance, she shoved McCuen’s gun under his jaw.

“Empty it,” she said.

He hesitated.

She cocked the hammer. He emptied his pistol, bullets ringing and skittering across the rough floor. “Now drop it.”

He dropped the gun at her feet, not taking his eyes off her, and she kicked it away down the drift. They looked at each other.

“I don’t want to kill you this fast,” she said. “I’d like to see you suffer, you son of a bitch.” She said the words without thinking, and the sound of them shocked her. But they were true, God help her. She’d killed more people than she could count or even remember, but this was the first time she’d actually wanted to murder someone.

“Got you where it hurt, huh? Who was that bitch whose throat I cut, anyway? Another girlfriend? Too bad I didn’t have more time to spend on her.”

Li forced the gun’s muzzle farther up under his jaw, as if she thought she could shut his mouth with the sheer pressure of it.

“They’re waiting for you,” he said, eyes on her trigger finger. “You’ll never get out of here alive, even if you kill me.” He licked his lips. “Especially if you kill me.”

Li backed off a step or two, keeping the gun leveled on him. That was when the other guard made his move.