Robert Charette - Never deal with a Dragon

This was not a man!

Panic threatened to overwhelm her, but she fought it back. Hutten had snarled when she cut him. If that meant he could feel pain, he was not invincible. She lashed her foot into his groin, knowing that he did at least one thing like a man.

Hutten whuffed in pain and surprise. He bent at the waist, enough that Crenshaw’s second kick went wide and landed on the side of his knee. The leg buckled and the two of them went down. Crenshaw rolled away and came to her feet in a crouch.

Her antagonist landed sprawled, holding his genitals. One foot supported by the curb of the waiting area. Without hesitation, she stomped down, satisfied to hear the bone break. Hutten howled.

No, not invulnerable.

The firefight raged around them. Her scan took in the smoking observation deck. That was going to be trouble.

She had to minimize her own exposure, both to the shooting and to the repercussions. She bent over the writhing Hutten.

“You’ve earned this, whatever you are,” she said, drawing her knife from the sheath at the back of her neck. The monofilament line grafted to its cutting edge would cut through almost anything, even the polysteel cord that bound Hutten’s briefcase to the locked band on his wrist. She applied the blade to his arm and smiled at his scream.

Shaking the severed hand free of the still-sealed band, she started for the end of the pad, keeping low enough that the boarding area fences provided cover. The service door that was her destination would get her back into the arcology without passing through the firelight, which had intensified with the belated arrival of the Red Samurai reserves.

Crenshaw was reaching for the door control when something slammed her from behind. She hit the concrete hard, scraping painfully across its rough surface. The case’s bloodied grip slipped from her fingers and skidded along beside her to stop, teetering, on the edge of the landing pad. She rolled over, ready to deal with whatever runner had caught her, then froze.

Hutten, teeth bared, held her ankle in an iron grip. He laid his no longer bleeding stump across her shin. As he snapped her leg bone, he said, “We’ll start with this.”

Crenshaw didn’t scream until she saw the splintered edges of bone emerge through her skin, Heedless of the pain, she scrambled back, crashing into the fence that kept her from hurtling over the edge. Her frantic motion overturned the briefcase and it slipped, taking the fall from which the rail had saved her.

Hutten moved forward faster than she thought possible, but instead of attacking her again, he leaned over the railing and wailed. She turned her head in time to see the case hit a projection at a lower level and shatter open, spreading a debris of cassettes and chips to the wind. Hutten collapsed, bent over the fence.

A little leverage was all it would take to flip him. As her hand touched his ankle, he revived and slapped her away. Crenshaw tasted blood from her split lip. He reached down, hauled her up by the hair, and slammed her against the wall, pinning one arm against the hard surface.

“That was my ticket to life,” he screamed into her face.

Despite her leg and his speed, she was sure she still could get away if he was blind. She flicked out the razors on her free hand and raised her arm to strike, only to feel them slice into her own palm as he squeezed her fingers into a fist. Pale, but immensely strong despite its childlike size, his new hand crushed her bones and ground them together.

He wrenched her up again and swung her out and over the abyss. In a last act of defiance, she spat into his face. He licked the mixed blood and spittle from his face with a tongue that seemed inordinately long before releasing his grip.

She fell, knowing that she would reach terminal velocity unless she hit a projection. There wouldn’t be enough left to put back together. She hoped she would black out before she struck.

One wall blinked, its images of the battle on Landing Pad 23 replaced by a detail of a racing woman pursued by a limping man who moved with uncanny speed. As he closed and they struggled, a briefcase toppled over the edge of the platform. It smashed against a projection and opened, scattering circuit boards and computer chips to the wind.

Darkness assaulted Dodger’s senses as his hostess’s cloak billowed out of its own accord, masking her and everything else from his sight. A keening wail overwhelmed the sounds of the firelight, and over all the cacophony, he heard her voice.

“Lost. For myself, no hope. Gone. Fled. For my scattered self, gone.”

His sight returned and she had vanished.

The mad kaleidoscope began again, images racing across the facets. Within seconds, the tumult faltered as individual panels went dark or flared to stark white. Groups of panels froze en masse in blocks, crosses, or stepped triangles. Each geometric portrayed a different scene, but all the panels making up one shape displayed the same image. One showed a gold-eyed man struggling to free himself from fallen debris in a smoking room scattered with bodies. Another displayed a small cubicle where an emaciated decker lay sprawled across his board, the flesh around his datajack blackened. A third, which Dodger at first took to be a rebroadcast, was a window on the Renraku air traffic monitor center where the staff was casually sitting around. In the back of the scene, Dodger could see the reaction force pilots in their ready room, drinking, eating, and playing cards. Their wall clock showed the current time. There were other scenes from around the arcology as well, and they too showed no alarm. Then the facets of the floor froze in unison, having returned to Pad 23, where the Trojan shuttle was rising into the sky.

The fireball flared into being on the Renraku arcology’s left Rank. Three of the undercover guards were torched to cinders and a pair of over-eager Red Samurai were blown back, smoking, to their squad’s position at the building entrance.

“Good shooting, Tsung,” Jaq called out.

Tsung waved back and pointed at the remaining guards on the landing field. Jag nodded and directed her mercs to pour on the fire. Tsung needed cover to catch Hutten.

Their target had gone down in a struggle with one of the Raku guards. Jaq hadn’t expected the guard to come out on top, but she had. For a while, that is. Then Hutten chased her down and threw her from the platform. Now he stood there, looking bewildered.

When Sally reached him, his initial reaction was wary. She said something to him, but with the din of combat Jaq couldn’t hear. It must have been words to the effect of, “We’re here to rescue you,” because Hutten looked at the Commuter, nodded, and lit out toward the aircraft. Sally and the Indians beat a fighting retreat.

No time like the present, Jaq decided. She scattered powder from her pouch into the wind and began to chant. Watching the progress of Hutten and the runners, she tried to pace the spell so that the timing would be perfect.

Debris, litter, and masonry skittered across the platform like autumn leaves before the wind. Luggage rolled on wheels or tipped end over end to race dropped weapons and loose tools to the growing wall in front of the Commuter. It was a meter high when Hutten hurdled it. It had grown to two meters when Tsung, intent on the pursuit, slammed into it. Three of the Indians went down before she could lead them through the smoke clouds and around to the sheltered side.

By then, Jaq had gotten Hutten on board and recalled her four remaining mercs. She was closing the hatch when Tsung spotted her.

“Wait for us,” Tsung called, racing for the aircraft.

Jaq gave the order to lift. “Sorry, Tsung. I’ve got a delivery to make. Have fun with the Samurai.”