Simon Green - From Hell with love

They came at me with glowing battle-axes, that shattered against my armour. They hit me with gloves made out of shimmering metals, and the gloves shattered and fell apart. I didn't feel the blows at all. I grew golden blades from my hands, and cut down anyone who came within reach, with vicious brutal blows. Accelerated Men threw themselves upon me bodily, clinging with desperate strength to my armoured arms and legs, struggling to pull me down. They piled up on me, trying to force me to my knees through sheer strength of numbers. But I stood firm, and would not fall.

I threw them off, one by one, grabbing them with hands so strong they cracked and broke the bones of my enemies, throwing the Accelerated Men long distances before they hit the ground hard, and did not rise again. I punched in chests, stove in heads, and broke arms and legs and necks. I stabbed and cut and hacked. I threw them down and trampled them underfoot. I killed and killed until there was no one left to kill, and then I moved forward again. And felt nothing but a cold focused rage. No mercy, no quarter, for the Accelerated Men. This was where Droods lived, and they should not have come here.

I'd been back for only a few minutes, but with everything that had happened, it felt like hours. And I hadn't really achieved anything. For all the Accelerated Men I'd killed, thousands more were streaming past me on all sides now, heading for the Hall with murder in their hearts. I looked back, wondering whether I should fall back and raise the alarm, and to my relief I saw the main entrance doors slam open, and a great force of Droods came out to defend the family home, led by the Armourer and the Sarjeant-at-Arms.

I knew them immediately, even though they were fully armoured, by the awful weapons the Armourer and the Sarjeant were carrying. Hundreds of armoured Droods came pouring out after them, because when an enemy comes, everyone fights. Every man and woman, no matter what they normally do. All Droods are trained to be warriors from an early age, because we all know that the day may come when everyone has to fight. For the family.

Many of the emerging Droods had transformed their armour into strange and terrifying shapes, to scare the intruders, but they couldn't concentrate long enough to sustain them, in the face of such an immediate threat. And besides, the intruders were so lost in the embrace of the Acceleration Drug they didn't care who or what they fought.

The Sarjeant-at-Arms was carrying two really big guns, a Colt automatic repeater in each hand. Massive pistols that could fire endless series of bullets, and never run out, and never miss. Their bullets exploded inside human flesh. Only the Sarjeant was authorised to use them, and only then in direct defence of the family. His bullets blew off arms and legs, punched through guts and chests, and exploded heads. Accelerated Men fell by the dozen, but the others kept coming. I didn't know whether they were brave, or determined, or whether enough of them was left to feel such things. They ran right over the bodies of their own dead to close with us.

The Armourer had chosen a really appalling weapon: the Kirlian gun. I winced when I saw it. The Armourer had never authorised its use in the field, not least because it was almost as dangerous to the user as to the people he aimed it at. Every living thing has its own energy field: the Kirlian aura. The gun explodes that aura. The Armourer aimed the Kirlian gun at the Accelerated Men, and they exploded into messy bloody gobbets as the aura that held their bodies together was suddenly removed. The Armourer trained the Kirlian gun back and forth, and suddenly whole sections of the lawns became bloody butcher's shops, with offal lying steaming in the early morning mists.

The two forces finally came together, as hundreds of armoured Droods slammed into the first ranks of the Accelerated Men, and stopped them dead in their tracks. They crashed into the golden armour and were immediately thrown back. Others were savagely clubbed down, or cut open with golden blades, or just thrown aside with such force that they died of it. Even a Drugged-up superhuman is no match for a Drood in armour. But… there were just so many of them, and for every Accelerated Man we struck down, more came racing forward to take their place. They moved so terribly fast, shooting past us, sweeping in and out of our ranks, come and gone before we could even lay hands on them, most of the time. Some Droods used their armour to boost their speed, to meet and match that of the intruders, but the Droods couldn't maintain it for long. Use up too much energy, and the armour automatically reverted to basic, to preserve itself and the Drood within. So for a while there was a stalemate, as blurred figures warred up and down the lawns, dead and dying men appearing out of nowhere to bleed out on the soaking ground. And then one by one the Droods reappeared, falling back to only human speed. They struck out viciously at every enemy who came within reach, but far too many of the Accelerated Men just raced straight past them, too fast to be touched.

And more and more came through the glowing circle, in a dark endless tide.

So the Droods nearest the Hall fell back, and linked arms, and made a golden wall between the main entrance and the approaching enemy. More Droods fell back to reinforce the wall, until it was four ranks deep, of Droods standing firm, ready to take on all comers and not be moved. They shall not pass… The first Accelerated Men came howling out of the mists at incredible speed and ran straight into the wall, as though they thought they could crash right through it. The golden line didn't budge an inch, the armour protecting the men and women within from the impact. The Accelerated Men had no such protection and were thrown back, dead or damaged. Bones cracked and splintered, organs were torn loose, or crushed through abrupt compression. Some kept their feet, even as blood flew from their mouths and eyes, and the Droods struck them down.

The enemy coming up behind saw what had happened, and were forced to slow their speed to nearly human levels. They threw themselves at the golden wall, and the Droods stood their ground and killed everyone who came within reach of the deadly golden blades protruding from their hands. They cut and hacked, and the Accelerated Men fell before them, but there were always more, pressing forward.

The Accelerated Men took on a new tactic, and used their superhuman strength to leap right over the Droods in the wall. But the Droods in the rear just jumped up to meet them, and cut them out of midair. The Droods threw the dead bodies aside, so they wouldn't get in the way of the fighting, and took their place at the rear again. And that was the end of that tactic.

I was still fighting alone on the lawns, surrounded on all sides by Accelerated Men. I cut them down with my golden blades, over and over again, my arms and my back aching fiercely; and still they came. I could feel sweat running down me, inside my armour. Fight long enough, and I would collapse from my own human weaknesses, long before the armour would wear out. Because the armour only augments the man inside it; he still has to do the fighting. But I had already decided, quite calmly and rationally, that I would fight till I dropped, would die on my feet, inside my armour, before I would stop fighting, as long as one Accelerated Man remained.

The intruders streaming through the glowing circle suddenly had new weapons in their hands-strange bulky guns they turned on everyone who wasn't them. They strode forward, firing indiscriminately into the Droods before them, and I heard shocked and startled screams, as Droods were thrown to the ground by bullets that could pierce Drood armour. I saw one defender rolling on the ground, clapping an unbelieving hand to the blood flowing down his golden side, from the ragged hole in his armour. I saw blood spurt from a featureless golden mask, as a bullet punched through his forehead. More and more Droods lay screaming and dying on the bloody lawns, brought down by bullets that pierced golden armour as though it was paper. A bullet whined past my head, and I crouched down instinctively, because I thought I knew what those guns were, what they had to be.