Ray Aldridge - The Emperor of Everything

In that transparent slice of time, she saw that Remint — for all his inhuman speed — would be too slow, that the fat man would kill or disable Remint before the slayer could reach his weapons or get his feet sufficiently under him to take evasive action.

But then a slender hand reached through the shattered door and sank a stun needle into the fat man’s neck. The fat man spasmed and flung his arms wide… then toppled over, helpless.

Ruiz regained consciousness as two of Remint’s hired slayers were cutting him out of the bodymask. He couldn’t completely stifle a groan as his injured nervous system reacted to the rough handling.

Corean’s face floated above him, transfigured with vengeful joy. “Oh, how I’ve waited for this moment,” she said, in tones vibrant with pleasure.

He knew better than to attempt speech until he had further recovered from the stun; his muscles were still useless. He looked around, and saw the tall naked woman with the steel slippers removing the last piece of her acolyte bodymask. She favored him with a nod and a cool smile. “Not a bad try,” she said. Apparently she was not in the employ of the pirates, as the mythagogue had told him. Other things were also apparent: principally, that Ruiz Aw was an idiot who richly deserved his fate. He sighed.

Remint y’Yubere sat on the couch, hands folded, looking remarkably placid. Ruiz could observe none of the intensity he had expected to see in the slayer’s face. The man seemed unaffected by the recent violent events. Genched, Ruiz thought, and shuddered. He would be just as placid in a little while.

“That’s right,” burbled Corean, as if she had added mind-reading to her skills. “You’re all mine now.” She reached out and touched the madcollar Ruiz wore. “Whose is this? No matter.” She clamped a decoupler module to the collar’s control linkage, and adjusted the damping field until it resonated with the linkage. The collar clicked open and dropped away. “There,” she said brightly. “Remint!”

The slayer looked up incuriously.

“Take us back to your brother’s stronghold,” she ordered.

Remint nodded. “As you say.” He rose from the couch and glanced around the suite. The joyboys, who were still huddled on the bed, both shrieked thinly when his gaze rested on them; he killed them with two brief touches of his pinbeam.

A look of uncertainty flickered across the face of the tall woman; immediately she suppressed it. The other two slayers laughed and brought out a control harness, which they began strapping to Ruiz. It was a device somewhat like the corpse-walker Publius had used; when it was activated Ruiz would be unable to make any movement except those specifically directed by the controller of the harness.

When they had finished fastening the control harness to Ruiz, they rolled him over and sat him up.

“Give me the controller,” said Remint.

“Sure,” said one slayer, and passed it over. Remint touched the controller’s finger pad, and Ruiz’s leg and arm muscles locked tight. The intensity of the pain astonished him; his abused nervous system was protesting vigorously. He clamped his jaws shut. For some reason he didn’t want to admit how much it hurt.

Remint took one last slow look around the suite, and then he cut down the rest of his people. The two male slayers fell before they could react; the tall woman, who was very quick, had time only to jerk aside slightly as Remint’s pinbeam cooked through her breastbone.

Ruiz took a sort of hopeless satisfaction in the terror that filled Corean’s face as she waited to find out if she were scheduled to die too. But Remint turned toward the door and said, “Come. Alonzo is waiting for us.”

Some sort of terminal bravado caused Ruiz to speak then. “Alonzo Yubere is dead,” he croaked.

If Ruiz had thought Remint a terrifying creature before, that pale perception faded to insignificance, seared away by the white-hot intensity that filled Remint’s face now. “What?” asked the slayer breathlessly.

Ruiz drew a deep breath. “Yubere is dead.”

“Who killed him?” asked Remint, stepping closer and pushing his terrible face into Ruiz’s, as if he wished to peer through Ruiz’s eyes into the hidden darkness at the back of Ruiz’s brain.

Had he not been paralyzed, Ruiz would have flinched away. “I did,” he answered.

“Ah, ah…. “The slayer rocked back and forth, shaking his massive head, very carefully, as though it might otherwise burst from the pressure of his thoughts. “You killed him? Why?”

“I was paid to do so.”

“Ah? By whom?” Remint’s lips writhed back and exposed his teeth in a hideous grimace that seemed to carry no identifiable emotional content.

Ruiz could hardly find the breath to reply, but he forced out the words. “Publius the monster-maker commissioned Yubere’s death; it was the price of his help, which I needed.” At least Publius would not escape unscathed; his machinations had led Ruiz to this sorry ending, and Ruiz found an unambiguous pleasure in the thought of Publius’s eventual meeting with Remint.

Remint stepped back, and calm rationality fell over the slayer’s features. “Ah. Publius. We know that one, an ancient enemy and colleague.” He looked away, and was silent for a moment. Then he asked, in gentle tones, “You would not lie to me, Ruiz Aw?”

“No.”

“No, I think not. What would be the point, now?” Remint paused, then spoke in the same soft voice. “You are too much like me, just a tool, sharp steel for the use of weaker hands.”

“May I ask you a question?” Ruiz found that he was still driven by his own purpose, even in this hopeless moment.

Remint nodded gravely. “Ask.”

“What have you done with my people… the Pharaohan slaves?”

“I delivered them to my brother’s stronghold. Beyond that I know nothing.” Remint turned to Corean, handed her the controller. “You must now proceed as you think best.”

Corean recovered her power of speech. “Wait! We still need to get Ruiz Aw back to the stronghold.”

Remint shook his head. “My directives in the event of my brother’s death take precedence over all other instructions; I must go now to punish his murderer.” The slayer started toward the door.

Corean made a serious mistake, then. She stepped in front of the slayer, and, in an attempt to detain him, put a hand on his chest. “Now wait,” she said, just before he snapped out his armored forearm and knocked her across the room. She hit the wall with the back of her head, and the controller went flying. She slid down the wall into a boneless heap, unconscious or dead.

Remint was gone, and Ruiz was alone in the suite full of corpses, unable to move a muscle below his neck.

Time passed, and the agony in his limbs eased somewhat, as his peripheral nerves adapted to the harness. He watched Corean, and wondered if she was alive and if so, how long it would take for her to awaken. The management of the joypalace seemed in no hurry to investigate the trouble in Suite B-448; hours might pass before they sent up a security team.

After a long while, he heard a faint scrabbling sound from an unexpected direction, and he snapped his head around.

To his astonishment, he saw the tall woman attempting to drag herself along the wall. Her face was white, and the wound in her chest made an ugly sucking sound. Apparently Remint’s beam had not quite ruptured her heart. It had apparently severed her spinal cord; her legs trailed uselessly. She was making slow progress, pulling with clawed hands at the dirty carpet, her bulging eyes fixed on the harness controller that still lay a good two meters away.

Ruiz couldn’t bring himself to hope that she would succeed. His mind seemed to have taken a turn toward cold introspection, and he was unable to take much interest in the woman’s efforts.