Graham Paul: The Final Battle

“Once I’m onboard that Kallian courier, yes. You have my word on it.”

“Your word? That’s fine, then. What are we waiting for?”

“Don’t be sarcastic. The crew will be coming with me; the shuttle’s AI will fly you back. All of this is finished-” Polk waved a hand around the office. “-so what do I care? What you did, it’s history now and I’m over it. Now we need to go. Either come with me or I’ll give the word and the lasers will kill you. Last chance. Coming or not?”

“I’m coming.”

Polk got to his feet and made for the door to his private rooms, Michael close behind. “We’ll take the elevator to the roof,” Polk said over his shoulder. “Once the shuttle appears, we need to be quick or it will leave without us. And in case you’re tempted, don’t try anything. There are lasers everywhere, even covering the pad. Those Pascanicians are very thorough. It’s the only thing I like about them.”

“I just want to get this over with,” Michael replied.

The elevator opened into a small reception room. Polk checked a wall-mounted holovid screen showing the rooftop landing pad. “Good,” he said, tapping a small data window superimposed on the image. “Our shuttle has received the message about you and is inbound.”

The holocam tracked the shuttle in. Its nose reared up for landing. Belly-mounted thrusters blasted jets of incandescent gas into the pad. It slowed into a hover and started to drop to ground.

“Let’s go,” Polk said the instant the machine settled onto its undercarriage. He pushed through armored doors and walked briskly across the pad to where the shuttle waited, its ramp down. Michael struggled to keep up; belatedly he worked out why. The cocktail of stimulants he had injected into his body was wearing off. By the time he reached the ramp, it took a huge effort just to keep moving. His body was beginning to collapse with frightening speed. He staggered up the ramp and into the shuttle. A crewman-the only one Michael could see in the cargo bay-waved him into a seat, his pistol trained on Michael’s chest, as it had been from the moment he had appeared at the foot of the ramp.

“I’ll have the gun,” the man said. Pistol in one hand, he reached forward to take Michael’s rifle. But, as he did, the pilot fed power to the thrusters for liftoff and the artgrav twitched, forcing the crew member off balance for an instant.

Michael had his opportunity, and he took it. Purely on instinct, he pushed himself out of his seat and whipped his rifle up, driving the butt into the crewman’s stomach with sickening force. The impact doubled the man over, and he half fell, half stumbled back. It gave Michael enough room to bring his rifle to bear, and he shot the man full in the chest, the noise of the gun shockingly loud even over the roar of the shuttle’s main engines.

Shock had frozen Polk into immobility. Before the crewman even reached the deck, Michael was bringing his rifle up. Polk saw death coming for him. He threw his body to one side as Michael fired. The burst plucked at Polk’s sleeve and smashed into the bulkhead, spalling metal and plastic into the air. Michael tried to get the gun to follow Polk around, but he was too slow.

Polk ducked under the rifle barrel and launched himself into a desperate leap that threw Michael onto his back, the rifle ripped out of his hands as he cannoned into the deck.

Now Polk was on top of Michael. One hand was around Michael’s throat; the other arced down in a glitter of quicksilver. Michael only had time to bring his left arm up to deflect the attack but not fast enough to stop the knife from slicing through his DocSec-issue coverall. In a searing blaze of pain that shocked Michael into a frantic, scrabbling fight to win the knife, it opened a gash across the corded muscle between neck and shoulder.

With an awful clarity, Michael knew that this was a fight he could never win. His adrenaline-fueled energy was fast running out, and Polk was attacking with a manic ferocity that was truly terrifying, his left hand battering punches into Michael’s face while the knife in his right slashed and cut and stabbed past Michael’s flailing hands, a desperate struggle that left both men drenched in Michael’s blood.

Michael rolled the dice for the last time.

Calling on the last of his reserves, he arched his back, a violent movement that brought his right leg up hard and gave him the space he needed to twist his upper body away from Polk’s fist. He lunged for the knife with both hands, forcing it down, the sudden move throwing Polk off and onto his back. Polk fought to regain the initiative, but Michael’s right fist was free now. A punch exploded upward into Polk’s jaw. The blow hit home with a sickening crunch of broken bone that drove Polk backward, screaming in agony.

Kicking to get clear of him, Michael broke free. He scrabbled across the deck to grab his rifle. He leveled the gun at Polk. “It’s over,” he shouted.

Polk wasn’t finished. His right arm whipped across his body. The knife was a blur that moved so fast that Michael had no time to react. It buried itself in Michael’s right shoulder. Overwhelmed by pain and shock, Michael staggered back across the cargo bay. He hit the bulkhead and collapsed into a seat, the gun still in his hand across his lap. He glanced in disbelief at the knife lodged in his shoulder.

Polk struggled back to his feet. Terrified, Michael watched the man come toward him across the deck, a bloody-jawed horror with death in his eyes. Polk scrabbled into a pocket and pulled out a pistol. “Yes, Michael,” he mumbled; scarlet froth dribbled from his mouth as he raised the gun, his hand shaking. “It is over, but it’s not-”

Michael needed to move the gun only a fraction. He fired. The shot hit Polk below the heart. Polk staggered backward. The second shot hit him in the center of his chest, and he slumped to the deck, arms out wide and legs twisted beneath his body. But his eyes stayed locked on Michael’s.

Michael stared back. “Where are your Pascanicians and their lasers now?” he mocked. “I know we had a deal, but I decided not to honor it. You should have killed me when you had the chance.”

“You’ll … never make it … Helfort,” Polk said, the effort it took to force the words out twisting his face into a grotesque mask. “The pilot will know … so you’re … dead too.”

“I’ll make it,” Michael said. He fired again and again into Polk’s body. “Unlike you, Chief Councillor Polk.”

Michael looked down on the bloodstained wreck of what once had been the most feared man in humanspace. It was done, and now all Michael wanted to do was lie down and sleep, but he knew he could not. Polk had been right. The pilot would have watched the fight on one of the cargo bay holocams; now Michael had to make sure not to let him finish what Polk had started.

Where he found the energy, Michael would never know, but he bullied an unwilling body to lean forward as he worked the straps off his shoulders, whimpering in agony when one caught on the haft of the knife that still stuck out of his shoulder. Free of the pack, he reached in and pulled out the packet of autojects. With a silent prayer that his badly abused body would cope, he injected a second shot into his arm.

The change was immediate. Stimulants and painkillers flooded his system. They scavenged the last reserves of energy from his abused body, and it jolted back to life. He sat there for a few seconds. He wondered what to do about the knife. A tentative attempt to ease it out of his shoulder gave him the answer: Do nothing. Despite the massive dose of chemicals he had just injected into his arm, the pain was all but unbearable. Working with one hand, he did the next best thing: He slathered his entire shoulder with woundfoam before packing a crude dressing around the knife.