Warden 3

by Isaac Hooke

  Rhea and Will quickly spread out and approached the fountain at a crouch from opposite sides. Rhea sort of waddled back and forth as she moved, the crouch position proving awkward in that lower gravity.

  A highlight appeared on her HUD, and she realized Horatio had marked the target. A red dot also appeared on the overhead map, giving her the precise position in relation to herself.

  She reached the rightmost rim of the fountain and continued forward, slowing down as she rounded the bend. Her target was just ahead.

  If she had been human, her heart would’ve been pounding in her chest at that moment. As it was, her breathing came so rapidly the sound of it nearly consumed her hearing within the helmet.

  Before she sighted her target, a long metallic tail jutted upward. The tip was pointed toward her.

  She threw herself backward.

  Plasma bolts erupted from the tail, smashing into the ground just in front of her, melting big holes in the ice.

  “Careful!” Horatio sent.

  Horatio fired down at that tail, which buckled under the impacts; it quickly withdrew from her view.

  Rhea was trying to think on how best to approach, when a large shape leaped into the air, arcing over her. Rhea saw the silhouette of the Scorpion against the stars overhead. He was just as big as the last time she’d encountered him, except this time he had two tails protruding from his tailbone, instead of one. That was the augmentation Horatio had been referring to.

  Both of those tails were pointed directly at her…

  Rhea scrambled to her feet and began randomly zigzagging as she bounded away. Plasma bolts bit into the ground all around her. Ice fragments produced by the impacts traveled higher than they would have under ordinary gravity, and the shards peppered the air all around her, pelting her suit like hail.

  This continued for what seemed an eternity, but in reality, only seconds could have passed.

  And then the attacks ceased.

  “Shot out both of his tail tips,” Will said. “That was a bad move, strategy wise, to expose himself like that. Guess he thought it was worth the risk for a quick chance of taking you out.”

  Rhea risked a glance behind her and watched the Scorpion land on a nearby rooftop with a loud thud. The assassin ducked from view.

  “That’ll be the last of his plasma weaponry, then,” Horatio said. “I eliminated the rifles he had attached to his arms. He has only brute strength left now.”

  “Brute strength?” Rhea broke into a run and headed toward the building the Scorpion had landed on. It was only three stories tall: easy enough for her to surmount with a single leap in the diminished gravity. “I can handle brute strength.”

  “Dude, wait for us!” Will said.

  “I’m not letting him get away this time!” She switched the pistol to her left hand and activated the X2-59 in her right. The blade erupted and the electrolasers engaged, causing electricity to spark all around it. The weapon cast a flickering blue light over her body.

  “I’m a Ganymedean warrior. I can face him.” She took a running leap…

  Her body arced upward with a momentum that made her feel truly powerful, and she passed over the rim of the roof beneath her and landed relatively hard. The impact produced no sound of course, but vibrations would have traveled outward across the surface.

  Ahead of her, the Scorpion was indeed fleeing. His hulking figure reached the far side of the rooftop, but he looked over his shoulder and paused when he saw that it was just Rhea who had arrived to confront him. He smiled, baring his white, glistening artificial teeth.

  He wasn’t wearing an environmental suit of any kind, which meant either he was holding his breath, or his body had an internal oxygen tank installed somewhere. Given how long he had likely been hiding inside the ruined colony, only the latter made any sense.

  He had marks in his chest where Horatio’s energy bolts had struck. Mostly glancing blows, from the look of it. Though there was one solid impact in the upper left of his torso, where a bolt had partially melted through to the circuitry beyond, but otherwise he seemed unharmed.

  His two tails swayed back and forth hypnotically.

  And then he broke into a run, intent on closing the distance. Alone on the rooftop like that, she was too tempting a target to resist.

  Rhea opened fire with her pistol. It had been somewhat of a mistake to switch the weapon to her left hand so early, as she had trained mostly with the right. Her first few shots missed their mark badly, but after the fourth she began to score glancing impacts. It didn’t help that the Scorpion zig-zagged back and forth, making tracking difficult, his movements a blur. The lower gravity only worsened the situation, allowing him to bound two strides for every one step.

  And then he was upon her. The blunt tip of one of those tails slammed into her left hand, knocking the pistol free.

  Rhea brought down her X2-59, slicing through part of the tail, but not severing it entirely. However, the blow was enough for the appendage to drop limp to the rooftop.

  But the other tail was already coming in upon her.

  Rhea wasn’t able to raise her blade in time and the metal slammed into her side. She flew into the air, the lower gravity causing her to vault across two entire roofs before landing on top of another building that bordered the square. She hit face down and slipped across the entire surface of that flat roof before skidding to a halt next to the far edge.

  Her side throbbed with pain. Definitely some damage to her metal exoskeleton there. She was amazed that the blow hadn’t punctured her suit.

  She turned over and started to get up, but then a black silhouette blotted out the stars above her.

  She rolled away as the Scorpion arced down. He crashed hard into the rooftop where she had resided only moments before; cracks spidered outward from the impact zone, even though the gravity was one-seventh that of Earth’s.

  Rhea leaped at him, slicing downward with her X2-59. But she was hit by the remaining operational tail, and her blade skidded harmlessly off the edge of her opponent’s leg. The blow sent her slamming backward onto the roof, and she slid across the icy surface, crashing into the low wall that lined the edge. Once again her suit remained unpunctured.

  It can’t take much more of this punishment. Nor can I, for that matter.

  “Will,” she sent. “You were right. Help!”

  “Coming,” Will replied.

  The Scorpion advanced, taking slow, bounding steps, dragging the dead weight of his damaged tail behind him. The good tail remained posed above him, just as deadly despite the fact it could no longer shoot plasma. He was still smirking sickeningly.

  Rhea clambered to her feet. Her left arm was hard to move, and the elbow servomotor whirred loudly in complaint inside the suit. Pain in her upper chest signaled potential damage to her armor there.

  She backed away slowly along the edge of the wall, shuffling her feet, keeping the X2-59 held defensively in front of her. The reach was too short against that tail.

  “Will!” she sent.

  The Scorpion’s tail came striking down one more, a lethal stinger aimed at her face. Rhea dodged to the side and swung.

  But the Scorpion was already leaping backward, withdrawing his tail at the same time, so that the appendage retreated in a blur. Rhea’s blade cut only empty space.

  She turned around, bounded to the edge of the rooftop, and leaped off. But something struck her ankle as she left the ground and spun her sideways into the air.

  As she spiraled across to the next rooftop, she caught sight of the Scorpion, vaulting across directly behind her. He’d struck her with his tail once again. In his hands he held a large fragment of rock, perhaps ripped from the wall of the previous rooftop. He threw it at her.

  The Scorpion timed the throw just right, so that as her body continued to spin, she rotated right into the path of that rock, and it slammed into her face, jerking her head backward. She felt a mixture of sensations then: an intense cold that chilled her face to the un
derlying metal; a stab of sheer agony, courtesy of the fragment, which crushed her nose before bouncing away; gentler pricks of pain, from the pieces of glass digging into her cheeks.

  An alarm flashed on her HUD.

  Warning, suit integrity failure. Pressurization loss. Warning, suit integrity failure.

  She held her breath. If she were human, she would be dead now.

  But she was cyborg.

  She landed on her belly on the adjacent rooftop and spun around to meet the Scorpion with her blade. The assassin had meant to crush her with his two feet, but he spread them wide to avoid the X2-59 then, doing the splits in midair. He slammed his tail into the ground next to Rhea, using it to halt his momentum.

  Rhea swung at the base of that tail, cutting into it just as the Scorpion shoved off. She severed the tip.

  The Scorpion reached down and ripped away two more fragments from the roof and tossed them at her. She dodged them easily.

  He backed away, ripping away more pieces. He didn’t throw them. Not yet.

  She realized he was stalling. Waiting for her. He could afford to.

  He knew that while Rhea’s artificial face and body would protect her brain from the effects of the void, she would only be able to hold her breath for so long. Since she didn’t have a full body to oxygenate, but “merely” a brain, she could last a lot longer without air than an ordinary human. Somewhere between five to ten minutes. However, she’d still have to fix her helmet. The repair kit didn’t really have anything to deal with the loss of an entire faceplate, but she’d deal with that later.

  For the moment, she had to defeat the Scorpion. And quickly.

  She bounded at him, using the X2-59 to deflect the rocks he threw at her.

  That tail struck out, but she leaped acrobatically to the side and past it, using a muscle memory she didn’t know she had. A memory that knew precisely how to position her center of mass to optimal effect in the lesser gravity. At the same time, she swung at the tail, striking it with a glancing blow. She withdrew the blade, bringing it forward once more. She landed, and immediately leaped toward the Scorpion, closing the gap, stabbing at her enemy’s face.

  But the Scorpion was ready. He pulled his head to the side and the blow missed its target, cutting a gash only a few centimeters deep into his cheek.

  He grabbed her out of the air with one arm and threw her forcibly to the ground. He pinned her torso with one massive foot, and her X2-59 arm with the other. Grinning triumphantly, he crouched very low, and drew back one hand, forming a fist that, when it struck, would collapse her face and drive right through into her underlying brain.

  He had won.

  10

  Rhea stared at that fist and waited for death to come. She never thought the journey would end this way.

  Then again, no one ever really expected the end when it finally came.

  Strangely, she smiled, welcoming it.

  That made the Scorpion pause. His hand drooped slightly, and he tilted his head as if confused; the smirk dropped from his lips, and it was replaced with anger as he gritted his teeth and drew back his fist back with renewed alacrity.

  “I’m going to kill you, you little bitch,” those eyes said.

  Plasma bolts slammed into his face and arm and he staggered sideways without throwing the punch. He stumbled off of Rhea, releasing her, and spun away, lifting his tail toward the source of the blasts to shield himself.

  Rhea rolled to her knees and chanced a glance to her right. It was Horatio. The robot frenetically fired those forearm rifles through its spacesuit.

  X2-59 held high, she rushed the distracted assassin.

  But the Scorpion had retreated to the edge of the building, and before she arrived, he leaped over.

  She reached the rooftop’s rim and watched him crash through a window partway down the adjacent building. The assassin vanished within, leaving behind an enlarged window frame in his wake, the outline of his body broken into the surrounding cement.

  Watch the street, she sent Horatio and Will mentally. I’ll flush him out.

  Be careful. The robot also responded over a mental channel, because the speakers in her helmet wouldn’t operate without an atmosphere to transmit through.

  Rhea retreated a few bounding paces, then took a running leap over the edge in pursuit.

  She arced through the air and landed on the broken windowsill. She swept her blade inside, first to the left, and then the right, confirming that the Scorpion wasn’t lurking somewhere within to ambush her.

  She proceeded inside, using the light from her X2-59 to see by. She augmented the glow with LIDAR, and white wireframes overlaid her vision, outlining the objects in the room. It looked like a bedroom.

  She hurried to the hallway and checked the left side. Motion drew her gaze to the right, and she caught a glimpse of a hulking form as it ducked from view down another hall.

  She bounded to the remains of a freshly broken door, and slowly peered past the right side, beyond which her target had vanished. In the tall hallway, a chandelier swayed to and fro, indicating the very recent passage of something big. A door on the far side of the hall slowly creaked closed.

  Rhea took several bounding steps to that door, quickly reaching it. She kicked it open before it could shut completely and revealed a stairwell beyond.

  She heard a thud from upstairs.

  She vaulted up the steps, taking the entire flight in two bounds. At the landing, the steps turned back, and she similarly surmounted the next flight.

  At the top, the door had been kicked off its hinges.

  She peered past, checking both sides with her blade, and then slowly emerged. A window was broken not far from her on the left, which offered a view of the street below.

  She rushed to the window and peered down. There was no sign of her enemy below. No hulking body. No footsteps in the snow.

  She deactivated LIDAR, since it wasn’t needed, and glanced upward. She spotted the tip of a tail swaying on the rooftop she had only just left. She realized the Scorpion had doubled back to come at Horatio from behind. Though that tail swayed, it remained in the same general area, as if the Scorpion was pinning someone, and preparing to deal with them in a similar manner as he had planned with Rhea.

  Horatio!

  She had held her breath through all of this, and it was in that moment her vision decided to grow darker, slowly turning tunnel-like. She was becoming hypoxic. She needed oxygen.

  Just a bit longer…

  She pulled herself onto the window, but the angle was bad for an immediate leap onto the roof, so Rhea retracted the X2-59, and scrambled up the exterior of the building. It wasn’t difficult, since the Scorpion had left hand and footholds crushed into the surface for her. She quickly reached the rooftop and spotted the Scorpion on the opposite roof, his back to her. Horatio was pinned beneath him.

  Gritting her teeth, she retreated, and took a running leap, arcing high into the air.

  She came plummeting down toward the Scorpion. She activated her X2-59 again, and the glowing blade thrust forth. Its light must have given her away, because the Scorpion rolled to the side before she could strike, releasing Horatio to get out of the way.

  She landed harmlessly beside the robot, and immediately saw the damage the Scorpion had inflicted: he had bent back Horatio’s forearms, rendering the built-in rifles inoperative.

  She spun toward the Scorpion, who slowly backed away. The tunnel enclosing her vision had increased to consume half her perspective by then, so that all peripheral sight was lost. Everything remaining seemed murky, covered in a layer of black fog. She was forced to activate her LIDAR, but even that seem somehow less substantial, the white lines faint.

  The Scorpion continued to retreat: the inert tail dragged along the rooftop before him, leaving a trail in the snow, while his working tail swayed back and forth patiently.

  Then he stopped and remained still.

  He was obviously waiting for her to come to him once again.
He knew she was close to blacking out: the usage of LIDAR on a relatively well-lit rooftop must have given it away.

  Horatio stood, and sent a mental message. I’ll try to distract him. His voice sounded distant.

  Rhea couldn’t muster a response. The words wouldn’t come.

  The robot started forward at a slow shuffle, which became a rapid bound. Horatio raced directly for the Scorpion, and at the last moment leaped up and over the assassin. The enemy spun to follow Horatio’s arcing vault, and that tail stabbed upward; Horatio twisted to one side, but was still hit, his body contorting as he was thrown even higher.

  Two words filled Rhea’s mind.

  Strike now.

  Her vision had almost failed her entirely, but she bounded forward anyway. At least her body wasn’t any weaker: her artificial muscles relied upon electricity for energy, not oxygen, ATP, or glucose.

  Operating mostly on instinct and muscle memory, she leaped at the distracted Scorpion. She focused her failing mind on her objective, and the lone stratagem that had come to her in these, her final moments. She couldn’t help but grin.

  If she was going to die, she was going to bring the Scorpion with her.

  The assassin’s head tilted toward her as she hurtled through the air at him, and the moment he met her eyes, she activated her headlamps at their maximum brightness. She had maybe half a second of blindness to work with before his light autogating circuitry kicked in, but that was all she needed to slip through his defenses.

  She twisted her body upward, drawing in her arms and legs to alter her center of mass, once again instinctively knowing how to utilize the lighter gravity of Ganymede to her advantage. The change caused her to spin.

  As she continued toward him, her body spiraling like a bullet, she slid the X2-59 before her so it led the way. She centered the small tunnel that remained of her vision over the tip of the blade and aligned it with her target.

  The spinning weapon slammed into the Scorpion’s face, just beneath the right eye, and she felt the momentary resistance as the thick armor opposed the weapon. But then the plasma-enveloped blade slid through, passing into the brain within. But it stopped after traveling only twenty more centimeters, checked this time by the inner portion of the brain case at the back of his skull.