Unconstant Love

by Timothy J Meyer

  Rubble and debris, however, are far from the worst thing to come dropping down the elevator shaft after them.

  Seen from below, the descending spice ranger looks only like a pair of fiery flowers, blue petals blossoming wider and wider the nearer she comes. Odisseus struggles to his feet, uncertain how best to meet this flying foe. There's another impact – a pair of boots alighting on the elevator's roof – before a pair of heatblades jab through the ceiling. A dumbfounded Odisseus watches as the shuddering blades draw a ragged and uneven circle through the thick marble.

  In the process, however, something mechanical starts to whine. Nemo and Odisseus exchange glances, Nemo oblivious and Odisseus portentous, as the Ortok guesses what the careless heatblade's just severed – the elevator's servomotor.

  Its main line cut, the elevator plunges into darkness, lit only by the glowing wounds the heatblades have cut into its ceiling. A moment later, the elevator literally plunges, freefalling the remaining way to the cargo deck below. The inertial dampener shot, both Nemo and Odisseus float awkwardly about the elevator for a quarter of second before impact.

  By some mercy, they're only falling for a moment before they crash into the lower atrium's docking clamps. Nemo and Odisseus are tossed like dice in a cup, slamming into and bouncing off one another, reigniting the Ortok's belly wound with each slam.

  The pair of marble doors fare much worse. Damaged by the ranger's initial attack, the brunt of the blow proves too much for them. They pop apart and fly away in chunks, a few marble scraps hanging by the hinges.

  More than dust, smoke and rubble is tossed clear, however. Nemo is cockled comically over a hunk of shattered marble like sack of wet cement. Odisseus, meanwhile, is tumbled across the lower atrium's floor, skidding slowly to a stop on the polished marble.

  The Ortok blinks dust from his eyes and discovers a pair of unfamiliar boots – actually the same that Nemo now wore – an inch from his muzzle. With great effort, he cranes his gaze upward. There stands Moira Quicksilver, looking quite the diligent Consortium employee in her pressed blue uniform, still clutching a buzzing comm in her hand.

  “Hey,” he manages weakly.

  “Hey.” She nods towards the whole sad scene of him. “How you doing?”

  “Eh,” Odisseus answers honestly. “Stomach hurts.”

  Saying this aloud sends a fresh tremor of pain through his whole body, radiating outward from his squashed belly wound. He makes an involuntary sound and writhes a little, attempting to amend his awkward sprawl. Above him, Moira's eyes follows the streak of blackened fur and puckered skin beneath.

  “Oh, yeah,” she remarks, stooping suddenly to better examine him. “Where'd you–”

  Odisseus hears her coming long before he turns to see her. He hears the sound of rippling flames, followed by a heavy thud and the whine of servomotors. By the time the Ortok can wriggle his body around, the Umijo is standing there, perfectly framed by the utter destruction all around her. Her heatblades extended and sizzling, there's an expression of pure malevolence on her alien face.

  Both of her remaining eyes fix fiercely on Moira. “Stand aside,” she orders, without room for argument, assuming Moira to be simply a concerned crewman.

  From where she’s squatting above him, Odisseus can sense the tension in Moira's body. She lingers there a moment before she reaches a hand to go digging about in his Consortium-issue toolbelt. He feels her palm something – his neticgrappler, Odisseus thinks – and hears her rise from her crouch.

  Only his neticgrappler in her hand, Odisseus watches Moira plant her feet and square off against the spice ranger.

  Moira Quicksilver would never, drunk or sober or under the influence of weaponized hallucinogens, dare to engage a spice ranger in unarmed combat.

  Fortunately, she's armed with a neticgrappler, so she's all good.

  She spends a second to spin the tool in her grip, testing the heft and gauging the weapon's balance. From what little experience she has with neticgrapplers, Moira's unimpressed with this specimen. Like her boots, the tool's shoddy, manufactured by a factory press. The distribution's severely uneven, weighted heavily towards the grappling end.

  Moira supposes, of course, that the tool's been designed for neticgrappling not hand-to-hand combat. Even a masterwork neticgrappler would make a clutzy weapon.

  The entire time she's getting a feel for her weapon, Moira's gaze never once leaves the Umijo across the way.

  Her disadvantages in this contest are legion. The harness grants its wearer strength and speed far superior to Moira's own. The heatblades have easily six inches of reach on her neticgrappler and even a near miss with one can leave a devastating burn. What's more, her opponent can fly, the greatest advantage of all.

  In addition, Moira's weapon is poorly designed for combat, could easily be severed with one clean strike from the heatblade and she's far from proficient with its use. Not to mention, of course, the pair of helpless and wounded and comrades, strewn about the battlefield that the spice ranger's free to endanger at her leisure.

  Moira's advantage in this contest is singular but strong. Moira thumbs the neticgrappler open and its head levers apart, magnetic energy crackling.

  At this, there's absolutely no chance that Moira's just an innocent crewman, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. She takes too much pleasure in watching that realization dawn on the spice ranger's face. Standing on her tiptoes, the Umijo activates the flame jets on her ankles. The spice ranger soars a graceful little arc over the heaps of rubble and onto a patch of open lobby, approximately fifteen feet from where Moira now stands.

  Fair is fair, Moira decides, and she advances those fifteen feet.

  The spice ranger's opening combo is a killer one, designed to cut down an inexperienced or unsuspecting opponent in record time. She thrusts right, follows with an underhanded swipe from the left and ends with a second right thrust. A lesser duelist would have been eviscerated but Moira, practiced with Tebi-Gali and electrobaton, is no lesser duelist. She stays well outside the range of the heatblades, bouncing like a pugilist on her feet as the swords slice the air around her. She gives a little ground and keeps the neticgrappler loose in her hand, all the while calculating the Umijo's swing speed and reaction time: impressive, both.

  When this opening gambit bears little fruit, the ranger transitions smoothly into another tactic. She twists and spins, heatblades weaving a basket of strikes and parries all around her. Moira recognizes this cunning ploy even as she escapes it. The fancy footwork and twirling blades are meant to capture the eye, to distract the target, while the ranger sneaks a fatal stab or slice into the mix.

  Moira takes a knee to avoid getting fried. Eventually, she's forced to roll beneath the swinging heatblades, right past the ranger's right flank. Moira comes to her feet in a Poised Hukia stance but the Umijo's just too quick. She's spun around so fast, Moira has no time to make any riposte or counter strike. All she manages is to regain some distance and solid footing before the spice ranger works into her third routine.

  The first attack pattern was about skill. The second was about showmanship. The third is about savagery. She hacks and chops, unleashing the full strength of her harness to sizzle the air inches from a backpedaling Moira. Normally, with swings that powerful, Moira can exploit the attacker's blind rage and frustration. The eerie blank expression on the Umijo's face says otherwise, however. Moira doesn't fight some angry brute; she fights another remorseless killer, the shade of a life she might once have led.

  The next five or six swings drive Moira further and further back until she's forced to make her move. Moira pivots like a skooshball player, avoiding a punching stab. She swings the neticgrappler, magnetic head fizzing, in a coordinated backhand. Her target is not the right heatblade, the stabbing heatblade, but the left one, the one held in reserve.

  The neticgrappler clamps hungrily onto the spice ranger's harnessed wrist. Planting her feet, Moira pivots again, yanking the neticgrappler, the hea
tblade and the Umijo's wrist with her. She's rewarded with the sound of snapping metal and a few droplets of machinery that cling stubbornly to the neticgrappler's end.

  The spice ranger leaps backward, flamejets buying her a few extra feet of distance. Pieces of metal and hosing are scattered all about the nearby floor and Moira takes comfort in the knowledge that that heatblade's not coming back online for the foreseeable future.

  Moira Quicksilver isn't about to give the spice ranger the window she needs to recuperate, however. With a burst of speed, the once cautious Moira goes charging across the atrium, spinning the neticgrappler in her hand to confuse the angle of her next attack. To her credit, the spice ranger takes the literal high road and gooses her flamejets.

  The attack Moira'd planned is now pointless against an enemy hovering five feet above the ground. Instead, she shifts her footing and starts recalculating how best to confront this new problem. Unbothered by her puny attacker, the spice ranger hovers in the air and grows increasingly frustrated with her busted heatblade.

  Moira is suddenly happy to oblige the spice ranger a moment to monkey with her machinery. She takes the time to asses the situation, the terrain and what her best tactic might be. Never quite turning her back on her hovering foe, she decides on the obliterated elevator, hoping it could serve as a temporary bottleneck.

  Moira scoots backward, striking a balance between speed and caution. She works her way sideways, scuttling over the debris with one hand, neticgrappler ready in the other.

  She's ultimately too slow. Halfway to the elevator, the spice ranger abandons her attempts to fix her broken instrument and swoops down towards Moira. As she does, she swaps the remaining heatblade from a slender sword into a ravenous flamethrower.

  Moira curses inwardly. She scrambles backward, almost loses her balance on some rubble and closes a fist around a handful of dust and gravel. The spice ranger comes in hard, eager tongues of flame reaching for Moira.

  On instinct, she tosses the handful of grit upwards at the looming spice ranger. Good luck and better aim guide the throw straight into the Umijo's face.

  This streetfighter's tactic isn't enough to distract a seasoned spice ranger for more than a second but it's enough. The Umijo shakes her head once to banish the dust from her eyes. In that second, Moira's coiled her legs beneath her and is leaping upward. She swings the neticgrappler in a wild, overhead arc, aimed at the spice ranger's right foot.

  Tendrils of magnetic energy grapple the ranger's harnessed foot and cling on for dear life. The momentum behind Moira's fall drags the spice ranger straight back to the cargo deck. Somewhere in the fall, something vital gives way on the harness and the flamejet promptly dies.

  Both Moira and the spice ranger tumble awkwardly onto the floor, one after the other. While Moira lands approximately where she'd jumped from, the spice ranger's second, still functional flamejet, carries her partway across the room. Moira's satisfied to see her connect with a crunch of metal against the far wall.

  One smooth motion returns Moira to her feet. She collects the neticgrappler with one hand and smirks to see the bundle of machinery still gripped in its magnetic jaws. Not wasting another second, she bolts across the room to finish her kill. Moira's not taken three steps before the spice ranger's on her feet, heatblade extended and poised to duel.

  Her posture is much changed. Her harness now twice damaged by Moira's neticgrappler, the spice ranger is clearly unwilling to underestimate her opponent a third time. Instead, she adopts a defensive stance and demands that Moira, with a woefully inferior weapon, become the primary aggressor.

  Here Moira confronts all her disadvantages at once; how does she launch an attack against a foe with a deadlier, longer and more agile weapon?

  The strike she does eventually try won't do, she knows the moment she throws it. Moira feints right and swings left, aiming for the single remaining heatblade. It's painfully obvious, though, what she's aiming at. With a deft motion of her forearm, the heatblade cuts clean through the neticgrappler's haft.

  The tool's magnetic head clatters uselessly to the floor.

  Moira only has time enough to toss the headless haft aside before the spice ranger presses her advantage. It takes all Moira's skill, adroitness and good luck to squeak past another furious attack pattern. Any thought towards defense is vanished from the spice ranger's movements, as Moira's completely unarmed against each attack.

  She's only ever a heartbeat ahead of a fatal strike to the heart, the temple, the carotid. All the same, Moira does start to notice a pattern in the spice ranger's movements. Each routine, she notices, is intended for two weapons. What's more, even though one of her heatblades is deactivated, the Umijo makes the same motions she would otherwise, were she attacking with two swords.

  It's not much of a chink in the armor but it's enough for Moira Quicksilver.

  A punch thrown a few inches too short whizzes past Moira's head and she snatches it still. Moira then starts to telegraph the beginning of a Constricting Sarsalus, a chokehold that could snap its victim's neck. The spice ranger howls in outrage and brings the working heatblade swinging across – exactly the response Moira hoped for.

  Moira ducks and sidesteps, abandoning her chokehold and weaving beneath the incoming sword. Before the spice ranger can recover, Moira's pinching several of the important cables that connect the heatblade to the harness. She rips them free with a twist and a yank, sparks spraying everywhere. The heatblade, drained of power, drops to the intensity of a guttering candle.

  The enraged ranger flies back on the offensive. Both heatblades offline, the spice ranger resorts back to bare hands. Considering that those bare hands are twice as strong and half again as fast, it’s not much of a downgrade.

  Fast as a ditrogen bolt, the Umijo throws two rights and raises her knee, the harness grinding and moaning. Moira twists to avoid each strike, unwilling to parry or intercept a punch with so much power behind it.

  Suddenly, she recognizes the routine – Rampaging Hagrak. Before she can really register this, Moira is next running through the recommended counter to Kodo’s Jaws. She feels the bones of her forearms nearly break in the process, the spice ranger’s enhanced arms coming way too close to crushing her head like a Gitterpeach.

  When Pouncing Dhimoza comes immediately next, Moira simply gets the fuck out of the way, lest she be pulverized by all the strength that harness can muster. She’s unable, however, to hide her sly smile as she recognizes another Tebi-Gali practitioner.

  Up against that raw strength, Moira makes an attempt at Foaming Volkine, praying that one among the flurry of rapid body blows will do some damage. She’s partially successful, striking an unprotected section of the spice ranger’s torso three or four times. She’s forced to scoot away again in short order, not wishing to have her skull caved in by a Barreling Rekava that comes in like a wrecking ball.

  They exchange Hidden Jakdar and Venom of Hokri and Wrestling Thonqo. They dance across the lower atrium, both huffing and heaving from exhaustion. It doesn’t take long for Moira to ascertain that she’s probably the superior fighter, in terms of raw skill. There’s no way, however, she can answer the ranger’s raw strength and speed. The longer this contest continues, the greater the chance she’s going to break a bone or rupture an organ by a miscalculated block or parry.

  What does eventually bring Moira low is a Stinging Spith, a full-body kick that Moira assumes is way out of range. What she doesn’t expect is the gout of fire that leaps from the flying ankle, bursting to life from the ranger’s one remaining flamejet.

  Twisting partially away in panic, Moira spares her face from the worst of the blast. The whole right side of her head, however, is savaged by the fire. She collapses to the unforgiving floor, the smell of burning hair in her nostrils. No doubt Moira paints a pathetic picture, rolling around in the rubble and frantically smothering the fire that engulfs her head.

  She doesn’t hear the spice ranger’s approach, noisy machinery creaking wit
h every step. Moira’s next aware of her opponent when her silhouette blots out the harsh red light, foot poised either to crush her skull or douse her face with more white-hot fire.

  The killing blow never comes. Instead, the spice ranger jerks violently, arching her back and screaming wordless agony. Moira’s eyes scan across the ground to discover Ortoki fangs sunk deep into the meat of the ranger’s leg. Propped on his elbows, Odisseus shakes his head back and forth a few times, worrying the Umijo’s leg with his incisors. Her balance forfeit, the ranger tumbles backward and onto the Ortok. Enemy and ally momentarily tangle amid fur and rubble and harness in a bloody, wrestling mess.

  Moira’s back on her feet in a flash, hurrying to where her foe’s recently fallen. Before the ranger can mount any manner of counteroffensive against either her or the Ortok, Moira lands on the Umijo’s neck in a Kneeling Hazrolope. Her death throes, as the life is slowly strangled from her, are blunted somewhat by the three hundred pound Ortok she’s entwined with. In a few moments, the ranger shudders and lies still.

  All across the GCF Franchise, the alarms continue to scream and wail. To the occupants of the lower atrium, this feels like silence, compared to the chaos and clamor of battle.

  “Moira!” shouts a woozy voice somewhere behind her. Moira twists her torso to see Nemo, struggling to climb from the elevator’s wreckage. “There’s a spice–”

  Soon as he gains his feet, Nemo nearly loses them again, clutching onto the shards of the doorway for support. “Dizzy,” Nemo comments idly, by way of explanation.

  Given a moment’s respite, Moira runs trembling fingers along the burnt side of her head, terrified of what she’ll discover there. Hair comes away caramelized, in scratchy, blackened bundles. She breathes a sigh of relief to discover that her overdue haircut may have actually saved her from third-degree burns. Had she kept it as brutally short as she usually did, Moira’s whole face might be a smeared burnmark right now.