03 Lethal Impulses

by Angela Knight (AKA Julie Woodcock)

  "Lethal Impulses"

  By Julie Woodcock

  Radm pulled on his heavy synthleather gauntlets as he stepped out of the Rat Warren's main lift, his rapier and poinard--a long parrying dagger--tucked under one arm. Lifting his blond head as the lift doors slid shut behind him, he paused, his attention caught by the wash of stars beyond the space station's transparent dome. The Veil Nebula shone off to starboard, pastel violet gauze against the blackness. Radm stared for a moment, caught by its glory; even after twenty years of life on the Rat Warren, he still wasn't immune to the nebula's beauty.

  "You're late." The voice rumbled out of the silence behind him.

  Radm grinned and turned. "Think of it as a chance to practice patience."

  At this hour of the station's artificial night, the Domedeck was still and dim, empty except for the lone figure standing in the shadows. "Patience has never been one of my problems," the cycop said dryly, stepping out into a pool of light. He was bare-chested, wearing, like Radm, loose white pants and a pair of soft boots. A ripple of reflection danced down the lengths of the blades he carried in either hand. "After twenty years of you, I could teach patience to Job."

  "Your martyr complex is showing, Mik," Radm said. "But since you're in the mood to suffer..." He pulled his weapons from under his arm and settled into guard with a flourish.

  "We'll see who suffers, boy." Mik fell into his own fighting stance, left leg leading, his rapier in one hand and the poniard in the other.

  Radm let his grin go feral and began to circle around to his left. Mik pivoted after him, keeping the point of his sword aimed between Radm's eyes. He was a big man, a fraction taller than Radm, a fraction heavier--and 20 years older, his once-black hair streaked with white, gray in the thick hair pelting his chest and arms. But not an old man, no. The chest under that gray mat was thick with hard striated muscle, clean of fat, immune to age. A cycop's life may have grayed him, but his years did not mean weakness.

  What those years did mean was skill and experience--experience Radm knew he couldn't match. Experience that could easily beat him, despite his young man's strength and speed, unless he could maximize whatever advantages he had.

  I'll wait, Radm thought, as they circled each other warily, let him take the offensive, wear himself out with the first attacks. Knowing Mik, he'll feint with the sword and come in with the poinard, so I'll parry in sixth and ...

  He barely saw the spinning kick coming in time to leap back. Watching Mik's boot slice a millimeter from his nose, Radm knew it would have taken his head off if he'd been a fraction slower.

  He attacked, driving the rapier toward his opponent's ribs while Mik was still coming out of the kick, but the other recovered and spun away with a taunting laugh. "Wake up, boy, before I salt that sword and feed it to you."

  "I'm waiting, old man," Radm said, faking a smile; luck had been all that had saved him just now. And you couldn't count on luck in a fight with Mik. It would eventually abandon you, and then he'd take you apart.

  A flurry of movement as Mik lunged, coming in hard with the poinard. Radm caught it on his rapier's blade, felt it scrape down the length of steel as Mik kept coming, intent and lethal. Going on training and instinct, Radm thrust out his knife--and Mik's rapier was there, just where it should be, coming up under his guard in a drive toward his heart. With a twist of his knife wrist, Radm deflected it the few crucial centimeters that saved his life...

  Only to feel a jarring impact in his side. There was no pain yet, but he knew he'd been hit. Radm disengaged his weapons from Mik's and scrambled back.

  How bad, Hari? he thought to the internal computer that wound through his brain as a microfilament biocrystal network, as much life form as machine. An incredibly powerful artificial intelligence, Hari and her sensors gave him almost total control of his body and its chemistry.

  Deep cut, eight centimeters long, between the third and fourth ribs on the left side, Hari replied, her voice ghostly and feminine in his mind. You can continue to fight for 15 minutes without significant blood loss.

  "Do you want to beg quarter?" Mik asked, his polite tone contrasting with the bloodthirst shining in his eyes.

  "Not likely," Radm growled, furious with himself for failing to take the parry far enough to keep from being hit. Drawing first blood always gave a fighter a measure of psychological advantage. He had to draw some of his own, or Mik would run with the edge he'd gained, straight to a win. And Radm had lost entirely too much blood as it was.

  Drawing a deep breath that made his injured ribs howl, Radm attacked, driving hard in a flurry of strikes that kept Mik too busy parrying to make any counters of his own. He kept going until he was almost chest to chest with the older cycop, until Mik's arms were straining to hold off his simultaneous attacks with the two blades. His wound throbbing a kettledrum beat of agony, Radm rammed a knee into Mik's hard muscled belly.

  Leaping back as his opponent hissed in pain, Radm braced himself to fleche--a lunging run, quick and deadly and hard to stop. And risky, if Mik should recover and come up under Radm's guard, he could easily impale himself.

  Radm bellowed a battle cry, and Mik looked up into his lunge. Sighting down the length of his sword, Radm saw gray eyes widen slightly as he charged.

  He waited for Mik to retreat in the blurring instant of his rush. Then, as he came within sword's reach, for Mik's parry, the quick scoop of steel that would push his blade out of line and save M ik from what would otherwise be a death thrust.

  And it didn't come.

  His point was scant millimeters from Mik's face when Radm jerked his wrist to deflect it. The blade sliced past the cycop's ear.

  Off balance from the attempt to stop his own lunge, Radm stumbled. Mik caught him, and for an instant they were face to face. There was a long gash along the side of the cycop's face and across the tip of his ear, exactly on level with his left eye. Despite regeneration technology that could heal almost any wound, a blade driven into the brain would kill instantly. My God, if I hadn't managed to pull my stroke...

  "Why the hell didn't you parry?" Radm demanded, pulling away. The bout forgotten, he stared at the bright red stream that snaked through Mik's graying hair. The two of them had been practicing with unblunted weapons since Radm was fourteen. This was the first time in all those years that Mik had ever missed parrying an attack so obvious --or so deadly. "You had to see it coming a mile away."

  Mik met his eyes and shrugged, pulling back. "Sorry. It was an impulse." He turned and walked toward the chill plastisteel of the dome wall.

  Radm stared at his broad back, stunned. "An impulse?" In three strides he was on the older man, spinning him around and slamming him back against the wall. "Impulse, my ass! You just came a millimeter's breadth from suicide!"

  For an instant, Radm thought he saw shame on Mik's face. Then it was gone as he set his jaw. "I think I need a drink."

  "Yeah, well, that's not exactly unusual, is it?"

  Radm stumbled back from the hard shove he got for his gall. Gulping breaths of exertion and rage, he watched as Mik walked past to pick up the blades he'd dropped, then start toward the lift. Radm went after him, stooping to grab his own weapons. The room spun, and he put a hand to his ribs.

  You need a medtech, Radm, Hari said in his mind.

  Later, Hari. Aloud he said, pulling himself erect, "W e're not through, Mik."

  "Yes, we are," Mik said, without breaking stride.

  Wounded or not, Radm managed to slip through the lift doors just before they closed. Mik leaned against the wall, arms folded, the sharp lines of his face looking as if they'd been hewn in stone.

  "You're crazy if you think I'm letting this go," Radm said, hand still cla
mped against his bleeding ribs.

  Mik stared at him coolly. "You don't have much choice." He banged a fist against the lift's controls, and it began to sink through the station's core. "You need to get that tended," he added in a more normal tone, nodding at Radm's wounded side.

  "Quit trying to change the subject."

  Mik shrugged, then punched the floor number for the infirmary. Radm took a deep breath, despite what it did to his ribs, and started his attack. "Around the station, they're saying you have a death wish. They're saying at the rate you're going, you won't live out the year."

  Mik gazed at him steadily.

  "This is about Brit and Celeste, isn't it?"

  Mik's eyes flickered, confirming his guess. But before Radm could pursue the issue, the lift lurched to a stop. Increasingly dizzy from blood loss, he almost fell.

  Mik caught him, supported him with a hand clamped around his forearm. "If you were this bad off, you should have stopped the bout."

  Radm made himself grin. "What, and lose? You've got to be kidding." He allowed himself to lean on the older cycop, partially as a way of keeping him from escaping while he decided what to do.

  Mik helped him out of the lift, bellowing for a medtech. Radm experienced a sudden flashback: he'd been eight, hurt in an Academy brawl with a cadet twice his size. Mik had carried him into the infirmary bellowing just like that...

  Celeste, who'd been following at Mik's heels, had laid a cool hand on Radm's bloody forehead. "Calm down, child," she'd said to his tears, "It isn't fatal. Though you'd never know it from the way Mik's taking on..."

  Celeste had always been the cool one of his three foster parents, the one you went to when you did something stupid. Though you didn't want to make her mad. Mik bellowed more, and Brit could put you on a guilt trip, but Celeste was downright deadly...

  He felt a sudden spurt of grief. She'd been murdered the year before during a case, she and Brit both. It was no wonder Mik was deliberately missing parries--both his partners killed by someone he'd never been able to catch. He hadn't even been able to recover Celeste's body, though he'd found Brit's a couple of days after the disapearance. The top of her head had been blown off.

  Radm had never known Mik's guilt ran deep enough for suicide.

  Radm heard an astringent curse just as the medtech caught his arm and started steering him toward one of the built-in regenerator beds. Through his buzzing ears, he was dimly aware she was cursing both of them for fighting without a medtech present. Mik, half-carrying him, was simultaneously attempting to defend their joint common sense to the enraged tech, who obviously thought all cycops were crazy to begin with. The discussion, which got pretty lively, continued until Radm was ensconced under the bed's humming field and the medtech disappeared again, still cursing.

  As soon as his dizziness lifted, he returned to the attack. "Just think what she'd say if she knew about your little stunt with that parry."

  "Are we back to that?"

  "You don't really expect me to drop it, do you?"

  "Look, I told you it wasn't something I planned. It just got away from me, that's all. I saw the attack coming and I...just didn't stop it."

  Radm set his jaw. "Y'know, you don't exactly have the monopoly on grief."

  "It's not the same."

  "They were our fosters, M ik. Val and Tanaka and I...The three of you raised us."

  "I know that, but you weren't part of the team," Mik said coldly. "You weren't responsible for keeping them alive. And you didn't get them killed."

  "Neither did you. You were running an interrogation at the time, right? You weren't even there." "No. I wasn't."

  Radm winced and decided to let the moment cool.

  The wound, tingling and itching, healed rapidly under the regenerator's field as he brooded over the question of what to say next. Finally the medtech reappeared to discharge him, cursed both of them again, and told them to "By God, call me next time."

  Radm rolled off the bed and followed Mik back to the lift, his step thankfully painless. "You're walking like you're in a hurry to loose me," he observed mildly, ducking through the lift doors just before they closed. "You're building up to a lecture, and I don't want to hear it."

  "You're not as perceptive as you think you are. Actually, I'm building up to begging some of that quality hootch you keep stashed in your quarters."

  Mik hit the lift controls and turned to eye him. "Radm, you've really got to work on your lying. You get this innocent expression that just doesn't go with your face. I hope you don't do that when you're undercover, or someone's going to shoot you."

  Radm felt a flush heat his skin. "Actually, I'm really much better at that. There's something about you that regresses me into a twelver-year-old."

  Mik snorted. "T o hear Val tell it, that's not all that unusual."

  Radm winced. "Touche."

  Mik sighed. "I suppose if we don't have this out, I'll find Val at my door next." The lift stopped, and he grimaced. "All right, damnit, come on."

  Radm ducked out the lift at his heels, intent on cornering him before he could change his mind.

  Mik's suite looked basically the same as Radm's; stark, linear furniture, a bed, a desk, a low couch--and an arsenal on the walls. Weapons from every epoch decorated the room: knives, rapiers, broadswords, a battle axe, a Colt revolver, a blazer rifle. Mik had used all of them at one time or another, either in duels or on missions.

  One ornate great sword caught Radm's attention. More than five feet long, it hung in a place of honor over the couch, arranged artistically next to a riot shield.

  Well, now, Radm thought, eyeing it. This has possibilities... Walking over, he took the sword down from the braces that held it on the wall. Behind him, he could hear glasses rattle as Mik filled them from his hoard of liquor.

  "I guess I can't really blame you for missing that parry, under the circumstances," Radm said in what Val called his "obnoxious voice." "Growing old must be a bitch."

  Mik, walking over to hand him the glass, quirked an eyebrow skeptically. "Yeah. Right."

  Radm cursed under his breath. Mik knew him entirely too well to fall for a line like that. Time for hard ball.

  Trying to keep his tone light despite the tension settling over his shoulders, Radm continued, "Well, you've got to admit the edge has gotten a little blunt, Mik. Take this Brit and Celeste thing, for instance. It's been a year, you should have solved that case by now. I would have."

  "Somehow I doubt you'd find it that easy," Mik said.

  Radm stared at him, arranging his face into a snarl. "You know, I don't think I like your tone." Taking a half step forward, he lifting the great sword.

  Blinking at his sudden temper, Mik opened his mouth as though to make an explanation. Then he stopped. And laughed.

  "The bit with the sword was a nice touch, Radm, but I'm not that easy to sucker," Mik said, still grinning. "My sensors tell me you're acting. Unless I miss my guess, you've got some quixotic idea of goading me into a fight."

  "You think so, huh?" Radm growled, trying to bluff it through.

  Mik gave him an indulgent grin. "Tanaka already gave me a variation on the same routine, Radm. 'Confront your anger, Mik...'"

  "Did it work?"

  "No."

  "What the hell." Radm shrugged, feeling a bit silly--and beneath that, a trace of embarrassed anger. Anger...

  He wants anger? Radm thought suddenly, Let's give him some anger he can believe in, Hari... Radm, are you sure..? The consequences...

  Do it.

  And rage fell on him like a wall.

  Hot and choking, it washed over his mind in a tide of red he could almost see, consuming every thought, emotion and desire. Leaving room for nothing but the rage.

  Killing rage.

  Radm's face twisted, lips drawing back in a snarl, eyes narrowing to green slits. With a wordless roar, he swung the sword he still held in a brutal cleaving arc.

  Straight at Mik's head.

  Mik yelped a
nd leaped back, narrowly avoiding the murderous stroke. "Damnit, Radm, what the he..."

  Radm heaved the sword up and around, then slashed downward with vicious power. Mik launched himself in a long flat dive that barely carried him out of the way. The great sword slammed into the coffee table he'd been standing beside, chopping it in two with a crash.

  Desperately, Mik snapped a glance around the room, looking for something he could use to control Radm without killing him..and spotted the riot shield that hung on the wall. Jumping onto the couch, he clawed it down into his grasp.

  Radm came after him, snarling, intent on cutting him in two. Mik whirled away from the wall and leaped right at him. The impact sent both of them smashing into the opposite bulkhead. Before Radm could recover, Mik managed to pin him against the wall, trapping the lethal great sword between Radm's chest and his own shield.

  Spewing curses, Radm fought to free the sword, but Mik set his booted feet and put a shoulder into the shield. Hands locked desperately over the shield grip, Mik was grimly thankful Radm was too blind with rage to apply any of the even hundred moves that could free him. Time for a little judicious overdrive, Mik thought.

  An instant later, the force Mik was exerting increased to superhuman levels, pinning Radm effortlessly despite his surging insane strength.

  He's gone to overdrive, Radm thought, and then realized he could think.

  Dropping out of berserker mode, said Hari.

  Suddenly there was something in his world besides rage; A taste of hot copper blood in his mouth from his bitten tongue, the pain of ribs protesting the grinding pressure of Mik's riot shield. The sound of Mik's steady cursing.

  "Mind easing up, Mik?" Radm gasped. "I need those ribs."

  There was a brief silence. Then Mik said, with icy control, "I ought to break your ribs. I ought to beat your hollow head in. What the hell was that about? You damn near killed me." He pulled away to glare. Radm met his hot gray stare evenly. "I don't see why you're so pissed. You're the one with the death

  wish."

  Mik straightened convulsively.

  "Yeah, I thought a near-murder would give you a new perspective on suicide," Radm said, and grinned cheekily.