by Alex Archer
A flap at the tent's rear flew open. Eight men charged into the room. They were tall men, wide men. They were made even wider by the bulky olive-and-earth-tone-painted suits of bullet-resistant polycarbonate armor they wore. They carried curved polycarbonate shields on their arms, and held yard-long shock batons in gauntleted hands.
"Who are they?" Amaral demanded, gaping in amazement.
"My bodyguards."
Fat jiggling above his too-tight web belt, the colonel tried to force his way into the protective circle the armored men formed around Publico. They thrust him rudely back.
"Sorry, Colonel," Publico said. "They're for me, not thee."
Amaral's dark eyes bulged. Publico laughed, a huge roaring laugh that rattled the tent walls. The drugs always had that effect on him – filled him with the sense of invincibility.
And why not, he thought, when my enemies are bringing everything I desire right to me?
A ripping sound from the weatherproofed fabric behind Amaral made him turn. His right hand clawed at his holster flap.
Something silvery flashed in out of the humid night. There came another sound like tearing cloth. He felt a burning sensation at his throat.
Amaral spun back to face Publico, visible past the armored shoulders of his guards. Then he dropped to his knees and pitched onto his belly, as blood drained from his gaping wound.
A young man, at least six-four and built like a greyhound, stepped into the tent. His midnight-blue body-suit fit his muscle-rippling torso like skin. Chestnut dreadlocks hung about his shoulders. He held a Japanese-style short sword naked in his hand.
He stepped over the colonel's shapeless lump of body. Ignoring the huge armored guards, his eyes fixed like golden spotlights on Publico's blue ones.
"Welcome, my friend," Publico called to him as a slender blue-eyed blond woman stepped in quickly to the young man's left.
Moran held up a huge hand and beckoned. "Come on and die."
****
Annja sliced a six-foot vertical cut in the tent and stepped through.
The pavilion's main room was a good ten yards long and six or seven wide. Despite its size it was crowded.
In the center of a circle of enormous men in bizarre plastic armor carapaces painted in camouflage patterns, Patrizinho was slashing at Sir Iain Moran with his sword. The big Irishman was easily dodging the serpent-fast sword cuts and laughing uproariously, as if he were having the time of his life.
Annja's eyes narrowed. No normal human could have evaded Patrizinho's attacks so fearlessly. Sir Iain was into his chemicals again.
On the far side of the wall of goons Annja glimpsed blond hair. She heard a hailstorm sound. Lys was shooting her noiseless electromagnetic rifle, trying either to chop a path clear or drop Sir Iain, their most vital target. But the big men just held up their Roman-style shields. The projectiles rattled off them as harmlessly as Ping-Pong balls.
Three of the thick men charged Lys. She let go her rifle and whipped out her sword. She uttered a falcon scream of challenge.
Publico darted in to rock Patrizinho's head back with a fast straight right. The Promessan staggered back. Blood streamed from his nose.
Annja charged. Shield to shield, two of the bulkily armored men advanced to meet her. She swung the sword overhand at the one on her right, figuring to break or even sever the man's shield arm.
The blade bit right through the upper rim of the shield, cut deep. But after a bit more than a foot the blade stopped.
Grinning behind the faceplate of his helmet, the man on her left jabbed his stick toward Annja's ribs. He had a big brutal face. She thought to recognize either Goran or Mladko.
She pulled on the hilt of her sword to yank it free of the shield. It stuck fast. Belatedly she realized why the cut had stopped – it wasn't that the tough polymer material of the shield defeated the sword's edge. It was because the plastic sides of the cut had gripped the flat of her blade tightly as a vise.
She released the sword and danced to her right. Goran, as she chose to think of him, didn't have a lot of range, trying to reach around the big shield. He could not stretch far enough to hit her.
The man at his side yelled in surprise as the sword simply vanished.
Annja smelled ozone. She realized the batons were tipped with electric leads. If Goran's had struck her she would have received an incapacitating shock along with any other damage the blow might do.
She scampered back to reassess the situation. Patrizinho was battling with Publico. The rock star stood with his head tipped forward, his lightly silvered dark blond hair framing his face. Two other bodyguards were stomping something on the floor. To her sick horror Annja realized she could no longer see Lys.
The two men closest to Annja, having absorbed the fact that one way or another the woman in front of them was now unarmed, glanced toward each other and charged as one. Annja was fairly certain the second was Mladko.
She lunged toward Goran on her left. Turning sideways, she slammed into his shield. Taken by surprise, he rocked back onto his heels. Then he swung the shield outward with all his strength, hoping to fling her to her back, where she'd be helpless against a baton thrust.
But Annja had grabbed his shield's upper rim with both hands and let all her weight hang from its inch-thick polycarbonate. Adding her weight to the momentum Goran had imparted caused the shield to swing open to his left like a gate.
Before an almost equally surprised Mladko could strike at her Annja had swung past the business end of his baton. She found herself right between the hulks.
With her right foot she kicked hard at the back of Goran's left knee. It wasn't a blow that could break the joint. But it did buckle it.
Already overbalanced Goran dropped to that knee. Annja got her feet beneath her, stood. She glanced quickly over her right shoulder to make sure none of the other bodyguards was trying to club or zap her from behind.
But they had clearly been ordered to stay surrounding Publico at all costs, in case more would-be assassins turned up. Patrizinho and Publico continued their death dance, oblivious to the world. For the moment she was clear. And a moment was all Annja Creed needed.
She let her weight fall back again, locking out Goran's shield elbow. Mladko had turned toward Annja. He thrust his baton at her. Her latest move caused him to ram the tip of his baton against the inside of his partner's shield instead.
Goran's armor could not prevent Annja's using legs and hips to torque the shield and pop his elbow joint with a nasty crack. He bellowed in agony and pitched forward onto his face.
Mladko pulled his shield between himself and Annja. She grabbed its top as she had his partner's. He was ready for that. He braced and stood like a rock.
She was ready for that, too. Jumping and pushing hard with her arms, she scaled the shield as if it were a solid wall. So strong was the polycarbonate that the cut she had made didn't open a millimeter. As she came over the top Annja bounced a shin kick off the side of Mladko's head. His helmet took the force of the blow – most of it. But it gave her the split second she needed to scramble astride his shoulders like a monkey behind his head.
Roaring with rage, he teetered in a circle. He tried to reach her. The armor bound his joints, rendering him clumsy. He slammed himself in the faceplate with the upper rim of his shield, stunning himself enough for Annja to catch hold of his baton right behind its live tip, use the leverage advantage to twist it from his hand and fling it away.
He had turned 180 degrees. Still riding Mladko's shoulders, Annja saw Publico lunge toward Patrizinho. Instantly Patrizinho's blade flashed in a backhand slash for his enemy's eyes.
Patrizinho was fast and skilled. But in the grip of his drugs Publico was faster. He reversed motion, bending backward like a limbo artist. The short sword's razor edge clipped a lock of hair from his head before swishing harmlessly past.
The outward cut left Patrizinho totally open. Publico snapped forward and seized his foe. His right arm went beneath t
he Promessan's left. His left hand caught the biceps of Patrizinho's outflung sword arm.
Patrizinho tried to head-butt him. Publico buried his face in the juncture of Patrizinho's right arm and neck, jamming the attack. With his right arm clamped up at an angle between his opponent's shoulder blades for leverage, Publico pushed back on the trapped arm with all his augmented strength.
Patrizinho groaned as his shoulder joint was forced from its socket.
His sword fell to the floor of the tent. Everything froze. Mladko stopped ineffectually trying to bat at Annja, momentarily more fascinated by his boss's fight than his own seemingly comical predicament. Sensing the climax had arrived, the other guards had turned to watch their master's combat.
It all burned itself into Annja's brain – the guards, faces obscured by visors. The sad crumple of Lys in a pool of blood at the tent's far end, pathetic as a kitten hit by a car. Beside her an armored bodyguard lay on his back, unmoving arms outflung. The woman had not died without exacting a blood price of her own.
And then Annja's vision contracted to a tunnel around Patrizinho's beautiful face, contorted with agony and effort as he still strove to break free.
Reaching up behind Patrizinho's head, Publico grabbed a handful of his dreadlocks. Then with all his strength he yanked down. Although the muscles stood out like columns on Patrizinho's powerful neck, his head was whipped back.
Annja heard his neck break.
Chapter 35
Publico let Patrizinho go. The beautiful young man fell back dead.
"No!" Annja screamed.
Fury rose in a flood through her body, her mind. She summoned the sword. Reversing it, she drove it point downward toward where Mladko's thick neck joined the swell of his trapezius muscle.
Through the neck hole of his armor the blade plunged. Mladko gurgled, then he dropped first to his knees, then onto his face.
Springing free, Annja tore loose her sword. As nimbly as they could, the guards to left and right sprang to form a new wall between her and Publico.
Goran had struggled to a sitting position. He some-how managed to disengage his shield from his ruined left arm. He reached with his good hand for the gun holstered on his right hip.
Reversing the sword again, Annja slashed at his head left-handed. The helmet was not thick enough to trap the blade as Goran's shield had. Nor was it strong enough to resist being neatly split by the powerful weapon.
He went down for good.
Three of Publico's remaining armored guards stood between Annja and the billionaire, who stood astride Patrizinho's corpse grinning at her. Two others hung behind him, still guarding against reinforcements. Utterly absorbed in events inside the tent, Annja wasn't even aware if the sabotage charges the other team were supposed to set had detonated yet.
She wouldn't have counted on reinforcements – had she been capable of thought.
Screaming, she feinted right, then lunged left. The men were big and strong and obviously practiced in their armor. But it still rendered them clumsy – and disrupted their sense of balance.
The left-most man had fallen for Annja's feint, stepped forward with his left foot and committed his weight to it. Before he could shift his balance back, Annja had run past his right side. His unshielded side.
As she went by she slashed backhanded at the small of the guard's back. He shrieked as the end of the blade bit through the soft flesh between hips and ribs.
One of the guards standing behind Publico charged past his master, drawing his baton for an overhand strike. Annja tipped the blade of her broadsword back over her own right shoulder and thrust the pommel straight for the angry gray eyes behind the visor.
Reflexively the guard raised the shield to protect his face. Then just as automatically he lowered it to clear his counterstroke.
But Annja hadn't swung her sword – merely feinted with the hilt. Taking the sword in both hands she swung it around, up, down.
It came down in the center of his helmet just as the rim of the thick shield dropped to expose it.
There was a hideous squeaking crunch. The guard dropped.
Another guard charged from her right. She ducked under a horizontal swing of his baton and slashed him across his right shin. He howled and fell with a tremendous racket.
"That's enough." Sir Iain Moran did not shout. But his voice filled the tent like the report of a grenade going off. He hadn't been a professional performer for a quarter of a century without learning to project.
His two remaining men stopped in place. Even the man whose tibia Annja had just slashed whimpered more quietly, rolling to his side and coiling into a knot of agony.
"I'll handle this from here," Publico said in a softer voice. "You want a piece of me, don't you, Annja?"
He had shed his jacket. His fight with Patrizinho had torn his shirt open, revealing his powerful torso. In his right hand he held one of the long black shock batons. In his left he held Patrizinho's sword.
"What good do you think those will do you?" Annja said. "Whatever happens, even if you try to surrender now, I will kill you. I swear it!"
"Talk is cheap, dear girl," Publico said. "Cheaper even than your friends' lives. Show me what you've got."
If he'd meant to taunt her into a blind-angry attack he failed. She couldn't be any more focused. She took up an en garde position like a modern fencer, left hand on hip, sword thrust toward his face.
The baton clacked against the flat of her blade. She was already withdrawing the sword, coiling her legs for her real attack, a slash to take the legs right out from under him. Instead he spun toward her. Whirlwind fast he came out of it slashing with the blade in his left hand at the unprotected left side of her head.
She had no graceful defense for the unexpected move. She only escaped by flinging herself in a dive to her right. She was able to get her shoulder down, rolled and snapped up to her feet with her back to the tent wall.
Publico stood with his stolen short sword held out before him and his baton tipped negligently back over his right shoulder. "You see, Annja dear, at the end of the day you're just an ordinary girl who's happened to luck into possession of a fascinating sword," he said. "An exceptionally resourceful girl, not to mention athletic and alarmingly skilled at combat. But still just a girl."
Annja had worked her way away from the wall to give herself some room to fight. Obedient to their master's command the two armored men still on their feet had pulled back to the rear of the tent to clear the floor. They had dragged the injured man with them.
Publico grinned a wild grin and launched a whirlwind two-weapon assault. He was fast. He might have defeated her with sheer strength. But for all his speed and power Publico had one very serious problem – his drug did nothing for his weapons. All she had to do was get an edge on one and she'd chop it off like a skinny dry twig. So he was forced to pull his blows unless he was certain they'd connect with either Annja or the flat of her blade.
Like a skilled boxer, she managed to keep moving in a circle rather than backing straight away from him. She was fit, and knew how to use her resources in combat. But if all she did was defend and give ground he would sooner or later get lucky or just smash down her defenses. And she knew with terrible certainty that one solid hit would incapacitate her.
But he made an amateur's mistake. He tended to fall into predictable patterns. And his timing was regular as clockwork.
Annja's blade flicked out. His reflexes saved him. He danced back with a red line across his left cheek that slowly blurred downward as it bled.
He laughed, but it rang hollow. "You're good," he said, "I'll give you that." He couldn't help his words turning to a snarl at the end. He had obviously not expected to get stung.
Annja wasn't cocky about drawing first blood. She had aimed for his forehead. She'd intended either to split his skull and end it, or more likely, to open a cut that would fill his eyes with blood and blind him. As it was, she knew she was lucky to have tagged him at all.
/> Nonetheless when he roared back to the attack his strikes were that much clumsier. They came faster, though. The sword sliced through Annja's tough suit and her skin just below the short ribs on her left. The pain was bright as a camera flash. But she didn't let it distract her. Adrenaline quickly dulled its edge. And Publico's days as a street-fighting man lay decades in the past. She'd been hurt in battle a lot more recently than he had.
His minor success led him to redouble his attacks. That came at the expense of such technique as he had. In a moment she translated the rebound energy from blocking a transverse stroke of the baton into a quick cut down and left that caught the flat of his sword with her edge.
With a high, pure note her sword cut through the other blade two inches from the round handguard.
"Ho-ho!" Publico shouted, dancing back just in time to avoid being eviscerated by a whistling horizontal stroke of Annja's sword. "Well done!"
He tossed away the useless stub. Then he took up his own exaggerated fencer's pose, right side on to Annja. The contacts at the tip of the shock baton were aimed straight at her right eye. His left hand was held up behind him.
She thrust toward his eyes. The baton parried with a clack. She thrust again, stopped short in a feint, thrust for true. With the prodigious strength of his wrist he whipped the baton in a tight circle around her blade, outside to in. Then he knocked the hard sword to Annja's right, throwing wide her arm and leaving her open.
Laughing he swung the baton high and charged to club her down.
And again lack of skill at this kind of fighting played him false. Vulnerable as she was, a strike could have taken her down. But Publico raised the baton high overhead as if winding up to split a log.
She just got the sword up, hilt gripped in both hands. She had to catch the blow on the flat. She feared that with his speed he could jam the stub of his baton into her belly if she chopped it off.
It was like parrying a falling car. The blow's incredible power drove her down. She had to use her back leg, her left, as a shock absorber, bending it until the knee touched the floor.