A tiny elbow, whipping in a blistering arc, took him right under the left ear and sent him careening into the recycler. His legs, still tangled in his coverall, were of no service whatsoever and he bounced off the metal housing with a clang that left a dent in the dull green metal. Unable to control the rebound because he remained trapped in his clothes, the soldier tripped and toppled to the concrete. Strong arms pressed gamely against the ground, trying to force his body upright while his vision swam and his ears sang with the roar of harsh static. Through the tumult came that country drawl, saccharine and sarcastic.
“Still awake? I guess somebody’s got a few body-mods going on.”
Tiny hands pulled him upright, and he batted at them absently. Though small, the hands gripped with a furious strength. His blows against her forearms had no effect, and a creeping dread invaded his clearing thoughts. To his credit, the elite UEDF fighting man tried his best to escape. Handicapped as he was by a mild concussion and still entangled in his pants, the man had no chance at all against the heavily augmented assassin he faced. Another blow to his guts doubled him in half and sent a retching cough from his lungs, then the familiar pressure of a forearm across his throat told him he was about to be choked unconscious. He threw himself forward and clawed desperately at the arm around his neck. Somehow, she had spun behind him and as he fell her grip tightened. Like a monkey she rode his back to the concrete, her legs wrapped around his hips from behind. The grip grew tighter, and his vision began to fade. His last thoughts before drifting off were wry. If this bitch doesn’t kill me, I am so screwed. Then everything went black.
The limp form of what had been an elite UEDF special forces operator now drooled and snored softly into a lozenge-shaped grease stain etched into the sidewalk of a Dockside alley. With a soft chuckle, his tormentor rose and dusted her clothes off with absent strokes from delicate hands. A narrow finger tapped the stud of her earpiece and she called in the action to Lucia while tying the man’s arms and legs together.
“First one’s down, Boss. Nothing permanently damaged but his pride and his career prospects. On to the next one. Mindy out.”
To avoid detection, she decided to exit the alley by scaling the walls to the roof of an adjacent building. Limbs liberally reinforced with MyoFiber intramuscular weave found solid grip in any crevice wide enough to accept a finger or toe. The craggy edifices of Dockside’s aging buildings were replete with such, and the tiny blond shot up the facade like a squirrel. Moving to the roof, she crouched low and scrambled to the edge to view the street below. The other follower was where she had stopped to watch the diner. She wore skin-tight black pants that shined with a mirror’s sheen and a brightly colored top that rivaled any of Mindy’s tawdriest. The woman swayed nonchalantly at a corner, looking precisely like any other streetwalker in any other dirty burgh the world over. Mindy scowled. A few months ago, a working girl on this track would have been safe as houses. But with the Madame dead, many of Dockside’s prime tracks were getting contested nightly. As much as anything, the brightness of the late-morning hour kept protective competitors at bay. This was just as well, because if this operator was anything like her friend in the alley a cranky whore or a territorial pimp who took a chance with this new girl was likely to end up broken in half.
Yet, this thought gave Mindy an idea. She slipped down to the street on the far side of her vantage point and quickly reassembled her appearance. She yanked her shirt tails from her pants and tied them tightly around her waist. She unfastened the front and pulled it low to expose a huge amount of cleavage. A few quick strokes of her pocket knife and her pants became a pair of tight blue shorts that left very little to the imagination. Her boots would have to remain, and Mindy hoped that anyone looking would consider their incongruously military nature a style choice and not something suspicious.
Mindy had dropped onto that street the most successful assassin on the Hunter’s Lodge Leaderboards. Yet she came around the corner an angry hooker on the warpath, a stalking nightmare of back-alley aggression. She played the role perfectly, the very vision of a desperate woman of the night about to defend her track from a newcomer. She strode with a brassy exaggerated swing to her hips and twisted her face into a sneer simultaneously angry and desperate. The other woman noticed the angry blond stalking her way when Mindy was still about thirty feet out. When their eyes met, Mindy opened fire with a shrill screech of expletives so explicit and vulgar that her target paused from whatever her retort was going to be to contemplate all the anatomical impossibilities the little hooker had just accused her of. It was a flawless Dockside screed, rife with colorful accusations that ranged from the woman’s parentage and speculated wildly as to what sort of things she liked to insert into orifices both real and imaginary. It ended with the threat of a fate so dire and (once again) anatomically improbable that the six-year veteran of the UEDF Expeditionary Force was taken completely aback.
This hesitation allowed Mindy to get within striking range. Without pausing in her diatribe, the diminutive blond killer sent an overhand right for the woman’s jaw at a speed few people could ever hope to match. Mindy elected to take no chances with what she felt was almost certainly a heavily augmented foe. Hardwired nerves drove her steel-cable muscles and rock-hard bones with lethal intent. The woman in black nearly dodged it anyway, a tribute to her own skills and augmentations that set Mindy’s jaw in a frustrated snarl. The blow clipped her opponent’s chin, spinning her head to the side and opening a long cut along the jawline. When this failed to put the target down, both fighters dropped their pretenses of being prostitutes and went at each other in earnest. What followed was a dance of skilled fighters and the subsequent violence bore no resemblance to the brawling of street thugs. The fight quickly drew the attention of passers-by. Two prostitutes battling over a choice track was not so interesting an event in Dockside. Two well-trained augmented women dressed in wildly inappropriate attire battling across the sidewalk was altogether more novel.
The soldier’s hand darted for her waistline and Mindy correctly surmised that there would be a weapon of some kind there. Whether it was a gun or a knife or some other implement of war, Mindy did not care. Her booted right foot thrust forward to smash into the questing hand before it could withdraw the item. Mindy kicked hard, hoping to break the arm and remove the weapon from the game entirely, but the dull ringing feedback from her boot told the tale of a woman who had as much OsteoPlast bone reinforcement as she did. A small bead pistol fell from the struck limb and clattered to the concrete. The woman lunged for it and Mindy’s toe sent it skittering across the gray expanse of concrete and far from her grasp.
The growling soldier switched tactics and lunged for Mindy, trying to tackle the smaller woman. Mindy met the charge head on and wrapped her opponent’s arms with a double-overhook grip. Digging her toes into the sidewalk, she leaned in and forced her opponent downward, blunting her momentum and preventing an ignominious crash to the deck. As soon as she felt the danger of getting thrown was over, Mindy hauled the woman upright and began firing knees into the soldier’s gut. She used a sharp downward yank with her arms each time, pulling the woman’s torso down and into each rising knee. There would be no reinforced ribs over the abdomen, and each thundering impact blasted supernovas of pain to the comparatively un-reinforced area of her foe’s guts. Nevertheless, the woman in black was strong and tough. She pulled gamely against Mindy’s grip to create the space she needed to avoid the punishing shots to her liver and stomach. Yet every piercing strike sapped more strength and slowed her down. Mindy’s grip may as well have been coils of steel cable over her arms, and each powerful hit set off a nuclear explosion of pain within her body. The seventh knee brought the soldier to her knees with a wheezing sob and only then did Mindy release her. As welcome as a respite from the merciless pummeling felt, this did not represent an improvement in the tactical landscape. Mindy just wanted room to lean back and send a Thai round kick into her temple. The soldier tried to raise he
r arms and block, but her body was no longer taking requests. A booted shin connected with her head and sent the woman in black to the street for a long nap and a severe concussion.
Lucia’s code chimed in Mindy’s ear as the little blond was securing her victim. Mindy answered it with chastised acknowledgments. “I know I know. Took too long. Too public a setting. You figure I’ve spooked the third one?”
“Roland saw him bolt right when it became obvious you weren’t really a hooker. It looked like he was coming over to help at first.”
“Shit,” Mindy spat. “Which way did he go? I’ll run him down.”
“Don’t bother. Roland went after him while you were beating that poor lady half to death on the sidewalk. Christ, Mindy, it looked like you were killing her!”
Finished cuffing the downed woman, Mindy straightened and looked over to the diner where Lucia was exiting. She killed the comm signal when Lucia came close enough to talk without it. “They’re all boosted real damn good, Boss. Can’t hit them lightly if you want them to go down.”
“That’s what Roland said. I wanted to chase the last one down, but Roland worried that without my gauntlets I’d have a hard time hurting him.”
“He ain’t wrong, Boss.”
“You don’t think I can take one of these?” Lucia jabbed the unconscious woman with the toe of her shoe.
“You are hell on wheels in a scrap, Boss. But why take the chance when you’ve got old Ironsides on the bench? Fieldwork is not a game, y’know what I mean?”
Lucia was perennially surprised at how pragmatic Mindy could be in the field. Her irrepressible ditziness was an act that only really got dropped when things came to grips. At which point the vapid facade would be abandoned entirely and one might catch a glimpse of the furious killer who lived just beneath the surface of her alluring exterior. Lucia acknowledged Mindy’s valid point with professional grace. “Oh yes. I get that. I’m not in any rush to try any of these guys on for size.” She gave Mindy a sly smile. “Not empty-handed, at least.”
The little killer smiled back. “I hear ya. For what it’s worth, I think you’d starch ‘em either way. Hell, the first guy was plain damn easy. Caught him with his pants around his ankles. Literally.” Mindy ignored Lucia’s elevated eyebrow and pointed to the supine woman. “This chick must have seen the punch coming, though. Just grazed her a bit with that one.” She shrugged. “After that it was kill or be killed, I guess. She is working with a lot of augmentations. It felt like punching a boulder.”
“You still got her.”
“Damn right I did. I’m the best.”
A sound like a distant car crash rolled softly over the pair at that moment. The gathered crowd murmured and rippled, anticipating some new action or encroaching danger. The sound was followed by a series of heavy thuds as if somewhere several blocks away a large cyborg was slamming an augmented soldier into something solid over and over again.
Lucia rubbed her face, suddenly looking tired. “Well. Sounds like Roland found his guy. Think he wants help?”
“Don’t ruin his fun, Boss. You know how he gets.”
Lucia did know. “Let’s pack her and her partner up and then go wait at the office for Roland to finish. If he’s in a mood, this could take a while.” A thin scream of pain wafted in on the breeze, as if somewhere an augmented soldier had just had a limb fractured in several places. She gave Mindy a knowing look. “Sounds like he’s in a mood, too.”
Mindy reached down and hauled the now-stirring soldier to her feet. “Oh come on, Boss. You know damn well Roland’s always in a mood.”
CHAPTER TEN
When Roland finally stomped through the office door, he was dragging the writhing and groaning body of the third UEDF surveillance team member. Lucia, being no expert in such matters, was still confident one could safely say Roland had been far less judicious in his use of force than even Mindy had been. Less inclined to politeness, Mindy gave voice to Lucia’s suspicions.
“Holy crap, Ironsides. I thought you wanted them alive?”
“He’s not dead,” was Roland’s brusque reply.
“But I bet he wants to be!” Mindy said with a disgusted head shake.
“My heart bleeds.”
“Not as much as his face,” Lucia interrupted. “Please move him away from the carpet.”
“Right. Sorry” Roland tossed the inert body over to the restroom so the man could leak his fluids without damaging the carpet. The lump of broken flesh gasped and let a pained groan past his bleeding lips as the cold tile rose up to meet his plummeting body with a soft thwack.
Mindy and Lucia winced at the unnerving sound. The injured man lay still but for the subtle rise and fall of his chest.
“Told ya he’s in a mood,” Mindy hissed to the other woman.
The growl from Roland was curt and a touch dangerous. “I am not in a mood.”
“That’s what you say when you are in a mood,” Mindy said with a waggled finger in his direction.
“Don’t poke the bear, Mindy.” Lucia decided to switch gears before Roland ground Mindy into a paste of blond hair and body parts. “Where’s Manny?”
“On his way,” Mindy replied. “He’s still looking for a line on that guy who shot at him.”
“Right. Okay.” She turned to Roland, who was examining the other two UEDF soldiers, currently strapped to office chairs with DentiKuffs. “Roland?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s next? We got them packed up, so now what?” Lucia blew the magenta stripe of hair off her forehead and whispered a fervent prayer that Roland would not want to question them. His methods were a degree or three more forceful than she was comfortable employing on government agents.
Roland did not turn to look at her. He remained standing, hands clasped behind his back, content to loom over the two stoic prisoners below his baleful glare. When he spoke, his words were quiet and measured. The calmness frightened Lucia more than she cared to admit. “Well Lucy, I’ve been considering that.”
“And?”
“I say we wait.”
The two women fixed each other with confused stares. Mindy asked first. “Wait for what?”
“The other team.”
Lucia scrunched her face, “There’s another team?”
Roland never took his eyes from the captured soldiers. “You screw-ups been briefed on me?” No one answered. Four angry eyes met his, and this was all the answer he needed. “Yeah. I figured. So there‘s no goddamn way you chumps were stomping around out there without an extraction team your bosses figured could take me.” With a snort, the big man turned to face Lucia. “Of course, any team that can drop me is not going to be real stealthy. They’ll be scrambling from somewhere far enough away to avoid detection.”
Lucia felt the subtle prickle of an anxiety attack begin to lift the hairs on the back of her neck. Any team equipped to fight Roland would probably have armatures, air support, and heavy weapons. Any subsequent fighting would likely level the whole block. “Roland...” she started, but he raised a hand to stop her.
“It’s okay. They won’t attack.” He turned back to the captured soldiers. “Were you guys aware of that?”
Eyes blazed pure feral hatred, but the pair stayed resolute in their silence.
“Why won’t they attack?” Mindy asked. She seemed hopeful and skeptical all at once.
Roland actually chuckled. It was a rumbling, rolling, gravelly thrum that sounded nothing at all like mirth. “Because the DECO team has already gone over their heads. By the time the extraction team arrives, they will have strict orders to stand down.”
“How can you know that?” Lucia trusted her own instincts, and while Roland was not a stupid man, this level of detail bordered upon prescience.
Roland tapped a thick black finger to his ear. “Our DECO liaison hacked my comm about a minute ago. He’s been feeding me information this whole time. We have about five minutes before a squad of very irritated Spec-Ops goons lands out on the drag
. Let’s make the most of it, shall we?” He sank into a low crouch so he could look the prisoners in their eyes. “Listen up, screw-ups. I appreciate the whole tight-lipped thing you’re doing here. I was once just like you, so I get it. But you should know by now it doesn’t matter whether you talk or not. UEDF is shitting all over this op and that’s a problem for me and my team. I understand that you don’t care, but it’s also shitting on DECO and their comm signal goes all the way to the top. When your little back-up squad gets here to pick you up, your job is to relay to them that if the UEDF wants that armature back, they are going to need to steer clear of me and mine. You suck at this, you bring nothing to the table, and I’m not sure I can trust myself not to go nuts and kill the lot of you on account of the fact that I’m a retired vet with acute PTSD and an ax to grind.” He tapped himself on the temple hard enough to make an audible thunking sound when his armored finger bounced off his reinforced skull. “I’m not mentally stable and I’ve got immunity from prosecution, understand?”
“Harper better be okay, you freak,” hissed the silver-haired man. The outburst earned him a sharp scowl from the woman.
Roland leaned even closer. “Or what, runt? You gonna take me on? Hah. You couldn’t even win a fight with your own pants.” From across the room, a gleeful snort bubbled out of the little blond killer. She smiled sweetly at the furious captive and blew him a kiss. Roland went on. “Mindy’s eyes are wired for full video, chump. We are going to make sure that your bosses get a good look at how well you handled yourself out there. I figure you’ll be digging latrines on some frontier backwater soon enough.”
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