“Yeah!” the big man blurted. “That. Anyway, it’s totally stuck, and the harness is busted. I... uh... well my toes are starting to go numb and I’m getting kinda worried.”
“Oh,” she said softly. Then more emphatically, “Oh! We need to get that off you!”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I didn’t want to bother the medics ‘cause a lotta guys are busted up way worse than me. I was tryin’ to just tough it out, y’know?”
“I’m familiar with the type,” she said, feeling the tension leave her body as she set her mind to the task at hand. She looked over the broken harness and how it connected to the polymer cuisse protecting his thigh. “Problem is, Bubba, what’s going to happen when we remove this thing? You have a fractured femur, right? I’m guessing this is the only thing keeping you upright.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to just sit a while anyway. Pretty sure a few other things is busted, too.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Fuckers hit like tanks.”
“You were impressive out there, Bubba,” she added as she searched for a way to release the pressure on his leg. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so fearless.”
The big man shrugged, which made him wince in pain. “I don’t know nothing about being fearless. I just get kind of scared, which makes me mad, which makes me scared again. The only way to make it stop is to kill the enemy so they’ll stop scaring me. So I try to kill them real early and real hard. Folks think I’m dumb, or crazy, and maybe I am, but it’s what works for me.”
Lucia laughed at this, and it felt good. “I wish I had your gift for simple thinking, Riley! When you look at it that way, I guess it makes perfect sense.” Her fingers found the manual release for the armor, though it had been mangled by whatever impact had broken the leg. She twisted it hard, frowned, and tried again.
“Try this,” Bubba suggested and handed her his vibroblade. She took it absently and carefully slid the edge under the clasp. When she thumbed the power stud, the blade buzzed to life and Lucia pried and sawed her way through the damaged clip. With a soft ‘ping’ and a clatter, the cuisse fell away and Bubba breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thanks, ma’am,” he said, a goofy expression on his face.
“You’re welcome,” she replied. Then something occurred to her.
“Bubba?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you really need me to help you remove a piece of armor you have probably worn a thousand times, with a tool you already had on you?”
“Maybe?”
Her heart sank. “Was I that obvious?”
The big man looked trapped. “I don’t think nobody saw but me, ma’am. Maybe I just know what it looks like better’n most. But I seen what was happening and didn’t want no one to think you was soft. These guys can be real mean about that kind of thing.”
“Do you think I’m soft?” she asked.
“Oh, hell no, ma’am. Everybody gets scared, and that was some seriously scary shit. You saved my ass out there, and you didn’t look soft for none of it. For some folks the shakes and shit don’t happen till after the fighting’s done. I figured you was one of those.”
Lucia sat back on the floor and looked up at the strangely insightful behemoth. “I didn’t realize I was ‘one of those’ until today. This was only the second time I had command, and the first time, well, somebody got hurt. I guess the pressure sort of got to me at the end there.” She looked around at the wounded being tended and the dead being covered. “Doesn’t look like I’ve gotten any better at it. People still get hurt, I see.”
Bubba pressed gingerly at his leg and sniffed. “Somebody always gets hurt, ma’am. I don’t know why anyone thinks war can be clean like that, but I only got a job because lots of folks can’t handle it being dirty.”
Lucia did not comprehend if it was exhaustion or anxiety clouding her better judgment, but it seemed to her that the big oaf just might have a point.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
With Mindy’s departure going unnoticed, the fight at Rum Runner’s remained a spirited affair. The pirates seemed entirely undistracted by their mounting casualties and continued to attack with a zeal that beggared rational evaluation. For his part, Roland was more than happy to stay and kill pirates for as long as Mindy needed to get away with Marceau. He may also have harbored an ulterior motive for keeping the brawl going that had a lot to do with ensuring some of those incoming androids focused on him and not Lucia.
When the first white humanoid crashed into the bar, the pirates scattered like crows. Whether or not they were aware of what the towering androids were Roland could not say, yet somehow they knew to get clear of the melee. Roland greeted his new dance partner with a straight left that sent it back through the doorway and into its following brother. This bought him the time he needed to unsling Durendal once more and grace both of the androids with a burst of explosive beads.
Six half-inch beads loaded with high-explosives struck the pair as they rose. The chemical yield of his ordnance was not large. These rounds were for ruining cover, cracking light armor, and causing general damage to machinery. There was not enough punch in any one of them to destroy hardened targets, though they did send the androids back down and into the open area in front of the cantina. With a practiced flick of his thumb, Roland switched to flechettes, hoping that the tungsten-tipped needles would pierce the thick hides of his advancing enemies. Durendal thrummed like a sewing machine as it sent white-hot metal into the writhing humanoids at mach nine.
He was not surprised when the flechettes proved useless. They would not have harmed him, either, and he knew the Better Man system had been built off his own specs. His rounds shattered and caromed from the alabaster skin of the androids, flinging shards of smoking metal in every direction. As expected, the pair ignored the assault and leapt for Roland. Knowing he could not match their speed, the big man met them head-on. His right fist clipped the first across its metal chin. The punch was strong, echoing like a thunderclap and turning its head sharply to the side. The impact staggered the machine and spoiled the charge. Before Roland capitalized on this, the second android hit him with a low tackle that brought him to the deck and sent chairs and stools clattering across the bar. The big man wrapped his legs around the waist of his foe and pulled it close. Throwing a brawny arm over its shoulder and securing the machine by a wrist, Roland cranked the android’s arm behind its back and wrenched the hand high enough to touch the base of its own skull.
If the android had a mouth, it might have screamed when the techno-organic humerus tore free from the glenoid cavity. The blank-faced white titan had no mouth, so the brutal dislocation of its right shoulder via kimura armlock was announced only by the audible cracking and tearing noise it made. While a crippling injury to most opponents, the android more or less ignored it and began to smash at Roland’s faceplate with the uninjured left arm. With Roland firmly controlling its posture from within his closed legs, these blows fell with little leverage and less power.
Hearing the second android resume the attack, the big man spun on his hip, rotated the android trapped in his legs to be between himself and the other, then kicked the captured machine hard. Legs capable of lifting sixty tons sent the white homunculus rocketing backward to collide with its twin. Both left the floor and sailed thirty feet through the air, stopping only when their flight brought them into conflict with the metal wall of Rum Runner’s. True to their nature, the androids rose without hesitation and re-engaged.
The big man uttered a quiet curse at the sight. The only other time Roland had fought a Better Man armature, it had been piloted by a man every bit Roland’s equal in hand-to-hand combat. The machines were a bit stronger and faster than he was, and with a skilled fighter driving it, a single Better Man had been as much as he could handle. Lucia’s warning had clued him into their lack of pilots, and the opening exchanges of this tussle had further cemented the conclusion that no great warriors drove these two machines. However, that is where th
e good news ended. His foes had already demonstrated that they possessed a decent combat AI. This alone did not concern him. What was setting his slab jaw and causing him to grind his teeth was that there were two of them. Had there been only one, it would be a simple (if not exactly easy) task to pound it to death, eventually. He had already determined he was strong enough and skilled enough to work one of these into spare parts if given the time. Their armor was thick, their systems robust. They would not stop until he had literally smashed them to pieces. Thus, he also understood the enemy well enough to accept that smashing them to pieces was going to be a lengthy process. It was becoming obvious that he was not going to get the kind of time he needed. As long as each android supported the other, the machines would have no problem forcing him to play a defensive game. It required no special fighting skill to understand that a defensive fight served the enemy’s goals far better than it did his.
With nothing else to do until help arrived, Roland took two long strides forward and threw himself at the advancing androids. The machines took the charge, undaunted by the potential damage a thousand pounds of armor at forty miles per hour might cause. What passed for intelligence inside their brains was more than content to let the prey come to them. Roland wrapped the closet machine in a football tackle and drove it through the wall of the cantina, pumping his legs and driving ever forward. As his bull rush was slowed by the growing bow wave of destruction, Roland released the android and sent it flying with a boot to the chest. He whirled without hesitation in an attempt to engage the other before it exploited this distraction, whereupon he took a punch to the face that rattled his molars and sent him spinning to the floor. His instincts honed by hundreds of barroom brawls, Roland knew better than to do anything other than roll with the punch and scramble. A giant white boot smashed the metal floor where his head had been, and a second boot found his ribs as he fled before the assault. He rolled with this as well, letting the force move him away and ignoring the insistent blinking of an internal diagnostic alarm. He needed no sophisticated electronics to tell him that kicks like that were dangerous and should be avoided.
He was back on his feet when the machine with the damaged arm tried to take his head off with a left hook. Roland ducked the punch and returned with his own right hook to the body. This shoved the android off to Roland’s left, revealing the other to be mid-swing with its own overhand right. With no time to dodge, Roland bobbed his head and let the punch bang off the top of his shoulder. The android’s aggression worked against it. It pushed forward to swing again and Roland seized it by the neck and arm like a Greco-Roman wrestler. A twist of the hips and a sharp pull dragged the android over his shoulder and sent it airborne across the bar. Without conscious thought, Roland buttoned both arms over his head in a high guard. The old fighter’s instinct proved prophetic. What felt like a nuclear explosion blasted Roland from his feet and sent him sprawling back outside and onto the wide open deck once again.
“What now?” He growled out loud as he righted himself.
“Breach!” It was Manny’s voice on the team comm channel, sounding shrill and panicked. “It’s Bob! You need to get out of there!”
Roland did not have the time to respond to this. He was already fighting with the androids again. He was trading blows with the pair when he took another mysterious hit, though this time he saw it coming. He threw himself backward when he glimpsed the telltale flare of a rocket’s back-blast and managed to avoid a direct hit from what he presumed to be some kind of rocket-propelled grenade. It had come from the far side of the open square outside the cantina, and Manny’s warning told him exactly what it meant. This knowledge changed nothing. The rocket detonated when it got within six feet of him and sent all three combatants tumbling through the air. Roland’s HUD came to life with a dozen blinking warnings and pinging alarms. He silenced them all and lurched to his feet. When he saw the next launch, he threw himself out of the way. The missile altered course to follow and the big man took another savage hit. This one tossed him like a bowling pin, sending him head over heels and tumbling to rest in a heap against a bulkhead.
Now Roland had a fix on the shooter’s position, and he sprinted. Ignoring everything but the next missile, Roland almost missed seeing the small, lithe figure of Manuel Richardson as the brave young man charged. His shotgun outstretched in his bionic left arm, Manny sprayed the shadowed mass of the shooter with eight rounds of explosive scattershot. The tall man in the black suit leapt to avoid the barrage, though the nature of scattershot made total avoidance an impossibility. A half-dozen tiny detonations pockmarked the fleeing body, causing it to stumble and destroying the shoulder-mounted weapon it clutched. Roland was inches from seizing the man when he was tackled from behind. Both of the ivory androids swarmed him. One held him down while the other pummeled at his body and helmet with fists like white granite war hammers. Roland roared and fought back. He kicked and punched, seized and wrenched, every movement fueled with rage and desperation as control of the fight slipped further and further from his grasp. He could not see Manny anymore and this terrified him. If it really was Bob Robertson out there, then the young man was in serious danger. A madman’s heave thrust the androids from his back, and he called out, “Get clear, kid! Go!”
Then the machines were upon him again. No longer interested in mission goals, Roland focused on killing to the exclusion of all other tasks. He tore at alabaster bodies without conscious thought for tactics. He smashed for the sake of smashing itself. Little by little, he began to make progress. He dished out as much punishment as he took and more. He could see the damage accumulating on his foes’ bodies, see their armor fail and their frames begin to slow and stagger. His own HUD reminded him that he too was suffering from attrition. His helmet provided him with stark explanations of all the reasons he needed to disengage from the constant battering. Most annoying was the widespread damage to his internals caused by Bob’s rocket launcher. Nothing was imminently life-threatening, but the repairs were sapping his resources. He wanted to ignore the warnings, but the old soldier was too experienced to pretend that he was going to win this fight without consequences.
Just a little longer, old man, he cajoled himself. Help is on the way.
The arrival of Big Bernie was heralded by a long burst of gunfire from her autocannons. Roland’s opponents whipped toward the source of the fusillade to see the huge yellow and orange machine stomp into the square. One immediately sprinted off to engage while the other remained to continue the fight with Roland. Bolstered by the more favorable odds, Roland surged to life and began to stalk down his lone opponent. Both war machines were battle-scarred and damaged, though neither shied away from violence. Without the skills of a trained pilot, the machine fought like any other android with a reasonably sophisticated combat AI. Roland exchanged blows with the thing in earnest, exploiting the linear thinking and lack of imagination that plagued these types of systems with a loose and creative brawling style.
As his advantage grew, he spared a quick glance over to Bernie who seemed to be struggling with her opponent’s speed. Her guns kept it from picking her apart, and routinely raked it with streams of destructive fire. Roland figured it was only a matter of time before she either got a hold of the speedy android or chewed through the surface armor enough to bring it down. Turning back to his own task, the big man rained a combination of heavy fists down on his dance partner. Most were blocked but the last, a left hook, connected flush on what amounted to its chin and sent it sprawling. Roland stomped over to finish it off, but was stopped by a wave of searing electric agony. It started in the middle of his back, locking his muscles and dragging a hiccup of pain and surprise past his lips. Then it spread to his whole body in a creeping paralysis that fused his joints into unmoving statuary.
Groaning, Roland fell with stiff limbs. Like a bug trapped in amber, he could only watch as the white android he had been fighting rose and ran off to help its twin fight Bernadette. He wanted to shout into the co
mm channel, but all he accomplished was a gurgling grunt past teeth forced together. He could hear, and Bernie’s shouted warning came through his helmet speakers loud and clear. “Breach is down! Somebody hit him from behind. I... I can’t get to him!”
“Honey Pot en route,” Mindy said.
“That Bob guy has him! Watch out!” Manny tried to warn the little killer, but Roland knew the warning had come too late when he saw the tiny blond streak sprinting his way. She never saw the tall man in the black suit who darted from the shadows. She never had a chance to defend herself from the savage backhanded blow that put her down. Mindy hit the deck like a broken doll and bounced to a crumpled heap many feet away. Then Bob turned and sprinted with inhuman speed to Roland’s prostrate body. He grabbed Roland roughly under the arm. The paralyzed cyborg hissed and growled, but could do no more than that as the monster in the black suit began to drag his weighty chassis as if it weighed no more than a child. This turned his helmet away from the action, and Roland was unable make his head move to see what was happening. He heard the reports of Manny’s shotgun, knowing very well the weapon would not harm the thing hauling him further and further from the fight and his friends. He heard Lucia shouting over the comm, and this sent a surge of activity through his compromised nervous system. He heaved, or he tried to at least, and was rewarded with a slight bucking motion.
“Very interesting,” he heard Bob say, then the pain returned and Roland lost consciousness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“What in the name of all that’s holy happened out there!?”
Pike, whose tone was always a touch loud, was roaring. “We lost Breach? How the hell did we lose Breach? That thing can punch his way through a goddamn mountain!”
Seated at a table in the Privateers’ bivouac, what remained of the attack squad could only stare back with blank faces and uncomprehending eyes. Bernadette finally answered. Her life support pod had been removed from the main chassis so she could move about more easily on its rubber tracks, but her ruined respiratory system kept her behind a polycarbonate canopy. “Commandant, he was in there and fighting like a bastard. Doing fine, really. Then he just fell over.” Behind the clear membrane, she pantomimed a tree falling with her arm. “I never saw what hit him, but he went stiff as a board and just dropped. Then that crazy character in the suit grabbed him and carried him off.”
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