"Yes?" Vicky answered the Marine.
"We got a general behind us that says we need to get out ahead of you."
Vicky scowled as she fired off a shot to keep at least one of her problem children down.
"And you got a Grand Duchess ahead of you that wants to kill herself some SOBs."
"Oh. Oh! Oooh!" dawned slowly from behind her, but it dawned.
"Now, be a good Marine and stay where I tell you. You get to kill all the rest of these POS’s. These two are mine."
There was much murmuring from behind her.
"Ma'am, you sure we can't fire over your shield, or something?"
"You get your head up above this shield and your mama's going to be getting a condolence letter from me."
That quieted things down a bit from behind her.
The aerial view showed that the one to her right had gone over to have a talk with the one to her left. That guy edged out just enough to get a quick glance at her fire position, then pulled back just as her shots whizzed by where he'd been.
The two continued to talk.
Finally, two young women, nude and vulnerable, were forced out to stand between the edge of the air conditioner housing and Vicky. Between their heads, shoulders, and hips, there were spaces for this crook to shoot at Vicky. It didn't leave much for her to get a shot off at him and not hit the women.
Vicky checked her aerial view. The guy was hunkering down but keeping his legs behind theirs. If he tried for a shot, he'd be low. He’d likely try to get a shot off somewhere from between the women's hips and shoulders. She doubted he'd go so low as their legs.
Still, he used his machine pistol to force the women to spread their legs. One winced as the hot barrel made contact with her sensitive thighs.
"You're a real sicko," Vicky muttered.
The gunman leaned out and fired from the apex at the top of her legs. The recoil sent the machine pistol high. The woman screamed as her most delicate parts came in contact with a hot piece of stuttering metal.
Vicky held her fire until he was done. The two women had somehow managed to settle down from the wild jittering and screaming they had done as a machine pistol snapped off a burst either close to or on their vulnerable skin. Then Vicky fired one shot. It hit the wall just where the gunner's head had been a moment ago.
The women must have felt the wind of the dart on their skin, but they didn't jump at the lower sound of her shot. Good.
Vicky went back to aiming between their legs.
This time, the guy fired a burst from between the other woman's hips. This time neither woman jumped. They'd been inured to hell. Now that they knew this new version, they adapted to it and let it become just a normal part of their miserable existence.
Again, Vicky picked a bit of wall off the corner near the guy's face for a late shot. From the overhead take, she watched him flinch.
She also watched him get down on one hand and both knees.
Setting up her shot, she breathed slowly, evenly. Her finger squeezed gently back on the trigger. She knew exactly when it would fire. She held just short of there.
"Come on, you SOB," she muttered, urgently.
He made his move. He leaned forward, positioned himself between the skinned and bleeding knees of the hostages and took aim at Vicky.
She squeezed off one shot. It hit his pistol, knocking his arm back and kicking his shoulder back. Her second round was aimed between his eyes.
He'd flinched at the first shot. The second shot only took him in the cheek. As he rolled away, Vicky got a good shot at the back of his head.
This one hit where she aimed it.
With a cry, he fell flat, deflating like a blowup doll. He screamed again. Vicky put two more rounds into his skull.
She could hear the last huff as his breath left him. He lay there, bleeding.
The two hostages took off running.
They'd been through enough hell to know not to block Vicky's field of fire.
The last guy hung his gun out to fire a wild burst at them. Vicky sent a shot at him. She missed the gun, but the wind of the dart on his skin sent his aim wide and his gun back behind the air conditioning tower.
The women fled past Vicky. They didn't quit running until they reached the other end of the elevator equipment. One of them, however, paused as they rushed by. She retrieved the machine pistol and several spare magazines from Vicky's first kill.
No sooner were the women behind the elevator gear than one of them was snapping off shots at the edge of the air conditioning towers.
Vicky had to like that kind of woman.
35
"Ma'am?" the Marine behind Vicky kind of begged. Marines don't beg. Not when they're fully armed and dangerous. But then, most didn't have a headstrong Grand Duchess blocking their path.
"Yes?" Vicky said, not even trying to strip her words of the deadly anger in her soul.
"Could we please get out there ahead of you? The general is getting mighty mad."
"He's not mad at you. He's mad at me. Don't worry. I'm used to people being mad at me."
"Yes, ma'am," didn't sound all that convinced.
Vicky ignored the Marines and General Pemberton. She had no time for them at the moment. She studied her overhead view. The last POS had retreated, dragging four hostages with him, back to the middle of the air conditioning stacks. Two naked and vulnerable women were to his right. Two to his left.
His head and weapon whipped back and forth, left and right.
He had only one way off this roof, and that lay dead ahead of him: the edge of the roof and a ten-floor drop. He must somehow realize that he wasn't getting out of this alive. How many people did he want to take with him?
"Listen," Vicky whispered to the Marines. "The kill shot is mine. This bastard is mine. Understand?"
The two Marines behind Vicky exchanged worried looks, but they nodded their assent.
Vicky used hand signals to tell the Marines that she was headed to the right side of the stacks. The next two were to go to the left. The rest were to stand their ground. They didn't like that, but one look at Vicky's Grand Duchess-size glare and they were as cowed as Marines could be. It helped that none of them were higher than corporal.
They all nodded agreement.
As silently as she could, Vicky lifted her shield. Keeping it in front of her, a very angry Grand Duchess stepped out of the door and headed at a low crouch across the roof. The two Marines reached their corner as she got to hers.
She checked her overhead take. The guy was showing bad signs of taking his desperation out on the women. He had a choke hold on one of the women on the right while holding his machine pistol jammed hard into the back of one woman on the left.
Vicky made a guess that the women were tied together.
She moved forward to only pause at the corner, before edging around it. Crouching behind her shield, she confronted the head bastard.
He snapped off a burst of fire at her. The shield took the hits and deflected them.
"Can't you do better than that?" Vicky called.
"A bitch! What's a bitch doing up here? Hiding behind a stinking hunk of garbage?"
Vicky fired one round, hitting the air conditioning stack above his head. Chunks of metal splattered all around him. He took a hit on his head, but two of the women took slashes to their shoulders.
They flinched but stayed in place. As Vicky expected, both were bound together by plastic strips at their wrists and ankles.
Running would be a bitch.
"Oh, so the little baby girl has a gun. I am sooo terrified," he baby-talked as he did an exaggerated tremble in fright.
Vicky fired another shot. It was just centimeters above his head.
Now it was his turn to flinch down behind his hostages.
"You do that again, and I'll blow these bitches away," he snapped.
"Count Blankster, you die exactly one second after you kill any one of them," Vicky said. "Or maybe I'll take your gun away an
d let the women here have at you. I've got a knife in my boot. Want to see what one of them can do with it?"
The guy crouched lower.
One of the women muttered low. "Oh, yeah."
He slapped her on the butt with his pistol. She rocked with the blow and made not a sound.
What Vicky did notice was that both of the women facing her were shuffling their feet just a bit wider.
She had a good shot at his knee. She took it. One shot only.
He screamed as his knee blew out beneath him.
All four of the women took off running. One among each pair counted "One, two. One, two." The four of them must have had some time in three legged races at picnics or fairs. One got four steps, the other six before they lost coordination and went down.
He yanked up his machine pistol, screaming he'd kill them all.
Vicky caught the hand that held the weapon just as he settled his aim on the closest pair. She put a round into his wrist and the gun flew from his hand.
He grabbed for it with his other hand. She put two rounds into his forearm.
It shattered, leaving it dangling at a sickening angle with the ends of both bones showing through the bloody pulp.
He fell to the deck, screaming in agony. As Vicky stood up from behind her shield, one of the Marines from the other side raced forward. He kicked the weapon well out of the count's reach. One of the women grabbed it.
"Don't shoot him!" Vicky screamed. "Don't shoot! He doesn't deserve a quick death."
She got some nasty looks from the four women, and the other four that had joined them.
"Who are you to tell us what we can do with this piece of shit?" one woman demanded.
"I am Her Grace, the Grand Duchess Victoria, and I hold high, low, and middle justice in this half of the Empire. If you kill him, it's just another murder that justice must be done for. If I execute him, the blood price ends with me. Understood?"
"The Grand Duchess?" several of the women echoed.
The bleeding redcoat had a few vulgar and bitter things to say about her and her lineage. Of her ancestors, Vicky couldn't much disagree. Of herself, she really didn't care.
She aimed a dart just a centimeter in front of his nose.
A couple of small chunks of gravel took him in the face. He shut up.
"Now, we can do this the hard way, the harder way, or the hardest way. You understand me?" she told the so-called count and commander of this regiment of murderous, raping thugs.
He gulped while trying with his shattered hand to staunch the bleeding from his arm.
"I can give you a quick death. Three rounds, right between the eyes."
The guy actually looked hopeful. The women looked dismayed.
"Naw, that ain't gonna happen," Vicky said. "You've got too many crimes on your soul to get off that easy."
The women relaxed and the guy who had tortured and murdered so many women went back to whimpering and looking terrified.
"Now then, I could put a couple of rounds in your gut, your stomach, or your lungs. Nobody ever died from a few hits there. Leastwise, never quickly. I could let the women here have my knife and they could play with you. I'm told women can be the worst torturers ever. How would you like to eat your dick one small bite at a time or have one eye cut out as an appetizer?"
The women exchanged wicked smiles. This was fine by them.
The guy wasn't so into it. "No. No. You can't let them . . . let them do that to me."
"I can if I sentence you to that. There's one thing about this damn Peterwald Empire. We never got around to defining cruel and unusual punishment. If the Grand Duchess says it ain't, well boy, it ain't."
"You said there was a third. Some third way. What is it?" he begged, eagerly.
"You can drag yourself over to that roof edge and see if you can learn to fly during the ten-floor drop."
The women didn't look too happy, but the guy began to crawl across the gravel roof for the edge.
He didn't crawl so much as drag himself. He had only one knee to push himself along with and only his two good elbows, one arm and on hand being wrecked. The gravel was cruel against his ruined knee.
"Ladies," Vicky said, "don't you think he's a bit over-dressed for this? After all, we wouldn't want his clothes to interfere with him learning to fly, now would we?"
Vicky handed the gal who had picked up the first machine pistol her boot knife. She went to cut the others free. She gave Vicky a hopeful look, but the Grand Duchess had to ask for her knife back.
Still, the six women were not gentle as they rolled him over and stripped him naked. There may have been a few unkind kicks and punches, but no one was keeping count.
No one but the former count, Head of the Security Consultants on Oryol . . . and he wasn't talking. Grunting, groaning, screaming, but not talking.
He lay there on his back, going nowhere, resting in his agony.
"Hey ladies, look at his pink little prick," Vicky said, "it ain't like he's got any use for that nice tip. Who wants to cut it off?"
All were eager volunteers.
However he, quickly rolled over on his stomach and began a slow crawl across the tar and gravel rooftop. Soon, a smear of blood followed him both from his mangled knee and somewhere between the apex of his legs.
"Can I borrow your pistol?" the woman who'd picked up the second machine pistol asked.
"What do you have in mind?"
"If I tell you, and you don't like it, I won't do it."
Vicky swapped weapons with her. The Grand Duchess checked the machine pistol. The safety was off. The magazine was still half full.
The woman with the automatic strolled up to the punk as if she had not a care in the world. As if the gravel wasn't as cruel to her bare feet as they were to his package.
Once she was up to him, she aimed the pistol down at his good knee. She gave Vicky a questioning look.
Vicky shrugged.
She put three slugs into that knee.
The man howled in pain.
The women exchanged smiles. They all liked that he'd need more time to crawl to his death.
But the young woman with the automatic wasn't done yet. She stepped around to in front of him. Stooping, she waved the pistol in front of his eyes.
She immediately had his attention.
"Sing us a song, cutie." Her squat in front of him gave him a good look at her bare sex. "What's the matter, don't you have a song for us?"
He crocked something. It didn't sound much like a song.
"I didn't hear no song, little girl. You are gonna sing me a song, aren't you, little cutie?"
He croaked louder, but there was no melody.
"Oh, no song. Well then, you don’t need those lungs if you ain't gonna give me and my girls a song, now do you?"
She stood up, and seemed to walk away, then thought different of it and whirled on him. She put one dart into the back of his right lung.
Grinning she came over and swapped guns with Vicky. "Thank you."
"You think he can make it to the edge on one lung?" Vicky asked.
"Alice managed to crawl halfway down the hall with four slugs in both her lungs. He ain't hurting. Not really."
They watched him crawl for a few more excruciating minutes. He tried to push himself along with his legs, but neither knee would give him any purchase. He struggled to use his elbows, but one arm flopped about every time he moved. That had to be painful. The other arm had a shattered wrist at the end of it. More pain.
Still, he struggled along, barely making a few centimeters with each excruciating pull of his elbows and body.
Vicky glanced around. The two Marines at the other end of the air conditioning unit looked kind of green around the gills.
"You don't have to stay here if you don't want to."
"Will you be okay, ma'am?"
"I got four weapons. He's got none. I feel pretty damn safe."
"Okay, ma'am. If it's okay with you, ma'am," and the two Marines did
n't retreat. Not exactly. It was more like a proper retrograde. Breaking contact with the enemy. Yeah. That’s what it was.
A moment later, from the other side of stacks came "General, I wouldn't go around there if I was you, sir."
"What's the Grand Duchess up to?" a gruff old voice demanded.
"Justice, sir. Raw and bloody justice."
"Is she alone?"
"No, sir. She's got eight bitches from hell and I wouldn't bother any of them just now, sir."
"She get the last of the sons of bitches?"
"She got him. He sure wishes she didn't, sir."
"Your Grace, do you need any help?" the general called.
"Do we need any help?" she asked the naked man.
He crocked something, but no one understood it or cared to.
"Ladies?" she asked the former hostages.
They shook their heads without taking their eyes off the struggling former count.
"No, General Pemberton, I have everything well in hand. You go police up this mess. Get those women back with their loved ones. Families."
"Yes, Your Grace. Okay, Marines. Don't stand around gawking. You got your orders. You two. You post at the first landing on this stairwell. When Her Grace is finished here, you get her to my headquarters."
"Yes, sir," came in perfect unison.
"Damn, she is the Grand Duchess," one of the former hostages whispered.
One of the women with a weapon sidled up to Vicky. "You damn Peterwalds can be pretty vicious."
"Yeah, my pa and grandpa were real SOBs. Now, for what it's worth, I'm a SOB, too, but I'm your SOB. You okay with that?"
"Yeah. I guess so. Don't Peterwalds come in any other flavor?"
"Maybe my kids won't be SOBs. Maybe my husband can help them not to be," Vicky mused aloud,
"I'll pray for the poor bastard."
"Married to me, he'll need all the help he can get."
"Your Grace," the shortest of the naked women around Vicky said.
"Yes."
"Can I borrow your knife for a minute?"
Vicky eyed her, but said nothing.
The woman turned her gaze to the struggling man. "I can't have my pound of flesh, but don't I deserve a few square centimeters of skin?"
Vicky retrieved her knife from her boot, flipped it in her hand, then offered it to the woman, hilt first.
Implacable: Vicky Peterwald, #5 Page 18