Oslet’s sharp, mewling scream echoed through the training facility and spoke to Karza of an urgency she had refused to anticipate. Both thought that, with their new powers and with the support of gun golem steel, a single Shade would provide little challenge, even if it was Jav Holson, whose boundless skill Karza knew so well and had come to hate. Karza had partially untangled her chain, but it was taking too long and Oslet’s situation sounded dire, the scream stabbing at Karza’s impatience and honing her frustration to a sharp head. She flexed all the muscles upon her prodigious frame, heaved her chain with a roar that overwhelmed and diminished Oslet’s cry, and tore her weapon free of the snare Jav had made of it.
Plastic cracked, steel rent, masonry exploded. Karza reeled in her chain, her roar rising in pitch to a lingering howl, and cleared the gravity block of every column that held it fast.
The sudden destruction of the training area caught Jav off guard and took his attention off of Oslet—much to her relief. As he turned to see the innards of the facility coming down all around him, Oslet fled, tears streaming from her eyes, left hand clutching the mess of her right shoulder, blood pumping from between her fingers.
With Oslet clearly no longer a threat, Jav fixed his gaze upon Karza and her wild thatch of changed, steely hair. It killed him to have to think about her as he was, but there was no choice. The level of power she was exhibiting left little chance of successfully subduing her without killing her.
“Karza! Why are you doing this? What happened to you?”
Her upper lip danced over her teeth like a wolf’s. “Do you know what it’s like, Jav? To work and work and never see progress?”
“But you are progressing.” Before he even finished the sentence, he had a strange flash, as if it were Mao Pardine before him and not Olander Karza. He saw Karza’s frustration and knew then the terrible paradox of respect and contempt that had inevitably resulted from their association. He saw the tears in Karza’s eyes as she shook them away.
“Part of me wants to stop, Jav. I didn’t ask for this. But another part of me is relishing the chance to meet you on completely even terms and beat you, to cut you to pieces. It’s both good and bad that the decision is out of my hands.” She was shaking her head. “I can’t stop and—” she paused, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, her eyes with her forearm. “I wouldn’t if I could. Not now.” She shook her head. “You’re not going to beat me today.”
Jav swallowed hard. He wanted to concentrate on Karza, on right now, but he couldn’t help thinking about Mao and how he suddenly wanted to be with her to try to make up for. . . for what? He didn’t know. He still felt as though he had failed her somehow. Now Karza stood before him, the image of Mao fading from his mind, and he was wracked by the same sense of failure. He had trained with Karza and, in so doing, had inadvertently fostered resentment in her. Should he have turned her away when she approached him those many months ago? He didn’t know.
He felt tired. He loved Karza as a big kid sister, just as he loved Mao as a little kid sister. He felt no other emotion than that for her as he resolved to give her the fight she wanted. He didn’t dare to think about how the fight might end. It would go the way it would go.
And so it began.
He moved quickly, dodging her chain and its myriad convolutions, and started from the outset incorporating the Approaching Infinity techniques. The Kaiser Kick caught her under the ribs, unconscious and misdirected reprisal for the stinging wound Oslet had drilled into him. Karza folded under the immense pressure and hit the wall with an odd clanging sound, as of metal on metal. The air whipped by Jav. All in an instant the guillotine snapped back to its source and made a straight shot for him from Karza’s position on the wall, piercing the smoke afterimage left by the Ghost Kaiser.
He was upon her, driving the palm of his right hand into her stomach, and her further into the indentation in the wall. She craned her neck, coughing spit and blood, but immediately wrapped her arms around him in a deadly embrace, squeezing vice tight and tighter still. He felt something pour out the hole in his midsection and Karza’s front was painted wet with his blood, streams and drops coming off her bare toes, spattering the floor. He thought he might both be sick and pass out. Instead he worked the fingers of his right hand, still pinned between them, into and through her tough skin, gripping something vital beneath and crushing it.
Karza let out a short, sharp cry. She vomited blood in one thick, gurgling bubble. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and white with fear and disbelief and stark against the rich red that now covered her face. Jav backed off, still hovering in the air, one hand upon his middle.
“Give up, Karza,” he said huskily. “Please.”
She stared at him, her fear and disbelief mixing like colors on a painter’s palette, but what settled on her face finally was outrage. “I can’t. And I won’t.” She reigned in her guillotine and launched it at him underhand.
Jav avoided it easily, but it was meant more to gain Karza time than to be of a real threat. She was off the wall now, and the guillotine was whirling like a buzz saw, humming with hypnotic constancy. She moved the cycling blade in various patterns about her, and then, with machine gun speed, the head of the weapon darted forth again and again, filling the air with glittering steel.
At first, Jav thought that this was the same technique Karza had used during the competition and similar to Oslet’s pressure cannon, but each time the guillotine came, it was solid, sharp-edged and deadly. He was appalled by the speed with which the blades came and could do nothing but focus on defending himself. High-density air pressure was one thing, gun golem steel was quite another. He evaded the blades, slapped the flat sides of them away with his hands, and began to creep forward again towards Karza who had managed to put quite a bit of distance between them. With every advance he made, he was forced back again. He didn’t like being forced into a purely defensive fight, but could not make adequate progress.
An idea struck him. Her weapon was the key to her defeat here just as it had been back at the competition. Despite the darting machine gun blade, the dancing buzz saw never faltered—or never seemed to falter. Through technique and some special property afforded her by the gun golem metal, she was throwing it each time at impossible speeds, but speeds which, if he applied himself, he could measure and track. He studied the blades as they shot forth and soon knew their speed. It took him less time than he thought, and this made him hate himself a little. “I’m sorry, Karza,” he said softly.
Quick as thought, Jav grabbed at the chain of a blade just passed, held on tightly, and was drawn straight back to Karza, down a tunnel of wind that thundered and abraded. As he approached her, he invoked AI, bringing the Kaiser Kick to bear and catching her full under the chin. The kick obliterated all in its path, reducing Karza’s head to a fine, red spray.
With her fallen corpse behind him, he stood regarding the sheen of blood that coated his hands, his arms, his whole body. He raised one hand before his face, clenching his fist uselessly. He dropped to his knees and drove both fists into the floor, leaving two small craters.
A klaxon sounded, snatching up his attention, and then Ren’s voice boomed over the central PA system. “Attention. This is the Director of Imperial Police, Ren Fauer. If this message is being broadcast, it means that I am most likely dead and that the person responsible for killing Former General Mont Cranden, the person behind the Grans’ sabotage and the other recent murders, my own included, is Cultural Studies Division Director, Ty Karr.
“Artifact Competition finalist, Lara Bester, is also in some way involved, possibly responsible for the murder of Specialist Elza Steinz.
“Both Karr and Bester are to be considered enemies of the Empire and extremely dangerous. Exercise every possible caution in any attempt to apprehend them.
“Attention. This is the Director of Imperial Police. . .”
A jumble of voices suddenly came through over Jav’s Artifact, some insistent, some plaintiv
e, all incoherent. Jav bolted. He punched through the door to the facility and was gone.
22. THE EXCEPTION
10,688.318.0740
Karr was a dripping mess of exposed, shredded tissue and glaring white bone. With long, rasping breaths he turned to regard the needle lodged in the wall behind him, then focused his remaining filmy eye on Ren.
“It would have been so much easier with that,” Karr grated, “but do you think you are safe from me?”
The sound of the psi blocker was already coming loud and insistent.
“It may tax me, it may exhaust a portion of my power permanently, but I will see you dead, Mr. Fauer.”
Ren dropped to the floor, the psi blocker’s alarm growing ever louder. He staggered drunkenly for a moment, his hands moving towards but never quite reaching his head as if actual contact might cause the thin shell of his skull to rupture like the taut and straining skin of an overstuffed balloon.
Within its useless veil of knives, Ren’s mind was inundated with thoughts, voices, images, regrets, dream memories, both alien and his own. Somewhere, deep below it all, that part of him that understood what was going on recalled the time when he was ten years old and he’d been delirious with fever, with all the strange, illogical competing thoughts going in endless circles, locking him in a mental prison. Then, the thoughts had spiraled higher and higher until reaching the triggering point and he could do nothing but vomit what felt like half his body weight. The fever had broken with that, but Ren had an idea that this time, he would give up something far more vital than his last meal or two should he reach a similar point. He was vaguely aware of Karr’s endless stream of curses, of the incessant and insistent bleat of the psi blocker, and then finally of his own voice as it howled out protest over both.
• • •
Jav burst through the entrance and into Ty Karr’s inner office, stopping just beyond the threshold. He scanned the room cautiously, his chest heaving from adrenalin, from fear for his friend, and because of the array of gore that decorated the room. He began circling what he found upon the floor. Who- or whatever else had been in here was now gone, but what was left behind was. . . was heartbreaking.
Making a supreme effort to master his violently shaking body, Jav knelt down to regard what had become of his friend. Ren was on his hands and knees, the steel of his knives dulled, browned, and withered, giving him the overall appearance of a desiccated sweetgum seedpod. His head, like Karza’s, was gone. All that remained was the lower bowl of his skull and his jawbone.
“F-F-F-Fuck!” Jav cried at the top of his lungs. He shook his head and then croaked barely audibly, “Ren.” He saw the smoking, burst-open psi blocker still upon Ren’s wrist, nestled amongst the shriveled blades. He carefully removed the shattered device and regarded it. His arms went limp, knuckles grazing the muck-slicked floor in shorter and shorter pendulum strokes. He bowed his head and began to weep.
After a few moments, Barson and Abanastar, both of them Dark, entered the office.
“Jav,” Barson said, “are you all right?”
Jav rolled back onto his seat with his forearms resting upon his knees and nodded.
“Something was blocking Artifact communication,” Abanastar said. “Whatever it was, it appears to have stopped now. How did you know to come here first?”
“I don’t know. I suppose this,” Jav said, nodding to Ren, “could have happened anywhere.” He shook his head, sniffing back tears.
Barson noticed the wound in Jav’s side. “Jav, who attacked you? Since you’re still alive, I’m assuming you didn’t catch Karr on his way out.”
“No. It was Nanda Oslet and Olander Karza. Karza’s dead, Oslet’s minus one arm. Both of them were as strong as Shades and using weapons made of gun golem metal.”
Barson nodded. “Vays had a close call, too. Apparently, he took care of. . . What was her name?”
“Edren Rol,” Abanastar said.
“Right, Edren Rol. Did you hear the Grudge Star?”
“Uh-uh.”
Barson shrugged. “He razed half the facility and managed to cut Saya Lostrom pretty good before she had what Kalkin described as a psychotic break. Vays is in Hospital 2 now, under heavy guard—which may or may not mean anything. Kalkin thought he killed Lostrom, but she was gone when the investigation and clean-up teams arrived.”
“Well,” Jav said, “that accounts for the remaining finalists. I guess we have to assume that Bester, Lostrom, and Oslet are still potential threats. And Karr, of course. Karr. . .” He shook his head. “Any ideas on where they might be?”
Abanastar shook his head.
“Minister Witchlan is waiting for us in the war room,” Barson said. “We’ll send for a. . .” He sighed. “A clean-up team. Come on, Jav.”
23. WAR ROOM
10,688.318.0825
Still Dark, the three Shades stepped into the war room from the jump deck. Witchlan was indeed waiting for them. With him were Lor Kalkin, Brin Karvasti, and Tia Winn.
“Jav!” Kalkin nearly shouted. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine,” Jav said.
“Ren, he. . .” Kalkin couldn’t bring himself to put his fears into words.
Jav looked away, but behind him Barson shook his head in silence.
“I’m sorry,” Kalkin said.
Brin’s eyes shook with stagnant tears that refused to fall. Everyone had heard Ren’s announcement. It could have been faked, that was of course possible, but somehow it didn’t seem likely. Ren had been able to pierce the obscuring veil of Karr’s glamour when no one else had. Despite his harsh words last night, he had in fact believed her, had taken action on that belief, had in large part solved the mystery that had plagued them all for the last several months, and had died—horribly, she knew—in the process. Like so many times before, she wished she could go back and change things, wished she could go back and change everything. But now, some recessed, highly rational part of her was beginning to realize that it was too late this time. Before, there would always be a next time, she would, or at least could, always be reminded of her fear of being swallowed by her need for him. No more. The only man she would ever love, who shook her very sense of self, was dead.
“What is that in your hand, Mr. Holson?” Witchlan said.
Jav absently raised the psi blocker. “It was Ren’s.”
Witchlan nodded silently. “Director Scanlan,” Witchlan said over his shoulder, addressing the holographic screen behind him, “start the procedure.” Then to the Shades before him he said, “As we discussed, ladies. Gentlemen, stand ready.”
“Yes, sir,” all said in concert.
On a number of hard screens set into the walls, a small percentage indicator began counting up slowly.
“Let’s do away with the charade, shall we?” Witchlan said, addressing no one in particular, but with increased, bassy volume. “We have been playing your game long enough. Let’s have a contest and finish this. You insult me if you believe that I cannot sense your presence now. Mr. Fauer pushed you, didn’t he? Your power is fluctuating and you are as obvious to me as a panting dog.”
Silence.
“Mr. Karr,” Witchlan said with a sigh, his patience running thin, “the moment the jump was completed, this room was enclosed in a Prisma Shield, the jump deck disabled. You and your charges are going nowhere.”
In the corner of the room, to the left of the darkened jump deck, a bright yellow vertical line of light appeared in mid air, as if a door had suddenly cracked open, revealing a hint of the brightness beyond. More lines traced themselves upon the empty air describing what everyone clearly recognized as one of Cranden’s vaults. But what stepped out of the vault was the shredded, angry red form of Ty Karr, or what was left of him. His body was swathed in once-white bandages, soaked through in some places, decorated with fainter blossoms in others. The bandaging was not complete. Ragged tears of flesh jutted from between the strips of cloth and were peaked with blackened pearls of coagula
ted blood. He wore a greatcoat loosely over his boney shoulders. His head was wrapped and showed only one pus-occluded eye. The three remaining competition finalists, in various states of health, accompanied him.
(3%)
“Go, my Gun Metal Soldiers,” Karr said and the three girls fanned out to be met by Jav, Barson, Kalkin, and Abanastar. With a tilt of Karr’s bandaged index finger, however, Kalkin and Abanastar both stopped in their tracks, Kalkin’s big hands gripping at the low mound of his head, Abanastar simply stopping as if turned off by a switch, his head shaking, seeming to vibrate with increasing force.
Jav and Barson continued, clashing first with Lara Bester in the lead then with Saya Lostrom and Nanda Oslet who followed immediately. Witchlan ushered Tia Winn and Brin Karvasti behind him, effectively making them disappear.
“I’m afraid I cannot allow you, Mr. Kalkin, or you,” Karr cleared his throat, “Mr. Abanastar, to participate. Singly or in combination you two are too dangerous.
Kalkin cried out as his body began to consume itself. Great gray blisters rose and popped all over his huge frame. His legs shook until he dropped into a heap, his quivering mass quickly turning the floor to putrefaction and sinking through it. The floor continued to sizzle and hiss as the edge around the hole widened.
The Gun Golems (Approaching Infinity Book 2) Page 22