by Gavin Smith
His attacks were a little more careful after that. Not that he had to be. Miska concentrated on keeping the knife he had taken from Bean out of her flesh. Which was a good tactic as far as it went, but it meant she got hit, kneed, and head-butted a lot. Still, at least he wasn’t kicking her now. She was trying to bide time, look for any opening, any advantage, the slightest edge, but he wasn’t making any more mistakes.
Miska almost managed to get out of the way of a punch to her face. Had it contacted fully it probably would have powdered her jaw despite the reinforcement. Her head whipped round as she spat blood out. Her lack of depth perception wasn’t helping and he knew that, he’d snuck the blow in on her blind side. He hit her in the chest hard enough to turn it into one large bruise. She felt her hard armour breastplate crack. She stumbled back and decided to sit down and try and breathe again.
‘You know you can’t win this, right?’ Resnick asked as he closed with her. He wasn’t playing with his food. It was simple psych warfare one-oh-one. He would look for any advantage. Humiliating his opponent didn’t come into it. Besides, he was right.
His boot flew at her head. Miska managed to move out of the way so that it only caught her a glancing blow. It still cracked her half-helm, made her IVD jump, and left her with the strong urge to vomit as she went sprawling in the mud. Where she lay she could see his muddy boots getting closer. She was absurdly pleased that she had managed to hold onto her knife. It wasn’t difficult to play dead. She plunged the knife into his boot. He started to move but wasn’t quick enough. She stabbed again, biting in just under his kneecap. This time he actually cried out in pain. Then she aimed the diamond-edged tip straight for his groin. She felt his fingers grab her wrist. She looked up into dark eyes. It was over.
He snapped her wrist. It felt like a compound fracture. She only had a moment to experience the pain before his fist hit her in the top of the head. Her helmet split but it saved her life. She still lost consciousness just for a moment.
She was lying in the mud. She opened her eyes. Everything slowed down. She had known she was going to lose. She felt Resnick pull her up into a sitting position. Her right arm flopped around, her undersuit staining from the inside as blood filled her glove, the knife still held loosely in her right hand. Resnick made a triangle with his arms around her neck and started to squeeze. She clawed at him with her left. Fought as hard as she could as he sought to cut off the blood supply to her head.
As she fought, as everything slowed down, as she died, she caught a snapshot of the rest of the fight. Maybe Artemis had told herself this was like two groups of ancient warriors battling. Maybe she had convinced herself this was another gladiatorial tribute. It wasn’t. It was a sordid little gang fight. A prison yard brawl.
There were already bodies on the ground turning the grey mud crimson. It took her a moment to differentiate who people were. Everyone was caked in mud from head to foot. She could tell which one was Kaczmar, however, by his bulk. He was sat atop one of the Double Veterans, simultaneously biting his cheek while trying to tear open the man’s mouth. Miska imagined she could hear the sound of the flesh ripping over the noise of the battle.
Raff had locked up the arm of another Double Veteran as he repeatedly stabbed her in the armpit. Grig had another round the neck as he tried to push the tip of his knife into the contractor’s skull. Mass held his victim against a tree; he had somehow managed to get his hooked fisherman’s knife through their inertial armour and was dragging it upwards. Both Gunhir and Hemi were sat upon struggling Double Veterans, knees pinning their arms. Gunhir was repeatedly clawing at his victim’s face, while the diamond-edged titanium teeth of Hemi’s māripi pounded another Double Veteran’s face into so much ground beef.
She hoped Artemis was enjoying the show.
Miska was becoming weaker, losing consciousness. Then a crossbow bolt landed in the mud in front of her. The crossbow bolt exploded. The force of the explosion battered into Miska and she lost consciousness.
Miska came to again, reawakened by struggling medical implants. Immediately the panic hit her as Resnick’s strangulation threatened to cut off the oxygen supply to her brain. She could feel her subcutaneous armour cracking under his incredible strength. Her knife was useless in her right hand. Then she saw the rock. The fingers on her left hand closed around it. The pinnacle of Martian military training and nanotechnology was killing her and she had a rock.
It was an awkward blow with her left hand, back into where she hoped his eye was. All she had to do, however, was think about what Resnick, this Martian drone, had tried to do to her Legion, the things that New Sun and Triple S had said about her, about her father, and she found the rage to power the blow. The jagged end of the stone caught him in the eye. There was a satisfying scream of pain. The grip on her neck loosened. Miska pushed with her legs and they both went sprawling into the mud. Then it was her turn to howl with pain as she elbowed him in the nose with her right arm. It jarred her compound fracture, but he let go of her. She rolled off him. Managed to push herself up onto her knees. Resnick’s eye was a bloody mess. Now he looked angry. Good. She smashed the stone into his face, turning the expression of incredulous rage red. She did it again. And again but this time he caught her left arm. He kicked out from the ground, catching her in the stomach and sending her flying with the force of the blow. Resnick was up on his feet again.
‘Why won’t you just die?’ Miska asked as he stalked towards her. It seemed like a reasonable question. Then Resnick was stood over her. He moved as though to stamp on her. Then his hand came up and he caught another crossbow bolt. He quickly threw it away from himself. Even as the crossbow bolt blew up in mid-air another thumped into his buttock and exploded. His leg blown from under him, he flopped into a messy somersault, his head battering into the earth on the way down.
Miska didn’t waste any time. She screamed again as her left hand wrestled her knife, which she had somehow managed to hold on to, out of her useless right hand. She threw herself into the air as Resnick tried to push himself up, a chunk missing from his buttock and the top of his left leg. She screamed out again as she landed on him, jarring her broken right arm, forcing him into the mud. She plunged the knife into his neck, pushing it upwards. She felt resistance from whatever armour he had under the skin, some subcutaneous inertial armour-like nanotech application, then resistance from his spine. She kept pushing as he bucked under her. She kept pushing until he was still. Then she twisted the knife and tore it out but she hadn’t finished. She pushed herself unsteadily to her feet, awkwardly clawing at the straps on her back before finally managing to pull out Nyukuti’s boomer-sword. The angular blade clicked open. She swung the blade again and again. She kept swinging it even as the others gathered around her. She kept swinging the blade even though every jarring movement sent agony coursing through her from her compound fracture. She kept swinging until Resnick’s head came off. Then she passed out from the pain.
‘This is for the pain,’ the Ultra’s beautiful voice told her. She opened her eyes and looked up at his face, made alien by the camo-paint. She opened her mouth and accepted the painkiller that would supplement her body’s own, seriously strained, medical implants. She needed them at the moment. At the very best she was horribly concussed.
‘Why did your reactive camouflage work back there?’ she asked him. They were down by the water again. She could see Torricone, hog-tied, lying face-down in the mud. Still sequestered, still following his last instructions as he struggled against the Ultra’s bonds. There was something pathetic about it.
‘I don’t know,’ he told her. ‘Perhaps because it was part of me, perhaps Artemis allowed it.’
She noticed that her arm had been bound. She wondered when the medpak that had been driving the medgel on her back had stopped working. She was lucky that Resnick hadn’t hit her there.
She turned back to the Ultra.
‘You came back for Torricone?’ she asked. He just nodded. ‘Why risk discove
ry?’
The Ultra gave this some thought.
‘I think Artemis knew I was there anyway,’ he told her.
‘Why?’
‘Just a feeling.’
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ she pointed out.
Silver eyes spent some time looking into her own.
‘Because if he died, if you killed him, it would hurt you, perhaps irrevocably,’ he told her.
Miska didn’t know what to do with that. Eventually she had to look away. There were four bodies wrapped in their ponchos down by the water. She looked around and saw Kaneda lifting Hogg’s crossbow.
‘What happened?’ she demanded.
‘My rifle stopped working. When Hogg didn’t shoot I went looking for him. It took a moment to work out how to work this thing,’ he said holding up the crossbow. ‘It was my last shot that got him as well. I’d used two bolts on one of Resnick’s people in the wood.’
‘What happened to Hogg?’ Miska asked.
‘He was dead when I got there,’ Kaneda told her.
‘One of Resnick’s men?’ Miska asked.
‘I guess,’ Kaneda said as though no other possibility had occurred to him.
Miska looked around at the others. Most of them were sat in the mud, their backs against the fungal trees. Corenbloom was conscious. She was relieved that he had lived, at least. Hemi and Mass were sound asleep. The rest of them were watching her with weary, wary eyes.
‘We’ve called for an evac,’ Grig told her. She knew that the Nightmare Squad had been carrying a tight-beam uplink. It appeared that Artemis had chosen to let them leave, allowed their tech to work.
Miska pushed herself to her feet despite protestations from the Ultra.
‘Grig, Mass … Mass!’ she shouted. Mass started awake. ‘With me!’ she snapped. She staggered over to the bodies. She spent a moment or two searching the ponchos until she found Hogg’s. He’d been killed with a knife. It’d been done professionally as well, and, she suspected, very quietly.
‘What’s up?’ Mass asked as he and Grig joined her. He sounded groggy.
‘Did you guys have eyes on each other when you were in the woods?’ she asked.
‘You think one of us did this?’ Mass asked. He sounded more surprised than offended. Chances were it had been one of Resnick’s men, that was the most logical answer. Except something was bugging her. Just as Hogg was about to tell her something about her father, something he didn’t want to say on the boat in case it was overheard, he got killed.
You’re paranoid, she told herself, this was a war.
‘Just answer the question,’ she told them.
‘No,’ Grig answered, ‘we were too strung out, too much ground to cover. We kept it simple. If either Mass or myself opened fire then the rest would join in. When we tried—’
‘Your weapons didn’t work,’ Miska finished for him. Grig just nodded and suddenly all three of them were in shadow as Kaczmar loomed over them.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Mass snapped as Kaczmar held up Resnick’s severed head.
‘I thought you would want this,’ he shouted.
They really did need to do something about his hearing.
‘Yes, yes I do,’ Miska said, ‘Thank you!’
The huge serial killer just nodded.
‘Bean was my friend,’ he told her loudly.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Miska ventured.
‘I want to eat his corpse. Something of him will live on in my colon. It’s what he would have wanted.’
Chapter 21
The Ultra had managed to talk Kaczmar out of eating Bean’s corpse. Just another day in the Legion, Miska thought.
‘Are you actually going to drink blood out of his skull?’ Corenbloom asked. All of them were sat, exhausted, in Pegasus 1’s cargo hold, heading back to Waterloo Station.
‘It’s evidence,’ Miska told him. The disgraced FBI agent nodded.
‘Is that why you’re keeping that prick alive?’ Mass asked. He nodded to where a gagged Torricone had been strapped into one of the fold-down bucket seats. He was still trying to follow his last verbal instructions. Still trying to kill Miska with hate on his face and panic in his eyes.
‘Yes,’ Miska lied. She was too tired and in too much pain to argue with Mass at the moment.
‘Fine,’ Mass said. He groaned as he pushed himself out of his seat. Like everyone else bar Grig, Raff and, of course, the Ultra, Mass was a mass of bruises, minor cuts and some not so minor cuts. Most of them in the back of the ship were a patchwork of medgel, swellpatches and mud. Mass had been one of the legionnaires who’d required attention from a fleshknitter. Miska was pleased to be back in an environment where technology worked again.
‘Hey!’ Miska shouted as Mass punched the bound Torricone in the face. The Ultra was on his feet, interposing himself between Mass and the struggling sequestered Torricone. Mass had his hands up and was backing way.
‘Simple reciprocity,’ he told the prolific serial killer. ‘It’s done now.’ He went and sat down again.
‘Fuck’s sake, Mass,’ Miska muttered, shaking her head. Her arm was wrapped in a medpak-driven medgel cast, applied by the Ultra after the shuttle had picked them up. Artemis had remained true to her word and had let them leave. The Ultra had also reapplied medgel and a pak to the bullet lodged in her back.
Corenbloom was sat on the other side of the cargo bay, slowly drifting off to sleep. He’d been hit pretty hard and had spent most of the fight in the mud.
‘Corenbloom,’ Miska subvocalised over a direct comms link. He jerked awake and looked around for a moment as though trying to work out where the voice was coming from. ‘When we get back I want you and the Doc to look over Hogg’s body.’
‘Why?’ Corenbloom asked. ‘You don’t think it was one of Resnick’s guys?’
‘I think it was one of Resnick’s guys. I’m just being thorough.’
‘Let me get some rest, but then sure.’
She opened a comms link to the Hangman’s Daughter and spoke with her father. It seemed that the ship was under siege.
Miska, four of her mud-covered mercenaries and Raff made their way down the Central Concourse, weapons at the ready. Except Miska couldn’t hold her AK-47 because of her broken arm, so she just had the ageing Glock in her left hand. Her right hand worked just well enough for her to hold onto Resnick’s head.
She had sent the Ultra and the rest of the Nightmare Squad back to the Daughter. She could have done with their firepower if things turned nasty but any way she cut it they were bad press. Kaczmar would get his ear fixed and his (non-human-flesh) meal when they docked somewhere they weren’t going to get lynched. There had been some groaning when she’d ordered them to clean their weapons. She had been worried about the pollen that had adhered to and jammed up their weapons down on Ephesus, but now it was just yellow dust. There was still a lot of mud to clean off, however. The Ultra had offered to clean her guns. Stubbornly she’d insisted on cleaning the Glock herself. She would do the rest later when her right arm worked again. The Nightmare Squad had passed on any spare ammunition to Mass, Corenbloom, Hemi and Kaneda.
Kaneda was ahead of her, Corenbloom behind, pushing the bound and still-struggling sequestered Torricone ahead of him. Mass and Hemi were on the other side of the street. Raff was moving more casually, coming along for the ride but trying to make it clear, through distance, that he wasn’t one of the Bastards.
There weren’t a lot of people on the street but even hardened mercenaries decided to give the five mud-covered, heavily-if-anachronistically armed Bastards a wide berth. Especially when their leader was carrying the commander of Triple S (elite)’s decapitated head.
Miska magnified her vision when the concourse’s curve brought Salik’s nineteenth century townhouse into view. There were four guards that she could see. They looked like Triple S (conventional). She guessed they’d run out of special forces operators. She called the targets for the rest of the fire team.
Lomas Hinton had been shot to death in the stall of a toilet. There had been at least three shooters according to the news reports. Somebody had put the head of a decapitated rat in his mouth and, to really drive the message home, the words ‘rat motherfucker’ had been painted on the stalls in the victim’s blood.
Someone had fire-bombed the Waterloo Station offices of New Sun’s PR company. The words ‘tell the truth’ had been painted on the walls.
A number of ‘reporters’, those who had toed the New Sun/Triple S line, had their tongues cut out. The words ‘tell the truth’ had been tattooed on their foreheads. Again they had claimed that three masked assailants had done this.
Needless to say, the Bastard Legion were being blamed. Given how Mass had chuckled when he’d seen the news report, there was a chance that the Legion was actually responsible this time. There was certainly something Mafiaesque about the attacks, Miska decided. What worried her a little was that the attacks must have had hacker support so that the ‘assailants’ hadn’t been caught on security viz. If it had been the Legion, then she was less than pleased about the use of a hacker. They were dangerous to her. On the other hand, she hadn’t been there so it wouldn’t be fair to criticise their call. All of this had, of course, caused outrage on the station. As a result the Hangman’s Daughter was currently clamped to the station with Salik’s security force, the elements of Triple S that had been up on the station, and a few other mercenary groups including the Dogs of Love camped outside.