Kismet

by Watts Martin

  Jack, Ms. Ziff and Other Guy have come out of their tent, staring in slow motion confusion. Get it together, Jack. Maybe Other Guy isn’t armed, maybe he’s just slow, but Ziff already has her own pistol out. She’s seen Gail, she’s turning. Gail brings up her pistol—she doesn’t see any signs of a biometric lock on it, so with any luck it’ll fire for her—lines up the shot, and pulls the trigger. It fires. Ziff staggers, distracted enough by the sudden hole in her chest that she doesn’t return fire.

  The remaining crew—down by four already—start to react. One man’s charging toward her like a bull. Another woman’s got a gun out. Yet another woman’s just screaming. Confusion, anger, terror. She might have a few more seconds in real time to keep taking advantage of it.

  She runs hard toward Jack. Someone she didn’t keep track of gets off a shot and she feels it go right past her ear.

  Jack pulls out his gun, moving at what she sees as nearly normal speed, maybe eight or nine times faster than real normal. And—

  —points it at her.

  Okay, he’s putting on a good show for Purity, but no time for her to figure out how to play it. Randall is moving, three others are moving, two other guns are out. She dives into a roll.

  Jack fires. Misses. Deliberately? By the time she decides yes, deliberately, she’s already barreled into him. They go rolling together.

  “Kis took out their radio.” She doesn’t slow down her speech, letting it stay as ridiculously accelerated as the rest of her, hoping his own biomods are still engaged and he’ll understand. “We need to get to Burke, get the databox and disable that cargo ship.”

  He stops the rolling, with him on top, and points the gun at her head. “Power down.” He speaks loudly, at normal pace, so everyone else can hear. He has a swollen eye, a cut on one cheek. How much of the rest of him’s been worked over?

  “Jack—” she hisses low.

  “Power down!” His eyes flick to the group, then back to her.

  Ears lowering, she does what he says. Is this part of his plan? It wouldn’t have been part of hers, if she’d had one.

  For a split-second after she shuts off the biomods it’s a relief, as muscles stop straining, nerve endings stop being overloaded. Then abruptly she aches everywhere. Ow. Christ, don’t get a leg cramp. She’ll have a couple bursts of reserve for later this way, right? If she gets a later.

  Kis chimes in her ear. “The starboard fuel container has been damaged by the impact. The leak is slow, but we will not be able to return to the Ceres Ring. If we depart within two hours we will have enough fuel to dock at Kingston for repairs.”

  Great.

  Jack sits up, gun still pointed at her. He winces, then gets to his feet, yanking her up with him. When they’re both standing he braces an arm around her neck. It’s not tight enough to hurt, but it’s uncomfortable.

  How many are left? Six. She did okay. Okay, if shooting a woman in the chest is okay, if cracking two people’s heads together like eggshells is okay, if breaking someone’s leg with a stomp is okay. None of it is okay.

  Four of them have guns out, but they’re all lowering them. She’s been subdued.

  She didn’t see Burke run out of his tent, but he’s here now, breathing hard, perfect hair finally looking out of place. He’s joined by three new people she hasn’t seen before. They don’t have guns out, but she has to assume they’re armed, too.

  “What in God’s name—” He looks around at the damage she did in the few seconds she had free reign. “You and you and you.” He stabs his finger at people, including Bull and Screaming Woman. “Get up there,” he points at the spindle, “and see what the hell the damage is. Bring pressure suits.” They nod and scramble away, the woman flashing Gail a fearful look as she passes by.

  Burke glares at his surviving crew before his gaze settles on Jack and Gail. “You brought her here, Mr. Thomas, yet didn’t think to mention she had biomodifications above and beyond mongrel nature. Why is that?”

  Jack gestures with his gun toward Nelson. Nelson doesn’t respond; he’s hugging himself, trying to look stoic and failing. He might be going into shock. “I assumed he would have told you.”

  “Did you.” Burke walks toward Nelson. “And did you know?”

  Nelson’s teeth are clenched so tightly it takes him a second to get an answer out. “Y…yeah. Figured you’d…keep gun on her…”

  “Perhaps if we’d known she was superhuman, we would have.”

  Gail makes a mockingly sad face. “Guess none of you are, huh? That wouldn’t be pure enough.”

  “No.” He smiles patronizingly. “But guns are a marvelous leveler, and I don’t think it’s fair for you to have one. Especially since I believe you’ve stolen it from Mr. Nelson here. Mr. Thomas, would you disarm Gail?”

  Jack presses his own gun against Gail’s head. “Hand me the gun, very slowly.”

  She swallows and hands him the pistol. Now that she has a moment to look at it, it’s a nice one, one of the few kinds she recognizes: an eighteen-round magazine, three-round bursts, only two shots fired.

  “Thank you.” Burke approaches Jack. “And now give me the gun.”

  Jack holds out Gail’s pistol, reholstering his own. “You’re lucky you hadn’t let me leave yet.”

  “And Ms. Simmons was lucky her handcuffs were so curiously easy to break.” Burke slams the pistol’s grip into the side of Jack’s head, then turns to the surviving henchman who’d taken Jack into the tent. “Mr. Reeves. What was your impression of Mr. Thomas’s sincerity?”

  Reeves shuffles his feet, glancing back at Ziff’s body, then at his boss. “He doesn’t seem like he likes totemics much, and especially doesn’t like her.” He gestures at Gail. “And I think he’s right that trying to keep him out of sight would just raise questions.”

  “Mmm.” Burke steps away again. “It remains hard for me to trust this last-minute change of heart of yours. The databox would already be on its way to Earth if you hadn’t taken it to, of all places, New Coyoacán.”

  Jack is holding one hand to his now-bleeding head. “I didn’t understand the stakes…’til I learned what was on the box.” He shakes his head once, then moves closer to Gail again. “Shakti…can’t happen.”

  Burke steps back and crosses his arms. “If we’re in agreement, I can tell you to shoot Ms. Simmons in the head—”

  “She’s mine!” Randall bursts out.

  Burke turns. “Mr. Corbett, I’m aware of your feelings, but do not give me orders.”

  Jack leans toward her. “Power on,” he mouths silently.

  Her eyes widen fractionally. If it wouldn’t get both of them shot she’d kiss him. Hard.

  She turns on all her biomods.

  “The whole reason she’s here is me!” Corbett isn’t paying attention to Gail and Jack now. “The whole reason we’re all here—that’s me. Me!” Randall gestures toward the rat, but his eyes remain fixed on Burke. “I’m the one who knew her, who knew who to call for the dark courier, who set—”

  “Mr. Corbett.” Burke’s voice rises like a drill sergeant. “We are here to save humanity from itself for at least a few more decades. Fulfilling your pathetic vendetta against a do-nothing drifter is not our priority.”

  Reeves turns in their direction and he starts to exclaim—something. His hand makes it to the hilt of his gun before Jack shoots him.

  Gail goes for Burke. They slide the same way she and Nelson did a few minutes ago, but this time she rolls, making sure he’s on top of her when people start firing at her. She doesn’t see who wings him, but she feels him jerk.

  She lifts him up enough to frantically search through his jacket until she gets a hand around the databox and shoves it into her pocket. To her, it’s long seconds; to him it’s just fractions of them.

  She grabs his gun—Nelson’s gun—her gun now, goddammit—and lines up a shot, using Burke as cover. An Asian woman’s taking aim at Jack. Gail shoots her in the head. A middle-aged guy, maybe a decade older tha
n Gail, is raising a gun toward her, but Burke’s body blocks his shot. It blocks hers, too.

  She throws Burke to the side and shoots in the same motion, hitting her target in the arm, not anywhere vital. That’s enough to get him to drop his weapon—he’s no more a trained fighter than she is. Then she throws herself into motion, picking up speed, and slams herself into him. They both go down. She feels his ribs crack.

  When she raises her arm she intends to slam it down on his chest with enough force to kill, but she makes the mistake of looking into his eyes. He’s not just in pain, he’s absolutely terrified.

  For that moment she sees what he does: not a woman, not another human. He sees fur and claws and fangs. He sees a monster, as smart as he is but much stronger, much faster, smashing down him and his compatriots as if they were insects. Maybe he knows her superpowers are biomechanical, not genetic, that they can’t be passed from generation to generation. But when he looks at her, he sees people who will always be a little stronger, a little faster, always have better ears, better eyes than his people ever will. He sees the future he has to stop.

  Something punches her right shoulder and pain blossoms across it, nerves all at once aflame. Dammit to hell, she’s been shot.

  She spins around, raising her gun, but her biomods and her body have desynced. When she fires at the man who shot at her, the shot flies wide, high, and this time the recoil turns the flame in her shoulder into an inferno. She topples over onto the man she’d shot a couple seconds ago, and he screams again.

  As she switches the gun to her left hand—not as good, but if she can get her damn circuits under control they’ll compensate—the man she’s trying to get a bead on crumples, blood and bone spraying from the back of his head. She rolls over and fires at a woman standing near Randall. Her target jerks backward, but she can’t tell where she hit yet. Seeing it all at ten-times acceleration makes it surreal. It’s felt like minutes since Jack “switched sides,” yet in real, objective time, it’s not even ten seconds. Randall’s gun is out but not pointed at her or Jack. He’s staring at the man Jack just shot to save Gail.

  No. He’s staring at the man he just shot to save Gail. Mara’s Wounds.

  The only people left standing are her and Corbett. Jack’s sitting, at least, not sprawled somewhere, but he’s clutching his thigh. Shit. They’ve both gotten off a lot easier than they could have, though.

  Burke’s pushed himself up into a sitting position. The side of his suit’s soaked with blood. “What have you done?”

  Randall looks back at him, but points the gun at her. “I said she’s mine!” His voice shakes with hysteria.

  Gail winces at her throbbing shoulder. Shouldn’t the biomods be helping with that? Maybe they are, and it’s going to hurt much worse when she shuts them off. Great thought. She swings her gun around. “Randall, you know I can shoot you before you squeeze the trigger.”

  Burke pushes himself to his feet and staggers toward the elevator.

  “Take another step, and I’ll shoot Randall and then you.”

  With a pained sigh, Burke turns around, raising his hands in the air.

  She keeps her eyes locked onto Corbett, watching his face for any slight tic, any indication he’s about to fire. “Jack, are you okay?”

  His voice is strained, wheezing. “Been better.”

  Back to Randall. “I swear to God if you don’t drop that gun right now I’ll drop you.”

  He trembles, eyes filled with a hatred too deep to have a name, and lets the gun drop to the tile with a clatter.

  When she shuts her biomods off again her shoulder explodes anew. Ow. Jesus ow. She takes in a sharper, more gasping breath than she intended. “Kis.”

  “Yes, Gail?”

  “Send a message to Bunten and the RJC with our location, that cargo ship’s faked registry information, and the image of Thomas Burke Junior here I’m sending now. Wave to the mongrels, Tom.” He gives her a sour, affronted glare. “Good enough. Tell them to send help, right now, and to get Jack’s family back on Earth to a safe house.”

  “Yes, Gail. I’ll connect them directly to you if they have questions.”

  “Okay, but tell them to hurry. And bring medics.”

  Burke sighs thinly. “And you have a transceiver in your head, talking to…you’d have already called anyone hiding on your ship, I would think. Your ship’s control system.”

  “Good guess. Now we have to—”

  “Gail!” Jack’s yelling, lurching toward her. She turns just as something smacks her back and abruptly her vision goes to static. Crap, not again.

  When she comes to, she’s moving. She’s being dragged. When she tries to switch her biomods back on, part of the HUD lights up, but nothing else. How long was she out? Only a few seconds, she thinks, but that’s too long.

  The middle-aged guy, the one she shot but didn’t kill, had the stunner. He’s dead now. She hears shots from high above. Jack’s running. Burke’s running.

  She manages to flop one arm against her vest, feeling the pocket. The databox is still there. Her stolen gun’s gone, dropped on the tiles. Where’s Randall? He’s the one dragging her. Now he’s lifting her up.

  “Y…” Her voice isn’t working quite yet.

  Burke lurches into the elevator. The hell—he’s going for the one part of the plan she hasn’t screwed up for him, isn’t he? The cargo ship.

  Jack jumps back as a round of fire from above ricochets off the ground in front of him, and catches sight of Gail. He freezes for just a moment.

  She forces her jaws to work, screaming hoarsely. “Go after him! Go—”

  Randall slams her back against one of the panoramic windows. At least this side is real glass. He may be scrawny but right now he’s looming over her, and he’s mad as hell.

  She raises her voice. “Jack! Go!”

  He goes, climbing up the service ladder. That has to hurt, but he doesn’t show—

  Randall punches her right in the muzzle. She feels something crack somewhere, and her mouth fills with blood.

  “Guh.” She shields her face, now that it’s too late to help. He slugs her in the chest instead, and she slides down the glass.

  “A ship has been dispatched from New Coyoacán,” Kismet announces. “The estimated arrival time is six hours thirty-nine minutes.” Good. Whatever it is, it’s fast.

  While he’s still seething, he doesn’t kick her. Yet. But he doesn’t need to. He still has a gun, and it’s out, pointed at her. “It’ll only take a couple minutes to launch the ship. Even if I’m the only one left, I’m going to make you watch.”

  Heaving gasp. She needs air, to inflate her lungs again. “You…” Another gasp. “Burke’s…not gonna…suicide mission.”

  “Of course he will.” He laughs. “You don’t see it? We’re just like you. We’re just like your mother. We’ll die for our cause.”

  Her wind’s almost back. She looks up at him steadily, even though that puts her almost nose to barrel with his pistol. “My mother didn’t…want to die for her cause…any more than yours.”

  “My mother didn’t believe in blowing up innocent people!”

  “Neither did mine.” When he continues not shooting her, she risks sliding back up the wall, slowly, warily, hands still in front of her. There’s no one else left moving in the plaza, and she can’t tell if any are even still alive. “But we’re both here right here, right now, because Purity does.”

  For a second, it’s on his face. He knows she’s right. Of course he knows. How couldn’t he? He knows the people he’s working with are the people who killed her mother, that to them his mother was just collateral damage.

  Gail straightens up without leaning on the wall, trying not to wobble. She’s beat to hell, somehow Randall’s remained almost untouched, and she’s going to have to fight him, without a gun and without biomods. At least there’s a slight waver as he holds his gun on her.

  When he speaks, the waver’s in his voice, too. “I told my mother not
to go with yours. But she said it was important. She said it was a mission. Can you believe that?” He looks into her eyes, and for a moment she sees the twelve-year-old kid there, a child who’s just been told his mother’s been killed in an attack on someone else. How could that happen? She sees someone who still doesn’t have an answer twenty years later.

  “Yeah, Randall, I can.” She wipes her mouth; the fur on the back of her hand comes away bloody, but at least the taste’s fading. Did he break one of her front teeth? Is she feeling that with her tongue?

  The anger comes back to his eyes. “Turn around. Look out the window.”

  “Jack will stop him. Even if he doesn’t, I’ve warned them. It’s over.”

  “Turn around!”

  She does so. She tries to trigger her biomods one more time and gets a painful electric shock running through her arms. At least they’re responding. Is that better or worse?

  “The warning won’t help.” The tremble in his voice has grown. “We worked out just the right flight path, just the right transmissions.”

  Her ears fold down. God, she can see the flight paths in her head. They could really do it. Then Randall’s going to shoot her and take the databox. “You think making me suffer before you kill me is going to make you happy?” She turns around again, partway, looking at him.

  He watches her with an expression as uncertain as it is hateful. He’s very close to her. Too close. There’s never going to be a better moment.

  She leaps for him, driving her head into his chest. He fires, and she feels the bullet punch her good shoulder. While she desperately hopes the force will make him fall over, it doesn’t. Gail’s not heavy enough, doesn’t have enough momentum.