Lu Bu unthinkingly hurled Glacier Splitter at the guardsman and was rewarded with a direct hit to his near hip. The impact was enough to unseat him from his perch atop the Tracto-an’s shoulders, and Lu Bu drew Walter Joneson’s vibro-knife from her belt just in time to parry an attack which the second guardsman sent toward her head with his own humming weapon.
The air was incredibly thin in the subterranean passage, but it was thankfully breathable and as the energized weapon passed her head her nostrils were filled with a smell that she had come to associate with electrical fires.
The vibro-knife deactivated immediately when it met and deflected the staff, but she didn’t care. She had perhaps done herself a favor by abandoning the cumbersome warhammer, and even if Joneson’s virbo-knife was now no better than a regular knife it would allow her to maximize her speed and agility.
She could not spare her allies another moment’s attention; she was about to engage her foe to the death, and when she lunged forward she knew that the battle might end at any moment.
She sent a series of rapid-fire attacks toward her foe’s torso, each of which he deftly avoided. She worked left and right, dancing from foot to foot as she kept him off-balance and forced him to spin his body this way and that to avoid being skewered. The speed of her attack kept him from putting both hands on his staff weapon, and she held no illusions that as soon as he regained his two-handed grip on the energy staff he would regain the advantage.
She swept a low kick with her injured leg, which her foe easily danced away from, but she followed the kick with a spinning backfist with her right, unarmed hand. She followed that with a pair of rapid stabs of the knife—one of which skittered off his breastplate while the other missed entirely.
She raised her good foot and kicked his staff weapon wide as he attempted to bring it before his body so he might regain a proper grip—and only in that moment did she realize that only one of the weapon’s heads was crackling with energy, and it happened to be the end closest to his still-gripping hand.
Lu Bu re-focused her attention on the weapon, sending swipes and stabs at his arm while essentially running full-speed toward her backpedaling opponent. She was amazed that he could retreat as capably as she could advance, but took solace in the fact that they had very nearly reached the wall. Once she had neutralized his superior mobility, it would be a doable to disarm the agile warrior and put the engagement on terms that favored her—terms that focused solely on brute force and physical superiority.
When the warrior had backpedaled to within a meter of the wall, she feinted a lunge with the knife before lifting her leg and push-kicking him into the stone wall.
To her morbid fascination, he let her kick push him toward the wall in stride, placed a foot against that wall, and literally began to walk backward up the vertical surface without missing a beat. Her split second of surprise cost her every inch of ground she had just gained as her opponent managed to re-grip his staff with his free hand, and when he did so the weapon’s second tip crackled to life.
He pushed off and leapt over her body, swiping at her neck as he sailed above her head and forcing her to duck or be hit by the blasted weapon. He regained his footing with improbable grace and drove forward with a series of swipes and stabs that quickly saw Lu Bu back dangerously close to the wall.
She tried to feint left and escape to the right, but her foe was too savvy and nearly stabbed her through the throat when he correctly anticipated her maneuver. She attempted to blitz forward and create an escape angle, but he snapped a kick into her left temple that saw her vision explode into a field of stars. She swung the knife blindly as she staggered into the wall, and for an instant she was certain that her life was at an end. In that moment she was unable to differentiate up from down, left from right, or in from out. That she was aware at all was something she considered a blessing from the Ancestors, since it meant she might consciously experience some small part of her life’s end.
But the end never came; instead, a loud thunk was followed by a skittering sound. When her vision cleared she saw that the guardsman’s body had been driven into the joint between the floor and the wall to her right. Blinking in confusion, her eyes settled on the massive sword which the Tracto-an wielded, but for some reason the Tracto-an was nowhere to be seen.
It took her another pair of precious seconds to realize he had hurled the weapon in an effort to save her, and when she finally connected the proverbial dots she reached down for Joneson’s knife and leapt onto the guardsman’s back just as he began to regain his feet.
She stabbed down with the knife, using brute strength to jam the tip of her old Sergeant’s weapon into the guardsman’s lightly-protected neck. The first three blows failed to pierce the flexible material his coif was made from, but the fourth penetrated an inch deep. She tried to drive it in further, but her strength along was not enough. She raised her fist and slammed it into the knife’s pommel once—twice—three times with enough force to break a bone in her hand with each blow, but finally the weapon sank to the hilt in her adversary’s neck.
She gave a series of violent twists and tugs which quickly saw his body spasm and then go limp. Ripping the knife from his profusely-bleeding throat, she turned and saw the other guardsman appeared to have gained the upper hand on the armored Tracto-an. But the Tracto-an now wielded Glacier Splitter, and using his armor’s powered servos he was able to swing it in his right hand like a carpenter might swing a framing hammer.
The damage to his suit in the past few minutes had been severe, and it was clear that the guardsman was methodically—and successfully—disrupting the suit’s functions with his energy staff. Both legs and the left arm were visibly slowed, which meant that the warrior within the suit was operating on nothing but muscle power—which would put him at a deadly disadvantage to the agile guardsman.
Lu Bu considered throwing Joneson’s knife, but knew that even a direct hit would do little more than alert him to her presence. And since his counterpart had failed to react to the incoming sword when the Tracto-an had hurled it, she guessed they were operating largely independent of each other.
So she picked up the massive sword—which looked like it should weigh between thirty and forty pounds—and felt that it was impossibly light in her hands. Its balance was absurd, and she knew that she would be unable to wield it effectively in a duel due to a lack of practice. But all she needed was one reasonably good attack to turn the tide in the Tracto-an’s favor, so she gripped it in both hands and ran toward the embattled warriors as best she was able with her wounded leg.
The guardsman struck the warrior’s helmet with his staff and the warrior countered with a surprisingly effective sweep kick which very nearly hooked the guardsman behind the ankle. The guardsman recovered and struck the armored boot with his staff, causing the warrior to topple dangerously forward as the guardsman planted his feet and prepared to drive the staff through the warrior’s visor.
Lu Bu knew that the warrior’s life would soon be over, so she abandoned the element of surprise by screaming in her native tongue, “Die!”
The guardsman turned his head in her direction just as she closed to range, and the tip of his weapon wavered at the last instant just enough that it buried itself several inches into the top of the Tracto-an’s helmet—just above where his skull would be—and Lu Bu slammed the sword into the guardsman’s staff weapon before he could withdraw.
The comically oversized blade whistled through the air in a perfect arc. When it struck the staff, there was an explosion which robbed her of her hearing and sent her to the stones as the shockwave drove her sideways with the force of a charging bull.
She rolled to a stop and shook her head to clear it, only vaguely aware of a scramble taking place nearby as she gathered her limbs beneath her body. She barely managed to react in time to roll out of the way of the armored warrior’s bulk as he crashed to the stone.
But when her vision finally returned, she saw that the battle w
as won: the Tracto-an had secured both of his gauntlets around the guardsman’s torso, and with brutal force the gauntleted fingers of his still-functioning arm began to crack the light armor which protected the guardsman’s vital organs.
To his credit, the guardsman made no pained protests as he valiantly struggled against the inevitable crushing of his ribcage. But without a weapon, and in the grip of such an obviously powerful foe, his resistance was predictably futile.
After several sickening cracks within the guardsman’s chest, the Tracto-an released his grip with his left hand, drug his foe toward him with his right arm, and thundered fist after fist into the guardsman’s helmet. The first blow cracked the guardsman’s visor, the second shattered it, and the third made a wet crunch that saw the guardsman go limp as the gauntlet buried to the knuckles in brain, blood, and bone.
The Tracto-an completed the brutal execution with another pair of blows which reduced the guardsman’s skull to pudding within what remained of his helmet. The Tracto-an attempted to stand, but his left leg’s servos appeared to have seized up entirely and prevented him from straightening his leg.
Lu Bu looked to the far side of the room, where Lynch and Senator Raubach’s duel continued to ring out whenever their weapons met. She briefly considered ignoring Lynch’s orders not to interfere, but decided that even if she wished to do so she would be better served with the Tracto-an at her side than without him. And to do that, they needed to extricate him from his ruined casement.
The Tracto-an had apparently arrived at the same conclusion, as he popped his helmet off and unceremoniously discarded it. “Stay still,” she instructed as she moved to his flank, where the manual interlocks were located which joined the front and rear pieces of the bulky armor, “I will unlock.”
It took them only a few seconds to undo the locks, and the armor’s breastplate fell away with a clatter as the Tracto-an rolled himself over onto his back and carefully climbed out of the armor.
When he stood to his full height, Lu Bu was struck by his physical dimensions; he was as tall as Kratos had been, though his torso was more classically V-shaped and his limbs were noticeably longer than the one-eyed Tracto-an’s had been. He had long, blond hair covering half of his head, and a horrifying scar which seemed to cover the other half.
“You fight well,” he said with a nod, and Lu Bu was not ashamed to admit his voice was everything that a man’s should sound like: deep, rich and measured. “Should we help?” he asked, tilting his chin toward the remaining duelists.
“He does not wish it,” Lu Bu shook her head, proffering the bulky, impossibly light sword’s hilt. “This is a fine blade.”
“I have had finer,” the Tracto-an said darkly, nodding in thanks as he accepted the weapon from her. He turned and retrieved Glacier Splitter, which Lu Bu now saw was damaged so severely that she doubted it would be much better than a club until it had undergone significant repairs, and presented its haft to her. “How did you come to possess that hammer?” he asked after she had accepted the hammer, and she noted that his eyes—both of which were the color of cold iron—caught on the weapon for several seconds as the sounds of the ongoing duel filled the stony chamber.
“It was a gift,” she replied, eyeing the battle between Lynch and Senator Raubach as she slung Glacier Splitter across her back. “Do you know it?” she asked as she sighted the other guardsman’s energy staff near where is dead body rested against the wall. She moved toward the staff, determined to claim it as a trophy at the very least.
“I do,” the warrior replied simply, “it was once offered to me, but I refused it.”
“You refused it?” she repeated in surprise before remembering that most of the Tracto-ans had considered Kratos to be some kind of heretic. “You thought it was tainted,” she concluded as she carefully picked up the dormant energy staff and gave it a cursory examination.
“Yes,” the warrior said with a note of surprise before sighing and shaking his head. “I once thought that rejecting it was the obvious choice…of late, I have begun to doubt that conviction.”
“We move forward or die in the past,” Lu Bu said, echoing something she had heard one of her shipmates espouse several months earlier.
“Well said,” the warrior nodded as they turned to face the combatants. They studied their moves and exchanges for nearly a minute of silence before the warrior declared, “The battle is already over; this is no longer about deciding the outcome. It is about shaping the loser’s final moments.”
Lu Bu had to concur with the Tracto-an’s assessment of the battle. Every time Senator Raubach expertly parried or dodged an attack with his slender, ornate weapon, Lynch was presented with an opportunity to press the attack which he never took. None of the openings would end the fight outright, but they would at worst wrong-foot the Senator or allow Lynch to score a peripheral hit.
“This is about dominance, not victory,” Lu Bu agreed. “I think Lynch has waited many years for this.”
“A meal should be chewed and swallowed,” the blond Tracto-an snorted, “not savored. That way lies defeat,” he growled as his jaw muscles bulged rhythmically as he audibly ground his teeth.
Lu Bu looked up at the warrior’s horribly scarred head and that image, combined with the dark tone of his voice, suggested that the Tracto-an was speaking from personal experience.
The combatants broke apart and Senator Raubach’s perfectly sculpted physique heaved with each long, labored breath while Lynch cracked his neck laconically.
“You cannot win,” Senator Raubach huffed, his previously unshakable demeanor still far from broken.
“Looks like I’m doin’ just fine, Jimmy,” Lynch sneered. “Say the words and I’ll let you crawl away from this—say ‘em not, and I’ll turn you into a steppin’ stone.”
“Everything has changed,” Senator Raubach spat, pointing his sword at the Core Fragment. “Do you honestly think you can escape the wrath of the Empire of Man after your planned heresy becomes known?”
“Escape?” Lynch scoffed, shaking his head piteously. “That’s the problem with you, Jimmy: you was always too myopic. I don’t want to escape, Jimmy,” he said, spinning the long-handled sword over as though it was as light as a feather, “I want a reformation…and, if I’m lucky, a few more reckonings like this one.”
“You are an abomination and a heretic,” Raubach spat, the fire of zealous rage bursting through his perfectly composed veneer as he surged forward, “and you will die a heretic’s death!”
Lynch sidestepped the attack with a ballerina’s grace and slammed his pommel into Senator Raubach’s face with blinding speed, sending a handful of pearly whites flying amid a spray of blood. Before those teeth landed on the stone floor, Lynch gripped the Senator’s sword-arm at the wrist with his right hand and unceremoniously amputated James Raubach II’s arm at the elbow with a downward chop of the over-sized sword. Before the first drop of blood had fallen from the arterial spray issuing from the Senator’s fresh stump, Lynch launched a vicious front kick into his adversary’s chin which lifted him a full foot off the floor before his body crashed to the ground.
“Game over, Jimmy,” Lynch said contemptuously. “Say the words, or I’m takin’ this to the next level.”
Senator Raubach’s insane, zealous rage melted away, and in its stead came a firm resolve which Lu Bu had not expected. “You may kill me,” he spat, his eyes drifting to the ominously silent and motionless Core Fragment, “but I die having seen the face of our god—MAN will strike you down for your heresy. My name will live on—“
Lynch flicked the blade across the Senator’s throat with a surgeon’s precision, cutting the leader of House Raubach’s final words short and replacing it with a gurgle of blood.
“I’ll take that as your refusal to do the right thing,” Lynch said, leaning down until his eyes were inches from the Senator’s, “but you can die knowin’ I’ll do far worse to your precious name than I ever did to your body.”
Th
e Senator’s eyes focused on Lynch, and for a few seconds amid the pained gurgles he seemed genuinely distressed at Lynch’s grim promise. Then Senator James Raubach II’s eyes slowly rolled back into his head, and the flow of blood from his fatal neck wound slowed until it was little more than a faint dribble. Lynch reached down and retrieved a ring from the Senator’s finger, tucked it into a small pouch on the arms dealer’s belt, and collected the ornate blade which Senator Raubach had used.
He turned and made his way to the Core Fragment, recollected his wrist-link and activated it just as the sounds of duralloy boots began to echo down the tunnel through which they had come.
Lynch turned to face the Tracto-an, then Lu Bu, offering each a nod of what seemed like genuine respect, “Takin’ down Senatorial Guardsmen ain’t no small thing; each one was easily twice the fighter old Jimmy was. Good on both of you.”
Lu Bu saw the white-bearded Ganymede appear at the head of the small group of warriors—which thankfully included Hutch and Shiyuan—and breathed a sigh of relief as she made eye contact with the last remaining members of her team.
“Now let’s blow this hole,” Lynch declared, activating the Core Fragment’s repulsors with a series of commands to his link, and the retinue made their way to the surface of the planet a few hundred meters past the junction.
Chapter XXXII: A Timely Pick-up
McKnight was still reeling from the loss of her first genuine command. She had seized the Slice of Life during the Battle of Cagnzyz and commanded it during the return to Fleet HQ, but the Freedom’s Bastard had been her first genuine, assigned command and she had lost it during her first proper mission.
The part of her that despised the lack of running water in her quarters—which had been barely a quarter the size of which her berth on the Pride of Prometheus had been—and the generally inhospitable nature of the Bastard had caused her no small amount of personal discomfort. But it had been her ship, and the official record would almost certainly read that she lost it at the very first opportunity.
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