Corporate Gunslinger

by Doug Engstrom

  “I declare this match to be a win by forfeit for TKC Insurance and their representative, Kira Clark. This judgment is final, and there can be no further appeals.”

  Kira turned to Diana, who clapped her on the shoulder. “Nice job.”

  Kira accepted Diana’s congratulations, and looked back toward the field. No blood. No gun smoke. No body. Just a clean stage and a good payday.

  Heads turned as Kira entered the Gunslinger’s Lounge. Even without the cloak, left in her locker after her truncated debrief with Diana, the Death’s Angel outfit garnered attention. It didn’t hurt that an analysis of her forfeit was playing on the vid terminal right above the bar. From his manager’s station, Steve greeted her before returning to the task of preparing his staff for the coming onslaught of the Winter Qualification Week crowd. Kira selected an empty booth and snuggled into its soft, dark, padded leather. A few quick taps on the tabletop, and her order for an Angel’s Envy was in. She’d nurse that slowly while she waited for Chloe.

  Chloe’s quickmessage said she still hadn’t gotten Diana’s blessing on her range work, but she’d be down to the Lounge in half an hour or so. The plan was a quick victory drink and then home to change into Guild jackets for the Qualification Week after-party.

  The vid screens that ringed the seating area pulled at Kira’s attention. Most carried the wind-down of Qualification Week coverage, although there was less of that than usual. For the first time in nearly five years, no one from any of the Des Moines training complexes had been a contender for the Regional Cup. Under pressure from the patron’s lack of interest, the Lounge’s selection algorithm switched more screens to the citizen-on-citizen duels that made up the bulk of weekend matches. Some professionals enjoyed ridiculing the citizen combatants, especially when they both missed, forcing a repeat of the match. Kira had never found the contests funny, or even interesting. More like watching drunks trying to punch each other out in a bar’s parking lot than anything else.

  A replay of Gary’s Thursday afternoon duel showed up, and Kira watched his bullet graze the shoulder of his balding, stick-thin opponent. The hit barely drew blood, but it did make the guy drop his pistol. Anticipating return fire, Gary turned sideways and put his arms over his head. The citizen tried to retrieve his weapon from the pseudograss but lost his balance and fell, triggering the motion sensor.

  The vid showed Diana and Gary exchanging a congratulatory handshake, but if you knew Diana, you could see trouble coming in her expressionless face and stiff body movements. Over post-match drinks with Chloe and Kira, Gary confided she’d been furious during the debrief. She’d devoted almost the entire session to berating him, hammering on the fact that if his opponent had been a little less flustered or clumsy, he would have been standing defenseless in the kill box while the citizen had all day to set up his return shot. During the seven days after his Guild-mandated rest period ended, Gary faced sixty-three training hours and no break for the weekend.

  On the nearest wall, Niles LeBlanc held forth in a one-on-one interview with a commentator. “The guy kept trying to talk to me in the waiting room, and I just kept smacking him down, like, ‘No, y’all are not allowed to talk to me. You aren’t good enough to talk to me.’ Every time he’d open his mouth, I’d shut him down. By the time we got to the field, he was cowed.”

  Kira rolled her eyes. Aside from his drawl being a bit less pronounced, Niles hadn’t changed much. The announcer wrapped up. “So, Niles, thanks for letting us in on some of the tricks of the trade. Lesson for today: verbal interruption can create physical intimidation.”

  Niles smiled indulgently and responded. “One word of caution there, Dan. It doesn’t work with women. Not even I can get them to shut up.” He and the host exchanged knowing laughs.

  Kira clenched her jaw, noted the name of the host, and fired off a message to her publicity coordinator. If the host ever made an interview request, she wanted him to know he wasn’t getting the meeting and why he wasn’t getting it. She might only be seven fights into her career, but she’d already generated enough interest that there was some crap she didn’t have to put up with.

  The waiter arrived with her drink.

  Samuel, the Lounge’s big Samoan bouncer, planted himself on a stool near the door. The Qualification Week crowd would start arriving soon. He waved through a group of young men in shiny new gray-and-blue EMR Trust jackets. Some of the smaller companies must be finishing their receptions already. The group didn’t include a second or an instructor.

  The new grads looked around the room as if they were trying to read a reference manual. After some consultation, they staked out a table near Kira. Several of them had trouble with the table’s ordering function, and they dispatched three of their number to forage for drinks.

  Those remaining rehashed their trials.

  “So, how did you do on Friday?”

  “Eight kills, man.”

  Kira cringed. Had it only been a little over three months ago that she’d referred to a hundred-point hit on a mech as a “kill”? Kira moved deeper into her booth, drew her drink closer, and pulled her hat down low. Maybe that would be enough to hold the unbloodied wannabes at bay.

  The discussion around the table got louder. “Forty-five? You’re shitting me. You got the rest on nonfatals?”

  “Yeah, what’ve you got?”

  “Sixty-three.”

  “Bullshit.” The newly minted gunfighter detailed his record, while the pair nearest Kira held a heated discussion over a disputed match.

  “Hey there, beautiful.” A young man juggling three drinks stopped at the entrance to her booth. He had chiseled good looks, a broad chest, and a surplus of swagger.

  Kira turned her head down to her drink and pulled her arms in, watching him from under the brim of her hat.

  He absently passed off two drinks to his tablemates and sat down opposite her in the booth. Evidently not a top scorer in the “Reading Nonverbal Cues” unit.

  “I haven’t seen you around. You must have been in one of the other qualification groups, right?”

  Add an F in either “Observation and Awareness” or “Etiquette.” A new graduate would obviously be wearing a brand-new gunfighter’s jacket without a first-match pin. It was possible no one had explained the rules for approaching veterans to him, but it was more likely he was seeing nothing but “blonde girl.”

  Or maybe just “prize.”

  He looked at her expectantly. She let the silence drag out while assigning another failing grade, this one in “Taking the Hint.” Getting rid of him before Chloe arrived would take active measures. Keeping her head down, she responded. “You might say that.”

  He brightened. “I’m with EMR Trust. I got fifty-three kills on my final.” He was clearly trying to decide if she was impressed or not, then dredged for a question. “So, how many kills do you have?”

  Kira straightened and pushed her hat up to reveal her face. “Five.”

  He didn’t recognize her.

  Instead, he looked both smug and embarrassed. “Well, five is pretty good. You must have made it in on nonfatals. That took some serious shooting.”

  She took a sip of her drink, eyed him over the glass, and used the Death’s Angel voice. “I only count the ones that bleed for real.”

  Shock crossed his face, and a chorus of poorly stifled guffaws sounded from the adjoining table.

  Kira remained silent until his ears and cheeks turned a shade of red that was almost cute.

  “You can go now.”

  “OK.” He followed his whisper with a hasty retreat to his fellow graduates.

  On his return, the ridicule of her young suitor was merciless.

  “‘Oh, five, that’s pretty good.’” The high, sotto-voice re-creation provoked a storm of laughter.

  “That was Kira Clark, you twig!”

  “Hitting on Death’s Angel. What’s next, genius? Seducing the guild master’s wife?”

  The mockery had only died down a little when
Chloe arrived. She slid into the booth and nodded toward the adjoining table. “What’s with them?”

  Kira smiled. “Oh, just some new guys learning you can die places other than the dueling field.”

  Chapter 16

  The moment the changing room door snapped shut behind her, Kira crashed into the chair and buried her face in her hands.

  Fuckitall . . . Fuck it all . . . Fuck. It. All.

  Gabriel Hernandez was way too damn stubborn for his own good, and now he and his kids were going to pay for it. Yes, it was tragic that his wife had died in the damn house fire. Yes, TKC was probably avoiding payoff on the property claim through some sort of shitty, underhanded maneuver, and yes, it would be terrible that he and his four children would have to keep living in a two-bedroom apartment and he wouldn’t have anything of value to leave them when he was gone. But . . . why, oh why, oh why couldn’t he see past his own ego and understand that getting himself killed on the dueling field was going to make every single damn thing about this situation worse? Much, much worse.

  Kira had done her level best in the waiting room, but the short, wiry man had just sat there and shrugged off every appeal she’d brought to bear, from subtle sympathy and I’m-only-telling-you-this-because-I-admire-your-courage counsel to her colder-than-dry-ice parting assertion that if preserving her life meant taking his, she wouldn’t hesitate to do so. At one point, she’d even gone so far as to explain how her parents’ untimely deaths had led to her current predicament, and told him he would be putting his kids in the same situation. Nothing worked.

  Intransigent bastard. This is what they meant when they talked about people “too stubborn to accept the outcome of the process.” He’d lost, and yet he refused to quit. Now it was Kira’s job to deal with him.

  So suit up and do your damn job.

  Kira stood, pulled off her jacket, and worked through her changing room routine.

  At least this would be good for her image. Her last four fights had been no-shows, and it was about time to let the fans see some action. Convincing the guy from Louisiana she was a demon who would both kill his body and consume his soul had been a great piece of work, but it happened out of view in the waiting room. Except for the receptionist, all anyone saw was Kira, Diana, and the guy’s second listening to the judge declare a forfeit. Gunfighters with a lot of cancellations got higher ratings—intermittent reward was a helluva drug—but she did need to pay off occasionally.

  She sighed and faced the clock. Eleven minutes left.

  What if she didn’t kill him?

  During yesterday’s simulator session, she’d posted the fastest draw times of her career. What if she used the extra time to take careful aim at the shoulder instead of the heart?

  She didn’t have to guess what Diana would say: “Seconds have a technical term for gunfighters who don’t shoot to kill. We call them ‘corpses.’”

  Still, if Kira could put a round through his right shoulder while he drew, the resulting spasm would almost certainly make him drop the weapon. Even with the doubtful assumption he could get the pistol off the pseudograss without triggering his motion sensor, he’d be trying to fire through great pain with his nondominant hand. No way in hell that would work. Even after repeated drills where she tried to fire while the shock suit mimicked an injury, Kira was lucky to score a hit one in five times. An untrained citizen? No chance.

  Though the maneuver wasn’t risk free. Even though she planned a more solid shoulder hit than the one Gary managed a few weeks ago, Diana would probably respond with the same mix of rage and a punishing training schedule. If she figured out Kira avoided the kill shot on purpose, her reaction would be even worse. Still, weighed against Hernandez’s life and four orphans . . .

  Distracted, she nearly fumbled the final ID check inside the scanner.

  On the field, Diana announced the status of Mr. Hernandez’s second by making a fist and bringing it to her thigh. A Guild professional. Her index finger extended from the fist. A first-rate one at that. One more sign: Be careful.

  Hernandez hadn’t seemed like the type to hire professional help.

  She went through the drill—declaration of intent with the judge, equipment checkout, and finally, standing beside Hernandez, waiting for the Wall to go up. He wore his holster on his right leg—no surprises there. She made up her mind on the way to the start point. She’d give herself one extra beat to align on the shoulder, then take whatever shot presented itself, fatal or not.

  Back-to-back, with only the hologram of the Wall between them. She breathed, focused, and visualized herself turning and firing. Following the lead ward’s count, she marched down the strikeline, deviating just a few feet to the right at the end. She completed her turn, and a fraction of a second later, the Wall blinked away. Kira drew and found Hernandez a little to her left. She brought the gun to bear, let the sights stabilize on his right shoulder, and controlled her breathing to make the shot perfect . . .

  His muzzle flashed. Pain flared in her right thigh, followed by a sharp crack from the bullet’s shockwave. Her body tensed in a spasm. Her head struck the pseudograss and her vision blurred. Her gun was gone, dropped during the fall. Pain exploded through her upper leg and spread to her hip. She turned toward it, sitting up to get a good look at the damage. Bright red blood spurted from a rip in the inner thigh of her uniform.

  Holy fuck. An artery.

  Memory from self-care class: blood loss from a severed femoral artery could cause death in four minutes. She put her palm against the spot and tried to bear down.

  A shadow. The clatter of a dropped kit.

  “Lie back, Ms. Clark.”

  She kept pushing down, the blood still spurting under her palm.

  A hand pushed hers aside. The voice was firmer, louder, and more insistent. “I said, ‘Lie back.’”

  Kira flopped back, and strong hands moved her leg and pressed on the inside of her thigh. The EMT flexed as he applied all his strength to stanching the flow, muscles bulging beneath the blood-spattered blue sleeves of his coverall uniform. Another shadow and the clatter from another dropped kit.

  Kira gasped. Even through the uniform, the pseudograss rubbed her skin like a steel-wool scrub pad. Her heart raced. She tried to control her breath by count, but her body rebelled, interrupting the exhale to demand more air. Pain spread from where the EMT bore down.

  Diana, kneeling beside her. “Hey, it’s going to be OK.”

  Kira grabbed for her hand.

  The EMT let up and tore the leg of the uniform away for better access to the wound.

  On her thigh, nitrile gloves pinched hard at the surface and deep pain radiated from the wound as the EMT brought his weight to bear again.

  The other EMT was on his handset, barely audible. “. . . femoral artery . . . conscious . . . not sure . . . trying to save the leg . . .”

  Kira pushed up on one elbow and reached toward her wound and the EMT. “No!”

  The EMT holding the wound barked at Diana. “Keep her still!”

  Diana slid behind Kira and wrapped her arms around her. She spoke softly. “It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK. My leg got torn up worse than this in Iran. I’ve still got it.”

  True enough, though Diana’s leg required constant exercise to keep it limber and it was a mess to look at.

  Kira leaned back into her second’s chest, and Diana adjusted her grip. The change both enfolded Kira and held her arms to her sides. The EMT who’d been on the phone knelt and unwrapped a tourniquet kit. He reached across Kira’s left leg and brought the strap around her right, while the other EMT continued to apply pressure to the spot where she’d been hit. The second EMT wound the torque bar until the strap was snug, then faced Kira and Diana. “This is going to hurt, but it’s the best thing.”

  He directed his last look at Diana. Her grip on Kira tightened.

  The medic turned the torque bar, and the tourniquet strap became a band of fire. Kira arched her back and sucked breath through clenched
teeth.

  Diana whispered to her. “It’s all right, baby girl. It’s all right. The ambulance is coming.”

  The tentative win light flashed on her opponent’s side of the judge’s table. When she tried to focus on it, it was surrounded by fog. Tunnel vision. Hypoxia symptom. She was going to pass out. Fuck. How much blood had she lost?

  The pain in her leg became throbbing agony, and her vision narrowed further. When she focused on the EMTs, the rest of the arena vanished into the haze of her deteriorating peripheral vision. Diana’s grip became closer and warmer.

  The ambulance gurney arrived. A rush of cool air as Diana moved away, and other hands lifted her. A pinprick on her bicep. The words, “Something for the pain.” Who said that? Someone held her hand fast while someone else drove a needle into her inner elbow. Straps bound her arm to the support. One of the EMTs held a bag of purplish fluid above her. Blood. It was blood. Someone else’s. Not as bright red as hers, but still good. It must be very, very good.

  Diana took her hand. Bright red smears marked the places where Kira had touched her, mostly the sleeves. “I’ll finish up here. I’ll be along as soon as I can.”

  Kira managed a weak wave as the ambulance crew took her away.

  Everything was terribly foggy.

  And then it was dark.

  Chapter 17

  “Proceed on my count.” The lead ward calls cadence.

  “1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . .”

  Kira chooses the exact point where she will enter her kill box.

  “. . . 4 . . . 5 . . . 6 . . .”

  Steady breaths, relaxed hands, even pace.

  “. . . 7 . . . 8 . . . 9 . . .”

  She aligns her foot so the final step will land on the very edge of the box boundary.

  “. . . 10 . . . 11 . . .”