Head Space

by Andrew Vaillencourt

  The queasy churning of his guts did not improve as the fight wore on. Murphy tried to drive Roland off his chest with a powerful shove from a huge right arm. Inoue winced at the beginner’s mistake and was rewarded with the sight of Tankowicz seizing the limb and twisting it savagely. A shriek of actuators pierced the tumult and Murphy thrashed to avoid taking damage to the arm. Roland used the moment of distraction to drop four pile-driver punches directly onto Murphy’s domed helmet. The blows rang off the surface like a twisted church bell but did no damage to the thickly armored face. Another spastic push from Murphy shifted Roland to the side and bought the younger man space to scramble. Scuttling away from the monster atop him, Murphy sent a kick upward from the ground that threw Tankowicz backward.

  The green cyborg was just getting to his feet when The Fixer was on him again. Inoue hissed. The thing’s reaction time was beyond good. It was phenomenal even by military standards. Unopposed by Murphy’s flailing defenses, a searing combination of punches from Roland rained down on the Silverback with loud bangs and grim purpose. A stiff jab rang the dome again, followed by a heavy cross driven from his back leg that bashed into Murphy’s wide chest with enough force to send him back a step. Heavy green arms converged to protect his head from an incoming left hook, and Inoue groaned.

  “Your head is the most armored place on you, you numbskull,” he hissed under his breath. Inoue predicted what came next. Sure enough, Roland’s left hook glanced off Murphy’s guard like the calculated feint it was, and with his arms blocking his face, Murphy never saw the right hook that collided with his side and took his feet from the ground. What followed could only be described as a savage and thorough beating. The fixer hit Murphy as he was still staggering and pounded the giant green machine with a hurricane of bludgeoning fists that drove the victim backward on wobbling legs.

  The younger man was not unskilled and possessed a fighting spirit to rival any living person, yet Inoue knew that spirit could only tip the scale in a fight so much. No matter what the holovids liked to portray, only a fool thought pluck and gumption was going to overcome the kind of yawning skills gap he saw between these two fighters. Murphy appeared oblivious to what was quite obvious to everyone watching and fought on with a tenacity that while admirable, stank of futility. The Sergeant took his lumps like a good soldier and mounted such offense as his skills could render. His chassis was stronger and tougher, and that kept the fight going long past the point where a lesser armature would have been reduced to scrap. Every strike from Tankowicz Murphy returned with an answering swipe that if it hit, could dent a tank. They never seemed to land, though. Roland danced and dodged, his head bobbing around and under the punches with the sort of fluid grace that spoke of many hours’ practice. Tankowicz met each forward step from Murphy with a sidestep or pivot, punishing the sergeant for every lumbering inch of progress his more powerful machine managed to eke out.

  The practiced eye of Inoue took it all in and the tactician in his head analyzed what he was seeing without conscious thought. Tankowicz had played them, and Inoue now understood how. There was no way Roland could have taken them all in a shooting match. The railguns, the Avengers, the Silverback’s autocannon, all these combined would have chewed him to pieces. Getting blindsided by DECO had changed the interaction to something he could win, so Roland had pushed for a fight to make a point and send a message. Inoue now suspected that Roland did not care whether they retrieved Harper or not. He had already returned the other two; why hold on to the third? A dull ache in his jaw informed the lieutenant he was clenching his teeth, and he forced himself to relax with a deep breath. Roland would have lost a battle with his squad, so the clever old soldier had turned this into a street fight instead. The plan was good, the lieutenant had to concede, as it was quite obvious which of them was the better brawler.

  With this in mind, Inoue watched the battle more closely. Roland slipped one of Murphy’s looping overhand punches and ducked under the arm to hoist the man into the air again. This time he leapt backward, arching his back and hauling the big green machine over his own head to smash against the destroyed street. Murphy flopped to his back with the screech of armor on rubble and scuttled away from Roland with all the dignity of a green metal arthropod fleeing a determined predator. Tankowicz did not pursue and Inoue detected his teeth grinding again. Tankowicz was just toying with Murphy at this point. He had the Sergeant’s measure now, and the rest of the fight was firmly in those big black hands.

  Inoue opened his mouth to order a halt to the fiasco, but he was a touch too late and the order never made it out. With a roar and a cloud of pebbles, Murphy lunged from the ground to attempt a tackle. Now Inoue was irritated with his man, and his thoughts turned critical. First a kata guruma, then an ura nage. How many times does that moron have to get slammed against the ground before he figures out how to keep his distance?

  The answer to the silent question turned out to be ‘at least three.’ The charging Silverback collided with the crouching Golem and for the briefest moment it looked like the green cyborg might get his moment of triumph. Roland met the tackle with lowered arms and caught Murphy under the armpits. The quarter-second it took for Roland to secure the double-underhook grip allowed Murphy to drive The Fixer back two big steps. Roland dug his feet into the rubble and let the man push. Green legs pumped and pistoned against the ruined street as Murphy drove ever harder forward, as if he could upend his foe with just the sheer force of his will and blind faith in his own technological might.

  Inoue shouted in frustration at Murphy’s burgeoning blunder, “Don’t push him—LIFT HIM!” He may as well have been shouting into a hurricane.

  If Murphy had listened to his commanding officer, he might have had a chance. Roland’s weight was nothing compared to the strength of his armature, and Roland had twice demonstrated how effective throwing the other guy around was. Ever the patient teacher, the universe elected to provide the sergeant with a third example. The big fixer twisted hard with a circular step and all the unfathomable force Sergeant Murphy was throwing into his opponent was instantly turned against the man himself. Again, his feet left the ground, but this time Roland did not release him. The big man continued to rotate, whipping the shrieking sergeant around in a full circle before heaving him with Satan’s own strength at the troop carrier parked quietly across the street.

  Sergeant Murphy and his armature weighed a combined nine-hundred and sixty-seven pounds. His flight across the street took one-eighth of a second and he was traveling close to eighty miles-per-hour. A physicist might have been able to tell Lieutenant Inoue that Sergeant Murphy was going to strike the side of his transport with 280,000 joules of energy. While there were no physicists present to witness the impact, there were many experienced soldiers. Every knowledgeable observer in attendance agreed that the good sergeant plowed into the lightly armored skin of the vehicle like a cruise missile, proving that a practiced eye can be just as accurate as a Ph.D. Every window on the street shattered as one when the speeding cyborg tore through the craft. His body punched a neat entrance wound into the bleak gray flank and then exploded out the far side with an expanding blossom of ruined machinery and broken parts. Murphy was little more than a tumbling green and gold blur until he struck the brown facade of a building and dropped to the sidewalk in a heap of twisted metal and whining electronics.

  The unexpected escalation of the fight had scattered the remaining men out of formation. With a spat curse, Inoue barked a sharp command into his comm. On cue, his team began to reform, and the two Avenger drones dropped from overhead to cover The Fixer with their large railguns. Tankowicz seemed entirely unfazed by this development and was standing in the middle of what had once been a busy street dusting his hands off on his tattered pants. It irritated the lieutenant to see that blocky face wearing a grin of pure smug satisfaction. Roland’s suit had been ruined in the fracas, and Inoue could now see that his skin below the neck was a flat waxy black color, which he correctly surm
ised to be some kind of armored mesh. More interesting than his exterior, the lieutenant saw beneath the skin muscles that looked exactly like swollen versions of human muscles. The biceps, triceps, and forearm flexors rolled and heaved exactly as a man’s might with each swipe of a dirty paw against soiled slacks. In a long and lauded military career, Inoue had never seen anything quite like Roland Tankowicz.

  Speculations would have to wait, however. “All right, Tankowicz,” he called to the chuckling behemoth. “You’ve made your point. Orders or not, you take one more step and I’ll have the birds chew you up.”

  “You sure that’s a good idea, Lieutenant?” The threat in his voice was all the more real for the jovial tone that delivered it. “I’m guessing Murphy’s chassis cost a pretty penny already. You sure you wanna risk two Avengers?”

  “You’re overplaying your hand, Tankowicz,” Inoue called back. “Yeah, you handled Murphy. Good for you. We’re all very impressed. But beating down the sarge is not the same as shooting it out with the whole squad. You want to try your luck with the railguns and the birds, just go right ahead.” The lieutenant stalked forward to meet Tankowicz in the middle of the rubble. He looked up into the face of the big man and met his answering glare without flinching. “Feel free to give me a reason, asshole. To hell with DECO, I’ll kill you and take the court martial.”

  Roland did not appear to be worried. “Good for you, Lieutenant.” The slab jaw was set at a strange angle and his beady eyes squinted in a manner that might have resembled amusement if the man’s features were not fixed in a perennial glower. “And as much fun as this has been, I’m hoping we don’t ever have to repeat this demonstration. I expect you are going to get a very thorough debrief from DECO on this little party, but I can go ahead and give you the short version now.”

  Inoue let a thin eyebrow rise.

  “Stay the fuck away from my people and my op. This is my sandbox and all the toys in it belong to me. Any more of your soldiers show up and try to play spy in Dockside, and they’ll go back in a box.”

  The temerity of the threat sent a flush of angry heat to the lieutenant’s face. “Spare me, Tankowicz. You didn’t prove anything here. UEDF and the EF aren’t going to ask your permission to do anything.” He gestured to his men and the drones, still poised to cut Roland down where he stood. “It’s not as if DECO can protect you forever.”

  Roland shook his head as if he was speaking to a particularly stupid child. “See, that’s what you aren’t understanding, Lieutenant. Fucking with Dockside is a lot more dangerous than you think. It’s dangerous to you and dangerous to bunches of very powerful people. Protect me? Hah. I don’t need protection, Lieutenant. I thought I just made that point. You got another ringer you want me to slap around? Maybe someone who actually knows how to fight this time?”

  Inoue did not, and he was embarrassed enough not to push the matter.

  Roland waited for a response and not getting one he barreled on. “So for the record, DECO isn’t protecting me from you chumps. They’re protecting you from all the shit you don’t know about.” He leaned in with a scowl and whispered, “Things like me.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Oh what in the nine hells is that idiot doing?”

  Lucia did not want the words to come out so harsh, but anxiety always made her irritable. The view from inside their wrecked office offered far too many opportunities to be anxious for her sunny disposition to remain unaffected. In their time together Lucia had seen Roland fight many people and many things. At this point it was hard to get all that excited about the big man’s pugilistic endeavors. However, the presence of all that military hardware lent an air of gravitas to this dust-up that most of his other scraps lacked. No matter what happened out in that street, there would be consequences for all of them and she hoped fervently that Roland was aware of that.

  “Pretty sure he is beating up an army guy, Boss,” was Mindy’s unhelpful reply.

  Before Lucia could rake the impertinent blond with a fusillade of self-esteem-killing expletives, Manny’s code chimed on the team comm channel.

  “Manny here, team. I need a sitrep or something because I’m across the street and very confused!”

  “Roland is having a pissing match with his old army buddies. A high-level spook is keeping them from shooting up the block so they are treating this like a mess hall brawl.”

  Mindy added, “And we are holding an EF commando hostage for some reason.”

  “Is it too late to put in my two weeks’ notice?” Manny was trying to be funny, but the long history between Venusians and the Expeditionary Force was not a past easily put aside. The presence of all the arrayed military hardware appeared to be setting the young man on edge. He was not alone in this. Lucia ground her teeth as confusion and fear began to unravel her exterior calm, and even Mindy’s cheeky demeanor seemed several shades muted. The situation remained firmly out of their hands, and none of them enjoyed the stress of waiting and watching while Roland played his precarious hand.

  A tremendous crash from the street made the women jump and tore a panicked squeak from Manny. Mindy whispered into the open comm channel, “Looks like Ironsides is about done with his fun.”

  Manny concurred. “He just put a Silverback right through their transport. He, uh... the guy’s not moving, boss.”

  “Please tell me Roland didn’t kill him?”

  “Probably not. Silverbacks have serious armor. I’m sure he’ll live. Probably.”

  Mindy snickered. “That explains why Ironsides was hitting so damn hard. I ain’t seen him swing like that since Quinzy.”

  Manny still sounded nervous. “We got a plan, boss?”

  Lucia had no idea what to do, but she had learned that no action was always a worse call than improvised action. “Mindy, go drag that goon out of the bathroom and get ready to send him out. One way or the other, the UEDF won’t leave without him. Manny, can you get into that transport?”

  “Well, there’s a real big hole in the side of it now, so yeah. Not going to be a problem.”

  “You think anything useful is in there?”

  There was a pause, and then a soft defeated sigh. “Won’t know unless I look, I suppose.”

  “Good boy.”

  From his vantage point in a banking kiosk, Manny had a clear view along the path of destruction the hurled cyborg had bored through the transport. A tragic youth as a hunted terrorist had given the boy many opportunities to study military equipment, and while he could not remember the exact designation of the transport in question, it was not hard to determine that it was a fairly thin-skinned vehicle. As strong as Roland was, there was no way he could have thrown his opponent through anything with even cursory attention paid to its armor. This was a glorified people mover, probably a commercial model. He noticed that it had not been painted in the UEDF green and gold, nor did it have any markings to give away its passengers as EF. If anything, it appeared to be a bland and inexpensive thing, the sort of hastily converted auction-lot hardware that security contractors might use. This at least caused the corner of his mouth to twitch in amusement. He began to pick his way into the street carefully, his thoughts wry and critical.

  If you want to keep a low profile, boys, don’t bring a Silverback and two Avengers.

  He supposed that this was the best UEDF had available. Once the decision to deploy in force had been made, discretion had been abandoned out of necessity. As he moved from the cover of a traffic barrier to a ride-sharing booth, Manny wondered what sort of ‘high-level spook’ had enough pull to leash an EF squad rolling in full battle rattle. He saw Roland and the commanding officer squared off in tense conversation, and the desire to kill was writ large and plain on the smaller man’s face even at a distance. The young scout had seen enough of these interactions to assume the lieutenant would be blustering and threating to ignore his orders, and that Roland would be inviting him to try. Both would be bluffing, obviously. Career officers rarely broke orders without a very g
ood reason. None of his men had been killed, so Manny was confident the beleaguered commander was just trying to save face. From his new position, the undamaged portion of the transport obstructed his view of the group. Manny imagined the snarling indifference of the big cyborg and suppressed a smile. Roland’s confidence would be as much a performance as the lieutenant’s bluster. Working alongside Dr. Ribiero for eighteen months had made the young Venusian as conversant in Roland’s systems and capabilities as anyone. The men with railguns would not bring Roland down right away, but six or seven direct hits would have him in bad shape as fast as the highly-trained soldiers cycled their weapons. Roland’s speed might keep him in the fight long enough to put down the ground-pounders, but the Avengers would chew him to pieces in short order with their 30mm sabot rounds or a barrage of missiles.

  Fortunately for Manny, one-hundred percent of the squad’s attention was on Roland. Both of the ominous drones and their suitably intimidating weapons’ pods remained transfixed upon the big cyborg while he argued with the commanding officer. The entire squad of soldiers stood or crouched with their gun sights centered on the armored bulk of Roland and nothing short of a nuclear weapon had a chance of shaking their focus. After what Roland had just done to their toughest member, Manny could forgive them their lack of environmental awareness. It was no trouble at all for the slim young man to make his way unseen to the back of the wrecked transport. From there, he sidled along the smooth skin of its exterior until he met up with the ragged hole made by Roland’s human missile. With a quick look spared for the broken cyborg still resting against the wall a mere forty yards down the street, Manny determined that the body remained deathly still and quiet. Satisfied, he then slipped through the hole and into the sparking detritus of the transport.