Deus Ex - Icarus Effect

by James Swallow

  The mercenary moved with unnatural speed, his limbs twisting on hydraulic shocks that made him more agile than anyone she had ever seen;

  Saxon seemed lumbering and slow by comparison.

  Namir went low and threw out his legs in a blur, sweeping around in a swift spin-kick that almost took Saxon off his feet, but the soldier did not

  allow the attack to put him on the reactive. Instead, Saxon launched himself at his opponent as Namir regained his balance, charging into him.

  Legs pounding, Saxon gathered up Namir and shunted him bodily across the sky deck in a fast tackle, driving him into a support stanchion with

  a heavy crash.

  Anna heard the grind of fracturing bone and the dense thuds of metal fists on human flesh as Namir struck at Saxon's neck and torso, his hands

  blurring as the apparatus in his arms went into machine-fast retaliation. He punched at the bloody patch on Saxon's belly, drawing a howl from

  his opponent.

  Fluid spattered from the soldier's mouth as he let the mercenary commander drop, and Saxon engaged him with a flurry of punches and kicks.

  Strikes went back and forth between the two men, some blocked and parried, others hitting home.

  The two opponents seemed evenly matched—at least at first sight. But Jaron Namir had come fresh to this fight and possessed some of the

  most advanced combat augmentations in the world; Ben Saxon was already on his reserves, his stamina running raw, fatigue poisons turning

  his bloodstream into acid, the knife wound in his gut weeping red.

  Momentarily dazed by a snap-punch, Saxon shook it off and threw a heavy blow that knocked Namir back. The Tyrant turned with the strike

  and pivoted on one leg, whipping up the other limb to plant a heavy combat boot in Saxon's jaw.

  Anna saw the blow flash home, but at the last possible second, Saxon snagged his former commander's leg and twisted it, arresting the

  momentum. He pulled Namir in with all his might and dragged the other man off-kilter.

  Namir stumbled and Saxon snatched at him, arms curving up around his shoulders to lock behind his neck. In a heartbeat, he had the Tyrant in

  a breaker hold, and he squeezed, drawing a howl of pain from the other man. "I never should have trusted you," Saxon grunted, applying lethal

  pressure.

  "I was about... to say the same thing ..." managed Namir.

  Saxon felt the other man's augmented arms squirming in his grip, and it was all he could do to hold on. Just a few more seconds, and he could

  end this— Namir's arms went rigid and turned forward. Before Saxon could recognize what was happening, the limbs shifted and moved against the balls

  of their joints, twisting opposite the true and folding back against the lines of flexion. Dislocating the cybernetic arms, Namir swiftly inverted the

  chokehold and tore himself free, snapping his head back to crack Saxon across the bridge of the nose.

  He felt a hard shock of pain and blood gushed from his nostrils. Namir snaked away and snapped his arms back to a more human mode, lashing

  out with a cross-handed blow. Saxon tried to block him, but Namir pushed in and caught his left arm—his human arm—in a steely vise.

  Saxon cried out as the humerus bone snapped with a wet crunch, agony tearing up his nerves in a burning wave. With a savage wrench, Namir

  pulled him aside and threw Saxon at the fuselage of the flyer. Unable to arrest his motion, the soldier slammed into the blunt prow of the black

  helo and collapsed to the deck near the body of the dead pilot. The pain was blinding, and the impacts from the storm of punches had cast

  scatters of static across the vision field of Saxon's optic implants. He dug deep, reaching for a last reserve of strength even as he knew he had

  little left to give.

  The attack at the airport, the fight with Hardesty, and now this ... Saxon was tapped out, running on vapors.

  He heard Namir coming up behind him. "Time to end this," said the Tyrant commander. "No more distractions."

  And then he saw his last chance, lying there before him. He reached for it.

  Anna choked back a gasp as Saxon struggled to his knees, trying to bring himself back up from the deck. Namir stood over him, and cast a

  quick, frosty glare toward her and the other Tyrants. "We fix our own mistakes," he told them.

  He turned back to meet Saxon as the soldier came up on one knee, releasing a roar of pain and effort. Something metallic glittered in his hand

  and he cracked it across Namir's face with brutal intent; a pistol, torn from the holster of the dead pilot.

  The mercenary was knocked away, blood streaming across his face. Saxon rose, the gun in his machine arm, and he fired three bullets into

  Namir's chest from close range. The shots would have killed a normal man, but the Tyrant commander wore a tac vest lined with armor inserts,

  and beneath that he carried dermal shell implants capable of stopping any low-caliber rounds that made it through; still, Anna felt a ripple of

  pain-memory as she recalled a bullet from a similar gun that had cut into her.

  Barrett was shouting as Saxon raised the pistol's muzzle a degree higher and laid his aim on Jaron Namir's head.

  The big man's grip on her neck tightened again, enough to draw a strangled scream from her lips.

  "Saxon!" bellowed Barrett. "You kill him and the woman dies next!"

  Namir lay in a heap on the deck, scarred and wheezing. He looked up, one eye gummed shut, the other the bright lens of an augmented optic.

  "Go on, then," he panted. "That was a very clever recovery, Ben ... It's one of your best skills ... The ability to evaluate and exploit a tactical

  opportunity. You're quick that way." He coughed up a string of bloody spittle. "So do it. Kill shot." He tapped at his cheekbone, under the

  undamaged eye. "Right here. I'll die, and you'll have what you want. Your payback." On the lower tiers of the yacht, glass portholes shattered

  as the fire continued to spread, waves of heat radiating up through the floor of the sky deck. "Icarus burns," said Namir, chuckling painfully at

  his own joke. "And so will all of us, one way or another.

  What's it to be?"

  "Drop the gun!" Barrett shouted. Pushing Federova aside, he dragged Kelso to the front of the upper deck and shoved the woman until she was

  half over the guide rail. "You test me and I swear to you, I'll drop her into the fire!"

  The muzzle of the pistol wavered. He thought of Sam and his men, the ghosts he had seen in the gloom of the field hospital. He owed them this,

  this last bullet. This measure of justice.

  "Shoot me," Namir demanded, "or save Anna." He shifted, dragging himself to his feet with slow, agonized motions. Blood was streaming from

  the wounds in his chest, but he never broke eye contact with Saxon. "You're aggrieved. You've been lied to and used. But that's the world we

  fight in. That's who we are."

  "Not me," Saxon bit out. "I'm not like you. I never was."

  "Then you have to decide." Namir gave a shrug. "Is your need for revenge worth another innocent life?"

  He would never be this close again. Saxon knew it with ironclad certainty—if he did not pull the trigger, Namir would slip away, the Tyrants

  would vanish into the shadows cast by the Illuminati, and all the deeds they had done would go unpunished ...

  And the cost would be only one innocent life. Just one single person. Another name on the endless roll of sacrifices laid down for the ideal of the

  Illuminati's draconian one world order. Anna Kelso's death in exchange for Jaron Namir's, a man whose soul had to be black with all the horrors

  he was responsible for.

  He could not let him live. It wasn't right that such a man should have a life, a family, a purpose, while all Ben Saxon had turned to ashes around

 
him.

  It is not right!

  With a sudden snarl of fury, he flung the pistol away into the waters of the lake, turning to Barrett. "Let her go, you son-of-a-bitch."

  Barrett grinned through bloodstained teeth. "Sure, whatever you say." He opened his hand and Kelso screamed as she went over the edge of

  the sky deck and into the churning black smoke.

  Saxon heard him laughing as he exploded into a full-tilt run, racing toward the far side of the boat. Barrett brought up his gun-arm and let rip

  with a screaming hail of rounds that chopped up the decking all around him, shredding wood and plastic.

  Without halting, Saxon reached the lip of the rail and threw himself over it, Barrett's shots hissing through the air around him.

  One moment, her world was a fog of pain, consciousness hanging by a thin thread, and the next

  Anna was falling into the mouth of hell, gasping as black smoke filled her lungs, the heat of an inferno beating at her. She landed badly on the

  slant of the hull, a glass-and-steel slope that ranged away down to the main deck. Anna flipped over and tumbled. She threw out her hands to

  arrest her plunge, but she couldn't find anything to grab on to. The smooth, polished glass resisted all attempts to grip it. She slid inexorably

  toward the flames gathering below.

  Above, gunfire rattled, and through the smoke she saw another figure vault over the edge and come down toward her. Fear lanced through

  Anna; someone was coming down to finish the job. But then she saw Saxon's blood-streaked face.

  He punched his machine-fist into the hull and found a moment's purchase. Anna grabbed for his outstretched arm and heard him cry out in

  agony as she pulled on the broken limb. Her shoes scraping over the hull, she shoved herself up, feeling plumes of heat from the fires searing

  her back.

  A shape hazed into view through the smoke. Barrett leaned over the edge of the sky deck and sneered, pointing his gun-arm toward the two of

  them. The tri-barrel cannon spun up to firing speed and spat a line of stark, yellow-white tracer, shredding the paneling.

  "Hold on!" shouted Saxon, as the glass window beneath them shattered under the salvo, opening up into a void of hot vapors. The two of them

  tumbled into the interior of the burning yacht, vanishing from sight.

  Barrett spat over the rail and turned away in disgust, cordite vapor coiling from the maw of his gun. He kicked away the spent brass casings at

  his feet and moved toward the idling helo. Federova, her ice-cool glower now sullen and silent in its fury, shot him a hard look. She'd managed

  to extricate herself from most of the tangler rounds, but she was angry that none of Saxon's blood had ended up on her blade.

  Namir ordered her into the flyer with a sharp gesture, and he climbed into the empty pilot's chair. "Is it done?" he asked.

  "Lost them in the smoke—" Barrett's explanation was interrupted by a dull concussion from deep inside the Icarus s engine room. The yacht

  shuddered and listed alarmingly, tilting so far to port that the lake waters broke over the main deck and swamped it.

  "Get in," Namir told him. "The police launches are a few minutes away. We're not going to be here when they arrive."

  Barrett threw one last look over his shoulder, listening to the death-throes of the boat as the Icarus was consumed by fire and water. "See you

  in hell, Saxon," he muttered, pulling himself into the flyer.

  The rotors became shrill, spinning the smoke into twisting columns; then the aircraft lifted off and rose vertically, pivoting to survey the

  burning boat as a raptor would hover over the corpse of a fresh kill.

  Anna crouched close to the carpeted decking and did her best to draw what little untainted air remained into her chest. She cast around, finding

  Saxon in a heap on top of a broken table. They had crashed through the roof into the forward gallery of the yacht, a richly appointed dining

  room. Small fires had taken hold here, crawling slowly along the support stanchions. The floor was gritty with a layer of extinguisher powder

  that had proven ineffectual. She moved to him, staying low, her breathing ragged and painful.

  Above, a rent in the glass ceiling looked out into a blackened sky. The smoke filled it like a chimney, the hot haze billowing around her. She

  blinked, her eyes stinging. "Saxon?" She could hardly speak; the call came out like the bark of an animal.

  He stirred and rolled off the table, hissing with pain. Shards of shattered glass were buried in the meat of his damaged arm, and Saxon pulled at

  them, tossing the bloodstained fragments away. "We ... We have to get off this deathtrap."

  Toward the bow, the Icarus was already a quarter submerged, a wide slick of burning oil spread out across it. Water lapped in through breaks

  in the forward doors, but a fallen stanchion blocked any hope of getting them open. They couldn't go back the way they had come in, and the

  metal staircase leading to the deck above was searing hot to the touch. Anna chanced a look up the stairwell and saw nothing but flames.

  She turned back to Saxon. "Down," she told him, a plan forming in her thoughts. "We've got to go down. There's no other escape route." The

  risk of what she was suggesting made her blood run cold; but at the same time she knew there was no other option open to them.

  "This boat's sinking, or hadn't you noticed?" he retorted. "Those decks will be full of water."

  "I don't plan on burning or drowning," Anna snapped back. "Saxon, you have to trust me. I know a way out! Come on!"

  He nodded, with effort. "Go, then," he said, and limped after her, deeper into the dying vessel.

  The corridor to the aft canted at a forty-five-degree angle and the cold water of the lake was at Saxon's waist. All around them, the Icarus was

  dying, electrical systems firing blasts of sparks over their heads, the hull moaning as it buckled.

  At the door to the tender garage, Saxon and Kelso had to put their full weight behind the hatchway to swing it open against the pressure of the

  water. The pain in his arm and his belly were numbing fires.

  The small bay was a mess, debris scattered across the room floating in drifts and the yacht's launch already overturned and knotted in its own

  guide ropes. Water was pouring in from the port side, and what space they had to breathe was thick with suffocating smoke.

  "This is your way off?" Saxon asked.

  Anna didn't answer him; instead she dropped beneath the surface and vanished into a cloud of bubbles. A moment later, she broke through

  again and pulled at his arm. "You can swim, right?"

  "Of course I can bloody swim."

  "There's a dive hatch set in the deck. We get it open, we can get out into open water."

  He shook his head. "This wreck is on fire! We're surrounded by burning fuel, we try to surface out there and we'll die!"

  Anna shook her head. "That's not what I said. I told you to trust me, so trust me!" She grabbed his other arm and pulled him.

  A crash of fire and heat rippled down the corridor behind them, ending any more argument from him. Taking as deep a breath as he could,