“Saya Lostrom?” Vays said, struggling to get her name right. “What are you doing here? We’re not scheduled to meet till later.” Vays looked around. The facility was still dark, except for the lights upon the gravity block where Saya Lostrom stood waiting.
She followed him with her eyes as he approached the block. “We never got a chance to fight at the competition and you’re always so anti-social when the rest of us have our little get-togethers. I thought it was time we met on the block.”
“You want to spar with me?” Vays said incredulously and with more than a hint of disgust. It was out of his mouth before he could help himself and he instantly regretted it, not because he cared about Saya Lostrom, but because of the promise he made to Kalkin. He would do better to keep that promise in the future, but he had a lot on his mind right now, and the very idea of sparring with someone like Lostrom was counter-productive. “You lost. I suppose I should feel honored by your desire to test yourself, but I would prefer that you come back when you have an invitation.” He waited for her to step down, but she did not.
“You might be surprised by what I can do, Specialist Vays.”
“I saw what you can do,” Vays said. “The competition weeded you out. As far as I’m concerned that was the end of it. Now would you please step down?” It wasn’t a question.
Vays turned suddenly, responding to the sharp sound of the door to the facility slamming shut. Another woman had entered. “Edren Rol?” Vays looked back and forth from one to the other. “What’s going on?”
Rol walked forward, her hands moving with increasing speed and force, describing a circle about her. As they hit certain points along the circle, her hands made snapping sounds against the air until the circle caught fire, but the fire was not as Vays remembered it. It looked like thick, moving brush strokes of oily, silver paint, but Vays new that it was animate metal pretending rather successfully at fire.
He stared at the fire, thinking that though this was the first time he had seen such from Rol, there was something familiar about it nonetheless, about the character of the metal, anyway. Was it the light of the metal fire or had the color of Rol’s hair changed?
His vision blurred, and suddenly his head hurt. He felt as though something wet and warm were leaking from his nose and ears. His eyes felt like they were vibrating in their sockets. He put one hand to his head to steady himself, one to his nose to visually confirm the blood he knew was there. No one was speaking and there was no sound except for the low roar of Rol’s uncanny fire, but Vays felt as if he were being buried under an avalanche of silent noise. He turned towards Lostrom and saw that she was pointing her hand axe at him like a gun, its head a blur of motion, like a tuning fork resonating with the soundless note in his head. Her hair. . . Her hair was changed. It was still short, parted neatly to one side, but now it looked as if it were composed of soft, silken strands of steel.
Vays squeezed his eyes half closed to keep them from jumping out of his head. He took up his practice sword and leapt high, coming down behind Lostrom on the gravity block. Lostrom tracked his progress through the air and met his blade with her axe. Vays struck relentlessly, but Lostrom’s casual, unhurried blocks were making his bones rattle in his skin—she was much stronger and faster than she was supposed to be. A silvery white light fell over them and made the elaborate filigree patterns upon the blade of her hand axe stand out in stark relief. He was sure that that tracery was new, that the weapon was in fact made of gun golem steel, just as Rol’s fire was.
The heat followed the light almost instantly and Vays nearly had his breath taken from him as his practice sword poured to the gravity block in a molten stream. That was enough. Let them experience the power of the Titan Star. He cast the useless handle away, touched his fingers to his breast—an unconscious action not required to activate his Artifact—and was instantly covered in gleaming angles and facets. He pulled the Titan Saber free from its nest upon his brow and struck his knuckles against the base of the blade. He would hold nothing back now.
Rol’s fire was not solid and so could not turn the Titan Saber away. Vays concentrated. Letting everything in and funneling it into his blade, Vays worried Rol, driving her back from him. Lostrom stepped up and met him again strike for strike, only this time Vays outclassed her in speed and strength. He didn’t know by how much or if she had resources as yet untapped, but he didn’t care. The presence of the stolen gun golem metal was reason enough to offer no quarter, no matter who his opponents might be.
Rol had moved behind him and sent her fire unraveling from its ring, spiraling out like a corkscrew and bathing his back in a tinsel furnace. He cried out. The heat was sudden and sharp and threatening to burn through his armor. He kicked Lostrom away with a heavy boot, turned, and brought the power of the Single Element Ghost Sword to bear upon Rol’s fire. He charged forward and the fire was drawn into the blade, the pale ghostly light at its core pulsing with increasing intensity and regularity. As he was about to deliver his Union Blade, Lostrom was upon him again, descending from above and this time the head of her hand axe was vibrating as it had been before. Rol recalled her fire as Vays began his stroke, but Lostrom’s stroke landed before his did. The Titan Saber was clipped ten centimeters above its minimal guard, the separated blade beginning a leisurely spin before exploding into glitter.
Vays howled with rage. The plates of his armor shifted, spitting steam and revealing the hidden lights. He grabbed Lostrom’s axe hand by the wrist, yanked her before him, stuck one square corner of his remaining blade into her breast and raked it diagonally down her front, tearing a jagged, uneven line in her flesh to the opposite hip. He followed this with a savage right-legged kick, which sent her sprawling in the air off to his left.
The fire was coming once more, but Vays was through with Rol. His hand was impossible to follow, and even without a blade, the pattern was flawless.
Rol’s fire died as she was raised and stuck by an unseen concussive force, but she didn’t move; she was rooted to the star in the circle, which shone angry red behind her. With a flick of his wrist, Vays flipped the hilt of the Titan Saber around and held it upside down. He pulled the handle apart, releasing the hammer and trigger and aimed the butt at Rol. He did not hesitate. He fanned the hammer and pulled the trigger six times. Six explosions raged out within the facility, each echoing fiercely and blackening the walls, beginning with the point of the star that held Rol’s left arm, then going around clockwise in succession, taking her legs, her right arm, her head, and finally finishing with her torso as the center of the star went.
When it was finished there was nothing left but a black, pockmarked ribbon of smoking gun golem metal.
Vays heaved, catching his breath—and then dropped to one knee under the force of Lostrom’s Hummingbird Hand Axe technique. The head of the axe was vibrating again, a blur that seemed to come and go in cycles. She struck and struck and struck.
Vays struggled for his bearings and felt, with each impact, needle sharp stabs into his flesh through the protection of the Titan Star. He couldn’t move and thought that somehow he had become trapped by his own armor. He turned over, subject to Lostrom’s savage and unending assault and caught sight of the wound he’d given her. Her clothes were almost black with blood and the skin beneath looked like one more layer of clothing, like one side of a carelessly unbuttoned blouse, flapping suggestively and giving fleeting glimpses of the raw, glistening muscle within.
He didn’t think he still held the Titan Saber, but it didn’t matter since he couldn’t feel his right hand anymore. His vision moved up her body and settled on her face which only unsettled him: her face was a mask, her eyes were wild and devoid of intelligence; occasionally his blood would spray up with one of her strokes and leave beads upon her cheeks to mingle with her own blood there. Pain was everywhere upon his body now. Little parts of him were being disintegrated with each fall of the axe and Lostrom was showing no sign of letting up. She hunkered down, dropped close, p
ushed his brow so that his neck stretched to make a better target, and struck. The layer of armor there cracked and he felt a thousand pinpricks on the left side of his neck. She never made a sound and the crazed, animal intensity on her face never wavered. She struck again and Vays felt warm blood erupt and spill down his naked back within the shell of the Titan Star.
Vays laughed weakly. Lostrom’s Hummingbird Hand Axe technique was much better than he realized. Froster must have gotten lucky with ranged attacks.
There was a shout then—someone was calling his name. Was that Kalkin? Was he angry again? Vays hoped not, he really did. But a shadow fell upon him then and brought oblivion with it.
Saya Lostrom stood over the mass of rent and twisted metal that housed Forbis Vays, finally pausing her maniac strokes only as the door to the facility swooped over her head, spinning like a circular saw, and crumpling against the far wall. Kalkin stood at the threshold, his splayed right hand out before him, his anger roused and clear on his face. He was a blur of motion and, Dark with the Contamination Pump, he suddenly stood where Lostrom had, his thick, knotted fingers once again splayed. Lostrom was sunk into the wall just to the right of where the facility door had struck, her arms and legs spread out in an X. Her hand axe was still in her right hand but the blade was buried in the wall. Her flesh ran like hot wax from various points upon her ripped body and mixed with her blood, staining the wall with a sick combination of colors that was almost too vivid to be real.
Kalkin took and placed Vays over his shoulder with a degree of care that seemed incongruous with his size and shape. He turned to regard Saya Lostrom for a moment, ensuring that she didn’t peel herself free from the wall, then bounded from the room, once again a sudden flash of motion, always quicker than expected.
• • •
Karza seemed different today. There was a look in her eye that Jav did not like. Over the last few months he had watched her frustration grow, and though he was responsible for that frustration, he saw no way of alleviating it. She had improved steadily over the last few months, but he knew now what he had begun to suspect before, that she would never be able to beat him, and it had nothing to do with his Artifact. He couldn’t explain exactly how he knew this; it wasn’t ego or assumption, it was just a simple fact, like his name, his height, his weight. Today her frustration seemed to have evolved—finally or spontaneously—into hate, and that hate was affording her an edge Jav was having trouble understanding.
He would have liked to see her exceed his ability, but there was something unfamiliar about her now, something unnatural. She was throwing her guillotine with more force than he was accustomed to seeing from her and she was doing it with a speed she had never before exhibited.
“You took your vitamins this morning,” he said, trying to be light and to avoid dwelling on what might become of their relationship.
She merely grunted, redoubling her efforts.
He had to work harder and harder to defend himself and this was not lost on her. She drove him through the illusory clockwork forest, smiling a smile that added to his concern. Suddenly, she let fly her guillotine, harder and faster than ever before, a sonic boom crashing the air in the tight spaces, echoing strangely between the mirage-inducing columns. Shocked but not out of his senses, he clapped his hands together before him, having to rely largely on AI to catch the thick blade of the guillotine a hair’s breadth from splitting him down the middle and possibly knocking his spine right out his back. He twisted his palms together and again used AI to fling the blade away from him so that half of it wedged up to its butt into one of the columns.
He glared at her, panting. “What’s going on, Karza?”
But Karza only smiled.
Before his anger caught, he felt his throat close sharply and then the room spun, a dynamic whirl that was growing dream-dark in his dimming vision. The floor struck his back hard, jolting him back to momentary alertness. An upside-down face leered down at him.
“Nanda Oslet?” Jav managed through his confusion.
Indeed, Nanda Oslet. She pulled her ring from his neck, leaving a friction burn there and letting his head bounce smartly on the gravity block. He could breathe again, but his relief was short-lived. Placing her slippered foot upon his head, Oslet threaded each of Jav’s outstretched arms through one of her rings and pulled. Each ring was generating fantastic and opposite torque. Both shoulders felt like they might burst, but worse was the strange, horrible, and yet almost indefinable, pressure upon his breastbone. He fought against the grip of the rings, arching his back uselessly and feeling the muscle fibers of his biceps and triceps buckle, separate, and come loose under the direct pressure of the rings. Karza stepped closer to stand over him, her guillotine blade in hand. She showed her teeth, swung the blade in a quickening circle, reared up and brought it down upon the curve of Jav’s straining breastbone.
Amidst the smoke, Nanda Oslet fell back onto the seat of her thin, tight pants, her hands flat upon her rings, her rings tracing ruts into the gravity block. Karza’s guillotine was buried in crumbled concrete, a small irregular crater in the block between the risqué spread of Oslet’s legs. Above and behind them both, the Kaiser Bones upon him, Jav floated in the air before descending and kicking Karza savagely in the head. The angle of impact set her body to orbit her head as it traveled in a shot from the block, her chain playing out after her like fishing line.
Massaging his upper arms with both hands, Jav alighted as Oslet scrambled a bit inelegantly to her feet. He had never sparred with Oslet before, but Jav knew that she, too, was exhibiting physical characteristics that did not match those on record. Still, she was not his better. He found his way through her rings and struck her a blow that should have knocked her senseless. She sagged under his power, but remained standing, continuing to plague him with her rings. Karza was recovering and when her guillotine joined the fray again, his advantage in skill over Oslet would be lost. Fine. If he couldn’t put Oslet down fast, he would have to defang her—and Karza, too, if possible.
He was waiting for the guillotine and snatched it from the air as it came. He took hold of the loop of steel at the base of the blade, becoming aware of a change in the weapon. The color and luster were different; intricate scrollwork he had never seen before decorated the blade and spoke to him of an eons old struggle, one which he had joined only months ago. But how? How could that be and why? He didn’t want to hurt either of them, but Karza had tried to—had intended to—kill him with Oslet’s aid.
He shook his head clear of these thoughts and proceeded, with AI augmenting his speed and motion, to weave the chain into a haphazard pattern of twists and turns throughout the gravity block, until it was an asymmetrical spiderweb, snarled and knotted about the columns.
Oslet could not keep track of Jav, so fast were his movements and so numerous and eye-tricking the hiding places. Karza, however, was used to training here and not so easily befuddled by the optical properties or by her quarry’s speed. But she was unprepared for what Jav was doing with her weapon. As her initial surprise quickly devolved into frustration, she began the laborious task of extricating the chain from its interminable tangles, leaving Oslet for the moment to fend for herself.
Jav emerged, approaching Oslet calmly and confidently. She stood there with both rings hanging from her right wrist, the same hand planted haughtily upon her hip, staring at him with an air of disgust. She would make him take her seriously.
Oslet snapped her right hand up, flinging both rings into the air before her. She dragged her fingers along the edge of each, guiding them and setting them into whining motion. Jav did not react, but continued forward—Oslet grinned. With a deft motion, she guided the rings into a stacked configuration, so that they were separated by about a hand’s breadth, and presented Jav with what he would soon discover to be a gun barrel of sorts. She held her open hands on either side of the invisibly spinning rings and pressed at the empty space that held them suspended.
There was a
screech and a bass thump and Jav felt his head snap back with sudden, violent force. This was new. He rubbed the ivory skull of the Kaiser Bones, focusing once again on Oslet. The sound came again, and a great red flower erupted just under his ribs on the left side, avoiding the direct protection of the Bones this time. Doubling over on impact, he instantly clamped his left hand to the wound and knew that he had in fact underestimated Oslet, that like Karza, she had undergone some kind of change.
Still doubled over and moving forward once again, he looked up and noted two things: her once-blond hair looked like spun silver and her rings were different. They, like Karza’s guillotine, had been upgraded, complete with ornate tracery in some unknown, alien style. Okay. Hadn’t he intended to defang her?
Jav dropped his left hand, made as if to launch himself forward, and disappeared from Oslet’s sight. Suddenly he was directly before her, kicking at the bottom of her rings with the top of his right foot. The rings shot up and sank into the ceiling; her arms flew apart, leaving her open for a follow-up kick to the chin. She staggered backwards, her eyes rolling up into her head for a moment before a scowl of pure hate brought her features into white-hot clarity. Her rings shimmered and pulsed in their nests in the ceiling, flashed back to her hands, then carved the air in an unending series, halting Jav’s second advance.
She seemed crazed, incensed, possessed even, and the presence of gun golem steel made her all the more dangerous. He backed off, sure that she would use her rings as she had previously, as a pressure cannon, and was not disappointed. As she oriented them, he rushed forward with his hands set for the Kaiser Claw, catching the rings in an unbreakable phantom grip. The pressure shot blasted not altogether harmlessly against the ribs of the Kaiser Bones, but Jav’s strength transcended the physical now. His clutching fingers were approaching infinity and Oslet began to panic as she felt the implacable tug. Her right arm quivered, struggling against the force being exerted. Fine cracks spread throughout both rings; flakes rose, blackened, and were reduced to atoms. A warping effect made it difficult to tell if the rings were maintaining their original shape, but they appeared smaller now, thinner, less than before. And then, perhaps a second after catching the rings, Jav twisted his hands in his signature way, folding the rings into a single dark knot that rotated like a small, misshapen planet still between his hands. Also swept up in the savage torque was Oslet’s right arm, ripped off at the shoulder and reduced to pulp.
The Gun Golems (Approaching Infinity Book 2) Page 21
