The results were impressive. The strikes landed more often than they missed. Dodging the fixer’s ripostes was child’s play. The killer that had once been Chico Garibaldi ran roughshod over one of the most dangerous men in the galaxy, and he made it look easy.
Everything he did bore the comforting mantle of familiarity. Chico fought Roland like he had done it all before. In that moment, Chico Garibaldi slipped away and someone else entirely remembered what it was to fight hand-to-hand with Roland Tankowicz. The thing in Chico’s head could sense his revenge was nigh, and this filled him with a sublime joy.
Chico was not gone for all this. Quite the contrary, he was present for these moments and loving each of them. What felt strange and oddly comforting was that he was not alone. A multitude of impressions and memories swam though his subconscious mind, but a single purpose and goal drove all of them. The overwhelming consensus was that in the next five seconds he was going to shoot this big bastard in the head, have his way with that blond bimbo, then go win back the love of his life.
Then things started to go awry. Roland stopped trying to hit him, and while most people would consider this a positive development, something about that fact unnerved Chico. Both fighters were moving so fast that Chico almost missed registering that the big man now angled away from him. Roland switched to circular footwork, blocking more and swinging less. The shift was subtle, and inside his mind Chico heard a voice that was not his own say: clever.
Roland was disengaging, as if trying to create distance. This made no sense because Roland was the bigger and far stronger fighter. Chico knew, or the voice in his head that was a good fighter did, that distance favored the faster fighter. Roland should be trying to keep the brawl close and tight. To tie up Chico’s limbs and limit his movement. This would take away the speed factor and let Roland’s vast strength carry the fight. An urge came then, strong and uncompromising.
SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM NOW!
Chico’s right hand whipped up and forward. He did not know exactly why it was so important to prevent Tank from doing whatever it was he was doing, but at this point his trust in his borrowed instincts was implicit. He centered the big bald head in his gun sight but hesitated for another half-second to let the capacitors charge fully. This turned out to be a mistake.
Roland was swinging his fist like a mallet. Not at Chico, but at Chico’s feet. Because the blow was not coming directly for him, Nonna had failed to mark the threat his subconscious ally had recognized. Tank’s fist crumpled the street like a smart bomb and sent the black-eyed cyborg lurching into the shallow crater now blossoming beneath his feet. As he fell, a shadow blanketed Chico and too late he saw the looming shape of a rapidly descending Roland Tankowicz.
On instinct, and at the moment Chico did not know whose instinct it was, he fired upward into the incoming darkness. At maximum charge, his pistol muzzle erupted into a retina-searing explosion of white light. A thunderbolt of compressed air and the hypersonic boom of a metal dart hurled at thirty-five times the speed of sound split the atmosphere while a corona of superheated gas sublimated into pure plasma between the two mighty war machines.
The penetrator flechette struck Roland in his right pectoral. At a range of less than six feet, the spike delivered two million joules of energy to an area with a cross-section of three microns. Armored skin that had resisted a dizzying array of munitions both small and large parted like a beaded curtain. The tungsten-tipped spike bored a smoking channel through the dense layers of techno-organic muscle and blasted a hole into the hardened armored carapace that protected his internal organics.
And then it kept going.
It knifed through Roland’s right lung and kept enough velocity to punch through the carapace at his back as well. At this point it had bled much of its energy and began to tumble. The slowing projectile burst limply from Roland’s back, leaving a ragged wound and trailing a spray of blood and silver nanite transport fluid. Roland did not notice. The giant cyborg was already falling. He landed astride Chico in the depression and despite his grievous wound, he managed to grab his scrambling foe as it tried to escape.
Chico was so concerned with regaining his feet and fleeing the crater before being crushed that he almost did not notice the iron grip seizing his right arm. He jerked to a halt when Roland pulled him back. The yank spun him to find the wounded Tankowicz holding him fast and lurching to his feet.
“Just fucking die!” Chico screamed and bashed at the massive ebony mitt, but it did not move. He saw the face of his captor, a grim, gray mien marred by the small smile turning the corners of his cruel mouth. He bled red blood and wept viscous silver fluid from the circular hole in his chest. Chico’s sensors and Nonna both agreed that Tank had sustained severe injury, but something in his posture and the furious strength of the fist crushing Chico’s arm told the tale of a warrior with plenty of fight left in him. Chico swung harder, bashing over and over again at Roland’s wrist. Each overhand smash was punctuated with the shrill, almost panicked cry of, “Die, die, die, die, die, die!”
Roland staggered up to his feet and yanked Chico from the ground, dangling his prey by the captured limb. To his relief, Chico noticed that Roland’s right arm appeared unresponsive, which was probably why it was not pulping him to death already. Chico kicked, he swatted, he thrashed, but even his bionic might was no match for the inhuman strength of the monster holding him. “Why won’t you just DIE!?” He screamed it into Roland’s face spitting saliva and hatred at the same time.
“Because, Chico,” growled the fixer, “I’m stalling, too.”
Something like a fireball exploded in Chico’s abdomen just then. A massive electrical overload radiated from the pain in his stomach, expanding outward in fiery tendrils to burn his whole body with electric agony. Muscles both organic and mechanical locked into bizarre and painful contortions and the flapping hems of his clothing caught fire. It dragged a hollow scream of anguish from the dangling killer, an all too human wail overlapped with angry electronic squeals. White static overwhelmed his vision and his AI abandoned him to a reboot cycle. Somehow he held onto consciousness, yet this proved to be no blessing. His convulsions nearly wrenched him free of his captor. In response, the pressure from Tank’s grip quadrupled.
What had felt akin to a vise-like manacle grew into the crushing pressure of a hydraulic press. Overwhelmed by the forces arrayed against it, the captured wrist crumpled and tore away from the arm with a crunch and a blinding blue electrical arc. Feedback from Chico’s traumatized prosthetics scraped along his augmented nerves like a thousand fingers on blackboards and he tasted iron in his mouth when his teeth clamped down on his own tongue. He fell, and the initial shock of his amputation passed like the retreating water of a tsunami. Only then did the plummeting Chico experience the dull pain of getting slugged in the gut. Glancing down, his rebooting eyes fixated on the fuzzy figure of a woman in black armor cocking a fist. He remembered her as Tank’s girlfriend, and her black armored gauntlets he recognized as some sort of electrical weapon.
Then she hit him again and the universe blinked out of existence.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Roland kicked the limp form of Chico Garibaldi where it lay upon the shattered pavement. Then, in a rare display of weakness, he sank to his knees.
“Roland!” Lucia cried, rushing to his side.
“No!” he growled in response. He pointed to Chico. “Watch him! If he moves, hit him again, as hard as you can. Do not let his cybernetics re-start!!”
“But you’re bleeding! You’re bleeding blood!” She had seen him lose nanite gel before, but his own blood, never.
“I’ll mend.” He sounded raspy, with a wet gurgle when he spoke that set Lucia’s heart racing. “If he wakes up we’re screwed. Where’s Mindy?”
“Manny has her,” Lucia replied. She scanned Chico with wary eyes between concerned glances at Roland. “You sure you’ll be okay?”
Roland never lied to her, but in this case he did his be
st to make the truth less bleak. “I’ve been shot through the right lung. It’s okay, I can go for a long time on one lung.” If he bled to death internally, the number of lungs in his possession would be irrelevant. He left that part out. As long as his nanobots could close the holes before his lung filled with blood, he would recover. If they did not, he would die. Without his helmet feeding him diagnostics, he could not be sure which would be the case. He added, “Call your Dad, please.”
Lucia gave him a look that communicated very clearly that she knew he was leaving things out. But her hand went to ear to make the call. Before she could finish the conversation, a large air transport whooshed over their heads and descended onto The Drag. It was wide and squat, wearing multiple gravitic engines indicating something that could lift a lot of weight. Roland recognized it at a glance and hissed. “Troop transport.”
Lucia’s hand went to the pistol on her right hip while Roland struggled to his feet. “Stay cool,” he advised. “We are in no condition for a fight.”
“Right,” she huffed. Lips pressed into a tight line. “Got it.”
The bay doors of the transport opened, and a ramp descended. From here a squad of heavily armed and armored troops clomped onto the street and set up a loose perimeter around the crater and its three inhabitants. Once done, a figure emerged from the transport and walked briskly down the ramp. He was tall and broad, dark-haired with a sharp widow’s peak. His black suit fit perfectly and looked like it had been pressed recently. Long strides took him to the edge of the depression and he squinted down at Chico with a cold glare. After a brief pause he addressed Roland. “Good afternoon, Mr. Tankowicz. My name is Bob, and I see you have managed to subdue our wayward operative. I would like to thank you for that and apologize for any inconvenience he may have caused.”
“Inconvenience?” Lucia’s voice dripped scorn. “He just tried to kill us!”
Roland forced some of the strength back into his voice. “Unless I’m mistaken, he has murdered fourteen people, including a very good friend of mine. We are well beyond ‘inconvenience,’ Bob.”
Bob did not appear the least bit concerned with any of their grievances. “Yes. He has been extremely unstable lately. Nevertheless, I am here to retrieve him. You can rest assured that he will not be an issue for you again.”
Roland growled his retort. “Retrieve him? I don’t think so. The police will be retrieving him momentarily. You can take it up with them.”
“You misunderstand me, Mr. Tankowicz. I was not making a request. I am quite aware of who you are and what you can do, Breach.”
The word ‘Breach’ narrowed Roland’s eyes and made Lucia flinch ever so slightly. ‘Breach’ is what he had been called as part of Project: Golem. It was a callsign that hearkened to his time as a government slave. ‘Breach’ was not a name many people knew to call Roland, and those who did used it with great care. Bob continued. “I also know that you are in no condition to stop me.” He gestured to the armed men surrounding them. “All my men are loaded with flechettes, Breach. Perhaps their weapons are not so powerful as Mr. Garibaldi’s—” he smiled a wholly unfriendly smile, “—but I brought quite a few of them. Even if they cannot pierce your hide, Ms. Ribiero’s armor will not be so difficult to puncture. Furthermore, your right arm is quite non-functional and unless my scans are in error you are bleeding to death rather quickly. If you do not receive the attentions of Dr. Ribiero soon, you will die.”
Lucia’s face went pale at this, but Roland remained stoic to a fault.
“You can’t just walk in here and—”
“Take him and go,” interrupted Lucia.
Roland turned to her, confused and hurt. “What?”
Lucia did not meet his eyes. Instead she looked at Bob. “You take him and your thugs and get the hell out of here.”
“Lucia...” Roland began, but she cut him off with a look. The look was pleading, and angry, and scared all at once. The sight of it had a profound effect on Roland and he swallowed his rage enough to grab Chico by the arm and rudely toss him over to the tall man in the impeccable suit.
“Fuck it. Go, then.”
Bob inclined his head slightly, “Thank you again, Mr. Tankowicz.” He reached down and grabbed Chico with one arm and loosely slung him over a shoulder. The weight of a grown man and his prosthetics did not seem to present any difficulty for the man in the suit. “Saddle up, troops!” he barked to his men. “We are leaving.”
The assembled troopers fell back in smart formation and assembled into a defensive perimeter around the suited man. Then as one the entire troop shuffled back to the transport. By the time the craft was airborne again, Roland had slumped back down to one knee. Lucia tugged his arm in a fruitless attempt to get him standing again.
“Stand up!” she shrieked into his ear. The panic in her voice was transparent. “Get the hell up, Roland! If you pass out I can’t lift you!”
But Roland was having a hard time hearing her. His vision swam, and the fire in his chest was steadily increasing. To keep him combat effective in battle, Roland’s systems made him incapable of feeling acute pain. Severe damage that was not quickly addressed, however, would cause pain that was allowed to escalate until the injury was managed. This encouraged dedicated soldiers like Roland to seek medical assistance before tearing himself apart over the course of a battle. The tiny machines in his body were already knitting his skin and muscle back together, but his lung was not so easily repaired. It was obvious there was too much organic damage to deal with. This meant that a mere minute or so after receiving a perforated lung the big cyborg languished in the throes of very real agony.
If he had been trying to keep the severity of his wound a secret from Lucia, the paper-thin charade ended when a rumbling cough sprayed frothy red blood from his lips and marked the crumbling asphalt at his feet with white-flecked crimson splatters.
“Damn it,” he whispered quietly.
Lucia was more emphatic. “Holy shit!” She tugged harder. “Come on! Please!”
Roland half shuffled, half dragged himself from his crater and began the ponderous and lumbering sojourn to the office door. Each step moved him closer to unconsciousness, and if not for a dozen different systems working together to keep his brain from shutting down, he would have collapsed long before making it. The anesthesia of unconsciousness would have been a mercy, but his chassis had been designed to take hits and keep fighting. Even without a coherent brain to issue commands the machines in his body cycled his legs in a reliable left-right rhythm that eventually brought him to his destination.
Once inside, he crumpled into a heap on the floor, then rolled to his back with an enormous sigh. Immediately he regretted this. Blood filled the back of his throat and caused a burst of coughing that wracked his body with spasms of pain from his ruined lung.
Lucia tugged on his good arm and he sat upright, spewing more foamy blood from his mouth in thick red rivulets.
“Roland!” Lucia was near to a full-on panic attack now. Roland could tell even with his perceptions fuzzy. He burned with the immediate need to calm her down, to reassure her somehow. His dimming faculties lacked the clarity to come up with anything convincing, so he settled for a thin smile and a gurgling platitude.
“Hey. I’m all right. Just a scratch. It’ll be okay.”
She grabbed him by the head, each hand on one side, and turned him to look her in the eyes. “No, you are not okay! Dad will be here soon. You stay awake or I’ll... I’ll...” She couldn’t think of anything suitably dire, and just keeping herself from hyperventilating was more than enough work for her. So, she let it drop. The stupidity of commanding a wounded man to stay awake and not die was entirely lost on her, and at that particular instant the edict made perfect sense in her head. She checked her comm for a location ping on her father and swore when it showed his position still several minutes distant. Lucia had no real comprehension of how bad Roland’s injuries might be. She did not know how the damage correlated to his fram
e’s ability to keep him alive. There was so much about his body she did not and could not understand. Anyone else would have been dead already. Adding to her confusion, she had seen Roland withstand explosives, ten-story falls, armor piercing flechettes, and all other manner of weapons before. She had never seen him get shot all the way through the body, though. Every hurt he had received, even the bad ones, had failed to get past the armor to his internal organics. For the first time ever, Lucia was watching the man she loved bleed.
Part of her had always taken great comfort in his indestructibility. Thanks to his construction, she never truly had to fear for his safety or health. Fear had ruled her universe for most of her life, and this one little bit of comfort had always been there to root her. No matter what else in her life went wrong, Roland would always be there to grunt in a disapproving manner and make grouchy comments.
He was indestructible.
This made him permanent.
Unfailing. Dependable. Reliable. Constant.
Now Lucia wondered if she had placed an unfair burden upon him. She loved the man inside that machine, and all men were mortal.
Deeply rooted anxieties about mortality fueled the fevered certainty she was watching Roland die. Lucia fought those fears with a courage she did not truly feel. She fought them with all the data she had about the big cyborg soldier. Her mind searched for and re-lived her father’s lectures on Roland’s back-up systems, his self-repair capabilities, his multiple layers of redundancies. None of those discussions had covered what to do if Roland got shot through the chest though. The panic continued, ever-present and ever-building. She knew her breathing was too quick and shallow. Cognitively, she understood her superhuman brain was focusing too much on all the ways this might end poorly. Most critically, the terrified woman knew the fear and panic would take over soon and convert her into a useless sobbing wreck.
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