He tried to imagine her as a new soldier who needed his guidance, but that just made it worse. Corporal Tankowicz had never been stuffed into a crate with a new soldier who needed guidance. Complicating his dilemma, some of the eighty-seven pounds of Roland that was still organic would not stop reminding him that none of the green troops under his command had ever looked or felt like Lucia Ribiero, either.
The silence was dragging on, and Roland knew he had to say something, because this may be the last chance he had before they were both thrust into combat. So, he simply said what needed to be said.
“Thank you. I appreciate that more than you know.”
“You’re welcome” she squeezed his hand and let her head rest against his torso, “Promise me we’ll get my Dad back?”
Roland’s throat caught, “If it can be done, I’ll do it. Count on it.” He did not like thinking about what that meant, but he had to be practical. War was no place for sentiment or wishful thinking.
She nodded, recognizing what his equivocation implied, “I understand. If he can’t be rescued, what then?” She sounded anxious, fearing the answer.
“I will kill them all.”
“That will have to be enough,” she didn’t like it, but she accepted it.
There was another long moment of silence, which Lucia broke it first, “Roland?”
“Yeah?”
“When this is over, I’m taking you shopping.” Her tone had finality to it. This was not a negotiation.
“Shopping?” The giant asked, bewildered, “for what?”
“Clothes,” she replied, “you simply cannot keep walking around looking like you robbed an Army surplus store and then slept in whatever crap you stole. You look ridiculous.”
“Really?” Roland couldn’t understand what was happening, “this is when you want to discuss my wardrobe?”
He heard that musical chuckle again, and she wiggled against him in a manner not altogether innocent. “It’s the perfect time. You can’t avoid me in here,” Roland understood quite well that she was just being playful, probably to mask her own terror. “You’re a captive audience!”
… but it was obvious to Roland the woman did not understand how uncomfortable his reaction to it was proving to be.
Lucia, being a mature adult, knew precisely how uncomfortable she was making the big ’borg. Roland may have been the more seasoned fighter, but Lucia had already ascertained that he had the emotional sophistication of bedrock and the social awareness of a topiary. She (correctly) guessed that no woman had offered Roland anything more than a terrified glance in a very long time. Nor could she blame them; the man’s physicality was challenging and his whole demeanor was a deliberate ploy to put people off. It may have been an understandable defensive mechanism, but it was also transparent and immature. Lucia had no trouble seeing right through it, and she was acutely aware of how conflicted Roland was with how he looked at her.
She could feel his discomfort in his voice when he replied, “It’s not my fault. Nothing fits me.”
The attention of men was something Lucia had become accustomed to. She was pretty, moderately rich, and not at all snooty. Except for an awkward phase in her early teens where she developed the worst case of klutziness mankind had ever recorded, she had never struggled in securing affection from the males of her species.
It wasn’t until her anxiety attack in his storage unit that she decided that she couldn’t help but like the big guy, as well. He wasn’t really her type, and now was a strange time to be considering it, but the giant oaf was charming in his own simple way. Sure, he lacked social graces, basic table manners, and had all the romantic allure of a sasquatch. He was neither rich nor handsome, and she was still working through the whole ‘thousand-pound cyborg’ thing. But he had also been solid, dependable, fearless and kind all the same. He was a man utterly incapable of deception or subterfuge. If she was being honest, Lucia had to admit that she really liked that in a friend. She patted him on the leg, enjoying his discomfiture, “Don’t be stupid. You need a tailor, is all. Anyone can be fitted if you make a little effort.”
“Never saw the point. I try not to attract too much attention, anyway,” as a rebuttal it was unconvincing, and she sensed his fear. Her body pressing against his, and the flirtatious turn the conversation had taken was overriding his already strained verbal skills.
“Do you even own a mirror?” She giggled, “You are going to attract attention no matter what you wear. It might as well look decent.” She teased him without mercy, “Imagine all the girls you’d get with those muscles and a nice tailored suit!”
Lucia wasn’t sure, but she was pretty sure she actually felt him flush. “That’s not really my… uh… thing.”
“You don’t like girls?” It was couched as an innocent question, but her wicked grin belied the fun she was having.
“No! I mean, yeah, I like girls, ah, women, that is,” he growled, “arrrghhh, you’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”
People like Roland or her father were rare, and the looming presence of the big man behind her seemed like a tangible rebuttal against all the horrible things happening outside. He made her own fear manageable, so she would so the same for him. It was only fair.
Lucia had walked into his life out of nowhere, told him that a man he hadn’t spoken to in twenty years needed his help, and twenty-seven hours later he was holding her shoulder as they rode off to wage war on the entire criminal underground. To think a little light banter from an attractive woman could put him in this state was simply too much, and she decided in that moment to let him off the hook.
“A little, yes,” she conceded, “Am I making you uncomfortable?”
“Very!” It was two syllables delivered with finality and conviction.
She squeezed his hand a final time, and nestled in against him, resting her head against his bulk and closing her eyes.
“Good. I like you uncomfortable. If we live through this, maybe I’ll make you even more uncomfortable.”
Roland had absolutely no idea how to feel about that remark, but he made a mental note to kill everyone within a mile of Umas anyway.
Just to make sure they all lived through this.
There was a loud banging on the outside of their crate, indicating that they were getting close to Umas. Roland felt the tension spike in Lucia’s one small shoulder, and her spine stiffened. Banter and flirting were age-old ways to avoid the terror of an impending battle, but there was no way around it now.
“I won’t let you down!” she said, her voice shrill through gritted teeth.
“I know,” he said, and he meant it, “Let’s go get your Dad back.”
Chapter Twenty
Roger clawed his way to consciousness with tortuous effort.
He was accustomed to waking up instantly, with near-perfect awareness of his surroundings. This new lethargic awakening was unsettling. This time, perception came creeping up in subtle dribs and drabs of sensory input funneled at random intervals to various sections of his brain. Vision was the slowest to arrive, which left him in a half-blind, half-awake stupor for what seemed like interminable minutes.
It started as clips of sounds, at first, and he could hear Doctor Johnson, talking with clear academic detachment to someone else in the room. The voices were faded, and tinny, but he could understand them just fine.
“I’ve never seen anyone with that much intra-muscular weave before. I don’t know how he can even move. Look here.”
There was a dim, distant impression of pressure on his leg, “Look at the scarring, most of this is synthetic. It’s not even Myofiber, either. It’s something industrial that I suspect he got off-world.”
“Will that be a problem?” another voice was heard. Familiar, but not very. Is that Fox? Roger wasn’t sure. It was too hard to focus.
“Probably not. If anything, it means we can likely bring the tolerances in the armature up to more than spec. Look, his joints are nearly fused there is so much reinforcement!” Johns
on sounded either amazed or disgusted. Roger couldn’t tell.
Johnson continued, “His skeletal mass and density are excellent, but his marrow is shot to hell because he took it too far. We’ll go full transplant on that to avoid rejection.”
Roger listened in bemused torpor while Johnson critiqued his extensive body work.
“His other internals are all garbage, because he spent all his money on becoming a super-man instead of taking care of them. He would have been dead in a couple of years at this rate. Five at most. We will have to regrow most of his internals just to get twenty years out of him.”
That didn’t sound good. Roger lived life at full speed and then some, so some excess wear and tear was to be expected. But a mere five years to live? That couldn’t be right. Either way, it looked like his new employers would be fixing him up, so no big deal. Being in a semi-conscious fugue state was making Roger very zen about many things.
The other voice grunted, “We knew that might be the case. What about the rest?”
“His neurologicals are a bit of a ’good-news-bad-news, scenario.”
“What’s the good?” the mystery man asked.
Johnson’s answer was quick and practiced, “Successive treatments over many years appear to layered without antagonistic effects. I haven’t seen anyone with this kind of speed and perception since Golem. With these neuro numbers and his better-than-expected musculoskeletal system, we can expect the armature to outperform our projections easily.”
“I very much like the sound of that, Doctor. What’s the bad?”
Johnson cleared his throat, “The neurological activity is too high for effective cognition and proprioception. His brain is still faster than his body, and just too damn fast overall. The subject has been using illicit pharmaceuticals to subdue brain activity when not in combat. It was the best he could do it seems, otherwise his life would probably be a perpetual series of psychotic breaks. There is serious damage to the organic template.”
It can’t be that serious, Roger thought, I haven’t had an episode in months.
“Shit. Is it recoverable?” Roger had decided that this was Mr. Fox. His vision was sharpening, and the amorphous blobs of color seemed to match his model for Johnson and Fox well enough, and he didn’t have the energy for further speculation.
There was a loud, heavy sigh, “I can work with it, but it will bear very close watching after integration. I can’t promise he will ever be stable.”
“That’s what the fail-safe is for.”
“… What… fail… safe…?” Roger forced his mouth to speak, and the Johnson blob flinched in startled reflex.
Fox’s voice came in with a nervous edge, “He’s awake?”
“Kind… of…” Roger’s voice was a weak croak.
Johnson recovered his nerve, “Nurse! Increase Thorazine drip and get me another 5ml Haloperidol! Let’s do another round of Piperidine as well.”
The blob moved over to the bed and shined a small light directly into Roger’s left eye, “Mr. Dawkins, I apologize for this, but we need to sedate you again. You are experiencing withdrawal from… er… I forget, but its several different illegal drugs. We’ll get you sorted out in the next few days, though.”
“Feel… like… shit…”
Johnson stuck something into Roger’s arm, “Good night Mr. Dawkins.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Lucia and Roland were being as quiet as they could. The truck had stopped, but from inside the shipping container neither one of them could tell how it was going outside.
At the gatehouse, McGinty’s men were making casual conversation with the guards. That much Roland could make out, but there seemed to be some confusion. It sounded like the van was being redirected from its usual route. Roland frowned, that wasn’t unexpected, but he had been holding onto a wan hope that they would pass through the gates unmolested and with no change in the routine. Changed routines meant preparation. Preparation meant coordinated opposition. Like any respectable infiltrator, Roland preferred ‘disorganized resistance’ over ‘coordinated opposition.’
But the truck pulled through the gate without being searched, and that was enough of a blessing. Fixed defenses would point outward, and those were the guns with the highest chance of stopping Roland. Getting inside the walls reduced the chances of getting pummeled with things like 50mm HE rounds and other more forceful munitions. Anything smaller than that should be manageable.
The truck lurched to a halt about five minutes after clearing the gate. Roland heard a noise he figured was a bay door opening, and the van pulled ahead with agonizing slowness. They were moving indoors somewhere. He heard footsteps and barked commands from outside.
Roland forced his mind to relax. One of three things was about to happen, each with its own corresponding plan.
If the van was unloaded without a search, they would continue to lie low in the crate until they could sneak out and find Marko. Roland dismissed this scenario as highly unlikely.
If the van was subject to only a cursory search, then they would lie low and wait for an opportune moment to sneak out as well.
If the search was thorough, then they would burst out guns blazing and fight their way to Marko the old-fashioned way. Roland felt that the second scenario was at least a bit likely, and that the third was probable. Just getting this far had been a miracle, and he could not hope for more than what they already had accomplished with stealth.
“Get ready,” the big man whispered to the trembling woman in front of him.
He felt her nod, and her hand went back to her pistol butt.
There was the sound of a bay door being closed by mechanical apparatus. And then more voices speaking in commanding tones. The rear door of the truck was thrown open with a rough clatter, and the sounds of crates being dragged to sleds was obvious.
Then there was the telltale hiss and clang of a crate being opened, and voices calling out inventory.
They were searching the crates. So much for stealth. Roland preferred the rough stuff, anyway. He squeezed Lucia’s shoulder once, twice, and on the third squeeze he shoved the crate open and the two burst forth. The cargo space was narrow and cramped, so they had to get clear of it with as much speed as possible.
This part was actually quite easy, considering how fast the pair could move when properly motivated. Motivation they had in spades, and Roland was probably the most effective battering ram in human history. The giant drove forward with complete abandon, hurtling cargo containers and surprised workers before him with indiscriminate violence. He and Lucia exploded from the back of the van in a rain of hurtling bodies, broken cargo containers, and an impressive cloud of narcotic debris.
Lucia was like a streak of black mercury, darting between flying shards of detritus and sailing with a raptor’s grace through the space between adversaries. In a heartbeat, she found herself out of the truck and moving among at least a dozen of Marko’s goons. Roland had a very uncomfortable thought as he paid passing attention to her movements. Too fast! She’s moving too fast! She would break an ankle or tear her shoulder out of its socket if she didn’t slow down.
What Roland lacked in easy, fluid grace, he made up for with pure kinetic energy. His barrage of improvised projectiles had scattered men and materiel and pushed them away from the truck in a wide semicircle, and they scrambled for cover like startled insects. He could currently assess at least twelve men in the opposing force, and two of them had just gone down hard from contact with high-velocity shipping containers. With staccato popping like tiny lightning strikes, Lucia’s gauntlets accounted for two more in short order. It bode well for their chances to see a third of their enemies’ total strength gone in less than one long second, and Roland allowed himself an instant of approval. Dropping all their opposition without gunfire would be very nice as it meant that some level of stealth may yet be preserved.
Roland did not bother to pull his weapon, he just tore into the scrambling enemies like a gorilla after pigm
ies. First, he grabbed a screaming thug by the head, and whipped him in a violent arc towards two others. The force of the throw separated some of the unfortunate man’s cervical vertebrae and shredded the spinal cord of the man-cum-projectile. With terminal velocity the flopping corpse hit one of the intended targets with enough force to drive him down and bounce the live man’s forehead off the concrete floor. The impact was marked by an audible crunch and neither man moved after that.
A quick backhand killed another thug that failed to get clear of Roland, and a seventh went down in a fountain of blood when the van driver drove a seven-inch blade through the back of his neck with the practiced stroke of a professional killer.
Roland turned to go after the remaining five, but he needn’t have bothered, Lucia had them well in hand.
The lithe woman sped like a hunting cat through the group of bewildered men. She kept her center of gravity low, and her movements were short, precise, and too fast to follow. In one motion, she slid low and to the left of a goon, driving her right fist into his groin. What was soon to be the familiar sound of the gloves discharging and the capacitors squealing signaled that this man was never likely to sire any children after this day. Without hesitation, she spun off of this emasculating blow to wheel a savage spinning heel kick to the chin of another, which she followed with a straight left to the throat. The kick and ensuing punch were so fast that there was almost no delay between their respective impacts. With a pop and a whine of charging capacitors, the armored glove shut his lights off instantly, and he went down in a choking, gasping mess. A third man received a vicious Thai kick to the inside of his left knee, which buckled and caused him to stagger. Lucia finished him with an uppercut. Pop! Whine! Three down.
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