The Musashi Flex

by Steve Perry

  She smiled, not worried. If you had the will and you had the tools, it was just a matter of time . . .

  When he was a step and a half away, Mourn jumped, bore in, and threw the fifth of the attack sambuts, a single beat broken into a triplet with a punch for each third—high, high, low—!

  Even if you knew what was coming, it was impossible to block all three if the attacker sold them right. You had to short-circuit the attack with one of your own; pure blocking wouldn’t work, no matter who you were.

  Weems apparently thought he could manage it. He bat-ted the first and second shots aside, but the third punch got through, hit him in the belly—

  It was like smacking your fist into a wooden wall.

  Mourn tried for the takedown, but Weems pivoted and hammered him with the edge of his fist, caught him in the ribs hard enough to break one or two. It drove him sideways, and Weems followed him in—

  Mourn fired his right elbow, caught Weems on the left ear, staggered him, but when he tried to follow up, Weems ducked the next punch and slammed his fist into Mourn’s solar plexus, knocking his wind out—

  Mourn dropped to the ground and swept with his left leg. Caught Weems on the left calf and knocked him off-balance, but Weems dived away, hit in a shoulder roll, and came up—

  Before Mourn could get to his feet, Weems jumped in—Jesu, he was fast!—and snapped a front kick. He blew through Mourn’s block, caught him under the left armpit, broke a couple more ribs, and lifted him with the force of it—

  Mourn went with the kick, rolled away, barely avoided the stomp to his head, and managed to get into a siloh squat.

  Weems recognized the danger, circled to get behind him; Mourn scooted away and came up—

  As Weems charged in, Mourn waited . . . waited . . . now! he dropped low, put his left hand into Weems’s face, fingers spread, and went for the eyes. Weems slowed his rush, Mourn shoved at his face and reached for the leading leg, caught him behind the knee, to do angkat, the throw from the unweighted leg—

  Weems dropped his weight, trapped Mourn’s hand with his flexed knee, twisted, and drove a spear-hand at Mourn’s throat—

  Mourn blocked, deflected the attack enough so it drove into his shoulder instead of his throat, felt the muscle tear in a hot flash—

  Weems kneed him, caught him on the back of the head, knocked him down, the blow enough to stun him. Mourn’s vision blurred, he grayed out, but even half-unconscious, he tried to cover. He knew it wouldn’t be enough, and knew he was more than a beat behind. He’d never be able to catch up, but he struggled to get up—

  There was a sharp hum, and Weems suddenly collapsed, falling next to Mourn.

  What the fuck—?

  Mourn shook his head, trying to clear his vision. That didn’t help, it only made his head hurt worse. He blinked. What—?

  Sola came into view. She was holding a hand wand. Shaking like a woman with palsy.

  He stared at her. “You shot him?”

  “Goddamn right I did. He hit me.”

  He started to laugh, but it hurt his ribs, and he stopped. “Welcome to the club,” he said. He managed to get to his feet. Man. He was going to be immobile once his injuries took hold.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “I was passing by.”

  She was so rattled she let that go. “Did you see what he did? He was enjoying it, slapping and choking me!” Her voice was high and still full of fear and rage.

  “Come on, we have to go. Once he wakes up, he’ll kill us both if he catches us. We want to be far away from here.”

  Still holding the hand wand, she looked at Weems. “Why don’t you just cut his throat while he’s lying there unconscious? Stomp his fucking head in!”

  “Can’t,” he said, shaking his head. Ow. Bad idea.

  “Why not? You’ve killed men before.”

  “It wouldn’t be fair.”

  She laughed, and it was on the edge of hysterical. “He would have stomped you to death! And probably raped me when he was finished with you!”

  “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “Come on.”

  After a hurried trip to collect her gear and his—which included a guitar, of all things—they caught a local out of the region, then an uplight boxcar from the Central Mediterranean Terran Port to the wheelworld called Segundo, at the L-5 point between the Earth and Luna. There, they transferred to a liner heading galactic spinward, eventually to wind up in the Faust System, by way of Orm and Kar. Since those two systems had only one habitable planet each—Greaves, in Orm, and Makarooni, in Kar—it was as much as an express flight as they were apt to get. Even if Weems was able to track them, he wouldn’t be able to get to their destination ahead of them. At least that’s what Mourn told her.

  On board, they stowed their gear in a fairly large cabin with two bunks, then went to find the clinic. Mourn seemed to be moving okay, but he said he might need some minor work. Given what she had seen, she had no trouble believing that. The two men had hit each other with fists and elbows and feet hard enough to break furniture, no question. Mourn was stoic, but he had to be in some pain.

  He had purchased two open-ended tickets, paid for them—and they weren’t cheap, since the flight was leaving less than an hour after they booked it. She’d thanked him, but he’d waved it off. “You saved my life.”

  “Well, you saved my virtue.”

  They both smiled at that.

  “We can leave the ship at any of four destinations,” he said. “Even if he tags us leaving, he won’t know which world we drop on unless he can get the passenger manifest, which he isn’t supposed to be able to do, but probably can. But we can catch a feeder and be off that planet before he can get there even if he does figure it out.”

  “And do what then?”

  “It’s a big galaxy,” he said. “He isn’t going to spend the rest of his life chasing us. I hope.”

  “Sooner or later he will find you, though, if you don’t quit the Flex,” she said.

  “Yeah. Probably.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  He shrugged. “I’ll have to up my game,” he said.

  “Just like that?”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy.”

  They made it to the ship’s clinic, which was, like everything else on the starliner, sparkling new. The vessel, the Ansel Park, was the size of a seagoing luxury ship, could carry three thousand passengers in comfort, and was essentially a small town in space. Starliners never touched atmosphere, they did all their travel in deep, most of it in Bender, only dropping out of warp near a feeder station.

  The medico was a dour woman of sixty or seventy who took one look at Mourn and waved him toward the Healy. Mourn shucked his clothes without any false modesty, and Sola gasped at the size and colors of the bruises he sported. And at all the old scars.

  He climbed into the Healy like a man who had done it more than a few times. The lid clamshelled shut, motors and pumps whirred to life, and there was a disinfectant smell when the bug-killer lamps strobed and flared actinically.

  The medico went to the Healy’s control panel and waved her hands over the sensors.

  “So, what happened to you?”

  “I fell down the stairs.” His voice came from the device’s amplifier and echoed hollowly.

  The medico cackled, a hoarse, raspy laugh. “Yeah, you did, and I’m the fucking Queen of Charlene, too. You’re a player.”

  “Good guess.”

  “I’ve seen a few fight injuries. And you didn’t get all those old scars bumping down the risers, boy. How’d the other guy look?”

  “Last time I saw him, he was out cold on the playground lawn.”

  “He fall down, too?”

  “After somebody hand-wanded him.”

  She shook her head. “Well, let’s see. You have five, six, seven broken ribs, none compound, fortunately. Torn obliques, torn intercostals, what looks like a bruised liver, a
leaky spleen, interabdominal bleeding is going pretty good, not to mention some great contusions and abrasions. Your ’crit and hemoglobin are on the way down, and your left wrist is broken. Left fifth metacarpal, too, boxer’s fracture. You should know better than to punch with that knuckle.”

  “I was in a hurry.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m surprised you walked away under your own power.”

  “I didn’t want to be there when he woke up,” Mourn said.

  She cackled again.

  “Well, you know the routine. Bones we can orthostat, I can transfuse enough oxyliq to make the blood flow okay, maybe a couple pints of whole, but I make your in-case time at, six, six-and-a-half hours for the spleen and liver. No way around it.”

  “I need to pee first,” he said.

  “After I got IVs set and running? Nope. You know where the catheter is. Oil M. Willie and shove it in, you are there for the duration.”

  Mourn sighed.

  “Shoulda thought of that before you picked a fight with Goliath. He have a weapon?”

  “He is a weapon.”

  “That’s good, I like that one.”

  Sola walked to the Healy and peered though the clear lid. “You want me to stay and visit with you?”

  “No reason to. Might as well get some rest yourself. It has been a long day.”

  “Boy, has it,” she said. “I’ll come back when the time is up.”

  “Okay. Doc, you got something to take the edge off so I can sleep?”

  “Already pumping,” the medico said. “Sweet dreams, M. Mourn.”

  Sola watched him fade into slumber.

  “Is he going to be all right?” she asked the medico.

  “Yeah, no sweat. He’s a tough bastard, I’ll give him that. On a scale of one to ten, he had to be hurting at least eight, and getting so anemic that if he stood up suddenly he’d have passed out. Man has discipline.”

  Sola nodded. Yes. She knew.

  11

  Shaw was in the middle of dinner when time slowed down.

  The workout with Baba had been uneventful, the rest of the afternoon standard. He had felt fine, albeit somewhat more nervous than he had let on. The vouch followed him around, humming and whirring, and hadn’t felt the need to rush forward and start pumping chem into him while screaming for medical help. Not yet, anyway.

  But as he lifted a bite of hot and spicy dillnut noodle to his mouth, one of the strands slipped from the grip of the ivory chopsticks.

  Shaw watched as the noodle fell. It wasn’t like some entcom slomo effect, but it was definitely moving slower than normal in one gee. Without any particular sense of speed, he reached out with his free hand and managed to catch the falling bit of food.

  Unless gravity had just changed the rules, the drug had finally kicked in. Son of a bitch.

  He hadn’t known how it would manifest, hadn’t really thought about it, but here it was: The drug fired up, lit, and what it gave was the illusion that everything else had slowed, and that he was moving at normal speed. The truth was the opposite, but the effect was the same. An example of subjective relativity, so it seemed.

  He took his water glass and heaved the contents straight up. The water stretched out in a fat globule and started to come down, and he was able to move the glass under it, catching most of the falling mass. Not all of it, he wasn’t quite quick enough, but certainly he was faster than normal. Much faster.

  Damn! This is great!

  “Cervo!”

  “Sir?” Cervo said.

  “I need to see you in here.”

  “Yes, sir, right away.”

  Well, his speech hadn’t been affected, that was good.

  Cervo arrived ten seconds later and his movements didn’t seem any slower than usual. Hmm.

  “Sir.”

  “I need you to punch me,” Shaw said. He pointed to his nose. “Right here.”

  “Sir?”

  “Not hard enough to kill me, but fast, fast as you can.”

  Cervo nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  The giant stepped forward and snapped a punch at Shaw’s face.

  He had sparred with Cervo many times. The big man was quick, if not as quick as a flyweight. This time, the punch looked like a tai chi move, smooth, but maybe half the normal speed. Maybe the drug needed adrenaline to make it work?

  Shaw slid to the side, deflected the punch with a slap block, and tagged Cervo’s ribs with a one-two combination, not hard enough to cause any damage but enough to sting a little. He saw Cervo trying to react, but the man couldn’t get out of the way.

  “Yes!” Shaw yelled. “How did I look?”

  “Never seen you move that fast before, sir,” Cervo said. “Never seen anybody move that fast before.”

  “You were throwing at full speed?”

  “Sir. Quick as I could.”

  “Yes, yes! Computer, mark the time, acknowledge.”

  “Time: 1847 hours, twelve seconds,” the cube’s computer said.

  To Cervo, Shaw said, “Okay, let’s see how long it lasts. Another punch, please.”

  Cervo nodded and came in, again moving as if he were a little better than half speed. Shaw waited, then just ducked and stepped to the side.

  “Keep going!”

  Cervo turned, slid forward, brought his right leg up in a muy thai kick, shin aiming for Shaw’s thigh. Shaw waited, jumped over the attacking leg, came down, and danced behind the bigger man.

  Cervo twisted, spun, and Shaw knew he could step in, smash the man with any tool he had, and be back out before Cervo could react.

  Shaw dropped, shot his left leg out, swept, and caught Cervo behind the knees. He rarely could sweep the big man, his placement had to be perfect, but he went down this time.

  Jesu, is this great, or what?

  Things started to speed up for him after an hour. By an hour and a half, he was only slightly faster, and by the start of the second hour, he was back to normal.

  He was also totally exhausted and starving. He had burned a lot of energy, and his heart rate was still elevated, up to 120, twice his usual resting pulse. What had it been at the peak?

  He dismissed Cervo and called his vouch over and asked it for a record of his telemetry.

  The device printed out a sheet and he looked at it. Only 170 beats per minute at the peak, that was high, but not dangerously so for a man in good shape. Respiration up to 26 per minute, but again, nothing beyond his limits. Blood pressure spiked to 160/90, no real danger there for an hour or two.

  Body temp had spiked a couple of degrees, but if that worried the vouch, it hadn’t said anything.

  Already, his mind was whirling with ideas. An hour, ninety minutes? That was more than enough time for any match, though the timing to get to it might be tricky. He’d have to come up with some kind of faster delivery, to get the drug into his system quicker. If he could get the onset down to say, fifteen or twenty minutes, then he could track an opponent and stay with him long enough for the chem to kick in.

  Even if they couldn’t fix that, all he would have to do was be careful of his timing, make sure he didn’t bump into another player until the Reflex had bloomed.

  He laughed aloud. God, this is fucking great!

  I am going to do it! Finally!

  When Mourn awoke inside the Healy, the unit’s clock showed that he had been asleep for four hours. He felt a little better, mostly due to the analgesics the machine had pumped into him. On the other hand, lying in a coffin-sized box unable to move, even with a clear denscris lid, full of needles stuck into your veins with a piss-drain tube up your lingam was not a situation he was ever apt to find pleasant.

  He had at least two more hours before he could exit the medical unit, maybe longer, and since he was awake and couldn’t move, thinking was his main option.

  Since the reason he found himself in one of these bastards was usually the same, the first order of business was generally performance review.

  Mourn replayed the fight with
Weems.

  First, he ran through his general impressions. What stood out, of course, were the strikes that Weems had gotten in, the bone-breakers being hard to forget even had he wanted to do so. What could he have done better to stop those?

  Next, he went over relative positions during the exchanges, distances, angles, trying to imagine what it would have looked like from behind, above, Weems’s point of view.

  Then, he considered his own attacks, those that had landed, those that hadn’t, and ways he might have better launched them.

  He could have spent some time berating himself for his stupidity by challenging Weems in the first place, but done was done, and there was no sense in wasting energy on that, he couldn’t undo it.

  All in all, he hadn’t done badly. Yes, he had lost, but he had known going in that he was going to lose. Weems was the best fighter out there, everybody knew it, and nobody knew it better than a highly ranked player such as Mourn. No dishonor in losing to a superior artist.

  What could he have done to make it go his way?

  After replaying it half a dozen times, Mourn knew the answer to that: Nothing.

  Given the tools he had, which were not inconsiderable, he’d still never had a real chance of winning against a man of Weems’s caliber, not unless Primero made a big error. At his level, players didn’t make big errors. Yes, he had gotten a couple of good licks in, done some damage against the best player out there. He had marked him enough so he would remember it, and there was some small pride to be taken from that, but the end had never really been in doubt—and both he and Weems had known it.

  Mourn sighed, realized he wasn’t breathing properly and getting enough oxy. He concentrated on that for a few seconds until his heart rate dropped back to normal, around fifty beats per minute.

  All right.

  He looked at the clock. His review had taken only thirty minutes. He had time to kill.

  He considered the woman who had probably saved his life, but there wasn’t much point in trying to dissect that—he needed to talk to her again before he had enough information to think about her properly.