Hearts of Chaos

by Victor Milán

  She kept peeking out the windows. The Popular Militia had insisted on providing its own security for this first big gathering, and given the rather tense history between the Militia and the 'lleros, Cassie had seen no choice but to agree. She hated it, and had made certain security provisions of her own. She could not keep from looking out the windows every few seconds to check on the guards.

  The windows themselves bothered her, for some unfathomable reason. They seemed of a conventional sort, double-paned, hinged to rotate about the longitudinal axis to open, but currently locked and sealed against the ferocious Townian winter. They should have reassured her; so stringent were the demands of weatherproofing here in the middle Gunderlands that as a by-product they were bulletproof as well—pure transpex. But they made her uneasy.

  She stopped by one halfway down the right side from the main entrance, glanced out. There was something familiar about the guard walking parallel to the wall and five meters out with an autoloading shotgun tucked under his arm. The face, the hair—Diets, it's the agitator from the riot that Diana stopped, the one I gave the kidney massage to!

  She shook her head and straightened, amazed at how a simple sidestep by Fate could land them on the same side. She wondered if he'd spotted her.

  A commotion drew her attention to the entrance. Somebody's approach was stirring lots of interest. Marly Joles's father, Rusty, a solidly built man with freckles and thin ginger hair, began to walk toward the foyer, extending a hand in greeting.

  And then, against Cassie's ThinSkin-clad right buttock, the merest wisp of icy wind blew.

  In a Zen thunderbolt she had the whole scam in all its glory. Her hand dove into the open front of her coat and closed around the neoplast grips of the nine she carried in a shoulder holster. Her mouth opened to shout a warning.

  "Wolf Girl! Damned good to see you," Rusty Joles called out to a familiar figure, the wide shoulders exaggerated by rodan-hide motorcycle jacket, but to Cassie it was almost anticlimax.

  Wolf Girl stopped for a beat, stood. She had the same compact grace, the same air of total insolent assurance. The only thing that had changed about her was the black patch over her left eye.

  Cassie seemed to be moving in slow-motion while the rest of the world proceeded at its customary pace. Even her cry of warning—"Evreeboddee DOWNNN ittt's a SET-uppp!"—seemed to crawl from her mouth like a crippled worm. Trapped as if in a dream of endlessly drawing her sidewarm, Cassie watched helplessly as Joles stepped up to embrace Wolf Girl—and then staggered forward down the steps as she lit him up with a burst from that nasty little machine pistol of hers.

  —Cassie's pistol came free. Time snapped back into shape. She thrust the piece out two-handed, lining up the three sight dots as Wolf Girl turned—

  The window to her right—which at some recent point had been tampered with, and then set up to look as if it were still locked and sealed for winter— snapped open. The long black barrel of an auto shotgun poked through.

  Cassie wheeled. Her left hand grabbed the barrel, forced it up. Her right stuck the nine into the Starry Wisdom Street agitator's left armpit.

  The shotgun went off, searing the palm of Cassie's hand. "Remember me?" she said, and shot the man four times as quickly as she could pump the trigger.

  He grimaced in pain and fell away, leaving the shotgun still in her grasp. She shoved the nine into her belt and shouldered the long gun, turning to point it at Wolf Girl, who had begun to spray the crowded pit with bullets.

  Wolf Girl's peripheral vision caught the move, or maybe she just sensed it. She dodged to her left. Cassie's blast blew a big chunk out of the square wooden pillar at one end of the rail.

  As splinter-edged holes began to march toward her along the wall, she turned and launched herself along the catwalk. A man was shooting a subgun at her from the window directly opposite. As she flew she fired twice. The autoloader was a twenty-gauge, not a twelve—chalk one up to the late agitator's judgment for choosing a weapon that had about two-thirds the killing power of a twelve for half the kick. She did not lose the gun. The submachine-gunner fell back away from the window.

  Cassie tucked, rolled, came up to a sitting position with shotgun-butt snugged into her shoulder. She was looking for Wolf Girl. Instead she felt cold air on her back.

  She rolled over backward. Muzzle-flash ballooned twice directly over her face. A gunman was shooting a pistol braced on the horizontally turned windowpane. She fired beneath the pane. The front of his coat shredded and smoked, and pink spray misted out to either side behind him. He let go of the handgun and reeled back. The window rotated, depositing the pistol next to Cassie as the man dropped.

  She came to one knee, shotgun tracking across the pit like a Marauder's autocannon. The hall was full of gunshots, screams, the stinks of burned propellants and lubricants and also loosened sphincters. Some of the resistance members had produced sidearms of their own and were shooting it out with Wolf Girl and her assassins.

  Wolf Girl broke cover from the left of the main entrance, sprinting along the catwalk across the pit from where Cassie crouched. She held her machine pistol out at arm's full extension, blazing wildly away. She seemed to be laughing. Cassie let the rest of the extended tubular magazine go in four monstrous pulses of sound, but could not swing the unwieldy weapon fast enough to catch the running woman up. She hated long guns.

  The shotgun quit making noise. Wolf Girl vanished through a door next to the giant fireplace. Cassie threw the shotgun down, re-drew her nine, then scooped up the gun that had fallen beside her. As she did, another gunman came flying through the top half of the window, apparently trying to take her by surprise. She sat down, thrusting against the wall as hard as she could with both legs as she snapped both guns up and began firing.

  The man bellowed as bullets pierced him. He slammed against the railing that separated catwalk from pit. Cassie's push and—possibly—the impulse of the firing pistols propelled her between two uprights and into empty space.

  Her angular momentum saved her a nasty tailbone crack when she landed. She slid under the table and banged her left shoulder against a table leg the thickness of a railroad tie. Lucky you didn't crush your skull, pulling a nitwit stunt like that.

  Lots of eyes, very wide, peered at her through the gloom. Apparently a lot of meeting attendees had discovered urgent business beneath the table. She backed out, stood, rolled onto the tabletop and hence to her feet. She darted across the vast table.

  A man appeared at the railing before her, aiming a Rorynex submachine gun at her face. She shoved both pistols out before her and just shot him and shot him. He danced back against the wall and slid down it, leaving a shiny-dark smear.

  She jumped from tabletop to the lip of the catwalk, vaulted the railing, and pounded after Wolf Girl.

  * * *

  Colonel Carlos Camacho and Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Baird stared at the screen. Though the library monitor provided no audio, they could distinctly hear the sounds of a savage firefight, muted by thick wooden walls.

  "It was a trap!" Baird exclaimed. "They were trying to wipe out all the resistance leaders at one shot!"

  Don Carlos was half-rising from his chair, drawing his big FWL service-issue Imperator autopistol from its worn leather holster. "We should be cautious ourselves," he said, slipping over the chair-arm to crouch down between the chair and the external wall.

  The door flew open. A man with a submachine gun stood framed in it. He saw Baird standing to his right, brought his weapon up and around, spitting fire. Desperately, Baird dived for the doubtful shelter of a table strewn with out-of-date Federated Commonwealth magazines. Bullets followed.

  Don Carlos popped up from behind the chair and shot the gunman twice, right through the center of his chest. The bullet-stream stopped. The intruder stared at Don Carlos, wonder in his eyes. The Colonel shot him a third time between them.

  Silence, but for ringing in ears and the sounds of fighting elsewhere.

  "Well,"
Don Carlos said after a few moments.

  "Well what?" Baird asked from under the table, his pulse hammering so hard he was afraid a vein in his neck would blow. He kept covertly feeling himself everywhere he could reach in his hunched-over position, unwilling to believe he hadn't been hit.

  "Go get his weapon," Don Carlos said, "and close the door. We might be in for a little siege."

  Baird stared at his commander, crouched there with his big pistol in hand. Look at him, he thought He's actually enjoying this.

  It was then that he began to believe Don Carlos had well and truly lost it.

  * * *

  Back flattened against the wall, Cassie reached out with her 9 mm still in her right hand, hooked her thumb into the handle of the door, yanked it open.

  Gunfire answered immediately, shatteringly loud in the confines of the corridor beyond the door. Cassie was already dropping as inertia swung the door outward. She landed on her belly, still mostly covered by the lintel, extended her right arm, fired twice at the figure standing at the far end of the short hallway.

  Wolf Girl ducked to Cassie's left.

  Cassie took the picture in at a flash. The corridor was whitewashed. There was just one door visible to the right, which looked to Cassie to lead to a utility closet. Two passages led left, the one her adversary had dodged down and a nearer one Cassie thought must lead to the kitchen.

  She jumped up. Firing both pistols in hopes of keeping her enemy pulled back around the corner, Cassie charged the two meters to the nearer left turn. She didn't try to make the turn so much as veered left, so that she went into the side-passage at a shallow angle, sacrificing little speed, slammed against the wall and let rebound carry her father along. Even as she lunged into the side-passage she saw the stubby barrel of Wolf Girl's machine pistol poke around the corner and bloom with flame.

  She was in the kitchen, all right. It was much less rustic than the rest of the lodge, all gleaming tile and chrome. There were hardwood cutting tables you could perform autopsies on, ovens you could cremate people in, vast ranges, big sinks, and even Big Hats, traditional accouterments of the master chef, on a rack by the far door. Cassie had little time to take in the scenery, however, because Wolf Girl had seized the initiative and was coming after her.

  She fetched up against a chopping table, spun as Wolf Girl came around the corner. Cassie had her right-hand gun up, but her antagonist had the MP preceding her, blazing away. Cassie could do nothing but throw herself into a backward roll across the table top, barely managing to get her feet under her as she dropped to the floor on the far side.

  To anchor it against heavy use, the chopping-table was filled with cement or something; bullets wouldn't penetrate it. As soon as she took in that fact, Cassie stuck just the barrel of her left-hand gun around the comer of the impenetrable pedestal and cranked out the whole rest of the magazine.

  She heard a surprised grunt, a meaty thud as of a body falling. Yeah, sure, she thought. I'm really going to fall for that.

  She dropped the borrowed gun. Rolling on her back, she braced her strong legs against the pedestal, pushed herself off on her back, just as she had done on the catwalk. She slid easily over the polished dark-green fired-clay tiles of the floor and stopped with the top of her head almost touching the pedestal of the next table in line.

  Arm locked down her body, gun ready, she rolled left. Wolf Girl was crouched in the passageway, machine pistol pointed into the kitchen. The other woman wasn't expecting Cassie to appear at such a low level. Cassie fired twice before Wolf Girl could refigure her targeting solution. Which meant she didn't get to; all she had time to do was fling herself to her own left, to put the mass of the table Cassie had just left between her and Cassie's gun.

  Cassie stood up, scuttled around the base of the table she'd arrived at. She crouched behind the table, staying low in case Wolf Girl tried the same trick she had used.

  Wolf Girl didn't. She came over the top in a namesake leap, machine pistol yammering. Cassie snapped a reflex shot wild and ducked back around to huddle with her back to the pedestal and her knees up. She heard the thump of a body rolling up against the other side of the table she was hiding behind.

  Her eyes focused on the pistol held before her eyes. She realized the slide was locked back: empty. She dropped it, grabbed her snubby out of its pocket holster in her coat. Then she tried to figure out what to do.

  If she waited long enough, she'd win, because certainly the 'lleros she had stationed out of sight but on call must soon be responding to the commotion at the lodge. But what if Wolf Girl decided not to wait? She had a preponderance of firepower, and while Cassie respected the old marksman's adage, you can't miss fast enough to catch up, if Wolf Girl wanted to try poking the machine pistol around or over the table and loosing off bursts at random, she was a lot more likely to tag Cassie than Cassie would be to nail her back. Even if Cassie tried the same. reconnaissance-by-fire stunt.

  Therefore the only thing to do was take the risk of exposure, try to establish dominance of position. Which meant one, two—go!

  Cassie stood up, locking her arms out in a two-handed isoscles grip. Wolf Girl arose as if they were both attached to the same rising beam. Cassie found the muzzle of her snubnosed revolver pressed against Wolf Girl's philtrum—and the muzzle of Wolf Girl's MP snugged in the notch where Cassie's jaw met her ear.

  "You're good," Wolf Girl said. Her voice was low, rich, and perfectly calm. She wasn't even breathing heavily. "No one's ever touched me as you have." She reached up and flicked the hard plastic eye patch with the thumbnail of her free hand.

  "I'm sorry about your, eye," Cassie said. "I meant to kill you, not hurt you. How did you escape?"

  "The same way you did when those fools came after you in the diner. The same way you did when you sensed you were being driven in a trap in that alley. I felt the danger with my ki. It gave me time to react—if not time to get away scot-free. You are well-trained."

  "My guru taught me to use my head and my senses."

  Wolf Girl smiled at her. Her remaining eye was russet. She was a very handsome woman.

  "What will you do now? What your head tells you—or your heart?"

  Her accent's local Davion, Cassie thought, but she's fond enough of talking in riddles to be a Drac.

  "My heart and my head both seem to be pretty much out of ideas," she said, "but—"

  She dropped, turning, sweeping out with her right leg to scythe her opponent's legs out from under her.

  Wolf Girl jumped high in the air. Cassie's sweep passed harmlessly beneath her.

  Cassie followed through, bringing up the snubby. Wolf Girl crescent-kicked it out of her hand.

  This wasn't turning out as Cassie might've hoped. But guru had always taught her to chain attacks until her foe went down or forced her to retreat, and not to give up. Having come halfway up, Cassie dropped again and spun into another sweep. This one deposited Wolf Girl neatly on her rump on the tile.

  Cassie swarmed over her, clawing for the machine pistol. She caught Wolf Girl's right wrist with both hands, cracked the back of her gun hand sharply against the corner of the table, The MP skittered away across the floor like a giant metal roach.

  Wolf Girl got a foot up between herself and Cassie, launched the smaller woman off of her. Cassie flew against a huge alloy sink, banged the elbow of her right arm, which promptly went numb.

  She didn't go down—that balance training. Huddled twisted against the sink was not an uncomfortable fighting position for her. She was doing fine fending off a series of kicks with her left hand when Wolf Girl laid a move on her she hadn't encountered before. The one-eyed woman, fighting right foot advanced, cocked that foot for a front snap-kick at Cassie's short ribs. Cassie got her arm down in time to foul the blow. But instead of driving straight in against the interposed arm, Wolf Girl bent her foot to ninety degrees and turned it way out, like a ballerina, so that it was parallel to the floor. And she whipped it around horizontally, in a move
ment that caused a brief sympathetic twinge in Cassie's knee and hip, and slammed the ball of the foot in under Cassie's ribs.

  As Cassie fought for breath, Wolf Girl retracted her foot, then brought it around the other way in a fairly conventional round-house kick. It wasn't any tournament love-tap with the instep, either; it was a full-on ball-of-the-foot shot, into the side of the head.

  Bright light flared behind Cassie's eyes, to be replaced by great floating purple globs of afterimage. Her body did not seem to want to respond.

  Wolf Girl grabbed her by the front of the coat, held her upright. Cassie gave her a right elbow-smash to the corner of her jaw. It was a good shot, snapped Wolf Girl's head right around for a change.

  Wolf Girl's response was to turn her hips counterclockwise and slam Cassie in the gut with a side-kick that was almost a back kick. The small of Cassie's back smashed into the edge of the counter next to the sink, and her head struck a metal cupboard. She saw more pyrotechnics.

  She also heard a rushing in her ears. She figured that was a very bad sign. Especially since it was getting much louder.

  From somewhere outside came excited shots, followed by a sharp crack! as air rushed in to replace that ionized by the startling passage of a laser beam. Outlaw Leyva's Phoenix Hawk was jumping to the rescue, signaling the arrival of sundry Caballero reinforcements Cassie had left standing by in the nearby evergreen forest.

  "So your friends have come." Wolf Girl grabbed her. Her face swam in Cassie's vision. "I'm glad. I don't want to kill you; you're the best I've ever met."

  She crushed Cassie's already-bruised lips with a kiss. And then she was gone, leaving Cassie to slump down until she could rest her cheek on the cool comfort of the tile.

  20

  Port Howard

  Aquilonia Province, Towne

  Draconis March, Federated Commonwealth

  9 February 3058