by Lee Bond
He would still land atop the armored arsehole, just as clean and nice as anything he’d ever done, though, so it weren’t all that m…
“Raging bollocks in the backyard!” A series of angry looking red beams flashed out from the knave’s wrist, and they were hot enough to scald his backside just a wee bit ‘ere they turned his old perch and roost into so much rubble for the trouble. “I is going to enjoy this, hey?”
Dominic Breton collided with the Enforcer in a tangle of arms and legs, nearly sliding off the surprisingly slick surface of the armor and only managing to save his rapid –and ignominious- descent down to the ground with the rest of the plebes by closing a hand ‘round knave’s ankle.
Momentarily discommoded but otherwise still in control, Dom then began shimmying up the stunned knave’s immobilized leg, taking efforts here and there to drill his free hand into whatever were left unexposed. At first, his fist didn’t do much other than sting from the titanic impact, but as he scrabbled agilely up the side of his enemy, each successive blow felt … stronger somehow, as if his own flesh were learning the ins and outs. By the time he were face to helmet wi’ knave, free fist were leaving behind marks.
Staring into the visor, spying ‘pon steady amber eyes bearing the taint of abysmal confusion, Dominic Breton flashed the … oh, now this were a nice change of pace, hey … flashed the lady knave the most salacious of winks. Pulled direct from the mugs of them dead whores in Ickford, it bordered on the obscene.
“Hello, my duckling.” Dom winked a second time, drilling his fist into the side of the woman’s helmet. “Let me show you how we do things down Ickford way, hey?”
Dominic Breton squared his head up wi’ helmet, then nutted his lady knave in the visor so hard he were certain he heard summat crack, and it damn sure weren’t his scholarly noggin.
Down they went, spiralling towards the ground, muffled curses and sounds of confusion spilling out of the temporarily defunct helmet…
***
“Clint! For fuck’s sake, Clint!” Slizzer wished there was something she could bang on inside the goddamn Suit, but everything was either directly controlled by mental stimulation, AI predictor algorithms or basic eye movements. “Clint what in the fuck is going on here?”
Outside, clinging to the Suit with more strength than he ought to possess, Dom was busy climbing her, free hand banging into her legs and abdomen with enough force to worry Suit; damage indicators built directly into the skin of the armor were still trying to calculate the absolute level of force the Arcadian could throw into his punches when a calloused fist exploded into her stomach with enough strength to actually crack the plating.
“Slizzer. Slizz. Don’t let your guy get too close.” Clint’s voice came through the comms like a breath of fresh air, though his tone was one of absolute mystification. “Looks like they generate some kind of field or something … Shuman is having a goddamn terrible time.”
“Bit late for that.” Slizz replied dryly. Suit was already repairing the minimal damage to the stomach plates, fussing quietly in the background at it’s inability to determine precisely what was going on. “Fucking guy is climbing me like a fucking tree.”
“Well, shit, Slizzer. You gotta…” Clint’s voice was momentarily obscured by five incredibly loud retorts that blew through the entirety of 17 like the voice of an angry god, promptly and swiftly followed by a few unearthly shrieks that caused Suit’s diagnostic feeds to waver in place. “Ah, yeah. So. Terrex just got hammered by what appears to be modified FARS-guns live and direct from Latelyspace annnnnd it looks as though Abercoign done fucked up with his melty-faced lady soooooo … good luck with that. Try not to die.”
Slizzer realized that Dom was staring at her through the visor. Either he could somehow see into the mirrored helmet or he somehow instinctively knew right where she was looking, because his pale blue eyes –really, they were the softest, lightest blue she’d ever seen, and if there wasn’t a great serpent of madness slithering around those twinkles, she could fall into them quite easily- were locked with hers.
His lips were moving.
Slizz flicked the external audio on.
“… down Ickford way.”
Slizzer watched Dom pull his head back as far as it’d go, bemused. It was one thing to own fists capable of dealing damage to the nearly-indestructible plates of her Suit but it was another thing entirely to think your skull could survive an equally destructive blow, even if these Arcadians were … different.
Bemused, still smiling wryly at Dom’s destiny –that future being a definitely collapsed forehead complete with brains and other goop leaking through every available hole- Slizzer settled back inside Suit and braced for impact.
Her eyes fell on Suit’s diagnostics. Designed to scan for weaknesses and exploits in massive enemy fortifications, Slizzer’s slick Suit was the ultimate combat sapper; with a little time and effort, she could detect even the smallest of cracks into which her considerable talents could be poured. Because of the kind of work she ordinarily did for Trinity, her Suit’s diagnostics were always running, and were capable of generating reports that were far beyond much of what other Suits could provide.
There was some kind of field emanating from Dominic Breton. It was affecting Suit operations.
More specifically, the Arcadian disruptor field was wreaking havoc with Suit’s powered systems.
Dom’s handsome, bloody face and mad, mad eyes slammed right into the front of her helmet. Once. Twice. Three tim…
Three time’s the charm, hey?
Slizzer lost consciousness. Suit started falling to the ground.
***
Morton and Silla, Trey and Gadorn and all the rest of the 'liberated' and 'still alive for some fucking reason' Stairwell Settlers looked back and forth at each other, wondering just what in the hell they were doing. Each of them recalled with perfect clarity the words pouring from Dom’s mouth, that blood-stirring, heart-pounding pep talk in the Stairwell –a Stairwell that was now a boiling inferno, so there was no going home now- and they believed that their decision to come running out and directly into Enforcer’s weapons had been made on their own terms, but now, with that idiot running around howling and screaming like a lunatic, they suddenly felt …
Confused.
“What in the hell?” Morton jerked his chin at Dom as he flew through the air towards a barely seen wall. “This guy? Fuck this guy.”
Silla shrugged. “There ain’t nothin’ we can do, Morty. Stairs are all gone. I ain’t walkin’ to the next one, not down here.”
Gadorn pointed a nail-less finger at the man they’d been following for the last few days. “Would you look at that? He’s jumping right off that wall!”
Trey snorted. “Right at the Enforcer! Man’s crazy.”
“We’re all crazy.” Morton replied sensibly, indicating the ear necklace he was wearing around his thick, fat neck. He’d only just started collecting them, and the stink as they decayed was pretty goddamn heinous, but when you were following someone like Dominic Breton, adopting new levels of insanity was the best and only defense. Especially when he turned those weird damned eyes on you. “We wouldn’t have been in the Stairs in the first place otherwise.”
Gadorn cupped a hand to her mouth and hooted in appreciation of Dom’s tricky aerial maneuvers. “Would you look at that! Never seen anything like that in my life.”
“You was born in the Stairs, Gaddy, you prolly ain’t even seen real sky.” Morton slapped the girl on the back of the head, instantly regretting it; the young woman’s hair was thick and matted with stuff that was better left to the imagination. Gaddy cackled crazily, pretending to fix her coif.
They all winced as their outcast leader slammed into the Suit like a cannonball, then cheered valiantly as Dom startled scrabbling, shimmying and twisting his way up and up.
“Guy’s tenacious.” Morton commented, throwing shadow punches alongside Dom’s real blows. “Gotta give him that.”
Ga
dorn worked her lips, sounding out the strange word. “What’s tena…”
Just that moment, five terrifyingly loud cracks drowned out all sounds, echoes ricocheting all around them. A frightful silence fell over 17, a silence that was suddenly torn asunder by these warbling screams that sounded like Death.
Silla looked at the few remaining survivors of Dom’s folly. She looked at the melting Stairwell, then at Dom and the Enforcer, then back to those she supposed where –at the very least- comrades. “Nope. Fuck this. I am out of here. You all can hang around watching that idiot try to beat an Enforcer to death and you can find out what kind of guns those were and you can even encounter whatever the hell is screaming like that, but me? I am out of here. I didn’t sign up for this kind of fucking fucked up bullshit. Magic Books? All the knowledge of the Universe? And who in the goddamn fuck is Garth Nickels and why does that asshole get all weird whenever he talks…”
Trey rubbed his lips with the back of a hand, watching Silla walk off around a pile of rubble, straining to catch the tail end of her rant. He made a thoughtful face. “Yeah. No. Me too. This is insane. I mean, I know I’m insane, okay? In that last fight, I bit a guy’s nose off. I’m pretty sure I ate a bit of it too, but that kind of thing? Heat of the moment type stuff. No harm no foul.” Trey pointed at Dom, who looked like he was having a chat with his Enforcer. “But this? This is some next-level fuck no bullshit. You can all hang out. I’m going to see if I can find a bar that hasn’t been completely demolished.”
Gaddy and Morton and the rest of the Stairwell survivors watched Trey hustle off as he tried catching up to Silla then turned their attention to the madman that’d rousted them from the hell they’d known in favor of uncertain and phenomenal insanity.
Morton winced particularly hard as Dom slammed his forehead into the Enforcer’s helmet. “I … I think they’re right. Let’s go. Dominic can deal with this himself. I sure as hell ain’t gettin’ that close.”
Morton hurried after Trey, looking over his shoulder at the thirty or so survivors. They, too, were packing up and hurrying after him.
Behind the group, Dom and the Enforcer slammed into the ground hard enough to make them all wince.
***
“Warning.” Suit’s voice echoed through the helmet like a klaxon alarm, literally causing Slizzer’s head to ring like a bell. “Internal inertial dampeners offline. Warning. Internal inertial dampeners off…”
“I got it. I got it.” Slizzer tried opening her eyes to read through the HUD displays to see what the hell was going on but the moment she did, the illumination from all that data sent daggers right in the middle of her skull. “Ugh. What the fuck happened?”
The back of her head was all wet. Why was it wet? That didn’t make any sense. They were in Stack 17, and as far as she recalled, 17 didn’t have any pools or manmade oceans until you started getting to the top tiers.
Slizzer tried moving her head around to get a better feel for the wetness, but doing so made for a tremendous amount of pain that had her retching. Her eyes popped open and the glaring lights from the HUD burned deeply, adding to the nausea.
“What in the hell?” Slizzer knew she was repeating herself but she couldn’t stop. “Suit! Goddamn you. What happened here?”
“Critical damage.” Suit whispered gently, at last detecting the extent of Slizzer’s wounds. “Impact at the base of the skull has resulted in a number of fractures along the spinal column. as well as a crack in the skull itself. You have been brain damaged. Inertial dampeners failed due to extreme damage to the helmet. Do not move. I am attempting to activate the autodoc.”
“Fucking fine.” Slizzer tried sounding irritable, but it came out in a breathy whisper that sent thrills of panic through her mind; she couldn’t feel her right side at all and the faint cold trickling that was still persisting at the base of her skull grew more worrisome by the second. “Fix me. Fix me now.”
“Attempting to reroute auxiliary power.” Suit responded clinically. “Rerouting … rerouting … re … complete. Engaging autodoc.”
Slizzer opened her eyes a sliver, the merest of fractions and peered up into HUD-space looking for the holographic display that represented her body, her … her. It took some doing, what with the lights drilling lasers right through the eyes every time they twitched too quickly, but in the end, if she squinted just right and held her head absolutely straight –which no doubt made Suit much happier- the display blossomed out into a full-blown diagram, just like it was supposed to.
A cool hiss pressed against the back of her neck, competing for the chill drip.
“Administering sedative and pain compensators.” Suit whispered softly. “Eyesight should return to normal.”
Slizz blinked acidic tears away and continued staring at the image. It wasn’t promising. With the inertial dampeners being offline, she’d bounced the back of her skull against the inside of the helmet itself, cracking things open back there and either compacting or outright snapping more than a few vertebrae in her neck.
“At least,” Slizz said into the hole that came from the sedative, “I didn’t crack my pretty face open.”
“Preliminary analysis of wounds indicates the autodoc will be unable to repair the damage, Slizzer.” Suit sounded almost apologetic.
“Gee, you think?” Slizz demanded acerbically. “And here I thought the hole in the back of my head could be healed with a fucking bandage. Give me some credit. Are we fully powered up or not? I can’t move my head, so I can’t see all the readouts.”
The HUD-space blurred a bit as Suit realigned the displays so Slizzer could see the information for herself. As she worked through the data, Suit spoke, “As you can see, we are at approximately ninety percent capacity. There is some damage to the helmet, damage affecting several critical systems. Among the systems affected …”
“Do I have lasers or guns or anything like that?” Slizzer moved her head a fraction of an inch out of irritation and immediately regretted it; pain lanced down the left side of her body like electrified magma and shot out the tips of her toes.
The injured Enforcer promised not to move anymore.
“I am working at repairing the affected components, but the deleterious effect of the Arcadian seems to be preventing a quick and speedy recovery, Slizzer. I am sorry.”
“I really think you mean that, Suit.” Slizzer considered her options. She was partially paralyzed, had a hole in the back of her head big enough to stick a fist in, Suit was down all of it’s primary weapons and goddamn Dominic Breton was around here, no doubt getting ready to do something weird but effective to her Suit.
Something told the Enforcer that he wasn’t nearly as injured as she was, which put her at an extreme disadvantage.
“Where is the asshole?” Slizzer flexed her left hand methodically, feeling the augmented strength of the Suit flow through her fingertips. “Please tell me he’s dead.”
Suit said nothing for a long second. “Dominic Breton is not dead, Enforcer. He is forty feet away and moving towards the remainder of the denizens he arrived with. For all intents and purposes, he appears to be fleeing the scene.”
“Hah.” Slizz shook her head and –even with the sedative and pain compensators coursing through her bloodstream- spent a good minute or two howling in an agony so sweet that by the time it left her, the Enforcer found she almost missed the sensations screaming through her. “He’s either going to go kill them all or force them to come back. You looked into his eyes. Don’t your databases have information on men like him?”
“Indeed, Enforcer. I do possess endless data.” Suit paused to reflect. “Ah. Yes. Violence is in the air.”
“Once…” Slizz took a deep breath, ready to articulate the idea that’d been percolating in her brain since the moment she’d come to accept that there wasn’t anything practical they could do to prevent her murder. “Once … once he’s finished with them, he’ll come back here to finish me off.”
“Impossible.” Suit
declared stridently. “My exterior shell is comprised of impenetrable layers of …”
“Suit. He head-butted me into unconsciousness and destroyed the links to the primary weapon arrays.” Slizz’s voice rang in her ears. “With his fucking head. I don’t think the normal rules are applicable here, do you?”
Suit went stone cold silent, plumbing the depths of it’s considerable warehouse of knowledge in search of any other time, with any other Enforcer, where this kind of situation had arisen. The only instance in living memory of an Enforcer going the way of all things was recent, wherein Tiv Solom had been killed by a handful of enraged Specters.
“No.” Suit replied into the silence. “You are correct. The rules no longer seem applicable. What should we do? I can override some of the safety protocols and remove you to a safer location, whereupon I can summon a medical team.”
“No.” Slizzer shook her head a second time, this time hissing defiance at that ugly brute called agony. “Cortical shunt. Only option.”
“That will sever all connection to your body, Slizzer.”
“It’ll get rid of the pain fully, right?” Slizz pressed urgently. “You and I both know that we can’t let Dom loose, there isn’t time to get another Enforcer down here to deal with him and the others are for damn sure in the same kind of boat as me right now. I …”
“There is Clint the Enforcer, Slizzer. He is attempting radio contact right now. From the sounds he is making, he is quite desperate.”
“Fuck him.” Slizz raised her left hand and slammed it into the ferrocrete floor she was laying on hard enough to crack it. “Cortical shunt, Suit. The only way. Once I’m free from pain, I can focus on the links and systems. You can’t operate yourself. Not completely. You need a viable organic brain to at least pass through the permission gates. You know this.”
