Back and forth, the mech flew, hitting its targets repeatedly. If its fuel held, it would eventually wear through the armor. Mary was fascinated by this deadly ballet, but could not stay to watch. She looked all around for the wall. That’s when she saw the second pike. He was standing very still, holding his carbine at his side, letting it self-target. The gun discharged a prolonged pulse that raced through the woods and hit the mech. The mech exploded as its plasma reserve was ignited. The concussion knocked the groundskeeper off his feet.
The second pike lowered his carbine and gestured to Mary to stand still. A utility cart, like the one at the cottage, rolled up behind him.
FRED HEARD THE explosion and set his visor to calculate its location. As he ran, the ground he covered was added to the theater map under construction in the corner of his visor. It was a growing band of known terrain in an unknown territory. The explosion had come from an unexpected direction. If it marked Mary’s location, it would mean that she was doubling back to the plaza in a large arc.
Fred ran toward the explosion marker in his map. He crossed several footpaths and climbed small wooded hills. The terrain was rich in natural cover, which his visor mostly filtered out. Suddenly he was buzzed by a mech, bluish, like the one that had streaked from the gatehouse. He guessed it wasn’t a clinic mech, but didn’t know how it figured into the action. It circled him twice and flew off. Suddenly all of the unknown territory in Fred’s map was filled in. Not only that, but personnel markers appeared, and he had access to clinic comm. Fred paused in order to analyze the situation. Two of the markers were to his left and receding at a good pace. One of them, flagged as armed, was pursuing the other, who was unarmed—Mary? To his right, another marker was at the location of the explosion. It was flagged as armed and uninjured, but unconscious. There was another marker much farther inside the clinic. It was marked by a battlefield lid, which meant it was a casualty. Fred couldn’t read its vitals, but a picture was quickly forming in his mind. Pikes often came in tactical teams of three. These three had been sent to destroy Ellen Starke, but ran into trouble. One was down. A second was stunned by the explosion. And the third was pursuing Mary.
Fred turned to follow Mary but stopped again. She was too far away to reach in time. He needed another plan. He knew that the pike chasing Mary had to be wondering who he was and what he was doing there. The pike could see in his own visor that Fred was unarmed, yet wearing body armor, and that he wasn’t attached to clinic security. The pike had to be watching Fred’s marker on his own map with growing apprehension, for he had made a serious mistake. He hadn’t expected to run into a loose russ, and left his teammate vulnerable. If russes were predictable, pikes were doubly so. They never left their brothers behind. Clients be damned.
On Fred’s map, the pike slowed down, a calculated move. He was still within striking distance of Mary, but he was giving Fred a chance to catch up, luring him away from his teammate. A russ would surely take the bait, especially if his duty was to save the Starke girl, and Fred nearly went for it. The Starke girl wasn’t his client this time, though. This time he was his own client. The downed pike was just over the next rise, and on a counterintuitive impulse, Fred rushed there instead.
Fred topped the hill and crouched close to the ground to study the fallen man who lay amid a litter of shattered and smoking tree branches. His groundskeeper uniform had been burned off at his shoulder, revealing an armored suit underneath. His breathing seemed regular, and his suit looked intact. His carbine lay several meters away in the grass.
Fred scampered down the hill and retrieved the gun. It had timed out, and he brought it to the pike. He took the fallen man’s left hand—pikes were southpaws—and wrapped it around the grip. The gun controls became enabled, and Fred reset the force and shape of the laser pulse to its highest, narrowest setting. In his visor he saw that the other pike had left off pursuing Mary and was heading back to him. Excellent! If his new friend here cooperated, Fred had a target and a weapon.
Fred pushed the pike’s index finger into the trigger guard and laid his own finger over it. He pulled the man’s body around a little and lay down behind it.
But the pike’s eyes fluttered; he was coming around. Suddenly his free hand made a fist and roundhoused Fred on the side of his head. Fred’s cap took most of the blow, but even so, his ear sang.
They struggled for the gun, the pike punching Fred savagely. Fred was losing control, so he pressed the pike’s trigger finger and squeezed off a shot. A terrific bolt of light erupted from the gun so close to Fred’s face that it dazzled him, despite his visor. The blast rived the trunk of a nearby tree like a lightning strike, splitting it in two. On the way, it vaporized the pike’s right hand.
The pike gasped, and his suit quickly sealed his stump with battlewrap. Fred wrenched the carbine and pressed the barrel under the pike’s chin.
“Tell your pal to stop where he is!” Fred ordered him.
The pike didn’t respond. His pupils closed to pinpoints. His suit was doping him for the pain. The other pike was almost in sight. Fred poked the muzzle of the gun hard against the man’s throat and repeated his order.
The pike smiled in drugged serenity. “I see you are unarmed, friend.”
“What do you call this, friend?” Fred said and jabbed him again with the muzzle.
“A soft cock if you kill me with it.”
He was right. The moment the pike died, his gun would shut down, leaving Fred weaponless.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” Fred said and carefully re-aimed the gun. He fired again, taking off the side of the pike’s helmet, his ear, and a strip of his scalp. Before the suit could patch itself, Fred grabbed a splintered branch from the ground and stuck its pointy end several millimeters up the pike’s exposed ear canal.
“Lie still!” he yelled in the man’s good ear. But the pike struggled all the more fiercely, so Fred shoved the stick in until it passed through his brain and jammed up against the inside of his skull. The pike convulsed a couple of times and went limp. On his map, the pike was flagged injured. With any luck he would take a while to die.
Meanwhile, the other pike’s marker stopped just over the next rise, and Mary was making good time back to South Plaza.
“Such a deal,” Fred said and reset the carbine’s spread pattern.
MARY CAME TO a path she recognized. To her surprise, she wasn’t far from the plaza where she had started. On impulse, she turned left, away from South Gate and toward the central complex of clinic buildings. She’d feel safer there, and from there she could choose any of the other gates. But the blue bee, her guardian angel, intercepted her and urged her toward South Gate with pulsing arrows.
Vehicles, both homcom and police, filled South Gate Plaza, but no medevac ambulance. Mary shifted her terrible burden from one arm to the other and approached a belinda in a hommer uniform, but a crash cart intercepted her first. It lowered its treatment platform, and asked Mary to sit.
“No, not yet. Can you call me an ambulance? A medevac?”
The holo of a man projected next to the cart. He was a stranger, but he seemed to know her. “Ah, Myr Skarland, at last! Hurry, give Ellen’s head to the cart. We’ve got a fresh tank waiting for her. There’s no time to lose.”
The cart proffered its arm, and Mary ached to give Ellen to it and be done with it. “That’s right,” the man encouraged. “Give your bag to the cart.”
Mary said, “Who are you?”
“Byron Fagan.”
Mary clutched the tote to herself. “Fagan Health Group? Concierge’s sponsor?”