Reacting to the welling pins and needles as circulation returned would have been a great way to get killed.
Instead, as the stranglecord came loose, I grabbed it at its midpoint and hurled it as far as I could.
The damned thing sailed over the bed, but changed trajectory before it would have hit the opposite wall, the toruses coming in low over the bed, with the stranglecord a shared banner between them.
The son of a bitch could fly. How the hell was I supposed to fight a stranglecord that could fly?
I was still on my back and there was no chance of survival if I took the time to stand, so I grabbed my satchel, my all-important satchel with the weapons I’d hoped to use against the damned thing, and flung it. The toruses carrying the stranglecord performed a little loopy somersault and evaded it, recovering even as my satchel disappeared from sight on the opposite side of the bed. I rolled, saw the stranglecord coming in low, kicked at it, felt a plunk as my right foot glanced against one of the toruses.
It recovered fast, looped around, and went for my throat. I tried to dodge again, but there was not enough time and it wrapped around my neck with a force so dizzying that my bare throat felt the heat of the snap as the material impacted with skin.
The toruses pulled, and the stranglecord constricted, intent on cutting off my air, my breath, my life.
“Fuck you!” I shouted, able to shout only because I’d covered my throat with my hand a fraction of a second before the damned thing closed its noose. When the stranglecord tightened, it was against my knuckles, the skin there burning as the material drew taut enough to cut off circulation. But lost circulation in a hand is far easier to survive than the loss of oxygen to the head…
I rolled, somehow rose to my feet, lurched off-balance as the toruses wrangled me like a horse controlled by its rider, and slammed the back of my head against the bulkhead, hard.
I felt blood on the back of my neck: the stranglecord breaking skin there.
Protecting my throat wouldn’t save me for very long if the monstrosity managed to saw through my spine. Quadriplegia’s temporary, if you survive long enough to get some halfway decent medical care; I’ve suffered injuries on that scale more than once, and never been inconvenienced for more than a few hours. But a severed spine leaves you helpless against anyone or anything intent on inflicting damage more permanent. Paralyzed, I’d be an easy target for anything the stranglecord wanted to do…
My free hand probed the cord, found one of the toruses, and yanked hard, pulling the material from my neck.
Still protecting my throat with one hand, I used the other to swing the cord like a whip, slamming the torus at the other end against the bulkhead. There was a flash of light when it hit, some kind of energy discharge, but the torus itself did not break. I swung again and slammed it against the endtable; there was another spark of light, but less intense, as if the thing had managed to roll with the impact, lessening it, avoiding the damage that would prevent it from pressing another attack.
A third swing at the bulkhead and the torus managed to curve away from the impact completely, instead defying momentum to go for my eyes.
I yowled, spun, avoided the impact, but lost balance and went down again.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been faced with a ludicrous death. Ask me about Catarkhus or One One One sometime. But the idea of being outwrestled and outfought by something small enough to be held in my fucking hands was more than I could take. I shrieked in dismay and outrage and just flung the Juje-bedamned thing away, not even caring if it came back in a second or two, wanting only a moment’s freedom from it, a second or two so I could breathe without feeling its hateful touch on my skin.
Wherever it went in the next second or two, I don’t know, because somebody was yelling in the outer room. “Andrea! What’s happening?”
“Counselor!”
Skye. Paakth-Doy. A perfect opportunity to scream for help again.
Stupid, unreasoning instinct took care of that one. “Stay out there!”
I managed to get a hand atop the bed and used it to pull myself to an imperfect upright position just as I caught a flash image of something black flying at my face. I threw myself backward onto the mattress and rolled, catching another flash image of a crude noose zipping through the air right above me. My wounded hands left bloodstains on the comforter as I flipped back over the opposite side of the bed, hitting the floor just as Skye and Paakth-Doy came in at a dead run, shouting my name.
The stranglecord, which had been headed for my neck again, changed course and went for Skye.
I cried, “Shit!” and went for the satchel again. No time to open it, no time to get anything I trusted to put this thing down, no time to do anything but throw the goddamned bag again and hope I knocked the stranglecord out of the way long enough to improvise something else, maybe a blanket torn from the bed and thrown as a makeshift net…
There was a fwap.
Skye stood stock-still, her fists closed around the toruses, her arms extended so far apart that the deadly stranglecord hung taut as wire between them. It thrummed, vibrating with a fury that reduced it to a gray blur; she still held it motionless, as far as it could stretch, rendering it incapable of pressing its attack.
“I am impressed,” said Paakth-Doy.
The speed Skye had just demonstrated by plucking that thing from the air, and the strength she was still demonstrating by holding it in place, impressed me too. “Nice catch.”
She grimaced. “This is…not exactly a…long-term solution, Andrea. It’s propulsive units are…disproportionately powerful, for their size.”
Right. I went for my satchel, undid its seal, and peeled away the several identical black suits before uncovering the several items best kept a secret from planetary customs.
The most mundane among them was a stasis tube designed for the transportation of perishables; not illegal in and of itself, but clear evidence of criminal intent in that the substance it carried was a genetically keyed nanopoison illegal for me to possess. It was my personal suicide solution, one that would have not only killed me but also denatured all my genetic material, preventing identification of my corpse.
If you ever wonder whether your life’s taken a wrong turn or two, consider how fucked up your circumstances would have to be for that to qualify as a reasonable component of your carry-on luggage.
Skye’s voice had a distinct tremor. “Andrea? Whatever you’re going to do…”
“I’m coming, love.” Twisting a certain lock at one end of the tube popped off the protective shields at the endpoints and provided access to a fair-safe that sent a microwave burst through the contents, deprogramming the nanites and giving the liquid suspension all the virulence of distilled water. A further, cleansing blast of molecular excitation reduced what was left to vapor, which the tube then vented with an audible hiss.
Even as that happened, the smears of blood my injured hands had left on the metal turned to lighter shade of pink; evidence that a very few of the nanites escaping through the vapor were still intact, and capable of dissolving anything with my genetic material. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t safe for me to deactivate it myself. Strictly speaking, I should have been in another room, giving instructions from a distance. But strictly speaking, I shouldn’t have to carry anything capable of breaking down my own cells…