“Bullshit,” said Grace.
“Yeah, bullshit,” said Kohl, but his face was grey, his voice weak. Couldn’t be blood loss, there wasn’t enough coming out of him. More like the shock of being stabbed by an alien.
“Grace,” said Nate. “We need him. The Gladiator’s fire controls.”
“Looks like the captain gave your one good reason,” said Grace. She lowered her sword. “Let’s go.”
“I need a weapon,” said Penn.
“You need to be cut down,” said Grace. “Looks like we’re both going to compromise today.”
Kohl was rifling through a pouch on his belt. He pulled out a syringe and a dermal patch. Kohl stabbed the syringe in between his armor plates, right next to his injured shoulder, winced as he punched it home, and then relaxed. He slapped the patch on his neck, tossed the empty syringe to the ground, and picked up his laser cannon. “Good to go,” he said.
“What was in that?” asked Nate.
“Nothing legal,” said Kohl, “and nothing you need to worry about.” He strode forward, strides sure, armor whining and clanking with his steps. “You know, I wonder what these … hey, Penn.”
“Rear Admiral to you,” said Penn.
“I’m not with the Marines,” said Kohl. “Those assholes couldn’t fight their way out of a cobweb. Anyway. What did you call these fuckers?”
“The Ezeroc,” said Penn.
“I wonder what these Ezeroc taste like,” said Kohl. “They look a little bit like lobsters, you know?”
Grace looked at the fallen syringe, then up at Kohl. Nothing legal. But it turned his day around. “You got another one of those?”
“Maybe,” said Kohl, with a nasty smile. He turned to Penn. “You and me? We’re going to have a conversation when we’re in space.”
“Yes,” said Penn, “we are.”
• • •
Grace made the top of the escalator by the time Kohl was at the bottom and already firing. Red light reflected up the escalator, refracting off glass and metal. The man is actually good at something. That Kohl wasn’t all talk came as a surprise to Grace, like realizing your parents were cool before you were born. That the hip clothes and stylish cuts gave way to looking after your sorry ass. Grace put a hand against the railing, vaulted past Penn and Nate both, landing on the steps heading down. She slipped a leg over the hand rail, sliding the rest of the way. As she descended the railing at speed, she could see Kohl marching forward, the rotary laser firing at something obscured by a wall to her left. He was leaving a trail of smoking insect parts.
Grace hit the ground floor, tumbled from the railing and tucked into a roll. She hit her knee a little too hard — damn the gravity of this planet — but nothing broken, just a little bruised. Grace came up, sword hunting through the air with a soft whisper. She couldn’t hear it, not over the noise Kohl was making, but she knew it, like she knew everything about this blade. Grace knew how much it weighed and how sharp it was. She knew how many lives it had taken.
Nothing. Kohl had already killed everything here.
The man was marching like an automaton towards the main door, laser still on full auto. Sparks and flames licked out from the frame of the door as he cut a hole in the metal, ceramicrete, and substructure, pieces falling away, burning like falling angels. His focus was on the door, and getting out, and Grace could feel urgency/chase/hunt pouring off the man. No fear. Not a lick of it.
What was in that stim?
Her gaze was drawn to the ceiling, where one of the—
Ezeroc. The fucking bugs have a name, and it’s Ezeroc.
—Ezeroc was clawing through, scuttling to get the drop on Kohl. Grace pushed off from her crouch into a sprint, sword held low and ready. The insect—
Definitely an insect. Fucking bugs.
—dropped from the ceiling as she got there, landing about a meter from Kohl’s back. Her sword snicked out, slicing through the Ezeroc’s rear legs, drawing a keen from the creature. It turned to her, and that right there made her pause. Because she was standing in front of an honest to God alien, a crawling thing from another world, and it had teeth, and claws, and stood above her at well over 2 meters in height. It was favoring the injured legs — so you fuckers feel pain, huh? — and rearing up and back on the six multi-jointed legs it stood on.
Rearing up to strike.
When Grace had learned kendo, it had been style and forms, too slow for any real use on the street. Iaido had been the natural step, a pure form of focus and awareness. The problem with both is that they were designed for fighting people. People had intent, and she could feel that. It let her move faster, a step ahead at all times. This thing had no intent she could feel.
GRACE GRACE GRACE GRACE!
Oh no you don’t. She wouldn’t let something get one over on her. Not again. Never again.
She spun as it crashed its weight down where she was standing, falling back on those old forms. Iaido was beauty, and kendo was purpose, and her feet moved through the forms like she was still in the dojo, learning hand-me-down tricks from her sensei. Keep moving. Her sword was a part of her, an extension of her will, and she turned and put it through the left-side legs of the Ezeroc. It keened again, crashing to the ground, and her sword swung like a thing with purpose of its own to slash through the creature’s fore claws.
The remaining legs drummed on the ground, a greenish scum oozing from the cuts. Kohl had turned around by this time, taken in the scene, and stepped forward that remaining meter distance. The rotary laser whirred around to his back, and he put two hands around the thing’s neck — is that a neck? — and brought his visored head in for a headbutt. There was a crunch of chitin and teeth, and Kohl pushed the thing aside to flail on the ground. He gave Grace a glance, expression invisible behind his mask, then said, “You’re all right, Gushiken.”
“Just all right?” she said.
“Of the two espers here,” said Kohl, “you’re the one that hasn’t tried to kill me. That Penn, though.” He paused, frowning. “I mean, I don’t know he’s an esper. But it fits. Knows too much. Fucker. Let’s go, yeah?”
Seriously. What was in that stim? Never mind that Kohl thought she was an esper — Nate must have said something while she was opening the doors. The truth was something different, but explaining that was hard, and she never seemed to get the time before someone tried to shoot her, or open her skull, or put her in a jail that even time forgot about. The stim got past all that. Sure, something to get the body moving when it was weak. Something to speed up the heart, the reactions, to dull the pain and the fear. But a little something else, to bond soldiers to each other when the end was near? Had to be. Grace had heard about psychotropics like that, but never felt them. A throwback like Kohl should pound her skull through the floor, but here he was, treating her like one of the team.
You’re not, though. Keep your distance. You’re not with them.
Now, she was lying to herself.
• • •
The light was bright and hard and oppressive, everything taking on too much shine. This damn gravity was another level of bullshit, trying to leech the strength from her limbs, making her slow to move. Making it hard to fight.
The Ezeroc were everywhere.