It's the middle of the week, and I have more Chelsea. Honestly, the stuff here is what I had in mind before I wrote this into a Big Battle scene. This time, I'm including my concept for the building, which I thought I had up under Futures Past but maybe not. As usual, the table of contents for all chapters is at the end.
Skinny McCoy had fired six shots when the first officer arrived. He had come out of an elevator behind the wraith. The officer called out, “Hey, you need to evacuate, somebody’s shooting out there!” It was a blunder he never admitted to his peers, but it probably had saved his life. Skinny twisted at least 90 degrees at the waist, bringing his rifle to bear. The single shot staggered the officer. He promptly retreated back into the elevator. Skinny turned back and fired one last shot in the direction of the Aster.
Skinny descended a tree 3
meters from the balcony. He dropped to ground holding his cutlass pistol. Two
officers challenged him. A shot from the pistol smashed through the helmet of
one. The other stepped into the path of the wraith as he strode forward, firing
a .38 revolve that he carried against regulations. A single thrust of the blade
went straight through his face plate. Skinny stepped over him as he fell. From his
gun belt, he took out a translucent plastic shell that enclosed a
fin-stabilized microrocket and a small powder charge. It dropped handily down
the muzzle. A quick wipe of a rag cleaned the blade before he sheathed it
again. He unlimbered the rifle single-handed, twirling it to shut the hinge
that held its two parts together. The entrance to the shopping plaza was just
ahead, guarded by two more officers. He fired and then reloaded with a very
strange circular motion of his wrist, which made the barrel drop downward and
bob up again as he worked the sliding grip. He fired again, and again…
* * *
Chelsea’s van rolled
slowly along the sidewalk. Frank was still at the wheel. He gaped at the Dodge
cargo van that had taken out the entrance, a missing pane, and a bullet hole in
a window rated to stop a projectile with 2000 joules of force. From inside, the
sounds of battle could still be heard. “Dammit,” he said, “what the Hell happened
and where the Hell are they?”
* * *
For several long moments, Skinny stood in the doorway, holding both rifle and pistol at ready. “Chelsea,” Diane hissed, “what are we going to do?” Chelsea only stared ahead. She sighed and looked to Shad. “Shad, can you tell what he’s got?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Shad
said. “That’s a Burgess .45 folding slide-action rifle, didn’t even exist in
Mainline time. I suppose the other one’s an Elgin cutlass pistol or something
like it…”
From across the main corridor, Hexley groaned. He had propped himself up against the wall, just outside the barrier that sealed the other end of the cross-corridor. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s about what I figured.”
Diane looked at the feed on her own wrist organizer. The wraith had lowered a bandana that would have covered his face. What was revealed was unsettlingly mundane, the visage of an evidently old man with a silver mustache. His mouth was twisted strangely. She realized that he had at least two rounds of ammunition tucked into his cheek. “All right,” she said. “How many shots does he have?”
“Now that’s a bit tricky,” Shad said. “The magazine is good for six .45-.70 cartridges, plus one in the chamber of course. He could get in 8 shots if he used the .45-.60 load. If he topped off a bit, he could get up to 10…”
Finally, the wraith
spoke. “Dat’s a smarta boy,” he said. “You canna tell them whata dis is.” He
took a step back and fired the pistol. Shad covered Chelsea instinctively. The
rocket-assisted projectile turned a corner and sailed right past them. It
finally lodged in the door at the end of the corridor. A fraction of a second
later, the projectile started spewing a blood-red vapor.
“Oh, yeah,” Shad said as
the gas advanced. “That’s really bad…”
There was a metallic sound as Skinny reloaded the pistol. Diane tried to convince herself that he hadn’t done it with his tongue. “Listen, Skinny,” Shad said. “You aren’t getting to her without coming through me. If you did, you’re still going to have to kill me, because if you don’t, I’m doing everything I can to kill you.”
“She’s notta goin’ soft
on you no-ah more,” Skinny answered. “She may taka you back, but iffa you get
in my way, I’ma clear to taka care of you.”
Shad put his arms around
Chelsea. “Then I give her up,” he said. There were tears in his eyes, though
all their faces were already red with irritation. “Just let her go.”
“No,” Skinny said. “You mighta think you mean it. Butta she would taka de bullet first.”
Before she really knew
what she was doing or would do, Diane stood up and stepped into the main corridor.
“Okay, I still don’t know what this is about,” she said. “But I am done with
these two idiots. I’m leaving, and you aren’t going to shoot me because you’re
low on ammo and you’re not getting paid to kill me.”
“Diane Clairaborne
Weber,” Skinny said. Diane flinched at the sound of her name and the half-smile
on his lips. “You mighta be surprised. But fora now, you canna go.”
Diane nodded. Behind her, Hexley held up two fingers. She dived for the panel by the barricade. The wraith cursed but held his fire. In a moment, the barricade opened.
And that was when the
shopping plaza exploded.
* * *
On the other side of the barricade that cut off the shop from the main market floor, the goons again fell back, dragging almost half their number behind them. The parted crowd revealed the battered, blood-stained bronze god in an almost ape-like pose, leaning forward far enough to show the full fan of his arms from above. His blades retracted and his fists became hands again, including the severed arm that lay on the floor. From the other side came none other than Spike. “So, fine, you beat up my gang,” he said.
“Then it is single
combat,” Deve said. There was a clong as his damaged arm dropped to the floor.
“I suppose you could say
that,” Spike said. He glanced down at the two pieces of the severed arm on the
floor. He showed no particular surprise as they crumbled into verdigris.
“A fair fight?” Deve
pressed.
“I doubt it,” Spike said. He drew a four-barreled weapon, easily recognized by the knowledgeable as a semi-improvised, definitely illegal plasma carbine. A fist-sized bolt hit Deve in the chest, followed by two more. For a moment, his whole body glowed with a checkerboard pattern, the inverse of the grid beneath his hide. The glow grew brighter, and his body began to hum like the last, lingering reverberation of a gong. Then there was another sound, which might have been called a laugh, if a hyena, a buzzsaw, a fusion bomb and a neutron star could all laugh simultaneously.
“Frinkin’ frink of a
frink,” Spike said, almost contemplatively. Then he ran like hell.
* * *
The whole building shook with the blast. Across the arcing face of the ground floor, panes of flexiglass broke, bowed, or came right out of the frames. The light turned the glass gray and then black as safety tinting kicked in. Officers, bystanders and goons dropped to the ground if they weren’t blown down first. The tiny Fiat van rocked to the right, enough for the left wheels to mount the sidewalk as they turned. Ahead, a wraith-like figure flailed like a scarecrow in the wind. Hector leaned out the window and pointed with a large claw. With his toothless snout, he managed to whistle, “Squin-hee!”
“Stop!” the other officer
Hexley shouted to Frank. “Let me out and I can take him!”
“Uh-uh,” Frank said.
“This is gonna be fun…”
At that moment, Skinny
turned. “Aye,” he said, “carape diem…” Then the van hit.
* * *
Diane led the way as they
ran through the cross-corridor. “What the Hell was that?” Chelsea said. “Did
Frank just run over the bad guy with my
van?”
“Who knows?” Diane said. “But we sure as Hell aren’t going out that way!” They crossed another corridor without stopping. Suddenly, Shad pulled Chelsea back. Diane froze a moment later. Directly ahead of them was an old woman they all knew well, flanked by two escorts.
“My sweet boy,” she said,
“why do you make this so hard?”
“Maimeo,” Shad said to
his great-grandmother, “just let us go.”
The crone smiled. “Shoot
her,” she said to the escorts.
“My Lady,” the one on the
left said, “I told you, we don’t have that kind of contract.”
“Then give me a gun,” she
said.
“We can’t do that,” said the other.
“Well, then, I suppose
it’s just as well I brought this,” the crone said. She reached into an
immaculate black handbag, and pulled out Shad’s one handheld saw.
Shad practically wrapped himself around Chelsea as the saw came to life. “Maimeo, don’t!” he shouted. The crone shrieked and turned aside, straight for Diane. She had just time to scream… and then the old woman was on the floor, wrapped in a still contracting net.
Percy stepped forward from the main entrance. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “We were tied up across the street. I suggest you keep going.”
The van had skidded to a
halt just a few meters from where they burst out on the other side of the
Aster. Chelsea’s first reaction was, “Frank! What the Hell did you do to my
van?” The van was indeed in dubious shape, shaking as it idled and leaking an
impressive variety of fluids.
“Never mind, get in!”
Frank shouted. “We’re getting out of here!”
Hexley climbed out of the van. “Did you see my brother?” he shouted. He looked over his shoulder and swore. In the midst of the van’s trail was a grotesquely crumpled shape that a pair of officers were just venturing to approach. Suddenly, the shape rose, reforming itself by a series of contortions back to something close to a man.
The only sign of Skinny’s rifle was the grip and splintered stock, now permanently separated from the barrel. But he still wielded the cutlass pistol. “It’s over, Skinny!” Shad shouted. “Maimeo just got busted. If you kill her now, you won’t even get paid!”
“Perahaps, per’aps not,” Skinny said. He raised the gun with care, sending officers and bystanders scattering. He fired the most sophisticated of his rockets, a homing round that could navigate to a target through a crowd of bystanders and even around anyone selfless enough to block its path. What it wasn’t designed for was hundreds of needle-like flechettes from not one but two guns, fired ahead of the still-accelerating projectile. The rocket blew apart in mid-air, throwing off a spray of shrapnel and phosphorous over a radius of a meter or more. The two Hexleys nodded to each other, one by the van and the other leaning against the door frame. They each turned their 12-gauge riot guns toward skinny. But then a figure stepped into his path, still glowing red with eyes that flashed blue-white.
“Pardon me, officers,” Deve said. “I believe I can render some assistance.” From five pairs of hands, his blades sprouted again. The Hexleys lowered their guns, while the other officers backed away warily.
Skinny laughed and
reached over his shoulder with his free hand, drawing a forward-swept kukri
blade 60 centimeters long. “Once-ah,” the wraith said, “I kill a ding like-ah
you.”
“Funny you should mention
it,” the bronze god answered. “So have I.”
Even Chelsea stared as the combatants sized each other up, indeed virtually the same in height, until Percy shouted, “Go ahead and get in the van! If it doesn’t run, I can push!”
As they piled in, the wraith and the bronze god lunged at each other. Deve’s headpiece rang like a gong as a slug lodged in the metal. Skinny undulated one way and then the other, dodging flurries of blade strokes and simply absorbing several that struck home. Twice, the cutlass pistol’s blade rang on Deve’s hide, then the kukri cleaved deep into his chest, with enough force and effect to make him draw back as Skinny extricated his weapon for another stroke. By then, the van was back on the road and making its way along. The wraith’s whole torso twisted as he prepared for a swing at the idol’s neck. But Deve struck first with a hook on his second-lowest pair of arms, snaring Skinny’s shoulder. With a further twist, he deflected the blade enough to disarm the foe with one of his trowel-like thrusting blades. He followed with a double claw on his matching hand, hauling the wraith into the waiting fan of his blades. And of those who were escaping, only Shad looked back.
“Ever hear the ballad of Leroy
Brown?” he said. Chelsea just shook her head. “`He looked like a
jigsaw puzzle… with a couple of pieces gone.’”
Part II: The parking violation!
Part III: Capsule hotel destruction!
Part IV: The Kelsiraptor, and Harryhausen monster bureaucrat!
Part V: The restraining order!
Part VII: The trial, part 2, with the King Kong Moral Contraband film!
Part XI: The Arcostate Zoo, plus Spike's Southside Motorcycle Gang!
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