Hammer of Angels: A Novel of Shadowstorm (28 page)

Six minutes later, 6:50
A.M.
CET

Cherbourg, Province of France, GG

“What are you talking about?” I gripe at Brando. “They're right there. Let's blow them up!”

“With what?” Brando takes off his glasses and wipes them on his shirt. “This is a cargo vessel, Scarlet, not a warship.”

We're all in
Longstreet
's bridge. Sitting down for a bit has given my vision's oversaturation a chance to go back to normal. I've got my eyes closed as Captain Demet tells Grey and Brando he can't risk moving his ship out of Cherbourg's harbor until Kruppe's proslavery militia on the two fishing boats has been eliminated.

I open my peepers. “Raj, can't you blast them with your Bitchgun?”

Raj sits on a desk in the corner. “I could if I had any ammunition for it, but I used my last shells to bring the down the warehouse floor.”

“Crap.” I already know Falcon is out of ammo for his rifle, and even he's not good enough to neutralize every person on two floating crafts from a half mile away with a combat pistol. If F-Bird actually hit someone out there, the rest of the assholes would motor in and sink us with a barrage of rockets.

“How about the rocket launchers?”

“No,” says Grey. “They're too inaccurate at this distance.” We collected three intact rocket launchers from our speed-raid around the harbor. But they're older surplus models and aren't guided at all. Instead of fire and forget, these are more like pump and pray.

Clearly, the brownshirt militia would rather take this ship intact or they'd have sunk it already. But we have no doubt about their willingness to forgo their prize to prevent the “escape” of a boatload of Jewish slaves. I'd try it with Li'l Bertha, but I doubt her aiming system could acquire a target from so far away.

“So … now what? We're stuck here?”

The entire ship's crew has gathered outside. They all volunteered for this voyage, but they were promised official protection from proslavery activists. The government vastly underestimated the scale and severity of the far right's response, and Berlin's attempts to restore order have been comprehensively overwhelmed. I think
Longstreet's
crew is worried we're going to abandon them here.

Grey stands up and looks out the front windows. He rubs his stubbled chin. Grey hasn't had a chance to shave since we left Paris, and his beard grows in fast.

He turns around and faces me. I give him an open look, like, “‘Yes, can I help you?” He brushes his scruffy facial hair with his fingertips and smiles.

I spread my hands and snap at him, “What?”

Finally, he says, “How fast can you swim?”

“Really fucking fast. Why—oh! Wait, you're not thinking to—”

“Swim out there, yes.” Grey finishes my sentence for me. “You and me. We each attack one boat and eliminate Kruppe and the rest of his men before they can react.”

Captain Demet, his crew, a contingent of former slaves, Raj, Brando, and Falcon—all of them—watch Grey and me. I never say no to a chance to fuck people up, but this is crazy even for us.

“Grey, our pistols will be so waterlogged, they won't—”

He holds up one hand and cuts me off again. “No guns.” A nasty smile slithers across his face while his eyes narrow down to slits. “Knives.”

My heart thuds like a mallet. He's daring me to chicken out, but Alixandra Janina Nico never turns down a dare. I lean toward Grey. “All right, tough guy. We'll do them with knives.”

The two of us walk out to the side of the vessel facing away from Kruppe's boats. Everybody follows. I hand Li'l Bertha to Brando, who carefully accepts her with a solemn nod. Grey gives his small arsenal to Raj.

Grey and I both kick off our boots and socks. I unbuckle my belt and slide my pants down to my ankles. Brando's eyes pop out a little, and he says, “Alix, it's March. Don't you want to keep your clothes on for this?”

“No way.” I unzip my coat and take that off too. “These are the only pants I've got left. If they get soaked in seawater, they'll never dry out. I'm not doing a weeklong boat trip in wet clothes.”

The crewmen avidly watch my striptease. They hoot and holler as I undress, their worries of imminent death washed away by the sight of female flesh.

I pull off my shirt and throw it on my little pile of clothes on the deck.
Whoo! Chilly!
I consider for a moment.
Oh, hell. My underwear won't keep me warm, anyway.
Off come my bra and panties. Naturally, my nipples get as hard as pebbles in the winter air. I use my belt to buckle my knife holster around my upper thigh.

I turn to the overstimulated crew and flip them my middle finger. I shout in French, “Sorry, maternal parent fornicators. No American tail for your soft-as-cheese dicks!” Or something like that.

Grey has also shucked down to his birthday suit. He's pale, fit, and hairier than I would have thought. After he straps his knife around his waist, he turns to me, bares his teeth like a pirate, and sneers, “Eyyyy!”

I grit my teeth back at him. “Arrrr!”

We each take a huge breath and dive into the harbor. The water is actually warmer than the air. Not that this is saying much. It's still freezing. I dose a bunch of Madrenaline and shoot away from the
Longstreet
like a torpedo. I add a drizzle of Overkaine to my chemical cocktail to numb the pain from the cold.

“I'll go for the boat on the left?” I comm to Grey.

He comms back, “Yeah, I'll get the one on the right.”

The Development Cycle for Infiltrators emphasizes speed over durability, unlike the Dev Cycle for Interceptors. My implanted skeletal armor adds weight, plus it takes up room that could otherwise be used for additional speed Mods. This is why Grey is so much faster than me … on land. We're evenly matched as swimmers since here we fight liquid resistance instead of gravity. Our arms and legs churn the water and propel us toward the fishing boats like a pair of biorobotic sharks.

With fifty yards to go, Grey comms, “Try to swim underwater the rest of the way to max the surprise.” I switch to a backstroke and hyperventilate for a few seconds. Then I turn over and dive a few feet under the surface. I raise my arms past my head so I'm shaped like a missile and furiously kick my legs until I pass under the enemy vessel.

I comm, “In position.”

“Me too,” Grey replies. “Give 'em hell, Scarlet.”

I surface at the boat's stern. My last stroke launches me like a flying fish. My left hand grabs the hilt of my fighting knife before my feet hit the deck.

Two brown-shirted men lounge on a pair of small plastic chairs. One is a big guy who holds a rocket launcher across his lap. The other guard is shorter and is armed with an assault rifle. They're immobilized by the sight of a furious naked girl erupting from the briny deep like a merpsycho.

I draw my knife from its holster and charge them. My arm sweeps the blade across both men's faces. They each raise their hands in defense. I spear my knife into the bigger man's heart. Quick as lightning, I rip my knife out of him and thrust a killing blow into the smaller man's chest.

Their shouts of surprise turn to high-pitched shrieks and then low wet rattles. They lean backward out of their chairs and thunk onto the deck. My right hand picks up the smaller of the two men by his hair. I drape his warm, limp body against my icy, hard skin and shuffle him forward. My bare feet leave red prints on the deck, and my frozen teeth chatter like maracas.

A thin wail shimmers across the water, followed by a heavy sploosh. Grey is on his game. The idiots on my boat are so distracted by watching his murderous rampage that I get all the way into the wheelhouse before anyone sees me coming.

The thug nearest the door dies with my knife in his back. The remaining four bruisers spin around. One of them is Johannes Kruppe. My sudden proximity and shocking appearance render them all speechless, but Johannes recovers quickly. The tall white-haired rat-fuck swings himself through a small doorway and disappears below.

Two of the brutes draw Luger pistols, which upgrades them to Express Checkout. I hide behind my human shield and rush the nearest gun-toting militiaman. He fires his weapon, but his shot hits his dead colleague and leaves me at liberty to jab my knife into his crotch.

And so it is revealed, that for generating pure and unadulterated perturbation, pyrotechnics are nothing compared to shanking a man in the balls. The pinhead screams and drops his Luger so he can have an extra hand free to protect what's left of his genitals. He bends down to see what's happened to him, and it's the most natural thing in the world for me to stab him right in his fucking eye and obliterate his central nervous system.

I bang too much gusto into the thrust, though, and my blade sticks in the dimbulb's eye socket. I hurl my human shield at the final three palookas, nab the Luger off the floor, and unload an entire clip into their screaming faces. The insides of their heads wind up all over the walls, windows, ceiling, chairs, and control panel. It's like the Grim Reaper's raft to hell.

“Grey, my top deck is clear, but I've got one more down below.”

“Roger, Scarlet. Be careful. I found a few militia still in their bunks over here.”

There's a small hatchway between the main wheel and the navigator's station. Through it, a ladder leads below the deck. My infrared vision shows a warm, square shape toward the boat's stern. That'll be the engine. Up front are two smaller blobs. Those would be my targets.

To retrieve my knife from Dead Crotch's face I stand on his head and heave the blade out of his skull, like King Arthur freeing his magic sword from the stone. At that moment, my F-S fighting knife earns the name Deathcalibur.

I pitch myself down through the doorway. My feet thump onto the lower deck in the main cabin and galley. I clutch Deathcalibur in my left hand and the Luger in my right. I move forward and push a thin door open. It's pitch black, but my vision Mods allow me to see two red-glowing figures cowering on a V-shaped bunk under the bow. It's a boy and a girl, eight or nine years old, like the kid back at the dockyard who … Jesus, if they try the same suicide-grenadier move down here, we're all dead.

The girl's eyes flick to something moving—

—behind me!

I sling myself to one side. A man lunges into the space I've left behind and grunts. I spin around and jack my pistol into the face of—

“Johannes Kruppe,” I sneer through my chattering teeth. He grimaces back at me as I fire at his head. He dodges the shot and slaps the Luger out of my hand. I slash at him with Deathcalibur, which he also evades.

Damn, that's right. He's enhanced!

“Grey, I've got Kruppe cornered, but—” The rest of my report is interrupted as Kruppe grabs me and we violently wrestle all over the cabin.

“Hang on, Scarlet,” Grey comms back. “I'm on my way.”

We rumble through the kitchenette and I throw everything that isn't nailed down at him: chairs, tables, food, coffee pots, the works. Very little of it hits him, and his hands keep grabbing more of me each time I get backed into a corner. I jump over one of his lunges, but when I come down, shards of broken glass stab into both of my bare feet.

“AHHGH!” My legs drop out from under me and I collapse to the deck. My neuroinjector hits me with Overkaine as Kruppe reaches down and hoists me up like a sack of potatoes.

The big fucker has the advantages of size and reach, so he tries to crush me in a bear hug. I club my forehead into his nose. This draws blood, but he doesn't release his viselike grip. Kruppe squeezes me so hard I feel something snap inside my body. I fight for air and kick at his knees, but my bloody bare feet don't have any effect. Fortunately, my right hand is still clutching Deathcalibur. I switch my grip on the weapon's handle and scrape the point of my knife along Kruppe's thigh until I can jab it into his gut.

He shouts and lets go of me. One of his hands covers the wound in his stomach. I roll away and kick at him as he tries to grab me with his free hand. Kruppe backs me up against a bulkhead, which I use to prop myself upright. I grab a metal folding chair and swing it at him. He ducks his upper body away, but the chair clocks him on one of his kneecaps. He yelps sharply.

Ooh, that's gotta hurt, Bob.

Kruppe reaches behind a counter and—fuck me!—hauls out a monumental handgun. He doesn't even aim the beast. He just blasts in my general direction. I jump across the cabin into a small table covered with maps and papers. The table legs tangle up my legs and I stumble against the wall. I spin around and get ready to throw my knife into Kruppe's neck.

Then something brushes my ankle. I raise my hand and brandish Deathcalibur for a savage slash at this unwelcome surprise.

The little girl stands at the door to the front cabin and cries out,
“Ach nein! Nicht mein kleines Pfefferchen!”
No! Not my little Pepper!

I freeze my swing. My knife avoids stabbing the kids' black dog by less than an inch. The goddamn mutt scurries up the ladder to the top deck. By the time I turn back to Kruppe, he already has his nasty-looking pistol aimed at my chest. His face is streaked with blood running out of his nose, and more blood pours across the fingers of his hand over his knife wound.

“Scarlet!” Grey comms. “Do you still need help?”

“Yes! Ohmigod, Grey. As soon as fucking possible!”

Kruppe draws in breath to speak, and then the world slams upside down.

I land on my elbows and knees. Shit flies everywhere. Nothing is where it was a second ago. It isn't until I feel water gushing into the boat that I realize what happened.

If we were following proper ExOps comm protocol, I'd transmit something with the words “situation report” and “competitor status.” Instead I comm, “Grey, you crazy fuck!”