Ursula - part 3
"Another newblood-veteran combination?" Ursula snorted. "C'mon, Kal. Get me something that's going to be a challenge."
Her husband didn't see the humor in her joke, but kept that sour frown on his face as he adjusted her armor. She wore her standard Scout Armor gear, the old style with the covered midriff, unlike the daring shield-reliant designs that were coming out of late.
Kalamon straightened, ran a hand through his hair, and shook his head. "Again, Su, this is starkissin' crazy. Call it off."
"You know I can't, so shut up about it." She looked across the cargo bay. The butchers and their escort had come in a few minutes ago. Today's opponents were two men, both of them tall and strong, though one of them was outright huge. A Blood Eagle tattoo covered his forehead. The other looked younger, and didn't have any noticeable scars.
She gestured at the escort, two young women and a couple of men. "Which one jumped into the prison camp?"
"The dark-haired one. Kenzie. She's a newblood."
"A young idiot's what she is." Ursula smacked a fist into her palm. It sounded like a hammer hitting an anvil. "Who's the big warrior?"
"Ah," Kalamon said, his craggy features looking uncomfortable. "That's Bandolas Bax, formerly a Sergeant."
"Spill it. What's his story?"
He sighed. "Tortured by the Blood Eagle until he suffered permanent brain damage. Freed during a reprisal raid. He can still fight, but he probably couldn't pour biru out of his boot if the instructions were embossed on the sole."
"Tortured?"
"Afraid so."
"Scroffin' murderers." The usual grim rage worked its fingers up her spine. Her temples tightened until it felt like her heart thumped in tandem above her eyes. The veins throbbed. The need to kill absorbed her once again. She sucked in a deep breath through her nose and headed for the escort.
"Su?" Kal's voice behind her.
"I'm going to have a word with the young idiot before we start." She glanced back over her shoulder. "Don't worry, I'm not going to lecture her like the Phoenix Prime at a garden party. She needs to know this is war."
As she approached the other Starwolf, she took in the familiar room around her, the coolness on her skin, the sterile smell of recycled air, the ringing of each step on the stahlplast floor. Her armor hummed and clicked faintly, a subtle background noise that reassured her. This was her killing ground, and that knowledge centered her, gave her an anchor she could use to focus her anger. Through the rage, she felt intensely alive, as she always did with a duel. That was why she fought, she knew. Fighting kept her in touch with life. It kept her alive. So she could avenge her son.
The escort members came to attention as Ursula came up to them. The problem girl was young, dark-haired, and pretty in a coltish kind of way. Not like her blonde companion, who could easily have stepped into a Starwolf recruiting poster and gotten males to join in droves. Both girls seemed distracted. The large fellow, Bax, was a handsome enough man. His features had a hint of true idiocy about them, but someone obviously trusted him in armor with live ammunition, so he couldn't be that stupid.
"At ease." She stole a glance at the butchers. They'd donned their armors and were running their systems checks. The sight of the crimson and silver suits drove a hot spike into Ursula's brain, and she felt the killing urge well up in her.
Returning her attention to the dark-haired girl, she said, "So. You're Kenzie. Mind telling me what you find so bloody wonderful about the butchers?"
The blonde tried to hide a smile, and Kenzie flushed scarlet. She opened her mouth and closed it, then opened it again.
"Come on, girl!" Ursula snapped. "Don't play fish face with me. Just answer the question."
"I… that is, ah…" Kenzie gulped. "I didn't think we should treat them like that."
"What? They get to torture us and we have to treat them like they're human beings?"
Kenzie's flush deepened, but a determined look came over her. "Yes, sir. We're supposed to be better than they are, so we should keep those standards."
"She has a thing for one of the butchers, sir," chimed in the blonde girl.
"I didn't ask you," Ursula said. "That true, Kenzie? You let one of these killers get under your skin?"
The girl stared at her for a long moment, and then dropped her eyes. "Sort of, sir. I guess."
"Which one?" Ursula held up a hand to forestall an answer. "No, don't bother. I can guess it's not the old tattooed fat one." She clapped Kenzie on the shoulder and held the girl's gaze. "Listen, newblood. Your crush is going to die tonight. You're going into a war, and the sooner you realize the butchers are the enemy, the better."
She said an encouraging word to the blonde girl and turned to Bax. Before she could say anything, he dropped to his knees and clutched at her foot. Shocked temporarily by his reaction, she didn't pull away. When the big warrior looked up, his eyes streamed with tears.
"Kill 'em, Slasher," he said with a deep, rumbling voice that reminded her of a child's in its inflection. "Butchers hurt Bax. Make them stop."
Dimly, she was aware of the blonde girl dropping to her knees beside Bax in an effort to comfort him. Kenzie stood there wavering, as though the same impulse moved her but she resisted it. Ursula shook her head, trying to clear it. An indefinable emotion moved in her at the gesture of this simple, damaged man who - at that moment - suddenly reminded her of her son Laram. It undercut her rage, and she pulled away with an effort.
"Get up, warrior," she said hoarsely. "Act like a man."
"Yessir." He stood and wiped the tears from his face with a forearm, leaving a wet streak across the armored surface.
"Alright." Composure regained, she stepped back. "No one interferes. Understand?" They all nodded. "Good. Get the restraining bolts off the butcher armors and bring them to the starting point." She spun and jetted across the bay to where Kal waited.
"What was all that about?" he asked as he handed her her knife. "Looked like some weird sandraker ceremony."
She shook her head. "Another butcher crime to avenge. That's all." Her arm whipped the knife through an elaborate pattern. At the end of it, she tossed the blade spinning in the air and caught it point down with her other hand. The weapon whined as it sliced another pattern into the air.
"I'm ready." She sounded harder than she felt, though. The rage was still there, but somehow it had unraveled at the edges. The disappointed look in Kenzie's eyes combined with the pleading in Bax's.
Suddenly, Ursula felt very tired. She focused on the two butchers and tried to stoke her rage once again. They both wore Assault-classs, which meant they were less agile, but stronger. No one was wearing helmets, so any blow to the head would most likely be deadly. The seasoned one would be the more dangerous. He'd probably use the younger to distract her while he moved in for the kill. Same old story she'd met before.
"Hear me, murderers!" she called out. "I am Ursula Lennaera DiVaragas, warnom 'Slasher,' Ur-Warlord of the Starwolf, Leader of the Ten Thousand Knives of the Great Muster! Your kin killed my son! I claim blood-right to your lives, and the lives of all your tribe!" She pointed the knife at them, first one, then the other. "We fight to the death! You win, it's freedom and safe passage home. I win, and what's left of you goes out the airlock."
Incredibly, the young butcher answered, his mocking voice cutting into the silence that normally followed her challenge. "You gonna show a good vid on the way back to B-E space? The one on the way out here didn't do much for me."
The rage came back with a vengeance, and Ursula welcomed it. A picture flashed up in her mind's eye of these two butchers cutting her son up and laughing while they did it. Snarling, she kicked off and hurled herself toward them, angling toward the mocker.
He leaped to her left, letting the tattooed man meet her first rush. The big warrior was good, and moved with a speed that belied his bulk. Their knives clashed, and she danced back just ahead of a wicked cut that would have decapitated her had it hit its target. The mocker came at her from the side then, his blade held low. She feinted a parry and then leaped up and lashed a toe kick at his head. He turned and just barely caught the blow with his pauldron as the point of her foot struck sparks from the crimson armor. The impact staggered him, and he dropped to one knee, eyes flashing. The idiot had a half-grin on his face, and her fury redoubled.
Ursula made to follow up, but the big man was on her again like a bulldog. She brought her knee up and elbow down simultaneously in time to shatter his knife blade on one of his thrusts. She stabbed at him but he slapped her attack away and pressed his. Agility and speed were her weapons; if she let him grapple, she was finished. A side kick to his knee plate slowed his advance, and she jetted safely back just ahead of the mocker's second attack, delivered in a peculiar circular style that differed from the usual hard style, straight-at-you butcher approach.
These two were competent. Good. She'd get to stretch her skills. She caught a glimpse of the others watching her, but they didn't really exist for her. There was the battle, a rhythm of jet, fist, foot, and blade that became her world. They maneuvered and clashed, but the two didn't let her separate them. The big one would tire if she pressed the attack; she didn't know how long the younger one would hold out.
The battle blurred by, occasionally freezing into stark moments. Wind of her passage slapped at her as she hurtled through the air and banked off a wall to slash at one of her enemies. She scuttled crablike around one and then shot like a missile along the deck to get some distance. Her knife clanged off an upraised forearm in a staccato one-two-three as she drove at the vulnerable head. Sweat poured off the face of the tattooed man. Her breath sounded harsh in her ears.
Finally, she slipped her knife into a chink in the mocker's armor and drew blood from his wrist. He switched his knife to the other hand, but she could see he wasn't as clever with that grip. That half-grin persisted, though, infuriating her.
In her next attack, a feint-feint snap kick combination struck the blade out of his hand, and it skittered away across the deck. Pain flashed across his face, but he recovered in time to block a flurry of attacks. That circular style was a problem, but she had seen enough to adapt to it. The two had tried to mix her up, but their plans were obvious now. The veteran had tried to be the stalking horse and open her to the other's attack. Interesting strategy, if a doomed one.
Time to finish it.
A whirlwind series of feints and slashing attacks drove them farther apart from each other. The big man was tiring fast now. His breathing had grown increasingly ragged, and he had slowed noticeably. The younger man left blood on the deck here and there, small spatters that nonetheless meant he was weakening. He had a darker complexion, but he looked a little gray to her. And though they'd led her a merry chase, they hadn't been able to mark her.
The rage rose to a fever pitch. She made her move.
A feinting lunge at the big man shifted to a sudden leaping reversal in which she back flipped and aimed a whirling spin kick at the younger butcher. She'd figured he'd block it, so she planned to twist hard, legs reversing in a corkscrew move that would roll her over his head and let her plant a heel into the opposite side of his head. She'd practiced this move many a time. If he could block it, he was a magician.
But something went wrong. The ship shuddered under a distant impact, and her timing was off, so she changed the first move's setup to a feint and switched to a spinning back kick. It looked good. The butcher's guard was down. If he missed, she was going to take his head off.
He blocked… just. He stabbed his hand at her, palm out, thumb pointed at the floor, and turned just enough that his forearm came up underneath and deflected her foot so that it missed his head. That hunchin' circular style!
She was only dimly aware of the ship shuddering again as she bounced away with a touch of her jets. The rage had become a roaring furnace now, her world narrowed to the two men she fought. Skinning her teeth back from her lips, she pressed her attack. One man tired, the other slowly bled to death.
She would outlast them. And then she'd bury them.[1]
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References