Naj Zero - part 4
Raw God, she was good, this DiVaragas. Wicked good. The Pig and I worked it hard, but she stayed out of our reach and never, never let up. I'd tried the old smart mouth on her, since my experience told me attitude goes a long way to winning fights, but it didn't work. She just got madder and faster. I wasn't a pit fighter; most of my duels had been larks, and even the serious ones weren't to the death.
The Pig wasn't holding up real well. His mouth was moving like a fish, and he was starting to slow down, which was a bad sign. If she nailed him, I wouldn't last more than a couple of minutes. As it was, there'd been a bunch of close calls. We'd only survived this far because we stayed close and kept flanking her so she couldn't concentrate on either one of us long enough to make a kill. But now she was armed and we weren't. She'd broken the Pig's blade early on, and tagged me with hers about ten to fifteen seconds earlier. When I swapped my knife to my off-hand, she just kicked it away.
Sometimes it just goes that way.
DiVaragas didn't let up. After I lost my blade, she turned everything up a notch, herding me and the Pig away from each other, breaking up our flanking efforts. As if this wasn't discouraging enough, I was leaving a nice red trail of spots on the floor. My bleeding would become a factor here real quick unless I stopped it. Even though I'd customized Sweet Jenny some, I kept the usual first aid kit in the standard handy vambrace compartment. Problem was, I didn't have the time to pop the suture spray out, much less apply it. I had my hands full trying to keep the pressure up on our end. If she cornered either of us without the other close at hand, we were goners.
Nothing in my fighting experience had prepared me for this kind of duel. I mean, nobody real fought like this! DiVaragas was like something out of the holovids, which is real naff when you're watching with a biru alongside some buddies, but starkissin' terrifying when you're one of the poor mooks being pounded on. When the Pig and I finally got on opposite sides of her again, she danced toward him until he brought his guard up, and then flipped back at me all of a sudden in some kind of weird spinning body twist. I could see a kick coming and set to block it, but when she added that twist, I knew I'd been caught flat-footed. I had time enough to feel stupid as I watched her metal boot swoop around to kick my brains across the deck.
But something happened. The ship shook, and it threw her off. She aborted, came down too soon, recovered, and snapped off another kick just like that. This one I blocked purely by luck. My particular style made it a good move, 'cause a hard-style block would have missed. I tried a counterattack, but she was already gone, jumping out and away before me and the Pig could scissor her.
The ship kind of lurched again, but DiVaragas didn't pay any attention. She just came right back at me from another angle, stabbing that knife at my face. I swear she was growling, and the expression on her face made some stuff a lot more clear: she was plain crazy. Nobody sane looked like that, and the realization scared me a little more. She was fighting like she had nothing to lose, while the Pig and I were trying to get there, but we weren't in her league. Whatever was driving her, it had seven whips and a whole lot of arms. I'd have felt a little better if I still had my knife, but it was on the deck a good fifteen meters away, and the psych boost it represented was a drop in the bucket compared to the motivation DiVaragas carried inside her.
I might be able to surprise her, though. Jenny had a few surprises, including a spring-mounted katar hidden in my right forearm that would pop out over the back of my hand and lock in place. An action vid-inspired conceit, really, but a number of us put in cool extras like that when we could afford them. The katar might come in handy- if I lived long enough to to use it.
Nausea curled up from my gut, which meant shock was sneaking up on me through the adrenaline. We had to try something soon, the Pig and I, or it was over. I tried not to let the feeling of defeat sink me, but it didn't look good for old Naj. At least I wouldn't die on Ymir. Thank the Almighty for small favors, I suppose.
Still, I didn't plan to go down easy. I gave the Pig a hand-signal to be ready, and faked a stagger to draw DiVaragas's attention.
That is, I tried to fake a stagger, but my knees loosened, and the act became a reality. DiVaragas didn't miss it, but came screaming in with her knife ready to chop me into bite-size Najettes. I caught myself and jumped back. Again, reflex saved me. The small subconscious part of me that could actually think creatively in a fight took over, and I thrust my fist out at the yapper's face - and popped Jenny's katar. The thirty-centimeter blade snapped out so fast that if DiVaragas had been a shade slower, it would have gone right into her brain. As it was, she flung herself to the side, all off-balance, and her blade scratched the armor underneath my arm instead of slicing my throat open.
Despite the adrenaline, I was slow, slow, slow. Shock had definitely settled in, probably some blood loss as well. I hadn't been counting the drops, but I'd been generous in sprinkling the red stuff around the bay. I watched her recover like I was tuning in from a remote camera. She wheeled toward me again, and I knew my life was measured in seconds. I wondered how the Wolfgirl was reacting, and what it was that bothered me about Monsterboy.
That's when the Pig made his move. He came in low and hard, at full jet, arms wide. DiVaragas must have heard him, because her timing was perfect. She turned like a snake just as he reached her and fired a stiff-fingered strike that nailed him like a spike driven through an orange. He didn't even bother to block. He crashed into her at full tilt, his arms hooking around her thighs. She clanged into the deck, tackled by a dead man.
Slow and shock-teased as I was, I knew an opening when I saw it. I slammed down onto her like a hammer, putting my knee on one outstretched arm and clapping my bleeding hand onto her shoulder. The katar jabbed down at her unprotected neck. She jerked hard to the side, and my blade's point jolted into stahlplast instead of flesh. Still, the Pig and I had her pinned. Good as she was, my heavier armor and superior leverage gave me enough of an advantage to finish this, hopefully before one of the yappers decided honor be damned and put a blaster bolt into my head. My peripheral vision was tracking movement somewhere to the side. Feeling crosshairs tickling my scalp already, I raised the katar-
"Don't shoot!" DiVaragas yelled, so unexpectedly that I hesitated for a split-second, despite her continued wriggling.
"We're under attack, Su!" a man's voice shouted back. "But it's not the butchers!"
That stopped her cold. Seven Hells, I thought. Who could it be if it wasn't Fury? Well, it wasn't my problem. I had brethren to avenge.
The katar pricked her neck and I wondered why I was stalling. All I had to do was lean forward, and I'd decapitate the Starwolf - almost literally. I'd do something Fury would be proud to hear about.
"Listen," the man continued as he approached. I realized he was talking to me. He was a yapper officer, some kind of sub-kahuna, but pretty high up there. Getting the rank insignia of yapper brass hadn't been one of my priorities, either, so right now I was beginning to regret dozing through so many intel briefings. "Whoever you are," he said, "you've won. Let her go. We need her. Dark help us, if the reports are right - we've been hit by the Scourge."
"What?" I managed. "You're kidding, right?"
"No, he's not." Another voice cut in. The Wolfgirl. When she stepped into my line of sight, she looked pale but totally serious. "I patched into the CC and got visual confirmation. It's - it's these animal things."
"Bio-Derms," the man snapped.
I rolled off DiVaragas. Tremors started in my arms and legs, and I retracted the katar back into Jenny's armored sleeve. The adrenaline rush ebbed, and the nausea jumped back with a vengeance. I was getting the post-nearly-got deaded shakes. DiVaragas struggled out of the Pig's grip and hauled herself to her feet. After one final glare at me, she wheeled and stalked away, the officer in tow. The Pig's blood stained her legs and back and a red handprint on her shoulder marked where I'd grabbed her. Raw God, the witch had really cut me.
"So, you busy tonight?" I asked the Wolfgirl. Then I passed out.[1]
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