Fated Blades

Ramona slashed, slicing the man in front of her in half.

Matias thrust his blade into the neck of the trooper before him. The seco encountered no resistance. It never did.

Blood wet the paver stones.

The pair of remaining Vandals opened fire. In the split second before they pulled their triggers, he’d shifted both seco into shields and sprinted, aware of Ramona at his heels. The pellet barrage smashed into the double shield, glancing off and mincing the jungle around them, and then he was in strike range.

Ramona spun from behind him with breathtaking elegance, her two seco mutating into wide blades, and struck. Two heads rolled onto the path. She dismissed the seco with a flourish and stepped over the bodies.

He knew it was for the cameras. He had no doubt they were being watched and that whoever saw that on the other end likely wet themselves. But she had done it flawlessly. Every line of her body, every twist, every movement was the definition of deadly grace. Jealousy seared him. He wished she had done it just for him. He wished he was the one to parry it.

Ramona plucked a rifle from one of the dead men’s hands.

“The exit is about forty meters down this path,” he told her quietly. “They’d be fools not to guard it.”

She hefted the rifle and fired into a corpse with a metallic thump. The body jerked, spraying blood and liquefied flesh onto the path as the payload detonated.

“No genetic lock. What kind of door?”

“Hermetically sealed plasticore with a wood veneer.”

The atrium was around thirty degrees Celsius, about six degrees above what most people found comfortable, and a good deal more humid. Drewery meant it as a tropical retreat and took pains to insulate it from the rest of the house. Plasticore was a poor heat conductor and therefore perfect for his purposes, but an average firearm would punch a hole through it even with the smallest-caliber round.

“And behind the door?” Ramona asked.

“A hallway about ten meters across.” It went without saying that they had no idea how many Vandals waited there.

“Fun.” Ramona eyed the rifle. “Do you want to shoot or cut?”

“Cut.” It was his turn to take point.

“Then I’ll make some noise.”

He sprinted down the path. She followed a step behind. He veered right, dashing through the greenery out of sight of the security cameras; she kept going straight.

Matias ran for a few more seconds, then cut left. Ten meters, fifteen, twenty . . . The perimeter path that ran along the wall of the atrium winked at him through the leaves. He crouched in the bushes at its edge. The exit door lay to his left, about twenty-five meters down. No guards in sight. They waited on the other side of the door.

Once he stepped onto the path, the cameras would find him.

A pellet rifle thudded, sinking a full cartridge load into the door. The pellets discharged. Wood and chunks of plastic sprayed into the air.

Ramona fired again, and again, pumping cartridges into the expanding hole.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

She was going to run out of ammo at this rate. He had never bothered to get the specs on the Vandal rifles, and he had no idea about their magazine capacity, but judging by the size of the cartridges, they would carry fifteen to twenty, at most.

Thud.

The rifle fell silent.

Now.

He burst onto the path and sprinted to the door. Double thuds of the pellet rifles tore through the silence—the Vandals returning fire through the ruined doorway, focused on finding Ramona in the jungle.

He cleared the last meter and a half. The door was a memory, gone except for a ragged piece hanging from the top. He snapped his seco into two square shields and thrust them against the gap where the door had been.

Three cartridges punched the red force fields and ricocheted. Matias leaped to the side, putting the wall of the atrium between himself and the hallway.

A howl of pure pain rang out. The ricocheted pellets had hit home and detonated.

He dived into the hole, his seco twisting into short, curved blades. Two bodies down, motionless, one soldier trying to stand up on the left, two to the right, two more in front leaping to their feet after hugging the floor. He floated through them, weightless, free of gravity and time, slicing, cutting, severing. Blood sprayed the white marble walls. The last soldier let out half a scream and gurgled on his own blood, his terrified plea for help aborted midnote.

The Vandal in front of him fell. In Matias’s mind, ships exploded all around him, blinding flares against the darkness of space.

A faint gasp made him turn.

Ramona stood by the ruined door, the long spike of her right seco buried in one of the bodies. She was looking at him, and he saw admiration in her eyes.

“Did I miss one?”

“No. He was dying. I ended it quickly for him.”

“It was more than he deserved.”

“My apologies. I’ll restrain myself next time.”