40 – If There’s a Valhalla

  At Nora’s direction, Tony’s nanites, dragging more of his precious Dust out of his reactor, numbed his pain and redoubled their efforts on his wounds. As fire billowed behind him, and the popping, crackling explosions of the merc’s no-holds-barred attack continued, he scrambled to his hands and knees, grabbed the door handle and threw himself out of the hallway into the backstage area.

  “You got eyes on ’em?” he asked in comms.

  “I lost all vid feeds to the hallway! I see you now, though. The goons from upstairs are lingering near the stairwell—did something happen in there?”

  “Yeah,” Tony wheezed, limping away from the door, unable to put much weight on his right knee. “One of those mercs had some damn good tech, and she went batshit trying to erase me.” He hurried to the opposite side of the backstage area, hunkering behind the same stacks of folding chairs as before. The explosions had stopped, so he had to assume the merc had either run out of ammo or decided nothing could have lived through her barrage. He hoped it was the former; she’d clearly been unhinged. Either way, he couldn’t bank on it. He needed a plan.

  “I gotta split these guys up again, Glitch. Any ideas?”

  “Hurry, T, move back to the lobby!”

  Tony didn’t hesitate; it was trust Glitch or wait to get annihilated by superior firepower. Much of his body was numb thanks to his nanites, but his knee seemed to be bending a little better, so he tried his luck with jogging up through the auditorium. Nothing gave way, and he limp-ran up the central aisle. When he reached the exit and nobody had appeared to blast him from the stage, he crashed through the door into the dimly lit lobby.

  “Shit, T, you look rough. Your poor suit!”

  Tony looked down and saw his pants were singed and shredded, especially on the right side. The same was true of his coat, but the double layer of fabric over his nano-weave dress shirt had spared his torso and arm from the shredding his leg had taken. All he could do was thank his earlier self for the foresight of stealing the merc’s helmet. He had a feeling it would be over already if he hadn’t. “Where?” he asked, trying to control his breathing.

  “The elevators! They have a lockdown for the building, but it’s open between this floor and the one above.”

  Tony nodded, hurrying down the broad, carpeted hallway to the elevator bank. “They won’t see where I went?”

  “Nope, I have the cam controls. They don’t know it—they’re currently scanning the feeds looking for you.”

  “I like it.” Tony pushed the call button, careful to use a finger that wasn’t soaked in blood. If he could get upstairs, he could come down behind them and hopefully pick them off as they separated to search for him. He’d barely set foot into the elevator when the doors closed and it started to move; Glitch was helping him out.

  “You can’t get past the elevator lock?” he asked, leaning against the wall to take some weight off his leg.

  “I can, but I didn’t know about it until just now. When you’re out of danger, I’ll focus on it—or maybe Smokey can, but he’s kind of helping the others.”

  “They started already? Good. I was afraid I’d blown things with that babysitter.”

  “Yeah…” Glitch trailed off, clearly distracted, and Tony took stock of himself. Once again, he was down to his arm and the needler inside it for weapons; during his escape from the female merc and her losttech armor, he’d dropped the plasma knife. What the hell had that been? A Dust-frame? He’d heard stories, but armor like that—powered by Dust and loaded with built-in smart weapons—was near-mythical in its rarity. Her helmet hadn’t been part of it, that was for sure, but what he’d taken for standard chest armor with bulky shoulder-mounted tech was clearly more than he’d bargained for. Once again, he hoped she was out of the fight.

  “She has to be,” he muttered into his helmet. Having half your face blown off would make continuing pretty damn hard for anyone, no matter how good their nanites were.

  “Tony?” Nora asked.

  “Just thinking out loud.”

  The elevator had come to a stop, but it wasn’t opening. Tony moved to the controls, but Glitch spoke before he could touch anything: “You’ve got about twenty seconds. Go into the first room on your right.” As she spoke, the doors chimed and opened. Tony moved, noting the plush navy-blue carpet, the faux-marble walls covered with Cross Corporation plaques and awards, and the many other open doors in the hallway. He could see all the way to the end, where the stairwell would lead down to the hallway below, where he’d almost died.

  Following Glitch’s instructions, he found himself in a small room with couches on the left and right. A crystal-glass display covered the far wall, and a low table between the couches held baskets of sealed snacks. A small fridge sat under the display, and Tony was tempted to crack it open, but he figured he didn’t have time to risk taking off his helmet. “What now?”

  “They’re sending two up, but one is badly injured from what I can see. They’re moving slowly; it looks like they still haven’t figured out how compromised they are. I’m pretty sure that, as far as they know, nobody has used the elevator.”

  “And the others?”

  “They split up—one searching the stage area, and the other made a beeline for the lobby.”

  “Is the guy I asked you about down there? The one with the implant on his—”

  “You mean LaMonte?” Glitch chuckled. “They’ve been calling each other by their names in comms. Yeah, he’s the one who went to the lobby.”

  “Tell me what room the two coming upstairs go into.” Tony checked the bio-batts in his arm: 18%. He wouldn’t be firing the kinetic amplifier anytime soon. “There cams in any of these rooms?”

  “All of them.”

  “No weapons in any, I’m assuming, right?”

  “Um, maybe? The mercs were set up in another room, and there are a couple of duffels in there—”

  “Dammit, why didn’t you say something?”

  “Because I didn’t think you had time! They’re in the stairwell, and it’s one floor!”

  Tony took a second to weigh his options. “Guide me,” he said, cracking the door and peering down the hallway to the stairwell. Nobody was there yet.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “Middle door on the left.”

  In four quick strides, Tony was there. He pulled the door open and slipped through, shutting it silently behind himself. He’d just scanned the room. Larger than the one he’d been in, this one had a small kitchen built into the far wall. He saw a black duffel on the couch and another on the kitchen counter. He’d just started for the one by the couch when Glitch populated his mini-map with two flashing red dots. The mercs were in the hallway.

  Tony grabbed the duffel—satisfyingly heavy—and spun, praying an idea would come to him. To his momentary relief, he saw there was a blind corner beside the door he’d come through, formed by a short wall that blocked off a single-occupancy restroom. He practically dove through the door into the bathroom and closed it behind himself. He set the duffel on the sink and yanked the zipper open, revealing…medical supplies.

  “Shit,” he grunted. They’d be coming for this very duffel. When it wasn’t where they expected it to be…

  Tony grabbed an autoinjector, left the duffel on the sink, and opened the door about half a meter. Then, as noiselessly as he could, he stood on the toilet, ensuring the partially open door obscured him. While he lurked there in the dark bathroom, he examined the injector, praying he’d gotten lucky. It was labeled “OP-40.”

  “What is this?” he asked Nora.

  “Omniparanidasole, 40 mg. It’s a powerful pain reliever. At that dosage, it would make the recipient drowsy and induce mild opiate-like intoxication.”

  “And if I doubled the dosage?” Tony asked, twisting the little injector dial up to the maximum: 2x.

  “It would increase disorientation and lethargy, with impaired coordination.”

  Tony gripped the injector, lurking there in the shadows behind the door. When he heard the outer door open and then the grunts and gasps of the two mercs, he froze, not even daring to breathe, even though he wore a sealed helmet.

  “Alright, you’re okay, you’re okay. Hang on, Haze. Here’s a couch. Can you see it?”

  A gargled, wet-sounding cough was the only response, and the first speaker, a youngish-sounding man, replied, “Shit, stupid question. Your eyes are just…” He trailed off, and more grunts and gasps sounded. “Goddamn, Haze. You look fucking awful. Where’s the goddamn trauma kit?”

  Tony heard heavy footsteps as the uninjured merc looked around. A moment later, he said, “Ah, there it is!” and his steps thudded on the carpet toward the bathroom. Tony tensed his muscles. When the door swung open further and the merc stepped through, Tony knew it was then or never. He pushed the door shut and jumped onto the guy’s back.

  “What the—” the merc cried as Tony’s weight drove him forward into the sink, spilling the duffel onto the floor. The merc staggered back, trying to compensate for the added burden, and when he saw Tony’s dark form clinging to him in the mirror, he kicked off the sink, throwing them both back onto the toilet.

  During those few frantic seconds, Tony desperately tried to find a spot of unarmored flesh where he could jam the autoinjector. They crashed into the toilet; the tank slammed back, cracking where it joined the bowl, and water gurgled out, soaking the tile floor. When the guy reached back, trying to grab hold of Tony, his sleeve pulled up and a patch of dark skin caught Tony’s eye. Like a snake striking, he jammed the injector against the flesh and repeatedly depressed the injection trigger.

  The device had a built-in safety; it wouldn’t fire more than once every three seconds, so the repeated trigger presses didn’t help. Even so, after just one injection, the merc grew noticeably limp, and his grasping arm stopped groping and flopped. Tony held on, squeezing tight, and after a couple of seconds, he gave him another injection. After that, all the fight went out of the merc, and he slumped forward.

  Tony pushed him off, so he fell onto the floor, his helmet clunking into the base of the sink. Then, for good measure, he yanked on the guy’s utility belt, exposing a few centimeters of flesh between his pants and torso armor, and gave him another injection. “There you go, buddy. If you don’t die, you’re gonna have a hell of a trip.” Tony’s voice didn’t leave his helmet, but the quip relieved some stress, nevertheless.

  He grabbed the merc’s belt and dragged him out of the path of the door, then he searched the guy for a usable weapon. There was no sign of an SMG, assuming that was his primary. Tony figured he’d set it down when he’d helped the wounded merc onto the couch. He found another vibroblade and a fat, old-school revolver strapped to his left boot. Tony took the revolver and popped the cylinder, ensuring it was loaded—why it wouldn’t be, he had no idea.

  To his surprise, it only had four chambers, and each one was filled with a finger-sized black polymer bullet. “The hell is this thing, huh? Some kind of peacemaker?” He slammed the cylinder shut and pulled back the hammer. Then, after taking a deep breath to steady himself, he yanked the door open and leveled the gun, ready for that crazed female merc to unleash hell with her Dust-tech again.

  Almost to his disappointment, he saw her sprawled out on the floor, not the couch. She was face down, one arm outstretched toward the bathroom like she’d been trying to come to the other merc’s aid. “Damn,” Tony whispered, uncocking the hammer on the peacemaker. Just to be sure, he hurried over to the woman and, grimacing at the bloody state of her face, put his fingers to the side of her neck. Her flesh was cool, and he couldn’t find a trace of a pulse.

  “Tony?” Glitch asked. “All good? I would have warned you about her, but she only made it one step.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I’m good. They should’ve sent her and that other merc down the elevator…should’ve called a trauma cart for her.”

  “Maybe they didn’t want Cross corpo-sec to get involved?”

  “Yeah,” Tony said, turning the woman over to get a better look at her body armor, “probably. Still got eyes on the other two?”

  “Yes. One is still searching the auditorium; the other is in the ladies’ room near the lobby.”

  Tony nodded absently as he examined the woman’s armor. Beneath the hard polymer shell, a faint shimmer rippled through the nanomolecular underlayer as it flowed to fill spiderweb cracks and scorched gouges from their earlier exchange.

  “Self-repairing,” he muttered.

  The twin turrets that had nearly killed him were gone, folded so neatly into the swollen nodules of the shoulder plates that they might never have existed at all. Up close, the backplate was wrong—too thick, too dense for mere protection. If he were betting, that was where the flechette magazines lived, nested alongside the spine like a second ribcage.

  “How the hell do I get this off her?”

  “Near the right armpit, above the lamellar plates,” Nora replied without hesitation. “You should find a biometric scanner and data port. Since you have access to her finger, press it to the scanner.”

  Tony frowned. He’d looted a hundred bodies in his time, but this felt different—more intimate, more invasive. He took the woman’s hand, peeled back the glove, and pressed her finger to the smooth, glassy circle tucked beneath her opposite arm.

  The armor hissed, then clicked. A seam irised open along her right side as several lamellar plates folded into themselves, sliding aside with surgical precision. The opening widened until he could pull the rig free.

  It came away as a reinforced vest with integrated shoulder assemblies. The merc’s arm armor remained behind—plasteel vambraces locked in place by flexible sleeves that clung like a second skin. “Just a vest, huh?” Tony said, holding the artifact up. “Think there’s any chance I can get this to fit me?”

  It was Glitch who replied, “If that’s what I think it is, it’ll fit a wide range of individuals. Only problem being that old Dust-tech like that requires a hard-wired connection and some specialized software to reset and pair.”

  “Yeah, figured.” Tony stood, still clutching the heavy piece of armor. He gave the dead merc a last look, feeling like he ought to say something, but the words wouldn’t come to him. She’d been a fierce warrior, that was for sure. He took a step toward the kitchen counter and the other duffel, but then turned and touched the button on his helmet that would lift the visor. Looking down at the woman—Haze—he tried to imagine her face before he’d ruined it, and then he said, “If there’s a Valhalla or something like that, you deserve to go there.”

  Then he walked over to the duffel and yanked the zipper open. This time he wasn’t greeted with medical supplies. The bag was filled with spare ammo—mostly nine-millimeter SMG mags, a box containing six flashbangs, four stim injectors—RhinoRed—a bandolier of shotgun shells and, like a match made in hell, a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun, straight out of a vintage action vid.

  Tony grabbed the bandolier, slung it over his shoulder, then loaded his coat pockets with grenades—two each. He took one of the stims out and tucked it into his pants pocket—the one that hadn’t been shredded earlier. He picked up the other merc’s peacemaker and tucked it into his waistband, and finally, he stuffed the merc’s Dust-frame armor into the duffel.

  “You’re gonna try to make it out with that?” Glitch asked.

  He slung the duffel over his shoulder, then cracked the shotgun, stuffing two fat shells into the barrels. “Gonna try; those things are impossible to buy.” He thumped the shotgun barrel against his palm. “Besides, won’t be too hard after I’ve killed the other goons, right?”