Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [81]
Wesley fumbled for the button on the Cyclops-buster. His hands were shaky and he almost dropped the machine before he triggered his shot. The Cyclops-buster built up a charge, accelerating its special subatomic particles for final release. He heard, as counterpoint, the whine of the one-eye as it prepared to fire at him.
He aimed the Cyclops-buster at the one-eye.
The one-eye and the Cyclops-buster fired at nearly the same instant. Wesley felt part of a wave-front hit him; a wave of nausea and anguish.
But he’d fired in time. The one-eye blossomed suddenly into a spherical cloud, bright and dark patches alternating around its surface, spinning and pullulating with mesmerizing complexity, and it made him think of Shiva. Suddenly the cloud expanded outward, past him, and he knew the neutrinos were passing through him and the bulkheads by the billion, but they were benign as they sought the void outside the ship.
Wesley felt feverish and uncoordinated as he reset the controls on his Cyclops-buster. He looked at the two security men; they seemed to be experiencing symptoms as well. The one next to him shook his head to try and clear it, while a second man, far down the corridor, retched and held his midsection.
Wesley realized that the Cyclops-buster had disrupted the one-eye’s shot, and saved them from a lethal dose of radiation.
Yet the encounter wasn’t over. Wentz had said there were two of the intruders. If they had arrived together, Wesley could have annihilated them both. But the Cyclops-buster needed thirty seconds of charging before it could fire again, and the digital counter said twenty still remained.
At that instant the other one-eye came around the far corner, many meters ahead.
The one-eye moved closer toward him. This time it would fire at closer range, to make sure of the kill.
Wesley turned to run for the open doorway, knowing already that it was much too far. The one-eye would have plenty of time to fire.
Now he saw that Shikibu had arrived and was standing near the open doorway.
In one hand she held her seven-foot-long bow. On the other hand she wore a leather glove. Under her belt were several slim tritanium arrows.
At this moment, after clearing herself of all distracting thoughts, Shikibu’s mind was in perfect repose—like a mirror, or the surface of a lake on an absolutely still day.
Her breath slowed down and found an unconscious rhythm, and her posture found a balance around the centerpoint called the tanden, just below her navel.
She perceived the one-eye, sensed its motion and direction, but had no thoughts or feelings about it.
She reached, without rational hesitation or irrational fear, for an arrow from her belt.
The one-eye observed Shikibu through its lens as it moved toward Wesley. It saw the large bow she held, and the arrow. It knew what it saw was a potential weapons system, but of manual operation, requiring forethought to fire. And as it scanned her brain waves it found there was no forethought, no purpose, no thought at all. So it concentrated on knocking out the primary target, the young man with the machine that had just destroyed another one-eye.
Wesley felt as though he were trying to wake up from a dream. His legs were sluggish from the effects of the other one-eye’s blast. He tried to think them into moving as he kept his eyes on the door and on Shikibu.
He saw Shikibu move through discrete postures and motions as she grasped the arrow, nocked it on the bowstring, and raised the bow. He saw her pull the great bowstring back until it reached its maximum tension. She seemed to be in no special hurry as she took aim, sighting past the grip of the bow.
She was still far away but Wesley saw on her face, as if with magnified clarity, the peaceful expression of a contented child. Why doesn’t she shoot! he screamed silently.