Out of the Black - Lee Doty [146]
The surgeons looked up from their work on Hawthorne.
"How long for you to stabilize her enough for us to take her?"
He looked reluctant, "Maybe two hours for prep and... but Anne, you know you can't take..."
"Now listen, Sean," She interrupted with a hard voice she'd picked up somewhere, "There's more of those disco zombies on their way, and I'm pretty sure anyone who's still here is on the buffet, if you get my drift."
The surgeons glanced quickly at each other. "Five minutes." Sean concluded. They went back to work.
"We got five?" Anne looked to Alex. He didn't think long before giving his head a slow shake. This was going to end badly.
Rae and Ping checked their remaining ammo. Ping discarded his assault gun onto a nearby cabinet. He limbered his pistols in their holsters, adjusted his sword in his jacket pocket. He then straightened his jacket, making sure the weapons were out of sight. Rae ejected the drum from her fletcher, slammed another into the port.
Ping looked at their small company. "Maybe I should head back up to the observ..."
"Crap!" Alex shouted, squeezing his eyes shut and raising his arms before him as if to ward off a blow. There was a sharp, wet sound and he was blown off his feet as if hit by a car. Rae screamed, but brought her fletcher up as quick as any hero in an action video. Anne's head snapped around, looking for an attacker. Ping stood perfectly still, one hand in his jacket pocket, eyes moving to the doorway. Alex slammed into the wall at the far side of the OR. He fell limp to the floor, leaving a crater in the tiled wall.
The double doors from the hallway opened inward and a woman in a rich brown suit strode in as if she were on a catwalk, exuding confidence. Her fingers sparkled with bright metal and rubies. Her smooth skin was only a few shades lighter than her suit. "Hey, how 'bout I just kill..."
Anne was moving before the newcomer finished speaking. She was into the slipstream of relative velocity, three steps toward the newcomer when she left the ground. Force tingled across her skin. She raised perhaps twenty centimeters into the air, peddling her feet like a cartoon character before a big exit.
Her wrists and ankles stretched out painfully. Every joint strained to the point of breaking under the unseen force. A short cry escaped her lips before she squeezed them shut.
The woman in brown laughed. She didn't flinch as four explosions rattled off with no discernable time between them. The air before the woman filled with sparks as she deflected the fletchettes. Rae's weapon flew from her hands and into the brown woman's ready hand. "Thanks honey!" She smiled without warmth.
The woman brought up her right hand with a theatrical flourish. She snapped her fingers like a commanding debutante and both Ping and Rae were struck in the face. They both went down hard, their legs above them as they hit the floor.
"Stay!" the woman commanded with an outstretched finger and an inward-directed chuckle. Shiva was ever playful at work. She returned to regard Anne, floating and stretched taught by invisible bonds. "Now you've been quite bad!" She had a flash of inspiration. "You know, something's missing." Her smile broadened.
Anne didn't scream as the holes opened in her outstretched palms, the blood flowed onto the floor. "Lets play charades- your turn." Anne's ankles snapped together. "Wait! I know this one..."
Then their eyes met. Shiva had expected the most satisfying form of terror. She'd expected despair. After four hundred years, only despair still warmed her jaded heart. But here, in this disgustingly fat woman, in that swollen bag of a face, Shiva saw no fear. Where by all rights she'd expected a blank bovine gaze, she saw the dark eyes of the predator, of the patient shark. She saw her own death with confidence. Here was a woman totally helpless, yet able to make Shiva's bravado falter with only a glance.
She looked away, shaken. She'd fought Torpedoes before, but this was different. She'd forgotten what she was saying...
Another shot ricocheted off her shield at