Out of the Black - Lee Doty [64]
The newcomer stood casually, seemingly in the same position as before the attack, the lines of his face softening from terrible rage back into a mask of reason and curiosity. He held up a hand, palm out.
"Look, by now you folks realize you're in deep trouble, so it's time to decide. We can do this the easy way or the hard way." He said reasonably, "This is actually my third killing spree today, and I'm way over my homicide limit for the week, so I'm going to give you folks a gracious deal: you put down your wee little knives- you walk away peaceably right now, and I'll kill you." His smile broadened, mirth and menace mingling like fuel and air awaiting the smallest spark.
"And you'll kill us?" one of the Grunts said.
"Hmm," the newcomer said with a smirk, "apparently you've seen through my little ruse." He sighed with mild disappointment, "Abandon all hope."
Beautiful weapon, Ping thought through the sparkle-haze of the blood slowly returning to his brain. Sprawled on the ground, neck craned to stare at the newcomer; he was reminded of an exhibit at an air-show he'd attended when he was thirteen. He had been impressed with the terrible beauty of a gun node on the nose of a short-attack craft. Its every line was symmetry and efficiency. Its many rotating barrels and the surrounding fairing had the sleek fearsome look of a shark's mouth, but the overall impression was of beauty strengthened by purpose. This guy radiated the same aesthetic- terrible, irresistible beauty. For some reason,heneemed less impressive in Ahmed's lobby this morning.
An ephemeral flicker disturbed the floating dust between Good Cop and the bristly-haired killing machine, but then things happened faster than anyone else could see.
Dek had almost missed the action again. A sharp pang of regret crystallized in the firestorm of his rage. For the second time today, he'd been there to face Alex's hunters, but when it had really counted, he'd been too late.
In a time continuum where hummingbirds would float motionless on cushions of thick, downy air, his sword came out. It's ringing was a low resonant hum of shifting harmonics in the heavy air. Dek's clothes stretched and tugged backward with the first eddies of force from the blonde Savant's Grappling. His torso began to rock with the slow dissonant violence of the kinetic Cast. But his legs were already compensating, holding him upright, allowing the force to drive him back. His feet slid across the floor, glass crunched, and the blade hummed through a short, direct arc. The blade was fully extended when it tore through the Cast around him. The blade lit with the tracings of the Loom as its Forged steel sheared through the blonde guy's weave and the Loom's raw power burst from the destroyed Cast like oil from a severed wellhead.
At his speed, the explosion sounded like a wave slowly crashing on a rocky shore. Dek struck again, cleaving downward as he leapt forward. The results were less spectacular- a final spurt of emptying power, but he liked to be thorough.
Though he probably wasn't yet aware of it, the amateur Savant was already swimming in a backlash of power that blew back from his shattered Cast. He'd left the ground and entered a contorted backstroke. Dek left him for the moment and turned his attention to the Savant's henchmen.
Payback wasn't sweet, but it was coming.
A nearly imperceptible contortion shivered through the world as the bristly haired guy from Alex's lobby struck the air before him in a blur of implied motion. The sword that came from nowhere lit with lines of power as it passed through the seemingly empty air.
The world was still a bit fuzzy around the edges from his brush with Garvey's magic flyswatter. Ping was still considering the possibility that this was a postmortem hallucination when the last body fell amid the newcomer's blade tornado and he stood alone in the archive's