Spin State - Chris Moriarty [215]
She caught him on the right temple. Not ideal, but she stunned him—and opened up a long gash in his skull that would bleed into his eyes with a little luck.
He staggered to his feet and aimed a crushing kick at her ribs, but she was already rolling away from him.
She glanced around as they squared off against each other. The gun was too far away. She’d never get there in time. But Kintz couldn’t get to it either—not without risking a kick from Li’s still lethal legs.
This would be a good time, Bella, she thought. But of course, Bella was nowhere.
“You fucking digger bitch,” Kintz said. “Fucking stinking dirty half-bred cunt!”
Li laughed. She didn’t know where the laugh came from, but suddenly it all seemed pathetically ridiculous, from Kintz’s tired insults to the fact that they were fighting for the same planet both their ancestors had wasted lifetimes trying to escape from. “Guess you should have stuck to the half-breeds you could buy in Helena,” she gasped.
After that, they didn’t talk anymore; they were both short of breath, and they knew that the next time they went down one of them wasn’t getting up again.
Li would have liked to be able to wait Kintz out, let him get impatient. But she couldn’t afford to. She was too tired, too battered. She would flag before he did. She had to draw him into doing something stupid, and she had to do it while she still had the strength to take advantage of his mistake.
She danced in, let him get a glancing hit on her, jumped away, deliberately stumbling a little. He took the bait; he reached for her, missed his hold, reached again.
This time she let him catch up to her. She forced herself not to think what would happen if this ploy didn’t work, if he really did get her down. She kept her hands up, locked together. As he gripped her, she braced her feet and drove her hands toward his face with all the strength she had, fingers rigid.
He screamed and staggered back, clutching his eyes. She threw herself down the drift without even looking to see if he was following and reached the Colt in a cloth-ripping, face-forward slide.
His first kick connected just as her fingers touched the gun. He slammed into her ribs, her kidneys, her stomach in a flurry of blows so violent that only the certainty of death if she failed kept her hands locked around the revolver.
She rolled over, baring her stomach, and looked up at him. One eye was still open, though the skin around the socket was torn and bleeding. The other was a gushing mess.
She raised the gun only to have him kick it aside. He fell on her, trapping the gun between them, scratching and grabbing for it, his breath roaring in her ears with the tight scream of adrenaline and agony. They wrestled, grunting like dogs fighting for a bone, locked in a deadly tug-of-war. She felt Kintz prying her fingers from the sweat-and-blood-slicked grip. Her pulse drummed in her skull. Her lungs and fingers burned. Her grip slipping, belly to belly with Kintz, hardly knowing where the gun was aimed, she fired.
She heard the wet thump of bullet hitting flesh, felt hot blood rush over her legs and stomach.
It took a long time for him to die, and she didn’t dare move the gun, even to flick the safety back on, until she was sure his fingers had slacked. When she finally pushed him off her his one remaining eye was open and his limbs loose and heavy. She wiped the blood off her face and stood up—only to find herself staring down the barrel of her own gun.
“Bella,” she said.
“Not quite.” Haas’s smile looked all wrong on Bella’s pale face, and in the construct’s dark eyes Li saw the same frozen, uncomprehending panic she’d seen when she’d gone under the loop shunt.
“You took your time,