Mateo fired a three burst. I had no idea what he was shooting.
Warhammer stepped out from the mini-tank.
Auto-tracking again, I shot her. My blaster should have boiled her brains, but she shifted, the tracker slipping away again. It was calibrated for human speed. We were faster.
Bloody damn.
She raised her gun.
Warhammer had reloaded.
She fired.
I leaped to the side as she emptied the weapon, wasting ammo.
Behind me, One-Eyed Jack fell silent.
Hidden behind a pile of refuse and debris, I stretched out low. Steadied my blaster. Aimed at her helmet. Fired again. Missed. Warhammer was as fast as me.
She raced down the deserted street, leaping over debris, skirting behind rubble that had once been buildings. Firing all the way. Then she pulled out a new weapon. I couldn’t see what it was. She stopped, turned, aimed at me where I lay in the bricks and rebar. She fired.
It sounded like a cannon going off.
“From your armor cameras,” Jolene said, her voice unusually crisp, “I can tell that Warhammer is firing a Smith & Wesson Model 500, once the most powerful handgun on the planet. The bullet diameter is 12.7 millimeters. It is also unsuppressed, Shining Sugah, and the military convoy nearby has heard her weapon fire. They are maneuvering to investigate.”
I cursed.
“Sugah,” Jolene continued, “do not let that woman fire at you point-blank. Youwillsustain damage.”
“Not in my plans.”
“Without Maarsies with cams overflyin’ I cannot tell you how soon the military will send their own reconnaissance flyers or how soon they may arrive on scene. I am attemptin’ to track their communication system, but they seem to be aware of my interference and have put up firewalls of a kind I have not encountered before. You better hurry, Sugah.”
I rolled to my knees and moved silently around a bigger pile of rubble, rebar sticking up and out and bent like pretzels. I reset my armor and crawled through a small hole. To the side, Mateo began to dismember Warhammer’s last fighter, the screams high-pitched and desperate. He didn’t last as long as Jack had, dying in seconds.
My speakers picked up the low scrape of movement just ahead.
It was clear Warhammer’s armor had far fewer bells and whistles than mine did. Her soft-mode was loud where it brushed the wreckage. But her body was augmented. Even without the new speed functions, gyros, and mechanical reinforcement, she was fast.
I peeked out from behind an exposed basement foundation.
Mateo reared up over the wreckage of the buildings. “Your turn,” he said, his metallic voice echoing through the wreckage.
Warhammer tripped over a low wall. Landed. From the ground, she fired at Mateo with everything she had. Mateo moved slowly toward her, his legs like a massive spider, her rounds bouncing off his carapace. Her gun jammed.
“Peel pieces off you like I did Jack, for what you did to Evelyn.”
“She’s mine,” I whispered to him. I set my blaster on auto-aim, auto-fire. Weapon out in front, Harlan’s dead face in my mind like a beacon, I ran for her.
Leaped over the low wall. Engaged auto-targeting.
The barrel end of the biggest handgun I had ever seen was pointing at me.
She had faked me out.
In midair, I tucked, swiveled, pivoted, rolled. The first round caught me ten centimeters to the left of my navel, in the pad of flesh at my waist.
Pain slammed through me like a tidal wave hitting a shore, overriding everything.
