Chapter Twenty-Two
IT WAS A HIDEOUS PASSING.
Over the bloody years Ryan Cawdor had seen many men and women meet their Maker. Few of them had gone peacefully into that long night. But he had never seen anyone chilled in such an appalling way as his friend Finnegan.
The blind perversity of the fates had dictated that the laser rifle of the sec man functioned perfectlyfor just long enough.
Unlike a single bullet, the beam of light from a high-power military laser acts more like a directional, narrow strip of extreme heat. A bullet drills a hole through flesh, the exit hole generally markedly bigger than the entrance wound. Not so with a laser. It is precisely the same size as it exits the human body as when it entered.
Also, light has no mass, so there is no impact. As the laser struck Finnegan, it didn’t lift him off his feet, or throw him backward, nothing initially as dramatic as that.
But the power was so awesome that in the instant the blaster came to life its vivid blue beam had penetrated clean through the helpless Finn, hitting the wall only a couple of paces to the left of J.B., who immediately threw himself flat on the floor, hands over his head as chunks of liquid concrete and charred wood fell from the side of the corridor.
Along one wall, Ryan watched the termination in impotent horror, seeing that nothing could be done for the doomed man.
Stinking smoke erupted from the front and back of Finn’s coat, tiny flames flaring red and yellow. Every staggering movement of the dying man only increased his horrific suffering. His skin was scorched black, the flesh broiled by the immense power of the blaster. The heat was so intense that the wretch’s intestines began to explode and melt, and his blood boiled instantly where the laser had touched him.
As Finn dropped, his own blaster clattering on the tiles, the sec man kept the trigger down, almost slicing the beefy man into segments with the blaster’s ferocity.
“Oh, no, no, no, no” Krysty moaned softly, one hand resting lightly on Ryan’s arm.
As the body lay smoldering on the floor, the blue light stopped as suddenly as it had started. The sec mutie looked down at the blaster and banged his fist on the control dial, frustrated that the weapon had ceased functioning.
“Mine,” Ryan said. He stooped and put his G-12 caseless down, placing the SIG-Sauer 9 mm pistol alongside it. Then he moved out of cover, and walked toward the helmeted guard, loosening the white silk scarf from around his neck.
“Don’t, lover,” Krysty said, trying to pull him back around the corner.
“I’ll chill him from here,” J.B. said.
“No,” Ryan said very quietly. “This is what the good Dr. Tardy might call a hands-on termination, revenge-wise. Got to be.”
He shrugged off their warnings and stepped toward the sentry.
Closing in on the mutie, Ryan carefully avoided the stinking corpse, where bodily fluids still bubbled and seeped. The guard backed clumsily away until his helmet rang against the door.
Ryan looped the silken scarf in his hands carefully, his eyes locked on the reflective visor of the sec man’s black carapace. The lower edge of the mutie’s helmet didn’t quite settle on his squat, muscular neck, leaving a couple of inches of pallid flesh exposed.
The muzzle of the blaster rose to cover Ryan’s groin and lower belly. Despite his limitless courage, the one-eyed man winced. Having seen the shambles that Finnegan had become would have been enough to make any normal man fall to his knees and bury his head in his hands, weeping.
Not Ryan Cawdor.
“You just chilled one of the best, bravest men I ever knew,” he said in a normal, conversational voice. “Friends are rare. Good friends rarer. And you chilled him, you heartless mutie bastard!” he shouted in sudden anger as he stepped closer.
He swung the weighted end of the scarf so that it lashed out and whipped around the guard’s throat, the end coming back into Ryan’s ready fingers.
The sec man tried to get his gauntleted hands up, but he was too slow. The scarf tightened and began to bite into the tender flesh of his neck. Ryan jerked hard at it, pulling the guard forward, so close he could smell the rank sweat on the mutie’s body. The helmet bobbled off, and he looked into the dull eyes of the creature who had butchered Finn.