So don’t let it happen.
It was the last full thought she had before she let her instincts take over, crouching herself, ready to defend. The yautja howled for action, the platform trembling as they crushed against it for a better view.
With a wild, guttural scream, Shorty rushed her. He thrust one meaty hand forward to swat at her head, easily enough power to break her neck—
—and she sidestepped as she reached up and cupped his wrist with both of her hands, swung her upper body into his lunge, down and left. She let him do the work, simply redirecting his charge.
Wham! Shorty went down, landing heavily on one shoulder, his weight pulling him ass over to land flat on his back. The room erupted in excited shouts, fury and disbelief and a desire for more, more battle, blood or death.
The unBlooded yautja crawled to his feet, his mandibles spreading wide as he screamed his anger. He was furious, use it—
A leap toward her and Shorty swept his right arm at her head, still shrieking. Noguchi dropped, bringing her leg out and around, hitting the hot flesh of his ankles with the side of her foot as hard as she could.
Wham!
As soon as he hit the floor she was up, dancing backwards, barely hearing the cacophony of almost feral screams that filled the kehrite.
Shorty lunged up from where he’d fallen, the hatred in his tiny eyes now tainted with something new, pain, uncertainty, she didn’t bother to guess. He flew at her, kicking off from the padded floor, his entire body a ram that would crush her—
—and she kicked her feet up and out, landed on her butt as he reached her, lifted her legs and found his muscled belly with her bare feet. A single motion, Shorty continued his limited flight over her rolling body as she helped him along.
Wham, and there was a grunt of escaping air this time, a sound of pain and shock that only she could hear over the shrill cries of the watchers.
—finish this—
She leapt up and took one running jump, Shorty still rising from the stage, side of the knee—
—and her right foot slammed into his leg, not breaking the cap but surely bruising it badly, definitely pain on his face now as he reflexively grabbed his wound—
—and Noguchi landed and spun, bringing her foot up again, the full force of her body’s momentum behind the roundhouse kick to his jaw. Strings of saliva flew from his mouth and he collapsed, elbows on the floor, his head hanging.
On all fours as he was, there was little chance that she could knock him off of the platform—but rendering him unconscious was a distinct possibility, and definitely the more gratifying of the two. She couldn’t let him recover, it would have to be fast, and she stepped back, ready to run, to deliver another well-placed kick—
—and someone grabbed her foot. Talons closed around her ankle, holding on, pulling her off-balance. No!
She looked over her shoulder, saw only a sea of screaming faces, but it didn’t matter who, she had to get loose before Shorty regained himself.
She dropped as if to do a push-up and kicked back with her free leg. Her foot hit flesh, hard, the smooth feel of tusk against the sole telling her that she’d found her mark. The grip on her ankle fell away and she scrabbled to her feet, struggling to find her center again—
—and was slammed into, her head rocked back by the rounded dome of Shorty’s skull, a head butt that knocked her backwards and made the shouts and faces and heat blur into a single thing, a noise-light that hurt—
—and before she could fall, Shorty’s arms were grabbing at her, one giant fist raised, her head pushed down and she could only see the padded floor—
—and the pain was tremendous, a ton of hot metal landing across the back of her head. His fist, knocking her flat, the floor blessedly cool against her bare abdomen. Her limbs suddenly felt far away and she knew that if he hit her again, he would probably kill her. In the space of only a few seconds, the fight had turned, turned and cemented an outcome.
Noguchi saw the clawed foot in front of her, saw it pull back, saw her only chance; with what little coordination she could muster, she raised herself, hands and knees, tightening her gut—
—and when he kicked her, the top of his foot connecting solid with her tensed muscles, she let it carry her. She flew, screams rising up, enveloping her moving form, hot musk filling her senses—
—and she hit the floor, skidding, tall bodies moving aside to let her flesh finally stop her. Dazed and in pain, she lay on her back, catching her breath, trying to catalog her injuries as sixty or more Hunters roared their approval. Shorty’s voice seemed loudest of all, a wordless shriek of triumph that hurt even worse than her head.
She’d fought honorably, and lost because they hated her, because they couldn’t stand to see her succeed. Who would believe her, who would say that they’d witnessed the cheat?
Doesn’t matter . . .
She closed her eyes behind the stifling mask, making no move to rise, not sure if she was angry or sad or relieved. She was alive, and no one could brand her a coward—but she’d lost her place in the Hunt.
No one reached down to help her to her feet, and that felt like the answer she’d been waiting for. After a year, it was finally over.
14
The sounds that poured up from the jungle as a pale twilight fell over Bunda were soothing, making Ellis feel sleepy in spite of their circumstances. They were Earth sounds, some of them, gently repetitive insect noises that reminded him of a childhood long dead. He’d been sleeping too much, he knew, but his body was still recovering from the interface; he couldn’t help feeling tired.
Seven hours thirteen minutes and still aboard the – shuttle, no contact at all with the people living on the station despite Lara’s repeated efforts. Jess had even tried to engage a couple of the guards, but they weren’t interested. Either they really believed that there was a risk of alien infection or they had been ordered not to talk to them.
Ellis sat cross-legged in the back of the shuttle, Max towering over him, hunched and empty. Lara and Jess were still in the cockpit, trying to raise Mr. Vincent from the station. Their voices seemed distant. Ellis figured it was because the hatch was still open; the cooling Bunda air had a life of its own, a rich presence that
filled the shuttle and separated the occupants with its thickness . . .
. . . more crazy thinking, maybe, but we don’t care, do we?
Max said nothing. Of course, it wasn’t alive, had never been alive even when its guts had been human. Ellis only had to close his eyes to see the dead volunteer he’d pulled out of the machine back on DS 949, the insanity written in cruel lines across his pain-wracked face, his emaciated frame wrapped in circuits and lines and tubes. Pop had given Ellis the order to run the full program, up to stage three—massive doses of synthetic adrenaline pumped into the volunteer, creating something even more savage than an alien horde—and it had killed him.
When Ellis had slid into Max, he’d had no idea what would happen. His only concerns at the time were the echoing screams on his headset, from Teape and Jess. Pulaski had already been dead by then, eviscerated and bled out—and when Pop’s voice had coolly informed them that they were dead, that he wasn’t going to be picking them up …
. . . I got in. I got in, and stopped being Brian alone. I became … ms.
Max’s huge orange body was pitted and scratched, acid spots randomly spattered across its plated chest, but it still looked as powerful and deadly as when they’d first met. Its left arm was tipped with a revolving liquid-propulsion grenade launcher and pulse rifle, its right a tri-capacity M210 flamethrower; even sitting still, it was a formidable creature. They had worked well together, Ellis’s mind computer and Max’s physical—awareness, if that was the right word. It was strange, how before they’d interfaced, Max had been MAX, just a machine. Ellis couldn’t look at it now and think that; he’d been with Max, shared consciousness with it. It was just a machine the way that a diamond was just a rock.
Ellis gazed up at its soulless face, thinking about the
predicament they were in now. Lara had worked up a story about having looped the Trader’s log on a locked channel before the explosion; she said that it was their only chance, that they could count on being killed if they didn’t stick together . . .