This left the right-hand side of her body completely exposed to attack, the line down her arm and ribs undefended from any blow that may be struck.
Ryan stepped forward, ducking under the blow as her arm fell uselessly past his shoulder, the scything blade hacking at empty air. At the same time, he brought his own blade across and up, so that he sliced beneath the ribs, carving open the soft flesh and spilling the mutie’s intestines into the dirt with a slooshing sound and a rise of steam as the warm flesh and blood hit the cold night air. The blade continued its upward thrust, carving into vital organs before being withdrawn as Ryan stepped back.
The mutie woman stood for a moment, a bewildered light in her eyes. Then the light died, and she tumbled forward onto the ground at Ryan’s feet.
JAKE, THE HUGE, bearlike sec man, roared loudly and had a blood lust in his eyes. Like the berserkers of Viking legend, he had almost tranced himself into a state where he had no feelings or emotions, no sense of morality or justice, nor even any sense of his own being beyond being a killing machine.
Which was exactly what Harvey wanted from him. The sec chief had seen Jake in this state before, and had spent no little part of the journey persuading the sec man that he should adopt this persona for the raid. The bearlike, grizzled fighter had taken little persuading, and had spent the few minutes at the top of the valley, waiting for the signal of covering fire, to put himself into that state where he saw only fresh meat for the chilling.
And now he was in full cry, a deep-throated roar escaping him, barely registering the sweeping knives and rough-hewed blades of the muties as they attempted to stop him. He had discarded his Heckler & Koch blaster in favor of two long samurai-type swords, the strangely shaped blades arcing through the air before him in a complex pattern, sweeping and crossing in a way that prevented the mutie Sunchildren from getting too close. There were a few random stabs that penetrated his defenses, and the jagged edges of blades had cut and marked him, streams of blood ribboning down his chest and back. He seemed not to register them, except that it spurred him to greater savagery.
The flashing blades cut through soft mutie flesh, hacked at jagged bone, with barely a pause.
“DARK NIGHT! Could have sent that big bastard in on his own,” J.B. muttered.
“Be fair. You don’t want him to have all the fun, do you?” Downey replied, snapping off another round from the Sharps, scoring cleanly through the forehead of a passing mutie. The mutie staggered on for a few steps, not seeming to realize she was dead, before crumpling into a heap.
“Fun?” the Armorer grunted, rattling off another short blast from the Uzi into a group of muties emerging from one of the ranch houses. He and Downey had both gravitated toward covering the ranch houses, the two of them assuming that any blasters the Sunchildren had would best be stopped as soon as they came out of what passed for an armory, rather than let loose as a random factor into the firefight—except that it was much more of a night chill than a firefight. J.B. had descended the eastern slope of the valley almost on his butt, sliding down through a cloud of dust and feeling the rough earth tearing at his fatigues. It didn’t matter if he ripped some skin on the way down. If he was going to use the M-4000 to maximum effect, then it was necessary to arrive as quickly as possible.
Hitting bottom at a run, the Armorer had headed for his self-appointed task: the ranch house armory. There was still confusion as he sprinted through a crowd of mutie Sunchildren, using the Tekna knife to carve a path. The blade was razor sharp, the muties keen to avoid it. He was relying on the element of surprise and the fact that others were following to cover his back on the outer fringes.
But now he was coming into the main area of light, lamps and fires making the central arena of Samtvogel seem almost in daylight. There was a clutch of muties around the ranch house, blocking his way.