“If they so much as crap on this facility, this baby will toast them.”
Crow nodded and ran his hand over the smooth metal admiringly. “Yes. I have no doubt of that. I like these things you’ve made for me, Kyle. They remind me of Snapper. I miss her. Do you miss Alamo?”
“I haven’t had time to miss her, really,” I said. I rapped out my code on the door. The door dissolved open.
Crow recognized the code and laughed. “High security, eh, mate?
I gave him a wintery smile and gestured for us to go inside. He followed me.
The second I stepped inside and the door sealed itself behind us, I knew something was wrong. I began to turn, to raise my arms.
I caught a glimpse of Crow behind me. He had his fists balled up around something, a rock? I couldn’t tell. His eyes were bulging with effort, they were half-mad. I realized vaguely this must have been the face he’d worn when he’d killed people aboard the Snapper.
Truthfully, I wasn’t all that worried. He was older and in worse shape than I was. Much more importantly, he’d never been nanotized. What did I have to worry about? My biggest concern was not to accidently hurt the crazy old codger.
His balled fists came down on my temple, and I felt shocked. Not just from the power of the blow, but the speed of it. How could he?
A purple explosion went off in my brain and I went down. I rolled away from him, struggled to spring up again.
He was on me in an instant. I saw what he had in his hands now. They were big, round steel balls. Ball bearings? Something like that. He’d picked them up somewhere and had kept them in his pockets. Now, he was beating the crap out of me with them. The skin on his knuckles opened up. The skin split over the bone. I saw metal in there. Then I knew.
Training saved me. I was on my back, but I managed to yank my knees up to my chest and piston them into his body. He flew away from me like a toy tossed by a child. He crashed against the far wall, bounced off and came back at me.
By that time, however, I had gotten to my feet again. My face was a patchwork of dented flesh by then, I knew. He had hammered me in the head a half-dozen times. I was woozy, but I didn’t let on.
I grinned at him with blood outlining each white tooth. My hand were up, but I waved him forward with a flick of my fingers.
“Always wanted to take a few pokes at you, old man,” I said. I did my best to sound excited, feral—confident.
It worked. He hesitated. His face registered surprise. We circled, kicking chairs out of the way when they came near. He threw a punch or two, but I slapped them away. We were both breathing hard. Each second that passed my head cleared. I needed a break badly.
“You thought I was out of the picture, didn’t you Riggs?” Crow asked.
I nodded. “My bad. The second ship,” I said, pointing at him. “You were on it. What did you tell the Snapper to get the Nanos to let you go?”
Crow didn’t answer. Maybe he’d figured out I was stalling. He came at me, throwing roundhouse swings. I caught one with my shoulder, another with my ear. The one in the ear really hurt. I threw one uppercut into his chin that must have rattled his brains. It would have broken the jaw of a normal man.
We clinched up and wrestled for a minute, then pushed off each other again. Crow had a heavier build than I did, and I could tell he’d been in brawls before. But he was older and hadn’t had much time to adjust to being full of nanites. At first, it threw a man off, like steering a new car.
“So, what’s this all about?” I asked. “Do I owe you twenty bucks?”
Crow snorted. Blood fired out onto the floor when he did so.
“You cocked-up everything, that’s what you did.”
I gave a small shrug. “Like what?”
“Like what?” he screamed suddenly, disbelievingly. “Kyle, I flew seven hundred ships at the Macros. I left this world behind with thousands of followers and billions in cash. We met the enemy, ran them off, and somehow a few hours later I found my fleet disbanded. I couldn’t even talk to them. I finally talked the Snapper into returning, and what do I find? You had dismantled my organization, pissed off every power on the planet and setup for a last stand out here in the woods.”
I took a deep breath. I straightened up. “You’ve got a point there,” I said.
“Oh, so you admit it?”
“Yeah. I can see it from your point of view. Too bad it has to end like this, though. We had a great partnership.”
He looked troubled at that. He nodded. “You were my best man. But I was almost an Emperor. Do you realize that?”
I blinked at him. At this point, we’d stopped circling and stood a safe distance from each other, watching one another warily. “Is that what you wanted? Really?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He rubbed his chin. “That uppercut hurt.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, taking a second to run my fingers gingerly over my own face. There were new lumps and the skin had split at the seams.
He heaved a sigh. “Okay. Okay, I’m the bigger man here. I’m going to say it first.”
I looked at him expectantly.
“I’m sorry for hitting you. I just lost my cool. I’ve been losing it ever since I got my ship to unload me here and then she took off.”
“How’d you manage to get back to Earth?” I asked.
“Are we talking or fighting?” he asked.
We stared at each other appraisingly for a few seconds. I decided to take a chance. “How about I buy you a drink and explain everything, Emperor?”
Slowly, with half his mouth, he smiled at me. The other half didn’t work right yet. He nodded slowly. “Right. Let’s do it.”
Crow dropped two round stones. He’d had one in each hand. They thumped loudly on the floor and rolled away. No wonder those fists had hurt so much. He stepped to the wall and rapped out a series of raps. It was my code. I wasn’t surprised he’d memorized it. The door dilated open and he waved for me to step ahead of him into the blinding sunlight.
“As an Emperor, you rank me,” I said. “You first.”
Crow grinned with the working half of his face and blood ran down his purpling chin. Metal gleamed inside, where the bone should have been.
Crow stepped out into the open and I followed him. I didn’t intend to let him get behind me again.
-12-
When I asked Kwon for booze, he looked at each of us. His big, black eyes flicked back and forth. Those eyes got wider with each flick as he took in the extent of our injuries. Then without a word he produced a flask. I took it and thanked him. I twisted off the top and sniffed it. Whatever it was, it was warm and smelled like kerosene.
“We might need a mixer for this,” I said, handing it over to Crow.
He sniffed it, winced, and nodded. Every marine in the compound watched us. I knew they wanted to see how their leaders were getting along. I hid the truth by acting cool and calm. There was no sense making a big deal about our differences. I knew that the men had to have heard the fight. The walls on these sheds weren’t thick. But no one had tried to come in and check on us. If only one man had made it out alive, I supposed he’d have been crowned king. I had to wonder if that had been Crow’s plan all along.
Together, but with me walking about a foot behind him, Crow and I headed for what served the base as a mess hall. It was really just another shed, but without a factory inside. Instead, it had a few folding tables, chairs and crates of food. A marine was eating a can of something brown when we came in. He left in a hurry without having to be told.
I smiled after him. “I wonder if they think we are about to have round two in here.”