CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“How did you get here?” I asked. “You’re a long way from Earth.”
Lewis laughed, and not in the friendly way that he laughed when he still wanted to convince me we were going to Fort Sebastian. Now he sounded disdainful and possibly unhinged. “Are you going to interrogate me right up to the end?”
“It’s better than dying curious,” I said.
“Sorry to disappoint you, General, but I didn’t come here to answer questions.”
“I suppose not,” I said. “But out of curiosity, how did you get here?”
He laughed. “I don’t know the name of the ship.”
We were rapidly approaching the east end of town. The buildings became smaller, and the lots became larger. Civilization gave way to countryside. We passed a stand of trees. Off in the distance, I saw hills and forests. The end of the road, I thought.
“Are you working for the Unified Authority?” I asked, pretending to be a little afraid. I wasn’t afraid at that point, not in the least. My combat reflex had not kicked in, but I didn’t care. I did not think I would need it. The fight would not last long. I’d fought this make of clone a thousand times. He was just a clone, just an ordinary standard-issue clone.
“Sure,” he said.
He slowed to thirty miles per hour as we approached the trees.
“So you’re not Avatari,” I said.
“What the speck is Avatari?”
“Alien,” I said.
“I’m property of the Unified Authority Marines, just like you.”
“You’re a different make,” I pointed out.
He slowed the jeep to fifteen miles per hour as he turned onto a small dirt road. When we bounced over a bump, I grabbed Lewis behind the neck and slammed his face into the steering wheel, then I slammed the bottom edge of my fist into the base of his skull.
During the moment that he blacked out, I slipped the gear into park, hoping the jeep would come to a stop; but its gears ground together, its engine whined, and the wheels locked as we skidded into a ditch. Bracing myself for the slow collision, I watched Lewis’s already bloody face slam into the wheel a second time, tearing gashes across his forehead and eyebrows.
We landed nose down in a three-foot ditch. I climbed out of the jeep, pulling Lewis out as well, carrying him away from the ditch and slinging his limp ass down on the hard forest floor. I checked his pockets. He’d come unarmed. No gun. No knife.
He moaned as he started to wake, so I kicked him in the ribs, probably shattering two or three of them. The man did not call out in pain. He made a grunting noise, but he did not writhe or cough up blood. He was awake enough to know that I’d kicked him, but he did not curl up to protect himself.
“Get up, asshole,” I said, and I kicked him again, in the same spot, doing damage to organs that were no longer protected by bones.
“You kick me again, Harris, and I’ll break your specking legs,” he said calmly.
“I don’t think so,” I said, and I kicked him again. I kicked him hard, and I felt the side of his body give way like the side of an overripe melon.
Lewis sat up coughing. When the coughing stopped, he looked to his right and spat blood.
“How many of you are there?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, sounding as if he did not take my question seriously.
My next kick was not to the ribs. It was a roundhouse, and it struck him across the cheek. Had I connected two inches higher, I would have shattered his eye socket, but I did not intend to inflict that kind of damage. Not yet.
The kick to the face knocked Lewis flat. He lay there, rubbing his cheek, and said, “I’m going to break your arms and legs and your ribs before I kill you.” The words rang hollow, but his voice radiated anger instead of fear.
“I don’t think you understand what’s going on here. See, now, I am the one standing, and you are the one on the ground who just got his face kicked. Correct me if I’m wrong; but the way I see it, you are in the shithouse, pal.”
“It looks that way,” he said as he sat up.
I kicked him again. This time I kicked him in the ribs first, and then doubled up on the kick and fetched him a simple soccer kick across the face.
Lying on his back, staring up at me as he felt his injured ribs, he said, “Stop kicking me.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“You won’t get anything out of me if I’m dead.”
I wasn’t sure that was true; his autopsy might provide all kinds of answers. “Tell me what I need to know, and maybe we can both walk out of here,” I lied.
“Why the speck would I let you walk?” he asked. He rolled backward, toward the jeep and slid into the trench headfirst. I felt sorry for the bastard, until I saw how quickly he sprang to his feet.
The expression on his face looked more animal than human. His eyes focused on me to the exclusion of anything else, his lips formed a sneer.
My combat reflex kicked in quickly. A reviving soup of adrenaline and testosterone flowed through my veins, clearing my mind and sharpening my reflexes. There was no fight or flight once the reflex began, there was only fight. Lewis lunged at me quickly, striking first high, then low, then crashing into me with all of his weight. I fell backward, with him attaching himself around my waist, still slamming his fists into my ribs and gut. I hit the ground hard, knocking the air out of my lungs. As I struggled for breath, he pounded his left hand into my chest and his right hand into my face.
Ignoring the flashing lights that filled my eyes, I fought back. I grabbed his blouse and pulled him toward me as I hit him in the face again and again. I worked a knee loose and drove it into his ribs. That slowed him, and I threw him off me; but I was dizzy, and it took me a moment to climb to my feet.
He recovered more quickly than I did. As I tried to clear my head, he jumped to his feet and came at me again. I kicked at his knees and struck his broken ribs with the heel of my right hand. The blow should have put him down, he had to be badly injured; but he grabbed me and threw me backward to the ground, then stomped a heavy boot into my gut, knocking the fight and the air out of my lungs.
Lewis dropped a knee into my chest and wrapped his fingers around my throat. “I’m going to enjoy this, Harris,” he said in a voice that sounded triumphant and insane.
A single shot rang out, echoing through the forest, and Lewis flew off me, smashing into a tree a few feet away. A quarter of his head was missing, from the right eye to the top. Still gasping for oxygen, I sat up and stared at the bloody mess of his head.
The air slowly returned to my lungs. It felt like fire inside my chest.
Sitting on that rocky ground, fighting for breath, the pains in my back and arm and shoulder starting to register, I knew who had saved me even before I saw him. A few moments passed before he stepped into my view.
Seven feet tall, thick as an oak tree and just as stout, his shaved head as bare as a billiard ball and his skin as dark as mahogany, Ray Freeman came and stood over me, his sniper rifle hanging loose in his right hand. Here was a powerful man who could snap a man’s bones or crush his skull with his bare hands, but he preferred the work of the sniper.
“Nice shot,” I said, my throat not quite able to add voice to my words.
My vision was still a bit blurred. The light was to Freeman’s back, so I could not see his face. I didn’t need to see it to know that I would find no sympathy in his gaze.
He was not a man given to compassion. We were friends, of a sort; but the last time I had seen him, he fired that very rifle at me. He’d shot me with a “simi,” simunition, a gel cartridge loaded with fake blood used to simulate an assassination. He’d come all the way across the galaxy to deliver a message for the Unified Authority. They wanted me to know that I was not beyond reach. The U.A. attacked Terraneau the following day.