Instead I grabbed the railing and pulled myself to my feet, managing to stand just as Vernon Wethers did the same on the deck below.
For a long shaky moment we just stared at each other, breathing hard.
Then he straightened. He was no longer the hysteric he’d been when he had to face the Bettelhines with the fact of his own betrayal, but just another resigned functionary, facing an outsider who did not matter to him at all.
“You’ve lost,” I told him.
He shook his head. “No, I haven’t.”
“You have. It won’t take long for the others to get past the door. They’ll be just a few minutes behind me. All I have to do is keep you busy until they get here.”
He shook his head again. “That won’t be enough.”
“Why? What have you won? The murder of one harmless academic and two service workers?”
He seemed hurt by that. “You think I feel good about that? But J-J-Jason was more right than he knew when he said that this was about cancer. Only they’re the c-cancer, the pair of them. And cutting out cancer sometimes means cutting out the healthy tissue around it.”
“Like Philip,” I said.
“He wasn’t supposed to be here, but he’s expendable. The Family can survive losing him, as long as I can n-neutralize them. If it’s the only way the Bettelhines can recover from the things they’ve done.”
I descended a step. “It’s not up to you.”
He reached inside his jacket with a certainty of purpose that halted me in midstep. “Oh, it’s up to me, all right. It’s my duty.”
I imagined him pulling out another Claw and slamming it against my back or chest. I pictured the gentle, painless interval that would follow, rendered torture only by my own awareness of the changes taking place inside me. I’ve had to charge knives, clubs, energy weapons, and even explosives at various times in my eventful life, but I wasn’t sure I had whatever it took to face that.
“At least tell me if I was right, about where you got the Claws.”
He seemed amused by that. “Do you care?”
“I need to know whether I was right.”
“We had about fifty working models gathering dust on a shelf in one of our outer system factories. I’ve spent the last few months secreting about a dozen of them in various hiding places around the carriage and a few more around Xana, in case I had to take action planetside. Even a few other weapons, like that Fire Snake. But the carriage was always plan number one. It was the best place to isolate,” his voice caught again, “J-J-Juh-Jason and J-Jelaine, and the c-corrupt influences they were determined to bring to Xana, from all outside rescuers.”
“Corrupt influences that included the Khaajiir, and Dejah, and me.”
“There was no way of knowing who was corrupt and who was not. But I had to know what Jason and Jelaine were doing. It was my duty. All you accomplished, by asking all those questions, was to do my job for me.”
I descended another step. “Then why stop my interrogation of Philip? Why activate that Fire Snake?”
He backed up again, not so much a coiled predator prepared to strike as trapped prey prepared to kill to defend itself. “I stopped your interrogation of Philip because there are things about the Bettelhine power structure that are none of your business.”
“Things like Dina Pearlman’s internal governor program?”
He looked stricken.
“You made Philip leave the room as soon as I pressed the issue. You threatened me with the wrath of the Bettelhine Corporation.”
“That was my duty!”
“And was it also your duty to activate the Fire Snake, you son of a bitch?”
I went after him, watching the hand inside his jacket, ready to run like hell if it emerged with anything in it. There was no telling what a conspirator inside the Bettelhine Corporation, one capable of getting his hands on a Claw of God and a Fire Snake, could have been holding. He surprised me by producing nothing more virulent than a fist, swinging wide, aiming for the side of my face with a strength that could have put me down.
It never struck me. I recoiled, seeing the swing as a flesh-colored blur centimeters before my eyes.
His hand went back inside his jacket.
Maybe he did have something in there. Something so awful that the thought of using it gave even him pause.
We circled each other, the industrial floor of the loading dock reduced to arena.
He babbled. “It wouldn’t have killed me—or you, for that matter. It was, like you said, a distraction. An extra variable, to make you look at anybody other than me. Something to keep you asking the questions I would have asked myself if I could.”
“How did you hide it from our search?”
“Are you kidding? You’d be surprised how many weapons I was able to get aboard, with the stewards ordered not to question me. I’ve been bringing them aboard and hiding them, in one alcove or another, for months. Including in this room…”
He faked left, then went right, launching himself at an equipment array behind the stairwell. I might have been in serious trouble had I gone for his feint; when you’re dealing with an amateur, as Wethers was, there’s little possibility of being fooled by such a move as long as you dismiss the body and take all your cues from the eyes.
We launched at the same time, both leaping for distance and both meeting in midair. The shared momentum did nothing for our aerodynamics. We hit far short of his intended destination, landing in a clump, kicking and snapping at each other like a pair of wild animals intent on ripping out each others’ throats.
He had the advantage in weight and madness; I had the advantage of a little girl who’d survived the massacre on Bocai.
He went for my throat.
I closed my teeth on his nose and bit down until my mouth filled with blood.
He screamed, released my throat, and went for my forehead, pushing my face away with both hands, a tactic that succeeded in gaining a little distance but did not quite manage to make me let go. A little twist and my teeth met something warm and bloody in my mouth. He rolled away, his scream wet, his hands clasped over a face turned to a fountain that gushed red between his fingers.
He called me a bish.
I coughed, spat out something pale, found myself snarling through teeth turned to fangs. I was going to go for him again but he was standing and I was not, and though he’d been gravely wounded he was still focused enough to see me as the threat I was, and kicked me hard enough to drive me to the floor gasping.
I curled into a ball, and while I had an advantage over many human beings in that I would not have remained in that position long enough for the pain to go away, that advantage was erased to zero as he staggered over and kicked me again and again and again, not cursing as I would have expected but weeping and sobbing, which was worse. I moaned and damned the reflex that curled me further into a ball, trying to become the black hole all victims try to become when they attempt to shrink themselves too small to be noticed by the people hurting them. I know from experience that it’s not a tactic that works, and have trained myself against using it, but there’s a difference between knowing that and being able to defy what your body wants you to do at any given moment, and right now my body, my stupid stubborn body, just wanted to be smaller, even as I tried to scream my way past that suicidal instinct.
Wethers hauled off and kicked me again, then circled the room, not just once but twice, snorking blood through his ruined nose as he worked up enough hate and resentment to kick me some more.
He might have managed it if I hadn’t realized something as he came circling back for his second go. The reason he’d needed to circle the room twice.
This isn’t him.