We traded kicks, ineffectually slicing at the other’s legs with our blades, hitting armour and sometimes cutting through. That was about as far as we got with skill, we just started to slash at each other. He was good with the knife. He parried my attacks and slashed at me.
I caught the vicious-looking knife on my blades and countered. The thing is I had two weapons to his one, and although he was fast and managed to parry many of my attacks, more of them were getting through. Like a good kick-boxer he knew he had to take his licks to give them. Neither of us broke. Both of us were red.
Finally I noticed that I was slowly pushing him back. A slash to his forehead bled into his eyes. He swung just a little wide. I don’t know how I had the presence of mind to realise his mistake and push my advantage. The blades on my right hand pierced his right wrist. I all but heard the crowd’s intake of breath. With some satisfaction it was also the first time I heard Rannu cry out in pain. The kukri flew from his hand. I punched forward with the blades on my left hand and he bent backwards so far that they shot over his face. Somehow I was peripherally aware of the kukri sliding to the end of the flight deck and tipping over, falling towards the water.
With my blades still in his arm he kicked me in the face. I staggered back, spitting more blood. I heard another cry of pain from Rannu as my blades were torn out of his arm. His forehead was coming towards me. There was a crunching noise from my nose. I staggered back but managed to recover sufficiently to punch forward with my right. He caught the prosthetic, twisted his arm around it and elbowed me repeatedly in the face with his other arm. That was when I knew the fight was finally over. Rannu kicked my legs out from under me. I hadn’t done so bad, better than I thought. I hit the deck. Shame I’d let everyone down. Blacking out would be good. Will he just kill me now? I thought I was beyond pain until I felt the tearing at my right shoulder. I found the energy to scream. Why wasn’t I unconscious?
I rolled around on the wet flight deck. Just as I saw the bloody stump of my prosthetic arm flying towards my face I saw the weirdest thing on the viz screen. The figure on it wasn’t me or Rannu. It was Morag. She looked really upset, like she was terrified and had been crying. It was like a reaction shot from an old viz. I got hit with my own arm. Nothing.
16
I wasn’t sure whether I was more surprised or disappointed to be alive. I felt I needed a rest and this wasn’t it. Smell returned first, antiseptic, which was good as it suggested a hospital. There was the faint rotting smell of low tide, so I was still in New York, and the familiar friendly smell of tobacco.
‘Fag,’ I croaked. I was trying to decide how I felt about opening my eyes. I came to the conclusion that doubtless something bad would happen to me when I did. I felt a cigarette placed between my lips and heard the wheel of an old-fashioned lighter being flicked. It sounded very familiar. A brief warmth on my face and I sucked in the smoke. I didn’t even cough as my internal filters went to work. "S my lighter?’ I asked.
‘Mine now,’ a voice said. It sounded familiar. ‘Tell me, have you ever won a fight?’ I cracked an eye open. I was surprised that my vision seemed to be working just fine. It took a moment for me to recognise his slightly off-kilter features as he’d grown a rather wispy and slightly sad-looking beard and dyed that and his hair dark brown. He was huddled in a parka drinking from a bottle of expensive-looking, proper Russian vodka.
‘Fuck off,’ I said by way of greeting. Mudge smiled, the corners of his eyes turning up round the expensive camera-lens eye implants that he’d used to shoot the war. He took the cigarette back and took a drag on it as he kicked back in the chair. Beneath the jeans he was wearing were, I knew, a pair of top-of-the-line prosthetic legs. He’d always boasted he could run faster than anyone in the troop and would do if things ever got really bad, and he could move really fast when correctly motivated, but he never ran.
‘Did that cunt really tear my arm off?’ I asked. I couldn’t really feel any pain but I was trying to ignore that in case I was paralysed.
‘You mean Mr Nagarkoti?’ Mudge asked, pointing past me. I turned my head and saw Rannu in a bed less than four feet from me. He was awake and watching me, his face impassive as ever. He had medgels and -paks all over his face and the top part of his body. I felt good about that. I answered a lot of questions about how I was feeling by trying to crawl out of the bed to kill him.
‘Easy, tiger,’ Mudge said, grabbing me and pulling me back into bed. The fact that he could do this suggested I wasn’t quite back to my old self just yet. Rannu seemed to find this funny, further infuriating me.
‘Get me a gun, get me a fucking gun!’ I demanded.
‘Shut up,’ Mudge said. ‘And to answer your question, yes, he tore off your arm and beat you with it. It was pretty fucking brutal, man. He just kept beating you with it. Balor had to swing in and stop him. Nobody’s quite sure why you’re alive.’
I turned around to glare at Rannu. His face was impassive again. Then something occurred to me. ‘You saw it?’ I asked.
‘You getting your arse kicked?’
‘I didn’t do that bad.’
‘No, you came a close second. Yeah, I saw. I was driving the media deck.’
‘You filmed us?’
‘Hell yeah. Not every day you can profit from seeing a close friend get beat mostly to death.’ He grinned and the pair of us lapsed into silence. I had a closer look around. We were in some kind of hospital ward, all peeling paint and old beds, but the linen was clean and all the medical equipment couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty years out of date. There were about a dozen or so beds in here but Mudge, Rannu and I were the only people in the ward. White curtains were pulled across the windows but a pale light shone through the thin material.
‘How long was I out?’ I asked. Mudge took another generous sip from the bottle of vodka and offered me a mouthful. I shook my head but hoped Morag was alive and more importantly still had my whisky. You have to learn to prioritise at a time like this.
‘Three days,’ Mudge said.
‘Jesus!’ Now I was really surprised I wasn’t dead. Why hadn’t Rolleston gotten to me? Why hadn’t Rannu killed me, or failing that, the Grey Lady? I looked down at myself. Like Rannu I was covered in medgels and medpaks. The scar on my chest told me that my cracked subcutaneous chest armour had been replaced. I wondered who’d paid for that. It took me a while to get up the courage to look at my right arm. I was relieved to see it had been reattached. Pak-controlled gel running all the way around the join, knitting flesh to metal.
I was in very little pain and an internal diagnostic told me I was still banged up but healing.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Balor,’ Mudge answered. ‘He’s providing shelter for you and your mates, just like he did for me.’
‘He paid for this?’ I asked.
‘More sort of stole it all. Says you’re under his hospitality. He’s got some funny ideas.’
‘But Rolleston…’ I began.
‘Your friends told me what happened in Hull. This ain’t the Avenues. Rolleston can’t just walk in here.’
‘The Grey Lady can.’ Mudge considered this.
‘Yeah, yeah, she can,’ he admitted, looking down at the bottle he held between his prosthetic legs before looking back up at me. His lenses whirred in their sockets. ‘Your friends tell me you came to New York looking for me.’ I nodded. He gave this some thought. I was suddenly very aware of Rannu in the bed next to me. ‘You trying to get me killed, Douglas?’ Mudge asked evenly.