Secret of the Slaves (16 page)

Smoke had begun infiltrating the weird, winding passageway, hanging at head level. As Annja coughed, three figures materialized in front of her. From their hard, fit appearance and athletic posture she saw at once they were Promessans, not starveling colonists. One held two two-foot sticks of polished black wood. The two in front carried machetes.

Summoning the sword, she rushed them. The passageway was only wide enough for two people to pass abreast, no higher than a couple of feet above Annja's head. It wasn't the most cramped stretch they had run through but left little room to swing a weapon. Fortunately the same limitation applied to Annja's attackers.

Once again her opponents were surprised at seeing a broadsword appear from thin air. Annja took her advantage. With the hilt in both hands she hacked through the machete of the man on her left. The one on her right recoiled in surprise, bumping into the stick-wielding man behind. Annja slammed her hilt against the side of the first man's head and side kicked him through a decayed hanging.

The second machete-wielding man struck for her head. She was out of position to chop through the short, broad blade. She brought it up before her face. The cut was a semifeint. The wide machete kissed off her sword with a sliding ring and then swung back down in a cut at her hip.

She managed to drop her hands fast enough that the machete clacked against the cross-shaped guard. She swung her left foot up and around in a roundhouse kick to her opponent's right short ribs, exposed by his low attack on his left. He was good—he got his right elbow down, fouling the blow and absorbing most of the fierce hip-turning kick, although a bit of air chuffed out of him as her shoe's reinforced toe drove the elbow into his side.

To block the kick he had to hunch forward, bringing his machete with him. Annja tipped her sword back over her right shoulder and cut down, as always putting her hip into it and driving with the legs. It wasn't a long cut but a very powerful one. It sliced almost effortlessly through his clavicle, right beside his muscle-corded neck, sank deep into his chest.

Gunfire roared like constant thunder in the passageway behind. Annja's shoulder blades kept trying to crawl together in anticipation of a bullet between them. She realized late she should have ducked into a side chamber herself. But her blood was up—and apparently Dan was mainly keeping the gunman pinned.

As long as his magazine held up.

Her stricken opponent slumped across the corridor, blocking the man behind him. The first machete wielder erupted from the chamber into which Annja had kicked him. He swung a small wood crate at the back of Annja's head.

She spun into him, kicked high, almost into a vertical split. Her painful hours of gymnastics-style limbering exercises paid off. The rotten-wood crate shattered. The Promessan blinked as splinters and dust fell into his eyes. She brought the heel of her foot crunching down in an ax kick that mostly by good fortune hit him square on the left wing of his collarbone and snapped it loudly.

He went down in a heap, moaning in pain. It was impossible for him to raise his left arm.

She faced back the way they had come. Yellow muzzle-flame dazzled her. A bullet cracked past her head, struck the ceiling a few yards farther down. At once Dan popped out of a side door and fired four rapid shots as the dimly glimpsed gang gunman ducked back in turn.

She heard a scuffle of rubber sandal on wood. Annja had been hypnotized by the firearm, which appeared to be a rifle or carbine, going off almost in her face. And now the stick fighter had gotten past the dead man in the hallway and was about the crack her skull open with one of his batons….

Holding the sword diagonally upward, she twisted her torso counterclockwise. At the same time she let herself fall to the floor. It gave her the split second she needed. Ebony wood clacked against the sword's flat blade three inches in front of her nose.

The man knew how to use the sticks in combination attacks. As the first, held in his left hand, kissed off the blade, he aimed the second for the crown of Annja's head. Her shoulders slammed the wood floor. She rolled into him fast. The stick smashed into the uneven planking as her long legs slammed against his.

It wasn't any kind of proper sweep, just desperation. But Annja was tall and strong and her opponent had sacrificed balance to strike at his falling foe. He went down in a tangle across her legs.

She lay on her belly with the sword trapped beneath her. Fortunately it had already been flat against her body; otherwise it would have gashed deeply into her rib cage.

The stick fighter was good. He reared upright, straddling her thighs, raised his right stick for a shot at her unprotected neck.

The sword was an impediment. She let it go back to the otherwhere. Then with all her strength she whipped her body clockwise, pushing off with her left hand, lashing out with her right.

The stick fighter's nose broke with a crunch of cartilage. He reeled back, blinking in agonized surprise as blood covered his upper lip.

She wrenched her right leg free, drew back the knee, pushed hard. The stick fighter stood almost upright. He slammed against the far wall of the corridor. His head cracked back against the planking so hard the wood split vertically. He groaned and sank to his knees.

From back up the corridor, she heard the heavy ringing slam of the gang member's carbine. Dan grunted.

A body thumped on the floor. Annja heard her partner moan, “Oh, shit,” in a ghastly voice.

As Annja rolled back to face him, the gang member strolled from a doorway on the right as if he wanted to give the appearance he was going for a walk in the park.

Annja jumped to her feet. The rifleman ignored her. She summoned back the sword, knowing already it was futile.

Smiling, the man raised the stock of his rifle to his shoulder, sighting down the barrel at Dan, who had slumped out into the corridor doubled over his knees, a knot of helpless misery.

Suddenly he twisted sideways, bringing his gun up in both hands, thrusting them out to extend his arms fully in an isosceles triangle. The handgun cracked twice.

Dust flew from the rifleman's grimy shirt at belly and breastbone. He reared back, more in surprise and shock than pain. The metal butt plate slipped from his shoulder.

Dan rotated to a sitting position. He fired again. The man's head snapped back. He fell backward in a lifeless sprawl.

“Fell for it, asshole,” Dan snarled, getting a knee up and starting to stand. He turned a grin of triumph toward Annja.

It froze. “Look out!” he shouted, bringing the handgun up again. It seemed to be pointing right at her face.

Annja's eyes widened. She was looking straight down the black muzzle.

Flame blossomed in her face. Hair that had fallen loose at the left side of Annja's face stirred as if brushed by careless fingers. Shock waves of the bullet's supersonic passage slapped her cheek with surprising force as its miniature sonic boom temporarily deafened her left ear and filled her head with ringing.

She spun. The stick fighter stood behind her. Or rather, he was falling away from her, weeping scarlet from where his right eye had been.

Whatever else he was, Dan Seddon was a hell of a combat handgunner. Accomplished herself, after considerable training, practice—and real-world experience—Annja could scarcely have done better herself.

Dan stood. “Nifty piece of cutlery,” he said, looking at the sword. He had punched the magazine release and was pulling out the old box. He held a full reload, retrieved from an inner pocket of his vest, clipped between a couple of fingers. Annja had been meaning to ask why he encumbered himself with extra clothing in the unremitting wet heat. Now she knew. “Where'd you get that?”

“Tell you later.” Her voice shook. Relief flooded her body and caused her legs to tremble.

Catch a grip, she told herself sternly. The smoke was a bit thinner but flames cackled madly not far away. And she still had no idea how they were going to get out of the strange warren alive—much less the whole monstrous desolation of the colony.

“I'll be sure to ask,” Dan said. His eyes snapped past her. “Behind—right!” he shouted.

She wheeled, not right but left, counterclockwise. It allowed her to lead with the tip of the sword, gripped two handed and held horizontally to her left.

A warped wooden door had opened a yard behind her. A young man had emerged, bare chested, with a red cloth band holding hair back from a handsome Indian face.

The sword punched right through his sternum, through his heart. Fixed on hers, his dark eyes widened. They stared a final question into Annja's eyes. Then the light faded from them and he slumped. In sudden sick horror she banished the sword, as if that could unmake the wound. But life had fled the body huddled at her feet.

“He—he was unarmed,” she said.

Dan gripped her hard on the shoulder. “Suck it up,” he said. “He was one of them. See? He doesn't look anorexic.”

She was shaking her head in desperate denial. “He wasn't armed. I killed him.”

“He was an enemy. He ran up on you. And one thing you've got to learn about the real world, sweetheart—you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

She turned an agonized look on him. Tears blurred her eyes.

From behind them rang hoarse shouts. Ahead flames suddenly ate up another entry curtain and billowed out into the corridor.

“Choose now,” Dan said. “Move or die.”

She nodded. He turned and raced out ahead, weapon grasped in both hands. He didn't even flinch from the flames that lashed at him and filled the corridor with a hellish orange glare.

She followed. Dan vanished to the right around an unseen corner. She passed through the fire. She felt it sear her upper arm. The pain was like a penance.

It snapped her back to the situation. Batting at smoldering hair, she turned the corner and found herself facing another long corridor. Blessed daylight shone at its far end, a dazzling white oblong a good twenty yards away. She saw no sign of Dan.

But a figure blocked her path. It was short and unmistakably feminine. In spite of the way the flood of photons over her retinas blurred it to shadow, Annja recognized her antagonist.

“Xia!” It was half surprised exclamation, half curse.

“Annja Creed,” the woman said in English, “you don't know what you do.”

“I'm fighting to break free the secrets you're selfishly withholding from the human race,” Annja stated, striding forward. “If you want to call that neocolonialism, go right ahead. But your murderous ways have shown you aren't fit stewards of whatever power you hold!”

“I see you've been talking to Isis,” Xia said. Her tone was conversational, almost light. “She can be a bit strident. I hope you didn't damage her too badly. She has a good heart and great promise.”

“If she's the tall black woman with the green headband, she was alive when I left her,” Annja said tautly, “if not feeling too well. But what you'd know about a good heart I haven't a clue.”

“If you keep on this path I must fight you,” Xia said with what sounded like regret. Feigned, Annja was furiously sure.

She held her arm out to the side, started to form her hand into a fist to pull the sword from its special place. Then she let her hand drop to her side.

Treacherous as Xia and her people were, Annja felt she had sullied the sword—sullied her soul. She would not give in to damnation by deliberately striking down an unarmed person. No matter how deserving.

She charged. Size and strength were her obvious advantages over her foe. She hoped they sufficed to overcome whatever skill Xia possessed. Closing on the much shorter woman, Annja realized Xia was fuller-figured than she'd looked in her exquisitely tailored suits in Belém and Manaus. She wore a dark green wrap around heavy breasts and a loose brown skirt like a sarong around full hips. Her belly was a dome of muscle like a belly dancer's.

Annja expected the woman to try to sweep her legs, tackle her or kick at her belly or pelvis. The low line was the strongest attack against a taller foe. Instead Xia leaped straight into the air. Her rump-length hair formed a dark nimbus around her head.

Unable to stop, Annja ran right into her. Xia wrapped her legs around Annja's belly as her arms tried to tangle the taller woman's. The hair enveloped their heads like a cloud.

Annja fell heavily on her back. Air exploded from her lungs, driven by Xia's hard-muscled butt pounding into her solar plexus.

For a moment they were nose to nose, completely enclosed by Xia's amazing midnight hair. The Promessan smelled of sweat on clean female skin, and her hair like jasmine. Her nose was snubbed. Her big almond eyes, their jade-green hue visible even here, reminded Annja irrationally of the eyes of the golden
onza
she had seen on entering this hellish maze. That had been hallucination, she told herself.

Xia's hands were like steel clamps pinning Annja's wrists to the floor. The wood was slimy and irregular beneath her. She felt ancient ooze seeping through her clothes at shoulder and butt.

“It's not too late for you, Annja,” Xia said. “You have been misled—”

“By you!” Annja shouted. Planting her feet, she violently arched her back.

Though Xia held the advantage—and, like Annja, her body was well packed with muscle—she had not managed to pin Annja's hips. Rather she sat astride Annja's flat belly just below her breasts.

Annja used her strength to buck the smaller woman off like an angry rodeo bronco.

Xia went tumbling down the passage. The way to outside lay clear. Annja doubted she could make it without her opponent taking her down from behind. And her nature rebelled against fleeing, though she knew it was the right thing to do.

She rolled over and jumped to her feet. Xia was already up, clearing a curtain of heavy black hair from her face with a flip of her head. She grinned at Annja.

“Not bad,” she said.

Annja advanced. Not headlong this time, but behind a flurry of kicks and punches.

Xia blocked or redirected them with apparent ease and a remarkable economy of motion. Even as Annja struck for her in dizzying combinations, she marveled at the other's skill.

Annja's breath came in great gulps. Strength ebbed from her like blood from an opened vein. Along with total physical exertion loading up the lactic acid in her muscles came unrivaled mental tension.

Xia, her oval face serene, looked as if she could keep this up for a week.

Gasping raggedly, trying not to reel, Annja decided to try power where technique had failed. She threw a quick quartet of punches at Xia's face—all blocked by scarcely visible movements—then shifted weight to her back foot to fire a side kick.

But she had barely lifted her right foot to chamber the kick when Xia flowed toward her and slammed a palm heel into her sternum.

Floorboards slammed her in the back. The air fled her body. A dark figure rose above her. It was Xia, hair flying around her again.

From down the hall a noise erupted. Even with Xia suspended above her, Annja's eyes were drawn away, back down the hall. A gang member stood in a crouch, firing a Kalashnikov from the hip. The brilliant yellow muzzle-flare illuminated a face screaming almost in ecstasy.

The dancing flame went out. The banana magazine was empty. Annja looked up, wondering why Xia hadn't heel stomped on her sternum.

The air was empty of all but roiling smoke and drifting motes of dust and spores. The hallway between Annja and the door to the outside world was a roaring hell of flame.

The Promessan woman had vanished.

It was time for Annja to do likewise. A hint of light showed beneath a blanket hung in a doorway to her right. She rolled through it into a tiny room as a fresh burst of automatic gunfire chewed up the planking where she had lain an instant before.

A tiny off-square window let sunlight filter vaguely into the room through yellowed newspaper taped across its crossed slats in lieu of glass. Annja coiled herself and jumped through it. She carried with her not just the window but a good patch of rotted-wood wall.

She put a shoulder down as she landed and rolled clear of the wreckage. She got herself to her feet by sheer willpower and desperation and bouncing off the walls to both sides of the narrow alley. Speed was her only slim chance at life.

Coughing from the smoke she had inhaled, Annja tried to force her mind clear, assimilate surroundings and circumstances. She was alone in a tiny space that initially seemed to have no outlet. Then ahead of her she noticed the outward-leaning wall of the shack to her right didn't quite meet that of the hovel beyond.

She also noticed all the buildings around her were in flame to a greater or lesser extent. If she lingered another minute she'd best pray the Kalashnikov gang-banger blasted her from the blown-out window. Only that would save her from burning to death.

Annja raced around the almost hidden corner. Running through coils of brown-and-dirty-white smoke, she saw ahead of her, thirty yards away beyond a cross alley, two men fighting.

Dan. Looming over him was Patrizinho.

She shouted. Smoke clawed at her throat. Dan, bare-handed, launched a savage one-two combination, left hook and right cross.

The punches came at their target from the sides, outflanking most attempts to block them. Patrizinho leaned back away from his opponent, slipping the blows. His bare brown upper torso gleamed in the sun as if oiled. His dreadlocks, held back from his handsome face with a golden band, flew like a Medusa tail of serpents about wide shoulders.

Dan's right hand went behind him, came up with the handgun.

“No!” Annja screamed. She reached the crossing alley. Firearms and energy weapons crackled to both left and right through the roar of flames.

Patrizinho flicked the 9-mm pistol with the back of his left hand. It fired. The muzzle-flame must have seared his left biceps; unburned propellant and primer fragments must have peppered his bronze skin. Paying no mind, he stepped into Dan, dropping his weight and driving a compact vertical punch straight into Dan's chest above his heart.

Dan did not go flying back the way Annja had from Xia's palm-heel strike between her breasts. Instead his body seemed almost to balloon away from the blow, up and outward. He staggered but stayed on his feet.

“No!” Annja shrieked again. This time Patrizinho looked straight at her. His beautiful long face seemed full of infinite sadness.

The black handgun dropped from Dan's fingers.