The Empty Warrior (78 page)

The lizard released his arm as O’Keefe communed with Regulus and an instant later he felt the ropes fall away from his wrists. He turned in time to see the beast replacing the long, serrated knife in its scabbard, just below where the base of its long neck joined the armored vehicle. It then opened a compartment atop its undercarriage and pulled out two long whips, both with sharpened metal blades woven into their tips. One it threw to the floor at O’Keefe’s feet. The other it raised and struck with, drawing blood from O’Keefe’s back even as he knelt to claim his own weapon. He cried out, but stood and faced his attacker.

“You motherfucker,” he spat through clenched teeth, too angry now at the premature strike to be afraid. “I’m going to have your brain in my fist in about two minutes.”

“You big talk, human,” the lizard growled above the noise of its engine. “But talk no help now. I kill many humans. Now you die like all rest, but you die slow. I enjoy much.”

O’Keefe pointed at the guard with the hand that held his whip. “Good luck, shit for brains,” O’Keefe raged. “Because whoever you’ve killed, you’ve damn sure never killed a Marine and trust me, you’re not starting today.”

The guard merely laughed, fumes erupting from under the rear of the its tracked body as it lurched into motion. It warily circled counterclockwise around O’Keefe as the Earther stood centered, turning to keep his front to the lethal machine/creature. Occasionally the lizard would circle in closer to O’Keefe and crack the whip at him, but he was quick enough to avoid most of the attempted blows. However, some inevitably found their mark, and it was not long before O’Keefe was suffering from several bloody and painful wounds.

His own attempts to strike back at his opponent were not nearly as successful. O’Keefe had never used a whip in his life, and what blows he was able to land did little if any damage to the thick, scaly covering of his adversary.

In his mind he felt incoherent animal rage rising from the side of the arena as Regulus had nearly reached the breaking point. The dog was seconds away from leading the pack on a charge.
No!
O’Keefe commanded forcefully.
Don’t you dare! This one’s mine, and I’m going to kill the bastard!
The force of his emotion blunted the dog’s ardor until it was under control again, if held back only by a slender thread of resolve.

Time seemed to slow for O’Keefe as the battle progressed. The whip seemed to lighten in his hand. Every sense he possessed was heightened far beyond even the enhanced amplitudes with which Dr. Beccassit had equipped him. He saw everything—the dust patterns raised by the treads of the guard, the angles of its wrist bones as it drew back to strike with the whip, even the individual scales around its reptilian eyes. He could clearly see the lids of those eyes nictitating horizontally across the planes of the irises as if filmed in slow motion.

And yet, everything outside of the immediate sphere of battle faded to insignificance. The men crowded together in the stands may as well not have existed. He was unaware of the sounds they raised, the smattering of cheers at his every strike coming from those still not cowed enough to stand by silently. Elorak and the rest of her guards meant nothing to him. Even the presence of Regulus was at length swept aside as only data of critical importance to the single combat was allowed to enter his conscious mind.

But despite his adrenaline-soaked senses and musculature, O’Keefe was still making little progress. His skill with the whip was increasing with each attempted blow, but not nearly at the rate that would be necessary to save his life. Meanwhile the guard was making a point to turn into him now and again while reducing its speed, forcing him to back away with rapidity, draining his stamina, and simultaneously increasing the accuracy it attained with its own lash, as it had a lesser need to compensate its aim for its movement across the floor. A dozen welts now oozed thick blood through rents in O’Keefe’s skin.

At this rate the lizard would reduce him to a quivering mass of flesh before it had suffered any significant damage at all. O’Keefe knew that seizing the offensive was paramount if he were to survive, and he knew it had to be done soon. He began to intentionally slow his movements, baiting the beast by feigning exhaustion beyond that which he felt, enduring strikes that he could have evaded merely to draw the lizard in. It seemed to be working. The guard kept rolling closer and closer to O’Keefe before pivoting away. At last, sensing victory, the beast moved nearer to him than at any other point during the contest and slowed almost to a crawl. When it drew back its arm to snap the whip, O’Keefe reversed his retreat and instead charged. In a moment of utter ferocity he screamed at the top of his lungs and sprinted directly at the guard. The lizard’s simultaneous flick of its whip missed its mark, landing long. The body of the whip fell across O’Keefe’s left arm, the arm he was holding up and out to protect his face. He twisted the whip around his forearm as he ran, winding the weapon into his clenched fist.

The guard, instinctively aware of the danger, tried in vain to free the scourge from O’Keefe’s clutches as it reflexively stopped to shift into reverse. Its powerful, genetically engineered muscles pulled up and back on the handle of the whip at the same time as its chassis came to a halt. But its action did not free the lash; it only tightened the wrap of the weapon around O’Keefe’s arm. The upward heave did jerk O’Keefe off the floor however, nearly pulling his shoulder from its socket and swinging him into the angled metal front of the lizard machine’s hull and then dragging him aboard it. The force of the blow felt as if it had collapsed the ribs in O’Keefe’s chest. Pain shot through his torso. Only the upward pull of the guard’s whip kept him from sliding off the armor and onto the floor in front of his attacker.

But the collision with the unyielding steel had stunned him to the point where his fingers lost their grip. The whip uncoiled from around his forearm and the guard finally yanked it from his grasp, but not before O’Keefe was able to wrap his other arm securely around the base of the lizard’s neck to hold himself atop its steel body. As his left arm descended from having the whip torn away, O’Keefe transferred his own whip to that hand and locked that arm around the lizard’s scaly trunk. Pain from his injured left shoulder burned blackened pathways into his mind, and yet he forced his muscles to hold fast. And now his right hand, his gun hand, was free.

Somewhere deep in the lizard’s dull mind alarms sounded at what was about to happen, but it was too late. It had reared back to pull the whip free from O’Keefe, and its long neck had carried its short arms too far from its undercarriage to tear the human from its hull. In the half second the lizard’s mistake afforded him, O’Keefe drew the lizard’s knife from its scabbard and buried it to the hilt in the misbegotten creature’s neck and held it there, twisting it as much as he was able in order to do the maximum amount of violence to the reptile.

The guard’s neck had been arching back downward even as O’Keefe had impaled it, and almost immediately after the knife struck home, taloned reptilian fingers raked deep gashes across his naked back, from the top of his buttocks up to his shoulder blades, as the beast scraped him off its hull and threw him to one side where he landed in a bloody heap on the arena floor. The knife was torn from his grasp and skittered across the stone, out of his reach. But the damage had been done. In the action of sweeping O’Keefe away, the lizard had also pulled the razor sharp blade of its knife through over half the tissue of its neck, ripping a jagged slash through its scales from the side of its throat to the point where the knife had caught on its vertebrae and was loosed from O’Keefe’s clenched fist.

The wound elicited a hideous shriek of pain from the guard. Arterial blood spurted like a fountain from the gash. The creature dropped its whip and clumsily lowered its neck to where its hands could grasp at the gory tear with its bony fingers, trying desperately to stem the flow of crimson ichor that already stained the front of its armored hull and dripped heavily to the dusty floor beneath it.

O’Keefe, meanwhile, had been nearly knocked unconscious, first by the lizard’s fierce blow and then by the impact of his head against the stone when he had landed. He had just managed to get to his hands and knees when the guard threw back its head and bellowed a terrible and tormented war cry. Then it thundered toward him as fast as its diesel would propel it, both its hands still frantically attempting to hold its shredded throat together. O’Keefe turned his head at the sound just in time to see a wide, metal track rolling toward him and only a few feet away. The beast, now bereft of its weapons and the use of its hands, meant to crush him. He rolled on to his side, folding into a fetal position. The move allowed him to slip between the treads, avoiding one by only inches.

As the guard rolled over him O’Keefe was surprised to see that its underside was not armored like that of Terran military vehicles. At the last second he reached out and caught the axle that ran between the machine creature’s rearmost sprockets in the crook of his still good right arm. The rotating shaft was coated with the rough and dry residue of Ashawzut, and it abraded the skin from the inside of his arm as it turned. His nearly naked body scraped sideways across the arena as the lizard slewed around to make another pass at its intended victim. The motion also had the torturous effect of pressing his bare flank flush against the hot metal of the lizard’s exhaust, burning him severely. O’Keefe ground his teeth into each other with all his strength to avoid screaming at the pain. Yet still he did not release his hold on the axle.

The lizard slowed, and then stopped, its head turning this direction and that atop its bent neck, looking for the enemy that should have been reduced to a gory pulp of pulverized bone and macerated flesh. Instead it saw only the crimson trail of its own fluids. It threw back its head once more and let loose another hideous cry before speaking. “Human!” it hissed loudly, its voice near delirium with pain and loss of blood. “Where human? How to hide now, when no place I see?”

Beneath the beast, O’Keefe released his hold on the axle. He dropped the whip and pulled the remnant of his shirt from between his legs. It was already wet with his blood, but he soaked it by wiping it quickly over his chest. He wadded it up, and pushed it into the guard’s exhaust, holding it there with two fingers. Regaining the whip with his other hand, it took all the strength he still possessed to ram the butt end of the handle as far inside the rounded exhaust outlet as he was able, the handle’s fattened center sealing the outlet and sticking fast. The effort sent waves of searing agony pulsing through his ribs and left shoulder, and ripped a scream from his lungs.

The guard, belatedly realizing O’Keefe’s whereabouts, pulled away as if to turn and charge in another attempt to run down its quarry. It did not make it far. The tracks rolled a few yards before the lizard’s hull lurched once, then twice before the engine seized, immobilizing the creature a mere twenty feet in front of O’Keefe. He pushed himself to his knees, his chest heaving and his body abused from a myriad of injuries. He remained where he knelt for some time, watching; as the lizard howled piteously and flailed about in its death throes. At last its long neck sank forward to the floor, its jaw striking with enough force to send an audible thud issuing across the arena.

O’Keefe forced himself to his feet and made his way to where the guard’s long knife had come to rest. He bent to retrieve it as rivulets of blood from the gashes the lizard had opened across his back streamed down over the cloth that covered his buttocks. Rising, he turned and walked slowly, unsteadily, past the steel hull of the guard to where it’s scaly head lay. He fell to his knees beside it and with what strength still remained in his lacerated musculature, buried the knife deeply into the dying beast’s skull.

But still he found the strength to rise yet again and stumble toward Elorak. After moving a dozen or so yards, he raised a clenched fist at the Vazilek and attempted a victory howl that died in his throat. With that he keeled weakly over, sprawling across the floor. Pain swept over him in waves, submerging his consciousness, fading his vision to black. The release awaiting him was seductive, and his mind clawed toward the comfort of oblivion.

She dismounts her litter. You must come back to yourself. You must remain conscious. Take hold of my thoughts. Remember your weapon. The time has come to use it.
But O’Keefe could not come back. He could not take hold. He was slipping away. And yet somehow Regulus’ thoughts clutched at him, refusing him release, suspending O’Keefe’s mind on the edge of the darkness.

The locked doorway that had closed O’Keefe’s mind to Regulus during the battle had swung wide open now that the death match was settled and he was near unconsciousness. His mind was now as vulnerable as his body. Never before had he been so accessible. Now the big dog’s thoughts, suffused with devotion and concern, poured through the nanite construct in a flood, filling his mind to overflowing.
Follow me,
Regulus commanded.
The climax of your battle is yet to come. You must follow me.
At last O’Keefe’s mind, responding to a directive he could not deny, grasped toward the thoughts of Regulus and did follow; their minds intertwining, the canine’s presence a rock to which O’Keefe clung, and from which he slowly pulled himself back to sentience. The darkness receded and became fog. The fog thinned to become mist, a mist through which Mada Elorak strode, coming directly for him, her assault robot trailing in her wake. She stopped a mere ten feet from where he lay.

“You are indeed a stonliata,” she said softly, her voice unamplified, nodding slightly as if still skeptical of the battle’s outcome. “Tis a pity to kill you now, and yet discipline must be maintained. The Akadean swine must not be allowed to think there is any hope in rebelliousness. However, I have no wish to shoot you while you lie in the dust and your own blood. Rise, and face death as you deserve, with dignity.”