Planet Leviathan

^{Chapter 7} Barroom Blitz

Stacia realized almost too late that there was no way Lexton would leave the other plasma pistols primed with a full charge when she had any doubt at all as to someone’s loyalty. Had this not occurred to her, Stacia might have wasted time trying to shoot Lexton and getting nothing but a face full of burning hot plasma for her efforts. Instead, as she spun around to face Lexton, she used the pistol in her hand as a hammer, smashing it into the blank side of Lexton’s face. Lexton’s intended killshot went to the side, burning through a stack of leather sheets. Stacia’s neural implants went hot, instantly assessing the situation, and telling her that she had been wrong about her assumptions regarding Faust. He hadn’t put himself in a bad place at all. Instead, with the doorframe around him and the Skin in front of him as a human shield, Faust had her at a distinct disadvantage. Fortunately for Stacia, he was also armed with the wrong kind of weapon for close quarters combat. He tried to aim his heavy 808 at Stacia, but it was too bulky for him to get a good shot around the Skin.

Stacia took advantage of that awkward moment to make another swing at Lexton, this time trying to batter the pistol out of her hand. It worked, and the gun hit the floor and skidded beneath the desk. Stacia had hoped it would be where she could easily grab it, but at least for the moment, it wasn’t where Lexton could quickly get it either. Realizing the guns in the crate were practically useless to her at the moment, Stacia grabbed one of the sonic blades, activated the trigger in its hilt, and took a swipe at Lexton. Whatever implants Lexton was running in her head would be horribly out of date, but they still allowed her to duck and roll backward to avoid Stacia’s attack.

She heard the naked woman scream right as Stacia’s implants told her Faust was about to become a bigger danger. Unlike Lexton, Faust’s implants would be almost as up to date as Stacia’s, meaning his threat assessment and strategic ability would be almost as quick. Stacia looked to see that Faust has tossed his gun to the side just outside the door and pulled his own sonic blade, which he was raising to the woman’s neck. Stacia didn’t wait to see if this was intended as a threat to get her to stand down or if Faust really was going to kill the woman. Stacia threw her blade. The vibrating mechanism that allowed it to slice through steel like lard didn’t work when it wasn’t in someone’s actual hand, but Stacia’s aim was true enough for it to just barely missed the woman’s shoulder and embed in the gap between armor plates at Faust’s elbow. He hissed and dropped his own knife, then shoved the woman at Stacia as a distraction. Stacia caught the woman from falling even as she grabbed the next sonic blade and prepared to use it on Lexton.

Lexton was already running out the door, however, and both she and Faust disappeared from sight. Stacia took a defensive stance at the doorframe and looked around the corner to see them disappear into one of the rooms on the side, slamming the door shut behind them.

“Where’s that door lead?” Stacia said in a hissing whisper to the Skin.

“Wha… what?” the woman asked, still clutching at Stacia’s arm for support. “I don’t…”

“That door! Where does it go?”

“Um, another bedroom?”

“Why would they lock themselves in a bedroom?”

“That’s the bedroom none of us like to use. It has a window with blood dried all around it.”

That would make it the other exit that Lexton had mentioned. It also made that an unlikely way for Stacia and the woman to escape themselves. Faust and Lexton could be waiting outside on the ground, preparing for an ambush.

“Are there any other bedrooms with windows?” Stacia asked.

“N…no. They don’t want us to be able to escape.”

Stacia nodded as she hurriedly went back to the crate and started loading the weapons. No other way off the second floor meant they would have to use the stairs and go back through the club or bar or whatever it was. Right through the room packed with armored ex-marines.

“I don’t understand,” the woman said. “What’s happening?”

“I wasn’t a fan of the so-called Lord Commander. I didn’t feel like taking orders from her.”

“But everyone takes orders from her.”

“Not me.”

Stacia inserted charge packs into each of the pistols. They wouldn’t be ready to fire for at least fifteen minutes, but until then, she had the 808s, the sonic blade, and there was still the pistol under the desk. She grabbed all the extra ammunition she could and shoved it into her survival sack, then turned to look at the Skin again. The woman stood completely rigid, her eyes tightly shut.

“What are you doing?” Stacia asked.

“Please. Just make it quick.”

“Excuse me?”

The woman opened one eye. “Aren’t you going to kill me?”

“Why would I kill you?”

The woman’s mouth worked for a second as though that question were so bizarre that she couldn’t come up with an answer.

“I had Faust bring you up here so I could take you with me.”

The woman’s muscles un-tensed. “Oh. Oh yes, of course.”

“Do you know how to use any of these?” Stacia asked, indicating the weapons, then realized that was a stupid question. “No, of course not. I’m betting you’ve never even been allowed to so much as touch one.”

“You… you want me to use a weapon?”

“Here, take this,” Stacia said, handing the woman her sonic blade. “If you hold it just like this, it’ll vibrate and cut through practically anything. Keep the blade well away from your skin.”

The woman held the knife as far away as her arm would stretch.

“Uh, good enough. Just swing it at anyone that comes at you. I don’t suppose you have any clothes on this floor that you can put on up here?”

The woman stared at her.

“I guess not. Are you ready?”

“I still don’t even understand what’s going on.”

“Just keep close to me. I’ll protect you.”

“From what?”

“If we’re lucky, nothing. But I’m pretty sure we’re not lucky.”

Stacia gestured for the Skin to be quite as they crept down the hall. If anyone on any other planet saw them, she was sure they would look absurd: a woman in full battle armor with six different guns strapped to her trying to sneak down the upstairs hall in a bar followed by a butt-naked woman holding a knife straight out in front of her. But here on Leviathan, she was hoping that anyone that saw them wouldn’t look twice, or at the very least would be drunk enough that if they did look twice, Stacia could drop them before they could sound any alarm. They got back to the end of the hallway without incident, although the sounds coming from behind two of the doors told Stacia that they weren’t completely alone on the floor. She would have to watch their six if something went wrong.

As soon as Stacia took two steps down the stairs, something did indeed go wrong.

“Everyone!” someone screamed from downstairs. Faust. “This is not a drill! Oathbreaker upstairs!”

All sounds from below stopped. Stacia stopped too, wondering if it was maybe too late to go back and try their luck with the window. But that would be just as problematic as earlier. Faust might have come around to the main entrance of the building, but Lexton would still be waiting below. She might even not be alone anymore.

Potential ambush behind me, definite ambush ahead, Stacia thought, then smiled. Actually, ahead sounds a lot more fun.

She put a hand on the Skin’s shoulder for a moment, hoping she would get that she should stay put. Then Stacia unslung one of the 808s from her back and jumped headfirst down the rest of the stairs.

It was an unbelievably stupid move, which thankfully meant that no one could have possibly thought to prepare for it. Before she was even halfway down, she fired multiple rounds blindly into the ceiling, hoping that would be enough to distract a number of the patrons. Stacia’s implants registered that it did, although not as many as she had hoped and not the right ones. The Skins in the room, apparently ready for everything to explode into violence at a moment’s notice, nearly all ducked and a covered. A few of the ex-marines, likely some of the drunker ones judging by their proximity to the bar, followed suit. From what remained, Stacia scanned the room and registered sixty-four people remaining on their feet, fifty-eight of them in the early stages of taking a hostile position.

Fifty-eight targets, all of them as highly trained as me, Stacia thought. Let’s see if I can do this in under five minutes.

Before Stacia even hit the floor, she’d blown two heads off.

She did the sideways tuck and roll when she landed that she’d been trained to do when she was carrying so much gear. The threat assessment went from fifty-six to fifty-nine as three more people decided it was better to fight than run. Making sure her 808 was set to short bursts rather than continuous fire, Stacia swung the weapon around and made headshots at the eight nearest Shellheads. The bullets connected dead on with four and grazed two. In any other circumstances, Stacia would have been horrified that she’d missed at all, but by now, every person in the room with implants should be running their own threat assessments. The element of surprise was disappearing quickly.

One of the Shellheads she’d missed ducked low behind one of the stages, while the other pulled out a sonic knife and did a pirouetting lunge at Stacia. She recognized this one as Derre Mur, a woman who had been discharged for pit-fighting. Although that alone was not considered a dischargeable offense, since Galactic Marines making money on the side as pit-fighters was kind of an open secret that the bureaucrats tried to hide under the rug, this woman had been known for taking particular glee in killing her opponents. She wasn’t the kind of person Stacia wanted to take on in a melee.

From some far spot in the back of the room, some man drunkenly screamed, “Everyone attack!” This was promptly followed by a spray of bullets that hit more of the person’s erstwhile friends instead of Stacia. This provided Stacia the perfect opportunity to duck out of the way of Mur’s attacks, and she dashed over to a Skin cowering nearby to shove her down before a stray bullet got her. The Shellheads might be able to survive a body shot just fine, but Stacia doubted Leviathan had the medical supplies to help a randomly injured Skin.

In Stacia’s mind, the red of many of the direct threats to her turned to a burning orange as the stray bullets caused many to turn on the nearest person and take out whatever aggressions they’d pent up. Faust might have intended to get everyone in the bar to go after Stacia, but all he’d done was start a barroom brawl. Stacia scanned the immediate area for anymore Skins in danger, found that most of them were sufficiently out of the way, and then took advantage of the chaos to run back to the stairs. She had to duck one drunken punch and redirect one not-so-drunken kick into someone else, but otherwise made it with minimal effort. She looked up to see the Skin staring down at her with a wide-eyed look that could have been anything from amusement to pure terror. She still had the knife held straight out in front of her.

Stacia motioned for her to come on down. The woman cocked her head like she didn’t understand. “Come on!” Stacia said. “We don’t have much…” There was another burst of gunfire. Stacia ducked, even though it had apparently been directed at some woman in the corner who was crying mournfully that someone had gotten blood in her drink. Her protests ceased rather abruptly. “If you don’t come down now, I’ll have to leave you behind.” It occurred to Stacia for the first time that maybe that was exactly what the woman wanted. After all, what did Stacia really have to offer her? She felt a strange desire to keep this peculiar woman safe, but could Stacia really give her any safety once she left Hobbes in search of Stanton? How many more vicious creatures were out there that would see her as a quick snack?

Before Stacia could voice any of these possibilities, the Skin hurried down the stairs. “I’m coming. But, um, where are we going?”

“We’ll figure that out later. Right now, anywhere but here.”

Stacia turned for the door just in time to see Mur charging at her. It wasn’t enough time to dodge, though. Mur barreled Stacia over onto the floor, where they rolled for several seconds before Mur ended up on top of her. She thrust her sonic blade down, aiming for Stacia’s eyes. Stacia caught her wrist and tried to hold Mur back, but the pit-fighter had obviously been keeping up with her training. Slowly, Stacia gave up valuable inches to Mur’s strength, and the blade got closer, closer…

Then a completely different blade popped out of Mur’s eye. Stacia didn’t understand what was happening at first. Did Mur have some kind of weird additional implant that allowed her to sprout another weapon from her head? But as Mur worked her mouth, trying to speak, blood flowed down her face along with pieces of her eye. Definitely not intentional. Stacia pulled out from under her as she dropped forward, revealing the Skin woman over her, the sonic blade Stacia had given her now jammed into the back of Derre Mur’s head.

The woman’s mouth hung open in horror at what she had done, and Stacia had no doubt that she would have continued standing there uncomprehendingly until someone else finally came along and knifed her in the back. Stacia stood up and shook her out of her stupor.

“Come on!” As Stacia pulled the knife out of Mur’s head, the woman finally blinked and seemed to realize she was in even more danger now than before. Previously, she had just been yet another Skin caught in the fight. Now, she had actively taken the life of one of her masters. If there had been any way for the woman to stay behind, it was completely gone now.

Faust had somehow gotten lost in the fight, leaving the door just open enough for the two of them to run through with a minimum of kicking and punching on the way. Outside in the mostly deserted street, a single Elite stood in Stacia’s way with a plasma pistol pointed at her. The Elite might not have been wearing his armor anymore, but he would still have the neural implants and all the enhanced reflexes and perceptions that came with it. Now that Stacie was closer, she could clearly see the scars on the exposed skin where it has been cut off some other helpless fellow and reattached onto him. Not that she had had reason to doubt her companion’s story before now, but this proved the horrible fate of many that were born naturally on Leviathan.

The Elite nodded at her, then indicated his pistol, then indicated her 808 and shook his head. Stacia understood what he meant. A duel. It would be crazy and stupid to actually agree to this. Without the armor, the Elite would probably be faster on the draw. Yet she also knew that, if she tried to use her 808 at the moment, he’d be able to get her first. Silently, Stacia nodded to the man in agreement, lowered her 808, and hit a switch on it. She turned to the Skin.

“I need you to hold my rifle while I take care of this.” She thrust the weapon into the startled woman’s hands. “Just hold it in his general direction and squeeze the trigger if he tries to do anything outside the rules.”

“I don’t even know the rules.”

“I don’t think there are any.” Keeping her back to the Elite and moving slowly, Stacia stepped aside from the Skin and then slowly pulled out a pistol and held it at her side.

“If you don’t think there are any rules, then why are you following them?” the woman asked.

“I’m not.” The switch that she had flipped on the 808 clicked. A burst of fire came out of the rifle, scaring the Skin enough that she dropped the weapon. Stacia spun around to see that, while most of the bullets had missed the Elite, one had hit him in the leg and the other in the chest. Stacia fired off two more shots from the pistol, both of them hitting him in the head and melting his face. The Elite never even raised his gun.

Stacia picked up the 808. “Next time, hold on to it.”

“Uh, okay.”

Stacia grabbed the Elite’s body and slung it over her shoulder. The Skin would need clothes, but they didn’t have time to strip the corpse just now. They instead had to get as far away from Hobbes as possible.

As the ran over the tiny metal wall, the Skin hesitating ever so slightly as though she thought whatever might be beyond was worse than her fate might be if she stayed, Stacia looked back at the center building. Lexton stood near the door with Faust. Neither of them gave chase and neither of them had weapons, but Lexton shaped her finger into a gun and pantomimed pulling the trigger.

The parting message was obvious.