-37-
The table I’d been sitting at went up and over. I was on my feet and marching to where Jack stood smiling, eyebrows riding high. His hands were uplifted like a priest doing a benediction.
“Here we are,” he said. “I want you all to bear witness to the violence inherent in this man. He can’t take criticism. Why do you all think I never promoted him to the rank of General? Because he was a poor officer—a narcissist, a megalomaniac. All I want to do today is set the record straight before I’m dragged off somewhere and put to death.”
I stopped my march before I reached him. I suddenly understood what was happening. I saw clearly what he was doing, why he wanted to provoke me: He was setting me up for later. He wanted me to attack him.
We had a long history of coming down to fistfights, and I wanted to hit him right now more than at any point in our sordid past. But it was a trap. After today, if Crow quietly had a heart attack in his cell, the public would forever believe I’d ordered it.
And they would probably be right.
It was my turn to nod to Emperor Jack Crow. I didn’t smile, because I couldn’t make my facial muscles do that right now. But I did nod with a steely gaze. I wanted him to realize I knew what he was up to, and that I wasn’t going to play his game.
Crow looked mildly disappointed, but he wasn’t through yet.
“May I speak?” he asked me. “Or is this just a mockery? I’m willing to sign these documents, but I feel I must express myself to the people. I would rather submit to their judgment than to the mercies of a conqueror.”
I nodded briefly. I figured I’d let him talk for a while. No one liked to listen to long, boring speeches. When everyone was getting bored, I’d shut him up and move on. If I pressed for that right now, I knew it would be all anyone remembered from this event.
Crow turned away from me and returned his attention to the cameras and the worldwide audience. I forced myself to relax and tried to appear calm.
“The litany of crimes Star Force has committed against this world is long and frankly unbelievable. No single entity in the history of the human species has caused so many preventable deaths. In each of these instances, Kyle Riggs, your new dictator-to-be, presided over the slaughter.”
He proceeded to list events. He started with the South American campaign, in which we lost hundreds of millions. From there he detailed the laying waste of China, southern Florida, much of Europe and places in the Middle East. He had some good points, and some bad ones. He neglected to point out that in the early battles he himself was in charge of Star Force.
He ended with some damning conclusions. “In the final stages, these enemies of their own species allowed a massive fleet to pass them by and fly to Earth. Star Force, a den of traitors, chose not to fight the machines. The alien fleet destroyed ours and nearly wiped out this planet. Imperial forces finally prevailed, but only after a valiant battle. That’s a story I need not repeat here, as you all know it well.”
I was grinding my teeth, wishing I’d shoved him out of the room before he’d started. I knew that if I did so now, it would appear as if he spoke the pure truth and I feared to hear it. I hung on, forcing myself to breathe evenly.
“And now we come to the most recent events. Trumping up a reason to attack their own homeworld directly—to attack us—Star Force fabricated an assassination plot. It was on this pretext they flew against us when we were weak, and they’ve managed to win through. Using alien technology, they have defeated us, but not the spirit of those who have survived! I urge you all to resist these invaders—”
“That’s enough,” I said loudly, unable to withstand any more from him. “This is a peace accord. Everyone here came in the interests of obtaining a ceasefire—except for you, apparently.”
“Peace? You dare talk of peace? You bring nothing but death and destruction wherever you go, Kyle. I have held the peace here. Millions did not die, as long as you were away. But no, that wasn’t good enough. You had to send your machine minions. When they didn’t kill us all, you invented a reason to come back to Earth in person. To do your own dirty work!”
I opened my mouth again, but I saw Jasmine gesturing desperately. She didn’t want me to engage him in debate. She wanted me to smile and pat him on the head like a crazy old uncle and be rid of him quietly.
But I couldn’t do it. I knew her strategy was a good one. But I wanted to tell my side of this story.
“Twice now,” I said, “you made some reference to a trumped up reason for us to go to war with your Imperial forces. Are you attempting to claim that a roster of assassins didn’t attempt to kill me and even my girlfriend?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“I have proof, if you want to see it. I—”
“Fantasies! Lies, invented recordings and sheer propaganda.”
“Jack,” I said dangerously. I was losing it again, I could feel it. “I’ve heard enough from you. I think it’s time you signed those documents—or just got up and left.”
“Again with the threats! When something or someone doesn’t go along with the master’s plan, he crushes the one who dares to speak the truth.”
He looked at me then, instead of at the cameras. He looked me right in the eye.
“Was that how it was with Sandra, Kyle?” he asked. “Did you get tired of her, and want to replace her? Or maybe she had too many ideas of her own. I hear you’re pretty good with those fists, and I know you assaulted her on many occasions. What happened the night you killed her and decided to blame it on me—?”
That was as far as he got.
I’m not an easygoing guy, I’ll admit that, but under the right circumstances, I can take quite a bit of public abuse. This was not one of those times. I’d been devastated by Sandra’s death and I couldn’t bear to hear her being used in this way. It wasn’t good enough for Crow that he’d killed her. Now he was trying to twist her death to his own advantage.
I charged at him with arms outthrust. As I rushed in he put up his own burly arms. He had a smile playing on his face. I didn’t quite understand that. The last time we’d met in hand-to-hand, I’d given him a good beating.
All around us, people shouted and stood up, but they weren’t quite certain what to do. The guards stepped closer, but didn’t grab Crow the way bailiffs were supposed to do when a convict went ape in a courtroom. First of all, it was me who had gone ape, not the convict. Second, I was their leader, but I wasn’t a frail oldster with white hair. I was tougher than any of them, and they knew it.
Nanotized people move fast and the hesitation on the part of the guards allowed quite a bit of action to occur.
With blurring speed, we met. He caught my hands with his, and I felt something odd—a stinging jolt. My right hand felt funny.
He had something in his hand. Something small, like a prankster’s joy-buzzer. He’d nailed me with an electrical shock.
Maybe that was supposed to put me down. It did numb my hand and weaken it, but otherwise, it only served to piss me off.
I yanked back the shocked hand and hammered it forward again, aiming for his face. He blocked with both his hands, but my fist blasted through and he was sent reeling.
About then, two of my marines reached Crow. They grabbed for his arms. Crow looked at me, panting.
He grinned. I knew that grin. He was a scrapper. A lowborn bastard from down-under. He liked to fight, and right now, he was enjoying himself.
“Afraid, Kyle?” he asked. “In the old days, men would duel for kingdoms. Don’t you want to punch me?”
He had me there. I did want to hit him. I really, really did. I couldn’t refuse this opportunity. I knew I’d never get it again once he was safely placed in some holding cell. He’d grow old and I’d be bored to death by the bureaucratic details of running a planet. This was the only chance I’d ever get to make him pay personally for Sandra—for all of it.
“All right,” I said. “But drop the buzzer.”
He nodded and something fell from his hand onto the table. It was small, round and silver, about the size of a quarter.
“You suggested a rule,” he said, “so I get one too: no hitting in the face. Let’s not end this too quickly.”
I agreed then nodded to my marines, who reluctantly let go of Crow.
Apparently, they didn’t move quickly enough for his taste. He punched both of them in the mouth at the same time—one with each fist—without even looking at them. His eyes were staring at me the entire time, and he was still smiling.
My marines were caught by surprise and sent reeling away. They had broken jaws. Blood and teeth dribbled from split lips.
Crow came toward me with absolute confidence.
I, on the other hand, frowned in concern. Had I misjudged the situation? What if, instead of getting me to give him a beating, his real goal all along had been to fight me like this, man-to-man?
Just before we met in the middle of the room with a hundred cameras watching, craning on tentacles and buzzing from their drone-platforms overhead, I wondered how this was going to go. I’d been thinking in terms of a traditional fistfight. A battle to beat another man down until he gave up. Such battles normally ended when one man was helpless or even unconscious.
But with two modern combatants such as Crow and I, things didn’t always go that way. We were too powerful, too deadly. We could kill with our bodies.
I knew I had been heavily modified, far beyond the level of normal troops. But what about the Emperor of Earth? What had he done to his body to improve it over the years?
He surprised me mildly with a sweeping low kick. He moved fast, but not that fast. A normal human would not have been able to blink, but I skipped back and the kick missed. I lunged the moment his foot whistled by and came in before he could regain his balance.
It was his turn to look surprised by my speed. I threw three punches into his ribcage before he pushed me away and got his guard up again.
I hit him hard, but it was like pounding on a steel barrel. He didn’t even register pain as we disengaged and circled one another.
“You’ve been paying the surgeon, Kyle!” he said. “I didn’t think you were the type.”
I wasn’t in the mood for banter, so I came at him again. Punches, kicks, holds and counters. We sparred for perhaps ten seconds. Neither of us landed a blow that could take the other out.
When we separated again, there was blood all over Crow’s white suit. Both our fists were bloody as well. Our clothes were ripped in places, as were our skins. Metal showed under there, crawling nanites that were working desperately to repair us. We were breathing harder, but we weren’t tired, not yet.
I heard Jasmine calling to me from the sidelines. She had cupped her hands around her mouth.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere, Kyle!” she shouted.
She was right, of course, but I didn’t really care. I took a step back to talk to her.
Crow apparently didn’t want us to talk. He grabbed up a pen from the table—an old-fashioned fountain pen of the type they reserved for these special occasions. He threw it at her with a flick of his wrist.
She appeared not to see it coming in time. The pen caught her in the chest and sunk in, like a thrown dagger.
I looked at her in surprise and anger.
“What the hell—?” came out of my mouth, but that was all I had time to say.
Crow charged at me. I realized even as he barreled in that I’d been tricked. He hadn’t injured Jasmine out of spite, he’d wanted to distract me, to make me look at her.
When I looked back in his direction, his foot was coming at my face. The black heel of his dress shoe was scuffed down to the brown leather in places.
I lifted my arms and twisted my head, but that heel connected with my left cheek and slid on into my ear. It hit with such force that it shaved my left ear off. The ear hung down upon my collar, dangling by shreds of skin. Blood welled up a moment later from a dozen severed vessels.
Crow had cheated, I thought for a stunned moment.
What a fool I was. Of course he’d cheated. The only reason he’d made up the rule about not hitting one another in the head was so that he could cheat. No one watching on the net would know or care. This fight, I realized now, was to the death.
The mistake he’d made, I decided in the next split second, was in not killing me with that single opportunity. If he’d landed his kick square-on, he might have ended this as the victor.
I knew what I had to do. I had to win.
Instead of dancing away howling in agony and trying to put my ear back on, I moved in close. I didn’t bother with grabbing his leg or punching his belly—I summoned up all my strength and threw a hammer-blow into his head.
The results were not unpredictable, but they were spectacular. My fist caught him under the chin and applied a couple thousand pounds of force there. Jack Crow’s head snapped back—and came off.
I’d decapitated the first and only Emperor of Earth.
One might think, as I did in that moment, the battle would be over. Under any kind of normal circumstances, we’d both be correct.
But technology on Earth had not sat still. Just as we’d made medical advances out in the Eden system due in large part to the twisted genius of Marvin, the Imperials had learned their own share of somewhat gruesome tricks.
His head hung by a flap down his back, thumping there like a backpack, or a slung-back hoodie. But despite gouts of blood, his body did not fall.
What happened instead twisted my guts. Out of his sides, stalks sprouted. They were like the eye-stalks of crabs.
I looked at them, staggering back. My mouth hung open.
“You’re a cyborg,” I said. “Are you even the real Jack Crow?”
Crow’s mouth worked, hanging there by the spinal cord and flaps of bloody skin. No intelligible words came out, but that was hardly surprising.
He staggered toward me and I backed away, disgusted. As far as I was concerned, this fight was over. He’d lost.
But Jack, apparently, didn’t see it that way. He came on, walking oddly, but still functionally. He threw punches at me, and his neck gargled. No doubt he was swearing at me still.
Where is his brain? I asked myself. He should be dying.
Jack kept coming and I kept backing away. This seemed impossible, but it was happening.
All around me the crowd of onlookers, who’d at first been circling closer for a better look, now retreated. They were horrified and repelled, and I didn’t blame them.
I was glad for the extra room. I wasn’t quite sure what I should do. Now that I had time to think about it, I realized why all those blows to Crow’s chest had done next to nothing. He really did have a steel barrel underneath his skin. Like the cyborgs I’d fought on Phobos, he had a layer of metal, a shell, protecting his innards instead of ribs made of bone.
I thought about ripping his head off all the way, as disgusting as that would have been, but I didn’t think it would work. His brain must be inside that central torso. Inside the metal encasement that had replaced his ribcage.
Going for a different tactic, I kicked at his legs. He grabbed my foot, twisted it, and forced me to disengage.
He seemed to move more slowly now that his head was gone. He still had eyes, but maybe he wasn’t accustomed to using them.
I jumped up onto a table, still retreating.
“Kill it, Kyle!” Jasmine shouted.
I glanced over to her. She had a vicious look on her face. Not even Sandra could have looked angrier. She’d pulled the pen out of her chest, and a circle of blood ringed the spot and ran down from it. The injury reminded me of a bullet wound.
I decided to man-up and hold my ground. Crow and I traded blows. I grunted as fists slammed into me. I was hitting him harder, and I had better aim, but I wasn’t doing any real damage. I might have dented his metal shell, but I wasn’t even sure that was happening, as the steel was encased in flesh.
Gritting my teeth, I braced myself to do what had to be done. I’ve killed aliens in hand-to-hand many times. Ramming one’s gauntlets into the guts of a Worm wouldn’t be much different, I told myself.
But I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to reach down his severed neck and dig for his brain. I didn’t want to rip off the eyestalks. It was just too gross.
In the end, as I was steeling myself for the finish, I was saved by unexpected interference.
Something small and silvery flashed. I shied away reflexively, thinking someone in the crowd, maybe one of the Imperials, had taken a shot at me.
But it wasn’t that. Suddenly, Crow’s body stiffened. There was a hot, burning smell. Then he shivered and fell, stone dead.
I stood there over him, panting. Around me, there were ragged cheers—but not many. They quickly fell into a stunned quiet.
I turned in a slow circle, eyeing the other Imperials. Over their heads, the cameras hovered and buzzed.
“Does anyone else here object to signing the peace accords?” I demanded.
No one else did.